Mask of Flies (15 page)

Inside Rick’s mind, a
specific memory resonated with an overwhelming level of emotion.
Russell’s yolk in the darkness, a place to hid and feed. Morrow
groomed him for this, showed him how to live inside and feed his own
way.

He had seen through
Rick’s eyes, sitting in the driver seat of a vehicle. The leather
wheel had a checkered insignia that read: “BMW”. The visage
blurred, Russell felt the warm muddle of drunkenness and his host’s
heart racing. A woman giggled from the backseat. Rick’s eyes
glanced in the rear view: a dark haired man kissed and fondled a
sweet blonde thing in a tight black dress.

He had to jump back to
previous memories, regardless of how bad he had wanted to see the
memory play out—Morrow’s protocol. The correct context was the
key to control—Morrow’s rule. The interior of the automobile
faded.

Backwards several
hours, through the perceived time signature in Rick’s mind, Russell
watched the dark haired man from the backseat lean on a bar top.
“What are we celebrating?” he asked a group of young girls that
sat next to him.

“Small Italian
penises,” said a chubby girl with shoulder length curls.

“Ha, a woman of
unique taste. Unfortunately—I don’t think I’m your type. It’s
my buddy’s twenty-first,” he pointed back at Rick. “Take a shot
with us.”

It wasn’t Rick’s
birthday, and it’d been years since his 21st, but he walked to
them.

The girls smiled,
wished him happy birthday, and they took shots: Red Headed Sluts, Sex
with an Alligator, Rumplemintz, and then Jagermeister.

The blonde from the
backseat sat next to Rick. Her name was Amanda, 20 years old, a
sophomore at Canisius, majoring in Psychology. She put her hand
around Rick’s bicep and squeezed. He twisted in his barstool to
conceal his excitement at this.

Another vision broke through,
distracting Russell, an imposing memory. He had no choice but to let
it in.

Inside a courtroom,
from the bench; Rick’s eyes gravitated towards a disheveled woman
crying, clutching a bearded man.

“Amanda—my baby,
you took her you murderer. You will fucking pay for this. I will ruin
you.” The woman snapped when the big men picked her up, carrying
her towards the big double doors.

Russell stopped himself from looking
further. This memory as enticing as the first, but he needed to stay
in line.

Russell pulled back,
near to where he left off. Outside on a rooftop, surrounded by the
same group of girls, red light glowed from above. Rick looked up, a
big neon sign read: “SoHo”. The dark haired man paid for a tray
of red shooters, delivered by a waitress in a slutty schoolgirl
outfit.

Amanda had tired of
Rick and now had her arm wrapped around the sleeve of his friend’s
starched button-up. Rick slammed two shots in succession.

Russell liked where
this was going.

The chubby girl sat
next to Rick.

“That-a-boy Ricky,”
his friend said while Amanda stroked his wavy black hair.

Love-hate between old friends, a
kaleidoscope of memories inundated Russell. He weeded through them by
their chronological order and pursued the very first.

Through his host, he
saw the inside a middle school classroom, from a desk in the back of
the room. The seat empty next to him. The clock read 7:05 am when the
rotund teacher, Ms. Heichiegger, waddled into the room with a dark
haired boy behind her.

“Class, say hello to
our new student, Vince Moretti,” Ms. H. said.

The class said “Hello”
and the new student took the empty seat next to Rick.

Russell jumped forward, quickly
scanning a few memories on the way back to the night at SoHo. He saw
Vince raiding his Dad’s liquor cabinet, breaking out the good
scotch for Rick’s 18th birthday. Forward—Vince hurdled up in the
air onto Rick, almost tackling him. He passed his bar exam. Rick had
flunked out of Community College.

Back on the rooftop,
Vince told Amanda. “We did come to celebrate, but the real reason
is I got the job I wanted, fresh outta school.”

“What job is that?”
she asked.

“At Cane and Powell,
it’s a law firm dealing with zoning and servicing laws of cell
phone towers.”

She smiled with her
white bright teeth.

Vince addressed the
whole group. “I just became a member of some social club down the
street, wanna check it out?”

Rick’s voice startled
Russell. “Some sorta lawyers only club?”

“Not just for
lawyers. People with exquisite taste that take carry out business
with discretion.” Vince wrapped his arm around Amanda’s waist.
“You ladies up for a little adventure?”

