Terror

"Christine and I have been talking." Angela's tone was conversational. She might have been discussing the price of tomatoes in the neighbourhood supermarket. "I suggested taking the lot off, right from the root. But she thinks you just need to lose your balls."

"You won't need them anymore." Martin recognised Christine's voice, but it was also the voice of a witch, cold and uncaring. He felt a hand lift his scrotum and pull upwards on his penis, and now it was swollen and hard with a terror that went beyond all sexual experience.

"I'll try an experimental swipe, then saw hard if that doesn't work." Angela sounded pensive, and she might have been talking to herself. But Martin had fainted.

The two women looked at each other. "He isn't much of a hero." Angela sounded disappointed.

"He never was. Just a lot of balls." Christine smiled. Martin was paying a price, in full, and he would never forget.

"We'll need somewhere where blood doesn't matter." Angela looked at the edge of her knife, where some bright drops of Martin's blood pearled along the blade, and then at the experimental red line she had sliced into his loin. "It's going to be messy."

"We could take him up to the bathroom." But Christine sounded doubtful. She was houseproud, and hated untidiness.

Angela sighed. "Is he worth it?" She wiped the blade against the side of Martin's neck, smearing his blood against him, and now they were both unsure.

Christine thought for a moment, and then shook her head. There had been a moment, one moment, when she had wanted to see Martin castrated, and totally unmanned, but his whipping had sated her, and she was full.

Angela stood up. Now she was magnificent in her housemaid's uniform, and it was clear she was a leader. She stood over Christine, and reached down, and her latex-gloved hand touched Christine's cheek. "You can't stay here."

Christine reached up, to intertwine their black-gloved fingers. "He's had a lesson."

"You should come with me."

"Will you beat me?"

The two women smiled at each other, and their smiles made a compact of understanding and support. Now Angela's eyes were tender. "I won't need to." She pulled, tugging Christine to her feet, and for a moment the two women were warm against each other. Then Martin stirred at their feet, moaning to himself, and they both looked down at him. He was something obscene, puffy and blotched across his back, marked with bright red welts, and they both instinctively recoiled.

Angela pushed at him with her fishnetted foot. "What about him?"

Christine pursed her lips. She was already mentally packing her bags, and she wanted no more part of this messy thing at her feet. She shrugged. "We'd better untie him and leave him to clean himself up. He's got the whole weekend ahead of him."

"He's lucky he kept his balls."

"He wasn't worth the bother."

The two women smiled at each other. Martin Boston had sinned, and signed his own doom, and they had punished him.