The Escort
Gretchen Ellison was a beautiful young woman, as many men (and a great many women) would attest. Though modest by nature, she wouldn’t disagree. She knew her face had a Madonna-like, cherubic innocence. Her hourglass figure was exquisite. She sometimes braidedher flowing chestnut hair into a ponytail for work. The male clientele really seemed to like that style with a lily-white sundress. It gave the impression she was being married off. It reflected her purity of spirit, despite the disdain many held for the world’s oldest profession.
Gretchen worked at the Kit Kat Ranch, a high-class escort service situated in the desert a few miles west of Las Vegas. At a glance, the locale wasn’t what most would envision for a decadent establishment catering to the haves and have mores. It certainly didn’t look like the Playboy Mansion. It resembled an upscale motel and college campus combined in the middle of the desert. Single story buildings spread over a ten-acre expanse, complete with dormitories for the working girls, and barracks for security personnel. A small, shoddy desert villa sat at the rear. It had a minimalist design with large tinted windows to maintain privacy. Though well-maintained, the entire establishment had a bit of grit that blended in with the desert terrain. It gave the place character, “like a desert oasis,” visitors to the Ranch would comment.
Gretchen had gone over to the villa for more important reasons, even in the 110-degree heat, entering through the front.
Gretchen now stood in Old Man Johnson’s office within the villa, wearing that white sundress the clientele so loved,. She clasped her hands behind her back to keep them from shaking while the fat man to finished his cell phone conversation. Behind him the security monitors and terminal recorded virtually all the goings-on at the Ranch. Voyeurism was his favorite pastime when not promoting the Ranch to wealthy investors and clientele.
“Yep, yep, that’s right, Bill, my very, very best. Come on back by, enjoy some of the good ol’ fashioned fuckin…” Johnson said. He laughed so hard he began to choke, unable to catch his breath. Finally, he pounded hard on his chest a couple times and managed to clear his airway and breathe again. “Anyway, let me know when you arrive at the airport, bud. Yep, take care.”
Johnson ended his call, wiping beads of sweat from his brow with a handkerchief.
“I’m here to give my two weeks notice,” Gretchen said.
Johnson blinked, staring at Gretchen without saying a word.
The Ranch was a seedy venue that catered to individuals of means. The less exuberant appearance kept the enterprise somewhat discreet. It served as a brothel and studio for shooting adult films. Gretchen herself had been featured in a couple. Filming wasn’t her cup of tea. The films proved to be excellent advertising, as wealthy patrons would be able to solicit sex from their favorite stars.
Dozens of young women found themselves working here, their dreams of fortune and fame in Hollywood having come to naught. Gretchen had come from the Midwest at nineteen as an aspiring actress. She and the others had been recruited by the sleaziest fat bastard of them all: Horace Wallace Johnson. Or Old Man Johnson, as he preferred to be called.
He was an unsightly creature, completely bald, with loose jowls and extensive folds and wrinkles on his wretched face. His penetrating blue eyes, unkempt beard, and hypnotic aura resembled Grigory Rasputin. His massive girth and bulging eyes were akin to Jabba the Hutt. To Gretchen, his Southern accent, nasal voice, and cruel, cunning nature made him more like a captain overseeing a 1930s Georgia chain gang. He certainly looked the part, with his white Colonel Sanders suit and cowboy hat. He sometimes had to use an electric scooter due to his massive weight.
No one really knew how old he was, but one of Gretchen’s coworkers claimed to have found an old album featuring a black and white photograph of Johnson with Richard Nixon. They all surmised it must be a relative, or some type of novelty item. Even in that picture, he looked old.
“What’s that, darlin?” he finally asked.
“You heard me,” she said, lowering her gaze. Her throat contracted.Her stomach sank, and she briefly second guessed her decision. But Gretchen wanted nothing more to do with the Ranch, period. That went triple for this lecherous fiend.
Without warning, Johnson burst into voracious laughter.
“Greta darlin, what do ya mean you quit?” he asked, using the pet name she loathed. “You have any idea what you’re sayin? Where would you go? What would you do? How would you support yourself? This here is where you belong, girl. We’re your family.”
He smiled that same ugly, mordant grin that chilled the marrow in her bones.
