The God, the Ghost, and the Whore: The Conclusion to the Queen and the Monster Trilogy

By Matthew Caputo

Twenty-two years after her kidnapping and brainwashing, Emily Masterdon regains consciousness and explains a horrifying plot her abductors had revealed to herto send someone back in time to prevent the fall of the Protecian Kingdom, create a monster unlike anything anyone has ever seen before, and alter history so that todays world is ruled by anarchy and chaos. Beverly Lopez, now director of the FBI, steals a government time-displacement device to travel back to the past in an attempt to set things back to the way they were always supposed to be. Or has the damage to history already become irreversible?

The God, the Ghost, and the Whore brings back old adversaries Prince Alexander, Catryna Corpa, and Henry Scarpini, joined with new villains, in a battle against Beverly Lopez to save the very fibers of time itself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Jul 9, 2018
• ISBN: 9781490789767

Matthew Caputo

Matthew Caputo was born on Long Island, New York, and currently lives with his husband, Tim, four cats and a dog in the suburbs of Houston, Texas. He obtained a doctorate in Mathematics Education from Columbia University and has been a mathematics instructor at both the high school and college levels for the past eighteen years. This is his third novel, the conclusion to The Queen and the Monster series.

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Copyright 2018 Matthew Caputo.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

ISBN: 978-1-4907-8975-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4907-8976-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018950635

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For my Mother, who bought me my first book to read, and who has always been the president of my fan club. Even when she was the only member.

And for Tim, my everything. Thank you for being by my side whether it was a thousand years ago or will be a thousand from now.

It is an unwise man who fucks in affairs he doesn’t fully understand; it is a downright fool who tries to meddle in situations he can’t possible begin to fathom. Prince Alexander, the eventual and brief ruler of the Protecian Kingdom.

I can tell you tales of men that have tried to understand me. They are all now dead. Catryna Corpa, entertainer and wanton whore.

I know that God exists, just as God knows that I exist. Neither One of Us is particularly happy with that arrangement, but We stay out of each other’s way and try to make the best of it. Henry Scarpini, archeologist and serial killer.

Sometimes, being a bitch is all a woman has to hold onto. Kathy Bates, Dolores Claiborne, 1995.

CONTENTS

Chapter 1     The Morning After

Chapter 2     Hibernation

Chapter 3     A New Way of Doing Things

Chapter 4     Ruled by Madness

Chapter 5     Answering Questions and Questioning Answers

Chapter 6     Death and Second Birth

Chapter 7     Remembering the Past

Chapter 8     Fearing the Future

Chapter 9     An Evening’s Walk through the Monuments

Chapter 10   Incongruities

Chapter 11   The Reactor in the Mountains

Chapter 12   All Hail Caesar

Chapter 13   To Awake in a New, Old World

Chapter 14   Prognosis and Premonitions

Chapter 15   The Slaughter of the Angels

Chapter 16   The Rise of the Fallen

Chapter 17   The Stone Cell

Chapter 18   Food for Thought

Chapter 19   What Needed to be Done

Chapter 20   Special Report

Chapter 21   A Lover’s Embrace

Chapter 22   An Unexpected Reunion

Chapter 23   Time’s Monster

Chapter 24   A Plan to Stop Time

Chapter 25   Catryna’s Spire

Chapter 26   The Bed Chamber

Chapter 27   The Last Stand

Epilogue   Reflecting on One’s Life

CHAPTER 1

The Morning After

H e opened his eyes wishing he hadn’t.

As soon as he saw the light of day, defused through the dirty windows that were easily twenty feet up the wall, a searing pain blossomed at the back of his head. He closed his eyes again trying to wink out the fiery agony as easily as he winked away the morning light. There was no such luck. That constant at the back of his head spreading forwards towards just behind his eyes wasn’t going anywhere. Now that he was awake, he might as well keep his eyes open, despite the pain, and see what there was to see.

At the sight of the old warehouse, Walter Dotrine started to remember bits and pieces of what had happened before he blacked out the night before. The sun was high in the sky by now. Dotrine had been unconscious, or at least unaware of his surroundings, for several hours. The last he remembered, it was dark. An old saying popped into his head: The night is darkest just before the dawn. It was just before dawn when entered the warehouse. Why? He vaguely remembered running from the street into this building, but his purpose for doing that still eluded him. Why had he run in here?

