by Sam West
Yet, she thought.
It really was the most unusual sensation; one that sent every nerve ending in her body into tingly spasms. She was aware of every inch of her skin, like it had suddenly come alive and was undulating and pulsing over her skeletal structure.
He stopped suddenly. Her skin felt itchy, desperate for more of the same. He reached up and fiddled with the cuffs at her wrists, unlocking them. He did the same at her ankles, freeing her totally.
“Turn around, face the wall,” he ordered.
She cradled her aching wrists to her chest. Her arms felt weird and cold from being yanked above her head like that, even if it hadn’t been for very long.
She did as he asked, resting her hands against the stone wall. She was still scared, but dazed with it. She was travelling the darkest path of sexual discovery and in that moment there was no turning back, not for anything.
The flayed ends of the whip slapped against her buttocks, repeatedly and at speed. He used the same pressure he had on her front; not hard enough to hurt but firm enough to make her skin sing out; an intense sensation that balanced on the edge of pain without tipping over.
He worked the cat o’ nines over her shoulders, back and thighs before returning once more to her bottom.
The whipping increased in intensity; he used less speed, more force. She cried out at each hard thwack on her backside. It took a moment for her fevered brain to work out that he was hurting her. She had grown accustomed to the feel of the whip all over her body and the pain had crept up on her without her being able to pinpoint the exact moment it had started.
Every slap on her backside made her cry out and her body jolt.
“Please! You’re hurting me,” she gasped.
“That’s kind of the point. Be a good girl and take it.”
Dimly, she was aware of the door to the basement opening and footsteps on the stairs.
“Nice work,” said a male voice she didn’t recognise.
“Thanks. She looks great, doesn’t she?”
“Yeah. Give her one for me, won’t you?”
They laughed, and she heard the intruder’s footsteps recede.
She gasped and flinched when she felt his fingers slip between her legs from behind. Just a few strokes of her aching clit and she was coming hard on his hand. Wave after wave of pleasure coursed through her and she sobbed at the intensity of the pleasure and the humiliation.
Then it was all over and there was just cold, empty air on her back. She slumped against the wall for support, her breathing ragged and her arse-cheeks throbbing sharply.
“Shall we go, then?”
She turned her head sharply, her mind in turmoil, her body aching. “After what you did to me, you just want to go?”
“Yes? What’s your problem?”
Hope could barely put her confused thoughts into words. “You just beat me and now you’re acting like it didn’t happen?”
“I told you, we had to make it look good and now is a good time to make our escape.”
“But you said we had to wait, until it was quieter.”
“I didn’t say for how long.”
“You just wanted to abuse me.”
He shrugged nonchalantly. “Are we going or not?”
He handed her the jumper that he had ripped off her body earlier, and she snatched it out his outstretched hand.
“I’ll take that as a yes, then. Follow me.”
Pulling on the jumper, she stumbled after him. He was running up the stairs, taking them two at a time, his gun held out in front of him.
Christ, he thinks he’s James fucking Bond.
He reached the door and pushed it open, his back pressed against the wall and the gun held upright in front of his face.
Oh God, this is ridiculous, he’s going to get us both killed, he hasn’t got a clue what he’s doing.
“Stick close, don’t make a sound.”
Rohan stepped into the deserted hallway and she followed close on his heels.
I can’t let him do this. He’s going to get my brother killed…
“Rohan?” she asked softly.
“What,” he snapped, obviously irritated.
“I’m sorry…” Before she had time to change her mind, or question the wisdom of her actions, she brought her knee up to his groin for the second time. “Help!” she screamed at the top of her voice, wrestling with him for control of the gun.
The hallway was filled up with Mick’s heavies in a matter of seconds. She turned round to explain that this wasn’t her idea, that she hadn’t wanted to escape, but the back of her head exploded in agony, and then there was only darkness.
CHAPTER NINE
Hope’s eyelids fluttered open. It took a moment to piece together the fragments of memory.
One atrocious scene after another played in her mind in no particular order; her little brother, tied up and helpless, orgasming after Rohan whipped her, Isobel breaking down in front of the factory staff and her own arousal and humiliation….
I hate myself, was her first coherent thought.
She groaned, forcing her eyes to focus on the new surroundings.
Where am I now?
Frying pan to fire, sprang to mind. She forced herself to try to remember what happened after she was knocked unconscious in the hallway, but she drew a blank.
Struggling to overcome her blurred vision, she forced the fuzzy shapes to merge together. She was in a room; a room she had never seen before. It was tiny with just enough room for the single bed on which she lay. The room was devoid of any other furniture, including bed-linen of any description, and was sparsely decorated. The walls were white-washed, non-descript, the floor a beige carpet. From the high-ceiling hung a bare bulb. Only then did she notice there was no window in the room, just a door which instinctively she knew had to be locked. Invisible hands squeezed her skull as she struggled into a sitting position. Dispassionately she noticed she was naked, although her constant nudity no longer shocked her as it once had. Now her head was beginning to clear a little, she tentatively flexed each muscle of her body in turn. She hurt, she felt battered and achy like she was getting over a bout of flu, but nothing was broken. Her knees felt stiff and swollen and her ankles and wrists still throbbed where they had been lashed to the ‘X’ frame.
