Belonger (An erotic novel): Part One

by Daniel Six

  Orientation

  The Merkin perched on his billowing narrator’s seat in the loft above the stage, sipping warm berry tea. The Stage Manager was busy with final preparations for the scene he had devised. The sun had just set according to the mannermen, several of whom had recently returned from out in the City. By now the women auditioning tonight had already been carefully groomed and dressed by the slippers who worked under the Manager’s authority.

  The Merkin smoothed the thin delta of hair about his lips with a flourish, contemplating the fastidious soaping and scrubbing of flesh his instructions required. He had not allowed himself to watch the women prepare Manassa, or any of the slippers carefully chosen to perform with her. It would have weakened the whole proposition of the evening to see them naked beforehand.

  The glow gnomes ranged about him in the lighting grid beamed a deep red radiance onto a richly decorated set designed to simulate the environment of a rubber lingerie boutique. Manassa had been provisionally hired late yesterday at one of his busiest clothing shops by the park, and had spent most of today learning its customs and procedures. The mannermen had sent runners with regular updates about her performance, and the Merkin had emptied one capsule after another from their limber vaginas, anxious for news of the big woman’s progress.

  Then, later in the day they had ushered Manassa herself into his Tent.

  Script pages were prepared for the evening; something he hadn’t bothered with forever it seemed. While he might have written these on paper for a single use, he had instead made the investment in hand-stitching the words into canvas pages that could be used again and again without being scrambled by dream, even laundered.

  Manassa had not been given a copy of the “orientation” scene of course, and as such she would not be rehearsed like the other performers. It had been explained that she would be observed by an audience of employees, ostensibly to determine whether she would be permanently hired into service. The Merkin was curious to see how she reacted to the massive theater environment where she found herself.

  The audience was heavy tonight, by no accident; the Merkin had let it be known throughout the whole society of the Tent that a specially titillating audition was in progress. It was the first time he was going to be showing them more than games and informal skits actually, and he would have to be specially vigilant for deviations from the script, which might quickly ramify to ungovernable circumstances. He was already anxious enough about his first encounter with Manassa—albeit from the circumferentially skirted protection of the loft above the stage and the cloudlike construction of his narrator’s seat, which together rendered him invisible to the audience and thespians alike.

  The Manager indicated his crew was ready. The Merkin verified his script was open to the right page and called down for him to proceed. His hands were shaking.

  “Heads onstage! Performers on the deck!” the Manager shouted, and the last of his crew departed. The noisy conversation of the audience faded to a murmur of excited voices.

  The women were let out from a talent vestibule under the enveloping ascent of theater seats, and the Merkin watched them stroll onto the round stage; a dox or so of slippers garbed in stylish, rubber-accented dresses suitable for the theme of the evening.

  He reflexively stroked his fringed lips, then let his voice boom down, reading directly from the script to limit the possibility of error.

  “A new employee has come to a clothing boutique for orientation. Previously acquainted with the sale of ordinary attire, she will now practice with erotic rubber fashions. She circulates among the more experienced shop personnel as they wait for customers, ready to accommodate them in any reasonable way.”

  Which one was she? The Merkin scanned faces in perplexity, noticed the performers were mostly looking back toward the vestibule.

  There was a piercing slap and a bouncy blond came tripping in after the rest of the auditioners, giggling indecorously. The Merkin stared in disbelief at the woman that followed her, one hand still playfully raised.

  She had midnight-black hair that wove gently about her neck, framing a lovely countenance filled with an innocent exuberance for life. Her shoulders were high and shapely, her slender arms tapered to gracefully fingered hands. Her breasts bulged under the rubber-laced bodice of her frilly white and red lingerie dress, and the Merkin fixed upon their bulky perfection for a moment before his gaze lowered to the most sumptuously rounded hips he had ever seen. She was easily taller than anyone else on the stage, and wore high-heeled shoes added to that.

  The other women were apparently just as enthralled; they were crowding around Manassa in obvious contravention of their roles as “established employees.”

  “Wow,” he heard the big woman say. “This is crazy. All these people watching! And I thought we were just gonna mess around with some new clothes or whatever. Maybe go drinking afterwards…”

  She turned to the flirtatious blond. “What store are you from? I just got hired at the one by the big pond on the Dowser’s side of the park.”

  “Dowser? Park? What are you talking about?”

  Manassa looked around at the theater, brow furrowed. “I can’t hear the City at all. Are we really still in the warehouse? And what was the deal with that water elevator thing? It took forever to get to the fourth floor!”

  “What’s a ‘city?’” a woman asked.

  Manassa stared down in perplexity at the other performers, who were fingering her dress now, exploring the round form beneath it by coy exploits of pressure and estimation. The crowd was whispering in awestruck appreciation for her beauty.

  The Merkin felt his penis surge against the cramped regulation of his briefs, shoved his script down hard to suppress it. His script. He stared at the pink-bound valley of pages in his lap, laced with neat lines of hand-sewn writing. They were completely off course and the scene hadn’t even begun! He had to take control.

  “The employees circulate among the various items of apparel on display, making ready for customers.”

