Chapter IX The House of Shame

 

I had been seriously provoked by her cheeky banter over the phone, but whatever irritation I felt was forgotten by the sheer frisson of seeing her in this garb.

I pulled myself together. “Valentina, hello! Tell me. What the fuck is going on?” It is not often that I lose my self-control to the point of swearing like this. She sensed my anger, so she pursed her lips as for a kiss. I relented again. I made to kiss her rich impish mouth. Suddenly she twisted her head sideways with a laugh and I had to make do with a peck on her cheek.

I found this very annoying.

“What the fuck is going on?” Valentina said back to me mimicking my voice. “Well, I can show you what the fuck is going on. But first,” she wagged her finger at me, “you must promise to behave.”

“Behave?” I asked. “What do you mean?”

“Well we are having a number of special guests here. We don’t want you to do anything disruptive.”

“That’s OK. I’m sure I will be on my best behaviour.”

She smiled at me enigmatically. “I know you will be,” she gave me a tormenting smile as if she was in on an amusing secret that I may not enjoy so much.

“Come and see, Petya” she said. She spun round and walked round the side of the staircase. I noticed now that all vestiges of that halting English she had used when I had first met her had now gone. She spoke English well and effortlessly, although the melodic foreign accent remained. It was obvious that her earlier pidgin English was a come on. As was probably most of her behaviour since then, I realised.

Under the staircase there was a wide cupboard protected by a curtain. She drew aside the curtain. Inside there was a long wide wooden ledge set against the wall with 2 computer monitors and keyboards and several metal chairs. I noticed that big Nikolai followed us but stopped outside the curtain.

We sat down on two of the chairs provided. She entered a password on one of the keyboards and went into an internet address. She pressed an icon on the screen and we found ourselves in a raunchy website offering sales of porn videos. Valentina smiled and looked at me knowingly. She entered a website called “Mood Swing Pictures”, clicked against an offer of a free sample video and waited. I looked quizzically at the screen and then at her. She caught my gaze again and this time she grinned almost savagely. “You will like this, Petya. Please say you do.” Somehow, I felt I might not.

After about 15 seconds a film trailer popped up. It was a 45 second video with sound effects of a pretty almost naked girl with pigtails and red stockings and what looked like a leather strap, whacking the naked bum of an anonymous silent man bent over a couch. It took only 3 seconds for me to realize that the girl in question was Valentina. I did not know at first whether to congratulate her or commiserate with her for being caught by the camera in this pose. She looked magnificent.

Then all of a sudden a terrifying thought occurred to me. It made me feel sick to the pit of my stomach. I ask her to rerun the sample and peered carefully at the victim. Then to my horror and surprise I recognized the room, I recognized Valentina, and I recognized the couch. I was staring at a picture of my own arse being mercilessly whacked.  I did not recognize the bum at first as it was not a part of me that I was over familiar with. At least not visually. Yet instinct told me that the posterior in action was somewhere close to base. Otherwise, why else would she show it to me? I was so mortified I was sick.

“Petya, you look ill. It is such a nice picture, don’t you think? Do you want me to play it again? No? I will go a get you a drink.” I made a grab for her. Hastily she jumped aside and left through the curtain.

I was speechless at first. The sweat poured from my forehead and my mouth went quite dry as the reality of what I had seen hit me. I seized the key-board and worked my way back to the video trailer. I looked to see where and how the whole video was accessible. On pressing the button to order a purchase of the tape I was thrown onto a reject pop-up which stated “not yet available for general release”. For a moment I actually felt relieved.

Then the reality struck me. They had the tape and were withholding it to ensure my compliance. My compliance? To what exactly?

I felt intense anger now. I needed to hit something or somebody. I would have hit Valentina if she had been next to me. Where the hell was she? I got up and ripped aside the curtain. Then I stopped dead. I found Nikolai standing in the corridor looking at me.

As I made to move forward he shook his head slowly. “Just you dare,” he appeared to be saying. He looked quite intimidating. I sobered up, sat down and took stock for a minute.

What could I do? Retrieve the tape? How? There was undoubtedly more than one copy. Count on the anonymity? Yet this short piece was undoubtedly part of a longer whole perhaps with my face visible, where my anonymity would probably be non-existent. Would I be blackmailed? Should I resign?

   If only…if only I had resisted.…How can I cure myself from this cursed appetite of mine for women?

