by Sam West
As disorientated as she was, she still felt refreshed after a long sleep. But now fear clung to her like a shroud and she scooted up in the bed, wrapping the dressing gown she still wore tightly around her body.
“Come on, up,” he said in a jovial manner. “The guests have arrived and we must join them. You are honoured to be collected in person.”
Her brain was slowly clicking into gear, assessing him. He was dressed in his customary suit, except this one was black, lending him the appearance of an undertaker. Knowing that it would be foolish to disobey him, she swung her legs over the side of the bed.
“Good girl. On your feet and take off the dressing gown. You may use the bathroom and drink from the tap before we go downstairs. I want you to feel your best before the festivities commence.”
Silently, Hope stood up and reluctantly shrugged off the gown, her skin crawling with his eyes upon her.
“Do as he says, Hope, we have to bide our time.”
She gasped and spun round, and there was Rohan standing there by the bathroom door in just his boxers with his arms crossed.
“What’s the matter?” Mick asked. “You’re looking at the bathroom like you’ve never seen one before. Come on, we haven’t got all night, go and piss. And brush your hair while you’re in there, too.”
“Yes,” she said, her eyes darting nervously from Mick to Rohan, then back again. Rohan smirked as she brushed past him. He was solid to the touch, which surprised her.
“Don’t shut the door,” Mick barked as she began to pull the door to. “We have no secrets, do we, Hope?”
Hope looked at Rohan who still had that irritating smirk on his face. “No,” she said.
“Good. Now hurry up.”
Hope urinated naked under Mick’s watchful gaze, hating him in that moment with every ounce of her being. Resolve hardened in her heart; she was going to kill the bastard or die trying.
“Don’t keep him waiting,” Rohan said, sticking his head round the door as she was brushing her hair with a comb she had picked up next to the sink. “Don’t be dumb. Play along and do as you’re told. We’ll find our time, but it isn’t now.”
“Stop talking to me,” she hissed.
“What did you say?”
Shit, she hadn’t meant to speak aloud. She froze with the comb halfway down her waist-length hair. For some reason she didn’t want Mick to know that she was seeing the ghost of the man she had killed. That was… private.
“Nothing, just talking to myself.”
Mick chuckled softly. “Is little Hope losing her mind? Maybe you’ll find it at my party.”
Hope quickly finished up in the bathroom and entered the bedroom once more.
“Put this on.”
She looked dumbly at what Mick held in his outstretched hand, not understanding why he was giving her a regular-looking, dog collar and lead.
“It’s a BDSM leash,” Rohan piped up helpfully. “Doms and subs use it a lot on the club scene, it’s more for show than anything.”
“Do I have to crawl on all fours like a dog?” she asked Rohan.
“Yes,” said Mick and Rohan in unison.
“But not until we’re downstairs, at the party. The lead is more for show, than anything,” Mick said. “Just to let people know that you are mine.”
“See, told you so,” Rohan said smugly.
With trembling hands, Hope placed the black leather collar around her neck.
“Here, let me.” Mick did up the buckle at the nape of her neck like a lover fastening a necklace, gently lifting her red mane out of the way. “There. Beautiful. Come on, it’s time to go.”
Hope looked helplessly over at Rohan.
“Don’t worry,” he said, “I’ll be right there with you every step of the way, I promise.”
She threw him a ghost of a smile.
“What are you grinning at?”
Mick was regarding her in a mix of amusement and irritation.
“Nothing,” she said quickly, “just preparing myself.”
“I have something to prepare you. Open your mouth.”
As soon as she realised his intent, she shrivelled inside in horror. He had produced a little blue pill from the inside pocket of his suit jacket, and was brandishing it under her nose between thumb and forefinger.
“No, please, not that. Anything but that.”
Her heart smashed against her ribcage at the mere thought of tripping again. Briefly, she thought about knocking it out his fingers, but good sense prevailed.
