Welcome To Hollywood

by Alexander Michael

Sirens in Los Angeles were more common than birdsong. Tonight was no different.

They announced their righteousness to the world. Criminals fell under their batons. Deviants were caught red-handed and red-cocked. Everywhere, the law stalked its prey.

He laughed at their naivete; no one could put the Fear of Good into him. He was invisible. Unknown. Powerful. And so he played his games and lived his bliss.

The sirens wailed. He dismissed them as feeble.

While he waited, he dwelled on his Desire.

He’d first seen her from across the street. Through windows. Between slips in the curtains.

Sometimes she’d dance.

Sometimes she’d read by the window.

Some afternoons would see her succumbing to a warm doze.

What dreams spun behind her sleeping eyes? Bougainvillea and Bird of Paradise swayed by her door. The setting sun always disappeared just as the streetlamps ignited. She would forget to close the curtains completely. So would he.

Her curled form on the sofa was a question mark, a street and a million miles away.

She was always alone, except for the night of the party. The night they met, two weeks ago.

Did she ever think of him? All these questions and more ran through his mind. The answers would come tonight. So he sat in his Void and waited. What a place it was, this nothingness that could be filled with whatever his mind perceived. He did so now, pulling images from within and slipping them onto the projector screen that was the darkness around him. The images he chose concerned that special night.

There she was. Her smile was radiant. The sparkle of her immaculate teeth matched that of her eyes. She greeted him at the front door as she greeted all the other guests, and he noted the crystalline depths of her eyes.

Now, two weeks later, he could not even say how he’d gained access to the party; which one of his acquaintances had invited him into the halls of Shangri-La? It didn’t matter. He was less himself now. His memories – even of his own identity – were out the window. This was a fortnight of obsession. Now, in his little silent Void, images from that night of commencement ran riot.

Her name was Matilda. So perfect. She had worn a slip of a dress, black as sin, save for tiny jewels that glittered in the downlights. Her high heels ascended her a foot to goddess-hood, though she didn’t need them. She towered over all her guests with energy alone. Her hair was a shade lighter than her dress, cascading over her shoulders. Her forehead boasted a central part that put him in mind of a crown. She was pale statuary, boiled pink by pumping arteries; avenues much kinder than those of LA.

That night passed into memory. Members of the Who’s Who were in attendance, actors and actresses, producers and the like. Some with names still known, though their star had dimmed of late. Others were budding flowers all set to bloom.

A sure-fire sign that he was losing his mind: he was a screenwriter, yet he spent the night ogling the hostess rather than engaging in creative networking.

It had been easy to find the spare key. It was taped to the inside of her medicine cabinet.

Two weeks down the line, here he was in the Void he often visited. It truly was a magic place – a No Place, as he sometimes liked to call it. This Void could have been anywhere, any nation, and at any time of the day or night. It was always the same place, yet the entrances to this black colossus were various.

He could be in Los Angeles, as he was now, in Matilda’s apartment off Sunset. In the suburbs of San Bernadino. Up in the Hollywood Hills. Hell, anywhere. At any of these places he could enter the Void. Tonight’s entrance was, of course, Matilda’s closet.

He sat on the floor. Her clothes hung around him like rent skins. They stared down at him in a cluster, forbidding and impartial in turns. Her scent filled him up, as he longed to fill her. Of course, he wouldn’t. It was not his MO. All he did was watch. They never knew, these beauties he chose. They never knew someone lingered in their closet, watching and watching and watching. Some would call him stalker had they only known who he really was. Others, monster. He disagreed wholeheartedly with these terms. He was simply ‘voyeur’. In a city subsisting on voyeurism, he couldn’t see the problem.

Life was a movie, after all. Watch and enjoy!

There she was again. Matilda. Her hair is obsidian fire. So strong was his imagination he could believe she was in the closet with him, reaching for his leg with those painted nails.

They were scarlet, as glimmering as a slit throat; a gash in a bloated stomach; as beautiful as the gristle behind the eyes. He’d seen this redness, this shocking brightness, countless times in films. It spurted, usually followed by over-exaggerated gasps and cries. Aliens burst forth from split torsos. Unlucky bastards fell into meat grinders and went from Average Joe to Sloppy Joe.

But to inflict damage in the world outside the projector screen was a notion that sent his system into somersaults of revulsion.

