Guinea Pigs

by Peter Marriner

  She had no idea how it had been administered this time, but it was undoubtedly the same strange drug that the General had used back at Muang Lo. She huddled tighter, clasping her arms about her knees, recalling how it had affected her before, suddenly humiliated by the way Bha Duong and his men had set her aside, ignoring her while they indulged other appetites. They knew they only had to wait, she told herself bitterly. They were expecting to make this night a celebration and she was being kept until the last as the piece de resistance! Crouched in her corner, behind the men’s backs, she undermined her own fight for control by allowing her thoughts to dwell upon her helpless vulnerability.

  The courses of the banquet had been innumerable; the toasts seemed interminable. The room was hot and the air thick. Jacqueline found that she was panting for breath. The sudden dissonances of the Chinese music made her start and quiver. The longer she would have to wait, she realised, the less control she would have of her body. She tried to keep it together but her limbs seemed to flow apart like water, the space between her legs a liquid gulf that yearned to be plugged. Soft moans escaped her lips; her feeling of shame in her plight only fuelled the urgency. She couldn’t keep her mind off images of phallic solidity.

  Her fingers crept downwards, but then checked as her eyes fell upon the thick leather belts of the men before her. She contemplated possible punishment with mad feelings of excitement, but at that moment her wild, hot eyes fell instead upon the great brass vessel in front of her, from which the General was just then pouring his drink. It had a fat bulbous body and a long thick tubular neck, enhanced by bulging annular rings and little round knobs, crowned by a thickly rounded lip. Her eyes settled upon it in fascination, tongue wetting her lips as she imagined how that would feel thrust up into her... filling her gap... like a solid stopper ...

  “None of that, you bitch!” The General’s strong fingers plucked Jacqueline’s free from where they had unconsciously sunk into the soft clasp of her vagina. She cried out, but he ignored her protest with an evil grin, dragging her out from her retired corner behind the feasters and thrusting her into their midst; scattering the glasses and bottles and almost overturning the lamp. With the eating coming to an end, the old woman had brought in pipes of opium for a few men who desired it. The sweet and deadly fumes made Jacqueline’s head swim and rational thinking difficult; the familiar fantasies mingled with the reality of her position. She was crouching naked and helpless, trying to subdue her sexual excitement before a dozen watching men. She knew they could take her, one or all if they wished, and the thought only excited her the more. She couldn’t control her own body or conceal her randiness. She looked desperately from one to another. They seemed exasperatingly, to be in no hurry, lolling in surfeited indolence, laughing and talking. She had to do something.

  “Please... Please... Give it... Give me it... please.” Sobbing, she crawled in a wide circle, pausing wherever fingers reached out to poke or tweak her burning flesh, turning her rump towards them like a randy bitch, acknowledging their mastery over her.

  “Please... give it to me...” She postured before their replete and grinning commander, whining eagerly as his greasy fingers slid and teased between her splayed thighs.

  “You’re in too much of a hurry, Jacqueline!” He pushed her away so that she wailed, aggrieved. He had made her like this! She deserved to be fucked! That part of her brain still sentient was aware that he was playing with her; the rest of body was helplessly imitating a bitch in heat, a fantasy female spaniel like the one her family had owned, eager to be mounted and penetrated by any big randy dog. The General was lighting a fresh cigar. He waved her away.

  She turned to the other men, sending dishes and bowls flying in her haste to stir their languid interest into action, arching her back and splaying her thighs, spreading her nether lips with shaky fingers to tempt them, panting wildly and waggling her rear. But she only found the torment worsened by teasing fingers that reached out. In desperation she lunged once again for the long-necked brass pot, only to have it snatched from her grasp.

  “An experiment!” The General heaved himself upright, a cruel smirk on his face as he surveyed the condition the drug had imposed upon this once demure young woman. “We’ll see if we can actually cure this lechery of yours, Jacqueline!”

