by Syra Bond
‘I watched transfixed as one of them crawled across the back of my hand. It scuttled forward, stopped, raised its long thin tail, turned and scuttled forward again. It looked entirely unpredictable - it gave away no clue of its intention or next action. Another clambered onto my other hand. I didn’t know whether to shake it off or stay still. I was trembling all over. I thought I was going to die.
‘The congregation came close around the cage - some on their knees, some squatting on their haunches. They began throwing money down, shouting out odds, predicting when or where the first would bite. I was riveted with fear. I could hardly breathe - my body was rigid. One of the scorpions tried to climb up my arm and fell off. It struggled on its back and when it turned over seemed enraged. It tried again to climb up my arm and failed. It seemed to get angrier. It turned at the bend on my wrist, faced me, arched its tail fully like a spring then released it and buried its sting into my skin. Still I did not move - it was impossible!
‘I listened to my heart, thinking it would stop in a sudden convulsion, or break into uncontrolled beating until it exploded. I counted my breathing - waiting for a seizure to stop it, or a sudden cramp to herald the onset of twitching then paralysis. The congregation cheered as some of them snatched up their winnings. Others, disappointed by their losses, threw down more money, betting on when the next would sting or where. My ordeal had only just started!
‘I knew my eyes were rolling. I was dizzy. I felt a burning sensation where the first sting had occurred. With the next bite I had a different reaction - not a shock of fear but a shock of pleasure! I couldn’t believe it! It was like the electric shock from the generator - it was bringing me an overwhelming sensation of joy. I watched the sharp tipped sting passing through my skin and I felt it burn as it injected its venom, and I felt the heat in my cunt, and the moisture at its edges as I revelled in the penetration of being punctured. That’s what it was - being punctured. That was what was so exciting - my skin being broken by something sharp, and of something flowing through it, entering me.
‘They pulled me out of the cage and threw buckets of water over me. “Don’t waste it,” shouted Manuel. “It’s valuable out here in the desert”. They pulled me underneath one of the scrap cars, tied me by the wrists to one of the rusty axles and left me there. All night, as I shivered in the cold desert air, I imagined I was going to die. I continually flexed my hands to make sure I was not going into paralysis. I opened my thighs and managed to pull my cunt up against one of the deflated tyres. I rubbed my slit against its textured tread, all the time thinking of the puncturing sting entering through my skin, until I rose up in a storm of short, heavy and repeated orgasms.
‘The next morning Manuel came to me. I had raised red spots all over the backs of my hands, on the soles of my feet and just above my knees. “When will I die?” I asked him hopelessly as he untied me from the axle. He roared with laughter. “You will not die! They were harmless -big but harmless. They’re just Vinegaroons - non-venomous. You’re not going to die!”
‘I told him how frightened I had been. He mocked me for thinking it was a Death Stalker. Then I told him how I had felt my cunt getting wet as I had seen the sting penetrating my skin - how I found the idea of being punctured like this more exciting than anything I had ever known. He raised his eyebrows and asked me to tell him more. In a way I knew it was a mistake, but at the same time I didn’t regret it, after all, if I had never told him, then my life would never have been complete.
‘From then on everything he did to me was connected to my admission that I liked my skin being punctured. For the first couple of weeks he waited until Sundays - until the congregation was there- and in the week I had chance to recover. However, as time went on, it was almost every day and the only chance I had to get over what he did to me was the few hours he left me alone, sometimes lying under one of the scrap cars, sometimes still tied to one of the posts, sometimes lying naked and tethered to a stake in the cold air of the desert night.
‘I don’t remember what I begged for most - public degradation as he beat me with the cane on front of the congregation, or somehow being exposed to my skin being punctured? He used the scorpions a few more times but it was never the same after he had told me they were not venomous - knowing they were harmless reduced the fear and so the pleasure. He could tell I needed more. He had the congregation dig a deep hole once. He stripped my clothing off in front of them, pushed me down onto my hands and knees, caned me
then made me stand in the hole. He told me to keep my arms by my sides, as if I was at attention. He pushed a table tennis ball into my mouth and secured in place with a thin piece of black material he pulled across my mouth and tied behind my head. He told me the ball had been cut in half and resealed - after he had placed a live scorpion inside it!
