"Control, Part One: The Show"

By H. Jekyll

* * * * *

I do not use story codes anymore. This story contains 
explicit sex and great sexual cruelty. It is the tale of a 
woman who left her lover for a sexually dominant man, and 
who has descended into a world of sadism-for-profit on the 
internet. It is also a story of love and commitment.

It previously appeared at "Ruthie's Club," which I 
recommend to readers, edited by Ruthie. An illustrated and 
formatted version can be found there. See: 
http://www.ruthiesclub.com/.

Copyright 2002 by H. Jekyll. Permission is freely granted 
to post on any site that does not charge for entrance, as 
long as full attribution is given to the author. The story 
should not be read by anyone under the legal age to read 
sexually explicit stories, or by anyone in a location where 
it is illegal to read such stories. 

I appreciate comments and inquiries, even criticisms, and I 
absolutely promise to respond to them. Please send them to: 
h_jekyll2000@yahoo.com

The H. Jekyll stories are archived in the Alt Sex Stories 
Text Repository (http://www.asstr.org/files/Authors/h_jekyll/), 
and at "Ruthie's Club."

* * * * *

"Control, Part One: 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. On her gaunt torso they look big.

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 knuckles are white from 
gripping the armrests. 

"How'd you find out about it?"

"A newsgroup. The site's been there several months. The 
live stuff is new."

"You've watched it for months and never told me? And you 
knew it was Anne?"

"No-way, Geoffy! This is my third week. The first week she 
was masked and I missed the intro. I called you as soon as 
I knew. I really wasn't even sure it was her at first. 
Damn! I can't believe how skinny she is."

"Yeah. She was always thin."

"And her waist. Shit. It's like her waist was cut out 
completely."

On the monitor, Anne's husband has left her to stand on the 
treadmill, while he attends to something. She leans on the 
bar. Bill is talking again.

"This is a contest Geoff. He makes her walk the treadmill, 
then he speeds it up. You can see the settings he's gonna 
use in advance. You won't believe it. When she runs out of 
air and starts to collapse, he whips her ass and legs with 
a fiberglass thing, like a fishing rod. The people who 
guess closest to how long she'll go before she falls win a 
week's free membership."

"Jesus," says Geoffrey.

"I came within three seconds last week."

Geoffrey jerks around toward Bill in time to see him 
massage his erection through his jeans. He turns back away. 
Somewhere in Iowa a man tells his girlfriend it's time for 
her to go down on him.

"You don't have to look at me like that! It's consensual. 
It's what she wants. If it were anyone besides your ex-
girlfriend, you'd like it too."

"Yeah, I guess. Sorry. You know I've still got problems 
about her."

"I know. Maybe I shouldn't have told you?"

"No. No. I'm glad you did. I'll be okay."

Anne's husband turns on the treadmill and she begins 
walking. She isn't whimpering, and she doesn't protest 
doing this. The fifth week of the treadmill. She has to 
know what's coming.

Sometime during the interval, "Sympathy for the Devil" 
ended. Now something new starts, first faintly, then 
louder. It's Saint-Saëns. "Dance Macabre." No one could 
miss the significance of that, could they? 

"He's the one, right? The one you called 'Satan?'"

"Yeah," answers Geoffrey. "He liked to call himself 
Lucifer. When Anne left with him she wrote that she was 
marrying her Morning Star." Geoffrey looks like he's 
bitten into a dead rat. He shakes his head. "Tell me who he 
looks like to you."

"Easy. Ted Bundy. I told you that before. What's his real 
name?"

"He's a devil all right. An archangel. Beautiful and evil. 
How does he make women do those things and like them?" Bill 
gives an odd look at the word "beautiful," but Geoffrey 
ignores it and goes on. "It's not just Anne. Before she 
went with him she once said he had some special way about 
him, and that he could get women to do all kinds of things. 
More like Charlie Manson than Bundy, I think." 

"I wish I knew his secret."

This time Geoff doesn't glare at Bill.

