Reinhardt’s Eager Clients 

The lawyer wouldn’t scream. Reinhardt inserted the silver ring gag to fit snugly inside the lips and force the mouth open like the statue’s. There would be pressure on the jaw and the facial muscles would feel the strain, but the lawyer would get used to it. In the boutique, following his orders, Manfred had examined a wide selection of mouth gag and speculum designs in either black or silver, and had spent time talking with the clerk, scanning pictures of models on the store computer showing how each gag looked when worn. Finally, he chose the one that Reinhardt now locked behind its head. It could make animal noises, if it wanted, but neither pronounce words nor shut its mouth, nor would anyone call it by its usual name. It could swallow but not chew. A mouth funnel could be inserted and attached to the ring for beer, cum and piss. It was ready to receive whatever form of food and liquid refreshment Reinhardt cared to give his pig.

Speaking after a fashion, the wife Wanda writhed and moaned and emitted bird-like sounds on the couch where Jamal had placed her to perform his “cunt specialty.” Before engaging, he secured her nipples between thumbs and forefinger, pinched, rolled, and stretched; pinched, rolled, and stretched. His wide hands covered most of her breasts, as the hard brown nipples ached and stiffened between his thumbs and forefingers. She began kicking her legs. Jamal needed one hand to constrain them. His dog tags popped out from behind his khaki green T-shirt. He wore a soldier’s outfit like she wanted.

The lawyer could not move, its entire body, arms and legs, roped and shackled. Reinhardt had pulled his arms behind the chair and connected the leather wrist restraints; the ankles cuffed the same way to the chair’s front legs. To restrain the torso, he used a yellow nylon rope criss-crossing his chest and knotted from behind. The rope had a smooth texture. The lawyer wasn’t going anywhere. After properly restraining his cuckold pig, Reinhardt inserted the ring gag in its mouth.

Confined to a steel cock cage, its dick bulged but had no room to rise. Who the fuck cared about the lawyer’s dick, anyway? A pathetic and useless appendage exposed through its unzipped slacks. Wear one of your best suits with a white shirt; Reinhardt had left a message on the lawyer’s iPhone. So, it had chosen a grey wool and mohair stretch suit, according to the label Reinhardt read before applying the ropes, dry-clean only, under the jacket a crisp Egyptian cotton white shirt, and a sapphire blue silk tie. Like Jamal, he wore fatigues and boots like a soldier, according to the agreement.

“This is what you wear in court, fuckhole?”

The cloth bunched and creased under the ropes. The lawyer nodded, its brown eyes glistening. Reinhardt knew that the lawyer was slipping into subspace, where he ceased to be an independent, smart-ass lawyer, and became whatever Reinhardt decided. And Reinhardt knew the lawyer wanted to shed the burden of being human and become an animal, a pig or dog. A dog leashed by its master.

Reinhardt and Jamal smoked in the condo, traipsing over the white carpet in their dirty boots. A sudden rainstorm blew up from the east in mid-morning, soaking the streets, splashing the soldiers’ fatigues, so they left footprints on the rug. The dog enjoyed the opportunity to lick the soles of both their boots just after they entered the condo. Jamal bellowed surprise. What the fuck? Reinhardt had pointed to the floor and in his suit, the lawyer, obeying the force of Reinhardt’s silent command, fell on all fours, and then crept to the boots.

“What’d I tell you, Jamal?” He’s a fucking animal. A soldier’s bootlicker. See that, bitch? Your hubby’s a fucking dirt pig, nothing but fuckmeat for a soldier.”

“He sure is, Reinhardt.”

Wanda giggled, watching Manfred proceed with the licking. Wanda said that he deserved a spanking. She showed the soldiers a paddle like the kind used in ping pong, flat black leather with a handle embedded with purple and green rhinestones. Ribbons of the same colour fluttered from the handle’s tip.

Reinhardt looked, but said nothing.

“Hey, there, Reinhardt’s pig or dog, nice to meet you. Don’t forget my other boot.”

Jamal stretched out on the sofa to give the lawyer easy access to the treads of his boots. The animal went at them as if famished.

