Thrills

  She suppressed the urge to vomit, turned and surveyed the lobby. There were the stairs, the door blocked open, grimy and dirty and clearly someone had been pissing in there.

  And an elevator! Doors open, dim inside, light flickering but at least clean.

  She stepped in, examined the panel. Some big onyx buttons seemed to go down from here, though this was clearly the ground floor, she could make that out through the lobby windows. Didn't want to mess with those, who knows where that would lead.

  Above that, rows of tiny ivory buttons, must be a thousand. No way was she taking the stairs. And at the top, one gold button, labelled Penthouse.

  OK how appropriate. She pressed Penthouse.

  The doors rumbled, stuck, and made a thumping sound. She grabbed one panel, tugged, a skreek! and she got them closed.

  Lurch! First a little drop, then it caught, then slowly began to rise. She could watch the progress by light in the door crack, as floors passed.

  Finally after an endless time it jerked to a halt. Was it stuck? Or there?

  The doors tried to open so she helped them again, banged with her foot and scrabbled at the crack with her fingers, got one to move then wrenched them sideways. Wide enough to get out.

  She squeezed through and the door re-closed, smooth this time and the elevator whizzed down, down, sounding more and more remote, ending in a distant crash. Some dust poofed out the crack.

  She sneezed.

  Turning, the room instantly caught her attention. The whole top floor! A casino. Firelight from literal chandeliers, large brass fixtures with sputtering tallow candles.

  Hunched figures ranged across the floor at tables, swearing and gambling, throwing down cards, getting into fights.

  Hell yeah! This is more like it. Real life, people struggling and feeling. Desire and frustration and sudden joy.

  A uniformed troll, the maitre-d' by the clothes, appeared at her elbow, inquired "What is your pleasure?" in gravelly cultured tones.

  She considered. Not really a gambler, didn’t even know what they're gambling with. What did that leave?

  Sex, drugs, or rock and roll. The classics.

  "Sex."

  That got a knowing nod, no judgement here. He ushered her ahead, down an open lane between the tables and gambling machines. Her head was on a swivel, observing the people on the floor, sitting at tables, throwing dice, staring at screens with tickets.

  People? Mostly human; lots of other things. Gnomes of course, trolls but mostly staff, bouncers and waitstaff. Something drippy and sinuous, with a slit for a mouth and no teeth she could make out.

  Cards that didn't look like any she knew, all face-cards, all different, strange creatures she couldn't identify. Doing things, she didn't want to think about.

  One weasel caught her looking, got up to complain.

  "You spying on my cards? You a sharp? You damn..."

  But the Maitre-d' simply placed a hand on his chest, pushed him back into his seat, effortless. He subsided, grumbling. Meanwhile the player to his right had flipped his cards over, flipped them back, all while he was distracted, accusing her.

  Serves him right.

  At the far wall was a green door. The Maitre-d held it for her, ushered her through. Closed it on her, leaving her on her own.

  She found herself in a long corridor lined with doors, mostly closed. A couple naked elvish figures, in high heels and nothing else, hanging out in doorways, smoking.

  Really, smoking, from nostrils and ears, from their butt. They even had a hint of a tail.

  Otherwise sexless. Just smooth, like department store dummies. How did this work?

  Proceeding down the hallway she heard sounds behind some doors. This one, sounds of high passion, now we were getting somewhere!

  Then it turned to a sustained scream, cut off suddenly. She felt a chill, hurried on.

  Now she heard begging. Some man begging somebody to do things, perverse things, every kind of perversion. He ran on and on, just begging, never getting satisfaction.

  Here the door was open a crack so she peeked in. A gang of motorcycle toughs was taking turns, holding a virgin down on a bar while she bled and screamed, goading them on. She wanted this! Demanded it!

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  She found she was sweating.

  Next a cassock-clad priest and a confessor chained to a beam, beating him with a rod, demanding he repent. He refused, screaming obscenities at the priest. As he got more excited the priest increased his intensity.

  Here a woman was screaming accusations at a penitent man as he writhed on the floor, kicking him, accusing him. He apologized, again and again but it was never enough. She kicked him in the nuts and he began vomiting, choking on his own vomit.

  Behind the next closed door came thumping, crying, gurgling. Someone else was giggling, hearing the cries, pain or pleasure, it was impossible to tell. More giggling, creepy now, too-happy, verging on insanity. She didn’t look.

  No voices here, just the sound of an axe, chopping wood? But whatever it chopped was squishy and sometimes spattering. She passed quickly on.

  Now the sounds of eating, choking, throwing up. Then eating again. She could connect with that; had been on more than one binge she regretted.

  She got bold, opened the next door, peeked in. A roaring fire in a mountain lodge. It would have been a comfortable homey scene but for the woman on the spit, rotating over the fire, eyes wide in terror.

  Legs trussed to the pole, twitching and dripping melted fat. She would have screamed but for the pole filling her mouth.

  Then she heard a scream, but it was her own. She was screaming at this new horror.

  She couldn't stop now, opened another door to an abattoir, flesh hanging from beams on hooks, still quivering. A bloody figure, might have once been human, suspended on a wall from a meat hook through each hand.

