I know bad people when I see them, and Gordon Fuller was a world-class, evil scumbag, son of a bitch. He also happened to be my best friend.
Funny how things work out.
What that makes me, I do not know.
Since meeting him back in 1996, I’d personally witnessed him beat the shit out of several individuals, and at least one woman (Debbie . . . Donna . . . ? Can’t remember anymore). Granted she stabbed him about two inches from his dick, but that doesn’t make up for the beating he gave her in return.
I’ve seen Gordon steal people’s money and drugs, usually from right under their noses (with drugs, that was especially the case). I’ve seen him con his way in and out of some of the most fucked-up situations and lie like it was an Olympic event.
Gordon was a prick. No doubt. But he was also one hell of a stand-up guy when the shit came down hard. I will give him that. And seeing as I had a knack for getting in some tight spots, he proved to be a decent friend.
I almost feel sorry that I personally led him to Hell, but whatever. That’s where he was headed anyway.
It was the middle of March and Los Angeles was having a strange spell of mixed weather days. One second it would rain, the next the sun would come out. The nights were cold, and the constant wind made it all raw, uncomfortable.
I was living in an apartment off Franklin. A scuzzy, roach-infested little dump, but it was cheap and times were tough, so it suited me fine. Not like I ever threw dinner parties or anything.
The last time I scored was six weeks prior and only because I’d walked into a bar that looked like it had been hit by an alcohol bomb. It was closing time and mating standards had dropped for the remaining bar hags, so one of them came home with me.
Julie was her name, I think. She was about as homely as I am, and I remember she sounded like a rattle when she walked. I later found out it was because she carried Tic Tacs in her purse, but I’ll always remember her as the Rattle Girl. The last woman who’d even touched me.
Julie was the first person I’d ever heard speak about that stupid box, as well. She talked a lot but all I was thinking about was getting in her pants. Somewhere between foreplay and whatever passed for actual penetration, she told me about a friend, some shitbag named Andy Getz, who recently found a strange little box in an alley. Sold it to a pawnshop for a couple bucks, only to discover later that the pawnshop had turned around and sold it for, get this, ten thousand dollars.
That got my attention.
Ten grand for a fucking box?
I told Gordon about it later on and amazingly he knew Andy. He said Andy used to be the go-between for a guy he bought weed from. Gordon’s hunch was that the box was full of drugs or something—that it was the contents that made it valuable, not the box itself.
We decided to check it out. It had all the elements of interest for Gordon: easy money and the chance to screw someone over.
We found Andy Getz at a dive bar in Hollywood, just past the cleaned-up touristy section. It wasn’t even noon and he was already drunk.
I slid up next to him on the right and Gordon flanked him on the left.
Gordon spoke first.
“Andy,” Gordon said in a mildly threatening manner. “This is my buddy, Ed.”
Andy looked at me with glazed eyes.
I nodded. “We hear you had some kind of box that you sold.”
Andy’s shoulders slumped like he was revisiting his biggest regret. “Aw, man,” he whined. “Everybody in town know about that shit?”
Gordon said, “Some bitch named Julie told Ed here about it.” Andy looked at Gordon and then back to me. “Yeah, I fucked her, too.”
I rolled my tongue in my mouth and tried to remember if I’d used a condom.
Gordon ordered a round of beers to make the situation friendlier. After a few, Andy spoke freely about the box and the deal he lost out on.
“It was about so big,” he said, indicating what seemed to be a drunken, palm-sized square. “And it had these grooves with metal and shit. I tried to open the fucking thing but all that happened was a little static spark.”
I looked at Gordon. “Spark?” I asked. “That’s fucking weird.”
Andy drunkenly nodded, swinging his head side to side depending on which one of us was talking. “And I’ll tell you something. That box freaked me out. Honest. It was weird. Stupid little box and it gave me the creeps.”
He was getting sloppy. It was time to get the key info. Gordon took the ball and ran. “So what pawnshop was it again?”
Andy thumbed back over his shoulder and almost fell off the stool. “Iz that place over by, what the hell’s it called, the Scientist Building?”
“Yeah, thaz it. The shop in the strip mall across the street.”
