(I ask that any who even think of following this type of fetish go get a blood pathogens test done for both partners. The risk to your health is incredibly great. With that note of warning enjoy the story)
Chapter 01: Father of Syn
Pulling the car to a halt in the parking lot of my club I shut off the old beast and open the door. It protests being opened with a casket like creak. Getting out I stretch, inwardly cussing the unholy hour of the day. I look at the setting sun and want to flinch away from it. Grabbing my sunglasses from my pocket, I clamp them to my nose hiding my eyes from the light.
Looking into the windows of my black T-bird I agree with my reflection ... it's too damn early. I walk away listening to the engine with it customary pinging of cooling metal. The smell of hot oil and brakes is in the air around it.
I unlock the large wrought iron gateway and push the doors open. The first guest will be coming in soon.
Beth will be here sooner.
I smile thinking about my wife. She called me and woke me to see if I would come to the club early today. Like I would refuse her anything.
Especially this.
As I walk past the tombstones draped in dead roses I check out the front of the club. With the sun still up it has the same feel as a haunted house in the daytime. Like something's not right about seeing it before dark. Like a very important part of it's being is missing.
I run the tips of my fingers across Aleister Crowley's stone. My black nails catching in the granite's rough texture. Reaching into my jacket I take out a single red rose and lay it on top of the pile of withered ones before the stone. His is one of the most popular in the graveyard. Among the men at least.
Elisabeth's Bathory's stone is almost hidden under the piles of roses.
As I stand up a yawn threatens. Like the prophet I wish I was asleep. Maybe just like him. I shrug away that thought. Tonight was going to be fun. I need to stay on an upbeat as much as I can.
Looking up at the dark neon lights above the door, I smile.
'Sanctuary'
Home.
Unlocking the thick wooden doors I swing them open. The inside of my club seems to protest the light as it comes through the doorway. It eats it, swallowing the offender whole into its dark depths.
Just as it swallows the part of me called Todd.
I give a shrug and a side neck pop as the part called Syn steps to the forefront. Walking through the hanging chains and into the large open entrance. I flip on the lights by the doorway. Again I feel an almost angry grumble from my club as I wake it too early. I smile. Like me it will enjoy this night enough to be worth the indignant awakening.
Especially when Beth gets here. Beth? The name sounds almost strange to me now. Looking into the large black framed mirror opposite the door I see myself realize why.
Syn doesn't really know a Beth.
He knows a Baethny. Baethny the Daughter in Syn.
My daughter? No...but most of the people who come here think that. I grin at my white haired reflection. I aged quickly my hair going white before I was thirty.
Baethny...well she could on a good day maybe look twenty. Not bad for a woman approaching thirty-five.
I walk down the red carpeted hallway to the former chapel in this old funeral home. Past the doors that open into rooms where bodies where shown. I look into them as I pass seeing the various themes. The sweet smell from the leather room, that acidic smell that new leather has. It had cost us a fortune to have the walls done in leather but it had been worth it just for that smell.
As I walk past the bondage chamber I see a whip has been left out on the table. I cross to it and shiver at the sensations of pleasure pain I feel from its worn handle. I hang it on the wall next to all its brothers and sisters. My fingers brushing the thongs as I walk away. I can almost feel the hot crack across my spine again as I pass an old friend of mine. I run a finger across the soft leather top of the whipping horse just as I leave the room.
In the chapel I go to the long bar with it massive wooden top. A single peace of wood twenty feet long, five feet wide, it's top a swirl with intricate patterns and whorls. The legend goes it was sawn a century and a half ago from a massive tree in California. It lived most of it's life after that in a brothel in Texas.
It's a good legend. I started it myself.
Getting a lighter from the bar I go around and light the dozens of incense bowls, the drifting smoke from them only strengthens the now permanent smell of sandalwood and frankincense the room will forever have.
I lower the five massive candle chandeliers down to the tabletops they hang over. I light the hundreds of candles, replacing the few dozen that have died and gone to candle heaven. As I pull back up the last one I see a single drop of wax fall to the table top under the first one I lit. The chandeliers would weep hot tears all night.
Going to the bar I reach under it and open a small sliding panel. I pull out one of the few remaining bottles of true European absinthe. I've have had them smuggled to me by friends over the years. I opened this bottle last Saturday and it's all but gone. Counting the remaining bottles, I know I need to make a few phone calls some times soon. I'm getting out sugar cubes and glasses when I hear Baethny's bike pull into the parking lot.
Knowing I have a few minutes, I go through the ritual of properly fixing a drink of absinthe. There is just enough in the bottle for her and myself a drink. I sit the empty bottle on the dark wood bar mourning its loss. I watch a single wet line run down it's side. I pity that waste.
The trickle of cold water melts the sugar cube as I ever so slowly poor it over the silver spoon. When it gone I give the drink a stir with the spoon watching the white green liquid. The anise scent comes to my nose and I wonder again how many thousands of these drinks this spoon has stirred. The spoon, unlike the bar top, really is over a hundred years old.