Lionsuit

Chapter Three

 
     Marcus’s girlfriend arrived at dusk. Her car, a bulbous SUV, peeked over the fence of bushes as she pulled into the driveway. Marcus pulled himself off the porch and attentively followed the stone path to the gate. He entered the new combination and it creaked open, revealing a tall brunette woman with a distinctly befuddled expression on her face.
     “He actually gave you his fucking house?!”, Carol exclaimed.
     Carol Bronz was as much a famous internet personality as Marcus, perhaps more than him, but certainly less than Selwick. With long, straight hair and an angular face, her plain jane beauty served as a fine excuse for the incels of the world to dismiss her charisma and keen business sense in their evaluations. The only one who would have been more surprised than the online collective to learn of her relationship with Marcus was Marcus himself. Thankfully for both, their relationship was not public knowledge. Neither were ignorant enough to think that could cause anything less than a rapid accumulation of threats, stalking, conspiracy theories, and suffocating shipping.
     “Apparently. I’m still having a hard time believing it myself”, Marcus admitted, spreading his arms to receive a greeting hug.
     “You’re keeping it, right? So we don’t have to spend any more time in your godawful apartment … which I love.”
     “Mm, I … haven’t made a decision yet.”
     Carol looked up into Marcus’s pale eyes and darted down to the pronounced bags underneath them. “Are you pulling all-nighters again?”
     “Not exactly”
     “Oh … Oh! I’m so sorry I wasn’t thinking about—I uh … H-How’ve you been holding up?”
     Marcus grinned in amusement at the quaint idea of his distress being caused by simple grief. “I’m fine. Wanna take the grand tour?”
     “Sure,” Carol replied, smiling with lingering discomfort.
     Marcus led her into the house, making sure to steer away from the disk-laden lawn. 
     “Wow, this is … why’d he make everything green?”, Carol observed as her hazel eyes danced around the foyer.
     “I never got the chance to ask him.”
     “He never invited you over?”
     “Nope. Even his parents weren’t permitted to roam the area you now occupy, madame.”
     “Woah. I am honored to traverse such luxurious, monotone halls … Okay, but seriously, he helped you move in. Why’d you never ask to come over?”
     “C’mon, you know how it is,” Marcus claimed, moving through the living room, “You don’t look into someone’s life any more than they let you. You don’t let yourself get doxed. You never brag about what you’ve earned.”
     “Yeah, and who can actually manage to follow all those rules? ’Specially that last one.”
     “Selwick could.”
     “…” Carol systematically moved through the rooms of the first floor, making candid observations on the aesthetic nature of each room: what kind of atmosphere they gave off, to whom they would convey different feelings, and lastly, her personal bias. Marcus responded to her remarks by nodding with the mock enthusiasm of a scholar, yet internally, his respect was nothing if not sincere. Carol had appearances down to a science. She had to, considering the portion of her audience who would dedicate a dissertation to proving that she was “fake” if she didn’t hit the goldilocks zone between professionalism and amateurism. He had worked up the courage to ask her to help arrange his own setup after the third week of officially dating and saw an immediate boost to his reputation.
     Once she was finished grimacing at the items in the fridge that hadn’t been removed since Selwick’s death, Carol bounded up the steps. “Why the hell would someone design the top floor to be split apart like this when you could just have one staircase with a path between the two sides?”
     “… Aesthetics?”
     Carol raised her eyebrows, squinted, and frowned.
     “Well. It keeps the guest rooms separate from Selwick’s room and studio. Makes people more comfortable staying over.”
     “Maybe” Carol repeated her pattern from the first floor, beginning on the left side of the stairs. She opened the two guest bedrooms, drew the same conclusion of their resemblance to hotel rooms that Marcus had, and complimented how well he’d transferred his setup to the house. However, when she opened the final door into the storage room, a slight frown appeared on her face as she silently peered around the boxes.
     “What’s wrong?”
     “Hm? Oh, it’s just that I was expecting this to be a bathroom.”
     “Bathroom’s on the other side of the floor, next to Selwick’s room.”
     “Seems inconvenient for guests but I suppose that’s no biggie.”
