Callidus

Lenore’s hands searched in the dark for the small button. Although Gloria’s family home had been wired for electricity for more than twenty years, Gloria, herself, had never gotten in the habit of using very much of it.

‘Particularly the fixture above her front door,’ Lenore thought wryly.

She raised the wrought-iron knocker, sculpted in the visage of a falcon bearing the eye of Horus, but then thought better of it. The knocker was the home’s only outward sign of Gloria’s late father’s keen interest in Egyptian history and his vast collection of relics. It had been a favorite of Gloria’s for many years. The home was large enough that Gloria may not even hear it and Lenore would feel awful if she damaged it.

Then, luckily, the headlamps from Lenore’s departing cab passed over the porch of Gloria’s house, briefly painting the large oak door, and its surrounding features, in amber light. Lenore found the small doorbell hidden amidst the ornate wooden carvings she’d been futilely pressing.

She pushed her thumb to the button and was rewarded with a deep three note chime emanating from inside her friend’s home. The taxi had just turned left at the end of the block when the lock clicked firmly and the door swung open.

“Gloria!” Lenore stepped over the threshold and wrapped her arms around the other woman. “I was so happy to hear from you. Thank you for inviting me over.”

Lenore kissed the air on either side of Gloria’s cheeks noticing how impeccable her makeup was tonight. “I’m glad to see you’re feeling better. We were, all of us, beginning to get quite worried. It’s been over a month after all.”

She took both of Gloria’s hands in her own and looked at her face, noticing the distant look in the other woman’s eyes. “Gloria? You are better aren’t you? Didn’t the doctor say so?”

Gloria inhaled sharply and there was a strange light in her eyes. “Yes” she said quietly. “Doctor Sondergaard has cured me. I am very grateful.”

Lenore studied her a moment. “You seem… tired perhaps?”

“The treatments…” Gloria breathed, a slightly pained expression on her face, “are very… strenuous.”

Lenore nodded gravely. “If you aren’t feeling up to a visit I can come another time. I could telephone for another taxi to take me home.”

“No,” Gloria said, her fingers gripping Lenore’s tightly. “You must come in and stay.”

Lenore smiled and let herself be drawn into the foyer of Gloria’s home. The front door groaned as it closed behind them.

Lenore followed Gloria into the sitting room and joined her on a plush sofa. “Well all the women back on Holden Street will just be thrilled when I tell them you’re up and about again. Did you know Governor Zaleska managed to make it back for a Sunday brunch a few weeks ago? She asked after you personally.”

Gloria’s eyes were far away again. “I will contact the Governor soon. Not yet though.”

Lenore nodded her agreement. “No, you’ll want to recover your full strength I’m sure. You must have been so poorly, you didn’t sound at all like yourself in your letters. If I didn’t know your handwriting so well, I would’ve doubted it was you writing them.”

“Yes I wrote them,” Gloria said dully. “I had to write them.”

“Oh I know dear, I just meant it must’ve been dreadful dealing with this… What was it exactly you were diagnosed with again?

Gloria’s eyes were far away again. “It is a very rare, very serious condition,” she recited.

“Is?” Lenore asked, turning towards her on the sofa. “You’re still suffering with it?”

Gloria took several deep breaths. “I… I require regular treatments,” she finally managed to reply.

Lenore took her hand. “Oh my, I’m sorry I didn’t realize that. Is that why you’re so tired? All the traveling?”

Gloria seemed confused by this. “I… I must not leave.”

Lenore cocked her head. “Is… is the doctor traveling here for your treatments?”

Gloria’s eyes were pulled up to the wood paneling in the high ceiling above them. Her voice was a whisper. “Doctor Sondergaard is my guest while I am in her care.”

Lenore followed her gaze up, then things clicked into place for her. “Oh! She’s staying here at the estate? Wonderful! And, goodness knows you have the room for a guest.”

This close, Lenore could see how tired Gloria was. Still, she was wearing her best diamond necklace and a flawless gown… she clearly had been in the mood for company.

