The Interview

Chapter Four

I waited expectantly for the revelation. What was behind the door, I wondered. The silence stretched into a full minute,  so I put a hand to my mouth and gave a polite cough. Nothing. The ticking emanating from the antique-looking carriage clock seemed noisier, each tick louder than the preceding tock or was that merely my impatient imagination?

She suddenly laughed. “That was very obvious you know”. There was a slight note of disapproval in her voice but bit it was good-humoured.

“Sorry Ma’am, you’d got me hooked, and I was waiting eagerly to find out what Celine was going to show you?”

“Then I am going to have to disappoint you”. She glanced at her gold wristwatch and then at the clock on the mantelpiece. “Hmmm, one of them is out by a good five minutes” she noted. “I am feeling a trifle weary, so I think you will have to excuse me for today. I will be delighted to see you again tomorrow; I start with an early walk in the park and take breakfast late. Shall we say eleven am” She gave me a big smile? “Besides, I want to….to think through things a little more. I’m old and old people are not always good at recollecting all the significant events of their past.”

I opened my mouth, but she wagged a finger at me.

“Now now, don’t you start trying to soft-soap me, telling me I’m not old or shower flattery on me regarding  my mental state.” She chuckled. “You know I can’t even remember what I had for breakfast this morning, orange juice, coffee and….no, it's gone?”

I stood up to take my leave. “That probably makes two of us ma’am, I don’t think it’s just a problem of age, breakfast has always been a case of ‘grab and go’ with me, I might be OK with this morning but thinking back to yesterday….?

She laughed and shook my outstretched hand, and I made my way quietly to the door, leaving her sitting still and once again staring into space. Was she looking to find and rewind events from her youth, from wherever they had been stored or merely trying to remember what she’d had for breakfast, I wondered?

*****

“It was a bacon sandwich, a huge one,” she said triumphantly and with a certain smug degree of satisfaction.

“Pardon, ma’am.”

I was back in my deep comfortable armchair with a full coffee cup to hand ready to listen when she resumed her narrative.

“Yesterday’s breakfast. I told you I couldn’t remember what I had eaten, remember”

I nodded.

“Silly of me, I couldn’t remember because I didn’t have it here in the hotel, that’s why. I went for my morning walk later than I usually do and went much further than I normally do, then I spied a café on the other side of the railings near the park entrance. My nose detected the distinct aroma of bacon frying. I needed caffeine, and goodness that bacon smelled delicious, a real working men’s greasy spoon type café, I can’t remember the last time I was in one of those!”

I smiled. “A bacon butty complete with tomato ketchup” I presume.

“Lashing of it and a fried egg on top plus a huge mug of coffee complete with a couple of hash browns” she chuckled and added, “It was divine”.

“Well, you seem to have survived it.”

“No harm done” she agreed. “Now then, where were we?”

“Celine was about to open a door down in Darcia’s cellar as I recall.”

“Yes,” she whispered. “Darcia’s cellar, that was I suppose the second stage of the journey across my personal Rubicon, a journey of no turning back, no possible U-turn to normality!”

I waited and took a sip of coffee while she gathered her thoughts together before resuming her recollections.

“Celine was giggling as she opened the door. She opened it a trifle to peep in then turned back to me.”

“Time to see a poor doggie,” she said opening it fully and walking in with me following on behind as another agonised scream sounded from within and I heard the voice of a distraught man begging, really begging for the first time in my life.

“Please, please, no more, mercy for god’s sake, no more, have pity, no more, please, please….”

“Très voix forte,” Celine remarked at least it sounded something like that.

“If you mean this pups got a  good pair of lungs, then I quite agree,” the woman whom I presumed to be Anne said turning around as we entered, “Good job Dar invested in quality soundproofing, this one could wake the dead!” She looked down at the man in front of her. “Which is what this miserable piece of shit will be if it tries to bite me again”.

I followed Celine as she strolled over to look at the naked man strapped securely to a low whipping bench, his bottom raised, and his head down low, arms and leg strapped securely to the legs and a thick strap around his waist. He was visibly struggling but going nowhere not with those thick heavy-duty straps restraining him.

