Amaluen in Latex

Author’s note: Breath play is dangerous. Vacbeds should never be used alone.

She could not move. She could not see. She could hear only the strained rush, in and out, of air from her lungs, the surging pulse of blood coursing through her veins, the syncopated double-thrusting beat of her heart. She could feel only the pressure of the latex about her, could smell only the acidic musk of the material, a smell like sweat, like flesh, like sex. The darkness, the pressure, and the smell of the latex encased her in a timeless isolation. There was nothing else but those, and the awareness of her own body, and the hallucinatory figments of her own overactive mind reaching out in desperation for any reality to grasp hold of, even one of its own creation.

Were those his hands upon her body? Or someone else’s? Were those his lips upon her nipples? Or someone else’s? Inhale. Exhale. She felt a sudden pulse of pressure as someone squeezed the little bulb that inflated the dildo in her pussy. She groaned. And another pulse. And another. And then she screamed as she orgasmed for what might have been the thirtieth, or fortieth, or hundredth time. How many? She’d lost track of her orgasms long ago.

“I wish you could see yourself,” whispered a soft, sweet voice into her ears, the stereo of the little earbuds making it seem as if the voice originated from within her own mind. A man’s voice: a voice of wealth and power, educated and cultured. “I wish you could see your own helplessness, dear, your own beautiful body encased in latex.”

She was sure she could feel his hands now, trailing down her body as he spoke.

“I wish you could see the black gleam of the bright lights upon you, clinging to you, replicating every detail of you. Your erect nipples, your slender waist, the little protruding bone of your hips, even the soft slope of your sex.”

She could feel his hand sliding down her sex as he said it, sliding between her legs, tracing a long diagonal of the fishnet stockings he had asked her to wear. “I can see the subtle geometry of your stockings,” he whispered, “even through the latex, binding your legs into the fragile, intricate pattern of their elastic web.”

“Can you see yourself, my beauty?” whispered the soft, seductive voice, and almost she could. In her imagination she saw herself as if from above, there, as she lay helpless and spread-eagled, bound, encased in a frame of clinging black latex (a vacbed he’d called it) on the black-and-white checkered tile floor of the sterile, all white room. Was that how she looked to him? And almost, too, she could see the man who leaned above her. His face was in darkness. She imagined that he smiled.

“I can trace the lines of your palms too, my dear,” whispered his soft, sweet voice, “I can feel the rise and fall of your breath. I can feel your pulse. I can tell every detail of you, my beauty, every subtle motion, every lovely twitch and flinch of your eager, tumescent sex.”

His voice trailed off into silence. She felt his body shifting above her. She felt the weight of his legs straddling her waist. She could feel his tongue lustfully upon her face. She could taste his hot male breath, now, blowing across the short tube that fed air into her mouth. And then, suddenly, she couldn’t breathe at all. The short tube that fed air into her mouth was blocked. She tried to force her breath past the blockage, but she couldn’t. She could feel his strong hand pressing firmly over the hole. The latex around her face ballooned outward with her exhalation, pulling wetly away from her skin, but when she breathed in again the latex only suctioned back to her face tightly, and she could get no air but the stale air she had already breathed.

Another breath, ballooning and suctioning. Air now deprived of oxygen. Another breath. And then she had no air at all. She tried to hold what little breath remained to her, conserved deep within her lungs. Her chest strained to hold it. Pressure built like a scream in her head. Sparks of light swam in the darkness behind her lids. She strained and strained, but in the end she could not hold her remaining breath any longer. It exploded out of her, and the strong hand released its grip on the tube for just a moment to let it go, and then, before she could breathe in again, clamped down firmly on the tube once more.

Panic seized her with a wildfire flash of anger. Adrenaline surged through her. She began to struggle desperately. She was suffocating. She was dying. She could not breathe. She would have screamed if she had been able, but she had no air for it. In her pussy she felt the dildo unmercifully inflate once more. She would have begged. She would have cried. Larger and larger it bulged with every pulse of the little inflation bulb, gorging her sex until she felt like she would burst and explode from the pressure. She was helpless to stop it. She could not resist it. She could not protest it.

And so, at last, she simply gave herself over to him, placed herself at his mercy. She was his completely, with no will of her own. She stopped struggling. She let the last of her breath out, and felt her consciousness slowly fade into a serene sense of peace. She was his. And then the pressure was gone, the blockage removed, the dildo deflated, and as suddenly as it had been taken from her, the breath of life passed unrestricted into her lungs once more. She gasped at the air, coughing. Her body shivered in the tight clinging latex as the adrenaline and the intensity of suffocation, the fear and the final submission of herself drained from her veins. It seemed to take a full minute before her pulse slowed once more to an even trotting pace.

