Chapter 13: Sex
The keyboard quit clacking and Hussie said: "How long have you been there."
She lurched upright and banged her head on the doorknob. The fallow pit of loneliness circled the dregs of her stomach, a faint melancholy of which she was dimly aware but uncertain how significantly it affected her. She wrapped her arms around herself and shivered, her shirt had ripped at the back.
"Major oversight... they have no locks on the outside," said Hussie. "You can lock them from the inside but not the outside. Anyone can come in at night—" He slapped his forehead, actually slapped it. "I should have locked the door on Mitchum's side, how did I not think of that?"
"Mr. Hussie." Unsure what honorific to bestow him. "Please, tell me, where's Max?"
Hussie adjusted his glasses. Even in completely different lighting, they managed to catch a glare. "Zelda," he said, "Why would I know that?"
"Because you've done something to him," said Z. "I know you have. I've seen it, I've seen him change myself. He's never acted this way. Never so... distant from me. Something about you is different. You've done something."
His fingers remained on the keyboard, but they did not type. He sighed. "Sometimes I wonder what exactly I've done..."
Z. approached, leaning over his bed and propped herself on her spread fingers, she dared not move closer. His laptop had a word processor open, and words on it. It was attached by a cord to a plain black box that blinked with sporadic lights. This box mesmerized her during Hussie's lull, she found it unfathomable, what purpose could this alien box hold? An ancient artifact unearthed from Tutankhamen's tomb. Except it was made of plastic and metal. When she squinted, the side said "External Hard Drive". It was a boring thing, and she remembered she was in the midst of a conversation.
"He's not there anymore," Z. said. "Please, Mr. Hussie, Max isn't THERE anymore. I talk to him, I take him out here, I just want to be with him. He's not there. You've taken him away from me, please, I want him back."
Hussie considered these words. His head lowered. The light left his glasses and she could see his eyes as they drilled into the carpet near his feet. His foot tapped. The unicorn on his shirt ruffled.
A sickly, feeble smile spread across his face. "You know... I never considered... Maybe they got what they deserved."
"What?"
He looked up at her. "All this time... Zelda. Do you know what it's like to write? To create a story?"
"What do you mean, got what they deserved."
"You create something from nothing. A godlike task. By the rules of physics, literally impossible. So there's always been this conceit... of writers being like gods. Or at least a shade of them. But I've never believed it. Because I don't create something from nothing."
"Who got what," said Z.
"I take part of myself, my essence, my soul..." The smile widened. "And put it on the page. I wrench a piece of myself out of me and mold it like putty. Characters, places, events, I devise them out of my own being. That is what it is to write. My experiences, my memories, my life, my imagination—I chisel out bits. An act of self-erasure. The more I write, I find, the hollower I become.
"And then they... take that piece of my soul..." He stood up so abruptly his chair fell backward. "And they stick their filthy hands inside and rip out little pieces and jam them down their throats and chew and chew and chew. Hahaha." He took a step toward her. "They gnash their teeth and eat more and the more they eat the more ravenous they become all of them feasting on my contorted twisted corpse of a semi-soul maybe that's... maybe that's why..."
Z. backed away, unsure if the man were dangerous or simply passionate, unsure what he was talking about.
"I did it at first because I wanted to, I didn't know why I wanted to. It was fun, I guess. It makes no sense in hindsight, why I started to write. But I never expected these insatiable cannibals to gather like rats around me. So maybe when you say your friend isn't all there, capital-exclamation-point THERE!, well maybe that's because when he gobbled down a piece of my soul he didn't realize my soul was sour."
They stared at each other from across the bed. Hussie's eyes blazed with passionate intensity, all trace of his somnolent demeanor evaporated in its heat.
"Consider it my revenge. They feast on my soul, I poison theirs. They swarm me and demand more, well maybe they should choke. They stalk me, they pretend to be me, well maybe that's as much their purgatory as mine. Maybe—"
Z. had enough of this "maybe." "JUST TELL ME WHERE MAX IS!"
"Maybe if you listened, you'd learn something..." said Hussie. He adjusted his glasses and turned his head and again the light flared. "I wonder if you even care about this Max, or if he's a name invoked to console yourself. I wonder if you ever think about other people as people and not just names to surround yourself with. You're one of them, aren't you? A souleater."
