I met them at a beach party. I wish I could say more, because lives are at stake–but the truth is, that's all I know.
The house they told me they owned turned out to be rented…and I doubt the names they gave me were real.
I still don't know why I stopped to stare at them that night. Maybe it was the contrast. Four friends, socializing and laughing with people they loved around an intimate bonfire, while I was walking alone along the shore and reeking of vodka. I'd found out my girlfriend was cheating earlier that night; the only reason I even knew was because a guy named 'Brett' left a post-it note about it stuck to the bottom of the toilet seat. I told myself I'd raise one shot to Brett–just one–in a trashy tiki bar about a mile back down the shore…and the rest is history.
The crackle-pop of burning driftwood carried a sweet, smoky smell down the beach.
"Hey–you okay?" A copper-skinned girl with frizzy blonde hair called out. It took me a minute to realize that she was talking to me. I had no idea how long I'd been standing there.
"Fine, thanks." I mumbled. I was glad the night hid how much I was blushing. I turned to continue my walk.
"Come on over!" she offered. "We've got some extra beers…"
She didn't have to tell me twice. When I entered the warm orange glow of the campfire, she introduced herself as Brandy, then gave the names of her friends–Jude, Katie, and Cain. Jude was a thirtysomething bald white guy with lots of tattoos, who was handsome except for a smile that seemed a little too big for his face. Beside him, Brandy reclined against Katie, a pale quiet girl with dyed-red hair, who held hands with Cain, a Korean guy who looked and dressed like a model.
Maybe it's no surprise that they seemed as fascinated by me as I was by them…I was the stranger who'd walked out of the night, after all. Or so I thought.
And with my toes buried in the warm sand, a cold brew in my hand, watching sparks crackling upward into the starry night sky–it was too easy to let my guard down.
That's probably how I wound up back at their place, or rather, the place they said was theirs.
It was a weathered wooden beach house with a wide-windowed porch–where our party continued. We threw some darts. Cain brought out some green supplies and chill music started playing from a speaker somewhere. I laid my head back against what I thought was a pillow, but turned out to Brandy's bare thigh. She smirked and rubbed my head. All was right in the world.
I woke the next morning on the couch with golden sunlight in my face, a splitting headache, and Brandy wrapped around me beneath a half-fallen white blanket.
At a beach-bum breakfast spot a few blocks away, I tried to drown my hangover in whipped cream, blueberry syrup, and about a gallon of free-refill black coffee. But as I ate my pancakes, I realized that there were two conversations going on around me. One I was included in: what I thought of life in this town, a funny story about Cain's mom, Katie's complaints about her work.
But there was another conversation, too. One that my new friends shared among themselves with intense glances and whispers that I couldn't make out. Finally, Jude proposed that we go someplace where we could keep the party going. He knew the owner of a bar with a psychedelic basement where we could all trip together. Since the owner himself was the supplier, there was no risk of getting caught.
I had my doubts; I'd never done anything heavier than weed, but it wasn't like I had any plans for the rest of the day. It didn't take much more than Brandy's toes caressing my leg to convince me to leave with Jude and the rest of them.
The bar was one of those places that's so expensive it's impossible to tell what it is from the outside: just a name engraved on an opaque glass door. The black marble floors and dark wood furniture made the place feel as dim as a cave after the bright coastal sun, but Jude led us down a side stairway with a confidence that told me he'd done this before. Once my eyes adjusted to the light, I realized that there were huge works of art on the basement wall.
"The Owner has a lot of*…unorthodox*…interests. Very avante-garde." Cain explained. "But the drugs are free, and the experiences he puts you through…they're out of this world. You just gotta try it for yourself…"
The Owner. I could hear the capital 'O' in his voice.
There was something ominous about it. I leaned in to inspect the art.
Photographs? They couldn't be. No person could go through what I was seeing in those images and survive…right? I leaned in until my nose was nearly touching the sickening sight.
A pale, bald man hanging from hooked chains that emerged from his body like spines on some kind of nightmarish deep-sea creature. The expression of ecstasy on his face was so intense it hurt to look at; blood-pink tears streamed down from his marble-round, wide open eyes.
There was no doubt about it: I was looking at a photo of Jude.
Behind me, I heard the sound of clothing rustling and falling to the floor.
I could see right away that Jude still had the hooks: they were permanent features anchored into his naked skin. I inadvertently took a step backward, and as I did, I made the mistake of looking at the next enormous photo on the wall: it was Katie.
She was pressed against a human-sized grid of tiny metal pins, like the kind I used to make molds of my hand with as a kid. These ones, however, must've been sharp: wherever any of the tiny barbs touched Katie's fully exposed skin, a droplet of blood had formed…and like Jude, her face was twisted into an expression of unbearable joy.
In front of me, the real Katie disrobed as well; I could see firsthand the thousands of almost-invisible pinprick scars covering her pale body.
