Chapter Nine
April 18th, 10:28 PM
She found herself in a narrow corridor, a space maybe six feet wide. The room was dim, illuminated by small circular lights embedded in the ceiling, but she could see a door at the other end of the hall, maybe thirty yards away. She began to march toward the exit, and then she noticed the pictures.
They were on either side of her, one for each couple yards or so. Each one situated in an ornate golden frame. Each one a lovingly crafted, beautifully painted rendering of her, the Blue Lynx, in a horrible predicament.
The first image showed a familiar scene. It was her hanging from the rafters of that hillbilly barn, her wrists and ankles roped together, her mouth shut with duct tape. To the painted Blue Lynx's left and right were the two men, Clayton and Jackson, who had menaced her so long ago.
"What the hell is this?" she thought. The painting showed details that Erin had thought only she had remembered: the way the men dressed, the amount of hay on the floor of the barn, the exact way her belt sort of drooped on her hips.
"Do you like it?"
Erin turned around. It was Hammerson's voice. Again coming from a speaker somewhere.
"How much did you have to pay the pervert to do it?" Erin asked, pointing at the painting with an unimpressed stance.
"Nothing," Hammerson replied. "I did it. I did all of them."
Erin blinked.
She looked at the first painting on the wall opposite the "Hillbilly Manor" scene. It depicted the second time Hammerson had seen Erin in a jam: that night at the factory, when they'd first captured Margot and used her as bait. Once again, every detail had been considered: the way Erin and Margot sat together, the exact amount of rope binding their limbs, the look of the bomb that had been meant to end the Blue Lynx.
"I didn't know you liked to paint," Erin said, shaking her head. This was getting eerie.
"I didn't know either," Hammerson said. "I think I just needed a muse. I needed you, Blue Lynx."
"Don't you have anything better to do?" Erin shouted. It wasn't just a rhetorical question. Each of these paintings probably took days to finish, and even more time to mount and display in this hallway, which Hammerson had already said was "custom made" for the Blue Lynx. So much time, so much money, so much energy spent on her. On her destruction.
"You know, I'm not sure if I do have better things to do," Hammerson said. "Tormenting you... It's become the best part of my life."
Erin had moved on to the next painting. This one wasn't quite as accurate as the rest-- Hammerson hadn't been in the van when Todorov had secretly given her his poison. The way Hammerson saw the scene was even more humiliating than its inspiration: he showed Erin bent over the table like a little girl waiting for a shot, her wrists bound behind her, Todorov sticking a syringe into her butt while the news crew laughed.
"I like that one," Hammerson said. "Grigory told me what happened. Hope you don't mind if I've taken some creative liberties."
Erin shook her head and kept walking. There weren't many more scenes for Hammerson to recreate-- he hadn't known he'd captured the Blue Lynx, too, when he'd kidnapped Erin Steele-- and yet, there were at least fifteen more paintings lining the corridor.
"I've let my imagination roam for the rest of the pieces," Hammerson said.
Erin took a deep breath before she looked at the next one. It showed her strapped to a gurney, completely naked except for her mask, a couple of strategically placed metal bars shielding her breasts and womanhood. A plastic cup had been placed on her face, and a tube connecting it to a machine was pumping some sort of gas. The Blue Lynx's eyes were closed in the picture, as if she were being knocked out, or killed.
"Ugh," Erin shouted. "You're disgusting!"
Hammerson's laughed echoed through the hallway. "You have no idea." He paused. "Yet."
Erin's eyes darted to the next picture. It was another with her and Hammerson, another one with her wrists bound behind her back. In this one, Hammerson was pushing Erin's spandex costume off her shoulders, letting it bunch around her arms, and laughing hysterically at her exposed breasts, which were larger and rounder (but not by much) than real life.
"You're sick!" Erin yelled.
Erin pulled the painting from the wall, threw it to the floor, and stepped on it. The hallway resonated with the sounds of the frame cracking and Hammerson chuckling.
"Go ahead, destroy it," Hammerson said. "I've made a copy."
Erin had begun to feel nauseous. She had become a fetish for Hammerson: he got himself off by picturing her tied up, gagged, naked. She knew he had been attracted to her, had known he was a perverted freak, but these pictures-- this gallery of her in peril-- it was something newly terrible in her superheroine life.
Her mind raced. Did other people think about her in this way, too? Were there hundreds, thousands of gross old men in the city, painting pictures of her demise, writing stories about her failures, hoping desperately for one night when they could be with her, take a lock of her hair, cop a feel, unmask her?
She put her hand on the wall, trying to steady herself. She had to get out of here. This was the worst stage yet.
She took off into a run.
"What's the matter, Blue Lynx? You're not much of an art fan, are you?"
Erin tried to keep her head down, but her eyes couldn't help but scan the remaining paintings. She saw the Blue Lynx tied to railroad tracks, Penelope Pitstop style. She saw herself being placed by Hammerson and Sunny into an Egyptian sarcophagus. She saw herself in the middle of a giant spiderweb, her costume being ripped to shreds by an eight-legged robot. She saw chains, ropes, cuffs, nooses, hooks, restraints, gags. She saw her bare flesh, again and again-- her thighs, her butt, her boobs, her belly button, her pubic hair, her cunt. She saw herself being slapped, whipped, groped, licked, and penetrated: by Hammerson, by Sunny with a massive dildo, by a brainwashed Black Bobcat, by a random gang of young men, by tentacles, by a fucking... half-man, half-cat mutant.
It had only taken a half minute to reach the door, but it had felt like an hour. Erin placed her hands on her knees. She was sweating, gasping for air, rapidly blinking her eyes.
"You've got one more stage, and then me," Hammerson said. "I hope you're ready."
Erin shook her head. "Fuck you, Hammerson," she spat.
The Gauntlet had taken a toll on her: physically, mentally, emotionally, and now, spiritually. She could take a punch. She could even handle a drug being pumped into her system. But this room, with its insinuation that the Blue Lynx was nothing but a sexual fantasy, a prostitute... It hurt.
She didn't know if she was ready.
But she had to keep going.
On to Chapter Ten
No comments:
Post a Comment