The fluorescent lights of the Metro Tribune satellite office hummed with an irritating, insectoid buzz, a sound that seemed to drill directly into the base of Camila Reyes’ skull. It was 11:30 PM. The rest of the floor was a graveyard of dark monitors and empty chairs, but Camila’s desk remained a chaotic island of cold coffee cups, crumpled notes, and sheer desperation.
Rain lashed against the floor-to-ceiling windows, distorting the city lights into smeared, weeping streaks of neon. Camila stared at her reflection in the dark glass. Dark circles bruised the skin under her eyes. At twenty-nine, she looked exhausted. The hunger that had driven her out of the Bronx and into journalism school was still there, but it was curdling into fear. The big Three-Oh was creeping up, and what did she have? A few fluff pieces on zoning laws and a handful of bylines that nobody read past the first paragraph. She was hemorrhaging time.
She looked away from her reflection and down at the corkboard she’d commandeered. Three faces stared back, printed on cheap office paper.
Elena Kowalski, 21.
Sarah Wong, 19.
Chloe Johnson, 22.
They were all young, all pretty, all vanished from the same six-block radius near the arts district within the last six months.
It had started with Chloe. Two weeks ago, a police scanner alert about a missing waitress had caught Camila's ear. She’d pulled the initial report: Chloe Johnson. Missing Person. Suspected Foul Play. But when she went back to check for updates three days later, the digital file had been altered. The status had changed from Missing Person to Located — Not Missing. The note attached was brief: "Subject contacted parents. Relocated to California."
It felt too clean. Too fast. Camila had called the diner where Chloe worked. The manager said Chloe had left her favorite jacket in the breakroom and hadn't picked up her last paycheck. Girls who move to California don't leave cash on the table.
That snag had sent Camila digging. She widened her search parameters, looking for similar anomalies in the precinct’s recent history. She found Elena Kowalski. A student from Cornell visiting the city. Her file told the same story: Missing, then abruptly Located. The report claimed she had returned to campus. Camila made two calls—one to the registrar at Cornell, one to the sorority Elena belonged to. Neither had seen her in months. Her key card hadn't swiped into a dorm or a library since the day she left for Brooklyn.
Then she found Sarah. A quiet art student. Same pattern. Missing. Then Located. The updated report claimed she had "gone off-grid to pursue artistic endeavors." Camila tracked down Sarah’s landlord. He told her Sarah’s cat had been left locked in the apartment, starving, until the neighbors complained. "Sarah loved that cat," the landlord had told her. "She wouldn't just leave it to die."
The pattern was undeniable. Women were vanishing, and the paperwork was being sanitized to cover the tracks. It reeked of a cover-up, or a level of police incompetence that bordered on criminal.
Camila had taken her findings to Arthur, her editor, last week. She’d pitched it as a serial predator operating under the cover of bureaucratic apathy. Arthur had been skeptical—"You're chasing ghosts, Reyes. The cops say they're safe"—but confronted with the discrepancy of the uncashed checks and the starving cat, Arthur agreed that it looks suspicious, but not groundbreaking, and gave her a sidebar on page 7. It was something.
Her hand drifted to the object sitting in the center of her desk, weighing it down like a paperweight made of lead. A crumpled cocktail napkin. It had been slid under her apartment door two nights ago. No knock, no footsteps. Just the napkin with heavy, grease-pencil scrawl:
The Old Print Works. West District.
Romano.
"Romano," she whispered, testing the name on her tongue. It tasted like ash and old blood.
Frankie "Big Frank" Romano. The name was a ghost story in this city. A corpulent, ruthless relic of the old Italian mob who had supposedly retired to a villa in Sicily five years ago, leaving the city to the new, chaotic gangs. If Frank Romano was back, and if he was operating out of the ruins of the West District, this wasn't just a crime beat. This was the kind of story that tore the city open. This was a Pulitzer. This was the ticket out of obscurity.
Or, a voice in her head whispered, it was a trap.
She looked at the photo of Chloe again—the strawberry-blonde hair, the bright smile. Then she looked at the napkin. The West District was a no-man's-land of industrial skeletons and urban rot.
"Screw it," Camila hissed.
She stood up, the chair screeching against the linoleum. She wasn't going to let this slide. She grabbed her heavy, beige trench coat, buttoning it up like armor against the damp chill of the office. She reached for her heavy camera bag, hefting the weight of the Nikon D850. She popped the back, checking the SD card. Empty. High speed. Battery fully charged. Ready.
She didn't leave a note. She didn't call her editor. If this was a dead end, she didn't want the humiliation. And if it was real… she wanted the scoop for herself.
Camila killed the desk lamp, plunging her corner of the office into shadow. She walked out into the hallway, the sound of her heavy combat boots echoing in the silence, heading for the elevator and the storm waiting outside.
---
The West District in the driving rain felt less like a part of the city and more like a wound that refused to heal. Streetlights here were smashed or burnt out, leaving the streets bathed in a suffocating, charcoal gloom.
Camila parked her hatchback three blocks away from the Old Print Works, tucked behind a dumpster overflowing with wet cardboard. She killed the engine and sat for a moment, listening to the rain hammer the roof like a thousand tiny fists. Her heart was doing a frantic double-time rhythm against her ribs. She checked the map on her phone one last time, memorizing the layout of the block before shoving the device into her deep coat pocket.
She stepped out into the deluge. The cold water soaked her hair instantly, plastering it to her scalp, but she barely felt it. She moved quickly, hugging the shadows of the crumbling brick facades.
The old Print Works loomed ahead—a monstrous, rotting hulk of Victorian brick and rusted iron. It looked like a tomb. Most of the windows were boarded up with decaying plywood, and the iron gates at the front were welded shut with heavy chains.
"Great," she muttered, wiping rain from her eyelashes.
She circled the perimeter, her boots sinking into mud that smelled of oil and dead leaves. Around the back, near where the loading docks had collapsed into rubble, she found it: a section of the corrugated iron fence had been pried loose, leaving a jagged, person-sized gap.
She slipped through, the sharp metal grazing her coat.
Inside the compound, the roar of the city rain was muted, replaced by the ominous, rhythmic dripping of water hitting concrete. The loading dock door had been forced open years ago and never repaired. Camila stepped into the darkness of the factory floor.
The air inside was thick and clammy, carrying the stench of wet rot, rust, and something acrid—maybe ozone, or stale chemical developer fluid. It was a cavernous space, the ceiling lost in darkness high above. Pigeons cooed softly from the rafters, their sounds echoing in the vast emptiness.
But as she crept deeper, navigating a maze of rusted machinery and piles of debris by the faint ambient light leaking through the roof, she heard something else.
A low, throbbing hum.
Generators. Powerful ones.
She froze, holding her breath. The sound was coming from the center of the building, down in what used to be the main press floor. And under the mechanical hum, there was another sound. A voice.
Camila crept toward a rusted iron staircase that spiraled up to an old overseer’s gantry. The metal was slick with condensation. She moved slowly, testing each step for squeaks before committing her weight.
When she reached the top, she peered over the railing. Her breath caught in her throat.
The factory floor below was a study in contrasts. Amidst the filth, the grime, and the ruin, a pristine, terrifying oasis of light had been constructed.
High-intensity studio lights on tripods blazed white-hot, illuminating a square of clean, padded flooring. In the center was a heavy medical table, complete with leather straps. Soundproofing foam had been erected in temporary walls around the perimeter.
And on the table lay a woman.
Camila raised her camera, her hands shaking as she zoomed the lens.
It was Chloe. There was no mistaking the strawberry-blonde hair, now matted with sweat. She was stripped down to her underwear—simple white cotton that looked stark against her flushed, red skin. Her limbs were spread wide, shackles clamping her wrists and ankles to the corners of the table.
A man was leaning over her. His back was to Camila, blocking his face, but he was wiry, moving with a manic energy. His hands were a blur over Chloe’s ribs.
And the sound… it wasn't screaming. It was worse.
"NO! PLEASE! STOP! AH-HA-HA-HA-HA! NOT THE RIBS!!!"
It was laughter. High-pitched, desperate, breathless laughter that tore from Chloe’s throat like a physical wound. Her head thrashed from side to side, tears streaming down her face, her body convulsing against the straps as the man’s hands danced over her sensitive skin.
Camila stared, horror chilling her blood. It was a production. Two large men with handheld cameras were circling the table like sharks, getting close-ups of Chloe’s heaving chest, her tear-streaked face, the tendons straining in her neck.
