MONSIEUR JOURDAIN PROMETHEAN
by Noël Burch
More adventures of the ruthless Bret Blade, martial artist and hypnotist extraordinary


But this bold lord, with manly strength imbued

She with one finger and a thumb subdued

Alexander Pope : The Rape of the Lock

Bret Blade hung up the receiver, feeling relieved but vaguely annoyed as well.
The separation was coming along nicely but might still get out of hand. Her
latest lesbian lover had long bored her to distraction, in bed and out of it.
But the affair had been profitable, Bret thought, if only because she had at
last admitted to herself that exclusive lesbians had always seemed to her
immature and limited, insipid and odorless. That only "bi" women knew how to
share pleasure.

Nor would she be sorry to spend her nights alone for a while. Yet still her
mood was bleak.

In this month of July, the phenomenon might have various explanations. It was
too hot in the West Indies to take refuge in the arms of one or another of the
handsome black lovers always ready to receive her, young men who were gentle
and attentive, with above-average equipment and who preferred women of forty -
the Latin cult of the Mother! - to fresh young things. And who were thus
sweetly infantile...

And besides which Bart, the only more or less acceptable Parisian lover she'd
found in over three years... was in the provinces looking for work!

Normally for Bret and her Parisian colleagues, the first month of summer was
good for business. Before joining their families on holiday, many married men
who dared not ask certain services of their wives, dipped back into the venal
luxuries of their bachelorhood, allowing themselves once a year the punishing
delights which Bret knew how to provide.

But this year, it was as if all the sex sites were down, all the singles
magazines on strike. The "economic downturn" of course, she consoled herself,
having read somewhere that this year even the middle-classes were suffering.

But the unpaid bills kept accumulating in the little box by the bronze Buddha.

Bret went to her bi-weekly class in Chinese martial arts. After fifteen years
of assiduous practice, the parries and projections of tuy shoo, the
incapacitating nerve pinches and tendon twists of qin na had no secrets for
her. But even here, her bad lucked dogged her : for the third time this month,
there were only beginners on the mats and none could even begin to stand up to
her: once again she was denied her sole emotional outlet : intense physical
confrontation. After three minutes, the urge to punish a big, heavy partner
who was even clumsier than his predecessors, became just too great: she caught
him off balance with a letter-perfect ankle sweep that was far too brusque for
this tyro, who hit the mat with a thud and a gasp. She turned and headed for
the showers without so much as a backward glance at the young giant who fell
so poorly and whom she knew would be lying doubled up with pain, rubbing his
bruised tailbone.

She drank tea in a café, feeling anxious at the idea of going home. She saw a
handsome boy looking at her and Bret's huntress instincts returned as she
turned the full force of her redoubtable charisma on him. But before the
barrage of charm could deliver its voluptuous poison, her target was joined by
a young cover-girl type and Bret asked for the check.

In a Latin Quarter movie-house where her professional relations with the
manager earned her freebees, she yawned for an hour at a new British film,
coldly and extravagantly erotic, finally decided to go home.

As Bret removed her makeup in front of the triple mirror, the tiny wrinkles
under the chin were more demoralizing than usual. She thought of a sleeping
pill, then rejected it out of pride: she wasn't there yet....

And indeed she went to sleep easily enough, but her dreams were haunted by a
remote, abstract eroticism...

When she awoke, it was 4:35 AM by the luminous dial she could only just read
through sticky eyelids.

Out of habit, she assumed thirst and the need to pee had roused her. Body and
mind still half-asleep, she sat up in bed, pushed back the covers...

... and came suddenly wide awake, listening intently.

There was someone else in her apartment.

The spiral staircase that wound up from living room had distinctly creaked.

First reflex : phone the police...

But the receiver remain suspended in mid-air as a perverse thought crossed her
mind : could not this nocturnal visitor help relieve her ennui? An occasion to
have some fun in Paris for a change!

With a delightful feeling of letting go, Bret Blade decided to play Emma Peel!

Without a sound, relying only on her sense of touch in the dark, she quickly
slipped into the first piece of working gear that came to hand, her cat-suit,
whose matte black leather would render her invisible. As she zipped it up the
front slowly and noiselessly, Bret knew she was doing nothing very brave: with
the double advantage of darkness and surprise, and the many ways she knew of
hurting people very badly, she didn't doubt she could have the upper hand with
even the most Herculean burglar.

She felt under the bed and found a pair of black laceless tennis shoes.

But how had he managed to get in without waking her?

In the darkness of the entrance hall, she ran her fingers over the door : no
sign of a break-in. Her visitor was a regular Arsène Lupin! Unless, of course,
he had the keys? But no one had the keys to Bret Blade's apartment.

Moving silently on her rubber soles, she reached the underside of the spiral
stairs, silhouetted against the streaks of street-lighting visible through the
venetian blinds. Upstairs in the dungeon where she plied her trade, there was
a faint sound of someone rummaging. The door to what she called her "closet
full of tricks" squeaked...

Then came another familiar sound : the rustle of her big latex cape, the pièce
de résistance of her working wardrobe. It was then she realized she was not
dealing with an ordinary burglar. Any apprehension she might have felt gave
way to anger...

The stairs began creaking again and Bret saw the tall, pot-bellied silhouette
cautiously descending - a silhouette which was not unfamiliar...

z

Laden with his rustling booty, filled with anguish, B... makes his way down
the corkscrew stairs with infinite precautions. But...

... no sooner has he set foot on the parquet floor when he feels a slender,
supple silhouette leap against his back. His shout of thrilled surprise
becomes a scream of pain as wiry fingers worm between his thighs and become
steel clamps around his testicles. Doubled up by a dreadful traction, he feels
the irresistible power of a sinewy calf as it sweeps his legs right out from
under him. His forehead smashes against the hardwood parquet, a flash of light
explodes in his head. Half-stunned, all resistance gone, he suddenly feels
like a big inflatable doll in the hands of the invisible attacker with her
superhuman skills and whose lithe, body exhales a heady smell of leather...

No sooner has he hit the floor when his right thumb is seized, given a
strange, vicious twist, and then he screams and screams as the pain in all the
sockets of his arm, twisted several ways at once, it seems, forces him to
heave his heavy body his shoulder and the suddenly his own captive arm is
pulled garrot-like across his throat. Half-throttled, he is suffering horribly
in thumb and shoulder... and in one kidney too : a bony knee seems almost
accidentally to be digging into the small of his back. And now a hand so frail
and cool he can scarcely imagine it belonging to his brutal assailant, feels
its way up his cheek, moving towards his hairline in what might almost be
mistaken for a loving caress...

And of course the man knows whose hand this is, and has already got a hard-on
imagining the pleasures ahead... until he realizes the "game" isn't over yet,
and that those fingers apparently caressing his cheekbone are in fact
searching for the temple, on which they now exert sudden, unbearable pressure
: he hears himself whimper like a child... before slipping into oblivion.

z

Increased by only a few pounds per square inch, the pressure which Bret Blade
had just exerted with tips of her crossed index and middle fingers on the
cavity called Tayang would have put her burglar to sleep for all eternity. The
old qin na master who had imparted to her the secrets of that deadly art
during her long residence in Shanghai, had also taught her to subtly dose the
damage inflicted on her opponents' vital spots. The shock to the intruder's
brain was only temporary, it would leave no lesion. However, unless she
actively ministered to him in certain ways, her "patient" wouldn't not wake
for hours... with the migraine of a lifetime.

Releasing the now superfluous arm-lock, she stood up and felt for the
light-switch. A soft halogen glow dispersed the shadows and she burst out
laughing. She had just recognized her nocturnal visitor as B..., one of her
fetishist johns, generous enough with his money but whose sessions were
indescribably boring. She would have sent him packing long ago were it not for
the financial problems that beset her.

How on earth had he managed to get into her apartment at 4 AM?

She searched the pockets of her knock-out victim and found a duplicate set of
all her keys, including the key to building...

Bret Blade flew into a white rage : her privacy had been invaded, and of all
people by this fat pig! The professional gestures came to her unthinkingly:
quickly untying the shoelaces of her face-down knock-out victim, she folded
his legs so that his feet touched his fat buttocks, crossed his ankles and
wrists and deftly tied his thumbs to his shoes.

A vicious Lesbian whom Bret had had a crush on because she was an airport
security guard (our bisexual heroine often fantasized about women in uniform)
had taut her the technique in a moment of passion. Bret herself had
considerably improved on it with a diabolical Chinese slip-knot and used it
only on submissives with a taste for hard bondage, close to actual torture.

Bret lit the gas under the kettle, gazing down at the body that lay bound on
her living room floor. She had regained her poise, and a wan smile appeared on
her lips. What a nerve! He had her keys! But how?

