Aenea came to the conclusion that something was wrong, though her intuition could not tell her what exactly. Perhaps it was the scent in the air, of that medicinal, sterile quality. The distilled atmosphere, like hospital air. It smelled of finality, death. Or at least, she presumed this is what death smelled of.
She sat in a restaurant around a group of board members. There was no scent of food. Neither of wine. She was stiff. It was as if all senses were reduced to focus wholly and solely on these board members. Board members who called her ‘the only sane Wolfe left.’ Board members who forty-nine percent of the shares of the casino El Rey.
She looked down at her half-eaten steak and then at the men.
"Now we know your brother is dead and we don't mean to bother you or anything..." One of them said, an old man with folded hands and a mole on the side of his cheeks.
“Why are you contacting me? I own less of this company than you all.”
"Well that's the thing, isn't it? We don't know who owns the company right now, which, as you can tell is quickly becoming a problem."
"I’d guess Salome owns it, right?”
“That’d be wrong. There is no successor and no lawsuit to decide who does own anything. What’s going on?”
If only they knew.
“I can’t help you there.”
“And the casino has been closed for a week now. We’re losing money?”
“Ask Salome about it. And about the successor, while you’re at it.”
"That's part of the problem," He said. "We can’t talk to management. We can’t get a single second of an audience with your mother- "
"She's not my mother," Her fork fell with an awful timbre of metal hitting ceramic. The other guests in the restaurant turned. Even the chefs, who cooked by the table-side, a flaming breast of duck were moved to stare.
"Come on, don’t get offended." The old man smiled. "That's neither here nor there. Let’s focus on Salome, as an entity of the Wolfe family, if that makes it easier for you then. She’s a problem. Or rather, she doesn’t know how to deal with problems. Now I understand two murders in such a short time frame - Family, especially, can cause issues. But that's no reason to shut the casino down. We're losing money, you understand that, right?"
"Yes. I do. I’ve got about a couple hundred resignations left to review." She said.
"You’ve managed well, see? You can manage stress much better than she can. Or the rest, for that matter. Why I’ve seen you do it. You worked those casino floors for the little time you’ve been here, and I’ve seen you do some magic. Real magic."
"What's your proposition?"
"I - We," He gestured around the table to the other smiling board members, seven in total, who looked at her with hungry eyes. "We'd appreciate it if you'd perhaps consider...taking over? As far as we can tell, your father never really left the casino in your mothers will. There's an argument to be made, perhaps a lawsuit or two that might entitle you to some shares of the company. And maybe if you leverage with your siblings...we don't know how your relationship with them might be but..."
"I appreciate your consideration." She said, both annoyed, maybe even flattered and humbled and annoyed at being humbled. "But I can't convince any one of those people, and I certainly don't want this headache of a company."
"We heard you're very successful with your pharmaceutical company. A great startup, we hear - artificial intelligence to replace doctor’s in analysis diseases and injuries - Incredible, though I don't really know all about it, it's way over my head. But that incredibleness, that quick wit is exactly why I want you to lead our company. You’ve got a mind for the long term, don’t you? It’s a nice head on your shoulders, I can say that much. " He smiled, and she knew what those wide-bright teeth and that lascivious glint in his eyes meant more than just words. A kind of lust. "Big pharma? Tech Startup? Why not add a casino to your portfolio? You just need to fix it up where Salome ruined it. Then it’ll run all on its own, perpetually. We promise.”
"No, it really can't run on its own." She said. "And I have no interest in adopting my father's abortion, just like he had no interest in adopting his own."
She frowned and they looked confused at her as if the words weren’t even English but some foreign tongue in an accent both insulting and humorous.
"Would you consider at least?" He asked, standing.
"I will. I am. I have." She took her coat and walked out.
The man with the mole sat down, twirling a fork and some strings of pasta.
"God damn she's as stubborn as her old man." One of them said.
"Worse, honestly."
"At least she has a pretty face."
Another smirked, a younger man. "Beats the old shit in looks, that's for sure."
♣
She would have loved to say that that was the end of things. That while she drove through the city and the streets (whose resemblance reminded her of dried, black rivers) that her troubles with this casino would soon be over. With the death of Junior, she was sure Salome would not have the intensity nor propensity even put a fight. That she was sure that Salome would leave the casino to Floyd, which to her seemed the obvious choice. And afterwards, that she could negotiate with Floyd and have the corpse buried back in California with her mother, that she would sit on the little bump of fecund earth and smile at the sunset.
But one look at these streets, the bumpy, cracked roads, reminded her that her troubles had only begun. The city people, travelers, and natives alike appeared to her like apparitions, phantoms amongst the dying sun, with their dragged shadows cast against her BMW and behind them, the red glare of the sun. They looked lifeless. Limp. Thin, sickly thin. The life sucked out of them like newly victims of a vampire. She began to think how this all happened but realized the source = immediately when she came around to the parking lot and faced the casino. The main artery of the casino was blocked, cut, nipped along and what she saw now, was the slow bleeding out of the casino and the city into the desert.
This city would be dead within years. She knew it. And she was kind of glad, even her father’s monolith could die.
