The Chosen

by Edward Lee

  She felt grateful for the dream; Dan B. hadn’t proved of any use at all tonight. “Aw, honey, I’m really not in the mood right now, you know?” he mumbled in bed. “We got slammed tonight, wound up doing twenty dinners after nine.” Then he’d rolled over and gone to sleep.

  This hurt. Donna went to serious efforts to turn him on, to make him happy. But this seemed to be happening almost every night now: she’d dress up for him in the sexy garments, and he scarcely even noticed. So, frustrated, annoyed, she’d go to sleep herself.

  And dream.

  She never remembered at first. Soon, though, as the dream-Scotch rushed to her head, she’d think: Yes, here it is. I remember this place, from all the other dreams.

  Suddenly she knew where the dream was taking her.

  Her buzz deepened; the dream became a cloud which muddled her perceptions but one: arousal. She was hot. Something was summoning her excitement, beseeching her with vaguely remembered promises of pleasure. The corridor wound down.

  A figure was approaching just ahead of her. Another figure came up from behind and urged her away. Donna never remembered entering a room. Was she at The Inn? Had they taken her into one of the upper suites? More candlelight flickered as the two figures lowered her onto what seemed a bed of fragrant pillows. Gentle heat stirred in the air, like the heat in her belly, her head, and her sex…

  She could barely see. The candles backlit the figures to crisp silhouettes. One figure was a woman—Donna could tell by the contour of hips and breasts—and the other was a man. But as her eyes tried to focus up she noticed one more thing. These two figures, these dream-escorts, were—

  They’re…bald.

  She could tell by the silhouette-shapes of their heads that both of them—the women included—were bald.

  And a third bald figure seemed to be standing aside.

  Who are all these bald people? Donna thought.

  A moment later, though, she didn’t care.

  It didn’t matter.

  Her senses slipped into a chaotic swirl. Hands prodded at her, removing her fishnet bra and stockings, snapping off the scarlet panties. The three bald dream-chaperones stepped back, yet other figures continued to probe her. Another woman slithered forward, breasts rubbing, and in her sloppy kisses, Donna dully noted that the woman had no teeth. Then yet another woman, a brunette, lowered her face to Donna’s sex…

  Before her stupor finally claimed her, Donna managed to lean up. She’d never seen these two women who tended to her. They seemed sluggish, woozy. One mouth alternately sucked her nipples, while the other quite pointedly sucked her sex. Beyond this, however, and past the three bald silhouettes, she thought she could see even more figures, many more.

  Watching.

  And there were sounds. Glasses clinking. Silverware ticking against plates. Soft, unintelligible chatter. Was she dreaming of some outré dinner party? And what of these two sluggish women in bed with her? Am I a latent lesbian? came Donna’s muted thought. Why am I dreaming about women?

  She’d never been with a woman before, so perhaps the dream was telling her something about herself. Soon, in the dream, she was coming. The brunette’s mouth expertly plied her sex, a finger slipping in at prime moments, which caused her loins to jettison blade-sharp pulses of bliss. Her pleasure seemed to gush…

  And her stupor deepened. Soon, the figures more distant became impatient with mere watching. They approached the bed, perhaps a half-dozen of them. Donna, through her strange haze, couldn’t really see them, and she didn’t need to. She didn’t care. The candlelight dimmed; each orgasm that claimed her only left her in want of more. Soon the bed was acrawl with figures, and things were being done to her that she had never even thought of.

  And as the night lolled on, Donna began doing things in return, which beggared description, reveling in her infidelity and newfound decadence.

  But none of that bothered her.

  Because it was only a dream.

  It’s only a dream, she assured herself, as she admitted yet another stout, musky penis into her mouth.

  — | — | —

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Vera wandered through the main dining room, checking the place setting and flower arrangements. Lately it seemed she had nothing to do before opening but that: wander. The early afternoon light looked drab in the gaps between the heavy gray draperies. In the far wing, one of the housekeeping staff seemed to grimace whilst laying out more place settings and teepeed linen napkins.

