Spectacle Ch. 01

[All characters in this work of fiction are over 18]

*

I should never have taken the job.

I'm a criminal. We do these things for different reasons, we killers and thieves. Sometimes for profit, sometimes because we want to self-determinate beyond whatever it is the bounds of the law dictate, to live in defiance of any and all authority. As with anything, it was probably a mixture of these for me. Mainly though, the skills I garnered in the military didn't land me anywhere close to a desk, or any kind of decent income in civilian life. But the bottom line is, I am a mercenary, and therefore a criminal. Ever see the TV series, Burn Notice? I love that show. I sometimes imagine I'm one of the bad people they kill on the way.

So when someone like me says that Ramona was evil...

It probably wasn't her real name. I remember watching her from the passenger side of the cab of the semi. She chewed gum with her mouth open, teeth showing like a shark, bobbing her head slightly to Rage Against The Machine's "How I Could Just Kill A Man" on the stereo. I could already tell someone was going to get hurt today.

I didn't come gunning for this job, I was approached. This is how it usually goes when your skills or talents are unique and uncommon. Someone puts feelers out looking for certain qualities, and they come up with you. This job, any man could have done. But what Ramona wanted was a woman.

So it made me uneasy the way she looked at me. I've been expendable. I've been viewed as a sex object. It was the way I felt like both to her that made me wish I'd stayed in Toronto. The maintenance crew outfit she'd "issued" me was several sizes too tight.

"Hey, Merc. Heard about the shit you did in Fallujah," she said.

Of course you did, I thought. It was a bloodbath. I just nodded.

"Hot shit," she said. "Merky-Merc. I'm gonna call you Merky-Merc. Like that? 'Cause you don't give your real name and you don't say anything. You're not clear, you're all...murky-like."

I looked over at the vans tailing us, containing the rest of Ramona's crew and hoped like hell at least some of them were mentally stable. I looked from the rearview mirror to the road ahead. There it was. It was a women's college in the middle of the city. I knew it was going to be hideous.

---

So there we were. We'd established ourselves in the atrium, which overlooked the entire city through the biggest plate-glass window I've ever seen, in ridiculously full view of the public. I was getting more and more uncomfortable.

Crazy as Ramona was, her crew, all female, were a collective machine. We'd taken the entire University Union building and rounded up over a hundred girls as hostages. I think the final count was 127. She hadn't told me the rest of the plan, saying we'd "wing it from there." I wanted to demand more information, but I seem to recall gagging on all the money the job was paying.

Ramona had decided she liked me. It may or may not have had anything to do with how I'd handled the initial entry and sweep of the grounds. At least she wasn't leering at me in that tight jumpsuit anymore and I was back in my work outfit. Boots, BDU pants and assault vest, an FN-P90 resting in my black gloves. I'd made it clear I was a professional. I wonder if that just turned her on more. Either way, she had important errands for me to run from the get-go.

"Go get me," she said, holding up a photo, "this." She jammed it into my cleavage and turned to her lackeys. "You two, go with her. Do whatever the fuck Murky-Merc says, she can kick your ass."

Before long, I was standing over a blond Queen Bee surrounded by several lesser girls, huddling in a corner. They were praying. I rolled my eyes. "Take her," was all I said. The two attending me lifted her and started carrying her off to the distress of her brood.

"I've got the queen bee," I said into my earpiece. "I'm taking her up."

"Fuck yeah," came back Ramona's voice. "The cavalry's almost here, I can't wait."

It was unbelievable. She'd taken the place so fast the LEOs hadn't even arrived yet.

I hauled Miss Priss up to the top floor, which was offices with no windows. The crew had already set the place up. It looked like torture equipment, electrical stuff. I dropped the queen on the floor and left before I had to see what they had in mind, but I could guess. Hostages are a commodity, and to make your point you usually have to kill one. Threaten to torture them, and you get a lot more mileage. I was pretty sure we were going to be there for at least a few days. I got ready to live in the gas mask I was wearing. They'd been issued to all of us to cover our faces.

"Did ya do it?" said Ramona in my ear.

"She's taken care of," I said.

"Good, the bulls are here. Grab me that teacher bitch."

That "teacher bitch" was a faculty member we'd managed to grab ahold of. She wore a suit and a skirt and wouldn't look at me. She must have only just arrived at her thirties and was fit and attractive. No wonder Ramona wanted her.

I stood over her. "Move," I said, nodding to the door. She looked stable enough to walk under her own power. The two crewmembers walked on either side of her as we made our way to the atrium.

"Awesome!" shouted Ramona, "I'm so happy! All of our friends came to the party!"

As I approached the window, I could already see a huge police perimeter forming outside. I grimaced behind my mask. I heard a tinny voice coming out of the radio Ramona held to her ear.

"Hello?" she said. "Hello? Mr. Negotiator Man? Can you hear me 'n stuff?" she waved to the outside. "Yeah. Here's how this is gonna go." She then threw it to one of the attending crewmembers, and picked up a magic marker. On the plate glass window she apparently had already written the frequency (backwards from here) she'd wanted the police to contact her on. Now she reached up and drew two circles on the glass at just above head level.

"Okay!" she said to the teacher. "Hands on the circles!"

I didn't give anything away, but my blood ran cold. She was going to execute someone. There wasn't much I could do but step back a bit.

The terrified woman, a redhead with freckles and sweet, blue eyes, timidly put her shaking hands on the window.

"Would you be classified as human?!" Demanded Ramona.

"W-what?" quailed the woman, hands pressed against the glass.

"Guess you didn't see that movie. Showtime!"

