Nick had no idea how long Lucy had been forced to endure this obscene posture, but even a few minutes would surely be excruciatingly uncomfortable. Lucy’s groans of anguish were hardly audible however, because a large rubber object had been forced into her mouth and, from the swollen shape of her neck, deep into her throat. Her thrust-up ass cheeks were striped with red and purplish welts, and a thin metal rod protruded from her anus. As Nick watched, the silver-haired torturer pressed a button on a handheld remote control and the rod buzzed and trembled inside her rectum. Lucy’s body shook, and she went cross-eyed and clenched her fists, as a sorrowful moan issued from her plugged-up throat.
Nick had taken in all of these details simultaneously whilst standing motionless at the foot of the stairs. Now he was galvanized into action, and brandishing the knife, he approached Lucy’s tormentor.
“Hey!”
The man swiveled round with a look of astonishment, but then lashed out with the crop with surprising speed, knocking the knife out of Nick’s hand. As Nick bent to retrieve it, the old man struck again, catching Nick viciously across the cheek. His eyes watering, Nick swung out wildly with his fist and caught the old man square on the nose. A stream of claret issued from the man’s nostrils and he staggered backwards. Nick grabbed the knife and holding it at arm’s length, said, “Untie her now!”
The old man’s eyes darted uncertainly between Nick’s face and the razor sharp blade.
“Do it!” Nick hissed.
The old man glanced at Lucy who had awkwardly maneuvered her face onto her right cheek so that she could see what was happening. Then he pressed the remote again and Lucy let out a throaty, warbled cry, and a stream of hot piss shot out from between her legs as the electrical rod shocked her insides.
In a blur of rage, Nick instinctively lunged at the old man, but as he did, a ragged pain tore into the nape of his neck, and his knees buckled and he pitched forward, banging his head against the table. Rolling over, the last thing he saw was Lucy’s contorted, naked form above him, as his world faded to black.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Nick woke up in a simply furnished room with security bars on the windows. He wondered if they were there to keep people out or in. His head ached and his neck was sore. He swung off the bed and wobbled over to the door, which he found to be locked. He checked his pockets and discovered that his wallet, watch, and cell phone were gone, along with the knife and the lock picks.
He sat down and considered his situation. It seemed he was now at the mercy of a murdering psychopath, and nobody except Chieko had any idea where he might be. Not the best of planning. On the plus side, Lucy was here and she was alive - or at least she was. What remained now was to wait to see what Johnny Ho planned to do with him. Ironically, Nick realized that Johnny Ho was within his rights to call the police, although he suspected that was unlikely to happen.
After some fretful hours had gone by, he heard a car engine and, peering out of the triangular window, saw Johnny Ho climb out of his metallic blue Porsche. He was greeted by a bald-headed Japanese man and they talked briefly before disappearing into the cabin. A small knot of fear formed in Nick’s stomach as he realized that judgment time had arrived. While he waited, he tried to formulate in his mind what he was going to say. He hadn’t come all this way just to ask for forgiveness and leave. On the other hand, he had witnessed enough to convince himself that Lucy was being held against her will - surely even she wouldn’t willingly have submitted to that torture. If he could get away, he would certainly feel he had reason to go to the police. Unfortunately, Johnny Ho would be well aware of that too.
He heard a key turning in the lock and the door opened to reveal the bald guy - with a sneer on his lips and a gun in his hand. He silently gestured towards the door, and then took Nick down a short passageway to a balcony at the top of the stairs which looked out over the ground floor. Johnny Ho was sitting in a leather couch watching a wall-mounted flat-screen TV. He glanced up and turned the sound down with the remote.
“Hello, Nick,” he said amiably. “Come on down.”
Nick felt the nozzle of the gun jab in his back, and he climbed down the stairs, noting that the trap door was now closed. He sat in a vacant armchair and Johnny Ho regarded him for a moment, his eyes dark and inscrutable, his mouth again pulled back into that narrow smile.
“I’m surprised that you came up here,” he said. “Most people wouldn’t have had the balls.”
