WE WALK IN SILENCE BENEATH UNNERVING CRIMSON RAYS until we’re upon a wooden double door engraved with twisting branches and leaves.
Cameron turns to look at me. “Ready?”
My eyes meet his through our masks. After a long moment, I nod.
His grasp on my hand is unyielding as he opens the door and pulls me through.
A gasp escapes me as I catch sight of the scene before us, everything stilling, time suspended. The room is lit in muted coral hues which are positively soothing compared to the aggressive red light of the corridor. There is a bar to the right where masked bartenders serve champagne, cocktails and other liquor to a few patrons perched on stools who have removed the bottom halves of their masks. A brown sectional surrounding a wooden table dominates the center of the room. Thick candles burn in glass vases on mahogany tables and a single stick of incense placed in a bowl of sand lightly perfumes the air. The ornate gold and olive-green wallpaper is obviously hand-printed and the rich hardwood is adorned with two intricately woven rugs of cream and mossy green. Two sturdy-looking masked men wearing black suits stand purposefully beside the open door on the other side of the room, through which I catch a glimpse of the foot of a wide staircase. Armchairs and loveseats are dotted around the room next to tables covered in various items—drinks, fruit, water, tissues, condoms.
Eyes burn into us from behind expressionless masks. Not a single person anywhere is without one, with some wearing unnerving masks with long, crooked noses and sinister-looking features that are frankly the stuff of nightmares. I squeeze Cameron’s hand without meaning to as I zoom in on a couple spread out on the sectional in front of us. On the left, a hooded man’s robe is open from the neck down, every intimate part of his muscular body fully exposed. A woman sits on the rich sepia table opposite him, leaning towards him. Her robe has fallen off her tanned shoulders and is bunched up around her waist, leaving her ample breasts exposed and her nipples erect.
On a black loveseat on the other side of the room, a woman sits cross-legged next to a half-naked man who is fondling her breasts through her robe while she glides her hand up and down his chest. The bottom halves of their masks have been removed and they are kissing each other passionately, pushing their tongues into each other’s mouths in a dramatic display of unabashed oral exploration. He tugs at her thick nipples with his fingers before slowly pulling open her robe and sliding his hand between her legs.
Cameron glances in my direction for a moment before pulling my hand and leading me to the bar where we perch on tall stools. The masked barmen are wearing white gloves and burgundy three-piece suits. I barely have a chance to sit down when one of them approaches.
“Evening, madam,” he utters, his accent clipped, his tone proper. His mask is made of white leather, with two tiny slits for his eyes and one for the mouth. The thing looks like something out of a depraved horror movie.
Cameron instantly turns to the barman. “If we need something, we’ll ask for it.”
“Very good, sir.”
Before getting a chance to get settled, I spot a stocky robed man slowly make his way towards us from the other side of the room. As he arrives within six feet of us, Cameron moves his arm across my body in an unsubtle off-limits gesture and the stranger changes course, taking a seat a few feet to our right. As he does so, a dark-skinned woman with ample hips saunters past us, her robe hanging off her shoulders, revealing her naked breasts and neatly trimmed pubis. The sight of her perfect body slices through me. The idea of Jack being in this place makes me feel physically sick. And seeing Cameron look at these women isn’t much easier…
“Is this the only room?” I ask.
Cameron leans over to me, raising his voice slightly over the moody, hypnotic music. “No. This is nothing. This is just a relaxation area for before or after the entertainment.”
I swallow hard at the thought.
“Do you want to see more?” he asks, his eyes connecting with mine.
I pause for a moment. This room is clearly the fat-free vanilla yogurt of this establishment. If this is nothing, there is a risk that seeing the rest will hurt me badly.
“Show me the rest,” I respond.
Cameron watches me for a few moments before grasping my hand and leading me towards the double doors to our right where we’re greeted by a majestic staircase, at the top of which more masked people are milling around. On our level to the right of the staircase is a long corridor lined with more doors. We head down it past doors adorned with various symbols carved into the wood: phallic symbols, rosebuds, riding crops, whips, cages, chains, beds, chairs, handcuffs.
We make our way between two masked security guards on either side of a black door and into a room that leaves me struggling to catch my breath again. Though I’m vaguely aware of the sight and scent of naked bodies, a colossal tree immediately transfixes me—an oak carved into a wooden panel that covers the entire length of the wall in front of us, from floor to lofty ceiling. The carving stands at least twenty feet high and is as intricate as any engraving I’ve ever seen in my life. Rough grooves of sinewy trunk lead up to twisted branches and clouds of multitudinous leaves. The wooden panel itself is a golden brown color and the tree carving has been stained to look much darker, almost black in the soft gleam of this dimly lit room.
