by John Everson
“Yeah,” she whispered, admiring herself. She liked what she saw.
Now, tattooed and black-lipsticked and clad only in thin strips of metal-studded leather, Rae watched the initiates walking in through the front door as Tailor checked their invitations. Some of them looked nervous-first-timers, probably. Some looked hopeful; she remembered her own anxiousness that second and third visit.
But now she was of the inner circle.
Then she saw a familiar face coming in through the door-the woman who had flogged her so well that first time. The woman she’d been looking for on her next visit.
Rae walked quickly across the room to intercept. The woman was superthin. Her face betrayed lines of stress, and her bare arms and legs were crisscrossed in lines of lighter skin. Scars.
“Hey,” she said, smiling as she held out a hand. “Remember me?”
The woman stopped and looked at her coolly. She nodded, but didn’t reach out to accept Rae’s hand. “Sure.”
“My name’s Rae,” she continued. “I’ve looked for you the past couple of NightWheres…you were so good to me the night we met.”
“Yes,” the woman responded, still not offering her hand. “I’m Amelia. Congratulations.”
Rae frowned, confused. “For what?”
Amelia nodded at Rae’s wrist. “I see you’ve made it to the inside.”
Rae held up the snake tattoo and smiled. “Oh this? Yes! Kharon asked me to stay overnight last night, and I said I’d stay forever if he’d let me. This morning he gave me this.”
“How sweet,” Amelia said. Sarcasm dripped from her voice. “Did he give you his class ring to wear around your neck too?”
“No,” Rae said, confused by the chilliness of Amelia’s reception. “But this whole scene is really cool. I’ve been looking for NightWhere for years, and just didn’t really know it. Now that I’ve found it, I don’t want to ever leave.”
“I don’t suppose you will,” Amelia said. She smiled thinly and walked past Rae towards the back of the club. “I’ll see you later, I’m sure.”
Bemused, Rae watched Amelia walk away. What had she done to deserve the ice treatment? The last thing she knew, they’d had a great session near the racks. She thought back, trying to think if there had been some problem at the end of that night, but…
“Rae,” a voice called. And then cool fingers slipped around her elbow. Kharon stood behind her. “We need you in The Red. There’s something that must be done tonight. Consider it…your initiation.”
Rae smiled, but inside, her stomach trembled.
Initiation?
She thought of sorority hazing and wondered…in a deviant sex club, what sort of thing would an initiation involve?
Her heels clicked faster and faster as she crossed through the growing crowd in the Blue Room, anxious to find out.
“Here she is,” Kharon said. His teeth smiled wide and white in the dark room. A small crowd of NightWhere regulars was gathered there, in a room just off the entrance of The Red. Three of them were Watchers. She’d learned quickly that not everyone who was in the in-crowd of NightWhere was a Watcher.
Watchers were different. Easily recognizable. Rae didn’t know why, but the Watchers all seemed to look alike. They were thin, almost emaciated, and their skin was white as a cave amphibian; they didn’t appear to have ever gone out in the sun in their entire lives. They almost always wore black leather-of course, almost everyone here wore leather but…there was just something about the Watchers. They walked differently, talked differently…they were like the sex club elders even if they didn’t look old.
Kharon took the hand of a middle-aged man in the center of the circle and led him to Rae. “This is Peter,” he said. “I want you to take him around the club tonight. Show him the ropes. Do whatever it takes to make him happy here. But bring him back here at midnight.”
Kharon smiled at Peter and said simply, “Enjoy it. This is your night.” Then he signaled to the others and the group streamed from the room, leaving Rae and Peter alone.
“Well, hi there,” she said, holding out a hand. “My name is Rae, and I guess I’ll be your tour guide tonight!”
“Peter Rathburn,” he said, squeezing her hand tightly before letting it go. “I didn’t realize when I got my invitation that I would have my own private sex queen as an escort if I came tonight.”
Rae laughed. “Not sure if I qualify as a sex queen, but thank you.”
He nodded at her small but prominent cleavage, pressed up by the leather, and her barely concealed crotch. “Well, you look like a sex queen to me! So, do you help run this place?”
Rae snorted. “Hardly. I’ve come here a few times, but I love it so much I’m staying on for good. But…I don’t really know what I’m helping with yet.”
“Apparently, the entry level position here is ‘Welcome Wagon’. Sorry about that!” He smiled awkwardly, as if embarrassed.
“Don’t be,” Rae said. “I’m happy to show you around. Come on.”
She took him by the hand and led him out of the dark room and into the red-lit hallway. “I’m surprised that you actually are starting here,” she said, motioning at the murky hallway. “Normally people don’t get access to this part of the club right away. It’s called The Red.”
“Why not?” he asked. “I get the red part-all the lights here are red. But why is it restricted?”
Rae considered for a minute and then shrugged. “Well…what the hell, they said to give you a tour. Follow me.”
She pulled him down the hall, away from the exit. “Let’s see what we can see.”
The screams advertised the action before they even turned the corner to the first doorway. They stepped inside the room and stopped almost immediately. A group of six or seven stood a few feet away, surrounding a small stage. It was a bare stage, except for one thing.
