Chapter 35

The next couple of weeks were among the most hectic of Veronica's working life. Things were apparently picking up again! Once again her days pumped out mega shots of pure super charged adrenalin into her system. Each night she would adjourn to "The Flask" and unwind in convivial company. She would afterwards collapse into her bed before rising at the crack of dawn to renew the daily battle.

There were two long conversations with Douglass during this time. She wrote him a long letter, enclosing some photographs taken during her film project - pictures of her relaxing with the rest of the crew. His business in the USA, was progressing well and he expected to be back in a few weeks' time. They had agreed to waste no more time messing about. Marriage had been agreed on! Veronica had already started to organise the wedding. She was feeling happier than she could ever remember.

And then came the interruption. She was to leave for Spain and a rugged and remote coastal location the very next day! The tickets were waiting for her when she came home from work and her heart sank when she saw them. It did not matter that she had known for weeks that the day was soon to come - she was sick of the whole damned business by now. Her bruises had just about healed after the realistically filmed torture scenes and all her aches and pains had gone. Now she was to have to go through it all again!

At least she would be being tortured in the fresh air this time, beside the waters of the Atlantic. But she could think of no other mitigating circumstances!

Once again she glanced through the itinerary. Veronica, as the beautiful, doomed and newly kidnapped victim was to be tied to an open air pagan altar, where she would be inspected by her kidnappers, whipped and otherwise tortured, surrounded by twenty or so chanting members of the Cult. What kind of jerk watches stuff like this, she asked herself for the millionth time!

At last the whole thing was over! The final scenes of the doomed heroine being tormented on a wild storm-tossed beach had been filmed. Why they had needed to come al this way when there were plenty of wild storm-tossed beaches in England, Veronica could not work out. Of course, some of the scenes had been filmed inland on the way to the sacrificial climax and the local scenery was a little more arid and rugged than anything England had to offer! And she was supposed to be captured in Spain before being smuggled to England.

For her final appearance, the hapless victim had been tied upside down, her legs spread wide apart at the Cult leader inspected her to ensure that the virgin sacrifice actually was a virgin!

"Golly, Veronica! You really are!" said the actor playing the fearsome master diabolist. "And a sweet and sexy looking girl like you! Miracles never cease!"

Veronica had not like that very much, finding it quite unacceptable, but had largely forgotten it in the remainder of the filming. Now she was relaxing in the bar at the hotel and getting ready to fly home the next day. Hopefully, Douglass should be home a few days after that and her life as a married woman could begin!

Her wedding couldn't come a moment too soon as far as she was concerned, in fact she would gladly give everything she had to put the clock back a few weeks to the time when she had almost broken the poor man's heart and start out again from there. In that case, she would not be here in this Iberian hotel and the heroine would be some other woman.

"Care to take a farewell stroll, Veronica?" she looked around and saw Jeremy Smythe-Hopkins, the villain who had been responsible for disembowelling her in the closing scene, just foiling the attempt of her lover to rescue her. A sad ending, she had thought, and not one likely to go down too well at the box office, but that was not her problem. Soon she would be out of all this for keeps! She frowned slightly as she remembered the intimate look this not very likeable man had taken at her maidenly secrets and the coarse comment he had made at the time. This creep was the last one she had any thought of taking a moonlight stroll with!