(Following on from “The Whipping“, we return to George Page’s PoV)
I chatted briefly with Cov and Hun and didn’t rise to their semi-snide comparisons of the way we treated our respective Wheaton Heights Wives.
With Claire Winters looking on, I complimented them on the event so far, and thanked them for introducing me to Monsieur Avignon.
I let them go as they went over to Ernestine to join the camera crew for a more intimate interview.
All the while I’d ignored, as much as possible, the slave that I’d ordered to lick the ‘basting’ paste from my hand. I’d noticed her movements slowing down, and an increasing warmth in my fingers, but I’d been determined to show the women that I could be as callous as they could.
I may have done better than I’d known, because as soon as they were out of earshot, two slaves hurried over to us.
“Master,” the first one to reach us said urgently, “That paste is mildly acidic, ah, it contains some chemicals that break down the skin to further tenderise the meat. Ah, it can cause permanent damage if we don’t get it cleaned off quickly.”
I quickly held out my hand for her to wipe down with a wet towel, while the other one hovered nervously. If they were so concerned about my hand … Fuck!
“Can you neutralize it? For her?” I nodded at the slave who’d been licking my fingers.
“In the clinic, Master, can we?” They looked over to the back corner of the courtyard, where one of the arms joined the cross at the kitchen.
“Lead on” I ordered, helping my slave to her feet. I nodded as one of the others had her rinse her mouth out before taking a long drink of water.
The ‘Clinic’ they lead me to was a well set up little facility in the back corner of the complex, almost a mini-hospital, with several treatment rooms as well as a couple of small ‘recovery’ type wards.
The thickness of the doors on the ‘treatment’ rooms should have been my first clue, but it wasn’t until I saw a slave - well, a presumed slave - strapped to the table in the last room, with what looked like a dozen surgical clamps attached to her breasts that I realised that this was as much of a torture facility as the courtyard or the dungeon I’d looked into.
Some of it may have been psychological, but by the time we reached the sluice area, my hand - my dominant left hand, of course - was beginning to sting quite badly. I didn’t want to think about how the slave’s mouth and throat felt.
I very quickly had the paste washed off, and a cooling anesthetic (and antiseptic?) gel smeared over it. When it was offered, I accepted a thin gauze glove as well.
Looking at my victim, I watched as she was made to rinse her mouth some more and then gargle a sharp smelling liquid.
“You’re both medics?” I asked as her attendant shone the expected device down her throat, looking for damage.
The one who treated me snorted. “I’m an MD, and Kate’s a registered nurse, or she was.”
“Ah. This place would keep you fairy busy, then.” Another snort.
“How is she?” I went on as she didn’t offer any more information.
“Tongue and lips are the worst,” the other one - Kate - answered, “But then you’d expect that. Throat’s inflamed, but I don’t think it’s too bad. I doubt she swallowed very much.”
“Good.” I knelt next to my victim and took her hands.
“I’m sorry I did this to you,” I told her, very much to her surprise, I imagine. “I didn’t mean to, but that’s my fault for leaping before I knew what I was putting my hand into.” She nodded when I finished. “Is there anything I can do?”
“She’ll get points for this,” the MD said. “Not many, because there wasn’t all that much damage, but I don’t think we’ve ever had anyone eat the paste before. And her obedience was perfect, too.”
I pulled a card from my shirt pocket and handed it to her. “If there’s ever anything, give me a call.”
***
Jesus, I thought as I wandered back out to the courtyard. I’d thought that I was riding the rough edge of my personality when I beat on my Debbie, but half the things I’d seen here were giving my ideas. I amble past some of the displays that had been set up while the queue basted poor Earnie.
Most of it was low key stuff - girls in whipping posts, or getting fucked in pillories, that sort of thing. But there were a couple that stood out. They were winding up before the main event, so I couldn’t watch them for too long.
One was a ‘human dartboard’: A slave was strapped to a wheel like an old knife thrower’s assistant and the wheel was spun while the ‘players’ threw oversized darts. When the board spun to a stop, I was surprised to see the slave wearing a hard plastic mask over her fast and throat. I would have expected her to have to take her chances with getting a dart in the eye, but it soon occurred to me that it was Cov and Hun who weren’t taking any chances: It wouldn’t do to have some mere slave upstage their show by dying by accident.
