BDSM Library - Story: Stiffkey Blues, Chapter: Chapter 2 Webscape

Chapter 2: Webscape

Freddie Clegg was watching Connie Mbazu as she laid yet another stroke with her flogger across the naked girl’s back.

The girl, ungagged so that Connie could hear her every response, whimpered and bit her lower lip.

Another stroke followed, harder this time, throwing the girl forward against the pull of the chains that held her hands high over her head.

Clegg admired the precision with which Connie carried out her work. It was hard to imagine how the stripes could be more evenly spaced, more precisely parallel or how the welts could be more equally raw.

After the fifth stroke she stopped. The girl was sobbing, her head bowed, sweating with the strain of hanging from her shackles and the beating. Connie picked up the spiked wheel from a side table arrayed with a surprising array of steel implements that looked as though they were surgical instruments but had a very different purpose. She approached the girl who looked down at the needle like spikes as the Doctor brought it closer to her breast. “Please,” she begged, please what do you want me to do? I’ll do anything? What do you want me to do?”

“Do, dear?” Connie responded. “What do I want you to do? To get used to it, of course! This is nothing to what your new owners will expect. You have to be ready. You have to get used to it. Now, do your best for Connie. Please.”

The girl squealed, exclaiming “Nooo!” as Connie came nearer.

Regretfully, Freddie interrupted the proceedings. He didn’t like to disturb Connie’s activities. He knew that her methods depended on orchestrating a crescendo of sensation in her subjects. An unplanned pause would only disturb the rhythm.

On the other hand she had obviously only just started and a short period for the girl hanging in her shackles, wondering what might happen next, would probably contribute something. Connie looked up seeing Freddie and sensing that she was needed. She stopped the pin wheel a fraction of an inch from the girl’s nipple. “Soon,” she said to the girl. “Soon.” She turned away, put the pin wheel down and walked back to Freddie. The girl sagged in the grip of her shackles and watched the two of them, seeming almost disappointed that her ordeal had been delayed.

“What is it, boss?” Connie said.

Freddie beckoned her out into the corridor. “Can I just have a chat with you, Harry and Rick about the Kalinin’s request? It’s just that Rick has come up with an opportunity. We need to be quick off the mark though and you know how I hate rushing things. I want to be sure we aren’t taking any unnecessary risks. Harry has things set and ready to go but I want us all to be happy.”

Connie nodded. “Our friend in there will keep warm for a while,” she said. “I was thinking I needed a cup of tea anyway.”

Freddie raised an eyebrow. A tea break? Even he was sometimes surprised by the matter of fact way that his team approached their work. The two of them headed off towards an office where Rick and Harry, Freddie’s operations director, were already waiting.

The four of them sat around the office table. “Rick,” said Freddie, “perhaps you can lead off on this.”

Rick nodded and passed around photo copies of a print out of a half a dozen pages from a web site. “The Kalinin is looking for storytellers. As you know we track web sites of possible interest and we’ve been following this one, largely because it came up in some routine searches we do on keywords like ‘Kushtia’, ‘slavery’, and so on. They’ve had quite a thread going on in their forum about the whole Cultural Exchange Programme thing and it hasn’t been the usual ‘Oh! Oh! Human Rights!’ stuff either. Anyway we wondered if this might be a route to finding some story tellers – they’ve got quite an active group of authors and some of the stuff is quite literate. Anyway, cut to the chase, we’ve identified a group that might fit requirements as far as their story telling ability and physical attributes are concerned and a collection opportunity. The only problem is that the timescales are a bit like Sarah’ skirts, somewhere between way too tight and far too tight.” Rick smirked. Freddie waited patiently. He was used to Rick’s jokes. He found the best way to deal with them was to let them wash over him.

Freddie flicked through the printouts of pages from Eastern Promise. “We are actually talking about women are we?” he said. “My feeling was that most of the contributors to these sites turn out to be middle aged, balding men.”

“Not in this case. We’ve followed up the on-line research with some fieldwork and we’ve got these.” He passed around a series of photographs. “Fatima – or as you see her here Madeleine Roth – is one of the site’s founders together with ‘First Concubine’ – Krysta Collins.”

