Part 1: The Show

Exhale and suck in that gut so I can tighten this properly." Even his voice is beautiful.

"I'm trying, darling. Please. I can't breathe." Her voice is beautiful too, soft and high, but there is no force behind her words.

Somewhere in a basement the images and sounds become digitized, sweep through banks of servers, and are accessed by thousands of viewers somewhere else in the world, in homes and apartments, in offices, in labs, in dorm rooms. They are mainly in North America, but viewers in Europe, primarily in England and Germany, stay up late or rise early to see it happen live. Internet billing records show hundreds of subscribers in South Africa, South America, and Australia, and many hundreds more in Asia, mostly in Japan. There are enough that he has renegotiated his bandwidth contract, and now he has his own mirror site. A letter on the desk in the corner announces in formal terms that volume could double before new bandwidth problems would develop.

So, even though his equipment isn't really adequate, viewers see her clearly enough, and hear the conversation, see her expression, and understand her desperate tone, even over the music he's chosen: "Sympathy for the Devil." How appropriate.

On the monitor the viewers watching the scene from Camera Five see a quick dark blur as he strides past the camera, around in front of her, and gets up right to her face. Camera One catches both their faces nicely. The picture snags for a second, and rectangular sections of the screen become blurry and still. Sometimes this happens to an important section of the screen, such as over the part of her he is hurting, but he's never gotten a complaint about that from a viewer.

"You're not trying, you bitch." He doesn't spit out the word "bitch." It comes out smoothly, sounding almost affectionate.

"Please. I'm trying. I'm sorry. I'll try harder." Her voice is hardly a whisper and hard to make out now. She hasn't any air. As he looks at her closely, her face gets small and tense, and her voice becomes even tinier, and tight, and squeaking, the voice viewers love according to the emails.

He slaps her. One side, then the other. Then both again. Her only response is to wince and cry one weak little whimpering gasp with each slap. Last week she dodged one and he told viewers there would be a special, private punishment later, one that he might provide as a video.

"I know you will, you sweet bitch. Now what do you say?"

Weak, whispery sentences, with quick little breaths every three or four words. "Thank you darling. I know I need. Your help. For this. I love you so. Much."

He walks away again. On some screens everything freezes for a second. The computer in the corner is visible on Camera Three. On it a viewer might barely make out text that announces a steady arrival of emails. A few times he's read some out loud. They are full of suggestions for what the writers want to see him do to her.

She sways a little from her ropes, and her scrawny arms, almost stick-like now, are bent slightly at the elbows because he let her put her feet on the floor. He says into his mike, "She needs to be elevated. I'm going to pull her off the floor and stretch her between her wrists and ankles. That'll make it easier to tighten the corset. It's hard to tighten now because she's almost out of body fat."

Viewers can tell there isn't much more lung capacity to squeeze out either. It's obvious. Last week he read them an email from a viewer who asked if he would suffocate her live on the Internet. He could always get a new wife, it said. "Suffocate her live." He read the oxymoron out loud and laughed his rich laugh. He told the audience they were having great fun and making lots of money. "Besides," he smirked, "there might be an investigation." His dancing penis told everyone he was certainly having fun.

Viewers can choose among five camera angles by clicking appropriate buttons, or they can view miniatures of all five at once. Pity those who have only 56K modems. It might seem a one-man operation, but it's sophisticated. The Number Two camera is focused on the jack handle he cranks to work the mechanism, Number Three is on the pulley itself, and Number Four shows his erection, which soars out of his leather suit. Number Five displays all of her, his wasting little wife, wan and emaciated, made up beautifully and carefully lit with red and blue stage lights so the audience can't tell how pasty she's really become. She shows up well against all the shadows the lights throw. The coal black corset makes her waist impossibly tiny and pushes her little breasts out so they look larger than they really are.

He works the winch and the viewers watch her stretch. First her arms straighten out. Then she lifts up a fraction, then another fraction. Another. Again the image freezes. Then they see her shoulders begin to give, her arms stretch up from her pits, and those watching the image on Camera One can see her muscles and tendons and ligaments press against the surface of her skin all the way up toward her elbows and down toward her ribs and breasts. She makes a tiny whining sound the viewers can barely hear, but then her panting becomes faster and, if possible, shallower. Little pants that bring in all the air she'll be able to get. Every once in a while a pant comes as a whimper. She seems passive, not fighting the machine. He cranks it one more time. Her panting is as fast as that of a dog.

"Suck in your gut."

He takes the lowest strap again. The viewers can see his effort and hear her make another tiny whining sound among her pants. It won't give, but then it does. One more notch. The straps have notches every quarter inch. He showed the whole thing in a close-up the week before he began the project. He pulls the strap at her middle. As tiny as her waist has become, it still seems easier to pull this one than the first one, probably because there isn't a hip bone to interfere.

