Constant: Book 5, Chapter 4

Four: In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

Last time I last saw Darius? Five years ago.

            It’s not like we had, you know, regular family reunions or anything. Sakura’s children, we went our separate ways and got on with our lives. Those of us who made it out, that is. So, meeting the guy was fucking unusual. The request came out of nowhere, an e-mail one morning from an account I didn’t recognize. That was wrong in itself; he wasn’t using the correct channels. I was sitting at my office desk. A crisp afternoon in March, wisps of clouds racing across a clear blue sky and I can still picture that day clearly despite the passage of four normal years and one batshit crazy one.

            Tailored, grey pinstripe suit, short hair spiked with product—I’d had a haircut that morning, my usual place in town—and a chunky, ridiculously expensive watch on my wrist, bought on impulse that morning. I looked good; felt good, too. This memory of myself is all the sharper for its simplicity: no makeup, no accessories, no attempt at matching nails to lips to shoes to belt. I read the email, stared out the window for some time, returned to Darius’s message and read it again and felt a curious mix of elation and dread.

            Voices from the past were a complicated thing. Over the years, it had happened—three? no—four times, meeting old acquaintances, always calling in favors owed; one of those, and under very unusual circumstances, transferring a debt into my care. The fact Darius contacted me through an open channel was puzzling. His request wasn’t something I could easily refuse. First, because there remained an unresolved debt between us: he still owed me, after all. Maybe he wanted to settle? But ultimately, because we had a shared history. The guy was a premium asshat. But I’d known him for over thirty years, and that meant something.

            So, I couldn’t just ignore him. Truth is, I didn’t really want to meet him. We’ve all been there, meeting someone from the past. Every now and then, I’ll have a colleague at work, they come in late some morning all fucked up looking like something the cat dragged in. Caught up with this guy I knew back in college, they’d say, great guy but fuck, what a drinker—or something like that—you wouldn’t believe the shit we got up to—and they’d follow with some predictable night out replete with booze, a strip club or bondage thing, drugs, maybe some lurid details involving a girl and the stuff they did to her, the usual crap, just another late night leaving them absolutely wrecked for the rest of the week.

            We met a few days later. It was hot and bright and instead of grabbing a cab, I decided to enjoy the walk. The warmth of the sun on my face as I walked the sidewalk affirmed my success, confirmed I belonged. Towers of concrete, glass and steel and the sounds of the city, and all those pretty little things in their miniskirts, the short dresses and stockings, heels and bare arms that came with the warm weather. Outside the bar, I took a moment to check myself in the polarized glass. I looked good: manly and successful. I’d just been told that morning I was up for promotion. This would be my third and fuck me if I wasn’t a rising star, the guy to watch. And sure, Tom was up for the job, too, but it was mine to lose, not his to win. I’d get an office, my own P.A.—secretary, really, even then there was talk of reviving the old job title.

            Nearly a decade with Neopharm and I was doing great, just fucking swell.

            Also, there’d been a girl the night before. What was her name? Ngozi. Very tall, rail thin, muscular, like a whip, an investment banker in town for a conference or something.  Shaved head, dark skin, red pantsuit, bright orange lips and dangling earrings; she nursed a martini and that’s what drew me in, the indelible image of her sitting cross-legged at the bar, sullenly swirling her drink, clothes like a flame in the dusky light. I’d stopped for a drink on my own on the way home, mulling over Darius’ request. I’d all but decided I was going to cancel on him. Life was good, right now; why risk fucking it up? The past was a desert, dry and dead: nothing good ever came from it.

            But sitting with Ngozi, I instead thought, fuck it, let’s do this. And ‘this’ might’ve been ‘get laid,’ but also, ‘confront the past,’ even if that only occurred to me afterwards.

            This chick, this sexy bitch, she was angry: with men in general, with the world. She called me on my bullshit, on the half-assed line I tried on her. Her anger pleased me, I dropped the crap and she bought me a drink. We talked. She wasn’t just angry. She was lonely, too. No, it was more than that: she was touched with a desperate melancholy, despairing of the world and how it was changing, dissatisfied with her place within it. She yearned for an escape without any idea of where she could go. And so, we went to her hotel room.

            Ngozi’s skin gleamed with sweat, and her shaved pussy glistened as I ate her out, knees over my shoulders. She hissed as I went down on her, her moans long and low. Then I pulled her onto my lap, so that she faced away from me. She leaned into my chest as I held her small, firm breasts, rolled the nipples between finger and thumb. At first, I fucked her slowly. Then she took charge, riding me hard. Her thighs were firm and strong. Eventually, she slowed and Ngozi gasped on the rise, and whimpered on the fall, and squirmed around my cock. I kissed her neck and bit her ear. When she came, her mouth opened and closed in intense silence and then finally she released a single, long exhalation of breath; her body shuddered, and she finished with a bitter laugh, and: “fuck.”

