Hollow Dolls, The (37 page)

No one showed. No Winnie, no Walter, no
Kim Li. Nobody answered their phones. Mel filled her vacancy with oxys, ritalin
and booze for the next thirty six hours. She even went out into the back yard
and got the water that Georgy had sent. She
missed
it. The salvia
divinorum. She knew what it was now, the tripping. She’d looked it all up on
the internet.

Then she was struck by melancholy. Not
only the phantom melancholy that her and Winnie always shared but some real
kind of feeling in her heart and soul, something new. She dragged her stoned ass
out to go see Scott. He’d bring her to some human familiar place.

Mel got behind the wheel and slid the
key in.

“Hello again Mel.” She felt steel on the
back of her neck.

“Alejandra!” She felt an excitement. She
couldn’t help herself.

Mel could see both of their faces were in
the mirror.

“You’d like to see Scott again wouldn’t
you.”

She turned and Alejandra whacked her on
the ear with her revolver.

Mel’s ear bled and as she touched it,
struggling to stay conscious.

“Just drive. To Coal Harbour.”

From the parking lot at Coal Harbour
Alejandra led Mel out the wharf to an eighty foot yacht. Alejandra’s gun was pressed
to her back and Mel stepped down the narrow staircase to the yacht’s interior
cabin. A darkened room. She could make out the portholes shining in a bit of
moonlight as Alejandra walked about inside.

Mel was still dizzy. Coal Harbour’s
salty city evening air quickly shifted to an old familiar odour. It was black
metallic death. Old decaying blood. A lot of it. She flashed on the Man-Rabbit.
A moment of hope, that he might be there.

Alejandra turned the light on and Mel’s
system seized. Her heart turned to rust. She backed up into the wall and slowly
crouched down to the floor. Situated around the center of the room were body
parts. She tried to identify them. She recognized Walter’s severed head. She
was sure that his lips would move and start talking to her. Another head was sideways
laying in blood. Legs and arms were placed in a circle around the heads. The
eyes were pinned open.

“Your father and Scott did not go
easily,” said Alejandra. “It was long and painful. Scott begged me to tell you
that he was in love with you. How touching.”

Mel glared at Alejandra’s blank, still
eyes. She’d had already stepped closer with the gun raised and pressed it to Mel’s
forehead. Any infatuation she’d felt for Alejandra disappeared.

“Winnie will get the same treatment,” said
Alejandra. “And Mel, don’t think about grabbing Winnie and running. There’s
nowhere for you two to hide that I can’t track you down.”

“I’ll kill you.” Mel groaned it out. She
wanted to but she was in no shape.

“Don’t be stupid Mel. I have people
working for me everywhere. You’re a kitten. You don’t know the darkness. Not
yet.”

Mel pushed herself up and stood against
the wall.

“I’ll join Kutha against you,” she said.

Alejandra glared.

“So you know a few things. It won’t help
you,” she  said.

“Look.”

Alejandra directed her attention to a
tablet. On the screen Scott went about his duties.

“See? He is with us now Mel,’ said
Alejandra.

Mel noticed her accent come on stronger
the way Lilly would do sometimes.

“We can replace whomever we choose. A
bit of surgery. A bit of makeup. You will join Kim Li, Winnie and myself. It’s
the only decision you have left Mel.”

Mel made a blind panic run for the
stairs. Alejandra fired and missed. As Mel ran down the dock she wondered whether
Alejandra had aimed to kill her. She was a trained soldier. Maybe it was a
warning. She drove Tweetie hard along the waterfront slamming through rainwater
potholes.

Dad.

 It was a word she’d just gotten to
know. The last time she’d seen him was with Jack. She had hurt him. It must
have hurt him. His daughter being taken as a child sex slave. She didn’t even
say goodbye. Mel fishtailed across the tracks at Main Street leaving smoke and
rubber. She parked in the alley behind the club. Her tongue had fused to the
insides of her cotton mouth. Kindergarten paste pots. Instant mashed potatoes.
Her mind was scrambling. Heart racing, she struggled for breath as she pulled
the back door open.

Think this through. She  got a double scotch
and took a booth. Remember what Jack said about your rage. The
drink was
gone in seconds. She wanted to go off the rails, to fire her rage at whoever
Alejandra had put in Scott’s place.

 “Hey there. What’s up? Haven’t seen you
in a while.”

She took a deep breath. It was him—whoever
he was.

“Nothing, just some family stuff.”

