THE KING IN YELLOW
Some hours later, Dmitri and Grigori set down their glasses of tea and went upstairs. Shortly after nightfall the others had taken the broken blonde back to Mirenberg leaving the two friends to play a few moves of chess and recover their strength, and now they were curious to see what Alexandra had done with the prodigal.
“Perhaps it really is possible for her to disappear” suggested Grigori as they climbed the narrow staircase to the servant’s room. Dmitri turned around.
“We daren’t dream of it” he said, simply. Grigori shrugged, and together they went through the low doorway into Alexandra’s dormer room. They had expected to find Elena strapped to the bed, at the least, but both women were sitting at Alexandra’s computer desk. They presented an incongruous spectacle; Elena was at the keyboard, her hair tied back in a ponytail, wearing black jeans and a v neck while Alexandra perched next to her, naked but for collar and high-heeled sandals, delicate silver chains trailing from the rings in her nipples to those in her labia. Before Dmitri could open his mouth to speak, Alexandra turned to him with shining eyes.
“You must see what Elena has done for us” she beamed “It’s wonderful”! She laid a tiny hand on the other’s shoulder, “Show them” she urged.
“I think you should” said Dmitri, and Elena showed them The King in Yellow site.
“This site is not generally known, and should not be,” she explained, her brisk, business-like manner contrasting with Alexandra’s girlish enthusiasm, “although it is impossible to link it to us. It connects to an encrypted network of criminals and fraudsters…” She caught Dmitri’s raised eyebrow “I worked in security,” she explained “until today”. Continuing, she explained how the screen would capture the totality of an individual’s identity, from their state identification number to their financial records to their membership of social and cultural groups. These would be then sold on to be cloned by disparate criminal gangs who would, between them, create a false trail so chaotic as to defy the most intensive of missing persons investigations. It was highly unlikely, she went on, that even a perfunctory investigation would take place because all the evidence would point to the submitted person having simply run off to start a new life abroad, like so many others. Financial assets would be laundered through many layers in many continents and ultimately fund the whole process. Alexandra became excited again at this point.
“We have women submitted already.” she blurted out “We already have everything we need!” Dmitri silenced her with a glance, but he turned to Elena with new interest.
“See here?” said Elena “This is The King in Yellow as only we can view it. There are five victims listed in this column and here a sixth – newly submitted and yet to be processed. The five have already completely vanished from their previous lives; they are variously thought to be missing at sea, travelling abroad, dead in the terrible 271 air disaster – none of them is being sought by the authorities. Their combined wealth, including life insurance payments and so forth, is deposited in this trust”. She opened a fresh screen and Grigori gave a low whistle. The room went quiet.
“And we have a property” Alexandra interjected. Dmitri and Grigori turned the bed around to sit facing the screen. Elena’s work was displayed before them. They were now the anonymous tenants of a deconsecrated convent – the only building in a Svitavian mountain valley, serviced periodically by agencies and leased in perpetuity through an offshore holding company. Alexandra stroked Dmitri’s hair and breathed into his ear.
“I trust her. We should go to see it”. She was trembling. “There are four victims there, waiting to be killed. And there will be more. This is real”. Dmitri held up a hand for silence and sat in thought for a long while.
“I have many questions” he rumbled “but for now I need only one answer. You say there are five victims disappeared, but only four waiting in his place. Where is the other”?
“I am here” Elena said “I am the fifth. I have not been seen since a ticket was bought with my credit card in a railway station at the western border two days ago. Records show that the motorcycle I rode here was scrapped last month”.
“I had assumed that you were the sixth, the newly-submitted” he said. Then Alexandra took his hand and kissed it.