She wasn’t going to let him talk her out of this decision. She’d never fit in here, and had nothing in common with her coworkers aside from their occupation. The small talk often bored her. Gretchen found it difficult to have any really deep conversations with anyone at the Ranch. Tthe job paid very, very well. There were times she’d enjoyed it. But not anymore.
This wasn’t her family, and this fat tub of lard certainly wasn’t any type of father figure. Far from it. She’d been at the Ranch for seven years. She wanted to get out into the real world, utilize her true skill set, find a nice man, and make a family of her own. A real family.
Was that too much to ask?
“Two weeks. After that I’m gone. You can’t force me to stay by trying to humiliate me. This is not my home, and it never will be.”
Johnson’s eyes narrowed to blazing slits. His bottom lip quivered as he straightened up in his seat and leaned forward.
“How dare you…” he said, in a sharp, bitter tone. “After all I’ve done for you, you’re gonna go and run out on me? You think I’m gonna just let one of my best money makers skedaddle and make me look ridiculous? Is that what you’re tryin to do, make me look ridiculous?”
Gretchen regarded Johnson with utter contempt.
“Not everything is about you, Horace.”
Johnson’s forehead crinkled into a threatening frown.
“Of course it’s about me. That’s what these types of situations boil down to. Ya ain’t the first, and ya won’t be the last. But fine, you want to go out into that hellhole of a world and have it knock the shit out of you, be my guest. You’ve got your two weeks. ”
Gretchen feigned a smile. “Thank you.”
“Get outta my sight,” Johnson grumbled.
This wasn’t their first time butting heads, Gretchen being much more strong-willed and intelligent than Johnson would like those working for him to be. Hopefully it would be their last if all went to plan. She headed into the courtyard and stopped by the medium-sized, round enclosure in the center. Her favorite part of Kit Kat Ranch: Orville the orangutan. Old Man Johnson’s prized pet served as a sort of mascot. She had no idea where he’d gotten it from. Orville was a kindred spirit who also desired to be free of the Ranch. He just had more limited options than Gretchen did. The poor beast loathed Johnson though, that much was readily apparent.
She sidled up to the cage, hands on her knees, watching the ape as it ate the various fruits and vegetables Lewis had left. She smiled and waved. The orangutan gave her a cursory glance, then resumed eating his dinner. He normally had a much more jubilant reaction when she stopped by. Gretchen was the ape’s “favorite human” according to Lewis. Honestly, she didn’t doubt that one bit. When he was a juvenile, he’d eat right out of her hand and even let her pet him. She had a stronger bond with the orangutan than any of the working girls Gretchen wasn’t allowed to own any pets while working at the Ranch, so Orville functioned in that capacity. The no pets rule didn’t apply to fish or small mammals and reptiles that could be kept in tanks. But she didn’t want a pet fish. They tended to die easily. As for hamsters and gerbils, she’d never consider having one as a pet. And she harbored an innate fear of all reptiles.
Strange that Orville reminded her of that.
She left Orville to finish his dinner. Two weeks left. She could handle that.
Would Johnson keep his word? People had disappeared from the Ranch before—unruly clients, reporters, some of the working girls. Several with no explanation ever given. Gretchen wanted to avoid their fate.
An electric tension crackled in the air. A bevy of illicit dealings were rumored aside from prostitution and pornography. Drugs for one, as well as other shady activities that no one ever discussed for any reason. Dark satanic rites, black masses practiced in secret, underground bases, including one rumored to be beneath this very establishment. The invisible masters who gave Johnson his marching orders hung over the place like a dark shroud.
Gretchen decided not to worry about things beyond her control and focus on the present. She’d be gone soon enough. She truly believed that with all her heart. She wouldn’t let Johnson’s shadow hover over her any longer.
She worried Johnson may have other plans. A cold shudder surged through her.How far he would go to keep her caged up? As far back as she could remember, Johnson had been a constant presence in her life that refused to be cast off. Though he wore the facade of a shrewd businessman and innovator, Johnson was stark, staring mad.
