Chapter 1: The Turnpike to Nowhere The Honda Civic smelled like a locker room that had been marinating in Red Bull and cheap cologne for three days. We were somewhere on the New Jersey Turnpike, a stretch of asphalt that seemed to exist in a perpetual state of grey twilight. To our left, the industrial smokestacks of Elizabeth churned out white plumes that merged with the overcast sky. To our right, an endless blur of marshland and power lines. "You can't be a virgin forever, Owen. It’s un-American. It’s practically treason against the Founding Fathers." Mike was shouting from the driver’s seat, trying to be heard over the bass-heavy dubstep remix rattling the car’s blown-out speakers. He was drumming his hands on the steering wheel, fueled by a mixture of caffeine and the manic energy of a twenty-year-old on Spring Break. I was wedged in the backseat, my knees pressed against the cooler. I was the "Third Wheel" of this expedition. Mike and Jason were roommates, gym rats, and the kind of guys who used the word "legendary" to describe a ham sandwich. I was the quiet one. The English major. The guy who brought a paperback copy of The Great Gatsby to a party school because I preferred reading about other people’s tragic parties rather than attending my own. "I'm not a virgin," I lied, my voice flat, staring out the window at a billboard for a personal injury lawyer. "I just don't think we need to pay for it. It feels... transactional." "Everything is transactional, bro!" Jason twisted around in the passenger seat, grinning like a shark. He was wearing neon wayfarers, even though the sun had set an hour ago. "College is a transaction. You pay tuition, you get a degree. Dating is a transaction. You buy dinner, you get affection. This? This is just cutting out the middleman. It’s efficient." "It's a massage," Mike corrected him, checking his hair in the rearview mirror. "A Happy Ending massage. It’s cultural. It’s relaxation. We’ve been studying for midterms for two weeks. We deserve to be pampered." I didn't want to be pampered. I wanted to be back in my dorm room, listening to The National, staring at my phone, and agonizing over whether or not to text Sarah. Sarah. Even thinking her name made my chest ache. We grew up together in Oak Creek, West Virginia, a town so small you could hold your breath and drive through the whole thing. She was studying nursing at UVA now; I was at Rutgers. We were trapped in that purgatory between "childhood best friends" and "something more." We texted every day—memes, song lyrics, complaints about the cafeteria food. But I had never made a move. I was terrified that if I tried to cross that line, the ice would break, and I’d drown. "We’re going to The Red Velvet," Mike announced, swerving across three lanes of traffic to hit the exit ramp for Atlantic City. "I did the research. Deep web forums, Reddit threads. It’s legit. No cops. Clean. And the talent? Top tier." "Top tier," Jason echoed, fist-bumping the air. My stomach churned. It wasn't just nerves; it was a profound sense of wrongness. I felt like a character in a tragedy who sees the cliff coming but can't take his foot off the gas. We hit the Atlantic City limits as night fully descended. The casinos rose up from the boardwalk like glittering, electric monoliths—The Borgata, Caesar’s, The Hard Rock. They promised glamour. They promised luck. But Mike didn't drive toward the lights. He turned the wheel sharply, guiding us away from the ocean, away from the tourists, and into the shadow of the city. We drove past pawn shops with barred windows, liquor stores with flickering neon signs, and rows of houses that looked like they were holding their breath. "Here we go, boys," Mike whispered, killing the engine. We were parked in a cracked concrete lot behind a strip mall. The only light came from a buzzing, fuchsia sign above a blacked-out door: THE RED VELVET SPA. The silhouette of a woman on the sign looked less like a pin-up girl and more like a crime scene chalk outline. "I'll stay in the car," I said, gripping the door handle. "I'll read. You guys go." "No way," Jason opened my door and dragged me out by the sleeve of my jacket. "One for all, all for one. You’re not ruining the vibe, Owen. You’re getting a massage, you’re getting released, and you’re going to thank us." I stood on the pavement. The air smelled of salt, exhaust, and rotting garbage. I looked at the black door. It felt like a mouth waiting to swallow me. Chapter 2: The Antechamber of Purgatory The lobby of The Red Velvet was an assault on the senses. The walls were covered in flocked wallpaper that might have been elegant in 1980 but was now peeling at the corners, revealing the grey drywall underneath. The air was thick, humid, and smelled of cheap jasmine incense masking the underlying odor of bleach and stale cigarettes. A single ceiling fan wobbled overhead, clicking rhythmically: tick-tick-tick. Behind a high laminate counter sat the Gatekeeper. She was a woman of indeterminate age, though the deep lines etched around her mouth suggested she had lived three lifetimes already. Her hair was bleached a brutal, chemical blonde, pulled back into a tight bun. She wore a silk blouse that was too bright for the dim room. She was smoking a slim cigarette, tapping the ash into a ceramic cat figurine. She didn't look up when we entered. She just exhaled a cloud of smoke and said, "IDs." Mike and Jason stumbled forward, eager, handing over their driver's licenses. I hung back, terrified she would see through me—not my age, but my soul. I felt like a child wearing his father’s coat. She glanced at the cards, her eyes scanning the dates with the precision of a barcode reader. She threw them back on the counter. "Hundred bucks for the room," she rasped. Her voice sounded