THIRTEEN

Everyone Can See

Seconds after Catherine has entered the ballroom, what her mind’s scouts return with as their initial report is so unexpected and unsettling that she immediately stops herself from looking into the room with a sharper eye. She instead concentrates her full attention on more cages, which are lined up along the walls of the immense room, with approximately eight feet separating each. She sees that some of them are staffed in the same manner that the ones present in the grand hallway to this grand room were, while others offer different combinations of inmates at play. At work.

The cages in this room are no longer on wheels, but hang instead from the ceiling, with the base of each enclosure resting somewhat lower than most men’s eye-level, thus allowing the masters’ line of sight to travel right into the thick of the entanglement action within each. It is a recurring setup in this association, sight of action at this height, just as is being able to touch the nude performers, which is always allowed. For masters.

When Catherine’s eyes follow all the way up to the ceiling the heavy-duty chains that hold up the cages, she sees that this ceiling was constructed to support such weight, and so, no chance of a cave-in. Unfortunately.

While still looking up, her eyes further discover lovely art, which she can see through gaps within the structure of the equipment that is temporarily mating with the ballroom’s top. The lighting  is dim up there, but Catherine can still make out that an artist spent much time on the design and execution of what she sees. The lighting where she stands is brighter, although not office-bright, but not cozy dim either.

Catherine returns her eyes to the cages and sees that the blends within the ones that are closest to her and Tristan at the moment include two couples working together in one cage, and three women and a man labouring together in another. The cramped quarters only add to the appeal and attraction of the exhibits for the masters who are observing them.

When all the cages are considered as a whole, careful choreography and planning become obvious, since the performances of each enclosure clearly fit into a broader repertoire made up of a variety of sexual positions and tricks intended to please the masters’ varying tastes, as they arrive for the weekend. And one of those masters to be pleased is Tristan.

A few steps ahead of Catherine, he begins to walk down the closest wall lined with cages. As he then pauses to study and to appreciate every intermingling and every nude female form before him in those enclosures, Catherine, as she follows, continues to work hard at not thinking about what is elsewhere within the room. She is so focused on not considering what is there, on not considering what it is that is forcing the cages to line up along the walls because there is no other room available for them in the immense ballroom, that the interlinking and interconnecting of the bodies in the cages, their rhythmic pushing and shoving, rising and falling, along with all the sounds of such activities, whether hushed or loud in order to please all male tastes, therefore maintains her attention as well, her full attention.

In the cage immediately before them now, Catherine sees three different manifestations of breasts. One pair is smaller, rounder, with each breast existing rather independently, due to quite the gap between them. Another pair is bigger, with each breast falling towards an outer side of the woman’s chest. The third pair is so big that each breast falls directly down, leaving no space in between them, but just a straight line down, a “crack” there.

When Catherine’s mind soon seeks another thought to occupy itself with, it refuses to compare in words the areolas of the smallest bumps of fat presently seen before her, to those of the medium ones and those of the mounds of it  jiggling away, and instead finds itself concentrating on the subject of body image. Before implants, models were flat-chested, because, having no fat anywhere else on their body and being so tall and slender, neither did their body store fat in their breasts. Where did I hear that? She nervously asks herself, wanting the babbling in her head to . . .  continue. Consciousness, you are allowed all the words that you want right now, as long as you stay . . . off topic.

Catherine’s eyes move on and offer her mind the positioning of droplets of perspiration upon the female bodies to consider, at least for a moment. The caged man’s manhood briefly slips into her line of sight before its striking erection is once again taken in by one of its female playmates, or coworkers, in the cage.

How are you doing, Catherine?

I saw people doing all of this at those two soirées. I’m fine, she bravely replies.

What some of the inmates are doing here is more explicit.

You tell me, then, how I’m doing, keeper of the end-of-days-vault. End of my days.

When Tristan begins to walk again, Catherine immediately follows him, and the two soon reach a cage in which a woman’s genital area is opened up and fully exposed, glistening, and very close to where Tristan pauses. The woman’s legs extend up, with each falling away from her torso on their own side of it, and against the bars. Her lower cheeks rest right up against the cage’s inner limits, as she lies on her back.

Tristan is attracted to the opportunity that has opened up before him, and therefore sticks a hand in between the bars. He then sends two fingers into that female darkness, pushing them in deeply, and allowing them to become coated with what is within her, which is a mix of herself and of the other females in the cage, since the male among them recently played pollinator-without-completion to the three flowers on display.

