Addiction

Chapter 4
Karn Evil 9 1st Impression Part 1

4- Step inside! Hello! We’ve a most amazing show

You’ll enjoy it all we know

Step inside! Step inside!

We’ve got thrills and shocks, supersonic fighting cocks.

Leave your hammers at the box

Come inside! Come inside!

-Emmerson, Lake, & Palmer; “Karn Evil 9 1st Impression Part 1”.

“Mr. Athan said that we’re cool,” Damien told the big guy guarding the door to Eden. The bouncer stared down at Damien, unflinching. The guy was intimidatingly big. Damien was pretty sure he could have hid in this monster’s shadow without having to hunker down at all. More unnerving though, was how little the brute moved. Damien had only seen the guy move to cross his arms and solemnly shake his head no; oh and scowl, lots and lots of scowling. Scowling was the full range of emotion that Damien had seen demonstrated by this man.

If not for the occasional (and also intimidating) flaring of his nostrils as he breathed, Damien wouldn’t think this man mountain needed to draw breath like a normal person. He might as well have been a statue. The big guy’s pock marked face vaguely reminded Damien of freshly baked brownies or porous concrete. The doorman slowly crossed his arms and Damien swore he heard the rough, grinding sound of stone on stone.

“And….?” the doorman growled. Even his voice sounded like he had a gullet full of gravel. Damien fumbled around in his pocket and took out the little red pill he’d been handed moments earlier. He held it in front of him in his thumb and forefinger, and pointed to it with his free hand. He shot the doorman a questioning look. The doorman gave no response save for an added nostril flare.

Was this seriously happening? Was the hottest nightclub in town not only some sort of nudist hangout, but where taking drugs was not only encouraged, but required? Damien was losing his nerve and fast. What should he do?

“Nut up and swallow it, or shuffle off newbie,” someone from farther down the line shouted. “We ain’t got all night.” Damien resisted the urge to spin around and find the voice of his accuser, but then he saw the bouncer’s head start to move ever so slightly. If he didn’t act fast, he was going to be denied entry and his night would be over before it began.

“Fuck it,” Damien whispered mostly to himself. He popped the pill in his mouth and rested it on his tongue. Shit, maybe this was an MnM. It even tasted like candy. Damien resisted the urge to bite down on the thing and tossed his head back like he was taking a shot. He swallowed the pill.

“Enter,” was all the doorman said. Damien didn’t waste a second scurrying around the big man and into the slightly open doors of club behind him. Instead of a giant naked sex orgy, like he’d imagined, Damien rushed into a dignified yet rather tame and refined receiving area.

The marble floor gave the place a rather classy feel. The high ceiling made the room seem impossibly huge, and was painted in the color of a nighttime starry sky, with the domed center featuring a loose recreation of God creating Adam, like in the Sistine Chapel. The walls themselves were painted in a forest scene that matched the buildings outer décor. This was, for all intents and purposes at least one artist’s interpretation of the Garden of Eden, from the Bible.

Though it wasn’t an orgy, Damien was clearly not alone. A crowd had gathered in front of him, and more were steadily trickling in behind him. Every footstep echoed in this place and there were murmurs and whispers bouncing off the walls.

“Hey,” Damien asked another patron, tapping him on the shoulder. “What’s going on?”

“We gotta wait for the Satyr, man.” The patron returned a goofy, stoned smile from over his shoulder.

“What?” Damien blurted in surprise. The man whom Damien had asked a question to turned around and looked Damien over from head to toes.

“Oh, shit…first time, right?” he asked. Damien nodded. Was it really that obvious? “My bad, man. The Re-Lease is hitting me pretty hard already.” He chuckled at something that Damien couldn’t hear. Oh god what had Damien put in his body?

“We gotta wait till there’s enough people,” the man explained, still holding onto a lazy smile. “Then they close the door, and we get a little show before we sign the papers.”

“What papers?” Damien asked. Chad hadn’t mentioned anything about papers.

“Just waivers and shit, man.” Damien’s new companion shrugged. “Y’know, I promise that I’m cool with being seen naked, and I’m cool with seeing other people naked and that I don’t have cameras and shit and I’m not gonna try and rape anybody and you can kick my ass and send me to jail if I do ;basic shit.” That much made sense to Damien. Near the head of the crowd, Damien could see a row of bank teller’s desks, complete with the glass shielding and chained to the desk pens.

