Cole was dropped and hit the floor hard. The wind was knocked from his lungs. He gasped for breath, thrashed around straining against the ties on his hands and feet until he was on his back, staring up at the sky: patches of blue surrounded by dark, pregnant clouds.

He saw the other man with things under his arms ... things wrapped in white cloths ... things that wailed ... cried ... sobbed ...

Babies. They were babies.

"Okay, here they are," said the man who had carried them out. "Let"s get to it, guys."

Lying on his back and watching, Cole tried to count the babies. There were three ... no, four men. Or was that guy over there the fifth? He couldn"t tell, and quickly didn"t care.

One of the men lifted a baby high by the ankles. He unwrapped the white cloth until the baby was naked, then he handed it to another man, saying, "Remember, the shoulder, that"s where it"s gotta go."

"I know, I know, whatta you think I am, some kinda amateur?" He took the baby roughly in his left hand.

Cole gasped when he saw the large, barbed hook in the man"s right hand.

The hook went through the baby"s shoulder.

Blood spurted, then flowed from the wound.

The baby screamed so hard and so long that its face turned dark red as its arms and legs flailed and kicked.

The hook was attached to a cable and was thrown over the side of the boat. A couple of the men laughed loudly.

Cole"s eyes were so wide they hurt as he gawked at the men. He felt as if he might throw up.

A man at the other end of the boat holding an enormous fishing pole-like no fishing pole Cole had ever seen before-shouted, "Oh-ho, well, I guess we"ll see what I get here, huh?"

One of the men bent over Cole then, clutched him with both hands and lifted him up.

"I"ll hold him," he said to another. "You cut the ropes."

Another of the men some distance away bellowed, "You know, I never thought about it before, but hey, this way we"ll make the liberals happy "cause we ain"t killin" any dolphins, right?"

The others, including the one holding Cole, roared with laughter.

Someone cut the ropes and his limbs were free.

Big hands with fat, rough fingers ripped his shirt off and peeled his pants from his legs like the thin seal from a sausage. They pulled his shoes and socks off and tore his underwear away until he was completely naked and shivering.

"Okay, you take him," the man said. "Give "im to Corny-he"s good at hooking the bigger ones."

Moments later, Cole was looking at a big man with huge moles on his face. He smiled at Cole. "Tell ya what, kid, I ain"t gonna hit any a your organs or arteries or nothin". It"ll hurt, but you"ll be okay, I promise."

The man stabbed a large barbed hook through Cole"s right shoulder. The excruciating pain made him scream for an instant, then he pa.s.sed out.

He woke to big hands slapping his face.

"Kid! Hey, kid!" the man slapping him shouted. "You gotta be awake for this, okay? You gotta be awake and kickin"!"

Once Cole was alert and crying out for help, one of the big men wrapped his thick arms around Cole, sending explosions of pain from his pierced shoulder through his entire body, lifted him and threw him over the side of the boat and into the cold water.

Under the water, Cole held his breath, cheeks puffed out like little balloons on each side of his face. The pain was unbearable, but at the moment, he was more interested in breathing.

He began to thrash and kick.

He found the surface, got his head above it and cried, "Help me! Please help me help me help me help-"

Through bleary, watery eyes, he saw the men looking over the edge of the boat, grinning at him.

"Go get "em, boy!" one of them shouted with a laugh.

He went under again, quite unexpectedly, still kicking and flailing, mouth closed and eyes open. He saw it.

The shark.

It came out of the darkness aimed directly at him, its predatory, dead-black eyes staring, teeth showing in his half-open mouth, rows and rows of crooked razors.

Cole felt the impact and was jerked through the water.

His own blood clouded the water around him until the silent predator looked like a nightmarish ghost moving through the night.

Cole let out his breath and screamed under the water as the shark"s face came out of the darkness again, mouth open.

Closer and closer ....

Painfreak.

Gerard Houarner.

"Painfreak" was first published in Into the Darkness #1, April 1994.