Catherine registers the woman’s light brown hair on either side of her opened pinkness, seeing Tristan’s fingers there, before looking away and finding a darker coloured, full-carpeting on another woman’s body, and a mere line of blond hair straight down the middle, on the third woman’s most southern continental point.

She then once again asks her eyes to find something else for her to categorize, in order to occupy her mind with data-like work, but they instead send back information about Tristan, who, after having called back his fingers from their exploration and gathering expedition, has now turned towards her. As she sees those fingers approach her face, Catherine remembers shoving her own digits into that woman’s mouth with herself and Tristan upon them -- the one who is now dead -- and repeats to herself that she is most certain that she will very much hate this weekend.

Catherine’s master slides those two returning adventurers down the bridge of her nose, from forehead to tip, and then down from there to the median between her nostrils, before finally arriving at the crease above her top lip, where he rests his fingers, after rubbing the area.

“Breathe in,” he orders her. “Deeply.”

Catherine does.

“Again.”

Catherine follows the command a second time, overloading her sense of smell with the scent of the bodily-fluid mix smeared beneath her nose, and still on Tristan’s fingers.

When he next traces her lips with one of those digits and then presses upon her bottom one in order that it separate from its partner, Catherine, however, does not unclench her jaw.

“If this scares you, disgusts you, then . . .” He tells her, eyes into hers.

Catherine frowns. She remembers thinking those very words about the woman who died today. And I’ve spoken them before, to other female employees of his who turned away from sex acts that are a part of my “everything” clause. Ones that they , on the other hand, are free to say no to, as it should be.

“Get over it,” Tristan snaps at her, a moment before he shoves his fingers into her mouth, while grabbing the back of her head at the same time with his other hand in order that she not be able to back away from the two invaders, which she of course attempts.

Once his fingers are in, he sends to her face the ones from his restraining hand, which leaves the back of her head. These fingers then grip her chin and push on her lips at the same time, from either side, in order to bring them tightly together around the soiled fingers of his other hand. Once the latter are embraced as he wants them embraced, he then repeatedly slides the digits in and out of her now pursed lips, pressing upon her tongue and reaching for the other walls of her mouth as well as he does, smearing there what the two trespassers at his command brought with them, on them.

The hand to which these two fingers belong then falls away from her mouth, but quickly finds her neck, commanding its fingers to then close slightly upon it. “Do as I say. A word to the wise . . .” He reminds her.

The man in the cage climaxes, brought to that bliss by a female other than the one pushed up against the cage’s bars, and all three women immediately react in the appropriate hero-worship way to the male’s mighty culmination highlight: so very pleased, ecstatic even. After allowing some impressive spewing to travel straight up to the ceiling of the cage, the man then sends some of the product of his pleasure towards the genital area that Tristan’s fingers just visited.

“Could’ve been tastier. You just missed it,” Tristan consequently whispers by one of Catherine’s ears.

The fingers at her throat then reach up and grab her bottom jaw, before tilting her head to one side as far as it will extend, and then a little more, paining Catherine. After a moment, the restricting hand drops down to one of her breasts, and, after it has caressed it, forces this breast to extend towards its mate by pushing it sideways, with strength, before finally allowing it to return to its own natural space when it can travel no more. This hand, however, then continues to move across Catherine’s chest, exerting that same uncomfortable pressure as it does, until it reaches her other breast.

“As I was saying, if that scares you, disgusts you, then you’re in for a long, long weekend . . .”

“Nourished by another? Of course you’d break the rules,” she replies, in her soft voice, recovering it just in time from it coming out shaky instead.

“Did a force field go up around that cage just now to stop me from sticking my fingers back in there and feeding you his come? Am I doing it?” He snaps back. “I saw what was on my fingers. And by the way, many rules have their accepted exceptions, when masters gather. So don’t think that you know, just because you heard. But I know. And everything that I know is all that we both need to know.”

Thread lightly, Catherine. Male ego. Sexually heightened state growing as we speak, within this room geared towards that end and more. His master’s power, with support from the collective free and flowing this weekend. And he’s warned you. He’s even already slapped you, which has rarely happened in such context during this last year, but here . . .

I managed “even” during this last year. But here?  Catherine interrupts.

Discipline is most important to masters. To Dominants, Catherine, and there is no doubt that that’s not any different within this association, whatever other rules and beliefs the masters here adhere to, or don’t follow, from what is generally defined in Dominant/submissive context.

When Tristan resumes his walk along the cages, Catherine has no choice but to follow him. The enclosures most certainly grab all of the male passers-by’s attention, with the keyword being “passers-by,“ since couples are most definitely on their way somewhere within the grand ballroom, as are Tristan and Catherine. She knows.

