HIGH ROLLER
Purple.
The impersonal neon of cheap advertisement. The buzzing, blinking, flicker of electric gas filled tubes, bent into shapes announcing the availability of products and services.
This poorly maintained announcement amused Merrick as he walked into its glow.
He paused as he read the words and a sense of nostalgia washed over him.
“Girls Girls Girls”
A generation ago this sign would be controversial. Two generations it would have been unheard of.
Not even a hundred years ago and we had to use obscure signs, hand painted in hard to spot locations. A bowl with steam. A bed a certain shape and color. Now, it’s just another sign, as common as a late night cafe.
Anymore, the sign had a deeper meaning then what was at the surface. As little as ten years ago, it meant you could look, but not touch. Now it shouted a total experience
As Merrick walked past out of the glow and into the alley he caught his reflection in a puddle of liquid that likely wasn’t water.
A chubby, balding man with a stubby nose and an unshaven neck, stared back.
He stepped in the puddle with disdain, I’ll have to upgrade soon.
He continued down the alley, the first entrance on his right, a split door with the top open. His guard leaned out at the sound of Merrick’s footsteps.
No words were exchanged, not even a glance. Merrick’s guards knew better.
Past the guard, the alley widened. Along each side, tables of wares for sale. Tables of various products for smoking. Tables of mind altering liquids from simple vodka to more extreme creations. Tables of sexual accessories.
Customers browsed and haggled over prices and quality. Each of his minions manning the tables all bowed their heads and shushed their customers as Merrick strolled by surveying his kingdom.
As Merrick walked deeper into the alley he began to reflect how his trade has evolved this last decade. From hiding in dark corners to hocking his wares on websites.
Products that could feed any desire and debauchery can be shipped across the world in days.
At the end of the alley was his favorite income. The alley opened up to a plaza once designed to give space for horse drown carriages to turn around. The far end of the plaza was his club. The building once held a saddle factory. The massive front doors, designed to allow shipping carriages, were open as music and lights throbbed out from inside.
The four windows fronting the building each had a woman swaying in sultry rhythm to the music. They were dressed and dancing only in the most academic sense.
More of his guards let him pass without glance or word as he entered the building.
Inside more customers, dancing and imbibing various concoctions. At their beck and call, for a price, where his ‘employees’, women who haven given up. Given up a steady life, given up love, given up happiness.
Most were tied to Merrick’s control with addiction to drugs. Some were so far gone internally they actually thought they enjoyed this. The rest, the new product. Girls born and raised into this life. No more need for drugs and conditioning, this is just their life.
“My lord,” spoke a minion whose name Merrick cared not to learn.
Merrick sighed and turned to the voice, “yes?” His voice dripped with annoyance.
“Apologies my lord,” continued the minion. “A high roller is here.”
At the words, ‘high roller’, Merrick’s disposition changed and a smile creased his stolen face.
“Where?” was all Merrick replied, he was above wasting words on this lowly servant.
“Your office my lord,” said the servant with its head bowed. “She just arrived.”
She? Pondered Merrick. We don’t get many females making in person calls. His curiosity and anticipation rose.
Without another word he moved across the dancefloor. Before him the crowd split like the Red Sea and closed behind him in his wake.
Past more guards and the DJ booth to a set of stairs. At the top of the stairs a hallway of a dozen doors. He smiled as each room had it’s red light lit, occupied for business. He passed the sounds and smells of carnal activities. At the end of the hall was the thirteenth door, his office. The guard at the door bowed as Merrick pushed open the door.
His office sprawled before him. To the right against the wall was a worn leather couch where he conducted many ‘auditions’ of his employees. A camera on a stand, flanked by lights, faced the couch. The wall the couch was against ended to a wall that was all window, overlooking the dance floor. The lights and sound pulsed through the thick glass. To the left of the entrance along the wall was a glass bar fully stocked with ancient alcohol, Merrick’s collection he built over a century. The far wall was covered by a bookcase full of awards, recognitions, and his books. Physical records of his kingdom, beyond the reach of praying electric eyes.
