Then a voice. A female voice. “Ah, and this must be our American friend.” It took me a moment and a nudge from the Magician, to realize where the speaker was. I stepped forward, curtseyed, it seemed the right thing to do, then straightened up. Behind me, my escort hissed, “Her name is Magdalene. You will call her Ma’am.”
She was tall, and dressed immaculately. Three or four top designers could have slaved all day, drawing out their finest creations, before she was ready to step out of her dressing room. Her blonde hair was teased high; her make-up was perfect. If Marie Antoinette had ever fancied a job as a model, this is what she’d have looked like.
Only the woman’s features let her down, she was pretty enough, but she wasn’t stunning; her eyes were just a shade too far apart, her cheeks just a little too pudgy; her mouth just a smidge too wide. Oh, and she had the stumpiest fingers I have ever seen. I guessed she was around my age… late thirties, early forties, maybe.
“And how are you enjoying your stay, Miss America?”
“Yes, Ma’am. Very much Ma’am.” She looked closely at me and then turned to the man seated to her right – I recognized him as one of the three I’d met on my first visit to this room. “I’m told you’re
something of an author. I look forward to reading some of your work later. Tell me, what is your specialty? Thrillers?
Mysteries? Historical fiction, perhaps?”
“I guess you could say romance, Ma’am.”
There was a murmur of laughter around me. “You guess? You mean you’re not certain?” She paused and, for a moment, it seemed that her eyes had narrowed cruelly. But then they relaxed again. “Never mind. I will read them and I’m sure I’ll be able to decide in which category they belong.”
There was another whispered conversation. Taking my eyes from her, I glanced at the other faces seated around, all transfixed in apparent rapt contemplation of me. The Doctor was there, the Executioner, the Weasel… I’d quite forgotten about him, it was so long since he last paid me a visit.
The other men from my first time in this room; a handful of other faces that I recognized from my second. I looked for, but did not see, the rest of the gang who had drenched me in cum, that awful day in the dungeon. Perhaps they were too disfigured for an occasion like this. Or maybe they were seated in one of the other blocks of seating.
Magdalene spoke again. “And how are you being treated?”
“Very well, Ma’am.” “Really? But I have just been informed that you have required several rather harsh beatings. Why should that be?”
Because they’re a bunch of sadistic bastards. “I sometimes forget my place, Ma’am. There are so many rules, sometimes I mix them up in my mind and offer the wrong response.”
“Yes, rules. Where would we be without rules? Still, no harm seems to have come to you. So long as you learn your lessons and remember what you are taught, then perhaps your tutors will not need to be quite so harsh in future.”
This was ridiculous. She sounded like a schoolteacher, reprimanding a child. Her voice was so gentle, though, and her tone so matter of fact reassuring, that I almost felt as though that was the case; that I’d been caught drawing beetles on my test paper, or passing notes to the girl behind me. In fact, that particular thought was so compelling that, when Magdalene asked me how my lessons were progressing… yes, exactly like that… I almost forgot where I was
altogether.
I collected myself hurriedly. “Yes Ma’am. They’re progressing very well.” “Good. Although I do see that you are somewhat behind…” and she emphasized that word, as if to ensure I knew precisely what she was talking about… “Somewhat behind in one or two of your classes. Now, tell me why this should be.”
I was silent. Around me, I could feel the entire audience hold its breath, anticipating my response.
“Well, Ma’am. Some of the lessons are very new to me. I’m still learning. And
others….” My voice trailed off, not because I couldn’t think of the words, but because the words I had suddenly determined to say were either going to result in the greatest thrashing of my entire life – or something else entirely, something that I could not even begin to imagine, even in my deepest thoughts. But that remark of the Doctor’s had set a thought train in motion, and it was just pulling into the station.
“And others?” Magdalene sounded impatient. I took a breath. Here goes. “Well, others, I learned them long ago; and I believe I learned them well. And, if I might say so, Ma’am, I really don’t think some of my tutors actually know what they are doing.”
