Chapter 20
They had a quiet dinner, that night, in China Town, and then explored the "hippy" section. It seemed a little old, and run down, and definitely overcrowded. What should have been comfortable two-family homes, were broken up into several apartments. But the people in the street fascinated her.
Everyone looked old. Lined beared faces on the men and boys, and even the same lines of suffering and old age on the women. Young boys, scarcely able to grow a beard, were wandering around the streets, their eyes glazed and tired, and their clothes and bodies filthy. "If this is love," Claudie thought," they should start off by loving themselves."
It made her sad to see seventeen year old mothers in ragged clothing carrying babies papoose-style on their backs. Even the babies seemed old and seldom cried. The whole atmosphere was stifling and Stephen suggested that they leave.
"Why don't you go on, darling. I'll meet you back at the hotel in a few hours."
Stephen didn't like the idea of leaving Claudie alone, particularly in Haight-Ashbury, but at Claudie's insistence he agreed.
"I don't trust you, baby, and you know why. You better be back in three hours, and in the same condition you're in now." He spoke half jokingly, but Claudie knew he meant everything he said. She didn't understand herself just why she wanted to stay here, but somehow the hopelessness of the people around her was relaxing.
She had a feeling that something important was going to happen, and she wasn't going to run away.
Stephen left despite his misgivings and Claudie started to walk around on her own. A few men stared listlessly at her when she passed and she thought to herself that this was the safest place in the world she could be. Everyone was on drugs of one kind or another, and no one seemed to care particularly about a very sexy piece of ass that was staring them in the face.
She passed a small coffee shop and realizing that she was thirsty, she went in.
"Lemonade please," she said to a handsome, and thickly bearded man who approached her table. He called the order out to a girl in the back and sat down. "I'm not a waiter, lady, I'm a friend."
Claudie smiled at him, not knowing what else to do, and she thought a little sadly about how incomplete her social education had been. She could handle herself at a party, or in a fifth avenue dress shop, but she was at a loss to know what to say to this young man with such a very frank approach.
"I'm Chay," he said. "What's your name?"
She liked him. She didn't know why. He was about thirty, strongly built and pretty tall. He was very tan and had a huge bush of black hair on his chin, but it looked well on him where it would look sloppy on someone else. His eyes were gray, very calm and very deep. They looked like they were sinking back into his head. They reflected everything he saw clearly, and she could see herself plainly mirrored against the grayness.
"I'm Claudie," she said. Then the waitress brought over her drink.
"What's bothering you girl, cat got your tongue? Or are you shy. You know, I think you're afraid to talk, cause the wrong words might sneak through and you might just say what was on your mind.
"If you don't like me you can leave. I didn't ask you to join me anyway." Claudie was angry, and embarrassed. He had no right to say things like that to her. He didn't even know her.
"Finish your lemonade, and come with me. I'll fix you up at my place. Whatever you need I can give you. Just tell me, cause, believe it or not, I ain't no mind reader." She shouldn't go, she knew she shouldn't, but this was it. She felt something strange and powerful pulling her to this man. She knew he had the answers.
They got up, and left after he paid the bill. They walked a few blocks through the neighborhood and then were in front of his house. It was a particularly rundown looking building, the paint was chipping and the wooden steps leading up to the back entrance were rickety and looked unsafe. He led the way like a billy goat, jumping confidently, two at a time, up the splintered stairs.
"We're home baby. And make yourself ... at home. Its the best place to do it." He laughed, and then quickly stripped, and when Claudie turned around she was greeted with a view she had hardly expected to see so soon.
The man was beautifully built. Tall, strong, with a broad dark-haired chest, and lean hips and waist. His legs were long and graceful, he looked like a runner. And his prick was no disappointment. It hung down limp against his tanned thigh, but it was big and Claudie knew it would get bigger. Already the swollen purplish veins were pounding blood to the tip in anticipation of what was to come.
Claudie smiled. "You're certainly not shy," she said, and a second later her clothes had slid to the floor next to his.
"Not so fast, baby," Chay said. "First we've got to talk, you know, get to know one another. Taking your clothes off is just step one. It helps you think better. But I want to know what your hang-up is. What's bothering you?"
"Well as long as we're playing psychiatrist and patient, here's my story." And Claudie told him, told him everything. She hardly knew why, it was just that she trusted him, and she thought that he'd understand. He accepted everything she said as the gospel truth. He didn't even interrupt to ask a question. And when she was done he smiled.
"So your problem now is how to stop being a pain freak and how to groove on kindness. Right?"
"I guess that about sums it up, Chay. Is there any hope, doctor?" She said it with a laugh, but her eyes were serious and pleading for help.
"Okay. I'll fix you up. But remember, no cops afterward. I'm doing this at your request and I hold you responsible. Agreed?"
"I don't know what you're going to do, but if it might help me, I'm down for it. And I promise not to tell anyone about you."
"Good," Chay said and he walked up to Claudie and punched her in the mouth. "Hold out your hands, girl."
Claudie was staring at him in amazement. A trickle of blood was running down her chin and her mouth was hanging open with shock. Chay repeated his order, and when he raised his hand to hit her again she obeyed. "Is he crazy?" she asked herself. But she had asked him to do whatever he could, and now she had to accept the consequences.
He bound her hands firmly with rope, and pulled her to her feet. Then he shoved his crumpled handkerchief in her mouth.
"When you're in love, pain is a waste of time," Chay said seriously. Then he roughly pushed Claudie back wards and she landed hard on the floor, her legs sprawled out awkwardly. Moving quickly, Chay bound her wrists to thick wood blocks on the bottom of his messy bed, then he left her for a minute alone with her thoughts.