Gerard Houarner works in a psychiatric inst.i.tution by day and writes at night, mostly about the dark. Recent publications include "Tree of Shadows," in the Crossroads Press electronic edition of the novel The Beast That Was Max, "Mourning With the Bones of the Dead," Horror Library 4, "The Flea Market ," Eibonvale Press anthology Blind Swimmer, "Lightning Can"t Catch Me," Darkness On The Edge: Dark Tales Inspired by the Songs of Bruce Springsteen, and "Dead Medicine Snake Woman," Indian Country Noir. He also serves as fiction editor for s.p.a.ce and Time magazine.

Painfreak started as a (slightly) warped view of an elite club scene and the not-so-elite desires such scenes serve to satisfy. The club has since appeared here and there in my work, sometimes as a kind of gateway to h.e.l.l, other times a crossroads between worlds and desires. It"s not a place where good things happen.

Fear knotted Tony Lambert"s stomach as Lisa hopped out of the cab that had stopped in front of the closed Brooklyn warehouse half way down the block from his hiding place under the Belt Parkway. Once again, she was going to Painfreak.

Lisa, anonymous in her black rain coat and hat, trotted through the night"s light drizzle to the loading docks. Her slim, pet.i.te figure danced in and out of the light from the occasional functioning street lamp. He had followed her from her girlfriend"s apartment to the floating club"s latest secret location a week ago, and had watched her enter every night since then. He had not yet gone in after her. The fear in his stomach warned him not to pursue her any further. Guy had said people didn"t always come out from Painfreak.

So far, Lisa had. Of course, Guy had called the both of them tourists, not players, the night seven years ago when he had introduced Tony to the club and they had met Lisa. Players took the real risks. Like Guy, who Painfreak had claimed with AIDS. Tourists just watched, and wished they had the guts to join in the fun. To give themselves up, surrender to their fantasies. Tourists were afraid to go all the way. Guy had been right; Tony and Lisa had given up the club circuit, and Painfreak in particular, after they met. But they were still alive.

Except now Lisa had left him and gone back to Painfreak. Tony didn"t know why. They had started living together the night they met, and had married soon afterwards. In the seven years since, Tony had never been tempted to chase after another woman. Lisa had paid her share of the expenses, never complained or mentioned kids. They had lived quietly, with few friends or family to distract them from their private games. And it was the private games, like the milder ones at Painfreak and the scene to which it belonged, that had kept him faithful to Lisa. They always had s.e.x the way Tony liked it. The way he always thought she liked it. Fantasy not quite over the edge. Love with costumes and devices out of video p.o.r.n and catalogs; games without points; play with roles and body parts. It had been enough for him and, he thought, for her. He had no idea what other desires had gone unfulfilled in Lisa, any more than he knew the source of the fear that kept him from following her in.

He knew only that he was afraid of finding out.

Tony pressed himself against one of the Parkway"s steel support beams, as if trying to draw strength from the vibration of cars pa.s.sing overhead. Cold metal stole the warmth from his hands and face. The sussuration of tires on the wet highway pavement overhead whispered urgently to him as Lisa knocked on the steel rolling gate at one of the bays. She waited, perfectly still, looking down. A side door cracked opened. She held out her hand towards the darkness in the entrance for a moment. She nodded and slipped into the darkness beyond the doorway.

Tony shuffled his feet. Thunder rolled in from Manhattan; lightning flashed. Soon, the drizzle would turn to hard rain. Soon, perhaps tonight, Painfreak would move. Vanish from the city altogether, re-settle for a while in Paris, Bangkok, Berlin, Los Angeles, or some other travellers" city. Guy had said clubs like Painfreak were only an idea that stayed on the mind of a big city for a little while. The various social scenes from which such elite clubs erupted did not have the energy to sustain the kind of activities that went on inside. There were only so many players at any given time, in any given place. Once depleted of energy, the idea simply moved to another mind. Another city.

