Monica's Travels 02
by Richard Alexander (Gromets Plaza)
(story continues from Monica's Travels 01)
Chapter Two – Taking Off
Two days later I was next to Trish again, seated in Cathay Pacific First Class. The cabin was not very full, and Trish and I found ourselves at the back of the first class cabin, behind Jill and Emma, with the others sitting opposite. It was an evening flight to Hong Kong, and we felt obliged to partake of the free-flowing champagne that seemed to come before, during, and after the excellent meal.
Not surprisingly, we became just a little more relaxed with the alcohol, and I ended up asking Trish how she had first become involved in the whole Bilboes thing. I had touched on this once before, en route with Trish down to Sydney, delivering Madam Wong to her fate, but I had never pushed for details. For some reason I had always been reluctant to pry into the girls’ pasts. It was probably some deep-seated problem that a shrink would describe as an inhibition linked to the perceived forbidden nature of the work and the common view that people in the business were somehow of dodgy character. Thus, you never knew what skeleton you might stumble over. ‘So, why did you become a banker?’ is obviously a bit different from ‘Why do you tie clients up and perform painful and bizarre rituals on them?’
Whatever my reasons for not asking previously, by the time we had eaten and knocked back the bubbly, and the cabin crew had turned the lights down, I was sufficiently released of my inhibitions to broach the question with Trish again. Fortunately, any similar inhibitions that Trish may have had were equally lost, and she smiled mischievously at me as she pushed the armrest up and snuggled against me in the big leather seat.
“Got a while to listen?” she said, in her husky accent that would not have carried to the seats in front of us.
“Sure.”
“Very well. I’ll tell you the story of my life. If that doesn’t send you to sleep, nothing will.”
My youth was pretty boring. Grew up on Victoria Island, British Columbia. My Dad was a manager at a timber mill, and Mom wasn’t. She stayed home and looked after my sister Penny and I. Penny was the wild one – always getting into trouble with boys. But not Patricia. Oh no. Trish was a good girl – then. Left home at seventeen, went to the big smoke that was Vancouver, and worked my way through college to end up with an interior design diploma. Did that for a couple of years, got bored as hell, and decided to see the world. Because there seemed to be so much more of Canada to get past by going east, I decided to go the other way, and Australia was the obvious choice.
Got to Sydney – waaay bigger than Vancouver! Poked around interior design jobs for a bit, fell in with the wrong person. That was in 1990. God, that makes me feel old! It seems like a long time ago now. There was one particular day, Steven, that changed my life. Some people have those days, some don’t. This was how it went.
I was living with this guy, Nick, in a tiny flat in the Cross, in Sydney. Well, you know what Kings Cross is like now. Back then it was worse – every type of scam and perversion under the sun. But it was cheap. I was scrounging contract jobs but Nick was into drugs, and he’d got me hooked. Shit, it pisses me off when I look back now. The bastard! The drugs had messed me real badly. I wasn’t working properly, showing up late – just didn’t have my act together. Nick didn’t care, but I thought he was still pretty neat – that was how naïve I was, even at twenty three. Oh yeah - he was into B and D, by the way. That was my first exposure to it. But of course he was a top, and pretty rough with it. I wasn’t overly impressed with it, but my brain was so screwed up that I let him do things to me that I’m aghast at now. At that time I had a limited concept of what was normal, and even that had gone out the window as I became dependent on the regular supply of drugs from Nick. Which – of course – was just what he wanted.
Well, getting back to my big day I was supposed to meet a new client to show him a portfolio of sketches and stuff. Somehow I managed to leave it all on the bus, I was that zonked. It was the last straw – or so I thought. It actually turned out to be the first of a whole haystack that day, and which even at that moment was dropping on me from a great height.
Of course I was mortified. I’d not only lost my drawings, but I couldn’t go to the interview and I knew we’d lose the client. I also knew I was on my last warning from my boss, based on my erratic behaviour, and I couldn’t face having to tell him what had happened. So after wandering around aimlessly for half the morning, I finally went back to the flat. I had expected to be away the whole day, and obviously Nick had likewise planned on my absence.
The flat was a dingy place up some stairs above a shop. I opened the door quietly, expecting Nick to be still asleep, since he worked night shift. He was asleep all right, but he’d been busy in the time I’d been away. The first thing I saw, on opening the door, was a female figure bent over the big armchair. She was wearing black stockings and high heels, and her ankles were spread and tied to the rear feet of the chair, while her wrists had been crossed and bound behind her.
