by John Everson
Sin-D laughed. “Are you kidding? Drag that baby boy to my office. We’ll set him up good.”
Rae pulled Peter off the stool and around the back of the bar to a doorway. The three of them stepped inside, and Peter whistled.
“She wasn’t kidding,” he said.
The walls were completely covered with an octopus tangle of studded leather belts, codpieces, bras and more. In the corner a box overflowed with rubber phalluses and various colored vibrators. A couch was tucked against the far wall, and a plastic woman rested there, her mouth permanently open and painted exaggeratedly red.
“Welcome to the toy box,” Sin-D said. “I think I know just what you need.” She walked over to one wall and fingered several long belted devices that hung from a hook. “You a 36 waist,” she asked. “Or a 38?”
“Try a 36,” he said. “You’re good.”
“You have no idea,” she said. “Rae, strip him.”
Rae smiled and unbuttoned Peter’s shirt. There was a faint look of alarm in his eyes, but she leaned up and gave him a soft kiss on the lips. “This is what you’ve wanted,” she said. “Enjoy it.”
He swallowed hard and nodded. Meanwhile, having exposed a bushy-haired chest, Rae continued and undid his belt, then popped the button on his jeans. She felt his body shiver as she pulled them down and helped him step out of the pant legs. His gasp was audible when she pulled his briefs down, letting his already half-hard cock flop out to dangle exposed.
Rae smiled at that. Kneeling, she put her hands on his hips and moved her lips up the shaft of his penis, instantly turning it hard as rock. It pointed to the ceiling, and his breath came faster. Rae grinned at the easy effect a few touches and nakedness could have on a man. She pursed her lips and pressed them to the head of his cock in a wet, puffy kiss before she opened her lips and let him slip inside her mouth, wetting him gently and then pulling back.
“All right,” Sin-D interrupted. “None of that yet. Let’s make him a slave and earn that release, huh?”
“Mmm-hmmm,” Rae agreed and pulled her mouth away, pressing wet lips to Peter’s mouth for just a moment.
“Let’s see if we can cram that big ol’ dick into this little pouch,” Sin-D said. “And no, you making it slippery didn’t help with that.”
Moments later, they walked Peter out to the Blue Room again, but now, his outfit nearly matched Rae’s. A small leather codpiece held his manhood in, and twin leather straps crisscrossed his chest in an X. They connected to an oval ring in the center of his chest and then strapped across his shoulders to do the same X trick across his back.
A pair of black leather combat boots completed the look.
“I feel like a character in a bad gay porno shoot,” he murmured.
Sin-D giggled, and Rae pointed out, “This is what you wanted.”
He nodded, clearly embarrassed to vocally admit it.
“I think it’s time to introduce you to the racks,” Rae said. “You need a good spanking!”
Peter’s smile brightened.
“Come with me, slave,” Rae said and pulled him by the ring on his chest across the club.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Revenge
They say the road to hell is paved with the best of intentions, but Mark had the best intentions, and the road was proving very difficult to find. The bondage night had proven a bust, though he had to wonder about Selena showing up again out of nowhere. It creeped him out a bit…as if she was following him. Maybe she was acting as a spy for NightWhere.
Either way, he hadn’t gotten anything from her. He stared at her card where it sat on the kitchen counter. He wasn’t going to be calling her anytime soon. Whatever she wanted, it had nothing to do with taking him back to NightWhere.
Mark walked through his empty house and felt lonelier than he ever had before in his life. He picked up the postcard that he’d found in one of the abandoned NightWhere locations and stared at it again.
Night
Where
Your dreams…and nightmares come true
No lurid photos. No other indication of any kind about what it meant. But as he stared at the seemingly obscure phrase, he noticed that there was something more to the card that he hadn’t seen before. Faint grey lettering was just barely visible along its edge. Not much of a promotional gambit-most people would never see it. But it was there: “www.nightwhere.666”.
