The Brothel: Through Sleeping Eyes (Chapter One)

Initially, all she could see were teeth! HUGE teeth! No...FANGS!1

Ivory barbs snarled and dripped. Strands of salivary syrup swung wildly, threatening to burn her skin like acid. The jowels were powerful and matted, and deceptively blackened as if their fur was the spawn of midnight itself. They worked feverishly, inches from her face, flinging otherwise hidden cakes of coagulated blood and bits of flesh like clods of Heartland soil cast from a tiller...2

As Ely lay beneath the enormous beast, she stared up, petrified and confused. She could smell the sweet rot of wet yet ancient death with each spatter from the wolf's lips. 3

G-R-R-r-r-r-R-baRK! FLING! SPLAT! 4

She winced as the stench struck her face, and tried to brace herself for the agony of being shredded alive. She wondered if this was how it had been for those whose remains either clung stubbornly to the snout that tormented her or pelted her nakedness. Minutes passed and the monster continued to threaten, yet curiously, she experienced none of the ripping or gushing she anticipated. Instead, she felt only the cool mushy weight of decay as it began to collect on her from her slender neck to her nicely toned legs. As more and more of the stuff piled atop itself, it buffered her body from its own pounding. Eventually, it became a mere pulse of which she was vaguely aware, but could hardly feel. The cold of the rot progressively seeped into her bones, numbing her.5

She looked across her body toward her feet and noted that the animal had apparently housed an unimaginable amount of dead scraps in its mouth, as the discarded matter had grown into a heap of black compost upon her. She looked with awe as it began to dissolve, liquifying into large droplets. The better part of the liquid seemed to be absorbed right through her skin. In its transformed state, it brought speckles of warmth to her body, inside and out. Then to her amazement, the droplets ran together and began to pool and change hue until they actually became crimson streams. At the sight of them, she found herself alone in a field beneath a full moon, swaying and prancing, wearing her red streaks like trophies, and then the fluid rained down around her as if summoned by her dance. It trickled then flowed down her form until at last she realized she was bathing in the stuff. It saturated and engulfed her. The warmth of it exhilarated her! It seemed not only to provide her energy, but also thrived on her elevated mood. It turned bright scarlet and began to bubble as if its own joy was too great to contain. Revelling, she lunged backward, arms and legs outstretched, to do a backstroke. She felt as if she could swim in this mysterious, rejuvenating well. Unfortunately, she lacked buoyancy in its stickiness. It congealed and rose. It swelled to a height that convinced her she would drown as she struggled to stay afloat. She only sank further as she fought for control. 6

Ely's ears, now consumed by this river of living blood, felt the steady vibration rendered by the far off beast above her. She could still faintly detect its persistent barking. She lifted her eyes upward to those of her previous captor. They were met with the unblinking glow of two fluorescent yellow coals. Their flickering reminded her of an inviting hearth when, in her youth, the sky had birthed such a quantity of snow that the wind sheered mountainous landscapes into a near-flat horizon in spots. She felt the icy slap of the North Wind strike her cheeks. Her lungs labored to breathe in the harsh cold air. She reached to throw her angora scarf across her mouth and nose as she felt gravelly chrystalization beginning to travel down her throat into her chest. She saw flashes of her little brother when he was still alive, like three-dimensional photographs. Building snowmen. Snowball fights. Making snowcones. Playing hide and seek in the wintry forest. Gliding just ahead of her down the eastern slope near their family winter cabin, snowboarding together once again. Sipping hot cocoa from oversized mugs, topped with melting whipped cream and chocolate sprinkles. Drifting into memories of home and her past, she settled back staring at the fire. But something was wrong. It didn't warm either of them as it should. She felt her backside sizzling from the searing cold as if she was laying on a snow drift inside their cozy den. Still the fire beckoned. Through the flames she saw little Jeremy with puffy blue lips close his eyes and shutter like a mis-idled engine shutting off. 7

Sputtering, she realized too late, she had sunk too far. She inhaled snow and tasted an irony tang. In an instant she was back in the pit of now angry red quicksand, from which she could seemingly not escape. 8

In her fight, she found herself out of breath and gasping. Alarmingly, the sustainence she was taking into her lungs was not the air she expected, but the liquid that surrounded her. Anxious, but exhausted, she finally succombed to her fate. Surely she must be experiencing some sort of euphoria that accompanies oxygen deprivation during drowning. With each inhalation, she felt calmer and more whole, rather than panicked and stricken as she expected. She thought to herself that drowning was a lot like dying of hypothermia or loss of blood. She readied herself for the warmth she had heard tale of to wash over and receive her. She blinked her eyes only to find that she had indeed fallen below the "waterline". While her eyelashes should have glued her eyes shut under the circumstances, without any effort she found she could see through the red sea that swallowed her. Moreover, she discovered a peace she had never known. She let herself go limp, sinking further downward, until light could no longer penetrate the depths of her grave... 9

Ely awoke with a jolt upright. Pitch black encompassed her vision. She was sweating profusely, yet felt a chill that emanated from the core of her.10

