The door to room 420 closed behind Gordon Knight with a luxurious muffled click. His heartbeat resounded in his ears like the drumming on an epic metal anthem as he fumbled with his belt buckle. Lisa's hands clasped his wrists, soft but persuasive, staying his hands.
"There's no hurry, good sir Knight. We have all evening! I always find things are so much easier if we're both relaxed and comfortable." Lisa directed Gordon's attention off of her figure and toward the far end of the room. A large television took up most of one wall. Further back from it was a chair of considerable age, constructed of solid wood and upholstered in leather.
"You mentioned you liked to play video games. Will you show me?"
Gordon across the room, eager to please, and settled himself in the chair. Resting on one of the arms was the familiar HexBox controller. With a few fluid movements the television screen was on and Gordon was browsing the selection of games on the HexBox hard drive.
"Excellent. This HexBox has Tiberius Rising: Deagle Nation Soldier!" he enthused. "Tiberius Rising: Deagle Nation Soldier is my favourite game released in 2014. It has big guns, tactical parkour moves and all the blood and gore you could ask for! If I were typing this sentence online I'd add a smiley face holding up the Metal hand sign, because that is how cool this game is!"
"I'm glad you're happy." Lisa lounged on the bed, her head resting on her elbow.
Gordon negotiated the game's menu with an ease born of familiarity. Before long he had selected a character and chosen a map which recreated a crowded marketplace in Central Africa.
"I like this mission. I have to kill a rebel warlord!"
"That sounds exciting.
Lisa watched for several minutes are Gordon controlled his character. Seeming to quickly get bored with moving quietly across rooftops using parkour techniques, he soon changed approach and had his character produce a minigun and open indiscriminate fire on the crowd.
"Are you supposed to kill so many...unarmed people?" queried Lisa, softly.
"It's an acceptable strategy. The game doesn't prevent me. I may not unlock all the achievements this way, but I make progress".
Indeed the game did not prevent Gordon's rampage. A voice on his character's radio would occasionally tell his character to "stop shooting black people, Tyce", but he did appear to be checking off the essential mission objectives. After a few minutes' more digital slaughter, the words "primary objectives complete" flashed on the screen.
Gordon had his character survey the market square. The stalls were collapsed, some on fire. Corpses and blood carpeted the floor. Six women cowered in a corner, pleading for mercy in a foreign tongue. Gordon's character dropped the minigun and produced a Desert Eagle. The screen took on a bluish tint and the action slowed, allowing Gordon to leisurely mark a point on each woman's head using a laser sight.
The slow motion effects suddenly stopped, and Gordon's character fired six shots from the Desert Eagle in rapid succession. The women's heads exploded in six near-simultaneous bursts of realistic gore. In the top-left corner of the screen, the words "Achievement Unlocked: Tycenado" were shown.
"Why did you kill those civilians?" asked Lisa, suprised.
"A civilian can still have a knife or a bomb under the clothes. Well, not in this game - but in real life it is certainly true. Also, these people were happy to allow a warlord in their midst, his crimes are their crimes. In any case, I am a sadist on the battlefield - and in the bedroom." Gordon made his best attempt to sound breathily seductive at the end of the sentence, and ended up at 'mildly tuberculotic'.
Gordon loaded up a different level, and Lisa rose from the bed. Gordon jolted in surprise as she laid her hands gently on his bony shoulders. She began to lightly rub his shoulders as she spoke quietly in his ear.
"Did I tell you that my favourite animal is the wolf, Gordon?
"I do not care for animals. Animals are noisy and demanding."
"But wolves are so majestic, and so intelligent. You see, wolves are constantly observing. When wolves come to a human settlement they sit at a distance, sometimes for days, watching. Then they come closer, gradually closer. They sit and look through the windows of houses."
Lisa was now softly running her fingernails along both sides of Gordon's neck. From their feel, he suspected they might be horrid artificial nails, but he was far too excited to care deeply about this matter.
"After a while, the wolves become bolder. They approach people - young children, the elderly or sick. Wolves can tell if someone has a cold, you know - just from the way they walk. The wolves will nip at arms or tug at clothing, almost like they're playing. But they're not playing."
Gordon may not have been the most perceptive at recognising voices, but even he could tell there was something different about Lisa's. The polished tones had faded, and the vowels had taken on a distinctly foreign quality. Lisa's voice still had it's sparkle, it's soft femininity, but there was a very real change as she spoke of these wolves. If he hadn't been enjoying the all-too-rare feeling of physical contact, he would have said something.
"No, ze vulfs are not playing at all. Zhey are testing. How strong is zat skin? How much effot vill it need to break zat bone in haff? And ven you find ze fictims of a vulf attack, zere is no oferkill, zere is no wholesale slaughter. Typically a few bites to ze head, ze neck. Just enough force to kill, no more."
Lisa was pressing her nails into the soft skin of Gordon's neck, harder and harder with each word. Knowing that the night was about pleasure and pain, Gordon kept quiet, wanting to prove he could cope with Lisa's play. Just as he was about to demand she stop, the pressure was relieved, and her soft hands were once again kneading his shoulders.
"Alvays just enough."