Shackled
Page 14
He couldn't have been more than six or seven, a small, naked, frightened-looking boy with skin the color of dark chocolate. Around his neck, he wore a collar that looked just like the strips of leather strapped around the base of each man's penis. Attached to the collar were two leashes of silver chain, one held by each man. The boy looked at her as if he hoped she might be able to help him, or at least explain to him what was happening.
The helpless innocence in his eyes reminded Lacey of her little sister Daphne and she sat up and swung her legs over the edge of the bed.
"Oh, honey," she whispered instinctively.
"Shut the fuck up," one of them said casually.
The other one gave the boy an order — a loud, obscene order — and pointed at Lacey, and both men pushed him forward.
The little boy looked up at one leather mask, then the other, then turned his eyes to Lacey's. He quickly looked away, as if he were guilty of something.
Lacey leaned forward, suddenly terrified, and clutched the boy's shoulders, pulling him toward her, showing him what to do.
"C'mon," she whispered tremulously, "c'mon, you can just do it for now, Can't you, honey? Oh, please, sweetheart, it's okay, nobody'll hurt you if you just do it." She went on in a comforting tone as the boy reluctantly followed the order.
Her voice was clogged with tears and she began to sniffle as she looked down at the little boy and thought of Daphne.
Poor, poor Daphne ...
... poor, poor little boy.
Someday, she thought, some fucking day ... these subhuman bastards will fucking pay for this!
She let the little boy go on doing what he was doing and went on patting him and stroking him reassuringly, giving him what she was certain was the only affection and reassurance he had gotten since he had, in one way or another, fallen into the hands of these creatures.
When one of the men finally told him to stop, the little boy scurried off the bed as if he'd been caught doing something ... but the four fingertips of his left hand were resting on her hand.
As the men took him out, the little boy said in a hoarse voice, "My name's Sam-yool."
Lying on the bed, Lacey shot up and stood, all the while stammering, "I'm-I'm-uh — my nuh-name is — "
But he had been pulled out the door.
The light went out, throwing her into the pit of complete darkness.
"You bastards," she breathed, groping her way through the dark. "You fucking sons a bitches, fucking bastards, you miserable — " She hit the wall with a grunt before she could raise her voice too high.
Lacey knew what happened when she shouted or screamed ... horrible, painful things ... wet, electronic things happened to her ... ugly, spiked things that vibrated and growled like angry rodents while all the faces circled around the bed and watched her agony with smiles.
She found the light switches and tried them desperately, up and down, up and down. But nothing happened. Because They wanted her to be in the dark.
Lacey stumbled back to her bed and fell onto it, crying. As she buried her face in her small, flat pillow and tried to swallow her sobs, she wondered where so many tears were coming from all of a sudden ...”
3
As she ate her next meal — she tried to think of it as breakfast, her favorite meal, tried to imagine a plate of scrambled eggs with melted cheese before her, four strips of bacon with hash browns, an English muffin, and a tall glass of orange juice — she thought about that little boy.
How long ago had it been since They'd brought him to her? She couldn't remember. They had taken time away from her, just as They had taken away her control of the light in her room — if it could be called a room — and her ability to sleep for very long without someone bursting in to do things to her that she'd never imagined one human being could do to another. Maybe They weren't really human after all.
Where had They gotten poor little Samuel — Sam-yool! she remembered — before bringing him here? It was unlikely they'd found him in a bus station because he was too young. A playground, maybe? A park? Outside his school? Or maybe right off the sidewalk on the block where he lived with his parents, who were probably sick to death with fear and worry over their missing son.
At least, she hoped they were. She hoped somebody worried about him and was afraid for him. She knew that wasn't the case with her. It didn't bother her much at all. In fact, she didn't really care. It was just a fact. But that sad-eyed little boy deserved someone's worry and concern.
Lacey thought that she probably had never deserved such concern, even back when she was a baby, or a little tiny girl, being romanced by her father as he prepared her for the bedroom games they would be playing some years later.
Her father had always told her that she'd wanted that from him since she was a little baby. In her mind, that was translated to mean that, from birth, she had been no good. So it did not surprise her that she was here in this tiny black room where all these people did all these things to her.
Maybe this was, after all, what she deserved for being born the way she was ... wanting to play the games her father had told her she'd wanted so much since she was a baby.
Lacey was halfway through her meal, eating slowly and mechanically in the dark, when the door opened and the overhead light exploded in her eyes, hurting her head and making her wince.
The woman in the nurse's uniform walked in. She had a sort of non-face with nondescript features, untouched by makeup, that were so bland and plain that she would be nearly impossible to describe to anyone else and would be virtually invisible in a crowd. Her graying black hair was pulled back tightly in a bun beneath the old-fashioned nurse's cap she wore. This time, she wore a dull, worn, light blue sweater over her shoulders. And her right arm was bent at her waist, fingers wrapped around something.
It's the gun again, Lacey thought as she squinted at it. The gun that isn't really there.
