The Secret Circus of Pain and Degradation

Chapter Two-1

Chapter Two

The Secret Circus of Pain and Degradation

It had started, if not innocently, then with only with a lightly wicked sense of fun.

“Hmm,” Amy mused, covertly admiring the lean, muscled form of a circus-hand as he walked past, checking the guy-ropes. “The last time I was taken to a circus must have been twelve years ago, and I’m sure it was, well, not quite so abandoned.”

Paula looked at her with concern. “But you’d only have been about eight then,” she observed. “And you probably went to an afternoon show. Didn’t you like what we saw?”

Amy smiled, a slight twist of the mouth and a glint of cat-green eyes that didn’t quite reveal her thoughts. “On the contrary, maybe I liked it too much…”

Paula nodded sagely, knowing full well what her companion meant, knowing also she was too reserved to use the explicit language that would describe her feelings more accurately. The circus had camped on the very edge of the town, taking up two fields of a run-down farm. Both women understood why—if it had been within the town boundaries, it would have been shut down as an offence against public morals.

The show they’d watched had been scary, sexy and dark. The trapeze artists, male and female, had worn nothing more than thongs and tattoos. The fire-breather had taken a flaming whip to his chained and writhing assistant who had appeared to be—though the only light came from the whip itself—completely nude. The escapologist’s manhood had been clearly outlined in contour-hugging leather briefs—and the chains wrapped in a way that emphasized it—while his female assistants had flirted outrageously with the crowd, moving like strippers and encouraging the young men in the front row to touch them. The ringmaster, immaculate in his suit and top hat and carrying a dress cane, had hypnotized those same front-row young men, turned them into statues and calmly discoursed on the lewd acts it would be possible to perform and which they would instantly forget upon being brought out of the trance, before having them enact passionate kisses on each other. Then there had been the ‘equestrian’ act in which all the ponies had been women, complete with bridles, harnesses, and tails fixed to their rumps—and Amy knew those marks had to have been made by the trainer’s lunge whip…

Even the clowns, miming something as simple as cooking a meal, had contrived to lose most of their clothing, juggle with knives, cover one of the trapeze girls with cream and other substances, and have a young woman from the second row trussed like a turkey to a roasting-pole set up in the ring… or maybe she was an accomplice, judging by the way she seemed to enjoy it. At any rate, there had seemed to be a lot of tying up and general mistreatment of women, and Amy had to acknowledge privately a feeling she’d often tried to ignore: that she found the idea of being mistreated in such ways extraordinarily, moisteningly erotic.

Amy looked about her. While not actually in the shadows, she and Paula were standing towards the end of the line of lanterns marking the entrance to the big top. Amy was a willowy blonde, made taller by the slim line of her body and long legs. Paula stood beside her, half a head shorter, bustier—though constrained in a tight black high-necked dress—and with dark hair piled and caught in a massive decorative clasp, her partner in adventure for this evening. When Amy had suggested the circus, Paula had jumped at the idea. “All those fit, well-hung roustabouts,” were her exact words. “Maybe our lives are too boring. We should join up and run away.” What kind of intuition had led her to mention Amy’s own repeated night-time reverie? In her mind it was a hard life, but also free, bold and filled with s****l opportunity. Much better than the dreary, unimaginative men of this town she’d had the misfortune to fumble with. She was worth more than that.

Most of the crowd was trickling away, some drunk and singing raucously, and all no doubt having much lighter pockets. A number, though, hung back as if waiting for something more to happen. Most were single men, discreet and well-dressed, of all ages from their twenties to their seventies. There were some couples, though it seemed to Amy by the way the women acted they were not the wives of their male companions. And then there was Amy herself, and Paula.

“Should we be finding our way home now?” Paula asked.

“We could,” Amy mused, “but I wonder if something else is about to happen here. See how some of the people are waiting? Maybe there’s a late show—a more adult performance?” Noting Paula’s shocked expression, she smirked mischievously. “Don’t tell me you’re not interested. I’ve slept over at yours, remember? I know you keep those love-eggs in your bedside cabinet—unless you’re wearing them now?—and a riding crop under the bed.”

Paula had the grace to blush deeply. “Yes, I wore them all day,” she replied, her breathing suddenly shallow, “but I took them out earlier.”

Sensing her advantage, Amy calmly appraised Paula. To prolong the moment, she reached out to remove the grips in her hair, allowing the dark mass to fall freely around her shoulders, and smoothed it out.

“So you must be in the mood for… whatever the next show is?”

Paula’s brown eyes widened, and her cheeks began to color up as she considered the possibility.

“Well…” Amy shrugged, as if the matter wasn’t important. “I know I’m not as forward as you, haven’t experimented as much, but maybe this is an opportunity to look and learn… see something that really dark, taboo, forbidden…” Her voice trailed off as she watched the circus hand, now outside the entrance to the big top, talking with the ringmaster and a couple of others. The ringmaster suddenly looked up, his eyes connecting with Amy’s, and a sudden, almost mesmeric, jolt flowed through her. The man was assessing her as coolly as he would a horse he was thinking of buying. She could almost feel the tip of the dress cane he carried, under her chin, raising her face to his… suddenly she shivered.

“Are you cold? Should we go?”

