"Mel? Melody! Anybody home?" It had been a few weeks since Jess had broken up with her girlfriend. She'd put off coming back to get her stuff and Mel wasn't answering her phone. Finding the house locked up with the lights off, Jess had let herself in with the key under the mat, planning to grab what was hers and split.
Once they had gotten past nice-to-meet-yous and into the bedroom, how much of a freak Mel was became apparent. She was really into the whole BDSM thing, getting off on playing with pain and always talking about how she wanted to get some pretty extreme implant work done like chrome eyeholes put under her skin so she could dangle from hooks in the ceiling. It had been a good ride while it lasted, but Jess had to get off before the crazy train got too far out of the station.
From the look of the place, things had gotten worse since she had left, not better. Pornographic collages cut out of Mel's favorite weird magazines featuring women being whipped, bound, and abused were taped to the walls. Some of those hooks she was interested in were dangling in the kitchen. It seemed like nobody had cleaned up for at least a week with flies buzzing around empty takeout containers strewn everywhere and all the shades were drawn. The air seemed stale and musty.
Expecting to find the master bed converted into a bondage chamber of horrors, she instead found it practically vacant. All the furniture was stripped out. The bare floor looked like it had been scrubbed to a shine. Jess turned her nose up at the reeking pitcher in the corner that was full of piss. She thought it lucky that the candles arranged in a pattern on the floor hadn't burned the house down. In the middle of this messed up shrine was what looked like a black and gold Rubik's Cube.
Jess turned it over in her hands, studying the strange symbols and letters from different alphabets etched into its surface, wondering if Mel was always going to go off the deep end or if she had pushed her there by walking out. "I should probably wash my hands after touching this thing," she laughed. The puzzle cube was heavy in her palm and felt warm to the touch. It was weightier than she'd expect of a prop for whatever ritual Mel had played in here with her fuckbuddies. Something about the toy made her forget about wondering where she was going to find her makeup and clothes. The lines on the patterns looked like they were on the cusp of being solved if she just twisted and slid it the right way. Things clicked into place like they belonged and a segment sprung from within the box. Jolts of electricity ran along the runes. She dropped it, afraid.
The far wall creaked and began to move. The boards and brick split apart, fog and pale light spilling through the gaps. Jess wanted to run like hell but was frozen where she stood, feet cemented to the ground, hands immobilized, jaw clenched. Lightning struck the four corners of the room, the energy crystalizing into human shapes, but the beings surrounding Jess looked utterly inhuman. Their ash-pale flesh was a mess of scars, bodies wrapped in leather and latex with hooks piercing their faces and hands. Chains hung from their belts, sharpened blades and whips coiled in and out of peeled patches of skin, open and bleeding. One of them was eyeless, his mouth a lipless rictus grin held back by metal strips as his teeth chattered.
"The box. You opened it. We came!" one of them, a towering figure with a grid of nails driven into his skull, said in an imposingly deep voice as the quartet closed in around her. Jess tried to scream but could only manage a stifled squeak. "You came seeking and now you've found. Oh, yes. Pain unendurable Pleasure incomprehensible! Sensation without limit. Suffering, as you comprehend it, is but a shadow. Come. Feel agony in all its delightful and succulent forms."
Jess found her mouth able to form words. "What? What is this? I don't want any of this."
"The beat of your heart betrays the lie," the tall one said. "A mere interest in baubles does not concern us. Deny or admit it, we care not, but the truth of your desire is inarguable. You could not have solved the Configuration otherwise."
"Melody," Jess said to herself. There had been more lingering feelings that she'd been able to say when she left and she had certainly worried how far the girl was going to go without her to moderate things.
The tall, pin-headed one laughed. "A fitting name for one so eager to have sweet musics played by the flaying of her ligaments. She was a true connoisseur of our decadence. Bear witness."
Through the fog, a woman emerged. It was impossible to tell where the taut bodysuit ended and skin began. A skein of barbed wire was threaded out through the gaunt cheeks and laced through her lips. A lattice of ropework criss-crossed her waist, forming a kind of corset that forced her cleavage to prominence.
"Oh my God, Mel!