And just outside the circle of light, sitting in a canvas director's chair, was a massive shape wreathed in cigar smoke. He was watching the torment with dispassionate interest.
Romano. It had to be.
Camila swallowed the bile rising in her throat. She needed the shot. She needed proof. She steadied the heavy camera against the rusted railing.
Click.
She got the wide shot of the set.
Click.
She got Chloe’s terrified face.
Now for the leader. She needed Romano’s face. She leaned further over the railing, shifting her weight to get a better angle past a steel beam.
Her wet combat boot slid on the slick metal grating.
She flailed, grabbing the railing to steady herself, but her other foot kicked a loose bolt lying on the walkway. It went skittering over the edge and plummeted down, hitting the concrete floor below with a sharp, echoing THWACK.
The laughter on the set stopped instantly. The man working on Chloe froze. The cameramen lowered their gear.
The figure in the director's chair didn't even stand up. He just pointed a thick finger upward, toward the darkness of the gantry.
"Company," a deep voice boomed.
Camila scrambled back, panic seizing her chest. She turned to run back toward the stairs—and slammed directly into a wall of muscle.
A shadow had detached itself from a dark alcove on the walkway. She hadn't heard a thing. He was huge—easily six-foot-two—a silhouette of pure bulk blocking the narrow path.
"Going somewhere, sweetheart?" a gravelly voice grunted.
Camila reacted on pure instinct. She swung her heavy camera bag like a flail, aiming for his head.
A massive hand shot out and caught the bag mid-swing, stopping it dead with terrifying ease.
"Cute," the man muttered.
Before she could even scream, a fist the size of a cinder block crashed into the side of her head.
Pain exploded behind her eyes. The gantry, the lights, the smell of rust—it all dissolved into a swirling vortex of black. Her legs folded, and she knew nothing else.
---
The world came back in a throbbing, nauseating wave of grey.
Camila gasped, her head snapping up, but the movement sent a sharp spike of agony through her skull. She tasted copper—blood from where she’d bitten her tongue or cheek when hit.
She blinked, trying to clear the fuzzy static from her vision. She wasn't on the catwalk anymore. She was in a small, windowless room. The walls were lined with grey egg-crate foam soundproofing, giving the space a claustrophobic, deadened quality. The only light came from a harsh, naked bulb hanging from the ceiling.
She tried to move her hands and found them pinned tight behind her back. She was seated in a heavy, high-backed wooden chair. Thick plastic zip-ties bit into her wrists, securing them around the vertical slats of the chair's backrest.
Panic surged, cold and electric. She kicked out her legs—but they were trapped too. Her ankles were zip-tied fiercely to the front legs of the chair, keeping her grounded.
"She’s awake. Weclome back, Camila"
The voice came from the corner. Camila squinted against the glare.
A mountain of a man was leaning against the reinforced door. It was the one who had hit her. Even in the better light, he was terrifying—a slab of muscle in a dark t-shirt stained with engine grease. He was wiping her blood off his knuckles with a dirty rag. This was the enforcer. The brute. In his hand he held her Press Card
"About time," another voice said. Smooth. Oily.
Camila turned her head to the left. Sitting on the edge of a cheap metal desk was a second man. He was slimmer, wearing a suit that was too shiny and smelled of cheap cologne. His hair was greased back so severely it looked like a helmet. He was holding her Nikon camera, turning it over in his hands like a toy.
"Nice gear," the man in the suit said, looking up with a smirk. "Framing was a little off on those last few shots, though. A little shaky."
He held the camera out at arm's length and let it drop.
CRASH.
The sound of the lens shattering on the concrete floor made Camila flinch.
"You son of a bitch!" Camila shouted, the anger overriding the pain in her head. "I'm with the Metro Tribune! My editor knows exactly where I am!"
The man in the suit chuckled—a dry, rattling sound. He hopped off the desk and walked toward her. "The Tribune, huh? A real reporter." He leaned in close. He smelled of peppermint and stale tobacco. "Know what I think? I think nobody knows where you are, chica. You walked past three 'Condemned' signs and broke into a private facility. You're a ghost."
"I have a source," Camila bluffed, spitting a glob of bloody saliva onto the toe of his polished shoe. "I know who runs this place. Police are probably already on their way."
The man looked down at his shoe, his expression hardening. Lightning fast, his hand snapped out, backhanding her across the face.
Camila’s head whipped to the side. The sting was sharp, bringing tears to her eyes, but she refused to cry out. She glared back at him, her chest heaving against her coat.
"You got a mouth on you," the man said, wiping his shoe on the back of his pant leg. "Who talked? Who gave you the location?"
"Fuck you," she hissed, her voice trembling with rage. "I saw the girl. I saw the cameras. You have a sick little tickle-porn ring running out of here. You kidnap women, torture them, and then what? Sell the footage to freaks like you? You're pathetic. You're filth."
The room went silent. The only sound was the hum of the lightbulb.
The brute at the door stopped wiping his hands. He pushed off the wall and walked slowly toward the center of the room. He looked at the man in the suit.
"She knows a lot about the operation, Slick," the giant rumbled. His voice was deep, like stones grinding together.
The man in the suit—Slick—looked at Camila, then back at the brute. The anger in his eyes faded, replaced by something far worse: a dark, predatory amusement. He smiled, showing teeth that were just a little too yellow.
"She does, doesn't she?" Slick murmured. He reached out and touched a lock of Camila’s hair. She jerked her head away. "Maybe she came for an audition" he added with a smirk.
"What do you think, Slick?" the giant asked, cracking his neck with a sickening pop. "Should we give her a taste of what we do here?"
Slick stepped back, looking Camila up and down as if she were a piece of livestock at an auction. He nodded slowly.
"Good idea, Knuckles," Slick said. "You get her ready. Prep the station." He adjusted his tie, grinning. "I’ll go see if Nails is finished with the blonde. He loves fresh meat. Especially the feisty ones."
Knuckles. Slick. Nails.
The nicknames hit Camila like punches. They were cartoonish, stupid names—but the malice behind them was real. As Slick turned and walked out the door, leaving her alone with the mountain of a man called Knuckles, the defiance in Camila’s chest began to curdle into cold, hard dread.
Knuckles turned to her. He didn't raise a fist. He didn't shout. He just dragged a heavy chair, similar to the one Camila was tied to, from the corner of the room, placing it deliberately in front of her chair, facing her.
Then, he dropped to one knee.
The air in the room thickened, growing heavy with a new kind of menace. The threat was no longer a simple beating. It was shifting, twisting into something specific and perverse. Knuckles remained on one knee before her, a hulking figure whose presence was suffocating in the small, soundproofed room. He pulled a wicked-looking hunting knife from a sheath on his belt, its blade glinting under the harsh light of the single bulb.
Camila’s heart hammered against her ribs. She strained against the zip-ties binding her wrists, digging them deeper into her skin, but it was useless. The plastic held fast.
Knuckles didn’t look at her face. His gaze was fixed on her legs. He reached out with his free hand and gripped her left ankle, his huge, calloused fingers wrapping completely around it. The sheer strength in his grip was terrifying; she had no doubt he could snap the bone with a single twitch.
He brought the blade of the knife up to the zip-tie cinched around her ankle. Camila watched, mesmerized by a horrible fascination, as he slid the tip under the plastic and, with a quick, powerful twist, snapped it free.
Her leg was loose.
Instinct took over. She lashed out, kicking her heavy combat boot into his chest. It was like kicking a concrete pillar. Knuckles didn’t even grunt. He absorbed the blow, his expression unchanging. His hand shot out and clamped down on her calf, his fingers digging into the muscle like steel talons.
"Feisty," he grunted, a flicker of something almost like approval in his flat, dead eyes. "I like that."
She struggled, kicking and twisting, but his grip was absolute. He dragged her leg forward, forcing it onto the chair he had placed in front of her. threading it through the horizontal bar of the back rest, then he took a few new zip ties and looped them around her ankle and different bars of the backrest, anchoring her foot, rendering it immobile.
He then repeated the process on her right side. He sliced through the zip-tie, weathered her frantic, useless kicks, and then threaded it though the chair also and used more zip ties to secure that ankle down as well, then stood back to admire his work. The soles of her combat boots were presented in front of him in a makeshift stockade.
Knuckles holstered his knife. He looked down at her booted feet with a strange intensity. Slowly, methodically, he reached for her left foot. He looked Camila in the eye as he slowly inlaced her combat boot. Camila could feel the leather pressed around her calf loosening. She curled her toes, desperate to try to keep the boot on her foot. He simply wrapped his massive hand around the heel of her combat boot and yanked. The boot came off with a sucking sound and he tossed it dismissively into the corner, where it landed with a heavy, final-sounding thud.
