The Slave - Day 5

This is odd. In some ways it parallels Jenny’s “Why we do it”, but it’s been rattling around in my head for weeks. Honest Jenny, it really has. It’s an excerpt from something that will, eventually, be a lot larger but this seemed as good a time as any to give it an airing. 
 

THE SLAVE
(DAY FIVE)
 

FRIDAY JULY 19th – 7.00 AM.
 

Bill Rodgers and Sheila Wilson walked up the enormous curved sweep of the open, chrome and glass ballustraded, Art Deco stairs together. He dressed in black cords and a black short-sleeved shirt. She in a white tunic like shift that came to about half way above the knee and was belted at the waist with a gold cord, there was gold embroidery at the neck, the short sleeves and the hem. She wore gold sandals with toe posts and her make up was dramatic; she had used dark shadow on her eyelids, and a very pale foundation. Her lips were gold and her eyebrows were neatly plucked and very black. She had drawn a black line from the corner of each eye, extending about half way to each ear, to give her face an Ancient Egyptian look. Her finger and toenails were the same colour as her lip-gloss, metallic gold.

They stopped on the first floor and stood in front of the huge window that ran from ground to roof and looked out onto the bright, sunny, flower filled gardens outside. He took her hand and kissed her lightly on the lips.

“You look nice” He said, “Strange, but nice.” 

Sheila touched the hem of the shift.

“And where did this come from?” She asked, performing a small twirl.

He kissed her again.

“Theatrical costumiers, Berman and Nathan’s, I think. Sally picked it up with the rest in Soho last night.”

“That’s probably not all she picked up in bloody Soho!” Said Sheila acidly, grinning as she said it. He kissed her on the nose. 

“Oi you, mind my makeup, it took ages,” But she didn’t pull away from him. He hugged her closer and kissed her once again. His eyes narrowed.

“Are you wearing anything under there?” He asked, as he explored her back with his hands.

“That’s for me to know and you to find out...buthter!” She said, showering him with spit and gripping an imaginary carrot. He didn’t bother to tell her that Daffy Duck didn’t eat carrots; they had been through it all before. He kissed her again. Despite the smile on his face, which he always seemed to have when they were together, he was concerned. Sheila knew only the very barest bones of the scene that was about to unfold before her. She knew it had an Egyptian theme, but she had no idea of what was going to happen to Sarah on her last official day of “slavery”.

“Sheila…are you sure you can do  this?” He asked quietly. Sheila looked at him for some time.

“Well I’ve gone along with everything else her warped imagination’s come up with so far haven’t I?” He nodded and held her face in his hands.

“You have, but this is different, it’s her finale, if you like, and it’s quite intense.” 

Sheila thought for a moment,

“Linda’s big production number. Does she sing and dance?” He slapped her playfully on the rump and she cuddled against him.” Where’s Sarah?” She asked kissing his cheek.

“She’s downstairs with her two “handmaidens”, they should be here quite soon.” His hands were now on her bottom. She pressed herself closer to him.

“How many times have I told you not to start something you can’t finish?” It seemed as if he could feel every contour of her body against him. "And where’s her Ladyship?” She whispered in his ear.

“She’s in there already with Sally,” Sheila raised her eyebrows. He answered her unspoken question, “ She got here about half an hour ago. She’s the High Priestess,” He could feel Sheila’s hand wandering toward the front of his trousers. She kissed his neck.

“And what am I exactly?”

 He shuddered as she slipped her tongue into his ear.

“You’re a handmaiden,” He said, a trifle breathlessly.

“A handmaiden!” She pulled away from him and straightened up, “What, like those two silly cows downstairs?”

“ Mmm,” He murmured, “I had a feeling you weren’t going to like it.” She looked at him with eyes like gimlets, but said nothing.

“Sheila,” He began, as reasonably as he could. But Sheila was looking down at her feet, scuffing one sandal against the carpet. She turned her face up towards him.

“All right,” She said softly, “I’ve gone along with everything else, so I might as well go along with this…it’s not going to kill me.” She paused, and smiled at him. She was slightly nervous and unsure. Some of the things that had happened to Sarah in the last four days had shocked and, she had to admit to herself, excited her. Sarah, for her part, had taken it all in her stride. Even during the anal vibrator set piece there had been a smile on her face, eventually. Slightly concerned by Bill’s expression she said weakly and jokingly, “It’s not is it?”

He laughed.

