NightWhere

by John Everson

  She stopped, and Perry pushed himself down the other side of the bridge by going hand over hand on the rail.

  When he reached the other side, he cried out once.

  Just once.

  “What’s the matter?” Rae called, but Kharon was at her side instantly. “He can’t hear you,” he cautioned.

  “I just saw him,” she said. “I’d think he could still hear me.”

  “He’s crossed over,” Kharon explained. “He may never talk to you again.”

  He turned to Gordon and shook his head. “Your rabbit lost,” he said. “You’ll have to feel what that’s like. Put your hands on the bridge.”

  “Flog him,” he commanded Rae.

  She lifted the whip that Kharon had given her not long before. She raised it and tested how it felt as it came down, at first gently on the man’s back. Then she raised it and brought it down harder. And then she really gave her arm a flick and smiled at the sound the leather made on Gordon’s back. She could feel the place between her legs growing wet as she beat him, and at times she let her eyes roll back in her head as she released the leather. She had almost always been the recipient of the pain, but this energy…she liked it. It was power in its most brutal form. She’d wielded power over plenty of men in her life-using her body and promises of the taboos that she could fulfill. But that was all subtle teasing. An art and a form of power. But this…this made her belly tighten. Her lips swelled and her entire body warmed.

  Whipping Gordon was like sex without the penetration.

  Rae felt hands touch her ankles and calves. And then something wet licked her flank, and a tongue traced the curve of her ass. More hands touched her, but Rae kept whipping Gordon; she was getting off on the way his back welted visibly with each slap. She looked down briefly and saw that the entire Living Path had gathered in a mob around her. Some of them were touching her, but many were working on each other, fingers and tongues plying each other’s sex with increasing urgency. The air grew thick with the smells and sounds of copulation, and when the hands reached around from behind her to pinch her nipples, she almost dropped the whip as her nerves released a pent-up electric jolt all the way to her clit. A tongue traced her inner thigh, and she looked down to see a woman kneeling in front of her. Still Rae whipped, and Gordon shivered in his place on the bridge. His legs trembled with every blow. The ground between his legs was wet. Rae laughed at his weakness, but did not stop, even when he sank to his knees.

  Something prodded Rae from behind, and she felt someone’s cock easing between her legs. She widened her stance slightly, barely thinking about it, but giving the stranger permission to slip inside her. She raised her arm back once more, but this time when the whip cracked against Gordon’s ragged back, he fell to the ground.

  Rae surrendered as well. The feeling of having a thick man inside her was overpowering in her current state, and she bent over, gripping the rail of the bridge as she gave up control, and Gordon crawled away. She shook her ass slightly, wiggling the cock to draw it as deep as possible inside her. The woman who had been licking between her legs adjusted and crawled now in front of her, fastening her mouth on Rae’s breasts, sucking each in turn. Rae offered them uncontrolled access to her body. She closed her eyes and focused on the sparks of sensation that electrified her groin and chest with every kiss and thrust.

  Hands pulled at Rae’s hair, and someone slapped her. The violent nature of the crowd began to surface-they weren’t in The Red because they enjoyed simple doggy-style scenes. She cried out, but then her mouth was full of leather…someone had put the whip between her teeth…and now with the rhythm of the man fucking her, she was slapped and punched by various members of the Living Path who had all gathered close. Fingernails gouged at her back, and the woman who had been sucking gently now bit hard on her nipples, so hard Rae tried to scream. But she couldn’t…her mouth was choked with leather.

  Instead of fighting back, Rae worked to spread her legs farther apart, urging the stranger to own her as he (or someone) yanked on her hair like a bridle. She welcomed the abuse with the pleasure…had dreamed of it in her secret fantasies all of her life. This moment, right here, with its mix of sex and blood and sudden exchanges of power and pain, may have been the fulfillment of almost every dark desire she’d hidden deep inside her heart for most of her life. Rae abandoned herself to the degradation of the moment. Where The Red took her…she would go.