  A beast menacing her flesh, hungry! She screamed encouragement. Eat me! Eat my slut cunt! She closed the door before the beast did anything more.

  The next was a silent tableau, a couple at a table, one holding a hogleg revolver to her own head, her hand shaking so hard it was pointing all around the room, hardly ever at her head.

  Click! and she dropped the revolver, collapsed on the table in tears. The man picked up the gun, put it to his own head. She ducked out, not strong enough to watch that play out to the end.

  She wondered, this is still Heaven, right? They can't die. Not really. This wasn't real.

  "It's all 'real', honey. As real as anything up here. They feel every cut, every tooth and nail. Feel their life ebb and wink out, in agony then just numb then gone. Wake up back in their room, they remember everything but returned to whatever form they got here in. Come back and do it again next week."

  This from a tall elvish dame, not young, maybe ageless. Saying all that in her gin-raspy voice. She pushed upright from the doorway across the way where she'd been lounging, came over, lazy, languid, all the time in the world.

  "Can I treat you to something Sweetcheeks? Make you happy? Make you feel? Make you cum? Take your life?"

  This made some kind of sense. Eternity had to pall. There would be some who needed a rush, any kind of emotion, needed to feel, needed to care. Nothing like a hell-hound ripping your entrails out to feel grateful for your warm bed, TV and hot pockets again.

  A Bang! and thud from back down the hall; it startled her.

  "I... I'm new here. Not really ready for extreme stuff, not yet. Just, you know, a little suck-and-fuck? Like what I'm used to."

  "Nothing here is like what you're used to, Angel. But sure, I get it, been a while?"

  Yes, six months in the hospital, four before that, a dry spell. Most of a year, unfucked!

  "I just died like a few days ago. If that means anything here."

  She nodded. "From your point of view; it works differently for each of us, each taking our own time. This place? Been here forever, but I remember when it opened. Strange, right?"

  She turned, went to her(?) room, opened the door with a curious key, a little silver rod with a heart-shaped tip, a wicked jagged fractal key-end that didn't so much go in the lock as seek it out, get sucked in, mate with it.

  With a sound like a sudden exhalation the door popped open a crack and the elf pushed in.

  She followed. Why not? She was clearly equipped to give me a good time. I wasn't that into women but an elf-dame? Not gonna pass this up.

  This room was a swirl of fog and light, nothing very clear. I could just make her out, standing inside some inchoate cloud.

  "Whadda ya fancy? A little slap-and-tickle? Some romance? A tropical island?

  “Maybe you want to be a castaway, the only woman on Cannibal Key? They all fuck you, then prepare to eat you!

  “A bitch in a brothel, being used by a dozen guys, slapped, spit on and bred, left slimy and pregnant on the floor with a twenty dollar bill?"

  What imagination! Nothing she would have thought of on her own. But now that she was here, why not try something dangerous? Something she'd never dare done while still alive.

  Inspired, "Skydiving! Falling from a plane, coupled? Doing it all the way down."

  That would be a blast, the fear, the sex, weightless, outside, naked. The ground rushing up!

  "You got it Angel."

  And I was in an airplane, a DC10? The door open, engines howling, wind shrieking past. Naked, with a man but still the elven person somehow. Wearing some harness of straps.

  (S)he approached, embraced, kissed me, I felt her forked tongue in my mouth, hot, erotic. Grappling now, holding her rump, humping against her.

  She held me, leaned, leaned, and we fell out the door together.

  Falling! I want to throw up; want to scream; want to fuck. Grab her hips, maneuver against her, find her(!) cock. Grapple with her, with it, get it to my sex, use heels to press her to my flesh, in me. Hump, vigorous, desperate, not conscious of anything but her and the wind and her cock inside.

  We turn, sky, ground, sky, ground, the terrain growing imperceptibly larger at first, expanding slowly as we groan and struggle, locked in a writhing couplet, warm and wet, sucking and biting and sharing breath. The wind tearing our breath away, our lives connected by our sex, by this fantasy, hot and fierce and real.

  S/he came inside, hard, the wind taking the spunk away, drops streaming up from my sex over our bodies in hurried rivulets, carried by the screaming wind.

  The ground! Falling, faster, faster. Pull the ripcord! Now!

  "Don't got no parachute Angel, this is it."

  And the ground explodes upward, a fast zoom and I can make out individual people, cars, houses, trees. Cum, cum, cum, and a white light...

  And I was in my tiny room, in my bed, in our house on Final Reward court, the TV loud, the game at some critical point. Roommate shouting, urging his team on.

  Shaking, shocked by the violence of the memory, of the thing we'd done yet not done, all a fantasy now, a dream.

  A bad dream? Well, it had been sex, that part was awesome. So awesome, I thrilled and shivered at the recollection.

  I could get addicted to this.

  Did it really happen? Still flushed, still feeling the afterglow, the adrenaline and shock and echoes of pain and pleasure. I touched my palm, where the gnome had struck, saw a little spot, squinted.

  A little deaths-head brand was embedded just under my skin, seemed to be grinning at me.

  The deal. Somebody's third strike.

  When would I pay? What would it cost? Did I have enough credit?

  Because, I had to go back to the casino and do that again.