by Tia Lewis
“Let me pass,” he said, wiping his nose. “I’ll take you through.”
“Sure,” I muttered, stepping aside.
I felt like I was being led by a hunchback in one of those old movies. I was surprised when the doorman didn’t take a torch from the wall and wave a long, gnarled finger at me. He led me down the hallway and past more candles. After around five minutes of walking, we arrived at another door. An innocuous wooden door that seemed ominous and foreboding.
“Here you go,” the man coughed. Then he held out a hand.
I looked down at it, and then up into his face. “I’m not shaking your hand,” I told him.
“No,” he said, and then coughed again, violently into his hand. “A tip.”
A tip? I couldn’t believe this shit! My anger rose. What the fuck for? These greedy sons of bitches had no shame!
“Here’s a tip,” I grunted. I grabbed him by the shirt and lifted him almost off of his feet, so he had to stand on his toes. He grabbed my hand, but he was weak and frail. I held him there for a few moments, and then growled, “Get a new fucking job and lay off of the coke.”
I dropped the man. He stumbled back, hitting the wall, and looked up at me with wide, terrified eyes. “What the hell, man?” he muttered, panting heavily. “I’m just doing my job!”
“Get the fuck out of here,” I said and pointed to the other end of the hallway. “Don’t test my fucking patience.”
“Okay, chill,” the man sighed, wiping his nose again. He turned and shuffled away, muttering under his breath: “No tip? I escorted your shitty ass all this way, and I didn’t get a tip? What sort of place are they running here when a man sits in the dark all night and doesn’t even get a fucking tip?”
I watched him go and then turned to the door, fists clenched. Behind there, is Tess, or someone who will know where Tess was. I might have to fuck someone up, kill someone, make a scene, or let my pistols do their work. But I didn’t care what I had to do. Whatever it took, I’ll find Tess and bring her home where she belongs. I’ll find the woman that I need and rescue her from these madmen. Because I do need her, and that’s the truth. I need her more than I ever would’ve guessed.
I took a deep breath and opened the door only to discover a scene straight from the depths of Hell.
12
The room was large, an underground cavern. The floor was plush and purple, the walls displayed red damask wallpaper. Luxurious couches with puffy white cushions lined every inch of the wall. The room was lit with large lamps that sat between the small crevices in the sofa cushions, dangling over the room like drooping plants. All around the room, men in suits, old and young, sat and stared so much, and so intensely that it made me want to kill every damn fucker in this place.
But they weren’t watching me. They were staring at the women. Not women like the ones upstairs on the dance floor. Not women who had chosen to be stared at. No, these women were like animals to them. My heart thumped in my mouth, in my head, and made it hard to think. Everything was blurry and overwhelming, and I felt myself being overtaken with rage. Anger was twisting around every part of me making my fingers twitch and ache to curl into fists before I ripped into their faces.
Then I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and reminded myself that I was here for Tess and that I couldn’t afford to lose my shit now.
When I opened my eyes, I took in the scene calmly.
Every single woman was butt-naked without a single article of clothing on them. I imagined that they would wear lingerie or a stripper’s outfit, something to tempt the sick fucks and stimulate their depravity. But no, they were completely naked and on display like fresh meat on display at a butcher’s shop. There was servers, women who circulated the room holding silver platters heavy with glasses of champagne. These women had fake smiles plastered to their faces. Maybe I’m not the best at reading women, but I knew when a smile was fake, and these smiles were just that. When the women served a man a drink, sometimes the bastard would reach casually across the table and grope her. He would grab her ass, or even slide his finger up between her legs. I was clenching my jaw so hard that I thought that my teeth would shatter and that was not even the worst of it. The worst part was when this happened, the woman lets out a phony, disingenuous giggle and flashed fake fuck-me eyes at the man like an attractive porn star would direct at a fucking a disgusting man that she had no intention of screwing but felt like she had to entertain for the sake of propriety.