            Afterwards, we lay together, limbs entangled, and she traced my scars with long fingernails, each painted a different shade of purple. The woman nibbled my ear and with unexpected shyness invited me to spend the night. I laughed and left her resplendent on the hotel bed. She didn’t really want me to stay. We’d both gotten what we wanted from the night, the best we could hope for, really. Instead, I went back down to that hotel bar and sat alone. I ordered my final drink for the night and decided, yeah, I had better meet up with Darius.

            The next day, another record-breaker, bright, beautiful and hot, we met at this bar I knew a couple blocks away from the office. Pricey, atmospheric place, back-lit counter and claustrophobic nooks, slabs of dull pitted metal for tables suspended from the ceiling under isolating spotlights in a dark, empty space. In other words, pretentious as fuck. Women weren’t even allowed entry, this time of day—except for the waitresses, obviously, all young and sexy as hell. It was the kind of place men in hideously expensive suits met for discrete conversation over lunchtime booze.

            The place was quiet when I arrived, and I picked Darius out immediately.

            His suit was cheap and ill-fitting, as though he’d bought it off the rack that morning. The boots, military; his watch too. His hair was buzzed short, but aside from that he looked like he’d escaped from a serialized cop drama from a few decades ago, the kind where intense men crouch pensively over horrific murders, remove mirrored glasses and deadpan a terrible pun. For a moment, I thought he was messing with me. Then, I remembered Darius wasn’t that guy. Not much of a sense of humor, Darius; he always took himself way too seriously, like he’d never realized the whole thing’s a fucking joke, and we’re the punchline.

            I joined him. He nodded, signaled the bartender. Two Caol Ila appeared in short order. He raised his tumbler, and I did the same. Ice jangled as we touched glasses. He hadn’t spoken yet. Frankly, he looked pissed off that I was there. But I was fine with that. Better than being in the fucking office, right? I stretched out my legs, sipped my whiskey, allowed peat and caramel to curl around my tongue and bring me back to Ngozi, the taste of her pussy, that wet waiting warmth. Smiling, I watched the muscle in his jaw clench and jump.

            “You’re a fucking asshole, Luke,” he said, calling me by my old name.

            “David,” I said.

            “It wasn’t the same after you left.”

            “I didn’t leave,” I said. “She threw me out.”

            He sneered, ordered another round of drinks.

            “You fucked it up for all of us,” he said. “Couldn’t keep it in your pants. Couldn’t—”

            “What do you want, Darius?”

            “That girl. Fuck. What was her name? Persephone. Why’d you do it, L—”

            “David,” I interrupted.

            “Whatever.”

            “I loved her.”

            He shook his head. “Strange fucking kind of love,” he said.

            We finished the first drink as the second arrived. He stared into the depths of his glass. Whatever he was working up to, I was happy to wait. I wasn’t in any hurry. Quite the opposite. It struck me then how little we’d both changed. Nearly twenty years—twenty, Jesus Christ, when did that happen?—but he was the same angry, wiry bastard I remembered, just… older. But then, so was I. Bit of silver at the temple, thinning on top, wrinkles, but his eyes were still sharp as hell, vigilant.

            He leaned forward. “Hey, do you remember Shangri-La?”

            Yeah, I remembered.

            Vestige. Or rather, Vestige Eleusis, to give its full, ostentatious name. And I damn well remembered that palce, even if I hadn’t visited it outside of dreams for decades. That old, decaying palace was our own private Elysium, our refuge from the world. Prestigious and opulent, the old department store shuttered and shut down during the lockdown of ’20. This was a few years before Sakura took me in. Pandemic notwithstanding, nobody really knew why the place shut down quite so suddenly and never reopened. When the owners left, the store was left behind almost entirely intact, stock included.

            As I remember it, Sophya was the one who found the way in, a trapdoor in the ceiling of a disused room in our shared foster home. It led to a crawl space beneath the rafters of the roof. The roof extended the length of the two terraced buildings, Sakura’s and the store next to it. We crawled along century-old timbers supporting the eaves, breathing in dust, shivering excitedly as delicate cobwebbed tendrils brushed our cheeks. Then we dropped into another dusty room, this one at the top of the disused store.

            It was nighttime. The room was piled high with moldering cardboard boxes and bolts of cloth. The light from Sophiya’s phone picked out a tall, stiff figure, ghostly white, looming over us—we shrieked; Darius lashed out, knocked it over—and then we laughed, uneasily, at the sight of the mannequin laying broken on the floor, its billowing ivory wedding dress stained with the dark print of his boot, square in the middle of its chest.

            We giggled and tried the door. It was locked. Dmytro forced it open with his shoulder.

            At the time, I was all of eleven or twelve? The others only a few years older. The whole time, I was fucking terrified but filled with the anxiety of a newcomer desperate to impress the older kids. Darius didn’t want me there, he’d made that clear, but Emma insisted and led me gently but firmly by the hand when I hesitated. With hushed voices and tentative steps, we descended from the top floor, down richly carpeted stairs into the wide, silent space below. A few beams from street lights outside cut sharp lines across the floor, slipping through gaps in the shutters and plywood hammered over the windows.

