Rick R. Reed WRITER

“Fantasy deserted by reason produces impossible monsters: united with it, fantasy is the mother of the arts and the source of their wonders.”

Francisco Goya

(caption for The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters)

Chapter One

ELISE GRONEMAN STARES out the window, stomach roiling. What she has is like stage fright. She gets it every night, before she ventures out of her tiny Rogers Park studio apartment on Chicago’s far north side. It’s always been amazing to her that just a few minutes walk to the north is the suburb of Evanston and a different world; there, the streets are tree-lined and clean, the homes palatial, the condos upscale, the restaurants grand, and the stores exclusive. Affluence and culture preside. Yet here, on Greenview Street, one encounters abject poverty, crime, the detritus of urban desperation: tiny brightly-colored baggies, fast food wrappers, condoms, empty alcohol bottles, even pieces of clothing. The sidewalks are cracked, the grassy areas choked with weeds and garbage. Here in Rogers Park, the normal folks¯the ones who travel on the el  to work downtown every morning¯stay inside, so as not to mingle with people like Elise, or the man outside her window right now, who’s screaming, “What the fuck do I care what you do, bitch? It ain’t no skin off my ass.”  Elise glances out and sees the man is alone. A boy cruises by on a bicycle that’s too small for him. The bike is stolen; either that, or he’s a runner for some small time dealer, delivering and making collections. Sometimes, there aren’t many options for moving up the ladder.

But this neighborhood is all Elise can afford, and, unless she picks up more clientele soon, she may even be crowded out of this hovel she begrudgingly calls home. Once, she shared the place with someone else, but those days, for better or worse, are long behind her.

Elise moves to the window, attempting to obliterate memory by the simple act of staring outside. Dusk has fallen and the sky belies the earthbound life before her. The sun is setting, the sky deep violet, filtering down to tangerine and pink near the horizon. If she keeps her eyes trained on the riot of color and shape to the east, she can almost forget where she is.

But the denizens of Greenview Street make sure she stays reminded. They stroll the night in an attempt to escape the heat, the hot, moist air pressing in, smothering. They call to one another, using words she had barely heard, let alone used, back in Shaker Heights, Ohio, where she had grown up: nigga, motherfucka, homey. Fuck used as an adjective, verb, and ejaculation (but rarely, ironically, utilized in a sexual context). Snatches of music filter out from apartment windows. Cruising vehicles pass by, bass thumping hard enough to cause the glass in her windows to vibrate. She has picked up names of artists like Bow Wow, Def Soul, and Trick Daddy as she walks the streets. Elise puts a hand to the screen, testing the air. Will there ever be a breeze again? She wonders if her neighbors would recognize any of the names attached to the music she loves, names like Vivaldi, Smetana, Bach. Other music fills the street: arguments and professions of love shouted with equal force. Headlights illuminate the darkening night, which is also lit by the flare of a match here, neon there, and sodium vapor overall. The world glows orange, filling up not only the streets of the city, but the sky, blotting out the stars.

East of her churn the cold waters of Lake Michigan, and Elise imagines its foam-flecked waves lapping at the shores. She’d like to pad down to the beach at the end of Birchwood Street, kick off her sandals and run across the sand and into the water, its cold obliterating and refreshing. She wishes she had the freedom, but east is not her path. Her way lies south, to Howard Street, purveyor of pawnshops and prostitution.

Her destination.

Elise turns to survey her cramped apartment. Near the ceiling, industrial green paint peels from the walls to reveal other coats of grimy paint no color describes. Metal-frame twin bed, sheets twisted and gray, damp from sweat and humidity. Next to that, Salvation Army-issue scarred oak table, small, with the remains of this night’s meal, a few apple peelings, a knife, and a glass half filled with pale tea, darkening in the dying light.

It’s a place no one would ever call home. Elise’s apartment is utilitarian, a place to work, to sleep, to eat. It’s little more than shelter.

