The Girl at the Bus-Stop (15 page)

After the car had moved some distance along the track, Rudge relaxed a little. He glanced admiringly at Becky seated next to him. In her Lady Penelope blonde wig and black leather cat-suit she looked every inch a superstar. He couldn’t help but feel a glow of pride, like a father escorting his only daughter to her wedding ceremony.

He looked down at his pale blue Parker chauffeur’s costume, and shook his head. As he tried to look out of the side window into the darkness, he caught a glimpse of his reflection and grinned back at himself. An involuntary shiver ran down the back of his neck as he thought back to those wasted years, which thankfully had ended just a few short weeks before.

A few minutes later Harry stopped the silver Mercedes a few yards from the grand entrance to the main house. The gravel frontage was flooded with the light from hundreds of thick ivory-coloured church candles placed on the ground, making a hot flickering path leading to the blue and white pinstriped marble steps to the open front door. Tall elegant pillars rose twenty feet high to support a Gothic stone archway which was adorned with the carved heads of griffins, lions and unicorns, gazing down to welcome visitors with sculpted sneers.

A young blonde woman in nothing but a tight-fitting transparent plastic jacket and short white Wellington boots skipped over to the car and opened the rear door. She bowed as Becky and Rudge stepped out, and they followed her along the candle-lit path to the steps leading up to the front door. Becky walked with her new practiced air of celebrity aloofness and superiority. Her tight-fitting cat suit and blonde wig were complimented with a white feather boa draped around her shoulders, and an elegant diamante mask disguising her face
.
Rudge shuffled behind, feeling self-conscious in his ill-fitting costume, looking around for rogue photographers as he hastily pulled on his leather gimp’s mask.

Inside the hall, they were greeted by a tall handsome young man who could have been a member of
The Chippendales
. He looked resplendent in a white mask, a short red butler’s jacket adorned with gold braid, knee length silk stockings and black patent leather shoes with silver buckles.
 
This was all he was wearing, and Becky stared agog at the man’s huge penis before turning and winking at Rudge.

 
‘Good grief, it’s like a donkey’s nadger,’ whispered Rudge, with some envy in his tone, ‘it can’t possibly be real, can it?’

‘Why don’t you give it a tug and find out?’ said Becky with a snigger. ‘Anyway, I thought this was supposed to be a masked ball?’

‘It is.’ said Rudge.

 
‘Well he hasn’t done a very good job masking his pair has he,’ she replied, before erupting into a fit of the giggles.
 

A chuckling Rudge led her quickly away along the marble tiled hallway with its walls adorned with huge paintings, ancient and modern. Several life-sized statues were positioned on both sides of the walkway to form a static guard of honour for guests making their way to the main ballroom.

Rudge and Becky stopped to admire a magnificent white figure of a tall young woman with a ball and chain secured to her ankle. Delicately sculpted thin white chains were attached to rings in the statue’s nipples, connecting to a matching pair of vaginal ones. Rudge stepped back to admire the artistry and craftsmanship before reaching up to stroke one of the figure’s perfectly formed buttocks.

‘My god, she’s alive,’ he said, stepping back in fright, ‘I’m terribly sorry, my dear.’

The woman didn’t react in the slightest, remaining absolutely still with her white eyelids closed.

‘I could have told you she was real,’ said Becky, ‘I think her breathing might have given it away to most people.’

Rudge looked around at the other figures and could see that they were all indeed living human beings.

Rudge had to virtually drag Becky away from the last statue in the row of a naked athletic young man in a hard hat and white desert boots. She reluctantly followed Rudge into the mammoth ballroom, and they gazed around the opulent splendour which greeted them. They stood still for a few minutes and observed their fellow guests, none of whom was wearing anything which could be described as normal clothing.

They glanced over to a small stage a few feet away to the right where a string quartet was playing Baroque music. Rudge stared admiringly at the stunningly beautiful and talented young female musicians. They all wore Restoration style white powdered wigs, silver masks, black high heels and not a stitch of clothing.

‘If it was me I’d want to be the cellist,’ remarked Becky.

‘I’d opt for a double bass,’ replied Rudge, ‘but they don’t appear to have one.’

Rudge was getting too hot and removed his gimp’s mask. He retrieved his sunglasses from his inside pocket, as Becky looking at him disapprovingly.

‘You won’t be told will you?’ she scolded him, ‘Don’t blame me if your face ends up on the cover of next week’s
Bottoms Up
magazine.’

A young waitress in just a tiny lace apron offered them champagne from her tray. As she turned to walk away, Rudge noticed a brand on her naked buttock proclaiming, ‘Prop. of Mistress Zelda’.

They continued through the spectacular room, marvelling at the huge stone fireplaces filled with beautiful and fragrant floral displays. There was an almost endless display of artwork, objets d’art and period furniture. Rudge stared up at the splendid intricate plasterwork of the domed ceiling, with its stained glass roof lights and gold-painted architrave.
 

Entertainment was provided by a variety of street and circus acts performing all over the vast room, with small clusters of guests gathering around to watch. Rudge and Becky looked on in amazement as a naked man in a jester’s hat and curly toed cloth boots, juggled three small petrol chainsaws with the motors running.
 