“No of course it’s not!” He looked at her thoughtfully. “But you might feel like it will for a while.” She put her head to one side and looked at him quizzically. Before she could say anything else they both heard footfalls on the stairs below them.

Chrissie and Rosie, dressed like Sheila in white embroidered shifts belted, at the waists, and gold sandals, their faces heavily made up, were leading Sarah, who wore a plain floor length white shift, up the stairs. Her hands were bound behind her with gold cord and she was barefoot. Her eyes were covered with white silk and so was her mouth.

They led her carefully and gently by the upper arms. They both looked unbelievably perky for that hour of the morning. Chrissies long blonde hair was tied in a ponytail that bobbed about behind her, Rosie’s short burgundy coloured hair was shiny and newly dyed. Sheila noticed that both girls were gagged with thick white leather straps that buckled behind their heads. Despite that both of them wore big smiles visible even behind the gags.

“I s’pose they did that themselves,” She whispered. 

Bill nodded and grinned.

“You know they love doing it to each other.”

Sheila looked up at him.

“And I s’pose I’m going to get the same,” She said, her brown eyes big and wide.

He looked at her earnestly. He was relieved she had agreed to take part because, although a third “hand maiden” wasn’t essential, both Linda and Sarah had wanted her to be present, but she if she baulked at being gagged, then there was nothing he could do.

“That’s what Linda said in her notes, she wants three SILENT handmaidens.”

Sheila looked at him with a grin,

“Well, I don’t suppose she expected ME to be a handmaiden at the time, did she?” Bill grinned at her self-insight. But he knew that Linda had ALWAYS wanted Sheila involved. They might be always arguing, they might appear to be at each other’s throats, but Sheila was Linda’s best friend and Linda only wanted people involved whom she knew and whom she could trust, Sally and even Bill himself, had expressed concern, at the regular “production meetings” they had held in Linda’s comfortable open plan flat, that Sheila, being Sheila, might not accept some of the things that she would see and experience. So far they had been wrong. 

The three girls had stopped at the top of the stairs and Rosie and Chrissie were watching them expectantly. Sheila turned round and leaned against him. She tilted her head backwards to look into his eyes.

“Go on then,” She sighed, “Do your worst!”

From his pocket he took a wide, white leather strap with two smaller straps at either end of it, one with a buckle attached. On the inside was a thick flattish piece of white rubber that looked similar to the end of a shoehorn. He showed it to Sheila,

“You’ll be able to breathe through your mouth but this will hold your tongue down so you can’t speak. The girls wore theirs for four hours the other night and they were fine.”

Sheila said nothing, but there was a lot of doubt on her face. He stroked her short brown hair and kissed her cheek.

“Ready?” He asked. Reluctant at first, she finally nodded and opened her mouth wide for him.

As he held the white gag in front of her open mouth he felt a little shiver of excitement run up his spine. Sheila pressed herself hard against him. He eased the attachment between her lips and held the strap against her mouth. He could feel his excitement building. His hands shook slightly as he held the gag in place. Sheila was pressing even further into him. He wanted to let go of the gag and do up the buckle, but something was stopping him.

 Sheila began to undulate her bottom against the front of his trousers. Gagging Sheila in the past had never caused him to have an erection, but he had one now. He couldn’t let go of the gag. Sheila was beginning to struggle and make little noises. She was still staring up at him. Their eyes locked and he knew then that she was as excited as he was and he suspected that neither of them really knew why.

Or perhaps they did.

 He had a vague feeling in the back of his mind that this was about power. Both his and hers. Sheila’s hands were free. She could stop him if she wanted to. The moment he saw her raise a hand to her mouth he would let go. But she didn’t raise her hands. In fact he could feel one moving caressingly between his legs.

Sheila was making soft low grunting noises and wriggling her body against him. He wanted to reach down with his free hand. He wanted to reach down and pull up her shift and…

He tore his eyes away from hers and saw Rosie and Chrissie staring at him with eyes that were even wider than usual. Coming to his senses he quickly removed his hand and buckled the gag firmly in place. He felt one of Sheila’s legs moving and he spun her round before she could kick him. He pulled her close to him again, kissed her on her gagged mouth, took her in his arms and said, “I’m sorry” very quietly.

She looked at him her eyes full of emotion and for a moment he thought that, for some reason, she was going to cry, but she recovered her composure, gave him a light kick on the shin with her sandaled foot and wrapped her arms around him. They held each other for a short time and then he looked at her questioningly.