‘I stood there obediently as the desert sun beat down on me. The congregation used the same shovels they had employed to dig the hole to fill it in. They did it slowly, building the sand up around me carefully and packing it down tight by smacking it with the backs of their shovel blades. They smoothed it off level so that only my head was above ground level. I stayed there all day, feeling the increasingly desperate scorpion running around inside the table tennis ball in my mouth. It was so hard to breathe - the sand was so tightly packed around my chest. When it got dark the scorpion became even more agitated. It clattered around inside the ball - its sound echoed in my head, the image of its arching tail and horrifying sting filled my mind. I fantasised in the night - half dreaming, half imagining - thinking how it might break through the ball and start biting my tongue and the inside s of my cheeks. The idea made me squirm with revulsion - a scorpion inside my mouth! At the same time the picture of it filled me with a strange sense of pleasure - of violation inside my body against which I could not protect myself.
‘In the morning, before they dug me out, they took the ball from my mouth and let scorpion sting me twice in the neck. I could not see what it was doing although I heard it scuttling near my ear. I waited anxiously, knowing that all I wanted was to feel its sting cutting my skin, breaking the fragile surface and entering me. When it did I felt a flood of pleasure inside me - it was as though a dam had burst and released all the pent up tension of the water it held back. I could not respond because of the constriction - I could not breathe harder, rise up, or tense myself - and that made the sensation even more ecstatic. It was like being absorbed by a star - impossible to resist, completely overcoming, hotter than anything imaginable. I know I dribbled, and I know I gasped but I only felt the intrusion of the puncturing sting and the overcoming exhaustion of my irresistible and total orgasm.
‘They dug me out and left me on the sand all day. By nightfall I had a terrible headache - I could no longer stand the glare of the sun. When he came to me again he held a scorpion up in front of me. Spit ran from my mouth and I jumped at it, biting at it, trying to get it into my mouth. I wanted it against my tongue - stinging me, puncturing me, entering me. He laughed and pushed it into his trouser pocket. I imagined it in there, in the dark, scurrying around, arching its tail, looking for me - its victim, its prey. I made a grab for it - struggling to get my hand into his pocket. For a moment, I felt the scorpion’s hard segmented carapace. A shiver of excitement rippled through me. I reached deeper and felt its pinchers snapping at my finger tips. Suddenly, Manuel seized me and threw me to the ground. “You don’t want to mess with that,” he shouted. “That’s a Bark Scorpion, the most venomous scorpion in the USA!”
‘I felt pitiful lying on the hot sand, my head pounding from the light of the day, my heart thumping with anticipation as I thought again of lurching forward and trying to touch the scorpion in his pocket. What had I come to? In a few weeks I had fallen into a pit from which there seemed no escape. But I didn’t want to escape! “Wait there!” he said. “I have more for you.”
That time he returned with some needles - thin stainless ste
el needles. He asked me to hold out my hand. I did as he said. He pushed one of the needles through my skin. A trickle of blood appeared at the base of the needle. I felt my heart rate increasing; I felt the pounding in my head. I felt the heat of my cunt and the moisture on its flesh. I opened my thighs wide. I wanted him to see the glistening flesh of my slit. He left the needle there. It was so thin it swayed slightly. The trickle of blood formed a dark red drip. He pushed another needle into the inside of my wrist. I felt the heat in my cunt increasing - burning. Another drip of blood appeared. Having my skin punctured like that was so exciting. I leant forward. I wanted to suck his cock. I wanted to offer myself to him for a beating. I wanted my bottom thrashed, my cunt lashed with a cane, my breasts beaten with a whip, my nipples pinched with pliers. He put another needle into my arm, then one into my neck. I felt my body going rigid. I no longer felt I could move. He put one on the inside of each of my thighs - just lower than my slit - then one on each side of the flesh of my cunt, then more, circling my clitoris before burying one directly in its end. I felt my mouth drop open. He placed another line of needles on the inside of my lips, and he pulled my tongue forwards and drove some more directly through its tip.
