Top of the stairs, there’s a girl named Kane with a derby like Reg’s, but Kane’s is paired with an immaculate white jumpsuit, a cane and one false eyelash pointed straight to hell.
I showed her my stamp; she frowned and shook her head. I read her expression: she knew me, knew the tarantula, didn’t think we were a good match. Kane’s a nice girl, despite, or because of, the whole loving-to-beat-people thing. She narrowed her eyes, told me, “Be careful, fucker,” without saying a word, the slightest hint of crow’s feet telling it to me since there’s no way soft words could pass on the landing and Kane’s way too dignified to shout.
I squeezed past her into the leather curtain and her nipples brushed mine. Then I was in past the leather and her hand was on my shoulder, briefly, and I was gone, into the black where the music sounds distant, blocked off by heavy insulation and the half-inch thick curtain.
High in the corners, some spacey New Age shit was playing, competing with the beat from outside. Forty, perhaps fifty people were crammed into the well-equipped space, eight or twelve gawky spectators, four couples crammed into corners going at it—male male, male female, female female, male female, I think—and half a dozen women relaxing and getting foot massages, back rubs, kisses on their rubber-clad behinds.
The rest were playing, if you can call it that. A female plugged and ring-gagged on a St. Andrew’s drooled down her front while a six-foot tranny whipped her. A guy bent over on a sawhorse was getting fucked by a machine. A woman in a gas mask was bound and spread on top of a horizontal cage, getting a violet wand to her exposed genitals. There was a guy in the cage, fucking himself onto a bar-mounted dildo. And up on the low stage, where emo bands play at Chagrin on fourth Tuesdays, an impeccable female body was suctioned tight into a howling vacuum bed, every contour of her naked body bleeding through the latex, growing more visible with every drop of sweat.
The vac bed is a fun little device or a nasty slice of hell, depending on your perspective, which for me can change at any moment. A sturdy frame of PVC pipes, it’s wrapped overall with an airtight envelope of heavy-duty latex. A victim—usually a submissive, for reasons I’ll detail momentarily—crawls inside and the pipes, which are attached to a vacuum, suck the air out until the rubbery skin molds so close it all but crushes you. It feels like you’re being buried alive. The slightest movement becomes an ordeal and is often impossible, depending on the strength of the suction.
While some vac beds are covered with black latex, or latex thick enough to hide the contours of the body within, this one was an almost perfect white, and thin enough to be seen through. The girl inside was slim and savage, spread and squealing, the sounds muffled as she fought against the crushing weight of the latex.
In a vac bed, you breathe through a tube, and this one was trying to squirm but unable to because the latex held her so tight, like a python digesting something still ever so slightly alive. The intricate outlines of her shaved pudenda were of infinite fascination to me, as were the gradually more visible outlines of the blue-black Sanskrit characters tattooed above her sex, growing discernible as a thin film of sweat made the white latex translucent, then gradually transparent. The former, the folds of her pussy, I did not at first recognize, but the Sanskrit’s a dead giveaway. It was the labial piercings that threw me, or the lack thereof; she’d taken them out, I imagine, so as not to damage the latex. Three on each side, now nothing.
I dusted my second bourbon, sucked, cracked ice, chewed. The Domme operating the vac bed was six feet in heels, poured into a rugby-striped number short enough to show her latex panties and low enough to show that she didn’t bother with the matching bra. Her boots left a trio of inches between their rubber tops and her dress. Her hair was cropped short, a bottle-blonde contrast to the electric blue stripe on her black dress. She held the wired remote, a simple attenuator dial on an ergonomic grip. She twisted the dial and the bed howled louder. I watched the girl on the bed fighting it, trapped, suctioned into the rubber. I remember that: the fighting. I remember it like it was yesterday.
She moaned through the breathing tube, almost drowning out the music and the sound of the vacuum. Then she humped her body against the pressure of the vac bed, not making much purchase, asking and not receiving.
“Another drink?” asked the girl in the pinstripe latex dress, and I said, “Knob Creek,” and bent down and gave her the first bill out of my boot, a twenty. Then I was back to watching, as she moaned and fought. The Domme switched off the suction and left a huge gap of silence unfilled by New Age from above and Psytrance from outside. My ears rang.
