The Chosen

by Edward Lee

  The frequent pregnancies, of course, were blamed on insensible male patients, and were expeditiously aborted via the crude surgical standards of the day. Things went as such for years, in complete ignorance of the authorities, and eventually warders of higher rank developed a knack for, shall we say, creative entrepreneurship. To serve the occasions when patients died, a cemetery was fashioned beyond the estate’s grounds, in a secluded dell, though it was later discerned, after much digging, that not a single cubic inch of earth had ever been turned beneath the countless dozens of gravestones. The bodies, in reality, were sold to out-of-the-way medical schools, and to increase the financial gain of the warders, some of the less manageable and more obscure patients were quickened along to their eventual passings, with the thoughtful assistance of garrotes, bars of soap in socks, and pharmaceutical overdoses. In the early forties, when the country’s involvement in World War II became un-disputable, human freight, for research purposes, became quite lucrative. A discreet lab facility at the Edgewood Arsenal, enthusiastic about germ warfare, paid top-dollar under the table for “lab specimens” of a particular nature, that nature being that they be delivered live to the facility. The warders of Wroxton Hall were all too eager to assist in the defense of their nation, and many times logged certain patients as “deceased” when they were in fact still among the living, only to transport them without reluctance to the open arms of the Edgewood Arsenal.

  But this proved merely the icing on the cake. What went on on a daily basis at the hall was even more disturbing. Unruly patients were taken aside and disciplined by a coterie of “technicians” that would make the Inquisitors of the Holy Office look like the cast of Sesame Street. Of course, this was regarded instead as “behavioral therapy”; it was difficult to get out of line when one’s orbital lobe had been thoroughly routed by knitting-needle lobotomies administered up through the anterior eye socket. (Staff members, naturally, sterilized the knitting-needles before each application.) A less sophisticated manner of taming rowdy patients involved a simple tourniquet fashioned about the throat just under the jawline, which cut off blood-flow to the brain. The tourniquet was maintained for just a period of time to effect the level of brain damage desired to take some of the zing out of said patient. The relatively unsupervised staff, too, when they weren’t applying such contemporary behavioral therapies, were quite forthcoming in the application of sexual therapies. All manner of libidinous abuse was pursued at Wroxton Hall, no perversity ignored, and no orifice unplundered. Boys will be boys, after all. And since the induction of semen into fecund vaginal passages was known to result in pregnancies, Wroxton Hall became perhaps the most expeditious abortion clinic in history.

  Certain patients however, upon expiration, and due to the extreme state of physical disrepair racked by decades of subhuman living conditions, were deemed not only sexually undesirable, but also unpurchasable by the buyers from the medical schools and the illustrious Edgewood Arsenal, but that did not mean that some profitable utility couldn’t be found for them. In other words, when the state investigators came, it was more than pork that was discovered in the briny stew that served as the patients’ daily food ration.

  Shortly thereafter, Superintendant Flues died in prison of tertiary syphillis. Many of the hospital staff were either executed or incarcerated. Wroxton Hall was closed down, sealed shut, and gratefully forgotten.

  Except by the local residents, who came to think of the hall as a curse and an embarrassment. Some residents, upon investigating the dank corridors of the hall firsthand, claimed that the edifice was abundantly haunted by the spirits of those who died there.

  Not too long afterward, Wroxton Hall was anonymously set ablaze, its interior gutted, and its horrors wiped clean from memory…

  The story seemed too trite to even consider; Vera scoffed and closed the ludicrous book. But her mind wandered to other things: questions? Why had Feldspar invited her to dinner? Did Chief Mulligan know something she didn’t? Could it really be possible that Feldspar and Magwyth Enterprises were involved in some sort of criminal activity? Vera was determined to find out.

  — | — | —

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  “I’ve got a surprise for you,” Zyra panted.

  Phil Brooks gave the large, hanging nipples a pinch and grinned up at her. “I’ll bet ya do, baby. You been surprisin’ me all night.”

