Authors: Ricki Thomas
Hope wriggled out from under him, shifting her feet to the floor, head hanging with a mixture of weariness and alcohol. She reached over for the dregs of her drink, savouring the warming fluid before starting on Rick’s untouched glass. “He’s bound, blindfolded and gagged in a room on the next floor down.” Bizarrely there was no anger in the grimace, just a resigned acceptance. The words were right, but the emotion was lost. Only briefly, though, and a surge of rage burst forward. “I want to slice at his body the way his abuse made me slice at mine for so many years. I want him to see how it feels to be riddled with cuts like I have been so often, how the scabs catch on your clothes and pinch and hurt.”
Rick didn’t know whether to hold her, comfort her, or to stay seated, listening. He chose the latter. “Then what?” He watched Hope down the last of his drink, patiently, silently, waiting for the burning to cease enough for her to speak without choking.
“Paracetamol. Aspirin.” She leant forward, dragging her bag near, and reached inside, tugging a handful of tablet boxes out. One by one she threw them on the bed, narrating. “Ibuprofen. Diazepam. Temazepam. Prozac. Seroxat. I could continue, but I’m sure you get the idea. They’re all tablets that I’ve overdosed on in the past, and I cannot describe how revolting they taste when you vomit them back. Maybe Griffin will be able to explain, maybe he’s better with words than me.” The irony was lost in the charged atmosphere.
Fishing back into the bag she brought out a shoddily prepared noose, made from thin, fraying, rope tied into a rudimentary slip knot, and Rick resisted the urge to laugh at its inadequacy. Hope spotted the twinkle in his eye, but she was deadly serious. “I’ve deliberately made one that will break with his weight, I just want to give him that fear briefly, make him wonder if he’ll ever breathe again, just like I have in the past.”
Rick inhaled deeply, sealing it into his lungs, trepidation for the answer to the question he was about to ask. “So you’re not going to kill him, just torture him until he realises what you’ve been through because of him.”
Hope’s chuckle tinkled through the room, light and airy, but with sinister undertones. “No, I’m not going to kill him.”
His sigh of relief was audible.
“You are.”
Their discussion had ended abruptly with her statement, she’d poured another drink, vodka this time as they’d finished the brandy and whisky from the mini bar, mixed with half a bottle of Britvic orange juice, and she excused herself to the bathroom, telling him she wanted to change her clothes into something more comfortable.
As soon as he heard the door lock, Rick dragged the bedcovers over his head to muffle his voice, and dialled a number on his mobile. It rang. And rang. “Come on, come on, oh, Dawn, it’s Rick.” He desperately hoped his muted whispering was inaudible in the en-suite.
Still furious at being dropped from the band she’d started by her greedy traitor of a brother, Dawn’s tone was terse. “What do you want!”
“I’m in Cambridge with Hope. Dawn, she’s gone completely mental, say’s she’s got that guy who abused her in another room, that she’s tied him up and she’s going to torture him then make me kill him…”
“Fuck!” Dawn was already slipping her shoes on, car keys in hand. “I knew she was up to something.”
“Get the police here, we’re in room one twenty, Cambridge something hotel.”
“What hotel, Rick? Think, damn you.”
“Oh, I dunno! Garden. Maybe Cambridge Garden Hotel, summat like that, on a road called Mill Lane in central Cambridge.”
“Me and the police, we’re on our way, bro. Try and stall her somehow, the best way is to get her talking about herself. I’ll call the coppers right now.”
Rick lay on the bed, frantically contemplating ways he could keep Hope in the room for as long as it would take for the police to arrive, and gasped when she stepped out from the bathroom. The thirty two year old had transformed herself into a virginal teenager, a pigtail hanging over each shoulder, the redness in her hair reflecting the light, complimenting the black hair-ties that held them in place. The grey, flared mini exhibited her slender legs, clad in black stockings, the lacy tops just meeting the hem of the skirt, and her feet were fully enclosed in heeled lace ups. The blouse, unbuttoned enough to expose a sexy cleavage, was white, and a burgundy school blazer finalised the metamorphosis.
“Hope! What are you playing at? Why the outfit?”
She glared at him, challenging, dispensing with the love that had shone from her eyes just a couple of days before. “You’ll see. Come on, let’s go.”