ELENA’S SUBMISSION
The following morning, Dmitri, Alexandra and Elena packed into Grigori’s jeep and he drove to the convent, Elena directing him because the location was unknown to satellite positioning. They travelled for over an hour through increasingly wild and desolate landscapes before finally taking a cart-track high into the foothills. Dmitri questioned Elena patiently but incessantly throughout the journey, but she satisfied his concerns at every turn. They drove through scrub and mountain pines for some miles, passing a solitary ruined dacha and scattering a flock of wild goats, and finally reached the convent at midday. Although its grounds were overgrown and its outbuildings falling into ruin the main building – hall, chapel and dormitory wing – was still sound and habitable. The tyres crunched on weed-choked gravel as Grigori drew up in front of the building. The party gathered before the oak door of the main hall and paused, expecting Elena to lead them inside. Instead she took off her clothes, leaving them carefully folded, and stood naked but for black stockings and boots with her eyes meekly downturned and her hands behind her back. Dmitri understood and strode forward to throw open the doors and march into his new domain.
Dmitri paused, and answered Katya’s question before it left her lips. “Yes, you have been taken to the old convent – twice” he told her.
The hall was a stark and brutal space, bare stone walls and stone flags lit by high windows that cast heavy shadows and pools of cold light. A warmer glow came from the log burning in the huge fireplace, where four women were lined up awaiting them. Like Elena, each was nude but for stockings and heels and each stood demurely anticipating her fate.
Alexandra and Grigori went over to them. She had chosen a somewhat more practical outfit for the trip but still looked devastating in thigh-high boots, leather skirt and a crisp white blouse. They moved from one woman to the next, prodding and pinching like buyers at an auction, here weighing a breast in a cupped hand, here brushing aside a lock of hair, here testing a cunt for wetness with cruel and arrogant fingers. Alexandra had each woman turn around, spread her legs and bend at the waist. They remained docile under these intrusions but their arousal was fierce and tangible, not only in the intense, musky aroma surrounding them but in every muscle of their bodies. Meanwhile, Dmitri paced around the hall scanning everything from floor to vaulted ceiling; he checked the doors to the kitchens and to the long corridor of monastic cells and disappeared for a long while to investigate the chapel. He returned to face Elena.
“And, now?” he asked, “What do you want in return for all of this”? She fell to her knees.
“I can ask nothing” she declared. “You are the master here. And – and you wanted to punish me” she added, more quietly. Dmitri folded his arms and stared down at her for a long minute.
“You know that I want to believe you” he said, at last “and you have convinced me of everything except your own good faith. Can you prove that”?
Elena nodded eagerly and went to the fireplace, returning with four spills. She reached into her heeled ankle-boot and pulled out an ivory handled flick knife which she used, with a flourish, to shorten one of the spills. Then she had each of the women draw a straw. There was a low moan from the willowy oriental woman who was given the third choice, and she took a pace forward. Elena bowed to Dmitri and moved closer to her. The woman heaved a sigh and closed her eyes. Elena stroked her hair and flicked the knife open. Her heels rang on the stone floor as she circled her trembling victim and wrapped a strong arm around her from behind to clutch at her breast. The woman reached back to press their soft bodies together at the hips, and leant into the embrace, resting her head back on Elena’s shoulder. She held the cold steel to the woman’s lips for a final kiss and then suddenly slashed it across her throat from ear to ear. Blood cascaded down her torso to splash loudly onto the flagstones. Elena held the body tenderly but firmly until it ceased to spasm and the flow of lifeblood lessened to a trickle over her firm bosom, then gently laid her victim down and stepped back. Dmitri glared at the slim form lying in a spreading pool of its own gore. His nostrils flared and his fists clenched convulsively. No-one moved or breathed. Alexandra embraced him and wrapped her leg around his waist, running her fingers through his hair and rubbing her crotch desperately against his thigh.
“Do it!” she breathed, fiercely. He pushed her aside and stepped quickly out of his linen trousers, staring maniacally at the slender corpse.
Then he fell on it, bucking his hips frantically, tearing at the dead flesh with teeth and fingers. Elena licked the blade and sucked her fingers clean of blood as she watched, enrapt. Grigori and a trio of anonymous, naked victims looked on in anticipation.
ELENA’S SACRIFICE
“Then Grigori sodomised the body slowly and thoroughly” said Dmitri. “Since his release we had talked many times about his triumph with Marie-Claude, while we dallied together with willing victims – willing, but doomed to live”. He smiled, and Katya worshipped him with her eyes, transported back to that summer evening in the cool of the convent hall.
