Interview With an S&M Queen

By Neal Williams

Out of sheer boredom Harold turned on the TV set. A talkshow was just beginning -- the interviewer, big-nosed and mustached, stood in the aisle among his studio audience while they applauded.

"Good evening and thank you for joining us," he said when the applause had died down. "Tonite we have a very special guest."

The shot switched to the stage, where a beautiful woman sat calmly. She was dressed in classic S&M attire: black stockings and garters, black leather teddy, spike-heeled boots. Covering her arms were gloves that reached past her elbows. Wrapped around her right bicep was a black and red armband reminiscent of a fascist regime.

The interviewer strolled with poise and presence down the aisle and onto the stage. He took a seat in the empty chair facing the one in which the mysterious woman sat. "Please tell us your name."

"Krystina."

"And what is your occupation?"

"I'm an S&M queen."

"That means you torture people."

"Yes, among other things." Neither of them was joking.

"What's your favorite form of torture?" the interviewer asked.

"I like number forty-three from One Hundred and One Days of Sodom by le Marquis de Sade."

"I don't believe I know that one."

"It's where you bury someone up to his waist in the ground and wait for the lower half of his body to rot."

"Ooohhh -- that sounds like a good one."

"And what's your favorite form of torture?" Krystina asked the interviewer.

"Personally, I like the 'draw and quarter' method."

"That's a good one too." Pause. "But all of these methods are mere child's play compared to what I did to Harold."

"Yes, please tell us about Harold." It was the subject he'd been waiting to bring up.

Harold, alone in his darkened apartment, stared in disbelief at the TV screen. He'd been sitting by the phone for days, thinking about Krystina and hoping she would call. And now here she was on TV. And what was even more bizarre -- she was about to talk about him.

Back in the studio, the S&M queen paused for a moment as her mind drifted back over bygone days.

"I was hitchhiking home one nite when Harold gave me a ride. He struck me from the very beginning as a real SOB. As we drove along he kept glancing at me and laughing. I wasn't sure at first if this bizarre behavior was meant to attract me to him, but if this was his goal he was failing miserably. Then I realized he was trying to intimidate me. He thought I was afraid and this sense of power turned him on immensely.

"Harold's problem is that he's secretly terrified of women. To cover up this fact he adopts the exact opposite position: one of extreme arrogance and condescension towards women -- It's a classic Freudian reaction formation."

"What happened next?" the interviewer asked, fearing that Krystina's psychological analyses would bore his audience and reek havoc on his ratings.

"I remember feeling sorry for Harold," she replied. "I imagined that he must have been terribly unsuccessful with women. More intelligent women could easily identify his act as a defense mechanism and less intelligent women would simply be repulsed by him without ever having need to examine the deeper causes. Fear and insecurity have never made us more attractive and are, in fact, the antithesis of all aphrodisiacs."

"Just get on with the story and spare us your speculation," the interviewer said, losing his patience. He was imagining half his audience switching to "Baywatch Nights."

The S&M queen flashed a look of surprise at the interviewer which disappeared just as quickly as it came and she calmly continued her story.

"We were riding along and suddenly he turned off onto an old dirt road so I said, 'Hey, this isn't the way.' I wasn't afraid at this point because I had already seen thru his disguise.

"Harold looked at me and laughed. 'Don't worry,' he said. 'I just want to show you something.'

"I smiled to myself because I knew he was deriving great pleasure believing I was afraid."

"When in fact it was he who should have been afraid," the interviewer said, in a rare moment of insight.

"That's right. So he pulled off the road into the darkness and reached across my lap towards the glove compartment. He opened it and took out a small book."

"And what was in this book?"

"Poems -- he wanted to read me poetry."

"Do you remember any of his poems?"

"No. I only remember that they were really bad."

Harold's mouth hung open as he stared at the screen. How could she say his poetry was bad? But then suddenly he started to cry because deep down he knew that it was true; everything she said was true. He had in fact been an arrogant bastard. He had treated women with condescension and disgust. He even abused them -- in a purely psychological way. He looked back on his life and realized he had acted like a wild fool. But hadn't he really been waiting, secretly hoping for someone to come along and give him the punishment he deserved? Someone to expose him for the hypocrite he was?

Someone like Krystina.

Harold quieted his girlish sobs and focused his attention back on the screen where Krystina continued her story.

"Harold invited me back to his apartment and was quite surprised when I agreed. Once inside he began groping me like a wild animal. I told him I wanted to but only if he did it my way. He immediately stopped his assault on my body. I told him to take off his clothes and he complied. As he did so I removed my coat, revealing an S&M ensemble similar to the one I'm wearing now. When he was naked I handed him a dog collar and told him to put it on. Then I told him to get on the floor start barking. Again he did as he was told, running around on all fours barking -- Woof woof. Woof!"

"And then what happened?" the interviewer asked. He was pleased because he knew that stories of perverted sexual practices made good television, or at least good ratings.

"I don't think it's fair to embarrass Harold anymore than I've already done -- especially on national television. But I will say that his subjugation and humiliation was complete and unequivocal, passing even my own expectations. I would also like to add that from this moment on his life has never been the same. He began a new journey down a dark and treacherous path; He had fallen in love with me. I left his apartment and promised to call him the next day -- which I never did."

Harold felt a pain in his heart almost too excruciating to bear. Why did she torture him this way? He cried and laughed and cried again. Why did he need her so badly? Tears burst from his eyes like water thru a leaky pipe. He had been reduced to a blubbering infant. He cried because he knew he had found the great love of his life. Krystina was the first woman to understand him. It was true that she treated him like a piece of refuse you find on the sole of your shoe, but it was precisely this abuse that he longed for. He knew full well that he was a selfish, egotistical, sniveling coward. Didn't he deserve to be punished for these weaknesses? Krystina had exposed him for the worthless human being he was and he wanted desperately for her to do it again. For reasons he couldn't (or wouldn't) explain -- not even to himself -- he felt strangely comfortable with Krystina's abuse.

He felt like he was home.

The interviewer had been listening intently to Krystina's account. So intently in fact, that he hadn't realized that she had been silent for several seconds. Finally he snapped out of his reverie and broke the silence.

"So you just left him by the phone."

"Yes."

"And you haven't called him."

"No."

More Silence.

"Are you going to?"

"Why should I?"

"To give him more punishment."

"Who cares about him? I'd rather give you your punishment."

With those words the S&M queen rose from her chair and struck her whip on the floor with a wild flash. The startled interviewer fell out of his chair and scampered across the floor out of the studio. Krystina followed closely behind, still cracking her whip.

Harold was devastated. With those cruel words Krystina had delivered the most violent blow yet. She punished him not by loving him, not even by hating him. Her unique brand of torture lay in demonstrating that he wasn't important enough to love or to hate; he simply didn't matter.

Harold rose suddenly and ran out of his apartment into the street below. A car skidded, narrowly missing him. Undaunted, he ran still further into the street where he was struck down by a truck which completely rolled over his body. The impact made a loud popping sound and Harold died instantly.

Seconds later the scene was one of complete serenity. The driver of the truck, confident that no one had copied down his license number, had left the scene of the accident. Harold's corpse lay in the road, a peaceful expression on his face.

The End

Neal Williams writes horror and Science Fiction. His stories have earned him tens of dollars (thank God for day jobs). He's had approximately a dozen short stories published online and in the small press.

E-mail: nealwilli@yahoo.com

URL: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Aegean/7602/