A Private Exhibition

A light chain was strung between her exposed genitals and her face. At one end it was locked to the shackle transfixing her armoured clitoris, then it had been fed through the eyelet in her drawn-out tongue before being fastened off to the outer shackle framing Susan's nose. Apart from rendering her effectively speechless, it forced her head down until she had little choice but to stare along its tight length at her own gaping sex, held wide open by her vaginal dilator. Amid the jumble of Susan's intertwined torso and limbs, Joanna espied more chains; one pair leading from each breast shackle to the opposite-side earlobe, another pair connecting her nipple rings to her clitoris. Hence, each or any tiny headshake of protest was translated into painful tugs at her most sensitive parts. Susan was effectively discouraged from moving her head at all, ensuring that her uncomfortably close, yet forever unreachable genitals enjoyed her undivided attention.

Despite her humiliating and excruciating posture, Susan's expression was tranquil; almost serene, betraying no sign of the pain and discomfiture she was most certainly experiencing. Her bright, dark eyes darted over to her visitors, and apparently unfazed by her own exposed condition, she blatantly sized up the disconcerted Joanna before meeting her eyes with a challenging stare. It was not Susan but Joanna who blushed and had to look away first.

"As you must know, appearances can be deceiving, Joanna. What you're witnessing is a very proud moment for Susan. This represents her graduation, her rite of passage if you will."

- Susan's Happy Destiny -

This time Stephen did not even try to hide his emotion and his voice held a decidedly wistful note as he continued.

"I consider her to be without doubt my finest artistic achievement so far. I'd like to call her my creation, but in reality what I did amounts to cutting a raw diamond. We've covered a tremendous distance together, for with Susan I got farther than with any woman I've known before, but our common way has come to an end at last. I've found a new owner for her, or rather, she found him, or they found each other: fate, providence, whatever you want to call it. The fact is, they're madly in love with each other. By the way, you've met him already: Eric's doubling as security guard tonight. Well, it seems I'm about to loose both my slave and my able assistant, but stand to gain two close friends in exchange."

Joanna tried to bend her stunned mind around these new, utterly unexpected revelations.

"You're setting her free? Just like that?"

"No, of course not. I'm a commercially successful artist, remember? Actually, I'm selling her to Eric and she won't come cheap either. However, in this case most of the money will go to Susan and she's the one who fixed the price. I'm taking only a very modest percentage as a 'commission'."

Noting her incredulous expression, Stephen sighed wearily.

"Whatever you may think, I'm not a jealous man. On the contrary, I almost feel sorry for Eric, since I'm not sure he'll be a match for her. The ordeals my dear Susan had to endure as my slave have taught her to tap into an enormous reservoir of inner strength. By now, she's like damascene steel. She just won't break. And she's absolutely fearless, too. I also know from experience that Susan can be headstrong, intractable and quite demanding at times. I only hope she'll cut poor Eric some slack."

Looking at the systematically enslaved, permanently pierced, inescapably bound and humiliatingly-displayed woman dangling helplessly from the ceiling of her own private prison cell, Joanna felt hard pressed to stifle a sardonic laugh at the preposterous reversal of roles that Stephen's words implied. But then, she remembered the expression in Susan's eyes and was not so sure anymore that his sympathy was in fact wasted on the wrong party. There was no question that Susan's ostensible submission alone constituted an almost irresistible erotic allure and combined with her natural beauty, she exuded a sexual magnetism that affected even Joanna. What kind of power could a determined slave wield with such a weapon at her command?

Stephen's voice intruded before her fantasies could blossom any further.

"So now that you know what I've been up to these last years, what do you think?"

Although Joanna had been expecting a question like this, she nevertheless felt ill-prepared when it finally came, and so tried to prevaricate.

"Do you mean from an artistic point of view? Your work's definitely pushing the boundaries of art in an unexpected direction. Very ori..."

An irritated tug on her leash put an ungentle end to her desperate babble. Obviously, Stephen felt not inclined to indulge her intended diversion. Instead, his inscrutable dark eyes searched hers and held them.

"I understand you're probably a little overwhelmed, so let me put this as bluntly as possible. I plan to embark on another journey of erotic exploration like the one I undertook with Susan and you're by far the most promising candidate. You're intelligent, inquisitive and quite beautiful with a rarely found kind of unconscious grace. You're alternately audacious and endearingly shy, at times insufferably impudent and then suddenly vulnerable again. In short, you're utterly fascinating and I want you. Yes, I want you. I want to own you, form you, break and remake you until your true inner gestalt lies bare for everyone to see and admire."

