Previous Chapter (1) - Camila
The glaring spotlight was blinding, it felt like it was cooking her retinas. She hears loud footsteps of dress shoes on concrete echoing through the cavernous room, she looks over and sees the familiar outline of Nails approaching her. She tries to struggle but the straps on her arms, legs, and torso keep her prone.
She looks again, Nails has entered the light, he is casually filing the nails of his right hand with an emery board, and then his cold eyes snap to Elena's "aaah good" he murmours, smirking as he puts the emery board in his breast pocket.
He walks around the table slowly to where Elena's feet are held immobile "remember this?" he coos, holding his right hand aloft in a loose fist and extends his index finger, the light catching the deadly point of his nail, and then he starts to lower his hand slowly.
Elena woke with a gasp, her body jerking violently on the thin, lumpy mattress.
She sat up, clutching her chest, her heart hammering a frantic rhythm against her ribs. The air in the room was stale, a familiar cocktail of damp concrete, old sweat, and the faint, chemical tang of cleaning supplies. It was the smell of the holding area. Home sweet hell.
She rubbed the sleep from her eyes and swung her legs over the side of the cot. The movement made her wince; her ribs ached with a dull, persistent throb, a souvenir from yesterday's "endurance" session with Knuckles' maulers on her sensitive ribs and breasts.
Her eyes drifted down to her feet.
She froze.
Her toes, which had been red and raw when she collapsed onto the cot hours ago, were now clean. The cuticles had been pushed back neatly. The skin looked moisturized, lacking the usual dryness of the warehouse air. And her toenails… they were painted a bright, glossy, almost cheerful shade of candy-apple red.
"Dammit," Elena whispered, cursing into the gloom.
It had happened while she was asleep.
Atkins.
He was the resident clinician, or beautician, or whatever title he gave himself. A soft-spoken, eerie man with hands that felt too gentle for a place like this. Elena loathed him, loathed the way he hummed while he worked, loathed his complicit silence. But god help her, she loathed missing him even more.
His visits were the only mercy in this entire operation. The warm foot soaks with Epsom salts to soothe the cramping arches. The cocoa butter massages to keep the skin supple and sensitive. The careful pedicures. It was perverse, keeping their feet pristine just so they could be tortured again, but in those moments, the touch wasn't meant to hurt. It was the only time she felt like a person and not just a prop.
She had developed a rapport with the man, the sessions with him felt like a normal trip to get a pedicure done, it reminded her of life before this place, where she could banter with someone. Even if he was just getting her ready for her next torture session.
And she had slept through it.
She glared at her shiny red toes. They felt strange wiggling in the cold air. Now, instead of a comfort, the bright paint felt like a brand. A "Ready for Use" sticker slapped on a product.
"Great," she muttered bitterly.
Elena rubbed her face. The motion was weary, a gesture she’d repeated a thousand times. She pushed the greasy, unwashed hair from her eyes and did what she always did upon waking: a quiet, desperate census.
She scanned the adjoining cells, their wire-mesh walls creating a grim, overlapping grid in the dim safety lighting.
Directly across from her, Sarah was awake. The nineteen-year-old was sitting on her cot, legs pulled up to her chest, arms wrapped tightly around her knees. She was staring at the cinderblock wall with an unnerving, blank intensity, as if trying to see through it. Sarah had been retreating further and further into herself over the last few weeks. Checked out. Present in body, but her mind was somewhere far away, somewhere safe. A place Elena was starting to envy.
To the right, Chloe's cell was empty. A cold knot formed in Elena's stomach. The young blonde had been taken for a session hours ago. That she wasn't back yet was a bad sign. It meant she’d either fought too hard and earned a stay in the medical bay, or they were making her do a "double feature." Elena felt a pang of genuine sympathy. Chloe was still a fighter, and in this place, fighting only made them hurt you more.
In the next cell over, Priya was asleep. The newcomer—she'd only been here a week—was curled into a tight fetal ball, her body twitching intermittently as her mind replayed its own private horrors. For a moment, Elena felt a flash of resentment. Sleep. What a luxury.
In the far corner, Jolene was on her knees. The woman had been here longer than Elena, and she’d found her own method of coping. She was rocking back and forth on her knees, a small, rhythmic motion, her lips moving in a frantic, whispered prayer in her melodic southern twang. "O Heavenly Father, hear our cry. Save us, protect us, deliver us from evil… and bring us out of this bondage into the light of Your mercy. In Your holy name we pray."
Elena sighed. Everyone present and accounted for, in their various states of disrepair.
Then she looked to the cell on her left. The one that was usually empty, the overflow cell.
And her blood ran cold.
There was someone in it. A woman. Slumped against the dividing mesh, her face hidden by a curtain of dark, messy hair. She was still wearing a heavy trench coat, a sure sign she was new.
Elena froze. This was wrong. The routine was always the same, another cruel twist of the knife. Knuckles would storm through, banging his nightstick on the wire mesh. "Listen up, my little songbirds!" he'd boom, a sick grin on his face. "Scout is heading out! Means one of you might get a new playmate tonight!" Then they'd be left for hours, sometimes a whole day, with the churning, horrifying knowledge that somewhere out in the city, another woman's life was about to end, that she would join them here. The announcement for Priya had come a full twelve hours before she was dragged in, sobbing and confused.
But for this newcomer, there had been nothing. No announcement. No warning. Just… silence.
The new girl had been brought in quietly. Secretly. And in this place, anything that broke the routine was dangerous.
Elena pressed herself closer to the cold wire mesh, the grid imprinting a faint pattern on her cheek. The newcomer was a dark, slumped shape, a heap of trench coat and exhaustion. Elena squinted, her eyes straining in the dim safety light that cast long, distorted shadows across the concrete floor.
