by Zoe Blake
This wasn’t a cellar. It was a torture chamber and she was standing in the middle of it, mere feet away from some kind of cruel bondage bench. Like the horse upstairs only without the equine neck and head, it had four legs, a padded rail across the top, and multiple rings on all sides by which to affix whoever was stupid enough to get caught in this house.
Right now, that someone was her.
Everywhere she looked, she saw horror after horror. Neatly coiled ropes, straps, manacles, crops, paddles, and even hooks—hooks, hanging from other hooks—dangled off the stone walls. Blindfolds and masks lined the shelves amid more gag varieties than she’d ever known existed. Gags with balls, gags with bits, gags with round metal hook contraptions designed to force a jaw open and keep it that way no matter what.
Another hard thump pulsed through her, an unexpected echo of which landed, centered, and took command of her clit.
Once upon a time, a wise man had told her moments of stress could teach a person a lot about themselves. She had to stop talking to wise men because this wasn’t at all something she wanted to learn.
The low, scraping footstep on a hard stone floor.
Goldi looked down at the stones she was rooted to, at her own feet which hadn’t moved. Her heart thumped again, her clit hummed, and every fine hair on her body stood up on end as she heard the bellows-like exhale of beastly breath nowhere near far enough behind her.
Her own breath sounded abnormally loud and shaky as Goldi faced the third bear. It was even larger than the other two she had seen, and it was squaring itself against her from the far side of this entirely too small cellar. Facing it now too, she hugged the ledger tight against her.
She was going to die. She was a little surprised that she wasn’t more scared. Her legs were shaking. She was clutching the book so tight that the edges of the hard cover bit into the fleshy parts of her fingers, making her knuckles ache and throb. But she didn’t scream. The urge was there, choking up the back of her throat at tonsil level, but that was as far as it rose, even when the bear rose to stand. Twenty good feet separated them and it still towered over her, not roaring or growling, or making any noise apart from the heaviness of its breathing. Not moving either, apart from a faint pawing at the air and a twitch of its black nose.
The Tower
by Jennifer Bene
A Rapunzel Story
Rebecca 'Rapunzel' Sinclair has spent her entire life in The Tower. A forty-two story monument to her father's tech company where she lives and works, trying to be worthy of Daniel Sinclair's incredible legacy. But while her father has kept her sheltered and safe, he has also made enemies, and when one of them rips Rapunzel from The Tower and takes her prisoner she is dropped into a nightmare of pain and pleasure. As her masked captor works to break her down, will she be able to face the darkness in her past, and the dangerous desires she's discovering inside herself?
The Tower Warning:
When kings make bad decisions, sometimes it's the princesses who bear the burden. Tortured, tormented, and used for dark purposes, you're in for a ride. Tread lightly, the nightmare doesn't end when Rapunzel leaves The Tower this time.
Enjoy,
Jennifer Bene
Excerpt from The Tower
Rebecca stretched as she walked across the empty apartment, the buzzing voices of the television keeping her company as she settled onto the couch. The shining white tile reflected the images moving across the screen, some sappy sweet romance movie had started while she’d been washing dishes.
No thanks.
Click. Cooking show. Click. Reality show. Click. Commercial. Click. Dad?
The volume was too low to understand the chipper looking woman on the screen, but she turned it up fast. “… to attend. Software magnate Daniel Sinclair is showing his softer side this week as he opens the Sinclair Shelter for Women. While Mr. Sinclair is well known for his contributions to technology, he’s not often caught in the public eye, but he appeared today with his daughter Rebecca as they cut the ribbon to open this…” The voice on the screen faded in her ears as she watched the flashes of images. Her father cutting the ribbon, smiling and waving at the cameras, all blond hair and dimples – the perfect CEO. Then they were both waving, his arm around her waist – a picture perfect father and daughter.
Her voice came over the surround sound speakers and she cringed, hating herself for agreeing to that damn interview. “Right. My father just wanted to, you know, do something to honor my mother’s legacy. I’m really just, uh, glad to be here for it. It’s nice.”
Nice? You’re such a fucking idiot.
The news mercifully switched back to her father, his vibrant voice filling the room for a minute as he walked the camera crew through a tour. The one and only Daniel Sinclair, practically perfect in every way.
Perfectly poised, perfectly dressed, and perfectly happy to spend all his time at the office.
She should have just gone skiing without him, invited a few friends and enjoyed herself – but no matter how childish it seemed, she missed him. Missed the days when it was just the two of them going for a run near the waterfront, or ordering Chinese and watching bad movies.
And how many years had it been since that happened?
‘Too many’, she answered inside her head.
As Rebecca sulked, taking a large drink of her wine, the reporter appeared in the frame again. “The facility is set to open in the next few weeks, and according to Mr. Sinclair’s representatives they are already in active communication with support organizations throughout the city. We can only hope others follow in his footsteps. Back to you, Tom!”
When the news anchors took back over, she slid the volume back down a little and sighed. Tapping her phone, the display revealed 10:17 in bright numbers, and she contemplated texting him. To ask when, or if, he was coming home tonight, but that was ridiculous.
