The Cyberkink Sideshow (5 page)

Sylvia continued past, and through the next tent where a bazaar of dildos and imaginative sex toys was staged. Beyond this, imitation stone steps led down into the ground through a square trapdoor.
This way to the dungeon
read a sign at the top step.

Sylvia squinted into the hole. The only light she could discern came from dim bulbs at floor level, just enough to illuminate the surface of the stairs. There looked to be some sort of intentional gloomy atmosphere setting going on down there. At least people wouldn’t be able to stare at her in that case. Well, not unless they were kitted out like the bionic man from last night’s performance. She slowly made her way down into the room below, leading Max along behind her.

Looking around the dim space, she suspected it had been created by digging a pit in the ground and roofing over it. Chinks of twilight showed where planks formed the ceiling. A recording of groans and screams and the rattling of chains played continuously. All around the room loomed sinister dark shapes, glints of steel showing here and there in the scant light. A few people browsed racks of unpleasant-looking metal implements.

A figure moved toward her from the shadows–that of a very thickset, muscular man. He wore an executioner’s hood that revealed his nose and mouth, leaving holes for the eyes and the rest of his features covered, and leather trousers and jackboots, and studded leather gauntlets. A nipple piercing gleamed from the hair on his bare chest. The light from the stairs revealed it to be a steel ring threaded with a tiny white skull. He had a cat-o’-nine-tails attached to a hook on his belt.

Sylvia took a nervous step backward.
Oh shit
. He’d seen her, and he was moving over to speak with her.

The man executed a bobbing bow with a strange elegance his physical bulk hadn’t betrayed. “Good evening, madam. I am but your humble servant.”

Sylvia stared at the huge muscles of his biceps and chest. His manner didn’t seem to match his costume. “Who are you?”

“My name’s Vaughn, madam. I design and manufacture torture furniture and apparatus. Would you be interested in trying any of it? My services are at your disposal.”

Cold fear was crawling down Sylvia’s back at the man’s manner and thoughts of what the instruments around the room might be used for, but she had to block it to stop it getting into Max. The bleedback from that might trigger fear aggression, and if that happened she’d be in trouble. This was the first thing she’d been taught in dog-handling training. “What sort of services do you offer?”

“I could torture you, if that’s what you’d like. Or, if you’d like to bring with you a slave of your own, I can torture your slave for your pleasure while you watch.” He glanced sharply at Max. “I can’t torture your dog, though. That’s illegal.”

“Of course.”

“Or, I could just show you the wares I have for sale.”

“Perhaps it’s best if you just do that, then. What...wares...would you recommend?”

“That would depend, madam, on whether you’d be wanting to torture men or women.”

Sylvia was glad of the darkness and the light behind her. It meant Vaughn wouldn’t be able to see how flushed with embarrassment her face had become. She reassured herself that he was a salesman, and it didn’t make sense that he would do anything to her that would jeopardize his pitch. “Well, men, I guess.”

“In that case, any of these items here would be suitable for the amusing and painful pleasuring of the male slave.” He gestured to a wall covered with display cases of nasty surgical objects.

Sylvia stared at some long metal rods formed into elongated S-shapes and arranged in order of increasing diameter. “What are they?”

“Those are sounds, madam. They’re for probing the urethra.”

Urethra. Biology lesson. That meant down some bloke’s willy. All of the men Sylvia had known would have squirmed and cringed at the very idea, and yet there was something appealingly vengeful about it. Why was it men always expected–almost considered it their prerogative–to penetrate women, and why did they conceitedly expect them to enjoy it just because? Why was there no reciprocity in it, and why shouldn’t a woman penetrate a man? Why do people have it in their heads that one way is natural, and anything else is wrong? After a pause, she asked, “Isn’t that dangerous? Can’t you get infections doing things like that?”

