Authors: Maren Smith
“S
ara?” The shortest of the four women, the dark-haired slave girl, Hannah, knocked softly on the door just under the red and white “First Aid” sign. “Sara, Kaylee’s here.”
On cue, Kaylee stepped up behind Hannah, leaning in to the door as she called, “Sara, honey, please open the door. We just want to talk.”
Chelsea hovered as far out of the main group of women as Selena would let her go. She felt conspicuous now. She didn’t know these women. How likely would this Sara-person be to accept words of comfort from her friends with a stranger standing right here, listening in? She cringed a little when she heard the click of the door unlocking, and then it opened to reveal Hannah’s costume twin. Her long blonde curls had been gathered up in an elaborate coiffure on top of her head, with ringlets that dangled around her neck and shoulders, but which did little to hide the mottle of burn scars that crawled up the left side of her body. She was still beautiful, though, in spite of all those scars and her red-rimmed eyes and nose.
She looked embarrassed, glancing from Hannah to Kaylee, to Selena, who she offered a wan smile, before her gaze ended on Chelsea.
Feeling every bit as embarrassed as Sara looked, Chelsea waved. “Hi.”
Looking down, Sara shook her head once and
then, stepping back from the door, simply let them all inside.
Chelsea hovered at the threshold long after everyone else had crossed it, painfully aware that the polite thing would be for her to just leave and let the others console their friend in privacy. And yet, there was Selena, beckoning her to follow as she crossed the threshold and circled behind the door, disappearing after the others. And so, rubbing her palms nervously against her legs, she did.
Sara was perched on the side of a narrow medical bed, the only real furniture in the room aside from the examination table and a sink where the obvious reason for her tears were lined up along the counter—three pregnancy tests, lying side by side with their bright blue positive symbols standing out strong against the urine-discolored backgrounds.
“Oh,” Kaylee said, staring at them. She wasn’t smiling now. Nobody was. “Oh, honey.”
“We’ve been so careful,” Sara moaned, bending over to brace her elbows on her knees and buried her face in her hands. “We both use protection every single time…except for that once, out at the cabin when we just got so carried away. And don’t tell me that once is enough, because I’ve been thinking that very thing all morning!” Sniffing back a fresh new wave of tears, Sara pulled herself upright again. She reached for Kaylee, grabbing onto her hands and pulling her down to sit on the bed beside her. “What am I going to do?”
“Does Jackson know?”
Sara shook her head, a flash of panic crossing her features. “No. No, I can’t tell him. How can I tell him, Kaylee? We can’t have children here! What kind of parents would we be to raise children anywhere near this place? We’ve never talked about marriage or a family. I don’t know if he
wants
kids. I don’t know if
I
do!”
Chelsea shifted, growing increasingly uncomfortable. Her stomach tightened in sympathy for the woman, even as she slipped a backwards step toward the door.
“What am I going to do?” Sara wept, burying her face in her hands again. “What
can
I do?”
“I don’t know, sweetie,” Kaylee said, wrapping an arm around her shoulder. “But I do know this isn’t something you can hide for very long. And if you try to hide it from Jackson…honey, he is not going to understand.”
“No, he won’t,” Hannah said, sinking down to sit on the distraught woman’s other side. She also wrapped her arm around Sara’s shoulders. “Men are funny creatures. Doms who are also fathers are even funnier. You have to tell him.”
Doms? Chelsea cocked her ear. What was a Dom? Images from
The Godfather
flashed through her mind. What kind of place was this again?
This was all too strange and…and intimate. She felt like a peeping tom, watching from the back of the room while Sara the slave girl fell apart and her two friends tried their best to comfort her. Even Selena was somber. For some reason, that made it all that much worse. The door behind her was still wide open and, wondering if she should wave, say goodbye or just quietly disappear, Chelsea slid back a step toward it.