“Why not,” Amanda
said.

Rick lit up a Winston.
“You can get us all in? None of us are members.”

Vince snatched the
cigarette from Rick’s mouth and took a drag before flicking it off
the balcony. He smiled, perhaps realizing he had gone too far.
“Baby-boy, who are you talking to. You’re already on the guest
list—I called in and got the ladies on it too”

Rick raised his arm in
the direction of his lost cigarette, but dropped it when the group
ignored him and moved towards the exit.

Out of the group of
college girls, only Amanda and two of her girlfriends followed. They
walked two blocks up Delaware avenue and stopped in front of a
nondescript brick building. It stood two or three stories tall, could
have been an old firehouse or municipal building. The entrance to the
social club was around the back; it had no sign, nobody outside, just
a darkly lacquered door.

Inside, Vince spoke
with a bearded man sitting behind an old ticket booth. A metal
security door buzzed open to the inner sanctum.

“Kinda creepy,”
Amanda said to the chubby girl.

Through the door, the
club’s high arched ceiling and velvet carpeting stretched beyond
what Rick imagined, judging by the exterior. “This an old theater?”

“Part of one,”
Vince answered. “Used to be the Grande Capitol. I think it was over
one hundred thousand square feet. The actual theater room burned down
in the eighties. This was its lobby.”

Men, shadows in suits,
congregated around a raised stage, watching an ample woman, a
peroxide blonde with caked on make-up, gesticulate while gripping a
bull whip.
I wanna fuck you like
an animal,
were the lyrics over the loud speaker when the
dancer took off her G-string and massaged herself with the leather
base of the whip.

The chubby girl
chuckled. “Is this a sex club?”

“It’s whatever you
want it to be.” Vince raised his voice over the music. “Let’s
go to the bar around back, no more masturbating ladies, promise.”

Past the little stage,
through an archway, the group walked into the antique bar room.
Polished wood tables and stools furnished the area. Two dimly lit
chandeliers provided just enough light to see. Some long dead
craftsman had carved a lion’s head surrounded by latticework into
the base of the bar. The shelves behind it held obscure bottles and
decanters.

“Ever had real
Absinthe?” Vice asked Rick, pointing at the top shelf to an
elaborate bottle filled with green fluid.

“That green crap?”
Rick said with levity but wanted to know what he was getting into.

“It’s green from
the herbs, and distilled with wormwood—for an extra kick. Oscar
Wilde and Hemmingway drank it regularly. The real shit is banned in
most countries,” Vince flagged down the bartender. “That brand
there is
Roquette,
from
France, isn’t legal in the U.S.” He turned to Amanda and the
girls behind him. “What do ya say?”

Both of Amanda’s
friends said they had to be up in the morning, but the blonde Pych
major decided to stay. The chubby girl pulled her aside, her usual
comic expression hardened when she whispered in Amanda’s ear.
Rick’s eyes focused on the chubby girl’s lips, as they formed the
word: “slut”.

The two girls left.

“Your friend giving
you a hard time?” Vince asked.

“A little. How about
that drink?”

The bartender poured
shots of the green liquor into three parfait glasses. Over each he
held a cube of sugar in a perforated mixing spoon and poured a jigger
of water over it.

Vince paid, tipped, and
took the drinks, setting them down at booth, tucked away in the
corner. “Don’t drink too fast. It’s missing a special
ingredient, be back in a flash.” He disappeared back out the
archway.

Rick sat across from
Amanda and took a sip. It tasted had the licorice taste of Sambuca.
“You like Vince?”

“Yes, I find him . .
. interesting.”

“He is quite a
character—nice place for a first date, eh?”

She smiled a piss off
smile and the conversation ceased into silence.

Vince returned five
minutes later. He approached the booth behind Amanda and put a hand
on her shoulder; in it dangled a messy plastic bag of white powder.
“Did you guys miss me?”

“We’re gonna blow
lines here in public?” Rick said.

Vince slid in the booth
next to Amanda “Not in public—friend; perhaps you didn’t hear
me when I said this place is special. We do what we want without
being fucked with. Quit being paranoid and nut up,” He put his arm
around Amanda. “How ‘bout you, hun, a small taste?”

“Never tried cocaine
before.”

Vince pouted his lips.
“You don’t want to party with me?’

