“You’re stuck here for a while, Mary,” Belinda said. “It’s okay, Igor. Turn on the lights.”
I caught Mary when she fainted and put her on her gurney again. Sharon sponged her face, and Belinda held her hand, closing her eyes when their new cell-mate woke up.
“It’s not a bad dream, honey,” Sharon cooed. “We are the way we are. We take care of each other.”
“What kind of freak show is this?” Mary cried.
I moved into the light. “This isn’t make-up. This was all real doctors could do after my accident. Master took me in, filling my head with talk about miracle cures. He drugged me, made me commit crimes so I wouldn’t have anywhere to go. I’m his slave now. The name on my birth certificate is Igor Hamilton. Mom liked Russian music.”
“Let me go,” the tear-stained stripper pleaded.
“Can she get past the dogs?” Frieda asked.
“Dogs? I’m scared of dogs. I got bitten by one when I was a kid,” Mary sobbed.
“You wouldn’t last a second. I can’t go outside or even some places in the castle if Master doesn’t shock their collars. They’re one of his early experiments – pit bull and Rottweiler cross, with leopard stem cell injections. Sometimes, they eat each other.”
“So what can I do?”
“Help Belinda make a spot on the floor for yourself between me and Sharon,” Frieda said. “We can talk in the morning. We have enough food and water for a few days, don’t we, Igor?”
“Yes. Good night.” I locked their cell behind me and turned off the lights.
Everyone was still asleep when I went upstairs with breakfast for Sadie.
“What’s going on downstairs?” she yawned.
“The nun’s awake.”
“How is she?”
“She wasn’t a nun, just dressed like one to go to a Halloween party and strip. She has a nasty lump on her head, and she’s scared green of dogs.”
“Fine. I won’t count on any help from downstairs, but the dogs won’t be a problem after we take care of Master. The sorceress understands animals. I dreamed she made me walk with a couple of them last night. She spoke to me through one of them. She’s angry, you know. She sees her opportunity to make things right with her greater power, or something like that. I didn’t understand all of it, but I think Master is going to be very sorry.”
“I still don’t see how you think you can resist him. We don’t know what the drug will do.”
“We’ll worry about that if the drug has an effect on me. The sorceress said it won’t. She said she’ll guide me when she has to.”
“I don’t like it, Sadie. You don’t know Master. He’s crazy, but he’s smart. He’s evil.”
She put her hand on mine, the touch jarring in it’s warmth. “You worry too much.”
The phone rang in the lab. I hurried to pick it up. “Yes, Master?”
“When do I get that progress report?”
“I had to sedate her again, Master. Shall I finish up here, or do you want me in your office immediately?”
“I’ll shock the dogs in ten minutes. You shall grovel in my office one minute later. I want her awake soon.” He hung up.
“He doesn’t want me sedated. Good. The sorceress works better when I’m awake,” Sadie mused.
She was under the shower-head when I locked her cage. “Lie down and play dead if you hear the laboratory door,” I said.
“Woof! Woof! Pant! Pant! I’ll be fine!”
I hurried to the modern portion of the castle.
Master faced the windows, looking out over the dying autumn landscape. “My tea leaves said I should have patience. Were they correct?”
“Yes, Master.”
He spun in his chair to confront me. “You sniveling idiot! Can you say anything else?”
“Yes, Master. I mean, yes, sir, I can.”
“Good. How is she?”
“She woke in the night. She was restrained, but I heard her. I talked to her in the dark. She wasn’t too bad until I went in to feed her.
“You didn’t wear a mask?”
“Of course, Master, but she fought with me. I didn’t want to mark her for you, so I let her struggle. She tore my shirt.”
“Moron!” he screamed. “Your incompetence may have ruined things.”
“Master, she calmed down a little after that. I didn’t hurt her, and she learned she couldn’t hurt me. I restrained her again and fed her. She asked me for a pill to help her sleep, so I gave her a small one. The tea leaves may be correct, Master.”
“She’s trying to get herself under control, is she?”
“Yes, Master. It appears she is.” I wasn’t lying that time.
“If she can get comfortable with something like you, she may like me very much.”
“She’s got spirit. Maybe you won’t need the drug, Master.”
“Hmmm. I must study that variable. My natural charm could skew the results of my experiment. Very well, Igor. Report back to me before I retire for the evening.”
“Yes, Master.” In the hallway back to the laboratory, I watched the dogs, frozen in place, sniffing the air and drooling as I passed. Master allowed me enough time to bolt the laboratory door behind me before I heard the first frustrated snarl.
Sadie lay on her bed. “I’m glad you’re alone, Igor. The sorceress says it will be easier to defeat him than we think. I won’t be affected by his drug, regardless of what it is.”
“I don’t like it. He’s going to give you something horrible, and if it doesn’t kill you right away he’s going to rape you.”
