Read The Facility for Free Online Page B

that! I don’t care what they do. I swear to you, I will not ever touch that horrible man’s dirty feet. I can’t stand to look at him. To get on my knees and crawl to him and kiss his feet...never! You must be crazy!”
    Miko and Mi Jong exchanged looks and smiled. “You have much to learn, American woman, much to learn,” Miko said. She jerked on the chain. Mi Jong gripped Kathy’s arm. They led her along the hall and down a long flight of stairs. The door at the bottom swung open to admit them to a circular room with walls made of huge square cut gray stones. In the center of the room stood a thick wooden post. Above it hung two chains attached to ropes, which ran through pulleys and were secured to a railing against the far wall. A bright circle of light shown down on the post.
    In the shadows facing the post were two ornate chairs. One was occupied by Abul. In the other sat a bearded fat man several years older than his companion. Both men wore white caftans. Next to them stood what at first appeared to be a stocky very black Negro child. When the three women got closer, Kathy gasped. What she had taken to be a child was, in reality, a grotesquely misshapen dwarf. His bare arms were thick and muscular. They hung down below his knees. His huge round head was bald. The left side of his face was horribly scarred. Where his left eye should have been there was nothing but a livid red socket from which seeped yellow mucus. His lower jaw jutted out and his thick lips were drawn back in a perpetual grin exposing large yellow teeth. His massive chest and back, as well as his arms, glistened with oil. He wore tight black leather pants and black boots. The front of the pants were cut so that his testicles and his long black penis were exposed. The knobby head of his flaccid penis dangled obscenely between his legs. Kathy turned her head away and shut her eyes.
    When the women were ten feet from the three men, they stopped. Miko and Mi Jong stepped back. Kathy, her eyes still closed, bowed her head, not out of deference to Abul, but so she wouldn’t have to look at him. The fat man stared at her with tiny rat-like eyes. “She is as you described her, Abul.” His voice was high-pitched, effeminate. “I am forced to do business with her kind in America. They are all the same. Arrogant...arrogant bitches who don’t know their place. They look down on me or they act as if I’m invisible. I despise them.”
    “This one is learning her place, my friend. I can assure you of that.” Abul gestured toward Kathy and pointed to his bare feet. “The respectful greeting, Mrs. Ryan. On your knees and crawl to me.”
    Kathy opened her eyes and looked at his crooked toes with their long blackened toenails. She shook her head and started to back away.
    “My God, Abul!” Narimov cried. “She refuses!”
    Abul’s face turned crimson, the veins stood out on his neck. “Take her to the post!” he shouted in a rage. “Strip her and take her to the post!”
    Quickly, Miko and Mi Jong rushed forward and grabbed Kathy, forcing her back to the center of the room. Although she struggled, she was no match for the two powerful women. “Turn her to face us and rip the clothes from her!” Abul shouted. In a few moments they had roughly torn off her blazer and skirt. Each of the women twisted one of Kathy’s arms up behind her back until she thought she might faint. Her head hung down. Her red painted nipples glistened under the harsh light. “Cuff her,” Abul ordered. “Take off her shoes. We’ll see how she dances on the tips of her toes.”
    Miko and Mi Jong dragged her to the whipping post. They buckled thick leather cuffs to each wrist, then clipped them to the chains. Then they hurried to the rail and pulled on the ropes until Kathy was lifted almost off the ground. They secured the ropes and came back to remove her shoes. Her back was toward the two men. Under the glare of the light, her oiled skin seemed ever whiter than before.