  A solitude, drab as the winter light, fell down on her: The Carriage House felt dead. What was wrong now? She couldn’t stop calling up the memory of her encounter with the blond prostitute, and how so much of what she’d said corroborated Paul’s explanation. And the business with Chief Mulligan disappearing—she knew it had nothing to do with her, or The Inn, but it still seemed so strange. Earlier, in her office, she’d gotten a call from Morton-Gibson Ltd., someone inquiring as to the whereabouts of one Mr. Terrence Taylor. Vera told him all she knew, that Mr. Taylor had checked in but had forgotten to check out. This, too, seemed strange. But that wasn’t all that bothered her—

  “You look bothered,” the soft but solid voice drifted out. Feldspar stood by the hostess station, eying her. He wore fine black slacks and a loose gray-silk shirt, diamond cuff links winking. Bothered? Vera thought. Me? What could she tell him? Nothing, really, so she lied, “I’m fine, Mr. Feldspar.”

  He unlocked the glass cognac case and poured himself a shot of Louis XIII. Vera winced when he threw it back neat. That stuff’s a hundred years old and cost five hundred fifty dollars a bottle, Vera wished she could scold. You don’t throw it back like it’s Old Grand Dad. Of course, it was his; he could do what he wanted with it. He could wash his hands with it if he so desired. “You’re fine, you say?” he seemed to challenge. “Frankly, I’ve never seen you appear so…disconsolate.”

  Well, I think someone was in my room last night. Is that something worth being disconsolate about?

  No, it wouldn’t work. What could she possibly tell him? Last night, her dream had returned, her fantasy of The Hands. The Hands had caressed her into ecstacy, after which their phantom possessor had made love to her in the graven dark. Well, no, not love—she’d been fucked, roughly and primitively, her face shoved down into the pillows so intently she thought she’d smother, her buttocks slapped till it stung, her hair yanked like a bell cord on an ice cream truck. Yet in spite of the dream’s flagrant violence, she’d enjoyed every minute of it.

  And when she’d awakened…

  She swore she’d heard a click.

  As if her bedroom door had just clicked shut.

  Suddenly it hadn’t felt like a dream at all. Her sex ached, and her buttocks seemed—yes—it seemed to sting. And hadn’t Donna reported having bizarre dreams too, undeniably sexual dreams?

  Laved in sweat, she’d lurched from bed, donned her robe, and stepped quickly into the hall. No, this hadn’t seemed like a dream at all. It had seemed real in some hazy unsorted way. She even harbored the consideration that maybe, just maybe, someone had been coming into her room all these nights. Molesting her. Raping her.

  In the dim hallway she’d seen the figure, its back to her as it walked away. “Who are you?” she called dizzily out. She’d always believed the dream-lover was Kyle, but this figure didn’t look like him at all. “Who are you!” she called out again.

  When the figure turned at her call she saw at once that it wasn’t Kyle.

  And she knew that it must be a dream.

  No, the figure wasn’t Kyle. It wasn’t even human.

  The memory snapped like a thin bone, bringing her back to Feldspar, the dining room, reality. “I just haven’t been sleeping well,” she said. “Bad dreams.”

  “I’m sorry,” Feldspar offered. “I suppose we all have them from time to time. They say that dreams, particularly nightmares, represent abstract depictions of our darkest desires.”

  If that’s true, I need to be
locked up, Vera thought. She remembered the dream-figure’s face, once it had turned: pallid, malformed, hideous. Rheumy, urine-colored eyes peered back at her with irregular irises. A cluster of pale slimy tentacles emerged from a mouth like a knife-slit in meat…

  When you have a nightmare, Vera, you don’t fool around. But what in her subconscious could be so demented that her mind would produce such awful images in her dreams? Am I that screwed up? she wondered.

  Feldspar obliquely smiled, something he rarely did. “I’m very enthused, Ms. Abbot. Things are just going so well.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” Vera said, though she still had yet to see any evidence of The Inn’s success. Evidently, room service was still blowing the restaurant away. “Oh,

  I meant to mention something to you. Remember Chief Mulligan? He seems to have disappeared.”