Mark frowned. Dot-com, sure, but there was no web suffix of.666 that he’d ever heard of. He took the card to his computer and launched an Internet browser. As soon as it loaded his home page, he typed “www.nightwhere.666” in the web address window. He bet that he’d end up with some “No Such Page” style message, but instead, his computer screen suddenly turned black.
Slowly, like a movie animation, the word NightWhere materialized at the top of the screen, silver letters carving through the black, in an arch over the tangled image of a snake.
Below the logo, a headline also appeared: Do You Know This Molester?
Mark gasped.
Beneath the headline, was a photo of a man’s face. The very same face he saw in the mirror every morning. There was no question; this was no “that guy looks like me” scene.
The photo was of Mark, grinning full face at the camera.
“Holy shit.”
Beneath the photo it said:
Mark Rogacz may look like just an innocent bystander, but he has flashed dozens of girls at a local grade school near his house and is believed to have had sex with at least five children aged 8-12.
He has a long history of sexual abuse and police have speculated about the possibility that he has hidden away the bodies of some of the girls he has slept with in the basement of his home.
This man appears affable and trustworthy, but he is actually a very dangerous sociopath. Police suspect he may have even murdered his wife, who has not been seen or heard from in several weeks.
If you see him, do not interact with him; call the police immediately.
“What the fuck!” Mark sat back in his office chair and stared at his own mug shot staring back at him from the computer screen. His chest felt like ice. How could they do this to him?
He didn’t ask why…he knew why. Because he hadn’t played along. He had tried to pull Rae away from NightWhere, and when she’d gone anyway, he’d tried to find her.
But, Jesus…if this was on the Internet, how long would it be before police were at his door, ready to pull him in for questioning?
Probably not too long, he speculated.
“They’ve ruined me,” he whispered to the empty room. “First they took my wife, and now they want to take what’s left of my life too?”
Mark clicked the X with a sharp finger snap to the mouse and closed the browser. Then he sat back and took a deep breath.
He had to find Rae. For his own sake now, as well as her own.
He stood up and went into the bedroom to change out of his sweatpants and into his jeans. It was after 11:00 p.m., but he needed to go out. He knew places where the city came alive after dark. And that’s where people might have information on NightWhere.
He wasn’t going to find NightWhere sitting in his house…or looking on the Net.
And based on what he’d just seen online, it looked like he didn’t have a lot of time left to find it before the authorities came looking for him.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Dark Dreams Come True
The sound of the leather on his back sent a shiver down Rae’s spine. Mark would never have allowed her to flog him like this…and if she’d tied him up and beat him anyway…he certainly wouldn’t have enjoyed it. The enjoyment of pain just wasn’t in his makeup.
But Peter couldn’t get enough.
The skin of his back was burning pink when someone asked her to stop. Rae looked up from her focus and smiled. Perplexed.
“Stop…why?” she asked.
The man, decked out in blue jeans and a leather vest, looked at Peter and said, “
Because you’re really hurting him.”
“Exactly,” Rae had laughed and turned away to continue the process.
She swung her arm harder with every stroke and reveled in seeing his body shift and arch off of the rack. She could see that part of him yearned to be beaten and part was, at the same time, pulling away, afraid. She wanted to warm the skin of both sides. She would turn his fearful side into a slave of the whip.
But maybe not tonight.
Peter’s back was welting and red, and her arm tired. And at this point, what Rae honestly wanted to do to him…
A clock tolled.
A cool hand closed around her wrist. “It’s time,” a familiar voice said. Kharon removed the flogger from her hand, as two other Watchers undid Peter’s bonds.
“Tonight is a special night,” he said. “And I have something special in mind for you and Peter.” Kharon put his arm around Rae and let his lips graze the top of her head.
“You have a cruel streak that I adore,” he said. “Let’s see how deep it runs.”
