The Whipping Girls

by Logan Fox

  He lit black candles. Then he pushed aside the rug in the center in the circular room. The white paint is faded and scratched, but I know a pentagram when I see one.

  We’re in the middle, a black candle at each point.

  Priest has my hair in a fist, wrenching back my head so I’m forced to stare at the crucifix on the wall as he rams into me from behind.

  Mary cried for a bit, but when I started moaning in time with Priest’s relentless thrusting, she grew quiet.

  I’m not surprised. She’s a child conceived in sin. Shoved prematurely into the world as a result of addiction. And fed from the breast of a mother enslaved to opiates.

  Yeah, she’s gonna go far.

  If I could give more than a passing fuck right now, it would break my heart.

  But there’s nothing left of my heart, my soul…my mind. I’ve been scattered to the four corners of the earth, and fuck the fact that it’s round so they don’t actually exist.

  The crucifix jumps up and down on the wall as I slip deeper and deeper inside myself.

  I hope Priest ruptures something inside me so I can bleed to death. It would be a fitting way to go.

  Priest cups my breast, squeezes, and scrapes his teeth down my shoulder.

  He’s big, stretching me, making my core ache as he speeds up. I’ve been on the cusp of orgasm for an eternity, and I don’t know if I’ll ever reach the brink.

  I’m a sick fuck — this I now know. Maybe Lucifer took me out there in the woods when I killed myself. Maybe my soul is already his, and Priest — Satan’s mortal vessel — is just fucking an empty body.

  Because fuck knows, I should have come a long time ago.

  I think Mary whimpers, but then I realize it’s me making the sound.

  Is it too late to pray to a God I never believed in?

  Because I sure as shit believe in the Devil. I don’t have a choice, do I? He’s balls deep inside me, and I’m not even fighting him anymore. What does that make me, a succubus?

  I laugh. Priest pauses, and then grabs the front of my throat, squeezing.

  “Yes,” I mutter, pushing myself up and forcing his hand tighter against my windpipe. “Do it.”

  Instead, he grabs my cunt, holding me open so he can keep fucking me while I’m up straight, arms dangling uselessly at my side.

  This time, Mary does cry out. And she doesn’t stop, even when Priest’s spent and panting against my neck, his dick shriveling inside me like it’s dying.

  Like I’m dying.

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Hunter

  There’s a crackle of static before Lars’s voice bursts through on the walkie-talkie at my side. I jerk, caught off guard by the unexpected sound.

  I press down the button. “Hello?”

  “Get down here, both of you.”

  “What?” comes Kane’s voice.

  Then Lars’s voice spills through the line as if he never stopped talking. “—gotta fucking see this shit.”

  I’m moving forward while the hairs on my arm are still trying to stand up.

  I see movement up ahead — Kane heading for the same concealed entrance Lars had used to gain entry to the back of the church and, subsequently, the basement. It was the same entrance MJ was taken out of. According to Kane, the same entrance Father used to reach that occult ritual room where he’d raped Zee.

  We reach the doorway at the same time and glance at each other. Kane’s face is nothing but a strip of dark skin and hazel eyes peeking out between the camo suit’s white exterior.

  “The fuck’s going on?” I murmur.

  Kane shrugs, hesitates, and then heads inside the church. I follow a second later, but it feels as if I leave my stomach outside there in the snow.

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Clover

  I’m on my back, one arm flung close enough to a candle to feel the warmth strobing from its flickering wick. Priest perches on the edge of his bed, watching me with a sadistic smile twisting his mouth. My legs are open, still bent, but I can’t be bothered to close them.

  “Will you kill me now?” I ask. I sound as if I’m trapped in a bubble and my own voice comes from outside, hollow and distant.

  Priest shakes his head. “Who will feed Mary?”

  “Feed her your dick,” I say through numb lips.

  Something flashes over Priest’s face. Anger? Frustration? He’s on his knees, then between my legs. Naked with candlelight gleaming from him, he’s all corded muscles and a single, vivid tattoo on his chest.

  It’s an intricate design — a pentagram surrounded with archaic rune-like symbols.

  And, in the center, a perfectly circular scar. As if something thick and solid pierced his chest just below his breastbone.

  “That how the Devil took your soul?” I ask, pointing with a limp hand.

  Priest growls, absently rubbing at the scar as if there’s a trace of pain. “Harlot,” he whispers, crawling closer.

  “Says the man who just fucked her,” I say.

  Anger solidifies his face in a hideous mask, but Clover give a good darn damn right now. Clover high as fuck, recently fucked, so badly fucked.

  “My Lord will consume you.” His words are so fervent, spittle laces them.

  “I love being eaten out,” I mumble, rolling my head to the side so I can watch the candle flame shimmy in Priest’s wake. “Tell your Lord to take it slow. Men always rush.” I’m slurring, my words running together.

  Priest grabs my ankles, jerks my legs open so wide a dagger of pain sparks through my hips. Panic takes me in a rabid bite, shaking me.

  The morphine’s wearing off.

  Fuck, how long has it been? Too long. Too fucking long, Clover.

