The Whittier Trilogy

by Michael W. Layne

  The woman next to him was dressed in black jeans and T-shirt, and her face was abnormally pale, especially for Las Vegas. Around her tiny waist was what looked like a makeshift belt made of black parachute cord anchored at the front with two short, shiny metal bars tied to each other that served as a makeshift belt buckle. In stark contrast with her medium length jet-black hair, a silver Ankh hung from a black leather cord around her neck. The Egyptian cross with a loop at the top was almost a cliché for young people trying to look mysterious, but somehow it completed her look perfectly.

  Trent was about to ask the woman to stand up so that he could guess what kind of car she drove, but he stopped himself. Even from the stage, he could tell that she was probably poor and maybe even homeless. The frayed edges and the fading color of her T-shirt, the plastic bags she clutched to her side, and even the tired but wary look in her eyes all led him to this possible conclusion.

  He decided to skip her for the time being and to come back to her for the next segment instead, where he would turn the show down a darker path—and begin to make his audience step outside the comfort levels of their normal, day-to-day, often fabricated emotions.

  After a quick reading of a short man in the front row where Trent easily guessed that he drove a large, black SUV, it was time to show his audience members how tentative their grasps on reality really were.

  “Now,” Trent said with a smile, “I need three new volunteers who are feeling…a little wild tonight and who wouldn’t mind exposing themselves…only emotionally, of course. I promise you that the experience will be one you will enjoy and that you will never forget.”

  With that, Trent went about the process of pretending to randomly choose from the five or six people raising their hands. He chose two men immediately, and then pointed to the gothic-looking young woman in the back.

  “Miss. I know your hand is not raised, but I am picking up a very particular vibe from you tonight, and I implore you to join me on stage. Everyone, please give this young woman a big round of applause to get her up here!”

  The audience clapped and some of the males even let out a few whoops, as the young woman reluctantly stood. She made sure that the man next to her was holding on to her bags before starting her way toward the stage.

  She neither smiled nor looked up from her black Converse high tops as she walked. Trent figured that she didn’t have many high points in her day, and wanted to give her some serious entertainment for her time spent at his show.

  That, and of course she was also very attractive.

  Trent asked the owner to please bring up three seats for the volunteers, and as he did, Trent introduced the two men and the one woman by asking their names, just as he had done with the previous set of volunteers.

  The first man was named Billy. He was a lanky man, about six feet two inches tall with a mop of red hair and the beefy wide nose of a boxer.

  The second man was named Richard, and he was of average height and build for a male. Richard had dirty blonde hair that looked as if it were kept short most of the time, but which had been allowed to grow out recently.

  The woman’s name was Zana, and as Trent shook her hand, he appreciated how naturally stunning she was up close. At that distance, it was also even more obvious that she’d led a hard life, at least for a while. Her fingernails and the skin on her hands showed that by their roughness, but she was also remarkably clean, well put together overall, and smelled faintly of almonds.

  Even though Trent was in the middle of his act, she awoke something inside him that was jarring and at the same time familiar. It was not strictly sexual in nature, but it was at the very least primal.

  Chapter 8

  FOR THIS NEXT PART of the show,” Trent said, “I will help each of these brave volunteers release their animal selves and dig into the core of who they really are…all strictly for the sake of our entertainment, of course!”

  Trent took a moment to smile at the audience as they laughed at his quip.

  “Depending on which animals each of them ends up identifying with, we may see very cute and funny things tonight, or it is possible that we may see something truly terrifying. Either way, for their safety and for yours, I ask you to please remain as quiet as possible and to resist interacting with our volunteers during their transformations. Remember, they will not be themselves nor fully aware of what they are doing. Just pretend you’re at a strip club, gentlemen. They can touch you, but you may not touch them!”

  Again the audience laughed.

  With a wave of Trent’s hand, the lights in the bar area dimmed, while the spotlight remained focused on Trent and the volunteers.

  The audience was silent and waiting on Trent’s next words, which he delivered slowly and with a seriousness of tone that instantly changed the mood of the room from light and entertaining to dark and foreboding.

  “I returned recently from a place where the townspeople believe themselves to be possessed by the angry spirits of animals that were slaughtered there many years ago. I saw things in that small town that I could not and still cannot fully explain. Even so, I remain skeptical that anyone was possessed by anything other than his or her own true nature.

  “Make no mistake. I do believe that in each of us there is an animal lurking—a primal core that today’s society requires we keep at bay. I also believe that we are all only a handful of societal norms and niceties away from losing control of our internal beasts—as you are about to witness tonight, first hand.”

  Trent turned to the group of seated volunteers.

  “I want the three of you to please close your eyes, and listen only to the sound of my voice,” Trent said.

  The volunteers each closed their eyes.

  “Before we begin, I want each of you to remember the word, Cadillac,” Trent said. “When you hear the word, Cadillac, you will remain relaxed and hypnotized, but you will revert to being human once again, to your normal behavior, and you will return to the stage immediately. Remember the word, Cadillac.”

