While she had no stockings, what she did have were shoes. Black, fat, high-heeled shoes. The heels were at least four inches tall, but wide, so that she wouldn’t fall. Still, she felt like she was stalking across the room in Frankenstein’s boots when she walked to the mirror.
She applied the black lipstick and eyeliner that had been lying on the bed with the rest of the outfit and admired herself in the mirror. She was a dominatrix without a whip. All leather and steel and provocatively half-clad flesh.
“Yeah,” she whispered, admiring herself. She liked what she saw.
Now, tattooed and black-lipsticked and clad only in thin strips of metal-studded leather, Rae watched the initiates walking in through the front door as Tailor checked their invitations. Some of them looked nervous-first-timers, probably. Some looked hopeful; she remembered her own anxiousness that second and third visit.
But now she was of the inner circle.
Then she saw a familiar face coming in through the door-the woman who had flogged her so well that first time. The woman she’d been looking for on her next visit.
Rae walked quickly across the room to intercept. The woman was superthin. Her face betrayed lines of stress, and her bare arms and legs were crisscrossed in lines of lighter skin. Scars.
“Hey,” she said, smiling as she held out a hand. “Remember me?”
The woman stopped and looked at her coolly. She nodded, but didn’t reach out to accept Rae’s hand. “Sure.”
“My name’s Rae,” she continued. “I’ve looked for you the past couple of NightWheres…you were so good to me the night we met.”
“Yes,” the woman responded, still not offering her hand. “I’m Amelia. Congratulations.”
Rae frowned, confused. “For what?”
Amelia nodded at Rae’s wrist. “I see you’ve made it to the inside.”
Rae held up the snake tattoo and smiled. “Oh this? Yes! Kharon asked me to stay overnight last night, and I said I’d stay forever if he’d let me. This morning he gave me this.”
“How sweet,” Amelia said. Sarcasm dripped from her voice. “Did he give you his class ring to wear around your neck too?”
“No,” Rae said, confused by the chilliness of Amelia’s reception. “But this whole scene is really cool. I’ve been looking for NightWhere for years, and just didn’t really know it. Now that I’ve found it, I don’t want to ever leave.”
“I don’t suppose you will,” Amelia said. She smiled thinly and walked past Rae towards the back of the club. “I’ll see you later, I’m sure.”
Bemused, Rae watched Amelia walk away. What had she done to deserve the ice treatment? The last thing she knew, they’d had a great session near the racks. She thought back, trying to think if there had been some problem at the end of that night, but…
“Rae,” a voice called. And then cool fingers slipped around her elbow. Kharon stood behind her. “We need you in The Red. There’s something that must be done tonight. Consider it…your initiation.”
Rae smiled, but inside, her stomach trembled.
Initiation?
She thought of sorority hazing and wondered…in a deviant sex club, what sort of thing would an initiation involve?
Her heels clicked faster and faster as she crossed through the growing crowd in the Blue Room, anxious to find out.
“Here she is,” Kharon said. His teeth smiled wide and white in the dark room. A small crowd of NightWhere regulars was gathered there, in a room just off the entrance of The Red. Three of them were Watchers. She’d learned quickly that not everyone who was in the in-crowd of NightWhere was a Watcher.
Watchers were different. Easily recognizable. Rae didn’t know why, but the Watchers all seemed to look alike. They were thin, almost emaciated, and their skin was white as a cave amphibian; they didn’t appear to have ever gone out in the sun in their entire lives. They almost always wore black leather-of course, almost everyone here wore leather but…there was just something about the Watchers. They walked differently, talked differently…they were like the sex club elders even if they didn’t look old.
Kharon took the hand of a middle-aged man in the center of the circle and led him to Rae. “This is Peter,” he said. “I want you to take him around the club tonight. Show him the ropes. Do whatever it takes to make him happy here. But bring him back here at midnight.”
Kharon smiled at Peter and said simply, “Enjoy it. This is your night.” Then he signaled to the others and the group streamed from the room, leaving Rae and Peter alone.
“Well, hi there,” she said, holding out a hand. “My name is Rae, and I guess I’ll be your tour guide tonight!”
“Peter Rathburn,” he said, squeezing her hand tightly before letting it go. “I didn’t realize when I got my invitation that I would have my own private sex queen as an escort if I came tonight.”
Rae laughed. “Not sure if I qualify as a sex queen, but thank you.”
He nodded at her small but prominent cleavage, pressed up by the leather, and her barely concealed crotch. “Well, you look like a sex queen to me! So, do you help run this place?”
Rae snorted. “Hardly. I’ve come here a few times, but I love it so much I’m staying on for good. But…I don’t really know what I’m helping with yet.”
“Apparently, the entry level position here is ‘Welcome Wagon’. Sorry about that!” He smiled awkwardly, as if embarrassed.
“Don’t be,” Rae said. “I’m happy to show you around. Come on.”
She took him by the hand and led him out of the dark room and into the red-lit hallway. “I’m surprised that you actually are starting here,” she said, motioning at the murky hallway. “Normally people don’t get access to this part of the club right away. It’s called The Red.”
“Why not?” he asked. “I get the red part-all the lights here are red. But why is it restricted?”
Rae considered for a minute and then shrugged. “Well…what the hell, they said to give you a tour. Follow me.”
She pulled him down the hall, away from the exit. “Let’s see what we can see.”
The screams advertised the action before they even turned the corner to the first doorway. They stepped inside the room and stopped almost immediately. A group of six or seven stood a few feet away, surrounding a small stage. It was a bare stage, except for one thing.
A giant, ten-foot-tall cross grew from the floor to dominate the room. And from it, a nude woman hung.
She was Italian, Rae thought. Her skin appeared dark in the red light, and her hair was black and lustrous. She still showed underarm hair, black and wispy, and her crotch was a thatch of heavy black bush. But the denizens of the room were not paying attention to her bounteous body hair. A man wearing only a leather belt and a black jockstrap stood before the cross. A black leather hood covered much of his head. He held a long black pole that tapered to a thin, barely visible end. While it may not have been easy to see, it was easy to hear as it slapped against the crucified woman’s skin.
He slapped it across her small tits and thin-stretched belly with a practiced ease-whip-smack, whip-smack.
With each connection, the woman yelped, but otherwise didn’t complain. And the man didn’t slow. He flicked the fishing-pole-like cane and caught her on the breast and the chin and the belly. Her body reddened and she still never said a word. Only cried out, and moaned in between.