“I never said I
wouldn’t try it”.

Vince took a small
razor from a pocket in his wallet and doled out three lines on the
granite table top. He slid one to the edge of the table, into a
creased twenty spot, and poured it into Amanda’s cocktail. “Bon
appetit mon Cherie.”

Rick watched Vince add
the zip to the other glasses, wanting nothing to do with the now
absolutely illegal cocktail, but he nutted up for his friend.
“Cheers.”

“Cheers,” Vince and Amanda said
in unison, and the three clanged their glasses together.

This memory tickled
Russell; he enjoyed the burgeoning feeling of the cocaine cocktail.
But he needed consequence and jumped back into the memory inside the
BMW. Overwhelmed and stifled, Rick’s subtle buzz transmuted into
borderline incapacitation. Russell wondered if his host had gone for
seconds. Rick clicked in his seatbelt and started the car. “You
guys might wanna hook in.”

Too busy making out,
they ignored him.

He turned onto the
Kensington Expressway’s eastbound ramp. In an inebriated but
somehow lucid state, Rick felt he maintained control. Driving the
speed limit, in the right lane, he noticed something sway below.
Suctioned on the dash was a dancing hula girl doll, an
uncharacteristic novelty for Vince’s newly found sophistication.
Its movement scraped his outer periphery, exasperating his focus.

“What’s up with
this damn hula girl? Can I pull it down?” Rick asked.

“Yeah, yeah, that’s
fine—” Vince’s remaining words were stolen by Amanda’s mouth.

The overhead lights
lining the expressway ended as the car crossed city limits. The
roadway darkened, and the hula girl oscillated idiotically to “Living
La Vita Loca”. The last straw, Rick reached over to pull the doll
down. Before he touched it, an unknown force slammed into the
passenger side, plowing them towards the median.

Tires screeched. Amanda screamed
from the backseat. The BMW crunched over the concrete barrier.
Something hard hit Rick in the back of the head and flew forward, in
a blur, through the windshield. White dust from the inflated air bags
hung in the air amongst blood and broken glass. The shattered
interior roiled and lurched. Rick felt weightless for a moment, but
gravity pulled it all back down; the crushing of sheet metal meets
asphalt. Rick went out.

Russell couldn’t
surmise what went wrong. Without another automobile on the road, it
seemed as if the steering wheel flung itself towards the median. He
moved to the beginning of the memory from the courthouse.

Rick’s arms were
bandaged. He got off much easier than his passengers, now reduced to
photographs on a particle board by the prosecution: Amanda, who
weighed a little over 100lbs, was propelled out of the vehicle at
such a high velocity that she was shot 20 yards down the road. She
skipped off the concrete; her body in the photograph scraped
skinless. Pinned next to it was a picture of her severed tongue,
blue-black. She had bitten it off upon terminal impact.

The crash had propelled
Vince forward but not out of the windshield. He smashed his head open
on the dashboard, dusting the lower passenger side with skull
fragments and brain matter. His clever witticisms forever lost
amongst the passenger side floor mat.

The lack of a jury
informed Russell this memory was a sentencing hearing. The assistant
district attorney stood; a silver haired butch in a navy blue
pantsuit. “Your honor, it is evident that Mr. Soblinski exercised
gross negligence when he got behind the wheel in an incapacitated
state. When I say incapacitated state, I’m not talking about
catching a buzz from a few beers at the local pub, I’m talking
about multiple shots of illegal Absinthe chased with cocaine,
resulting in 0.14 blood alcohol content. Absinthe is illegal in the
U.S. because of the psychoactive properties of wormwood, its prime
ingredient. And the cocaine speaks for itself.

“At approximately
3:30 a.m. on July 22nd 1999, Mr. Soblinski left Jester’s, a private
social club, and opted to drive, the now deceased Vincent Moretti and
Amanda Bennett back to Vincent’s townhouse, located on the
outskirts of UB’s north campus, in Amherst. This is not a quick
trip around the corner, but a 15 mile jaunt down a major highway,
averaging over 20 minutes in travel time at the speed limit. Mr.
Soblinski could have opted to take a cab, get a hotel room for the
night, or not to overindulge in a variety of mind altering
substances, but he did not choose these alternatives. He made the
conscious choice to put Vincent and Amanda’s lives in grave danger
by attempting to drive them home while intoxicated.”