Chapter Twenty-Two

With bathing and shaving and incidental monster-baiting out of the way, and the stretching and range-of-motion exercises seen to, it was time for FNS. As usual Nurse Drake moved aside the wedges, clearing space for the bike. But as she began binding him into the sling it became clear she indeed had something quite different planned.

When Karl rose from the mat he was prone rather than sitting up. Last to lose contact was his face, and as he was hauled into the air he hung head-down from his knees like a trapeze artist. With his legs folded over the supporting strap and bound uselessly doubled-up, it was his arms that dangled free as he was maneuvered over the bike. There he was lowered into place. His hands were fitted into the pedals and strapped there. Blood already flushing his inverted face, Karl tried to steady himself as electrodes were attached to the muscles in his arms and shoulders.

Something told him this was going to be a challenge analogous to all the other recent increases in the intensity of his treatment. That instinct was correct. When his helpless flaccidity was suddenly zapped into mobility, everything about exercising his upper body proved far more distressing than his previous workouts.

There was his posture of course. Instead of hypotension he had to deal with its opposite. His face burned and bloated as his pulse beat behind his eyes and ears. His scalp crawled and his head pounded; breathing became more effortful as his shifting viscera bore down on his lungs. Even without exertion hanging upside down for any length of time was difficult to deal with. This he knew from his many atonement sessions. Forced into involuntary activity it was torture.

Karl imagined it fitting training for Navy SEALs perhaps. He was no such exceptional specimen. His arms were unaccustomed to any work and even more atrophied than his legs had been. He’d always had a soccer player’s build anyway: great legs and ass, but normal shoulders and arms. They weren’t an embarrassment; he’d just never needed to really use them for more than everyday activity. Now he would do so. After only a minute he could tell this was going to be no joy ride. Nurse Drake was going to run him ragged without ever untying his legs.

And that was the saving grace in all this: that sense of possession, of having his body taken over and run like a puppet. Even after months the submissive frisson of this still excited him. Only now that sense of helplessness (like a rat trapped on a treadmill) was far more intense.

The burning and buzzing of the enveloping electricity was much closer to his head and heart, making Nurse Drake’s control of him somehow even more personal. Flailed along by the constant shocks she inflicted on him, gasping desperately as she tapped keys and increased the pace of his spastically jerking limbs (and the resistance in the pedals), Karl quickly grew erect again. Panting and moaning with rapturous exertion, he fell into the rhythm of his workout and was only more aroused when his mistress picked up a thin limber dressage whip and began her own regimen by slashing this against his handily-sited feet and buttocks.

After all he’d been through lately this was just play-time pain, masochist’s fantasy stuff. And the combination of two treatments at once was heady despite his acute distress and swiftly growing exhaustion. As it was he suffered and wallowed and worked with a fanatical will, even though his will was utterly irrelevant to the function of his muscles. Now was the time to enjoy his morning, and enjoy it he would. The serious atonement would begin soon enough.

They were almost up to the heaviest cane already, which Nurse Drake took to the bath to soak with them nearly every time she intended to use it. Though the ever-worsening beatings he received still far outstripped the limits of his enjoyment, in his perverse need Karl had actually come to mourn that she owned none with thorns.

That she couldn’t countenance unfortunately: her job was to heal him, not permanently scar him. The only marks she wanted him to carry away from their year together were on the inside. In any case, distracted by penetration and fellatio, Doreen had forgotten to soak it this time. Karl’s thrashing was extended accordingly. Add in a bit of lovers’ dawdling over lunch beforehand, and it was three-thirty before it became time for his usual indoctrination session. Then it became apparent that this too was going to be considerably more interesting than usual – even with the Stephen King story now getting really good.

Karl still wasn’t wearing a condom. During the time he was so inflamed from sun, bugs and overuse, they’d become good at leaving it off and either hurrying the urinal into place or keeping him preemptively empty. Only at night or during the times Doreen reserved for herself was it generally necessary to keep the monster smothered by rubber and confined to a fraction of his potential size. Now she slipped in the urinal and got him voiding again while he recovered from his caning. Grinning at his sniffing and whimpering, Doreen offered cheer.

“You’re doing great today, darling. First you discovered some important things about yourself this morning. Then you made some good first steps toward getting your upper body back in shape. You remain impeccable about accepting your punishments with honor and willingness since your one little lapse. Now we’re going to have even more fun.

“No Lifetime channel this afternoon, or even quietly reading a book for you. I have to clean in here today, so you can keep me company while I work. Let’s just get you hung up and suffering first.”

