Monica's Travels 22

by Richard Alexander (Gromets Plaza)

(story continues from Monica's Travels 21)

Chapter Twenty Two –  Searching for Answers

Trish, Mary, Emma and I sat at a small table in the café area of the big convention hall.  From where we were, we could see the entrance to the back room, and we were keeping a careful eye on that door.

We were still frustrated and upset at getting so close to rescuing Monica and capturing Jade Wong, then missing out at the last minute.  We needed time to regroup and plan our strategy.  Emma had told us Monica was being taken to LA, though we had no idea where in LA or through which airport.  I could tell the girls were unhappy and had the look of wanting to pull in different directions.

“What if Kris doesn’t know anything?” Trish ventured.

“I reckon we’ll find out if that’s the case by the time we go back in there,” Mary said with utter certainty.  She was probably right, I thought.

“But shouldn’t we be booking flights?” Emma said, her anxiety clear for all.

“Yes, we should,” I agreed.  “But we still have one card to play, remember?  Marilyn has to come back here.  She’s run out leaving Kris to be pumped for everything we can get, not to mention leaving all her merchandise here.  And most important, she’s left behind her handbag with her credit cards and all her personal details,” I said, dumping a smart black leather handbag on the table.  We had already had a good rummage and established the contents.  “Come to think of it, Trish, you’re a brunette - you look rather like Marilyn.  What’s your handwriting like?”

Trish dug into the purse and studied the signature on a credit card.

“Shouldn’t be too hard,” she decided after a little thought.

“Seems only reasonable that some of Marilyn’s profit made with the talents of Emma and Monica should be used to fund our own resources, doesn’t it?” I suggested ingenuously.  The others nodded.  “Okay, here’s what I propose.  Trish organises some flights for us tonight, and goes back to the hotel with Emma to get everything ready.  Mary and I will stay here and either get the truth out of Kris or from Marilyn.  She’ll have to come back tonight, otherwise it will be all locked up, since tonight’s the last night of the exhibition.  She’s in a no-win situation.”

“Sounds fair enough,” Trish agreed.  “Hey, I could ring my old friend Louise, in LA!”

“Who’s Louise?” asked Emma.

“She’s an American girl I worked with in Sydney, at Dark Castle.  Did you ever meet her, Mary?  Tall, African-American, sort of Naomi Campbell looks but with long hair.”

“Uh-uh,” said Mary.  “But go for it.  I think we’ll need all the help we can get.”

*   *   *

Mary and I returned to the back room and checked on Kris. She was still sobbing from the nipple vices, and spilt the beans when we took them off and removed her gag.  Not that there were many beans to spill, it seemed.  Other than the fact that Jade Wong had a holiday home in LA, we were none the wiser.  There was no address, no indication that this was where Monica was to be taken.  Kris mumbled something about a mental institution, but could give no further details, even after six strokes of the cane across her backside from Mary.

By that stage the cries were too much and we were obliged to gag her again, leaving her sniffling and sobbing, still bound to the frame.

We estimated an hour to the airport, and an hour back, and realised that pretty soon Marilyn might be returning.  She would try to sneak in, but the only options were through the loading dock or the door into the main hall.  I went out to check the gates to the alleyway leading to the loading dock and found the chain and the open padlock that had previously secured them.  I used one of the many padlocks from Marilyn’s merchandise collection to now secure the gate, thus reducing her choices to only one.  Mary and I took up positions behind a pile of boxes a little way inside the main door, since we wanted her inside with the door closed before we pounced.  We left the door open to the smaller room where Kris was still tied to the frame, letting her whimpering noises drift out into the area with the stage.

Our suppositions proved correct, for half an hour later Marilyn cautiously opened the door from the main hall, obviously very wary of what might be awaiting her.  Her handbag was sitting on the edge of the stage, open, and the sight of it proved too much for her to resist, the moment she laid eyes on it.  Clearly she was concerned that her whole life was exposed in the form of credit cards, driver’s licence and every other piece of important information that we habitually carry with us.

