I had not known the little stone house had a basement until I saw the light appear, near the ground. At last realizing that it came from within, that there were casement windows, I approached stealthily, fearfully, and with pounding heart. All sorts of shrubs and some mums had been planted there, and I scratched my arm and was just able to avoid crying out when I came into contact with a little thorny tree. Fearing I had made a noise they might have heard, within the house, I was still for perhaps a minute. It seemed, of course, like hours.
At last I moved further in, espying the window now. Staying just outside the square of light emanating from the window, I peered within. And my mind was staggered by a second shock far greater than the first, when I had heard those strange exchanges of words and had watched my aunt stripping off her clothing.
In that basement, or wine-cellar, or whatever it had once been, I saw my aunt and Mr. Parker and both Miles and Lois.
My aunt still wore no clothing, and I really believe my first reaction was one of astonishment at the fact that her loins were as smoothly-shorn as a child's, as a girl's before she reaches that age at which her breasts begin to swell and the soft fur begins to grow to conceal the mound and the nether lips of her sex. Those soft pink lips were very visible, obscenely bared, for my aunt's lower belly was entirely hairless. Furthermore, it was some time before I realized that she wore rouge or dye of some sort; at first I was so naive as to believe that the intensely red color of her puffy little lips was either, natural pigmentation or the fiery result of… what had been done to them.
She stood awkwardly, her bare thighs and legs apart, for one of those roughly X-shaped, spring-closing clothespins had been clamped to each of her nether lips. They drooped low, long red lobes that framed an open cavity into her, body, not, a tight line such as that which pierces my vulva as though incised with a single, swift drawing of a razor blade down the mound. (What a horrid thought! I shudder as I find myself entering here auth a terrible analogy!)
I tried to imagine the pain to those soft, so-tender lips, of having clothespins clamped to each of them and then left there, to squeeze and pinch the flesh and draw it downward as they dangled beneath her, between her thighs.
I do not know in what order to record all this. I shall put it down as each incredible portion rushes redly back into my staggering mind.
Around each of Isobel's ankles was a leather band with a huge buckle; the straps were perhaps three inches high, and thick-looking, like a shortened version of a hippy's belt. The leather was black.
She wore the same leather straps around her wrists, and another circled her neck, and I could see that her waist was fearfully constricted by the belt, also of black leather but surely five inches high, that encircled her. Despite her slimness, her flesh bulged whitely above and below that tightly-drawn and buckled strap. She was blindfolded with a strip of black, cloth, and her wrists were linked together behind her back; each of the straps was equipped with rings and hooks, making them resemble the horse harnesses one sees hanging in small town hardware stores.
Her breasts!
They were rather fuller than I had expected, and I am sure now that she wears no brassiere, not ever, which makes her look less bosomy than she is. Those soft, intensely white hemispheres were set well apart on her chest. They were not huge and perhaps they could not be called large, certainly not by comparison with my own bosom's twin lobes. But the tips, like her sexual lips, were incredibly red, and again I realized that her aureole and thick nipples had been dyed or painted with something; perhaps vegetable dye?
That deep red color was visible to me despite the fact that… that… ah horror!… that to each of her nipples was clamped another of those spring clothespins! They dragged each deep pink nipple downward, making it look long…
At last, with a sinking feeling, I recognized the other adornments to the satiny half-spheres of her breasts. I shuddered violently and closed my eyes, digging my nails into the palms of my hands. But I had to open my eyes and look on; I was totally incapable of not watching them!
Into each of her breasts, including the crimson aureoles circling the clothes pinned tips, had been thrust several of the thorns from the bush or slim tree I had just encountered! They varied from the thickness of a needle to that of ordinary pencil-lead, which is quite thick indeed to be stabbed into human flesh and left there to sting and throb! Most of them were about the length of an ordinary sewing-needle, and they protruded from her flesh at varying lengths; some had been thrust in deeper, perhaps with more force than others.
I could not understand why I had not heard her agonized screams while those terrible thorns were being imbedded in the enchanting swells of her bosom!
Thus have I described my aunt, whose body, I am forced and rather proud to declare, looked more like that of a woman of perhaps thirty than of forty, which I believed her to be.
Now the others. The monsters. Her tormentors. (Yes, I know, and I will say so now: the tormentors of a willing victim!)
Erik Parker wore a long brown robe with a thrown-back cowl. I mean a long robe; past his ankles. Had he been tonsured he'd have resembled a monk. As it was, just that robe, girt with a shiny belt of black leather matching that of his boots, added flavor of the Inquisition to that medieval scene of horror and obscenity; he looked for all the world like a monk with a full head of hair and a beard.
Nearby stood the girl Lois. I do not know how old she is. Perhaps my age? Fifteen or twenty, eighteen or twenty-five? I do not know. She wore a black body stocking that covered her from the tips of her toes to her chin, where it rose in a turtle neck. But… either that sheath of black that fitted her like her own skin had been made extraordinarily, or it had been altered with scissors and new hems. For, with shocking lasciviousness and unbelievable immodesty, it had been left open to reveal her naked and painted breasts, her lower sexual parts.
She too was shorn to reveal the intimate deft between the puffy, hot-pink lips of her sex; She too had had paint or dye applied to the enviable and deep swells of her breasts, which jutted forth from her black sheath in a display that drew the eye like twin, snow-colored magnets with rust-red tips.
Even as I stared at her, she plucked another thorn from the silver tray in her left hand, poised her hand while she took careful aim, and rammed it so hard into Isobel's left breast that the lovely globe bounded and quivered in the air. I saw my aunt's mouth open wide, but heard no sound. She only gasped, I thought, despite what must have been terrible pain; what a strong and brave woman she is!
(What am I thinking? I asked myself. She is here voluntarily. She is naked voluntarily. She submits voluntarily to their lascivious gazes and their torment, and this is not the first time! She is as much monster as they!)
As to young, well-built Miles;… I shudder and blush even at the memory of his display of himself! I stared and stared, shivering and yet trying to tear my gaze from him. Impossible; it was as though my eyes were fastened to his body by invisible chains.
He wore boots, blood-red tights, and a broad black belt, and one glove, on his left hand. And… his tights, like those of Lois, were open at the most obscene of places. From that hole… which I saw had been cut in the shape of a heart; what perversity!… jutted a great and swollen shaft of an angry pink color, with, a mushrooming bead that at once looked bloated and soft, not like the shaft which seemed iron-like to me as I stared at them through that window… and purplish in color. Beneath dangled-no, hung, for they did not appear dangling, which implies a looseness… a very tight-looking sac of flesh containing two large round objects.