It was Janet. Janet Richards. On the street, she went by the name Honeycup. The smell of the perfume she always wore, the faint scent of honey, began to fill Dotrine’s nose. Probably just a memory, but it felt remarkably vivid. That scent created a stirring in Dotrine’s pants that he also always associated with Honeycup. He remembered having seen her last night. The smell of her perfume was so strong now, filling the stale air of the dirty warehouse, as if she was standing right there.

Dotrine had run into the warehouse after her. It was starting to become clearer to him. The warehouse was still filled with assembly lines that probably hadn’t been used in so long their engines would seize if someone flipped the power switch. There were stacks of wooden pallets in every corner. All of the merchandise had been removed from as far back as Dotrine remembered, but according to his research into the address, this location was used for the manufacturing of sewing machines. When the economy of Chicago began to fall apart, the company, named Threadworthy or something like that, closed the doors of their warehouse and filed for bankruptcy. The State of Illinois repossessed the building from the company to offset the back taxes they owed, and no one was willing to buy the lot after that. It was a different world by now. Old women didn’t sit for hours in sun-drenched rooms slumped over a sewing machine producing creations with thread, fabric, and love anymore. They worked, usually until the day they died, simply to keep ahead of their bills. There was no more time for peaceful hobbies to fill the quiet afternoons anymore. Dotrine assumed that the equipment he saw inside this warehouse, as well as the equipment he didn’t see in the back rooms or the basement storage rooms, was specifically designed for the construction of sewing machines, and no one wanted to buy the structure and then invest the time and capital to remake it to fit more modern-day needs.

Then, as with most abandoned buildings of the time, the drug addicts and dealers, the pimps, whores, and johns, the homeless and the mentally ill, began to flood through broken doors. It was during a time when Chicago had bigger issues to deal with than the vices of its few remaining businessmen buying their release from a day’s stress in the dark shadows of places such as this. Gang violence was at an all-time high. People were being murdered on the streets for their wallets, which were often empty to begin with. Some were killed simply for the sport of it. Like hunting wild deer just to mount the head, was how one of Dotrine’s collars described it.

When the war on gang violence was won, or at least a series of battles was won to give off a sense of security, Walter Dotrine, a beat cop in the Chicago Police Department, was transferred to vice, where he quickly climbed the ladder of success to being a lieutenant. Dotrine wasn’t happy in that assignment. When it came to vice, Dotrine had a motto of live and let live, but he also needed the job. The economy of Chicago was still shaky at that time, though back on an up-swing, and he didn’t want to make waves. Improvements in the city’s financial well-being had a way of being short-lived, and Dotrine didn’t want to be unemployed when things went bad again.

It was during one of his vice patrols was when Dotrine first met Honeycup. She looked cheap but not ugly. She definitely didn’t appear to have taken care of herself in some time. Brown hair that was tangled and filthy, probably covered in dirt and cum that had dried into a crust. Clothes that were quite revealing, but not stylish. She took great efforts to make herself appear exactly as she was. Willing to do anything for anyone if the price was right.

It was dumb luck that Dotrine saw the money exchange hands from the driver of some luxury car to the hooker as she was climbing out of the passenger seat. They either didn’t see him or assumed that he was some other customer looking for something to buy without any questions being asked. Regardless, Dotrine took off running after the prostitute as the driver of the car peeled out and got away. Dotrine ran down the sidewalk after the prostitute while others that saw the chase vanished into the shadows. Draping themselves in a cloak of darkness as easily as slipping into a coat. Away from the action so they wouldn’t become involved. Honeycup ducked into a building, this very warehouse in fact, and when Dotrine followed her through the doorway, she hit across the face with an empty vodka bottle. Cheap vodka, Dotrine had noticed afterwards.

The feeling in Dotrine’s head on that long-ago night was a lot like the feeling he was having now. It was starting to become Honeycup’s signature move for him. That time, however, Dotrine didn’t lose consciousness, but he did lose his feet and fall onto the hard, concrete floor. From the ground, Dotrine managed to grab the hooker by the ankle, sending her to stone as well. She hit the ground with a dense thud and the jingle of cheap jewelry hitting other cheap jewelry. Then, a kick to his forehead from her spiked heeled feet before Dotrine managed to pull her back along the concrete floor so they were lying on the ground side by side. Like lovers sharing a bed.