The girl’s body became slowly less visible as the tension in the rubber began to relax. The Domme gave her a moment, ran her latex-gloved hands all over the entombed victim’s upper thighs, then into her, pressing as far as the rubber sheath would let her.
The woman moaned. The Domme slapped her. The latex glove came off and her fingernails came out, drawing great gentle circles around the captive’s breasts; she shivered at the sensation. The nipples had little gaps of air around them. The Domme took care of that with a twist of the dial, and moans mingled with the howl of the bed as the latex envelope evacuated. Going full bore now, the machine crushed her again, and the victim writhed violently.
My bourbon came back with twelve dollars, which I left on the tray. I gulped, not quite feeling the two Maker’s, thinking I should leave; there’s death trapped in that Pandora’s vac bed, and motherfuck if someone isn’t about to let it out.
The crowd shied away from the captive’s audible moans, muffled from the breathing tube but growing louder until they actually drowned out the scream of the machine. The spectators formed a half-circle that, contrary to the typical wisdom of crowds, gradually inched back as the action throughout the rest of the room slowed and stopped, as manacles came undone and whips ceased their movement, as foot massagers lost interest and turned to gawk at the screaming latex statue.
I edged closer. Slick in its latex cocoon, the girl’s body now showed impeccably, every contour, every curve, every place I had put my tongue and my hand, every part of her I had tasted, every part of her I loved. Her name was Aiden and I should have fucking left ten minutes ago, but the third bourbon was gone and that wasn’t going to happen.
The dial twisted down, up, down, up, down, making Aiden screech and seethe and pump her hips. I was now the only spectator within the Domme’s space bubble, which is rude at any party—and at this one, it was asking for trouble.
“You,” she said, pointing, without looking at me.
I stared, dumbly.
The Domme’s eyes turned to me, and Christ, did she look pissed. I gestured, “Me?” and she stomped her foot.
The beat from outside the curtain went pounding into my breastbone, bam-bam, bam-bam, in unplanned syncopation to fucking Zamfir Master of the Pan Flute or Yanni or whatever it was pouring treacly out of the speakers. I think it was the Blade Runner soundtrack or some Year of Living Dangerously shit. I shook my head.
“I don’t think I should,” I told her.
She killed the vacuum; Aiden moaned behind her breathing tube as the air hissed back in. The Domme’s eyes were steel. “Did I ask, Tarantula?”
I thought, be careful what you wish for, which is not a new thought for me and seems to be coming with increasing frequency nowadays.
I put my dead soldier on a passing tray, looked at the tarantula as if to tell myself it was really there. I climbed onto the stage.
From somewhere, the Domme produced a dildo with a flat base. She set it up and said, “Put it into her.”
“Look,” I said stupidly. “I sort of know this girl. It’s my first night. I know her. It’s my first night.”
The Domme grasped my hand, planted the dildo in it, and used both her hands to force mine closed around the shaft of the dildo.
“I said put the dildo into her.”
Without looking down, she unzipped the vac bed and sat down to light a cigarette under the NO SMOK
ING sign.
The crowd had surged closer, perhaps sensing that something especially dirty was about to happen. If only they knew. I looked down at Aiden, saw her eyes glassy and dull behind the frosted latex.
“Can she see through this thing?” I asked.
“Put the dildo in, Tarantula.”
My hands were shaking as I pried up the edge of the vac bed. I forced my hand under, scenting Aiden’s body, sweat and cunt pouring out to mingle with the sharp stink of latex. I tried to keep my flesh away from hers, but it was impossible in such close quarters; in a moment, my forearm was slick against hers, glassy as we rubbed together, like naked bodies fucking after an hour of slow, hard afternoon sex—
“Put it in her,” snapped the Domme. “I haven’t got all day.”
I could feel the heat as my arm crossed her side, her belly, her hips, pressed in tight. I took longer than I should have wrestling the dildo between her perfect thighs. The dildo was not a small one. I nuzzled the head between her thighs, reached my other hand in, with some difficulty, to spread her lips. I could feel the tiny keloids where her piercings had been.