As I watched, a short red-haired woman had her tray taken from her by one of the businessmen. He pulled the woman to one of the couches and then onto her his lap, her small tits bouncing as she laughed softly. He slid his sausage-fingered hand between her legs and jostled her up and down on his lap. The woman’s face was torn with fear for a moment, but then she tilted her head, as though contemplating the consequences of resisting, and she plastered a fake smile on her face.
Sensual lounge music played low, but not low enough to blot out the noise in the room.
The noise was of women being raped. There was no mistaking it. I couldn’t tell how many, but it was more than three, at least. It filtered down from a hallway beside the bar—the bar staffed by fake-smiling, naked women who couldn’t possibly be that oblivious to what was going on behind closed doors. The hallway looked like it led to a series of hotel rooms and the noises floated down the hall like fleeing guests who were desperate to escape but were trying to be tactful about it.
Nobody seemed to notice, or everybody pretended not to care about the urgent screams of the women:
“No, no, no please, I want to go home, no—Ow, ow! Ahhh! You’re hurting me! Please, please, please let me go!”
“Where am I? Who are you? Please, I don’t want this! Don’t do this to me!”
Even worse was the last voice that filtered to me, the voice of the woman who was quite clearly forced to pretend that she liked what was being done to her. She shouted out mechanically, in a dead and monotone voice:
“Yes, yes, yes, please, yes, yes, yes!” “I love it, fuck my pussy harder! Yes, yes, yes!” she moaned, but she was clearly moaning in pain, not pleasure. The sick son of a bitch either didn’t know that she was putting on a show, or he did not care.
I looked away from the hallway, trying to blot out the noise, reminding myself that I’m here for Tess, my Tess. Plus, there were bodyguards all around the room. They didn’t stand around like bodyguards, but I saw the guns beneath their suit jackets because they were not hidden very well. I knew that I could take those fuckers, but I couldn’t risk it with Tess still in danger and possibly located in one of these rooms.
Apart from the servers―who had been coerced or threatened into playing their roles―and the women being violated, there were the women chained like cattle to the wall at the end of the room, where the couches ended. There were around fifteen of them, each of them young, crying and chained by their necks to the wall. I scanned these women for Tess, but none of them were familiar. One woman, a short blonde who I mistook for Tess, tugged at the chain around her neck. Tears streamed down her cheeks, and her breasts jiggled pitifully as she wept. Suited men approached these women intermittently, grabbing their breasts, reaching around and massaging their asses, and forcefully inserting their fingers inside of them as they laughed and jeered, encouraging each other. I was sickened, disgusted and furious. I had to find a way to end this shit.
There were two cages set out on either side of the cavernous room that drew my attention. Each one held two beautiful women inside. They were both young, as were all of the women who had been unfortunate enough to fall into the hands of these evil, vicious men. One had short, spiky black hair and held herself with impressive dignity in spite of her circumstances. The other had long brown hair that fell all the way to her waist. Her eyes are red and bruised, and she gripped the bars of the cage, peering out at the spectators from her watery and beaten eyes.
I wanted to kill every man in here. The urge came over me so strongl
y that for a second I slid my hand into my leather jacket and reached for my pistol. It wouldn’t be so hard to shoot down these sick fucks and save these women, would it? But I had no cover, no escape route except for a narrow hallway that could quite easily be closed in on me, preventing my escape and ensuring my death. Plus, there were at least thirty hired men with guns mixed in with the buyers. If I went in with guns blazing, I didn’t stand a chance of making it out alive.
I bit down on the urge to punish these motherfuckers and removed my hand from my jacket, feeling like a goddamn coward but knowing that this is for Tess, all of it for Tess. I didn’t even know if she was here. I needed the information more than I need to feel like a hero. I had to play it cool, blend in and not blow my cover.
