Rough Play

by Christina Crooks

  Martin seized the opportunity to nudge Ratty and tiptoe back down the hallway, turn a corner, and let themselves out the front door. They ducked into one of the recessed alcoves so common in buildings downtown. The alcoves were prized by the homeless. Fortunately theirs was unoccupied.

  A minute later Kartane pushed open the same door, holding it for Charlotte. A true gentleman. Martin sneered from his shadowed perch. Ratty rustled, and Martin went still, hoping his alcove partner didn’t do anything to reveal their location. It’d still be awkward to explain their presence, and Ratty didn’t strike him as particularly diplomatic.

  The Gorean held the passenger-side car door for Charlotte. A late-model BMW. The man had money. How nice for him.

  Martin didn’t breathe easily until the dark blue luxury car had disappeared.

  When he did, he inhaled the smell of piss. Cursing, he stepped out of the alcove and let the moist night air seep into his sinuses, cleansing his nose and clearing his brain. “Filthy city. The homeless problem is out of control.”

  “So, move.” Ratty stepped out, brushing at his coat with long strokes.

  “I might, after the blackmail situation’s settled.”

  Ratty looked at him quickly.

  Martin exhaled noisily. “Never mind. Look, I’ve been foolish. Going after Charlotte as if I had any right to invade her privacy.”

  What was he doing, anyway, breaking into a building in the middle of the night? Taking these kinds of risks for a woman he barely knew? A woman who’d chosen Kartane over him? He wanted less responsibility for others, not more heaped onto the towering pile of duty that was his life.

  Money. It came down to money, and freedom. Martin had been so close to both goals. Now his choices were being stripped away. Charlotte wasn’t a viable choice. Was she?

  “Ratty? When Charlotte talked about her, ah, visions, did she ever mention seeing me in them? Me and her, specifically.” He tried to sound impersonal and businesslike.

  He discovered it was impossible to sound impersonal and businesslike regarding Charlotte under the circumstances.

  “Uh-huh. That’s what I thought.”

  Martin bristled. “What? What’s what you thought?” He clutched Charlotte’s coat to him, scowling at Ratty. Ratty simply smiled.

  Why had Martin ever tried to help him? Clearly Ratty was an ungrateful loose canon. Martin should ban him from Subspace to save himself trouble. Amethyst was far better off without him. Ratty had no friends in Subspace. Martin would tell Ratty so immediately.

  “I think she must’ve had a vision about you. She’s obviously crazy about you.” Ratty grinned.

  Martin decided he wouldn’t ban Ratty after all.

  18

  Gail sprawled in her small, dark cell and cried.

  It wasn’t just the pain, though the whipping had been harsh.

  It was fear.

  What else was he going to do to her?

  Kartane. Such an evil, crazy man.

  Without the slightest warning, he’d come back, unlocked the door to her tiny room, woken her up with a curse and a kick. He’d hauled her out, ripped her clothes off, tied her facedown to an old mattress, and whipped her with some kind of heavy flogger.

  He hadn’t explained why. He hadn’t talked to her. He hadn’t sexually assaulted her. He’d just punished her.

  He’d beaten the hell out of her for nothing.

  No more sleeping for her tonight. Unless she passed out. She mewed, rolled onto her side with an effort that had more tears streaming down the side of her face. Her skin hurt. Her muscles ached. Her brain wanted to shut down.

  She couldn’t let her brain shut down. She had to get out before he hurt her worse, or killed her.

  With shaking fingers, Gail investigated her butt and her back.

  Cool wetness. That would be blood. Her fingertips traveled as far as she could stretch. Found parted skin. The lacerations were more numerous than they were deep.

  Her hand slid, strengthless, to the packed dirt of the floor.

  She began to shiver, more from shock than cold. She couldn’t get comfortable and she hurt all over.

  Her tears tapered off. She sniffed, feeling wretched.

  She hadn’t done anything.

  Did that asshole think she was made of leather? She could get sick. An infection. She could die. How could he get away with this?

  All she’d wanted was a nice date. Stepping so far outside of her comfort zone, stooping to fetish dating sites because the regular ones weren’t working, she’d congratulated herself on being open-minded. On doing whatever it took to find Mr. Right and the elusive goal of marriage and pregnancy.