Lying on the floor were her rubber cape and other accessories that B... had
been trying to make off with. And she remembered the words of a fellow
dominatrix : "A scrap of plastic is all it takes, it doesn't matter who's
wearing it... We are like a sail on the horizon... With a fetishist the
important thing is to make him realize there's a person inside..."

And Bret promised to give herself that satisfaction!

A "scenario for johns" popped into her head : yes indeed, how did he get those
keys. And she would find that out before she turned him over to the police.
For the first time in a long while, she was looking forward to a "session",
despite the ungodly hour.

But... turn him over to the police?

Really?

And Bret Blade had a dream...

Taking a maso, or better yet a fetishist, further than he wants to go, was
something that had always excited her... But with her paying customers there
were generally limits, the usual "conventions" passed between the maso and his
hired "sadist" : no canes, or no marks, or no pain or or no hard bondage.
Those who did want to be hurt always wanted it in one special way (a whip on
the backside, battery-clips on the nipples, a scissors strangle-hold...). With
recreational lovers, the limitations were generally even greater. Thus far,
for example, she hadn't managed to get Bart to play her games at all!

And here a game had landed in her lap, and the only limits would be those she
cared to set! Here was an opportunity to blow off steam on a grand scale, to
liberate all the frustrations, vexations, resentments and repressed anger
which she had been nurturing ever since her return from the West Indies four
months ago. Get back at them all for those boring lesbians, those
self-involved, workaholic male lovers, and the Parisian environment where she
suffocated. Get back above all for having no other options in life but to
offer her feet to be licked for an hour by an unending series of exasperating
johns in exchange for a few miserable banknotes, johns of which the man at her
feet represented the most vile specimen.

The technique by which she had caused her lamentable burglar to lose
consciousness, Bret Blade had already used it to knock out opponents in bar-
or street-fights. Once, having drunk a bit too much, she had used it to kill a
karate-wise pickpocket she'd decked in a back alley of Singapore. However, the
satisfaction derived from these accomplishments had been largely athletic. To
have sent to sleep, with finger tips that might have killed him, this
ridiculously pretentious man who had not a ghost of a chance against her
skills, had filled her with an evil sense of power she had never known before,
and it was an intoxicating experience.

B... had delivered himself to her hand and foot... To whom could he complain
about being sequestrated here or about any ill treatments he might receive?
The brand new keys in his pocket were damning evidence of criminal intent!

And if need be, Bret Blade had the power to erase certain memories...

Her mind was made up : this man would not leave here until she decided to let
him go.

Besides which, ever since she'd recognized her piteous "night prowler", there
had been another idea at the back of her mind: B... was a wealthy man.

That flabby body on the floor, members folded crab-like behind its back,
completely defenseless, could be the object of any treatment she wished to
deal out for as long as she pleased - but might also be a way to resolve her
financial problems, pay for her West Indian holiday in the Fall...

Yes, perhaps the summer wouldn't be such a disaster after all.

She bent down, rolled the man over on his back, squatted above his chest to
avoid spraining his ankles with her weight, grasped his scalp with both hands
and pressed her thumbs into the center of his eyebrows. Pressed hard... There
was a gurgling sound and the man opened his eyes, whimpering with pain (the
same butch policewoman had taut Bret this... first aid technique!)

Seeing her prisoner was awake, Bret released the nerve-pressure and brought
her face close to his...

"Well, my friend, is this an hour to be paying a call?"

The man stared up at her in a daze.

She dangled the keys above his nose.

"And how do you explain these?"

A few inaudible stammers, then silence.

"I'm listening... Nothing?"

Bret Blade again bent over the man on his side, laid light fingers on his
cheek, probed the facial muscles and gave a brutal in-depth pinch.

The scream that escaped the man's lips was barely human... Bret congratulated
herself on the sound-proofing of her apartment.

The pincer-like fingers relaxed their grip but remained in contact with the
sensitive spot.

"Hurts, doesn't it? The trigeminal nerve... I pretend to be cruel for my
living, but I can really be cruel free of charge. And I rather enjoy it... Now
what about those keys?"

Silence.

"Now listen to me: do you want me to collapse one of your lungs? I can do it
easily enough and believe me, it's very unpleasant" Her thumb was already
probing the inside of his forearm : "Feel the pain begin? This cavity is
called neigan, it is located on the meridian of the pericardium..."

"Please don't! The keys were lying on the coffee table one day, you were
dressing in the bedroom, I happened to have some wax..."

"So you planned it..."

The thumb dug deeper...

The man choked violently, murmured : "I can't breath..."

"I know... Yes, who? Yes, my doggie?"

She unexpectedly stabbed him in the hollow of the throat with her finger tips:
the contraction blocked his trachea and the scream was barely audible. She
released her grip and while waiting for her victim to catch his breath, she
let her weight press gradually down on his waist.

"You're hurting my legs!"

"Yes, who?"

The voice was scarcely audible: "Yes, mistress."

"That's more like it..."

Bret stood up: "You're not going to get off so easily, you're going to stay
here for a while... in custody." Still coughing spasmodically, the man made an
effort to loosen the bonds that held his thumbs behind him and immediately
squealed with fear.

"You see, it's best to remain perfectly still : those are very special knots,
the more one struggles, the tighter the nooses are drawn till the thumbs fall
off like dead leaves."

Suddenly she became aware of what she was wearing and laughed wholeheartedly,
and said in deliberately vulgar tones : "You like me in this? It wasn't just
the cape that turned you on, the cat-suit did too, remember? I'll bet if this
had been in the closet you'd have taken it too! Do I still give you a
hard-on?" She slipped her hand between his thighs and roughly felt his swollen
cock. "Ah, not bad at all... But when I tell you I'm going to make you get
over that, you'd better believe it... This time, you're not here for kicks..."
she concluded with a vicious little laugh.

She poured herself a second cup of tea wondering what the next step should be
in this "citizens' detention" which Bret knew was legal only in her personal
"heterocosm"...

Seeming to read her thoughts, the jurist in her prisoner came to life : "You
have no right...!"

She eyed him distastefully. "Well, I'm making it my right! And I'm in my
right: you are a burglar caught red-handed with duplicate keys in your
pocket... I could turn you over to the police, where I have many friends,
believe me... All your money wouldn't save you... But I'm not going to do
anything of the sort... I want to play games with you instead..."

She tilted her cup and let a stream of hot tea dribble down the humiliated
man's balding pate, then put it down and knelt beside him.

"And this time, I'm the only one who's going to have fun!" She reached under
his arched body and gave a sharp tug at one lace then the other, miraculously
freeing his hands. He wanted to suck his throbbing thumbs, but she offhandedly
chopped away his arms and roughly gripped his upper lip between thumb and
forefinger, pulling in such a way that he was obliged to clamber to his feet.
He clutched at her hand to tear it away but the twisting pain her fingers then
inflicted caused all resistance to cease. It was like leading a bull by a ring
in the nose : she felt almost embarrassed by her captive's whimpering, so
strong was the impression of hurting a dumb animal.

The passing weakness was quickly swept aside by her Sadeian instincts.

As soon as her victim could stand on his stiff legs, Bret leg go of his lip
and immediately seized him by the wrist and armpit, applying a ferocious pinch
to the hindmost tendon.

The man's whole upper body was instantly paralyzed; whimpering, begging for
mercy, he could only yield to an imperious shove.

"I hope your enjoying my qin na tricks... I doubt you've still got that
hard-on, eh? You're all the same : as soon as the fantasy becomes real,
there's nobody home!"

She forced him back up the spiral stairs, kneeing him painfully on the
tailbone every few steps or in the hollows of his pelvis (she remembered her
prisoner was sometimes prone to attacks of bursitis.)

In the dark dungeon, walls covered with black velvet, spotlighted displays of
equipment here and there, Bret led B... to a low bamboo cage.

"This is my guest-room... Do you like the looks of it? No?.. Well, never mind,
it's time for a nap..." Bret's fingers slid down his arm and she exhaled
sharply as the tip of her thumb burrowed deep into the hollow between thumb
and index finger: the cavity known as fukuo.

The blackout was instantaneous, she had to sidestep quickly to avoid the
weight of the flabby body as it fell.

Bret Blade then raised the door to the cage, went to the wall where certain
accessories hung against the black velvet and took them down.

3

Ô blasphème de l'art ! ô surprise fatale !

La femme au corps divin promettant le bonheur

Par le haut se termine en monstre bicéphale !