            What we had discovered was—magnificent.

            At least in memory. I’d probably find it tacky, now, or maybe just a little sad, a relic of a forgotten era. But to eleven-year-old eyes, the racks of sumptuous clothes, the red velvet sofas—I remember those vividly, the deep richness of those cushions, the splendid crimson color—gilt wallpaper, scintillating chandelier, vaulting ceilings, glass display cases and engraved wooden paneling: walking down those wide carpeted steps, embarrassingly wide-eyed, it was like descending into the great hall of some fairy tale castle. We all felt it. Dmytro muttered under his breath in his native tongue, looking angry at the lavish displays of casual wealth. Sophya, oldest of us, squealed for joy and ran to the nearest rack, snatching bright dresses that sparkled like gemstones from their hangers. I don’t remember what Darius did, or Emma: I trailed after Sophya and only remember a strange dread overtaking the initial joy as we began to explore this new space.

            Sophya named it Shangri-La; she found it, so it was hers to name. Shangri-La became our playground. We never told Sakura, but looking back, she must have known. I can’t help but wonder why she allowed it. We escaped there often. Not as a full group, though the five of us—Darius, Dmytro, Sophya, Emma, and me—did occasionally find ourselves there, together. More often, we went there in pairs. Or alone.

            And remembering this place, sitting opposite Darius, a memory surfaced, one forgotten until Darius dredged it up, now all confused with the lies I once told Julia. I told her the story of the wedding dress, how my mom dragged me into a bridal store, and I wandered and wondered at all the marvelous dresses, walking through hanging folds of silk, satin, taffeta and tulle, lost in the kaleidoscope of colors, mostly ivory but bright flashes of yellow or pink, pale eggshell blues and bursts of orange; and the sweep of fabrics over my young face, gentle, soft, cool, sometimes a little rough, always exciting. And that story’s bullshit, obviously, as fabricated a memory as that of the little girl who once dressed me like her doll in dresses and took pictures, showed them at school, got me beaten so badly I ended up in the hospital.

            But in thinking back to Shangri-La for the first time in—Christ, ages—suddenly, I doubted my doubt, which is to say I suddenly remembered a night in that empty boutique, alone, a night when I needed to be on my own. A lonely night, when I inexplicably ached for home and the mother I’d left behind, even though she meant nothing to me, never wanted me; a night of weakness, when I fled to this space to hide the tears I couldn’t share. I remember moonlight, slipping through a crack in the boarding, and motes of dust, dancing in that light.

            In that heavy silence, I crossed over to the racks of clothes and dove headfirst into them, dust puffing out, faint smell of mildew as I walked through what was left of the sparkling and colorful dresses, and onwards to blouses and tops, skirts, dangling scraps I hardly knew as lingerie at that age, but which nevertheless left me feeling funny inside; and I staggered and danced through all these clothes until I fell back onto one of the red velvet sofas, and lay there, staring up at the high, curved ceiling and its inlaid constellation of stars and planets.

            Darius and I talked about Shangri-La for a little bit. I was surprised at how sentimental he seemed, genuinely nostalgic. Then Darius sank back into silence. By this time, we’d finished our third drink. At this point, I started to wonder whether I’d be heading back to the office today. Then, Darius signaled the barkeep, and another pair of tumblers arrived. That’s when the hair on the back of my neck stood on end. Where was he going with this?

            He stared into his drink. “You ever think about—my debt?” He didn’t look up, didn’t make eye contact. “You know, the Winthrop job? What a fuck up that was.”

            I swirled my drink and nodded. Yeah, I remembered that night. I carried that scar for nearly twenty years, into that meeting with Darius. The scar stayed with me until Scooter erased it from my skin, along with all other physical memories of my past.

            “That security guard had you dead to rights,” I said.

            “Pow,” he said. “Dead.”

            I nodded again.

            “You took that bullet for me.”

            I shrugged. I rubbed my shoulder, at the phantom impact, shredded muscle, shattered bone, spray of blood. “You would’ve done the same.”

            “No,” Darius said. “I wouldn’t have.”

            I laughed.

            He leaned forward, halfway across the table, and stared directly at me. I stared back. “I thought you were a goner,” he said. “I was thinking about how pissed Sakura would be. It was my fault, I’d been sloppy. But after taking that hit, you got yourself under cover—but the guard—then he got too close—and you—”

            I knocked back my drink and hissed around the burn. “Darius—”

            “You fucking destroyed that guy.” He shook his head. “Hardcore brutal. It was scary, watching you work—I hadn’t appreciated until then why she favored you so much, but I saw it then. Like an attack dog, and she held the leash.”