  The guy Charlotte set her up with, the dark-haired one—Master Martin—took one look at her and got an expression on his face she was too used to seeing on first dates.

  Sure she wasn’t classically pretty. And she hadn’t dressed all in black or rubber or naughty-schoolgirl outfits like some of the other women at the club. Maybe she’d come off a little abrasive, when he’d asked her if she was sure she had the right place. Perfectly understandable how she’d be a bit snappish after such a welcome. Overcompensating for her nerves and inadequacies made her act that way, made her need to take control of things.

  His declaration that they didn’t seem to have the right chemistry was par for the course. Usually, however, her dates waited longer than two minutes.

  Gail’s lips curled into a snarl of anger, remembering. He’d driven her away, right into Kartane’s strong arms.

  Kartane, a nice, easy “switch,” according to him. Liar! He’d grinned at her, flashed those gorgeous eyes, bought her a drink, nodded his head, and acted gratifyingly attentive when she poured out her story of Martin’s rudeness. He’d laughed and called Martin some rude names, which made her happy.

  He’d nodded some more as she’d braved her opinions about dating, and about how much she despised overbearing men. He’d given her a knowing smile.

  By the time he’d invited her downstairs, she was half in love with the guy.

  Not anymore.

  Gail clung to her anger, stoking it until her pains faded a little under the onslaught of adrenaline. Her mind filled with simmering rage, then white-hot fury. She launched herself at the metal door.

  She pounded on it with all her might.

  She didn’t hear the small, frightened voice until she’d stopped.

  “Please! Don’t do that anymore! You’ll have us all strung up for punishment.” Gail heard fast breathing, like someone having an anxiety attack. Scraping and tapping sounds on metal. Fingernails?

  Gail darted to the spot on the wall. “Who are you? Can you get me out of here?”

  “Please.” A girl. She sounded young and terrified. Tears clogged her voice. Her voice dropped to a strained tone just above a whisper. “We’re not allowed to talk, not when we’re in these rooms. These are supposed to be like solitary. They’re breaking rooms. Don’t show you’re not broken.” Her voice lowered to a whisper. Gail could barely hear her, but she’d heard enough.

  “Kartane.” Gail snarled it. “He whipped you, too? How many women does he have imprisoned down here?”

  “Please keep your voice down!” Panicked.

  Gail rose, her skin smarting all over. “Fine,” she said, her voice soft. “But I’m getting out of here. You should, too. This place . . . this terrible place . . .” Words failed her. Finally she finished, “It’s some kind of slaver operation. We’re being ‘broken, ’ then we’ll probably be hooked on drugs and beaten to compliance, then likely sold to some rich, syphilitic Middle Eastern pervert. I’ve read about these things.” In the perfect darkness, she began to feel around the door, searching for any gap in the metal, any weakness.

  “You’re wrong.”

  “Huh?” Gail pointed her face toward the girl’s soft voice.

  “Our owners live in town. They aren’t so bad, usually. As long as you please them, they’re very reasonable.” Her voice held both cert
ainty and a quavering doubt.

  “Says the girl in a box. Your owner, you say? Are you retarded, or just freaking nuts?”

  Silence.

  Gail shrugged, continued searching for a way out.

  After an hour she was trembling with exhaustion and shuddering from pain, and utterly defeated. The cell was a metal fortress all around, with hard-packed dirt and not so much as a rusty nail to use as a tool.

  She pounded the door in an extremity of frustration.

  This time the girl didn’t say anything.

  “Hey, you still there?”

  Silence.

  “What’s your name? Mine is Gail.”

  Silence. Then, “This girl is called Sula.”

  She had a strange way of speaking. Maybe she was retarded. “Why do you talk that way? Aren’t you American? What did you do to piss off your . . . owner? Is there any way out of these goddamned boxes?” Gail kicked the wall between them with her bare foot, then stumbled, wincing.

  Silence.

  “Look, I’m sorry, Sula. This is just difficult for me. Okay?”

  “The shock of first bondage is hard,” Sula agreed.