It was Kaylee who stripped her of that choice. Noticing the movement, when Kaylee glanced up, so did Selena. When she came back to stand with her, Chelsea whispered, “I should go.”
She half-expected Selena to argue, but she didn’t. Instead, they both stepped out of the room. Selena caught and squeezed her hand until they got enough distance between them and the open door so as not to disturb the others inside.
“You have your room number?” Selena asked.
“Yeah, I—” She looked at the manila envelope in her hands. She actually had no idea. It was paid for, right? Once she had a chance to really go through the papers she had, it made sense that she’d find a room number in there somewhere. If not, she could always go back to the admissions tables. “Yeah, I’ll be fine.”
Selena clutched her hand in both of hers now. “You’re coming to my wedding tomorrow, right?”
“Uh…” Never had anyone attach
ed themselves to her so firmly or so quickly. “Yeah,” she said, hoping her hesitation didn’t show. She didn’t want to hurt Selena’s feelings. “Sure I will.”
“You’ll be my bridesmaid?” Selena brightened, excitement beginning to edge back into her.
“Bridesmaid?” Chelsea echoed, startled.
Selena gave a muted squeal and threw her arms around her shoulders, hugging her fiercely. “I’m so happy! We’re practically sisters!”
“Yay,” Chelsea said, a deer in the headlights all over again.
Releasing her, Selena stood back, suddenly all serious. “Okay, the ceremony is tomorrow morning at ten o’clock in the main reception hall. It’s on your map.”
She had a map? She hadn’t seen one when she’d first glanced through the envelope back in her car, but maybe she’d find it waiting for her in her room. “I’ll find it,” Chelsea assured her. “Ten o’clock tomorrow morning. Got it.”
“Wardrobe first,” Selena said. “That’s very important. Go back out to the main hall, then it’s right, left, right, right.” She gave each direction, wiggling her hand like a swimming trout. “You can’t miss the giant double doors with ‘Wardrobe’ carved across the top. They’ll get you fixed up into any program you prefer. Will I see you in the dining hall later on?”
“Oh uh…yeah.” Chelsea was still on the fish directions—right, left, right, right…left? Maybe she should go to her room first and get the map.
“Six o’clock?” Selena grinned, wrinkling her nose. “We’re going to have so much fun! See you tonight, bridesmaid.”
Chelsea managed a smile and when Selena waved before bouncing back into the medical room, she waved too. Neither the smile nor the wave lasted longer than it took the enthusiastic blonde to vanish from sight. What a strange girl. Happy, but strange.
Digging into her envelope in search of a room number, Chelsea headed back down the hall the way they’d come. She was just about to turn her first corner and was halfway wondering if that gorgeous mortal incarnation of a Greek god would still be hanging around by the door when she heard Selena call out behind her, “Don’t forget your race let!”
Chelsea looked back. “Race let?”
Her head sticking out the medical room door, Selena pointed at her wrist. “Race let!”
Chelsea checked her watch. What the hell was a “race let”? She had no idea, but she pasted on another smile and waved a second time. “Got it!”
Grinning, Selena disappeared again.
Opening her packet, Chelsea shuffled through what few papers she had, but there was nothing on any of them about races. Not of any kind, “let” or otherwise. “Huh.” She pulled out the contents of her envelope, threading the two purple and single white bracelets over her thumb while she—
“Oh!” Of course! Shaking her head at herself—“race lets”; what was she thinking
?—she slipped all three carefully back into the envelope. As soon as she was settled in, she’d figure out what to do with those too. First things first, though.
On her receipt, she found a room number of R221, but there was definitely no map. Not even printed on the back of the included brochure. At any other hotel, a two hundred designation would put her room on the second floor, which was exactly where Chelsea was. So, at least she was on the right level. All she had to do now was find the “R” wing. If she was lucky, she might stumble across a directory. Or, failing that, she could ask someone.
She shuffled through her papers again. Damn. No room key. That would probably have been given to her at the admissions tables. Except that she hadn’t really checked in.