She felt his hands caress her face gently. His sweet voice crooned to her and whispered to her softly. The sheer intensity of the breath play had brought her instantly out of the trance of her sensory deprivation, but now his voice in her mind slowly guided her back into that hypnotic void of thought. Bit by bit the immediacy and fear of the breath play slipped away from her into a sea of emptiness. He guided her gently with his voice, pacing his soft sibilances to the rhythm of her body. Soon there was only the darkness upon her once again, the pressure, and the smell of the latex infusing every breath. The sounds and the inward sensations of her own body floating in a timeless, weightless world of isolation.

He watched her breathing slow. He watched her body become still. And he smiled.

“You are beautiful, my dear. I know you will soon be my favorite decoration.”

Somewhere deep within her trance, Amaluen’s conscious mind registered those words and she wondered: Does that mean he has other decorations?

* * *

Amaluen sat on the patio of her favorite restaurant, overlooking a broad sandy beach, a placid white rim of waves, a steel blue sea, and a sky washed with the gold of sunset. In the soft dusky light she lifted her cranberry sex-on-the-beach-with-a-dead-German-rockstar, and sipped it daintily through a bright red cocktail straw. The drink was the same pink color as her hair, vibrantly artificial. Setting the glass back down on the round frosted-glass table, she pilfered a bright red maraschino cherry garnish from the concoction, placed it delicately between her teeth, and bit it whole from the stem.

Amaluen was a woman of individual style. Everything about her, from her solar-storm pink hair and her rhinestone encrusted horn-rimmed glasses, to the vintage 1950’s lemon yellow and black polka-dot summer dress, to the metal buckles of her black leather knee-high stiletto boots, seemed calculated to proclaim her own uniqueness. You might easily have assumed she was an artist. In fact she was a geek.

“So, how was it?” asked the woman across from her, watching closely, “How was your hot date with the mystery man?”

“Intense.” said Amaluen, “Very intense. And kinky. He had this vacuum thing. I doubt you’d want to know the details.”

“A vacuum thing?” Amaluen’s friend laughed, throwing back her veiled head, “How long have we been friends, Amy? Nothing you could ever say would shock me. Believe it.”

“No? I’ve known you since childhood, Tamara. But I think we both know how much things have changed between us. You found your religion, and I got rid of mine.”

Tamara glanced down and stirred her tea with a spoon held in a black, satin-gloved hand. Her bead-embroidered headscarf fluttered against her cheek in the light touch of an evening breeze, and she brushed the fabric back from her face with her other black, satin-gloved hand. Except for the pale, freckled oval of her face, Tamara was covered entirely from head to toe in the hijab and abaya that her chosen religion’s modesty required.

“We used to be like twins, Amy,” said the Muslimah, “We had the same dreams. We had the same secrets. The same fantasies. Even physically people couldn’t tell us apart. We were the same size. We wore each other’s clothes. We did each other’s make up. Have we really changed so much since then, Amy? I’m not so conservative as I may look, and you are not so liberal. I doubt anything you could say would surprise me.”

Amaluen considered her longtime friend. Their identical brown eyes met each other. Amaluen glanced away first. “Maybe I’m wrong, Tamara,” she said, “You knew me well enough to give me that ad, after all. Maybe we aren’t so different after all.”

Tamara smiled. “Yes I did, Amaluen” she said, “I certainly knew you that well, at least.”

“All right. I’ll tell you.”

Tamara settled back in her seat to listen. Amaluen took another sip of her drink, then began:

“Well, I never actually saw him…”

* * *

Fourteen Fifty-five, Fourteen Fifty-seven…

Amaluen had turned in her driver’s seat to confirm the address on her google maps printout, and had nearly missed the concealed driveway of fourteen fifty-nine.

“You have arrived at your location!” announced the pleasant female voice of the GPS system, a little late and rather unhelpfully. Amaluen shifted into reverse, backed up, then made the hairpin turn down a steep slope into the driveway of fourteen fifty-nine. Gravel crunched beneath the tires of her Prius as she came to a halt at the massive, intricately sculpted, wrought iron gate that rose suddenly before her.

She only had to pause momentarily before, with a clank and a slight whirr of motors, the gate opened, rotating inward on its own. She looked up at the gatepost and saw a security camera pointed towards her car. Somehow it gave her a chill, as if the gate had opened by magic rather than by the wonders of modern technology.

