Free Scarla by BC Furtney

was wrong with that? They were
surviving.
He nodded out.
    * * * *
    A white van sat outside the gates of 3417 Overlook Drive, bearing the pink-and-black logo,
Veronica’s Cleaning
. The driver’s window rolled down at the intercom box and then … silence. The van’s engine purred, waiting. Finally, a loud buzz signaled access. The gates rolled open and the van drove through, starting the long wind up the driveway. In the den, the Hazmat team had completed the first coat of paint and were refilling their spray guns for another pass. They’d removed their masks and were pulling on matching soda cans, faces glazed with sweat, one Mexican and one white, both leathery thirty-somethings. They paid no attention to the van’s silhouette through the window, as it pulled up beside their own.
    * * * *
    The upstairs hallway was eerily quiet, the only light being the warm spotlights trained on each work of art. The bathroom door at the far end opened in slow motion. The punk emerged, hanging onto the doorknob for balance. He’d left his works on the sink, a fine streak of blood on the wall. His eyes were hooded. White spittle bubbled in the corners of his mouth. He started walking, dirty sneakers padding silently past famous artists he neither knew nor gave a shit about. For the life of him, he couldn’t remember which room his girl had gone into with the tall creeper. He counted doors. Six, plus a clear-glass elevator car with red velvet interior. She was on the right side, he remembered. But
which
right? Had he been facing the bathroom or the stairs when he last saw her? Was he looking straight ahead, or over his shoulder? He would’ve started knocking, but that was the kind of infraction that might get a junkie street urchin tossed out on his ear, and his girlfriend left to provide all manner of freebies just to escape on her own two feet. He decided not to rock the boat, pressing his ear close to the first door before wobbling across the hall to the next. Silence. He moved to the third. Heavy breathing, punctuated by muffled moans. Was it the creeper? The hair on his neck stood up. He’d never eavesdropped on her while she worked. He knew he couldn’t cope. It was one reason why he’d slipped away to get high. He steeled himself and turned the knob, when a thumping splat in the room behind him got his attention. He froze, looking back.
    * * * *
    Inside the control room, velvet curtains were drawn tight to keep the light out. A diminutive, frail figure sat hunched in the plush leather seat of a power wheelchair, surrounded by numbered monitors that covered one whole wall, each screen displaying a different room in the house or area of the grounds. Posed along the opposite wall—standing, sitting, kneeling, lying down—were a dozen RealDolls. The life-size, fully-posable sex dolls were all female and cosmopolitan—white, black, asian, hispanic, with varied hair styles and breast sizes, some scantily-clad, some nude. One had flowing red hair and no face, two others had duct-taped mouths, one was handcuffed. Another was on her hands and knees, a dildo inserted deep in her mouth and another up her ass. Still another was the most disturbing of all—a busty doll simply thrown into the corner, wrists and ankles tied, body riddled with bites from head-to-toe.
    On one of the monitors, Robert was licking the floor clean of his victim’s remaining entrails. Her lifeless body lay a few feet away, crumbled like a gutted doll, used and discarded. The wheelchair-bound man rocked back and forth in excitement, licking his lips and breathing heavy, though climax was impossible. His name was Michael Glissberg, and though he’d never use his legs again, the family money was keeping him entertained until the day he died. So what if he had some peculiar ideas of entertainment? He wore a salmon button-down with a cardigan tied around his shoulders, sans pants, a blanket draped over his lap to hide spindly white legs and the catheter tube that