The tall, thin man was naked, and his long, white hair trailed behind him as he kept pace with Tony. His face was bony, beardless, and his eyes were black in the dim, flickering light. He smiled, acknowledging his discovery. "I never had the chance to show you the back rooms," the man said, and his smile broadened. "You and Lisa hit it off so fast the first time you came here."

It wasn"t Guy. Guy was dead. The toothy smile was his, as was the jutting jaw and the body that had been flesh draped over bones even before AIDS claimed it. The man"s voice sounded like Guy"s, sarcastic and dry, on the edge of a caustic observation. But it couldn"t be Guy. The cavern spun once around Tony, and he nearly fell.

Tony stopped beyond the fire"s inner circle of light, and the man coasted to a stop a few steps later. They faced each other, the man putting his hands on his hips. Through his body, Tony could see the flames jump as if through a translucent curtain.

"See anything you like, sailor boy?" The man wiggled his hips.

"Who the f.u.c.k are you?" Not believing, never, it wasn"t possible.

The man pouted. "I could understand you forgetting me if we"d f.u.c.ked, Tony. But d.a.m.n, after two years of rooming together, I figured the s.e.xual tension between us would"ve made me memorable." The man exploded into hysterical laughter, holding his arms across his stomach and stamping a foot repeatedly. "Nothing like unrequited l.u.s.t to bring back the dead," he said after catching his breath, and laughed again.

Tony circled around the man and approached the fire. It was Guy. Alive, or dead, but still Guy. Not possible, but real. Suddenly, the world did not feel so solid or tangible.

"College was a long time ago," Tony said, measuring his words carefully. He glanced at the figures at the periphery of the fire"s light, trying to deny the fact that he was talking to Guy as he searched for Lisa.

"Oh, please, stop acting like a tourist b.i.t.c.h," Guy said, his good humor gaining an angry edge. "I"m the f.u.c.ker that"s dead, a.s.shole."

Tony wandered to the other side of the fire, trying to put distance between himself and the apparition. Guy strolled languidly around the fire after him. Tony glanced at the cavern entrance, a distant grey splotch in the darkness. He thought of emptiness, and Lisa.

"I"m sorry about what happened to you, Guy." Was he really talking to a ghost? "But I"m here looking for Lisa." Tony started turning away, desperately pushing the idea of Guy, of talking to a ghost, out of his mind. Lisa. He was after Lisa. That was his anchor to what was real.

"You always were looking for a b.i.t.c.h, Tony," Guy said in a mocking tone. "That"s why you liked rooming with me. Didn"t give a s.h.i.t about what the guys said. I was a good b.i.t.c.h to you, even if you never touched me, even if you never let me touch you. And I made your other b.i.t.c.hes feel good when they came over. Mister sensitive and self-confident, so masculine you could relate to a h.o.m.os.e.xual," he said, rolling his eyes, shoulders, hips, and snaking his arms up and down, "and not feel threatened. Ooooo, they really ate it up, didn"t they?"

Tony"s face flushed, and he turned back quickly as a flash of anger washed over his fear. "Why don"t you spare me the helpless f.a.ggot routine, Guy."

"And if they freaked when they met me, you knew they weren"t going to be any fun, right? Too uptight and serious. They"d start in on your image and reputation, like I was going to drag the both of you into a social gutter. And I would"ve, too." Guy laughed, but kept his gaze fixed on Tony. "No, you liked the ones who asked if you ever watched me have s.e.x with my lovers, who were curious about how gays did it, who"d listen to you talk about leather and c.o.c.k rings and fist f.u.c.king."

Tony jabbed a finger at Guy. "I used you, and you used me. You liked it when your little studs played seduction games with me, or when the two of you sat back and made fun of me while I was in the house. And you knew things were wrong when your p.r.i.c.k got jealous and macho around me. You didn"t mind it when I got some of those wackos off your tail, either."

"You know how I love it when you get angry, Tony. Sure you don"t want to find out what the real thing"s all about?"

"Go f.u.c.k yourself."

"Only as a last resort." Guy waited a moment, then smiled. "Just like old times, right?"

Tony"s anger evaporated. Guy was right; he had fallen right into a petty argument they had re-hashed hundreds times, a standard eruption of the pent-up frustrations that built whenever two people chose to live together. Only now he was arguing with a ghost. His fear returned, stronger than before. To fight it he had to close his eyes and picture Lisa, on his bed, waiting for him with a seductive smile. He had gone too far to run away. He was too close to her to give up, just because a ghost from his past chose to haunt him in Painfreak.

