Featured in this story: Erik (click for pictures)
I looked at the piece of paper in my hand. Studio 3. I looked around and saw the building that sported a huge advertisement touting the title of a brand new show: The visual design was a bit abstract: two white hen’s eggs sitting on a grey surface, with a big, red hammer hanging menacingly over them. The show’s title “Bashing Balls” was designed to look like it had been written with red lipstick, and I was pretty sure whose handwriting it was…
A few weeks ago, I had met Katya. She was a very attractive woman, the sister of my own boss Nikolai, with an undeniable ability to make people do what she wanted. Her mother was a super-rich oil magnate who had bought a TV station for Nikolai to play with. And somehow, Katya (a nickname for Katerina) had convinced her mother that it was a good idea for her to get her own TV station, enhancing the rivalry between the two siblings, and causing quite a lot of anger on Nikolai’s part, and delight on Katya’s.
Since the day she told him about it, conversation with Nikolai had become extremely difficult. He was moody and angry, and I did my best to avoid him. I sure hoped that nobody saw me entering Katya’s territory, because I knew that I’d be in a lot of trouble if Nikolai got wind of that…
Erik had invited me here. He was a young guy, around twenty years old, and he had been one of the stagehands in my TV show. He had been alright on that job, looking handsome when crunching our contestants’ testicles, and even managing to coax a load or two out of them if necessary. But he was an ambitious guy, always reaching for the stars. On two occasions, I had witnessed him putting his balls on the line to enhance his career – even though I guess he hadn’t known what was in store for him on both occasions…