“Ready?” She shrugged her shoulders and raised her arms slightly, which he took to mean that she was as ready as she would ever be. Rosie and Chrissie moved forward, still holding the uncomplaining and sightless Sarah by her arms, holding her head and high and trying, it seemed, to look around her, the way people without sight seem to do. “You walk in front and remember, if you don’t know what to do, just stay where you are, the girls know the script and they’ll guide you. Oh, and if you’re ordered to something… do it!” She looked at him defiantly. 

Sometimes he worried that he was becoming dominant, something which he devoutly did not want to happen. To him tying Sheila up was a game. A game they both enjoyed. When they were playing they were, in his eyes, like a couple of children. A couple of children let loose in a sweet shop doing whatever they wanted, but there were rules. There were things that Sheila did not want him to do and they meshed almost exactly with the things that he would not do to her, anal play being one and any form of physical pain another.

As someone who had suffered from blinding, debilitating and painful migraines since childhood, Sheila didn’t find pain to be at all stimulating. Strangely the migraines had disappeared quite soon after they had met, but she maintained, when they were alone together, and sometimes when they weren’t, that the pains in her head had been replaced by one long continuous pain in the arse. He didn’t have to be genius to work it out.

If they were alone, she would normally find herself being gagged for that remark, but it was because she wanted to be, because she was playfully goading him into it, not because he was imposing his will on hers. 

Whenever he found himself worrying about dominance, a few minutes with Sheila would soon bring him down to earth. What they were doing now was restoring the status quo. 

“Please?” He asked, “For Sarah?” Trying hard to stop a note of desperation creeping into his voice he looked at her intently. Sheila stared back at him, and then her eyes brightened and she gripped his hand for a second. As satisfied as he could be, he kissed her on the cheek and walked away from her and the girls. The strange procession followed him towards the door of the dining room.

Bill opened the door and stood to one side. When Sheila entered the room she stopped and stared in amazement.

The beautiful, circular Art Deco room had been stripped bare. It was sombre and silent. There was no light coming from the big, rounded, picture window and she assumed that the blinds must be drawn against the July sun. There was a sweet smelling white mist everywhere, a mist that made vision difficult. As she recovered and began to move forward an eerie kind of music began to fill the room. A continuous, low, electronic gonging sound. Her sandaled feet made flip flopping noises on the floor. Even the carpets were gone. She was walking on polished wood.

She became aware of something else. Despite the warmth outside it was decidedly chilly. Wearing only the light cotton shift she could feel Goosebumps forming on her arms and legs.

Dotted around the walls and about three feet from them at regular intervals, stood long wrought iron candleholders that each held three candles. There must have been at least fifty of them in all, all lit and burning brightly, throwing shadows onto the walls and the ceiling. The flames danced as if in a breeze, the room seemed to be getting colder.

Sheila now noticed that the walls of the dining room had changed. No longer white, no longer hung with framed prints, they now appeared to be made from blocks of sandstone with sandstone columns spaced out along their lengths.  The whole atmosphere was unreal and it took her several seconds to realise that what she was looking at were not real walls but boards of free standing scenery, painted to look like the inner walls of a temple. They reached from the floor, where they stood on wooden feet, all the way to the unusually high ceiling. 

At the far end, and lengthwise to it, stood a high ornate gilded table with figures of cats carved into the legs. It had no top, only canvas straps at regular intervals. Forward from the table was a golden chair with straps of golden leather attached to it. Like the table, the front legs had been fashioned into the shape of cats, the back legs and part of the backrest were formed by human figures with long eared cats heads.

Another long and ornate gilded table stretched just behind the chair and almost to the curving window used to be. On top of it was the bottom half of what could only be a large wooden sarcophagus. The top half stood upright to the left of the table on a frame. It looked exactly like the gilded and brightly covered lid of the sarcophagus of Tutankhamen, the boy king of Egypt. She remembered being taken to the exhibition at the British Museum on a school trip. She must have been about nine at the time, but she still remembered. 

Bill had taken up a position near to the gold chair; he motioned Sheila to keep walking until she was only a few feet away from him. She stopped and turned her head; she looked at him and made a noise that sounded like gasp. At the head end of the sarcophagus were two enormous gilded statues, each about seven feet high, one on either side. At the foot end stood one more. 