The woman in the next cell shifted, a low groan escaping her lips as she rolled slightly onto her side in her sleep. The movement caused one of her feet to slide out from under the hem of her coat, coming to rest in a small patch of the weak, orange light.
Elena’s breath hitched. She didn't need to see the woman's face to know her story. It was written on the bottom of her foot.
The sole was glistening with the unmistakable residue of baby oil, making the skin look slick and unnaturally pale. The entire surface was an angry, inflamed red, a roadmap of agony. But it was the other marks that made Elena’s own stomach clench in sympathetic dread.
Across the arch and the ball of the foot were a series of thin, parallel red welts. They were unmistakable. They looked like the neat, precise scratches of a cat's claws, a signature of terrifying artistry.
Nails.
Elena winced, a phantom sensation ghosting across her own soles. This girl hadn't just been put through a session. She hadn't gotten the clumsy, brutish attention of Knuckles or the frantic, unpredictable work of Slick. She had been introduced to Nails. That was his signature, the calling card he left on the ones who fought back, the ones who had to be truly broken.
This quiet, secret arrival hadn't been a mercy. It had been an execution of spirit.
A knot of something she hadn't felt in a long time—pity, maybe, or just a grim sense of camaraderie—tightened in Elena's chest. This woman had been through the worst of it, and she deserved to know she wasn't alone.
Elena shifted until she was kneeling by the partition. She reached her hand through one of the wide, diamond-shaped holes in the wire mesh, her fingers brushing against the damp, heavy fabric of the newcomer's coat. She hesitated for a second, then gave the woman's shoulder a firm, insistent poke.
"Hey," she whispered, her voice a rough, unused rasp. "Wake up."
The reaction was instantaneous and violent.
The woman jerked awake as if jolted by electricity, scrambling backward on the dirty concrete until her back hit the far wall of her cell. Her eyes were wide with pure, animal terror.
"Don't touch me!" she screamed, her voice cracking, raw from overuse. "I swear I'll—"
"Keep it down!" Elena hissed, pulling her hand back quickly. Her own heart was now pounding, the fear of attracting a guard a cold spike in her gut. "Shut up, unless you want Knuckles to come back in here for an encore. I'm not one of them."
The woman froze, her frantic breathing the only sound in the cellblock. She blinked, her gaze slowly coming into focus, the wild panic in her eyes giving way to a dawning, horrified awareness of her surroundings. Her eyes darted from Elena, to the mesh, to the other sleeping forms in the cages across the hall.
She stared at Elena's face, her brow furrowed in confusion, and then a flicker of recognition crossed her features.
"You…" she breathed, her voice dropping to a shaky whisper. "I know you. Your picture… you're Elena. Elena Kowalski."
Elena let out a short, bitter puff of air that might have been a laugh in another life. "In the flesh," she said, gesturing down at her worn t-shirt and grey sweatpants. "Mostly."
The woman—Camila—pushed herself up, a new energy, a spark of purpose, cutting through her pain and exhaustion. "My God. You’re alive," she said, her voice gaining strength. "I've been looking for you. For all of you. Sarah and Chloe too!" She leaned closer to the mesh, her eyes intense. "I'm a journalist. My name is Camila Reyes. I came here to find you."
The word "journalist" hung in the stale air. For a fleeting second, Camila’s professional determination burned through her terror. She wasn't just a victim; she was a witness. She was still on the job.
She pushed herself closer to the wire mesh, her voice low and urgent. "Listen to me, we have to get out of here. I know about the operation. I saw Romano. I have evidence." Her eyes locked onto Elena's. "I know you were the first one they took, Elena."
The reaction wasn't what she expected.
Elena didn't gasp. She didn't cry. She laughed.
It was a horrible sound—dry, hollow, and utterly devoid of humor. It was the sound of something breaking, over and over, until it could no longer be put back together. The laugh echoed briefly in the concrete cellblock before dying out, leaving an even deeper silence in its wake.
"Victim One?" Elena said, the words dripping with a weary, ancient cynicism. She shook her head slowly. "Honey, look around." She gestured with her head towards the other cells.
Camila's gaze followed, landing on the sleeping form of Priya and the praying, rocking shape of Jolene. "I... I don't recognize them," she said, her voice confused. "I checked every missing persons report from the last year. They weren't on any of the boards."
"Of course not," Elena said flatly. "Jolene's a runaway from out of state. Priya's a tourist from India. Their paperwork is probably at the bottom of a landfill by now." She leaned her head against the cool metal of the mesh, her eyes unfocused, looking into the past. "And I wasn't the first. Not even close. When I got here nearly six months ago, there were three other girls in these cages. 'Emily', 'Anya', and a redhead whose name I never got."
The names sounded like code, like brands on livestock. "Where are they?" Camila asked, her stomach twisting. "Are they… dead?"
Elena let out another one of those empty, rattling laughs. "Dead? No. Dead girls don't generate revenue, reporter." She finally turned to look directly at Camila, her eyes holding a darkness that was terrifying. "They were 'graduated.' Sold. After they were broken in, after they had enough 'content' on the servers, they became showroom models."
She paused, letting the horror of the word sink in.
"Some rich guy in Dubai bought Emily. Paid seven figures in crypto. Anya went to a collector in Japan. The redhead… I don't know." Elena shrugged, a gesture of profound exhaustion. "This isn't just a studio, Camila. It's a catalogue."
The word "catalogue" landed like a body blow, knocking the air from Camila's lungs. The scale of the operation she had stumbled into was monstrous, far beyond a simple trafficking ring. It was a factory, a production line for broken human beings.
