Pink Butterfly (23 page)

“Hi,” Alicia said acting like they were old friends.

“Oh, hi, how are you?” the dancer said looking at Alicia’s orange jumpsuit.

“I’m great, you live around here?” Alicia asked.

“Yeah, I’m getting ready to go to work at the Pink Butterfly. Just got off my day job and I have to get my dancing clothes.”

“Really? I was planning on going there myself, do you suppose I could get a ride?”

The dancer looked at Alicia with a curious eye and thought for a second. “Sure, you can wait in the car, I’ll be right back.”

“Thanks,” Alicia said and slid into the passenger seat of the car.

From the back seat she heard a female voice,” Hey girl, what are you doing?” It was the voice of Poonytang, the dancer that went on stage after Alicia’s fall.

“Oh, Hi,” Alicia said startled. “I’m heading back to the club.”

“After what they did to you?” Poonytang asked. “I almost quit that night when I found out they tossed you out.”

“Oh, shit happens,” Alicia said. “Gotta work you know.”

“You working in that outfit? Looks like you just escaped from jail.”

“Yeah, it sorta does doesn’t it?” Alicia asked.

“I got something in my locker that might fit you. I’m a size twenty two, but I have some safety pins and could make something work for you. I think we have about the same size tits. What size bra do you wear?”

“Thirty six D cup,” Alicia replied.

“Thirty four C cup, but it’s a loose C cup so I think you’ll be fine. Where is your regular outfits? Did you even get a locker? I know you were only there one night.”

“No, and all my clothes are locked up in my ex’s apartment,” Alicia lied.

“That’s ok, we girls have to look out for each other. Nobody else is going to do it for us. Look, Angel is back.”

“Oh, why are you sitting in the back seat?” Alicia asked as Angel got back in the car.

“In case we get in a car accident, then I won’t fly out the windshield.”

“What about the seat belts?”

“I don’t want to mess up my money makers with seat belt marks. I make my living off my titties. Last thing I need is a seat belt stripe running across these babies.”

Thinking that Poonytang was nuts, Alicia turned back around and watched the alley go by as Angel drove them back to the Pink Butterfly. She slid down in her seat to keep law enforcement from finding her and pretended to pick at her shoes.

“What’s wrong?” Angel asked.

“Got a rock in my shoe, fucking hate that,” Alicia replied.

“What are all those cops doing?”

“What cops?”

“The ones running down the alley.”

“Are they stopping you?”

“No, they’re looking in trash cans and stuff.”

Panicked, Alicia slid down further in her seat.

“Are you hiding?” Angel asked.

“Maybe,” Alicia replied.

“Are you some sort of criminal? I thought you were a really bad dresser, but now that orange jumpsuit looks like something off of the news.”

“Are you planning on turning me in?” Alicia asked

“No, don’t worry, I’ll get you out of here. I hate the fucking police. They tip like shit.”

Later that evening, after the remains of the priest were mopped off the floor and wiped off the walls, the dancers started the show. Melvin found a great spot to watch by the stage and Jeff spent his time back at the juice bar trying to figure out what to do with his now living ghost step dad. By now, Hilda Kozas had gone home and the bar was filling up with horny men. Ready for the next dance, Alicia approached the stage wearing stripper clothes she had found in a lost and found basket. Poonytang convinced her that no cop would ever come looking for her on stage at the strip club and since Labiastan was an embassy with no extradition agreement with the United States, she was pretty much safe.

Alicia limped up the stairs and immediately took notice of a young woman sitting along the front row chairs with her hands folded across her chest frowning. In a much lower set of heels, Alicia began to grind and hump the floor all while keeping an eye on the strange woman with the evil stare. Alicia knew something was wrong but couldn’t put her finger on it, the woman seemed to carry a lot of anger in her eyes. In a moment, Alicia was topless and continued to gyrate the best she could on a bad ankle to impress the crowd. Then the angry woman tossed a dollar on the stage.

Alicia, hesitantly crawled over to the woman with the burning eyes and faked a smile picking up the dollar and placing it back closer to the brass pole. “What brings you out here?” Alicia asked nervously trying to make conversation with the woman.

