Haze

Aaron stumbled forward and fumbled with the buttons on her blouse. "Sorry," he murmured to her muffled moans.

"Gentlemen, let us retire to the observation stage," Neelon ordered. The group of men shuffled out of the door. Before closing it, Neelon admonished his captive, "By the way, if you don't get free in the next twenty six minutes, a piece of your clothing will be removed. Then you will be given another fifteen minutes. If not free by then, two pieces of clothing will come off. It goes exponentially until you are totally exposed. Have a nice struggle."

Aaron and Kyle were forced to watch on a big screen TV in the large tour bus for Neelon's amateur heavy metal group, "Haze," stationed next to the freight car. The masked men hooted and hollered while swilling beer and liquor to watch the unfortunate coed fight the ropes. When the timer sounded its alarm, a masked and menacing Knutson was sent in to remove her skirt. She writhed beneath his roving hands. After another fifteen minutes of futile struggling, her blouse and bra were snipped away with a pair of shears. Knutson molested her unmercifully with titty twists and slobbery hickeys. His gorilla hands moved toward her panties. "Here puss, puss, puss," he chirped. Madeleine cried agonizingly into the cloth strapping her mouth.

Aaron couldn't stand it anymore. "That's enough! We've completed out mission and you've had your fun. Now, let her go."

"Ooo, if it isn't the mouse that roared," Neelon snidely quipped.

"I mean it, Neelon. This crude behavior is being carried way too far."

"Honi soit qui mal y pense," Neelon chastised as he walked over to Aaron and ripped off his mouse mask. "Let's see what kind of valiant knight lies behind that cowardly rodent's guise. Strip and bind his noble ass, reverse straight-jacket style," Neelon commanded.

The masked cohorts jumped Aaron and stripped off his jacket, jeans, shirt, shoes, socks, and briefs. They forced his arms across his back. Using duct tape, they fastened his wrists to his forearms. They wound a wide strip over his mouth and around his head. The last thing Aaron saw before they taped his eyes shut was Madeleine being stripped bare and carried from the chair over Knutson's monstrous shoulder.

They dragged Aaron into the railcar and spun him around to disorient him. His steps faltered, but he managed not to fall. He heard Neelon's voice from behind. "You have the rest of the night to untie her and then make this mission interesting, or Mr. Poogie will fry and Kyle will...," he paused, "well, you finish the rhyme. We'll be back at sunrise for your surprise." The metal door clanked shut with the sound of a deadbolt sliding across it.

From the tour bus, the fraternity brothers watched and roared at Aaron slamming into the walls as he tried to make his way blindly over to Madeleine. He tried freeing his hands but found it impossible to pull free from the adhesive. Listening for her muted sobs, he inched his way along the sides of the railcar until his toe stubbed against the edge of a mattress. He tumbled down on top of her with a stifled grunt. She let go a shrill squeal.

He painstakingly felt around her with his taped-up face until he understood her position. He maneuvered himself to her backside where he fingered the rope around her wrists and tried to pry apart the elaborately wrapped coils, but they were too tight for him to even squeeze a finger in between. He repositioned himself to place his bound hands by her head. The tape over his mouth puffed in and out with the exertion. Rivulets of sweat ran down his face. His fingers caught onto the knot holding the blindfold over her face. He worked it loose and pulled it off. He did the same to remove her gag. "Bite the tape," he maundered.

"What? I... I can't understand you." She rasped and coughed from dehydration.

His jaw strained to loosen the tight seal. He formed each syllable with slow deliberation. "Bite the tape." He pushed his bound arms up to her lips.

Under a flood of tears, Madeleine gnawed the sticky gray strip. He flinched when she nipped his skin. They both grunted and tugged until Aaron's left wrist pulled loose.

Using his freed arm as torque, he wrenched the ape to its tensile limit. He peeled the gag and blindfold off his face then set to untying the tight knots holding her arms. He tried to stimulate circulation in her purpled fingers by rubbing them.

She batted him away with swollen chafed hands. "Don't touch me!"

"Madeleine, how can I finish untying you if you don't let me touch you?" He pulled the string of cord from her upper arms then unraveled it from her feet and legs. He tossed the vile bindings into a black corner of the railcar.

She curled up into a ball and rued, "You promised no one would hurt me."