From the corners of the room, deep inside the shadows, Dotrine could hear the footsteps of people, or creatures that once been people, scurrying from the activity, most likely through back doors and blocked hallways that no one else knew of. Dotrine could also hear the random dropping of a needle or a spoon or a pipe to the concrete below. The random demand that money paid should be returned since the services requested weren’t completed. Random screams. Random people falling to the ground. Nothing could be seen though. The warehouse was pitch black inside, making it the perfect stage for such desires that were best satisfied far from the light.

Dotrine got the hooker handcuffed behind her back. He couldn’t help but notice her pretty nails, manicured some time ago, and since chewed down to bloody, ragged stumps with nerves. The hooker screamed as he slapped the cuffs on her, trying to get anyone within earshot to think he was beating her or killing her or something worse. Regardless, she was probably in pain. She fell on the ground hard, most likely landing in the broken glass from the bottle she had used as a weapon. Still, Dotrine was sure his pain was worse. He could feel blood starting to trickle down his head and into his right eye. If there was anything to see other blackness, it would probably be a blurry film by now.

You are under arrest for solicitation, resisting arrest, and assault of a police officer. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will…

That was as far as he got. With them still lying on the ground of the warehouse, Dotrine stopped speaking and looked at the woman in front of him. Barely an outline against the darkness. There was a knee in his crotch, but it wasn’t to fight him off. Not this time. It was caressing him. And the vice detective was liking it. He knew the hooker could feel his dick hardening against her knee, and he knew that she was not going to end this night in central booking. I am sorry I’ve been a bad girl, officer. But maybe, if you give me a chance, I can show you what a good girl I can be.

It was a line that she had undoubtedly used more times than she could count. Dotrine had no doubt this woman would have bitten off her own pinky finger to get out of those handcuffs at that moment. He had no doubt that he was being used by her, but was that any different than the police chief using him when he was reassigned to a department he hated? A department that had unspoken advantages that other departments didn’t. Advantages like this scenario that was playing out in front of him at this moment.

Dotrine didn’t remove the handcuffs from her wrists, but he did rip off her cheap skirt, listening to the avalanche of wrapped condoms falling from the pocket he tore through. The hooker rolled onto her back, mindful to keep the handcuffs in view, knowing he’d like to see them. As she wrapped her legs around his waist, Dotrine pulled down his uniform pants and dropped his boxers. He was already fully erect against her grinding on him. Dotrine unwrapped one of the condoms from the ground and slid it on. Then, after a moment’s consideration, he grabbed another and slid it on as well. God knows what diseases this bitch had, so better be safe and double-bag it.

As he pushed himself into her, she howled into the darkness of the not-so-abandoned warehouse. She moaned louder than any woman he had been with before. Again, Dotrine knew it was an act. She was playing a role that she knew he wanted her to play. The meth-heads began to recirculate around the room and the other whores came out from their hiding places as Dotrine fucked this woman, harder and more mercilessly than he ever had done with anyone before. He knew they were all watching them, possibly recording them, as he turned her over, pushed face against the glass-strewn concrete floor, and started fucking her in the ass. It was the first time Dotrine had ever had anal sex, and still he knew that all of her screams and pleas for mercy were only an act.

It was an act she kept up for two hours that night.

This exchange went on for three years. Lieutenant Dotrine would walk his beat along Honeycup’s, who eventually he learned was actually Janet Richards, normal street. He would ignore her legal indiscretions, and she would let him fuck her in the abandoned sewing machine factory. Most nights, she went willingly enough, seeing him approaching from down the street and casually walking towards the warehouse, slow enough that he could easily follow her at a slow jog.

Then there were other nights when she put up more of a fight. Janet would throw a punch or a kick or a knee to the groin (not in the way she had on their first night). Dotrine never understood why she would fight him some nights and not others, but he assumed that she was probably crashing from some kind of a high when she became violent. Dotrine had never bothered to shine a flashlight into her eyes to check her pupil dilation, and he didn’t care to. What difference did it make if she was cranked out of her mind as long as she was eventually willing to let him fuck her? On those occasions, Dotrine almost always ended up cuffing her, smacking her around for a while, or even spitting on her. Once he even used his nightstick to fuck her after her shot his load into the doubled-up condom. That night, he knew how it sounded when her screams weren’t an act.