            “What do you want, Darius?” I said, and brought the tumbler down on the table, hard. “Fuck this nostalgia bullshit. Why are we here?”

            “A job,” he said. “Just like the old days.”

            “Like the old days?”

            “Yeah. Real super-spy shit, funded, top-secret.”

            “We weren’t spies, Darius. We were kids.”

            “Sure. But when Sakura told us to go somewhere, we went there. Watch, we told her what we saw. Steal something, we stole it. Hurt someone, we hurt them. You spent six months pretending you were a fucking high school kid, just to get close to that girl.”

            “Not the girl,” I said. “Her dad, his computer, his research.”

            “What was her name? Doesn’t matter. You did it.”

            “Muna,” I said. “Muna Khalid.”

            He shrugged. “That’s not important. What matters is this: there’s a job, and I want you on it.” He openly looked me over, picking out the cut of my suit, that new watch, and sneered. “A chance to mean something, again.”

            I tugged my sleeve down over the watch, caught myself doing it, and scowled. “What job?” I asked.

            “Blackwater Phoenix,” he said, and his eyes glittered like slivers of obsidian.

            I turned him down.

            Five years later, and fuck me, but I’m questioning the wisdom of that decision. I’m standing there dressed in a bodystocking and the tiniest of skirts, bound and gagged, jiggling tits pushing out and I’m perched in a pair of stripper heels, wondering whether Darius remains the kind of guy to hold a grudge.

            Then again, he still owes me, and a debt’s a debt. And God, I sure as hell hope he remembers that.

            Dmytro tugged the leash and with mincing steps, I followed him into an expansive and dimly lit room.

            At one end, nearer the entrance, there were sofas and chairs, a few tables, a small bar and entertainment unit. In the half-light, I made out a pair of feminine figures. Their silhouettes were not unlike mine: curvy, heeled, short-skirted. But they moved freely, one reading from a tablet, the other sipping from a tall, fluted glass. High ponytails in profile turned as they tracked my arrival and small blue indicator light flickered at their temple.

            Gleaming with a dull sheen, dark grey walls revealed themselves as floor-to-ceiling screens, ultra-thin LED panels forming a seamless display, currently quiescent. With another gentle pull at the leash, Dmytro led me to a table near the center of the room. There were chairs, but I wasn’t invited to sit. Already, my calves burned, and an ache grew in my lower back. My tits pushed out obscenely and drool trickled down my chin. With a faint click, he attached the leash to the table and then, hands behind his back, stepped back and stood behind me.

            I waited. A panel overhead glowed into life, casting a faint spotlight.

            The walls glowed into life. Then, the nearest display flickered. Within a single frame, I saw myself, a live feed from somewhere in front and a little above me. The camera zoomed in closer. I shivered, to see myself so lewdly displayed. The curvy, blonde bimbo on screen twitched her hands behind her back and tossed her head, long braid swaying. Fuck, she was—sexy and vulnerable, and the eroticism of my own appearance struck me far more powerfully than it had in the mirror under the gentle lighting of the change room. In the mirror, I controlled the experience of observing myself. On the screen, seen from the perspective of some hidden camera, Cindy became externalized. I saw her as others must see her: sexualized and objectified; and I liked what I saw. And yet, I was her. Or rather, she was me: like a living mannequin in bondage gear, posed for the pornographic pleasure of an unseen male gaze.

            I didn’t close my eyes. I didn’t want to. Rather, I felt hot—a flush felt spreading outwards from my chest, crawling up my neck, and down into my belly. I felt powerfully drawn to the girl on the screen because—because, fuck, she was sexy, those tits, her legs, and wrapped up like that, the commodification of her beauty, that too was powerfully erotic.

            In my heated discomfort, I squeezed my thighs together, and so did she; shifted in those towering shoes, and so did she; the illusion collapsed, the distance between us disintegrating and once again there was only me, or Cindy, and I felt a moment of dizzying confusion.

            Before I could recover, a frame flickered to life next to the live feed: another image, again fed from an unseen camera, but frozen this time, a still life in ultra-high definition of a young woman in jeans and hoodie. This snapshot showed Cindy standing by the woman in stocks in the Empyrean. Gradually, the image drew closer to her face, focused on her green eyes. Pensive, chewing on her lower lip, Cindy contemplated the other woman and bizarrely, I yearned to know what she was thinking. Then, a third image appeared: Cindy flinching back from the strange man in the corridor, top hat and tails and cane, teeth bared in feral grin. Fourth: Cindy and the elegant dark woman, gold dress, diamond earrings, a study in feminine contrast.

            A pause, then several more followed in quick succession, each growing out of the original feed still focused on my startled study of these captured moments. Each new image gradually spiraled out, reaching into the past even as they sprawled across the room. The next image: Cindy, threading through the heaving crowds of The Pit, eyes bright, dark red lips curved in a smile. And another: hands thrust deep into pockets, flashing ID for the bouncer. Then: the moment outside when that young, muscular woman in fishnets and chrome, mouth curled in a black lipstick sneer, slammed her shoulder into Cindy.

