Captives of Cheyner Close (23 page)

It was when they were brought back in, cheeks rosy from their exertions, that they saw today would be different.

A simple stage, built of wooden crates floored with sheets of hardboard, had been set up at one end of the room. Dustsheets pinned to the ceiling provided a backdrop and closed off a small backstage area. Two stacks of crates draped in blankets formed the sides of the tiny proscenium, while a beam resting between them supported a pair of full-length dark blue velvet curtains. The stage was lit by anglepoise lamps taped to simple stands set up on either side of the curtains.

Along one wall were piled several cardboard boxes. Some were packed with odds and ends of old
clothing,
while others contained rope, chains, belts and straps, a bundle of bamboos and thinner basket canes, assorted dildos and vibrators. On a side table were bottles of mineral water, a travelling clock, the CD player, a stack of cassettes and CDs, scissors, sticky tape and glue, a reel of garden wire, a jotter pad and pencils.

As the girls blinked at this strange assortment, Narinda explained.

‘I said you should take note when you did those dances, because tonight you are going to put on an erotic variety show for us. It will start at nine o’clock and you have the whole day undisturbed to write and rehearse. There are old clothes and things here for you to use as props. If you want anything else, within reason, we can get it. You can do any sort of acts, even song and dance, as long as there’s plenty of sex, punishment and humiliation involved. All of that’s got to be genuine, of course. Basically, we want to see more of the sort of thing we’ve been doing to you this last week, except this time you’ll be doing it to each other. And as an incentive for you to perform well …’

She pointed to the other side of the room, where two more of Jim Curry’s constructions rested.

They were both identical. On lengths of timber fitted with splayed bracing feet, were mounted three thinner wooden rods fastened to heavy coil springs, so that they angled upwards a little off vertical. Bolted to the tops of these rods, one on each side, were pairs of translucent plastic food storage bowls with their open mouths facing upward. Dangling straps fastened to the outside of the paired bowls made them resemble surreal bra cups. The girls looked closer and shivered. Bras are not normally studded with carpet tacks. These had been
hammered
through the plastic from outside, so that the insides of the bowls bristled with a dozen or more tiny black metal spikes.

‘The idea is that you are bent over them with your feet tied to the beam and your boobs dangling inside the bowls,’ Narinda continued. ‘They’re different sizes to fit each of you nice and snugly, and they have the same number of tacks in each, so they should prick you just as much whether you’re big or small. It won’t hurt if your tits are not moving, but if you were to be caned really hard, for instance, everything will start bobbing around and then I think it would hurt quite a bit. Which is the idea, of course.’

She grinned at the expressions on their faces.

‘It’ll be our final judgement on you. This is how it works. You’ll start off the performance marked down for 25 strokes each. The more entertaining you are the more points will be taken off that number. At the end of the evening what’s left will be added together and divided amongst you. You won’t get away without any punishment, of course, but you can make it as few strokes as possible if you’ve put on a good show. That should encourage you to work with each other and try really hard to please us.’

The girls were gaping at the fearsome devices and each other, still trying to take in the challenge facing them. They were hardly aware of Warwick undoing their handcuffs until they realised he and Narinda were standing by the door.

‘We’ll leave them there until this evening,’ he said, pointing to the six ominous pairs of bowls mounted on their frames. ‘It might help keep you focused. We’ll bring you lunch at the usual time.’

And they went out, locking the door behind them.

The room was silent. Nobody appeared inclined to move. Tara felt unaccountably lost and helpless, as it
seemed
did the others. For the first time in a week they were ungagged and unbound, except for their collars, nor were any residents standing guard with a holey cane. They rubbed their wrists and looked about them, unsure of what to do with their sudden, relative, freedom. They were not secured to their bed frames and nobody was telling them what to do. They could walk about the room as they liked, pick up things with uncuffed hands using untapped fingers, stand up, sit down, almost anything … But instead they just stood there uncertainly, as though waiting for orders.

As the seconds dragged on Tara feared they had all forgotten how to think and act for themselves. Could the habits of freedom really be erased so easily and quickly? No, that was ridiculous. Then was it just them? She felt she should say something, make plans, but the possibilities seemed daunting.

Then Cassie broke the spell.