She glanced over once more to the little personal ad paper clipped to the map printout: “Sophisticated man seeks beautiful fetishist to be my personal decoration. You will be encased in latex, bound and helpless: an object, a toy. I will use you as I choose, and release you as I choose. Is that what you dream of? Carpe Diem. Pluck the fruit of the day. Your dreams are meant to be lived.” Was it truly her dream? A part of her quailed at the thought, at the risk. But he’d already seen her. No point in turning back. Taking a deep breath Amaluen eased the accelerator pedal of her Prius down, and the car slid forward with a quiet crunch of gravel through the gate.

The driveway wound sinuously through a dense old-growth forest of trees. Dust rose behind her car and filtered light dappled her windshield as she drove. Smaller, bushy sun-loving plants lined the driveway. Amaluen glanced left and right through the tangle of trees, stumps, and snags beyond, but could see nothing but more forest, darker and murkier in the distance. The gravel road curved left, then right. She caught a brief glimpse of sunlight through the trees, and half a minute later the driveway opened out onto a broad patchy meadow. A large, grey-stone manor house seemingly plucked from a Jane Austen novel nestled to one side, up against the trees. It’s rows of large, paned windows, gleaming with reflections of the sky and meadow, squatted three floors high and twelve abreast. A stocky, baby-faced man in an immaculate waistcoat, shined shoes, and spotless white cotton gloves, who could only be the butler, was waiting on the marble front steps to greet her. As Amaluen pulled up in front of the house, he moved preemptively to open her door. His cotton gloved hand was extended to her.

“Welcome, Miss Bell,” he said in a voice that was higher than she expected, “You may leave your car here. The Master is waiting for you. If you would follow me, please.”

Amaluen was a little stunned by her surroundings, and completely uncertain how to deal with a butler.

“This way, please,” he prompted. He set off in front of her, not up the steps to the front door as she expected, but around the house, on a paved brick path to the left.

“Wow! Amazing house! What’s your name,” asked Amaluen, attempting in an exaggerated way to be casual. The butler turned.

“The butler, Ma’am.” He nodded slightly to her. Then he turned back to the path and continued.

He led her to the side of the house, where a small fenced rose garden with a gazebo and a fountain and a classical bronze statue of Artemis, bow raised to the sky, lent a gentle grace of sight and sound and smell to the coldly shadowed, grey stone bulk of the manor. There in the slanting shade of the manor, a set of small stone steps led downward beside the wall, into a shallow cut beneath the level of the ground, where they found the threshold of a plain, metal door set firmly into the building’s solid, concrete foundations.

The butler paused to let Amaluen catch up, then descended the half-dozen steps to the door, where he produced a set of keys, unlocked it, and opened it. Holding it open, he turned to Amaluen and gestured her in.

“This way Ma’am,” he said, “The Master awaits.”

* * *

“And you went?”

“Yes,” said Amaluen, “Why not?”

“You weren’t afraid? You know there have been stories of women disappearing from the streets. They say there’s a serial killer on the loose. You can’t be too careful nowadays. And a locked door into a basement!”

Amaluen spread her legs beneath the table and scratched at the crotch of her dress, wincing slightly. Tamara did not fail to notice the gesture, but said nothing.

“Well, it just didn’t seem like a man who lived in a house like that, who had a butler, would be the sort. And besides, all those women who disappeared have been prostitutes and drug addicts. People no one would care about or notice, not like us, not the sort of women this serial killer, if there is one, preys on. I was nervous, in truth, but I figured I had this guy pegged. He’s a fetishist, not a psycho. I wasn’t worried about that.”

Tamara shrugged. “If you’re so confident I suppose you’re right. He doesn’t seem the type.”

“No he didn’t,” said Amaluen, “So I followed the butler in, and sure enough, he locked the door behind me.”

* * *

The room was white. The floor was of black-and-white checkered tile.

Behind her, the lock clicked.

The walls were white. The ceiling was white. The metal door on the opposite side of the room was painted white. A white, leather-upholstered box lay to one side, and a white chair, and a small white table with a white vase and white flowers. All white.

And in the center of the room, on a raised, black leather platform, lay a shining, gleaming sheet of black, raw latex, spread over a frame like an artist’s canvas in the stark negative, blank and waiting for the paint. A single spotlight shone down upon it.

There was no one else in the room.

The butler turned from the door and stood behind her, silently waiting.

