Sisters
Everywhere Denise looked, there was darkness. Open or shut, her eyes could fathom no difference. It was as if she were submerged in a sea of black ink. Not the slightest shimmer of light entered the subterranean tomb in which she knelt, her hands bound above her, her mouth rudely gagged. No sound either, other than the slight echo from her muffled moans or the faint clinking of the chains that held her arms together suspended in the air.
She had been kneeling for what seemed like hours. The man had beaten her, whipped her skin raw, abused her, raped her mouth and then left her here to suffer, alone in the dismal darkness. Her knees, affixed to a ring in the floor, were being rubbed raw by the rough concrete beneath them. Only by pulling on her chain with her bound arms could she alleviate the pain of the abrasions on her skin. But then her arms would begin to ache, extended to their extreme, not really strong enough to bear her weight. The silenced woman tried to maintain a desperate equilibrium between the pain in her arms and her knees. As time wore on, this became more and more difficult, the pain more and more excruciating.
The lithe, young blond woman, naked but for her collar and her leather bracelets, had been condemned to muteness since she had awoken a prisoner in the Turk’s estate house. Except for the purposes of eating, hygiene or to caress the Turk’s rigid manhood with her lips and tongue, she had worn a leather mask over the lower portion of her face. The mask was attached to a long, thick plug that filled her mouth and reduced all but the most violent moans and cries to mere whimpers. Her arms, when not confined as they were now for purposes of abuse or affixed to the headboard of a bed, were kept locked behind her back.
Everything was done for her. She had no right to any volitional activity. A short, rotund old woman, strong as a peasant’s wife, was her keeper; washing her, feeding her, wiping clean her intimate parts and, most importantly, making sure that she was available for the pleasure of the master of the estate. She did not know his name, only that he had kidnapped her 24 hours ago from her sister’s apartment in New York City. She had been there to investigate her sister’s disappearance and had by now surmised that the man who was her captor was responsible for her kidnapping as well.
The only other person that Denise had seen upstairs in the living areas of the mansion was an old man, apparently the old woman’s husband. He had not spoken to her except once, a murmuring in some foreign tongue as he caressed her breast. She had been kneeling, chained to the ‘family’ dinner table, awaiting her master’s pleasure. It was a gentle touch, almost kindly, but laced with a tinge of lust.
Her tormentor was a person known to his milieu only as ‘the Turk’. He was a tall, broad shouldered, well muscled man. His face was scarred and cruel. His jet black hair and dark brooding eyes had greeted many a young woman about to be condemned to sexual slavery. It was his business, his specialty. He had engaged in many of the various industries of crime throughout his life: assault, murder, theft and mayhem. If no drug dealer himself, he had killed for drug dealers or protected them from death. But it was the art of sexual enslavement that truly engaged him. He loved to see the frantic eyes widen as his broad bladed knife traced a thin line beneath their chins. He loved to hear the muzzled pleas to be spared after he had shoved a stifling gag into their mouths. He relished their tender, intimate flesh as he stripped them of their clothes and their dignities.
But Turk had made a serious mistake. He had indeed kidnapped Denise’s sister, Cheryl, months ago. He had sold her to the highest bidder after a forced strip show, web-cast by him to buyers all over the world. He had earned six figures for Cheryl, but he would return it now, in an instant, more, if that was what it took, for her return. For in one desperate moment, when Cheryl was struggling on the living room floor of her apartment, frantic with fear at her cruel captor’s intent, he had kissed her. And in that moment, she had captured his soul.
The worst part of it was that he had no idea where she was. The kiss had come after bids had been closed, bids submitted confidentially to an email account known only to the ruthless shadowy organization that served as the middleman for the Turk’s transactions. No one reneged on a deal with them if they wanted to live. No one. Not even the Turk. So, in spite of his growing reservations, the Turk had delivered her from her New York apartment, as instructed, to the parking lot of a small strip mall outside of Baltimore. Cheryl had traveled in the Turk’s van in one of his specially designed carrier boxes, drugged into a stupor. He had left the box there, in a dark alleyway for pickup by anonymous agents of the organization known only to him by its initial, ‘K’.
Months later, in a strange twist of fate, he had been prowling the streets of New York, seeking out a new victim in an attempt to drive out the furies that plagued him, when he saw Denise, who was the virtual spitting image of Cheryl. Except for the hair (Cheryl was a brunette) and a slight difference in height (Denise was taller), they could be twins. Cheryl was actually the older of the two by a year and they were as close as sisters of similar ages could be. Of the two, Cheryl was the more introspective, a dreamer. Denise was a woman of action, decisive, strong. But that strength had not saved her when the Turk followed her back to Cheryl’s abandoned apartment to make her his prisoner.
