Soul Survivor

"This is a story for the

When A Man Loves a Woman event

."

"So, no shit, there I was...."

Some of my best personal stories begin with those words. And this one is no different. I had just stepped out of the gate from Russia to the US when two men in black suits and dark glasses flashed their IDs and directed me to a waiting vehicle where a third figure, a woman this time, drove me downtown for a little chinwag.

"...so I was balls deep in this tiny little Asian gal when her husband walked in on us. And do you know what he says? This is the best part... he says, damn it all to hell, woman, you started without me."

When I am nervous, I start rambling on about anything and everything. The driver laughed while the two stoic sorts just cracked a smile. I had no clue what the NSA wanted from me, and they weren't talking at all, not yet, anyway. I noticed something unusual about Agent John and Agent Doe as I thought of them respectably. John and Doe wore matching suits, and my first thought was they weren't NSA but Men in Black. After what had happened at the dig site, anything was possible, and nothing was off the gaming board.

"Same suit, same glasses, damn, you two even wear the same shoes. Tell me, who is your fashionista? Is it Claire Browne? No, she only works for the ultra-wealthy. Bobbie Bo Brownstone? Nah, he died in that skiing accident," I said, using air quotes when I used the word accident. "We all know that was a professional hit."

"I heard a rumor that he was fucking the Vice President, and his wife put out the contract on poor old Bobbie Bo," the driver joked, but John and Doe visibly reacted to her jest.

"Hmm, white knuckles, profuse sweating, and I can practically hear your hearts doing the Fandango. So, someone did off Bobbie Bo, interesting; I can put that in my memoirs."

"Jesus guys, lighten the fuck up," the driver continued. "It was just a fucking joke."

The silence was oppressive, and I recognized hostility just before it broke the surface, as well as anyone.

"Did I ever tell you about the time I nailed a nun on the altar of an Evangelical church? No. Oh, you guys are gonna love this one. Her name was Sarah, which means princess in Hebrew or something or other. Anyway, Sister Sarah was out of her habit, the clothing not the routine, and pounding down tequila like it was nobody's business in this little dive near Tijuana, that's in Mexico, in case you didn't know." Five minutes later. "And that is how I busted a nut in her ass, and Sarah found God again, all in the same day."

"We are here," Doe said in a voice that lacked anything I would call emotion.

The driver never left the car, and John, Doe, and I took the elevator to the local NSA subsidiary office. As we descended, I began counting, and when the doors opened, I announced that we were one hundred and fifty feet from where we started. John's mask broke for just a second and confirmed my assessment. He may or may not know that my dad designed and built elevators for a living. He taught me a few tricks when estimating how far, up or down, an elevator car will travel. The environment was unassuming, as any office space would be, but the background of white noise fiercely wore on my inner ear. Did they pick a frequency that affected potential interviewees? I decided to ignore it for now and see if anything stood out as we headed to one of the interrogation chambers. As we walked along a long hallway, I began.

"Nope. Nope. Mmm, nope. This one is perfect. It is in the exact center of the floor. Ooh, number six, how can you go wrong with lucky number six?"

"Fine, it doesn't matter. Step inside."

"I noticed you didn't say please. That's okay; I'll let it slide for now. Well, would you look at that, a drain in the middle of the floor? I suppose that makes waterboarding easier to clean up, eh?"

That did get a visceral reaction from both agents. If I had expected them to perform the interview, I was wrong, dead wrong. They left, and three minutes later, the older man wearing sweatpants and a hoodie joined me.

"Welcome back, Professor Pickman. I hope your journey was uneventful," he said, and I tried to figure out his place of birth from his accent. It was a subtle thing, but the way he emphasized certain vowels, this guy had been to a speech coach.

"Boston," I said, and the man flinched. "I have a secondary degree in language and phonetics. Let me guess, you had a lisp as a child, and your wealthy parents sent you to someone to get rid of it."

"I must have missed that in your file. Your main field of study is protoculture and archaeology, is it not?"

"Give the man a cigar," I replied. I slipped off my shoes and tried to get comfy in the not-so-comfortable chairs. "I give you credit; these chairs suck."

"I know. Why are you back? I thought after what happened; you'd never set foot on US soil ever again."