Then, his fingers closed around the toe of her damp, sweat-soaked sock. He peeled it off her foot slowly, deliberately, the fabric clinging to her skin. The cool, dead air of the room hit her bare sole, raising goosebumps on her arms.
"Don't you dare," Camila hissed, her voice a low, desperate rasp, trying to make her voice sound threatening and not frightened. She tried to pull her foot back, but the zip ties held it fast. "Get your filthy hands off me."
Knuckles ignored her. He held her bare foot in his palm, his rough, grimy thumb pressing into her arch. Then he did something that made her stomach clench with revulsion. He lowered his face to her foot. He leaned down, his nose hovering just over her toes, and took a long, deep, audible sniff.
The violation was more intimate, more debasing than any punch.
"Mmm," he grumbled, a low, animalistic sound from deep in his chest. "Smells like fear." Then he extended his tongue and licked from her arch up to her toes. At the first touch Camila let a disgusted whimper escape her lips. “Tastes like it too” the large man grumbled before he ran his thumb hard down the arch of her foot, as if testing its texture. The sudden sensation pulled a yelp from her mouth as she clenched her toes and tried to pull her foot back.
He let go of her foot with a knowing smirk and then repeated the entire process with her right foot: the boot yanked off, the sweaty sock peeled away, the long, disgusting sniff of her toes, the lick, and the test. "Ooooh you’re in trouble, lady. Nails is gonna have a field day with you"
Just then, the door creaked open.
Slick walked back in, that same greasy smirk plastered on his face. Behind him was a third man.
This one was different. He wasn't a mountain of muscle like Knuckles or a cheap suit like Slick. He was wiry, almost snake-like, with slicked-back, oil-black hair and eyes that were as cold and dead as a shark's. He moved with a disturbing, fluid grace. He was wiping his hands meticulously with a sanitary wipe, as if he’d just finished a delicate surgery.
Camila’s eyes were drawn to his hands. His fingers were long, almost unnaturally so. And his fingernails… They were perfectly manicured, coated in a black, hard lacquer, and filed into sharp, curved points. They looked like talons.
Slick gestured to Camila, who was now bound and barefoot before them.
"All yours, Nails," Slick said, his voice dripping with sadistic glee. "She says she wants the scoop."
Nails dropped the used wipe into a bin and pulled up a rolling stool from the corner, the casters squeaking on the concrete floor. He rolled it before Camila's outstretched legs and sat down, so he was facing her, his eyes level with hers.
He didn't speak. He just looked down at her bare soles for a long moment, a connoisseur admiring a piece of art. Then, he raised his hands and tapped his sharp fingernails against the wooden seat of the chair, between her feet.
Click, click, click.
The sound was small, but in the deadened silence of the room, it was deafening. He looked up, his dead shark eyes finally meeting hers.
"Investigative journalism," Nails mused, his voice a soft, cultured purr that was more terrifying than any shout. "That requires a willingness to dig deep."
He reached out, his hand hovering over her right foot.
"Let's see just how deep you can dig before you break."
Nails leaned in, a predator studying its prey. His movements were unhurried, almost surgical. He looked from her right foot to her left, as if choosing the perfect place to begin his work. He settled on her right, his eyes tracing the high arch and the long line of her sole. He didn’t grab it. Instead, he slowly extended the index finger of his right hand, the lacquered, sharpened tip of his nail glinting like a shard of obsidian in the harsh light.
With a horrifying delicacy, he touched the nail to the sensitive skin of her heel.
Camila flinched, her entire body going rigid. The touch was feather-light, but the sharp point felt like a hot needle, a promise of pain to come.
He began to draw a line. A slow, excruciatingly deliberate trace from her heel, up through the center of her arch, over the ball of her foot, and ending with a final, lingering flick under her big toe. She squeezed her eyes shut and her toes curled. She bit down hard on her lower lip, tasting the faint coppery tang of her own blood. The sensation was maddening, the point of the nail scoring up through her delicate skin, exciting the clusters of nerve endings. She would not scream. She would not laugh. She would not give this monster the satisfaction.
He withdrew his hand. The silence stretched. Then, he did it again, this time scribbling a lazy, looping figure-eight across her arch. The sensation was maddening. It wasn't painful, not yet, but it was an unbearable, skin-crawling intrusion. Her nerves screamed, her muscles twitched, and a desperate urge to yank her foot away seized her.
She held her breath, trying to contain the reaction building in her chest. Her cheeks puffed out with the exertion, but it was no use.
A sound ripped itself from her compressed lips. "mmphf!"
It was a pathetic noise—the air pushing through her pursed lips. A sound of utter weakness.
Nails’ lips curved into a faint, cruel smile. He had found a crack in her armor. He lowered his nail again, this time to the impossibly sensitive spot between the ball under her big toe and the arch, and began tracing tiny, maddening circles.
The dam burst and a laugh exploded from her, long and loud.
The sound hung in the dead air of the room, a testament to her failure.
Nails pulled back, leaning back on his stool and admiring his handiwork as if he had just painted a masterpiece.
"There it is," he purred, his voice a silken ribbon of contempt. "One nail. One tiny little touch, and the tough investigative reporter from the Tribune giggles like a schoolgirl." He leaned forward again, his shark-like eyes locking onto hers. "You're a 'soft sole,' Camila. You have all that fire, all that righteous anger on the outside… but underneath, where it matters? You’re weak, you’re pathetic."
The humiliation burned hotter than any pain. Tears of rage pricked at the corners of her eyes.
"Go to hell," she gritted out, her voice a low, trembling snarl.
"Oh, I’m already there," Nails replied smoothly. "And you’re the main attraction."
The faint smile on Nails' face vanished, replaced by a look of cold, clinical focus. He dropped the pretense of a delicate test. Now, the interrogation truly began.
He placed his left hand firmly on her ankle, his long, spindly fingers wrapping around it to hold her steady. This time, he didn't use a single nail. He extended all four fingers of his right hand, fashioning his hand into a claw, and raked the sharp, lacquered tips from her heel to her toes in a single, fluid motion.
Camila gasped, her back arching against the chair. The sensation was a hundred times worse—a chorus of tiny razors scraping across every nerve ending on her sole. She bent and flexed her toes, helplessly trying to lessen the torment.
"Let's make this simple," Nails said, his voice losing its predatory purr and gaining a hard, commanding edge. He didn't look at her feet now; he stared directly into her eyes, searching for the first sign of a crack. "You had a tip. A source. Who was it? Give me the name."
He raked his nails down her foot again, harder this time.
"I don't have a— Hee-HEE!" A stuttering, hiccuping laugh broke through her denial as he dragged his nails over the ball of her foot. "I don't— Huh-huh-huh —I told you… S-stop" She tried to form the words, to maintain the lie, but his fingers were relentless, scribbling and scraping, mapping out every sensitive inch of her flesh.
He discovered the divot in the center of her arch.
A low groan escaped Camila's lips as he abandoned the scraping and instead dug the hard pads of his thumbs deep into that hollow spot. The pressure was intense, sending shockwaves of agonizing sensitivity through her entire leg. While his thumbs ground into her arch, his fingernails danced and scratched over the tops of her toes.
It was too much. The carefully constructed walls of her resolve crumbled into dust.
A deep, rolling laugh erupted from her chest, a sound she didn't recognize as her own. It was a full-bodied, helpless thing, that shook her from head to toe, a sound of utter surrender to the torment.
"HA-HA-HA-HA! OH GOD, HA! STOP-HA-HA-HA! PLEASE!"
The laughter was a betrayal. Her body was a traitor, siding with her torturer, broadcasting her weakness to the entire room. Tears, hot and shameful, streamed down her cheeks, mingling with the sweat beading on her temples. This wasn't amusement; it was agony wearing the mask of joy, and she could do nothing to stop it.
"The name, Camila," Nails repeated, his voice calm and steady amidst her chaotic laughter. "Just give me the name, and this can all stop."
"I DON'T KNOW!" she shrieked through another gale of laughter, her head thrashing against the back of the chair. "I DIDN’T SEE HA-HA-HA-HA! I SWEA-HEE-HEER!"
"Wrong answer," Nails said, his voice flat. The smile was completely gone now, his expression hardening into something like a surgeon’s weary frustration. He released her foot, which twitched uncontrollably on the stool, and stood up.
