Amsterdamazons Pt. 1
by No#l Burch  nburch@wanadoo.fr 
A biologist visiting Amsterdam is kidnapped by a mysterious female colleague and her a sadistic henchwoman, skilled in the art of inflicting pain.


Amsterdamazons - 1

K. had always loved Amsterdam in the summertime, the ballet of trams, the
herons on house-boat roofs, the nervous diving grebes, the stately ducks...
and the no less stately women on their bicycles. The women fascinated him:
tall or short, blonde or brunette, youthful or mature, slender or plump, there
was something about the women of Amsterdam that kept his head spinning as in
no other metropolis he knew. So this conference of fellow scientists was
welcome, ten days in the Venice of the North, a ... "wet dream" he joked to
himself.

As expected, the conference itself was a crashing bore, nothing new, the same
colleagues with the same old research; he knew it all by heart... He spent as
much time as he decently could drinking oude genever at the sunny canal-side
caf's, watching the boaters go by, watching those exciting Dutch women on
their bicycles or on foot. He particularly loved the way so many still wore
boots on the hottest summer days, eschewing their comfort to cater to boot
fetishists ' or so it seemed to K., who suspected he counted among them...

There was one woman he had noticed especially. During the three days already
spent in Amsterdam he'd seen her ride past his hotel several times, seen her
near the conference centre, too. Once, when he saw her reflection in a shop
window, she even seemed to be looking at him... But when he turned to look
where she stood, she was gone... Tall and big-boned, she wasn't all that
young, forty plus, no doubt, but wonderfully fit the way so many of these
Dutch women are. A splendid figure in tight jeans, denim jacket and dirty
white sneakers - a common enough outfit in this easygoing city, with its
pot-selling "coffee shops" and display-window prostitution. Yet there was
something special about this particular "amazon"...

And just now, as he sat drinking coffee at a sidewalk table near the
Waterlooplein, he saw her ride by again ... His fascinated eye followed till
she was out of sight... He shook himself mentally, sighed and opened his
cardboard conference wallet. It was late afternoon and the warmth of the sun
was tempered by a brisk wind from the sea. He ought to be getting back to his
hotel for a jumper. But first he'd best glance at the next day's program to
see which session he really couldn't miss.

He was absorbed in this thankless task when suddenly, without so much as a
by-your-leave, someone sat down at his table... a woman... a woman in blue
denim... the woman in blue denim, yes, the very same! A hooker, he thought?
Yet surely active soliciting was against the law in the Netherlands. Which was
perhaps why this particular hooker didn't look the part: no make-up, no nail
polish, blonde hair knotted in a single, long braid, a tattooed cobra coiled
around her wrist, the flat, deadly head lying suggestively on the back of her
hand ... But a hooker on a bicycle? And where had she left her bicycle?

She sat smiling a tight, ambiguous smile and said not a word. It was as if she
were giving him a chance to look her over... Well, she was not what one would
call a pretty woman... handsome, would be the more appropriate word, he
thought. There was beauty in the shape of the skull, in the greenish eyes, the
graceful neck, but it was a rather masculine beauty, he thought... though
there was nothing masculine about the way her breasts strained against the
tough blue vest, the way her thighs packed the tight jeans.

"Good afternoon, Mr. K..., please forgive this intrusion, but someone needs
urgently to talk with you," she said at last matter-of-factly, in almost
unaccented English. How in the world did she know his name? What was going on
here? Who the devil was this woman? He was completely taken aback, but managed
to keep his outward calm..

"Really, now... What on earth about?"

"About the future of humanity..."

"I beg your pardon?" Well, that was that... There was to be no sex, venal or
otherwise: the woman was clearly deranged. His expression must have betrayed
the thought...

"I see you do not believe me, but I am very serious. And I'm afraid I shall
have to insist... You must come with me immediately..." The woman had been
toying with the coffee-spoon and now she laid her hand on his wrist, seemingly
to emphasize her plea... "If not of your own accord, then..." and she pressed
the bowl of the spoon into the back of his hand, near the base of the thumb.
The pain was awful; he let out a shriek and his arm went numb, the effect
seemed out of all proportion to the cause ... His shriek had been drowned by
the rumble of a passing tram and even as he protested this vicious trick, the
thought crossed his mind that the woman had consciously timed her assault to
this end:

"What'd you that for! Just who do you think you are, anyway! Let go of my
wrist!" He tried to pull his arm free, but it was still numb and the woman was
squeezing his wrist in a way that weakened the limb even further.