Now, Dotrine looked around the abandoned warehouse, trying to regain his balance and his vision, trying to settle the throbbing in the back of his head. Memories from last night were beginning to solidify in his mind. He had seen Janet last night, and she had put up a chase. There was something different about last night, though. When she ran from him, there didn’t appear to be that playful bounce in her step that she usually had. Janet was running scared. From something.

Dotrine remembered following her into warehouse. It was a dark inside as it always was. There was no scurrying of feet running into the darkness this time. After that first night, there never was again. He had become part of the family. Whenever he was up for review at the precinct, Dotrine wondered if this would be the time that his chief would show him a video, anonymously delivered, of his plowing a known hooker. With these recordings in their possession, the dealers and users, whores and pimps, bums and madmen, had no reason to run and hide when this particular pig entered their lair.

But last night was quieter than most. Usually, Dotrine could hear the whispers of conversation, quiet and inarticulate, but definitely there. Almost a background hum of white noise against the blackness of surrounding shadows. Last night, it was as though an exterminator had just been through, cleaning up the vermin from their nest. From the sound of it, Dotrine and Honeycup were the only two in the building. Their private resort filled with dust and dirt and filth.

And that was where the clearest memories stopped. Dotrine had a vague recollection of seeing the shadowy image of Janet in the distance, a black shadow against less black shadows. She was still running away from him. That much was hazy, but Dotrine certainly did not remember catching up with her. He didn’t even remember making it passed the broken doorway of the warehouse on this particular night.

There was an explosion of pain in the back of his head, his eyes flashed a blinding white light as if there was a short circuit somewhere in his brain, and then the world just winked out from existence. Someone had hit him. Not Janet, because she was in front of him, but there was someone else behind him that struck him in the back of the head with something. A blow to the back of the head could definitely cause the blackout or unconsciousness that he had experienced. It would definitely explain the pop of white light he saw. But who would have done that?

As if by instinct, Walter Dotrine reached around to the back of his head. There was a large lump just under the crown of his skull, about the width of a baseball. It was still tender to the touch, the slightest pressure causing a lightning bolt of the pain to shoot directly through his head to his eyes and even send tingling sparks down to his fingers and toes. This was not an injury caused by a fist. He must have been hit by some kind of a metal pipe or a rock or something.

His hands drifted down to his belt, fearing what he was going to feel there, or not feel there. That could have been the oddest part of all that had happened. Everything was in its place. His sidearm, nightstick, handcuffs, taser, mace, keys. Nothing was taken. If someone was going to attack him in this manner, whether robbery was the initial purpose or not, they would have helped themselves to these items. But they didn’t. They just knocked him out and left him there. For some reason, they needed him there, but they also needed him out of commission for a few hours.

By the time Dotrine’s eyes were able to focus in the filtered, speckled daylight, he started to see that last night was not a typical night by any means. There was blood drying in long uneven trails stretching from the center of the room, next to the first of many abandoned assembly lines, and reaching away in diminishing tones towards every corner of the warehouse. This was the product of several trips and many hours of work. There was a lot of blood. Someone had died here.

As Dotrine took a step forward on uncertain and wobbly legs, he realized that he had never seen the warehouse in daylight, whether it was diffused through a layer of dirt or not. What he was seeing now could have been the evidence of some long-ago crime. Since the Threadworthy sewing machine company closed and locked their doors for the last time, even after the people of the night had disabled those locks and reopened those doors, probably no one had seen this floor in daylight. It was likely that this was blood from a crime that had been committed years ago, or several less significant events happening over a period of several months. This may be nothing as sinister as Dotrine initially thought.

After a few more stumbling footsteps into the room, Walter Dotrine saw that his initial assessment of the situation was correct. Lying at the end of a trail of blood, next to a stack of empty wooden pallets, there was a severed hand. Dotrine immediately recognized the cheap rings adorning the fingers as belonging to Janet Honeycup Richards. One was a cubic zirconia with an imitation gold setting, another that was a simple silver band that was dirty and tarnished, and a third was nothing more elaborate than stainless steel shaped like a dragon. It was definitely hers. Dotrine remembered the biting pain of that dragon against the head of his dick when she would jerk him to either get him hard or to finish him off when he kept sliding out. On the nights he referred to as her busy nights, usually around the end of the month when the bills were due.

She was dead. While Dotrine was unconscious, or maybe awake but unaware of what was going on around him, someone had killed her, dismembered her, and left her body in pieces throughout the main assembly floor of this warehouse. At least two pieces, but there had to be more. All that blood, there would have to be.