She had barely reached the stage when there was a noise from Mary which distracted her, allowing me to make a very effective rugby tackle that saw us sprawling in a welter of cardboard boxes and merchandise.  Marilyn fought like a mad woman, but Mary and I had had a wealth of devices to investigate and select for just such an occasion.  Mary had found a nice one-piece set of handcuffs which between the two of us we used to secure Marilyn’s wrists behind her.  After that it was all over bar the shouting, and she couldn’t do much of that after we’d strapped an inflatable gag between her teeth, and Mary delighted in pumping it up until Marilyn’s cheeks bulged and she began to make true gagging noises.

Fifteen minutes later Marilyn’s clothes lay in a heap on the floor, and she was bound to the frame in a star shape back to back with Kris.  The door was closed and Marilyn was doing her best to express her dismay and discomfort at the steel vices that Mary was tightening on her nipples with great deliberation.  Mary gave one clamp a half screw, tugged it, then did the same with the other one.  Marilyn screwed up her face and moaned around the bulbous sac stretching and filling her mouth.  Tears trickled down her cheeks as Mary gave each screw another half turn and Marilyn screamed as best she could.  Her breath came in rapid, uncontrollable gasps, but Mary took not the slightest heed.

“We need to know where Monica’s been taken,” she said, matter-of-factly, as though making conversation while doing some needlework.  Marilyn moaned in misery and mumbled something unintelligible.  Mary made no sign of having heard and picked up a long-tailed flogger as though she simply felt she needed some practice.  Marilyn became even more agitated and strained against the ropes holding her wrists and ankles wide, throwing herself against the rigid frame.

Mary let fly with a deliberate upward flick, catching the brunette between the legs.  Marilyn screamed into the gag, which was effective in toning the noise down to a muted nasal moan.  Another flick, and Marilyn jerked hard and tried desperately to close her thighs, but had no chance.  Flick, flick, flick.  Marilyn’s breathing had become disordered, owing to her need to scream and suck in air at the same time.  Mary paused to let her victim decide which was more important.  Marilyn’s breathing slowly coincided with various sobbing noises that expressed a small degree of the pain she obviously was experiencing.  When her bodily needs were almost under control, Mary struck with a fearsome swish across the helpless girl’s breasts, catching both clamps and prompting a new paroxysm from Marilyn, as she again flung herself against her ropes.

Mary had her rhythm now, forehands and backhands across the breasts, belly and thighs, punctuated by the odd upward flick to the crotch.  Marilyn’s head went back as she howled in pain.  Eventually I stepped forward and caught Mary by the arm.  I think she was half expecting it, and she made no resistance to my gesture, but stood back.  I suppose unwittingly, we had become good guy - bad girl.

It took Marilyn a full minute to compose herself after I delated the gag, such was the intensity of what she had just gone through and was obviously still experiencing from the nipple vices.  With a great effort of will, she gritted her teeth and pleaded with me, striving to retain some pride and self-control.

“Oh G-God! Please undo them!  They hurt so much! Pleeese!”

“Of course,” I said, resisting the entreaty only with difficulty.  I wanted to appear dispassionate and unimpressed.  “All in good time. Mary and I are prepared to stay here all night, and to whip you bloody, if that’s what it takes to find out where Monica is.  Do you understand?”

“Y -Yes!  Look, I don’t know!  She’s been taken to LA with Jade Wong in a private plane.  Jade has a house there, but they were talking about putting Monica in some insane asylum, but I don’t know which one or where!  It’s the truth!  Honestly!”

“Where’s this house?”

“Somewhere in the hills to the north – the address is in my note book in my bag!  Go look for it – it’s the truth!  Oh God, please take these off!”

“If you’re lying, Mary will tighten them even further,” I said with a calmness I did not feel.  Torturing women was not my forte, which was why I was wimping out and letting Mary do the dirty work.  She had a much better wrist for it than I did, anyway.  But getting Monica back was a way higher priority than the sensitivities of Marilyn, who was simply there to make a buck and who now found herself caught up in events beyond her control.

My threat prompted further sobbing and I felt a real bastard, watching her while Mary left the room and returned moments later with a dark green address book.

“Is this it?” Mary demanded, holding the opened page under Marilyn’s nose.  She nodded and sniffled some more.  Mary inclined her head to me, and we retreated to the main room, closing the door behind us.

“I think this is as far as we’re going to get,” I said, praying that Mary would agree with me and not decide to go on some vindictive revenge crusade of her own.

