Story: The Back Room

This fills a prompt from creepy_shetan for the Thursday: Shadows and Darkness prompt call at comment_fic and the "West End Blues" square of my January Public Domain Day Bingo Card. 670 words, this is the 7th story in the OtherWorldy series.

The Back Room

Behind the red door at Barbed Wire was a dimly lit hallway, walls papered in moody black and purple damask with flickering sconces throwing light in small pools just beside each heavy mahogany door. Carnelle had a bizarre moment of dissonance as she compared this darkly sensual hall to the generic grey stretch of hallway she’d traversed earlier in the day.

She released Costa’s hand as they cleared the threshold, confident he’d follow her to the room of her choice. They walked the hall and she let her long, elegant fingers flick across discreet “do not disturb” signs hanging from several crystal doorknobs. They found a room towards the end of the hall, and she pulled their own sign from a pocket by the frame, hanging it delicately on the knob before entering after Costa and shutting the door behind them.

“Well, this certainly isn’t why I normally drag a man back here, but let’s handle our business,” Carnelle murmured as she settled on the navy-blue duvet of the brass four-poster bed that took up the back wall of the room. This room was done in dark blues and golds, with a celestial sky painted overhead.

Costa was goggling around at the array of furnishings in the room when he said, “No, I suppose not. What is all this even for?” He was reaching towards a rack on the wall where an assortment of floggers and paddles hung, each wrapped in clear plastic with a sanitation seal. “Is this a torturer’s chamber?”

Carnelle snorted. Silly Dream. “Nah kid, to the people in this club this is a pleasure chamber. Some humans really get off on a little spice with their sugar.”

He released the royal blue leather fraternity paddle he’d grasped, letting it swing back against the wall. “Right. That must lead to at least some bad dreams. Things gone wrong kind of nightmares. I’m sure I’ve a brother who’s specialized for that.”

“Why didn’t the council find whichever Son of Somnus was specialized for murderous dreams to catch this guy? Why tap you, and make you change focus?”

“There are thousands of us out there, and I imagine finding the singular Dream who has dominion over the types of dreaming I’ll be searching for would take a lot of Council resources. I’m easy to find; I signed up to serve the council centuries ago,” replied Costa evenly.

“Really? I was assigned council duty as a type of community service for breaking a few human interaction rules. I certainly didn’t volunteer that first time.  Why’d you?”

“I’m…bored? My work is very satisfying, but it really is all I’ve got happening, and filling my daylight hours becomes tedious sometimes.” Costa scuffed his combat boot against the hardwood floor, then looked up and met Carnelle’s eyes. “I can tell you don’t want to work with me.”

She thought about softening her response, but just replied, “Yeah. I Hunt alone, and I don’t see how you’re going to be helpful with this. Your skills are a little too, ah, ephemeral, for what we’re supposed to get accomplished.” Her hand waved in a gesture of vague frustration.

“I think I’ve got a unique way to help you, that you haven’t considered. My primary role as a Dream is to cause humans helpful nightmares, but that’s certainly not all I can do. Skimming and spying on the disturbed dreams of a whole neighborhood is what I offered to do when the Seven first spoke to me.”

“What?! You can just see the dreams of an entire neighborhood? How long does that take?” Carnelle demanded.

“I could probably clear three or four city blocks a night?” Costa offered.

“Well, what the hell are we dicking around here for? Let’s head over to West End, where my last lead went cold, see if your dream peeping heats things up again.”

Grasping her unlikely Hunting partner by the hand once more Carnelle drug them back down the hallway, through the heaving crowd, and out into the night.