Fresh Girls & Other Stories by Evelyn Lau Read Free Book Online Page B

while yet before he begins to bite on the leather strap in his hands, like a woman giving birth. Shouts escape his lips, and he turns his face towards Sabina. His eyes are black and tortured and he is staring straight at her. It seems for a moment as if he is trying to draw strength from her face, which she keeps impassive. His eyes hold hers as his lover whips him with all the strength in his arm in the now utterly silent club, his eyes tell her not to blink or breathe, not to disturb the spell. Only when he ducks his head down again to clamp his teeth on the strap does Sabina’s heart start beating again, hurtfully, as if she is being pounded repeatedly from inside her chest. The whipping must stop but it doesn’t stop, the people standing around in their elaborate costumes no longer seem threatening, their chains hang limply by their chaps, oneor two women are stepping forward to tell the man he is whipping the same spot repeatedly, he mustn’t do that, he’s hurting him too badly, and still the whip descends on breaking flesh and the walls and the ceiling are ringing with its sound. The man on the table is finally crying, his whole body rising and falling with his sobs as if his body was a white-and-pink wave of raw flesh.
    Long after any tolerable ending, the beating stops. His wigged lover, breathing hard, tugs the strap tenderly out from between his fingers and helps him off the table. The man staggers and almost falls, and the two make their way supporting each other through the crowd. People clear a wide path for them, and the silence takes a long time to form again into conversation. People cough and clear their throats, testing their voices as if using them for the first time. In a corner, before they disappear through a doorway, the man in the wig kisses his bleeding lover, and Sabina hears for a moment their soft, commiserating laughter.
    The man who has been watching Sabina all evening is suddenly, magically, on his hands and knees in front of her. She looks at Justine and shrugs; her friend grins and moves into another chair, tucking her knees up to her naked chest, drawing on her cigarette. The man kisses the floor around Sabina’s feet, and when she crosses herlegs he cautiously moves towards her dangling shoe. His face reminds her of a storm cloud — soft brown curls, bushy eyebrows, large turbulent eyes, and a bow mouth in a round face. Reaching between his legs her hand collides with the pendulum of his penis, cloaked in rich, supple leather. Without being asked, he draws a whip from the belt around his waist the way a soldier might unsheathe a sword, surrendering it to her, and she begins to step around him in the first stages of the tormentor’s dance, the music familiar and dependable, the whack of leather against skin, the small unchecked cries of pain.
    Sabina’s slave is circling the club now, as he has been ordered to do, his ass raised high and his forehead bent to the ground. He is alternately barking and howling. People make room for him, glancing at Sabina curiously, smiling now that the tension from the man’s whipping on the table has been replaced by a more playful mood. A girl with cropped hair and rings piercing the skin of her temples, nose and neck asks to borrow the slave for a ride, and when Sabina assents she climbs nimbly onto his back and digs the heels of her ankle boots into his side, yipping, her small neat body arched in pleasure. Occasionally she reaches behind her to strike his rump with a leather strap. When the slave returns, head bent,to Sabina’s side, the girl dismounts him and thanks her, returning him with a bow and a flourish of her hand.
    Fetish Night is almost over. Lights blink on in different parts of the club, exposing white faces and garish makeup on the women and some of the men. Sabina heads for the bathroom, which is a modern, unfriendly cavern of mirrors and polished cement. She and Justine leave through lit passageways, brushing against the other