Vesta - Painworld (7 page)

The masks had a sort of wig attached to them; black hair scraped up into a chignon, the rubber cheeks coloured bright pink, the rubber lips unmoving, unspeaking lines of bright carmine. Only the eyes were animated, where they peered through apertures that clung to the features so closely that only a close inspection revealed that the girls were masked at all.

‘Ah, I see my little swans are ready for me!' The man had appeared as if by magic, standing in front and slightly to the left of the line, dressed in flesh-coloured rubber tights and a bright green rubber leotard of sorts, and clutching a long switch in his right hand. Ellen guessed he was in his late twenties and her keen eye did not miss the well muscled legs and the light way in which he moved about on the balls of his feet.

Well, she thought, VESTA couldn't have chosen better, for the blond newcomer, his unkempt tresses giving him something of a swashbuckling air, was Ellen's epitome of a sexy male. And though she could not move her hands to investigate properly, she could certainly feel the heat rising in her sex and knew she must already be very wet down there. Despite the anonymity of her mask and despite the fact that she knew none of her companions were real, she felt herself blushing.

She was brought quickly back to reality - or at least VESTA's version of it - when the tip of the switch caught her exposed sex lips with a sharp slapping sensation. A high-pitched squeak burst past the gag and her instinctive reaction set the entire line tottering from side to side, five pairs of nipple bells jingling merrily.

‘Pay attention, swan number three,' the man snapped, stepping closer to her. ‘Pay attention, or we shan't give your hungry little twot its dinner, shall we?' He strutted up and down the line, the switch flicking at this girl and that, darting between open thighs one moment and clipping engorged nipples the next.

‘Now,' he said, casting the weapon aside and reaching for some sort of fastener over his crotch. ‘Who shall we dance with first?'

This time Lianne was in a small cell and the rubber outfit had been replaced by a simple shift of a rough woven fabric that stopped several inches short of her bare knees. Her hands were secured behind her back, presumably by cuffs of stout leather, and her head was encased in a harness made of thinner straps of the same material; a harness which held immovably in place a ball of yet more leather, foul tasting as it wedged between her teeth, pressing on her tongue and rendering speech impossible.

Suddenly the heavy timber door banged open and the doorway was filled by a huge figure, a man dressed in close fitting black leather breeches, heavy boots, a hangman style hood and wearing studded gauntlets which glinted in the sunlight from the ‘world' outside. Instinctively, Lianne shrank back, eliciting a loud guffaw from her latest adversary.

‘Yes, you should cower, witch!' he bellowed, his voice almost deafening in the confines of the room. ‘Your time has come to atone for your devilish sins!' He strode forward, grasped her by the arm and dragged her easily across the few feet separating her from whatever fate next lay in store for her.

Outside there appeared to be quite a crowd gathered, though their appearance was somewhat nebulous and every time Lianne tried to focus on any individual, or particular knot of individuals, their outline became indistinct and only the mass of people behind them seemed to exist. She assumed VESTA was not yet quite capable of projecting a scene as complicated as this one seemed to be, but she was left with little time to ponder the subject.

The platform to which her captor dragged her looked far more solid than the crowd, as did the little group of figures who stood around the top of the rough hewn steps leading up to the top of it. There were four of them in total, two men dressed similarly to the giant who had hold of her, although their masks covered only the top halves of their features. The other two were robed as priests of some sort, black cassocks, monkish hoods thrown back over their shoulders, and vestments of white, gold and red draped about their necks.

Despite herself and the gag which filled her mouth, Lianne almost laughed out loud, for the features of the latter two had clearly been derived from any one of a hundred Hollywood B movies; lantern jaws, deep set dark eyes, hawkish noses and hollow, cadaverous cheeks. However, the fierce pressure of the big man's huge hands on the soft flesh of her upper arm seemed real enough, and she winced with pain as he all but threw her up the rustic stairway.

Lianne stared about her, eyes darting from side to side. Above, a thick hemp rope, stereotypical hangman's noose at its lower end, dangled limply in the airless afternoon. To the side a shorter post supported a cross member, from each end of which hung an open manacle of thick leather. On a bench beside this lay a selection of whips, tiny steel teeth glinting in the woven fibres of each.

It's not real! she screamed to herself silently. It's just part of the script. This isn't really happening to you - none of it is!

Yet the splinters which dug into her bare feet seemed only too real, as the two assistants grasped her and hauled her across to the whipping frame. A small box had been positioned before it and very quickly Lianne was lifted onto this, her fetters unlocked and her arms stretched high and wide for her wrists to be re-secured in the waiting straps. Another strap was buckled about her ankles, pressing her legs close together, and then the box was unceremoniously dragged from beneath her, leaving her dangling helplessly, toes agonising inches from the decking.

She groaned as her weight fell upon her protesting shoulders and only the greatest effort of willpower managed to prevent her from screaming into the gag. Her eyes rolled wildly and her breath hissed through her nostrils. Her common sense kept telling her that none of this was really happening to her, yet every nerve ending, every brain cell, screamed out that it was real enough.

‘Strip her, executioner!' This was from one of the priests. The hooded giant nodded to his two assistants, who stepped forward once again and ripped the crude shift from Lianne, tossing the ragged cloth into the crowd and bringing forth a bay of anticipation. Her face pressed against the upright, Lianne hung and waited. She did not have to wait for long.

Into her vision swum the haunting features of the first priest, his lips bared to reveal rotted teeth and a deep crimson tongue. Curiously, despite the pain that was threatening to overwhelm her, Lianne realised the man ought to have terribly fetid breath, and yet she could smell nothing.

The corners of his mouth twitched cruelly, as he took from within his robes a roll of parchment of some kind, unrolling it with slow deliberation and holding it at arms length.

