by Ophidia Cox
Hands flicked up and down in the crowd, and in the space of a few heartbeats Sylvia’s price was up to thirty pounds. It all happened so fast, she wasn’t able to tell who the current high bidder was.
“Forty, anyone?”
Immediately the dungeon master raised his hand. Sylvia had a bad feeling he might be able to recognize her as the woman who’d been poking around his dungeon the day before. She felt horribly undressed standing there before him, an intuition that had nothing to do with her skimpy costume.
“Vaughn? Forty pounds?”
Vaughn’s jaw flexed into a smile. “I could do with someone to help out in the dungeon.”
“Anyone care to top Vaughn?”
A man in a Nazi costume saluted. Oh shit, no.
“Fifty pounds.”
Vaughn’s hand went up again. Sylvia wasn’t sure which prospect was worse.
“Sixty pounds.”
A hand went up at the back–some great wide person, garbed in a lurid Lycra costume. The ringmaster, Sylvia realized, giving way internally to an ebb of relief. He was somehow unthreatening, too ridiculous to be taken seriously.
“Seventy pounds from Victor.” The auctioneer’s voice took on a strange inflection at the ringmaster’s name.
The executioner turned his eyes away from Sylvia, his posture changing subtly, almost reminiscent of a genuflection. It was as though the others afforded this absurd ringmaster a reverence incongruous with his appearance.
The auctioneer’s gavel rapped on the tabletop. “Sold, to Victor!”
Sylvia stepped down off the dais and made her way toward him. The relief she’d initially felt wasn’t lasting. He might well have been the least scary individual in the room, but he was still a stranger who exhibited his private parts in front of an audience and he’d still won her in an auction, and what was to come next was anyone’s guess.
She wasn’t sure what he was meant to be: probably a court jester or some sort of clown, or maybe a cartoon villain. It appeared he wore nothing under his garish costume, and the tight fabric didn’t leave much to the imagination. She could even make out the shape of that weird piercing. Sylvia averted her eyes, glad her mask at least partly concealed the rush of heat to her face. “So, am I, like, your slave or something for the day?”
“It’s just for fun.” Victor shrugged. “We don’t have to do anything if you don’t want to. There’s a main event starting in the arena soon, if you’d honor me with your company for the first part of it. I’m afraid I’m in the second part of it, if you see what I mean.”
Noisy music started up in a stall close by. People threw hoops at male mannequins dressed in trench coats and hats. The trench coats opened on drawstrings in sync with the music, and the mannequins had black strap-ons beneath them.
“You have a lot of stalls here,” said Sylvia, thinking she ought to try to make conversation. “They’re very imaginative.”
“Yes, although we used to have more. We’ve been forced to shut down a lot of it. We used to have poodles,” Victor elaborated. “I don’t know how much you know about dogs, but when they have sex, their genitals swell up and they stick together. The female poodle had been sterilized, but she had a remote-controlled pituitary implant so you could make her effectively go into heat at the push of a button. Tom–the snake guy–he used to cut funny topiary into them so they looked like something or spelled a word when they were together. An RSPCA inspector said it was cruel, so we had to retire them.”
“Oh,” said Sylvia, thinking of Max and that she agreed with the RSPCA inspector. She said no more, because she didn’t want to start an argument.
“Ridiculous, really, because poodles like to be laughed at and to be the center of attention. People like to say they’re stupid and not real dogs, but historically they were bred as gundogs, and they’re the second-most intelligent breed there is. The funny thing is there was a police officer with a castrated sniffer dog here the other day. I mean, how is cutting parts off a dog and using it to hunt for drugs any less exploitative than watching dogs engaged in their natural behavior for entertainment?”
Sylvia had never really thought about it that way. Perhaps he did have a point. Dogs don’t have taboos and inhibitions about sex like humans do.
“You seen this?” Victor had produced a long, narrow, yellow rope from somewhere. Its surface looked smooth, like Plasticene. “New kind of microvelcro someone in Germany invented. Pulls apart easily from the right direction, but sticks like glue in the wrong one.” He took hold of Sylvia’s arm. “Here, let me show you.”