            Now the wall behind glowed into life. I twisted to look at it, felt the tug of the chain at my neck. It took me a few seconds to recognize the picture. Cindy stood, hands at her side. Jeans and a hoodie. Darkness behind her, and light spilling from a late-night market stall across an eruption of color in the shape of pale green okra, yellow guava, grey-brown bulk of yams. There was a young man—a boy, really—scrawny, eyes dark, pale, hungry. The look on Cindy’s face was ugly and eager.

            Another picture appeared, adjacent to the previous. Cindy on the bus, sitting and staring out through the faint imprint of her own reflection at the street scrolling past. Another, further back and caught mid-step crossing a street near home. Then, standing at the entrance to her apartment building, cracked concrete path, halogen circle lights.

            I shivered, to see the next picture: Cindy stood alone in the elevator, staring at the door, and it was unclear whether she was rising or falling. A brief pause, and then the next image appeared. The setting was immediately and intimately familiar. Cindy’s apartment, the privacy of the tiny bedroom, and there she—no, I stood, leaning in close to the mirror with pencil held to lip, black jeans and black bra, hair still hanging loosely over my bare shoulder. The image quality wasn’t great, with minor defects suggestive of AI correction for low fidelity, but it was me. Judging from the angle, the camera sat somewhere above the mirror. There are string lights hanging there, they’ve been there since I took over Cindy’s life.

            What the fuck? But with a ball gag between my lips, it’s just a muffled moan.

            Now, the show began in earnest, picture after picture, spinning out from those central images into a startling, shifting, flickering mosaic, a multiplicity of memories diffusing across the walls, the ceiling, meeting and merging, some expanding to near-life size, other dwindling to wallet-sized pictographs that fluttered and fled between larger moments. Most were still; some cycled through short seconds of movement or reaction; a few played long captures of Cindy moving through her world. And I was trapped in this mosaic of projected selves, an externally manifested multiplicity of lived experiences flickering and flaring across the dark room. And I could not look away.

            And along with the visuals, sound: for each short clip and brief video of Cindy in action, her voice. First, short, simple words: a chirped ‘please’ or ‘yes’ or tremulous doubt, a drawn out ‘um’. Then, with rising volume, Cindy spoke in brief statements, uptalk verbal ticks, lilting voice, consolatory, pleasing. “I don’t know?” “Walk me out?”, and then, “sometimes, like, I wonder if I should even be here, you know?” As with the images, Cindy’s words began to spiral out, overlap, a whisper rising to a gentle murmur to a muttering conversation of identical female voice. Clips repeated themselves only to submerge beneath new statements: “Help,” “Why are you doing this?” and then, “fuck.”

            Overlapping voices rose to a cry to a shout to a cacophony to match the dizzying mosaic enclosing me. Surrounded by this constant barrage of images and sound, I experienced Cindy in all her varied selves, at work, at play, at rest in her apartment or standing in the line outside a club. Pretty dress and red lips, waiting for the bus. Security camera snippets: paying for lunch, walking down the street, shopping, twittering voice. Then sitting at my living room table, an array of makeup and a cheap mirror, practicing; a soft grunt of satisfaction. A mirror, blonde hair tied back, practicing a flirty smile. Sitting opposite Dan. Sitting alone at the bar. Slinky black dress and bold makeup, waiting at Chez Pierre. Standing within the circle of Dan’s arms under the streetlamp outside his home. His hand is on Cindy’s ass, my hand rests against his chest, holding him close, pushing him away. Nights out with the girls. With the girls, shopping. Last week’s visit to that shitty club, transparent floor, tube top and some dickhead banker’s hand on her ass. He’s kissing her, and I’m letting him. Then it’s me—no, Cindy; fuck, no, it’s me and I’m clasping a simple white handbag with both hands in front of me, peach sundress, white trim, hairband and loose hair fluttering in an unseen wind. My arms are bare and I’m smiling, but only a little. I’m staring wistfully into the distance. In the background, a blue sky, trees, flowers. I’m waiting for someone or something. I can’t remember who or what, but I can feel the memory of that dress as a tickle on my skin and feel her voice, caught in my throat.

            Something—unpleasant—grew in my chest, expanded and I felt hot, uncomfortably so, and also cold, shivering in the bodystocking. I felt a desperate need to strip out of these clothes and cool down. But also, I felt a desperate need for comfort—warmth—and I twisted away from the visual assault, but the leash arrested my motion. Behind me, Dmytro remained impassive, face lit by the flickering spectacle. ‘Stop,’ I called out. ‘Enough,’ but my garbled cry went ignored.

