She speaks quickly and quietly, too soft for me to hear either her or the other person. Then she nods and turns towards me. “It’s time, my dear.”

My legs feel like they’ve turned to concrete. Mere has to physically pull me up before I can walk towards the door. Every step takes a lifetime, it seems.

There are two massive men waiting for me outside the room. Their expressions are identical masks of stony silence. They take up positions on either side of me, holding my upper arms just tight enough to hurt, and walk me down the hall. I glance back over my shoulder at Mere, who’s remained rooted in place outside of the room.

She’s standing at the door with her hands clasped in front of her chest again. “Good luck, my dear,” she says, giving me a sorrowful wave.

As sick as it sounds, I honestly believe she means it.

I try to pay attention to my surroundings as we walk. It’s definitely a house, that much I can tell. But only in its bones. The rest of it has been gutted, stripped down and rebuilt into something else. Something worse.

The wallpaper is a salacious red and antique lamps cast a disturbing bronze light, alternating with strange paintings of nude women, reptiles, knives, devils. The silent men don’t stop or slow. They just keep moving, and I get the feeling that it makes no difference whether I walk with them willingly or not. They’d drag me to our destination without a second thought if that’s what it took.

The men drop me in a cavernous room, then retreat back to the hallway and pull the door shut behind them. I rub my arms where they were holding me and look around.

Shadows cluster among the rafters of the arched ceiling overhead. A thick velvet curtain in dark purple saws the space in half.

In the corner are three other women, all dolled up just like me.

All lifeless in the eyes, just like me.

I look at them and then at the curtain. At the curtain, then at them. And as I glance back and forth, the curtain seems to take on this weird, mystical property. It’s the only thing keeping us from what comes next. When that curtain raises, we won’t be women anymore.

We will be ushered into a new nightmare.

We will be property.

I feel nauseous again, worse than ever, but I manage to keep my feet. Then I catch a whiff of metal and sweat. I don’t have to turn around to know who it is.

“You do clean up well, Junepenny,” Adrian says, placing his hand on the small of my back.

I jerk away from his hand and whirl around. “Don’t touch me.”

He raises his eyebrows. “You’d rather be touched by one of the men sitting out there, behind the curtains?” he asks. “Let me tell you what you can expect. Layard will touch you, but only after he whips you raw. The sight of blood turns him on. Slava is much gentler. But he does like to share, so be prepared to spread your legs for more than just him if he buys you. Radomir… ah, now, I saved the best for last. He wants to feel like he’s got his finger on the life or death button when he fucks.”