  With the safety word established, Trent asked the volunteers to imagine taking an elevator car down into the depths of their inner selves. Each floor brought them closer to their core, and as they descended floor by floor, Trent informed them that they would soon meet their animal totems. When they reached the basement floor, their elevator doors opened, and each of them was confronted by whatever animal his or her subconscious had come up with.

  He moved from volunteer to volunteer, asking each person which animal they saw when the elevator door opened.

  The first man, Billy, told Trent in a shaky voice that he saw a gorilla. Just that piece of information alone told Trent a lot about the inner workings of the man. There was always at least one subject who wanted to be a monkey of some sort, and the fact that Billy chose the clear symbol of the alpha male ape was significant.

  The second volunteer, Richard, said that he saw an eagle. Unlike Billy, Richard seemed to be in awe of the majestic animal he was envisioning. For Trent’s part, he loved it when people wanted to be birds. Watching a human flapping his or her arms as they pretended to fly around the stage made for a great show.

  When Trent came to the porcelain-skinned, but beautiful Zana, he asked her gently which animal she saw when her elevator door had opened.

  “A bear,” she said in a flat tone.

  Trent was genuinely surprised by her answer and had to control himself from revealing his inner reaction. He had recently encountered an actual grizzly bear up close and in person, and had probably come within only a hair’s breadth of being mangled to death.

  He knew it was only coincidence, but the thought of Zana thinking she was a bear formed a pit in his stomach.

  “Are you sure you see a bear?” Trent asked, turning to the audience. He tried to mask his trepidation with humor, and the audience took his cue and quietly laughed.

  “I see a bear,” she said again.

  Trent gave an exaggerated shrug to the audience and then leaned over
to whisper something in Zana’s ear. The audience was deftly quiet, trying unsuccessfully to make out what he was saying.

  When Trent was finished, he moved back to face all three of the volunteers again.

  “You are all feeling very relaxed, and you can feel yourself drifting toward the animal in front of you. Don’t be afraid. The animal is you. You are the animal. As you get closer, you feel an overwhelming oneness with the animal in front of you.”

  Trent knew that what started as imaging would soon blur into feeling and then into being. His volunteers would be existing in a state where time would seem to have no meaning or duration.

  “As you become one with your animal, feel yourself taking on its form and strength. Your thoughts are no longer that of a human. You are animals. In thought. In action. And in raw, wild emotion. When you open your eyes, you will feel curiosity. Hunger. And you will feel fear.

  “Now. Open your eyes,” Trent said.

  As the audience looked on, the three volunteers seemed animated by a sudden rush of energy as each of them moved out of their seat, acting at first bewildered and then lost.

  Trent had temporarily transformed them into animals, and the audience, the lights, and the stage were suddenly foreign to them.

  A tiny piece of their human selves remained in the back of each of their minds, but for now they were merely powerless observers.

  Richard got his bearings first. He stood up on his toes and started flapping his arms in long, slow arcs, as if he were riding the wind currents high in the sky. The audience started to laugh, but Trent motioned for them to remain quiet.

  Next, Billy stuck his chest out and pulled back his shoulders as he lumbered around the stage. He paid no attention to Richard, but he eyed some of the male audience members in the front tables as if he were waiting for them to challenge him and his ownership of the stage.

  And finally, Zana sunk down and started walking around the stage slowly on all fours. Other than sniffing around like she was tracking something and an occasional grunt, she seemed content to be in a world of her own.

  The members of the audience still were trying not to laugh at Richard as he flew around and around his corner of the stage, but they did not seem as amused when Billy hopped down off the stage and approached one of the tables up front. He stood only a few feet from a smaller man who was wearing eye glasses with thick black rims.

  All eyes were on Billy, waiting to see what he would do.

  Trent motioned with his hand and softly asked the audience members to remain perfectly still. He assured the man in the front row that he was in no danger—that Trent was ready with the safety word if need be.

  He also added that the man should avoid making direct eye contact with Billy.

  The little man did not seem comforted by this piece of advice, but when he turned his gaze away from Billy and looked down at the floor, Billy grunted and backed away.

  Trent was amazed at how naturally a human being reverted to the instinctual display of submissiveness when confronted with an imposing alpha male.

  Everyone stared at Billy, who had started making deep grunting noises and flaring his nostrils.

  Suddenly, the quiet of the room was shattered by a loud shout. While everyone had been watching Billy, Zana had crept to the back row and was now on top of the young man whom she had asked to hold her bags, tearing at the bags like she was trying to get at the man’s unprotected flesh.

  At the same time that the young man shouted, Billy rushed back to the table up front and started growling loudly only inches from the face of the man with the glasses.

  Billy looked completely inhuman, and the small man’s face turned white.

  Trent let the scene unravel for a few more seconds before shouting the word Cadillac as loudly as he could.

  Immediately, Richard stopped flapping his wings, Billy seemed to almost shrink a few inches in height as he stumbled away from the terrified man up front, and Zana edged her way off of her friend and rubbed her forehead. She continued to do so as she calmly made her way back to the stage.

