A Dance at the Slaughter House

"I don't think so," I said, "but you can keep right on guessing. The only thing is I'll have to watch the tape to know if you're right or wrong."

"Oh," she said. "Well, what the hell. Let's watch it."

* * *

IT started off looking like just what the label promised. The opening credits rolled and Lee Marvin went from cell to cell. We were introduced to the twelve American soldiers who would make up the dirty dozen, killers and rapists and all-around fuck-ups under death sentences for their crimes.

"To my untrained eye," Elaine said, "this looks remarkably like the movie I remember."

It went on looking like it for ten minutes or so, and I was beginning to wonder if Will might have problems beyond mere alcoholism and chemical dependency. Then the screen went abruptly blank right in the middle of a scene and the soundtrack cut out. The screen stayed blank for perhaps ten seconds, and then it showed a slender young man with a boyishly open, midwestern sort of face. He was cleanshaven, and his light brown hair was parted at the side and neatly combed. He was naked except for a canary-yellow towel around his middle.

His wrists and ankles were shackled to an X-shaped metal frame that stood at a 60-degree angle to the floor. In addition to the metal shackles at his wrists and ankles, leather cuffs had been fitted around each leg just above the knee and each arm just above the elbow, and there was a matching leather belt around his waist, part of it obscured by the yellow towel. All of these devices looked to be holding him quite securely in place.

He did not appear to be particularly uncomfortable, and he had a tentative smile on his face. He said, "Is that thing running? Hey, am I supposed to say anything or what?"

A male voice off-camera told him to shut up. The young man's mouth was open and he closed it. I could see now that he was no more than a boy, not so much cleanshaven as beardless. He was tall, but he didn't look to be more than sixteen or so. There was no hair on his chest, although he did have a pale tuft in each armpit.

The camera stayed on the boy, and a woman moved into the frame. She was about as tall as the boy but looked taller because she was standing erect, not spreadeagled and tied to a crossframe. She wore a mask, the sort of device the Lone Ranger wore, but hers looked to be of black leather. That made it a match for the rest of her outfit, skintight black leather pants open at the crotch and black gloves that covered her clear to the elbows. She wore black shoes with three-inch spike heels and silver trim at the toes, and that was all she wore. She was naked above the waist, and the nipples of her small breasts were erect. They were also scarlet, the same shade as her full mouth, and I suspected she'd daubed them with lipstick.

"There's that simple unspoiled look you go for," Elaine said. "This is shaping up to be dirtier than The Dirty Dozen."

"You don't have to watch."

"What did I tell you before? I can stand it if you can. I used to have a client who liked to watch bondage films. They always struck me as pretty silly. Would you ever want me to tie you up?"

"No."

"Or to tie me up?"

"No."

"Maybe we're missing something. Fifty million perverts can't be wrong. Ah, here we go."

The woman unfastened the boy's towel and tossed it aside. Her gloved hand caressed him, and he became aroused at once.

"Ah, youth," Elaine said.

The camera moved in for a close-up of her hand gripping him, manipulating him. Then it pulled back and she released him and tugged at each finger of the glove in turn, finally removing it.

"Gypsy Rose Lee," Elaine said.

The nails of the ungloved hand were painted with a polish that matched the lipstick on her mouth and nipples. She held the long glove in her bare hand and struck the boy across the chest with it.

"Hey," he said.

"Shut up," she said. She sounded angry. She swung the glove again and hit him across the mouth. His eyes widened. She hit him on the chest, then struck his face again.

He said, "Hey, watch it, huh? I mean, that really hurt."

"I bet it did," Elaine said. "Look, she marked his face. I think she's getting carried away with the role."

The man off-camera told the boy to be quiet. "He told you to shut up," the woman said. She leaned across the boy's body, rubbing herself against him. She kissed his mouth, touched the fingertips of her bare hand to the mark her glove had left on his cheek. She moved lower and trailed kisses across his chest, her lipstick marking him where she kissed him.

"Hot stuff," Elaine said. She had been sitting on a chair, but now she came over and sat beside me on the couch and put her hand on my thigh. "Guy told you you had to watch this tonight, huh?"

"That's right."

"He tell you to have your girlfriend around while you watched it? Hmmm?"

Her hand moved on my leg. I covered it with my hand, stopped its movement.

"What's the matter?" she said. "I'm not allowed to touch?"

Before I could answer, the woman on the screen took the boy's penis in her gloved hand. Then, with her other hand, she swung the glove and struck him hard across the scrotum.

He said, "Owww! Jesus, cut that out, will you? That hurt! Let me down, let me off this thing, I don't want to do this anymore-"

He was going on in that vein when the woman, her face a mask of cold fury, stepped forward and drove her knee into his unprotected groin.

He screamed. The same off-camera male voice said, "Tape his mouth, for Christ's sake. I don't want to listen to that shit. Here, get out of the way, I'll take care of it myself."

