by Sky Winters
A warm rush emanated from Nora’s chest and out to the tips of her limbs. She was never able to handle kindness very well.
“Oh, why thank yeh, Mrs. Atherton,” she said, immediately bringing her fingertips to her mouth in embarrassment. Nora was American by birth, but her mother and grandmother were as Irish as they come, and Nora found their accent slipping out of her mouth when she was angry, or in this case, flustered.
“Amanda!” she said, giving Nora a playful push on the shoulder.
“Amanda,” Nora stammered out.
With that, Amanda opened the door, causing the chill of the night air to slip in through the entryway.
“Have a good night, sweetheart. Get home safe.”
“Good night, Mrs… I mean, Amanda.”
Amanda held the door open while Nora slipped out, then down the gray granite steps, and out onto the sidewalk. Amanda gave a finger-wiggling wave and closed the door.
Nora pulled her pea coat tight against the cool breeze of the late-September air and fastened the buttons. Heading toward the subway, she found her eyes wandering, as usual, to the windows of the expensive townhomes, looking in to catch glimpses of the lives of people who could afford multi-million dollar homes. She sighed, envying the spacious interiors, exquisite, hand-crafted furniture, and expensive, original prints of art. Nora knew that there was money in New York, but seeing it on every street corner only made her more conscious of what she didn’t have.
Maybe someday. She passed one window through which she could see a family dining at a long, wooden table that would have a hard time fitting in her apartment.
Turning onto the main road from the quite street where the Athertons lived, Nora dialed her hearing aid down to its lowest level. The thing worked, but almost too well. The din of cars, with its constant horn-blaring, could be amplified loud enough to feel like a spike going through her head. And the less said about the ear-splitting wailing of the fire trucks and ambulances that raced down the street seemingly every few minutes, the better.
With the sound lowered, leaving her with only her sight, the city was almost peaceful. The air was calm and cold, and the towering, glittering buildings of the Financial District loomed overhead. The Empire State Building, its lights orange and red for fall, could be seen off in the distance.
Nora continued down the sidewalk, she stopped at the intersection. Only a couple more blocks before she was at her stop.
Oh, fuck yeah, that’s nice.
Nora snapped into alertness and looked around. To her left was a middle-aged man in a long, beige trench coat. It must’ve been him. But her hearing aid was off; how could she have heard him? Nora watched him suspiciously out of the corner of her eye, holding her purse close to her body and hoping the light would change soon. Between catcalls from passing cars and the occasional grope on the subway, the perverts in this city were almost too much for Nora.
Mmm, I gotta see her from the back now.
Again! Nora heard the man’s voice, but this time one eye was on him, and she saw that his mouth didn’t move. What was she hearing?
She then looked down at the phone the man was holding close and looking at, a wry smirk on his face. She leaned a bit, enough to see what was on the screen: It was a woman wearing nothing but white panties, her arm crossed over her very full breasts, a sly grin on her face.
Then the man caught Nora’s side-eye. He became flustered, turning the display off on his phone and shoving it in a clumsy, haphazard fashion into his front pocket, nearly dropping it onto the pavement.
Nora couldn’t make out what he was saying exactly, but given his flummoxed, wide-eyed expression, she was sure it wasn’t anything kind; one word was unmistakably the lips-behind-lower-teeth mouthing of the “F’ word. Nora looked away as fast as she could, though it was clear that she had seen something she shouldn’t have.
And what’s more, she sensed something from the man, a color emanating from him. Light red, almost a dark shade of pink, like the color of her cheeks when she became nervous or flustered. The color seemed to come from the man in waves, like the air over a street on a hot summer’s day.
Fortunately for Nora, the man was more concerned with the immediate shame, and once the crosswalk light changed, he traversed the intersection with quick, frantic steps.
Nora took a moment to collect herself before crossing the street. Her steps were slow and deliberate. She was trying to wrap her mind around what had just happened, that she had been able to hear the man’s thoughts.
