by John Everson
Selena held Mark’s arm and pulled him towards the dance floor beyond the row of masochists along the wall playing with whips and floggers. “I want you,” she said quietly.
Mark shrugged her hand away.
“I want my wife,” he said, and walked towards the bar.
Chapter Twelve
Invitation 2
Rae stepped through the medieval wooden door in the back of the club and felt her heart stop. The invitation had grown damp between her fingers in the short time she’d held it, but then, almost as soon as she’d stepped in front of the iron-hinged doorway in the back of the club…someone came to snatch it away.
The door had opened, and she had been pulled into The Red.
Everything changed.
The modern, blue-light-and-black-metal and ripped-fishnets, dark-techno feel of the outer club disappeared and she was in a place that felt like the antithesis of the Blue Room. This place was ancient. Like catacombs.
Her skin felt cool and clammy as the light of a hundred candles inset in the walls lit her way, and when she stepped past the candle foyer, the deep light of The Red slid across her skin, absorbing her into its world. She was in a different place…the room in which she’d entered NightWhere was almost on a different planet than this. That was casual. Out there, it was just a game. Sex and pain for fun. Frolic.
Here…she felt…nervous. Like a tourist in the dank caverns of a horror movie. The shadows misted dark and hot around her. Clouds of foul air hung in the long hallway, hiding whatever lay beneath it. Rae’s feet-and whatever was near them-were obscured from view…still, she stepped forward.
The wooden door closed behind her with a snap.
She turned, but there was nobody inside the dark. She saw the shadow of the door and the flicker of candle flames. A hint of the fog drifted past like a grounded cloud.
“You came,” a voice said from the fog ahead. His eyes glowed red, like fire.
“I was invited,” she said.
“Yes,” the voice agreed. “You were.”
Rae stepped farther into the main hallway of The Red, and in the bloody shadows, she saw the nude shoulders of a man. She moved faster, intrigued. That’s when the slap caught her across the shoulder blades.
“Ouch,” she complained.
The voice in the dark laughed.
She heard the sound this time before she felt it. The crack of leather. Followed by the white flash of contact pain. As the sound faded, the pain blossomed orange and hot across her breasts. Her nipples stung with the shock of unexpected abuse. She gasped and stepped back, but didn’t cry out. Instead, Rae hugged herself, wrapping her arms in protection across her violated skin.
“You can’t hide here,” the voice said.
Suddenly, a light glimmered to life high above them. A single bulb in a corridor of shadow. But as it lit, a softer, deep-amber glow rose from the floor around her. Rae saw vague silhouettes moving in the dull light.
“Show her,” the voice said.
On command, hands grabbed Rae’s shoulders and as she turned to see who had touched her, more hands gripped her ankles. She was dragged through a doorway, and then her arms were lifted towards the ceiling, and with a rip, the hooks of her corset were yanked one way, then the other, and then the garment was gone. Moments later, her skirt was gone too. She felt cold fingers slipping along the top of her thigh, and then her fishnets were ripped away as well. Rae stood naked in a room of shadows and shadow watchers.
With her clothes, the hands were gone. Rae stood alone in the center of the strange cavernous place. Things moved along the perimeter. Things she could only just barely see.
“What do you want?” she asked.
The deep voice laughed. “What do you want?” it countered. “Why are you in The Red?”
“I was invited,” she said.
“You were invited because you asked. What is it that you need?”
“I need to feel,” she said. Her voice cracked.
“Mmmmm,” came the reply. And then…
Snap.
Something broke across her rear end. Rae jumped, holding the stinging flesh of her ass, but another crack broke the dark and sent a spike of white pain up her arm as the leather bit across the joints of her fingers.
And then another slap took her in the belly.
And another across her thighs.
And one on her calves.
And one on her back.
Rae began to cry, jumping from the bites of the whips, but craving them at the same time.
Finally, when she doubled over, a voice whispered again, this time right in her ear, “Is this what you want?”
And Rae could not contain her answer. Part of her hated herself for it, but the bulk of her agreed.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes.”
The lights in the room abruptly went out, and Rae blinked, trying to see something in the inky blackness.
“We’ll let you know if we want you,” the voice said. And then it was gone and Rae was alone in the dark.
Chapter Thirteen
Going Back for More
Selena seemed like a nice girl. Okay, hardly a girl…definitely a woman. But Mark wasn’t interested. Not now. Not after having someone tell him that he was blocked from walking into the room where his wife was. The scene played over and over again in his mind, and he couldn’t let it go.
Wouldn’t.
He ordered a shot of Johnny Walker Black from Sin-D, who leered at him, cupping a breast for him to see its pale, sexy nipple. “Body shot?” she asked, and he smiled in spite of himself.
“Not tonight,” he said. “I think this shit would burn that beautiful skin.”
“Sometimes burning is good,” Sin-D said with wide eyes and the pink tip of her tongue touching the edge of her lip. She pushed the whiskey across the bar at him. “You need to live a little,” she added.
Mark downed the shot in a gulp and then pushed the glass back.
“I think I’m going to go do just that,” he said.
