She sighed and looked at the food, which she had placed just outside the bedroom. They were down to one sandwich now and half a bag of chips. Lisa had eaten a sandwich for breakfast and had tried to get Debbie to eat something, but the woman wouldn't eat. She wondered how long Tim intended to keep her and Debbie prisoner here. The next time they came would probably be to film the completion of Debbie's torture and murder. Would they commence filming her own murder shortly after? Or would she get another short reprieve?
Lisa went into the bedroom and tried to get Debbie to eat again, but she still refused. Debbie Martinez was still in a dazed, catatonic state, her muddy brown eyes staring vacantly at the wall. Lisa checked her wounds, then went back to her spot outside the bedroom. She ate the rest of the potato chips and chased them with the rest of the water from her Evian bottle. They were down to five bottles of water now, enough to last a while, but not forever. It was the food she was more worried about now.
Just then, as if in answer to her concerns, the sound of a van pulled up in the driveway.
Twelve
They didn't venture immediately into the cabin.
Apparently, on the drive up a heated discussion had commenced.
"So what the fuck are we supposed to do with this Debbie bitch?" It sounded like the blond guy. "I mean, Animal went fucking nuts on her, so yeah, of course I'm gonna film the shit. That was the best shit I've gotten on film in a long time, and we can probably finish it today. What I want to know is what are you gonna do when the bitch is dead?"
"I'll get rid of her," Tim said. They were slowly walking up the walkway to the front door. "Don't worry. I found a new spot two weeks ago. We can get rid of her easy there. But we got to do it soon, like tonight. Neal hasn't cruised by yet, so as long as he don't come up, nobody will know'
Lisa listened, her heart pounding hard as she listened. Debbie moaned on the bed, raising gooseflesh along Lisa's arm. The men had stopped outside the front door, their voices lowering somewhat, but still audible. `What about this fucking place?" The blond guy was saying. "When you told meyou had a new place, you didn't tell me it was in the center of where every fucking California yuppie flocks for their summer homes. What is this shit?"
*Nobody will know anything; Tim said, trying to calm the blond guy down. "Sam Bash made the arrangements. His name isn't attached to it at all, and neither is ours. Nobody will know anything. We'll just use the same tarp we rolled over the floor and roll both bodies into it when we're done and dump them. Then we got two films ready to go. That's some extra cash there."
"You sure Sam and his boys will be in the market for a second one?"
"You better fucking believe it. He told me himself that they were tired of all the fucked-up-looking junkies and whores I been getting them. Debbie's gonna really please them. And that other bitch? She may not be no fucking beauty queen like Debbie, but she's got a nice wholesome image, you know? They'll like that-that's what they asked for anyway."
Lisa shuddered at the conversation. She felt her limbs go numb. It's going to be tonigijt, she thought. Oh God, not tonight, please help me get through this-
"Fine," the blond guy said. Then the sound of the door opening rolled through the cabin and they stepped inside.
"I'm fucking starving," the blond man said as three pairs of booted feet stomped into the cabin. "All that arguing made me hungry. Animal, you hungry?"
A muffled, throaty" No."
"You?"
Tim: "Nah. I'm gonna go outside and take a walk around the grounds to make sure everything is cool. Why don't you go on ahead."
"Okay. I'll be right back."Ibe blond man stomped back outside. A moment later she heard a car door open and close and then the sound of the engine starting.
Tim: "You want to come with me and check things out?"
"No" At the sound of Animal's voice, Lisa felt her skin tremble. His voice sounded so normal, so unassuming. "I think I'll stay here",
"Well, don't fuck with them," Tim said, walking to the door. "You want to fuck with them, wait until Al gets back so he can film it."
"Okay."
Tim left the cabin, and she heard his footsteps on the porch for a minute, then click down the front steps and around to the side of the house. A second set of footsteps slowly approached the bedroom, and Lisa felt her skin crawl as they grew closer, a large shadow materializing in the doorway, and then Animal was standing in the threshold of the room.