And then the Master spoke.

“Welcome,” he said, and his amplified voice echoed around the room. There were speakers hidden in the walls. Amaluen looked about for the source. She thought of the security camera on the gate. She wondered if he was watching and listening. Yes, he was. She was certain of it.

“Thank you, Sir,” she said. The ‘Sir’ came out even before she had thought about it. Maybe it was the way the butler had deferred to her, calling her Ma’am. Maybe it was the anachronism of the manor house, like something from Jane Austen. Maybe it was the tone of command in his amplified voice. “Sir,” she said, and it just seemed right.

“What you see before you is called a vacuum bed,” said the amplified voice, a soft sweet voice despite the amplification, an educated voice, a cultured voice, a voice of wealth and power. “A vacbed some call it, barbaric word, for those whose ears are tuned only crudely to the rhythms and subtleties of the English language. How it works is not particularly relevant to you now. You will surely discover that soon enough in due course. But for now, if you please, I require your nudity.”

“Ma’am,” said the butler, stepping forward.

“My butler will assist you,” said the voice.

“Yes, Sir,” she said. There was no reply.

“If you would raise you hands above your head, please, Ma’am.” said the butler, matter-of-factly, as if he were well-practiced with this routine.

Amaluen hesitated, watching him for any sign of interest, but outwardly at least he showed no sign of interest at all. It unsettled her; most men, standing so intimately close to her, could not have disguised their reaction. Curious, she raised her arms, and her pulse stepped up a notch as the butler reached forward to touch her. White gloved hands slid the spaghetti straps of her camisole smoothly up over her shoulders and arms, and the rest of the silk and lace garment followed. Topless, Amaluen momentarily crossed her arms over her chest, but then she intentionally let her arms drop to her sides, as if to challenge the butler, as if to say fiercely, “I am not shy!” He seemed not even to notice her bare breasts. He simply folded the delicate camisole neatly and turned to lay it carefully on top of the white upholstered box. Then he knelt gracefully before her.

“You shoes, Ma’am,” he said, looking up.

Amaluen lifted first one foot, then the other. He slid her black stiletto pumps from her feet.

“Your pants, Ma’am.”

Amaluen was temporarily at a loss.

The butler stood and stepped in and politely helped her. He unzipped her skintight gunmetal gray leather pants, unhooked her belt, and dropped the combined garment down to her ankles. She stepped out of it obediently, and the butler knelt and picked them up without an inkling of interest, folded them, and laid them neatly on top of the camisole.

By the time he turned back to her, she had already removed her panties and she handed them over silently, without his asking.

“Thank you, dear,” said the voice of the Master, echoing from unseen speakers, “You are quite as beautiful and unique as I was told, and I am well pleased. You are beautiful indeed.”

* * *

“Flattery, they say, is a man’s oldest weapon.”

Amaluen laughed, taking another sip of her sex-on-the-beach-with-a-dead-German-rockstar. “Yes. And you’d think the race of women would have learned that by now.”

“Well,” said Tamara, crossing her legs beneath her abaya, “I have indeed found that sometimes there is something to be said for dressing modestly. Not that your style doesn’t have its benefits. Please, though, continue. The tale’s just getting interesting.”

“Okay. Let’s see…” Amaluen bit her lower lip for a moment. “…The butler moved the folded pile of my clothes to the small white table, as if he knew what was next. Then he opened the box. He was between me and the box, and I couldn’t see everything that was in it. He didn’t take anything out of the box, though. He stood waiting.”

* * *

Amaluen waited, too.

“Ah, yes. Quite beautiful. The fishnets I should think. You have such long legs. They will look lovely in the fishnets.”

“Yes, Master,” said the butler. He leaned over the box and retrieved the indicated item.

A pair of thigh high fishnet stockings, black, with a broad band of lace across the top. He draped them over one arm.

“If you would, Ma’am,” he said, indicating the chair.

Amaluen followed his gesture and sat. She found that it was turning her on, the butler’s indifference, being dressed by him, being watched by a man she could not see. A part of her felt like some white-trash girl in a tawdry pay-by-the-minute strip show, or a money-starved college coed selling cheap fantasies over a blurry webcam to hormonal adolescents with credit cards pilfered from their all-too-busy-to-give-a-damn parents. It was a puppet show, and he was pulling the strings. She was an object to him, she knew. And it turned her on. She found that she was relaxing. Playing the part for him. She was getting in to it.