“No. Wait…”

The circus hand was making his way, now, back around the guy ropes. As he passed the two women he held out something, almost carelessly, to Paula, who took it reflexively. And then he was gone, swallowed up into the blackness beyond the oil lanterns.

“Well?” Amy asked, trying to keep the curiosity from her voice. Paula unfolded the paper, read it silently, her lips unconsciously forming an “O.” Impatient, Amy snatched it from her hand. Holding the paper up to catch the glow from a lantern, she read: “The Secret Circus of Pain and Degradation, an entertainment for those with enquiring minds.” In smaller type below, it continued: “Explicit and revealing enactments of the most depraved and terrifying human appetites. Witness the truly debauched excesses of famous emperors, kings and queens through history. Also presenting the unexpurgated re-enactment of Scenes from the Inquisition.”

“Are you serious?” Paula pleaded. “Do you really want to see that?”

Amy smiled sweetly at her companion. “It’s right here, right now. An invitation to a special performance—after the rest of the public have left. We might never get another chance!”

Privately, Paula suspected that degradation, depravity and debauched excesses was probably over-selling what would turn out to be a mildly spicy show that would last just long enough for the single males in the audience to bring themselves off. On the other hand, she did keep a riding crop under her bed, and one or two of her special friends were allowed to use it on her. If nothing else, she might find some ideas worth sharing with them.

This show wasn’t in the big top. Indeed it wasn’t under canvas at all. In the middle of the circus encampment, benches had been laid out inside an area fenced off with wooden palings, the light—and warmth against the night chill—coming from three braziers set around the performance area. Two pairs of stout poles had been set into the ground, one pair at each side of the area and the poles of each pair about six feet apart. Other pieces of apparatus stood in the shadows, and the centre of the makeshift stage contained a cage perhaps six feet on a side and four feet high, presumably a travel cage for one of the circus beasts.

Amy and Paula had presented the handbill and, unlike the men queuing to enter, were waved through without p*****t. A waif of a girl, one of the trapeze artists, still wearing no more than strategically placed ribbons—and, Amy now noted, a metal collar of some sort—conducted them to one of the front benches. She scanned the crowd, noting that many of the performers themselves were sitting or lounging among the paying audience, chatting and laughing quietly among themselves. The women among them were barely dressed, and all had those same metal collars as though they were part of a uniform. Lolling in the shadows, behind the crude benches set out for the audience, half a dozen dogs idly observed the passing crowd through yellow-gold eyes. They were big—large enough, Amy thought, to put their paws on her shoulders if they reared up. They were obviously well cared for, with sleek black fur. When one yawned, it displayed teeth almost the size of Amy’s fingers.

The dogs didn’t hold her attention, though. The cage did. Inside the cage were squashed four young women in tattered dresses – hardly more than rags – that even in the light from the braziers revealed far more than they concealed.

The sudden retort of a whip-crack resounded around the makeshift stadium, and the ringmaster, dressed now in a white shirt open to the waist, and without his jacket, though still wearing his top hat, stood astride the cage. His voice carried easily in the night air.

“Good evening, sluts and whores. Good evening, ladies, since we have two in the audience. Good evening, gentlemen and not so gentle men. And good evening, my fellow artistes.”

“Tonight, we present for your entertainment some scenes from history and other… diversions. Those of you who are paying guests must consider that performances such as this are but everyday pastimes for circus folk, who have no amusements but those they choose to create among themselves. And I would ask you also to remember that while the ensemble before you has played out these amusements to kings and queens, princes and courtiers—in reality the most debauched of all those we have the honor to play before—not a word of what you see should be breathed among those who were not present to see it with their own eyes.”

“Our first scene is this: remember when Tamurlaine the Great took Damascus, he ordered the virgins of the city to be displayed before him. And what then, you may ask! Were the virgins to remain such? Watch, and be shocked!”

With that, half a dozen ‘soldiers,’ wearing rough woolen shirts and carrying riding crops, strolled into the arena. One unlocked the cage and as the girls tumbled out, they were seized and dragged by their arms—and in one case, doubled over and by her long hair—to the centre of the area. As the soldiers shoved the girls casually back and forth among themselves, the odd thwack of a crop punctuating the air, it became apparent that each girl had her hands tied behind her back and was struggling to keep her balance. The pushes became more violent, the girls being thrown almost bodily from man to man, hand to hand, squealing and yelping. And as they passed around the group of soldiers, such clothing as they wore was ripped from them. Yelps were punctuated by the sounds of ripping and tearing, and each time a leg, or breast, was suddenly exposed. Within a couple of minutes at most, all four women were completely naked, unable even to cover their modesty since their hands were bound, and vulnerable to anything the men might care to do.

At that moment another, more commanding, presence strode into the ring. This figure carried a short sword and wore a crown. At his barked command the soldiers seized the girls, even more roughly if that were possible, and presented them to him in turn, each one forced to her knees in front of him. He used the flat of his sword under the chin of the first to force her to look up, regarded her closely, then his boot sent her sprawling in the dirt. The second, then the third, received the same treatment. The fourth had her head drawn up by the hair, and this time the figure snapped his fingers impatiently at a waiting soldier who produced a chain that was placed around the girl’s neck. Turning on his heel, “Tamurlaine” strode off into the darkness, the unfortunate girl stumbling behind him as she tried to rise and being summarily jerked at the end of the chain as she did so.