Teena: A House of Ill Repute (18 page)

First she wrapped a waist-cinching corset around me, a garment that was not intended to even support, let alone cover, my rubber breasts, which in any case did not need any additional support, thanks to the hardened layer within the latex. This corset, to my surprise, was made from neither leather nor rubber, but black satin with red piping and lacing, the sort of thing it is possible to buy over the counter in one of the more discerning lingerie establishments.

The stockings she then drew up my legs were black fishnet, so that my painted toenails were clearly visible through the mesh, and this illusion was maintained by the addition of red sandals with thick platform soles and wickedly spiked heels. Red satin gloves were then drawn up my arms, but I saw they were fingerless, exposing my plastic fingernails. Finally, a black and red satin choker was fastened about my throat and there I stood before the mirror, the epitome of a high-class tart in her boudoir, though perhaps the allusion to class was somewhat spoiled by the gaping mouth that was plainly inviting only one thing.

I had half expected I would now have to wait around while Carmen transformed Anne-Marie and Andrea as she had done me, but in making that assumption, I had underestimated the devious dominatrix's ability to play psychological games. Where she was quite happy to spend her time turning me into one of her new sex dolls, having beaten Anne-Marie in what I still suspected was a fixed contest, she had now decided to emphasise her temporary superior status by consigning her defeated opponent's preparations to someone else, probably someone who could best be described as an 'underling'. As a result, no sooner was I pronounced ready than I was led out along a narrow passageway and into a slightly larger version of the room in which I had been dressed, to find myself confronted with one mirror image of myself, and one other that almost made up an identical trio, but for the far too obvious presence of a large pink penis jutting up from where the first two of us sported our oversized female genitalia.

Larger though it was, this second room was now quite crowded, for in addition to the three dolls there were their various creators - Carmen, Hector and a total of five identically rubber-clad women in deep red latex cat suits, matching high-heeled knee-high boots and enveloping hood masks. The scene was eerie and yet at the same time exciting, though in a way that had my stomach turning, for I was only too aware that all the trouble that had gone into preparing us in this way had not been taken merely to display us as trophies. I looked across at my identical twin, wondering just what was going on inside Anne-Marie's head, but the blank face and staring blue eyes of course gave no hint of emotion.

'Well ladies,' Carmen declared, and I guessed she wasn't talking to the three of us, but to her assembled helpers, even though one of these was the all too obviously male Hector, 'I think we can congratulate ourselves tonight. These three dolls are perfect, absolutely perfect. It's a shame we can't mass-produce and sell them just like this,' she added, laughing. 'The demand would be amazing, I think.'

I shuddered at the prospect of such a fate, for it was all a little too close to something Megan Crowthorne might have done, always assuming she'd had access to the latex and technology that went into creating our outer shells, which of course she hadn't. I supposed the world, and me in particular, should be thankful for the small mercy that Megan hadn't lived in the latter half of the twentieth century. On a desirability scale of one to ten, that prospect ranked somewhere in the very heavy minuses.

Meanwhile, role-playing fantasy or not, I was still stuck in Carmen's clutches and, whilst I could comfort myself with the fact that in what would only be a matter of hours, I would eventually end up warm and snug in my own bed, first there would be a 'scene' to contend with that had been created in the depths of a mind that was in its own way every bit as warped as those of my nineteenth century tormentors. To make matters worse, I had walked reasonably happily into this with both eyes open.

No, I consoled myself, that wasn't entirely accurate. What
I
had happily walked into was a scene with Anne-Marie and Andy in his Andrea role. It had then been Anne-Marie who walked - driven would be more accurate - both of us into this, and whilst part of me was whirring away towards sexual overdrive as I stood there gaping my stupid sex-dolly invitation, the sensible, feet-on-the-ground part of me was resenting every second I was spending here when I had so much to finish back in the real world.

For a few seconds everything in the underground chamber faded and the sounds about me, dull enough anyway from the effect of the rubber stretched over my ears, grew fainter still. My immediate reaction was that I was about to go back again, but then I realised that wasn't the way it happened and that what I was experiencing was something different, a sort of revelation. I realised what I had just thought, and what I would have just said, had my mouth not been filled and distorted by that awful gag.

Back in the real world
.

I couldn't believe I'd actually said that - well,
thought
it - because eighteen thirty-nine was actually...

The
real
world.

Yes, eighteen thirty-nine
was
the real world. Maybe it wasn't
my
real world, but it was real enough to Angelina and Indira and real enough to me while I was there, even if I was really nothing more than a displaced person in the whole affair. In fact, eighteen thirty-nine and what we had been doing in Arundel was a damned sight more real than what I seemed to have been spending most of my time doing since my first encounter with Anne-Marie, leaving aside my attempts at playing Philip Marlowe with various records offices. And it was not only a damned sight more real; it was also a damned sight more urgent.

I closed my eyes and willed myself back in time again and...

And, of course, nothing happened. That is to say nothing happened in the time travelling department, though something did happen in the small, stone walled subterranean cell under a ruined priory. I felt a sharp slap across my rubber-clad backside and jerked my eyes wide open again, although wide open or peering didn't make a whole lot of difference, given that I could only see through the centre sections of the lenses covering my eyes.

