Damnable Page 5

  Lindsay guessed there was a giant screen behind the curtain. Pretty obvious it was something to watch porn on, since there was little doubt this was a sex room. She hoped he wasn’t going to make her watch anything disgusting. Guys had tried to show her some sick things before, seemed to get off on watching her watch. But she didn’t think Valentine was the type to be interested in that kind of stuff. Too classy for anything gross. It would probably be just some girl-on-girl junk. Wide-screen. The good kind, with attractive models, not butchy dykes. The more she thought about it, the more that seemed like something she wouldn’t mind.

  “You really are a naughty boy, aren’t you?” She stepped forward and stroked a finger down his cheek as she passed by, looking around the room. “Nice guy, but a naughty boy.”

  Valentine cleared his throat. “I wouldn’t say that.”

  Lindsay stopped at the edge of the bed, pressed down on it as she surveyed the surroundings. The bed had a white fitted sheet and a red dust ruffle along the bottom that reached down to the white-and-black checkered floor. But that was it. No pillows, no comforter. All business, she thought.

  A few prints adorned the opposing walls, scenes with winged babies carrying bows and naked people with long hair and laurel wreaths dancing. Artificial candlelight glowed from sconces staggered on each side, barely adding to the wash of natural light from the other room. Below one of the prints was a tall wooden armoire. A plain wooden chair stood next to it. Along the opposite wall was a thin wooden table, bare and empty. She imagined it as a place to set an ice bucket and glasses, a spot to chill some expensive champagne and whatever went with it. Maybe next time. Something to look forward to.

  She sat on the bed and leaned back onto her elbows, bounced her weight a bit. Not a very comfortable mattress, but it would do. She tilted her head back and pondered the contraption overhead.

  “So, how does this thing work? You strap me in, then have your way with me?”

  “More or less,” Valentine said, watching from the threshold.

  “I hope you’re not thinking about breaking out a whip or anything. I don’t do pain. Seriously.” She regarded him with a smile, hung a finger on the edge of her teeth. “But for you . . . for you a spanking’d be okay. You can even make it sting a bit, if you want.”

  “No whips.” He made an X across his chest with his finger. “Stick a needle in my eye.”

  Valentine stepped into the room and took off his blazer. He folded it in half and laid it across the back of the chair next to the armoire. Lindsay smiled and pulled the back straps off her heels and let her shoes drop to the floor. She tugged the top of her dress below her breasts, pushed it down to her waist, and wriggled it past her hips. She slid one leg out of it and held out her other foot, letting the garment hang from her ankle.

  An amused expression floated over Valentine’s face as he took the dress from her foot and tossed it onto the seat of the chair. Lindsay rolled onto her knees, leaned forward on her palms. She looked back over her shoulder at him and pouted her lips, swaying her ass. Just to encourage him, she reached back and slid a thumb beneath the waistband of her thong and worked it down a bit. She hoped the tattoo across the small of her back, the green design spreading out like Indian wings, didn’t turn him off, rich guy that he was. The managers at the club hated it when she’d showed them.

  Taking the cue, Valentine removed her thong, slowly rolling it down her legs and past her knees. She pressed her ass against him as he did, moving it from side to side, purring her breaths. He pitched the thong onto the chair.

  Lindsay pushed herself up to a kneeling position; turned to let him take a look at the goods, let him know he was getting his money’s worth. She’d never met a guy who didn’t appreciate a real blonde. If he wasn’t already harder than a rock, she figured that should do it.

  “Let me help you into this,” he said, placing a hand on the bar suspended next to her. He lifted the black nylon strips of the shoulder harness and positioned it for her to put her arms through.

  Lindsay looked at the apparatus before she let him set the harness over her shoulders, feeling a vague discomfort set in. She had initially pictured him tying her up with a silk scarf, maybe a rope. This was different.