Who the hell would ever want to tear down the beauties of the world? They were goddesses. Their skin was too precious to maul. Their breasts and nipples too perfect to bare. In truth, they were Art, and he would do all he could to protect them. That included watching them. In their homes. At their offices. Strolling down Hollywood Boulevard on the weekends. The wind in their hair at the Santa Monica Pier was kin to him. He too caressed their skin. He smiled in Matilda’s closet at the thought.

Hands were taboo. Eyes were like the wind.

The jangling of keys!

His body tensed. He sat up. The clothing behind him whispered its excitement. The light in the entry came on. He frowned. There was more than one shadow. This was rare, but not necessarily a bad thing. This way there was more chance of a show.

Only the front hall was illuminated. He never imagined this place could look so stark. The abundance of shadow still cloaking most of the apartment drabbed it in loneliness. He himself felt lonely as he looked out the little slits in the wooden door of the closet. Never again would he experience this place as he had that very first night, all the downlights sparkling, the rooms filled to bursting with The Beautiful People. It was a night to believe in things, to think that maybe the future was to be bright: that goals and dreams could come true.

But without the glistening bodies drinking champagne, this place roared in its empty spaces. How could one woman stand it?

There were sounds in the hall. Wet, smacking sounds.

Discoveries of this nature always reared their head on nights like this, peering out of the Void onto real stories.

Sights and sounds made him feel, and what a blessed condition. Even seeing an empty room, its curtains drab, the carpet stained, could get him dreaming awake. He’d seen such a place not two months ago, having chosen a heroin addict to binge. She’d crept into her place, a two-room hovel behind a wrecker’s and stripped off all her clothes. She collapsed into the dark and immediately fell asleep. There was no lamp. No bed. Nothing but the sound of deep breathing.

He had found himself seeing her dreams.

They played for him on either side of his vision, the Void all too happy to entertain itself. He found the strength of her yearning far stronger than any of his other chosen women. Her dreams had as much piquancy as reality.

Was he nothing but a character in her night visions? This thought sent him running.

Why he did what he did was simple enough: to discover whether or not love was merely a storytelling device. He would search for that answer again tonight.

The voyeur stood up slowly, doing his best to not jangle any coat hangers. Now at his full height, he took in Matilda’s apartment in all its lonely glory, waiting to be filled by light and by her beautiful presence. He wondered what she was wearing tonight. Oh he was excited. His skin was bristling. His eyes peered out the little slits onto the Great Drama.

A man stepped into view.

The voyeur frowned. He had shoulder-length hair. There was a piercing in his right eyebrow. The blue jeans he wore clearly hugged him far too tightly. The bulge at his crotch put the voyeur’s to shame. What’s more, he wore a black leather vest. He nodded, taking in the sight of the apartment. “Not bad,” he said.

The voyeur hated him on sight. The eyebrow ring sparkled as it transitioned from the lit front hall into dimness.

Matilda followed him in after the sound of the door locking. Fabio was clearly intoxicated. He could smell it from within the closet. Matilda looked her best. The darkest of dark hair. A smile to match. He watched as she pulled the fool into her embrace. How he wished to be enfolded in those arms. To feel that soft skin wrap around him, hands caressing his body and his hair.

The fool kissed her. Matilda kissed him back. Hard. The monster in the closet felt a stirring in his pants.

This scene of heavy breathing and wet lips was definitely not Oscar-worthy. The fool’s clumsy hands snatched at her breasts.

The voyeur could have done a much better job.

His hands then went to her rear.

The monster in the closet could not see it, but he could see the shadow her ass cast, and boy, it looked just fine. Matilda pulled away from the drunk. He came at her again. Her perfectly manicured hands – those jagged nails as scarlet as they had been two weeks ago – stopped him in his tracks with a finger to her lips. “Wait, love,” she said.

“Wait for what?” he sighed. The voyeur smelt a fresh wave of beer. “I want you so bad.”

“I want you too.” Matilda calmed him with a kiss on the lips. One hand went to Mount Kilimanjaro. “I want this in me.”

The voyeur swallowed. To see this all in a mess of shadow was too beautiful to describe. There was mood here. There was contrast. A lot of work for Fabio to do to pick it up, but Matilda was carrying the day. What a bingeworthy scene! Bravo!

