This story was previously part of a novel-length submission
DREAMS
Back in Katya’s apartment, they sat by the fire, wrapped in shawls and sipping sweetened tea. Neither had spoken much during the drive back from the countryside and they stared blankly into space until Katya broke the silence.
“We are in danger” she said softly. “We were too close tonight, too involved”.
“I laid a false trail” Dana replied dully.
“That’s not what I meant. We were too close” she repeated “and we have to accept that we’re at risk of being drawn in”.
“I don’t think I want to be killed” Dana protested, bridling, but Katya held up a hand to silence her.
“It is a negation, of course” she said “but there is a powerful attraction - even if we don’t fully understand how it works. I had a colleague named Rosa - a dear friend…”. Her voice trailed away, and then she collected herself and continued. “There is…” she hesitated, setting down her glass and looking Dana in the eyes “there is an experimental technique. Jungian in origin, but the clinical psychologists are very positive about it, they say it desensitises the subject. A kind of deprogramming”.
“I’ve read this, too” Dana said, avoiding her gaze. Katya looked away. “You’re talking about the cognitive-behaviour dream therapy. But I don’t have a suppressed fantasy I can express to - to bring catharsis. My own nightmare is not fantasy at all, not in that way. It terrifies me”.
“Your nightmare?” Katya asked gently “One nightmare? That sounds promising”. She took another of her herbal cigarettes and reached for a lighter as she spoke; Dana started in surprise when a familiar aroma reached her. Katya passed it to her with a thin smile. “Use of a depressant is recommended in the literature” she said, settling back and taking a drink of tea. Dana drew on the reefer several times and leant back, looking up at the ceiling.
“I am in St Cyril’s cemetery, in the moonlight, with a mist coming up from the river around the headstones and mausoleums” Dana began.
She saw movement in the corner of her eye and span around to see shapes moving low down in the mist, around a pile of loose earth. Drawn towards them she made out figures in the moonlight - stooped and crouching figures in mouldering rags. The nearest turned its face to her and she saw the dead eyes and mottled, blue-grey skin stretched over a skeletal frame, saw the shreds of raw human flesh trailing from its drooling mouth when it bared yellow teeth at her in a savage grin. She continued towards the creatures until they all turned to stare at her. Six foul and decaying corpses looked up from feasting on the pale body of a young woman dragged from a fresh grave, gobbets of bloody flesh in their clawed hands and gaping mouths. She stepped between two kneeling horrors and looked boldly around at them all, running her hands sensually over her pert breasts and down her ribs and hips. They watched intently, blood running down their chins as they champed on pale flesh, while Dana unbuttoned her tunic and let it slide down her long legs. She sucked on her index finger as she tugged her lace pants to her knees and stepped out of them.
“I don’t want to be there” she whispered to Katya, inhaling again “but in the dream, I cannot help myself. I have no choice”. Katya nodded encouragingly.
The ghouls sniffed at her and their rotting tongues hung wetly from their mouths like dogs’ as Dana lay down languorously alongside the half-eaten woman, her lithe body spread open shamelessly in the freshly turned soil, amongst bones and teeth and wet coils of human innards. She licked her lips and rubbed at her clit; when the first bony fingers touched her she trembled and let out a deep sigh.
A rotting woman with long, white teeth slithered towards her open thighs and she raised her hips up to meet her, spreading her labia open with her fingers and teasing her long, aching nipples with her other hand, licking her lips. The corpse’s foetid tongue darted to and fro at her gaping cunt while Dana dug her outspread heels into the earth and moaned. The licking stopped and she looked down to see the thing raising its head over her crotch. Arching her back, Dana pressed a fist into her mouth and chewed on her knuckles to suppress a scream as the cruel teeth sank into her pubic mound. Two startlingly red trickles of blood ran over her pubes from the jagged punctures by her clit. Raising its head ready to bite again, the ghoul slithered over her bloodied crotch; she moaned louder still when it rubbed its bony form against her, making a slick, moist trail up her flat stomach until the gaping mouth was poised over her pert bosom. A sinewy arm snaked under her slim back and pulled her up to the thing’s ravening maw. Once again, sharp teeth sank into her white flesh and crimson rivulets ran down the gentle curve of her left breast, either side of the swollen nipple.
Soon there were hands reaching from all sides as the creatures bent over her, poking and clawing. Dana strained her slender form eagerly upwards, grinding her feet and elbows into the graveyard soil and moaning her imminent climax as strings of drool trailed from their looming mouths across her milky breasts and thighs. One by one they raked their jagged fingernails over her trembling body and dug them into her yielding flesh, sending drops of blood trickling around her thighs, bosom and throat. She closed her eyes and groaned her pleasure as their thin lips snaked over her trembling limbs and torso and hungry teeth rested in place on her smooth skin, ready to bite. Dana spread her arms and legs wide and bared her throat, wantonly inviting her own death. A low growl spread from throat to throat as a prelude to the brutal snapping of jaws that ripped open her jugular and smashed the other arteries. She died spurting great jets of blood into their open mouths, screaming in delirious agony.