  He delivered this as an imperative and they did as ordered, straightening rubber lingerie and clothing arranged in low displays, commenting on the style and presentation of various items; gloves and whips and belts, and rubbers mounted on plastic peckers.

  “Oh, here’s the ‘changing room,’” Manassa tittered, stepping playfully over a knee-high wall. “Quite a setup just for training, eh?”

  She inspected a rectangular series of low wall segments, intended to represent what were normally private rooms lined with mirrors. The Merkin was quite aware of the drastic failure of discretion inherent in this design, a practical consequence of the visibility requirements of theater-in-the-round, where the audience lay in every direction. But there was a deeper meaning to the setup as well; he had actually devised the whole scene around this compromised place of privacy.

  Manassa looked straight up at him then, eyes narrowed with mischief, and he almost lost the courage to proceed. She didn’t seem at all intimidated. But the cloudlike narrator’s seat was camouflaged in darkness, and he knew she could not see him among the gnomes beaming down. He let his eyes dive into her husky decolletage, fed his lust on the swaying mass of her skirted rump as she sauntered off to play with the whips.

  Where was the first customer? The Merkin fretted for a moment, then belatedly diagnosed the delay; the man had seen Manassa, and now he had stage fright. But all he had to do was walk in and ask for a belt.

  “A patron arrives to peruse the fashions,” he boomed, superimposing his will on the fellow.

  A handsome actor in a brown leisure suit emerged from a talent vestibule under the audience, slowly ascended to the stage, entering the boutique.

  One of the employees was supposed to step forward to greet him, but was flirting with Manassa instead. The customer edged over to them both, trying to get the scene started.

  “I’d like… um… I’d like to see your panties.”

  The crowd tittered and the Merkin seeth
ed. The idiot had blown his line, flummoxed by the transition into Manassa’s presence.

  The big woman shrugged in quizzical acquiescence and gamely twitched her hem up to oblige. The customer stared at her midsection in stupefied arousal. Half the audience fell silent. The spectators seated to her rear clamored insistently for a look. The Merkin could sympathize—from his vantage on high he wasn’t privileged to witness the sight either, though he knew her panties were pink. He had designed and tailored them for her reported proportions.

  The employee next to her stepped forward uncertainly, dragged them all back to the script. “Can we show you like, a belt maybe?

  “Oh. Yes! A belt. That’s what I’m after,” he agreed, eyes rooted to Manassa’s crotch till her hem fell again. The Merkin resumed breathing.

  “I need one to coax my lover’s… uh, her sulky bottom,” he stammered.

  “Right this way, sir.”

  The employee consulted with her customer at the appropriate display, and they fumbled to deliver the reasonable-sounding repartee that had been scripted.

  “How about this one?”

  “I think not, sir; it’s too flimsy to inflict a satisfying censure on the buttocks.”

  “What about this?”

  “Well…”

  They dithered under Manassa’s interested gaze, stymied by her presence. This inability to bend with circumstance was the reason the Merkin had employed games with precise rules and structure for auditioning, rather than dialog memorized and performed. He needed thespians with the wit to improvise—especially on opening night, when the context of reality itself would be in negotiation.

  “The shop assistant selects a belt,” he grumpily directed, trying to contain the damage to the night’s credibility.

  “This is it. This is what you want,” the employee hastily declared, and handed her client an effeminate rubber strap adorned with pink and blue hearts and moons, more likely to provoke laughter than humility in anyone destined to receive its touch. The Merkin cringed.

  “Very well. This will do,” the man skeptically agreed. With a last, infatuated look at Manassa, he was gone from the stage.

  The crowd noisily deconstructed the exchange as the Merkin waited for the next customers to arrive, fuming at the ineptitude of the performance. It wasn’t that his people were stupid; far from it. Despite their apparent sophistication, even the brightest residents of the City were skulks and slippers by the standard of the stage—their lives seldom called for extemporaneous demonstrations of wit.

  He thumbed to the next page of the script, gingerly balanced on his erection, let a brief interval of undirected time elapse, watching Manassa’s restless physique under her jealously clinging dress. He sighed when it was clear the scene had stalled again.

  “A couple enters the boutique,” he declared, hoping for a better result this time.

  Two casually attired people sauntered onto the deck, awkwardly holding hands.

  “Can I help you?” said a pert redheaded employee, managing to conduct herself with reasonable believability.

  The customer stepped away from his companion, a lovely woman with an air of quiet anxiety. He regarded the contents of the shop with a frown, then addressed the redhead in an irked tone.

  “Well the situation is this; the lady disturbs my sleep on a frequent basis with her masturbation. She means to be discreet I’m sure, but at some point every night—when she decides after endlessly rubbing and teasing herself she wants to climax after all—I am awakened from dream to find myself haplessly involved in her fantasy.”

  The employee displayed a scandalized look, as scripted. “I see.” She regarded the woman with a puzzled air. “Why do you touch yourself when fulfillment is impossible without his participation?”

  There was no answer. “Tell them!” her man railed, and she was bullied into stammering the truth.