Gordon and I exchanged another glance. The pawnshop was called Dexter’s. It was four blocks from my apartment in a strip mall behind some trendy restaurants. We thanked drunken Andy, slapped him on the back, and slipped out of the darkness of the dive bar into the blinding light of day.
We headed over to Dexter’s Pawn Shop. Neither of us had a car, so we had to take the bus, of all things, from Hollywood a few dozen blocks north back to my neck of the woods. I got off the bus behind Gordon, and as he stepped off onto the sidewalk I noticed the angular bulge under his shirt.
I grabbed him by the shoulder as the bus pulled away. “You carrying a piece, man?”
“Yeah,” Gordon said like it was the dumbest question in the world. “Of course I am.”
“Why?”
Gordon rubbed his chin mockingly. “Let me see,” he said. “To shoot someone in the fucking face if they mess with me. How’s that sound?”
I didn’t reply. I just shook my head and walked toward the strip mall where Dexter’s Pawn Shop sat between a Korean barbecue and a dry cleaner’s that had gone out of business. We approached the shop. Gordon grabbed the door, but despite the OPEN sign hanging crooked in the window, it didn’t budge.
Inside I could see a mountain of a man with a beard, perched behind the counter, on a stool that looked like it grew from his ass. I waved and the man mountain reached under the counter and released the door lock.
I entered first with Gordon trailing. The dude at the counter kept his hand underneath it. I assumed that’s where he kept his gun.
“How can I help you, gentlemen?” he said, removing his hand, evidently deciding we were safe.
“Are you Dexter?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “Dexter died years ago. I’m Jerry. Anything in particular you’re looking for?”
Gordon stepped up. “Name’s Gordon. This is Ed. We’re looking for some information.”
Jerry eyeballed us hard. “You guys cops?”
Gordon laughed out loud and I just smiled. “Good Lord, no,” Gordon said. “We’re anything but cops.”
“What kind of information you looking for?” Jerry asked, and I noticed his hand inching under the counter again.
“We’re looking for somebody who bought something from you,” Gordon said.
Jerry shook his head. “That’s not being very specific. Besides, we don’t give out that kind of information.”
My heart almost stopped as I saw Gordon reach for something behind him and relaxed when he came back with his wallet and not the gun. He pulled out a twenty and laid it on the counter.
“Somebody bought a small box for a lot of dough.”
Jerry took the twenty, then wrote a name on a scrap of paper and slid it back.
“Thanks, Jerry,” Gordon said and abruptly turned and went for the exit.
I nodded at the man mountain named Jerry. He nodded back, and I saw the corner of his mouth curl slightly, and his eyes narrow like he knew something we didn’t. A chill snaked down my spine and I almost ran into Gordon as he waited for the smirking man mountain to buzz the door.
The name on the paper scrap was Thomas Harden. Anybody who lived in Los Angeles or watched a movie knew who he was. I sure did. He was a producer known for spending very little money on movies and making millions back.
He specialized in horror movies, the films that teens flocked to on weekends. Harden knew how to snag the kids. He put in lots of violence, graphic and horrible torture and mutilation, and added just enough sex and nudity to keep the censors at bay.
Even Gordon thought Harden was a sick fuck. That’s saying a lot.
In one film I saw, there was a scene where a nude girl was skinned alive on camera. It lasted ten minutes without cutting away, and just the sounds of the girl’s shrieks would have been enough to turn my stomach. That was the last time I watched a Harden-produced movie.
And this was the guy who had spent ten thousand dollars on a stupid little box.
Gordon and I took buses all the way to the base of the Hollywood Hills, where the bus lines stopped on Ventura Boulevard.
From there we walked it because Gordon didn’t want to take a cab. I went along with it, in active denial of what was really happening. We actually didn’t take a cab because we didn’t want any record of where we went or what we were doing.
Strange the way crimes start sometimes, no? Most people think it’s all planning, premeditation. The scary thing is, it can be unspoken right up to the point of break-in or murder, just a silent agreement between two nasty bastards like me and Gordon.
As we approached the gates of Thomas Harden’s mansion perched in the hills we both knew, without so much as speaking a word of it, we were going to break in and get that box, one way or another.
