“That is just so wrong!” Andrea giggled as she stood in front of one of the sentinels, her flashlight fixed on its enormous erection.
“It gets a lot more wrong,” Wayne warned her with no amusement whatsoever in his voice. He and Olivia stood before the face of the moaning woman. It was still startling to look upon.
“It’s so…perfect,” Olivia marveled. “How did they make it so real?”
Andrea stepped up beside her and examined the face. “Can the statues in there really make you…do those things?” she asked, blushing a little.
“They made Albert and Brandy do those things the first time they came down here.”
Olivia shuddered at the thought. How humiliating. She couldn’t imagine such a thing.
“They really did that?” Andrea pressed. “Right in there?”
“Like a couple of animals,” Wayne replied. Although Albert and Brandy had never explicitly described in steamy detail what happened to them inside the sex room, he made it a point to exaggerate his knowledge of the incident. He wanted to discourage any curiosity that might arise before reaching the other side.
“Wow.”
“Yeah,” Wayne agreed. “Wow. Just remember, we can’t peek in here.”
Andrea didn’t know how mere statues could do something like that. She thought the statues out here looked ridiculous. But she had to admit there was something extremely creepy about the woman’s face that framed the doorway. It was like Olivia said: it was just so perfect, so disturbingly real. She couldn’t find anything funny about it. And she liked finding reasons to laugh at scary things. It made them easier to deal with.
“Let’s get this over with,” Wayne sighed. He lifted his glasses and rested them atop his head so that he wouldn’t lose them. Then he carefully ducked into the moaning woman’s mouth and peered into the sex room.
Immediately, he realized that his eyesight was considerably better than Brandy’s. The shape on the floor in front of him was clearly a woman lying on her back with her feet spread in the air as a man mounted her.
He closed his eyes and waited for a moment as he tried to judge whether he was being affected or not. He didn’t feel overly aroused. His body was not reacting to the sight of the dirty act he had just witnessed. But he felt something uncomfortable deep in the pit of his belly. Was that the first stirring of the sex room’s mysterious power taking hold of his senses? Or was that simply his nerves? The task before him was dangerous and his confidence questionable. What if he wasn’t strong enough to lead these girls through this room?
From behind him, Olivia reached out and grasped his hand. She didn’t have a flashlight. She chose to let Wayne and Andrea carry the two that they brought, therefore she would be the link between them as they walked.
Wayne opened his eyes again, this time holding his flashlight so that it pointed back at his belly, illuminating the room ahead of him indirectly. This darkened the room considerably, and the extra dimness, combined with the shadows, helped to reduce his visibility. But it wasn’t quite enough.
“Turn off your flashlight,” he instructed. “I need it a little darker in here.”
Andrea hesitated, but obeyed. She didn’t need it anyway if she was going to have her eyes closed. But the very idea of turning off her light was a little unnerving.
“That’s better.” Now he could scarcely make out any details at all. “Brandy’s eyes are better for this than mine.”
“Funny way to say she’s more blind,” Olivia observed.
“True,” Wayne agreed. “It’s a funny thing. Not many instances where it’s actually an advantage to have poor eyesight.”
Olivia found it intriguing to think that being extremely nearsighted, of all things, was the key to safely navigating these bizarre chambers.
“Okay,” Wayne announced. “I’m going to start moving now. Stay right behind me. There’s a lot of places to bump your head in here. And remember to keep your eyes closed. No matter how bad you want to peek.”
Olivia didn’t need any encouragement. As Wayne started forward into the sex room, she found that she had no interest at all in seeing what was inside this room. He had already told them—multiple times—what would happen, what the statues in here could do, and that was enough for her. After all that she had seen at Gilbert House, she had no reason to doubt a single word that he said. Though she could hardly fathom the idea of losing control and turning into a sex-crazed slut just by looking at a few statues, she had been through quite enough these past few days to keep her from being the slightest bit tempted to test it. She could certainly do without humiliating herself down here.
Andrea, on the other hand, was terribly curious about this chamber. Could it really do the things Wayne said it could? She couldn’t help but doubt. She couldn’t imagine anything making her do the things he said it would. She simply wasn’t like that.
“I can see the doorway already,” Wayne announced. On one hand, it was a relief to be able to rely on his own nearsightedness. Without Brandy’s glasses, he could indulge in glancing to the sides when something seemed to be reaching toward him in his peripheral vision. But he still could see a little too well for his liking. The details of the statues were shrouded in a shadowy haze, but he could see what most of them were doing, and he found that this alone turned him on a little. He could not imagine what he would feel if he put his glasses back on and actually looked at them. The idea of losing all control was so incredibly foreign to him that he almost wished he could do it, just for the experience. Just to know the feeling. But of course the consequences of doing that could be unimaginable.
“How are you doing back there?” he asked.
“I’m fine,” Olivia replied.
“Me too,” reported Andrea. But the truth was that she was dying of curiosity. All around her supposedly stood fantastic statues. X-rated statues. Statues that would make her throw herself shamelessly at any man with merely a glance.
They couldn’t be real. Not the way he described them. She could buy a lot of what he had told her, but this was too much. Maybe if she were some kind of exhibitionist slut already. Maybe then she could believe it. She even knew a couple of girls who she suspected might be susceptible to such a place. But not her.