Vaughn shook his head vigorously. “All my torture equipment is manufactured to the highest standards from surgical steel and Teflon. If it’s sterilized and used correctly, I personally guarantee no infections will result from it. However, for reasons of safety and ultimate enjoyment of these sounds, I recommend you first restrain your slave. Would you like to see some very fine racks of my own patented design?”

Sylvia glanced back up to the light from the tents above. Much as the sounds were interesting in a perverse way, the dungeon and the man were making her uncomfortable. “Uh, I really have to go now. I don’t have long, and I want to see all the exhibits. If I have time later, I’ll come back and have a look.”

The man’s half-hidden face cracked an unsettling grin. “Not a problem. Come back, any time. I’m always happy to help out a novice domme. After all, everyone was a beginner once. If you don’t manage to get back before the sideshow moves on, you can always mail order any of the apparatus you see here from my website. It’s vaughnstortureshop dot com.”

Sylvia climbed the steps. There was no point hanging around here. Max hadn’t caught so much as a whiff of anything, and going plain clothes wasn’t going to work in this situation. She might as well walk quickly around the rest of the tents and go home. At least then she could say she had patrolled the whole area if the superintendent did ask. Not that if she told him it would make her feel any more adequate. She was doing a half-arsed job here, but she couldn’t see any alternative. If only she’d been assigned something that wasn’t so unsettlingly weird.

She was nearly at the exit when she noticed a shop window crowded with chrome dummies, all of them modeling ornate eye masks reminiscent of the masquerade balls of the fifteenth century and glitzy fetish costumes that didn’t cover very much. Sylvia found her attention drawn to a leather harness. The outer surfaces of it were decorated with tiny scales of iridescent electric blue, like the wings of a butterfly viewed under a microscope, and the straps were riveted together with sapphire-like blue gems and silver rings. At the corner of the shop window, by the door, a placard read,
Costumes custom-made to order. All sizes catered for
.

If she went about here barefaced and wearing ordinary clothes, she’d never get anywhere, and Pikesley would be on her back again. And she ran the risk that someone she knew would recognize her. Go undercover, Pikesley had said. This was as undercover as it got. Sylvia closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. She could do this. One step at a time. If she bought it, she wouldn’t have to wear it. She could decide later.

She looped Max’s leash to a rail outside and pushed open the door. A man with studs implanted in the skin of his scalp, dressed in a leather gilet, looked up and pulled his finger out of his nose at the sound.

“Hi, I’d like to buy the costume from the window, if I may.”

“Cool,” said the man. “Which one?”

Sylvia pointed out the harness to him.

“I can set the machine up now, but you’ll have to wait an hour for it.”

“Is it okay if I pick it up tomorrow instead?”

The man sniffed. “That’s fine. You need to pay for it now, though. It’s not returnable because it’s custom made to your measurements.”

“That’s all right.” Sylvia handed him her card.

The man sniffed again, and ran it through the reader and handed it back to her. “Now all you need to do is stand in my machine for a moment.” The man indicated a door to a little booth.

“Do I have to take anything off?” Sylvia asked nervously.

The man sniffed again. “No. It can see through stuff like that. It’s like them things they use at the airports.”

Sylvia stood still in the dark booth while machines chuntered and thunked and an emerald beam passed over her from several different angles.

After the scan had finished, she thanked the man and went to the door.

“Just before you go,” he interrupted. “Not to sound personal, but if you’re planning on wearing this costume to the Sideshow, you might want to do something about the bush.” He made a pointed glance at Sylvia’s crotch. “That kind of thing doesn’t go down so well here.”

Chapter 3

Sylvia got out of work at three. She dropped Max off at her flat because she had to go out to buy some things.

When she returned, she went to the back of the house and unlocked the kitchen door. “Hey, Max.”

Max raised his head, face breaking into an idiotic dog-grin, his tongue lolling from his lower jaw. He didn’t stand up, but a string of saliva began to descend from his mouth toward the floor.

“Hey, laddie.” Sylvia unwrapped the sheep bone from the carrier bag and held it out to him. “You’re a good lad. Here you go.”