Something about the very idea of the mystery box had, and I know this sounds odd, possessed us both. Maybe it was the ten grand Harden had paid. Maybe it was the loss in that loser Andy’s eyes or the dangerous smirk on the man mountain’s lips, the look on his face; but something beyond simple greed drove us up those long, winding roads.
We stopped just short of the paved driveway and the black iron gates flanked by security cameras. The house was tucked inside high walls and thick foliage planted to deter unwanted fans and intruders.
I flinched and backed away when I saw the cameras, but Gordon squinted and raised his hands.
“They’re not on,” he said. “Look.”
I looked up. He was right. The red indicator lights below the lenses were off, and the cameras hung at a sort of dead level. Even if they were on, they would only catch our feet at best.
Curious, I gave the gate a push, and to both our surprise, it creaked open. Nothing was on or locked. As I pushed the gate open wider, I got the sense that the whole place was shut down. Something wasn’t right.
Even Gordon felt it, and that prick never felt anything. He pointed ahead, up the shoehorn driveway. The arc peaked at a huge, modern/Spanish-style mansion. It was the oddest house I’d ever fucking seen—instead of sections, it just looked like stacked stucco squares with way too many windows offset at different levels.
“Is that his house?” I asked.
Gordon took the gun, some kind of semi-automatic, from his waistband as he walked ahead. “Sure looks like it. Come on. Let’s make this a quick in-and-out.”
We walked fast and steady up the driveway to the front door, which we found open a sliver.
Gordon looked at me. I shrugged.
“We’re just getting the box and then splitting, right?” I asked. I felt a quiver in my voice.
And Gordon heard it.
He grinned at me and lowered his head. “Let’s see what there is to see.”
The tone in his voice screamed trouble, and if I’d had a lick of sense I would have turned around right then, but I didn’t. Instead I followed Gordon as he pushed open the front door of the odd mansion, and the smell of sulfur and urine hit us both like an unexpected wave.
“Fucking hell,” I said, throwing my hand over my nose and mouth. “Stinks!”
Gordon pulled up his T-shirt, used it to buffer the stench, and pushed on down a long narrow hall covered with framed movie posters. All horror. All produced by Harden. Besides the posters, everything was white.
The walls were white. The carpet was white. The closed door in between the last set of posters was so white, that if not for the silver handle, I might not have noticed a door at all.
Until we reached the end of the hall and the carpet started fading to red; sopping-wet, bloody red.
The spacious living room was a huge white square, not furnished, nothing on the walls . . . until recently, it seemed. The walls were splattered with blood that still ran and dripped. Chunks of matter, skin and organs ripped to tiny shreds still pried loose from the walls and slapped to the soaked carpet.
I’d never seen so much blood in my life, not even in one of Harden’s films.
In the center of the room was a perfect clean spot, like a white crater on a planet of blood. There sat the box we’d come for. It sat on a pad of paper.
I looked at Gordon. “We should get out of here.”
Gordon looked nauseous. He was staring at the ceiling, where larger pieces of shredded flesh were coming loose like wet tiles and falling to the sopping carpet with an audible slap. That was the first time I ever saw Gordon afraid . . . and it wouldn’t be the last.
Despite all this, Gordon was still greedier than smart or frightened. He shook his head and stepped onto the soaked carpet. The sound was loud and wet as he let his foot sink into the gory slush.
Just watching him walk, hearing the squish of his steps and the sounds of dripping from ceiling to floor, made my stomach lurch and twist. What the hell had happened in here? It looked like a bomb had exploded and the box was ground zero.
I stood at the edge of the hall, where, even as I waited, blood seeped and spread wider, closing in on me. I watched Gordon take careful steps across the bloody carpet until he reached the clean area, where he immediately picked up the box.
I watched as Gordon tried to find a way to open it, but he had no luck.
“What’s on the pad of paper?” I asked, yelling above the rising din of raining gore.
Gordon paused and bent down. “Looks like someone was trying to figure out how to open it.”
“Probably Harden?”
Gordon gestured around the blood-covered walls. “This is probably Harden, too.”
Gordon tried to pass off his comment as a joke, but even I could see he was nervous.
He turned and gestured for me to follow him, but I shook my head. “I’m staying right here,” I said, “and I think we should get the fuck out of here.”