like tires crunching on gravel. "Cash only. Tip is between you and the girl. No rough stuff. No cameras. No phones. You break anything, you buy the whole building." "Yes, ma'am," Mike said, his bravado deflating slightly under her gaze. "Sit." We sat on a vinyl sofa that was patched with duct tape. It let out a long, wheezing sigh as we settled onto it. I looked around the room. On the coffee table, there was a stack of magazines—Car and Driver, Cosmopolitan, and a few in a language I didn't recognize. A plastic fern gathered dust in the corner. It was depressingly mundane. It didn't look like a den of sin; it looked like a dentist’s waiting room in hell. "This is it," Jason whispered, nudging me. "The point of no return." I closed my eyes. I tried to summon an image of Sarah—her laugh, the way she crinkled her nose when she drank iced coffee. I tried to use her memory as a shield against the grime of this place. But the jasmine smell was too strong. It was seeping into my clothes, into my pores. The door to the back hallway opened with a squeak. The "Mamasan" clapped her hands twice. Sharp. Loud. "Girls! Line up!" I expected glamour. I expected the airbrushed fantasy Mike had promised. What walked out was a tragedy. Five women filed into the lobby. They ranged in age from barely legal to mid-thirties. They were wearing silk robes, short kimonos, or lingerie sets that looked itchy and cheap. Their makeup was heavy, designed to be seen under red light bulbs, not the harsh fluorescent strip of the lobby. They didn't smile. They didn't seduce. They stood in a line, shifting their weight from foot to foot, looking at the floor, at their nails, at the ceiling—anywhere but at us. They looked bored. They looked tired. "Pick," the Mamasan ordered. Mike stood up, regaining his confidence. He pointed to a tall woman with dark hair and a bored expression. "Her." The woman nodded and walked toward the hallway without a word. Jason stood up. He pointed to a blonde girl who couldn't have been older than nineteen. She had a butterfly tattoo on her collarbone. "I'll take the butterfly." She followed him. That left me. And the last girl in the line. She was smaller than the others. She was standing at the far end, near the plastic fern. She was wearing a grey oversized hoodie over her outfit, the hood pulled up, casting her face in shadow. She was wearing Converse sneakers—dirty, white high-tops with writing on the rubber toes. She looked out of place. She looked like she was waiting for a school bus, not a customer. "You take Number 25," the Mamasan barked at me, lighting another cigarette. Number 25 didn't look up. She just turned on her heel and walked toward the hallway. "Go on, tiger," the Mamasan sneered at me. My legs felt like lead. I stood up, clutching my wallet. I walked into the hallway. The walls were painted a suffocating shade of maroon. The carpet was sticky. I followed the grey hoodie into the dark. Chapter 3: The Red Room Room 25 was the size of a prison cell. It contained a massage table covered in a scratchy pink towel, a small sink in the corner, and a single metal folding chair. A red lightbulb hung from the ceiling, casting the room in a sickly, feverish glow. There were no windows. The air was colder here, frigid, as if the building itself was dead. Number 25 walked to the sink. She turned on the tap. The pipes groaned. "You want a shower first, honey?" she asked. I stopped dead in the doorway. My hand was still on the doorknob. My heart missed a beat. Then another. The voice. It wasn't the voice of a seductress. It wasn't the harsh rasp of the Mamasan. It was soft. And it had a twang. A specific, rolling lilt that belonged to the Blue Ridge Mountains. A sound I hadn't heard since I left West Virginia two years ago. "Uh... sure," I managed to squeak. I stepped inside and closed the door. The latch clicked, sealing us in. I went into the tiny bathroom cubicle attached to the room. I didn't shower. I just turned the water on and stared at myself in the dirty mirror. My face was pale, green under the bad lighting. I looked terrified. Just get through this, I told my reflection. Pay her. Sit there for an hour. Don't touch her. Make up a story for Mike and Jason. Just survive. I turned off the water. I took a deep breath. I opened the bathroom door. She was sitting on the edge of the massage table now. She had taken off her sneakers. She was scrolling through her phone, the blue light illuminating her chin. She had pushed her hood down. I stepped forward. The floorboard creaked. She looked up. Under the harsh red light, the heavy makeup couldn't hide the structure of her face. The slight bump in her nose from a softball injury in eighth grade. The way her left eye was slightly smaller than her right. The faint scar on her chin. I felt the world tilt on its axis. The room spun. "Misty?" I whispered. She didn't react at first. She squinted, trying to focus on my face in the shadows. She looked annoyed, waiting for a customer to stop being weird. Then, I stepped into the light. Her phone slipped from her hand. It hit the floor with a loud thud. Her mouth opened, but no sound came out. Her eyes went wide, vast, filled with a panic so raw it was physically painful to witness. The blood drained from her face, leaving the rouge standing out on her cheeks like bruises. "Owen?" she gasped. It was barely a sound. It was an exhalation of horror. She scrambled off the table, backing away until her back hit the cold wall. She pulled her hoodie tight, crossing her arms over her chest, trying to make herself disappear. "Oh my god," she hyperventilated. "Oh my god. No. No, no, no." "It is you," I said, my brain misfiring, unable to process the data. "Misty. From Oak Creek."
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