Welcome to chapter twenty-second of an ongoing gritty noir series from ‘Sin Street’ created in partnership between Kate Granger and Sissitrix. Follow a woman’s desperate tale of humiliation starting in a pit of despair before her rebirth, revenge, and resurgence. This series began in a dark place because it must.
Previous Chapters, from First to Last:
Fallen Angel. Rude Awakening. Rest and Recuperation. Taking The First Step. From Rags To Riches. Revenge is a dish best served cold or warm. Did Erin cross a line? Are We Alone? Enter the Glass Cube. Leave or Die. Who Is My Friend? Going Underground. Death Ballet at the Ice Ring. A Swinging Dick. The Mansion House. A Time For Calm. The Virtue League. Resurgence Begins. Reunited. Apocalypse Now. Mirror Mirror On The Wall.
I chucked up when we stepped back onto the silo floor. What I’d seen could never be unseen. I sank to my knees, letting rip a blood-curdling scream. Through my tears, I vaguely saw piles of naked bodies stacked like twisted, macabre funeral pyres. Every fifty or so meters of our silo level had a pile of the dead.
I hid my pistols down the back of my pants, covered by a jacket. My mind was a tumult of emotions as anger and fear gripped my soul when I thought of what the Red October pervert customers would do to the young girl I’d just abandoned.
Dancers seemed more agitated, twisting and writhing around frenetically, almost reaching desperate proportions. I shuddered uncomfortably when the music bass wreaked havoc on my body, almost to the extent it made me queasy again.
“They are all fucking one another, Erin… can you see them?”
“Yes, Allen, but why now and with no smiles or any signs of enjoyment.”
“The crowd is working up to a climax.”
“What happens when they reach the top?”
“A clean-up, then clear out of the clients. After that, the simulation will collapse, and the next session begins somewhere else. The servers will shut down and reboot once the process begins. It’s just like Sissitrix said, but with one difference.”
I stared around our level and saw everyone was fucking someone or at least getting to that point. The funeral pyres grew by the minute, and I saw one guy fucking his victim in the ass while slitting her throat with an enormous Bowie knife. She spurted blood in rapid jets, signing her death message on the concrete floor from a severed jugular vein.
She looked pitiful, like a slaughtered pig bleeding out, but the pervert kept fucking her back passage even as the light of her life disappeared from the girl’s eyes.
Clothes were discarded everywhere. Panties and bras were torn off as women serviced men, sometimes more than one, making sure every cock was sheathed in a mouth, pussy, or back passage.
I looked over the silo-level railings and saw the same scene repeated on every level down. Underground was bathed in blood.
“What happens to us when the reboot starts, Allen.”
“Our simulation collapses, but not completely, and we are trapped here forever because the connection between our substance and the body you left inside my pod will be severed.”
“What is ‘here’? What do we become?”
“This simulation collapses down to the bare minimum of space required to store us for infinity.”
“Are we conscious?”
“Yes. We are alive as you know it but confined to becoming storage on a shelf.”
“Fuck! That sounds like hell.”
“Hell is someplace else, Erin. It’s much worse than our fate.”
My knees buckled, and I saw Sissitrix was more than a little concerned. I slid to the floor with my back against the balcony wall, face-planting in a desperate act, trying to make sense of it all.
“I’m in a simulation.”
“If I get cut off from my world, I’m stuck here, but does that mean I die back home?”
“Fuck! What is happening to me?”
The fucking between men, women, and children was almost all-encompassing. Everywhere I looked, there were sweating, writhing bodies. Rape, physical assault, and murder were happening everywhere as a mass nightclub transformed into its final swansong before closing time. It was a free-for-all farewell for clients using and abusing simulation non-player characters and downloaded fetish fodder of all ages provided by Red October.
Allen stared at me pitifully, then leaned down after I’d taken in enough of the nightmare, offering me a hand up.
“It’s time to act. They know we are here, Erin.”
“Who knows?”
“Red October. The council of twelve disciples is searching for us in this realm.”
“Get us to the server room, now.”
I leaped to my feet, snapping my head this way and that, assessing our situation. The writhing orgy disgusted me, with consent being completely abandoned as though humanity had reached the end of days and the rule of law no longer mattered.
I ran down corridors, then leaped up flights of stairs, following Allen, averting my eyes when I saw men and women being strapped into stocks, fuck benches, and other restraints, howling in pain while desperately struggling to be released.
Sissitrix tried to save another group of kids being ushered along our corridor by a gang of predating men and women. They pulled a pistol and started shooting, shouting, and gesticulating wildly at me.