"Get up and come with me," she said.
Lacey simply stared at her numbly, her mush-filled spoon halfway to her mouth.
"Come on. Now. Get up and come with me."
Lacey put down her spoon, stood, and went with the nurse. They stepped into a dimly lit hallway and the nurse led her to the left, walking slightly behind her. Lacey was naked but, by now, nothing much fazed her, so she did not feel self-conscious or ashamed and made no attempt to cover herself. It had been a long time — Lacey thought, anyway — since she had walked any farther than from her bed to the bathroom and back again, so she was a little unsteady on her feet and she reflexively stumbled backward and clutched the nurse's elbow.
The nurse jerked her arm away and said flatly, "Don't touch me."
Lacey snapped her hand back as if it had been burned.
The nurse moved a couple feet ahead of her.
Thick, blood red carpet — the cheap, flat indoor-outdoor variety — silenced their footsteps and walls of an even deeper red — the red of thick, drying blood — swept by on either side as they walked, with a door every several feet, as Lacey tried hard to keep up with the nurse's brisk pace. The quality of the carpet made little difference to Lacey; compared to the concrete floor of her room, it was soft and warm and made her want to sigh with relief, although she remained silent.
They rounded a corner and stopped before a large, rectangular door with two buttons in an aluminum casing on the wall beside it. The nurse, still standing behind Lacey, leaned forward and punched the bottom button hard with her stubby forefinger. There was a deep thrum beneath their feet, and in a moment the doors opened onto an elevator car.
Lacey followed the nurse, the doors closed, and they began their descent.
When they stopped, the doors opened on blackness. The nurse put her hand on Lacey's neck and pushed her gently into the darkness with the gun at her back, down a narrow hall that was lit by the faintest of lights.
It was cold down there, cold and damp, and beads of moisture clung to the dark walls of lumpy stone, sparkling like bits of crystal.
The first thing she saw was the cross hanging from the ceiling in the center of the room. It was hanging upside down. On the cross was the sculpture of a lean, muscular man, his feet placed at the horizontal ends of the cross, his head at its base, and his arms outstretched, raised slightly above his head. An enormous erection shot from his crotch like a veined club. He appeared to be made of gold.
Lacey gasped and touched her fingertips to her lips. But there was more in the room, much more.
There were several people — how many, maybe twelve, fifteen, more? — all dressed in black robes and wearing black hoods with long open slits over their eyes and mouths. In one corner of the room was a bright red light, and in another was a bright blue light; the result was a sickening sort of purple that poured over all the black, staring figures who formed a sort of haphazard circle.
In the middle of that circle was a rectangular platform directly beneath the upside-down cross with the man on it. On that platform lay a small shape beneath a black blanket. She could see a head and two little hands poking from the top of the blanket. A baby, still, motionless, as if it were sleeping.
One of the black-clad, hooded figures stepped forward when Lacey walked in. It approached her and held out a black-gloved hand to take one of hers gently. The figure spoke to her in a quiet but somehow familiar voice.
"Hello, Lacey," he said. His voice was a low, moist mumble. "We don't want to make too much noise because the baby is sleeping." He led Lacey by the hand toward the platform. She could tell that his hands were large and strong and they frightened her a little. "We have something for you to do," he said, his voice so quiet and wet, "but first, I want to ask you something." He turned to face her, and even though he wore a hood, she could tell that his eyes were very serious. "You know that you are absolutely worthless and that you have lived to deserve what you are receiving here, am I correct?" he asked, so casually that Lacey automatically nodded. "You know that you have no other choice than to do what we tell you because of your worthlessness, am I correct?"
Once again, Lacey nodded, wearing an expressionless look on her face.
"You know that you have reached the destiny to which you have been bound since birth, correct?"
Again, she nodded, but this time without any hesitation because she knew he was right.
He lifted his right hand and it held a very large, serrated dagger with a goat's head carved at the end of the handle.
"Here," he said. "This is for you. We want you to kill the baby with it as a sacrifice to our lord Satan, the Prince of Darkness. Because you know your worthlessness, you know that you have no choice and that you must do this."
In spite of the horrible words he spoke, his soft, wet voice sounded friendly, amiable.
"Take the knife," he said, holding it toward her. "Take it. Unlike everyone else, we accept you. To us, you have worth. To Satan, you are valuable. To Satan, you are priceless. But first ... to prove your worth ... you must kill this baby as a sacrifice to him, so that he will know you are deserving of his respect."
Lacey took the ugly dagger in her right hand mechanically, as if she were a robot.
"Now, go stand over there, beside the baby. We will perform a chant to our lord Satan, and when I say, 'Do it,' you put the knife into the baby to prove your worth to Satan. Because, after all, he is the only one who will accept you now. You have no choice. You have nothing else."
Lacey felt sick. She thought she might vomit soon.
"Come with me," the man said quietly.
Lacey went to the platform. The man stood behind her, reaching around her to place both of her hands around the handle of the dagger and lift them high above her head.
