House of Skin

DECEPTION

The storm had abated by the next afternoon. Lisa slept perhaps four or five hours and it was enough. She woke around eleven and told the front desk to keep holding her calls. Fenn was probably going mad and sooner or later he would just flash his badge and demand to be brought to her room. It wasn’t something she looked forward to.

She showered quickly and threw herself together and left the building via the back entrance. If he was going to come, then she just wouldn’t be there. Better to hide out until she could think this all through. She caught a cab to the Financial District and took lunch at a Greek restaurant, losing herself in the spring lamb for a time. She ate and drank wine and did not think. Above all, she did not think.

But eventually it had to come to an end. She went back to the hotel around three and Fenn was waiting in the lobby. She supposed he would’ve waited weeks if that’s what it would’ve taken.

He rode up to her suite with her on the elevator, not saying anything, not knowing whether to smile or frown and deciding on the latter. They went in and sat on the sofa and she made them drinks.

“You wanna tell me about it,” he said. “Or should we just sit here and pretend we don’t know one another.”

“Everything’s fine.”

“Really?”

She nodded and drew away when he touched her hand.

“You’ve been acting odd ever since that night in the house,” he said to her flatly. “Something happened and I want to know what.”

“No you don’t.”

“Tell me.”

“Nothing happened.”

“You’re lying,” he said.

“I got scared. I was alone in house with a bad history. My imagination got the best of me.” She couldn’t even look him in the eye.

“And that’s all?”

“What else could have happened?”

“I thought maybe you’d tell me.” He was moving in close now, his concern genuine, as was his lust. She could smell it all over him.

“There’s nothing to tell.”

His arm was around her, his lips at her ear. He whispered things that she didn’t hear, had no interest in hearing. His hand casually fell to her breast.

“Don’t,” she said.

“Why not?” He kissed her neck and ran fingers along her thigh.

“Stop it.” She pushed away. “I don’t want that.”

“What’s wrong? What did I do for chrissake?”

“You didn’t do anything,” she told him, hugging herself. “Nothing at all. It’s just me.”

“Tell me what’s wrong.”

“Would you stop interrogating me like one of your criminals? I don’t need it right now.”

His eyes narrowed. “Oh, is that what I was doing? I thought I was showing concern for the woman I love.”

She shivered. Why did he have to say things like that? He didn’t even know her. He was in love with her face, her body, the sex they’d shared. That and some pristine image of her he’d developed. There was no truth in it. He didn’t even know the person he pretended to love and if he did, his love would wither like an October rose.

“C’mon, Lisa,” he pleaded. “Stop this and tell me.”

But she couldn’t. She just couldn’t tell him the truth. The fear that he’d abandon her then and there was terrifying. She couldn’t stand being alone, with no friends in this awful city. She’d lie first. She’d swindle, cheat, deceive, but she wouldn’t be left alone. Not now. If there was no love for him, she’d invent it.

“Tell me what you’re thinking,” he said.

“Nothing. Just daydreaming.”

“I bet.”

She ignored that. “Anything going on with the case?”

“One little item. Maybe unconnected.”

“Which is?”

“Remember Soames? Your P.I.? He’s dead. He asphyxiated. But as to the how or why, we don’t know yet.”

“My God.”

“Interesting, I’d say. But not as interesting as what’s on your mind.”

“There’s nothing on my mind.”

“Christ.” He left her and went to make himself a whiskey sour and drank it down. Then another. He brought this one back. The phone shrilled almost immediately and Lisa went in the bedroom to answer it.

“Who the fuck can that be?” she heard Fenn say. “If it’s Gaines, you don’t know where the hell I am.”

“Of course not,” she said.

She sat on the bed and sighed, picking up the cordless. “Hello?”

Breathing. Heavy, insistent.

“Who is this?” she asked, a tickle of fear at the back of her neck.

Fenn was at the door. “For me?”

She shook her head and he stalked off.

“Who’s there?”

There was a peal of laughter and she knew all too well who it was. She wondered briefly why he’d waited so long to begin his campaign of terror. “Who is this?” she asked again, trying to show no fear. It was important that the bastard not suspect that she indeed knew, that he was burned on her memory.