Souleater! Ridiculous. So what, was Hussie's whole philosophy that the process of consuming art was like the process of consuming a person? Suddenly HOLIDAY was the victim? Oh boohoo, poor guy, with his legions of doting fans. "The only person here fucking around with souls or whatever is you," said Z. "You've fucked up my friend and I intend to do... SOMETHING about it, what I don't know, but whatever you're doing to him I'm going to stop, you hear me?" She leapt onto the bed and bounced higher than expected, her head hit the ceiling.
Hussie and she stared at each other. Her last proclamation resounded in the hollow of her mind but he made no reply. His glasses shimmered. His intensity resolved into a more neutral, more familiar expression. He covered a cough.
"You're right, this is pretty stupid." He picked up the chair he had overturned. "I'm tired... I say strange things when I'm tired. I didn't want... you know... to make a scene." His voice quieted as he bumbled about his chair. "My fans... they're nice people. I should treat them better..."
She sighed too. What did she expect. Vagaries and metaphors, always when she didn't understand something it was because it turned out to be a metaphor or simile or some bullshit. She had come in with such a simple question. And gotten such a bullshit answer.
"Please." One final time. "Please tell me where I can find Max."
"I, uh, don't know his current whereabouts," said Hussie. "He may have attended Mitchum's party, I know some of my fans were interested, they expected me..." He lulled, watching his unmoving computer screen, seemingly lost in thought until he continued: "You should, uh... Have you seen the girl at my booth today? The one with the, uh, large scythe?"
"Blue wig chick?"
"Yeah... her. She sticks out, doesn't she? She might know something."
Holy fuck, finally. A semi-respectable answer, or at least one that ADDRESSED THE QUESTION SHE ASKED. She had a lead now. She ran for Hussie's door and into the bathroom, remembering only too late the swamp-thing in the tub.
The antediluvian abomination unfurled halfway from the black-splotched basin, the shower curtain twisted around it. It inflated with oxygen and uttered a sibilant hiss to expel it. Other than a slight throb from a tumorous growth on its arched carapace, it made no irregular movement. The light from Hussie's room cascaded on the crumpled shower curtain.
Hussie commanded her to close the door—it was too loud. Terrified but unable to disobey, she shut herself into darkness.
She hoped for her eyes to adjust but they didn't so she groped her way along the wall. Her shoes landed with thunderous splashes of sound. Each thud forced her to cleave closer to the wall, each brought with it uncertain gurgles from the beast. It reeked of bile and alcohol. Z. doubled over and crammed her fist into her mouth to stifle a cough, she bit down on her wrist as her throat chafed against her tongue and nausea frothed in her innards.
The creature, almost directly beside her, stirred.
"Z."
Z. spat out her knuckle. "Kiki?"
The Kikimonster tried to roll over, but it snagged in the curtain and only managed a pitiful wobble.
Z. plopped beside the toilet and leaned her head back against the wall and stretched out her legs and laughed. And laughed and laughed and laughed—a Kiki enchilada! She dragged her fingers across her scalp and felt her hair between them and couldn't stop laughing.
"Alright. Alright." She harnessed a modicum of calm. "Alright, let's unwind you."
She crawled to Kiki and patted the curtain, it formed an unbroken seal around her, she could discern no beginning or end, and worse yet half of Kiki remained in the bathtub causing her body to awkwardly arch around the waist and exacerbate the entanglement. She tried to wrench Kiki out of the tub but she wouldn't budge, in part due to the curtain, and she tried to unravel the curtain but it wouldn't do that either in part due to the tub, which basically put Kiki in a Rubik's Cube bind where no matter which way you twist the damn cube you fuck up the part of the puzzle you already solved.