As she walks, Catherine allows her mind to register a large stage at one end of the room, with the top of a circus tent hanging above it. Red with yellow. She also sees women biting into red or blue candied apples, or sending fingers to pink or blue cotton candy. She and Tristan both see a master send a big fluffy piece of blue into his fully-nude companion’s nether region, before returning it to her for her to eat. Catherine is quick to look away.

“Bad memories at the circus? Were you afraid of clowns when you were a kid?” Tristan mocks. She does not answer. “Want some?” He then asks, as an attendant walks by with bags of the flossy treat.

Catherine shakes her head no. She is almost certain that Tristan means a bag of her own, and not some from the woman’s and her nether region’s, but with no way of knowing whether or not he would dip the treat into her own nether area in that same way,  Catherine’s answer was therefore a quick no, just as quickly followed by a no to her mind, after it asked why that submissive is nude.

“This way, Lovely,” Tristan instructs her, after they have reached the end of one of the long walls of the vast ballroom and are now turning towards another. This one has fewer cages against it, since the stage is located alongside it.

After several steps along this wall, Tristan turns down one of the many long aisles located in the middle of the ballroom, and Catherine can then no longer deny to herself what the scouts of her mind first reported to her upon her first setting foot in the room earlier on, before she averted her eyes: she must accept that what occupies most of the ballroom are numerous, long rows made up of  work stations, which are side by side, with no space in between them, and back to back as well, with only a narrow aisle separating front end from other front end of the rows of stations, in order that the work areas be accessible by way of those limited passageways.

Each small area is furnished with one cot, one table, and one pedestal. The cot is situated to the very right of the station, and has a separator wall immediately beside it, on its right side as well. This divider is only four feet high, and is not quite the length of the cot. At the very back of the area, the table sits. It has a four-foot tall divider behind it as well, but only as long as its own length. The other side of the station, the left one, is delineated by the divider wall of the cot belonging to the station beside it. The pedestal stands a few feet in front of the table, and beside the cot. It is electric and can be raised and lowered. A step-stand is tucked in beneath the table. Every station surrounding any work area is easy to access and easy to look into.

By the time that Tristan chooses his work place, enters the area, and drops the carry-on bag onto the table there, above which the number of the station is displayed, he and Catherine have walked by several stations, and she is therefore familiar with their identical layout as well as their red and gold colour scheme, one no doubt chosen to match the tent top’s colours, over the stage. By that time, she can also no longer ignore the dread within her roused by having seen that many of the submissives are nude, dread that is further fuelled by having had to accept that private rooms will not be available this weekend, since everything is set up for masters to be able to do, while also being able to see what is being done all around them. Not a hotel that I would recommend checking into, she nervously tells herself.

Catherine calculates that there are two hundred and fifty to three hundred work stations in the massive ballroom, and, in her mind, completes the room’s blueprint in its present configuration by adding that stage to it at one end, as well as the four wide passageways that allow people to walk around the perimeter of the room and of the work station layout, either between one of the room’s walls and the end of each one of the rows of stations in one direction, or between one of its walls and the backs of all the stations that make up one of two framing rows of the rectangle layout, in the other. The cages presently lining those passageways  will soon be removed. Their exhibits have other duties.

As Tristan’s eyes seek, study, and appreciate the bare canvases around his work area -- that is, the living ones belonging to the masters within the stations to the right and to the left of his in his row, as well as the ones belonging to the stations joined to his by the back of it, and also the ones belonging to the stations across the narrow aisle from which he and Catherine just entered in order to claim this particular area as his studio for the weekend -- Catherine’s mind works at fully grasping that this beautiful, majestic room -- a quality that it manages to retain to the attentive eye thanks to its richly and intricately decorated walls, ceiling, flooring and tapestries, and despite all the big screen TVs that presently occupy those walls and the floor, on stands here and there both in the space along the perimeter of the room and also among the very rows of stations -- is now to be an enormous sex room, this weekend. She feels very much out of breath and somewhat dizzy after defining it as such, after labelling it thus, and after quickly running together so many words in her mind. The final designation is therefore not easily processed to acceptance, with shock and fear hindering that final report.

About ninety percent of the stations are already occupied, with more men arriving, she tells herself, hoping that perhaps math will save her. Objective, safe math. No religion has a thing against math, she oddly thinks. Religion? Really? If God watches what happens here, then God . . .  She stops. The words of the master who threw God into the mix during his lesson to his submissive return to her.

“In God’s world, on this Earth . . .” She recalls. “If there’s anything at all left inside you that God put there, if you living your life the way that you have hasn’t completely killed you inside, emptied you out, and made you completely and utterly worthless.”