They were statues of a man. A man with the head of a jackal. Anubis, the son of Osiris, who guided souls to the underworld for judgement. Sheila could only assume that they, like everything else in the room, were props from the back lot of some film studio or other. She wondered how Linda had got hold of them, she wondered, Sheila being Sheila and having the kind of mind that would not simply accept things, what studio they had come from, Pinewood? Shepperton? Elstree? The BBC at Ealing even?

Chrissie and Rosie walked the still blindfolded Sarah towards the golden chair. When they reached it they helped her to kneel a few feet from it and then withdrew. They took up positions on either side of Sheila and clasped her hands tightly in theirs. She looked from one to the other and thought she detected slight smirks on both their faces. She took a deep breath and looked in the same direction as them, the place in the scenery, halfway down to the right, where the door to the kitchen had been.

As her vision focused she saw several blocks of sandstone begin to move. There was a hidden door in the scenery. When the door opened fully, a figure appeared, there was another figure behind it visible only in shadow. The first figure moved silently into the room, the second remained framed in the doorway.

Puzzled at first, Sheila recognised the short plump figure of Sally as she came towards her. She wore a long white shift that reached her ankles, belted at the waist and embroidered with gold like hers. She wore gold sandals with high heels and her dark hair was piled high on top of her head and held in place with a decorated gold headband. In her left hand she carried an incense burner, in her right a golden ankh about six feet long.

From his vantage point at the far end of the room Bill watched her move gracefully toward Sarah, her obviously free breasts wobbling slightly as she did so, but he didn’t concentrate on Sally, his eyes were moving all the time, going from one handmaiden to another, then to Sarah and then back again. Watching for any signs of distress. Watching for the three long blinks that would tell him that they wanted to leave, or, in Sarah’s case, listening for the three short grunts that would mean, effectively, that the whole scene was over.

None of the unblindfolded girls moved their eyes at all. Their gaze appeared to be transfixed on the figure in the doorway. Sally stopped and put down the incense burner. She stood behind Sarah and touched her lightly on the head, and then she knelt and whispered something in her ear. Sarah nodded but made no sound. Sally turned towards the doorway.

“The supplicant is ready Mighty One!" She said, the words sounding strange in her slightly husky Welsh accent. Bill shook his head in relief. Whenever they had practised that line Sally had dissolved into giggles, but now she said it with a straight face.  Sheila turned her head, her eyes boring into him with an unspoken question, he knew exactly what the question was, she had asked it every night that week.  He held her gaze for a short time and then turned his attention to the figure in the doorway. It began to move. It moved slowly and deliberately, placing one foot carefully in front of the other, back straight, head held high.

As it moved further into the room and the light from the candles began to illuminate it, it became obvious that the figure was Linda Hutton, former dominatrix, turned reluctant actress in television adverts, turned web mistress.  But Linda Hutton as she had never been seen before, or would probably ever be seen again for that matter.

If Sheila’s jaw had been able to drop, then it would have done. Where everyone else in the room, with the exception of Bill, was dressed in white, the minimal clothing that Linda wore was silver. Sparkling silver. 

Resting on the curve of her hips and several inches from her naval, in which sat a red jewel, was a silver lame thong that tied at the sides. Around her large, but not man-made breasts, was a silver lame halter, two small triangles that left them almost bare and that tied at the back and the neck. Around her shoulders and held in place by a silver chain with a jewelled clasp was a floor length silver cloak. There was a jewelled silver choker around her neck and silver amulets, also jewelled, on her wrists. There were two more jewelled silver bands around the muscles of her upper arms. Her hands were encased in silver elbow length gloves.

On her feet were open toed silver boots, laced at the front, which reached to just below her knees. They had five inch pencil thin heels. Her long waist length dark hair was piled high on the top of her head, like Sally’s. Two curved wisps had been allowed to fall on either side of her face, just in front of her ears. A tapering silver headpiece sat on her head, holding her hair in place. Her skin glistened strangely in the flickering candlelight and for the first time Sheila realised why. Linda was dressed in silver but every visible inch of her skin, from forehead to toes, was painted gold. 

Her arms and hands were gold, her legs and feet were gold, her breasts were gold and her face was gold. Gold and shiny, sparkling in the light. Her eyebrows appeared to be painted on in black. She had the same black lines running from the corners of her eyes that the others had, but where their lips and their fingers and toenails were gold, Linda’s were red, a bright polished crimson.

She looked strangely like Nefertiti, the wife of Ahkenaten, King Amenhotep IV of Egypt. Or perhaps not so strangely because Bill and Linda had spent a lot of time poring through reference books and annoying various search engines on the Internet for information on ancient Egypt, some of which they had used, some of which they had discarded completely and some of which they had modified with their own ideas.

