The Juliette Society(45)

Then I become aware of a bright light bearing down on me from above, warm as the late afternoon sun. I wonder if I lay down in the park for a minute and fell asleep. I wonder if this has all been a terrible dream. My senses tell me otherwise.

My hands are constricted behind my head, as if I’m lying on top of them. There is a tightness around my mouth. I’m dry and parched. I hear rustling sounds, at first right beside me then echoing in the distance. As the unfamiliar details stack up, confusion gives way to fright.

I force my eyes open and I’m blinded by the light. Shadowy figures block the source by moving across it, allowing me to make out my surroundings.

I’m in an old, old theater, looking out into the auditorium from a stage illuminated by a single spotlight. The audience is comprised of men and women dressed for a masquerade ball. They look back at me blankly through eyes veiled by Venetian masks, murmuring expectantly as if waiting for a performance to begin.

I’m reclining on some sort of gynecological chair raised up to waist height. My feet are locked into metal stirrups. My hands, I now realize, are bound tightly underneath the headrest, with rope that scratches and burns against my wrists. I’m gagged by a red cloth. My field of vision restricted by the few inches I’m able to turn and lift my head.

I feel utterly helpless. But I don’t panic. My mind is sharp and clear, buzzing with adrenaline and wiped free of emotion. Resistance, I decide, is useless. Resistance, I think, might make things worse.

Three women, the figures I saw, flutter and swoop around me like birds. They wear egg-shaped hoods made of black chiffon, cut open in a downward curve from the tip of the nose, with eyeholes the size of silver dollars. And matching caped boleros hemmed by a leather halter that runs along the chest and under the arms, leaving their breasts exposed.

One of the women produces a pair of shears and, in one quick fluid movement from neck to hem, snips the dress from my body. I feel the cold steel of the blade as a drip of ice water running from my neck to my belly. The fabric drops like a magician’s curtain. My pale white skin is rose-flushed from the heat. Next, my panties are snipped at the hips. The embarrassment I feel at being exposed makes me squirm.

The first woman falls back. Two others move in to take her place, as if the whole thing has been choreographed for my benefit. One rouges my nipples, applying color with lipstick, rubbing and pinching to smooth it out, leaving them a deep crimson red that reminds me of the brilliant autumnal shades of the oak trees that flame against the silver-blue sky during my early evening walks in the park.

The other uses a pin brush, the kind used to groom dogs, to comb the tight curls of hair between my legs. As the metal rakes my skin, blood rushes to my head and makes me dizzy.

The three women position themselves around me, one on either side, another in front, holding large sprays of peacock feathers up in front of their faces, enshrouding me. And one by one, in rotation, they lower the feathers, fan and sweep them across my body then lift them up again. And then the next. Fan, sweep, lift. Fan, sweep, lift.

They feather my arms, they feather my pits, feather my breasts and feather my nest. I feel my sensitivity heighten, becoming aware of every tiny filament as it dances across my skin, anticipating where the next will fall and the shape it will trace.

The vanes possess my body and all I see are the eyes, electric eyes of blue and rust and green, that stroke and flutter and lash me into a trance. Dividing and multiplying, into a thousand and more, staring down at me. Hungry eyes that want to consume me. And I want that like I’ve never wanted anything before.

A bell rings. The three women peel away in a flash. The auditorium falls quiet. And I’m blinded by the light again, floating towards it, in the silence, in the space that’s left between wanting and being.

A man appears before me, at the foot of the chair, wearing a harlequin mask that’s hooked over his ears, covers his whole face down to his mouth and extends over and around his head. It’s made out of something that looks like burnt leather and molded with a nose, cheeks, and eye sockets – as if he’s wearing a face on top of his face. His naked torso, his broad shoulders and powerful arms, all sharply defined and beautifully contoured, look to me as if he’s been carved from stone. The Renaissance ideal of a man. My ideal of a man. What I can’t see, like the statues in the Vatican, is his sex, which, I imagine, hangs there with intent just below my own, beyond my field of vision.

He steps up and there are no words exchanged, no looks, no niceties or introductions. No foreplay. He grips my legs just above the ankles to steady himself, leans back, looks down, takes aim and thrusts.