THE LOT: Sum of One’s Parts

A red haze began to descend, thick and cloying, smothering him like a damp velvet pillow pressed over his face. The air in the bar had turned to a hot, iron-scented soup. Andrew scanned the shifting throng, his eyes darting from one nightmare to the next. [observational] It wasn't just a crowd; it was a curated collection of the lost. He saw a woman in a tattered black dress, her mouth carved into the jagged, permanent grin of Elizabeth Short. She was dancing in the arms of a man whose spectacles and cold, intellectual stare could only have belonged to Leopold. [chilling] Across the floor, a man with the vacant, wide-set eyes of the Zodiac swayed in time with a girl whose face was a perfect, pale match for the grainy newsreels of the Romanovs. They were all there—the victims, the perpetrators, and the vanished—a fluid, frantic hive of people who had been violently subtracted from the world above. Nearby, a man in a shabby, salt-and-pepper Victorian frock coat stood with his back to the bar, his hands hidden in his pockets as he watched a woman who bore the frantic, wide-eyed look of a Whitechapel victim. [chilling] Across the floor, a man with long, dark, greasy hair and the decayed, twisted smile of Richard Ramirez sat alone, his eyes hidden behind aviator sunglasses as he tapped a rhythm on the mahogany. [disturbed] Every face was a headline. Every movement was a rehearsal of final grizzly moments. Andrew felt the pressure of their collective history pushing against his chest, a weight that no amount of Macallan could drown. Andrew looked away and to the bar, where Buddy Chapman sat, he wasn't selling medical supplies anymore. He was methodically hacking off his own forearm with a rusted bone saw, his face twisted into a look of ecstatic relief. Mariana pulled him close on the dance floor. Her eyes were alight, and beneath her silk slip, the black sigils on her skin began to hum with a bruised, purple light. [whispering] "Don't worry, Andrew," she whispered. "I have chosen you. You are mine now. No one will ever touch you." The music in the lounge wasn't a melody anymore; it was a rhythmic, industrial thrum that vibrated in the marrow of Andrew's bones. He pulled away from Mariana, his hands slick with a sweat that smelled of blood and oil. He didn't look back at the bar, where the medical salesman was finishing his grim surgery. He didn't look at the Black Dahlia, whose hollow eyes were fixed on the rhythmic swaying of the crowd. He ran. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit markusmachado.substack.com