Brianna and Jeanna are playing dress up in the green room (it had been sardonically christened that by a libertine fond of torture who was giddy on a coke jag) up at the Love Shack. The green room, comparatively spacious compared to the other poky chambers in the modest structure, resembles a weird mash up of surgical operating theatre and Broadway musical changing room. It is windowless and illuminated by fluorescent strip lighting. On a coat stand hang a nurse’s uniform, doctor’s coat, an orange jump suit and a replica bespoke Waffen SS uniform. It was that kind of place, cater for all tastes, and for some reason the Nazi stuff gave a lot of people hard ons. Brianna noticed most of the old shit had gone, like the dark blue boiler suit spattered with blood, memories of which assailed her during the wolf hour, and the Little Bo Peep costume replete with outsize candy cane used for the unthinkable. Brianna and Jeanna are sat on side chairs at the dresser, applying make up from a pile of cosmetics and staring numbly at their reflections in the Hollywood style mirror, wide and tall with a polished gold surround punctuated by light bulbs. Jeanna pouts as Brianna fondly applies lipstick.
“This rich red goes on creamy and doesn’t bleed,” says Brianna. “For even lipstick application, start at the Cupid’s bow and extend out to the corners of the mouth before blotting.”
Jeanna laughs and the lipstick runs down her chin. Brianna cleans the smudge with an antiseptic wipe.
“Looks good,” says Jeanna, air kissing the mirror. They both start rummaging in the draws of the dresser, which are full of latex clothing, bikinis, thongs, lingerie and shoes, all jumbled up. Next to the dresser is a stainless steel surgical trolley, on its tray a scalpel, an occult symbol drawn assiduously on a piece of lined paper, bone saw, a hotdog jar empty except for saline liquid and a lubed up black double ended dildo specked with blood and faeces. Brianna’s picked her outfit.
“You serious?” says Jeanna.
“I’m always serious these days,” says Brianna, dabbing Chanel on her neck.
The Love Shack is way up in the hills, set in a clearing in the forest and you have to pass through a maze of obscure roads and trails to reach it. You’d never find it unless you were looking for it and knew where you were going. Still, those who frequented it were big on security. They were scared of each other, and there was always distrust and conspiracies. Anyhow, that was history now. It was just a spooky old joint now, originally built as a playhouse for rich perverts. A one storey brick building with a flat roof. There were many apocryphal tales about who funded, created and frequented it; depraved Hollywood producers, the Armenian mob, Russian gangsters, South American coke dealers with cartel money from lands where life was cheap, the fag ends of la cosa nostra, A list stars bored in search of bigger thrills. Call them legion. It has two wire mesh windows set into the front of the building that appear to regard those approaching it with forbidding eyes and that are situated in the lounge and kitchen within the building. A thick metal door with a peephole was the only entrance. There was a panel with rubber covered buttons that you punched a security code in. Well least till yesterday when Brianna blew a hole in it. After cutting his throat, she’d took her father’s shotgun and a box of cartridges and drove him away in his pick-up truck, wrapping him in old rugs and carpet and rolled him down a hillside to where no one could get at him. Chrystal her sister had helped with the disposal. There were five rooms within the love shack, kitchen, bathroom with shower stall and toilet, green room, red room, lounge. It had been a few years since anyone had been here, till this week at least. The place had earned its ironic sobriquet simply because when it was first built almost thirty years ago (the year Brianna was born) and already stockpiling nightmares, the B52’s song ‘Love Shack’ was on heavy rotation on the radio. People never have much imagination so it stuck. The mouldy lounge was full of drugs paraphernalia. All part of the lo fi thrills. The red room had a hose pipe to sluice the shit, blood and piss away into a gutter that ran along the far wall and led to a grid. A stainless steel chair, equipped with leather straps on the arm and foot rests, was bolted to the ground in the centre of the room. There’s someone waiting for them both in there. He’s trying to scream but merely succeeds in gurgling. A digital camera is set up on a tripod to capture a private memento.