  The bar was round and sturdy. Valentine held it in place while she slid a hand into one of the leather cuffs and buckled the straps. With the bar across the back of her shoulders, she lifted her other hand and started to fit it into the remaining cuff, then stopped. The feel of the metal across her upper back and the grip of the leather around her wrist sent a mild shock of reality through her. The inside of her head seemed to ring, silent alarm bells going off.

  Use your head, girl. This is incredibly stupid. It’s not worth it.

  “I’m having second thoughts,” she said. “About this thing, I mean.”

  “Oh,” Valentine said. She waited for him to say something else, but he didn’t.

  “I’m sorry, I just . . . this is . . . I don’t really know you? Understand what I’m saying?”

  “Yes. I understand. Really I do. It’s okay.”

  “We could still have a really good time, you know.” She reached for his crotch and gently rubbed her palm against him. “I mean, you can still spank me and everything.”

  He took her hand and lifted it, pressed it between his. Then he backed away, letting her hand slip out, and gestured toward her clothes.

  “I’ll have Lucas drop you off wherever you want. Just leave the money on the table out there.”

  “Wait,” she said. “You mean, that’s it?”

  He stopped halfway out of the room. “Yes.”

  She slumped down, one arm hanging from the leather cuff on the bar, the unsecured harness lifting off her shoulders. She had done those furry cuffs before, hitched to the rails of a headboard. A few times when she’d been with one of the other girls at the club, more than once with a guy she dated. Never with a John, but was it that big a deal? A thousand bucks was a lot of money. Not to mention the gravy train she might enjoy if this guy became a regular.

  “You aren’t psycho, are you?”

  “I’m sane according to every legal standard I know. But I understand your concern. No hard feelings. A girl like you can’t be too careful.”

  Lindsay let out a breath, then straightened herself up and pushed her free hand through the other cuff.

  “I’ll need you to buckle this for me,” she said.

  Valentine came back to the bed and secured the second leather cuff. The straps of the harness pulled snug beneath her armpits when he tugged out the slack. He clasped the straps behind her back, then checked the other cuff and tightened the buckles on it a notch.

  He lay across the bed in front of her, propping himself up on an elbow.

  She smiled down at him. “Hey, no fair. Here I am, naked and helpless, and you don’t even have your shirt off yet.”

  “How does it feel?” he asked.

  “Weird,” she said, shifting her shoulders and swinging slightly as she leaned forward a bit, taking some of the weight off her knees. “But I could probably get used to it.”

  Valentine inhaled deeply and reached up, placing a hand above her left breast. She shook herself, causing both breasts to jiggle. He cupped one of them and she hummed approvingly. He continued to stare at her chest, moving her breast one way, then the other, saying nothing. His hand was firm and still.

  “Is something wrong?”

  “No. Everything is just right.”

  Valentine got off the bed and walked to the end near the table. He stuck his foot beneath the dust ruffle and pressed down. Lindsay heard a popping sound, the slap of a latch being thrown. He circled to the opposite corner, behind her. She strained to see over her shoulder, saw him do the same kind of thing again with his foot, heard the same kind of sound.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  He put his hands on the corner of the mattress and pushed. “Nothing you’re going to like, I’m afraid.”


  “Hey!”

  Lindsay felt the bed shift sideways beneath her knees and feet, sliding on a track. It pulled her legs with it as it revealed a rectangular opening in the floor beneath. The perimeter was a few inches smaller than the dimensions of the bed, a square-edged space dropping off into a shallow pit of some kind. She tried to keep her feet on the bed as it rolled to an abrupt stop, stretching and pointing her foot, pressing down with clenched toes, but the sheet didn’t offer much traction. Gravity tugged and kept tugging until her feet slipped off and her legs swung back to the center, dangling over the shadowy space, her body twisting back and forth with the bar as she kicked.

  “Okay, I don’t like this! I don’t want to do this anymore! You can have your money back! Just get me down! Hey! Do you hear me?”

  Valentine didn’t respond. She could hear activity behind her, movement, bumping, the sound of cabinet doors.