  “You sound like you accept this.”

  “I . . . this girl only wants to please. My master’s will is my will.”

  “You poor, brainwashed moron. Don’t you want out of here? Didn’t you have a life before? Isn’t there anyone you miss?”

  Sula sounded young. And incredibly naïve. Gail tried to pull back on the anger that had flared at the girl. She didn’t deserve it. But it was hard. Gail felt so angry all the time, and now that she had real reason for it, the emotion drained instead of sustained.

  As Gail fought against the old anger and the new exhaustion, another, softer whisper came. “I miss my dad. I was all he had after mom left him and moved out of state. I wonder if he looked for me. Maybe he didn’t bother since I did the same thing to him she did. I left him.” The agonized words were so soft Gail had to strain to hear them. “I ran away with my boyfriend, and things got so much worse. So terrible. On the streets, and then, here. I miss school, and my house. It was so clean and good. I miss my dad,” she repeated with a catch in her voice.

  “Hey.” Gail felt uncomfortable. She had little experience with comforting people. “At least you have a dad. Mine took off when I was a baby, and my mom went nuts. She ended up in a state facility for the mentally unstable. I visited a couple times, but she was too out of it to know who I was.” Gail shook her head briskly. “No sense dwelling on it.”

  “I miss him so m-m-much.” The girl had turned on the waterworks.

  Gail felt impatient. “Look, get over it. We’ve got a big problem here. You miss your dad? Good. Let’s get you home. We’ll all bake cookies and play board games and this will just be a bad memory. To do that, we have to get out of these metal cages. How do we do that?”

  “We’re not supposed to. This girl deserves to be punished.”

  “Fuck that. Snap out of it. You weren’t always like this.”

  “I used to take gym classes. Mountain climbing was one of my PE electives.”

  Great, now the idiot was reminiscing. Gail gave up, crawled to the door, and started to dig with her short nails. One tiny spadeful at a time.

  Suddenly something gonged the metal right next to her ear. Then again, higher. Gail froze, put her hands over her mouth to hold in a shriek. Kartane had returned. He’d come back to hurt her more.

  She heard fast breathing from high in the air, then the thud of something heavy meeting packed dirty right outside.

  Then the sound she’d quickly come to dread, the latch clicking and squealing as metal rubbed against metal. Her door opened.

  The slender shadow wasn’t Kartane. “I climbed,” said the familiar soft voice.

  “Atta girl,” Gail breathed. “Oh, atta girl.”

  “Yeah?” Sula preened. “Thanks. But if we get caught, it will be bad. Very bad. Come this way.” Sula groped for her hand, pulled her. “Oh,” she said, noticing Gail’s nakedness. “We have to get you a slave silk—a tunic—to wear. It’s all he allows, here.”

  Gail peered at the girl’s skimpy dress. “You climbed a wall in that?”

  “I knotted it around my waist.”

  It fell barely below the waist unknotted. Gail raised her eyebrows when Sula found and gave her an identical one but said nothing. It was better than being naked.

  “Here.” Sula threw it over her head. The red silk settled simply, a sheer mini-poncho with slits all the way up the sides.

  Gail plucked at the gossamer material. “At least it doesn’t rub,” she said pragmatically. Her lacerations might not be deep, but they still stung like fire. Her slacks and blouse wouldn’t have draped so lightly on wounded skin.

  She paused, looked again at Sula. “Are you okay?” She couldn’t explain the odd, lingering concern she had for the much younger girl.

  Her motherly instincts were kicking in at an inconvenient time, she decided. “Where’s the exit?”

  “I’ve heard there are two doors. But I’m only familiar with the tunnels to Kartane’s building. My new master gave me to him to punish, tonight. But Kartane punished you instead. This girl is sorry.”

  “Stop talking like that,” Gail said gruffly. “Is your name even Sula? Why were you being punished? You knee someone in the nuts?”

  Sula gasped laughter, quickly stifled. “They would throw me to a sleen.”

  Before Gail could ask what a sleen was, Sula lowered her voice still further and whispered, “My name was Elizabeth. He made me . . . I had to discard my old identity and ritually beg to be made slave. Then he branded and collared me. Tonight he sold me.”