“You’re such an easy mark,” said Mary, a touch of condescension in her voice, and my heart sank.  “But in this case I agree.  I think we should leave these two here for the night and they’ll be found in the morning when everyone turns up to dismantle their display stands. I think we should use that mercury switch device that Emma showed us - and maybe a couple of other things.”

I nodded my agreement and we rummaged through the piles of merchandise, returning to the two prisoners. 

We did not immediately unscrew the nipple clamps that were causing so much pain to Marilyn, instead fitting her with a head harness and ball gag that at least silenced her whimpered pleadings.  We untied Kris’s wrists and re-secured them with handcuffs, over the top of the upper horizontal bar.  The effectively left her fully restrained, even when we untied her ankles, but these, too, were then manacled, the link passing under the lower bar.  The manacles and handcuffs were non-standard, specially crafted pieces that Marilyn had obviously been promoting.  The cuffs were in one piece, and were not the sort of thing you could remove with bolt-cutters, since they had no chain link to attack. 

Marilyn was similarly secured, back to back with Kris – an arrangement I thought was elegant and very secure.  We replaced Kris’s ball gag with a harness one that matched Marilyn’s.  Another Ultimator was unwrapped and then inserted within Marilyn’s exposed orifices, and secured in place with waist and crotch straps, before being hooked up to the same black box that powered Kris’s.  We added a couple more chains to the handcuffs, locking them such that the cuffs were tethered to the poles, and could not slide back towards the middle of the upper bar, since this was where we now placed the hemispherical mercury switch, suspended from the bar on a wire.  A string from the switch to the top of each head harness ensured that the switch would be activated if either prisoner nodded off during the night.

It took me twenty minutes to work out the settings on the black box and to get all the wires hooked up properly.  It was a little like programming a video, and Mary watched me puzzle over it all until she could stand it no longer and dug out the instruction leaflet.

“If all else fails, read the destructions,” she murmured, dropping it in front of where I knelt on the floor.

I didn’t dignify her gesture with a reply, but managed to get everything hooked up within five minutes.  At that point we had to set up the timing and make sure things worked as they should.  This was easy enough, with Mary forcing the prisoners’ heads forward to tug on the string which activated the mercury switch, sending a jolt of electricity into front and back passages.  Mary suggested that we should in fact cross them over, such that Kris nodding off would zap Marilyn, and vice versa. That was why she was the true devious domme and I was just the helper.

We did a final check of the pair.

“Someone will find you tomorrow, no doubt,” I told them, and it was only then that they realised they were to spend the night that way, and however much longer it took before the convention organisers decided to check that all the gear was cleared out.  Kris and Marilyn went ape at that point, tugging on their restraints and making passionate mmphing noises, which inevitably set off the mercury switch as their heads bobbled about.  This in turn precipitated more complaint, until they finally realised that they had to act a little more rationally.  Marilyn had tears trickling down her cheeks as she half-turned in her bonds and thrust her clamped breasts out, shaking them plaintively in a way that must have hurt.

Feigning reluctance, I returned to her and unscrewed them to a point where with a bit of persuasion, she would probably be able to flick them off, though I was careful not to let Mary see how loose they were.  I picked up her clothes and left, closing the door on them to be met with the mess that was the outer room.  Boxes of stuff were everywhere, as was opened merchandise and samples.

“I think we should take any keys with us,” Mary suggested, “that might undo those cuffs and manacles.  They’ll have great fun getting them off.  And we should take Marilyn’s clothes, too.  Naked and chained females are so much fun.”

*   *   *

We had almost finished our final checking of the outer room when Mary’s mobile phone rang.  She spoke briefly then relayed the message to me.  She was smiling broadly.

“Trish has heard from Jill.  Apparently an almighty scandal has broken out in England about what our friend the Earl and his mates have been up to.  Shit is hitting the fan in a major way and flying in all directions!  Warren and Leon are in the clink somewhere, along with the Earl, and Trish said it will be on the BBC news if we can get back to the hotel in time.  Oh yes, and we’re booked on an 11 pm flight to Los Angeles, so we’d better get ourselves organised.”

It was almost 5 in the evening.  We exited into the main hall and deposited Marilyn’s key at the enrolment desk near the main entrance, telling the girl that Marilyn and Kris would be back tomorrow to remove their stuff.  The girl smiled and said that was fine, and that access would be available from nine in the morning, for all exhibitors to pack up their gear.

