Vesta - Painworld Read online

  ‘The spookiest bit of all was when he tried one scene with Ellen and me together, rather than have one of his library characters doing the bit. We were able to talk to each other and act together exactly as we would do in the real world. We even discussed how crazy it all was, just as if we were in the same room together in the normal way of things. God knows how Marlon does it, but it really does work.’

  ‘It’s all a bit sci-fi if you ask me,’ Paul said. ‘But then I suppose that’s the world we live in nowadays. Things are happening at a faster and faster rate. Before long humans will be bloody redundant, and I find that more than a little bit worrying.’

  Swaying seductively on her high heels, Lianne closed in on him, her fingers encircling his flaccid penis. She felt his back stiffen at the intimate contact and could not suppress a small giggle.

  ‘As long as we don’t let this little beauty get redundant,’ she cooed, ‘I don’t care about the rest. And don’t you think it’s about time you got your uniform on, Pauline?’ she added, trying to inject a note of sternness into her voice. ‘I’ve been expecting a decent maid service for the past half hour, and all you can do is chatter away like a silly schoolgirl!’

  The room was three floors down from the bedroom in which Clarissa had first awoken, but the problem of navigating the stairs in the awful boots was overcome by Christina picking her up under one arm, as easily as if she had really been a doll, and carrying her down bodily.

  If Clarissa’s return to consciousness had been traumatic, at least, she thought, she had been spared the initial shock of coming round in this hell hole. The bedroom upstairs had retained an air of normality, even if the costumed puppet that had confronted her in the mirror had not.

  The cellar room had been designed for one purpose and one purpose only, to convey an air of menace, evil and sheer terror. The chamber was a pastiche of every horror film, every historical engraving and every nightmare Clarissa could remember. The walls and ceiling were black, bare stone blocks, alleviated only by the various wooden racks, from which hung collections of leather and metal devices whose purpose she could only guess at, and prayed fervently she would never have to find out.

  Stumbling awkwardly in the fearsome heels, her back arched cruelly, Clarissa felt as though she was completely stuffed by the two dildos, every shambling step emphasising their invasive presence, and she sobbed with shame as Christina thrust her into the centre of the room.

  ‘Now then, Ginger,’ the big woman grinned, backing her captive against an upright post that ran from floor to ceiling, ‘let’s add a few more touches to your outfit. I do so like my slaves to look really submissive, and you don’t quite look submissive enough yet.’

  Clarissa stared at her, eyes wide with terror. ‘What are you going to do with me now?’ she wailed, as Christina began tethering her to the post, threading a strong cord through a ring at the back of her corset and winding it around the timber until Clarissa was drawn hard up against it. To either side of her feet, two heavy ring bolts had been set into the stone and now Christina used more cord to drag Clarissa’s legs wide and tie her ankles to them, preventing her from closing her lower limbs together again.

  ‘Please,’ Clarissa begged, ‘haven’t you done enough to me already?’ By way of reply, Christina brought the back of her hand down hard against the outside of the helpless girl’s left breast, drawing another squeal of pain from her.

  ‘I’ve already told you once, slut,’ she growled. ‘Slaves speak only when spoken to.’ She stood back, hands on her broad hips, her expression mocking. ‘And as for whether I’ve done enough to you already, I can assure you I’ve hardly started. I’m as much an artist in my field as you are - or were - in yours, though I use a lot less metal.’ She reached out a hand and fingered one of Clarissa’s distended nipples.

  To her utter astonishment, Clarissa felt a little electric charge run up her spine and she closed her eyes, unwilling to meet the bigger woman’s challenging stare.

  ‘You have very pretty tits, slut,’ Christina said, very matter of fact in her tone. ‘They deserve to be properly ornamented. The clamps are all very well, but I prefer something more... permanent.’ She turned away and crossed to a small metal wall cabinet, opening the door and sorting through its contents. A few minutes later she was back at Clarissa’s side, carrying a small chrome-plated dish, upon which lay a number of small objects that the terrified girl could not at first identify.

