Chapter 14: The Underground Brothel

It took me about twenty minutes to find Room 101. I knew I was looking for a door with numbers on it, and after wandering around for about fourteen minutes I found Room 101. Finding the room was a matter of following the doors as their numbers increased.

Room 101 seemed like any other room. The walls, floor, and ceiling were made of rock. A single fluorescent tube at the top lit up the whole room. The room was about the size of my parents' bedroom, which was about double the size of the average teenager's bedroom. A desk stood at one corner of the room and on this desk was a cash register. Sitting on a chair by the desk was Mark. He had his white robe on, but neither his hood nor his mask was on. The cash register was open and Mark was counting cash. The way his fingers so quickly flicked through the paper notes showed how experienced he was in money-handling. Mark looked up at me. I kept reminding myself that I was wearing a mask, so Mark couldn't know who I really was.

"Leon!" he said, finishing up his money-counting before getting up to shake my hand. "I've heard much about you. It's great to finally meet you."

Finally meet me? Mark had never met this Leon character before, but Mark certainly knew my voice, so if I was going to speak to him I needed to change my voice or else he'd recognize who I really was.

"It's good to meet you too," I said, putting on what I thought was a Russian accent.

"Have you got a cold?" asked Mark. "You sound a little different."

"Yes, I do have a cold. I've been sick the last few days."

Mark nodded. "So how has your first few weeks been? You enjoying yourself?"

"Very much," I said.

"You know why you're here, don't you? You're being promoted to brothel manager, not bad for someone who's been working here for only a few weeks. This is reward for your excellent job capturing that bitch kid and drugging the school food supplies. If you keep doing the good stuff, who knows, maybe you'll become an executive and work directly for me. That's when the big bucks start rolling in."

"That's what I want," I said, managing a laugh to lighten the mood. Mark responded to my laugh very well, patting me on the shoulders like I was a good friend.

Mark spoke. "You know how to work a cash register, right?"

"Um, not really."

"Rupert told me you knew how to work a cash register. He said you knew everything."

"I did," I said, "but I forgot. I used to know when I was younger."

"Nevermind, I'll teach you now." He pressed a green button and the till opened, exposing all the money. "Chuck all the cash in here." He then opened a drawer I hadn't noticed before and pulled out a folder, throwing it on the desk. When the folder landed on the desk, it opened to reveal papers with small portraits. Under each portrait were numbers. "Here's the catalogue of prostitutes. When the customer flicks through the catalogue and selects a prostitute, you enter the prostitute's identification number into the machine. The price will show up on the screen. The customer either accepts or rejects the price. If he rejects, let him pick a cheaper or better prostitute. If he accepts, take his money. They can do anything they want with the prostitute for fifteen minutes. If they want more time, they have to pay more."

I looked at the catalogue. Each page in the folder had nine portraits and under each portrait was a ten-digit identification number. Below the identification number was the room or cell number, where they could be found. There were no names, just numbers.

"Why don't you have the price printed on the catalogue?" I asked.

"Because the price is always changing," said Mark. "Different prostitutes set different prices. The hot bitches will want to charge more than the ugly bitches or else the hot bitches will be swamped with customers, and prices change all the time because one day people like bitches with big tits and the next day they want bitches with small titties. If we print the price out we'd have to change the prices all the time. That's a waste of paper."

I nodded. His explanation made sense.

"Got any other questions? Feel free to ask, man. Fuckin', first day on the job you're gonna be confused a lot, so if anything's not clear just ask now."

"What kind of people come here?"

"All kinds, man." Mark smiled. "We've got heaps of kids coming here as well. The school where I go... I've been going around advertising this place like crazy. You get heaps of young little boys coming in here wanting to get their first taste of pussy or cock. We provide especially for that market. Normally when you go to a street whore, if you don't know what you're doing maybe the whore will laugh at you and stuff. Fuck, here we treat our customers with more respect than that. If you're a beginner, we treat you like a beginner."

"How many people come in here?"

"Ever since you filled the school water and food supply with 97.1 we've been getting heaps of people coming in."

"What?"

"You know what Solution 97.1 is, don't you?"

I nodded even though I had no idea.

"Solution 97.1 is what the nerds call an aphrodisiac. It makes you horny! The drug took ages to make. We spent heaps of time testing samples only to throw them away after we tested it on animals. We wanted the drugs to be perfect. We wanted the animals to be so horny."

"When you threw away the drugs, where did you throw it away?"

"We used to just throw it in the bin," said Mark, "but then I started to get worried about garbage collectors getting suspicious, so recently we've wrapped all our drugs in black plastic bags and dumped them in ponds and rivers."

"Do you use anything other than drugs to tempt people to buy porn?"

"We also give away free Internet porn blocker software for parents to install. When the kids don't get Internet access to porn and have their sex drive intensified by our drug from food at the canteen, that's only going to make them more and more horny."

I nodded. "That's a good idea."

"Customers come in here." Mark pointed to a door. "Behind this door are stairs that lead to the backyard of my house. That's how people get to this brothel. They go to my house first. There's a dunny in the backyard of my house. That's how they get here. There's a hidden door that leads here. I have to tell people about the hidden door before they can come here."

I had one more question I wanted to ask. "Why do we have to wear these robes?"

"It's a safety thing," said Mark. "Just in case the police get in here and start video-recording stuff. If we wear robes, they won't know who we are. But I'm a hundred percent sure no cops are getting in here, so I don't bother putting on a mask as much as the other guys do. There is absolutely no chance any cops will get us because we are heavily armed. You should see some of the weapons we've got. The police will never get in here. You should take your mask off."