JASON

by Candace Smith

  Makoto enjoyed two more days with the slave sisters, and then he returned to California. He made a few discreet phone calls to perspective buyers, mentioning O in several conversations.

  Like Sierra, Olivia’s disappearance was barely noted. The lawyers were more pissed off that their sandwiches had to be delivered than that Olivia had finally quit. It was obvious she had packed what she needed from her apartment… though it was odd that she took the food and left her clothes. When the people who knew her explained that Olivia was indeed odd, it was dropped.

  * * * * *

  October 5th- Twenty-two year old Olivia De Monte, disappeared sometime after the end of her workday Friday afternoon at the Overland Law Offices. A search of her apartment does not indicate foul play.

  Acquaintances mentioned Ms. De Monte suggested she might show up at Thrasher’s Friday night, but she never made an appearance. Anyone with information concerning Olivia De Monte, is urged to call Nicki Sorrell at Napier Herald. - N. Sorrell; Napier Herald Newspaper.

  Nicki was already waiting for Max’s blast on this one. She was not disappointed. “For god’s sakes, Nicki. The girl had come from the city, lasted six months, and figured out what a boring place this is. She went home and back to her flashy nightlife.”

  “That’s not what’s happening, Max. The lawyers won’t admit it, but the guy at the deli told me Olivia came by for sandwiches every Friday. She disappeared before she could complete the errand.”

  “So,” Max suggested, without hiding the exasperation in his voice. “Do you think the butcher or the lawyers grabbed her? Shit, Nicki, listen to yourself.”

  “No, Max. You listen. This is the fourth girl who has gone missing.” Nicki looked up at the ceiling. “Why am I the only one who sees this?”

  “Because, you’re the only one who wants to see it, Nicki. There is nothing here. Look, I know you think there are guys hiding in vans around every corner…”

  “You bastard,” Nicki gasped. She had regretted telling Max from the moment it left her lips. While they had been in their relationship, she had weakened. She felt that she owed him an explanation.

  “I’m sorry, but it’s true. Look, maybe we should slide you into local events for a while.”

  “Bullshit, Max. I already put my time in covering the livestock auctions and corn prices.” Nicki slung her purse over her arm and she pointed at him. “I’m right about this, Max. Janice, Amy, Sierra and Olivia’s disappearances are all related, somehow.”

  Even as she said it, an uneasy correlation began to form in her mind. Nicki stopped by her office and she printed out the articles and drafts she had written on the missing girls.

  Chapter VI

  Nicki finished her bath, and in a slightly woozy, tranquilized and wine induced semi-stupor she moved furniture and pictures away from one wall in her living room. She taped the copies of her reports in a row, beginning with her article on Janice and ending with the unpublished draft on Olivia.

  She stared and squinted, knowing the disappearances had to be related, but her muddied mind would not let her concentrate. After an hour, and another glass of wine, she stumbled off to bed.

  Nicki avoided talking to Max about the women. His threat about demoting her was serious, because he had seen her slip into depression before. When she got home from work each night, Nicki sat on the sofa and stared at the wall. It was over a week before her eyes narrowed and she approached her beige wall with a marker. She began making lists beneath each article.

  July - Janice - Jasper Community Junior College - nineteen

  August - Amy - Arbor Heights Apartments - twenty

  September - Sierra - Singleton Shopping Plaza - twenty-one

  October - Olivia - Overton Law Offices - twenty-two

  At first, Nicki had circled all the J’s, A’s and so on. She was certain she was onto a strategy that should narrow it down. Nicki was excited when she noted the young women’s ages. November would be a young woman, twenty-three years old, whose name began with N. She should be from Napier, if Nicki had it worked out. In December, the man would move out to Destin.

  Nicki pleaded with Max to let her contact the police and allow her to put a warning in the paper for the girls from Napier. November first was a week away. Max studied the circled letters on her copy and frowned. It looked like a crazy word search game. “Nicki, you can force any theory to fit. This is a coincidence. It means nothing more than a theory that he chooses women in a sequence of time where a girl goes to college, back to her apartment, over to shop, and then to work. With that strategy, the next abduction could be a girl at church or out clubbing.”

  “For god’s sakes, Max,” Nicki exploded in frustration. “You honestly can’t see this?”

  “Nicki, don’t you think the detectives would have considered this if they thought there was a connection? It’s a coincidence, Nicki. Three of the young women aren’t even listed as missing.”

  “What are you going to do, Max, when a twenty-three year old girl disappears from Napier, next week? How are you going to feel when you know we could have warned them?” Nicki began collecting her papers. “I’m taking this to Chief Ross.”

  “No, Nicki, you’re not.” Max sighed. “Look, you like working the police beat and you need those connections. If you walk in with this whacked out theory, you’re going to blow your credibility with the police department. We need their cooperation, Nicki.” Max was close to placing her on medical leave. There were circles under her eyes and a consumed look in them that did not look completely stable.

  Short of personally locating every young woman in their early twenties whose name began with N and warning them, Nicki had no idea what to do. She was sure she would be fired if she tried hanging posters around town. For the next few days, she spent her evenings with a popped pill and bottle of wine, scribbling new notes on her living room wall in permanent black marker.