"I hurt you just now, didn't I? And now you've no feeling in your arm... You
see, I'm an expert at hurting people..." She spoke very softly; he could
hardly hear her over the traffic noise. At the same time, she had seized the
nerveless elbow with her other hand, and was probing the hollow joint with her
thumb: "I know how to kill a man this way, I've already done it several times:
the right pressure in this vital cavity will stop your heart... and I will
have vanished into the crowd before anyone notices that a tourist has
succumbed to a coronary. You think I'm bluffing, perhaps, but are you brave
enough to call for help? I very much doubt it... Just feel this." She must
have dug her thumb into his numbed elbow for he felt his heart skip a beat...
Terror rose in his breast... "So you see: I am telling the strict truth..."

All of this had been said quietly and with a seductive smile, no doubt meant
to deceive people seated nearby but conveying to him at the same time the
twisted pleasure she derived from causing him pain. Retaining that numbing
grip on K.'s wrist, she drew a banknote from the back pocket of her jeans and
slipped it under a saucer. Then she shifted her grip to his hand... To all
appearances it was an affectionate gesture and the numbness soon went away,
but in fact she had cupped his little finger into her palm in a subtely
powerful lock and as she rose to her feet he was forced to rise with her to
relieve the new pain that burst upon his jangled nerves.. And it was thus that
their "couple" walked over the nearby bridge and on to the number 10
tram-stop, she looking for all the world like a woman in love, joyfully
leading her companion by the hand... when in fact, he thought to himself with
a strange mixture of horror and excitement, he was being kidnapped!

This was insane, K. thought to himself. Am I really going to let this mad
woman abduct me in broad daylight on a city street? But then... did he dare
confront her uncanny skills? She might have been boasting about that killing
stuff, but the way she'd taken control of his body was properly frightening...

And now here they were, waiting for a tram. This was bizarre in itself: K. had
seen as many movies as the next person and had expected to be bundled into a
waiting sedan with smoked glass windows. Why was she taking this risk? Was she
so confident in her ability to control him in public? He heard the tram
drawing near at the same time as he saw a mounted policeman approaching; he
determined to throw caution to the winds... But no sooner had he opened his
mouth to shout for help when the woman, anticipating his intention with
amazing prescience, and having bunched her finger-tips into a cone, stabbed
him sharply on the chest near the armpit. It was a short, quick jab, invisible
to inattentive bystanders but his shout died on his lips... for suddenly he
could not breathe...

"That," she said, "was your last warning... The next time you try anything, I
will twist your ear in a certain way and you will suffer a fatal brain
hemorrhage from double nerve shock!" The tram slid to a stop and the doors
opened. She grabbed his belt from behind and fairly lifted the gasping,
helpless man through the opening. She was not only skilled beyond belief but
immensely strong, he realized, and his fear grew tenfold.

He was vaguly aware of two ringing sounds as the woman validated two
"chip-cards"... and hustled him forward between the rows of seats.

It was not until after his statuesque kidnapper had eased the powerless K.
into a seat ' treating him solicitously, as if he were drunk or ill - that he
finally got his wind back. Who was this woman sitting beside him? What did she
want of him...? And where had she learned all these devastating techniques? He
had never encountered anything of the sort, it was the kind of "martial magic"
you read about in spy novels but never actually believed was real... Until you
experienced this almost dreamlike helplessness...

At present his captor was holding him oh so gently by the elbow while her
other hand was resting "affectionately" on his thigh, but he knew for a
certainty that at the slightest sign of rebellion on his part, those hands
were prepared to wreak excruciating punishment. He sat perfectly still,
scarcely daring to breathe...