His fear would not go away.

Drugs. Hallucinogens in the drink, in the smoke from the fires, giving life to memories brought up by his return to Painfreak. A bad trip.

Reason calmed his fear to a manageable level. He took a deep breath, let it out slowly. He could handle what was going on. It wasn"t real. Just play along, he told himself. Remember Lisa.

"What a pair of predators we were, Tony," Guy said, stepping to the fire light"s edge and sitting cross-legged on the floor. "To tell you the truth, I can"t even give myself a good f.u.c.k anymore. Why don"t you sit for a while and help bring back the good times? It"s the only way I can get off nowadays."

"I can"t," said Tony. "Lisa left me, came here. She"s looking for something, I guess, but I need her. I have to find her, make her come back."

Guy shook his head from side to side. "I know where she went. I can lead you to her, if you sit with me for a few minutes. That"s not too much of a price to pay, is it?"

Tony hesitated. He listened to the sounds, stared into the darkness between the fires. There were exits at the far end of the cavern, and Tony imagined a network of tunnels spreading out under Brooklyn and the rest of the city. Lisa could be anywhere. Real, or unreal, there was a chance this vision of Guy might help.

He sat down next to his old roommate.

"You look worse than a tourist, Tony," said Guy, with a touch of sadness. "You look like prey. What happened to you?"

Tony sighed and pa.s.sed a hand over his face. His palm and fingertips came away slick with grimy sweat.

"Please, don"t tell me," Guy continued, breaking into a chuckle. "Please don"t tell me you fell in love."

"Not quite. Not in love. But I fell into something." He searched for words to capture what he had with Lisa. "Safety, companionship. Maybe I just fell into s.e.x. But there"s nothing now, there"s just emptiness."

"That"s all there ever is, especially for people like us. You just don"t realize it. You don"t know the emptiness, how deep it runs. That"s why you never made the move to being a real player. But don"t feel bad. Even I didn"t understand the emptiness completely when I was alive, and I was a player there, towards the end. We thought that empty feeling we had was a hunger for something other people could give us. It didn"t bother us most of the time "cause we thought we were filling ourselves up every time we came. What a pair of sharks we were, cruising our own little scenes. You know what it was that let us live so well together? We were the same kind of people underneath all the bulls.h.i.t. Predators. We went after the same kind of people. Hollow little n.o.bodies who didn"t know their a.s.ses from their p.r.i.c.ks, or c.u.n.ts. But the beauty of us being together was that we had our own little territories. You went after the c.u.n.ts, and I went after the p.r.i.c.ks. Tell me about those times, Tony. I want to remember, I want the details. There"s nothing inside of me anymore. No feelings, no memories. It"s all shadows and emptiness."

Guy stared at him without blinking, as if ghosts forgot to blink. His mouth hung open, his hands lay in his lap, palms up. He looked like a child waiting to be fed.

Tony closed his eyes and trawled for memories, eager to put Guy to rest. The specter"s talk of emptiness and predators had only made his own need for Lisa stronger. And if this ghost could not help him find her, at least its guilty presence would not distract him while he caught up to Lisa and tried to win her back.

Names from his own adventures as well as Guy"s returned to him, and their faces. Anne, Shanelle, Kiko. Thurman, George, Larry. Episodes he hadn"t thought about in years came back: s.e.x on the dorm roof, in the closet while others listened and commented outside, using the early model video recorders the college owned. There were the games of humiliation, the games of pain, and the entertainments in costume. Simple and complex, he had repeated them all with Lisa. But he had discovered them first with the disposable partners he and Guy had enjoyed. He began to talk, and as the memories rushed out Tony opened his eyes and looked up, letting the words flow, the past catching up to him.

And as the past flooded him, the darkness beyond the fire seemed to lighten. He began to see what was happening between the fires. He looked away, at first. He spoke quickly, felt as if he were babbling, but Guy did not interrupt or ask him to be clearer, only sat and watched him with his blank expression, his dull, lifeless eyes. The more he talked, the clearer the air became, until he could not help but see the expression on the face of the squirming woman being hauled by giggling men up to the ceiling on a hook and length of chain; until he could see the sweat running down the body of the man suspended at an angle by his outstretched arms and legs, desperately thrusting his erect p.e.n.i.s into a fat, laughing woman dancing wildly to the electronic howl of a band that had just started playing; until he could see the broken bones pushing against muscle and skin, warping the smooth lines of the bodies of the two wrestlers fighting and screaming in a pool of water to the cheers and jeers of a few people standing near.