  Zyra felt blissfully lost in herself. How many times had she come? Every so often she’d lose control, she’d do things that startled even her. It was the moment, she knew, and the spontaneity: the quick collision of passion, lust, curiosity, and a plethora of other feelings too intricate—or too dark—to even attempt to put a name to. Maybe it was love—not love for the grainy, over-muscled redneck who now lay exhausted beneath her—but love for herself, and all of the beautiful things she was capable of feeling. Feelings were truth, of a sort, an honest acknowledgement of who she really was in the scheme of things, in the blazing reality of the world. She’d bathed his entire body with her tongue, she’d drunk up his sweat. She’d sucked his testicles, nibbled his perenium, had let herself be sodomized by him, after which she’d immediately fellated him to orgasm. And this had only been the prelude to a very long and energizing evening.

  I’m a pervert, she thought, and almost laughed. A pervert of truth. She caressed her own breasts and sighed.

  They’d met Phil Brooks and his drunk, flirtatious girlfriend at the old pool hall off Furnace Branch Road. The Factotum had left instructions for them to bring in one more girl; this would be their last abduction for some time. Bar dogs, Zyra had concluded when they’d first entered. Some fat girls, some worn-out older women missing teeth. Not much to choose from. Then Phil Brooks and the girl walked in—Ellen was her name, Zyra thought. Blond hair with black roots, a flowery bracelet tattooed around her wrist, and over-applied makeup, but she was well-breasted, shapely, and seemed to have the type of spirit they were looking for. She and Zyra had got to chatting—Not much for brains, Zyra concluded; all she could talk about were pickup trucks and diets. Zyra had asked her about the Middle East, and Ellen had responded, “Oh, yeah, I have some relatives in Maryland and North Carolina.” Meanwhile, Lemi and Phil had taken to making wagers at the billiards table. “You win the next game,” Phil challenged, “and I lay fifty on ya, and if you lose, we swap squeeze. How ‘bout it, friend?” “You’re on,” Lemi said, and wasted no time in losing the game. They followed them back to their big SilverLine trailer, alone on its own lot back off an old logging trail. The big propane tank outside would provide a fiery finish…

  They’d paired off at once. Zyra turned up the heat, way up. It should be hot for this, hot and sultry and damp, to parallel her mood. She left the lights on, as she frequently did. She wanted to see him—or she needed to—and she needed him to see her in every detail. Their bodies blazed in sweat for hours, through every offering of flesh, every configuration she could conceive. Phil was good for several bouts, which gratified her. It made her feel humble to the lot she’d been given in life, and to the Factotum, and to her lord. Where others had faltered and failed, Zyra had been given this holy and cyclic bliss. It was wonderful.

  Everything’s wonderful, she thought.

  In the interims of their coupling, she masturbated for him, she let him watch. All she could think, for the entire time, was: More, more, more. I want more. She had to be careful, though, she mustn’t masturbate beyond control, not yet. Zyra was a complex woman, and a prudent one, but even she on occasion would lose the reins on herself. She mustn’t spoil the moment, she mustn’t spoil the surprise. Nevertheless, the fervid teasing of herself, and its wet, shiny imagery, revitalized him each and every time, lending him the ability to give her exactly what she wanted. More. More. She felt crazy in her passion, more so tonight than ever perhaps. Was it her growing maturity? Her evolution as a complete woman? Each caress, each thrust into her sex, and each release of his semen into whatever orifice he tended, made her feel more an
d more real, and more purposeful. But still, there was always the irrepressible desire, the unrelenting urge:

  More.

  “What’s this?” he coyly inquired. “This right here?” His finger touched her navel, which glittered sharp, faceted purple: the amethyst she wore there.

  “It’s my lucky charm,” she replied, still stroking herself.

  “It’s pretty. It’s like you.”

  Zyra moaned. “You like it?” She slid up, over his wet chest, leaning into his face. “There. Kiss it. Lick it.”

  Phil Brooks obliged, squeezing her rump as he did so. She was getting too close, and in a moment she was turning him over, sculpting his slickened physique with her frantic hands. I can’t kill him yet, she thought. No, not yet.