The two of them looked at me strangely, as though they were surprised at my reaction by being suddenly confronted by a pair of nude people in a basement torture-porn art gallery. Those whispers, like the rustling of birds' wings, started up again…
"You okay, hon?" Brandy asked. She'd approached me from the side while I was distracted in a way that made me think disquietingly of pack-hunting animals. She, too, had shed her clothing like an insect shedding its shell.
Insects. A word that I knew I'd associate with Brandy from that moment on. In her photo, she was covered by an unbelievable variety of biting, stinging bugs. She reached out for the photographer like a ragged mummy made of centipedes and wasps. Her crimson lips opened wide through the swarm in a moan of pleasure.
"You don't look too good, man." Cain put a hand on my shoulder. How had he gotten BEHIND me? I glanced at his photo. The hanging cage…the white-hot twisted metal…it was too horrible to describe. Especially when I could see the corresponding scars on his muscular body. There was something else as well:
Another frame further down the wall. An empty one.
Waiting, I supposed, for my photo.
"Uhhh," I stammered, "I think I should go." Behind me, the basement extended into darkness. The polished floor was clean–*too clean–*like it was used for something vile that got cleaned up often.
"You've been through a lot." Brandy grabbed my wrist. Her grip was light…but tight enough to hold on if she'd wanted to. "We can see it in your eyes. That's why we invited you here. The experience will be good for you. It was for us. "
"We're like a family now." Jude agreed, his awful chains clinking. Behind him, I saw with an awful sinking feeling that the door was barred.
"The Owner takes your greatest fear and turns it into pure bliss!" I could see in Brandy's eyes that she believed every word of what she was saying. It was the blank glare of the truly brainwashed. "It's a truly transformative experience. C'mon. Let us open your eyes*.*"
My eyes kept darting from the barred door to Jude's bulky form standing between me and escape.
I'd just have to play along. And then when they let their guard down…
"O…okay," I smiled weakly. "I mean, it sounds cool. I just saw those pictures and got a little freaked out, you know how it is…" Jude's face broke into that too-big grin. Brandy hugged me. Cain started massaging my shoulders…and the whispering quieted down.
Katie went over to some sleek cabinets in the corner and came back with a clay urn full of something that gave off a thick blue smoke with a smell halfway between cloves and eucalyptus, like nothing I'd ever known. There was something horrible about the grinning clay faces on the ancient urn, like they were urging me to just give up control of myself and submit helplessly to whatever fate awaited me.
I felt Cain lifting my shirt off. Katie put her lips against one of the urn's clay mouths in a grotesque parody of a kiss and sucked in a lungful. When she exhaled, smoke the color of glacial ice swirled diabolically through her red-dyed hair. She was holding the urn to my lips before I even realized that Brandy had slipped my pants down. I gulped–too cold and frightened to be embarrassed–stepped forward, and pretended to take a big hit.
I say 'pretended,' but the stuff got inside me whether I wanted it to or not…and it was strong. By the time Jude, Cain, and Brandy had finished inhaling, I was already feeling it.
My toes felt like they were hovering inches above the chilly floor; my senses were turned up to eleven. Every shape that Brandy's fingernails traced along my spine sent electric shockwaves through my nervous system. But it wasn't enough. I wanted something more like what Jude was doing, hanging himself from the ceiling by that nest of chains. Or Cain and Katie, digging their fingers into each others' flesh.
I wanted that. I wanted…pain.
Or did I?
Maybe the drug just hadn't fully kicked in yet for me, the way it obviously had for my writhing, biting, clawing new friends. Or maybe it was the cold sound of footsteps in the dark and the sound of a camera tripod being placed that made me realize that 'The Owner' was getting something set up in the dark. A special torture, maybe–one made just for me.
If I had known how brief that burst of clarity would be, I would've moved even quicker. I ran for the door. When I lifted the bar, Cain grunted and tackled me to the ground. Only the blood from the wounds that Katie's nails had carved into his chest allowed me to slip through his grasp.
By the time I'd staggered up the stairs and out into the blinding sunlight, the itch was unbearable…and scratching it was pure pleasure. I rubbed my back raw on the rough concrete. Rolled in broken glass. Later, in the hospital, the police told me how I'd been found: pressing the side of my face into hot metal and giggling at the sizzle of my skin.
They had to strap me down to prevent my pursuit of pain.
My own memories of what happened after I left that awful basement are hazy at best. As far as what I'd taken was concerned, the doctors were stumped: its chemistry didn't match the profile of any known drug. It was a long time before I was able to explain what had happened to me, and by then, it was too late. The bar, it turned out, was still under construction; there was no 'Owner' apart from a development agency. The basement had already been emptied and bleached clean. In the meantime, however, it seemed that my 'new friends' had found another victim.
When I saw the article title while scrolling through news in my hospital bed, I already knew:
Local Teen Girl Disappears From Beach.
I hoped she had at least enjoyed the bonfire as much as I did.