THE LAST LAUGH
I'm grinning as I type this. Mainly because I'm imagining how you Members of the
Club must be reacting as you read this. Shock? Dismay? Fear? I'm guessing, of
course, but I'd wager that you're feeling all of the above. You were all
probably praying to whatever you believe in that I wasn't going to say anything
about "The Word" - or even that I'd somehow managed to misconstrue what I
heard. And now I'm about to dash that hope with what I've written below.
So why did I wait this long to share this invaluable piece of information? Well,
that's easy to answer. If I had have started my tale with a "Here's the way to
make an incredibly beautiful group of female assassins yours for the taking!",
how many people do you think would have believed me? That's right, none. Not a
fucking soul. In fact, the moderator would probably have never even posted the
first parts of my "story".
But THIS way, I've established credibility. Certain readers have been following
my misadventures over a fortnight now, so they know (or at least suspect) that
I'm on the level. And if that's the case, the thing that they're going to have
freshest in their mind at the end of this piece is the very Command Word that
you all strive so hard to protect.
But enough of my gloating. Time to spill ...
*****
Despite my initial misgivings, my key slid easily into the lock. I grinned at
58A who was hovering protectively by my side.
"Are you pleased, Master?"
"Very," I said, and put my finger to my lips in a sushing gesture. I figured
there was no point in announcing our arrival to anyone who might be lurking
inside.
I pushed the apartment door open gently. Steeling myself, I started forward
after the swinging door in a half-crouch, but 58A stopped me with a firm grip on
my shoulder.
"What?" I mouthed.
She frowned at me, and motioned for herself to lead the way into my old
apartment. Given that she was the trained assassin, I agreed she had a point and
made room for her to move past me.
Somehow moving silently on the balls of her booted feet, 58A eased her way
inside. I watched her glance from left to right . . . and suddenly rear back in
surprise. An instant later, a black baton crashed into the side of 58A's head,
knocking her unconscious to the floor. Without even thinking, I was throwing
myself through the doorway and at her assailant. We went down together in a
flailing jumble of arms and legs. I came out lying on top of the baton-wielder,
and used this advantage to recover my balance first. Leaping to my feet, I aimed
a vicious kick at my opponent's midriff - but stopped it in mid-arc as the "he"
turned out to be a gorgeous "she". And more particularly, MY one time gorgeous
"she".
Susan was decked out from neck to toe in black. Black turtle-necked sweater,
black lycra leggings, black leather wrist-length gloves, and black knee high
boots. In short, she looked incredible. As she warily climbed to her feet, I
noticed there were deep indentations in the corners of her mouth - as if she had
recently been gagged, and gagged tightly.
Twenty whole seconds had passed since the moment I'd recognised her, and still
neither of us had said a word. For a crazy moment, I wasn't even sure she knew
who I was, but then . . .
"You shouldn't have come back."
There was no warmth in her words whatsoever.
"You shouldn't be in my apartment," I responded
She took a sudden step to the left and all of a sudden we were circling each
other like opponents in a gladiatorial arena.
"I'm ordered to be here."
"Oh yeah? By who? And why?"
She smiled coldly. "My Master. The why should be fairly self-explanatory."
"Your Master? Jesus, Susan. What the hell happened to you? I thought . . . I
thought we were in love."
There. A flicker. Just a shadow and it was gone, but a flicker nonetheless.
I pressed on before she could respond. "I mean, what was it that The Club
offered you that I didn't? If you wanted more in our bondage games, you just
should have said so." I'd gotten through to one Angel in this manner, and I
figured it was worth trying on another. "Don't you remember the whipping I gave
you on stage? You can't tell me your Master or anyone else at The Club has given
you better than that!"
Susan was breathing noticeably harder by now, and I could see a gleam in her
eyes. Our circling of each other was also slowing - something that I took to be
a good sign because she no longer looked as if she was going to leap for my
exposed throat.
"What is it about The Club that's worth selling your soul for? Especially when
you had everything you wanted before you joined?"
She stopped circling completely, and I did the same. "B-Bondage Club . . . is
everything," she managed to say.
I decided to push her harder. "C'mon, that's bullshit and you know it. I can SEE
you're doubting The Club - despite their programming, despite your training,
despite everything."
That was when her defenses must have kicked in. Instead of biting, she turned on
her heel and strolled across the room, chanting: "The first rule of 'Bondage
Club is that you don't talk about Bondage Club'."
"No! Listen to me. You can't let them win. Don't give into it." I was becoming
desperate. This was my last chance, and my emotions began to cloud the words
that flew from my mouth. "Fight it Susan, fucking fight!"
She turned then and stared at me - eyes narrowed, lips curled, deep indentations
in the corners of her mouth. The earlier confusion gone.
In despair, I snarled: "Enough of this shit. Just tell me what the fuck 'Bondage
Club' is."
Her eyes narrowed further, and her marked mouth twisted into a lop sided smile.
"The first rule of Bondage Club is that you do not talk about Bondage Club. And
besides, " she added after a pause, "I would have thought the traitor Angel
would have told you all about it."
"She did, but I want to hear it from you. I want to hear how they got to you." I
strode purposefully toward her. "And I'm going to MAKE you tell me."
A new voice stopped me cold. "That will be quite enough, Mr Kendalli."
I recognised the voice even before I laid eyes on its owner walking from the
bathroom, holding a 9mm Barretta that was pointed at the centre of my chest.
"Hello Chaswell," I said with fake pleasantry. "I wish you would have called in
advance to let me know you were stopping by. I would have prepared a proper
reception."
Chaswell smiled thinly as he strolled to a stop thirty feet from me. "Quite the
contrary, Mr Kendalli." He emphasised the 'Mr' as if slightly annoyed by the way
I'd purposefully dropped his title. "113F and I have been awaiting your return
for quite some time. But fear not, we've found ways to . . . occupy ourselves."