Moving stiffly at first but with gathering confidence, she walked over to the bundle of canes, selected one, and turned towards Tara with a murderous glint in her eyes.

‘I said I’d get you for dumping us in this shitty mess,’ she hissed, slashing the cane viciously though the air and catching Tara a stinging blow on the arm. As Tara stumbled backwards in surprise, Gail, Daniela and Hazel sprang on Cassie, trying to restrain her. Sian hovered in the background, as though uncertain which side to join. Such was the force of her anger that even the weight of the three girls clinging to her could not stop Cassie crashing into Tara. The five of them tumbled to the floor in a tangle of naked limbs.

The shock of Cassie’s attack finally penetrated Tara’s numbed mind, and she found herself bellowing:
‘Stop
it! Cassie – save it for the fucking show! You want revenge, then save it for later! When it can do us some good!’

Then Sian waded in and helped pull Cassie away from Tara, shouting: ‘This is so stupid. Stop it, Cassie. What are we doing fighting each other?’

‘I hate her!’ Cassie snarled, red-faced and panting.

‘Yeah, well I don’t think much of her either, but kicking the shit out of each other is still crazy. The residents are the ones who’re meant to be punishing us.’

‘Please don’t fight,’ Hazel begged, her face distraught.

‘Keep out of this,’ Cassie spat. ‘You may be a happy fucking slave, but I’m not. She deserves a slapping!’

‘For what?’ Gail said sharply. ‘For getting us caught or making the residents’ lives a misery for so long? Yes, Tara started it but we should have known better. I think you’re still denying the truth by trying to lay all the blame on her. We’re all guilty and it was right we should be punished.’

‘Speak for yourself,’ Cassie said, but without much conviction.

‘I think … we’ve all got grow up to and start behaving like adults,’ Hazel said with quiet conviction.

‘None of us are what we were a week ago,’ Daniela added. ‘Maybe you should accept that and move on.’

‘They’re right,’ Sian told Cassie. ‘You’re just feeling sorry for yourself. I felt the same, but I think I’m getting over it. You’ve got to take things as they are. Let’s just get today done, OK?’

The tension gradually drained from Cassie’s body and she sagged in their grasp. Tentatively they let go, though still looking at her anxiously.

‘Stop staring at me like that,’ Cassie said. ‘I won’t do it again.’ She looked at Tara. ‘What did you mean, save it for the show?’

That paralysis of mind and body had left her now, and Tara found herself thinking and talking fluently once more.

‘They want a show with lots of S&M, so we’ll give it to them. You want to give me a good hiding, that’ll be your chance. We’ll write it into the script. And the better you do it the less we all get hurt later. Win win for you, right?’ She felt the familiar warm fluttering in her loins as she spoke the words, but they were only the simple truth.

Cassie looked at her narrowly. ‘You’re a cold calculating pervy bitch, do you know that?’

Tara smiled as though it was a compliment. ‘Yep.’

‘I still won’t talk to you ever again after this is over.’

‘You can do what you like afterwards, as long as you do what you must to get through today. Well?’

‘I haven’t got any bloody choice, have I?’

‘None of us have.’

‘And I suppose you’ll tell me to make the best of it and try to have fun?’

Tara shrugged. ‘Why not? This’ll be the last performance of the Elite Society. One night only. And then …’ She took a deep breath, turning over strange possibilities in her mind, but contented herself by concluding: ‘… then we grow up and move on.’

‘There’s lots of stuff we can use in here,’ Hazel called out.

While they had been talking, she, Daniela and Gail had begun rummaging in the props boxes.

‘Somebody must have kept these for dressing up or charades or something,’ she continued. As they watched she pulled out a long tasselled scarf and
wrapped
it round herself, giggling and flouncing about to show off. Gail tried on a battered woman’s hat with a large floppy brim. Daniela was turning a vibrator on and off while smiling thoughtfully.

‘Look at them,’ Cassie exclaimed. ‘You’d think they were looking forward to this.’

‘At least they’re enjoying themselves,’ Tara said. ‘Why don’t we join them?’

Sian had picked up the jotter pad. Now she stood over Tara and Cassie looking purposeful. ‘We’ve got about eleven hours to write, rehearse and design this perverted sex show, so let’s get started. First: what do we call it?’

