The Pulp Fiction Megapack

by Robert Leslie Bellem

  “You may return,” Tala Mag ordered savagely. “Next, Lillian Bord.”

  One by one the three remaining women came to the center of the room and, thoroughly cowered, removed their clothing. When they were all naked, Tala Mag looked the crouching women over coldly and said:

  “Before the night is over, one of you five will endure the same fate as Portia Teele. Which one that will be depends on your husbands.”

  * * * *

  The women were wailing again, their eyes drawn against their wills to where the thing that had been Portia Teele still hung from the chains. Which one was it to be? She had said that it depended on us men. Would she make us draw lots? No, her diabolical brain would think of something infinitely more horrible.

  Tala Mag turned to us. “We shall have a hunt,” she said with that completely dissolute smile of hers. “It will be great fun, I promise you. You men will be the hunters, your wives the hunted. The women will be let loose in the grounds, and then you men will be given guns. Not real guns, of course, shooting lead bullets; they will contain tiny pellets which will dissolve when striking the naked skin, leaving a blue mark. The game will last for two hours. At the end of that time you will all be rounded up and the blue marks on the bodies of the women will be counted, and she who has been hit the most times will be handed over to Clops for the caress of his hot irons.”

  We gaped at her, finding it hard to understand that even this woman could have conceived of anything so diabolical.

  “It will be a fascinating game,” she went on. “Those of you who win, and there will be only one loser, will be permitted to depart unharmed.”

  “We won’t do it!” Victor Rooney shouted. “You can’t make us!”

  Tala Mag shrugged. “That is entirely up to you. You are all completely in my power, yet I am making a magnanimous gesture by promising freedom to all five of you men and four of the women. If all of you prefer to die unpleasantly instead, very well. But I think that you will all play the game with no further protest.”

  What could we do? It was all our lives or the life of only one. We had no choice.

  “As in all games, there are rules in this one,” Tala Mag said. “You women, you hunted, will use all your skill, all your ingenuity, out there in the grounds to avoid being shot by the hunters. Not for a moment will you forget the terrible price you will have to pay if you are shot more times than the others. And you men, you will do your best to shoot and hit any woman but your wife, because the more times the others are hit, the greater chance your own wife will have of bearing the fewest marks on her skin. There will be but one bullet in your pistol; when you have shot that, you will return to the terrace where I will hand you another. We must play fair, gentlemen; if I gave you a supply of bullets in advance, you might be unsporting enough to hold a woman and fire repeatedly at her. You must realize that it will be futile to attempt to escape over the walls. One more rule: you may not attempt to protect your own wife from the others. My servants will be everywhere with flashlights, and there will be severe penalties for unsportsmanship.”

  Almost it was funny, her talk of sportsmanship. It was when she had finished speaking that the full diabolical cunning of the “game” became clear. Each of us men would have to do our best to condemn one of the other women to appalling torture in order to save his own wife.

  “We are ready,” Tala Mag announced. “You women hide yourselves well before we release the men. You know what is at stake.”

  They did not move. They crouched there against the wall in a frozen mass of naked flesh. One of the servants went to them with a whip, and then, shrieking, they leaped to their feet and scampered across the room.

  * * * *

  We were released from our chains and led out to the terrace. We moved with slow, shambling steps, with our eyes fixed on the floor, not one of us looking at the others whose wives each of us would hunt like wild beasts in order to save the woman we loved. And although we were no longer in chains, we made no attempt at resistance, because we knew that our strength was that of babies as compared to that of the monstrous servants. We needed our energy—for the hunt.

  A full moon hung above the estate, so that we could see the waterless pool and the overgrown lawn and the hedges and the trees and sections of the wall topped with barbed-wire. On a table on the terrace lay five toy-like pistols. One was handed to each of us. It was like a child’s BB gun, with a small hole on top of the barrel where the pellets were inserted. Tala Mag seated herself at the table. At her right hand was a cardboard box filled with tiny blue pellets, the size of a BB shot. She gave one to each of us and we loaded our pistols and were ready.