Elena watched her, her expression unreadable in the dim light. The brief, hollow amusement was gone, replaced by a sharp, focused intensity. She saw the journalist in Camila flicker, replaced by the terrified victim, and she pressed her advantage.
"Don't just stare at the wall, reporter," Elena whispered, her voice a low, urgent command. "Talk to me. You found this place. No one's ever done that before. How?"
Camila swallowed, her throat dry and raw. "A tip," she rasped. "Anonymous. A napkin slid under my door. It just had an address and a name. Romano."
She leaned closer to the mesh, desperate for Elena to understand. "But I didn't just walk in here blind. I knew something was wrong. It started a few weeks ago with the blonde girl… Chloe. I was monitoring the police scanner," Camila continued, the memory of her frantic research spilling out. "I caught the initial report about a missing waitress. 'Chloe Johnson. Suspected Foul Play.' But three days later, when I checked the file again, it had changed. The status went from Missing Person to Located — Not Missing. The note said she'd contacted her parents and moved to California."
Camila shook her head, grimacing as the movement pulled at her stiff neck. "It didn't sit right. It was too clean. Too fast. I called the diner where she worked. Her manager told me she left her favorite jacket and an uncashed paycheck behind. People don't just walk away from money. That’s when I started digging deeper."
Elena was watching her intently now, her skepticism shifting into a wary respect.
"I widened the search," Camila said. "Looking for the same pattern in the precinct's history. I found two others. A Sarah Wong. And... you, Elena Kowalski,"
Camila paused a moment, looking at Elena before continuing. "Student at Cornell. Visiting the city. Your file told the exact same lie. Missing, then abruptly Located. The report claimed you went back to campus. I called the registrar. I called your sorority. No one had seen you. Your key card hadn't swiped anywhere since the day you vanished in Brooklyn."
"And Sarah?" Elena asked quietly.
"Same story," Camila whispered. "File scrubbed. Listed as 'pursuing artistic endeavors off-grid.' But I found her landlord. He told me she left her cat locked in the apartment until it was starving. He said she loved that cat more than anything. She wouldn't have just left it."
Camila took a shaky breath. "That’s when I knew. It wasn't just random disappearances. It was a pattern. Someone was making you vanish, and someone inside the system was cleaning up the mess."
"So you went to the cops?" Elena asked, leaning forward.
Camila let out a bitter laugh. "after seeing that a cop had doctored the files? No. I feared I might talk to the same cop. Didn;t want to take the risk. I pitched it to my editor instead. He gave me a tiny sidebar on page seven. A fluff piece. 'Missing or Moved On?' It was useless. Then two nights later… the napkin appeared." When... when they captured me I tried telling them I didn't know who gave me the note but..."
Elena looked pityingly at Camela "they didn't believe you"
A tear appears in Camela's eye and tracks down her cheek "I... I told them everything else. The password to my phone... everything. I wanted them to understand that I really didn't know the source or I would tell them. Hoping that... hoping they would end the torment... let me go."
Elena just shook her head slowly, her expression hardening with a mixture of pity and frustration. "Nails is a sadist, and tweedledum and tweedledee are animals," she said, her voice dropping to a grim, matter-of-fact tone. "You told them everything, Camila. You gave them your life on a platter, hoping for mercy. But mercy isn't a currency they accept here. Pain is. Compliance is."
She paused, her eyes narrowing as she re-evaluated the woman in the next cell. This wasn't just a random snatch-and-grab. This was a breach.
"And you didn't just stumble into a warehouse," Elena continued, her voice gaining a sharp, analytical edge. "You saw the setup. You saw the cameras. You saw Frank Romano himself." She leaned back against the wall, grim understanding dawning on her face like a storm cloud. "You didn’t just snoop around, reporter. You stepped right into the center of their web. You saw the whole production. Director, cast—everyone..."
She paused, letting the weight of Camila's failure settle in the small, cold cell.
"And now," Elena said, her voice dropping to a near-inaudible whisper, "you're going to be in it."
Camila stared at Elena, the pieces clicking into place with a horrifying, sickening finality. This wasn't just a clandestine porn operation. It was a sophisticated, multi-layered business.
"In what?" Camila asked, the words barely a whisper. "What is this thing? What do they call it?"
Elena looked down at her own feet, flexing the freshly painted red toes. Then she looked back at Camila’s ravished soles, a grim mirror of what was to come.
"They call it 'The Giggle Room,'" she said, the name tasting like poison in her mouth.
"The… Giggle Room?"
"Don't let the stupid name fool you," Elena went on, her gaze becoming distant as she pieced together the fragments of knowledge she'd collected over nearly six agonizing months. "I've never seen it, obviously. But I hear them talk. Slick, Knuckles… they get sloppy. They brag."
She leaned closer to the mesh, her voice dropping lower. "It's a livestream. Dark web shit. People… subscribers… pay a fortune in crypto to watch. They're not just watching, either. They're participating."
A cold dread, deeper than anything she had felt in Nails' presence, began to fill Camila's veins. "Participating? How?"
"They get to vote," Elena said, her voice laced with venom. "Before a session, a poll goes up for the subscribers. 'Which tool should we use tonight? The brushes or the feathers?' 'Which spot gets the focus? The arches or the toes?' Sometimes they take live requests. Some sick bastard pays a bonus, and suddenly Knuckles is switching from tickling to itching powder."
She shook her head, a shudder passing through her. "It's all for them. Every laugh, every scream… it's content. We're just the puppets, and they're pulling the strings from the other side of a screen."
Elena gestured vaguely around the cellblock. "And us? We're the cast. They have their regulars."
"Sarah is 'The Void.' She checked out weeks ago. Doesn't fight, doesn't beg. Just stares into nothing. They love that… seeing how much pain it takes to make a ghost flinch."