In front of the bookshelf was his eight foot wide desk. Wood from a tree now long extinct. At the desk with her back to him was the ‘high roller’.
Merrick circled behind his desk and examined her. He first noticed her hair, a natural red so pure it was orange. Her pale face and freckles added to the exotic look. She wore a tight green dinner dress over ample breasts and a svelte waist. Her shoulders and arms donned a leather half-jacket.
Pure gingers are rare anymore. He wiped some saliva from his face.
“Hello,” he oozed. “You are a fine specimen.”
“Thank you,” her thick Irish accent lilted across the desk.
Merrick plopped into his overstuffed chair. “You could make a small fortune starring in my videos.”
“I already have a large fortune,” rebutted the woman. “What I need goes beyond money.”
Merrick leaned back and let his eyes roam over her again. He kept the smile on his face. He let it sit there, a mask.
“Nothing goes beyond money,” he said. “That’s why men covet it. You tell yourself it’s for something higher. You keep your hands clean in your own head.”
The woman did not flinch.
“I don’t need you to psychoanalyze me,” she said. “I need an answer.”
Merrick’s smile tightened.
“An answer to what?”
She reached into her purse. Merrick’s fingers flexed on the armrest. He watched her hands. He relaxed when he saw what she pulled out.
She set a wrapped stack of bills on the desk between them. Tight band. Crisp edges. American currency, heavy enough to make the desk wood thud when it landed. The wrapper had $10,000 stamped on it.
“Start with that,” she said. “You’re the broker. You know where things come from. I want to know what I’m buying before I decide whether I’m wasting my time.”
Merrick stared at the stack. He did not touch it.
“You’re not buying a girl,” he said. “You’re buying an evening. A fantasy. A hole in your own head you want filled.”
“Where do your girls come from?”
Merrick’s eyes lifted to her face. He searched for a tell. Greed fought caution in his chest. He felt the host’s pulse rise. It irritated him. The flesh always got excited around money. It always wanted.
“From here,” he said. “From anywhere. You want a list of ports and airports?”
“I want the chain,” she said. “Local, imported, or grown.”
Merrick’s mouth twitched. “Grown.”
“Raised into it,” she clarified.
He let out a soft laugh. He made it sound like amusement.
“Some,” he said. “A few. Most don’t need that. Most of them walk into it. They just don’t call it what it is when they do.”
She slid a second stack onto the desk. Next to the first. She stacked them neat, like bricks.
“Local,” she said. “How many?”
Merrick’s eyes flicked down. His fingers tingled. He wanted to scoop the stacks into a drawer and lock it. He kept his hands on the chair.
“Enough,” he said.
She did not move. She did not blink fast. She waited him out.
“Numbers matter,” she said. “If you can’t speak in numbers, you’re not a broker. You’re a bouncer with delusions.”
Merrick’s jaw worked. He hated the way she spoke to him. He hated that he did not scare her. He hated that he liked it.
He leaned forward and rested his forearms on the desk. He did not touch the stacks.
“Local comes in waves,” he said. “Runaways. Girls who burn a bridge and think the world owes them something. Girls who think they’re too grown to be told no. They get hungry. They get lonely. They get offered a room and a phone and a little powder and it’s done.”
Her eyes stayed on him.
“And the ones who don’t walk in,” she said.
Merrick’s smile returned, thin. “Not every door has a knob on the inside.”
She placed a third stack down. Merrick’s throat tightened. He could smell the paper and ink. The host’s mouth went dry.
“Imported,” she said. “How?”
Merrick tapped one finger on the desk beside the money. A nervous little motion he did not like. The host again. Weak habits.
“Paper,” he said. “Always paper. If you can move paper, you can move anything. Sometimes they arrive with their own documents. Sometimes they arrive with documents that belong to someone else. Sometimes they arrive with no documents at all and nobody asks questions because the right man has been given the right paper.”
She nodded once, as if she already knew.
“Who holds the documents,” she asked, “once they arrive?”
Merrick’s eyes narrowed.
“You ask like a lawyer.”