He led the way to the heavy wooden door of The Red. They passed the velvet ropes and Kharon pulled the iron ring to open the way. They stepped inside to the candlelit foyer. Screams echoed from somewhere in the distance. A girl with silver hair gently rubbed down Peter’s back with a wet rag. He arched his back when she hit the tender spots, but when he looked at Rae he smiled. “Thanks,” he said.
They walked down the long hallway and passed the crucifixion room and the others that Rae was familiar with. But soon they were in a part of NightWhere that she had never been to before. The bricks seemed to change with their progress; the walls grew from modern and smooth to darker red, with uneven grout and chipped and pitted bricks. The walls all glinted with heavy moisture. In some areas, the wetness seemed to flow steadily across the bricks in what looked like a stream of blood.
“Where are we going?” Rae asked after walking a while.
“The last room before The Black.”
“What is The Black?” she asked.
“You’ll find out, depending on what you do in this room,” Kharon said. “I have every confidence that you will meet the Night Mother very soon.”
Finally, they reached the end of the hallway. The brick here seemed to weep cement, and the air smelled of heavy mold and something richer. Almost metallic. The light was low too; everything was cast in a long shadow, and scuttling sounds came from the dark places on the floor as they walked. Rae wanted to lift her feet higher than they could ever reasonably go, uncertain of what lurked along the damp floor.
They stepped into a room that looked like a medieval castle dungeon. The walls were rough-hewn grey stone, and the lighting was provided by flames in sconces set every few feet at eye level along the walls. In the center of the room was a stone table. It was raised just three feet off the ground, and its center was adorned with the ubiquitous symbol of NightWhere-a scaled serpent that ate its own tail.
Kharon went and stood at the head of the table, while six followers took positions on either side, men to the left and women to the right. All of them wore black silk robes, loosely sashed. They were obviously naked beneath. Rae thought the scene looked like a Victoria’s Secret version of a druidic ritual. Sackcloth had been replaced by obsidian, sensual silk. And nobody wore hoods. This was a different group of people than she was used to seeing out in the Blue Room of the club; though, like all the Watchers, they had a similar look to Kharon. They were pale and thin, with complexions like corpses. The women all had small breasts; two of them had barely sashed their robes, and the grey nubs of their nipples were exposed as they stood next to the table. Their ribs were visible beneath what looked to be flawless marble skin.
The men appeared strangely thin and as hairless as the women from what she could see beneath their robes.
“Strip him, and then lay him down before us,” Kharon commanded. His voice was quiet, but firm.
Rae turned to Peter and pushed the robe that someone had covered him with to the floor. She kissed him softly on the lips and then pushed him back to the table. He lay back and scuttled forward until his head lay in the indentation that was also the dark head of the snake carved into the rock’s surface.
Kharon nodded at the chains coiled at the corners of the table. “Restrain him,” he said. The twelve gathered around the table remained silent.
Rae walked in front of them and picked up a dark iron chain. At its end was a manacle, and she stretched it out to cuff Peter’s left hand. She walked in front of Kharon and did the same to the right. Then she returned to the foot of the table and fastened heavy cuffs around his ankles. They snapped together easily. Peter shifted on the table, pulling halfheartedly against the bonds and rattling the metal as he did. Testing. He wasn’t really trying to escape, but he did discover that his limbs barely could move. He was lying there completely vulnerable-spread-eagled and trapped.
Rae smiled when she noticed his cock; it was half-erect and shifted slightly across his upper thigh as it grew. This complete loss of control was exciting him.
“Now strip and mount the table,” Kharon said.
