Flatliners: A Dying Light Story

Yves often said the food at the Sucker Punch was to die for; he always ordered the beeftek berber – it was his favorite – an appropriate last meal.

The blaring racket of the Sucker Punch was far behind him now as he walked with his new mates, but he forced his thoughts to wander back along the path that led him to this night. The restaurant was the key to it all. The chorus of whispers rising above the intimate placement of the tables. The blistering tempo of the deep beats that seemed to set the entire restaurant vibrating, as if the whole world was breathing. The delicate vapors of the cuisine that mixed with and surpassed the crude scent of flesh. The dance of the candlelight on eager, ravenous faces. 

He closed his eyes for a moment, coolly waiting in the midst of the small group as a throng of worshippers filed past headed for the Cathedral. 

The dance of the candlelight – everything had depended on that moment.

He remembered the candlelight on her face when he first saw her. He picked at his beeftek berber – “succulent and thinly sliced, chilled to a precise temperature, delicately arranged with string onions and chives, dusted with lemon curry and garnished with a mango demi-glaze,” his review had said later. The tender cuts of the beeftek seemed almost as thin as snowflakes. The mango added just the right touch, countering the tartness of the curry and always leaving a lingering sweetness that reflected and attenuated the particular tang of the beef. The first time he’d tasted it, he was sure he’d found perfection itself – not in the succulent morsels that found their way to his mouth, but in the delicious treat he’d found with his eyes.

He laughed at himself, remembering each distracted bite as he’d watched her chew, saw her laugh at another’s words. When she’d suddenly looked up, perhaps feeling the ghostly pressure of his stare, he’d glimpsed another smile, shy but warm, before his eyes darted down to his own food. When he’d mustered the courage to look again, she and her friends were gone.

He’d gone back to ‘review’ the place three more times before he’d seen her again, before he’d discovered her name was Tara.

The lengthy soundscape of the Tannhauser Gate seemed to float past. The Sucker Punch was far behind now, but the massive corridor reflected a similar hedonistic luxury. Despite the close press of the moneyed, the glaring grasp of holo-ads and clamor of shoppers, the small group moved easily against the shifting tide of luxury, focused on their meager destination.

Ahead, a thin connector traced its way across the sky, leading from the famous mega-corridor, a thread between cloudscrapers that they crossed in silence. The misty night swirled past the flexi-glass tendril that connected the two edifices, and at the far end, a lift bank came into view. The small group swept past it, entering the quiet environs of a residential block, the broad opulent corridors now dark and mirroring the late hour.

Yves looked around and shivered. The blackness of the hallway had caught him off-guard. It was too much like the dark passage that had been haunting his thoughts and filling his dreams since he’d made the decision to join them, since Tara had told him about the Flatliners.

The corridor branched off to the right, and they followed it, not a word passing from their lips, just a silent harmony of breathing, the beating of Yves heart keeping tempo. He glanced at the others and wondered if they were as nervous the first time as he was. He’d professed his preparedness, but now that the night had arrived, he was unsure. The jokes about the meal – it was his favorite and it was indeed amazing – were failed attempts to mask his barely hidden terror, his amazing desire to take an awful chance to achieve an unimaginable reward, and his desperate need to see her again.

They turned right and stopped in the face of another lift bank. Artur tapped the control, and the door to the first lift opened. He waited by the door as the seven of them stepped inside, and then he nodded and disappeared as the doors closed. He was nothing more than a “gatekeeper”, they’d said. He didn’t partake. He, like others, only ensured that the path was clear.

Yves stood in the back of the lift, taller and broader than the others. His size had rarely been a disadvantage in his short life; more often than not it had acted as a catalyst to get him noticed and promoted. Perhaps people were intimidated, he’d thought; perhaps they were unprepared to tell a large black-skinned man “no”. Women, however, had professed something other than intimidation – not curiosity certainly. His stature, his quiet demeanor and his green eyes were enough, a lover had said, to get a woman to look twice. His warm voice and easy manner contradicted his potentially menacing appearance, and the dichotomy worked to his advantage, drew others in, even won him another glance from the magnificent redhead he’d spied more than once at the Sucker Punch. 

