Phoenyx: Flesh & Fire (30 page)

It occurred to me that Svetlana had barely spoken to me before the previous week, when I was granted a headline slot for the first time. Perhaps that was it – she saw me as an easier target than the long-established Olivia, the mouthy Petra, the genuinely world-class Gloria or the full-on Honey. Well, I told myself as I brushed my hair out; I wasn’t going to be anyone’s pushover.

“Hey, Phoenyx. Still up for tonight’s face-off then?”

Svetlana leant herself against the doorframe and looked down the dressing-table. Everyone, including me, turned to look at her in almost perfect unison.

She grinned back at us from beneath a black beret bearing a big red enamel star. A riding crop in one hand, the rest of her outfit was all leather – knee boots, a halter neck top, and laced-up hot pants. Even her long opera gloves were the real thing, and from over ten meters away she still smelled like a tanning factory.

The crop slapped against the top of her boot. Mrs. Groenenberg did
that
with a lot more panache, I observed. Now
that
would be a battle to contemplate, I mused: grim Mrs. G and not-so svelte Svetlana. I would have paid to see that show.

“I’m not afraid,” I said, “But I still don’t understand what you’re playing at.”

“Oh, you will.”

Olivia bent close to me. “Stepped on someone’s toes, darling?” she asked me with her usual gentle concern.

I shook my head. “No idea. You’ll have to ask the Comrade Colonel.”

Just then, Bruno appeared in the doorway and tapped Svetlana on the shoulder.

“Hey,” he said. She turned to face him and he took a step back to get a good look at her costume. He pointed to the beret. “Could you take that off, please?”

“I won’t.”

“Svetlana, it might have escaped your notice – but this is
Berlin
. Not Leningrad. Now please take the hat off, because I don’t want any complaints. It doesn’t bother me but some people are touchy about these things.”

Svetlana looked ready to argue back when I stepped in.

“Bruno? Let her wear it. It’s okay. This club has a long and noble history,” I reminded him. “It flourished during the early Nazi years, with satire and comedy aimed against the Third Reich. It made people laugh during a dark and frightening time, and brought a little light to lives which were much in need of it.”

Behind me, Petra applauded enthusiastically. “Pretty speech, Phoenyx,” she gushed. “As pretty as the nose on your face, in fact.”

I smiled inwardly. That had been an unusual burst of subterfuge on my part. I seemed to be picking up cunning bad habits from the others.

Svetlana didn’t flinch. Bruno pushed his shoulders back and shoved his hands in his pockets. “What are you two up to? Eh? You’re planning something. I can sense it.”

“Stick around and find out, darling,” Svetlana said as she marched past him and disappeared into the corridor, swinging her crop as she went.

Bruno came up to me and leant over my shoulder. “What’s with you two?” he asked. “I need to know.”

“It’s just something we’re working out in our own way,” I said. “I can’t tell you any more because I don’t understand it all myself. But Svetlana has a bee in her bonnet, and I intend to flatten it.”

He stepped back from me with a long, deep breath. “I don’t know now if I should be allowing you two to be on stage together,” he said. “You’re starting to worry me.”

I began to apply my make-up. “Relax,” I said through my lipstick smile, “it will turn out okay. I promise you.”

Bruno shrugged and walked off, even more confused than when he had entered.

Melissa posed behind the mike stand, arms behind her head, having just finished the début of her latest parody number,
(Don’t Fear) the Beaver
, which would have had Blue Oyster Cult turning red. Wearing only a pair of five-inch heels and a pink scarf, she’d exhibited a generous amount of the title object to the audience, who now cheered their approval. She threw another raunchy pelvic thrust at them before turning to bow to Chuck, the lead guitarist and arranger of the whole number which I’d overheard them rehearsing in the afternoons for the past week.

“Thank you,” she sang, “thank you all. It’s so nice to see all your hands at last. I hope they weren’t up to anything too fulfilling, because what’s up next will have you wanting to squirt in your pants, I can tell you. All the way from behind the iron stage curtain, we have our biggest and hottest, not to mention reddest, import – Miss Svetlana. And, so I’m told, going head to head to with her – uh, whatever that means, although the mind boggles – is our own fiery redhead, Miss Phoenyx. And I’m going to get the hell out of here now before these two dames start slugging each other for real, ‘cos I can tell you, ladies, gentle, and not-so-gentlemen, that the Cold War is happening right here, right now, for all of your continued delight. And I’m off for a hot shower ‘cos I can feel the Moscow frost sweeping in from here.”

