The music continued relentlessly as Rachel, served by the silent muscle men, rounded up each of the girls and had them hoisted aloft in cages.
Within a few minutes she was standing triumphantly alone on the podium, striking poses with the whip and showing her teeth in a grotesque smile. She curled the leather strip around her legs and let it slide up her thigh as though she were caressing herself with the tip of it, working her hips as she pulled the whip closer to the tops of her stockings. Julia watched unbelieving as Rachel started stroking the whip between her legs, all the while arching her back and opening her mouth in a half-laugh, still celebrating her dominion over the animals.
‘She’s an utter bitch!’ Julia couldn’t help herself.
Sylvie let out a blurt of laughter, and pointed upwards. ‘You really are a gullible little girlie, aren’t you? Watch the tigers.’
In the cages, the girls had stopped trying to escape. Instead they were now rubbing themselves against the bars – Sarah had her legs spread in the splits over the wire floor of the cage, displaying her crotch to the burly man standing underneath. In another cage, the girl was pushing her breasts out from the bars, squeezing them together and making low purring noises. The tigers were purposefully displaying themselves to the men below, pushing their asses upwards as though they were animals that wanted to mate, licking their lips, pawing at the bars. The scene was starting to change, and as the men hungrily watched the girls in cages, a new beat started to creep into the music.
‘This is where things start to turn around,’ Sylvie said, nudging Julia.
While Rachel gyrated unaware on the podium, still playing with her whip gleefully, the men were lowering the cages. As they opened the doors a driving seductive beat started playing, weaving insidiously through the tent. The tigers slipped easily out of the arms of the men, running into a huddle downstage before turning to where Rachel stood exposed in the centre of the stage. Julia felt a little rush of delight as Sarah crept up to put a clawed hand on Rachel’s leg, catching the whip in her other hand. As Rachel looked around, horrified, the tigers placed themselves in position around her, quietly teasing her. Julia had to admit she had a fantastic stage presence. Even as the tigers pulled her down from the podium and pawed at her clothes, she kept her attitude of pained arrogance, refusing to beg for mercy.
Now the girls circled Rachel and knocked off the top hat, letting a long swathe of auburn hair spill over her shoulders. Carefully, Sarah crouched in front of her and pulled at the buttons on her blazer-style jacket. Julia felt the air thicken with desire. Now the whole tent was watching the action onstage and even the stage crew had stopped in their preparations. Someone whistled as the jacket was stripped roughly from Rachel’s body, exposing a corset and the creamy-white skin of her décolletage.
‘What we’ve been waiting for,’ Sylvie noted. The tigers pulled at the corset, growling excitedly as it came undone and fell open. Rachel’s body was sprawled over the podium, her breasts exposed and her legs bent apart as she struggled weakly against the tigers’ efforts.
‘Kind of kinky, isn’t it?’ Sylvie suggested to Julia. ‘I hope it’s getting you heated up, girl, ‘cause we’re on in five minutes.’
It was a jolt to Julia’s system – she’d almost forgotten her own act while the tigers played out in front of her. She felt another wash of sickly nerves rush through her. She’d be at the mercy of the audience, which, she now realised, would include the terrifying Rachel. She watched the tigers mauling Rachel with a mixture of admiration and despair – how was she going to follow this? As the act reached its climax, the music developed into a deep, pulsing house track and the lights were turning blood red over the bodies onstage. The tigers were now pulling at Rachel’s limbs in a frenzy of lust, their bodies tangled around her as they rubbed themselves against her and ran their tongues in long licks over her skin. The tamer lay surrendered, giving herself up to the animals as they feasted on her body and growled with pleasure. From the people watching in the wings and round the tent there was appreciative applause, some shouts of encouragement. Julia saw Robert bang on the flat of the seat in front of him, giving a whoop of approval and clapping hard. There was a gleam in his eyes that she knew meant he was turned on. Julia felt her knees grow weaker as she imagined his pleasure.