His consoling hand hovered above her arm but balled up and pulled back in frustration. "Madeleine, you don't know how sorry I am for putting you through this. As soon as we get out of here, we'll go to the cops and... and...," he succumbed to tears. "I'm sorry, it's just that I never meant to hurt you, or Mr. Poogie, or Kyle. I just wanted to be inducted into the fraternity."

He felt Madeleine's butterfly touch land on his shoulder. "Please, don't cry," she cried. "We can't afford to cry. We have to get out of here. We have to keep our heads and find a way, okay? I'm counting on you to be strong for me." She looked through her tears into his watery brown eyes.

Aaron sniffed back his grief and puffed out his determination. He looked about the confines of the railcar. To his right was a table propped against the corrugated wall. He saw two plastic bottles of clear liquid towering above him. He reached up for one and passed it to Madeleine. "Here's some water."

Madeleine's long sip broke to a sputtering cough. "It's not water," she rasped.

Aaron took a sip and grimaced. "It's vodka." He checked the other bottle to make the same discovery. "Guess they want us to get drunk."

"Why?" Madeleine asked covering herself with her arms crossed over knees drawn to her chest.

Aaron stood up to explore the room. He saw Madeleine turn away for his exposed genitalia. He stooped down and picked up the cloths used to cover Madeleine's face. He knotted them together and wrapped them around his spare waist. A glaring spotlight shone on the area where Madeleine sat. He walked across the mat into the shadow zone where he rattled the locked door. "There's a port-o-potty here." He crept back into the light to Madeleine's laughter. "What's so funny?"

"What's that around your waist?" she heaved between giggles.

He looked down. "What? My loincloth? Why it's to shield my shame and preserve your modesty, milady." He grinned. The ridiculous accoutrement had shattered the dire tension. When he looked above her head, all the levity fell with a crash from his face.

Madeleine's eyes followed his to a nasty chain twisting down from the roof. At its ends were two thick manacles. She saw Aaron walk over to the table and pick up a folded cardboard sign. "What does it say?" she timidly ventured.

He turned it to her to show the word "SLAVE" in bold caps. "There's another one." He picked it up and showed her the word "MASTER."

"What does that mean?" she asked.

A loud ringing made them both jump. A second ring prompted Aaron to search for its source. Under a leather mask on the table he found a disposable cell phone. He clicked it on to hear Neelon's voice. "This phone is programmed to receive calls only, not transmit them. We see that you are both free and able to carry on for the remainder of the evening. If you note, there are two sets of equipment near the signs on the table. One of you will have to play the master while the other the slave. The master will don the mask of domination then hood the slave and attach the wrists of the slave into the manacles. The wrists must be behind the back. The master will then subject the slave to the pain-and-pleasure-inducing toys on the table. We expect a good show with a fucking good climax. Don't disappoint or fear being disappeared. The stakes are rolling high on you two. By the way, nice skirt, Mouseman." The phone went dead.

"What did he say?" Madeleine stammered.

"He said..." Aaron stilled himself before erupting into a storm. He threw the phone at the red recording eye behind the thick plexiglass protecting the spotlight high above him. "Fuck you, you sadistic goons," he screamed. "Fuck you! I'm not doing it. You hear? I won't put her through your sick twisted game."

The durable device rang from where it fell. Aaron wrung the hair in his scalp.

"Answer it," Madeleine urged.

"No."

She bounded across the mat to pick it up. "What do you want from us?" Her shriek dropped into silence upon hearing Neelon's demands. She dropped the phone on the mat and looked at Aaron. "He says he'll kill Kyle and us then dispose of our bodies where no one can find them."

Aaron vented his remaining fluster through his lips. "I doubt he'll go that far."

"How can you be so sure? Everyone knows how powerful the Domino cult is."

"Cult?"

"Well, what would you call it? The hazing, the brainwashing, the promises of connections in high places if you serve their agenda. Why did you sign up for initiation? Shit." She wrapped her arms over her breasts to make Aaron avert his gaze. "They have a reputation for being ruthless. Just check their alumni list and see how many of them are judges, senators, bishops, people in power."

"Yeah, but they didn't get there by committing murder."

Madeleine glowered at him, "How do you know?"

"Aw come on. There's no proof of it ever happening."

"Do you think they keep records? People like you and me can be extinguished like them snuffing out a candle with their fingers pinching the wick. Our deaths can be easily staged as victims of a car crash or a recreational drug overdose. Or maybe they'll make our deaths look like an unrequited lover's murder suicide." She was pacing frantically.

Aaron took her by the arms to make her stop. "What do you suggest we do then?"