The large star-emblazoned felt-tip-drawn card propped up at the foot of the stage read:
THE ELITE FOLLIES.

Cancan music stuck up and the curtains were drawn back to reveal the girls in a line arm in arm, minimally dressed in assorted boas and lengths of tinsel. The backdrop behind them was decorated with cut-out paper stars, balloons and musical notes.

The residents seated in the other half of the room applauded loudly. To one side Tom Fanning stood by his tripod-mounted video camera, recording the performance for posterity.

The girls began high-kicking in time, yipping and yelling, their breasts bouncing and jiggling merrily, showing off their glitter-dusted pubes. The line broke and Tara, Daniela and Gail twirled about, spread their legs and stuck out their bottoms, while Cassie, Sian and Hazel leaned over them and pulled their labia wide to expose their shiny pink clefts. Reaching into the dark pits of their fellow performers’ vaginas they began pulling out lengths of coloured paper streamers and throwing their coils out into the audience, who laughed and clapped.

The line re-formed. In time with the rise and fall of the beat, they sang:

‘
We’re so sad that

we gave you all so many tears
.

As a sor-ry
,

we hope you enjoy our pretty rears
.

Let us show you

all our nooks and all our crannies
,

By the end you’ll

know every hair on our fannies!

Cane our tits!

Cream our slits!

We hope to keep you all in fits!
’

They bowed and slipped away into their impromptu theatre’s tiny wings. The curtains closed to loud applause.

A moment later Tara, now wearing a top hat and red-sequinned jacket unbuttoned to expose her breasts, pushed through the curtains to stand on the narrow strip of stage. The sound of bare feet scuffing on the boards and urgent whispers told of the scene being hastily reset behind her.

Tara took off her hat and bowed humbly. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the one and only performance of the Elite Follies, where six misguided young women are demeaned and degraded for your delight and delectation. Our first act this evening is a daring feat of distending vaginal dexterity. I give you Daniela the Dildo Swallower!’

Tara stepped aside and the curtain drew back to reveal Daniela resting upside down in a chair with her legs splayed wide in the air, so that the cleft mound of her pudenda rose like a little hill between them. A sheet of black card had been taped to the back of the chair to highlight her brightly lit pubes. On a table beside her were several dildos and vibrators. Background
music
started up with an eastern swirl, full of reedy pipes and jingling tambourines, of the kind more usually heard accompanying the Indian rope trick.

Daniela picked up a dildo, threw her head back and sensuously licked the rubber shaft, then reached up between her legs and slid it into her anus. She next picked up a vibrator, turned it on, and slipped it into her vagina, which she first spread wide with her fingers, showing off her dark passage to the audience. Then she took up another dildo and slid it into the passage beside its buzzing predecessor, stretching her vagina a little wider.

By the time she was forcing the third dildo in beside the humming vibrator, her splayed legs were trembling and she was sweating and gasping with effort, the lips of her labia stretched painfully taut about the bundle and her pubic hair glistening with lubrication. When she had finally forced it in she gripped the sides of the chair and orgasmed before their eyes, a trickle of her juices running down her belly to her navel.

The curtain closed on her to loud applause. This time Hazel came out in front wearing the top hat and sequinned jacket.

‘And now a lesson to us all. The moral is: Do not behave badly in class, or else you’ll come to a painful end. At least, your end will be painful. I give you Tara and Cassie in: The Naughty Schoolgirl.’

The curtain parted to reveal Cassie, wearing a long gown and mortar board, standing in front of a blackboard. Opposite her Tara slumped in a chair. Her hair was tied in bunches, she was dressed in a white shirt and short pleated grey skirt, and had a sulky expression on her face: the image of a petulant schoolgirl.

Cassie tried to teach but Tara kept interrupting, flicking paper pellets and calling Cassie names. Eventually Cassie took out a cane and ordered Tara to bend over with her rear to the audience. She lifted Tara’s schoolgirl skirt to expose her bare bottom, and then, with evident relish, proceeded to give her six of the best. The blows sent shivers though her flesh and Tara’s yelps of pain were clearly genuine, as was the blush that spread across her buttocks.