‘I don’t know how long he left me there. I know I urinated, that my head pounded as the sun came up and went down. I know some of the congregation came and looked at me, and some of them pulled at the needles that still stuck in my skin. I do know that my stiff body was filled with a strange rhythm - a swelling rhythm like the pull of the waves on a beach or the lifting of a heavy tide. Each time it rose, I felt my body filled with a wave of pleasure, each time it drew back I felt the pleasure increase. I can only imagine it was my orgasm - flowing like the tides, never ending, at the command of some force greater than could be imagined. In the end I became unconscious and when I came to I had been tied down in the back of one of the pickups that brought the congregation to their worship every Sunday.
‘They drove me to a small town - it took all day. Manuel told the local sheriff that I’d had some sort of fit. He said I was insane and should be locked up. He said he thought I was a vampire. They came for me in an ambulance. I watched Manuel smiling as they handcuffed me and pushed me in through the back doors. He already had another girl hanging on his arm. She was young and beautiful - looking up at him adoringly, holding his bulging cock in her sweating hand, waiting to be given a chance to take it into her hungry mouth.
‘He thought that would be the last he’d see of me, but he was wrong. I know they captured me again in the end - and I’m here because of his lies - but he forgot I had plenty of money. It was easy to bribe one of the guards and slip away. And it didn’t take me long to track him down - not as long as it took the institution to find me again anyway!’
Madison pushed up close against me.
‘You must think I’m terrible.’
I wanted to stroke her wet hair, run my fingers across her hard nipples, and slip them between the soft fleshy edges of her cunt. She looked so appealing and her story had filled me with a need to touch her body, to feel the places she had been punctured, violated, excited.
‘What happened to him, to Manuel? What did you mean, you tracked him down?’
‘He went to North Africa, on some sort of missionary work for the church. He was only there for a week and he was bitten by the same sort of scorpion he had tattooed on his arm - a Death Stalker. He had to have his arms amputated to save him from the spread of the venom. It’s a good thing for him I found him and was there to help.’
I had never heard a story like it; and so much of it sounded so familiar - the desert, the preacher, the congregation.
‘What was the name of the preacher?’ I asked.
‘Manuel, I told you.’
‘No, the name of the preacher who was away, the one Manuel was filling in for?’
‘Oh you mean the master. I thought you knew - Father Dawson, of course.’
My blood ran cold. I felt his presence. Father Dawson! It was as though I could never escape him.
‘Just think,’ she said. ‘We’re all part of his flock. We’re so lucky aren’t we? Now, Syra, come on! Let’s have something to eat. I’m starving aren’t you?’
She jumped up and went to the fridge at the back of the chalet.
‘Absolutely ravenous!’ she said pulling out something wrapped in silver foil. She dropped it onto the table - it was large and heavy. She slowly peeled back the shiny covering.
‘Here,’ she said. ‘Take a bite!’
She held out a human arm with a large black scorpion tattooed along its length. I couldn’t believe it! A human arm! The arm of the man she had been talking about! Manuel!
‘Tomorrow we can share the viper!’ she said, nodding enthusiastically towards the fridge. ‘Go on! Taste it! It’s all the better for keeping, I think. I posted them here before they recaptured me. Lucky, don’t you think? They keep for ages in the freezer!’
I dropped back in disbelief. She was a cannibal!
She turned to the man who was still standing behind me.
‘Manuel will wheel you away now,’ she said.