“Just do as he says, sweetheart,” Rohan whispered in her ear. She flinched when his cold, dead fingers wrapped around her upper arm. “I know it’s awful, but if you don’t, he’ll hurt you bad. And then you’ll still have to go the party all broken. Remember, I love you. I’m here to protect you, you won’t have a bad trip like last time.”
Hope’s eyes flitted from the pill to Mick’s stern face. Knowing she didn’t have a choice, she opened her mouth like an obedient dog.
“Good girl,” Mick said, popping it on top of her tongue. “Now swallow.”
Without another word they left the bedroom.
As soon as the bedroom door opened, music drifted to her ears – Soft Cell’s Sex Dwarf – It sounded deep and echoing, like she was one door away from a night-club in full swing.
“Walk,” Mick said, tugging on her lead.
This landing was small with just one other door opposite hers, the staircase before them narrow and winding to the left.
“We are at the top of the West Wing, this is where I throw my parties.”
“Yeah, you should see the size of the place” Rohan said from behind her. “it’s fucking monstrous.”
“Where are we?” she asked either Mick or Rohan, forgetting that Rohan wasn’t real.
“In my country estate in Kent,” Mick said proudly. “Fifty-five bedrooms in all, and not another house for miles.”
“He ain’t kidding,” Rohan chipped in. “You should see it from the outside, it looks like fucking Balmoral Castle.”
As they descended the stairs, the music grew louder. Marc Almond’s creepy voice rang out in the air around her;
…luring disco dollys to a life of vice...Sex Dwaaarf…
She had always quite like Marc Almond. Not anymore.
At the end of the stairs was a heavy wooden door that looked like it would be more at home in a Medieval castle.
“You know what, Hope, I think Mick loves you, in his own, funny little way. You are his princess, locked away in the ivory tower.”
Mick pushed open the door and she was blasted by Marc Almond, singing loud and clear;
…Walk my little doggie, walk my little Sex Dwarf…
Mick gave her lead a tug and her head snapped back, her hands automatically flying up to stop him from strangling her.
“Touch that lead one more time and I’ll strangle you with my bare hands.”
She knew he wasn’t kidding – her neck was still tender from the last attempt. “And keep your head lowered, no eye-contact with the guests unless I say so.”
It took Hope a second or two to adjust to the loud music and lack of light. Her head spun with her new surroundings and a dizzying onslaught of vertigo.
Shit, this is massive, was her first thought, swiftly followed by Oh God, this is bad.
She looked behind her for reassurance from Rohan, who smiled encouragingly. “It’s okay,” he said in a raised voice to be heard over the music, “it’s going to be fucking carnage, but we’ll find a way out. I won’t let you down sweetheart, I love you.”
“Now this is what I call a party,” Mick said.
Hope tried not to flinch when he cupped her arse-cheek, and made sure to keep her gaze lowered. Peeping through her eyelashes, she surveyed her surroundings. There was so much to see, so much to take in that giddiness threatened to overwhelm her. She fought to get it under control and to calmly assess her surroundings.
They were standing on an open landing that
ran the length of all four walls. The hallway seemed to stretch on forever, making her think of a nightmare she used to have where the hallway got longer the faster she ran. Except the faster she tried to run in the nightmare, the heavier her legs became. For a second she was in that nightmare, except it wasn’t an unseen assailant chasing her, it was Mick…
No, come on, snap of it. The image was so vivid she was scared it would turn into a LSD induced trip.
“Relax,” Rohan said in her ear. “Don’t have a bad trip.”
The banister was waist height and she leaned against it, surveying the scene below.
And what a scene it was. The balcony-style landing was at least thirty feet from the ground, the area it overlooked roughly half the size of a football pitch. Directly below the balcony were stone arches that rose all the way to the landing. Beyond the arches that would have looked more at home in a cathedral were shadowy areas where bodies writhed in the gloom. Hope didn’t look beyond the arches for long, instead concentrating her attention on the vast open space. Something was wrong with those glimpses of those shadowy people and she suspected she would be forced to look at them soon enough.