Jamal examined Wanda’s body in detail as Manfred tongued his dirty black boots. She gained about six inches of height on her stilettos, but still had to look up to giant Jamal, who could lift and sling her easily over his muscular shoulder. Reinhardt had given him permission; he could do anything he wanted with the couple. The hem of her short red leather skirt stretched across her pudendum barely covered by a black thong. A breast man, Jamal admired her bosom ballooning out of a constrictive black lacy corset. Tit clamps with a fine silver chain would look great on those nipples. Did she have any? The lady had dressed for games. He wondered if she also owned a whip to use on her wimpy husband.

“So, you spank your hubby with your sweet paddle?”

“Oh, yes, he’s such a bad boy sometimes, he needs discipline, and mommy gives it to him. Let’s spank him, shall we?”

Jamal winked at Reinhardt, who lit a fag. Wanda spoke sharply.

“Don’t smoke. I told you last time I don’t like it in the condo. Put it out.”

“Hear that, Jamal? The bitch told me to put it out.”

“She telling you what to do, Reinhardt? Be careful, she might spank you.”

“Never gonna happen, buddy.”

Reinhardt grabbed her by the air, pulling it back, forcing her mouth open, and he blew smoke down her throat. She choked and spat. His fingers folding into a fist, and tension hardening his biceps, he refrained from slapping her face, but jabbed the fingers of his free hand into her cunt. He withdrew his hand and rubbed it over her face, her juices smearing her perfectly applied makeup. How much time did she spend creating that face of hers for the public when he could get her on all fours and fuck her ass, if he had a mind, like the bitch she was. Fucking slut thought she was queen of the world. He’d show her what she was. Be the rough bull she craved and paid good money for. Fuck, he did degrade the cunt for nothing. 

The contract specified bondage, discipline, verbal abuse and humiliation within agreed-upon limits, no breaking of bones or blood: that was the rule. Nor did he beat up on women, outside of permitted discipline games like spanking, love taps, and necessary flogging for those into it. Aside from a well-deserved smack now and then, he had never beaten the shit out of a woman, but he knew she wanted to be terrified and threatened. And it was tempting. He knew he could force the cunt anytime he wanted.

That superior look on Wanda’s face, the plucked eyebrows raised, trying to put him down like a toy poodle sniping at a German shepherd, dressed up like a Barbie dominatrix with cranberry red lipstick. Giving him an order. Wanda was going to get it, and get it good and hard. He’d break the rules, he didn’t give a damn, she wasn’t going to the police anytime soon to complain that the man she wanted to fuck and degrade her in kinky play, well, had actually fucked and degraded her in kinky play. He’d show her, though, that he wasn’t playing Barbie dolls in a playhouse condo. Stupid little paddle and her silly corset from a sex shop, and spiky heels. Did she go there to buy the crap herself, or perhaps her husband did, or maybe she found them on eBay. Costumes: Reinhardt almost spat the word on the rug. Was he supposed to shake in his boots? Fuck that shit.

His cock pushed up hard under his fatigues, so did Jamal’s. Together their cocks would fuck the bitch senseless, plough her ass, choke her throat, teach her how to behave and show respect, just like she wanted it, like the terms of the contract specified. They would wipe that supercilious disapproval off her expensively cosmeticized face. She was nothing but his slave cunt in need of a lesson. No smoking, as if he had to follow her commands. Maybe a flogging wouldn’t be a bad idea to begin. Twisting her hair in his hand, she winced and whimpered, he blew more smoke into her face, and shouted to the lawyer.

“Where do you get off telling me what to do, bitch?”

“The smoke…we don’t…” she coughed again. Reinhardt tugged her hair harder.

“We don’t…who gives a fuck what you do or don’t? I do what I want and you do what I want. Got that, bitch?”

About to scream, he stopped the sound by kissing her full on the mouth, exhaling more smoke down her throat, followed by his marauding tongue, and she struggled, choked, and pushed against his chest, and tried to slap his face. That was the ticket. Play the role. He’d train them both like dogs. Why else was he there?

“You’ll get something to gag on, cumslut.”

“Hey, Reinhardt, that cunt needs a good fuck.”

“You go ahead and start. The pig can watch.”