Julia was at the edge of the stage. Round her neck was a collar and chain, Robert holding the end of the leash. The foreboding she’d felt earlier was turning into a storm of nervous shakes. The more she tried to calm herself, the more wretched she felt. She couldn’t quite understand why she was so overwrought – she’d taken part in enough shows to be able to put on a professional attitude even when she felt less than confident. Deep down, she knew it was something to do with Robert’s proximity, and his dark languid attitude that made her feel herself melting even as she struggled to concentrate on her moves.
The tigers’ set had been struck and the scenery for the contortion act had been swiftly changed over. The stage was now an opulent fantasy of an ancient temple. Stone columns lined the walkway, adorned with flickering torches and lit with an unearthly blue light. At the foot of each pillar stood burly temple guards, shaven-headed and clad in loincloths. The bronzed sculpture of their muscles contrasted sharply with billowing swathes of white fabric, so that it almost seemed as if they themselves were carved out of stone.
An altar stood in the centre, on which Sylvie would perform. The music was a low, echoing drumbeat accompanied by trance-like chanting, enhancing the sombre ritualistic atmosphere. Dry ice drifted slowly over the stage, its smoky acrid smell stinging Julia’s eyes and drying her mouth. She waited for her cue, staring blankly at the floor and trying to control her breathing. Robert stood inches from her in his tailored suit and braces. His presence was awe-inspiring; Julia was almost painfully aware of his magnetic command of the show.
In front of them, Sylvie climbed onto the altar, under cover of the dark set. As the lights came up, she sat straight-backed on the stone slab (in fact, artfully painted wood). Her legs were folded into a lotus pose, and her body was burnished with gold paint. Sitting totally still, her doll-like face impassive, Sylvie looked like a life-size effigy.
Without looking back at Julia, Robert started walking onstage. The chain tightened, and Julia was pulled along behind. She tried to move in time with the languorous beat, settling into a loping stride while she rolled her hips and curved her back. She’d practised this movement with Sylvie leading her, trying to lend sexiness to her movements without showing too much flesh. Now, with Robert tugging at the rope, jerking her forwards, Julia felt as though she were too obviously intrigued by this man, too willing to let him drag her around and humiliate her. She imagined suddenly with a little panic that the other performers watching her knew how she’d tried to seduce Robert. Did she look pathetic following him across the stage? She felt herself cringe as she imagined their knowing laughter, and was struck with a sudden burning desire to run away. As Robert pulled her past Joe, who stood rock-solid in his role as temple guard, Julia felt her humiliation turn into rage. Fuck this man and his sadistic flights of fancy – she didn’t want to be paraded around likes some idiotic sycophant. Dancing was one thing, but submitting to his perverse power trip was sticking in her throat.
Halfway across Robert turned back to look at her, and the critical expression on his face made Julia falter and hesitate. He stopped in his tracks. Around them the music continued; the low insistent drumbeat and hollow chants the only sound in the cavernous dark of the tent. The temple guards looked on implacably, and below them circus workers in the rows of seats watched with lazy curiosity, some smoking, some with their arms folded. Julia felt eyes on her as she held her breath and waited for Robert to continue.
Instead, he marched back to her, and her heart sank.
‘Julia, you know the character, don’t you?’
Sylvie had explained the story of the slave-girl and the goddess as they rehearsed. Julia should know her role; after all, it
was hardly a Shakespearean drama. All she had to do was ‘waft’ around and show some flesh.
‘Yes.’
‘And what do you feel?’ Robert leant down further to her. ‘You’re a slave, here against your will. About to be made a sacrifice to the goddess of lust and sensuality.’ Julia watched him warily, unsure of how to respond.
‘I guess . . . she’s scared,’ she faltered, her rebellious thoughts dissolving as she quailed under his ferocious gaze.
‘Scared? How perceptive, Julia. I thought they taught you this stuff at dance school.’ He straightened up again, and Julia saw his eyes were as dark as thunder.
‘We don’t have time to develop this here and now. I’ll see you after we finish. Just for now, let’s concentrate on moving that arse of yours to centrestage. At least make an effort to look sexy, okay?’