"When needs must."

"That's not an answer," he fired back.

"No, it is an answer, not the answer you want; there is a difference. I am here to settle my late brother's affairs. He left me the entirety of his estate. His widow isn't thrilled with the situation, but hey, that's life."

"I think you missed my point. You could have handled things via a lawyer. Why are 'you' back?" He placed a heavy emphasis on the word you.

"Not sure I catch your drift," I said and watched the spot between his eyebrows as it furrowed as his annoyance grew. While my dad built elevators, my mom was a psychologist and trained people in interrogation techniques, and I grew up with this shit.

"You made a public spectacle when you left that you'd rather die than face that woman again."

"Oh, that... well, shit happens, and the world revolves whether you like it or not."

Mom called it foreplay when an interrogator and interviewee first met. The first few minutes are crucial to set up any kind of rapport. I touched my smartwatch and started a timer. My best estimate is that the second interviewer would arrive within five minutes and change the dynamic. The older man didn't miss my action.

"Checking the time?"

"Nope. Testing a hypothetical. You'll see. Shall we continue? I came back to confront the bitch who murdered my brother."

"His death was declared an accident."

"Pfft," I made a rude noise. "I read the reports, and it stinks how poorly they handled the scene, and the so-called professionals dropped the ball. She fucked the lead investigator, and no one returned to reassess the evidence. They closed it, fired the detective, and walked away."

"I can't argue with you," he said, and I smiled. The first thing to create a connection is to agree before you verbally corner them. Use their words against them and force them to crumble. I gave him enough to chew on until his partner arrived. "Can you tell me about the dig?"

"Sarnath?"

"Yes. How did you deal with the threat of radiation?"

"We wore badges that measured our exposure, but the site is at the bottom of a river valley, and the terrain surrounding it is composed of diorite, which shielded the village from the blasts. The shortest war on record, thirteen minutes and twenty-eight seconds."

"It still leaves me in a cold sweat when I think of how close we all came to annihilation. There are rumors you found some interesting artifacts in that abandoned tin mine."

"I can't talk about that; anything related to the carbon dating reports or the objects unearthed is strictly taboo, like when you shtupped your little sister in the ass back in the day."

I hadn't meant to say that; it slipped out, but the visual impact on the agent was immediate and impactful. The plume of scarlet followed by his breaking out in a sweat, a clear indicator I had hit home and deep, just like his pecker buried in his dear sweet sibling. Was it her idea or his? I was leaning on him coercing her and promising how good it would feel. These flashes of insight since the event at Sarnath had become a two-edged sword. I watched his mouth open and shut several times, and as he began to speak, two things happened simultaneously, my watch's alarm sounded, and the door to this room opened. Enter the partner. I bet they would blow a gasket when they played back the video.

"Welcome, Special Agent," I said. "You are right on time."

The woman, young, beautiful, and noticeably stacked, did that Spock thing and raised one eyebrow as her gaze drifted between her partner and me. I openly stared at her tits and began to ponder, pierced, puffy, inverted nipples, or all three, now that would be epic. By the time she sat between me and the door, a common enough tactic, I had her figured for a racing stripe girl with red pubic hair to match the dark scarlet mane she had on top.

"Your mother trained negotiators and interrogators for twenty years," the woman said. "Impressive, and it is clear she passed on her wisdom to you."

'Gisella,' the name popped into my head along with the song Hotel California.

I began humming the tune, and she reacted but very subdued; ooh, she was good at this. "Special Agent Gisella, I grew up with psychology, tactics, math, and engineering. My parents were loving, and my childhood was delightful."

She was still emotionally reeling from her name coming from my lips. The old man swooped in to save her, and I let him. I began talking about the things that happened at Sarnath not covered by the gag order. Ooh, speaking of gags, I knew down to my bones that Gisella liked to be tied up and fucked rotten. She could deep throat like a champ, and her ass was anything but virginal.