  Across the track of the moon a white figure ran. Moonbeams flashed on blonde hair and Bob Spaulding cried out, calling frantically to his wife to hide herself. She threw a glance at us over her shoulder, then stumbled among some trees. There was silence out there now and no sight of any of the five women.

  “Go,” Tala Mag said.

  And we five hunters of naked women set out.

  CHAPTER V

  HUNT OF THE DAMNED

  I am certain that the drinks we had several hours before must have been drugged. However much our minds had been affected by the sight of Portia Teele’s horrible fate and fear of the giant servants and the frenzied urgency to keep our wives from frightful torment, all of that would not have been sufficient to make of us the relentless savage hunters which we became. Yes, it must have been drugs which stripped of us the last veneer of civilization. Without mercy we hunted the wives of our friends, the little pellets in our guns crueler in the end than leaden bullets would have been.

  We set out when Tala Mag gave the command. It struck me that most of the women would have run around to the other side of the house. And as soon as I turned the corner, I glimpsed moonbeams dancing on a white arm. The rest of the body was hidden behind a rose bush.

  Swiftly I ran up to the bush. When I had almost reached it, the woman behind the bush uttered a terrified cry and leaped to her feet. I saw the blond hair of Inez Spaulding. She put out her hands as if to ward off the pellet. Deliberately I shot at the smooth expanse of her abdomen.

  She screamed shrilly then and fell to the ground, writhing and clawing at the blue spot which had appeared on her white skin. God, the pellets consisted of acid which burned the skin! Even those four women who would, in the end, be spared the torture of the white-hot irons, would still suffer untold agony from numerous acid burns.

  Feet pounded behind me. Victor Rooney came up, gawked for a moment at Inez Spaulding, then bent close to her and shot a pellet against her thigh. Her screams rose higher. In spite of her pain, she bounded up and stumbled off.

  I had said we were not quite human. We raced back to the terrace to get more pellets to inflict more pain on other men’s wives. As I inserted a pellet Tala Mag handed me into my pistol, I heard a shriek from the swimming pool. Whirling, I saw that a naked woman had fallen or jumped over the side and she was crouching there on the dry bottom, trapped, while Spaulding and Cuyler were taking aim at her.

  The woman was Helen.

  Shrilly I cursed those two men, although a minute before I had shot at Spaulding’s wife as he was now shooting at mine. They both shot and Helen’s body leaped erect, spun, and then she was trying to clamber over the side, her voice hoarse with pain. Rooney had reloaded his pistol and was racing toward where she was trying to climb out. Thinking only that Helen must not be hit again, I threw myself at his feet, and we went down together.

  The next moment fire burned across my back. One of the servants stood over me, lashing me with a whip.

  He let up at last and I lay there in a welter of anguish. Helen was no longer in the dry swimming pool. None of the men and women were in sight, but from other parts of the grounds I could hear screams.

  “I mentioned sportsmanship,” Tala Mag’s voice came from behind me. “I trust you have learned your lesson.”

  I managed to push myself up to my feet. Bor
d and Cuyler were coming around the side of the house. They snatched pellets from Tala Mag and dashed off again. I had to go on, to inflict pain on other women so that Helen could be saved.

  I became crafty—a hunter. Instead of rushing about wildly, I chose what appeared to be the best hiding places and went to them. In a copse of birch trees I came across Jane Rooney and let her have it. I ran back to reload and returned to the hunt. I got Clara Cuyler and then Inez Spaulding. I had Lillian Bord trapped against a corner of the wall when her husband appeared suddenly and threw himself at me.

  As we struggled there in the moonlight, a sharp beam of light spread over us and one of the servants pulled us apart. Now it was Frank Bord who received a lashing. Lillian had fled. I rose and went in search of a fresh victim.

