Tabula Rasa (12 page)

“The farther back the memory loss goes, the more serious the case.
Recent memories are lost first.”

So even if I remembered stuff from my childhood, it didn’t mean I’d
remember everything or anything else.

“How much money do I have?”

“A lot,” Shannon said. “More than me. And I’m certainly not
uncomfortable.”

I stared at him for a good long moment, wondering if he’d idly
thought of killing me and draining my bank accounts. Surely, if he
could find out this much about me, he could find out how to gain
access to my money once I was out of the way. Why hadn’t Trevor
done that?

But I think I knew. Those photos he kept in his wallet told me
everything. I had to have dated him and then rejected him. And what
he’d wanted more than my money was to force a relationship with me.
When I woke without my memory, maybe he’d thought if he could just
isolate me enough, make me depend on him enough... he might have a
chance with me.

It sounded crazy-vain for me to think this way, but he’d obviously
been obsessed. What else would explain the lies he’d concocted? In
his fantasy, I was his wife and depended solely on him for
everything. And he’d found a way to make it happen. I don’t think
he cared even a little bit about my money, or maybe he’d been
planning for us to live off it indefinitely. Maybe that was how he
was getting by just fine and stocking the deep freezer without his
job at the hospital.

“If you know how much money I have, does that mean you’ve been in
my accounts somehow?” I didn’t even want to think about how he
might have accomplished this, but I had every confidence Shannon was
capable of figuring it out.

He gave me one of his patented calm, assessing looks. “I have.”

“Had there been recent withdrawals?”

His eyes widened as if surprised I wasn’t a complete idiot. “I’m
impressed. Yes, Trevor gained access to your accounts. He had your
cards and PIN numbers. I used them to get in. He’d been leeching
off your money.”

“How much did he take?” I didn’t even know how much I had. More
than Shannon. But what did that even mean? I had no idea how much
Shannon had, but I was sure he had a lot more than it appeared to the
casual passerby.

“Not as much as I would expect. I think he was just living off you
since he fled his job.”

I wondered even more now about what Trevor’s end game had been.
Surely he hadn’t thought we could live in an abandoned theme park
forever. And even if we could temporarily, he’d been a fugitive, so
it wasn’t as if he’d roamed freely without fear. Was there a
second improbable location he’d planned for us? How would he have
kept the ruse going? Or was he deluded enough to think he could win
my love and then confess the truth to me, and we’d go off somewhere
happily into the sunset? Was that why he’d tried to confirm that I
loved him the night Shannon shot him? Had he thought he could move us
to the confession and the next phase of his plan?

But... I had money. At least that was something.

“So I can pay you back now. For all the clothes and food and
everything.”

“I don’t need your money,” Shannon said.

“I didn’t say you needed it. I just... you should be compensated
for... for everything.”

“I don’t
want
your money.”

Shannon took his empty glass to the kitchen and went back upstairs.
The cat followed him and then yowled when he shut her out of the
bedroom.

However much he might be attached to the animal, it didn’t extend
to bedroom privileges. She sulked back down the stairs, gave me a
look of pure evil as if it were my fault he’d locked her out, then
curled up on the chair she’d been in before.

“Mrrrawr?” she said.

I might be going crazy but I was half-convinced she wanted to finish
watching the movie. Maybe the white cat understood French, too.

***

The following night, we had dinner early. Shannon brought home
Chinese take-out. At five minutes til six, he took my box of food
away from me, closed it, and calmly placed it in the fridge.

“What?” I was only halfway finished.

“It’s almost six.”

“So?”

“So, my guests will be arriving any minute. They’re very
punctual. You have to go to your room.”

“But...”

“You can finish dinner when they leave.” Shannon never allowed
food out of the kitchen for any reason. He’d said something about
attracting bugs—as if bugs got together and conspired to find the
houses where people ate in more than one room.

“I still don’t understand why I can’t just...”

Shannon loomed over me and pointed upstairs.

“Okay! When will the party be over?”

