Chapter 14

The small dressing room above Club Royale's second floor stage was misnomered; it was almost exclusively used for undressing. The haggard miserable wife of Roger Carmel, Lonnie, and his similarly black-haired young daughter, Jennifer, stood huddled in shivering fear, icy tendrils of horror touching their spines and making their white, firm flesh tremble convulsively.

The ride from Stan Lubin's house had been a kaleidoscope of nightmares, and both mother and daughter had sat dazed, unable to speak to each other for the long, interminable minute it had taken to drive to the rear entrance of the club. Sam Zeigler had sat hunched over the steering wheel, chuckling lewdly from time to time, occasionally taunting the pretty wife and her teen-age child with obscene comments as to what was going to happen to them.

"I guess you're surprised to see your daughter here, aren't you, Lonnie-baby?" the vicious, immoral gangster had sneered. "Your once virgin little Jennifer? Well, look at her, look at what half the football team of her high-school has just finished gang-fucking!"

Lonnie had stared in utter disbelief as her shocked mind absorbed his vile words, and when she had looked over the rumpled pants and stained blouse of her innocent naive daughter, had heard the mewlings of satiation and desire bubble from the tender, swollen young lips, and had caught the trembling jerks of Jennifer's still throbbing, still demanding loins and thighs, the wife of Roger Carmel had thought that the earth would open up and hell would swallow her for sure. She had almost screamed with agony, putting her fisted hand to her open mouth and biting her knuckles until they bled, her torture-glazed eyes bulging wider.

She had somehow managed to gasp out around her constricted dry throat: "Why, Sam? Why, oh God, why my daughter too?"

And Zeigler had laughed low and ugly. "Because it was part of the price. Because your daughter was needed to make sure you would never dare say a word to anybody not in the know, not in the same world of lust and sex that you're in now, and she in turn must save her mother from the same fate by cooperating..."

His corrupt, salacious talking had cut through the dream-like trance of Lonnie's debauched young daughter for an instant, and little Jennifer had fluttered her eyes open for the first time since she had fainted. "Mo... mo..."

Those had been the only croaked gasps of intelligibility that the girl had been able to mutter throughout the whole ride, though she had tried to work her mouth, her jaw moving up and down soundlessly as she locked her tear-blurred, puffed eyes on her mother's tormented face.

Lonnie, bitterly grieving at this shattering confrontation, had realized that the final point of no return had been reached -- then, that never again could she have her baby girl curl up in her lap and cuddle with the warmth of love and security without them both recalling this horrible day and the still more terrifying night that was surely to follow.

And as for the night, the gangster had left no room for hope as he had driven the large Cadillac through the city streets. "This is almost too good to be true," he'd cackled. "I couldn't have asked for a better deal if I'd arranged it myself, but you have your friends and neighbors, the Olisses, to thank for setting this up."

The evil light in Sam Zeigler's lustful eyes had grown larger as he had glanced at Lonnie in the rearview mirror and seen how tenderly she cradled her raw, sore, abused child. He had been tempted to stop the car and turn around and watch how the lovely wife of Roger Carmel would react to the lewd confession that the Oliss plot was more than to simply pervert the two Carmel females, that the reason was to strip their husband and father of his livelihood, and that the one man they were doing all of their immoral submissions for had betrayed them by fucking the young girl he'd hired, Kim Copeland. Christ, mother and daughter would probably go mad with that news!

But Sam Zeigler had plotted the downfall of too many once pure men and women to lose control that much; he had the experience to know that should he spew out the full details of what had been going on since Roger Carmel had first announced the development of his invention might well wreak havoc on the carefully laid machinations of both the Olisses and himself. Lonnie Carmel still adored and worshipped her husband, and as long as she thought she could keep her sinful capitulations from him, she would do any thing to save what little there was left of her marriage and home; to learn that her beloved Roger was the true target could very well make her change about and warn her husband, sacrificing herself in his interests. On the other side of the coin, allowing Carmel's wife to know that he'd been unfaithful, either now or after the pictures of him and the Copeland whore were developed, might well turn her against her husband in a fury of anger, spite, and jealousy, and she would tell all. That would spell disaster, Zeigler had thought as he drove, for the holds over the Carmels depended that the wife and daughter didn't know what the husband was doing -- and vice versa.