  By the second of November, she was taking two pills before she left the office. It did little to help the anxiety while she scanned the faces of young women she saw. Nicki wondered how many had names that began with an N. She cut across the parking garage on her usual shortcut to her apartment. When she neared the stairwell on the opposite wall, the door opened. As she took one step past it, an arm reached out and grabbed her.

  In her distracted drugged haze, she did not fight back until the cloth was over her mouth. A familiar voice whispered, “The age was never a part of it, Nicki. Like your Napier Newspaper, all the women all lived or worked at places that contained the town name and a second correlating letter.”

  Jason tossed her up onto his shoulder and quickly walked down the flight of stairs. He took the back exit to the stairwell where his van waited in an alley. Jason wished he had more time to look at her, but he tempered his impatience and drove out of the alley. He had to chance not hogtying her until he was out of town.

  Makoto had provided him with special contacts to lay over Nicki’s hazel eyes. They had a mood ring effect and would change color with her responses. While he secured the collar around her throat, Jason was almost irritated. Makoto’s name should not hold such a prominent position on her collar.

  Nicki woke slowly. The sluggish affect from the tranquilizers still slowed her thoughts. Her arms and legs were fixed in place and a round ring was situated in her mouth. For the moment, she was lying in darkness. It took her time to understand that she was no longer in the van… and that the man who had taken her was the same man who had abducted her in college. How did he find me?

  Nicki had always assumed that the man had moved on. For years after she took the job at the Napier Herald, she had spent weekends scanning the police reports for a man fitting his description. There was the possibility he had been caught and was in prison. One thing was certain: the kidnapper was not going to release her in a few hours, like he had the first time.

  “It’s been a while, Nicki.” Jason ran his hands over her sweater covered breasts and down the sides of her rib cage to h
er impossibly small waist. “You look even more beautiful than you did in college.”

  The voice. I know that voice. It echoed in a foggy memory she could not quite grasp. She began to cry when scissors starting cutting her clothes away. Although Nicki was terrified, a small pocket of her mind accepted that this was something she had always known would happen. This man had changed her. He had stolen her innocence and trust, and replaced it with a frightening, arousing passion no other man could match. And then, he had left her; left her for years to struggle with her fears and humiliation, with only wine and numbing pills to ease her emptiness.

  “You are slave N, Nicki. You know you are blind, and that you must do as I order to survive.”

  Nicki felt his fingers caress her nipple, and then he squeezed. A sliding drool of excitement dripped from her pussy and Nicki moaned. Jason watched her contacts strobe from golden to purple with anticipation and angry passion, and he released her nipple and reached for her pussy.

  Nicki closed her eyes and her terrified thoughts returned to her time in the van, with the cloth bag blocking the air she tried to drag into her nose while her pussy was being aroused. There was a slight tinge of humiliation coloring her cheeks, but for the most part her face expressed a strange, yearning passion.

  Nicki had nightmares of that time in college, and for the past few months they had begun to collide with thoughts of becoming one of the abducted women. In the light of day, she knew that she was too old. She was almost thirty-one. To discover the kidnapper was her mysterious man from the past had alarmed her. A small piece of her mind that had not succumbed to fear helped her rock into a climax with the thought that the man had never forgotten her either.

  Jason was slightly confused. He had expected her to fight in panic. Instead, she was accepting his stroking fingers willingly. He twisted her nipple at the height of her orgasm, and she gasped and moaned in sounds of pleasure. Jason helped her off the table, and although she was trembling, she turned once to stare blindly towards his voice before crawling into her cage.

  Jason spoke to his other slaves and he allowed J the opportunity to relieve the throbbing pressure in his balls. She cried quietly the whole time with a look of sadness on her face, and Jason looked at the other women kneeling by their cage doors. He realized his slave sisters understood that N was different. If nothing else, her passionate response during her introduction to the cellar had given it away.

  In the morning, Nicki crouched against the back of the cage, cringing when she was ordered out. A strong hand… a familiar hand… snaked around her ankle and pulled her roughly onto the concrete floor. She sat curled in stunned silence until his deep voice ordered her to come to him. Nicki knew the hopelessness of her situation, and she already knew the power of the man.

  She stood and walked with slow uncertainty towards his voice. Nicki hissed when his strong hand stroked down her breasts and belly. He tugged her down to her knees and enjoyed the warmth of her mouth around his cock. Nicki cried while she tried to memorize the ridges and veins of the soft surface, closing her eyes to the taste him. This was the man who consumed her nighttime hours. He was the man who had made it impossible to feel pleasure with another lover, because he had forced her to heights no one else could find. Nicki followed his instructions to lick the softening shaft clean, and then she knelt back and waited.

  Jason reached into her mouth and removed the gag. “You’re not afraid of me.”

  “Yes,” Nicki whispered. “I’m terrified of you. Not so much that you will hurt me, but the control you’ve held over me. Why did you take me again?”

  Jason trailed his fingers through her golden hair. “You were my first. Did you know that?”

