WARNING: THIS 'SMALL STORY' MAY BE TOO GRAPHIC FOR THE AVERAGE READER.
IT IS LOOSELY BASED ON REAL EVENTS WHICH TOOK PLACE
AT THE END OF THE LAST CENTURY IN THE FAMED MILLIONAIRES' ROW
OF FIFTH AVENUE MANSIONS IN MANHATTAN, NY.
AGAIN, IT IS QUITE GRAPHIC - YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED:
Studies in Cruciform 2.1360
Slightly Bigger Story
It’s his eightieth birthday party, for pity’s sake!
I mean how many more does he have?
Well, happy birthday! But no sale!
Is it too much to give a man the pleasure
of your company at the end of his life?
Pleasure for him, not for me! Does he think I’ve forgotten?
Darling, it was years ago, we’re different people now!
He isn’t! Need I remind you of what happened?
Please, darling…
...You were off racing your stupid yacht in Bimini,
while I was stuck In the Townhouse with your mother and…him!
Somehow he managed to get your mother out of town for
the weekend, leaving me alone with him and his bodyguards! Bodyguards!
His goons, more like! The first night they came into my bedroom,
carried me downstairs and he watched…!
…Darling I know the story, I’ve apologized a thousand times!
…He watched as they hung me by my wrists from the
chandelier, stripped me naked and began horsewhipping me!
They went to jail, remember?
Yes, but he didn’t! After they all but shredded my back and buttocks,
(GIF)
they began cropping my breasts and thighs as hard as they could –
and these were big, ferociously strong men – I remember
their faces to this day, ugly, leering, salivating as
they pulverized my body !
Then I fainted – for the first time.
When I came to, your father had stopped them, but only to caution them,
“Be careful with her womb, I’ll need an heir one day!”
Then they changed from riding crops to thumbtack-laden floggers,
and resumed full force, scourging my front from neck to ankles
– I was awash in blood - until I mercifully blacked out.
I think they threw water on me to try to revive me,
I'm fairly certain your father took a turn slashing away at my breasts
with bamboo canes while the other two whipped away at everywhere else,
but I was beyond feeling any more pain.
I woke up three days later in the private hospital on Sutton Place.
Covered in bandages, I couldn’t speak for a week!
Years later I met the young doctor who cared for me that night.
He said I looked like a hundred pounds of hamburger meat!
And where were you?
I wasn’t told. When I found out I came very close to killing him.
But now you’ve made your peace.
He is my father, like it or not. He wants to make it up to you.
Hah! That’ll be the day!
He’s offering you a million dollars.
What? Are you serious? He wants to do it to me again, does he?
All right, since money is the only thing he cares about, tell him I’ll do it for five million!
That’s a lot of money.
Not to him! Take it or leave it.
Very well, you have a deal.
Just like that?
I have power of attorney to negotiate up to five million.
The lawyer’s waiting in the car with the contracts.
Sure of yourselves, weren’t you? Like father like son?
No, darling, I was sure of you.
Five million dollars? You know I’m half-tempted to agree
to it, just to see the look on his face.
What are his strings? There are always strings.
He wants you to wear a mask…
And nothing else, of course…
Of course you’ll be completely nude, that’s a given, but the mask is mainly
to conceal your identity, and protect his. He’s expecting a hundred.guests.
And I’m to be the entertainment!! And the whipping itself?
It would be an exact repeat performance? Replicated in every way?
I'm to be brutalized as savagely as the last time. No more, no less?
You're being remarkably precise, darling. Why?
I survived the last adventure, barely, but I intend surviving this.
No more, no less?
Except I’ll be there… with an ambulance and medical team on standby
To make sure he doesn’t kill me? Or to slap me back to consciousness
when I black out, to minimize any interruption to the carnage?
Or both?
Both. All right, the party begins in an hour. What’s your decision?
Dammit! Let’s go! With any luck the shock of seeing my nude body
whipped to raw meat will stop his heart…! Is that it? Nothing else?
There was one small stipulation he wants in addition…
‘Wants’ or demands?
Demands, I’m afraid. It’s sort of a deal-breaker.
I knew it. What??
To open the evening’s performance he wants
you to submit to the use of a spreader.
A spreader? What’s that?
I confess I don’t know.
Whatever it is, it can’t possibly be any worse than what I’m about to go through.
Very well… I accept.
(GIF)
Oh, dear god, what have I done??
Ego Stipes Ergo Sum