  To the side of her a big woman climbed over Gordon and sat on his face, forcing him to eat her sex or smother. Maybe both. Another man sat on Gordon’s chest and French-kissed the big woman as, beneath them, Gordon shook and moaned, trying to escape. Trying to breathe.

  Rae felt her orgasm build like a storm. Her legs began to tremor and her arms shook. Something in her head almost seemed to pop, and then she was falling forward, landing on the chests of two people who pulled her down with them, and the man behind her followed as well, crushing her into this mound of licking, sucking, scratching flesh as she screamed her climax into the leather of the whip. Someone put their hands around her neck and throttled her as she came. She choked and gasped for air, the room growing hazy in her eyes, freckled with pinpricks of red light.

  Her body felt like a fireworks display, full of crazy light and heat and tingling and explosions, one after another, until she couldn’t see straight. She gasped hard trying to draw air through her strangled throat, knowing that she couldn’t go much longer without it, and at the same time moaned for more abuse, begging for immolation in the moment of mingled fear and ecstasy.

  She didn‘t know when the hands left her neck or the whip fell away or her invisible partner finished, or when the others around her left. The next thing she really knew, Rae was nude and damp and alone on the cold floor.

  Kharon stood over her, holding her slinky red dress. He dropped it on her chest and frowned. “The dawn is almost here,” he said. “NightWhere is done. Until the next…”

  He turned and walked away, into the shadows.

  Rae pulled the dress over her head and found her bra and panties on the other side of the room. When she walked through the Blue Room there was almost nobody left. Someone was taking the last cords away from the stage, and Sin-D was clinking glasses behind the bar.

  Tailor still guarded the door, though morning approached. He nodded as Rae slipped past him and out into the crisp air of dawn.

  She felt more alive and more afraid than she ever had before in her entire life.

  She never wanted to leave NightWhere.

  But she knew that in the end…it might kill her.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Relation Slip

  Mark heard Rae come home, but instead of leaping up to interrogate her, he rolled over and listened with his eyes closed as she stripped, threw her clothes in the hamper and got in the shower.

  When she finally did come to bed, it was almost 6:00 a.m. She cuddled up behind him, slipping her arms around his neck and chest, spooning herself against his ass. It felt nice, but didn’t diminish Mark’s anger at being left behind.

  “Fun night?” he asked finally.

  “The best in my entire life,” she murmured sleepily. “I can die happy now.”

  “Glad I could be there to share it,” he said.

  “Sorry, baby, the invitation was just for one of us.”

  “So I don’t even get the courtesy of you answering my phone calls or letting me know? You knew I’d be worried.”

  Her arms slipped away from him. “I just didn’t want to argue about it,” she said.

  “Are we still a team, or what?”

  “We are,” she said. “But NightWhere is what I need.”

  “And you are what I need,” he answered.

  “I know,” she said. Her voice was very quiet. Almost sad.

  “Next time will be different,” she promised.

  The alarm went off, and Mark hit the Off button.

  “This is going to be a long day,” he grumbled and rolled from t
he bed. His eyes burned from lack of sleep, and the heat of the shower didn’t do much to help.

  Rae curled into a ball, hugging a pillow between her legs, as she listened to Mark move about in the bathroom. When she closed her eyes all she could see were scenes of her being kissed and beaten, petted and fucked. She opened her eyes to clear the visions, but as soon as she closed them, the moments of penetration and violence returned. The ghost memory of the warmth of bodies enfolding and loving and hurting her all at once tingled beneath her skin. She tightened her hold on the pillow as she agreed quietly with Mark.

  “Yes it is,” she whispered.

  There was a new princess in the castle of perversion. And Amelia was not happy about it. The worst part was, Amelia had given the girl some training herself. And Rae had taken to the lash like an addict to heroin.