Linda was gold. Not as entirely gold as it first appeared because the cloak covered the skin that had been left uncoloured with body paint to allow it to breathe. But when she stood between the kneeling Sarah and the golden chair, her hands by her sides, her head high, she could have been a tall, perfectly moulded, golden statue.

 As much a statue as the two cat headed figures on the chair or the three representations of Anubis who were only a few inches shorter than her, because Linda, who was six feet two in her bare feet, was raised to a towering six feet seven by the high heels of the strange silver boots that she wore.

Eventually Linda lowered herself into the golden chair, the lower legs of which were lost in the swirling mist that now seemed to be rising from the very floor itself. Bill felt a shiver of cold run down his spine. To all intents and purposes he could have been transported back thousands of years to some arcane and sinister ritual in an Egyptian temple.

Deep down he knew that no Egyptian temple would have a state of the art smoke machine instead of braziers, or half a dozen loudspeakers playing synthesized music, or, for that matter, four small, concealed, high resolution video cameras capturing every sound and movement. Nor, he was very sure, would it have had air conditioning. He shivered again. It was too cold. The air conditioning had either gone wrong or had been set too high, but the thermostat was at the opposite end of the room and, right now, he didn’t want to disturb the scene in any way.

Linda leaned forward and touched Sarah’s face, briefly, with her right hand. Still standing behind her Sally unknotted the silk blindfold, took it away from her face, and whispered to her to raise her head. When she did she found herself staring at the golden face of her friend, her partner and, only relatively recently, her lover.

Sarah did not move or make a sound; she stared silently into Linda’s dark brown eyes. If she was surprised or shocked she didn’t show it. She just stared at Linda unblinkingly and Linda held her gaze.

It went on for a long time, neither of them moving, Sarah looking up at Linda in apparent wonder and Linda, with just the slightest of smiles on her face, looking down on Sarah in a manner that was almost reverential.

Eventually Linda leaned forward and downward and kissed Sarah gently on her gagged mouth, leaving the faintest trace of red lipstick on the white silk.

“Hello, Little One,” She said quietly, “Are you prepared to make your sacrifice?”

Bill noticed movement amongst the three handmaidens. Sheila’s head had shot round to the right at the mention of the word “sacrifice” and she was staring at him with questioning eyes. He did his best to look reassuring and tried to indicate that she should just watch what was about to happen. Sally untied the white silk gag and removed a thick piece of wadded white silk from Sarah’s mouth.

Moving her jaw a little and still staring up at Linda, Sarah said simply,

“Yes Mistress.” And then, without moving, her voice full of emotion, she said “ I love you Mistress,” And a small tear rolled down her left cheek. Linda watched her with a blank expression and then she leaned forward once more and kissed Sarah on the lips. When she straightened up Bill could see her lips moving. No sound came out, but even from a distance it was obvious that she had mouthed, “I love you too.” It was the first time that week that the real Linda had emerged from the character into which she had so deeply immersed herself. The two women continued to stare at each other.

For a while nothing happened, Bill, the three handmaidens and Sally all watching the silent inter action between Linda and Sarah. Watching their facial expressions and their body language. It was obvious that Sarah was overcome by the effort, the time and the trouble that Linda had gone to for her final scene. Bill wondered, for a time, whether she would feel the same when she knew what was going to happen to her, but then he thought about the  “wish list”, that she had put together soon after she had first told Linda that she wanted to be her slave for a week.

He had gone through it carefully with her one Monday evening when Linda, Sally and Sheila, with Chrissie and Rosie in cheerful tow, went clubbing in the West End, ostensibly because Linda wanted a break. The real reason was that Bill, as a detached third party, could go through each “wish” with her and point out the drawbacks and pitfalls. All of Sarah’s wishes that had not so far been complied with, and that she had refused to alter in any way, were encapsulated in this last scene.  There was one “wish”, however, that still bothered him a great deal.

Suddenly Linda stood up and clapped her hands. She looked around the room, her eyes locking with Bill’s for an instant. In that split second he thought he detected a slight wink, then, looking towards the handmaidens she said,

“Prepare her!” In a loud voice. 

© Wallace 2002.All rights reserved.  The writer asserts the right to be recognised as the author of this piece. This is a work of fiction and bears no resemblance to any persons living or dead or to any events or places either real or imaginary.

26.08.02