The door creaks when she opens it. Sometimes she thought he let the doors rust on purpose, to give it a sinister touch. Part of the protocol, of his foreplay. She would never fully understand that man. His hands stuffed in the pockets of the white lab coat, the stethoscope hanging from his neck with that serious air, his black eyes did not shine behind the crystal of his glasses. Dark lust and condescension in that unintelligible expression, she wasn’t allowed to hesitate or back down.
He holds out his hand, the long, thin phalanges pointing toward the white leather-lined stretcher. Handcuffs on her wrists would be exciting, it wouldn’t be the first time he had requested it; In this white-tiled room that had seen all the consensual abuse, between the four underground walls, in this man’s basement, which perfectly mimicked his professional zone… Joelle couldn’t understand the importance of protocol. That was his way, his modus operandi… she wasn’t allowed to question either. Descending into the dungeons of his home was an unspoken agreement between the two of them, in which she became a guinea pig with no chance to protest; her screams wouldn’t be heard ten meters under the ground, lost and intertwined between the violins and the romantic opera voices that composed the ideal melodies for those lunatic ears. Habanera played with lukewarm intensity in the cold air, it doesn’t take long for Joelle to be sucked into that time and space of dreams.
She crosses her arms across her belly and lifts her blouse, feeling a warm blush color her cheeks under his gaze. The chills that bristled her skin contrasted with the hot and passionate impulse that began to burn in her blood, there was no exchange of words between her and the doctor who waited patiently, she lies down on the stretcher and the freshness of the padded leather makes her sigh, much to Almar Leitz’s delight, and a smile spreads in a thin thread across the corners of his whitish lips.
She never knew what to expect. Her body was not fully recovered from the latest abuse. A gasp hangs in her throat as his fingers caress the trails of thick crimson threads entwined around her neck, given as a souvenir of their last date. Joelle had had to wear woolen scarves during the two-week interval, thanking the start of the twenty-third autumn of her life. Nothing gave her such a strange feeling of revulsion as the idea of someone in her «real life» finding out about their secret tryst (protocol, protocol); those faces on the surface, normal patients with normal and curable diseases would not go downstairs or lock themselves underground, not like her.
An index finger and thumb gently squeeze her neck, Joelle is assailed by memories of ropes coiling around her throat and blocking her breathing; it was all strings and threads and hands with him. Careful, calculating hands, touching skin and more, squeezing, suffocating, and pressing. Fingertips apply pressure to the arteries in her neck, feel her pulse racing, spread the smile now showing teeth, Joelle tries to relax. Inhaling deeply that air that smelled of him, cologne with the sterile metallic aroma of artifacts, Joelle exhales and releases tension. The music was a nice touch, his private signature, probably. Leitz never made small talk, never talked too much. He gave orders and she obeyed. That was all.
The composure of Leitz’s countenance touched her every nerve. Curses articulated by those lips would be so… unbelievably aphrodisiac… with his hands pressing and ropes blocking the movement, though that sadomasochistic tension still met resistance in her. She couldn’t admit her wishes, however welcome they might be. Joelle closes her eyes. His fingers tighten even more, for an instant, and then release.
That dirty game, making her feel like she wasn’t just another patient, sometimes biting, rarely kissing anything other than her lips, touching and sinking his nails and leaving crescents and red lines on her skin… and then not seeing each other again until the next session. It was a drug and an addiction. Mad medicine, mad scientist, if she dared to call him that. That basement was a portal to another dimension, mimicking a hospital room with sheer perfection of detail, including the hellishly impersonal air of someone who manipulates lives for money, or in his case, for mysteriously deranged inclinations. Pure physical and mental agony, she could be nothing more than a sacrificial lamb in those dark eyes. And like a lamb she could only walk mindlessly to her own private slaughterhouse. If she dared to call it that.
Leitz moves both hands up to her wrists, pinching her pulse, and she can perhaps feel the diminutively decreased blood flow in her hands that seemed to lose movement. Psychosomatically, maybe, but his hands had a certain hypnotic energy. He could snap his fingers at her and she’d pass out, if he ordered it. Just a snap of the fingers. The man presses on her wrists for a few seconds, checking the order of her racing heart, her blood pounding under his fingertips. She takes advantage of the moment when he is focused on his task and peeks into his face.