She was twenty-four, not some kid.
She shouldn’t even be living at home, hell, she shouldn’t be working for her father.
But it makes him happy.
Lying back on the couch, she tilted the wine glass back and forth, watching the pale chardonnay blur the skyline outside the floor to ceiling windows. The night sky was a black hole above the city, not a star in sight with all the light pollution. If she were smart, she’d move somewhere far away, somewhere she could wake up and walk outside without going down forty-two floors in an elevator. Out of the city. Somewhere she could be someone new. Being the daughter, and thus the charmed employee, of the head of Monarch Systems had some benefits – including the beautiful, spacious, two-floor penthouse that took up the top floors of The Tower – but it also meant that she spent her whole life here.
She worked in The Tower, she slept in The Tower, and unless her friends begged her to go out, she never left. And, lately, even that was a rare occurrence.
“You’re pathetic,” she growled and lifted the wineglass. Empty. With a sigh, she pushed herself off the couch and wandered back into the kitchen to refill. The stack of papers she’d printed out lurked underneath her laptop on the crisp dining table, tempting her to just bury herself in work.
To be just like Daddy.
It was what she’d always wanted. It was one of the few things that made him smile with pride. It was why she’d killed herself to get the business degree and the art history degree. Something she needed and something she loved, but only one of them was ever going to matter. After all, how was she going to shake off the dumb blonde perception of the board if she couldn’t speak their language? If she didn’t start showing them, she knew how the company was actually fucking doing?
The memory of how she’d looked on the news flashed behind her eyes. The form-fitting royal blue dress, the tasteful jewelry, her long pale hair falling to her waist, that perfect Sinclair smile – she’d looked more like she was trying out for Miss America, not preparing to be the heir to one of the most successful companies on the East Coast. Fuck, she wouldn’t even take a girl like t
hat seriously if they said they wanted to run Monarch Systems.
Damn it all.
“Let’s just drink until we can’t think. How does that sound, Rebecca?” Talking to herself, again, she grabbed the whole bottle of wine and headed back to the couch. Glass refilled, cold and biting as she swallowed, she zoned out on the newscast. Something about a shooting, police looking, blah blah blah. So much chaos in the world, so many angry people. As she took another sip, she heard the click of the door behind her and she smiled to herself.
Speak of the devil and he shall appear.
“Hey Dad,” she called over her shoulder. “I want to show you something, come in here before you run off to your office!” Pressing the rewind button on the remote so she could show him the news report, she set the wine down. The stupid DVR went too fast and she had to stop it and fast-forward, cursing under her breath. “They were just talking about the facility on the news. I looked like a complete idiot, but you did great. Hold on, I’ll show you. Did Patricia tell you this was airing tonight?”
He didn’t answer her, but she clicked pause as soon as the image of the new building filled the screen. Was he on the phone and ignoring her again? Asshole.
Turning to find her father, she caught a dark shape in her vision, too close, and then the sharp pull of someone’s fist in her hair made her gasp. Panic flooded her with an overdose of adrenaline and she kicked out, her foot colliding painfully with the coffee table, but she was caught. Her struggles only sent her wine crashing to the floor, and an instant later she was hauled over the back of the couch. Rebecca landed hard on the tile, but the adrenaline was now a live wire in her veins and she made it onto her knees, planning to run, when the hand returned to her hair. Air hissed between her teeth, a whimper rising up as the man tightened his grip and then forced her flat. A knee behind her shoulder blades pinning her painfully against the cold tile.
“Let me go!” she screamed as soon as she caught a breath, her voice breaking, but there was no one to hear her in the empty building. No one is coming. Fight. Reaching back, she dug her nails into gloved hands, trying in vain to tear his grip free. A growl rumbled above her just before he cracked her forehead against the floor. Pain flashed like a firework behind her eyes, turning her stomach while she tried to protect her face. Her ears were ringing, and for a moment she was so stunned that she didn’t notice the jerking motions at her waist until she felt the cool tile on her lower belly.
Oh God, he was taking off her pants.
Nightmares in Wonderland
by Addison Cain
An Alice in Wonderland Story
When darkness falls, Alice hears the tick-tock of the grandfather clock, and the hosts of Wonderland come out to play: the Red Queen soaked in blood, the laughing Madman of Cheshire, and a nasty pair of little boys who itch to bite and scratch. Of all who haunt Alice, one devil’s false friendship is far more insidious. The Hatter has all the power, loves to twist and taunt, and is eager to draw sweet Alice into a never-ending nightmare of degradation and fun. Tea anyone?
Nightmares in Wonderland Warning:
How deep into the woods are you willing to stroll? For the story ahead is truly dark and twisted. The horrors of thorny thickets and poisonous swamps await. You’ve been warned.
This is where the romance ends and the nightmares begin.
Love,
Addison Cain
Publishers warning:
This story is not a romance. It is a wonderfully written tale of horror.
