The Journalist’s Revenge Against His Torturers

I woke up slowly, like someone surfacing from the bottom of a well. The first thing I noticed was the metallic taste in my mouth and a dull throbbing in my temples. Then the darkness. Closed in, complete. I tried to sit up and felt the pull of my wrists behind my back. My ankles were tied too.

I pieced it together. The interview. The bar. The brunette who promised definitive documents for my story. She drugged me. The fucking bitch drugged me.

I’m an investigative journalist. For weeks I’d been after a couple who moved in the circles of Buenos Aires high society. Dirty business: prostitution, trafficking, women brought in from Eastern Europe with fake job offers. A source had slipped me an envelope with copies of transfers and names. Enough to sink them. And then Mariana showed up, saying she’d been one of the victims, that she had proof to finish the case.

I believed her. Like an idiot.

The sound of a door brought me back to the present. Harsh light snapped on and I had to clamp my eyelids shut for several seconds before I could open them. When I did, there they were, both of them. The couple. Smiling like they’d just won a game.

—Here we’ve got the curious reporter —she said.

—Well, love. I’m leaving him to you. I’ve got business in Panama that can’t wait —he replied, barely looking at me, as if I were a piece of furniture.

—Don’t worry, darling. You know how I handle things.

—Enjoy —he said. And he left.

I was alone with her. A blonde a little over thirty, slender, with that cold beauty propped up by money and a lot of discipline. I later learned her name was Cecilia. She came close enough to be a palm’s width from my face.

—Now you’re going to tell me where you’re keeping the documents that belong to us.

—I don’t know what documents you’re talking about.

—Play dumb if you want. We’ve got time.

While she talked, I looked around for the first time. It was a large basement, without windows, with gray-painted concrete walls. Rings, chains, hooks hung from the walls. On a neat panel, like tools in a workshop, there were whips, crops, handcuffs, gags, plugs, clamps. A nightmare set. Then I understood what they used that place for. That was where they filmed the videos they later used as bait to sell the girls. And I had fallen into their own cage.

—Mariana, come. Give me a hand.

The brunette who had set the trap for me appeared behind Cecilia. She didn’t look me in the eye. The two of them tightened the ropes around my wrists to a hook hanging from the ceiling. They pulled, and my arms rose over my head until I was barely supported on my heels.

—I’ve got until my husband comes back from Panama to get you to tell me what I need. A week. If you want this to be easy, you talk now. If not… —she left the sentence hanging and slapped me across the face hard enough to wrench my neck.

The taste of blood filled my mouth.

—For the last time. Where are the documents?

—I keep telling you I don’t know what…

Another slap. This one split my lip.

—Just so it’s clear. —She pulled a black electric immobilizer from her back pocket and pressed the button. The blue buzz made every hair on my body stand on end—. This hurts a lot. And it doesn’t leave a mark. Think about it while we have some fun.

I calculated fast. If I told them where the envelope was, I’d become the only living witness. End of the story. My only chance was to hold out, buy time, wait for them to slip.

—Mariana, untie his feet. We’re going to strip him.

The brunette obeyed. They cut my T-shirt off in one snip and yanked my trousers down without the slightest care. I was left in my underwear, dangling from the hook like livestock in a slaughterhouse.

—Leave it, I’ll do this —said Cecilia.

She knelt in front of me, slipped her thumbs inside the waistband and pulled down in one motion. I was naked, completely exposed, my cock hanging limp in front of her face. I felt the humiliation like a physical blow, worse than the slaps. A young, athletic guy, prize-winning journalist, hanging naked in a basement, with his dick a palm’s width from the painted mouth of a stranger.

—Not bad at all, Mariana. We’re going to have fun —said Cecilia, and took my cock in her hand, weighing it like someone choosing fruit at the market. She squeezed it, pulled the foreskin back, exposed the glans, studied it with a clinical smile—. Look at this, good material. Too bad what we’re going to do to it.

***

The first lash crossed my back. The second, my ass. After that I lost count. Every strand of the multi-tailed whip left a burning mark, and the screams escaped me without permission. Cecilia seemed energized by my reaction. Mariana, by contrast, watched silently from the side, arms crossed, like someone observing another person’s work.

—Mariana, tie his legs open.

