moment."
He grunted as he placed the jar on his desk. "You sound like you enjoy their suffering."
She turned and strolled over to the "casting" coach against the right wall. He had acquired it against the day when he would have flesh and blood female clients; for the time being, it served as the platform for his daily antics with Lucy. She laid down, her head and shoulders propped up on the padded arm, with one arm draped over the back.
"They're my servants; they're only purpose is to serve my needs; all my needs." She snapped her fingers and a cigar appeared in her mouth.
"Your slaves, you mean."
"I prefer to think of them as pets. In any event, I fail to see a distinction." She snapped her fingers again and the exposed end lit up.
"You don't believe they have any rights?"
She snapped her fingers a third time and a glass of liquor appeared in one hand. "Technically, they're dead." She took the cigar out of her mouth. "What rights does a dead man have?" She drained the glass, but as soon as she held it level, it refilled.
"So, you see no problem with torturing them?"
"None whatsoever. They're possessions, disposable commodities; do you worry about torturing a newspaper or a pair of greenbacks?"
"No, but neither would I think of doing it. What would be the point?"
She gave him an exasperated look. "What's gotten into you?"
He shrugged, smiling, and waved his hands in the air. "Nothing. It's just that, replacing Lucy got me to thinking. She told me once about some of the things you did to her. It sounded pretty gruesome."
"One advantage of this process is that you can do anything you want to them, even dismember and eviscerate them, and they're conscious throughout, right up until their bodies fall apart, leaving no trace of your activity. Even the blood dissolves into thin air. You can then create a new body, a whole new person so to speak."
"Then, how do they remember anything?"
"I don't know; I haven't figured that out yet." She looked pensive for a moment, as if losing herself in thought, but then she shook her head. She swallowed the contents of her glass again, and stared back at him with a stony expression. "What do you care? Consider how you've used them. Porno films, snuff films, live rape podcasts, interactive torture websites. When it comes right down to it, the only difference between you and me is that I did all that myself, while you let others do it."
"You're absolutely right; who am I to talk?"
She grunted in derision. "You're a strange one." She placed the cigar back in her mouth. "You said you had two requests; what's the second?"
"What's an 'ongenew'?"
Her eyes popped out as her cigar drooped. She pulled it free as she sat up. "An ingenue is a character archetype typified by a beautiful young girl who is gentle, naive, and innocent. Why?"
"I have a request for one. Who would you recommend?"
She leaned back, crossing her legs, and struck the cigar back in her mouth. "What's going to be done to her?"
"Nothing. A Hollywood producer wants an unknown for his next blockbuster."
As he waited for her to respond, she smiled a wide, toothy grin. "I take it this is a big deal."
He didn't like the sly look on her face, or the tone in her voice. "Yes, it could be, if I have the right girl."
She removed the cigar. "Then, you would be willing to negotiate."
"Not really. As you say, I can threaten her with torture if she doesn't cooperate, or better yet, with flushing her salts down the john."
"I actually meant me. If you want the right girl, you have to negotiate with me. Otherwise, I could forget who I have."
"How would you be any different?"
She chuckled, an ominous sound devoid of humor. "Without me, how would you know which jar to open?"
"I could open them all myself."
She nodded. "You could, but I wouldn't recommend it. Not all of the contents are female, or even human."
"So what? They'll just disintegrate after a day."
"Some of the more aggressive beings would tear you to pieces as soon as they saw you."
"I could always shoot them."
She stabbed the air with the hand holding the cigar. "That's the one serious problem with this process: you can't kill a resurrected being. They don't need food or water any more than air, and as I said, you could hack them to pieces and they would still be alive."
He shrugged in an attempt to feign indifference. "So I just use the jars I've opened already."
She laughed. "Funny thing that. There's only about a kilogram in each of those jars. I assume you have been resurrecting Lucy every day?"
He nodded, a cold knot in the pit of his stomach.
"That would be about 200 grams. I used her several hundred times myself before you got a hold of her, and who knows how often your uncle did? I would imagine there isn't much of her left." She paused as she took a puff on the cigar.