Trying to appear relaxed, Nick shrugged.
“How’s your head?” Johnny Ho asked.
“A little sore.”
“Sorry about that. Kono-san here used a taser on you. You were going pretty wild, he said. I think you broke Satoru’s nose.”
Nick had wanted to do a whole lot more than that to the twisted bastard.
Johnny Ho folded his arms. “Anyway, I got a call that you were here and I was kind of intrigued, so here I am. The question is why are you here?”
“To see Lucy, of course.”
“After what she you told you on the phone?”
Nick drew a deep breath and said, “I don’t believe she meant what she said.”
“Why is that?”
“I think she was under duress.”
“Ah, I see. I was holding a gun to her head, right?”
“Not exactly. I think you drugged her.”
Johnny Ho cocked his head. “Really? With what, may I ask?”
Nick held his gaze. “A natural drug called scopolamine. I think you’ve used it on her before.”
Johnny Ho looked surprised. “I’m assuming Lucy told you about that.”
“In a round about way. I put two and two together.”
“Very astute of you, Nick.” He looked thoughtful for a moment. “Have you told anybody else?”
“No.”
Johnny Ho looked at him for a long time, then nodded, as if he had just reached a decision. “So now what? Do you expect to just walk out of here with her?”
Good question, Nick thought. What am I expecting?
Johnny Ho crossed his legs and said, “I need a Scotch. Will you join me?”
Without waiting for Nick’s reply, he spoke in Japanese to Kono, who went over to the bar.
Johnny Ho said, “Would you like to know why I drove all the way up here, when I could simply have had Kono take care of you?”
Nick waited.
“I had a long and interesting talk with Lucy yesterday,” Johnny Ho said. “Before and after I drugged her - yes, you’re right about the scopolamine. Under its influence, victims become totally compliant to suggestions - even if they exceed their own moral limitations. Literally, they will do anything you tell them to, with absolutely no recollection afterwards. Believe me, it can be quite a turn-on, watching a normally chaste and dignified woman willingly perform degrading sexual acts in front of complete strangers.”
“Sounds like you’ve used it a lot,” Nick said.
“Some Colombian acquaintances introduced me to it. In my line of work, it can come in very useful.”
Kono came back with two crystal tumblers of whisky over ice, and set them on the coffee table.
“Anyway, as you guessed, Lucy was under the poison’s influence when you spoke to her. I told her what to say. I’d hoped it would be enough to put you off, but I obviously underestimated your feelings for her.”
“And hers for me,” Nick added.
Johnny Ho sipped his drink. “Well, that’s the thing, isn’t it? When I first heard that Lucy had a new boyfriend, I was skeptical. See, I’m a very egotistical guy and I don’t like to lose. It was kind of embarrassing for me when she left and, as a matter of honor, I have to show my colleagues that I have got her back, and more importantly, completely under my control. As you are very well aware, Lucy is a strong-willed girl, and in order to restore my standing with my peers, I am going to have to crush that spirit.”
“So this has nothing to do with love?”
Johnny Ho laughed. “N
o, Nick. It has to do with control. Lucy is my property. Always was, always will be.”
Nick shook his head incredulously. The man was clearly demented.
“Satoru, the guy you punched downstairs,” Johnny Ho went on, “is a master in the art of dispensing pain and humiliation, and he takes great pleasure in his work. Over the coming weeks, he will systematically strip Lucy of every ounce of her sense of self-worth. By the time he is done, her entire existence will revolve around satisfying my every whim.”
Nick was now feeling slightly panicked, along with a growing sense of helplessness.
“However, as much as that will repair my reputation,” Johnny Ho said, “there is still another issue that bothers me. Do you know why Lucy agreed to meet me?”
Nick shrugged again.
“I told her that if she didn’t, I was going to kill you.”
Nick felt the color drain from his face.
“Scopolamine is an extremely powerful drug, you know,” Johnny Ho continued. “It acts as a kind of truth serum. The loss of willpower means that the victim has no alternative other than to speak from the heart. So I asked Lucy if your life was so important to her that she would risk her own. Do you know what she said?”
