Something new

I have an idea. A suggestion someone made. What if I started writing an erotic novel, a single long piece rather than a bunch of shorter ones? Well, I'm going to give it a try.

Please let me know if you like it or not. And please keep making requests. I'll keep the list going.

In the meantime, I've got the beginnings of a story here. I'm not sure how exciting the opening is... let me know what you think in the comments.

Testimony (1)

My name is Ian Marsh. I'm here to talk to you about the death of Lena Regland. Most importantly, I'm here to tell you that she was not murdered. That she did not die of negligence. She was not murdered. Lena Regland is dead because she wanted to be dead. She committed suicide. And in doing so, she framed my good friend for murder.

I know you don't want to believe me. You'd prefer to just convict my friend and let her spend the rest of her life in jail. Or maybe you'd be happy to convict her of involuntary manslaughter, and just see her behind bars for a few years. I'm sure the state has offered her that deal.

But I'm going to ask you to listen to me anyway. I'm going to ask you to follow along the story I'm about to tell you. I want you to understand not just that Ms. Regland killed herself, but also how.

I'll start with the facts. Some of this is just repeating what you've already heard so far, but I want to make sure we're all on the same page. The fact is that Lena Regland died on January 11^th at 2:43pm. The fact is that my friend, who calls herself Mistress Lola was in the room with her at the time.

That's it. Those are the facts. The rest is conjecture. The claim is that Ms. Regland died of an apparent heart attack during what the state is calling an elicit sexual act with Mistress Lola. What that means is that Ms. Regland was engaged in consensual BDSM play with Mistress Lola. She paid for the privilege; money was exchanged for a service, and Mistress Lola provided that service. Ms. Regland died while bound to what is called a St. Andrew's cross. Mistress Lola left her bound and called the police immediately upon realizing that there was something wrong.

What killed Ms. Regland was heart failure. But that wasn't brought on by the equipment or the activity of Mistress Lola. It was brought on by a poison that Ms. Regland had been regularly ingesting, in secret, for months.

Now, let me tell you where I come in.

As I said, my name is Ian Marsh. I'm a writer, and a friend of the woman calling herself Mistress Lola. I have been at times one of her clients. I am deeply involved, both personally and professionally, in the kink community. After she was arrested, Mistress Lola asked me to look into what had happened to Ms. Regland. Lola went through what happened during the scene step by step; it didn't take her long to convince me that what they were doing was not intense enough to have caused Ms. Regland to have a heart attack.

Normally, information about what happens in a scene with Mistress Lola is between her and her clients. I am happy to talk about things that have happened to me personally, but not about what has happened to other people. However, in this particular case, I am going to share exactly what happened in the scene that led up to Ms. Regland's death. It was not a particularly unusual scene, and is in fact one that I have experienced personally. So in the interest of privacy, I will tell you about the scene as I experienced it. I will tell you the place where Ms. Regland's heart gave out, and then tell you what would have happened in a normal situation.

The scene began like all scenes with Lola. She meets you out front, where money is exchanged. By the time you're meeting for the session, you've already met her at least once in a public place, and you've exchanged information with her privately. You've talked about what you want to do, what your fantasies are, and she has explained to you what she is willing to do.

Lola does not have sex with her clients. There is no exchange of bodily fluid, no sexual contact whatsoever.

When she takes you to the back room, she makes sure you know your safe word. That's a word that you've agreed upon ahead of time, a word that means that she needs to stop. That you are worried, scared, or unable to continue. That word is almost never 'Stop,' as that's far too common of a word to slip out. It has to be a word that doesn't fit the context of the scene.

I don't know what Ms. Regland's was. If I had to guess, I would say it was the word “Red.” Red is a nice, easy to say word. It's one Mistress Lola uses rather frequently.

When the scene begins, Lola ties you to the cross. She uses nylon straps on the wrists because they're easy to remove and they don't cut off circulation. Over the nylon are some plastic snaps that give you the firm feeling of being bound but still come away easily, in case of emergency.

She puts a red cloth in your left hand. If for whatever reason you can't say your safe word, you just have to let go of the cloth. Mistress Lola will stop immediately and make sure everything is okay before she continues.

I'm going over all of this because I want you to understand just how careful she is. Not only is she making sure not to do any permanent damage, she has multiple systems in place in case her client needs to put a premature end to a session.

Once securely bound, Mistress Lola begins the session. She normally starts with a light flogging, using the straps of leather to pound against your skin. She hits again and again. The individual strips of leather, when rubbed against you, feel soft, almost like they are made of velvet or suede. But when she swings them, the impact they make is more akin to being hit with a baseball bat. At least, that's how it feels.

