Suffer the Flesh (12 page)

Now she wondered if she’d gone too far, said too much. Would he call the men, turn her in?

“I don’t know what to say, Zoey. I really
am
sorry. Anything I’ve done was for control, order. No one was ever harmed who didn’t deserve it.”

“So if this ended right now, if you were to regain control, would you shut down this facility?”

No response.

The room spun as she struggled to her feet, using the wall for support as she clawed her way up. “I need to try to use the toilet.” Every white-hot step seared her internally. Her heart throbbed, and her mouth was dry.

“Need help, Zoey?”

“No.” She hobbled to the stalls. At least there were stalls, even though there were no doors. What little privacy they offered was hardly much comfort.

She lifted her shirt and sat on the toilet. At first it refused to come, anxiety freezing her bladder, and she forced herself to relax. The first drops almost made her scream. Torment again, red-hot pokers. Open wounds sizzled and pulsed, and she waited an eternity for her bladder to empty. The toilet paper she used was soaked with blood. She wadded up more and pushed it inside her like a tampon, trying to dry it. She pulled it out, and it was also soaked. Several applications later, she had it under control.

Supporting herself against the wall, she stood, nearly flushed out of habit. The water was sanguineous, mottled with blood clots. The exertion stole her breath, drained her small reserve of energy as she made her way outside the stall.

Voices outside the bathroom. Her head jerked from side to side, as if she had a decision to make, as if she had any options at all. The stall was all she had, and she moved back inside and straddled the toilet, moved as far back as she could. Trying to get back to the linen closet wasn’t an option.

The lock was thrown, the bathroom door slammed open. “Let’s go, asshole.” The voice drifted toward the showers, along with footsteps belonging to more than one person.

“Where?” James asked.

“Just get the fuck up. Zack wants you to join the party.”

A soft thud, a grunt from James.

“Move!”

She heard them scuffling, and then their footsteps were heading back toward her direction.

Pressed up against the wall, she tried to melt into the plaster and paint. Squeezed her eyes but not completely shut, wanted to see them if they approached her.

The small procession stopped at the door, and she was sure they would find her, that maybe they could hear her raspy breath, could smell the fresh, bloody piss that stank like copper and rotten fish.

Instead, they left.

After several minutes—the longest minutes of her life—she peered outside the stall. The bathroom door was ajar.

She slumped against the wall.

Now what?

The same dilemma that had brought her to the bathroom to begin with returned.

No place to hide. There was another level to the torture chamber, that shrink’s office. She recalled walking up a short flight of stairs, had thought before reaching his office that it had been the way out. Although she hadn’t seen an exit. But still …

She stood behind the bathroom door and listened. Voices, but not close. Down the hall, around Room Four, a few doors away. Someone yelled, a man’s voice, and someone else sobbed. Slapping sounds. A woman screamed. Rushed footsteps, and the corridor was silent. A door slammed.

It took every ounce of reserve for her to leave the relative safety of the bathroom.

Once in the hall, her head jerked back and forth. The stairwell door was at the end of the corridor, near the cells.

She sucked a great breath of air and started to move, trying to ignore the stabbing pain. The rooms seemed to creep by. A few doors were open, but they were dark. She knew them well, knew the layout of each one but couldn’t see inside. Room Six, the Dungeon. BDSM. Whips and cuffs, stocks, racks.

Several feet away a door opened, and three visitors poured into the hall. They were distracted, dragging women out behind them.

Zoey ducked into Room Six, her breath abruptly ripped from her lungs. In the blackness it was impossible to make anything out.

Light filtered in through the open door, but her eyes hadn’t yet adjusted.

Somebody moaned. Zoey tried to swallow. No spit. Her throat was parched and raw.

Further in, her eyes focused.

Several women were in the room with her. Tamara, who had been here less than a week was strapped to the rack, a large solid wooden platform. Her contorted limbs were stretched to impossible lengths. Kim was hanging upside down against the wall, her ankles in wrist chains. Jessica was hung on rings suspended from the ceiling.

“What the fuck …?” she muttered. She knew the men were demented, but this—

She dry-heaved into her palm. Tears blurred what little vision she had.

“Help …” Tamara groaned.

“Zoey?” Jessica cried. “Oh god, Zoey …”

“Where are they?” Zoey asked.

Kim was silent, and she wondered with alarm whether she was still alive.

 “Help me …” Tamara moaned, her voice a paroxysm of pain.

Zoey returned to the door and listened. The corridor was quiet.

Tamara first. She released the crank, loosening the stranglehold on the women’s limbs. Tamara sobbed, thrashed her head on the wooden base.

“Stay still, you have to stop that,” she whispered.

Tamara’s cheek was hot beneath her touch. “Is anything broken? Dislocated?”

“Don’t … know … yet …” she moaned, lowering her spastic arms to her side.

Zoey unfastened the clamps next, released Jessica, who slumped to the floor.

Kim was unconscious. Her head dusted the floor, and Zoey lifted it. “Kim? Kim, wake up.” She checked for a pulse and found one.

Jessica knelt beside them.

“How long has she been hanging here?”

“At least an hour,” Jessica said, rubbing the circulation back into her arms. “They raped her and then hung her there.”

“Unfasten her ankles. I’ll catch her.”

Jessica tried to reach up. “My arms, Zoey. No strength in them. I’m sorry.”

“Take it easy, Jess, it’s okay. Relax for a minute.” Zoey lifted Kim’s upper body, supported it on her shoulder. She reached up and unfastened the clamps, releasing one foot at a time. Kim’s legs came crashing down, but Zoey held her tight, lowered her to the floor.

Tamara crawled over. The four slumped in the corner of the room, useless limbs pressing limbs, temples resting against hair.