"Chloe is the 'Screamer.' Definitely the loudest and, unluckily for her, a favorite for them to play with."
"Jolene is 'The Believer.' She sometimes prays silently on camera. They make it into set pieces, mocking her faith."
"Priya is 'The Desi-rable'. A sick joke about her ethnicity."
She pointed a thumb at her own chest. "I'm the 'Veteran.' The one who can take it the longest, the hardest to break."
Camila looked at the woman through the wire mesh. She saw the bruises, the exhaustion that told a story of months of systematic abuse. The idea of enduring this, day after day, seemed impossible. It seemed like madness.
"Why?" Camila whispered, her voice trembling. "Why do you fight them? Why endure it? Why not just... give in? Like Sarah? Maybe it would make it stop sooner."
Elena’s expression hardened. Her eyes, which had been weary, suddenly flared with a fierce, diamond-hard resolve. She moved closer to the mesh, her fingers curling around the wire until her knuckles turned white.
"Because that is exactly what they want," Elena hissed. "To empty us out. To turn us into nothing but meat that twitches when they poke it. I will never let these sick fucks win."
She jabbed a finger toward Camila. "Look at you. You came looking for me. You proved that I'm not forgotten. If you came, others will come too." She took a deep breath, her chin lifting in defiance. "I will get out of here. I will walk out those doors. And until that day comes, I will not let them break me."
She held Camila’s gaze for a long moment, transmitting a fraction of that steel into the terrified reporter. For a few seconds, the cellblock didn't feel like a prison; it felt like a trench, and Elena was the commanding officer telling her they could hold the line.
Then, Elena sighed, the adrenaline fading as the reality of their surroundings seeped back in. She rubbed a hand over her bruised face, wincing slightly as she touched a tender spot on her jaw. She looked at Camila again, but this time the camaraderie was gone, replaced by that terrifying, prophetic pity. She tilted her head, analyzing the reporter with the cold, practiced eye of someone who knew exactly how the machine worked.
"But you..." Elena murmured, looking Camila up and down, assessing the trembling fear radiating off her. "A new girl... a new girl who fights back? A tough, pretty reporter who thought she could take them down?"
Elena gave a humorless, chilling smile. "That's not just new content. That's a pay-per-view special event. A ratings booster."
The horror of what was to come for Camila washed over her, choking out the brief spark of hope Elena’s defiance had ignited. Her eyes unfocused. Elena knew that look. The poor girl was running the simulation in her head, imagining the tools, the oil, the hands.
Elena thought to say something else, a word of comfort... anything. But she thought better of it. False hope was cruel here. At least this way, Camila would be somewhat prepared for the reality of the studio.
Elena lay back down on her lumpy cot, turning her face toward the wall, the conversation finished. In the distance, Jolene’s whispered prayers grew slightly louder, a frantic, futile mantra against the encroaching darkness.
Camila was left alone in her cell, staring at the concrete ceiling, the name of the show echoing in the silent, terrifying chambers of her mind. The Giggle Room.
"And tomorrow," Elena's voice drifted across the space, muffled and final, "since you're the new 'feisty' one... you're gonna be the star."
Just as the full weight of Elena’s words began to crush Camila, a harsh, metallic screech echoed from the end of the cellblock. It was the sound of the heavy steel door to the main factory floor grinding open.
Instantly, Jolene’s prayers died in her throat. Priya, who had been twitching in her sleep, went completely still. Even Sarah seemed to flinch, her gaze shifting from the wall to the source of the noise. The air grew thick with a collective, silent dread.
A rectangle of harsh, yellow light sliced through the dim orange gloom of the holding area. A massive silhouette filled the doorway. Knuckles.
He wasn't shouting. He wasn't banging his stick. He was just… working. With a grunt of effort, he dragged something heavy through the doorway behind him.
It was Chloe.
She was a dead weight in his grasp. He had her hooked under the armpits, her head lolling back, her arms dangling limply at her sides. Her strawberry-blonde hair was a matted, tangled mess, plastered to her skull with sweat and tears. Her face, visible in the harsh light, was pale and slack, her eyes closed. She was unconscious, but the faint, shallow rise and fall of her chest showed she was still alive.
Her body was a testament to the night's ordeal. Her clothes were twisted and soaked through. Her bare feet dragged behind her on the gritty concrete, the soles glowing an angry, raw red, glistening with a fresh coat of oil.
Knuckles dragged her down the central walkway, his heavy boots scuffing on the floor, the sound echoing off the cinderblock walls. He stopped in front of Chloe’s empty cell. With a jangling of keys, he unlocked the heavy padlock and slid the mesh door open with a loud CLANG.
He didn’t carry her in. He didn't lay her down.
With a final, indifferent grunt, he heaved her inside. Chloe’s limp body landed on the thin mattress with a soft, pathetic thump. One of her arms slid off the cot, her hand coming to rest on the filthy floor.
Knuckles didn't even look at her. He slammed the cell door shut, the metal vibrating from the force, and snapped the padlock into place. He gave it a single, perfunctory rattle to ensure it was locked.
Then, without a word to any of them, he turned and lumbered back toward the door, his form disappearing back into the yellow light.
The heavy steel door screeched shut, plunging the cellblock back into its dim, familiar twilight.
The silence that followed was heavier than before. It was a silence filled with the image of Chloe’s limp form, a preview of coming attractions. For Camila, it was a promise. She looked from Chloe’s still body to her own feet, then across the darkness to Elena. But Elena was already facing the wall, a silent statue in her cage, leaving Camila utterly alone with the dawning, suffocating certainty of what waited for her when the lights came up on The Giggle Room.