The headache was the worst, though, not helped by severe dehydration. She no idea how long she’d been unconscious, how many hours it had been since she’d last had a drink. Her throat made funny clicking noises every time she swallowed and it was impossible to muster enough spit to moisten the inside of her parched mouth.
Glancing downwards, she saw a small bottle of water by the side of the bed. Greedily, she snatched it up, not caring that the plastic seal had been broken. She gulped down the lot, revelling in the sensation of the water hitting her stomach and fanning outwards through her limbs, bringing with it the strongest surge of energy, of life itself. Her head cleared a little, like her brain had instantly soaked up the water like a bone-dry sponge.
The empty water bottle slipped through her fingers, landing silently on the carpet. She swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood up on trembling legs. As she did so, there was a scraping sound that caused her to stiffen and stand perfectly still, every muscle in her body coiled tight. The round doorknob turned and her paralysis broke. She stumbled backwards, her legs still shaky and unsure, and she pressed her back against the small wall-space by the top of the bed.
The door swung inwards and even before she saw who stood framed in the door, she knew who it would be.
“Hello Hope. I trust you slept well?”
As slim as he was, Michael Cooper cut an imposing figure. Dressed in his customary suit, his greying black hair neatly swept back and his green eyes glittering with intelligence and ill-suppressed mirth, he stepped into the box-room. He filled up the small space surely and absolutely, making her cower in the corner like a beaten dog.
“There’s no need to be such a scaredy-cat
, Hope. Please remove your arms from your breasts and stand up straight.”
Hope found her teeth were chattering, even though it was warm in the room. She straightened up, dropping her arms to her side.
“Better. You have displeased me, Hope, although it does not come entirely as a surprise. Rohan, however, is quite another matter. I am sorely disappointed in his actions and you and I shall punish him accordingly.”
Hope closed her eyes for a second, suddenly dizzy. When she opened them again, the room was spinning. A wave of panic gripped her, she didn’t feel right, at all.
“Oh, I slipped a little something in the water, keep you docile. Not just docile, but corrupted. You are too pure, dear Hope. You are not ready.”
She lifted up her hand to her face, and her hand left a trail of fingers that hung suspended in the air for a second. “What did you give me?”
Her voice sounded funny to her own ears, alien. Like her hand, her words appeared to float in the air around her head, but not come from her. She cradled her head in her hands, whimpering slightly.
“Look at me, Hope. You will soon get used to the sensation of being drugged. You are currently on LSD. You may start hallucinating, and experience some distortion of your sense of time as well as a distorted perception of the size and shape of objects and of movement in general. The way in which you usually experience colour and touch, even the way you view your own body, will alter. Your depth perception will be impaired. Just relax and go with it. Try to enjoy it.”
Enjoy it? It was too much for Hope; drugs terrified her. Hope had never taken drugs in her life, not even at university when the obligatory spliffs were being passed round. She thought of all the things she had heard about LSD, about those supposed bad trips. A fresh wave of panic assaulted her and she refused to look at him, cradling her face in horror.
“I see you panicking, you must not panic, you wouldn’t want to induce a bad trip, would you? Panicking will do that, it will bring on severe, terrifying thoughts and feelings. Don’t lose control, Hope, let the LSD bring on that glorious sense of euphoria, of certainty. Not terror, you don’t want that.”
“You bastard,” she sobbed into her hands. “What did I ever do to you?”
She was trembling from head to toe, whether from the drugs or sheer terror, she didn’t know. Her heart was beating painfully hard and fast against her sternum and she was having great difficulty catching her breath.
“Look at me!” he roared suddenly, making her flinch.
When she peeped at him through splayed fingers, he had the face of the devil, complete with horns. His face was red, his eyes a glittering, reptilian yellow. He blinked, but he blinked with sideways eyelids, like a lizard.
Hope screamed and slumped down the wall onto her backside, her knees clutched to her chest. “Get away from me.”
But when she looked up at him again, he was the same dapper gentleman he had been moments before.
“Stop panicking, Hope. Come on, on your feet.”
There was no mistaking the backbone of steel in the quiet command, but somehow, her legs wouldn’t obey the order her brain sent. She knew she had to get it under control otherwise she would drown in her own terror and never surface. Shakily, she stood up.
“Good girl. Come, I have such sights to show you, such pleasures of the flesh.”
He laughed when he said it, and Hope was sure she had heard those words somewhere before, although for the life of her she knew not where. With the faintest flick of his head he left the room, and she knew she had to follow like the obedient dog he expected her to be.
She covered the length of the room in five strides, the sense of floating and a general detachment from her own body and feelings engulfing her. It felt like her feet were hovering just off the ground; she could feel air on the soles of her feet where the carpet should have been. Dreamlike didn’t even come close to the way she was feeling; she barely felt human. A distant part of her mind was grateful for this cushioning effect; God only knew what lay in store for her.
Hope found herself in a large hallway, at the end of which a broad staircase curved gently downwards.