Lisa might be swept away with the scene and find herself lost in a strange land. Or, driven by whatever pain and desperation that had brought her to the club in the first place, knowing the club might be out of her reach for a long time, she might make the move from tourist to player. And even if she emerged once more, unscathed, and returned tomorrow night to find Painfreak gone, Tony doubted she would come back to him. He would still not know the source of the pain and desperation that had made her suddenly abandon him, refuse any contact with him, and flee to Painfreak. And if he did not find out, then she would be lost to him forever.

The warehouse stood silent in the abandoned business district. No lights escaped its windows. No music, or any other sound, drifted along the street to him. Tony glanced back at his Lexus parked by the service road curb. Water dripped from the highway into shallow pools, splashed on to concrete. The city waited around him, vast and enigmatic, offering neither encouragement nor menace. He had to make his move on his own. Tonight. Or give Lisa up.

He took a step, then another. He left the comforting darkness under the Belt Parkway, crossed the service road, hit the sidewalk at a steady pace. He tried not to think about where he was going, what he was doing. He tried to keep his mind on Lisa: on her strong legs, gentle hands, her wide mouth and full lips, the way she laughed, and sighed, and turned her head away from him after they were both satiated with s.e.x.

Tony hunched his shoulders against the rain and the breeze, which had chilled and grown brisk. Cold rain trickled down his neck. The warehouse loomed over him, but he was still not at the loading docks.

Thinking about her reminded him of the barren apartment that was now his home, the loneliness he felt sleeping alone. He missed her sitting on the sofa, reading, while he watched television. He missed her cleaning up in the kitchen after he cooked their meals, and coming back from the laundry with their clothes bundled in sacks, and pulling out coupons as they shopped in the supermarket. He missed the click of her high heels on ceramic floor tile, the play of muscle under skin when she tightened straps and flicked a crop or whip, the way leather and latex hugged her body. Without Lisa, he was empty. He could not give her up.

He realized suddenly, as he put his foot on the concrete step leading to the loading dock, that it was emptiness driving him into Painfreak.

The hollow feeling within him had been growing since she left him days ago without a word. Each failure to re-establish contact with her had sucked another piece of his inner self away. She had not gone to work in a week; Tony had called her line and waited outside her office building. She had run away from him outside her girlfriend"s apartment building, from which he had followed her to Painfreak. She had the doorman warn him the police would be called it he persisted in trying to talk to her.

He wondered how he had coped with the terrible, raw and aching hole at the center of his being before he met her. It was the pain of that emptiness that was overcoming his fear, making him return to Painfreak to find what he had lost.

On the loading docks, Tony took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Though he was afraid, the desperation of pain was stronger. And now he had something to tell Lisa. He understood there was more than fear inside of him. Surely, she could relate to his emptiness. Perhaps, he thought as thunder rumbled nearby and the rain suddenly began to pour, she felt the same way. Empty. Missing something essential. Perhaps he had failed her in some unknown way. Perhaps he had driven her to Painfreak with his failure.

He had words, now, other than the pathetic: please come back, don"t leave me. He had questions: are you as empty as I? what are you looking for in this place? how can I fill your emptiness, as you"ve filled mine?

Fist trembling, Tony knocked on the gate. The steel rattled. A gust swept rain across the open dock. The side door opened, and Tony approached the darkness.

Shadows stirred, then a tall, wide form separated itself from the deeper blackness and blocked the entrance. A thick-necked, bald-headed man crossed his arms over his chest and looked down on Tony.

Tony reached into his pocket for money, then stopped and stared at the doorman. He had a few more scars on his face and hands, and he was dressed in grey and black instead of the more colorful styles fashionable on his first visit, but there was no doubt the doorman was the same as when Guy had brought him in. It did not seem as if he had aged.

Someone reached out and grabbed Tony"s right wrist while he was pulling out his money. Strong fingers wrenched his hand back and twisted, paralyzing him in a painful joint lock. Tony knelt to escape the agony of tearing muscles and ligaments, then looked up. A slightly built Asian man dressed in a dark suit and turtleneck regarded him impa.s.sively while the doorman, his arms still crossed, stood behind him. Tony"s money fluttered away on the breeze.