They stared at each other for a minute. Lisa couldn't tear her eyes away from him; her mouth went suddenly dry. She couldn't believe what she was seeing.
Standing before her was a tall, slim, nice-looking man in his mid-thirties. He was dressed in a clean pair of faded blue jeans and a green polo shirt. There was no trace of bondage apparatus anywhere on his person. Without his bondage hood, Animal could have passed for a young executive at a large corporation, or maybe a lawyer at the firm she worked at.
His features were angular, his jaw strong, his cheekbones sharp. He had mesmerizing green eyes that danced and complemented his smile, which was now cracking his boyish features. His mouth was fine, framed by sensuous lips, clean, even, white teeth. His hair was black and wavy, cut short and stylish. He looked like an All American Boy.
They looked at each other and for a moment Lisa was too stunned to say anything. This is the man they call Animas This is the man that almost killed Debbie yesterday. This is the man that is going to kill me either today or tomorrow in a snuff film.
Her mind was reeling; she couldn't get over how normal he looked.
"Why?" The question came unbidden, her voice sounding strong to her for the first time in days.
Animal blinked; he seemed surprised by the question. He's probably expecting me to beg for my life right now, she thought.
"Why… what?" he asked, his lips curling upward slightly in a grin.
"Why do you do it?" She gestured at the room; the bloody tarp, the bed with the worn mattress, Debbie lying in a bloody stupor. "Why do you do this? Snuff movies… kill people…?"
"Why do you want to know?"
Lisa looked at him, meeting his gaze. "As long as you're going to kill me, I think I would like to know the reason why before you do it."
For a moment, Lisa didn't think Animal was going to answer her. He looked at her in silence. Then he glanced behind him into the living room-the sound of Tim's footsteps had receded-and then took a step into the room. For the first time since laying eyes on him, Animal looked human-he looked like the kind of guy that she would pal around with at the office. "You really Want to know?"
Lisa nodded, trying not to appear too desperate. "Yeah, I would."
Animal shrugged. "Guess it can't hurt." Then he stepped into the room and began to tell her how he acquired the taste for hurting and torturing other human beings.
"I used to work for a large, international consulting firm," Animal began. "It was through my employment there that I met a woman who I became involved with. She introduced me to the scene. Even then, to look at her you wouldn't have guessed she was into the painful arts. She looked like she could've been a cheerleader in high school. She was pretty and incredibly sexy. At work she had a bubbly personality-lively, free-spirited, fun to be with. But she was sharp. When it came to her work, she was a real professional.
"It started innocently enough. We became lovers. We had a good time, but I could sense that for her she was just going through the motions. At first I thought that perhaps she didn't want to get emotionally involved with me, that she only wanted me for a fuck toy or something. That was the furthest thing from my mind. I only wanted her for the sex. See…" He began pacing the floor, his brow furrowed in concentration as if he were trying to think of a way to express himself most clearly. "I was never much of a ladies' man. I'd always had an inferiority complex around women. I'd only lost my virginity two years before and I was pretty much racing to catch up, if you know what I mean."
Lisa nodded, accepting his confession but finding
it hard to believe that a man as handsome as Animal would have lost his virginity well into his twenties. Physically, he was a hunk. But the more she watched him, the more she listened to his speech, the way he carried him self, the more she began to get the sense that he was something far different.
Anyway," he said, stopping his pacing to look at her. "It was a sexual thing. It always was. And the more we got into it, the more she started… demanding certain things!
"What kind of things?"
"It started with biting," he said. "We were having sex one night and she begged me to bite her while we were fucking. I was so into it that I did, and she loved it. At first I thought I had hurt her… my teeth had actually broken the skin and drawn blood, but she'd been ecstatic. She actually came. It was like that night was the happiest day of her life. And it was then that I learned the first lesson in the painful arts." He took a step forward, regarding her as a teacher would a student. "Pain and pleasure are two sides of the same coin. Pain tolerance goes up during sexual arousal. The brain also produces endorphins during sex to compensate for pain. It gets you high. It's the same rush you get while eating chili peppers. It comes from that same center in the brain where pain and pleasure come from, and that's what makes it enjoyable for S&M players being whipped or spanked or whatever. It isn't pain to them. It's pleasure." He smiled.