After that day, life improved for Gretchen immensely. She’d saved up during her time at Kit Kat Ranch, so she was able to afford an apartment in a more affluent part of Los Angeles. She made a second attempt to break into the film industry., According to her agent, no one wanted anything to do with her for mainstream productions because of her past association with the Ranch. It seemed people were only interested in casting her for pornographic films. She turned downevery offer She had encountered some very shady and salacious individuals offering her roles in these adult films, some of whom rivaled Johnson in their depravity and penchant for perversions. At least that was her general impression from the few meetings she’d had with such men.
Her fortunes changed when she met a handsome, eminent thirty-seven-year-old Arab American businessman named Ahmed Abdallah. He even secured Gretchen a speaking role in a feature horror film. A minor part, but she hoped it would open doors for her.
What’s more, Ahmed told her his father was even more well connected. He was good friends with a few industry insiders from Dubai who had financed several Hollywood productions. Not just independent or art house films. Actual multimillion dollar budget films.This wasn’t why she dated Ahmed. His personality complemented her own: generous, kind, and innovative. His connections were an added bonus, a welcome boon.
It had been three months since she’d left Kit Kat Ranch, and she’d been invited by Ahmed to meet his family at a small dinner party in a lavish Beverly Hills apartment complex. They’d only been dating a month, but Ahmed insisted. He told Gretchen it would be the perfect time to introduce her to his father. Ahmed had told his father about her aspirations to establish herself as a serious actress in Hollywood. Ahmed hadn’t told him of her past occupation, but he assured her it wouldn’t matter. She’d still been nervous about the dinner.
“Do not worry, my dearest, you are beautiful and radiant, with a truly loving soul. They will see that—you have nothing to fear,” Ahmed said. They had kissed, and together strode into the penthouse.When her phone rang from a private number, Gretchen didn’t think it was unusual. Her agent often called from a private number.
She stopped at the threshold to answer.
“Hello?”
Silence at first, then a deep bass voice she didn’t recognize said, “Abraxas…”
The next thing she knew, she was standing in the dining room. She was no longer holding her phone. Her hair was matted with blood that stained her hands, legs, and dress. She attempted a forward step, but slipped in a puddle of blood, arms flailing for balance. Gretchen kept herself from falling by bracing on the table edge.
Her mind refused at first to accept what her eyes beheld. Yet it was a cold reality of obscene splendor that could not be denied. Sprawled all over the capacious chamber were the bodies of Ahmed’s family. All five were dead, brutally murdered by an assailant who had utilized any and every available item in the room as a weapon for bludgeoning and stabbing, done with efficient, machine-like precision.
Her body grew rigid. Ahmed had sustained the most grievous wounds. His battered and broken body resembled a human voodoo doll. Instead of pins and needles, silverware had been plunged into his torso. His eyes had been gouged out. She stared at her bloodstained hands once again.
At first, Gretchen thought she must have been injured in this heinous massacre as well. But there wasn’t a mark on her.
It made no sense.
This was the work of Old Man Johnson. She wasn’t sure how, but deep in her heart, she knew. The fact that she was alive while Ahmed and his family were brutally murdered all but confirmed this. Given the “good ol’ boy” network he was a part of, it would be simple for one as well connected as Johnson to arrange such an atrocity, even against an individual of means. He’d done it before—several times—and for the pettiest of reasons
This was Johnson’s revenge for her walking away. To Johnson she wasn’t a person, but a possession.
The depths of his sadistic cruelty and its potential repercussions was a lot to process.
Gretchen felt numb. She should be grieving. Ahmed had loved her. She had loved him. And that bastard had ripped him from her life before they could even have a future together. Yet that part of her had been shut off.
“It’s not fair…” she said, a silent tear running down her cheek.
She was behaving more like a petulant child than an adult.
She knew Johnson. He had something else up his sleeve. There was much more to this than it seemed at a surface glance. That certainty flowed like acid through her veins. But to be sure, she had to check the security recordings, which were located in an alcove at the rear of the penthouse.
The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. Her hands shook as she rewound the tape half an hour back.
Gretchen pressed play, holding her breath as she watched the footage. Tears welled up in her eyes. Her heart broke right then and there.
The individual who killed Ahmed and his family wasn’t some assassin.
Gretchen threw up a little in her mouth.
“No…” she said aloud, to no one but herself. “It can’t be.”
