Sacrifice of Suffering

"We are, and I wouldn't have it any other way."

"Good. In your script, you say you want 88 strokes. That's a strange number. Explain it."

"It is a strange number, but I'm not going to explain it."

"The four I gave you this morning don't count?"

Lisa thought for a moment. "No. I want to take the 88 in one continuous session."

"If I gave you all those strokes on your butt, you wouldn't be able to sit down for days. In fact, I have no idea how you'd get back to San Fran without renting an ambulance. So here's the plan.

"I'm going to give you eight groups of eleven each. Two groups on the back, one on either side of the backbone. Parallel welts with no overlap, running from just below the shoulder blade to just above the kidney. Two groups of welts on the thighs, one group on the back of each thigh. Four groups on your butt; eleven horizontal welts on each cheek, followed by eleven vertical welts. The classic checkerboard. The overlapping welts will be the grand finale, and I promise you, they will hurt like a motherfucker. When we're finished, you'll know you've done a good day's work. If you haven't called safe before then."

Lisa sat immobile, staring at something in the distance.

"So what do you think about the plan?" Gale asked. "Want any changes?"

"No," Lisa said quietly. "I'll trust your judgment."

"Would it be OK if I sat in this afternoon?" Bud asked. "I'd just like to see the rest of this drama."

Helen glanced around the table. Smiles, shrugs; no objections. "Sure. I think we're all curious." She glanced at her Rolex. "It's almost one. Let's all be back on the set, ready to go, by one-thirty."

5. Pain

In which Our Heroine feels the full impact

of what she has set into motion.

Lisa was seated on the edge of the table, sans robe. Gale stood in front of her, sans kimono, flexing the nylon cane; a tennis pro fiddling with her racket. Helen and Doro stood nearby, while Jimmy and Alan checked their equipment in the background. Bud sat in a director's chair a few steps from the sound board. The air conditioning was losing its struggle with the afternoon Sun, and the set was getting warm.

"I know Helen ordered no restraints," Gale was saying to Lisa, "but we had a chat after lunch, and I convinced her I need to secure you at the waist. While I'm doing your back, I'm also going to tie your wrists to the sides of the table and put a strap across your upper back just below your arms. That's because I need you to be in exactly the same position before each stroke. I know it's going to be tough, but I need you not to squirm around, or at least try not to."

Doro joined in. "I'll be watching you, talking to you, keeping an eye on your condition. If I think you're getting hysterical, we'll stop until you're back with us. If you're hysterical, fighting the restraints, and I can't talk you down, then it's over. I'll call safe. Understood?"

Lisa nodded.

"When I'm done with both sides your back," Gale continued, "I'll take off the upper-body restraints except for the waist and add restraints at your knees and ankles. For the same reason. The program will be; left back, right back, left butt horizontal, left thigh horizonal, right butt vertical, right thigh horizonal, left butt vertical, then right butt vertical. And then we all clean up, get dressed, and go have a drink. OK?"

"OK," Lisa said. It was barely a whisper.

"Good. So let's get on with it." Lisa nudged the stool with her toe, rolling it next to the table, and lifted a large gym bag onto the stool. She unzipped the bag, fumbled around, and brought forth various items. The first was a wide leather belt with a heavy brass buckle; it had steel D-rings spaced around its circumference at two-inch intervals. "We need to put this around your waist. Since you'll be lying on your stomach, we'll put the buckle on your back. Let me do it. We need to put it right there, at your true waist, just above your belly button. Sorry, it's got to be snug."

Once the waist belt was in place, Gale produced leather bracelets and anklets of similar design, and a pair of what looked like oversized anklets. "These are garters. They go just below your knees. D'ya think we could lose the twee white socks and Mary Janes? I want to make sure these things don't slide around." Lisa nodded. Gale began unbuckling her shoes. "Can you hold onto these, Helen? Thanks a lot."

Once all the gear was in place on Lisa's body, Gale said, "OK, Lie on your belly. Good girl. Slide toward the end a little bit. A little to the left, you're not in the middle. Good." She closely examined Lisa's left thigh, where she had applied the test strokes. "I still like the nylon. A nice bright red welt with no deep bruising." She flicked the raised flesh with a fingertip; Lisa twitched and stifled a yelp. "Excellent. Nurse Marks? Please prep the patient."

Doro, once again wearing blue examination gloves, stepped forward with the brown bottle and a gauze sponge. "Again, this is Betadine. It may be a bit chilly going on."