My eyes darted across to focus on the gag marks at the corner of Susan's mouth.
Although she stood between the two of us, her eyes held an unglazed look and her
lips were forming were words silently. I could also see that her brow was
furrowed, perhaps in intense concentration.
"Now 113F," continued Chaswell. "It's time to finish what we came here to do."
A groan from behind me interrupted Mr Chaswell's instructions. A glance over my
shoulder revealed 58A to be climbing to her feet slowly. "Ahh, my lost Angel! So
good to see you alive. Perhaps now you're ready to return to the fold?"
"Never," hissed 58A. "I serve only my Master." Before she'd even finished
speaking the last word, "my" Angel was darting across the open room between
herself and Mr Chaswell. She moved quicker than any human being had a right to,
but I knew it was a fruitless attempt. 58A was fast, but Mr Chaswell had sixteen
very speedy friends on his side and it would only take
one of them to stop her cold.
He did not fire, however. Instead, he simply spoke one word very clearly.
"Remorhaz."
The effect was instantaneous. 58A stopped to a complete halt within three steps
- just before she could launch her self from the couch in the middle of the room
and at her target - and slid to her knees, head bowed. Susan, too, had ceased
her silent mouthing and now stood with closed eyes and lowered head.
"How the fu-"
"You don't think we failed to plan for the possibility that one or more of our
Angels might get of line do you?" He laughed. "The word 'Remorhaz' is the first
and most basic part of every potential Angel's programming. It is in fact the
basis for the remainder of their training and programming. Whenever an Angel
hears the word, she effectively shuts down - like a computer saving itself from
a particularly insidious virus. And when she boots back up, it's with all
original programs restored." He paused gleefully. "In other words, the once
corrupted Angel belongs again to The Club."
At that point, I knew I was dead. There was nothing else I could do. My "wild
card" had played itself and I'd come up short. I knew it, and so did the smug
bastard pointing the gun at me.
"Well Mr Kendalli, I really have no more time to waste, so I'm afraid this is
goodbye." He raised the Baretta's barrel slightly to point at the centre of my
forehead.
I gritted my teeth and waited for the end.
The report of the gun going off intermingled with the sound of a piercing shriek
as Susan suddenly threw herself across in front of me. Her graceful dive ended
as the bullet hammered into her upper chest, dropping her like a lead weight.
For just a second I stood there, unable to comprehend that I wasn't dead - but
that the woman I loved most likely was.
And then I was moving, incomprehensible rage fuelling my flight. I crossed the
first fifteen feet between myself and Chaswell in what felt like a nanosecond,
because he was only raising the gun to fire at me as I leapt off my couch and
arrowed through the air towards him.
He was too slow, of course. He'd had his chance, but killing his prized new
recruit instead of his target had rattled him just enough. I slammed into him
before he had the chance to fire, and together we tumbled to the floor. I
slammed a balled fist up and into his bulging stomach as we rolled to a halt -
this time, my opponent on top of me. Then I reached up and grabbed the sides of
his hair and slammed my forehead into the bridge of his nose. Blood spurted onto
my face in a fast torrent, stinging my eyes and filling my mouth. Chaswell took
the opportunity to smash a fist into my jaw and scamper off me. But I snaked a
hand out and caught his trouser leg, and little by little drew myself up as he
tried to pull away. I threw myself across him, shoving him down onto the cold
hardwood floor of my apartment, and then crashed a fist into his right kidney.
Chaswell floundered beneath me as I managed to straddle his squirming body.
"Please," I heard him whine. "Please stop!"
I grabbed him again by the sides of his head and slammed his head into the
floorboards once . . .
"Die . . ."
. . . twice . . .
" . . . you . . ."
. . . three times . . .
" . . . FUCKER!"
. . . and kept hammering it until I was holding little more than a pulpy mass in
my blood-drenched hands.
Tasting bile, I stood and staggered over to where Susan lay in a pool of slowly
spreading blood. I knelt down beside her, and brushed her gorgeous hair from her
gorgeous face. A pair of unfocused, unblinking eyes confronted me.
Biting down hard on my lip, I turned away and found myself staring at 58A. She
was still kneeling on the floor but was evidently beginning to stir as the
muscles in her legs and arms were twitching. Hurriedly, I rushed across to the
drawer where Susan and I had kept out ropes, scarves and cuffs and gathered up a
handful of restraining items. I had no idea whether Mr Chaswell had been lying
about what would happen when my one-time Angel woke up, but at this stage of
proceedings I wasn't about to take any chances.
I swiftly bound 58A tightly. Hands together in palm to palm fashion so I could
also cinch her elbows together as tightly as possible. That done, I wrapped and
cinched rope around her ankles, knees, and upper thighs, before attaching her
wrists to her ankles in a back-arching hogtie. She was awake by this time and
staring at me coldly, but she never spoke a word as I
stuffed two handkerchiefs in her mouth and tied them in place with a thin
rope as a mouth stretching cleave gag. Over that I wadded another handkerchief,
being careful to prod the edges of it into the small recesses remaining behind
her upper and lower gums. An ace bandage was last, wrapped first in between and
then over her lips to further muffle any sound
she could have made.
My final words to her were a whispered "I'm sorry", to which she responded with
a glare that should have killed me on the spot. It was obvious that Chaswell had
been telling the truth - "Remorhaz" worked. Which meant from this point, I would
be using it to stay one step ahead of The Bondage Club and all its affiliated
Chapters.
*****
I wish there had been time to grieve for Susan. But while I knew that Chaswell
would never again bother me, I was equally aware that there was entire network
of affiliated Chapters who would be baying for my blood
And as a result, I've been running now for almost two and a half months now.
More on that soon.
*****