She grabbed the mike stand and escaped through the rear curtains to allow the house to welcome Svetlana. She entered as she always did, striding right to the centre without even a glance towards the house, forcing the spotlights to chase her all the way.

Once on her favored spot she turned to the crowd, fists on her hips, and let them soak up her new look. Nobody booed, but the applause was a little more muted than usual: despite Mr. Gorbachev’s new policies, that red star of hers wasn’t doing her any favors. But my belief was that if I could give her enough rope, then she might just end up hanging herself.

The audience noise, however, shifted upwards about ten decibels when I appeared, and completely against all public expectation. I had previously begged a loan of one of Gloria’s cheerleader outfits, and some of Olivia’s white lingerie. And so wrapped in red, white and blue, I drew the cheers and the whistles, and Svetlana’s stormy scowls. It was a cheap shot, but it hit the bull’s eye nonetheless.

“You dirty bitch,” she hissed as I passed within hearing range. “What the hell are you playing at?”

“Your own game, Svetlana,” I said. “You wanted an arena match, so you’ve got one. Like you said: East versus West. Still want to keep your hat on?”

She puckered her tightly-clenched lips, fighting back an angry outburst.

“I will never take it off now.”

And then the death match kicked off.

She flicked the crop at me and caught me a hot stinger on the upper thigh. I moved in to grab her wrist and wrestle it from her, when she skipped past me and smacked me a hard one across the buttocks as she went. I almost cried out.

I realized that the audience was now expecting satirical theatre, so I decided to give it to them. I spun around and waited for her next move.

The crop flicked out, faster than I could follow, and slapped me hard on the left tit. I clenched my teeth against the pain and then slowly, teasingly, unfastened Gloria’s star-spangled top and bravely bared my tits, welcoming more stinging little slaps. Svetlana hadn’t expected that and hung around at the other side of the stage, smoldering, while I got the cheers as the top slid off down my arms and onto the floor. I waggled my finger at her, beckoning her forward. She just raised an eyebrow in reply.

Before I knew what she was up to, she had slid in between my legs, ducked underneath me, and grabbed me in some kind of judo or wrestling hold. I couldn’t maintain my balance against her strength and leverage and I went down in a heap, arms and hair all over the place as she bent me double on my back and grinned down at me, pinning me there with industrial strength.

“That all you’ve got?” she hissed at me. “You’re all talk and no guts. Give it up.”

“Never,” I growled.

She hooked one hand around inside my thigh and parted my legs. “Then I’ll show you the real meaning of
glasnost
,” she sniggered. I felt myself spread wide under her touch. My hips complained and my anus popped. She pressed the knuckles of an angry fist into the pit of my ass and squeezed.

“I wonder how deep I could ram that crop up you?” she asked.

My shoulders and neck were straining under the pressure and I could feel myself close to total submission. The pain was spreading into my spine and I knew the bitch would end up crippling me if I didn’t do something, and fast.

“Shit,” I swore, as I considered my options.

“Oh, I reckon a lot deeper than that.”

The crop landed across the backs of my thighs, stinging, burning, and really truly fucking
hurting
now. My whole body was alight. I had to fight back now, or forever surrender.

My free hand flailed around behind her until it contacted warm flesh. I found the waistband of her hot pants and pulled, as hard as I could. The laces at the front unraveled as the pants plunged over her cheeks. Even as she was tightening up her hold on me, I scored a colossal crack on both her naked buttocks with my palm, ignoring the blazing sting which shot through my hand, as if I’d just slapped a nettle patch. I’d never hit anybody in my life, and this time I meant it.

The crowd went nuts. This was like nothing we’d ever shown them before.

She squeezed her shoulder into the back of my knee and tried to flip me over, but I had exposed her ass, the weakest point within my reach. I jabbed three fingers inside her, ripping her up with my half inch-long nails. She twitched and squealed at that, and I rolled backwards, breathless and sore, but free.

