Gethsemane Hall by David Annandale Read Free Book Online Page A

the orgasm. Resurrection was old hat and unwanted.
    Where was the love? She wondered that again back in the dressing room. Her feet were aching from the heels, but nothing new there. That wasn’t enough to sour her on the gig. Maddy Tibbert had climbed out of the coffin and was towelling off the blood, in a hurry for her first post-show cigarette. “Went pretty well,” she said.
    “I thought so,” Sturghill agreed, her voice flat.
    “You sound chipper.”
    Where was the love? “The show’s getting to me, I guess.”
    “Girl, this was your baby.”
    “I know. I know.” The trick was so old it was cool again: the box painted with lengthwise stripes so the connecting sections between the removed middle and the head and legs looked thinner than they really were, leaving plenty of room for Tibbert to bend herself into position. The gimmick was the blood. Sturghill’s inspiration had been an old Herschell Gordon Lewis movie, The Wizard of Gore . In the film, the gory illusions had turned out to be real. Sturghill ran with the idea, and pretended to mutilate her assistant. She’d loved Lewis’s bloody tongue-in-cheek attitude, wanted shock and satire in her own act. The early shows in the goth clubs had been fun, the audience buying exactly what she was selling. She was pretty sure they were in on the joke. She hoped they were. Either way, word spread, the gigs improved, and then the call had come in from Paris. And here she and Tibbert were, gravy train at full throttle.
    So where was the love? Not in the audience. That was the problem. They weren’t buying the satire. They might claim to be. All the reviewers did. But Sturghill wasn’t buying what they were selling. She knew what was going on. Rocks were being got off, far too many of them, over the sight of one woman carving up the other. Her fault for playing up the sex. What happened to irony? she wondered. She knew the answer: it had become a first-rate alibi for guilt-free indulgence. I’m not a misogynist, the audience said. I don’t really like seeing women pretend-butchered. I’m appreciating the social commentary. Now get me hard again, you bitch.
    The love had been leaking away for a while. The breaking point, the moment where the love had died and the freeze had set in, had been Pete Adams killing himself. The poor bastard had no family and was buried in England. At least that meant Sturghill had been able to attend the funeral. The event had been too depressing. Adams had been a smart guy, too smart to wind up believing his own bullshit, but there he was, another audience with no irony. Dead in his seat. They’d met in college, had hung out a fair bit before he’d joined the Agency, a decision that Sturghill still had trouble forgiving. She didn’t want to believe that someone she liked, someone she respected, would work for that outfit. At least she was aware of the little bit of irony in her disappointment. She must have some faith after all, if someone could betray it.
    They’d stayed in touch, though. Just enough so that the network of friends spread the word when he died. A few made it over from the States. A handful more sent wreaths and cards. Most were absent and silent.
    Sturghill changed out of her fishnets. She balled them up and threw them on the chair.
    “They do something to you?” Tibbert asked.
    Sturghill made a face. “Isn’t any of this bothering you?”
    “I never bought your whole make-a-statement idea, you know that. So it’s all good.”
    “There are guys creaming to see you bleed.”
    Tibbert shrugged. “Like this is news. At least they’re paying for it. They don’t touch us, and neither of us is naked. Things could be worse. Shit, Kristine, we’re making coin, and we’re living in Paris. I’m trying to see the problem here.”
    Sturghill didn’t answer . Look at what you’re doing, girl, she thought. You were working on a humanities degree. You were going to change things. Look at what you’re doing. Look