She sat for several minutes trying to get her bearings to no avail. Then she heard distant ringing...and her own muffled voice say, "Hey! It's me!! Check your window to find me...sunny skies equals at the beach (or work, bleh!)...if it's night, I'm jookin'! Either way I'm not answering, so talk to the machine!" She laid on her back to listen to the caller.11

A barely audible male voice followed the BEEP: "Ely, it's been FIVE days and I've got a business to run!" She didn't remember turning down the volume on her recorder, but still she found herself straining to hear Bill's usual thundering sarcasm. "What is it THIS time? Another one true love or the world's greatest hangover? JESUS! Why do I put up with this? We're ALL expendable, you know? At least call me damnit! CALL ME!" BEEP.12

Her thoughts flitted around her head like short-circuited fireflies. 13

"What does he mean, 'FIVE days'? I was at work this morning..."14

BZZZT.15

"Why is he calling me in the middle of the night, anyway?"16

BZZT.17

"I worked an hour OVER tonight!"18

BZZZT.19

"What time IS it?" She turned her head to the right to check the green illumination of the alarm clock's digital display, but saw nothing. She turned to her left, then toward her feet, then scrunched her body together like an inch worm to look laterally above her head. In every direction her eyes were met with pitch blackness so that she felt them to see if they were open, inadvertantly sticking a finger into her left one. "Ouch! Dumbass!"20

BZZT.21

"Where's my clock? Where's my answering machine?" She performed another repertoire of neck calisthenics in search of the blinking red light that should have been just across the room. In the process she realized she could neither discern shadows nor depth. "What the fuck? Who did I go home with?" 22

BZZZT! 23

"Wait a minute. Bill called ME so I must be home...Who did I BRING home?...Sharinne..." 24

BZZT! 25

"Ahhhhh" she breathed, remembering "...Sharinne. Mmm-hmmm!" Images from earlier that night flooded her mind: voluptuous bossoms, meticulously sculpted, but dangerously lengthy red fingernails, long, flowing black locks of silken hair sweeping rhythmically down and across Ely's own shapely middrift, keeping time with the pulse of her need, black lacey..." BZZZT! She sat upright again and called aloud, "Sharinne!" But somehow, her voice refused to travel as it should have up to the vaulted ceiling of her bedroom and down the hall before dissipating. Instead it hung in the air, nearly clinging to her. Mesmerized by these strange acoustics, Ely called out again, "Hello?" She noted the same effect. Then becoming a bit anxious, "Hello! Can anybody hear me?" As her words lingered, she realized simultaneously that she didn't feel the cushion of her mattress or the billowy softness of her down comforter. No pillow. No sheet. Just unyielding knotty berber carpet...she was on the floor! But where? 26

She drew her legs from the knees underneath her and sat up on them to touch and feel her way with her fingertips as she began to crawl. Almost immediately she felt her left shoulder brush against firm, vertical, smoothness. She sat back onto her heels and splayed her hands against the wall as if to assure herself of its existence. She knee-walked this perimeter of reality, keeping her fingers always in contact lest it retreat, irretrievably, from her grasp. Within a few feet she met the inside of a corner and continued to explore her surroundings at a ninety-degree angle from where she had been. Something brushed her left cheek, and she pulled her face away, but kept moving. Instantly, her whole head was engulfed in swishing fabric. Alarmed, she pulled back even more, and let go of her precious sheet rock to reach upward, swatting away her assailant. She heard plastic TING and thump as garments and hangers rained down around her. Still confused and groggy and now in a bit of a fright, she flailed backward rising to to her feet. She grabbed at the clothing hanging innocently, yet menacingly, in her own closet to regain her balance and keep her torso atop her now rushing feet. Again, she reached an inside corner and hugged the wall like a jumper having second thoughts on the side of a sky-scraper. She stood still, trying desperately to slow her panicked breathing, the sound of which threatened to push her from the ledge of sanity. Ely silently talked herself through the apparent fact that she was in a closet, most likely her own, and tried to picture its layout in her mind's eye. She regained her composure enough to inch her way along the third wall until she felt the door jamb with her right hand. She exhaled with relief and slid her fingers up and down its perfect vertical lines, pressing her face against it, nearly worshipping it. She leaned to her right, groping to find the knob and plucked it from the void on her third try. She gulped and breathed in deeply, then twisted and yanked her way to what she was sure must be freedom.27

Instead particles of light bombarded her senses with a Lilliputian attack. Millions of tiny arrows simultaneously pierced her eyes and pricked her flesh. They set her skin afire! She made a hasty retreat back to the safety of her closet, slamming the door shut as she went.28

"What the fu..", she breathed aloud as she put a hand to her forehead. She stopped mid-word when she found it to be tender and rough. "What in the world?" she said incredulously. She gingerly fingered her face and arms, then slowly explored her whole body. She seemed to be covered with tiny blisters similar to those she usually formed after sweating underneath a first- or second-degree sunburn. "How the hell did I get this?" Disbelieving, she pressed and kneaded one of the bubbles with her index finger until it burst. She felt a squirt of wetness and a miniscule stinging sensation. Then her lights went out amid the darkness. 29

30

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX31

32


At least sugar plums waltzed their magic spell against evil intruders. Their dance turned out to be an encore performance of Ely's encounter with Sharinne. She dreamed pleasantly for several hours, reliving the night before. 33