"Fifty grand is deep guano for a deadbeat like you." Guido smirked, enjoying his victim's fear. "Maybe I ought ta just make an example outta ya." His routine was very good.
Anthony DeMartino trembled in the hard hands of the leg-breakers that held him. Why couldn't he stop gambling? "Please! I'll pay you back! I'm good for it! I always pay my-
He gasped, slumping and vomiting from the fist that had abruptly sunk into his belly.
Guido buffed his fingernails on his lapel, then examined them boredly. "Anthony, just shut up and listen. You owe fifty two Gs now, what with the vig. You ain't got it. You got to sell your house or you got to die." He narrowed his eyes, fixing DeMartino in place. "You got a week, then I start cuttin’ off fingers."
"Not my house! It's all I have!" DeMartino knew that he would never be able to get another mortgage to buy another. Not with his miserable credit.
Guido gestured and Anthony was punched again. "You got your health, Anthony. Keep that in mind tonight when you're calling the realtor."
Anthony was dropped and ignored as the goons walked away. They laughed and chatted amiably, DeMartino's existence already forgotten.
DeMartino lay in the alley for a time, then slowly stood, holding onto a rough brick wall for support. He looked around, but this was an unfamiliar area to him. They had taken him right out of his house and brought him here in their trunk.
Trembling with despair and disgusted with his weakness, he started walking down the alley in the opposite direction to the one which his creditors had taken.
He almost missed the discreet little sign, but the smell of gin led him to the bar. Gratefully, Anthony ordered three double Tanqueray and tonic’s, then took a look around. It was an old speakeasy, never redecorated and only fitfully maintained. There was a small, decrepit stage at one end of the room and a doorway leading into another room.
Deciding that he liked the place, he downed his first drink with a single gulp. Anthony looked into the dusty mirror and felt his eye popping at the horrifying sight. A familiar-looking man in a zipper-festooned rubber suit was being paraded past his barstool on a leash held by a stocky woman in a dominatrix outfit.
Quickly fortifying himself by swallowing half of the second drink, DeMartino turned and gaped at them.
Barch saw him and sneered. "What the hell are you doing here!"
Anthony blinked. That was a very good question. "I was... drinking." Quickly finishing the drink, he gestured at the beet-red O'Neil. "Can he breath okay in that ball-gag?"
Barch frowned. "You don't talk to someone else's slave, Bucko. It's a house rule." She shot an irritated glare at the bouncer's empty stool by the door. "Timmy's just learning a thing or two about submission. Before I tie the knot I have to know if he can reeally love honor and obey his lawfull Mistress."
DeMartino nodded, then stood briskly, draining the third Tanqueray. "Well. I'll just be toddling along then. Good luck with your perversions and don't worry about me telling anyone. Each to his own I always say." He took one step and gagged when he was abruptly checked by a noose around his neck.
Barch cackled like the wicked witch of the West.
"Yhaaa! What the hell?" Anthony turned and gaped, recognizing Linda Griffin, also in a dominatrix outfit.
"Well, well, well! Hello there, fresh meat." Linda stood posed, smiling playfully and idly tugging on the leash. She had been divorced for a year now and there was no one around but other bitter divorcees. She happened to know that DeMartino was a life-long bachelor as well as being indisputably heterosexual. That difficult combination was all that she really wanted.
DeMartino drew himself up. "Madame, I am a mere sojourner passing through this den of iniquity in search of alcohol and succor, not a... whatever you people are. Furthermore, I have already had enough punishment for one lifetime and-
Linda pulled the leash and buried his face in her studded leather bikini top. "Oh, what a bad boy you are, raising your voice to a Mistress. Submit!"
The combination of an empty stomach, the contusions suffered during his clash with the mob, three double-gin short drinks and the impact of having his face in the Griffin cleavage all combined to weaken him at the worst possible moment.
Linda smiled happily as Anthony collapsed to his knees in front of her. Pulling, she used the noose to put him on his stomach.
Anthony felt the first intimation of panic “Wha- He clapped his mouth shut, desperately holding down the gin that was trying to escape.
Linda put her foot on his head, pushing his face into the floor. “I claim you and declare you to be my property, Slave.” She quickly cuffed him, to illustrate his ‘claimed’ status to the rest of the club.
DeMartino goggled and painfully re-swallowed his mouthful of Tanqueray. “Ah, m-
Snapping the ball-gag into place, Linda pulled him back to his feet by the noose. “No talking, slave. Oh, yes. I think that you’ll do quite nicely once I get you properly broken in.”
Guido and the boys were walking back toward the car from Steve’s Stogie Shack, all puffing away on huge ten dollar cigars, when their attention was attracted by a figure sprinting toward them down the alley.
Guido gaped when he recognized DeMartino, handcuffed and wearing a gag. “Hey, what da hell, lookit that, it’s Tony.”
The mobsters all shuffled aside, letting him pass, their attention on the five masked women in dominatrix outfits that were chasing him. None of them said a word as the women pounded past in shouting pursuit. Then Big Louie smirked.
“I got a bill that says he don’t make the street.”
“You’re on!”
“I’ll take that action!”
Anthony’s luck was perfect. Perfectly bad. They caught him twenty feet from freedom.
“Damn, I always thought Tony was a hell of a lot faster than that,” Guido huffed grumpily as he paid Big Louie.
“Poor bastid.” Louie shook his head sadly.
A Mistress found a metal TV antenna pole lying behind a dumpster and slotted it through Anthony’s belt and cuffs, tying his torso and ankles to it with TV wire from inside the dumpster. Heaving the pole up onto their shoulders like big game hunters, the mob of Dominatrix cheered and began the procession back to the club, laughing and talking.
Passing through the center of the mobsters again, this time a passenger, Anthony managed to work the gag loose. “G- Guido! Get me out of this!”
Guido looked at the women. “No way, Tone.”
“Then you can forget about the money! Go ahead and whack me! Do it now!” Anthony was literally at the end of his rope.
Guido sighed. “I’m tearin’ up your marker, Tone. You got enough trouble. Stop by and let us know what happened if ya ever get away.”
Anthony took an outraged breath to curse them, but Linda pushed the gag back into place.
“No talking to the slaves.” Linda smiled at them. “Unless you boys want to come in and play too?”
The Outfit was routed in seconds.