Rae took a breath. She’d known that this was coming and she wasn’t shy, but to have such a formal array of watchers as she knelt over a man…she wasn’t used to that sort of attention. She undid her studded neck collar and its weight fell forward, pulling the strap of leather away from her breasts and belly. Her skin goose-bumped, even though the room was warm. Then she loosened the buckle and released the last hold of the leather on her waist. It fell to the ground, leaving her naked. Her body was damp beneath the leather, from all the exertion of flogging Peter just a few minutes earlier, and now that sweat on her groin and between her thighs felt cool. She breathed in deeply again and climbed onto the table, straddling his thighs-kneeling upright, eye to eye with Kharon, who remained at the head of the stone table. He nodded, and those pale lips seemed to hint at a smile. He reached into his robe and pulled out a knife. It looked ceremonial; its handle was jet black and glimmered in the flicker of the torchlight. The silver blade also caught the orange light and looked to be six to eight inches long. It curved upwards in a graceful arc to its needle-thin point.
Kharon handed the knife to her. “Carve your name in his heart.”
Rae took the knife but didn’t move instantly. She wasn’t sure what he meant, not really. She had drawn blood on people before with the whips, but she had never intentionally cut someone.
“He is lucky that your name is short. Start on his breast and cut your name into him. When your name bleeds from his chest, we can begin.”
Rae swallowed. The knife felt heavy in her hand. She laid the blade against Peter’s right breast and drew it down gently, trying not to cut too deep. But the knife was razor sharp. Blood welled instantly as she drew it down. When she began to draw the curve of the upper half of the R, the long line to the left was already weeping red tears. She completed the right leg of the R and then dragged the knife up and down in an inverted V quickly, to make the A.
Peter didn’t say a word as she cut him-he lay there and just watched her face-it felt like he gave her permission to draw his blood, and Rae didn’t question it. She cut the E, and Peter’s chest ran with his blood. It welled up and drops escaped the troughs of the cuts and began to weep across his ribs and down the canal of his sternum to pool in his belly button.
Kharon spoke, but Rae could not tell what he said. His words were a harsh cacophony of syllables that sounded foreign and guttural. At first she thought maybe it was Latin, but then she thought not. She had taken Latin in high school, and there were too many unfamiliar tones to this tongue. Kharon spoke faster and faster though, and the words grew louder as his energy increased. And then his cadence grew to a high point and he nearly shouted one word, “Faut!”
As one, the twelve women and twelve men drew blades from where they’d been hidden in the pockets of their robes. The knives were much like the one that Kharon had given Rae. Long ceremonial
daggers. They let their robes drop to the floor and stood with their knives raised in the air. Rae let her eyes wander, wondering what they were going to do with the blades. Part of her worried that they were about to stab her to death in some weird sacrificial ritual, but Kharon’s promise that she would see The Black, depending on her performance here, stilled that fear. Her presence on top of a chained man implied that she was to do something more than that…simply being a sacrifice didn’t equate to doing something and earning a reward.
She looked at the line of pale-skinned men and again thought how they all looked like Kharon. Long, heavy penises hung between their thin thighs, and their sunken bellies were hairless and white. They could have all been carved from marble. And the female Watchers-they had breasts, but barely. They were thin and hairless people, all of them. It was as if they’d bathed in bleach-their skin was beautiful and smooth and white. And then they stepped closer, so that their beautiful, strange skin touched the table, their thighs pressing against the stone where Peter lay.
And then in a heartbeat, their flawless bodies were speckled in red.
As one, the twenty-four standing around the table drew their blades across their own wrists and loosed streams of blood. Some of them drew the knives deep enough that the cuts sprayed blood out in an arc of red. The others still cut themselves deep enough that their blood ran fast down their arms.
Kharon alone remained robed and still.
The rest reached out with bleeding arms, and suddenly they all touched Rae. She was pushed back and forth, as they rubbed their blood across her chest and back. When her skin was smeared and coated in their blood, they removed their wrists from her and instead, one by one, held them to Peter’s face.
“Drink,” Kharon instructed. “And join the body.”
When Peter turned his head away, Kharon reached out and put his hands on either side of the man’s head. He pressed Peter’s face forward to stare at the ceiling. And another white-skinned Watcher held a bleeding wrist to the trapped man’s lips.
