The Visitor

The Visitor
by Wallace
THE VISITOR by Wallace

How did that old TV series start?

A deserted diner on a lonely road…

Something like that wasn’t it? 

“The Invaders.”  

People from another planet who arrive on this one to take it over.

 Don’t they always?
 
 

Well the A23 wasn’t exactly lonely that night but it wasn’t teeming with life either and it wasn’t a diner. I don’t think there are too many of them in East Sussex; in fact it was another vehicle. What appeared to be a deserted vehicle …I’m getting ahead of myself I suppose.

It was an antiques fraud in Brighton that tied in with some bigger stuff in London that set this all off. I’m on light duties because I got shot six months ago after getting caught up in a stupid domestic that involved a petty drug dealer and his missus. We didn’t know that at the time when they wanted some twat from CID to stick his head round the door and warn Michael John Rawlins that if he did it again the DVU would nick him.

Six months on and they still haven’t nicked him because he did a runner that night and no one has seen him since. But Tracey Rogers, common law wife of M.J. Rawlins has connections. She wasn’t happy about having her jaw broken for the second time and neither were her two brothers who specialise in removing people from the face of the earth if they upset them and are also reported to grease a palm or two in certain high profile sections of the Metropolitan Police Force. 

Once upon a time it was motorway pillars.  I’m not sure that any self respecting motorway pillar would want Michael John Rawlins in it but I’m pretty sure that he’s no longer alive to inhabit anything else.

 I’m the twat from CID, who just happened to be on duty with nothing to do that night.  Rawlins disappearing like that meant that I was left dangling in mid air with a bullet hole in my shoulder and a lot of angst. 

Lack of closure the counsellor called it.

Counsellor. A psychiatrist in a human form. Seeing if I was capable of taking on The Job again. Which, as far as I was concerned, I was. She seemed to think so too, but light duties only and she wanted me to take an anger management course.  I swallowed that particular pill and got on with my life as best I could.

I’ve always liked Brighton and my Guv’nor seemed to think it would do me good. Sea air and all that. So I started out latish on Sunday night with the intention of booking in to a hotel courtesy of the Met and making an early start on Monday morning. Well that was the intention.

In Brighton they call them sea frets. It’s like a mist, although mist doesn’t describe it even half way. It’s so thick that it’s nearly solid and it comes up with little or no warning. I remember seeing one rolling through the streets when I was little. It stopped everything. The traffic just snarled up. People slowed right down. It’s disorientating, like being in a thick fog, which is basically what it is.

I was on the road that runs along the edge of the Downs and comes out at Preston Park, when it rolled in. Quite literally rolled in. It’s not a big road or a wide road and it’s not particularly well lit so it was more by luck than judgement that I saw the car at all.

A big car. A dark blue Lexus with the nearside door open and the engine running. On the grass verge beside the road. It looked as if it had skidded.   The interior light was the only thing that gave it away because the sidelights and headlights were all off. 

When you’ve had something happen to you like I did, you blame yourself for being stupid and not paying more attention to what’s going on around you, all coppers will tell you the same thing, it’s not just me. So I was wary. I was very wary, but being a copper I couldn’t just drive past. Perhaps I should have done.

I eased over onto the grass verge and got out. It’s eerie being in the middle of a sea fret. It blankets out sound. It changes your perspective. There are shadows where there shouldn’t be shadows. You see cars, or at least you’re aware of cars, passing very slowly because the drivers have slowed down, but you don’t hear them. Your footsteps echo and it’s damp. Very damp and sticky.

 I took the torch that I carry in the glove box and eased my way out, being careful not to use my shoulder more than was necessary and feeling the twinges anyway. “Arthritis,” the consultant had said. “Even if it heals okay, which given time it should, you’ll probably get a touch of arthritis in it.” And then he looked at me and grinned to the top of his bow tie and said, “Cheer up! At least you’ll know when it’s going to rain!” 

I knew now. It was the middle of August and it had been hot, muggy and airless for days. There were storms in the channel and rain was predicted but it hadn’t arrived. The damp affects my shoulder quite badly and it was hurting a lot, and all my instincts were telling me to be careful, very, very careful as I walked towards the Lexus holding the torch in front of me but prepared to use it to defend myself if necessary. 

It was like I was in a world entirely my own. A grey world. A quiet world. A very eerie world. The car in front of me like a haven of light in what would otherwise be almost complete darkness. It was the first time I’d noticed it, probably because I’d been in the car, but all the lights in the immediate vicinity were out. The road was on my right and there was a wood to my left that ran all the way to the top of the Downs. Everything was indistinct. The trees were just rough shapes. The noises that seemed to be all around me were reduced to vague sounds. Rustling sounds. Digging sounds. Fighting sounds. Sounds you can’t even begin to describe. I’ve lived in London all my life; even the noise of an owl makes me jump. 

The car seemed fine when I got to it. I shined the torch all around and looked inside and checked the bodywork but there was no obvious reason why this car should have come off the road. The open door suggested it was abandoned and abandoned in a hurry because the motor was still running. I walked around it a couple of times so wrapped up in myself that all the background noises disappeared. 

Something moved off to my left. It was just in my peripheral vision. A shape. I couldn’t make out any more than that. A dark shape. Wildly out of proportion, moving in time with me, in parallel with me. No recognisable features. Elongated limbs. Huge head.
 A grotesque parody of a person. I started and fell against the side of the car. “Police Officer”, I shouted out, “Identify yourself!” But the thing didn’t answer. It didn’t answer because it was me. Or rather it was my shadow projected onto the mist by the headlamps of a passing vehicle. 

Finally after all these years, a punch-up or two, a stabbing and a shooting, I was scared of my own bloody shadow.

My pulse rate had jumped and I was leaning against the car when I first heard the noise. Scuffing. Like something rubbing against something else and maybe another noise too. I called out again and then I listened. More scuffing and a muffled sort of sound. It was coming from behind me. I turned. No one there. Moved a pace or two back and then another couple. The sounds were more distinct. Closer. They seemed to be coming from the boot…

People leave all sorts of things in car boots. Animals, bombs, dead bodies. My pulse was up again and I’d come out in a sweat. The lock was open, I pushed at it and the lid swung smoothly upward. I couldn’t help thinking how ludicrously unprotected I was.