  However, their purpose soon became apparent, as Christina picked up the plier-like instrument in one hand and seized Clarissa’s left nipple between finger and thumb with the other.

  ‘No-o-o-ooooo!’ Clarissa shrieked, but there was no escape. A bolt of ice fire shot through her breast and straight to the base of her brain, as the jaws closed and the sharp needle pierced the tender flesh. A gurgling sound erupted from Clarissa’s throat, saliva drooling from her slack lips, and she would have sagged helplessly had her rigid costume and bondage not been supporting her.

  Through the red mist that swam before her, the poor girl peered downwards, unable to believe what she saw as her tormentor threaded the heavy steel ring through the punctured teat. Seconds later another spear of agony, and the other nipple was treated in identical fashion.

  ‘Much better,’ Christina nodded. ‘And don’t even think about removing them, even when you get the use of your hands back. The two halves interlock and there’s no way of separating them without cutting through the steel. When I ring a pair of tits, they stay ringed until I decide otherwise.’

  There was worse to come, and the pain now was too great for Clarissa to bear. Mercifully, she passed out into a semi-coma, barely aware of the agonising piercings that were added to her labia and clitoris. But Christina wasted no time in reviving her when she had finished, releasing the binding cords and thrusting her in front of the long mirror which hung from the end wall. Every step was agony and, when Clarissa peered into the glass, she saw the reason why.

  Clips had been attached to the labial rings and fastened to tiny half rings set at the top of the inside of each boot, so that the act of walking forced the mouth of her sex to gape open and move with every movement of her legs, exposing the third ring and the elongated shape of the normally hidden bud through which it had been set. With her brain almost numb from the shock, Clarissa thought, stupidly it seemed, that she could not even remember Christina removing the fat dildo from her sex, though the one at the rear was still only too obviously in place.

  ‘Very provocative, wouldn’t you agree?’ Christina sneered. ‘A slut on display, just begging to be fucked. Well, I’m afraid there’ll be no real cock for you just yet, though I do have a nice substitute lined up for later on. But first, I nearly forgot with all the excitement. Get back over to the post.’

  She dragged the sobbing girl across the room and quickly re-secured her to the upright, although this time she ignored the ankle restraints. Clarissa soon discovered why, for it seemed that Christina was finished with the area between her legs and was intent only on the addition of a sixth and final ring. When she stepped back, the steel oval drooped from Clarissa’s septum, resting lightly against the soft flesh just above her top lip.

  ‘And if you don’t do exactly as I tell you and phone your brother with the correct instructions,’ Christina said, flicking the steel loop with her forefinger, ‘I’ll pierce your lip and use the ring to keep your mouth permanently open!’

  Completely disoriented, pain raging from a million different nerve ends, Clarissa could only stare at her, tears running down between her cheeks and the hard perspex that covered them, a thin trickle of urine worming its insidious passage down the inside of each thigh, between flesh and boot, as Christina replaced the original crotch strap with another that was thin enough to pass over her gaping sex lips, but pass between the two labial rings.

  ‘And now,’ the amazon announced, straightening up, ‘it’s time to take s
ome pretty pictures and show off my latest work of art.’

  ‘I’m still not sure I’m happy about Nadia’s mass tryout,’ Lianne said. She and Ellen were sitting sipping cold cola between scenes. So far the afternoon’s shoot had been a doddle, just a few background bondage positions and Gavin lightly whipping the two ‘prisoners’ as they spun slowly, strapped back-to-back in an intricate leather harness, a double-ended dildo adding an extra element of togetherness.

  ‘What’s your problem?’ Ellen asked, leaning forward amidst a symphony of creaking leather. Lianne looked furtively from side to side before answering. Seeing that they were some distance from the rest of the cast and crew, she continued, though in a harsh whisper.

  ‘Well, it’s one thing to be chained up and fucked by an illusionary character,’ she said, ‘something that VESTA’s created out of all this random data-feed Marlon keeps on about, but this time it’ll be real people. I mean, I know they’re not real real and they’re only images inside our heads, but they’ll seem real at the time. And, well, Simon’s going to be in on it.’