Yes, he'd just have to be patient. The day would come for the confrontation -- after Roger Carmel handed over his invention -- and then there wouldn't be any more reason not to sadistically enjoy spilling the secrets each hoped the other would never learn. Besides, tonight there was going to be a confrontation of sorts, for the Martin Oliss plot required that Carmel learn of his wife's and daughter's public depravities in an inducement to cooperate with the man who had enslaved them. At this very moment, Oliss and Carmel were flying back to Rapier City after being sent for by Oliss' wife, Cylvia, who called in the guise of the "detective" earlier that afternoon. Zeigler had smiled with self-satisfaction at the corrupting, degenerate plan, and could almost picture the husband wringing his hands and moaning, a spineless, puritanical milksop who'd capitulate to the insidious terms with insipid whimperings and no more; serve the pretentious Carmel right to look out of that window a nd view his worshipped wife and teen-age daughter as the main performance -- with the help of Big Daddy Sam and his wonderfully trained dog, Fang, as added attractions!

The gangster laughed out loud at that point, and lashed out with further invectives at the helpless mother and daughter cringing together in the back seat. "Everything has been a lead-up for to night, Lonnie-baby," he'd taunted on, "In a little while the Club Royale is going to offer its special second-floor patrons the delights of a mother-daughter act for the first time in its history, and you'll do it, you hear? You and that hot-assed prick-teaser Jennifer, unless you want your husband to find out about the sordid sex lives of his two sweet girls. Those are my terms..."

Lonnie Carmel had been fully cognizant of her and her child's exact position, but she had looked into Jennifer's wooden eyes and had realized that the tremendous pressures the girl had already gone through had snapped her immature mind like a twig, and that the inundation of lewd, savage cocks by innumerable young boys had stopped the girl's brain from coherency the way a computer would throw its circuit breakers to halt unrepairable damage from a short. Perhaps it was better this way, she had thought; perhaps if her sweet, angelic daughter wasn't able to comprehend what tonight's pagan orgy would be like she could be saved the self-loathing and disgust which gripped at Lonnie's pain-wracked soul, and her barely formed life might still have a chance for a normal, happy and love-filled future.

"... Both of you are going to fulfill all the promised delights of your tender bodies," Zeigler had continued to taunt delightedly. "You and little Jennifer are going to get fucked every way I've ever wanted or dreamed about, and you two are going to do it back good and proper..."

His words had droned on, even after the Cadillac had been parked and the gangster had escorted Lonnie and the still mercifully half-conscious Jennifer into the private entrance of his night club. Lonnie's own helpless mind had come to the brutal conclusion that nothing mattered anymore except to get the night's lewd ordeal over with as fast as possible for her husband and her daughter's sake, and she had taken deep shuddering breaths as she mentally promised what she would do. With each faltering step on the narrow, steep back staircase leading to the room above the stage, the tortured wife of Roger Carmel had set her mind into a single vow that while she would awaken tomorrow permanently scarred with memories she would take to the grave, she would not let it destroy her family; that Roger must never know the horrors she and Jennifer were going through because the so-called friends they had liked and trusted had sold out her and her daughter to this evil maniac. She would protect her husband and, as little as she could, her child too, with all she had -- and all she had left was her body. A body at the mercy of Sam Zeigler and whomever he chose to share its secret pleasures.

She would show him, she had drummed through her recoiling brain, she would show him that she could please no matter what he would demand. He wanted her to act as a whore, then she would be his whore! She would suck anything if he said suck, fuck anything if he said fuck! Nausea had made her weave and clutch the faded paint door way of the room, but somehow she staggered onward, holding onto her child with determination born of hysterical hopelessness.

The (un)dressing room had been small, like a closet, most of it taken up by the huge, white-covered double bed and gold chains which she knew all too well. Lonnie's stomach had churned with the lurid remembrances of seeing the young girl only slightly older than her own little girl being cruelly raped by an enormous dog while she... while she... The mental words hadn't come to describe her own inexcusable acts, and for an instant the room had blurred and she had the distinct feeling that she was falling... her eyes faintly staring up at the electrical hoists mounted on the ceiling which lowered the chain-driven bed to the spot-lit stage below.

Zeigler's fingers had caught her in time, and his talon-like grip had made her perk back to the real world, for his touch had been something incredibly repulsive to her now; but she had made a promise, and swallowing back the nausea which acidly choked her throat, she had allowed the gangster to lead her beside the large, rectangular bed, and she had breathed deeply of air musty and unclean, with its odor of untamed sex and depravity-induced sweat.

And now the lecherous gangster, Zeigler, was rubbing his hands up and down his pants in anticipatory excitement, and his eyes burned holes through the pretty young wife of Roger Carmel. He said with a hoarse, trembling raucousness, "The show's about to begin. It's time you and your daughter, Jennifer, got ready. Strip, Lonnie baby, take those clothes off just like you did for me once today, and if that hot-cunted little girl of yours won't do it herself, you undress her, too." He chortled demoniacally. "Just pretend you're home and Jennifer's unable to get into bed herself, and you have to do it for her."