“I ask like a buyer who doesn’t like surprises.”
He let out a breath through his nose.
“They don’t hold their own,” he said. “Not if they’re smart. Not if they’re under care.”
“Care,” she repeated, flat.
Merrick spread his hands.
“Call it what you want,” he said. “You want them safe, don’t you? You want them where they belong. You want them to show up when you pay.”
She put a fourth stack down. Merrick’s control slipped for half a second. His eyes dropped. He imagined the weight of it in his palm. He imagined walking out of here and upgrading the host. New face. New teeth. Less sweat.
He forced his gaze back to her.
“How long,” she asked, “from request to delivery.”
“That depends,” Merrick said.
“On what,” she pressed.
He stared at her. He tried to decide if she was bait.
“It depends on what you ask for,” he said.
She reached into her bag again. Merrick’s body tensed. A fifth stack landed.
“I’m asking now,” she said. “How long?”
Merrick swallowed. He let his voice take on a professional tone, as if he were quoting shipping times and not selling souls.
“If you want a body that’s already in the city,” he said, “you can have it tonight. If you want something that has to cross a border, you wait. If you want a certain look that isn’t common, you wait longer. If you want someone who will not fight you, you wait longer unless you pay for the conditioning.”
“Conditioning,” she said.
Merrick’s smile flickered.
“Everyone needs training,” he said. “Some need more.”
Her gaze stayed steady.
“How much more,” she asked, “for someone who won’t remember.”
Merrick’s eyes sharpened. That question was too clean. Too cold. Too exact.
He did not answer right away.
She placed a sixth stack on the desk. She slid the stack forward, slow, until it was an inch from his hand.
The host’s fingers twitched. He did not touch it.
“You have a particular appetite,” he said. “You don’t sound like the usual.”
“I don’t have an appetite,” she said. “I have requirements and clients. Answer the question.”
Merrick leaned back and let his laugh out again. He used it to buy a second.
“You can’t buy affection,” he said. “You can buy silence. You can buy obedience. You can buy fear. But you can’t buy affection.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Merrick’s mouth tightened. He felt a prickle in his throat, then heat. The host again. He hated the host’s instincts. He hated that the host was afraid of this woman.
“You pay for a handler,” Merrick said. “You pay for a place where they can be held. You pay for the right mixture so they stop thinking they can run. You pay for the work. If you want memory gone, you pay for the kind of work that doesn’t leave marks.”
Her eyes did not drop. She did not look away.
“And if the work fails,” she asked. “If she doesn’t comply?”
Merrick’s face hardened.
“That’s your next question,” he said.
She set down a seventh stack. The stack was starting to look like a small wall built between them.
Merrick stared at the wall of money. His chest felt tight. The host’s heart thumped. He tasted copper. He did not like the taste.
“What happens,” she said again, “to the rejects.”
Merrick’s smile returned. It was not warmth. It was teeth.
“You’re asking about waste,” he said.
“I’m asking about outcomes.”
Merrick leaned forward.
“There are no rejects,” he said. “There are only different markets.”
Her expression did not change, but something in her eyes sharpened. She had wanted that phrase.
“Different markets,” she repeated. “Explain.”
Merrick’s gaze flicked to the door. He listened. He heard music through the wall. He heard the bass. He heard bodies laughing. He heard nothing else.
He looked back at her.
“Some are entertainment,” he said. “Some are private. Some are labor. Some are kept. Some are sold to men who don’t ask questions.”
“And the ones who break beyond use,” she said.
Merrick’s lips pressed together. He was silent long enough that the room felt smaller.
She placed down an eighth stack. Then a ninth. Two in a row. Her hand stayed on the second stack for a moment.
Merrick’s eyes followed her fingers.
“Answer,” she said.
Merrick licked his teeth.
“The ones who break,” he said, “cost money. Money tied up in a body that won’t produce. So you either cut your loss, or you find a buyer who doesn’t care if it produces.”
She waited.
“There are buyers,” Merrick continued, “who do not want them awake.”
The woman’s face stayed calm.
“Like doctors,” she said.