She sat with her legs crossed and watched the butler sliding the fishnets up her long, smooth legs. With her toes she caressed the butler’s baby-faced cheek. He didn’t react. She fingered her pussy. He didn’t react. Amused, she looked about the room.

When the butler was done she stood and pirouetted for the invisible cameras.

“Do you like what you see, Sir?” she asked coyly.

“Indeed,” said his voice through the speakers, “The gag, butler. Then lock her in, And the earbuds, if you please.”

“Yes, Master,” said the butler.

* * *

“I guess he didn’t like me talking.”

“I would think you would have realized that before then, Amy. Objects and decorations and toys don’t talk, do they?”

“Well,” laughed Amaluen, “Lesson learned. You’re right of course. And it frightened me a bit. And thrilled me a bit. I realized my mistake immediately. This Master wasn’t one to treat his toys gently when they misbehaved. I shut up after that, wisely, not that I had a choice.”

* * *

“I’m sorry, Sir.”

The butler, behind her, placed the gag in her mouth.

The gag had a small tube to breath through, and another small tube with a rubber bulb dangling from the end. The butler squeezed the bulb twice and Amaluen was caught off guard as the gag abruptly inflated in her mouth, forcing her tongue back and to the bottom. She gulped, and reached up instinctively, but the butler, with surprising force, pushed her hands down and pulled her towards the vacbed, unbalanced.

She stumbled, but quickly caught herself. Had the butler shown emotion? She turned to him, and for a moment thought she saw a spark of humor in his eyes, a curl to his lip, but then that faded, and he was no more than the indifferent butler he had been before.

“If you would lie down in the vacuum bed, please, Ma’am,” he said.

She turned to the bed.

It was large, large enough for her to lay down upon it with room to spare. She saw that it was not in fact a single layer of latex sheet, but rather two; a slit in the top with an airtight closure would provide access between the layers, and a frame of tubing, embedded around the perimeter of the bed, would provide the device with rigidity. She noticed a tube from one corner of the bed, with what looked like a small vacuum attached, and she in a sudden leap she realized how the bed worked. She would be placed between the sheets, the entry sealed, and then the air sucked out from around her, sealing her with the inestimable strength of a vacuum. When she had first seen the vacbed she had thought of the it as sort of a canvas in reverse, black instead of white, waiting for the paint. And now she realized, she was the paint. She looked at the butler for confirmation, and he nodded slightly.

“Between the sheets, Ma’am. Allow me to assist you.”

It was not difficult though, and Amaluen managed to slide into the latex unassisted. The smell of the latex surprised her. It filled her nostrils and lungs, made her feel a little dizzy. The sensation of the latex sliding over her body was like a caress, and she found herself wanting to squirm between the sheets, to feel that caress all over her.

“Your hands please, Ma’am,” said the butler, and Amaluen realized there were thick metal cuffs attached to the insides of the frame. She reached up and felt the butler grasp her wrists, first one then the other, and lock them with a small key into the fetters. They fit well. There would be no escape.

“Now slide yourself down into the bed, please, Ma’am. That’s it. All the way, as far as the cuffs will allow you. Spread your legs. Ah, yes. Don’t worry about breathing. There is a hole for that. Allow me to pull the airway tube through it. There, can you breath now Ma’am? Good. Then the earbuds, and relax, and we are ready.”

She could see nothing in between the sheets of the vacbed; they were entirely opaque. Then a slit of light came through from the opening at the top, and she felt his hands feeling for her head. He found her head, found her ears, and into them he placed two small earbuds.

His hands retreated. Darkness enclosed her. She heard him sealing the top of the bed tight.

“So we begin,” said the Master’s soft, sweet voice. And then there was the sound of a vacuum turned on, and the air rushing out from between the sheets.

* * *

“It happened very quickly,” said Amaluen. “Instinctively, I tried to move. But before I knew it the latex was sealing to itself, stretching over by body, moulding to me, forming to me. I tried to move, and found that I could not. A vacuum is a powerful force, more powerful than you might realize.”

Amaluen paused. Tamara seemed entranced in the story.

“And then?”

“And then there was nothing. The vacuum stopped. I could not see. I could not move. I could not hear except for the sound of my own heart and breathing. I think the Master must have entered the room then. I think he must have been watching me, watching me breathing. Not touching. Savoring. I do not know for how long. I kept waiting for his touch, and it seemed to never come.”

