William Davis - The Polaroid club book II

"Don't worry, don't worry, they'll be here. Just like I promised they would be."

Taylor nodded, set his case down, and began to take the photographic equipment out of it. He looked up at Samuels as he was doing so. "Have you got a screen or something I can set this stuff up behind?" he demanded.

"Yeah, I think so," retorted the clerk. "But what for?"

"Never mind what for, Goddamn you! This is my show, and we'll run things my way or not at all! Understand?"

"Sure, sure, don't get uptight."

"Just do as you're told, Samuels, and everything will be fine."

The wizened clerk nodded, licking his lips, and left the room to locate the screen Ralph Taylor had asked him for.

The taxicab let Cindy Jamison off in front of the run-down home of Steve Samuels at exactly nine o'clock.

She was weaving just slightly as she walked up the path to the front door, her hands tightly clenched around her handbag. She had commenced to drink straight vodka immediately after the call from the postal worker, trying to work herself into a stupor so that, as on the first occasion, she would be too drunk to be totally aware of the horror of her situation. She had succeeded in getting intoxicated only to a point, beyond which she couldn't seem to go, no matter how much she drank. Now, she felt light-headed and nauseous as she rang the bell, trying desperately to blank her mind against what was soon to happen to her.

The door opened almost immediately, and the malformed features of the government employee peered leeringly out at her. She shuddered involuntarily with revulsion, averting her eyes from that terrible, sweating face. Her stomach churned sickeningly.

"Well, well, right on time I see, Mrs. Jamison. Good, good," said the clerk in his husking voice. He reached out his talon-like fingers to take her arm, and Cindy imagined that it was the touch of something incredibly alien on her coat-covered flesh; but she didn't have the strength or the inclination to resist his hand. She allowed him to lead her down the hallway and into the living room.

The room itself was little more than a blur in the mind of the tortured young wife. She was aware of a musty smell, of a jumble of old and ragged furnishings, of a large screen which had been set up on one side of the room – but details escaped her brain completely. It might have been some medieval torture chamber, complete with iron maiden and thumbscrews and the rack, for all she knew.

Samuels said, "Sit down on the couch, Mrs. Jamison. Here, let me take your coat. Make yourself comfortable." He snickered evilly. "It's going to be a long wonderful night."

Cindy shuddered again at the implications of this depraved postal clerk's words. She hurriedly shed her coat and moved robot-like to the sagging sofa and sat down stiffly, her eyes staring glassily ahead. I have to do this, she thought numbly. I have to do it for Howard, for our future, for Howard, for our future…

Samuels hung her coat up in a hallway closet and came back to the living room, sitting down next to but not touching the soul-sick young wife. "Have a cigarette, won't you, Mrs. Jamison?" he invited unctuously. He reached out to the coffee table in front of the couch, to where a wooden cigarette box lay, lifted it and opened it, presenting the contents to the eyes of Cindy Jamison.

She knew instantly this time what the brown, crudely made cigarettes were, but instead of being further repulsed, she was almost grateful that he wanted her to have more pot, more marijuana, just as she had had the last time. Commingled with the liquor, the pot would once again put her in that half-netherworld of semirationality and the pain, the degradation, would not be as acute as it could be. Almost eagerly, she reached out and plucked one of the rough brown sticks from the box and placed it between her soft, warm, moist lips. The wizened government employee lit it for her immediately, telling her as he had before to hold the smoke in her lungs as long as she could before releasing it. She obeyed, drawing deeply, retaining, exhaling slowly… drawing deeply, retaining, exhaling slowly…

The first roach butt was no more than ash in her fingers, and then Samuels was handing her another, lighting it, and she was repeating the process yet again… drawing deeply, retaining, exhaling slowly… and her head began to swim and she could feel herself weaving slightly on the couch, though she was powerless to cease the movement of her body. The agony was lessening in her mind, she could feel it; it was being replaced now by that same gloating, suspended feeling of the previous encounter. She was ready to take whatever he would mete out, now, as ready as she would ever be…

She opened her mouth, forcing thick words out with careful enunciation, "Do you want me to take my clothes off now? I'm ready to take my clothes off, if you want me to."

"Ah, that's the attitude, Mrs. Jamison!" snickered Samuels. "That's the way to talk, you little bitch. But not yet, not just yet…"

"Why…?"

"Because we're expecting another visitor shortly."

The drugged young wife tried to grasp the significance of that statement, but it seemed to elude her. She frowned, trying to speak again, to ask him what he meant – and in that instant, the doorbell rang.

"There we are, she's here," Samuels enthused, jumping up. "And right on time. Don't go away, Mrs. Jamison. I'll be right back."

Cindy sat dazed for what seemed like interminable minutes, then Samuels reappeared leading a tall, black-haired young woman whose face was streaked wet with tears. The young woman's eyes went wide, and her mouth dropped open in shock as she saw Cindy sitting on the couch. "What…?" she began.

"Sally Reagan, meet Cindy Jamison," cackled the government employee, pushing the dark-haired girl forward.

Cindy managed to struggle up off the couch, to stand just a few feet from the new arrival; the eyes of the two women locked on one another. And in that moment, complete – if momentary – lucidity returned to the mind of young Cindy Jamison.

She knew, just as Sally Reagan knew, that they were both the same, trapped in the terrible web of Steve Samuels' depravity. Cindy's whirling brain instinctively became aware that the dark-haired girl had committed much the same type of transgression as she had, perhaps sending private photographs through the mail which Samuels had intercepted. And her brain became aware, too, that this evening would be worse, much worse, than the other – that what the venereous clerk had planned for tonight was the apex of perversion: an orgy, an impossible flesh circus of which she and Sally Reagan were to be the main performers. She began to tremble with renewed fear and trepidation, seeing that the dark-haired girl had realized the same inevitability as she just had and had begun to tremble as well.

And still the two young wives stared at each other, as if each was seeking solace in the eyes of the other, tied together more closely than the best of friends by their mutual subjugation. A mute empathy, a tight bond, was sewn between Cindy Jamison and Sally Reagan and that bond somehow made things a little less terrifying than they might have been. Now, perhaps, both enslaved housewives would be able to keep their sanity during this longest of all nights…

The next few minutes were a kaleidoscope of fragmented time for the young mate of Howard Jamison. She was told to sit down on the couch, told to have another marijuana cigarette, and she obeyed. Sally Reagan, rid of her coat, sat beside her on the dirty material of the sofa and took pot herself – one joint, two, three. The room was filled with the sweetish, almost cloying odor of the weed.

"Are we ready now?" Samuels called out finally, as if asking permission of someone else to begin, looking in the direction of the screen. Then, nodding, as if he had received his answer though neither Cindy nor Sally heard a spoken word, the evil civil servant moved to the couch, staring down at the two beautiful women who sat with glazed, perspiring faces before him.