by Jenny Plumb
“Marley and Christmas’s mill, I believe,” said the first gentleman. “Have I pleasure of addressing Christmas or Marley?”
“Martin Marley has been dead seven years this very night.”
“Well we have no doubt his rapacious interest in the erotic arts and crafts is well represented by his surviving partner,” said the second gentleman.
Carol frowned. “To what are you referring, sir?”
“Marley was a purchaser of several of our products. He had dummies from us, bottles and teats, white socks, porcelain dolls, all of the finest quality.”
“How does that concern me?” Carol asked, thinking silently that perhaps she had not known her partner as well as she had assumed. Could it be true that he bought such things? What on earth did he do with them? Marley had no wife that she knew of, nor children to provide for.
“At this time of year, women like yourself are often in need of assistance with their marital life. We represent the poor and destitute who suffer greatly at the present time from the lack of funds to purchase marital aids of any kind. We wondered if you would like to sponsor a sex toy for a pauper to use.”
“Are there no prisons?”
“Plenty of them, I fear.”
“And the whorehouses are still in operation?”
“They are.”
“Oh, I was afraid from what you said, that something had occurred to stop the poor from finding cheap ways to indulge in such sins. I am glad to hear it.”
“But they cannot afford to visit the whorehouses.”
“No, but they can become employees of the establishments if they are in such urgent need of pleasures of the flesh.”
“Nonetheless, we are endeavouring to raise a fund to buy the poor some sturdy whips and handcuffs. We choose this time because it is a time for others, when orgasms are wanted most of all. Can I perhaps demonstrate some of our wares on you? I have a cane here that would just suit a posterior as well shaped as yours.”
“You cannot.”
“You are willing to donate without trying the goods? That is most generous of you.”
“I wish to be left alone. Since you ask me my wish, that is my answer. I can ill afford to help idle people with their sinful endeavours. I support the prisons and the whorehouses by paying my taxes. I have investments in the Drabble Dildo and the Vonnegut Vibrator companies. Those who need orgasms so badly can go there.”
“Many can’t afford to. They might die of cold without ever enjoying the power of an orgasm brought on when bound to a table with their Papa behind them.”
“Papa? That is another ridiculous notion. It is a word reserved for fathers, not for lovers.”
“Nonsense. It is a word used between consenting partners to demonstrate their submission to another, their giving up of the pressure of normal life, an escape into a fantasy land, if you will.”
“I will not.”
“But what of the paupers who could die without ever enjoying an orgasm?”
“Let them die and decrease the surplus population. Besides, a lack of climax never killed anyone. I haven’t come for years and I’m still here. Good day to you both.”
Seeing that it would be useless to tempt her further, the trunk remained closed and the gentlemen withdrew. Carol resumed her labours with a will, though as she did so, the sting in her rear from the spanking she had received flickered and sparked inside her with more life than the fire in the grate, dying as it was. She frowned and shifted her position many times, but was unable to stop the sensation within her from growing; it reminded her of something, something long forgotten. “Humbug!” she said out loud, turning a page in her ledger and beginning a fresh column.
Meanwhile the fog and darkness thickened. In the main street the cold was so intense that icicles were plucked down to be used by the more adventurous couples out there. Foggier it became and colder yet. At length the hour of shutting the counting house arrived. With an ill will, Carol dismounted from her stool and dismissed the staff of the mill, the only day that the machines stopped and that was bad enough. They were designed to run without stopping. For the sake of a day of cheer, she might be paying for repairs for sometime yet, but did they care? No, they just left with a smile and Carol left them with a sneer, returning to the counting house. The clerk had snuffed out his candle in the meantime and put on his hat.
“You’ll want all day tomorrow?” said Carol.
“If it’s quite convenient. There are a number of things your step-nephew suggested that I would like to try if I could only find a suitable partner to do it with.”
“It is not convenient to me that you are looking for a lover when you should be working. If I was to stop half a crown for your day of no work, you’d think ill of me, no doubt.”
The clerk smiled faintly, seeing a flash of beauty behind the scowl of his employer. A thought came to him, how might Carol Christmas look in a nappy? Not that he’d ever have the chance to know, of course, but a nice thought, nonetheless.
“And yet you don’t think me ill for paying you a full day’s wage for you to grin inanely at me like that?”
The clerk observed that it was only once a year and had she ever considered tying her hair in pigtails?
“A poor excuse for picking my pocket whilst you picture me as a little girl in your parlour. Oh yes, don’t think I can’t tell by your eyes moving down my front that you aren’t thinking such a thing. You stand there with a smug look on your face and a snug bulge in your trousers. It may stay there; I have no interest in it. But I suppose you must have the full day. Be here all the earlier on the twenty-sixth.”
The clerk promised he would and Carol walked out with a growl. The office was locked up and the clerk went off for home to his children, hoping that one day he would find a replacement for their poor departed mother, little knowing that he was perhaps to find one sooner than he expected.