The only sign of human habitation is her work: huge canvases mounted on easels, bits of heavy paper taped to her drawing board. Much of her work is done in charcoal and pencil, but the palette of grays and black remain constant, whether it’s a sketch or a completed painting. Her subject matter, too, is always the same, although the variety of choices she has to explore is endless. Elise likes to draw intensely detailed renderings of crime and accident scenes, aping the cold, clinical detachment one might find in a book of crime scene photographs. Here is a woman, slumped beside a corduroy recliner, a gunshot ripping away half of her head (the blood black in Elise’s rendering), beside her, a half-eaten chicken leg and the Tempo section of the Chicago Tribune, folded neatly and splattered with her gore. There’s a man lying beside a highway, the cars a fast-moving blurred river. His head has been severed from his body. On the wall she has masking-taped a nightmare in quick, staccato slashes: a young woman strangled and left to lie in the pristine environment of an upscale public washroom, clean, shiny ceramic tile, untarnished metal stalls. Another woman, looking bored, checks her lipstick in the mirror. Near Elise’s floor is a small, intricately detailed drawing done in charcoal: two lovers lie in a bed of gore, the aftermath¯one presumes¯of discovery of their union by a jealous lover. The woman has a sheet discreetly covering her up to the neck. The man lies splayed out in a paroxysm of agony. And why not? His offending penis has been slashed from his body. Is that it on the floor beside the bed, a smudge of black, nearly shapeless?

Where is all the color? Elise herself wonders as she dresses for the evening. Color has been leeched out of her world; it is getting increasingly difficult to be able to remember what color was like and thus, increasingly difficult to duplicate its varied hues on paper or canvas. Color, it seems, is but a hazy memory out of her past.

Enough of art analysis, she thinks. It’s her days she has designated to her art. Nighttime is when she prepares for her other job, the occupation that keeps a roof over her head.  The job which perhaps is responsible for stealing the color from her vision.

Enough! Enough! Enough! she thinks. Put the introspection behind you. It’s time now, time to become a creature of the night, an animal doing what it must to provide its own sustenance.

She rummages in the apartment’s lone closet, pulling out one of her “uniforms,” clothing that helps identify her occupation as much a mechanic’s jumpsuit, or a waitress’s ruffled apron and polyester dress.

Tonight, she dons a short black skirt bisected by a wide zipper ending in a big silver loop. Over her head, she pulls a white T-shirt, tying it just above her waist. In combination with the low-riding skirt, it perfectly frames her navel. Elise pulls the skin apart and plucks out a piece of lint. She completes her ensemble with dark seamed stockings and spike heels. These are the tools of the trade as much as the brushes, sticks of charcoal, and pencils littering her space.

Elise flips back her long whiskey-colored hair, and leans close to the mirror. She lines her lips with a shade of brown, then fills in with glossy crimson. Cheapens her green eyes with thick black kohl. Elise pulls her hair back, away from her damp neck, and up, pinning it all together with a silver barrette adorned with the smiling face of a skull. Pentagram earrings. Tonight a witch, creature of the night.

Then she turns, hand on doorknob. The night awaits: exhaust fumes, traffic, the chirping of cicadas.

MARIA, TERENCE, AND Edward sit in a circle, facing one another. Atop the mantel, an army of candles, blood red pillars, votives, tapers, flickering, banishing the shadows to the corners, barely. The gloom is palpable, a fourth presence. But here is a trio who prefers the darkness, a threesome preternaturally attuned to it.

Edward, as always, has one eye on the paintings covering the wall. His vision reacts to their presence, even in the dim. His favorites stand out. There’s an original etching by Van Gogh hung next to a portrait of Terence done years ago by a bag lady who used to sell her paintings on the steps of the Art Institute for a pittance. Even while living on the streets, Lee Godie’s work was being collected by museums and important collectors. This one of Terence, commissioned on a bright, moonlit night in 1969, would probably sell these days for around $5,000. Terence had paid ten dollars for it. Further down, a Picasso (in his blue period) painting of a boxy woman contrasts with a drawing of a scream, giant, done in shades of magenta, black and yellow...a siren. Edward likes the paintings that have distilled emotion and movement into simple colors and lines. More paintings and sculptures choke the room, making of it a gallery, a warehouse, anything but what it is supposed to be--a living room. No room in this house, Edward thinks, is a living room. He does not grin at this play on words.

For Terence, the art is mostly a backdrop, a witness to an evening ritual and to his stunning presence. Terence has always been his own canvas, and the artwork he admires most. He holds a glass cylinder topped with a glass bowl. He has filled the bowl with a sticky mass, a brownish-green bud, sticky and redolent with a pungent aroma. He tamps the bud in firmly with his thumb, leaving just enough room to allow it to ignite and burn. His long, flat palm covers the cylinder’s opening at one end as he brings it to his lips. A flame shoots up from a sterling silver lighter and Terence lights the bowl of marijuana. The bud glows orange, drawing Edward’s gaze; it’s a beacon in the darkness. Smoke rolls into the cylinder, gray and ephemeral. Terence removes his hand from the end of the cylinder and his mouth becomes a vacuum; the smoke disappears.