“Oh, poor puppy, is Anne being cruel then?” Celine had gone to the front of the bench. She bent down to look into the young man’s face, ruffling his hair at the same time. “Poor doggie but it’s for your own good you know; you have to learn to be a good puppy, or the nasty cane will hurt your rumpy-pumpy”. She laughed in his face and stood up. “I heard him talking, that was very naughty, may I?”

“Sure, be my guest”  the woman I presumed was Anne said handing a long thin whippy cane to Celine, “my arm was starting to tire anyway”.

Celine laughed and swished the cane through the air a couple of times. “That would be the first time I’m sure. One rarely gets tired when delivering a good flogging as we both know!”

She gave the cane one more slash then holding both ends bent forward flexing it ominously in front of the helpless man’s face. I moved so that I could see him better. I was surprised; this wasn’t what I was used to at all. This was no flabby paunched, balding middle-aged businessman paying someone like me to get his rocks off. Nor, I noted, was Anne the traditional glamorous stiletto-heeled leather-clad Dominatrix the perverts invariably expected. I’d had to doll up countless times in such attire for my clients, and those heels hurt my feet, stockings and suspenders. Yuk! Give me tights or better still a pair of comfortable jeans every time. Plus I found that my leather corsets and the like adopted a specific odour once you’d worn them a few times and worked up a sweat whipping some fat bastards arse.

Anne naturally hadn’t bothered with any of that male fetish stuff.  Why should she? Totally one hundred per cent the opposite. Not a hint of makeup and she had plastic curlers in her thinning grey blonde hair. Cheap plastic curlers complete with rubber bands! I estimated her age to be maybe sixty, sixty-five(ish). Not a great beauty without any warpaint, the sort of hatchet-faced respectable matron, I could imagine teaching ten-year-olds their times tables or glaring at the parsimonious while handing over the collection plate on a Sunday morning. Tatty white plimsolls, blue slacks and a baggy white sweater with the sleeves rolled up did surrogate duty for the leather catsuit and boots.

She was neither very tall nor very broad but had a sort of imposing presence that you felt immediately. Not a woman to trifle with or who would suffer fools easily, I thought. 

She gave me a quick smile, and a casual wave of acknowledgement then fished in her pocket for a box of matches and a packet of cigarettes, struck a match which briefly filled the dead air with the reek of sulphur and then puffed away calmly watching Celine.

Celine looked up and beckoned me to join her. “New?” she queried Anne, who promptly nodded and withdrew her cigarette long enough to reply.

“Brand new, hitchhiking down the Great North Road in that bad storm day afore yesterday, Dar stopped with an offer of a lift to London and a bed for the night. An irresistible offer the randy fool couldn’t refuse, no doubt expected fringe benefits the way Dar still goes around flaunting herself at her age!” she finished on a slightly disapproving note.

Celine giggled and ruffled the man’s curly hair again. No, not a man a youth I saw. “Did puppy boy think he’d be mounting a hot mature bitch then, poor puppy, not what you expected at all, eh, boy”?

He wasn’t a man nor a boy, but a well built muscular youth, maybe nineteen or twenty. Dark and very good looking. Heavy growths of blue-black stubble already decorating his chin and neck but my eye was drawn to the opposite end of his anatomy. Somebody, almost certainly Alice had flogged his bottom into a bloody bruised swollen mass of flesh. There were livid raised welts all over many oozing thin tendrils of blood, some joining together forming red rivulets that ran down to drip on to the concrete floor.

I’d been in the punishment business for several years by then and administered plenty of beatings, even a couple of times in a duo scenario bit never, never anything to match that bottom. Christ, that must be absolute agony. How the hell could he stand the…I saw a small bottle on the floor, smelling salts I suspected. Evidently, he couldn’t stand it, so Anne had a solution to hand.

“Help me, for the love of God help me, please, please” His eyes caught mine. Help me, I’ve been kidnapped, and these bitches are torturing me, help me” Terrified eyes, pleading eyes, eyes that showed both anger, raging anger but also fear and helpless frustration.  Eyes I realised that I had seen once before. They were the eyes of that ‘horse-man’ in the photos Celine had shown me in the café. The eyes that had nuked my pussy so effectively; otherwise, I would not have been there starring into their equivalents.

 I shivered, I was experiencing the same reaction as before, and my initial shock was again rapidly diminishing. His eyes were locked on mine, and I saw his expression slowly change from one of hope, through resignation and then to terror once more as he realised his pleas had fallen on deaf ears. I know it wasn't nice, but a jolt went right through me at that moment as my pussy went from zero to a hundred in one jump. 

