Chapter Text
I used to think that the nightmares my lover had on a nearly-nightly basis were the results of a not-so-nice childhood and an incident when he was older involving the Stasi, but after what happened two days ago, it's no longer so. So now I’m huddled on our bed, my shaking, terrified-out-of-his mind beloved curled in my arms, drifting in and out of a medication-induced sleep. I’m afraid to move, else Richard will wake up and freak out again, but if I don’t hit the bathroom soon, my back teeth are going to float.
“Reesh?” I whisper, brushing my lover’s hair from his eyes. He peers up at me through swollen, red eyes and whimpers softly. “Reesh, I gotta take a pee like now. I’ll only be gone for a couple of moments, okay? I’m not going to leave you.”
“Think I’d better come too. All that water and Gatorade’s gone right through me,” he croaks. I release him from my arms and we stagger towards the bathroom, both of us bone-tired and wobbly-legged. I get everything done quickly so I can keep an eye on Richard to make sure he doesn’t pass out and hit the floor. Once he’s done, we make our way back to bed; this time he gives me a moment to peel out of my sweaty, wrinkled clothes and help him out of his. I don’t care that we’re naked; all I want to do is lie down and close my eyes for just a while. Richard clambers into the bed and curls into my side, resting his head on my shoulder and slinging an arm around me. I can tell he was halfway to sleep before he hit the mattress; he’s now breathing deeply and the arm around my waist is heavy. It doesn’t take long before my eyelids grow heavy and I drift off, the events of the past 48 hours replaying like a bad movie in my head.
::
I hadn’t seen Richard in a couple of days; he was working his ass off on the new Emigrate album and the video for the first song off of the album. I’d been a little upset at first that he was choosing to stay in downtown Berlin rather than make the half hour trek back to our flat every evening but knowing my beloved as I did, I figured his hotel room was nothing more than a place to dump his gear and maybe get a couple of hours sleep before heading back to the studio. He’d been moody as hell the last time I’d talked to him; I could tell he was tired and wanted to come home but was going to be his usual stubborn self and see the project through even if he ran himself down to nothing and fell asleep standing up when all was said and done.
“I wish you were here,” he’d said, a yawn distorting his voice during one of our pre-bedtime phone calls. “My back is killing me and you’re the one person that can get the knots out of it and not punch my spine through my chest.”
“Poor baby,” I sighed, rattling the ice in my glass of water. “Hey, why don’t I come down tomorrow and visit? You’re all but done with the video, yeah?”
“Can you? Oh man, sweetheart, that would be awesome!” Richard replied, his voice becoming cheery and bright again. “I’ve missed you so much even though you’re only a half hour away from here.”
“I could be persuaded to spend the night too,” I purred. “That is if you don’t have any other plans, like, oh, working around the clock till you pass out.”
“For you, my love, I’ll clear my calendar. Especially if you bring some…ahem…toys and treats along.”
“I think I could manage that,” I replied, feeling a warm tingle dance through my nerves. “Anything special, or do you want me to surprise you?”
I heard someone yelling in the background for Richard to get off the phone and back to work. “Ah, shit, I gotta run. Surprise me. Baby, I’m sorry to cut you off but…”
“I know how things are. Go do your thing and I’ll see you tomorrow around noon,” I said, anticipation making my head spin. As we rung off, I chuckled evilly to myself, saying, “Surprise you, eh? Oh my dear, sweet Reesh, you’re going to be quite surprised…”
Traffic the next morning around the city center was unusually heavy; I got to the site where Richard and the rest of Emigrate were filming the video later than I’d wanted to be. The forbidding, grey building that rose up against the somber, rainy sky made me shiver. I wasn’t sure what it had once been used for but it literally reeked of old pain, sadness, and depression. From what Richard had told me, the entire inside had been gutted to the bare brick walls, then areas partitioned off for use in video or photographic shoots. I pulled up into the small parking area near the back door and slid out of my car, pulling my jacket closer to me to keep the cold air that whipped around the buildings from freezing me down to the bone.