The grayish patches under his eyelids spoke of lack of rest, the sallow complexion was a yellowish layer over a face that had once been very handsome, but was now eaten away with physical sorrow. His lips were set in a serious expression, his black hair was slicked back without a single strand out of order. But his heart was somewhere else. Joelle gulps down and the saliva seems to get stuck in her throat. She would never tire of the rare tableau of raw emotion so close to her, almost on top of her.
His hands move to her belly and she feels his fingertips pressing into her skin. Her soft tissue sinks under the fingers, round pink nails neatly trimmed, applying force and sliding, from her center to her sides, stroking. She felt the pressure on her stomach, on her kidneys, like a massage in one of her most unprotected areas.
The song ends with an echo that fades into the silence of the room. The keys of a piano solo fill the air once again; oh yeah, she knows it. Those tastes that seemed so sophisticated to her and that she adopted naturally and unconsciously. Serpent’s Kiss seems to bring the man’s humor back, and he smiles at her and takes his hands off of her.
“Sit up straight,” he commands and adds, “please.”
She obeys. That grotesquely erotic German accent was an arrow shot to her core, a burning pain between her lungs, asphyxia and lust captured in a deep voice. Her black bra barely stretched over her small breasts. She was still breathing slowly and deeply. Leitz gets the rubbers of the stethoscope in his ears with absent concentration. She sees that his glasses had a thin gold frame. She notices that his eyelashes were longer than they looked like from afar. Leitz rests the metal of the stethoscope against her cleavage and Joelle shivers from the sudden cold. He slides it with deft hands a few inches to her left, then tells her to take off her bra.
Joelle takes her hands behind her back and undoes the satin garment. Leitz presses his fingers on the metal, which sinks slightly on the soft tissue. The man’s expression does not change. The sound of her heartbeat would be his favorite tune, in fact, he loved listening to it. Joelle thought he was forgetting that she was there, waiting, because Leitz was taking his sweet time, his eyes more focused than ever. His eardrums would vibrate in tiny waves to the rhythm of her beating, her heartbeat, and he would appreciate that she was alive. She waits agonizingly, for endless seconds demarcated by pulses she felt but couldn’t hear. Music would vanish from his senses, not even the loftiest of symphonies will ever surpass the sound of life, in his own words.
But the spasms were not eternal, and therein lay the graceful mystery. Press your damn ear to my chest then, she thought. Why everything had to be through machines, through insensitive artificial materials. But to question would be anathema. It would break the trance and be more insidious than she could understand. The man separates the metal from her skin, removes the stethoscope from his ears with a slightly too long blink, and fixes his eyes on hers.
“All well.”
The man turns and places the stethoscope on the second shelf of a metal table and shuffles through some objects, which rattle in a single metallic vibration.
“Almar?”
Leitz replies with a brusque and distracted: “What.”
Joelle feels a huge wave of doubt and apprehension inside her. She feels her cheeks instantly burn with a blush, but she forces herself to get the words out. “Are you okay?”
He shuffles through the gadgets some more and turns to her, a clear glass rod between his fingers. He had his eyebrows raised, as if waiting for her to elaborate. Explain exactly what difference she had noticed, perhaps suspecting, a little resentfully, that she was going stepping over the limits. Of limits never set. And after all, who was the sick one here?
Joelle gulps, “You look a little… angry.” She says, looking down at her intertwined fingers on her lap, starting to regret that she even opened her mouth. But at the same time her interest for an answer grew and hung in the air in her lungs. She expected him to brush it off with a shake of his head, but to her immense surprise his expression softens and he looks away from her eyes.
“It’s just,” he starts, and Joelle hears a tone in his voice that she’s never heard before, “work.”
Before she can stop herself, Joelle asks, “What happened?”
Leitz sets the object down on the small metallic table, leaning over and resting his palms on the gurney, the tips of his fingers almost touching Joelle’s legs. His face bears a scathing expression of sheer cynicism that gnaws at her guts, a smirk stretches the corners of his mouth, and two prominent lines wrinkle his forehead above a raised eyebrow, “I made a mistake, okay? Can we start?”
This time frustration threatens Joelle’s eyes with tiny acidic tears. She remembers that in reality, she’s in control. She could walk out of that bland dungeon any time she pleased without asking for anyone’s permission, that he had to take her seriously and- “Can you tell me what happened?”
The man whispers a profanity in German language and replies, “I was slow and couldn’t save him. A young guy. He had a spectacular hole in his stomach and I couldn’t patch it up. Understand?”
