Strange Desires

by Joe Simpson Walker

  Demetra had nearly finished. Shelly hurried into the shadows, over to the corner where the tall tank stood. She took the hose and hurried back, pulling it out from its coil. To the end of the hose was attached a big heavy brass nozzle.

  Now it was Demetra’s turn to watch, and Shelly’s place to push the nozzle of the hose hard into the valve on the sack. By brute force, with an ugly scrape of metal, chafing her hands so severely as would raise blisters for sure within a few hours’ time, she thrust it into place, turning it once, twice, to make the connection secure. Demetra had to be satisfied. When she was, she walked over to the tank and turned a wheel. A mechanism was activated, and the contents of the tank began to pump down the hose, into the airtight sack.

  It took a long while, and made a peculiar noise: a continuous gurgling and bubbling, low-pitched but loud. Gradually the sack expanded, until it had swelled into the shape of a vast sausage, with a rough grey skin stretched rigid. The substance that was being pumped into it was a kind of chemical foam, of a consistency somewhere between syrup and jelly. As it pumped in, Caleb would be lifted, and would float, until the space around him was filled to the limit. After that he’d sink, but not completely: he’d come to rest, and would hang, suspended and still in the middle of a liquid darkness. Or he would have done, had he been left to lie undisturbed. The ritual wasn’t yet complete.

  The gurgling noise turned suddenly into a choking splutter. The sack began to stir, as if in protest at being pumped up past its limit. At once Demetra turned the pump off and there was silence. Shelly had been examining her palms, running tender fingers over the places where the blisters would rise, but she left off immediately. The next stage had to be performed with great speed, as fast as she knew how; and she worked with an urgency which contained no small element of fear.

  She unscrewed the nozzle, dragged it out of the valve, and threw the hose away over her shoulder; a splash of cold slimy foam landed on her bare arm. From the floor beside her she lifted the four-pronged hook, taking it in both hands, hooking it up to the head of the sack. Four steel attachments were fitted to receive it, but they could only be clipped on in the right order, one after another. Shelly knew how to do it, but she fumbled. In the shadows, Demetra had moved away from the tank; past the crank handle that raised and lowered the hook, over to the big signalman’s lever. She’d taken the lever in both hands. Her arms were tensed, her elbows squared in readiness for sudden effort.

  The last prong refused to clip into place. Shelly’s hands were trembling. She struggled, cursed, pleaded in her mind for the inanimate object to do as it was told. Demetra’s hands were on the lever. Under a desperate push, the prong clipped into place; Shelly felt its sharp point score a line into her skin, and knew it had drawn blood, but she hardly noticed. She sprang backwards to her feet, and backed as far across the room as she could; in the same second, Demetra pulled the lever, jerking it forward with a harsh CLANK.

  CLANK gave way to CRASH and BOOM; the floor shook beneath the two women’s feet and the two wings of an immense trap-door, occupying perhaps a quarter of the room’s area, fell open. In doing so they allowed light to flood upwards, a light dazzling to the eye after so long spent in gloom. For a moment both Shelly and Demetra were blinded. When they could see again, the trap hung open to the light. The sack had fallen through, with Caleb in it. All that could be seen was the steel cable, swinging wildly back and forth.

  Demetra waited patiently for the cable’s momentum to exhaust itself. When it hung perfectly still, at the exact centre of the trap’s area, she grasped the lever again and pushed it back. With a groan of machinery, the trap-doors swung upwards.

  The room was dim again. Shelly was standing with her back against the wall. The sweat beneath her rubber chin-mask felt cold. Her hands were wet, the right hand wetter than the left. She looked down and discovered that it was bleeding badly.

  Demetra was standing on the closed trap. Her shiny black eyes met Shelly’s. She gave a sharp stamp of her boot against the floor. She’d read Shelly’s mind in those final moments before the lever was pulled, and was sardonically amused.

  Shelly’s hand hurt. She held it up for Demetra to see. Demetra beckoned her to come. Shelly obeyed, and Demetra reached a hand to her chin.

