Avenging Minerva by Orpha Creed Chapter 4
"You know the drill Orpha!" Cary yelled through the door from the lounge. "Either hang around and be nice or Garth will eat your liver!" she continued sarcastically as the other women behind her in the lounge laughed Mockingly.
Orpha's arms and wrists were aching and numb when she heard the door close and lock and the noise and laughter ended abruptly. "Alone at last!" she said aloud in relief as Garth glanced up at her adoringly while wagging his tail in a submissive manner.
Orpha worked her thumbs against the restraints as she hung. Both thumbs eventually slipped out of their sockets allowing her hands to slip through the restraints and she dropped to the floor, crouching like a cat while surveying the large dark warehouse space. Garth crawled over toward Orpha with his tail between his legs, whimpering submissively. Orpha stood and walked toward the lounge door as Garth followed close behind. She felt her way along in the dark until she found the kitchen next to the lounge. She opened the large refrigerator door, opened a can of beer and rummaged through the stored food, selecting mostly the higher protein items. She began stuffing herself with cold lunchmeat, occasionally tossing some to Garth who bolted it down with one gulp. She found a jar of peanut butter in a cabinet. She scooped out its contents with her fingers and ate most of it, holding her hand down to Garth who obligingly licked her hand clean. She found her way into the lounge. A dim red light over the exit door illuminated her way over to where she had found the flashlight the night before.
"Lets go Garth, we have work to do!" she ordered in a serious tone as she headed back into the warehouse.
The signs that hid the door to the lower level were made of thin metal and plastic making them easy to slide to one side. There was a padlock on the door but Orpha remembered seeing one of the women place a key near the top of the doorframe. She slid her fingers along the surfaces until she touched the key. Unlocking the door, she entered and walked down a steep ramp leading down into the darkness as Garth pressed close against her legs. The damp chill on Orpha's naked body felt miserable but she was determined to explore the secrets that lay hidden below the building. She entered a room where several pieces of old rusty equipment were stacked, The walls were of hand cut stone and appeared to be old but one wall was of fairly new cinderblock. She noticed that the tire marks from the forklift and the footprints all went toward the cinderblock wall and disappeared. Pushing what appeared to be a loose block, the wall began to rotate into a large area. Unlike the previous room, the air was cool and dry, obviously from a large capacity dehumidifier running at one end of the room. There were rows of boxes stacked up to the ceiling containing new computers, stereos, TVs and other items. At the back of the room was the pallet load of white powder in small plastic bags, shrink-wrapped to the pallet. The plastic was tough and she couldn't drive her fingernail through, so she bit a small slit with her teeth. Tasting a particle or two, she discovered it was Cocaine.
"Street value in the millions!" she said aloud as Garth responded by cocking his head and gazing affectionately at Orpha.
"Well, what have we here?" she thought to herself as she lifted a loose board on a wooden crate. "Holy shit! AK-47 Assault Rifles," she said in amazement as she counted the 36 crates, each containing three rifles. "I wonder where the hell these are going," she asked herself as a mental picture of a bearded terrorist of Arabic decent flashed through her mind.
Across from the rifles was a stack of wooden boxes under a tarp. Orpha slid the tarp back and read the stencil on the box. "Plastic Explosives!" she read aloud. What in the hell are these bitches up to?"
Orpha continued to explore the very large space. At the rear of the room, she found several large planks placed tightly together covering an opening in the cement floor. Dragging them to one side, she discovered a crude stairway leading down to a very old wooden door with rusted fittings appearing centuries old. Orpha tugged on an old rusty ring and the door creaked loudly on three rusted hinges as it swung open.
Orpha was now two levels below ground as she stepped through the ancient doorway. She directed the flashlight down a long dark corridor. The ceiling was made of very old, crudely fabricated bricks that were laid in such a manner as to form an arch. The arched ceiling extended beyond the capacity of the light and disappeared into a curtain of darkness and mist with a cold, chilling affect. Every ten yards, there were arched doorways to side rooms. The rooms had no floor, but had sandy dirt spread unevenly across the rooms. She shined the beam of her light on some markings in the brick. The very faint inscription read: "San Francisco Brick Co, 1813," and bore a faded logo of the now extinct company.
Orpha walked forward cautiously with Garth nervously pressing against her leg. Up ahead, she heard a slight noise and Garth let out a low menacing growl. A fairly large rat scampered across the corridor from one of the rooms and into a hole in the bricks.
Orpha broke out in chilblains. "Oh shit! Why rats?" She said aloud as she experienced a flashback of being in a rat infested prison in El Salvador when on an assignment during her dark past. "Must be from the early 1800's," she thought to herself as she directed the light down the corridor. "They might have stored root vegetables down here like potatoes and turnips. Could have been part of an old winery from that period too," she continued to speculate to herself as she continued forward, turning abruptly as another rat scampered across behind her.