Before Joelle can even think of what to say, Leitz continues, “The world doesn’t stop in hospital wards. Right across the street people walk by checking the time on their watches, exploring the possibility of buying a cappuccino or iced tea, fix their tie, maybe think of how exhausted they are, but inside that building people believe that time stops. They believe that when they get out of there they’ll get back to their normal life, but who creates that magic? Who slides magic wands over holes or broken parts and returns them to how they should be? How can something be fragile and invisible at the same time? Do you understand what I’m talking about?”
For the first time Joelle feels pernicious discomfort at having his face so close to hers. She wants to say that she’s sorry and that she doesn’t understand, but Leitz adjusts his glasses and stands up straight again. “Excuse me,” he says, “perhaps it would be better if-”
“No, I’m sorry,” Just guilt and a single attempt to make it better. Joelle lifts her head and looks at him, noting that the overbearingly intimidating atmosphere was gone. “And I’m sorry that happened. I just wanted to say that… you can take it out on me, if you want…”
Just an impulsive thought, but it succinctly contained an idea that had blossomed and withered in intervals since she had first met Leitz. Desperate shameless lust, there was no shame to be felt, apologies were not necessary either. If he had secrets he could reveal them through violence, a peculiar way of mourning… but magnificently tempting, for Joelle who had bruises that spread like ink in water on various parts of her body—pure carnal sin, made even more vulgar by its longing and desire.
Leitz reaches into the pocket of his white coat and brings his fingers up to his mouth. He looked at her with new eyes, touched her with the same hands, and sealed her mouth with thin, cold lips. His lips were just another artifact, another callous artificial machine, but Joelle was able to pretend she didn’t care. She feels her body shudder, an electrical vibration run up her spine with a shiver, and then a sour, resinous taste hidden under Leitz’s tongue seeps into her throat before her reflexes could block it. Joelle breaks the contact and coughs, bringing her fist to her mouth, glancing up at the man next to her, and all is lost in the giant gap between them.
“Maybe you should listen to my warnings for once,” He says. Joelle only hears whispers, but they sound loud and clear in her eardrums, “but I’m at your command.”
Her cough draws guttural noises and tiny drops of saliva from her throat, with no choice but to swallow the pill or whatever it was, that left a sour aftertaste like crushed lemon seeds. But Joelle doesn’t care; after all, without trust these rituals would be impossible, and while saying it wasn’t scary would be a lie, she was sure that nothing would be permanent.
The chemicals disintegrate in the gastric juices and a slight discomfort is present in her body, a fleeting attack of nausea forces her to crouch down until her forehead touches her thighs, still dressed in tight blue jeans. Leitz gently rests a hand on her shoulder, Joelle feels a bristly rub, like a sheet of rubber and latex caressing her skin. Leitz had a collection of drugs that would make any Colombian Don green with envy, information he kept hidden behind a translucent screen of dark glass, inside cabinets and under the floor, even lower than where they were. Oh hell! He kept falling into a mesmerizing spiral of perversion and drag Joelle along with him, but she had no objections, and so she was just as guilty.
Her back bumps against white leather, she feels her muscles relax in a strange invisible massage; her energy being slowly drained away, leaving in its place a potent sedative, warm and eerie. As if she had immersed herself in a sauna. The man undoes the button and lowers her pants, lifting her waist with one hand, sliding the fabric down her legs. Her body vibrates with relaxation beginning at her shoulders and working its way down the tangled circuit of her spine, nerve by nerve, releasing a single deep breath.
But contrary to this paralyzed calm, her chest contracted with rapid movements, up and down. Rough breathing squeezed sharp whistles between her lips; she needed the oxygen, because her heart was beginning to beat with desperate urgency, pulsing in her neck, listening to the pulse inside her ears. As if she could feel the organ convulsing inside her, as if he forced her lungs to breathe faster, with organic will. Joelle closes her eyes, feels the cool suction of pieces of rubber, tiny electrodes, being carefully placed, two on her chest, one on her neck and one on her belly.
The sounds around her seem to take on a certain dimension of clarity. The beating of her heart in the deepest layer, like a transparent sheet over the other sounds. The monotonous hum of cubical machinery a meter away from the stretcher, the slap of a latex glove on Leitz’s hands, the virtuosic notes overcoming the volume of the speakers and making her eardrums vibrate like the strings inside a piano. Her brain no longer filtered out sounds, her attention was scattered on all the stimuli. The electrodes on her chest sent subtle ripples between her ribs, faint, quietly arousing tingles. Leitz connects wires and a black screen makes numbers appear in its edge, a straight line falling in sharp peaks and rising at acute angles and hitting circuits that released beeps as the line reached the top of it and fell back down.