Julia felt her heart skip in her chest, and a blush prickled at her cheeks despite her efforts to stay calm. She fixed her eyes on Robert, trying to ignore the snide ripple of laughter coming from the workers sitting in the shadowy depths of the tent. She felt the lights hot on her skin, as though she was burning up with shame and uncertainty.
Robert gave a sharp tug on the chain and started walking again. Julia had no choice but to try to slink along the stage, stretching her arms and legs out in long, swaying movements, trying to keep a hold on her feelings as she felt a mix of hot fury and embarrassment boil inside. Willing herself to concentrate on the routine, she approached the stage and allowed Robert to push her onto the steps of the altar. She lay sprawled over the steps, waiting for her cue and feeling her heartbeat pound as she felt Robert watching her with displeasure. The fabric wrapped around her revealed the curve of her thigh and the fold of her ass, every inch smeared with white body paint. She knew if she moved her legs too far apart she would show a glimpse of her newly waxed sex, hairless and also whitened with panstick. She had dabbed the paint gingerly onto her pussy before the show, advised by Sylvie that any skin let unpainted would stand out naked and pink. Careful to pat the sponge gently over herself, Julia had duly made up every crevice and fold of her sex, feeling a strange pleasure as she did so, as though she were putting on the most insubstantial underwear in the world. The paint covered her whole body, smeared over her limbs, belly and breasts. Last, she covered her face, even brushing a fingertip over her eyelashes and working the paint into her hair so that it hung in clogged grey strands, as though it were carved marble. Sylvie had applied the paint to her back, rubbing it on roughly with great speed. She was practised at her craft, knowing in detail every tiny ritual of preparation and able to perform her act flawlessly every time. Next to her exquisite, precise body, Julia had felt clumsy, as though she were starting to learn all over again.
Now she was aware of the sweat building under the greasy make-up, and the fact that her body was intimately visible under the spotlights. How much could Robert see? Could he tell that she had been waxed and painted even deep between her legs? She lay on the steps with one arm flung over her head and her legs bent out, trying to give an air of lust and abandon, even though the position was awkward and uncomfortable.
He approached now and as planned pulled Julia to her feet by her hair. As he reached for her, she saw the brutal look on his face and flinched, scared he would in fact grab her hard by the hair. She saw a flicker of some human feeling in his eyes as she drew back, and he winked at her.
‘Relax, it’s all theatre,’ he whispered, as he slipped his hand under the back of her head so gently Julia was taken by surprise. Giddily, she clicked back into her role and rose to stand in front of him, holding her head back as though he really were pulling on her with all his force. As he thrust her forward up the steps, Julia wanted badly to turn and search his face for another sign of warmth, to see if he had softened his opinion of her, but she knew she had to concentrate on the next part of the dance and forced herself to focus on her performance.
She swayed upwards, climbing as though she was approaching an alluring but terrible fate, sometimes stumbling as she mounted the steps. Behind her, she knew the whole tent was watching as she approached Sylvie, whose motionless figure, covered in shimmering gold, was lit by the flickering torches.
Sylvie wore a bikini that was sewn to make it look like filigree metal, the embroidered and beaded bra cupping her breasts with flame-like tongues of gold fabric. She wore a headdress worked in metal wire and sprayed with gold, a beaded belt that wrapped round her belly and hung down to the strip of brocade that she wore between her legs as a simple thong. Her gaze was heavy-lidded and unblinking as she stared impassively into the dark distance. Julia approached as though she were worshipping an idol, and sank to her knees in front of the altar, stretching out before Sylvie in a pose of utter surrender. She rested with her hands spread palms down, her back to the audience, shoving her ass in the air and arching her back so that her body had the curved pose of a supplicant. She imagined herself begging for mercy at the feet of a goddess.
Now Sylvie started to move with fluid and graceful precision, stretching out her arms as though she were a bronze statue. She struck several poses, one flowing into another as she pulled her limbs into breathtaking contortions. The first time she saw it, Julia had thought she had bones missing. Her joints could turn in ways that looked utterly wrong – curving her legs backward over herself to rest her feet on her shoulders like a scorpion’s tail; rolling forward and coming into the splits; lifting her legs to gracefully frame her face as she hooked her knees behind her head. While she did all this, Sylvie made it seem totally effortless – in fact she moved as though she loved it, twisting her body with an expression of immense pleasure, as though she possessed an unnatural control over herself.
