Dean meditated in lieu of sleep on the bus ride and three connections back to his apartment. He went over everything he knew while doing his exercises. It was too late to hit the construction yard safely, so he did them in his room. Hindu squats and handstand pushups.
His leads: three names, a rental property, a frat house, an anime club, and some odd statements. He kept his mind away from speculating. Get as many facts as you can, then start the guesswork. Dean dropped to near splits and stretched out his legs. Some future sources of intel: spyware on a cell phone and laptop, a voice activated recorder in the jeep, and Sintalia, if she contacts him.
Dean pulled a bag from behind his hot water heater in a utility closet. He closed his eyes and reached inside. The bag was filled with a variety of cell phones, most deactivated, that he acquired from a variety of sources. He practiced identifying the brand by the shape and feel of the phone, and tested his memory of how to navigate the menus quickly.
Unless Sintalia went to the police, it was unlikely that his earlier call would lead to an arrest. But it would turn up the heat. Heat makes the scared talk, and the stupid make mistakes. Sintalia was alive. Dean hoped the same for Alana Favors. He cursed himself for taking his two hours of practice and exercise, but if he skipped them every time there was a crisis he would be ill-prepared to face the next one.
He did make a shortcut and bathed while practicing holding his breath under water. He took his netbook and began researching on the bus ride to the library. The central library was near the courthouse, and not all records were to be found online.
He checked the booking logs for his three sparring partners from the night before. No such luck. He skimmed the rest of the night’s mug shots and skimmed through their associated charges, but nothing related jumped out.
He did social media recon on the three. Dawley he was already familiar with. Michael Bailey was too common of a name, and he couldn’t find any public accounts with his face on them. Cody Bianca had some presence. A freshman at VCU. Some “likes” for anime and comic books.
He moved on to the house from last night. Several real estate listings as For Sale. The taxes were paid by Lloyd Dawley, as were the taxes on several other houses and condos. Dean made a note of those locations for future reference.
Mu Theta Pi wasn’t connected with the community college. Dawley could not have been pledging. Dean forced himself again to stop making connections. Facts first. He checked as much of their membership as he could from their website and connected social media. A search of the local news revealed a hazing scandal eight years previously, but those alumni should be long gone.
He got off the bus and entered the central library. A security guard went through his bag on the way in. Dean went straight to the fiction section and turned the paperback racks around until he found what he was looking for. He had never read these books before but the covers used to turn his head, especially during puberty. He found one: The Slave Wenches of Dominus by Murray Walton. On the cover was a beautifully painted barbarian warrior in a loin cloth holding a chain. At the end of that chain, a woman in a metal bikini, kneeling, hands in prayer, a shackle around her neck.
“Gogan the strong, thou surely are the strongest of the warriors of Dominus. Thou shalst do whatever is thy will.”
“Silence, sow!” Gogan used the least of his strength as he introduced the sow to the back of his hand, lest his full force strike her as dead as the Lizardarians of the burning swamplands he so recently vanquished. “I need not your permission to have my pleasure, for I would take what I desire. Besides, I have a mind to put your mouth to better purposes.”
Dean flipped through the paperback, not able to read through the whole page. Sword fights, chains, lengthy descriptions of muscled warriors, and the strange words from last night liberally sprinkled through the pages. Clan. Sow. Vanquish.
Dean returned the paperback and settled at a table with his netbook for some internet research. Murray Walton wrote a series of fantasy novels beginning in the late 1960s set on the world Dominus. Clans of warriors fought for survival against the reptilian Lizardarians, and fought each other for breeding stock, as the Lizardarians had kidnapped most of the women for food. The Lizardarians’ had a taste for the fat and old, so only fit young women were safe. Early books had male domination as a subtext, but it began to dominate the plots of later books. An attempt by some of the woman to withhold sex for better treatment led to women being literally enslaved in chains, and in later books it was explained that women weren’t truly human, and started to be referred to as brood sows. By the 1980s the Lizardarians rarely made an appearance, and the series devolved into bondage pornography.
The series was cancelled in the mid 1980s, and Walton became famous in the publishing world for his angry letters to editors, claiming that weak men being dominated by women was the cause of his work not being published. The letters were reprinted in fanzines, and it became a running gag to read excerpts from his unpublished works at Sci-Fi conventions.