She took her hand away from his crotch. “Wait here on the sofa. I’ll be back.”

The fool let her go. The clothing behind the voyeur whispered its complaint. Two sets of male eyes watched the woman in the dark dress, the strappy shoes, disappear into a far hall.

Time passed in the darkness. The fool spotted some unlit candles on the coffee table. He set them burning with a match he had in his pocket. With the job done, he crashed onto the couch. The room now appeared as a cave, the golden hue from the candles presenting an almost curved formation of light.

Matilda stepped from her bedroom into the hall. Gone went the dress she had been wearing. She now appeared before the fool resplendent in a scarlet night gown, all velvet, all shimmering. The voyeur’s skin tingled again. He wanted to touch, though he knew that was against the rules. The Void spoke up behind him. Just a little caress. Where’s the harm?

No, he answered the whispers. Break a rule and what has it all been for?

Fun?

This isn’t fun. It’s a masterpiece. Now be quiet.

She was short without her heels. The fact of her power was all the more marvellous for that. He noticed it before the fool did: she wasn’t wearing a top beneath the gown. It hung open, presenting him with tantalising hints.

Cream globes. Heavy. Their own marvellous weight bore them down. Their whiteness glowed in the pale light from the hall. All the darkness did was personify her corpse-like pallor. This coldness aroused the voyeur to no end. How could starkness and sensualism marry this way?

The fool stood from the couch. He looked her up and down. Her bare feet. Her bellybutton curtained by the red velvet. Her perfect breasts, nipples hidden. The sleekness of her neck. The candlelight failed to penetrate the bowl between her throat and shoulder. She smiled at him, holding out her hands. He collapsed into her. The voyeur could hear the sucking sounds. He was kissing her neck while she began undressing him.

The Void ached. The voyeur trembled. The moment was near.

She pulled his jeans down. He bounced to attention. The voyeur could make out its impressive size even in the dimness. She was so petite. Could she take it all?

She stood. Her hand wrapped itself around the jutting member. The gaps in the closet allowed him to see her squeezing the fool. He was hers completely. The fool slipped her night gown off her shoulders. Her nakedness hit the voyeur like a punch. Matilda was illumination at one instant and darkness the next. Every little move she made as she guided the fool by his dowsing rod over to the couch changed her form completely. The only shapes of consistency were her breasts, piqued and interested, nipples sharp like razors. The voyeur bet they tasted like strawberries, or the iron tang of shed blood.

The fool pinned her to the couch, his ass infuriatingly aimed right at the closet. Precious little of the voyeur’s infatuation could be seen, save the smoothness of one of her legs. It was a stream of silk. The fool ran his stinking drunken hands up and down it. It surely felt like sandpaper to the poor woman. Her moans seemed to disagree with the voyeur’s hypothesis. They were full and throaty, coming from deep within her. How could she feel pleasure at this poor display?

Just when the fool began grinding on her skin to skin, Matilda slipped one hand down to this eager gentleman’s ass. At first she clasped his cheeks, spreading them wide.

The voyeur cringed.

Then she slipped her thumb into that little brown bud.

The fool let out a cry and pulled himself off her. “What’s wrong?” Matilda asked. “You don’t like that?”

“Give me some warning, at least,” her suitor mumbled into her neck. “Or let me do that to you.”

“Soon. And warning is for the wary. You’re not wary, are you?”

“Hell no.”

“You want me, don’t you?”

“Mhmm.”

“You want to fuck me, right? Hard?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me how deep.”

“So fucking deep. I want to feel you.”

“You fucking better.”

She thrust one leg around the fool. Before the voyeur could discern motion, she swung around and perched on the naked man’s back. The fool was as shocked as the man in the closet. Was she some kind of athlete? With that body, he wouldn’t be surprised. Beneath her, the fool turned himself over. Now he faced her, and that face of his was in her breasts. He nodded his head up and down, smiling at the light tickle of her nipples on his nose.

“Mama,” he moaned.

Jesus Christ, the monster in the closet despaired.

“Shhh…”

Thank you.

Matilda hushed him with a long, slow kiss. The voyeur could only imagine the kind of warmth those beautiful breasts would bring.

The man spoke again. “I’m your fuck pig tonight.”

Oh you are kidding me…

“Yes. Yes!” he squeezed her ass.