Dotrine closed his eyes and began to rub the sockets with the heels of his palms, trying to wipe away the image of the severed hand. Janet’s hand. Even with his eyes shut, he could still it, lying on the concrete, palm down, costume jewelry facing up. Dotrine rubbed his eyes until he could see bright orange and yellow blossoms popping in the blackness of his shut eyelids. Through the bursts of bright colors from the pressure of his hands, he could still the severed hand as though the image was burned into his retinas.

Before opening his eyes again, Dotrine made certain to turn to the side. He wanted to make sure that he couldn’t see Janet’s hand when he opened them again. Having turned to the left, when Dotrine opened his eyes, he saw a new side of the warehouse. More assembly lines. These were as filthy and dirty from lack of use as the one he had just looked at. The one with Janet’s hand lying on the ground beside it, his mind added.

There was another smear of blood in this direction as well. Another drag-mark from what most likely originated just inside the busted door to the street and ended somewhere to Dotrine’s left. He knew that he didn’t want to see what was waiting for him where the drag mark ended, but he couldn’t keep away. Like slowing down to look at a traffic accident, it was just something that was required.

On legs that were still uncertain and felt like crystal stilts, Dotrine cautiously made his walk to the left, following the streak of blood along the concrete floor. It was a heavier stain than the one left by the hand, so Dotrine assumed that this must be a large piece of the victim. Maybe something to identify it as anyone other than Janet. Some other whore with bad taste in jewelry and worse taste in clients.

Part of Dotrine’s mind was screaming at him to call for backup, report what was seen, and follow police procedure for this sort of situation. He knew that for every second he was casually walking through this building without calling it in as a crime scene, he would be seen as a more plausible suspect. But he needed to know exactly what was going on here first. After all, he was blacked out for hours, and it was possible he had more to do with the events that were unfolding than he could remember.

Like a firecracker exploded in his mind, Dotrine realized that he could have done this. It was possible that the blow to his head wasn’t just to incapacitate him, but maybe it was meant to kill him. Maybe, instead, it triggered some sort of instinctual response. A fight or flight reaction that he took out on Janet. Was it possible that he killed her and cut her into pieces while having memory loss from being hit in the back of head? Was it possible that he had killed her in this gruesome manner?

The blood trail Dotrine was following ended abruptly. No severed leg or arm at the end of it. The red smear just stopped. Maybe the victim of this attack had managed to survive. Maybe she was getting proper medical attention at this very moment. While making a statement to the police, of course. How long would it be before they linked Dotrine to this location? How long before he became a suspect in this attack? Was he already? His shift had most likely ended hours ago, and he never checked in. Were other officers out looking for him right now? Would they find him like this?

A drop of blood fell to the concrete just next to where the red streak ended. A single drop, exploding into a tiny red starburst before settling back to the ground. The drop was joined by another. And then a third. Dotrine followed the drops up towards the only possible origin of their descent. At the top of the idle assembly line was a thin red stream, blood drops forming at the end of it, where the stream met the edge of the metal counter. Another drop formed, fattened, and then fell. Dotrine could only see the very end of this assembly line from where he was standing. He was looking through a large doorway, and much of the next room was obscured by the wall. Maybe, in the original floorplan of the building, this area was reserved for smaller work and needed to sectioned off from the rest.

One careful step forward, and then another. The blood drops were forming and falling to the ground in faster succession now. Dotrine could see a little more of the vinyl belt that used to send gears and pivots to workers to be transformed into sewing machines. Another step and he could see a little more. And then he saw the curl of black hair on the assembly line belt. Except not entirely black. It was soaked in blood turning it into something approximating a deep ocean shade of purple. As Dotrine began to take another step forward, another step towards the undeniable truth, another step towards seeing what was lying there waiting for him, he heard the voice from behind.

It rang out in the silence almost making Dotrine scream in fright. Still, he had to bite back the urge to scream. Something in that voice, the deep but somehow over-confident voice of someone who has the world in his hand, made the lump on the back of his head throb again. Not like he was hit a second time, but like someone was pushing down on the injury to make sure he felt it. To make sure he understood how much worse it could be.

It looks as though you have gotten yourself in some trouble.

That sentence felt like a joke of an understatement, but there was something about it that resonated with terror. Just hearing that kind of an assessment of his current situation made Dotrine feel like a scolded child. Slowly, Walter Dotrine turned around and looked at the man behind him. The man whom so accurately described his predicament.

