In Through the Red Door (Complete)

Yeah, there are a few clubs here, in the City. The usual mix, I guess; lots of filthy dives like this place; an exclusive trans-bar that’s almost im-fuckin-possible to get into, believe me; a rain-blow dance club for the queer kids – you know, the kids looking for cheap sex and even cheaper drugs; a couple of your classier S&M joints, where everyone wears Carnival masks and drooping feathers; and the Red Door.

Well, to be precise, the Red Door used to be here. Now, it’s no longer. I mean, the building is still standing, and the sign is still there, but that’s it. No more lights. No more music, unless the clanging of bones against bones against splintered table legs counts as music.

It was the place to be, the Red Door. Everyone went there, and I mean everyone. Kids from every scene imaginable (even the Vampire kids, who are way too fucking elitist to ever mix with City scum), every kind of trans-creature, even City men in suits and slicked-back hair.

I guess the big twist, and the reason we all went there, is that the Red Door was all about love. Yeah, the front door was red, but if you looked closely you’d see that it was actually a hundred different shades of red, made up of interlocking hearts, some of them the ‘O’ in love, some of them just perfect little hearts, like the ones you make when you’re a kid: fold a piece of paper in half, draw a wing, and cut. The walls inside were painted red too, and we used permanent markers to write on them. Management allowed one love story each; other than that, there weren’t really any rules. I guess there was a whole city’s-worth of love stories written on the walls.

I mean, it’s no fucking wonder the place went insane.

Can I remember what I wrote? Jesus. I actually wrote a lot of things on those walls, to be honest. I don’t remember them all. They were probably mostly long strings of drunken expletives, anyway. I mean, that’s what I do. You’ve figured that out by now, I bet.

I think it was around the time when I first met Fresia that I wrote something coherent. I don’t know. Ask her if she remembers.

Personally, I remember a lot of stupid fucking poems.

Have I ever been in love? Wrong question. Moving the fuck on.

It was a nice place, the Red Door. Not like this place, just another goddamn dive in a city full of goddamn dives. The drinks were good and strong. They had names like ‘The Beatrice’ and ‘Temporary Madness’ and ‘Ophelia’s Cunt’ (yeah, that was my favorite). No black lights to pick out the lint and semen on your dress; they wouldn’t have worked with the red walls. Just dim lamps on each table, and a few rippling spotlights on the dance floor.

I remember one of the songs that was playing that night:

I can't forget I am the sole architect
I built the shadows here
I built the growl in the voice I fear

‘The growl in the voice I fear’. That’s good shit, right? Something about those lines always gets me, I don’t know what it is.

Hey pretty, don’t you wanna take a ride with me,
Through my world?

I was there with all the regulars that night, I guess. Fresia (we were on a downward slope, me and her, but we were still fucking, of course, and drinking even more), Gabe, Vito. Vito and I danced all night. Fresia was tired and heavy because of the pills, and I think maybe another surgery. Honestly, I wasn’t very attentive at that point. Fresia was…boring me, I guess.

I hate it.

I hate that I hurt her, that I let myself get bored. Fuck. I wasn’t at my best.

Anyway. Moving the fuck on. Things are better now, and that’s a story for another time. Yeah, there’s always another story.

Gabe doesn’t dance, so he sat at the table with Fresia, drinking and smoking, while Vito and I writhed on the dance floor. Funny that Gabe doesn’t dance; I don’t know many fags who don’t, especially fags who are on as much E as Gabe was that night. Gabe’s weird for a gay boy, though. He doesn’t fit the mold. But fuck was he high that night. I don’t even know how much he remembers. When Fresia brings it up he just glares at her. Which isn’t all that unusual for Gabe, actually. Ornery fucker.

Anyway, Vito and I were on the dance floor, dancing as if our lives depended on it. That’s what we do, me and Vito; we whirl like the Allah freaks you see in Edenwood. Except we aren’t lost in some bullshit religious revelry; we dance because it’s pure sex, and we like how our bodies feel, sliding against the slippery skin of strangers, thrusting our hips, grinding along the hipbones of those same strangers. It feels pretty fucking good.

A trans-boy with silky cat-ears and a tail that whipped sinuously around my waist felt me up with hands that were more paws than fingers. His claws dug into my thighs. Delicious. A Vampire kid was crawling on the floor, trawling for blood. It nipped at my ankle and I kicked it in the ribs. It scuttled away, crab-walking between boots and fuck-me pumps. Excuse the hippy bullshit talk, but there was a good vibe in the air.

I ain’t happy, feeling glad
I got sunshine in a bag
I’m useless, but not for long
The future is coming on
Is coming on
Is coming on

I didn’t hear anything coming.

Is coming on
Is coming on

Cat-boy’s paws were all over me, and damn it if I didn’t care. Fresia could have been watching, I didn’t give a fuck, and I bet she was watching; I got a sick thrill out of it, her watching me grinding against a man, all cock and tail and teeth (yeah, I know how fucking bad it sounds, but I was a bitch back then, and I’m a bitch now, and fuck it; I tell the truth, I remember things as they were, and I tell a goddamn good story). Vito danced next to me, his tight little ass rubbing against my hip, and I saw him meet Gabe’s eyes and smile, like a fucking coy little schoolgirl. The heat between those two, the friction; it always made me sick, and still does.

The spotlights were swirling pink and purple and red; red lights against red walls, it was like dancing inside the pulsating fleshy walls of a womb, all heat and the stink of blood and pussy.