Brian and Jeanna are now costumed and ready for the ritual to be performed in the red room. They both look stunning. Brianna is five ten and skinny with long thin muscular legs for which she had been damned and praised, online and to her face at fan Q & A sessions at adult industry conventions. She remembered one asshole told her she looked freaky, like a newly born foal struggling to find its gait. How she’d love to see the fat sweaty fuck again and burn his face off. Brianna is wearing a stars and stripes bikini and clear stripper heels, showing off her deep golden tan and pretty pink toenails. Her long naturally blonde hair is scraped back into a bun; usually she just brushes it over her shoulders. Brianna has deep blue eyes and a gaze that had hardened over the years, and though she could never accept it, she was a real beauty with delicate features and a neat button nose which had been scalpel carved to make it less bulbous. The only blemish was the trout pout she was left with after having filler in her lips. She’d never had her breast size cosmetically boosted despite great pressure from agents and producers simply because it would have freaked her younger sister and only sibling Chrystal out and being so slim and tall they’d have looked out of place. It was her only act of rebellion, until she started on the kill list, and it paid off, as the gonzo filmmaker Larry Conan told her, ‘Fans dig your natural little titties, big hooters are a dime a dozen.’ Jeanna had no such qualms and had her tits pumped up, an operation financed by a ten man gang bang, with the performers all looking like extras from a prison drama, and got a discount on it for letting the surgeon fuck her in the ass. Luckily he was proficient and they were magnificently pneumatic, such a hyper real exaggeration of female sexuality they seemed almost subversive. Jeanna is a few inches shorter than Brianna, more fleshy and curvy, ‘voluptuous’ as she was always billed, with her mousy brown hair dyed raven black and cut into a bob. She’s not as innately pretty as Brianna, with a jawline that’s a little too strong, but she knows how to sell herself, with smoky brown eyes and full crimson lips. Jeanna is sassy with attitude, with a huskily seductive voice and her demeanour oddly complements Brianna’s taciturn, sometime icy bearing. Brianna just says she’s numb to everything, that’s all. In another life Jeanna would have been a great tough broad in a film noir, she’s a genuinely talented actor, but it never panned out that way. She’s wearing a latex cat suit with thigh high leather boots, Jackie O sunglasses and it is capped off by a death’s head SS hat. She snakes her arm around Brianna’s shoulders and holds her tight as they appraise their reflections.
“Why the fuck are we doing this?” says Brianna, her face cracking into a rare smile.
“Because we can. I always loved getting made up, best part of the job. Escaping from drab little me”
“Yeah and then the cocks would come in and spoil it,” Brianna dryly remarks.
“We are still hot bitches,” laughs Jeanna. “You dig it, don’t lie girl.”
“You know, there’s something to be said for this dance with the devil shit.”
“Chrystal is very special. Let’s hope she gets us over that rainbow,” says Jeanna dreamily.
“This place gives me chills,” says Brianna, vulnerable for the moment. “I thought it was all an urban myth an industry bogeyman well…till things happened with Chrystal.” The last words are choked out.
“Well we are here dealing with it,” says Jeanna, artfully wiping Brianna’s tears away.
“He’s awful quiet.”
Composing herself, Brianna says, “I prepped him yesterday. It is all done really. We are just collecting the talisman. “
“Bitch wanted all the fun,” laughs Jeanna.
“Hardly,” says Brianna.
“So tell me more”
“I thought you’d ask questions. I made notes. Don’t want to talk about it. I’m all talked out.”
“No fun,” puckers Jeanna.
Brianna goes over to her pile of clothes she’d worn getting up here and fumbles in the pockets of a biker style white leather jacket. She produces a tatty small black notebook, also taken from her father’s house.
“I wrote everything down, figuring you’d ask questions.”
“That’s dank.”
“You read this and that’s that.”
About half the pages of the notebook had contained her father’s surreal and disconnected misogynistic ramblings so Brianna and torn them out and shredded them, throwing the pieces in the air like confetti as his corpse rolled down the hill. Jeanna reads the notes, written in neat black ink.
9 to 5 at the Luv Shack
10.51
Hydration. Fed him cat food hes awful hungry.
12.13
Shit everywhere so he eats it.
12:42
Needles he’s telling all now Krystal at the Kandy Palace
15:12
Hydration and sedation. Smoked a cigarette. Hose down
16:00 he tells everything so he doesn’t need his tongue anymore it was all so easy he swallowed it like a champ
17:00
Home…
Smoke drank water and dreamed of Fentanyl. It’s heavenly. Really takes you away.
Jeanna, a little ashen, finishes reading and hands the notebook back to Brianna who places it on the dresser.
“Let’s do this,” says Brianna, pushing the surgical trolley.
