Authors: Christina Crooks

Rough Play (9 page)

BOOK: Rough Play

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Ratty grasped and pulled on the first restraint. Martin heard the slip of leather and clink of the buckle releasing its grip. He pulled his wrist down. Ratty moved to the other wrist.

The light gleamed on Ratty’s bald head. Martin found his gaze arrested by the tattoos. Now he could see what really gave Ratty his club name. A daisy-chain of lovingly inked gray rats appeared to writhe, linked tail to feet to tail, all the way around his head: a tonsure of rats. The heavy ink and intricacy of detail made Ratty look as if he had hair on first glance.

“That’s okay, I can take it from there,” Martin said when Ratty dropped to his knees to release the ankle restraints.

“It’s no problem. ‘Well begun is half-done,’ and all that.” Ratty quickly finished. He glanced up, caught Martin’s stare.

“I usually wear a wig,” Ratty offered. “But here, I don’t have to hide. I can explore things about myself in an open-minded environment.” He gave a shy smile. “Guess I’m trying to say thanks for the opportunity to meet people like Amethyst. As frustrating as they can be.” He waited, obviously hoping for some inside information on Amethyst, then stood with a wry farewell smile and shrug.

Ratty turned to go.

“Hey, hold on a sec.” Martin kicked away the last restraint and looked toward the back tunnel where Charlotte had disappeared.

He had no intention of letting the woman get away.

At the same time, she might not respond well to Martin’s pursuit at the moment. She seemed to believe he had something to do with her friend Gail’s disappearance. She also seemed inclined to involve the police. Neither idea was acceptable.

He turned to Ratty. “You’ve been more helpful than you realize, and I’m grateful. I’m ashamed, too, for not meeting you sooner. You’ve been playing with Amethyst for a while now. You two have an intriguing dynamic.”

“That’s one way to put it.” Ratty shifted from one foot to another. “She thinks I can’t top. She’s wrong.”

“Amethyst’s an accomplished switch. I’ve seen her go deep on both ends of the whip. But, it wouldn’t be the first time she’s been wrong.” Martin saw the way Ratty looked at him. “Oh, she’s my best friend in the world and she has a heart of gold. But she’s not perfect. Nobody is.” He grinned. “It’ll be fun to see you change her mind.”

“I’ve tried.” Ratty glared at a spot on the wall, making Martin follow his gaze. It was only one of the lighted stars. Ratty spoke at it. “She laughs at me.”

Martin looked at Ratty, evaluating. “I could put in a good word for you.”

Sure enough, Ratty’s gaze jerked back to his, full of interest. But his words were more cynical. “She wouldn’t believe it.”

“She might.”

“What do you want in return?”

“A favor. Something right away.”

When Ratty didn’t ask what, or react at all except to raise an eyebrow in inquiry, Martin’s estimation of him went up. With such control under his command Ratty might actually be a decent top.

“It’s nothing bad,” Martin assured him. “Let me lay it on the line. Charlotte—the brunette woman who was topping me—nobody tops me.” Martin stopped, marveling at what he’d just said. He’d actually let a woman top him. How strange.

He shook his head, continued. “Well, she got scared. Of me, possibly, or maybe something else. She ran that way.” Martin pointed. “I’m concerned about her, and I also have information she wants, but I’m not sure she’ll let me near her right now. Will you please tell her I’m harmless and bring her back?”

Ratty looked at him sideways. “Are you harmless?”

“Not completely. But I promise you I won’t do anything to her she doesn’t permit.”

Ratty seemed to consider it. He gave a brief nod. Without another word, he turned in a swirl of glittering clothes and moved with a sliding, self-conscious gait into the tunnel toward the third and final room.

Martin stared after him. Ratty was a strangely interesting man. No wonder Amethyst was intrigued.

He took a step and nearly tripped over the strewn restraints. “Oh, no.”

Traditionally, the grateful bottom usually cleaned and reorganized the equipment. Tonight that duty presumably fell to him. Martin muttered, stalking to the discreet cabinet filled with moist wipes and hand towels.

