“I noticed that, sir. I’m sorry, Sir.” “See, there you go again. Did I ask you to apologize? No, I didn’t. You were anticipating my commands before you received them. A deadly mistake” He pulled a tattered paperback out of his jacket pocket, and handed it to me. Robert Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land. “Have you read this?”
“No, sir.” He looked a little surprised. “You should. There’s a character in here, she’s what is called a ‘fair witness’, which means, any event that she’s called upon to describe, whether in a court of law or somewhere less formal, she does so without any attempt to embellish the facts with what she thought she saw or heard. She reports only what actually transpired in her presence. Now, if you take that same principle and apply it not only to what you see and hear, but to every other moment of your life, then you’ll go far. You do not anticipate, you do not guess. You react only to the events that actually occur.” He looked at me. “Does that make sense?”
“Yes, Sir.” “Hang onto the book. Something to read in between your writings. They went down well, too, you know.”
“Thank you, Sir.” Then; “May I ask you something?”
He nodded.
“The man… Jurgens. What happened?” “Oh Chrissie, that was priceless. Absolutely priceless! The look on his face when you picked him out… let me ask you a question. Why did you happen to pick him out, a man you’ve never seen before? Surely there were enough other faces in that room that you recognized?”
“I don’t know, really. It was just… the expression on his face when I looked at him, as though he despised me, and everything I represented… and not just me. The entire human race, male or female.”
“That about sums him up,” the Doctor replied. “A lot of people were very pleased indeed when you called him out. Including Magdalene. Between you and me, she’s been looking to have him taken down a peg or two for as long as I can remember.”
“What happened afterwards?” “After you left the room? What an exit that was, by the way. There were actually people calling for an encore! But Jurgens… the last I heard, they were waiting for the police to take him away. He’s probably on his way back to Dusseldorf now, to stand trial for the murder that everyone seemed to know he’d committed, but which nobody dared to confront him with.”
“The police were here?” “Of course. Why do you…” his voice trailed off. “Oh, I see what you’re getting at. Don’t worry, they wouldn’t have come to your ‘rescue,’ as you call it. Although they could probably have shown you some interesting tricks with their nightsticks. But returning to Jurgens, good riddance to bad rubbish. You might find it hard to believe, but we’re really not fond of killers around here.”
I was taking a sip of coffee as he spoke; I almost spat it back out in disbelief. “How can you say that? What about the bellhop?” He thought for a moment. “The bellhop. Oh, the boy at your hotel? Yes, what about him?”
“His head. I was shown his severed head.”
“And?” The Doctor sounded genuinely puzzled. “So you killed him. Well, not you personally. But somebody killed him. Then they brought me his head, so that I’d understand that this wasn’t all some kind of sick joke.”
“Really? Who told you that?”
“I saw it.”
“Yes, I know you saw it. But who told you we killed him, and all the rest?”
“No-one. They didn’t need to. It was obvious.” “Obvious to you, perhaps. Not to anybody else. I’ll admit, showing you the head was a little gratuitous… I was actually against them doing that, as it happens. You’d already had enough shocks, I didn’t want to run the risk of sending you over the edge. But no, we didn’t kill him, and neither did anybody else. Damned fool driving too fast on his way here – I think he wanted a crack at your ass, to be honest. Hit the main gates, through the windscreen, and… well, I’ll spare you the graphic details, but his head was severed from his body. And somebody suggested borrowing it…to give you a scare.”
He was lying, I knew that now. “No, that’s wrong. He told me… it was him who warned me about you… about the men in the lobby, they’d been watching me, they were going to snatch me away. He’d been protecting me from them.”
“No, no, no. I don’t know where you get these ideas from. Or, rather, I do, and I wish you’d put them back there. I don’t doubt that he told you all that, and he was right to do so. You needed to be told what was about to happen, otherwise you could have imagined anything, and what effect might that have had? But protecting you? Whatever was he protecting you from? Did he say?”
