And, in less than a week, he’d be receiving divorce papers from Marcie.
Beautiful as the artist was, he wouldn’t trade Marcie for her, not even if the artist agreed to marry him and have his babies. He did love his wife.
It occurred to him that he could ask Marcie for permission. This was an once-in-a-lifetime chance that was never going to happen again. He might convince her to give him this as a treasured gift. Especially since he would be forever grateful and there was a ninety-eight percent chance that he wouldn’t win the lottery anyway.
He would never dare ask Marcie for such a thing, but other men here might. And some wives who were more generous and open-minded than Marcie might give their husbands their indulgence.
The fucking option might be a lot more popular than he first imagined.
He smiled at the horny man and said, “I’ll think about it.” And he did think about it. Even if he won the chance to fuck her and declined, his vote would have contributed to making some other man happy, his wife’s boss in the default case. And he would help save the artist from a scourging with that evil-looking whip. That was worth something, too.
Another man caught his eye. “You know what I heard?” the man said. “I heard that if a married man wins the chance to fuck her and can’t do it because his wife is here, the artist is going to get his name and arrange meet him in a hotel room in secret next week. Jeff couldn’t tell everyone that in front of our wives, but that’s what the real deal is. Jeff will even pay for the room. You can ask him yourself if you don’t believe me. He’s around here somewhere.”
Howard heard the same story from several other men before he got to the voting table. It made sense that there had to be some way for the sex option to be attractive to all the men, not just the few single guys who were here.
He wondered if the artist would find fucking two strangers more palatable than getting flogged. Probably. A lot of women didn’t mind a bit of casual, no-strings-attached sex. And the men here were basically good guys. Jeff didn’t invite any losers to his parties.
If Howard had a one-time, no-strings-attached, purely physical bit of fun, would it really hurt Marcie if she never knew?
Howard fingered his badge. He had a hard decision to make.
The voting process was only semi-private. There was a small table on a platform. The table had a foot-high shield on three sides to keep anyone from seeing the badge being slipped into one of the three slots.
No one could see the vote, but everyone could see the voter’s face as he made his decision.
Howard mounted the platform and faced the crowd with his badge in his hand. He looked down at the three slots. As promised, there was a picture of the multi-tailed whip above the first, a picture of a dildo above the next, and a picture of an antique key above the last. Just to ensure that there would be no misunderstanding, the words, “Flog Her”, “Fuck Her”, and “Free Her” were printed below the three slots.
Howard fingered his badge for a long time, still trying to decide. Sex or violence? Each had its merits. Either would be entertaining.
After he finally made his decision, he went off in search of Marcie. She was in the front room keeping company with two other women. All were looking at the artist chained in her cage but no one was talking to her.
Howard had never before seen anyone look so defeated.
He stood at the bars and looked toward the crowd. No one in the room was wearing a badge any longer.
The artist’s fate was decided. There was nothing that she or anyone else could do but wait for the decision to be revealed.
Then the lights dimmed again. Spotlights illuminated the dais as Jeff mounted it. There were three burly men standing beside him. One of them carried an opaque plastic container in his hands.
“Catherine,” he said, “we have counted the votes. Your audience has decided your fate.”
Another spotlight snapped on to illuminate the artist in her chains. This single light was harsh and cast the white-robed figure in sharp, uncompromising light and shadow, a living chiaroscuro.
All of the screens in the room came to life, each showing a live close-up of the artist’s stark face from a slightly different angle.
She raised her head to look across the audience at Jeff and waited.
“I’m sorry to inform you that only eighteen people voted to free you. Less than one-fifth of the people in this room believe in artistic freedom.”
Catherine moaned and hung her head again.
“One third of the voters, thirty-three votes, wanted to see you fucked.” He paused, and then said, “That leaves the largest portion, forty-eight votes, in favor of flogging.” His voice was as grave as an undertaker’s. “Almost half of your audience wants to see you suffer for your art. Your fate is to be punished with ten lashes of the cat o’ nine tails.”
Howard turned to look at Catherine directly. Her lip was trembling and tears were welling in her eyes. He wondered if she were reacting more to the prospect of imminent suffering or to the betrayal by the people that she had tried to serve with her art.
What other outcome could she have expected? She had given her body over for the enjoyment of the men in this room. Those were the husbands of women who were older and less attractive than her. She had set herself in competition with the women who were deciding her fate. Of course they were going to want to see her punished.
He thought about the vote count. That number could have been reached by the women’s votes alone, but he doubted that. Some of the women here must have wanted to free her, if just to get her out of sight and mind as quickly as possible.
To get forty-eight votes, some of the men must have wanted to see her flogged as well. He wondered if any woman had voted to see her fucked.
Then her realized that the voters’ faces were publicly visible when their badges were slid into the slots. Videos of everyone’s faces when they voted would be included in the documentary. The artist would know who voted for which fate when she viewed the videos from tonight because the badges would have been recorded when they were slid through the slots. Anyone who saw the final video would see the expressions on peoples’ faces when they made their decision and would know what decision they had made.