“Bad boy, bad, dog, bad, bad puppy” Celine chided tapping the business end of the cane on her left palm. She turned to Anne. “You told it the basic rules I suppose?”

Ann nodded. “Dar did,  straight after I stripped the cunt down to bare hide. Gave it a  little taster with her paddle as a welcome warm-up afore she handed the cur over to me! Animals like him don’t talk, don’t think, don’t do nowt, period, unless permitted by their owners. This one’s too dumb so far to learn that, wants to yap every time I take the rubber bone out of his mouth”.  She removed her cigarette and used it to point at a discarded gag on the floor.

Celine shook her head in mock sadness. “But he’s still only a puppy, so new and not even house trained yet I expect. Still, that is naughty, very naughty puppy. Doesn’t everybody hate silly yappy doggies?”  She smiled sweetly at the dumbfounded youth and then slowly walked around behind him. He tried to follow her with his head, but his restraints wouldn’t allow it. I saw him tense, and his eyes caught mine again in a silent plea. His mouth opened, but he caught himself and made only a soft moaning sound.

That look again. Oh, yes, I remember it hit me again. We both knew what was about to happen, yet there was no way I would interfere in this horrendous scenario. No way  I realised as my damp pussy spasmed yet again, it wasn’t horrifying at all, it was wonderful, truly mind-blowing in such a delightfully sadistic pussy tingling way.

She paused to look at me. “Do you think that was truly wicked?”

I considered for a moment then nodded slowly. “So, what happened”.

She laughed. “Well, we didn’t decide to stop for a nice cup of tea and hold a Mother’s Union meeting. I can tell you that!”.

Her mischievous eyes sparkled with long remembered treasured memory as she took a dainty ladylike sip from her cup of coffee before resuming her narrative.

He looked at me, and for a long, long second, I looked back straight into his very soul. Maybe he looked into mine, but if so, I doubt he liked what he saw. I turned to Celine and quietly said, “Flog him, flog him hard, make this dog howl for us”. Oh God, the way I felt as I said that. I couldn’t stop myself; it was my pussy talking not me, and I didn’t care about them, I wanted him to scream for me and me alone at that moment.

“And he did?”

“Oh, my yes, from the very first stroke Celine gave him he started to scream. Not just scream but to howl, unconsciously howl like the dog they intended him to become. You can’t even begin to imagine? I appreciated what Anne had said about soundproofing. His screams reverberated around that cellar dungeon room and under other circumstances might have triggered one of my migraines but not now this was just too delightful. Music to my ears as Celine ruthlessly used her slender instrument to play her own composition on his flayed buttocks.  There were no preliminaries, no tune-up; she launched in full volume with the very first cut she delivered with a precision born of practice. Six strokes and he fainted.

“Merde!” Celine snarled and gave the silent slumped figure the hardest stroke yet.  She turned to me ”Its hide will soon toughen up, here” She handed me the cane.

“Yeah, makes my fucking job harder though” Anne grumbled dropping her cigarette stub and crushing it under one foot. She bent to retrieve the small bottle and with the stopper removed wafted it a few times under the youth's nose till he began to move.

Celine laughed and winked at me. “She jokes, I think. She will have broken its spirit long before its hide is turned into leather. Come on doggie, no sleepy heads when this lovely lady wants to burn your bottom too”. Her voice took on a hard note, and she grabbed a handful of hair and shook the youths head roughly from side to side.

There was another long silence as the mantle clock ticked remorselessly on, and I wondered if  I should cough again and risk another rebuke.

“I can remember it as if it was yesterday” She continued speaking slowly, and a shiver shook her small frame. “Like yesterday. I gripped that cane so hard my fingers ached I yearned to hurt him, to make him scream for me but it was I recognised, that final bridge I was about to burn, and I relished that thought. “ I couldn’t resist going to stand where Celine had first stood so I could also look down upon him. Look at the wretched creature fate had delivered to me and brought so low, so helpless, so vulnerable. Once again, our eyes met. His mouth opened as if to speak, but no sound emerged because I raised a finger to my lips to silence him, shaking my head as I did it. Words would have spoiled the moment for me, and in any case, there was nothing he could say that would make the slightest difference.