“You know who this is,” the voice taunted. “You’ve never forgotten me. You never could.”

“Eddy…”

“Now you’re using that analytical brain of yours, Doc,” he said happily. “I’m the reason you’re in town, aren’t I?”

“Eddy, please—” she began and realized that she wasn’t alone. Fenn was in the doorway again. He had a sour look on his face and his drink was almost gone. He looked suspicious, jealous even. She knew he hadn’t heard her speak Eddy’s name. If he had, he’d have snatched the phone from her grip. No, he was worrying that some lover, old or new, was on the line, whispering of seduction, alluding to some private rendezvous.

She held the phone against her bosom. “It’s a colleague,” she lied. “From the hospital.”

Fenn said nothing, he just stared at her a moment and then left. She heard him make another drink and sit on the sofa.

“What do you want?” She was polite, painfully so. Good sense told her not to be, to slam the phone down and tell Fenn. At the very least, call him in and let him know what was happening here. But she did neither. She asked her question as if she didn’t really know the answer and displayed no fear. After her encounter with the elder Zero, Eddy seemed almost harmless. She’d almost forgotten she’d come to stop him.

“Have we company?” Eddy asked.

“Yes.” Why lie to him?

“Your cop friend, I’ll bet.”

She bit down on her lip, wondering why she didn’t terminate this conversation. She told herself that if she could find out where he was or arrange what he thought was a secret meeting, Fenn could do the rest. But was that the real reason? “Why are you calling?”

“I heard you were looking for me.”

“Yes and you know why.”

“I know why,” Eddy said covertly. “But do you? Do you know the real reason yourself? Is it law and order or something more personal?”

Lisa felt as if the breath had been sucked from her lungs. He was so like his father, so cunning, so confident. Perceptive to the point of sixth sense.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Don’t you?”

She was the psychiatrist here, the trained therapist, and here was Eddy pummeling her with suggestive questions and she couldn’t seem to stop him. He’d gotten into her mind more than once when she’d left her guard down. And he was doing it again. So effortlessly, knowing exactly how to orchestrate his attack. Alfred Adler would’ve called Eddy Zero a classic high dominance male personality, Lisa thought. And a very rare one at that. He had a great deal of skill in mastering people, particularly those who thought they were mastering him. She likened him to Franz Walter, a German confidence man who’d also been of high dominance. A fiend who’d turned a woman into a prostitute and made her attempt to murder her husband merely through hypnotic suggestion. Eddy seemed to possess those same skills. Very few had them, but it ran in his family.

“I don’t have time for your games, Eddy. Why don’t you tell me where you are and we can help you.”

“I’m near,” he said, “and far.”

“Please, Eddy.”

“Yes, do beg, dear Doctor. When the time comes, I’ll have you begging and you won’t be able to help yourself.”

He hung up and the phone slid from her grip. What did he mean by that?

What do you think he meant by that?

“Trouble?” Fenn was in the doorway.

“No,” she said in a shaky voice.

It was a clever lie and Fenn seem to buy it. He was showing the signs of drink and looked unkept and worn. He sat on the edge of the bed and sipped his whiskey, not bothering with sour this time.

There was a sound from the living room, almost like the door knob was being jiggled.

“What the fuck?” Fenn said.

He pulled himself slowly to his feet and went out there. Lisa couldn’t follow. There was no strength in her legs. She waited, listening for the sound of a knife arcing through the air and plunging into Fenn’s chest. The door was opened and then closed.

He returned. “Nothing. Must’ve been my imagination.”

Mine, too? she wondered in a panic.

“I’d better be going,” he said in a defeated tone.

“You’re too drunk to drive.”

“Not as drunk as I’m going to get,” he promised.

Like a little boy, she thought, a pouty little boy. “Stay here,” she told him.

“Do you want me to?”

“Yes.” And she did. The idea of being alone with Eddy lurking so near… or far for that matter… was unnerving. Let Fenn stay. Even if she didn’t love him, she could pretend for one night that she did. It was something. The desire he’d displayed to her before sounded intriguing now. Sex would be the perfect prescription for taking her mind off the terror of the night.