He passes it to Maria. “To hedonism! To art!”

Maria rolls her eyes. “Save the hyperbole for someone who gives a shit.” She takes the glass cylinder and lighter from him. Where Terence’s mouth and hand had been, the glass is icy cold.

ELISE PACES HOWARD Street. Her face, lit by street lights from the parking lot across the way, reveals apprehension and longing in yellow. She toys with an earring, examines the bottom of her shoe. Behind her a 7-11 and an adult bookstore compete for not-so-conspicuous consumption. The 7-11 offers Big Gulps.  So does the adult bookstore, Elise thinks.

Her heart pounds faster. There is more sweat at her hairline, dribbling down her back like the crawly legs of insects, than even the humid night could provoke. Even though she has been doing this “work” for at least two years, she never gets over the fear. Never gets over the shame. Never gets past wondering if she will end up another crime statistic, another hard-to-identify young woman discovered in morning mist in an alley, or stuffed into a Dumpster. She did a drawing once of a woman in spike heels, lying in an alley with a plastic bag over her head, its bottom knotted tightly around her throat. She called it “Pessimistic Self Portrait.” Thoughts like these cause her to shiver, in spite of the heat. Thoughts like these make her long for the solace of her tiny apartment, despite the mice whispering through the walls, and the cockroaches scattering when she turns on a light in the middle of the night.

Right now, it feels like one of those mice gnaws at the inside of her stomach. She breathes deeply, trying to focus her attention on the traffic cruising by. Which will slow to look? Which will cause her to move forward from her post in front of the store, a smile brave and totally false, plastered across her features? These initial movements¯before any words are exchanged¯are where the deal is truly struck. The eloquent meeting of the eyes between the wanted and the wanter is where decisions are made. Elise’s slow walk to the idling car, the negotiations: nothing more than busy work, after-the-fact necessities. In spite of her anxiety, the motions of this work have become stale and as routine as the filing and photocopying her more conventional sisters do downtown, in some Loop office.

Elise smoothes her skirt, stiffening as a gang of Hispanic boys charge up the street. They call to each other in Spanish, tossing a basketball back and forth. There are at least eight of them, their youth raucous and threatening. They haven’t seen her yet, but soon will, and Elise knows what’s coming from past experience: the whistles and catcalls, the unintelligible sexual come-ons in Spanish they will all laugh at.

And she is a woman alone. No matter that she is plying a trade almost as old as mankind itself. Never mind that she is a criminal in this commerce.

These boys could take what she seeks to sell.

Take and destroy.

Elise prays they will surmise she has a pimp, leave her alone. Running in these heels is a fantasy, and a gangbang is not what she has in mind for tonight.

The boys press closer and Elise strains to understand the quick, staccato rhythm of the Spanish. But only the most basic words filter to Elise, not enough to make sense. Their laughter is evil, predatory.

The boys surge close, their heat and aggression a warning scent.

Elise moves on.

MARIA SETS THE glass cylinder on the floor. She closes her eyes, and beneath the delicate, blue-veined lids, her eyes flutter. Movement stops and she exhales; a plume of blue smoke jets upward into the darkness, tinged just a bit brighter where dull light shines in through leaded glass. “That’s it; there’s no more left in the bowl.”

The two men nod. Edward rises and moves to the rheostat on the wall. Recessed lighting disperses the room’s shadows and brings the paintings to brilliant life. Sculptures formed from granite, marble, and metal move in the sudden light. The three’s eyes glaze at the drama the paintings and sculptures present: the liquid flow of color, images conflicting, jumping from canvas and paper, rock or metal become bone, flesh. It is the ingestion of THC that causes their sudden fascination, but it’s also the sudden riot of color and form the light reveals.

It excites them. They see mockery in this art, love, too...sex, death, and betrayal. Violence. Serenity. The art sharpens their focus and brings them closer to what they will hunt, the population they were once part of: humanity.

They see it all. Theirs is a special sensitivity, approaching empathy.

            This is an old ritual.

It attunes them to the night...and the hunt.

ELISE HAS FOUND solace under the Howard Street el tracks, under a street lamp’s pool of light. Trains rumble overhead; she barely hears herself breathe. She wants to vanish, to become silent and invisible. If I had any guts at all, she thinks, I’d go into the station, pay the fare, walk upstairs, and fling myself on the tracks just before the next rapidly approaching train. Think of the excitement, the clamor, the shouts, and the cries. Picture the blood dripping down from the tracks onto the sidewalk and street below. Windshield wipers swishing away blood. And I would be a part of none of it. I would exist only in memory.