Next chapter (3) - Clement
The glaring spotlight was blinding, it felt like it was cooking her retinas. She hears loud footsteps of dress shoes on concrete echoing through the cavernous room, she looks over and sees the familiar outline of Nails approaching her. She tries to struggle but the straps on her arms, legs, and torso keep her prone.
She looks again, Nails has entered the light, he is casually filing the nails of his right hand with an emery board, and then his cold eyes snap to Elena's "aaah good" he murmours, smirking as he puts the emery board in his breast pocket.
He walks around the table slowly to where Elena's feet are held immobile "remember this?" he coos, holding his right hand aloft in a loose fist and extends his index finger, the light catching the deadly point of his nail, and then he starts to lower his hand slowly.
Elena woke with a gasp, her body jerking violently on the thin, lumpy mattress.
She sat up, clutching her chest, her heart hammering a frantic rhythm against her ribs. The air in the room was stale, a familiar cocktail of damp concrete, old sweat, and the faint, chemical tang of cleaning supplies. It was the smell of the holding area. Home sweet hell.
She rubbed the sleep from her eyes and swung her legs over the side of the cot. The movement made her wince; her ribs ached with a dull, persistent throb, a souvenir from yesterday's "endurance" session with Knuckles' maulers on her sensitive ribs and breasts.
Her eyes drifted down to her feet.
She froze.
Her toes, which had been red and raw when she collapsed onto the cot hours ago, were now clean. The cuticles had been pushed back neatly. The skin looked moisturized, lacking the usual dryness of the warehouse air. And her toenails… they were painted a bright, glossy, almost cheerful shade of candy-apple red.
"Dammit," Elena whispered, cursing into the gloom.
It had happened while she was asleep.
Atkins.
He was the resident clinician, or beautician, or whatever title he gave himself. A soft-spoken, eerie man with hands that felt too gentle for a place like this. Elena loathed him, loathed the way he hummed while he worked, loathed his complicit silence. But god help her, she loathed missing him even more.
His visits were the only mercy in this entire operation. The warm foot soaks with Epsom salts to soothe the cramping arches. The cocoa butter massages to keep the skin supple and sensitive. The careful pedicures. It was perverse, keeping their feet pristine just so they could be tortured again, but in those moments, the touch wasn't meant to hurt. It was the only time she felt like a person and not just a prop.
She had developed a rapport with the man, the sessions with him felt like a normal trip to get a pedicure done, it reminded her of life before this place, where she could banter with someone. Even if he was just getting her ready for her next torture session.
And she had slept through it.
She glared at her shiny red toes. They felt strange wiggling in the cold air. Now, instead of a comfort, the bright paint felt like a brand. A "Ready for Use" sticker slapped on a product.
"Great," she muttered bitterly.
Elena rubbed her face. The motion was weary, a gesture she’d repeated a thousand times. She pushed the greasy, unwashed hair from her eyes and did what she always did upon waking: a quiet, desperate census.
She scanned the adjoining cells, their wire-mesh walls creating a grim, overlapping grid in the dim safety lighting.
Directly across from her, Sarah was awake. The nineteen-year-old was sitting on her cot, legs pulled up to her chest, arms wrapped tightly around her knees. She was staring at the cinderblock wall with an unnerving, blank intensity, as if trying to see through it. Sarah had been retreating further and further into herself over the last few weeks. Checked out. Present in body, but her mind was somewhere far away, somewhere safe. A place Elena was starting to envy.
To the right, Chloe's cell was empty. A cold knot formed in Elena's stomach. The young blonde had been taken for a session hours ago. That she wasn't back yet was a bad sign. It meant she’d either fought too hard and earned a stay in the medical bay, or they were making her do a "double feature." Elena felt a pang of genuine sympathy. Chloe was still a fighter, and in this place, fighting only made them hurt you more.
In the next cell over, Priya was asleep. The newcomer—she'd only been here a week—was curled into a tight fetal ball, her body twitching intermittently as her mind replayed its own private horrors. For a moment, Elena felt a flash of resentment. Sleep. What a luxury.
In the far corner, Jolene was on her knees. The woman had been here longer than Elena, and she’d found her own method of coping. She was rocking back and forth on her knees, a small, rhythmic motion, her lips moving in a frantic, whispered prayer in her melodic southern twang. "O Heavenly Father, hear our cry. Save us, protect us, deliver us from evil… and bring us out of this bondage into the light of Your mercy. In Your holy name we pray."
Elena sighed. Everyone present and accounted for, in their various states of disrepair.
Then she looked to the cell on her left. The one that was usually empty, the overflow cell.
And her blood ran cold.
There was someone in it. A woman. Slumped against the dividing mesh, her face hidden by a curtain of dark, messy hair. She was still wearing a heavy trench coat, a sure sign she was new.
Elena froze. This was wrong. The routine was always the same, another cruel twist of the knife. Knuckles would storm through, banging his nightstick on the wire mesh. "Listen up, my little songbirds!" he'd boom, a sick grin on his face. "Scout is heading out! Means one of you might get a new playmate tonight!" Then they'd be left for hours, sometimes a whole day, with the churning, horrifying knowledge that somewhere out in the city, another woman's life was about to end, that she would join them here. The announcement for Priya had come a full twelve hours before she was dragged in, sobbing and confused.
But for this newcomer, there had been nothing. No announcement. No warning. Just… silence.
The new girl had been brought in quietly. Secretly. And in this place, anything that broke the routine was dangerous.
Elena pressed herself closer to the cold wire mesh, the grid imprinting a faint pattern on her cheek. The newcomer was a dark, slumped shape, a heap of trench coat and exhaustion. Elena squinted, her eyes straining in the dim safety light that cast long, distorted shadows across the concrete floor.
