The Devil Wears Leather Part 4

Author: greenbrownblue
Title: The Devil Wears Leather Part 4
Date: 28 August 2008

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright 2008




The Alias Company paid me a measly three hundred dollars weekly regardless of how many hours I worked. Upon calculation, this actually amounted to less than minimum wage per hour, which was technically illegal. When I had first been hired, I had accepted this as just part of what was necessary to break in to the Hollywood industry. Initially, I had planned on obtaining a part time job for weekends and possibly some nights to supplement my income. However, spending most of my nights and a majority of my weekends at Alias prevented me from even considering another job. Further, Alias was taking a toll on my body. I wasn’t getting enough sleep. Even though Cameran’s couch was extremely comfortable, the restraints were hard to sleep in. I wasn’t able to use the bathroom when I needed, which forced my body to unhealthily adjust its cycle. I was also lucky to be getting in one meal a day. Being strapped to either Cameran’s couch or his assistant’s chair meant I had little opportunity for food. When I was able to manage to get food, I somehow was not very hungry. Beyond all these constraints, the simple fact was that I was overworked. My mind was in a constant state of distress. I was constantly worried about being able to please Cameran, who was growing ever more demanding.

My Hollywood studio apartment was costing me $1200 a month, which was exactly what Alias was paying me. For everything else, I was dipping in to my savings. It was quickly running out. Since I was strapped on to Cameran’s leather couch six nights a week and only using my car to commute home Saturday nights and back again only on Monday mornings, I decided to get rid of my car. I drove it to a nearby dealership and signed it over to them for what I knew was a rip off price. I now had four less monthly bills: insurance, gas, maintenance, and car loan. I began taking a bus that ran frequently along Sunset Boulevard from Hollywood to Century City.

Despite all the abuse to my mind and body, I clung more and more to the spark Cameran evoked in my being. Despite all his increasing demands and decreasing reasonability, or perhaps in some way because of them, I grew fonder of him each day. I truly tried my best to take care of his every whim.

The inventory spreadsheet Cameran had been having me work on cumulated in to a massive project. I was going to have to physically locate each prop and properly tag it according to a new inventory system Cameran had developed for the spreadsheet. It made little sense as to why such a massive overhaul of our inventory system needed to be done and I somehow suspected that the whole project was simply whimsical for Cameran. Regardless, the project needed to be done by Labor Day weekend, which was two weeks away. Cameran was actually going to give me that weekend off.

In order to accomplish the massive task of finding all of our Alias Properties’ props, it was necessary for me to not be restrained. Cameran let Jeffrey make and answer his calls so that I could roam Alias’ two floors to get at all the props. I actually was making great headway on the project. Despite my freedom to roam, there was a part of me that missed being so close to Cameran all day long. This was especially true on Friday, when Cameran wore leather pants.

They were so fucking beautiful: supple, thick, and shiny. I knew instantly that they were the missing pants from Terminator 2. It was hard to leave Cameran’s office suite to work on my props assignment because I wanted to keep looking at his pants.

Once I had run out of excuses to linger in Cameran’s presence to gaze at his leather pants, I had to break away. I managed to get down an odd shaped meandering hallway off of Cameran’s office suite where I was told more storage rooms were located with props to mark for inventory. Using my keys to get doors open, I investigated the rooms. The first room I found actually had props in it but I continued to see what I was up against. The second room was just files. The third room was very hard to open. There were actually two deadbolts that I needed to find separate keys for. Once I had the deadbolts unlocked, I struggled to get the door open. It was a heavy steel door. As I strained to wedge the door open, I saw the thickness of the metal of which a thick layer of white padding was attached.
The inside of the room was dark and as I stepped in, I tripped and fell flat on my face. However, I was not hurt. I landed on a thick padded floor, the edge of which I had tripped over. As I struggled to gain my bearings, I could hear the creaking hinges of the massive door. I managed to turn my body around and my butt sank firmly in to the deep padding. It was hard to negotiate the floor. I looked up at the door and saw that it was slowly closing. I now realized that the noisy hinges, which were located on the outside of the door, were springs. Much like hotel room doors, the door was designed to stay closed and at this moment, the springs were struggling to snap the door back in to place.

The door was only half-way closed when I made my first attempt to stand. I placed one hand on the padded floor to steady myself but the floor swallowed up my hand causing my elbow to bend and my entire arm to give way. It was hard to pull my hand back out of the thick padding. Next, I tried putting both of my hands on to the floor in order to raise my butt; but, the floor simply swallowed both hands causing both elbows to bend and both arms to give way. The door was now three-fourths closed and I tried wedging my ankles in to the floor to stand. The floor simply swallowed up my ankles making my legs give way and forcing my butt to sink back down in to its original position snug deep in to the floor.