As he cleaned the too-lightly used St. Andrew’s Cross and its wrist restraints, he remembered Charlotte’s reluctant sadism.

The strong scent of disinfectant overpowered the basement smell of wood, rock, repaired water leakages, and thin tendrils of smoke from the upstairs smoke machine. Martin breathed through his mouth and made a mental note to order Subspace some different cleaning products.

He hoped Ratty fetched Charlotte, but not just yet. Squinting against ammonia-induced tears and wiping ankle restraints on his hands and knees was not the domly image he wanted to portray.

C
harlotte stared at the woman in the bathroom’s graffitiscrawled mirror. Was that really her own image? Were those her wide, shocked-looking eyes? Charlotte was appalled.

The covered overhead light seemed a spotlight on the way her nipples poked the thin material of her sweater. The blushing red of the walls matched her parted, moist lips and flushed cheeks. She looked wanton.

She felt wanton.

“I want him.” There, she’d admitted it.

Not that it mattered. She’d learned her lesson.

She hated how she wondered whether Martin felt the same level of attraction to her.

She spoke sternly to herself. “You are supposed to be searching for Gail. You are in over your head. Maybe you should just call the police, let them find her. Yes, call them even though you don’t want to.” She nodded for emphasis. The woman in the mirror nodded back, with a look of sadness and regret.

Decided, Charlotte slowly opened the restroom door, letting music and cooler air in. She crept out. Martin wasn’t lurking in the narrow hall as she’d half expected despite her leaving him restrained.

When Rollie appeared before her with such stealth, she jumped. He’d seemed to simply materialize, blocking her path. “Hi, Charlotte. C’mon, Martin wants you.”

“Whoa!” She edged sideways, carefully in the opposite direction as Martin.

Rollie slowly kept pace. “Yeah. I saw you earlier. I know you saw me, too. This is a long way from Burger Town, isn’t it?”

She stopped. “I think you’ve said more words to me just now than in an entire day at work.” Her gaze kept being pulled to his baldness. There were tattoos on his head.

He shrugged. “Nothing personal. That job isn’t exactly a social outlet. Besides, I’m naturally quiet with people outside of the scene. Working at that place is just a way to save money for college.”

“Well, it’s not a career for me either, but I’m not completely antisocial.” Then she remembered she was, lately. Frowning, she added, “Don’t you get bored, off by yourself with nobody to talk to?”

“Do you? Oh, I see you make small talk, but that hardly counts. They’re not our kind of people.”

She started. “Our kind?”

“You’re here too, aren’t you?”

“Rollie . . .”

“Ratty. Here it’s Ratty.” He cocked his rat-tattooed head. “And your scene name is . . . ?”

“Still Charlotte. Just Charlotte. And I’m leaving. You never saw me here.”

“Goes without saying. But maybe you shouldn’t leave just yet. North Riverport is pretty far to go without a car. I could give you a lift in a little while.”

She stared at him. “How do you know where I live, and that I don’t have a car?”

“Uh. Well, you work at Burger Town, which is in North Riverport. And don’t feel, like, stalked or something. It’s just that I’ve seen you walking to work.” He waved his hand, nothing to see here. “Anyway, don’t leave just yet.”

“I’m leaving, and if you’re smart you’ll leave too. There’re dangerous things here, don’t you know that? Twisted and dangerous. Even that woman with the purple streak in her hair—Amethyst.” She was pleased to remember the woman’s scene name. “Even her. I can’t imagine that movie was right, that you’d enjoy her doing that stuff to you.” She recalled the pins piercing Ratty’s scrotum, and shuddered. “Ouch.” She gazed at him with empathy and confusion. If he wouldn’t enjoy it, then maybe her movies weren’t always accurate. “You wouldn’t enjoy her doing it. Not that.” Would he?

“Doing what to me? I’m not just a bottom to abuse at her convenience. She might think so, but I’m not.” His anger seemed inappropriate to Charlotte’s comment. Everything about this place threw her off.

Another reason she should leave. “Good-bye. Um, see you at work.” She rushed off before he could stop her.

She noticed he followed her as she turned left rather than right.

She made her legs pump faster, looking for an exit sign.