To Joanna, his words felt like lightning bolts unerringly aimed at the rousing slave that had dwelt unacknowledged within her mind for all her life; laying low until she was finally ready to succumb. They pierced her to the core, throwing her unresolved inner conflict into stark relief. He wanted her! But was she ready to pay the prize? However, Stephen had not finished yet.

"I know that you're unsettled by the dark fantasies and dangerous desires that have taken hold of you, that are invalidating your lifelong conceits of who you are, Joanna. However, let me tell you, in the final analysis there is no denying who you really are. I sense an enormous potential in you that I want to help you realize. No doubt you feel intimidated by Susan's example right now, but consider that what you see is the culmination of her own life-long fantasies. On a journey like this, the course cannot be set in advance, but has to be decided day by day. Believe me, in the process you'll discover that you're a lot tougher and braver than you consider possible now. Susan had her own reasons to join my quest and she has attained her goal at last. With you, I believe the quest might be open-ended and proceed even further than Susan has. And, I want to keep you for myself."

Stephen pulled two more items out of an apparently depthless pocket and held them up for Joanna's inspection. One was a large, pear-shaped object resting in a nest of leather straps which she knew to be a fiendishly efficient gag; the other was a tiny, silver key.

"In my left hand I have the key to your handcuffs and by extension, the key to your freedom. In my right I hold a gag and again by extension, a token of your slavery. Left or right, what will it be, Joanna? Choose!"

- The Opportunity -

Stephen's uncompromising command reverberated through her, jolting her stunned mind out of its paralysis and she blinked as if roused from a particularly vivid dream. The key to her freedom! It glinted in the overhead light, beckoning her to use it, to break the spell binding her in this wild, dark, dangerous place and return to the familiar world she had grown up in and knew the rules of: the world of packed trains, traffic jams and tiny apartments, or row houses with tidy front gardens and double garages, if you were really lucky. A world where money was the universal and only standard by which everyone and everything was measured. The lack of which was the root of all evil, as her late parents had maintained, they now tragically detained from continuing its relentless pursuit by their early deaths in a senseless accident.

Joanna glanced through the bars at the bizarrely twisted and suspended figure of Susan, dangling in her cell and suffering through her rite of passage.

Did she really want to follow the path of this woman? Had the same seemingly uncontrollable compulsions led Susan to this culmination point of her submission? Had she rued her choice? Many times, certainly!

The pictures in the corridor had spoken a clear language. Nevertheless, Susan's demeanour left no doubt in Joanna's mind that she would do it all again if that was demanded of her.

Why? What was in it for her? What was the point of it?

For herself, Joanna had already chased this particular question down almost every other track of human endeavour and come up empty time after time. At least here she had found something that called out to the innermost parts of her personality, these having lain dormant for the longest time, but now rousing with a vengeance; poised to consume all that she had been before. For the first time in adult memory she felt the urge to relinquish control and become part of something bigger than herself.

She almost spoke the word that would have condemned her forever to the existence of a slave. Almost. But then, her lifelong habit of distrusting her own impulses kicked in. All her adult life, Joanna had been wary of her emotions; never allowing them free reign and always reviewing them with her analytical mind. Instinctively she had known about her dark side all the time, although she had until recently denied its existence, even to herself. What Stephen had presented her with was by no means a trivial choice, but a decision that would shape the balance of her life and therefore warranted careful consideration.

But what kind of existence could she look forward to as a pierced and shackled freak, indelibly marked slave? She had barely tasted life yet! It was all entirely ridiculous!

Clearly, there was no sound reason to do what Stephen had asked of her, yet she felt so tired of always acting sane. She stole a glance at Susan again; an incredible exhibit of the appalling consequences, should she allow herself to enter the same role. Nonetheless, even though Joanna told herself again and again over the last minutes how abhorrent Susan's condition really was, her own body was at odds with her conscious mind. She was undeniably aroused and becoming more so by the minute. Trying to calm down, Joanna forced herself to breathe slowly and focus her attention until her whole world contracted to just the pair of hands in front of her and the choice they symbolized. Despite all efforts, her fatal arousal only deepened, causing her heart to pound and her insides to become warm and wet. Incredulous, she identified the first stirrings of a powerful orgasm inexorably building within her and groaned helplessly.