See these eyes so green
I can stare for a thousand years

There was something underneath the music, then, and the floor bucked.

A low growl, different from the thumping bass in the song. I mean really different. The Vampire kids hissed, and cat-boy did too.

I backed away from cat-boy, and there was another growl.

It's been so long
And I've been putting out fire
With gasoline

‘Enough!’

The growl was like a goddamn earthquake, I mean it shook the floor in that place, and tables toppled right the fuck over. The music ended when the voice shouted, and all that was left, now, was the crash of falling glasses and the rumbling growl. I don’t even know where it was coming from. It sounded like it was coming from the walls and the floor and the fucking tectonic plates of the goddamn earth.

Fresia looked at me. I could tell she was terrified. I didn’t go to her. Yeah, I know. I bloody well know what I am, thanks. Vito had run to Gabe, and they were holding each other. Fucking love. I stayed where I was.

Another growl and the floor buckled in a few places. People were scrambling for the door, rushing past me towards the exits, Vampires and trans-folk and City men alike. I guess we were united once in Love and once again in Fear, and not much else.

Fuck profundity.

Cat-boy was on all fours; I hadn’t realized how feral he was, more cat than boy. From the Borderlands, I guessed. They haven’t evolved too much out there. He was poised like a housecat eyeing a mouse; back rippled, lips pulled back, tale twitching. Sexy as hell.

‘Enough!’ the voice said again. I couldn’t see where it was coming from, not over the bodies rushing past, but when it spoke again it bellowed, and it sounded like there were a thousand goddamn growls rippling through every letter. Fuck. What a sound. I can’t explain it. I can still hear it, but I can’t explain it.

‘Enough! We consecrate this place in the name of all the forgotten Gods. They are angry, people. They haven’t forgotten about you, and they’ve been watching.’

Finally I could see the speaker, and you won’t believe me, but it was a fucking child, striding out of the crowd, a goddamn prepubescent boy with oily black hair covering his eyes, barefoot, wearing dirty fucking jeans and a ripped t-shirt, just a child, but that voice.

I can still hear it, but I can’t explain it.

‘They’ve been watching, and they see you for what you are. Filthy.’

The crowd was quiet and still now – I mean, who would want to fuck with that voice? – and I could tell he liked it, the attention, although the way he spit out the word ‘filthy’, I think he really meant it. I think he fucking hated us. I could taste it.

Another growl. I swear it was coming from the walls. Coming from the air.

Cat-boy was poised, swaying slightly. Fucking predators. So goddamn predictable.

‘We’ve come to show you what nihilism is. We’ve come to show you the depths,’ the boy said, and now more kids in rags were advancing from the corners of the Red Door, and spilling through the main door, their filthy forearms and foreheads marked with symbols I couldn’t understand – triangles and upside-down crosses, some of them fresh, bloody.

The kids had knives and razor blades, the ragged lids of discarded soup cans, any goddamn weapons they could scrounge, I guess. Still the fucking growls that seemed to be coming from the walls.

I was hooked; I mean, I couldn’t move. I have a pretty damn sharp instinct for self-fucking-preservation, but this was something I’d never seen before. An army of street kids with prison shivs looking to take on a club-full of misfits? Sick, I know, but I wanted to watch the war.

I wasn’t even looking for Fresia.

The kids were scattered around the crowd now, and fuck it if I couldn’t smell the blood already.

‘Are you fucking ready?’ the leader cried, and cat-boy hissed; he leaped onto the speaker’s back, tearing into the boy’s neck with his claws. I’ve never heard anything like the roar that came next, and to be honest, I hope to fucking god I never do. It was all fury and noise after that; Vampires laughed their weird laughs and sunk their teeth into their neighbour's throats; they can’t help themselves, not when they smell blood. City men, who don’t belong in our world and should never visit, made their way towards the exits, and trampled other City men and their trans-escorts on the way; the walls were dappled black with the shadows of impossible claws, claws and paws like I’d never seen before. It was all cacophony, but I could still hear the growls.

I can still hear them, but I can’t explain them.

Of course Fresia saved my life; that’s just the kind of girl she is. She grabbed my arm and pulled me through the awful dying crowd, along with Gabe and Vito. Fresia is at least a head taller than anyone in any given room, and she’s strong. We got out, and didn’t stop running until we were blocks away from the Red Door, although we could still hear the growls; I think the whole City could hear them. The growling, and the screaming.

I don’t know how anyone got any fucking sleep that night. I mean, how could you? If you heard that noise, how could you ever sleep again?

We stood there and listened to the war, and the wail of the sirens. Cop car after cop car after ambulance after fire truck. They didn’t do much; they only saved a few people, and the wrong people at that. I remember the straights were in a fucking tizzy that Vampire kids had been saved. Scourge of the earth, and all that.

We came out of it okay, though. Me and Fresia and Gabe and Vito, we were fine. Obviously. We’re all still here. I don’t think any of us knows exactly what happened that night, or why; although I got a second taste of something, something touched and off, later, when I visited the Edge. I know all about the symbols now.

Yeah. That’s another story.

This one’s almost done, I think. Not much more to tell.

Fresia and I broke up, for good, pretty soon after. Sometimes we talk about what happened that night; sometimes we don’t. I prefer it when we don’t, to be honest. Like I said, the Red Door is still standing, or at least the building is. If you want to see it for yourself, hey, it’s your choice. Two blocks down, turn left, you can’t miss it.

Check out the scratches on the walls, but only if you’re looking for a new nightmare.

Enough. I’m done now.