  Time lost all meaning. Two hours the hunt was to last, and five minutes or an hour might have passed. The night air was shattered by the occasional shrieks of the women; and now and then across my vision would flash a naked running woman, or a clothed man in pursuit or returning to the terrace to reload, or a huge servant with whip in one hand and flashlight in the other to impose “sportsmanship” on us.

  Running across what had been a lawn, I almost stumbled over a white body which lay pressed flat, hidden in the tall grass. The woman leaped to her feet with breasts bobbing crazily and flesh quivering as she realized that she could not escape and waited with shrinking body for the searing pain of the acid pellet.

  I lifted my pistol. Then for the first time I saw her face and my arm dropped to my side.

  “Helen!”

  She stumbled to me and my arms closed about the sweet, abused body of my wife.

  “Helen, perhaps we can get out of here or hide before it’s all over. Let’s try to get into the house. They’ll never think of looking there for us.”

  We ran across the lawn. We had almost reached the rear of the house when the form of Roland Cuyler came running toward us.

  “Let him shoot you,” I whispered. “We mustn’t become separated again, and if I try to stop him they’ll tear us apart.”

  She nodded and waited for him, setting her teeth. I swung a short distance away from her. In spite of the blue marks which pitted her skin, she looked breathtakingly lovely as she stood there in the moonlight. Cuyler came up to her, and glanced at me, then went close to her so that he would not miss. His lips were pressed tightly together and his eyes glinted with the joy of the hunter who had cornered his quarry. He was no longer quite human, and neither were the rest of us.

  He shot a pellet at her sleek hip and raced off. Helen winced, but did not cry out. Then we were holding each other’s hands again and continuing toward the house.

  The sight of the windows shattered my scheme. They were all barred. Doubtless the front door was locked. There had to be another way. I had counted the blue acid marks on her and there seemed to be eight or ten. And the hunt was still young.

  “Perhaps the wall,” I said desperately. “I might be able to lift you to the top. The barbed-wire will tear you, but it will be no worse than the pellets and what might follow. Somehow you might manage to get over the second wall.”

  We ran across to the wall. For a while we were in the open and she was seen by Rooney, so we had to stop while she submitted to being shot again. I went through a hell of helplessness watching. Then we were at the wall.

  I had hoped that there might be a tree close enough, but Tala Mag had taken care of that.

  Sticking my pistol in my belt, I pressed against the wall while Helen climbed up to my shoulders. She could just about reach the top of the wall with her fingers. I grasped her ankles and, exerting every ounce of strength, lifted her slowly. She got her elbows on the wall, was pulling herself up—

  A flashlight beam covered us. With a groan of despair I knew that I had failed. The whip curled around my back. I stumbled and Helen lost her hold and we both dropped to the ground. Panting under the pressure of Helen’s soft body, I lay waiting for the whipping.

  But what happened then was worse than any whipping would have been. The servant Wick dropped his whip and flashlight and plucked Helen from the ground. Holding her with one hand, he pulled from a pocket a pistol containing a number of the acid pellets, and five times he shot at various parts of Helen’s body.

  Her screams of agony formed a maddening din in my brain. This was our punishment for attempting to escape. Not only did the five pellets at once cause her unendurable anguish, but, counting the two other marks she might have avoided if she had not met me, she was seven marks behind the others. God, what a fool I had been! She had had one chance in five of losing.

  Now her handicap was terrific.

  She writhed there on the ground, clawing at her flesh, and her screams attracted other hunters.

  “Run!” I shouted.

  With an effort she managed to stumble to her feet and choke off her voice. She cast a frantic glance over her shoulder and plunged in among a nearby copse. Frank Bord and Bob Spaulding raced after her.

  Wick picked up his whip and flashlight and strode off. It struck me that I was wasting valuable time, that the only way to make up for those marks on Helen was to redouble my own efforts. And so I became a hunter again.

  Several times more I came across Helen, and each time I kept my distance. With despairing heart I saw that her skin was literally pitted with those cruel, damning marks.