  Feldspar’s eyes narrowed quizzically. He ran an unconscious finger across his bright amethyst ring. “I don’t understand.”

  “One of his deputies called me, said he never returned to the station after he dropped by here.”

  “How queer,” Feldspar remarked. “I suppose they believe he was abducted by one of The Inn’s evil ghosts.” Then Feldspar chuckled.

  Even Vera shared the laugh, but then she kept thinking: Mulligan. And his fairly direct implications. Feldspar had admitted to a checkered past, though she hadn’t asked him to elaborate. And what she asked next went against all good judgment.

  “May I ask you something? Personal?”

  “Of course,” Feldspar invited. “Personal questions are always the most enlivening.”

  “Well…” Vera hesitated. “The other day, when I was telling you about Chief Mulligan’s visit—”

  “And his suggestion that we might be involved in some sort of corruption,” Feldspar added for her.

  “Yes, and all that. You said that you had been in trouble with the authorities once in the past.”

  Feldspar nodded. He poured himself another shot.

  “I realize it’s none of my business,” Vera tacked on, “but I can’t help but be curious…”

  “Ah, you want to know exactly what happened. Well, as you know, I’ve always been in this business in one way or another. My employer always had great faith in me—”

  “Magwyth Enterprises, you mean.”

  “Correct. I’ve managed resorts similar to The Inn, all over the world, the very best inns, facilities that make our inn here pale in comparison. Well, it was at one such inn that I gave my associates a bit too much leeway in the way things were to be run. I’m afraid some improprieties occurred, and my associates, unbeknownst to me, took it onto themselves to engage in some rather unusual management practices.”

  Vera’s brow twitched.

  “Yes, Ms. Abbot. Crimes were committed. Nothing serious, mind you, but crimes no less. Several of our best-heeled clients took exception to this, and since my associates were under my supervision, I was quite justifiably held responsible. But I assure you that none of these misgivings were anything remotely similar to the good Chief Mulligan’s accusations. They weren’t so much crimes as they were unauthorized liberties.”

  Vera pondered this. Certainly many liberties were taken in the hotel and restaurant business: pilfering, misuse of funds by mid- and upper- management, fraudulent business deductions and record-keeping. These must be examples of what he meant.

  “At any rate, my employer was not pleased. I was demoted back to the field, so to speak, to manage a new facility and reprove my worth. It’s a bit like penance.”

  Some penance. It sounded more like a slap on the wrist to Vera. Sending Feldspar to the cost-no-object Inn as a demotion was like putting a fat person on a 5,000-calorie-a-day diet. If this is how Magwyth Enterprises punishes its managers for screwing up, I’d hate to think what their idea of a promotion is.

  But Feldspar, next, even answered the joke, by repeating something he’d already mentioned many times. “If The Inn continues to succeed—and I suspect it will—then I’ll be back in the good graces of my employer, back to running our very best inns.”

  Feldspar made The Inn seem like a highway motor lodge. Vera found it hard to imagine that the company’s other inns could be significantly superior to this one. He must be talking about places in Europe or the Middle East, which catered exclusively to royalty and billionaires.

  And Feldspar went on, “In which case I’ll need a preeminent restaurant manager to take with me, Ms. Abbot.”

  Another implication he’d been making since she started up here. Part of her felt like a dog being tempted by a distant bone, yet another part of her felt quite flattered. “Well, Mr. Feldspar, I don’t like to count my chickens before they hatch. We haven’t even been open long enough for a full quarterly report. It’s probably not a great idea for either of us to be worrying about promotions until we see exactly how well we’re doing here after the initial numbers are in.”

  Feldspar lit a Turkish cigarette with a jeweled lighter. “Ah, so businesslike, a natural predilection toward pessimism. My hunches, however, almost always come true. I hope that you will keep any potential possibility in mind.”