“The next item of business is to choose who will do the whipping.” Jeff took the plastic container from the man beside him and held it aloft. “The badges of all the people who voted for flogging are in this bucket.” He reached his hand into the container and stirred it around for a minute, keeping his eyes averted. “I need a volunteer to choose a badge.” He looked at the people standing nearest to him. “Holly, if you would be so kind?” He held the bucket above the eye level of one of those women.
She reached over and picked out the first badge she felt.
“Marcie,” he read from the badge. “Where’s Marcie?”
The room lights were turned on again.
Howard saw his wife raise her hand.
“Will you flog Catherine for us?”
“Gladly,” she shouted.
Howard was shocked by his wife’s gleeful enthusiasm. Was this the woman that had shared his life, home, and bed for seven years? Who was she?
“We have our volunteer.” Jeff gestured to the man who had held the bucket. “Morris, will you please assist Marcie.”
The crowd watched silently as Morris approached Marcie and said, “Please come with me, ma’am.” He led her to the side of the cage where he unlocked the door with a key from his pocket. He stepped in only far enough to remove the multi-tailed whip from its hook on the wall next to the chained woman.
Catherine, her hands still chained loosely over her head, watched the proceedings with a horror in her eyes. “Please have mercy on me,” she whispered, her soft voice carrying clearly across the heads of the silent multitude.
Morris ignored her and said to Marcie, “This way, ma’am.”
He led Howard’s wife out of the room.
“Morris will instruct Marcie
in the effective use of the flogger,” Jeff said. “She will learn how to cause the most intense pain possible with the instrument.”
All eyes swiveled back to look at him.
“Jack and Bill, will you please prepare Catherine to receive her punishment.”
The other two assistants who were standing beside Jeff walked to the open cage. The crowd parted for them as they had for Morris and Marcie.
“People,” Jeff said, “please step away from the cage. Step all the way back to the walls. When Marcie returns, she will need a lot of space to swing her whip.”
The crowd began shuffling backwards but their eyes remained glued on the stricken woman in the cage.
One of the men unlocked the padlock that was fastening Catherine’s shackles to the wall. Each iron wristband was attached to a separate piece of chain so that, when she lowered her arms, one of the men could hold one chain attached to one wrist and the other man hold the other.
They led her from the cage, pulling her arms before her.
She followed silently with her head bowed, appearing too fearful to resist. But when the trio reached to front of the cage, she raised her head to the audience and said, “I never thought that so many of you would want to treat me so cruelly. Never.”
The two men turned her away from the audience and raised the chains to lock her wrists to the railing that connected the tops of the bars.
With her bare feet flat on the floor, her arms were stretched akimbo, pulled wide, slightly above her head. She looked as though she were being crucified.
One of the men untied a bow at each shoulder of her robe and a large panel dropped open, leaving bare the entire width of the upper part of her back from her shoulders to her waist. Then he pulled her shoulder-length blonde hair into a ponytail and doubled it over with an elastic band so that it was held out of the way.
She rested her forehead against the bars and waited. With her arms stretched wide, she looked uncomfortable.
The crowd shuffled impatiently for a few minutes. Finally, Marcie and Morris returned. Marcie looked at ease holding the whip casually as she walked across the floor. Morris positioned her beside Catherine, an arm’s length away.
“Step back, please, people,” Jeff said again. “We don’t want anyone to feel the sting of the whip but Catherine. Give Marcie plenty of room.”
Howard noticed that the various television monitors now showed Catherine’s face, her back, Marcie’s face, and Marcie’s upper body.
“Administer the first stroke whenever you are ready, Marcie,” Jeff said.
Catherine’s back tensed in anticipation of the lash. Her hands grabbed the chains above the iron wristbands to balance herself against the force of the coming blow.
Howard marveled at the intricate interplay of muscles in her back. He had never before paid much attention to a woman’s back. He had thought of it as nothing but a flat, blank space of skin. Now he studied it, seeing a complex erotic landscape. That single spotlight casting stark shadows across the structure of shoulder blades, ribs, and vertebrae that were overlaid with an intricate ramification of large and small muscles that twitched and quivered in tension.
Two months ago, in this same room, Howard had run his hand across that beautiful expanse. His palm tingled anew with the sensual memory of those precious moments.
Then the perfect beauty of Catherine’s form was blasted by an explosion of nine leather thongs that thrashed her flesh.
Marcie, his beloved Marcie, had laid a powerful, vicious, perfect stroke of the cat onto the poor woman’s back. Following her recent instruction, she laid all nine tails full and flat across the back from one side to the other. As she had swung her arm, she had twisted her body, making certain that she was throwing her full weight behind the stroke. And she had followed through, moving past the point of impact to ensure that the whip was still accelerating when it struck tender flesh.