The fake Scott slid into the booth
beside her. He moved close and slipped his arm around her waist.

“Where did I start dancing?” said Mel.

“What do you mean?”

“Just answer. Where?”

“London, okay! You started dancing in
London. That’s what you told me at least. What’s going on with you?”

She examined his eyes and face then
touched his cheek. It felt real.

So he’d learned his lines. Big deal.

“Mel?” said Scott.

He tried to touch her head and she
pulled away.

“Come on to the office and dry off.
You’re all wet,” he said. “Let’s relax there for a while.”

She followed him to the office the same
as the day they met. He even walked the same. How could they find anyone so
similar?  Maybe it was staged. Maybe she’d had an episode. Scott closed the
door behind them and he slid his hands around her waist.

“Cut it out!” She  pushed him away and
sat on the couch.

“I just don’t get you Mel. One minute
with you everything is hot and heavy and then—”

Mel’s face changed and Scott stopped
talking. Something clicked. Whether it was wishful thinking or not, she
suddenly felt like it was him. She stared at his face. It seemed like him. How
long had she known him anyway? In her dilemma she went with Jack’s thing—the
Occam’s razor.

“It must be you!” she  said. “Alejandra
fooled me somehow.”

“What?” said Scott.

Mel walked over and kissed him
passionately. Then as Scott kissed back she threw him to the ground. “You do
not
kiss the way Scott did.”

He was stunned from the fall.  She
straddled him and grabbed his throat with both hands. As she pressed her thumbs
in she could see the edges of a silicone mask lifting up under some makeup on
his neck. The impostor was gurgling and turning red. Someone pulled her off. She
turned ready to fight. It was Jack. The Scott replacement on the floor was
choking and coming to his senses.

“C’mon, we have to get out of here,”
said Jack. He grabbed her arm.

“No!” She smashed a beer bottle on the
desk and jammed it into the impostor’s throat in one fluid stroke. Blood pulsed
out. A gurgling last cry sounded against the empty bottle. Jack pulled her up
and she went with him. He broke a key off in the lock and they ran out the back
door of The No. 5.

Jack pulled Mel along walking quickly
toward Gastown.

“You didn’t have to do that,” said Jack.

Mel was silent, walking through the rain
on the cobblestones. Half a block later she said,  “Yes, I did.”

 “Scott was one of our—”

“No!” she snapped. She grabbed Jack by
the coat. “How did you find me?”

“You know the ring that Lilly gave you a
long time ago? It was a tracker
and
a cam, a very high tech device. I
replaced it with one of ours.”

Jack made a call.

“We need a clean up crew at The No.5.
The manager’s office,” said Jack.

He looked to Mel. “We have to go now.
Claudia’s waiting.”

“Don’t give me that
working an asset
bullshit,” said Claudia. “It was more about ass than asset Jack. It’s all over
your face.”

Jack was silent.

Claudia looked at Mel. “And you?”

“Me?” said Mel.

“Are you in the habit of executing Russian agents?”

“I...He...” Mel didn’t know what to say. Claudia was intense.

“Besides going off the grid for three days Alejandra now has Kim
Li off in no man’s land. This deal was in jeopardy already Jack.”

“Mel, I’d like you to meet my boss Claudia, CIA Chief of
Operations for the UK.”

 “Once Mel is in place at
Club Lick
again I’m assigning
another handler,” said Claudia.

“Claudia, there’s no one who knows her better. I have Mel’s
trust,” said Jack. He looked at Mel.

Mel nodded confused. “Why do I need a handler?”

Claudia looked at Jack then back at Mel. She toned down her voice.

“You’ll be a great service to us if you work from within Lilly’s
organization as our asset. She wants you back anyway. Don’t you want to go
back?”

Mel was still puzzled.

“Jack, you’ll be back undercover working with Kutha,” said
Claudia.

“This slave trade restructuring operation is a top priority. We
have INTERPOL on board and assets in place all across the EU and US.”

“The Russians are just going to gain more ground...
and
intel.”

“Earth to Jack: Remember, we are kissing ass. That’s how we get bills
passed for funding, isn’t it? You still want those fat pay checks, right?”

“Fat, right,” said Jack. Where is Kutha now?”.

Claudia dropped a folder on the table.

“She’s tracking Alejandra in Vancouver. We don’t know where
Alejandra is at this exact moment.”

Mel had let their voices fade to the background. She went back to
London where she and Winnie were on the couch under the covers at her apartment
watching a movie. It was all she really wanted.