“I went through stages. I was curious. I squirmed, tried to test the boundaries of small movement that the latex’s stretch permitted. It was not much. I Became frustrated with that and lay still. I tried to imagine him. I tried to taunt him with new squirms into touching me. I lay still again. After a while time began to lose its meaning. I began to enter a trance. I was not asleep, but I found myself becoming a part of the emptiness. A part of the isolation. And before I even realized the transition my imagination took over for what my senses failed to provide.”

“I saw myself. I saw myself as he saw me, lying in the vacbed shallowly, evenly, slowly breathing, my body sealed and gleaming in the light. I felt his hands touch me, and I was not sure whether they were real, or a part of my imagination, too. I felt his caress through the latex, and it thrilled me like nothing I have ever felt before. I felt his hands slide down to my sex, and I realized there was a hole there, convenient access. It was real then, I knew. And I felt the dildo slide into me, and inflate.”

“How can I describe that time? It was endless agonies of orgasm and desire. He played with the dildo, inflated it, deflated it. Pushed it in, pulled it out. Teased me, let me cum. Whispered to me through the earbuds. Left me alone in the darkness to my own imagination’s torture.”

“His hands caressed me; his body lay against mine. His lips lay against mine. His hot breath passed over the breathing tube. He blocked it. I could not breathe.”

Tamara’s eyes widened a little. “He did that? Weren‘t you afraid he would suffocate you? Kill you?”

“No,” said Amaluen, “I knew he would not. He is not a killer. I was precious to him. He would not harm me. But struggling to breathe was like nothing I have ever felt before, and it brought me out of my trance as if I were drowning, cold water thrown over me, as if a blade of icy steel were pressed to my throat.”

“He released me, and I breathed again. He let me drift back into the emptiness for a long while then, whispering into my ears. I felt the dildo removed from me, and replaced with something hotter.”

“He was bigger than I expected. He filled me, and he knew what he was doing. I didn’t have to help him. I could not have helped him, even if I had wanted. He thrust in and out of me, and I swear I’ve never been used like that before, never had sex like that before. I just gave in to him completely. Again and again. And by the time he was done with me I was no more than a rag doll, limply tossed aside.”

“I wasn’t even aware when he left me.”

* * *

There was darkness. There was silence. Amaluen did not know for how long. And then, at long last, the voice whispered to her. It was the last time she would hear him.

“Awake,” he said, “feel refreshed.” And strangely, she did.

There was a rush of air as the latex released itself from her. Hands reached in and unlocked the cuffs. She could move again. She stretched. The butler helped her slide out of the vacbed. He removed the gag and earbuds. She felt a little dizzy, and the butler supported her. She was covered in sweat, chilled to the bone, shivering, her teeth chattering. Weak as a child. He wrapped her in a blanket. When she felt ready, he guided her to the chair.

In the space before the vacbed, where previously there had been nothing, now a large old-fashioned bathtub steamed with warm water. The whole room seemed impossibly bright and vivid, every detail surreal.

“When you are ready, Ma’am,” said the butler in his oddly pitched voice, nodding towards the tub. Amaluen looked at him as with newborn eyes, and realized, with a flash of insight, the butler was a woman. Or had been a woman once. It hardly mattered. He. Whatever the butler had been, he was no longer. Amaluen smiled inwardly with the revelation.

“Your bath Ma’am,” said the butler. He helped her in.

There were perfumes in the water. There were sweet scented soaps. As with the undressing, the butler assisted her. He removed his gloves, rolled up his sleeves. His hands massaged the soap into her shoulders and down her body, searching out every knotted muscle with skillful pressure. He worked shampoo into her hair, rinsed her with a pitcher of the warm, scented water. Helped her out and dried her off in a warm, soft towel. Through all of this, he showed not a single gesture of interest. It was merely his job.

Amaluen perched on the edge of the raised platform, holding the towel wrapped about her in one hand and running her other hand through the pink sunburst of her hair. She felt relaxed. Glowing. Infused with warmth. The butler stood before her impassively.

“Before you dress, Ma’am, the Master would like to make you an offer.”

Amaluen looked about the room, but the speakers remained hidden and silent.

“He would like to continue this arrangement, if you wish it, Ma‘am. He suggests once a week, on Fridays, perhaps.”

Amaluen looked at him closely. “Yes,” she said finally, “I believe I would enjoy that.” She smiled.

“Ah, but before you agree, there is a condition.”

Amaluen’s smile turned to a frown, and her brow creased.

The butler turned to the white, upholstered box, opened it, and removed a device of gleaming mirrored steel and black rubber.