Sylvia snatched back her arm, fearing he would tie her up and leave her there, or worse, try to unmask her. “No, thanks, I’d rather not.”
“Of course, what was I thinking? You’re the domme. Here, you try it on me.”
Sylvia stared at him, and at the yellow string he held out to her. There was something tempting in his tone of voice, something admiring in his expression.
Almost without thinking, she grabbed his arms and pinned them behind his back. He struggled a bit, in the entirely predictable way football hooligans do. Sylvia backed him into a guy rope holding up one of the tents and wrapped the yellow rope around his wrists.
“Wow,” he said. “And you’re calling yourself a novice domme? Dark horse, more like!” He wriggled his shoulders, testing the bonds. “I’m well and truly stuck. Now what are you going to do?”
Sylvia found herself staring at his gray eyes, his straight nose and shapely lips, the thickness of flesh under his chin. He wore no mask and, like the zebra woman, it wasn’t as though he could shed the aspect that made him bizarre. The night she’d watched from the audience, it hadn’t been apparent quite how big he was as was clear now she was up close. Normal attire would probably make him look even more out of place. Perhaps she only felt this way because he was such a novelty, because on some media-instilled or perhaps instinctual level fat people should be revolting. Perhaps this lust she was feeling was abusive. She wanted him, and it was ridiculous because she’d never before been intimate with someone with whom she wasn’t in an established relationship, but he was offering her exactly that. And this wasn’t really her.
From behind a mask, the situation was surreal, almost as though it wasn’t a part of the reality she knew. No one would notice, not in this place where, to her left, twelve nearly naked people of both sexes thrashed in a mud bath. On her right, people played on what looked like a children’s playground object, but had a sign before it saying it was a Fantastic Fucking Robot Swing. Even if someone did look, she’d never be recognized.
There was something she couldn’t resist about him when he was restrained like this and unable to escape. She put her hands on him, feeling the softness of his flesh under his tight costume.
Victor’s eyes widened.
He didn’t know what she was going to do. And it dawned upon her that was the whole point. “You think I’m going to tell you?”
Sylvia slid her palms down his chest, over his belly to his flanks and buttocks. She watched how his expression changed as she touched him, confident because her own face was hidden from him by the mask. It made her feel the way she did at the end of a hard winter, just before the break of spring, when one can almost sense the new life building in the earth and the air.
She could touch him anywhere. With his arms trapped, he was powerless to resist if it tickled or made him uncomfortable. Underneath his costume she could see the deep dint of his navel and the points of his nipples on broad, heavy breasts underlined by folds that ran under his arms. She wanted to touch him here, but she couldn’t quite get past the inhibition of it not being right for a heterosexual woman to want to play with boobs, even if they were man-boobs rather than woman-boobs. Instead she moved her hand down between his wide thighs, feeling under his balls where the Lycra squeezed them, and up to examine the shape of his piercing. The wide metal barb pushed against the folds of his groin, almost as though it acted as an anchor to stop the tip of his c
ock from disappearing into his flesh when he wasn’t using it.
A loudspeaker crackled and shrieked from the arena.
“The evening’s event’s getting underway,” said Victor. “We ought to get over there, or we’ll be left with the bad seats.”
Sylvia hesitated as she untied him. “Victor...” Did she really have the courage to ask this? “Would it be all right for someone...a member of the public to do something in one of your acts? Not like how you do it!” she hurriedly added. “Maybe something like the hermaphrodites do? It’s okay if I call them hermaphrodites, isn’t it? The people who were in the ring with you on the opening night?”
Victor examined his wrist and waved his hand dismissively. “They’re both transsexuals who got halfway and decided they liked the view from there.”
Sylvia laughed.
“They won’t mind if you call them that.” Victor leaned his weight back onto his heels and frowned, stretching his arms and rubbing his wrists as he considered. “Come tomorrow. I’ll have a word with some of the other performers about fitting you into one of our acts.”