Jeff had promised that Marcie would be taught how to ensure that the scourge delivered the maximum degree of pain. He had kept his promise.
The impact of leather against skin echoed in the room like a single mighty handclap.
As the agony radiated through Catherine’s body, her arms and calves convulsed, pulling her heels clear of the floor for a long moment.
Then the wave of pain roared up her spinal column and flooded her consciousness with a tsunami of agony. The moment of absolute silence following the impact was broken by a wail as loud and pure as a siren.
Television screens magnified the artist’s face, contorted by shock and horror, from three angles. Her mouth was open wide; her lips drawn back to expose white teeth and her eyes screwed shut.
Another screen showed her back, now striped in white and red – white stripes where the force of the lash had driven the blood from the capillaries and red stripes on either side where that blood had been driven. As Howard watched, the white lines began to turn pink and then darker red as the blood flowed back into the network of tiny vessels, now damaged under the skin.
Her back heaved and rolled as the woman drew a great gasp of air into her lungs and wailed again.
Another screen showed Marcie’s face, aglow with satisfaction, grinning, her eyes greedily searching out every nuance of suffering expressed by the woman chained in front of her.
The whole scene repulsed Howard but he was powerless to leave. His horror chained him to the spot as effectively as the iron chains that held Catherine. Everywhere he looked, on every wall, he was bombarded by images of the effects of the first lash.
The first lash.
There were nine lashes left.
When Jeff had said that Catherine was to receive ten strokes of the cat ‘o nine tails, Howard had judged that to be not so many. Only ten. Not a dozen or twenty or a hundred. Only ten.
Now he thought that ten was nine strokes too many. One stroke alone was a terrible enough punishment. No one should have to suffer more than one stroke of a cat o’ nine tails.
Catherine’s wails subsided into gasps and sobs. Her red-striped back relaxed and her hands released the chains.
“One,” Jeff intoned from his dais.
Catherine grabbed her chains again and her body tensed until her back was rigid.
Marcie raised her cat back and wide of her body, then swung again, twisting her body and bringing her arm through in a second heavy stroke.
Leather slapped into flesh already bruised and tender from the first lash.
Catherine howled again as her back blossomed with a new lattice of white stripes of agony.
Again, Jeff waited patiently, giving Catherine ample time to feel the effects of the lashes as fully as possible. Only when her howls had again subsided to sobs and her body slumped in its iron bonds, did he say, “Two.”
His count gave Marcie permission to administer the third blow, delivered with all the strength that she could muster.
It took longer for Catherine’s shrieks to subside into pathetic mewling this time. Three strokes of nine tails meant that she was already suffering under the cumulative impact of twenty-seven individual lashes. And there were still seven strokes, sixty-three lashes to be laid on that poor, tortured patch of flesh.
Catherine was in hell and Marcie was grinning like the devil herself.
“That’s three,” Jeff announced.
Howard quailed at the report of the fourth lash and the horrible scream that it elicited.
He told himself that it was better that Marcie be delivering these blows than some man who had twice her upper body strength. Then he looked at his wife’s face, grinning in triumph after every stroke and thought again. A man would show some mercy. His will to inflict pain would be eroded by the woman’s piteous screams and he would have been pulling his blows after the second stroke.
Catherine’s howls only encouraged Marcie to strike harder because they confirmed that she was hitting the mark precisely and effectively. Marcie had always taken pride in doing everything as well as she could.
&nbs
p; “Four.”
Marcie’s fifth blow landed in the same place as the first four, on that broad patch of skin and shallow muscle that must, by now, be bruised to the bones below.
Catherine’s scream was ragged, her voice growing hoarse because her vocal cords were suffering such abuse that they were weakening under the strain.
The delicate hands that gripped the chains above the iron shackles were studded with bone white knuckles under the tightly-stretched skin. She was not gripping only to take the weight from the iron wristbands, she was trying to squeeze her agony into the heavy metal.
She was half way to the end of her punishment but Howard feared that the second five would be worse than the first five. The damage to her back was cumulative, every stroke added more pain on top of the earlier pain.
Catherine was babbling now, pleading for mercy, asking that her torture be stopped, begging for release.
“Five,” Jeff said and Marcie raised the cat for her sixth blow.
Howard could close his eyes but he could not shut his ears to the terrible thud.
Catherine no longer howled but gibbered in her agony. She would have been begging for mercy if she could form the words, but her mind was so consumed by her pain that she could utter only disorganized syllables. The only recognizable word was the single syllable, “No!” embedded over and over in her stream of babble.
“Six.”
Surely by now, Marcie’s arm must be tiring but her seventh stroke gave no evidence of flagging.
Catherine’s gibbering was now reduced to ragged gasps for breath, her back heaving spasmodically.
This was more than any could have imagined when they were making their decision at the voting table.
Punish Me, Please Me Page 28
