Chapter 5
That evening Roger rang her bell and came in. "I see you're up and around," he said.
It was pretty obvious. Suzanne was sitting on her sofa, reading.
"Yes. I've been walking a little."
"Still hurt?"
"Not as much as before."
Roger glanced at her book and raised an eyebrow. "That's pretty heavy reading for a girl who's just had your experience."
She closed de Sade and laid the book on her lap. "Mr. Craft gave it to me yesterday."
A frown flitted over the doctor's features. "I see. What do you think of it?"
"I've not read far. But it seems very strange. Do people really act like that?"
Roger laughed and sat on the couch beside Suzanne. He was wearing a smartly tailored suit, rumpled with his day's work, and looked very much the man of medicine. But his laugh turned him into a boy.
"Suzanne, where sex is concerned, people act in ways that boggle the imagination." He reached across and lifted the volume off her lap. "This man was branded a pervert in his time. He practiced the infliction of pain to create sexual arousal. We're still considering this as perverse. But the more enlightened among us are beginning to see that there is no such thing as a perversion; that in sex the end justifies the means. Whatever turns you on, as the kids say, is good."
Suzanne shook her head. "How can pain and humiliation gratify sexual desires?"
"They can't. But they can make it possible for a person to release his pent-up fears and fantasies enough to allow him to experience climax."
Suzanne shook her head again, violently. "If that's what it takes, then I'm never going to have anything to do with sex!"
Roger shook his head. "That would be very sad, Suzanne. You'd miss the greatest pleasure this life can bestow."
"Was last night an example of the world's greatest pleasure?" she asked bitterly.
"Well, for some it could have been."
"Then you can count me out!"
Roger studied the girl, a thoughtful look on his face. "Tell me about your childhood, Suzanne. Was there anything... sexual in it?"
"No!"
"You were never approached by your father, or an older brother?"
"My family was dead or gone by the time I was sixteen. My father long before that. I never had any brothers."
"Then who? I know there was some man who turned your life. I can tell by your reactions."
Suzanne flushed, partly in anger, partly in shame. She kept silent for a while, then, haltingly, spoke of her uncle... of his eyes on her for all the years she'd been developing her body... of the crude hints, the sly touches and gropes. Then she told of the night when Tom Corville had come drunkenly to her bed, clawing at her body, mouthing love words which were obscenities from him. And in the end, she cried again, her face buried in her hands.
Roger put an arm around her shoulders and offered her his handkerchief to honk into. He was quiet until her sobs subsided. Then he spoke. "I think," he said quietly, "that you need to stay here for a few weeks. Not look for a job just yet."
"I-I can't do that. I have no money."
"I'll take care of that. I'll see that you have food and such, and money to live on until you do get a job and draw a check."
"I c-couldn't accept money f-f-from you."
"Sure you can. I've got more than I need, anyway. And you can pay me back as you're able. I want you to stay here and let me treat you. I will try to get you into some sort of balance so that you can cope with this city. Yes, I'll treat you."
His voice had become abstracted. He was almost crooning. The same, unidentifiable quality that had given Suzanne the horrors before was about him now. She felt like screaming, "No! No!" But she could not. There was something compelling about him, and about the whole situation. But the thought of another excursion into the sinister streets of this cold city was more than she could face.
"A-all right, Doctor," she heard her voice saying. "I'll do as y-you say."
"Fine!" Roger said heartily. "That's a wise decision." He stood, looking at his watch.
"You just sit tight and I'll go change. Then well go shopping. We'll get groceries and housethings and have a little supper here in the apartment. Okay?"
"Yes. That sounds g-good."
Roger changed in a few minutes and was back with a list. "See if this will do?"
Suzanne read it over. He had thought of most everything. "It's all right."
They shopped at an all-night supermarket, Roger talking away and making jokes. Suzanne tried to present a normal front, but she was quaking inside. Every man in the store looked to her fear-blurred vision like a potential rapist. She couldn't let herself get more than a few feet away from Roger.
They brought home the purchases and made supper. For a little while Suzanne was almost happy, forgetting her past terror in the homely little rituals of stove and plate and sink. But at odd moments it would all creep back in and she would go white, her hands pausing in their motion to tremble and twitch.
Finally, Roger said to forget the dishes. She'd had enough for one day. "And I think I'll begin treatment now," he added.
