The King in Yellow Chapter One

Dmitri sat with his legs manacled, facing an empty chair through a wall of steel bars. He had been brought in strait-jacket and cuffs from his secure cell by six silent warders who had manoeuvred him expertly from one set of restraints to another and left him alone again without a word of explanation. He stared straight ahead, expressionless, the yellow prison fatigues stretched taut on his broad frame.

Katya had been watching him through the two-way mirror for many minutes before she called for the cell to be opened. His wild hair and beard, broad forehead and deep-set eyes were familiar from the many news stories about Waldenstein’s most prolific serial er and cannibal, but few women would ever dare come so close to him. The popular press ghoulishly reported that he had some kind of hypnotic power or evil eye. Other commentators were frankly mystified at his evident ability to seduce women into colluding with their own s. Little was known of his victims, but there was no evidence of abduction and the whole country shivered deliciously at the thought that they had gone willingly to their deaths. Katya’s director had decided that their most important task was to learn more about the victims and that the most promising line of investigation would be to question the cannibal himself. Secretly, Katya had been desperate for the job; there was something about these extremes of masochism which she found utterly compelling.

Dmitri looked up and smiled as an attractive, dark-haired woman of about forty entered the room, sat in the empty chair facing him through the bars and crossed her shapely legs.

"My name is Katya and I would like to ask you some questions” she said, clutching her clipboard to her chest. Her voice was steady and her gaze impassive.

“It will be a pleasure” he said, pleasantly.

"You understand that I cannot bargain with you?" she asked, carefully. "Your cooperation will be noted on your records, of course".

"Of course," he nodded.

“We have found these images” she began to flip through a folder of prints, holding each one up for him to see. There were pictures of headless women on slabs, human thighs and other body parts roasted and dressed for the table, corpses all covered with cuts and drenched with . Katya paused, and their eyes met. “These stigmata…” she swallowed, momentarily off balance, “…how did they happen?” She held up the picture. A beautiful, doll-like woman lay spread-eagled on a floor of stone flags. Long black hair tumbled in waves around her cruelly lacerated corpse and she bore jagged, crimson holes in her hands, feet and chest.

“Stigmata?” asked Dmitri, arching an eyebrow. “Those are real nail and spear wounds”. He pretended not to notice as Katya shifted uncomfortably. “The photograph is of a woman named Alexandra, Grigori’s wife. We crucified her last year; I decided that I had drawn all the pleasure I could from prolonging her agony”. He smiled, his words flowing easily and compellingly. “She had reached such a peak of anticipation and arousal that she could be denied no longer. And I wanted her”. He told the tale.

Four of them had left the back door of the old convent that day, Dmitri told her; they cast dark shadows in the bright, summer sunshine. Alexandra was stark naked save for a length of barbed wire wrapped tightly around her head; Dmitri, Grigori and Leon wore simple smocks belted at the waist. Each carried a knotted scourge and Dmitri also held an African assegai – a foot of gleaming steel at the end of a shaft of smooth, dark oak. He gestured with it towards the path and strode off towards the hilltop without a backward glance. Alexandra promptly dropped to her hands and knees and crawled after him, her tight arse rolling invitingly as she struggled to keep pace. Before long, her lithe body was shimmering with sweat and she had to set down her tender knees and palms more gingerly. Dmitri stopped, turned, and put his hands on his hips. Alexandra turned an expectant face up to him.

He spoke without looking around, “Grigori. Give her the first whipping.”

At this, she spread her slender thighs as widely as she could and grasped her ankles. She lifted her hips and gazed wide-eyed over her shoulder at Grigori. His heavy features twisted into an ugly leer as he drew back his arm and lashed viciously into her arse with all of his strength. Her mouth stretched open in a great voiceless scream and she fell face-forward, a series of dull red stripes scored across her firm buttocks.

Grigori spat one word, “Up!”, and she quickly shuffled her knees back into position, whimpering quietly. The scourge slashed down again and bit into the taut, white flesh, this time drawing from her a full-throated howl that rang around the grounds. Crying pitifully, Alexandra herself back into position for the next three strokes before uttering a long, deep groan when the sixth, delivered on an upswing, cut cruelly into her crotch. She lay on her belly writhing and gasping, raking her fingers through the grass, until Dmitri spoke.