He walked over to the corner where Knuckles had tossed her combat boots. He didn't even glance at Camila, who was panting, her breath coming in wet, hitching sobs, her body trembling with the aftershocks of the laughter. He bent down, grabbed the thick, dirty laces of her boots, and with a series of sharp, efficient tugs, pulled them free from the eyelets.
He returned to her with the laces dangling from his hand like a pair of dead snakes.
"What… what are you doing?" Camila stammered, watching him with wide, terrified eyes.
Nails didn't answer. He knelt before her and took hold of the toes of her right foot. With a brutal lack of ceremony, he pulled them back, bending them sharply towards her shin. A sharp, searing pain shot through the muscles of her foot as her arch was stretched taut, the skin pulled tight as a drumhead. She cried out, a sound that was half pain, half a precursor to more laughter.
Before she could react further, he looped one of the bootlaces around her hyperextended toes, pulled it tight, and then threaded it through the wooden slats of the chair's backrest, cinching it down with a merciless knot. Her toes were now locked in that agonizingly exposed position. The balls of her feet were presented forward proudly, her arches stretched out, any wrinkles flattened.
He repeated the process with her left foot.
The new level of vulnerability was staggering. She was no longer just bound; she was presented, her soles stretched and utterly helpless, every nerve pulled taut and screaming. The pain in her arches was a low, constant burn, a prelude to the horror she knew was coming.
Panicked, high-pitched yelps tore from her throat as she struggled against the new bonds. "Wait! Please don't do this!"
Nails stood back for a moment to admire the new setup, then leaned in close, his voice a low hiss in her ear. "Last time. The name of your source."
"I don't know!" she wailed, tears and snot running down her face. "I'm telling you the trut-AAAHA-HA-HA! FFFFUUUUU-HU-HU-CK! NO-NO-NO-NO-NO!"
Her answer dissolved into an incoherent scream of laughter as he resumed his assault. He didn't need to hold her still anymore. With both hands free, he began a terrifying symphony of torment. His right hand spider-walked its sharp nails up and down her stretched left sole, while his left hand scribbled frantic, maddening patterns across her right. The sensation was everywhere at once, a relentless, overwhelming flood of ticklish agony. Her mind couldn't process it, couldn't find a single point to focus on. There was no escape.
After ten minutes of relentless tickling, Nails gave a theatrical sigh of disappointment and pulled his hands away. The sudden cessation of the attack was almost as jarring as its onset. Camila was left gasping, her body thrumming with residual signals of panic, her drenched soles tingling with a horrible, sensitive ache.
He reached beside his stool and lifted a small canvas bag, placing it on his lap. He unzipped it with a slow, deliberate rasp. Camila watched through blurry, tear-filled eyes as he pulled out two items.
The first was a large, clear plastic bottle of Johnson's baby oil.
The second was a cheap, black plastic hairbrush with a paddle-shaped head, its face studded with stiff, unforgiving plastic bristles.
"No," Camila whimpered, the word a ragged puff of air. "No, please, not that…"
Nails unscrewed the white cap of the baby oil. Without a word, he upended the bottle and began to glibly pour the slick, warm liquid all over her feet. It cascaded over her hyperextended toes, pooled in her stretched arches, and dripped from her heels onto the concrete floor. The room filled with the cloying, infantile scent. The oil eliminated any hope of friction, magnifying every potential sensation a hundredfold.
He tossed the empty bottle aside. He picked up the hairbrush.
He didn't start slow. There was no teasing touch, no gentle test. He took the brush,gripped it like a weapon, and ground it, hard, into the slicked surface of her right arch.
The effect was immediate and catastrophic.
Camila’s body convulsed as if she’d been electrocuted. The combination of the sharp, unyielding bristles, the frictionless glide of the oil, and the intense, grinding pressure was a sensory apocalypse. Her sanity frayed. She couldn't breathe. Her lungs seized, and the laughter that tore from her was no longer human.
It was a series of wet, desperate, hyperventilating gasps.
"AAAAAAAAAA-HA-HA-HA-HA NAAAAAAAA PLEEEASE!"
He scrubbed the brush back and forth with a merciless, metronomic rhythm, the plastic bristles scraping and digging into her tender flesh. He worked his way from her heel to the base of her toes and back again, leaving no inch untouched. The sounds she made devolved further, losing any semblance of laughter and becoming primal, guttural noises of pure, system-overloading panic.
"NOT THE TOESSSSSSS SHHHHHIIIIT FFFFFUUUUU-HU-HU-HU-HU-HU-CK"
He switched to her left foot without breaking rhythm. Her mind couldn't form words. It couldn't even form coherent screams anymore. There was only the overwhelming, inescapable sensation. He canted the brush onto its corner, using the sharp plastic edge to dig into the ultra-sensitive skin between her toes.
Camila threw her head back, her mouth stretched open in a silent, agonizing scream. She strained against the zip-ties on her wrists and the laces on her toes, every muscle in her body locked in a desperate, futile attempt to escape. But only a choked, pathetic hiss escaped her lips.
Through the red haze of her agony, she saw Nails’ face leaning in close, his features contorted in a mask of furious concentration.
"THE NAME!" he screamed, his voice barely audible over the sound of her own ruined breathing and the harsh scraping of the brush. He dropped the brush, and now it was both of his claw-like hands, digging into the slicked soles, his long nails sliding and gouging with maddening speed. He used the brush on one foot, his claw like nails on the other.
Every instinct screamed at her to give him something, anything, a name, a lie—but her brain was short-circuiting. There was nothing left but the feeling.
Slick called out “Yo, Nails. Maybe she’s telling the truth. Maybe she don’t know. But maybe we can find answers in this”
Nails lifted the brush and looked around at Slick. Camila’s eyes were blurry with tears, she tried to focus on what the other man was holding.
She blinked furiously and he started coming into focus. He was holding her overcoat in one hand, and had her mobile phone in the other, waving it.
Nails turned back to Camila with a smirk and purred “give us the code to your phone, Camila” waving the hairbrush up menacingly, the threat presented.
“Ok ok” Camila wheezed, her breath coming in short bursts, her lungs on fire and her throat raw “5936”.
Nails looked back at Slick.
“Ok, we’re in” he said, dropping the overcoat onto the floor, then going and sitting while his thumbs zipped over the screen of the phone.
Camila gasped for air, humiliated that her life is now on show for these fucking freaks, but anything for a break.
“Aaaalright let’s see here. Photos…” Slick murmured, his thumb sliding from the bottom to the top “a-ha. Ok, looks like a piece of paper. Has the building, the street, and the name of the Boss” he said, looking over at Camila.
“Like… like I said… I don’t… I don’t know who… who gave it to me… It was… It was pushed under my… my door… two nights ago.”
Slick frowned at Camila and then looked back down at the phone, his thumb started scrolling through the photos again until he gave a little whistle “damn… Camila has some saucy selfies on here.” Then he looks at her “so… you got a fella or…?”
Camila’s cheeks burned bright red “what does… that have to… do with anything?”
Nails lowered the brush.
“NO!!!” Camila screamed before he touched her “no, I don’t, I don’t, please!” she said, a sob breaking through her plea, a tear stinging her eye from the sheer humiliation of it all “it’s just… hook ups” she muttered, looking down.
Slick shrugged. Then he started tapping her phone again “ok, I’m in her emails now. Let’s check sent folder…” he paused a beat “nope. Nothing about coming out here. Nothing in messaging apps either. No-one knows she’s here. Let’s keep it that way.”
He looked up at Camila again “what’s your editor’s name, Camila?”
Camila paused a moment, her brows knitting why does he want to know who—
Nails shook his head and lowered the brush again.
“ART!! Arthur Shafton! Art is my editor.”
“Art… okie dokie. Let’s send a little resignation email to good old Artie” He hummed as his thumbs whizzed over the phone screen “tell him you are going out of town.”
Cold hard dread seeped into Camila’s bones. Telling them what they wanted to know wasn’t going to mean they would let her go!
“Wait, please! Wait. I told you everything! Please, just let me go” she whined, a thick tear tracing down her cheek.
Knuckles at the back stood up from the chair he was sitting on to watch the show “I guess she told us everything we need to know, Slick.”
“I guess so, Knuckles” Slick agreed.
Camila looked from the giant to the oily one in the suit, her eyes wide, pleading, and then they fell on the cold, dead eyes of Nails who placed the brush back into his bag “well if you have nothing else to say…”
Nails raised his hands and slowly brought them to her feet.
