Chapter 1

In the Hip Room there wasn't even elbow room, but no one seemed to mind. There were many other attractions. There was noise, confusion, smoke (not all of it from tobacco) and the pungent smells of unwashed bodies, stale beer, cheap wine and vomit. There was long, unkempt hair, beards, bare bellies above hip-huggers and bare thighs below abbreviated miniskirts. There were many dirty feet, both bare and sandaled, and many grimy hands.

In one corner, where it squatted like the insane, plastic monster it was, a jukebox taxed its mechanical lungs and electric vocal cords to the utmost, bellowing out the frenzied beat of a rock group to make itself heard above the witless, jabbering din that rose in a mad cacophony from the crowd.

The final touch to this man-made inferno was supplied by multicolored, wildly unsynchronized strobe lights that were strung along the low ceiling.

No torture chamber devised for the specific purpose of driving its hapless victims to madness could have compared in devilish ingenuity of the Hip Room.

To Ellen Canfield, however, it was all very exciting. It was her first experience in a place if its kind and, although she felt both out of place and somewhat frightened, she was enjoying herself immensely. She turned to convey this information to her escort, only to discover that he had managed to slip away from her unnoticed. She thought she could see the back of his blond head through the haze of smoke and was temporarily reassured. She supposed he was trying to squirm his way through the densely packed crowd to get drinks from the bar. Vaguely she worried about where he would sit when he returned. The space he had occupied on the bench at the long table beside her was now taken by another person; whether man or woman she could not be sure, for all she could see was the back of a head with its shoulder-length, brown hair. He solved the matter of his sex by turning toward her, revealing a bearded jaw and dull, glazed eyes of pale blue on either side of a jutting, fleshy nose.

"Here," he said, "take a hit." He offered her an inch of crudely rolled cigarette, the end soggy from many lips.

"What is it?" she asked, drawing away and wrinkling her nose at the acrid smoke. She thought she knew but couldn't be sure. She had never before seen marijuana. At least she was certain it did not resemble the neat, filter-tipped cigarettes she smoked.

"Whadaya mean, what is it?" the man demanded indignantly. "It's a joint. Whatcha think it is, hashish?"

She hesitated, revolted by the thought of that sodden butt between her lips, yet afraid of offending the one making the offer. She shifted uncomfortably when he took his first good look at her, and his eyes widened, then narrowed.

"Well, I'll be dipped in shit!" he exclaimed. "Damned if it ain't Miss Uptown herself. Whatcha doing down here, baby doll... little slumming trip?"

Ellen blushed. Under the flashing strobes it probably was not noticeable, but she felt her flesh become hot, as though a blowtorch had been turned on her. The intensity of the hot flash rendered her speechless and made her a little sick. There was a terrible moment in which the noise, the stench and her own fear hit her like a blow to the solar plexus. She wondered if she would faint.

The bearded man sneered knowingly. "You fucking squares are a pain in the ass," he said disdainfully. "Come down here to see how the weirdos live... like going to the zoo to look at the apes. Then you get all shook if one of us speaks to you. Whatsa matter, baby, you figure I got leprosy or something?"

"I'm sorry," Ellen stammered drawing as far away from him as she could, trying not to show her disgust or fear. "I... I didn't mean any harm. I've never been to a place like this before, and I've never smoked marijuana. My boy friend brought me here. He's gone for drinks... I think," she ended lamely.

The bearded man grinned, but it was not a friendly grin. His eyes, sparking now with interest, started at her feet and moved with slow and calculated insolence up her nylon-sheathed legs to rounded thighs visible below the hem of her miniskirt. They rose to the slight curve of her stomach and the contours of a sweetly crafted torso, revealed in abundant detail by the form-hugging fabric of her knit dress. They lingered appraisingly on the twin bulges of her breasts, then rose to her face, baby-round beneath the heaped meringue of her champagne-blonde hair. He read the unmistakable fear in her blue eyes and in the nervous trembling of her soft, red lips. "Whenever I see a chick like you," he said with toneless menace, "all starched and ironed and strapped into place, I get the damnedest urge to mess her up. So you dreamed you went slumming in your Maidenhead bra and in your Playsex girdle, did you? I gotta notion to pull them to hell off of you and see what you look like with your titties flopping and your bare cunt hanging out."

Ellen gasped in shocked horror. "You wouldn't! You wouldn't dare! This is a public place! My escort will be back. He'll... he'll..."

The bearded man laughed unpleasantly. "You just said the wrong word, you goddamned phony, antiseptic, perfumed bitch. Nobody dares Max Kern. Hey, look what I got here," he said to the others at the table. "Smart-assed cunt needs a lesson. Watch for that blond square she was with while I show this chick how we do it on Cool Street."

"No! No!" Ellen screamed as Max Kern's long-fingered dirty hands reached for her. "Help me!" she appealed to a hard-faced girl her own age who sat across from her. The girl curled a pale upper lip and, to Kern, said: "Why doncha take her down under the table and fuck her, Maxy? We'll cover for you. When her boy friend comes back, we'll tell him she split on him."