“Get to the server room, Erin. I will be right behind you.”
“I can’t leave you here to fight alone.”
“You must. We shall divide our resources and prevail.”
I was swept away by a crowd, barely able to keep in touch with Allen, until people peeled off into side rooms where beatings, rape, and murder ensued. I was convinced that I was in hell until I wasn’t anymore because we’d reached the server room.
When I walked inside the football stadium-sized room, Underground Club’s thumping bass music was dampened, and silence prevailed. A light humming noise replaced the mayhem outside, and I felt peace in my heart where violence had consumed me.
Rows of server racks sat behind glass walls between which corridors ran to a central point. A green hue pervaded the room, which was freezing cold. I stepped forward, but Allen wouldn’t follow. I turned and stared at him while he looked down at a line on the floor.
“I can’t cross the line, Erin.”
“Why not?”
“I am not real, and this place will know that as soon as I cross the line. No artificial intelligence may enter here without permission.”
“Jesus Christ. Am I on my own now?”
“No, you fucking aren’t.”
Rex strolled right around Allen, surprising me. He hugged me, wrapping his bear-like arms around my waist and lifting me before we kissed. Confidence surged as my boyfriend held me close.
“I came prepared, Erin.”
“Is that a gun in your pocket, I can feel?”
“Several, actually.”
“Let’s go, Rex. The answers we seek are somewhere in this room.”
Rex followed me as I strode toward the center of the room. He brandished machine pistols at the server racks as though they might be a threat and would take heed of his warning.
“You can’t start shooting the servers, Rex.”
“I’m sure they won’t like it if I did.”
“They don’t have any consciousness and can’t act for themselves.”
“How the fuck do you know, Erin.”
I stopped in my tracks, realizing Rex was right. I was applying real-world standards to a place that was anything but. There was no way to know up from down in this simulation because the rules were invented, changed, and played out by persons unknown.
“I’ve been fucking played, Rex.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve been so fucking stupid.”
I looked back the way we’d come and saw Sissitrix ambling along, looking pleased with themselves.
“Happy hunting?”
“They’re all dead, and Allen is babysitting the kids. What’s happening here?”
“Follow me, and all will be revealed.”
In the center of the server room, a massive glass bowl was freely suspended, with light, spontaneous colors flickering across its surface. I stood and grinned at my friends, then stared at the glass.
“Oh, Max… come out, come out, wherever you are.”
“Max? Have you gone mad, Erin?”
“Just watch, Sissitrix. Max is here. In fact, he’s always been here.”
The glass bowl filled with the same gas it had when Sissitrix activated the cube at the Mansion House. The same grotesque shape-shifting occurred with flashing colors and almost shapes forming until Max coalesced from the mist.
“Hello, Erin.”
“Hi, Max. Fancy seeing you here.”
“How did you figure me out?”
“You were there from the start, Max. It makes no sense that you wouldn’t be here in the end. Heck… maybe you even set me up in the first place, using Brian and my rape to secure your avenging angel.”
“I didn’t set you up.”
He looked ashamed but also tired, like the weight of a world, this world, was born on his shoulders. I saw my Max, the beautiful, loving boyfriend, mingled with another very different, frightened man whose eyes darted around, looking for trouble.
“Spill the beans, Max. Where are we? Is this your constructed simulation?”
“Welcome to Limbo, Erin.”
“Limbo?”
“Yes. For my sins, I am the keeper here.”
I stared at him in utter disbelief. Max looked deranged and tired. If there was anything left of the original man, he must have a very sick psychosis going on.
“Max, for Limbo to exist, there must be a heaven and hell. These are religious constructs.”
“Not so, Erin. Religion is a construct of humanity. Limbo exists, not because human beings say it does but because it really does. These are the real laws of physics and Mother Nature, not the toys of humanity.”
“It’s a bunch of fucking servers dishing out a heavy dose of very clever science, Max.”
“Shoot them up like robocop fuckhead wanted to. You’ll see it’s just part of the simulation.”
“So you admit this place is a simulation?”
“Everything is a simulation, Erin. You’ve managed to peer behind the looking glass at the reality upon which the simulation exists.”
“Then where are heaven and hell?”
“Sin Street is the gateway to Limbo. What you call heaven is elsewhere. People talk; some say they’ve been to and seen heaven, but I’m unsure. Sin Street is definitive, a place where nobody cares about right or wrong.”
“Is Sin Street important, Max,”
“Sin Street is most important, Erin. Human souls are fought over, won, and lost in that place.”
“And Limbo?”
