Balustrade

by Mark Henry

Jack made the mistake of sitting in Ludovic's chair, flipping his leg casually over the arm. “So this is where it happened,” he said glancing around, taking in the furnishings, the pain. He kicked his dangling leg playfully.

  “Yeah. It happened right there, actually,” Hilary gestured to the chair. “You're sitting where he was when...”

  “When Chantal took my big cock right into the back of her throat.”

  Ludovic's booming voice and laughter startled them both, Jack standing bolt upright and Hilary nearly choking on her words. “I …didn't see you there,” she stuttered.

  “Not to worry, there are no secrets here. Clarity is the key to insight. Insight is the lock that once opened allows a personality to grow and flourish like a rose.”

  “Not to mix metaphors,” Hilary joked.

  Ludovic merely blinked and then waved off her comment. “Anyways, what were we discussing?”

  “Your cock, apparently.” Jack dropped onto the couch beside her, kicking his feet up onto the coffee table.

  “Make yourself comfortable,” Ludovic threw in, his tone oddly adversarial.

  He sat back in his chair and produced a chart he’d apparently been holding before he burst in on them at exactly the wrong time, or the right time if his point was to cause Hilary to blush uncontrollably.

  Probably the latter.

  “Today, as you may be aware, is the first official day of our treatment. Although, clearly in many cases, we’ve begun to lay the groundwork.”

  “So to speak,” Jack said.

  Hilary assessed Ludovic with some scrutiny. Something was different. For a man who only hours before and since their meeting seemed large in every way a man can be, Ludovic appeared smaller, if that were possible. It was as though his chair had been replaced with a larger version, like a doll thrown on for atmosphere.

  “Do you have something to say, Hilary?” His voice still rippled with thunder.

  And yet it didn’t have the same effect as it would have before Chantal had dominated him so completely.

  Chantal.

  And then it dawned on her. Ludovic hadn’t changed at all, she had. To anyone else, and even herself removed from this place, this would have been evident far sooner. She usually caught on to things quickly when other people were involved, but insight was one of those things you struggle against. It’s a protective skill. It’s best not to know yourself too well, lest you start taking sides with the people who call you a controlling bitch.

  “I’m seeing through different eyes, I suppose.”

  Jack reached for her hand and held it reflexively. She shook her head and his hand free.

  “That’s good,” Ludovic said. “A welcome shift in your paradigm. For your evening session, you'll engage in a fantasy you've shared with Chantal. Involving a third sexual partner joining the two of you.”

  Hilary’s hand fell against her chest, suddenly winded. Chantal certainly worked fast. She tried to push away the humiliation. Just to accept that she wanted certain things. That if Jack could have his cake, she could eat it, too.

  “Wait,” Jack said. “That wasn't my fantasy.”

  “No,” Hilary said, biting her lip. “It was mine.”

  Jack grimaced. “Why did you never tell me? I probably would have been open to that. In fact, I've always fantasized about watching you and another woman.”

  “It's a common fantasy,” Ludovic offered.

  “My fantasy involves another man.”

  Jack’s cheeks flushed. “Oh.”

  “But don't worry, he doesn't have to touch you if you don't want that.”

  “I'm not certain what to even think about this, I mean, it never even occurred to me.”

  “I want you both at the same time.”

  Jack’s mouth fell open, shocked at the abrupt shift in her personality. “Fucking you?”

  She nodded.

  “Like one in the mouth, one in the vagina?” he ventured.

  “No.” She swallowed wondering how to put this delicately, but deciding that would be completely against the new leaf she'd turned. “Both of you flat on your backs, nuts pressed together”

  “One in your ass?”

  “Both in my ass,” her voice sounded stony, even to her.

  Jack's gulp was audible.

  “I'm just kidding.” She laughed.

  Ludovic joined in. “You really had him going there. That was beautiful.”

  Jack giggled uncomfortably. “Yeah, you really did.”

  She let her hand drift back to his and she gripped it pleasantly. “No, I want one of you inside my pussy and the other in my ass. You can have my ass, since you've always wanted to try that but I've been so ridiculously protective.”

