Chapter 5
"I'm telling you, Southworth, there was no diamond on her finger. And she did take the bus; I found a ticket stub stamped Chicago." Myra drew feverishly on an ironically slender cigarette. The milky swells clad immodestly in black satin shone from each tight inhalation. "I say we keep her. She's lovely, a piece of excellence." Myra kissed her fingers in an expansive gesture.
She winked conspiratorially at the nimble-minded man who, despite a certain lethargy in physical appearance, was very thorough in his business. "She's just right for you."
All five feet eight inches of Southworth, local business entrepreneur grew with the luscious details to follow. "I've never seen a lovelier creature in these hick woods," continued Myra sardonically. "In Germany the women are delectable . . . here they're cows."
"And this one's udders?" grunted Southworth, stroking a square, naked chin with a hand that had corruptively dipped into the pocket of every successful businessman in the county . . . and helped pad a few in points south.
Together he and Myra, with out of state backing, operated a prostitute ring in an intricately woven, well-plotted fashion that spread its crooked fingers throughout the northern vacation land where wealthy Chicago businessmen ventured for weeks of bought pleasure. Politicians, corporate executives-people who had the money to throw away on vice and the need for secrecy. A tight, powerful ring of local politicians with state influence shrouded him from nosey local inquisitives who knew better than to open their mouths. The rest of the quiet community didn't care; they stayed cautiously astray.
"We need another girl for the Hunters Point Inn," Myra reminded him tersely. "The last one seems to have made a mess of her future."
South worth's eyes snapped upward. "Nothing too messy, I hope. . . . "
"It washed down the drain easily enough . . . blood always does." Myra pulled easily on her cigarette. "Hamilton took care of the body . . . but that leaves us one girl short. Now are you ready to test our little
Chicago dumpling?" She shivered her shoulders, showing off a creamy cleavage and licked her lips. "I've tasted her-she's sublime!"
Southworth pulled a deep breath. "You judge them best, Myra." Deep-set, piggish eyees rolled up to study Myra's snappy dark ones. He trusted this woman; they thought a-like. She was the daughter of a wealthy lumberman, and he, the son of a state senator. Together their tight-fisted control allowed for no mistakes. Anna was proof of that.
"Tomorrow morning we put her on the machine and test her."
By Monday morning, Chicago's snow flurries had thickened to drifting winds. The elation after a season's first snowfall, like the exploding climax of sensual bliss, fades quickly. A glum mood sets in, hovering like pregnant, stormy skies. So it was with Jack Turner.
Indecision boxed him in. Slumped on the living room sofa with elbows braced on his knees, hands supporting his head, he struggled to piece his life together. Right now he had enough evidence to put his father-in-law's ugly face behind bars. "Sherrie.. . " He muttered her name aloud, no more than a whisper. "Shit!" One foot shot out to kick the television set in the face.
Jack jumped to his feet, startled by his violent behavior. To confess to Kurt Bailey that his daughter had run away, probably to the nearest courthouse to seek divorce, was utterly castrating.
Yet, ironically, he must prove to Sherrie what a lousy scum of the earth bastard her Daddy was, in order to earn her respect. Jack raked strong fingers through brown tousled curls, two days uncombed. Daddy this, Daddy that . . . if she only knew how Daddy dear paid for their house and the cheap bevy of women he hid from his family, she'd whistle another tune.
He started for the kitchen to snatch a beer from the refrigerator, but caught himself in time. No . . . he'd been substituting the bottle for balls too long. Decisively, he turned on his heel and grabbed the telephone, strangling it in a clammy fist and wishing it were Kurt Bailey's neck. The dial groaned metallically from the iron pull of his fingers.
"I want to speak to Bailey."
A cold blast of air shivered over Sherrie's supine naked flesh. Struggling up on a weak elbow, her puffy eyes focused on Myra's tight-lipped face glowering down at her from the doorway.
"Well, my sweet, I hope you had a good night's sleep."
"Wh-I . . . " Sherrie's head flew around in a desperate search for remembrance. Where was she? What was she doing laying naked on the floor? In a flood of hysteria, the damned walls burst.
like a cat, she sprang to her feet. The goose-bumped curves of her luscious nudity attacked the grinning vixen blocking the door.