Yet she knew it to be true. At some level she had already known. The assailant she saw on the screen was one she saw every day in the mirror. She backed away from the monitor, almost fainting.
It beggared belief. She wasn’t trained in any type of fighting style, and the savagery of the attacks, the lusterless, dead eyes of the woman on the security monitor who wore Gretchen’s face. It was like an alternate persona. But she’d never suffered from such psychological issues in the past, nor had she ever been diagnosed. It was like a demon had possessed her mind, body, and soul.
No. This was something else. Something more deliberate and insidious.
Mind control. Trauma based mind control.
Where had she heard that term before?
A memory from a couple years ago came to her. He had been one of the weirder ones she’d had at the Kit Kat Ranch. She loathed the scientific type. They were drab, dull, and uncreative. This one claimed to have done some work for the military.
“Mind control, ma’am, it’s a real thing,” he’d said. He was a slight, bespectacled middle-aged man, an unimpressive specimen all things considered.
Pretty much his only remarkable quality had been his knowledge.
“Mind control?” she’d asked.
He smiled like a weasel, with an eerie gleam in his eyes.
“The beautiful thing about it is that they have no clue, literally no clue that it’s been done. That’s how fucked up in the head they are!”
She had recoiled from his touch. “That sounds horrible. I’d kill myself before I’d let someone do that to me.”
The man grinned. “But how would you know? You wouldn’t! You could be under Monarch control right now, the perfect mind-controlled slave, and you’d be perfectly happy, have no memory of it at all, none at all. It would all be cataloged into your subconscious—”
“I think you should leave right now.” she’d said.
The man had done a double take, slack jawed and wide-eyed.
“Why?”
She sat up in a tight ball on the bed. “Because you creep me out.”
He stank as well, a musky stench, like a wet ferret.
“Now go before I call security.”
“But I already paid you to…”
She’d glared at him with absolute malice. “Did I stutter?” she’d said.
He’d left shortly thereafter. It was one of the rare instances of her stiffing a client or threatening anyone. The dialogue had greatly disturbed her, so much so that she researched the subject a bit in her spare time on social media.Scant material had been available on MKUltra or Project Monarch. In fact, a great deal of the available material was deliberate disinformation, complete garbage. That client had really seemed to know what he was talking about, and not in a psychotic sort of way. That was what upset her. The matter-of-fact manner he’d used when discussing the subject.
Rumor had that client was banned for some trouble with one of the other girls, but Gretchen couldn’t independently verify that. Perhaps he’d been one of the unfortunates to have been “unalived” by Johnson’s goon squad, The Marauders. If only there were some way she could get ahold of that man today—perhaps he had some insight as to what was happening to her. Then again, seeking answers from that creep was not how she wanted to find out aboutMKUltra and Project Monarch.
Could some type of MKUltra-like technology have been employed on Gretchen while she was working at Kit Kat Ranch? If so, she had no memory. It would certainly explain the strange phone call she received earlier. Perhaps it had been some type of subconscious command. Her phone was back in her purse, as if she’d never removed it, no record of any private caller.
No one was likely to believe her explanation. Gretchen couldn’t stay in the penthouse any longer. Gretchen instead began attempting to get out of there without arousing suspicion. She washed off what blood she could, as quickly as possible. She deleted the recordings before she left. It might buy her some time despite how easily she could be connected to this crime. She threw together a makeshift disguise—an abandoned pair of sunglasses belonging to who knows who, and the shawl of Ahmed’s dead sister. It was almost 11:00pm on a Wednesday, which made sneaking out much easier.
She made it back to her apartment in Los Angeles without incident. However, Gretchen was in a lot of trouble. The only people she could think of who could help her were her parents. She couldn’t even recall when their last conversation was.
Her call to her mother went straight to voicemail. She silently cursed. That meant she’d have to call her father.
Gretchen’s father was a Marion County Superior Court Judge in Indianapolis, Indiana. To her surprise, he immediately picked up.
“Daddy? Do you, I mean, I know it’s been a while, but I need help, I—”
“You need to listen to me. Everything is going to be all right, I promise you. Just go back to Kit Kat Ranch, and to Old Man Johnson. Do whatever he tells you to do.”
She cocked an eyebrow. “How do you know about any of that?”