"Referrals only," the Asian man said softly. "Please leave."

"My wife just went in-" Tony began, but then gasped as the Asian man twisted his hand a fraction more.

Wrong answer, but what was the right one? Guy had led him in the first time, talked to the doorman. No money, but what? The hand. Like Lisa, he had shown the doorman his hand. There had been a hand stamp, with invisible ink, to allow patrons to leave and return the same night. Both Guy and Tony had been stamped, but that was so many years ago. Stupid to even think- "Been here, Guy brought me, long time ..."

The Asian man released him, and the doorman gently helped him to his feet. They gazed at the back of his left hand. The faint outline of a bone mark glowed on his skin. Tony searched for the UV lamp, but found only blackness beyond the two men.

The Asian man stepped back while the doorman pressed a stamp down on the back of Tony"s left hand. His flesh tingled, and he remembered the sensation from his first visit. The doorman stepped aside and motioned him to enter.

"Always show the mark," the Asian man said reproachfully before melting into the darkness.

Tony nodded and hurried into the warehouse, his heart beating fast and his wrist still throbbing. All those years he had worn Painfreak"s mark without knowing it had been burned into his flesh. Lisa had worn it as well. He had no doubt she had known about the invisible bone on her hand, just as she had always known how to find the club. A pair of secrets she had kept from him, like the unfulfilled dreams that haunted her, like the pain that was driving her back to Painfreak. He wondered how many marks she wore on her hand.

The narrow corridor he followed was dimly lit at the opposite end by a single bulb over a tight, winding set of metal stairs that led down. Seeing no other way to go, Tony descended the stairs. Ba.s.s pulsed up the stair well from the club"s speakers, sending tremors through the steel hand rails. A repet.i.tive, mechanical tune echoed through the wider hallway he found at the bottom of the stairs. He headed towards another distant bulb, and the music became louder, ba.s.s beating inside of him like a second heart; cold, synthesized notes drawing his thoughts into an endless, pointless loop. At the steel double doors under the bulb, Tony shook his head, wiped his palms against his thighs, and pushed a heavy door.

The music washed over him like a cold wave of water. Something in the music, like the combination of electricity crackling and a faint feedback whine, made the short hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. Things had changed since his last visit. The music was different, for one thing. And he didn"t remember seeing so many cages.

Seven years was too long away from Painfreak to return.

Tony walked to the long bar-battered tables of different heights and widths set end to end, behind which two naked barkeepers patrolled-and found an empty storage drum to sit on. Something whimpered inside the drum as his weight made the walls pop. He shifted uneasily on the warm metal. Nails or claws scratched feebly at the barrel walls. A new variation in Painfreak"s perversions, he decided.

The male barkeeper came to him and set down a tall styrofoam cup of what looked like frothy fruit punch. Tony reached into his pocket and remembered he had lost his money. He turned to hold his empty hands up in a gesture of apology. The barkeeper shook his head, wiped his palms together in a gesture of dismissal and moved away. Tony didn"t remember paying for any drinks the last time, either.

He took a careful sip of the concoction, aware from news reports that drugs might have been mixed in with the punch. The sweet scent of tropical fruit masked for a moment the warehouse bas.e.m.e.nt"s stale odors. Tangy flavors danced on his tongue, before a slightly bitter aftertaste and a spot of cold numbness told him there was a potent spell hiding behind the drink"s seductive enticement. Shaking his head, he put the cup down. Cocaine had been the drug of choice in his day, when things had seemed simpler.

Tony scanned the bodies jumping, gyrating, hurling, convulsing spasmodically on the dance floor. In single cages suspended at varying heights from the ceiling, naked women and men, some locked two and three to a cage, writhed and sweated and rattled the bars to their prisons. Colored lights flashed stroboscopically over the crowd, illuminating for an instant individual faces contorted by ecstasy. He was not surprised Lisa was not among them. They were both too old for this nonsense. How could Lisa stand it? Over thirty, now, and slowing down, neither one of them had the energy or the stamina anymore to throw themselves into such a baccha.n.a.l. In fact, meeting each other had been a graceful means of exiting the world of clubs and scenes and parties for both of them. Was it the adventurousness of youth that she missed? The daring? Was she trying to recapture the feeling that came from being young and living life on the edge? His appet.i.tes were no longer as keen or as sharp.