Quercus Velutina.
The Black Oak.
I take a deep breath and pan down the oak onto the bodies below. The room is dark, but I can still make out the robes draped on ornate wall-mounted hooks and the naked men and women adorning the room, limbs twisting and writhing, gasps and moans emanating from behind masks. Glistening perspiration gleams in the candlelight and the unmistakable smell of sex is everywhere.
A woman lies supine on a claret rug. A half-masked woman’s head is between her legs, tending to her sex with the tip of her tongue while a naked man runs his fingers up and down the woman’s body to the rhythm of eerie chanting reverberating throughout the room like the soundtrack to some sacrificial ritual.
In a dark corner of the room, a buff man sits on a loveseat while a half-masked woman performs slow licks up and down his large shaft while another man positions himself behind her, pulling her hair roughly before putting his hands around her throat and squeezing as he whispers what seem like menacing words into her ear, the head of his sheathed erection positioned at the entrance to her body.
On a sofa against the back wall, two women kiss and fondle each other while a naked man rubs a hand up and down their bodies while occasionally pushing his sex against the curves of their hips. From the corner of the room, a half-masked woman approaches him, kneels down and opens her mouth wide. He pushes his hard manhood inside and she sucks fervently, bobbing her head as she moves her lips enthusiastically up and down his shaft while he grabs her hair roughly. The two women kissing each other stop and turn to face him and join in, with all three sharing long licks up and down his sex while kissing and fondling each other as the man throws his head back and groans with pleasure.
The draw of Cameron’s hand leads me out of the room.
“More?” he asks as we reach the other side of the door and I nod instantly, wanting to make sure I see everything I need to.
Light laughter emanates from behind the unsettling masks of a group we pass in the corridor. We come to a stop before a blue door with a chain and shackles engraved onto it and the familiar ALL MASKS ON sign next to it. Heading in, we’re hit by violent metal music accompanying deep, throaty singing in some Scandinavian language. The room is dark but for orange and blue strobe lights that dart around frantically and the faint glow from a spattering of wall-mounted lamps. The shackles on the door had prepared me for seeing some BDSM, but I’m not sure that you can ever really fully prepare yourself for a sight such as this.
Four eight-foot-tall steel frames are mounted around the room, two to our right and two to our left. Five metal chains are attached to each frame, all leading to shackles locked around the ankles, wrists and necks of four naked, masked souls suspended in the middle of the frames like trussed turkeys. In the frame to our left, a muscular man with caramel skin is wearing shackles while a naked woman whips his back with a leather crop. Hard. The smell of leather wafts in the air as lashes are rained down upon his back. In front of him kneels a naked woman performing fellatio on him.
In the frame opposite him, the shackles adorn a petite woman being fucked from behind by a powerhouse of a man wearing a robe that flaps against her ankles as he grips the metal shackle around her neck and thrusts into her aggressively, grunting loudly with each impalement. The gruesome, twisted features of his mask are frankly disturbing. The woman’s wrists and ankles are held apart by shackles and chains, her feet just about on the floor. She couldn’t get out of that mess if she tried. A pale man takes up position in front of the woman and starts caressing her tiny breasts. He lowers his head and licks and bites at her nipples before clamping them hard between his fingers as she shakes her head in response. The man behind her lets out a final triumphant groan, pulls out of the woman and removes his sheath, swiftly placing it in a tissue and into a wastepaper basket on the floor nearby. As he does so, the man in front of her takes up position behind her, grabs her around the neck and says something into her ear to which she responds with a nod and some words that are dissimilated by her mask.
As the man takes a condom from a table nearby, I divert my eyes. I can’t watch anymore. I want to rescue her, to run over there and pull her out, to push those men away from her, but I know she’s choosing to be there. I know she wants it and is probably enjoying it as much as anyone else here. I just can’t understand how.
Cameron holds my hand tightly and protectively as I scan the rest of the room. Opposite us against the back wall stand two short frames from which hang whips, clamps and riding crops. Inside one of the frames, a woman wearing some kind of tight leather catsuit is bent over on all fours as a man thrusts in and out like some wild animal while a group watches nearby, drinking from champagne flutes. Another man stands over them, caressing his hard sex, readying himself to take his turn.