Around me, it was as though some hidden device had noisily sucked the air from the room, a great gasp that rose up round me, to hang in the air. I saw a movement in the front row; it was the Doctor, who’d been watching me with a faint smile on his lips, allowing his head to sink into his hands. Other faces looked shocked, horrified, angry. But the woman remained impassive.
“Is that so? That is very interesting indeed. And in what ways, would you say, their knowledge is deficient?”
“Nothing specific, Ma’am. Nothing where I could leap up and say ‘You’re doing it wrong. Stop it.’ But…. When you have read my journal, Ma’am, should it please you to do so, I believe you will understand what I mean.”
Now she, too, was gazing at me in silence. I braced myself, expecting to be grabbed at any moment, tied to some hidden torture device, and then beaten for the mealtime amusement of the watching crowds. Instead, she spoke a few words to a hovering attendant, and then turned back to me.
“I have sent for this journal. I shall read it while I dine. And you, too, should eat.” Another attendant appeared, took my arm gently and ushered me to an empty seat between two middle-aged men, in the block of seats at right-angles to Magdalene’s roost. A glass of wine appeared at my left arm, a small basket of breads at my right.
“You’re just in time, my dear,” one of the men said in a cut glass English accent. “The soup course is about to arrive. Bon appetite.”
I thanked him, drained my glass and, before I could even replace it on the table, it was being refilled for me.
The meal was astonishing. Five courses, six? Had I not been so frightened, I could have eaten more that evening than I have in my entire life. As it was, I came close. But even as I devoured my food, every spare iota of my attention was elsewhere, first watching for Magdalene to be handed my journal, then studying her as she leafed slowly through it. Once or twice, I saw her speak with one of the men around her; another time, she seemed to point something out to another.
“Eat up, my dear. Food like this doesn’t grow on trees,” said the man to my right. “Or maybe it does. Capon. Does that count as a fruit or a vegetable?”
I looked at him, uncertain whether he expected an answer or a laugh. Apparently, he wanted neither. “It’s just that my doctor told me to lay off meat. Cholesterol, you know.”
“In that case, I think it’s a vegetable,” I replied.
“Oh, I like this girl,” he announced to the table in general. “I like her very much.” “Maybe you should ask to keep her then,” a voice further down the row answered him. “After her little performance out there…” a fork gestured to where I’d been standing… “I very much doubt she’ll be welcome here again.”
“Don’t pay them any mind, dear.” Another voice, an older woman, chimed in. “If more girls showed your kind of pluck…”
“The plucking’s not her problem, from what I hear,” the first voice interrupted. “It’s the plodomy. Let’s face it, they don’t make ripe little asses like they used to.”
“Oh, but they do.” An entire conversation was going on around me now; the latest speaker sounded heavily-accented, a Russian, maybe. “Except they all belong to lesbians. Have you any idea how much one of those goes for these days? And, even if you can get one, her tutors have already robbed her of her tightness.”
“And if the tutors haven’t, her dildoes have.” Another Englishman. “What I can’t ded
uce is, if these women hate men so much, why do they spend all their time fucking one another with dildoes?”
“I had a lesbian once.” A thick, oddsounding accent. A South African, maybe? “At my sister’s wedding. Took her behind the gravestones and pumped her arse from here until Christmas. She thought I was a chickie, you see.” I craned my neck and, to be honest, I thought he was a chickie as well. The best-looking drag queen I’ve ever seen.
The table laughed; me, too; and, again, I found myself slipping into an unreal world where this gathering, this conversation, this entire situation wasn’t simply natural, it was actually enjoyable.
The old woman was holding court now. “I sucked my first cock in 1923.”
The South African again. “Good God. Did people even have them back then?”