But whose?

Her own memory she would like to extinguish, have an operation to excise that part of her brain that stores what happens to her. There would be a kind of comfort in awakening each day and not remembering what happened before, starting life over every day. It seems there would be more possibilities. But that option has already been explored too much by Hollywood screenwriters and seldom happens in reality.

Besides, she is a nameless entity now, a utilitarian tool, waiting to be used. This other job allows her to disconnect, in a way. It frees her from worrying about where the idea for her next drawing or painting will come. It frees her from wondering if the only thing she has a passion for is anything she’s really good at. If she deserves¯one day¯to make a living from it.

An el train rumbles by above, the brakes squealing as the muffled voice of a conductor announces, “Howard Street, change here for Evanston/Wilmette trains. Howard Street.”

There’s a rush of people behind her as passengers descend the stairs from the platform. Elise casts her gaze downward when the stares come... in an instant, contempt, desire, and indifference. They know her and they don’t. In some ways, she’s used to the looks, the leers, and the sneers. In others, she will never get used to it. She can never stop being the good Jewish girl from Shaker Heights. She thinks of her mother, to whom she has not spoken in two years, and imagines her shock if she could see her daughter now, the clothes she wears and the blatant advertising the shoes, shirt, and skirt convey. What would her mother do? Try to strong-arm her into coming home? Arrange for a deprogramming?

“Excuse me, miss.”

A wheedling voice. Elise tries not to jump. Before her is a man, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. Seersucker suit, frayed around the edges; dirty, colorless hair hanging limp across a creased forehead. Black plastic-frame glasses.  The glare on the lenses makes it impossible for Elise to discern color or intention in the eyes beneath.

“What?”

The man slides his hand around in the sweat on his forehead. Thin, pale lips like worms break into a grin. “You sellin’ it?”

What is this? Elise wonders. Chicago vice? He’s got quite a disguise. The nerd routine, perhaps it’s worked before....

“Well?” The man moves even more restlessly, toying with buttons, mopping the sweat that pops up in frantic beads from his forehead.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“You know,” he says like a whining child. “Come on.”

Elise shakes her head. One of his shoes, a scuffed Hush Puppy, has a hole in it. His baby toe, pink and crowned with a dirty nail, pokes out.

Is this character for real?

“I can’t help you, sir.” Elise puts mocking emphasis on this last word. “Unless I know what it is you want.”

“You,” he stammers, “I want you.”

“Well, you can’t have me.” There’s something too odd about this one, something too bizarre. Besides, if he can’t afford even a pair of shoes, how could he afford her?

“Even if I pay?” Words tremble. His shirt collar darkens with perspiration.

Elise looks him up and down, considering.

Something better will come along. Elise’s stomach churns at the thought of this man above her.

Still, the rent will be due in a few days. She has closed her eyes to others before.

No. Even a streetwalker has to have some standards. “Get lost,” she whispers to the guy. “I couldn’t. Not even for a million bucks.”

Even though nothing has blocked the glow from the streetlight, a shadow darkens the man’s face before he turns and hurries away. And Elise shivers. In this commerce, even the most innocent-looking prospect can be a latter-day Jack the Ripper. By refusing, one never knows whom one is pissing off.  She’s dealt with outraged rejects before...and in spite of his look of harmless geekiness, this one could have a switchblade in his pocket, the strength of a strangler in his hands.

THE NIGHT IS alive. Humidity and heat press in, heightening the smells and feel of living, breathing flesh. They are restlessly attuned to the smell of prey. Criteria: Which one is weak enough? Which one has a healthy supply of blood, one that will not pollute their evening repast with disease or drugs that have the power to set their systems on edge and cause them to turn and thrash in their daylight slumber?

Hunger.

They have moved north, to Roger’s Park. Here Terence, Maria, and Edward can mingle with the detritus Lake Michigan and the city has washed up: the homeless, the runaways, drug addicts (crack, coke, meth, and heroin their most popular choices) and those who seek to addict others.

Prostitutes. 

The ones no one asks questions about. The ones few notice missing and fewer still care about. These people  are especially drawn to their looks, their casual affluence, and the lure of easy money. These are the ones that go missing for days with no one wondering who they are, the ones the authorities don’t spend much time searching for. The three of them prefer the lonely, the alone, the ones who arouse no suspicion upon their departures.