  She gazed down at his tapered, shining back, the muscled buttocks, the sturdy, corded legs. Lord, my lord, the weeping sigh of her thoughts swept through her head. Her breasts were thrumming orbs. Her finger kneaded her clitoris, chasing her ultimate release. But what would she kill him with afterward? Her bare hands? She might be strong enough to do it. Lemi had the gun, and she’d left the ice pick in the console in the van. Strangulation bored her; she’d done it too many times, and bludgeoning seemed too primitive. Blood, she thought. More. Perhaps she’d just bite out the side of his throat and suck him to death. She’d swallowed enough of his semen tonight. Why not his blood too? Yeah, she mused. Oh, yeah. Just gulp down his blood like a famished, raging animal. Swallow it till her belly was fit to burst…

  Zyra’s eyes narrowed to the thinnest of slits. Her fervid passion, merged with the panting, hot breaths, seemed to turn her words to steam.

  “I have a surprise for you,” she said.

  ««—»»

  “Can’t have you catching cold, now can we, Ellen?” Lemi thoughtfully remarked as he wrapped the limp, naked girl up in the blankets. She hadn’t been much of a tumble—she’d passed out. At least she was slender; she’d be easier to get out to the van. Carrying that tub of lard Mrs. Buluski had been like throwing three or four bags of cement over his shoulder. Lemi was a strong man, but he wasn’t a forklift, for God’s sake.

  He set the little timer for thirty minutes and placed it on the cheap fiberboard bookcase, like the kind you buy at Dart Drug for twenty bucks and put together yourself.

  Lemi figured that any five pieces of furniture at The Inn probably cost more than this whole place.

  He heard the shower turn off. Zyra always took a shower after a job; she had a way of making a mess of herself. I like to watch the blood go down the drain, she’d told him once. It’s sort of symbolic, isn’t it? Zyra went off on these bends every once in a while—weirding out, but the way Lemi saw it, all women were weird. He couldn’t figure them. You do what they tell you, and then they’re pissed off that you didn’t assert yourself. You assert yourself, and then they’re pissed off that you’re overbearing and selfish. Lemi was grateful he didn’t have to worry about romance. I’d go fucking nuts, he concluded.

  Zyra traipsed in naked, slipping into her panties. “You turn on the gas?” Lemi asked.

  She only nodded. She seemed dreamy, or contemplative. Lemi squinted at her.

  “What did—” He squinted harder. “How come your belly’s stickin’ out like that?”

  And it was. Zyra was a hardbody—trim, toned, and zero body fat. But right now that lean stomach of hers protruded almost like she was four months pregnant, and wouldn’t that be a kick? Zyra the murderer mother. The Factotum would shit right there on the chancel floor if one of his girls got knocked up.

  “I drank his blood,” Zyra said very softly, rubbing the tight belly. It was sticking out so tight her amethyst might pop out. “It makes me all warm inside, and full. I kind of like that idea. Even though he’s dead, there’s some of him still alive in me, like I’ve taken him into me, like he’s become part of me. You know?”

  Lemi rolled his eyes. “Quit blabbering all that philosiphal shit and get dressed. We gotta slip.”

  “That’s split, Lemi. Not slip. Jesus.” She pulled on her jeans, top, and coat, having to leave the jeans unbuttoned against the grossly distended stomach. “What’s wrong with her?” she asked, peering quizzically at Ellen.

  “She passed out.” Lemi chuckled. “I guess my TCL was a little too much for the gal.”

  “T-L-C, you stupe,” Zyra complained yet again, regarding Lemi’s continued ignorance of colloquialism. “Tender loving care. There’s no such thing as TCL.”

  Lemi didn’t care. He hoisted the reedy black-rooted blonde over his shoulder. “Let’s split, okay?”

  “Go warm up the van,” Zyra suggested. “I’ll get the guy.’’

  “No need to. Just leave him. Let him burn up with the place.”

  “But why?” Zyra objected. “It’d be a waste.”

  “We don’t need it.” Lemi began to walk toward the door. “The Factotum says we’re all full up on meat.”