‘The witch Griselda has been tried by the rightful church and found guilty as charged,' he intoned. ‘She is guilty of heresy, blasphemy, consulting with the dark forces and of murder, upon which all charges she has been sentenced to death. She has further been sentenced, upon the charges of witchcraft and heresy, to be scourged, that she may be received into the next world with her soul cleansed of her mortal sins.' He allowed the parchment to roll itself up again and stepped back.

‘Executioner, do your duty!' he cried. ‘And may the gods have mercy on her soul.'

The whip landed across Lianne's unprotected back with a sound like a pistol shot, and a spear of red-hot pain shot through her. She bucked and writhed, high-pitched mewling sounds forcing their way past the leather gag, and kicked her bound legs helplessly.

The second lash cut across the tops of her thighs, red, purple and green lights exploding in front of her eyes. Dimly, she was aware of a huge cheer behind her; the crowd, however nebulous they had appeared to her earlier, was clearly programmed to enjoy such sport. By the time the sixth lash scored a vivid line across the tops of Lianne's shoulders, the noise had risen to a cacophonous crescendo, but she could scarcely hear it through the haze of pain that now engulfed her.

‘Enough!' The priest stepped forward once again and held up a hand, the executioner staying his wrist just as he was about to snap out the snakelike coils for the seventh time. ‘Let her hang there for a short while,' the cleric instructed. ‘She must not lose consciousness, for her evil master lays wait to claim her in the dreamworld beyond.'

Can I actually pass out here? Lianne had no idea, other than that there was no way she should have been able to endure such a vicious beating under normal circumstances. Marlon's wizardry was still mostly beyond her ability to comprehend, but she understood enough to know that the pain she was experiencing was being transmitted straight to the appropriate part of her brain.

She remembered an accident she'd had at school, during a games session, when she had badly torn a tendon in her ankle. The pain had been excruciating and she fainted; apparently it was the brain's way of saving its owner from things when they became too bad. Vaguely, she wondered if the priest's intervention was Marlon's way - VESTA's way - of achieving the same effect. Certainly she'd felt herself on the verge of losing consciousness after the last lash.

Amazingly, the burning sensation in her supposedly ravaged flesh began to subside almost immediately the whipping ceased. Closing her eyes, Lianne concentrated for all she was worth, repeating to herself over and over again that the whole experience was illusory and that the pain was not real pain at all. It worked, and not only did the pain in her back, shoulders and buttocks evaporate, but she realised that even her arms and wrists no longer hurt. However, the respite was short-lived.

‘Begin again!' the priest ordered and, as the lash cracked across her skin again, even the utmost concentration could not stop the fresh pain. True, it did seem to hurt less than the first onslaught, but it still hurt, and Lianne was quickly bucking and writhing under the leather braid's wicked kiss.

Ten times the whipping was ended temporarily, only to begin again after a few minutes' respite, and now Lianne was beginning to fear that something had gone wrong. Maybe VESTA had become locked into an automatic cycle, but then common sense told her that Marlon would be sure to sense an error of that kind and bring her out of this cruel scenario.

Fighting to re-establish mastery of her senses, Lianne hung panting through her nose, little rivulets of saliva escaping at either side of the gag and trickling down over her jaw to drip onto her heaving breasts as they were pressed out to each side of the upright support pole. She felt a hand probing between her buttocks, forcing the tops of her thighs apart to permit a finger to explore inwards and trace a line along the lips of her sex, and she realised she was very wet there.

Surely that could not have been simply as a result of the whipping? Yes, it was true she could get off on bondage and rubber, and even a spanking or strapping as well, but the physical pain thing was not her particular bag. Ellen had told her of girls who did get turned on by being whipped, but Lianne didn't consider herself as being among their number. No, she reasoned, VESTA had to be applying some extra stimulus somewhere.

The two assistants were reaching to free her wrists now and the box was pushed back beneath her feet, but she was not left unfettered for more than a second or two. Her arms were forced cruelly behind her once more and fastened there, presumably with the leather cuffs she'd originally worn in the cell. A second set of cuffs locked about her ankles as soon as the strap that had bound them together was removed. These cuffs were joined by a stout chain of no more than seven or eight inches, preventing her from taking anything other than very tiny steps. The reason for this quickly became apparent.

Looking down, Lianne saw the crowd had divided into two, leaving a narrow avenue between them, the front row of which now comprised figures that looked far more solid than those in the main body. There were men and women, she saw, all dressed in archaic costumes that she guessed were either sixteenth or seventeenth century, and each one now clutched a long cane.

A gauntlet line, she realised, and a whimper forced its way past the gag, for at its far end, where there should have been the cell building from which she'd been led to this scaffold, there now stood another raised platform, from the centre of which rose a blackened stake and about the base of which was heaped bundles of kindling wood and twisted sections of either large branches or thin tree trunks. It was, Lianne understood, a pyre - a pyre designed for one purpose only, that of burning a witch.

Her.

 

Clarissa had never believed it was possible to feel so wretched as she did now, perched astride the horrendous display pole, the thick dildo filling her vagina and stretching it to an impossible extent, the plug in her anal passage all but forgotten in comparison to this monstrous invasion. How long it had been since the massive blonde had mounted her so lewdly, she had no idea, but there had been several visitors since to admire Christina's handiwork.

Thanks to the rubber ball gag the Dane had forced between her teeth, the wretched captive could do nothing but stare back at the procession of strangely garbed voyeurs, trying vainly to shut her ears to their mocking comments.

‘Hang a couple of lights on those tits and she'd make a great standard lamp,' one woman had laughed. ‘I'll have to ask Christina if we can have her up in our suite for tomorrow night's party.'

‘Might as well use her for furniture,' her male companion had sneered. ‘By the time she's spent a few more hours like that, her cunt will be too slack to be of much use.'