“WAIT! NO! I TOLD YOU EVERYTHING! PLEEEEEEASE!"
Next Chapter (2) - Elena
Rain lashed against the floor-to-ceiling windows, distorting the city lights into smeared, weeping streaks of neon. Camila stared at her reflection in the dark glass. Dark circles bruised the skin under her eyes. At twenty-nine, she looked exhausted. The hunger that had driven her out of the Bronx and into journalism school was still there, but it was curdling into fear. The big Three-Oh was creeping up, and what did she have? A few fluff pieces on zoning laws and a handful of bylines that nobody read past the first paragraph. She was hemorrhaging time.
She looked away from her reflection and down at the corkboard she’d commandeered. Three faces stared back, printed on cheap office paper.
Elena Kowalski, 21.
Sarah Wong, 19.
Chloe Johnson, 22.
They were all young, all pretty, all vanished from the same six-block radius near the arts district within the last six months.
It had started with Chloe. Two weeks ago, a police scanner alert about a missing waitress had caught Camila's ear. She’d pulled the initial report: Chloe Johnson. Missing Person. Suspected Foul Play. But when she went back to check for updates three days later, the digital file had been altered. The status had changed from Missing Person to Located — Not Missing. The note attached was brief: "Subject contacted parents. Relocated to California."
It felt too clean. Too fast. Camila had called the diner where Chloe worked. The manager said Chloe had left her favorite jacket in the breakroom and hadn't picked up her last paycheck. Girls who move to California don't leave cash on the table.
That snag had sent Camila digging. She widened her search parameters, looking for similar anomalies in the precinct’s recent history. She found Elena Kowalski. A student from Cornell visiting the city. Her file told the same story: Missing, then abruptly Located. The report claimed she had returned to campus. Camila made two calls—one to the registrar at Cornell, one to the sorority Elena belonged to. Neither had seen her in months. Her key card hadn't swiped into a dorm or a library since the day she left for Brooklyn.
Then she found Sarah. A quiet art student. Same pattern. Missing. Then Located. The updated report claimed she had "gone off-grid to pursue artistic endeavors." Camila tracked down Sarah’s landlord. He told her Sarah’s cat had been left locked in the apartment, starving, until the neighbors complained. "Sarah loved that cat," the landlord had told her. "She wouldn't just leave it to die."
The pattern was undeniable. Women were vanishing, and the paperwork was being sanitized to cover the tracks. It reeked of a cover-up, or a level of police incompetence that bordered on criminal.
Camila had taken her findings to Arthur, her editor, last week. She’d pitched it as a serial predator operating under the cover of bureaucratic apathy. Arthur had been skeptical—"You're chasing ghosts, Reyes. The cops say they're safe"—but confronted with the discrepancy of the uncashed checks and the starving cat, Arthur agreed that it looks suspicious, but not groundbreaking, and gave her a sidebar on page 7. It was something.
Her hand drifted to the object sitting in the center of her desk, weighing it down like a paperweight made of lead. A crumpled cocktail napkin. It had been slid under her apartment door two nights ago. No knock, no footsteps. Just the napkin with heavy, grease-pencil scrawl:
The Old Print Works. West District.
Romano.
"Romano," she whispered, testing the name on her tongue. It tasted like ash and old blood.
Frankie "Big Frank" Romano. The name was a ghost story in this city. A corpulent, ruthless relic of the old Italian mob who had supposedly retired to a villa in Sicily five years ago, leaving the city to the new, chaotic gangs. If Frank Romano was back, and if he was operating out of the ruins of the West District, this wasn't just a crime beat. This was the kind of story that tore the city open. This was a Pulitzer. This was the ticket out of obscurity.
Or, a voice in her head whispered, it was a trap.
She looked at the photo of Chloe again—the strawberry-blonde hair, the bright smile. Then she looked at the napkin. The West District was a no-man's-land of industrial skeletons and urban rot.
"Screw it," Camila hissed.
She stood up, the chair screeching against the linoleum. She wasn't going to let this slide. She grabbed her heavy, beige trench coat, buttoning it up like armor against the damp chill of the office. She reached for her heavy camera bag, hefting the weight of the Nikon D850. She popped the back, checking the SD card. Empty. High speed. Battery fully charged. Ready.
She didn't leave a note. She didn't call her editor. If this was a dead end, she didn't want the humiliation. And if it was real… she wanted the scoop for herself.
Camila killed the desk lamp, plunging her corner of the office into shadow. She walked out into the hallway, the sound of her heavy combat boots echoing in the silence, heading for the elevator and the storm waiting outside.
---
The West District in the driving rain felt less like a part of the city and more like a wound that refused to heal. Streetlights here were smashed or burnt out, leaving the streets bathed in a suffocating, charcoal gloom.
Camila parked her hatchback three blocks away from the Old Print Works, tucked behind a dumpster overflowing with wet cardboard. She killed the engine and sat for a moment, listening to the rain hammer the roof like a thousand tiny fists. Her heart was doing a frantic double-time rhythm against her ribs. She checked the map on her phone one last time, memorizing the layout of the block before shoving the device into her deep coat pocket.
She stepped out into the deluge. The cold water soaked her hair instantly, plastering it to her scalp, but she barely felt it. She moved quickly, hugging the shadows of the crumbling brick facades.
The old Print Works loomed ahead—a monstrous, rotting hulk of Victorian brick and rusted iron. It looked like a tomb. Most of the windows were boarded up with decaying plywood, and the iron gates at the front were welded shut with heavy chains.
"Great," she muttered, wiping rain from her eyelashes.
She circled the perimeter, her boots sinking into mud that smelled of oil and dead leaves. Around the back, near where the loading docks had collapsed into rubble, she found it: a section of the corrugated iron fence had been pried loose, leaving a jagged, person-sized gap.
She slipped through, the sharp metal grazing her coat.
Inside the compound, the roar of the city rain was muted, replaced by the ominous, rhythmic dripping of water hitting concrete. The loading dock door had been forced open years ago and never repaired. Camila stepped into the darkness of the factory floor.
The air inside was thick and clammy, carrying the stench of wet rot, rust, and something acrid—maybe ozone, or stale chemical developer fluid. It was a cavernous space, the ceiling lost in darkness high above. Pigeons cooed softly from the rafters, their sounds echoing in the vast emptiness.
But as she crept deeper, navigating a maze of rusted machinery and piles of debris by the faint ambient light leaking through the roof, she heard something else.
A low, throbbing hum.
Generators. Powerful ones.
She froze, holding her breath. The sound was coming from the center of the building, down in what used to be the main press floor. And under the mechanical hum, there was another sound. A voice.
Camila crept toward a rusted iron staircase that spiraled up to an old overseer’s gantry. The metal was slick with condensation. She moved slowly, testing each step for squeaks before committing her weight.
When she reached the top, she peered over the railing. Her breath caught in her throat.
The factory floor below was a study in contrasts. Amidst the filth, the grime, and the ruin, a pristine, terrifying oasis of light had been constructed.
High-intensity studio lights on tripods blazed white-hot, illuminating a square of clean, padded flooring. In the center was a heavy medical table, complete with leather straps. Soundproofing foam had been erected in temporary walls around the perimeter.
And on the table lay a woman.
Camila raised her camera, her hands shaking as she zoomed the lens.
It was Chloe. There was no mistaking the strawberry-blonde hair, now matted with sweat. She was stripped down to her underwear—simple white cotton that looked stark against her flushed, red skin. Her limbs were spread wide, shackles clamping her wrists and ankles to the corners of the table.
A man was leaning over her. His back was to Camila, blocking his face, but he was wiry, moving with a manic energy. His hands were a blur over Chloe’s ribs.
And the sound… it wasn't screaming. It was worse.
"NO! PLEASE! STOP! AH-HA-HA-HA-HA! NOT THE RIBS!!!"
It was laughter. High-pitched, desperate, breathless laughter that tore from Chloe’s throat like a physical wound. Her head thrashed from side to side, tears streaming down her face, her body convulsing against the straps as the man’s hands danced over her sensitive skin.
Camila stared, horror chilling her blood. It was a production. Two large men with handheld cameras were circling the table like sharks, getting close-ups of Chloe’s heaving chest, her tear-streaked face, the tendons straining in her neck.
And just outside the circle of light, sitting in a canvas director's chair, was a massive shape wreathed in cigar smoke. He was watching the torment with dispassionate interest.
Romano. It had to be.