"Fracking is what made the site so valuable. It isn't just the US that uses that technique to eke out every last drop of oil from the ground. When the Russians did it, they weren't as cautious as their American counterparts. Oligarchs don't care if they ruin other people's lives as long as they enrich their own. They pumped in water which reached a layer of soil that supported one of the mine's sublevels. It found a way in and flooded the tunnels initially. The long-term damage arrived a year later and within a week of my arrival. I was supposed to be the new coordinator for the site after the army unduly conscripted my predecessor, a Russian national. My fieldwork was limited, but my highly sought-after organizational skills got me the assignment. After the chief archaeologist died of a heart attack, they put me in charge of the entire dig."

"Did you murder Marsha Blackburn?" Special Agent Gisella asked.

"Wait, she's dead? Well, fuck me sideways; that's news to me. That'll make things simpler for me."

"A woman is dead," the old man growled. "Show some respect."

"If I were to offer remorse for her passing, it would be a lie. I thought you two were after the truth. That cunt murdered my brother, and I have zero sympathy regarding her."

"Then why are you crying?" Gisella asked. I reached up and touched the stream flowing from my eyes. "That doesn't look like zero sympathy to me."

"It breaks my heart that my brother loved her intensely, and her betrayal shattered his worldview. He supported me through college after our parents died. We relied on each other, and when the assignment took me to Russia, his unshakeable faith in me drove me forward."

"So, you didn't love her?" The old man asked, and the intensity of my hate surprised me.

"No," I growled, and the ceiling lights flickered. "Must be a power fluctuation; it happens to everyone."

Oh, but it doesn't, their matching expressions said. There are backup generators that kick in instantly if a fault or flutter is detected—microseconds between the cause and effect. That momentary chink in their armor alarmed them more than anything I could say.

"The floor collapsed three days after I arrived. The tunnel from levels six to seven gave way and revealed the worked stone. The carvings were unlike anything encountered in that region or the world. The carved material wasn't local."

"You mean they quarried it from another site and brought it to the mine," Gisella said.

"Well, yes and no. Let me explain. Yes, the builders extracted the substance from somewhere else. I can't say more because of the gag order."

I wished I could say, no, the stuff did not possess a terrestrial origin, but I didn't need that level of legal trouble. However, when I mentioned the word gag, the woman reacted. Gisella's pink tongue licked her upper lip just before she began chewing the lower one. The word gag hit that portion of the brain controlling pleasure, and instinct kicked in, and I couldn't wait to see how this ended. This was the positive side of hyperawareness and intuition.

"So, the lawyers legally restrained you from answering any questions about the dating of the dig," the old man asked, and Gisella squirmed in her seat long enough for me to see the words were affecting her. I suspected that someone trained her and did a damn good job.

"I couldn't have put it in better words myself. The law binds me to remain silent. I would kindly ask you not to ask any further probing or penetrating queries about the temple or its artifacts. It was, in fact, a shrine to an unknown deity that time forgot. The thing was hideous and deformed, and only the sickest minds could have conceived such a being. The cult had infiltrated the dig by posing as one of the local diggers. Somehow they knew the complex was there."

"Stop," the old man interrupted. "You said shrine, and now you are talking about a complex. Which is it?"

"Are you asking me how big it was?"

"Yes," Gisella said. "Can you describe it and share its dimensions?"

Oh, sweetheart, we are going to get along fine, I thought. "Our initial penetration into the site hinted at a tight, narrow passage. It was so snug we had to turn sideways to enter. The basreliefs were terrifying, and the tunnel claustrophobic. The first chamber appeared to be the only one. Wisely, Simone, a French student, tied a string to her jeans, and another student held the other end, allowing her to pull wires and cables through the slit more easily. Once through, they could tie a power cable to the string, and we could pull it to us, and of course, the line would have a length of rope taped to it so we could bring even heavier things through the gap."

"Smart girl," the old man agreed. "Rope is a lot sturdier than string."

"Silk rope is the best," Gisella offered. "Soft yet robust."

I imagined Gisella naked, trussed up like a shibari whore with her nipples clamped and her pussy soaked. The agents frowned when I smiled.