In their clothing, their looks, the images they have chosen to project, the three all are bait. Lures. The twinkling of an eye, a smile, an outstretched hand: all are nothing more than razor-sharp steel, ready to hook the unwary. 

Maria sees her first: a whore. Long hair and tight clothes. Stiletto heels and black rubber bracelets climbing up one arm. She stands alone, watching the traffic go by, her eyes staring restlessly into the glass shielding each driver. She tries to appear streetwise and tough, but there’s a vulnerability to her stance, a little too much hunger  in her eyes to make the act convincing.

She’s desperate.

She’s perfect.

Maria moves back into the shadows, pulling her companions with her. They are sandwiched between a convenience store and a movie theater, long ago abandoned, a home for nothing more than pigeons and trash. With Jimmy Choo spike heels, she kicks aside a fearless pigeon and a Popeye’s chicken box.

“Look.” She nods toward the whore. All three pairs of eyes train in on the woman across the street. Her beauty draws them, or at least what once could be referred to as beauty, her looks are sliding downhill; she looks beyond tired, a rose whose petals are velvety, but blackened and drooping.  What really sets their mouths to watering is her vulnerability. Easy pickings are always the best. Why cast a line into an ocean when you can shoot into a barrel?

At once, each of the three is more aware of the woman than she could ever realize. She is like something small, a rabbit nibbling on grass as a hunter is positioning it in the crosshairs of his rifle. Even from their vantage point across the street, they feel the heat emanating from her body, drifting over to them in shimmering waves. They see it as no one else can: a crimson aura surrounds her body, pulsing in the heat. Her scent, sour body odor not masked at all by cheap cologne, rides the heat like a magic carpet. It smells of fresh game, clean, yet musky. Heavy. The blood pulsing in the whore’s veins reveals itself; almost audible, the tide of it, as the heart pounds out a beat. She is alive, glimmering with life.

Appetizing.

It’s almost too much. A feast of the senses; a cornucopia. Corpuscles of fat floating in the most delicious blood, thick and viscous, with a sharp metallic tang. It excites all sorts of hunger. Maria turns to Terence and wraps her arms around him, her mouth devouring his, tongue exploring the dryness within, sliding over his teeth. Edward presses himself into Maria from behind, thrusting against her, feeling the taut flesh and bone outlined beneath the satin of her dress. Tight between the two men, Maria throws back her head, grinding herself back and forth, pushing their insistent hardness against her. She sighs, imagining someone walking by, deigning to join this impromptu orgy. If someone should, they would never emerge from the shadows again. This trio has always had a problem dealing with the curious, but no problem with swiftly extinguishing that curiosity...forever.

Cold flesh touches cold flesh. Eyes close. Each whispers and moans proclamations of lust and desire. Edward nuzzles the ice skin just below Maria’s hairline in back, biting, biting harder until the skin breaks, exploring the small barren openings his teeth have made with his tongue. Maria arches her back, and stops.

“Now, we should go to her now.” Maria pulls away from the panting men, lust brightening their eyes, even here in the shadows. “Terence, you approach her.”

Terence doesn’t need further encouragement. He loves this part of the hunt. Breaking away, Terence waits for the passing cars and dashes across the street. He knows exactly how he looks, the blond hair shining in the artificial neon brightness of the night, the high cheekbones and full lips. The costume of tight leather and pewter latex. A whore’s dream: money and beauty, too.

The whore is about to light a cigarette. An opportunity. Terence brings out his silver lighter and hurries to her, flame erect, before she can raise the cheap plastic disposable in her hand. He meets her eyes as the flame transfers some of its glow to the tip of her cigarette.

“Thanks.” She exhales twin streams of smoke through her nostrils, and. appraises him, taking in the leather and latex, wondering perhaps what someone like him is doing in her part of town. She draws in hard on the cigarette, cheeks collapsing. Thin tusks of blue gray smoke rise. She burns.

“Hot tonight.” Terence smiles and looks around him, as if for the source of the heat.

The whore smiles, shakes her head. “You gotta do better than that for an opening line.” She laughs. “Ah, but the way you look, what do you need lines for?” She cocks her head, suddenly the coquette.

“Flatterer.” Terence touches the whore’s bare shoulder.

She flinches, shrugging his hand away. “Baby, you’re cold. How’d you manage that?”

Terence thinks for a moment. “Just got out of air conditioning.”

The whore looks around, trying to locate the building from which Terence has emerged.

