Hey everyone!
Let me get to it.
I'm rebooting my series The Truth About Us. As much as I liked this series it missed on a lot of levels and I seemingly wrote myself into a corner. I had also birthed the concepts of the series during a failing relationship. Meaning it was colored with idealism and projections of myself that honestly had nothing to do with the story I was trying to tell. This reboot will be just as grand and sweeping and will share many story beats with the original. But It will be a more mature and developed story and will also have all the lessons I've learned from my past works.
Consider this story the last of my old guard. A special thank you to Captain Andrews for all her help with my creation of this tale. I hope you all enjoy it too! Smaller side note; I had written most of this and finished it long before the conflict in Europe began. I hope it isn't traumatizing to anyone as it has been for some of the people in my life.
MADE IN DEATH'S IMAGE III
PROLOGUE
Mütters Tasche,
1983. A club founded in East Germany where only the most fervently against Russian occupation would party and let loose. This space existed as a way to rail against the oppressive and culturally strangling control of the Soviet Union. Westlicher Herr Verein's existence attracted many different peoples because of what it stood for—it even attracted the occupying Russian spies away from their posts. The sex, drugs, and music filled the air with a pulsating and unending miasma of indulgence. Music blared loudly, drowning out any conversation that wasn't being maintained at point blank range. But no one really spoke at a club like this; it wasn't a place for discussion with men kissing men and women kissing women. Each body joined by passion, and longing to not think of the morning when the sun would rise on their end of the iron curtain. People would enter the club in trench coats or garb that fully covered their appearance only for it to be removed at the door and the men and women within would reveal themselves in skimpy attire or full-on fetish gear. Red lights cast themselves across the room and all that was left were the deep dark shadows of the maze of rooms that was
Mütters Tasche
. But within the shadows, a woman stood watching for someone in particular. She was magically bathed in the shadows, but her eyes would occasionally catch the light and have the silver glow of a wild animal in the black of night.
Across the room, dressed in mostly black, was a man who just watched as the occupants of the room found ways to liberate themselves. His gaze was heavy on the amount of gorgeous scantily clad women around the room, but he was working, or rather monitoring. Pavel's position in the KGB was unique; his mission was to monitor those agents under him that had been stationed on the front lines of the Cold War. He was a sort of security to those who'd be seduced away from the Soviet mission by the indulgences and debauchery of the west. Pavel kept defectors in line, and should they choose to defect... well, they didn't get to make any choices again. The truth for Pavel is that he wanted nothing more than to fall into this haze of desire and passion, to fall into the arms of a woman who would fuck all his worries away. These thoughts of freedom had distracted him and the predator in the shadows emerged and crossed the room in a glide until she was in front of him.
The woman had luscious chin length hair that curled at its ends, and bright brown eyes that glowed red in the light. Her body was dusted with glitter, and she wore a shiny red vinyl bodysuit that left her long creamy pale legs exposed as well as her breasts. Her nipples were pierced horizontally and her brazen choice to not even cover them made Pavel swallow hard. She wore tall see-through boots with red heels to match her vinyl bodysuit. Pavel always considered less being more, but in this case the minimalist nature of her outfit was a contrast of nothing at all. This stranger smiled at Pavel. Her lips were obviously covered in lipstick, but the light of the club made them glisten even redder than anything else. It was like they'd been painted with fresh, wet blood.
The woman giggled softly as the music and lust of the club drowned her out. "I saw you from across the room. I liked what I saw."
"I couldn't say the same," he replied in such a way to convey a false disinterest.
"Does this trick usually work with all the other German women?" She laughed. Somehow her voice cut through the crowd as if her lips were moving, but her voice was in his head caressing and teasing his mind.
"It's not a trick. I'm not interested."
She smiled again and leaned closer. Pavel was expecting to feel her warm breath against his ear. He got goosebumps in anticipation of what she'd say as her pert nipples pressed into him. "That's like saying I'm not an American. Don't you wanna come interrogate me? Find out what a woman like me feels—thinks like on the inside?"
Pavel knew from her first words and average spoken German that she was a foreigner, but her brazen outfit truly gave it away. Even the Germans here trying to cut loose would never have such...confidence. Pavel exhaled calmly, deciding to play her game. After all, the spies here for the KGB were behaving but obviously they weren't astute enough this evening to notice this foreign element within their midst. "What would be in that mind of yours? Doesn't the west have enough rot of their moral fiber to party back home?"
Grace giggled again. "Yes, but they lack a certain je ne sais quois."
Her French was also mild at best, but a cultured American throwing herself at him was practically a fetish all its own in his country. "So you're chasing after the only Russian in the room? You wanna be a national security risk when you go home?" He figured this would scare the young American woman off and he could focus on the task at hand, regardless of how much he wanted to indulge in her.
"No, but I bet you'd like to be. So how about you come with me, and I offer you more than what you're seeing right now? And I'm not just talking about me." Grace's words dripped out of her mouth with a decadence Pavel's soviet conditioning warned him of. That unchecked sexual behavior and the dangers of western women's promiscuity.
Pavel grabbed Grace by her strangely cold shoulders and moved her a foot away from him. It took everything he had not to kiss those juicy red lips or to see those eyes open in pleasure at what he'd do to her body. "Go away woman."
Grace's aura darkened, and she leaned in, overpowering him with shocking ease, placing a hand on his arm, her nails piercing his skin. "Come with me."
His eyes widened, and he looked around the room. It was like everything had moved a million miles away from him. He was frightened of his own handler hearing of the situation, but he couldn't resist the compulsion to follow her. His mind betrayed himself. There, he pulled away quickly and powerfully, ignoring the sting of escaping her grip.
"Who do you work for?" he demanded, his hand moving to the silenced pistol in his jacket. "What do you want?"
She smiled again, but this time her mouth had two unnaturally sharp canines. For a moment, pure primal fear filled him. The women in front of him, he realized, only wore the face of a human being. And yet, he could see the demon behind those eyes so clearly. This wasn't an American, and she wasn't a spy. She was something far worse.
"Do you really believe that will do any damage to me?" she asked, now annoyed by his obstinance, and pointing condescendingly to the Markov concealed in his coat.
Pavel stood his ground. "No. But at the same time, I've never seen anyone survive a bullet to the forehead."