Stephen's left hand slowly closed around the gleaming key and began to withdraw. It took Joanna a moment to register what she saw, although when she did, her heart skipped a beat and a wave of panic crashed over her.

"No! Left! I choose the left hand! I want to be free!"

The retreating hand wavered for long seconds; then reversed its course. Joanna released her held breath in a long sigh and began to weep quietly. Contrary to what she had thought, she did not feel relieved in any way after her emotional ordeal, only tired and numb. Stephen did not say anything for the longest time, but watched her intently, his face an inscrutable mask hiding his deep disappointment. When he spoke at last, his voice was carefully neutral, tinged only with the faintest hint of regret.

"I understand. You aren't ready yet, but I'll wait for you."

- Epilogue -

Joanna stared tiredly at the screen of her computer, trying in vain to make sense of what she had written in the past few hours. Her article might just find her editor's approval for it was quite incomprehensible through the use of a highly specialised jargon creatively assigning new meanings to common terms and sufficiently vague to allow for a multitude of different interpretations. She sighed. Although her studies had enabled her to write for an elitist, but (in her considered opinion deservedly so) obscure art journal, they failed at providing her with a steady income. Since her graduation she had moved from one temporary position to the next, at most earning a pittance (a boon especially the more renowned institutions sometimes dispensed with altogether, on the basis that working for them was amply recompensed by the honour and the opportunity to build a reputation for oneself). Maybe she should really have gone to med school as her late parents had wanted, or have married some nice, rich guy and given up on this "art thing" of hers once and for all. However, the latter plan had already fallen through several times, although not for lack of opportunity. Her relationships with men tended to be very short, in recent times not even surviving the inception phase due to the lamentable fact that she became bored even before her suitor had the chance to provide proof of his depressing usualness. She had also delved into the SM scene for a while, but was quickly dissuaded by the hollow pomposity of its kingpins.

The ringing of the phone intruded into her glum thoughts, interrupting before they could complete their familiar course and return to the one pivotal moment that might have given her life a new direction.

"Hi Joanna, it's me, Adrian."

"Hi Adrian. Listen, the article would already be done if you'd kindly refrained from pestering me about it every five minutes." She did not bother to keep the exasperation she felt out of her voice.

"Forget the article. Something important has come up. Guess who's just agreed to do an interview?"

"Elvis?"

"Please Joanna, this is serious. The enigmatic Stephen Lewis has called to congratulate us on one of our recent articles and said he'd like to discuss some of its implications with you personally."

Joanna felt her heart skip a beat. Although almost two years had passed since her encounter with Stephen, she still had nightmares about it, and occasionally, also a pleasant dream, she had to admit. About every other night lately and very pleasurable ones, if she was to be completely honest.

"Stephen Lewis?" She repeated numbly.

"Yep! The reclusive master himself." Adrian lowered his voice conspiratorially. "If you ask me, he's not so great an artist at all, at least thoroughly commercial. There's no truly revolutionary spark recognisable in his so-called art; he's just another interchangeable representative of the system's structural oppression of true ..."

Joanna wisely interrupted, before he could launch himself further into one of his dreaded monologues.

"Was he by chance referring to my article where I interpreted some of his recent artistic endeavours in terms of a psycho-pathologic condition manifesting itself? The one you didn't want to print for fear of a libel suit?"

Adrian switched to his most persuasive voice.

"Well, yes. However, regardless of what you or I may think of him, the guy's popular and the interview with him could be big for us. This may be the break we've all been working so hard for. And don't forget, being the one to interview Lewis can do wonders for your reputation, too. Considering your article I wondered myself why he wanted you of all people to do the interview, but he specifically said he'd be ready if you are. So! Are you ready to do the interview?"

Joanna had the distinct feeling that the interview had the potential to do wonders for more than just her reputation. Her heart hammered in her chest. She had wanted to provoke a reaction with her article and it seemed she had succeeded beyond her wildest dreams. She had not been ready for Stephen's proposal then, but was she ready now? All of the incredible sights that had etched themselves into her memory came back, plunging her into the by now familiar maelstrom of dread and desire, and for the first time in what felt like years, she was fully awake. It was as if her whole life since her last encounter with Stephen had been nothing but a particularly dull dream and with this realisation, a deep calm came over her, for once stilling all the quarrelling voices in her head. Now fully aware of the consequences and embracing all of their implications she gave her true answer at last.

"Yes, I'm ready."