Chapter Seventeen
THE TWISTING OF THE KNIFE
The Corporal guided me back down the stairs to the basement scullery where I had first entered this house of horrors. He shoved my clothes against my chest and said "dress". I asked him if I could have the mask off. "No" he snapped, so I struggled blindly into my clothes before he dragged me out to the car and guided me in. I told him I needed a piss. "When you get to the station" he said.
At last we arrived and parked. He told me to put the dark glasses on to hide the goggles and, as when I arrived, guided me like a blind man. "Sit" he said in the station concourse and backed me onto a wooden bench. "Count to 100 and then you can remove your glasses and go" he said, thrusting an envelope into my hand.
When I removed the goggles I looked around for him. I had no doubt he was watching, but although the concourse was not exactly crowded he could have been any one of 20 men. I checked the time of the London train. 30 minutes to wait. I looked at the envelope, "To be opened on the train, not before" it said. Hmm, the manipulative bastard was up to his tricks again. Dismissed I might be but he was still twitching my marionette strings. I went for a much needed piss and considered going into a loo to toss off but decided against it. Who knows what instructions the envelope might contain?
Finally, on the train, I ripped open the letter. You would think that after all I had been put through in the last two days I would have approached the letter with weariness, perhaps even impatience. The shaming reality was that even now I was excited to get further orders.
There were two instructions. The first said that I was, on arrival at Euston, to go to the gents and there strip to the waist and wash my arms up to the armpits. My first reaction was that I could not possibly do that because people would see my soiled and marked body and what would they think? It would be too humiliating. Then I realised that was the point. The bastard! I felt sick to my stomach.
The second order read "I have a friend and fellow master in Scotland and we always keep each other informed of how we treat our slaves. To accompany the photos I took, you will write a detailed account of you recent experiences, starting with the words 'Sir, my Master instructs me to tell you about my usage at his hands' This will be posted to the same Box No. as before within 48 hours."
Still the Box No. so even now I was not to be allowed to know the name of the man who had abused me over the last two days, nor even the address of where I had been! There was just this dreadful black limbo where I had been beaten and sexually assaulted by a total stranger I had never seen. And now, as a further twist of the knife, I was required to tell yet another un-named, unknown man all about it. "In detail"! Not for nothing did my master call himself "The Humiliator"!
Would I have to report even on the final act of shame at Euston? Well yes, of course, that would be expected of me too. But would I really be able to go through with it? Then a terrible thought struck me, suppose the Corporal was on the train - was ordered to spy on me to be sure I carried out my orders in full? Unlikely, but I could not be certain. Anything was possible with a manipulative sod like this man. I decided to go into the toilet on the train and strip off to inspect myself and see just what would be on display at Euston.
I peeled off my jacket first. Oh God! It was worse than I feared. My body (and my face) were filthy, all smudged and soiled with the black coal dust of the prison-pit floor and grazed where I'd been dragged over it. Red weals criss-crossed my chest from the "Obedience Test" flogging and my arms were bruised from bondage and my ribs from being kicked. I turned and craned my neck to try and see my back in the mirror. Worse! Oh dear god, much worse. Well, that settled it, orders or no, there was no way I could expose that in a public lavatory. Even the most casual glance would reveal that I had been flogged.
I wondered what my thighs would look like, (thank heavens I did not have to expose THEM in public!) Gingerly I eased my jeans down and had to stifle a sob of self pity at the horror I revealed. Both thighs were swollen and lumpy and discoloured. Some individual welts could be made out in the general mess but for the most part it was just a pudding of beaten meat. Hell, but that had been one severe punishment! But the message was clear - I did not permit - or invite - other men to touch my body. It was not a lesson I was likely to forget!
Back in my seat I agonised about what to do when I got to London. Euston Station always heaved with people at any hour so there was no hope that the lavatories would be empty. Now I had seen for myself how badly my back was marked, there was no way I could show that in public, bent over a wash basin for anyone to inspect. And no hope that the marks might be misinterpreted as scratches caused in a car accident or something. They were whip welts, clear and unequivocal. But then, although I had not seen my back before, my master had. He knew exactly what he was asking me to display. As a man who liked to boast of my obedience, God help me I had no choice.
At the station I made my way to the gents. There are two, one at either end of the concourse, one much bigger and busier than the other. I went to that one. I prevaricated by going for a piss first while trying to decide what to do and looking out to see if I could spot anyone following me.
There were fewer guys around than I expected. Perhaps 8 or 9 but there was a constant churn of coming and going. My heart was banging and my guts were tied in knots. Oh hell, here or there made no difference, all basins were equally public so there was only one thing to do, just go for it. I strode over to a basin and unzipped my jacket and peeled it off expecting six men to point and jeer immediately. Of course no such thing happened. The men at the stalls carried on pissing, the chap nearby finished washing his hands, another carried on drying his hands under a blower. None even glanced in my direction!
I filled a bowl with warm water and immersed my forearms and splashed water up to my shoulders. I soaped my arms and washed right up to my armpits. I did it - oh God help me - slowly. As in s - l - o - w - l - y. And still no one paid a blind bit of notice. Men came, men went. Not one appeared to cast a glance at my man-used and whipped body. Chastened, I rinsed my arms and went to dry them under a blower. Then the door of the caretaker's cubicle opened and he stood in the doorway watching me, a small, elderly black man. Why had he opened his door when he could watch me perfectly well through the one-way mirror of his booth? Because he didn't trust what I was up to and he wanted me to know he had his eye on me! Oh, he knew all right. I put on my jacket and scuttled out flustered and ashamed.
I had expected this public humiliation to be awful. The reality was worse. Not because of the suspicious glare in the attendant's eye, not because no one else had given a damn, but because I now realised that I had WANTED to look in the mirror and catch the sneer of contempt on another man's face or the smirk of recognition from another pervert. Miserably I made my way home, depressed by my own depravity.
And when, that night, I came to write the account of my week-end for the benefit of the unknown Scottish sadist, would I include the bit about the Euston lavatory? Yes, I knew I would. And would I even describe my disappointment that no one had looked at me with leering contempt? Yes that too, for my Master would read it first, before sending it on, and he had a right to know everything.
That night, lying in bed after having tossed myself off, I reflected on the events of the last few days and realised with certainty that I had been trampled down to the very bottom of the pit of depravity. I really believed that. After all, how was I to know that there were far greater depths yawning beneath me? Depths of humiliation which I could not even imagine - yet!