He went to the living room and took a small case from the pocket of his windbreaker. It held a hypodermic and a vial of amber liquid. "Okay, Suzanne. Let's put you on the sofa."
A little apprehensive, Suzanne laid herself gingerly down. "W-what's that, Doctor? I don't t-t-think I need a sleeping shot. I'll get to sleep all right."
"It's not that sort of medication, Suzanne." He knelt on the carpet beside her and test-squirted some of the fluid from the gleaming needle. "This is a kind of mental relaxant. It lowers cortical inhibition."
He swabbed her arm-the one he hadn't stuck the night previous. "It will induce fantasies, hallucinations in your mind. I will ask you what you are imagining, and you will describe them to me. From this, I can understand what your fears are, and from that, how to ease your mind."
Suzanne started to object. She wasn't ready to have anyone probe into her innermost thoughts, even a doctor. And, too, there was still the nagging feeling of evil about this whole thing; Roger and the building and the strange noises in the night. But before she could bring herself to object, the needle sank into her arm.
"You will remember later what you have fantasized," she heard Roger say. "Now. Count with me. One. Two. Three. Four..."
Suzanne felt herself slipping away, off on a soft pink cloud. Roger's voice began to boom and echo, to phase in and out. And then she heard him no more.
Suzanne was having a nightmare. She was in a dark room, lit only by candles placed on intricately carved floor stands. The walls were hung with dark rugs of an Oriental design. Incense filled the close air and layered it with pale smoke. Directly opposite her was a high-backed, gilded chair, sitting on a raised platform. There was a curious design carved into its back. A design of whips and chains, and a creature half man, half goat. And on the walls hung more whips and strange metal devices that looked like clamps and bracelets.
She tried to move and discovered that she was bound, tied hand and foot to a chair with odd arms and legs, and a yoke-shaped headrest. Panic filled her. She cried out, then screamed. Her voice was swallowed by the thick hangings, all sound absorbed and smothered. With a curious detachment, Suzanne noted that the layered smoke that hung in the air stirred with her cry. It seemed somehow odd that her hallucination should be so detailed.
From somewhere she felt more than heard a low, pervasive sound. She strained her fear-sharpened ears. A chant. It came nearer, grew in volume, still muffled but more distinct. Then there was the sound of metal on metal. A key being fitted in a lock. The hangings on the left wall parted. Four people came in. Suzanne almost fainted.
The first was almost a dwarf. A short, grotesque little man with twisted back and a lame leg. He was dressed in shiny black leather from head to foot, and a hood covered his face. Two eyeholes, cut flat across the top and slanted upward at the outside corners, masked rather than revealed his eyes. But he was not totally shrouded. There was a leaf-shaped cutout in the leather. In the crotch. And a tiny penis protruded through it.
The other three were dressed the same way. A man and two women. The second man's whole scrotum was bare. And huge. His sac was deep and full, and the penis that hung before it was long and thick, veined with blue ropes. He carried, Suzanne noticed, a black bag.
The two women had triangular cutouts at their pubic regions, and their breasts swung free. Small leather discs covered their nipples. One was a black woman. Suzanne did not have to ask their names.
The grotesque cripple hobbled to the dais and crawled into the thronelike chair. The other three arranged themselves on either side of the chair. All looked at Suzanne from the facelessness of their masks.
The grotesquerie on the chair spoke. "Who calls the high council of pain and pleasure?" His voice was a high sing-song.
"I call it, master," said the other man.
"Why is it called?"
"To bring a new child to the fold, master."
"Then let the council convene."
The four began a chant. The same one Suzanne had heard earlier.
She was near hysteria. "D-Doctor Watlington! Roger! What i-is this? What are you doing to me? Please let me go!
The four ignored her, continuing with their chant. Suzanne began to weep. The standing man and the two women began to sway, moving their bodies in synchronous rhythms from side to side. They continued for some time.
Then the man on the dais raised his hand and the chanting stopped. "Let it begin!"
The two women began to move toward Suzanne in slow, measured steps, pausing between each one.
"P-please," Suzanne pleaded through her tears. "Please, don't. Let me go."
The man on the dais addressed Suzanne. "Know, child, that you are about to be defiled. You are going to enter the realm of utter degradation."
"N-no. Please, no."
"You are to become a tool, a plaything. And this is to the end that you may acknowledge your true masters."
Suzanne struggled against her bonds, vainly attempting to free herself. "Please. I'll acknowledge whatever you want. Just let me go."