Leaning in close, the woman replied, “You killed my father.”

Alicia bolted back and looked at the woman with wide open eyes. “What are you talking about?” she asked in a panic.

“I read in the paper about you, got to your mother before she died in that helicopter crash. She told me everything.”

“I didn’t do anything to your father, freak!” Alicia replied.

“Your momma spilled everything, told me about how you chickened out and shot my dad because you were such a spoiled bitch.”

Knowing she was right, Alicia slid her butt back away from the woman and reached for her top lying next to the brass pole.

The woman stood and leaned over to make sure Alicia could hear her. “Just because the cops can’t come get you here doesn’t mean I can’t.”

“My mother had no idea I was coming here today, it was by chance I ran into the girls from work.”

“You’re momma said you’d come back here. She said you were a whore and this is the only place you could go besides home and that’s where the cops would come looking for you.”

The customers watching knew something was up but didn’t interfere with the two women. It seemed that an argument was ensuing, but until it turned to blows, it was a great part of the show. Everyone loves a good cat fight.

“I want to know how you did it, how did you manage to kill my father twenty years ago and still look so young? Where have you been all these years?” the woman asked shouting over the music.

“Nowhere!” Alicia screamed. “It happened a week ago to me.”

“A week ago?”

“I met a witch, she cast me and my mother into the future to hide us from the crime. To me, this is still 1974.”

The woman stood dumbfounded staring at Alicia wondering if she actually believed the story she was telling or if it was pure bullshit. The problem was that Alicia looked the same age as she did in the police photos, not twenty years older. The DNA and fingerprints matched, but this woman didn’t believe in witches or time travel. “What is your real name?” the woman asked.

“Gina Gardner”, Alicia replied.

The woman shook her head in disbelief. Gina Gardner was the name of the woman who shot her father back when she was a toddler. “If you’re Gina Gardner, who’s this witch that helped you?”

“Dixie Delgado,” Alicia replied. “She was a friend of my sister in college.”

In a rage, the pissed off woman climbed up onto the elevated dance stage and pinned Alicia down on the wood dance floor. She reeled back her fist and began punching Alicia repeatedly in the face while Alicia tried her best to fend back with her clawing fingernails. The crowd watched and cheered as the two women fought on stage. Punching and scratching and twisting and pulling the two women wrestled back and forth banging into the brass stripper pole over and over.

Finally the woman pinned down Alicia’s arms keeping Alicia from further clawing her with her sharp nails. Using her knees to hold down Alicia’s arms, Alicia was powerless to defend herself. The woman took this opportunity to wrap her hands around Alicia’s neck and squeeze tight. As the blood flow slowed to her head, Alicia’s eyes began to bulge and her face turned red gasping for air.

Like a professional wrestler, Melvin jumped on the stage, grabbed the woman by her hair and yanked her back pulling her grip loose from Alicia’s neck. The crowd acted like this was all staged and applauded the take down. The woman, stunned by Melvin’s powerful pull, tore her hair loose from Melvin’s grip and spun around and kicked him in the face. Melvin tried to grab her foot but got another kick in the face for his trouble.

Turning her attention back to Alicia, the woman abandon her kicking of Melvin and crawled back to the woman she despised and began pounding Alicia in the stomach with a closed fist. Over and over she pounded while Alicia squirmed in pain trying to roll away from her aggressor. Once again Melvin came after the woman, grabbed her by the leg and dragged her away from Alicia who was now crying in agony and pain.

“Stop!” Melvin yelled at the angry woman.

“Fuck you!” She shouted back and dug her fingernails into the back of Melvin’s hands until they bled. She then spit in his face and tried to pull herself free from his grip. With a quick kick to the face, she was again free and crawling back to Alicia. Melvin, using some sort of super human power, leaped on top of the woman, pulled up his shirt, opened his chest and devoured her head inside his rib cage. He leaned back leaving her headless torso lying on the dance floor draining blood onto the wood surface. Alicia gasped in horror watching Melvin’s chest chew the woman’s head and spit it back out.