He’d been unable to hold himself back the night Tara had come alone. It had to have been an invitation – he could see it no other way. He always sat in the same seat – the review on the Atair E-Network had won him the undying devotion of the owner and secured his table at a moment’s notice. She could have sat anywhere, but she’d selected a small, intimate setting from which she could easily be noticed. Not once had she looked up at him. She picked at her meal, which he recognized as the stuffed tomato curry. The red of the fruit mirrored the fire of her hair as the pale bone dishes imitated her pure alabaster skin. He left the beeftek berber forgotten as he crossed the oceanic expanse of blue tiles between them, his heart threatening to quit with each successive step.

The lift stopped unceremoniously, and the doors opened to utter blackness. Just as they said, this was a wholly abandoned level of this cloudscraper. Rigel let out a whooping howl that startled Yves. The echoes of his outburst reverberated in both directions, cascading through the bones of the skeletal walls.

“Shut up, you stupid fool,” came a growl from the blackness, and suddenly a tiny light flared only meters away, the glow straining to fill the cavernous space.

Yves frowned at the second gatekeeper. It wasn’t her, and yet, he was relieved. He’d hoped it wouldn’t be. The gatekeepers were never part of the fun – they were security only, not only keeping the curious out but keeping the newest members in. There was no backing out once the agreement was concluded; if a new member attempted to back out, there were consequences. Artur had not explained those consequences, but he had said there had been one man amongst them all who had been utterly unwilling to go through with it. If the words hadn’t been enough to relay the lesson of that statement, the look on his face had been.

But Yves knew what he was in for, and what he had pictured in his mind overwhelmed his desire to flee, even though his heart threatened to burst from his chest.

Artur led the way, throwing an angry growl at Rigel and brushing past the second gatekeeper, who murmured directions. He produced a glow lamp from his own pocket and walked boldly into the shadows, the rest of the group following close behind. As he’d explained to Yves, each location was new, pre-arranged, and thoroughly scouted. Only he and the three gatekeepers knew the location, thus they were able to keep it fresh and random for the group and free of outside hassles. It wouldn’t do, he’d said, to have a squad of Praetorians roll up in the middle of a session and whisk everyone away to prison or a quick court appearance. “Deviant behavior”, as determined by the Church, was enough to get one demoted dozens of levels, if not more, and being forcefully moved out of opulence and into poverty was not on his agenda.

Yves kept his eyes on the leader as they moved through the black space. He could feel the vast hollowness of the space, the walls somewhere in the gloom out of sight. Only the bones of the building surrounded them, flexi-steel girders of the unfinished chamber. Their steps echoed on the bare tile below. They walked single file, shadows from the single lamp fading into nothing.

It was just like the dream, he thought. It was a long path to nothingness, as if they were descending into the bowels of the city, the Underground’s desolate wasteland materializing around them. They’d moved forward unperturbed, crossing a broken landscape, climbing mounds of refuse, the remains of a once proud cityscape. That path had led even deeper. They’d crossed another threshold, a doorway in the midst of the sprawl, and then one-by-one the earth had swallowed them. He looked left and right, up and down, but there was only the roughly-hewn tunnel of packed earth. He shivered as it closed around him, less from the cold emanating from the walls and more from the deep darkness than seemed to welcome him. Somewhere ahead, death waited for them all, and each in turn welcomed it.

Yves blinked, shattering the memory of the dream. Somewhere ahead would be the third gatekeeper and then the final steps. And hopefully, he thought, taking a deep, calming breath, Tara would be waiting.

Her eyes were blue – a very light hue, almost unnatural. He’d stopped at the edge of her table, mouth open, about to speak, when she’d looked up, and his breath had caught in his throat. He sputtered, utterly flustered by the wide, sparkling orbs, the pale, cool skin of her face and the fiery corona that surrounded it. He was undone with a single look – as expected, he later told himself, but no less unnerving and wholly enticing. He’d suddenly be desperate to flee, but one word from her buried his fear: “Sit.” He’d been right. She’d been waiting, playing his own game – returning to the Sucker Punch time and time again until she saw him, until he made his approach.