He made his way through the crowded dance floor and past the racks where two men were taking turns flogging and fingering a woman who had legs like tree trunks. Her breasts looked heavy as cow udders. Mark shuddered. But the skinny guys looked like they were getting off on playing with her. One of them was fully nude and sporting wood.
Mark waited until the area near The Red was clear of people, and then he ducked under the red velvet rope and hurried to the shadowed arch of the double doors. The Watcher who’d been there earlier would no doubt be back any second. Obviously they kept an eye on this entryway. To keep out people like him.
He pulled the iron ring and the right door creaked halfway open. Mark slipped inside and pulled it shut behind him.
Everything changed in that moment.
The pumping beat of the band outside was replaced with another throbbing sound…only this one was more organic. More sexual. The air was heavy, humid and hot. And the walls on either side of the entryway had dozens of small oval alcoves inset in them. Candles burned in each of those spaces. The room glowed and rippled with the flicker of the flames. The ceiling glowed faintly, but seemed to do so with its own light. It looked as if it was made of heavy glass, and a low red light glowed behind it. But the light wasn’t coming from any one direction…the whole ceiling seemed to bleed a viscous bloody color.
Mark stepped past the entryway and into a long hall. He walked to the right and passed a room with writhing bodies, all shifting and moaning on a floor studded with what looked to be nails. He stepped inside the entry a moment, squinting through the faint red light to see if Rae was there.
A burly man with a back as hairy as a gorilla’s was driving himself between the legs of a middle-aged woman close to the door. She lay back across the floor of nails, her arms outstretched as if she welcomed the man’s sex, but with every thrust, her heavy breasts shook and she screamed out in what sounded far more like pain than pleasure. When the man pulled out of her and rolled
her onto her belly, her back resembled a pincushion; a thousand spots of red glimmered in the low light and began to run as her blood, uncorked, flowed from the wounds.
Mark winced. No pain, no gain?
Nearby, a thin, aging, black-haired woman held what looked like a college-aged boy by a chain that hooked to a leather collar around his neck. “When I say jump, I mean jump!” she yelled and hit the kid across the ass with a wooden paddle. He cried out, but in the next moment, she yelled, “Jump,” and he did, screaming as his feet came down on the nails.
Then she slammed the wooden paddle across his penis, and the kid screamed even louder as he lost his balance and fell backwards, impaling his ass and shoulders on the nails. The woman jumped on him then, straddling his abused cock and forcing her tongue into his mouth even as he continued to scream. She closed his lips with hers and then reached down and guided his cock inside her. How it had remained erect, Mark couldn’t fathom. The kid wrapped his arms around the woman as if he truly loved her. The sound of his pain was dulled, but not stopped, by the suction of her lips, but soon her own bleats of pain joined his as he pushed against the floor and rolled her over, pinning her wrists and her back to the nails with his body. His cock never left her, as they fucked and rolled, fucked and rolled, until both of their bodies were nothing but a bloody rash.
Mark felt sick.
This was not sex play.
This was horror.
It had only taken him a minute to confirm that Rae, thankfully, was not in this room, but…where was she?
He slipped back out of the room and walked a few steps farther down the hall. He heard the sound of the whips before he reached the door. They slapped wet and sharp, with a rhythm that was unmistakable. And the screams that answered each crack told the rest of the story.
Mark peered around the edge of the door and saw three men, nude from the waist up, standing around a woman who appeared to be hanging from the ceiling. At first he wondered why there were so many ropes stretching from the ceiling to her naked flesh, but then one of the men shifted his stance and Mark understood.
She was hung from the ceiling by hooks. Each rope ended in a steel barb that pierced the skin, in sequence, from her shoulders all the way down to her calves. Six crank wheels surrounded her, and when one of the men turned the handle on one, the ropes that held the hooks in her calves and thighs began to pull up until her body hung at a forty-five-degree angle. One of the other men reached out and pinched one of her nipples between his fingers, pulling on it until it stretched from her body like almond taffy. The woman cried no, and someone in the room laughed. That’s when the man abusing her breast pulled a long knife from a sheath in his leather pants.
Mark shook his head and hurried on. Now he knew he was right to come here…he had to find Rae before they did something horrible to her. This was wrong, all wrong. He understood a little bit about the pain and pleasure dichotomy, but this was something else.
This was hell.
The next room was full of people, and Mark strained to see what was happening. He could hear the bleats of pain, but the light was so faint, he couldn’t make out anyone’s face.
But then he didn’t need the light. He heard Rae scream. Mark abandoned stealth mode and rushed into the room, pushing people aside as he struggled to see in the darkness.
That’s when the lights came up, and the room suddenly glowed in a harsh white. It brought tears to his eyes and he blinked to clear them. But when he could see again, he wanted to cry in earnest.
Rae stood in the center of a circle of nude men and women, her arms outstretched. Her wrists had leather bands around them, and chains were hooked to each of those bands connecting her arms to the ceiling. Her ankles were similarly bound, the chains extending to walls on either side of the room, forcing her to stand with her legs spread wide.
