Chapter 4
Maybe, she tells herself, maybe if she didn't enjoy it so much.
Maybe, if she didn't enjoy it at all, if it were merely something she found herself forced to suffer through, to endure, for the sake of loyalty to her sick, sadistic, perverted husband who was nonetheless not without his good points.
And who, like the rest of us, has his problems- even though they are certainly not the same as those of the rest of us.
If she could just, just... abstain.
That's it, abstain.
Meaning absent herself emotionally from the proceedings.
Meaning become just so much dead meat for the three fiends to amuse themselves with until, at last, satiated, exhausted, they just naturally grind to a halt.
Then, ah then! she wouldn't need... help.
Then she wouldn't want to, wouldn't feel so compelled to seek a cure for what ails her, because nothing would "ail her" then.
No, she would be all right.
She would be a victim, albeit a willing victim, of their shared perversion, the three men's perversion, that is, a perversion she herself would not share.
Which is, admittedly and unfortunately, presently not the case.
Because there is stimulation, there is arousal, there is response, there is excitement, there is climax.
And this too is reality, is a fact she cannot deny.
And there, just there, lies the problem.
Because she does not know if it is true or not-she strongly suspects that it isn't-that she has, by word or deed, actually requested such treatment, but, however it came upon her, whether voluntarily or by force and manipulation, she does enjoy it.
And the drugs, if drugs there be, cannot account for that.
Because drugs, addiction, carries with it its own form of enjoyment which, they say, is as intense as that which she derives from sexual intercourse.
Although she doesn't believe it.
Because it just doesn't get any better than what she feels.
And again, precisely therein lies the problem.
Which is that she does enjoy it so much, which is that it does provide her with the supreme pleasure, the ultimate high.
And that, she reminds herself, is sick, is, to be precise, her sickness.
Because no well person would want to have sex like that.
Whatever happened to a man, a woman, a bed and carry on?
She does not know, she cannot say.
It could very well be that, that very first time Randy fucked her, back there in that cabin on the ship, when she used another drug-alcohol-as an excuse to let happen what did, it could just be that, even back then, she wanted it the bizarre, bound up way.
Because that is what Randy embodies.
That is one aspect of the huge dark side of this huge man.
And even then, it showed, it showed in his aura, in the fact of his fucking her with his eyes closed as, on the view screen of his mind, the scene of herself, bound and helpless, getting it from the three of them any way they chose to give it to her-even back then, that is what he was looking at, what he as imagining was happening in reality.
Or worse.
That, of course, is the other downside feature of this thing, she reminds herself.
Because one thing leads to another.
How much longer is Randy going to be content with repetition of this same scene?
How much longer will it be before he moves on to do something else with her, to her?
Because, so far, the only physical damage she sustains is, ironically enough, that which she inflicts upon herself, getting carried away with her arousal, her passion, becoming oblivious to the sawing of the ropes on her wrists, letting them rub themselves raw as she writhes and squirms in the throes of her raw sexual pleasure.
If that were all there was to it and if she could somehow get that part of it under control, then she would have reached a mode of existence which, while certainly not normal, would at least be something she could live with in relative serenity.
But how likely is that to happen without help.
She is in a chicken and egg situation, she realizes.
If she could bring her own emotions under control, she wouldn't need help.
But in order to get her emotions under control, she does need help.
Because she has not that within herself to sustain the effort of her rational desire.
Which is one of the first things to go when she gets "turned on".
She needs an emotional anchor, something she can hang onto, something to help her weather the storm of her own passion.
Unreasonable? She thinks not.
Indeed, there is a common condition among women which is quite the opposite of her problem.
Frigidity, it's called. The inability to climb the rainbow.
And she smiles at the thought of this.
Let's see the coldest of women hold off, she thinks, when faced with the kind of assault she regularly sustains.
For her own problem, she cannot find a cure; for theirs, she has one instantly ready and waiting.
No, she needs help.
Useless to attempt emotional detachment during the act.
She knows this.
She has tried and failed.
