The Unbreakable Trilogy

Someone else steps into the shot. Dressed entirely in black leather, including a cat mask. Dominatrix gear, black leather, studded collar. The figure is holding a thin black switch, like a riding crop, with a bunch of fine leather tassels dangling off it. I glance at Gustav. He is watching the video intently.

The rooms seems to shrink, the pictures and walls and ceiling sliding inwards as if to crush me, then spinning nauseatingly. I sway, nothing to grab on to. This isn’t art as I think of art. This isn’t soft-focus nuns in Gothic candlelit shadows, about to purge their sins on their own virginal skin. This is starkly lit domination.

Gustav wavers in front of me like a flame. He even splits in two for a second. I am afraid I’m going to faint. What’s the matter with me? It’s only a dirty home video masquerading as indie film. A bit of kinky behaviour, fetish dress, all up there on screen. Readers’ wives, but more skilfully stage-managed, more convincingly acted. If I look closely, surely I’ll see the joins.

Crystal spreads her arms and legs in a star shape. Sweat trickles down my back, in my hair, my armpits as I regain some focus. The black-clad creature plants its high-heeled boots on either side of Crystal and yanks her milkmaid skirt up to reveal her white bottom. Crystal is wearing no knickers, just black stockings. Her bottom and thighs glow in the dead lighting of the interior. Then the creature lifts its arm. No-one is uttering a sound. All I can hear is the sliced air as the leather-clad creature brandishes the whip so clearly that it practically lifts the hair from my forehead in its breeze.

There’s a swish like a wasp’s wing as the whip is brought down on Crystal’s buttocks. The stroke rings out like a cruel gunshot and I run my fingers quickly over my own bottom. Her skin quivers under the blow as I gasp out loud. She is so skinny. She jerks involuntarily, showing a quick flash between her thighs, and I see her fingers clawing at the bed cover. My own fingers dig into my backside, try to quell the dirty excitement growing in me. But still she makes no sound.

‘Don’t you move, Crystal, or you get double.’

The dominatrix’s voice hisses out of the film. Fills the room like the humming of a bees’ nest. She leans down and strokes Crystal’s butt cheek, where a livid red stripe has come up. I stroke my own bottom to soothe the imaginary pain. And still Crystal lies there as if she is in a trance. Remember, she’s an actress. Or she’s been doped. The dominatrix is stroking her on the one hand as if she is preparing a rare steak, but on the other she steps back and swipes the whip down a second time, squarely on the second cheek.

I squeeze my legs together as the dampness pricks up in excited response. On the screen Crystal flicks her head as her bottom jerks up again involuntarily. Again the frail flesh quivers under the blow, and again there is a tantalising glimpse of her sex as she bounces off the floor. My own is tightening frantically in response.

‘Remind you of anything, Serena? These sounds? That white skin, scored across with punishment?’

As a third stroke comes down and the thwack resounds round the panelled room we’re standing in, I could swear that instead of moaning or cringing in fear, Crystal actually lifts her bottom, as if inviting the stroke instead of recoiling from it. She moves slightly from side to side, kneeling up to lift her bottom higher into the air. As I glimpse the softness tucked between her legs, the quick slash of bright red as she wiggles her bottom, a spike of desire flashes through me and at last I recognise it for what it is. Clear, urgent, sexual desire.

I was aroused when I watched little Perpetua and her secret sisters. But this is like a hand reaching inside and physically shaking me. It’s not Crystal I want, surely?

The dominatrix creature kicks at the back of Crystal’s knees, so that she rises higher, thrusting her bottom, decorated now with three pink stripes, into the air. The dominatrix places the whip on the crack and for a moment I freeze. Is she going to shove the whip in there? Hasn’t Crystal suffered enough? My own body clenches tighter still. I’m so close to feeling it for myself. I wriggle restlessly as the whip strokes Crystal’s bottom almost tenderly. Yes, it would be tender as well as cruel. Sweet, as well as sour.

I wish I could see the dominatrix’s face. Who is she?

The whip is in the air, swiping down once more onto the butt cheek. I sway along with the teasing of the whip. Four pink stripes on her bottom and now an audible groan escapes from Crystal, but she’s unashamedly showing her pleasure now. She’s fidgeting from side to side like a mare scratching herself on a fence. The blows have raised her beaten flesh into weals. One hand has come up brazenly between her legs and she is touching herself, just as I’m desperate to do, she’s moaning as she waits for her mistress to strike her, her fingers sweeping up and down, her face tilted heavenwards as she sways, one long white finger going up inside, pushing in.

