Lamia (12 page)

The villagers led him away and we
distributed p
acks of food we had brought as
gifts.  They were very grateful and we
were all invited to a feast held in my honour.  There was meat roasted over a big fire and we had wine and beer
.
 
The
evening brought with it
dancing and music from a guitar and a home-made flute-like ins
trument.  M
erriment went on well into the night
and I had almost forgotten why we were there.  Then they dragged the semi-conscious body of Almero to the feast.  Judging by his swollen genitals, he
hadn’t
been enjoying the evening, and his day
wasn’t
about to get any better.  They bound his hands behind
his back and tied his feet to a rope that was fed over a high branch of a tree.  Then they hoisted him a few feet off the ground and swung him, pendulum-fashion, over the fire.  Every time the pendulum slowed down he screamed at the villagers, begging them to push him.  The men and women were by now quite drunk
and sometimes they’d push him but sometimes they’d slow him down.  By the time we turned in for the night, there were two women lef
t watching the slowing pendulum.
Almero’s face and upper body were burnt black and crusty and his shrill screams were getting weaker and less frequent.  All in all it was a very successful trip.
”

I was now feeling very nauseou
s and I think Lamia was beginning to enjoy shocking me.  I
clicked
on my wind-up torch for a few moments, to bring a sense of normality to our surroundings.
  It brought me back to where I was, rather than beside a twitching body being seared over a fire in a distant mountain village.

“Lamia, you’ve watched a man being tortured to death!  How can you possibly describe the trip with such a bland word like successful?”

Again she looked very confused.  She thought for a moment in case there was a buried question she had not noticed.

“Almero was dead which left the way open for Mateo to take over his end of the market.  That was the main objective, but it also meant that word of the Lamia would now spread
over that side of the mountain as well.”

“But they saw you as a real person who ate and drank with them.  Surely this would
have
kill
ed
the legend.”

“Legends are funny things.  By the time that story had reached ten villages I would have
been seen flying
in carrying Almero under one arm and a ready-cooked hog under the other.  Once a legend is resurrected, conditions that were attached to the old legend
are also assumed to be true
.  I just needed to put in an appearance from time to time.  This trip showed them the good and the bad.  The farmers were rewarded and the man who brought terror to their village was punished.  So there you are, th
e true balance: good and evil.”

I think it was because I remembered what Maria was like, that it shocked me so much to see how Lamia
had
handled murder in such a matter-of-fact way. 
When she was describing the theory behind the things she had done, she seemed like a normal person, but when she described the torture and murder of Almero, she spoke as the Lamia. 
I took into account all that she had been through and hoped that the future would see her guiding Mateo into more peaceful methods.
  I wanted to show my disapproval of the way she had acted, but to be honest, she still frightened me a little.

“I take it you had the other three killed in a similar fashion,” I said, hoping she would skip over the details.

“Yes, I must admit to a certain amount of satisfaction, after the things they did to Maria.
  I thought that the punishment should fit the crime, so I waited until Mateo and his bodyguards had gone out and I had the place virtually to myself.  I ordered the mountain-men to tie the three naked and gagged to the whipping frames and then I sent them away.  That just left me and my faithful servant Alejo.

I had a chair and umbrella brought out and a nearby small round table brought over.  I settled down
on my chair
with a bottle of wine while the men waited for their fate to be revealed.  None of the servants could see me where I was; not even the tower guard as I was hidden by the umbrella.  Eventually I opened my bag-of-tricks
and took out the palillo dentado while watching the fear on the men’s faces.  I placed it on the table and then I took ou
t three lengths of fishing line and the crop,
placing them on the table as well.
”

I had to stop her there because I was certain that I did not want
to hear about it
.

“I can see where this is going,” I said.  “If it’s all the same to you can we skip the details?”

Lamia
got
up and walked around my chair.  She stood behind me and gripped my shoulders as if she was going to give me a massage.  Then she put her lips to my ear and spoke in a whisper.

“You didn’t want me to stop when I told you how Mateo took Maria for the firs
t time;
how he stretched the little virgin’s hole.  You didn’t seem to
mind when she had to suck the men’s
cocks, just for food and water.  You even defended the idea of Maria and Lina, running their tongues in and out of each other
’s little slits
.  Then when Maria was lashed to the table with belts, totally at the mercy of the mountain-men, you were on the edge of your seat!”

She nibbled the tip of my ear and ran her hands over my chest, sending thrills of excitement through my body.  This woman
could do anything she wanted to me; I was helpless!  Her tongue then ran down the side of my neck.