     “No biggie indeed, Professor Bronz.” Marcus motioned for her to follow him out of the storage room, down the stairs and then back up to the opposite side. He swung the bathroom door open for her with an illustrious flourish of his free hand.
     “Wow. This room is almost … acceptable.”
     “Really? I thought it was gaudy.”
     “It’s a bathroom. You’re the only one who’s gotta worry about looks while you’re shitting. And I for one would love to be immersed in marble and smart technology when I’m doubled over a plastic halo.”
     “That does sound luxurious.”
     Carol smiled and slipped past him, sidling up to Selwick’s door, yet her light-hearted expression soured as she opened the door. “So he gets a lock, huh? Was this room this cramped when you got here?”
     “Yup. His setup is intense. Takes up nearly half the space as that bed.”
     “Mm-hmm. I always thought it was crazy how he could stream with his bed just … right there, in the background.”
     “Someone with his numbers could’ve afforded to stream in a fucking prison cell.”
     “Well yeah, but I was referring to how crazy it is that he could be comfortable keeping his camera angled at the place he sleeps, fucks, and beats his meat.”
     “To each their own, I guess. Selwick wasn’t the paranoid type,” Marcus claimed before immediately realizing how ridiculous such a claim was when considering the barbaric display he found in the yard.
     “Shall we cap this off then?”, Carol asked, leaning her back into the hallway and craning her neck at the door of the sound studio.
     “Let’s” Marcus followed her to the threshold of the final room. 
     Carol wrenched the door open and her jaw immediately dropped. “What the shit is this?”, she asked, eyes pouring over the infestation of black and crimson foam.
     “One big ol’ recording booth.”
     “Well, I guess I can’t fault the man for his dedication, just wish he didn’t make it so creepy looking.”
     “Creepy is something this house has in spades.”
     “It’s not that bad.”
     Marcus side-eyed her, in preparation of a vital decision. He didn’t want to scare her with everything he’d learned, nor did he want to hurt her by concealing the unusual activity that had been plaguing his psyche. Yet it occurred to Marcus that all he needed was someone to watch his back and discourage a potential intruder; she didn’t need to know what had happened to help him get through one night of rest without a break-in or an incident of “sleep-walking”. If there was one thing he’d learned online and even from Carol herself, it was the value of a lie by omission. “You haven’t had to sleep here at night. Feels like you’re in a log cabin just waiting for some animal to bust in.”
     “Dude, you’re still in L.A. In a big house a lot of people would give their left nut for.”
     “I mean, it’s also the house my friend hung himself in,” Marcus retorted calmly.
     “R-Right. I’m sorry. It’s hard to let sink in that someone as huge as him could just be … gone.”
     Marcus didn’t reply, idly fiddling with the audio equipment at the center of the room.
     “… I want to stay over with you. I don’t have anything pressing going on tonight or tomorrow. Maybe this log cabin’ll be less creepy with me here to scare off the racoons.”
     Marcus smirked on the outside and sighed with relief on the inside. “I’m sure you could terrify even the most ferocious cougar.”
     Carol puffed out her cheeks and punched him in the arm, to which Marcus laughed. She was only three years his elder, but the difference had given him plenty of ammunition for unreasonable jokes.
     Marcus and Carol traded barbs back and forth as they moved away from their occupation upstairs and into a pleasant meal around the kitchen’s island. Carol again demonstrated her superior wealth of skills by elevating Marcus’s cooking to a palatable level. They ate and discussed their work with the freedom of two office employees of separate, cooperating firms: candid but keenly aware that a mistake by the other, God forbid a cancellable one, would bring them both down if they defended their cooperation publicly.
     As is often the case, consumption of nutritious food transitioned into consumption of poisonous beverages, and the two took the bottle of vintage wine they found in the fridge to the living room and settled down side by side.
     Carol carefully poured herself a glass, swirled it, and took a brief sip. “Eugh!”, she coughed, “How alcoholic is this stuff?”
     Marcus scanned the bottle. “13.5%, by the looks of it.”
     “Tastes like fuckin’ vermouth!”