  She looked down at the pit, which she realized wasn’t a pit at all. It was about four feet deep, with bare concrete walls. A vertical utility ladder, short, with just a few rungs, descended down the one she was facing. Mounted to the wall to her left was a swinging arm of metal tubing on a swivel, a hinged section of iron grating hanging flat from it. She could see the bottom, four converging slopes submerged in shadow, meeting at a drain in the middle. It looked like the base of an empty pool, an oddly shaped one with squared-off corners.

  “What’s going on? Oh, Christ! Talk to me!” She was starting to feel light-headed, realized her breathing was out of control. Adrenaline surges were causing a jackhammer to go off in her chest, icy hands to clench her lungs.

  She tried to spin her body, to look back at what Valentine was doing. She caught glimpses, brief shots of him snapping in and out of view, facing away from her, standing at the cabinet. She was able to discern a collection of things arrayed inside it, tools of some kind.

  “Please say something!”

  She sensed Valentine move, swung her head around as he walked the narrow space between the side of the pit and the bed. He was carrying several items, including a large drill and some kind of cylindrical wheel with teeth.

  “Do you know how much money it cost to build this thing?” he said, nodding toward the space below her.

  “Oh, God, what are you doing? Please! Please just let me down, let me out of here!”

  Valentine set out the drill, the round metal cylinder, and a couple of smaller items she couldn’t make out on the table adjacent to the wall. The drill was yellow with a large square block at the base of its pistol-like handle, allowing it to stand upright. It had another straight black handle sticking out from its side.

  “I had to buy both floors. Submitted custom plans for a water exercise tank. Couldn’t call it a pool, or a hot tub. Those aren’t allowed. But tell them you need swim therapy for your back, make sure the right people find skybox tickets and sideline passes for the Jets, or front row to see Three Days of Rain, and you can have yourself your very own one of these. For a modest six figures, that is.”

  Lindsay tried to speak, but was sobbing too hard to get any words out.

  A pneumatic hum coupled with the mechanical groan of bearings and hinges caused her eyes to pop open. Valentine was crouching at the edge near the grate, reaching down, his hand on a lever. The grate was rotating away from the wall, creeping closer.

  It stopped with a clang less than a yard in front of her, forming a platform just out of the reach of her foot. Valentine disappeared behind her again. She heard him rummaging, shifting and sliding things.

  “Please don’t hurt me. God, oh God, oh God, please.”

  Valentine stepped around and onto the platform, carrying a bundle of multicolored rope and a small laundry basket. He put the basket down and unwound the rope. He made a loop, tied it off, pulled another loop of slack through it.

  “Good thing about owning boats,” he said. “You learn how to tie all sorts of useful knots.”

  Lindsay started crying again. She kicked out, bicycling her legs and screaming at him as he moved closer.

  “Stay the fuck away from me!”

  He caught one of her legs by the ankle, pulled it at an angle so she couldn’t reach him with the other foot. He slipped the loop over her foot, then let her go, still holding on to the rope. He picked up the other end of the rope and fed it through a ring on the edge of the platform, pulling it tight, then binding it with a practiced series of quick motions.

  “Now, I can lower this platform, thereby ripping your leg off, or you can allow me to tie the other foot. It’s your choice.”

  Lindsay screamed as loud as she could, breaking down into more sobs.

  “Shhh! Someone might hear!” The concerned expression on his face melted away quickly. “I’m kidding, if you didn’t know. Not only is the floor below empty, but these walls are quite soundproof. Your foot?”

  She kicked with her free foot as he took a step, baring her teeth and yelling. Valentine shrugged and backtracked to the wall, reaching for a lever and pressing down on it. The platform bucked slightly then started to descend.

  “Okay!” She was crying uncontrollably now, breathing in convulsions, her body trembling.

  He untied the rope from the ring. She hung limp as he looped it over her other ankle. Once it was taut, he pulled the rope through a ring in the center of the platform and tied it off. It stretched her body rigid, her toes inches from the grate.

  “Excellent.”

  “Please, please, please don’t hurt me. I’ll do anything you want.”