Her voice was relaxed and relaxing. He slipped into the seat across from her, the two of them hidden in the little alcove, and a moment later, a member of the wait staff placed his drink and plate before him. He glanced back at his old table, found it cleared and reset, and turned back to her with more words on his lips. They were left unspoken again when she smiled and spoke. “I was waiting for you, Yves.” The words called for him to run. The lilting melody of her voice held him fast.

The pace of the line slowed as Artur rounded a corner, and Yves looked up and followed him as he wound through a series of turns and slipped effortlessly down a narrow flight of steps to a doorway. A man with a similar glow light waited there – the final gatekeeper. They were close.

Artur conferred with the man there, his face in shadow. They nodded, and the group moved off once more – the final leg of the trip, oblivion waiting for the newest member of the club.

Yves could feel his pulse quicken. He rubbed his hands together, felt the slick sheen of sweat. It would only be a few minutes more, and there, somewhere ahead, his fate would be decided. If it went well, he would follow this path again with them and one day whisk some new recruit to his own date with destiny. Tara had used that word often in their talks: destiny. It was his fate, she’d assured him, to have caught her attention, to have felt compelled to cross the room and speak to her. It was inevitable, no more or less than having his heart stop one day.  Only with them, he would go somewhere only the few of them had gone before. He would experience a pleasure that was indescribable, even amongst the small cadre of those who’d experienced it already. There were no words, they’d said, only the most glorious sensation imaginable.

Would she be there waiting for him? Or was she perhaps only the recruiter and not part of the ceremony? Suddenly he felt panic, knowing that it was potentially just a ploy – use her beauty, her savoir faire to bring in lambs for the slaughter, then when it was too late, when they were committed, she would be absent or perhaps off in the shadows snickering at her own skill and trickery.

Terrified, he balked, stumbling in the semi-darkness. He cried out as he fell, but two strong arms gripped him from behind and propelled him forward, thrusting him through the open doorway ahead. It was true. It was all a lie, just a trick to get him here in this empty, cold place, where he would surely meet his end in the cruelest way. How could he be so foolish!

“Are you prepared to meet your maker?” Tara had said that night. He grinned, thinking the question ridiculous, just a joke. But she hadn’t laughed. She’d only smiled and waited patiently for him to realize that it was a serious question. He had indeed laughed, easing back into the chair. It was a great ice-breaker after the initial nervous moment when his dinner had been transferred to her table and she’d confessed to stalking him as he had her.

They had spent the entire night talking, and it seemed to him that with each word, each movement, she pulled him into her web, weaving a silken spell that ensnared him. He didn’t touch his meal, but drank in every detail of her existence, filling his need with her essence. It seemed like he had only spent moments talking with her that first night, but it was early morning when she’d finally excused herself. The night had drifted away on her words, a tale that she spun of a magical experience she had discovered with a close-knit group of friends.  Her eyes blazed with their own fire when she spoke of it, a twisted tale of deviancy that at first he found ludicrous and yet later compelling. When she bid him goodnight and slipped away, he sat still mesmerized, wondering at the intimate moment that had passed between them, the erotic invitation. “Come and die in my arms,” she said, and he’d agreed.

They pushed forward, clearing the door in the blink of an eye, and suddenly stopped, letting Yves go. He slumped to the floor, head up, eyes searching the darkness. The small group crowded in, arms reaching for him, low voices jumbled in the confusion of the moment. “NO!” screamed Yves, scrambling to his feet, casting off the hands that threatened to grab him. He spun left and right, threatening as he could with open arms, searching that many faces he didn’t know, but they were only blurs, like demons in the darkness.

“Yves. Yves. Wait.” Three words cut through the frenzied fog and immediately settled him. He turned round, searching for that melodic voice that had drawn him here, and as the crowd parted, the lithe figure he’d longed for stepped into view. Her blue eyes looked up at him, red curls swirling around her head like a magnificent Medusa, freezing him into place as if he was turned to stone.

“Tara.” His voice was the barest of whispers.

She smiled and drew closer, reaching up to touch his cheek. “It’s ok. It’s ok. It’s just as I said it would be. Don’t be afraid.”