I can feel heat on my bottom, the thrust of the finger’s invasion. It will hurt, I know it, but although I can feel the fear I want to be in the film now. I want to be in there with these people, I want to push Crystal aside, take my place in front of the mistress, feel those blows on my own soft skin and the heat and pain they will conjure up.

Her black eyes blaze and I read clearly what’s going on behind them. She isn’t cowed, or humiliated. Or if she is, she’s loving the belittling. Being paid to reveal it. She’s euphoric. She’s loving those red, sore stripes on her. This is more than a job to her. They’re battle scars. They’ve brought her to life.

My mouth drops open as she tips her head back, her eyes and mouth alight with pleasure. She lifts her bottom for more. I push mine back against the wall. It’s like a foreign language being translated for me. It’s all so clear now. It’s not Crystal I want. I want to be playing her part.

Suddenly the picture freezes.

‘Have you seen enough, Serena?’

For the first time since we met I’ve forgotten about Gustav. I can see my face superimposed onto Crystal’s. She was tense and stiff when she lay down on that bed. Now she’s liberated. Crazy Crystal. Surrendered Serena. No illusion. That was real. Every blow, every flinch and tremor felt real to me.

I press my hand against the frozen image on the screen. ‘I could quite happily go right back to the beginning and see it all again. But then I might never leave! So no. Let’s get out of here.’

I saw the nuns doing it, and now I’ve seen Crystal submitting to it. I won’t be still, won’t rest, until I’ve tried this for myself, and surely that’s why Gustav brought me here today? To show me these films, these scenes, these people writhing with pleasure. To tease me, then invite me to try it. My own photographs, the little nuns hanging brazenly in the other gallery, have told him I have this twisted urge to watch and then to be tried and punished. He understood it before I’d even admitted it to myself. But I’m ready for it now. In fact, I’m practically ready to come. Euphoria rushes through me, heats my body, lifts my feet. I want to run as fast as I can. Jump as high as I can. I have to get him home, persuade him to do all those things to me.

Gustav has done what he set out to do. He’s shown me what I need, what I want him to do next.

I jerk the silver chain tight, lead him quickly through the dark, panelled rooms. The twisting, groaning, gyrating bodies will continue silently writhing inside their fantasies, imprisoned joyously inside those frames forever.

At the front door Gustav lets me push past him.

‘I don’t want to talk. I just want to get home before these images fade. They’ve done something to me, Gustav.’ I jump down the entire flight of steps, tipping my head back to the twilight. ‘I’ve got this terrible itch I need to scratch. You can help me. That’s why you brought me here, isn’t it?’

He plays the silver chain through his hands like a fishing line, then gives it a playful tug. I jerk exaggeratedly back towards him, making jazz hands like a puppet. I’m grinning like the Cheshire Cat. I can’t identify this new exuberance. I’m fizzing with a deep, dark energy.

His eyes burn with the tenderness I saw at the private view the other night. I’m the cat on a hot tin roof. As he starts to descend the steps it’s my turn to yank on the chain.

‘Remember your place, young lady.’

Still grinning at me he dances me right up to him with the chain. Our faces are so close. His mouth opening to speak, to smile, perchance to kiss?

His big silver car purrs alongside and he opens the door for me.

I climb into the back seat first, and then tug the silver chain again, urging Gustav to hurry up as he gets into the car after me.

‘Take me home, Mr Levi.’

‘Dickson? This girl has something pressing on her mind,’ Gustav murmurs, rapping smartly on the window then sitting back, dangling the chain loosely in his lap. I challenge myself not to touch him, the whole way home.

‘Yeah, Dickson?’ I call out. ‘Step on it.’

CHAPTER TEN

We’re back in the tall dark house in the quiet garden square. Dickson has brought my bags in, taken them upstairs. Lit candles and fires around the house. Set out a meal of rare steak and roasted vegetables dripping in olive oil, and tells us chocolate pudding is in the fridge. Two bottles of red wine are breathing on the white counter in the kitchen. And then he’s gone, and we’re alone.