Outside, the warmth of a New York spring was lingering as we took a cab back to the hotel.  I thought it was a shame that we couldn’t stay to enjoy the place, but there was no choice in the matter.  We had to catch up with Monica and this time we had to do it properly, though I had no idea how.

Trish and Emma were buzzing with excitement as we raided the minibar and sat down on the couch and king sized bed in Trish’s room to watch the news.  It was 48 hours since we had left the three men uncomfortably encased on the village green outside Ross-on-Wye, and it was only now that the full details of the story behind their plight were emerging.  The police had been hounding the newspapers, accusing them of concealing evidence, until copies of the tapes had been handed over.  There had been a raid and search of Simons Yat Hall, with more tapes seized, along with assorted ‘devices’.  The place had been put under police guard, and the three men had appeared in court, charged with deprivation of liberty, kidnapping, grievous bodily harm and no doubt a few more charges yet to be dreamed up.

The media were in a frenzy.  The matter had been nick-named the Armourgeddon Affair, and British aristocracy was reeling from attacks from all sides about the lifestyle of the decadent few.  People in high places appeared to be running for cover in all directions.  It was certainly a cause to open a bottle of Moet, which we did.

We did not have much time to savour our triumph, after we had phoned Jill and Leila and Shawnee and had a group update over on speakerphone.  They were in Paris, and having a great time, though their first thoughts were how we were progressing with our pursuit.  They were much cheered by Emma’s voice, but the edge was taken off by the fact that we were now heading to LA, and really had no idea quite where that would lead.

Trish had further good news that she had caught up with her friend Louise in LA, who would be meeting us at the airport.  Things were happening so fast that I was afraid we would overlook something in our haste, but my doubts were shushed by the others, and I had to admit that we were making progress through the rescue of Emma. 

We ate at the airport after checking in, and as the 747 finally lifted off, Trish and I again found ourselves sitting together in the gloom of the dimmed cabin lights, and our whispered conversations continued into the night.

*   *   *

“Mary told me about how you teamed up with Jill and how Monica decided to move back to Brisbane,” I said, as we got on to our second bacardi. 

“Did she?”  Trish raised an eyebrow.  “Was it the complete version or the Mary version?”

“How would I know?  And what’s the difference?”

“Well… Mary sometimes leaves things out, if you know what I mean.  Usually they relate to herself, and what she’s done.  Mary is surprisingly self-effacing.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning, oh ignorant pleb, that she plays down her own abilities and the unseen contributions she makes behind the scenes.”

“I see.  The last I heard of the saga was when Monica rang you and Mary to ask you to join her in Brisbane.  Was that a big step?”

“Well, yes and no.”  Trish took another sip of her drink and settled lower in her seat.

In our line of business, we’re sort of self-contained contractors, and this was essentially what Monica was offering, ie more of the same.  The big danger was that there was no client base, but she seemed to be on top of that.  The real issue was for Mary, since she had her own house and her sideline translation business in Sydney.  I could relocate at short notice, and did so.  Not that I was running out on Mary.  We agreed that it would be better to start up gradually, and I came up to help Monica set up the house.  Of course I ended up using my design skills and practical knowledge for two months before we even got to the sharp end of the business.  That gave Mary time to sort out her affairs, relocate her translation business to Brisbane, and rent her house out.

Things were looking up and we soon found out that contrary to our expectation, Monica had under-estimated, rather than over-estimated the client base.  We soon found that we could barely satisfy the demand once the word got out.  The problem was that we really needed some heavy-duty dungeons, and that was hard to organise.  The house – Bilboes – was a colonial one, as you know, but it had to be raised up sufficiently for a basement to be excavated underneath and blockwork walls to be built.  It was a pretty serious piece of building, and it took time and money.

And while all this was going on, we kept the business running in a kind of ad hoc manner, using a lot of Mary’s gear, along with some of Monica’s.  We were pretty stretched, even with the limited facilities.  There seemed to be a market for overnighters and longer term stuff, which takes a toll on three people, when all-night surveillance is needed.