Charles Baudelaire

Regaining consciousness, B... 's first sensation is great pain, diffuse at
first, then located more and more precisely in his testicles, one shoulder,
his cheek, his upper lip, an armpit, a thumb, a temple ... The memory of his
insane escapade and humiliating capture is beginning to return. Why oh why was
he not content with his monthly meetings with the terrifying woman?

He opens his eyes but sees nothing. Sudden panic! Blind? But then the pungent
odor in his nostrils tells him he is wearing a leather hood. A fetishist's
reflex would immediately take his hand to his crotch but he now discovers that
his elbows are fastened to the heavy belt around his waist which appears to be
the only piece of "clothing" he is wearing, except for this hood and... a hard
shell of plastic, held in place by heavy straps and which encloses his
genitalia. Completely awake now, he suddenly panics and tries to cry out, but
something smooth and pliant fills his mouth hermetically, pressing his tongue
to the palate. His feet are untrammeled, but his legs are half bent, in a
position which further increases his discomfort : he cannot stretch them out
because of some obstacle which feels like bamboo. And he remembers the low,
narrow cage briefly glimpsed in the darkness before the diabolical dominatrix
had sprung another of her mysterious pressure-point tricks and made him pass
out again.

Paralyzed with fear, aware of having fallen into the hands of a dangerous
madwoman with martial skills that border on magic, he sees himself trapped in
an everlasting nightmare.

The hours go by in endless succession.

When finally he hears the staircase creaking, his relief is boundless :
whatever tortures may await him, this suspense is worst of all. He recognizes
Bret Blade's professional voice, gentle, reassuring and playful, but now it
contains a deadly menace as well:

"I caught up on the sleep you stole from me, thief... How do you like my
tiger's cage? It's a copy of the ones used by the South Vietnamese: the
prisoner can neither sit up straight or stretch out on his back. After a
while, this is becomes most uncomfortable. There are johns who love it, but
they only spend an hour or two in there..."

B... has a strong whiff of intoxicating perfume, as Bret Blades hands busy
themselves about his hooded head. There is a sound of air escaping and the
tiny balloon which fills his mouth shrinks and withdraws. Then a loud sound of
Velcro tearing fills his ears and after a moment's dazzlement, he sees his
beautiful jailer's face peering down at him through the bamboo bars.

Bret Blade is wearing black, as she has done every time he has come to her,
and in the darkness of her dungeon all he sees is the oval of her face
hovering above the cage, an evil smile on the tight lips.

"How long are you going to have to stay here? You were a lawyer, you ought to
know what attempted burglary is worth..."

B... tries to conceal his fear, to defy the contemptuous gaze drilling into
him. And so he remains silent..

But not for long. The woman's fingers find a clump of muscles on his side and
give them a wrench. The pain takes his breath away before he hears himself
screaming inside the leather bag...

"Already forgotten my little parlor tricks? I could have done that harder and
you'd have a burst pancreas... Very nasty... When I ask you a question, Thing
- because from now on that's your name, Thing, like the Addams Family, you
know... when I ask, you answer."

His voice surprises him, hoarse and weak, muffled by the hood over his ears:
"Three to five years..."

"Really? Well, what would you say to serving your sentence here, starting
right now. Caught in the act, we'll skip remand and the trial... and play a
few games of which Amensty International would disapprove... What do you say?
I have johns who'd give an arm and a leg for this! Maybe you're one of them
and that's why you did it. The truth is you wanted to be caught, isn't it?"
Her hand is at his aching side again.. "Answer me! That's it, isn't it?"

"I don't know... Maybe... Probably..."

"Probably who?" The fingers tense dangerously.

"Probably, Mistress..."

The hand is withdrawn.

"Fine... Now, I'm going to feed you... I want my Thing to keep his strength."
And without further ado, she slips a thin rubber tube into the cage and
connects it to the hood. I kind of warm soup begins slowly flowing into his
mouth. He has no choice but to swallow it.

A few minutes later, the soup stops flowing.

He tries to speak, he must reason with this madwoman... But already he hears
the sound of a rubber bulb being squeezed and the balloon swells up inside his
mouth, stilling him again.

"Here, we eat when I say so, we talk when I give permission and we don't leave
this cage unless I open it. And I might point out that we don't play with
ourselves either : I carry the key to that chastity belt you're wearing,
snugly nestled between my breasts. An idea which turns you on, perhaps, but I
advise against getting a hard-on: the inside of that shell is set with steel
points which I have coated with viscous phenol specially for you..."

And so saying, she seals in place the flap that blindfolds him. But before
leaving the cage, she has some comforting words for her prisoner : ""Your
sufferings won't begin right away : in the soup, there was something to make
you sleep." And indeed already the faint sound of her rubber soles on
linoleum, the creaking of the spiral stairs, fade into an infinitely welcome
dreamland.

3

However whipped man's pain and shame began to give way

to sensations that were more complex (...)

It seemed to him that each excruciating bite

became some strange perverse kiss, a kiss of fire,

like the diabolical brand which she-devils

stamp upon the brows of those they have damned.

Pierre MacOrlan : La comtesse au fouet

The john was a demanding one who needed two women to deal with him. As a
consequence - and not counting the Thing in his cage - three people were
crowded into Bret Blade's little dungeon that day.

The client was spread-eagled on his back suspended by his wrists and ankles
about three feet from the floor by a system of pulleys, poire d'angoisse in
the mouth, blindfold over the eyes. Bret was holding a Chinese pinwheel and
adroitly teasing the sensitive spots on the upper body - nipples, armpits,
throat, cheeks, eyelids - while Eve, a tall fleshy blonde, was kneading
buttocks, anus, testicles and cock with a horsehair glove. In spite or no
doubt because of all these sources of discomfort and pain, the man had a huge
erection. The women knew exactly when to pause, change pace, or generally
intensify their manipulations. The leather gag was of excellent quality, they
heard only vague grunts from their ecstatic victim, mingling with the facile
harmonies of Keith Jarrett that rose from the living room below. Most audible
however was Bret Blade's voice as she poured into the suspended man's ear a
lascivious description of the scene. But Bret was bored and voice was becoming
less and less expressive, more and more monotonous...

"Careful Bret, remember what happened last time." Bret smiled at the memory of
the john she'd unwittingly hypnotized, and broke off her patter for a bloody
pass with the pin-wheel, counteracting the soporific fluids her voice and her
body oils emitted with such force.

The john took a long time coming, far too long. As the women went on with
their manipulations, never missing a beat, they exchanged weary glances.

The spasm came at last, wetting the horsehair glove. They lowered the splayed
body and led him out of the dungeon as he had entered it : blindfolded. He had
not so much as suspected the presence of the "other client".

The "spider-man" had left half an hour ago, and the two friends took tea in
their working gear. That day, Bret Blade was in black leather - a tailored
jacket with an officer collar, terrifying in its severity, leather jodhpurs
square-toed patent leather riding boots and a leather flying-helmet that
hugged her perfect cranium. Eve had opted for rubber : Bret's long cape over a
cat-suit which statufied her voluptuous forms.

Though very well paid, the session had left them both unsatisfied : the john's
passivity, the pusillanimous limitations he imposed with his money - no marks,
never cross the pain threshold or even approach it. The women raised their
cups in an ironical toast to the departed maso : "What a downer that one was!"

On the other hand, two hours before, Bret had sensed how excited Eve had been
by the possibilities afforded by the Thing, that lump of anonymous flesh,
reduced to silent suffering in the isolation of his hood and the discomfort of
his cage... Eve had said nothing at the time, tacitly taking him for another
of those johns she'd known in a New York dungeon, who loved to spend long
hours, sometimes several days, caged liked animals... and who were always
delighted when some beautiful stranger condescended to play with them.

"Can I have some fun?" asked Eve cocking head her towards the spiral stairs.
And she added : "Can he hear us?"

"The answer to both questions is 'yes' ". Beth's voice was warm and low.

She stood up and turned off the music, as if to mark the turn to serious
matters.

Eve was already on her way up the stairs : there was something eerie about the
crackling rubber and the creaking steps in the quiet that had descended on the
apartment.

When Bret joined her, she stood bending over the cage.

"Can we raise him up?"

Without a word, Bret pressed a spring and swung back the bamboo cover. She
fastened two ropes dangling from the ceiling to hooks on the floor of the
cage, and cranking a small winch-like mechanism, raised the false bottom to
the level of the tall Eve's cunt. The prisoner now lay on an inclined plane,
head down, legs dangling genitals dangling. While this operation had been
going, Eve had taken down from one wall display a two-pronged dildo : now,
opening the crotch-flap of her cat-suit, she slipped one of the branches into
her vagina, already moist with anticipation. Bret unbuckled a strap and
relieved her prisoner of the diabolical cup of hard plastic. But when Eve
approached the splayed body lying head down on the raised board, the Thing's
feet thrashed out spasmodically and she received a sharp blow on the chest.
She backed off in dismay, pressing her hands to her aching breast.

