Switch Pt. 03 of 03

The room was a carnival of horrors. Men and women in all stages of undress cavorted with one another. A nude woman shackled with her face to one wall wailed and sobbed as another woman flayed her backside with a whip until the victim was striped and weeping blood. A man stood confined in stocks, his trousers around his ankles, while another battered his hindquarters with a thick wooden paddle. A woman bound from neck to ankles in rope was hoisted into the air and suspended like a butterfly in its chrysalis.

Merry and her naked escorts were visible over the shoulder of the man in front of me. They turned toward me. Merry was clearly afraid. Her hands shook; her legs trembled. She looked from one man to the other. They said nothing, but unbound her hands and feet held her in place as others moved a large wooden contraption into place behind her. It was round and spoked like a Catherine wheel. They brought it up behind her at an angle to the stone floor. As tiny as she was next to the two men, Merry was powerless to resist as they held her down on the wheel while other men used ropes to tie her wrists and ankles to the place where the spokes met the outer rim of the wheel. Naked, spread-eagled, and secured, Merry was at the mercy of whoever wished to use her.

The spectacle that followed was so heinous that I cringe at the memory, let alone the task of description. One of the men who had escorted Merry to this infernal chamber stepped forward and thrust his erect member into her mouth. Grasping the back of her head with one hand, he pushed himself in and out of her until she made rhythmic, gurgling sounds. When she gagged and her cheeks ballooned, he withdrew briefly and allowed her to gasp loudly for air. Then he filled her mouth again and resumed thrusting. As she was being tortured in this fashion, her other escort moved a low divan to the underside of the wheel. He lay down upon it and, his body almost touching Merry's backside, began to knead and massage her buttocks. After a time the fingers of one hand disappeared from view, and from the undulations of Merry's hips it appeared he was entering her with his hand. But Merry's smooth, hairless sex was in plain view; his hand was not there. Finally, he moved his hand away from her bottom and grasped his erection. His other hand he wrapped around her waist, and he pushed upward—slowly, but relentlessly. Merry screamed around the shaft of her initial tormentor as the second man entered her anus.

The two men pistoned in and out of Merry as if they three comprised the gears of some devilish machine. A third man stepped in front of her and entered her from the front. Two other men came forward; each placed his phallus in one of her bound hands and compelled her to stroke it as they pushed forward and back. With that, Merry disappeared from view, lost in a roiling swarm of naked men. Not even her muffled cries could be heard over the shouts and grunts of the villains who abused her.

I could do nothing but watch, speechless, as the poor girl was thus defiled. It seemed an eternity, although it must have been less than thirty minutes. When, at last, every man had finished with her, Merry was allowed to rest. Her eyes closed, her head lolled, and her chest heaved with heavy breathing. She was unbound from the wheel after a time, and helped to her feet. Indeed, she could not have stood on her own. Unsteadily, she approached me. The man who had barred my way stepped aside. I rushed to this girl who had been a stranger to me mere minutes before, but whose plight now touched my heart.

Merry was in a shambles. Her skin and hair were slick with sweat and semen. The devils who had used her hands had ejaculated onto her arms, which were now streaked white. The one who had used her mouth had spurted his essence onto her hair and face, and it dripped onto her breasts. There was more on her belly from the one who had used her quim. "I will rescue you from this place," I whispered. "I do not know who you are or how you came to be here, but I will save you from this hell, I swear it."

"It is forbidden," said Merry, eyes downcast.

"Forbidden?" I cried. "What power can keep a girl in such circumstances? By whom is it forbidden that I should save you?"

Merry looked up at me from under heavy eyelids, as if half-dreaming. She smiled. "By me."

In that ghastly moment I knew. The eyes that had seemed so strange, yet so familiar, were unmasked by a smile equally familiar—one that I had seen so often before, but whose meaning had always eluded me until now.

Merry.

Esmeralda.

Esme.

"What is happening?" I cried. "Who are you? What madness is this?"

"Sir," said a voice behind me. I whirled around to see the man who had led me to this nightmare by the light of his oil lamp. "Where am I?" I shouted. "Where is Esme?"

"Who?" asked the man.

I turned back around. Es—Merry—was gone. All of them were gone: the men who had violated Merry, the demon who had held me back and tricked my body into profane excitement, even the room where Merry had been abused. All had vanished. I was alone with my guide again in a darkened passage.

"This way, sir."

"Where are you taking me now? Have you not satisfied your damnable desires? Is my suffering not complete?"

"Please, sir. This way."

What could I do? I followed. Again the lamp barely illuminated the stones upon which I trod; beyond them was only darkness.

He led me into a room and stopped. As I looked away from the lamp, my eyes adjusted to the darkness, and I began make out walls and furniture. My room, in my house. "Now sir," he said, "if you will, the switch is over there." I found the wall and felt my way along its length until I found it. The switch that had flipped everything upside down and begun a nightmare without end. The toggle that transposed light and dark, grief and ecstasy, virtue and depravity.

A push of a button, and the room flooded with light. The specter with the lamp was gone; my bedroom was as it had been before. Whatever phantasm had possessed me might as well have been a delusion; there was no sign it had ever been corporeal.

I slumped on the bed and did not bestir myself for several long minutes. When, at last, I gathered my wits and arose, I noticed the closet door ajar. I thought to close it, but opened it instead and gazed upon the trunk containing Esme's things. In the time since she had been taken from me I had not opened it, so oppressed was I with grief at the loss of my beloved. Now, for some unfathomable reason, I opened it. There were the expected articles of clothing and personal effects. Resting on top of those were items strange to me before today; horrible devices unsuited and unsuitable for my darling angel. Metal cuffs. Bits. Canes of various materials and diameters. Several lengths of chain. Clamps. I was aghast. With trembling hands I took up the envelope that lay atop these abominations, removed the paper inside, and read:

Dearest:

If you are reading this, then I am gone. Had you been the man I needed you to be, I would have removed this letter before we opened the trunk together, and you would have been spared the reading of it. Had you known the woman I am, there would never have been anything between us, and this letter would never have needed to be written. But you are who you are: a man who imagines himself the master of his fate, the ruler of his domain at work and in his home. A man who preserves the illusion of mastery by blinding himself to all needs and natures other than his own. And I am who I am: a woman who wishes to live. I am a woman who wishes to know fully the pleasures and pain of existence so that I may learn the purpose of life as well as I know the certainty and finality of death. I wish—I need—to experience the height of ecstasy and the depth of despair, so that I may appreciate the distance between the two. I am truly sorry that I am not the helpmate you need. Another woman might not need to feel humiliation to understand dignity, but I do. Another might not need to grovel in abject servitude to understand dignity and worth, but I do. And another woman might not find erotic delight in the hot sting of the lash—but I do.

If you are reading this, then I am already far away. The potion administered by my confidant to induce a death-like sleep has run its course, and I have awakened to a new life far from here. Do not look for me; for the sake of your reputation and mine, it is best that all who know us think me dead. Dearest, please believe that the impossibility of spending a lifetime together does not make me insensitive to the pain I cause you in taking this most desperate course of action. You deserve to find a woman who makes you happy, and not to spend your years with one whose wicked desires can never be reconciled to your more conventional ways. I wish you happiness and long life.

Yours,

Esme

Outside, the rain continued to fall.