After a long time in the dark trying to figure how things worked she jumped in the tub and a viscous liquid schlucked against her shoes, something stickier than water. She seized Kiki's legs and shoved until her feet gave way in the mushy basin and she slipped and slammed her chin on a porcelain abutment.
"Uf," she said.
"Unngh," said Kiki.
A renewed effort, a redoubled sally, a ripped curtain, a dislodged pole, and a cascade of gold rings. Kiki's body hoisted up and over the side and plunked onto the tile and lay still. Soles squelching, Z. managed with some pawing and blind fumbling to unwrap her.
"Cripes Kiki how much you drink?" Shuffling, pulling, twisting limbs and body parts into shape, she moved like a mannequin. Z. tried to prop her against the wall, but her head lolled and she became dead weight.
"Nngh," said Kiki. "Z., ah."
The exertion necessary to move Kiki's fat ass (actually she was infuriatingly svelte but ninety pounds of bagabones was ninety pounds) left Z. panting and slouched over Kiki's lap.
"Ah god Kiki, this place is such a mess." She wiped her eyes. "You're such a mess." She had Kiki now, they were together in this bathroom of uncertain fluids, all its unguent pungent dinginess. "I'm so glad you're here."
"Bluuuuh," said Kiki. "You goof."
Goof was good enough, she'd take it.
They remained in the bathroom an indeterminate amount of time, breathing and sitting, until Z. figured she ought to bring Kiki back to their room. Afterward she'd find Max. She lifted herself off Kiki and reached her hands under Kiki's armpits and pulled hard. She slid easily enough even though Z. had to walk backward with her body arched over Kiki's head to maintain her momentum.
When she opened the door to Mitchum's party, no tumult assaulted her, no monstrous amalgam of women tumbled against her. A distinct deadness imbued the room, silhouettes made vague motions in murky haze, garbage and liquids and bodies covered the floor. A vaporous, strained music played from stereos submerged in the ocean, a brusque voice muttered the same ambiguous line ad infinitum. Refrigerator coolant radiated from the wasted terrain. As Z. dragged Kiki across the corpses, she had the distinct impression of traversing an apocalyptic waste land, napalmed Vietnam. She perceived no doors or boundaries.
"Mm, Z., where we go," said Kiki. "Sleepy."
"Work with me Kiki, gotta find an exit." She picked a direction that matched the direction the exit would have been in Hussie's room. At first she tried to step between the splayed arms and legs and heads of girls who caked the floor, but Kiki's dead weight steamrolled them anyway and they didn't complain—maybe they had actually died in some kind of Jonestown mass suicide—so Z. just stepped on them. Maybe Graves, true to his name, had some necrophilia fetish going on, Z.'s head imagined all kinds of goofster scenarios and she had no clue why.
Kiki's hand touched Z.'s bare back. "Ha ha, shirt." Out of the fog emerged a solid wall, like she reached the loading zone that spawned it. She breathed heavily from exertion and sweat dribbled down her armpits with an uncomfortable coldness.
"Almost there," said Z., "You think you can walk?"
"Where your bra," said Kiki. "Ahahaha cuz you got NO BOOBS."
"Did someone say... boobs?"
Something primordial stirred from across the room, a black bulge that lifted slowly. Z. started to tug frantically on laughing Kiki's arms to get her moving faster as the Shadow Graves, the Tyrannosaurus Mitchum lumbered toward them with contemplative sluggishness, its elongated arms reaching far to drop against the ground and pull the body closer.
"Mitchurm!" Kiki raised her own arms and gave a celebratory cheer. "Z. has no boobs!"
"Gonna get dem boobs," said Mitchum Graves, closing the distance. "Gonna get em." As he neared, his silhouette changed shape, bubbling and rippling, growing and arching, and from him extended the shadowy form of a flag which he used like a walking stick, spearing the women beneath him as he built momentum.
