Read Online Black Hole by Bucky Sinister - Free Book Online Page B

it’s a bar or club or something. Not sure. Looks familiar, but that doesn’t mean anything.
    I come out of the stall. I know this place. It’s the Dog House, an all-night dance party south of Market. It also caters to a dom-sub clientele that’s about being super nice and loving to your “dogs.” It’s not the humiliation kind of thing with the slave set. It’s kinder and gentler, but it keeps the collars and the leashes and the chains. But some owners just love to spoil their dogs.
    I’m wearing a VIP wristband, so there’s no way I’m hanging out with the pedestrians on the floor. There’s a mashup playing of “Blue Monday” and “Regulate.” I get through the crowd ofeyes and teeth glowing in the black lights, the Day-Glo hair, and the textural bliss of a mass of people. I must be really high. Forcing my way through the crowd feels like fucking.
    The VIP area is full of owners at tables chatting with their dogs sitting on the floor. The dogs aren’t wearing much: briefs only in the case of the boy dogs, which most of them are, and briefs and halter tops for the girl dogs. They don’t talk, but they look dumbly happy at me as I walk by. I find an empty table and sit.
    I check my phone. Messages and texts from the roommate, many more from former coworkers and MiniWhale clients. A detective handling the murder case. The texts are coming in as I look at them. There are hundreds of them. Shit is blowing up.
    A lady owner approaches with a pair of little people dogs. She asks to sit. She says something. I just nod my head, but I can’t hear.
    CHUCK? she yells. DO YOU REMEMBER ME?
    It’s Liza, a dancer I had a thing for when I first moved here. We had sex once. I had wanted it since I first saw her, and then it was like nothing when it happened. Didn’t feel like a fucking thing. I was embarrassed. I thought I sucked in bed or something, a lousy lay. A few weeks went by. Found out through her friends that she really liked me and was mad that I never called her back. I had no idea why she would like me. But I blew it, and I think about it all the time.
    LIZA.
    YES. ARE YOU INTO THIS SCENE? YOU DON’T HAVE A DOG.
    HONESTLY I DON’T KNOW HOW I GOT HERE. WHAT ABOUT YOU?
    THESE AREN’T MINE. I’M A DOGSITTER FOR THIS OLD GAY COUPLE.
    I WONDERED.
    DO YOU HAVE ANYTHING?
    MOST LIKELY.
    I search my pockets. About time for an inventory. In my jacket, there’s a Pomade tin. I open it. It’s full of coke.
    JESUS CHRIST, CHUCK.
    She takes it, taps a little out, and cuts it into lines. I look around. I don’t know who’s watching. She rolls up a bill.
    CALM DOWN. YOU LOOK TOTALLY PARANOID.
    You’re not paranoid if they’re really after you.
    She snorts half a line with one nostril, then switches nostrils and inhales the other. She hands me the bill. I should say no, but I don’t. I can’t feel my face. I took some kind of painkiller before this, from the feeling of things.
    Halfway up my nose, I feel my heart punching my ribcage. Fuck. Too much. I do the other nostril. I have to keep things even. I need to come down though. I look up. Liza’s playing with my marble.
    DON’T FUCK WITH THAT.
    WHAT IS IT? A GOOD LUCK CHARM?
    CAN WE GET OUT OF HERE?
    She pauses. Her face goes blank, then confused, then happy.
    YES.
    I follow her through a succession of strobe lights, black lights, and fog. I can’t feel my feet. I see all these women dressed in ’70s punk makeup, Siouxsies and such—must be some kind of retro thing coming back. I like it. None of them make eye contact with me. Just like the punk girls I remember.
    As soon as we make it outside, I’m cold and my ears areringing. There’s a mist falling, a foggy damp towel freezing my bones. It shocks me with momentary sobriety. I feel a pull.
    This way, she says.
    The little pups pull her in their harnesses toward the car. They’re in a