Edward Lee - The Chosen

Then it jerked to a stop.

And, at last, opened.

Heat blew in. Vera looked forward and saw a rough stone wall. When she peered out she saw what looked to be a long aisle through a cave. This is no basement, she realized. She took a left and walked down, the hot air making her sweat. Crude doors had been fashioned along the corridor. And under their gaps, light flickered.

Vera stopped. She faced one wood-plank door.

She turned the brass knob and pushed it open…

Candlelight danced in her eyes. She froze. What she saw she could not comprehend:

Monstrous figures copulating with several naked women tied down to a strange bed. Squirms, squeals, and shrieks roved the air.

More figures seemed to encircle the spectacle. Some were watching, some even masturbating. Others seemed to be…

Eating.

Vera backed out of the entry.

I’m dreaming again, she convinced herself. It’s just another nightmare, like all the others.

Many more such doors lined the strange hallway. Would she find a similar scene behind these other doors? From the low chorus of shrieks and moans, Vera imagined so. She looked back into the first mist-filled den. A croaking sound augmented the roving moans, and a dark, clicking chuckle. The nude women writhed en-frenzied as their hideous suitors stepped up the pitch of fornication. Discolored, bony hips pummeled splayed white thighs. Maws like gouges in dark meat drooled copiously into the woman’s open mouths.

“Hey, Vera! Come on in!”

Her eyes dared up. Through shifting, hot mist another figure turned from what appeared to be a sconce cut into the earthen wall. A male figure different from the others.

Naked. Bald. And human.

Kyle.

“We knew it was only a matter of time before you found out,” he commented, grinning. The amethyst pendant glittered in candlelight. The cocky grin widened. “But that’s the way he wanted it. He likes you, Vera. He needs you.”

He, she thought numbly. And at once the dreams came back, The Hands, the brutal sex, and the ecstacy.

The hideous face seen departing down the hall.

A face, she realized now, so similar to these.

“See anyone you recognize?”

Vera couldn’t move. Instead she remained where she stood, gazing into the carnal den, one cheek pressed against the edge of the doorway. She felt helpless.

And, indeed, there was someone here she recognized…

One of the women on the bed, who now locked her ankles behind her grotesque lover’s back, heaved shrieks in response to her obvious climax.

Vera felt her heart shrink very quickly.

The woman was Donna.

Her mate grunted in its knobby throat, eventually withdrawing a penis that looked like a mold-ridden log and discharged streams of semen onto Donna’s breasts. But at the same time, the thing—and that’s all Vera could think of it as: not a man but a thing—strangled Donna with a leather strap. Donna, still in the throes of orgasm, convulsed wildly, her tongue bulging between her lips. The thing chortled, its hideous penis drooped. Donna’s swollen face turned red, then blue. Then she died.

Kyle slapped his bare thigh, laughing. “Now that’s what I call coming and going!”

Vera stared at him through the rank mist. This wasn’t a dream, she knew that now. This—however mad, however impossible—was real.

Kyle turned back to his hidden task at the sconce. “Yeah, they’re party animals, all right. Sometimes they get a little carried away. But that doesn’t matter; we’re here to serve them—”

Serve them, Vera thought, remembering the book.

“—and if they snuff a chick every now and then, well…shit happens, you know? We can always get plenty of girls. Me and Zy have been snatching them for months.”

The other woman next to Donna looked unconscious or dead. Her breasts joggled frenetically as a similar consort copulated. And beyond the bed she still could see the band of primeval spectators, gorging themselves on mysterious food as their intent eyes watched on. Their faces looked like noxious masks of pulpy gray paraffin, sinuous muscles and tendons flexing beneath tight clay-colored skin. Their jaws worked obviously, munching hunks of food. Some of them sported preposterously large erections with veins stout as bloodsuckers. And some of them had what could only be horns jutting from their malformed foreheads.

One of them stood up as the thing that strangled Donna retreated.

They’re…taking turns, Vera deduced.

“Come on in, Vera,” Kyle repeated the offer. “We’ve got lots of great grub here, stuff like you’ve never seen or tasted. They’re delicacies, Vera. Ambrosia. You can probably guess where the recipes come from.”

Vera felt as though every joint and every muscle in her body had melted together, akin to welded metal.

“We’ve got a great steamed tripe—you know, chopped bowel, served with a wonderful remoulade sauce. Fantastic belly filets baked with my famous cashew crust and basil cream.” Kyle, seriously enthusiastic, turned with a silver service tray in hand. “And if all that’s a bit too rich for ya, try our crispy spring rolls. Of course, we don’t wrap them in rice paper, we wrap them in skin. You’ll also want to try our special of the day…” Another silver plate was offered. “Kyle’s famous cherry-pepper and sesame brain purée. Great on baked toast points brushed with duck fat.”

It was a kaleidoscopic madness that churned in Vera’s head. She thought she might collapse, or throw up, or simply die.

Kyle chuckled, and ate one of the topped toast points. It crunched in his mouth. “Bet you can’t guess where we get the brains.”

The hellish paralysis broke. Vera moved away from the entry, prepared to turn, to leave, to run away as fast as she could—

“Hey, Vera! See anyone you recognize?”

Indeed she did, in that final glimpse. Kyle had raised two objects in the feeble light—two heads.

And despite the missing skullcaps, through which the brains had obviously been evacuated, Vera easily recognized the faces on the severed heads. The accountant, Mr. Terrence Taylor. And Lawrence Mulligan, chief of the Waynesville Police Department.

Vera ran back down the hall, her cheeks bloated from disgust. And Kyle’s raucous voice followed after her like a trailing banner:

“You’re wasting your time, Vera! You’ll never get out of here! You’ll never get away…”

««—»»

I’ll get away, you asshole, Vera determined. The elevator opened immediately. She jumped in, punched the UP button, and the doors quickly thunked closed. At once she was rising. Come on, come on! The lift felt so slow now. All she had to do was get to the atrium and she could flee. She’d run down to the main road, and she’d keep running till she could flag a motorist. She wouldn’t waste time going back to her room for her shoes or car keys. It wouldn’t take the elevator long to go back down to that hellhole, admit Kyle, and bring him up after her—

Seconds seemed like grueling minutes.

Her heart was racing.

Then:

Thunk!

The doors opened. She dashed out, scrambled through the pantry, then skidded on her bare feet around the corner of the service line. I made it! she celebrated. Another ten seconds and I’m out!

Kyle stood in the room-service entrance, arms crossed. He grinned. He’d redonned his jeans, one foot proverbially tapping as he waited for her. He began to whistle some truck-stop tune.

“How the FUCK!” Vera screamed.

Kyle shrugged. “There’s another elevator at the other end of the hall.”

“You motherFUCKER! ”