She was pale in the light from the torch. The noises had been her bare feet scuffing against the lining of the boot. She wasn’t wearing any clothes at all, she was completely naked and shaven. Yes shaven. Everywhere. Not just her armpits, not just her pubic hair, but her head as well. Someone had shaved her head.

Someone had tied her up and shaved her head. Well, that was how I read the situation, because your mind is working all the time, taking in information, making assessments. Damage assessments. Risk assessments. Is she in danger? Am I in danger? Is there anyone else around? What do I need to do next? 

What I needed to do there and then was to get her out of the boot and to take the gag that was stuffed into her mouth out and find out what had happened to her. 

It looked like a kidnapping to me. A kidnapping that had gone wrong. 

She was chained up. Not tied up. Chains would be quicker and easier. If you were in a hurry and you wanted to immobilise someone quickly and effectively without drugs then you would use chains.

She was chained at the wrists, her hands behind her back, her wrists fitted with wide leather cuffs that buckled in place, were secured by padlocks and had a three-inch chain between them. Her ankles had been treated in the same way and there were similar cuffs just above her elbows keeping her arms together. Just to make sure she couldn’t get up there was another pair of cuffs just below her knees. 

Her arms were locked behind her back and her legs were joined together. Just to make sure she was immobile there was a thick collar around her neck that prevented her from moving her head much, if at all. And she was naked.

She was about five foot eight, I suppose, and she had a pleasant face, slightly rounded. Laugh lines round her eyes. I could see her eyes and they were closed. I couldn’t see her lips because they were covered by layer after layer of grey gaffer tape that had been wound round and round the lower part of her face to stop her from talking or crying out. It had worked. There was a bulge in her cheeks that suggested that her mouth had been stuffed with something.

She was young. Well, younger than me. Thirtyish? You tend to make judgements when you’re a copper, value judgements a psychiatrist would call them and you HAVE to make them because sometimes your life might depend on it. I knew the bloke who shot me was a little shit and I was wary of him, I just didn’t expect him to have a gun under the cushion and under the dog in his favourite armchair that’s all.

This woman, and I use the word woman advisedly, looked as if she had been around a bit, seen a few things. I don’t mean that she was a brass or any form of prostitute whatsoever. I just mean that she looked, for want of a better word “experienced”.

She was a little over average weight and her breasts had just a slight sag and her tummy wasn’t as flat as it might be, but she looked none the worse for that. She looked like a REAL woman rather than some Barbie doll off the catwalk, or some plasticized Hollywoodette. 

Real in most respects I suppose.

 She was lying on her side and her eyes were closed.

 Her heavily made up eyes.

That struck me as unusual somehow. There was much more make up on them than a person would normally use. People who shave their heads tend to use extra make up to emphasise their eyes and to detract from the stark baldness of their scalp. Perhaps she was already shaved before she was abducted. Perhaps her kidnappers had stripped her, chained her, and THEN shaved her and made her up.  A shiver ran down my spine for some reason. Only another woman would have the wherewithal to do that surely?

I leant forward and touched her shoulders and her eyes flicked open. I don’t know what I had been expecting but whatever it was it wasn’t what I saw. Big soft brown eyes looking at me in a way that seemed to melt me from the inside out. Soft warm trusting, but somehow wanting, brown eyes. She didn’t try to scream, she didn’t jump or start and she didn’t try to struggle. She just looked at me.

I don’t really know what I saw in those eyes. But it was hard to drag myself away from them and I had to. I helped her to sit up and propped her against the rubberised edge of the boot. It was awkward but I managed it and then I began to unpick the tape from around her mouth until the end came away and I was able to unwind it slowly from her face. Slowly and carefully. But not too slowly because I needed to find out what was going on.

 I could have taken her back to my car but it wouldn’t have made much difference. The best course of action seemed to be to talk to her there and then and decide what to do next after that.

It seemed to take forever. All the time I was watching her and looking over my shoulder at the same time and she was just looking at me. Not staring. Just looking. Almost inquisitively as if she was wondering what I was going to do next, but she didn’t seem frightened, quite the opposite. Despite the fact that she was naked she seemed to radiate a warmth that was almost tangible. And she just kept looking at me.

Finally the last layer of tape came away. Her mouth was held open by a thick wad of yellow cloth. Clean cloth. It was a duster. A bright yellow duster. I couldn’t help what I did next. I just did it automatically. I stroked her cheek and I pulled her against me for a second and there was some sort of exchange of emotions between us as we touched. There really was.

 She was still looking at me when I let go and took hold of the duster with one hand and held the back of her head steady with the other. The soft smooth back of her head, and I pulled and it slipped out of her mouth with relative ease.

The duster was soaked. Soaked with her saliva. She moved her jaws a couple of times to ease the stiffness and pulled a face. I was waiting for her to gush. I was waiting for her to say “Thank you”, or burst into tears or something but she didn’t. She just kept on looking at me and if anything those eyes seemed to get bigger. The pupils by now like huge black footballs.

Finally she did speak but it wasn’t what I was expecting. It wasn’t what I was expecting at all. She didn’t take her eyes off me and without any warning, her gaze absolutely steady; she said just two words, clearly, quietly and unambiguously. Just two words.

“Fuck me!” She said.  Looking at me in a way that could only suggest that she meant it.
 

                                          ____________________________
 

By the time we reached the B road that runs across the downs it was raining hard. Very hard. The wipers were dumping water off to the sides of the windscreen as fast as they could but visibility was virtually nil and there was thunder rumbling in the distance.

She was sitting in the passenger seat with her head resting against my shoulder. I didn’t have anything in the car that would cut the chains so I had made her as comfortable as I could and strapped the seatbelt around her. I had a blanket on the back seat that the dog normally sits on and I had used it to cover her.

