by Trevor Hoyle
Sarah sat up and rubbed the sleep from her eyes. The knowledge of where she was filtered slowly into her brain, like a halting message coming from a great distance. She was in the Palm Beach home of Messiah Wilde. She was clear about that much, because she remembered that he had invited Daniella and herself to be his guests. But she couldn’t remember how they had got here. The last distinct memory she had was of being among a group of people in the crowded hospitality suite, watching him and listening, in a mesmerised way, while he chatted to them about this and that. And now it was morning and here she was. Alone in a strange bedroom. Her suitcase had been brought in and laid flat down on a trestle stand near the wall of black closet doors with red surrounds. The entire room was decorated in the same colour scheme: black drapes with red trim, black carpet with the Beamers’ symbol picked out in red, a thin red stripe on the edges of the shiny black furniture.
The tapping came again, louder this time. Sarah had asked the person to enter before she realised she was naked, and quickly crossed her arms, holding the black silk sheet against her body.
‘Good morning, madam.’ A small, brown-skinned man, Indonesian perhaps, wearing a white jacket came in wheeling a trolley. From a widow’s peak his hair flowed straight back like a glossy black cap. He brought the trolley to the side of the bed and removed the white linen cover. He bowed slightly, averting his elliptical eyes. ‘If you require anything more, madam, please use the telephone. Thank you.’
He went out, quietly closing the door. Sarah wouldn’t have minded eating breakfast outside on the patio, but she felt too lazy and disinclined to move. Her throat was parched, and she had a raking thirst. She poured a tall glass of orange juice from the ice-cold pitcher and drank it down. It tasted so wonderful that she poured another and sipped it between mouthfuls of scrambled eggs, crispy bacon, and wheat toast spread thickly with butter. She was, Sarah discovered, very hungry, and even thirstier, filling the tall glass for the third time and gulping it down, before subsiding, replete and contented, on to the pillows. She felt revivified, her mind clear and sharp, though her limbs were suffused with a pleasant languor after the meal.
It was only then that her thoughts turned to Daniella. She tried to recall if they had travelled here together to Palm Beach, but that was no use because she couldn’t even remember leaving the Grace MediaCorp building last night. And something else hit her. Sarah touched her naked shoulder. Had she undressed herself, or had someone else put her to bed? And, if so, who?
Lying back on the pillows, trying desperately to remember, Sarah was startled when, without any warning, the door opened and Messiah Wilde came silently into the bedroom. He was wearing a robe of black silk that clung to his shoulders and was loosely swathed across his chest to reveal a deep V of his pale, lightly muscled body down to the navel. He stood at the foot of the bed, regarding Sarah with a crooked smile of amusement. Then he chuckled and gave her an impish wink.
‘Glad to see you haven’t lost your appetite, my dear. Anything else you’d like? More juice?’
‘No.’ Sarah shrank down, holding the sheet to her with numbed hands. ‘Thank you.’ She tried to avoid looking at his crotch, which was directly in her eyeline; at the folds of silk rippling over a long hanging shape. ‘Where’s my daughter? I want to see Daniella.’
‘Daniella isn’t here.’
‘Where is she?’
Messiah Wilde raised his dark eyebrows, as if surprised by her question. ‘At the studio, of course. She has to get ready.’
‘Ready?’ Sarah frowned. The frown felt stiff on her face, similar to the numbness one feels after an injection at the dentist’s. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘Daniella is the Chosen One on tonight’s show. It’s a great honour for her. You should be proud.’
‘But, I’m on tonight’s show,’ Sarah said, articulating the words as if her mouth was filled with large, round, smooth pebbles. ‘Not Daniella.’
Messiah Wilde’s lips split open in a wide smile and his head went back. She saw his white throat quivering in a dry chuckle. ‘No, no, no, my dear. We like tight young cunts, not camel’s lips puckered by the ravages of time.’ His head snapped forward. The smile vanished and his eyes suddenly narrowed to slits. ‘Have some more juice, why don’t you?’
