The Haunted Stripclub

disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons real, imaginary, or other is purely coincidental.

It was a run-down, dilapidated sim. They say Old man Rust just let it all go to pieces once "the madness" started taking him. When they found him, they said he was trying to cut the evil out of his soul with a hacksaw. He's...harmless..now. After the operation. Lobotomy patients rarely cause any problems. He appears to respond to youporn videos of dwarves and emus.

"What are we doing here?" whined Calvin.

"You're not...scared, are you, baby?"

"Woman, I'll kick you in the nuts like I'm scared."

"Well, c'mon then, baby-boy". Yulia beckons him inside...wiggling those curvaceous hips and flashing that seductive grin.

Calvin mutters under his breath "Goddammit, I thought I was rid of this shithole..." He finds the circuit breaker for the room. Half of the lights flicker on, protesting their rude awakening.

From the entrance, they can barely recognize what was once a stripclub. Dust and spiderwebs appear to have overtaken much of the interior. Looming shadows consume the farthest corners. Squinting, they try to make out where the stages used to...

All of a sudden, they hear a metallic squeaking from above. The rhythmic, repetitious sound of...bedsprings?

"I thought you took all of the beds, Cal?"
"I did. I have all of mine"

Yulia and Calvin ascend the stairs to the second floor, the squeaking growing louder and louder. They arrive at the bedroom door.

Calvin yells "Tak, is that you? Could you and whatever-you're dating-this-week please stop?"

The squeaking continues, unfazed. Yulia stifles a giggle. Calvin reaches for the handle and opens the door.

The squeaking is deafening, they both avert their heads, covering their ears. Yulia finds the lightswitch.

The bed is empty, but the mattress continues slamming up and down, its metallic springs screaming for all their worth. Calvin recognizes something familiar and touches a spot on the bed. The mattress makes a few last gasps of rusty squeaks and expires.

"Oh, I see. Yeah, this is a Stoker Sex-Gen version 1.5. See? You can tell by the detailing. They were very buggy...lots of script errors. Didn't sell very well. Man, this is an antique. Hard must've been desperate to use one of these..."

"That squeaking." says Yulia with a shiver. "Ugh! If I had to listen to that all day, every day, I'd go..."

"..insane?" Calvin quickly answered. They both looked at each other and silently agreed to head back downstairs.

By now, their vision had adjusted to the reduced lighting. They can now clearly see the remains of the stage and the dancepoles. The stagelights were shattered, half of one stage appeared to be the loser in a chainsaw fight. Human-sized bitemarks decorated the barstools.

The poles all had deep gashes and dents in them, save one. Yulia hops up and runs her hands over the cold, dry metal. "This feels familiar" coughs Yulia as she mounts the dusty pole.

"It looks like Madman Hard took an axe to the others." Calvin peeks inside a hat, only to find a maggot-ridden corpse of a rabbit. "augh!" he screams, tossing the body outside.

"C'mon, Yulia...let's just go. We have better stripperpoles in our goddamn bathrooms for Christsakes..."

"Don't be such a buzzkill, Cal. I'm feeling that...thrill...again." Yulia quickly climbs to the top, executing an inverted downward spiralspin like it was her first stripper audition.

He cautiously looks around the club once more before taking a seat.

Just as he was getting comfortable with Yulia's one-woman show, the power goes out. Calvin curses Hard under his breath, like so many, many times before. The room is totally black and instantly grows cold.

Unable to see or hear anything, Calvin asks..."Yules...are you...?"

"calvin...please help me...."

A smoky glow envelops Yulia. Her body starts twisting, contorting in horrific directions. Her ankle pops with that sickening, wet sound you hear in butcher shops. Yulia starts screaming, crying for help. Her makeup is now a melted mess on her face.

Calvin is paralyzed in his seat, struggling to grasp what is happening...he feels a squeezing inside his own chest. He rips apart his shirt, tearing at the buttons. They both watch as Calvin's skin starts splitting, forming the words "a vingança é minha".

Yulia claws at the stage trying to make it to the door but the phantom mist refuses to let go. She looks back only to see her knee dislocate. She almost blacks out from the stabbing pain. A horrific laugh emerges from Calvin's throat. His body spasms in the chair as chains start wrapping themselves around his limbs, pulling downward into the floor. Flesh and bone give way as he's quickly reduced to a limbless torso, helplessly impaled on the shaft of the broken barstool. Blood pours onto the dusty wood flooring, his grey, pupil-less eyes roll in their sockets and he croaks the phrase "a vingança é minha"

On the brink of insanity, Yulia tries to concentrate...Russian? Italian? Latin?!?

Her left arm breaks in four places in a very ugly compound fracture. She howls like a tortured animal at the pain. Gritting her teeth, she struggles to the barstool, smearing the blood away with her one good arm, reading the carving in what-used-to-be-Calvin....listening again for the death whisper "a vingança é minha"

Portuguese!

She watches her world spin around, hearing her own neck snap. A chilling, tingling, merciful paralysis takes her. She swears hearing someone say "mwa ha har"...

Epilogue: Authorities are still trying to piece together yesterday's double-murder at Hard Alley. "The bodies were...disfigured." says Officer Dumart. "At present, there are no signs of anyone else involved. Investigators have also discovered the remains of a female neko ....possibly Mexican in origin....sealed inside a crude plywood cube. The cube itself was found submerged in the underground sewers of the club. Autopsy results are pending but it appears that the neko was buried inside the cube still alive."