We hadn’t exactly had a long conversation. She seemed exhausted somehow although her speech didn’t seem slurred. She came straight out with it. 

“Fuck me!” To a perfect stranger. I could have been anyone. I could have been carrying anything.

 The ultimate Zipless Fuck.

 Many years ago I read “Fear of Flying” by Erica Jong, yes coppers DO read, well some of them do. It seems dated now, but that was what it reminded me of, Erica Jong never did it tied up of course; at least I don’t THINK she did, but it reminded me of her all the same.

The ultimate thrill. The ultimate risk. 

She’d just looked at me after that. Her eyes melting slowly into my soul and I had leaned in and kissed her and she had responded. Open mouthed and warm. Her words had been more like a request than a command. There didn’t seem to be any desperation behind them. Just a matter of fact request. With a promise there somewhere of warmth and tenderness. She seemed to want more than just a straightforward poke. She seemed to want and emanate love. Whatever that might be.

 We eventually broke from the kiss, I broke. I had to. Getting involved with the victim of a crime before I’d even found out exactly what the crime was. Kissing a naked woman I’d found lying bound and gagged in the boot of a car. Makes you shiver just to think about it. I started to question her, first thing that came into my head, as she sat propped up in the boot, me easing myself onto the edge and feeling the suspension dip significantly

“What happened to you?”
“I, er, I don’t know.”
“What’s your name?”
“Er, Stella.”
“Stella? That’s unusual. The only Stella’s I know are McCartney and Artois!” I was trying to make a joke. Trying to lighten things up a little. Makes for better rapport between yourself and the subject, according to all the textbooks, but I think it was lost on her. I tried again.

“Stella who did this to you?” 
She shook her head. Her eyes were far away from me and her voice was low and almost raspy. She shook her head sadly, dolefully.
“I don’t know.” 

Temporary amnesia. It happens after a shock. Whatever had happened to Stella could have been so traumatic that her mind had just blanked it out. If her head had been forcibly shaved that would have been enough. The abduction was enough. Being tied up was enough. Being thrown naked and tied up into a car boot was enough. I could see that I wasn’t going to get very far right now.

“Stella, I think I need to get you to a hospital. I need a doctor to take a look at you. I’m a police officer. Detective Inspector Jack Bryant…” It moves people in different ways. Some express shock when you announce yourself as Old Bill for the first time, some just look you up and down as if to say they’re not surprised. As if they could smell you all along, but Stella, well Stella didn’t react at all. There was a look almost of recognition in her eyes as if she’d known me for years and was just renewing old acquaintances. She shook her head but didn’t reply.

“Stella, Sussex General isn’t far from here, it’s just down the road in Whitehawk…” But she was adamant. She shook her head again.

“Take me home!”
“Where’s home?”

Home was apparently on the Downs somewhere.

The Downs.

 Only in England would you come across somewhere hundreds of feet above sea level called “The Downs”. In fact they’re chalk hills that cover most of East and West Sussex. They’re not quite Dartmoor or the Yorkshire Moors, but they’re beautiful in summer and fairly treacherous in the winter, in fact they were quite treacherous now. 

Stella hadn’t wanted or didn’t seem able to talk and I’d hoped that being in familiar surroundings might help. I’d established that she lived alone and that for the time being she didn’t want to take things any further, so I decided that the best thing to do right then was to take her home.

I had lifted her bodily out of the boot of the Lexus and carried her to my car. It was starting to rain. Big warm droplets of summer rain. The whole thing reminded me of that scene from the bodyguard where Kevin Costner carries Whitney Houston, only I’m no Kevin Costner and Whitney Houston wasn’t naked, bald and tied up. 

I’d wrapped the blanket around her and strapped her in and then I’d gone back to the Lexus, closed the boot, taken the keys out of the ignition and locked it. The minute I’d got back to the Rover and settled myself she had leaned her head on my shoulder and closed her eyes. She told me roughly where she lived and then she seemed to go into a sort of a doze, leaving me to my own devices.

I had three CDs to choose from; The Best of Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple In Rock, which is always in the car, and a classical compilation. I didn’t think “Child In Time” or “Whole Lotta Love” was quite what she needed right now, but she seemed to appreciate Barber’s Adagio for Strings and there was a little smile on her face as I did a fairly hazardous U turn in the murk and headed for the road that would take us onto the Downs. 
 

                                     ***********************************
 

Home was a bungalow, she had called it a cottage, but it was too modern to be a proper cottage. It stood totally alone and surrounded by just a few trees somewhere near the top of the Downs. During the day it would have been beautiful and would have merited much more than a second glance, but right now, with a naked woman in my arms and the rain lancing down out of the skies and drumming on the roof of the car, I didn’t even have time for a proper first glance let alone a second.

The door was shut, as you would expect it to be. I’d hesitated as I got to the end of the little path because it was quite obvious that she didn’t have any keys on her. My shoulder was beginning to hurt badly from her weight. The garden in the front of the house was full of flowers and bordered by tall trees, but all I cared about right then was getting her out of the rain, into the house and out of my arms.

She was lolling against me in the pouring rain, she had only spoken once more since we got in the car and that was to tell me that we were nearly there. I wasn’t going to mess around. I just hoped that this really was her place. I couldn’t kick the door in with her in my arms so I began to ease myself forward to lower her onto the path and as I did so there was a flash that blinded me for several seconds and made me start at the same time. I pulled Stella closer to me again. A few seconds later there was the loudest crack of thunder I had ever heard and the rain came even faster, soaking us both.

If not directly above us the storm was very close now. Holding her close to me as if my arms could protect her from the rain I noticed movement in front of me. The door. The front door to Stella’s “cottage” was open. Just a fraction. Just enough to be obvious. There was another flash followed by an even louder crack of thunder. I moved forward as quickly as I could, raised my foot and kicked at the door and almost fell inside just as the thunder and lightning crashed and flashed again.