They were approaching the end of the line: the old harbor-front. This was
apparently the woman's destination. They were the last passengers in the
articulated tram, alone save for the driver and the conductor, both hulking
males. It was now or never, K. said to himself, and with fear-inspired
audacity, he jerked away from the woman's grasp so unexpectedly that she was
unable to detain him and fled to the back of the tram where a burly Black sat
behind a counter to sell single journey tickets to out-of-towners.. "Help me,
please this woman is trying to kidnap me..." The employee looked at him
quizzically, torn between disbelief and alarm. K. pleaded with him, casting
worried glances back over his shoulder. But the woman, instead of pursuing him
as he expected, had made her way to the front of the vehicle, and now, with a
spectacular karate kick, broke through the glass door which protected the
driver. Reaching through the broken pane with both hands, she caught the man
by the jaw and indeed did something to his ear. Her victim let out a raucous
squawk and she immediately lost interest in him, turning her attention instead
to the controls of the still moving tram, with which she seemed uncannily
familiar. The heavy machine ground to a halt and in the silence that followed,
K. could distinctly hear the driver's death-rattle as he lay sprawled over his
seat. The woman pressed a red button on the dash-board and then loped at an
easy gait towards the back of the tram. The black employee and K. had watched
this terrifying performance in horrible fascination, and now the employee was
desperately pressing a button meant to open the doors and allow the two men to
make their escape.

"Goddamn, she's locked the doors!" he cursed. K. fearfully retreated to the
back while the big man picked up a heavy flashlight and prepared to confront
the dangerous female. Their encounter did not last long. The poor fellow took
one swipe at the amazon and that was all: she dodged the blow easily enough,
trapped his arm in some sort of jiu-jitsu hold and broke it with a sickening
crunch. The man screamed once and then was silenced as she drove a claw shaped
hand into the top of his throat, just beneath the jaw; There was a briefly
sinister gargling sound and before the Black even hit the tram floor, K. could
tell he too was dead. The woman turned to face him, hands on hips. K. was
petrified, he was sure his turn had come. Never had he seen violence of the
sort, never would he have imagined a woman capable of such, coldly calculating
death-blows, snuffing out lives the way some implacable goddess might kill,
without effort or emotion.

"Well old boy, how does it feel to be responsible for two corpses?" She took a
step towards him where he cowered in the back of the tram. "I don't enjoy
killing, it's just part of my job. But you! I'd kill you right now if I had
the choice ... And you'd die a lot more slowly than these two poor guys... and
for once I would enjoy it, believe me. I despise men like you. Unfortunately,
my orders are to bring you in alive." She was so close now he could smell her
fresh breath, her laundered clothes... She lay her hand on his shoulder,
gently at first but he trembled in every limb. "And so here we go, because if
I can't kill you, I can certainly hurt you..."

And she gripped the back of his neck with vice-like fingers, mercilessly
compressing tendons and arteries. He instantly felt spaced out, as if under
anesthetic, enfeebled in every limb, impossibly dizzy. The woman propelled him
effortlessly to the front of the tram where she opened the doors, then down
the metal steps and along a street leading to the piers. The working day was
over in this waterfront area and there was no one in sight. K. almost felt
relieved: for the moment, at least, there would be no more killing. Twice on
the way to wherever they were going, he nearly fainted and his knees buckled:
each time, the woman slapped him hard across the nose with the palm of her
hand, a technique that caused an explosion of stars and revived him instantly.

It was thus that they reached the edge of a pier where a huge black petroleum
barge was moored. She released him and stood waiting : he knew without asking
that he was to climb the rope ladder hanging down the side, knew that
resistance was useless.

Soon, she stood facing him on the deck with that evil smile on her lips. "Time
for your nap, Mr. K." And without warning she hit him, hit him just once, in
what he had time to reflect was the strangest way, the heels of her hands
landing simultaneously on the hinge of his jaw and the opposite temple: there
was an awful explosion of light and pain and he lost consciousness instantly.

He came to with a slitting headache... in utter darkness... He could see
absolutely nothing. Was he blind, he wondered? The memory of the terrifying
woman returned. Had that mysterious blow deprived him of his sight? He could
hear the sound of a motor and the steady beat of water on a hull: the boat was
under way.

He ached in many places ' neck, shoulders, elbow; his little finger seemed
sprained. He clambered to his feet and began feeling his way around his
Stygian prison... a table, a couple of chairs... the bunk... There were
portholes, he could feel them, but they did not let in so much as a crack of
light : and yet and the luminous watch which told him he was not blind also
showed that it was not yet sundown.

