“Yes,” she said. “I’m here to pay it off. I want to bring this to an end, finalise the deal. Just like you said on the phone.”
Terry, still standing by the primitive shower stall, laughed again. He flexed his gloved hand; the leather creaked loudly in the silence that followed his abrupt laughter. He stared at her face, her eyes, and never broke eye contact even as he stripped off his vest. His torso was well-muscled, but not as barrel-like as his boss’s broad trunk. Blue-black prison tattoos — at least that’s what Lana assumed the crude, thick-lined renderings to be — decorated his upper arms. An odd-looking dragon draped its badly-drawn tail around his shoulder.
“Is that what I said?” Bright walked around and stood directly in front of her, cutting off her view of Terry as he began to loosen his trousers. Bright was pulling his shirttails out of his waistband. Then he began to undo the shirt buttons from the bottom up. “Yes, I suppose I did say that, didn’t I?”
“I know the score,” said Lana, trying to find strength from somewhere, anywhere. “I know what’s expected of me, and I’ll do it all. I’ll do you all, if it keeps you away from me in future, and away from my daughter.” She clenched her fists and refused to look away as he slipped off his shirt and folded it neatly before placing it on the floor, near the end of the stark double bed.
Beneath the shirt he was wearing what looked like a wetsuit. It clung to his oddly-shaped form like a second skin, accentuating the ugly, disproportionate muscle build-up around his upper body. Lana was so surprised by Bright’s ridiculous get-up that for a moment she forgot to be afraid, and a tiny smile flickered across her lips. She cut the smile short before it got out of control, wishing that she could have prevented it altogether. The last thing she wanted to do was antagonise these men: there was too much aggression in the room already; unless she was careful, there was the risk that they would lose all control and cause her some real physical damage.
They could fuck her, by all means — she was just about prepared for that — but please God, don’t let them break her.
“Monty, I have some things to do… I’ll just go back upstairs while you sort things out down here.”
Sort things out, was that how they thought of it? What they called gang-rape? Lana felt her back stiffen as Boater brushed up lightly against her.
“Don’t be silly, Francis. We’re all taking part. We’re going to have some fun.” Bright smiled at her. “Aren’t we, Lana?”
She didn’t have it in her to reply, but she somehow managed to keep staring at him, pressing her gaze into his soft face. There was something going on here — something below the surface, a situation that was nothing to do with her but in which she seemed to have a pivotal role.
“But, Monty–”
“But nothing, Francis!” Bright’s eyes swivelled away from her and glared over her shoulder, at his mammoth henchman. “But nothing. We all stay here, and each of us takes our fill. We owe it to this kind lady, who has put herself to a lot of trouble to be here. Never, Francis, ever look a gift horse in the mouth.” He smiled but it looked all wrong, as if his face were splitting in two. “And don’t ever let a free fuck go to waste.”
Lana felt her legs start to shake, but she fought to control the movement. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of witnessing her fear. She was strong; her mind and body were one. This bastard wouldn’t break her, not ever. She vowed to remain intact to the very end, even if she ended up dead. This fucker would not see a single tear roll down her face, or hear a scream pass from her lips. She was stone. She was already dead.
“Are we ready?” Bright rubbed his hands together. His wetsuit absorbed the meagre light, glistening like the flesh of some hideous black lizard. “Are we all ready?”
“Fuck, yeah,” said Terry, moving forward, away from the shower stall. He was standing in his white wife-beater vest and underpants. She could see clearly that he was ready for action.
“Yeah,” said Boater, still standing behind her. There was something about the giant that Lana couldn’t fathom. It was obvious that he was having some kind of crisis of faith; she’d picked up on the fact that he was struggling with his own emotions. He’d almost turned against his boss. She felt it in the air: a sense of suppressed rebellion. Why couldn’t he have gone all the way and brought the fight out into the open, giving her some slight hope that this might not happen — that these men might not use her as a sex doll in this grimy basement room?
Terry’s pink nub of a wrist shone weakly in the dim light. Monty Bright grinned like a lunatic. And behind her, remaining out of sight for now, a silent giant took stock of his situation far too slowly to offer Lana any form of hope.
Bright took something from his trouser pocket: a thin black scarf. “Here.” He said. “Put this on.” He opened his fingers and let the scarf unfurl, holding one end between his thumb and the palm of his hand. It was not a scarf, it was a blindfold: a black silk blindfold.
Lana reached out and took the blindfold from his hand. His skin felt cold and clammy, but that might just have been her imagination, conjuring little tricks to transform a bad man into a demon.
“Put it on, now.” The playfulness had gone from his demeanour, leaving behind a blank, empty shell waiting to be filled by whatever he could take from her.
There was a pause. The room seemed to exist out of time for a moment, as if they’d all moved sideways into another state of being.
When Bright slapped her, without warning, it took her a second or two to register the pain. She heard the sound — quick, high and sharp — and had time to wonder what it was before her cheek started to burn. It was too late to even raise her hand and feel the spot where he had hit her. The pause between the violent act and her realisation of it was too great for her to react without feeling stupid. “Oh,” she said instead. It was an ineffectual remark; she wished she’d just kept her mouth shut. “Oh,” she said again, thinking, Shut the fuck up!
Bright nodded. The walls closed in, squeezing her sense of spatial awareness until it lost all meaning. She realised why Bright had slapped her. The bastard had done it to sharpen her senses, to plunge her into the moment like someone jumping into a cold lake. To make sure she was fully aware when things got under way.
He wanted to ensure that she was trapped firmly in the present and not retreating into some inner chamber where she might distance herself from the outrage. The fucker knew exactly what he was doing. He had done this too many times before to make silly mistakes and allow his victim — his debtor — even a scant emotional reprieve. Maybe his men were just along for the ride, but like most serial rapists, Bright was interested in mental rather than physical penetration.
“Let’s get this show on the road,” said Bright, softly, almost lovingly — as if he were savouring the taste of his catchphrase on his tongue.
Lana covered her eyes and waited for the suffering to start.
AFTERWARDS, WHEN IT was all over and done with, she stood in the shower stall and let the cold water chill her battered body. Hot water would have been too much of a kindness, and men like these were not known for their acts of generosity.