by Ophidia Cox
“I could torture you, if that’s what you’d like. Or, if you’d like to bring with you a slave of your own, I can torture your slave for your pleasure while you watch.” He glanced sharply at Max. “I can’t torture your dog, though. That’s illegal.”
“Of course.”
“Or, I could just show you the wares I have for sale.”
“Perhaps it’s best if you just do that, then. What...wares...would you recommend?”
“That would depend, madam, on whether you’d be wanting to torture men or women.”
Sylvia was glad of the darkness and the light behind her. It meant Vaughn wouldn’t be able to see how flushed with embarrassment her face had become. She reassured herself that he was a salesman, and it didn’t make sense that he would do anything to her that would jeopardize his pitch. “Well, men, I guess.”
“In that case, any of these items here would be suitable for the amusing and painful pleasuring of the male slave.” He gestured to a wall covered with display cases of nasty surgical objects.
Sylvia stared at some long metal rods formed into elongated S-shapes and arranged in order of increasing diameter. “What are they?”
“Those are sounds, madam. They’re for probing the urethra.”
Urethra. Biology lesson. That meant down some bloke’s willy. All of the men Sylvia had known would have squirmed and cringed at the very idea, and yet there was something appealingly vengeful about it. Why was it men always expected–almost considered it their prerogative–to penetrate women, and why did they conceitedly expect them to enjoy it just because? Why was there no reciprocity in it, and why shouldn’t a woman penetrate a man? Why do people have it in their heads that one way is natural, and anything else is wrong? After a pause, she asked, “Isn’t that dangerous? Can’t you get infections doing things like that?”
Vaughn shook his head vigorously. “All my torture equipment is manufactured to the highest standards from surgical steel and Teflon. If it’s sterilized and used correctly, I personally guarantee no infections will result from it. However, for reasons of safety and ultimate enjoyment of these sounds, I recommend you first restrain your slave. Would you like to see some very fine racks of my own patented design?”
Sylvia glanced back up to the light from the tents above. Much as the sounds were interesting in a perverse way, the dungeon and the man were making her uncomfortable. “Uh, I really have to go now. I don’t have long, and I want to see all the exhibits. If I have time later, I’ll come back and have a look.”
The man’s half-hidden face cracked an unsettling grin. “Not a problem. Come back, any time. I’m always happy to help out a novice domme. After all, everyone was a beginner once. If you don’t manage to get back before the sideshow moves on, you can always mail order any of the apparatus you see here from my website. It’s vaughnstortureshop dot com.”
Sylvia climbed the steps. There was no point hanging around here. Max hadn’t caught so much as a whiff of anything, and going plain clothes wasn’t going to work in this situation. She might as well walk quickly around the rest of the tents and go home. At least then she could say she had patrolled the whole area if the superintendent did ask. Not that if she told him it would make her feel any more adequate. She was doing a half-arsed job here, but she couldn’t see any alternative. If only she’d been assigned something that wasn’t so unsettlingly weird.
She was nearly at the exit when she noticed a shop window crowded with chrome dummies, all of them modeling ornate eye masks reminiscent of the masquerade balls of the fifteenth century and glitzy fetish costumes that didn’t cover very much. Sylvia found her attention drawn to a leather harness. The outer surfaces of it were decorated with tiny scales of iridescent electric blue, like the wings of a butterfly viewed under a microscope, and the straps were riveted together with sapphire-like blue gems and silver rings. At the corner of the shop window, by the door, a placard read, Costumes custom-made to order. All sizes catered for.
If she went about here barefaced and wearing ordinary clothes, she’d never get anywhere, and Pikesley would be on her back again. And she ran the risk that someone she knew would recognize her. Go undercover, Pikesley had said. This was as undercover as it got. Sylvia closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. She could do this. One step at a time. If she bought it, she wouldn’t have to wear it. She could decide later.