"Allow me" murmured Bret. She stepped past her and deftly caught, just above
the ankles, first one then the other flailing leg; carefully securing her
grip, she exhaled sharply and her whole body tensed as she dug the tips of her
thumbs into a certain point on the inner face of each tibia : a muffled squeal
of pain rose from the beneath hood and the prisoner's legs fell limp. "The
paralysis will last about half an hour..."

"How did you do that?" Eve marveled. "Will you teach me?" A faint smile played
about Bret Blade's lips : she always liked people to think there was something
uncanny about her skills : "It takes years to learn to learn those
pressure-points and attack them effectively... That one is lougu..." When she
spoke the word, it was as if the voice of a Chinese actress had been dubbed
into the conversation ; Eve was duly impressed.

Bret raised and spread the lifeless legs as the dildo advanced and entered the
orifice, which the women enlarged by pulling roughly at the man's buttocks.
The young sadist had left the dildo dry as a bone on purpose. The inlubricated
sodomy was more like an impaling, and drew muffled shrieks of pain from the
Thing. Blood began trickling from the anus, which caused the two confederates
to giggle. Shaking her hips from side to side and back and forth, Eve was
beginning to get excited. Bret had a more detached view of the "action" and
was the first to notice the consequences of the rape, so surprising that she
made a fatal slip : "A week in there, and he can still get it up, that clown!"
Although she was about to come, Eve still had the presence if mind to find
this remark bizarre. Up till now, she'd assumed she was dealing with a very
committed maso... But suddenly she had a doubt. A week? A whole week in there?

Bret was immediately aware of her gaffe... Quickly, she slid her hand over the
taut rubber behind and the firm, studied caresses she delivered through the
thin film of latex, deep between the cheeks, around the anus and pubis, so
spectacularly increased the quotient of her friend's excitement that almost
immediately she plummeted into the maelstrom of a devastating orgasm, which
Bret hoped would make her colleague forget her little slip. If this fails,
Bret Blade thought to herself, she might well have another prisoner on her
hands, a prospect she certainly did not relish, one which moreover seemed
materially impossible...

Eve was preparing to leave, but Bret offered her a glass of Dutch genevra
which she couldn't very well refuse. The younger woman made no reference to
her hostess' strange remark. Was Eve aware how intently, albeit discreetly,
she was being watched for any sign of forbidden knowledge? Atched by a woman
of whom Eve knew full well that however frail she might appear in her elegant
black leather suit, she had at her fingertips the power to stop her heart?

z

There is pain in the Thing's anus and rectum. The Thing is feeling sorry for
itself, tears are flowing inside the hood that imprisons. Thank goodness that
horrible woman who tortured him has left, he no longer hears her mocking
laughter down below. And yet, this brutal change of routine has roused the
Thing from its lethargy : and as it thinks about that woman and her laughter,
a hundred needles gradually penetrate the tender flesh of the penis : a
hard-on, which dies immediately of course, only to begin to rise again...

But the fleeting erection is enough to remind him that he is not a foetus in
his mother's belly, but a grown-up man.

The staircase begins to creak, the Mistress's footsteps draw near.

The Mistrss he loves with all his being. Sometimes he wonders why. Shouldn't
he hate her instead? Yet however diminished his faculties, he does know that
along with the pain and fear, pleasure and desire have entered his life with
Her.

The whoosh of air, the scratch of Velcro...and Bret Blade, perfect bosom
sculpted in softly glowing leather, looks down at him with what might almost
be taken for commiseration: "Poor old Thing, you're having a hard time of it,
aren't you?"

B...'s tears redoubled at this unexpected display of pity.

"But tomorrow a great change awaits you... And right now, a small one..."

In an instant, the cage is open. The supremely competent hands help him to
his, help him over the side of the cage in which he has been shut away for who
knows not how long, and which in his confusion he is suddenly afraid he will
miss!

The next thing he knows he is lying on the ground again, but the belt is gone
and the diabolical cup, and his head is lying on a soft cushion. Ah, to
stretch out his legs at last ! But immediately he screams. "That's the effect
of the tiger-cage" she sighs not without a touch of mockery. A vigorous,
knowing massage of his knee-tendons ultimately enables him to extend them all
the way.

Then, kneeling beside him, she applies her science of finger-tip massage to
his temples. Despite the gloves she wears, she seems to feel every minute
detail of his anatomy. Her touch is infinitely delicate and yet a stab of pain
on the right hand side reminds him of the terrifying pressure of those same
tapered fingers that knocked him out a long time ago ...

"Yes, my friend, tomorrow is a wonderful day for me because I am getting
married... The dream of a lifetime, a husband just for me and no more money
worries! That's all men are good for really, don't you know?" All the while
she is delivering this unexpected speech, Bret Blade is doing something
equally strange : slowly she pulls down the zipper on the mandarin collar of
her leather cat-suit until the perfect cleavage is fully revealed. But B...' s
gaze is immediately trapped by something beside the forbidden flesh : a small
pendent nestling in the intimate cleft. A precious jewel no doubt, whose
innumerable facets seem to focus there, between the woman's breasts, whatever
light there is to gather from the dim room which has become his home.

"Lovely, no?" The words were ambiguous. "You like my precious jewels? The one
in the middle was a gift from the Tadjah of Nyapore, it I said to be a very
powerful stone, full of energy... Look hard and you can see the energy surging
deep inside the stone, try to see the energy, it will make you feel better, I
promise you..." B...wants to look up, see the face of this woman whose voice
is so unexpectedly solicitous and soothing, but Bret Blade presses her cool
gloves firmly to his cheekbones : "No, keep looking at the gem between my
breasts, see how it shines...! A slight tremor of her torso causes the pendent
to sparkle. And Bret Blade talks on and on, in even, soothing, monotonous,
sleep-inducing tones... The flashes of light stab into B...'s brain like so
many daggers, the meaning of her words is lost... until she begins to count :
"1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6..." and at 10 he felt an electric touch on the hollows of
his wrists : lightening coursed through his body...

Someone far, far away is listening carefully to instructions whose meaning he
cannot fathom...

4

Three thousand years of sleep-unsheltered hours

And moments aye divided by keen pangs

Till they seemed years, torture and solitude,

Scorn and despair

John Keats : Prometheus Unbound

Bret Blade was very pleased with herself. Wearing a tailored high-fashion
leather suit, she sat before her dressing-table mirror putting on the false
lashes that veiled a gaze that was irresistible inmate ways that one. At last
she was going to have independent means! She could stop "doing the Minitel",
stop seeing submissives... escept perhaps for a few that still amused her...
Henceforth she could do whatever she wished!

Since her first husband had abandoned her melodramatically, she had never
succeeded in living with a man for more than a few months : he would either be
the jealous type who couldn't handle her professional activities or the
compulsive philandering of a lover who regarded monogamy as an aberration, or
else he would too hung up to be a good lay.

From now on, she was going to enjoy all the advantages that attractive woman
could expect to get out of life "in today's world": she would have a rich
husband in no position to deny her slightest whim, submissive to her now in
the full sense of the word!

She took from her wardrobe the clothes she had stripped from her prisoner on
that fateful night, climbed to the dungeon, opened the bamboo cage and
relieved her inmate of the hood that deprived him of his vision and his voice.

"Thing, I want you to listen carefully : yesterday I hypnotized you. This is a
talent of mine of which you knew nothing, but you needn't take my word for it,
I'm going to give you a little demonstration. Right now, you feel quite
normal, you are wide awake and you remember, I suppose, who you were before
you became the Thing... But I have only to pronounce certain words - in
Chinese, which should avoid the odd accident - and you will go into a trance,
or you will faint, or you will lose your memory, or else this will happen to
you..." She spoke a word in Chinese. B... screamed and tried to put his hands
to his crotch... "You see? One word from me and it will feel as if I were
crushing your balls as I did on that very first night. When I'm not so much as
touching you..." Another Chinese word and the man sagged, panting. "What
ghastly thing have you doing to me what you just did to me..." he exclaimed
With something of his old pomposity. "Ghastly? I've made you my absolute
slave... Doesn't that excite you just a little ? Go on, think about it, you'll
have plenty of time... So, as you can see, I have implanted in your mind
post-hypnotic reflexes that neither that you cannot resist - as I had
suspected, you are an especially susceptible subject, masochists usually are.
And remember too that those commands can only be deactivated by my voice...."