  Jack’s blanched.

  “Possibly this is too much for Jack, just yet,” Ludovic said, chuckling. “Perhaps the two of you can do some preparatory work.”

  Ludovic reached beside his chair, fingers flitting within what must have been a box and then retrieving a paper-wrapped parcel, tied up in twine, he placed it between them on the coffee table. “A gift,” he said.

  Hilary stared at it, not sure what to do. It was Jack who reached out and unwrapped the object. Inside was a rather large dildo and some sort of leather belt or harness. The phallus was black as night, long and thick as a coke can with perverse ridges veining its surface, the reverse side was a wide bulb, the handle. It took Hilary a moment to put two and two together. It was a strap-on, to use the vernacular.

  “What the fuck?” she glared at Ludo. “It's a pretty big leap to think that I'd enjoy fucking Jack with that.”

  “Oh?” Ludo's face took on a boyish glee.

  “What about Glynnis? Would you fuck her with it?”

  “Uh...no. I’d beat her in the head with it.”

  Ludovic's brow knitted as he stared pointedly at Jack, waiting for some response.

  Hilary swiveled toward Jack. His expression leaked out of him as though blood from a cut. Clearly nervous, pits staining, his voice quivered with each word. “I don't mind. You can fuck me.”

  Hilary chuffed. She pursed her lips, suspicious.

  He nodded slowly, his eyes skyward as though he were playing out the scenario.

  “Who the fuck are you?” she demanded of him. “I feel like you've been replaced by a pod person.” And then to Ludovic, “What have you done to him? I've suspected you're drugging everyone, but this is beyond even that. Brainwashing?”

  When the Montenegrin had no response beyond a sigh and a blank stare, Hilary decided she'd had enough and stood without another word, fleeing the room. She stomped through the middle of a circle of guests surrounding a sashed staff member on his knees alternately jerking off the men and fingering the women, all of them laughing hysterically, as though they'd discovered a new party game. If Milton Bradley could box this shit up, Hilary thought, they'd kill their competition. She turned to break out of the back of the group, but was stopped by a surprising presence.

  Claire.

  Standing there, rubbery kneed and taking three fingers up her snatch and one, possibly two in her ass. The woman’s head was thrown back in a howl of glorious pleasure and two men at her sides held her up by the elbows. Just to be helpful.

  Hilary backed away, bewildered momentarily, and then brought back to perfect clarity when a man’s rough hands, curled around the underside of her breasts. Hilary slapped his hands away and made a break for the stairs, turning back to see Claire staring at her.

  The look was vacant, disembodied.

  Horrifying.

  Something. That same something that she’d been noticing since they arrived. That eagerness to be led. That total abandon. They seemed possessed by a hunger for sex that was, well, unnatural.

  Drugs, Hilary thought. But then the religious fanatics came to mind. The zealot in black. The Mother. It flooded in like insanity. She needed to lie down.

  Purge it.

  Hilary made a point to keep from glancing into the rooms as she passed lest
she see something else that would trigger thoughts of demons hiding on the second floor. The

  In the end, she drifted into an uneasy slumber in the steam shower.

  ***

  The writing desk drawer hung open. Empty this time, an antique liner paper curling at the joints. Underneath though, instead of a wood grain, Hilary spotted a curve of letters. She pinched the scrolling paper, tugging it away, revealing the sentence slowly.

  Let…

  the…

  devil…

  fuck you…

  HILARY.

  The room shook as she staggered away from the desk, flattening against the wall, panting, eyes darting to the opening to the hall, horrified that the fanatical mother, the one that was her would walk in and begin to make her terrible threats.

  Stilling her breathing as much as she could, she tried to listen for noise in the hall. The slightest scuffle. Someone hiding. Waiting.

  Hilary edged across the room, tiptoeing as she reached the arch. She steeled herself for what she was about to witness and lurched out, eyes clinched shut at first and then peeking into…

  Nothing.

  The white hall was clinically empty. Sterile.