He was like something out of a history book. Or a horror movie. Dressed all in black. An absurdly long black cape rolling down from his shoulders in rippling waves. Gold bracelets and some kind of a gold choker were attaching the cape to his wrists and neck. His face was pale but severe, as if looking at him for too long may result in blindness. Or madness. Or something much worse. He had dark brown hair and a similarly dark goatee. Bright green eyes and a smile that was filled with crooked and yellowing teeth.

Who are you? Dotrine wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer to this, but it was all he could think of to say. Part of him wanted to ask the man if he’d prefer the mop or the shovel when cleaning up this mess, but the sight of him, the very presence of him, nearly froze Dotrine’s tongue in his mouth. The three words he managed to say slipped out in a high-pitched squeak like a twelve-year old trying to sound like a grown up.

The man’s smile widened making a wave of shivers break out down Dotrine’s spine as though needles had grown from his vertebrae. "There was a time when that question required no answer. There was a time when the mere sight of me would send people falling to their knees and the earth itself to quake in fear. That, however, was a long time ago. A time that time simply forgot.

Back then, I was royalty. I had a chance to rule the world that feared me, but things happened that shouldn’t have. People interfered and now I am only a memory that very few actually share. You see, when I died, I didn’t die entirely. There was part of me that refused to let that affliction of commoners infect me. I knew I was something more. Something that was incapable of death. I was nothing short of a god. The man took a step forward, a step closer to Dotrine. Beams of sunlight splashed across his face and nearly surrounded him with an aura of white light. He could have looked like an angel at that moment, but the light just made his evil, his rotten soul, more obvious by the contrast. You can call me Prince Alexander.

Dotrine took a cautious step backwards. Who was this man? What did he want? And more importantly, what role did he play in the grisly murder and mutilation that had happened here. What happened here last night? It was all Dotrine could think to ask. All other thoughts and ideas could have waited until another time and place to be answered. It was only a matter of time before Dotrine would be found and would need to give a report, a statement, or some kind of an account of why he never checked in at the precinct after his shift was over. And that explanation would need to include what he found here. And then, at that moment, his fate would no longer be in his hands.

Once again, Alexander grinned that disgusting, twisted grin, forcing Dotrine to take another step back. The dull glow that surrounded this man spilled over his face and body, washing out his complexion into muted tones of grays. For an instant, Prince Alexander could have been a ghost. You were attacked. You following that hooker into this warehouse, and then you were jumped from behind. It was quite a brawl that ensued. The hooker joined in on the attack. Actually, she swung a metal pipe at you, but missed. Then, you killed her. Stabbed her with a piece of an old knife that was lying on the ground. Probably something left over by one of the other people that used this place for their businesses. Their secret exploitations of the world. The man that jumped you initially, then hit you again. This time using the pipe that the hooker had dropped. Knocked you out cold.

With uncertain hesitation, Dotrine took a step forward this time. This man, this supposed prince and god, knew too much to simply be in the right place at the right time. He saw everything happen and waited until now to say something. Throughout the entire incident, he never called for help to aid either of them. Just casually waited for Dotrine to wake up and discover everything for himself. Who cut her up? I know I am not capable of doing something like that. Not to her. Even if I wasn’t thinking straight. Dotrine leaned in as he spoke. If there were other ears listening, he didn’t want them to hear him now. He was all but confessing to murder.

With a sigh, Alexander said, The same man that attacked you initially cut her up. His voice was conversational and calm as though he was speaking of nothing any more disturbing than the weather or having received a speeding ticket. This sort of grotesquery was nothing out of the ordinary for him. I have a feeling that man was her pimp. Probably angry at her for keeping such regular company with you. And for no money in his pocket. Alexander tilted his head up to the ceiling. He knew something more. Something he was not willing to tell. It was probably done to send a message to any or all of his other girls that crossing him wasn’t going to be tolerated. One can quickly learn never to cross the man that helps you if a message is so clear and so very brutal.

Well, come on. Help me clean up this place. I need to take care of her before the other cops show up. Dotrine began to head back towards the entrance to the warehouse, appearing to consider this the center to his cleaning of the blood trails. It was, after all, where all the crimson streaks originated from. We’ll have to either bury her or cremate what’s left of her. Maybe there’s some kind of a furnace in the back.