“Now you don’t want to hear about the just way they were treated.  Are you a friend or an enemy?”

Her teeth gently closed on the side of my neck.  I felt my pulse pounding as the blood was forced through her grip
, speeding-up my heart
and tensing my body.

“I am a friend,”
I gasped
.

She released her grip and kissed me on the cheek.  Then with a low laugh she sat down again.  I noticed that I was trembling and I could still feel her lips
on
my
face
.
  If she was going to teach me about power, I had a long way to go.  She was incredible!

“Pablo was in the middle and I sat directly in front of him, hitching up my skirt.  I was naked underneath and I let the men
see
me playing with myself as
I
watched their cocks rise.  I ordered Alejo by my side and used one of my hands to stroke his ever-hardening cock through his trousers.  Then
I
made him kneel and I pulled his head to my crotch.  The men’s eyes were bulging as they watched Alejo bring me to climax.

I pushed him out of the way with my foot and stood in front of Pablo, stroking his cock.  Then I looped the fishing line around the base and tied it tightly, making him scream.  I did the same to the other two and then sat down, poured myself another glass of wine and ordered Alejo to fetch four mountain-men.
  While I waited, I amused myself by tapping their swollen cocks with my crop, every time they groaned.”

Lamia was right, I did find it more disturbing to hear how she tortured the men, however much I thought they might have deserved it.  If Mateo and Alejo were under her spell, I was even more so.  Her looks, her mannerisms, even her clothes brought a heightened feeling of sexual awareness to the room, beautiful, powerful and deadly.
  I had to listen on and to fight the feeling that I wanted to possess her; something I felt certain would spell my doom!

“Alejo arrived with the men
and I made it plain to them that I would show them what happened to traitors.  They were over eager to show that they were not traitors themselves.  I took out some rubber bands and placed one on each man’s right wrist, explaining to them exactly what was required.  They dared not disobey me, otherwise I might have thought they were on the side of the other three.

I walked up to Pablo and tapped his cock a little with the crop.  It was now purple and excruciatingly painful to the slightest touch.  Then I sent one of the men behind him.
  I replaced the crop on the table, walked
back
to Pablo and grabbed him by the hair, my face inches from his.
  Glancing away for a second I nodded to the man behind him before returning my gaze directly into Pablo’s eyes.  As the man’s fist twisted its way in between his buttocks, a scream of
terror
and realisation filled the air.  ‘Right up to the rubber band,’ I commanded as I watched him struggle frantically, his eyes bulging in disbelief.
  He was frothing blood at the mouth and his wooden gag was half bitten through before I was invited to inspect the depth.  It was bizarre to see a whole hand lost up his rectum; right up to the
wrist
.  I nodded and he pulled it out, sending spasms of pain through Pablo’s body.  Cesar was next fol
lowed by Leandro.  After screaming all the way through, t
hey
just
hung there sobbing at the end.

I returned to Pablo, grabbed him by the hair and told him that as he was the leader, he should have more than the others.  His eyes were pleading as the next man took his place.  He screamed through
out as each
m
a
n
warmed to the task, ever
eager t
o prove whose side he was on.  W
hen
they had finished,
I whispered in Pablo’s ear, asking if he remembered when a young girl begged him to make them stop.  Then I turned to Alejo and slipped a rubber band over his wrist.  Pablo now
twisted and
strained at his bonds, frantically trying to avoid the pain he could no longer face.  I grabbed his hair and watched every agonised jerk as he found out what Maria felt like, lashed over that table.
  Then we a
ll broke for lunch for an hour, during which
time
t
he mountain-men had told
all
their friends
.
T
hey
gathered in the afternoon, to witness the end.  It was important that they should all understand the punishment for failing the Lamia.”

“Please tell me you killed them quickly in the afternoon,” I begge
d as I felt parts of m
e were
feeling
far more vulnerable than I had ever known.

“Oh no, they had to suffer, otherwis
e the others might have seen weakness.  Can you imagine Maria having asked again about her family, after she was thrown over the back of that chair and given a bare-bottomed spanking in front of everybody?  No, they
had to
learn never to cross the Lamia!

When the others returned they began to mock the sorry-looking trio.  They would tug on the end of the fishing line to make them scream.  Then they took turns with the palillo dentado until I stopped them for fear they should kill the men.  I wanted them to suffer for a little longer.

They were left alone in the sun all afternoon.  Then I returned with Alejo.  He was my personal servant so he had to be totally convinced that he should never cross me.  I told him to watch what would happen to him if I ever suspected he had crossed me.