“Enough” he rumbled. He reached down to lift Alexandra’s chin and murmured into her ear, “It is happening” then he turned away and went on up the hill. Dragging herself back up onto her hands and knees she followed him, sobbing softly, and the party moved on.

”You are quite comfortable?” Dmitri asked, regarding Katya searchingly. She nodded for him to continue. “Alexandra slithered after me. I waited for her beside the bed of nettles that I’d been having her cultivate for months.” He relaxed back in his chair, so far as the restraints allowed, enjoying himself.

Alexandra crawled over the nettles, wincing and chewing at her lip, then lay down slowly and deliberately. She was already gasping desperately with her sweet face twisted into a grimace of sheer agony when Dmitri put one foot to the small of her back and pressed her down hard. Her whole body from shoulder to knee was cruelly stung and she spread her legs wide apart to let the luxuriant growth she had tended so assiduously lick at her inner thighs and stab deep into her cunt.

Dmitri watched her lie there for a moment, taking great gulps of air as she gazed up at him pitifully, then smiled and nodded. With a long, low groan Alexandra languorously rolled onto her back, clasping her knee up to her chest to open the cleft of her arse to the bitter stinging. At a sign from Dmitri, Leon stepped forward and stood over her. He trailed his scourge teasingly over her blistered clit and nipples while she writhed on her back in the nettles, panting, her teeth bared in a fierce rictus of pain.

“Am I to be whipped now?” she asked throatily , her cunt glistening wetly in the bright sunlight. He turned away abruptly and walked back to the path, the whip trailing over the grass behind him. She followed it on her belly, then bent to offer her arse to the scourge, bracing herself on her elbows as he drew his arm back to strike. The blows fell rapidly and relentlessly and she let out a continuous, wordless cry. On the second stroke her skin broke and trails of ran down her thighs. At the fourth her bladder emptied, and a pool of piss formed between her legs while she threw her head back to howl, blank-eyed, at the blue sky. The beating continued to the same rhythm until she fell forward onto her face on the tenth stroke. He squatted before her and lifted her head by a fistful of hair.

“Drink it” Leon said quietly, almost tenderly. She gazed into his eyes and licked her parted lips before dipping her head to the stone flag to lap at the puddle she had made. She sucked or licked every drop, looking up as she swallowed to be sure he was watching her debasement. The remaining two strokes of his whip were aimed at her open crotch and landed wetly, provoking an animal wailing and shudders which ran the length of her petite frame. When she could control the sobbing enough to crawl, they moved on again - following the path higher into the sparsely wooded uplands.

At the top of the hill Alexandra dragged herself painfully into a sun-dappled clearing where two disused bridleways crossed and paused to catch her breath at the sight of her cross lying ready by its post-hole, Andrei and Pierre waiting naked and erect beside it. She twisted around to look back at Dmitri.

“Go on” he ordered, and she squirmed over the last few yards of grass to the cross, where she fell to kissing and caressing the rough timber in a frenzy as though it were the body of a lover. Three iron spikes had been laid out where the two beams crossed. Dmitri’s shadow fell over her as she carefully gathered them up and, kneeling, offered them to him from her open hands. Her face shone with naked adoration when he reached down, smiling.

He stepped back and the other four closed in and knelt around her. Alexandra seated herself on the upright of the cross - her body slick with and sweat - and crossed her tiny feet in place to be nailed. Grigori and Leon reached out to hold her firmly by the arms and shoulders while Andrei and Pierre seized her knees and ankles. She rested her cheek against Grigori's shoulder and sighed, utterly helpless in their strong hands. Dmitri knelt at her feet to position a long, black nail in the middle of her foot and drew the hammer back high above his head. She let her head loll back and moaned until the hammer fell and the moan became a piercing shriek, which continued while another two firm blows drove the iron through both feet and into the timber beneath. Alexandra quivered from head to toe but she was held immobile while Dmitri worked. She panted hoarsely for a few moments, tears streaming down her face, until he stood up and spoke.