It wasn’t the first time this had happened. It had begun a few years ago, after she turned eighteen. She started hearing the thoughts of those who stood close to her; just words here and there, like a radio tuned into a weak signal.
And the colors, too, began to appear; strange, shifting waves of color that were the general shape of the person. Nora wasn’t sure what they meant, why they were different, but she was noticing that certain colors seemed to match certain moods. Someone who was sad would be a shade of blue, depending on the exact nuance of their emotion. A person in a deep depression would be a deep, Prussian blue, almost a black. A person in an erratic, paranoid mood would be yellow. And someone in a strange melancholy would be a mixture of the two, resulting in an unsettling, sickly shade of green.
But these gifts, if she could call them that, only seemed to manifest under two conditions: One, being in close proximity to the person, and two, that her hearing aid was turned off.
The experience with the man was still running though her head as she stepped down the stairs of the Chambers Street station. As she walked into the station and its dirty stone walls and ceilings and harsh lighting, she noticed that something was off. No one else was there. Not even an MTA employee in the booth. Not wanting to miss the train, she swiped her card through the reader and stepped through the turnstile.
She reached the platform and the story was the same. No one was there. The low rumbling of a departing train vibrated through her body. Nervous, Nora reached for her hearing aid and turned the small, ridged knob.
“— an uptown, three train, approaching the station. Please step back from the yellow line,” said the pre-recorded announcement from the loudspeaker in its stilted, chipper voice.
“Hey, miss.”
Nora turned on her heels, shocked. Now there was someone, a homeless man in a tattered parka and dirty workpants, his face smeared with grime. Nora was shocked; either she hadn’t noticed the man when she arrived at the platform, or—
“Got anything you could spare?” he said in a ragged voice, shaking one of the ubiquitous blue-and-white coffee cups every vendor used in New York.
Nora reached into her purse. She knew that she couldn’t give change to every homeless person, but the Midwest courtesy had yet to be completely driven from her. Withdrawing a quarter, she approached the man and dropped it in his cup. It landed with a hollow thud against the bottom.
“Why, thank you, ma’am, God bless,” he said.
“Sure,” said Nora, noticing that the man was looking her over with hard, inspecting eyes.
He then pulled the collar of his parka up, and spoke into it. “We’ve got a positive,” he said. But now his voice was different. Clear and professional.
Then, with inhuman speed, he withdrew a small, silver item from his parka pocket and jabbed it into Nora’s hand. Shocked, she pulled her hand back and held it close.
“What did you do to me?” she asked, her voice frantic.
But then her vision began to blur; her limbs felt weak and wobbly.
Two pairs of heavy, firm hands grabbed her arms before the darkness swimming in from the borders of her vision consumed her completely.
Chapter 3
When Nora came to, the first thing she noticed was that she was restrained. Her wrists and ankles were clad in manacles of wrought-iron, and as her head began to clear, she noticed that the chains were extremely old. She pulled and yanked at them, but they were hooked into some kind of fastening in the
wall behind her. She tried to scream, but her mouth was covered with cool, tight fabric.
Along the wall to her right and left were maybe two dozen other young women, all bound in chains, their mouths covered like hers with something that looked like a leather bandana, like an Old West bandit would wear, but bondage-style. The girls all searched the room with panic-stricken eyes, all, like Nora, trying to determine where exactly they were, and why. They all looked as if they had come out of their stupor at about the same time as Nora.
She was in a long, open room with high ceilings and wooden walls of dark oak. Farther down the room she saw racks of women’s underwear; lingerie, bra and panty sets, and leather kink-wear. Across the room were rows of vanity mirrors in front of chairs of soft-looking leather. The room was two-parts dungeon and one-part fashion show backstage.
Where the hell am I? A drip of nervous sweat darted down her forehead. Nora made eye contact with the girls to her immediate left and right, but bound the way they were, all they could do was share terrified expressions.