Having reached their neutral position, the hinges stopped creaking and the padding of the door began wedging itself against the padding of the wall. The last sliver of light from the outside disappeared and I was left in total darkness. I heard the latch of the door click shut in to place. I knew the deadbolts could not lock themselves so I still had hope that I could pry the door open once I managed to get up off the floor.

In pitch black darkness, instead of putting my limps in to the floor, I decided to spread my body out and roll over to where I thought the door was located. Rolling was hard. The force I exerted to roll across was redirected by the floor downwards. So when I tried to go sideways, the floor directed me downwards. I began sweating and what seemed like an entire half an hour later, I was finally at an edge of the room. I pressed firmly on to the walls thick padding of what I thought was the door. Nothing budged. The wall simply swallowed up my hands. I tried hitting the padding but it only made the sound of a soft muffled puff. I couldn’t reach the metal that had to be beyond the padding with my hand. The only thing I could hit was soft padding. If the room did have a light, I realized the switch must be on the outside in the hallway. In fact, I remembered noticing a light switch near this room. My suspicions were confirmed when I reached up along the walls and could not find anything but padding.

I tried yelling for help but I could barely hear myself because the padding quickly absorbed my yells. The room had stolen my sense of sight and sound. In defeat, my body submitted in to the floor. Soon my mind submitted as well and I feel in to a deep sleep.

Deep in the slumber of my dreams, I began hearing noise from behind me. A cool breeze hit the back of my neck. A weight sat on the back of my legs. Thick hands massaged the back of my neck.
Cameran whispered in my ear, “Joey, Joey, wake up Joey.”

My over tired body and overly stressed mind had found such deep rest in the thick padding of the floor. It was a coma that was hard for me to physically and mentally come out of. Slowly I realized that I needed to wake up. Slowly I realized that someone was sitting on my back.

I tried to raise my arms away from my sides but thick leather stopped them. I slowly opened my eyes but all I could see was darkness. As they adjusted to the sliver of light that found its way in to the room from the outside hallway, I could see the dank white padding that lay before me.

“Joey, Joey, wake up!” Cameran whispered more forcefully.

I tried to stand up but my body was wedged down in to the thick padding by the force of Cameran’s body sitting on top of me. The leather preventing my arms from moving was from Cameran’s leather coated legs pressed firmly against me.

“Cameran?” I managed to finally say.

“Shhhhhhhhhh,” Cameran soothed, “Don’t try to talk now Joseph.”

“You’ve wasted a lot of time in here and there is a lot to be done,” Cameran continued as he finally began to get up off of me.

Now standing, Cameran helped me turn my body around and assisted me in getting my knees up under me so that I was now kneeling before him.

“I- I- didn’t mean to…” I tried to explain.

“Joseph,” Cameran forcefully interrupted, “I wore these pants today so you could catalog them. But it has to be done today because I am going to take them back home.”

Cameran presented a black marker and a white tag with a string attached. Handing the items to me, he asked, “Do you remember what number they are?”

My brain struggled to think.

“Leather pants. Leather pants. The brown leather pants from the movie Eragon were 783. 783? How was it that I remembered something like the number 783?” I thought to myself, “and the number 784 were the black leather pants from Eragon.”

Cameran was growing impatient. He looked down at my coldly.

“Uh, uh,” I began stalling.

“Arnold’s Leather pants. Terminator II. 387! 387? Wait, wait, 387 is Sarah Connor – the Sarah Connor restraint system. Um… Wait! The pants were missing. What number were they?” my thoughts continued racing in my head.

“389,” I finally responded to Cameran.

“Ok good,” he stated. “Now mark them.”

In the dimness of the room fighting my grogginess and struggling to keep my knees steady against the unevenness of the thick padded floor, I popped the cap off of the thick black marker and wrote the number “389” on the crisp white tag.

Cameran looked down at me judging my every move.

I placed the cap back on the marker and handed the marker and the tag to Cameran. He refused them.

“Joseph!” Cameran shouted, “You need to mark the pants.”

I was mad at myself for being so stupid.

“Wake up you idiot. You’re supposed to be doing inventory here!” I yelled at myself inside my head.

I reached up to the right side of Cameran’s thick shiny leather pants and pressed my finger against his hips to wedge open a wide thick belt loop. The loop stuck to the base of Cameran’s pants as I struggled to get my finger inside of it. My finger pressed against Cameran’s muscular body and against the suppleness of his leather pants. My finger finally slid through the slimy tunnel of the loop and broke out the other side. The loop of Cameran’s leather pants was now free. With both hands, I maneuvered the string of the crisp white tag around the loop and tied the string off. My hands were shaking as I clung back on to the thick black marker and rested my hands down in to my lap.

Cameran nodded in approval.

“I brought one more thing from home that needs to be marked,” he explained and handed me another crisp white tag.

“It’s going to be number 1,” he stated as I wrote the number one on to the tag.

I had looked at the inventory spreadsheet a million times to know that number one was the most unique prop. It was described as white, small, and Posey. It was a strait jacket.