“Stay with me,” she entreated him. Her fingers loosened his tie and unbuttoned his shirt. He closed his eyes and teetered drunkenly in rapture as she undressed him and took his cock in her mouth. It was engorged and ready within seconds, and seemed to need little prompting from her lips. She took his length completely, feeling him push against the back of her throat, and she held him there, sucking, biting tenderly. He gasped and nearly fell.

“I love you,” he managed as she pushed him onto the bed and slipped out of her blouse. “I do love you.”

He said it almost as if he were trying to convince himself of the fact. But she understood. He respected her and liked her as a human being, but he didn’t love her. Not really. He loved her cunt, her mouth, any of the secret places he could push into and spill his seed. It had never been any different for her. Men never got close enough to love her because her looks got in the way. They were ensnared in the web of her physical charms, transfixed by her eyes, her face. They worshipped her body and all the things she could do with it. But the real Lisa was hid away in a back room of her mind where no one ever went. And this person, the one that needed love, never got anything but infatuation and that was a constant. Her looks were a curse.

She worked his cock as these thoughts tumbled through her mind and she wondered if any of it—from her teen-age affair with a psychopath to her inability to crave anything but rough sex—was really her fault. The thoughts faded as she released his cock and let him push it in the valley between her breasts.

As he dropped her down onto the bed and stripped her, she knew he didn’t love her. She’d wondered before, but the truth had come now. He, like the others, saw only her face and body and nothing more. He could never be made to realize that it was nothing more. But in the years to come, when his head wasn’t dizzy with heat, he’d come to know the truth.

He pushed himself roughly into her and she managed a moan. It was the best to hope for under the circumstances. Fenn seemed to enjoy himself and if nothing else, this did her heart some good. It seemed to take a long time, but finally it was over and Fenn fell away and passed out, satisfied with both himself and the weak passion he’d spurred from her.

Some time later, she put on a robe and went into the living room, staring at the TV. When the phone rang, the sound of it went through her like a knife. She ran in the bedroom and snatched it from the cradle.

It was Eddy again.

“You call that fucking?” he asked bluntly.

She couldn’t speak. How had he known? Had he guessed? Or had he been in the suite, watching them?

“You work wonders with your mouth,” he said.

“Fuck you,” she said. “How did you get in?”

He laughed. “I have my ways.”

“What do you want?”

“You know what I want. The same thing you do.”

“Fuck you,” she said again. There was nothing else to say.

“I could’ve killed him while he mounted you, but I didn’t.”

“Why?”

“I have my reasons,” he said. “See you soon, Doc.”

He hung up and she had a drink. The door was unlocked and she fastened it again for all the good it would do.

The phone rang again about three, but this time it was for Fenn. There’d been another murder. Eddy had been busy again.

About an hour after Fenn left, Lisa sat on the sofa and waited for Eddy Zero. He was coming; she had no doubt of this. It was only a matter of when. She sipped cognac from a tumbler until her nerves stopped jangling, keeping her right hand underneath a pillow and in it was the .38.

About 4:30 the doorknob rattled and opened. Eddy walked in, knowing he was expected: confident, cool, in control. He knew he wasn’t being set-up and this was just an additional comment on his arrogance.

He wore a black leather jacket, a bulky, greased and glimmering thing that hung down to his knees. His hair was long and dark and he wore mirrored sunglasses over his eyes. She understood now how Gulliver hadn’t recognized his photos, he looked completely different.

“It’s been a long time, Doc,” he said. “I suppose we should’ve got together before this. But there wasn’t time.”

Lisa said nothing. She didn’t feel afraid really, just a little tense. She had the gun and all she had to do was pull the trigger.

Eddy took off his coat and laid it across a chair. “Very clever of me, wasn’t it?” he said.

“What?”

“Killing that whore so I could get your boyfriend out of here.”

She was shocked, but she didn’t show it. “You took a life just to get me alone?”

“Yes.”

“I would have met with you any time. It wasn’t necessary to do that.” Her professional demeanor was intact. It slid into place like an oiled mechanism. “Murder isn’t an answer to anything.”