“Gretchen, this is serious. Just do as I say. Old Man Johnson is your friend, only he can help you now…”
A fog formed in her brain, her father’s words repeating again and again and again.
Old Man Johnson is your friend. Only he can help you now…
“Old Man Johnson…is…my…”
Her hand tightening on her phone in utter revulsion.
“No, fuck that! And fuck you too!”
She ended the call by flinging her phone into the wall.
Tears welled up in her eyes. Whatever was going on, her parents were in on it as well.
She received simultaneous texts from both her brothers that said, “Call me.”
“Trust no one,” she said to herself, wiping away a tear.
There was no escaping the deadly reality of this situation with wishful thinking.
Her phone rang. It was her mother.
“Gretchen, honey, please listen to your father. Old Man Johnson is your friend. Only he can help—”
She hung up, then put her phone on Do Not Disturb.
That same creepy repeating mantra parroted by both her father and mother. Something was very wrong. It seemed as if she’d stepped into The Twilight Zone. The more she thought about all that had transpired, the more she began to wonder about her life, and her origins. When would she have been subjected to a mind control process? For what possible reason? All she knew for certain was that it tied back to her time at Kit Kat Ranch—a life she’d thought she’d put behind her.
When Gretchen reached her bathroom, she silently collapsed onto the floor. The more she looked, the deeper the rabbit hole went. One question dominated her mind: What am I?
She pondered this long and hard as she slipped out of her clothes and stepped into the shower. She scrubbed furiously to wash the remaining congealed blood out of her hair and off her skin.
What was she?
Gretchen wasn’t sure at this point whether the term “who” was applicable any longer. That term applied to actual human beings. While she possessed the face and body of a twenty-seven-year-old woman, she wasn’t sure if that was real.
Silent tears rolled down her cheeks. Fear piercing her heart, freezing it in her breast.
There was only one option for Gretchen. She would have to return to Kit Kat Ranch to confront Johnson.
She dressed in a tight-fitting pair of jeans and a Power Puff Girls T-Shirt. She then packed the bare necessities into her purse: her emergency stash of over $5,000 dollars; and the small, snub-nosed.38 revolver from the back of her underwear drawer. She would need to find a place to lay low. Gretchen had watched enough crime and forensics shows to have a rough idea of how to at least temporarily frustrate the efforts of law enforcement, as she’d attempted to do back at the penthouse—though not indefinitely. She threw on an olive-green duster and pulled up the hood. She looked like a Jedi. The disguise would throw off facial recognition technology, as well as obscure her identity on any cameras in or around her apartment building. She placed her bloodstained dress, and the blood-spattered pair of stiletto heels into the incinerator in the basement.
She requested an Uber. Then, she went outside to the front of her apartment building to wait for her driver deliver her back to the belly of the beast.
She was returning to Kit Kat Ranch first to find information. And the second to finally free herself from the diabolical fiend who ran the debauched establishment.
She was going to kill Old Man Johnson…
It was well after 3:00 a.m. when Gretchen’s Uber pulled up to the main gate of Kit Kat Ranch. She used her employee keycard—which still worked—to gain entry. She’d never gotten around to throwing it away. Perhaps at some level she knew she’d be returning one more time.
An eerie gloom had settled over the Ranch, a darkness vibrant with menace.
A blackout?
Unlikely. Most likely a trap for her. But she wasn’t dissuaded.
She made through the Ranch, past Orville’s cage, to the villa. The ape was asleep. Gretchen didn’t have the time to give more than a brief glance. With every step her sense of dread increased. She could not shake off the intangible horror no matter how hard she tried. The entire place was like a tomb. There weren’t even any cars in the lot, save for Johnson’s red pickup truck. Since he rarely ventured out of his office, that would be the place she would most likely find him.
She went into Old Man Johnson’s villa through the side entrance that was always unlocked. It was pitch black inside the outer office, no hint or trace of Johnson. Gretchen turned on her phone’s flashlight to look around.
The inner office was deserted, though the large terminal with dozens of monitors remained in service. There were cameras everywhere. Even in the private rooms. Everything was recorded and archived in Johnson’s intricate filing system. Those he enjoyed watching the most he would summon back to his office for a private performance on a regular basis.