Sarah’s stomach turned over. She could feel the dull seismic thud of her heart. Her mind was bright and clear – unnaturally so – yet her body was leaden and inert. His meaning was obvious: the orange juice had been spiked. And she had drunk three full glasses of the stuff. And, though his meaning about Daniella was a mystery to her, Sarah was chilled to the marrow of her bones.
Sarah lay palpitating against the pillows, arms crossed over her chest, hands like frozen claws clutching the sheet to her body. The numbness was spreading; she tried to move her right foot, just the tiniest fraction. Nothing.
‘What’s the matter, my dear? Why so modest? Isn’t this what you came for?’ He jiggled his hips and the hanging shape in the folds of silk swung from side to side.
Sarah formed the words slowly, as if her jaws had been wired together. ‘Tell me, please … what you mean … about the Chosen One. You won’t… harm my daughter … please …’
Messiah Wilde spread his arms wide.
‘Of her own free will Daniella became a convert of the Beamers. She is among the most blessed, my dear, being the Chosen One to serve in the sacred rites of our Temple. Your daughter will be revered by millions of people throughout the world. The ultimate sacrifice is the supreme accolade.’
Sarah swallowed painfully. ‘What… will…’ She ground out the words, one by one. ‘You… do… to… her?’
‘Oh don’t worry, you won’t miss anything: it’ll be taped,’ Messiah Wilde informed her. ‘We’ll let you see a copy.’
He leant towards her, the wavy curtains of black hair framing his face. His eyes bored into Sarah with such intensity that she could feel heat on her face, as if a furnace door had been opened. Dim embers in their dark depths grew brighter and brighter until they glowed fiery red. She tried to tear her own eyes away from their mesmeric power, but the drug had numbed them in their sockets. They were glassy and unblinking. And now everything in the room seemed heightened – sharper and more vivid than real life. Sarah’s brain speeded up. Sensory impressions swirled around her in a bright jangle of colour and light and movement, while her body lay stiff as a corpse under the thin sheet she clutched to herself with frozen hands.
Messiah Wilde parted the black robe. Kneeling on the bed, he uncrossed her arms and folded back the sheet to expose her breasts, rising and falling rapidly, and gave a long, slow wink.
‘First the mother, then the daughter,’ Messiah Wilde murmured huskily, his nostrils flaring as his breathing became harsh. ‘Daniella, poor sweet, won’t enjoy it half as much. These young girls never do. But you, my dear, you have dreamt of this moment, haven’t you? And now your dreams are about to come true. Just imagine … just think of all the women who would envy you, and yearn for the blessing about to be bestowed upon you by Messiah Wilde Himself!’
‘Messiah Wilde Himself made the decision,’ said the clean-cut young man. He had a smooth round face, blond hair brushed neatly from an arrow-straight parting, and smelt strongly of aftershave. ‘When he saw you last night after the show, and talked with you, he knew you were the one.’ He favoured her with a smile that was brimming with enthusiasm. ‘Bet you’re thrilled, huh?’
‘Yeah – uh – yes,’ Daniella said uncertainly. ‘But – uh – did he ask my mom about it? Does she know he picked me? I mean, I thought she was gonna take part in tonight’s show.’
‘Hey, don’t worry so about it!’ the clean-cut young man chided her good-naturedly. ‘Everything’s jake. She’ll get her shot some other time. And your mom’ll be in the audience, cheering you on, proud as gosh almighty.’
Looking through the glass walls made Daniella’s head spin slightly at the sight of the levels moving rapidly past the elevator. She’d awake
ned late that morning feeling muzzy, in a strange bedroom of black and red that she knew must be in the home of Messiah Wilde. She knew it because he had invited them to stay there as his guests. There were gaps in her memory that stayed stubbornly blank, no matter how hard she tried to fill them. Anyway, this servant had come into the bedroom, a small Asian-looking man in a white jacket, and told her to get dressed at once, someone was waiting to take her to the Beamers’ building. When she asked after her mother, the man shrugged his narrow shoulders and muttered something in a foreign tongue. She asked the black chauffeur the same question, standing by the bronze limo in the driveway, and all he could do was shake his head and mumble, ‘Don’t have a clue about that, miss. My orders say to drive you to HQ, that’s all I know.’