She directed her light into the first room on the left of the corridor. She was curious about a mound of dirt at one end of the room so she kicked at it with her bare foot which eventually touched something hard about six inches below the surface. Bending down, she cleared away the soft dirt, exposing a skull. Removing more dirt, she determined that she had found the skeletal remains of a woman, probably buried there about fifty or sixty years ago. Above the shallow grave, she saw rusted chains dangling from the ceiling. Faded, colored pictographs and symbols were just barely visible over the entire surface of the arched room. Strange grotesque figures painted in various sexual positions. Some of the figures were of naked women while other figures wore a hooded robe with skull-like faces. At one end of the room was a structure crudely made from brick and cement. The structure stood about four foot high and was about six by four foot in length and width. Old rusted chains were attached to the four corners that were attached to iron wrist and ankle restraints that had rusted almost beyond recognition. Around the edge of the top surface, there was a gutter like formation that led to the gargoyle like carved, stone head with its mouth open and a very long tongue extending downward. Below the open mouth, Orpha saw a large urn adorned with a monstrous head, it's large, gaping mouth open to catch the fluids that would drop from the Gargoyle above. Orpha's eyes gazed intrinsically between the apparent sacrificial alter and the frightening pictures on the walls and ceilings. She envisioned in her mind's eye, the naked women chained to the top of the alter awaiting whatever fate an insane Cult Priestess had on her mind. Orpha stretched out on the alter surface, running her hands and feet under the cold, rusted chains. As she stared up at the frightening figures above the alter on the ceiling, she felt herself start to become wet as she manipulated her vaginal muscles and rotated her hips against the cold surface. She reached down and gently touched herself to heighten the pleasure as she relaxed her bladder, allowing the hot steaming liquid to drain across the top and into the gutter. She stretched her head over the side as the urine began to drip down from the gargoyles open mouth and into the open mouth of the urn below. As Orpha felt herself being drawn ever deeper into the overpowering sensual trance, Garth let out a piercing series of barks directed at Orpha, jarring Orpha's consciousness back to reality and she jumped from the table as though hit with a thousand volts of electricity.
Orpha slowly backed out of the room, horrified at the strange spectacle. Continuing down the corridor, her light focused on a pile of dirt in one of the rooms. The dirt appeared to have been disturbed recently and she began to dig at one end of the oblong pile. Eventually, her fingers pulled up a lock of hair. She continued to remove the dirt and was suddenly overwhelmed by a deep feeling of depression.
"Oh my God, it's Minerva!" she said aloud in a deep, unearthly tone of voice. "You're dead meat Cary and Val, you're dead meat for sure! Get the hell back Garth!" she ordered as the dog sniffed at the corpse. "Get out!" she screamed, pointing at the arched doorway as the dog cowered and backed away.
The air became repugnant as she continued to clear away the dirt from Minerva's body. Orpha evaluated the extent of decomposition, determining that she had been dead for at least four or five days. The flashlight revealed the massive welts across her butt and thighs. Some of the larger welts had even burst open from the repeated impact of the whipping.
"Oh my God, my poor baby!" Orpha responded sadly. "Why, why, why?" She asked aloud as she stood up, looking down at the atrocity that lay before her. "Why would anyone do this to such a kind hearted, free spirited little soul like Minerva," she mourned as she gazed down at the poor little waif, lying there so lonely in her crudely constructed grave.
Orpha turned and gazed at Garth who was crouched in the archway gazing pitifully back at her. The dog's ears jumped straight up as a chilling sound came from the unexplored end of the corridor. Orpha crept over to the door and peered out toward the dark abyss in the same direction that Garth was staring so intently. The sound came again, an unearthly moan that sent chills through Orpha as she frantically searched the dark corridor with the beam of her flashlight. One green eye glowed back at them as they stood petrified. It was the most ugly, largest tomcat that Orpha had ever seen. It was a dark gray in color, exhibiting several large scars, had one ear missing and a grotesque empty eye socket that caused one side of it's head to appear withered and grotesque. It glared intently at Garth with its one large green eye, illuminated by Orpha's flashlight. Garth was now crouched and ready to attack. Confused by this unearthly sight, the dog whined and curled around behind Orpha's legs, peering around them at the cat who was slowly advancing while hissing and moaning with a deep reverberating sound.
"You're a big help you silly wuss!" Orpha said mockingly as she looked down at Garth.
Orpha picked up a loose brick and hurled it in the direction of the cat causing a distraction as it clattered against the wall of the corridor. Garth let out a string of barks in succession as it lunged forward toward the cat. Surprised, the cat shot away into the darkness.