Now Nick felt a combination of both relief and despair because he knew what was coming next.
“She said she loves you,” Johnny Ho said. “The poor kid actually put herself at my mercy to save you, Nick. How about that?”
Nick felt a lump rising in his throat. Oh, Lucy.
“So here’s my dilemma,” Johnny Ho went on. “It hurts my pride to think that she is that much in love with another man, and even though I can physically make her my sex slave, that’s not enough. I want every part of her.” Now he leaned forward with a manic glint in his eye. “I want her soul.”
For the first time, Nick had a glimpse of the malignity that Lucy had described.
“I don’t have that, but you do,” Johnny Ho said. “I was thinking about this on the way up. By coming here, you’ve given me an opportunity, Nick. So I have decided that you’re going to be staying for a while. You’re going to be Satoru’s assistant, participating in Lucy’s torture sessions. She came here out of love for you, but by the time we’re through, she will have learned to detest you.”
“You can’t make me do that,” Nick said without conviction.
“Don’t you be so sure,” Johnny Ho said, regaining his cool demeanor. He raised his glass. “You haven’t touched your drink.”
Nick looked at his glass and then back up at Johnny Ho. Beside him, Kono pointed the gun at Nick’s head. He had no choice - the net was being drawn in. He picked up the glass and put it to his lips.
“That’s it, Nick,” Johnny Ho said. “Drink up.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
Nick stared up at the ceiling and tried to focus his eyes. Slowly, he sat up, feeling light-headed and dry-mouthed. A quick personal inspection revealed that he was naked, that all his bodily hair below the neck had been removed - and that he was also sporting a massive erection.
He couldn’t remember anything after drinking the Scotch in Johnny Ho’s living room and he had no idea how much time had passed. He stood up shakily and leaned on a table to steady himself. He noticed that there were silver chains attached to the table legs and with a jolt he realized that this was where Lucy had been trussed up in that degrading and painful posture. He looked around the basement with morbid curiosity. Unlike Nick’s own makeshift dungeon, this place had been fitted out as a fully functional torture chamber. A quick survey of the room revealed a number of metal cages of varying shapes and sizes, a medieval rack, chains hanging from the ceiling, a steel frame with leather cuffs attached, a sinister-looking iron box, a set of wooden stocks, a vertical pole, on top of which sat a gigantic dildo, and some rubber hoses and pumps, whose purpose, Nick could only guess at.
Seeing nobody else in the dungeon he went over to the stairs, his penis bouncing annoyingly before him. His mind in a turmoil, he needed to decide what to do, and in order to do that, he had to find out what had happened. He was practically certain that he had been drugged with scopolamine, and therefore Johnny Ho had compromised him in some way. His mind was a blank, so he could have done anything, and the fact that he was naked, sexually aroused, and depilated, did not bode well.
He quickly climbed the stairs, pushed open the trapdoor, and climbed out. The cabin again appeared to be deserted. The first order of business was to find something to wear. He went upstairs and discovered that the loft covered half of the cabin’s floor area and contained three bedrooms.
He went into the first room and encountered a petite Japanese girl in a skimpy maid’s outfit bending over the bed, and showing off her white panties. When she whirled around, wide-eyed, Nick was dismayed to see that it was not Lucy, although the girl did have a striking resemblance to her ‘Miki’ persona. They both froze for a moment and then the maid’s eyes dropped briefly to Nick’s swollen dick. He put his hands over it and said, “Bathroom?”
The girl pointed towards a pine door in the corner and hurried shyly out of the bedroom. Nick located a towel which he wrapped around his waist. It was an improvement, but his wretched hard-on refused to subside. He went down the short passageway and stood at the balcony that overlooked the downstairs area.
The windows were open and summer air filled the room. Outside, Nick could hear somebody grunting and panting, punctuated by an intermittent smacking sound. He padded downstairs, opened the back door and cautiously went out onto the deck.