"We have to do what they want," she uttered slowly.

"I can't do that to you. That's... that's torture."

"He didn't specify that you put me in the hood and chains, did he?"

Aaron searched her eyes for the horrifying implication. "You mean you chain me up and do those heinous things to me?"

Madeleine nodded.

Aaron sucked in a chestful of air and blew it out of his puffed cheeks. "You think he'll let us go then?"

"I don't know, but it's worth feeding his sick appetite with a little show, isn't it?" She ran her fingers gingerly through his thick mane. "Besides, I'm sure he has paying customers who are betting on us right now. Maybe if we can make this profitable for him, he'll feel generous and let us go."

Aaron took her hand, laced his fingers through hers, and led her to the table. "Brace yourself for what you see." He showed her the layout of masks, clamps, whips, latex gloves, battery-operated electrodes, vibrators, a pair of six-inch stilettos, along with a key, a rube of lubricant, and a package of condoms. "I think we're meant to go hard core. Are you ready for that?"

A slow tear glided down her face to be land on Aaron's finger. She looked at him. "It's that or die." She reached over to take up one of the bottles for a swig. "Liquid courage, right?" She offered it to Aaron then slipped on the dominatrix mask. "How do I look?"

"Catty."

She tried on the shoes. "Way too big for me." She looked at him and said, "You try them."

"What?"

"I think they're meant for you." Aaron took another drink then passed her the bottle. He shook his head, sat on the table and slipped a foot into the shoe. It was a perfect fit.

"Now strap them on," she wheezed after a throat-scorching swallow of one-hundred proof.

Aaron complied. He finished the vodka in the bottle and closed his eyes as Madeleine pulled the leather hood over his head and snapped up the eye and mouth flaps. She guided him on his wobbly ankles to the hanging manacles and gently bent him forward to hitch each wrist in the cuffs. She proceeded to pull the cloth from his loins. "Aaron?" she sniffled.

A dulled acknowledgement escaped the leather hood.

"Would you have ever gone out with me? I mean, other than being coerced into it." She went over to the table and picked up the alligator clips.

"Sure I would."

"Then why didn't you ever ask me? I mean, you had plenty of opportunity."

Aaron's wails resonated inside the slave hood to the attachment of the sharp-toothed clamps to his nipples. Tears flowed from his eyes. "I don't know," he gasped.

Madelene picked up the smooth wooden paddle and moved to his backside. She began warming up his tender tush by stroking and slapping with the palm of her hand. Then she readied the paddle. "Was it because I wasn't foxy enough for a frat boy like you?" She hurled a hard slap to his bottom.

"No," he screamed.

"Are you sure?" She let go another whack.

Aaron lurched in his chains.

"I mean, I know I'm not a cool chick or even a pretty one," she paused with a heave of the battery to his sore flesh. "Still, I thought you liked me." Her paddling intensified with her interrogation.

"I do!" he cried. "Please, stop hitting me!"

"Then why," she whacked, "have you," and whacked, "never," and whacked, "taken," and whacked, "me," and whacked, "out?" Her final slap left her teetering on her feet. Panting, she dropped the paddle to the floor then went to the table to grab another device.

Even as a trained athlete, Aaron had never endured such excruciating pain. He shrieked to the electrodes firing up his balls. He struggled to keep standing in the torturous heels. Yet excitement rushed to his brain while his penis anxiously pulsed.

Madeleine undid the mouth and eye seals on his hood. Kneeling before him to be at eyelevel, she asked, "Do you want me?"

"Yes," he sobbed.

She placed her breast to his lips. He comforted in suckling her nipple and grew hard. He begged to fuck her. She reached between his legs and mercilessly teased his throbbing appendage. "Madeleine," he breathed, "kiss me then suck me, please." He felt her lips tantalizingly brush across his. A maniacal laugh broke out from her pale lips accompanied by a harsh metallic clanking.

The door of the container car swung open. The nail-sharp rays of daylight crucified Aaron to the cross of helplessness. He looked up to see a crowd of girls in hooded cloaks clapping and cheering loudly. They high-fived Madeleine. Then Neelon appeared, a foreboding silhouette haloed by the bright morning haze. He planted a lusty kiss on Madeleine's receptive lips and cloaked her in a long black hooded robe.

"Madeleine? What is this?" Aaron begged to know.

