by Polly Frost
You could tell he wanted to shed a tear but wouldn’t let himself. He looked out at the audience.
“You are here to relive your childhood,” he said. “Only this time, I will take you through it in the right way.”
The audience nodded and sighed.
Larry paused, wiped off some sweat, and looked at us compassionately but sternly. He clapped his hands.
“All right,” he said. “It’s time for you to confess about the bad things you’ve done this week.”
A young woman raised her hand.
“Yes?” Larry said.
“I…” then she broke down into sobs.
“Stop crying,” Larry said.
The young woman swallowed her tears. “I’m sorry, Mr. Gamble,” she said. “I just feel really badly.”
“I don’t care how you feel. Quit whimpering and tell us what you did,” Larry said.
She flinched. “Well, it’s good for me to be spoken to like this,” she said. “I didn’t show up on time at my job.”
“What?” Larry said. “Say that again.”
“I called in sick so I could hang with my buds.”
Eyebrows were being raised all around me. Larry looked like some angry mutant from a first-person shooter. Then he calmed down. “Look, it’s good that you’re telling us this. Honesty and courage are steps in the right direction. Come up here.”
The girl looked scared but walked up on stage.
Mr. Gamble snapped his fingers. One of his assistants brought over a big box and swung it open. Inside were several whips.
“It’s your choice,” Mr. Gamble said. “Pick one.”
The young woman picked the mildest-looking one.
“Wrong choice,” Mr. Gamble said. He took out a bigger one. I recognized the brand as one with genuinely tough leather. “Now I’ll have to punish you twice as hard.”
“Yes, sir,” the woman said. The assistants led the obedient young woman offstage and she disappeared.
What was going on here? I was surrounded by kinkier freaks than I’d ever encountered at Shanna’s dungeon!
“Who’s next?” Larry Gamble said into the microphone.
No one raised a hand.
“No one?” he said, looking gently amused. “All right. So maybe I’ll have to ask for reports from my assistants about your transgressions. You know they follow your activities very, very closely.”
A dozen hands shot up.
Larry shook his head. “Too late,” he said. “But then, it’s always too late for your type.”
He took a piece of paper from one of the assistants and began to read, “Tara McIntyre was seen throwing her top off at a Hogs ’n’ Heifers bar Saturday night.” Larry Gamble peered into the audience.
“She’s over here,” a guy’s voice said.
Tara had her head between her hands and was saying, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”
“Sorry isn’t good enough,” Larry said. Assistants hoisted Tara from her seat and carried her out.
The moment had come. I stood up.
“Yes?” he said, looking at me. “I don’t recall seeing you here before.”
“Oh, I think you’ll remember me,” I said.
Larry was taken aback. I did my best imitation of a humble walk and joined him on the stage. He looked me up and down. I could feel the discipline in the way he did it, but also something else. Was it lust?
“Well, young lady. Whomever you are, why don’t you tell us what you have to apologize for?”
I grabbed the microphone away from him.
“What the—” he stammered.
I quickly backed away, carefully positioning myself a good distance from Larry and his assistants.
It was showtime!
With a sudden yank—and just like Britney at the MTV awards—I whipped off the stupid conservative dress I was wearing, and stepped forth in a leather bra and spangly shorts that screamed “eat me now” on the back of them.
“Katie Vail!!” Larry gasped, reeling backwards.
I gave a few bumps and grinds and growled into the mike, “This man is a fraud. He’s nothing. He’s a failed schoolteacher. He’s a sorry spectacle!”
Already I was feeling better.
Astonished murmurs swept through the audience. I could see Larry motioning for his assistants and knew I had only a few seconds more.
“He’s got no real authority!” I shouted. “I got him fired in the seventh grade!” The assistants were on me but I still had hold of the mike. “There’s no such thing as a real grownup!” I shouted. “You should all be at the beach or at rock concerts, not here listening to this dork!”
And that was it. Strong hands were all over me. And then I felt nothing.
When I came to, I saw that my ankles and wrists had been tied with ropes, a gag was in my mouth that felt like cotton sheeting. I sat in some sort of dungeon.
So this was where Larry Gamble did his Zero Self-Esteem programming.
It was nothing like Mistress Shanna’s salon. It looked more like a bunker or basement than a dungeon. And there weren’t the cool instruments of torture that Shanna had. Instead I saw rings in the walls for people to be tied to and a line of paddles and whips. Steps led up to a solid metal door. I was alone in the room, in my see-through panties and leather bra.
There were two desks in the middle of the room—one was small, identical to the one I used to sit in during his class! A larger, teacher’s desk faced it.
I looked around. Larry had no TVs to watch. There was nothing but cement and wood paneling to stare at.
It felt like hours of total boredom before the door opened and Larry Gamble stood at the top of the stairs, alone. My old hatred of him coursed through every cell of my body.
Was Larry wearing the same cords and sweater he’d worn that fateful day in seventh grade? He was definitely still carrying that ridiculous briefcase. But I had to admit he looked even more handsome. His black hair had grayed, and it gave him an alpha-daddy look.
He descended the stairs in that straight way of his, then walked over to where I was. He smiled at me.