The back door was guarded by a security guard tucked away in a little booth; I told him who I was and who I wanted to see and he ushered me through the heavy steel door just as a strong wind blew by and shoved us both inside the building. He rolled his eyes at the wind, pulling a pass out of his jacket pocket and handing it to me, saying, “I’d swear this is January but the calendar says it’s May.”
I clipped the pass onto the bottom of my heavy, black jacket and said, “I had to check my calendar this morning that we suddenly hadn’t been transported back to Winter. Where’s the video shoot going on?”
The guard pointed over my shoulder to a fire door that had seen better days. It was covered with flaking, dirty white paint and didn’t quite fit into the frame. “Go through that door and turn right. The shoot is at the end of the hallway. I’d keep my jacket on, it’s cold down there.” I thanked the guard, zipped up my jacket all the way and made my way through the door and down the frigid hallway. By the time I reached the area of the building that had been set up for the video shoot, I was blowing on my fingers and muttering about global warming. There was no notice on the door that I needed to stay out, so I carefully pushed the door open and slipped inside, peering about for Richard.
“Hey Christoph!” he called, popping out from behind a heavy light. While we didn’t run towards each other, Richard practically bounced over to greet me while I stood in place and waited for him to reach me. He grabbed me into a breath-stealing hug and dropped a kiss on my forehead; I managed to brush a kiss along lips quickly before he all but dragged me over to the set. “You have to see this!” he crowed. I followed along, feeling very much like a child’s toy being dragged along by its leash, trying to greet the people I passed by and not trip over my feet, cables, packing boxes or loose bits of unidentifiable things. We reached our destination without me wiping out; Richard stood aside, pointing to a mockup of a padded cell. I came to a stumbling halt, blinked at the set and said, “It’s…a padded room. Are we converting one room of our place into a padded room and this is how it’ll look when it’s done?”
“No, goofball. I’m supposed to be a patient in a mental hospital and the rest of the band are gonna walk by the door, peek in the window and walk away. Or something like that. That’s not the cool part,” he said, lifting his chin up so I could see that instead of his usual indigo-cobalt blue eyes, he was wearing contacts that turned them a glossy, royal blue, almost like the vampire’s eyes in the “Underworld” movies. “I kinda like ‘em. I originally wanted those freaky white lenses like I used to wear but these look better. Everyone else has the white lenses, so it looks really cool. I’d show you some of the footage we shot yesterday but the director’s being a hard-ass about not letting anyone outside us and the crew see it.”
By that point, a skinny, rat like little man dressed in layers of grey and eye-bleeding yellow parka and almost-sneer plastered on his ugly face. He set off every warning bell I had and I was surprised Richard wasn’t showing any signs of wanting the person booted off the set. Instead he nodded at me and said, “This is Vadim Parizikoff. The label and management liked his work, so here he is.” I didn’t make a move to shake the creepy man’s hand; I stood with my arms folded and hands shoved into my armpits.
“Hi,” I muttered, stepping a little closer to Richard and sort-of putting myself between him and the video director. He peered up at me through thick, soda bottle bottom lenses and rasped, “Oh, you must be Christoph Schneider! I’m pleased to meet you. Let me borrow your ...friend for a bit, yes? I promise to give him back unharmed.”
I had no choice; I gave Richard’s shoulder a quick squeeze and watched him follow the director over to a gigantic rolling cart that was laden with computer equipment, monitors, and cables snaking everywhere. I found a rickety stool in the corner and perched on it, watching my lover listen to Vadim and my stomach twisting with nerves. A cute young lady wearing a pass around her neck that said “Filmtech” came over to me, asking if I needed anything and I said quietly, “Have you ever worked with this...Vadim...before? I’ve never heard of him.”
She turned her back to the set and pretended to fiddle with her iPad, her voice pitched low so only I could hear her. “He’s supposed some new hot-shot video director out of England, and his name’s Stan Miller, not Vadim something-or-other. That Russian name and accent is as fake as you can get. I guess he did videos for fashion shows or television ads, I’m not sure. All I know is Jonas Åkerlund was supposed to have this gig and suddenly, he didn’t. I signed on just to work with Jonas, not this twit. I don’t know what the record label’s thinking. I know he and Joe Letz have nearly gotten into a fight a couple of times over what he wanted him to do. How Richard’s keeping his temper I have no idea.”