Stall her! Stall her! He racked his brains, and an idea presented easily, he’d play on Hope’s weakness. He patted the bedcover. “Come and sit down first, we’ll both need something to calm our nerves before we get to work, let’s have a drink, then go. He’s not going anywhere anyway, if you’ve tied him up…”
“Handcuffed.”
“Okay, handcuffed him. Come on, let me fix you a drink.”
Hope’s suspicions of the delaying tactic were raised immediately, and her heart began to beat harder, the thudding pumping rapidly in her head. She guessed he must have told somebody when she was in the bathroom, and this meant they now had a limited amount of time to finish her revenge before fleeing back to East Anglia. To the kids. To a cleansed life. “You bastard. Who did you call?”
Rick forced a smile onto his face. “Call? I don’t know what you mean.”
Hope trotted to the bed, folding the knife roll and fixing it securely. She threw it into the bag to join the tablets and noose, and indicated the door to Rick with a nod. “We’re going. Now.” His mind whirled, desperate to stay in the room until help arrived. Her voice was angry, guttural, filled with hatred. “I said we’re going now. Move, you bastard.”
Thinking quickly, Rick crossed his arms in defiance. “No. You can’t exactly make me, can you! I mean, you’re a shortarse and I’m six foot four.”
The blue of her eyes swiftly disappeared, black pools of viciousness replacing it, and her teeth clenching gave her mouth a threatening sneer. She reached into the bag, rummaging about, searching, and Rick could feel the hairs on the back of his neck rising, goose-bumps prickling at his skin.
Within moments a gun was in her hand, cocked, and pointed in his direction, and he shuddered involuntarily, arms dropping to his side as he moved carefully from the bed, eager not to make any sudden movements in case she fired. He walked slowly towards the door, eye contact constant, and tugged the latch. Momentarily losing her target, Hope tugged her coat on to conceal the school uniform, and hid the gun with her bag as they stepped from the room.
The corridor was empty, and they waited seemingly endless minutes until the lift cranked to the top floor, the doors revealing an empty cell. The journey to the next floor passed in silence, and Hope guided Rick to room sixty nine by nudging his back with the barrel of the gun.
Reaching the door, a muffled growl could be heard, and Rick’s hopes lifted, there was a possibility that somebody had heard the noise and reported it to the receptionist.
Efficiently Hope unlocked the door and pushed him into the room with the gun, and the muffled groaning increased: Griffin was flailing on the bed as much as his restraints would allow. Regardless that he was male, Rick’s face was drawn to the penis that flopped across Griffin’s thigh, it was colossal, the biggest he’d seen, and that was when it was flaccid. Involuntarily Rick imagined how massive it would be erect, and he winced at the thought of the monstrous tool penetrating a seven year old. Suddenly he felt intense sympathy for his girlfriend, and remorse for not supporting her more, to the point of not even remembering her abuser’s name. “That’s the guy who fucked you when you were a baby?”
Hope marched over to the bed, the un-cocked gun now hanging loosely by her side. She pulled her arm back, and struck Griffin with the heavy barrel, he roared in pain through the ball gag. “Shut up, bastard. I’m your dominatrix, and I told you not to make any noise unless I told you to. His body stilled immediately, and silence swamped the room, a thin stream of blood pulsing through his greying hair, pooling on the pillow. Hope flicked a glance at Rick, then nodded to an easy chair in the opposite corner to the door. “Go and sit down.” He followed the order, leaning forward, forearms on knees, eager not to show any fear.
Hope crawled onto the bed, her head hovering over Griffin’s impressive beast, and she let the ends of her bunches tickle him temptingly. She fixed her eyes on Rick, and, hypnotised by the intensity of the glare, he couldn’t take his eyes from hers, he was mesmerised. Her tongue reached out, seductive, tantalising, and she began to flick it back and forth above Griffin’s penis, the man completely unaware of the sex show being acted above him. Rick was both revolted and intrigued. And his eyes couldn’t leave her provocative stare, he was trapped in her spell.
He watched as she hovered above the giant, nearing it, but never taking it into her mouth, and memories of her sucking flooded and stirred him. He didn’t want to be aroused, the display was sick, but he couldn’t stop himself finding the act stimulating, and soon his own manhood had grown. He wanted her.
