In the Court of the Yellow King (30 page)

Campbell scraped his shoes across the concrete and stared at the reinforced door, left ajar for his team. The device was tucked under his right armpit, its presence not a comforting one. The Glock 22 in his left hand
was
. After a few minutes stood in indecision, the idea of backing out was taken away from him as he heard footsteps marching down the corridor towards the room. A quick check of his wristwatch told Campbell they were right on time.

Yes of course
I have proof
, he’d said, and hoped the object under his arm was proof enough.

The footsteps paused at the door, followed by silence, then the door burst open.

The King entered the room, his face red with rage. This unforeseen sight made Campbell gasp. The Black Ops team, their weapons trained on him to a man, followed The King, and his shock became fear.

He awoke from a dreamless void, his mind hazy, his sensations padded in cotton wool like he’d just come around on a dentist’s chair. The comparison was apt, for Campbell found a plastic mask strapped tightly over his face. Laid flat, he blinked at the bright, nebulous vision above. Gentle noise surrounded him, distant waves crashing against a shore. Then, his vision cleared, his mind cleared, and he saw a looming nighttime sky in negative.

Campbell screamed into his mask. Fear overcame his numbed body with an impetus to move. He struggled but found himself strapped tightly down against... he knew what.

A gurn
ey. The ritual. The Ca
rcosan Event.

He twisted his head to the right; saw The King, other agents, stood solemnly in the desert. They
could
hear him. One of the agents, Barnes he was called, had his head bowed in shame.

Campbell screamed himself hoarse, begging, the foam from his pleading mouth soaking his lips. He froze his struggles as a thin shadow fell atop him, a shadow sourced by a cadaverous, Carcosan female. She was naked but for a diamond-shaped, bone-coloured mask with slits for eyes, a slit for a mouth. Long fingered hands stroked Campbell’s chest and he voided his bladder in fear. The Carcosan laughed and said something in their twisted alien tongue. Campbell didn’t hear the translation. The fear growing too much for him, he started to hyperventilate, shuddering uncontrollably

The Carcosan touched his crotch, stroked it intimately, then lifted her hand towards the mask. Unattached by anything visible, the mask came up easily. The shrunken face revealed, too small for the surrounding, swollen yellow head, looked down and smiled. The thing wore Gibson’s face.

oyt Hefti’s ninetieth birthday was coming right up, and the founder of Layboy Enterprises and framer of the Layboy Philosophy was not planning to let the occasion go by unnoticed. He liked parties and held them constantly, filling the Layboy Mansion with curvaceous Laymates from recent years, as well as all the sports and cinema celebrities he could invite. The Big Nine-O would be special, far more exciting and extravagant than his other bacchanals. The occasion surely merited it, but that was not all. For Hef’s fortunes had begun to fade, his gleam to tarnish, in recent decades. For one thing, the competition was fierce. At first he had to deal with rival sex magazines, more of them every year, and most of these did not bother with his own
Layboy
’s “tasteful” and “artistic” approach. His competitors tended to be down and dirty, going straight for the sex, the cruder the better. After all, what was the whole point of such a magazine? The interviews in
Layboy
were interminably long, the “party jokes” moronically stupid, the kitschy merchandise too expensive. No, the whole point was sex, and
Layboy
’s pages didn’t have enough of it to satisfy your average masturbator, whatever his age.

But it wasn’t just raunchy rivals
T
ownhouse
and
Rustler
that gave Hef’s accountants headaches. There were attacks from the Left, crusades against pornography mounted by feminists and lesbians (weren’t they the same thing?) who puritanically denounced skin mags as vehicles for the oppression of women, yada yada yada.
Lay
boy
had thrown them a bone back in the 1970s by including “fact sheets” on the living party dolls displayed on his glossy pages. While stroking one’s member one could educate oneself in the fascinating matters of each model’s turn-offs, turn-ons, favorite sports and movies, etc. See?
Layboy
cared about the whole person and would never think of reducing her to a mere sex object. But it didn’t do much to satisfy his shrill critics.