She looped Max’s leash to a rail outside and pushed open the door. A man with studs implanted in the skin of his scalp, dressed in a leather gilet, looked up and pulled his finger out of his nose at the sound.
“Hi, I’d like to buy the costume from the window, if I may.”
“Cool,” said the man. “Which one?”
Sylvia pointed out the harness to him.
“I can set the machine up now, but you’ll have to wait an hour for it.”
“Is it okay if I pick it up tomorrow instead?”
The man sniffed. “That’s fine. You need to pay for it now, though. It’s not returnable because it’s custom made to your measurements.”
“That’s all right.” Sylvia handed him her card.
The man sniffed again, and ran it through the reader and handed it back to her. “Now all you need to do is stand in my machine for a moment.” The man indicated a door to a little booth.
“Do I have to take anything off?” Sylvia asked nervously.
The man sniffed again. “No. It can see through stuff like that. It’s like them things they use at the airports.”
Sylvia stood still in the dark booth while machines chuntered and thunked and an emerald beam passed over her from several different angles.
After the scan had finished, she thanked the man and went to the door.
“Just before you go,” he interrupted. “Not to sound personal, but if you’re planning on wearing this costume to the Sideshow, you might want to do something about the bush.” He made a pointed glance at Sylvia’s crotch. “That kind of thing doesn’t go down so well here.”
Chapter 3
Sylvia got out of work at three. She dropped Max off at her flat because she had to go out to buy some things.
When she returned, she went to the back of the house and unlocked the kitchen door. “Hey, Max.”
Max raised his head, face breaking into an idiotic dog-grin, his tongue lolling from his lower jaw. He didn’t stand up, but a string of saliva began to descend from his mouth toward the floor.
“Hey, laddie.” Sylvia unwrapped the sheep bone from the carrier bag and held it out to him. “You’re a good lad. Here you go.”
Max took the bone and began to lick it. It would make a horrible bloody mess on the floor, but she would have to clean that up later. She checked Max had water, locked the door, and went back to her car. Even though she’d only been gone a few moments, it was already intolerably hot inside. She turned the air-conditioning on full blast.
After she parked, she walked to the Sideshow and paid for her ticket before immediately going to the shop, where she collected her costume. She’d brought with her a bag containing a butterfly mask with a plume of peacock feathers that she’d bought from a party shop in her lunch break, as well as a pair of thigh-high patent leather stiletto boots and matching full-arm gloves she’d worn years ago when she’d been an undergraduate who went to a fancy-dress party as a witch.
In the locker room, she found a line of changing cubicles at the far end. One step at a time. If she didn’t want to do this, she could back out at any point. Keep it calm and in control. Right. In quick first, lest anyone recognize her. She chose one of the end cubicles and dumped the bag on the bench in there. She’d stuffed the parcel she’d picked up into the bag and left the shop in a hurry, and it was only now in the privacy of the cubicle she dared examine it.
It was a very plain brown box tied up with ordinary string. The box bore no writing or manufacturer’s logo to suggest where it might have originated or what it contained. Inside, the familiar iridescent sequined straps had been wrapped in
tissue paper. After Sylvia had unwrapped it and straightened it out, it took her some minutes to work out how it fit to the human body, and which part of it was the front or back, or the top or bottom.
She was going to have to take off everything, she realized with an inward cringe. Yesterday she’d thought only about wanting to blend in, and now the thought of wearing this ridiculous thing daunted her. What had possessed her to choose something so extreme? She thought back to the performers on the first night she’d come here, how their costumes were made more ridiculous by only covering parts of the body normally thought of as nonsexual–the clowns with holes cut out of their costumes, the ringmaster with only his shoes and his necktie on. Then she remembered the reason why she’d picked this, because although it was revealing, it still covered the areas that mattered, by means of a strap under the crotch and small removable pasties secured to the straps that passed around the breasts with four narrower straps. And it was a pretty color, and she would be wearing the mask. It wasn’t like it would be possible for anyone to recognize her.