I’m wearing another dress that magically was waiting for me on the bed in the attic room. A vibrant purple number, velvet and medieval, very low at the sequinned bodice and cut on the bias so that it flares out from my hips and swishes round my bare ankles when I come back downstairs. I don’t put on any underwear. Whatever I put on will be wet in no time. I’m still on fire and I’ve got to get this over with.

I eat the dinner as quickly as I can. We race at it like a couple of cavemen, tearing at the meat, tossing the vegetables into our mouths, wiping oil off our chins with the white napkins but then glugging red wine down our necks as if we’re in the desert.

‘Let the pudding wait,’ I say, getting up from the table and leading him, with the silver chain, into the drawing room. ‘I know why you showed me that collection today, Gustav. I know why you showed me Crystal being slapped by that woman. I didn’t get it at first. But it turned me on, just as you predicted. And now I want you to do that to me.’

He stands in the doorway as I pace agitatedly around the room. He’s brushed his black hair back and has changed into a soft cashmere sweater in the same deep purple as my dress with a white T-shirt underneath. His black jeans accentuate his long legs and the hips I long to feel grinding against me.

The silver chain tinkles and glints in the space between us.

‘Part of the game is that you seek punishment. What have you done wrong, do you think?’

‘You want me to play? OK. Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.’ I squirm, clasping my hands together as if I’m in confession, winding the silver chain round my fingers, tight, so it bites white into my skin. ‘I was brought up in a house full of hatred. All my life I was told I was a nasty little runt. That I was worthless, good for nothing. Even the woman who gave birth to me tossed me away in a plastic bag. Drip, drip, drip into my ear, day after day, year after year. But my way of coping was to stop listening or even speaking. I became a difficult child, a surly teenager.’

‘Doesn’t really count as a sin.’ He steps closer, winding in the silver chain. His mouth has become dark with stubble. It would rub if he kissed me. ‘More like a virtue. You were strong, Serena. You rose above those pathetic bullies. Why should I spank you?’

‘I still need to do penance.’ I pace from side to side, warm and fuzzy from the food and the wine, but still revved up from what he showed me earlier. ‘It’s the only way to delete them. Crystal was purged of her problems by that dominatrix woman.’

‘You are a quick learner,’ he interrupts quickly. ‘Quick, swift punishment. So much more straightforward than years of wrestling with psychological warfare.’

‘So do it, before I change my mind.’ I shake him.

‘You won’t change your mind.’ His fingers are digging into my arms. He’s handling me so much rougher now. His piratical air is just the way I like him. ‘I knew what you needed as soon as I saw the photographs in your portfolio. The nuns, the whipping. You confirmed it with your rapturous talk at the private view. I know what I’m doing, Serena. I can banish your demons once and for all.’

‘But will it become an obsession?’

‘For me?’ He shudders. ‘My demons are still out to get me.’

‘I meant for me. Will I become addicted to it? Will I be like Crystal and beg to be whipped every time I feel I’m losing it?’

‘If you do, it won’t matter. You’ll be with me, and I’ll decide when and if you need punishing. Special perversions can always be saved for special occasions.’ He picks a pin out of my hair so that tendrils fall around my face, tickling me. His eyes are dancing tonight. ‘Crystal controlled her obsessions in the end and so can you.’

I sway slightly with the lightness of his touch. He curls the tendril round his finger. ‘First, let’s go over what those bastards did to you.’

‘Do we have to?’

‘Yes. It will heal you in the end.’ He taps the end of my nose. ‘I told you. We’re exorcising your demons.’

‘They made me feel like a freak, Gustav. Always telling me I was an outsider. The unwelcome little cuckoo. That I would never belong anywhere.’

‘I thought you said they found you on a doorstep, and adopted you?’

‘Yes, and they regretted it the moment I opened my mouth and started to answer back.’

His black hair falls over his eyebrows and this time I brush it away. ‘But foundlings are supposed to be magical beings, aren’t they? Like fairies.’

The silver chain is twined round both of us now. Joining our hands like a rosary.

‘Goblins, more like.’ I shrug. ‘You’ll understand more if you read my diaries. I left them in the gallery.’

‘I know. Dickson found them. I warned you how intrusive I could be.’

‘I should never have brought them back to London.’

I start smacking at my forehead.