Merrick’s smile creased.
“Like men with clean hands,” he said. “Men who wear coats and talk about science. Men who sign forms and call it donation.”
She nodded once.
“And the boys,” she asked.
Merrick’s eyes narrowed again. That question was poison. It sat on the desk and stank.
He did not answer right away. He watched her. He watched her throat when she swallowed. He watched her breathing.
Nothing.
“Do you deal in boys,” she asked again, “or not.”
She placed down a tenth stack. It landed with a soft slap, a final offer.
Merrick stared at the money. He felt the host’s stomach churn. He felt the host’s shame. It rose like bile. The host did not want to say this out loud.
Merrick enjoyed that.
“Categories exist because humans made them,” he said. “The Market does not care. The Market pays for what it can sell. I can put you in touch with what you want if I’m not the one who handles it.”
“So you outsource,” she said.
“Everyone does,” Merrick said. “Even saints.”
Her gaze stayed on him. Her posture did not soften.
“What happens,” she asked, “if I pay and what arrives isn’t what you promised.”
Merrick let out a breath.
“Then you get a refund,” he said. “Or you get a replacement. Or you get an apology and you never see me again. Depends how much you paid and how much I like you.”
She placed down an eleventh stack.
“Proof,” she said. “I want proof of origin.”
Merrick’s eyes narrowed.
“You want to see paperwork.”
“I want to verify you aren’t selling me stolen product from a rival,” she said. “I want to verify you aren’t lying about where you source. I want to verify you can deliver the kind of volume you imply you can.”
Merrick’s mouth twitched. That sounded like a corporate audit.
“You’re careful,” he said.
“I’m thorough.”
Merrick leaned back and finally let his hand drift toward the nearest stack. His fingers hovered above the paper. He could feel heat from it.
The woman’s eyes tracked his hand.
Merrick stopped. He pulled his hand back.
“You don’t trust me,” he said.
“I don’t trust anyone,” she said. “Show me.”
Merrick stared at her. The room felt too quiet. The music outside felt far away. He felt the host’s skin itch. He wanted to scratch at his own neck.
“Proof costs,” he said.
She slid one last stack forward. Twelfth. A full dozen bricks lined between them.
Merrick’s throat tightened. He could not stop staring. It was a simple thing. Paper. Ink. But it had power. It moved men. It moved doors. It moved bodies across oceans. It moved police. It moved judges. It moved pastors and politicians. It moved the weak.
He looked up at her and tried to smile again.
“What,” he asked, “do you need beyond what I have here?”
The woman’s gaze did not soften.
“A name,” she said.
Merrick’s smile froze.
“A name?”
“A supplier,” she said. “The one you answer to when the request is unusual. The one who can fill volume. The one who can provide what you call ‘conditioning’ without leaving a mess that draws attention. I don’t want your street work. I want the chain above you.”
Merrick’s eyes narrowed into slits.
“That’s not how this works.”
The woman reached into her jacket and set something down that was not cash.
A slim phone. No case. Screen dark.
Merrick stared at it.
“I’m not here for your pride,” she said. “I’m here for your access. Tell me who you broker for, and I can wire more than this ‘small fortune’.”
Merrick’s mouth went dry.
He felt the host’s fear again. He hated it. He hated that it was right.
He leaned forward anyway. He let greed push his body closer to the stacks, closer to her, closer to the trap he could not see.
“You’re playing a game,” Merrick said.
The woman nodded once.
“Yes,” she said. “And you’re losing.”
Merrick stared at her.
Then his phone vibrated in his pocket.
He froze.
He had it on do not disturb.
He pulled it out. The screen was lit. No name. No number. The call timer was already running, answered without touching it.
The output slider moved to ‘speaker’ on its own.
A young woman spoke with a Scottish voice. “Hello Merrick,” she said. “Thank you for the wonderful data your phone has.”
Merrick’s eyes flicked to the woman across the desk. The stacks of cash sat between them like a low wall. Her phone on the desk stayed dark.
He opened his mouth.
