The captives were taken by the arms and led out of the car park. Joanne Savage followed. She swished her leather rod playfully in the air, then brought it down with a crack upon Sue’s behind and as if in a spirit of fair play, she struck again, drawing a loud squeal from little Rosanna.
***
They’d been stripped of their clothes. The belts and cuffs had been taken away, but the tape gags remained a while yet.
Sue and Rosanna sat side by side in upright chairs. Ahead of them lay a track, perhaps ten yards in length and fifteen feet wide, divided into six lanes, marked out in gold upon a smooth shiny floor.
Each girl was naked but for a small g-string; each was being bound to her chair with lengths of thin black cord. Rosanna’s tears had dried and as a man in a white jacket trussed her into place, she sat calmly looking into the middle distance, as if preparing herself for what was to come next. Occasionally she turned her head to glance at Sue, and then her little blue eyes showed a faint contempt. Sue, meanwhile, stared all about, right and left. While her bare body submitted to the bondage, her mind struggled to take in the reality of the scene around her.
They were in a vast room, its ceiling high, its walls hung with mirrors; the light of chandeliers shone back and forth, reflected away into infinity. It was crowded, full of men and women of all ages. They thronged around tables arrayed with wheels, dice, cards and chips; this was a gaming room, and the gamesters were plainly able to play for the highest stakes. But the ordinary games stood neglected. Everyone was pressing towards the track, eager to see, exchanging excited comments, calling and whistling; the buzz of voices grew louder and louder.
“Ladies and gentlemen!” called a voice. “Ladies and gentlemen, players and spectators, once again I give you - your Mistress of Ceremonies, Madame Joanne Savage!”
There was a round of applause. Joanne waited for the crowd to quieten. While waiting, she strolled purposefully up and down the length of a low-strung rope of silk that cordoned the track off from the rest of the room. The supple rod in her hands, the gleaming black boots on her feet, the scarlet jacket on her back, all served to reinforce her air of authority.
“Thank you,” she said at last. “We come now to a special event on tonight’s programme. It might be termed a personal contest, between two of the leading lights on our scene: Mr Bernard Beckett and Mr Vincent Wardell.”
Beckett and Wardell were at the front of the crowd, but some distance apart. Each sat at a table, surrounded by friends, and it could be seen that there was a distinct difference between the two groups: Wardell’s following were young, or youngish, Beckett’s mostly middle-aged or older. In the noise, each had been yelling defiance and jeers at the other. In the silence, they traded raised fingers and pulled faces. But the two principals sat quietly, with eyes on the track.
“As you can see, it’s a race between two fillies only. On the left, a regular racer, owned by Mr Beckett: a round of applause, please, for Little Rosanna.”
Cheers and clapping, mingled with abuse. “On the right, owned by Mr Wardell, somewhat of an unknown quantity. This is her first race in public, and she hasn’t even got a professional name as yet. But from what I’ve seen of her, I’d say she’s a fair bet. Applause, please, for a filly who might be dubbed Spirited Susan.”
More applause, more catcalls. Sue’s eyes met Wardell’s, watching her intently. Filly? Owner? She wanted to shout out, bursting the tape: Nobody owns me! Let me out of here!
“The preparations are nearly complete,” Joanne went on.
The two menservants who were engaged in binding Sue and Rosanna had succeeded not only in tying each girl in the same manner - hands together behind, arms trussed to sides, back to chair back, ankles to front legs, knees together - but in synchronising each step, tying them up at precisely the same pace. Now each pulled away the tape.
“I’m not moving this chair!” Sue said; not shouting, but addressing her jailer in a fierce whisper. “You tell her! You tell him! I don’t care what they do, I won’t move this thing one inch - I won’t - mmm, mmm!”
Without a pause, the manservant had pushed a fresh gag into Sue’s open mouth, an inflatable rubber one. He squeezed a rubber bulb rhythmically in his palm, and the gag expanded, pushing Sue’s jaws far apart and leaving her tongue no room to move. But Joanne Savage had heard; she didn’t pause in her address to the crowd, but for a moment her head turned.