                                          _________________________________
 

It was dark in the room that we entered. There was no hallway, just a large modern front room with false oak beams. Leather furniture, glass topped tables, blinds, everything in pastel colours. The furniture peach, the carpets and the blinds off white. How could I see all this? Well, that was bothering me too, because the moment we crossed the threshold the lights came on. I was startled at first because I was cold and wet and my shoulder was giving me merry hell but later it seemed to make some kind of sense.

There was, I assumed, a movement sensor in the room, like the ones they have outside buildings and in car parks and other dark places that automatically switched on the lights when it “saw” us. That was what I assumed at the time. What does Clarice Starling’s boss say to her in “Silence of the Lambs”?
 “When you assume you make an ass of you and me!” Well there was only one of us to make an ass of but I certainly did it in style!

We were both wet. I eased her, sitting upright, on to the peach coloured soft leather couch and took the blanket off her because it was soaked through. She looked even more exhausted than before and collapsed backward against the generous cushions even though it meant falling against her tightly bound elbows. If it hurt her in any way she didn’t show it, she just looked at me for a few seconds and smiled and then she closed her eyes.

The storm was still going on outside and each crack of thunder and each flash of lightning made me jump. I was jumpy enough as it was, being in someone else’s house with a naked and bound woman who I had only met an hour previously. My shoulder hurt and I was wet through. I decided to look for towels first and then find a sharp knife to cut through the leather cuffs. 

Stella appeared to be more in a sort of a trance than a doze. Much the same sort of thing that she had been in in the car, yet the moment I had asked her something she had answered, even if it was only with a nod or a shake of the head. It was like she was in some form of deep meditation.
“Stella, where’s the bathroom? I want to find some towels.” Her eyes opened and she nodded her head to the left. I followed her gaze. There was a door. A door that presumably led to the bathroom. 

“I won’t be long. Will you be okay?” She nodded again and her head seemed to sink further back into the peach cushions. I made my way to the door and pulled it open.
 

I found myself in a small hallway with several doors leading off it. It was dark at first and then, just like before, the lights came on. All the doors were painted in different pastel shades, light blue, lemon, cucumber, lavender. At the end of the hall was a large white-framed conservatory with a number of rattan chairs in it, a sun lounger and a lot of large potted plants. The storm was much much louder out here and the lightning infinitely more vivid. I could hear the rain literally drumming against what I assumed to be the glass roof.

All the doors were closed and there seemed to be little point in going back to Stella and asking so I took potluck. I opened the first door that I came to on the left and walked in. The lights came on almost instantaneously but if it was a bathroom I was hoping to see I was sorely disappointed.
 

                         ______________________________________
 

I must have spent several minutes taking it all in. Just staring at the rose coloured walls and the black oak beams and the equipment. All the equipment made from highly polished teak with smoothly rounded edges. And the accessories. There were plenty of accessories. All arranged round around the walls in neat rows. The lighting came from halogen lamps set in the ceiling. It looked almost friendly and inviting, the colour of the walls did that I guess, but this was no bathroom. Cleaning was the last thing you would do in here. Unless it was a cleaning of the soul, because what I was looking at was an ultra modern, extremely high tech and above the ground dungeon.

You didn’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to work it out. There was a pillory. There was a Saint Andrews cross. There were chains hanging through the false ceiling. There was a rack. A modern, polished, state of the art rack, so well made it could have been a piece of furniture. Where the victim would lie it was thickly padded, almost like a black leather bed with manacles and fetters attached. And then there were the whips

Leather whips, deerskin whips, horsehair whips, thick whips, thin whips, floggers and paddles. All arranged neatly in the wall racks. I’ve raided a few massage parlours in my time and I’ve seen quite a few mini and not so mini dungeons, one was at the back of a barbers shop, but I’d never seen anything like this.

The wall to my left was not a wall as such but one huge mirror, presumably to satisfy the voyeur in whoever used this place. As I stood there dumbstruck there was one enormous crash of thunder and the lights flickered and came back and flickered again and came back at about half power. There was another crash and another. I couldn’t see the lightning but I guessed that the storm was directly above us now. The lights seemed to be trying to get brighter but couldn’t, and there was a buzzing noise coming from the fittings. I was concerned that they would burn out when I felt rather than saw a movement behind me.
 

 There was a rack of whips to my right and with the instinct to protect myself very strong within me at that moment, I reached forward with my right hand and grabbed the first thing I could. A long rubber multi tailed whip with a carved mahogany handle. I whirled round with the intention of hitting whoever it was full in the face and asking questions afterward and stopped short giving my bad shoulder a nasty wrench in the process, because standing in the doorway naked and completely free of any bondage, apart from the stiff neck collar, was Stella.
 
 
 

                                   ___________________________________
 
 

She was leaning against the doorjamb, rather than standing, but she was free, completely free and she looked even more exhausted than before. Her eyes were half closed and in the dim light I couldn’t tell if she was looking at me or not.

“Stella! What the…?” I didn’t get any further because she eased herself off the doorframe and came towards me. Staggered wouldn’t be the right word but she was certainly unsteady on her feet. When she was close enough to touch me she stopped. She stopped and opened her eyes a little. There was recognition there, there was… friendship I suppose, familiarity maybe, but familiarity can breed contempt. The pupils were still huge but they seemed a little bloodshot now. Above us the storm continued unabated, sometimes it seemed that the crashes of thunder were actually coming from the conservatory down the hall.

She looked even paler now. Standing in front of me, eyes fully open, hands by her sides, completely naked, she looked uncertain and yet she seemed more confident now, being naked in front of a stranger didn’t seem to bother her in the slightest.

Still looking at me she reached forward to touch the tails of the whip. She raised her arm bringing them with it and touched them to her cheek, lovingly and caressingly, and then she dropped them and moved close against me. Instinctively I put my arms around her and pressed her cheek to mine. I could feel her warm breath on my face and then her lips against my ear. When she spoke she was breathless, almost wheezy.

“”Fuck me!” She said. “Beat me and fuck me!”
 