Grigori hoisted the bloodless corpse over his shoulder and headed to the kitchen; Dmitri sat half-naked and brooding by the fire. Alexandra knelt silently at his side and stroked his hair until Grigori re-appeared in the kitchen doorway wearing a leather apron, a huge cleaver in his fist and a broad grin on his face.
“I am going to be busy with preparations for the rest of the afternoon.” he said. “Call me when you kill another one”. He left in great good humour. Alexandra kissed Dmitri’s cheek and caressed his shoulders and chest.
“It’s real” she murmured in his ear. “She is waiting for you, and many more will come. This is your destiny”. She took his face in both hands and kissed him hard on the lips. “Look at her” she urged. Dmitri sat upright and focused on Elena, who was still standing where she had killed the first victim, with her head bowed and her arms at her sides. Her inner thighs glistened wetly. Alexandra unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it off to rain kisses on his mighty chest. “She wants it as much as you do.” she whispered. “Take her”! He pulled Alexandra’s head back by the hair and stared deep into her eyes. Finally, he rose to his feet, proudly erect. He reached out a hand to Elena and she pressed it to her lips.
“Bring my bag” he told Alexandra as he turned to lead Elena to the chapel. The other three followed in silence.
The chapel was already well furnished with equipment and apparatus. The altar was fitted with chains and cuffs; a ***********ion of whips and knives hung from the altarpiece. A brazier stood where the tabernacle had been, and the brass handles of various implements stood out from the hot coals. Dmitri and Elena walked hand in hand to the altar and the others lined up at the rail. Lifting her chin, he stared long and hard into her eyes and she held his gaze steadily. Only the rise and fall of her full breasts betrayed her intense excitement, and they stood like this for an eternity until Alexandra’s heels broke the silence when she returned with Dmitri’s special tools and spread them out on the table of oblation. She had discarded her skirt and blouse before entering the chapel – it was not a place for clothes – and she, too, was unmistakably aroused. She opened her mouth to speak, but Dmitri took her by the elbow and drew her away to a corner.
“If I do this…” he began in a low voice.
“You will do it” she whispered, urgently. “Your whole life has been a preparation for this moment – and mine also. It is everything you’ve wanted, every dream you’ve shared with me while I lay chained and bleeding at your feet”.
“But if I start, we will never be able to go back to our old life”. His voice trailed off, and he looked back to the altar. Elena had not moved, but nor had she taken her eyes from him. “One day I will kill you” he told Alexandra.
“We have always known it would end that way and we thought it would end for both of us” she replied, “but now you can survive me – that means I don’t have to be the first and last”. Her fingers brushed against her aching nipple and her eyes closed. “Show me how you will take me” she breathed. In the silence which filled the chapel after her words, Dmitri turned his eyes to the implements laid out for his ***********ion. At last he made his choice from the tools hanging on the retable. It was a choke-pear, an antique crafted in brass and steel. Turning to the altar Dmitri toyed with the mechanism which opened the four spring-loaded leaves.
“Look” he said to Elena, smiling coldly, “the device will only retract after it has been opened completely”. As the screw turned the blades spread wide like a parasol, before they closed into a pear again.
“Bend over the altar and brace yourself” he commanded, and Elena drew a deep breath as she obeyed, settling her feet apart and bending at the waist to grip the further edge of the altar. “You!” he rumbled to the nearest of the waiting victims “Lubricate her”. The woman hurried to kneel behind Elena. She pulled her cheeks open with brutal fingers and spat at the puckered bud of her arse then licked at it deeply, slowly and wetly. Dmitri held the pear to Elena’s gasping mouth and ordered her to kiss it – she barely managed to comply before the darting tongue of the woman behind her wrenched a long, despairing cry of ecstasy from deep in her throat and her eyes rolled back. He smiled.
Dmitri took the woman’s black hair in his fist and pulled her head away gently – but she still held Elena’s arse spread open and ready for the choke-pear, shyly looking up at him for approval and smacking her lips. Elena panted hoarsely as he pushed the evil object inside her until her anus closed around its neck and she released her breath in a low purr.