Z. wobbled backward at a precarious tilt to maximize speed, slipping and falling and regaining her balance. The wall gained detail, switches and magnolia patterns and a solitary closed door. Kiki kicked her feet and twittered with glee, Z. dropped her and fumbled with the knob, drawing almost the entire length of her body to reach it from her knees. She shoved against it trying to open it and it not budging until after a dumbfounding long time she realized it opened inward and reversed her internal force to pry it nearly off the hinges and feel the blast of the fresh air from the corridor.
"Kiki come on—" But when she turned for Kiki, Mitchum had already beset them and grabbed both of Kiki's ankles, jerking them around with his mangled fingers.
"Mitchum, no!" Z. lashed out a foot and kicked him in the face. His head jerked back and his dumb fake glasses flew off. An extreme amount of blood splurted out his nose, his neck looked about to snap. Z. yanked Kiki but Mitchum retained his grip, tugging Kiki's stockings and sliding them down her legs.
"Eeeeee," Kiki said. "It tickles!" She stroked her knees together while Mitchum started to kiss her skin.
Z. leapt over Mitchum's head and stomped his back. She bounced until his shirt crumpled up and the beginnings of a large, elaborate tattoo emerged at the base of his spine, a pool or lake or something from which something else was bursting upward, but that part of the tattoo remained obscured by her trampling feet and the tremendous bruise that spread along his back, his body bent and twisted.
"Die die die die DIE!" she said. His jack-o-lantern fingers broke their hold, his entire form shriveled beneath her onslaught. The moment he let go she seized Kiki and they rolled out the room and Z. slammed the door shut behind them, Mitchum looking like a small thing on fire that coils into a dead ember until he looked like nothing because the door was closed.
Kiki lay facedown dribbling spittle. Z. half expected the door to fly open and Mitchum to descend upon them, but it didn't so she took stock of the now mostly empty hallway. Only a few Homestuck fans remained, neither Frosty nor Red!Maximillion.
"Z. rub your face on my legs please," said Kiki. She rubbed her own legs against the carpet. "Mm yes like that."
"You lost your shoes," said Z. The dull factoid meant nothing, the overarching goal remained: ferry Kiki home. Gritting her teeth through fatigue, she mustered additional resolve and tried to lift Kiki's upper body. She envisioned an idealistic scenario in which they walked together, one supporting the other, but Kiki grinned gremlinesque and confounded Z.'s attempts at every possibility.
Eventually, with leverage and physics, she got Kiki on her shoulder and managed to shift her weight in specific directions to approximate forward movement. Kiki's arms tangled around Z.'s neck, her hands went into Z.'s hair, a lot of stroking and mumbling and giggling.
A pair of girl Homestuck fans, or what Z. assumed were Homestuck fans, glanced from their phones as the Z.-Kiki amalgamation passed. One, in only a t-shirt (maybe not even a costume at all), said:
"Oh wow she's drunk."
"Yeah," said Z.
"You're the girl we ruffled today, aren't you dear?" said the other girl, who wore a top hat.
"Maybe."
"Condolences!" The girl fiddled with her phone. "We got a tad carried away. No big deal though."
No big deal though. Ha ha! She searched for a caustic remark to fling in their face but creativity levels approached 1.6 percent.
"Either of you know about that girl with the frosty hair? And the scythe?"
The girls exchanged nods, each nodding in tentative expectation of the other's nod, so that the nods were only half-nods and neither seemed absolutely sure despite the nodding until the first spoke: "Yeah, we saw her, her costume was real cool."
"It perhaps deviated from canon."
"Alt universe genderbend speciesbend ice elemental—"
"Yes, she definitely put her own spin on things. Much like myself!" Girl 2 tipped her top hat. "I like girls who have their own flair."
"Seemed tacky to me," said the plainer girl.
"But who is she, what's her name, where can I find her?" said Z.
A pause while the girls communed via telepathy (probably). One said: "Nobody we know. She doesn't talk much."
"Condolences!"
Useless! She guessed sooner or later frost queen would turn up in Z.'s endless parade of unpleasant people so she didn't worry too much, but she had such a froth of emotions that her anxiety vis a vis the Max question ascended unbidden in her infinity list of worries, she didn't understand how she fell into the position with both her friends unspooling into long threads that she couldn't tie back together the way the machines that originally packaged them had.