Someone got under Joe’s skin that much? I thought to myself. To keep the tech from getting into trouble, I said, “Can you do a couple things for me? One, if Joe’s around, tell him I’m here and I need to talk to him. And if you don’t mind, I’d like a bottle of water.”
The tech smiled at me, ruffling her platinum blonde pixie cut and said, “Anything. My name’s Sarah, yell if you need anything else.” She cat-footed across the creaky wooden floor and vanished through a door across from the set, leaving me to gnaw on my fingers and wonder why I was half-scared out of my wits. Sarah returned in less than five minutes, winding her way through people, equipment and cables, a bottle of water in one hand and Joe padding along behind her. His eyes lit up when he saw me and we exchanged greetings while Sarah pulled up a short stepladder up for Joe and handed me my water. She left us sitting in the dim light from the windows; once I was sure she was gone, I said to Joe, “What the hell is going on here? I’ve heard you and the director almost came to blows, I’m sick to my stomach from nerves and I have no clue why.”
Joe pulled up the hood of his jacket, covering his streaky black hair and hiding his face from the light. “Fucker’s got some nerve, Schneider,” he said, bouncing his left foot up and down the way I was doing with my right. “I don’t mind the makeup, the creepy costumes but slamming Reesh around, smacking him, screaming at him? It’s not cool. This ain’t like the shoot we did for “Eat You Alive.” This guy’s a vicious little bastard and yeah, he’s got my perv-o-meter going off loud and clear. “The loony bin idea’s a good one, but he’s got Richard getting bounced off the walls. You haven’t seen any of the stuff we’ve shot so far, have you?”
I shook my head no, leaning down at Joe’s gesture so he could show me something on his cell phone. “This is the stuff I managed to get before that dick saw me and screamed his head off for me to stop taping. You’re not going to like it.”
What I saw on that tiny video screen turned my stomach inside out. Curled in the corner of the padded room, in a bloodstained straightjacket and bondage trousers, feet bare, his hair a mess and black eye makeup smudged down his face was Richard. He was staring into the camera with a defiant look, one eye blacked and those odd blue eyes shining out of an unusually pale face. There was a tiny dribble of dried blood at the corner of his mouth and his lower lip was split. There wasn’t any sound to go with the video, thankfully, so Joe could show me the short clip and no one be the wiser. The video blanked for a second, then showed Richard being hoisted up by his arms by people in faceless masks and dragged down a long hallway, unable to walk thanks to the leg straps on the trousers being pulled short. The blank-faced attendants flung him down the hallway; thankfully Richard knew how to fall properly and while it looked like the tumble was a bad one, I could tell he’d rehearsed the whole thing and wasn’t hurt.
Joe clicked the phone off and looked up at me. “Yeah, that’s the tamer stuff. There’s one part where Vadim’s off camera, screaming all kinds of shit at Richard, and he’s cowering in the corner like a whipped dog. Schneider, I know it’s not real but this isn’t right. If I didn’t know better, Reesh is scared shitless of him.”
My temper was just this side of boiling when I heard someone yell for Joe to get into makeup, so he stood up, saying, “I hope you’re going to be here awhile, maybe you can keep our lovely director from killing your sweetheart---and my friend. Something nasty’s going on, I know it.” And with that Joe trotted away from me, leaving me to sit and shake. I wasn’t sure how much pressure I could put on anyone as this was Richard’s project, not a Rammstein project, but I certainly wasn’t going to sit by and watch some no-name “director” have my beloved thrown around like a sack of beans.
I sat and stewed over what I wanted to do, what I’d seen, and was getting ready to go look for Richard and ask him what the hell was going on when he came up to me and plopped down on the stepladder that Joe had vacated. I looked up and almost fell off my stool; Richard was in full makeup and costume, except the straps on the jacket and pants were undone. He grinned at me and said, “I saw Joe over here with you. What did you two talk about?”
“Uh...drummer stuff,” I stammered, trying not to gape at how awful Richard looked. If I hadn’t known it was all paint, powder, and fake blood, I’d have been dragging him out of the building at warp speed for the nearest hospital. “By the way, how much of this is your idea? You look pretty roughed up.”