She flashed under an elaborate stone archway, then stopped short. There was no back staircase, here. She’d reached a dead end.

She jumped when he spoke to her. “Martin wants to talk with you. Says he’ll give you the information you want. Let’s go. I’ve got things to do. People to argue with.” Ratty tilted his head, pointing with it, his body language urging her to follow.

“You can tell Martin I decline his offer, because I don’t believe a word of it.”

“Sorry. I’ve exceeded message-carrying capacity.”

“Then he can hang there all night, for all I care.” She beat back a twinge of guilt. “I’m sure someone’ll undo the restraints if he asks nicely.”

Ratty jumped in front of her. “Someone did.” Ratty considered her. “I did.”

“You did what! I have to leave. Now.” Where was the exit?

She finally noticed the gray and dismal room around them. It belonged in another century. Large and lit only by dim, widely placed wall sconces flickering with bulbs made to look like real flame, the room appeared at first glance to be a storehouse of old furniture, clothing, and piles of dirt and debris. Hardly a dungeon chamber.

Or, was it? She approached a brick wall, with one small barred window placed low enough she had to stoop to look inside. She fingered the rectangular metal bars grown rough and pitted with age. Inside, she saw a single old chair sitting on hard-packed dirt within the small cage.

She slid her fingers back out, careful not to cut them on the metal’s edge.

What was this place? Piles of rubble and bedsprings, mostly shoved against one wall. Crumbled brick on the floor.

She approached a half-rotted wooden cabinet with its lid flung open. A porcelain-faced girl doll wearing a yellowed lace dress sprawled on her side within, limbs akimbo. Charlotte slowly reached inside, turned the doll slightly, then dropped it with a gasp. An empty, jagged black gouge replaced one glass eye.

Charlotte tore her gaze from the small cuts surrounding the eye socket.

In the middle of the room, a tall, sturdy wooden post penetrated deeply into the hard dirt. The large well-worn iron ring attached near its top gave mute testimony to victims fastened to it, possibly to undergo punishments far more primitive and vicious than could be found Martin’s modern club.

Or was this part of his club? The muted throb of bass could still be heard, but it was faint enough to allow other, softer sounds to register: surges of water in the exposed ceiling pipe and tiny rattles and scrapes of something small behind a wall. The air smelled of dust, iron, rotting wood . . . and rose perfume?

“What is this place?” Even her voice sounded different, dimmer, as if sucked into the cracks and holes in walls or absorbed by the dust and dirt. She drifted toward the middle post.

“Don’t touch it. It’s evvvil!” Ratty replied with a strange emphasis. He looked at her. “Didn’t see
Time Bandits,
did you. Never mind.” He shrugged. “This place? It’s a basement, connected to what’s left of the Riverport undertunnels. The original tunnels are gone. Or so they say.”

She turned, looked at him.

He answered her unspoken question. “In the eighteen hundreds, an underground labyrinth stretched from Twenty-third Street all the way to the Wilson River. It existed to move goods from the docked ships to the basement storage areas. These days, the businesses brick off their basement openings for earthquake-proofing and security. Bad for business to have homeless people sleeping in your basement and stealing your stuff, eh?”

“Naturally.” Charlotte continued toward the post. She lifted the iron ring, let it fall with a thump against the wood. She felt a chill. “This looks like the real version of what Martin’s club-goers play at.”

“Exactly!” Ratty grinned, and she saw his eyeteeth were sharp points. Were they filed or just naturally sharp? “It’s a real whipping post. You’re standing on old blood.”

Charlotte stepped away hastily, looking down. The darker splotches might’ve been blood. Then again, Ratty might’ve been having a joke at her expense.

Ratty lowered his voice to a near whisper she found herself straining to hear. “They also called these catacombs the Good-bye Tunnels. Women were abducted by white slavers to be broken as prostitutes, and men were kidnapped to sell to nineteenth-century ship captains who needed crew. The crimpers—that’s what they called the kidnappers and slavers—cruelly drugged and abused the innocents who fell into their clutches. Literally fell, from rigged trapdoors in the bars above in some cases. Then they punished the ones who caused trouble.”