The Turk did not know whether he should hate or treasure Cheryl’s doppelganger. He had believed that possessing her would drive out the demons that possessed him, his ever present but morose desire for Cheryl’s flesh. He had found relief in Denise’s arms, making torrid love to her, chained in his bed. But he hated himself for his weakness in allowing a cunt to bewitch him. He had taken that rage out on Denise’s tender, creamy white body. He had hoped to relieve his mental torment with his whip. He only partially and temporarily succeeded.
It was many hours after Denise had been abandoned in the mansion dungeon by the Turk, kneeling in bleak darkness, that she heard the rattling of a key in the steel door. An outline of dim light formed around the frame as it slowly swung open. Denise cringed at the thought that it was her tormentor returned. But it was Tamara, the old woman. From where Denise knelt, the woman’s blackened form blocked the entry of the light as she crossed the threshold into the chamber of horrors.
Behind Denise stood the various machines and devices with which the Turk was wont to break free women into slaves. For he did freelance, picking up the odd female on spec, selling her, once broken, to one of the various underworld Gulags. Tamara was his unlikely accomplice; she tended to these women, blissfully indifferent to their cruel fates. She was half mad, deranged since the brutal assault and death of her lovely daughter, Fatima, many years ago. It was Fatima’s death that set the Turk on his path: revenge against the culture that produced the teenaged fiends who had gang-raped his young fiancé. He had pledged revenge on that culture and the rape and enslavement of its women was the most appropriate and satisfying revenge that he could have. Each bitch that he converted to owned chattel would be raped a thousand times during the short and brutal remainder of her days.
Denise was glad to see the old woman. While she strictly enforced the master’s rules, she also had a streak of tenderness for her charges. She cooed and sang to them in Turkish, bright love songs from her youth, as she bathed them. She caressed them tenderly, like beloved pets. But she was the master’s agent. She carried a whip. When she was done bathing the distraught, frightened prisoners, she always returned the infernal gag to their mouths and locked their arms behind their backs. In accordance with the wishes of the Turk, she never tolerated speech from them, a rule she enforced with the whip, if necessary.
Tamara flicked on the light in the room. Denise was blinded by the sudden illumination. The old lady clasped her hands together before her and sighed, decrying the terrible marks all over her pretty pet. She knelt next to Denise and hugged her head, pressing it against her breasts. She murmured softly to the poor girl, comforting her. The old women was dressed in a black shirtwaist dress and low heeled, dowdy, black shoes. Her black and grey streaked hair was pulled into a bun behind her head. The short sleeves of her ankle length dress revealed her sturdy arms. After holding the dear child pressed against her breast for several moments, she stood. Before releasing Denise from her chains, she affixed a leash to her collar. Holding the leash in one hand, she released Denise’s wrists from the chain with the other.
Denise collapsed to the floor when released. Her whole body ached. She fought back her tears, tears that had already flowed that night to her surfeit. Her body was crisscrossed with angry red stripes from the Turk’s whip. Tamara urged Denise back up to her knees. While Denise sobbed silently, she pulled back her arms and fastened them behind her. Denise, her head bowed, forlornly allowed the old woman to manipulate her body. She felt Tamara release the leather bindings that had prevented her from rising to her feet. Tamara pulled her to a standing position, talking lowly, but rapidly, to herself in her high pitched, sing-song voice. Denise understood not a word, but its rhythm and obvious good spirit was soothing.
The old lady led Denise from the chamber of horrors by the leash. Her cell was one door away. The door was open and the naked young girl was led inside. There was a stool there and Tamara had her sit upon it. She pulled a tube of ointment from a cavernous pocket in her dress and began rubbing it over Denise’s wounds. The heavy hands of the woman felt comforting to Denise, like a child being tended by her grandmother. But as she espied the long, narrow whip on Tamara’s belt, she remembered that grandmotherly love was not the old woman’s prime motivation.
When she had smeared the ointment over Denise’s body, Tamara led the girl to her pallet, which lay on the floor near the wall opposite the door. She pushed her down gently until she was lying there on her stomach. Tamara wound thick leather straps around her ankles and her thighs, just above the knees, adding another layer to the girl’s physical confinements. Before rising, she leaned over and kissed her charge softly on the head. Her hand rubbed gently on the girl’s buttocks. Patting the supine girl’s rear end twice, she stood and, after locking Denise’s leash to a bolt on the wall, left the abject woman alone in her cell. Mercifully, she left the dim light on.
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