For that to happen, the untrammeled will must be present.
And hers, she fears, is very much subject to physical stimulation.
And Randy-and Cranston and Eric as well- know exactly how to push her buttons.
And she sighs at this last.
Maybe Randy is right after all about her having asked to be treated as they do to her.
Because where could Randy have found out about her tastes, her own perversion, if not from herself?
And yet when? How?
Why can't she remember giving the information to him, in whatever form?
Unless- How clever of him, if that is how he did it! she tells herself.
To question her, drawing her out.
Clever questions, an ingenious line of inquiry; that would get the job done, all right.
And Randy Buck is nothing if not a reader, an interpreter of people.
No question.
No question, but that the man is an expert when it comes to drawing people out, getting them to reveal things about themselves that they themselves don't know they know.
And was it not she herself who brought up the subject of the dark side of everyone the first time they met?
Hey, she tells herself, it could very well be that that alone was clue enough.
Still, from a casual-all right, perhaps a not so casual-remark about the dark side of all of us to what goes on in the bedroom these days seems to her a quantum leap.
But is it, really?
Is it not rather the case that the dark side of all of us exists in only so many forms?
How else explain the standard bizarre costume which has lasted, with only minor variations, throughout the ages?
How else account for those walking platitudes, those living axioms of dominatrix and victim, the whole alphabet soup of perversion-S&M, B&D, English and Greek and so on?
Seeking originality, so-called freedom of expression, these sickos find instead a triteness, a repetitiveness, a dry tradition which would bore the dullest of intellects.
And yet, they revel in it, rejoicing in their very unoriginality.
As though they somehow accomplish something positive, not perpetuating but rather reinventing that which has gone on before them for centuries- the same thoughts, the same actions, the same, the same, the same.
And yet, she cannot deny it; she above all cannot deny that the thrill is there, the excitement, the tingle of anticipation and that of arousal.
It's there for her.
It is what it is and cannot be argued away.
Perhaps, with proper help, in time, it can be over- ridden.
And replaced by what?
With a shock, she realizes that, without that, but for that, in fact, what she would have-is nothing.
Sad but true and there it is.
And she quite literally cannot help herself.
Because Randy may well be more correct than he knows.
Because okay, the actual practice of what she does, what happens to her, what she lets happen to herself is only as old as her marriage.
But.
It is not something which sprang into her head at the time of, or shortly after the initial assault by Cranston and Eric on Randy's instructions.
Rather, it was always there, lurking within herself.
Which is, of course, the hallmark of her dark side, so far as she is concerned.
Or was it?
Always there, that is.
So that what she is experiencing here is a false sense of d'j... vu, an echo, a suggestion implanted in her mind only after her wedding night, as though to partially justify in her own mind her failure, her inability to resist-mentally, that is-the onslaught.
So she would like to believe.
Because that is the healthiest, the least polluted view of herself.
And yet, she doesn't buy it, not completely.
Because the notion of having a dark side carries with it some imagery, even if unconsciously.
Ideas never remain mere words, disembodied syllables, floating through the mind, or words on paper, their image that of page or book.
Rather, they have form, substance, three- dimensional representations, models if you will, in the holographic projection space which is the human mind.
So that, when she thought of the dark side, when she thought of her dark side, she thought of-what?
Surely, not of herself as perpetrator, as some hooded, spike-heel booted, erotically black-clad dominatrix.
Rather and more likely, she would be the victim.
In the same sense that anyone who goes through life as the object of fore-ordained ceremonies is a victim.
The stages of high society and herself just so much properly consecrated meat in the course of being processed.
Now go here, now go there, now do this, now do that.
Now have your coming out, now go to this party and that one.
Now have your courtship, your engagement, your marriage, even your divorce.
Therefore and thereby is she the properly prepared victim.
Accept and accept and accept because it is her duty to accept.
And who is she, who would she be, to refuse, to fail to go along with the program, whatever program that might be, at the moment?
Is she a sensitive, highly intelligent human being?
So much the better!