On the wall was a large portrait of Ronald Reagan—Johnson’s personal hero and favorite U.S. President Johnson didn’t discriminate, at least when it came to politics. Republicans and Democrats all visited the Kit Kat Ranch.
Adjacent to the office was an adjoining living quarters with a bed, bathroom, and kitchenette—though Johnson always seemed to be awake. He was always watching, everyone and everything. Gretchen could feel him watching even now.
Where could he be?
Without warning, the overhead fluorescents illuminated, revealing Old Man Horace Wallace Johnson standing over by the front door of the office in his usual attire.
“I knew you’d be back,” Johnson said, looking her up and down as if she were a slice of meat lying on a countertop. “This is your home, girl.”
The light grotesquely distorted his shadow on the floor. It looked almost demonic. The nauseating scent of his cheap cologne hung in the air, like a spoiled apricot.
Gretchen stood in silent, in tremulous anticipation. Her limbs tingled with nervous energy.
Finally, she asked, “What am I?”
It came out as a deep demand.
Johnson chuckled, walking over to his desk and sitting down. He picked up the remote control and switched over to a prerecorded video.
“Think this’ll give ya your answers. You can sit on my lap if you want while we watch.”
“Fuck you,” Gretchen said.
Johnson smiled, a sardonic horselike grin that made Gretchen’s skin crawl. “That’s the idea,” he said, the tiniest bit of acid trickling into his words.
The video played on all of the monitors. She had no idea what to expect, but answers would be coming. She was sure of that.
Grainy black-and-white footage of a laboratory interior containing row after row of cylindrical, crystalline tubes with what appeared to be human beings growing inside them appeared on the screens. They were suspended in a translucent liquid. She had watched enough sci-fi movies and television shows to recognize what she was seeing, no matter how implausible. Clones were being grown in those tanks. Dozens of them. They were in varying stages of growth, from undeveloped fetuses with no real features to smooth skinned children like victims of immolation after receiving skin grafts. Affixed to each tank on a label in block letters was a five-digit numeric sequence. A scientist in spectacles wearing a white lab coat walked by the tanks. He stopped in front of each one to write on a clipboard andcheck digital readouts, like a devil attending to the damned.
Next, 16mm color film of children appeared. Boys and girls no more than ten years old, in cerulean blue jumpsuits and strapped to VR headsets. They were seated in rows in a darkened theater. Whatever they were seeing left many crying, convulsing in helpless, abject terror. Some thrashed about, held into place only by the restraints on their wrists and ankles. Trauma based mind control in real life.
The camera panned across the first row of seats, offering a closer view of these children. Johnson paused the video on a young girl, the top half of her face obscured by the headset. Her chestnut brown hair hung loosely over her back and shoulders. Tears rolled down her cheeks. She was suffering from many random tics and spasms, as if afflicted with epilepsy. On her chest on the front pocket of her jumpsuit, stitched in black block letters was “G. Ellison,” underneath it the number “24337.”.
Understanding bloomed within Gretchen.
“I’m a clone?” she asked.
Johnson snickered.
“I believe the proper term is genetically engineered human replicant. A Monarch Clone with artificial memory implants. Only one of each model is allowed in existence at a time—the best of the batch. The rest are put down. Otherwise, the jig would be up. No family, just given a name, assigned to predesignated handlers to keep you in line, grown in one of them there tanks for one purpose: to serve your betters.”
Gretchen glowered at Johnson.
“And who are my ‘betters’?” she asked, with obvious sarcasm.
Johnson scowled right back at her, eyes narrow.
“All them there folks that pay money to do some good ol’ fashioned fuckin with you and all the others like you, that’s who! Never had to deal with one as stubborn and bullheaded as you though, tryin to make me look ridiculous, humiliate me, bad mouthin me, all because one of the guys at the lab didn’t properly condition ya.
“That’s your problem, Greta. Your mind ain’t right. You’re mine, I own your ass, but you make up your mind to up and leave! You didn’t really think I was going to let you run off with some rich asshole, did ya? That there boy had guts, I’ll give him that, but he didn’t have a clue what he was up against..”
He slowly advanced. Gretchen recoiled with an involuntary shudder. He pulled a small silver remote out of his suit pocket about the size of a key fob.