“Oh, I’m not a cold-blooded maniac,” he assured her, sitting down. “I had to kill another one for the Sisters. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have bothered. It’s terribly strenuous and fatiguing stuff taking apart a body like that. And messy.”

“How many do you have to kill before they’ll let you cross?”

“A few more. It’s all getting very boring by now, you know. I wish they’d take me already and we could dispense with this slaughter.” He reclined and locked his fingers behind his head. “Oh well, they’re bound by traditions, I suppose, as we all are.”

“And what are yours?” Her voice was even, clinical.

“You know what mine are. I’m following in the footsteps of a great man, my father.” He smiled as if some enchanting memory had struck him. Then: “Why don’t you bring your gun out into the open? Aim it at me directly, if you like. Hell, I’m not here to hurt you, Doc. I don’t kill for kicks, just out of necessity. Besides, we’ve got some unfinished business.”

She shook her head. “We don’t have any business.”

“You’re wrong. I slipped from your hands and now you want me back, right? Back in a little cell where you can get into my head.”

Lisa avoided his eyes. “You know this can’t go on. You’ll be caught before long.”

“It’s a chance I take. But you’re avoiding the subject, aren’t you?”

“I don’t know what you mean.” Her hand was beginning to sweat on the butt of the gun. It felt greasy, ready to slide from her fingers.

Eddy smiled. “Why don’t you drop the facade? Isn’t it all getting a little tiresome? Pretending all this professional, moral interest in me when the real reason is lust?”

“Bastard.”

“Have I touched a nerve, Doc? Have I peeled away your defenses so easily?” He looked pleased. She was squirming and it gave him no end of joy. “All this time, you’ve been thinking about me, haven’t you? And you probably told yourself it was out of scientific curiosity and nothing more. You probably saw the whole episode, the whole situation of hunting me down, as meat for some book or paper you wanted to write. Am I correct?

But that’s a lie. You’re subconscious knows the truth and I can see right into it. I know what you’re about.”

Her hands were trembling, her reserve falling free like ice from a roof. “And what’s that?” she asked with some effort.

Eddy laughed. “You know that as well as I do. You wanted me to rape you that night at Coalinga. You were aggravated that I didn’t. You still are.”

“You’re crazy.” She couldn’t even look at him now, not even for a moment. She could feel his dark eyes staring at her from behind the mirrored lenses. They were so intense, so hungry, it made her skin crawl. She felt violated.

He stood up, stroking his crotch, his erection straining against the material of his jeans. “So are you.” He captured and held her eyes with his own lecherous gaze. “Don’t pretend to be offended. I know you too well.”

“You need help, Eddy.”

“Your kind of help?”

“Fuck you.”

“Exactly what I had in mind.”

He went to the door and returned with a large white package he’d left outside, pulled a knife out of his coat and slit it open. There were a dozen red roses inside. He said: “You like flowers, don’t you? No, don’t answer. I know you do.”

He began dropping them to the floor. He took the last few and brought them to her, pressing them into her face, forcing her to drink in their sweet odor. The petals fell like rain down her face and into her robe. Eddy grasped the belt and threw it open. He wasn’t surprised that she was naked beneath it.

“Don’t,” she said weakly as he took a handful of petals and rubbed them violently between her breasts.

The sweet, almost sickly smell of roses filled her nose, overloading her senses with a pungent intoxication. Her head felt giddy, her heart hammered. Hot blood rushed through her limbs.

He grasped her hair in one fist and jerked her head forward. She gasped, but did not fight. Not even when he dragged a rose stem across her throat and drew blood. She was trembling and her heart felt like it would pound right out of her chest.

Fight this… fight it… don’t let him dominate you, don’t let him give you what you want… don’t weaken… don’t… don’t…

But she was beyond self-control. She wanted him like she’d never wanted anything before in her life. He pressed a finger into her mouth and she took it, tasting the salty flesh, biting it, licking it. He put petals in her mouth and she chewed and swallowed them. And then his lips came in for a kiss. But it was no mere kiss, not the sort of tender, intimate brush of the lips or tongue that she’d shared with Fenn. He took her head in his strong hands and pulled her up roughly, covering her lips with his own, his tongue pushing into her, dancing a primal rhythm in her mouth that she joined in on. She was not merely being kissed, but devoured. His lips were smashed into her own, his tongue and hers wildly loving each other as he grasped her chin with one hand and a handful of her hair with the other. Then he pulled his tongue out and bit down on her lower lip. She gasped, but did not fight him off.

