Nesting Dolls
Chapter 1 – The Resister
Chloe couldn’t tell if she was shaking from nerves or shame. She was an MBA from Austin, working entry-level at one of the top futures trading firms in the country. Why was she getting into an elevator to moonlight at a bar? And not just any bar, but a nightclub that might as well be a strip joint, from the way her male co-workers hooted and hollered about it.
But she was getting into the elevator, and it was all Shelby’s fault. “Trust me,” Shelby had said around the seventy-eighth time Chloe had bitched about barely making 30K. “It’s how all the up-and-comers get noticed, and I don’t just mean ’cause of your legs! I started on the Rooftop a year ago, and look where I am now. Entry level doesn’t pay the rent, and everyone knows it. It’s not like I cross paths with anyone from the office, but they know I’m there. It’s got a... mystique. It’s a place to be seen. And hey, they pay well and barely make you work.“
The prospect of being paid to network was tempting, but something still seemed off. If nothing else, she knew the guys at her office were cruder than the oil futures they bought and sold, and just as liable to gush forth in sudden and embarrassing fashion. Doing this at a place where they gathered would likely end up with pictures of her in revealing outfits splashed over the Internet and pasted on the cubicle walls.
Then again, Shelby was an assistant manager, despite Chloe occasionally having to remind her of the basics of trading. Not even double-Ds excused that kind of incompetence, but Shelby carried herself well and made good money—there was no way she could afford her fine clothes and stylish jewelry even on a manager’s salary. She was no secretary bought from a brothel to look good in a barely respectable skirtsuit, no victim from a horror movie like the giggling blonde in HR.
The memory of the secretaries and their inevitable gaffes lightened Chloe’s mood enough that she could approach the security guard and announce, “Chloe St. John, appointment at the Rooftop.”
The guard gave her a onceover and grunted something that might have been approval or might have been appreciation. She had heard both in her twenty-six years. Long legs and a well-cut ass had done that for her. Bright blonde hair and classical features had helped, too. Not that he could see too much of her legs and ass; a Saturday interview meant that she could dress more casually, which meant that her designer jeans showed off her assets without being too vulgar about it.
She strode into the elevator, trying not to roll her hips too much, and waited as the elevator crawled its way to the 50th floor. The door opened right into the entranceway of the currently vacant club, and a black-haired woman who looked like Shelby was waiting for her—but Shelby would never wear the pink, diamond-studded dress that barely came down to her ass, nor the pink heels that made her look closer to 6-2 than 5-11, and Shelby’s smile was sharp, not as empty as the secretaries’.
“Glad you decided to come. You will get noticed here,” Shelby said in clipped phrases that gave Chloe the strong impression that Shelby’s brain was elsewhere—perhaps stored in a jar in the cellar, or in one of the bottles behind the bar.
“Yeah, Shel, dressed like that, I’m sure everyone notices you for all the... right... reasons. I’m not real big on sleeping my way to the top, so let’s just forget this and I won’t say anything,” Chloe said, masking her nerves with bravado, even as she eyed the elevator light to see how long it would take to get back to the top.
Shelby looked down at her dress as if she wasn’t aware that she had been wearing it. “Oh. Saturday night we dress to impress. We’re not always this forward,” she said, strutting towards the bar and teetering with every step.
Chloe shook her head and tried not to laugh as she followed. Just grin and bear it, St. John. Go along until you can get out, then pretend this never happened and be grateful you can live within your means.
Four other girls were waiting at the bar, all in the same pink dress that Shelby was barely wearing. One of them tilted her head, and Chloe could see dark roots under her platinum hair; on the other hand, the girl’s figure was spectacular, better than Chloe’s. “Brown and Stephenson?” the girl asked.
“Yeah, same as Shelby,” Chloe said, trying not to choke on the excess perfume. It wasn’t like the empty-eyed woman would have ever heard of them, anyway. Her fingernails seemed to be her singular passion.