I hovered over her belly and read the Sanskrit upside down, for the thousandth time, and the first: The butterfly counts not years but moments, and has time enough.
I pushed the dildo into her; in the slack latex, she arched and squirmed. Her ass lifted high and she let out a moan. Ice and heat in alternating waves ran through me, making my rubber pants distended.
“Zip her,” said the Domme.
I did, with some difficulty because I had never used this device, only seen it used. When Aiden was tightly sealed, I looked down at her eyes, frosty behind latex. Her eyes, what I could see of them, gave me no recognition. I listened to the sucking sound of her breathing. I was still staring when the Domme snapped her fingers in front of my face.
She had a spider on the back of her hand: a black widow, not a stamp, a tattoo. She was a lefty.
She took my hand and put the control box in it, forcing it closed. Then she held out a vibrator, a big rechargeable number with an angled shaft.
“Well?” she asked. “Make her come.”
“I’ve been drinking,” I said.
“Not enough,” she told me.
“But I—I know her,” I said nervously. “She’s my ex-girlfriend.”
“Then I’m sure you owe her a lot more than one orgasm. Start paying it back, Tarantula.”
I turned and regarded her; I fancied for an instant that we made eye contact through that frosted sheen. Between her spread legs, the rubber was distended with the base of the dildo.
I hit the suction and the distension disappeared, as the evacuating envelope of rubber forced the dildo deep into her. This time, her wail drowned out not only the scream of the vacuum bed, but the fucking John Tesh on the stereo. She pushed up so hard against the latex sheath that even as the latex went taut, she bent her body at an angle, hips desperately hunting for the ceiling, until I turned it up high and the dildo disappeared all the way inside her, and she went slamming down against the padded table underneath and did not get up again.
Now that I was close, I could see more detail—I could see the butterfly on her left hand, too dark, too defined, too colorful to be a stamp.
The Domme was at my elbow, whispering with the scent of an Indonesian clove caressing its way into me. I wondered if Aiden could smell it.
“Twist the dial with a rhythm,” she said. “The dildo will feel—”
I lost the last part of what she said, because I was leaning close, breathing hard, twisting the dial to see the perfect outline of Aiden’s body go clear and defined to white and undefined, each time the dildo slipping out just enough that she wailed when it went back into her—not an inch, barely a centimeter, but enough. I watched the rhythm of her body, the trembling that came when she passed the first plateau, the violent shaking at the second, and then, I knew, it was just a matter of making it happen, and the moment was in my hand.
For an instant, I almost killed the vac bed, put down the vibe, flipped Domme Lady the bird and went home to watch Skinemax. I was a moment, a split second, from doing that, when I looked up and saw Aiden’s eyes and something said she saw mine, through the frosted latex, through the haze of the machine’s tight embrace. I flicked the switch and brought the vibe down, on high power, as high as it would go, just to hear Aiden scream.
She did, and thrashed, and fought so hard against the crush of the latex sleeve that I thought for an instant she was going to rip the thing open. She couldn’t maintain it; she was strong, but not that strong. Her arched back went flat again as I pressed the vibe hard to her clit, switching it low, high, low, high, medium, low again, and then with the shuddering spasms of her naked body, high again, because her eyes were wide behind frosted rubber, staring up at me again, and whether it was me she was looking at or a hazy blur, I wanted it more than she did.
She came not by screaming or thrashing or fighting or shaking all over. She just went slack, stopped moving, froze there for an instant, and then a great violent jerk shook the table, and she was still. I gritted my teeth against it, because for an instant I thought I was going to cry.
I switched off the vibe, turned the suction dial to zero, reached out for the zipper.
“Did I tell you to free her?” came a voice from over my shoulder, velvet in clove smoke.
“Go to hell,” I said, and reached for the zipper.
The Domme’s hand grabbed mine before I could unzip Aiden. Our eyes met tight in the darkness and our breathing went heavy for a minute under the Enigma.
“Get out,” she said, pulling my hand away. “Leave.”