Exhausted from his harrowing adventure, at a loss for what to think or do, he
finally lay down on the bunk and fell into a restless sleep...

He had a strange erotic dream... a tall, faceless woman was stroking his
genitals... when she stopped on the verge of orgasm, he begged her to go on...
she laughed and said something not very complementary in Dutch... in the
dream, he understood Dutch... But suddenly his erection gave way to awful pain
and he woke with a shriek... there was light in the cabin now but all he saw
was the face of his tormentress leaning close ... and squeezing with
calculated cruelty the tips of one oval testicle in a way which was especially
painfully... As soon as she saw his eyes open, she seized him by the hair and
pulled him to his feet, still skillfully pinching his male intimacy... She was
held his head down, chin pressed to his chest ... He could see nothing but the
blue denim, the canvas sneakers and his own nakedness, a black-clad arm
emerging from his crotch... but he sensed another presence in the cabin.
"Stand at attention in the presence of the Mistress... but keep your head down
or I will hurt you again". The amazon released him now and stepped aside : he
has vaguely aware she traded the blue-dinim for a back body-stocking that
gugged seductively her shapely legs and hips.But now he heard another woman's
voice, hard and brittle, with an unidentifiable accent, a voice that commanded
obedience:

"Mr. K., I will not beat about the bush, as you Americans would say. You have
been brought here because I have need of your special knowledge... I am
intimately familiar with your work on animal enzymes... Your collaboration is
needed for a grand project of mine, I shall obtain it willingly or
unwillingly, as you choose... You have already had a taste of my dear Femke's
persuasive skills... Now will you agree to do my bidding or do I deliver you
into her hands once more?"

K. was certainly frightened out of his wits, and yet this scene reminded him
so much of a bad movie that he felt it behooved him to show his captors
suitably virile defiance.

"Not until I know what you are up to and what you want of me, Madame..."

"Wrong answer," said the woman... "Femke?"

The woman called Femke jabbed his sternum with stiffened finger-tip, a light
enough blow but which winded him instantly and caused him to recoil, tripping
over a strategically extended leg, landing heavily on his back. The woman
dropped to one knee. He had time to catch sight of a tall figure in a long
black robe looming behind her, while the woman named Femke lay a deceptively
gentle hand on his belly, somewhere below the liver. The hand felt cold and he
noticed then that she was wearing thick white rubber gloves. "Why?" he
wondered ' and the answer seemed to come at once in the form of ghastly pain,
irradiating his whole lower abdomen, pain such as he had never experienced
before... he screamed and screamed and vomited, he tried to reach the woman's
arm, push away the torturing fingers; nonchalantly but with surgical precision
she chopped both his biceps in quick succession with the edge of her free
hand, and his arms fell limp and numb... while the pain went on and on... he
retched again and vomited bile. He felt the other woman leaning close to his
ear, smelt her delicate perfume:

"If you want the pain to stop, Mr. K. the first thing to do is to promise me
you will do what I order you to do... Just tell me that, and I shall tell
Femke to stop hurting you..." K. was ready to agree to anything these women
wanted, but in fact he was incapable of speech... His silence was
unfortunately interpreted as stubbornness.

"Femke, I think he needs stage 2."

Rubber fingers probed the hollow notch at the base of his throat and then a
new kind of pain was added to the first: he could hardly breathe and the blood
was pounding in his brain! He wished he could faint, he wished he could die,
he was sure his skull would explode at any second... Time seemed to have
stopped, his whole body was one ball of pain... Finally the hands went away
and he lay moaning and panting on the floor with his eyes closed... and the
pain went on and on...

"Now, sir, perhaps you understand your position. This was only a modest taste
of Femke's skills; she has, at my bidding, driven men permanently insane from
the pain she knows how to inflict... Men who were no longer useful to me... An
insane man will tell no tales, of course, or rather no one will believe his
tales... And he is much easier to dispose of than a dead body... .. Your case,
however, is quite different; your sanity is precious to us... And when I have
done with you, if you have been properly docile, I promise you a much easier
release... Now, I repeat my question: will you collaborate with us... or face
more of Femke's unpleasant ministrations?"