She was glad. And sad as she stared up the giant accomplishment, the casino, and the operant lifelessness of it.
But even this still, was not her concern. Not the premonition of the death of the city and not the choking out of the life of the casino, neither of these gave her the eerie chill behind her neck.
It was the tattoo on her arm. The deep cut it left and the way it bled and burned and produced a kind of numbing ache all across the days. This scared her, this tattoo or marking or branding or whatever it was (she didn’t understand, hadn’t asked the Vicars yet out of embarrassment and shame and fear).
She undid her sleeves to the see the damages of the day. There were blue veins near the markings. She nodded her head.
She walked over to the elevator, her heels clanking, the machinery beeping behind her. The noise was loud when there was so little chatter to fill the rooms.
She pressed the elevator button and rode it up. She stared at the sunset, watching it drive beneath her. Yawning. It was a steep climb up and the more she climbed, the sicker she felt at the stomach. Also too, was the strange sense of awe at the scale of the city. As if disgust and amazement both came to her and turned in opposite directions of her stomach, such that she at both got butterflies and weak legs at the same time.
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It was enough to make her rethink what the old businessmen said, staring at the city. The beautiful lights like stars in the sky. This was her fathers work, all of it. She was impressed, she had to admit to that.
She put a finger against the glass and pretended, like a child, to poke out the lights with her index finger. She smiled.
And the elevator stopped. Creaked to a halt. Aenea almost fell but held herself by the rail. The lights flickered, and the cart shook once more. It made her scream, a quick burst.
Perhaps the machine heard her, for it begun again. It went up in a strained chug, stopping midway to her destination, stopping midway to the door. The elevator was stuck again, and this time in a peculiar spot. For she could only access half the door to the exit. She was afraid to go through it, fearing that the elevator would start (or drop) and sever her in two. After another creak and another shake of the cart and another scream (from her), the fear of falling overcame the fear of being severed, and she jumped, scratched, crawled her way through the small sliver of the door left open.
The elevator dropped immediately behind her. She couldn't help but gasp. She fixed herself up and composed herself, though could not fully wipe the sweat from her face.
She turned around. She had found herself in a little section, a collection of poker tables sprawled across.
There were no dealers, of course, no security either, for when she reached over to the emergency telephone wire, she could not find a single call line or even a single beep of electricity to tell her she was part of the world. The safe world, one she had just come out of and into this,a chaotic mess.
She looked around, how couldn't she? Sweating and frightened and wondering what mechanical mess had led her to this if it was an accident or something...worse.
The tables were high risen, the stools looked like trees, black lacquered and dividing what little she could see in the darkness. There were empty tom collins glasses. She smelled whiskey. Someone had drank recently.
She walked past it, she knew the layout well and knew that behind the bartender, behind the twin doors of the restaurant behind the bar and behind the giant white piano sitting in the spot line center-most of the room, was an emergency exit. A flight of stairs to get her out. She ran for them immediately, following small lights set on the floor to direct guests. Overhead, a few low hung lamps gave off a warm red.
They were the first lights to die.
Flickered. One by one. The bulbs popped and shattered and she felt the hot glass hit her scalp. She shook her head just to get the fragments out of her hair, and she looked around. Well, tried to. Abrupt darkness had left her eyes in a blur and daze. There were halos where the light had been killed from her. She rubbed her face and tried to see again, see anything. Nothing. Nothing but the single glow of light from the single light pointing at the single piano.
With her hand out, she believed to trust herself to walk through the aisles of poker tables, touching for green felt and smooth cards and even more empty drinking glasses. She must have hit her hand half a dozen times, her wrist hurt. She was looking for the exit light. The giant, red light.
She saw two letters. E X. Then, the E gave off. Only the X remained. Red.
In her intoxication with the light, she struck something.
"Fuck." She breathed hard and held her chest. A stool rolled underneath her heels. “Fuck.” She sighed, in relief.
It was enough to make her laugh, giggle even. Until the piano begun to play.
Not any specific tune, not any number or piece. It was a random stroking of keys, abrupt, without that human touch of tempo that you find even in amateurs. It was a random smashing of keys, beating of music, hitting of the piano.
She turned. Her head almost snapped at the speed of her anxious turning.
Nothing. Nothing in the light at least, nothing she could see from across the room.
When she turned around, she heard the piano start again and once again turned.
She saw a glimpse this time, something small, like a small black tree branch, descending, then rising.
She saw it fall down again. Then rise.
Her eyes widened.
The tree branch, what she thought it was (stupid thought! A tree? She smacked herself across the face for it), was shaking. It meandered about, wandering in a slow, methodical motion towards the piano. Licking it, wrapping around it.
It was no tree. She realized this as soon as the cold chill swept across her body and her hands begun to shake and her tattoo stung and bit into her flesh, smearing her sleeve with blood.