There was a loud bang. Thunder again and this time the lights went out completely. The room was silent apart from the fairly distant sound of the rain drumming against the conservatory roof. I could sense that she was no longer close to me but I couldn’t see where she was. She had closed the door before approaching me and now there was no light in the room at all.

Something flared. Flared and then guttered slightly like a candle being lit. Then another and then another. They WERE candles. The electricity appeared to have died but light was being restored slowly as one after another the candle flames sparked into life. Fitted to the walls, even the mirrored one, were glass candleholders. I stared in disbelief. I couldn’t help it.

Everything seemed normal at first, if a naked shaven woman lighting candles can be called normal but then I realised what she was lighting the candles with.

Nothing.

Quite simply nothing. She was moving from candle to candle, staring down at it for a second and moving on and as she did so, so each one flickered into uncertain life.
 

I didn’t speak, I just watched fascinated, it wasn’t a trick, it couldn’t have been a trick. Why bother? She just continued steadily or unsteadily around the room until every candle, and there must have been twenty or so in all, was lit and then she turned to look at me and began to move forward. She stopped when she reached the middle of the room and raised her head until she was looking at the ceiling and then she raised her arms as well.

She raised them until they were sticking straight out from her body. The candles flickered and the flames began to dance as if a breeze had blown through the room. She was standing directly beneath the chains that hung there and they began to move too.

Slowly at first, they began to swing. And the longer that they swung so the more animated they became until they were rocking back and forth just above her head.

The candle flames were nearly out and it could have been a trick of the light but the chains and the leather straps that hung from them seemed to be getting closer and closer to her wrists. 

There was another crack of thunder from the storm that seemed to be raging above us forever and then the flames died and the room went dark again. Dark and still. I don’t know what happened next in the darkness. In the darkness of that strange room. But when the thunder crashed again it seemed to shock the candle flames back into life and when the room was sufficiently bright for me to see again Stella stood exactly where she had been before but her head was lowered now. Her head was lowered but her arms were still outstretched because now they were securely fastened to the leather cuffs that hung from the shiny steel chains that were embedded in the ceiling.

Accompanied only by the steady beating of the rain on the roof above me I approached Stella with caution. She was securely chained. The cuffs held in place by small padlocks as before and she appeared, once more, to be in some kind of trance.

I touched her lightly on the shoulder and her eyes flew open. Different eyes, not the kindly, slightly confused eyes of before, but wanting eyes, crazed eyes, desperate eyes, eyes that bore into mine until I wanted to look away but I wouldn’t, or I couldn’t, I’m not sure which.

Now she was staring, staring straight at me. Staring into my soul and I’m not sure that she liked what she found. 

Her voice was husky and rasping when she finally spoke, the whites of her eyes visible above her lower eyelids, her eyes not leaving mine for an instant. It wasn’t just her eyes that had changed. It was her whole face. The benign slightly bewildered expression had gone. It had been replaced by something totally different. Malevolent. Sneering. Hateful. I don’t know what the word really means although I’ve come across a few murderers in my time, but now it was as if I was looking into the face of pure evil.

“Hit me you bastard. Hit me with that fucking whip! Hit me as hard as you want, every other fucker does! Hit me and then FUCK me! Fuck me so hard that it hurts. Put that fucking cock of yours to use for once! Fuck me so hard. Go on you bastard! Show me you’ve got it in you! Or are you going to run away from me like you did from that little bastard when you saw he had a gun?” I stood there dumbstruck. Her face had changed so much. Her lips were turned upward in a sneer; there was contempt in her voice and in her eyes.

“You were frightened!” She said as if peering into my mind and reading my thoughts. “You were frightened of some little cunt with a gun!” Anger was rising from the pit of my stomach “Some two bob piece of lowlife shite and you were frightened of him!” Her voice took on a singsong tone. “Did you shit yourself when you saw the gun? Or did you piss yourself instead? Did you plead with him? Did you beg him not to hurt you? Did you? Did you cower in a corner and beg him to spare your worthless fucking life? Did you?  Well did you? I bet you’ve asked enough questions in your career as a bent fucking copper why don’t you answer some for a change?!!!”

It was enough. I hadn’t begged. I hadn’t pleaded. I HAD considered doing a runner but I had a new PC with me, Constable Janice Wood He was actually threatening her. I’d WANTED to run, who wouldn’t? I’d pleaded with him, but I’d pleaded with him not to shoot HER. It was as if I was paralysed for a while as he stood in front of Janice and threatened her, threatened to kill her, threatened to stick the gun up her "up her cunt", his words, not mine and "pull the fucking trigger!" Finally I’d found myself able to move, the anger the sheer incandescent bloody anger that was welling up in me overcame the fear. I hadn’t begged for my own life, I’d tried to stop him taking hers, I’d tried to stop him shooting her and ended up getting shot myself!

This woman who I’d rescued from God knows what, who was doing God knows what, who was involved in God knows what. The woman who I’d saved, the woman I’d tried to help…

I can’t explain how I really felt just then, but being actually CALLED a coward, and then being called bent as well…

I was angry, I was hurt, something was stinging my eyes, and instinctively I raised my good arm. She saw me,

“Go on you bastard, that’s about your stamp isn’t it. Go on you fucking nonce, hit me! That’s what you want to do isn’t it?”

Calling me a nonce just about finished me off. I know that she was goading me. I know that it was what she wanted. Right then something in the back of my mind was telling me to punch her and slap her and and…

But that wasn’t me, it wasn’t and I fought it. I fought the urge to really lay into her. I’d lost it once in my career. With a child murderer, a child murderer and rapist who’d calmly sat in front of me and told me that the eight-year-old girl that he’d raped and strangled had goaded him into it. That it had been her fault and that … well that was as far as he got. 

They covered for me at the station. It was my first case in CID. They covered up the bruised ribs and the black eye and the busted nose, said he fell down the stairs to his cell. The police doctor raised an eyebrow, but he’d seen it before and he had two little girls himself. I got away with it that time and I vowed never to do it again.