She pulled the mask from her face and slipped the hood over her disheveled hair. She strutted up to the suspended track star and gently stroked his leather-covered face. Her finger looped inside the harness hitch at the back of the slave hood and jerked his head back. "You thought this hazing was all about you and your wheedling scheme to get into the big-ass fraternity with its secret society so that you could become a big man on campus," she seethed. "You thought by fucking me you would be inducted and that your future as partner with a top notch law firm would be a fix. I mean, isn't that how you men of ambition claw your way to the top, by fucking people over?"

Aaron gritted his teeth. "But I didn't fuck you. I tried to spare you."

"Madeleine, kiss me then suck me, please,'" she aped to the derisive laughter of her cohorts. "I'll tell you what sucks, you do. You're a pathetic driveling whiner." She tugged the hood harder. "You see Aaron, my lamb chop," she pronounced with a crisp pop. "I have the same ambitions as you. I wanted to make it into the Phi Kappa Psi Sorority where we have our own secret society of the Sisterhood. We may wear hooded cloaks instead of masks, but we operate by the same golden rule: Fuck others before they fuck you. I needed to pass my pledge and you were my ticket. The contest was that you kidnap me and put me in a very compromising position. For my end, I had to find a way to manipulate you into submitting to my will, which I easily achieved. I chose you, Aaron, because of the big sentimental sap with the Sir Galahad complex that you are."

"But I saved you from that creep, Knutson. I spared you the torment of this." He winced and writhed in his chains.

"Yes, you did and predictably so. I counted on your valiance, your chivalry, your self-control, your self-sacrifice, all those virtues that are nothing but weaknesses when wending your way through this wicked, wicked world."

"I thought you wanted a sensitive caring dude, a defender of your person and your rights," he agonized.

Madeleine spit in his face and released him in a manner akin to handling dog crap.

His head dangling in despair, he lamented, "This was meant to be a stupid hazing done for stupid kicks as a stupid rite of passage for a stupid fraternity." He raised his head to his tormentors to adjure, "Not a lesson in heartless cruelty and degrading subjugation."

Madeleine tilted her head and shot him a dumbfounded look. "Don't you get it? To attain success in life, you have to be cruel, heartless, and manipulative. School-yard bullies know it and so do hazers -- most of whom wind up running this country because of it. But you'll never realize it because you'll never aspire to those ranks. Right, hon?" She turned toward Neelon.

"Right, babe." Neelon stepped forward and handed her the mouse mask. "Mouseman, you're officially out. So is your pal Moynihan, who is not dead, you'll be relieved to hear."

Tears slid down from under the mask Madeleine had strapped over his hood in a final measure of crushing defeat. She tenderly cupped his chin in her palm and said in a voice soft as mink, "Aaron, if you had followed through and tortured and raped me, well, you would've been in and I would've been out. Now, you're hanging out to dry -- forever." She lifted the mask and kissed him on the mouth. "I am going to miss you. You are so cute and quite tasty." Walking towards her lover and her crew, she tossed him a codicil. "Oh, and you can forget the dinner at Bruno's. I couldn't risk being seen at such a swanky place with a loser like you."

"Wait," cried Kyle who had escaped Knutson's clutches to push through the crowd. "What about Mr. Poogie?" He gave Madeleine a whipped-dog look.

Madeleine gently brushed his cheek with her hand, looked him in his pitiful eyes and asked to her sorority sisters, "How was dear old Mr. Poogie, girls?"

They licked their lips and chimed in unison. "Deeeeee-licious."

Epilogue: Aaron Weiss never joined a fraternity. He dropped out of law school. For months, he felt as though his feet had been encased in cement and his body dumped to the bottom of the bay. But Aaron Weiss held his breath long enough to find a way to rise back to the top, not as the head of a major law firm, not as a giant captain of industry, not as a political leader in Washington. He came back as a reporter, a clever, resourceful, muckraking reporter. Wiry Aaron Weiss, the skinny track star with the Dustin Hoffman schnoz chased down his tormentors -- the Domino dirty-doers.

Like he had done in the girls' dorm where he had gone in drag to plant the shower cam, he probed undercover into the shady dealings of the law firm Harper, Harper & BelPré. Neelon was indicted for jury tampering in a high-profile mob hit case and disbarred.

Aaron searched long and hard to bring down Knutson, who was the CEO of a Title (8) government contractor connected with voter intimidation and the rigged computerized voting machine scandal. Aaron exposed him and his Domino cohorts for fraud and embezzlement that would make Enron look like a shoplifting escapade.