  Other hands impelled her towards him. Her bewildered brain struggled to make sense of his words, but she was unable to restrain her excitement at the prospect of being given his attention. She wriggled with uncontrolled lust at the very idea. She thrust her bottom recklessly high, splaying her thighs wide in mute invitation, showing them her vagina, visibly red and swollen. She felt something press in a firm line across her rump, feeling cool across her hot flesh.

  “See if a dose of this will cure you!”

  A start of fear ran through her as she suddenly realised just how he intended to cure her. With a bamboo cane! Yet she had no thought of protesting, but waited, cringing, with a breathless little whimper in strangely thrilling anticipation, to be ‘cured’.

  There was an impressive Wheeeppp! Crackkk!!! Instantly following. Jacqueline squealed, head jerking, eyes starting, mouth opening. The cane was even more effective than the belt she had reason to remember so well. She fell on her face with a howl, but it held a note of excitement despite the pain. A fiery line ran across her cheeks, but her bottom still remained uplifted.

  “Has that cured it, Jacqueline?” the General demanded.

  “Nooo... ooo ...!” Jacqueline moaned unthinkingly.

  Wheeeppp! Wheeeppp! Wheeeppp! Before she could amend her answer, Bha Duong used the whippy cane vigorously three more times, while Jacqueline grovelled on her belly, emitting howls of equal vigour, the thin red lines multiplying across her rounded butt.

  “How does?” Wheeeppp! “That feel?” Wheeeppp! “Now?” Wheeeppp!

  He punctuated his enquiry with strokes of the supple bamboo. The gibbering recipient ground her belly into the carpet, wallowing in a confusion of pain and excitement, a weird amalgam of responses and desires, reality and fantasies, welded together by the cane. Her drug-induced desire for penetration vied for dominance with the fire lancing across her haunches and both in turn fed images of sexual domination that satisfied something of that urge. The thrashing she was receiving became confused in her mind with the sexual satisfaction she had anticipated. Pain and ecstasy intermingled and she reverted to fantasy. She imagined herself a slave girl being thrashed by her master for importuning the males. Confused words escaped her. “Wicked... I... thrashing... deserve... I...”

  “So you want to be punished eh?”

  “Yes... Oh yes... Master... Oh yes,” she sobbed, writhing and squealing in actual relief as the cane struck in response, across bottom and thighs. Laughing half incredulously at the ludicrous result of his cruel experiment, the General plied his cane with interested skill, spacing the red lines closely across Jacqueline’s blazing flesh. Yet even this she accepted, emitting only teeth gritted squeals, clapping her thighs together at each stroke, then slowly opening them again to receive the next one, agonised and ecstatic by turns, exhibiting all the appearance of approaching orgasm.

  In the end it was the man who found the whole process too much for equanimity. Throwing down the bamboo, he heaved Jacqueline back onto all fours. Her bright red, cane-striated backside was presented abjectly to him and he mounted her doggy fashion right there and then.

  “Ahhh... Ohhh... Yesss... Ahhh... Yesss,” she howled as his hugely ramming cock drove into her arching body from behind. The pain of the thrashing had added to her lust rather than cure it.

  Jacqueline orgasmed almost at once, but by the time Bha Duong, slowed by over-indulgence finally reached his own climax his buffeting of her cane-tender rear end in repeated waves of pain had fully excited her again. Together they floundered amid the scattered remains of the feast, in a manner that promised a lavish bill for brea
kages. This triumphant finish drained the satiated libertine to his last drop, and even satisfied Jacqueline for some time.

  It by no means finished her entirely, though. Eventually she was driven to go around the circle of men once more, crawling on hands and knees, her hair like a tangled bush, sweat gleaming on her body and limbs, her backside striped with throbbing weals that were no longer enough to distract her. Panting like a dog on the heat and reeking of the smoke filled room, she presented herself before each one. Several men followed their leader’s example and took her where she knelt, like dogs with a bitch on heat, quickly and brutally, before thrusting her onward to the next. Still not enough to exhaust her though. Once round failed to satisfy her need. She was slower to react now, but the power of the drug she had been primed with was inexorable.

