Chapter 24
KEELY
Six years ago
“ Omigod! Leo, what the fuck is going on? Why is that girl screaming?”
I’m still holding my stinging cheek from the virtual slap from the TV bimbo. I look around, certain that if I search hard enough, I’ll find the remote to turn this acid trip off.
Another scream rips through the room, this time from behind a black curtain positioned in a different section of the room.
A flap opens as someone goes in and I catch a glimpse of another girl.
This one is suspended from ropes tied to the ceiling.
But there’s a floodlight set up on a tripod over there too, showing her naked and severely contorted body, and the avid audience staring up at her.
My hammering heart climbs into my throat, and my hand falls uselessly to my side. As a teenager in a sex-centric world, I’ve on occasion thought of what an experience in a sex club would be like. Even as a nineteen-year-old virgin, I know this isn’t it.
Morbid curiosity dampens my fear for a moment, and I stare at my surroundings.
In total, I count eight floodlights illuminating squared off areas the size of my living room back home. Besides the floodlights, there are no other lights. It doesn’t stop my gaze from probing the dark, trying to make sense of what I’m witnessing.
It registers that Leo hasn’t responded, and I start to turn.
Suddenly, my TV bimbo has gotten stronger and is yanking me by the arm down the dark middle of this amphitheater of fuck knows what to fuck knows where.
I start to fight, then realize it isn’t my virtual nemesis, but Leo’s hand shackling me.
He’s dragging me along faster than my unfamiliar stiletto-shod gait can keep up.
I stumble and nearly trip, but I catch myself at the last minute and try to reverse my forward momentum into my first circle of hell.
“Leo, let go of my hand, please.” I try to pry him off me, but he’s strong. Way stronger than me. He has to be in order to do all but the most dangerous of his own action stunts during film shoots.
“I’m sorry, Keely,” is all he says.
“What do you mean, you’re sorry? Sorry for what?” My voice is high-pitched with pure panic as we pass yet another curtained-off square. Someone is moaning, and it’s not the type of moan that proclaims pleasure.
It’s the type of moan that says: You’re hurting me. I don’t like it, but I’m at a point where I know I can do fuck all about it .
The rise of excited voices in that section also tells me there’s an audience lapping up whatever is being done to the individual beneath the spotlight.
“Please, Leo. You were right, I shouldn’t have come.
It’s not too late. I… I can leave. Just let me go and I’ll forget this ever happened.
I won’t tell anyone. You have my word.” My words tumble over each other, and my heart tears from its moors and plunges into my stomach when I see where we’re headed.
My eyesight has adjusted enough in the semi-darkness to see a last, unlit area at the back of the cavernous room. I can also pick out the dark, eager figures crowded around the parted curtain. They turn as Leo drags me forward.
“No!” I mean to roar the word like a fucking lioness, but it emerges as a whimper unworthy of a cockroach.
The ominous sound of a switch being thrown drenches the single chair in the middle of the room in blinding light.
I see the black ropes snaking from the back of the chair and I spend a hot, insane little second wondering why they’re not white like the others.
Am I not worthy? Or am I worthy beyond my own comprehension?
The pause button on my nightmare releases and a scream kamikazes into my throat. Before I can let it rip, Leo’s hand slams over my mouth.
“Whatever you do, Keely, don’t scream. This will be over much quicker if you just go with the flow.”
I lose all feeling in my knees, and my body drops like a stone. Leo catches me easily by the waist, and his other hand cups the back of my head and shoves me through the gap in the curtain. When I’m directly beneath the light, he releases me.
One calm part of me helpfully steps forward and offers flashes of my young life in a shockingly brief, but totally Oscar-worthy clip. I’m sure I hear ghostly applause as the other part stares at Leo, mummified in fear and shock.
“Why are you doing this?”
His head drops for several seconds, and I see that regret from earlier flash over his face. But he lifts his head and all I get is a blank, beautiful canvas.
“Take your clothes off, Keely.”
“Fuck you,” I say. The feeble power in my voice bolsters me a little. “Fuck you! Fuck you! FUCK YOU! ”
“Dammit, Dorian. This again?”
I jerk at the bored, disembodied drawl. The murmurs from behind the curtain stop, and that scares me even more than anything that’s gone on so far.
“That’s fucking strike two. You know what happens should you commit a third foul,” continues the voice.
Dorian/Leo shakes his head. “She wasn’t supposed to be here.”
“Did you not invite her?” the voice queries.
“Yes, I did, but?—”
“And what do the rules say, Dorian?”
His jaw clenches tight for a minute, and terror slashes across my every nerve. “‘One for all. Free for all.’”
“Prepare your guest, Dorian. If you can’t calm her down, help will be provided. But remember, that’ll be a third count against you.”
The voice shuts off and a feed that sounds like a radio’s echo sounds through the room before the voices rise again.
Leo raises his head and I see determination in his eyes. I shake my head as he advances toward me.
“No! God, please, no! Leo, stop this. You don’t have to do this.”
He reaches me and grabs my arms. “Dammit, Keely. Shut the fuck up!”
I fight with renewed strength. Whatever he’s planning to do to me, I don’t intend to make it easy for him.
“You weak, fucking pathetic asshole! Why did I think you were even worthy of one second of my time?” I snarl, my voice shaky with terror.
“That was your mistake, not mine.” His fingers dig into me as he hauls me toward the chair.
I kick and scratch and spit. Some blows connect.
Some hurt me more than they hurt him. My knee catches a sharp corner of the chair and it doesn’t move.
I realize it’s bolted to the floor, and I fight harder.
Leo’s shirt rips beneath my frantic effort to escape my reality.
The stench of blood and fear gags me as I’m thrown into the chair.
That’s when my screams finally step up to the plate and put in the performance of a lifetime.
I’m hoarse by the time the first rope snakes around my calf.
The radio feed slices through the air again, and I hear a sigh. “That’s it, Dorian, you’re out. Space Cadets, step in and secure our guest,” the voice says.
Leo freezes, then shuts his eyes for a sick little second. “I warned you, Keely. You should’ve listened.”