That way, being a quick study and all, she is fully prepared to adapt.
Given her superior powers of comprehension, she can all the more skillfully enter into the spirit of the thing, into the ceremony of the moment.
Thus can she progress through life.
Except that this is not progress, this is rather stagnation, this rut she is in.
Except.
How can it be a rut, when her rutting produces the ultimate satisfaction, when it invariably-disgustingly perhaps, but nonetheless invariably- yields the pleasure beyond pleasure?
Because, after all, life must have purpose, must have direction.
And where there is direction, some objective, some goal is implied.
And what better objective, what better aim can there be than that of the pleasure beyond pleasure?
None that she knows of, none that she has ever found or heard of, for all her supposedly high intelligence, for all her privileged position, for all her obedience to the demands of her level of society.
Where, then, does that leave her?
Certainly, she cannot compare her former sex life, such as it was against her present level of sexual satisfaction, cannot measure the quality or the quantity of it with what she has today, with what she can and does achieve by way of orgasms.
Because there is no comparison.
What she has is so much greater than what she had, in every respect, that she doubts that her former husband could even get her started.
Not now, now that she knows.
And oh yes, she does know indeed what the supreme pleasure is supposed to feel like.
She knows its advent, she knows its progress, she knows its payoff.
All these things, she knows.
All these things, she has learned from this present experience.
Sick, perverted, even dangerous it may be, but, when it comes to that deep-down satisfaction, to producing a series of knockout multiple orgasms, she can't beat it, cannot imagine another mode of achieving it.
And it's wrong, wrong, wrong!
She knows this as well.
But this knowledge does not help her.
And see, just see! how she is of two minds here.
On the one hand, she knows that this whole scene, including her wanting it, including her reaction to and with and in it, is sick, sick, sick.
But, on the other, she knows the feeling it gives her, the feeling which she can rely on its giving her.
What, then, is to be done?
How is she to accept, to live with her dark side which is, after all-and even the psychologists are agreed on this point, she knows-which is very much a part of her, and at the same time, put an end to its present mode of expression which, she is increasingly convinced, can but lead to her destruction?
Because, if her dark side is passive, is fundamentally masochistic, then Randy's is quite the opposite.
It demands victims.
And, should she be the only victim he has going for himself at the moment, then one thing will indeed lead to another.
He has killed people before; she is convinced of it.
He and his arch-enemy, the Baroness, are playing a killing game.
She kills his henchmen and he kills his victims, not always necessarily in that order.
Because, if Randy is the aggressor, then the Baroness must sometimes arrive on the scene too late.
He is, in legal terms, a perpetrator.
And, as any policeman can tell you, there is no crime unless and until a perpetrator-perpetrates.
Absent commission, where is the crime?
But she knows exactly where it is.
No mystery there, certainly.
It is in Randy's head, waiting to happen.
And a sudden realization comes over her.
Here she is worried about getting psychiatric help to assist her in her outlook, in her view of her situation, so that she can accept, can live with it- and here is Randy, here are Randy and his henchmen, ready to, to-why not say it?
Kill her.
That's right, murder her.
Not on purpose, perhaps-they will say this to themselves afterward, that it was an accident, knowing all along that a part of them very much wanted precisely this result-but who cares, given that the end result is, has to be, perhaps can only be, her demise?
So that, far from needing psychiatric help, she needs help of a far more urgent and immediate nature.
No! she tells herself. Just get a hold of herself, she must, calm down, she must and everything will be all right.
In his own twisted way, Randy Buck happens to be in love with her.
She is firmly convinced of this.
So that what she is thinking is nothing less than treason.
High treason, even, considering the stature, the greatness of the man she would thus betray, perhaps for no valid reason, perhaps from sheer panic, a mindless, unfounded fear which overrides and suspends her powers of judgment.
Why should she betray him?
Because if you don't, sooner or later, he'll kill you, comes the reply from a small, flat voice within herself.
And if this is panic, she tells herself, she has never heard it expressed more calmly, more matter-of-factly.