I was astonished at this, my already befuddled brain just not making sense of what I was seeing. I crept in to the room and stared at the girl. She was perhaps my own age, but blonde. Maybe she was a pro from off the streets, but usually they’re too smart to let themselves wind up in a position bent over somebody’s lounge chair, unable to move. Maybe he knew her. Maybe this was the only way she could score a hit. I had no idea.
Her hair was piled up on her head with a clip, and she was gagged with a ball gag which was strapped tightly around her neck. The gag had an eyebolt protruding from the front of it, and a thin cord was tied to this. It ran down to a rail between the front legs of the armchair and then back up to join a chain running between the girl’s breasts. The chain terminated in two nipple clips. They were like crocodile clips, and I knew from experience they were both very painful and would not come off without a lot of agonising tugging. As this girl now was, any attempt to raise her head or to stand meant a nasty pull on her nipples.
There was a cushion under her stomach where she was bent over the back of the chair, so that she was reasonably upright. Sensing my presence she made the mistake of trying to turn her head to look at me, but it obviously was a painful mistake, and she made a stifled moan. I circled the chair, looking at the clinical efficiency of Nick’s handiwork, and noting the livid weals of a cane that criss-crossed her backside, and further stripes on her back that might have been caused by Nick’s home-made flogger. Again, I had first hand experience of this. The girl’s legs had been tied further apart by rope that stretched around the chair back and was tied in multiple turns around each thigh above the knee. Nick had been in the back entrance here, as I knew he was wont to do when the mood took him. Nick, I should also explain, was well endowed, and while it made conventional sex a most enjoyable feature, getting it in the arse could be quite painful sometimes.
This girl had obviously had the full repertoire, but at that moment I had no sympathy for her. I told myself she was getting what she deserved, and I was furious that the pair of them had been up to this behind my back.
I opened the door to the bedroom to see Nick sprawled naked across the bed, snoring his head off. At that point I didn’t even think about what I was doing or the consequences. The tin trunk that he kept all his bondage stuff in had been pulled out from under the bed and was open. I took the handcuffs without hesitation and in seconds had his wrists handcuffed behind him.
Nick was a heavy sleeper. Between the night shift and his exertions with Armchair Annie, it would have taken a bomb to wake him, and even by the time I’d tied him face down with his ankles to the bed posts, he wasn’t with it. Only when I sat on his back and pulled his head back by the hair, before jamming another ball gag in his mouth, did he really come awake. Of course he went apeshit, but there wasn’t much he could do. I was scared stiff, so angry was he, but I was furious myself at the two-timing bastard. I guess subconsciously I knew I was burning my bridges in a pretty serious way, but I was past caring. I picked up his cane and let loose on him.
He tried to protect his arse with his handcuffed hands, and I had to tie a rope around his neck, then connect it to the linking handcuff chain, drawing the cuffs right up his back to give me a clear target. That was when things suddenly changed.
I can’t explain what happened, except that my head suddenly felt clearer. Somehow I could think properly, and the fuzziness was gone. I was in control, and I’ll never forget wielding that cane against Nick’s white cheeks and slowly watching them bruise and discolour. A feeling of empowerment flooded through me as I picked up the flogger and methodically delivered blow after blow down the back of his legs while he jerked and writhed on the bed. I was crying and sweating with the effort, but it was controlled, precise effort, not irrational hysteria, and I felt as though a great weight was lifting from me. It was almost sexual, but not quite. That was to come later, as I grew to understand more about what I was doing. Right then I only wanted to hurt Nick, and I had been on the receiving end of his arsenal often enough to know how to do this.
At length I finally sat down, totally drained. Nick was sobbing and crying into the pillow, but I couldn’t have cared less. The powerful emotions I had felt had likewise evaporated and cold reality hit me. I just needed to get away and think, and in a sudden flood of tears I ran out of the flat, not knowing where I was going or what I was to do.
The next hour or more disappeared in a welter of tears and the horrible feeling that I had come to expect when I feel that I will soon need another hit. I was barely aware of the woman who sat down on the bench next to me in the park. I had chosen one of the more secluded benches, since I wanted to be on my own. Sometimes they’re all occupied by vagrants, but in this instance I was lucky. I’ll never know why she sat down at all. Maybe it was because I was still dressed for the interview. You know, regulation short skirt, tight blouse and jacket, high heels and black stockings. Enough sophistication to avoid being considered ‘on the game’, but enough leg to distract a potential client from how much he might have to fork out for the work.