  “No. I was so scared, but I guess I thought you were a little, too. I thought it was because you were afraid you’d be caught. You planned it so well that it left me nothing to tell police. Is that why? Because I was first?”

  “You were the first woman I ever had complete control over, and you were aroused by it. I never forgot your moans and the way your body pleaded to have me coax your desire.”

  Nicki remembered, all too well. Never in her life had she experienced such humiliation; never in her life had she experienced such debasing lust. “What now? What are your plans for me?”

  “You will be my slave. All your passion… everything… will be for me.”

  Nicki absorbed his comment silently. She had been living half a life for so many years, consumed with a loss and feelings that she could not relinquish, even with the pills and booze. For the first time since she had awoken in her car at the mall, she felt like something right had slipped back into place. “I don’t even know what you look like,” she whispered… and his next words rattled her.

  “Yes, Nicki, you do.” Jason watched the contacts strobe with brief panic and confusion. He smiled and led her back to her cage.

  Although the other slaves worked to fulfill his orders, Nicki shivered with an excitement that made his cock hard and his balls tighten while she submitted to torments. He had to force himself to spend time with the sister slaves.

  Nicki was frightened. When the man called her from her cell, she trembled by the time she managed to follow his voice. She took uncertain steps on cool cement, smelled the air around her, and knew she was in a basement or underground space. Strange furnishings were spaced around the floor. The other women were there, but no one ever spoke. They rarely cried, unless the man wanted them to. The girls seemed to accept their fate, much as she did.

  The man began guiding Nicki through exercises of soft torture that melded and culminated with a passion she had missed. After spending years pretending she was strong and independent, struggling to understand and accept a life that felt hollow, there was almost a calm relief to accept his control. If the man did decide to release her, she would beg him to let her stay with him. The thought of returning to her real world life was far too depressing. The fear of waking without him again left her far more anxious than the strange limits he pushed her to.

  Sometimes she screamed. Sometimes tears flowed down her face while she shivered in fear and agony, humiliated that the man could control her arousal and passion. Nicki never pleaded, and she tried to submit to the tortures he craved to inflict on her with a stoic, silent acceptance. This was the penalty she would have to pay to stay with him. Always, he urged her to blend the pain with arousal. His fingers stroked over welts, tugged on pressing clamps, and ran over binding ropes. There was the touch of his hands caressing and demanding her to share his arousal.

  Nicki knew that he felt differently about her. She could sense that he was forcing himself to hold back a frightening need for her. Although she felt no jealousy towards the other women, she wondered why he did not just let them go. Nicki strived to do everything he desired. He did not need the others any more.

  Time passed in darkness. Nicki had never bothered with the insignificant detail of how many days she had been held as his captive. The lingering fear that she would be held for a pre-scheduled time and then released to the pathetic existence that made up the monotony of the façade she had been trying to live, made her anxious. While her abductor introduced her to erotic torments she had never dreamed existed, she continued to hope that it would not be her last day of captivity.

  In an agonizing restraint, the man had her hands raised by a chain and aimed at the ceiling. Her feet ached as she tried to ease the strain ripping through her shoulders. Nicki hissed when a reed lashed across her bottom. Three times, burning and stinging across her flesh. While tears dropped onto the floor from her hanging head, his hands caressed the bruises. Nicki gasped when his fingers stroked over her ass and found her slit.

  She shivered while he spread her cream, and anticipated his fingers finding her clit, pumping inside of her until she spasmed in passion. This time, she heard his zipper and she froze. His hands gripped her hips and she hissed when he entered her. It was the first time, and she moaned and tried to push back into him. The ach
e of her arms and feet was forgotten while his cock stroked her channel.

  All of the emptiness… the time she tried to satisfy her lust with Max or other men… washed out of her mind. No one ever could have quenched her passion like the man stretching her pussy and thrusting inside her. While she moaned her desire until at last gasping her climax, she could not see the depressing tears washing down the other women’s faces.

  Jason could. He watched his sister slaves while he plunged into Nicki’s pussy. He had planned to wait until they were at the compound and she looked into his face, but the sight of her slit glistening while he had whipped her had pushed him over the edge. The thought of J or S relieving the lust and arousal he built while tormenting Nicki would not satisfy him this time. Jason spent the remaining week enjoying Nicki in every imaginable way.

  One morning, Nicki heard the girls being led out of their cages and walked upstairs. The man would be gone for a long time before returning for another young woman. Is he letting them go? Nicki panicked. Is he letting us all go? Finally, she was the last woman left in her cage. He opened the door, and she crawled out and stood before him.

  Jason placed his hands on her shoulders, and he saw the fear and confusion in her colorful stare. “Tell me, Nicki.”

  Nicki trembled. “Please. Please don’t make me go back. I can’t do it again.”

  “You choose to stay with me?”

  “Please. You don’t know what it’s like. You don’t know what you did to me.”

  “And what if you know who I am? Will you still choose to stay? You are my property, Nicki, to do with as I wish. You still want to stay?”

  “I’ll die if you make me go back now.” Nicki knew that she meant the words. She would swallow her bottle of pills with a warm glass of red wine resting on the side of the bathtub, soft music, and bubbles from her cool bathwater covering her head.