After finishing her yoga routine, she showered off, got a massage from the family massage therapist (who basically lived in a guest room of the mansion), and ate dinner. Soon after, Michelle led Daisy down into the basement, confirming that, whatever this was, it was in the house.
But her intrigue spiked especially high when Michelle went over to one of the many large bookshelves down in the northwest corner of the basement, and started pulling out books, seemingly at random, each one being pulled out about halfway before she stopped.
She did it to seven different books, and Daisy was about to ask if she couldn't find what she was looking for, but as soon as the seventh book had been partially removed, a large section of the shelf began to slowly retract down into the floor, with barely so much as a whisper of sound. Daisy's jaw fell open as a secret passageway was revealed.
"You've got to be kidding me," Daisy said after a few seconds to let the surprise pass through her. "Really?" It was so damned corny, straight out of a cartoon or comic book, had her mother just told her about it, she would have laughed it off. So, as usual, the middle-aged matriarch was correct. This
was
something best experienced first hand. "Why—"
"You'll see," Michelle said, starting to sound a little playful and sly now, reaching down into the descending passageway and flicking a switch on the wall to illuminate a downward staircase. She started down the steps, Daisy standing there behind her, a little hesitant. Wild fantasies ran through her head for a moment, like wondering if her parents were members of some cult, and they were going to sacrifice her to some evil God in a ritual, but just as quickly as those concerns showed up, they disappeared. So too did the thought that her mother was actually a superhero and she was about to reveal her secret lair to her. Far more likely, there was some priceless family heirloom or rare artifact, kept hidden in a vault even more secret and secure than the main vault, that she was finally ready to show her. So, she quickly scurried down the steps after her mother.
"I expect that you'll have the respect and common sense to not tell anyone about this place," Michelle said, not sounding very stern or harsh, as if she knew her daughter's compliance in this matter to be a given. "Not your friends, boyfriends, uncles, aunts, anyone. Under any circumstance."
"Y-yeah," Daisy said, starting to play with a lock of her hair, twirling it around her right index finger. She was looking around the staircase, surprised by how well-maintained and seemingly well-used it was. You'd expect a secret passageway like this to be dark, damp, creaky and eerie, or at least be covered in dust and cobwebs, but it was almost as if these steps were used routinely.
"And, what's down here is not yours, nor is it your right to use it whenever you'd like," Michelle continued, coming to the bottom of the steps, where a steel door that looked like it belonged on a submarine was the only thing waiting for them. "This is a privilege, and I expect you'll treat it with the required respect."
Michelle started punching in a long code of numbers on a keypad in the center of the steel door, Daisy not even bothering trying to spy on her button presses or memorize the passcode. With a pneumatic hiss, the door popped open and slid upward. Daisy eagerly looked over her mother's shoulder, half-expecting the Crown Jewels or a row of authentic Van Goghs to be waiting inside.
Reality was far less impressive. Another room, dull and plain, grey walls all around, two steel doors on the left wall and two on the right, a fifth one on the far wall, each one almost identical to the one they had just passed through. Again, she was surprised by how clean and neat the room looked, as she would have assumed visitors down here were rare, but otherwise nothing in particular caught her attention.
"What is this, a...bomb shelter?" Daisy asked, watching her mother go over to the closest left-side door. A glance down surprised her even further, as the floor was covered in a lush carpet. If there was ever a room in human history that demanded the presence of a cold, hard, bland, concrete floor, it was most certainly a room at the end of a secret hidden passage in the basement. And yet...
"I suppose it could serve as one in a pinch," Michelle admitted, sounding like she enjoyed her daughter's confusion. To the left of the door she was in front of, there was a covered panel, and her left hand was now pulling the panel open to reveal a series of knobs and switches. She flicked a couple of the switches as her right hand reached over to the other side of the door, grabbing a palm-sized device attached to the wall by a cord off of a hook. Michelle cleared her throat and put it up to her mouth. "Assume the position," she said.
"Whoa whoa whoa," Daisy said, finally going into the room and up behind her mother. "
What
is going on here?! I-If this is some kind of...surprise party, then telling everyone to get into position when I'm standing right here kind of defeats the purpose." She was vaguely aware of the door behind her swinging shut and closing, which instinctively spiked her concern, but she quickly suppressed it.
Michelle's focus, however, was on a clock on the wall right above the main entrance door down into the bunker, a digital timekeeper with large red numbers, keeping time to the second. After waiting what seemed to be about fifteen seconds, she grabbed a tiny knob in the upper center of the door that Daisy hadn't noticed before and pushed it to the right, sliding a circular disc away that was covering up a glass window. Michelle put her face up to the view portal for a second, reaching over towards the panel to her left and flipping another switch.
Daisy, now practically dying of curiosity, craned her head up to peer through the little sliver of window she could. She couldn't help but give a rather sharp yelp of surprise at what she saw.
"Ow!" Michelle hissed, wincing and reaching up towards her right ear. "Sweetie!"
"I...I...what the...mom!" Daisy stammered. "What the hell is this?!"
---
Part Four: The Dark Side of the Mom [04TDSOTM]
Through the window, Daisy had been able to see a naked man, restrained in a set of pillory stocks that forced him into a kneeling position close to the ground. The remaining details of the scene had been lost on her, but that had been more than enough to freak her out.
Michelle started to tap a passcode into the keypad on the door. "Didn't you ever wonder what your mother liked to do to take the edge off in her free time?" she asked.
"Uh...not really?" Daisy replied, still utterly confused and contemplating if she should be bolting out of here. She gave her head a quick shake. "Uh, stop being so cryptic! Mom, who the hell is that?!" she pointed towards the door.
"My favorite toy," Michelle answered simply, as if that was supposed to answer all of her daughter's questions. With that, the door started to swing open, another powerful hiss and release of air accompanying the heavy steel moving.
Immediately, Daisy heard a terrified shriek from inside the room, followed by what sounded like whimpers. It seemed like a single second couldn't go by without something else freaking her out and confusing the everloving crap out of her. She just stood there, mouth agape, watching blankly as her mother sauntered forward into the room, towards the tightly imprisoned man.
"Special surprise, baby," she said, in a playful, maybe even sexual, tone that sounded very weird to Daisy, coming out of her mother's mouth. "I know you haven't seen that many different people lately, so I brought someone new for you to meet!" She crouched down over his nude form, still using that bizarre, overly sweet and honeyed tone.
Daisy looked mildly horrified, now seriously contemplating if her mother had gone insane. Her first, and at this point her most optimistic, guess was that her mother had decided it would be a good idea to invite her daughter to an extreme BDSM session with a guy she was cheating on her husband with. And yet, as she looked down at the naked, kneeling man, his wide eyes, shivering body, and contorted expression of abject terror convinced her that his fear and distress was real. Which was no small task, as the thought of anyone ever being scared of her mother was difficult for Daisy to imagine.