I smiled down at him. Mine for that precious moment, all mine to do as I liked without restraint. I knew instinctively that neither Celine nor Anne would interfere unless I did something stupid or dreadful. Maybe not even then! Just as Celine had done, I flexed that thin length of bamboo just as I had done on fifty perhaps a hundred occasions in the past in my private dungeon. Never before like this though, never without constraints, without limits where no safeword even existed to frustrate my sadistic yearnings. A secret little world where compassion was not in anyone's nature nor mercy in the vocabulary.

This terrified tortured youth was no middle-aged obese businessman with a gross revolting body orchestrating my every move courtesy of his fat wallet. Cowering before me in mock terror and yet the true master of the situation with me a mere flunky pandering to his pathetic fantasies. An insignificant whore with a whip! A whip under his control, not mine!

For the very first time in my life, my lips twisted into a smile that I was to repeat a thousand and more times. A smile of sadistic anticipation, a smile that said I have the power, absolute power over you and you are but an animal for me to do with as I want, whatever I want and when I want to do it! My sadistic lust far outweighs any sympathy I may have for your wretched plight. I want to hurt you and I will! He silently mouthed just one word up at me “please”. I licked my lips, pouted a wet kiss at him and moved to where I could get a good view of the target area. I heard a vague rasping whisper “noooo”.

Anne and Celine hadn’t left me much to aim at. I’d heard the expressions ‘skinning alive and tanning the hide off’ and between them chiefly Anne, that is just what they had done. One lesson I learned there and then was that of restraint. I’ve broken many a wild creature in since that first time, but I limit the damage. I’m a sadist, not a psychopathic killer. That youth had been taken too near the edge and far too quickly. I knew if I just so much as touched that bleeding brutalised black and purple mass with the tip of my cane he’d pass out again. For a second, a brief moment, a feeling of sympathy and compassion welled up in me. A feeling immediately stifled by my overpowering desire to inflict pain upon the poor boy, to assert my absolute unquestionable authority upon his helpless writhing body. 

“I wouldn’t use his ass Luv” Anne drawled. “ I reckon I might have overcooked that a mite but Dar said she wanted him broken in double-quick. I should tickle his thighs a bit dear, plenty of fresh meat left there to work on.”

Celine clapped her hands together. “Perfect, let us see if you can make it sing for its supper for us”.

“Wait a mo then,” Anne said as she saw me readying myself. “Talking of supper,”  she crossed to a corner of the room and retrieved a couple of large tin bowls and a small low-level platform. She thrust the latter under her captives head and then placed one bowl directly in from of him — the other to one side.

“Now puppy” she addressed him firmly holding his head in one hand over the bowl. “You didn’t want your nice tasty doggie chunks earlier, did you? Now you be a good boy. If we  see you with your muzzle deep in this bowl slurping up your breakfast, you can have the water bowl as well after, and maybe, just maybe this nice young lady won’t get too cruel, eh?”

Anne tightened her grip on his hair pulling his head savagely back and up, then bent down to put her face close to his. “We don’t waste good pet food in this house dog; you eat what we give you and lick your bowl spotless. If you don’t eat it now you’ll eat it later, or tomorrow or the day after, but you will eat it eventually dog, and in time you’ll show your gratitude by licking my hand for feeding you so nicely! Maybe it’s a  little too dry for you, eh, and lacking a certain something, maybe I can improve the flavour a bit?” she finished with a cruel laugh.

She picked the bowl up and spat on the dry looking brown lumps then stabbed her cigarette butt into the centre of the mix before setting the dish back down. She stood up and nudged the awful mess in front of his disgusted face.

“Nothing but the best for Madam’s pups,” she said with a mischievous wink and nodded towards the far corner of the room. 

I looked over to the worktop where she’d collected the bowls. My God, I thought its incredible! Next to another couple of bowls lay a can opener and several dog food tins from a well-known brand, one of them empty laying on its side with the top hanging almost off. Seems almost innocuous now doesn’t it but looking at that empty tin and all that it implied. That was probably my second ‘moment’ following on from the photos Celine had shown me in the coffee shop. 

The girl I’d seen upstairs, yes but perhaps no more than an over abusive top dyke and her submissive fem! One of my rare female clients liked to sit and watch while I heavily chastised her younger girlfriend once a month. Thinking back, thrashing that reluctant young madam was probably the nearest I’d got to anything remotely non-consensual.