As she went through her sequence of slow, strange positions, Julia was to dance as though bringing the idol to life with her devotions. She used moves that suggested the dances of ecstasy of Sufis, throwing her body forward and pulsing back and forth as though heaving with huge breaths, brushing her fingertips along the stone, rolling along the altar and reaching up to stroke Sylvie’s legs. Around the foot of the altar, the temple guards were starting to roll and tumble in acrobatic sequences, framing the tableau of the two women under the spotlight with dynamic flourishes.
Julia moved with a rhythmic sensuality, aware all the time of her costume constantly slipping from her shoulder and the danger that her breasts would fall from the loose confines of the dress. When they’d rehearsed the moves, Julia had felt breezily confident that she could dance like this easily. Now, onstage before the critical presence of Robert and the other workers, she felt uneasily as though her moves were faked, as though she were putting on an act that was transparently contrived. Julia ran her white hands over the lines of Sylvie’s body, trying to tease her to move further, aware that her hands were shaking. She had a feeling that she was pleading with Sylvie to move faster, to get the act over with so she could run back to her caravan and curl up in bed. She wanted to hide herself, painfully aware that with every move she was showing her nakedness to strangers who had treated her with rough indifference. Desperately, she kept circling Sylvie, trying to remember her moves from rehearsal but aware that she was missing cues. When she met Sylvie’s eyes the harsh fury in them gave her a lurch in her stomach that she knew meant she’d fucked up. To someone as obsessively, proudly professional as Sylvie, failure would be unforgivable. She gritted her teeth and continued to dance, going through the moves mechanically and as well as she could manage while feelings of shame washed over her.
The music grew in volume as they approached the finale. To Julia, the loud drumbeat was ominous and forbidding. She positioned the glasses as they’d practised, aware of the cold hostility emanating from Sylvie, who nevertheless continued to move flawlessly through her routine. Her hand shook as she placed a glass on Sylvie’s breast, and she heard a sharp grunt of anger from the woman’s throat, making her even more recklessly despairing. As the chanting in the background became faster and mor
e intense, Julia lifted the clay bottle of wine she was to pour over Sylvie, knowing that in a few moments she would have to try to kiss this woman, who probably wanted to kill her and might actually do so after the show. They’d practised the moves several times, and Julia had secretly enjoyed the feel of Sylvie’s soft skin under her hands, the heat of her mouth and the lingering kiss that they finished the act on. She wasn’t prudish about being intimate with a woman and found the whole routine quite surprisingly tender, liking the feel of Sylvie’s breast in her hand and the thought of the audience getting horny.
Now, though, it had all gone wrong and Julia knew leaning down and kissing Sylvie was going to be a terrifying experience. She swung the bottle hopelessly towards Sylvie and watched, horrified, as she caught her arm against a glass and it tumbled to the ground, crashing sharply on the floor and shattering into a hundred shards. The drumbeat continued, but Julia stood frozen behind Sylvie, unable to move as her worst nightmare became real.
5
JULIA STOOD OUTSIDE the caravan, wearing Joe’s old shirt over her costume and feeling as though she were waiting outside the headmaster’s office. Her act had been a disaster, she was painfully aware of that, and Robert had summoned her to see him after the rehearsal. She was glad to have an excuse to avoid Sylvie’s furious reprisals, but the thought of a dressing down from the ringmaster was painful. After the debacle onstage, Sylvie had abruptly stormed off and only Joe had shown any kindness to her, offering her his shirt and wrapping it round her shoulders in a tender gesture that had only made her feel closer to tears. Robert had said little to her, but gave her a tired look that Julia interpreted as disgust, before he turned back to the show to concentrate on the next act. She’d felt wretched since then, as though awaiting a court appearance with Robert as her judge.
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