I tried to recall his exact words. I couldn’t. Only the words I thought I was hearing. “They are bad men. Kidnappers, rapists, white slave traders. Make sure you shut your door.” “He told me he had to take his wife to the hospital and wouldn’t be able to guard me any longer.”
“I’m sure that’s not what he said. He did take his wife to the hospital; her sister was having her boils lanced, I believe, and she wanted someone to hold her hand. So he dropped her off, and was on his way back here when… well, you know what happened.”
I was stunned. I’d spent all this time building the bellhop up in my mind as my protector; and all this time loathing the people who’d killed him because of that. Only to learn that he was one of them to begin with.
The Doctor leaned forward; solicitously wiped a tear from my eye. “Oh dear. What did you think… that he was some kind of hero, a knight in shining armor, about to rescue the poor maiden from the evil dragon? Sorry, but that’s not how things work anymore.”
He leaned back against the wall once more. “You still think about escape, don’t you? No, don’t answer that. You do, it’s natural. But it’ll pass. That’s one of the things that Penelope will teach you.”
The shiver that I felt must have shown on my face. “You don’t like her?” he continued. “I like her well enough,” I answered, choosing my words carefully. “I don’t like what’s become of her. Talking to her is like talking to a child. She has to be my age, at least. But her mind is like that of a nineteen year old.”
“No, that’s where you’re wrong. Her mind is that of a perfectly normal nineteen year old…which, as she probably told you, is what she still considers herself to be in a world that is free of all the pressure, the fear, and the ugly things that society forces upon us and which we accept because they’re ‘character building’.”
“Oh come on!” I couldn’t help myself. “You know as well as I do, that girl has probably been sexually abused every day for the past twenty years. Her brain has completely rotted. She’s a fucking zombie.” The Doctor jerked forward. “I’ll let you speak to me like that because we’re having a conversation, and because you raise an interesting point, no matter how crudely. But before I respond to it, allow me to warn you that…” and his words slowed to a virtual halt. “If you ever use that tone of voice again, in my hearing or that of any of my colleagues, you will wish you were a zombie. And not just figuratively speaking, either.”
His tone lightened again. “Besides, you are wrong. Let’s leave aside the legal definitions of what constitutes sexual abuse – they are so vaguely defined that there’s scarcely two people on earth, let alone two countries, who completely agree with one another on that account. Ask Penelope if she’s being abused. She’ll tell you no. Ask her if she likes… oh, I don’t know… a particular colored dress you are wearing. She’ll say yes. Or no. Depending upon whether or not she likes it. As I said, she has her opinions, she has her tastes.
“The only thing she does not have, that you possess in abundance… and this is not a slur, or a threat or anything else. The only thing she does not have is the ability to lie, in the hope of securing some kind of advantage, or benefit. Now, if that means we’ve rotted her brain and turned her in to a zombie, then guilty as charged. But, until the day arrives when you can open a newspaper and confidently accept that every politician’s words are the truth, or sign onto your e-mail account knowing that every offer
to make you a millionaire overnight is genuine; until that day… until that day, how can you sit there and tell me that there’s something evil about somebody who does not know how to lie?”
“Because…” Suddenly I felt flustered. “What about an individual’s freedom to choose?”
“Oh yes, freedom to choose is a wonderful thing. But look how it is exercised. You could have the freedom to choose whether to stitch up some old lady with a pile of bullshit about how, if she hands over her life savings, she’ll be a billionaire before breakfast tomorrow. The freedom to choose to lead a country to war, by telling them that the enemy has a vast nuclear stockpile that only exists in paranoid imaginations. The freedom to tell your husband ‘I love you,’ ten minutes after you’ve paid a bent cop to shoot him. Yes, I’m sure that’s much better. Thank you for enlightening me.”
“Do you lie?”
“Why should I?” “To get what you want. To make people do things. I don’t know, any number of reasons. That doesn’t matter. Do you lie?”
