Suddenly nervous, James hugged herself as the decrepit elevator ascended through alternating bands of light and darkness. As she left the second floor behind she began to hear the repetitive staccato buzz and grind of some kind of heavy metal techno music. The singer, if you could call it singing, was howling like a lost soul being tortured with knives and hammers. The sound grew lounder the closer she rose to the third floor. James had grown up listening to alternative rock and some hip hop. During her brief amnesiac stint as Jill she had gladly listened to Top 40, new country, and gospel music, often singing along in a clear, sweet voice. The sonic assault coming from the third floor appeared to neither half of her dual nature.
The elevator clanged to a stop and James hesitantly leaned forward to struggle with sliding the heavy safety grate up out of the way. Suddenly it became lighter, she could feel a set of hands helping drag it up and open from the other side. Peering into the smoky gloom, James struggled to make out her unseen helper. A second later she stepped back with a little squeak of surprise. There was a young woman standing in the shadows. Clad in a black opera gloves, leather corset, and thigh high boots, she was all but invisible except for the pale naked expanses of her throat, shoulders, breasts, and hips. Heavy makeup made glittering bruises of her big dark eyes and there was a spiked stud dotting the spot beneath her jutting lower lip.
James instantly identified the young woman as exceedingly beautiful and tried to rank her in relation to her own looks, but only briefly indulged the momentary impulse. There was no point. They were nearly as different as day and night. James was tall and blonde, an all American beauty, though she hated to admit it. The stranger was short, though the steep heel on her boots gave her some extra height, and raven-haired, exotic, a willowy flower that only bloomed in secret places and at night. James tried a smile and found herself groping for words when it was met with an expressionless look.
"I'm Jill Dugan," James ventured, getting more confident as she went, "Matt sent me."
"Sure he did," the strange girl replied in a slow whisper, giving James a long look. The taller woman couldn't be sure, but black-haired girl sounded as if she had a trace of an accent, possibly Hispanic?
"What's that supposed to mean?" James said, a trace of Jill's southern stubborness creeping in.
"You know," the black-clad pixie said in a low sing-song voice, "You know, you know.
Momentarily taken aback, James became flustered and could not make direct eye contact, a Jill trait that was now hers. She distantly noted that the girl's nipples, impishly peeking out from two-cut out panels in the corset, were pierced. Eyes flickering back up to the strange girl's, James's face registered embarassment of a host of levels. As a man she would have noticed the naked, pierced nipples right away. Instead she had initially focused on the other woman's hair, her makeup, her footwear. The shorter woman smirked, amused by James's speechlessness. James felt her mouth form the chin-forward pout that Jill's face made when angry, she was about to say something rude and, in the three months she had thought she was Jill, James had picked up the best profanity laden curses Jill's mama had to teach her.
"Who is it, Rikki?" A strange voice called out of the darkness, cutting off her angry reply before she could even draw a sufficient breath for blessing out this weird little Goth bitch. Low and masculine, amused, it was a voice from a movie or maybe a dream. James turned toward its source, "You know I don't like you talking to strangers, my quickie li'l Rikki."
Far off, toward the center of the emptiness, past a veil of shadows, lost in the pungent mist of incense and clouds of cigarette smoke, beyond low walls formed from trunks and bookshelves, protected by a reef of tables and furniture, there was a space lit by many candles and two softly glowing metal flowers that were stand lamps. A figure detached itself from one of the low futons and stood, stretched like a lion rising from a dead antelope he had grown bored with. He cast about and briefly bent down to fetch a cigarette and lighter. Cigarette lit, exhaling smoke from his nostrils like a dragon, the similarly black-clad figure began to approach, though James was quick to note his own darkly colored garb was a silk shirt and denim jeans, not fetish gear. His battered cowboy boots changed the tik-tok of their heels as he moved from the area rugs to the bare stone.
"Do I," James began, trailed off, and then began again, the familiarity of the strange voice preying upon her attenuated nerves, "Do I, I mean, do we - - know each other?"
"Of course we do, baby doll," the man stepped into the crowded pool of light cast by the lone bulb hanging by the elevator cage. Both women drew back tomake room for him, unconsciously drawing together. The man radiated a weird aura of menace, something lazy but lethal, like a rattlesnake sunning itself on a rock. It was that undercurrent of menace that made the voice so hard to recognize.
A face that was at once familiar and yet almost forgotten smiled down at James, the cruel lips smiling as he spoke, "I'm you."
