The Black Door Cultists

Rat had mentioned the Black Door. Called it a religion. There had been a shrine, and something about it worked. So they had some mojo, and four missing women. That was a starting point.

She followed the hallway, making note of the weird graffiti down here. It looked too highly stylized to be random tagging. Somewhere between Mayan and H. R. Giger, demons and vulvas, flat nude women dancing beneath moons, splaying open their pussies like Sheela-na-Gig. It set the reporter's teeth on edge, but if it was related to the cult, it could be useful...

Then the Black Door stood before her. Dark as a piece of interstellar space set down in concrete, just opposite a freight elevator. Lois rehearsed her stories in her head. This wasn't the first time she'd infiltrated a den of potential criminals. You just had to tell them what they wanted to hear.

She knocked. A fragment of blackness slid aside.

"Whatta ya want?"

It was a Bludhaven voice, one of those a New Jersey mobster would give their back teeth to sound like, but definitely female, pitched low and rough. Lois put on her best Suicide Slum voice, hoping the Bludhaven bouncer wouldn't be able to tell the difference between it and the real thing.

"I heard about this place...I came down here and I made an offering at the shrine...and this spark kind of leapt out at me...and something told me that this was it, this is where I had to be."

The eyes widened.

There was a grunt as the door slid aside. Lois noted that it wasn't a standard door at all, but a piece of armored plate. No hinges, just railed tracks. Getting out of this place might be a lot harder than getting in.

The bouncer was a big woman, over six feet tall, and built not like a bodybuilder, but like those really strong guys at the gym, about four foot around at the gut, arms like a couple of hamhocks. Her wrists were thicker than the reporter's biceps.

"Alright sister," the bouncer said. "You come on in. The priestess will want to talk to you."

Lois gave a nervous smile and stepped inside, hearing the door crash shut behind her. She felt a flutter in her belly and thought, just for a moment, of the baby. Almost instinctively she laid a hand on her stomach, let her eyes adjust as she absorbed the scene.

It smelled of human beings too long in close confinement. There was one long room, thin mattresses on either side. Women were there, naked, mostly sleeping. Some simply stared mindlessly ahead, rubbing their legs. On the wall, more of the graffiti, but more elaborate. Small 30 watt bulbs provided lighting, but too few to really give more than shape to the darkness. At the back of the room there was an open space for another door, set off by dark curtains.

"Straight back," the bouncer said, as she resumed her squat on a stool by the door. Lois doubted she left the place, there was a covered bucket nearby that screamed "chemical toilet."

Lois Lane stepped forward, through the rows of women. Some of them she thought she recognized, but most she didn't know. Homeless, maybe. Most were thin, very tired looking. Their eyes didn't follow her as she passed. Something was broken inside of them, empty and hungry.

The curtain parted at her touch. She found herself at a crossroads. Smelled food to the left, shit and piss to the right. Kitchens and bathroom, respectively. Straight ahead...incense. Spices. Lois moved forward warily.

It was a space big enough for a congregation of sixty. Maybe it had once been some kind of meeting room, but all the furniture was gone now. A long slow table was festooned with offerings, the walls made up with elaborate murals, except for the back wall which consisted of a gigantic white screen.

Lois stared at the screen. Porn was playing some ancient black-and-white stag reel from the 1950s. Two women in bed together, eating each other's hairy cunts out with enthusiasm. It provided the only light in the room and there was no sound coming from the speakers mounted to the wall at all.

A woman in a black veil and nothing else knelt before this altar. Lois could see her hands move between her legs.

"Why do you come here, daughter?" The voice echoed oddly in the cavernous space.

"I heard...I heard there were people here that could help me." Lois began with her Suicide Slum accent again. "I made an offering at the shrine and..."

The wet schlick-schlick of the woman's fingers stopped. She turned to stare at Lois, and for the first time the reporter got a good look at her...and with shock, recognized who it was.