“Good company. Shelby is a good girl there. Chloe or Miriam? Please be Chloe. So much more potential,” the woman continued in the same mindlessly clipped tones as Shelby, never taking her eyes off her fingernails as she filed them endlessly.
“Girl? Oh, come on, Shelby, you’re going to let them talk about you like that? And why would you talk about work in front of some... some...?” Chloe trailed of spluttering, not sure if there was a polite word for the perfume-drenched bleach-blonde in front of her.
The woman saved her from finding the word. “Christina, Meyer, Douglas and Shaw. Li works for Barr and McLendon, and Sofia is from Dawson, Stewart, and Andrews,” she said coolly. “Do sit down, will you?”
Chloe blinked a few times. Barr and McLendon did not employ bimbos; it took an Ivy League mind just to be able to read their corporate accounting statements, and top marks in the class to be able to understand them. Dawson, Stewart, and Andrews required a law degree just to type their legal correspondence. Meyer, Douglas, and Shaw juggled international accounts on all six continents and had to do advanced math just to complete all the currency conversions. These were not—could not—be stupid people. So maybe it was their way of unwinding, although Chloe wondered if the sheer amount of perfume they were wearing could be considered a form of glue-sniffing high.
“Nice to know other top companies in the world also pay shit to their entry-level employees,” Chloe said with a smile of false camaraderie. She knew that if she had seen it on her face she would have been afraid for her mind, but she knew that she was just trying to play along.
Li’s head shot up, her jet-black bangs flapping with the motion, and she looked ready to tell Chloe off. Christina wagged a finger at her, and she relented. Christina then turned to Chloe and said, “You’ll see very soon that this job drives our success in our other jobs.”
“And our boss will put your mind at ease,” Sofia added, leaning towards Chloe so that more of her substantial cleavage showed. Her teeth shone very white against her brown skin as her vapid smile stretched wide across her made-up face.
“I hope she does. At least you guys seem to be enjoying yourselves,” Chloe said, still wearing the fake smile and mentally resolving not to drink anything they offered her.
“Oh, trust us, we do. This job lets us relax while still getting ahead. That’s what’s holding you back, Chloe,” Shelby said with an empty smile.
“No, what’s holding me back is being straight out of grad school in a shit economy,” Chloe bit back. To her surprise, the other girls applauded.
“And being a woman in a man’s world,” Christina added, nodding to Shelby.
Sofia and Li stared at Chloe with the type of assessing gaze that Chloe was more used to seeing from drunk guys at bars. Given what she was interviewing for, it made sense, but there was still no way in hell she was taking this job, no matter what Shelby said about it advancing her career.
“She will do, Shelby,” Sofia said, and there was something alive for a moment in her amber eyes, something excited and predatory in the movement of her curvaceous barmaid body, before it faded back into giddy excitement.
Christina made an unmistakable “up” gesture at Chloe, and Chloe relinquished the barstool she had been sitting on, though not without some reservations. “I’m still not sure about this, maybe you’re moving a little fast,” she said as she felt herself being measured in unexpectedly intimate ways.
“Don’t worry, you’ll have a sit-down with the boss first. It’ll be her decision,” Christina said.
Won’t it be my decision? Chloe wondered, but she stayed quiet and let the other girls chit-chat amongst themselves. The more of their twittering she heard, the more she felt that there was something sinister about the place—but nothing she could put her finger on, nothing concrete enough to be worth the effort of turning and running away. The sight of four professionals from top-notch firms cavorting around like the dumbest bimbos from the trashiest reality shows amused her, so she stood and listened to their babbling.
It felt like a long time, but only ten minutes or so had passed when an older woman in a black blouse and long black skirt came out of the office. “Upstairs,” she commanded, and the four women in pink dresses filed up the stairs in a neat row. Too neat. Like little pink robots. I should...