Carol took her usual dinner in her usual tavern of abstinence. Having read all the latest pamphlets on the sins of sex and the reasons it should be avoided, she went home to bed. She lived in chambers that had once belonged to Martin, a gloomy suite of rooms in a building up a yard where none lived but Carol, all the other rooms let as offices. The yard was so dark that even Carol, who knew its every stone, was fain to grope with her hands, the first groping her hands had done in many years. The fog and frost hung about the black gateway of the house as if the gods of weather had sprayed their thick malevolent seed all over the threshold, as the ectoplasm of the spirits would coat a particularly steamy séance.
There was nothing particular about the knocker on the door except that it was very large, as large as one of Carol’s in fact. It was not breasts that Carol thought of as she approached the door, it was Martin. Carol had not thought of her old partner since the last mention that afternoon and yet how otherwise could it be explained that Carol, having her key in the lock of the door, saw in the knocker without any process of change, not any knocker but Martin.
Martin’s face was not an impenetrable shadow, as the other objects in the yard, but had a light about it. It was not angry but looked aroused, the mouth open, tongue sticking out hard and firm into the cold air. A hand appeared a second later, stretching out and squeezing her left breast, finding the nipple even through her layers of clothing. As Carol looked at the hand, it became nothing but fog, the face no more than a lifeless knocker again.
To say that she was not startled would be untrue, but she put her hand on the key nonetheless, turning it, walking in and lighting her candle. She did pause before shutting the door to look behind it, as if half expecting to see the back of Martin sticking out into the hall. But there was nothing to be seen there so she said, “Pooh!” and closed it tight shut.
The sound of it closing resonated through the house like thunder. Every room seemed to have a separate peel of echoes. Carol was not a woman to be frightened by the echo of a door around her chambers; she was made of sterner stuff than that. She fastened the door, walked acros
s the hall and up the stairs, trimming the candle as she went.
Darkness is cheap and Carol liked it well enough. But before she shut her heavy door, she walked through the other rooms to see all was undisturbed. She recalled the sight of the face in the door long enough to do that.
All was as it should be. Nobody was screwing under the table, nobody touching themselves on the sofa, not since Martin occupied these rooms had that been a common sight. A small fire in the grate was ready for lighting as was a saucepan of gruel on the hob. Quite satisfied, Carol closed the door, locked herself in to secure against surprise, took off her dress and put on her nightshirt, adding her dressing gown and then sitting down with her bowl of gruel in her hands.
It was a low fire she sat before and she was obliged to sit close and brood over it. The tiles around the fireplace were illustrated with quaint designs and yet as she looked, the member of Martin appeared on each one, twitching in the throes of orgasm, the contraction of the muscles visible as if each tile had been blank and he were in the midst of a powerful climax, a rivulet of spunk dribbling out of the tip of the nearest tile and falling down to the grate as if it were as real as day.
“Humbug,” said Carol, looking down at the white spot on the grate. She walked across the room, took several turns and then sat down again. As she threw her head back, she happened to glance up at a disused bell-ended vibrator that sat gathering dust on top of a cupboard. She remembered the day Martin had given it to her. Though she refused to accept it, he insisted and so she brought it home and dumped it up there and there it had remained ever since.
It was with the most inexplicable dread and great astonishment that as she looked, the vibrator began to move of its own accord, buzzing louder and louder until it fell from the top of the cupboard and onto the floor, spinning wildly in circles for half a minute that seemed more like an hour.
The vibrator fell still, succeeded by a clanking noise from deep below the floor, as if some person were dragging heavy chains over the casks in the wine merchant’s cellar. Carol remembered at that moment that Martin mentioned once that he used to like tying people in chains.
The cellar door flew open and the noise grew much louder, as if someone was coming up the stairs before stepping over the mess and walking up the stairs towards her door.
“It’s humbug,” said Carol. “I will not believe it.”
Her complexion changed when without pause, the noise came on through the door and into the room before her very eyes. The dying flame leapt up in the grate and the vibrator buzzed in circles on the floor.
It was Martin, naked and bound in chains, ropes around his middle. The chains were made of bent and twisted sex toys bound together. The ropes consisted of stockings, Mary Jane shoes, nappies, frocks, cloth dolls, all tied and twisted together.
Though Carol looked the phantom up and down and through and through from top to bottom to feet, she fought against her senses. “What do you want with me?” Carol asked, as cold as ever despite the phantom in the midst of bondage before her.
“Much.” It was Martin’s voice, no doubt about that.
“Who are you?”
“Ask me who I was, not who I am.”
“Who were you?”
“In life, I was your partner in the business and occasionally the bedroom, Martin.”
“Only that once when I’d had too much to drink. Trust you to bring that up again. Can you sit down?”
“I can sit on that chair, next to that vibrator of yours.”
“It is not mine. I would not own such a thing.”
“Nonetheless, it is the only place I can be seated.”
Carol placed the chair by the fire and Martin lowered himself onto it.
“You don’t believe in me,” observed the ghost.
“I don’t.”
“What evidence would you have of my reality? Do you doubt your own senses?”
“A little thing may affect them. A disorder of the organs might cheat the mind. You could be a thwarted belch or a bit of meat in my eye. Indeed there is more of gravy than grave about you.”