“I don’t know. Late. Go. Don’t come out of your room. And keep
your door locked.”

What the hell?

But I didn’t fight him on it. I went upstairs as instructed and
locked my door. I heard people come in, but I didn’t hear any
growing noise or loud music. It seemed pretty quiet for a party. What
the hell was going on down there? Were they playing Scrabble? Was it
a hit man mixer? Very low key. Cocktails. Discussion of strategy—like
best body disposal techniques—while Schubert played in the
background.

By nine o’clock, Shannon hadn’t come up to tell me I was free to
go downstairs, and I was getting hungry again. I’d only had half my
dinner after all. Finally, I just decided fuck it. I was hungry, and
whatever was happening downstairs, it couldn’t be worse than all
the things I was imagining might be going on.

I unlocked the door and took a peek down the hallway. Nobody up here.
Except the white cat. She sat just outside my door giving me that
look again. Was she my guard cat? Would she report to Shannon that
I’d been bad? I kind of wanted to kick her down the stairs. I was
convinced she was the most disagreeable animal in the world with
everyone except for Shannon. And I think he liked that about her.

As I started toward the stairs, she began a loud howling meow as if
she were in heat. It sounded like she was sending out her own
emergency broadcast signal.

“Will you shut up?” I hissed back at her. This cat definitely
wanted me dead.

The main level was silent as well. Some party. Maybe they’d
relocated to somebody else’s house, and Shannon hadn’t bothered
to tell me—or he’d forgotten about me. I still couldn’t fathom
what he’d even do at a party besides brood near the punch bowl. He
just didn’t seem like the social butterfly sort. As time had
passed, it seemed increasingly ludicrous that he had friends to
explore abandoned theme parks with, let alone to throw parties for.

I went to the kitchen and heated the rest of my
lo mein
and
chicken and vegetables and sat at the table. As I ate, I kind of
faintly heard—but really more felt—the throbbing of music below
me. The sound vibrated against my bare feet.

So Shannon had a basement. I suppose I should be grateful I hadn’t
been locked in it. I couldn’t believe it hadn’t occurred to me
that one of those locked doors might lead to a basement level, which
made it all the more suspicious that the door remained locked all the
time.

I finished my food and put the cartons in the trash. I’d planned to
go back to my room, but I went down the hallway on the main level
instead. One of the mystery doors was cracked a fraction of an inch,
the music drifting ever so slightly up and out to my ears.

The temptation was just too great. I had to know what the hell
happened at a party this man would host. As soon as I took a peek
down the stairs, I discovered I was wrong about yet another thing.
Shannon’s elevator
did
go up to the sex floor.

The deviant sex floor.

The basement was a big finished space like an open floor plan
apartment. It stretched fully from one end of the house to the other,
creating a complete underground level.

There were maybe thirty or more people downstairs, every single one
of them naked. There was no pretense of lingerie or underwear for
either the men or the women. But the freaky part about the whole
thing was that they all wore masks. Not masquerade masks that just
covered your eyes, and not those creepy white masks that made you
look like a mannequin, either.

No, these were the kind of masks you’d wear for Halloween. Maybe it
was a costume party, though I was pretty sure it wasn’t Halloween.
There were gorilla masks and monster masks and wolf masks and alien
masks—even a few freaky cartoon character masks that were way age
inappropriate given the circumstances down here. The only requirement
seemed to be that the mask had to be full coverage, not one that only
hid half the head or face.

The only thing not going on at the party was oral sex—for obvious
mask-related reasons. The guests partner-swapped so fast it nearly
gave me whiplash. I couldn’t even begin to guess which one was
Shannon. Or was he hiding somewhere watching it all and not
participating?

The rule of the night seemed to be that anyone could fuck anyone—no
holds barred—because no one resisted. No one said no, no matter how
many people they were passed around to. And the whole thing was
utterly and completely anonymous.

Except for the masks, it was what I imagined an ancient Roman orgy
might be like. I thought it must have been the case that if you
decided to play at all, you were committed to whatever happened. The
idea of complicated consent and negotiations seemed unlikely somehow.
It was the same here. It didn’t seem a single person was willing to
take no for an answer. If you came downstairs, well, you came
downstairs.