Watching the frantic motions of the dancers and the twisting cages, he understood that now more than ever he had limits. He did not want to abandon himself to music screaming around him or drugs humming from within, or join in tired, panting games that tried to capture dreams of s.e.x and power and life and death. He did not want to dance on the edge. He wanted only Lisa.

The emptiness twisted inside of him as he imagined her as weary of the scene as he was, but wanting something else, something more. His grip on the cup tightened as he imagined her feeling that she had made the wrong choice in leaving with him that night, that she should have stayed, and gone deeper into Painfreak. He shut his eyes against the moment"s vertigo when he imagined her needing to go over the edge, to fall into the emptiness. To enter Painfreak and never come out.

Without thinking, he took a long swallow from the cup, then quickly put it down when he realized what he was doing. He wiped froth from his lips and pushed the cup away. When he looked around, he noticed an older couple standing against the wall, watching him. They were both stout, dressed in formal evening wear, and glittering with jewelry. The woman smiled and nodded to him, a hungry glint in her eye.

Tony remembered seeing their kind the last time. They were not tourists or players, Guy had said when Tony asked about the ones who looked so completely out of place in the club. They were the ones who paid the bills, made the arrangements, worked the bureaucratic magic that enabled Painfreak to appear and disappear without a trace. They were the part of the urban mind that sensed the need for Painfreak in the fabric of the city"s life. They did more than just make arrangements and watch; they filled their own emptiness when others danced on and over the edge. They fed, and when there was nothing more to feed on, they arranged for Painfreak to move on.

More and more, Tony remembered why he had abandoned the scene. He shuddered and looked away.

And found Lisa.

He saw brown hair cut short, a head bobbing up and down in a familiar rhythm, a quick profile that showed the long line of the forehead and nose. Lisa, slicing through the crowd, heading towards a door on the other side of the club floor.

Tony was up and on his feet, shouting her name. The music drowned his voice. Lisa vanished for a moment and he pushed his way through the dancers, frantically searching for her. He caught a glimpse of the older couple standing against the wall; they were laughing and talking to another elderly pair while pointing in his direction.

Someone who might have been Lisa went through the door. Tony staggered as a teenaged girl slammed her body into his back. Her raw-edged howl bored through his mind before hands dragged her back into the dancing pack, lifted her into the air, and carried her to the center of the floor. Tony cast a final quick glance for Lisa, then went through the door.

He pa.s.sed through a series of sound baffles made of strips of plastic and material hanging from ceiling pipes. He emerged into a darkened cavern lit by hazy fires. Tony froze, looked up, expecting to see stars through the thin smoke. Street grating set into the vaulted ceiling rea.s.sured him he had not been transported to some alien world. The place must have been a munic.i.p.al storage depot at one time, like the ones inside bridge supports and off subway tunnels. Abandoned, the cavern had been transformed into an incubator for Painfreak"s more serious games.

Tony coughed from the smoke tainted air, and he ma.s.saged a tearing eye. The music was absent; in its place, human voices cried out, wailed, shouted, screamed, singly and in small groups. Their rhythms were random, the volume nowhere near as high as in the club"s dancing area. Other noises mingled with the voices; metal grinding on metal, chains rattling, water splashing, the hiss of escaping gases, the soft thump of crashing bodies, wood splintering. Or bone. The sounds chilled him, though the cavern was hot and stuffy.

A few people ran past him, their naked feet slapping on the concrete floor. They faded quickly into the gloom, but he had seen enough to know none of them had been Lisa. Tony began trotting to the nearest fire.

He had almost reached the flames when he became aware of someone running alongside of him. Startled, he turned, antic.i.p.ating seeing Lisa.