Never, ever again. 

But I was very close to losing my rag at that moment, very close. It looked as if she was going to say something else but if she did the subsequent crack of thunder drowned it out. And then we were looking at one another. We were looking at one another and the shaking legs and arms and the boiling stomach of anger gave way to something else. Something cold and calm and steely that seemed to take me over from within, from the inside out.

I wasn’t angry any more. I was beyond anger. I was in a place I’d never been, quiet and silent like the eye of a storm, although the real storm, the longest storm I could ever remember, was still raging high above us. 

I started to walk around her not taking my eyes off of her, banging the whip against my leg as I did it. Then I raised it and held it a few inches from her face and watched her transfer her gaze from me to it in the yellow candlelight.

“You want this?” I asked in a voice I didn’t know I had. She nodded.
“Then tell me!” She looked at me again. I think she too had noticed the change. She was hesitant.

“Tell me!” I insisted. “Tell me how much you want me to hit you. Tell me how much you want me to beat you. Tell me because otherwise you can just hang there.” I turned away from her, began to walk towards the door. She didn’t need to be told again.

“Beat me! Hit me! Flog me! Hit me with your whip! Hit me hard and then hit me harder still! And keep on hitting me ‘til I scream and don’t stop. Don’t fucking stop! Just keep beating me until I scream and scream and. …Huuuh!”

I did what she asked. I hit her. Just once. I whirled round on my heels and cracked the whip against her body. Across her bare back. And then I started to walk around her. Looking at her, letting her see the whip, flicking it, sometimes against my leg, sometimes against hers. As I went around her she tried to follow me but the stiff collar would only let her go so far. I flicked the whip against the left cheek of her buttocks. She didn’t flinch. I flicked it against her right cheek. Still nothing. As I came round to the front again I flicked it against her stomach.

“Is this what you want?” She just stared, “Well…is it?” She nodded.

That wasn’t enough for me. The new me. The me who seemed to positively relish hitting this woman who seemed to positively relish being hit. 

“That’s no good!” I was walking around her again. “That’s no good at all,” I stopped behind her and she tried to turn her head but she couldn’t.

“If you want me to whip you, then you have to tell me you want me to hit you. Do you understand?” She wasn’t looking at me for once, she was staring into space. My voice, which seemed to becoming from somewhere else because it was as if I was detached from myself somehow, was low and patient.

“I’ll tell you again,” The storm seemed to have abated. There had been no thunder for a while and the rain seemed to have lessened too but I could still hear it falling onto the conservatory roof. Otherwise the strange, dimly lit room was quiet “But I’ll only tell you once more and I want you to listen very carefully.” I thought she might have said something but if she did it wasn’t clear.

“If you want me to whip you then you have to tell me and you have to tell me now. Is that clear? Once again she nodded.

“THEN TELL ME YOU BITCH!” And the whip shot up in the air and came down across the upper part of her back. “TELL ME!” And I raised my hand and bought it down in the opposite direction so the strokes criss crossed “YOU WANT ME TO WHIP YOU? THEN TELL ME YOU WANT ME TO WHIP YOU!” Across her shoulders this time and then the other way. She made a grunting noise each time the whip fell. And then she threw back her head as far as the collar would allow and looked at me as best she could.

“Hit me you bastard! Hit me as hard as you want! I can take anything you can give me you fucking shit!”

I started walking again, until I was facing her once more and then I moved closer. 

“Spread your legs… I said spread your legs!” She did as she was told and she seemed to thrust her hips at me as she did it. I stood in front of her swinging the whip lightly to and fro. 

“What are you going to do?”
“What do you want me to do?”
“I want you to whip me!”
“Where?” 
There was no trace of embarrassment in her voice. She was still looking at me but her eyelids lowered and her voice dropped an octave. 
“Whip my cunt!”  I should have been embarrassed but I wasn’t. I began to swing the whip in her direction. Not hard but aiming between her legs as if I was going to and then pulling it back before it actually reached it’s goal.

“Are you sure?” Right at that moment there seemed to be some sort of empathy between us. She wanted it and I wanted to do it to her and neither of us seemed to care about anything else. But there was an order to things. An unspoken order. A ritual if you like and this was all part of that ritual. She was whispering now.
“Yes I’m sure! I want you to whip my cunt!” 
“How sure?”
“VERY FUCKING SURE! NOW HIT ME!”

 I did it underarm.

 It was the only way.

 I didn’t do it hard, but the whip was heavy. The first couple brushed her skin, the next two landed squarely against her pubic mound and the next two made a satisfying slapping noise. She closed her eyes and began to expel air through her mouth as I settled in to a rhythm. And each time the whip slapped against her flesh so she hissed out air and closed her eyes in a way that suggested positive ecstasy.

After the first six or so of those she began to gyrate her hips against the whip as it fell and each time it fell the blows seemed to come quicker and quicker and her hips seemed to move against it faster and faster until it seemed as if she was actually fucking the whip. She was moving in time with it. Her eyes were closed but somehow she knew exactly when it was going to fall and she raised her hips and threw herself against it.

It seemed to go on for hours. It seemed to take place in slow motion. I think that in reality the whole thing probably took about five minutes. Towards the end her moans were beginning to drown out the steadily falling rain. Although I was watching her closely I was also aware of her shadow, thrown up by uncertain candlelight, mirroring her movements on the wall behind her.

She was hanging in her chains. They were the only things supporting her. Her legs were buckling and she was moaning quietly to herself. Not in pain. Oh no something entirely different to pain, or perhaps they were one and the same, was overwhelming her. Her eyes were closed and she seemed to be muttering some kind of incantation. The smoothly shaven area between her legs looked very red in the dim light but not necessarily sore. Even this new me, this cold, calculating new me didn’t, it seemed, want to hurt her unnecessarily. Wind her up, yes. Humiliate her, yes. Make her humiliate herself, certainly. But not hurt her as such.

The chanting grew louder. I could understand what she was saying now. It was just one word. One word repeated over and over again.

“Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!”  Ad infinitum.

I dropped the whip to the floor and walked forward. It was the circumstances. It was an unreal situation otherwise I would never have done what I did.

 I stopped a few centimetres from her and cupped her bare crotch with my right hand 

The skin was hot to the touch. 

I cupped it gently as she hung there moaning, naked and vulnerable. Her eyes were still closed. I took my hand away. Her eyes shot open. More bloodshot now. Intense and angry. Before she could speak I raised my hand to her lips and held out my index finger. She knew what she had to do; there was no hesitation whatsoever. She engulfed my finger with her mouth and sucked it in deeply licking it lovingly, soaking it with saliva. There was a kind of conversation going on between us but it was entirely non-verbal. It was through eye contact alone. Eye to eye contact to quote Marvin Gaye. In fact the song had been whirling around in my head for a couple of minutes now, for some reason.

I don’t think I could have stood it for much longer. Her head was moving back and forth against my finger and at that moment, right there and then I had the hardest erection I could ever remember. Her head moving up and down, her eyes enticing, urging me on, wanting to please, she wasn’t sucking my penis but she might as well have been. I had to break. I had no choice.

I withdrew the finger, warm and wet and slick with her saliva and she pouted. Put her lips together in a huge O and I so wanted to put it back or replace it with the real thing, but I didn’t. Instead I moved my hand slowly downward tracing the wet finger lightly down her stomach as I did so until it reached her pubic area.

I cupped her fiery crotch again and slid my finger against and inside her outer lips. I needn’t have bothered to get her to lick it. She was warm and moist. More than moist. Slippery. She moaned as if in relief as the finger slid further inside.

“Do you like that?”
“YESSSSSS!”
“Yes what?”
“Yes I like it.”
“Not enough. What am I?” Her eyes had closed, now they opened again and looked at me archly
“You’re a bastard!” I slipped a second finger inside her. And she moaned and sagged and her head went back.
“What am I? You know what I want to hear.” She raised her head as best she could. Her eyelids were heavy, her eyes even more bloodshot than before, but she looked at me defiantly.
“Fuck you!” 
“No!” I said quietly, insinuating my fingers ever deeper and beginning to move them gently in and out against her wetness, “No” Shaking my head,  “Fuck YOU!”

She was hanging in her chains looking more and more exhausted but she looked at me as if nothing was happening.

“Master? Is that what you want me to call you? “ I continued to move my fingers against her, my thumb was moving toward her clitoris. “You’re not my Master! You never will be…. No one is! AH!” I insinuated my thumb against her sensitive nub and moved it gently.

“Call me Master!”

 Her breathing was quickening. She seemed to be having trouble drawing breath.

“You’re…not…my…Master.”
“I am! Tell me I am.”
“You’re…not…” And then she screamed. A piercing high-pitched scream that seemed to send a shiver through my whole body. 

I had withdrawn my fingers.

I moved forward and picked up the whip. She was hanging in her chains panting, looking at me with hate in her eyes. Those intense bloodshot eyes.

I spoke slowly and deliberately as I moved behind her, at least someone with what was roughly my voice did.
“So I’m not your Master. Let’s see who or what is.” I flicked the whip against her buttocks and she didn’t move. I wasn’t prepared for what happened next. Something inside me did it but it wasn’t me. Diminished responsibility? It might have worked in court but I’d have probably ended up in an institution of some sort.

My arm flew up, paused for a moment and then bought the whip down heavily on her bare shoulders. She gasped. I did it again. And again. And again And I just didn’t stop.

Her shoulders, her upper back, her shoulders again and then her buttocks. I had enough sense about me to keep away from her lower back. Away from the kidneys and the other sensitive parts down there. .

The whip was heavy in even my good arm but I kept going. All the anger. All the anger that had built up over the years. Over the years of taking shit from people who weren’t worth a packet of crisps. Who’d raped and murdered and shot and stabbed and beat up and stolen. All that anger. The anger I still felt for Michael John Rawlins because I’d never had my day in court and I never would. All that anger was now focussing itself on naked chained and helpless little Stella who had never done anything to me in her whole life and at that moment I just didn’t care.

I t was relentless and it was so, so satisfying. Each time I hit her she grunted that much louder. When I hit her across the back she let out air in a manner not suggestive of pain but suggestive of sheer ecstasy. It wasn’t like I was hitting her at all; it was like I was in some way making love to her.

I got the most satisfaction from laying the whip across her buttocks and hearing her groan, but they weren’t groans of pain. We weren’t victim and perpetrator, we were somehow equal. We were like lovers. I was giving her something she needed, something she wanted…

How many times have I heard that one in court? But just then it was TRUE.

I raised my arm again and the whip fell heavily once more across her shoulders. I raised it yet again. I could see the need for the stiff collar now, to protect the delicate parts of her neck.  Then there was a crash and the whole room seemed to shake. Then there was a low rumble. A long low menacing rumble and another crash. Another storm. Following in the wake of the other. This one seemed to be directly over us already.

Stella was moaning in her chains. The noise seemed to bring me to my senses. I threw down the whip and walked quickly over to her, just in time to see her arms coming down.

 She was free. As I reached her she threw her arms around me and kissed me on the cheek. I tried to look her in the eye although God knows why, but she wouldn’t look back at me. She held me close to her. For the first rime I realised that I was sweating. She rested her cheek against mine. The rain was falling hard again. Still not looking at me she whispered hoarsely,

“Fuck me now! PLEASE!” And then she was out of my arms. The thunder crashed again and the candle flames flickered. My shirt and trousers were still damp from the earlier rain. I lost sight of her for a few seconds, lost in my own thoughts. That breeze seemed to run through the room again.

“Stella? Stella where are you?” The candles guttered again and then sparked back into their former brightness. And then I saw her, her pale figure stretched out in stark contrast to the black leather padding of the rack. She seemed to be looking at herself in the mirrored wall it was nearest to 

As I reached her I saw it actually happening this time. I saw the chains inching slowly forward until they were level with her wrists and her ankles and then I saw the cuffs snap shut around them as if closed by an unseen hand. Her eyes were still heavily lidded. Her face turned to the mirror rather than to me. She was chanting again,

“Fuck me now!  Fuck me now! Fuck me now!” And I just did it.