Apparently, the owner, “Mr. Athan”, or Levi the drug pusher if you could believe that, had decided to keep that feature of the old bank intact. He probably had to actually have the booths re-installed considering how long this place had been anything but a bank. Till this place became “Eden”, any number of restaurants, clubs, and artsy hangout spots had been opened and gone out of business here. This place may have started as a bank, but until recently it was really just another good place for entrepreneurs to lose money. Speaking of money…

“Hey,” Damien asked his new friend before he could turn back around to face the front, “What’s the charge to get in anyways?”

“Hundred bucks.”

“Hund-?” Damien stuttered in disbelief. “One hundred bucks?!” That wasn’t club money; that was theme park money. Hell, a hundred bucks was more than theme park money! Damien couldn’t remember the last time he had spent that kind of money on a single purchase. And that wasn’t even counting drinks.

“It’s totally worth it,” Damien was told, the look of indignation on his face easy to read. “Just relax and let the Re-Lease let you have a good time. You won’t regret it.”

The doors creaked shut and closed with a thundering boom. The last of those permitted entrance for the moment by the human gargoyle outside had come in and now Damien was firmly in the middle of the crowd. Hushed whispers of curiosity and anticipation along with mutters of “Awwww yeah”, bounced off the walls.

Clip. Clop. Clip. Clop. The sound of hooves echoed in the receiving chambers. Clip. Clop. Clip-Clop-Clip-Clop. The room quickly became hushed as the hoof beats grew louder and louder. By the front of the room, a red velvet curtain covered an archway by the bank teller’s booths. The clip-clopping of hooves came from that direction.

Two hands reached from behind the curtains and dramatically threw them back. A familiar face stepped forward from behind the curtains and the clip-clopping of hooves continued to echo as he faced the crowd. The face was familiar, but nothing else was.

Damien instantly recognized the dark brown cornrows and the neatly trimmed goatee with day old stubble on the cheeks. But gone was everything else that Damien had noticed when he first met Levi by the side of the club. Protruding from his forehead, instead of sunglasses were two tiny goat horns.

Gone was the green sweatshirt, and now Damien-the whole audience in fact- could see a lean, naked chest covered with hair. The ratty jeans and (likely) faux snake-skin shoes had been replaced with two hairy and very realistic-looking goat legs. The knees bent backwards, and the hooves were too small for any human to actually be able to fit their feet into. Dangling between his legs and ending just below his knees was a very well-endowed penis.

Damien craned his neck. How the hell did the guy do that? Damien was almost certain that the penis was fake. That part was too easy. Nobody’s junk could be that big compared to the rest of him. Damien didn’t size him up, but he was pretty sure he had a couple of inches on Levi in the height department, and to think that this weirdo had him by at least a foot in the length department…well that was just laughable. But how did this freak pull off the hooves? Were his real feet hidden by some optical illusion?

Maybe it was just the angle. Maybe Damien was already beginning to feel the effects of the mystery pill he had just popped. Levi had mentioned that it had some minor psychedelic effects. The clip-clopping sound could have cued his brain to fill in the blanks and now he was hallucinating. Regardless, Levi wasn’t waiting for Damien to figure it out.

“LADIIIIEEEES AND GENTLEMEN,” Levi bellowed. The crowd was silent as Levi’s voice reverberated around the room. “But not for long,” he added slyly, sending a wave of tittering laughter from the assembled crowd. “You are about to travel back in time to when God first created mankind. To a time when things like good and evil were unknowns to us.” Levi paced like Mel Gibson in front of the gathered men and women, only his speech was likely building up to the exact opposite of war. His feet made the same clip-clopping sounds with every step he made.

“You’re about to go back to a time when we didn’t have things like shame, or guilt, or sin. We didn’t sin because we only had one rule. For tonight, you’re all going to pretend that Adam and Even never broke that one rule, and so we will all be in paradise. So please, tonight, let us all be neither sinners, nor saints. Let us be something better. Let us, this night, be innocent. WELCOME! TO! EDEN!” The audience erupted in cheers and applause, and Damien joined them. The damn sonofabitch had gotten to him. This. This was a show.

With all the production value of the outside and the inside, and the Satyr getup, (he wasn’t sure how the Satyr bit meshed with the book of Genesis, but he was willing to let that one go… maybe that was the drug talking there) Damien was now sold. This was sure to be worth the hundred bucks.

“But first-” Levi held up his hand, and the applause and cheers died down. “But first, we have some administrative duties to attend to.” The crowd “awwwed” in disappointment. Damien even heard some boos. Levi held his hands up as if in defense, the giant cock between his two hairy goat legs swayed from side to side as he shifted his weight slightly.

