Delusionville
The hotel suite smelled like incense, cheap perfume, and regret.
Joey Marquez sat slouched in a velvet armchair, half-empty whiskey glass sweating on the table beside him, while Don Vesperelli paced the room like a shark who’d accidentally swallowed a radio that never stopped screaming. His tailored white suit had flecks of powder on the lapel—he didn’t notice, or didn’t care. The Don’s eyes were wild tonight, glinting like a man who had one foot in the underworld and the other in an alien temple.
The knock came soft at first, then impatient.
Joey looked up. Vesperelli grinned.
“Let the fun in,” the Don purred.
The door swung open. A half-dozen women tumbled in like they’d been rehearsing an entrance: sequins, leather, neon lipstick, stilettos sharp enough to kill a man. Hookers from every corner of Vegas, paid double to smile but not ask questions. They dragged with them trays piled high with cocaine bricks disguised as birthday presents and, inexplicably, a wicker basket full of chocolate rabbits wrapped in gold foil.
Joey blinked. “The hell is this, Easter?”
Vesperelli snapped his fingers. “No, Joey-boy. This is ritual.”
Cocaine Geometry
The Don clapped once. The women giggled, scattering across the suite like jewels tossed on velvet. One unwrapped a kilo, plunging a manicured hand into the powder and smearing it across the mirrored coffee table. She didn’t shape lines. She carved symbols.
Triangles. Circles. Interlocking hexagrams.
Cocaine geometry.
Joey leaned forward, suddenly sober, as she dragged her red-painted fingernail through the powder and completed a perfect Flower of Life across the glass. The white lines shimmered under the chandelier. Joey swore the pattern moved, breathing, pulsing, whispering.
“What the—”
Vesperelli crouched beside him, grinning like a demon priest. “Do you see it? Do you finally see why the sacred numbers brought us here?” He tapped the mirrored table with a gold ring. “Cocaine is currency, Joey. Cocaine is power. But in Delusionville, it’s something more. It’s an offering.”
Joey’s chest tightened. “An offering to who?”
The Don just chuckled, lit a cigar, and waved for the girls to keep drawing.
Chocolate Rabbits
One of the women climbed into Joey’s lap, balancing a foil-wrapped chocolate rabbit in each hand. She whispered in his ear, breath hot and dangerous:
“You bite the ears, you taste the truth.”
Before Joey could answer, she shoved a rabbit against his lips. The foil crinkled as he tore into it. But the chocolate wasn’t hollow—it was filled with something molten, bitter, alive. His tongue went numb. His vision burst open like stained glass shattered by lightning.
He saw the suite from above, but not from the ceiling—he saw it from another dimension. The hookers were no longer women, but fractal beings of neon light, moving in geometric dance. The cocaine lines writhed like white snakes, slithering across the glass into patterns too complex for language. And Don Vesperelli… oh, Don Vesperelli glowed.
His entire body was wrapped in sacred geometry, tetrahedrons folding over cubes folding over infinite spirals. He wasn’t just a man. He was a gate.
Joey staggered, chocolate melting down his chin.
“What… what the hell did you feed me?”
Vesperelli grinned wider, his teeth suddenly sharp in the flickering light. “Not chocolate, Joey-boy. Not cocaine. Keys. Keys to the city that doesn’t exist.”
Blood on the Mirrors
The trance broke with a crash.
The suite door exploded inward, splinters flying. Three men in black combat gear stormed inside, assault rifles raised. They didn’t hesitate—they opened fire. The hookers screamed, diving for cover, lipstick smearing across white leather couches. The chocolate rabbits scattered across the floor like golden landmines.
Joey hit the ground, rolling under the coffee table as cocaine sprayed like snow. The sacred geometry shattered, powder clouds twisting into chaotic storms. He pulled his pistol, returning fire. One of the black-suited men spun, blood painting the mirrored wall.
Vesperelli didn’t flinch. He calmly exhaled cigar smoke and whispered, “Delusionville doesn’t forgive trespassers.”
Then he drew a pistol engraved with runes, aimed, and blew another man’s head clean off. The corpse toppled onto the cocaine-stained glass, leaving a Rorschach blot of brains across the geometry.
The last attacker raised his rifle—only to be tackled by one of the hookers, a wiry brunette with fury in her eyes. She smashed a chocolate rabbit into his face until he stopped moving. Blood mixed with melted candy.
The suite fell silent but for Joey’s ragged breathing.
The Pact
The room looked like a slaughtered Easter parade. Hookers trembling in corners. Cocaine drifting through the air like divine snowfall. Chocolate rabbits trampled and bleeding sugar.
Joey dragged himself to his feet, pointing his gun at Vesperelli. “Enough. Tell me what the hell is happening. Who sent them? Who are you really working for?”
The Don smiled, unbothered by the carnage. “You’ll find out soon enough, Joey-boy. But first, we have a job. A big one. Bigger than all the dead men and all the drugs in Vegas. And you’re going to help me do it.”
Joey’s finger trembled on the trigger. He could feel the geometry still burning in his veins, the chocolate-DMT hybrid still warping reality at the edges.
Vesperelli leaned closer, his eyes glowing with an alien light. “Because whether you believe me or not… you already ate the rabbit.”
End of Chapter Five
The stage is set: Joey is locked into Vesperelli’s ritual, hooked on the strange geometry of cocaine and chocolate rabbits. But who sent the black-suited hit squad? What is Delusionville really, and why does it demand offerings of blood, sugar, and drugs?