Shackled

by Ray Garton

  Zanetta looked Lacey directly in the eyes, her face cold and expressionless as she nodded.

  Although she did not show it, Lacey was shocked. She had never seen Rex touching another woman in all the time she had been in the mansion. She was not at all jealous, that was not the problem. She had simply assumed that she was the only one he punished with his twisted version of affection.

  "Good, good," Rex said. "You be sure to remember that, Zanetta. As for you, Crystal," he said to Lacey, "I'll send someone for you when it's time for you to make your appearance. In the meantime, you just stay here and relax and be ready. Now ... I've got to go mingle with the guests."

  He let go of Zanetta's breasts as if they were large hot coals and left the room quickly, pulling the door closed hard behind him.

  Once the door was closed, Zanetta leaned forward slowly and went back to work on Lacey's eyes. When she spoke, her voice was casual.

  "You lookin' a bit s'prised, honey."

  "Wuh-well ... I just ... I've never seen him ...”

  Zanetta chuckled quietly. "You din' think he been diddlin' anybody else, right?"

  "Well, I ... wasn't sure. No."

  "Yeah, he does 'at alla time. Me ... all the others. But you ... well, you's new. Fresh meat. He gonna make you a staahh."

  "Is ... that what he told you?"

  "Baby, tha's what he tol' ever'body innis house. See, we's all been inna magazine. We's all been dragged in fronta th'press. We's all been treated like you. Like roy'lty. We's all been through what you been through ... an' pretty soon, you gonna go through what we been through."

  "So ... what he said about the movie producers and the agents ...”

  "Know what that is, honey? Tha's what comes outta th'back enda cows. Just so happens it be comin' outta th’front enda him. Meanin' his mouth.”

  They said nothing while Zanetta went on working. Then, her voice weak and sad, Lacey asked, "Are they all like this?"

  "They who?"

  "The others. The ones who have magazines like Rex."

  "Oh, y'mean like Playboy an' all them? Honey, you jus' think 'bout it. They been in this bidness lots longer'n Rex. Now Rex, y'see, just popped up outta nowhere alia sudden. Them other guys? Most of 'em been 'round for a while. I know Rex's been doin' his thing for quite a few years. But them? Well, don' 'spect me t'say they's nice guys. You wan' my 'pinion? Them guys is scum. Justa buncha power-hungry, selfish, soulless scum. But I'll tell ya one thing ... they ain' Rex. Y'wanna know th'truth, Rex'd hafta look up with b'noculars to see scum. If th'law knew 'bout Rex — if anybody knew 'bout Rex — this big house'd turn into a war zone."

  Lacey asked, "Do you miss home, Zanetta?"

  She took in a deep breath as she worked and let it out slowly, then said, "I don' miss home, so t'speak." She paused as she started on Lacey's eyeliner. "Sure don' miss my daddy doin' them things he did t'me. Don' really miss my momma. But I'll tell ya somethin'. I gotta li'l brother name a'Leon. Sweet boy. Smart, too. I thinks 'bout him alla time. Miss 'im. I hope he's doin' well. Better'n me, leastways."

  "I, um ... I have a little sister. I'm afraid for her. I know my dad's gonna do the same thing to her that he did to me."

  Again, a silence fell between them as Zanetta finished the eyeliner and started on the mascara.

  "They's all over, ain' dey?" Zanetta finally asked. "All them mens wanna do things with ya? They does it with they dicks, with they hands, with they eyes ... with they power. Ain' no gettin' 'way from it. Guess th'real secret's learnin' how t'deal with it. Tha's all we can do, sugah. Jus' deal with it."

  Zanetta began to put on Lacey's lipstick. It did not take long.

  When she was done, she stood from her stool and stepped back, took a careful look at Lacey's face, did a little touching up here and there, then grinned.

  "Crystal, baby, you's lookin' like you could send Miss America screamin' inta th'night!"

  Lacey smiled, but it didn't last long. She bowed her head a moment, then looked up at Zanetta cautiously. "My name's not, um, not really Crystal."

  "Hey, I knows 'at, sugah."

  "My real name is Lacey. What ... what's yours?"