  By now most of the men were indifferent to her, some smoking opium, reclining in an opiate haze, the others too sleepy or too drunk.

  At length the General, tiring of her sobbing importunity, roused two men and had them move Jacqueline outside. Taking her by the hair and limbs, the three of them dragged her, squirming and protesting, out into the night air. The sudden coolness subdued her a little. Though the night was mild, the contrast with the overheated interior of the opium den made the wind seem sharp. The sweat dried swiftly on her skin as they carried her, groping their way about the back of the building. At last one of the men, casting about in the dark, found what he were looking for. He summoned the others; stirring up with his foot what Jacqueline in her dazed state imagined must be a large guard dog. She could hear its restraining chain jingling audibly as it moved, a pale shape in the darkness.

  Dogs had cocks, she thought wildly, no longer fighting her captors. She would have to get down on all fours the same as this beast. There was a lot of grunting and kicking and then she was thrust forward, going down upon hands and knees quite eagerly.

  The pale figure was her husband. Roger still naked, was on his knees crouched low, his hands secured behind him, a big brass collar about his neck fastening him by a chain to a stout metal ring in the house wall. Her escort’s kicks had turned him over onto his back, ready for Jacqueline’s approach. For a moment she couldn’t adjust her thinking. He couldn’t mount her like that. But the sight of his flopping penis focussed her mind and she launched herself between his thighs, using fingers, mouth and tongue with lustful haste. Panting from her frantic efforts, she mounted the erection she had created as soon as it was stiff enough to stand. She straddled him and began to ride him for all she was worth.

  Chuckling, the General gave orders. His men stooped over the coupling pair, busy but unopposed by two people heedless in their preoccupation. They were being fastened intimately together again, legs, arms, waist and neck, Roger’s collar and chain this way serving to secure them both. For a moment the three men stood over the heaving pair, watching as their pale bodies twined naked on the bare earth in the fitful moonlight, watching as Jacqueline, still sex hungry, strove to keep her husband up to the mark, and he to satisfy her. At length, concluding that their captives were adequately disposed of, the trio strode back, laughing, to continue their pleasures indoors.

  So until dawn and Jacqueline’s exhaustion almost coinciding brought release, the unfortunate husband less recently drugged, was left to try to meet his wife’s alternately tearful and savage demands. Twice they made so much noise as to bring the old woman out to berate them, the second time to deluge them with the contents of a water pot as one might discourage a pair of illicitly coupling dogs.

  Fortunately, dawn brought no immediate reveille, since the General and his men slept late for once. As the sun crept above the surrounding peaks a few men came drifting in, heading towards their first pipes of the day, addicts nearly lost, gaunt creatures clad in rags, their heads wrapped in dirty turbans. They only stared with opaque black eyes as they passed the exhausted chained-up couple, who lay where they had managed to inch themselves for shelter against the dawn chill, under a pile of straw being munched by a resentful mule.

  More mules kept arriving as the morning wore on, until a string of them were being loaded up in front of the inn. Jacqueline and Roger, separated once more, were each allotted to a mule, lashed onto packsaddles as to the bicycles like inanimate bundles, watched enigmatically by the haggard habitués. Worn out by her night long exertions, Jacqueline nevertheless felt the horror of their disinterest. It was made clear to her that her world had been changed out of all recognition. Even General Bha Duong, the only figure who still connected her with the world she had lost, had changed in character from the slightly dubious hanger-on he had once seemed.

  She remembered his words about the place where he was king. Certainly the people here seemed to give him such honours. The mule men were respectful and the old crone who kept the place bobbed servile curtseys this morning. Their attitude to his captive cargo seemed to imply that the pair was regarded rather as valuable specimens than as human beings; like rare pandas en-route to some millionaire’s zoo.

