Epilogue

As I watched Jemima’s plane climb into the clear Arizona sky I could feel the tension draining from my body and mind, to be replaced by a sense of euphoria. I had done it. By a combination of luck, determination, self-sacrifice, minor criminality and a final flourish, I had done it. I’d guessed that Big Ron wouldn’t be prepared to do a film of a suspiciously young girl apparently being coerced into sex with a series of men while her bottom was black and blue with bruises, and I’d been right. She had also been sore and more than content with the money from Sixclip, the exact amount of which we’d conveniently forgotten to mention to Big Ron. The porno had been abandoned, and although I had been made to suck off Hudson, Big Ron and the elderly Native American gateman as a punishment for the state of her bottom, I hadn’t minded. Jemima’s face would not be appearing on the internet in conjunction with any pornographic material.

My own would, but only for those prepared to pay a monthly fee to indulge serious obsessions with cuckolding and anal sex. I couldn’t imagine any of my colleagues doing anything of the sort, and while it was true that they in turn would no doubt have enormous difficulty imagining me as a porn actress, it didn’t actually matter. No man or woman that I knew was going to make a complaint against me if it involved admitting to joining a porn site, especially a perverted one. Indeed, in the very unlikely event that anyone did join any of the sites and recognise me, and decide to do something about it, they were more likely to approach me in the hope of getting a little of the same. The way I felt as I walked back to the Winnebago, I’d have given it, gladly.

It was no distance at all from the airport to the university, but it felt as if I’d stepped from one world into another. Suddenly I was surrounded by academics and students. The conversations were no longer about spanking and cock sucking and anal dilation, but genetics and physiology and biometrics. No longer was I a submissive slut at best and a perverted whore at worst, but a reasonably senior scientist with enough reputation to elicit polite attention from everybody I met. So great was the contrast, and so sudden, that as I explained my analysis of selection on new mutations to Professor Yates I kept expecting him to tell me to shut up before whipping me across his knee for a panties-down spanking.

He didn’t, but kindly offered to show me how the equipment in the lecture hall worked. It was wonderfully efficient, with a huge screen at one side, slightly tilted so that both the lecturer and her audience could see it, and controlled by a computer system built into the podium. There would be no messing about with slides or even CDs. I simply needed to insert my memory stick into a USB socket and I would be able to access both my notes and the supporting pictures at the click of a mouse.

I was on third after lunch, something I needed quite badly. A trip to the canteen dealt with that but left me a little tired, and I was having difficulty concentrating as I listened to the first two lectures. Only when I realised that I was on in less than ten minutes did my body respond with sufficient adrenalin to wake me up. Not that I was in any danger of forgetting what to say, not after three years of painstaking research. I was still sipping coffee in the anteroom when Professor Yates appeared.

‘They’re waiting for you to start, Dr Birch,’ he announced.

‘Yes, of course.’

‘You’ve got a good audience,’ he went on, ‘four hundred and fifteen in all.’

‘I’m pleased to hear it,’ I answered as he opened the doors for me.

I climbed to the stage, smiling at the sea of faces in front of me, and for once in my life not in the least embarrassed. As Professor Yates introduced me I slipped my key fob memory stick into the USB socket and after a moment a list of files appeared on the screen, more than I remembered, but neatly set out in numerical order.

‘… Dr Birch,’ Professor Yates concluded, and stepped down from the stage.

‘Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,’ I began, ‘and thank you for introducing me, Mr Chairman. As many of you will know, my research relates to gene sequencing in the Arionidae, particularly Ariolimax columbianus and, more recently, Ariolimax dolichophallus. The paper I intend to present this evening contrasts the genomes of the two species, and seeks to establish rates of mutation and subsequent selection. My first picture …’

The files were in the order in which I’d left them when my computer went down, before leaving the lab what now seemed a year or more before, but I knew the presentation started with DSC–0087 and clicked on it – to see a huge picture appear on the screen, at least twenty feet high and as far across …

… of the interior of my rectum.

I stood staring blankly at the screen. Four hundred and fifteen assorted professors, doctors, postgraduates and students were also looking, their faces set in polite interest as they waited for me to explain what the picture had to do with genetic sequencing in banana slugs. Even as I promised myself that when I caught her Jemima would be unable to sit down for the next month I had decided what to say.

‘I do apologise. My supporting pictures appear to have become confused with those for my first-year course in proctology.’