Nora then heard a loud thunk from the end of the room on her right. The massive, wooden door opened with a sharp, quick creak, and five men poured in, all clad in slim black-and-white suits, sunglasses, and short, cropped hair. They looked like Secret Service agents, but with one minor difference: Their skin was bone white.
The girls turned their heads to the men. Nora did the same, anxiety forming into a tight hot knot in her stomach. Whatever was going to happen, it was going to happen now.
The men looked over the women as though surveying merchandise. Then one turned to the other, nodded, and the five men split apart, each heading to different girls along the wall. But not Nora.
Nora looked at the man nearest to her, who went to the girl two spaces to Nora’s left. He regarded the woman, then kneeled and flicked off his sunglasses, revealing a pair of shimmering yellow eyes. He took the chin of the fearful, squirming girl into his hand in a gentle scoop and looked into her eyes, his own eyes wide and fixed. He stayed like this for a moment, mouthing something that Nora couldn’t hear. Then, the girl slackened, her body calm.
The man waited a few more seconds to confirm that whatever he had done worked, then reached behind her, unhooked her chains from the wall, and led her to one of the makeup chairs on the other side of the room. The girl went with him without protest, her steps smooth, but unnatural, her face still and calm as a doll’s. She took her place in the chair, her beautiful face illuminated by the bright bulbs of the vanity mirror. The four other girls the remaining men went to all did the same. It was then that Nora noticed that there were as many chairs as there were girls, and that whatever the men had done to the first girls would likely be done to her soon.
The men, after making sure their girls were still in their seats, then went to another set of girls and repeated the process. Again, Nora wasn’t one of them, though the girls to her immediate right and left were. She watched the process repeat itself: the men kneeled, looked deep into the girls’ eyes, said something in a low murmur, then led the now-docile girls to their chairs. Again, the girls were watched for a moment, then the men went off to a new set.
This time, Nora was one of them.
The suited man squatted in front of her, and looked into her eyes. His face was as slim and angled as his suit, and at this distance, his brilliant yellow eyes looked like tiny blazing suns, and Nora could’ve sworn that she saw the colors swirl and roil. He locked eyes with her in this fashion for several heartbeats and spoke.
“You’re going to get up and go over to that chair. You’re going to sit down and wait until we tell you what to do next.”
Then he reached behind her, undid the lock that connected the chains to the wall and then waited.
Judging by the way the other girls complied, Nora assumed that she would’ve felt some strange sort of compulsion to get up. But she felt nothing.
The eyes of the man narrowed in suspicion. “I said, you’re going to get up and go over to that chair. You’re going to sit down and wait until we tell you what to do next.”
Nora then realized that whatever he was trying to do, whatever sort of hypnosis he was trying, wasn’t taking hold. But unless she wanted to arouse suspicion, she knew that she needed to act like it did. So, she stood, making her face appear blank and compliant, walked past the man, and sank into the soft, cool leather of the chair in front of the mirror.
Nora wanted to turn and look around, to see if she could figure out where she was, and to try to figure out what was in store for her, but she knew that such behavior would be noticed. So instead, she regarded herself in the mirror.
Nora’s eyes were big, which was a source of insecurity for her; she always felt that they gave her a constant look of surprise. The irises were the watery green of a freshly-dewed Longford dale. Her nose was small and pointed a bit upward, and her lips were a deep red with a full shape and the subtle turns of cursive handwriting. Her hair, which was the color of a polished copper pot, was tied in a thick French braid, which she now had draped across her left shoulder. Her coat was missing, and today she was wearing a knitted, oatmeal-colored cardigan over a fitted V-neck t-shirt, and a pair of unassuming blue jeans. She was always told by friends and family that she dressed too plain, too drab, and that her slight, lissome frame seemed to always be lost in the folds of heavy fabric that she typically wore. But this was how she liked it. Her hearing always made her feel like she was disconnected from the world at large, and so she liked to dress the part, like someone who wouldn’t be noticed.