Then one of those fateful sort of karma things happened.  Jill got a job in Brisbane as well, as a physio, after she had passed her exams, and suddenly we were reunited.  But Jill returned with company.  I remember the second time when she came to Bilboes for dinner.  The house was still a bit of a mess at that stage.  We had the sleeping quarters built, and the main interior was workable, but the basement was a shambles of blocks and plumbing and exposed wiring.  Even back then we still used the back verandah for entertaining – and entertainment, of course.  Mary had prepared the meal, and we had been told that Jill was bringing a friend.  I answered the door that evening, and that was when I first saw Emma.  I had to admit she was gorgeous – you know, really yummy in that shy Asian way.  She wore a white satin Chinese dress that was slit each side almost to her waist, and showed every curve of Emma’s body.  It had obviously been tailored for her, because her breasts were way bigger than most Chinese could ever aspire to.  Not that they were disproportionate – rather the opposite, in fact.  Emma had her hair down past her shoulders, and the black against the white was quite stunning.

She said very little during dinner.  I noticed she didn’t drink much, but a lot of Asians are like that.  Emma seemed to be at ease, smiling, but just not really contributing. It was a bit awkward, because we didn’t really know what Emma knew about Bilboes and our work, and Jill had deliberately not said.  I suspected she was up to something, and I was proved right after dinner, when Jill stood up and excused herself and Emma, saying she’d like to show Emma a little of the house.  Monica caught my eye and I just shrugged, and the pair went inside the house.

They were gone a little while, and of course the three of use were busy chatting about Jill and her friend – as girls do behind others’ backs – when Jill reappeared.  At first we couldn’t see Emma, until Jill pulled on a rope she was holding in her hand.  There was a clatter of high heels on the polished floor and Emma tottered into view.  She was bound and gagged, still in her high-collared dress, and looking if anything even yummier than before.

Jill had obviously been planning this, and we stared in amazement, the implications sinking in slowly at different levels.  Of immediate interest was Jill’s tying of Emma.  It was simple, but a lot of thought had clearly gone into it.  My first reaction was a designer’s admiration for the total look she had achieved.  With Emma already looking stunning with her black hair on the white dress, Jill had emphasized this further with a black ball gag on a white strap encircling and overlaying the shiny straight hair.  Emma’s mouth was wide, her pale lipstick shiny around the black rubber ball, and her big eyes even wider above that.

Jill had brought some black rope, with her, with which she had bound Emma with multiple turns at the elbows, so that they were touching, and similarly at the wrists.  Further loops of cord encircled Emma’s torso under her breasts, melding her arms to her body, with cinch ropes between arms and body.  The ropes made her breasts even more prominent and gave her a peculiarly wistful and endearing quality, the sort you might expect a good painter to capture in a portrait.  The final touch was a pair of nipple clips, again painted black, linked by a chain that dangled in catenary between the anchor points.  And here Jill had evidently aroused Emma to such a degree that her nipples were straining through the satin sufficient for the clips to be attached.

The picture was quite extraordinary, not just through the care that Jill had taken, but in the way she had presented her friend.  Jill herself was dressed in a sleeveless back dress that barely reached her knees, and with her shortish blonde hair she was exactly the opposite of Emma.  The pair of them now stood before us, saying nothing, while we – quite honestly – were gob-smacked.  Jill’s tying of Emma, leaving her still clothed, was in many ways a more sensuous and beautiful presentation than if Emma had been naked.  The contrasting black and white, and the sheen of the satin and Emma’s hair gave Emma an innocence that I had rarely seen in such circumstances.

Monica was clearly impressed.  She stood up slowly and walked around the pair of them.  Jill looked like a girl who has brought a puppy home and wants to keep it.  Emma looked very nervous and kept her eyes downcast. Monica inspected the ropes, slipping her finger between them for tightness, and cupping Emma’s breast to sense the tension in the nipple decoration.  After the initial inspection, she moved closer to the Chinese girl and slid a hand inside the slit skirt.  Emma closed her eyes and shuddered, her breathing quickening and the clips and chain quivering.