The man on the dais leaned forward. He placed one hand on his penis. "There is but one way to acknowledge your servitude, girl. And we will show it to you."
The two women had reached Suzanne's chair and now stood motionless beside it. Suzanne turned a pleading face from one to the other. "Phyllis! Flo! Why are you doing this? Won't you let me go? Help me!"
But the women remained silent. Then they each took an arm of her strange chair and began to pull. The chair rolled silently forward toward the throne. "Wait," Suzanne pleaded. "Please don't."
But the women paid her no heed. At the foot of the platform they stopped and Suzanne sat facing the throne. Beside her, the women stepped back. The standing man stood slightly to one side. His organ, Suzanne noted, was rising, becoming rigid.
Before Suzanne could offer further pleas, she felt the women behind her doing something complicated to the chair. Then it swung down and her feet rose, as if in a barber's chair, or a dentist's. At the same time, the arms swung out until she was in a horizontal crucifixion position.
"Oh," Suzanne moaned. "Oh, let me wake up. This is horrible."
The man on the dais chuckled, a low, ugly sound. "The worst is yet to be, girl. You haven't yet been touched." He turned his masked face to the man beside him. "Prepare her."
The man stepped silently up to Suzanne. He laid his gloved hands lightly on her belly.
For the first time, Suzanne saw that she was dressed in a long white robe of some smooth material. It was armless and high necked, with cords passing across her chest and under her breasts. It reached to her bare feet.
The hands on her stomach carefully gathered the fabric into bunches. Then, with a quick, fierce motion, they ripped the dress violently from her navel to her feet.
Suzanne gasped and cried aloud, "No! No!" She could feel her nakedness beneath the garment, feel her body hideously exposed to these faceless men.
Then, to her complete horror, the crooked little man scrabbled off the throne and came to the edge of the platform. His penis was rigid before him, its red knob quivering at each shift in his weight. "Now, girl, you will experience the ultimate degradation."
Suzanne was crying uncontrollably now. She tried to close her eyes, to shut out the horror around her. But somehow she couldn't. Her eyes were wide with revulsion and fear, unable to draw themselves from the bobbing member that hovered like a snake between the little man's leather-clad legs.
The dwarf made a preemptory gesture. The two women came into Suzanne's line of vision. One reached down beside the chair and placed a wooden crank into a socket. She began to turn the crank. Suzanne felt the lower part of the chair shift. The legs began to lift and fold at her knees, drawing her legs up and out. She could feel her private parts opening and rising. The shame of it almost overcame her fear. She was too mortified to speak. But as the little man had said, the worst was yet to come.
The women swiftly rolled the chair the remaining foot or so to the dais. Suzanne's body lay exposed and bound, on the exact plane of the dwarfs naked genitals.
"Oh," Suzanne cried softly. "Oh, don't let this happen to me."
"Ah, but it will," the dwarf said gleefully. "In fact, it is happening!" He moved forward and put his hands on the insides of Suzanne's thighs. She felt her skin actually crawl at his touch. But there was nothing she could do about it. Bound hand and foot, with the constricting bands across her chest, she was completely helpless, only mobile enough to writhe and twist.
Then she felt the first touch of the little man's penis against her sanctuary. The hot, hard organ pressing into the soft lips of her sex. "Oh, don't! Please, I can't bear it."
But he paid her no attention other than to laugh his ugly laugh. Then the dwarf took the flesh of her inner thighs in his fingers and twisted cruelly, at the same time ramming his organ through the bushy veil of her labia. "Yes, that's it, girl. Scream. Scream for the humiliation of it. Scream for the pain. There's more to come!"
There was little actual pain inside her. The brutal hand of her hairy abductor the day before had rendered her maidenhead flaccid. But the obscene presence inside her sent waves of humiliation throughout her being, causing more mental pain than any physical pain could create.
There was more-and worse. While the crippled little man fucked her, the other man came up beside her and began to caress her breasts. She moaned, tossing her head from side to side. She was powerless to resist him. Then, with the same cruel motions he had used before, he ripped the upper part of her garment to shreds, laying her firm, large breasts bare but for the X of straps crossing between them.
Then he backed out of Suzanne's vision and the two women stepped forward, one on each side. With a catch in her throat, Suzanne realized that they meant to further her degradation themselves. She was too humiliated even to cry out. The black woman bent and put her lips to Suzanne's left breast. She kissed the swelling undercurve and began to lick it. The second woman bent over the other breast and took the nipple in her mouth. Suzanne could feel her rough tongue bringing the little pap to erect hardness.