She ignored him. “The chimney sweep. Every Friday morning, he’d come to the house and do the flues. I wanted him to do mine, so one day I told mama I was ill, and would stay off school. Well, to cut a long story short…”
“And to make a short cock long, I hope?” That was the Russian. “Yes, very long. To cut a long story short, he refused to do what I wanted him to, but did offer to show me the next best thing.”
“And was it?” “Actually,” she laughed, “it was the most disappointing experience of my life. I’d only ever seen his face and hands, and they were coal-black – as you’d expect. But when he whipped out his prick, it was as white as snow.”
“So what did you do?” I asked. “What any sensible lass would do. I sucked him off and then the first chance I got…I moved to Africa and married a chieftain.”
Laughter, loud, happy, uproarious. “Did I ever tell you…” The Englishman beside me leaned forward, though he was addressing no-one in particular. “Did I ever tell you about Frank? Professional footballer, he was. Soccer for you colonials…” he glanced at me. “Played before my time, I was just a nipper, but I loved that man. First Division superman. Collected all his cigarette cards, used to pretend I was him when we had kickabouts in the park. Then one day I met him, a few years after he’d retired. Still a fine figure of a man, could still do things with a football that this modern shower could only dream about.
“Well, one thing led to another and finally, I got him to bed. And blow me down, but I’m buggered if he wasn’t half-bird! One of each he had, a big dangling dick, and you lifted it up and there was a cunt. How he got through 20 years of communal baths and physical examinations I’ll never know. The greatest footballer I ever saw in my life, and he wasn’t even a he.”
The drag queen pouted dramatically. “Don’t you hate it when that happens? I once met a girl with two assholes.”
“Really?” The Russian.
“Really. Her husband and her lover.” Again, laughter. But then a hand on my elbow. I turned to see one of the attendants. “If you are finished with coffee, Ma’am, you are required elsewhere.”
I turned to see Magdalene staring directly at me. My journal lay closed on the table in front of her. As I stood, I tried to gauge her mood from her expression, but she held it featureless.
There was a hush as I made my way to the floor before her; the few voices that did continue were swiftly sssh-ed by their neighbors, and even the attendants had stilled the clattering of crockery.
“Did you enjoy your meal?” “Yes Ma’am, thank you Ma’am.” “And the conversation? I trust they did not bore you?”
I flashed a sideways glance to where I had been seated; saw the drag queen give me a dainty little wave. “No Ma’am, not at all, Ma’am.”
“That’s good. I’d hate to be regarded as one of those hostesses whose guests are boring. Now, I have read your writings. Not all of them, I grant, but enough, I would wager, to allow me to opine upon them. You write well.”
“Thank you, Ma’am.” My mother majored in journalism and, following the death of my father, she worked in publishing until she remarried. I spent hours as a child, leafing through her scrapbooks of old clippings, amazed that my own mom had once been a real writer. I probably picked it up from her.
“I have also compared your writings with the notes that your tutors have made for me.” I remained silent this time. How strange to have talked so freely, so animatedly, just a few seconds before, and now to be trapped back in this world of rigidity and formality. “Tell me this, Miss America. Why is it that you succumb so freely to your partners’ advances in your writings, yet refuse so stubbornly in your lessons? And I would advise you to think very carefully indeed before you deliver your response.”
I took a breath. “I have thought carefully, Ma’am. In fact, I’ve been thinking about that question almost from the moment I was invited to become a guest of this
establishment.”
I fixed my eyes on one of the men who had overseen my humiliation on my last visit to this room… was it really only yesterday? “Some people in this company are probably expecting to hear me spout some noble speech about free will, about a person’s right to choose or refuse her partners and her lovers, and not have them simply forced upon her as though we were animals.”
Around me, I could hear a stirring, as though my audience was collectively leaning forward, so as not to miss a syllable of my speech. “And, if I may speak freely, perhaps that is an issue. It was the custom with which I was raised, and the manner in which I have lived my life. In which I did live my life.