The building shook. At first, Merrick thought a bomb had exploded outside sending a shockwave. The kind that travels through concrete and reorders the air in a room. The desk trembled. The glass in the frame wall rattled. Dust fell from a seam overhead.
The bass from the dance floor cut out mid-beat.
For a half second, there was silence.
Merrick looked out through his observation window over the dance floor. His minions had secured the main door. The patrons looked around torn between confusion and fear.
Then the main doors exploded inward, the impact shredding them. The frame tore. The minions at the door were blasted aside.
A figure filled the opening.
Silver plate armor in the broken light, moving too fast for a thing of it’s size. Breastplate catching purple reflections in dull patches. Greaves and cuisses and sabatons stepping through splintered wood. A helm and chestpeice with a red cross displayed in prominence. Gauntleted hands holding a shield nearly as large as the wielder and a sword, longer than the bearer’s height.
The metal creature stood in the wrecked doorway and surveyed the hall, judgment.
At the sight of the sword Merrick felt the host’s heart spike.
He felt something deeper tighten inside him.
It was not fear the way flesh fears pain. It was the old recoil of something that remembered what authority was. It climbed his spine and locked his jaw. It told him to run. It told him there was nowhere to run.
His guards on the dance floor froze, some stepped back. The armored figure spoke.
His voice ressonated. It filled the hall with authority.
“For from him and through him and to him are all things: to whom be glory for ever. Amen.”
The speaker on the phone, “Say hello to Roland!”
Merrick’s grip crushed the phone.
He could not speak.
The armored man took one step forward, flattening the head of a minion who manned the door. “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
Merrick slammed his palm on the PA button. “Kill him!”
He shoved back from the desk so hard the chair legs snapped against the tile.
The host body lagged. Too much softness in the legs. Too much weight in the gut. Breath came high. Sweat sprang out under the collar. The lungs pulled like they were full of water.
He hated this suit.
He moved for the door.
The woman was already in his path.
Her chair slid back. Her feet set. One step put her inside his gravity. Her hand came up and caught his wrist before he reached the handle of the drawer with the gun.
Merrick tried to jerk free.
Her grip did not change.
His eyes dropped to her hand. Small. Pale. No jewelry. Nails cut short. Wrist steady. Tendons tight under the skin.
He twisted, trying to use the host’s weight.
She pivoted with him and stepped in. Her knee drove into his thigh. Not hard enough to break bone. Hard enough to shut the leg off. His knee buckled. She rode him down and kept his arm.
Pain flared.
The host body whined inside him.
Merrick bared his teeth and forced the mouth to speak.
“Whore.”
The word came out thick, wrong. The host tongue felt too big.
She did not react to it.
She turned his wrist until the joint hit its stop. The host shoulder burned. Merrick felt the suit’s limits. Tendons, ligaments, cartilage. All of it had rules.
He had forgotten what it was like to be trapped under flesh rules.
A body hit the observation window, cracking it. When it slid down Merrick could see the dance floor was chaos.
Bodies surged toward the far end where the knight had entered. Men shoved and fell. Chairs toppled. Glass went down. The purple light over the floor strobed with the club signs and the emergency lights fighting each other.
The shield flashed once as it hit a man and threw him backward into the crowd. The crowd broke as a wave against rock.
Merrick heard the sound even through the wall.
Metal on bone.
Wood cracking.
A scream that ended with a wet choke.
His kingdom had always sounded like music. Bass and laughter and the soft murmur of money being spent.
Now it sounded like panic.
He tried to lunge again.
The woman wrenched his arm behind his back and pushed him chest-first into the desk. The stacks of cash shifted under his ribs. The host’s breath left in a grunt. His face turned toward the window. He saw more of the floor going down.
A guard sprang at the knight. Merrick had a flicker of hope, this was his strongest minion.
The knight did not step back. He drove forward. The shield hit the guard ’s sternum and folded it. The sword came down once, effortlessly. The body fell apart at the seam of the neck.
Merrick’s gut tightened. Not the host’s fear. His.