Lisa felt a shudder run through her body, along with a slight stab of guilt. The mild bondage she and Brad had participated in-tying each other up, slipping into the role of the naughty girl and begging Brad to spank herwas nothing compared to this.
"That was the first step toward my initiation," Animal said, still smiling. "When I first saw her naked body, I was shocked. The skin along her back and her torso and breasts was like one big puckered scar. It was so bad she looked like a burn victim. I thought she had been in an accident. When I learned that they were self-inflicted or from others, I felt… a combination of revulsion and attraction. And the more we talked about it, the more she told me that she really enjoyed pain and being abused, the more I saw that she was serious. And seeing that she was serious, that she was willing to put herself through such scenes, turned me on."
"I don't understand," Lisa said, choosing her words carefully. "What does being a willing participant in an S&M scene have to do with what you're doing with me?"
"It has a lot to do with it, if you'll listen."
"I am listening."
"No, you're not." He was standing in front of her, menacing even-in his Gucci loafers and polo shirt.
"Okay," she said, shifting gears. "Okay, I'm listening."
"You're just like all of them," Animal said, looking at her with a sneer of contempt. "All the whiny, pitiful little yuppie fucks who think they can be hip and cool by dressing in rubber and leather at underground fetish clubs at night and be corporate rats by day. You don't know shit. You don't know the first thing of what it's like to feel power over another human being."
"Then tell me!" Lisa said, trying not to sound too demanding.
Animal stepped forward, and at first Lisa thought he was going to strike her. Instead, he hunkered down so that he was looking at her eye to eye. "Let me give you a little bit of my background. I may look like a yuppie fuck to you, and maybe in a way I am. I came from a normal WASPish family. My mother was Miss Susie Homemaker; Daddy worked his nine-to-five like a good boy and came home every night to a home-cooked meal. Mommy and Daddy were also repressed shits who did their best to repress their children. All I heard from them was that sex was wrong, that it was only for procreation. Hearing that warped me, especially when I saw the exact opposite happening at home. My dad coming home drunk after having gone out with the boys from the office, getting fresh with my mom and her slapping him away, and then hearing them fighting over it. The fucking bitch wouldn't put out for my dad, and it pissed him off, you know? Then at the same time both of them are telling me that sex is wrong no matter what, even if it's between two people who love each other."
Lisa didn't know what to say. She met his gaze, not daring to drop it.
"Don't get me wrong," he said. "They never beat me, they never physically abused me in any way, but they did have their way with getting their message across. They were also both extremely domineering. I could only wear the clothes they wanted me to wear, have the kinds of friends they approved of, choose the kind of career path only they approved of. Anything I did on my own, from the people I chose to associate with, to jobs I've had, if they didn't like it they would let me know they were disappointed in me. It was beat into my head at an early age that disappointing my parents was something that was unacceptable with not only them, but to society at large. To disappoint those that had given birth to you, who had created you, was the worst thing a child could do to their parents. For them to be disappointed in me created such a feeling of guilt. And when it came to sex, it was hardwired in me to not disappoint them in that area. Could you image what it would have been like if I had gotten a girl pregnant? My God, they'd go off the deep end and I couldn't live with myself! It was that fear of disappointing my parents, of getting a girl pregnant, that kept me from indulging in whatever normal sexual feelings I had." He snorted back a laugh. As you could probably imagine, I jerked off a lot through high school."
Lisa didn't laugh; it really wasn't funny to her. If anything, it scared her.