‘You spoiling for a fight, Folkes? Because that’s exactly what you’re going to get!’

He holds my hands tight to calm me.

‘Let go of me! I need to punch something! I’ve been waiting all my life to let rip. I never could when they were alive, otherwise I’d have killed them both!’

‘Then you’d be my murderess, as well as my temptress.’

He catches me off guard with his laughter.

‘OK!’ I shout. ‘So how about I punch you instead!’

He ties my hands together with the silver chain.

‘As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods.’

‘What?’

‘King Lear. They kill us for their sport.’ He tests the tightness of the chain. ‘It won’t be me who gets hurt, Serena. But if pain is what you want, pain is what you’ll get. I’ve seen this coming a long way off, and believe me, I can’t wait to get my hands on you. It’s going to do me the power of good, too.’

He ties my bound wrists to the legs of the oversized sofa by the fire so that I am forced to sprawl on my front, my face buried in the cushions.

‘I don’t see how tying me up and spanking me can help you.’ I wriggle and kick furiously. ‘This isn’t how it’s supposed to work! This isn’t what I meant!’

‘This is exactly how it goes.’

‘No! I feel stupid. I’ve changed my mind!’ I scream, kicking my legs out to try to catch him. ‘I just need you to give it to me straight, Gustav. Why can’t you just fuck me, like any normal man!’

The obscenity sears the air. There’s an electrified pause.

‘Believe me, Serena Folkes, I would give my right arm to do that right now. Hard, and fast, preferably, and rough as hell, to shut you up. I’ve wanted nothing else since I first set eyes on you. But there’s method in my madness.’

‘Shakespeare again!’ My voice is muffled.

‘I don’t go about things like a normal man. In any case if I gave my right arm I wouldn’t be able to do this.’

He tests the strength of the silver chain.

‘Untie me and give it to me!’

He really laughs out loud this time. He leans on my legs to quell the kicking. He’s heavy. I can’t move.

‘Such an unquenchable spirit despite everything they laid on you.’

‘I don’t want analysing, doctor. I just want some good hard loving!’

‘As if you knew what that was.’ His hands just press down harder. ‘All this wild beauty. They were jealous of it. That was their problem. Or the woman was jealous. And they must have been frightened, too, because no-one knew where your beauty and spirit came from.’

‘No more psycho-babble!’

He weighs me down with one hand on my velvet bottom. And then he slides his other hand under me, walks it down my stomach, lower, until his fingers brush through the strip of hair and feel the wetness of me. I stop struggling, as he knew I would. My thighs part eagerly for him, even though my legs are shaking. I tilt myself into his familiar fingers. They pause, then trace the folds, the soft opening.

‘See how creamy you are? This always works to shut them up.’ His breath so warm on my neck, my hair. ‘You’re such a horny little devil, aren’t you?’

I groan hopelessly. ‘Those bloody diaries. I don’t want to remember that horrible house on the cliffs, or the girl who lives there.’

His response is to jerk on the silver chain again. ‘We’ll burn them on a massive bonfire.’

I am quieter now. His words are like gentle fingers, stroking my hair, my forehead. I want to curl into a ball. But I can’t, because my hands are tied and he’s leaning on my legs. I press my face further into the cushions.

‘Go ahead, but if you want to know all about me you’ll have to read them.’

We are both very still for a moment. There is music playing somewhere, violins, a melancholy cello. The wind is getting up again outside in the garden. Otherwise all I can hear is the snap of a stick in the fire, and the heavy ticking of the grandfather clock out in the hall.

‘You’d give me permission to do that? That’s very intimate.’

‘Look at me. I’m lying here on your sofa. I’m tied up with a silver chain, and I’m not wearing any knickers. I’ve sucked you off, and I’ve asked you to have your way with me, and you’ve refused. Doesn’t get much more intimate than that. Read them. I don’t care. I told you, I’m not that girl any more.’

‘You can’t kill her off completely. She’s here, with me.’ His fingers comb through my hair, undo another pin.

His words are so strong, so comforting. I twist round to look at him. He’s let go of my legs, and is sitting with his hands dangling between his knees, his handsome profile highlighted by the fire. I want him to put his hands on me again.

He taps his hands together. ‘Time to put you in front of the camera instead of hiding behind it.’

‘You’re going to film me? What if I say no?’