“Are you kidding me? You fucking pussy?” Gordon mocked. “Look at this joint. I’ll bet my last dime that there’s drugs and money, if not both, stashed here somewhere.”
“Okay,” I snapped back. “Then what are you doing?”
Gordon started to kneel, placing the gun down beside the ornate box. “I’m going to open this thing and see what’s inside.”
A shiver ran down my spine as I watched Gordon kneel before the box. I looked around to see what else I could find, but there was blood blocking my path to the stairs across the living room, and to the door leading to what looked like a balcony, and another door to a tiled room I guessed was the kitchen.
Maybe Gordon hadn’t thought of it, but stepping in that blood meant leaving tracks, and leaving tracks meant leading the cops right back to us. They’d tie us to this entire mess, not just a burglary. Maybe Gordon wasn’t thinking, but for once I was. I’d done a stint in the penitentiary when I was a kid—I had no intention of going through that hell again.
While Gordon studied the notepad, I looked back down the hall to the door we’d passed by. Maybe that was another way into other areas of the house?
“I’m going to look around,” I said. “Yell if you need me . . . and hurry.”
Gordon only half glanced up at me. He was enthralled with the box that I had already lost interest in. Seeing its modest size, I had serious doubts it held any great value.
The door between posters for Slaughter Me Saturday and Feel the Pain was locked, but that didn’t stop me from opening it. I used a plastic card to shimmy the bolt and popped it right open. On the other side were some stairs leading down.
I tried the lights, but they weren’t working, which explained why all the security was down—no power.
I took out my lighter and walked down the steps that led to a small basement room. I laughed out loud when I saw it was a personal torture chamber, with a leather harness swing and a table with straps and handles shaped like a large X. It was Harden’s own sex dungeon.
The walls were lined with whips and straps and various other toys you could find at any sex shop in West Hollywood, but farther along the wall, the toys turned from kinky to downright bizarre. There were whips with metal balls on them, and others with spikes. There was what looked like a vest and panties made of razor wire and a mask made entirely of barbed wire. All of the weaponlike toys looked like they had dried blood on them.
On the farthest wall there was a medieval shield with two crossed swords behind it. It looked like something from a B-movie version of Camelot, and as I stepped closer I could see it hung awkwardly from the wall.
There was something behind it.
I put out the lighter and waited a moment for my eyes to adjust, then lifted the surprisingly light shield off the wall. Behind it was a wall safe, and the reason the shield had hung awkwardly was because it had been left open.
Hoping for stacks of cash, I pulled it open to find instead stacks of pornography; graphic shit, violent, not what I would have called sexy at all. There were pictures of women tied up and being fucked, and others of men bound and having their balls tortured. Not my cup of tea at all.
Then, behind the stacks, I saw the drugs. There were bags of white powder and bottles of pills. Not cash, but just as good. I took the bags and bottles one by one and filled my pockets to capacity. I was taking one last look inside when I heard Gordon scream upstairs and felt the entire house rumble.
Thinking it was an earthquake I ran for the stairs, but by the time I reached the top, the rumbling had stopped, and when I peered toward the bloody living room, I saw that Gordon was no longer alone.
Four figures stood around Gordon, who held the box, now oddly reconfigured, in one shaking hand; his gun in the other.
My pockets loaded with thousands of dollars in drugs, I almost ran, thinking the leather-clad figures were police. As I looked closer, though, I saw they were anything but cops.
I wasn’t even sure they were human.
One stood in front of Gordon, one behind, and the last two flanked him. All wore what looked like black leather, but no two looked the same. The lead figure, facing Gordon, appeared to have the leather sewn into his skin up the sides of his arms and torso.
Exposed areas of deathly blue-white flesh were covered with gashes that were held open by wires. The leader’s head was a maze of slashes and slices and wires that held them open, forming an intricate maze of designs, cutting into the figure’s face.
If these figures were male or female, I could not tell. Except for the leader facing Gordon, their chests and crotch regions were so severely mutilated that I simply could not even begin to guess.