He felt the old pull inside him. The part of him that remembered Hell like a home and still recoiled from it. The part of him that had never belonged to a body and hated the idea of being stripped back down to what he was.
The woman leaned closer and leveraged her weight into the host’s body. He could feel her steady breath on his ear.
Her voice came low. It lost the Irish softness.
It was calm. Familiar in a way Merrick did not like.
“In the name of Jesus Christ,” she said.
Merrick’s skin went cold.
The host skin. The host nerves. All of it carrying the wrong sensation into him.
He tried to laugh. It came out as a cough.
“You don’t know what you’re touching,” he said.
“I know what you are,” she said.
Her free hand went to her pocket. She took something out. A small object. Flat. Hard. It pressed against the back of his neck, right below the skull.
His body flinched.
Not from pain.
From recognition.
Merrick’s mouth went dry.
He felt the host throat swallow.
He looked at the desk edge and tried to gather himself into the suit, to lock down deeper, to grip the meat tighter.
The woman began to speak again. Words measured. Words with authority. Words that burned.
Merrick cursed and strained forward. The host arms shook. The desk creaked. The stacks of cash slid and toppled.
He could hear the knight now without looking. It was in the corridor.
Each step hit the tile with am impact. Armor moving. The scrape of metal over cloth. The sound of a shield edge catching something and slamming it into a wall.
Scripture carried between impacts.
Merrick did not understand why the words could reach him through the flesh and peirce him.
The market’s guards in the hall shouted and fired their weapons. The report of the bullets gave him that tingle of hope.
The guns quit as quickly as they came. The shouts turned into screams. The screams turned into gurgles. Something heavy hit the wall near the door. A picture frame fell and shattered. The last of Merrick’s hope followed a hard swallow into the depths of his stomach.
Merrick’s eyes cut to the hall door.
He wanted to run.
He wanted to hide behind his minions.
He wanted to crawl back into the hole he came from.
He could not decide what was worse, being ripped out of the suit and hurled down into the dark, or being caught in this body by the armored knight walking toward him. He tried to leave, to abandon this soft flesh. The woman’s words pushed past the flesh and held him in place.
The woman’s hand tightened on his wrist again and the joint screamed.
“In the name of Jesus Christ,” she said again. “You will loose him.”
Merrick spat. Saliva hit the desk.
“You can’t command me,” he said.
Her voice did not rise.
“I can,” she said. “Not because of me. But because of Jesus”
She spoke the words and Merrick felt pressure behind his eyes. Heat in his teeth. A claw under his ribs. His grip on the host slipped for half a second.
He snarled and tried to leave down again.
The host body convulsed. His fingers clawed at the desk. Nails scraped wood.
In the window, the dance floor was no longer a party. It was a field. Men crawling. Women pressed into corners. Minions scattered and turning to ash.
The purple light flickered and died. Emergency lighting took over. A hard red impersonal glare.
His kingdom looked cheap in that light.
The hall door banged. Another impact. Closer.
Merrick felt his control on the host wobble. It was like trying to hold water in a fist.
The woman’s words did not stop. The rite continued. The pressure built.
Merrick’s vision tunneled.
He tasted copper. The host gums bleeding where he’d bitten down.
He heard armor at the threshold.
He heard a gunshot then a body hit the wall in the corridor.
Then the door came open, slow and delicate.
The knight filled it. He was monstrous in proportion. The walking embodiment of the one he will not name’s wrath.
Plate and cross and visor down. Shield on his arm. Sword in his hand. He stood in the doorway and looked at the room.
He did not rush.
He took in the desk. The money. The woman holding Merrick down. The host body shaking.
Merrick met the blank face of the helm and felt something in him fold.
Not fear of pain.
Fear of judgment.
The woman’s voice cut through it.
“In the name of Jesus Christ,” she said, and the words hooked into Merrick’s gut.
The host body arched.
Merrick tried to scream and only air came out.
The room flashed white at the edges.
His last clear vision was the knight stepping in beside the woman, steel and cross under the dead lights, as if the world itself belonged to him.
Then the suit tore away.
The world fell out from under him.
And the dark took him.