She undressed and bundled her clothes into the bag, trying to avoid catching sight of her reflection in the full-length mirror to the side. She’d rid herself of “the bush” as the shopkeeper had called it last night, using a waxing kit she’d bought from Boots pharmacy, after researching the procedure on the Internet. She had read on most of the sites that it was customary to leave some hair as a “landing strip” as they called it, but it had been too fiddly and she’d ended up removing it all. Pasting the hot wax onto the sensitive areas between her legs had felt weird and sensual, and mustering the courage to rip the hair away had been oddly exhilarating, yet the feel of skin against skin down there and the finished look reminded her disconcertingly of when she’d been a child impatiently awaiting the onset of puberty so she could be like all the other girls. Also since she’d torn out the hairs between her buttocks it seemed to be impossible to break wind silently.
She put on the boots first, thinking it might be hard to bend over wearing the costume. It had been about five years since the only time she’d worn them, and she did wonder if they’d still fit. They were a bit of a close fit around the thigh when she did the zips up, but nothing too bad. It felt silly to be wearing them with nothing else.
The harness came next, her breathing sounding loud in the confines of the cubicle. It took some experimentation to work out what she had to undo in order to get into it. She settled for unbuckling the crotch strap, all of the ones around the waist, and one of the shoulders. It fit perfectly, although the leather creaked every time she breathed, and it wasn’t something she’d describe as being comfortable.
The mask was very light, made mainly from a superthin synthetic material with a silky yet slightly rubbery texture, decorated with feathers and iridescent scales and fine fibers that drifted in the still air. It stuck to the skin around Sylvia’s eyes and the bridge of her nose when she pressed it into position. The sides of the mask had flexible hooks for twisting behind the ears for extra security.
She fumbled inside the bag for the pocket of her jeans and found the cylinder of lipstick. It was colored a deep bruised purple, like squashed deadly nightshade berries. Turning to face the mirror, she squinted through the feathery fronds of the mask that had wandered in front of her vision to apply it, then wound the lipstick down and snapped the cap back on. She dropped it back into the bag and pulled on the gloves, before stepping back to examine the overall look.
She could have been anyone. She didn’t look like Constable Sylvia Price any more, and that was all that mattered. Sylvia had never really hated her body, but she’d neither ever particularly liked it. She supposed she had been more self-conscious of it when she was younger and made an effort with men, but that didn’t matter now. She didn’t tend to think about it that much. It was just there. It didn’t frighten children and animals, it was healthy, and it all worked properly, and that was all Sylvia expected any reasonable person could want. She would be able to blend in here, she hoped.
As a final touch, she attached her police handcuffs to one of the D-rings on the waist strap of her costume.
She left the cubicle and found an empty locker in which to put her clothes, pressing her finger to the biometric panel to calibrate it to her. She couldn’t see anyone else around, and a paranoia that she would step out there to find everyone dressed normally came over her.
The presence of a man and a woman in the first tent allayed her fears, and she found herself taking in details of their very revealing costumes she normally would have been too embarrassed to examine. The man’s cock was riveted to his balls in some sort of metal chastity device, and he had a gas mask strapped over his face and his arms laced together in two leather sleeves behind his back. He wore jackboots, but aside from that he was naked. The mask at the back was attached to a lead, the other end of which was held by a dark-skinned woman with wild orange hair, who was dressed in a gold fishnet body stocking and stilettos. Her nipples were covered by vulgar pointy brass shapes that protruded through the holes of the fishnet. The only thing concealing her genitalia was a similar brass-colored thing, also shaped like an obscene exaggeration of nature, wedged in the crack between her outer lips.
“Hey,” she said, and Sylvia realized with a stab of fear that she was looking back. But this was an approving, curious examination with a smile, not the frowning, distrustful glares she’d received as an outsider yesterday. “Cute costume.”
“Thanks,” said Sylvia, flustered. “Yours is awesome too. Don’t think I’d ever have the guts to wear something like that!”