   I remembered how I had loved the shape of Valentina’s body as she positioned herself initially to indulge my “curse.” I remembered how I had taken a few moments to contemplate the contours of the scenery. These are normally moments to relish no matter how shameful. I have to confess that I have relished them before. From an early age. Again, let me explain. Yes, explain the inexplicable. Even when I had first been snogging and petting young girls at the age of fifteen I had been drawn to imagining them perched over my knee or over a desk being whipped. It was frustrating because girls were not into this thing very much at that age. They could take violence or being verbally abused more than a ritualized smack. I would fantasize and watch in fascination on the odd occasions that a caning had still been applied in my boys’ schools, but girls seemed to endure a different kind of rough treatment. If I once let the matter slip about my secret desires, a girl would laugh; but if I dwelt on it longer they shied away. “You’re weird,” she would say. “You do go on”, and would promptly up and leave.   

   I was troubled by my seeming weirdness. I fantasized about canings received by other boys in my school and was even jealous when some of my closer friends had to suffer this indignity. I had once received a single slipper on my bottom from a gym teacher while in my PE shorts and that had been exciting from the very moment I had to bend over and clasp my knees in front of the class. I had been shouting and pushing while in the queue to jump the vaulting horse. The glow of the single hard slap and the indignity of my position in full view of my classmates embarrassed and excited me.

  But this was not the full ritualistic caning, however, where you report at lunch-time to the head’s office. These seemed both dreadful and enticing and my friends said that they really hurt although it would have been unthinkable to cry out or complain. I almost wanted to join them and to be one of them, but I had never screwed up the courage to commit a sufficiently serious offence and join this elite. Most of my rudeness or late essays resulted only in boring detentions and writing a hundred lines. Only once did I find myself in this compromising position and, frankly, I do not want to dwell on it. So corporal punishment etched itself into my imagination all the more strongly in that I largely lacked the concrete experience.

  I confess that I drew pictures of girls getting spanked or whipped which I kept in a secret drawer until my inquisitive mother found them there once and I hastily destroyed them. I felt deep shame and resentment. I was weird, I concluded. I was a pervert. I withdrew into my world of books and for some years I stopped chasing skirts. In fact I found that I was more likely to be seduced by young ladies on account of my bookish absent-mindedness and my self-deprecating sense of humour. I no longer needed to go on the pull. I was a lamb to be mothered, not a lion to be feared.

   As I grew older and reached my middle thirties, I attended a number of fetish parties as well so I was able to practice what others would barely dare fantasize about. It was a secret world of dungeons and discreet parties, often hidden within larger assemblies of fetish fashion displays. We would meet, dance, display and perform in airfield hangars, remote farms, on boats in the Thames, and at trendy Soho and City venues. I was also able to indulge my special fantasies further by attending parties in North London where girls were paid generously to be beaten and could then, if you so wished, beat you in return. Most of my fellow guests at these parties were older men in their sixties and seventies. It sounded sad but at least these guys knew how to have a good time.

  Well my curse had now come to haunt me with a vengeance. I sat down again in front of the screen and buried my forehead in my hands. Despair! Despair! Despair!

 

 

Further feverish thoughts were cut short by Valentina bringing me a tumbler of whisky. I took a grateful gulp. “How could you? How could you?” I hissed at her.

Valentina shrugged her shoulders. “I am sure it was just a coincidence. The club must have filmed everything going on there. It was not my normal place of work, so I really didn’t know about it. Honest. You do believe me? Don’t you? Remember I am the victim too. After all you recognized me straight away on that recording. Others will too.” I stayed silent. I was obviously unimpressed. She caressed my hair and my cheek. I shook her off like a petulant boy.

“Don’t be so glum. Nobody knows that it’s you, do they? And why should anyone know?” Why indeed? But what was the price to pay for that anonymity?

There was a prolonged silence. My silence was sullen, hers expectant. She appeared to be waiting for my response. I robbed her of that pleasure and stayed sulkily silent, but actually seething with anger underneath. Nikolai’s brooding presence beyond the curtain prevented me from exploding there and then and beating the crap out of her.

“Cheer up. Let me show you round the house,” she said to a change of tone. “That may cheer you up. Some very sexy people here. You’ll love it. Come on.” She stepped out from the curtain and invited me out. In a perverse daze I followed her.

She sashayed her way up the staircase, swishing her little whip against the side of her leg.

 I was still sullen and angry. In fact I must confess I was also quite frightened. I looked round me wondering whether I should cut my losses and make a dash back to the entrance. But between me and the door stood the heavy menacing bulk of Nikolai. Now I really felt frightened. I looked back up the staircase. Valentina had reached the top now and was beckoning me to follow with her finger. How could I refuse this Russian siren? More important still, what option did I have?