Max took the bone and began to lick it. It would make a horrible bloody mess on the floor, but she would have to clean that up later. She checked Max had water, locked the door, and went back to her car. Even though she’d only been gone a few moments, it was already intolerably hot inside. She turned the air-conditioning on full blast.

After she parked, she walked to the Sideshow and paid for her ticket before immediately going to the shop, where she collected her costume. She’d brought with her a bag containing a butterfly mask with a plume of peacock feathers that she’d bought from a party shop in her lunch break, as well as a pair of thigh-high patent leather stiletto boots and matching full-arm gloves she’d worn years ago when she’d been an undergraduate who went to a fancy-dress party as a witch.

In the locker room, she found a line of changing cubicles at the far end. One step at a time. If she didn’t want to do this, she could back out at any point. Keep it calm and in control. Right. In quick first, lest anyone recognize her. She chose one of the end cubicles and dumped the bag on the bench in there. She’d stuffed the parcel she’d picked up into the bag and left the shop in a hurry, and it was only now in the privacy of the cubicle she dared examine it.

It was a very plain brown box tied up with ordinary string. The box bore no writing or manufacturer’s logo to suggest where it might have originated or what it contained. Inside, the familiar iridescent sequined straps had been wrapped in tissue paper. After Sylvia had unwrapped it and straightened it out, it took her some minutes to work out how it fit to the human body, and which part of it was the front or back, or the top or bottom.

She was going to have to take off
everything
, she realized with an inward cringe. Yesterday she’d thought only about wanting to blend in, and now the thought of wearing this ridiculous thing daunted her. What had possessed her to choose something so extreme? She thought back to the performers on the first night she’d come here, how their costumes were made more ridiculous by only covering parts of the body normally thought of as nonsexual–the clowns with holes cut out of their costumes, the ringmaster with only his shoes and his necktie on. Then she remembered the reason why she’d picked this, because although it was revealing, it still covered the areas that mattered, by means of a strap under the crotch and small removable pasties secured to the straps that passed around the breasts with four narrower straps. And it was a pretty color, and she would be wearing the mask. It wasn’t like it would be possible for anyone to recognize her.

She undressed and bundled her clothes into the bag, trying to avoid catching sight of her reflection in the full-length mirror to the side. She’d rid herself of “the bush” as the shopkeeper had called it last night, using a waxing kit she’d bought from Boots pharmacy, after researching the procedure on the Internet. She had read on most of the sites that it was customary to leave some hair as a “landing strip” as they called it, but it had been too fiddly and she’d ended up removing it all. Pasting the hot wax onto the sensitive areas between her legs had felt weird and sensual, and mustering the courage to rip the hair away had been oddly exhilarating, yet the feel of skin against skin down there and the finished look reminded her disconcertingly of when she’d been a child impatiently awaiting the onset of puberty so she could be like all the other girls. Also since she’d torn out the hairs between her buttocks it seemed to be impossible to break wind silently.

She put on the boots first, thinking it might be hard to bend over wearing the costume. It had been about five years since the only time she’d worn them, and she did wonder if they’d still fit. They were a bit of a close fit around the thigh when she did the zips up, but nothing too bad. It felt silly to be wearing them with nothing else.

The harness came next, her breathing sounding loud in the confines of the cubicle. It took some experimentation to work out what she had to undo in order to get into it. She settled for unbuckling the crotch strap, all of the ones around the waist, and one of the shoulders. It fit perfectly, although the leather creaked every time she breathed, and it wasn’t something she’d describe as being comfortable.

The mask was very light, made mainly from a superthin synthetic material with a silky yet slightly rubbery texture, decorated with feathers and iridescent scales and fine fibers that drifted in the still air. It stuck to the skin around Sylvia’s eyes and the bridge of her nose when she pressed it into position. The sides of the mask had flexible hooks for twisting behind the ears for extra security.