She unbuckled the belt that held his wrists, removed the needle-lined cup and
saw that the tiny red dots on his penis were deeper than before. "I see you are
getting into to it!" she mused, half to herself. She helped her prisoner out
of his cage, sat him on a bench and handed him his clothes. "Get dressed...
We're going out this morning..."

z

B..., who knows full well he is not a Thing, that this is the name She has
given him, is beyond fear. He simply wonders, quite objectively how this has
happened to him, but also says to himself that playing with fire is a way to
get burned.

He dresses unthinkingly. He follows the woman in the stylish leather suit,
smoky stockings and high heeled-shoes down a winding staircase he vaguely
remembers once having climbed, with Her hurting him terribly from behind.

The journey is disconcertingly familiar: the landing, the stairs, the street,
the car-park, the car...

... then a sudden revolt and he begins to run, he is going to be free !

But a strange sing-song voice behind him speaks just two nasal syllables...

Then a blank.

More sing-song words, close to his ear.

And suddenly he find himself in a setting he recognizes : the wedding hall of
the mairie du sixième arrondissement, where he once attended the civil union
of a despised colleague.

Now he is aware that the mayor, a pint-sized man with a tricolor sash across
his paunch, seems to be waiting for him to do something...

"Answer the mayor, darling." He turns towards the source of that voice at his
ear, a voice he knows so well and his gaze meets Bret Blade's sardonic grin as
she lays her hand on his shoulder, fingers caressing the neck muscles. "We're
getting married, my dear," she said softly, "and you can't imagine the pain
you're going to be in one second from now if you don't say "yes" to the man !
"

And so he does as he is told because even in a waking state, his will-power is
totally submerged by the woman's... The rings are exchanged... Another
sing-song word in his ear...

Again, he is sitting in the car next to "she-who-must-be-obeyed" - a familiar
expression, he says to himself, but can't quite place it - driving across the
pont du Carrousel. "We'll get everything settled in one day, that will set our
minds at rest : we're going to the notary to make out your will ! Aren't you
pleased?"

Though his mind has been dulled by weeks of imprisonment, drugs and hypnotic
sessions, B...'s mind has finally grasped the situation with what remains of
his former intelligence, he understands what he is up against and starts to
laugh hysterically.

"Well," says his beautiful tyrant, "I'm glad to see you're taking it in good
stead..."

But the gales of laughter turn to sobs...

Bret Blade strokes his neck as she would an animal's...

"Don't worry, I shan't make you suffer much longer, poor fellow. In the end,
you'll have done me a wonderfully good turn with that crazy idea of yours ! I
won't forget it..."

z

In the notary's office, there occurred an incident more worrisome than the
slight hesitation in front of his honor the mayor. Was it out of some obscure
legalistic impulse that Bret Blade wanted her slave aware if not consenting as
he went through the motions that would make her - or rather make one Barbara
Brimstone - B...'s sole legatee ? Whatever the case, before she had time to
take from her bag the document he had penned to her dictation under hypnosis,
B... began stammering dangerous words under the very nose of a notary, whom
Bret had chosen because he was rather deaf: "Please sir, you must help me..."
A sharp sing-song command rang out and a terrible pain in the chest put an end
to the pitiful attempt. Her victim clutched at his heart and moaned. Bret beat
a hasty retreat, hurrying B... to the door with what looked like a comforting
arm around his shoulder but was actually a qin na muscle-pinch that was
absolutely compelling.

"My husband doesn't feel well... wedding fever, you know... We'll make another
appointment..."

She was going to have to implant a more detailed script in what was left of
the Thing's mind, so he could carry out this part in deep trance. In front of
a different notary!

All in all, however, Bret was pleased with her day: the crucial step had been
accomplished, the rest would be a mere formality. She was at last going to be
able to leave "the planet of the apes" as she had been known to call the world
of fun and games where she had been going round in circles for years without
ever satisfying either her need to create - her published stories were
appreciated by connoisseurs but were few and far between - nor her need for
violence and for power over others, which the conventions of S&M kindled but
never satisfied.

She had to take B... back to her apartment : she was not yet sure enough of
her hold over him to send him home with instructions. She needed to subject
him to several days of intensive conditioning before she made him jump that
all-important hurdle with the notary. Only then would she return him to the
semblance of freedom that her plan required.

But there's many a slip...

As she headed for the corkscrew staircase, controlling with a powerful
wrist-press the cumbersome body beside her, a body she intended to cure once
and for all of its rebellious impulses, she noticed the answering machine was
blinking. With her free hand, she pressed "play".

And now, as she guided her slave up the steps, there came a surprise, one
which was both pleasant and unpleasant. Bart, her current lover, was back in
own... She hadn't expected him so soon, and there he was announcing his
arrival for 6 PM... She had hardly ten minutes to spare, the boy was
desperately punctual.

Bart knew about his lover's professional activities and never referred to
them. She sensed he felt flattered having for "mistress" (in the phallocentric
way he understood the term!) a woman who earned a livelihood "playing Marquis
De Sade" as he put it. It was lucky for Bart she did earn a good living, for
like most of Bret's lovers, he was perpetually broke - and she had always
perceived this disinterested choice of sexual partners as a personal failing.
In any event, despite several initiatives on her part at the beginning of
their relationship, the young man just wasn't interested in S&M.. Which
secretly annoyed her. But he was tall and handsome and strong, and he was a
great lay. So Bret was biding her time, confident ultimately she could raise
the ante, as it were.

B..., although outwardly accustomed to his condition as Bret Blade's slave,
nonetheless put up some resistance as she tried to get him back into his cage.
She hesitated a fraction of second between a command in Chinese and physical
punishment : she wanted some exercise... and decided to punish the silly
marionette for his insolence.

Crossing index and forefinger to stiffen them, she jabbed the Thing just hard
enough in the sternum to double him over, swiveled behind him and rammed her
knee against the sensitive edge his hip-bone, which sent him sprawling on his
face. He lay on the black linoleum, quivering in all his limbs from the shock
to his nervous system. Bret yanked her tight skirt up around her waist and
lifting one shapely nylon leg in both hands like a dancer till her foot high
was straight over her head, she struck the man a blow on the tail-bone that
might have crippled him for life but was only hard enough to paralyze him
momentarily. Not quite unconscious, nor completely a dead weight, the Thing
was like a big passive doll in her hands : panting, moaning, hands and feet
moving feebly, he submitted unresisting now to the twists and pulls woman's
skilled hands.

Lifting the side of the cage, she had no difficulty in fitting her prisoner
into his uncomfortable position, slipping the hood over his head and the gag
into his mouth, strapping on the chastity belt and the needle-lined shell.

Just in time : the doorbell was ringing.

All that was lacking was the swell of romantic music on the sound-track : lit
from behind in a supremely gossamer contre-jour, Bart's Beth stood smiling
sweetly at him in the open doorway.

Bret Blade in her mind, however... wished she were happier to see this lover.

There was no way around it : Bart's presence in Paris was going to complicate
her life considerably.

From the start, she gave up the idea of playing Bluebeard, with his forbidden
room : "I've got a boarder upsairs," she said between kisses, as casually as
she knew how : "Just a few more days. How could I refuse? A thousand francs an
hour in a cage with a hood on his head, and it's for me to decide when it's
over!"

Bret smiled inwardly: Bart couldn not possibly guess the real meaning of her
words... nor that the reward she was expecting would be immensely higher than
she suggested.

Bret Blade had just enacted, in a gentle mode, that phrase she remembered from
an old American movie - "Do it to him before he does it to you". It was the
philosophy of her life and had enabled her to nip a number of dangerous
encounters in the bud.

Bart started laughing that forced laugh of complicity he affected at such
moments : "Wow, those "M-s" are something!"

And Bart took Bret in his arms, the lucky bastard...

After which, Bart and Bret had sex, which was after all the chief reason for
his visit.

Let it suffice to report that it did a great deal for Bret Blade's morale,
without needing to dwell on the details for in the words of Nicolas Restif de
la Bretonne (1734-1806): "Ce ne fut là que foutrerie ordinaire et donc sans
intérêt particulier." Bret Blade, however, had a permanent need for that sort
of "ordinary fuckery"... though never with the same man for very long.

Resting after "the sex act" - and the double meaning of the word was floating
as usual at the back of her mind - Bret ignored the phone when it rang. After
four rings, the machine answered and the voice of her fellow domina Eve
reminded her that she still desired the woman's body, unsuccessfully to date.

Distorted as it was by the tiny loudspeaker, Eve's voice still had all the
suavity of the high-class whore. And yet today there something about it that
Bret had never heard before : something grasping and hard.

"Bret, darling, there's an envelope in your letter-box that's very urgent, I
advise you to have a look..."