“Come,” Mick said from the top of the staircase.
In a daze, she followed, or rather floated, after him. Dimly, she was aware of the dark oil paintings that adorned the walls on their descent. Hunting scenes and creepy portraits that had to be hundreds of years old blurred together in her peripheral vision.
The bottom of the staircase opened out into a huge, plain room. It was the size of her old school gymnasium and she wandered out into it, that feeling of total detachment never leaving her. Turning slowly around on the spot, she took in her surroundings. It took a moment for her brain to process what her eyes were seeing, leaving trails of light and shapes in the air.
Doesn’t this place have any windows, she wondered in an abstract, disinterested way. Tilting back her head, she gazed up at the chandelier. It twinkled prettily high above her, the details of it blurring together to form one giant jewel.
Pretty, she thought, smiling softly.
Tearing her gaze away from the light, she took in the rest of the room. Despite the grandness, it was sparsely decorated. The highly polished, mahogany floorboards were the most striking feature of the room as very little furniture adorned them. Only an oversized, heavily-buttoned, Chesterfield style, red leather sofa sat alone in the middle of the room.
It took her a moment to notice the doors. So many doors…
She twirled round on the spot, trying to count them, but they all blurred together and she couldn’t remember the door at which she had started counting. They all looked the same; barely discernible oblongs set into the smooth, white walls. They lined the perimeter of the vast room and the more she twirled, the dizzier she got.
“Thirty-eight doors, ten each side, save for the wall with the staircase.”
She had forgotten about her captor for a brief moment and her gaze snapped in the direction of his voice. That cushioning, devil-may-care feeling leaving her the smallest amount, leaving her colder and more frightened.
Mick walked over to the red leather sofa and sat down. Leaning back he crossed his legs like he didn’t have a care in the world, knotting his hands behind his head in an exaggerated, nonchalant manner.
“Sometimes I just like to sit here, on occasion I have be known to sit here for hours. If I open the hatches I can listen to their screams. You really are quite beautiful,” he said, “I have wanted you since the first moment I saw you.”
Hope was beginning to feel distinctly strange. She may have stopped spinning, but the room had not. Squeezing her eyes tightly shut, she groaned in misery, pressing the balls of her thumbs into her eye-sockets.
“Do you want to see inside the rooms?”
Her eyes snapped open when she felt his presence behind her, his breath on her neck. How the hell did he get there so fast? She wasn’t aware that he had even moved from the sofa. It had a deeply disorientating effect on her, and her knees threatened to buckle; if it wasn’t for the tight grip he had on her upper-arms, she would have done.
“Come,” he said, steering her in the direction of a door. “Let me show you my little projects. Each one will play their part when their time comes.”
One of the doors loomed closer, like it was coming towards her, not the other way round.
Come on, Hope, you have to keep it together.
Blinking to clear her vision, she found herself facing the white door. Now she was up close, she saw a hatch just above her eyelevel.
“You will look inside, Hope, and see the truth. This is what I do to God’s creatures. I do the Devil’s work, Hope. I take God’s creatures and I make them suffer, in His name. Suffering is divine. Death is beautiful. You will understand that soon.”
His breath felt hot on the flesh of her bare neck, making her squirm. His words made no sense. Or perhaps she simply did not want to grasp them because the truth of them would send her spiralling uncontrollably
into depths of despair…
And that would be pure shit considering she was on LSD.
He opened the hatch, and with it came funny, groaning sounds.
“Look, Hope.”
She gasped when he let go of her arms and fisted her tangled hair, tilting her face upwards. The first thing she noticed as she stared through the hatch was the room itself. It was small and white-washed, the same size as the room she had woken up in, except this room had no bed in it. In the centre of the smooth, shiny floor was a drain-hole.
To drain away the blood, came the unbidden thought. A first, she didn’t understand what she was seeing. She didn’t want to understand.
“I call this the basket-room. It is extraordinary how little of the body a human-being needs to survive. Well, for a limited time, that is. The fellow on the left has nothing to him except his brain, heart and lungs.”
Hope felt her mind lurch in protest. I can’t look at this. I will go mad if I look at this…
But for some reason, she couldn’t close her eyes, or look away. Only then did her brain fully process what her eyes were seeing.
Three things hung from the high ceiling from thick rope. Each thing had once been a person. And technically was still a person, she thought darkly. Each person had a head, a neck, and some of their torso, to a lesser or larger extent. Everything else was gone. They appeared to be lined up in order of size – what remained of the man on the left was so miniscule it defied comprehension and the woman on the right was intact to her hips. Intact, that was, apart from the fact her shoulders were entirely gone as well as her limbs, and her neck went straight into her body. The woman was beautiful, with immaculately blow-dried, blonde hair in the style of Marilyn Monroe. The fact she had a full face of make-up on was even more disconcerting, that someone would put make-up on her after operating on her and sticking her in a god-damn basket.
Each person was placed in a size-appropriate, old fashioned wicker-basket that put her in mind of the baskets old ladies carried when popping down to the bakery for their morning loaf. The baskets were attached to rope that tied round each handle, the ends of which knotted around thick hooks in the ceiling.