"Z., Z., Z., Z.," said Kiki, sometimes in a whisper, sometimes in a shout.
Somehow they reached an elevator and even managed to tumble out the elevator onto the correct floor. But "tumble" was deliberate word choice, Z. and Kiki had to do YET AGAIN the "Get Kiki Off the Fucking Ground" dance, until Z. started to slap Kiki's face like movie people did and yell get up, get off the ground you degenerate ape, which only made Kiki push herself closer to the ground, rubbing her face against it.
Z. knelt beside her. "Please Kiki, please, I'm so tired, please Kiki, please."
"Aww Z. if you're tired get on the floor with me." And she tried to pull Z. to her, grabbing the midsection under the torn shirt.
"No, your bed is fifty feet away, you can sleep in your bed, how's that sound?"
"I like the carpet!"
"No carpet Kiki, no carpet."
"I like Z.!"
Z. almost said 'No Z.,' so much energy had redirected from her mental faculties to her physical ones, but she caught herself. She even smiled and said: "Thanks, Kiki."
"You're my best friend," said Kiki. "Don't be sad!"
And Z. melted, she started to cry, explosive sheets of tears that rolled down her face and wrenching sobs as she curled into a ball. She became aware of Kiki touching her spine, the extended vertebrae that rubbersheeted her skin, Kiki's fingers rubbed around them in semicircles. The spot in front of Z.'s eyes turned into a wet splotch, her entire face went numb, acupunctured by a thousand stinging nettles.
"What's wrong Z., did I make you cry? Oh no..." Kiki drew her into a hug, she had actually gotten off the floor by herself. "I always do this, I'm always so terrible..."
"No," said Z. She lifted her face and even though she wasn't fine she said, "I'm fine." She tried to be fine, tried to encompass fineness, and against all odds it worked, although her face remained totally numb. Kiki was up now, this was the opportunity, although maybe they could stay on the ground together, no she had to get Kiki to bed, it was important—duty. "Let's go to bed."
"Okee," said Kiki. She lisped for no apparent reason. "I go to bed with you."
They made forward motion. Kiki shuffled her feet in pantomime of walking while her hands glided over Z.'s back and stomach, her head nuzzled against Z.'s shoulder. Z. counted the steps, each step removing one step from the step ticker, a manageable countdown that maintained her motivation. They reached the midpoint between Maximillion's door and Max's. Z. halted a moment and stared at Max's peephole; unmistakably, the light was on.
Knock? Speak to him. But he wouldn't answer. No matter how hard and how long. She—
Kiki's hand grabbed Z.'s tit.
Z. ossified. Kiki's hand remained there, pressing deeper. "So small..."
"Kiki stop."
"Whyyyyyy," said Kiki. She tried to pull Z. onto the carpet with a treacherous dead-weightening but Z. only dropped to a knee. "Let's fuck Z., whoopsie I mean frick, the sexual tension is palpable, ahhhh palpable is a funny word." Her other hand angled for Z.'s other breast but Z. seized the wrist before it reached.
"What are you doing, stop."
Kiki didn't stop, her smile grew voracious, she tried to wrangle Z. onto the ground, suddenly Z. was on her side with Kiki crawling on top of her, pawing her, Z. powerless, Kiki's empty puppet, smooth hands slid—
Maximillion's door opened. Z. immediately hurled Kiki off her and Kiki crumpled, and then Z. had to worry about what her shirt was looking like but it had miraculously continued to cover everything which was good because Maximillion's face was already looking directly at her with his punchable smile full on display. He had, bizarrely, his bag of golf clubs slung over a shoulder.
"I thought I heard your voices wow you two realize how late it is you must be real night owls hoot hoot what're you doing on the ground having fun down there well I won't pry I'm actually uh actually I'm on my way out to do something so uh bye!"