“I know, I know, my friends, I know. But we have to. We have some new faces in the crowd tonight, or at least we should!” Levi dramatically shielded his eyes like a sailor searching for land as he made a show of looking through the hundred or so people in the room. “Gabriel, Delilah, Damien, Mary, Jose, Maggie! Glad to see you all got through the front door! I had a feeling about all of you!” The audience all looked around and Damien suddenly felt the eyes of the crowd scanning him. It was fairly evident who was a regular and who wasn’t based on the state of dress. The regulars of Eden all wore loose fitting clothing that could be torn off in short order, some of it stained and faded, like they didn’t really care what happened to this shirt or those shorts.

“I see some other faces I don’t recognize,” Levi continued, “but if one of my beloved regulars liked you enough to give you the password and give you a little taste of Re-Lease, then that means you’re okay by me too. So,” he went on. “Rules for the new folks.”

Levi held up his left arm. With a flourish, he grasped his wrist with his right arm for the crowd and slowly dragged his hand down his left forearm, almost as if he were bunching up a sleeve. A golden bracelet, thin on the ends but flat on the middle, kind of like a medical I.D. bracelet was now the satyr’s left wrist.

“After you provide your I.D. to the lovely ladies who will shortly be behind me,” Levi explained, “and sign the proper forms, and provide a valid credit card, you will be given one of these to wear. Each of these wonderful little bracelets will have a barcode that is unique to you and will make charges to your account. Chargeable amenities include but are not limited to secure lockers for your outerwear, drinks, food, showers, and of course colognes, perfumes, deodorants, and antiperspirants for those of you who don’t want to be too naturale.” There was a bit of knowing laughter at the last part.

“When you choose to leave our dear little Eden, either because you’ve had your fill or because it’s gotten to the point where you don’t have to go home, but can’t stay here” Levi went on with his pitch, “your tab will be cashed out, and you’ll be on your way till you choose to return to Eden another night. Oh, and remember the big guy at the door?” Levi gestured toward the now closed wooden double doors. “That’s Gary. Not only is Gary my head doorman and bouncer, but he’s also my chief debt collector, so make sure your cards won’t be declined before you hand them over.” Everyone shared a bit of nervous laughter at that one.

“Oh don’t worry about that!” Levi waved the crowd’s nervousness off. “I’ve never had to use him once,” he added. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go scout out the crowd behind this group. Let’s get started!” He then trotted back behind the red curtain to applause and cheers as a half dozen beautiful women rose up from behind the bank tellers’ desks.

Each one had their hair dyed a bright and unnatural color; red, blue, yellow, green, purple, and orange. They might have been wigs, in all likelihood, as each one had thick hair and bangs that framed the sides of their faces. Each one wore a matching bustier and nothing else that could be seen from where they stood behind the receiving counters.

Quietly and without much direction, the groups muddled into single file lines and aisles, rather like picking a checkout lane at the supermarket. Damien picked a line and stood in it as it shuffled forward person by person. The cold calculating part of his brain realized he should be anxious, even regretting this decision as impulsive and not thought through. He was in line so that he could spend over a hundred bucks to hang out naked with a bunch of strangers. True, he knew that going in, but as each person shuffled forward it became more and more real going in; or at least it should have.

Instead, any worry or anxiety that Damien might have had was being transmuted into a kind of childish giddiness. He was going to be able to literally let it all hang out without repercussions. He might even meet a pretty girl tonight to have fun with. That wasn’t something to be nervous about. That was opportunity.

He logically knew that this giddiness and excitement over getting naked likely had something to do with the drug he had just taken. “Re-Lease”, it had been called, and Damien understood why. He literally felt as if all of the little neurotic things in his life, the self-consciousness, the potential for embarrassment or guilt, just drifting away. This was some good shit, here. Some really good shit.

Damien inched up to the front of the line. “Next!” Called a woman in bright green hair. Damien scooted forward, digging his wallet out of his back pocket.

“ID and Credit Card,” the green woman said, all business. Damien slid it under the glass patrician separating him from the woman at the counter. She gave it a passing glance, and slid a piece of paper back towards Damien. “Sign here please.”

