Planet of Pain

by B. A. Bradbury

  An hour later, leaning heavily on Helen’s arm, Jo made her way back to their quarters.

  ‘A hot shower, as hot as you can stand it, and then bed,’ Helen said. ‘Have another hot shower when you wake, then I’ll come and give you a massage. You’ll feel like a new woman afterwards, I promise.’

  Jo nodded, wondering why Helen, who she’d thought of as the enemy, was being so nice to her.

  ‘It’s just muscular,’ Helen went on. ‘You’ve been straining against the straps, that’s why you hurt all over. It’s better if you can stay relaxed. Easier said than done, of course, when the pain’s bad.’

  Jo remembered Bel saying something similar all those weeks ago aboard Dauntless. Jo had fainted in the chair, and when she surfaced she felt just like this, aching in every joint and muscle. ‘Where’s Eli?’ she asked.

  Helen shook her head grimly. ‘Worry about yourself, not her. Your friend’s an expert at looking after number one, believe me.’

  That seemed harsh and unfair, but Jo was too weary to pursue it. Tomorrow, she told herself, she would find a way to see Eli tomorrow.

  Chapter 23

  Tomorrow duly arrived, and after the shower and promised massage Jo found she did indeed feel a whole lot better. She would even get to see Eli, too; they all would, Helen said. Annamarie had ‘entertainment’ planned, at noon precisely. She told them to be ready at a quarter to twelve, bathed and naked; which told Jo more about the entertainment than she cared to know.

  At the appointed time Helen came for them. They followed her to the lounge, where they found Annamarie waiting, lying on one of the couches with a naked Eli snuggled beside her. Perry stood alongside, watchful and silent as ever. Of Siggi there was no sign.

  ‘Time for some fun,’ Annamarie said as they lined up in front of her. ‘At least, I shall enjoy it, but I’ll be very surprised if you do.’

  She rose from the couch, telling Eli to rejoin her friends, and she did so but with no great enthusiasm. Jo hardly recognised her. Her dark hair was up in an elegant coil, her make-up lent her an alluring, exotic air, and her skin glowed with a golden tan. The biggest change of all, however, was that she didn’t spare Jo a second glance: she had eyes only for Annamarie. It wasn’t hard to see what had happened; Eli had switched guardians from Jo – who had done such a miserable job of it – to someone who could truly protect her.

  They all trooped through into the playroom, at one end of which was a raised area perhaps five yards square. It was to this that Annamarie led them.

  ‘I have four sessions planned,’ she said, ‘one for each of you. We’ll start with a little game I call Awawa to determine the running order. You’ll work in pairs for this: Kitten with Josephine, and Stella with Bel. Helen will now get you ready.’

  Helen led the four of them up the steps onto the dais and had them stand in line, with Stella at the end, then Bel, Eli, and Jo. Helen proceeded to tape short wires to their nipples, each wire terminating in a round black plastic sphere as big as a walnut. They were surprisingly heavy for their size, and Jo felt her nipples being tugged downwards by the weights. It was uncomfortable, certainly, if not exactly painful, but when Helen handed Annamarie a miniature controller Jo suspected all that was about to change.

  ‘Stand to attention!’ Helen snapped. Eli alone failed to respond to the command, and Helen was obliged to push and prod her into position. Once they were all set the woman went down again and placed a chair in front of the dais. Annamarie sat, looking up at them.

  ‘Keep as still as you can,’ she said. ‘Most especially I want you to keep your arms by your sides. Kitten, do you understand?’

  ‘Yes, mistress,’ Eli said meekly.

  ‘I hope so,’ Annamarie said. She pressed a button on the controller, all four of them flinched in unison, and all bar Stella gasped. It felt to Jo as though someone had stuck pins into her nipples, for a second or two, and then the sensation was gone. ‘As the goads are merely taped to your nipples,’ Annamarie said, ‘it would be the easiest thing in the world just to pull them off. The first woman to do so loses the game, however, for herself and her partner. The losing pair will go last in the sessions, and the later ones are the more severe. Does everyone understand?’

  There were unhappy nods all round.

  ‘Very well,’ Annamarie said. ‘First I shall increase the power a little to make things interesting, and programme the sequence…’ she tapped keys quickly, ‘…and now we can begin.’

