The film cut dead, and the screen reverted to a blue rectangle. Betty imagined that this was a taster of things to come. The first in a series of films that would culminate in live action. She lay there staring at the blue meditative blank. It was like a bit of sky got into a dungeon. Betty imagined treating the space as a swimming pool, and diving into a blue membrane that parted fluently round her body.
Images jumped out at her again. This time the camera followed. Nicole from behind as she walked the length of one of the château’s corridors. She was dressed in a seam-splitting emerald sequined miniskirt. The thin indigo seams of her silk stockings pronounced the curve of her legs. She was walking with deliberate provocation in the direction of a recessed window guarded by a stone lion. And without warning, the two oriental girls who Betty had seen at dinner appeared, one in front and one to the rear of Nicole. They too were dressed in costumes that hinted at fetishistic ritual. Their manner was less challenging than oneiric. They looked like dream figures jumped out of Nicole’s head.
Nicole froze. Her hands dropped to her hips, and her bottom continued to rotate in full circles despite her immobility. The oriental girl positioned behind Nicole, began walking slowly towards her affecting the same stylized manner of walk. She looked like she had been stitched into royal blue silk, her red heels matching her scarlet wig. And simultaneously, the girl who had materialized by the recessed window began to move in from the opposite direction, her movements exactly synchronizing with her partner’s. They appeared to be moonwalking, their progress indefinitely delayed. There were rooms to left and right of the corridor, but Nicole made no attempt to consider the options of escape. Rather she seemed excited by the prospect of danger. The two women closed in on her, all three of them dressed as though they were models in a Herb Ritts shoot. Betty found herself triggering with anticipation. The oriental woman behind Nicole, at the risk of splitting her seamless dress, knelt down and brought her head to the height of Nicole’s bottom, and with unexpected ferocity slashed open the zip on her emerald skirt. The upper part of Nicole’s body looked like a flower escaped from its sheath. The skirt hung open in a V, and the two hands busy caressing her buttocks began slowly to manipulate the sequined fabric, looking to have it give, but finding an extreme flexibility in its tightness. The erotic thrill was in the difficulty of stripping Nicole. Meanwhile the other woman was kneeling in front of Nicole, and her hands slipping around the waist attempted to assist her partner in taking off the moulded skirt. Nicole was growing visibly more excited by the delay. She wanted to be free and unrestrained, but instead was confined to this glittering second skin. The constricted skirt would only give fraction by fraction, and Nicole made no attempt to assist her captors. But by degrees the crack of her naked bottom appeared. She was wearing nothing but a black silk suspender belt under the skirt. The combined efforts of the two women succeeded in finally forcing the skirt to the back of Nicole’s thighs, and from there to her shoes. The green scales sparkled like a tropical fish on the stone floor. The three women, with Nicole in the centre, walked hand in hand down the corridor towards the stone lion. Betty thought the place resembled a chapel. The tenebrous atmospherics were gothic. When they reached the lion, Nicole was transformed into an assertive disciplinarian. The creature held a riding crop in its stone jaws. The two women were made to strip, and bent over the lion’s body. Nicole began flicking the whip over their round bottoms. The decorations made by her work were like painting. Red stripes began to appear alternately on their buttocks. A series of horizontal cuts that followed the curve of the flesh. Nicole appeared excited by the correction she was administering. She would stand back admiringly, her left hand straying across her own bottom as though empathizing with the severity of her discipline. Neither of the girls was bound, and neither made any attempt to elude their voluntary punishment. Rather one, or both of them appeared to be ascending the scale towards orgasm. Their breathing grew heavier, there was a spasmic thrust from the pelvis which commented on pleasure. And as climax was anticipated, so Nicole increased the ferocity of the whipping. A throaty howl, pitched to a note of ultimate pleasure was wrung out of the throat of first one girl, and then the other. And pleasure attained, they crumpled, subsided to their knees, backs still facing the camera. Nicole stood over them, the perfect locket-shaped proportions of her bottom accented by her green spike heels. She returned the whip to the lion’s jaws, knelt down, and began kissing the buttocks she had ravaged.
At this point, the heavy reverberation of a door being open and shut announced Leanda’s entry into the film. She too was seen from behind. She was carrying a large black wooden heart in her arms. She was dressed in nothing but minimal see-through blue panties. She walked on high matching heels. The corridor was now strewn with big yellow chrysanthemums. Leanda was seen walking through that yellow ruckus. She held the black heart out in front of her, and there were diamante sprays in her hair. She walked towards the recessed window, a leopard padding behind her, the big cat evidently trained to obey her instructions. Betty froze. Her heart turned over at the prospect of a leopard inhabiting the château’s corridors, and perhaps being admitted to the dungeon. The rehearsed elegance of the film surrogatized the pointers towards implicit danger.
Betty was fixated as the leopard switched sides. It went over to Leanda’s left as though informed by some subliminal message. Leanda’s journey from one end of the corridor to the other seemed to occupy a lifetime. It was a passage through the underworld. Betty watched as the leopard waited obediently for Leanda’s instructions. Leanda stood off at a short distance from Nicole, whose tongue had shifted to one of the woman’s toes. With her bottom resting on her heels, the sensitive underside to her feet had become charged as erogenous zones. Nicole was finding those places where the nerve impulses came alive. She did this by following the other woman’s finger, for she outlined on her right foot the map that should be pursued by Nicole’s tongue. Leanda stood there imperiously surveying the kneeling triptych. The leopard remained sitting upright at her side. At a sudden command from Leanda, the big cat stepped forward and ran its tongue the length of Nicole’s spine. The latter evinced no disquiet at the proceedings and continued to excite the oriental girl through pressure on her foot. At another command from Leanda, the big cat altered its strategy, and began caressing Nicole’s bottom with its tongue. The film cut at this image, and Betty was left to reflect on the surreal juxtaposition of Nicole receiving oral stimulus from a leopard.