“Okay,” she said, pushing through the door to the main hall. First things first—wardrobe (very important, Selena had said) and then she’d check in like she should have done in the first place. What were those directions again? “Right, left, right, left.”
Except that her first right dead-ended her in front of a giant window that overlooked a hedge-maze garden. This was not good.
Hoping Selena was only off by one direction, Chelsea turned left and made her way down the hall to the next intersection. Unfortunately, turning right there found her facing giant double doors, but the wood plaque above them did not read ‘Wardrobe’. It read ‘Nursery’ instead.
Never in her wildest dreams would she have expected an adult resort to have a daycare. She hadn't seen any children on her bus or getting on the one that left before hers. Who would bring their kids to a place like—
The door opened and out spilled a bouncy thirty-something brunette in a short (very, very short) blue and white pinafore that barely came down far enough to cover her diaper. She was lacy and frilly, with her pretty pink lips locked around a pacifier and her short hair barely long enough for the pigtails she wore.
She was accompanied by a well-dressed gentleman who held her hand. “Are you ready to visit the horsies?”
The “little” girl nodded, bouncing and grinning and looking in that moment so much like Selena that Chelsea could only stare. She backed hastily to get out of their way, but the gentleman stopped when he saw her. He looked at her clothes, his mouth pulling into a frown. “Young lady, what are you doing out here dressed like that?”
Glancing down at herself, Chelsea then looked at each of them in turn. She beat a hasty retreat back to the main hall, glancing back over her shoulder once just as she turned the corner, but neither the gentleman nor his “little” girl were pursuing her. They remained just outside the nursery doorway, the man still frowning and fishing what looked like a pager out of his pocket.
Chelsea ducked out of sight, a thin quiver of panic digging in under her breastbone. She hadn’t been here one full hour yet and already she was in trouble. Screw Wardrobe. Her most important thing right now was finding those admissions tables. She had to get checked in so she could get her map, her room key and then spend the rest of the day hiding out while she tried to figure out what exactly she’d got herself into.
Walking quickly, Chelsea fled the length of that long hall, through a wing filled with endless doors labeled N201 to N240, until she came to a windowed exit at the far end. She burst through that door onto a stone landing that overlooked a long and narrow grassy playground. Surrounded on three sides by tall Castle walls and gated at the far end for privacy, the playground was full of adults in Victorian-era children’s clothing—little girls dressed in a veritable rainbow of “Alice in Wonderland” dresses and little boys in short pants with matching jackets, knee socks and shiny, black shoes. They played on seesaws and merry-go-rounds and swung on swings, and intermixed among them were more adults, this time dressed like adults albeit in full period costume. Men wore the distinguished trousers, vests and jackets of Victorian men some two hundred years out of date. Women wore either the gray garb of impeccably dressed governesses or the much fancier gowns of Ladies of A Higher Station. Despite having flung herself out here hard enough to make the door slam and rattle against the doorstop, almost no one noticed her. Those who did, however, stared, making her feel so very conspicuous in her jeans and simple white blouse.
Chelsea hugged her envelope as if it were a shield. She was about to go back inside when a sudden commotion across the playground drew her attention. A gentleman had caught one of the young men in short pants by the ear and was leading him, kicking and fussing, off to one of the benches set up along the Castle walls. Before Chelsea could react, he stripped the young man of his belt first and then his trousers, and promptly up-ended the “youth” over the back of the bench. What happened next nearly wrenched a scream out of Chelsea, though it wrenched more than a few out of the young man. He was thrashed, the whip and snap of his own belt as it licked across his naked buttocks carrying across the playground almost as clearly as his shouts and wails.
Dear God…she was in a crazy place!
Chelsea stumbled back inside and quickly helped the spring-controlled door close faster than it was inclined to. Though it did block out the whipping sounds, the rapidly disintegrating shouts, then pleas, then wails of the man on the receiving end still permeated through the door.