The clean-cut young man who met her in the reception hall had an answer ready. Her mother would be along later; she was having brunch with Messiah Wilde while they discussed some new material for Sarah’s radio programme. In the meantime she, Daniella, had a busy day ahead of her, preparing for tonight’s show. Grinning at the bewildered expression on her face, he dropped the bombshell:
Daniella Gawdor was to be the Chosen One.
The news sank into her brain like a delayed-action depth charge. She was still grappling with the idea and trying to come to terms with it as the clean-cut young man led her into the coffee shop on the first-floor balcony. There he bought her fruit juice, a double cheeseburger and a Twinkie bar, and a glass of milk (which was what she asked for), and sat opposite her sipping a mineral water, a beaming smile on his round, well-fed face.
‘You do realise what a privilege this is, don’t you? Many are called but few are chosen. You’re a lucky little girl.’
‘I know that,’ Daniella said. Her head was clamped in a vice, and the waves of his pungent aftershave wafting over her made it difficult to eat. In fact she felt faintly nauseous. She bit into the cheeseburger, which tasted like warmedover cardboard.
‘Very lucky. Very fortunate. What a story you’re going to have for the guys back home in… where is it you’re from?’
‘New Jersey.’
‘Back home in New Jersey, right.’ The clean-cut young man was nodding earnestly. He had a habit of staring at her with his large bright-blue eyes, the whites so white they had a bluish tinge to them, that Daniella found rather intimidating. They seemed to her unclouded by a single thought; or maybe there was just one single thought in them and nothing else.
She said, ‘I can’t eat any more, guess I lost my appetite,’ and pushed the cheeseburger aside.
‘Don’t you want your Twinkie?’
‘No thanks. You have it.’ He ate it in two bites, chomping it with large square teeth which made her think of white tombstones. She dabbed her lips with a paper napkin. ‘You sprung it on me out of the blue. I’m still in shock,’ Daniella said, giving him a tentative smile. Everything was happening so fast that she was finding it difficult to get her bearings. Yesterday had been a nonstop whirl, and meeting Messiah Wilde on top of it all had been pure fantasy. The countless hours she had spent in her room playing the Beamers of Joy video, his dark soulful gaze filling the screen, had transformed him in her imagination into a figure of mythical proportions who inhabited another realm. In her wildest dreams Daniella had never dared to believe that she would one day meet this wonderful being in person and experience the aura of his actual presence.
But now her dreams were coming true. Not only had she met and talked with him, it was just sinking in that she was going to appear live with Messiah Wilde on The Lovebeams Show.
The elevator stopped at level nineteen and the clean-cut young man took her by the elbow and guided her out. This level was different from the others, Daniella saw: not open-plan offices but corridors of dark-grained wood panelling and thick carpets softly illuminated by concealed lighting. She walked along beside him, her heart beating fast.
‘Where are we going?’ she thought to ask.
‘Oh, my, a whole bunch of things to do. Publicity shots, make-up tests, costume fitting, pre-show briefing – when you’re chosen to step up out of the audience you have to know how to react, what to say, and you have to look right too. I mean, you look just fine, great,’ the cleancut young man amended hastily, ‘but appearance is all important in front of a mass audience. Television is a cruel medium.’
‘What do I have to do?’ Daniella asked nervously. ‘I don’t want to make a fool of myself.’
‘Don’t fret yourself so,’ the clean-cut young man reassured her, tapping lightly with his knuckles and opening a door to a room of spotlit mirrors, high-backed chairs and women in white smocks. ‘After the pre-show briefing you’ll be word perfect. And when they’ve done with you here,’ he said, giving her a gentle nudge in the back to step inside, ‘you’ll look like a movie star.’
Had it moved or hadn’t it? Sarah blinked a mixture of tears and sweat from her eyes and squinted down at her right foot. For the past fifteen minutes she had been using every ounce of willpower to get the damn thing to move even the tiniest, minutest fraction, and because she lacked any physical sensation she had to keep staring at her foot to see if anything was happening. Had it really twitched just then, or was she so desperate she had fooled her imagination into playing tricks on her? She screwed up her concentration and tried again, her naked, inert body shiny with sweat, spread-eagled like a white cross on the black silk sheet as he had left it when he was finally done with her.