  He’s such an odd man, she thought. Was that why she admired him? Was that why she liked him? “Don’t worry. I will.”

  Again, he smiled, the fetid smoke blurring his face. “Indeed, Ms. Abbot, I believe with the utmost certainty that you and I will both enjoy a considerable success in the very near future.”

  ««—»»

  What could Lee say? He didn’t even know her name. Excuse me, but have you seen…well, you know, the pudgy housemaid who never talks? That’s right, the one who gives me head every night, and who can’t have sex because some S&M pervert sewed her vagina shut? The one who’s got burn marks and scars all over her body?

  Lee was worried.

  She hadn’t come to his room in the last three nights. Nor had he seen her working about The Inn. The other housemaids—the ones who seemed equally distant and nontalkative—sure.

  But not…her.

  Lee didn’t know what he was getting into; he didn’t even know how he felt. He knew one thing though:

  Something’s fucked up around here.

  They seemed to be running a fair amount of dinners that night—not exactly in the weeds, but they were busy. There was no time to take a quick break and skip over to room service to ask Kyle if he’d seen her. And he couldn’t really ask anyone else because they’d want to know why.

  “Hey, Lee, what’s the matter? Your Jack-’o-matic break down?” Dan B. called out from behind the range. “How come you’re acting weird these days?”

  “Weird? Me?” Lee tried to joke back. I think I’m in love with a fat woman who never talks. “Your mom dumped me for Cujo. I’m depressed.”

  “Aw, that’s a shame. But look at the bright side, you’ve still got your sister, that is if you don’t mind the sloppy seconds after me. One thing I can’t figure out is that parking-garage-sized cooze on her. What’ve you been doing, sticking your whole head in?”

  “Why don’t you stick your head into that pot of creek water you call Le Chabichou Sturgeon Soup? And take a deep breath.”

  “I took a deep breath last night when I was going down on your grandma. About died, but fifty bucks is fifty bucks.”

  Lee slid another tray of glasses into the Hobart. No point in trying to out-do Dan B. with the gross jokes. He sipped a Maibock he’d hidden behind the big dishwasher, and let his thoughts flee.

  They didn’t flee far.

  He couldn’t stop thinking about the housemaid.

  He couldn’t stop thinking that something bad had happened.

  — | — | —

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  The food was exquisite: rich, savory, remarkable.

  As remarkable as this heady reprieve. They sat and watched, stuffing their gullets on steaming ambrosia and delectible wines. A taste of the cursed world! This blasted scape of insult!

  The women were
splayed naked before them, dumbly following their own initial instincts. Lapping at one another upon fragrant beds of feathers as countless candles sizzled. Holy preludes drenched with ungodly designs! The acolytes stood aside in wait of their wishes: more rich foodstuffs, wines, fellatio…

  Eventually they rose, their lips glossed by succulent greases, and approached the beds. A male acolyte produced wondrous little blades, while the female shrieked in cosmic enthusiasm, a most diverting creature. Her pleasure was obvious.

  One blonde’s throat was delicately slit, and the warm blood allowed to sheen the soft flesh of the others, which several reveled to lave off with their tongues. Several more pried apart the blonde’s brittle skull, to feast upon the still-warm brains…

  Stout members turned rigid. They each waited patiently to take their turn.

  ««—»»

  Lee woke up past three a.m. For the third night in a row now, his lover had not shown herself. I guess she’s sick of me, his male paranoia presented. Probably in bed with Kyle right now. Or that weird fucker Feldspar.

  He couldn’t sleep. The room’s dark unnerved him, aggravated him like an incessant, yapping poodle. Subtle noises cloyed at him further; he knew he must be imagining them.

  Whispers, shrieks, remote thunkings…

  Fuck this, he thought. I need a beer.

  He hauled on old clothes, taking care to leave the suite as quietly as possible. The hall to the stairs seemed cramped, unearthly in silence. A barely noticeable heat wafted against him as he crossed the atrium, from the fireplace.

  The kitchen sparkled back at him when he eased through the double doors. The service bar was unlocked.