“You are already dead” Dmitri said, gave the key one half turn to lock it inside her, and stepped back. Elena closed her eyes and ground her hips against the edge of the altar. He sent the woman to find him a cigar and sat by Elena’s head, watching her face while he smoked. “I need to understand you” he told her “and so I will prolong your death”. His erect cock twitched. His fist clenched.
Alexandra and the surviving victims waited in silence for Dmitri’s orders. Eventually he rose to his feet, tiring of his cigar. Casually, he took the arm of the nearest woman and bent her over the edge of the altar opposite Elena. She opened herself to him – then cried out brokenly when he stubbed out the butt in her wet cunt. He turned to the others.
“Spread Elena on the altar” he commanded and they stepped forward to turn her onto her back and hold her pinioned there, the screw of the choke-pear protruding obscenely from between her parted thighs. Drawing on a leather gauntlet he pulled a red-hot skewer from the brazier and leant over her, holding it to her face so she could see how brightly it burned, and how sharp it was. Then he took her left nipple firmly between thumb and forefinger, twisted, pulled hard to lift her breast high, and drove the skewer straight through the flesh from top to bottom. Elena drew in her breath in a sharp hiss, grinding her teeth while Dmitri seized and pierced her right breast the same way, A thin trace of grey smoke rose from where the smouldering iron had been quenched in bloody tissue and she let her lungs empty in a long, despairing groan. He smiled grimly and pulled another, longer skewer from the heat. Their eyes met and she ran the tip of her tongue around her full lips but her lovely face froze into a rictus of agony when his huge hand cupped first one breast, then the other as he forced the glowing rod through her bosom from side to side. Tears streamed from her eyes and her nostrils flared as she fought the pain but she held still, docile and unresisting in the grip of the four women at her ankles and wrists. Finally, when he reached to give the key of the choke-pear another half turn, Elena’s back arched and she moaned into his face. He nodded, satisfied, and went back to choose another tool from the table of oblation.
Trailing the braided end of a vicious single-tail whip from her crotch to her face he paused to let her kiss its tip then moved around to stand between her open legs. He kissed her cunt once and then laid into her groin, stomach and thighs with the whip, forehand and backhand strokes falling in quick succession. Elena gasped and panted through the first three blows and then tossed her head back and screamed, straining desperately at the strong hands restraining her when the whip sliced into her cunt. The plaited leather whistled around Dmitri’s head and bit deeply into the soft, smooth skin; soon her screams became thin and breathless. Dmitri threw the whip back with the others.
Put her in the manacles” he commanded. They set about chaining her to the altar as he returned to the oblate to choose her next torment. Elena reached her arms and legs out to them to be pulled tight and cuffed, wincing when the movement disturbed the steels piercing her breasts and stretched the raw welts across her crotch. She quivered as he laid four lengths of fine chain, each tipped with a wicked steel barb, across her round belly. His finger idly stroked her reddened cunt and came away slick with her juices; he sucked it thoughtfully.
“You want me to fuck you” he murmured. Suddenly his voice became colder. “But I will only fuck you after you are dead”. Elena sighed and rolled her hips shamelessly. Dmitri watched her face closely as he bent to press a steel hook through her engorged nipple. She stiffened slightly and then licked her lips and moaned as his strong fingers reached to pierce the other. He passed the ends of the two chains to Alexandra and to the buxom victim on Elena’s other side. With his huge hands guiding theirs, he made them stretch her breasts up and apart so that they stood like cones from her chest. Moving around the altar he rested his elbows between her thighs and took one of the remaining hooks. He positioned it at the inside of a glistening cunt-lip and then paused. His hand moved towards his cock but he reached instead for the other hook and dragged the sharp, steel points down both Elena’s quivering inner thighs over and over again until she wore bloody stripes from groin to knees and bared her white teeth in a tormented grimace. Her transfixed breasts heaved, cruelly stretched by hooks and chains, and the tendons in her neck and shoulders showed hard and tight under their sheathing of milky-white flesh.