  The grin melted away slowly as her eyes locked with Lacey's. A lot of thinking seemed to take place behind her eyes as she stared. Then she whispered, "Melody. My name's Melody."

  After a long moment, she reached out and took Lacey's hand.

  The two hands clenched tightly as they continued to look into each other's eyes. Then, both of them smiled ...

  3

  Everything was going well so far, except for the fact that Ethan's stomach refused to stop jumping around in his abdomen like a trapped jackrabbit.

  They had already gone through the double doors with the other passengers from the shuttle and passed by the three long tables where the partygoers were being greeted by beautiful young women and signed their names in large, open books.

  Ethan, Ed, and Doc simply stayed behind all the others, moving slowly along the back of the crowd.

  Ethan had no idea what he was doing. He just stayed close to Ed and followed his every move.

  As people finished signing the books, they moved away from the tables, and Ed began to follow them slowly, sticking close so they looked like part of the group.

  There were people everywhere. Coming and going. Some had TV cameras and microphones, others held drinks and finger foods.

  Music came from somewhere, spectral jazz that floated around them with no apparent source. The din of voices mixed with it like the low hum of a distant generator.

  They were in an enormous, marble-floored foyer flanked by beautiful paintings that looked like they might be very expensive originals ... but Ethan knew nothing about art.

  The three of them moved along with the others. The small group was approached by three beautiful women in clinging, revealing evening gowns, each holding a tray: two with drinks and one with hors d'oeuvres. The middle woman, a redhead with huge eyes and a smiling mouthful of pearl-white teeth, spoke with the stiffness that comes with repeated rehearsal when she said, "There is a band and a bar on the patio in back, which is at the end of the corridor directly behind me, and the other half of the party is taking place in the game room to your right. If there is anything you'd like, anything at all, just let one of us know. There's plenty of everything."

  Ed gave her a charming smile and tilt of his head and said, "Well, thank you very much. Now, tell me. Where's the most action at the moment?" he asked as he took a drink from her tray.

  Her smile grew — as impossible as it seemed — and she said, "I think Mr. Calisto is in the game room at the moment. But really, everybody seems to be moving back and forth. The new Visions centerfold won't be introduced for another forty-five minutes. Maybe an hour. I'm not sure."

  Ed winked at her. "That's fine. Thanks."

  Sipping his drink, he headed to his right, past the tables, and toward an open doorway from which music and the sound of laughter floated like an invisible mist.

  As Ethan followed Ed and Doc, he reached out and grabbed one of the finger foods from the tray — an octagonal cracker topped with some sort of pate — and popped it into his mouth and tried to give the woman a quick, faint smile. As he chewed, he realized, quite suddenly, how very hungry he was. His stomach was a yawning hole dripping with digestive acids. He also realized that whatever he was eating tasted like rancid, mildewed socks. Ethan had to swallow hard three times to get it down.

  It made him think of Bent and his wonderful cooking ... his delicious veal picatta.

  Ethan coughed into his fist a few times as he followed the others into what the lovely young woman had called the game room.

  It was not what Ethan had expected. Every "game room" he had ever seen had been in someone's basement with a bumper-pool table, maybe one of those levered hockey games or a Pachinko, and a dartboard on the wall. But not this one.

  The three of them walked through the door and along an ornate, wrought-iron divider, then
through another doorway and into the room, which was bigger than Ethan's entire house. The carpet was dark and plush. The walls were rich, decoratively carved mahogany.

  People played cards and craps at the kind of tables he would expect to see only in casinos. Two roulette wheels spun with a clackety sound. Bells and buzzers came from the enormous pin-ball machines against one wall and electronic beeps and buzzes came from the video games along another. Balls smacked together on the pool table. People moved to the beat of the loud rock music on the dance floor beneath flashing lights. In one corner, others crowded around the bar, where a beautiful young woman served drinks, moving back and forth before a long mirror above shelves of liquor bottles. Other girls walked around carrying trays of hors d'oeuvres. Smacking his lips over the ugly aftertaste left by what he'd just eaten, Ethan decided to avoid them.