The man walked up to me and reached out to take hold of the handles of the wheelchair. He had no arms! From the elbows he had an articulated metal bar and at the end of each, instead of hands, he had a large claw like a scorpion!
‘Death Stalker,’ he said as the two metal claws clamped around the handles of the wheelchair.
I was rigid with fear as he pushed me out of the room and into the dark corridor.
I was still sitting in the wheelchair, in the dark, when suddenly, Caroline appeared.
‘Syra! What are you doing? You need to get out more! I’ve had this marvellous idea. It’s about, “you-know-who”.’ She bent down and whispered in my ear. ‘About...Nurse Roslin. If we can get her out of the way I think we can get you out of here. Syra, what do you think? Get you out of here? I’ve had this fantastic idea. We’ll trap her. Yes, trap her! And I know exactly how. In a cage!’
PURIFICATION
I woke up with a start. I looked around, expecting to see Madison, or Caroline. There was no one around - I was in an office, in the wheelchair, alone. I looked down. I was naked. My bottom felt sore. I knew I had been thrashed. I flexed my wrists. I was not tied! I could hardly believe it! I wasn’t tied!
I didn’t move for ages - I couldn’t believe I wasn’t bound as usual by my wrists to the wheelchair. Was it a mistake? A test maybe? Some sort of trap? I looked around suspiciously. The room smelled musty. In front of me there was a large wooden desk and behind that a heavy, leather covered chair. It had broad leather covered arms and revolved on a base of turned wood studded with brass buttons and mounted on heavy black wheels. Files and papers were spread haphazardly all over the desk top. The dirty yellow wallpapered walls were covered by certificates in old wooden frames. Everywhere was dusty. A waste paper bin was overflowing with screwed up paper. A water cooler in the corner of the room nearest the window belched a sudden explosive bubble.
As if startled by the noise of the bubble one of the window blinds rolled up with a screech. The sunshine burst in. I shaded my eyes. It was like being hit with a heavy rock. My head started pounding. I closed my eyes as tightly as possible, and shielded them with my arm, but it was a waste of time - my head was filled with painful blazing light.
I stumbled forward and managed to grab the blind cord. I hung onto it, tripped and got it tangled around my neck. I felt as if I was suspended from a noose. I struggled clumsily to get free and finally managed to drop my weight on it and pull it down. I sprawled across the leather covered chair. It rolled forward and crashed into the edge of the desk. The relief was instant. As the shaded dimness of the room returned, so my headache passed and my eyes stopped throbbing. I breathed deeply and sighed heavily with relief. I rubbed my bottom with my hand and felt the line
s of soreness that covered it. I flinched.
With my physical freedom came a strange mental freedom. I started to worry about my sensitivity to the sun. Something had happened to me - I knew that - and it frightened me. I had changed somehow. Deep inside, I knew what it was but I couldn’t admit it - the thought of it made me shiver. Yes, I knew what had happened. I had tasted new sensations - the joys of puncturing the skin of another, the need to quench my thirst with blood. All the things that would make me some sort of vampire! No, I couldn’t accept it! It was too horrible to think about! I focused on the desk, and all the papers on it - trying desperately to distract myself, trying to think of other things, anything to take my mind off the dreadful conclusion that I had become a...No, I couldn’t admit it!
I picked up a piece of card that was laminated on both sides - my hands were shaking. I clenched my teeth together and tried to calm myself by reading it. It was some sort of instruction.
Purging impurities
Method and Benefit: Purge with water - the great purifier - then plunge or douse the patient until all strength is lost. Only then can equilibrium be restored. Only then can true balance be found, the old life abandoned and the new life adopted. Some patients may find the transition difficult. If unsuccessful continue the treatment daily.
There were some pictures scattered around amongst the papers - all of women. Each had an identity number written at the bottom. Some were simply portraits showing them dripping wet, their hair bedraggled, and water streaming from their mouths. Others depicted a scene. I picked these up and looked at them one by one.