She set to work, outlining the treatment areas and carefully swabbing every square inch of skin inside them. The antiseptic left a light brown stain. The meticulous procedure took a full ten minutes; when it was finished, Lisa had elongated brown rectangles on her back, the backs of her thighs, and a large brown oval on each buttock. There were unstained areas over her kidneys, coccyx, and at the bottom of her butt crack, where the tip of the cane might strike the base of her vulva. Doro studied her work and stepped back, satisfied. "Your canvas, Mistress. Take care to color inside the lines."

While Doro swabbed, Gale had been doing her own preparations. She used short canvas straps to attach the D-rings on either side of the waist belt to similar fittings on the sides of table. She passed a longer strap from one side of the table to the other, routing it under Lisa's upper arms, through her armpits, and across her shoulder blades. Finally, she attached the bracelets to the sides of the table at waist level. She tightened the rigging up, examined it critically, and stepped back satisfied. "Jimbo," she called out "could you put a monitor near the end of the table, where Lisa can see it?"

"Sure, give me a minute." He disappeared into the gloom and returned a few seconds later, pushing a small table on casters. He positioned a computer on it, fiddled with power and input cables, tested the setup, and pronounced himself satisfied.

"Stage directions. Display the Steadicam output on that monitor. Move the cam to give us closeups of the area I'm working on. I want Lisa to have an HD view of what's happening to her tender virgin skin."

"Damn," Doro said. "I mean, damn!"

"You really are a sadist, Armstrong," Helen chimed in.

"Thank you all so much. It's what I do.

"Ms. Li, I will begin by administering eleven strokes to the left side of your back. You will call for each stroke as follows; 'Give me Number One, Madam. Thank you, Madam. Give me Number Two, Madam. Thank you, Madam.' And so forth for eleven strokes. We will begin the count again with each area.

"Ground rules. If you lose count, we begin again at one. If more than one minute passes between a stroke and your call for the next one, that will be considered a safe call, and we're finished. Clear?"

"Yes," Lisa said, her voice muted by the table.

"A couple of guidelines. You may want to get it over with by calling the strokes as closely together as possible. However, it may hurt less if you give the pain of one stroke to a few seconds to dissipate before you call for the next one. It's up to you. So here we go. Call."

"Give me Number One, Madam." Every muscle in Lisa's body tensed.

"It will hurt less if you don't tense up. And remember, try not to move."

Gale took her position; facing the table, legs slightly spread, upper arms held tightly to her sides, left arm across her lower chest, left hand grasping her right arm just above the elbow. The left arm stabilized the right arm, helping her restrict the latter to a straight up-and-down motion. The cane was in her right hand; the other end of it rested lightly on Lisa's back. With tiny steps left and right, Gale positioned the impact point on the top of the brown target area. She bent her elbow 45 degrees, raising the cane. "I'm going to count down - three, two, one" - snap!

Lisa twitched and gasped, but immediately blurted out, "Thank you, Madam. Give me Number Two, Madam."

Holding the same posture, Gale side-stepped to the right until the cane was resting on the bottom of the target area. She raised it. "Three, two, one" - snap!

"Thank you, Madam. Give me Number Three, Madam." There was a quaver in Lisa's voice.

Gale side-stepped to the left, aiming the third stroke at the center of the target area. Just off set, Bud had risen from his chair and was standing next to Helen. "I've never seen that technique."

"You've never seen our Gale at work before?"

"Nope. First time. What's she doing?"

"Well, she prides herself on uniformity. Every stroke is the same, and her control is perfect. I've seen her flick the flames off a row of birthday candles, one at a time, never miss, and never break a single candle."

"Gotta admire talent."

"And constant practice. The woman loves her work. God help her, she really does."

Back on the table, the count was Eight. Lisa was puffing, trying to blow the pain away, while tears streamed down her face. She was blurting out the orders as quickly as possible - "Thank-You-Ma'am-gimme-Number-Nine- Ma'am" - and biting her lip as each stroke landed.

"Why the pattern?" Bud asked. "Why doesn't she just start at the top of the area and work her way down, instead of going back and forth?"

"She wants to make sure the area is covered; that is, that she doesn't run out of strokes before she runs out of skin. Also, she's compensating for nerve saturation. If she placed two strokes right next to each other, the second one wouldn't hurt as much as the first. That's 'cos the nerves under that patch of skin are already busy, passing pain signals from the first stroke. There's research on that, and Gale's studied it."