“No I don’t. Have I told you anything that you have since discovered, or even suspected, of being untrue? Has anybody here?”
I shook my head, then thought for a moment. “Once in the dungeon… somebody came to me, told me their name was Sindy. I thought she was a girl. She sounded like a girl. But when the light went on….”
“It was Sindy. That really is his name. At least, that’s the name he goes by here. It’s short for Abassin. Albanian, I believe. So he was telling you the truth. And that…” he patted the paperback that lay on my lap… “Goes back to what I was telling you about the Fair Witness. They report only what they know to be a fact. The person said their name was Sindy. Therefore, the person was named Sindy. But no mention was made of gender. You simply assumed. Like you did with the Bellhop. You hear what they are saying, and then assume you know what they mean. And that is where you go wrong, every time.”
He got to his feet. “Now I have a question for you, and I want you to tell me the truth. Will you do that?”
I nodded. I was glad he was leaving; I needed time to think. “I will.” “At the ceremony. You told Magdalene that only once in all the time you have been here, had you felt you were in the presence of a true man. Those were more or less your exact words. You looked at me as you said that. Did you intend to do that?”
I nodded again. “I did.” He turned and left the room. His last words as he opened the door were “Interesting. Very interesting.”
CHAPTER TEN
Mark was what you’d call a professional protestor, one of those people who goes in search of trouble because he wasn’t able to cause enough on his own. I didn’t pay much attention to it, apart from warning him every so often that he was going to get arrested if he kept going like this, but I think that was a part of the thrill for him. So we dated on and off for a few months and then one day while I was visiting him, and not really in the mood for anything more than the promised trip to the bar, I happened to pick up a small plastic case that was lying on the floor.
“What’s this, your make-up bag?” I joked as I opened it – and found, instead, a gas mask. I knew he owned one; it’s how he kept going when the teargas started flying at demos, but I’d never seen it before. And of course I had to try it on… and I couldn’t believe how great it felt. Imagine your face encased in rubber. Your breathing restricted, your eyesight limited. Heat and heaviness, darkness. And HOT. Watching him as he toweled off from his shower, staring through the round glass eyelets, it amazed me how different his body suddenly looked and I wondered how different the rest of him might be.
He was obviously having similar thoughts – as I watched, I could see the towel wrapped around his waist begin to tent, and he hadn’t even spoken before I started unbuttoning my blouse. Thank goodness I didn’t wear a t-shirt tonight. I stepped out of my skirt and stood in bra and panties, as he slipped off the towel. Fuck the boy was hard. I reached out and stroked his cock.
“You like Gamask Girl?” I teased, surprised at how strange my voice sounded, muffled and deep. He nodded and I jerked his cock a little.
“Do you want Gasmask Girl?” I asked. Again he nodded, and I put my hand on the top of his head and pushed him to his knees – no easy task, he’s about a foot taller than me. But he knelt obediently and when I parted my legs around his face I did not even need to command him to lick me. He did it anyway.
I was feeling dizzy. The heat, the difficulty breathing, the excitement… the more he licked, and my hips bucked against his face, not even noticing the stubble that he’d forgotten to shave away, the more disconnected from reality I felt – and the wetter my cunt became, as he licked and lapped. I steadied myself, one hand on his head, the other reaching out for the wall, but as his tongue hit my clit I felt my leg begin to buckle. Without letting go of his head, I stepped backwards, pulling him along by his hair, then lay back on the bed, my legs wide before him and forcing his face in between them.
He licked and I bucked, ignoring his movements and concentrating on my mind, fucking his face with my pussy streaming, and when I came, I almost blacked out… almost, but not so much that I didn’t realize that I’d just experienced the most intense orgasm of my life, and given him something to remember as well.
Turned out he’d always wanted to have sex with a girl in a gasmask, but had never dared to ask anybody… me, I’m not so shy. I bought my own and it sits on my bureau, right next to my favorite dildo and vibrator. In fact, there’s only one thing about it I don’t like.