"Fifteen and three-quarter inches," he says. "I told you I could get you below sixteen, you sweet slut, but you didn't believe me." She doesn't answer. Would she ever disagree with him about anything? And does she even hear him? She's stretched her neck out and tilted it back a little, probably to help herself breathe. She doesn't seem to be paying much attention. The Number One camera shows that her eyes are barely open and she doesn't appear to be looking at anything in particular.

Viewers can click an icon and get a pop-up explanation of how the corset works. It claims that the waist strap doesn't affect her breathing very much. It mainly hurts her digestion. She will have cramps and be almost unable to eliminate. Everything will be crushed down against her bladder, so she will be able to hold only a tiny amount of urine. It says he will make a video showing him using this fact in her discipline.

He talks into his mike again, "This will keep you from being so hungry all the time, you cow. It'll be easier to follow your diet."

Now the lower part of her rib cage. Pull. Pull.

"Exhale, bitch."

She tries to obey and he cinches it the quarter inch. On to the next one, number four of five. Again he tells her to exhale and again he manages the quarter inch. Number five will be the hardest, because the top is the only place she has any air left.

"Exhale." He pulls. He's cutting off her air. For the first time she looks panicked but it doesn't make any difference. She can't fight him. He tightens it. Then he leaves her to hang, stretched out for the viewers, her head falling to the side, her body swaying slightly and her breaths almost nonexistent, little more than a vibration. Thousands of people on six continents are transfixed by her, watching her try to breathe, waiting for him to return. Thousands pay twenty-five dollars a week for access. He is expensive but worth it to them, because he gives a true show. Most other sites are make believe or crap. This is legal, too. Passably legal. Body modification and BDSM between consenting adults. How many viewers are masturbating to her right now, jerking off or frigging a clitoris, getting a blow job, or spewing into the ass of a partner? Emails come from viewers who get together in groups, to pool the cost, and one BDSM club manager wrote that they want to show her on a large projection system before their Friday night sex games, so can they purchase a site license for commercial purposes?

(I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness)

The master of ceremonies certainly wouldn't know Geoffrey is watching, though why would he care? Oh it might give him a little charge to know he could rub Geoff's nose in this, but truthfully he hardly knows Geoff. She might care, if she could think of anything besides the fact that she is suffocating. She wouldn't want Geoff to see her because once he loved her and she loved him.

"That's tight enough for now, my pretty. Down we go. Time for your workout. You need to stay toned, you know, and it helps with your weight control."

He works the lever and she moves slowly to the floor. Her skinny arms become loose, looser, then fall ever so slowly together, down to her hips. They are tied together at the wrists with a red silk scarf, and she has bright red fingernail polish, so together they make a splash of color for the camera, against her pale thighs and pale, naked pubis. And the black corset. Everything that is actually part of her is almost fish-belly white, except for some bruises. For contrast there are all the silver- and gold-colored rings and pins in her ears, eyebrows, nipples, navel, labia, and clitoris.

She is breathing more easily with her shoulders down. Still panting, but breathing nonetheless. She sways and staggers a little, then raises her head and begins looking around at the lights, and her husband, and at things in general, as though she isn't familiar with them. He seems to be adjusting the cameras again and Camera Three catches a stage light and its picture bleaches out. It's off for a few seconds, while she sways in place on Cameras One and Five, panting. It comes on again.

He needn't have shaved her pubic hair. An email suggested he burn it off, and last week he told viewers he might let her grow it and burn it off for them later. But he could easily have left it, it was so fair. Everything about her is almost vanishing in the studio lights. People on an alt.bdsm newsgroup had a flame war over how often he bothered to make her shave her underarms and legs. Maybe he makes her do it when the stubble bothers him as he uses her. That would make sense. It might be different if he had better quality equipment or a darker woman. He left the hair on her head long -- straight, thin, yellow hair that falls almost to her waist. Sometimes it is braided, and sometimes she is tied by her hair. She is so blonde, so pure and innocent looking, exactly whom the alt.bdsm people want to see degraded.

He unties her feet and leads her to the treadmill.

"Come on, now."

Who watches such shows? Many types, probably. Addicts of darkness, ghouls of pain. Law enforcement officers trying to document offences. People satisfying curiosity, or wanting to see something outré. And a one-time lover.

"I didn't believe it at first either, Geoff, but it's her."

"How long has this been on?"

"I've seen it three times."

"But how long total, Bill?"

"Well, the archives show that it's been on six weeks. This is the seventh show."

"Show?"

"It's like tonight. They're live every Friday at eleven for a half hour or so. The rest of the time you can play the archived shows."

"Archived shows."

"You can get them in three different formats. Plus they have photos of him training her and other sorts of things. Links, other video clips, the sort of thing everyone has."

Geoffrey hasn't moved since the show began. He is sitting in a wheeled desk-chair and his hands are white from grasping the armrests.