That simple can of dog food though, I stood there cane in hand thinking of all it implied for the wretched youth before me. The callous way Anne had soiled what they proposed to feed him on, feed him like a dog and treat him in a manner no loving owner would ever contemplate. My mind, as they say, was thoroughly boggled!

Celine was standing opposite me idly examining one of her long fingernails with a frown on her pretty face apparently oblivious to the enlightening little scene I had just witnessed. Was such indifferent cruelty so familiar to her, I wondered? She looked up and smiled at me then made a whipping gesture, a clear invitation to proceed.

The swish, the scream, the satisfying sound as the bamboo bit hard and deep into soft white skin — the ridge of bruised flesh that immediately arose to mark my omnipotence over the helpless creature.  I delivered a second and a third.

“It’s not eating, sweetie” Celine chided.

I remember gritting my teeth. It must have been screaming, but strangely I can’t seem to recall other than the first one. I gave it the better part of a dozen and more some on one thigh and the rest on the other. By the time I was finished that metal tin was banging around as it thrust its head deep into the bowl, frantically slurping up its dinner or whatever it was. He had it all over his face when Anne kicked the bowl away, and it looked and smelt awful. She thrust the water bowl toward him, and he plunged his face in desperately tonguing the cold liquid out.

Anne picked the food bowl up looked inside then delivered a meaty slap to his rump, making him jump and slop water everywhere with an agonised scream. “Next time dog” She bent and showed him the bowl, “I want to see my beautiful face in the bottom of this dish otherwise rumpy-pumpy  gets another immediate roasting!”

She looked over at me. “Gotta talk to them a little at first, they gotta learn and learn quick. After that, it’s just one-word commands plus pointing and finger clicks. Don’t usually take too long. Some, of course, are dumber than others, but they all learn in the end”.

I stared at her, then at the cane in my hand then down to the youth still frantically slurping up water and finally to the vicious bleeding stripes I’d just created on his bare thighs. Oh, how at that moment I wished his arse was a pure, unsullied expanse of white flesh so that I could ply that cane all over it!

“Come,” Celine said, taking the cane from my hand and casually tossing over for Anne to catch. “let’s go see the rest”. She pointed to a nearby door. “Da owns this house and the ones either side, Anne lives in one, and a couple of her dancers rent the other. Young female dancers she is very friendly with ” She finished with a suggestive wink.

“Nice girls! Anne added, replacing the youths water dish with his food bowl. “Lick it clean, mutt! They just love helping out down here.” She looked up with a grin and nodded to the nearest wall. “So, no problems with neighbours if anything were to go wrong with the noise proofing, eh?”

I nodded and went to follow Celine. Behind me, Anne called “Feel free to come back and see us any time” There was a swish and another agonised scream. “I’m sure dog here would love to play with you again”.  She finished with a nasty chuckle.

“Incredible,” I said to Celine. “Absolutely incredible….I mean here just a stone’s throw from King’s Cross station and you have these…these…”

“Nobodies” Celine interjected.  “The world is a big place, London is a huge city, and no one cares or gives a damn when one of them goes poof into thin air most times! If they do care, then too bad. But we care and look after them so sweetly!” she added with a laugh.

We were in a small, musty brick passage that made a tight right-angle turn. Were we still in the same building or next door? I didn’t know. Celine opened another heavy door into another passage or what at first glance seemed to a narrow passageway. It wasn’t I realised a moment later.

It was another old cellar divided up into roofless cubicles by walls of newer bright yellow coloured bricks. Each cell for that’s they were fronted by iron bars and a narrow iron gate. The ceiling composed of the same black bars spaced a few inches apart — three larger on the left with an open space at the far end and four smaller on the right. The ones on the right differed in that the iron bars that formed the ceiling were a lot lower, only about four feet in height.

“Da’s private cells and kennels” Celine gestured along the row. Cells on the left dog houses on the right.” She laughed again. “It’s a bit, how you say, complacent, no…complicit….”

“Complicated”.

“Oui, yes complicated. She can have Anne push up or sink those top bars to change height if she wants”. She laughed again. “If a dog or a slave makes her very angry she sometimes drops it so low they have to wriggle around on their bellies in the dirt like snakes, very funny yes? Come let us see the animals” She giggled. “Like a zoo, non?”