  She gave them a long look, a smile playing over her lips. Her finger hovered above the controller and Jo braced herself. The finger jabbed down and Jo flinched, then she realised nothing had happened. There was no pricking sensation, no pain of any sort. Annamarie was toying with them.

  But only with three of them. Stella was standing stiffly, her arms rigid by her sides.

  Annamarie laughed softly. ‘Did I forget to mention? You’ll feel it one at a time.’

  The three of them looked at Stella, who was clearly suffering, though precisely how much was hard to say. But even as they looked on nervously Stella sagged, and now it was Bel who gasped and went rigid. Jo began to count in her head: one-supernova… two-supernova…

  When she reached five Eli whimpered and rose up onto her tiptoes. Jo faced forward, took in a deep breath, and let it out slowly, trying to relax. Any second now…

  The pain hit, worse than before. Jo stiffened as the others had done, and her chin lifted. She counted to herself and at five, right on cue, the pain stopped. For her, that is, though not for the group. She heard Stella gasp and knew the controller had been programmed to cycle automatically.

  ‘As Stella is now discovering,’ Annamarie said, ‘the level increments each cycle: by zero-point-two, to be precise. Simply put, the longer it goes on the more it hurts.’

  It reached Eli just as she finished speaking, and Jo thought the girl’s reaction was indeed more extreme, but there was little time for speculation, for just moments later it was her turn again, and most definitely it was worse. She clamped her jaw and fought the pain, keeping it inside the way Stella did.

  And so it went on, round and around, becoming less bearable with each circuit. Almost as bad as the pain itself, Jo found, were the intervals between, watching the thing moving towards her down the line like some malevolent beast. She fully expected Eli would be the one to cave in, but the young woman proved surprisingly resilient. True, her distressed cries were louder than anyone else’s, and her jerking more pronounced, but her arms remained resolutely by her side.

  In fact it was Bel who called a halt, tugging the goads off her breasts and throwing them on the floor. Jo was sure she had done it deliberately, holding out just long enough to make it convincing.

  ‘Bel,’ Annamarie said dryly, ‘why am I not surprised?’

  The woman, Jo realised, wasn’t fooled for a second.

  Helen brought the four of them down off the dais, Annamarie having declared the running order to be Kitten, Jo, Stella, then Bel. As Awawa winners, she reiterated, Kitten and Jo could expect more lenient treatment than the other two.

  ‘Very well,’ Annamarie said in conclusion, ‘let the fun begin.’

  Eli was led to a waist-high bench and made to lie on her back while the other three held her. At Annamarie’s instruction Jo and Stella held the girl’s ankles, raising her legs and spreading them wide apart, while Bel grasped her wrists, keeping Eli’s arms above her head. Annamarie unclipped the seraph from her belt.

  ‘A method of torturing women that has been used all through the ages,’ she said as she adjusted the settings, ‘is to put hot irons inside them, vagina and rectum. Men also, though the choice of orifice is necessarily more limited.’

  She approached Eli, who was shivering, and stroked her hand along the inside of the girl’s thigh. ‘Don’t worry, Kitten,’ she crooned, ‘it won’t be all that hot. Level four only, I promise.�
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  She put the copper tip into Eli’s vagina and began to work it slowly in and out. Eli whimpered and tried to close her legs. Jo and Stella held fast to her ankles, preventing her from doing so; and Jo felt like a traitor. Eli may have deserted her, but that didn’t mean she should now desert Eli. Holding her in this fashion – helping Annamarie to hurt her – was the very opposite of what she had vowed to do.

  ‘This reminds me of The Goose Girl,’ Annamarie said. ‘Do you remember that fairy story, Kitten?’

  ‘No, mistress,’ Eli gasped, as she squirmed on the bench.

  ‘Oh, but surely you must! The goose girl was tending her geese in the meadow when the fire dragon spotted her from his lofty crag, remember? He swooped down and carried her off to his lair and ravished her there. Ring any bells?’

  ‘I’m sorry, mistress.’

  ‘No? What a pity. I don’t suppose anyone tells fairy stories any more, do they? The Goose Girl was always one of my favourites. I especially liked the part where the dragon put his fiery cock inside her and she screamed and screamed.’