  At the far end of the room, covering a good deal of the wall, was a glowing neon depiction of the Visions logo. It was a huge eye ... except, it wasn't quite an eye. It was a pair of full, glossy-red female lips shaped somewhat like an eye, with the white of the eye inside, surrounding a blue iris and a dark, somewhat dilated pupil.

  The room was crowded and faint cigarette smoke drifted above them like a fog, given a ghostly shimmer by the dim lights, but the air was cool.

  Ed slapped a hand on Ethan's shoulder, leaned toward his ear, and spoke loud enough to be heard above the voices, laughter, and music. "So, do you have a taste for the strong stuff, or do you want something a little softer?"

  Still smacking his lips, trying to get that bad taste out of his mouth, Ethan said, "Huh?"

  "What do you want to drink?"

  "Well, just a soda, I guess. But what I really want is something to eat."

  "I'll bet money there's something at the bar. At least peanuts."

  "Just as long as I know what it is."

  They went to the bar, Doc walking beside them silently, moving smoothly, apparently uninterested in everything around him. Ed ordered drinks for the three of them while Ethan attacked a bowl of pretzels, another of peanuts, and another of potato chips. A few moments later, a tall glass of some sort of cola over ice was placed before him and he took a few swallows. Then he leaned over and placed his mouth close to Ed's ear.

  "Have we found anything yet?" he asked.

  Ed looked at him and smiled, shook his head. "Just enjoy yourself, my friend. We been here ten minutes. We got a long time, okay? Like your drink?"

  Ethan nodded.

  "How about the snacks?"

  He nodded again. "I suddenly became very hungry. Are you, um, drinking ... liquor?" It made Ethan nervous to think he was in the hands of a man who might be clouding his judgment with booze.

  Still smiling, Ed said, "Far as anybody knows, all three of us are." He reached around and slapped Ethan on the back. "And we're havin' a damned good time, aren't we?"

  Ethan nodded quickly. "Yes, yes, of course."

  Ed leaned toward him until his face was a fraction of an inch from Ethan's. "Then how come you're not smilin'?" he asked, his tone friendly, his smile encouraging.

  Ethan felt better hearing that voice and seeing that smile. He smiled, too, and lifted his glass, clinking it to Ed's.

  "Atta boy." Ed laughed. "Hey, I bet you got friends who'd envy you for bein' here."

  Almost uncontrollably, Ethan found himself laughing. "Yes," he said, "yes, I'm sure I do." Then he put his glass to his lips and sipped it as if it were full of rum.

  Doc leaned his big body heavily on the bar as he sipped his drink and stared at the rows of bottles as if they were speaking to him ...

  4

  Lacey sat in the room alone. She'd been there for ... how long? She looked around, but there was no clock. She already knew that, because she'd looked for one countless times already.

  It was just Lacey, that long, lightbulb-rimmed mirror above the vanity, a closet full of clothes, a connecting lounge with a sofa and a couple chairs and a radio on an end table beside a lamp, and a small bathroom with a shower.

  She'd turned on the radio earlier, but it was only an annoyance when it mixed with the pounding rock music coming from one end of the house and the blurry jazz coming from another.

  Walking into the lounge, Lacey sat on the sofa, wanting to stretch out on it ... but not in the dress she was wearing.

  She'd worn a lot of beautiful dresses since coming to the mansion, but this one was unlike anything she'd ever seen. It was clinging ... and humiliating.

  It was a sheer black lace body sheath, ankle-length, with full-length sleeves and scattered with red sequins. The sequins gathered dazzlingly over each breast and in an inverted triangle over her pubic area. She wore nothing underneath. Other than the smattering of red sequins, her ass was there for all to see through the sheer black material. There was a seven-inch kick pleat in back and she wore black spike heels.

  Lacey knew that if she did not look perfect when she went out there — if anything was out of place — well, she did not want to think about that. It was too frightening.

  And that made her angry.

  She did not feel sixteen anymore. She felt ... well, just old. She could not remember ever feeling her true age, even when she was a little girl. How could she with her father sneaking into her dark bedroom almost every night to play his sick little games?