Ellen screamed again. Not a head turned in her direction. Screaming was the normal method of communication in the Hip Room. She tried to fight, but her efforts were futile. Not only was Max several times stronger than she, but by this time she was so nearly paralyzed with terror that all power had deserted her arms and legs. He easily held her arms pinned to her sides while his free hand went under the hem of her dress to claw at her panties. She felt the elastic give and then he had drawn them down to act as a hobble around her kicking ankles. Despite the fact that she held her legs clamped as tightly together as possible, he thrust hard fingers into the tender flesh of her inner thighs, violating for the first time the sacrosanct cleft of her crotch, roughly parting the hair-shrouded lips of her vagina.

She continued to scream, even though she knew it was useless. Those around the table were laughing and leering at her. Those in the rest of the place ignored her. As she felt Max Kern begin to slide under the table and drag her with him, her sanity left her; she was bludgeoned temporarily numb by the impossibility of what was happening to her. She was from a small town, and certainly no smarter than the average of her sex and she knew--just as she knew that there is a President of the United States, that the sun rises in every morning, and that Walter Cronkite comes on every evening- -that one does not get raped in a public place among seventy or more people. She knew that, but it was happening anyway. Her mind, therefore unable to cope with the impossible, withdrew from the nightmare that was taking place, leaving her only enough awareness to feel pain, shame and horror.

They were on the floor under the table. Bare, willing feet found her arms and held them with cruel pressure against the cement floor. Her resistance was instinctive but feeble and futile as her dress was tugged and pulled until it was bunched under her armpits. Her bra surrendered to a savage jerk that tore the snaps loose and her panties were snatched the rest of the way off of her weakly thrashing legs. The cement was cold and hard against her bare back and buttocks. She had stopped screaming and only cried in a continuous, sobbing bleat of mindless terror.

"How is it, Max?" A bearded face appeared upside down under the edge of the tablecloth.

"Don't know," Ellen's attacker grunted. "I ain't fucked her yet. But, man, she's got one hell of a body. Dig them big boobies."

"Yeah," the upside down one agreed. "You gonna suck her cunt, too?"

"Naw, not now. She ain't in no condition to appreciate the finer things. Maybe after I've broken her in I'll take her up to my pad and give her the full treatment. Depends on how she acts."

"How about me taking seconds on her when you're through?"

"Sure. She'll need a lot of screwing to tame her down. We got all afternoon. Tell the rest of the guys, too. Pussy just ain't much good unless it's been gang-banged. Keep a watch out for the guy she was with." As he talked, Max had been dropping his trousers. He wore no underwear. He held his long, hard cock in his hand, fondling it lovingly as he knelt between her legs and studied her hair-fringed slit.

"Okay, baby doll," he muttered as he lowered himself to her, "here's where you get it... right up to the balls!" He addressed the dripping, throbbing head to her opening and settled himself, his bearded lips quivering with lust and his pale eyes glowing in anticipation as he hesitated one last second to savor the creamy expanse of her beautifully molded torso and the swelling mounds of her breasts with their pink and brown nipples, the softly rounded contours tremulous with the agitation of her sob-shaken body. He pushed the broad, purplish bead of his prick into her until it was lost to sight. Then, with a long, almost anguished "ahhh" of pleasure, he thrust down with all his strength, driving the bone- hard instrument into her, relishing the exquisite sensation of her flesh parting or tearing as it was shouldered aside by his ruthlessly rapacious root.

Ellen screamed again, but the hard-eyed girl who had been across the table from her was bending down so that she could watch. Expecting the scream, she effectively muffled it by putting a bare, dirty foot in Ellen's open mouth. She kept her foot there for a while, then transferred it to one of the exposed breasts, roughly massaging it and sometimes pinching the nipple with a prehensile big toe. As she peered under the uplifted edge of the tablecloth, her face was flushed; and her eyes shining, her breath coming in convulsive gasps. One hand was under her skirt, her fingers frantically manipulating her clitoris.

Had Ellen looked about her, she would have seen not only the shapely limbs of the hard-eyed girl, trembling to one self-induced orgasm after another, but that the men at the table, inflamed by the vicarious thrill of what they knew to be taking place right under their feet, had unzipped themselves and were stroking their cocks. They also cried encouragement to Max.

"Fuck her, man!"

"Stick it to her, Maxy!"

"Ram it clear up into her goddamn fucking guts!"

But Ellen was not aware. She knew only pain and, dimly, that she was naked on the floor while a man raped her, that the virginity she had cherished for nineteen years was being ravaged and destroyed, and that her oneness with herself as an entity distinct from all others was being annihilated. Mostly she was aware of the plunging, piston-like prick and the ruthlessness in which it battered her inner body, each thrust as agonizing as though performed by a hot poker. But even pain must finally reach a plateau, must suffer a surfeit of itself until it fails from overproduction. It lessened. She opened her eyes to the forest of legs, feet and dripping pricks as seen through the fringe of Max's rancid-smelling beard. As a child she had had nightmares, but none to compare with this atrocious and impossible scene. She had two choices... either go completely insane with fear, or withdraw in a kind of stunned indifference and patiently await the moment when this Phantasmagoria would end.