The Siren

With another curtsy the girl left and promptly returned with a plain white handkerchief and a small box that looked like a flute case only much longer.

Nora took the white scarf and wrapped it around his bicep.

“What on earth—”

“The Circle revived the flag and scarf signal system from the old guard leather scene,” Nora explained. “We revised it quite a bit to suit the specific clientele that comes here. The scarves are signals or advertisements. Here white means you’re an S&M virgin who only wants to observe. Should keep the wolves at bay.”

“Should?” Zach asked skeptically. “I really need a stop signal? A simple ‘no, thanks’ wouldn’t do?”

“Trust me, as gorgeous as you are, Zach, you would be in big trouble down there without a little armor on.”

“Wouldn’t red make for a better stop signal?” Zach asked, not wanting to be labeled as a “virgin” anything.

“A red scarf would signal you were into blood-play.”

“Ah, I see.”

“Could be worse,” Nora said as she finished knotting the scarf around his arm. “It could be a brown scarf.”

“And brown means?”

The young woman and Nora gave each other conspiratorial glances.

“Keep the wolves at bay…should I be nervous, Nora?”

Nora didn’t answer. She snapped open the black case and took out a riding crop, black with white braiding and quite professional-looking. She took a step back and twirled the crop with stunning expertise. With a quick flick she struck it against her own leather-clad calf. The sound echoed down the hall like a gunshot.

“Kingsley Edge was the first person who put a riding crop in my hand. It was like Arthur with Excalibur.” She winked at the girl and the girl could only smile in awe. Zach tried not to roll his eyes. Disheartening to think Nora had better luck with women than he did.

“Come, Zachary,” Nora said, tapping her leather-clad calf with the crop.

“Yes, mistress,” he said, with minimal irony.

Nora started to turn but stopped in midstep.

“Tell me your name,” she ordered the girl.

“Robin,” she replied.

“Ah, a little bird,” Nora purred. She reached out and caressed the girl’s burning cheek with the back of her hand. “I’ll remember that.”

Nora lowered her hand and stepped away. She pushed the down button on the elevator and the door slid open. They entered and Zach saw there was only a down button inside.

“This elevator only goes down?”

“Apparently so.” Nora held the handle of her crop in her right hand and the tip in her left. She held it, he discovered with a jolt of recognition, like a scepter. Even her posture, usually intimate and conspiratorial, had transformed. She held herself like a queen, her chin high, her back straight. She wore the hauteur well.

“Then how will we get out?”

Nora looked at him as if the thought had never occurred to her.

“I suppose we won’t.”

“That girl worships you but she doesn’t know you’re a writer. How did she know you, Nora?”

“Down here everyone knows me. Oh, and to answer your earlier question,” she said as the elevator slowed. “Yes, you should be nervous.”

He heard the muted grinding of the elevator coming to a shuddering stop. The doors opened. Nora turned her face to the dark outside the doors, and in a low voice said, “Let the wild rumpus begin.”

Nora stepped forward and across the threshold. Zach called her name as she disappeared into the dark. Her hand reached back; Zach grasped it and let her pull him across blindly into the abyss. It took a few moments for his eyes to adjust. Zach stepped back when he realized he now stood teetering at the top of a steep staircase. But Nora stepped forward and went down, and he had no choice but to go down with her.

He felt the music before he even heard it. It beat into his chest, a pounding, visceral symphony of violence. Nora descended the staircase, and he had to trust her since he could barely make out his own feet below him. As they reached the middle of the staircase a deafening roar erupted as the throngs below recognized Nora. When they reached the bottom step a horde of near naked bodies congregated to throw themselves at Nora’s feet. She brushed past them, kicked some away, and swatted a few dismissively like flies with her riding crop. The more viciously she dealt with them, the more they groveled.

Looking around, Zach saw sights his eyes could process but his mind could not. Above him hung bodies hoisted high on suspension harnesses. A woman in leather dragged a man to a cross and lashed him to it. A line of people queued up to take turns flogging him. A naked woman was tied spread-eagle to a large spinning wheel. A huge bear of a man whipped her as the wheel turned and turned. Another woman strapped to an X-Bar volunteered her services to a man covered in head-to-toe vinyl except for the part of him in her mouth.

Into all this wet, red hell Nora strode without blinking, without flinching, without missing a step. She floated light and buoyant across the black waters, her eyes burning like flags afire. Zach imagined they could be seen for miles.

She pulled him through the herd of admirers toward an open wrought-iron elevator shaft at the other side of the floor. Guarding the elevator was a man roughly the size of a house wearing chaps and a spiked dog collar. Nora transferred her riding crop from her right hand to her left, and with her free right hand delivered a slap so fierce to the man’s face that Zach winced.