Camila swallowed the bile rising in her throat. She needed the shot. She needed proof. She steadied the heavy camera against the rusted railing.
Click.
She got the wide shot of the set.
Click.
She got Chloe’s terrified face.
Now for the leader. She needed Romano’s face. She leaned further over the railing, shifting her weight to get a better angle past a steel beam.
Her wet combat boot slid on the slick metal grating.
She flailed, grabbing the railing to steady herself, but her other foot kicked a loose bolt lying on the walkway. It went skittering over the edge and plummeted down, hitting the concrete floor below with a sharp, echoing THWACK.
The laughter on the set stopped instantly. The man working on Chloe froze. The cameramen lowered their gear.
The figure in the director's chair didn't even stand up. He just pointed a thick finger upward, toward the darkness of the gantry.
"Company," a deep voice boomed.
Camila scrambled back, panic seizing her chest. She turned to run back toward the stairs—and slammed directly into a wall of muscle.
A shadow had detached itself from a dark alcove on the walkway. She hadn't heard a thing. He was huge—easily six-foot-two—a silhouette of pure bulk blocking the narrow path.
"Going somewhere, sweetheart?" a gravelly voice grunted.
Camila reacted on pure instinct. She swung her heavy camera bag like a flail, aiming for his head.
A massive hand shot out and caught the bag mid-swing, stopping it dead with terrifying ease.
"Cute," the man muttered.
Before she could even scream, a fist the size of a cinder block crashed into the side of her head.
Pain exploded behind her eyes. The gantry, the lights, the smell of rust—it all dissolved into a swirling vortex of black. Her legs folded, and she knew nothing else.
---
The world came back in a throbbing, nauseating wave of grey.
Camila gasped, her head snapping up, but the movement sent a sharp spike of agony through her skull. She tasted copper—blood from where she’d bitten her tongue or cheek when hit.
She blinked, trying to clear the fuzzy static from her vision. She wasn't on the catwalk anymore. She was in a small, windowless room. The walls were lined with grey egg-crate foam soundproofing, giving the space a claustrophobic, deadened quality. The only light came from a harsh, naked bulb hanging from the ceiling.
She tried to move her hands and found them pinned tight behind her back. She was seated in a heavy, high-backed wooden chair. Thick plastic zip-ties bit into her wrists, securing them around the vertical slats of the chair's backrest.
Panic surged, cold and electric. She kicked out her legs—but they were trapped too. Her ankles were zip-tied fiercely to the front legs of the chair, keeping her grounded.
"She’s awake. Weclome back, Camila"
The voice came from the corner. Camila squinted against the glare.
A mountain of a man was leaning against the reinforced door. It was the one who had hit her. Even in the better light, he was terrifying—a slab of muscle in a dark t-shirt stained with engine grease. He was wiping her blood off his knuckles with a dirty rag. This was the enforcer. The brute. In his hand he held her Press Card
"About time," another voice said. Smooth. Oily.
Camila turned her head to the left. Sitting on the edge of a cheap metal desk was a second man. He was slimmer, wearing a suit that was too shiny and smelled of cheap cologne. His hair was greased back so severely it looked like a helmet. He was holding her Nikon camera, turning it over in his hands like a toy.
"Nice gear," the man in the suit said, looking up with a smirk. "Framing was a little off on those last few shots, though. A little shaky."
He held the camera out at arm's length and let it drop.
CRASH.
The sound of the lens shattering on the concrete floor made Camila flinch.
"You son of a bitch!" Camila shouted, the anger overriding the pain in her head. "I'm with the Metro Tribune! My editor knows exactly where I am!"
The man in the suit chuckled—a dry, rattling sound. He hopped off the desk and walked toward her. "The Tribune, huh? A real reporter." He leaned in close. He smelled of peppermint and stale tobacco. "Know what I think? I think nobody knows where you are, chica. You walked past three 'Condemned' signs and broke into a private facility. You're a ghost."
"I have a source," Camila bluffed, spitting a glob of bloody saliva onto the toe of his polished shoe. "I know who runs this place. Police are probably already on their way."
The man looked down at his shoe, his expression hardening. Lightning fast, his hand snapped out, backhanding her across the face.
Camila’s head whipped to the side. The sting was sharp, bringing tears to her eyes, but she refused to cry out. She glared back at him, her chest heaving against her coat.
"You got a mouth on you," the man said, wiping his shoe on the back of his pant leg. "Who talked? Who gave you the location?"
"Fuck you," she hissed, her voice trembling with rage. "I saw the girl. I saw the cameras. You have a sick little tickle-porn ring running out of here. You kidnap women, torture them, and then what? Sell the footage to freaks like you? You're pathetic. You're filth."
The room went silent. The only sound was the hum of the lightbulb.
The brute at the door stopped wiping his hands. He pushed off the wall and walked slowly toward the center of the room. He looked at the man in the suit.
"She knows a lot about the operation, Slick," the giant rumbled. His voice was deep, like stones grinding together.
The man in the suit—Slick—looked at Camila, then back at the brute. The anger in his eyes faded, replaced by something far worse: a dark, predatory amusement. He smiled, showing teeth that were just a little too yellow.
"She does, doesn't she?" Slick murmured. He reached out and touched a lock of Camila’s hair. She jerked her head away. "Maybe she came for an audition" he added with a smirk.
"What do you think, Slick?" the giant asked, cracking his neck with a sickening pop. "Should we give her a taste of what we do here?"
Slick stepped back, looking Camila up and down as if she were a piece of livestock at an auction. He nodded slowly.
"Good idea, Knuckles," Slick said. "You get her ready. Prep the station." He adjusted his tie, grinning. "I’ll go see if Nails is finished with the blonde. He loves fresh meat. Especially the feisty ones."
Knuckles. Slick. Nails.
The nicknames hit Camila like punches. They were cartoonish, stupid names—but the malice behind them was real. As Slick turned and walked out the door, leaving her alone with the mountain of a man called Knuckles, the defiance in Camila’s chest began to curdle into cold, hard dread.
Knuckles turned to her. He didn't raise a fist. He didn't shout. He just dragged a heavy chair, similar to the one Camila was tied to, from the corner of the room, placing it deliberately in front of her chair, facing her.
Then, he dropped to one knee.
The air in the room thickened, growing heavy with a new kind of menace. The threat was no longer a simple beating. It was shifting, twisting into something specific and perverse. Knuckles remained on one knee before her, a hulking figure whose presence was suffocating in the small, soundproofed room. He pulled a wicked-looking hunting knife from a sheath on his belt, its blade glinting under the harsh light of the single bulb.
Camila’s heart hammered against her ribs. She strained against the zip-ties binding her wrists, digging them deeper into her skin, but it was useless. The plastic held fast.
Knuckles didn’t look at her face. His gaze was fixed on her legs. He reached out with his free hand and gripped her left ankle, his huge, calloused fingers wrapping completely around it. The sheer strength in his grip was terrifying; she had no doubt he could snap the bone with a single twitch.
He brought the blade of the knife up to the zip-tie cinched around her ankle. Camila watched, mesmerized by a horrible fascination, as he slid the tip under the plastic and, with a quick, powerful twist, snapped it free.
Her leg was loose.
Instinct took over. She lashed out, kicking her heavy combat boot into his chest. It was like kicking a concrete pillar. Knuckles didn’t even grunt. He absorbed the blow, his expression unchanging. His hand shot out and clamped down on her calf, his fingers digging into the muscle like steel talons.
"Feisty," he grunted, a flicker of something almost like approval in his flat, dead eyes. "I like that."
She struggled, kicking and twisting, but his grip was absolute. He dragged her leg forward, forcing it onto the chair he had placed in front of her. threading it through the horizontal bar of the back rest, then he took a few new zip ties and looped them around her ankle and different bars of the backrest, anchoring her foot, rendering it immobile.
He then repeated the process on her right side. He sliced through the zip-tie, weathered her frantic, useless kicks, and then threaded it though the chair also and used more zip ties to secure that ankle down as well, then stood back to admire his work. The soles of her combat boots were presented in front of him in a makeshift stockade.
Knuckles holstered his knife. He looked down at her booted feet with a strange intensity. Slowly, methodically, he reached for her left foot. He looked Camila in the eye as he slowly inlaced her combat boot. Camila could feel the leather pressed around her calf loosening. She curled her toes, desperate to try to keep the boot on her foot. He simply wrapped his massive hand around the heel of her combat boot and yanked. The boot came off with a sucking sound and he tossed it dismissively into the corner, where it landed with a heavy, final-sounding thud.