That explained some of the urgency of the two medics, as well, I supposed.
The other interesting exhibit was more complicated. This time the slave was suspended by her feet from a gantry that extended out from the rooftree. With her hair just sweeping the ground, the swing arm must have been something like twenty feet. That part of it alone, I could see possibilities for - thank you Foucault - but it didn’t stop there: on each swing, she swung between two large metal domes. As she did so, fat, juicy sparks leapt out from the Van der Graff generators.
She must have been well gagged, or very well trained, because I didn’t hear anything over the Hummm-Zap! of the generators.
Like the dartboard, though, this one was also coming to an end. The swinger was slowed till she hung still, directly between the domes! The discharge rate went up dramatically until they were turned off. She was left hanging, but the machines were quieted so as not to distract from the main event.
While I’d been away, Ernestine had been moved from her upright frame to the ‘kneeling supplicant’ restraints of a Jessica 3000, her neck and spine held rigidly in place, her arms stretched out in front of her.
I worked my way to the front of the onlookers, up by her head, almost despite myself. I was damned sure I wasn’t going to enjoy this anywhere near as much as I’d thought I would.
There was absolutely no expression in Earnestine’s eyes as the tip of the shaft, the spit, was seated in her anus, and I wondered if I had hurt her more than I’d helped when I’d brought her back - if I’d brought her back - earlier. If she’d found some place inside herself, I’d probably not done her a favour.
Still, I was hardly the demon of this piece. The spit may have been ready, but Cov & Hun weren’t ready to let their Earnie go quite yet. They stepped up to where her hands were splayed against the metal frame of the Jessica and rapped the machine hard with bulb-headed metal rods.
Earnie blinked at the sudden noise, but that was it: she didn’t track her tormenters the way I’d seen her do the night before, or even as recently as her whipping. From the look of it, if they wanted a live spit roast, they’d better get on with it.
I was wrong. Earnestine focused and started tracking again the instant Hun brought her baton down to smash one of her fingers. Then it was Cov’s turn, and they alternated until her hands must have been shattered.
I could understand why they did it - it was like Winters had said earlier, there was no point tormenting someone who wasn’t aware of it - but there was something beyond callous in the way they did it.
Finally, they were done, and with a flourish, Cov pressed the button that started the machine. Earnie didn’t react much for the first several inches, but I wasn’t surprised given they way she’d been reamed out the night before, starting with myself and graduating up to Cov’s fist. God only knew what they’d got up to after Tia and I left.
I could tell when it hit the first serious resistance by the way her eyes widened and the slight pause in the shaft before the sharpened point pushed through whatever membrane or intestinal wall it had hung up on and continued its remorseless inch-per-second progress.
Her breathing changed as it punctured her diaphragm, and then she spasmed - despite the rigid restraint - as the spit forced its way into her esophagus.
I watched her throat bulge at the end, just before it appeared between her teeth.
The shaft continued to come out until a full yard had passed completely through her before stopping. Earnestine’s ragged heartbeat thumped out over the PA system as the MD slave I’d spoken with earlier held a microphone to her chest before bowing deeply to Cov and Hun and announcing solemnly “She is alive, Mistresses.”
The two Hosts grinned hugely as the whole compound burst into applause. Bowing themselves, they reached forward and pressed the next button on the Jessica, causing the gutting blades to sweep out and disembowel their slave - their meal, now - in a gout of blood.
They walked hand in hand the length of the machine until they reached the offal tray at the end. Hun reached in and picked up something - I figured that it was probably the liver - and cut a long slice. She seared it quickly on a prepared hotplate and offered one end to Cov. Taking the other end between her own teeth, they embraced and nibbled down the virtually raw slice of meat.
I could barely hold down my gorge as they met in the middle and sank into a deep soul-kiss to renewed applause and a couple of cat calls.
That was it, for me, I had had enough. ‘Friend of Jamis’ I might have called myself, but at least Paul Atreides never had to watch the deathstill in action.
Earnestine Royal had expired, at last. I reached out and closed her eyes, only to look up into the smirk on the face of Claire Winters.
“Staying for Dinner?” she asked.