Soon Karl was hung up indeed, dangling agonizingly swaybacked again over the bed. With his wrists and ankles shackled into those extended spreader-bars, his only comfort was that his arms were stretched straight above him rather than out behind his back. With his ankles chained considerably lower than his wrists, his genitals hung lowest to the bed while his torso bowed out to almost upright, leaving him facing not the TV but turned toward the main living area of the suite. On the mattress right under the monster (raging already at this exquisitely stressful semi-circular spread-eagle) Nurse Drake slid a two-gallon plastic basin. Though falling asleep clearly wasn’t going to be a problem, she collared his balls and turned on the vibrator.

Out came the bag of clothespins, one hundred strong. Shortly he was colorfully bristling with these, particularly in his most erogenous zones. The monster suffered at least a dozen and raged on even with a pair pinching the tip just to either side of his eye. Only a short length of the madly straining shaft remained bare to boast its bulging veins. But then Karl had other things to think about as the last dozen and a half pins were clamped to the lobes and pinnae of his ears, the tip of his nose and yes, that of his out-thrust tongue. Still she wasn’t done. New second-quarter torments were about to be introduced, beginning with the penile flail.

This proved to be a small battery powered fan for use on airplanes, near bathtubs or in other confined spaces. There was no guard over the little plastic blades, and to each of these had been affixed a trailing ribbon. When Nurse Drake clipped the fan to the edge of the basin and turned it on (luckily at its lowest setting), the whirling blades whipped those thin, six-inch nylon strips incessantly against that bare stretch of shaft. Eyes streaming tears from the pinching of nose and ears, froth already over-spilling his lower lip, Karl gave an eloquent squeal of aroused masochism at this. In response Doreen pinched his cheek like that of a child.

“We’re having some fun now, aren’t we, little slut? Paying our debt to femininity gladly! Okay, it’s time for a little domestic work. We need to keep a hygienic habitat. Remind me to change this bed linen tomorrow too, please.”

So Karl hung there in his bonds, panting and groaning and sobbing occasionally as gravity had its way with him and the slaver foamed and ran. His multiply-pinched penis strained and throbbed non-stop, kept continuously erect by the combination of the ribbons whipping it, the vibrator buzzing his balls and the rapturous misery in which his mistress was keeping him while she casually cleaned the suite. Still he managed to maintain a limited conversation despite the clip on his tongue-tip. With more of that sexy 70’s rock-jazz-soul playing the background, Doreen eased her chores by talking to him. She’d become used to decoding his garbled replies by now, and occasionally Karl was even able to introduce subjects of his own. No doubt that uncanny intuition and insight into him aided her interpretation.

“What’s that darling? You wish you could help me with the housework?”

“’Ore!”

“’More’? You mean you wish you could do it all for me? Scour my house from end to end while I put my feet up, have a smoke and maybe masturbate while I watch you dust and vacuum, wash my dishes and laundry and hand-scrub my dirty underwear and stuff?”

Karl nodded vigorously, then rolled his eyes rapidly in their nonverbal signal to take a situation or context to its extreme.

“I see. What you’re saying is you would gladly live forever as my lowly chore slave, keeping my house, suffering my capricious punishments and submitting to all my demanding and demeaning sexual uses. You wish to be my groveling little bitch ‘til you die.”

Karl nodded with honest fervor.

“How about if I made you do it all dressed as a sexy French maid?”

Karl gaped and winced, then hung his head in glum acceptance as he nodded.

Tickled, Doreen laughed as she continued wiping down all the PT equipment. She pushed the question even further.

“How about if in addition to making you my feminized sissy housemaid I never touched you sexually beyond riding your face? How about if I kept you in a chastity cage, limited you to self-milking on command and made you watch and attend me while I had sex with other men?”

Karl goggled at this, then ashamedly shook his head.

“Not worth it, huh? Well I don’t blame you, and I applaud your honesty. And I’m more than flattered by your devotion already darling. Don’t think the thought of curing you just to keep you for myself hasn’t crossed my mind. But I think you might find the appeal of submission lessening once you’re whole and able again. All the more reason to wallow in it now though, right little slut? Let me move that fan to whipping the tip and turn it all the way up while I clean the bathroom. You can enjoy that ‘til I finish. Then I’ll take you down and ravish you before dinner and bed. Tomorrow we’ll work your arms and legs both, and then whip your torso.”

Doreen was as good as her word. Flattered by Karl’s professions, perhaps even fantasizing a bit over the kinky kind of life they’d been half-joking about, she used him with exhilarating cruelty and exhaustive purpose. By the time they enjoyed a late meal and went to bed he was so wrung out he slept like a rock. If he dreamed he didn’t remember it, and this situation would persist throughout the week. He went to bed utterly drained and awoke stiff and sore from his exertions to face another epic stretch of exercising, punishment, and madly painful, degrading, frustrating yet utterly compulsive sexual service. Along the way he finished the King novel, and as before they discussed the lessons to be gleaned from it.