More conversation. Cheap words mouthed to get to the real purpose. Finally, the whore cuts short the compliments and inanities about the weather and cuts to the chase, not knowing that the chase began a while back.

“What do you get into?” Her eyes flicker, moving down Terence’s body like liquid. Her voice has a broad, Midwestern twang: flat A’s, sharp and nasal.

“There are three of us.”

“Group scene.” The whore nods. “Been there. There’s no group rate, though. It’ll cost each of you the same as if you came to me individually.”

“So that’s all right with you?”

“Anything’s all right, so long as it’s worth my while.” She takes one more drag off the cigarette, drops it to the pavement, and grinds it under her toe. “I assume you got a place. Otherwise, it’s extra. There’s a motel on Sheridan.”

“No need for that. We have a car nearby. Come with us?”

“What kinda car?”

“A black Mercedes.”

Eyes light up. “Let’s go.”

The Mercedes idles at a corner, just steps away from Lake Michigan. It’s quieter here, away from the bustle of Howard Street. Once in a while, someone strolls down to the lakefront, or a figure passes across a lighted window. Otherwise, here so close to the lake, it’s deserted.

“Shit! Why you wanna make me walk so far in these shoes? Couldn’t you have had one of your friends come and pick us up? Jesus, don’t you have a cell?” The whore bends down and pulls off the black spike heels and grips them angrily in one hand, continuing in a tight little barefoot canter. “You’re gonna have to give me some money for new hose.”

“Sorry,” Terence says, not bothering to explain, but there is a reason:  Maria always plans ahead; she’s cautious. The car will be close to the lake, away from the bright lights and bustle. This way, there will be fewer witnesses. Even whores, sometimes, have friends. There have been times when they had taken the wrong person. There was trouble, and they had to flee. Terence and Maria have lived all over the world, nomads with the stench of death following them, too cunning to be caught, but unable to stay¯and feed¯in one place for too long.

“Not to worry, my dear. Our vehicle is just ahead.” Terence nods at the Mercedes, black, shimmering, and reflecting the moon. There’s a low hum, the song of solid German engineering. The windows are black.

“Nice car.” She giggles, running a red fingernail across the trunk.

Terence opens the back door for her. She slides in; Terence follows, closing the door behind them with a muffled thunk.

The whore settles in, grinning and leaning back into the leather. It takes her a second to notice Maria in the front seat. “Ah,” she says, “we got a lady here.”

Maria turns. “I hope that’s not a problem.”

“Problem? Honey, it’s a bonus.” The whore smiles at Maria, engaging her with her eyes. She tries to keep their gazes locked. Maybe that way, Maria won’t notice the crooked teeth and the slash across her right cheek, the smooth white scar.

“This is Maria.”

The whore offers her hand. Maria makes a kissing expression in its direction but does not touch it. “I’m very pleased.” Maria gestures toward Edward, sitting next to her. “And this is Edward.”

Edward turns and gives a small wave. His face is tight, revealing nothing.

The car pulls away from the curb, makes a U-turn, and heads south on Sheridan Road.

Back at the vampires’ house, the mood is one of anticipation. A party on the cusp of bursting into revelry. Terence, purveyor, escorts the whore to a bedroom done entirely in red: red satin settees, heavy red drapery, blood red velvet, flocked wallpaper.

The whore giggles at the sight of the room’s interior. “God! It’s like a womb.” She paces, fingering the heavy draperies. “Or a bordello.”

The three say nothing. Terence leads her to the bed and pulls her down next to him. Wordlessly, they begin shedding their clothes. The air fills with the whispers of satin, creaks of leather, the thud of shoes hitting the floor. Terence implores the whore to keep her stilettos on, though. “You look so hot with those on...and nothing else,” he tells her. The three take their places, wordlessly concurring. Maria sits on the floor at her feet, and Edward remains in a corner near the door, watching, eyes brilliant in the flickering of the candles.

Now, Terence strokes the woman, cupping and holding her breasts. He stares into her eyes while pinching harder on her nipples, almost as though searching for an indication of pain.

“Your hand’s so cold.”

“Warm it.”