The woman in the next cell shifted, a low groan escaping her lips as she rolled slightly onto her side in her sleep. The movement caused one of her feet to slide out from under the hem of her coat, coming to rest in a small patch of the weak, orange light.
Elena’s breath hitched. She didn't need to see the woman's face to know her story. It was written on the bottom of her foot.
The sole was glistening with the unmistakable residue of baby oil, making the skin look slick and unnaturally pale. The entire surface was an angry, inflamed red, a roadmap of agony. But it was the other marks that made Elena’s own stomach clench in sympathetic dread.
Across the arch and the ball of the foot were a series of thin, parallel red welts. They were unmistakable. They looked like the neat, precise scratches of a cat's claws, a signature of terrifying artistry.
Nails.
Elena winced, a phantom sensation ghosting across her own soles. This girl hadn't just been put through a session. She hadn't gotten the clumsy, brutish attention of Knuckles or the frantic, unpredictable work of Slick. She had been introduced to Nails. That was his signature, the calling card he left on the ones who fought back, the ones who had to be truly broken.
This quiet, secret arrival hadn't been a mercy. It had been an execution of spirit.
A knot of something she hadn't felt in a long time—pity, maybe, or just a grim sense of camaraderie—tightened in Elena's chest. This woman had been through the worst of it, and she deserved to know she wasn't alone.
Elena shifted until she was kneeling by the partition. She reached her hand through one of the wide, diamond-shaped holes in the wire mesh, her fingers brushing against the damp, heavy fabric of the newcomer's coat. She hesitated for a second, then gave the woman's shoulder a firm, insistent poke.
"Hey," she whispered, her voice a rough, unused rasp. "Wake up."
The reaction was instantaneous and violent.
The woman jerked awake as if jolted by electricity, scrambling backward on the dirty concrete until her back hit the far wall of her cell. Her eyes were wide with pure, animal terror.
"Don't touch me!" she screamed, her voice cracking, raw from overuse. "I swear I'll—"
"Keep it down!" Elena hissed, pulling her hand back quickly. Her own heart was now pounding, the fear of attracting a guard a cold spike in her gut. "Shut up, unless you want Knuckles to come back in here for an encore. I'm not one of them."
The woman froze, her frantic breathing the only sound in the cellblock. She blinked, her gaze slowly coming into focus, the wild panic in her eyes giving way to a dawning, horrified awareness of her surroundings. Her eyes darted from Elena, to the mesh, to the other sleeping forms in the cages across the hall.
She stared at Elena's face, her brow furrowed in confusion, and then a flicker of recognition crossed her features.
"You…" she breathed, her voice dropping to a shaky whisper. "I know you. Your picture… you're Elena. Elena Kowalski."
Elena let out a short, bitter puff of air that might have been a laugh in another life. "In the flesh," she said, gesturing down at her worn t-shirt and grey sweatpants. "Mostly."
The woman—Camila—pushed herself up, a new energy, a spark of purpose, cutting through her pain and exhaustion. "My God. You’re alive," she said, her voice gaining strength. "I've been looking for you. For all of you. Sarah and Chloe too!" She leaned closer to the mesh, her eyes intense. "I'm a journalist. My name is Camila Reyes. I came here to find you."
The word "journalist" hung in the stale air. For a fleeting second, Camila’s professional determination burned through her terror. She wasn't just a victim; she was a witness. She was still on the job.
She pushed herself closer to the wire mesh, her voice low and urgent. "Listen to me, we have to get out of here. I know about the operation. I saw Romano. I have evidence." Her eyes locked onto Elena's. "I know you were the first one they took, Elena."
The reaction wasn't what she expected.
Elena didn't gasp. She didn't cry. She laughed.
It was a horrible sound—dry, hollow, and utterly devoid of humor. It was the sound of something breaking, over and over, until it could no longer be put back together. The laugh echoed briefly in the concrete cellblock before dying out, leaving an even deeper silence in its wake.
"Victim One?" Elena said, the words dripping with a weary, ancient cynicism. She shook her head slowly. "Honey, look around." She gestured with her head towards the other cells.
Camila's gaze followed, landing on the sleeping form of Priya and the praying, rocking shape of Jolene. "I... I don't recognize them," she said, her voice confused. "I checked every missing persons report from the last year. They weren't on any of the boards."
"Of course not," Elena said flatly. "Jolene's a runaway from out of state. Priya's a tourist from India. Their paperwork is probably at the bottom of a landfill by now." She leaned her head against the cool metal of the mesh, her eyes unfocused, looking into the past. "And I wasn't the first. Not even close. When I got here nearly six months ago, there were three other girls in these cages. 'Emily', 'Anya', and a redhead whose name I never got."
The names sounded like code, like brands on livestock. "Where are they?" Camila asked, her stomach twisting. "Are they… dead?"
Elena let out another one of those empty, rattling laughs. "Dead? No. Dead girls don't generate revenue, reporter." She finally turned to look directly at Camila, her eyes holding a darkness that was terrifying. "They were 'graduated.' Sold. After they were broken in, after they had enough 'content' on the servers, they became showroom models."
She paused, letting the horror of the word sink in.
"Some rich guy in Dubai bought Emily. Paid seven figures in crypto. Anya went to a collector in Japan. The redhead… I don't know." Elena shrugged, a gesture of profound exhaustion. "This isn't just a studio, Camila. It's a catalogue."
The word "catalogue" landed like a body blow, knocking the air from Camila's lungs. The scale of the operation she had stumbled into was monstrous, far beyond a simple trafficking ring. It was a factory, a production line for broken human beings.