"So she puts the stokes as far apart as she can. To maximize the pain."

"Right. As I said, she's a pro."

"Kinda scary, if you ask me."

"No shit."

The eleventh stroke landed. Gale stepped back, whickering the cane in the air, admiring her work. "Jimbo, roll the monitor a bit to the right, so Ms. Li can take a look." He moved to comply.

Lisa was lying with her left cheek on the table, eyes shut, tears streaming out of her right eye across the bridge of her nose into her left eye, then down the side of her face. A small puddle was forming in the crease between her left cheek and the brown Naugahyde. "Open your eyes, Sweet Meat," Gale commanded. "Look at what your mistress is accomplishing on your behalf."

The left side of Lisa's back filled the monitor. The Betadine-stained skin was a lattice of closely spaced parallel welts, bright pink shading to red. Gale ran the tip of her cane across the welts from top to bottom, none too gently; Lisa tensed and hissed through her teeth but said nothing.

"Determined not to give us any satisfaction, Sweetheart? Whatever. What I was going to say was, in ten minutes or so, these welts are going to merge together into a solid red mass. It's going to be so very pretty. Jimbo, take a screen shot. I want before-after pictures. We will now move on to the right side."

"Just a sec." Helen stepped into the shot, leaned over Lisa's head and spoke quietly, gently. "Lisa, my dear, nobody could say you haven't completed your mission today. If you want to call safe right now, I'll give you a thirty-thousand-dollar refund. Just say yes, and it's all over. Get cleaned up, get dressed, have a drink, and go home. Doesn't that sound good?"

Lisa raised her face from the table to look at Helen, her eyes like two black marbles. "To paraphrase Jesus, 'Get ye behind me, Gweipor.'"

"What's a Gweipor?"

"That's Cantonese for 'white devil.' Feminine form."

Gale laughed out loud, as did the men standing off-set. Helen sighed and shrugged. "You can't say I didn't try. I don't want to scare you, Lisa, but our Gale here has broken some of the toughest leather-butted BDSM models in the business. They called safe, broke their contracts, gave up their fees, fled the studio in tears, and never came back. Got that?"

"Got it. So let's continue."

Gale moved into position as Jimmy found the shot and called for a sound check. He nodded to Gale who said, "Second verse, save as the first. Call."

"Give me Number One, Madam." Snap!

Bud was standing next to Alan at the sound board, watching intently. "Tell me, why is this so fucking hot?"

Alan took a moment to consider his answer. "Because it's totally real," he said. "When you're working with a pro, you know that some of her response is real and some of it is performance art. Unless, of course, the poor bitch happens to draw Gale as her costar. In that case, it all tends to be real.

"This is different. This girl is really suffering, and she paid big money for it. We don't know why; that mystery is part of what makes the scene so compelling. In my opinion, anyway."

"Works for me."

The second stroke had just landed when Lisa abruptly cried, "Let me up, let me up, I think I'm going to hurl!" Gale scrambled to disconnect the strap across her back while Doro fetched the bowl. Lisa was just able to get her face off the table and over the bowl before the three slices of pepperoni pizza abruptly reappeared. "Release everything," Doro ordered. "Let's get her sitting up. Lisa, are you OK?"

"Gaaak."

Bud to Alan; "Well that wasn't particularly hot."

"Nope."

Doro handed Lisa the water bottle. "Here, rinse out your mouth. Don't drink. Take your time."

After a minute Lisa stopped rinsing and held out her hand. Doro gave her a towel. "Whenever you're ready, Sweetie. If you want to go on, that is."

"I'm ready." Lisa's voice was weak, but resolute. "Let's get back to work."

The count resumed at three. Lisa was pressing her forehead against the table, eyes tightly shut. Taking Gale's advice, she was letting twenty to thirty seconds pass between strokes, and it seemed to help her center herself; her voice was loud and clear as she called for each stroke. But she couldn't suppress her body's reaction; her buttocks were clinched and her legs, bent at the knees, fluttered in the air after each stroke, steel D-rings jangling.

After the eleventh stroke, Gale called for a closeup of her recent work, but Lisa didn't feel like admiring it. "Untie me," she said. "I need to take a break." Gale looked to Helen, who nodded.

Once free, Lisa turned over and swung herself up into a sitting position on the side of the table. Despite having been pressed against the table, her nipples were hard. She was covered with a thin sheen of sweat and was panting as if she'd just finished a race. "How about the leather gear?" Gale asked.