* * * * *

The treadmill goes faster. Somewhere in a darkened room a 
viewer turns to her girlfriend and says, "She's going to 
fall now. Listen to her!" The machine goes faster. Anne 
begins to stumble. Her husband swings the whip-like 
fiberglass in a graceful arc. The viewers can't hear it 
swish faintly in the air, because "Dance Macabre" is louder 
now, but they can hear it snap against her ass if the 
volume is turned up. On six continents they lean forward to 
watch her arch her back and make her loudest cry yet. On 
six continents people play with penises and clitorises. In 
Japan a recently laid-off salary man begins to use his belt 
on his wife, who is tied to a chair facing him. Her cries 
are muffled with a ball-gag like the one he saw used on the 
show. He hits across her breasts, the belt going "splat" 
when it connects, once every ten or fifteen seconds. A 
woman in England is pleading, "Whip me now. Do it! Do it!" 
Geoffrey leans forward and cups his hand in front of his 
penis, so Bill won't see it push against his fly. 

    [I would find grievous ways to have thee slain, 
     Intense device, and superflux of pain; 
     Vex thee with amorous agonies, and shake 
     Life at thy lips, and leave it there to ache]

The stroke gained Anne four or five steps, but she's out of 
gas, so the next stroke licks at her almost immediately. It 
is hardly effective. The next comes quickly, the next 
instantly, and then she's down and the moving treadmill 
pushes her body to the back. Her husband turns it off and 
leaves her to try to get air, sprawled before one of the 
cameras, while Saint-Saëns reaches its crescendo, those 
quick violin strokes of the dance rising above the 
thundering percussion as it turns down the stretch. It's 
timed so well that her fall might have been choreographed 
to it. The audience saw her knees turn to rubber just as 
the last section began, watched her stagger and lose stride 
even with the stimulation of the whip. The music ends, and 
the screen is almost silent. The audience can hear her 
wheezing.

Geoffrey is breathing quietly, whispering "shit" with each 
breath. Shit. Shit. Shit. After a minute he turns to Bill 
again.

"Damn." His voice is soft. 

"It was real, wasn't it?" asks Bill.

"It was real. I don't know how she can do it, but she was 
going that way before she left." He turns back to the 
screen. "Still, something's not right."

"I don't know. You saw the intro. Do you think she was 
faking it? She told what was going to happen to her, and 
she was loving it. She's changed, man. That's all I can 
say. He changed her somehow."

It is still quiet on the screen. Anne is still lying in 
that heap and the music is over for now. Viewers can hear 
something heavy being moved.

Bill goes on, "You're not going to believe this last part 
either, Geoff. Maybe you don't want to watch."

Geoffrey cocks his head.

"He hurts her in this part. He always does something 
different and makes her scream. Last week she passed out."

"Jesus."

"It all depends on the vote of the viewers. He advertises 
the options a day or two in advance. This week viewers have 
four options. Look."

Bill pushes a button on screen and the four options appear 
on a pop-up screen. Viewers can vote for needle play on her 
nipples, a new piercing of her labia, electricity applied 
through wires pushed into her ass and vagina, or burning 
her vagina with a cigarette. The vote totals are visible, 
and the cigarette has won.

"Jesus," says Geoffrey, again. 

"Maybe you should go," says Bill. He isn't offering to turn 
the show off.

"No. I'm going to see the whole thing."

So Geoffrey watches Satan lead Anne back to the winch. In 
close-up he sees her strapped in again and stretched, sees 
her legs spread wider and the rings in her labia used to 
open her vagina wide. Geoffrey watches while Anne's husband 
lights a cigarette. He hears her whimper, "Help. Please." 
He hears Satan say, "What do you mean?" and watches her 
face collapse. She gasps, "I'm sorry. Darling. I was. Just. 
Afraid. For a. Minute." Geoffrey watches Satan stuff a ball 
into her mouth, then start some new music Geoffrey doesn't 
really hear. He watches Satan squat in front of Anne and 
begin to touch the lit end of the cigarette to the flesh 
inside her labia. It doesn't last long. She bleats through 
the gag, her body jerking this way and that. After five 
burns Geoffrey can tell she has passed out. The show is 
almost over. In the last part Anne's husband rouses her and 
makes her suck him off. She is good at it. Something else 
different.

* * * * *

Geoffrey has no erection. 