"Now, stand like that," he said softly, moistly, "and when you hear me say 'Do it,' you do it."
She stood there, feeling numb. The man walked away from her, and in a moment the group began to chant gibberish. It made no sense to her, the rhythmic blabbering that came from all the black clad, hooded figures was senseless ... but somehow it reached deep inside her and chilled the marrow of her bone.
Lacey looked toward the door, where the nurse stood with the gun held at her waist — exactly the way Carolee used to hold it — pointed directly at her.
Suddenly, in the middle of the gibberish, she heard the man say, "Do it."
Her fingers tightened around the handle of the dagger so hard that her knuckles paled. She held the blade above her head but was frozen, paralyzed, and could not move.
"Do it," the man said, still quietly, but with more emphasis.
Lacey could not move her arms as she looked down at the small form beneath the blanket, head turned to the side, its skin turned a dull purple by the lights. With the blanket pulled up so far and the baby's head turned away from her, she couldn't see its face, which was probably better. She couldn't even tell if it was on its stomach or its back.
"Do it!" the man barked as the others continued to chant.
She looked at the nurse with the gun pointed at her, at the others in black with their hoods hiding their chanting faces and with all their eyes burning into her, and, for some reason, thought of her father's fat, fleshy penis, and with all the strength she could muster, she plunged the knife downward into the center of the infant's body, then pulled it back out immediately, as if that would make a difference. She saw that the blade was covered with glistening blood.
Lacey turned to her right, leaned forward, and vomited onto the floor.
That was when everyone around her — all the people clad in black and wearing hoods to hide their faces — began to laugh. They laughed so hard that they leaned forward, clutching their stomachs.
Lacey looked around at all of them with wide, horrified eyes, still clutching the bloody knife.
The man who had spoken to her stepped forward. He was laughing, too, but quietly as he approached her and put his big, black-gloved hands on her shoulders. When he finally spoke through the laughter, Lacey could tell, somehow, that he was grinning.
"The baby," he said quietly, "was not real." He reached down and pulled back the blanket to reveal what looked like a life-size doll that was oozing blood from its wound. "A doll filled with strawberry jam. But you have shown us that you will do as we ask. Someday, the baby will be real. You won't know when, but you will have to do exactly as you have done this time, in spite of the baby's movement, in spite of the baby's crying. You will have to do as you are told, no matter what that might be. For Satan. Our lord Satan. Because he is your lord now, as well. He is your only savior, the only one who will accept you. Because you know ... you know that no one else will accept you. You have no other choice. You have no other god," he said through his hidden smile. "Satan is your lord and master now. The Prince of Darkness dictates your life. He is the one to whom you bow, the one to whom you pray, the one for whom you will do whatever is asked of you. Because it you don't, we will know. And very bad things will happen to you."
The man put his enormous, gloved hands on her shoulders and pulled her close to him. Their eyes locked.
"From now on, you must worship as we worship," he said, his voice still quiet, still wet. "You have no god but Satan. Am I right? You deserve nothing else but to demean yourself for Satan and do exactly as you are told, am I right?"
Slowly, very slowly, Lacey nodded her head, just as mechanically as she would raise her hand in class in response to a question to which she knew the answer.
"Good," the man said. "Very good. You may go back to your room. But we will call for you again. And you will come. And you will do as I say. For Satan." He paused for a long moment, staring at her from the darkness of his black hood, then reached out and gently touched her face. "You are incredibly beautiful," he breathed.
Suddenly the nurse was at her side, still holding the gun, still wearing a mask-like face that hel
d no expression. She took Lacey's elbow, led her out of the frightening, crowded purple darkness and back to the familiar and strangely safe darkness of her own room.
Once she was in her bed, Lacey surprised herself once again; pressing her face into the pillow, reliving over and over the mock sacrifice she had just performed, she burst into convulsive sobs and shed tears she did not know she had ...
4
After the mock sacrifice, things changed for Lacey. She was given a flimsy gray hospital-like gown that fell to her mid-thigh and tied in the back and was allowed out of her room at times. She was allowed to eat her meals in a small, dimly lighted, windowless room at a table, as if it were a real meal. It was the same kind of food, a mushy substance with little flavor along with bread that had been allowed to harden — but being outside of her darkened room somehow made it more enjoyable.
She was served by people who wore normal street clothes, but had hoods over their heads, like the ones she'd seen in that purple-lit room.
One day — or was it night? — she spotted the little black boy at a table eating his meal as if he thought it might be his last. She went over and seated herself across from him.
"Hello, Samuel," she whispered. "Remember me?"
Without meeting her eyes, he nodded.
She tried to give him a big smile, but it was something she'd almost forgotten how to do and was difficult. "I'm glad to see you again," she whispered. He still did not look her in the eyes.
"It's all right, Samuel. They made you do it. You have nothing to be ashamed of. I want us to be friends." She waited a moment for him to look at her, but he didn't. "Please, Samuel? Can we be friends?"