So one might say the
Layboy
empire was falling on harder and harder times. The Layboy Clubs and ski lodges had closed down years ago, except for a few in Japan, where they savored the camp chic of the 1960s. But it was equally true of Hoyt Hefti himself, for he was, after all, growing increasingly wizened and infirm. Though surrounded by a bevy of nubile sex models, most of them blonde and nearly indistinguishable from each other, Hef gloried in the rays of their smiles and well-oiled breasts like an ancient potentate with a well-populated harem ostensibly evidencing his superhuman virility. But old Hef, to the considerable relief of his own harem, was these days more of an
im
potentate. His girls, some of whom had their own TV “reality” shows, were pure eye candy, arm candy. His dentures would not allow him to actually taste the candy. At most, his liver-spotted, claw like hands would occasionally reach out to fondle a luscious-looking boob, its buxom owner shuddering as she tried to think only of the salary (“allowance”) she would receive.

But old Hef’s brain was still pretty sharp and shrewd. And what he had planned for his birthday gala stood to meet both his needs.

The day of his blessed nativity soon arrived, and Hoyt Hefti stood on an upraised dais at one end of his vast banqueting hall, surrounded and supported by his favorite concubines (he forgot which one he had “married”). He liked to call them Camilla, Cassandra, Carmella, and Cassilda, and so their fold-outs read. Sporting his jaunty yacht captain’s cap and wearing his trademark lemon silk pajamas, he welcomed a huge throng of guests who were even more stellar than his usual sycophants. There were government and military men, captains of industry, even numerous ecclesiastical leaders. Gallery owners, arbiters of taste, noted authors and poets, winners of Pulitzers and Nobel Prizes. A galaxy of stars. They had agreed to come once Hef’s lawyers had convinced them of the Mansion’s security arrangements, for there might well be certain activities that none could afford leaking to the public, who might not, with their bourgeois morals, understand.

“Welcome, welcome! My friends, as you know, I have asked that no one bring presents. You know the old saying about the man who has everything. I am that man, and this evening I want to share it with you, to give something back. Consider this shindig my present to
you
. Nothing will please me more than for you to have a roaring good time! I believe you’ve seen the instructions I’ve had passed out. And I see you’ve chosen your costumes from our wardrobe department. You look
great
!”

Hef was referring to a dazzling array of movie-quality costumes including leather and spikes, furry animal costumes representing various species (with a heavy emphasis on sheep, horses, and pigs), diapers, Catholic schoolgirl uniforms, pirates, cowboys, show girls, popes, etc. Most were cleverly designed to leave the faces, breasts, ass, and genital areas bare. The crowd was sprinkled with a number of wholly naked forms. And the grunts and bleats of real animals could be heard from adjacent rooms.

“But you’re probably eager for the fun to begin! I know I am!” With that, Hef signaled his DJ, who sat at a complicated mixing board. There were seven rooms surrounding the great hall, each with its own name as if it were a restaurant or a club, and this man was charged with piping play lists of different musical styles, all of them near-deafening, into each room. He secured his headphones and began, as the vast crowd began to fragment, following their maps to the room of their choice. Some were young and lithe, veterans of countless hours in the gym. Others were old and flabby. No one seemed to notice or to be embarrassed. It was time, as Hef had said, to get down to business.

Hef and his beauties, all naked and gleaming, watched their guests disperse. The sense of envy was evident in the expressions of the girls until Hef broke the tension: “Well, what are you waiting for, ladies? Go have some fun!” Off they went in different directions, with many a giggle and a jiggle. Grasping hold of his gold-plated walker, Hef stepped over to his diligent DJ and said a few words. Not wanting to distract him, Hef nonetheless wanted to make extra sure the many, many hidden video-cameras, long shot as well as close-up, were functioning smoothly. They were? Great!

And yet, despite such surveillance, none noticed the quiet arrival of a single uninvited guest. He had arrived already clad in costume, though one that left not an inch of flesh exposed to the eye.