After every few hits, she stops what she is doing and looks at your hand. She listens to the sounds you make. She checks that you're still fully cognizant. Then she goes back to hitting you.

A few minutes later, she puts down the flogger and picks up a crop. This one is a sharper pain, and when it hits, it feels like your skin is splitting. But that's an illusion. Mistress Lola knows exactly what she's doing, and she's fooled your senses by this point, making your body think it's in more pain than it is. She does this to release endorphins. It feels good when she hits you.

But she still keeps checking on you.

This is where Ms. Regland died. In between one round of hitting and another, during the use of this second tool. She died without releasing the cloth, without saying a word.

If she hadn't died, Mistress Lola would have used a paddle on her bare skin, possibly hard enough to leave some rather severe bruises. Nothing that would do any permanent damage, but enough that it would hurt for days afterward. Makes sitting difficult.

At the end of the hour, she lets you down, makes sure you're okay. She checks to make sure you're healthy and aware. Gets you some water.

Of course, Ms. Regland never got her water. She was already dead. But it wasn't by Mistress Lola's hands. Lola has played out this same scene, flogging, hitting with a crop, then paddling, dozens of times. Maybe hundreds. She has done this scene with men and with women, with people as young as nineteen and as old as sixty three. None of them have ever had any kind of health issues after the fact. Ms. Regland was the first one.

And why was she the first one? Because she killed herself.

But you don't have to take my word for it. I'm going to show you.

And to do that, I have to take you to some of the other kink scenes in the city. Scenes that Ms. Regland was, until a few months ago, an active part of.

Let's start with Cypher. Most nights, Cypher is like any other dance club. Very little activity during the week, lots during the weekends. On Tuesday nights, though, Cypher hosts a dungeon play. That means that there's a kink event. Every week.

The people involved in this event are normal people. They have normal day jobs, normal lives. Most of their time is spent wearing cotton, not latex. But that one night each week, people take out their leather, take out their vinyl, their leashes, their collars, and their whips.

I'm not going to say that you have to get down on your knees and crawl to get inside. I won't even say that you have to kiss the boots of the woman who checks ID, or of the woman who takes the cover charge, or the man who makes sure the metal detector works and searches you for weapons. You don't have to.

I choose to. I do it because I like that sort of thing. It's not for everyone. But Cypher, on Tuesday nights, is one of those places where you can do it without fear. Where you can do it as publicly as right inside the front door, and not have to worry about consent.

A lot of people like to paint those of us in the bdsm community as deviants. As freaks, as miscreants. What we are is a group of consenting adults who have different sexual desires. Most people have them; we just have the courage to experiment with our desires, rather than hide from them or strike out against those who feel more free than we do.

But I digress.

Cypher is a place where everyone is consenting. Where each person who comes in knows what they're getting in to. When you go to Cypher on Tuesdays, you know that you might see people in various stages of nudity. You know you might see someone bound to a wall and whipped until they bleed. You know you might see someone like me crawling along the floor, offering to kiss, and even to lick, the boots of the various people throughout the club. There will be people in full body latex, people in gas masks. The air will smell like rubber, sweat, and sex. Wax will be dripped on bare skin. There may be actual sexual activity, and there may be things even farther along the taboo spectrum than most of you have ever imagined.

What you won't find, and this is important, is people who are being forced to do anything against their will. People might pretend, but everyone consents. Everyone knows what is going on, and everyone is being safe.

That was the problem that Ms. Regland had. She wasn't being safe. She wanted to do things that went far beyond what any sane person would be involved with. When I went there last Tuesday, I knew that she had been banned. What I didn't know was why.

I didn't know, but I intended to find out. I had to; if I didn't have a good enough reason, I wouldn't be able to save my friend.

So I went in. I kissed my share of boots, pressing my lips against the leather while they scanned my body with a hand held metal detector, making sure I wasn't armed. I went in wearing leather pants, with a collar tight around my neck. I went in and started asking around about Lena Regland.

People in Cypher don't like to talk about most things. If you ask too many questions, they might think you're fishing for information, like you're intending to expose them and their secrets. Nothing that goes on in Cypher is illegal, but there are a fair number of things that are perfectly legal, but that people don't want it known that they do.

So if I was going to ask questions, I needed to make sure they knew that wasn't what I was doing. I needed them to know that I was one of them.

The problem was that I don't often go to Cypher. If I had, I might have been able to stop Ms. Regland from framing my friend in the first place. So I wasn't a regular.

Which meant I had to be able to prove my cred, so to speak.

That's how I found myself dangling a few inches above the ground, my wrists safely encased in leather that distributed my weight so that none of the bones in my hands were crushed. I had a bit in my mouth, and my shirt was folded neatly on a chair nearby.

....