That order froze me. The brunette tied ropes around my ankles, fed them through rings in the floor, and tightened them until my legs were forced apart at an almost obscene angle. Then Cecilia operated the hook control and it began to rise, lifting me off the floor. The ankle ropes kept pulling. I was left suspended, taut as a bow, legs spread in a cross, my balls hanging free, my ass and cock completely exposed to both of them.

—Poor little balls —said Cecilia with a sweet smile, and stroked my balls with a finger, almost tenderly.

Then she drew back and kicked me.

The blow was clean, precise, brutal. The left testicle took it full on and the pain shot up through my abdomen like an electric current that stole my breath. I tried to fold in on myself and couldn’t. All that came out was a howl that bounced off the walls.

The second blow was even worse. This time a front kick that flattened everything against my lower belly. I came close to blacking out. Hang on. Hang on. Hang on.

When my vision cleared again, Mariana was kneeling in front of me. She had started stroking me with an almost tender delicacy, saying nothing. She took my cock in both hands, very slowly, as if she wanted to make up for the punishment. One thumb ran over the frenulum, climbed to the glans, slid back down to the base. Her other hand cupped my battered balls, weighing them with a pity that seemed almost real. Then she bent her head and took the tip of my cock in her mouth. Her warm tongue circled the glans, sucking slowly, unhurriedly, with a care that contradicted the whole basement. My body, traitor that it was, responded. My cock, beaten and hurting, grew in her mouth little by little until it hardened completely. She let it swell, took more of it, until I felt the back of her throat and a useless spasm of pleasure rose in me that only served to drag me deeper down.

—That’s enough —Cecilia cut in—. We don’t want him getting ideas.

Mariana yanked my cock out of her mouth, a thread of saliva hanging from her lips, and stepped away. My dick remained in the air, shiny, swollen, pointing at the ceiling like a perfect target.

She came back with a crop. The first blow landed on the shaft, the second on the glans. Three more followed, backhanded, each worse than the last. Every strike burned from the tip to the groin, and my cock, still hard, jerked obscenely between my legs after each lash. My howls were inhuman. And then, just when I was about to collapse and confess anything, I thought of it.

I let my head drop. I went limp. I closed my eyes.

The blows stopped.

—Shit. Lower him. We need him alive.

I felt the ankle ropes loosen. Then the hook descended until my feet touched the floor. I kept my head hanging, my breathing faked, my eyelids barely open.

The two of them moved a few steps away. They were arguing in low voices, choosing the next toy. It was now or never.

***

I jumped with everything I had left. The wrist ropes, already loose, came free from the hook with the momentum. I was free. Hurt, naked, hands still tied, but free.

I lunged at Cecilia. She was the dangerous one, the one with the immobilizer. Mariana opened her mouth to shout, but her warning came too late. My blow with both hands together, driven into the back of her neck, sent her face-first into the floor. She went still.

Mariana tried to grab the crop and attack me. I dodged and drove a sharp elbow into her plexus. She dropped to her knees, unable to breathe.

—That’s for the bar —I said.

I picked the immobilizer out of Cecilia’s back pocket. With it in one hand and my breath ragged in my chest, I ordered Mariana to untie my wrists. She obeyed in silence, her hands shaking. When I was completely free, I picked up my jeans and put them on slowly. Every movement hurt. My balls throbbed as if they had their own heart. But I never once took my eyes off them.

I could have called the police right there. I could have handed them over with the source’s documents and closed the case that night. But something darker asked me for something else first. Something I hadn’t known was inside me.

Cecilia started to stir. She opened her eyes, saw the situation, and opened them wider.

—You’re not getting away with this —she muttered.

—No? —I showed her the immobilizer—. Let’s test that.

I pressed the button. Cecilia jerked on the floor as if a bolt of lightning had gone through her, bit her tongue, and stopped moving. It took almost a minute for her to come to. When she did, the hate in her gaze had mixed with something new. Fear.

—Stand up. Both of you. Against the wall.

This time they didn’t argue.

—Take off your clothes.

Cecilia looked at me searching for a crack. She didn’t find one. They began undressing slowly, first their shirts, then their pants. Cecilia was wearing white lace lingerie that fit her like it had been painted on. Mariana was simpler, black lingerie, the body of a girl who still can’t quite believe what she’s got.