He laughs, and starts to push my skirt up. ‘Says the uppity little voyeur herself! You really are my girl. The gift that keeps on giving.’ He leans over me and blows his laughter into my hair. ‘You won’t even know it’s rolling. Are you ready?’

A drape of white cloth falls over my face and he ties it over my eyes. Then I hear the little pop of what must be stoppers coming out of little ointment bottles. Here come his hands again, pushing my dress up and massaging sweet smelling oils into my legs. He’s being gentle, but the lotion is setting my skin on fire. I can almost hear it crackle like burning paper, and when he comes up to the space between my legs I screech out loud.

‘What the hell? Is there chilli in there or something?’

‘No more talking for now.’

He pushes my legs open and goes on massaging the cream right in, up and in. Every sense is magnified. There’s the warmth from the fire down one side of me, the coolness of the room on the other, the heat and scent of these creams soaking into me and wafting perfume through the air.

I can see nothing but silky darkness. My heart beats faster. I’m not afraid. I’m powerless, and free at the same time. There’s no more to be done, and it’s wonderful. I am blindfolded and tied. I can do nothing to change what’s happening.

I know he’d let me go if I screamed loudly enough. Or at least, I think he would. But I’m still totally at his mercy. And with the blindfold, everything else that has troubled me, my trip to Devon yesterday, reading my old diary, all the misery flooding back, the agitation I felt looking at those photographs, that film of Crystal, the euphoria when I realised that’s what I needed, the secrets he has yet to tell me, it’s all blotted out as well.

If I can’t see you, you can’t see me.

Hiding in the attic, under the stairs, the places they thought they’d looked, the stamping feet, the shouting voices, the broken toys. I was very good at hiding.

Gustav is silent. His long fingers swipe and wipe, the cream covering every fold and crevice until the whole area is alive and throbbing, burning bizarrely. I feel stoned. My head feels as if it’s floating away like a balloon. Far removed from the rest of me, that’s for sure, because all other senses are zoning in on that one secret part of me, sizzling like bacon, that bright beacon flashing a message. I’m here. I’ll open up for you, Gustav, when you’re ready. When you want me so much you won’t be able to hold back.

He’s stroking my bottom now. Slowly, resting his hand there, as if measuring his own hand print. And then with no other prelude, no warning, he slaps me there.

I can’t see anything but before I’ve had time to compute what’s happening I hear the rush of air as his arm goes up. I stutter with confusion but he slaps me hard on the butt, thrusting me forwards with the force of it, making me yelp. The yelp obviously fires him up, because he slaps again, on the same spot, and this time I can hear the sound of his palm landing on my flesh, the sizzling slap, and with it the stinging heat from the blow, and it sends a shaft of twisted pleasure through me.

That sharp whisk of air, then a handprint of fire on my buttock as it lands. The stinging goes deeper this time, radiates away from the original soreness, burns inside me, makes me twitch, I can even feel myself closing up tightly. The tentacles of pain touch me everywhere. I twitch and groan, unable to control my own reflexes now.

This is like someone else being punished in a muffled dream. So different from whipping myself feebly in that cheap hotel bedroom behind the Piazza San Marco.

‘I’ve got your whip right here, Serena. Ready?’

‘Yes! Give it to me!’ I struggle at the chain round my wrists, but that just makes it tighter, the silver chain biting into my wrists.

I hear him testing the whip on the palm of his hand for a moment. Then it comes down on my other buttock and the pain daggers straight up me.

This could be on camera. Who knows, who cares? Everyone can see me lifting myself off the cushions and flopping down again. He laughs softly, whips me again, that quick, vicious whip lashing down again and again. I’m floating somewhere near the ceiling observing what is happening below. I can see myself stretched out like a sacrifice at the mercy of this tall, strong man who could easily finish me off if he wanted to.

But he’s not killing me. He’s curing me.

I’ve heard of people who like to be whipped. Men, mostly. Judges, politicians. Rumour had it that my tutor liked it. Until I saw those nuns doing it, before I tried it on myself, I had no idea what pleasure could there be in submitting to horrible pain. Why would you beg to be punished for some made-up crime, just to feed a fantasy? What pleasure could there possibly be in wanting to be hurt so much it would make you come? What was so sexy about smacking and being subjected to that kind of humiliation?