He drove half way home, then turned off into the 
countryside, past a world asleep, farmhouses looking 
picturesque, the moon gliding along the horizon and keeping 
pace with his car. It's his only company. There's an Amish 
farm with a light in one window. Why are they wasting the 
oil? Are they fucking, an Amish couple adoring each other's 
bodies, pleasuring each other in ways they can't have 
learned from the world, doing something besides a kiss and 
a caress and some rutting under the covers? Are Amish women 
satisfied, knowing nothing of vibrators? Do they frig, or 
is it too sinful?

Maybe her husband is whipping her with a belt, thinks 
Geoffrey. Maybe he's punishing her because his dinner was 
late. Maybe he whups her for awhile, telling her she has to 
be quiet so as not to bother his mother, then turns her 
over and fucks her to show her how to please her man, the 
head of the family even as Jesus is the head of the church.

"Shit," says Geoffrey. He smiles. A ghastly smile. Probably 
it's just that someone is sick. Probably Geoffrey is sick.

     [This is the way my world ends]

The countryside is something from Norman Rockwell or 
Winslow Homer, if either had had room for dungeons and poor 
bound figures, women and children and fat men tied and 
burnt for the pleasure of the mob. Hurt and hurt again, 
they suck, returning ecstasy for torment, good little girls 
and boys trying to be obedient, pathetic beings unable to 
disobey. What would Satan's Web site look like if Homer had 
painted it? What if the geeky husband in a Rockwell 
painting could be heard planning to be kinky and diddle his 
wife all night long? Out of sight of the artist he hands 
her a pair of gold-plated nipple clamps. "Keep smiling," he 
says. "I'm going to start tightening them as soon as the 
kids are in bed." Did Ozzie spank Harriett? And spank her 
and spank her?

"Shit," says Geoffrey again. He parks his car in some 
desolate spot and walks.

"Well what did I expect?" he asks out loud. "It's not like 
Bill didn't warn me." Then, under his breath, "Damn."

The air is sweet with dew. Pure. Nothing evil about it. 
Geoffrey keeps inhaling it until he gets dizzy, but it 
doesn't wash away the thoughts. No wonder she left me. She 
turned into someone else.

A hound barks from the end of a long driveway and runs down 
to the road. It bays at Geoffrey until he is well beyond 
the house, but Geoffrey merely stares back at it, daring it 
to challenge him up close. The hound wags its tail the 
entire time. Be careful doggy, thinks Geoffrey. You can't 
tell so easily with people what they're all about. The half 
moon slides behind a cloud and the road becomes almost 
invisible. 

What happened, he thinks. Shit, I know what happened. He 
happened. 

     [This is the way her world ends]

Geoffrey kicks a rock. 

There's a mystery to it. There's something beyond my 
understanding. How did it go down? How did she change? It 
was so quick. 

Geoffrey kicks the rock again, down the road, like a soccer 
ball, kicking and walking, kicking and walking, finding a 
new rock when the old one goes into the ditch. The half 
moon re-emerges and he begins talking to it out loud.

"So that's what makes her happy, now. Can it be? She 
couldn't really like it, could she? What do you think? I 
sure as hell don't know! Shit. Could anyone like it so 
extreme? Could anyone stand it? Maybe he's forcing her. 
Damn. Maybe that's it! Shit!" 

When Geoffrey says "shit" this time it sounds like he means 
"aha!" He stops walking and looks into a field. The man in 
the moon looks down on him benevolently, so he stares back 
up for awhile. He gets a vision of a cruel-faced Ozzie 
Nelson cracking his belt on Harriett's ass, smacking her 
over and over, her face buried in a pillow soaked from her 
sobbing, drowning her screams in goose feathers. Afterwards 
she looks up at him and smiles, her mouth and eyes wet with 
tears. Her whole face is wet, but happy. Oh thank you 
honey. Thank you. Thank you. Geoffrey looks down at the 
road and says "shit" again, softly this time, as though in 
mourning. 

    [This is the way our world ends
     Not with a bang but a whimper]

I disagree, thinks Geoffrey. It ends with a bang and a 
whimper. After a few minutes he begins walking back toward 
his car. It's time to go home.


End of Part One.
