Most of the people who wanted to chat were men. Some mentioned that they had attended the previous evening and were so fascinated that they had come back for a second viewing. Others said that they hadn’t intended to come but that their friends had been so enthused that they had urged them to come and have a look.
She had been mounted on the Spanish horse for almost an hour and could barely write her signature legibly, the pain was so bad, when she saw two more familiar faces – Lord and Lady Hoffman.
“Hello, Lord Hoffman, Lady Hoffman,” she said, taking the book from the woman who had once been her best friend. Since making herself a slave, their relationship had become complicated and Irene was never sure how she should acknowledge her in public, if at all.
“Dear Irene,” Linda Hoffman said, “how are you doing?”
“I’m suffering rather a lot at the moment,” Irene said. “But things are going pretty well in general.”
Linda looked down at the wooden wedge that was pressing so cruelly into Irene’s vulva. “Is that as painful as it looks?”
“Worse. You can try it if you want.” She managed to force a laugh through her pain.
She meant it as a joke and expected her old friend to join her in laughing at the suggestion, but Linda looked intrigued.
To her shock, Linda said, “Okay. I will.”
Her husband, standing quietly next to her, jerked his head around to look at his wife with wide eyes. But he said nothing.
“Get off there,” Linda said.
Irene kicked her shackled feet ineffectively. “Not really possible.” The movement drove a wave of pain from her crotch all the way through her body and she couldn’t repress a moan.
“Anything is possible. An old friend keeps demonstrating that to me in new and startling ways.” There was no need for padlocks on the shackles so Linda could kneel and unfasten them from Irene’s ankles.
“Now get off.”
Irene flapped her bound hands ineffectually for a minute until Lord Hoffman offered her a hand.
“There’s a crank at the back,” she said. “It will lower the wedge so that I can step off.”
He ignored the crank, stepped close, grabbed her under her arms, and lifted her bodily from the wooden wedge. He was a strong man and made her feel light in his arms.
The flow of blood back into her crotch brought a new wave of pain and she shrieked a little.
When her feet were back on the floor, Lord Hoffman kept his hands on her for a minute to steady her.
Lady Hoffman cranked the horse down far enough that she could stand astride it. Her modesty was preserved because her voluminous dress covered her legs and most of the wooden wedge.
“Crank me up,” she told Hoffman.
He turned the crank until the wedge had lifted Linda’s feet off the floor.
She shrieked a little as the edge began to work on her crotch. “This really hurts. Really hurts.” Her voice was breathy as she panted against the pain.
Irene wondered if her panties were pressing into her crotch. The weave might be worse than the bare wood. Then she looked down and noticed cotton panties lying on the ground where Linda had been standing. She had pulled the magician’s trick of shedding them discretely while everyone had been watching her husband lift the slave off the horse.
“Let me take you off,” Hoffman told his wife.
“No. Not yet. Put the shackles on my ankles. I want the full experience.”
He shrugged, knelt, and obeyed.
She kicked her feet a bit to feel the shackles pull on them and then shrieked a bit at the pain that caused in her crotch.
She put her hands on the wedge, both in front of her and lifted some of her weight off the wedge. “This won’t do,” she said. “Untie that rope from Irene and tie my hands together behind my back.”
Once again, her husband obeyed. It took a couple of minutes to loosen the knots. Linda kept using her hands to take the weight of her crotch while he worked.
But when he had the rope, she immediately settled back on the wedge and crossed her wrists behind her back.
Lord Hoffman lashed them together. He didn’t bother with a knot but just wrapped the rope around her wrists a dozen times. That was sufficient to hold them.
“My god,” Linda gasped. “This is agonizing. How long have I been here?”
“Four or five minutes,” Irene said.
“Five more minutes,” Linda said. “Don’t let me go for another five minutes.”
“Okay,” Lord Hoffman said and glanced at his watch.
“How long have you had to ride this thing at one time?” she asked Irene. Tears were filling her eyes and beginning to trickle down her face.
“About an hour and a half. It would have been two and a half hours but I won a trivia game against the professor so he let me off early.” She leaned close to her friend and said in a loud whisper, “I cheated just to get off the damned thing.”
“An hour and a half,” Linda wailed. “I don’t blame you. I’ve only been on this for a few minutes and I’d already kill someone to get off it again.”
“We can take you off any time you want,” Irene said.
“How much longer?” she asked Hoffman.
He glanced at his watch. “Four more minutes.”
“That’s close enough. Take me off.”
He made no move toward her. Instead he said, “I don’t think so. You said that you wanted the real experience. That means that you don’t get to decide when you get off. I’m going to keep you there for the full ten minutes that you wanted, and then I’m going to add an extra five just to make the experience real.”
“You bastard,” she howled and pulled at her bound wrists. “Take me off this evil thing.”
“Not yet.”
“Please. I’m begging you.”
“No.”
Irene couldn’t tell if her scream came from pain or anger.
Lord Hoffman watched impassively.
His wife fell into quiet sobs and waited.
