Jaspre Bark - Dawn Over Doomsday

Cortez hated the smell of whorehouses. It was so dishonest. Cheap perfume and stale sweat masking a fruitless search for satisfaction.

Cortez had always preferred torture to sex. He had little interest in the wares the girls were selling. Torture seemed far more honest to him. Just as intimate, but a hundred times more heartfelt and intense. There was so much more invested in torture.

Sex always left him feeling hollow afterwards. Empty, angry and unfulfilled. Torturing someone made him feel like a god. The men and women he was paid to torture came to worship him a little more each time Cortez touched them.

Cortez always thought it strange that in English fucking was politely called 'making love'. He had never made a woman love him by fucking her. He had made many women and men love him through torture. It wasn't long before they looked to please his every whim. To confide in him their deepest and most dirty secrets. Things they wouldn't even tell their closest friends and lovers, they would whisper into his ear between the pain filled sobs of shame. The timid admissions that lovers make to each other during pillow talk are nothing like the devastating truths he had extracted from his victims.

There are no misconceptions like there are with sex. No-one is thinking about a possible future together during torture. There were no tears when Cortez ended his relationship with his victims. They didn't beg him for one last chance to try and work things out. They looked at him with gratitude and relief. Some of them kissed his hand as joyous tears spilled from their eyes.

When they thought about the broken and agonising state their bodies were in, Cortez's victims realised there was no greater compassion a human being could show than to end their suffering. No lover's caress brought them anywhere near the relief Cortez did when he finally ended their lives.

And yet he had always been paid for this pleasure. Which, when he thought about it, made him little better than the women who worked in this brothel. They traded in their own tawdry and limited pleasures, much as he had. Taking lovers as he had victims, indiscriminately as long as he was paid.

He didn't betray it in his face or the way he stood, but it was this that annoyed him most about Greaves taking him to the brothel. Greaves was his paymaster. He went where Greaves asked him, irrespective of what he felt.

Cortez thought it ironic that even in these times, when Allah sought to test the faithful through plague and famine, that the world's oldest profession continued to thrive.

"What's your pleasure?" said a woman's voice over the intercom.

Greaves bent down to speak into the metal box, leaning against the reinforced steel door. "We're here to see Mr Edwards, the owner. About a… err, monetary transaction."

"Just a minute."

A CCTV camera, mounted above the door, swivelled round to get them both in shot. Cortez was impressed by the security. It wouldn't have come cheap. Seems sex sold well even after the world had ended.

Greaves straightened up and adjusted his glasses, looking out over the ruins of the traditional stone houses and churned up lawns of what had once been an exclusive suburb of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

"This part of town used to be real popular with the pharmaceutical execs you know," he said. "That's where all the money was out here. That and steel of course."

Cortez nodded silently. He didn't have anything of value to add. Greaves knew a lot more than he did. He was smart. Perhaps the smartest person Cortez had ever met. He was short and scrawny and he couldn't fight for shit, but the smarts Allah had granted him were as deadly as any weapon Cortez knew.

"They're taking their time aren't they?" said Greaves, taking off his glasses and rubbing his eyes. "Damn this pollen!" He swore and began rummaging for pills in the pockets of his greatcoat. He never took it off, even though it was high summer and the sweat stuck his mousey brown hair to his forehead.

"Okay, step inside," said the voice over the intercom.

The door buzzed and Greaves pushed it open. Cortez followed him into a cage of reinforced steel. Four shotgun barrels were pointed directly at them. Four dangerous women, with very little clothing, had a bead on them.

"Gentlemen," said a deep male voice from the shadows. "You'll be dead 'fore you even reach for your weapons. So I suggest you take out whatever you're packing – nice and slow mind – and toss it through these here bars. With the safety on."

Cortez didn't like the odds. He looked over at Greaves to see how they were going to play it. Greaves nodded for him to disarm. Cortez pulled out a Colt. 45 from the holster under his robes and the sawn-off shotgun he had strapped to his back. Greaves pulled out the snub-nosed pistol Cortez had given him. He held it like it scared him.

"Is this how you put the safety on?" he asked, showing Cortez the pistol.

All four women dropped a bullet into their chambers and aimed at Greaves. He went very pale.

"You need to press the lever forwards," Cortez told him, remaining calm.

"It's okay, it's okay," Greaves said holding the pistol away from him. "Don't shoot I'm not going to try anything." His hands shook as he fumbled with the safety before dropping the gun through the bars.

"Y'know fellas," said the man in the shadows. "There's a lot of cunts on sale in this place, but I'm not one of them. Think I don't know you're holding out on me? I wanna see every piece on the floor, in front of these bars."

Greaves looked confused and panicked. He turned to Cortez. Cortez shrugged, bent down and took the pistol out of his ankle holster. Then he reached into his belt and removed the Bowie knife he kept there.

"That's better," said the voice. Lights came on in the reception area revealing a hallway done out in plush velvet and gilt brocade. Edwards, the owner of the brothel, was standing at the bottom of a baronial staircase.

He was a big guy and, although he was carrying a lot of weight, he looked like he could move pretty fast when he had to. He was wearing shorts, slippers and a loud Hawaiian shirt. Beads of sweat stood out on his bald pate and what little hair he had was tied in a pony tail at the back.

Edward's arms were spread in welcome and he was smiling the type of broad smile you wear when you're just about to fuck someone good. "Welcome to the Pleasuredrome. Excuse the gals, they're not used to being up before noon and they're kinda tetchy until they've had their coffee."

The cage doors clicked, whirred and swung open. Greaves entered and Cortez followed. Two of the women bent down to pick up the weapons, the other two kept theirs trained on the visitors.

"Can I you gentlemen anything to drink?" Edwards said, beckoning for them to follow him. "A little champagne perhaps, maybe something harder?"

The two women followed as they walked down a corridor off the main hall, shotguns still primed.

"I'll just have a glass of water," Greaves said.

Edwards chuckled. "Got ourselves a real party animal here gals." He slapped Greaves on the back. "Just busting your balls buddy, guess it is a little early in the day for some people, lightweights that is." Edwards turned to Cortez. "How about you big guy, what's your poison?"

"I do not drink." Cortez said. He trusted Edwards even less for his attempts to ply them with alcohol.

"Is that a South American accent I hear?" Edwards said, probing. "That's some beard you got there Fidel. You ain't one of the last surviving commies are you?"

Cortez started to lose his cool. He did not feel comfortable in this place of carnal sin and Edwards' attempt to rile him were beginning to work. "La ilaha illa Allah," he said aloud. Partly to put Edwards in his place, and partly to collect himself and ward off the stench of the wrongdoers. "Muhammadur rasoolu Allah!"