Then, his fingers closed around the toe of her damp, sweat-soaked sock. He peeled it off her foot slowly, deliberately, the fabric clinging to her skin. The cool, dead air of the room hit her bare sole, raising goosebumps on her arms.
"Don't you dare," Camila hissed, her voice a low, desperate rasp, trying to make her voice sound threatening and not frightened. She tried to pull her foot back, but the zip ties held it fast. "Get your filthy hands off me."
Knuckles ignored her. He held her bare foot in his palm, his rough, grimy thumb pressing into her arch. Then he did something that made her stomach clench with revulsion. He lowered his face to her foot. He leaned down, his nose hovering just over her toes, and took a long, deep, audible sniff.
The violation was more intimate, more debasing than any punch.
"Mmm," he grumbled, a low, animalistic sound from deep in his chest. "Smells like fear." Then he extended his tongue and licked from her arch up to her toes. At the first touch Camila let a disgusted whimper escape her lips. “Tastes like it too” the large man grumbled before he ran his thumb hard down the arch of her foot, as if testing its texture. The sudden sensation pulled a yelp from her mouth as she clenched her toes and tried to pull her foot back.
He let go of her foot with a knowing smirk and then repeated the entire process with her right foot: the boot yanked off, the sweaty sock peeled away, the long, disgusting sniff of her toes, the lick, and the test. "Ooooh you’re in trouble, lady. Nails is gonna have a field day with you"
Just then, the door creaked open.
Slick walked back in, that same greasy smirk plastered on his face. Behind him was a third man.
This one was different. He wasn't a mountain of muscle like Knuckles or a cheap suit like Slick. He was wiry, almost snake-like, with slicked-back, oil-black hair and eyes that were as cold and dead as a shark's. He moved with a disturbing, fluid grace. He was wiping his hands meticulously with a sanitary wipe, as if he’d just finished a delicate surgery.
Camila’s eyes were drawn to his hands. His fingers were long, almost unnaturally so. And his fingernails… They were perfectly manicured, coated in a black, hard lacquer, and filed into sharp, curved points. They looked like talons.
Slick gestured to Camila, who was now bound and barefoot before them.
"All yours, Nails," Slick said, his voice dripping with sadistic glee. "She says she wants the scoop."
Nails dropped the used wipe into a bin and pulled up a rolling stool from the corner, the casters squeaking on the concrete floor. He rolled it before Camila's outstretched legs and sat down, so he was facing her, his eyes level with hers.
He didn't speak. He just looked down at her bare soles for a long moment, a connoisseur admiring a piece of art. Then, he raised his hands and tapped his sharp fingernails against the wooden seat of the chair, between her feet.
Click, click, click.
The sound was small, but in the deadened silence of the room, it was deafening. He looked up, his dead shark eyes finally meeting hers.
"Investigative journalism," Nails mused, his voice a soft, cultured purr that was more terrifying than any shout. "That requires a willingness to dig deep."
He reached out, his hand hovering over her right foot.
"Let's see just how deep you can dig before you break."
Nails leaned in, a predator studying its prey. His movements were unhurried, almost surgical. He looked from her right foot to her left, as if choosing the perfect place to begin his work. He settled on her right, his eyes tracing the high arch and the long line of her sole. He didn’t grab it. Instead, he slowly extended the index finger of his right hand, the lacquered, sharpened tip of his nail glinting like a shard of obsidian in the harsh light.
With a horrifying delicacy, he touched the nail to the sensitive skin of her heel.
Camila flinched, her entire body going rigid. The touch was feather-light, but the sharp point felt like a hot needle, a promise of pain to come.
He began to draw a line. A slow, excruciatingly deliberate trace from her heel, up through the center of her arch, over the ball of her foot, and ending with a final, lingering flick under her big toe. She squeezed her eyes shut and her toes curled. She bit down hard on her lower lip, tasting the faint coppery tang of her own blood. The sensation was maddening, the point of the nail scoring up through her delicate skin, exciting the clusters of nerve endings. She would not scream. She would not laugh. She would not give this monster the satisfaction.
He withdrew his hand. The silence stretched. Then, he did it again, this time scribbling a lazy, looping figure-eight across her arch. The sensation was maddening. It wasn't painful, not yet, but it was an unbearable, skin-crawling intrusion. Her nerves screamed, her muscles twitched, and a desperate urge to yank her foot away seized her.
She held her breath, trying to contain the reaction building in her chest. Her cheeks puffed out with the exertion, but it was no use.
A sound ripped itself from her compressed lips. "mmphf!"
It was a pathetic noise—the air pushing through her pursed lips. A sound of utter weakness.
Nails’ lips curved into a faint, cruel smile. He had found a crack in her armor. He lowered his nail again, this time to the impossibly sensitive spot between the ball under her big toe and the arch, and began tracing tiny, maddening circles.
The dam burst and a laugh exploded from her, long and loud.
The sound hung in the dead air of the room, a testament to her failure.
Nails pulled back, leaning back on his stool and admiring his handiwork as if he had just painted a masterpiece.
"There it is," he purred, his voice a silken ribbon of contempt. "One nail. One tiny little touch, and the tough investigative reporter from the Tribune giggles like a schoolgirl." He leaned forward again, his shark-like eyes locking onto hers. "You're a 'soft sole,' Camila. You have all that fire, all that righteous anger on the outside… but underneath, where it matters? You’re weak, you’re pathetic."
The humiliation burned hotter than any pain. Tears of rage pricked at the corners of her eyes.
"Go to hell," she gritted out, her voice a low, trembling snarl.
"Oh, I’m already there," Nails replied smoothly. "And you’re the main attraction."
The faint smile on Nails' face vanished, replaced by a look of cold, clinical focus. He dropped the pretense of a delicate test. Now, the interrogation truly began.
He placed his left hand firmly on her ankle, his long, spindly fingers wrapping around it to hold her steady. This time, he didn't use a single nail. He extended all four fingers of his right hand, fashioning his hand into a claw, and raked the sharp, lacquered tips from her heel to her toes in a single, fluid motion.
Camila gasped, her back arching against the chair. The sensation was a hundred times worse—a chorus of tiny razors scraping across every nerve ending on her sole. She bent and flexed her toes, helplessly trying to lessen the torment.
"Let's make this simple," Nails said, his voice losing its predatory purr and gaining a hard, commanding edge. He didn't look at her feet now; he stared directly into her eyes, searching for the first sign of a crack. "You had a tip. A source. Who was it? Give me the name."
He raked his nails down her foot again, harder this time.
"I don't have a— Hee-HEE!" A stuttering, hiccuping laugh broke through her denial as he dragged his nails over the ball of her foot. "I don't— Huh-huh-huh —I told you… S-stop" She tried to form the words, to maintain the lie, but his fingers were relentless, scribbling and scraping, mapping out every sensitive inch of her flesh.
He discovered the divot in the center of her arch.
A low groan escaped Camila's lips as he abandoned the scraping and instead dug the hard pads of his thumbs deep into that hollow spot. The pressure was intense, sending shockwaves of agonizing sensitivity through her entire leg. While his thumbs ground into her arch, his fingernails danced and scratched over the tops of her toes.
It was too much. The carefully constructed walls of her resolve crumbled into dust.
A deep, rolling laugh erupted from her chest, a sound she didn't recognize as her own. It was a full-bodied, helpless thing, that shook her from head to toe, a sound of utter surrender to the torment.
"HA-HA-HA-HA! OH GOD, HA! STOP-HA-HA-HA! PLEASE!"
The laughter was a betrayal. Her body was a traitor, siding with her torturer, broadcasting her weakness to the entire room. Tears, hot and shameful, streamed down her cheeks, mingling with the sweat beading on her temples. This wasn't amusement; it was agony wearing the mask of joy, and she could do nothing to stop it.
"The name, Camila," Nails repeated, his voice calm and steady amidst her chaotic laughter. "Just give me the name, and this can all stop."
"I DON'T KNOW!" she shrieked through another gale of laughter, her head thrashing against the back of the chair. "I DIDN’T SEE HA-HA-HA-HA! I SWEA-HEE-HEER!"
"Wrong answer," Nails said, his voice flat. The smile was completely gone now, his expression hardening into something like a surgeon’s weary frustration. He released her foot, which twitched uncontrollably on the stool, and stood up.