"Meditation time is over babe," he looked down at her. Then he showed her what was in his hands.
"Just a little old tweezers honey. I'm going to pluck you." For a second Claudie didn't understand what he meant, but it was only a second. Then he showed her.
Kneeling on the floor, Chay was in such a position that Claudie couldn't see him. The next thing she knew a jolt of pain shot through her body and made her arch her back in agony. One by one he was plucking her cunt bare. Starting with the dainty copper hairs that covered her mound and then slowly working his way down to the much more sensitive area between her swelling lips, he pulled the hairs out. Nothing had ever hurt her so much before. She was gagging on her sobs, and her face was bathed in tears and no matter which way she twitched her aching body, his cruel hands followed relentlessly. Blood was now streaming from the hurt area, and her womb was died in the red stain pouring endlessly from the torn skin. Her back was arched so high that her heavy breasts were almost falling backwards towards her face. The hard nipples seemed frozen, and stood out bright pink against the palest of pale flesh of her tits. She was literally white with pain. The only color being the sticky red in her lower regions. Some of the fluid had even spread out on her belly making it seem as though her firm stomach was blushing.
Chay was very busy. He slid his hands under her buttocks and raised her pussy higher to afford him a better view. Then carefully he spread her gooey lips and got a good look at the tiny golden hairs that slept peacefully in the area between her cunt and her asshole. He pinched her hard on the ass, and she practically shoved her mound into his face. He paused for a moment, and just looked at his handiwork. Then he set his mouth in a grim line and proceeded to pluck the few hairs in that most sensitive region from out of her writhing body. Claudie passed out.
She woke up to find herself dripping in cold water. Chay was standing over her, with a bitter smile on his handsome face.
"If you promise not to scream I'll take that filthy gag out of your mouth," he said. Claudie nodded her head.
She just lay there stunned for a few moments, gathering her wits together. Chay came over and sat by her side.
"Tell me chic, do you want any more of that?" Chay asked with a smile.
Claudie turned pale, if it was possible for her to become any whiter. "Please, no. No more." She could just about see the beginning of her cunt and with a sob she saw that where there was once a bush of curling copper hair now there was only a mass of bloody naked flesh. "Oh Stephen," she thought, "what are we going to do?"
"I'm going to untie you now, Claudie" Chay said. He bent over the limp form and tugged at the knots. Then Chay was hurtling the air, and Claudie caught a glimpse of another man as he bent over the fallen form of Chay and started to pummel him hard with vicious blows. The new man turned and looked at Claudie. And then Claudie saw who it was. Stephen! How had he found her?
She looked up with glazed eyes as he stooped over her and finished untying the rope around her wrists.
"Oh, baby," he said, and she could hear tears in the back of his throat. Then things started to happen fast. From across the room came a chair, hurtling fast and powerfully through the air. It hit Stephen smack on the head, and he fell over in a crumpled heap.
Somehow, despite the paralyzing pain that wracked her body, she managed to crawl over to Stephen. The back of his head was sticky with blood. "Oh God," she prayed, "let him be all right, punish me but not him."
Chay stumbled over and looked down at the two huddled bodies.
"I'm splitting," he said. "And I'm not coming back here. Put something on and call the cops or an ambulance or something. Remember, you promised to keep me out of this. I was only doing you a favor." Then he put on his clothes and ran out the door and down the steps.
Somehow, Claudie found the strength to get dressed, leave the apartment, and call an ambulance from a telephone booth near the corner. Then she made her painful way back to the house, and waited. She put cold compresses on his head and kept checking his pulse, holding her own breath each time, and terrified that she might not be able to hear his heartbeat or feel the blood pounding through his veins.
"It's me. It's all my fault. He's going to die," she repeated over and over to herself, her mind temporarily gone. She stumbled in to the bathroom, thinking of finding a towel or something to put under his head, and her eyes fell on a bottle of pills. She didn't know what they were and she didn't care, she just started swallowing, and a few minutes later she collapsed on the tile floor, her breathing coming in short hard gasps.
The wailing of a siren was the last thing she remembered before she passed out, and her woozy mind and pain-wracked body were grateful for the relief of unconsciousness.
There was a loud knock on the door, but Claudie was beyond hearing and Stephen had been out for fifteen minutes already and didn't seem about to wake up for a while.
With a loud crack a stocky man wearing a white hospital uniform pushed through the door. It wasn't hard to do. The door was pretty near falling in on it's own.
"Bring a stretcher," he called. And then he saw the bathroom door ajar, and went in to investigate. "Make it two," he yelled again, and he tried to get the slumped body lying against the shower stall on it's feet. The empty bottle lay on the floor, and he snatched it up and put it in his pocket. Then two burly men entered the room and Claudie and Stephen were taken to the waiting ambulance and driven rapidly to the nearest hospital.
That's where Claudie came to about an hour later, and she wished she hadn't. Not only was she sorry just to be alive, but having her stomach pumped by a disinterested intern just finished her misery.
As soon as her life was out of danger, she was wheeled into a quiet ward and put to sleep. The nurse in charge of that ward had looked with disbelief and horror on her brutally treated body. She had done her best to stop any further bleeding from the damaged area, but there was nothing that could be done to make Claudie's cunt in any way resemble what it had looked like just a few hours ago.
The nurse left the roof shaking her head sadly, and thinking that they had a real suicidal psycho on their hands.
"Lord have mercy ... ," she mumbled to herself, and then went to look after her other patients. There was nothing more she could do for this girl, and she wasn't sure if any one could help. But then, she didn't know. She didn't know Claudie's story, and she didn't know that Claudie was cured. She had accepted the last pain and humiliation she would voluntarily ask for. From now on she was out for one thing only. And that was love. And love was Stephen!