He stood behind the bound lawyer as Jamal led Wanda to a position in front of her husband.

“Ever worry they’ll call the cops?” Jamal had asked.

Last week they had been checking out pussy in the bar, finding nothing to their taste; skanks all tonight, they agreed. Reinhardt had already serviced three customers that week. Jamal, his friend who was new to the kinky escort business, had ordered four beers, and had already gobbled down half the pretzels as Reinhardt told the story of how he first met Wanda and Manfred, and what they did. And how much they paid.

“Nah, we signed a contract.”

“What?”

“An agreement, the rules and regulations laid out, saying what they’re into, their free choice and desire, what I can do, what they expect their bull master to do. If legal shit happens, I can show the contract. See, consensual play, they went into this with eyes wide open. No one’s ever called the law on me.” He invited Jamal to go with him to the next session. To experience kinky play. They both craved black cock in their fantasies. And would pay handsomely for the privilege.

“Listen to this. From the wife, my slave.”

Reinhardt played the voice mail on his cell.

No one fucks me like you, my bull. Please, fuck me. I’ll do what you want.

“And this one from the hubby.”

Please fuck Wanda, master. I’m your cuckold pig. Your dog. Please put it on a leash, mein kommandant, SIR. Please, master.

“Shit, Reinhardt, you got it made.”

“They don’t want anyone to know about their little fuck games. Besides, the more I degrade the pig, the more he wants it. I’ll collar him like a dog and make him lap my boots and bark. He wants to submit to soldiers, so I dress the part. Wanda protests sometimes, but that’s all part of the fucking game. She likes to be taught a lesson and shown who’s the master. The rougher it gets, the better she likes it. All written down in the agreement. They’re my cunts now. I can do what I want with them. My personal, hot and eager cunts. I’ve been fucking kinky cunts like them for years. They pay well. So, Jamal, you want to dress like a soldier and fuck the bitches? You’ll come away many Euros richer.”

“My cock’s hard, so the answer is damn right I do.”

A Great Variety of Monsters

The Big Top loomed against the bruised, pre-storm sky like a cancerous growth, its garish colors somehow muted by the encroaching darkness. Inside, the air thrummed with a discordant symphony: the wheezing calliope struggling to maintain a semblance of cheer, the hushed whispers of the gathered throng, and the barely perceptible thrum emanating from beneath the center ring. 

Reynaldo, the World’s Smolest Circus Bear, adjusted his tiny fez, its jaunty angle a defiant gesture against the encroaching cosmic horror. He was, after all, a professional. A veteran of countless shows, seen it all. Or so he thought. He’d debuted as a cub, wrested (gently) from his mother’s arms, and thrust into the spotlight. Now, decades later, he was a seasoned performer, capable of death-defying feats of dexterity—balancing precariously on a stack of increasingly unstable spools, juggling miniature cleavers with unsettling accuracy.

Tonight, however, was different. There was a wrongness in the air, a psychic weight that pressed down on him with the force of a collapsing star. 

He prepped for his act in the cramped squalor of his dressing “room”, a space measuring only a few feet. 

Reynaldo ran the show in his area. He just had to make sure to keep out of the way of the elephants. Reynaldo checked his equipment, made sure that his small arms were properly lubricated. He needed to be at his peak for tonight.

A tremor ran through the tent, causing the calliope to skip a beat, morphing its cheerful tune into something akin to a funeral dirge. The crowd gasped, then fell silent, a silence so complete it felt unnatural, as though all sound had been sucked into a cosmic vacuum. Reynaldo knew, with a certainty that chilled him to the bone, that the show was about to begin.

Outside, Silas Blackwood, the circus barker, wrung his gnarled hands, his eyes gleaming with a feverish intensity. He’d made a bargain, you see, with entities best left unnamed. A bargain for success, for fame, for immortality. And the price? Well, the price was merely a matter of rearranging certain elements of the show, of tweaking the…ingredients…ever so slightly.

He glanced at the crowd, a motley assortment of the gullible, the desperate, and the deeply, profoundly curious. They’d come seeking entertainment, but what they were about to receive was something far more…transformative. 