I looked away at something less disturbing...like the crowd of armed police outside waiting for the excuse to shoot us all where we stood. But when I heard the woman whimpering more instead of having her head exploded, I reflexively looked back. Ramona didn't have a gun. Instead, she had stripped out of her cargo pants and boots, standing there in a jacket and panties, and rolling up the woman's tight business skirt.

"Seriously?" I said, before I could stop myself.

"Seriously," she said. I noticed one of Ramona's people smearing a clear surgical lubricant on, oh yes, a strap-on dildo.

I watched in disbelief as Ramona held her hands out to her sides. "Form! Blazing sword!" she chirped as they strapped the dildo on for her.

And as I watched the situation prepare to go from bad to worse, I came to the terrible realization that this was going to work.

The plan was brilliant because it was crazy. Any idiot could kill a hostage. But this was worse. This wasn't even torture. This, Ramona could do as many times as she wanted. And any parent of any hostage seeing it would be so horrified, they'd probably take a hostage themselves to raise the ransom, and then shovel it on us forever whether we released anyone or not.

There, in the window, so the whole world could see it, Ramona pulled the woman's panties aside with one hand, gripped her hips with the other, and slid the dildo wetly into the woman's vagina. The redhead stiffened, then shivered. Ramona raped the woman in front of god and everyone. Steadily flexing her hips against the teacher's body, reaching around to rub her clitoris, slipping into her blouse to touch her nipples, I had to listen to the squishy noises made by the ribs of the thing for the longest ten minutes of my whole career. And I've waited out snipers.

When she finally pulled out, a splash of liquid came with it. The woman was crying...and shivering. I couldn't believe it. Ramona had rubbed an orgasm out of her. I was going to inquire as to how she'd done that, but right then I noticed the crowd outside. Most of them rioted. The cops suddenly had to turn the whole barricade around. Some people didn't charge. They just stood there cheering.

"That should keep 'em busy," said Ramona. She clapped and held her hand up, and her radio was compliantly tossed back to her. She started walking, gesturing for me to follow. "Still there, Mr. Negotiator Guy? Here's how this works. Right now, there's a URL being spraypainted onto the window. Take a look with the rest of the world's population, and you'll see--"

We arrived in the office. It was even worse than I thought.

"--me! Hiii!" Ramona waved enthusiastically to what must be a webcam on the ceiling, installed recently in the newly-repurposed torture room. Miss Queen Bee, whose name I've since put out of my mind, Carly I think, had been strapped down to a table under it, her wrists above her head and her ankles and thighs held open obscenely, her (natural or just really expensive) breasts rising and falling with her panicked breathing. She was smeared in something that made her skin shine. They'd stuck electrical patches and wound chrome wires all around her nipples and between her legs.

"Do it," she said. A woman very expertly, very carefully, gave two of the knobs on an expensive-looking control box a slow turn. The girl squealed, arching her body toward the webcam. "Ladies and gentlemen, this is Miss Carly. She's the president of the glee club, president of the Campus Crusade for Christ, a member of the Tri-Theta sorority, and High Grand Wizard of the I'm A Stuck Up Rich Cunt Klux Klan. And she's about to have an orgasm."

I'd be shocked if it was her first (If you'll pardon the expression), but I'm fairly certain this one almost changed her religion. They held her like that for a long time before letting her down. She collapsed back in a heap on the table.

"And she's going to have one every, oh, say, ten minutes, live on the internet. Meanwhile, I'm going to commit an act of sexual perversion on a hostage every twenty minutes. Or so. I mean, twenty minutes between perversions, some of the ones I have planned take a while. And as long as you leave the clear view of the window in the atrium unblocked, and make no attacks on our website..." her voice became dark. "...that is *all* I will do."

There was a long silence.

"What do you want?" said the voice on the radio.

Her cheerful demeanor returned. "First I want--stop that," she said, reaching over and slapping Carly out of a tearful Hail Mary, "first, I want a female negotiator. Second, if you go to our website, you'll find a list of the people we've taken hostage, and just how much we want for each one. Anyone in the whole world can donate to our offshore accounts. We take PayPal! But until everyone is paid for, nobody gets released. 'kay? Now run along and bring me someone soft to chat with!"

Another pause on the other end. I heard Mr. Negotiator say "We don't want any--"

"Naaaa-na-na-na-na! Uh-uh!" Ramona interjected. "Go, get, me, a, chick. Someone pretty. Don't fuck with me. I really don't want to kill anybody, but these TENS things go up really high..."

She smacked her cohort's hand off the dial and twisted it. Carly shrieked.

"All right! All right!" Ramona released the knob. Carly collapsed again. "I'll get you your negotiator," said the voice.

"That should give us a little while," said Ramona as we arrived back at the atrium. She switched to our radio frequency, the one used by all her men.

Women, I mean.

"All right. Hear this. Twelve-hour shifts. Alpha is on first. Bravo, get some rest. Sleep in the lounge, eight hours at least, four hours of off time. You can have your way with any of our guests, but only during your off time, in the room we've set up on the top floor. Obvious exception being our internet porn star in the main office. If I find you bruising or injuring the livestock, you will fucking become one. Masks on outside the lounge, even during funtime. That is all, over'nout"

"Except you, Murky." she said, turning to me. "You're pretty much on call all the time. Keep your eyes out, make sure nobody does anything funny. When I'm asleep, you're in charge. Of everything."

"...everything," I repeated.

"Oh yeah," she said. "Even that. Make it good. I've got another appearance to make in about ten. Bring me a brunette this time!" She skipped off to the atrium.