Excerpt from Nightmares in Wonderland
Every childhood memory, every last horror over the years held one object in common: a stuffed white rabbit. Since I was a baby, the snowy toy sat on a shelf above my reach, high atop the nursery’s sprigged walls. I had many playthings I was not allowed to touch lining that shelf, the china faces of dolls with golden ringlets like mine in plenty. My mother was the one who told me to only look, never touch—that like me, these dolls were expected to remain immaculate and beautiful.
There were other rules: I was not permitted to muss my frock and pinafore, nor was I ever allowed to touch my hair. I was to be always clean, starched, crimped, and expressionless—my overlarge blue eyes lowered in a demure position should someone address me. It was never phrased so bluntly, but even as a small child I understood that, like the jewels of my nursery, my purpose was to serve as a pretty item for others to enjoy.
Often, I was put on display.
When Mama and Papa would throw their soirees, our house would transform into a fairyland—flowers, exotic foods, extra staff bustling about our London brownstone. After dark, the magic of music would seep upstairs, above the crowds of gentlemen in their dress coats and ladies stuffed in taffeta and ribbons. My nanny would spend the entire day preparing me to be seen for five minutes. In my fresh dress, scratchy lace at my throat and at the cuffs of my sleeves, she’d take my hand and lead me down the twisting staircase to where my proud parents waited.
If it were near Christmas or my birthday, before the crowds of Papa’s friends, all eyes on me, Mother would give me a new doll to add to the collection on the shelf. Like clockwork, my arms would reach out and the new toy lain upon them. Always I would thank her for her generosity, tuck the doll carefully under my arm, and then to be sent right back upstairs.
The doll with its cold china face would be taken from me the moment I was restored to my nursery, placed upon the shelf with its myriad counterparts. I never minded the loss of the bauble. My favorite toys were my miniature porcelain tea set and the worn rocking horse at the foot of my bed.
Though I’d smiled as expected when my mother handed me the cursed thing, truth was the dolls’ fixed expressions frightened me... all thanks to the rabbit nestled in their ranks.
Everything goes back to that rabbit.
I could not tell you how long it had been up there, who had given it to me... I could tell you nothing about it.
But I could tell you this: the dolls with their dead stares could be ignored. I could pretend they were not there. The same could not be said of that stuffed rabbit. Black glass eyes followed me wherever I played, when I napped, dressed, did my toilette. I was always watched... and there was no getting rid of it. One autumn morning, I had finally found the courage to climb atop my bureau and reach for the cursed thing. I threw it in the fire before my nanny might notice, and I watched it burn.
That afternoon, I had felt whole. I had not been afraid of the glass eyes or what they would bring when the house was asleep.
But, when I had returned to my nursery after the daily, elegant tea with my parents, my short-lived bravery died. In fact, I think a part of me died, sank right out from my toes and into the floorboards.
The rabbit was back, on the shelf innocently sitting, tucked between the dolls that looked like me. The white of its fur was pristine. There was no soot or rips. The glass eyes had not melted, they shone under the lamplight, glowering at me in judgment.
One look at the thing, and I had screamed my head off. My nanny had come running, and in the end, I’d earned a whipping for my noise. Like all good children, I was to be seen and never heard.
For the hundredth time, I’d begged her to take the white rabbit away.
My pleas fell on deaf ears.
Every few years, months, weeks, I don’t know... I never slept, recalling time was a difficulty for me... I would again try to make my move against the rabbit. I had thrown it out my window and into the street to be run over by carriages and made dirty by the dust and shuffling of strangers. Other times, I had hidden it someplace else in the house: locked it in cabinets, buried it in the attic, set it upon the bed in the maid’s room. The rabbit always came back.
I don’t know why. I never know the why of anything.
Night after night that rabbit would infect my little nursery with evil. Tucked into my bed, alone, the house would be soundless save the ticking of the grandfather clock downstairs. The growing noise of that clock was the herald of trouble:
tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock, louder and louder. No breaking storm could have roared through the house as furiously as that screaming timepiece.
Covers to my chin, my wide blue eyes would dart to and fro. Though the noise was wretched, I longed for it to continue into forever. I would rather feel it vibrate through my bones than face what came next. Because that cranking cog of noise would end abruptly, sometimes after hours, sometimes after just a few short moments. Then I would be trapped in deafening silence, with only the sound of blood racing through my ears to warn me danger had arrived.
Silence was unsafe. The dark was a living thing, monstrous. The thin slice of moonlight cutting through the curtains offering no succor. Casting the shape of my window’s panes against the papered wall, that scant light illuminated a single horrid thing. If I let my gaze stray, peeked just a little to the right, I would see something that should not be.
The rabbit’s stitched head had turned, those flat glass eyes staring right at me. And then they would come.
The first time I’d seen her grace my nursery, I had been very little—so young that I could not tell you what my age might have been. The apparition was naked, slender—a young woman, shoulders hunched forward in the shadows. Long hair, tangled and matted, hung messy to her waist. Every bit of her bared body was covered in wet blood. Before her, she’d rub her slippery hands together while pacing, back and forth, a terrible clicking coming from her throat.