  “Jesus,” she exhaled. “What a freak. Pull yourself together.”

  She made her way to the courtyard only to stop dead at the sight of the balustrade. A blisteringly bright light jutted into the night sky, a searchlight, an announcement. Something was coming. A great scrabbling squelch arose and this time it was clear. Claws were raking on the stair. Something…

  The devil.

  …was crawling out of hell. Clawing its way up out of the pit and into the cage, its door open and clanging as the floor rumbled beneath her.

  Hilary’s eyes skittered to the four corners of the courtyard, scanning the balconies. She had to tell someone. She had to warn them. But when she looked back at the balustrade a dark figure split the bright column of light in two.

  The silhouette was familiar.

  At first she mistook it for Ludovic, his strange exotic features seemed fitting subterfuge for a demonic presence, but as the man approached. It was clear that she knew him more intimately.

  Jack.

  He walked toward her, eyes sleepy and nearly closed. Relief flooded in and she rushed to throw herself into his arms. He wrapped her in a comforting embrace, whispering warmly into her scalp. Something.

  She couldn’t quite understand it.

  And then she could.

  “This is the wrong meat.”

  Hilary pushed away, staring at his placid expression, his jagged teeth.

  His bright red eyes.

  She screamed then.

  9

  Jack didn’t want to hear it. Her stories of demons, of contracts. He started in before she’d even finished the story. Hilary slumped forward, elbows on her knees, forehead in her palms and brain bulging out of her skull.

  “It's not going to help anything to get upset,” he said.

  “Okay, for starters, Jack. You could back me up, for once, instead of the other way around.”

  “Oh come on, don't you think you're overreacting just a bit?”

  She jerked to her feet. “Seriously? If you can't admit that we've stumbled into something that's completely fucked up then we have definitely gone off the rails with this relationship.”

  “We're having sex and its fun again, what the fuck is wrong with that?”

  “I don't even know how to respond to that, Jack. These people are insane. Even if my dreams are complete bullshit. All of them are nuts. Did you walk through that fingerbang gauntlet? Who does that?”

  “What's wrong with that? No what? Really? It's exactly what we need to turn things around. We've been so…I don't know, same, for so long. This is definitely not same. This is...it's—”

  “Potentially dangerous?”

  “Fucking awesome is what I was going to say.”

  “Oh. Great!”

  Jack was definitely losing his grip on reality. Or she was. The dreams were truly making her unstable. She knew it.

  Unhinged was the word that came to mind.

  “I'm into it, Hilary, and I want you to be too. I want us to spend some time together and be weird and uncomfortable and awkward and whatever it is these fucking people think we need to do to get back to happy.”

  “Happy? We were happy? When was that?”

  “In the beginning. Fumbling with your bra in the back of Rex’s car, before he died, obviously. Laughing hysterically at film society screenings of those terrible Swedish dramas. I even found your armchair medical diagnostics quirky and cute. Now, I—”

  “Now?”

  “Not so cute. Just kind of...” his voice trailed off, and a smile curled onto his lips.

  “Kind of cute?”

  “Yeah. Kind of cute.”

  “So you think I’m overreacting? I want that to be the case really badly. You have no idea how badly I want it to be true.”

  And she did. It would mean she wasn’t going crazy. She could finally stop thinking about the pit in the floor of this place. The dream. The contract. The red eyes floating behind the thin curtains on the staff floor. The feeling that somehow, she’d been singled out.

  Jack stepped forward and wrapped his arms tightly around her, drawing her into the safety of an embrace she hadn't experienced for at least a year.

  “It's the case,” he said. “Trust me.”

  “I want to. I will,” Hilary said and relaxed into him as much as she could.

  Jack shepherded her to the bed and laid her down on the relenting pillow top. He hung above her slightly and she saw in him, what had originally drawn her to him, his intensity, his focus, and his desire to see her for what she really was.

  Where had that been hiding?