Whatever the smartness of my clothes, my face looked a mess. I must have had ‘pathetic’ written on my forehead. I felt the hand on my shoulder and looked up to find a woman probably only a couple of years older than me, sitting next to me. She wore her black hair short, but stylishly tucked behind each ear and with enough flourish across to one side so that it looked feminine, rather than boyish. She was dressed similarly to me, but with an elegant scarf at her throat lending an indefinable style that said ‘sophistication’ and ‘expensive shopping’.
For a few minutes she just sat there, her slender hand resting on my shoulder, waiting for my crying jag to finish. She gave me a plain white handkerchief, but I was so far gone at that stage that I could barely catch my breath between sobs to thank her. Finally the tears died down, and I was able to string together a sentence coherently enough to explain that I’d lost my portfolio, almost certainly my job, and now my boyfriend. I skipped the implication that with the boyfriend I’d lost my place to live and the supply of drugs that I’d now become accustomed to. Looking back, it was a pretty depressing story.
Mary – that was her name – was a lifeline. She took me to a nearby restaurant where she bought tea and some food, and we huddled in a corner booth. I was starting to get the shakes, but concealed it as best I could. We talked about finding a new place to live, and Mary said I could stay with her for a few days until I found a new place. I wanted to go back to get my things, and also to free Nick and the girl, for I was sure they couldn’t manage it by themselves, but I dared not let Mary see the situation inside the flat.
Mary insisted in coming with me back to the flat, but I made her stay outside in the hallway at the top of the stairs. I didn’t know how I would explain things. I said I would call if I needed her, and let myself in.
The girl was still bound over the armchair, making plaintive mewing noises at what must by then have been pretty painful sensations coming from her nipples trapped in the crocodile clips. Nick was still bound on the bed, his back, buttocks and legs exhibiting a rainbow of welts and bruises. He was making mmphing sounds furiously through the ball still jammed in his mouth and was tugging at the handcuffs connected to the rope around his neck. For a moment I wished I had made it into a noose.
I was just standing there, a bit overwhelmed by the whole scene when Mary stole up beside me. Her appearance made me start, and I lost it again, not knowing what to say or do, but Mary’s presence seemed to calm things down. She took me in to the kitchen and sat me down.
“Right. Now tell me what’s really going on. Those people didn’t get tied up and beaten like that by themselves. The girl – did he do that?” I nodded. “And you did that to him?” Another nod. Mary sat back in a kitchen chair and eyed me up and down, as though seeing me in a new light. She smiled thinly, then reached out and grabbed me by the wrist, pushing my sleeve up with the other hand. The fine line of puncture marks was visible, and I knew then that I had blown my chances of getting her support.
“Stay here,” she said sharply, and there was at once something in her tone that made me obey. At the same time it all became too much, and I started on another crying jag, just wanting someone to take me away from all of this horrible mess. Mary closed the kitchen door and was gone for several minutes, returning only briefly to open the fridge and take out a tray of ice cubes. I could hear the sound of wardrobes and drawers opening, and then she came into the kitchen again.
“Where does he keep them?” she demanded.
“W-what?” I stammered.
“Don’t fuck me about!” she hissed, her hazel eyes blazing with authority that made me quail. “The drugs! Where has he stashed them?”
“I-I don’t know ” It was true. He would never have shown me, for he knew I’d have been into them while he was out. Mary shook me, but I started crying again and she pushed me roughly back on the chair, before ransacking the cupboards and drawers of the kitchen. She found two stashes, one taped under the table and the other in a top cupboard in a tea canister. She left the room with them and I heard the sound of the toilet flushing. Then she was back.
“Time to go. Pull yourself together, girl!” I learned at that point that when Mary put her mind to something, you did as you were told, for she was a fearsome woman when in full flight.
We emerged from the kitchen into the living room and I saw that the bound girl had had her nipples released from the steel jaws of the clips and could now stand upright. Her face was tear-streaked and she probably looked as bad as I did in that regard. The ropes that had bound her wrists had been replaced with a pair of handcuffs from Nick’s trunk, attached to which was a length of twine that now disappeared under the kitchen door through which we had just come. Near the end of the string I could see a key tied to it.
“There’s a sock full of ice cubes tied to the string,” Mary explained to the girl brusquely. “In a few hours they’ll melt and you’ll be able to pull the key to your hands and unlock the cuffs and free yourself. Then you can free that animal on the bed, if you so wish. The choice will be yours. Maybe you might get the cops to come and do it. In the meantime you may as well enjoy yourself, having suffered at his hands.” Mary squatted behind the bound girl and I saw then there were several turns of white sashcord around her waist that dived between her cheeks to presumably reappear and attach to the waist ropes in front. Mary worked her hands up between the girl’s legs and moments later I heard the faint hum of a vibrator and a muffled squeal from behind the rubber ball.
