He sat down in front of the screen, his right index finger moving over the touch sensitive pad, rows and columns of numbers and symbols scrolling before his eyes in a jumble that would have been meaningless to just about anyone else. Except, he realised, to whoever had set up that complex website connection. Whoever he - or she - was would soon decipher this little lot; access codes, barring codes, safety codes - everything.
Turning away from the VDU, Marlon picked up the curious helmet which lay on the side table, turning it over slowly in his hands, eyes narrowed in concentration. Time was running out now and this had to be done right, otherwise there was no telling what these bastards might do to Clarissa. The image of her impaled upon that awful stand was burned into his memory forever. And he didn’t doubt for a moment when they told him that what they had done to the poor creature so far was nothing compared to the fate that awaited her if he failed to deliver.
Marlon made a final check on the multi-ribbon connector cable, nodded to himself, raised the helmet and slowly lowered it onto his head.
‘Time to go walkies, sweetmeat.’
Christina stood framed in the open doorway to Clarissa’s cell, high black boots, black waistcoat-styled jacket and black gloves all gleaming in contrast to the pure white silk blouse and leggings she wore. In her right hand she carried a vicious looking riding crop, which she now pointed at Clarissa.
‘We’ve got a bit of time to kill, waiting for your brother to come across,’ she said, ‘and I have a very low boredom threshold. C’mon, move that fat butt, or do you want me to put a nice red design on it for you?’
‘What do you want with me?’ Clarissa cringed back, but there was nowhere to retreat to in the tiny room. Christina chuckled, but it was not a very pleasant, nor humorous sound.
‘What do I want, indeed?’ she replied, stepping into the cell and reaching out to clip a leather thong to the front of Clarissa’s collar. ‘Well, to start with, it’s a very nice day out there and I fancy some fresh air. We’re very remote up here and there’s some beautiful scenery I like to take in.
‘The problem is,’ she continued, jerking Clarissa into an upright stance, ‘that I don’t enjoy walking. There’s a nice pony trap I can use, but then keeping and grooming ponies is so time consuming, so I prefer to use a different kind of pony - the two legged variety. You!’ she grinned, pulling Christina closer to her and forcing her head back.
‘You’re going to be my pony for the day.’
‘You’re bloody mad!’ Clarissa squealed, trying to fight for her breath at the same time. For a brief second a dangerous light flared in Christina’s eyes, but it faded immediately and she relaxed her grip on her captive slightly.
‘That tongue of yours will get you into trouble,’ she warned. ‘Take care, or I’ll have it cut out. Ponies don’t need tongues, remember.’ She switched the crop into the hand that held the leash and forced her right index finger between Clarissa’s lips and teeth, probing deep and causing Clarissa to retch.
‘And afterwards, once Naylor’s got what he wants from your Marlon,’ Christina went on, ‘I think I’ll keep you as my own personal pony.’ The leather-covered digit pressed against Clarissa’s upper back molars and Clarissa had to fight the urge to bite down, knowing that if she did the consequences didn’t bear thinking about.
‘We’ll have a couple of teeth out either side, top and bottom,’ Christina said. ‘Makes it easier to fit your bit, pony girl. And we’ll have this pretty little face tattooed. I think you’d make a good palomino, don’t you? However, I mustn’t damage the goods too much just yet, must I? Have to let dear Marlon think we’ve taken proper care of you, otherwise he might not play the game.’
Paul Dean had his own private sanctum, also high up in the roof, but at the furthest end of the house from where Marlon worked. His room was also larger than Marlon’s, two of the original servants bedrooms knocked into one, for here Paul stored everything he needed for his work, plus copies - hard copies, so unusual in this electronic age - of everything his original outlines had produced.
The rows of filing cabinets contained scripts, prints of photographs, rough sketches and even copies of the final artworks, originally the work of James Naylor before the artist’s treacherous greed had driven him to try to betray Nadia’s close-knit organisation, and now the creations of the even more talented Sonia Hughes, who had succeeded him just after Paul and Lianne had finally managed to escape Naylor’s fiendish clutches and the even more fiendish attentions of his amazonian henchwoman.
With a barely audible sigh Paul opened a drawer at random, picked out the first file his hand encountered and flipped it open. With a grin, he recognised the manuscript as one of the very first he had ever produced for Nadia. The story line had been developed, enacted by a willing cast that included Gavin, Hazel and a couple of other girls who were no longer involved - it would still be another two and a half years before Lianne had become part of the team - photographed from all angles and videoed too, by Simon Prescott, and the final panels produced with meticulous care by Naylor.
The very first Della de Linkwent cartoon strip; probably a collector’s piece by now, Paul realised, especially in its original artwork form. Not that he had the original artwork. All of that was kept carefully under lock and key in Nadia’s specially constructed vault in the cellar complex; each completed strip, once scanned for printing, sealed in its own fireproof box, inside a fireproof safe, inside a fireproof, bombproof vault of nine inch steel walls and outer jacket of two feet of reinforced concrete.