'And of course,' Carmen was saying close to my ear, 'while number three dolly here can fuck as well as being fucked, I'm afraid you two dollies mostly just have to be happy with being on the receiving end.' She stepped away from me and I watched as she seized Andrea's monstrously jutting shaft. 'Sadly, though,' she continued, and I could imagine the smile on her face underneath the rubber mask, 'poor Andrea dolly here won't really get much out of all the fucking she's going to be asked to do tonight. You see, there's a very hard layer of plastic between the two softer rubber layers, so whether she's rock-hard inside this, or whether she's a total flop won't make any difference to any of us and certainly won't make any difference to her, poor love.' She flicked her tongue between her lips, a pink snake gliding between two carmine ribbons bounded by black and white rubber. 'My bet is she's actually hard as a stick of Brighton rock underneath, but then that doesn't earn me any bonus points for shrewdness. Give this girlie the girlie treatment and straightaway she starts acting like a dirty little boy, don't you Andrea, my sweetie doll?'

I felt a barely controllable urge to plant my heavy platform sole straight between Carmen's legs, and yet I knew she was dead right in what she said. I didn't pretend to really understand what it was about being dressed as a female that appealed to Andy - he'd been perfectly capable of rising to the occasion and satisfying me in a perfectly normal situation the night before - but there was something about it, especially when the feminine outfits in question were comprised either wholly or largely of either rubber or leather, or a mixture of both, that rendered my erstwhile lover a helpless slave to emotions and urges that went way outside the normal chemistry of sexual attraction, lust or even love. In much the same way that being bound and gagged and dressed in all manner of bizarre outfits seemed to have the same effect on me, I had to admit. Even this doll routine was doing something to my hormones, or at least to a trigger in some part of my brain that carried the authority in that little bit of my brain where the sign read
Hormone Department - Over Production Section
. Brought down to its basic components, mask equals anonymity (include heavily and bizarrely made-up face in the category of mask) and cuffs, chains and/or ropes equals 'not my fault', which in turn equals 'not my responsibility'. Result, off comes the handbrake labelled
Decent Moral Standards
and the automatic gearbox shifts straight into overdrive, with the result that the Teena mobile careers headlong down whatever hill of depravity happens to lie in its path.

'Come on then, dollies dearest,' Carmen trilled, 'time to show you off to your adoring public. And, oh my, aren't they just going to
love
you!'

And as we started to move towards the door, this time I
did
have just about two seconds' worth of warning before I was zipped back through time yet again...

Some things never change, and if you want a benchmark of stability it's rain in autumn in England, or more precisely, mucky, penetrating, dismal and chilling drizzle, the sort of stuff that seems innocuous enough when you watch it through the window from the warm comfort of your living room, but try walking outside in it for even ten minutes and you come back looking like a rejected extra from the set of
Titanic
, that bit of the film when everyone ends up in the water, either inside or out of the stricken liner.

It was drizzling and, of course, I wasn't inside in the warm looking out, I was walking along the riverbank with Erik, the stiff breeze finding every chink in the cape I had wrapped about me and my eyelashes doing creditable impressions of eucalyptus leaves in a monsoon. I looked round and upwards at the shimmering features of my Viking consort, but if he found this awful weather depressing, he was made of sterner stuff and wasn't about to show it any more than he was given to showing any other sort of emotion. A man whose forebears managed to discover America - and show the strength of will not to tell anyone in Europe when they got back - by braving the Atlantic in a ship not much bigger than a Ford Transit with the roof cut off, was hardly going to be put out by plain ordinary English autumnal weather.

'Going well it is with Molly?' he asked.

I nodded and a large drip of water flew off the tip of my nose. 'Very well,' I confirmed. I hoped now that things would be progressing equally as well with Milly, who was next in the queue. I had met Erik and the two girls just outside the mill house and despatched the unsuspecting girl inside, into the clutches of the waiting Indira and a newly polished version of Molly, who I was confident would be only too eager to play a part in imparting some of her recently acquired experience to her colleague. Mandy, meanwhile, had been despatched to fetch milk from the farmhouse that was halfway between where we now lived and the town itself.

'I should congratulate you on your choices,' I said as we halted before a stile. 'If the other two respond as well as Molly, we'll be able to say we're ready for business by the end of the week.'

'Yourself, you will not the same be doing?'

I peered cautiously at Erik. His features were as impassive as ever, but I sensed something behind his question.

'The same not be doing as what?' I replied carefully, determined to draw him out a little further.

He swallowed, perhaps nervously. 'As the girls,' he replied levelly. 'Not the thing that these people paying for will be,' he added, the closest he was going to come to clarification, I realised.

So that was it, protective or jealous, or maybe a combination of the two. I smiled and turned my head away, fixing my stare ahead as I carefully climbed atop the stile. 'No,' I said firmly, 'most certainly not. I have a different role to play, as I thought you would realise.'

He made no reply, but reached up to steady my elbow as I climbed down onto the wet grass.

'I have to create a character that will provide an aura of mystery and intrigue,' I elaborated, 'Madame X.'

'Madam X?'

I grinned, but was careful not to let him see. 'Well, maybe not Madame X exactly, but something along those lines. I have to make sure no one can possibly recognise or even describe me, for a start, which is why I've used that veil for our initial interviews. It's almost as good as a mask.'
Though it doesn't seem to have quite the same effect on me personally
, I thought.

'What I need,' I continued as Erik jumped over the stile to land alongside me, 'is some sort of alias, a different name, and to establish a reputation, at least among our own little circle of clients, of being a strict, authoritarian sort of person, if you get what I mean.'

'Like Miss Crowthorne?' Erik nodded.

I cleared my throat. 'Well, something like that,' I said. 'Maybe not quite such a nutter, though.'

'A nutter?' Erik raised his eyebrows. 'This something to do with trees is not, I am guessing?'

I tapped one forefinger against my temple. 'No, nothing to do with trees,' I agreed, mirroring his look. 'Nutter means mad, screw-loose, bonkers, not quite the full—'