Freddie felt the pictures were encouraging. As always with the surveillance pictures it was difficult to be sure. Some of them were blurred and grainy but it was clear that Roth and Collins had the qualities that would appeal to the Kalinin’s son. Freddie’s years of experience allowed him to assess a possible acquisition quickly. Of course there were other factors that governed their choices but he felt he had a sixth sense that told him ‘yes, this one’. Anyway, one thing was clear, they certainly weren’t balding men.

Freddie looked down at the transcript of one of the stories that ‘Fatima’ had posted. “She lay, face down and arms outstretched, at the door to the Prince’s chamber for what seemed like hours. The cool tiles of the room pressed against her naked belly. ‘Approach,’ the Prince ordered and his latest slave slid forward like a snake across the floor towards the sound of his voice.”

Well, Freddie thought, if those are her fantasies, she’s soon going to get the opportunity to live them out.

“So that’s two,” said Freddie. “What about the others? Have you got a plan for a collection? Are these two cleared for impediments?”

Impediments, thought Harry, that’s an Elly word, straight out of her legal frameworks. Still it was important that they knew about any husbands, boyfriends, dependent relatives or other unnecessary complications.

Rick nodded. “Nothing complicated. Usual family links, both have parents living and the usual set of work colleagues. They’ve both been fairly secretive about their on-line personas and that goes for these other two girls too.” Rick dealt out another pair of photographs. “These two are known as ‘The Sheik’s Dancer’ and ‘Kismet22’ on Eastern Promise.” Freddie flipped each of the photos over. They both carried the file label that Rick’s research people added. ‘Angela Dark’ and ‘Celia Best’ the labels said.

“OK,” said Freddie. “You’ve even managed a red-head with Ms Best by the look of it.” Freddie was pleased by that; he knew the enthusiasms of the Kalinin’s son.

“I can’t vouch for the authenticity,” said Rick. “There’s only so much research you can do from a distance.”

Freddie flicked through the photos again. He looked across at Connie and Harry. They seemed happy enough. “They look OK.,” Freddie said, “But we’re looking for five, don’t forget.”

“Uh huh,” said Rick. ”This bunch are all off for a few days shared writing next week-end. Harry and I thought this would give us a good collection opportunity. First of all it was just going to be four of them but now there’s another one and that will make our five. The only problem is that we don’t know much about her.”

He dealt another pair of photographs. “Penelope Trating, posts as ‘Yasmin’ on the board.”

In one ‘Yasmin’ appeared in full eastern splendour, wearing a burkah, her face veiled, It didn’t allow much of a judgement to be made about her looks. The other photograph made it easier to judge Penny’s appearance but it was scarcely less bizarre. She looked as though she had stepped out of 1962; heavily lacquered bee-hive hair, dark rimmed spectacles and eye make up that made her look like a panda.

“She’s a strange girl, this one,” Rick went on. “It’s like she’s living her life almost fifty years on. You only ever see her in this sort of fashion.”

Freddie looked at the girl’s outfit. Smartly tailored, skirt just short of knee length, round collared jacket, low heels on her shoes. The image shot him straight back to his adolescence. It was a strange sensation - the same way that a half forgotten scent or a snatch of a music track could suddenly pitch you into the same sensations that you felt at fourteen or fifteen with all the sense of confusion that he’d felt at the time and all the difficulty he felt about what he was and why he was who he was. Sixty-two, he thought, that was before Miranda. Before he knew anything about this. Before …..

“Freddie? Are you OK?” Rick interrupted his thoughts.

Freddie was suddenly aware that he hadn’t been paying attention. “Yeah, sure. Sorry about that. Just thinking about something else. What were you saying?”

“We’ve really not been able to find out much about her. She’s a librarian, lives on her own, that’s about it.”

Freddie took another look at the photograph. “Sounds OK,” he said tossing it back onto the table. “I don’t suppose the Kalinin is bothered by her fashion sense. You’d better get on with it.”

All characters fictitious

E-mail: freddie_clegg@yahoo.com Web Group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/freddies_tales/