He flashed a grin, a rictus of teeth that seemed far too numerous, and launched into his spiel, his voice taking on a hypnotic cadence that seemed to bypass the conscious mind altogether. “Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, step right up! Prepare to witness a spectacle unlike any you have ever seen! A great variety of monsters, both human and…otherwise!”

Blackwood gestured towards the entrance to the Big Top, its canvas flaps now rippling with an unseen energy. “Tonight, we offer you a glimpse beyond the veil, a peek into the abyss! But be warned, dear patrons: once you have seen, you can never unsee! Enter at your own peril!” With a flourish, he swept his arm, ushering them towards their doom, or perhaps their enlightenment. Hard to tell these days.

The acts began as they always did: the contortionist, her limbs bending at impossible angles, the strongman, hoisting weights that defied gravity, the clowns, their painted smiles masking a disturbing emptiness. But as the night wore on, the performances grew increasingly…aberrant. 

The tightrope walker, for instance, began to levitate, her eyes rolling back in her head as she spoke in tongues unknown. The lion tamer, normally a figure of fierce authority, cowered before his charges, their roars taking on a distinctly unnatural timbre.

And then came Reynaldo’s act. But the carefully balanced spools had been replaced with pulsating, tumorous growths, and the cleavers had been swapped for obsidian knives that seemed to hum with malevolent energy. The calliope, now possessed by some unseen force, shrieked out a cacophony of discordant notes, driving the audience to the brink of madness. But Reynaldo, bless his tiny bear heart, persevered, juggling the knives with a grim determination, his movements growing increasingly frantic as the tent around him descended into chaos.

“The show must go on…” he muttered to himself.

He glanced at Blackwood, who was now standing in the center ring, chanting in a language that tasted of salt and decay. The thrumming from beneath the ring intensified, and the canvas above began to bulge, as though something vast and terrible were attempting to breach the barrier between worlds. 

Reynaldo may have been the World’s Smolest Circus Bear, but he was also possessed of a keen intellect and a surprising knowledge of the occult. Years spent traveling the world, performing in forgotten towns and far away corners, had exposed him to things that no bear, or human, should ever have to witness. But he’d learned, he’d adapted, and he’d survived. 

He knew, with a dreadful certainty, that Blackwood was attempting to summon something from beyond, something ancient and malevolent, something that would consume them all. And Reynaldo knew that it was up to him, the tiny bear in a fez, to stop it.

With a roar that belied his diminutive size, Reynaldo launched himself at Blackwood, bowling him over like a cheap lawn ornament. He snatched the obsidian knife from the barker’s hand and, with a desperate prayer to whatever gods might still be listening, plunged it into the center of the summoning circle.

The tent went silent. The thrumming stopped. The bulging canvas relaxed. The calliope sputtered and died, leaving only the sound of ragged breathing and the distant rumble of thunder. 

Reynaldo stood over the fallen Blackwood, his tiny chest heaving, the obsidian knife dripping with ichor.

The crisis was averted, for now. But Reynaldo knew, with a cold certainty, that this was just the beginning. The show, as they say, must go on, but Reynaldo was going to be the one to do it right this time.

Telegram Sam

Aurelia De Quincey feels exposed, their eyes piercing through her clothes. Going further, faster, through flesh like a razor nosed bullet train. 

Down to her skeleton. Down to the marrow. 

Denuded has been Aurelia’s continued experience of life since childhood. Her jumbled toys still stir in the attic of her mind. They are soft and hard edged and plastic and plushy.

Her soul is shadow-scorched, and bad energy comes off of her in grave-waves.

She sits alone at a cafe, hunched over her tablet, doodling.

He sits at a nearby table.

Aurelia has identified him. His cop heart and soul. She feels his dagger optics lance her. Prurient fingers probing her like they were forensics experts seeking brain-embedded bullets.

She looks up, straight at him, daring him to respond. His eyes are hidden behind shades. Cop stache and attitude. 

***

They began to operate in her apartment complex at the beginning of the longest summer she can remember. 

They started by inserting their grubby fingers into her mailbox. She could see the scratches on the metal where they’d left their signs. The Aleph, the all-sigil, the Masonic signs, the Illuminati dog whistles.