  ««—»»

  One step at a time, Vera thought, running her finger down the rezz list at the hostess desk. Sixteen reservations. And that didn’t include the walk-ins. It was only seven thirty and the dining room was half-full. Things weren’t great, but they were sure getting better.

  Donna whizzed by with a tray of covered main courses for a four-top in the corner. When she came back, Vera asked, “What’s the kitchen done so far?”

  “Twenty-two, and about half of them are walk-ins,” Donna responded as she automatically tabulated a check. “The grilled Louisiana andouille is going like mad, and so is the banana-cream pie and the Michelanglo Peppers. This isn’t bad at all. I’m actually pulling some serious tips.”

  “Good. If this keeps up we might have to hire a part-time waitress.”

  “Over my dead body,” Donna said. She crammed a wad of bills into the tip jar. “Did you read the book?”

  “Yes,” Vera close to groaned. “Ghosts from an insane asylum. The whole story was just so silly.”

  “Silly, huh?” Donna shot her a wicked grin, then headed back to the kitchen. Was she chuckling?

  She’s a trip all right. Vera just smiled. As far as she was concerned, Donna could believe in ghosts all she wanted, so long as she remained a proficient waitress.

  Vera took a minute to slip to the ladies’ room, ever mindful of her watch. In little more than an hour, Feldspar would be coming in for dinner. With me, she thought. Or would he? Suddenly she felt afret. Maybe he’d forgotten. Maybe something else came up. Then she smirked at herself. You’re worrying like a little high school girl. And she was: inventing catastrophes. Still, she couldn’t deny the subtle excitement, not just that he wanted to have dinner with her, but she couldn’t wait to probe him out over today’s surprise visit by the chief of police. Or perhaps she was so bored of late that she was also inventing her own intrigues. Nevertheless, another thing she couldn’t deny were her own suspicions regarding The Inn’s financial success—or what Kyle and Feldspar claimed was a success. Is that what they were? Suspicions? Don’t be gullible, Vera, she reminded herself. What did she have to be suspicious of? A country bumpkin cop walks in spouting unfounded implications about money-laundering and ill-gotten gains, and now she was thinking the silliest things. Certainly a cop of Mulligan’s low caliber was no reason to suspect Feldspar of improprieties.

  She surveyed herself in the long mirror, checked her hair, made sure her earrings were straight. Quit fussing! You look fine. Actually, she looked great. She wore a flowered pink-white silk jacket, rather low cut, and a white chiffon skirt. Her amethyst necklace sparkled keenly; she always wore it now—since Feldspar had complimented her on it so many times. She easily admitted to herself that she was out to impress Feldspar— via her job performance, her insights, even her looks. But what she still had yet to discern was…why? Do I want to impress him as my boss, or as something more?

  The dinner shift seemed to pass in scant minutes. Every single table complimented The Carriage House as they left. From Vera’s end, everything
clicked: Donna’s service was outstanding, Dan B. turned out one superior entree after the next, and the place was running without a hitch. But tonight, in a sense, was the trickiest test so far. She could please customers, sure.

  But can I please the boss? she wondered now.

  He hadn’t been in for dinner before, which seemed strange. He was a connoisseur and probably a snob. He smoked cigarettes that cost five dollars a pack and drank $300-per-bottle wine like it was Yoo-Hoo. A man like Feldspar, ultimately, was never easy to please. Now Vera began to wonder, or even fear, what his impressions would be.

  “Shit!” she whispered, glaring at her watch. “I knew it. He’s not going to show.”

  Donna laughed beside her. “Vera, it’s only thirty seconds past nine. What’s wrong with you?”

  “I—” I don’t know, she thought. But it was only thirty seconds more before the shadow slid across the entry.

  “Good evening,” Feldspar greeted. Vera noted the crisp gray suit, and black shirt with no tie—exactly what he’d worn the night she met him. He smiled at her. “I believe we have a reservation.”

  “Is there a particular table you’d prefer, Mr. Feldspar?” Donna inquired, assuming the role of hostess.