This time Karl was hanging hogtied belly-down, about two feet off the bed. With his limbs all bound together and stretched up behind him, he had that cervical collar holding his head up to face forward. In a step up from clothespins, he now had alligator clips clamped to his nipples. Teardrop-shaped lead weights dangled from little chains attached to these. The constant pulling of those embedded teeth was far worse than any mere pinching, just as the similar but larger weight hung from the vibrator collared about his balls was a challenge far beyond that incessant buzzing. Doreen had come in to see if he wanted the rest of her iced tea. Finding him finished reading, she unclipped his tongue and sat down to idly bat his nipple-weights around and talk about what he’d made of the novel.

“How about Norman? Some character, huh?”

Karl emitted a helpless hiss for a minute as those weights swung and danced. Then he sucked in the air he needed for extended speech.

“That’s what makes King so great. Even his most outlandish characters are believable, relatable. You can understand what goes on inside their heads. Norman is the worst sort of crazy, violent, abusive, entitled, misogynist, murderous, racist, sick pig you can imagine – funny how King made him a cop, isn’t it? But as much as you fear and despise him, it’s also impossible not to see where he’s coming from, and even sympathize with his motivations a bit.

“My old man shared a lot of the same attitudes. I was raised to emulate them. He was never overly violent or crazy, but he was certainly verbally abusive, hence my own reflexive bullying. Maybe that’s why I’m not as fucked-up over my parents’ deaths as Krista’s. My ledger isn’t quite as deep in the red with them. My old man didn’t exactly take care of his heart after all.

“If it hadn’t been me, it might have been the next election, football game, or bacon double-cheeseburger. And I wouldn’t be shocked if he vapor-locked in the middle of a long and profane rant about me. Anyway, Norman just takes the way men have been genetically inclined or raised to behave to its logical extreme. It’s a clear lesson about the atrocities that kind of thinking can lead to.”

Doreen nodded, now twisting those dangling weights and setting them to spinning.

“Yes it is. That’s why we’re working at eradicating these attitudes and habits in men in general and you right now. Remember though, it’s okay to understand how evil people think, and even to sympathize to an extent. But actions are what matter. Make your judgments based on how people behave. Unjustified harm is not acceptable. Any other lessons that you picked up?”

“Yeah: don’t mess with the Goddess. As if I needed that one!”

They laughed and kissed. Karl drank the ice tea, savoring those warm, watered-down dregs more for the mix of thoughtfulness and demeaning they represented than the effect, though the caffeine and sugar were as hugely welcome as the soothing of his pipes. They enjoyed another, wetter kiss, and Doreen allowed him to keep the book up on the screen until dinner, so that he could read back through particularly moving passages again as a distraction from his suffering. He would be afforded no such mercy the week following.

Nurse Drake alternated female-oriented cable TV with more marathon sessions of news reports and true crime documentaries. She also continued to introduce more mechanical torments to his time alone. When Karl’s bondage or posture made gravity uncooperative, she produced arcane little devices called nipple-stretchers that did just that: clamping onto, stretching back and even twisting his nipples, holding them thus until they were released. Likewise a cruel testicle fetter fitted about his balls could be tightened, squashing him just enough to cause constant considerable discomfort whenever weights hung from the vibrator wouldn’t serve. As for that constant electronic stimulus, it too proved to be just the beginning.

Other, smaller vibrators were clipped to the tip or harnessed about the shaft of his perpetual hard-on (or both) for long hours. Nor did Karl kid himself that this was all that was coming. He watched her sorting through her collection and saw no lack of phallic shapes. There was still a worse place to put a vibrator, and unsettling suggestiveness in the looks she gave him, and the subtle double-entendres she made. She also rubbed him frequently down there when they made love, which they still did as often and fervently as any adolescent male and aggressively estrus adult female could wish.

Truly the intensity of this incentive/inspiration/expression of their love continued to increase along with everything else, and Karl felt fraught almost to the point of mania during these encounters. So much pent-up physical and emotional pressure, so much stimulation upon stimulation in such a relentlessly erotic context, all building continuously with no hope of relief from torture and frustration except more of the same unto apotheosis was their goal of course. But these forces are tough to keep contained, even with both partners acting in good faith. Sometimes accidents can happen without fault or weakness to blame. Sometimes they are simply collisions of fate. Both would soon deal serious setbacks to Karl’s prospects.