 As I mounted I noticed that the staircase wall was covered with beautiful erotic pencil sketches. They showed languid reclining females and rent boys being doted on by bloated rapacious elderly gentlemen in Edwardian clothes and army uniforms. On closer inspection some of the women wore uniforms too, but they looked suitably dishevelled and mismatched with bulging breasts popping out beneath the cloaks and epaulettes.

“Let me show you something more,” said Valentina, as we moved forward from the top of the steps. She led me along the corridor on the first floor landing. A door opened on the left and a very handsome young man appeared in a chauffer’s glistening uniform. In fact the jacket and trousers were made of some black leather material. I noticed his long sleek eyelashes. He smiled at Valentina and inclined his head in my direction with an insolent stare and a polite grunt. His hair was slick and he had a sybaritic air about him. He held open the door for Valentina and then passed by us on his way down to the staircase. Valentina gazed after him with an amused smile inviting me with her eyes to look round at the young chauffer myself. I spun round and found to my amazement that the rear part of the leather trousers had been cut away to reveal a milk white firm pair of young male buttocks. The buttocks appeared to be shiny and had obviously been shaven clean and then rubbed with some ointment.

  “You prefer boy buttocks or girl buttocks?” she asked cheekily. I glared at her. “OK, OK, don’t be so glum. I know the answer, naughty English boy.”

 “Don’t call me that!” I snarled back at her.

 I sensed a presence behind me and looked round again. No, it was not the chauffer. It was Nikolai again looking at me dark and brooding. I looked back to Valentina who had beckoned to me once more as she stood by the door which the saucy “chauffeur” had opened for her. “I hope you will not be a spoilsport now” and then without waiting for an answer she walked through the door and opened a second connecting door just behind it. The noise of merriment hit us immediately. Valentina went in first, then me. Nikolai followed us in, closed the door and stood behind us.

The first thing I noticed was that the room was dark, but bathed in a red glow, which came from 3 wall lamps covered with red crepe paper. There were about 10 figures in the room, mostly women, but with 4 men, one of whom, I inadvertently noticed, was Lord Smallbridge, smoking a cigarette with one of those long cigarette holders. They were sitting on low chairs and settees clutching partners in various states of undress. At the end of the room was a St Andrew type cross with a naked young Chinese woman tied to it with a white rope while another, a tall gangly girl of Slavic appearance and almost as naked, was standing over her with a tilted candle dropping hot wax on to her victim’s exposed breasts. The girl was sucking in her breath with pain at every drop of wax as it sizzled on her exposed body and every now and again evinced squeals of pain. The audience clapped and cheered. Luckily I had witnessed scenes like this in the dungeons underneath the big fetish party events so I was not so shocked. The only difference, and it was potentially a shocking difference, was the fact that, in contrast to the usual fetish parties, the victim on this occasion appeared to be a somewhat unwilling one.

 To me it was both sickening and exhilarating. The rest of the company must have thought the same as they clapped and cheered further.

  Smallbridge saw me just then. “Come on in, old boy! Come in! Valentina, find him a place, there’s a good dear. You want to have a go at that?” he said as he pointed to the Chinese girl left hanging on the cross. Her tall tormentor had stepped away now and the victim just hung there with her head hanging down. “Ecce Virgo,” the randy old lord called out. He may have been an elderly gentleman roué, but undoubtedly still sprightly.

 As my eyes grew more accustomed to the darkness I noticed that some of the supposed women around me, were actually male cross-dressers in female clothing. Or they may even have been transvestites. I am not that good at telling them apart. My attention went back to Smallbridge and I realized suddenly that His Lordship was waiting for my answer.

 “Maybe not just now,” I said. It would have been a bit sudden to have dived in like that. Normally, I would have loved this kind of scene, but after my recent experience downstairs I was not really in the mood. Secret cameras can work in red light too. Once bitten…Nor, frankly, did I like to abuse potentially unwilling victims.

 “Perhaps you may want a ride with one of our chauffeurs? “, he asked diplomatically. He glanced round looking for his new tasty morsel of flesh and but could not spot him anywhere. “Where is that silly boy, Boris, anyway? Oh yes, he’s probably popped downstairs to the loo. How tiresome. Shall I have him fetched here?”

 “No thank you, Lord Smallbridge, please not on my account,” I replied with equal politeness. “I don’t think that kind of ride is quite my cup of tea.”

 “Never mind,” said Smallbridge. “ Droit de seigneur and all that!”