‘This lot will be worth millions, some day,’ Nadia had once told him, confidently, but Paul knew such lavish security precautions were not there simply to protect the fruits of their combined creative genius. Nadia was very rich - very rich - and did not trust too much to banks. Not simply because they were liable to be robbed, because the average bank was more than secure enough in that respect nowadays, but because, in common with a lot of other incredibly wealthy people, she preferred not to share too much of her fortune with the taxman. And in that way, unless you kept a numbered account in Switzerland, banks were far less secure.
Paul had occasionally tried to estimate what Nadia was really worth, but had given up the attempt each time, for to call her affairs complicated would have been doing them a grave injustice. He knew she had inherited this huge estate and that it had been in her family since the time of Cromwell, at least, and that there were other properties dotted around the country, including at least two hotels, an international shipping company, several magazines and a company that specialised in manufacturing everything from latex suits to pony girl tack; an astonishingly lucrative enterprise to a one time naive young writer.
Nadia Muirhead was worth millions, and she was also generous to her friends and employees. Della de Linkwent and Mary Lou were a terrific commercial success, but Paul doubted whether the strip and its spin-off videos and Internet episodes made enough to justify the huge salaries that most of them now received.
Of course, he could be wrong in that assumption, he supposed. After all, none of them ever had any dealings with the financial end of things, Nadia preferring to handle everything herself, closeted away with her team of three personal accountants for three or four days in every month. She never mentioned money directly and none of the elite team ever broached the subject themselves. Della de Linkwent and Mary Lou just were, and that was that.
Closing the file, Paul replaced it in the drawer and slid it shut on noiseless, well lubricated runners. He wondered whether he would still be standing here in this room in another ten years time, or even five, for he had a dreadful suspicion that the computerised age was fast beginning to make creative writers redundant.
Marlon’s bloody VESTA machine was probably only the tip of the iceberg, crazy though that might seem. Paul could remember his own first computer, a cumbersome black box with two floppy disc drives on the front and a total
memory storage and processing ability that an average modern personal computer could now duplicate a thousand-fold, and in probably one hundredth of the time. Technology was racing forward at an ever-increasing rate, a breakneck speed that Paul, a confirmed Luddite in many ways, found utterly alarming.
He hadn’t wanted any part of the VESTA experiment, at least not when it came to being one of the test subjects himself, but he felt he owed it to Nadia to at least make a show of it. Life was pretty good here and Paul, along with all the other team members, was paid handsomely for doing something an awful lot of people would have willingly paid to do. And he knew that even were the likes of Marlon and their electronic wizardry to remove the need for human creativity, Nadia would never drop him. She was a great believer in loyalty.
Moving to the desk, Paul produced a small key from his jacket pocket and unlocked the top drawer, lifting out the neat grey cash box and placing it on the top. He closed the drawer, sat down and used a second key to open the box in turn. Inside, the carefully folded statements and accounts lay atop an inch thick wad of Swiss thousand franc notes, each of the notes worth something in excess of four hundred pounds sterling, the bundle numbering six hundred notes at the last count.
There were also three very fine diamond rings, each valued conservatively at around twenty-five thousand pounds. But seventy-five thousand pounds’ worth of pressurised carbon and a quarter of a million pounds in cash represented only half of what Paul had managed to squirrel away from his royalties and salary, courtesy of Nadia. Thanks to her nous, he had also invested nearly two hundred thousand pounds over the years, a sum that had all but trebled in the interim.
With two bank accounts and a further account with a very large building society, Paul himself was fast approaching millionaire status. He no longer owned any property; it had seemed stupid keeping on the little mews cottage when he spent virtually all his time here now, and there was always Nadia’s two Spanish villas, or the house in Nassau if any of them fancied a break. But he had lately begun to consider the possibilities of buying a new place, for he had every intention of proposing to Lianne in the very near future, and every confidence she would accept.
Life with Nadia was tremendous whirlwind fun, it was true, but the pages of the calendar never went backwards, and there would have to come a time...
The hateful plastic bondage outfit had finally been removed, but what Christina had selected to replace it was, if anything, even worse, and Clarissa’s initial attempts to resist the dominatrix had met with a beating so severe that she no longer had any fight left in her. Not that there were any marks left showing; Christina was far too expert for that. But every muscle and nerve in Clarissa’s body now seemed to be on fire.
Glaring resentfully, her eyes still tearstained, there was nothing the redheaded artist could do but submit, for the great Dane outweighed her by at least five stone, outreached her by several inches, and carried more muscle than a trained light heavyweight boxer.
First came the rubber helmet, a close fitting latex hood that left only the eyes and mouth showing, two brass ringed apertures permitting air to enter and exit the nostrils. It laced tightly to hug every contour of Clarissa’s skull, a high tubular opening at the crown allowing her flaming hair to emerge in a gloriously cascading ponytail that was emphasised starkly against the black rubber and even dwarfed the two long, high-pointed pony ears that were attached at either side.
The body suit was next, more close-fitting rubber in black, brown and white, giving a dappled effect that was not lost on Clarissa, who also noted that, in addition to the strategically placed rear opening, the suit was cut away at the front to leave her shaven sex mound clearly on display, the added pressure from the stretchy fabric forcing her lower lips to protrude and bulge quite grotesquely. Even worse, there were two round openings through which her nipples now stuck out, the pressure around their bases causing them to distend horribly, so that the nipple rings hung on them like hoops on a fairground stall.