The audience watched in fascination.
After a long time, Lord Hoffman cranked the horse out from under his wife. Irene unwrapped the rope from her hands while she was being lowered. She whispered in her ear, “Don’t hate him. He was just trying to give you what you wanted.”
“No. He kept me up there for longer than I wanted.”
“He didn’t, actually. Time is a funny thing when you’re in pain. I was looking at his watch. You said ten minutes and that was how long he kept you there. He lied about adding the extra five minutes. He was right to do that. You wanted the real experience of torture and it’s as much about the psychology between the torturer and the tortured as the physical pain.”
As soon as Linda’s hands were free, she hugged her friend. “Is this what happens to you?”
“All the time,” Irene said.
“It’s horrible.”
“It’s funny because it’s not the worst thing that has happened to me. But my life is okay. Good things happen, too. The professor only has a torture session every week or so. Most of the time he’s treating me well.” She laughed. “The torture is something for me to look forward to.”
They were speaking quietly but the people nearest could hear them.
“I couldn’t do it,” Linda said. “I couldn’t live your life.”
“Sure you could,” Irene replied. “You could because, if you were a slave, you wouldn’t have any choice.”
Linda gave Irene a final hug and then took her husband’s hand. She kissed him softly and said, “Take me home.”
Irene was amused. Linda seemed more in love with her husband than ever. And why not? He had not only given her exactly what she had asked for, ten minutes on the Spanish horse, but he had been perceptive enough to realize what she needed – to be psychologically tortured as well as physically. If she had not asked for it, she would have felt betrayed. But she had asked and he had granted her wish.
After they left, Irene no
ticed that Linda’s discarded panties had disappeared from the floor. She hadn’t noticed Lord Hoffman retrieving them and wondered if they were now hidden in some stranger’s pocket.
Another woman, a young commoner in an expensive frock who was accompanied by an older man, tapped Irene on the arm. She looked shy, embarrassed, when she asked, “Do you think that I could try the weight machine for a couple of minutes? Just to feel what it’s like?”
“The weight machine?”
The woman nodded toward the giant balance scale.
Her older husband’s eyes were sparkling.
“Sure,” Irene said.
“Only for a couple of minutes.”
“For as long as you want.”
It was a trend. For most of the rest of the exhibition, the professor demonstrated the devices by torturing one slave after another in overlapping shifts while Irene helped the guests, mostly wives who were accompanied by their husbands, sample the tortures for a few minutes at a time.
The guests used the crucifixion, suspension, horse, and pillory because those did not require disrobing. A couple of aristocratic women bravely sat on the spiked chair by carefully moving the fabric of their skirt out from under their thighs and buttocks, relying on the voluminous material draped all around to protect their modesty.
In the pillory, some of the women allowed their husbands or boyfriends to cane them lightly through their clothes. No husband was foolish enough to raise his wife’s skirts when her head and hands were pinned out of the way. That would have been grounds for instant divorce. Not to mention, social shunning.
Only the naked slaves were laid on the bed of nails or were whipped on the whipping bench. And no guest dared even consider Irene’s icy dunking cabinet.
The professor and Irene had discussed the possibility that members of the audience might want to sample a bit of the torture devices but the frequency and enthusiasm for the experience both surprised and delighted him.
They had also discussed her thesis that the torturer had to reveal more of himself than he might wish, so Irene paid close attention to the wives when they were being released from their volunteer torture samples.
They were not all like Lord and Lady Hoffman. Many of the wives looked at their husbands with distrust, dismay, and sadness as they walked away. Some wives were hurt that their husbands had not intervened and stopped them from volunteering for a sample of torture. Some wives were bitter that their husbands had actively encouraged them to give one of the devices a try. Some wives were shocked by the happy look on their husbands’ faces when they watched the love of their life suffering.
But for every wife who was displeased by her husband’s reaction, there was another wife who was happy that she had proven her dedication to her husband and shown her bravery so unmistakably.
Irene concluded that there was more variety among human beings that she had ever guessed.
For the next few days of the exhibition, between arranging demonstrations and autographing books, Irene was too busy to be tortured again.
Life as an artist was good.
* * *
On the last day of the exhibition, Irene’s life went to shit.
The professor brought her to the exhibition before the doors opened, as he had on other days.
Unlike other days, he immediately ordered her to step into the ice water dunking cabinet and then he locked the steel collar about her neck.
That filled her with dread. She didn’t know why he didn’t wait until the exhibition was open and an audience had assembled. But she had to obey. She was the slave; he was the owner.
She stood in the cabinet and waited silently.
He emptied the last couple frozen pails of ice into the moat.
She looked at the giant ice cubes with dread. As they were slowly melting, the water was chilling.
The exhibition would be opening in a few minutes. A line had formed at the door. People were watching through the windows. As well, the other slaves were lined up at the back of the hall, waiting for their turn to be tortured.