As she drew back, trying to pull her pants back up, I made a grab for the front and dragged the pants back down to her knees. I crawled forward and slapped her ass again. She snatched herself out of my grip and somersaulted backwards and away, drawing some justified sounds of amazement from the regulars. She wiggled the pants down to her ankles and stepped out of one side, then flicked them up and away with what looked like one of Gloria’s own trademarked moves. The woman was as tall as most men I’d ever known, and she was kicking higher than her own head. Now was a great time to find out I was going up against a black belt ballet dancer.

She snapped the tie at the hip of her black leather G-string and swept it aside, exposing her natural blonde pubic stripe and, as she kicked a leg out to the side, her dilated labia beneath. She swung her pelvis, grinding deep and hard to work the crowd into a hot lather, slithering one hand against her crotch while she rubbed the shaft of the crop between her pouting lower lips.

I sneered back as she swept that long, V-shaped tongue around her lips as though licking sugar candy and fixed me with a gunmetal stare. Her breasts heaved beneath her leather bustier, as though preparing to burst through the laces and hit me in the face like a couple of rockets.

She bent the crop in both hands, turning it into an inverted ‘U’ shape for my benefit, no doubt sizing up her next target as she looked me up and down. I grabbed up Gloria’s fallen top and swung it at my side, ready to deflect any incoming attacks as best I could. I was beginning to feel a bit like Wonder Woman or something, and that very idea put a wry grin on my face.

“Don’t know what you’re laughing at,” Svetlana growled at me, her shoulders visibly rising and rippling. The top of her spine distended, her vertebrae pushing out like underwater eruptions, threatening volcanoes or tidal waves of destruction. A chain reaction of electric impulses fluttered from her fingers up to her triceps, deltoids, and ended in a spasmodic twitch of the head which brought her growl rumbling beyond the lower limit of human perception. “You’re going down.”

For that moment, I believed in shapeshifters, in werewolves – I would not have been surprised if she had burst out of her skin and lunged at me in a huge distorted storm of teeth and claws, shredding me into a shower of blood and entrails on the spot although Svetlana’s inner animal was probably more tiger than wolf, I decided. I don’t know why – it just seemed to suit her.

Then the Tigress of Siberia took a flying leap towards me. Split my feet wide apart with a horizontal scissors kick and the next thing I knew I was flat on my back, staring up at the curtain rails and the stage lighting rig, half-blinded by several thousand watts of power, and as stunned as a cow about to meet its end in a slaughterhouse. Svetlana’s snarling face eclipsed the stabbing, probing light and then I realized she had grabbed a hold of my hair. The crop rained blows all over my hips, thighs and ass, softening me up, making me twist and shriek and waste valuable energy in the process.

The audience might have loved it, but I certainly wasn’t.

Having slapped me a healthy shade of red and pink all over, she dragged me on my ass to the middle of the stage and then sat down on my chest, spreading my arms out wide at my sides.

“Still think you’ve got what it takes?” she grinned. She bounced further up my body, legs apart, and the next thing I knew I’d gone blind and deaf. The bitch was straddling my face, squeezing my head between her thighs in some bizarre attempt at simultaneously suffocating and crushing me to death. Her muscles tautened like iron, gripping me in a vice. All I could sense was the smell of her sweat, her bland perfume, and the very distinctive tang of sexual secretions. Just as I’d thought, she was getting off on all of this. In fact, I could taste it. It was a harsher, more bitter blend than that of any other woman I’d experienced, but that was no surprise – it complimented her harsh exterior.

I lashed out with my feet, vainly trying to kick her in the back of the head, the shoulder, anything to loosen her grip. She twisted her hips and yanked my head from one side to the other, then I felt her bristly pubes rub me under the chin like wire wool.

I opened my mouth and clamped it shut again, succeeding in catching a portion of wet folded skin between my teeth. I bit as hard as I could and then she was off me with a snarling scream, and once more I could breathe, and see light. I wiped at my mouth and realized I’d bitten into labia.

Her face registered more annoyance than pain, and I gulped a long deep breath.

“Gnashy, nasty little pup,” she spat. “Not surprised your father ran off and left you in the dog pound.”

That just about did it for me. I’d been ticked-off before with her, but had been happy to give her the benefit of the doubt. Maybe she had just wanted to tease some good old rivalry out of me, but that was a punch aimed too low for my taste. Nobody brought up my family in that manner and got away with it.