Kim, still unconscious, was cold and clammy to the touch, her extremities chilled despite the mucky air.

“What the hell do we do now?” Tamara asked through chattery teeth.

“Did they say what they were planning? Did you hear anything at all?” Zoey asked.

 “No,” Tamara said.

“I heard them talking,” Jessica said. “And I saw some of the stuff they brought in.”

“Stuff?” The hair on Zoey’s arms prickled.

“Torture devices. Like things out of a museum. Or a horror movie. Video equipment too. They were carting it all into Room Twelve.”

Room Twelve was sparsely furnished, just a few rings suspended from the ceiling, rubber padding on the floor. The orgy room.

“They were saying how much fun they were going to have. Complaining that James never let them do what they really wanted. The only thing they said to us was ‘see you soon, ladies,’ and then they left. But that was a while ago now.”

“They’ll be back,” Zoey whispered, shivering. “We have to do something.”

“Like
what?
” Tamara asked. “They’re men, big men, men with guns. What are we supposed to do?”

Zoey shut out the limited light by closing her eyes.

“Where were you hiding, Zoey?” Jessica asked. “They tore this place apart looking for you.”

“In the linen closet in the bathroom.”

“Linen closet?” Tamara said. “How? Those shelves are tiny.”

“It’s amazing what you can do when you’re desperate. At one point they opened the closet door. I thought I was going to have a stroke.”

“Good for you,” Tamara said, laughing lightly. “You had them going crazy.”

“And they just gave up looking?”

“I guess they had to. They probably figured you escaped somehow.”

“I need my shirt,” Jessica said. She roamed in the dark room, apparently knowing the layout as well as Zoey did. She retrieved their shirts and handed them out. Zoey slipped one over Kim’s head.

“We’ll have to be ready for them when they come back.” As the words came out of her mouth, Zoey realized how futile they sounded.

“You have any suggestions?” Tamara said. “They never travel alone, those fuckers. Always in pairs. Or more.”

Kim groaned, stirred in Zoey’s lap.

“Kim? Can you hear me, Kim?” Zoey took her hand and massaged it between her own.

Kim’s head nodded in Zoey’s lap. “What …?”

“Long story, Kim. Just rest. Tamara, Jess—let’s go.” She slid out from beneath Kim, rested her gently on the floor. “Stay here and rest, okay?”

Zoey stood, fighting the return of pain in every tiny bit of movement. The three approached the door, and Zoey closed the gap, leaving it open a couple of inches.

Ear against the tiny opening. “We have to be ready,” she whispered.

“We’ll just have to hope too many don’t come back for you. Maybe we can overpower them.”

“Oh,
fuck
,” Tamara groaned. “That’s your plan?”

They waited in silence, sounds of hoarse, rushed breathing, of rattling, abused lungs. Strained for sounds of voices or footsteps.

More time passed, an impossible stretch of endless minutes, leading to the better part of an hour. Zoey’s nerves sizzled, felt electrified, adrenaline replacing the blood in her veins.

“Got a plan B?” Tamara muttered, breaking the silence, but Zoey shushed her. Someone was in the hall.

Three men, she could see through the inches-wide gap. Frank she knew. The other two she had seen in the cafeteria but didn’t know their names.

“This should be the last of them,” Frank said. “I’ll get the one in Room Two. Think you can handle these bitches?”

“Jesus, Frank, just go.”

“How many are there?” he asked.

“Two. Three. I think we left two.” He tittered, briskly massaging his face with his palms. “Too many poppers, Frank! Good coke though. Fucking with my few active brain cells.”

Frank shook his head and disappeared down the hall, away from Zoey. The other two men headed toward her. Two! They’d never overpower these men, especially in their weakened condition. Maybe if they were in better shape, but they were a mess. Beaten, exhausted.

“I gotta take a leak.

“For cryin’ out loud, Pete. Now?”

“Yeah,
now
,” Pete, the one who’d enjoyed too much coke and poppers, whined.

“I’ll wait for you. Hurry up.”

Pete scratched his head. “Don’t wait for me, just go. Unchain them, get them up. I’m not carrying them. Go get started.”

“Yeah, but hurry. You’re not sticking me with all the shit work again, asshole.”

“Yeah, whatever.”

Zoey’s heart throbbed as he approached the door. The anticipation was like jagged wire digging into her flesh.

He came inside, groped the wall for the light switch. It wasn’t beside the door where a switch would traditionally be but was further down the wall.

“Hello, ladies,” he said to the torture devices. “Daddy’s home.” He was fully inside now, his hand sliding up and down the wall. “The fuck are the lights?”

Zoey slammed the door shut, and the elements of darkness and surprise were on her side. She attacked, knocked him off his feet. Sat on his chest and repeatedly bashed him in his face, fought off his fists as they punched her chest. She pinned his arms to his sides with her knees. Someone behind her now, leaning into her—Tamara. She recognized the much-larger frame.

“Get the fuck off!” He thrashed beneath her.

“Jessica, get the lights! Tamara, you got him?”

“Yeah, got him!” she panted.

A second later light exploded into life, blinding Zoey.

“Get
off!
”

“Fuck!” Jessica cried. “They’ll hear him.”

“No, soundproof.” Zoey punched him again, glanced back.

Tamara was sitting on his legs, and she leaned forward, groped his waist.

The gun.

“Get off me, you fat cunt!”

“Jessica, get something to stuff in his mouth.” Well-aimed spittle flew from Zoey’s lips, landed on his cheek. “Fuck you.”

Jessica returned with the first-aid kit and stuffed gauze in his mouth, wound surgical tape around his head.

“That other asshole will be here any second,” Zoey said. “He just went to use the bathroom.”

“What should we do with this one?” Tamara said. “Can’t shoot him—too much noise.”