Mary stood up and hauled me by the arm into the bedroom. It was a mess, with drawers pulled out and the wardrobe open. I saw she had thrown all my clothes into two backpacks – mine and Nick’s – and had closed the trunk with all the bondage gear in it. Nick lay as before, except he now sported a blindfold of duct tape over his eyes and around his head, which would no doubt be very painful to remove. But then I also saw a broomstick jammed up between his spread legs. One end of it disappeared into his back passage, while the brush end was taped to the central bar of the bed frame at the foot of the bed. Nick’s legs were spread as wide and as rigid as they could be, with any attempt to bend his legs resulting in a further penetration of the dowel. I could see the muscles quivering in his thighs as he lay there, not daring to move.
Mary lifted one backpack and helped me put it on, before swinging the second on to her own back. She indicated for me to pick up one end of the trunk by the handle, and together we worked our way back through the living room and on to the stairs, pulling the door closed behind us.
The sight of two chicks in short skirts and high heels lugging back packs and a tin trunk was really nothing out of the ordinary in the Cross. Sure, we attracted some stares, but it was nothing to do with the backpacks. Maybe backpackers were simply becoming more sophisticated in their dress sense.
Mary led me to a car park building and to her car, a small Toyota, into which we loaded the packs and the trunk. Mary was still coming down from her rush of blood back at the flat, and said little in the course of the drive across the city to her house in Balmain. It was a two-storied corner terrace house, probably a hundred years old and built well before garage-parking was thought of in the narrow streets. But with walls of solid sandstone and distant views of the harbour bridge, in Sydney’s rarefied real estate it was probably worth a mint.
I was starting to feel ratty and irritable and in need of a hit, and already I was beginning to regret both what I had done, and what Mary had done. She showed me upstairs to a small but neat room, and left me to unpack. That was when my cravings began to take hold. I sat on the bed, edgy and uncomfortable, trying to come to terms with everything that had happened. I was agitated and desperately needed something to calm me. I guess that if I smoked I would have been through a packet of ciggies by then, or maybe a couple of good stiff gins, but in this instance I knew what I needed and I was sure I wouldn’t find it in prissy Mary’s little homestead.
The room abruptly seemed intolerably hot, and the small crucifix on the wall appeared to leer down at me, mocking my discomfort. I got up and made my way downstairs. Mary was in the kitchen.
“Uh look, Mary I really appreciate what you’ve done, but I think I ought to leave ”
Mary looked at me over her shoulder from where she was putting some vegetables into the sink. Her brow furrowed, with an expression that might have been concern, or it might have been annoyance. Something told me it was the latter.
“And where are you going to go?” she demanded.
“Uh I can hook up with some friends back in the Cross ”
“Why didn’t you do this before, then?” I was silent, knowing it had been a lie. “I thought so. Come with me – I want to show you something.” She took my wrist, her fingers firm and strong. We paused in front of the door leading off the main hallway, where Mary slipped the scarf from around her neck. “Close your eyes,” she said.
“What for? What’re you doing?” She bound the scarf over my eyes and slapped my hands away as I tried to push the blindfold up again.
“No, leave it!” she commanded, with such authority that I did as I was told. I sensed the door opening and allowed myself to be led in to the room.
I don’t know what I was expecting. I do know I wasn’t expecting to have my wrists handcuffed behind me, especially not as quickly and efficiently as Mary performed on me at that moment.
“What the hell!” I struggled in her grip, trying to reach the blindfold with my manacled hands. “What are you doing?? Are you crazy? Undo these this instant!” I tried to fight her, but when you’re blindfolded, it’s pretty hopeless with your hands locked behind you. Mary forced me down on to a chair, and moments later I found myself well and truly anchored to that chair, with a strap around my body under my breasts, and each ankle secured to a chair leg.
Of course all the time this was going on I was protesting in no uncertain terms, which was probably why the rubber bit gag wound up strapped in my mouth, and then the blindfold came off. At that point it didn’t take a gag to shut me up. I was speechless in what seemed to be a dungeon of rough-hewn dingy stone walls. In one corner was a small cell with a barred door which occupied the space under the stairs, while the remainder of the room contained what looked like a large vaulting horse, and a set of stocks. Around the room hung various implements of pain and restraint, not dissimilar to those that came out of Nick’s tin trunk. Suddenly I understood why Mary had brought it with us, though I had been too confused to raise the issue at the time, thinking perhaps that she had merely used it as carrying space for a few more things of mine. Now I had the feeling that she was in fact supplementing her own bondage collection.