Four of the seven enclosures were occupied. Again, I thought back to what I’d said only a minute or so before. Incredible, four human beings, imprisoned, helpless, four individuals held captive totally against their will and for one purpose and one purpose only. To provide entertainment and pleasure for the woman who had captured them, the woman who’d caged them down here, the woman who claimed ownership, no a woman who actually did own them. Incredible!

“Two and two” Celine observed clinically. “Two dogs and two slaves”. We walked a few feet so that we could see into all four occupied cells. “Well trained,” she said with approval glancing around. “but what else with Anne looking after them” she finished with a nasty giggle. “So happy in their little doggie houses. How do you call them in English?”

“Kennels” I replied and added, “Please stop that Celine!”

“Stop what?

“Stop playing me for a fool; your English is as good, probably better than mine!”

Celine threw back her head and laughed. “So you caught me out, oui, I mean yes. You spoil my bit of fun”. She scolded, turning to grin at me. “My mother sentenced me to seven years hard labour at an expensive English ladies college, two junior, five senior but I survived!” she finished with another laugh then became serious. “It gives me a useful edge at times; not everyone is as perceptive as you! Look though, see how they stand awaiting their Masters, so well trained.”

She was right. All four occupants were standing right at the front of their cells where they had scrambled the moment the two of us entered. Well trained indeed, I observed but noted standing was clearly the wrong term to apply to two of them!

Two ‘human male dogs’ knelt upright or as near upright as they could in the low pens to the right. They held their hand out in the ‘beg’ position only they were not hands but leather balls, or rather a type of wrist mitten with a ball and pad shaped like a paw.

“Their hands…?” I started to ask.

“Paws, front paws” Celine corrected me. “These stupid animals have no hands, no fingers, not anymore, they don’t need them for anything now do they, silly?”

I remember slowly shaking my head. “No,…..no, I suppose not”.

“Same with their back paws” She pointed and snapped her fingers at the nearest caged occupant. “Dog, turn!” she twirled one finger in a circle.

The unfortunate man, no, the unfortunate creature promptly dropped to his hands and knees, shuffled around through a hundred and eighty degrees and instantly resumed the same humiliating position but now facing the rear of his simple enclosure.

“Only little legs” Celine observed pointing again. “Some owners prefer little both for front and at the back, but Da says it makes them move too slow, so only back little legs for her puppies”.

I remember being puzzled for a moment until I twigged what she meant. What I’d initially taken for some sort of garment was not. A wide sheath of leather circled the ‘man dog’s lower thigh and upper calf strapping the two tightly together. His bent knee supported by another paw pad. The result meant that he, it, would be permanently forced to crawl on hands and knees unable to stand upright.

“How long, how long does he stay like that?” I asked wondering how painful it must be. At the very least, it must be horribly uncomfortable plus the sheer humiliation. I remembered the girl upstairs crawling to heel, but this was far worse. I had my third ‘moment’ as I pictured the elegant long-legged Darcia stepping out leash in hand with such a dog obediently at her heels. Talk about power! I remember wondering if there was any chance of borrowing a vibrator and visiting the loo for a quiet private ten minutes.

Celine shrugged. “Who cares. The longer, the better for it, I think. At least it can move quicker. Dar likes to put them in her car and take them somewhere private to give them a run out sometimes. Some owners bind up their front legs the same way, but they are good only as lapdogs, too slow, but they make a good pet for the house. She laughed “Or for the bedroom. Da trained a lovely girl poodle puppy for a girlfriend of mine. Poor puppy does not need to go very far other than to do her poopies. She keeps it in a basket near her bed” Celine finished with a giggle and rapidly ran a wiggling tongue sensuously around her lips several times. “very well trained!”

I remember shaking my head. It was a different world. A completely different world. A world that as far as I knew only existed within the pages of some of the more extreme sadomasochistic books available from one or two discrete sources around Soho square.  No Amazon or internet and the like back then and the fetish scene was mainly underground. The difference of course that what I was looking at was real! No, not only real but to the likes of Celine, Anne and Darcia, also perfectly normal. Incredible.