Blood spurted from a nearby atrocity and sprayed across his face, tickling his lips. Shocked, he raised his arm to wipe the blood away, to spit and rub his skin and shield his face from any more splattering. A sudden impulse made him stop. The blood was hot on his flesh, like Lisa"s sweat mingling with his own when they made love. His tongue darted out like a snake"s, licked his lips as he would Lisa"s body. He tasted coppery saltiness, then swallowed. Surprised by his act, he shuddered. The emptiness within him yawned, threatened to take him. Expecting a surge of fear, he was even more surprised when he became excited by what he had done. His erection pressed against his pants" zipper, as if he had just heard the click of Lisa"s heels on ceramic tile.

Blood. He worried for a moment that it was contaminated, tainted by Death. Death"s blood. He thought of Guy, dead, a ghost, and of the times he had given in to Guy"s nagging and partic.i.p.ated in his s.e.x games by disinterestedly watching him with his lover. Kissing, stroking, mouthing, they had ended by swallowing each other"s c.u.m.

An electric shock of pleasure pa.s.sed through him as he described the scene he had just remembered to Guy. He put himself in Guy"s place, and in the scene his lover was not another man, but Death. Death"s b.l.o.o.d.y c.u.m was on his lips, in his mouth, in him.

The stream of his words faltered, his memories stumbled over one another. The emptiness that had driven him to follow Lisa into Painfreak blossomed with the promise of secret fulfillment. He saw clearly into the void around which he had lived his entire life. The games, the costumes, the mix of pain and pleasure he had pursued with such desperation were suddenly nothing more than shimmering veils hiding his true desire. He did not want to fill the emptiness with s.e.x. He did not want to master, or be mastered by, pleasure and pain. He did not want to feed the hollow hunger with experience, sensation, life. He wanted to surrender to the emptiness. He wanted to be consumed by Death.

Tony stopped talking. Moments later, the electronic howl of music changed, became louder, erupted with sudden energy as if the band had found its groove. A roar like a raging beast echoed through the cavern, deep and raw and edged with the ragged wail of electric guitars. Buried in the roar like a dim heartbeat was the frantic pulsing of drums and ba.s.s. Feedback screeched, pierced ear and mind and thought. Tony doubled over in pain, pressing his palms to his ears. Through tears, he saw the elderly couple nearby, pointing to him and laughing. They looked away. He followed their gaze to a crude cage construction surrounded by a frenetic mob trying to tear down the walls to reach the band playing within.

Tony got up, but the music kept him hunched over. Had Lisa wanted to play in a band? Had that been her fantasy? The band members were shadow forms prancing and miming and sawing the air with their instruments, lost in the pa.s.sion of the moment. He had no idea if she was among them, or their audience. He took a step towards the cage.

A cage wall fell, bringing down one musician. The mob spilled into the stage s.p.a.ce as the other walls collapsed. One by one, the instruments died. Last to go was the pulsing ba.s.s, quivering with a life of its own before drowning in the squeals and cries of the mob fighting for any morsel of meat.

He heard bones crack, flesh tear.

"Beautiful, isn"t it?" Guy said, standing beside him and looking at the orgy. "It"s all so ... romantic, don"t you think? Art and death and, h.e.l.l, even audience partic.i.p.ation." He giggled.

Tony took another step towards the mob, then stopped when he felt Guy"s touch on his arm. It was not a solid touch; Guy"s fingers felt like a cold breeze blowing against his skin.

"She"s not there," he said, suddenly serious. "That"s not her game."

"What is?" Tony asked.

"Is that what you want to know? Or do you want to find out what yours is? I can show you that, too." He stroked Tony"s arm, and the cold tightened his skin, seemed to burn in the bone of his arm. "Want to be a player, Tony?"

Tony groaned as the emptiness reached for him. He wanted it, he wanted Lisa. "Lisa," he croaked, trying to hang on to the crumbling edifice of his past desires and pleasures while his future called to him.