I had assumed the male voice belonged to the cameraman, but there was no break in the filming while the voice's owner stepped into the picture. He looked to be wearing a skin diver's wet suit, but when I said as much to Elaine she corrected me.

"It's rubber wear," she said. "Black rubber. They have it custom-made."

"Who does?"

"Rubber freaks. She's into leather, he's into rubber. 'Can This Marriage Be Saved?' "

He was wearing a black rubber mask as well, actually more of a hood that covered his entire head. There was a hole for each eye, and another for his nose and mouth. When he turned I saw that there was an opening as well at the crotch of the rubber suit. His penis protruded, long and limp.

"The man in the rubber mask," Elaine intoned. "What has he got to hide?"

"I don't know."

"You couldn't skin-dive in that thing, not unless you wanted the fish to give you a blow job. I can tell you one thing about this guy. He's not Jewish."

He had by this time covered the boy's mouth with several lengths of tape. Now the Leather Girl handed him her glove, and he left more red marks on the boy's skin. His hands were large, with dark hair on their backs. The rubber suit stopped at the wrists, and because his hands were nearly the only exposed part of him, I noticed them more than I might have otherwise. He was wearing a massive gold ring on the fourth finger of his right hand. It was set with a large polished stone I couldn't identify. It was either black or dark blue.

He dropped to his knees now and took the boy in his mouth. When he had restored him to an erect state he drew back and wrapped a rawhide thong tightly around the base of the boy's penis. "Now it'll stay hard," he told the woman. "You stop the vein, the blood flows in but it can't flow out."

"Like a roach motel," Elaine murmured.

The woman straddled the boy, taking him into the opening in her leather pants and the corresponding opening in her flesh. She rode him while the man caressed them in turn, now cupping her bare breasts, then tweaking the boy's nipples.

The boy's face kept changing expression. He was frightened but he was also excited. He winced in pain when they hurt him, but the rest of the time he looked wary, as if he wanted to enjoy what was happening but he was afraid of what might happen next.

Watching, Elaine and I had ceased to comment on what we were seeing, and her hand had long since withdrawn from my thigh. There was something about the performance that stifled commentary as surely as the square of white tape quieted the boy.

I was beginning to have a very bad feeling about what we were watching.

My apprehension was confirmed when the pace of Leather Woman's ride picked up. "Come on," she urged, breathless. "Do his tits."

Rubber Man moved out of the frame. He came back holding something, and at first I couldn't see what it was. Then I recognized it as a gardener's implement, something you'd use to prune a rosebush.

Still riding the boy, she worked one of his nipples between her thumb and forefinger, rolling it, pulling at it. The man laid one hand on the boy's forehead. The boy's eyes were rolling wildly. Gently, tenderly, the man's hand moved to smooth back the light brown hair.

With his other hand he positioned the pruning shears. "Now!" the woman demanded, but he waited, and she had to say it again.

Then, still stroking the boy's forehead, still smoothing his hair, he tightened his grip on the pruning shears and cut off the boy's nipple.

* * *

I triggered the remote and the screen went blank. Elaine had her arms folded so that each hand was cupping the opposite elbow. Her upper arms were pressed against her sides and she was trembling slightly.

I said, "I don't think you want to watch the rest of this."

She didn't respond right away, just sat there on the couch, breathing in and out, in and out. Then she said, "That was real, wasn't it?"

"I'm afraid so."

"They cut him, they, what do you call it, pruned, that's it, they pruned his nipple. If they got him to a hospital right away they could reattach it. Didn't one of the Mets-"

"Bobby Ojeda. Last year, it was the tip of one finger."

"On his throwing hand, wasn't it?"

"His pitching hand, yes."

"And he was rushed to the hospital. I don't know if it would work with a nipple." Deep breaths, in and out. "I don't suppose anybody rushed this kid to the hospital."

"No, I don't suppose so."

"I feel like I could pass out or throw up or something."

"Bend over and put your head between your knees."

"And then what, kiss my ass goodbye?"

"If you're feeling faint-"

"I know, to get the blood back in my head. I was just making a joke. 'She must be all right, Nurse, she's making jokes.' I'm okay, though. You know me, I was brought up right, I'm a good date, I never faint and I never puke and I never order the lobster. Matt, did you know that was going to happen?"

"No idea."

"Clip, and his nipple's gone, and the blood just oozing out, trailing down across his chest. Flowing in a sort of zigzaggy line, like an old river. What's the word when a river does that?"

"I don't know."

"Meandering, that's it. Blood meandering down his chest. Are you going to watch the rest of it?"

"I think I'd better."

"It's going to get worse, isn't it?"

"I think so, yes."

"Will he bleed to death?"

"Not from a cut like that."

"What happens? The blood just clots?"

"Sooner or later."