Balustrade by Mark Henry

snickering lightly. Hilary pivoted as she passed and poked the woman between her tits.
    “ Back off. I don't want to see you again.”
    Glynnis stared at her with that same hangdog expression, unimpressed.
    Beneath them the courtyard began to flood with people, so many robes you’d think they’d pulled a fire drill, if you didn’t know better or had morals. They filed in and circled the black cage in the center of the floor. Just looking at it brought back the stitch in the pit of her stomach. Whatever was down there wasn’t right. The staircase led to something dark, somewhere dark—to call it a basement might have been an over-simplification. 
    The people in the crowd seemed to fall into one of three groups, the overly sincere about mending fractured relationships (lingering eye contact, firmly-threaded hand-holding), the obviously horny (boners and nipple pops were prevalent), and the suspicious and more than slightly terrified (her scoffing neighbor). Jack's stunt in the steam room had Hilary teeter tottering between those last two, though suspicious was a much more comfortable box to check.
    Hilary slipped in next to the frightened woman she'd seen earlier. Her name was Claire and she had the jittery eyes and frayed nerves of a war vet, if that war involved repeated viewings of Cracked on cable television—you know the show, the one where a seemingly normal woman suddenly cracks up and kills her cheating no good husband with an ax, corkscrew or broken wine glass shard.
    “ There's something not right about this place,” she said in a conspiratorial whisper.
    Hilary blanched. “You think? What was your first clue?”
    Claire's eyes grew wild. “You didn't see the religious fanatics on the way here? Creepy.”
    “ Yes, obviously. They were everywhere. I was being facetious.”
    Claire’s hand fluttered to her chest, oddly offended considering the jutting boomerang of an erection her husband sported. “Well, I don't see how this is an appropriate time for that.”
    “ I apologize. There's just so much wrong with Balustrade, it seemed a comic understatement. I see now that you weren't...funny.”
    Claire glowered at her and Hilary felt as though she may have lost an ally...before even gaining one. It was par for the course in terms of her relationships with women, it seemed. The workplace wasn’t much different, particularly among the management.
    “ Well, you can joke, but I've heard some things that would knock that grin off your face.”
    “ Oh yeah? Like what?”
    “ I heard our suggestive arguing with that filthy Montenegrin, that's what.” Her words dropped to a whisper as a surrogate—red sash loosely knotted and indicating her more…active role—sauntered by with a grin and a tray of iced tea of some sort. Claire snatched a glass while the cute young woman smirked and selected a beverage from the opposite side of the tray for Hilary.
    “ This one’s the best,” she winked, her pixie cut bowing away from her flexing cheek.
    Hilary accepted and gave the drink a sip. Iced chai. Her favorite. They’d done their homework. Another swished by handing them each a napkin and offering them a selection of pastry. Hilary took a chocolate croissant, for obvious reasons (all of them being…chocolate). As she munched at the tender crust and rich filling, she pondered Claire’s bias against their facilitator.
    Montenegrin?
    She'd thought Ludovic looked like he could have been Eastern European, but Claire was terribly precise in her isolating his heritage down to the country. It seemed a strangely specific prejudice. Hilary decided to take the bait. She took a swig off her iced chai, letting the tea soothe her nerves and leaned in to Claire. “What were they arguing about?”
    “ The suggestive, a guy named Chad I think or Craig, something starting with a 'C' anyway was complaining about his “accommodations.” Now, I assumed he was talking about his bunk on the staff floor, but then he said something