Guy tsked. "Well, you never really were the truly adventurous type, Tony. You would never have found Painfreak on your own. Not like Lisa. She"s been on the scene since she was fifteen. She never told you? I used to see her around, when I was still around. Surprised the h.e.l.l out of me when she latched on to you. Last chance romance, I think. One final try at a normal life with a guy who could give her at least a little action. Oh, what would my old therapist say? An abused child, obviously. Running away from something terrible, running back into it from the long way around. Dear, dear, the story of all our lives, I"m sure."

Tony pulled his arm away. "f.u.c.k you."

Guy came up next to Tony, careful not to touch him. "Say something like that again," he whispered into Tony"s ear, "and it might come true."

Tony stepped back and glanced to his left and right, looking for a direction to walk in. He shivered from the cold Guy had brought with him, and the cold in his words.

"No? Turned down again? Right. I really tried to seduce you once, didn"t I? After we graduated?"

"You tried to move in with me when I got my own place," Tony replied. He remembered the panic in Guy"s voice as he had offered himself, promised to do whatever Tony wanted, just so they could continue being together, continue playing their games. Fear had leaked from every pore in his body, as raw and powerful as Tony"s own when Lisa left him. Graduation, expectations of the adult world, Tony moving out had all sharpened the edges to Guy"s panic. "I kicked you back into the elevator," Tony continued. He had had his own panic, his own burgeoning emptiness, to deal with. "To make up, you took me out to Painfreak."

"My shrink"d say that was a very hostile move. Couldn"t get to you, so I brought you here for Painfreak to seduce you. d.a.m.n, but I wish I could remember that elevator scene. I wonder what I used on you. No, no, don"t tell me. Imagining it will entertain me to no end, at least until your next visit. Maybe then I"ll ask you to tell me about it."

"I"m never coming back here after I get Lisa out."

"Of course you"ll be back. What else are you going do when Lisa"s gone?"

Tony recoiled, looked away from Guy. He moved off in a random direction, searched out the next fire, headed for its flames. Guy caught his arm, and the cold staggered Tony. Painfreak"s bone mark glowed on Tony"s hand.

"Don"t go off half-c.o.c.ked, lover. You"ll miss her moment as a player. Here, let me show you."

Guy pulled on Tony"s arm, dragged him past women pounding on the bodies of men stretched out and tied down to the floor with wild, dancing steps; past a woman bound, blind, gagged, being raped by another woman with a d.i.l.d.o strapped across her s.e.x; past men wrestling one another in shallow pits, breaking each other"s limbs, biting off pieces of flesh, licking the blood spilling from their mouths; past a man with a b.l.o.o.d.y machete across his stomach, reclining among the severed heads of women and busying himself with pulling out the tongue from one head"s mouth and running her blue lips across his skin.

Lisa was not among any of the women.

Guy stopped before another pit, but held fast to Tony"s arm. Below, two naked women approached a nude fat man whose spread-eagled limbs were held fast by manacles to stakes. One woman sat behind his head and secured it between her thighs. Her leg muscles bulged as she applied pressure, and he twitched and choked as his eyes widened. The other woman settled herself on his face, covered it completely, and began to move her hips.

"Lisa," Tony whispered. He leaned forward, but Guy"s cold grip kept him frozen in place.

Lisa looked up as her hands ma.s.saged her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and she thrust her hips harder into the face trapped under her. Her eyes saw through Tony, as if he were as much a ghost as Guy. Sweat filmed her body. A smile, sweet and self-involved, danced across her lips. The fat man"s body jerked, spasmed. His hands grasped at something elusive in the air. His back arched and a desperate, m.u.f.fled moan escaped from the pit. Lisa threw her head back, gasped. The fat man collapsed, and his body slackened. Lisa jerked forward and cried out. She slid off the man"s face and fell to the ground, eyes closed, smiling to herself. The other woman raised her hips, twisted her legs over until the man"s neck cracked, then released him. She moved over Lisa, straddled her, closed her thighs over Lisa"s face.

"Lisa," Tony called out. His voice was still a whisper, Guy"s hand still served as a cold anchor.

Lisa"s hands fluttered in the air. Her legs twitched like caught fish thrown on a dock. The woman bore down, hunched forward, used her hands to keep her thighs pressed closed over Lisa"s face. Lisa"s struggles weakened until her last feeble movements finally subsided. The woman remained over her, locked in a tight embrace.

"Lisa," Tony cried out as he fell to his knees.