Carol didn’t often crack jokes but had done so to distract her attention and keep down her arousal, for the sight of the spectre’s naked body was making her think of her own body. Part of her that she had almost forgotten existed began to throb with desire for the first time in years. To sit staring at that enormous member played the deuce with her. There was something about the sight of such wanton nudity that reminded her briefly of her own youthful years, spent in the pursuit of such activities that had long become a part of her distant past. She would not allow herself to give in to such thoughts; there was no gain from it, after all.
“You see this carrot?” said Carol, picking up a scrawny specimen from her plate.
“I do.”
“I have but to use this on myself and stop just before a climax and I will be persecuted for the rest of my days by fantasies of group sex with an entire cricket team. The illness of desire is brought on by thinking of spunk filling me. In short, humbug, I say. Humbug.”
At this, the spirit began to cry out, his chains shaking, his bonds straining to hold him in place as he made such a loud cry that Carol held on tight to her chair to save herself from spontaneously climaxing from the sound of such manly abandon as she had not heard for many years. “Oh, why do you trouble me, dreadful apparition?”
“Do you believe in me coming like this before your gaze?” As he spoke, from the tip of him a drop of creamy white seed emerged as if he were being stroked by invisible spirits.
“I do if I must, but why come in front of me? Surely such a thing should only be carried out in private if at all?”
“It is required of every healthy adult in the age of Victoria, that they should fuck far and wide. If this is not done in life, they are condemned forevermore to do so after death. Oh woe is me for not sleeping with more people when I had the chance during my years on earth. If I had done more then, I would not yearn for so much now.”
Again the spectre moaned, shaking its chains and reaching a shuddering climax.
“You are fettered in chains,” said Carol, trembling with desire. “Tell me why.”
“I wear the chains I forged in life,” replied the ghost. “I made it link by link without even knowing it was being done. Is its pattern strange to your eyes? Did you never suspect I was an ardent fan of age play?”
Carol trembled more and more, her core throbbing for attention as Martin fingered one of the bonds around his thigh.
“Or would you prefer to know the weight and length of coils you bear upon yourself? Each time you turn down sex, each humbug you utter, each person you refuse to indulge, another length is added and your chains were this long and this tumescent seven years ago. You have ignored the calls of your body a long time since then.
Carol glanced around as if expecting to find herself tied down by fifty fathoms of dildo shaped chains though she saw nothing. “Martin,” she implored. “Tell me more, speak some little comfort to me.”
“I have no comfort to give. It shall come from elsewhere as you shall come elsewhere. And come you must, Carol. My time is nearly done. Listen to me!”
“I will, but don’t say that a hard on must ever go inside me. That time is long ended.”
“I have sat here, invisible, many a day and watched you refuse to masturbate. I saw you that time you were so cold you pushed a finger into your posterior to warm it. I saw the excitement in your eyes and the sadness when you forced it out again, as if you thought you were watched. You were watched and I saw your desire, much as you tried to crush it. There is still the spark of need in you, a chance yet for you to escape my fate.”
“You were always a good friend to me. Tell me what I must do and I will do it.”
“You will be spanked by three spirits.”
“Any other way?” Carol’s countenance fell low at the very thought of such a thing. “Is that the only chance I have? Surely I must be able to avoid
such unpleasant activity.”
“It is your only chance. You must let them spank you, hard, fast, and in whichever position they see fit.”
“I’d rather not, if it’s all the same to you.”
“Without their visits you will not be able to shun the path I tread. The first spirit will come tomorrow when the bell tolls one and they should all come in turn shortly afterwards, if you understand my meaning. By which I mean they may come in you.”
“Couldn’t I take them all at once and have the thing over with?”
“You would like a three on one, I have no doubt. Pretend not to like sex, all you want. But that is not the way. Expect the second on the next night at the same hour. The third upon the next night when the last stroke of your pussy has been done and your sex toy no longer vibrates. Look to see me no more and remember what has passed between us.”
Saying those words, the spectre stood up and walked backwards as the window behind it slowly opened. Martin beckoned Carol to approach and when she did, the spirit sat on the windowsill and looked out.
Carol became aware of confused noises in the air outside, the mixed sounds of countless people in the midst of passionate lovemaking out there in the air. Martin listened for a moment, his hand between his legs until his own ecstatic voice joined in with that of the spirits outside. Out in the night, the phantoms gathered, drawn to his calls and swooping past in the most compromising of positions, displaying themselves for him as he stroked his member.
As he reached a tumultuous climax, he fell from the window, floating into the air to be taken by the other spirits, their hands upon his body, their tongues flicking over his skin.
Carol looked out and saw a number of phantoms who had been known to her in life. There was one voluptuous naked lady crying piteously at being unable to sink onto the erect cock of a man masturbating in an alleyway below, her chains preventing her from reaching his organ before he reached emission. A gentleman was trying to slam his hand against the behind of a woman bent over in the act of tying her shoelaces, her dress riding up as she did so. He merely passed through her and up on the next gust of wind, fury and frustration clear on his phantom features.