  Valentine said nothing. He climbed off the platform onto the floor and circled behind her. When he returned, he was carrying a syringe filled with a clear liquid, the needle pointed up.

  “I want you to remember this. Hey!” He grabbed her by the jaw, cupping her chin in his palm, and forced her to look at him. “I want you remember that when I had the power of God over you, I was merciful. I didn’t make you ask, I didn’t make you worship me, I didn’t make you repent or forsake all others for that mercy. You think about that while you’re suffering eternal torment, burning and agonizing as He would have you do for the rest of forever. I’m merciful. God isn’t.”

  “You’re crazy,” she said, fighting through the sobs.

  He felt around the front of her shoulder with his thumb, then stabbed the syringe into the spot he settled on. She felt a burning sensation spread out as he pressed the plunger. She tried to scream again, but couldn’t gather enough breath and whimpered instead.

  “This is a local,” he said, removing the needle and rubbing the spot vigorously. “It will minimize the pain.”

  Valentine made his way off the platform and over to the table. Eyes blurred, she watched him assemble something on the drill. He hopped back onto the walkway holding the drill with the metal cylinder attached to it.

  “This is a six-inch hole saw,” he said. “It’s primarily used to cut holes in doors. This is the largest they make. And it’s the best way I’ve found.”

  He squeezed the trigger. The drill let out a whine, spinning the cylinder rapidly. The cylinder kept spinning after he took his finger off, quietly rotating to a stop.

  Lindsay swallowed, fighting back her sobs. “Wh-what are you planning to do to me?”

  “I thought you already knew. I’m going to cut a hole in your chest and remove your heart.”

  Lindsay screamed, sucked in a breath, screamed again. Her screams dissolved into sobs of no and please. Valentine waited for her to finish, a patient look on his face. She dropped her head and cried silently, still mouthing the same words.

  “You’ve asked me several times to tell you why I’m doing this. Do you still want to know?”

  Lindsay lifted her eyes, dipped her chin in an uncertain nod. She didn’t really want to know. But the only thing she could think of that would be worse was not knowing.

  Valentine’s mouth stretched into a cold smile and he moved along the platform a few feet toward the curtain. He took hold of a piece of it near
the bottom and shook, tilting his head and leaning a bit to the side.

  An arm shot out through the part, impossibly long, greenish gray with quills of black hair spiking out of it. Lindsay’s scream died in her throat and she gasped, twisting away from a clasping, snapping hand that was barely inches from her as it slashed the air. She let out short, loud groans instead, tiny breathless bleats, her eyes bulging.

  Valentine raised his voice. “Back. Back!”

  The arm withdrew behind the curtain. Valentine waited a moment, then yanked on the curtain’s edge, pulling it until the part was a few feet wide.

  “This,” Valentine said, “is the Get of Damnation.”

  The black, vertical bars of a cage were visible now. Behind them, illuminated in a spill of wan light, something was squatting. It was facing her, arms looped along the floor in front of it, palms up, spidery fingers curled over, eyes peering out from behind a mop of dark, matted hair. A sheathed penis drooped out of its crotch, almost grazing the floor. Its face was too long, as were its arms, and it had the coiled aggression of an animal. But a feeling worming its way through Lindsay’s gut told her it wasn’t an animal at all.

  Not entirely.

  Valentine crossed back to the laundry basket, pulled out a roll of duct tape. “Unfortunately, you have to be alive while I do this. I would use a paralytic, but believe me, it would be far worse for you, because you would be unable to breathe while your pulse was racing and you’d know everything that was happening. I don’t want you going into cardiac arrest, either. So I’m going use this on you. If you resist, things will become painful. Do you understand?”

  Lindsay wept. She was looking away, unable to speak, barely able to breathe, sobbing uncontrollably.

  “Trust me, you don’t want to watch. Now if you try to bite or anything, I will make you regret it. Do you hear me?”

  When she didn’t respond, Valentine slapped her. “I said, do you hear me?”