  ‘Aha, I see,’ Ellen nodded, although with some difficulty, for the leather collar kept her head permanently held high. ‘Don’t fancy the idea of being our Simon’s helpless little slave girl, eh?’

  ‘To be honest, no, I don’t,’ Lianne admitted. ‘Oh, he’s perfectly sweet and I like him a lot, but, well, I just couldn’t fancy him.’

  ‘Does that matter?’ Ellen retorted. ‘After all, it’s not like it’s the real him or the real you. Besides, Marlon reckons VESTA can do a bit of form shifting, alter the perceptions of the bodies involved, or something. He tried to explain, but you know Marlon.’

  ‘Swallowed the science lab at school and never got over it,’ Lianne agreed. She furrowed her brow in thought. ‘So, what you’re saying is that Marlon could drop Simon into VESTA’s world and make him look like a real hunk?’

  ‘Apparently,’ Ellen nodded. ‘Well, I think that’s what he said.’

  Marlon Vincent sat staring in sheer disbelief at the freeze-frame on the VDU before him. He had played the download four times in less than an hour, yet still he could not believe the evidence before his eyes.

  ‘You’ve got to access the following website,’ Clarissa had insisted, and had repeated the internet details twice, her voice sounding strangely detached. She had then given him a password, without which, she had assured him, no one else would be able to view what was on the site. Marlon had tried to press her for details, reasons, but she cut him short. ‘Just do it, Marlon,’ she had almost shrieked. ‘Please!’

  And there she had been, his only recently discovered half sister, crudely naked, but for the cruel see-through bondage, fresh whip marks showing when the camera panned around her, rings and pendants dragging on newly pierced flesh, her face a distorted mask of pain beneath the disguising layers of cosmetics. If there had not been footage showing her transformation, Marlon could easily have convinced himself that the poor little puppet on the screen was not Clarissa at all. But the narrator’s voice, combined with the carefully edited clips, left him no room for doubt.

  It was definitely his half sister, perched astride that awful pole, her vagina distended and distorted by whatever it was that thrust upwards from the centre of the painfully narrow seat that threatened to split her asunder. The strangely heeled transparent boots hung a few inches clear of the floor, but even had they not, there was no chance of the poor creature lifting herself off the impaling phallus, for both ankles were strapped to the pole with broad leather cuffs.

  Marlon brushed a tear of frustration from the corner of his eye and focused on the tiny rectangle in the bottom right hand corner of the screen. The type was small, but still easily readable and gave him precise instructions what to do, once he had fully assimilated and understood the scenarios that had been given to him...

  Lianne emerged from the en suite bathroom, wrapped in one towel and vigorously drying her hair with another, to find Paul Dean sprawled across the huge double bed they now regularly shared. As it was still a warm afternoon, she should not have been surprised to find him clad only in a thin pair of shorts and indeed she wasn’t, for she had long ago abandoned the idea of being surprised by anything he might appear in.

  As a writer, Paul was in the top division, but as a creator of the story lines they all acted out, he was in a league of his own. Lianne and he had become an item since their shared captivity and brutal treatment at the hands of James Naylor and his warped cronies. But even though that torrid episode was now many months in the past, Lianne still understood very little of what went on in her strange lover’s even stranger head.

  She knew that he regularly enjoyed dressing up in the female versions of the many costumes the organisation had accumulated, many of them designed by Paul himself, and she joined in the charades with eager enthusiasm, forcing him to be her maid and to endure the sorts of indignities and trials that were normally her lot ‘on set’. The results were phenomenal, for once in character, Paul was an inexhaustible lover, ready on demand, whenever his ‘mistress’ decreed.

  ‘You look tired,’ she commented, crossing the room and sitting on the stool in front of the antique dressing table. ‘What have you been up to?’

  ‘Letting Marlon siphon my innermost thoughts,’ Paul sighed. ‘He’s had me lying there, hooked up to his electronic girlfriend, imagining scenes in my head and then making me explain, down to the tiniest detail, anything that hadn’t registered properly in his box of tricks. I didn’t realise that having wet daydreams could be so exhausting.’