     Marcus sloshed a finger of wine into his glass and downed it in a single swallow. It indeed tasted more alcoholic than the label implied, but the pleasure of his anxious nerves deadening to the onslaught of its neurotoxins surpassed any reservations he had. “Tastes fine to me, although I suppose I’m not a pussy.”
     Carol looked at him for a prolonged few seconds with narrowed eyes, then raised her index finger. “Okay big man we’ll see what’s what.” She poured a full glass and took a protracted sip, maintaining frigid eye contact the entire time.
     “Holy crap, I’m sorry I doubted you,” Marcus admitted, earning a satisfied smile between newly rosy cheeks. “Doubted that you can’t hold your drinks for shit.” He swiped the bottle from her hands and took a gulp, swished in in his own reddening cheeks, and forced it down.
     “Alright, this is getting irresponsible and dangerous.” Carol pried the bottle from Marcus’s fingers, yet before he could voice a dejected objection, “Which is exactly why it’s so fun”, she took another swig.
     The bottle passed back and forth between them with fewer and fewer words, its content steadily decreasing. When the last drop escaped down Marcus’s throat, he extended his gaze from Carol’s lulling head to the dark void outside the living room windows. The raucous chorus of nature still pounded throughout the house, but the alcohol dulled it to a mere annoyance in the face of his mind’s new preoccupation.
     Marcus got up from the couch and began drawing the curtains on each of the wide windows.
     “Whatcha doing?”, Carol asked airily as she slumped to the side into his freshly vacant spot.
     “Setting the mood,” he mumbled, fiddling with the dimmer on the lights until he achieved a satisfactorily provocative level of light.
     “Eh, I dunno. I’m pretty tired.” She yawned, turning her face into the cushions.
     “So am I,” Marcus called from the hallway, checking to make sure that the front and back doors were locked, “Which is why I wanna sleep with you.”
     Carol did not respond. He stumbled back into the room and to the couch. She had turned onto her back, one arm resting over her eyes and the other on her stomach. Marcus ogled the gossamer-thin fabric of the white blouse that cloaked her chest, stretch lines tightening and relaxing between her breasts with the rise and fall of each breath. He reached out to unbutton the blouse at her neck. Marcus finished releasing the pale river of skin running from Carol’s collarbone to her navel, his other hand having already slipped around her waist, and began unzipping her jeans’ fly with indulgent sluggishness.
     Yet as the brass teeth clinked apart, unveiling innocent pink lace, Marcus heard another, distinct noise rise above the rest. It was a series of muffled gasps. They were violent in their sounds, cutting into each other with razor-sharp rises and falling off with plateauing sighs. Marcus looked up toward the source but frowned when he realized that Carol’s lips were sealed and downturned with discomfort. His hands froze and his gaze extended over the couch’s armrest.
     From the doorway, a black mass was extending into the room. In shape, the mass was utterly human. However, its posture, including the way it kept its hands splayed out on the wooden floor and balanced on its toes, evoked the spirit of a feline. The mass stilled from its languid movement under Marcus’s gaze. Its faceless maw turned toward him, reflecting his dumbfounded expression in its glossy surface. A moment passed of utter silence as the mass and Marcus regarded each other. Then the mass screeched, to an earsplitting volume that ran its voice ragged.
     Marcus released a pathetic yelp as he fell back from the couch and onto his ass, along with a healthy helping of urine. The mass scampered back through the doorway, and he heard it bound up the stairs. Carol bolted upright on the couch, her head swiveling back and forth like a meerkat.
     “What’s happening?!” Her chest visibly pounded with her heartrate, and her eyes bulged from their sockets.
     “I-I—There’s something in the house, it went upstairs!”
     She slipped off the couch and looked through both doorways. “The doors are still closed. Why—?” Carol’s question was interrupted by a series of thumps from the second floor and the guttural shriek that followed.
     Instantly, the last vestiges of drunkenness were flushed from her system by adrenaline. Carol grabbed Marcus’s arm, yanked him to his feet, and started toward the front door. She desperately pulled at the locked door until he clumsily twisted the bolt open. They burst onto the porch and back into the twilight chorus.
