my problem. As you can see,” he holds out his right hand toward the burning body, “there is a lot of crazy shit that happens outside my gates.” He turns his attention back to Dimitri, speaking with him in a manner of severe importance. “Let’s go down to the front of the property with the dogs and do a sweep. I want these assholes off my land in five minutes.”
The two men take the sniper rifle and move hastily out of the room on their way to the ground floor. Rory turns to Teddy, who simply holds his hands out to his sides and shrugs his shoulders. After a minute or two of staring into the distance, Rory retreats back to his bedroom to wait out whatever happens during the rest of the night.
As night turns to morning, the men settle their differences during a hearty breakfast that becomes an all day party. Anthony has his personal physician draw a pint of blood from Rory before allowing him to drink. Then he stays true to his word by telling Rory that he is free to leave anytime. But he offers a warning of unmistakable severity: that there are at least two groups trying to obtain him through violent means. Anthony explains that the man in the courtyard had been a Chinese enforcer, sent to repay them for the bombing on the road a few days earlier.
After Rory weighs out the dangers of the groups that are looking for him, he determines that it is safer to accept Mr. Pezzloni’s offer. After talking it over, he is excited by the terms that are laid out. In exchange for one pint of blood per month, he will get: free room and board, twenty-four hour protection, and twenty thousand dollars to spend on a credit card each month. This also includes the freedom to party as much as he wants except for three days during the month when he will have to be sober for a clean blood draw. Anthony’s other stipulation is that Rory stay away from his secure building on the east side of the property where the dogs are housed. Since Rory is not a big fan of man-eating dogs, and has no desire to find out about Anthony’s business dealings inside the fortified facility, this condition is not a problem. The two men have an understanding that the building is off limits and for employees only.
Over the next fifteen months, Rory lets himself go wild. He starts off his day with a hard workout in the private gym on the second floor. Then he goes for a shower and steam in the basement, before enjoying a lavish breakfast near the pool. By this time, the girls are starting to arrive for the day, and they begin with some strong drinks, which leads to some intensive clean and dirty play in the pool. Once he has had his fill of pleasure for the morning, he goes up to his room to do some shopping on the Internet for: books, movies, music, games; every form of entertainment he can find. As the girls become more comfortable with him, they start invading his schedule during odd hours of the day, and their sensual attacks are enticing. It begins one morning in the gym at 5 am. A gorgeous brunette starts working out right in front of him while he is using the cabled weights to strengthen his core. He soon realizes that she is teasing him, stretching on her back with her legs wide open, pouring water on her stomach, and staring at him with bedroom eyes as she rubs it into her beautiful skin. Soon he is peeling off her workout tights and shoving himself inside her with aggressive desire, and to his astonishment, she demands that he remain inside the entire time.
These encounters become bolder as time goes on, especially when Rory has been drinking. He doesn’t realize how wild his love life has become until he is getting a beautiful, young Japanese girl from behind as she holds onto the edge of the travertine table beneath the clear gazebo. Meanwhile, Anthony and Dimitri stroll casually past and wish them both a good morning. He responds with a smile, and drunken thumbs up, as he continues thrusting inside her. The women are constantly coming and going in this extravagant paradise, and Rory develops a world palette for his sexual desires. He plays dangerous games and tries to push his threshold every day to something even more spontaneous and naughty. At his pique, Rory has as many as five women in a day, and he vaguely remembers the life that was his before he became the goose. He sets a goal to have sex on every surface within the house outside of Anthony’s bedroom, and within just forty-five days, he is able to achieve that goal.
His desire for entertainment leads him to begin experimenting with different forms of art and he tries everything: watercolors, pottery, body painting, graphic design, video editing, and so much more. Just like a young, spoiled teenager, he soon finds himself wanting to do everything, and thanks to the alcohol, he feels that he is talented as well.
