Asylum
Chapter 3
Then:
“Miss Sally, Miss Sally! Please come quick, he’s at it again,” said Peaches, a southern runaway, on her own and on hard times. She had found a home at the Broken Wheel Bordello. A gentlemen’s club located just outside of Reno.
Peaches’ impertinent interruption was unwelcomed. At that moment, Sally was anything but glamorous, no makeup, no hairdo. The smoke from a freshly lit cigarette curled around the fine lines around her eyes. Her tired feet were soaking in a mini spa bath after she had just gotten out of the shower. She was tired, her shoulders were sore, and her back was killing her.
“What did he do this time?”
“Miss Sally, he’s got’m all thinking they’s cats!” said Peaches, ducking back outside the door.
Sally took another drag from her smoke and tossed it into the foaming pan of water at her feet.
“God damn him to hell,” she said as she stormed out of her private suite.
“Meow, meow, meow, purrrr, purrrr, reeeee-oooow!”
A dozen women greeted Sally who thought they were all cats. They were ‘her’ girls, Peaches included and Eddie had them acting like animals. Dressed in a tux, he sat on a folding chair, petting Betty’s head resting on his thigh. While a room full of beautiful, naked young women laid, played, and crawled around on the floor.
“Hello Sally, Mr. Cruz wants you to obey,” said Eddie, laughing out loud when Sally’s words froze inside her open mouth.
He stood and casually walked over to Sally. Opening her robe, he said, “Look at mama cat’s titties, kitties. The girl ‘cats’ looked at Sally and licked their lips.
“Come and sit down, Sally,” said Eddie, leading her to the metal chair in the middle of the room. Once seated, he placed a set of headphones on her ears. “Tonight is only the beginning, Sally. I have gone to great pains to make sure you never forget how wrong this is, but you won’t be able to stop yourself. We’re going to do this again and again until you beg for it.”
“Betty, Mr. Cruz wants you here, now,” he said to the naked brunette.
Betty crawled around in front of her mother. Eddie pushed Sally’s knees wide apart as Betty scooted up close to her mother’s lap.
“You know what’s going to happen, don’t you Sally? I’m going to make you drip with desire for your daughter until she makes a puddle out of you.”
Eddie pushed Betty’s head down into her mother’s sex. “That’s it Betty, lick, lick, lick. You know, if you lick her good enough, she’ll gush for you.”
Eddie could only guess at the indignity galloping through Sally’s mind. He undid his pants and straddled the helpless woman. “I don’t want you to pretend this is a lollypop, Sally. I want you to understand that from now on you will serve me anytime and anywhere. Suck me, you fucking cunt.”
The other girls in their kitten personas circled around the action.
Now:
“How about we find you a bed before it gets too late? That’s Betty’s room, where I sleep,” Sally said, pointing to a door to the left of a long dark hallway.
“I hope the den is okay with you. Can you believe this house only had four bedrooms? Spike converted one into his office. It’s in the corner, and he converted this one into his den.”
“What’s back there?” said Eric, referring to the door at the hallway’s end.
“That’s the master bedroom. The light bulb in the hall blew out the night it happened. I think it was a sign from Spike’s ghost.”
“You’re serious? You really haven’t gone into the master bedroom since it happened?”
“No, I am too terrified to take one step in that direction.”
Sally’s conviction made Eric stop and consider what could cause her to have such an irrational fear. Suddenly, a cold draft swept down the empty hall. As soon as it appeared, it was gone. Stunned, Eric looked at his aunt.
“See what I mean? This place is haunted, Eric. I am certain that was Spike checking out the new man in his castle.”
“Sally, there has to be an explanation.”
“Well, we’ll tackle that in the morning, but for now, let’s get you set up. The den is the only room in the house with no windows, so you can sleep in here any time of day. I thought about turning this into Betty’s bedroom so she couldn’t sneak out at night. It turned out bars on the windows with the automatic locking system were the way to go.”
“Automatic locking system?”
“Yeah, hurricane doors roll down over the windows and doors. With a push of a button, this place turns into a fortress.”
“Or a prison.”
Sally looked at Eric, and then continued.
“This was Spikes’ hangout,” she said, opening the ornate wooden door.
Eric’s mouth dropped open as he entered the old school man-cave.
“I haven’t changed the beer in the kegerator in years, so you probably want to give that a pass.”
Among the sports memorabilia were larger-than-life size nudes of Sally from her younger days and a free standing cardboard cutout of a naked Sally with holes under her arms. People could put their heads through them and get a picture of their face beside Sally’s tits.
“Spike always said, if you got it, flaunt it. These hung in the hotel. I had just turned thirty-five and Betty was eighteen when we got our tits done. As you can tell, mine are bigger than hers. She pouted about that until… Well, until she moved out.”
Sally’s voice trailed off, becoming sad. Tears gathered in the corners of her eyes just before she recovered and put on a cheerful face.
“Let’s get you moved in,” she said with a sad smile. For a moment, Eric could see the real Sally, not the over-inflated blowup doll, but a lonely, frightened woman.
“Tonight we can just pile your clothes on the foosball table. I don’t think you will play with yourself.”