The young woman’s shoulders heaved and she gasped for breath, curled into a ball and shivering furiously. Katya moved close and wrapped her arms around her until she relaxed and let out a long sigh.
“And, you?” Dana asked, suddenly raising her mascara-streaked face.
“I’ve been thinking about this ever since I interviewed Dmitri” Katya replied. “I believe I have identified my thanatomanic dream. The setting is a grey morning on the road I used to walk to Middle School; I remember the mills and warehouses - grim structures of brick and concrete with chimneys spewing ash and smoke. But I am oddly terrified at the sight of one particular corrugated iron workshop - the kind they built everywhere after the war - which has a thick trail of greasy, black smoke coming from its brick chimney. There are a dozen naked women standing in line outside and when I realise that I am also completely nude I wake up sweating”. She took a long draw on the joint. “Every time, I have blanked out what happens after that point, but now I remember”.
The last woman in line, a statuesque blonde of about her own age, turned her head and smiled in welcome and Katya found herself obediently taking her place at the end of the queue. A sliding door rolled open and the women silently paraded into the harsh light inside the building. Katya kept her eyes on the milky skin of the blonde woman in front of her until she was startled by the sound of the door slamming closed again behind them. She looked around to see that they were in a bizarre slaughterhouse. Workers in chain gauntlets and leather aprons were already busy. She watched an older man with a gleaming cleaver skilfully dismember the headless body of an athletic woman, removing the hands and feet and disjointing the limbs. His apprentice carried each cut from the chopping block to its proper belt-conveyor then lifted the torso and hung it from a great hook chained to the overhead rail. He gave it a hefty shove and it went swinging and swaying along the rail to where another man waited at the door of the refrigerated meat locker. Elsewhere, two men in goggles stirred a steaming vat with great wooden paddles and a woman in rubber boots and overalls sluiced blood from the concrete floor with a power hose.
A handsome woman with short, steel-grey hair approached the group. “Did everyone manage to depilate?” she asked in a friendly tone. Katya’s fingers strayed unbidden to her smooth cunt.
One young woman raised her hand uncertainly. “I’m so sorry…” she began.
The older woman smiled. “Please don’t worry, my dear,” she said, “it really isn’t a problem”. With that she reached into the breast-pocket of her overalls and produced an open razor. She indicated a wooden bench which stood beside a lit brazier, “Just lie down here, little one, and spread your legs”. The girl smiled back and hurried to oblige. “I usually find that I don’t need shaving-oil” the woman said, and pushed two gloved fingers into the girl’s cunt, drawing a gasp of surprise from her. “You’re soaking wet” she observed, smearing the juices over her fine curls.
“Yes, madam” she sighed, and licked her lips as the razor glided over her pubes and lips, swiftly rendering her as bare as the others. “Thank you” she breathed, starting to get up, but the woman gently pushed her back down again.
“Just roll over now my dear” she said, stroking the girl’s cheek. “We may as well mark you while you’re here”. She beckoned to a young man in a leather jerkin who pulled on his gauntlets and went to the brazier. He took a white-hot cattle brand from the coals and the girl positioned herself with her legs either side of the bench, her fingers gripping the edge. To Katya, all the clanging and humming of the machinery and all the chatter of the workers seemed to fade away and all she heard was the girl panting as she waited for the kiss of burning metal on her skin. The youth put one hand on the small of her back to steady her and then pressed the brand firmly into the centre of her left buttock. There was a hissing sound and wisps of smoke. The tendons in the girl’s arms and legs tensed to take this tremendous pain, and then relaxed again as the air left her lungs in a long moan.
He checked his work briefly, then slapped her thigh smartly “Over there, lass” he said, jerking his head towards the woman with the hose, and buried the branding-iron in the glowing coals again. The girl got up and moved along. There were tears streaming down her cheeks, she chewed at her lower lip to keep from sobbing, and her nipples were swollen and as hard as bullets. Katya watched her kneel over a drain to be hosed down from head to foot, turning around and then bending over so that the powerful jet of water kissed every inch of her. Finally, she was sent on into the building and disappeared behind a strip curtain.
After a few minutes the iron was hot again and the next victim was called forward. She laid herself down on the bench like the young woman before her but cried out wildly when the iron burned into her, thrusting her fist into her mouth in a vain attempt to stifle the noise. The workers gave no sign that they even noticed this and directed her on to be hosed, ignoring her stammered apologies.
Katya had to stand and watch while all the women ahead of her were given the same treatment, with an agonising pause between each one while the young man waited for his branding-iron to reheat, whistling a popular song and occasionally wiping the sweat from his brow. After the seventh victim – a full-breasted, middle-aged woman with dark, gypsy good looks – had screamed out her orgasm at the touch of the brand Katya saw that the woman ahead of her was shamelessly fingering her clit and moaning quietly.