Her stud still slept. Bret rose in silence, slipped on a T-shirt, cotton
leggings and tennis shoes, and took the stairs four at a time.

In her box there was indeed an envelope...

In the envelope, there were a dozen snapshots : Bret coming out of her
apartment house with B... in tow, of them both getting into her car, going
into and out of the mairie du sixième arrondissement and the notary's office,
etc....

Bret felt faint and had to sit down on the bottom step.

It was several minutes before she regained control.

As she climbed the stairs, a single thought occupied her mind : how was she
going to kill Eve?

Yet even as she re-entered the apartment where Bart was still asleep, where
B..., her radiant future, lay quietly in his cage awaiting the fate Bret had
prepared for him, she remembered all those wonderfully bleak films noir where
nothing ever went the way criminal-hero had planned : a blackmailer always
took his/her precautions - or claimed to have taken them, which amounted to
the same thing...

And yet there was a smile on Bret's face : she had weapons which the
run-of-the mill blackmail victim did not have. And which were not generally
employed in film noir.

But then the smile hardened, as she remembered that Eve knew about her skills
and would be on her guard.

Well, there was an exciting duel ahead : Bret always reveled in a challenge.
And after all, wasn't she defending her right to retire with a decent pension?

z

The Thing hears footsteps on the spiral staircase : the creaking sound denotes
more weight than usual.

"Hi, how you doing?"

The gently mocking voice that reaches the Thing's ears belongs to a man. His
rescuer?

From behind the huge hand of moist, pungent leather clasped to his face,
behind the obscene rubber finger pressing on his tongue, B... manages a few
throaty sounds, triying desperately to express the anguish he feels, with
little hope of success.

And yet...

"What's this thing?

There was a sound of air escaping. And the longed for hiss brought the
drowning man back to the surface one last time...

"Oh my god, thank you, thank you... Listen young man, you must help me : I am
not here of my own free will as She must have told you if She let you come up
here, I've been a prisoner here for months and months, years perhaps, I can't
remember, you must tell the police... And now quick, pump the gag up again! If
She found out..."

And just then, he heard Her voice calling the young man... who had almost the
same name as She ! A bad omen, thought the superstitious old lawyer. The
relief he had felt from this brief contact with the outside world was already
fading.

"Don't mess with the john, darling," he heard, "he's very sensitive."

5

Iron maidens covered with spikes

Madonnas haloed in Spanish daggers

Sebastian and his tree cut down in full flight

Barb-wire cactus wild rosebush

Bret travels the same way as you

after Jean Cocteau

It was not of course at Bret Blade's apartment that Eve had agreed to meet
her, but in front of the merry-ground at the Forum des Halles at 5 PM on a
Wednesday afternoon, surrounded by the mamas and a few papas watching their
little ones ride.

Eve's demands were simple : "Fifty-fifty".

She was lovely and feminine that afternoon in her low-cut silk dress, high
heels and moiré Dior tights. Once again, and in spite of the hatred in her
breast, Bret fancied the woman ; even the greed that she could read in her
almond eyes seemed to enhance her beauty.

Bret herself was wearing black leather as usual, a jacket and pipe-stem
stretch-leather trousers by Jitrois.

To give herself time to think, she drew a herbal cigarette from the discreet
pouch at her belt. Other cigarettes in the same pack contained a powerful drug
and had helped her extricate herself from more than one delicate predicament.

But Eve never smoked.

Bret appeared to be thinking over the conditions laid down by her enemy -
which she actually thought quite reasonable, considering the present balance
of power between them. In reality, however, she was solely preoccupied with
the ways and means of reversing that power relationship, by neutralizing her
antagonist there and then.

True, there was no special urgency, since the women had agreed to come to
terms and the will still hadn't been notarized.

But it was in Bret Blade's nature to want to set her mind at rest as soon as
possible.

Eve had chosen their meeting-place well : too much noise, too many
distractions to be hypnotized unawares, as Bret could easily have done in a
calmer environment.

It was also a place where the use of force seemed utterly out of the question.

"Or was it?" thought Bret to herself.

To legalize the new will which would guarantee the blackmailer's share "at the
source", they made an appointment with a notary chosen by Eve... Bret raised
no objections : she had her plan and high hopes the appointment would never
take place.

They parted with no amenities, in opposite directions. Watching Eve over her
shoulder, Bret transferred from pouch to jacket pocket an authentic police
inspector's card, once provided by a highly-placed submissive - along with
other official papers in the name of "Barbara Brimstone".

Judging it was time to act, the terrifying woman turned and began running
after Eve.

On the crepe-soled ankle-boots that encased her feet like gloves, Bret Blade
ran very fast, dodging in and out amongst the moving obstacles constituted by
the many bystanders. Some were annoyed, others simply surprised. But there
were still others, mostly men, whose eyes lit up at the sight of a lovely
woman clad from head to toe in black leather, slaloming so gracefully...

When Eve sensed a hostile presence behind her, it was too late : imperative
fingers seized her left hand, bending back her thumb and exerting paralyzing
pressure on some nerve in her wrist. She screamed with pain and fear and
called out for help. The crowd of passers-by froze, hesitated. A few men
timidly approached the scene of female violence...

Controlling with just one hand her prisoner's every movement - bent over,
half-squatting, pleading pitifully for help from the hesitant passers-by -
Bret Blade brandished her police card even as she retreated towards the exit
gates. Eve could only hobble along beside her, still screaming for help. No
one ventured to follow, the police card had produced its effect. Bret pocketed
it and gripped her prisoner in a certain way at the base of the skull, dug
deep with her thumb : a sudden paralysis of the vocal chords caused the
screams ceased at once.

Without further incident, they reached the bay where the Mercedes was parked -
illegally, but protected by an official sticker... Having left the rear door
open in anticipation of a precipitous return, she shoved Eve into the back
seat, only then releasing the numbing nerve-pressure. Before the woman could
recover her voice, however, before she even had time to put up a fight, she
found herself attached to the seat with handcuffs hidden under the cushions
(and which often afforded consenting passengers a more pleasant surprise).

Thus shielded from public curiosity, the "inspector" set about deploying
highly unorthodox methods which the law reproves. Extracting from her bag of
tricks a tiny atomizer, she sprayed a soporific drug under the nose of this
erstwhile friend who'd had the nerve to blackmail her. In a voice that was
scarcely audible, Eve begged for mercy, but the words soon dissolved into an
incomprehensible murmur.

Two squirts: a dose calculated not to put her victim to sleep but only to make
her very drowsy : Bret wanted her prisoner under control but not unconcscious.
Now she took from her pouch an Amercan gadget whose efficiency she had heard
praised but had never had an opportunity to use: a small metal case the size
of a large cigarette lighter. She pressed a spring and an umbrella-like frame
covered with a circle of silk unfolded: on it, a black and white spiral design
was printed. She pressed a switch and the pattern began to spin ; Bret brought
the dizzy spiral close to her prisoner's eyes and her monotonous, caressing
voice hastened the moment when Eve's mind would be sucked into the fascinating
whirligig.

In less than half a minute, her enemy was in a trance.

"Eve, this is Bret. Cab you hear me?"

"Yes, Bret".

"You know you must tell me truth."

"I must tell you the truth?"

Bret's voice grew insistent.

"You cannot resist my will, you must tell me the truth... Say it : 'I must
tell you the truth'!"

And Eve submitted.

"Where is the negative?"

"Home."

"There are no copies?"

"No."

Bret started the car, roared away... and one hour later the negative which was
potentially so dangerous to her project was in her possession.

Bret drove aimlessly through the Paris night, deep in thought. What was she to
do with this woman now that she was harmless and in her power ? Do away with
her, no doubt. But how? Her planning had gone no further than the recovery of
the negative.

She thought of a certain well in a field north of the city...

But she also thought that Eve had an exquisite body, that she had never wanted
to "go all the way" with her... and that she had just committed an
unpardonable treachery.

And Beth Blade was not the forgiving kind.

z

The Thing is roused from his lethargic state by a sound of tearing Velcro...

Emerging from his night, he is dazzled by the dungeon's light, dim as it is.
But already he can vaguely make out his Mistress' silhouette leaning over the
Nest : "Come along Thing, you're going to have an eyeful... I want an audience
! Floorshow tonight! I'll even let you jerk off!"

Deftly she removes the spiked cup that imprisons his genitals, then vanishes
from his field of vision, still greatly impaired.

There is a squeak of pulleys and the cage tips up. Gradually his sight is
returning : at the far end of the dungeon he sees what appears to be the naked
body of a woman, spread-eagled on the Saint Andrew's cross. She seems asleep,
her head on one shoulder...