Monica seemed amused by the whole thing.  “Is there something you want to tell us, Jill,” she whispered in Jill’s ear, barely loud enough for Mary and I to discern.  For possibly the first an only time, Jill seemed at a loss for words, but finally blurted out:

“We’d like to join you, Monica, if you’ll have us…”

So that was how Emma first came on the scene. Monica was a little reluctant at first, mainly because we were still starting out, but the signs were too auspicious.  Demand was more than we could cope with, and none of the three of us was a submissive.  If Emma was a true sub – and it turned out she was, it would lend a whole new dimension to our trade.  Jill, of course, was a switch, and this helped us equally well.  But there were other aspects that Monica was quick to pick up on.  Emma worked as a nurse, and when combined with Jill’s training as a physio, well, medicine’s loss was society’s overall gain, I guess.

Of course, we found out that Jill and Emma were an item, and this whole thing had come about because they had been doing a lot of experimentation on their own – as you do!  Jill proved a natural with the business side of things, too – an aspect that Mary and I had never been very interested in, and an area where Monica needed help.  You know how it is, sometimes, things just sort of click together on a multitude of levels, and the end result is just right.

“Which only leaves Leila to come on to the scene,” I suggested.

“Mmmn.  But that’s a whole different story… ”

“So tell me.”

“Oh shit, I know you’ll only pester me if I don’t…”

How long have you been with us – a couple of years now?  God, it seems like forever, so much has happened.  Well, Leila joined us about six months before you arrived.  We first met her at a function in the hinterland, as you Queenslanders like to call the hills behind the Gold Coast.  I suppose she would be nineteen, going on twenty then. 

Monica and I had been invited to an arty crafty thing at one of the wineries down there.  It was a Sunday afternoon trendy casual affair.  You know my views on crafts – I’m a practical girl, but the others were tied up – so to speak – and Monica said it was all part of networking, and that there would be a number of influential people there, some past clients, some decidedly future ones.  So I went along for the ride.

It was one of those wine and canapés affairs where nobody is quite sure how far to dress up on a Sunday afternoon.  Of course, Brizzie is notoriously casual, but there’s still the racing set who have to dress up, and a few of them were in attendance.  Monica and I tried to hit an intermediate level of attire.  Dresses, rather than slacks, and showing enough flesh while still meeting Monica’s standards of taste.  You know what she’s like.

Anyway, this exhibition turned out more arty than crafty, with a lot of photos on display by various local photographers, some of which were really quite good.  There was plenty of wine tasting going one, which was all included in the cover charge, so we met and mingled, with Monica doing the driving and sticking to mineral water, while I was quite enjoying myself, as I am prone to do when the chardonnay is liberally available.

It was one of those afternoons where a series of little events come together at the end of the day.  You know, where you see someone doing something, and remember them, and later they turn out to be the sister of a friend who you went to school with.  In this case it was more subtle, perhaps.  Monica and I were looking at the photos, and there was one particular lot that caught our attention by somebody called Leila McKinnon, whom we didn’t know from a bar of soap.  For all we knew she could have been one of those lefty trendy hair-armpitted greenies who inhabit those hinterland places.  Her photos were mainly of the Gold Coast, you know, Surfers Paradise and round there, but they had a kind of desolate quality.  A lot were in black and white and they brought out the starkness and artificiality of the high rises and the glitter strip, and some of the unfortunates who live there.  You know what Monica and I think of the place – both of us hate it.

That was the start of the chain.  Anyway, the afternoon wore on and I confess I was somewhat the worse for wear, but I wasn’t the only one.  The next episode came when we were standing on the wooden deck outside the place where the photos were being exhibited, and in avoiding a drinks waiter, I took a step back and bumped into somebody, who in turn took a step back and fell off the edge of the deck into the bushes.  It was hugely embarrassing for all of us, not least for this girl who had taken the tumble.  She was drunker than I was, and to make matters even worse, she was wearing a short white dress that took the impact of a full glass of red wine as she fell in the bushes.

Of course Monica and I helped her up and while I thought the whole thing at once embarrassing but also quite funny, the girl was in tears.  Not only did her dress now have a big red target on the front, but the zip at the back had come undone and refused to do up again.

Monica, of course, was in damage control, as she has to be so often, it seems.  I managed to get hold of myself, and the three of us retired to the rest room to see what we could do to repair the damage.  Her name was Leila, it turned out – the same Leila whose photos we had admired.  Her tears, it turned out, were the sort that come when you’ve just about had a gutful of the world, have drunk far more than you should have, and nothing is showing the remotest likelihood of getting any better.