A giant, ten-foot-tall cross grew from the floor to dominate the room. And from it, a nude woman hung.
She was Italian, Rae thought. Her skin appeared dark in the red light, and her hair was black and lustrous. She still showed underarm hair, black and wispy, and her crotch was a thatch of heavy black bush. But the denizens of the room were not paying attention to her bounteous body hair. A man wearing only a leather belt and a black jockstrap stood before the cross. A black leather hood covered much of his head. He held a long black pole that tapered to a thin, barely visible end. While it may not have been easy to see, it was easy to hear as it slapped against the crucified woman’s skin.
He slapped it across her small tits and thin-stretched belly with a practiced ease-whip-smack, whip-smack.
With each connection, the woman yelped, but otherwise didn’t complain. And the man didn’t slow. He flicked the fishing-pole-like cane and caught her on the breast and the chin and the belly. Her body reddened and she still never said a word. Only cried out, and moaned in between.
“What they love even more than sex in NightWhere is pain,” Rae said to Peter. “And back here, in The Red, they really get into it. Things are a lot tamer out in the main club area.”
Peter shrugged. “I’m here because I love the pain,” he said softly. “I suppose that’s why I got the invitation. I was at a local swingers club not too long ago, begging for people to use a whip on me. And when they could never get up the courage to really use the thing, I took it and showed them how you are supposed to use a whip. Made the guy bleed, and after they pulled me away from him and untied him from the pipe I’d tied his wrists up to, they threatened to call the police on me. I said, ‘C’mon, he asked for it. I mean, really…he did! How else could I have tied his wrists to a water pipe in the basement?’ He was a way bigger guy than me!”
“And that is exactly the difference between the real world and NightWhere,” Rae said. “Here, you can ask for it and it might happen. But you have to be a part of it-you can’t just wander in and out. Because…you’re either in or out.”
It occurred to her as she said it, that she was a parrot
of what Kharon had said to her.
“And you’re in,” Peter said. “Do you have a boyfriend, or…”
“Husband,” she answered, stepping away from the caning as the woman’s cries grew louder. “And he’s out.”
Peter slipped an arm around her mostly bare ass and said, “Well, I’m here because I want to be in.”
She didn’t shrug him off. He wasn’t a muscular stud or anything like that. He wouldn’t have stood out in a crowd, even a crowd of ten. But Rae liked Peter. He seemed honest and easy to talk to.
“C’mon,” she said, pushing him out of the crucifixion room and into the red-lit hall. “Let me show you the regular part of the club. Start at the beginning.”
“Sure,” he said. But in a moment, he stopped her.
“Wait,” he said. “What’s this?”
He pulled her closer to the hallway wall, which held a long series of black-framed pictures. They were lined up three and four tall as you walked along the hall. There were so many that Rae had never really stopped to look at them in the couple of times she’d been here. They became overwhelming-wallpaper-by their sheer number.
But now she did look; she stepped closer with him.
The pictures were probably in color, but in the heavy red light of the hall, they appeared almost black and white. In one photo, a man was stretched out naked on a rack, legs pulled taut in one direction, while his arms were clearly, painfully stretched in the opposite. Two nude women bent over his torso. The photo couldn’t show what they were doing given its perspective, but it did show what they held at the end of their fingers.
Knives.
And those knives looked to be touching various portions of the man’s anatomy, some more private than others.
The photo below that showed the same two women holding knives up in the air, with something hanging from each blade. Something paper thin and dripping…
In the photo next to that, a woman stood smiling as wide and provocatively as she possibly could. She held her hand on her hip and cocked it out, as if she were ready for an ass slap.
What made the photo disturbing, however, is what she wore as a pink boa. It hung around her neck and draped across her pendulous breasts. And if you looked a little closer at the photo, you could see the body in the background that she’d carved her boa from. He lay on the floor, semivisible between her legs. A glistening pool ringed the body, which betrayed enough head and chest hair to identify it as definitely male. The pool clearly emanated from the empty hole where his intestines once had been.
“Wow,” Peter said, staring at that photo. “That’s really crossing the line.”
“Yeah,” Rae agreed. “I haven’t seen anyone wearing guts as an outfit around here. Though I guess, I wouldn’t rule anything out.”
“Really?” he asked. “You think they could kill someone here?”
“If it was sexy, yeah,” she said, “I do.”
He squeezed one hand on her ass. “I can’t believe I finally found this place,” he said.
“You want to kill someone?” she said. Something inside her clenched at the idea.
“No,” he said. “My fantasy has always been to be the guy on the table.”
“I can put you on the table,” Rae promised. “There’s a nice row of racks out here in the main part of the club,” she said.
She led him away from the photos to the door back into the Blue Room section of the club.
“Here you go,” she said, pointing at the half-dozen racks against the back wall of NightWhere. Three of them were currently occupied by people, two men and a woman. Half-clad people wearing black leather hoods stood at the front of the racks. At least one was a woman, but all of them slapped a mean whip, as the sound of leather hitting flesh echoed through the space, regardless of who was wielding the weapon.
“Is that the kind of thing you’re looking for?” Rae asked.
Peter shrugged. “Kinda, I guess.”
