To understand the Gai Shift & to review the characters in this story, check out this useful guide: Gai-Shift Encyclopedia of Knowledge
Chapter 1: Lady M's Manor
The bedroom was finely furnished, its oak-paneled walls gleaming in the late afternoon sunlight. Against one wall, a massively plush four-poster bed. Opposite, the writing desk and pneumatic message tubing. Between them stood high arched windows that looked out into the lush grounds of Lady M___'s estate.
The door opened and a tall, dark women entered, her black maid's skirt brushing across her lanky thighs. Her hard, narrow face was gypsy-sensuous, lips full and eyes knowing, her hair a mop of jet ringlets. Her hands were slightly oversized, strong and capable. Her feet, somewhat long, were shod in high black pumps.
Barbette smiled to herself as she checked the second-to-last room in the guest wing, reviewing the work of the maids under her. Long fingers ran along the bed, feeling the tautness of the covers. The end tables were immaculate yet force of habit made her whisk her well-worn feather duster across them, clearing away any lint that might have settled in the past hour. The desk had its complement of pens, ink, and stationary. The pressure on the message tube was within margins and several canisters were at the ready.
Then she went to the final check, the creature comfort provided to every guest of Lady M___'s in order to make their stay complete. There, on the wall just above a peculiar stool, a manly pink cylinder jutted. Barbette, her customary cruel smile in place, strode over to it slowly, looking it over, easily recognizing it as a connoisseur would recognize a bottle of fine wine. Thomas35. Very ticklish, very sensitive, but possessing no unexpected sensuous spots. A good manni mount, docile and yet eager to please.
The rest of the manni, the unimportant 99%, hung in straps in the accessway on the other side of the wall. How convenient that their one good attribute could be physically inserted through an access hole, for the delight and entertainment of Lady M___'s female guests.
Humming a little French tune to herself, the tall maid began to sway the feathers lightly along the belly of the shaft. As if by magic it instantly responded, rising like a railroad semaphore, its ruddy cast increasing. Still humming, she toyed with the helpless flesh before her, losing herself in her little playtime. She knew Thomas35's body as well as she knew her own; she could waltz with the wall-entombed manni slave without any risk of setting him off. The activity was a good thing to do - it would make the manni ready for whatever guest was shortly to take the room. Barbette would walk him to the gates of orgasm yet slam it in his face, over and over. She found it so amusing.
Three times she brought his rod to a state of pulsing scarlet expectation and three times she settled back on the nearby stool, long legs crossed, watching with a smirk as its strength ebbed. The last time, after a particularly wicked twirl of feathers, she stepped to the wall, placing a delicate ear against the plasterwork.
Faintly came the muffled sounds of desperate sobbing. Strapped to the wall on a hidden corridor, gagged and abandoned, the manni could do nothing to save nor service himself. He could only pray for night to fall and for a guest hungry for an immediate gallop. Only then could he find relief.
But not through her. She never triggered her mannis. Maids who were unskilled or inattentive enough to do that had all night to regret it.
She left, pausing at the door, looking back to leer at the long shadow Thomas35's manhood cast along the wall. Poor Thomas. She'd try to arrange for a suitably amorous guest.
She walked down the quiet hall to the last room. From the distant stairwell rose the sound of the ladies' parlor games. Her Ladyship's guests were amusing themselves with that new card game from the continent. "Bindex"? Something like that.
She checked the final room with the same exactness with which she'd checked all the others. When she came to the wall, she stopped.
Where there should have been a manni, there was nothing but an empty hole. Barbette frowned at this. There was only one reason for such a last-minute removal - when a maid accidentally discharged a room manni. Who had been assigned this room? That girl from Dublin; Jillian. It would appear she'd overstepped her bounds.
Her tight Gallic frown deepened as she stepped from the room. When this happened it was such a bother. The maid would be punished, the manni rewarded. Specifically, he would end up bundled nice and snug in another maid's bed, to spend a delightful night beneath the tender affections of a hungry downstairs-girl. Such was the estate's tradition.
A new manni would have to be wall-mounted, of course.
Now in the hall, she stepped over to a section of wall and touched a hidden catch. A door clicked open and she entered. A moment later, it was as if she'd never been there.
The hidden passage was a study in opposites to the opulent corridor she'd left. There was no fine paneling, nor carpets and comfort. This dark byway wended and twisted between the manor's rooms, its walls naked brickwork, its only light from flickering oil lamps. And here and there, spaced as needed, were Lady's M___'s mannis. Each had been forced upon a box, and after their tackle had been threaded through the access hole, they had been ever-so-tightly belted into place. With the final strap came the ball gag. Then the box was removed and their toes were strapped down, to leave them helplessly pinned against the wall, unable to move, their only free limb the one that protruded into the sleeping quarters beyond, a worm waiting for night birds.
Occasionally Barbette would stop to tighten a strap, drawing a sad manni's helplessness one notch greater. She would pause from time to time to catch a distant echo of a maid's giggle and the slap of a small hand against helpless buttocks. Faintly, she heard the sound of muffled laughter, a manni being tickled by clever fingers. Such after-shift amusements were permissible as they excited the poor mannis even more. It would further credit Lady M___'s attention to detail.
She couldn't help but notice how the mannis flinched when they saw her and how their helpless feet wiggled in desperation. Her feather duster was legendary and woe to the manni she selected to while away time at the expense of helpless soles. But not tonight. She swept past each like a dark, slender ghost.
A small postern door let her out into a yard in the shadow of the estate's rear wall. She passed the vegetable garden (where a manni hung on a crucifix, a sad living scarecrow) to the barn. The door creaked open at her push.