  “Give me more,” I say, and then shake my head. “Drugs. More drugs.”

  “Why, whore? So you can block this out? I want you to remember every moment—”

  I kick him in the mouth. And then watch in morbid fascination as he slowly turns his head back to me. Blood black in the candlelight drips down his chin.

  “Drugs. More. Now.”

  Priest smiles at me with glossy black teeth. “After all that pleasure, maybe it’s time you experienced pain.”

  He’s on top of me a second later, nails sinking into my throat and breast. I scream, but the sound barely carries past that goddamn bubble I’m in.

  I claw at him, but it may as well have been Mary laying here for all the good I’m doing.

  Mary.

  Such a sweet fucking name for a kid.

  Not what I would have chosen. I’ve never given it a second’s thought, but I would never call my kid that.

  Kane’s kid.

  Hunter’s kid.

  My kid.

  Someone’s screaming. Is it me, or Mary? A fist connects with my jaw, scattering pretty stars all over the room. I reel, my back arching on instinct as Priest forces his way inside me.

  Maybe it isn’t too late to pray.

  “Our Father, who art in Heaven. Hallowed be thy—”

  A slap burns my cheek. I sob, choke on my own spit, and try desperately to block out the feel of Priest’s hard body on mine, his suffocating weight.

  “—thy name. Thy kingdom come—”

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Hunter

  I expected more candles down here. Lanterns, maybe. I didn’t expect fluorescent lights, or dirty mattresses, or all these girls chained to the cement floor.

  They’re naked but for their metal collars and the perfect braids each has dangling down her back or shoulder. The oldest among them couldn’t be more than ten years old, but I’m not an expert on kids, so I could be wrong.

  As wrong as this…all of this.

  I remember where Father had kept MJ and Zee and the other girls when we came to see them what, eight years ago?

  Turns out there’s a floor beneath that. I guess Lars just kept going, either forgetting my map or wanting to set his charges as deep in the corrupted heart of this freak show as possible
.

  My gaze darts from bowed figure to bowed figure, then back again. Ten, twenty, thirty? I keep trying to count them, but my mind recoils every few seconds, resetting itself.

  Instead, I try to count the supporting beams in this dungeon. Three, all running down the middle of the room. There’s an aisle to each side, and then the mattresses begin.

  Three pillars. Two mattresses before each wall. Three mattresses between each pillar—

  “Mercy,” Kane murmurs, his voice hoarse and utterly stupefied.

  Lars heads forward, a hand raised as if to soothe the girls we walk past.

  But there is no need because they don’t lift their heads.

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Clover

  Something warm touches my finger. That heat quickly turns to pain. I flinch, drawing my hand away, but the heat comes with it. I stare at black candle wax as it dries on my finger. I open eyes heavy-lidded with reluctance and stare around the room. All except one candle has guttered out, leaving me in a barely-illuminated room.

  Mary’s gone. Priest’s gone.

  I push onto my elbows, wincing. The pain in my belly is back, and I feel wetness on my lower abdomen. At first, I think my stitches tore, but then I remember I don’t have stitches anymore.

  Your wounds are healing so fast. Satan is sheltering you.

  I touch my skin, recoil with a gag. Cum, not blood. I crawl to the bed and snatch down the dress laying crumpled on the sheets. It takes every ounce of energy I have to pull it over my head and guide my arms through the holes. I can’t lace up the back, but if I keep a hand on my breastbone, I can keep the bodice in place.

  It’s less about modesty than the chill in the air.

  I crawl to the door, try to open it.

  Nope. Locked.

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Hunter

  There are manacles on the wall. The gray bricks nearby are dark with blood splatters. Beneath, wooden vats, tubes. I can’t even begin to understand their purpose. My stomach twists, threatening to spew out everything I’ve ever eaten. When I happen to glance at Kane as I swing my head to the right, I see his eyes are narrowed to slits, his mouth in a grimace.

  The room ends abruptly. A thick metal door bars our way. It’s not locked, but it squeals like a banshee when Lars opens it.

  As if prompted by the sound, every girl in the room behind us throws herself into a prostrate position and begins chanting. It sounds like Latin.

  “Vexilla regis prodeunt inferni.”

  “What are they saying?” Kane asks, staring at me as if I somehow know the answer.

  I shrug and rake my eyes over the girls. Now that their nakedness is covered by their bowed backs, I study them in more detail, trying to make sense of their behavior.

  Which is when I notice the dark lines over their backs.

  Whip marks.

  Brutally plentiful, crisscrossing, some still glossy as if they haven’t yet healed.

  Lars calls out from the room beyond. “Guys, you gotta see this.”

  But I don’t want to. All I want is to run back up the stairs and abandon this hell hole.

  “Oderint dum metuant.”

  Hate? Fear? How long did it take for these young children to learn such strange words?

  How many whip lashings?

  “Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc.”

  I had no idea the children Father had kidnapped — the girls — were still alive. How can we set the charges now? We’d have to find a way to get them all out of here, unseen, without—

  “Hunter.”

  A hand grasps my shoulder, drags me back.