  Within less than thirty seconds, all three volunteers were on the stage and seated, and Trent once again asked the audience to remain quiet.

  Trent spoke to the volunteers, slowly bringing them out of their deep hypnotic trances. When they were close to the surface, he counted backwards from three and snapped his fingers.

  The volunteers opened their eyes, and Trent finally turned toward the audience.

  “Let’s hear it for our animals!” he said.

  There was a brief moment of stillness before the audience erupted in applause, including the small man in the front row, although after only a few seconds of clapping, he picked up his glass of whiskey and took a large swallow.

  Trent joined in on the applause, and then motioned to the volunteers that it was OK for them to return to their seats.

  As they walked to their tables, Trent continued.

  “That’s it for tonight’s show, ladies and gentlemen. I hope that each of you had a great time. I know...”

  Trent stopped in mid-sentence and playfully slapped his forehead.

  “Wait a minute. I almost forgot,” he said. “Before we finish, can I please ask our first set of volunteers to stand up?”

  People in the audience craned their necks as Susan, Jennifer, and Phil stood up.

  “I believe each of you has a piece of paper with a word written on it? Phil, what is written on your paper, please?”

  “Eagle,” Phil said after unfolding his napkin.

  “And you, Jennifer?”

  “It says Gorilla,” Jennifer said.

  “And finally, what does yours say, Susan?”

  “Bear,” Susan said, holding up her piece of paper for all to see.

  The audience laughed and broke out in a final round of applause, as Trent bowed deeply.

  “Thank you all very much. Once again, you really have been a great audience tonight. And as one last favor, could I see a quick show of hands from anyone who perhaps tasted fear this evening, even if just slightly?”

  The audience laughed nervously as the majority of the people reluctantly raised their hands. With a wry grin, Trent noticed that even Zana’s friend raised his hand in response to his question.

  “Hopefully you were not only able to experience the thrill of a good scare, but perhaps you also learned something about the nature of man and what exists inside us all. My name is Trent Walker, and I hope that I came through on my promise to you tonight. Good evening!”

  During another round of applause, the house lights came up, and Trent walked off the stage and over to his satchel that contained several copies of his self-published book on mentalism and a few DVDs of one of his shows. He didn’t really expect to sell anything, but he waited by the edge of the stage just in case.

  As the people filed out of the bar area, many of them shook his hand and thanked him for a great performance, but Zana and her friend left without stopping by or even a backwards glance.

  Chapter 9

  ZANA WAS A LITTLE young for him, but she wasn’t too young.

  Even so, Trent felt a small tinge of guilt for staring so blatantly at her finely shaped ass as it disappeared into the casino. Being a performer meant traveling a lot, and it had been a long while since he had been in a serious relationship where the woman was sweet and the sex was regular.

  In fact, the last time that he had had sex with someone, it had been anything but sweet.

  Ferocious might have been a better word to describe it, he thought to himself, as he rubbed the bite wound on his shoulder again. He wasn’t sure whether anyone could ever live up to Christina, at least not in bed, but meeting Zana made him want to find out.

  Clearing his head and suppressing his libido, Trent relegated himself to the fact that he wasn’t going to make any sales off his merchandise tonight. He packed up his bag and walked through the casino area, heading for the front door.

  He swung by the front desk t
o say goodnight to the night manager, Buddy—a rotund middle-aged man with the plastered smile of a politician and the body of John Candy. He was certainly nice enough, but he came across as overly macho with his robust handshakes and his intentionally deepened voice. Trent strongly suspected that Buddy was doing all he could to hide the fact that he was gay, even though anyone observing him could easily see that Buddy’s eyes followed only men as they walked past the front desk and didn’t even budge for women. Trent was tempted to ask him why he even bothered to conceal such a thing when he worked in the relatively open-minded city of sin itself, but he decided that Buddy, like everyone, had his own reasons for not showing the world his true self.

  Buddy greeted Trent with a wide smile and asked him how the show went.

  Trent told Buddy that it had gone better than expected, which resulted in the night manager slightly cocking his head to one side.

  “Some of the people didn’t look so happy leaving your show, Mr. Walker,” Buddy said.

  “They were plenty happy, Buddy. Don’t worry about that. If you see them looking slightly unsettled when they leave, it means I scared the pants off of them and that they really got their money’s worth.”

  Buddy’s smile withered as he tried to process what Trent had just said.

  “I’m heading up to bed, Buddy, so please hold all my calls,” Trent said with a laugh as he walked through the front door and into the desert air. Despite the warmth, Trent could feel the slight drop in temperature that heralded the coming of winter, as it were, in this desert land.

  He walked up the outdoor stairwell to the second floor and on to his room.

  After closing and locking the door behind him, Trent put his bag down on the small desk made of dark wood laminate, haphazardly brushed his teeth in the small bathroom, and within minutes was ready to hop into bed and get some sleep.

  As he was slipping under the covers, he felt a slight tug at his gut—an instinct warning him of some undefined danger.