The lump of tormented flesh in the steel chair is adult industry veteran Jefferson Tate, who was what passed as a legend in the hardcore world due to his prolific career as a swordsman turned director, renowned for his huge cock and voluminous cumshots. Handsome, urbane and articulate Jefferson was seen as the acceptable face of porn and often popped up on talk shows defending the industry. Why, he’d even been wheeled out in a few indie films entrusted with minor roles. Tate had a reputation for being charming and thoughtful in contrast to some of the thuggish hucksters who despoiled the flesh trade. Brianna and Jeanna had both fucked him on and off camera many times. It was just the way things were. Despite his good guy rep, Brianna had always been wary of him after he had flared up at her during the shooting of a two guy one girl threesome. Tate had started in gay porn before finding religion and undergoing conversion therapy, a move that was greeted in the industry with incredulity and disdain, but those close to him claimed his intent was sincere and he was genuinely conflicted. Anyhow, it was something of a PR coup and a weird offshoot was that he attracted a fan base of evangelicals who deplored his oeuvre but were fond of the channel for rabid homophobia his spiritual reawakening afforded. Still, it was well known how much he had loved it up the ass, and on set Brianna had been smoking a little weed to relax before the shoot (it helped to loosen up her butt muscles or whatever the fuck was in there) and she made a lame joke about his ass being nicer than hers and he could easily ass stunt for her but he took the intended compliment the wrong way, grabbing her by the throat and calling her a dumb slut cunt. Anymore references to his ass and her career was over. Just over an hour later he had cock in her pussy alongside British co-star Reg Savage’s junk during a tasteful double vaginal scene that was the prelude to them emptying their balls on her tits and face. Go figure. They smoothed things out after the shoot but she told him he had no need to be so defensive no one cared about the gay stuff. Jefferson’s thousand yard stare chilled her into silence and the subject was never broached again. He came to the club a day later to help celebrate her 19th birthday and they rubbed along just fine after that until he helped abduct Chrystal and take her to the Love Shack. 300k was his fee for providing something special. He had gambling debts with bad people, Tate had told her as she inserted needles under his fingernails, as if that made offering her sister up as the sacrificial star of a snuff movie ok. In contrast, Jeanna had always thought Jefferson was an asshole, a sociopath in a Ted Bundy vein, all superficial charisma and good looks with darkness bubbling underneath. Tate was tall and muscular, a physique he maintained with punishing gym workouts and fastidious diet, his vices confined to the odd toot of coke and reckless gambling. He had bright white teeth reminiscent of porcelain and his thick dark hair was always immaculately and conservatively sculpted into place. Jeanna said he looked like a Fed. Tate had got a trifle leathery in the face due to excessive tanning, at one point Jeanna said he was the same shade as horse shit, but he had a competent surgeon to keep him youthful. Now the tan had dripped off him as he sat tethered to the chair, unable to scream and calmly waiting his death thanks to Brianna’s effective dehumanisation and administration of sedatives. Ah well, so it goes.
It is a classic snuff set up. Four white washed walls to make sprays of blood more vivid. A cramped windowless room. One camera, one angle. Ceramic floor tiles. Brianna checks that the camera is recording ok. Tate starts to flop about and gurgle so she gives him another jab of liquid Valium. It was old stock they had up here.
“So why are we doing this,” asks Jeanna, gesturing at the camera.
“Chrystal needs to bear witness, but lucky for her one remove is fine.”
Jeanna pouts and waves her fingers at the camera lens, “Hi Chrystal, this wave of mutilation is for you.”
“Please,” says Brianna.
“You don’t play anymore.”
“I don’t feel comfortable wearing this shit,” says Brianna.
“It looks good for the camera.”
“The camera doesn’t get irony,” says Brianna. She kicks off the heels and nips into the green room, coming out in a white doctor coat and porno secretary glasses. Clear lenses naturally. She pulls the metal door shut behind her and walks over to Tate, who is sleeping painlessly.
“You came on these glasses. Seems another life now.”
“Getting nostalgic bitch,” chides Jeanna. Ignoring her, Brianna takes a scalpel and carves an occult symbol on Tate’s forehead that is a reasonably accurate copy of the drawing Chrystal had done for her.
“Nearly there,” says Brianna tidying it up. Tate flinches out of habit, barely sentient. She slaps his thigh eliciting a trickle of urine. “Good job.”
Jeanna picks up the bone saw.
They change in silence in the green room. Brianna is wearing a strappy white shirt, blue jeans, sneakers and the white biker jacket. She twirls for Jeanna, who is in black – shirt and jeans, black leather jacket biker style in contra-distinction to Brianna. Their make-up softened into a parody of supine femininity.
“Thanks for helping me with this,” says Brianna tenderly kissing Jeanna on the lips. Jeanna holds up the dick in the hotdog jar. Brianna packs up the digital camera along with its stand and takes a last look at Tate, all bled out, before turning off the light.
Brianna and Jeanna are sat in the front of the pick-up truck. Chrystal is in the back looking at the dick in the jar. She is tall like Brianna but supernaturally pale with an unnervingly pretty doll like face and fierce green eyes. Out here that makes her a collectible. Chrystal hates her naturally blonde hair, like it doesn’t belong to her. Blonde she equates with cocks. Jeanna dyed it jet black for her and cut it into a Louise Brooks’ bob. It was choppy but quirkily charming. She loved old movies and Brianna always told her she had a face for black and white.
“The ghosts are going back into the trees. A little boy just waved at me,” says Chrystal. Jeanna and Brianna shared a side glance.
“Drive.”
Brianna gunned the engine. She watches the Love Shack burn in the rear-view mirror; the smoke billowing upwards consumed by the gathering dusk, and smokes a cigarette out the window.