What had gone before had been too much for me I suppose. I didn’t even take my clothes off. The leather padding ended just below what must have been her very sore buttocks and her legs were mounted on a V shaped projection.  There was space for me to climb over and stand in the middle.

All the time I had been whipping her I had suffered from what felt like a monumental erection and it hadn’t subsided much. In fact it was the first time since the shooting that I’d managed one at all. The thunder was still rumbling above us but it seemed further away now. I pulled down my zip and guided myself into Stella whose eyes were closed.

I was that hard that I didn’t even have to play with it to go in. It was quite literally like a knife going through butter. She was soft. Soft and warm and moist and she groaned as I entered her and began to move gently back and forth. 

All the violence seemed to have gone from me and she didn’t seemed to want any more either. I rocked against her, trying to make amends, wanting to hold her and say sorry, wanting to make love to her properly but she seemed happy with what we were doing and she began to move her hips in time to mine.

 It was as tender as it could be under the circumstances. Another low rumble of thunder outside seemed to penetrate and roll round the room. Her hips were moving faster now, driving me on. Her eyes were closed. She was still chained at ankle and wrist but she seemed somehow to be in charge. Rather than diminishing with time I seemed to be growing harder inside her and she seemed to want me to go deeper and I pushed and I thrust forward and got faster and faster in response to the rhythmic movement of her pelvis against me. I couldn’t last much longer. Another crash of thunder. Nearer this time.

I was close, very close.
“Stella, I...” She didn’t open her eyes. She was lying there with her arms and legs outstretched and her head thrown back as far as it would go. Her face had changed again. Her expression was almost ecstatic.

“It’s alright Master… Darling, darling Master. I want you to come. I want you to come Master, I want you to come and make me free….” She groaned and she screamed.

 And so did I.

I couldn’t take any more and as I climaxed so did she and then the whole house shook and the whole world seemed to explode as one enormous crash of thunder followed another and the lighting outside seemed to be visible in the room and I looked at Stella and her eyes were open and I recoiled in shock and horror, because where the whites had previously been bloodshot, they were now completely red with blood.

I was in some kind of shock. Stella must have known. She’d been looking at herself in the mirror and that’s why she wouldn’t look at me. Her face looked even paler now and she smiled a small thin smile.

“Thank you.” Was all she said and then her eyes closed and a tear, a shiny tear of bright red blood slid down her cheek. 
 
 

EPILOG

They used to have that at the end of “The Invaders” didn’t they? It seemed appropriate somehow. An epilogue to someone who died in the strangest of ways and under the strangest of circumstances.

That Stella wasn’t human in the accepted sense seems obvious to me now. Stella. My spelling, my pronunciation, far more likely to be Stellar, to do with the stars. The name alone should have alerted me, but it didn’t.

I was numb with shock and horror as I staggered to her side but she was dead already. No pulse. No heartbeat. I didn’t even try CPR because I knew it would be useless. 

There seemed to be about three storms going on overhead. One clap of thunder followed another. The house seemed to shake every time and there was one final crash. One cataclysmic, apocalyptic crash and lightning must have struck the house because every light every candle went out instantaneously and it was like there was an earthquake going on and I was thrown to the floor.

I think I must have passed out because when I picked myself up the lighting was back to normal and the candles had all guttered out. I turned to look for Stella. Hoping against hope that it had all been a dream, that it had never happened and that she still might be alive, but she wasn’t even there. Stella had gone. Or rather her body had. I don’t know where it had gone and I suppose I never will.

The Lexus had gone too. I drove back there later when the storm had abated. And the roads were dry and the dawn was coming up. I couldn’t stay in the house. No crime was ever reported. No one called Stella was ever reported missing and it appears that no one matching her description ever existed. I don’t know where she came from and I know even less about where she might have gone.

I ran a PCI check on the house later when I got to Brighton nick. It exists. It wasn’t a figment of my imagination as you might expect but we couldn’t find the exact owner. It’s been bought and sold so many times and through so many companies that it’s hard to track. It seems to be owned by a holding company registered in the Cayman Islands, but no one’s really sure. I DID manage to check the local parish records however, and that proved to be quite interesting.

There’s been some sort of dwelling where the cottage is now for more than a thousand years. That’s right. It’s traceable back to eight hundred and something and what’s more that exact spot is where no less than seven sets of Lei lines converge. At least three witches are supposed to have lived there in the Middle Ages and the house before this one was not only said to be haunted but also burnt down for no apparent reason.

Stella wasn’t from this world. I’m convinced of that. She was a telepath and she was telekinetic as well. The lights going on and off, the chains, the candles, no tricks, just the power of the mind. Her mind. Stella's mind. I can only guess that she drove to that spot stripped, tied herself up and locked herself in the boot. With her powers it would be easy enough to do. Why? I don’t know. Did she know I was coming? She DID seem to recognise me. Was I part of her plan or would any old Joe Soap have done? 

I don’t know how old she really was but I’m guessing that she was very old in our terms and that she needed the ritual that we acted out together to move on. I don’t think she died in the accepted sense. Not in the sense that we know. In fact I know she didn’t, because every now and then I experience a sort of gap in my mind. It’s like being in the eye of that storm again and Stella is there, I can sense her. I can FEEL her. 

And my shoulder.

 My shoulder doesn’t hurt anymore. I had a scan a few weeks ago and there’s nothing there, no arthritis at all. 

My senses are more acute. My hearing. My sight. My intuition. Stella died but when she did it was like something in me was reborn.

Wherever you are Stella I wish I had the chance to know you properly, to love you properly. 

Who knows? Perhaps one day I will.
 

THE END
 
 

© Wallace 2003. 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 and events or places real or imaginary.
 

10.06.03