The professor stood on the bridge and talked to Irene’s back. His tone was casual. Conversational. “I had dinner with Moe last night. I hadn’t seen him in the last few weeks and was wondering why he was avoiding me. He told me an interesting story. Do you know what he said?”
Irene shook her head. She doubted that the doctor would be stupid enough to tell the professor the truth – that he had been raping her – so she had no idea what lie he might have invented.
“He told me that you had friends in the neighborhood – he called them violent young thugs – who didn’t like you being tortured. He said that your friends had threatened to attack him if he helped me to torture you any more. I’m not sure how that came about. I don’t know why they threatened him rather than me. I don’t know why he didn’t go straight to the police and report the threats. But he didn’t want to tell me any details. He just made it clear that he wasn’t going to come over to visit again for as long as you are in my home.”
The doctor had obeyed Mr. B’s instructions to the letter if not in spirit. He hadn’t told her owner that she had been having sex without his knowledge. That was something for which she could be grateful. It wasn’t much, but it might be enough to save her life. In turn, she wouldn’t tell the professor that his friend had been raping her.
“You’ve made me unhappy,” the professor said. “You know what I do when I’m unhappy with a slave?”
The question was rhetorical. Irene didn’t try to answer.
“I punish her. And, while I’m punishing you, my friend Moe, my good friend, is arranging your sale on my behalf.”
He was selling her? And Moe, her mortal enemy, was going to choose her new owner? She had a premonition of her future. He was going to sell her to a brothel because that was the worst fate for a pleasure slave. She would spend the rest of her short life on her knees giving blowjobs to one horny sailor after another until she was nothing but a worn-out husk.
“You can think about your sins while you’re drowning.”
Before she would see the inside of a brothel, she had to survive the day. That was not a given.
She turned her head to look at him and spoke for the first time. “How can you do this to me? You know that I’m a human being.”
“That’s why I have to do it,” he said. “Do you think that I’d bother punishing a robot?”
She was startled to see a look of pain in his eyes. Having to punish her was making the sadist suffer. But not as badly as her. That was the hypocrisy. The pain that he was feeling was that he would never have a chance to torture her again. And that hurt him mostly because he loved the terrible torture devices that she could design for his amusement.
Devices like this icy drowning chamber.
He closed the door quietly. She turned to look through the glass out across the empty gallery.
A few seconds later, she heard the pump start. Icy water began to splash into the bucket above her head.
She began hyperventilating in anticipation of the first of many freezing deluges.
She never knew how she survived ten hours of hypoxia and hypothermia. The water must not have been as icy as it felt. Despite the couple of giant ice cubes melting in the moat, the water had been warming to room temperature for a full week. As well, the slaves who had been doused every day had radiated heat from their bodies into the water.
Nevertheless, the water was cold enough and felt frigid on her exposed skin every time she was drenched anew. The pain was terrible and unrelenting. She couldn’t get warm in the few minutes that passed between the time that the last gallon of water flowed out of the bottom of the cabinet and the next freezing waterfall submerged her.
Over the course of ten hours, her head was submerged more than sixty times. Every single time, she had to struggle mightily to keep from breathing water when the oxygen in her lungs was exhausted and the surface of the water was still above the crown of her head. Every tim
e, waiting for her nose to break the surface was an agony.
If Moe was arranging to sell her to a brothel, then her best strategy might be to simply give up and take a lungful of water. But she didn’t. Twenty-eight was too young to die, no matter what hells awaited in her future.
Through the window, she could see the other slaves watching with horror all day long as her torture went on and on. They could not comprehend what kind of monster would impose such an ordeal on anyone, even a slave.
When the last guest left at nine that night, the professor brought Moe into the room to watch the bucket tilt and empty into the cabinet, submerging her in cold water yet again.
She held her breath under the water and stared at them through the window.
Moe watched in satisfaction, as Irene struggled against suffocation. She knew that he would have liked nothing better than to reach down and close the spigot that was slowly draining the water. He would have loved to look into her eyes as she drowned.
The professor only looked sad. No little boy who lost a puppy ever looked more forlorn.
She hated both of them.
When the professor finally turned off the pump and opened the door, she was shivering as though she had palsy and could barely stand. He unlocked the steel collar from her neck. When she tried to walk out of the cabinet, she stumbled and fell to her hands and knees. She couldn’t stand without assistance but neither man was willing to help. She had to crawl across the bridge that spanned the shallow moat and collapse on the floor at the men’s feet.
She couldn’t stop shaking.
She couldn’t make herself believe that she could breathe freely again. That she didn’t have to keep hyperventilating. That there was no longer gallons and gallons of water accumulating over her head to drown her again.
Moe, not the professor, locked a chain about her neck and cuffed her hands behind her back.
She tried to say something to the professor but she couldn’t think clearly and could only mumble incoherently. She didn’t know if she were trying to tell him that she was sorry; or if she wanted to tell him that he was an evil bastard; or if she wanted to say that she understood and forgave him.
The Fine Art of Torture (Slave of the Aristocracy Book 3) Page 18