“You may be looking for a new career,” said Claudia.

“If the Russians control Li International through Kim Li they’ll
have half the global network,” said Jack.

 “Mel, if you can get back in with Lilly? The sooner the better.”

 “Jack, you’re dismissed.”

Mel barely looked at Claudia. She was lost in thoughts of Winnie.

They stepped out of the lobby of The Vancouver Hotel onto West
Georgia Street. It was one in the morning. The doorman had white gloves with
trails. The color popsicles were back in the streets as usual.

“Alejandra killed my father and Scott.”

“How do you know that?” said Jack.

“She brought me on to a yacht. It was a blood bath. She tried to get
me to side with her. She’s threatening to do the same to Winnie.”

“Where is she docked?”

“Come on, I’ll show you.”

A mild breeze blew across Coal Harbour and Mel could remember the
warm nights her and Jack had spent in Greece.

Jack led with his weapon drawn. When they entered the stairs below
deck Mel felt actual fear. She didn’t want to see it again. Jack picked the
lock, opened the door and shone his little flashlight around inside. She walked
in behind him.

There wasn’t a drop of blood anywhere.

Jack dropped Mel back behind the club. He
was under cover again. Gone to the States. She was supposed to return to London
and be contacted there by a new handler. Why work with the CIA? She had
Phillip’s list. She’d rather work solo. Go to London and do her own thing. With
Winnie. Maybe even Kim Li. There was just one little problem. Alejandra.

Back home Mel watched the feed she’d
been recording from Kim Li’s cam. Kim Li was in the club dressing room at The
No.5 by herself. Then came a  pounding on the dressing room door.

A muffled voice yelled, “Open up
goddammit!!”

Kim Li unlocked it and a few girls
barged in.

 “Fucking princess.” They pushed past.

Kim Li went out and sat by the bar with Billie.

 “I think I’m in love,” said Kim Li.

Billie shook her head.

 “It’s not a customer is it? You know that
Pretty Woman
shit—it never lasts.”

“No, it’s someone special.”

“Spill.” said Billie.

“It’s a Mistress.”

Kim Li took out her phone. The screen lit up with an incoming
call.

“Hey cuz.”

“Why do you keep whispering, you’re freakin’ me out” she whispered.
“Now I’m doing it! Damn, you said Uncle had gone to meet with the other bosses
in Guangdong?”

Mel could hear Kim Li’s cousin explaining something since the
phone was close to her necklace but it was too low to make out all the details.

“Plane crash?” Kim Li hung up.

“Holy fuck Batman.”

“What?” said Billie.

“My Uncle’s plane crashed,” she said. “I’m rich!”

Mel heard through the tiny speaker, Kim Li whispered to herself, “Alejandra
actually did it.”

Kim Li left the club and cabbed over to a place on West Georgia. As
she walked up to the building Mel saw
Vintage Park Suites
over the glass
doors. Kim Li stopped to talk to the doorman.

“Is Winnie upstairs?” she said

“Indeed,” said the doorman.

She watched her go up the elevator and enter Room 1215. She had
the whole floor. Then Mel fast forwarded.

A few hours later in the video feed Kim Li was on the couch
wrapped in a white cotton blanket. Winnie next to her while they both sipped
drinks and watched Jimmy Fallon. Kim Li talked on the phone. She spied
Winnie emptying
a vial into Kim Li’s drink.

Good
medicine for bad behaviour. Mel had already snorted her second Abby of the
night and drank two waters. Sipping on Jack Daniels, she drifted in and out of
her special dream world. When she opened her eyes again she saw on the feed, a
woman dressed in black latex standing by Winnie. She realized that Kim Li was lying
down beside them when she considering the angle of the shot from Kim Li’s
necklace.

“Listen
Winnie,” said the woman. “Just call me Paris. You’re the Mistress now honey.”

Mel
drifted off again into the days of her and Winnie and the woman with the long
dark hair.

The
next morning Mel manic flipped. She deciding to get in shape with a workout 
and a good meal. Afterward she had a few hours more sleep and woke. It was dark
again.

Down
at the Coal Harbour parking lot she was monitoring Alejandra’s yacht using some
binoculars. She kept a good distance sitting in Tweetie and watched her laptop
for the feed of Kim Li. The lights in the yacht went off. Winnie exited and
walked along the Coal Harbour to the seawall toward the Bayshore Inn.