He opened his mouth to rebuke her, to scold her for his moment of terror, but once again, he couldn’t find the words. Her slender fingers played across his lips, a tender caress, and then she reached out and took his hand and turned. “Everything is ready,” she said, and pushed through the crowd.

Before them the table was set up just as she described it, a massive black slab like an altar. Behind it, a wall of windows rose up, affording a magnificent view of the city’s nightscape. Cloudscrapers of various sizes and shapes rose up out of the blackness below, galaxies glittering with millions of twinkling stars. It was simple and elegant, yet utterly breathtaking. Yves once again found himself incapable of words or action, only drinking in the otherworldly display. He hardly noticed the hands that tugged at his clothes, stripping him and guiding him to the table.

Yves felt like he was floating, as if the dream had come and swept him up and carried him off – the long, twisting journey, the blind terror, the sudden appearance of an angel and then the heavenly landscape – each a step to this final destination, this terrifying yet undeniable conclusion. He gazed once more on the majesty before him, recognizing the long stretch of luxury that was the Tannhauser Gate, the home of the famed Sucker Punch. He realized then that he might have eaten his last meal there – the unsurpassed beeftek berber, but as he stretched out on the table and felt the straps set across his body and limbs, his thoughts returned to the moment at hand, to his destiny.

Tara stood above him now, glorious and wild, her azure robe slipping to her feet, revealing the Promised Land he’d eagerly sought. She was exquisite, everything he’d expected after those long hours of anticipation, and he felt his breath quicken, his heart tremble, and his arousal peak. She moved with the elegance of a dancer, descending over him, until she was nearly out of view. He closed his eyes when he felt the silken tendrils of her hair grace his stomach, and his entire body shuddered when she took him into her mouth. He moaned aloud at her perfect stroke, strained against his bonds as she increased her rhythm.

“Achieving this elusive goal,” she’d said, “is in the timing. Everything must be perfectly in sync.” She’d winked at him and smiled again, and he remembered sitting there stupidly, not believing, not sure what she was saying was possible. Yet, here he was, lying bound to the black slab, as she had proposed, watching her climb up over him, straddling him, feeling the warmth of her mouth replaced by the warmth of her body. She trembled as she mounted him, drawing him deep until she whimpered. Then she began to move, slowly at first, grinding against him, her elegant body writhing. He desperately wanted to reach up and touch her, caress her hot skin, cup her swinging breasts, draw her close for a panting kiss, but he was held fast by the straps.

“Kiss me,” he begged between breaths, but she only smiled wickedly and shook her head. “Now we begin, my dear Yves. I hope to see you on the other side.”

With those words, the angel transformed into a demon, her fiery hair burning in the darkness as she slammed her body against him. He cried out from her terrific onslaught, then gulped as he felt the last strap looped around his throat and synched tight. Suddenly his heart was in his throat, feeling the terrible constriction. It thundered in his ears, drowning out her cries as she drove herself against him.

Yves gasped for breath and heaved against his bonds, desperately trying to draw a breath, his mind losing focus as his body fervently tried to meet her assault. Slowly the pleasure built, and the world around him began to fade. With a concerted effort, pure willpower, he focused on her once more, saw her wrapped in her erotic dance, and for a moment her words crawled across his mindscape, echoing in his head as every other sound seemed to fade into the ether. 

“The goal, my darling man, is to cum just as you take your last breath, to realize the most amazing orgasm, the most glorious sensation – for that matter – imaginable, just as you die. It is the purest high I have ever felt, and” – she’d searched for words, but she had never finished the sentence. There was no way to describe it; neither she nor the others who had survived the ritual and achieved this dark pleasure were ever able to summon words that did it justice. All they ever shared was a knowing look of some unspeakable glory followed by the recognition that some of their friends had not been able to be revived.

“I’ll do it,” he’d said, hesitant at first about his decision and how he’d suddenly blurted out his answer, but when she’d smiled, he’d known his answer was true.

As if in the distance, her cries rang out, and he faintly felt her fists pound against his chest just as the world faded to black and he embraced the glory of transcendence.

I started writing short stories based on a science fiction vampire novel I wrote almost 15 years ago called Dying Light. This is one of them.