The voyeur finally saw her: the roundness of her; the cleft between cheeks; a holy serving of her cunt and its raptures. To be sucked by those southern lips. To be drawn into warm velvet. To be sodden. To be ridden. To fuck her hard and hear her cries. He was rigid in his pants.

She grinded on him, her hands on his chest, their bodies still unconsumed. Matilda sat closer to his stomach than his groin, so the voyeur could see his eight-inch clanger smacking her little hole. His face was all idiot delight. His stomach glimmered from her silken leavings.

The clothing in the closet behind chittered away in amusement. He couldn’t see what for… This display was puerile. How could these godly attires bear to see their mistress in congress with this slicked-up dickhead?

“What do pigs do?” she asked the man lost in bliss.

She began to make her way down his body, kissing every inch of him.

“Tell me, darling. Pigs. What do they do?”

If he says it…

“Oink! Oink!”

She laughed. Matilda grasped his thickness in both hands. The purring woman was studying its length. Would she impale herself on it? The fool and the voyeur were waiting to see what she could do with her mouth. Time would tell.

One hand left his cock and sought something beneath the couch.

What’s this?

The fool had no clue. His eyes were open, but he was too drunk to see. He offered a final pig squeal.

“No, darling,” she said.

Matilda brought something into the golden glow. The voyeur frowned. It was hard to discern in the murk. A nail file? Strange time for maintenance.

“Pigs bleed.”

And he was opened like a present.

Crimson lace and tissue padding fell from the widening slit of the wrapping paper. His eyes shot open in horror at this unexpected gifting. His head rolled back onto the cushion. Shock assailed him. He was useless.

The voyeur was frozen in something he had never experienced before.

Fear.

At its purest.

Another cut. Two more, running off from the initial gash.

What business did this sacred liquid have in running from the man’s body in a river? This night was meant to be about watching. No flesh was to be rent asunder, no life ended. There were rules, for God’s sake!

But what was this spasming thing on the sofa but a reminder that rules were broken every day? The blood ran in rivulets over her hands, soaking the cushions, drowning his flailing rod. It had impossibly shrunk on the instant. It was a flapping balloon now, and Matilda smiled as it struck her hand.

The voyeur slammed a fist over his mouth to keep the scream in.

Only when the man stopped struggling did Matilda snatch two of his fingers between her teeth and rip them clean off.

The Void blared its confusion. The voyeur slid to the bottom of the closet.

Matilda faltered.

She turned. Fingernails jutted from her mouth. Blood and bone were a mashed cocktail between her lips. She pulled one of the fingers out while crunching the other like a dog to a bone. The forgotten digit fell to the carpet. The fool made not a complaint. He had died sometime in the last several seconds. His body was wet with sweat and blood, bodily fluids he would have been certain had no business mingling tonight. Matilda sat up, perched on the edge of the couch. She kept chewing. Those painted nails of hers scratched an itch at her stomach indifferently. Her swallow was audible.

The voyeur’s gorge rose and he planted the fist firmly on his mouth. It didn’t work. Up it came, splattering on the door. He turned, projecting the chunky stream onto her clothes at the back of the closet. When the spasm ended, the voyeur opened his eyes.

He stared. The Void was gone. His beloved place of sanctuary.

The back of the closet had opened at some point in the last few minutes. The voyeur was staring at the highest rung of a ladder.

This couldn’t be real.

This didn’t happen during his binges.

He was in control. Was this a trick of the Void?

He crept over to the ladder and peered down into the hole. The diminishing rungs were claimed by murk. A sound behind him made him turn. Through the holes in the closet he could see Matilda standing up. Candlelight painted her torso in gore. “You cannot run…”

He screamed and dove into the hole headfirst.

Gravity snatched at him.

Screaming all the way, a frightened child, he reached out to break the fall. His right hand caught on one of the final rungs and snapped.

He collided with earth. Pain made a lunatic of him. Numb. Nerve endings screamed in anger. The damn thing was, he knew that his broken hand saved his life.

The voyeur sat up. Blood oozed from his nose. The back of his head was wet. He couldn’t yet muster the courage to look at his hand. He instead turned upward, and there she was. What a sight: still naked, still dripping, advancing down the ladder like a giant pussy on legs.