 He got up, still holding his cigarette, and walked towards the crucifixion site. I noticed he was wearing a long white Victorian night dress over his gaunt aristocratic body. Gently he cupped one hand under the girl’s breast and kissed it. Then with equal grace he dropped some hot ash from his cigarette onto it. The girl gave a light shriek.

 “OK, Olga,” Smallbridge turned again to the tall Slav lady, “Turn her round, will you?” 

Olga obviously knew the drill. She put down the candle and untied the Chinese girl’s feet and then her hands. Keeping a tight hold of her left hand, she swung the visibly frightened girl round and pushed her front against the cross, holding her there.  Then she quickly stepped forward and tied the Chinese girl’s hands again to each arm of the diagonal cross. Then she stepped back leaving the Chinese girl’s bare buttocks and back exposed to the baying and appreciative audience.

I was feeling very uncomfortable about what could happen next. The heavy atmosphere and the gnawing fear in my stomach over what I had seen downstairs was making me feel quite sick. Nicolai was still standing behind me, so I dared not move away. Smallbridge ran an admiring hand over her rump and hind quarters as if he were inspecting so much horseflesh. 

“A right old Chinese filly, eh Axtell? Ready to be saddled and mounted.”

He took a small leather flogger and applied it several times with moderate strength to her back and her behind. This must have caused her some stinging discomfort as her body writhed and she continued to utter those sharp gulps of intaken breath. They left some marks but broke no skin. I knew from experience though that a flogger caused more noise than pain.

“Olga!” he called to the tall girl with the rope.

He handed Olga his cigarette holder. Then he in turn knelt down behind the Chinese girl and kissed her bum. His oral attack on her rear orifice grew more sustained and intense and she writhed now under this new unexpected bombardment. The company cheered him on ecstatically. Suddenly the old aristo got up, lifted the front of his night dress and presented his emerging member. Olga applied some Vaseline to the appropriate part of the girl’s body. Then his Lordship reared up and plunged his weapon straight into the Chinese girl’s back passage. She called out “Please no, Sir!” and then screeched with awe and pain, with her head tilted skywards as if seeking salvation there, while he worked himself into a frenzy and began to ram home his lance with startling vigour uttering wild cries in the meantime, which he had probably picked up on the hunting field. I shut my eyes. I could hear him sustain this charge for more than two minutes, with thrust after thrust rammed home as he grasped the upper sections of the cross. I opened my eyes again and saw him crushing his poor victim as she writhed helpless in discomfort between the cross and his thumping carcass. She looked like one of those baroque paintings of a stigmatized St Teresa of Avila enduring her orgasm of divine pain.

I turned in alarm to Valentina and she returned my look with a look of indifferent disgust. I looked away in embarrassment but could still hear the peer’s incessant gasping.

 Suddenly it was Lord Smallbridge who was out of breath, sucking at the air around him, as his withered flanks shuddered and then held still while he unloaded his princely burden into the poor girl’s anal cavity. Now he hung limp, drawing deep breaths, as he pushed himself ever closer to the girl’s body, as if seeking comfort from the receptacle to which he had imparted this hereditary deposit.  Finally, he let himself emerge. Then he turned round, bowed to the audience and he was given a standing ovation. “Well done, My Lord. Excellent. Bravo”.

To me this scene appeared utterly grotesque. At last, I thought, a level of depravity I have not and never will descend to.

“Untie her please, Olga. She deserves a cheer too,” Smallbridge said.

Olga untied the ravished girl. She appeared somewhat shell-shocked and uncomfortable as she had felt her back passage being ripped apart. Nevertheless, she managed a quick bow to an appreciative audience, picked up the scanty dress she had dropped on the floor before her ordeal. Nicolai now suddenly stepped forward and escorted her like a frightened sparrow out of the room. I consoled myself with the hope that there was big compensatory envelope full of crispy notes waiting for her in the next room, but really I could not be sure. 

 This was all very well but I had not come here for fun and games, but to get some answers. I was ready either to find out more directly from Valentina or else to leave the building altogether. I could see Nikolai was no longer standing behind me, so my priority was to seize the occasion to leave that room, if possible, with my Russian companion.

I looked around, seeking an excuse to leave. “I want to leave now,” I hissed at Valentina.  

“OK. Ludmila is in the next room. You want to see her, naughty English boy?”

“Don’t call me that,” I snapped at her. I was getting thoroughly irritated by her constant mocking and I felt that on this occasion it was not me that was “naughty”. 

“Never mind Ludmila,” I said. “Can we talk?”

“Yes, Petya. Why not? Come with me.”

Well, that was easy. I could lead this oppressive company at last and get some straight talking.