  “In absentia lucis, Tenebrae vincunt.”

  I know that phrase.

  In the absence of light, darkness prevails.

  “Vexilla regis prodeunt inferni.”

  Something about a king, and Hell.

  The King of Hell.

  The hairs on my arm stand on end.

  I look away from the bowed, chanting girls with difficulty.

  I’ll be seeing them in my nightmares, perhaps for years to come, no matter the outcome of our actions tonight.

  The high pitch of their young voices, chanting, will drive me to waking.

  That’s what I think…until Kane drags me through that metal door.

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Clover

  I move as fast as I can to the window and wrench it open. Frosty air billows in, dusting me with snowflakes that melt a second later. I climb onto the window seat and lean over.

  The ground is a very, very long way down.

  Will it hurt?

  Someone’s laughing. When I start choking, and the sound cuts off, I realize it’s me.

  Which is strange, because I don’t know what’s so goddamn funny.

  Chapter Sixty

  Hunter

  Lars reaches out a hand.

  “Don’t,” I grate. “Don’t touch it.”

  He turns to me, green eyes venomous with hate, but I realize it’s not aimed toward me. “The fuck is going on here?” Lars demands.

  Kane doesn’t take heed of my warning. He grabs one of the masks and studies it up close.

  Goat heads replete with beady, glass eyes and twisted horns. Full body suits created from a patchwork of different colored fur. What a fucked up, rag-tag disguise — why the fuck would anyone want to wear it?

  The stink in here is unbelievable. Sweat, blood, semen, unwashed skin, and the musk of the beasts they slaughtered for their costumes.

  “Hm-uh,” Lars says, backing away. “I can’t even.”

  As soon as I can tear my eyes away from those hideous outfits, I scan the rest of the small storage room.

  Beside the goat outfits — white dresses. Bright; either new or freshly cleaned and starched. I swing around, trying to find another piece in this fucked up puzzle.

  Something vaguely familiar catches my eye. Medical supplies…for if the girls get too hurt and need stitching up? I push around the objects on a grimy wooden shelf as Lars and Kane start talking behind me.

  “We have to get them out of here,” Kane says quietly.

  “Here’s another door.” There’s the sound of a handle turning. “Locked.”

  A few packets of sealed syringes, one open with only three left inside. Cheap — the kind a junkie might use.

  “See keys anywhere?” Kane asks.

  “Doubt they’d have left them in here. But, hey, guess what? I packed me some C4.”

  The duffel bag thumps as Lars drops it. I flinch, but it’s pure instinct. I doubt anything could explode in there. From what I understood, he has to set the charge by inserting detonators into the play-dough like bricks before they’d do more than just sit there.

  A zipper sounds.

  “Could blow this door right off its fucking hinges,” Lars muses to himself.

  “That’d let everyone know we’re down here.”

  “So? We’d be long gone before that.”

  My eyes stick on a bag with a wide sticker. I pull it off the shelf, narrowing my eyes to read the label in this room’s weak light.

  CAUTION!

  4-AcO-DMT-Fumarate

  Not for Human Consumption

  Only for R&D

  “Tell you what. I’ll set a brick by the stairs, cave them in. A few more by the girls—” Lars clears his throat. “On our way out? We blow this place back to hell.”

  Why on Earth would Father give the girls DMT? DMT is a powerful psychoactive, producing hallucinations so vivid, it could cause PTSD. Add fucking goat suits to that… It’s as if Father was intent on manufacturing the worst trip in the world.

  My eyes dart to the right. Three syringes, each filled with a clear liquid. DMT dissolved in saline — no doubt ready to be administered to three very unlucky girls later tonight.

  “Then let’s do it.” Lars kicks at the locked metal door. “’Cos we ain’t getting out this way, that’s for sure.”

  “What if there are more?�
� I ask, spinning around to face them. There’s a syringe in my hands, and both Kane and Lars glance at it and then back at me.

  “What if he’s got more girls? What if they’re all over the church?” I grab Kane’s shoulder. “We didn’t even check the cells! What if there are—”

  Kane slaps me hard enough to leave a ringing in my ears. “We get the girls out, we blow this place up.” He grabs my shoulders, shakes me. “Got it, Hunter? That’s what we’re doing. No less, no more.”

  “We can’t save them all, buddy,” Lars says. “There’s not enough time.” He points a finger up. “Might be because we’re too deep, but I think their satanic mass is over.”

  As if on cue, footsteps echo to us, and the three of us turn to the distant stairwell.

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Clover

  The thing they don’t tell you about tying sheets together? It’s fucking hard, especially if they’re of good quality. High thread count fabrics are just too goddamn silky. Also, my hands are shaking fucked up right now, and I swear I’ve literally forgotten how to tie a knot.

  Bunny ear, bunny ear. Bunny hops through the fucking hole. Bunny dies because she can’t fucking tie this fucking knot.

  Wait…that’s for laces. Fuck!

  I finally get something resembling a rope tied and let it fall out the window.

  And then watch as it pools in the snow.

  “Fuck.”

  Guess I should have tied it to something first.

  Chapter Sixty-Two