Glam Metal Detectives

Phil’s first thought was of Dante’s Inferno. The room was full of naked people, crowding around the most extraordinary assortment of ropes and chains and other instruments of torture.

She turned to rush out, only to feel her arm pushed roughly up behind her back, high enough to almost dislocate the shoulder, and a man’s voice breathing in her ear:

“Not so fast, baby. You’ve got to choose a number first.”

There was a table right in front of them. It looked, incongruously, like a turnstile table. And – sure enough – a little man in uniform was sitting behind it sorting through a box of tokens.

“Ah, two new girls. That brings us up to a baker’s dozen …”

Looking down further, Phil could see a pair of bare feet protruding from underneath the green felt table-cloth. Whoever’s feet they were was evidently crouching under the table, and … Oh my God: the little fellow’s face did seem a trifle flushed, his speech quite slurred. Now was his predicament in any way unusual. Everywhere she looked there seemed to be bodies thrusting up against each other – voluntarily, one might have assumed: except that most of the bare-arsed girls had their arms bound cruelly behind them.

“Choose.”

Putting out her hand, she took a blank ivory tile from the box.

“We’ll need an item of clothing to attach it to, my dear. Perhaps your string?" said the little man in uniform. "Justine, would you do the honours, dear?”

A slender girl backed out from under the ticket table, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

“My God, she looks just like Luce!” was Phil’s first thought, until she saw the large tattoo across her bird-like chest: a single, lidless red eye.

The naked girl reached up to remove Phil’s string.

“Justine!” said Pat.

Frowning, the girl continued slipping off Phil's panties as if she hadn’t heard. Evidently claiming acquaintance was not the thing to do down here. Attaching the g-string to the ivory token (which had, Phil saw, the number 13 embossed on it), she dropped it into a drawer full of just such frilly feminine undergarments.

Meanwhile the waiter, Bruto (as Pat was calling him) denuded her of her remaining covering, with what seemed quite unnecessary roughness. When this was complete, he tethered her by the wrists, adding a coil of elasticised rope around her elbows, which had the effect of bringing her shoulders back and forcing her chest out.

When the same operation had been performed on Pat (her few, futile attempts at struggling and cursing resulted only in a stinging slap on the behind), the two of them were frogmarched, still in their high heels, to the small group of similarly naked women in the middle of the room.

When she saw the long line of stocks, the leering men, each with a naked girl on his arm, above all, the hangman’s nooses dangling from high up in the ceiling, Phil began to scream.