Before the Black Door

The old freight elevator had seen better decades. It had the slightly industrial smell of old paint and grease, the numbers worn off the plastic buttons. There was something else to the smell too, Lois noticed—a familiar antispectic smell underneath it all—but she couldn't quite place it. Maria shivered as she guided Lois in and shut the door. As the cage began to descend, Lois stared into the eye of the camera in the corner of the elevator.

"Are they watching us?" The heat began to increase as they descended.

"No-one's on duty." Maria said. "There's nothing going on tonight. Th-the sabbat isn't for a couple days."

Lois could see the the bartender sweat, and from more than just the rising heat. Her eyes were drawn once again to those pointed, pierced nipples that strained against the mesh shirt. The barmaid looked younger now, and scared. Her lips worked, almost as if in a prayer, and Lois felt drawn to them...

Maria did not shrink back as Lois' right hand found the back of her neck; did not resist as she was pulled into the kiss. Lips suddenly locked, an exchange of hot heavy breath, and then Lois' tongue brushed against hers...and they were lost there, for a mad minute, eyes closed, tongues swirled against each other, explored this strange space they were in. Foreign teeth, the slimy, muscular invader, the pulsing beat of their hearts as they clasped each to the other.

The elevator clanked softly into its landing. Maria broke the kiss, eyes half opened, and Lois turned as the doors opened with a series of soft clanks.

A warm, wet waft of air slammed Lois in the face. It was hot as a grow-house in the basement, and she immediately started to perspire. The air, too was rank with a kind of animal odor—a gym or bathhouse smell, human bodies. The thump of the music upstairs barely penetrated.

Lois stepped out of the cage and gazed around at was once an underground parking garage: bare concrete walls and floors, painted concrete columns, drains set in the floor. Most of the fluorescents were dead or flickered fitfully, leaving most of the place in shadow. Every surface had been tagged, as if generations of graffiti artists had come to ply their trade...provided that their trade consisted entirely of crude erotic works, interspersed with what looked like runes or symbols, picked out in black and white against the red and pink of cartoon vulvas and penises. The reporter in Lois picked out lines of cuneiform, Egyptian hieroglyphics, and more obscure alphabets.

The brightest lights were on a black door set into the wall opposite the elevator—probably originally the offices for this part of the building. The graffiti that surrounded the door took on an H.R. Giger-esque quality. Cocks and cunts seemed to flow into each other with a machine precision, hints of exoskeleton ribbing here and there. She stepped forward, searched the tags for a signature. Took out her cellphone—zero bars, no surprise—and snapped a few pictures.

The cage clanged shut behind Lois.

"I can't...I can't go any farther." Maria said. The elevator started to rise. "I'm sorry."

Lois steeled herself in the dark. Sweat dripped from her temples, and already had begun to pool at breast and armpit, crotch and waist. Her shirt and panties were already soaked as she stood before the Black Door.