Into Painfreak

by Lee, Edward

  Aaron sighed, and stepped past her into the booth. She pulled the door closed behind them. This was it then. All of her talk would amount to a blowjob in a seedy peep show booth? He felt his body deflate. This was worse than he could have imagined.

  The chauffeur pushed a coin into the slot next to a video screen mounted in the ragged plywood wall. But as soon as the screen came to life, she turned around and pointed to the door they’d just entered. Her arm brushed his as she did; they could both barely fit in the space at the same time. He trembled at her touch. Maybe a blowjob wouldn’t be the worst thing.

  “Open the door,” she said.

  “Huh?” he said. They’d just stepped in. The movie had just begun playing on the screen behind them.

  “Open the door.”

  He did, confused before he turned the knob, and even more confused after.

  The dingy hallway outside the peep show booth was gone.

  Instead there was a long corridor in its place, leading away from the door. It was blindingly white, though he could discern no actual light fixtures. The walls themselves seemed to glow.

  “Come with me,” she said, and led him down that long walk. He followed, and eventually the door behind them disappeared. When he glanced back, there was nothing to see but white.

  “I don’t understand,” he said. “How did we get here?

  She extended her hand and showed him the tattoo between her fingers. “The man at the front of the store gave me the coin…because I have this mark. Nobody can enter Painfreak without this,” she said.

  “Painfreak?”

  “It’s the place you’ve been searching for,” she said. “It’s a place known by many names and there are many doorways, though all of them are well hidden. You’ve seen an aspect of it before, in your NightWhere. Once it was all you needed. Now, it is all you need again. And that needing…that’s the only time one can find entrance. The need must be strong enough. Yours was.”

  The corridor ahead changed. With every step, the white dissolved, giving way to strobing colors and laughter. And throbbing music and moans. Aaron could see motion, figures dancing; the vibration of a bass drum made the hair on the back of his arms shiver. Rhythmically.

  “I don’t understand how we got here,” he said.

  “You called,” she said. “I came.”

  Before he could answer, they were there, in the club with the others, the long white road behind. She shed the cap and jacket, tossing them to the wall. Then she stood in front of him, corset shimmering in the moving club lights, the black hose of her thighs catching the colors and sparkling darkly with the rhythm of the beat. She slipped her arm around his waist and drew him close to her, rocking her small pelvis to his. He smiled and gave way to the motion, though he didn’t know the song.

  A blond girl in pigtails danced her way next to them; she wore black leather boots and red panties, and nothing else. Her breasts were pendulous; bouncing with every beat of the drum. She jiggled them against his arm, and tried to cut in. He resisted, and the girl shrugged, leaving him with a wet kiss on the cheek.

  “You should go,” the chauffeur said, pointing at the throng of people. “Dance and lose yourself here.”

  He shook his head. “I’m not looking for emptiness. I have that already.”

  “You want more?” she asked.

  He looked around, acknowledging the titillation factor of the sex-on-the-dancefloor gyrations, and then nodded his head. This drunken debauch did nothing for him anymore. It really never had; he had always gone quickly to the next level. The level that toyed with pain. The level that put life itself on the razor’s edge.

  “Follow me,” she said.

  She led him through rows of half-naked dancers. They passed an area where men and women were chained to walls and racks, as others took turns making their marks with whips and flogs. They passed couches where men mounted men and women smothered men with the deltas of their thighs.

  When they reached a wooden door so large and old it looked medieval, she turned to him and cautioned. “If you pass through this, there is no turning back. In Painfreak, every person must find their level. If they go too far, push too deep…some never return.”

  “What is beyond the door?” he asked.

  “Pain,” she said. “And pleasure. Dark lusts fulfilled. Thirsts quenched. Souls bled…what do you desire?”

  “Something more than this,” he said, gesturing to the revelers in the room around them.

  She nodded, and lifted a round iron ring pinned to the front of the door. It was surrounded by four heads carved in the ancient wood. Each featured a different expression—one laughing, one crying, one screaming and one blank—the absence of all emotion or expression.

  The door opened and they stepped into a dark hallway lit by glowing red embers on either side of a stone path. The waves of heat were palpable. The chauffeur turned, and placed her hands on his shoulders.

  “Are you ready to leave it all behind,” she asked. Her eyes were wide, and serious. “There is no holding back here, no reservation. To get it all, you must give up all.”

  He nodded. “There is nothing else for me now, nothing more to hold me back.”

  She nodded, as if she had expected that response. “Then remove your clothes. Shed your false skins and inhibitions at this door. Carry nothing of your society in here. This is the place for primal. For indulgence. For violence. For transcendence. Bring no binds that hold you back.”

  She removed her hands from his arms then, and reached behind her back to loosen the ties of her corset. After a moment, Aaron began to remove his shirt. As the chauffeur removed her hose, he undid his belt. When he hesitated, she was there, and pulled down his zipper for him, dragging the pants down his thighs, and then loosing his underwear from his hips with her thumbs. The wilted slug of his manhood slipped free, and her face moved past, so close he could feel her breath on his testicles as she dragged his pants down, down, and off.