In the last decade, the series found a new life in the form of Endless Worlds of Fantasy, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game. The game’s concept was that any fantasy or science fiction character or franchise could be simulated on the same world. The crew of Star Trek could go on a mission with the hobbits from Lord of the Rings. Players began creating their characters based on the world of Dominus, as a joke at first. Clans would fight over “sows”, and the vanquished would send porn pictures to the winners. Some of the players would send actual pictures of their wives and girlfriends, and the practice came offline in the shape of the Ways of Dominus.
Dean read a blog writing about the “Cult of Dominus”, but as far as he could tell, there was no actual leadership or even organization. Players of Endless Worlds of Fantasy began wife swapping outside of the game, and this circle began attracting people interested in BDSM, mostly in rural areas. Swinger parties were held, and friendly games of poker (or online duels on EWOF) were held, the winner getting sexual favors from the sow of the vanquished.
He found one news report from Georgia in which a fight club was broken up by police that intersected with the Ways of Dominus, but that was the only instance of any illegal activity that he could find. The “sows” were consenting to their roles, though many of them were undoubtedly in abusive relationships. Nothing like Sintalia’s situation.
Dean moved on to YouTube. There was a phenomena of “challenge videos” posted by those that followed the Ways of Dominus. These preceded parties, and different clans would taunt their opponents, bragging about their might, and sometimes showing off their sows and how well trained they were. Dean plugged in some ear buds and found a seat against the wall so the rest of the library wasn’t disturbed.
A search of Dominus Victors Crossing or Dominus Victim City did not yield anything useful. He began slogging through challenge videos. Skinny shirtless men with peach fuzz moustaches holding bored toothless women at the end of chains. Some in double-wides, some in apartments, some in the woods. Dean clicked quickly through related videos looking for faces. Some wore masks, giving him the unpleasant task of listening through whole videos and trying to remember the voices from last night. He wasn’t good at voices.
It didn’t take long. A fat kid in a flame shirt and skull mask on his bedroom webcam, X-Men poster in the background.
“First of all, Rockarolla69, I’m not fat! This is pure muscle, sculpted in the burning swamps.” The kid flexed from the safety of inside his shirt. He looked at his computer screen below the webcam. “No! No! You’re the fag! You are!” His bedroom door starts to open. “Mom!”
The video stops. “Fat Ass Loser Responds” has well over a million hits. Little Dillon Dawley had gone viral. Several Fat Ass Loser related videos and remixes were reposted, but clearly Dawley had taken down his original posting profile. Dean suffered through the rest of the videos. Several recurring themes: he’s not fat, you’re the fag, not him, and he’s looking for a brood sow.
Fat Ass Loser was too broad a search term, but he managed to find the handle Dawley gave himself: Domicide. From there he searched Ways of Dominus message boards, where he found that Domicide was the stuff of legends. Several long posts told stories of him inviting himself to swinger parties, getting beaten up and thrown out, claiming to be twice his age on dating websites.
This was in Arkansas. Fits with the idea of Dawley reinventing himself in a new city. Would he move out of state for any community college, much less VC? Might have gotten in trouble living with mom, so dad sets him up in VC. Dad has some real estate that Dawley’s taking advantage of. Alana Favors may be in one of those other properties. Unless she’s dead and Sintalia was her replacement.
Dawley’s first reaction was that the Bleeding Skull was from another clan. Dawley had a clan of at least three. Were there more in the clan? Was there more than one clan involved? Dawley found a couple of BDSM want ads in VC, but no organized presence that he could find anywhere near that part of the state. Dawley’s reinventing himself. He’s starting his own clan. How does an internet joke start a kidnap ring out of community college?
Dean cross references Endless Wars of Fantasy with Domicide. Here, Dawley was a bigger man. A muscled, skull masked warrior. One with the respect of other players, and head of one an elite clan in the game called DoMa$teRz. More message board recon: user names of others in the clan. Domilicious, Domzilla23, F_ur_MOM, URHOMOFOSHO. Only one avatar picture had a regular picture, a cellphone camera shot in the bathroom mirror, a young shirtless man with the phone covering most of his face. A Mu Theta Pi baseball cap.
Old message board chatter:
Domicide: Those Dominus Dominion fags are going to get their asses vanquished. Fags think they can raid.
URHOMOFOSHO: foshizzle niggas lol
Domilicious: Master can vanquish any foe
Domicide: SILENCE SLAVE YOU HAVEN’T BEEN SPOKT 2
Domilicious: Sorry, man
Domicide: DUDE STOP TYPING
Dean briefly considered some online undercover work. Developing a character and trying to join the clan. He decided it would be quicker finding Dawley and beating the intel out of his fat loser ass.