     From there the couple sprinted to the gate. Marcus input the outdated code twice while swearing profusely before finally recalling the correct sequence. They pushed through the oak barrier and ran to Carol’s car. She put one hand on its chrome door and the other in her pocket.
     “I don’t have my keys! They must still be in there.”
     Marcus rummaged through his own pockets. “Shit, I must’ve done the same.”
     Carol looked from the house to her car with unabashed fear, yet her eyes quickly froze, staring over Marcus’s shoulder, “Who’s that?”
     Marcus looked and saw his new neighbor Jacob, looking even more disheveled than earlier, wearing sky-blue pajamas and clutching an ornate double-barreled shotgun in his feeble claws. “I heard that screeching again,” he began, peering at them both with narrowed eyes that seemed to linger on Carol’s chest, “But what are you doing here, Mark? And with this sort of company?”
     Carol began redressing herself, an expression of justified disgust and anger adorning her face.
     “I’m staying over to … settle affairs, or something. I dunno, it doesn’t matter! Whatever shrieked is still in the house!”
     “And I assume it’s not a fox?”, Jacob said smugly.
     “Of course fucking not!”
     “Then let’s go,” the old man calmy growled, stepping through the open gate.
     Marcus started to follow him, but Carol caught him by the sleeve, “Shouldn’t we call the police?”
     “It might be gone by the time they get here.”
     “What does that matter?! Some old dude with a shotgun isn’t going to keep you safe. We don’t even know if that’s an animal, or some maniac.”
     Marcus surfed through his mind for excuses and came up wanting. The only way he could be secure in Selwick’s house was if this threat was properly dealt with, which the police were insofar incapable of doing. Furthermore, he wanted answers for Selwick, and his game of journalists was about to progress into a game of police or hunters, either way Jacob and his gun instilled a sense of power in him that Marcus had sorely missed in his brief hiatus. “Whatever’s in the house was here before. I have to solve this, okay?”
     “This happened before?! Jesus, Marcus, what—?”
     “Are you coming or not, kid?”, Jacob yelled, white knuckles stroking the shotgun’s barrels.
     Carol glared at Marcus with frustration in her upturned lip and hurt in her wrinkled chin. He followed Jacob anyway, with her trailing close behind. The trio arrived at the front door which still hung open. Jacob stalked into the foyer, hunched over like a skeletal puma.
     “Where did they go?”, he grumbled as his eyes combed through the living room and kitchen.
     “Ran upstairs, on the right I think.”
     Jacob grunted in acknowledgement and began to stealthily creep up the stairs. Carol slipped past Marcus as he went to do the same and hurried into the living room.
     “What the hell are you doing?”, he whisper-yelled. She didn’t respond, sifting through the clutter on the table before she held up her keys in one hand and his in the other. Carol walked back to Marcus as he stood dumbfounded and shoved the house’s keyring into his hands.
     “You leave with me and we can talk about this.”
     “What’s there to talk about?”, he asked with genuine confusion.
     She slapped him with the back of her hand, the keys clutched within nicking the flesh just above his cheekbone. Then she marched out the front door and into the night.
     Marcus was stunned but not completely dismayed. He was confident in his ability to smooth this over after the fact. If he explained and tied his actions to grief, there shouldn’t be any lasting issue.
     Turning his gaze upward, Marcus realized that Jacob had disappeared into the bathroom. There was a clatter, which sounded like several shampoo and soap bottles hitting the floor. After half a minute of standing in front of the door, rooted in the realization that Jacob was liable to blow his face off if he startled the old man, he watched Jacob emerge from the bathroom. He regarded Marcus with a vigorous, silent shake of his head and then walked into the bedroom.
     Another collection of clattering sounds resonated from the bedroom as ornaments were knocked over and furniture pushed aside. When Jacob returned, he gave Marcus a second negatory head shake. He approached the final room. Marcus could see the red glow of the sound studio’s foam walls as the door opened; the lights were on. Jacob raised his shotgun as he entered and shut the door behind him.