Then she raised her rod high in the air. Again, the crowd fell silent.
“When my hand falls,” she announced, “the race is on.”
Sue and Rosanna were gagged. The menservants stepped away.
Joanne let the rod drop.
The room exploded into pandemonium. On the track, ‘Little Rosanna’ emerged instantly as the front runner; trussed to her racing chair, she leapt forward, covering three or four yards in a matter of seconds. Sue, meanwhile, hadn’t moved and from the opposing quarters of the crowd came a mixture of laughter and furious yelling.
“Move! Move, you fucking cow!”
“No! Sit it out, baby!”
“Move! MOVE! Make her move, for fuck’s sake!”
Joanne was already coming towards her, with a couple of small shiny objects made of metal.
Next moment Sue saw - and felt - what they were. One after the other, her nipples were rapidly seized, plucked forward from her breasts, and clamped, caught and held in cold, sharp-edged, excruciatingly painful pincers of steel.
Even the inflated gag failed to suppress her shrieks. “Better move, dear,” Joanne. murmured. “They’re staying on till you cross the finish line.”
She turned back to the audience. “The turf has its whip behind. As you see, we have a frontal equivalent.” Loud laughter. “And as you can see, it works! There she goes...! Coming up on the right, making a strong challenge now, it’s Spirited Susan!”
Sue had had to get into motion, and the effort left her with no more breath for shrieking. Little Rosanna was already more than halfway down the track. But as her nervous system adjusted to the torture of the clamps, as the pain altered in her perception from the unbearable to the merely agonising, Sue’s brain cleared. She’d started by dragging her chair frantically forward, but now she took in her opponent’s calculated, precise manner of moving, and did her best to imitate it. And she was catching up, she was gaining speed; while Rosanna was slowing down, as the effort of moving caused the cords to tighten around her. Sue became aware that her own bonds were tightening, but compared to the clamps it hardly bothered her. And she was much bigger than Rosanna, and stronger: she could do it, she could win!
“Ladies and gentlemen, what a comeback! She’s drawn level, and now - yes, yes, she’s taken the lead!”
Sue’s eyes were fixed upon the finish line, now near, now tormentingly distant - perhaps five or six feet away yet. From behind now, she could hear Rosanna’s breath, panting out in regular little grunts, and the legs of her chair scraping against the floor with decreasing effect. But then it came to her that there was some change about the sounds Rosanna made, something picked up by her hearing that sent her mind an alert.
She turned her head, and saw Rosanna driving hard: not towards the finish, but across the track, towards her. She met Rosanna’s eyes again. They were filled now with a startling passion; with sheer hatred and rage at the possibility of defeat. Next moment, Rosanna had driven her chair into the back legs of Sue’s, giving her a sidelong blow.
The chairs were light in construction, and less than rock steady and the impact of Rosanna’s charge was enough to send Sue toppling sideways. For a moment, Sue’s balance was gone; another moment and she’d go crashing to the floor, to lay there on her side, completely helpless to rise.
“It’s all in the game, ladies and gentlemen!” Joanne cried over a roar of protests. “If a rider can knock an opponent out of the race, we let he
r do it!”
But Rosanna hadn’t done it. Unlooked for, that night in the flat came back to Sue’s memory. She saw Wardell’s cheque at her feet, heard his voice shouting at her to put a foot on it; she threw her weight to the left, and it told. All her four legs were back on the floor, and Rosanna was hard up against her.
Once more, Sue threw her weight sideways, and returned her enemy’s foul play with interest. It was Rosanna’s turn to topple, and she lacked the weight to recover. With a wordless squeal of alarm, she fell, hitting the track, tumbling over on to her back and out of the race.
Infected by the crowd’s enthusiasm, Joanne Savage almost leapt clear of the floor. “One filly starts it, the other finishes it! What a conclusion! She’s still got to make it to the line, but ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner: Spirited Susan!”