It was a tendril. And it treaded ground slow and steady, like a slow probing animal sniffing and observing the terrain, and her, low and with her hand around her mouth to block the scream coming out of her. She wanted to be calm, as collected as possible even when her body refused. She walked with a hurried carefulness, with jogging and skidding, but with her free hand (for she only had one available to her, the other was on her mouth still) extended out towards the chairs and tables to touch them before she could bump into them. And she was careful, at least she thought, as she wandered through the tables. They were so dark though. Too dark, and she, too clumsy in her heels. She grabbed them immediately after the entity appeared in her periphery, she grabbed her heels and throw them headlong away from her, far into a corner and stood still to let the noise dissipate amongst the silent, raw air . The entity made no movement, no sound either. She wasn't even sure what it was, as it descended from the ceiling. It's organs and limbs seemed dislodged and out of place, and it crawled with tendrils and long streaks of hair that collectively, looked like a pulsing muscle or heart. It made a stretch out. A colossal movement that shook the whole room. It moved with one giant limb, outwards, towards her like a clam, with its tongue about the ocean floor to pull itself forward. To eat.
It moved. She saw everything in it move too. Its fleshy body was semi-transparent, so she saw what was digested. She saw the red glow of something. She saw a body too, a corpse.
She had to bite her hand this time around to stop herself from screaming. And she drew blood.
The creature wandered about, slow-moving, a large entity the size of a small truck, and getting bigger.
Unconcerned, uninterrupted, this limbed creature extended small hands to maneuver itself and to drag in food. What food? Anything, any matter. It strolled with pompous leisure and abject aloofness.
It didn’t even want her.
It wandered, hovered near her, its long legs latched onto the walls and ceilings. And when it was almost ten feet away, she ran.
Far. Tripping twice, and getting up only once, for, by the second, she found her feet trapped underneath a table that she kicked away.
And seeing the creature approach her like an large black whale, a large entity in the indifferent dark sea, with neither patience nor impatience for much of anything but grazing, seeing this entity she crawled underneath another desk to get away. To not look. For looking made her paralyzed with fear. Looking held her back.
The tendrils extended out like feelers. They grabbed a table, the table she hid under, and sucked it into one of many mouths. White teeth, dirty with yellow stains, that ground and devoured (why’d she look?!).
A black hole, she saw it. Her hands shivering. A black hole, within an even blacker darkness that covered the room. She could barely see the purple flesh of the creature, the slimy and scaly flesh. She only felt its drool as it went overhead her. She crawled again, underneath it, underneath a table.
She figure as long as she could avoid the hands, if only she could dodge the tendrils, she was safe. No matter the noise, no matter the movement, as long as flesh did not touch flesh and as long as she was not captured, she would live.
So she acted as such. Wandering, tad poling onto each table like wooden Lillipads. Hopping underneath, above, around each table. Feeling the shavings of wood and glass, devoured by the creature, falling on top of her. The crumbs of destruction.
She looked left and right, still hopeful, still looking. She found the exit again, around the creature that she now charged. Her feet were bleeding, she did not care. And a giant hand fell in front of her, pushing smoke and dirt up. She was walled off and twisted her ankle to turn. So what? She limped. My legs already hurt like hell. So what? What’s a little burn?
She was a mouse.
And she screamed in pain and rage, and the monster did not care because those too, tears, was food as well. Those too were just matter to be eaten and absorbed by the demon. Fuel.
She fell. Pained, crawling underneath tables. And she made the effort to take out her cell phone and to call Dion. He answered, of course, exasperated and screaming where she was. And she said the floor.
“What?”
“I’m on the floor.” She hissed.
“What?” He asked.
“Fifty-eight, don’t be late!” She screamed. Nothing much more. The cell phone dropped from her hand, it fell to the floor, and she saw the tendril crawl up to it and pick it up. She rolled away.
Wondering where she would run, for the exit sign was gone, the main light on the piano was gone, only a crushed residue of the piano remained. The strings were laying on the floor. She ran and wondered where to go or be, she looked up. The ceiling was covered. Almost all of the room was covered now by that sickly looking, scaly demon and its tendrils. Like a rooted tree across the wall. And these limbs pulsed. They extended out, out to every side and every inch.
She was trapped.
She always was trapped, right from the beginning, and nothing could change that now.
"What do you want?" She screamed though she did not understand at what she was screaming at. The monstrosity was either beyond hearing or beyond the notion of conversation. She had lost her energy to cry, she instead raised her fist and beat it in front of her, towards the creature and his glowing misplaced eyes, five of them, that all rolled around before zeroing in on her. And more eyes appeared, on the limbs of this room-shaped demon. Eyes that traveled through the veins, through the fleshy body, and towards the center mass. So it appeared as though a hundred pairs, a hundred people judged her then and there.
She could do nothing.
Her hand was up, her face was hot, and she wavered in between anger and sadness. And she beat her hand. For the tendrils closed in.
Why me? She asked, to the ghost of her father, to the memory (if she had any memories) of him. I didn't want any of this. I've never wanted any of this. So why me?
She picked up a wooden leg of a stool, still complaining, still fighting.
You’ve done me in once before and failed, now you’ll do it a second time. Her hands shook. And succeed…and succeed…
And she stood above a table, as the long shaky limb reached her.
Taking the weapon out of her hands is easy, but she makes sure, out of spite and sheer audacity, she makes sure to make it hard for it to catch her.
So she runs, in circles, mindlessly, she runs.