“So you came back,” he said.
I glared at him.
“Can’t say anything? Well, children are to be seen and not heard,” he said.
He leaned down so that his face was next to mine and took out a knife. I winced. He quickly cut the ropes that tied me but he left the gag in my mouth.
Then he roughly pulled me up, and dragged me over to a desk, making me sit up in the chair like a good little girl. I kicked him hard in the shins.
“Still the little brat, aren’t you?” he said. “As you can see, your tantrum in the principal’s office only made me more resolved to teach children how to be good adults.”
Larry opened his briefcase and removed a pen and a pad of lined paper, exactly like the ones we used in his class. He handed them to me and said, “You will write an essay about how you need to be punished for what you did to me that day.”
I took the pad and pen and wrote, all right. He strode around the room while I scribbled away. He began to talk. I’d never heard his voice like that before—it had real emotion in it.
“It’s not your fault,” he muttered at me, “you didn’t have the right kind of parenting, that’s all. You didn’t have the benefit of my mother. She knew what I needed. And she loved me in a way your own mother never has. In the way that I will now love you.”
Oh my God, he did care about me! I was having a hard time concentrating on what I was writing. My body was tingling. I quickly finished my paragraph and then handed it to him. I saw his face flush with fury as his eyes glanced at it, then he shoved it back at me.
“You are going to read this to me while you take your punishment for having written it,” he said.
He removed the gag from my mouth.
“Go over there and pick out the whip that you will take your beating with.”
I threw my head back and proudly marched over to the wall. I know whi
ps really well.
“Oh, I see you have a tree branch in your collection,” I said. “Let’s see you use that one.”
“You think you’re smart, don’t you?” he said.
“I think you probably don’t know how to use this,” I said. “I think your mother probably did, but not you.”
He stormed over and grabbed the tree branch from me, then picked me up and threw me over the top of the desk.
“Read,” he said.
As I began, I felt the first blows. Oh, fuck, this wasn’t play pain, this was real pain. I was determined not to cry out. I read my words:
“I let you off easy that day in the principal’s office. No one but me knew your dirty secret. You wanted me. You didn’t want to punish me so I’d be a better person. You get off on it….”
Larry was beating me harder. My mind was now reeling from the pain. But his blows were also filling me with a strength and sense of my own purpose that I’d never known before.
I felt that I was on the brink of what Shanna had called “submitting to a Higher Power.” Should I surrender to Larry?
I decided to go for it.
“Give me all of your pain,” I said.
Larry stopped, looking stunned and stoked. But he waited a second too long….
Motherfucker, he wasn’t coming through right away. I pushed against him, sending him backwards.
“How dare you not give me what I want the moment I ask for it,” I said.
He lunged at me, but I managed to grab hold of the tree branch.
“I’m not here to take my punishment,” I coolly said, looking him in the eye. “I’m here to finish what I began in the principal’s office.”
Larry tried to keep command, but I could see that little bit of hesitation that gave him away. And it was actually turning me on in a way none of my clients back at Shanna’s dungeon ever had.
I wrenched the branch away from him and bent him over the schoolteacher’s desk. I pulled down his pants and briefs. I turned the whip around. The handle was just the size of a dildo. I spread his butt cheeks and touched his asshole with the tip of the handle.
I heard him involuntarily gasp.
“Now you tell me what you want,” I ordered. “What your mother could never give you.”
Larry pushed against me, but I saw that he didn’t really want to escape. I gazed at his ass. The hole wasn’t bleached the way porn stars’ are. Yet it was sexier than any porn star’s asshole could ever be. It was firm and determined.
But right now, it was in my command. I felt a rush of power sweep through me. A confidence I’d never before had. Words came out of me that’d I’d always had to force myself to say at Shanna’s dungeon.
“Say, ‘Put it up me, Katie,’” I ordered. “Say, ‘Please, Katie, it’s what I’ve always needed from you.’”
He shook his head. I struck a blow that would teach him about punishment. He cried out, and I could hear the infinite pleasure through the suffering in his voice.
“Put it up me,” he said. “Please. It’s what I’ve always needed.”
“That’s right,” I said, stuffing my seventh-grade panties in his mouth. “It isn’t about me needing to grow up, it’s about you needing to be reduced to a child.”
I gave a good Jenna Jameson spit onto the handle of the whip. My body was alive and I was on the verge of coming. I stroked my pussy just as I was about to slide the branch handle roughly into his ass.
Then the dungeon door flew open and crashed against the concrete wall. Two of Larry’s assistants burst through, holding automatic weapons.
“Sir!” they hollered. “The moment of redemption has come! SWAT teams are inside the institute compound.”
There was dust and swirling motion behind Larry and his officer. I could hear the sound of helicopters and P.A. speakers. I could see the well-dressed kids running for cover.
Larry pushed me aside and threw my panties on the floor. It was like he’d forgotten all about me and was having his own big moment. My head began to swim. Would I be taken down by his cult?
I made a burst for it and scooted by the burly losers. As I made it into the open I was dazzled by bright sunlight and coughed as I breathed dust. There was the sound of people running in boots on the concrete. Someone threw me a jacket to cover my naked body. People in uniforms hollered, “Let’s go let’s go let’s go!”
