Free NightWhere by John Everson

several times; they had even had him over to the house a few nights. Mark trusted him with more than just his friendship.
    “I’ve tried to ask her about it, but she clams up every time. She just says this club gives her what she’s been looking for. What she needs.”
    “Then that’s a good thing,” Randy said. “If you can handle it.”
    Mark laughed. “You know I can handle her with others. This is different. Something else is going on here. I’m worried about this pain fixation she’s got now. All she ever wants seems to be whips and pain…”
    Randy frowned. “She’s always been kind of aggressive but…I don’t know what to tell you there. I know S&M’s a big part of this NightWhere club. I’ve never been there, but the people who get invited…they’re pain freaks. That’s the rep. All I can say is that if you want to keep getting invited, you’re going to have to find a way to play along.”
    “Do you know anyone else who goes?”
    Randy tilted back his beer and belched. Then he winked at Mark and grinned. “Not really. They don’t let pigs in.” He stretched and looked at the ceiling a minute, visibly thinking.
    “You know, people talk about NightWhere, but nobody really knows much about it. It’s almost like an urban legend. There was a woman who used to hang out with us—and I mean, literally hung out—the chick was fuckin’ stacked! She was one of those who was into the flogging and stuff, used to have nipple piercings and shit. Loved to get bent over the couch and have her hair pulled during, you know? She used to talk about wanting to find NightWhere, and then one weekend she came back to the club and said she’d been there. I remember it because she had really beautiful skin when she came to the club—perfect complexion, no tattoos or moles or zits or anything like that. Pretty, though she had a little extra on the side, you know? Anyway, after NightWhere, she showed up with whip marks all over her body. I was afraid to touch her—I remember that—I was afraid she’d start bleeding on me! But she talked about NightWhere the same way it sounds like Rae is—she was absolutely in love with it, even though it looked like they’d thrown her under a truck. She talked about one of the guys there too; I sort of wondered if she was more into him than anything else. But I never got the chance really to ask her.”
    “Why not?”
    “She never came back to the club again after that night.” Randy shook his head. “You know, people kind of come and go through the club over time. I’d guess there were probably some others who didn’t come back after they found NightWhere. I mean—look at you guys, for example. Haven’t seen you in weeks. Does Rae want to come back?”
    Mark shrugged. “She hasn’t mentioned it since the first night at NightWhere.”
    “See what I mean? We’ve had others at the club who had a thing for whips and chains…they never stick around that long. Whether that’s ’cuz they were bored since most of us don’t go there, or because they got sucked into NightWhere…who knows? All I know for sure is, they didn’t come back.”

Chapter Nine
    Dying for It
    The bruises were deep. The black was yellow on the edges, but mostly…still black. Parts of her kept bleeding. She had to move every few hours so that she didn’t scab herself too painfully to the couch. That would only hurt worse.
    She tried to stand, but fell back to the couch after a red-hot something snapped in her back. She saw her guitar sitting across the room and longed to strum it…the music would help take some of the pain away. But she didn’t think she could walk that far across the room. And her fingers were swollen and thick. She probably couldn’t play it.
    Amelia didn’t know how she’d managed to get herself home. But she knew that she couldn’t go to work tomorrow. Maybe not the rest of the week. She tried to move her arm and nothing happened.
    Maybe not ever.
    The room felt like