The whore gasps and stiffens as Terence’s hand dives between her thighs. “I don’t understand...” There is something wrong. This coldness is unnatural. The whore thinks this leathery cold flesh feels dead. But that can’t be. They’re horny. They want a three-way. Dead people don’t wander around at night, picking up streetwalkers. She knows; she’s seen enough dead people. None of them managed to worm a cold hand between her thighs. But still, the feel of the cold flesh pressing inside her makes her feel nauseous. If she didn’t need the money, maybe she would get up, saying something like, “Sorry folks, this isn’t my scene. I’ll find my way out.” But she knows it’s not that simple. Once you commit to a scene, putting things in reverse is very difficult. Sometimes, it’s easier to just go through with it. Still, this cold flesh is really creepy.

She whimpers and shifts slightly to free herself from Terence’s cold probing fingers. Fear is making her own skin icy.

Maria, attuned to the fear in her eyes, rises and moves to a walnut armoire. She extracts several one hundred dollar bills and scatters them over the whore. They flutter down over her body.

“Warmer?” Maria’s voice is throaty. Deep as a man’s, yet in no way masculine. She knows how to speak the whore’s language.

“Yesss,” the whore hisses, staring at all the money. She spreads her legs to give Terence better access. Maria kneels at the whore’s feet and removes a stiletto heel. She takes the whore’s great toe in her mouth and sucks it. The whore closes her eyes as Terence moves to kiss her. She stiffens at the feel of his tongue: dry, rough, and again, icy cold. But she makes herself kiss back, trying to ignore the repulsion she feels. They’re all beautiful, but not one of them is desirable. She forces herself to think about the money, scattered around her. Christ, she thinks, there has to be at least a thou...

Terence pushes her hand down on his sex. It feels like ice.

The woman stiffens. In spite of all the money, in spite of everything, she doesn’t know if she can do this. She doesn’t know if there is a place in her mind that’s far away enough to distance herself from the revulsion and the horror. She sits up abruptly, pulling her foot away from Maria. “Why are you all so cold? I don’t get it.” Her heart races. Perhaps she can grab a few of the bills and make a break for it. Something is not right here. Something she doesn’t want to think about too closely, for fear she’ll lose her mind. But something instinctive in her is telling her she needs to get away. Even if it would mean running into the street stark naked and screaming...

And Edward is there to calm her. “Have some of this.” He hands her a lighter and the glass cylinder, its bowl filled with a fat bud of marijuana glistening with resin. She looks down at it in surprise, looks back up at Edward, not sure whether to be grateful or wary.

The whore’s chest heaves. All three sense her dichotomy: dread and desire wrapped into one conflicting package, each emotion pulling with its own force. They are old hands at dealing with this kind of war. They are confident in its outcome.

The whore takes the pipe and fires up the bowl. The cylinder fills with smoke, becoming opaque. Clarity returns in seconds as the woman sucks down the smoke. “Damn,” she whispers. “Where’d you find shit like this?” Already, she feels as though she is speaking from within a long tunnel.

No reply. Terence takes the woman’s hand and forces her to put the pipe back to her mouth. She giggles. “Okay, okay.”

After three hits, the woman has forgotten her fear, has stopped wondering why her three companions for the evening have such cold flesh and empty eyes, pale skin smooth like polished stone. Standing naked, the whore surrenders to their touch—all over, hands moving faster and faster, exploring. She closes her eyes, no longer aware who is twisting her nipples to an area where pain and pleasure mesh, no longer aware whose fingers are exploring her sex, her ass. The pot has filled her with a warm stupidity. She can think of only one thing at a time and that is how good these three pairs of hands feel on a body that is growing hotter and hotter with their chilled caresses. Juices run down her thighs, viscous, fragrant. Three tongues lapping make it almost impossible for the whore to stand. Dragging the three with her like sucking leeches, the whore moves to the fireplace and lies on the red and black patterned rug before it. She spreads her legs wide, pushing at them to enter her more deeply, to continue to bring out this wondrous pleasure she has never felt.

And then, the whore is sitting astride Terence, cock like an icicle buried deep. Edward squats behind and above her, pelvis arched out to thrust more deeply into her ass, and Maria presses the whore’s face into her own cold but yielding sex lips. Vaguely, through the fog of sensual pleasure and drugged stupidity, the whore remembers reading that the devil’s penis feels like ice. She shuts her eyes and grinds down harder on this pillar of ice muscle inside her. It feels good, damn it. It feels good. She reaches out with her tongue, lapping at Maria’s sex, tasting her, burying her face in the silken black hair that frames Maria’s moist lips, digging her tongue deep inside.

The whore sees this tableau in her mind’s eye, almost as if she is at once removed from it and deep within it, the center. She cries out, not knowing how she can stay conscious under the weight of such pleasure.

And then they are biting.