Alexander was now the one to whisper. There isn’t time enough for that. Look at the amount of blood you would need to clean up, and still they would find residue of it. No matter how long and how hard you scrub. Alexander turned to look over his shoulder, sending his cape in a spiraling swirl around his ankles. Your comrades in arms are on their way as we speak. They will be here in a few minutes. Prince Alexander turned back to look at the Dotrine again. He repeated, "There is no time to clean up this place.

You are going to be arrested when they get here. They aren’t going to find any evidence of the other man that attacked you and cut her into pieces. He is far too good for that. You will be arrested, you will be interrogated, and you will be placed in central holding. That much is unavoidable at this point. Prince Alexander leaned closer and whispered. For the first time since they began speaking, he actually sounded concerned. That will be the extent of it, however. I have some connections with the law enforcement in this city. Connections far bigger than you, of course. I have connections with the judges that will hear your case if it was going to go that far. I have influence over the mayor. Just don’t do or say anything that will make my helping you impossible. You have no memories of the events that transpired here, including the murder and mutilation of Janet Richards.

Dotrine’s eyes widened as if he had just been jabbed with a cattle prod. It was something about the words murder and mutilation. Hearing them said out loud made this whole situation feel real for the first time. Far too real. Not a horrible dream that had a timeline to run out before it stopped. This was real life. This was not going to go away once day surrendered its hold on the sky to night. There was something else, though. Prince Alexander had said Janet’s name. Not calling her, the hooker, or the prostitute, as he had done before. Despite his repeated eluding to the contrary, Prince Alexander knew her. Dotrine could already tell that this man was not one to commit a slip of the tongue on a regular basis. If ever in his life. He said her name for one reason alone. To make sure that Dotrine knew what he was capable of. A guarantee that Dotrine would understand that he, Prince Alexander, held all the cards and all the keys. A signed contract of Dotrine’s obedience to him.

If you follow along with playing ignorant, or simply being ignorant, you’ll be released before dinnertime tonight. Just don’t tell them about me.

Dotrine nodded nervously. His hands were trembling, and his knees felt as if someone had replaced the bones with jelly. He could hear the screech of tires coming to a stop outside of the building. They were here. They were here to find him and find out what had happened. To find out whatever he had or had not done. It was time for the act to begin. As the sound of car doors slamming filled the air, followed by footsteps pounding their way across the sidewalk and towards the disabled door of the warehouse, Dotrine asked, Why are you helping me? What do you want from me in return?

Alexander laughed. It was a subdued laugh, given the circumstances, but it was a laugh, nonetheless. For the moment, all I want from you is the following of the instructions as I had laid them out to you. After that, you and I will come to terms with exactly what you owe me for saving your life and your future. Not a small favor to be paid back. Alexander chuckled again. It sounded like the cops were about to enter the building. They were assembling outside the door, waiting for everyone to be in position. Remember, some things can be paid for upfront. Others must be paid in installments over time. This would be one of the latter. I will be in touch.

With a swirl of his black cape, Prince Alexander turned around and began to walk away from Dotrine. It almost appeared as though a black cloud was circling around him, consuming him, and carrying him away. He was moving in the direction of the front door, where he knew the cops were about to storm in. Still, he walked calmly and surely, the long cape rippling in the wake of his stride like waves in the ocean an hour before a storm was due to hit. And then he was around the corner and gone from sight.

In Alexander’s place, almost instantaneously, a swarm of uniformed officers rushed into the room, guns drawn and pointed towards the corners, clearing the warehouse’s blind spots of any other people. On your knees! Now! Dotrine complied. He slowly lowered himself to his knees and placed the palms of his hands on the back of his head, meshing his fingers together as he did. A few minutes ago, this would have caused such pain in his throbbing skull that he would have screamed out loud, but right now he felt nothing of the sort. He actually felt relieved.

My name is Lieutenant Walter Dotrine with vice. I was attacked during my patrol last night.

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Walter Dotrine was released from his holding cell in the back of the police station by 3:17 that afternoon.

CHAPTER 2

Hibernation

"E mily, this is Shannon. She works at a beauty parlor just outside of LA. Where all the actresses live." The old man spoke the words as he had done dozens of times before, hoping that this iteration would yield a different response. In the back of his mind, he remembered a quote from Albert Einstein. Something about repeating the same actions over and over again and expecting different results being the definition of insanity. In his line of work, the old man knew insanity well. Knew it by all of the new and old names that it used. Knew every aberration and every mutation of it. Understood each nuance and each detail.