     The housed remained silent for a few whole minutes. Marcus began to feel the obligation to go upstairs and check on his elder. Yet before his legs could move, a muffled scream rang out from the studio. Its low pitch identified the screamer as Jacob, which was confirmed when the old man burst out of the doors. He stumbled into the banister, the impact to his stomach causing him to drop the shotgun, which fell to the first floor with a clang loud enough to send Marcus’s heart into his throat.
     Jacob ran down the stairs, his baby-blue eyes bulging from their sockets and a thin layer of slime dripping from his face. He tried to get past Marcus to the door, but the young man shifted to block his path, hands raised.
     “What happened? What’s wrong?”
     “Get the fuck outta the way!”
     “You can’t just—”
     “GET THE FUCK—!” Jacob started to push Marcus with pathetically little strength. Tears appeared to be mixing into his smeared face. He looked utterly ridiculous, like Ebenezer Scrooge dipped his head in Vaseline. Marcus stood aside more out of fear for the geezer’s safety than his own.
     Jacob pushed through the door and into the darkness of the night. Marcus watched him unsteadily work his way down the path and out the gate. When he turned back around, Marcus saw a black head peeking out at him from the cusp of the top right step. It disappeared in the next moment, a series of loud thumps then proceeding back into the sound studio.
     Marcus kept his eyes and ears peeled as he inched his way to the shotgun, wincing with each creak in the floorboards. The weapon felt cold under his grip. Years of FPS games had ingrained the image and power of guns like this into his hind brain, but feeling the implement’s deadly weight broke that illusion in a chilling instant. He pressed the stock into his shoulder and noticed that Jacob had already pulled the hammers back.
     Careful to keep the barrels aimed at anything but himself, Marcus tiptoed up the steps. The studio was completely silent, a trail of drool leading up to its doors. He crept up to the entrance. A peek inside revealed nothing; from all angles he could view without stepping into the room, it was empty. With his left hand, he braced himself against the agape door, keeping his eyes and gun trained on the vacant studio. 
     Marcus rummaged through his pocket for the keyring Carol had returned to him. He locked the door and began to gradually shut it. Without incident, the studio became a cell for whatever hid inside. Relief hit Marcus like a tidal wave. He almost collapsed right then and there but managed to keep himself standing.
     He opened the door to Selwick’s room and propped the shotgun against its inner frame. He dragged the nightstand that Jacob had knocked over to the studio’s door and propped its weight against the knob. Then, against all rational judgement, Marcus reentered the bedroom, locked the door behind him, flopped onto the bed, and passed out.
   
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     Marcus awakened to a peaceful morning. Birds were chirping. The sun rose without a single cloud in the sky to obscure its tranquil rays. However, the second consciousness squirmed its way back into his head, Marcus bolted upward and flopped out of bed. Panic returned to his rested mind. He ran to the shotgun and cradled it like a newborn. Then he froze in his tracks, listening carefully to any sounds from the next room over. The only sounds from inside the house were his own breathing and the occasional creak of its settling foundation.
     Moving with careful stealth, Marcus exited the room and peaked out into the hallway. The studio was still closed with the nightstand firmly in place. He stalked over to the door. He tapped its wood lightly with the shotgun.
     There was no response.
     Marcus banged on the door with the shotgun’s tip, making as much noise as he could.
     There was no response.
     He quietly pulled the nightstand from against the knob. Shaking from head to toe, Marcus unlocked the door and began to pull it ajar, aiming his gun at the opening the whole while. When it was fully open, his eyes found their view of the studio empty as before. Summoning what little courage he had left, Marcus stepped inside. He pointed the gun to the left and right, making a pathetic attempt at imitating a SWAT officer clearing a room.
     There was nothing alive inside the sound studio. The microphone equipment at the center of the room was knocked over, and a thin layer of slime had pooled at the room’s front. Letting out a profound sigh of relief, Marcus shut the door, locked it, braced the nightstand against it, and patrolled the rest of the house with the shotgun. When it appeared that his domain was safe, he ended his rounds in the kitchen.