  But then he dropped down and pressed his lips to hers, cupping her neck gently and sweetly and she couldn't resist giving herself over to the calm waves of pleasure. She sucked at his lips, his tongue greedily; wanting to bite them, take him deep inside her as she knew this would inevitably lead to. Their tongues twisted and curled, limbs entwined, as they bucked out of their robes, fumbling for the belts looped at their waists, her panties, his boxers.

  Jack inched his lips down her throat, drawing a path of fiery passion across her flesh with his tongue, lingering on her most sensitive spots, the hollow of her throat, her armpits and finally, her nipples. He sucked her tender buds, throbbing stiff with need into his mouth, flicking his tongue over them, circling them, thumping them until the pleasure engulfed her whole body, strumming through her, down, down, straight to her wet pussy, her greedy demanding clit.

  His cock hard against her thigh, rising and falling, patting the flushed skin like a question.

  “Yes,” she cried out and slipped her hand between them, her knuckles dragging across Jack's hard pecs, lingering on his nipples, tweaking them a bit before searching out her cunt.

  Hilary toyed with her wet folds, sluicing her fingers brusquely between them and the depths of her sex, dipping her ring finger inside, hooking it tightly. Jack's eyes followed the length of her arm and when he looked back up at her, a big grin was stretched across his mouth.

  “You want me to get that for you?”

  “Yeah,” Hilary moaned. “Get it.”

  Jack's boyish laughter tamped out against belly, muffled completely within her cunt, then he was making a feast of her, lapping all of her, sucking her lips into his, licking the juice from them, supplying his own. She arched her back off the bed as he stabbed his tongue into her, fucking her deep and growling aggressively. Jack gripped her ass and drew her even closer, flicked lightly at her clit, then took her in long full-tongued swipes until Hilary alternated wanting to climb up the headboard to get away from his relentless mouth with the urge to flip him on his back and smother him with her cunt, grinding against those lips, that jaw, that tongue.

  In the end, Jack made the decision for her, turning them in a slow roll until Hilary was grippi
ng the headboard and thrusting across his mouth, riveted to the spot and hell-bent on keeping the sensation. Her jaw sore from clenching, grinding. Jack's little grunts drifted up like a reminder. She reluctantly raised herself off of him and twisted around hooking her arms over the top of the headboard and wiggling her ass above his greedy mouth, he snapped at her ass, little love bites that drove her insane. She glanced down the length of him, tan and rippling, his cock rock hard and pinioned against the gutters of his abs, a bead of desire kissed from the slit. Hilary settled her asshole closer to Jack's beseeching lips, his darting tongue and let out a soft mewling as he wet her tight little bud, prodding her pucker in twisting dabs. She sank into him and stretched her foot out to caress his prick, stroking it softly with her toes, pressing it even tighter against him with the pad of her foot. Jack moaned into her and fed all the more, slipping his thumb into her twat and tracing circles around her clit, teasing her with the possibility.

  Hilary glanced across from the bed, at the wall of windows and directly at a shadowy figure. For a moment she thought—hoped—it was Ludovic, come to work his way into Hilary’s fantasy. But it wasn’t.

  Chantal’s face lit in the soft glow of a cigarette cherry. The smoke curled about her head, a grey hood, her eyes sparking beneath the cloak. Hilary tensed and lifted herself off of Jack.

  “Whassit?” Jack mumbled sleepily.

  “Chantal. She’s standing out there,” Hilary whispered. “Jesus. Can’t she take a hint?”

  Jack craned his neck to get a look, just as Chantal took another drag, disappearing behind that glowing bud. Rudolf the red-nosed voyeur. Hilary had every intention of bolting from the bed, nude or not, and giving the woman a piece of her mind.

  But Jack had other ideas.

  “Never mind her.” He gripped her around her thighs and nuzzled his nose back into the crack of her ass, straining forward to tongue her clit.

  Hilary struggled with a deep desire to confront the woman—really lay into her for not getting a goddamn clue—and an almost messianic need to stay as close as possible to Jack’s determined tongue. If he had, as Hilary suspected, been taken aside and given some hint as to what exactly was needed in the pussy-eating department, then he was an apt pupil and she'd be happy to let him practice any time.