Her heart picks up the pace, like an engine that struggles to start. Memories of her last visit seep into the midst of her altered mind. The man turned the level up and down at will, sometimes gentle and loving in his sick abuses, punctuating his actions with kisses and caresses, slashing with finer-than-air blades, stitching the cuts in her skin, bleeding lust and obsession. Sometimes he became unrecognizable, terrifying in his unpredictability, sealing off the exits before they were found. The day he had entwined those cords around her neck, Joelle had felt her eyes bulge and her hands instinctively clawing at those wires that seemed to cut into her slender neck with unassailable ferocity. Her first breath of oxygen had felt so delicious, like a new beginning, an inexplicable relief. Her wounds healed, the scars would embroider her skin forever. Fear and pleasure danced together in their danse macabre, Joelle watching from afar, Leitz running the show behind the scenes.
And then the glass object returns to her field of vision. A thin invisible rod, his magic wand, connected to electricity that he commands to flicker into sparks at the push of a button. Sparks, white stars on the red screen of her eyelids, run through her nerves in an agonizing awakening… exhilarating, electricity that screamed shamelessly… bolts that ripped latent energy from her muscles, just his madness breaking barriers and making sparks fly. Pure ecstasy in her blood and in her flesh… Absolutely moving.
Everything was in her head, in her brain. The signals, the pain, the nerves that make her body tremble in a paralyzing frenzy. Suddenly her body ceases to be her property, it reacts without permission in spasms and jerks. Invisible bites on her neck, down to her breasts and belly, to the tips of her feet. Her nape sank slightly into the cotton under the leather, a furious storm of volts, scratching and pulling, tearing deep inside. Her fibers tensing in a violent fit of hell, her entire body burning in that whirlpool of wind and warmth, her vocal cords vibrating silently, helplessly.
Her parted lips exhale moist steam. Her senses are clouded in that thick fog of softness. She didn’t control the glitched involuntary movements, elbows quivering in the air, phalanges contracting like claws, clawing in chilling strokes across the leather and her thighs. She felt frustrations and emotions, fears, daily stress, being pulverized into thousands of particles, without being able to wait for that magnificent meditative awakening. Clinking glasses, sparkling wine, cheers for the future… an instant of clarity. She desired for the vision of the sun’s rays, away from the artificial lights, under the natural and healthy light of a lonely Sunday afternoon, without obligations or reprimands or blame. It was that, she wanted peace. All the effort seemed in vain, all the achievements with which she fantasized became superficial in an insane trance of catatonia. Convulsion of arms and legs, passionate heart, crimson red, maddened in its cage.
The analogous seconds between each discharge of electricity were so short that the suffocation began to plead in volatile brain infections, hissing furiously in the forced gasps of air, she didn’t need orders to know that her life would no longer hang on that white line on the screen if she didn’t make an effort to breathe. But it was so hard, the sauna she’d been plunged into was past its boiling point, bubbling up in bright explosive sparks. Too bright. Just a tingle, an explotion of air!
The beeps of the machine lined up exquisitely with the highs and lows of the music, high-pitched screams of machinery. Infinitely raising the volts, off-limits kids… Her fists hardened like stones, her nails sank into her palms, her teeth were about to tear blood into her mouth, oh but his eyes, she saw the man’s eyes being honest with that damned tinge of persuasion… Never failing to convince… Never leaving anything to the imagination, game in his eyes, wondering, how much more can you take?
Three more levels, skipping the intermediates, forcing the strings to their maximum stretch. One more millimeter and they would break, no doubt. Electricity splashes like a bucket of ice water all over her body. A scorching freeze of nerves and current, cauterizing wires, leaving out of service more than just a machine. Her heart exhales its last beat, one that Leitz registers on his eardrums connected to her through the black cord of the stethoscope. The man felt the rays that violated her body communicating everything in perfect clarity, loud and clear in his own ears, biting his lips but not containing any impulse.
And that’s the last thing Joelle sees. The electrical bolts permeated with their last mercy into her skin, vibrating in intense flashes. Raising their farewells in a sky blue glow, orange like strawberries, red like good tea. Leitz looks into her eyes, the blackness in his corneas still just as dark, and waves his hand. All condensed into an ear-to-ear grin. The entire space around that face blurs into a thick black mist, like the last scene of a TV show. She hears the white line on the screen tick away in a monotone wail, counting down the milliseconds on its military chronometer, lowering the curtains with a peculiar, almost peaceful, sigh of relaxation.