And at first, it’s all right, the tiny nips and nibbles nothing more than an extension of their lust, making it better and better. She’s endured nibbles and even harder bites in the name of pleasure. Seldom has she let anyone actually break her flesh...and seldom has anyone wanted to. She winces as their teeth penetrate. “Ow!” She laughs. “Watch it, there! I don’t go in for the rough stuff. Not too rough, anyway.” She bats at them with an ineffectual hand.

But then the bites become harder and harder and the whore awakens from the haze of the marijuana as the teeth, suddenly razor-like and distinctly not human, pierce and rend her flesh. “Oh, God,” she whimpers, muscles contracting at the pain like hot needles boring into her. She wants to scream, but feels paralyzed. Her voice dies in her throat as she looks down and sees Maria tear a hunk of flesh from her inner thigh, the skin, muscle, and blood hanging from her teeth. The whore lies convulsing, struggling as the bites penetrate deeper, ripping and shredding, faster and faster, on her breasts, her stomach, her thighs, her ass, all the tender areas. Piercing and penetrating. Sucking sounds filter up to her dull hearing.

Before everything goes dark, she sees: Terence and Edward biting down into her breasts, their mouths ringed with blood. Terence’s gaze meets hers. He smiles, fangs bright in a sea of crimson. One drop of her blood drips from his chin. And then, with a grunt, he lowers his head again, and rips her nipple off with his teeth. He teases the nipple with his teeth, playing with it, and then suddenly it’s gone.

The whore closes her eyes, shuddering and surrendering. She does not have enough sense to wonder why the cold bodies have suddenly become hot.

THE FACE ABOVE Elise’s is little more than a mask, white shapes in all the right places, backlit by the streetlight filtering in through the van’s windows. It’s how she gets through it, her commerce. She makes her clients inhuman, things that thrust, grunt, and groan above her. As much as she can, Elise goes elsewhere.

The man pants, squeezing her breast with one hand as he thrusts within her. Elise lies with her arms at her sides. Immobile, she tries to discern the color of the shag carpeting that covers the interior of the van, making it cave-like and muffling the man’s grunts. “That’s it, baby. Fuck me hard. Harder. Ooooo....you got such a big cock. Shove it in deep. Make mama feel good.” Elise repeats the words, hoping their crudeness will have the desired effect: to end this little session as quickly as possible. She doesn’t even have to put much emotion behind these porno-quality speeches. Just saying “fuck” and “cock” and “pussy” is often  enough to drive them over the edge. And then they will be disgusted with themselves and her and want to dump her as quickly as possible. That’s just fine with Elise.

He stops and stiffens. He stares down at her. Elise bites her lips, tasting blood, as he comes.

In an instant, he has pulled out of her. He tugs off the condom and flings it on the floor. He is breathing heavily, and his hairy back is matted with sweat. He crawls to where his pants lie and digs in the pockets.

“Here.” Tossing two twenties on her chest, he leans back and lights a cigarette, the acrid burn of the match filling the air. He settles against the carpeted wall, panting still. He smokes for a moment, then looks over at her. “Don’t you have somewhere else you gotta go?” He laughs, but there’s no mirth in it. “Another date?”

The act has taken no more than ten minutes, yet the man glistens with sweat, his fat hairy belly covered with slick. Elise feels soiled, but scoops up the damp money from her breasts and sits up.

She struggles into her clothes; zippers catch, nylons run, her shirt gets stuck as she pulls it over her head. Sheepishly, she grins at the man, her lover, her partner in sin and crime.

He glares at her.

“That was nice,” she says with little emotion and even less veracity.

“Just get the fuck out.”

Elise scrambles backward, like an animal out of a hole, from the van. The night surrounds her. Cold. Forty bucks.

THE THREE LIE together on the bed. The carcass lies alone, by the fire. It has been almost completely drained of blood and much of its flesh has been ripped from the bone. It is barely recognizable as human. In the early morning, before day’s cruel light intrudes, they will rip the carcass further apart and will feed it to the fire. The smell of roasting meat will send them off to sweet dreams.

Edward moves close to Terence and snuggles against him. When he encounters no resistance, he puts his head on Terence’s chest.

Terence turns away. “Get the fuck off, fancy man.”

“Sorry,” Edward whispers into the darkness, turning his back away from Terence.

“You should know by now I’m not into that.”

But you once were. At least when you wanted me. Edward thinks about the night they met and the promise. He didn’t know how quickly the promise would be met.

And then reneged on.