“Well...the insane asylum idea was mine, kinda nicked it from the “Mein Hertz Brennt” video. But the rest of it is Vadim’s. It looks really fantastic, fits in with the song, and all the getting bashed about and such, that’s all been planned out so no one gets hurt,” Richard explained, fiddling with the hem of the straightjacket and not looking at me. I knew that mannerism; Richard wasn’t telling me everything and no amount of cajoling, threatening or pleading would get anything out of him. I sighed, put my arm around his shoulders and said, “You’re not comfortable with this, are you?”
“No one is, really,” he replied. “Joe threw a huge fit when Vadim wanted him to slam me up on the wall and scream in my face, so he told Joe to do the throwing and he’d do the screaming. It wasn’t pleasant, let me tell you.”
“I thought Jonas was supposed to be directing this?”
“He was but the label said he didn’t want to do it, so they called in this dude,” Richard said. “And what’s weird is I know Jonas said he’d be more than happy to do the video but when I tried to talk to him on the phone about all this, he hung up on me and hasn’t answered any of the e-mail I’ve sent.”
Now I knew something wasn’t right. Jonas was one of the more easy-going video directors we’d worked with and for him to blow Richard off like that was not like him. I made a mental note to call him as soon as I could and went back to sitting quietly at Richard’s side, my right pinky finger twined with the pointer finger on his left hand. I wanted so badly to say something but I couldn’t think of anything that made sense or didn’t make me sound like I was being the bitchy boyfriend. Richard was too quiet himself; when Vadim called him over to the set, he reluctantly let go of my fingers.
“All right folks, this is the last shot of the day and the last one for the video,” Vadim said, waving his arms around like a windmill. “I want this to be a closed set, only the people who have to be here can stay.”
The look Richard shot me across the room was a cross between indignant and run-screaming-for-the-hills panicky. “Closed set? What the hell?” he asked, the merest hint of nervousness in his voice. “This wasn’t part of the discussion when you showed us the story boards.”
“I’ve got a great idea to wrap this whole thing up, Richard. Trust me, okay?”
“Wait a second. What are you going to do?”
“We’re going to have the actors who tossed you down the hallway yesterday pick you up and drop you on a stretcher, that’s all,” Vadim cajoled. “The reason I want the closed set is I know some videos and pictures have gotten out and I don’t want anything else going on the Internet. It’s the last shoot of the day, c’mon Richard.”
“Can you give me a couple of minutes?” Richard asked, glancing in my direction. I nodded quickly; once Richard was back with me, I said, “I’ve got to run to the bathroom. I’ll be back in a minute, okay?”
“Okay. Sweetheart, am I overreacting? None of this whole shoot has felt right to me,” Richard said, his eyes wide and scared under the makeup and contact lenses. I stomped my feelings of unease into the dirt and said, “I don’t know. Maybe it’s this building. God only knows what it used to be. It’s been giving me the creeps since I got here.” I dropped a kiss on the top of Richard’s head, found the friendly tech, Sarah, got directions to the bathroom and headed off at a near-trot, wanting to get back to the set before anything else went on. As I finished washing my hands, a knock sounded on the bathroom door and Sarah called in an urgent voice, “You need to get out here and now.”
“Huh?” I asked, stepping into the main room and nearly running over Sarah who was hovering at the door. “What’s wrong?”
“Don't ask, shut up and run,” Sarah replied, grabbing my jacket sleeve and towing me along behind her.
Something in my gut told me Richard was in a bad spot, and I went running for the set as fast as I could. When I hit the door, it was locked from the inside and I almost pulled my wrist out of place as I tried to yank the door open. My heart was pounding like mad as I gave the knob another jerk, then my heart all but stopped when I heard a scream coming from inside that sounded like a damned soul crying out from the pits of Hell. It was the most unholy, terrifying noise I’d ever heard and I knew I’d go to my grave hearing it in my nightmares.
“Richard! What the fuck...!” I heard Joe yelling from behind me. “Schneider, what the hell’s going on?”