He took a seat at the back row and Sylvia sat beside him. This night’s events seemed to be less organized than the previous ones. Various acts would be set up, but this time, members of the audience could come up to participate. Down in the arena, gallows had been constructed, and five people lined up under them. They stood on stools, and Vaughn fastened a noose around the neck of each.
Sylvia stiffened. “What are they doing? Isn’t that dangerous?”
Vaughn pushed the first man off his stool. He dangled from the rope, his hands clawing at his neck.
“Strangulation fetish. Oh, don’t worry, it’s not dangerous. Vaughn is a pro, and we have trained medics on hand in the unlikely event of anything actually going wrong.”
Sylvia followed his gaze to one side, where a man and a woman in sexualized nurse costumes stood.
After a few seconds, Vaughn picked up the man’s feet and stood him back on the chair. He took hold of the scruff of his neck and disentangled the rope from his neck. The man stood there gasping for a bit, then he bowed and the crowd applauded, and he stepped away from the gallows.
This didn’t seem right, but Sylvia couldn’t pin down the feeling that told her it was wrong. Perhaps because it was an execution fetish. Perhaps it was because if a mistake did happen, the consequences would be dire. But the whole point was that a mistake wasn’t going to happen, because it was a controlled situation.
“What’s more dangerous,” said Victor in a quieter, more contemplative voice, “is when people have such paraphilias but they are embarrassed of them, and so they attempt to practice them in isolation with inappropriate equipment. Take urethral play as an example. I enjoy it, but the mainstream thinks it’s disgusting and it goes against nature. Do you have any idea how many men end up in hospital with pencils and knitting needles and other such material lodged in their bladders, or infections resulting from such unsafe practices?”
Sylvia thought back to the metal rods in Vaughn’s torture shop. “I wouldn’t know.” Although it was an interesting idea and something she’d never thought about. She almost said something about only seeing the ones that she brought in stone drunk and with suspected alcohol poisoning, or the ones who’d got involved in violent crime and had it backfire on them, and the people who tried to hide packets of drugs in imaginative places. She suddenly remembered that Victor was not her colleague or her friend or anything of the sort, and that she’d come here to get information that she hadn’t found.
“Ah, well,” Victor said at length. “I’d better get down there and do my act.” He rose from his seat. “Make it down here before three o’clock.” He winked.
Sylvia hesitated. Pikesley wanted information. Quite possibly there was no such evidence of the sort Pikesley wanted in existence, and it wasn’t like he was about to assign her another job. Something about this exhilarated and scared her, as though she rode the crest of a wave just about to break. If she had to keep coming down here, she might as well play this game.
“I’ll see if I can make it.”
She had to get up so he could get out, even though the aisle was fairly spacious. Sylvia watched him head down through the audience and up to the stage. Vaughn put him in the stocks and tore his costume off him. Then the audience pelted him with fruit while Vaughn buggered him with the blunt end of a pitchfork.
She tried to imagine how Victor must feel, being restrained and violated, total surrender of control to Vaughn. He must get a massive adrenaline rush out of it, from not knowing what was going to happen or if he was going to be able to stop it if he didn’t like it. And letting Vaughn humiliate and use him in full view of all those people–that must take enormous confidence. It was starting to make more sense.
A stab of envy hit Sylvia. What if it was her doing that to Victor? If she had that power to capture him and do what she willed, and he craved it and feared it at the same time? If she could muster the courage to stand up there and touch him wherever she wanted–and let them laugh if they thought it was improper or immodest–and force him to orgasm in front of everyone, and make him utterly ridiculous and helpless.
Who was to say that something someone did was dirty, or immoral, if it had no effect on anyone else besides that person? This festival was a celebration of weirdness. Why did so many people object to it? Why not just not go to it, if they thought it was all that bad? What business of theirs was the choice of those who did want to participate and weren’t made to? She slipped away amid the commotion and went back to her locker for her clothes.