He walked over to the corner where Knuckles had tossed her combat boots. He didn't even glance at Camila, who was panting, her breath coming in wet, hitching sobs, her body trembling with the aftershocks of the laughter. He bent down, grabbed the thick, dirty laces of her boots, and with a series of sharp, efficient tugs, pulled them free from the eyelets.
He returned to her with the laces dangling from his hand like a pair of dead snakes.
"What… what are you doing?" Camila stammered, watching him with wide, terrified eyes.
Nails didn't answer. He knelt before her and took hold of the toes of her right foot. With a brutal lack of ceremony, he pulled them back, bending them sharply towards her shin. A sharp, searing pain shot through the muscles of her foot as her arch was stretched taut, the skin pulled tight as a drumhead. She cried out, a sound that was half pain, half a precursor to more laughter.
Before she could react further, he looped one of the bootlaces around her hyperextended toes, pulled it tight, and then threaded it through the wooden slats of the chair's backrest, cinching it down with a merciless knot. Her toes were now locked in that agonizingly exposed position. The balls of her feet were presented forward proudly, her arches stretched out, any wrinkles flattened.
He repeated the process with her left foot.
The new level of vulnerability was staggering. She was no longer just bound; she was presented, her soles stretched and utterly helpless, every nerve pulled taut and screaming. The pain in her arches was a low, constant burn, a prelude to the horror she knew was coming.
Panicked, high-pitched yelps tore from her throat as she struggled against the new bonds. "Wait! Please don't do this!"
Nails stood back for a moment to admire the new setup, then leaned in close, his voice a low hiss in her ear. "Last time. The name of your source."
"I don't know!" she wailed, tears and snot running down her face. "I'm telling you the trut-AAAHA-HA-HA! FFFFUUUUU-HU-HU-CK! NO-NO-NO-NO-NO!"
Her answer dissolved into an incoherent scream of laughter as he resumed his assault. He didn't need to hold her still anymore. With both hands free, he began a terrifying symphony of torment. His right hand spider-walked its sharp nails up and down her stretched left sole, while his left hand scribbled frantic, maddening patterns across her right. The sensation was everywhere at once, a relentless, overwhelming flood of ticklish agony. Her mind couldn't process it, couldn't find a single point to focus on. There was no escape.
After ten minutes of relentless tickling, Nails gave a theatrical sigh of disappointment and pulled his hands away. The sudden cessation of the attack was almost as jarring as its onset. Camila was left gasping, her body thrumming with residual signals of panic, her drenched soles tingling with a horrible, sensitive ache.
He reached beside his stool and lifted a small canvas bag, placing it on his lap. He unzipped it with a slow, deliberate rasp. Camila watched through blurry, tear-filled eyes as he pulled out two items.
The first was a large, clear plastic bottle of Johnson's baby oil.
The second was a cheap, black plastic hairbrush with a paddle-shaped head, its face studded with stiff, unforgiving plastic bristles.
"No," Camila whimpered, the word a ragged puff of air. "No, please, not that…"
Nails unscrewed the white cap of the baby oil. Without a word, he upended the bottle and began to glibly pour the slick, warm liquid all over her feet. It cascaded over her hyperextended toes, pooled in her stretched arches, and dripped from her heels onto the concrete floor. The room filled with the cloying, infantile scent. The oil eliminated any hope of friction, magnifying every potential sensation a hundredfold.
He tossed the empty bottle aside. He picked up the hairbrush.
He didn't start slow. There was no teasing touch, no gentle test. He took the brush,gripped it like a weapon, and ground it, hard, into the slicked surface of her right arch.
The effect was immediate and catastrophic.
Camila’s body convulsed as if she’d been electrocuted. The combination of the sharp, unyielding bristles, the frictionless glide of the oil, and the intense, grinding pressure was a sensory apocalypse. Her sanity frayed. She couldn't breathe. Her lungs seized, and the laughter that tore from her was no longer human.
It was a series of wet, desperate, hyperventilating gasps.
"AAAAAAAAAA-HA-HA-HA-HA NAAAAAAAA PLEEEASE!"
He scrubbed the brush back and forth with a merciless, metronomic rhythm, the plastic bristles scraping and digging into her tender flesh. He worked his way from her heel to the base of her toes and back again, leaving no inch untouched. The sounds she made devolved further, losing any semblance of laughter and becoming primal, guttural noises of pure, system-overloading panic.
"NOT THE TOESSSSSSS SHHHHHIIIIT FFFFFUUUUU-HU-HU-HU-HU-HU-CK"
He switched to her left foot without breaking rhythm. Her mind couldn't form words. It couldn't even form coherent screams anymore. There was only the overwhelming, inescapable sensation. He canted the brush onto its corner, using the sharp plastic edge to dig into the ultra-sensitive skin between her toes.
Camila threw her head back, her mouth stretched open in a silent, agonizing scream. She strained against the zip-ties on her wrists and the laces on her toes, every muscle in her body locked in a desperate, futile attempt to escape. But only a choked, pathetic hiss escaped her lips.
Through the red haze of her agony, she saw Nails’ face leaning in close, his features contorted in a mask of furious concentration.
"THE NAME!" he screamed, his voice barely audible over the sound of her own ruined breathing and the harsh scraping of the brush. He dropped the brush, and now it was both of his claw-like hands, digging into the slicked soles, his long nails sliding and gouging with maddening speed. He used the brush on one foot, his claw like nails on the other.
Every instinct screamed at her to give him something, anything, a name, a lie—but her brain was short-circuiting. There was nothing left but the feeling.
Slick called out “Yo, Nails. Maybe she’s telling the truth. Maybe she don’t know. But maybe we can find answers in this”
Nails lifted the brush and looked around at Slick. Camila’s eyes were blurry with tears, she tried to focus on what the other man was holding.
She blinked furiously and he started coming into focus. He was holding her overcoat in one hand, and had her mobile phone in the other, waving it.
Nails turned back to Camila with a smirk and purred “give us the code to your phone, Camila” waving the hairbrush up menacingly, the threat presented.
“Ok ok” Camila wheezed, her breath coming in short bursts, her lungs on fire and her throat raw “5936”.
Nails looked back at Slick.
“Ok, we’re in” he said, dropping the overcoat onto the floor, then going and sitting while his thumbs zipped over the screen of the phone.
Camila gasped for air, humiliated that her life is now on show for these fucking freaks, but anything for a break.
“Aaaalright let’s see here. Photos…” Slick murmured, his thumb sliding from the bottom to the top “a-ha. Ok, looks like a piece of paper. Has the building, the street, and the name of the Boss” he said, looking over at Camila.
“Like… like I said… I don’t… I don’t know who… who gave it to me… It was… It was pushed under my… my door… two nights ago.”
Slick frowned at Camila and then looked back down at the phone, his thumb started scrolling through the photos again until he gave a little whistle “damn… Camila has some saucy selfies on here.” Then he looks at her “so… you got a fella or…?”
Camila’s cheeks burned bright red “what does… that have to… do with anything?”
Nails lowered the brush.
“NO!!!” Camila screamed before he touched her “no, I don’t, I don’t, please!” she said, a sob breaking through her plea, a tear stinging her eye from the sheer humiliation of it all “it’s just… hook ups” she muttered, looking down.
Slick shrugged. Then he started tapping her phone again “ok, I’m in her emails now. Let’s check sent folder…” he paused a beat “nope. Nothing about coming out here. Nothing in messaging apps either. No-one knows she’s here. Let’s keep it that way.”
He looked up at Camila again “what’s your editor’s name, Camila?”
Camila paused a moment, her brows knitting why does he want to know who—
Nails shook his head and lowered the brush again.
“ART!! Arthur Shafton! Art is my editor.”
“Art… okie dokie. Let’s send a little resignation email to good old Artie” He hummed as his thumbs whizzed over the phone screen “tell him you are going out of town.”
Cold hard dread seeped into Camila’s bones. Telling them what they wanted to know wasn’t going to mean they would let her go!
“Wait, please! Wait. I told you everything! Please, just let me go” she whined, a thick tear tracing down her cheek.
Knuckles at the back stood up from the chair he was sitting on to watch the show “I guess she told us everything we need to know, Slick.”
“I guess so, Knuckles” Slick agreed.
Camila looked from the giant to the oily one in the suit, her eyes wide, pleading, and then they fell on the cold, dead eyes of Nails who placed the brush back into his bag “well if you have nothing else to say…”
Nails raised his hands and slowly brought them to her feet.
“WAIT! NO! I TOLD YOU EVERYTHING! PLEEEEEEASE!"
Next Chapter (2) - Elena
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