“The Master prefers not to share his toys. If you agree to this you will be owned by him, not just while you are here, but always. This is a chastity belt. It locks on. It cannot be removed. Only he has the keys, and I. You would be required to wear it, as proof and insurance of your fidelity.”

Amaluen’s eyes widened in surprise. He handed her the device, and she turned it over, examining it.

“Is it..?”

“Yes. It is possible to wear it. Others have worn them for months. For years.”

* * *

“And?” said Tamara leaning forward.

“It keeps pinching me,” said Amaluen, “I haven’t quite got the hang of sitting yet. Taking care of business is tricky too, though not impossible. I’ve gone through more rolls of toilet paper in the past few days…”

“So you agreed? You are wearing it? You are wearing it now?”

“Well, it can’t be removed. Yes. I agreed. I barely know why. But I’ll tell you, I’ve never needed sex so badly. It’s only been two days, and already it seems like months. Friday is a long ways away.”

Amaluen sat back and sipped her drink.

“The thing I can’t figure out is how he knew my size. A belt like that isn’t off the rack precisely. It has to be custom fit. But it fit perfectly from the first. There was no way he could have measured me. We’d never met before. At least not that I know of. But it fit! It fit perfectly! Maybe…”

Tamara sat back in her chair, her lips persed, watching her friend out of narrowed eyes. “Maybe he had met me,” her friend continued, “Maybe he’d secretly spied on me or something, snuck into my apartment and rifled my wardrobe. Checked my size, stole my panties. Maybe…” but then she stopped suddenly, as if cut off. In her satin-gloved left hand Tamara was twirling the little teaspoon absently.

“What?” said Amaluen after a long moment’s silence.

Tamara’s throat constricted and a blush rose to paint her freckled face.

“Well,” she said softly, “We always were the same size.”

Stunned, Amaluen gawped. Her mouth hung open.

“You…You…”

Tamara smiled. Her eyes descended once more to the teaspoon.

“Tell me,” said Amaluen.

The Muslimah casually wetted her lips with a sip of tea. “I will.” She set the cup down and picked up the teaspoon again. Now it was her friend’s turn to settle back into her chair and listen.

“I met him three years ago,” Tamara began, twirling the teaspoon first one way then the other, “Not him, of course. Never him. It was his butler who approached me. He made me an offer. I really shouldn’t have even considered it. Not that I follow every rule in the Koran, or even most of them, but…”

“I thought Muslim women were supposed to get married off in arranged marriages or something,” interrupted Amaluen, recovering from her shock, “You’re not supposed to have sex until then, and then you’re supposed to be the submissive chattel of your husbands or something…”

“No,” said Amaluen, setting down the spoon, “Really, some of us, at least, have entered the twenty-first century. Not that there aren’t backwards male boors, just like everywhere else. But as I said, I’m not one to follow the Koran blindly, word for word. Religion, I believe, is what you take from it. For me, Islam is spiritual, and fulfilling. It is a way of life, an attitude. I’m not sure that anyone who has never been to Mecca, who has never experienced the Ummah, could understand.”

She pressed her hand to the drapery at the base of her neck, where a symbol of her faith might well have hung unseen on a slender silver chain.

“So I accepted the offer,” she continued, “I really don’t know why. It was an impulse, I suppose. It was thrilling. It was just something that seemed to call to me, even if all that my religion teaches, and every puritanical instinct within me was dead-set like mile-high wall against it.”

“We set a date. The butler came and picked me up in front of my house. He drove me to the estate. He led me into the room. It was much the same as you described, really. Oh, he does things differently, sometimes. You’ll find out. But you know how it was. The vacbed. The darkness. Being used by him until I begged and cried out for release. And then he was gone, never having let me see him, never having let me know him, and there was the butler again, and another offer, and a belt made of steel.”

Tamara’s eyes had drifted down to the table as she spoke. Now she looked up again, taking a deep breath of the salty ocean air. The sun had set, and the air was cooling. A man was walking the veranda, lighting tiki torches. Tropical flower scents and citronella mingled in the darkness. Waves lapped at the shore quietly.

“It’s been three years now,” she continued, “I’ve never seen him in all that time, but I’m his, every Thursday, without fail. A decoration, he calls me. An object of art. That is what we are to him. You’ll get used to the belt after a while. Yes, hygiene is a little difficult at first, but you’ll learn to manage it. And after a while you don’t even notice it. It is possible to pleasure yourself despite it, you know. Even if you can’t remove it. There are ways.”

