Chapter 9: The Family Doctor

Marie drifted back to the stone courtyard again, this time looking up at the medieval rooftops of the surrounding buildings and the sky above. She lay on her back, ankles bound to wrists in a tight frog-tie. Lifting her head up, she saw the nobles and courtesans grinning down at her from just past her knees.

A jester turned cartwheels over her bound body, each leap threatening to land on a tensed thigh or a pierced breast. He quickly leaned into Marie's face and laughed. A domino mask covered his eyes and nose, hiding his face with a macabre Pinocchio.

He twisted into a backflip, and suddenly knelt between Marie's knees. Marie looked down at him and saw him lick his painted lips hungrily. Slowly, he leaned in toward Marie's womanhood and began to poke his mask's elongated nose into her.

Marie moaned as darkness blotted out the sky. Twisting her head this way and that, she realized that two platform high-heel boots were standing on either side of her head. Following them up the shapely female legs, she realized that she was looking up the latex skirt of the ruler from the sedan chair.

Marie stared into the mass of rubber, leather, and steel above her, and realized that the woman was squatting down toward her. As all light dimmed, Marie saw the most painful looking studded steel strap-on dildo pointed directly down at her mouth.

She woke suddenly in pitch blackness. Was she blindfolded? No, no she had swapped her baby blue curtains for heavy black ones. Why had she done that? They were a memento of her childhood. Streetlamps. They glared in the window at night. The heavy black velvet would block out the sun.

No, that's not right. The sun shone in the other morning, visible around the cracks. It must still be nighttime.

Marie blinked as her eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, squinting at a strange triangle painted on the ceiling. Three red beams glowed above her, the upper one less than a foot long, and the other two pointing like an arrow toward her feet. They seemed to move, to be alive in some way.

Marie stretched in her bonds, and noticed that the gentle tension of the cuffs on her body seemed much less stressful than the night before. She twisted her shoulders to work out a mild kink in her neck, and noticed the beams twisting in a similar fashion.

Curiosity brought Marie to her full senses, and she realized with some confusion that she must be looking at her own reflection. There had been no mirror on the ceiling when she went to sleep, had there? There certainly wasn't one there the other night, as she had counted cracks in the ceiling to keep time during the early hours of her punishment.

Marie twisted in her bonds as much as possible, and verified that the beams were coming from the jewels in her piercings. The red beams played an edgy, mathematically regular pattern on her naked skin. She admired the look, imagining herself suspended naked in the path of a laser show at some warehouse rave.

As she watched the lights, she began to get the impression that they reacted to her feelings and thoughts, pulsing and shifting. The collar, too, seemed to be alive in some strange way. Marie kept wondering if the ominous five letters along the front of her throat were glowing red as well, but every time she looked directly at it the effect would seem to vanish.

Marie felt aroused and excited in a gentle sort of way; but with her hands cuffed above her head and her legs tethered to the corners of the bed, she could do nothing to take advantage of it. The gentle pulsing and throbbing lulled her back into a deep sleep.

Marie woke a few hours later to the now familiar click-click-click-click of her cuffs. She stretched eagerly and massaged her wrists and ankles as she sat up on the bare rubber bedsheet. She examined the cuffs once more, and tried to determine if they released on a timer or if some external event had opened them. Unable to understand even the beginnings of how they worked, she again unbuckled the web of straps from her gag's head-harness.

By now she figured there had to have been enough saliva to dissolve the glue. Marie pushed hard with her tongue and pulled on the dangling leather as hard as she could. After a little jostling, the gag finally moved with a sharp, stinging pain. Looking down at the gag in her lap, she saw scraps of skin still glued to the base of the rubber cock-bit.

Marie immediately tasted the iron tanginess of her blood, remembering her childhood habit of licking her wounds to enjoy the wicked flavor. She grinned at the thought that she was a vampire in a previous life (or un-death, at least). She often thought of dressing up as the fetishy underground comic-book vampire Sandra Bodyshell and giving out deep kisses to people at the Castro street party.

Halloween! Marie verified that the costume was still in the drawer, tempted to try it on early. Angie's words about enslavement and punishment echoed through her mind, but now, in the sunshine of the spring morning, they seemed lighter than they had the day before. She disregarded them as the pulsing rings distracted her again, and closed the costume drawer.

First things first, Marie thought to herself, how do I get rid of these silly ornaments? A sharp, stinging pain stunned her as it snapped through her sensitive flesh. Sweat beaded on her brow, and she bit her sore lip gently. Marie panted as she massaged her nipples, feeling the heavy metal rings through the skin.

The charm of the previous night's light show had worn off. Marie felt a familiar helpless panic surge through her belly as she twisted the rings through her flesh, looking for some sort of clasp or seam. She moaned as her thoughts raced, trying to think of who had done this vicious thing to her mind and body. Pulling at the rings resulted in nothing than more pain--a punishing pain that had none of the arousing properties that Marie tended to experience.

In her mind, she flipped through all the people she knew in San Francisco, trying to come up with someone who could help. Faces and names came and went as she held her head in her hands. She stopped short and stood straight as one in particular stayed clear in her mind's eye: Dr. Rosenstock.

Rosenstock had been her family doctor ever since she arrived from Europe, and saw her a few times when she travelled to visit her aunt as a child. Marie realised that she could come up with no cover story that would explain how the piercings came to be. Still, she knew that he would keep their session in confidence, as he had her other embarrassing moments.

Marie recalled the violent orgasm that took her by complete surprise at the age of thirteen. Dr. Rosenstock had placed her in his old leather and steel gynecological examination chair. For a brief moment, the vision of heavy leather straps buckled about her arms, legs, stomach and chest consumed her. She was so rocked by convulsions that the Doctor feared she was having a fit, but realized what had happened when he noticed her swollen pubis.

Ever since that day, his bedside manner improved a hundredfold. He opened up and warmed to marie, helping her feel good about her body and her growth as a woman. He was friendly and sympathetic, whatever her adolescent problems may have been. He was the only person in the world who could possibly have a hint as to her submissive fantasies.

At that thought, Marie scowled. No, in the past week more than a few people have been given clues. Old man Scold the locksmith obviously knew a thing or two, and perhaps Miss Applebee had really been on that train. Perhaps her boss knew ... make that ex-boss. And now, of course, her beloved Angie knew things that even Marie had yet to uncover.

Marie glumly picked out the most modest outfit she could find for her trip to the clinic. She laid out a set of white latex underwear, a light blue latex skirt that reached only halfway down her thigh, clear latex stockings, and a sleeveless tank top of white latex with the highest mock-turtleneck she could find. As she dressed, she found with only mild surprise that the shape of the nipple rings showed all too clearly through the two thin layers of rubber, and the neckline of the top ended just below her gleaming silver slave collar. To make matters worse, her nipples poked out from behind the white film looking for all the world like large buttons asking to be pressed.