“He’s going to try.”
“The best thing you can do, Sadie, is put yourself under and hope he tells me to take you to the furnace when he’s finished with you. You’ll meet the other girls, and maybe we can think of something together. Hopefully, you and the stripper will be able to help me move the others if we can.”
“You worry too much. Tell him tonight that you think I’ll be ready to meet him sometime tomorrow. That will give me time to make a plan. Maybe you should check on the others.”
Mary’s voice was the first one I heard. “Is that you, Igor?”
“Yes. Keep your voice down. What is it?”
“Would you come in here, please? The girls told me everything. They said Master tried taking videos of the women as their feet blistered on that damn furnace-feeder he built. I want to apologize.”
I unlocked their cell door.
“I want you to let me out of here, Igor.” The “nun” fell to her knees in front of me, unzipping her hoodie and popping her big boobs out over the top of Sadie’s little tank top. Then she started on my pants.
“We told her it wouldn’t do any good,” Frieda said.
“It won’t.” I pulled Mary to her feet and held her at arms’ length. “If I wanted that from you I would have already taken it and more.”
“I don’t know what else to do, Igor. I’m scared.” She wept quietly until Belinda enveloped both of us in her arms in a tight, comforting hug.
Mary dried her tears on the tail of her hoodie. “You smell like my grandmother’s place. What is that?”
“Master’s favorite soap and his so-called ‘demon water’, both with his experimental scents.”
“I always think Igor smells like hot sand, and tropical flowers and fruit,” Belinda purred, moving to snuggle against me.
“It’s hand sanitizer and library paste for me,” Sharon chuckled.
“Liniment, shower-gel, chalk and happy sweat,” Frieda said.
“Not all Master’s experiments fail. When I bathe a new girl, I smell field grass, innocence, and virgin musk,” I said. “I sense what I want to smell, too.”
“I wonder what Master smells?” Frieda mused.
“Fear, ruined virginity, and roasting teen flesh. I’m sure it gets him excited,” Sharon muttered.
“You bathed the new girl again?” Belinda asked.
“She insisted I do it. She says she wants to get used to being touched by a man to prepare herself for Master. He has a new aphrodisiac drug he’s going to try on her.”
“She’s going to just lie there and let the creep rape her? Hell, I don’t know if I could do that,” Mary said.
“She says he won’t be able to rape her. She thinks she can resist his drug.”
“She’s an idiot,” Sharon scoffed. “This is supposed to be an aphrodisiac? His surgery on me was supposed to demonstrate successful limb-reattachment. He hacked my feet off but couldn’t sew them back on again. No anesthetics involved, of course. His drug will kill her or fry her brain.”
“Igor! My office! Now!” the speaker in my cell squawked.
I left my captives and hurried up the stairs. The dogs were frozen in the hall outside the laboratory. I knocked the required three times on his office door.
“Enter. Close the door.”
Immediately, I heard the dogs growling outside.
“They’ll be enraged with hunger by tomorrow, Igor. Your preparations must be completed then. I will begin my experiment after breakfast, for it will be Halloween. If things aren’t to my liking, the dogs will spend the evening fighting over your bones.”
“She may not be ready, Master.”
“She will be ready by morning, or I will supervise you putting her in the furnace before I turn you out for the dogs. Now go. You have work to do.”
When I put my hand on the door, a large canine body threw itself against it.
“Master?”
“I’ll turn them off. Walk fast.”
The biggest one caught up to me as I fumbled with the laboratory door, snarling as it closed the distance. It yelped when I slammed the door against its leg and withdrew, allowing me to close the heavy steel barrier and lock it. The lead cur’s cries ended quickly as his litter-mates fed like frenzied sharks.
“Not real cuddly, are they?” Sadie observed.
“That’s why it doesn’t matter if you can overpower Master. We won’t survive the dogs.”
“One thing at a time, Igor. After dinner, tell Master I’m ready for him. Tell him you said he was a brilliant, dedicated man of science, and that he can be very friendly. Tell him I want to meet him. Maybe he’ll forget to turn the dogs off when he tries to come here for me.”
“I hope you know what you’re doing, Sadie.”
“I don’t know what I’m doing, but the sorceress is ready. Make dinner for everybody, visit with the girls, and tell them everything.”
“What am I supposed to tell them? That I have a beautiful young girl up here who would be a virgin if I hadn’t violated her with my scarred, ugly finger? That she’s crazy enough to risk being poisoned and raped by a madman because the voices in her head tell her it’s okay?”
She pursed her lower lip and glared at me, just like she had on campus. A heavily accented, older woman’s voice spoke from her mouth. “Tell them things will change. I believe the word you people use is ‘chill,’ so I would ask you to do precisely that. This supposed Master’s power comes from Evil. I know Evil. But I also know Good. Chill. I got this.”
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