Little Gehenna
The streets are wet by the old warehouses along the southern wharf. Beyond the buildings, near the ship gangways, bare bulbs are strung above stalls hawking hot food, drinks and clandestine goods from all over the world. Fog is swirling down on the crowd, and the wetness in the air settles over everything. On handcuffs and exquisite, hand-forged chains, on black pearl dildos and anal beads made from glazed human bone, on the leather caps favored by the young and the rubber hoods favored by the paterfamilias who run Little Gehenna, the oldest part of the city.
Where we live is like any other city most of the time. There are thriving businesses and busy families, a City Hall and Chamber of Commerce. But our city was founded on darker ideologies. The piers on which we stand were built at such an angle that they're not visible to any other part of the city and can only be seen by ships approaching from precisely the right direction. People live their whole lives in the city and never know about the secret wharves, the pleasure ships that dock here or their cargoes. This is a city of secrets. A city of compulsive liars. In daylight, the casual observer would see nothing would out of place. But at night, the fog moves in and no one is who they were when the sun was up. Everyone who goes out into the fog goes out in a mask. Everyone wears gloves. In theory, this is to hide the identity of our players, but everyone knows everyone else by now. The masks and other elements of disguise have become a ritual, a fetish for their own sake.
Besides its inhabitants, nothing is free here in Little Gehenna. It's place of strange alliances and dark bargains. Everyone here carries a mark, a tattoo on the wrist or the back of the neck. On certain nights, different tattoos mean different things, and they all have to do with power. On different nights, according to the moon, people carrying one mark will find themselves subordinate to those carrying another. On a given night, anyone can end up a slave, subject to their superior's basest whims. Over by a stand selling roasted chestnuts, the weather lady from a local news channel, a slave tonight, busily eating the ass of our local Cardinal, he still in his finest vestments, his "disguise" for the evening. The chief of police, wearing a clown mask and ankle-strap pumps is orally servicing a line of leathermen.
At the end of the stalls, beyond the whips and tea stands, they auction off new slaves. The price is seldom money down here. Spouses are offered. Industrial trade secrets. Someone might offer a kidney or, ironically, to go into indentured servitude themselves.
I never bid for slaves when there are so many free ones wandering by, so I leave the auction and grab the pig-tails of a tranny slave in girl scout drag. The tranny is bare-assed under her pleats. I bend her over the low fence that runs along the edge of the wharf, wet a finger and slip it into her ass, while lubing my cock with the other hand. A butch girl with weightlifter muscles approaches from the other side of the fence and roughly shoves her strap-on down the tranny's throat. The butch is wearing a snakeskin mask and she hisses at the slave with each thrust of her hips.
I wish I could say that we all came together in a grand porn movie moment, but trouble started back down the wharf, so it didn't work out that way. I pulled out of the tranny's ass and yanked off my condom in time to shoot onto her ass cheeks before the commotion became too loud to ignore. People were shouting over by the auction stand. A slave had escaped, breaking all the most sacred rules of Little Gehenna.
Men in hassocks and women in chainmail arrive with police dogs to track the escaped slave. The head of the local PTA guts a seagull and reads its entrails. Old men wander the wharf with sextants and astrolabes, using the stars to plot their position and the runner's probable route. Gangs of school girls run by with torches, setting fire to the old warehouses, tearing off their clothes and dancing around the flames singing "London bridge is falling down, falling down. . . " Masked nuns in garters and g-strings drag hooks through the fetid water, hoping the slave might be a suicide that they could skin.
The frantic crowd spreads out from the wharf and into the wet streets beyond. I go down for a smoke by the water. The burning buildings turn the air a bloody, shimmering orange and our shadows skim across the top of the water like sharks in a feeding frenzy. I smile at the thought and that's when I see her. The slave is small and beautiful, naked, except for the tattoo on her wrist. Her wet hair hangs across her wide, frightened eyes. She's clinging to a driftwood log. It's all that's keeping her afloat. I can see the question in her eyes. "Can you help me? Will you help me?" She doesn't know it, but she's already begin pulled out to sea by the riptide. I finish my cigarette and walk back toward the crowd. The escaped slave will never know that I have helped her. She wouldn't have wanted me to pull her from the water. Not with the crowd on the rampage.
All the new slaves are sacrificed that night. The ones not thrown into the ocean are butchered, cooked in the great woks and served to the crowd. I eat a bit myself, so as not to stand out. It's not a night to stand out.
People begin to pass bottles and everyone drinks. People begin to laugh again and the wharf takes on a carnival atmosphere. The fog swallows the sky, but the heat from the burning buildings dries and warms us. We drink and eat, fuck and watch the old warehouses burn and think about how lucky we are to have seen Little Gehenna while the oldest buildings in the city were still there.