It required a certain amount of patience and the application of generous dustings of talcum powder to fit the garment, for it was intended to hug the body like a new skin. Especially over the hands, for the ends of the arms were shaped into rounded mittens, forcing the fingers into clenched fists and rendering them incapable of any dextrous task whatsoever.
‘Yes, you’ll make a splendid little horsy,’ Christina announced, giving Clarissa’s generously rounded buttocks a hard slap. ‘Nice muscle tone and a good generous rump. We’ll have to find you a nice stallion to mate with eventually.’ She ran a gloved hand down over Clarissa’s latex-covered belly. ‘Have to get this filled up with some pretty new foals, I think,’ she smirked.
Clarissa recoiled from her touch, but the big blonde just found this amusing.
‘Oh yes, my little slut pony, we’re going to have such fun with you.’ She turned and picked up a complex assembly of leather straps, the centrepiece of which was a broad, corset-like girth piece. This she wrapped about Clarissa’s middle, fastening it at the front with a series of five smaller straps and buckles, cinching each until the unfortunate girl felt breathless. However, the adjustments were far from complete, for the two halves of the girth were joined by stout cross lacing in the rear and there remained a gap between them of some three inches, which the powerful blonde now began to reduce in stages, tugging and hauling and seemingly impervious to Clarissa’s squeals of protest.
By the time the gap had been eliminated completely, Clarissa felt as though she were being held in a vice, for this was even tighter than the perspex corset had been and every bit as unyielding, for the polished leather was a good quarter of an inch thick. She stood unsteadily, gulping and gasping, trapped and useless fingers scrabbling helplessly in a futile attempt to release the front buckles.
‘Better remove temptation,’ Christina rasped, and seized Clarissa’s right wrist, buckling a wide studded strap about it and securing it to a ring at the hip of her girth by means of a strong snap link. Moments later, the left wrist had been similarly dealt with and, if there had ever been any chance that the hapless girl might have released those straps, there was certainly none now.
‘Hooves next, I think,’ Christina announced, holding up a pair of curiously shaped knee length boots. Wide-eyed inside her horse’s head mask, Clarissa saw they were designed with extremely high heels and a thick platform sole, but that heels and soul had been moulded together and the shape flared out into the profile of a hoof, on the underside of which was a glittering steel horseshoe.
The hoof boots looked heavy, as indeed they were, as Clarissa discovered when Christina had finished lacing her into them. Experimentally, she tried to shift her stance and the weight dragged even out of proportion to what she had expected.
‘There are lead inserts in the soles and heels,’ Christina smirked. ‘I call these training boots, as they help to build up the leg muscles. Very handy if I decide to race you.’
‘Race me?’ Clarissa echoed, horrified. The blonde’s leering grin grew even wider.
‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘There are plenty of clubs and organisations interested in pony girls, I assure you, and races most weekends. A good thoroughbred can win several thousand pounds if she comes out as overall winner at a meeting.’
‘You’re a bloody barbarian!’ Clarissa shrieked, and immediately wished she’d kept her mouth shut, for the roundhouse kick that landed in her kidneys would have done serious damage, but for the protection the girth corset now afforded them. Even so, the impact sent her sprawling sideways to collapse in an ungainly heap, and it was several seconds before she managed to haul herself unsteadily to her feet again.
‘I think we’ll definitely have that tongue out of your head before too much longer,’ Christina snarled. She moved in on Clarissa and seized the two straps that dangled down from the front of the corset girth, throwing them over Clarissa’s shoulders, crossing them at the back and buckli
ng them tightly to the upper edges of the broader band.
A secondary strap hung down from each at about the level of the bottom of the shoulder blade and these she drew around Clarissa’s upper arms, cinching tightly so that her shoulders were forced painfully back and holding her in an artificially erect posture, a pose which was further accentuated by the addition of a wide leather collar, the upper front edge of which rose to a sharp point, preventing Clarissa from lowering her chin without a great deal of discomfort.
‘And now for your tail,’ Christina said, taking up the article in question, a flowing cascade of black and white hairs, real or artificial it was impossible for Clarissa to say. What was most certainly real was the device to which they were attached, and by means of which the tail was intended to be affixed to her, for the long slender dildo was designed for one orifice only.
Without ceremony Christina forced her victim to bend forward, at least as far as her new harness assembly would permit, kicking her booted ankles as far apart as was possible without losing her balance completely. Clarissa tensed her rectal muscles, but there was to be no respite.
‘If you fight it,’ Christina warned, ‘it’ll hurt for sure. Just relax and it’ll slide in easily. One way or the other, it’s going in, even if I have to hammer it home.’ With a great effort, Clarissa willed herself to relax, but even so the initial entry was far from pleasant. However, as she stood up again and her captor buckled in place the intricate crotch strap assembly that would prevent her from ejecting the invader, her body was already beginning to acclimatise itself and the discomfort rapidly began to give way to sensations of a different sort; sensations Clarissa was determined not to acknowledge.
Vesta - Painworld Page 8