I realized that I had just been standing here, staring into empty space, for around a minute or two. With a sigh, I walked away from the door and into the lobby area, weaving between the men and the guards in suits. I walked in between the naked women, and passed the cage, and headed towards the bar. I avoided looking at the women’s bodies as much as I could. I enjoyed naked women as much as any other man, but when a woman is shivering in fear, forcing her smile and bruised from taking a beating in the eyes, that isn’t something to get excited about. The fact that these sick fuckers were getting hard over it was enough to make me sick to my stomach.
I’m almost at the bar when a man leaped out in front of me like a jack-in-the-box. His face was lit up with a devious smile which seemed entirely inappropriate under the circumstances. Then I saw his eyes and the way that he sniffled, and I knew why he was so goddammed happy. This bastard was a cokehead high on powder, just like half the people in this fucking place. He was a little shorter than me, with short black hair and a Harvard look about him. Just like those other high-class fuckers that I had dealt with over the years. He wouldn’t look out of place at any high-powered bank or brokerage firm on Wall Street. At the same time, he was probably running to the bathroom and snorting powder on his lunch break.
“Welcome, friend!” he squealed, his voice high-pitched. “How are you?”
Every impulse willed me to punch him squarely in the face and watch him topple backward and crack his head on the floor. It took an almost inhuman effort to stop myself, so I just responded that I was “Fine.”
“Wonderful!” he exclaimed then looked around the room. “You smell that? What’s that smell?” he had the nerve to ask. “My god, I haven’t smelled anything like it.”
“I didn’t get a chance to clean up before I came here.”
“I see.” He looked me up and down. “Oh, well that’s alright. We have bathrooms around the corner for you to tidy up in. Isn’t this place wonderful!” the man shouted, waving a hand around the place. “Isn’t this just amazing? Finally, a place where a man can just relax without being judged!” He slithered close to me and nudged me in the shoulder, a wink-wink-nudge, like we shared a secret. “I wouldn’t bring the wife here, though, eh? Don’t think that she’d like it very much!” He threw his head back and laughed like this was the funniest joke that he ever told.
We were close enough to the bar that I heard a “customer.” He looked to be in his mid-forties, gray-haired and leery-eyed. He leaned across to one of the naked servers and said, “I’ll buy the lesbian-looking bitch in the cage.”
The woman smiled―smiled―and replied, “Okay, sir, that’ll be three thousand dollars in U.S. currency, please.”
“Excellent! Great deal!” the man responded, pulling out a pile of cash with dirty fingers. “I hope that she’s young and new to the game! I love my girls extra tight!” he squealed, confessing his preferences without shame.
“I’m sure that you’ll be satisfied with your purchase, sir,” she answered.
“I can’t wait for my buddies and me to test drive that fresh, young pussy!” he admitted, delighted about the prospect of sinking balls deep into something new.
This man looked like a typical suburban husband, an ordinary everyday man, and yet here he was ordering pussy like he was casually looking through a Macy’s catalog.
The naked server then escorted the man over to the helpless woman in the cage who was screaming for help. I looked around the room, waiting for someone to take notice but all of the men were “busy” because their attention was occupied by “shopping” and testing out the women before they made their decision to make a final purchase.
“Here you go, sir. Her name is Bianca.”
“Mmm, Bianca. I like that.”
“Please no! Help! Help! Please let me go! You have no right to do this!”
“She’s a feisty little bitch isn’t she?” The man smiled, reaching his hand inside the cage and felt up and down the distraught woman’s shivering body. “I’ll take her.”
The man reached inside of his blazer and grabbed a thick wad of cash and handed it to the server. And just like that the server unlocked the cage and walked behind the bar. Bianca screamed and kicked her way out of the hands of her buyer, but she was unsuccessful as she tried to escape. The man was too strong, and when he almost lost his grip on her, he punched her in the face and knocked her out, rendering her unconscious. He dragged the woman down the hallway and into one of the rooms.
“Wow, that was a quite a show!” the man screamed in laughter. “Let me get you a drink! Martini? Bloody Mary? Something a little rougher?”