  Sitting there on the sofa, listening to the muffled music and garbled laughter throughout the first floor of the mansion, she thought of Daphne. Those people down in that dark place seemed to have known everything about Lacey, and what they hadn't known, Dr. Jacqueline Melton had gotten out of her. So they knew all about Daphne. Were they perhaps planning to take her, too? To torture her in one of those black rooms? Use her? Sell her to someone? Make her sacrifice a baby ... or perhaps be a sacrifice herself?

  Lacey thought of Jacquie, the kind and friendly doctor, the only beam of sunlight in the relentless darkness of that place. Her words had made so much sense, had been so comforting after the endless obscenities screamed at her by all the others there. Lacey had clung to those words, invested a lot of hope in them.

  But when she thought of that long walk with Jacquie from the hidden elevator to the back door of the mansion — a walk that had taken place an eternity ago, one of many eternities — she remembered that Jacquie had told her she was "going places," that she was going to do important things. She had never said exactly what those places and things were, however.

  Now Lacey knew. She just did not understand.

  What was so important about being repeatedly butt-fucked by some beefy, greasy, drooling, pajama-wearing mumbler who couldn't get it up unless he was causing pain, unless he was squeezing a breast so hard that he nearly drew blood with his well-manicured nails? What was so important about posing naked in a magazine? And what was so important about having her whole life stripped away from her in exchange for some pretty dresses, some good food, and the filthy, robotic existence of living for Rex Calisto's every whim.

  If there was anything at all important about any of those things, Lacey could not see it. She could see, however, that Dr. Jacqueline Melton was not the friend Lacey had thought her to be.

  Lacey knew she had invested her trust and hopes in manipulative lies.

  Again.

  Deep in her mind, she could see her father's sweaty face hanging over her in her bed at night, smiling and laughing quietly at her. She had not escaped him; she had simply gone out of the snake pit and into the lion's den.

  Lacey got up, went into the bathroom, and opened the medicine cabinet. In nearly every bathroom in the house — she wasn't even sure how many there were — there were usually some pills in the medicine cabinet. Librium, Valium, Xanax. That was what she needed, something to calm her down.

  Her eyes scanned the shelves in the cabinet: toothbrushes, toothpaste, a couple combs, an open box of tampons, a bottle of aspirin, another of Midol.

  Nothing to calm her nerves. Nothing to make the evening pass with a little more ea
se than she suspected it would. How could she look relaxed and confident in front of all those cameras and microphones when she would be standing at the side of a man she hated so much that she thought she would actually be capable of —

  Her eyes froze on an object in the medicine cabinet.

  Her thoughts tripped over one another and fell to a halt.

  It was a razor. The razor Zanetta had used to feather Lacey's hair earlier. It lay on the shelf, half open, the blade partially visible. Fully extended, it was only above five inches long, half blade, half handle.

  And it was very, very sharp.

  The door opened in the other room and Lacey closed the cabinet, turned, and left the bathroom. Zanetta walked in the room looking very stiff and quite frightened.

  Rex was right behind her, clutching her elbow. He closed the door and smiled at Lacey as he moved around to Zanetta's right side and put his left arm around her shoulders, pulling her close to him.

  "You look absolutely stunning," he said. Then, to Zanetta: "You've done a beautiful job on our girl here. But I'm afraid we have one little problem."

  Zanetta's lovely eyes closed slowly and she seemed to hold her breath.

  Rex looked at Lacey and his smile faded. "After spending this much time in my home, how could you possibly not know that every single thing that is said or done within these walls is monitored and reported to me? This place is wired for sound. There's a video camera concealed in every corner. Don't you realize that?"

  "Well, I thought ... I guess I suspected ... yes, I suppose so," Lacey said, her voice suddenly lowered to a frightened whisper. She didn't move, couldn't move, and simply stared at Rex as his smile returned.

  "You also know, Crystal, that there are certain things the young women here simply do not discuss, ever. Things that are forbidden, even though you are here under the considerable protection of my home, my security, my guards ... protected from the listening ears outside. You've been told that, so I know that you know it."

  She could only nod, unable to speak at all now.