"There must be another way in and out of here," Orpha thought to herself as she began to follow the cat's footprints down the corridor. The prints led her into a room where the ceiling had caved in, leaving a pile of bricks, cement and other debris. Slowly working her way around the pile, she felt a slight draft coming from an opening that led upward. Carefully working her way through, she came up into the rubble of an old building that had burned and collapsed within itself. Through the rubble, she recognized the lights from the entrance to the old LeFranz Hotel on the opposite side of the street. An old derelict hotel used now only by transients and prostitutes.
Orpha climbed back down the opening and headed back toward the old produce warehouse as Garth followed along behind. She pulled the ancient door closed behind her and made her way up to the main door, closing it and pulling the signs back into place. Entering the lounge, she opened a can of beer from the refrigerator behind the bar. The clock on the wall said 2:45 AM.
Ramona arrived at 3:07AM, let herself in and went immediately to where she knew Orpha would be hanging by her wrists. "What in the world? How in the heck did she get loose from the chains?" she asked aloud as she looked up at the wrist cuffs in total disbelief.
"I have ways dear," Orpha replied, peering through the doorway from the lounge. "What time do you expect Cary and Val?"
"I heard Val say that she would be in about 5:30 AM and she had invited the others to watch her whip you to death. Cary usually comes in around 6:00 AM but it might be earlier since the other girls want to be here when they whip you to shreds."
Orpha picked up the phone and dialed in the restricted number of Jane Daniel's home phone. She covered everything that she had found in the secret cellars below the warehouse. The information about the assault rifles and the plastic explosives sent Jane into ecstasy as she took notes.
When Orpha was finished, she paused for a moment. "Jane, I want you to promise that you'll make arrangements to have Minerva's body transported to a funeral home in Bakersfield. It would mean a lot to me if you could keep Minerva's name out of the report. She wasn't involved in any of the criminal activities and I would owe you a big one if you could keep her name clean," Orpha requested in a polite but firm tone.
"Orpha, this falls under the FBI jurisdiction more than the agency, but for providing one of the Senior FBI agents with a windfall like this which I'm just about to do, I think I can arrange it." Jane responded with a sincere tone of voice. "While I have you on the phone Orpha and being an expert on cults, How do you perceive what you found in the old brick sub-cellar?"
"It probably was started in about the 1940's and the cult's `Alpha Female' or her family probably owned the warehouse, built over the old brick cellar which probably came into existence in about 1813. I'd like to research the history on it myself if it's OK with you and the Bureau. There might just be a story that would support a best seller."
As Orpha hung up the phone, she looked toward Ramona. "Nobody will be whipping me or anyone else to shreds ever again around this evil place!" Orpha announced in her deep intense tone of voice. "In fact my dear, Cary and Val won't be doing much of anything when I get through with them!" Orpha continued as she began to drag the wooden sawhorse across the floor and place it directly under the hanging wrist restraints.
Orpha leaped gracefully like a cat, up and on the crossbeam of the sawhorse, balancing herself as she slipped her hands back through the restraints. "Ramona, be a dear and drag this damned thing over to the side where it was before would you?"
Ramona did what she was told as Orpha hung suspended by her wrists.
"Now here's what I want you to do dear," Orpha ordered. "Take Garth and get out of here now. I don't want you anywhere in the vicinity when the shit hits the fan.
Orpha continued to instruct Ramona to go the LA Airport, get her car out of long term parking after explaining where the keys were hidden under the body frame and return to the area, remaining out of sight of the front entrance. She also told her that there was money in her wallet, locked in the trunk of the MG.
"Now listen very carefully dear, I want you to park the MG in front of the LeFranz Hotel at exactly 5:45AM this morning, in other words, about two hours & 45 minutes from now. Do you have enough money to take a cab to the LA Airport?"
"Uh, yes!" Ramona responded.
"Ok then, get the hell out of here and take Garth with you on a leash," Orpha ordered. "Oh by the way Ramona, I'm putting my trust in you girl." Orpha hesitated and stared intently into Ramona's eyes. "If you just take off and leave me holding the bag, I'll find you," Orpha said softly but with a deep threatening undertone.
"Orpha, I promise you that I'll be there. You have no call to take that tone with me. I've been your friend through all of this and you know it!"
Orpha's intense stare softened to a warm, kind gaze from her pale blue eyes and she smiled affectionately at Ramona, continuing to hang, suspended by her wrists from the chains above.
Ramona gently wrapped her arms around Orpha's long, sinuous, muscular legs and placed her cheek lovingly against the soft skin of her inner thigh. Then she attached a leash to Garth and they both disappeared through the door leading to the rear loading dock.
Continued in Chapter 4 Warm regards, Orpha Creed