We tried to fix the dress, firstly – the zipper, that is.  It was a nice dress, white, sleeveless, with a plunging neckline and displaying plenty of leg.  Leila wore no bra and in the course of trying to make amends, I caught glimpses of the firm proud breasts that one has at that age, when one is not ashamed to show them off.  More significant, though, was what we saw as Leila tried to keep the back of her dress from opening up down the back.  Overlaying the white skin were the red weals – perhaps a few days old – that could only have come from a whip or a lash.

Now it may sound as though every person I’ve ever met has some sort of B&D fetish, but I’m only telling you about those who have joined Bilboes, for obvious reasons.  In this instance, Monica and I looked at each other meaningfully – looks which Leila saw in the mirror.  She was clearly embarrassed, and of course Monica and I were too experienced to jump to conclusions here.  It might have been a voluntary thing, or it might have been genuine abuse.  Either way, it was not our business, and Monica asked if I could go and fetch her leather jacket from the car.  It was late afternoon and starting to get a little cooler, so a jacket would not be out of place. 

The car was parked some distance away, and when I returned, I found Monica and Leila sitting some distance away from the crowd, on a wooden bench in a section of garden that surrounded the display area.  Monica looked up as I approached.  Leila had her head in her hands and was sobbing quietly.  Monica’s expression was one of concern and wariness.  I sat down beside Leila and put the jacket around her shoulders.  Suddenly I found myself quite sober – enough to listen and not interrupt.

Leila lifted her head from her hands and stared at some distant point in the garden.  She was blonde, her hair held up with tortoiseshell clips that had been dislodged by events, now allowing long wisps of hair to escape in random fashion.  She had a fine boned face, still fresh with youth and unspoiled by the harsh Australian sun.  But her makeup was smudged and she was definitely not at her best, and now she seemed prepared to cry her heart out.

Monica has a great gift of making people feel at ease and comfortable in her presence.  She put her arm round Leila and the girl sobbed on her shoulder, past any embarrassment as to the unknown nature of the company she was in.  I didn’t know what she had told Monica while I had been away, but I had the feeling it was quite a lot.  Monica held her like a sister, and slowly the crying jag passed.

Leila dabbed her eyes and apologised.

“I’m s-sorry.  I’m not normally like thish.”  Her words were slurred and she had a slightly out-of-focus expression in her brown eyes.

“I think you should go home,” Monica said.  “You’ve had a bad day.  Have you got a car here?”

“N-no.  I got a lift.  But my friend’s already gone…”

And that was how we came to be driving Leila back to her apartment on the God Coast, and that was when Monica told me Leila’s story, which was after she’d thrown up over the front tyre and fallen asleep in the back.  I have to say she was not a happy teddy.

One of Monica’s many talents is getting people to talk, and I was amazed at what she had learned just in the short time I had taken to go to the car and back.  It seemed that Leila’s parents had been living in New Guinea, where her dad worked as an engineer for a mining company.  They had been amongst five people killed two weeks previously when a small plane had crashed en route to the mine.  Adding to this, she had broken up with her boyfriend, who had evidently got a bit of a kick out of beating her.

“Was it a one-sided kick?” I asked quietly, recalling the marks on her back.

“I don’t know, yet.  I didn’t go down that road.  It seems he had a bit of a drinking problem, and of course that’s done nothing for Leila, because I think she might have one as well.  Whatever, he’s walked out on her and she’s all alone.  What’s the address on her licence?” 

I dug around in her bag and pulled out her drivers licence, and eventually we found ourselves outside one of the eyesores commonly known in Queensland as ‘six-packs’ – half a dozen brick flats, three upstairs, three down, devoid of any architectural merit whatsoever.

Leila managed to get herself together long enough to reach the front door downstairs and let us in, before rushing to the bathroom to throw up again.  The place looked as though it had seen the party to end all parties. Empty bottles lay on the floor, clothes were strewn about, the bed in the single bedroom was unmade and the kitchen bench was barely visible under the remains of a week’s worth of plates and dirty pans.  Pizza boxes poked brazenly from the overflowing rubbish tin.

Monica wrinkled her nose.  “We can’t leave her here.  This is disgusting!  We’ll have to bring her home with us.”