"You see that woman? She's the one who hurt your ass the other day, remember?"
speaking almost as if she expects an answer from her gagged prisoner. "Today,
her turn has come..."

B...'s eyes have adjusted to the semi-darkness.

Bret Blade stands next the crucified woman, facing him ; she wears an obscene
costume made of some dull black substance that clings to her body and can only
be some kind of rubber : a long-sleeved cat-suit that covers her cest and
shouldets but leaves the underside of her breasts bare to the nipples,
hip-boots rise to her crotch, and for the rest, she is naked from the sternum
to the inside of her thighs. He has a brief glimpse of the perfect fleece,
soon replaced by the cleft between bare buttocks, the torturess having turned
towards her "patient".

Bret snapped her fingers and the woman - punished like himself, the Thing
observes, vaguely wondering why - opens her eyes, realizes her position and
starts to whimper.

"Please don't hurt me, I can't bear pain, you know that..."

Bret Blade said not a word but showed her prisoner a small shiny object she
held in her hand ; the Thing couldn't make out what it was.

"Neat little thing, isn't it?"

The young woman was crying.

The Mistress pressed a switch: a low rumble could be heard and the Saint
Andrew's Cross slowly revolved until the woman attached to it was upside down,
her mouth exactly facing her hostess' naked sex. The Mistress took a step
forward and applied the metal object to her victim's left shin... and made
sudden movement.

An inhuman scream resounded in the miniature dungeon...

"You know what to do with your tongue. If I like it, your lovely legs may keep
the rest of their skin..."

The Thing hears little lapping sounds... and then a second scream... Soon,
however, the Mistress began to moan...

"Oh yes, right there...very good, you are a real pro..." she said hoarsely.

The old reflexes are still with him and the Thing feels his member swelling in
spite of himself, and braces himself against the pain. He remembers then that
the diabolical shell is gone, but still he is reluctant to touch himself, he's
known too many bad surprises in the time he's been here... immeasurable time,
a servitude he's no longer sure he's not always known...

He feels the joy of her all-powerful tyranny rising within him, and at long
last his hand ventures to close around his penis.

z

Bret Blade's head lay between the tortured woman's thighs as she abandoned
herself to long, deep spasms. More than her prisoner's knowledgeable caresses,
it was the situation she had created that excited her: for better or for
worse, she knew she was carrying her deepest drives to their ultimate
conclusion, in an almost mystical state of ecstasy.

One last contraction in her belly, and now her jaws contracted spasmodically
as she sank her teeth into the silken skin and tasted blood...

Eve screamed...

"Please Bret, let me go, I won't say anything, I'll never bother you again..."

"You'll never bother anyone again... And to start with you're going to stop
bothering me with your chatter..."

Among other instruments lying on a low table, she picked up a leather-covered
object the size of a golf-ball, but her attempts to thrust it into Eve's mouth
encountered a clenched wall of perfect teeth. She pinched the woman's gums
through her cheeks and the jaws opened reflexively to escape the pain. She
insert the ball into the defenseless orifice and touched a spring : there was
a faint click and the ingenious metal armature inside the poire d'angoisse
expanded, the leather ball doubled in volume and the irritating voice was
silenced.

"You're going to remain in that position for a while... So that the rush of
blood to your brain won't kill you, I'm going to make a small incision..." And
with the tiny curved scalpel she'd just used to cut two strips of skin from
the woman's left leg, she cut open a tiny vein at the base of her neck... A
few drops of blood appeared... "It's a technique the Japanese used on European
missionaries when the country was closed to foreigners... You might call it a
brain drain..." She set a plastic bowl on the floor to catch the drops of
blood and turned to the tiger cage.

"Well, I see you took advantage of the show... Good... That will probably be
your last orgasm." And she spoke the Chinese word which sent the Thing into
deep trance, a near-comatose state which she verified by poking the tip of her
scalpel into the base of the still half-stiff cock. The Thing did not react
but oddly enough, the cock perceptibly raised its head.

"Hmmm", Bret Blade mused. "Thing, can you hear your mistress' voice?"

"Yes Mistress"...

"Good... Do you know where we are?"

"No, Mistress."

"We are in the notary's off... Now, where are we?"

"In the notary's office..."

"Good..." And she provided her hypnotic subject with exactly the words and
sentences which were the only ones he was permitted to speak "in the notary's
office..." She knew it would take several long sessions before she could be
absolutely certain of her slave's behavior when the time came for the decisive
encounter, but now that Eve had been definitively neutralized, she could take
her time... And she shivered with pleasure at the thought that the
blackmailing bitch was right there, could hear every word of the training that
was going to make her, Bret Blade and nobody else, rich.

6

For woman, as Nature has created her and as she attracts men at the present
time, is his enemy and can be for him only a slave or a tyrant,

never a companion.

Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

On the pretext of an imminent journey, Bret Blade cancelled all her
appointments. There was no room in her dungeon for any more johns. And anyway,
she had high hopes of soon being able to abandon an activity which was
increasingly becoming a burden to her.

Eve was now right-side up, her face was white as a sheet and she was in deep
trance, and would remain so until such time as Bret could carry out the plan
that was taking shape in her mind.

As for the Thing, Bret had decided he was ready to face the notary and made an
appointment for the following morning.

Bart rang up on her private line. She felt a powerful need for recreation, and
proposed to visit her lover in his tiny, scruffy flat in the 13th
arrondissement.

Already over the phone she'd thought his voice sounded strange. And his
love-making was not up to his usual standard, so that Bret had to stimulate
herself by thinking of the voluptuous tortures she'd just inflicted on Eve. It
was perhaps time to think of taking a new lover.

The post-coital wind-down began in silence. Bret had the feeling her lover was
itching to say something he couldn't bring himself to spit it out.

She offered to give him a massage.

Bret Blade's massages, learned in Cambodia and India, were particularly
skillful, and Bart always welcomed them with joy.

She began with knowledgeable manipulations up and down his spinal column and
felt his body relax.

"I have the impression there's something you want to tell me, baby," she
ventured. Abandoning himself to the magic of the woman's hands, Bart finally
asked in a hushed voice :

"That maso in the cage, is he still at your place?"

Bret felt the muscles in her belly tighten.

"Of course not, I got tired of taking care of him days ago... Why?"

The lightness of Bret's answer made him bolder, and Bart spoke the words that
would be his downfall :

"Oh, nothing... It's just that the other day he told me you were keeping him
there against his will..."

"He told you? But when you went up to the dungeon, he was wearing a gag..."

"Yeah, I'm sorry about that, I deflated it by mistake... Very ingenious, that
gadget..."

"Yes, isn't it..."

Bret was furious with herself : why hadn't she been more cautious?

She shed a tear, but she had no choice... nothing must stand her way now that
she was so near her goal.

"Well, he was just having you on... He's a great kidder... Roll over on your
back" she said as casually as she could.

She grasped his right arm and massaged his biceps with a firm sensuality,
elbow, forearm, wrist, hand, fingers, one after the other... Bart smiled
confidently up at the nakedness of beautiful naked masseuse... She was working
delicately on his knuckles when she came to a decision. Under her thumbs she
held the tip of his thumb, the "cavity" called shaoshang, on the lung
meridian... She exhaled sharply as she pressed with all her might on either
side of his thumbnail... And that powerful man, for all his hundred and ninety
pounds and 5'11', gasped, choked and fainted away like a girl.

Bret drew back from the limp body and took a cigarette out of her bag.
Actually, she thought, her new plan was still valid, the scenario she'd been
brewing since Eve's capture would be even more convincing if three people were
involved.

Bart was beginning to regain consciousness and she had to hurry. She intended
to take advantage of the semi-consciousness that follow the disruption she had
caused in the young mans' chi : she did not want the poor boy understanding
what was happening to him. She sat on the bed, took his head lovingly in her
arms and pressed it to her bare bosom. He opened his eyes... and found Bret
Blade's staring into them.

"What happened?"

"Nothing, sweet, nothing at all... Just a little dizzy spell..."

She cradled him tenderly.

"My thumb hurts..."

"Don't you think I have beautiful eyes?"

"Oh, yes..."

"Look at them closely, there's a tiny gold fleck, can you see it, way at the
back... Look hard... "

The rest was child's play. Bart seemed an ideal subject, it was only a few
seconds before he was in a trance, eyes wide open, readily answering Bret's
questions.

"Did you tell anyone else?"

"No, no one."

"And did you intend to tell anyone?"

"No..."

Was there a slight hesitation in his voice? She carried on regardless...

"Good... Very good... Now you're going into a deep sleep and when you awake,
you will have forgotten everything you saw and heard at my place that day..."