With remarkable lack of aplomb, Maximillion powerwalked down the hallway and disappeared around the corner, his golf clubs jangling. The encounter had been so brief and stunning Z. nearly forgot Kiki's previous behavior, although Kiki started to crawl in Z.'s direction donning a mischievous smirk. Z.'s attention, however, focused on Maximillion's door, which closed slowly in the wake of Maximillion's swift egress.
She stuck out a hand and stopped the door microbes away from being closed. She watched the hallway lest Maximillion roar back in a puff of golf clubs and gold dust. Was entering a hotel room that wasn't yours unlawful? Maybe like, a misdemeanor.
"Come baaaaack Z." Kiki languished on the floor in dejection and squalor. "I prooooomise I won't grab your boobs again, no matter how cute they are."
"Shoosh." Z. pressed the door and peered into the blackened space for devils and/or Satanists. "Stay put, I'll be back in five minutes."
She entered Maximillion's room and closed the door behind her, slow and quietlike. She flipped the switch, almost not daring to, and the plainness and tidiness of the room confronted her, the bed unruffled and no sign of loose clothes. She entered the bathroom. The door at the other end, to Max's room, was shut, and when she tried the knob it was so firmly locked it wouldn't jiggle. Didn't Hussie say these doors didn't lock? Did he forget to check? A moment's thought made Hussie's claim seem completely outlandish, why wouldn't a high end Vegas hotel have locks on the doors. Regardless of expectation, reality obviously would contort to make her miserable anyway, so Z. had no clue what she expected.
As she slugged back toward Kiki's lascivious hallway realm she realized the door was locked from her side. She regarded the little turny lock-thing with abject incomprehension before, almost indignant, she rushed to the door on Maximillion's side and checked it and confirmed that there were lock-turners on both sides of the door, the door could lock from inside and outside, but the lock on Max's door was turned the opposite way as the lock on Maximillion's (unlocked) door, meaning it was definitely locked from the bathroom side, this was some major league quantum calculus but she solved it, ace genius Z. Coulter.
Maybe the door was also locked on Max's side, but she wouldn't know unless she checked. She switched the turny-switch-dealybob and tried the knob. Miracle upon miracles, the door popped open.
The red suit Maximillion wannabe sat on the bedside. He leaned back with his legs splayed out, his arms propping him up as his head tilted slightly and his mouth hung agape, the tip of his tongue on the swell of his lower lip as his sunglasses streaked with slim bands of light from the chandelier above. On her knees, between his legs, was the girl with the frosty hair.
For a suspended moment in time things continued as they had been, the red suit guy stifled moans, the frosty hair girl bobbed her head as her synthetic strands of hair swished around. Z. found her vision drawn to the girl's gently gyrating rear, as though the ruffles at the end of the pale blue skirt formed a hypnotist swirl.
Then the red suit guy's head snapped abruptly up and he let out a strained cry and tried to turn away, jerking the frosty hair girl with him. After a brief delay she extricated herself and he clamped his legs closed and folded inward like a piece of origami and uttered meaningless expletives and interjections.
"Max?!" said Z.
"Ah—I—uh—fuck—ah—shit—"
The girl with the frosty hair stood up and wiped her mouth on the back of her hand. Her icicle eyes drove their points into Z.'s soul as she extended a witch's finger with a long blue nail and accused Z. of murder without saying a word.
Then she did say words:
"GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY ROOM Z. OR I SWEAR I WILL—"
Z. turned and slammed directly into the bathroom door and ricocheted in a cyclone toward oblivion, she sailed into the shower and tangled in the curtain until it ripped from the pole and shrouded her like a straightjacket and she clapped against a wall and then a toilet and then floundered into Maximillion's room while all the doors in the entire world started slamming shut in a polyphonic harmony of condemnation a hellchoir of the seven archdemons and their affiliated devils durahans cerberi manticores nightmares the collective hordes of Pandaemonium uttering a unified and unrelenting invective against her Z. Coulter the fool of Denver the girl of clouds in the city of smoke as she rolled over Maximillion's bed and mashed her hands against the shower curtain until she burst from it and scrambled into Maximillion's closet and shut the door and waited in the dark.