  Lianne looked shocked. ‘You didn’t!’ she gasped, accusingly. Paul grinned.

  ‘What, come my load in front of our tame boffin? Hardly, though my imagination was running riot long before the end of our session and I felt really embarrassed whenever he looked at me. Not that he seemed to notice anything except for those bloody screens of his. I tried to see what was on them, but all I could see was a load of gibberish.’

  ‘No good asking me,’ Lianne retorted. ‘I gave up trying to understand all this after the first ten seconds. You wait till you actually go under with that thing, though. That’ll really blow your mind.’

  ‘It really is that realistic?’ Paul narrowed his eyes and Lianne could tell that he still did not believe what she and Ellen had told those of the crew who had not yet had the chance to experience VESTA’s magic at first hand. She nodded.

  ‘And it’s getting even better,’ she replied. ‘According to Marlon, every little extra titbit of data that VESTA consumes is adding to its ability to create a world that’s totally indistinguishable from the real one.’

  ‘I thought you said it could do that already?’

  Lianne looked thoughtful. ‘In a way, it can,’ she agreed, ‘but there are little odd things that let it down. Too many instant scene shifts, for example, and characters appearing out of thin air. One minute you’re on your own, the next there are people all over you with whips and dildos and everything. I did point that flaw out to Marlon and he said he can sort it in a little while.

  ‘Apparently he still needs to run in some background material, but he’s working on it day and night. And he’s also got this new programme he’s about to add. I didn’t understand a word of the technicalities, but he reckons it’s got some sort of artificial intelligence. Throw in enough basic data and it’ll merrily write all the other stuff in all on its own, updating and improving all the time.’

  ‘Sounds impressive,’ Paul yawned. Lianne shrugged.

  ‘Sounds too bloody complicated,’ she said. ‘And I’ve been starting to wonder if it’s really such a good idea, putting ourselves at the mercy of a load of wires and valves.’

  ‘Hardly valves these days,’ Paul pointed out. ‘Though I do take your point. But I shouldn’t worry. I’ve spoken to Marlon at some length and it’s all quite safe. There’s a safety shutdown feature, so if anythin
g should go wrong, VESTA switches herself off after a few hours.’

  ‘Having first fried our brains?’

  ‘No, don’t be silly. We’d just be stuck in VESTA’s little world for a bit longer than intended, that’s all. And don’t forget, everything that happens there is just an illusion. No real harm can come to any of us.’

  Marlon adjusted the throat microphone, studied the twin screens immediately in front of him, and addressed the occupants of the twelve perspex-domed cubicles that stretched away from VESTA in two rows of six.

  In her cubicle, Lianne lay flat on her back, trying to calm her thoughts, but already warm and clammy inside the black latex bodysuit and helmet. It had been Marlon’s idea that they should all ‘go under’ in character, but it had provided him with a lot of extra work, cutting tiny slits in the helmets of those who wore them in order to secure the sticky little electrodes. Lianne gazed along her body, at her wrists shackled to the rings on either side of her corset and at the heavy hobble chain dangling between her ankles, and wondered if that had been totally necessary.

  Marlon’s voice boomed out of the tiny speaker above her head. ‘What I’m going to do is allow VESTA to take an almost random decision as to who’ll be going in as passive and who’ll be active, apart from the three of you who I think would prefer to play your usual submissive roles.

  ‘The original idea was to have separate active and passive stations, but a few simple alterations have enabled me to construct units that will do either. That saves us having units left empty when we’re top heavy on demand for one type or the other. You’ll go in at different times and you’ll be involved in separate scenarios, at least to start with. It may even be that you don’t see all the others while you’re there, but don’t worry.

  ‘The main thing to remember is that whatever happens, it ain’t real, but don’t hold on to that thought too firmly, else you won’t enjoy yourselves half as much. Okay then, here we go. Bon voyage, everybody.’