“I’m fine,” I replied, as I turned my attention back to the guy who looked like he was a prestigious man from Harvard even though he was just as wicked and debauched as the rest of the men who were here to get their rocks off.
“Oh, nonsense!” the man shouted. “Come on, friend, let us have a drink!”
I thought about telling him to fuck off, but then I reflected on the fact that maybe this man could maybe give me some information about where Tess was. I swallowed my pride, shut my ears to the screams and the fake, flirtatious words of the naked women, and followed the man to the bar.
We sat side by side on high bar stools. The man waved over a naked lady, a woman who looked like a college girl. She was probably pretty normal before she was kidnapped and taken to this god-forsaken place. She had shoulder-length brown hair, pretty green eyes, and a freckled face. I didn’t look at her body because I couldn’t stomach it.
The man talked to her in the same tone that a slave master would use to speak to his slave. “Two whiskeys,” he snapped. “And don’t be long about it, whore!” He turned to me with a broad smile on his face. “You can call them anything that you want!” He clapped his hands, giddy. “Whore, slut, bitch, cunt… Anything! You can slap them, beat them and fuck them! When you fuck them, though, you have to remember which one entertains you and make sure to tell one of the servers. They’ll charge you. But if you have the funds, just drag any girl you like down the hallway there.” He pointed to the hallway where the screams came from. “And do what you like. Piss on them, slap them, choke them. Anal. Whatever. Ass to mouth. Easy. Just be careful not to damage the whores permanently, or you’ll have to buy them for good. But! If you do find one that you want to yourself and you can afford to test drive her and finalize the sale it, then, of course, you can purchase her outright.”
Then he threw his head back and giggled manically. When the laughter was done, he reached into his jacket’s pocket, took out a small baggie of white powder, tipped the powder over his hand and snorted the crystals, leaning his head back and inhaling sharply as he absorbed the effect of the drug.
“Snow?” he asked like he wondered if I would be interested in snorting some cocaine with him.
“Nah, I’m good.” I declined.
“I forgot to tell you! Silly me,” The man said, wiping his nose. “If you want to make the women obey and shut up their goddamn screaming, then all that you need to do is purchase some “treats” from the servers to give to them so that they’ll shut the fuck up!” he howled in laughter.
“Treats?”
“Roofies, GHB or liquid ecstasy, Special
K… Just slip it in their drinks and then you can do whatever your heart desires to them. It will be like taking candy from a baby!” he slurred over his drink.
“Cool.”
The woman brought us two glasses of whiskey. The man leaped forward, grabbed her hand, and stared into her vacant eyes. “Are you a whore?” he grinned.
The woman nodded. “Yes. I’m a whore,” she whispered.
“I read about you when you first came here.”
“Okay,” she replied, completely frightened.
“Your daddy raped you a lot when you were a little girl, didn’t he?”
Enough! I almost snapped and blew my cover. In my head, I saw myself reaching across the table and slamming this motherfucker’s forehead into the edge of the bar, smashing and crushing his face until his flesh was destroyed, nothing but a mess of red goo. Then I would take out my pistols and end the life of every disgusting piece of filth who paid money to get his dick wet in this place. Years of being a contract killer were not enough to prepare me for the things that I saw and heard in this place.
But then I remembered Tess. Tess, who I can’t let go. Tess, who I need more than anything. Tess, the woman who has had changed me so much in so little time. I won’t let her go. I would have to swallow my venom for now, but I made a promise to myself to end this shit.
This entire fucking place was going to burn.
I couldn’t let it stand, especially considering what had happened to Tess and what they intended to continue to do to her if I didn’t come through and rescue her from Zharkov.
The woman nodded her head, and she said “yes,” confirming that her Daddy had raped her, and the man giggled and slapped her softly and casually across the face.
“Bring a bottle of Johnny Walker!” he demanded, after draining his glass. “I want another Scotch!”
The woman brought a bottle, and the man giggled pointlessly. “You see!” he cried, pouring himself a drink. “Anything you want, you can have as long as you can pay!”