He finally managed to gasp: "What do you want of me?"

"I merely want you to continue your work on enzyme 35Q... for me. I have a
fully equipped laboratory at your disposal... I am an experienced biological
chemist, I will know immediately if ever you attempt to deceive me ..."

"And what... what is this grand project of yours, pray tell..." Despite
residual pain and nervous exhaustion, he managed nonetheless to instill a note
of defiance in his voice. This did not go unnoticed by the Mistress. "I advise
you not to use that tone of voice with me... Femke is ever at my side and
always happy to inflict a little ' or a lot of ' pain... Indeed, you will
receive visits from her at irregular intervals and she may well punish you for
no reason, as a matter of principle, to ensure your continued obedience...
This is actually a form of what the idiots call brain-washing and at which we
are quite proficient... You may well end up with a Pavlovian devotion to our
cause..."

"Which is?"

"That you may know in good time, if you have proven yourself..."

..............................................................................
.................................

The laboratory was on the boat itself, whose depths were far more spacious
than K. had imagined from what he had glimpsed of it by the quayside. This was
where he was to sleep and take his meals, as well. The room had everything he
needed, duplicates of all the specimens he'd collected, certain expensive
instruments and even the documents he'd left in his hotel room, notes for the
lecture he was to give at the end of the week... The whole thing was uncanny,
but by now he knew better than to ask questions...

He was given a proper meal, and allowed a night's rest... He lay for hours on
a narrow bunk and thought of the afternoon's events; he still could hardly
believe this was happening to him.

But despite the analgesic tablets he had been given, there was still very real
pain to prove this was no dream.

The next morning, breakfast was given through a wicket in the door... and then
to work. The barge seemed at anchor in mid-stream, there was very little
movement... but of course he had no idea where they were, still on the Maas or
out at sea; the portholes were sealed tight and he was not allowed on deck.

His work... He could not imagine to what nefarious purpose it would be put,
but that it would be nefarious, he had no doubt. And so he decided to risk an
experiment. The Mistress might have been bluffing about her capabilities, and
his work was highly specialized: there were only half a dozen experts in the
world capable of understanding it... And so he decided to produce meaningless
results... as a test... a dangerous test, no doubt, but he was driven by male
pride: he was not going to let two females get the better of him!

He worked all day on his specimens, useful work for his own project, in fact.
When his watch told him it was the end of the afternoon, he wrote up the
results... He had, in fact, been able to verify a small but crucial point
concerning the enzyme in question, but wrote down the results using a private
code which had the appearance of standard math but was meaningless without the
key.

The door opened and the two women appeared. This was his first view of the
Mistress in the light. She was gaunt and tall, in her fifties, with extremely
short steel grey hair and extraordinarily large, intense eyes. She wore the
same long black gown. Femke was again wearing her black Lycra body stocking,
with high neck and long sleeves, clearly designed for complete freedom of
action but which also made splendid display of her perfect body. He noted that
she still wore those dirty sneakers and carried the thick white rubber gloves
in one hand.

The Mistress demanded to see his notes. She sat down at his desk and studied
them for some minutes. Then looked up at K. with a disquieting smile and
slowly shook her head.

"Femke..." was the only word she uttered.

The terrifying amazon began pulling on her gloves. K. backed up against the
long metal work-table and seized the heaviest object he could find: he was
determined to defend himself this time, his male ego had been sorely tried by
the humiliations of the previous day... and he knew that to kill him would
defeat these women's purpose... whatever it was. Perhaps he could benefit from
that restriction.

"That is a very expensive microscope, Mr. K... But I'm sure Femke will see
that no harm comes to it... Did you really imagine you could fool me with this
gibberish?"

Femke had finished smoothing her rubber gloves around her fingers and now took
one gliding step forward, holding her hands in front of her face, fingers
weaving in a strange, fascinating pattern which drew his gaze in spite of
himself... She shuffled closer with that gliding step and then without warning
kicked him inside the thigh... he doubled up with the pain and dropped the
precious instrument, which Femke caught dexterously in mid-air and replaced it
on the metal table, while he stood bent over, clutching at his crippled leg,
unable to oppose her... Now the woman viciously pinched his upper lip between
gloved thumb and forefinger and irresistibly led his stooped, defenseless body
into the centre of the room... He smelled the pungent odor of the rubber close
to his nostrils...