Mel
assumed Alejandra was still in the yacht and had sent her little minion out for
something. Winnie was being a little brat bitch tease. Mel had every acidy
horrid possibility running through her mind about what she’d do to Alejandra, and
yet she didn’t care a bit when Winnie walked by. She was enchanted as always. Winnie
could never be guilty. She could never be wrong.

She
ought to try and persuade Kim Li back on track with their original plans. That
would take some serious haggling. They’d probably fight. With the laptop on the
seat plugged into the ciggie lighter, a big surprise came through. An email
arrived from Winnie which was to be part of the memoir. She must have sent it
just before leaving the yacht. Winnie had dispensed with her mysterious coding
system and the entry was simply titled, “Mistress Winnie”.  

“Paris, I’d rather we didn’t talk. I’d like you to
monitor her breathing and pulse and so on,” said Winnie. “But don’t worry, I’m
not going to do anything, you know, seriously bad.”

“I’ve got it covered,” said Paris. “I have my full
medical kit and Eric my EMT friend is only a few minutes away.”

Paris had a great bod for a thirty-something woman. She’d
been a Dungeon Monitor on the BDSM scene in Vancouver for over ten years. Her Domme
outfit helped set the tone and Winnie had her own tone going. An attitude. She
wanted to own Kim Li thoroughly. To have her way and to have it in secret. She
wasn’t hateful or angry at her as a person. Kim Li had stepped in between her
and Mel.

Winnie had been admiring her body all along and now
here it was completely still and naked for her to amuse herself with. Winnie
ran her fingers gently over Kim Li’s belly up over her breasts, shoulders and
down her arms. The touch was electric on Winnie’s fingertips. Kim Li had been
brought to a semi-moribund state with Flunitrazepam, aka Rohypnol. It was a the
common
date-rape
drug and this was Winnie and Kim Li's date. Winnie’s
mind quickly began to extrapolate Kim Li into being dead and Winnie’s
endorphins shot sky high.

Lauren had eaten father’s flesh when he was dead.
She’d dined on him. It was called vorarephilia or soft vore by members of the
dark world of flesh eaters since there was no extreme violence included. It all
made Winnie sneeze with excitement as she sat naked up on top of Kim Li. She pressed
her cunt up against Kim Li’s mound and she circled Kim Li’s nipple with the tip
of her tongue. Her nipples had the tensile quality of a firm grape and the
surface character of the skin on lips.  They’d begun to go raisin-like quickly
as she licked away. Kim Li must be feeling it inside somehow. That made Winnie
wiggle with excitement on top of her. It was so zombie-like!

Winnie’s blood was still infused with entheogens
from her many days and nights with Alejandra so her mind quickly went to a magical
place. It said that Kim Li was hanging in the balance in a place of the dead. Just
at death’s door. Winnie could touch her soul. She pinched the nipples between
her thumb and forefingers then ran along Kim Li’s chest and neck to nestle in
behind the ear lobes. Pheromone central. She felt Kim Li’s skull there rubbing
hard then smelled her fingers. It raced round inside Winnie and went straight
to her cunt. It was as though both their cunts were suddenly communicating via
some electrical signal. Winnie pressed down harder on Kim Li’s mound. She put
her fingers in her own mouth and rubbed the taste on her tongue. It was like
stealing candy and stopping round the corner unwrapping the first one and
gorging yourself there, your mouth full of the juicy goodness of sugar and
flavors and mostly the goodness of being bad and getting away with it. Even
though the owner might burst out onto the street and see you there, you had no
choice but to stop and take that first taste. And then there was all the rest
of it that was to come. She hadn’t even tasted her blood yet.

Winnie poured some massage oil into the palm of her
hands and rubbed liberally onto Kim Li’s breasts and belly. She felt the heat
between their furry mounds and pointed to the black ‘Double Header’ dildo on
the stand.

Paris lubed it liberally into a shiny black and held
it in place while Winnie slid down onto one end and Paris worked it into Kim
Li.

“You’re bad,”  said Winnie as she rocked on the
dildo fucking Kim Li.

She couldn’t help slide her hand between Kim Li’s
legs and slip a finger in her bum hole. It was so bad. So wrong. Especially
when she touched her there. She knew that without consent it was the sweetest
theft. She slipped her finger in deeper. Winnie’s body vibrated with such a
madness, she had to stop herself and remember to come back to reality.

“Needles.”

