The Pleasure Chateau: The Omnibus Read Online Free

Whatever the demands made on her at the château, its inhabitants were clearly aesthetes with a perverse set of values. There was a red suede shoe mounted in a hand, placed on the table nearest her. When Betty who was curious, moved over to examine the object, she noticed that a magnifying lens had been inserted into the shoe, and through it she could see a black spider twitching its antennae. The thing was hairy; a trickle of yellow juice exuded from its mandibles.
    Betty poured herself a drink, the large scotch hitting her system immediately. She needed alcohol to eliminate sharp edges. She sat there waiting, cursing herself for having accepted the price. Even if she left abruptly now, there was the problem of transport. She had no way of getting back to the city. Each time she looked round the room she discovered some new curiosity. There was a small erotic sculpture on a glass shelf. A woman with her skirt at her ankles was placed over the lap of another, her bottom presented to the correcting hand about to make contact with her cheeks. There was a clue here, but Betty hardly considered she would have been hired to give something commonplace like discipline. She had been paid at times to serve as an ashtray, a repository for excrement, a duct for olive oil, a whole range of peculiarities which had in time become normalised by repeat experience. She had grown unshockable. She had learnt that sexual fetishes were interminable. They were often not connected with the body. They were the directives aimed at depersonalised parabodies. They lived as obsessions which connected with fantasies. They were everything and nothing.
    Betty sat apprehensively and waited. She expected anything. A gorilla to be led in weari ng handcuffs, a black goat to be tethered to the chair with stiletto feet. The delay was unnerving. She had the feeling the house was ruminating on a story by Poe.
    When the door opened, Leanda entered with another woman, tall, dark haired and dressed in a tight leather skirt. Both women appeared to be wearing an identical red lipstick. The other woman, who Leanda introduced as Nicole, was carrying an entomologist's container, and after removing the lens that capped the red shoe on display, she tapped a number of spiders inside, and resealed the lens. Betty assumed the spiders were left to eventually suffocate, if they didn't tear each other apart, leg by leg.
    Betty had the sensation she was observing people who lived in a parallel dimension. No con cession was made to her being there. The two women busied themselves in rituals. Nicole picked up the red suede shoe, and carried the exhibit out of the room. Even in Betty's profession she had never observed so provocatively unrehearsed a walk. Nicole's natural movements involved a belly dancer's distribution of weight from the hips. Her spike heels emphasised the slow rotation of her bottom.
    Betty was told to come and meet the dinner guests. She was conducted out of the room by a midget who appeared from behind Leanda. A diminutive oriental, dressed in a black jumpsuit with sparkling rhinestone buttons, he trotted along at the height of Leanda's hip, carrying a large book under one arm, and a small bell in the other hand. His manners were ceremonious. He was like a priest about to officiate over a ritual.
    Betty was conducted through two ante-chambers. A monkey in a red conical hat was perched on one of the bookshelves, chattering excitedly to itself.
    She was shown into a dining hall. Black candles were burning in human skulls, and a bronze cupid placed central to the table, was holding a lit torch. Even Betty's experience of visiting simulated gothic penthouses, and executive torture cells, didn't lessen the impact of surprise. There were three guests seated at table. Nicole who was at the head, and on opposite sides two men, one of whom had flawless emerald eyes, which could have been coloured lenses, and who wore a white suit, and the other who was busy contemplating