No, she couldn’t fight her heart’s desire, the twisted machinations of her libido. The exchange between them had all the subtlety of rape and she wanted it even as part of her brain screamed for it to stop.

Eddy threw her to the floor and chewed her ear, whispering crude obscenities into her ear that made her blood boil. He went after her breasts with the same almost vengeful ferocity, licking and eating the uplifted cones with a hot-blooded animal need that was frightening. As he worked her from head to toe, she said things she wouldn’t remember later, begged and pleaded with him never to stop. Or never to begin.

She never forgot he had the knife, but in her racing, reeling mind it was only another symbol of his appetite. He brought it into view and ran the blade between her breasts, tracing a line of blood to her crotch. She thought for one dizzying, delightful moment that he was going to kill her, take her life with the blade and all she was concerned with was that he enter her first. He took up her robe and shredded it with his blade as her body rocked beneath him, anxious for any and all indignities he would press upon it.

He tied her wrists tightly with strips of the robe, nearly cutting off her circulation. He fastened the strips to the legs of a chair and then gagged her with the belt.

“Can’t have you screaming on me, my darling. Not yet.”

He shed his pants and pushed himself into her with a violence that urged a cry from her throat. Words crossed through her mind, things like desire and lust and lovemaking. If the former was adequately descriptive, the latter certainly was not. This was animal fucking, completely devoid of love or tenderness or sensitivity. Eddy fucked her with a vengeance, trying to kill her with each thrust, to burst her from the bonds of reason and it was all she could do not to explode free of her confining skin with each shuddering orgasm that rocketed through her body. He unlocked something in her, a starving beast kept behind lock and key for far too long. Her teeth tore at the gag, biting and shredding it until her gums ached and her lips bled. Her hands were forced into contorted fists by his incessant pounding, the knuckles strained white, nails digging into her palms. She knew sex as her ancestors had, not as an overly-festive and civilized affair, but as something approaching hatred. She was being raped and liked the feeling of being used, abused, and degraded. She hated Eddy and if her hands and teeth had been free, she would’ve slashed him to ribbons. An atavistic mania was erupting in her cells as her body arched and slammed into the carpet, as muscles tensed and released. Uncounted millenia of breeding and evolution and civilized behavior were washing away in a thundering tide of bestial hunger. Her brain and body were out of contact with present reality, instinct was surging up and releasing suppressed urges forgotten since the time man violated the mate of his choice in a damp and dark cave. Her head was raging with race memory, her nose drowning in odors of an ancient time: pungent smoke, raw meat, hot musk, sweaty muscle… as orgasm after orgasm ripped through her like tumultuous waves crashing on a foreign, primal beach.

She lost track of what happened then. Half-memories struck her later and vanished as quickly as they’d come: the lunatic, chemical frenzy that muddled and mastered her thoughts; the raw and real eruptions of racial memory that reduced her to an animal in heat and let her glimpse a moment buried in time; the wrists and bloodied fingers pulling free of their bonds and scratching and clawing at her lover; the evil, triumphant grin on Eddy’s features as he fucked her and she drew blood; the sharp explosion of pain as he sodomized her and struck her again and again; her own thundering need; the sight of his huge member spitting seed over her bruised breasts as he straddled her and tried to choke the life from her, finally forcing his cock into her mouth where she greedily sucked it. The memories came and went.

In the end, only one fact remained: Eddy had taken her farther than any man had before. Fenn and the others had merely incited a violent appetite in her; William Zero had taken her to the edge of the carnal abyss and dangled her above its hot mouth, but it was Eddy who threw her in, kicking and screaming.

When she woke later, she was alone.

She couldn’t remember Eddy leaving, but he must have. The suite was empty and she knew this from the breathing silence that pervaded the rooms. She was lying naked on the floor, her lips tender and caked with dried blood. Her insides hurt from the punishment he’d inflicted. Her throat felt swollen and raw from his mock strangulation. He’d had his fun, leaving his whore senseless on the floor.

