Chapter 11
Ray Hickey, after flogging and fucking Myrtle, had gone back to report to Dr. Marjorie Sayers that his assignment had been completed. She received him impassively and told him that he might have supper and then take a nap, from which he would be awakened about ten o'clock, for she wished him to take over the shift on the lower level of the castle-like prison. His relief, she indicated, would come at midnight, and then, she added, her face expressionless, "You'll be able to be with your wife, I'm sure you'll like that, Mr. Hickey."
He ate in the kitchen, which was presided over by a fat gray-haired woman named Kate Drummond, and he had far better fare than most of the prisoners, though it must be said that the attractive captives on Welfare Island were given plenty of good food to keep them physically fit-for reasons which, as we can well guess, had nothing to do with their eventual rehabilitation back into society! Sam Talbot, the Negro guard, was there with him and plied him with excited questions on his experiences with the blonde rebel. Ray found himself blushingly relating his sexual conquest of the attractive teenager, and relished the plaudits of the older guard.
Supper over with, he went to a little room on the first floor toward the end of the hall at the right, in which there was a comfortable bed and couch, an armchair and ample reading material for the guards off duty, stretched out and went fast asleep. He was awakened by someone's jerking at his shoulder and urging him to get up. Sleepily he sat up, blinked his eyes until he was accustomed to the light, yawned and then followed the man-who was Sam Talbot-down the stairs into the lower level. "I've got some business in one of these cells, Ray boy," the Negro chuckled, "but, shucks, I just don't have your luck, seems like. Dr. Sayers just told me to peel the girl down and get her ready for an examination. Guess Dr. Archie is gonna look her over and see if she's fit to fuck, haw haw haw!"
"Can I see who you've got in there?" Ray asked, his sensual curiosity by now being full-blown.
But the Negro guard shook his hear. "Sorry, Ray, can't let you. Doc Sayers' orders, not mine. I just do my job. You know how it is, boy. Anyhow, no use your fretting, neither of us is gonna get this little cute piece of poontang nohow. Anyhow, you already had your share. Don't be greedy, man. Then after you get done, you get on home and have yourself a time with that nifty little broad you got married to, so don't come feeling sorry for yourself just 'cause you can't look a new piece of snatch over." Clapping Ray on the back, the Negro strolled towards the cell door, opened it and went inside, clanging the door shut. Since it was soundproof, there was no way for Ray Hickey to hear what was transpiring behind that door...
A few minutes before midnight, as Ray Hickey concluded his monotonous pacing back and forth along the long narrow corridor of this level just below the main floor of the building, Sam Talbot and Jason Carpenter came down the stairs and headed for him. Ray brightened, "Hi there, you guys! I'm sure ready to quit this shift, I can tell you. Little Reenie's waiting for me."
"That so?" Sam Talbot laconically said. Then, glancing at Jason, he growled, "Let's get him in there, Jase!"
At this, both men seized the astounded Ray Hickey by the elbows and propelled him forward to the door of the very last cell on the left-hand side of the corridor, opened the door and pushed him inside.
"What the hell are you guys doing?" he stormed. But he got no answer. Again they seized him and dragged him to the middle of the room where a tall round wooden stake was set into the stone floor, very much like the one to which Myrtle had been pinioned when he had flogged and ravished her earlier that night. Cursing and struggling, Ray found himself helpless to overcome the combined strength of the Negro and the lanky, black-haired Jason Carpenter, and in a few moments he found himself with his arms drawn behind his back and tethered tightly to the stake, a rope lashed around his waist and one over his chest, and finally one just below his knees around the post. Then, with a lewd chuckle, the Negro guard bent to him and dragged down the zipper of his blue uniform trousers, completely opening his fly. "Just in case you get a real hard-on, Ray boy, won't do to go off in your new uniform. Doc Sayers'll make you pay to have it cleaned if you do, haw haw haw! Come on, Jase, let's go get some poontang of our own in town, huh? I hear tell over at the bar on Main Street, Sheriff Dawson once in a while lets a new young hooker try her tricks till he gets the word from the Judge to put her in the hoosegow and get her sent out here. Me, I like my pussy when it's fresh, and not used up like when it gets here. Let's go!
Ray Hickey heard the door clang behind him, and strained frenziedly at his bonds, but in vain. He was aghast at what had been done to him, and he racked his brains to figure out a reason, but he just couldn't.
He was facing the wall on whose other side was the victim in the next to last cell whom Sam Talbot had been ordered to prepare for a medical examination by Dr. Fenwick. What in hell was this all about anyhow? He was supposed to go off duty and go back home. Reenie would be waiting, and he was right in the mood for another piece, after knocking off that cute little hotheaded Myrtle.
Suddenly he heard a click, and then he stiffened with horror. There was the sound of a girl sobbing as if her heart would break. It was so real it seemed to be right here in the cell with him, but it wasn't. My God, she was really in anguish, whoever she was! Who was she and what had they done to her? Or what were they going to do? Again he tugged at his bonds, but all he did was to chafe his wrists and make his muscles ache in a useless cause. Ragingly, he ground his teeth and told himself that he was going to have it out with Dr. Sayers, having a stunt like this pulled without a word of explanation. He did his job, he came back here late on a Saturday night just to help out, and this was the thanks he got. And for what?
"Oh please! Oh help me, someone!"
Ray Hickey froze. That voice... that soft sweet tremulous quality to it... there was something about it which made his blood run cold. No, it was fantastic, impossible. Of course it couldn't be-
"Oh, won't anyone help me? It hurts me like this -what have I done, why are they doing this to me? I want to go home-oh, poor Ray, I won't be there when he gets home-and he won't know where to find me-oh help me, someone, help me!"
"Oh Jesus Christ!" Ray shrieked aloud. For the voice he had heard and now the words that voice had just pronounced could only belong to his beautiful brunette wife Irene!
And then, as in a hideous nightmare that was all too real, he heard another click, and suddenly the wall just in front of him seemed to slide away and in its place was a rectangular panel of glass. A glass panel through which he could see clearly... with terrible and paralyzing detail.
It was Irene. She was stark naked, and her body formed a kind of living hammock. She was on her back, at about waist-height to a standing man, and there were cords at her ankles and at her wrists, drawn out to pegs set in the walls, so that she was sustained in the air entirely by her four limbs, her body tractioned to the utmost. The creamy, ivory skin of his wife's naked body, the thick crisp black curls of her cunt, the magnificent pertly tipped pear-like turrets of her bubbies, the yawning chasm which her straddled thighs made of that intimate nook entry to which was his alone.
And she was blindfolded, a black bandanna tied over her eyes and knotted tightly at the back of her head.
Ray Hickey did not know that in her office, Dr. Marjorie Sayers had pressed two buttons in a panel inside the top drawer, turning on a secretly camouflaged public address system which connected both cells, and then sliding out the stone section of the wall in favor of the one-way glass. Thus Ray Hickey would be able to see and to hear everything that would go on in the cell beyond him... but conversely Irene could neither see nor hear her husband. And this was the true beginning of the night of atrocious Tantalus!