But her legs felt like overcooked pasta, and it took everything she had just to stay upright. Turning around would have meant falling over and making herself even more vulnerable.. Chloe bit the inside of her lip and flexed her toes to bolster her strength.
“You are Chloe St. John?” the older woman growled, an Eastern European accent of some kind making her words seem deeper and more menacing. In the dim light of the bar, her pinned-back hair looked brown, but Chloe could spot the white strands underneath the dye. Her features were sharp, her eyes deep-set. She looked like she had little patience for any kind of nonsense.
“Yeah, and I don’t know what kind of place this is, but it’s not for me. Find some other girl with a secret desire to be a bimbo,” Chloe said, putting all the spirit into her words that she couldn’t manage to put into her limbs. She stood rooted to the spot, trying to find the strength to lift one foot and turn around.
One corner of the woman’s mouth lifted in something that wasn’t quite a smile. She lifted her right hand and ran two fingers down the back of Chloe’s neck. Chloe shivered, but she still couldn’t move, only watch in dazed confusion as the woman sniffed her fingers and gave a full-fledged, wolfish grin. “Perfume is only to prevent you fleeing in confusion. I own the Rooftop. My girls obey me. When they obey, they perform better in the outside world. You will work well for me. You defy me. That shows you have a brain. Prevents wastage. Without an intelligent mind, there is nothing worth controlling,” she said.
The words were blunt, and Chloe should have been terrified, but all she could come up with was, “You drugged me? You trying to beat my brain into mush?”
“Is Normandy poppy perfume. Only makes muscles tired and lazy. Like Smile Girl perfume, but this is the pure thing from France. You are in the hands of an expert. I have done this work since Soviet times, but not with Soviet violence. Why use violence to do what trust is so much better at? And you will give me your trust,” the woman explained. From the large black bag at her shoulder, she removed a remote control and hit one of the large buttons.
Every light in the room went out, including the elevator lights. If Chloe had been able to lift her arm, she wouldn’t have been able to see her hand in front of her face. The darkness was so complete that she was sure that button had done more than just turn off the lights—blackout curtains or shutters had to have come down as well, to lock out any light from the outside.
Then Chloe was forced to blink as a giant multi-colored light descended from the ceiling and activated in a blaze of rainbow glory. “Very cute. Very, very cute,” she said, but she could feel herself being pulled into the light as it shone directly into her brain. She tried to close her eyes and block it out, but that only made her dizzier, only made her more aware of how helpless she was, only made her need the colors more.
She could hear the older woman, but the words were only directions. She didn’t need to understand her, just obey and look into the core of the colors in the center of the light. Horror movie buff that she was, she tried to comprehend the induction, but the colors dazzled her and dazed her. She had to look deeper to find the answer. She was drawn to the light.
Just for a moment, for a flash of insight, she thought she understood. The answers would be revealed if she gave herself to the light, thought only of the light, kept nothing but the light in her mind. And answers were the most important thing...
The lights reflected in her open, empty blue eyes like sunlight on a calm lake. Her jaw was slack, her arms limp at her sides, her body still and stiff like a sentinel’s. The older woman examined her and gave the wolfish smile again. “I only hypnotize to find true answers. So now you will give me the answers I seek, and perhaps that will be enough for me to give you the answers that you seek. What are your age and birthdate?”
“26, born April 29th, 1987.”
“Weight?”
“142 pounds,” Chloe recited, and some tiny part of her mind whispered to her, You just told her your real weight, you are entranced.
“Height?”
“Five-six, but I always say I’m five-eight.”
“Good, Chloe,” the woman purred, and the lights began flashing again, but this time more slowly, seducing Chloe into their embrace. She knew she was hypnotized, and she knew she was being led deeper, but she wanted to be led deeper, and she gave herself up to the slow strobing of the light until its steady pulse was in her heartbeat and beginning to throb between her legs.
“Boyfriend?” the woman asked.