The floor was a dark shiny hardwood. Expensive black leather sex
furniture was interspersed throughout the large space as well as a
few beds for those who preferred more comfort. There was spanking and
whipping going on in the middle of the large space and a few women
and one man being led around on leashes. There were three different
couples fucking on one bed, and more lined against the walls like an
assembly line of depravity.

I turned to go back upstairs, but a hand ensnared my wrist. “Where
do you think you’re going, lovely? You aren’t following the dress
code. I think we need to punish you for that.” The voice didn’t
belong to Shannon.

I tried to pull away, still thinking I could reason my way out of
this. “Let me go. I have to go back upstairs.”

“Shannon didn’t tell us he had a girlfriend. Do you just let your
boyfriend fuck whoever he wants? That’s generous. Does he allow you
the same freedoms? I can’t imagine him being so gracious with you.”
His hand moved to the button on my jeans.

I tried to ease out of the situation again, but he wasn’t having
it. Even though I couldn’t see his eyes, I somehow knew he planned
to take
Shannon’s girlfriend
right here on the carpeted
stairs. I looked back again at the orgy going on only a few yards
away, still wondering which one was Shannon. Had he spotted me yet?

I wanted to scream for help, but I was both afraid someone might
recognize me even with my new look and even more afraid to draw
Shannon’s attention. Maybe I could stand to just let this guy do
his thing and then slip back upstairs. It wasn’t as if Shannon
hadn’t told me to stay in my room and keep my door locked. Even as
I did it, I couldn’t believe I was trying to rationalize the
situation—as if it would be my fault this guy couldn’t process
the word
no
.

The stranger shoved me down on the black carpeted stairs and stripped
me down so fast I couldn’t believe it had already happened. My
clothes lay in a chaotic pile near my feet. I had barely enough time
to try to wrap my head around anything that was going on and whether
or not I thought I could handle it better than the alternatives.

His heavy weight settled on top of me, and I freaked out and
screamed. I couldn’t just let it happen. Shannon was going to kill
me for breaking his rules and coming down here, but I’d rather
Shannon kill me than this guy fuck me. I had such messed-up
priorities.

Nobody paid attention to my cries. Maybe they thought my scream was
role play. Or maybe they didn’t care. Or maybe they were locked
into their own fantasies at the moment and didn’t feel like dealing
with someone else’s traumatic reality. After all, that wasn’t
part of the fantasy orgy package. I was sure they’d all been given
an intense list of rules and that they all knew coming down those
stairs was consent... to anything with anyone. But the only rule I’d
been issued was to stay away.

While I processed these thoughts and tried not to think about what
was about to happen, the stranger was ripped off me. A second later,
a guy in a gorilla mask had him by the throat against the wall. “Did
she look like someone here for you to play with?” Shannon shouted.

“N-no.”

“She’s
off-limits
!” He turned back to the rest of the
guests, most of whom were slowly coming out of the orgy fog to notice
the commotion. “Everybody get the fuck out! Party’s over!”

I pressed my clothes against me and slowly backed up the stairs.

“Not you!” Shannon said, eyes blazing with fury from behind the
mask.

I froze where I was. He’d never yelled. I’d never heard him yell
before tonight. He was calm and methodical. I hadn’t been totally
sure he had the emotional range to yell. But tonight there was a new
and very different energy about him.

Suddenly I was overwhelmed with the reality of naked Shannon. To say
he was sculpted was an understatement. I’d had some vague idea of
what he must look like under his utilitarian black clothing, but the
briefly flitting imagination didn’t do it justice. I looked away
from his quite substantial erection, my face flaming.

Most of the guests scrambled to get their clothes and get out of the
basement. A few lingered—trying to finish up as if they couldn’t
make their own orgasms at home. Like it was worth risking a bullet to
the head or a snapped neck, two things I was sure Shannon was more
than capable of delivering.