Elena watched her, her expression unreadable in the dim light. The brief, hollow amusement was gone, replaced by a sharp, focused intensity. She saw the journalist in Camila flicker, replaced by the terrified victim, and she pressed her advantage.
"Don't just stare at the wall, reporter," Elena whispered, her voice a low, urgent command. "Talk to me. You found this place. No one's ever done that before. How?"
Camila swallowed, her throat dry and raw. "A tip," she rasped. "Anonymous. A napkin slid under my door. It just had an address and a name. Romano."
She leaned closer to the mesh, desperate for Elena to understand. "But I didn't just walk in here blind. I knew something was wrong. It started a few weeks ago with the blonde girl… Chloe. I was monitoring the police scanner," Camila continued, the memory of her frantic research spilling out. "I caught the initial report about a missing waitress. 'Chloe Johnson. Suspected Foul Play.' But three days later, when I checked the file again, it had changed. The status went from Missing Person to Located — Not Missing. The note said she'd contacted her parents and moved to California."
Camila shook her head, grimacing as the movement pulled at her stiff neck. "It didn't sit right. It was too clean. Too fast. I called the diner where she worked. Her manager told me she left her favorite jacket and an uncashed paycheck behind. People don't just walk away from money. That’s when I started digging deeper."
Elena was watching her intently now, her skepticism shifting into a wary respect.
"I widened the search," Camila said. "Looking for the same pattern in the precinct's history. I found two others. A Sarah Wong. And... you, Elena Kowalski,"
Camila paused a moment, looking at Elena before continuing. "Student at Cornell. Visiting the city. Your file told the exact same lie. Missing, then abruptly Located. The report claimed you went back to campus. I called the registrar. I called your sorority. No one had seen you. Your key card hadn't swiped anywhere since the day you vanished in Brooklyn."
"And Sarah?" Elena asked quietly.
"Same story," Camila whispered. "File scrubbed. Listed as 'pursuing artistic endeavors off-grid.' But I found her landlord. He told me she left her cat locked in the apartment until it was starving. He said she loved that cat more than anything. She wouldn't have just left it."
Camila took a shaky breath. "That’s when I knew. It wasn't just random disappearances. It was a pattern. Someone was making you vanish, and someone inside the system was cleaning up the mess."
"So you went to the cops?" Elena asked, leaning forward.
Camila let out a bitter laugh. "after seeing that a cop had doctored the files? No. I feared I might talk to the same cop. Didn;t want to take the risk. I pitched it to my editor instead. He gave me a tiny sidebar on page seven. A fluff piece. 'Missing or Moved On?' It was useless. Then two nights later… the napkin appeared." When... when they captured me I tried telling them I didn't know who gave me the note but..."
Elena looked pityingly at Camela "they didn't believe you"
A tear appears in Camela's eye and tracks down her cheek "I... I told them everything else. The password to my phone... everything. I wanted them to understand that I really didn't know the source or I would tell them. Hoping that... hoping they would end the torment... let me go."
Elena just shook her head slowly, her expression hardening with a mixture of pity and frustration. "Nails is a sadist, and tweedledum and tweedledee are animals," she said, her voice dropping to a grim, matter-of-fact tone. "You told them everything, Camila. You gave them your life on a platter, hoping for mercy. But mercy isn't a currency they accept here. Pain is. Compliance is."
She paused, her eyes narrowing as she re-evaluated the woman in the next cell. This wasn't just a random snatch-and-grab. This was a breach.
"And you didn't just stumble into a warehouse," Elena continued, her voice gaining a sharp, analytical edge. "You saw the setup. You saw the cameras. You saw Frank Romano himself." She leaned back against the wall, grim understanding dawning on her face like a storm cloud. "You didn’t just snoop around, reporter. You stepped right into the center of their web. You saw the whole production. Director, cast—everyone..."
She paused, letting the weight of Camila's failure settle in the small, cold cell.
"And now," Elena said, her voice dropping to a near-inaudible whisper, "you're going to be in it."
Camila stared at Elena, the pieces clicking into place with a horrifying, sickening finality. This wasn't just a clandestine porn operation. It was a sophisticated, multi-layered business.
"In what?" Camila asked, the words barely a whisper. "What is this thing? What do they call it?"
Elena looked down at her own feet, flexing the freshly painted red toes. Then she looked back at Camila’s ravished soles, a grim mirror of what was to come.
"They call it 'The Giggle Room,'" she said, the name tasting like poison in her mouth.
"The… Giggle Room?"
"Don't let the stupid name fool you," Elena went on, her gaze becoming distant as she pieced together the fragments of knowledge she'd collected over nearly six agonizing months. "I've never seen it, obviously. But I hear them talk. Slick, Knuckles… they get sloppy. They brag."
She leaned closer to the mesh, her voice dropping lower. "It's a livestream. Dark web shit. People… subscribers… pay a fortune in crypto to watch. They're not just watching, either. They're participating."
A cold dread, deeper than anything she had felt in Nails' presence, began to fill Camila's veins. "Participating? How?"
"They get to vote," Elena said, her voice laced with venom. "Before a session, a poll goes up for the subscribers. 'Which tool should we use tonight? The brushes or the feathers?' 'Which spot gets the focus? The arches or the toes?' Sometimes they take live requests. Some sick bastard pays a bonus, and suddenly Knuckles is switching from tickling to itching powder."
She shook her head, a shudder passing through her. "It's all for them. Every laugh, every scream… it's content. We're just the puppets, and they're pulling the strings from the other side of a screen."
Elena gestured vaguely around the cellblock. "And us? We're the cast. They have their regulars."
"Sarah is 'The Void.' She checked out weeks ago. Doesn't fight, doesn't beg. Just stares into nothing. They love that… seeing how much pain it takes to make a ghost flinch."