Which is how Leila came to be installed in a spare room in the sleeping quarters at Bilboes, but only after we’d had a good look around the flat while Leila was puking her guts out.  Monica was looking for drugs, but found none.  She wanted to know what we were up against, and to see what we could learn about Leila McKinnon.  We saw the diploma of photography and fine arts on the wall, and a portfolio of very good photos pushed carelessly under the bed.  Careless seemed to be the word for this place, for its occupant ceased to care about anything.  The empty rum and vodka bottles were testament to something serious happening, as were the several lengths of sashcord lying beside the bed and the home-made whip of several lengths of thin electrical flex taped to a short wooden handle.

There was no money, lots of overdue bills and a couple of final demand notices, including one about to cut of the electricity. 

Jill and I returned the next day on our own, and spent a whole day putting some order into the chaos, but it didn’t change the basic circumstances Leila found herself in.  More of this had come to light when she had awoken with a raging hangover and a thirst to go with it.  And that was after we had stripped her naked and put her to bed, discovering a broad tract of welts down her back and stomach that had obviously been made from the flogger.

Even though we were in the business of administering beatings of varying severity, this did not seem like the product of a devoted relationship, and Leila seemed too innocent to be wandering in these questionable sexual corridors.  Predictably, it was Monica who got her to confess, and when combined with what we had surmised from the state of Leila’s flat, we soon understood the whole unhappy story. 

Leila’s boyfriend had beaten her all right, getting himself off in the process of an unsophisticated thrashing that while causing considerable pain, had also stirred strange feelings within her – feelings which had been exacerbated when he tied her up and gagged her to stop her screams, for six packs were notorious for their sound transmission properties.  On top of the death of her parents, Leila had been trying to cope with this violence, which was arousing her own sexual urges in apparent contradiction to what was being done to her.  Confused and drawn into a cycle of violence and drinking binges, Leila’s life had gone downhill as her boyfriend had taken over, spending her money until she was broke and in debt.  Her freelancing photography work had dried up and she began to rely on alcohol to fulfil a need of her own.  Finally the boyfriend had walked out, taking anything of hers he thought he could still sell, including her beloved camera.  It seemed hard to find anything that could take her down further.  The red wine on her only good dress, now with a torn zipper, had been the last straw, and that was how we Leila had come to join us.

It took us a while to wean her off the grog, which we managed after a lot of crying and self pity, but finally she realised that we accepted her for who she was, and that her past history was not important.  On the third day, at Monica’s suggestion, I took her aside and told her my own story, which was when she finally seemed to realise that she was not alone in having to live through such things.  Having had our heart to heart talk, I took her upstairs to one of the bedrooms, and made her strip naked for me. 

She did this unselfconsciously, perhaps a legacy of whatever else she had been obliged to perform in her past, and did not object when I bound her spreadeagled to the bed.  Her skin still bore the marks of past beatings, but there are beatings and there are beatings.  This time I warmed her skin with a small multi-tailed flogger, enough to set the nerve ends tingling, before I gagged her with a ball gag.  She had never experienced one before, and looked at me wide-eyed in nervous anticipation.  I explained about a safeword, and how she should hum ‘Happy Birthday’ if she wanted me to stop or to untie her.  She nodded her understanding.

I teased her more with the flogger, focussing on her breasts with their pink nipples erect and engorged.  She was clearly very aroused, and even her muted grunts and the closing of her eyes with each strike could not conceal the rising excitement that was building up under circumstances in which she finally felt safe and uninhibited.  I gave her a few harder swats with a riding crop, which made her flinch, but there was no humming.  I flicked at her nipples and stomach, and then at the patch of blonde fluff between her legs. After three strikes, she abruptly went wild, straining at the ropes on her wrists and ankles, her gagged cries reaching a sudden stifled scream which I knew could be only one thing.  I was astonished, for I had intended to give her a working over with the vibrator, but that had not proved necessary, and Leila had climaxed from the punishment alone.  She stiffened and jerked as the orgasm overcame her, arching her back and letting forth a high-pitched wail, before slumping back on to the bed, her breath coming raggedly and beads of sweat running down her temples.  That was the moment that Monica – who just had to have been listening outside the door – chose to come in.

“I think we’ve just found a new convert,” I said. 

*   *   *

06.09.04

story continues in Monica's Travels 23

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