He heard the Mistress' scathing tones: "Either you have been wasting your time
and mine, which I somehow doubt, or you have indeed been doing useful work...
I want the true results written out in full by tomorrow morning... Don't I,
dear Femke?"

A sharp blow on the tail-bone exploded pain up his spine and he dropped on all
fours. The amazon whipped his left arm up against her leg and twisting his
hand in a practiced way forced him to roll him over on his back, blocking his
elbow against her knee, driving the tip of one hard rubber sole into a
sensitive spot beneath his jaw. He choked and gagged and screamed... and at
the same time was only too conscious of the beauty of the Lycra-encased leg,
the thighs and the voluptuous hips...

"I see that's the left arm you're holding, my dear... Since our guest is
right-handed, I suggest you dislocate his shoulder..." Again he noticed that
when these women spoke English to one another, it was because they wanted him
to understand... and in this instance to know exactly what was coming...

Indeed, no sooner said than done: there was a crunching sound and agony.... K.
screamed shrilly, shouted obscenities at his tormentress, who promptly jammed
the tip of her tennis shoe into his open mouth... He felt the rough canvas
distending his lips, tasted the rubber sole crushing his tongue...

"I don't like it when they say things like that...", she muttered in her
guttural tones.

Still tugging viciously on his injured arm ' his screams barely audible now,
gagged as he was by the woman's foot - she leaned forward and bore down
heavily on his lower teeth : he thought his jaw must come unhinged... He was
hovering on the edge of consciousness...

"All right dear, that's enough... I shall bind up that arm later tonight, and
perhaps even give him a sedative, but in the meantime we'll let him suffer for
a while..." And so saying, she turned to Femke, lay her hand on one full
breast which she stroked fondly through the Lycra. He screamed again as Femke
let his injured arm drop limply to the deck and the women kissed, long and
passionately, the Mistress whispering in her lover's ear, whilst Femke's
visible eye rested on her victim and seemed to taunt him... She had lifted the
Mistress' robe and slipped her hand between the older woman's bare, rather
boney thighs, whilst the Mistress in turn was stroking her crotch through the
Lycra. K. could hear their breathing quicken... Despite the pain in his jaw,
his groin and especially his elbow, he found himself actually feeling
aroused... Were they going to have sex right here in front of him, he wondered
confusedly. But no, the Mistress stepped back, smoothed down her robe,
muttered a few words in Dutch, and putting her arm around her lover escorted
her from the room without a glance or a word for K.

He lay moaning on the deck for what seemed like hours... His senses were
blurred, his brain was spinning... He slid in and out of consciousness and was
only half aware of the terrifying women's return... He received an injection
and soon the pain began to abate... There was an excruciating moment when
Femmke subjected his arm to some rather brutal manipulations and the Mistresse
strapped it up with a long bandage. He was beginning to feel drowsy... The two
women carried him through the bulk-head that separated his laboratory from his
"digs" and lifted him onto his bunk... Welcome sleep finally came...

The next day, he felt beaten... and doomed. He was sitting on the edge of his
bunk when Femke entered with a breakfast tray, a sheet of papr and a pen. She
said not a word, but he knew what he was going to do, what he must do... and
Femke's outfit reminded him why: she wore a mauve silk jacket tied with a
black sash over her black tights and a headband held her long locks in place:
she looked frighteningly martial. In ten minutes he had translated his results
into normal math and English. The mistress let him know she was satisfied...

A night and a day had passed before he was able to resume his work. Which was
in a critical stage but would take weeks, he warned the Mistress, as certain
tests were very long to mature. She easily accepted his explanations ' only
slightly exagerated to buy some time ; the Mistress was evidently in no
hurry... and K. strongly suspected what awaited him at the end of his task.

And so he set to work... and was surprised to discover that his dramatic
predicament soon receded into a small corner of his mind, such was his passion
for the research he had been discreetly conducting in the solitude of his
private laboratory for some four years.

To be continued