Dmitri leant over her. “You are dying” he said and kissed her passionately, only their mouths touching. He gave the screw at the handle of the pear a full turn and she screamed her anguish into his mouth. At last, he pushed each hook slowly through the flesh of her labia, one after the other, and had the two victims at the foot of the altar pull the chains taut, stretching her cunt open. Deftly and coldly he took up a long, thin needle and stabbed it straight through her erect clit – wrenching a full-throated howl from her – then took a long knife from the brazier.
“I could plunge this straight into your heart and it would all be over” he said calmly, “but I might take much longer. Suppose I gave you the choice – which would it be”? The blade’s red gleam was reflected in his dark eyes.
“It makes no difference what I want” she sighed. Dmitri drew the hot knife under each of her stretched and skewered breasts – describing two white semicircles in her tanned flesh. Her mouth opened in a silent howl and fresh tears started down her cheeks.
“But I wish to know” he rumbled, swinging the knife casually over her throat and cocking an eyebrow. He inhaled deeply, relishing the aroma of burning woman.
“I only care that you kill me,” she gasped. “It has to happen. I have to pay, as I promised”. Then she clenched her white teeth and her lovely face was transformed into a mask of pain; Dmitri had carved the letter “Д” into the satin skin of her belly.
“She told me everything” Dmitri said. “I prompted her from time to time by pricking her with the tip of my knife, but it wasn’t really necessary. You know what she meant about the promise, don’t you, Doctor”? His eyes drilled into Katya’s.
“I understand now” she answered humbly from where she knelt naked before him. “The King in Yellow is an archetype; He is someone real when a woman promises herself to Him. When I knew that I must put myself under your knife, when I sat in this room and submitted to my executioner, I promised to die His true slave. The ecstasy of that submission has to be paid for. Time means nothing and life is an illusion; only the promise is real. That is what she told you, I know”. Dmitri smiled into his beard.
“The King in Yellow touched me the day I met you” Elena gasped, fighting back the tears. “Do you remember how you stared into my eyes when my breasts were nailed to the tree – when Alexandra brought the dog to me”? Dmitri was stroking her thick hair and pinching firmly, but gently, at her left nipple. He nodded. “I saw in your eyes that you could kill me. I’ve always known how a person can disappear without trace and so I was sure I could find a way for you to do it. And then that beast…” Elena closed her eyes and moaned. Her tongue flickered between parted lips. “I abandoned myself completely because I promised myself I would be killed. It was beautiful”. Then her scream echoed around the vaulted ceiling at another turn of the screw.
He licked the hot tears from her cheeks. She trembled.
“Alexandra!” Dmitri ordered “Let your chain go for a moment and bring me the braquemard”. Elena groaned as the tension on one nipple suddenly eased. He took the short sword and tested its edge with his thumb, slowly, toying with her like a cat with a mouse. Her body strained against the bonds, up from the altar and toward the sharp steel. The warm, yellow glow of candles and brazier played on the polished blade and on her glowing flesh. Meanwhile, Alexandra took up her end of the chain again. Elena was pulled open, chained to the altar by wrists and ankles. Her cunt-lips and nipples were tugged viciously up and apart by fine chains hooked into her skin; skewers pierced her breasts down and across and she bore the welts of a severe whipping. Elena shrieked until her voice cracked while Dmitri dragged the point of the blade lingeringly up and down her body, scoring deep, bloody wounds over every quivering inch. At last he rested the tip over her heart and stared into her eyes. She gave a long, liquid sigh.
“The Pallid Mask” she whispered and he drove the bright steel through her ribs to end her life. A soft moan came from the throats of the attending victims when Dmitri thrust his hand into the wound, pulled the heart from her chest and bit into it, blood spilling over his lips.
Kneeling before him, hands behind her head and crotch open and displayed, Katya spurted and wailed.
“Tonight!” she gasped, sliding to the floor. Her eyes rolled back.
“Lick the tiles clean” he ordered in an even tone, when she began to recover her senses. Katya grovelled on her belly to obey, still sighing softly and quivering as fresh spasms of pleasure rushed through her.
“Tonight”!
Minutes later, a composed and collected Katya, demurely yet smartly dressed, went to the senior warder’s room to request that Dmitri be placed in the padded cell, in the back corridor.