Another man was throwing razor sharp knives at his beautiful female assistant, who strapped to a wooden wall. As each knife struck home, it burst a small heart shaped balloon fixed around the outline of her sequinned body.

Midget acrobats tumbled and rolled, sliding across the marble floor like annoying children at a wedding reception. Their display of pint-sized acrobatics culminating in spectacular somersaults on to each other’s shoulders to form a rock steady human pyramid, albeit not a particular high one.

Some of the sights witnessed by Rudge and Becky were not so much entertaining as bizarre, such as the
elderly man wearing nothing but a Phantom of the Opera mask, socks and sandals. His body was so pale and emaciated that that he resembled a paper bag full of bones. He was bending over clutching his knees, whilst two giggly young women in mini-skirted military uniforms slapped him. One of them selected a cucumber from a basket of vegetables on the floor, and Rudge had to avert his gaze as she attempted to insert it into the old man’s bottom.
 

 
A few yards further on, Becky stopped by a champagne waterfall to replenish her drink. Rudge smiled across at a pretty woman standing few feet away with her back against a marble pillar, and he raised his glass to her. In stark contrast to her fellow guests,
 
she was dressed conservatively in a simple white cotton blouse and black skirt. Her jet black hair was done up in a bun on top of her head, and a gold coloured mask shielded the top half of her face. As Rudge moved towards her he noticed that she’d been secured to the pillar by handcuffs, and a hand-written placard on the floor stated, ‘Strip me.’

Rudge was about to move away when two men wandered up to her. One was dressed as General Urko from
Planet of the Apes
, while his friend sported a leather collar and chain and was wearing a sack. The gorilla general crouched down in front of the woman and unzipped her skirt before ripping it clean off, à la Buck’s Fizz in the Eurovision Song Contest. His partner knelt at her feet and rolled the woman’s panties down her legs, lifting each of her bare feet to remove them altogether. They walked off with the garments, leaving the half naked woman smiling with gratitude.

‘It takes all sorts I suppose,’ commented Rudge.

The woman looked across at Becky and nodded her head slowly, her eyes lighting up behind the mask. Becky stepped up to her and unbuttoned the blouse tantalisingly slowly,
 
before ripping it from her and dropping it on to the empty drinks tray of a passing waitress.

‘Come on, Reuben, your turn,’ said Becky, digging him in the ribs.

‘No thank you,’ he replied, ‘it’s a bra and I’m a bloke. I could spend all night trying and I still wouldn’t be able to get it unfastened.’

‘Go on,’ she teased, ‘look at her the poor love, she’s desperate to get naked.’

Rudge’s blushes were saved by a middle-aged woman in a nurse’s uniform, her face concealed behind an operating theatre mask. She
was joined by a fat man wearing nothing but a strait jacket. He dropped to the floor beside the nurse, resting his head on her white shoes. She
expertly removed the woman’s bra and walked away slowly, letting the garment trail from her hand. Her partner followed closely behind on his knees, trying to grab the garment
 
with his teeth.

As Rudge and Becky turned to leave, a shaven headed man looking like a baddie in a
Mad Max
movie crouched down in front of the now grinning naked woman and flipped the placard over. Rudge sidled up to it to read that it now stated, ‘Spank me’.
 
He rejoined Becky, and the man rose to his feet and stood alongside them.

‘She’s my wife’ he explained proudly, ‘we do this all the time. She can’t get enough of it, and me neither.’

‘Really,’ said Rudge.

Despite the man’s macho bad-ass look, he had the strangled high pitched voice of a petty official straight out of a TV sitcom

 
‘We take it in turns, and last time I was the one handcuffed.’ he explained, ‘When I saw you admiring my wife’s body I thought you’d better know that I’m auctioning her off later. It’s all for charity, and we’ve raised over ten thousand pounds this year for various good causes.’

‘That’s excellent,’ replied Rudge patronisingly, ‘so how does this auction thing work?’

‘Same as any other,’ he said, ‘if your bid is the highest you win her. But you don’t have to take her home straightaway of course. You decide when you want her, then I arrange delivery and you get to keep her for twenty four hours.’

Rudge nodded his head and thought for a few moments, before his expression changed to one of total bewilderment.

 
‘So what am I supposed to do with her?’ Rudge asked.

 
‘She’ll be your slave of course,’ he replied, ‘she can turn her hand to almost anything. So if you want your house cleaned, garden dug, car washed or even a bit of DIY, she’s very capable. The last man who won her had her scrubbing out his garage, and you could have eaten your dinner off the walls and the floor by the time she’d finished with it.’

‘I see,’ said Rudge stroking his chin, ‘I don’t suppose she knows how to put up fence panels, does she?’

‘Certainly, as long as your next door neighbours don’t mind,’ the man replied with a wink.

‘What’s it got to do with them?’ said Rudge, ‘If I want to put new fence panels up, I
‘
ll bloody well put new fence panels up.’

The man shook his head and laughed, sounding like a drowning pig with hiccups.

 
‘She’ll be delivered to you in the nude.’ he explained, ‘So if your neighbours aren’t very broad-minded, well, they might object.’

The man looked across at his wife, blowing her a kiss as a rather obese gladiator slapped her bottom enthusiastically.

‘That reminds me,’ he said, ‘if you’re not completely satisfied she will expect to be punished.’