            Darius’ show continued, ever faster and louder, reaching further back to that period between Clinic visits, my interregnum with a cock. And it wasn’t until my own face and body were thrown back at me over and over that I truly understood how much I’d changed. With each digital flicker I saw emerge ever stronger hints of the man I’d once been. Each picture chipped away at the girl and bolstered the man. Like a time-lapse animation or sketchbook doodles flicked into life across many pages, I saw myself stutter and change. Shoulders bulked out slightly, the chin squared, tits dwindled towards a moderate B-cup. My voice, too, grew harsher, my words sharper. Fashion regressed, everything sitting less well, draped awkwardly across diminished curves. Increasingly, the girl thrown back to me appeared less comfortable, but then she would, wouldn’t she, with a cock still hidden between those sleek thighs.

            Twisting and turning as far as that fucking leash would allow, I tried to fix my gaze on a singular self and follow it. But the assault on the senses was too much and I failed to focus. There, I sat demurely on a park bench. And there, I pulled on stockings, clipping them to garter tabs. Then, I hammered my fist into Mal’s face. And then we were back to that first, terrifying month, those weeks before Julia found me. There’s a perpetual look of fear and anger common to those pictures that I don’t recall feeling at the time, but the pictures do not lie. There is in my eyes the look of a furtive animal.

            Makeup, always slightly overdone. Hair, never quite right. Clothing, poorly matched. These earliest versions of Cindy surprise me, and my stomach roils with confusion as the images flicker past, primarily with embarrassment because, fuck me if I don’t look a mess. Christ, how on earth did I ever think that was a good look?

            The cavalcade continued, picture after picture unspooling until we’re back to that very first week, waking up in Cindy’s apartment with tits. The flow of images slowed. Her voice retreated. There she was, slouching downstairs buried in a shapeless, stained hoodie, buying up a metric shit-ton of booze as seen from a grainy security camera somewhere over the counter. And there she is, back bent, hands thrust deep in pockets, riding the elevator.

            And then silence, and there I was, like a pre-Raphaelite beauty caught in the confines of the frame. It’s the precise moment I first saw myself in the mirror after waking up Cindy. One by one, the other screens either blink out or copy the same picture. And that picture of Cindy, it grows to fill the screen, spills out beyond it and expands across the full expanse of screens until I’m standing staring up at this giant-sized projection of the very moment I became this woman.

            My hair billows out in golden waves, my mouth slightly open. Lips, full and soft pink, rounded in an ‘o’ of surprise. The Clinic dropped me off with a face full of makeup, earrings, nails done; I’d forgotten that, somehow. Her breasts sit high on her chest. Her skin is clear and smooth—no scars—and so young and it's like I’m seeing myself for the first time. Standing leashed in Darius’ chamber, only two weeks back from my second visit to the Clinic, I stood and stared at this vision of my first awakening.

            Old emotions locked away in muscle memory awakened. My body remained a memorial to Cindy’s rebirth. The horror at seeing myself manifest in her flesh hit me in the gut, I couldn’t breathe. The room stretched out, a yawning gulf opening between me and—Cindy, and the room tilted, now as it did then, to see myself transformed. I grabbed for the table, as a drowning man reaches for a rope at sea. The table’s smooth, sharp edge bit into my palm, grounded me in the moment.

            And I trembled and felt weak again, so goddam fragile, small and vulnerable.

            And so, I felt terrified, scared out of my fucking mind.

            Which made me angry, so fucking angry, because I swore long ago that I’d never feel frightened and weak again.

            It was the seething rage that sustained me as I breathed in and out as deeply as I could around that gag. I let go of the table and stood straight and stared down this six-month-old version of myself. I blinked. Fuck me, but I looked fucking hot in that pale blue babydoll. A giddy laugh bubbled in my throat. I hadn’t seen it since that first day, and I wondered where it was. The laugh escaped, a single bark of relief, and I shook my head and turned my back on the past, at least as far as the leash allowed.

            All the screens went blank. The room fell back into darkness, except for the blinking lights over by the ladies on the sofa. I became aware of my heavy breathing, the steady trickle of drool only my chest. Dmytro shifted somewhere behind me.

            One by one, the displays lit up with a final sequence of images. Cindy, but it’s not, it’s David cross-dressing. Cindy-as-disguise rather than Cindy as a real person, a borrowed persona to get me to safety. Although now, I swear, there’s hints of the later girl in the man I was, which doesn’t really make sense because I didn’t even know her then. It was just a costume, prosthetics and wig, too much makeup and a mincing parody of femininity.

            And there I am, standing at a motel counter. There’s a lollipop in my mouth as I—flirt—with that kid, whatever his name was. Outside the motel room, dragging a small case behind me. Standing in the door, silhouetted by light in translucent lingerie. The hulking figure of a man, Fosters, interrogated me and was fooled by the disguise. Now he’s a grotesque monster, buried deep in a basement. But then, he was already a monster when I first met him.

            There’s a final flurry of pictures, barely registered. Parking lot. Honda Civic. Elevator. Safe House. Mincing practice. How the hell did he get these pictures?