—Who said to stop?

They let the bras fall, then the last garment. Cecilia, naturally blonde, with firm tits, pink nipples hard from the basement cold, her pubis showing a strip of golden hair trimmed with hairdresser precision. Mariana, waxed, her cunt completely bare, the inner lips barely visible, smaller breasts, brown, with dark areolas. Both of them tried to cover themselves with their hands.

—Hands behind your backs.

They put their hands behind them. They stood exposed, heads bowed, without armor. I handcuffed them myself, first one and then the other, careful not to take my eyes off them. My cock hardened inside my jeans just from seeing them like that, offered up, and I didn’t bother to hide it. They both knew what was coming, even if neither said it out loud.

—Thanks for telling me about the trip to Panama. I’ve got a whole week to think about what to do with you. Before the police, of course.

***

I took Mariana to the corner and tied her to a low ring, sitting on her heels. Then I turned to Cecilia.

I forced her to sit in the center of the room, where the hook hung. A spreader bar was enough to keep her ankles apart, exposed. The bar had a ring right in the middle. I hooked the winch cable to that ring and started lifting. Cecilia’s legs rose slowly, first to chest height, then above her head, until she was hanging upside down, her shoulders barely touching the floor, her cunt and ass exposed at my face level and her hair spilling all over her face.

—Please —she said, and her voice cracked—. Please, no.

—You know how this works. You taught it yourself.

I took the bristle whip, the same one she’d used on me. I didn’t even need to deliver the first blow: just seeing me come at her with it in my hand, a stream of piss shot up from her cunt and soaked her belly and her hanging tits. The body confessing what the mouth still denied.

The first lash landed on her stomach. The second lower, on one of the hanging breasts. The nipple turned red instantly. Cecilia screamed. It was a clean scream, without irony, without disguise. For the first time in hours she stopped acting.

—Not there, please, not there —she begged when she saw me lower my arm, aiming between her spread legs.

—No? But that’s what you enjoyed doing to the girls you brought here.

The blow went in cleanly between her thighs. The bristles bit into the lips of her cunt, slid between the folds, left a red mark across the trimmed pubis. Cecilia’s shriek filled the whole room. I dropped the whip, crouched down, and pried her cunt lips open with two fingers to look at it properly. It was swollen, soaked with a wetness that wasn’t just piss. The bitch was wet. I lowered her just enough to get her to mouth level and ran my tongue the full length of her slit, from clit to asshole, slow, tasting contempt and salt. Cecilia jerked in the harness, caught between disgust and something worse.

—Whore —I muttered—. With this wet cunt you won’t be able to tell me you don’t want it.

I unfastened my jeans and pulled them down to my knees, leaving my cock out, hard and still marked by the crop blows. I took it in one hand, rubbed it against Cecilia’s cunt lips, teased it against her clit, played with the glans between the folds, savoring every muffled moan from her throat. Then I buried it in one thrust, all the way in. Cecilia let out a howl that had nothing dignified about it. Hanging upside down as she was, her body almost vertical, each thrust shook her whole body, her tits bouncing the wrong way, toward her face, and her hand couldn’t reach anywhere to defend itself. I fucked her slowly, sliding in and out in measured strokes so she’d feel every centimeter. My cock, punished, throbbed with pleasure inside her. Every shove into that suspended body was direct revenge.

—Look at you leaking, you cunt —I told her, pulling my shiny cock out of her juices and dragging it across her stomach—. Look at that filthy rich cunt soaking itself.

Then I walked around behind her. She was at the perfect height. I spat on her puckered asshole, rubbed the glans against the little hole, pressed. Cecilia began to beg, with that voice that no longer knew whether it was asking or pleading.

—Not there, not there, please…

—You did worse things to the girls, didn’t you? Take it.

I pushed. Her tightly clenched ass gave way slowly, almost cruelly, and my cock sank in halfway. Cecilia screamed as if I were splitting her in two. I waited a second, pulled out, went back in deeper. I fucked her ass hanging upside down, both hands holding her hips so I could drive in better. Every thrust of my pelvis against her ass sounded in the basement like a slap. I shoved a finger into her cunt while I kept fucking her, feeling my cock through the thin wall, and she cried, and moaned, and it all blended into an animal sound.