“Here, souls are cleaved from their bodies, and people are consumed like ants stamped out or having boiling water poured on them.”
“For what reason, Max?”
“Entertainment for others. Now, Red October is on the ascendency here and down below, but there is always someone controlling this place, enslaving me, exploiting everyone.
“What others are being entertained. Come on, man, start fucking talking. You must be on my side.”
“Yes, I am on your side, Erin. I always was, but getting you here was so difficult because you are such fucking hard work.”
Rex snorted and laughed, so I shot him a look like poison, to which he clammed up, even drawing a line across his tightly pursed lips as he zipped them together.
“I’m here now, Max. Talk to me.”
“There are other places, Erin.”
“Do you mean Hell?”
“I told you that none of this is a religious construct.”
“What is it then? Make it fucking simple, will you?”
“We live in a universe of mirrors. The computers make it possible for us to move from one to the next; in a sense, we can see and sometimes walk through the looking glass.”
“But you and others live here.”
“We all live inside a reflection. Even Sin Street is a mirror for another place.”
“Is that how we see you now? Are you a reflection?”
“I am alive, Erin. Not in Sin Street because I finally ascended, but I’ve lived here for millions of years.”
“In Limbo?”
“Yes. I’ve been stuck here for what seems like forever, watching debauchery, murder, torture, and bestial behavior such as is unimaginable.”
“And you came to Sin Street to find me?”
“Some part of me cares about you. I came when you were hurt and saw the pain with opportunity for me.”
“Have you been anywhere else?”
“I’ve visited Treachery.”
“Is that another level?”
“Oh yes. Treachery is full of cunts. The worst of our kind times ten. Limbo is their playground where new recruits learn, and then, when their behavior is sufficiently vile, Red October takes them downstairs.”
“To Treachery?”
“Yes, Erin. It’s far worse than here, but there are still five more levels below that. I know nothing aside from rumors about them.”
“Are you saying Red October is calling the shots at every level?”
“No, they are only in control here. In Limbo, but soon in Sin Street as well.”
“Not if I have anything to say about it.”
“That’s my girl. I knew you’d get to the nub of the issue eventually.”
“Who runs the realms below Treachery, Max?”
“I have no idea, but if you want to end this plague, force Red October down the silo into Treachery and smash the mirror. Leave those cunts down there forever.”
“How the fuck do I achieve that?”
“I’ll help you, Erin. They trust me. I control the shutdown and rebooting of Limbo. Once the party ends here, I have some scant time to run checks, and the virtual space is mine.”
“Where will they be?”
“There will be twelve of them hunting you here.”
“Against three of us?”
“Yes, but they won’t kill you unless they must. Red October wants Sissitrix and Allen alive to suck out all know-how.”
“And what about Rex and me?”
“They want you as a curiosity, but Rex means nothing to them. They killed his family and want him dead.”
I sat on the floor, staring at Max, watching his moods transition through colors symbolizing peace, love, hatred, and anger. He was convincing, but Max always was, and I could never be certain this time he was any more truthful than any other.
Sissitrix sat down beside me, shrugging their shoulders.
“Max could be lying.”
“That thought occurred to me as well.”
“What do you think we should do, Erin?”
“Rex brought explosives. Enough to level this place. I say we set them here, try to lead Red October to Treachery, and blow that. If Max lied, we blow this place and accept our fate.”
“Let’s do it.”
Max saw us set charges around his glass bowl and at the middle of each server row. I waved a last farewell to him, praying my ex-boyfriend would do the right thing.
Back out amid chaos, a siren sounded, and the music was dead, as were thousands of people stacked high to the roof in piles of bodies. The living gorged on their victims, screaming like beasts running with a blood lust through the light.
I stepped out into the concourse of our silo level and screamed.
“I am here. Let’s finish this now.”
“We are coming, Erin!”
A Resurgent Whore #23
Welcome to chapter twenty-third of an ongoing gritty noir series from ‘Sin Street’ created in partnership between Kate Granger and Sissitrix. Follow a woman’s desperate tale of humiliation starting in a pit of despair before her rebirth, revenge, and resurgence. This series began in a dark place because it must.
Dive deeper into Sin Street on Sissitrix.com, where violence lurks in every alley and sex is a weapon. Brutal characters, tangled plots, and dark places in a corrupt neo-noir city that will drag you into its chaos. Written by Kate Granger, illustrated by Sissitrix.
The artworks perfectly illustrate the despair and debauched atmosphere of Limbo. I find this place more terrifying than hell because this is where hope fades as the images suggest.... the night before death is upon us all
I'm anxious for the showdown.