Damien eyed the paper and read it quickly. His mind was moving too fast though for him to really comprehend what he was reading. The words printed on the waiver went in one eyeball and out the other. To Damien’s rapidly diminishing comprehension, the piece of paper read:

“Blah blah blah twenty-one (21) blah, blah, blah, blah violation blah, blah, forfeit blah, blah, ejection. Compliance, blah, blah, blah, respectful blah, blah, blah, all decisions blah, blah, cameras blah, blah, intoxication, blah, blah, blah, attorney, blah, blah, blah, phones blah forbidden blah, blah, confidential blah, blah, blah,blah, blah, blah, not a reporter blah, blah investigator blah, blah strictly consensual blah, blah, blah prosecution blah, blah, blah.”

Logically, Damien knew that signing any kind of potentially binding document while high was a very bad idea, but Damien knew that he couldn’t be held responsible to this precisely because he was intoxicated while signing. He didn’t know because of knowledge, mind you, but knew in the same way that spoiled rich kids know their parents are going to bail them out of jail for that first D. U. I. arrest.

Also, Levi wouldn’t screw him over. The moment this went to court, Damien could start slinging allegations of drug use required for entry. Whether said allegations of drug use were relevant to the case, that would likely start getting this club checked out by all the wrong people if you were a drug dealing satyr. Holy shit, he was feeling it right now! He just thought of Levi as a drug dealing satyr with complete sincerity. The point was, screwing his customers over with a piece of paper was not in Levi Athan’s best interests.

Damien scribbled his signature onto the piece of paper and slipped it back over to the waiting attendant. The green haired woman gave another quick glance at the document before slipping it in a drawer under her desk. She then took Damien’s credit card and slid it in the crook of a credit card scanner. Within seconds Damien heard the whirring of a little printer as a piece of sticker paper with a barcode on it was spat out within reach of the attendant.

She reached under the table and brought out a gold medical bracelet similar to what Levi had been sporting, peeled the barcode off the receipt printer and attached it to the flat part of the bracelet. “Hand, please.”

Damien slid his hand under the glass partition and the attendant swiftly put the bracelet on him. The thought that he could go for a quick grope passed through Damien’s mind, but Damien dismissed it. Still, his fingers tingled and twitched a little in response to the idea. It was barely noticeable, but the attendant just clicked her tongue as she finished fastening on the bracelet.

“Heh…newbie. That Re-Lease is hitting you hard.” The green haired woman smiled condescendingly. Damien withdrew his hand and the attendant slid back his driver’s license and credit card. “Back through the curtain and down the ramp,” she told Damien. “Adams to left and Eves to the right.”

Damien quickly skirted out of the line, letting the person behind him step forward, as he placed his cards back into his wallet and hustled past the red curtain that Levi had trotted from behind not fifteen minutes ago. A few steps after he slipped through the curtain the floor began to slant downward. The recreational part of the club must be down near the basement, where the vaults and safe deposit boxes likely were in the olden days.

As he walked farther and farther down, Damien examined the bracelet on his wrist. It was more intricate than a simple chain design. The bits of golden metal were weaved together to look like scales, and upon closer inspection, Damien noticed that one end of the bracelet looked like a snake head. The other end was obviously designed to be a tail. So the bracelet, in keeping with the theme of the club, was a snake biting its own tail.

“An ouroboros,” Damien mused aloud. “My own little eternity locked around my wrist. My own little serpent in the Garden of Eden. Poetic.” Damien would never would have said something like that while sober, and might not have even consciously thought of it; but the thoughts and the words were just flowing more freely as the Re-Lease flooded his system. It was a little like being drunk without the numbness, wobbling, or potential for nausea.

The floor leveled off again and Damien saw two doors. The one on the left said “Adams” and the one on the right, of course, said “Eves”. About fifty feet from the two doors, Damien saw another set of double doors with a sign that said, “Eden: Take nothing with you beyond this point. (No fig leaves allowed).” Clearly that was the place, and this the staging and undressing area.

People were exiting the rooms, naked of course, in ones and twos and were heading for the doors marked “Eden.” Some were walking in big, slow, confident strides. They were made for this place, and it was no big deal. Their body language spoke to their confidence. Others scurried and scampered towards the doors like eager children to the top of a water slide. No one, however, seemed the least bit hesitant or embarrassed. And why should they? If they didn’t have the courage, they wouldn’t have shown up tonight, and any last minute hesitation was washed away with a single little red pill.

Damien turned to the door and noticed there was a scanner on it instead of a proper door knob. The label on the scanner read “Scan for entry, no charge.” Damien ran the ouroboros bracelet under the scanner, barcode up, and heard a satisfying click as the lock disengaged.

