Alexander Trocchi - Thongs

"You needn't worry about expense," he said with a smile. "You have a rich congregation."

"Will they like me?"

"They will obey you."

"Can I chose new retainers if I wish to?"

"Of course."

"I know a man."

"Ah, you have one in mind?"

"My personal Whipmaster," I said. "A Glasgow cobbler. It was he who groomed me to be what I am."

"Excellent! We should employ him at once!"

"Tomorrow I shall fetch him. I'll want you to come with me."

"Gladly, my Lady!"

"I like you, Harry."

"I like you, Gertrude!"

I smiled at him. "Why did you call me 'my Lady?'"

"In public, Gertrude, I shall always call you that in future. We must preserve the dignities of the Order. Mr. Oakes had become too lax. Many suspected it. You, Gertrude, must be a disciplinarian from the beginning."

I watched the cars arrive from my private apartment on the top floor of the big house: Rolls Royces, Daimlers, Talbots, and many others. Two uniformed attendants were directing the parking. Harry had already gone downstairs and I assumed he was occupying himself with the more important guests among the Members, for of course I found out at once that our Order, like all earthly orders, admitted of privileges for the rich and powerful. Harry had explained a great deal of this to me. Mr. Oakes had been a millionaire. Sir William L. was a great landowner. How then had I been chosen? In what way could I enrich or bring power to the Order? All Harry could say was that Oakes himself had on more than one occasion referred to this kind of corruption within the Order, to its being spoiled by wealth and privilege, to the possibility of its degenerating into a private club in which the wealthy could indulge in petty obscenities, and it was Harry's opinion that a stricture must have come from the Holy Seat itself both to Sir William L. and, perhaps through him, to Oakes, for at no time, Harry said, had either man impressed him as possessing a holy zeal for the commission of their trust. There was too much amusement, too many gatherings which were merely lascivious, too much hiring of professional exhibitionists from without the Order, couples who would dance in the nude and copulate at the same time, sleek-bodied women of various races and preferably of Lesbian tendencies who would rub and lick each other's sex for the delight of Members; in fact, in Harry's opinion, and that seemed to be borne out by the fact that those Members who actively participated in flagellation were becoming fewer and fewer in number, the big house was in danger of degenerating into a profitable brothel. There, he suspected, was the reason for my election. Indeed, Oakes' last letter to his Grand Painmaster, Sir William L., had hinted at this. New blood was needed in a decadent sect. "More blood," Harry said with a smile, "more blood and less titillation." It seemed that our Congregation had swollen to two hundred members and that not five percent of those members had appeared more than once for flagellation.

All this worried me as I watched the Members arrive in their fine cars. How on earth would I be able to control two hundred idle and lascivious men and women, some of whom, according to Harry, were very prominent in public affairs in this part of the country! What if they refused to obey me? How could I hope in one night to clear away all the corruption which my predecessor had allowed to come to exist during the ten years of his office? What if I was faced with mutiny? Harry had done his best to console me. He would be there at my right hand. Every one of the two hundred had sworn to obey under the penalty of Excommunication, and that, in the Order of Pain, meant death. Again, some Members would be firmly on my side, Mr. Bing for example, and Mr. Duval, and the redoubtable Mr. Coldstream. And I was not to forget that Sir William L. would be present, incognito of course, for none of the Members knew him except as an ordinary Member. No, in Harry's opinion, my Congregation would obey.

But would it?

I had no means of knowing in advance.

"Is everything ready, Willie?" I said.

Willie, who had been reading the evening paper, looked up. "Aye," he said.

The flogging room in the basement had been altered. Willie himself had attended to the installation of the new fixtures. The whipping board had been removed. Metal rings had been sunk into the floor and ceiling. Victims would now be stretched as I had been when I delivered myself over to Willie's doting punishment in the back shop of the boot maker's in Cumberland Street.

New instruments had been provided. No expense had been spared. Somehow Willie's company was a great comfort to me. Here was a Whipmaster of imagination. He was to have his own will with any female member of our organization: to whip, to suck, to dote, to bring religion where religion had not been before. But his loyalty touched me. It was my body which interested him. And it was his. Before all the world, it was his.

For some time now no more cars had arrived. If that meant that everyone had already come, then Harry would soon be sending for me. I pulled up my skirt and lay over a soft leather stool in front of Willie.

"Whip me a little, Willie!" I breathed.

He took a three-pronged leather strap from his pocket and with his full force, gave me six cruel blows across the soft, sweat-smeared surface of my buttocks. And then his nose and tongue were there, nudging, exploring. I raised my palpitating rump so that my slimy cunt came in contact with his darting wet tongue, and to feel it there, at my body's center, strong, hard, and masterful, just that, gave me back the knowledge of my own power, the religious certainty of my commitment.

Someone knocked at the door.

Willie got up and I slipped off the stool.

"Come in!"

It was Harry.

"They've come, Gertrude!"

"All?"

He nodded. "It's time you put in an appearance. They're all anxious to see you."

"Where have you put them?"

"In the Temple."

I nodded.

The Temple was a large, sparsely furnished hall at the back of the house, its ceiling domed like that of a mosque. There was a pulpit and beside it, a large whipping block. Chairs were arranged as in a church, in three segments with two aisles running between. Behind the pulpit and dominating the whole auditorium was a sculpted version of the picture I had first seen in the reception room, the Virgin Death.

"I shall come now. Go and prepare them."

He bowed and went out.

Willie helped me to dress in the plain toga of black cloth. Underneath, apart from a chain of iron drawn tightly about my waist and the black crown which fell from my cunt against the soft white surface of my right thigh, I was stark naked. My nipples and my navel had been treated with mascara. I stepped into my leather thong sandals and wound my soft black hair out of sight under a tall black turban.

"Be near, Willie," I said just before I went out.

There was a trapdoor in the pulpit so that the bearer of the Holy Seal could appear suddenly and impressively among the Congregation.

A moment later I was standing high in the pulpit, a green arc-light directed skillfully at me, and below me in the auditorium, a complete silence reigned.

I could see the faces craning up towards me: old faces, young faces, handsome faces, ugly faces, tired faces, fat faces, thin faces, gaunt faces, all alight with anticipation. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Harry, wearing a black mask across the upper part of his face, standing naked and rampant, the Whipmaster at his block. I raised my arms, my long fingers extended, making an impressive cross of my body.

"I am Gertrude!"

"She is Gertrude!" Harry echoed in a deeper voice.

"I am the bearer of the Holy Seal!"

"She is the bearer of the Holy Seal!"