“And the vacbed. The vacbed! I’ve never tired of it. Latex is like a drug. The smell of it. I’m not sure I could live without it now. A few months ago I bought one for myself, a vacbed. I bought it from this site that I found on the internet, kink engineering.com. I love it. I sleep on it, smelling the latex, smelling my sweat, and I dream of him, his hands on my body, his cock inside of me. The problem is, you really can’t use them alone.”

Tamara circled the rim of her teacup with a finger. Amaluen watched her friend closely, as if seeing her for the first time. Then the finger stopped.

“You know, you really ought to come over to my house and visit me more often, Amy. I could use the company. We could have fun together, you and I. Really, you should.”

A waiter came by their table, interrupting to offer more drinks. They declined politely, both secretly grateful for the interruption, and the waiter moved off to another table. The two friends turned back to each other. They sat in silence, unsure what to say to each other. Tamara sipped her tea. Amaluen contemplatively swirled the dregs of her drink in its glass.

“You know, Tamara,” she grinned at last, looking up, “I’m not sure if I don’t know you as well as I thought, or if I don’t know you better than I thought--” On impulse she lifted her leg beneath the frosted glass table and settled it firmly in her friend’s lap, stiletto heel pressed to the metal crotch of the chastity belt her friend wore concealed beneath the thin fabric of her abaya. “-- but I am damn sure that I want to get to know you a whole hell of a lot better than I do now.”

Her brown eyes, identical to her friend’s, gleamed mischievously in the tiki light as she raised her cocktail glass in a toast, then downed the remains of cranberry sex-on-the-beach-with-a-dead-German-rockstar, bottoms-up, at a single gulp.

Tamara smiled. “Much the same,” she said, raising her own tea cup in a black-satin gloved hand and sipping it daintily, “Much the same.”

* * *

Through the second door in the all-white room lies another room, but this one is darker and all together more dangerous. Like the first room, the floor is of black and white checkered tile. The walls, however, are all of black, and the ceiling is of black, and in the center of the room, like an altar, rests a black table with chains and manacles to hold a person secure. Spotlighted around the perimeter of the room hang twelve latex vacbeds, each suspended by chains from the ceiling. Each one is of white, and each one contains the bound figure of a beautiful, young woman.

Periodically the butler will take one down, unlock and remove the woman contained within, and chain her to the table. He washes them, checks them for ailments, and provides whatever other care or hygiene is necessary for their maintenance. He takes no other pleasure in them; not him. And the Master does not deign to do such menial tasks himself.

For now, all twelve women are sealed and suspended within their latex tombs. The Master walks clockwise between them, pausing at each. His left hand, which is scarred and missing a finger, touches one here, caresses one there. Some flinch. Some do not. He traces the gleams of light. With some he is cruel; with others he is gentle.

“Will you be adding the new girl to your collection, Sir?” asks the butler from his subservient position, two steps behind and a little to the right of his Master.

“No,” says the Master, his voice soft and sweet, an educated voice, a cultured voice, a voice of wealth and power, “She and her Muslim friend are safe. They are not like these. These… these were once prostitutes, crack addicts, heroin addicts, methamphetamine addicts. They did not care for their bodies. They did not care for their lives or their souls. They never loved another, but lived in cynical hatred of the world. They had no beauty until I hung them here. They had no worth before then, none of them. But those two. Those two are different. They are special. They have beauty as they are. They shine, those two. Tamara with her deep devotion to her faith, and Amaluen with her passionate individuality. Different as they are, they are each the artist of their own being, and I would no more touch their beauty than I would alter the work of any other artist.”

His scarred hand, missing a finger, lingers over the white-latex encased body of his newest decoration. She had lived a life bouncing between one abusive man and the next, whoever would provide her with drugs and food and shelter. At least until he found her, on the streets between boyfriends, verging on suicide. She whimpers at his touch. He pauses there for a long while. When he is done, his hand slides off her body. He moves towards the door, limping slightly. The butler watches his Master’s back as he disappears into the white luminescence of the room beyond.

Alone, the butler turns back into the room. For once, he indulges himself, looking from one suspended, spotlighted figure to the next, smiling faintly. He does not touch them. Not that way. He never would. When he is satisfied, he simply turns to the door, flips out the lights, and leaves. The door closes; the lock clicks.

In the darkness, twelve young, beautiful women hang bound and suspended, vacuum-sealed in frames of white latex. Twelve helpless decorations.

Miles away, two lifelong friends, Tamara and Amaluen, laugh together innocently, at play.

28.07.09