Exit to Eden

by Anne Rice

  “No fair telling me, now is it?” I forced a smile.

  Scott was waiting for us in the hall, his sleek black leather pants and vest fitting him exactly like skin.

  He gave me the usual warm welcome-home kiss, and slipped his arm around my waist. The trainers had given him the nickname of the Panther and he deserved it, just as Richard deserved the nickname of the Wolf. Physical affection was always easy with him, and we’d never been in bed together, which made for a nice tension, a nice bit of flirtation every time that we touched. You could learn things about sensuality from Scott just by watching him walk across a room.

  I hugged him close for a second. He was all muscle, all heat.

  “If it’s about a certain slave named Elliott Slater,” I said, “don’t try to sweet-talk me. It’s not fair.”

  “Whatever Lisa wants, Lisa gets,” he answered with another lingering kiss. “But maybe not as soon as you think.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Your boy’s a live one, honey. He just broke into a little vaudeville routine at the pavilion that brought down the house.”

  “He did what?”

  “A perfect send-up of the whole exhibition.” Scott laughed. “They pulled him right out of the ranks.”

  “Richard,” I said turning to him immediately.

  “Don’t expect me to be as lenient as you were just now, my dear,” Richard said. “I’m not the one who’s getting soft.”

  ELLIOTT

  Chapter 7

  Judgment in the Receiving Hall

  My heart started to trip when I realized the show on the pavilion was ending. And the others were being rounded up and marched off like naked school kids two by two.

  One of the handlers finally came for me, ordering me to walk forward with my eyes down.

  We got plenty of jeers and comments from the tables, the words Proud Slave flickering like neon in my brain.

  A couple of times, in fact, the handler ordered me to stop and stand still for inspection. And somehow I managed to do it, keeping my eyes down, ignoring the talk that went on around me, the muted voices sometimes in English, sometimes in French.

  The good guys were now out of sight.

  But soon enough we came to a low-roofed building, half hidden by banana trees and foliage, and entered a carpeted corridor that led to a large well-lighted hall.

  The slaves were already assembled when we entered, and some kind of indoctrination had begun.

  I felt my face redden, as rather conspicuously we headed along the side of the group, all the way to the front.

  A tall narrow-faced young man with reddish hair was talking and he broke off when he saw us to ask, “What’s this?”

  This was worse than the pavilion. I tensed all over, and tried to look really contrite.

  “Proud Slave, sir,” the handler answered with amazing rancor. “It took three handlers to force him onto the stage in the garden . . .”

  “Oooh, yes,” the tall red-haired man cut him off.

  The words seemed to boom through the hall. All the meek were surely staring. Again, I tried to analyze the sense of shame I felt but it was no good.

  “Pride so soon, Mr. Slater?” said the red-haired man. I was stung to hear him say my name. And he hadn’t even looked at that tiny delicate gold bracelet with the nameplate. This was great. I didn’t dare to look up but I could still see he was not only tall, but kind of sinewy in a graceful way, and real sea-tanned like he’d done his time on the yacht.

  I could also see glass walls on either side of us, and men and women behind them. And a number of people assembled behind the red-haired man.

  Everybody was watching this little debacle. And I knew this weird crowd had to be the trainers, the real heavies of The Club, because they were wearing a lot of black.

  Black leather boots, skirts, pants, with their white blouses or shirts. They had black straps hanging from hooks on their belts. Martin had said only the top brass in paradise wore the black leather. And I was hardly immune to the effect.

  The man started pacing, as if looking me over, and even his posture, the way he shifted his weight, exuded command.

  With a dull, ugly shock, I glimpsed a row of four obviously anxious slaves to the far right of him, all turned to face the assembly, some wet faced, others just red. They had the grease pen writing on their chests or bellies. They’d all been very well worked over by the strap. My gang, the bad guys, I thought dismally. Not good at all.

  This was the old-fashioned schoolroom I’d never been in, where the frock-coated schoolteacher dragged you to the fore to be whipped in front of the class.

  “I’ve heard about your little performance in the garden, Mr. Slater,” said the red-haired trainer, “your little beauty pageant walk down the plank.”

  They pick these guys for their voices, I was thinking. He is the frock-coated schoolteacher right out of the Dickens novel. Excuse me, please, I think I would like to read Robinson Crusoe now instead . . .

  “You’d receive the Initiative Award of the new season if we had one to give.”

  I gave a little shake of my head to show I thought it was awful what I’d done. It was awful.

  “But we don’t want initiative here, Elliott,” he said, drawing closer so that his height got almost as menacing as his voice. Men this tall should be immediately anesthetized and have four inches excised from both legs. “You are a slave. And it seems you have a little difficulty keeping that in mind.” Nice pause for effect. “We are here to help you with your difficulty, to eradicate it, so to speak, along with your pride.”

  I didn’t need to try to look miserable. He was flaying every inch of my naked skin. The stillness of the damned place was nerve shattering. I had the sense again, the way I’d had it on the yacht, that there was no reality anymore beyond this. I’d always been this bad little boy, in need of the worst correction, and now the real world had shaped itself around that simple fact.