But he also knew of hope and faith. Every time he spoke to Emily Masterdon, that hope continued to dwindle and fractures in his faith began to deepen. Still, he had to try. He had promised that much.

Dr. Christopher Benson stood up straight from leaning over the girl in the chair. It had become harder to follow these motions in recent years, and increasingly so in the past month. He was getting too old to keep this up. Too old to keep up with the heartache and let down that his career had offered him. When Benson entered the field of psychiatry, that branch of science offered a bounty of fruit. Rewards and promises of a future where he could help people, where he could turn lives around, where can make a difference in someone’s life. A future where he mattered. The tiny victories he enjoyed used to light the way over the next hurdle and through the next challenge. Now, the losses were becoming greater and harder to overcome, and the victories were becoming insignificant and farther between. Benson was beginning to realize an unavoidable fact: he was outliving his usefulness.

On legs that felt like fine crystal stemware, Benson walked away from his patient of three years. Now, Emily was eleven years old, and she was still in a vegetative state. If anything, Emily had drifted further away from reality in those years. It felt like a lifetime ago when he first saw her. Hopping out of the passenger seat of her mother’s car after it had been driven through the wall of this very hospital, mortally crippling one of his psychiatrists, and freeing one of his most dangerous patients. Benson still remembered watching Emily murder her own mother, moving like a zombie, while Josef Prekovics killed his doctor, Melanie Sanger. Benson had hoped to be retired by now, letting Sanger step up as the hospital administrator in his place, but now he understood that he was destined to work in this building, fighting against the plagues of mental illness that came through his door, like a child trying to dry an ocean with a plastic bucket, until the day he died. Still, he wouldn’t trust Emily’s case with anyone else. He knew what she was capable of, and he knew that if someone were to reach her, it would be him. If reaching her was still a possibility.

I saw a commercial on TV yesterday with an actor’s daughter that was about your age. She had the most beautiful blonde curls. If you sit still, I want to see how you’d look like that. The words were spoken as if there was a possibility of Emily not sitting still, as if she was going to bring their hopes and dreams to life that morning and jump from her chair, freed from the invisible shackles she wore. Shannon did work in a beauty parlor outside of Los Angeles, but she had never laid eyes on an actual actress in her life. Other than in the movies, of course. Still, Emily didn’t know that, and she didn’t need to know that. Shannon began to run her fingers through Emily’s hair. Going through the motions like she had done for years now. When Dr. Benson had first approached her, he spoke of a girl that had been through horrific events and had simply stepped back from reality. He stressed that making her feel like a normal girl of her age was the best treatment for her. Shannon agreed to help. Three years later, she felt more like an undertaker styling the hair of a corpse than she felt like a beautician, but like Benson, she had a made a promise to help the young girl.

Emily sat in her chair and stared out the window in front of her. There were fine wires interwoven through the glass, but she didn’t notice them. Outside the window, the sun beamed down from the blue sky onto what could have been a park or nature preserve. Such splendor only feet away from her, but she didn’t see it. Birds splashed in their birdbaths and chirped into the morning sun. Emily didn’t hear them. The words being spoken to her by Dr. Benson and Shannon, the hairstylist, sounded like they were coming from underwater. Garbled and inarticulate. Almost like listening to the radio through a film of static. But she knew they were there. Emily could feel them in the room with her. She recognized their presence. Something given off by their bodies. A change in the energy of the room. It felt comfortable. These two were the closest things to friends that Emily had anymore. They were the only contact with people that still spoke to her even though she couldn’t understand their words most of the time.

Their time together passed quickly. Every time they met, their encounters passed quicker than the last time, or so it felt. Shannon showed her a hand-held mirror so she could admire the golden curls on her head, but Emily couldn’t respond. She didn’t care if Shannon gave her a perm, dyed her hair neon pink, or shaved it off completely. Having someone in the room with her was nice. It felt like the human thing to do. The normal thing to do. It reminded Emily of her life before things changed.

Then, the dreaded taps of their footfalls growing farther away, the whispers of their voices speaking amongst themselves of things she shouldn’t hear, then the slam of the door to her room closing. Closing her away. Sealing her off from the rest of the world. Locking her in with her mind. And with Them.

It would only take minutes for her to be back in the