“But I understand now that there are others who do not abide by the same customs, not through any purposeful disregard for them, but because they simply aren’t aware that they exist. Just as I was not aware that any alternative to my lifestyle existed.”
All eyes were upon me. I could feel them boring into me from every direction. Directly in front of me, I saw the
Executioner’s eyes narrow beneath his mask. The Weasel, too, looked agitated, while the Doctor simply looked more and more resigned. Only the Magician remained impassive – perhaps even proud.
“Then what,” Magdalene asked, “is your difficulty? Just as a visitor to a foreign land must learn to adapt to that country’s customs, so must a visitor to a foreign lifestyle learn to accept that not all things are the same in every place.”
“That I understand, Ma’am” I replied. Then, ignoring the very real urge to run from the room to find a dark corner, I dropped my little bomb. “What I do not understand… or, should I say, what I cannot comprehend, is how those customs can be executed with such fumbling amateurism by people who claim to be experts in them.”
I paused again, knowing the response that my words would arouse, and determined that not one of them should be lost beneath the din, the riot that galloped the gamut of outraged opprobrium, from boos and hisses to cries of “Shame,” demands for me to be disciplined this instant, and even one voice, high-pitched and peeling above the rest, screaming “Whip her pussy! Whip her pussy!”
Magdalene rose, raised one hand. “Silence! I asked Miss America to speak. She is speaking. You will hold your tongues.”
“Thank you, Ma’am.” I curtseyed once again. “I do not speak out of malice, nor even to criticize. But you, who have read my writings, must surely understand what I am saying. There you read of men who believe themselves just as infallible, just as powerful, just as dominant as any man in this room. And they conduct themselves accordingly. “Here… I have experienced much at the hands of my tutors. I have learned to accept their organs in the deepest recesses of my body. I have learned to consume their seed as though it were the tastiest nectar. I have learned to accept their caresses and, on occasion, even to enjoy them.
“But only once… just once, in all the time I have been here… have I felt that I was in the presence of a true man, of the nature I encountered before I came here.” I fixed my eyes on the Doctor, still squirming in his seat; saw him catch it with his own eyes, and saw a few faces turn to look towards him. Good.
“As for the rest….” I don’t know how I had the nerve to continue. My knees were trembling, my legs felt
as though the blood had drained from them hours before, and I desperately wanted to throw up. But I had started, so I must finish. I raised a hand, then cast it down in the most dismissive gesture I could muster. “The rest are like boys, like children, confronted with
something they do not understand, but blundering into the midst of it accordingly. They call themselves Masters of everyone, yet they are barely capable of masturbating themselves.”
I took a deep breath, and fainted. CHAPTER EIGHT
Somebody thrust smelling salts beneath my nose. For a moment, I didn’t know where I was, couldn’t remember what I had said. Then the roar of the crowd around me, angry, screaming, howling for blood, broke through the fog that choked my thought processes, and I sat up to see the Doctor kneeling alongside me.
“She’s coming round,” he announced loudly, and the jeering grew louder. “I’m not quite sure what’s going to happen,” he whispered quickly. “Just brace yourself.” He patted my hand, then stood. “She is ready, my Lady.”
Magdalene had left her chair, rose to an immense height, far taller than I had ever imagined her to be. “You are bold. Foolish, perhaps, but bold. The question before me, however, cannot be answered quite so readily. You say that your tutors, including several that I myself personally trained, are like children. That they are incapable of carrying out the tasks that they have been assigned. I would like to see proof of this.”
The crowd was cheering now; she hushed them with a gesture. “But the proof will be garnered not from a demonstration of what they cannot do, but from what you can do.”
She turned away from me slightly, raised her hands, addressing the entire room. “It is the custom, on these, our little gatherings, for an entertainment to be raised for your
delectation. And so it shall be today. Ladies and gentlemen, you have already met our star attraction. You have heard her words, you have absorbed her sentiments. Some of you might agree with her” – I heard a handful of cheers.
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