  To make matters worse, one of the female trainers was zeroing in. Okay, you knew it would happen sooner or later. So hold tight. But the word defenseless was taking on new dimensions in my head. I could see her shadow, smell her perfume.

  Fragrances and sex, a kind of a tinderbox for reactions.

  I saw her boots, small and beautifully molded to her ankles. I could hear my own breathing, my own heart. (Steady, Elliott. No more panic.) She was tall, though nothing as tall as the red-haired honcho towering over me, and she was delicate like the perfume, and she had a veil of long, dark brown hair.

  The trainer took hold of my arm suddenly and turned me around. Now I didn’t have to see them, but being exposed from the back made my heart freeze.

  I looked at the floor, hearing a subtle clicking sound, which I knew was the unlinking of the strap that hung from the trainer’s belt. Here it comes, class.

  Nice, hard smacks on the thighs and the calves. The trick was not to flinch or make a sound. And then I was jerked around and pushed down to my knees in front of the man, and I had to put my hands out not to fall on my face.

  This time it was the back of my neck that got whipped and I hadn’t expected that. He smacked it so hard I had to bite down on a groan. I could smell the leather of his boots and his pants, and suddenly, I kissed his boots, kind of amazed I was doing it without being told. My mind went blank.

  “Ah, that’s much better,” said the trainer. “Now, you’re showing promise, even a little style.”

  I was in a sort of mild state of shock.

  “Get up, and put your hands back on your neck where they belong, and move over there with the other punished slaves.”

  Couple of fast smacks, and the new humiliation of joining the wild bunch and standing motionless in the silence, facing the class.

  Rows and rows out there of lovely bodies, naked thighs, pink organs in luxuriant tangles of hair. And for the first time I saw glass-walled observation rooms high above as well as on this level, full of attentive faces of both sexes.

&n
bsp; It was a hell of an audience. And the whipping wasn’t over. A new shower of smacks with the trainer’s strap, and again that struggle not to flinch or make a noise.

  I struggled for inner calm, for stillness, to fight through the sense of utter insignificance, to somehow give in. The pain was tingling and hot.

  In a frantic moment I saw the tall female trainer on my right, caught the light and shadow of her angular face with its extremely large brown eyes. Gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous.

  My heart was going to trip out. And so what? The other male slaves were broken down, weren’t they?

  “How is our pride now, Elliott?” the trainer asked, coming around in front of me. He lifted the strap, holding it taut between his two hands, and he put it to my lips.

  I kissed it, the way Catholics kiss the crucifix on display in the church on Good Friday, and the warmth spread all through me at the feel of the leather against my lips.

  There was an odd moment of total release. I let my lips stay against the leather as he held it. My head was spinning. All the resistance was washing away in the heat.

  I didn’t even look at him, but I had the feeling he sensed it, that something a little profound had happened. I felt like I’d been unconscious for a couple of seconds when he took the strap away and stepped to my left.

  Then another one of those reckless compulsive moments like the moment on the ramp when I had looked at the crowd. But this time it was at that female trainer that I looked, and only for a split second, and I don’t think the red-haired guy even saw.

  Face to die for, lady. I looked down without moving my head. Things had gone a little dim.

  “Let’s have a little lesson in lifting that chin and looking full at our obedient classmates,” murmured the red-haired trainer. That bunch of goodie-goodies, you must be kidding. I looked at them exactly as he said.

  “Class, you are to look at these punished postulants,” he ordered. All eyes on the Gang of Five.

  “Now we will resume our lessons, as if these little interruptions hadn’t happened,” said the trainer. “And if any of our bad boys and girls dares to move a muscle, to make a sound of complaint or suffering, then we will be forced to stop again.”

  He strode away from me and forward towards the first row of postulants and I saw him fully for the first time. Exceptionally tall, yes, with very broad shoulders for his slender chest, red hair a kind of thatch. The white silk shirt was pure pirate drag with full sleeves and lace at the cuffs. Handsome bastard, naturally, though his eyes were almost buried under his bushy brows, “like smoldering coals” as the bad books say.

  “As I was saying before this lamentable interruption,” he began very calmly, slowly, “you are now, all of you, the property of The Club. You exist for its members, for their pleasure in looking at you, touching you, whipping you, or humiliating you, working you as they see fit. You have no other identity here except that of slave, and by your individual trainers you will be fed, exercised, and groomed.”

  The voice was not only calm now, it was almost friendly.

  But I could see the slaves squirming; he was looking at them again, and they were shooting their covert glances at him. Maybe it’s harder for them, I thought, because they haven’t screwed up. Maybe you could go the whole two years never screwing up and die at the end of a nervous breakdown. But what could be worse than this? The lower echelon. What fun.

  “But you will also be studied,” he said, “you will be learned. The trainers here, with or without your conscious cooperation, will discover exactly what shames you, excites you, weakens you, or strengthens you, exactly what causes you to perform best. But in all this it is the pleasure of your masters, the members of The Club, that they seek to increase.

