Blind Angel of Wrath (The Blind Sleuth Mysteries 2)

7 Here and now

In the dungeon a kind of routine sets in during the first week. The first days, the Master is only interested in his newest acquisition, which at least gives me the satisfaction of taking the heat off the young girl.

When he comes to get me, he orders me to take off my clothes before he even opens the cell, and I comply. There's no gain in antagonizing the man over such things.

Then by the end of that week, the rapist starts taking Loretta to his pleasure room again from time to time. On these occasions, I listen carefully, but I soon come to the conclusion that the said pleasure room must have a padded door that is closed during the proceedings. From our cell, I can't hear anything of what's going on in there.

When it is my turn again, I try to engage the rapist in conversation as much as possible, even though I find this highly distasteful and disagreeable. The man is so cold, so ruthless and self-centred, that these chats with him send a chill through my spine at every word. But I believe it is important to keep him talking.

The conversations never last long, anyway. They last only as long as it takes the rapist to set up his victim on one of his contraptions, and they always end brusquely with a punch in the stomach before the gag is applied. When I am tied to the wall with my arms above me, I find that I can prolong our chat by jiggling my breasts in a particularly fetching way; and on the rack, it is the shaving of the pubic area, when needed, that especially absorbs the man and makes him forget himself in conversation...

In a strange way he seems to like these exchanges, and at one time he confides that at least with me he can have an intelligent heart-to-heart, not like with Loretta, who is "way too young", and something of an "airhead".

"Well, now that you have me, darling Master, why don't you let her go?"

"Oh no, girl. That is out of the question. She knows a lot more about me than you do. Besides, I'm thinking of having a threesome, once in a while... In fact—or rather: in theory—you're the one I could let go without any risk to myself. You know absolutely nothing about me, and you have no idea where we are... You're just a stupid blind girl!"

"Are you saying that Loretta knows who you are and where this lair of yours is located?"

"All I'm saying is that the young one knows a lot more than she is letting on, but that she's smart enough to keep it to herself... You see, that little Miss Holier-than-thou is not as innocent as she wants you to believe."

When I have been brought back to our cell that night, I broach the subject as soon as I can speak. Loretta starts sobbing straight away, which takes me aback. Then, in her typically roundabout style of speech, interspersed with a profusion of sobs, hiccups and sighs, the girl confesses that she has not been kidnapped at all.

This is something that I already know: that she has met the Master at the hippie commune where she stayed after running away from home. That she has followed him voluntarily, because he was plying her with "groovy" drugs. But it is the part I didn't know yet that really appals me: that she has stayed in the house with him for a while, right here, above the dungeon. That he has even taken her down a couple of times to show her his "secret pleasure room"; it even seemed exciting at the time. "I just digged the kinky sex, you know, but that's because I was stoned out of my mind half of the time." And finally, after living upstairs with her new lover for a few weeks, Loretta became bored with him and wanted to leave, she wanted to "move on", but that then the Master had forced her to stay and locked her up down here...

"Oh darling, don't cry," I say at the end of the story, "You were lured, you were tricked, it's not your fault..."

"I know, but I feel so stupid!"