“But you’d like more,” she pushed.
He nodded. “I have some pretty bizarre fantasies.”
Rae slipped her arm around his waist. “I think you can probably find just about anything you want here.”
“Anything?” he asked.
She nodded. “I don’t think NightWhere is the place where normal people go. Nobody is going to judge you here. All you have to do is say what you want and…”
“What if I wanted you?” he asked.
Rae smiled. “We can talk about that.”
“Right now?” he asked, cupping her ass.
She pressed a hand against his and moved it to her waist. “Later, maybe,” she said.
Rae took Peter’s hand and led him away from the racks and over to the dance floor. The band was playing a metal track that she didn’t recognize, but the beat still made her sway. Peter saw that she was moving to the music and began to emulate her.
They danced amid a floor filled with others, all trying to get off with the music. The bass line throbbed right down in the crotch, so it wasn’t hard. Or really…it was hard. At least on Peter. Rae felt his cock pressing against her like a rod as they danced-he was definitely enjoying his time with her. But she was also working the leather outfit pretty good, rubbing herself against him and grinding her boobs into his chest.
She liked this guy. He was nothing much to look at, with his wide face and thinning hair. The flesh around his eyes looked a bit puffy, pouty. The lines of age began at their corners, and there was grey in the black hair of his temples. Beneath his black cotton shirt, she could tell there was some extra flesh as well. Peter looked a little heavy and worn, but he wasn’t pushy. He clearly was attracted to her, but was willing to let her do all the moving. He definitely needed a guide to NightWhere before he got in too far. He seemed almost…too fragile for this place. In a way, he reminded her of Mark.
Rae leaned in tight to his chest and rested her head on his shoulder as the music slowed to a gothic crawl. “Why are you here?” she whispered at the stubble of his jaw.
He slipped a hand across the bare skin of her ass and squeezed before daring a tiny slap. “Why are any of us here?” he said. “To live. And die.”
Rae rolled her eyes. “Ooooh, deep!”
She pulled him off the dance floor. “Come on,” she said, “I’ll show you deep.” She led him towards the bar.
Sin-D was wearing white latex tonight. It made her bare skin look even more brown than usual. You could see her outfit across the club, and Rae grinned as she watched the bartendress tease one of the men at the bar. Sin-D leaned forward so that his nose was smothered in her cleavage.
“This drink’s on me,” Rae promised, pushing Peter onto a bar stool.
“What’ll it be?” Sin-D said, leaning across the wooden bar to stare eye to eye with Peter. “You going to drink her, or me? ’Cuz I’ll tell you this, one of us is gonna end up sitting on your face tonight.”
Rae almost choked on her laughter. “I promised I’d show you deep,” she said. “They don’t get any deeper than Sin-D.”
“That’s what the last guy who told me he had nine inches said,” the bartendress grinned. “But I think the problem was that he just wasn’t really that big.”
“How about a Dewar’s on the rocks?” Peter said.
“Is that your polite way of saying you’re going to Do Hers, not mine?” Sin-D asked with an exaggerated wink. She pushed the drink across the bar, along with a Tequila Sunrise for Rae.
“Wow,” Peter said when Sin-D moved down the bar to help another customer. She bent over to get something from the floor and the white latex miniskirt allowed him a clear view of her tanned behind above her thigh-high white boots. “And wow again,” he breathed.
“She’s all yours if you want her,” Rae said. “My feelings won’t be hurt… I was there this morning. She’s worth some of your time.”
“Not my interest, at the moment,” Peter said. “But she is a character.”
“So what is your interest?” Rae asked.
Rae smirked and hooked her thumbs beneath the thin leather straps that connected the bustier to the thick leather collar around her neck. “What, this li’l ol’ dominatrix rag?”
He placed a hand on the swell of her breasts and slipped it up until his fingers stroked the metal studs on her collar.
“Yes, exactly,” he breathed. His voice was quiet.
“Have you been in the BDSM scene a long time?” she asked.
“Not at all,” he said. His eyes looked nervous, almost ashamed, and he stared into his drink.
“How did you end up here, then?” she asked, puzzled.
He shrugged. “I’m guessing someone was paying attention to the kinds of magazines that came to my P.O. box. One day I got the invitation to this place, and…after dreaming about this for so long, I couldn’t say no. I had to check it out.”
Rae smiled and took a sip of her drink. So, he was a virgin, of sorts. Hard to believe that anyone in this place could be so untried.
“Is it the leather that excites you, or the nudity, or the danger, or the pain?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said, grinning. “I want it all.”
Rae considered his dark shirt and faded jeans. He looked about as casual as you could get. “You need some leather for yourself,” she said.
He made a forced smile. “I know,” he said. “But I just…I dunno… I’ve never been able to buy it. I feel stupid dressing up like that for myself, and…”
“And you’ve never had a partner who wanted to,” she finished.
He nodded.
“Hey Sin-D!” she called. In a moment, the bartendress was draping her bosom across the bar and staring up at them with eyes flashing all the over-the-top clichés for come-hither that eyes have ever invented.
Rae ignored the show. “Where do you think I could find some matching leather studs for my stud here? He needs an outfit to go with mine.”