“Thank them for your death” he said, and her tormentors freed their erections from their shirts to stab them at her face. Alexandra fell on them hungrily, leaning forward to lick Grigori from the crease of his arse to the head of his cock while running her fingers lightly around Andrei’s balls and across his belly to brush his nipples. She sucked greedily, hollow-cheeked, at one cock then another while the oozed between her toes and stained the bare wood.

Katya shifted in her seat, suddenly conscious of the weight of her clothes, and raised a hand to her cheek. Dmitri stopped talking and looked into her eyes. Her lips parted but she didn’t speak. His eyes smiled and he continued the story.

“That will suffice” Dmitri said, his voice calm and measured. Alexandra licked her lips and lay back, supine, on the cross. A gentle breeze played through the pines around them and a dark cloud drifted across the sun. The men backed off, grasping their engorged cocks. She reached her left hand out to its place on the crossbar and smiled as Dmitri positioned another nail in the middle of the palm, her skin puckering whitely where the tip was pushed firmly into place. Her eyes never left him as the hammer swept down and smashed the sharp iron through flesh and bone, then she threw her head back and screamed wildly. Weeping, she extended her right hand for the same treatment and again arched her back to scream, rigid with pain, before falling back onto the timbers, gasping. Her small breasts rose and fell as she fought to control her breathing. Dmitri pressed two fingers to her cunt, sniffed them, then wiped the moisture down her inner thighs before sitting down next to her, pulling her head towards him and thrusting himself brutally into her welcoming mouth. His fingers locked around a handful of hair while her mouth worked feverishly on his prick, her tongue swirling around the head while her lips slid up and down the shaft. All four men were frigging themselves over her outspread form and they spurted onto her sweating flesh one after another until finally Dmitri too grunted and ejaculated. She licked his sperm from her lips and swallowed while the others composed themselves and rose to their feet.

“Raise the cross” commanded Dmitri, lifting his whip. Pierre and Andrei exchanged a look, nodded, and hauled on the ropes looped around the ends of the crossbar. Alexandra gave a long moan and spunk ran thickly down her skin as she was hoisted from the ground. The cross juddered into place; with an effort that made the muscles of her arms and legs stand out taut she took the weight of her slim body on her ruined hands and feet. Juices streamed down her thighs and she groaned through clenched teeth. She turned her face up to the sky, heaving great, d breaths, and then looked around at her tormentors and mastered her sobbing for long enough to flash them a brave smile. The five men stepped forward, grinning evilly. Methodically, brutally, they laid their scourges into her breasts and stomach, cunt and thighs. Her body twisted and writhed in agony and she tossed her head from side to side, screaming into the silent woodland. She would strain her body away from the cross, rising up on her ing feet, and then smash back into the timber as a vicious length of supple leather bit into her nipples or cut a bright line of pain across her cunt. Eventually they settled into a regular rhythm and Alexandra’s d wails turned first to moans and then to a throaty panting as the whips came at her from left and right too quickly for her to react. Her knees fell apart and she hung motionless, completely open to them. Deep welts stood out across her white flesh and dripped onto the turf below.

They paused and the afternoon fell silent but for the men's rasping breaths and Alexandra's soft keening. Dmitri tucked his whip into his belt and turned back down the path to the convent. The others followed. Pierre produced a flask and handed it around as they went; cigarettes were lit and they began to converse in low voices. Alexandra kept her eyes on them until they passed out of sight and then slumped, wincing at the pain in her limbs, to endure the greater agony - of awaiting their return.

It was almost dark when she slowly lifted her head to see her rs ranged before her again, naked in the pleasant evening air. Her face was radiant and she favoured them all with a look of glorious triumph as, with an effort that brought fresh tears to her shining eyes, she held her body away from the cross and opened her thighs. The whips swung back then began to crack onto her proffered flesh. Older cuts reopened as fresh wounds were carved into her. Soon, a mist of played around her at every blow and when she could scream no more Dmitri let his whip drop and shifted it to his left hand. After a few moments she raised her chin painfully from her chest and saw his assegai poised to penetrate her. A tremor seized her and her hips bucked.

“The Pallid Mask!” she cried out, joyously, as a scourge bit deep into her spurting cunt and Dmitri’s spear drove through her ribs and into her heart.

“Au revoir” murmured Dmitri as Katya rose and walked silently to the door, her heels beating a tattoo on the concrete floor.