The cripple was fucking her in short, stiff jerks, thrusting his small member to its full length in her pain-filled sex. He had his hands around the edges of her organ and was peeling back the lips with his fingers. For all her tears and horror, and despite the humiliation, Suzanne felt a twinge of pleasure at his administrations. She felt doubly ashamed at the knowledge, but it was there nonetheless.
Then came the final insult. The standing man moved around behind Suzanne and began to stroke the sides of her face with his gloved hands. She tried to toss her head to the side, to remove it from his grasp. But he was too strong for her. His grip was firm and steady and she was reduced to helpless rage and immobility.
Then the man did something to the chair and Suzanne felt the yokelike neck piece fall away under her. Her head dropped before reflexes could take over and hold it up. And she found herself staring at the upside down spectacle of the man's blunt organ and heavy sac, inches from her face. The veined member pointed its blind eye directly at Suzanne's mouth.
"Oh, no more, please," she cried. "I can't stand it! The shame!"
But there was no response from the standing man, and only a further chuckle from the dwarf. The women made no sound save the suckings and slurps of their actions at her breasts.
Suzanne, in spite of herself, felt a warmth and pleasure from their touch, too. But she had no time to ruminate on this phenomenon. The standing man's thick cock was weaving closer. As Suzanne tried to elude the threatening shaft, the standing man placed his hands on her head again, on each side. He applied steady pressure until he forced her head down and back until it was almost in the vertical plane. Suzanne gritted her teeth, determined to deny entrance to the horrible invader. But it was useless. The man pressed expertly on two points behind her jaw and her mouth opened wide in spite of her efforts.
Then he held her and leaned forward, his broad tool slipping between her lips. He moved in and Suzanne felt the organ sliding along her tongue-now the upper portion of her mouth. It slid back until the knobby head touched the constricting muscles of her throat. Suzanne tightened up her esophagus defensively, but not so much that it would cause her to gag. She realized dimly that she had learned from the previous night's experience.
Determined to stay detached and suffer her humiliation without giving her tormentors the satisfaction of any further response, Suzanne withdrew her mind and feelings from the degradation that her body was suffering. She decided to adopt a clinical, cold attitude and endure her misery.
Accordingly, she ceased to resist and lay inert, her eyes calm. She focused on the wall opposite, noting how odd things looked upside down. But the detachment of new perspective did not remain. Her body kept sending her signals that her mind did not want to receive.
Twitches of pleasure from the little penis that was working so industriously inside her body; waves of sensual goodness from the twin mouths that were massaging her breasts. And even a perverse sort of enjoyment of the huge tool that slid so slowly, so rapturously in and out of her mouth.
From her upside-down position, the leather-clad legs of her captor and invader formed a shiny black "V" rising before her eyes. His heavy scrotum was a swaying, bouncing balloon with twin lumps, seeking to rise into the heights of her inverted atmosphere. It was the first time Suzanne had seen a man's genitals so closely and clearly, and she was astonished at their diversity of form and texture. She was amazed and intrigued at the hairiness of the sac, at the way the individual hairs sprouted from all parts of its wrinkled and creviced surface. Where the man's big pole disappeared into the gleaming leather of his outfit, there grew a veritable forest of hair, matted and tangled, growing even a way down the length of the member itself. It was all so... alien. As though the organs before her were parts of a creature of another species.
The standing man shuddered. It broke Suzanne's objective study. Then, with a wave of near nausea, she realized that he had shuddered because she had commenced to respond to his attack, sucking gently at his dick as it pistoned slowly in and out of her mouth.
With further horror, she realized that she had been responding to all her tormenter's ministrations, humping and writhing within the confines of her bindings, thrusting nipple and mound up to meet the passions of her captors.
She couldn't do anything about it! Her body was independent of her will, no longer answering her demands for cession. While her will cried out its shame and rage and frustration, her body abandoned itself to the satisfaction of a new found passion for lust. It gave willingly while her mind fought to withhold all. This was the ultimate degradation; to watch her violated body give itself in willing surrender to the very forces which violated it.
Suzanne felt a change in the rhythms of her assaulters, a quickening urgency. Her body responded by raising its own tempo. The little man between her legs was driving into her with an almost frenzied haste, his need making his whole body tremble. And the standing man increased the force of his motion also, his knobby rod whipping in and out of Suzanne's mouth hard enough to cause his sac to slap into her face with each inward move.