I swapped the whip for a single-strand one, thinner, more surgical, without taking my cock out of her ass. I gauged the distance. I let a clean lash land across her left breast while I was thrusting into her. Her whole body convulsed and the spasm clamped my cock like a vise. I didn’t last much longer. I pulled out at the last moment, grabbed her hanging hair, yanked her head back, and came all over her face and open mouth, thick ropes of semen landing on her lips, her eyelids, her tongue. I left her like that, marked, hanging there, while I breathed like an animal.

***

I don’t know how long it lasted. I know that at some point I stopped feeling tired, that the pain from my own wounds dissolved into something else. A strange, dark sensation I didn’t want to look at directly.

When I lowered Cecilia, I left her lying on the floor, wrists cuffed, ankles secured with shackles chained to a ring in the floor. Her face still shining with semen and saliva. She wasn’t going anywhere. I brought her a bowl of water. She had to stay alive until the police arrived.

—Please —she whispered, and that was the last I heard from her that night.

***

Mariana was waiting in her corner. She had watched everything from the floor, mute, and now her thighs were pressed tight together, trembling. She didn’t speak when I took her to a wooden sawhorse set between two metal supports, a horizontal wedge meant for straddling. I made her swing one leg over it. I tied her wrists to a ring in the ceiling. Then I lifted one foot, bent it back, and secured it with a rope. When I did the same with the other, the girl screamed. Her entire weight dropped at once onto the wedge and the wood sank between the shaved lips, splitting her cunt open against the edge.

—This was what they were planning to do to me. Or something like it.

—I was only following orders. I swear it. I didn’t want this.

—You’ll say that to the judge.

I put clamps on her nipples, like I’d seen on the panel. Her brown nipples turned red instantly under the metal. I passed the cord through a ring at the base of the sawhorse and pulled, forcing her to lean forward so she wouldn’t tear her tits off. The weight of her body pressed her clit harder against the wood. She bit her lip to keep from screaming. I ran a finger through her cunt and pulled it out shiny. The bitch was wet too, with the same guilty moisture as Cecilia.

—Look at this —I told her, showing her the finger—. You’re drooling with fear or with pleasure, I don’t know which.

—Please —she whispered—. Please, fuck me however you want, but don’t hit me anymore.

I pulled my jeans down again. My cock, tired and still marked, came back up. I stood behind the sawhorse and grabbed her hips. Her wet cunt was right at the glans, pressed against the wood. I mounted her in one thrust and the wood gave way slightly, dropping her another inch onto the wedge, with my cock inside and her clit crushed at the same time. Mariana shrieked. I fucked her slowly, moving her little by little forward and back over the sawhorse, forcing her to fuck both the wood and my cock at the same time, every thrust grinding her clit against the edge. I squeezed her tits from behind, tugged the cord on the clamps, and she came with a muffled cry, trembling all over, clamping my cock in a spasm she couldn’t hide. My cock swelled inside her. I pulled her hair, threw her head back, and emptied myself into her, driving every spurt deep inside.

When the curses began, I put a gag on her.

Cecilia, in her corner, didn’t even lift her head to look.

***

I sat in a chair, facing them both. I lit a cigarette from the pack on a table. It was the only luxury I allowed myself that strange night. I watched them for a long time in silence, thinking about the envelope locked away in the post-office box, about the call I was going to make at dawn, about the commissioner who’d owed me a favor for three years.

After a while I lowered Mariana from the sawhorse and left her lying beside Cecilia, secured with the same shackles. A thread of semen was running down her thigh. I took off her gag and the clamps. The girl was crying silently. I didn’t say anything. I left a bowl of water beside her and went up the basement steps without looking back.

I called at six in the morning. The police arrived forty minutes later. I waited for them at the front door with the source’s envelope tucked under my arm, my body still buzzing. When they opened the basement and went down, I stayed upstairs, smoking another cigarette, watching the sun begin to come in through the window.

The commissioner came out a little while later. He looked at me for a long time without asking anything. Then he said, almost admiringly:

—I don’t want to know what happened down there.

—Even better —I said.

I stubbed out the cigarette in the hall ashtray and walked to the patrol car. My balls still hurt. But for the first time in many hours, I could breathe.