Sarah had seen his eyes flare redly with blinding intensity, felt the heat of them upon her like a scorching sun, and then the glare in them had dwindled and died, and they had resumed their dark, brooding impassiveness as he pulled away from her, sated and spent. She had held back her tears while he was doing it, a fierce cold pride keeping her stony-faced, but when the door closed and he was gone they poured out unceasingly until she felt to be drowning in them. They were tears of rage, not self-pity, Sarah kept telling herself – rage and more rage and yet more rage, a flood of rage boiling out of her.
She had lain for a long while waiting for the drug to wear off, expecting the tingling of life to return at any minute to her leaden limbs. She was still waiting. The drug had left her senses sharp and alert, and she could move her eyes to watch the shaft of sunlight growing thinner and more upright as the sun rose higher, but her physical self had no more feeling or animation than a statue. That’s when she summoned up every fibre of her resolve, urging her right foot to respond to her command with even the tiniest spasm of willed movement. Staring down, her hair clinging wet to her forehead and neck like rats’ tails, Sarah shrieked in her head, Move yourself, goddamnit, give me a sign you’re alive and not dead down there! One feeble twitch, that’s all I’m asking for. You can do it if you try. Do it for Daniella. One feeble twitch for Daniella, that’s all you have to do. So do it for her, you bastard. Do it, goddamnit, do it! Do it!
Her right foot moved, suddenly jerked with a galvanic action, like a corpse on a mortuary slab returning to life.
Sarah lay back on the pillows, resting for a moment, chest heaving for breath. She was almost blinded with sweat, squeezing and blinking her eyelids to clear her vision. She looked down, focusing her concentration, and this time she got her foot to move not once but three times – to the left, to the right, and back again.
Encouraged, she set her mind grimly to the task. Progress was agonisingly slow. Every few minutes she had to rest, the furious effort of concentration draining her mental strength until her brain felt like a wrung-out sponge. She was able to flex her right leg now, and tried to use it to lever herself over towards the left side of the bed. The phone – black with a fine tracery of red – was on the left-hand bedside table. After three abortive tries, she succeeded, flopped over on her side and lay there panting, her body a limp dead weight, her arm sprawled out across the cover as if it didn’t belong to her. There was no life yet in her fingers. They were next on the agenda. She had to activate them and get movement into that stupid usele
ss arm in order to reach out, bring the receiver near her mouth, and punch the dialling pad. And, if there wasn’t a direct connection to an outside line, what then? Sarah shut that unthinkable possibility out of her thoughts. She couldn’t let herself be distracted now: she needed to channel every bit of mindpower she possessed into the very simple and excruciatingly difficult action of reaching – for – the – phone –
Time became elastic. It ceased to have any proper dimension, even when measured against her thudding heartbeats. Minutes or hours elapsed; Sarah had no means of judging the steady tick of their passing. She existed in a single extended moment as she watched the first slight tremors twitching through her fingers, her hand curling and uncurling as slowly as the petals of a flower opening to the sun, and then her elbow gradually straightening in tiny spasmodic jerks until her arm was reaching out at full stretch.
Her hand grasped the receiver. She couldn’t feel its rounded plastic surface, her nerve-endings still traumatised by the chemicals in her veins. Using her hand as a mechanical claw, she lifted the receiver and placed it on the pillow next to her head. Sarah closed her eyes, offering up a prayer as she heard the dialling tone in her ear. She was in touch with the outside world. Reaching out again to dial the number, she had a sudden seizure of panic. What was today? She couldn’t remember. Where would Jeff be – at his New York office or at home in Franklin? Think, you dumb bitch, what day is it? Then she did remember; it was Saturday; he was at home, that’s where he’d be.
She listened, her ear nestled close to the receiver, to the ringing tone purring over a thousand miles away in New Jersey. He wasn’t answering; the house was empty; he wasn’t there. And then her heart leapt when the purring stopped and was followed by a click as the connection was made.