So this was the last darkness, she thought, like a comic reflection. So nothing was everything and everything was nothing, correct? The lightning strikes ripped out her pulse and brought it back to earth, it wouldn’t be his first murder, too bad!
But what was that? Probably her imagination, so vivid since she was a child. They were like whispers breaking the total silence, like little quiet snickers. You shouldn’t derail the train of thought my friend. Not now at least, that everything was so good, so… peaceful and silent. Maybe the giggles were bursting into laughter, maybe the darkness was snapping in a long, dangling thread, breaking it in two. She wouldn’t mind staying asleep for a while, but if there was no other way then it was fine.
Another bolt of electricity invades her body, this time very painful, unloading agony in all her senses. Just an amorphous pain, searing into her fresh corpse, still too warm. Music is the first thing that comes back to her ears. The fifth fucking symphony, just pulsing, pulsing! pulsing! A whole sky discharges on her chest, arches her back, lets out muffled whimpers. Her eyes snap open as if she had woken up from a nightmare, cold sweat trickling down her temples and onto her collarbones. Another shock for good measure, Leitz presses the defibrillator on her chest over and over and over again, with that same maniacal expression she’s seen countless times before.
Then he stops. Joelle pushes herself forward and sits up, pushing Leitz away with a new wave of strength. She takes a deep breath. Suddenly her body experiences a kind of inexplicable tiredness, her muscles burned with exhaustion even without moving; being at rest was not enough to calm her down. She falls back, slowly, feeling the leather stick to her sweaty skin. Joelle could only stay still, breathing in and out, catching her breath and listening to the beeps of the machine starting up again in rhythmic highs and lows.
Just a moment lost in her memory, like a dream that had felt so unbelievably exciting, but fades from the mind minutes after waking up. She had the sour-sweet aftertaste of darkness permeating her insides, like the start of a nasty hangover, recovering at her own pace, without forcing it. Joelle concentrates on the loud beating of her exhausted heart, making her chest vibrate with an interesting feeling of self-love.
Leitz drops the medical instruments with a thud on the metal table. She hears the unmistakable sound of a belt being unbuckled, Joelle turns her dilated pupils to him. His eyes wide open, fixed on hers, traced with faint red ink at the corners; his entire body trembling, his hands shaking, fingers yanking down his pants and boxers. Joelle listens to the wet friction of four or five jerks through his closed fist and his voice exhales a coarse growl that aligns with the moment his orgasm seeped through the man’s slender fingers, in white lines on the tiled floor.
Before she knew it, Joelle was dressed and staggering to the door, mentally gathering the strength to climb the flight of stairs to the surface. She puts her hand on the doorknob, pauses for a moment to let out the breath she’s been holding, and looks back. Leitz was arranging all his gadgets, unplugging cables, he wasn’t looking at her.
He hadn’t asked about her status after the fact, actually he never did. Leitz had great confidence in his own abilities. No pillow talk, he’d just light a damn cigarette and pull up his pants and leave her alone. Joelle wasn’t a talkative girl either, but she had some questions, some comments. She wanted to find out if she had really been dead, for how long, how he felt about it… But it didn’t matter. And he looked better, no doubt. Even a few feet apart Joelle could make out a half smile forming on his lips.
But that wasn’t comforting to her, for some reason. This time it had been too much, he had murdered her, quite literally, and a somewhat childish part of her expected an apology, as stupid as it felt. She hadn’t had time to process the experience, certainly she wouldn’t admit how incredibly arousing it had been, nor that her body was trembling with something other than shock. She placed her hand on her chest, making sure her heart was still beating even though she could hear it clearly in her head.
Sent your regards to your ex-patient, he said fuck you, she thought bitterly, still watching the man cleaning up the mess. But it didn’t matter, the void would be filled soon while she kept accumulating years and that phase of her life would end with a quiet closing of doors. Joelle begins to climb the white-lit stairs. The old red lines on her neck were aching with renewed insistence; she caresses them with one hand. She starts to imagine what the next session would be like, although that mental game would have no meaning, because she would never really understand him.
Source: reddit.com/r/eroticliterature/comments/tql47c/ten_feet_under_cardiophilia_bdsm_electro_play