"I never felt in control of anything in my life," he resumed, standing up. He turned around and began pacing the room as he talked. "I let all this frustration bottle up inside me, and it wasn't until I began my relationship with Susan that I realized I could let them out. I was with somebody who was encouraging me to act on my fantasies. She didn't disapprove. In fact, the more I told her about them, the happier she got. They were fantasies I wanted to indulge in for real."
"What were they?"
"I thought you'd never ask," he replied. He turned to her, counting them off on his fingers. "Let's see… dominating every single woman or girl that had ever turned me on in high school or college or in the few years after obtaining my MBA. Sometimes I had fantasies about doing similar things to men, but men don't excite me sexually the way women do; the only way I get turned on by hornoerotic thoughts is if I'm torturing another man."
Torturing another man. Obviously torturing women, too. Lisa licked her lips and swallowed, her throat dry, and nodded.
Animal continued. "I tried to deny I was having these thoughts. I thought I could never act on them-normal people don't give in to such urges, much less have them. So for ten years I would occasionally think about what it would be like to strangle the head cheerleader of the high school football team, or castrate the homecoming king and stuff his cock down his throat, or cut my secretary's fingers off with a paring knife and force-feed them to her. And then I would deny that such thoughts excited me. I didn't realize that inflicting pain on these people would be like music to my ears.
"Obviously, when Susan found this out our sex life be come more intense. She encouraged me to get rougher with her, to hurt her. She enjoyed being tied up and whipped. She enjoyed having her ass slapped with a leather belt until I drew blood. She was with me the whole way, and I knew that as long as she was there I could do it. I knew I was safe with her, that our secret would only be between us. I later learned that this is what true S&M is: It is the complete surrender and trusting of your body and emotions to another person. I no longer saw it as something deviant practiced by perverts. Of course, what I'm going to describe to you… if a regular S&M practitioner were to hear this they'd be horrified. Basically, the entire extreme hardcore scene is a very brutal, very underground subculture that lurks within the S&M world. Most S&M participants are either ignorant of the more forbidden aspects of the extreme hardcore world or they don't want to admit it exists. But it's there. The more you get into S&M, the more you get into a local scene in a big city like NewYork or LA, the more you dig into its various subcultures, you'll soon start finding some people that are into some pretty extr
eme shit."
He paused, his features appeared reflective, then he continued. in a way, I guess we loved each other. We were the perfect partners for each other. We were friends and lovers in the extreme sense. Our sex life accelerated into something I had never experienced before and never knew existed. Previously, I was merely content to play my part in a wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am role. I suppose most guys are. With Susan, I was becoming more confident in myself in dealing with my fantasies; she encouraged me to act on them. Our sessions accelerated rapidly until we were getting into some heavy stuff, things I wouldn't have even imagined participating in. She demanded that I hit her harder, bite her harder, whip her harder. And I complied. The harder our ses sions became, the more I would feel that I shouldn't be doing this, that what I was doing was wrong, but then Susan would encourage me." He looked at her. "And the more she pulled me in, the more I found myself liking what I was doing to her."
Lisa looked into his eyes, and what he said next made the skin along the back of her neck erupt in gooseflesh. "We began having regular intercourse less and less. It never really did much for me anyway." He stepped closer to her. "But what we did together? Me playing the sadist to Susan's masochistic fantasies? 'That's what got me off. It's what still gets me off."
Lisa swallowed, and tried not to look away as Animal stared at her. His gaze was penetrating, cunning, predatory. She forced herself to meet it head-on, even as she fought to control her rising fear.
"She introduced me to the underground extreme hardcore scene," Animal continued, not breaking his gaze from hers. "It was at such functions, usually held in private homes, where she told me she often had to go to be completely satisfied sexually. I was a little nervous at my first party, but that didn't last long. As soon as I saw that there were others who shared my fetish, I relaxed around them. Susan introduced me to an underground hardcore porn filmmaker named Alex Pressman-he's the guy that filmed yesterday-who sometimes filmed the parties for private video collections. He asked us that first night if he could film Susan and me in a scene, and… well…I suppose he recognized talent when he saw it." He grinned.
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