  “I just like the feeling of my vagina,” she admitted. “I like to rub it very slowly and imagine…”

  “But no one can orgasm without the intentional contact of another person…” the employee carefully explained.

  The woman looked down submissively. “Yes, I know…”

  The redhead circled her with a speculative air, turned back to her client. “Sir, is it your desire to stymie her masturbation, or to condition her behavior so that such arrangements are unnecessary altogether?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve tried promises and oaths, nocturnal supervision, bondage, restrictive lingerie, whips and straps… she can’t be stopped,” he complained.

  The Merkin was relieved. The scene was progressing more reliably now. Manassa was auditing the exchange with casual interest, gaze shifting from employee to customer and back as they exchanged lines. She absently neatened a pile of pink rubber panties, apparently unaware of the crowd’s fascination with her activities.

  “Well, let me think,” replied the shop hand. She made a fatuous show of musing on possible remedies, then raised a finger theatrically. “I think I have it. Come this way, please.”

  She stepped around to the display of rubber gloves. “Sir, are you familiar with the ritual of the helping hand?”

  “No…”

  The employee selected a pair of long, angry red gloves, their fingers lined with clitoris-tormenting ridges to suppress even the most determined effort of self-gratification. She beckoned to the troublesome woman and briskly drew them onto her hands, carefully checking the fit.

  “Your first obligation will be to ensure that she is properly gloved for sleep. Then, when she awakens the following morning you question her.” She turned to the woman and spoke to her in an imperious tone.

  “How many times did you attempt climax last night?”

  “Five,” she responded on cue, voice rich with shame. At this Manassa sauntered over to join them. The Merkin wondered why she chose that moment.

  The redheaded auditioner smirked at this disclosure.

  “Well! Rather frisky-fingered aren’t you? A nice little love affair with yourself,” she chided, turning to address her male customer.

  “Next, you correct her selfishness with the following technique, which thematically bridges the behavior and its punishment.” The employee guided the gloved woman onto a padded demonstration table, got her settled on her back. Peeling her skirts back to display her panties, she stripped them away with a brisk sweep.

  “Spread your legs, please.” The woman hesitantly complied and they collectively stared at her naked crotch. Manassa leaned over to get a good look and the Merkin saw the other woman blush fiercely.

  He assessed the mood of the audience. They were deeply interested in Manassa, but sophisticated enough to be aware of the linear nature of the proceedings.

  “Now the ritual proceeds as follows…” the redheaded employee continued. She pointed sternly at the woman spread before them.

  “Which is the hand that helped your pleasure?” she intoned.

  The woman timidly offered her right, and the redhead drew the glove from it with a sensually protracted motion, leering judgmentally as the Merkin had scripted.

  She grasped its open end, fingers extended like a whip, and raised it menacingly. “For each offense you will be slapped by your own hand. And after each rebuke you will swear as follows; ‘I will not masturbate without permission!’ Do you understand?”

  The woman nodded, genuinely intimidated. Her gaze flickered to Manassa, who stared back, brows lofted. The employee poised herself and brought the long, supple rubber glove down on the customer’s crotch, provoking a shrill exclamation.

  “Say it!”

  “I will not masturbate without permission,” the woman quavered, legs fanning in pain. Her eyes closed.

  The redhead brought the glove down again. “The hand that hurts is the hand that helps. Say it!”

  “I will not masturbate without permission…” she moaned.

  “Here,” said the employee, passing the glove to her male client. “Now you try.”

&n
bsp; The man clutched the article, menacingly presenting its deeply ridged fingers to his lover. He shared a glance with Manassa, silently soliciting her opinion as to the propriety of the ritual. The Merkin was instantly tense, concerned that the scene might stall again. But the big woman just shrugged, grinning at the drama of it all.

  “She masturbates in your bed… so you finger it out,” she quipped. The crowd giggled in agreement.

  The customer chuckled, raised the glove high and brought the hand down between his lover’s shapely thighs. “Selfish slipper! Say it!”

  “I will not masturbate without permission!” she cried.

  “Good. Maybe you’ll keep your hands off your snooch tonight,” he gritted. The glove smacked her pubis again and her whole body spasmed. She mumbled the humiliating response, softening to his authority.

  “The hand that helps is the hand that hurts,” he declared and delivered a final, exquisite connection to her vulva. The glove, by now amply lubricated by her femininity, issued a terrorizing crack as it smote the same pain-reddened lips it purportedly spent the night romancing.

  “I will not masturbate without permission!” she wept.

  “You may close your legs and replace your glove again,” said the redhead, concluding the ritual as the Merkin had planned it. The chastened woman slid unsteadily to her feet, cheeks blooming from her belittlement. Eyes lowered to the carpet, she took the glove from the employee and slid it back on with a penitent heaviness. It glistened with her painfully coaxed oils, a musky reminder of her oath, always at hand.

  “This is a remedy I can believe in!” her man enthused, impressed by this bold regime. He selected more gloves to broaden his options, and the couple were shortly on their way. The audience clapped enthusiastically.

  The Merkin was happy the performers had managed their lines without error this time. He observed Manassa’s response to everything that had taken place, hoping enough context had developed to force a path through what would follow…