  And so the nightmare continued. Running to the terrace to reload, shooting the pellet at a naked body, returning to the terrace. And always Tala Mag was behind that table, holding out the pellets one by one, that unholy smug smile fastened to her lips. Sometimes none of her servants was near, and it did not occur to me or to any of the others to strangle her then and there. We were too thoroughly cowed; too thoroughly savages intent only upon the hellish hunt.

  Toward the end the five of us were so exhausted that we could scarcely stumble along, and our wives were weaker still, so that they made hardly any effort at flight any more.

  Finally, after the passing of an eternity, the two hours were up. When we came to reload, two of the servants were waiting for us. We were taken into the chamber where Portia Teele had been tortured, and we were chained once again. The corpse had been removed.

  Next the women were rounded up. They entered the room on legs which could scarcely bear them up, and they flopped on the bare floor and lay there, their bodies twitching with pain.

  Then one by one they were dragged to the center of the floor and the blue marks on their skin were counted by Tala Mag while Emil kept a record. We men dared hardly breathe. Looking at Helen, my heart stopped within me. She seemed to have marks more than any of the others.

  She was the third to be counted, after Clara Cuyler and Jane Rooney. Yes, she had many more than the others. And then Lillian Bord, and Helen was still the first.

  Clops was at the brazier, blowing on the coals to heat the irons.

  CHAPTER VI

  PASSION IN HELL

  Inez Spaulding saved Helen’s life. Because she had two more of the tiny blue acid dots on her skin than Helen, it was she who was suspended by her wrists from the ceiling.

  I leaned back against the wall, feeling like a wrung out rag. Bob Spaulding went stark raving mad, and his shrieks as he tore against his chains mingled with those of his wife. Helen sat on the floor with head buried in her arms, shoulders quaking.

  The brazier was wheeled from its corner by Clops. Inez watched him with eyes which were no longer those of a human being. Tala Mag placed a hand on Inez’ quivering flesh and whispered words to her which I could not hear, but I knew by the sadistic light in her face that she was taunting the poor girl, telling her in detail which she was soon to endure.

  Then Tala Mag stepped back and Clops set to work with the glowing irons.

  It was a repetition of what happened to Portia Teele. For a long time Inez’ statuesque body jerked in midair like a marionette and her screams rasped against our eardrums. Then little by little the screams
turned to moans and her body grew still save for involuntary spasms which shook it. The acrid smell of burning flesh clogged our nostrils.

  It was over at last, and what hung from the chains was a grotesque caricature of Inez Spaulding.

  Frank Bord’s voice came weakly: “And now, for God’s sake, let us go, You promised.”

  Tala Nag faced him and laughed. “Soon,” she said. “You will have to be patient.”

  It was odd that it had occurred to none of us until that moment that Tala Mag could not keep her word to us—even if she had wanted to. The drugs, perhaps, and the mental tension under which we had been, had obscured the fact that our release would send the police of the nation after her and her servants. She did not have to take that risk.

  So that hideous degrading hunt had been in vain!

  Despair clouded our faces. We were helpless to do anything but wait for whatever fate Tala Mag announced.

  Tala Mag gestured to Emil. He released me from the chains. Was I the next to be tortured? It did not matter, greatly. I was beyond caring.

  Holding my arm, Emil dragged me up a flight of stairs and into a bedroom. In a dresser mirror I saw myself for the first time since I had entered the estate. My eyes were wild, my face grimy, and my shirt, ripped by whips and bushes, hung in tatters from my shoulders.

  A minute later Tala Mag entered. She stood regarding me critically, with a strange excitement in her face and her practically bared breasts panting.

  She said: “You are still very handsome, Lester Marlin. You shall be my lover, and after that you and your wife may leave. Emil will be outside the door, so do not attempt violence. And I may add that if you touch me, that if you attempt to harm me in any way while we are alone, your wife will suffer ten times the agony of those two other women.… Emil, you may go.”