Paris fit latex gloves on Winnie and cleaned Kim
Li’s nipples with alcohol to prepare them. Handed Winnie a pair of twenty five
gauge needles with pink hubs. Winnie held them up between her gloved thumbs and
index fingers twirling the points in the light. She brought the point of one
needle close to the apex of Kim Li’s right breast. Holding the point right to
Kim Li’s erect nipple without piercing the skin was very exotic to Winnie; she
trembled and took a deep breath.

She rolled the nipple with the finger and thumb of her
other hand, examining it very closely, stretching and pulling until it came to
attention. Winnie rocked slowly on the black latex. She wanted desperately to
take the nipple in her mouth and bite hard to taste her blood. Instead she
plunged the needle point in through the nipple to half way along the length of
the needle shaft. It was a tender moment as the needle passed into Kim Li. The
density of the meat registered in her mind like Winnie herself was the needle,
that she had entered the tiny hole and gone through and now felt the texture of
the flesh pressing against her own skin. She was trapped stuck inside Kim Li’s
nipple with her arms pressed to her sides.

Winnie rocked ever harder, craving to come. Her mind
was taking all her inside Kim Li inside the beauty of the exquisite corpse that
she now possessed.

“All mine now. Far, far away from Mel and Alejandra.”
She’d owned her. 

Winnie brought the second point to bear. Facing her nipple
prey she slid it through half way in one motion.

Meat meat meat!

Blood dripped from Kim Li’s nipple and Winnie
couldn’t resist. She licked it off with her tongue.

Mad lust for blood.

Winnie was excited beyond herself off in the
hinterlands—off like a wolf, a she wolf hungrier for blood now tasted. She
wanted to cut into the flesh to feel the stickiness against her teeth and lips.
What had she been doing all these years?  Was she like her mother? Would she
kill and eat flesh? The inner magical world spun Winnie out of orbit.

“Oh shite! I just. Just...”

Winnie rocked on the black snake as Paris cupped her
ass hard and rocked her too.

“I! I...” Winnie cried and groaned in a desperate
tone sliding her hips closer pressing her clit down onto Kim Li’s.

“I want you!” she screamed like a mad child who’d
been denied.

“I want to eat you!”

She dug in harder and harder against Kim Li and held
her shoulders shaking her dead weight. Winnie had arrived in hell. In this
mysterious darkness of nothing where all is death. Where anything that moved or
breathed would be cut open to bleed and be eaten. She rocked with her eyes
closed ever harder coming and coming.

She finally stopped. Winnie looked around and
realized that someone was there. Besides Kim Li.

“Hello Mother,” she said. Her eyes were still closed.

“I know what you want me to do.”

Paris stood behind Winnie still cupping Winnie’s
bottom and holding her steady atop Kim Li so she wouldn’t fall. Winnie smiled
into the netherworld. and her eyes grew darker inside. Rings of a Saturnian
hell grew wider and darker in her soul’s travel. Fauns and seers whispered
sweet secrets in her ear and she nodded to them obeying her own nature to run
it’s course with their divinity. She waved her arms in the air like a
conductress licking her lips like the air itself was honey. Then she brought her
hands down to Kim Li’s face and felt the nuances of her skull. The holes in the
skull around her eyes felt beautiful to Winnie.

“My skull,” she said covetously.

This body was her toy now. Her plaything.

She dismounted her dead prey and pointed to the
saran wrap. Winnie brought her lips close to Kim Li’s and licked them then
inserted her tongue between them. She felt the teeth of death against the tip
of her tongue. Pushing hard with her tongue, she parted her jaws enough to get
her tongue in between the teeth and drove her tongue deeper into the death
mouth. She breathed in the body’s death breath.

She took the only and ever remaining bit of saliva
from Kim Li’s tongue onto her own and breathed in the last death breath of Kim
Li.

There was nothing. All would be gone, be begotten,
laid to waste.

All was death. She pulled away and turned her head
to the sky with her eyes closed. The seed fell into her throat. The new 
beginning trickled down planted itself in her belly.

Her hands found their way and removed the needles. She
got up and began wrapping the saran around her flesh puppet. Around the feet
and legs. With a thrust she lifted the meaty hip, slipped her hand in between
the sweet buttocks fold. They were her owned succulent labia tenders taking her
own flesh and bones in, swallowing her fingers, and then her hand up to her
wrist. Winnie disappeared into the garden of earthly delights deeper inside her
flesh pet, into her slippery sex.