The barn was dark with curious ranks of straps hanging from wall-pegs, their buckles gleaming in the scattered light of dusk. Strange and wondrous farming implements stood motionless on the dusty floor, their harnesses hungry for teams of mannis. Barbette ignored this, crossing to a small door on the back wall, her tall black pumps raising dust from the flooring.
The room beyond the final door was small and dark, perfect for sinister nocturnal deeds. And there on the floor at Barbette's feet was Jillian. Ordinarily, she was a pleasant-enough girl, with thick brown hair pageboyed to just above her shoulders and green eyes that seemed to swim in uncertainty. But these were not ordinary circumstances; she'd been stripped and bound by her fellow maids. They'd left her clothed in nothing save thick bands of hempish rope, with coils that pinned her hands behind her back and locked knees and ankles together. More rope and been used to haul her into a back-bending hogtie, and yet her devilish tormenters had not stopped there. The scratchy rope had been looped around her waist and through her legs, parting her Venus-lips in the most uncomfortable manner. More ropes captured her breasts, including strands that had been placed to either side of her swollen nipples, to pinion and chafe her to sexual distraction.
How Jillian might have felt about this was anyone's guess as the cruel girls had gagged her with a thick band of cloth. And so here she lay in the dust and dark, fearfully waiting for the sun to set. For then the girls would return to form a ring of giggling femininity, to pinch and prod and tease and torment her through the long night. Such was the penalty for setting a manni off.
The poor girl watched Barbette settle on her haunches, her eyes sending worried entreaties for freedom. But it was a waste of time; the older maid just smiled down at her, her face lined in copper from the castoff sunset glow which radiated from the high window.
To the girl's sorry expression, Barbette could only offer a deep-throated chuckle.
"Zo, leetle girl, are you ready for zees evening? Do you remember, last week when poor Betty lay in dose very same bonds, what you deed to her? Remember how you squatted over her, working her little titties while forcing eer to tongue you to ze climax? Eh? And little Sparrow? Remember how you 'ad her hung from her heels from ze pulley, and all those little weights you clipped on 'er? And ow you set her to swinging?" A smile at the widening eyes. A nod. "Oui, I zee zat you do remember your leetle tricks. And you can be sure zat your friends remember zem, too. I have no doubt that zey look forward to, 'ow you zay, 'payback'."
Jillian twisted in her bonds, humming desperate pleas into her gag. To these, Barbette just grinned like a cat with a fallen bird. She'd always took pleasure in these little overnight discipline sessions, especially since she was the only woman on Lady M___'s staff to have never experienced one. So well did she understand her manni charges that she'd never inadvertently allowed one to climax. Not while hanging in their wall-mounts, at least. Her bed was another story all together.
"Zo I leave you 'ere to while away the hours until zee girls come for you. And perhaps I shall look in on you, as well. I shall be sure to bring my leetle fezzer-dooster with me, no?"
Jillian warbled into her thick packing, shaking her head back and forth in furious denial. Everyone knew what it was like to experience Barbette's duster. In the gentler Gai-shifted world, her duster was likely the only thing coming close to true torture.
The older woman gave a shapely roped hip a friendly pat before rising. Then she left the poor girl to her fate. After all, she still had things to do.
She reentered the manor, moving down its long halls, nodding to the scurrying maids. The house was winding down towards evening and soon the guests would retire to their private amusements in their rooms. As was proper, it was time for her to check in with Lady M___ in the parlor, to see if there were any final orders for the day.
She slipped into the parlor unnoticed. On several tables, cards lay exposed, some arranged in cocky showmanship, others in a fan of annoyance. Clearly those games were done for the day. The high-bred women stood in groups, chatting over their glasses of wine.
Lady M___ stood at the head of the largest group in her full petticoats, her bosoms straining, her round face and crofted hair forming a near-parody of pride and breeding. In her exaggerated voice, she boomed out, "Explain It To Me Again, My Dear Baroness Manchester, What Supposed Advantages The Mannis Possessed?"
A woman of striking beauty looked up. Her dark hair seemed to sweep around her head like a tornado, a sweep over her left shoulder, a spill over the right. A single strand curled across her forehead. Her lips were full, her eyes deep, and her jaw line a strong as an ironclad's bow. Unlike the others, she wore a set of loose pants. And unlike the others, she was comfortable to stand before Lady M___'s bombastity.
"I simply said, my Ladyship, then the men before Gai-Shift were quite comfortable in their dominance over the Earth. They had the brawn, the money and the organization. Women were kept pregnant and unemployed. From birth-strings to purse-strings, we were enslaved, far more then the mannis of our time."
"And You Think That Was A Good Thing?"
"It was a heady thing," Baroness Manchester replied. "Men were fully equipped to enjoy their world. Their sex was aggressive while ours was passive. Their foreplay was simple rape while ours was entrapment, either by words, romance, or very occasionally, ropes. What could be better than having a sexual organ that would swell into a battering ram whenever needed? Think of the power of having such a rock-hard club. Far better than our moist lips and perky nipples."
"Piffle-Pof," sputtered her Ladyship. "And What Do You Think, Lady Goldwaith?"
The cute, curvy scientist, so famous for her recent expedition to Ecuador, blinked her blue eyes at being called upon. She'd been frowning over the remains of her final losing hand of cards in a night of bad luck. Her golden locks shimmered in the gaslights as she shrugged.
"That's not for me to say, my Ladyship," she tittered. "I've never been a manni, so I have never experienced the act of sex from their perspective."
Lady M___ turned back to the Baroness. "And Neither, I Suspect, Have You."
"You think not?" Manchester replied. A moment later, there came the faintest hiss of a tiny pump. The women in the room gasped in amazement, starring at the front of the Baronesses' breaches. Even Barbette gasped in giddy amazement.
"Oh, now that is clever," chirped Petunia Goldwaith.
06.07.09
story continues in Gai-Shift - Reversal 2: Barbette
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