I look up to see a naked, half-masked woman with a veil over her hair sashaying through the crowd in our direction, drink in hand. Cameron immediately pulls me out of the room and past the security guards at the door. This time he doesn’t ask me if I want to keep going and leads me straight down the corridor. We walk past an open door that has two rosebuds engraved on the doorframe. As I glance inside, I see only women, all naked, their bodies glistening, hands and tongues everywhere.
We don’t go in. Instead, Cameron pulls me through a maroon door with an engraving of a woman’s mouth on it. Four women, all naked and half-masked, lie on their backs on top of four slim beds, their heads dangling off the foot of them. Their mouths are all open as various men slide their cocks into and out of them roughly. A couple of the women have their legs spread, dense muscles holding them down as they are fucked by men on top of them who are taking advantage of the fact that the women are otherwise occupied. The men are all grunting at the sensation and submission to the soundtrack of female whimpers.
We watch for half a minute until Cameron once again pulls me out without asking and into a room with a white door branded with the engraving of a table. The room is quiet but for some incongruously relaxing meditation music that wouldn’t be out of place in a yoga class on the Upper East Side. The refreshing scent of verbena and sandalwood perfumes the air and the walls are a cool beige and lit in soft candlelight.
The serene décor clashes perversely with the six short heavily varnished wooden tables lined up in the center of the room. A naked woman is bent over each of the tables, facedown, and six men are positioned behind them, each taking one woman from behind. Some men are quiet while others groan fiercely as they penetrate the women in various ways. A group of masked spectators, the elite of New York, watch from the back wall, some seemingly waiting their turn while others simply enjoy the entertainment, champagne coupes in hand, with one man’s fervent arousal clear for all to see.
A man at the table closest to us lets out a cry and collapses over a woman’s back before withdrawing from her and removing his sheath. They both slowly get to their feet without so much as looking at each other and collect their robes from a hook on the wall before walking past us and out of the room, their demeanor betraying absolutely no emotion.
Time pulses by in slow motion as a short masked woman, her hair covered with some type of veil, approaches the vacant table from the back of the room and disrobes to reveal her slim, tanned, small-breasted body. She is muscular and graceful with manicured fingers and from the look of her body and skin, she looks to be in her mid-thirties. She hangs up her robe before grabbing a hand towel from a cart standing against the back wall, spraying it with some kind of solution and wiping down the recently vacated table. Without even looking behind her to see who will be fucking her, she bends over the table, her naked buttocks facing the spectators against the back wall and her breasts and taut stomach pressed into the varnished tabletop.
A tall muscular blond man approaches, hangs up his robe and picks up a condom from a table nearby before taking up position directly behind her. The sight of the expressionless mask with its strong male features floating over her petite body sends a frisson of fear into me. He gets down on his knees and takes a long, slow lick up and down her back before sliding the sheath over his erect penis. The man leans over her and teases the entrance to her body with the head of his sex for a moment while gliding his hands up and down her back, digging his fingertips into her golden skin before suddenly spearing himself inside her roughly in a move that leaves her wailing and gripping the table as if in pain. He leans on top of her with his full weight, caging her in so she couldn’t move even if she wanted to as he nips the curve of her shoulder with his teeth. He puts his right hand over her masked mouth and starts to fuck her. Hard. So hard. It looks merciless. I’m almost in pain just watching them.
We watch for a suspended half-minute that leaves me more and more uneasy with each passing second.
My skin crawls and goosebumps radiate up my back until suddenly, it hits me.
As the surreal, twisted piece of theatre unfolds, it dawns on me with dizzying clarity that I know this scene.
I’ve been in this scene.
The other day.
The Hamptons house.
The scene blazes into my mind like an explosion going off right before me and I see Jack leaning me over the ottoman and ravaging me with his hands over my mouth. I picture him caging me against the leather of the ottoman, feel his strong tongue gliding up and down my back and his fingers kneading my muscles, feel his dewy chest slide against my soft body and remember the spike of pain as he impaled me mercilessly, possessing me, dominating me, owning my body.
This is the same scene.
Jack was playing out this scene with me.
No.