What do I do? Catherine panics.

What you have to do. Everything, healer replies.

This room should have on display flowing dresses, and men dressed up to the nines as well, and dancing, and hand-kissing, and the opposite of what is set up here. Romance and gentlemen and . . .

The masters are dressed nicely.

“There's nothing romantic about full nudity and what ensues,” Catherine recalls her would-be-writer friend recording. “By that time in a couple’s exchange, man’s domain takes over and everything of worth that was perhaps there before, between the couple, quickly dissipates. There’s nothing ideal about sex, and no tender emotions to it either, because, no matter how it begins, man inevitably becomes beast, as he thrusts rapidly like a lunatic. Or, it is she, otherwise, who is the one who looks just as crazy, to take in and out quickly, or to slide up and down just as rapidly and as ridiculously, while body parts flop around, humanity lost, taken away. And is there ever a time when a woman feels like less of a human being than when that rapid thrusting is upon her, or when she is committing something like it herself, through some rapid movement with her mouth or from her lower body? And even the female’s high when being taken in the way that speaks the most to her instincts and core being, even that high often takes a hit during those moments of his heightened physical madness. Her mind then wanders. Seeks something more. So much more. And what woman doesn't know the words 'will you come already?'"

And how much of what she called “physical madness” will I witness this weekend? And endure either upon myself, or as I’m made to embody it myself? This magnificent room should be a place of class and romance, of human beings meeting as human beings. Look at its true art, on its walls and flooring, and on its ceiling where the structures needed to support the cages and that catwalk and who knows what else still let it show, still let it breathe. Look at it! That art would bring tears to my eyes, were I . . . The inspiration for that art so very . . .  And in its place this weekend, what? How many climaxes per man, this weekend, with all those spillings-over everywhere directed at  creating this mad idea of what they call “art?” What inspiration? What mad muse is on the loose here? True art is so beautiful and rich and I . . . Catherine stops.

It’s your past experience that dictates . . .

Because there is a time, ever, that all that rapid thrusting isn’t madness? She interrupts. Really? Seriously now. Because it’s beautiful? In romantic movies, only the slowed thrusting is shown. It still has feeling. Why do I presently have so many words at my command?

It’s okay. They’re just in your thoughts.

Why now?

What you just pointed out. Probably the ballroom’s effect on you, healer replies.

What, on the long-lost romantic in me? Long dead, I should say? I don’t think so. I feel . . . She stops. Forty-eight hours, with all these men all around me, with my being in close contact with them when their brain is most certainly not in charge of their behaviour at all due to the nature of this theme, of this weekend, while they live in this room of voyeurism and of continual escalating sexual everything with every hour that passes, no doubt. What will happen?

Your past must not get the best of you.

In feeling? Because I don’t know it! Why doesn’t it just end, when I die? Why have me believe that there’s more, when it’s only to make me believe that that more will be awful? It’s just cruel.

I do no such thing.

I think that I may want to die . . .

And face what waits for you then?

You’re doing it right now! Who’s being religious now?

You fear that death doesn’t end all. You don’t want to die, healer replies.

You agreed.

I agree with you because I AM YOU, healer returns. You don’t want to die, so you will do what Tristan asks of you.

Catherine sends a hand to her lips and wipes them. She can still taste the woman and the spices of male and other females within that taste. She can still smell them. She smudges her lipstick as she does so, but most of it ends up on her hand, and not upon her face.

“Big top inspiring you to be a clown?” Tristan nevertheless remarks, sternly. “You’re not a part of that show, honey. That’s for professionals and whores.”

“Everyone can see,” she whispers, reining herself in. The lighting in the room,  softer than bright white but not by all that much, hurts her eyes for a moment as the words sink in.

“Of course. What if a master were to have bottles of come hidden on him, and used them to cheat? The contest has to be fair. So nothing can be done in the dark or in private,” Tristan somewhat jests. “Of course everyone can watch everyone, Lovely, and see what sex plays are used to entice come to spew out and to land on a master’s canvas,” he then adds, seriously now, his tone reminding her that men are men, after all. He pauses. “Slip that off,” he then commands her, referring to her clothing.

Since the host takes to the stage at that very moment and demands everyone’s attention, Tristan therefore does not react to Catherine not obeying him. He instead raises his eyes towards a giant screen on a wall, while hers find a small screen mounted on a stand close by, in the aisle.

Each of the three hundred stations is occupied now, as all the guests have arrived, and as each master has claimed one for the weekend.