Somehow, Sue hauled her chair the last few feet. Exhausted, she sat on the finish line, while the crowd flooded over the cordoning rope and invaded the track. Surrounded by hands, she was lifted, chair and all - tied, gagged and clamped, she was borne away, to the table where Vincent Wardell sat. His face beamed with a cold delight.
Sue was set down next to him, and he opened the valve on her gag, deflating it. “Well done,” he said. “I win.”
He unclipped the clamps, releasing her nipples. Sue could almost have thanked him. But before she could speak, cries rang out across the gaming room.
It was Rosanna. Someone had removed her gag, but she lay where Sue had downed her, trussed to her chair. Bernard Beckett stood bent over her, Joanne Savage’s rod in his hand, his burly arm rising and falling as he lashed the rod across her breasts. Joanne stood by his side, arms folded. His circle of friends stood around. Rosanna howled under the lash. Nobody intervened.
“Oh, dear,” Wardell said.
Sue looked at him.
“Suppose I’d been the one who went over,” she said. “Would that be you and me now?”
Wardell shook his head.
“Bernard’s a bad loser,” he said. “Still, he did have a lot riding on this - both in cash and prestige. You see, he and I both manage young women who take part in events: games, races like the one you’ve just won; contests which combine physical prowess with elements of bondage, pain, humiliation, fetishism and so on. We run quite a range of different events.
“Bernard has been in the business much longer than I have, and takes the training and discipline of his girls very seriously. I’m afraid I like to tease him. I made him a bet that he could put up any girl he chose from his stable, and I could defeat her with a girl taken from the staff of his restaurant.”
Sue drew a deep breath. “You picked me? At random?”
“I’d seen you at the Bistro once. I thought you had potential.”
As they sat, Wardell’s friends and followers crowded round. They shook hands with him, clapped him on the back, thanked him for the tip. Wardell gestured modestly towards Sue and when somebody took a twenty-pound note, folded it, and pushed it beneath the cord that bound her arms, the example caught on. Within a few minutes, folded notes were lodged at every point where her body was secured, and hands pressed forward with more.
“Can I be untied, please?” she said to Wardell.
“What’s the hurry? At this rate you’ll make more money tonight than I have.”
“I want to be untied. And I want my clothes back.”
“Oh, all right. Fetch her clothes, someone.” He took out his small knife. “But you know, you need never wear a waitress’ uniform again. Like I said, you’ve got potential. This could be just the start.” He looked into her eyes, and laughed. “Don’t look so angry. Like you said, it’s just a game. Though I admit it’s a cruel game.”
House Of Footwear
A Novella in Five Chapters
One
The door-knocker was modelled after the shape of a lady’s high-heeled boot. As she lifted it to knock, Victoria Martins paused a moment, her attention caught by the piece of shiny yellow brass in her hand. It was heavy, yet elegantly made, in the style of a long boot, laced up to the knee, fitting tight around a shapely leg. At the front, the lacing was reproduced in full, intricate detail; at the back and sides, the effect of seams and sewing had been etched into the metal with a craftsman’s loving skill. Altogether it was an uncommon thing, and in its way quite beautiful, Victoria thought. But she was alone in a dark back street in a part of town she only vaguely knew, she was crouching under her umbrella to escape from a hurtling downpour of rain and she was pressed for time; so after that brief pause, she banged the brass boot hard against the door.
She meant to make a noise, but was startled by how loudly the knocking sounded: the toe of the boot struck a brass plate, and produced a crashing that probably shook the building beyond from top to bottom. Embarrassed, she knocked more gently, and then stopped. Somebody was coming.
The door was unfastened and eyes met Victoria’s, looking upwards, although the person who answered her knock was a man - a short, slim man, dressed in a waistcoat and shirtsleeves; not young, but with rather long hair, in which silver was well on the way to ousting its original dark colour. ‘Sorry if I disturbed you,’ Victoria said. ‘Is this the House of Footwear?’
The little man nodded. ‘Won’t you please come in? What can I do for you?’ he asked, leaving no pause between the two questions; but as Victoria accepted his invitation the answer to the second question became clear. She’d been standing on a flight of steps, her right foot a step above the left, her right leg bent at the knee. As she stepped up and entered the premises, that knee straightened, but the other was compelled to bend. On her feet she was wearing high-heeled shoes, and the heel of her right shoe was broken completely off.