A cold sweat frosts my skin and my breath leaves me in a rush as I sense the familiar terror of the panic attacks that used to torment me in my teens and which I was sure I had grown out of forever. As I look at the scene again, I no longer see a masked man and a faceless woman; I see Jack fucking me as Alex Frost, Sebastian Gravier and Vallen Markov stand and watch from the back wall. As the man thrusts ruthlessly inside the woman’s docile body, the room starts to spin and as frenzy tightens its grip, I yank my hand away from Cameron’s and turn and run out of the room, back down the corridor in the direction of the door we came through fifteen minutes earlier.
Over the muffled whoosh of blood in my ears, I’m vaguely aware of people walking past me and of a voice behind me as I dart past the staircase and turn left past the security guards into the lounge with the bar. The room trembles before my eyes; I could swear the patrons with their distorted masks are all turned towards me, laughing, whispering, clawing at my skin.
Jesus…
Please…
I slow to a brisk walk and head through those first engraved double doors we entered and into the red zone corridor, relieved that I get through without incident. Barely able to catch my breath, I rip the cursed mask off my face and start to run down the empty hallway towards the metal doors ahead. I make it about thirty feet before a strong arm grabs me tightly around the chest from behind and a man’s hand covers my mouth hard, stopping me dead in my tracks.
“Stop! Now!” The man’s low growl vibrates through me as he clutches my body mercilessly against his, leaning his masked mouth against my left ear. “You are attracting attention. You’re going to stop, right now.”
I squirm to release myself, but his grip is immovable and he keeps me prisoner until I start to catch my breath again and the scene around me stops shaking and I manage to take in some air. As the intimidating black mask presses against my bare face and Cameron’s thick hair brushes against my forehead, I can’t help be aware of how hard his chest feels against my back and how strong and powerful his arms are around mine.
“We’re going to get out of here without attracting any more attention. I’m going to take my hand away from your mouth. You’re going to stay quiet and do exactly what I tell you to do.” Though little more than a whisper, his voice is as forceful and frightening as I’ve ever heard him be in my life. “Is that clear?”
I try to nod, but his hand is still firmly pressed over my mouth as his other arm contracts over my chest, holding me in place. I wait for him to let go, but he keeps holding me close from behind, his breathing strong. Despite his unrelenting grip, the panic I felt in that room continues to subside in his protective grasp and I let out a breath. The pulses in our necks dance against each other for several long heartbeats before he finally slides his hand away from my mouth and places it loosely around my throat, looking down at my profile from behind for what feels like an eternity.
“You’re going to do what I tell you,” he whispers, his dusky pink lips at my ear behind his mask. “Is that clear?”
I nod, a whimper escaping my throat.
Having ensured my complicity, he finally releases me and turns to pick up the mask that I dropped on the floor moments earlier.
Standing in front of me, his eyes soften behind his mask as he sees my distress.
“You need to put this on, now.” Our fingers brush against each other as he hands me the mask. I put it on and he pulls the hood up over my hair. “I need you to walk slowly. Don’t speak unless spoken to. If they ask why we’re leaving, I’m going to tell them you’re not feeling well. Understood?”
I nod.
“I need you to smile when you get in there. Mask or no mask, they can see right through it.”
He takes a firm hold of my hand and leads me down the corridor towards those familiar metal double doors that now feel like the bars of some cage I’m afraid we won’t be able to get out of if we step inside. As we approach, the door buzzes open once again and we walk into the holding room where the faceless woman and three mighty security guards stand, though this time around the thick tension in the air seems to have reached critical mass. Cameron lifts the sleeve of his robe to display the room key around his wrist.
“You’re leaving soon, sir.” The cordiality of the woman’s tone doesn’t hide the frigid suspicion that emanates from her like icy breath on a cold night. Behind the thin slits of her mask, her eyes study mine unblinkingly. I hold my breath.
“My friend has been feeling a little sick today—some stomach bug. We’ll come back another time.” Cameron is as composed as if he were chairing a business meeting.
One of the masked men glances down at the woman whose shadowy eyes flit from mine to Cameron’s and then back to me for five heart-stopping seconds which frighten me to my core. She finally nods in the direction of the guard standing adjacent to the door that will lead us out of this place… hopefully.
“Very good, sir. Have a safe journey home.”
The guard punches some numbers into a keypad and the door opens. Cameron wastes no time pulling me through to the other side. As I turn back to look at the woman before the door closes, I could swear I see her eyes narrow from behind her mask.
After what feels like an interminable walk, we arrive at room 66 and Cameron pulls the key off his wrist and unlocks the door.