Up he stood, surveying the tunnel. There was nothing to see, no break in the nullity. A concrete passage stretched ahead. He caught a glimpse of the maimed mess that was his right hand and another wave of stomach gore pushed its way out of his mouth.

The voyeur ran. His bleeding head threw the world before him into a crazy whirl of disconnected images. His pace was slow. His bruised body an insult to its past form. He slammed into a wall. From that moment on he used it to push himself forward. The voyeur knew she had reached the bottom. She must have! His pace was that of a bloodied snail. She was a hunter, powerful and brimming with bloodlust.

Doors passed him by. All of them were shut and bolted. He even knocked on the doors. He no longer cared if he was discovered to be a deviant who watched women in the back of their closets. Hell, he was still technically in the back of someone’s closet.

Police! Where were the sirens?!

The voyeur was no longer invisible, no longer a force to be reckoned with.

He remembered his name was Lance Lazenby, and he sold tyres at Bob’s Big Rig.

The young man made his way through this fucked up The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. He was dead meat, his brain soggy, his body mangled. Finally he reached a door that opened to his touch. In he went, slamming it behind him. He might have seen a shadowy form in the distance of the concrete passage, yet he might not have. Reality was a mystery now. There were no answers. Just plot twists.

He froze once more. What a night for discoveries.

Before him stretched a bank of television screens, showing black and white scenes. From this distance it was impossible to discern the activity. He stepped closer.

A flurry of movement coalesced into a threesome in a dark room. Two women lay on a bed, on their backs. A man was choking both of them while they took care of each other with gentle caresses and brutal insertions both. He moved to the next screen. A bundle under a blanket lay sleeping and alone. Moving on, one man sat perched on the end of the bed and was talking to someone who wasn’t there. On and on and on.

A murder. Two lovers whispering sweet nothings. A suicide. An impromptu jam session with guitars. The sniffing of cocaine. The injecting of heroin. A mother speaking softly to her child. Someone suffering a nightmare. The dildo, the ass, and the contortionist. Syringes. Knives. Cheese graters. Endless screams. Pleasure and pain were indivisible here. 

Los Angeles post-midnight.

The voyeur’s eyes went to the next row. He cried out. Every single screen depicted men, and some women, sitting or standing in closets. Voyeurs, the lot of them. Their eyes were peeled, leering on the activity in the bedrooms – the activity being broadcast on the other screens.

“What the hell is this?” he said. No one answered.

The activity went on and on. The sexual liaisons. The violence. The arguments. The few quiet scenes of sleep. The insane speaking to phantoms. The people in the closets binged these scenes on and on. His brothers and sisters, story addicts all.

Then he saw it. Some of the faces on the screens were familiar. Some of the voyeurs were partygoers from that precious night two weeks ago. Others participating in the orgies or the illicit dealings were familiar too.

It was the Who’s Who once more, and some of them had been in attendance the same night. What the hell was this? Had that been a party for deviants, invited into the midst of the Hollywood elite on purpose? What purpose?

This purpose. To be watched. Someone was watching the watchers.

Why why why???

The door opened. He spun around. Matilda stood before him, resplendent in her own flesh and the fool’s blood.

In full light, he saw the tattoo above her pubic bone: a solitary eye below a bloated sun, its lids open, its gaze piercing.

Two men stood behind her, fully dressed. The voyeur’s face went slack. One man was a world-famous actor, his star rising and rising. The other was a musician, sought after by all.

“What are you people doing?” he asked.

Matilda smiled.

“What’s going on here? Answer me!”

The two men stepped forward.

“Fucking tell me! Why do you watch? Why do you watch?? Why do you watch?!”

It was almost as though he were asking the question of himself.

Bafflement entered Matilda’s cheeks, as though he should have known the answer. She shrugged. “Welcome to Hollywood.”

They rushed him. The voyeur closed his eyes, hoping his loving Void would snatch him quickly.

It did not.

She tore his eyelids from his head before passing him to the men. No one heard his screams. No sirens came to save him. No Academy judged his howls bingeworthy.

They carried him from the room and into the halls. As limp as a shocked ragdoll, he heard her whisper, “Take him to the mansion off Mulholland. He can watch. Loss of eyelids won’t kill a man. This is the night of Return! Her Return! He’ll be a gift. I’m certain she’s hungry.”

The sirens wailed. The night went on. He watched and watched and watched.