  When he was completely nude, she stood, with both of their discarded garments in a pile in her arms.

  “No turning back,” she said, and then threw the clothing onto the coals. They smoked, and then quickly caught flame. As they did, she slipped her arms around his back, and raked it with her nails. “Welcome to Painfreak,” she said. “This is the place you have dreamed of all your life. The place you tried to create in your secret room.”

  She leaned up and kissed him. Her tongue was hot, and sharp in his mouth, and he felt his entire body stiffen, rising to life. Waking from a sleep of years.

  Her hand slipped down his side and found his own. She turned and led him down the path of fire, and into a room of blood.

  Screams erupted from every side as they walked through the room. There were beds made of leather straps, the straps tight enough to support the weight of a body, but with enough gap to allow the blood to seep through freely. Because this was where those who wanted to feel the pain in their pleasure came. And those who wanted to give it.

  Aaron stopped near one bed where a woman lay on her back, wrists bound together above her head, ankles tied apart to force her thighs to remain open. A hirsute, brown-skinned man straddled her. At first glance, it was a typical bondage scene. Until you looked at his fingers. Which each wore a steel cap on their ends…and each cap was tipped with a tiny barb. As he shoved his cock inside her, he drew his fingers down her body, opening red ribbons of feeling across her breasts and arms.

  She screamed, and yet moments later, wrapped her arms around him, drawing him down to a hungry kiss. When he raised himself up, his chest hair glistened with her blood.

  Aaron walked past orgasmic women with breasts stretched taut by hooks and men with testicles weighed down by heavy chains or cocks impaled by metal skewers. At one bed, three women held a man to the bed, as a fourth dragged a knife across his inner thighs. She stifled his screams with her crotch as she felated his obstinate erection.

  They left that room, and entered a strange mechanica
l place that whined with sound. The scent of hot metal and oil permeated the air, and bodies bound by chains and iron rods moved back and forth, pulled and stretched by engines that revved and sighed. Men with skin burned red pulled against the chains, desperate to gain just one more foot, to reach the prone bodies of the women waiting just out of reach. Like the men, the women were bound and naked, streaked with black machine grease, but they appeared desperate to welcome the bodies of the men. Every few minutes, the men would gain a foot on the chain and mount one of the women, fast and hard before being eventually yanked back to the line. It was a strange sight, a half dozen naked men, cocks sprung, pulling against the machine to reach the nirvana of glossy vaginas that lie tauntingly just out of reach 90 percent of the time. A bell sounded, and chains went slack, and all of that muscle suddenly released. The entire line of bodies slid into gear and slapped together wetly; the clank of the machines now augmented with a chorus of groans.

  “Farther in,” she said. And he nodded.

  There were other rooms they passed, and scents of boiled flesh and excrement and the sounds of steel and wetness.

  And then they came to an empty room. With an empty bed.

  The chauffeur reached down to a small table and came back with her fingers curled around the haft of a thin, silver blade. She presented it to him.

  “You have waited long enough. I have waited my whole life.”

  She lay down on the bed, and slipped her wrists into round leather hoops. Aaron saw what he needed to do, and bound her ankles with the restraints that dangled at the foot of the bed.

  “You are sure,” he asked.

  She nodded.

  He bent over her and kissed her, and she filled his mouth with urgency. He answered, kissing her eyes and cheeks and breasts, covering her with his bites and licks. The memory of the girls he had once had in the secret back room of the club came back to him. He remembered the things he had done to them with his knife, and his cock. Only in those moments, had he ever really felt complete.

  “Take me,” she urged him. “Eat me,” she whispered.

  He chewed on the gummy tips of her nipples and bit her belly until blood flowed. But when she whispered once more, he could restrain the knife no longer.

  “Sushi,” she said.

  He lay between her legs and touched the blade to the thin petal of flesh trembling there. It seemed to breathe, gasping open and closed, desperate for fulfillment. Longing for completion. Aaron fingered her flesh, tantalizing it, letting it moisten. The longer he toyed, the more she glistened. And when she’d reached what he felt was the perfect flush of pink, he drew the blade down, and carved.

  The chauffeur screamed, and tried to close her legs. But they were locked in the stirrups he’d fastened.

  Aaron stood. Naked. Paunch sagging. Cock fully erect, rubbing against the hair near his bellybutton. Blood dripping from the flesh between his fingers to splatter and run down the silver hair of his chest.

  He held the petal of her sex up to the light, where she could see, and then let it slide into his mouth.

  Warmth. Salt. Perversion. Desire. Dream.

  He lost touch with the world in that moment, floating on the wave of taste and texture and the audible music of faraway screams. He shivered with lust and laved her broken flesh before crushing it with his teeth.

  The nerves of his mouth burned with a fire that he could not have explained. Pleasure. Perversion. The taste of her flesh.

  Aaron bent and gripped and brought the knife down again, and the chauffeur cried out again in a note of agony that only made the taste of her in his mouth even more exquisite. Only in violation could he feel fulfilled. He brought the sliver of sexual flesh up and held it above his lips before letting it fall, like fiery sugar to his tongue.

  Rapture.

  The space between her legs flowed in a red tide. Release.