The woman rose, took Lisa by the feet and dragged her up a ramp. She was heading in the direction of the machete man when Tony lost sight of them. He realized then that Guy had released him and had vanished. There was only the cold ache in his bone and muscle to remind him of the ghost"s hand.

"Come along, dear," an old woman"s voice said behind him. Someone tapped him gently on the shoulder.

"I think you"ve had enough for one night, young fella," an old man said, slipping his arm under Tony"s and helping him to his feet. "Time for you to go home. There"s always tomorrow night, you know."

The old, well-dressed couple who had been watching him throughout the evening bracketed him as he stood up. They each hooked an arm around him and helped him walk away from the pit. The woman"s diamond bracelet bit into his flesh. Tony felt like a child being taken home from a hard day at the playground by his grandparents. Would there be milk and cookies in the kitchen? Bedtime stories tonight?

Tony tried to remember his grandparents, and found that he could not.

The elderly couple guided him back to the cavern entrance, took him through the sound baffles, helped him maneuver through the dancing crowds in the outer club. At the steel double door entrance to the club, the couple released him.

"You come right back when you"re feeling better," the woman said. She smiled, and cracks widened in the caked make-up covering her face.

"We"ll be here another couple of nights," said the old man. He patted Tony"s shoulder in an amiable, fatherly way. His breath was stale, like the air in a den abandoned by a predator. "Of course, you can always come along when the place moves. There"s always a need for help. Lots of turnover, you know."

The couple looked to each other and laughed as they gently pushed him to the doors. Tony leaned against metal, felt it give, and found himself in a hallway under a single bright light bulb.

There was the taste of ash in his mouth as he made his way back to the loading docks. Exhaustion made him rest for a few moments on the stairs, but the faint echo of Painfreak"s dance music finally drove him on. He pa.s.sed no one on his way out to the loading dock, where the rain had stopped and dawn had lightened the sky. The ground was still wet, the air humid. Tony glanced over his shoulder at the warehouse entrance. The two doormen returned his gaze. Behind them, Guy hung upside down, suspended by his feet on a length of chain, swinging back and forth like a clock pendulum.

"Do you feel it?" Guy asked, his voice pitched high, almost hysterical.

And in that moment, the emptiness within him opened up like a bottomless well. Tony felt himself standing by the well, leaning out over the edge, wind whistling by his ears. He licked his lips, searching for the taste of blood. His erection strained as if it wanted to break out of its confines and search for satisfaction.

"You want it?" Guy teased. "Tell me what that"s like, to want it. To want the nothingness. The extinction. Tell me first, what that emptiness is like. It"s so hard when you"re in it to understand. Tell me what the void is like, from the outside. Then tell me what it feels like to want it."

"Tomorrow night," Tony answered, his voice quavering. After you show me the games I"ll really like. After I become a player.

"Tomorrow night, sir," the Asian doorman replied, with a slight bow. Guy was gone.

Tony went back to his car and drove home. He did not bother picking up his mail or answering his telephone messages. Though his fear was gone and he was tired, he still had trouble falling asleep. Excitement kept him up, until he began to relax as he gently stroked the back of his left hand with his thumb. Slowly, he fell asleep while caressing Painfreak"s invisible marks on his flesh.

Lover Doll.

Wayne Allen Sallee.

"Lover Doll" was first published in Little Deaths, edited by Ellen Datlow and published by TOR in 1994.

Wayne"s most recent collection is Fiends By Torchlight, which was published by Annihilation Press in 2007, and one of the original stories, "High Moon," will be reprinted in Best Horror of The 21st Century: The First Decade (Wicker Park Press). "Rail Rider" appeared in J. N. Williamson"s The Ill.u.s.trated Masques (Gauntlet Press), and his novel, The Holy Terror, and a collection from 1995, With Wounds Still Wet, are available on Kindle (CrossRoads Press). His meta memoir, Proactive Contrition, and Can I End Now? are both exclusive works published in Germany by Blitz Verlag. He is currently writing a crime novel, City With No Second Chances, and a series of dystopian stories with their beginnings set in the recent future fraught of our current political climate. His website is www.wayneallensallee.com and his blog is www.frankenstein1959.blogspot.com.

This is my favorite story in that the first part is almost entirely true, drawn from my childhood in the Humboldt Park neighborhood of Chicago.

She is asleep.