  The little buckle that held the chin-mask secure was awkward to get at if you were wearing it, but once it was unfastened, the mask practically fell off your head. The rubber peeled away from Shelly’s face. The sweat ran freely down her cheeks in big drops. Demetra took the mask and pointed to the door. Before Shelly could attend to her hand, she had to perform yet one more stage of the ritual.

  She left the room and descended a dark, cramped staircase. At the bottom was another door, closed and locked. The key was on a belt around her waist. She turned it in the lock. She stepped through, into bright daylight; the midday sun was shining down through big plate glass windows. She met eyes: the eyes of about a dozen women who were gathered around another door, a few yards distant. They were dressed like her, in leotards, with thick socks pushed down around their ankles and long hair tied back. On the wall behind them was a large notice:

  ‘FEMME PHYSIQUE

  WOMEN ONLY GYMNASIUM AND FITNESS CENTRE

  OPEN LUNCHTIMES AND EVENINGS.’

  They were the lunchtime crowd, waiting to be let in. Shelly locked the other door. It had a small notice fixed to it: ‘PRIVATE - Staff Only.’

  The women made way for her. Some of them noticed her bleeding hand, but nobody said anything. She knew most of them by name, but none of them were her friends. Sometimes people who came to the gym would ask her if she knew Caleb and Demetra. They seemed not to know that Caleb and Demetra owned this entire building.

  She let the lunchtime crowd into the gym, into the big sunlit room arrayed with physical training apparatus of every description. Most of them were members, and were free to go straight to whatever piece of equipment they fancied. The most popular item stood square in the middle of the room. It was a full-sized boxing ring, with an outsize punch bag hanging from the ceiling.

  There was always a rush to be first in the ring. While the losers limbered up elsewhere, or stood leaning around on the ropes to wait their turn, the winner pulled on her gloves and took first go at punching the bag. Some women aimed carefully, guarding as they hit out, skipping nimbly backwards as if to dodge return blows. Others just punched the hell out of the thing, hitting it as many times as they could and doing their best to make it swing a yard back from every punch; landing their blows somewhere around the region of Caleb’s groin.

  Shelly had got out the first-aid box and was cleaning and bandaging her cut hand. It was an awkward job to do to yourself, especially left-handed, but while she did it her eyes were drawn to the ring, to the fists striking the bag. She often wondered which style of punching Caleb preferred as he hung there, hidden within. He wouldn’t feel the blows, just the motion, the random shifts this way and that, totally unpredictable to him in his lightless, soundless, otherwise motionless environment. He’d feel the thick liquid shifting sluggishly around him; that, and the weight of the tank strapped to his back, and the skin-tight rubber within which his naked body was cocooned. His oxygen supply would last till well after closing time, giving Shelly plenty of time to get rid of the customers. Then she and Demetra would haul him back up through the trap. (Shelly glanced up at the ceiling, although she knew the trap was invisible from below; the two wings were camouflaged by a network of ceiling tiles, white with thick black borders.) They’d open the sack, letting the foam spill where it would as they pulled Caleb free. He’d be revealed, half suffocated and red as a lobster, nearly boiled alive by his own trapped body heat. He’d have a gigantic erection. He’d grab Demetra and throw her down upon the floor, and the two of them would fuck like maniacs in the chemical slime. The ritual would be complete. Shelly could watch them at it or leave the room, as she chose. They ne
ver cared.

  ‘Do you need a hand?’

  Shelly looked round with a stare. A girl was speaking to her.

  ‘Do you need any help seeing to your hand?’ the girl asked again. Her face was warm and friendly. Shelly didn’t know her.

  She gave a silent ungracious shake of her head. There was a moment’s eye contact, uncomfortable for both parties, before the girl gave it up and left her alone.

  Shelly’s attention returned to the ring. No wonder people who came there regularly didn’t speak to her. They probably took her for a surly dyke with a thing about boxing gloves. Well, they could think so if they wanted to. She was playing a role.