  “Branded? You begged to be a branded slave?” Gail’s skin crawled. Maybe she had it all wrong. Maybe the girl actually was sick in the head.

  “Yes. Begged.” Sula’s—Elizabeth’s—voice was hard. “And you would’ve, too, after a few weeks. Believe it.”

  Gail rocked back as if struck. They’d tortured the girl. Jesus. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Some of the women come to enjoy the life of a kajira—that means ‘slave.’ ” Elizabeth shrugged, a shadow against the darker shadows beyond. “I can’t seem to perform as well as a kajira should. My master gave me back to Kartane to punish me for the crime of inattention at a gathering of masters. A slave’s gaze is not free to wander.” Elizabeth sounded stronger, almost hopeful. “I believe my master would like to trade me for a more dedicated slave. He is quite strict about such matters. But for some reason Kartane beat you tonight, instead. He will either break or destroy us both. After enduring the process once, I’m sure I’d rather die.”

  Sula cocked her head at a sound. Then: “We have to go!” She grabbed Gail’s hand again, pulled with urgency. “If First Girl finds us, she’ll—”

  The lights turned on, flooding the cavernous room from its dirt floor to its unfinished, pipe-exposed ceiling. “She’ll what?” A beautiful woman smiled with malice in her eyes. Her long red hair looked sleep-tussled and her own little red poncho was hopelessly wrinkled and clung to her curves. Her skin appeared bruised in places and scraped raw in others, but her smile didn’t falter. “Do we actually have another escape attempt, Sula? Foolish, foolish girl.” She looked curiously at Gail. “You’re new. Not very young. Not a dancer or a pleasure slave. Destined to be a kitchen drudge most likely. You’d be wise to not bring attention to yourself.” With that, she seemed to dismiss Gail.

  “Sula, Sula, Sula. Your master will be most displeased. Kartane, too.”

  Sula wilted. “Please, Talia. Don’t tell them. There’s no need to tell Kartane. I . . . this girl didn’t know what she was thinking.” Her lips trembled. The brighter light revealed her youth. Coltish but athletic legs. Simple brown hair worn too long and straight. No makeup, or need for makeup with those pretty features and long dark lashes. She might be as much as eighteen years old. Maybe.

  Talia grinned. “Hiding the truth from our masters
would result in severe punishment for everyone. Whereas catching an escapee will result in my master’s pleasure.” She put her fingers to her lips and blew a piercing whistle. “Wake up, girls! We have an escape attempt!”

  Gail watched with trepidation as first one woman, then another rushed into the room.

  Sula pressed back, against her. Gail could feel her shaking, and it deepened her protective instincts toward the girl. Sula seemed terrified. But they were just women, fellow captives. Gail addressed them all. “What is this about? Why don’t we all get out of here before the caveman comes home? Maybe tell the police so the asshole ‘masters’ can spend a good long time in jail?”

  Sula whispered quickly, “Please don’t make it worse.”

  The women didn’t move. Gail whispered back, “What’s wrong with them?”

  “They are kajirae.”

  It seemed to serve as sufficient explanation for Elizabeth, but Gail noticed two women glancing at each other uncertainly.

  Gail raised her voice to its most strident, argumentative level. “You’re all stupid. You’re gonna let them beat you, rape you, break you, and brand you? You gonna let them chop you up and eat you too, maybe, if they’re in the mood? Maybe you are all better off down here, living like livestock.”

  A brunette answered with heat. “They don’t eat us! You’re the one who’s stupid!”

  “Oh, great. Welcome to third grade. Am I glue and you’re rubber?”

  The brunette looked confused.

  “This is a chance, this is your gold-plated invitation, to get the hell out of this squalid prison. Remember the real world? The one where you’re all equals in a relationship?”

  “I . . .” One of the women started to step forward. Her friend held her back, whispering furiously.

  Gail shook her head in disgust. “This is hopeless. We’re going into that tunnel over there. Past the women who should know better!” She gazed at them with all the scorn she could muster. “Let’s run for it,” she added in a whisper to Elizabeth.