  She gave a deep sigh, as though regretting the loss of folk culture. It wasn’t a genre Jo was familiar with, and from the sound of it she wasn’t missing much.

  ‘How did it end, mistress… the story?’ Eli asked a minute or two later. She was panting and her squirming had become almost frantic. ‘Was the goose girl… burned to a crisp?’

  Annamarie laughed softly. ‘No indeed. It ended happily, as all good fairy stories do. The geese heard her screams and flew up to the dragon’s lair. They flapped their wings furiously and blew out his fire. After that he crawled away into a deep crevasse, and was never seen again. The end.’

  ‘I’m glad, mistress. I’m glad… she survived.’

  ‘Yes, Kitten,’ Annamarie said, ‘so am I.’ And with that she took the seraph out of Eli and signalled for the other three to let her up.

  ‘Josephine’s turn now,’ Annamarie announced. ‘We shall be staying with “heat” mode for the present, but trying a different orifice. No prizes for guessing which one. We’ll stay at level four, too.’ She checked the settings. ‘This is my brother’s mode of choice for the seraph, as I’m sure you’ll discover in the not too distant future. Where in heaven’s name is he, by the way? Helen, see if you can find him. Tell him he’s missing all the fun.’

  Helen went out, but Annamarie obviously decided not to wait. ‘The position required is somewhat undignified,’ she said, ‘but I imagine that will be the least of your worries.’

  Annamarie sat on a stool and made Jo adopt a half-squat, facing away from her with her forearms resting on her knees. She put the tip of the seraph to Jo’s anus and pushed it a short way into her.

  ‘You will also learn in due course that my brother is obsessed with deep penetration. In my opinion this is counterproductive. The anal sphincter is more sensitive by far than the deeper recesses of the colon. Shallow penetration is hence the better strategy.’

  She was as good as her word. With a barely perceptible movement of her wrist she worked the copper sphere in and out. The burning pain was just bearable, and Jo closed her eyes and tried not to think about how much it was hurting. Not easy, with pain so dreadfully insistent and each minute interminable.

  ‘Do you think,’ Annamarie said after a while, ‘you could manage an escalation? Level five, say?’

  ‘I don’t believe so, mistress,’ Jo said, hearing the strain in her own voice.

  ‘Oh, I think you can,’ Annamarie said confidently. ‘You’re quite a tough young woman. Tougher than you pretend to be.’

  There was a momentary respite and then the pain returned, worse than ever. Jo groaned, shaking her head in despair. And Sigismund chose that moment to put in an appearance.

  ‘Apologies, Anna,’ he said. ‘Urgent business; you know how it is.’

  ‘Take a seat, pray do,’ his sister said. ‘Enjoy the show.’ He did precisely that, drawing up a chair and sitting in front of Jo. He leaned forward, studying her face.

  ‘This one’s very pretty, isn’t she?’ he said after a while. ‘What’s her name again?’

  ‘Josephine.’

  ‘Josephine, that’s right; I remember now. Such a beautiful mouth.’

  He ran the tip of his index finger around her lips, which were parted as she gasped in pain. She closed her mouth, disconcerted by his scrutiny.

  ‘You’re so predictable, brother dear,’ Annamarie chuckled. ‘Josephine, would you like me to stop now?’

  ‘Yes please, mistress,’ Jo gasped.

  ‘I’ll make a deal with you. Siggi here is just dying to have you perform fellatio on him, I know, so when you’ve made him come I’ll stop.’

  Siggi’s handsome face broke into a smile. He drew aside his robe and did the cock-flicking trick to gain an instant erection.

  ‘You’ve witnessed his impressive staying power,’ Annamarie said. ‘Artificially induced, needless to say, but still remarkable. Suck hard enough and I’m confident you’ll succeed, however.’

  Siggi put his cock to her lips, and Jo lost no time in starting to service him. More than anything in the world she wanted this over and done with, and at last Siggi climaxed, squirting endlessly into her mouth. At least he didn’t hold her ears as he had with Bel, or push his cock to the back of her throat, so choking wasn’t a problem. Neither was the dreadful pain in her anus, for Annamarie had withdrawn the seraph at Siggi’s first grunt. The only thing Jo had to contend with, in fact, was a mouthful of semen, and she disposed of that as she knew Siggi would wish, feeling it slide down her throat.