"Why did you lock me in?" she cried. "What do you want with met" Swirls of auburn hair fell about her creamy shoulders, sweeping over the swells of her breasts heaving with terror and trepidation. Liquidy chartreuse eyes blurred with tears, her chin trembled and long polished nails dug into the palms of her balled up fists.
The other remained seductively calm, a crooked grin creasing her face. "Don't you worry, my sweet. Climb back into bed and Anna will bring you more tea."
"I don't want any tea! I want to get out of here!" yelled Sherrie, her screams filling the empty hallways. With adrenalized force, she charged the large woman blocking the door, but Myra caught the lithe arms in the strength of her fists and held her captive immobile.
"Behave yourself," she spat between clenched teeth. "I'm warning you! Make it easy on yourself."
With a force that surprised Sherrie, the older woman pinned the naked girl's arms behind her back and shoved her face down on the bed. Sherrie landed in a heap of crying, goose-bumped, quivering flesh. "Oh, dear God, let me out of here. . . . ! " she sobbed into the cold sheets.
If only she could think straight! Why, why had they locked her in? Why had she come here? Jack, da m n you . . . I hope you die for this! She sobbed the harder, recalling the obscenities the man she'd loved had heaped upon her . . . and now this. It was his fault she'd come here. Why hadn't she stayed at her father's house, instead of running away like a teenager?
Slowly, the sobs softened to painful moans of terror-stricken despair and trapped, without the will or strength to move, Sherrie fell into a dreamless sleep.
She neither heard the voices whispering about the room, nor felt the hands mauling at her body. But when she awoke, fresh nightmares hardened into razored reality.
A sickening sensation weighted Anna's heart. With the burden of her limping foot slowing her, she ascended the stairs in time to see Southworth and his evilly grinning lesbian accomplice, dragging the sheet wrapped body of the new arrival to the locked 'chamber' next door. Anna stiffened. All too well she knew the meaning, could hear the screams and cries echoing in the dulled recesses of her mind.
I low could it happen, she wondered, heading toward the bathroom with her mop and pail, that human beings could contrive to hurt others, hold others captive against their will? Worst still, the thought gnawed at her heart that she, by virtue of being in their wicked surrounds, was accomplice to the crimes perpetrated within the walls of the chalet. With gnarled fingers, she unlocked the bathroom door and set down the pail weighted with cleaning utensils. The metal handle clanged against the side of the pail. She winced and stroked a strand of graying hair that had escaped her pug, back behind her ear.
The first scream echoed in a muffled cry from the chamber. That might have been herself years back. Emotionlessly, she powdered the sink with cleanser.
Sherrie awoke with a start. Reality broke through fuzzed consciousness at the feel of something tight constricting her body. She tried to stretch, but she couldn't move. The thorazine had dulled her vision, but the faces leering down at her were hellishly crisp and terrifying.
One wild sweep of the eye took in the windowless walls strewn with paraphernalia she could not name. A shiver rippled up and down her naked spine. She was strapped on her back in some kind of chair! Straining her neck, a scream died in her throat. To her right a man she'd never seen before-short, bald headed, with piggish eyes and bulbous nose-was slaving over a machine, turning knobs and buttons.
Their eyes met. "Ah ha, glad to see you woke up," he said with obvious lack of sincerity.
Sherrie wriggled and stretched. White hot terror tore through her goose-bumped frame, as she listened to the demon beside her talking to himself, swearing over the uncooperative machine.
A click and a whirr buzzed in Sherrie's ears and she felt her head rising. A cushiony support on the back of her head was bending her neck so that she could see every inch of her naked body-strapped! Dear God, what did these maniacs want with her?
She was captive in a chair, black straps, flecked with raisin dots of-dried blood! "NooooooooH Her scream died, rattled unspent from her captive body as Myra's hand stung across her burning cheek.
Black straps crisscrossed over her body, with two foam rubber cups supporting her bare buttocks. Another single strap tightened about her tiny waist and her slender legs were trapped in some special supports at thigh and calf. Her lithe arms were stretched out in a crucifix-like position and held tight in soft foam guttered, strapped and buckled at the wrists.