Suzanne knew the men were about to come to climax. She knew that any moment now the hot organ which had stretched her lips painfully wide would erupt in a thick flow into her mouth. She knew that the misshappen man whose hands kneaded the sides of her sex would soon create a similar rush of fluid in her inner sanctuary. And she knew that she was being taken by force.
But throughout the shame of this knowledge ran a small, almost guilty thread of another feeling. A feeling compounded of pleasure and carnal excitement, and, yes, of joy at being taken. Of release from something dark and overbearing. She didn't know how to handle this subterranean feeling, nor how to shut it off. It embarrassed her and filled her with shame. But it persisted and her body gave rein to it, opening eagerly to the assaults of the black-clad captors.
Then the dwarf came. He trembled to a stiff, tiptoe stance and released his come. Suzanne felt the warm fluid bringing a heated warmth to her body, bringing a new feeling of... completeness; release. On the heels of that sensation, the standing man reached his fulfillment. His salty flow shot into Suzanne's mouth and filled her throat. She felt herself swallow automatically, easily, and, to her astonishment, suck at the huge member for more!
Then an even stranger feeling. Suzanne felt her body seem to rise, to float upward and away, suspended, waiting for some inexplicable thing to occur. She became intensely aware of all the sensations of her body at once: the teeth and tongues on her breasts, the sticky hardness of the prick in her sex, the all-enveloping presence of the throbbing tool jammed against the back of her mouth. Wave after wave of feeling swept her. Her vision faded and a red mist hung over her. Her body jerked and spasmed, centering around a fiery earthquake between her thighs. For the first time in her life, Suzanne came. And came, and came, until she thought she would die of the ecstasy of it all.
Dimly, slowly, Suzanne came down again. Her breath was coming in harsh gasps, whistling through her nose-her mouth still stretched around the standing man's organ. Her heart tripped like a jackhammer, threatening to burst its confines and fly completely out of her body. There were tears in her eyes, but they were tears of... joy? Fulfillment? She knew not what. But they weren't totally tears of shame anymore, and that frightened her worse than anything that had happened to her so far.
There was a satisfied grunt from the dwarf and he withdrew his limbering tool from Suzanne's body. "Ahhh! Now you have sampled the pleasure of your masters, girl. Now you have begun to see the hopelessness of resisting us."
The standing man pulled away also and Suzanne drew a deep, ragged breath. He bent and snapped the chair's neck piece into place again and Suzanne gratefully let her head rest on it, relieving the strain that her neck had undergone. She hurt all over. But she was not worried about that now. She was on the verge of hysterical horror over the fact that she had given in so willingly. That her body had refused to obey her. She was shamed past anything that she'd ever felt before. And she was afraid, deep down inside, that she knew why.
With rapid motions, the two women sat the chair back upright and rolled it into its original position. Then all four retreated to their first positions, the dwarf on his throne, the women and the other man to either side.
"So, girl," the cripple said. "This is the beginning of your new life as a servant and plaything of the masters. You may look forward to further opportunities to provide us sport and amusement. But for now, we tire of you, and you no longer amuse us. You will therefore be allowed to return whence you came."
The standing man bent and opened the black bag that he had brought into the candlelit room. He withdrew a gleaming needle and filled it with fluid from an injection bottle.
"No!" Suzanne pleaded. "Roger, please don't give me another shot. Just take me home. I won't tell. Just let me go now, please." She did not know why she was so afraid of the needle. Perhaps it had something to do with all her fears that had come so horribly true. But she knew that she did not want to be injected again. There was no choice. The standing man came deliberately toward her, holding the wicked instrument before him like an offering.
Suzanne tried again to free her now nude body, but to no avail. She was tied with what looked to be silk scarves. Not tight, but impossible to loosen enough to escape. Fascinated, she followed the needle with her eyes, watching in helpless shame as its point pierced her skin. Then the standing man moved once more to the side of the throne. As darkness began to cloud Suzanne's eyes, the assembled people began another chant, this one faster and with a curious lilt. Almost a song of satisfaction. Almost a happy song.
Except for the obscene exposures in their black clothing, and the dark, unreadable eyeholes, blacker than the clothing. Blacker than the gloomy room. Black as the veil that came creeping over Suzanne's mind until she knew no more.