I dropped the vac bed control, threw down the vibrator, and stepped back. I looked at Aiden, heard her breathing regularly through the tube. I could see her eyes, but I was probably nothing but a blur, a white frost, a caricature.
The crowd was pressed in close, but they all cleared a path for me like I was fucking Moses.
It was five minutes waiting for my overcoat, five minutes to the car, five more minutes walking in a long perimeter around the parking lot breathing long and deep and freaky. Some guys on the corner puffing a spleef stepped out close in front of me and asked if I was having a good night. I mad-dogged ’em and they shuffled back into the shadows like a killer faced with a war criminal. I gave them the bird as I passed.
My car door was slim-jimmed, my glove rifled, ancient parking tickets scattered across the passenger’s seat. There’d never been a radio to begin with. I started the car and leaned on the gas to warm her up. Deep in my overcoat I felt a buzzing. I pulled out the phone and just stared.
I stared through six rings, till it was gone, then again, another six, then nothing as the engine purred. I put away my phone. I put the car in gear and crawled across the lot, feeling it buzz again.
At the exit, I turned right, not left, and crept down an alley marked DO NOT ENTER.
She was there, crouched by the Dumpster, black raincoat a dark pool all around her feet. She stood under the Kanji and blocked out the YOU YOU, which with the way the shadows were falling made the Dumpster say FUCK FUCKING, which at long last kind of made sense.
Reg stood watch over her, smoking a long thin cigar and playing absentmindedly with a butterfly knife. He eyeballed me as I drove up on the sidewalk. I pulled up, leaned over, popped the passenger lock, pushed the door open. It creaked.
Aiden got in. I saw that she’d neither buttoned her raincoat nor bothered to put anything underneath. I could smell the rubber all over her, the stink of skunk mixed with the heady aroma of her sex, the familiar scent of her sweat mingling. You can always smell them, people you’ve been with; it’s like a body memory, and I remembered the perfume of her in every cell.
She sat flat in the seat, breathing. In my pocket, my digital watch chimed midnight. Happy May Day, people.
“I like your tattoo,” I answered.
She shrugged. “Yours?”
I hel
d up my hand; between my sweat and hers and the pussy juice, I was sporting Monet’s tarantula.
She leaned across, kissed me, her coat falling open. My fingers found the smooth lines of Sanskrit, traced them, pressed lower. By the time our lips parted, my fingers were wet.
“Drive,” she said softly.
I stared at her a minute; her eyes were still frosted, but no longer by latex. I put the car in reverse. Reg raised his hat as I backed out of the alley, flipped a bitch, went right, left, left, and hit Figueroa going north.
CINEMA SHOW
Elizabeth Coldwell
When Robert told me he was taking me to see a foreign film at our local art-house cinema, I assumed it would be about sex. In French, probably, with lots of nudity and maybe a dash of kinky action to spice up the story line. He knows that’s the only way I can be persuaded to sit and concentrate on something that comes with subtitles. Instead, it turned out to be two hours of inter-family squabbling in Iranian. Moving, well-acted and garnished with awards it might have been, but it was still my idea of torment. Torment made all the more exquisite by the fact I was wearing the anniversary present Robert had presented to me before we left the house—a pair of black rubber panties.
From the moment I slipped the panties up my legs and settled them in place, I had been acutely aware of the way they clung to the contours of my sex. Robert had shaved me as the prelude to giving me my present. It’s a task he usually requires me to perform myself, but as if to emphasize that this was a special occasion, he had me lie back on the bed, a towel spread out beneath my bare bottom, while he gradually and oh-so-carefully sheared the stubble from my lips and mound. Now, I squirmed slightly in my seat as I wondered how many more times two very stubborn middle-aged brothers could refuse the opportunity to settle their differences before the film finally, blessedly, came to an end. And with each movement, it seemed as though every centimeter of the flesh that Robert had so lovingly denuded was being teased and caressed by the thin latex. My pussy felt hot, flooded with juices that were trapped by the tightly fitting rubber. I wanted to slide a finger under the material and touch myself, but Robert hadn’t given me permission to do that and so I sat there, fidgeting and craving release.
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