The shock of finding herself naked was nothing compared to the gut wrenching fear. The walls held her focus; walls decorated with whips and shackles, belts and chains-things one used on animals for training! Terrified, she turned her head. To the far right sat a table, a gurney much like those used in hospitals, except this one was splattered with dried blood. Buckles attached to heavy leather straps hung lifelessly from where arms and legs had been tied down.
What were these maniacs going to do to her? "Oh, God, let me out of here!" she wailed in a tight voice that might have shattered glass.
"Hush . . . be quiet!" warned Myra, holding up a threatening hand. "We don't want to hurt you. . . "Her eyes were glazed with madness. "We give all our pretty girls a taste of bliss before we set you to work," she explained simply, as if reciting a recipe to a neighbor.
That cold precision frightened Sherrie, more than the threat of slaps and blood. Myra's fingers worked at the straps, tightening them at Sherrie's thighs and calves until she let out a yelp of pain. The captive's green eyes shot up to glare into her tormentor's face, hoping to find a thread of decency in the cold-hearted woman who'd lured her into this heinous trap. Myra licked her lips seductively and, bending her head, leaned over to kiss her captive on the forehead. The perfumey softness of Myra's milky breasts mashed against Sherrie's face, nearly suffocating her.
She flinched, shivering from the feel of another woman's indecent closeness. Myra read her captive's disgust and taunted: "Do not be so frightened of a woman . . . " And here she cocked an arched brow. "I've already tasted you, my sweet." Her lipstick smeared lips twitched like swollen flanges about to orgasm. Sherrie's stomach knotted and for a moment she thought she might be sick!
Then her mouth went dry and her eyes ripped from the devouring glare of her captors to stare into space. Two liquidy green eyes squeezed shut, and hot pearly tears dribbled down her burning cheeks. "Don't . . . please . . . " she whimpered in a tiny voice. She jolted then from the coldness of the cups positioned over the strawberry-hued nipples.
Maybe humoring them would help. Maybe this was all a practical joke.
A hysterical giggle tore from her lungs. "What is all this about? You're teasing me, aren't you? You're like Jack, always teasing me.. . . "
Southworth turned to her and arched an eyebrow. Piggish eyes boring into her pleadingly blinking ones, he remained tight-lipped as he wildly turned knobs.
Sherrie wiggled a painted toenail, the only part of her body not strapped down. "Come on, let's quit playing games . . . it's cold in here."
Southworth didn't reply and Sherrie hadn't the strength of emotion to look at the buxom female whose perfume made her dizzy with fear. Perhaps the female in her found it easier to cope with man. Hadn't she always managed to get her way with Daddy above her mother? Yes, better she concentrate on the bald headed creature to her right.
Southworth didn't reply. His expressionless face, mask-like, glared coolly at her. Women had responded to his tortures as many things-but never as a joke. Then a thin, cold smile spread over his tight lips and his right hand found the working combination. A switch buzzed on, sending a tingling sensation and a jerking snapping through her breasts.
"Wh-what.. . oh God . . . ! " she cried in alarm.
With a snicker of lust, Southworth tripped another switch and the pulsating cups settled down to a slow squeezing and tugging rhythm. A strange warmth centered in her nipples, making them grow into puckery diamond chips. In a deep corner of her libido, something flicked a switch of pleasure her conscious mind could not accept.
Southworth folded his arms over his burly chest and stepped back cocking his bald head to take in all of his fresh captive's shivering, goose-bumped, naked form. He spoke to Myra as if Sherrie were not there:
"How much do you think she can take? Five, ten minutes . . . ? " His voice was cold as a knife's blade.
Myra, wrapping her red fingertips in Sherrie's auburn waves, pursed her lips and gave her wrist a tug. "My sweet darling would willingly die of pleasure!"
Die . . . the word sizzled in Sherrie's mind. "Please . . . no. . . let me up.. . " Auburn hair flailing from side to side, the screams tore from Sherrie's fear tightened throat.