But the leader, he was male, or had been at one time. I glanced down in horror, feeling my breath cut off and mouth go dry. What I’d first thought was a vagina was instead the figure’s penis, cut down the middle in at least six slices, pulled and pinned around his belly and legs like a seeping bloody flower of flesh.
I took a step forward, trying to see what was happening, and the pills in my pockets rattled so loud that all of the figures—even Gordon—turned and looked at me.
Gordon cried out. “Ed, help me, man!”
The leader tilted his head and stared at me with large, black eyes. “Would the witness care to change places with his accomplice?” he said, his voice sexless, both high-pitched and low, like two voices speaking simultaneously.
It seemed to know who I was, or what I was to Gordon at least, but I sensed some doubt in the inhuman tones. My presence was unexpected, that much was clear.
The leader, with the head and face of gashes and wire-maze mesh, looked at me and the expression was like nothing I had seen before. It was almost a smile, but a smile of pain; pleasure and pain intertwined, love and hate crushed together in a vise.
I couldn’t help myself. I smiled back at the inhuman creature as if we knew each other’s game.
“No,” I said, “I won’t.”
The leader nodded.
I’d played my hand and it was understood.
Gordon looked at me with disbelief and raised the gun, “You fucking bastard!”
He fired the weapon, but the leader with the flowered penis and understanding, loving eyes raised his hand and blocked the muzzle, taking the bullet through his own palm.
As the shot tore through his hand, the leader bent his head back and opened his mouth in pure ecstasy, an orgasm of pain.
What happened next was a blur. I watched as weapons appeared in the hands of the humanoid figures surrounding Gordon; an array of blades and razors and hooks. They hacked into Gordon all at once, tearing away his flesh as easily as his clothing. The figure behind him slashed down his spine, sending him reeling in agony.
The screams brought odd titters of laughter from the deathly, mutilated shapes, like children giggling at something naughty.
Gordon wailed as he was taken apart layer by layer. Flesh gave way to muscle. Muscle gave way to bone, and while he still stood, they hacked into his organs before they could fall to the floor.
Only the leader paused in the slaughter, to pick up the puzzle box Gordon had dropped. He held it in his hands as he faced me, and I watched as it reconfigured into a box shape right in the palms of his hands.
Then he looked at me one last time. “Are you sure you would not like to play?”
I shook my head and backed away, and the leader began cackling. Behind him his brethren demolished the last of Gordon, even though his head, lanced on a hook but still intact, managed to scream in pain.
I turned and ran, feeling the house rumble and the electricity suddenly coming back on. I didn’t yet fully realize what had happened and just scrambled for the door, but as I reached it, I turned back and saw the leader standing alone with the box.
Gordon was gone. Only his blood remained.
The leader had stopped laughing, but the smile of pain lingered.
I didn’t get it until the lights flickered on and the alarm system that had been silenced came back to life with a slowly winding screech.
I looked one last time at the leader, who seemed to be fading into the light, and the smile was gone. Instead he looked at me with a sort of pity, like I was the fool who had played a game I didn’t understand and thought I’d won.
I didn’t even try running. I walked out of Harden’s mansion with my hands raised in the air as police cars screamed through the gates and up the horseshoe driveway.
Behind me was unimaginable carnage, a safe with my prints all over it, and I had a pocketful of stolen drugs.
The leader was a clever one. I had to give him that. Even with a searing anger welling inside, knowing I’d been fooled, knowing I’d played his game despite imagining I’d played by my rules, I had to give the mutilated man his credit.
I’d be blamed for all the crimes, and the death of Gordon—second biggest scumbag in the world, and the only person I had personally sent to Hell, condemning myself as well.
I thought about what had happened as the cops surrounded me, pointing guns and yelling the things cops yell. I had never touched the box, and I certainly wasn’t the one who’d opened it, but I now understood.
I thought I was so smart, and I had played right into the leader’s hands. It wasn’t just the handling of the box that allowed them access to my life; it was my interaction with him. I had entered their world, with their rules, before I even knew what was happening.
I’d played his game, thinking I wasn’t, and I lost regardless.
Now I knew why the leader laughed as he had. I’d thought it was a communion of souls facing off, but the leader had simply played me as Gordon had the box, and both of us had lost our souls—one in Hell and the other on Earth.
Well played.