            These photos floated about for a moment. And then every single image flickered, flipped and confronted me with a single moment, repeated ad nauseum:

Green eyes, wide open. And a slight curve to his lips, like a mocking surrender, or a laughing smile, as though to say, of course it would end this way. His torso jerks backwards. His arms flail forward. The center of impact is over his heart. His right shoulder twitches backwards. He will spin and fall to the floor, into unconsciousness, into darkness. He will wake up a woman. But not yet. In this moment, his last, he remains a man. He wears a bulky green sweater over the Kevlar vest beneath. Curls of cotton puff outwards from his chest. Beneath the sweater and vest and shirt, that chest is firm and flat and muscular. Legs and arms as well, locked tight as the impact of two bullets flows through his body.

David, frozen in the moment two bullets take his life. Oh, he’ll live. The vest absorbed the impact, left him with a pair of cracked ribs and deep bruising—but that was the end of him, really. Soon after waking, Katherine Smith will stick a pair of prosthetic tits to him, he’ll slip on his first pair of panties and pantyhose, start learning to walk in heels and then he’s done for.

            Nearly a year later, those tits were real, and I wore stripper heels as I contemplated the final moment of my previous life. And it was then that the truth I had avoided for months hit me, with all the clarity and pain of a cresting sun after a late-night bender: David really was dead. My previous life was gone. There was no going back to the way things had been before. David would forever remain a part of me, but that life was over.

            I barely had time to acknowledge any of this before all the screens blanked, but for that single final frame of David. A soft pool of white light appeared at the far end of the room. In it, a standing figure. He approached at a slow pace. Recessed spotlights overhead tracked him, blinking out behind, illuminating the space he entered. And as he walked, his voice rang out loud and clear:

“In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure-dome decree:

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea.”

            At his words, the walls shimmered to life and filled with a deep blue waterscape, somehow capturing the impression of an underground, sunless sea. Bioluminescence glowed in the darkness, and in the absence of familiar shapes, huge and mighty forms moved slowly through the murky deep.

            Christ, and it didn’t seem fair. Five years, and Darius was unchanged: same grey at the temples, same sharp eyes, though better dressed in a suit not dissimilar to the one I wore five years ago. But then, the silence of his steps—a slight flicker of the light—and I realized it wasn’t the man himself, but rather a holographic projection of the sort I’d seen often enough in meetings over the past decade. I’d used them myself a few times to join team meetings in distant or foreign branches. Fucker-in-chief Jeremiah Steele was legendary for his insistence on using them. Apparently, only a handful of people could claim to have seen the man in the flesh since his childhood.

            I guess I was one of those lucky few. Funny, though, that standing there in bondage gear with my tits sticking out, slick with spit, I wasn’t feeling particularly fortunate.

            Darius’s eyes tracked me with unerring accuracy, and his lips curved in a sardonic smile.

            “Not quite Shangri-La,” he said, and the voice was the same I remembered. “But it’ll do, it’ll do.” The projection stopped at the far end of the table. Glittering holographic eyes raked over me, and his smile grew. “Welcome to Xanadu, Luke. To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?”
             I glared at him from within my prison of feminine bondage, biting deep into the gag.

            But his eyes were no longer on me, instead flicking to a point over my shoulder. “Yes, Dmytro. Luke, if it wasn’t clear from our little show.” Darius turned his attention back to me. “Don’t you recognize your old friend?”

            Dmytro’s heavy paw found my shoulder and turned me towards him with considerate gentleness. Serious and searching eyes met mine. At first, he seemed angry, or even hurt; but then, like storm clouds parting, his eyes brightened and his face split in a wide grin. “Luke!” He drew me into a crushing embrace. “It’s been too long.” His hug lasted longer than I liked, my tits squashed up against his rock-hard belly, my head ground into his chest. I endured it for a moment, then squirmed, and he chuckled and held me at arm’s length. “You’ve changed.”

            I rolled my eyes.

            He tilted his head. “This is not the future I imagined for you.”

            I grunted my frustration through the gag.

            “I have so many questions,” he said. “But later, yes?” At a gesture from Darius, he stepped back and stood, once again in silence, behind me.

            “Sit,” Darius indicated, and I wasn’t about to argue, wincing at the instant relief in my calves, my lower back. His projection sat at the far end of the table. Briefly, I was reminded of our encounter, five years prior. Clearly, he felt the same as he leaned back in his chair—the projection was remarkably convincing, no clipping through the furniture or visible distortions—and waved a hand towards the far side of the room, where the pair of female silhouettes waited. “What do you say, how about another round, just for old times’ sake?” His image stuttered, a jump in time; then he was gesturing towards those two distant girls. “Same as last time?” He grinned, though without kindness.