Keeping her head still, she looked to her right and left as best she could. As far as she could tell, all of the girls were in their seats.
Then the doors opened again, and a frenzy of feminine chatter filled the room. The pin-point clicking of high heels echoed through the open space. Nora allowed herself to turn just an inch to her right, to see what she could, which was a gaggle of coifed and made-up women in simple, form-fitting clothes; fashionable, but practical. Once the group reached the center of the row of girls, they looked the line up and down, made some counting-off gestures, and split off, one girl to each captive.
The one who came to Nora was tall, slim, and had a severe Slavic face of jutting cheekbones, ice-blue eyes narrowed to a laser point, and platinum-blond hair tied back into a tight ponytail. She looked Nora up and down, mouthing words to herself and making mental notes. Then she turned to the vanity, opened some drawers, and withdrew some items.
Makeup? Nora looked at the small cases lined along the edge of the vanity. What’s going on here?
The woman looked the items up and down one last time and went to work. She started by undoing Nora’s thick, simple braid and pinning it up above her head. Then, she applied the makeup in quick, precise movements—a little blush here, some eyeliner there, a little smokiness there. Nora stayed as still as death during the process, giving no indication that she wasn’t under the hypnotic spell that the rest of the girls were in. The woman was in front of the mirror, and Nora couldn’t see what kind of look she was giving her.
After a few minutes, she was done with the makeup, and set to work on Nora’s hair.
That was fast. Nora allowed a light-hearted thought to well up through the pool of anxiety in her stomach. I wouldn’t mind taking some notes from her; it would save a little time in my morning routine.
The woman went at Nora’s hair with stabbing motions, sticking pins here and tying braids there. Her face was lowered in concentration, and Nora could see that, like the men in the suits, her eyes were that same brilliant burnt orange.
“What you got over there, divchyna?” said Nora’s girl in a voice tinged in a Slavic accent to the makeup girl next to her, her own eyes not leaving Nora’s hair for a second.
“Another cow from one of those shitholes in the middle.”
I take offense to that, thought Nora, still not armored against the “flyover state” jokes.
“This one here is pretty; doesn’t lo
ok like she is from here.”
There was a pause while, Nora presumed, the other makeup girl gave Nora a look-over.
“Tak, yes, I see what you mean. Beautiful skin. And I am wondering if that hair is a natural color.”
“I think so,” said Nora’s girl. “I can spot a shitty red dye-job from a mile off.”
“Fair skin, red hair. I bet we get a nice little bag of coins for her.”
Bag of coins? What is she talking about? Where am I?
After a few minutes, the work was done, and the girl stepped back and around Nora, standing behind her in the chair to get a look from a few feet away. Nora could finally see what she had done. Her eyes had a slight wisp of smokiness, which set off their brilliant green; her fair skin was brushed with just enough blush to give her the appearance of being in a state of coquettish surprise, and her red hair was done up in twin braids that were twisted up and behind her head in an intricate pattern that reminded Nora of some kind of rolled and curled pastry. The look seemed to Nora like an innocent peasant girl with the smoky, sexy eyes of a girl in the city. Definitely not Nora’s style, but she liked how attractive she felt. She had always considered herself to be plain and unremarkable, but now she felt a little different about how she looked.
“You done over there? I think I am done with mine,” said Nora’s girl, looking her own work over in approval.
“Ohhh, very nice,” said the other girl, impressed. “Innocent but a little slutty. But the good kind of slutty,” she added after a beat.
“I am good at my job. What can I say?”
“Okay, I think it’s time to get these little chickies all dressed up and ready to go.”
Wait, what? Nora was still nervous, still scared, but also completely confused.
“Everyone to your feet!” shouted one of the women from a position toward the front of the room.
The girls complied, all standing in unison, their chains clinking and clanging together. Nora stood, too, though she was worried that the lag in her motions would be noticed by someone.