  “That you need this punishment, that you crave it and must have it, no matter how frightened and regretful you are at this moment, that you gave yourselves up to slavery to receive it, that you offered yourself on the fashionable auction block and through the best brokers for it—all this is one of the more interesting and delightful coincidences that nature provides. As you are mercilessly and tirelessly worked here, you will get what you crave in forms you have never imagined, and all your wildest dreams will be put to their most exorcising test.

  “And again, this is all done for your masters, and for your trainers who represent your masters and know what your masters desire. You are perfected and brought to prime for your masters. It is for your masters and mistresses, the guests, that The Club exists.”

  He paused, pacing slowly before the postulants, his narrow back turned to me for a moment, his arms folded, the strap dangling from his belt. I could see several of the slaves shuddering. I could hear soft whimpers from one of the male slaves near my side.

  “You will be both pleased and disconcerted to hear,” the trainer went on, “that you will be the object of relentless attention in this place, that you will be constantly and tirelessly worked. Some three thousand members are here presently for the new season and suites and bedrooms are now three quarters full. Beauty, variety, intensity . . . these are what the guests expect, and their appetite is insatiable. You will never be neglected by the members of The Club.”

  I tried to imagine I was hearing these words with the others, that I’d made it through the gardens without freaking, and my training was moving right along.

  “Of course, you will be kept in the best of health,” he continued, “you will be fed three times a day, sometimes for the amusement of your masters and mistresses, other times in private, you will be massaged, bathed, exercised, suntanned, polished, oiled. And never will your punishment cause you real physical injury. Your skin will never be broken, burned, or in any way irrevocably marred. In almost any situation, you will be under surveillance, with your trainers near at hand. No accidents have ever occurred here, and we do our best to see that none ever will.

  “But you exist to give pleasure, and you are tended to that purpose, whipped to that purpose, humiliated, and relentlessly sexually aroused to that purpose, to be made an object of amusement in any way the masters and mistresses desire.”

  He had stopped before me, his back turned still, and I saw him reach out and touch the breasts of one of the small female slaves who seemed most upset. She was crying, tears staining her small face. Her whole body seemed to bend to him as he ran his fingers across her small belly.

  “Now, you have all been presented in a casual way to The Club,” he resumed, stepping back. “But tonight, that presentation will be more dramatic, with special performances in which you will play important parts.”

  But did that include us? What the hell was going to happen to us?

  “And to prepare you for that, to prepare you for all your training, you will now be given over to a trainer who will pick you on the basis of your individual characteristics to be part of his or her stable of regular slaves.

  “Your individual trainer will come to know you better than you know yourself; he or she will supervise all your behavior, your physical condition, oversee your exercise and your special training, converse with the guests who request your presence and your services; he or she will discipline you, develop you, perfect you as you become one of the full-fledged slaves of The Club.

  “And let me warn you now that if you think you are trained, if you think the paddle and the strap and the trainer and the master and the mistress have no surprises for you, you have much to learn at The Club.

  “In fact, you would be wise to look upon your next few months of training as a series of shocks. That is: expect the unexpected, and resign yourself that the control of your mind and body in all their parts belongs to others.

  “If you give your cooperation, if you surrender to your trainer in all ways, then it shall be all the easier, but with or without your surrender it will be done.

  “What is mandatory from this moment forward,” he went on, raising his voice as he glanced at us, the punished ones, “is your absolute silence and obedience, your absolute s
ubmission to all who train you and use you here and stand above you here. There is nothing on this island as lowly as you are, not the commonest servant in the kitchen or garden. You are true slaves, true property, and you must never make the slightest movement, gesture, or response—or lack of same—which can be construed as disobedience or pride.

  “But your most severe offense,” he said, turning back to the other slaves, “is any mention of, let alone attempt to, run away. Any begging to be liberated shall be counted just as severely as an attempt at escape. And need I add there is no escape? And punishment for these offenses means time out from your contracts, no matter how long that punishment must last. For example, if you are here for two years, severe punishment for escape or rebellion will not count towards that time.”

  He paused and turned to face us. I could feel his eyes on me, though I still looked past him, forward, as that lovely black-haired female slave who was, in spite of her tears, looking back.

  I couldn’t see the tall brown-haired female trainer, where was she? Her power to move about in this room like a normal human being while I stood here captive seemed mildly terrifying. The male trainer approached.

  I could see the soft glossy silk of his shirt, see the small band of lace stretched over his large-boned wrist. My legs ached. I struggled for steadiness as he moved up and down the row. I heard a loud whimpering from one of the others again.

  “But those are rare offenses,” the trainer said. “More common, as you see from this little display here, is pride. Obstinance, the impulsive rebellion, with which we must be concerned here today. Five disobedient slaves who have thoroughly disgraced themselves before their true service has even begun.”

  As he stopped once more, staring from one to the other of us, I saw a large metal rack being wheeled forward. A really ugly-looking thing. It was a white platform on heavy casters with thick steel rods rising at both ends to support a long high bar from end to end. It wasn’t too different from a clothing rack used to move coats on hangers around a store. Only it wasn’t meant for clothing. The rods were too high and too strong, and the hooks affixed to the overhead bar too large.