  Tonight, Kharon had chosen Amelia to stand in the Living Path as the new girl ran the rabbits along with Gordon.

  Amelia had been sidestepped. Kharon had come to her in her house and had given her the strength to survive to see The Crossing. But he had witnessed her weakness then too. And so the baton had passed. Kharon had chosen another to fawn on.

  Very few ever survived the torture of The Red long enough to pass through into The Black. In Rae, Amelia saw her own chances dwindle. Those who ran the rabbits were being tested. It was an important moment for the Watchers. Who had enough desire, mixed with enough cruelty, to bring an innocent to NightWhere to endure the ultimate degradation?

  Could it be that the Watchers were wrong, and Rae didn’t really have it? Perhaps she was still too stupid and naïve about what NightWhere really was? Amelia prayed that was the case. Rae had only been here a few times, after all. She did not have the history of pain and understanding etched on her skin, like a road map to every conceivable destination of pain, as Amelia did.

  With Gordon the loser in the rabbit race, his own star had fallen some too, leaving a newbie as the star in the Watchers’ eyes.

  Amelia knelt in the bathtub as dawn slipped in the window of her small apartment. Drops of blood dribbled down her thighs, and she rinsed it with warm water and soap before lubing up a finger with antibiotic cream. Then she slid it inside her to coat the ripped flesh where Kharon had seen fit to pin a snake.

  The cruel bastard had told her it was the only place that he could find without a scar.

  Well, she was going to have one there now. A big one. And it gave her an idea. Something that would bring the princess down and remind the Watchers who could really take-and dole out-the pain. Who could enjoy cruelty the most.

  Nobody should ascend to The Black ahead of her. Certainly not a pretty little clueless girl.

  Amelia put on a pad to staunch the flow and dressed. Then she went to her dresser drawer and pulled out a flesh-colored dildo. One of her favorites. She fingered the fake veins and the bulbous head, and considered how she might have it modified before the next invitation from NightWhere. She knew a guy who did all sorts of steel and plastic model making, and he was also a pretty dark soul. She’d seen him at plenty of fetish nights over the years. She thought he might be willing to help her make some alterations to the way this particular sex toy functioned. Something that might really give the princess a “pop” when she tried to use it.

  “I’ll show you what it means to get nailed,” Amelia grinned. “We’ll see who can take the pain.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Gone

  “Rae?”

  Mark called her name absently as he walked into the house. It had been a sucko day, and he would rather have gone straight to the bar. He really wanted to pound a couple beers and try to forget the afternoon. Part of him hoped Rae had cooked something good for dinner so he could lose himself in a food high. But part of him hoped she hadn’t…so he could drag her out of the house and really pig out. Speaking of pig…maybe barbecue. If he could sell her on it…

  “Rae?”

  He dropped his laptop case in the corner and walked through the kitchen, flipping on the light even though he continued right on, into the next room. He smiled at that. She always complained that he wasted electricity.

  The living room was silent, and the front room the same. He knew without going up the stairs that Rae wasn’t home. But then…where?

  He changed clothes and then came back to the kitchen. A crumpled fragment of red paper lay on the floor and he bent to pick it up.

  And then unfolded it.

  He knew the paper. Knew the envelope. Another invitation from NightWhere.

  Mark’s heart sank. What the fuck? She had gone again without him? They had agreed that she wouldn’t go back there without him. That they were a team and had to be on the same page with this. Over the past three weeks, it had seemed like things were getting better. At first she hadn’t wanted to talk about it, but then slowly she had divulged the story of what went on in The Red. Of how they played a surreal game of sex and violence…and of how much that appealed to her.

  He knew he couldn’t tell her not to do it, and he couldn’t offer to fulfill that desire for her in any real way…it just wasn’t in him. But he was afraid that she was going to get hurt in these perverted games. Rae didn’t really know these strangers-what if someone took the whip too far? Or the piercing and cutting? He had tried to plead sense to her about putting herself in real danger, but in the end, he’d simply made her promise that she wouldn’t do this without him nearby, at least. To pick up the pieces, if need be.