All of the circle around her held whips or floggers with long leather straps. Some of those straps glimmered with the silver of steel.
Rae’s face was run with black from mascara…her tears had turned her into a ghastly clown. The marks of whips crisscrossed her breasts and back, angry red welts wrapped around her like red rope.
Mark pushed the people away from her and screamed, “Leave her alone!”
Nobody stopped him as he stepped into the center of the circle, reached up and unhooked the leather bracelets on Rae’s wrists from the chains and then did the same with her feet. As he did, her blood smeared across his hands; her back and legs were a mess of bleeding cuts.
“Mark, what are you doing? No,” Rae complained blurrily. She almost seemed drunk. Mark wondered if they’d drugged her before doing this. Fuckers!
Hands grabbed at his shoulders then, as well as at Rae’s. But Mark’s fists fended them off. He felt someone’s nose crush in a warm rush beneath his fingers, and a second later he punched a woman in the gut who was still holding a whip. She doubled over before the next guy grabbed at Mark and tried to stop them from leaving.
“Enough,” he yelled. “You’ve hurt her enough. I’m taking her home.”
He held her around the waist and began to push their way from the room. “Wait a minute,” Rae begged, pounding on his back. “I want my clothes!”
He stopped and she bent to pick them up. As she did, Mark realized the room had gone silent, and Rae’s torturers all stood still, in a single file along one wall. None resisted him. The one who had refused him entrance to The Red when he’d come with Selena stood in the center. “I told you this was for her alone,” he said quietly.
“Not anymore,” Mark said and pulled her from the room. He wouldn’t let her stop until they were back in the Blue Room, with the familiar sounds of ’80s goth rock pounding from across the stage. Then he let Rae pull her skirt up over her hips and half shrug on her corset (he clasped some of the hooks) before he dragged her from the club.
Rae didn’t speak on the way home. Mark knew better than to press her, but after a few miles, he couldn’t stop himself. Her clothes were ripped and bloody. He could see the pale skin of her ribs through the side of the corset that exposed the flesh just beneath her shoulder. She looked like someone who’d been attacked by a man with knives.
“Why did you let them do that?” he asked. “Did they drug you?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know why, or you don’t know if you were drugged?”
“I don’t want to talk about it right now.”
Mark felt his anger surge. “I thought our deal was full disclosure,” he said. “If we do this, there are no secrets-isn’t that what you said?”
Rae turned her head to stare out the window. In the glass, she no longer saw the night neon of the city passing by the car. She could see the shadows of The Red moving. Nude forms shifting this way and the other. Hands with long fingernails reaching out.
The crack of the whip…
Already, she yearned to go back.
Chapter Fourteen
Rabbit in a Cage
Travis had a feeling that something was wrong. Deadly wrong. He remembered tending bar. And then there had been someone coming in and asking him to go to a club…a place where he’d be comfortable…
And the next thing he knew he was waking up in a dark, cold place. His back was stiff. He couldn’t feel his legs.
And then he heard the voice speaking somewhere nearby.
“Now,” the voice said. “Make him wake up.”
The pain was almost instant. It cut across his belly like a steel ruler slapped down hard. He felt cold and then fire in the same breath. Travis opened his eyes.
Wide.
“What the fuck?” he cried out, and around him he heard a dozen people begin to laugh.
“What the…” he echoed, but nobody responded.
The pain came again.
Travis saw something glow in the far corner of the room. Then another light grew closer. And another.
It looked as if a dozen candles had been lit, and little by little, they
moved in tighter.
Travis could see the faces behind the candles now. Faces with dark eyes and creased brows and smiles that looked more hungry than amused.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“Just your pain,” someone answered.
And that’s when the hurt began.
When he woke up, they were still there. Waiting to begin again.
The ugliest one spoke.
“Here’s what we need from you,” the Watcher said. “We need pain. You need to bring it. You need to feed us. And in return…”
“What?”
“We know what you want,” the voice whispered.
Travis felt a stir. If they would just tie him up and make the world change in his head… All he wanted was someone to make him feel used.
“Think harder,” the voice laughed. “We will make you feel more than used. We will make you feel dead.”
“Pass?” Travis said, growing more and more afraid as the pale lights closed in, illuminating faces that did not smile.
“Too late” a voice said. “Once you’re in NightWhere, there are no passes. Or safe words. Everything is dangerous.”
Chapter Fifteen
Going It Alone
The doorbell rang, but by the time Rae made it downstairs, whoever had come had already gone.
But there was something left behind. A red envelope.
Her heart began beating faster. She knew what it was without picking it up. An invitation to NightWhere. She pulled it from the mailbox and let the door slam behind her as she ripped the seal open. Inside, an ornate script read:
It’s time for a rabbit hunt.
And there can only be one hunter.
Come alone to NightWhere tonight at 7 p.m.
Beneath that was a handwritten address. Rae didn’t recognize it, and so she crumpled the envelope, dropped it on the table and walked upstairs to the computer in the den to map it. As she did so, she knew in her heart that she had to leave the house before Mark came home. The invitation said to come alone. It didn’t specify which of them was to come, but she knew.