Any fear, any concern, had now dissipated, and Rick desperately hoped the police wouldn’t find them after all. If he’d realised Hope was planning a sexy act he’d never have called Dawn. His erection stood firm, and the longing for the warm tongue pulsed through his body.
Checking the ball gag was still firmly lodged in Griffin’s mouth, she climbed off the bed, then leant over to remove the blindfold. She posed coyly, a finger on her lip, the other hand behind her back, swaying childishly. “Sorry Griffin, Eva had to go. She asked me to take over. Remember me?”
Griffin’s expression was full of terror, his brow deeply furrowed, and his muffled cries of help were thwarted by the gag. Rick watched the scene, marvelling at her scheming, and he felt no desire to help the religious man before him: the man was a monster. He fucked children.
Hope was still posing like a virginal child, her beautiful dark lashes framing the stunning blue, lowered and coy. “You like schoolgirls, don’t you? Do you remember when you first had sex with me? Do you remember when you forced your huge cock into my face for the first time?” She slapped him, his face reddening instantly from the force. Now louder, angry. “Well? Do you?” Griffin nodded exaggeratedly, pleading eyes begging for forgiveness.
Hope rolled a sleeve up, scars, silver and purple, smothered her forearm. She brandished her arm before Griffin’s eyes. “See those?” Griffin nodded, fear still furrowing his brow. “That’s the life I had to look forward to after you pleasured yourself using my tiny body.” She tapped her head. “What was just a perverse orgasm to you fucked me up for life, it fucked me up in here. And I can bet you that all the other little children you’ve fucked are dealing with their rapes in a similar way. Makes you feel good, does it?”
Griffin frantically shook his head. Hope collected the knife roll from the bag, she opened it up across the bed, out of Griffin’s sight, although he strained to see. She took the latex glove from the floor, slipping it onto her right hand, and climbed back onto the covers, her grip working his penis. But this time there was no response, it remained flaccid. Hope pressed harder, she sped up, but Griffin’s sexual excitement had gone.
Lazing back in the chair with his foot over his knee, an audience to a Soho show, Rick was enjoying himself. “Suck him. No man can resist that.”
Hope shot a look of contempt, sick that she’d considered marrying the arsehole, and she worked her hand harder, faster, gripping firmly, willing life into the droopy member. But still it lay, weak and weary, and she dropped it with frustration. And then the voice started, lulling, melodic, gently setting the scene for the prisoner. “Go on Griffin, you’ve got a little schoolgirl over you, she’s really gagging to suck your dick, you know how much the young ones turn you on. Don’t you just want to push it inside her ‘til she tears?”
Rick’s plan worked within seconds, the big man was back, and as he watched the expert hand pleasuring the man, he was oblivious that Hope had taken one of the knives. Until the animal roar that the gag couldn’t quell. She pulled away from Griffin, from his penis, his body, the fresh blood that now trickled onto the covers, and spat on him.
The depths of her revenge had now begun, another level, a Hope never seen before. She slashed his chest again, this time the relief coming from his blood spilling, not hers, and Rick’s hopes crashed. The fear and trepidation swamped him. She was going to make him kill a man.
Room One Twenty
The concierge was past his best years, and he limped painfully slowly towards room one hundred and twenty on the fourth floor, followed by two constables, who had a duty to investigate the crazy emergency call, but didn’t take it very seriously. The concierge knocked on the door, and, on receiving no response, unlocked it, leading the constables into the plush suite. Signs of recent activity were there, the crumpled bed, used glasses scattered about, the radio playing quietly, but there didn’t appear to be anyone there now. PC James Collins knocked half-heartedly on the bathroom door, entering after receiving no reply, and his colleague checked the balcony, needlessly leaning over the rail in case a body lay broken on the terrace below.
Satisfied that there was no disturbance, that the so-called counsellor who’d called from a different county was just another time-wasting nutter, the two officers were about to leave, when James winked at his colleague, tipping his head towards the mini bar.
Reception
Awash with urgency on their hunt for Dorothy’s murderer, Krein and Horseferry pushed through the main doors and trotted across the reception area to the desk. Behind, Julie, a glamorous brunette, her skin a St Tropez orange hue, and face an array of bright colours, smiled winningly. “Sir. Madam. Can I help you?”