“None. I work twelve hours a day. I have no time for romance.”
“Before?”
“Three.”
“Sex?”
“With all of them. Four one-night stands in college. One was a girl.”
“Breasts?”
“32C.”
“Real?”
“Yes. I wouldn’t get a boob job if I could afford one anyway.”
The woman cackled and shook Chloe slightly, just enough to inject a little bit of awareness into her. “Chloe, I like you. You are hired. My name is Inga Balodis. You will succeed as long as you follow my direction,” she said.
Chloe could feel that her brain had been penetrated—or maybe hacked was a better word; she couldn’t shake the feeling that a flash drive had been inserted into her forehead. But she was still dizzy and disoriented from the attack, and could only nod weakly at Inga. So far it seemed that it would do her no harm to keep obeying, and she was relieved at that.
“Follow me for training,” Inga said, and Chloe trailed along behind her like a puppy until they came to a dark doorway.
“What... what are you doing to me?” Chloe managed to muster, hearing how quiet and defeated her words sounded.
“I am hiring you. You will work for me,” Inga said forcefully.
Something in Inga’s tone shut down parts of Chloe’s brain. “I will work for you,” she droned back, her legs moving forward like a marionette’s as Inga walked her into the booth and shut the door.
Surrounded in absolute blackness and silence, Chloe tried to loosen whatever bonds had been put on her before it was too late, but her brain hurt so much that she couldn’t think anymore, and that led her to remember the way the lights drew her into themselves to take her deeper and deeper, where the answers were. Closing her eyes only made them brighter, even though she knew they weren’t real—but they were real, they were in her mind, there was nothing there, and she—
The darkness consumed her, and she slumped forward into the well-padded wall, eyes rolled up in her head, out cold and helpless. Inga heard the faint thud and quickly opened the door to guide Chloe down to the floor. Years of her process had perfected her ability to drag girls who were larger than her to one of the lounge chairs that sat in the hall, despite her small frame. “Sensory overload. Natural reaction is to shut down and process it. You will wake up soon,” she whispered in Chloe’s ear. Chloe did not react, and Inga smiled. With hands grown quick from experience, she removed Chloe’s belt and opened her zipper slightly.
With Chloe properly prepared, Inga reached into her bag of tricks and took out a pager. Moments later, the other four girls appeared as if conjured from thin air. “Move her to the storeroom,” Inga commanded, and they carried Chloe’s chair to a storeroom with a bank of televisions.
“Still tense! She gonna be angry bear when she wake up,” Li giggled in her exaggerated broken English as she tried and failed to lift Chloe’s arm.
“Well, that’s nothing a tall pink lemonade can’t fix,” Shelby said as if she were remembering the details of her own hire.
“And a little cold steel in molten lava cures everything else,” Sofia agreed, putting a sparkling silver vibrator on the polished platter next to the tall glass of pink liquid.
“Silence! She hears you!” Inga snapped. She might as well have cut their vocal cords, the way they immediately stopped speaking. Christina had to be poked so she didn’t keep holding her breath as they walked out and got ready for their shift.
Chloe moaned and tried to move her head, but she was still too dizzy to open her eyes. Inga smiled at her. “You know what is happening. You are smart woman. I like that. You will rest your brain, then watch a shift. You will be finished when your co-workers are finished,” she said as she slid large headphones over Chloe’s ears. They looked like something from an airport, and Chloe went limp as soon as they were in place, completely covering her ears, with a little light on the left side indicating that noise-canceling could be turned on.
“Finest trance music. DJs from Munich, Belgrade, and Prague. Same music I use inside, so will be like you are at party,” Inga explained, though she suspected Chloe was far too gone to hear. She reached out and turned on the noise cancellation, then placed her fingers on Chloe’s neck and waited for Chloe’s pulse to slow to match the beat of the music. She looked at her watch. 2PM.
“Perfect,” she purred, and she left the room, locking Chloe inside.