Jeep after jeep drove up into the compound. Men and women jumped out of them, training rifles on the door to the dungeon. A SWAT guy bellowed through a megaphone.
“Come out, Larry Gamble. Or we’ll be forced to go in after you!”
Moments passed.
“Okay,” the SWAT man yelled. “We’re coming in!”
The door swung open. Larry stood there. He’d dressed and put his tie and jacket back on. He was proud.
“We will never surrender,” Larry announced. “Katie, come take your punishment! The world is yours if only you’ll grow up.”
I felt my heart surge. I started to get up. Uniformed officers restrained me. As they pulled me back, Larry and I stared at each other.
“Come to me, Katie,” he said.
I shook my head. Larry gave me a sorrowful look, then bolted back into the dungeon.
“Get down get down get down!” the cops hollered. And we crouched behind the cop cars as the huge explosions rocked our world.
I didn’t cover my eyes. I watched as Larry’s dreams and bits of his body flew into the sky and then rained down on us. I blew his remains a kiss.
“This wasn’t how I planned to destroy you,” I said quietly.
Then a soft arm was around me and I heard a worried voice.
“Mommy?” I said.
I turned to see her, crying and throwing her arms around me.
“Katie!” she said. “I called the police the moment we hung up.”
Mom raised her fists at the flames that had taken Larry Gamble. “You made my daughter feel bad! I hope you rot in Hell!”
Then she turned to me, and said, “Turns out the FBI have been tracking Larry Gamble and his weird cult for years. He was a regular Jim Jones, that guy. I had nightmares about you drinking Kool-Aid.”
“Jim Jones?” I said. “Who was that?”
“Before your time,” Mom murmured.
All right, yeah, I’m staying at Mommy’s. She convinced me that I was pretty traumatized by the whole experience.
“Larry Gamble tried to take your self-esteem away,” she said. “But I’m going to get it back for you.”
She got me a state-of-the-art vibrator to make me feel better. And guess what? My days of not coming are thankfully over!
I have a temporary job as a receptionist at a local Pilates studio. Watching women being tormented on The Reformer machines sometimes makes me nostalgic for my old days as a dominatrix.
But I’m not staying in the burbs for long. The mailman just rang the bell and handed me an envelope. Mommy watched anxiously as I ripped it open.
Inside was a formal letter. “We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted to UC Berkeley Boalt Hall School of Law,” I read aloud.
While Mommy jumped up and down for joy, I went outside. It was a bright and sun-filled day. Orinda wasn’t really so bad. I looked around at the comfortable and upscale homes and cars and decided that I could easily live in the burbs.
I gazed up at the clear and vibrant sky, and thought about what might have been between Larry and me. I brushed a tear aside because I knew he wouldn’t like to see me cry.
“I guess this is my To Sir, With Love moment,” I said, looking upward. “Okay, Larry, here it goes. I taught you about pain and humiliation. And I have to admit I learned a little something about discipline from you. Your spirit was with me as I prepared for my LSATs.
“Yes, I played Black Sabbath to rock me through the boredom of memorizing all that legal shit. But I’m ready for the full-on torture of law school. Thank you, Mr. Gamble.”
The Pleasure Invaders
“I have to haul you in,” I say. “I got no choice.”
The warehouse parking lot is empty around us. It’s just Alexi, me—and the Serzan. Evil sex beasts from the next galaxy, stashed in a canvas-covered crate in the back of Alexi’s FedEx-colored van. Noonday Miami sun beats down. In the distance, traffic noises from the interstate.
“What about the bribes we give you, pretty girl?” Alexi says. “We’re not paying you to arrest us. We’re paying you to keep us free.”
Alexi’s blond and rugged, a scar zigzagging down his left cheek. I’ve got my service gun pointed at him, but he’s cool and calm. It’s like he isn’t taking me seriously. That pisses me off. In my other hand, I have my Extraterrestrial Exploder 379 trained on the alien bounty.
“But I’m losin’ my credibility,” I say, hating myself for sounding too needy. “Dude, I need some scores! What’s it to you? You’ll be in and out. Revolving door. Kyle’s got the fanciest lawyers in town.”
“Your mind’s going, Rachel. It has been for a while. I bet you can’t even remember what we told you about this shipment. Best one ever.”
Have I really been told? My brain recently…Damn.
“The best shipment?” I say warily. “Ever?”
He lowers his arms and puts them akimbo. His tone of voice changes. “Brought ’em in myself,” he says. “All the way from Astraria. Got ’em past the interplanetary police, got ’em past customs. Don’t have to tell you of all people what a challenge that is these days.”
I snort. “Like your boss, Kyle, doesn’t have the interplanetary police and customs on his payroll.”
“Do you want to see them or not?”
“Show them to me!” I try to sound commanding, but my hunger seeps through in my strained tone.
Alexi grins, rips a brown cloth off the crate.
“Two light-years of highly illegal, potentially very profitable activity. And here we are—primo sex meat,” he gloats.
I can see his point. The bounty is stunning.
“Jesus, Alexi,” I find myself gasping. “They’re fucking grade A.”