You can’t suck cock with a gasmask on. At first I thought I was dreaming. I’d been asleep for – it felt like hours – when I was startled awake by hands on my ankles and wrists, literally lifting my body from the bed.
The covers slipped off, and that was what awakened me completely. Shocked, I struggled, but the flat of a hand hard against my cheek stilled my movements. Instead, I let my body relax and felt myself borne from my apartment and into the corridor.
I was tossed onto the floor, and then told to rise. Shakily, I stood. “You know the way.” A voice that I didn’t recognize was
succeeded so quickly by a kick in the ass that I stumbled; caught my balance with my fingertips, and then began walking. I know my way to where? The dungeon? The Big Room? Well, it had to be one of the two.
It was the Big Room and, as I stepped inside, once again I was taken aback by the transformation. Tonight, and it was night, for the sky outside that huge window was black, with a handful of stars to break the monotony, it resembled a gentleman’s club.
The lights were low, but clustered around the room, seemingly at random, figures sat at small round tables drinking, playing cards or chess, talking. A roulette game was taking place in one corner. In another, two men sat reading in vast easy chairs, illuminated by a tall and impossibly sculptured lamp. The only thing that looked out of place was… was… I couldn’t tell what it was. But I was about to find out.
It lay propped against a table, a sheet of almost opaque plastic, stretched between two pairs of poles, one set long and vertical, the other, short and horizontal. As I approached, a figure lay it on the floor and pulled back one sheet of plastic… no, latex. A second sheet lay beneath it.
A voice commanded, “Get in.” Gingerly, I stepped onto the sheet, then lay down at an angle, my head poking out of the turned-back corner. Someone kicked me in the side. “Get in properly.” Feeling the first flush of panic begin to flutter in my chest, I obeyed. What was this thing?
I lay down “properly,” my face beneath the latex layer. Somebody shifted my arms and legs, spreading them until I lay in an exaggerated X. Hands then pulled the top layer tight and secured it.
“Does she know where the breathing tube is?” I heard someone ask. “I hope so,” somebody else said. “She’ll be needing it.”
I felt with my lips, shifting my head slightly; my nose, then my mouth, met a plastic nozzle; I clasped it greedily between my lips. However it worked… later, I saw a black plas
tic tube leading away from the
mouthpiece… it brought me air. And, as I’d been warned, just in time. A high-pitched whine kicked up, followed by the
indescribable sensation of all the air being sucked from the sack. I was being vacuumsealed in a latex bag.
I could hear everything and, as the latex formed itself tightly over my body and face, see everything. I could even feel everything; I realized that, when a hand slapped down onto my thigh, then lingered long enough to draw its fingertips up my leg towards my groin. But I could not move a muscle; even breathing was an effort, although I was in no danger of suffocation. I just hoped that my body wasn’t nursing some long-hidden latex allergy.
I lay there, my eyes alone moving, following the figures as they drifted around me. Somebody knelt and pressed fingers to my lips; somebody else was stroking something hard against my pussy.
I resolved to remain calm. True, I was trussed up like a turkey. But if I couldn’t touch them, it meant that they couldn’t touch me, not really. And that meant there could be no penetration, not so long as I was protected by that membrane-thin latex barrier.
I don’t know how long I lay like that. Periodically, somebody would pass, glance down at me, maybe run a hand along my body. One pair of fingers tweaked my left nipple viciously; another spent an inordinate amount of time pushing ineffectually at my pussy. It appeared that this contraption was as novel to them as it was to me, and I wondered if that was the point of the exercise… a demonstration of some new invention by the friendly neighborhood scientists.
Penelope appeared. At first I didn’t recognize her; I’d never seen her, after all, from my latest perspective, spread-eagled on the floor while she stood directly above my head, affording me an unrestricted view straight up her skirt, to the shaven pussy that crowned her thighs.
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