"You will have the same problem with all the others, assuming you survive long enough to find out which are safe. On the other hand, I can make new pets anytime I want; can you?"
He sighed, defeated. "What are your terms?"
"I want your business."
Stunned, he stammered for a moment before he blurted out, "What?!"
"You heard me. I'll keep you on as manager, but for a salary; I get the profits."
"But that's outrageous!"
She grinned. "Most definitely."
Too shocked to reply, he took a step backwards and bumped into his desk by accident, causing the whiskey bottle to slosh. When he turned to look, his eyes fixed on her ceramic jar.
"You know," he drawled as he walked around his desk, "you won't even be around tomorrow at this time." Once in front of the window, he turned to stare her down. "All I have to do is wait until you disintegrate, and then you'll be out of my life forever. Would you like to reconsider your demand?"
She chuckled again. "There is nothing to stop me from creating a replacement before that happens."
He snatched up her jar and held it over his head. "You think so?" He backed up towards the window.
She said no word, just stared at him with a look like a venomous snake ready to strike. She stood up, the cigar and glass vanishing. "Are you threatening me?"
He wasn't bluffing, but his original plan was to force her to capitulate. At that moment, however, something about her manner set off an alarm in his mind, and he tried to spin around to throw the jar out the window.
He couldn't move. His muscles were all tense, but no matter how hard he willed it, he couldn't even budge a single toe. It felt like he had been turned to stone.
"Put that down!" She growled, her voice grating, deep, and reverberating. She stood in the middle of the room, her face darkened and her eyes flashing as her hair became a bonfire.
His body moving like a drunken marionette, he stepped back towards the desk. In stiff but rapid jerking movements, his arm lowered and his hand opened, dropping the jar onto the blotter.
"Come around here!"
He straightened up and made his way back around the desk to stand in front of it, facing her. She raised a hand, and he felt a force clamp around his neck and lift him off his feet. The paralysis vanished and he grabbed at his throat, but he felt nothing except his own skin.
She closed her hand, and he felt his larynx constrict, cutting off his breath. She pivoted around and flung her arm to one side, opening her hand. He flew through the air, crashed into the wall, then fell onto the couch and bounced off, to land face down on the floor. He lay there for a few minutes, wheezing and coughing, when he saw her feet just in front of his face. He scrambled back against the couch and raised his hands as if to ward her off as he stared up at her.
But her appearance had returned to normal. Standing with legs apart and her hands on her hips, she looked down. "So, what's it to be?"
He opened his mouth to speak, but she interrupted him. "Before you say anything, keep one thing in mind. If you ever try t
o destroy me again, I will slowly flay you alive over a charcoal grill. And believe me, I can keep you alive for a very, very long time. You are simply a commodity to me, necessary for now, but still disposable if you displease or bore me. Do I make myself clear?"
Terrified, he closed his mouth and nodded.
"Good." And she held out her hand.
He shrank back.
"It's okay, I don't harm one of my employees; at least, not unless he provokes me, such as not trusting me? Then I just make him a pet." She favored him with a wolfish leer.
He stared at her slack-jawed for a moment, and then took her hand. She yanked him to his feet with minimal effort.
She turned and walked towards his desk as he felt himself calm down.
"You realize you don't have a lot of time yourself, before your own salts run out."
She paused after pulling the chair out, and lifted the jar. "There's several kilos in here, enough for a few years at least. That should be sufficient time to discover a way for me to return fully to life."
As he watched, she sat down and placed her jar in front of her, beside the whiskey bottle. She then picked up the smaller ceramic jar and tossed it to him. He fumbled with it trying to catch it, but managed to keep from dropping it.
She leaned back. "Helen is your best bet for an ingenue." She lifted her legs and propped her feet up on the blotter. "I think you're right about needing a new receptionist; I'll pick out a suitable girl tomorrow. But we won't put Lucy back in storage just yet. I have other uses for her. Meanwhile, I need you to go out and buy me some clothes. Nothing too fancy, just so I can go outside. I'll do my own shopping later. After you get back, make arrangements with that director