  The Last One

  I work in an all-male office, on an upper floor of a big company building. Until recently, a regular part of the day was an event known as ‘Knickerwatch’.

  To understand what happened, you need to picture the office. It’s a room with work space for ten or a dozen people, and its outer wall is made up almost entirely of glass; huge clear panes with virtually nothing in between them. Through the glass you can see the outer wall of the building, which is of similar design and in between the two fields of glass, an open-plan staircase runs upwards, from floor to ceiling.

  The architect who put in all that glass and space must have thought it was a good idea; that it’d cut down on the need for artificial lighting, maybe. He was never going to have to walk up those stairs in a skirt.

  At least once a day, someone in our office would detect the sound of heels, coming from below or above. There’d be a shout:

  ‘Knickerwatch! Knickerwatch!’

  And - depending on what people were doing, and how attractive the approaching woman turned out to be - at least half the guys would jump up from their desks, run across the office and plaster themselves against the glass, getting as close to the floor as they could to catch the best possible view up her dress, while exchanging hot speculation as to what would be the colour of her underwear.

  ‘Black!’

  ‘White!

  ‘Red!’

  ‘None!’

  Of course the girls on the stairs could see and hear all this. Some gave as good as they got: they looked down through the glass, straight and hard, silently mouthing the word ‘Wankers’ or displaying a raised middle finger. Others ignored it as best they could, going by with their shoulders tensed and their eyes fixed ahead, upwards or downwards. Others turned crimson with embarrassment and humiliation. Some poor girls used to burst into tears; and whenever that happened, the guys cheered, as if they’d scored a goal.

  ‘Knickerwatch’ was a nasty game. But there were only two people in the office who never took part.

  I’m glad to say that I was one of them. The other was Helliwell.

  Helliwell is a big man, well over six feet tall and built to match. He’s square-jawed and good-looking, and has the self-assurance common in people who’ve grown up towering over everyone else. Not that that makes him sensitive. It’s just not his way to run with the pack. While the rest of the office were sprawling along the floor, lying and kneeling, pressed against the glass, he sat back at his desk and watched appreciatively as skirt and legs disappeared up beyond the ceiling. Sometimes he’d glance my way, and read in my face how distasteful I found the whole scene, and its lack of respect for women, and grin.

  ***

  One morning, a few weeks ago, I heard heels from below.

  They sounded feminine, but chunky, not like stilettos. And there was a hollowness about them, as if their striking of the stairway resounded inside leather shafts. I knew the sound, and could tell that a booted woman was coming.

  I wasn’t the only one who heard.

  ‘Knickerwatch! Knickerwatch!’

  Except for me and Helliwell, the entire office flung itself down at the glass. Work was slack just then and the girl who rose into sight was absolutely gorgeous.

  She was a glistening, brilliant redhead, with her hair cut in a stylish long bob, curving outwards at either side of a beautiful firm chin. Both hair and chin were shown off to great advantage by a tight black polo-neck sweater, which clung smoothly to the contours of a slim, fit figure. Below the sweater she wore a mini-skirt of black leather; a shiny black wrapping for her buttocks. And below the leather mini, she was booted in black knee-boots, cut close to the shape of her calves and ankles, with high stacked heels and rounded toes.

  ‘Frig! Who’s she?’

  ‘What’s your name, baby?’

  ‘Never mind her name, what’s the betting on her drawers?’

  Nobody had ever seen her before. For her part, she seemed not to have expected what she found here. At the sight of eight or nine men crouched down, all attempting to look up her leather skirt, a pair of strong dark eyebrows lifted in surprise.

  But only for a moment. Then she climbed on up the stairs.

  She didn’t hurry. There was no stiffening about her, no tension; no sign whatever that she felt challenged or threatened. She simply disregarded the ‘Knickerwatch’ and in a few steps, her knee-boots had carried her high above them.

  They tried to bring her attention down again, by yelling, jeering, banging palms and fists against the glass. She might have been stone deaf. Her boots climbed steadily on.