The memories struck her one after the other and dissipated just as quickly. She knew vaguely what had happened. They’d gone beyond the reasonable limits of sensuality, broke the bonds so to speak, and had journeyed physically and mentally back to a time when humans mated only once or twice a year like the beasts of the forest they were. She’d experienced animal heat.

Eddy had shown her things she’d never dreamed of.

And did she love him for this?

No, she hated him and was disgusted by herself as she supposed her female ancestors were when the time of ritual mating had come to an end.

She pulled herself off the floor and her entire body ached. Walking was a chore and it took some time to reach the bathroom. She was shocked by her appearance in the full length mirror. She was bruised and battered from throat to crotch. There were red, hurting finger indentations in her ass, and her throat was discolored from being throttled. There were cuts and teeth marks on her breasts. Her nails were nearly all broken off, her palms ragged and bleeding. Dried blood was smeared over her face like warpaint and her teeth were stained pink. She looked, if nothing else, like the end result of a very abusive rape.

And she supposed there was a glaring truth to that.

She wondered if his father was watching her now from beyond the mirror’s glass.

She showered slowly, cleansing herself of both Eddy and the act. Afterwards, her head reeling with anger and self-disgust, she went to bed and slept.

She opened her eyes some time later, feeling sore and raw, but not too bad despite the punishment she’d endured. It was after six and she realized she’d been sleeping for some ten hours. She wondered why Fenn hadn’t called and could only hope he was beginning to see her for what she was. She checked her cell. Nothing.

Eddy had raped her, but he could have done worse.

Rape?

You wanted it.

No.

You asked for it and now you got it. Did it feel good? Did it feel good enough to throw away your dignity, your professionalism, and your ethics?

She shook her head to clear these thoughts. There was no time for self-recriminations. No time at all.

Then the phone rang and she wondered if it was Fenn and if she’d have the strength to lie to him. She couldn’t tell him about this, not yet—

She answered it and it wasn’t Fenn at all.

“Sleep well, dove?” Eddy asked, sarcasm tainting his words.

She bit her lip and started to tremble. “Better than in ages.”

He was silent for a moment, perhaps expecting a string of expletives to be shouted in his ear, cries of hatred, accusations of assault. He got none and was at a loss for words. “Really?”

“Why shouldn’t I have?” It was painful to be so kind and unaffected towards him. She despised him beyond words, almost as much as herself. But there were ideas in her head now, dark and plotting. She held the upper hand now and they both knew it. In the back of her mind, a web was being spun and she was drawing him into it.

“You’re not angry?”

Lisa grimaced. “Angry? Why would I be angry?”

“You liked it?”

“You know I did. My feelings go way beyond like.”

One word was all he could afford. “Really?”

She laughed. “Why are you so surprised? You said you knew me.”

“I don’t know,” he told her. “I don’t understand you.”

“No,” she said. “I don’t suppose you do.” And he didn’t, she knew, no more than he understood himself or what was happening here. “Are you going hunting tonight?”

“Hunting?”

“Don’t be an idiot, Eddy. You know what I mean.”

She could almost feel him pale over the phone. “Yeah, I’m going. Just a few more and it’s done with. Then me and Spider are lighting out of this place.”

Spider was dead. What did he mean by that? Was he going to drag a corpse along with him? There was no time to ask such things. “Maybe I’ll come along for the ride,” she told him.

“You’d like that?”

“Why not? You think you’re the only one bored of the limitations of this place?”

“I never suspected.” She could hear him breathing on the line as if the prospect excited him. “Maybe it could be arranged. Maybe.”

“Think about it.”

“I will. Yes, I will.”

“Keep in touch,” she said and hung up. She raced into the bathroom and vomited in the toilet. But even as she did, her mind still plotted. As disgusted as she was by him and herself and the secret they shared now, it all might just prove to be a means to an end. If she was exceptionally lucky, she might just get rid of Eddy, his father, and the book in one fell swoop.

And maybe yourself in the bargain.

So be it.

It was a risk worth taking.