At first glance, down below looked like a nightclub in full-swing. There had to be thousands of people down there and her head swam just looking at them all.
How many people? Two thousand? Three? More?
People danced and writhed in the middle of the room, strobe lighting flickering over the heaving mass of bodies. Surrounding the dance floor were table and chairs dotted around like a regular nightclub.
Only on closer inspection did the clientele look different from the average nightclub; there was a lot of leather, a lot of latex and a lot of flesh.
Hope was beginning to feel strange – she recognised the emotional and physical sense of slowing down, of sinking into another place.
Once the doors of perception have been opened in the mind, they can never be closed again…
Who was it that said that?
Who cares?
“Walk,” Mick said, tugging on her leash.
The end of the section of hallway they walked down gave way to a wide, winding staircase. Hope was aware of curious eyes on them as they descended.
The host and his pet…
Soft Cell gave way to different song, something darker with a heavier beat:
Murder cute, happy rape, murder cute, happy happy happy rape, killer, sang the gravelly voice.
Marilyn Manson? she wondered. Whoever it was, it sounded like they were singing through a mouthful of broken glass. The music was that much louder down here, its aggression adding to her growing sense of disconnection from her own body and thoughts.
At the foot of the stairs, two men stood sentry. Both wore white t-shirts and blue jeans, just like they did at The Factory. As she passed, she stared at one of them. He looked familiar; heavily muscled, bald-headed, grim-faced. He ignored her and stared dead-ahead, doing his job.
“They’re carrying weapons,” Rohan said in right ear. “Look over at the entrance, there’s two more of Mick’s gorillas there too. There’s twenty of them in all. And when the time comes…” He finished the sentence by theatrically running his forefinger across his neck.
A coldness settled over her, despite the heat of the room. She wanted to ask him what he meant, but she didn’t want Mick to hear. Although she knew perfectly well what he was getting at.
Mass slaughter. A mass offering to the Devil…
Mick led her further into the room. Bodies brushed up against her as the crowd thickened and she shuddered in disgust. The people seemed to fall into one of two categories – abuser or abused.
There was some nasty shit going on in this room. She knew nothing of the BDSM scene, but she guessed that this was an extreme version of it. Most folk appeared to be ‘paired up’, like her and Mick. A lot of the coupling was male-female with the man in the role of abuser, although there was some same-sex abuse to be seen too. A man passed her dressed in an ordinary shirt and jeans with a younger man in tow who was completely covered in pins. Hope blinked, unable to stop herself from staring at the human porcupine. With his bald head, he looked like ‘Pinhead’ from Hellraiser, except the pins extended over every inch of the boy’s naked body. They even stuck out of his penis and scrotum. She gasped in disgust when his ‘master’ reached down and fondled the boy’s cock before removing a pin from his pubic region and sliding it all the way into his urinary meatus. The boy shuddered and gasped, whether in ecstasy or agony, she didn’t know.
This part of the room seemed to be where people came to ‘strut’. The dancefloor was vast, and a lot of bodies filled it. People danced and laughed and talked just like in any other nightclub. But the people doing the talking and laughing fit firmly into the category of ‘abuser’. Some of this group wore fetish gear, others wore ordinary clothes. All the abused, however, were either naked or dressed in hardcore fetish attire. Some were trussed up with rope, others were gagged, a few wore skin-tight latex that covered every inch of their bodies, including their faces.
“Get on all fours,” Mick said, jerking on her lead and bringing her to a halt on the edge of the dancefloor.
You and me and the Devil makes three…there’s not a word for what I want to do to you… sang that blood-curdling voice.
She did as she was told, the floorboards unforgiving on her bare knees. For a terrifying second she thought he was going to lead her onto the dancefloor where she would undoubtedly get trampled by revellers, but instead he led her through the crowd to the edge of the room.
Now she wished he had taken her to the dancefloor instead. She felt a hand on the back of her head and she flinched, thinking that Mick was going to smash her face into the floor.