  The object of ‘Knickerwatch’ was to draw a reaction; if a girl met it with genuine indifference, she won the game. Even before she was out of view, some of the guys were getting up and returning to their desks.

  But from where I sat, I couldn’t take my eyes from the stairs, not for a single second. Not while the red-headed girl remained in sight. To me, she was a heroine, a goddess, rising to paradise in...

  ‘Nice boots.’

  It was Helliwell, addressing me.

  ‘Pardon?’ I said.

  ‘That girl,’ he said, pointing casually to the now empty stairway. ‘She had on a nice pair of boots.’

  Jerked out of rapture, I nodded.

  ***

  Over the next two or three weeks, a curious thing happened. ‘Knickerwatch’ became history.

  It started in a gradual way. Heels sounded on the stairs, the shout went up; but one by one, people who usually joined in began to stay at their desks.

  ‘Come on!’ the others would yell. ‘What’s the matter with you?’

  The answer was always oddly similar: an uncomfortable shrug of the shoulders, muttered words that ‘it’s just stupid.’

  Once two or three of the guys stood out, the pack instinct upon which the game depended, was broken; and when the guys who wouldn’t join in became a majority, the ones who would began to look pathetic.

  The whole atmosphere of the office changed. It became almost a silent place, and a much more productive one. Girls who went by would stare through the glass in amazement at a roomful of heads bent diligently over work.

  The only eyes they’d meet, now, would be mine.

  I’d smile up, embarrassed to be caught looking. I couldn’t help it. When I heard heels, I had to look. I couldn’t miss a chance of seeing my red-headed, zip-booted heroine.

  At least once every day the new girl passed by on the stairs; and she wore her boots without fail.

  Not only was it a thrill to see her always with boots upon her legs, but her boots were uncommon in design. They were slim fitting, but not flimsy or floppy; the leather shafts were sturdy and erect, like those of riding boots, or extra-high Doc Martens. They fastened with long zips, located not at the sides, but at the fronts; from the bridge of the foot, each zip rose in a tall, slender J to the boot-top, which sloped upwards from the back of the leg.

  The surface of the leather was always absolutely black and gleaming, showing not a speck of dust. The toes were sharply rounded, almost to points; the heels were of medium height, maybe two and a half inches, and square, h
ardly tapering in their descent to the floor. In truth, the hollow clump of those boot-heels was an unmistakable sound.

  One day I heard it, ascending from below. I looked up from my desk as she rose into view.

  Along with the boots she wore a tight mini-dress, coloured violet. It was cut with a shallow V at the front, showing her cleavage and a deep V behind, baring half her shoulder blades. Its sleeves were long; on each of her wrists the cuffs were hidden, covered beneath three or four heavy bangles. Under one violet arm, she carried a box file.

  I feasted my eyes upon her. I wasn’t afraid of her noticing. Since that first morning, she’d never given our office another glance; she seemed oblivious to any difference in here. She walked on up, a calm, proud booted beauty.

  Then, at my side, there was a low brushing of castors. Helliwell had pushed back his chair and got up from his desk.

  He walked over to the glass and gave it a loud sharp rap of his knuckles. Halfway up the stairs, my heroine halted. She looked down at Helliwell, and it was plain that she knew him.

  With his hand, Helliwell made two gestures: first one of turning, then of lifting.

  Hesitation, an unaccustomed look of dismay, crossed my heroine’s face. But she obeyed him. Awkwardly, with the heavy box file clutched under her arm, she turned sidelong on the stairs, till she stood with one boot a step lower than the other, and crouched, her back to the glass. Looking over her shoulder, she reached back with her free arm, and pulled up the rear skirt of her mini-dress. Under it, she wore nothing; her bare buttocks, the smooth cleft of her anus, and the hairy, puffy, pink-ridged rupture of her sex, were all submitted to Helliwell’s steady, examining gaze.

  With a finger he beckoned her closer, towards the glass, on to it. Her cheeks were compressed, flattened into twin circles of pallid white, like a cold brand of humiliation.