  ‘Excellent,’ Annamarie said happily. ‘Two down, two to go. Who’s next?’

  Chapter 24

  ‘I find personally,’ Annamarie said, ‘that extreme cold can be equally as effective as extreme heat. The pain it engenders is quite different, of course: I’ve heard it described as a truly dreadful ache. Not unlike the ache that derives from anal intercourse, but considerably more severe. I’ll be interested to hear your opinion on this, Stella.’

  Her victim was lying on her back on the same high bench that Eli had used, but the position was somewhat different in that her knees were drawn up to her chest, and no one was holding her. Annamarie was standing at the foot of the bench working the seraph slowly in and out of Stella’s anal sphincter, much as she had with Jo. The level, however, was now at six, and Jo couldn’t imagine how Stella could just lie there and take it, and make not a sound.

  ‘Another advantage of the seraph should now become apparent,’ Annamarie said. ‘Real cold carries with it its own anaesthetic. Tissue becomes numb as the temperature drops and the pain falls away. With simulated cold, however, there is no such relief.’

  Siggi approached and stood looking down at Stella. He stroked her belly, shoulders, and thighs. ‘You have a remarkable body,’ he said. ‘Excellent muscle definition for a female. I imagine you must have trained hard.’

  ‘I have, sir,’ Stella said, her voice wavering.

  ‘Thought so.’ He plucked her nipples, stretching them. ‘These are remarkable, too.’ He told Helen to fetch some clips and selected a pair of largish black ones, which he fastened to Stella’s nipples. But she gave no sign that she felt it, and Jo guessed the pain in her anus was swamping all other sensations. Siggi, not to be thwarted, pinched the clips and squeezed, applying extra pressure. It did the trick, for Stella’s belly contracted suddenly and she grunted. He repeated it several times, then turned to Annamarie.

  ‘Mind if I take over?’ he asked. ‘I’d like to try something.’

  ‘Not at all,’ she said, stepping back and handing the seraph to her brother. ‘I could do with a drink in any case. Torturing young women is such thirsty work. Helen, fetch me my usual.’

  Siggi told Stella to get down, which she did, stiffly. He sat on the chair and changed the seraph’s settings. ‘Heat,’
he said. ‘Anna can keep her cold mode. Level six as before.’ He took off his right boot and sock, stuck the base of the seraph between his big toe and second toe, put his heel on the floor, and ordered Stella to sit on it.

  ‘Which orifice, sir?’ she asked.

  ‘Anus,’ he said.

  Grimly she stepped up and squatted over the thing, then lowered herself onto it.

  ‘All the way down,’ he said. ‘Sit on my foot.’ She did so, and for the first time in the session a groan escaped her lips. ‘That’s good,’ Siggi said. ‘Now hold it like that. I’ll tell you when to come up.’

  He kept her squatting for a good fifteen or twenty seconds. Stella was panting, her face a rigid mask. Her hands clasped her knees, the knuckles showing white.

  ‘Up now, very slowly,’ he said. ‘Slowly, that’s it… now stop. Hold it there… hold it… now down again.’ He raised and lowered her a score of times at least, telling her along the way that constant exercise was the only way to retain muscle tone, this particular routine being very good for the thighs. What Stella thought remained a mystery, though probably loss of muscle tone was the least of her concerns. Having experienced a hot seraph in the anus herself – albeit at level five, not six – Jo pitied her.

  The fourth and last session got underway. Annamarie took over once more, and had Bel kneel with her hands behind her back. She then proceeded to tell them another story, but this was no fairytale.

  ‘On Earth, early this century,’ she said, ‘there was a bloody civil war in the eastern part of that region called Europe. The cause was religious belief, if you can believe that, and it was rooted in centuries of bitter division and mistrust. It was a particularly vicious conflict and many atrocities were committed on both sides. In one incident a group of female prisoners had their nipples squeezed with pincers. They were made to kneel, as you are now kneeling, but they were not bound. They were told that if they could endure the torture without moving they would be freed. If they moved, or tried to resist in any way, their throats would be cut.’