It is as though she is listening to the voice of a computer, one which is stating a simple and obvious fact.
Which is that she is presently in mortal danger.
How is she not?
Is Randy running around on her, seeing other women, even though, considering what he does with women, she rather wishes he were?
Is he gone from home for days, weekends, or perhaps overnight?
Is he distracted or exhausted, returning to the Estate bedraggled, exhausted?
No and no and no.
He is being, in his perverted, twisted way, faithful to her.
No question.
And therein, just there, precisely there, lies the danger.
All that rampant sadism and only one place to go with it right now.
And time is running out; she is convinced of it.
Still, she shares her husband's dislike for the Baroness.
Cocky, aggressive, insulting, cynical, sarcastic- the Baroness is all these things and no doubt, more besides.
And not really concerned for her.
If she were, she would have made arrangements to get in touch with her, to contact her, to give her a serious, confidential warning.
But she suspects that, for Cynthia Marvel, the Baroness, this is all a game between Randy and herself.
When whales fight, the shrimp get killed, goes an old Chinese proverb.
And Irene can well believe that, in the case of Randy and the Baroness, this is only too true.
The important thing for the Baroness is winning the game, is spoiling Randy's fun, is ruining his plans.
And the fate of individual victims could not concern her less.
Dark side against dark side; Irene knows this, knew it the moment she saw the Baroness.
Is the flip side of a bad penny of more value?
Obviously not.
The Baroness could very well use her like a pawn in her chess game with Randy.
On the other hand, perhaps that is precisely what Randy Buck is doing with her, vis-vis the Baroness.
Having blocked him at every turn, Randy Buck is now seeking a safe haven from which to perpetrate his next outrage.
And not even the Baroness is capable of invading the conjugal bed.
And this is not a new thought with Irene.
She has thought this before and immediately put it from her mind as being too far-fetched, too devious, too cowardly, a thing unworthy of Randy.
But.
What if?
What if Randy has decided to pursue a limited objective, to tantalize the Baroness by dangling the prospect of a single victim, one she cannot reach, cannot possibly get to in time, whom he will then proceed to have his way with, completing the project, terminating her at his leisure.
Merely so that, at Irene's funeral, he can suddenly wink at the Baroness across the bowed heads of the mourners and give her a wink and a bow, chalking up one for RB in the frosty morning air.
Too late to stop him, once the project is completed, something having gone right for him, at last.
He will, of course, drag it out, teasing the Baroness.
But, at the first sign of her moving in on him, he will move quickly, efficiently and for Irene, fatally.
Not this time, she won't stop him.
Irene realizes, with a shudder of fear, that yes, this is a valid scenario.
And she feels that, for once in her life, she is going to have to take positive action to protect herself.
She rejects the notion at once.
No way, she tells herself. No way does she call the Baroness, going to see her.
Because that is no angel of mercy and salvation on the other end of the line, if she does.
Far from it, in fact.
She is looking at megalomania, at least the equal of Randy Buck's.
And if, somehow, she can get Randy Buck arrested for murder, then that way too, she will have won the game.
And what better way to see to it that that happens than being in constant contact with the victim, actually guiding the conversation in that way that Randy himself is so very adept at doing, recording it so that when it actually happens, the Baroness will be right there with the evidence.
Because, as Randy Buck is so fond of pointing out to Irene, the Baroness may very well have foiled him again and again, but he has yet to spend a single day in jail because of her.
Yes, all that could change, with Irene's help, provided that she is willing to pay the supreme penalty.
Which she is not.
Still, on the other hand-no, forget it.
The Baroness cannot help her, even if she is in mortal danger.
And she herself has only her intuition on which to base the belief that she is or might be.
Irene feels as though she has a sword hanging over her head.
That, or a headsman's axe.
If only, she thinks.
If only the Baroness had not been there on the yacht.
Then she might have remained Randy's shadowy nemesis and her own shining if nebulous hope, instead of a rather brassy super villain type spoiling for a confrontation with Randy.