“Relax, it’s me,” Rohan said. “Don’t panic, I’m right here with you.”
A figment of her imagination or not, Hope was absurdly comforted by his presence.
He is real, a voice whispered in her mind. He’s real and he’s going to help you.
A distant part of her recognised this feeling of comfort as a bad thing – believing the impossible was a sign that the LSD was taking hold.
I don’t want to go into the alcoves, oh God, I don’t want to see…
“It’s okay,” Rohan said. “It’s bad, yes, but at least it’s not happening to you, right?”
You can read my mind?
“Sure I can. I’m right here with you, baby. I’m not going to let him hurt you.”
“You may look, Hope. Lift your head and gaze upon the purpose of this party. Behind the pillars is where the real fun is happening,” Mick said, oblivious to her dialogue with Rohan.
She didn’t want to look, every fibre of her being protesting as she raised her head. The first thing she noticed was the space itself, framed by the stone arch. Running parallel to each side of the arch was a pair of Japanese-style room dividers, made of painted black wood and paper. In a strange way it reminded her of a stable and she guessed there had to be at least fifty other of these makeshift spaces along the edges of the party room. A sturdy looking wire at chest height sealed off the alcove from the rest of the room. She stared at the wire in puzzlement, her gaze travelling along the length of it which ran as far as the eye could see. It appeared to serve as a divider between the all the alcoves and the main section of the room. For reasons she didn’t understand, she found the sight of it deeply unsettling.
What the hell is it there for?
But all thoughts of the odd-looking wire were forgotten when she gazed into the alcove:
It was even worse than she had imagined. When she had glimpsed the shadowy activities taking place on the edges of the room she knew it was going to be bad, but this bad?
Sweet Jesus, I can’t look at this…
The music changed to something she didn’t recognise at all, a black metal song with growling lyrics, screeching guitars and heavy drums. It made her skin crawl and fit the scene perfectly. Nailed to a cross set against the far w
all was a bald-headed woman. She wore a crown of thorns, and thin trickles of blood ran down her face and chest. There was a red rubber ball gag in her mouth fastened around her head with a leather strap. Three men stood clustered around her, groping her waifish body. There was something familiar about the skinny girl and she stared more closely at her.
Oh God, it is her…
It was Isobel, the drug-addled girl she had shared a room with the first night at The Factory.
One of the men turned to look at Mick, and smiled. He was wearing a grey business suit.
“Fucking sickos,” Rohan said, crouching down next to her. “That bare-chested, scrawny guy in the gimp mask and leather trousers is the Mayor of London.”
“Gentlemen,” Mick shouted over the music. “Please don’t let my dog and I disturb you.”
The man in the suit grinned all the harder at Mick before turning his attention back to the girl.
To Isobel…
Only then did Hope notice the knife glinting in his hand, which he proceeded to drive into the girl’s lower guts. Isobel twisted and writhed, her eyes bulging madly above the rubber ball.
“Just a little blood-play,” Mick said softly in her ear. “Well, a lot of blood-play, actually. These little alcoves are the designated areas for the more extreme forms of torture. Shall we pop along to the next one?”
Hope wasn’t sorry to move away from the blood-sheened girl nailed to the cross. Now all three men were attacking her in earnest, stabbing her over and over.
The next alcove wasn’t much better. In this one was a long, plain, solid-looking oak table, on either side of which was two, Medieval style, long benches. A naked woman lay on the table and five men and one woman sat on the benches.
Fuck, they’re eating her…
The sight defied belief, but it was happening, right before her eyes. The girl had been nailed to the table by her shins and upper arms, and the well-dressed group surrounding her tucked into her with gleaming steak-knives and forks. They drank red wine from crystal glasses. Or perhaps it was blood. The only woman of the group – a stunning brunette in a long red cocktail dress – was laughing uproariously as she cut into the twitching girl’s lower belly. Carefully, she severed a piece of internal organ that looked like a morsel of raw sausage and popped it daintily into her mouth without a drop of blood spoiling her perfectly applied make-up.