Johnny Ho was sitting on a swing-chair watching Satoru training Lucy out in the grass clearing. She was still naked, although Nick noticed that her body had undergone some slight modifications - her nose had been pierced by a small gold ring, and inside her mouth - which was forced open by a metal ring gag - he saw that her tongue had been adorned with three silver studs.
Lucy was skipping with a pink plastic jump-rope. Her entire body was shining with sweat and her wet hair stuck to her face and neck. As she pounded her bare feet on the dry grass, her breasts bobbed wildly up and down, saliva dribbled off her chin, and her unfocused eyes rolled in their sockets.
She was clearly exhausted, but whenever she failed to raise her knees to waist height, Satoru - who, Nick observed, had a white plaster stuck on the bridge of his nose - would deliver a sharp crack with a bamboo cane across her exposed buttocks.
Johnny Ho glanced across, and said, “Nick, welcome back. Come and join me.”
Noticing Kono sitting at the far end of the deck, Nick sat on the swing-chair, a respectable distance from Johnny Ho. He was becoming increasingly uncomfortable about his rigid cock, and wondered which narcotic was coursing through his veins to have caused it.
“She’s been at it for almost an hour,” Johnny Ho said. “In this heat, she could very well collapse from dehydration.”
Unable to take his eyes off Lucy’s glistening, bouncing body, Nick anxiously said, “I thought you wanted to subjugate her, not kill her.”
“It’s all a question of degree,” Johnny Ho said. “Satoru knows exactly what he’s doing. He’ll push her right to the brink. The idea is to use the physical pain and stress to systematically dismantle her personality. When she is finally broken, he’ll rebuild her exactly the way I want her.”
The admiring way in which Johnny Ho spoke, left Nick in no doubt at all that he was dealing with a complete sociopath. Of one thing he was absolutely certain - he had to find a way to stop this before Lucy was lost to him forever.
The cute little Japanese maid came out with a jug of iced fruit juice, a glass of which was offered to Nick. As parched as he was, Nick was reluctant to slake his thirst while Lucy was being forced to exercise naked in the burning heat.
“You might as well drink it,” Johnny Ho said. “Lucy’s not getting any, regardless.”
Unable to contain himself, Nick guiltily sucked on the straw as the cold liquid slid down his throat like nectar. He could only hope t
hat Lucy’s exhaustion prevented her from comprehending the tormenting sight.
“Why are you doing this to her?” Nick asked.
“I told you why. To restore my honor. Plus, I enjoy it.”
Nick said, “I’m assuming Lucy isn’t the first, then.”
“Hell, no. There’ve been plenty of others. Yuriko, the maid that brought our drinks, has a rather intimate knowledge of my dungeon. She was a certified dental assistant before I broke her in. Now she just cooks and cleans - amongst other things. I’ll show you after dinner.”
Nick was suddenly struck by how distressingly bizarre this all was. He was sitting in a state of undress, cock erect, watching the love of his life being publicly humiliated, and the man responsible was inviting him to dinner. Despite the fact that he was being held against his will, Nick’s status had assumed that of a house guest.
Lucy’s legs finally buckled and she collapsed onto the hot grass, her breath coming in rasps and her chest heaving. Satoru brought the cane down sharply across her nipples, leaving a wicked red stripe and Lucy’s body jerked in pain. He shouted at her, presumably to get up, but the poor creature simply had nothing left. Wretchedly, Nick watched as Satoru grabbed a fistful of Lucy’s hair and jerked her upright. She slumped to her knees but managed to avoid pitching forward.
Satoru spoke to Johnny Ho who nodded, and then said to Nick. “Let me explain how this is going to work. I want Lucy to believe that you are getting sadistic pleasure from her ordeal. Eventually she’ll believe that instead of loving her, you just think of her as a sex toy to be abused for your pleasure. Satoru and I will continually reaffirm to her that this is, in fact, the truth. She’ll see you eating well and sleeping comfortably and her resentment will gradually turn into pure hatred. When I am convinced that I have destroyed her love for you, I will let you go.”
“Aren’t you worried that I will go to the cops?” Nick said, regretting it immediately.
The Manga Girl Page 18