Clive Bedford - Mistress of torment

The ambulance bumped over the grass beside the road leading over Wimbledon Common. On the main road, the traffic of the evening rush-hour was crawling along, delayed as always by the bottle-neck of Wimbledon High Street. If anyone noticed the ambulance, certainly no one was interested. But suddenly, out of a clear sky, the great bulk of the Andromedan space craft materialized, hovering a couple of feet above the grass. A driver braked suddenly, shaken out of his day dream of home and food, and the evening air was rent by the crash of bumpers and the tinkle of broken glass as a hundred cars piled up slowly and inexorably.

A square door opened in the craft and steps were let down. Two white-coated figures leaped from the ambulance and opened the back doors. They drew out a stretcher and carried it quickly to the foot of the steps. Weird figures in black plastic suits, their faces covered by hoods, came hurrying down the steps to take the stretcher while the white-coated men ran back to the ambulance for a second one. It was all over inside three minutes. The last of the black-clad figures disappeared through the door. The steps retracted and the door closed silently. The two men in white coats stood by the ambulance. When it reached its target, there was a blinding flash and ambulance and men just disappeared – evaporated. One moment they were there; a second later, they were not! The grass in a circle of about forty feet in diameter was burned black. That was all.

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The drivers whose cars had been damaged did not stop to exchange the names of insurance companies, names and addresses or bad language. With one accord they put their cars in gear and drove off as fast as they could. When they looked back, the huge craft had… disappeared. There was nothing to be seen but a circle of blackened grass, smoking faintly in the cool evening air… When they arrived home, the momentous news on TV absorbed their attention. None of them connected the formation of a new military government with that strange episode on Wimbledon Common…

Gerry Glasner had lost all count of time, but he knew he had been imprisoned for a long period. It was not easy to remember, but he believed he had been fed about twenty-five times, and assuming three meals a day, that was over a week since he had been abducted from the hospital and delivered into the hands of the Andromedans. In all the time, he had seen only a solitary hooded guard, who had not spoken to him, nor even seemed to understand his questions. He was in a grey-walled room with a sliding door and a grill high up near the ceiling from which came a light draft of warm fresh air. The walls and floor were lightly padded, which made sense because a couple of times the craft he was in had lurched suddenly and he had banged into the wall as he paced up and down, up and down.

There was a narrow couch in the room and a comfortable arm-chair, and nothing more. Everything, walls, floor, and furniture, were covered with material which seemed identical with that used to make the chastity belts he had seen. If it were, an eighth of an inch of that would make a better prison than three feet of solid stone! In an alcove, fitted with a sliding door held by a spring but with no catch, were necessary toilet facilities, strange in their design but recognizable and efficient.

It was the everlasting silence that came close to driving Gerry crazy! Except when the guard brought his meals, be heard nothing, apart from a soft whine that never changed note, and was presumably due to machinery operating somewhere. He had whistled at first, even sung to try to raise his spirits; but the sound bad been taint and dead in the padded room, so that at last he bad given that up too. He worried about Sonia.

During the first day, he had found interest in his clothes. He was wearing a close-fitting suit made of some black plastic which stretched so that the suit fitted like a second skin. It fitted simply, with no fastenings of any kind. Open down the front, it had an overlap seam. He pressed this seam with his fingers, and it closed – and stayed closed. To open it, he pulled the overlapped seam apart, and it opened. He could open and reseal it indefinitely, because the plastic, which certainly did not feel sticky, had this capacity to adhere to itself.

Under the suit he was wearing a garment that he thought of as a chastity belt. It was not like those others which had provided the first clue to the Andromedans. In fact, while it would certainly prevent him from having intercourse, assuming there had been a woman present and willing… the belt did not make any attempt to prevent masturbation. And several times, perhaps because of boredom, maybe too on account of the fear that gnawed at his mind, and anxiety about Sonia, he had brought himself to orgasm. There was a narrow belt around his waist, pulled tight. It had no fastening, but was made of the same stuff as all the other belts he had seen. Presumably it had been put on wet and then dried. Nothing he did could shift it. In front, the belt widened and came down to cover his belly. It passed between his legs and, narrowing, up between his buttocks to attach to the back of the waist belt, all in one piece.

In his anus was a long tube, about an inch in diameter. Over his penis and scrotum was a sheath of the plastic, metallic substance, which fitted perfectly. He could feel that, from the end of the penis-sheath, a rigid tube entered his penis at the tip, but he could not tell how long the tube was. In consequence, his penis was always rigid, even when it was not actually erect. The suit he could remove; the belt he could not. Every day the guard brought him a clean suit and waited while he removed the soiled one, to take it away. That was the only excitement in twenty-four hours. He would take a shower before putting on the clean suit, which felt clammy to his skin until it warmed up. After that it was not uncomfortable.

Sometimes Gerry wondered vaguely what was happening in the world he used to know, but it was becoming increasingly remote and unreal to him.

The monotony was broken when two guards came into the room. He made no resistance when they put a collar tight around his neck and strapped his wrists to it, one at each side of his neck. And when one of them took him by the arm, he moved toward the door without a word. There was no point in talking. He would not get an answer!

They took him through endless grey corridors and up in an elevator, and at last one of the guards pressed a button outside a door. A green light went out and the door opened. They pushed him, not roughly, into a large room. He stood, dazed, trying to recognize his surroundings. In front of him, sitting in a large armchair, almost like a throne, was the tall, dark-haired woman who had impersonated Sonia. It was Gulda. Behind her, dressed as he was, and with her hands similarly immobilized, stood Sonia herself!

Gerry started forward, to be immediately restrained by the guards.

"Sonia!" he cried. "Are you all right?"

The girl looked pale, but seemed to have recovered from the whipping she had endured. But there was something wrong with her. She did not smile, nor give any sign of pleasure at seeing Gerry. She stared at him coldly, as though he were a stranger.

"Sonia! What have they done to you?" She did not show any response.

He glared at Gulda. "What have you done to her? Why is she like that?"

Gulda smiled. It was not a nice smile. "The woman has been put under control," she said. "She no longer has a personality. She is an automaton."

Gerry struggled against the guards, in vain.

"You bitch!" he shouted. "I'll kill you!"

Gulda spoke rapidly to the guards. One of them took something from her belt, knelt down and strapped Gerry's ankles tightly together. Then the guards withdrew, leaving the trio together.