The Photographer is visibly waiting for them. He is dressed in Second Empire attire, a short blouse and crumpled trousers, with a thin moustache and small Napoleon 3rd-type beard. Next to him is the young man she had met at dinner: now undressed, she can see he can be no more than sixteen years old at most. He sports the thin and curvy shape of a classical catamite, a lazy if gracious body spread over the bed, distractedly playing with his half erect cock as they enter the room.
“Hello, darlings,” says the tired adolescent.
“Hello, arsehole,” says the Other. “How are you?”
“So, so,” says the young man. “he’s only fucked me twice since night fell. Do you think he no longer likes me?”
“Don’t you like him any longer?” the One asks the Photographer.
“He bores me,” says the Photographer. “So what are you bringing me here?”
“Don’t you think she’s pretty?”
“Very,” the Photographer says. “I so enjoy such pale milk-like skin.”
He examines the young girl all over. She blushes at being so exposed.
“Her eyes are so shiny,” the Photographer says. “Have you just made her come?”
“Insanely,” says the Other.
“Sit down on the bed,” the Photographer tells the young girl. Take your stockings off, please. And you, little fag, come here.”
She sits herself down on a short square of black silk, in the same pose as Rembrandt’s Bethsabea. It all feels like a dream. The Photographer moves his heavy apparatus and disappears under its black cloth. She hears the muted sound of his voice, commanding her:
“No, thighs apart. Good, yes, like that. Lean backwards, steady your arms, breasts to the fore, perfect.”
He reappears briefly:
“You,” he says to the young boy who is pretending to be terribly bored, “come and suck me off while I’m working, it’ll keep you busy.”
“Yes, uncle,” says the young man with a touch of irony in his voice. “Right away, uncle.”
The Photographer again disappears under his cloth, and on his knees facing him, the boy with obvious dexterity pulls out a remarkable cock, disproportionate in places, whose fat and swollen helmet emerges triumphantly from a dry, nervous stem. The boy licks it quite methodically and witnesses the bulging fruit thicken even more under his ministrations.
“Swallow,” says the voice under the black cloth.
Obediently, the young boy opens his mouth wide and jaws set wide apart devours the strange and monstrous fruit.
All the while, the Photographer is taking picture after picture, only making appearances to change the plates and sprinkle more magnesium into his flash, just his voice emerging from below the black sheet.
“Yes… Now each of you suck one of her breasts… Like that… Ah, a hand on her thigh… Open wider, my pretty one… Against that black silk background, you are just sublime. Throw her backwards, now. One kissing her, the other licking her… Yes… More profile, please, I can’t see your tongue… No, don’t look at the camera… Very good, head thrown back… and you, there, suck a bit better than that or I’ll have you whipped right in front of these ladies…”
“Oh, yes,” says the catamite, interrupting his labours.
Together with her two new friends, he has her adopt the most lubricious poses, ever on the look out for the moment she comes. Under their tongues and fingers, she experiences a whole series of orgasms, until she totally forgets where she is. Only the bright explosion of the flash, from time to time, reminds her that a man is taking photographs of her while…
Is it the caresses that are generating her pleasure or the fact she is being photographed? The orgasms, the flashes of light, one or the other or both are levitating her out of her body. Every time her mouth opens on a silent scream, the flash of the magnesium betrays the fact that the Photographer has captured her moment of selflessness, stolen yet a further parcel of her soul, her life… as if she was being emptied from the inside, as if her very substance was now flowing down her thighs, captured by the photograph, disfigured, transformed…
The sound of the door opening…
A bit later, a cock thrusting up her arse, another forcing its way down her throat, the room is now full of men and women, all the guests from dinner, each and every one fucking her in every way, and from orgasm to orgasm she feels herself grow wider, dilate until she is just a set of openings, of holes, deep abysses where cocks are ejaculating before being replaced by larger cocks or more numerous ones. Now they are penetrating her two at a time, in her cunt, in her arse, they come in twos to tease her mouth, and innumerable pairs of hands roam across her body, pinch her, sometimes spank her, and above it all the voice of the Photographer encouraging them on and on, and the brightness of the flash, and that anxious feeling that she is now no more than an empty space being furrowed, a nothingness full of come, devoured, eaten from the inside by a horde of vampires. Soon there will be nothing left of her, just some long blonde hair matted with sweat, a white expanse of flesh torn apart by caresses, a set of pale eyes she holds tightly closed while all of her is being impaled and only the violent flashes of light make their way through to her dead eyes.
Suddenly, they abandon her. From one moment to the next, it seems to her, there is no one left. She runs her hands in front of her eyes, as if she were blind and finally opens her eyes. The Commander stands in front of her and is watching her: the same cold marble eyes, the same early taste of the tomb. He gently applauds her, like earlier, but there is no sign of irony on his face.
“Very good, my dear, very good indeed. I knew we could rely on you.”
He comes towards her, takes her hands, invites her to rise from the deeply soiled bed of black satin.
“Come,” he says. “There is one final thing for you to do.”
Together they walk down the stairs. There are so many rooms, so many passages she will know nothing about, whose anonymous numbers will not be revealed. What masked ball or orgy in Room Twelve, what improvised concert in Room Eight? They find themselves on the steps of the castle. The cicadas are now silent, the night is still far from morning, but she hesitates. The moon has moved across the roof and a wide geometrical shadow now covers a whole section of the lawn. All that emerges, on the frontier of darkness, is the statue of the goddess, even whiter in the light of the moon.
The Commander leads her to the statue. The grass is mown short and feels hard against her bare feet. She shivers, not because she is cold, as spring down here already has an early touch of summer, but because of the anxiety that always strikes towards the end of a night’s party, when all is done and loneliness is about to knock on the door again and all you are left with are memories…
“Get up on the pedestal,” he says. “Yes, like that, with your eyes facing the eyes of the goddess. Take her into your arms – very good, now your hands on her rear, yes. Now, don’t move.”
Methodically, he ties her to the statue with thin string. He ties her tightly, the rope biting into her flesh, her breasts crushed against the stone breasts of Venus – or is it Diana – then her legs are pulled up against the legs of marble, ankle against ankle, until she can barely move an eyelash, her face pressed against the stone head.
“They’re the same colour,” says a female voice.
“That’s true,” says another man. “Maybe it’s the statue that’s actually tied to her.”
“Predator and prey,” jokes yet another.
Are they all present?
“Let’s begin,” someone says. “It’s time to end all of this.”
The sharp whisper of the first lash precedes by a micro-second the blow that lands on her rump. She screams, or is it her tortured flesh that screams under the assault of the whip? But she is not surprised; she is already resigned, abandoned, being punished because she is innocent. Innocent of what?