The music stopped and the crowd began to disperse out the front door as quickly as they could manage. The house lights came up and the entirety of the bloody mess could be seen from anywhere in the room. Melvin dripped blood from his chest and the formerly angry woman’s head rest on its side looking at the brass stripper pole with eyes open.

Alicia crawled back to the staircase and slid herself down one step at a time on her bloodstained butt. At the bottom, she limped back to the dressing room not looking back at the mess she had left behind. She was horrified and grossed out at the same time and had no fucking idea who this man was and how he was able to rip off a woman’s head using his open chest like a salad tine.

Outside the Pink Butterfly, rain poured from the night sky and the wind picked up strong enough to be heard from inside the building. Something unnatural had occurred inside the building and now something just as unnatural has occurred on the outside. The lighting lit up the entrance to the building and the thunder shook like a small earthquake. The group in the club quickly realized something was different and wrong and looked to each other for an explanation.

“What’s going on?” Poonytang asked shaking like an uneven load in a washing machine. Her huge breasts bounced with each shake and giggled like Jell-O.

“I don’t know,” Jeff replied peeking out one of the covered windows. He clicked off the neon sign so he could see the parking lot better and all he could see was sheets of rain pouring past the parking lot lights outside. “It is summer you know, this sort of thing happens. If it gets too bad, we can go downstairs.”

“You have a basement?” Alicia asked.

“Sorta, it’s the main embassy part of Labiastan. It’s where all the support personnel work.”

“How come I never see any of them in here?” Alicia asked.

“There are a couple of strippers that still work that live downstairs, but most of that work has been farmed out to girls like you. It’s hard to get new people in here, Labiastan is a pretty poor country.”

“Do you ever go down there?”

“I’ve been down there a few times, but since they made me assistant manager, I usually hang out in my office up here.”

“When’s the last time you seen or spoke to anyone from the embassy?”

“Shit, over a week I’m sure. Vera used to call once and a while for an update on how much we were pulling in, but I haven’t heard from her in a while.”

“How do you get downstairs?”

“Two ways, one is a switch on the dance floor that lowers this whole section down one level to the entrance, the other is the escape hatch back in the store room.”

The thunder cracked loud and the building shook. The weather outside was not right and everyone knew it.

“Let’s go downstairs,” Poonytang said.

The last people in the club were Jeff, Poonytang, Alicia, Melvin and the girl who drove Alicia to the club.

“Sounds like a good idea to me, not a good idea in case a tornado decides to flatten this place.” With that said, Jeff walked over to the stage and flipped open the lid of the control box to press the elevator button. Problem was that the lights were all dim, there was no electricity to the elevator system. “What the fuck?” Jeff said.

“Call somebody!” Poonytang yelped.

Jeff pulled out his cell phone and dialed Vera’s number. It went directly to voice mail. “This ain’t right, she always answers her phone.”

“Try the escape hatch!” Alicia yelled in fear.

“That hatch is designed to let people out from below, not the other way around. I don’t know if I can open the door from this side.”

“You have to try,” Alicia begged.

“Ok, follow me,” Jeff said and the group walked around the stage and back to the storage room. In one corner, clearly marked was a sign that said, “Do not stack anything in this area.” On the floor was a well-defined door with no handle to open it. “Now what?” Jeff asked. “There’s the door, but I can’t open it from this side. It’s meant to be pushed from below.”

“Who would design such a stupid door?” Alicia asked.

“Go to Labiastan and find out,” Jeff replied trying to lighten the mood.

The store room was located by the back door and the wind howled through the cracks.

“Got a crowbar?” Alicia asked.

“No, but I have a screw driver set in here,” Jeff replied and searched the room for his toolbox. Once found, Jeff knelt down and jammed the long metal end into the seam between the door and the floor and began to pry it open. As the door slowly dislodged, a thick acrid smoke poured out from basement into the storeroom choking Jeff and burning his eyes.

“What’s that?” Poonytang asked panicked.

“Smoke you dumb shit!” Jeff yelled rubbing the sting out of his eyes.

“They’re all dead!” Poonytang yelled. “Holy shit, they’re all dead!”

Jeff sat back on his butt and laid the screwdriver on the floor. “I think you’re right.”