She knew of their operational tactics having read Borges and Poe in childhood dreaming in her aunt’s house over dark magic tea and conversations that floated with spirits like red tea lights.

She was a legacy stalkee. Generations of the De Quinceys had passed through the gauntlet of the stalkers.

One time she was trying to walk across the street and a black Pontiac came out of nowhere and nearly crushed her.

They sent their agents into her dreaming world, clutching and clawing at her with long metal-taloned fingers.

It was impossible to free herself from them.

She heard scraping sounds from the apartment above hers as they moved the machine with the beams across the floor. Knowing how much it hurt her, they turned the weapon up to 11. It burnt her brain up so bad. She wept and gnashed her teeth and bit her lip and drooled and bellowed into her pillow.

***

She was a mark from the start.

She saw them park alongside her when she went to the grocery store. They brazenly made eye contact as their hands sauntered across the device, the Raven’s claw.

She saw their heads reflected in shop windows.

She heard their voices in her head when she paused by the apartment of the one friend she had, the cripple who was never home. Where did he spend his days?

She saw the Morgellan’s threads spill out of her palms like alien stigmata.

She drew a map from memory of the better timeline where she reigned like a mantis queen.

Aurelia knew that in the end nobody could hurt her, because she had much like Lurian Kabbalah resolved herself out of spacetime. Still the Nova Mob pursued her.

She wasn’t out of the woods just yet.

She sensed them hissing in the wee hours, like some kind of guerilla radio. Surface to air serpents filled her head with dread.

She ordered in but the pizza restaurant on the corner had her clocked. Their efforts would one day result in a body washing up on shore. Not hers, perhaps, but adjacent.

She was wrecked and ruined but still in good spirits when the officers showed up asking about her former roomie.

Of course she lied. The roommate still received mail. Aurelia told them that Eileen Glass had disappeared to Estonia to form a riot grrrl outfit. Which was partially true.

***

Eerily once in awhile her head split open and black bugs poured out.

Aurelia collected the bugs in a jar. They spoke a gossiping language that was entirely pictorial.

She wrote about the bugs in an online journal. Hers was a letter to the world that never wrote to her.

She was possessed by something or someone. She fell in love with a ghost. Perhaps the ghost issued from her future corpse.

She saw abjection rain down from the sky. She saw copper snakes curling on the ceiling. When her lovers took her, male and female, she evacuated her flesh body and joined the snakes.

She knew bi erasure was a thing and probably occurred to St. Bowie.

Her random architectures faded away in the light from a thousand suns.

She made soup out of bone broth. She imagined the skulls of the Buddhas bobbing in her soup like divinatory dreams.

She drew comic art of a woman whose twin sister lay in perpetuity in a hospital bed, big with hysterical pregnancy.

She made a comic book called Pen and Incubus.

She published panels from the book on Facebook, and slowly began to gain a readership.

She began to feel like her life wasn’t so damned after all, and she might be able to redeem herself in the fullness of time.

Aurelia De Quincey was no longer sad.

She took up yoga and pilates. She spent hours of languor wrapped up in her lovers’ bodies listening to the Cure’s Pornography album. 

Acid melted her and dripped her face and she delighted in that.

When they made love she merged with all the creatures.

It was a celebration. A mart of joy. 

One day she heard a noise from the kitchen. Nude, she shuddered awake. Her lovers were out cold, still dead from the party the night before.

She walked into the kitchen and saw the Man with the Hat.

And recognized him: Telegram Sam, an agent of the dream world. A shadow man.

He beckoned her.

Her stomach clenched. Her nerves shrieked. She wanted to scream and run away, but he had her in his power.

The solar flares began to lick the inside of her skull.

He fired off a series of telepathic instructions she could not refuse. 

Then he was inside her and she was inside him, like interlocking Russian dolls.

The suffocating heat closed in around her. Her feet froze to the floor.

He locked her in his fell embrace, whispering tender nothings about frost and genocide.

He knew her, evidently. 

Was the ghost, her ghost from the future. The one they spoke of in the black books.

Telegram Sam.

She would never escape his grin. It enveloped her. She felt his bloody temper rise as his miles of razor sharp teeth descended.