The Chosen

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.

Where are you? he wondered, strangely close to tears. Did he love her? What was going on? You fat, silly fool. You’ve fallen in love with a whore. That’s what Kyle implied she’d been in her past life. Scarred by the dementias of others, probably insensible by the way the world worked. Doesn’t care, doesn’t know how to.

The Maibock tasted great. Lee leaned against the big Hobart dishwasher, savoring each sip. He finished one bottle, and opened another…

Next, he felt walking through a dream, yet he knew it couldn’t be a dream. I’m awake, he assured himself. But it beats the shit out of me where I am. Strange warrens led him to stranger ones, he felt immersed in rock and moist air. The walls now seemed carved, like a catacomb. Smoky torches lit the way.

Then he knew he must be wrong; he knew he must be dreaming. Rock-arched entryways showed him flagrant horrors. The warrens were lined with ill-lit rooms, and in each room some new, hideous atrocity unfolded. Things he could never have imagined. Women fettered to beds by leather straps so tight their hands and feet glowed blue. Gorged nipples pierced by needles, tips of clitori snipped with shears and lapped of their blood by greedy tongues. In another room, a misshapen man penetrated a woman with a penis that looked large as a summer squash; the woman vomited, somehow, in ecstasy. In a third room a woman fellated a man who didn’t even look human. A gray corrugated face grinned down; the eyes looked blood-red. Weirdly jointed hands grabbed shanks of dirty hair, guiding the woman’s mouth over the worm-veined shaft…

An in yet another grottolike room, a bald man molested a squirming woman chained to a bed. Beyond a sheen of smoke, other men watched intently. The woman seemed fat, anguished; she squirmed against metal shackles while the bald man snipped off a nipple-end with scissors. He squeezed the breasts hard, blood jetting from the insult into some gaping mouth which yawned in the smoky dark.

Lee winced, disbelieving these mad bits of vision. Did I drop acid and not remember? he asked himself. This was the sickest nightmare he’d ever had. Then something jarred him, as solidly as a hammer to the bridge of his nose:

The bald man, muscles shining in sweat, paused as he drew a thin needle through the fat woman’s other nipple.

“Hey, fat boy, ever wondered why this ugly piece of cooze never talks?”

Lee squinted hard. The bald man’s features eventually jelled—the brazen grin, the fucked-up glint in his eyes.

The bald man was Kyle.

And the woman he was so nonchalantly torturing was—

Holy shit no! Lee’s thoughts screamed.

The silent housemaid. His lover.

“We cut all their vocal cords so they don’t get noisy. Sometimes the guys don’t like to hear a ruckus.”

“Stop that!” Lee screamed as the fat woman lurched at yet another needle piercing. Some thing that only vaguely resembled a man crawled forward to tongue the reddened sex.

Kyle chuckled, his bald head aswarm with tails of candlelight. “And we sew the dolts’ pussies shut every now and then for kicks. The fellas