"Sorry, my mind went away for a moment. The shrine was a domed affair with leering carvings hovering above us, waiting to pounce. We use the same architecture today when we build cathedrals. The arches draw the worshipper's eyes to heaven. In this case, the dome's apex held an astronomical design, a black constellation. Indira found the secret door. After a month of careful work, we removed the rubble and got our first unobstructed view of the shrine and its horrors. Indira and her boyfriend couldn't resist the urge to defile the area by having sex down there. While he was going at her from behind, she grabbed ahold of the mechanism to open the secret door. Indira's shouts were so loud they didn't hear the hidden panel open. While they smoked a cigarette afterward, Indira spotted the dark gap in the wall. Still naked, they rushed up and told us the news. I was too thrilled with the report to chastise them for fornicating in a ground-breaking site."

"Indira was one of the victims of the attack," Gisella said.

"What a waste of life; they all had such bright futures snuffed out instantly."

"Where did the opening lead?" The old man asked.

"I am glad you asked. It was a wide cylindrical tube that opened onto a mile-high dome." I paused and let the image form in their minds before continuing. "The sheer proportions of the pillars holding up that dome were mind-boggling. And at the center...."

They weren't after me for the death of that cunt whose real name I won't bother whispering, but information about Sarnath and the dome. If they were serious, why not seek to overturn the legal restraints keeping me silent? Answer. The powers that be didn't want them to know, or anyone else for that matter. They were scared and had every right to be; the dome builders and their cult had not been idle all these years. Suddenly I needed to test the waters and find out why they had dragged me to this place.

"Marsha Blackburn dead," I muttered. "I thought that little cockroach would outlive everyone. She was a survivor, and now she's gone."

The table's surface lit up and acted as a display monitor. Autopsy photos showed what someone, something, had done to Marsha. The crime scene images were the most telling, and I knew how she had perished, but the who remained a mystery.

"I take it the analysis failed to identify that smelly substance. It is biological but evaporated after a time degrading beyond salvaging."

"You know who did this," Gisella accused.

"No, I know what killed Marsha, but the who is a mystery."

"Care to share your insight?" The old man asked.

"What, and end up in Arkham Asylum? No, thank you. I like my freedom. If I were you, and this is just a suggestion, mind you, close the case and walk the fuck away. Marsha's death will only lead you to sorrow like the dig at Sarnath."

"Marsha was a Russian asset, and her real name was Nastya Kulakovskaya, but we can't find any connection between her and the Kremlin."

"When did you meet Nastya?" Gisella asked.

"Five years before she married my brother. I spent over a decade of my life on that damn dig. After a while, I needed a break, and one of the village elders suggested a nearby retreat. So, I placed Vera Summerfield in charge and took a slow-moving boat down the River Skye to the village of Ulthar. I don't know if you've ever been to Egypt or the Middle East, but history is heavy in the air there. Seeing the contemplative Sphinx and the weathered pyramids makes you feel microscopic by comparison. Ulthar's culture predates the so-called cradle of civilization by thousands of years. Bubastis, jealous of Ulthar, mimicked them, created the goddess Bast, and made cats sacred. Their laws were severe when it came to harming a feline in any way. But Ulthar revered them millennia earlier."

"I've never heard of Ulthar," Gisella said.

"It is like the Hamptons; only the wealthiest and most powerful can enter the city. Why they let me stay is still a bit of a mystery. Perhaps one of my ancestors impressed them, and they gave me sanctuary because of that."

"Go on."

"Well, despite it being the dead of a Russian winter, Ulthar felt like the height of spring. Volcanic springs feed the area, and the surrounding mountains sheltered it from the worst the weather had to offer. The women of Ulthar have long mimicked their feline brethren and move with a grace that you will find nowhere else. As I stepped off the boat, a small glaring of cats gathered around me. On seeing this, the high priestess welcomed me with open arms and an open bed. She was only nineteen at the time."

"So, just like that?" Gisella asked with a subtle grin.

"Just like that, talk about hospitality. For such an isolated community, the genetic diversity was quite impressive. Color, creed, nationality, and raw beauty were everywhere. The women of Ulthar were a sight to behold. No, there are no men that call Ulthar home."

"Sounds like paradise."

Gisella glared at her partner for that little comment. "Is that where you met Nastya?"

"Yeah," I whispered. "Nastya was an acolyte of Bast, though I didn't know it at the time."

"I'm confused," the old man interrupted. "Which of you were in love with this woman?"