She stumbled, and struggled to keep her balance. She compressed her lips, but the beginnings of a swear word escaped them. The little man caught her by the arm and held her steady. ‘There, there, miss.’
‘Sorry,’ Victoria said. ‘It’s just so fu - so bloody annoying, you know?’
‘Course it is. Why don’t you sit down and take them off, now you’re in out the wet?’
He guided her to a chair by the wall. Victoria sat down and removed her shoes. They were ankle-strapped slippers, in patent black and droplets of rainwater clung to the toes and insteps, like tiny jewels set in their shining surface. As her fingers pulled at the straps, she looked around her. She was in a hallway. Narrow stairs led upwards, and a passage led to someplace at the back of the building. On the air there hung a powerful but pleasant smell: the aroma of new leather.
‘You know, from the outside this place doesn’t look like a shoe-shop at all.’
‘I don’t intend it to,’ the little man said.
‘Are you the owner?’
‘I’m the proprietor,’ he said. ‘James H. Keane, established 1965.’
‘Really? You’ve been going that long?’ said Victoria. ‘How do customers find you? I mean, it’s pretty out of the way - ‘
‘I’ve still got regular customers I had when I started,’ Mr Keane said proudly. ‘Word gets around. I provide a highly personal service.’
‘Does that include being open at weird hours? I wouldn’t have been surprised if you’d told me to bugger off, knocking this late.’
Mr Keane shook his head. ‘I’m never shut for my regulars. You could knock at three in the morning, if we’d built up a connection.’
‘Really?’ Victoria said again. ‘Well, I hope I’ll never be that desperately in need of a shoe repair. Here...’ She opened her handbag, and from it produced a gleaming black spike, four inches long, tapering with sinuous curves from a round base at one end almost to a point at the other. She held the broken heel out to Mr Keane, along with her right shoe. ‘Can you fix that so it’s safe to walk on again?’
He nodded. Raising the right shoe close up to his eyes, he
peered at the spot where the heel had been. ‘Poor quality glue,’ he said, aloud but to himself.
‘They weren’t cheap!’ Victoria said with a note of protest.
‘Paying most won’t always get you best,’ Mr Keane said as if quoting a proverb, and without losing his preoccupied manner. ‘Let’s take these through to the workroom.’
He started down the passage. Victoria wasn’t sure that she’d been invited to follow, but decided to do so and got up from her seat. Her legs were clothed in sheer transparent tights so light and thin as to be almost invisible; the floor was covered in linoleum and felt cold against the soles of her feet.
Apparently unaware that he had a companion, Mr Keane led the way to his workroom. It was a smallish room with windows of frosted glass, none too well illuminated except for one corner, where a desk lamp shone brightly down on to the surface of a workbench. Even empty there wouldn’t have been a great deal of space, and the room was crammed full of stuff, of objects that were strange to look at and hard to name - a vast array of peculiar metal tools, large sheets of uncut leather, disembodied heels, soles, insteps, straps, buckles and zips. But what caught Victoria’s eye with most force in the half-light was a whole collection of dummy feet, ranked in order of size, standing in pairs along the shelves of a big open cabinet. Each foot supported a length of leg, some reaching to just below the knee, others to just above. They were carved out of some very pale, almost white wood. The wood was absolutely smooth, and the natural contours of the human foot were captured perfectly in its surface; the five toes were rounded and separate, and each toe even had its little spade-shaped nail. You could almost imagine them to be soft and warm to the touch.
Mr Keane was about to step across to the big cabinet when he realised that Victoria was just behind him in the doorway and before she’d quite entered the room, he moved instead to another, smaller cupboard, which stood fixed to the wall just above his workbench. This cupboard had a door, which stood ajar and he pushed it shut with a casual manner, but with the unmistakable intention of keeping Victoria from seeing what was inside.
Strange Desires Page 8