He nodded to a pile of dust-covered shoes, old-style men’s boots and ladies’ slippers. “Captors took their shoes. They sprinkled broken glass on the floor of the tunnels to discourage people from escaping and to leave a blood trail for them to follow if anyone did. Most of it’s gone, but you can see some embedded glass glittering there in front of that bricked-over opening in back.”

Fascinated despite herself, Charlotte stared. She could see something glittering. “This place should be given to a museum. It should at least be roped off.”

“It was,” Ratty replied. “You sort of went right through it.”

She looked. Sure enough, a thick velvet rope, twin to those partitioning off the play areas, lay on the ground just before the archway entrance. “Oh.”

“Don’t worry. Those shoes and furniture and accoutrements are mostly just props and thrift-store crap. Some of it’s real old though, so, who knows. Martin lets people role-play in here sometimes. And on Halloween he opens it up to everyone. Blood Orange, it’s called. Next week. You going?”

“No.” She shivered. “Definitely not.” Did Martin have a thing for abducting people? People like Gail?

This place was making her paranoid. She’d seen all Subspace’s rooms. Gail wasn’t here.

Her rude client was probably fast asleep, completely oblivious to Charlotte’s investigation on her behalf.

Charlotte looked around, found her path blocked. “Do you happen to know how to get
out
of this filthy torture chamber?”

“There’s a shower and tub for Subspace VIPs. Martin seems to consider you a VIP. It has fluffy white towels, soap, bubble bath. The works. You could wash the nasty icky Subspace filth off.” He spoke distractedly.

“Sure. Just what I need right now. A bubble bath.” She tried to retrace her steps, but the mazelike room forced her deeper into it.

Ratty followed. “When you mentioned movies and Amethyst doing something to me, what were you talking about? What movies?”

Charlotte passed rusty cages hanging from beams between the old, low pipes. Then her fingers reached out as if with a mind of their own to trail along a towering, many-spoked iron wheel affixed to a sturdy pole jutting out from one wall’s stonework. What might it be like to be tied to it, and at Martin’s mercy?

She frowned, yanked her hand away.

At the far end sat a throne-like wooden chair with its sewnleather phallus dominating its center. Her inner thigh muscles clenched as she looked at the big thing. Martin sported a phallus like that, possibly just as large, from what she could tell.

The scraping noises seemed louder back here. And, was that a scream? It sounded like someone being whipped or caned or something equally barbaric. Tortured by someone like Martin.

“Charlotte.” Ratty placed himself before her again. “What did you mean about Amethyst and movies?”

“You don’t want to know. You wouldn’t believe me anyhow.”

“Try me.”

A small hissing sound and the scrape of metal on rock joined the strange sounds from behind the wall. “Do you hear that?” Charlotte touched the wall, tentative. She was pretty sure Subspace was in the other direction. “Think it’s ghosts?”

“Enough.” Ratty grabbed her. “What do you know about Amethyst? Tell me.”

“Whoa. Rollie . . .”

“I’m Ratty, here. Use my club name here. Now talk.”

“Fine. Ratty.” She tried to shake herself free, but he refused to let go. He did loosen his grip.

“I have visions,” she told him. “Not all the time, but once in a while. They’re like watching X-rated movies in my mind. Whenever I see a pair engaged in foreplay or sex it means they’re a match. Since I’m in the matchmaking business—when I’m not at Burger Town—my unusual skill has some value.” She drew him close by his own grip on her, lowered her voice to a hoarse, confessing whisper that barely carried over the eerie sounds. “I see
fucking
people.”

It jerked a surprised laugh out of Ratty, but he didn’t immediately release her. “So you say you have prescient visions. Huh. You’re really a matchmaker? You tell your customers about your special skill?”

“No, I don’t make a habit of telling clients about it. My title is dating coach,” she added with some archness. She gazed at Ratty. “Want to hire me?”

“You must not be too good at it, if you’re working at Burger Town.” His words echoed her landlord’s.

“The visions aren’t consistent. They happen when they happen.”

BOOK: Rough Play

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