The Pezzloni private physician soon advises that drinking is bad for Rory’s health, and since he has become an alcoholic, they must provide him with a cocktail of anti-anxiety medications. These medications make him paranoid at times and cause insomnia. Pezzloni has a surefire cure for alcohol abuse, as he simply beats Rory until he cannot get up from the floor every time he catches him drinking. After a concussion and a few broken ribs, he soon prefers the cocktail of medications over the savage beatings.
During this fifteen month transformation, Rory becomes more a force of nature than just a man, and his typical outgoing, tenacious attitude, has been replaced by a set of compulsions, and a haunted paranoia. His grasp on reality shrinks with every passing hour, and at times he can simply lie next to the pool, watching the patterns of light dancing across the surface of the water as if it were his own private lightshow.
His hobbies turn from activities of inspiration and creation to pathologies of destruction. Soon his library of videos is replaced by every type of martial arts training he can find. He begins to read books on: weapons, traps, explosives, and war tactics. When Anthony catches him ordering real weapons on the Internet, those weapons are taken away, and he instead brings in a personal trainer to teach Rory karate. On some level, both men know that this drastic change of course is unhealthy, and Dimitri reinforces this theory after he discovers Rory nearly getting into a battle with one of the German Shepherds. But Pezzloni is far too amused by his changing behavior to restrict Rory beyond what is necessary for good business, and shrugs off Dimitri’s warning.
One evening when they are having a guys only football party, Rory and Anthony get into an argument about his son Eli, which enrages Anthony enough to break Rory’s nose. In the chaos that follows, they both scramble to locate a container for the blood, and Anthony finds himself holding Rory’s head over an ashtray, allowing the blood to drain into the dirty burned tobacco and paper. Both men laugh maniacally when Dimitri and Teddy tell them ‘how fucking crazy they look.’
As Rory’s paranoia grows worse, he catches glimpses of a beautiful brunette woman in a blue designer dress and sheer black scarf, wandering through the house late at night. He has dreams about being pistol whipped and tied down naked, with cold water being poured over his body. In this dream, his mouth is covered with a towel, and cold water is poured over the towel, while he is punched in the stomach as he gasps for air. One night he even sees Eli The Whisper standing at the bottom of the stairs, glaring up at him with his facial piercings, ponytail, and unmerciful blue eyes. In another dream, he sees flashes of a German Shepherd’s mouth growling and biting at the air a few inches in front of his face, as he lies naked against a cement wall. These dreams are all too frequent, but with the cocktail of medications, he has a hard time knowing what is real.
At this fifteen month juncture, Anthony steps into Rory’s room quietly, carrying a pistol in his right hand. He looks down at the younger man, a muscular and highly volatile creature, ready to lash out at the world at any minute. He strokes Rory’s hair softly with a bit of affection, realizing that he cares almost as much about him now as the German Shepherds. Rory’s hands are seized up near his stomach in tight fists, and he is muttering aggressively in his sleep. He is clad only in boxer shorts with the blankets draped over the e
nd of the bed, leaving him bare.
“The friend of my friend is my enemy-“ Rory says in an energetic burst of speech. “The enemy of my enemy’s enemy- My friend is the enemy’s enemy- My friend is my enemy, is my enemy.”
Anthony glances over at the nightstand next to Rory’s bed. It is covered with various pills from the cocktail of prescription drugs his doctor created to keep Rory away from alcohol, allowing him to party without damaging his body. Pezzloni shakes his head after a moment, sets the pistol down next to Rory on the bed, then picks up the trash can and slides all of the prescription pills inside. Once the pills are all gone, he removes the trash bag, tying it off neatly before holding it close to his waist. Then he picks up the pistol from the bed and smiles at Rory.
“Rory, wake up,” Anthony orders, smiling at first, but then becoming frustrated and impatient. “Rory, WAKE THE FUCK UP!”
“Morning!?” Rory announces opening his eyes wide; not so much a greeting, but a rhetorical question.
“No it isn’t morning, my friend,” Pezzloni replies with a smirk. “Hey, I have some good news for you this afternoon. You’ve kicked your drinking habit; now you don’t need the pills