Chapter 4
Sylvia had to get out of work early. Not least because she suspected Victor might be interested in learning her true identity if he was not already outright suspicious of her motives. She needed to think up a way of sneaking into the Sideshow without exposing her uncostumed self to the scrutiny of any prying eyes, human or electronic, that he might have posted to gather intelligence of his own. Getting in early, before the crowds, and with a valid excuse to be there would also provide adequate opportunity for her to look about for signs of any suspicious activity while it was quiet.
She stuffed a write-up of the lack of evidence she’d so far managed to acquire into Pikesley’s pigeonhole. Sylvia had reached the main door of the station and was about to leave when someone in the corridor behind called her name.
“Price!”
She turned to face Constable Baxter. Baxter was inclined to waffle, always using ten words where two would have done. If Sylvia let him get talking to her, it’d be the start of the school-run rush hour before she got away.
“I need to talk to you about–”
Sylvia cut him off sharply. “I’m sorry, Mike, it’ll have to wait until tomorrow. I’m on special ops today, Pikesley’s orders.”
Before he could say anything else, she pushed through the door and headed to the car park.
Sylvia shoveled into her mouth a hurried lunch of bulgar wheat and roast vegetables out of a plastic deli pot while she waited for the lights to change out on the main road. The plastic pot spilled the remains of the meal over the passenger seat when she pulled away, and she swore at it.
When she got home, she put on the kettle and made Max relieve himself out the back while she waited for the water to boil. After she had made her tea, she took the mug upstairs and stood it on the dressing table to cool while she sorted out her attire.
If she put on her costume and wore something over it, Sylvia supposed, that might be quicker and easier than going properly dressed. She threw her mask into a carrier bag, along with a bra, a t-shirt and a clean pair of knickers. It might save time going there already wearing it, but she wasn’t driving home after a day’s work in uncomfortable clothes. The same as one might wear one’s swimming costume under one’s clothes to drive to the swimming pool, but not when it’s soaking wet afterward.
Sylvia recalled there being a boiler suit screwed up on the floor of the
airing cupboard, but she wasn’t sure it was still there. As it turned out, it was lying under some towels when she went to look. The boiler suit had been left some years ago by an ex-boyfriend, after Sylvia confessed to him that penetration hurt her. Not being able to have “proper sex” as he’d called it apparently made him feel unmasculine in a way that being a car mechanic didn’t.
She uncrumpled the boiler suit. Oily stains marred its front, and grubby handprints smudged the thigh and backside areas. A faint underarm smell still clung to it, but the man who had owned it had been slight and not particularly tall. It should fit reasonably well.
Sylvia went back to her bedroom, where she took off her clothes and put on her costume. She pulled the boiler suit on over it. There was no point putting her boots on now. She wouldn’t be able to drive in them, so she’d be better waiting until she was there and she’d parked. Her lipstick she applied as she had the night before, and she also put on a large pair of aviator sunglasses. Running her fingers through her hair, she examined her reflection in the dressing-table mirror for any semblance to her usual self. She hoped she couldn’t see one.
After gathering the boots and the carrier bag, she headed out. When she had locked the front door, she buttoned the keys inside one of the boiler suit’s many pockets. The coarse fabric of the suit felt rough against her exposed skin as she got into the car and fastened her seatbelt. What if she crashed the car and the paramedics cut her out of it and found her wearing this when they tried to administer first aid? Sylvia wondered morbidly about what her relatives might think if she died and the paramedics gave them her clothes back.
She tried to concentrate on the road as she drove, but she was ever conscious of the reaction of the harness over her whole body to her movements in steering and changing gear, and the pressure of the strap between her legs. Where skin touched skin it stuck with sweat, and the rough fabric of the boiler suit was an infuriating tickle.
When she arrived at the Garden Festival, the day crowd was still very much in evidence. Old couples meandered painfully slowly around the flower exhibits. Kids wandered along or leaned against railings eating sweets and candy floss and played with cheap nasty toys from the many souvenir shops. Sylvia had never felt so self-conscious in her life as she stabbed her way on her impractical heels through them all toward the Cyberkink Sideshow’s tents. She was sure wearing the harness affected the way she walked, that people could tell and they were staring.