  Aaron tasted heaven. A dream so long denied. So darkly wished for. And yet still…

  …as the initial taste and electricity in his nerves eased…he found it wasn’t enough. It was a taste of heaven, but not what he truly sought. What he yearned for. He didn’t want the feeling to be fleeting.

  “Lie down,” the chauffeur demanded. While he had savored the forbidden taste of her, she had released herself, and undone her ankle restraints. Now she stood before him with blood-streaked thighs and bruising, well-bitten breasts.

  “Lie down,” she said again. Aaron complied. He laid down on the thin leather straps of the bed, and felt the warm wetness of her blood stick to his skin.

  The chauffeur locked his ankles in place, but then also reached up and brought a chain across his wrists. He had left her wrists free, and she had held herself back, as he’d carved into her most intimate flesh.

  She did not give him the choice. His wrists were locked.

  And he didn’t care. He gave himself up to whatever she wanted, whatever he had left. He had tasted her and…

  She raised the blade so that he could see. “My flesh to you, your flesh to me,” she said. And then she brought the blade down to slice just below the head of his penis.

  The pain was hideous.

  Aaron screamed. And strained against his bounds.

  But to no avail. The blade moved against him, as her fingers gripped the mushroom head of his manhood between them. He felt both the frisson of penetration, and the ripping as flesh separated.

  And then the chauffeur was leaning in, over his chest, with a bloody sliver of skin and flesh hanging above her mouth. She had peeled the skin off from around his shaft. Degloved his penis.

  “Your flesh for mine,” she said. “A communion.” And the skin of his manhood disappeared into her mouth.

  She undid his wrists then, and his ankles. Aaron looked down to see an angry red stake where his cock had once been, and part of him laughed, while part of him cried. The pain was excruciating. And yet…somehow distant.

  “You have looked for connection all your life,” his chauffeur said. “I have looked for the same. That’s why I took your call tonight. Together we can reach that place. Your blood in mine.”

  She slipped one leg over his lap, and bent to kiss him, the iron taste of him still fresh on her lips.

  “Will you be mine?” she asked.

  Aaron looked into the brown endless eyes of her, so exotic. So erotic. He nodded. “I will,” he gasped.

  She moved her pelvis over his, and let his mushroom head find purchase in the slippery gore he’d made of her sex. When she was sure, she let go, and allowed herself to be impaled by his bloody spear.

  Both of them screamed, as he slipped home.

  The pain and blood only lubricated their orgasm, which came quickly, violently, a series of wild waves on a shore of fire.

  Aaron opened his eyes and saw hers looking back at his, both of them haunted and aghast.

  Afraid and amazed to have finally found…

  “Yes,” he said. Only that.

  She nodded, and smiled. And closed her legs with him still inside. Their wounds kissed and wept. And he held her close, arms locked around her back, pulling her as tight as flesh allowed.

  ««—»»

  When he awoke, the next morning…or night—there was no division of time in the depths of Painfreak—she was there still, hips pressed to his, breasts wet with sweat against his own. The room flickered with the shadows of fires unseen, and the chauffeur’s arms remained around his neck.

  “Hey,” he said.

  She smiled, brown eyes pools of beauty and need and desire. He didn’t want to ever look away, but he did try to shift, to separate himself from the heat of their long embrace. But she came with him. As his thighs moved, they dragged her along.

  “What?”

  He looked down the brown silk of her waist and saw the place where his flesh entered hers. His cock somehow, unbelievably anchored inside her. Aaron pulled his hips back, and shifted his weight. Instead of leaving her, he saw her pubes stretch and move with his own. The skin o
f her groin lifted with his motion, skin pulling, but not letting go.

  “We are one,” she whispered. “Just like you always dreamed. Completed at last.”

  “I don’t understand,” he said.

  “Your flesh to mine,” she said. “We ate from each other…and gave back to each other. We are connected, for eternity. Two now one. Truly and deeply.”

  He tried to shift his hips again, and her waist and legs moved across the bed. It was going to be difficult to walk this way.

  “This is fucked up,” he whispered. She only smiled and he realized that he could actually feel the emotion that surged behind her lips. Her thoughts were in his head: wave of relief. The pure excitement of knowing that a lifelong, terrible emptiness was finally filled.

  He realized the feeling echoed the surge of his own bitter heart. He was suddenly, strangely completed. Content. He stopped trying to pull away, and instead kissed her deeply, and wondered if they could simply stay that way, lips and groins locked forever. Aaron closed his eyes and saw through hers. He looked old…but younger than he’d felt in years.

  We won’t be leaving Painfreak will we, he thought.

  A warm surge of bliss served as her answer.

  He realized in that moment that while she was inconceivably part of him, he didn’t even know her name. But she read his mind.

  “My name is Aaron,” she said. She moved her arms up and around his shoulders, and pulled him even closer. “And I won’t ever leave you,” her mind whispered inside his own.

  “I will always love you,” he said.

  Or she said.

  It didn’t matter anymore.

  | — | — |

  Storming the Museum

  ————

  Charlee Jacob

  As if the naked blade,

  gleaming only in darkness,