  He crumpled the envelope back up and tried to give her the benefit of the doubt. Maybe she’d just gone into town to get a special outfit for tonight or something once she’d received the invite. He waited a half hour and then found some leftover chicken in the fridge to reheat. But it was hard to eat. Rae hadn’t just gone to the store.

  She’d gone to NightWhere without him.

  And this time, he couldn’t follow her.

  He forced another few bites down and then got up to look outside. Then he sat and ate a couple more mouthfuls. And then he got up to look outside. No matter how many times he looked, Rae wasn’t to be seen.

  Finally sometime after midnight, Mark walked to the front door and switched off the outside light before locking the door.

  Part of him cried inside, knowing that somehow, inexplicably, this was the end. His wife hadn’t left him for another man, she’d left him for other men. More than that really. She’d left him for a lifestyle.

  She’d left him for pain.

  Mark went to bed, but couldn’t fall asleep. Instead, he played back all of the times he’d told Rae that she could do whatever she needed. He just wanted to keep loving her. He just wanted to be the one she came home to in the end.

  At 3:25 a.m., she still had not come home.

  At 6:00 a.m. he got up and showered, and then sat for an hour at the kitchen table in his robe, sipping his coffee alone. Finally, Mark pulled on a polo shirt and went to work.

  Mark had called home every hour during the day, and the answering machine just kept picking up, with Rae’s cheerful voice asking him to leave a message.

  When he got home from work that night, Rae still had not come home. Nor had she called or e-mailed. Mark walked every room of the house, as if she might really just be hiding in a closet somewhere, and all he had to do was find her. Hide-and-seek.

  Mark didn’t know what to do.

  Over the course of their admittedly nontraditional relationship, Rae had stayed out until the next morning once or twice with other men. But in the past, it had always been with his permission, and she’d never stayed out the whole next day.

  He couldn’t go anywhere to look for her, and he didn’t really want to call the police to report her as a missing person either. What was he going to say? “My wife went to a sex club-I have the envelope from the invitation right here. She went to a place that has no address and she hasn’t come home since.”

  What would they say to that? Aside from politely gagging back laughter, there wasn’t muc
h to be said. “Sorry, dude, you left your wife up for grabs. Obviously she decided to shack up once and for all with someone else.”

  Mark didn’t know where to turn for help. But somehow, he had to find her.

  First though, he had to find NightWhere.

  Chapter Twenty

  Crawling Through the Wreckage

  Where did you start to look for a place that only appeared once a month? And never in the same spot.

  Mark had never returned to any of the other sites where NightWhere had been held, but he decided to drive back to the first one, down on Riverside Avenue in the South Loop. He knew he could get back there easily-it wasn’t too far off the expressway. Maybe there’d be some kind of clue there. What kind of clue that might be, he didn’t know.

  All he did know was that he was grasping at straws.

  An hour later, Mark was walking down the cracked sidewalk of Riverside, noting how much more run-down the area looked in the light than it had at night when he’d walked with Rae here. The door to the place was unlocked. He stepped inside, and the room stretched out ahead, long and empty. There was no furniture, and the industrial, grey carpet was stained with brown circles in a variety of places. Looking up, it was easy to see why. The white panels of the drop ceiling were also stained in rusty circles. The roof leaked, and nobody was here to care.

  He walked through the place and saw the crumpled, yellowed sleeves of used condoms here and there in the corners. On the floor in the hallway, he found a black postcard that had the familiar self-devouring snake logo around the gothicly styled letters NW.

  All it said was:

  Night

  Where

  Your dreams…and nightmares come true

  There was no phone or address. It was a calling card-something to say “we were here” but not who we were. And perhaps it was aimed to set the idea of NightWhere in some unsuspecting sex addicts’ heads. Subliminal marketing.