"Chloe is the 'Screamer.' Definitely the loudest and, unluckily for her, a favorite for them to play with."
"Jolene is 'The Believer.' She sometimes prays silently on camera. They make it into set pieces, mocking her faith."
"Priya is 'The Desi-rable'. A sick joke about her ethnicity."
She pointed a thumb at her own chest. "I'm the 'Veteran.' The one who can take it the longest, the hardest to break."
Camila looked at the woman through the wire mesh. She saw the bruises, the exhaustion that told a story of months of systematic abuse. The idea of enduring this, day after day, seemed impossible. It seemed like madness.
"Why?" Camila whispered, her voice trembling. "Why do you fight them? Why endure it? Why not just... give in? Like Sarah? Maybe it would make it stop sooner."
Elena’s expression hardened. Her eyes, which had been weary, suddenly flared with a fierce, diamond-hard resolve. She moved closer to the mesh, her fingers curling around the wire until her knuckles turned white.
"Because that is exactly what they want," Elena hissed. "To empty us out. To turn us into nothing but meat that twitches when they poke it. I will never let these sick fucks win."
She jabbed a finger toward Camila. "Look at you. You came looking for me. You proved that I'm not forgotten. If you came, others will come too." She took a deep breath, her chin lifting in defiance. "I will get out of here. I will walk out those doors. And until that day comes, I will not let them break me."
She held Camila’s gaze for a long moment, transmitting a fraction of that steel into the terrified reporter. For a few seconds, the cellblock didn't feel like a prison; it felt like a trench, and Elena was the commanding officer telling her they could hold the line.
Then, Elena sighed, the adrenaline fading as the reality of their surroundings seeped back in. She rubbed a hand over her bruised face, wincing slightly as she touched a tender spot on her jaw. She looked at Camila again, but this time the camaraderie was gone, replaced by that terrifying, prophetic pity. She tilted her head, analyzing the reporter with the cold, practiced eye of someone who knew exactly how the machine worked.
"But you..." Elena murmured, looking Camila up and down, assessing the trembling fear radiating off her. "A new girl... a new girl who fights back? A tough, pretty reporter who thought she could take them down?"
Elena gave a humorless, chilling smile. "That's not just new content. That's a pay-per-view special event. A ratings booster."
The horror of what was to come for Camila washed over her, choking out the brief spark of hope Elena’s defiance had ignited. Her eyes unfocused. Elena knew that look. The poor girl was running the simulation in her head, imagining the tools, the oil, the hands.
Elena thought to say something else, a word of comfort... anything. But she thought better of it. False hope was cruel here. At least this way, Camila would be somewhat prepared for the reality of the studio.
Elena lay back down on her lumpy cot, turning her face toward the wall, the conversation finished. In the distance, Jolene’s whispered prayers grew slightly louder, a frantic, futile mantra against the encroaching darkness.
Camila was left alone in her cell, staring at the concrete ceiling, the name of the show echoing in the silent, terrifying chambers of her mind. The Giggle Room.
"And tomorrow," Elena's voice drifted across the space, muffled and final, "since you're the new 'feisty' one... you're gonna be the star."
Just as the full weight of Elena’s words began to crush Camila, a harsh, metallic screech echoed from the end of the cellblock. It was the sound of the heavy steel door to the main factory floor grinding open.
Instantly, Jolene’s prayers died in her throat. Priya, who had been twitching in her sleep, went completely still. Even Sarah seemed to flinch, her gaze shifting from the wall to the source of the noise. The air grew thick with a collective, silent dread.
A rectangle of harsh, yellow light sliced through the dim orange gloom of the holding area. A massive silhouette filled the doorway. Knuckles.
He wasn't shouting. He wasn't banging his stick. He was just… working. With a grunt of effort, he dragged something heavy through the doorway behind him.
It was Chloe.
She was a dead weight in his grasp. He had her hooked under the armpits, her head lolling back, her arms dangling limply at her sides. Her strawberry-blonde hair was a matted, tangled mess, plastered to her skull with sweat and tears. Her face, visible in the harsh light, was pale and slack, her eyes closed. She was unconscious, but the faint, shallow rise and fall of her chest showed she was still alive.
Her body was a testament to the night's ordeal. Her clothes were twisted and soaked through. Her bare feet dragged behind her on the gritty concrete, the soles glowing an angry, raw red, glistening with a fresh coat of oil.
Knuckles dragged her down the central walkway, his heavy boots scuffing on the floor, the sound echoing off the cinderblock walls. He stopped in front of Chloe’s empty cell. With a jangling of keys, he unlocked the heavy padlock and slid the mesh door open with a loud CLANG.
He didn’t carry her in. He didn't lay her down.
With a final, indifferent grunt, he heaved her inside. Chloe’s limp body landed on the thin mattress with a soft, pathetic thump. One of her arms slid off the cot, her hand coming to rest on the filthy floor.
Knuckles didn't even look at her. He slammed the cell door shut, the metal vibrating from the force, and snapped the padlock into place. He gave it a single, perfunctory rattle to ensure it was locked.
Then, without a word to any of them, he turned and lumbered back toward the door, his form disappearing back into the yellow light.
The heavy steel door screeched shut, plunging the cellblock back into its dim, familiar twilight.
The silence that followed was heavier than before. It was a silence filled with the image of Chloe’s limp form, a preview of coming attractions. For Camila, it was a promise. She looked from Chloe’s still body to her own feet, then across the darkness to Elena. But Elena was already facing the wall, a silent statue in her cage, leaving Camila utterly alone with the dawning, suffocating certainty of what waited for her when the lights came up on The Giggle Room.
Next chapter (3) - Clement
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