The master of the house gave things a half-hour or so to warm up, then decided to inspect the festivities. First he shrugged off his pajamas and slipped back into his bathrobe, not bothering to tie it closed. His nurse, nearly naked herself except for her pert little nurse’s cap and white silk stockings, helped the old man into his wheelchair and slowly pushed him toward the first of the consecutive party rooms.

The first was the Gay orgy room, called Planet Uranus. Most there were male, and the favorite costume theme seemed to be Village People, though there were a few Roman togas, too. Old-time Disco music blared from the lavender walls, pretty stereotypical, but no one seemed to mind. Nothing all that new here, but Hef had to admit these lads were energetic. There was so much changing of partners, one might have thought it a square dance. And his guess had borne out: both televangelists had made a beeline for this room, though they weren’t engaged with each other, of necessity, as both were on the receiving end. But they weren’t the only religious superstars here. There were a couple of Indian New Age gurus present, and a kabalistic rabbi with numerous bestsellers to his credit. An ecumenical event, then!

As his wheelchair passed slowly through the room, having to thread its way through knots of struggling bodies who sometimes appeared to come from nowhere into his path, he shook his head, politely declining more than one invitation. He passed no judgments but was an old-fashioned kind of guy. He felt sure they all understood.

Next Hef and his nurse, who paused to wipe herself of some splattered bodily fluids, crossed the threshold into the S & M chamber, Medieval Times. It was outfitted like a torture dungeon, though of course all the deadly mechanisms were stage props, nothing more. But the horsewhips, chains, and cat o’ nine tails were real enough. One might have imagined oneself transported miraculously to Iran during the holy flagellation days of Muharram for all the whip-cracking and blood-letting. The main difference was no doubt the ubiquitous occurrence of orgasmic moaning among the sufferers here. No leather masks or hoods were allowed, because Hef wanted every face, every identity recorded for posterity. He hoped the revelers were not as annoyed as he was by the music of the rock group Om, which sounded like the Trump of Doom and gave one the sense of listening underwater like a fish retreating from an exploding naval mine.

Politicians and government bureaucrats were in the majority here, equally glad to be taking the punishments and dealing them out, just like in real life. He and nursey had to be careful, once or twice coming dangerously close to the bite of a stray leather tendril. Once again, it was not to Hef’s particular taste, though witnessing others enjoying any sort of sexual sport was exciting to him. And that was the point of his little tour. A lash got tangled in one of his wheels for a few moments, but soon he was on his way again, headed for the next room.

Mainly to avoid befouling his bright yellow robe, Hef did not really want to enter the Copro-Cabana, where naked women down in recessed tanks to either side of a central runway wrestled in shit. Others ate it, while still others smeared it on passive partners and then sodomized them. Children at play. Hef waved as he passed by as quickly as he could.

The Play Pen was next, echoing with nursery rhymes set to music, alternating with classic selections from Alvin and the Chipmunks. Uncle Hef nodded paternalistically as he supervised the fun. Men naked except for urine-stained trench coats shoved their dicks up the assholes of women (and some men) dressed in plaid skirts, while others, garbed as Catholic priests, stuck theirs into the mouths of actual school boys and choirboys, dressed for the part. Hef had told them to BYOB. Again, he did not linger to join in, but the sight did its work, and his penis slowly tingled, thickened.

On through the Barn Yard, where some, dressed as farmers, pretended to rape pigs and sheep. One of the “sheep” was costumed as Shari Lewis’ Lamb Chop puppet. Others preferred the real thing. There would be no trouble telling who was doing what to whom, thanks to the clandestine camera work. Hef could not help laughing till he gasped as the repeating loop of “Old MacDonald” played and played again.

The special effects were top-notch in Area Fifty-One. Screens filled the walls with space’s starry voids and scenes from science fiction classics, featuring space aliens of all silly varieties. Several of Hef’s stable of Laymates wore Cone-head bald wigs and had gray-green powder over their bare bodies. Strapped to operating tables before them were more of Hef’s guests, face down, and enjoying rough anal probing from their unearthly captors, who wielded smooth rods emanating a mild shock. All this was accompanied by a hilarious soundtrack of weird background music from 50s sci-fi flicks.