  From the inn of the opium smokers the caravan rode northwards over grassy highland pastures and rocky ridges, a smaller more compact line now, with the escort also mounted, riding before and behind the pack animals. On the afternoon of the second day, following a sharp ridge above a wild and precipitous gorge they came upon an unexpected valley. The trail climbed up and down, winding among boulders and slabs that only a mule could have negotiated in safety. Far below a river ran half hidden in the gloomy depths like broken pieces of silver braid. Ahead of them the gorge opened out into greenery and cultivation, its slopes less steep, supporting wherever possible a mosaic of terraced fields with stone-built hamlets clinging like swallows nests to the rocks. The lower slopes were clothed with a thick growth of bamboo, while the towering peaks above extended fans of tumbled rock and scree down to the very margins of the fields. The mule trail wound around the mountain sides, skirting the upper limit of cultivation, following the contours and crossing the frequent cataracts by bridges of stone and timber. The view of the upper part of the valley was blocked by a thrusting buttress of rock, which extended halfway across it, seeming almost to divide it in two. Several hundred metres sheer in height; it brooded over the whole like a giant fortress, rising from foundations in the virgin forest. Clearly it must block their progress.

  Closer to, the multitude of pits and scars that marked its grey cliff face resolved into man-made workings, rows of regular sized openings like windows, arched doorways in mid air, some connected by rickety looking timber galleries, some only by the lines of holes for vanished props. Here and there, a spidery ladder or timber stair still seemed to give access between the various levels. Closer still, grea, carved figures blurred by centuries of weather gave a clue to its origin, as an ancient cave temple of some forgotten Buddhist sect.

  At a fork in the trail, the caravan escort turned off, trotting down the slope at gathering speed with much yelling and rejoicing, towards a cluster of stone houses, leaving the pack animals with their burdens to continue alone towards the rock. The mules’ hooves rang a little hollow as the precipice beetled over them, for here the way became a wooden gallery floored with layers of earth carried upon timber props across the face of the rock. The trail ended here, widening into a natural ledge before a dark portal, wide and arching, cut into the rock face. This was their final destination.

  Before the yawning entrance a bustle of activity greeted the arrivals. Men and women, clad alike in olive drab tunic and trousers, came to help the muleteers to unload and carry the goods away into various recesses of the rock. The General, dismounting, was welcomed by a slim, alert woman of Chinese appearance clad in a white overall like a lab-coat, whose proprietorial air seemed to denote either wife or an established mistress.

  The figures of guardian demons carved on the entrance arch, worn but still identifiable, glowered down upon the two shivering naked prisoners, lifted like the other loads, from off th
e mules. Carried forward, they were dumped upon all fours before the General and his female companion who coolly ignored them, continuing a conversation they had begun, the woman speaking an American English as if it was natural to her.

  “You took such chances, my sweet. It was a great risk to move so soon.”

  “It was necessary,” Bha Duong said easily. “And the Centre was vulnerable. There wasn’t much more to be had out of them. That fool of an Englishwoman made so much fuss, there was always the chance that our secret might be exposed.”

  “You were always over-confident with those Western women!” Her black eyes flashed.

  “They were always so easy to deal with,” the General grinned. “They are only female barbarians, after all. This one was so stupid that she told her husband before I could secure her.”

  “A little more patience would have been better.”

  “Not so amusing?” he smirked. “However, the remedy was successful. The Centre was totally destroyed and all its files with it. Even if government troops regain control of Muang Lo, in the present crisis they wont be inclined to rake through the cold ashes, nor bother identifying charred corpses.”

  The woman nodded. “The news from satellite TV is bad. Wars, rebellions, riots, risk everywhere, bad business for us. We need law and order - to a certain extent.”

  “Never fear,” the General said breezily. “People easily become hysterical. Whatever damage is done, things will be pulled back into order by the time our new product is ready.”