I stared at Mary in amazement. I had fallen from the hands of one sadist into another! God, what else could happen to me today?
Mary pulled up a padded stool and sat down immediately in front of me. For a while she said nothing, just stared at me, which I found really disconcerting, and prompted me to tug at my manacles and the ropes binding me to the chair. Of course it was futile, and eventually I gave up, and again the tears trickled down my cheeks. At this point Mary’s expression softened and she wiped them away with her hand.
“Before you start panicking,” she said gently, “I’m not some mad woman who preys on destitute people who won’t be missed if they’re never seen again, though God knows you were asking for that, sitting in a park in Kings Cross ready to sell your soul to the first person who showed an interest in you. I know you’ve been through a rough patch, and let me tell you there’s still a fair way to go. This is what’s going to happen, Trish.
“Firstly, you’re going to stay here – for as long as it takes. This will be mainly to get you off the drugs. I reckon you’re too intelligent to waste your life on that shit. It won’t be a pleasant time, but it’ll pass. Then we’ll see about finding you some more gainful employment when you’ve come to terms with yourself. While all this unpleasantness is passing out of your system, you will remain here as my guest. You may find the quarters somewhat cramped and restrictive, but that will be for your own good. You’ll just have to trust me. Will you trust me, Trish?”
There was not really much choice, but somehow Mary’s words made me feel better. I nodded.
* * *
The next week or so was very hard. I guess you could say that Mary’s treatment was – if not unique – at least unconventional. I was locked in the cage under the stairs with a mattress to lie on. Here I went through cold turkey and was cared for by Mary. I was fed here, and bathed while manacled hand and foot. I learned the hard way that any attempt to call for help was not advisable, but soon I decided that there was no purpose to such. I didn’t know what to do with my life outside the immediate surrounding that was my cage.
After the hard part of removing the toxins from my system, Mary and I spent many long hours talking. I learned that she had been a television news reader for SBS, but a bad experience with a stalker had made her leave the broadcasting industry. During the period immediately prior to that, she had worked privately as a Domme on a part time basis, and it was to this that she turned on leaving the media. She did all her work from her home, supplementing her B&D income with contract work translating Arabic and Spanish. Her full name was Maria Ramirez, but she had anglicised her christian name. Her parents had migrated from Spain before she was born, but she had maintained her cultural links, being fluent in both Spanish and Arabic, her family having Moroccan blood.
To say Mary had exotic looks would probably be an understatement. At twenty six years of age she had a striking elegance that came from Moorish ancestors, manifesting itself in a tall, slender figure that she bore with confidence and something that could easily be mistaken for arrogance. In the following years, Mary and I came to know each other intimately, and I learned about the tough façade she put up to outsiders, in contrast to what lay inside.
As my drug dependency came to an end, Mary questioned me further about the incident with Nick in the flat, where I had beaten the crap out of him. It was during these discussions that I came to understand my feelings of comfort and empowerment within that role. It’s not something you can explain. It’s no different from the difficulty in explaining why you’re straight, or gay, or bisexual. You just are. It’s just what you feel inside.
I became Mary’s flatmate, and assistant in her sessions, and pretty soon we were running them jointly, or I on my own. I admired her for what she had done in her dungeon, as I discovered that the amazingly realistic walls were all made of fibreglass which had been done for her by a client in the film set industry. Thus, if she ever sold her house, the entire décor could be removed.
Mary had grown up in a well-to-do family, and had never really been practical with her hands, other than what she was good at with a cane or flogger. She tied a mean rope, but did not have my practicality that had come with my childhood in the forests of Victoria Island, where – in the absence of any sons – my Dad had taken me under his wing and shown me how to use the tools in his workshop, which I loved. Now I had found an outlet for my talents with which to repay Mary, and we became a close team.
I had been living and working with Mary about a year, when another one of those moments in life occurred that you know will always stay with you, like remembering where you were on September eleventh. It was early one afternoon, and Mary was running late for an appointment. By that I mean she had not returned from some errand or other. I answered a knock at the door. The young woman standing there was perhaps nineteen, with raven black hair framing her face and piercing blue eyes. She was slightly taller than me and wore a black figure hugging dress that revealed a generous glimpse of cleavage and slim tanned legs in high-heeled sandals. She looked poised and confident.
“I’ve come to see Mary,” she said. “My name is Monica.”
* * *
01.02.04
story continues in Monica's Travels 03
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