“Want to see it up close?” My companion asked. She gestured to a catch on the door. On this side, I realised that the entrance doors were split rather like the traditional doors in a stable stall. Presumably to allow an ordinary person to enter or if the iron ceiling were lowered, it would enable the lowly occupant to enter or exit.

Celine flicked a catch with one finger and laughed delightedly. “Simple, no? I can do so and the dog it cannot. One teeny little move with one tiny finger and the door is open for me.” She gestured to the occupant. “It cannot, never, not with its clumsy paws; it is forever trapped. Poor sad dog” she giggled.

“Do they ever come off?” I asked. “Their hands, I mean their paws, those leather mitt things.”

“Maybe, maybe not, I think perhaps some people do so to cut nails. These no need, Anne removes them, so they have no bother”.

Removes them! You mean she pulls them out?” I gasped in horror a vision of some ghastly WW2 Gestapo interrogation coming to mind. Strange, I remember reflecting on that while I was heading home later. Had I behaved all that differently flogging that wretched youth, given the condition he was already in?”

Celine shook her head. “No, I know people who would do that with no thought, but Da is too kind, Anne used to be a nurse she gives them a…how you call it, with a needle?” She made a gesture bringing the index finger and thumb on her right hand together.

“Injection and you are doing it again missie”.

“Non, I forget the right word genuine this time. It stops them feeling pain when she pulls them out”.

The clock ticked loudly as once again, and there was a lengthy pause, silence in the plush sitting room while she stared sightlessly out of the window. A  window for her that was looking back through the years and not at the red double-decker buses and black taxi cabs undoubtedly passing below. I was back in the present, but she was still in the past in that cellar room. Idly I wondered if it still existed and what had happened to Anne and Darcia?

She suddenly shivered and collected herself. “Silly is it not. I have done many things, horrible things to such animals over the years, cruel things but never…..” Her voice trailed off, and she sighed. “I suppose we all have our limits. I never went in much for body modifications like that. I find this modern habit of piercing everything alarming. They have a young waitress here, but I had to ask them not to let her serve me. Nothing whatsoever against the girl she seems very personable and efficient, it's just I feel so queasy when I see the piercings and the horrible way she has stretched her earlobes”.

I smiled politely. “I’m surprised they allow it in this type of upmarket hotel?”

“Why ever not?” she instantly snapped back. “It’s the trend among young people today and some not so young so who am I to criticise” She laughed. “Shit” She abruptly put a horrified hand to her mouth. “Whoops, excuse me,  but I was going to say, who am I to say anything about anything a little odd given my background. Anyway, I know they have serious staff recruitment problems. The chain that took them over is apparently nothing like as benevolent with wages as when it was in private hands”.

“And the service. Nothing a few strokes of the cane couldn’t improve?”

“Ah, given how it used to be maybe years ago,  more than a few and on a good many lazy bottoms starting with the new owners” she agreed with a chuckle reaching for the coffee pot, hefting it for a moment then putting it down. “Still warm and half full, a little early perhaps to order more”.

I grinned. “You could ask them to warm it up a little.”

She giggled like a schoolgirl. “The prices they charge, maybe I should ask for a doggie bag, or perhaps bottle! But I better not. I do like it here, and I am far too old to find a new place to stay when in town.”

I nodded and waited as she picked up her thoughts again.

“Well, I suppose I did perhaps have double standards” she admitted. “ I never went in for the sort of intimate body additions some owners preferred, nipple and nose rings, that sort of thing. I’ve seen some shockers.  But I had no objection to exotic tattooing and of course the branding iron!”

I shuddered, which caused her to laugh in a rather unpleasant way.

“On reflection” she noted, “maybe Anne was considerably kinder than I was, the animals she declawed might have been shocked at what she did to them, but at least they were spared the pain. Whereas when I used a branding iron….” She sighed. “Well, it was as much about humiliation and total debasement rather than the pain or pains sake. The ultimate demeaning touch in their irreversible transformation as they became mere beasts, to carry forever the proud mark of their owner burnt into their miserable skins. Pain fades from the memory quickly, but a brand on the hide is there forever!”

“Forever?” I echoed.

She nodded. “No underground railway in this world, no abolitionists, no safe states, no parole. No soft left-wing sentimentality pushing for early release, nothing but a life of hell under the kiss of their owner's whips and many other cruel whims.” She paused again then smiled softly and added emphatically “….and I was to love every single fucking minute of it!”