     Marcus practically forced spoonfuls of cereal into his dry mouth and chugged it down with milk straight from the carton. With his morning boost of energy, Marcus’s mind began to work critically. Whatever had ambushed Carol and him was gone. At least it appeared so. It had done something to Jacob that shook him to the core. The drool on his face and the floor confirmed its connection to the other night. But wild animals don’t look through files on a computer. Nor do normal burglars crawl like panthers and shriek like banshees. This had to be some maniac, a crazy person with some connection or obsession with Selwick. Maybe they were trying to scare him out of the house. Maybe the broken discs outside were Selwick’s way of defending against them. It was even possible that they had a hand in his death, given the shriek Jacob reported.
     But none of these possibilities accounted for the issue at hand: How did they escape the studio? How were they even getting in and out of the house for that manner? He’d locked the doors just before they appeared; they had to have been inside the house already, maybe they had been since the other night or even longer. It conjured in his mind true crime stories of vagrants hiding in homes for years before they were discovered. Selwick’s home was still alien to him; there could be hidden, Scooby Doo-esque passages for all he knew. These thoughts degraded the small level of security that groping the long gun gave him.
     Danger could be all around. He peeked out of the kitchen and at the walls with reinvigorated terror. Weapon in hand, he reascended the steps and approached the studio. This intruder, whatever it was, chose to run here when confronted, and they escaped that seeming dead end. 
     Marcus brusquely kicked the nightstand aside and threw the door open. It was still empty inside. He entered the room carefully to avoid the pool of fluid that remained on the floor. There was no bookshelf or significant structure to be moved here, no trapdoor in the unobstructed floor, only an oppressive collage of foam. So, Marcus went about removing it. It was a simple task for him; he’d set up spaces like this multiple times, beginning with an unused closet in his father’s house when video-making transitioned from an assortment of Minecraft videos made for fun to Minecraft videos made with effort for profit.
     He peeled the walls bare, exposing their drab plaster surfaces. His operation started at the left side of the door and extended all the way around. That is, until he reached a particularly loose sheet of foam. A square space almost as tall as Marcus was cut out of the wall. Overtop it, attached with brass hinges, was a varnished wooden panel held shut by a flat, circular lock.
     Marcus looked at his discovery with bewilderment before fishing the keyring out of his pocket. Next to the house key and car fob was a small, smudgy key that he’d not yet found a use for. Surely enough, it fit into the keyhole. With a twist, the mechanism released, and the panel began to swing ajar on its own.
     Now, Marcus should have by all accounts become numb to surprises, but what lay within paralyzed his thoughts regardless. In a painted scarlet recess no deeper than two feet, illuminated by an array of active fluorescent lights, was a black latex catsuit stretched to fit over a feminine mannequin. Marcus was no more perverse than the average internet savvy person of his young age, so while his eyes beheld something they’d never expected to see in person, he couldn’t claim complete ignorance of its purpose.
     A tight corset grotesquely twisted the figure into an hourglass body shape, and a choker sporting a metal ring bound its throat. The suit’s eyeholes and mouth were covered by oval pieces of rubber strapped around the head with silver buckles. A long zipper ran from the top of the suit’s upper groin to the top of its buttocks.
     Every part of the suit, even the polished surface of the corset, was deeply reflective, to the point where Marcus could see himself in its sheen. The plain latex covering the figure’s breasts, collar, and limbs was translucent due to its lighter shade. However, the blank porcelain doll within was only fully visible through an array of puncture marks clustered around the center of the suit’s chest.
     It did not take a wild leap in logic for Marcus to connect this object to the intruder. A garment like this could easily create the appearance that had startled him to the core. Yet here it was, hidden neatly away without a trace of its former occupant aside from the thin trail of drool still dripping from its chin. He expected to find an answer and found his questions multiplied. However, there was a kernel of hope in his discovery: on the latex’s smooth surface, just above the mannequin’s left nipple, was a pristinely preserved, complete fingerprint.

「This is a work of fiction. Any references to real places, real people, or historical events are used fictitiously. Other characters, names, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events, places, or people, living or deceased, is purely coincidental.」

Copyright © 2021 Matthew Cammarano
All rights reserved.