“See this here? This is my favorite part, made possible by a nanochip plugged straight into your brain. Better than post-hypnotic suggestions and trigger words. Had to carry around a whole code book back in the day to get the Butterflies to even function.”
Johnson beamed as he displayed the remote.
“Push of a button, I can shift ya to one of your other personalities, your ‘alters’ they call ‘em. One of which lets me turn you into a living weapon who will kill any and everyone I want you to, along with the subconscious code word as a failsafe. Ain’t technology grand? That’s what I done gone did to all your friends— I mean what you did. Never had to resort to usin’ it with any of my Clones before, normally used by government Monarchs for assassinations. Had to be done though, had to get your mind right. But it’s only because I care for ya, girl. Hell, if it weren’t for me you’d be locked up right now, would serve you right for—”
Gretchen lunged at Johnson, striking him in the face. Her attack surprised them both with its primal fury. Her assault ultimately proved futile. One powerful slap from Johnson sent her to the ground. Though old, he was still very strong, much stronger than Gretchen. Her purse fell to the floor out of reach, making it impossible for her to retrieve her revolver.
He bent over to pick up his cowboy hat, which had been knocked off, then rubbed his jaw where she’d struck him. He glowered at her with smoldering contempt.Johnson grabbed her by the hair and back of her shirt, dragging her along the floor as she violently struggled. He pulled her out the front door of the villa toward the orangutan enclosure, where Orville now paced back and forth.
Johnson pulled Gretchen to the door of the cage, reaching into his pocket for the key. He was unlocking the door when Gretchen sunk her teeth deep into his hand. Then she spun around and went for his face, her nails raking across his temple and nose, just missing his eyes. He screamed like a caged primate, face crimped in pain. Gretchen kicked him in the stomach, causing him to stagger backward into the cage. He almost toppled over, but he righted himself, then lumbered back over to Gretchen and threw her to the ground.
Blood streaming from his wounds, Johnson almost delirious with delight. He kneeled down to strangle Gretchen.He laughed like a demented clown. Reality blurred as Johnson’s grip tightened. Gretchen gasped for breath, heart beating in her ears, enormous pressure being exerted on her trachea as Johnson continued his violent assault. His fingers around her neck and throat felt like thick, naked crayons.
“Not gonna bother savin ya for food for the lizard people, you done gone caused me enough trouble, gonna make ya—”
Orville leaped out of his enclosure and knocked Johnson to the ground with a powerful double kick. The beast proceeded to deliver a brutal beating, flinging Johnson around like a rag doll before finally strangling the lecherous fiend to death. Gretchen watched with a cathartic sense of satisfaction. Johnson’s tongue lolled out of his mouth, eyes bulging like pingpong balls from their sockets, lifeless face frozen forever.
Gretchen rubbed her bruised throat She stared over at Johnson’s corpse in disbelief. The bastard was dead. Really dead.
The orangutan lumbered over to gaze with its kind simian eyes. Orville looked curious. She rose to feel around in Johnson’s pockets until she found the remote he’d claimed controlled her “alters.” While it was tempting to hold onto, the idea of someone getting ahold of it and exerting influence over her outweighed her curiosity. Instead, she smashed it with one strong stomp of her foot. There could be more of them, but she had at least rendered that one unusable. She sighed with immense relief.
It was finally over, save for one new dilemma. What was she going to do with the orangutan? Despite the act of savagery it had committed, the animal had saved her. She had a special rapport with Orville. It had saved her life.
Gretchen decided to take Orville with her. he couldn’t leave him here. After all, he’d be euthanized when authorities arrived and discovered what had happened to Johnson.
“Come on, boy,” she said. S
The simian hobbled along after her as she grabbed the keys to Johnson’s truck off his desk. She retrieved her purseand tossed it into the small back seat of the truck. With the orangutan buckled into the passenger’s seat, she drove off into the night.
About the Author
Jeff Turner is a lifelong Hoosier and Indiana University graduate. He has done some political writing in the past for a couple of locally run blogs, but his passion has always been fiction writing, especially in the genres of science fiction and horror. He is also an artist, with an interest in film and filmmaking. He lives in Indianapolis with his two cats.