At last there was no-one else left and she draped herself over the bench, stretching her body luxuriantly and grinding her neglected pubes against the worn timber. Behind her, she heard the grey-haired supervisor’s voice, “This is the last one before our break, kid. Do you want her arse”? Katya felt a trickle of moisture run from her cunt.
“No thank you, boss” the youth replied, “Coffee and breakfast for me”. With this he pinned Katya down to the bench and pushed the branding-iron firmly into her, sending white bolts of pain through her whole body. As she came to herself again, quivering and gasping, Katya saw that the woman had unbuttoned her overalls to the waist and let them fall to her knees; underneath she was quite naked, trim and muscular with a tidy thatch of grey hair at her crotch. She straddled the bench in front of Katya’s head and leant back expectantly. She needed no urging and slid forward to suck hungrily at the supervisor’s cunt, rolling the clitoris between her tongue and teeth and lapping furiously at her. They moaned together when the thick juices ran over Katya’s lips and chin.
“That was good” the woman told her, rearranging her clothing. She pulled Katya close and kissed her hard on the lips, then murmured into her ear “Now go to be hosed down and butchered”. Katya closed her eyes and pressed her crotch against the woman’s hip for a long moment before she turned away to obey.
“Kneel over the drain” the next worker told her, “and empty yourself if you can”. Katya managed to release a stream of piss as the water washed over her head and shoulders and played down her body, stinging her breasts and belly. “Open” the woman ordered curtly, and Katya bent over backwards, spreading her legs wide apart so that the jet of water could reach her inner thighs and cunt, breathless at its icy touch. She shifted around when instructed just like the women she had watched while she stood waiting and anticipating her turn and then fell onto her elbows lifting her hips so that the stream of water could ravage her arse. She had just begun to wail her imminent climax when the water was suddenly and cruelly shut off. She looked over her shoulder to see the woman lay the hose down and saunter off after her workmates, drying her hands on a length of towelling. It was time. Katya rose unsteadily to her feet and walked in the opposite direction, following the previous victims through the strip curtain.
On the other side a red-faced, heavily moustachioed man took her by the arm. “Just wait a few minutes my girl” he said, and both stood watching the scene before them. The voluptuous blonde woman ahead of Katya was bent over the aluminium rail of a great slicing machine with her back arched, her ample arse and thighs quivering and her round breasts swinging beneath her. Drops of sperm trickled from between her legs onto the grating. A wiry, grizzled man turned away from her, tucking his softening cock back into his overalls and refastening them but another man, heavier-set and more youthful, stepped forward to take his place. He sank his broad fingertips into the flesh of her hips and drove into her arse with a single thrust; quickly finding a rhythm he pounded at her mercilessly, grunting and panting while she babbled and shrieked hysterically. Katya stole a sidelong glance at her captor and set her feet farther apart, pushing the fingers of her free hand into her dripping cunt. She was struggling to remain silent when the pair loudly announced the climax of their sodomy with howls of blasphemy and obscenity.
All three men gathered around the blonde, leaving Katya free to sink to her knees while continuing her desperate frigging. They led her, still trembling and panting, up the steps of the machine and carefully positioned her face-down over the base plate. Following what must have been a well-established routine they activated the slicer and then hoisted her headless body by the feet to hook the ankles to a system of overhead rails. Once the flow of blood lessened the carcass was pushed along the rail to where a white-haired butcher sliced it open from crotch to sternum and the entrails fell wetly onto a belt conveyor. From here, the rail inclined downward and the carcass rolled off through another set of plastic strips.
The big man turned to Katya and raised an eyebrow. She heaved a sigh and rose to her feet obediently, walking up the steps to where he stood waiting for her. She smiled briefly into the eyes of his leaner friend, who stood ready with two wicked hooks, and then bent at the waist to offer her neck to the spinning blade of the slicer. Below her was a trough where the heads were collected and on top of the pile she saw the heart-shaped face of the buxom blonde looking back at her, open-mouthed and somehow radiant. There was a great whirring and humming as the engines sprang to life.
Dana swallowed hard and clung to Katya, who slowly turned her head and blinked as though waking from a reverie.
“So, you see,” she said, “we really do understand the victims. I think we always have - you and I both”. Dana shook her head.
“No” she mouthed, breaking away and rising to her feet. “No!” then she turned and hurried to the door, snatching her coat on the way. Katya ran after her and caught up with her at the end of the landing, slumped against the wall taking great gulps of air. She reached out and laid a hand on the younger woman’s shoulder, but Dana only shook her head. She whispered, “I’m so sorry” and hurried off. Katya stood helplessly and watched her go, listening to the sound of her heels clattering down the corridor and out of the building.
Alone in her bedsitter, sitting naked and cross-legged on her bed, Dana gulped a mouthful of schnapps from the bottle and leant over her laptop. She had already typed her work ID, passport number, banking details and the passwords for her various personal and professional computer profiles into the King in Yellow website. Now she acknowledged the prompt, “Complete Submission”.
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