Page 12 of Pick Your Poison

“Are you all right?”

“Yeah, yeah I’m fine. I’m just going to take a shower and have some coffee. My head hurts a little.” I don’t relish the half fib, but I just need to get off the phone and process what I’ve just remembered.

“Okay. Call me if you need me.”

“I will.”

I end the call and toss my phone to the sofa cushion beside me then stand, beginning to pace the length of my living room.

Flashes of last night play like a movie that is being skipped through. I see sex, sweating bodies, reddened skin from being whipped with a belt, Carter’s hands on my hips as he kissed, nibbled and made me shiver in absolute ecstasy.

Screaming… crying… begging…

I could hear it all in the distance, but I couldn’t react. It’s like I was in a hazy cloud where only he and I were present but others were watching through frosted glass.

The screams weren’t pleasure filled or excited, not at all. With a clearer mind this morning, the shocking revelation sinks into the pit of my stomach with the force of a brick.

Those were screams of absolute terror, and I didn’t do anything to help them.

???

Two hours, some coffee, and a shower later, my mind is still reeling, trying to piece together any information I can remember from last night. I was clear headed entirely up until Carter and I started watching the scenes around us. That’s when things start to get fuzzy for me, but I don’t feel like I took any type of drug or even drank too much alcohol. It’s just holes in my memory, like I watched the night through a peephole.

But those screams are clear as day in my brain. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to unhear them. Between thinking about them, and the enigma that Carter Bellevue has become for me in a matter of forty-eight fucking hours, my mind is working overtime.

With another cup of coffee at the ready, I place my laptop on my kitchen table before taking a seat and firing it up. I’m hoping Google can help me find out more about the man I was with last night, and to see if there has been anything in the news regarding accidents or what have you at the hotel.

I scroll through multiple news outlets, national and local, but there is nothing that jumps out at me that could explain the screams I heard. Surely, I couldn’t have been the only one to hear it? Something like that draws the attention of any and everyone in the vicinity. Right?

I head back to the search engine and type Carter’s name into the text bar, and soon, his face populates my screen.

Most of the pictures and articles I find are about events happening at the Bellevue Hotel or about his family's contributions to the city. At base level, there is nothing out of the ordinary about him other than his extreme wealth and his predilection for kinky sex in front of others. Hell, show me ten powerful men and I’ll show you that at least eight of them are into things just like that, some even more kinky.

But my gut tells me to keep digging, to learn all that I can about him.

This leads me down a rabbit hole of old articles, building blueprints, police reports from accidents at the hotel… anything that is public knowledge. It doesn’t take long to notice a pattern of missing persons that have some kind of connection to the hotel in their story; be it the last place they were seen alive, or an area that they frequented, the link is hard to ignore.

How has no one looked into this even a little? Everything seems to be swept under the rug or held up by red tape of some kind. It doesn’t make any sense.

It’s taking everything in my body to keep myself planted in this chair instead of marching down there to confront him, to ask him every question that’s in my brain. Not only to alleviate guilt, but because I feel like an addict searching for my next hit, and I know that I’ll only feel satisfied when I’m near him. I don’t know how I know it… but I do.

My eyes begin to burn a few hours in, and my stomach begins to protest the intake of coffee and lack of food to accompany it. I raise my arms above my head, stretching out my back while I inspect a picture linked to an article about a remodeling contract for the hotel back in the 1930s. There are two men up front in sleek suits, shaking hands, but that’s not what catches my eye though.

There’s a man standing off to the side, trying to stay out of the photographer’s shot, leaning in to whisper something into another man’s ear.

That can’t be right.

I right click on the photo to make it bigger and when it fills my entire screen… there is no denying it.

Carter Bellevue is in this photo.

Carter Bellevue is in this photo taken over eighty years ago.

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