The woman winked at Sylvia. “It just takes practice to be comfortable with the more risqué stuff, that’s all.” She indicated her companion with her thumb. “Want to borrow him? I feel more like watching today.”
“No thanks, I’m just looking,” said Sylvia in a hurry. “But thanks for the offer.” She left the couple and went outside. The events at the arena hadn’t yet started, but several stalls and attractions were being set up around the edge.
“Hey, lady!”
Sylvia looked in the direction of the voice and found a man in a suit seated at a desk with an auctioneer’s gavel. “Hey. Are you a pony girl looking for an hostler?”
“I’m a...” Sylvia thought quickly back to what the dungeon master had said to her yesterday night. “...a domme.”
“Oh, I see. We’re having an auction, for charity. Would you care to buy a slave today?”
“I... I didn’t bring any money.”
The man smiled in a way Sylvia thought much too benign for someone who claimed to auction slaves. “Would you like to offer yourself in an auction then? You can name a charity of your choice, and I’m sure there’ll be some rich sub in need of a wonderful nasty mistress such as yourself.”
Sylvia came closer to the auctioneer. The area being set up around him featured lines of plastic seats and a dais upon which his desk was set. “Is it, well, binding if I do it?”
The man laughed. “Of course not. Think of it as like a blind date. It’s just a bit of fun to raise money for charity. You can leave any time you like, and you won’t be expected to do anything you don’t want to do. The Cyberkink Sideshow takes RACK seriously.”
Sylvia didn’t know what RACK was, but she got the gist of what the man was saying and didn’t want to embarrass herself by asking. “What do I have to do?”
“I’ll give you a number. Just be back before five when the auction starts.” The man tore off a raffle-ticket page and handed it to her. “Enjoy the Sideshow!”
She decided to kill some time by wandering around the perimeter to look at the stalls. Some of them sold fairly run-of-the-mill items such as vibrators and sex toys. There was a vacuum pumping shop, and one that sold chocolate and other sorts of sauce that were designed to coat the body so someone else could lick them off. There was also a candy floss shop, but the sticks the candy floss was dispensed from had dildos instead of handles.
It
was still ten minutes before five when she arrived back at the auction, but already a significant crowd had gathered. Sylvia took her place on the seats among a number of other “auctions.” Her buttocks stuck to the plastic chair, but at least she didn’t feel as hot and uncomfortable as she did when she’d come here in her police uniform.
Probably no one would bid on her at any rate.
The auction got underway. Sylvia’s number was nine, so she watched what the other auctions did when their numbers were called. They stood beside the auctioneer on the dais while he read a description of them, and some of them made jokes or described what they wanted to do. One man said he wanted to be whipped, and a woman said she had a rubber fetish. A small man got up and said he wanted a big fat lady to sit on his face.
By the time Sylvia’s number was called, she felt as if she was about to be sick. She climbed up onto the dais and stood next to the auctioneer’s desk. The assembled crowd looked up at her. She could almost sense the gazes of some of them running up and down her body, perhaps wondering about the small areas her costume didn’t reveal. She’d kind of thought of it as just a way to blend in and find out more about the Sideshow. She hadn’t expected this reaction. Doing this was drawing attention to her, rather than staying inconspicuous.
Sylvia recognized the man from the dungeon, the one in the executioner’s costume. He stared at her, face inscrutable under his mask.
“Now then,” began the auctioneer. “This delightful creature of punishment is Madam Butterfly. Is there anything you’d like to say to your bidders, madam?”
“Hi,” said Sylvia awkwardly. “I’m kind of new to this. I’m sort of a trainee domme.”
The bidders laughed in a good-natured way.
“I’m not into hurting people really. I’m just here ’cause I want to tie up some cute guys and have some fun.”
The auctioneer smiled. “Well, that sounds like an excellent proposition to me. Who’d like to open the bidding for this lovely lady at five quid?”