            A moment later, one of those female figures stood at my side. This woman was taller than me–but then, who wasn’t?—in a shiny black dress, skin-tight from neck to knee, though slit to the waist, and an outer underbust corset, purple and gripping her waist like a fist. Her tits nearly overspilled up top. Sexy, but her movements were sinuous, feline grace in stiletto heels. Rich red lips, blonde ponytail, and she wore a sleek, tight headpiece that left nose and mouth free but covered her eyes, ears and the back of her skull. The visor across her eyes gleamed with the same dull sheen as the screens lining the walls. She held a tumbler in her left hand, and each finger was tipped with dagger-like nails, metallic silver glint in the pale light.

            “They see what I want them to see,” Darius said, dismissing the girl with a wave. “And hear what I want them to hear.”

            I watched the girl return to the sofa. There was more than sexuality in that bitch’s sensual strut; there was also predatorial grace, a jaguar’s leanness of muscle rippling beneath the skin. Between Dmytro’s bulk, the two women, the guards beyond the door, and the fact I was talking to a fucking hologram projected within this lunatic’s pleasure-dome, I started to wonder what the fuck I’d gotten myself into.

            “Now, to business.” Darius leaned forward, elbows on the table, and an eager light flashed in his eyes. “Why are you here?”

I growled around my gag, I heard Dmytro shift uncomfortably behind me.

            “Come now, Luke. You’ve come all this way.”

            “Boss?” Dmytro stepped closer. “Should I… remove—?”

            “No.” A glance, and Dmytro retreated. “If he—” and here he stopped, and grinned. “Or do you prefer she?” He nodded in my direction. “If Luke has something to say, I’m sure they’ll find a way.” Then he leaned in a little closer, eyes bright with anticipation. “Go on, Luke. Tell me, what is it you want?”

            I tensed my arms, a preemptive testing of the bonds holding my hands behind my back. The cuffs weren’t anything special, dainty kink-links rather than police restraint, a sexy bit of fun just strong enough to keep a girl’s arms behind her back. The connecting chain was thin metal links; I’d been working out steadily these past six months, even if it didn’t show in sloping shoulders and slender arms; I felt confident I could snap the chain.

            Instead, I released a wet exhalation of frustration, bit hard into the gag. I wasn’t going to play his game. He had his secrets. So did I.

            I sat and stared levelly into the holographic eyes of this projection of a man I once knew. Drool gathered at the corner of my mouth, dribbled down my chin, gathered at the tip, dripped onto my chest. Silence settled between us. Dmytro shifted uneasily behind.

            Darius smiled, a thin and unpleasant curve of his lips. “Fine,” he said, his tone cold. “You always were a stubborn little bitch, weren’t you? Sycophantic pain in the ass. Trailing after Sophya, Dmytro, always underfoot, so pathetically eager to please.”

            I waited.

            He drummed his fingers soundlessly on the table, and his eyes drifted to stare absently into the middle distance. “Those were good times, you know,” he said. “We didn’t appreciate what we had. Our Shangri-La. Do you remember that night, Luke? You, me, Emma, that bottle of vodka, so fucking cold and sitting in moonlight surrounded by all those clothes and playing—truth or dare—can you fucking believe it? Just like kids, ordinary kids, and the way that light shimmered in the air, to think of it now, it hardly seems real. And Emma, she was wearing this sparkly pink thing off one of the racks over her jeans, like a ballerina might wear, remember? And her wicked little smile, when it was her turn, and she grabbed this slinky black thing off the shelf and dared us….”

            Darius trailed off. He refocused on me, spoke over steepled fingers.

            “As you can tell, Luke, you’ve been a person of interest to me for some time.” In speaking, new images flickered to life in the background, snapshots of David over the past few years: serious suits, short hair, cocky grin. The first few multiplied, broke apart, and slowly drifted across the walls, dozens of pictures of a nearly forgotten me at work, at play. Perhaps he wanted to distract me, keep me off kilter, but these older images were easy to ignore. “And it just so happens that I could use your help.”

            I grunted.

            “Tell me, Luke.” Darius tilted his head to one side. “Have you ever regretted not taking me up on my offer?”

            I hesitated, then gave a grudging nod.

            For some reason, that seemed to mollify him.

            “You made the right choice,” he said, quietly.

            Then he sighed, speaking with renewed purpose. “You’ve come here,” he said, “because you want something from me. You want to escape—this,” and he waved a hand at my bound and feminine form. “You want to be a man again.” Now he stood and approached, his image flickering through the table until he stood over me. His eyes tracked across my body and my skin crawled. I growled up at him, and he sneered. “Or so you say.”

            He crouched next to me. This close, I could see imperfections in the projections, where light diffusion and a slight flicker couldn’t fool the eye. He became translucent at the edges, and if I looked deep enough into his eyes, I could see through the other side. “Because I know you, Luke. Or David, maybe.” He tapped me on the forehead, a prickling warmth to the skin. “Because there’s something you want even more than your manhood back.”

            He looked at me, and I looked back at him, and he smiled.

            “Revenge.”