The streets are wet by the old warehouses along the southern wharf. Beyond the buildings, near the ship gangways, bare bulbs are strung above stalls hawking hot food, drinks and clandestine goods from all over the world. Fog is swirling down on the crowd, and the wetness in the air settles over everything. On handcuffs and exquisite, hand-forged chains, on black pearl dildos and anal beads made from glazed human bone, on the leather caps favored by the young and the rubber hoods favored by the paterfamilias who run Little Gehenna, the oldest part of the city.
Where we live is like any other city most of the time. There are thriving businesses and busy families, a City Hall and Chamber of Commerce. But our city was founded on darker ideologies. The piers on which we stand were built at such an angle that they're not visible to any other part of the city and can only be seen by ships approaching from precisely the right direction. People live their whole lives in the city and never know about the secret wharves, the pleasure ships that dock here or their cargoes. This is a city of secrets. A city of compulsive liars. In daylight, the casual observer would see nothing would out of place. But at night, the fog moves in and no one is who they were when the sun was up. Everyone who goes out into the fog goes out in a mask. Everyone wears gloves. In theory, this is to hide the identity of our players, but everyone knows everyone else by now. The masks and other elements of disguise have become a ritual, a fetish for their own sake.
Besides its inhabitants, nothing is free here in Little Gehenna. It's place of strange alliances and dark bargains. Everyone here carries a mark, a tattoo on the wrist or the back of the neck. On certain nights, different tattoos mean different things, and they all have to do with power. On different nights, according to the moon, people carrying one mark will find themselves subordinate to those carrying another. On a given night, anyone can end up a slave, subject to their superior's basest whims. Over by a stand selling roasted chestnuts, the weather lady from a local news channel, a slave tonight, busily eating the ass of our local Cardinal, he still in his finest vestments, his "disguise" for the evening. The chief of police, wearing a clown mask and ankle-strap pumps is orally servicing a line of leathermen.
At the end of the stalls, beyond the whips and tea stands, they auction off new slaves. The price is seldom money down here. Spouses are offered. Industrial trade secrets. Someone might offer a kidney or, ironically, to go into indentured servitude themselves.
I never bid for slaves when there are so many free ones wandering by, so I leave the auction and grab the pig-tails of a tranny slave in girl scout drag. The tranny is bare-assed under her pleats. I bend her over the low fence that runs along the edge of the wharf, wet a finger and slip it into her ass, while lubing my cock with the other hand. A butch girl with weightlifter muscles approaches from the other side of the fence and roughly shoves her strap-on down the tranny's throat. The butch is wearing a snakeskin mask and she hisses at the slave with each thrust of her hips.
I wish I could say that we all came together in a grand porn movie moment, but trouble started back down the wharf, so it didn't work out that way. I pulled out of the tranny's ass and yanked off my condom in time to shoot onto her ass cheeks before the commotion became too loud to ignore. People were shouting over by the auction stand. A slave had escaped, breaking all the most sacred rules of Little Gehenna.
Men in hassocks and women in chainmail arrive with police dogs to track the escaped slave. The head of the local PTA guts a seagull and reads its entrails. Old men wander the wharf with sextants and astrolabes, using the stars to plot their position and the runner's probable route. Gangs of school girls run by with torches, setting fire to the old warehouses, tearing off their clothes and dancing around the flames singing "London bridge is falling down, falling down. . . " Masked nuns in garters and g-strings drag hooks through the fetid water, hoping the slave might be a suicide that they could skin.
The frantic crowd spreads out from the wharf and into the wet streets beyond. I go down for a smoke by the water. The burning buildings turn the air a bloody, shimmering orange and our shadows skim across the top of the water like sharks in a feeding frenzy. I smile at the thought and that's when I see her. The slave is small and beautiful, naked, except for the tattoo on her wrist. Her wet hair hangs across her wide, frightened eyes. She's clinging to a driftwood log. It's all that's keeping her afloat. I can see the question in her eyes. "Can you help me? Will you help me?" She doesn't know it, but she's already begin pulled out to sea by the riptide. I finish my cigarette and walk back toward the crowd. The escaped slave will never know that I have helped her. She wouldn't have wanted me to pull her from the water. Not with the crowd on the rampage.
All the new slaves are sacrificed that night. The ones not thrown into the ocean are butchered, cooked in the great woks and served to the crowd. I eat a bit myself, so as not to stand out. It's not a night to stand out.
People begin to pass bottles and everyone drinks. People begin to laugh again and the wharf takes on a carnival atmosphere. The fog swallows the sky, but the heat from the burning buildings dries and warms us. We drink and eat, fuck and watch the old warehouses burn and think about how lucky we are to have seen Little Gehenna while the oldest buildings in the city were still there.