And now that Wayne had told them that they were already approaching the exit, she found herself even more tempted to peek. Just a little. Just a tiny glimpse. That was all. That couldn’t hurt.
Could it?
“Almost there,” Wayne assured them.
“Good,” replied Olivia. She didn’t like stumbling around with her eyes closed. It was too much like being in the dark. And she didn’t care for the dark anymore. The dark reminded her of Gilbert House, of that horrible restroom, and the endless hours she spent waiting for someone to find her.
Andrea said nothing. They were almost out. It would soon all be behind them. Then she might never know what was in this room.
And what if there was nothing here? What if this was all an extravagant lie? What if this was her one chance to realize that she was the victim of an elaborate deception? If she opened her eyes now and found nothing more than an empty room…
But what if it was exactly what Wayne said it was?
She bit her lip as she struggled with the urge to take just that one little look. It couldn’t do those things to her. It just couldn’t. She was sure of it.
She opened her eyes.
Immediately, her attention was drawn to the left, to a tall, gray shape, and she found herself staring at the brazen image of a man and a woman in the midst of ferocious copulation. It was a startling sight. She was barely able to stifle her gasp. The details were so real it was difficult to believe they were nothing more than stone. They could have been real people, their bodies merely painted to match the surfaces around them, acting out their filthiest fantasies. In the brief instant before she turned away, she saw the frozen face of the man with perfect clarity, even in the gloom. His lips were peeled back in a terrible grimace as he cried out with an unmistakable mix of ecstasy and agony, caught at the very apex of a powerful orgasm. The woman had her arms around his neck, her legs locked around his waist, her head thrown all the way back, her eyes bulging, her long hair dangling toward the floor. Somehow she looked both furious and rapturous.
She tore her eyes away, only to be met by a second statue, a man, sneering with lecherous delight as he mounted a woman from behind. He was frightfully skinny, with lean, taut muscles, and the woman was much plumper, with huge, meaty breasts that hung toward the floor beneath her as she moaned with obscene pleasure.
She closed her eyes, but she could not block out the images she had seen. Even with her flashlight off, they had burned themselves onto her memory. They lingered in her mind, as vivid as if she were still staring at them, imprinted on her thoughts like a tattoo, utterly inescapable.
She felt a hot blush fill her cheeks.
She wouldn’t lose control. She wasn’t like that. No matter what Wayne said, she’d never do anything like what he described. But there was a hot feeling spreading deep in her gut. Her body began to betray her. She remembered the things Wayne had told her, about Albert and Brandy coming here and wandering into the room unaware. It was such a carnal image that he had painted. It was so dirty. It was so wrong.
And yet, it was strangely alluring… She found herself trying to imagine the two of them in here, forcing themselves on each other, tearing at each other’s clothes. The thought was surprisingly sexy. She was suddenly dwelling on the idea of the two of them down here, naked and alone, furiously attacking each other. It was such an easy thing to visualize.
It was so hot.
She was suddenly curious about what other awful, fascinating scenes surrounded her, inviting her to look upon them. She wanted to see them, wanted to see what naughty things they were doing. It was intriguing.
She squeezed her eyes closed as tightly as she could. This was wrong. This wasn’t who she was. This wasn’t how she behaved. She didn’t want to see the things that were in this room. These things were disgusting.
But the truth was that she was incredibly turned on by them.
What was it doing to her? She’d never felt like this before.
She should have listened to Wayne. She should not have peeked. Now there were dirty thoughts in her mind. There were naughty ideas. And worst of all, she liked the way they made her feel.
“Here we go,” Wayne called back to them. “Watch your head.”
Olivia stepped out of the sex room behind him and opened her eyes, relieved to be free of the darkness again. In front of her, Wayne was returning the glasses he’d retrieved from his bedside earlier that night to his face. He looked good with them on. He looked gentler.
“Are you two okay?” he asked, blinking through the lenses as his eyes readjusted.
“I’m fine,” Olivia replied. And she was.
Andrea merely nodded, her face lowered toward the floor.
“Andrea?” Wayne asked.
“Yeah,” she replied quickly, nodding again. “I’m fine. No problem.” She dared not meet his eyes. She studied her flashlight carefully instead, inspecting it, hoping he would just turn around and start walking. She didn’t want to tell him she’d disobeyed him. She didn’t want to acknowledge what she’d done. It was embarrassing.
She didn’t even want to think about it, but it was right there at the front of her mind, tormenting her.
“You sure?”
“Yeah.” She forced herself to lift her eyes from the flashlight and meet his gaze. He was remarkably handsome, with the dirt on his face and his hair all messed up like that. He looked sexy. “It’s just…weird down here,” she told him as her face flushed even hotter than before.
Wayne nodded. “It is.” But his eyes lingered on her and she could meet them no longer. She looked down at the flashlight in her hands again, embarrassed. She was sure he could see the color in her cheeks, sure that he knew what she had done.
But he said nothing more. He turned away and started down the next passage with Olivia right behind him.
Andrea turned her flashlight on and followed, her eyes washing over Wayne’s cloaked body as he led the way ahead of her.