He pushed the door open and walked into the changing room. Men were in various states of undress as Damien glanced around. This wasn’t his first locker room setting, but this was definitely the first where there was purposefully nothing to change into.

The walls closest to the door were lined with lockers, each one with a scanner and dial pad. The room stretched out in front of Damien, and turned a sharp left. Based on the sounds of toilets flushing and running water coming from that direction, Damien guessed the aforementioned showers and bathroom facilities were in that direction. The steam was already wafting through the air as a few gentlemen were hosing down with a quick hot shower. He heard a series of low moans that may have been a couple of guys enjoying the hot water as they stretched and flexed. It might also have been them enjoying something else.

Damien scanned around the lockers looking for one to put his clothes into. The ones that were already in use had the word “OCCUPIED” written in electronic block letters on the doors’ dial pads. He finally found a small one that was available and read the label on the scanner.

It read: “Locker storage: $10.00”.

What a rip off. He was already being charged a hundred bucks to get this far, and now he was going to have to pay another ten or risk having his clothes stolen or thrown away. In for a penny, in for a lot more than a pound. Damien reluctantly scanned his bracelet and “Enter 4-digit PIN” flashed on the dial. Damien punched in the numbers “2-4-6-8”. “Code Recorded”, the dial pad flashed, and Damien heard another click as the locker door opened slightly.

Damien opened the locker and peeked inside. It was little more than a cubby with a steel grate protecting it, really. Still, this wasn’t going to be the straw that broke his back or ruined his good time, so he quickly stripped and shoved his clothes in one tight ball. His shoes wouldn’t fit, so he just took a chance and left them there on the floor. He closed the door to the locker shut and the dial pad flashed “OCCUPIED”.

His skin tingled at the exposure to the open air. His flesh was alive now, with everything from the steam wafting in from the showers, to the warm metallic feeling of the lockers, to the cold of the cement making him tingle. It wasn’t quite a sexual feeling, but it was definitely a form of arousal. Experimentally, he grabbed his penis and gave it a few quick pumps.

Almost instantly, he became hard. Normally, he’d have to be thinking about something dirty to become erect so quickly, and such absent minded fiddling around would result in little more but a warm dick. But this time, his body was ready and raring to go. He was primed.

The cold, calculating, lizard part of his brain screamed out that seeming too eager might not be the way to make a good first impression, and against the drug induced good feelings, Damien took his brain’s advice, and bit into his tongue while mentally reciting the pledge of allegiance. It wasn’t completely limp, but it wasn’t fully erect either, and everything was still all-a-tingle.

Damien took one more breath, and then, trying to imitate some of the cocksure men he had seen strolling out before, took deep strides out of the “Adams” room door.

Right as he opened up the door and stepped out, the door across from him shot open and someone from the “Eves” room stepped into the open air. Her hair, all of it, was a bright ginger red. Her eyes were an emerald green. While Damien wasn’t an expert on breasts sizes, he knew a solid C-Cup when he saw one. More importantly, he noticed that both of her nipples were erect, likely from the sensations of the air mixed with the effects of the drug. He fought the urge to pucker his lips and felt his hands twitch again. Her hips were ample, and she had a bit of a tummy, but not at all what you would call fat.

Damien’s libido shouted at him to run around her just so he could know what she looked like from behind and in that split second his neck twitched too as he resisted the urge to at least crane his neck around to get the full view. She could have been a doll, she seemed so perfect in that moment; the kind that little boys undress out of curiosity and then are confused and disappointed in when they find everything below the waist nothing but smooth hard plastic, no more anatomy than a G.I. Joe.

A lifetime of modesty wasn’t going to be undone instantaneously, though, and unconsciously, Damien’s hand shot down to cover up his crotch briefly. To his surprise, hers went to cover her breasts in response.

“Oh,” they said together, and both gave off a half-bashful, half-embarrassed chuckle; more at themselves than at each other. Wasn’t this the whole point?

“First time?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she nodded. “You?”

“Me too,” he affirmed. “I’m excited, but…I guess I’m starting to get over it,” he blushed looking down at his crotch. Still looking at his feet, he began to walk awa-

“Hey,” she called out before he had even gotten three steps ahead of her. “I’m, I’m…everything tingles right now…in a good way. But I feel empty. Hold my hand?”

“I’m Damien,” he said, taking her hand, and blushing a little.

“Delilah,” she told him.

And hand-in-hand they walked past the double doors with the sign that read: “Eden: Take nothing with you beyond this point. (No fig leaves allowed)” together.