"Leave it on. I just need a robe."

"Are we calling it a day?" Helen asked hopefully.

"No, we're calling for a pee break," Lisa said. "Thought I'd better take care of that while I can still sit down."

"Very wise. Remember where the girls' room is?"

"Think so." She rose to her feet, unsteadily.

"Doro, go with her." The nurse took Lisa's arm and led her away, D-rings clinking as her legs brushed together.

Bud to Alan; "Hard core."

Alan to Bud; "Yeah, I think I'm in love."

6. Second Intermission

In which Our Heroine and her chief tormentor exchange ultimatums.

After fifteen minutes Doro came back to the set alone, conferred quietly with Helen, then turned to address the others.

"Lisa's going to need an hour. I went to the can with her, insisted that she pee in a cup, and it was entirely too dark. Her blood pressure is low, her pulse elevated, and her skin is clammy. The girl's dehydrated, and she probably has low blood sugar, since she ate nothing for a day before coming here, and just barfed up her lunch."

"So we're done?" Jimmy said hopefully.

"Helen and I agree, Lisa needs to do this. For whatever reason. She's on the couch in my office, getting a unit of normal saline in one arm and a unit of Ringer's in the other. I think she's going to be OK in an hour, but I'll be keeping a close eye on her. Helen?"

"OK, it's almost two. Let's all be back here at three. If anything comes up, I'll be in my office." The men nodded and drifted away, chatting about the feckless LA Dodgers. Gale hung back with Doro. "Think I can see the patient?" she said.

"If you're nice. I want her to relax for an hour."

"I promise. Give me a minute to find a robe, and I'll be right there."

"Take ten. I need to get a couple of IVs started."

Doro's office was small but well-organized. A single-pedestal desk, bare except for a keyboard and display, shared the space with two chairs, a chaise lounge currently occupied by the recumbent Lisa, and two tall metal cabinets. One of the cabinets was standing open, showing a well-organized array of medical supplies.

Doro had swathed Lisa in a thick terrycloth robe, one of Doro's own, that covered her from chin to ankles. Under the robe, the garters and anklets were still in place. Doro had rolled up the sleeves and was on her knees, starting IV drips in both of Lisa's arms; a bag hung from a hangar on either side of the lounge. Lisa didn't even begin to wince as the needles went in.

"So what are you doing here, Doro?" Lisa asked.

The bigger woman chuckled. "Taking care of wayward Chinese girls. Why do you ask?"

"Well, considering your qualifications, it seems like a waste."

Doro thought about this for a second. "It's not my only job. I only come in when Helen asks me. The rest of the time, I divide my time between an in-home hospice service and a hospital ER." She reached up and adjusted a drip. "The nice thing about being a nurse is the flexibility."

"But why here?"

"Well, in the words of Monty Python, it's 'something completely different.' Plus the pay is good, and the other people who work here are a hoot. You've only met a few of them. The Christmas parties are not to be believed."

"How did it happen?"

"The usual way," Doro said, getting off the floor and moving to her desk. "A friend of a friend gave Helen my number. I came in, watched the action for a day, and decided it would be a nice change from incontinent old men and gunshot victims."

"So you enjoy watching?"

"Yeah, sure. I have my share of kinks."

"Ever take part?"

Doro laughed. "Never even tempted. Helen gives me copies of the videos, though, so I can take part vicariously, at home."

"You're refreshingly honest."

"False modesty evaporates quickly around here. So what about you? What exactly does your business import?"

"Everything you can imagine, from Tiger Balm to computer components. We keep our ear to the ground, picking a contract here, a contract there. You can make a lot of money, if you know the right people."

"And you do?"

"Courtesy of my late father. He was a big noise in Hong Kong wholesaling. That's about the only valuable thing I got from him; his Rolodex. And only because my brother, Kin Wai, died before he did." A cloud passed across her face.

"I'm so sorry. An accident?"

"No, disease. The same disease that got both of them, addiction. Dad succumbed to alcohol, my brother to pills."

"And your mother? I'm sorry, I shouldn't pry."

"It's OK. She died shortly after Kin Wai."

"Also addiction?"

"No. Despair."

There was a tap on the door, and Gale walked in. She'd donned a knee-length cotton robe and taken off her boots, revealing the tattoos on her calves, feet and toes. She walked quietly to the lounge, bent over, and with one finger tenderly brushed aside a strand of hair that had fallen across Lisa's forehead. "Hi, Sweetheart."