Bret Blade watched her handsome lover sleeping peacefully. Had she erased the
memory of that call for help that had reached his ears by chance? Bret was
terribly reluctant to have to kill this innocent male who wished her no harm.
She began searching the untidy room.

And soon found what she dreaded : hidden at the bottom of a drawer, an
unfinished letter, bearing today's date and addressed to Bart's sister. Bret
knew that her lover was deeply attached to his sister, who lived in La
Rochelle; of all the members of his numerous family, she was the one he felt
closest to. Bret glanced through the letter...

... and her heart froze! Bart had lied to her! He'd been able to lie to her
under hypnosis! For in that letter, he told his sister of his discovery! He
omitted certain details and did not mention Bret's name, but he wanted his
sister's opinion : should he or should he not go to the police... So he wasn't
as susceptible to hypnosis as she'd thought... He went into trance easily
enough, he was no doubt open to post-hypnotic suggestion, but somewhere in his
preconscious there was something like a pocket of resistance.

She could no longer rely on a quick brain-washing... and she simply did not
have time to undertake a long process of conditioning...

Bart had to go, too...

There were tears in Bret Blade's eyes as she kissed the handsome young man on
the lips... She took the vaporizer from her purse and sprayed a heavy dose of
"perfume" under his nose... He should sleep for some thirty-six hours... With
a little luck, no one would be barging in on this solitary, unemployed
bachelor till Monday morning, when she would be ready for him. Before leaving
the flat, she put on a pair of gloves, wiped her finger-prints from a glass
and other surfaces she might have touched and scooped up the bunch of keys
that was lying on the desk.

z

The Thing is feeling increasingly unsure of his identity... The Mistress has
only to touch him or look at him in a certain way for his whole body to float
upwards in a kind of warm, cottony, mist which is no longer him.

The Mistress is here now, she lifts him from the Nest, dresses him gently, he
is a new-born babe at his mother's breast...

"Another red-letter day for you, Thing... You are going to make me happy at
last ..." Her gaze drills into eyes and again he is overcome by vertigo...
"You do want to make your mistress happy, don't you?"

"Yes, Mistress..."

"Very well, Thing... We're off to the notary's office... You know how to
behave in the notary's office, don't you Thing?"

"Yes, Mistress."

He is wearing his former clothes now, but he is not used to him and they feel
uncomfortable... The wool feels scratchy and the underpants squeeze his
genitals... Nakedness has become his natural state, like a little baby... He
makes as if to lie down again in the Nest, but the Mistress prevents this by
squeezing his elbow in a way that hurts.

As he leaves the dungeon, he passes a woman who seems to be sleeping on her
feet against the wall : she is tied to a wooden cross and there is dried blood
on her neck.

"Who's that?" he asks.

"A friend, pay no attention to her..."

z

The session with the notary went Without a hitch. True, B... seemed a little
strange, had some difficulties finding the right words, but Bret invoked a
recent illness and its aftereffects, and the notary seemed reassured. In less
than an hour, the business was done : Barbara B..., née Brimstone, became the
sole heir to a fortune which knew to be quite considerable.

Now all that was left for the Thing to do... was die.

z

It was 11 PM in an underground car-park. Bret sat quietly at the wheel of her
Mercedes. She was wearing the black leather trouser-suit in which she'd played
cops and robbers a few days before. A blond wig and dark glasses made her
quite unrecognizable.

Lying on the back seat, eyes wide open, his breathing slow and even, the Thing
was in deep trance. In accordance with Bret's plans, he would now remain so
till the end.

Three quarters of an hour went by until she saw what she was waiting for : a
pot-bellied man in his fifties, heading for a big Citroën sedan. She drew on a
pair of tight-fitting, elegant gloves, noiselessly opened her door and a few
minutes later appeared by the left front window of the Citroën as the man was
just starting his car. She must have looked rather forbidding in her black
leather suit, but a charming smile reassured the stranger, who rolled down his
window.

"Have you a light, dear sir?" she asked in her sexiest voice. He held out his
lighter to the cigarette in her mouth and she grasped his elbow, ostensibly to
control the flame... then dug her thumb viciously into the "funny-bone". Her
victim with terror and clapped his hand to his heart. Bret opened the car-door
and he fell onto the concrete.

Oblivious to the heart-attack she had just brought about and which could prove
fatal to certain subjects, she pulled the Citroën up alongside her Mercedes. A
few minutes later, the trunk of the other car had been emptied of a few
cardboard boxes... and the "zombie" she had made of B... lay in their place, a
length of duct-tape over his mouth, hands his tied behind his back with
electric wire. She closed the trunk, locked the Citroën and sped away in her
Mercedes.

The countdown had begun.

z

Quietly, Bret opened the door with Bart's keys.

He was no longer on the bed and Bret had a moment of panic, until she heard
water running in the washbasin. She entered the tiny cubical and found Bart,
still naked, bending over the basin, running cold water over his head, trying
to chase away the cobwebs Bret's "perfume" had left in his brain. Gently, she
lay her gloved hand on his flank. He gave a start and bumped his head on the
tap, looked up and smiled at her...

At least he didn't seem to resent nor even to remember what she had done to
him.

Without a word, she led him to the bed. That handsome body about to die
excited her tremendously. She lay him gently on his back, slipped out of her
leather trousers and black panties and ran her fingertips over the sensitive
skin inside his thighs, the rim of his anus, the scrotum, the base of the
penis...

"Aren't you going to take off your gloves," he asked through the velvet
curtain of lust descending into his brain...

"It's more exciting this way, don't you think?" she whispered, as she probed
an erogenous point on the underside of his erection.

"Yes..."

She sat on his cock and took it into her damp cavern, fending off the hands
that fumbling for her breasts beneath her gaping leather jacket.

"No, this time you let me do the work."

And Bret Blade outdid herself, giving her doomed lover, still somnolent and
passive, the gift of of her love-making science, of those highly-skilled
fingers as familiar with the pressure-points of pleasure as with those that
bring death... which were in fact, more often than not, one and the same...

At the very moment when she made him come, her gloved fingers lightly touched
the hypnogenic zones at his temples and whispered a word in his ear : the
passage from orgiastic ecstasy to trance was imperceptible.

She took from her jacket pocket a sheet of paper with rows of glued letters
cut from a magazine as well as an envelopes addressed to Barbara Brimstone in
Geneva, and pressed fingers and thumb to both, then returned them to her
pocket.

She ordered him to dress and to come with her.

z

It was 7 AM. The Citroën was parked inconspicuously near the porte de la
Chapelle, under the an arch of the Périphérique highway that circles Paris.
Bart sat at the wheel, looking straight ahead.

Fifty meters from there, in a call-box, Bret Blade, in blond wig and dark
glasses, was dialing her private number.

It was the ringing phone that would trigger Eve's role entrance into the
little drama. Taken down from her cross and fully dressed, she would be
sitting patiently awaiting the signal that would seal her fate and that of the
two men.

After three rings, Bret hung up and walked to the nearest sidewalk café to
watch developments.

Three quarters of an hours and two café crèmes later, Eve came up out of the
métro entrance, walked briskly to the parked Citroën and got in beside Bart.
Not a look was exchanged between tham as Bart started the car, backed up,
turned right and drove up the ramp leading to the Autoroute du nord.

Bret Blade watched the car go out of sight and called the waiter.

z

Twenty-four hours later, on the Paris-Geneva flight, "Barbara Brimstone"
leafed through Le Parisien Libéré until she found the article she was looking
for :

TRAGIC KIDNAPPING : 3 DEAD

At 5 AM Monday morning a Citroën CX drove off the autortoute du Nord, for
reasons as yet unexplained. The vehicle had been stolen several hours earlier
from a shopkeeper of Vitry-sur-Seine, Monsieur Gaston Rebatet: the victim of a
heart attack, occasioned no doubt by the theft of his car, he has been
hospitalized in a critical condition. The driver of the stolen car, one Bart
Bartoldi, employed, residing in the 13th arrondissement, unaccountably lost
control of the car when there was no other vehicle on the road, perhaps due to
quarrel with his female companion. Three bodies were taken from the wreckage.
Next to the driver was Eve Mannoni, known to the police as a prostitute.
However, investigators were surprised to discover, in the trunk of the car,
the body of the well-known lawyer, Maître B..., recently retired from the
Paris bar. A ransom note found in the driver's pocket seems to indicate that a
kidnapping had gone wrong. The ransom note, which the kidnappers had not had
time to post, was addressed to Madame Barbara B..., née Brimstone, Maître
B...'s last wife, presently between cities but expected momentarily at her
Geneva residence.