She stopped, thought about what she had said, and gave a naughty giggle. Sally walked to the nearest nude portrait and acted as if she was going to cover it with a hand towel before she nearly fell on the floor laughing.
“Sorry, so sorry Eric. I don’t get to goof off. Well, I do, but no one notices.”
Eric laughed half-heartedly. His concern for his aunt ran at odds with his desires and her risque behavior. His hard cock had been aching all day. He knew he was going to beat his meat the moment his big-breasted aunt jiggled out of the room. Sally could tell, and she wanted to prolong Eric’s agony as long as possible.
“Look at this.”
Sally walked across the room, making sure that she swung her hips with each step. She wanted Eric to appreciate more than just her breasts. She stopped, standing beside one of the huge nude portraits in almost the identical pose.
“Come,” she said, curling her pointer finger in his direction.
“Why do you have so many nude paintings, Aunt Sally?”
The real question on Eric’s mind was, why are you flirting with me? His hormones and her blatant advances were making it hard to deal with the guilt of leaving his sister behind.
“What these? They used to hang in the game room of our hotel, but I wanted to show you this.”
Sally pointed to a framed cocktail napkin with the Minotaur Airlines logo.
“Spike was a fighter pilot. He drew that in the Middle East before getting out of the Air Force and buying our planes. You want in on a secret? Turn it upside down and it makes a bull’s prick and balls. Your flight didn’t cost me a thing, sweetheart.”
“You own the airline, Aunt Sally?”
“We did. Actually, Spike owned the airline. I owned the hotel. When he sold it, the market was at its peak. I still get perks like unlimited free air travel and rather healthy annuity payments. Eric, honey, Spike was a genius. He graduated high school at twelve, had a pilot’s license by sixteen, and at twenty-one he held PhD’s in engineering and aerospace. Everything Spike touched turned to gold in the palm of his hand. Until we met Eddie Cruz and our luck ran out the fucking door.”
“Wasn’t that the guy that married Betty?”
“Yes, but I don’t… oh hell. You are going to find out, eventually. Sit with me.”
Sally and Eric sat together on the leather loveseat in front of the wide-screen TV. She put her arm over his shoulders and her other hand on his knee.
“Our hotel wasn’t in town. We were outside the city limits in what you might call a gentleman’s club. We had a casino, a live show, and a bordello. It was paradise. We had girls from around the world and men from far and wide would spend top dollar for a few moments in their company. They were all my girls, including Betty.”
“Betty worked at the um, um, gentleman’s club?”
“Did you get a look at her? Of course she worked there, and she made a fucking killing doing it.”
“Anyhow, Eddie was a hack. He had a rinky-dink hypnotism act. He would get some of the guests up on stage and make them act like idiots. The problem was, he started making the girls do dumb shit. He would make them bark like seals or pull their tops off in public.”
Sally paused, a pained streak ran across her face.
“He enthralled Betty, anything Eddie said she would do… anything. Overnight, she turned into another person. She would yell at us and scream about crazy nonsense. All I knew for certain, whatever had happened to Betty, Eddie Cruz, was behind it. No matter how hard we tried, nothing worked, and we tried everything. When they got married at the hotel, she looked like a fairy-tale princess. And then, she was gone.”
“Where did she go?”
“They moved to Chicago. With all that had happened between us, Betty still called me every Saturday without fail. Until, until…”
“Sally?”
Eric put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close as she sobbed. He rocked her gently, trying to process her incredible story of the hero, the troll, and the fairy princess.
“I didn’t hear from Betty. I tried texting and calling, nothing worked. She had dropped off social media. I knew something was very wrong. I begged Spike to go to Chicago and find Betty.”
“Did he go?”
“Of course, the Minotaur corporate jet was wheels up as soon as he got to the airport.”
Tears flowed down Sally’s cheeks.
“When he got to the house, someone had boarded it up. Spike got the sheriff to break down the door. They found Betty tied up in a homemade dungeon. Eddie had slit her throat and left her to die. She was just barely alive. She had lost so much blood, so much blood. Spike called from the hospital. He told me she had acute brain damage. Even the doctors couldn’t believe she survived. They guessed that, slumping down, the weight of Betty’s head had stopped the bleeding in time. Now Betty is a combination of Eddie’s hypno tricks and multiple personalities. None of them are dangerous, but please don’t threaten her… just in case.”
“Hypno tricks?”
“Yeah, say the right word and Betty will bark like a dog, cluck like a chicken, or anything else Eddie programmed into her. For some damned reason that part of her personality stayed.”
“Really? How did you figure that out?”
“Well, I didn’t. Spike did. He had a list of commands written somewhere. Maybe you will find them.”
“Find them?”
“Eric, honey, I have early onset of Alzheimer’s disease. They diagnosed it just after the trauma of Betty’s throat being slit by a crazy man. That was why we sold everything and moved here. That, and to take care of Betty, but somehow Eddie found us.”
The long and winding tale brought Eric back to reality. He felt guilty for daring to think his life was so much worse than hers. He had only seen her money. He hadn’t stopped to think about her as a person.
“I guess we’ve had enough bedtime stories for one night. Good night Eric, and don’t forget what I said about locking your door.”