“And, lucky with the timing too,” she continued. “It seemed like you fell ill just as you’d finished dealing with that whole mess surrounding your inheritance. It would’ve been awful if you’d succumbed after you’d finally won what’s rightfully yours.”

Gloria nodded deeply, “Doctor Sondergaard diagnosed me just in the nick of time. I am very grateful.”

Lenore squeezed her hand and smiled wickedly “I am too dear. Without you there, I’m the wealthiest person in The Women’s League and I don’t think I could bear the burden of all that funding without your help!”

She laughed mischievously and for a moment it seemed Gloria was about to join her. A shadow of a smile crossed her face but then the large clock behind them tolled forcefully.

Gloria’s hand tightened in Lenore’s and her body went rigid as the bell chimed. The deep sound reverberated off the wooden surfaces in Gloria’s sitting room and hung in the air for several long moments.

Gloria stood slowly, her body quite straight. “It is time for my treatment,” she said with an odd fervor.

Lenore began to pull herself of the sofa. “Of course I completely understand. I can come visit another time if you’re-”

“You must stay,” Gloria said with more force than Lenore had heard from her all evening.

““Well of course I’m happy to… if you’re sure I won’t be in the way?”

Gloria stepped over to a writing desk opposite the sofa and took up a carafe filled with red wine. She poured it into two glasses.

Lenore let out a sigh of relief. “Thank goodness. I was worried the doctor was one of those modern sorts who insists on abstaining. All rubbish I say. My grandmother lived to be one hundred and three and she had a glass every single day of her life.”

Lenore took the wine from Gloria’s outstretched arm. “Best thing for your health I think.” She raised her glass, then sipped the burgundy drink and made a lewd sound. “Oh my, that is superb!”

Lenore took another drink, longer this time. She gestured to Gloria’s glass. “And, there is no complication with the medicine you’re being administered? One of your letters mentioned injections.”

Gloria shook her head slowly. “I… no longer require the injections. They have served their purpose.”

Lenore nodded as she took another draught. “That’s good. Because having this in the house and not being permitted would be quite cruel.” She smiled and tipped her glass again. “Aren’t you going to drink yours?”

“I… must switch this on,” Gloria murmured, setting her glass down beside an odd wooden box that sat centered on top of the desk.

“I was going to ask about that earlier” Lenore said between sips. “I’ve never seen a jewelry chest with a plug before.”

Gloria took up a black cord that was coiled on the desk. One end was capped with a round electric plug, the other disappeared into the ornate box through a small hole on the side.

Gloria took the plug and pushed it into the wall socket nearby. Light instantly spilled out from within the box, glowing and twisting in the dim room.

Lenore realized that the features on the front were actually doors. The light peeked out through the gaps in the design carved into the wood. “Is it some sort of miniature radio?”

“It is for my treatment,” Gloria said, a hint of excitement in her voice. She turned a round dial on the side until it clicked into place. There was a faint sound then, like the whirring mechanisms of a master-built clock.

“It’s beautiful,” Lenore breathed, watching the light twist and fold in on itself endlessly behind the doors.

Gloria returned to the sofa and sat again. Her hands fidgeted in her lap.

“And does it… do anything?” Lenore asked, draining the last of her wine and setting it on the coffee table before them. “Do you just watch it?”

“Yes,” Gloria breathed. “Just watch.”

Lenore was utterly riveted now. “Where did you get this? I think I’d quite like to… to have…” she trailed off, trying to catch the lost thread of her thoughts.

Gloria’s whole body was moving now as though she simply couldn’t stand to sit still. “The Doctor made it,” she said reverently.

“W-what kind… of… doctor is she again?” Lenore asked. She could hear how drowsy she sounded. Which was odd because her eyes were not remotely in danger of closing.

“She is a doctor of the mind!” Gloria hissed harshly, her hands were roaming up and down her body now. “The Doctor has mastered the chemical and photonic and aural methods of influencing the mind. She showed me… oh God Lenore did she show me!”

Lenore knew little of modern medicine but she struggled to understand how any of that or staring at this box, marvelous though it was, could have any therapeutic benefit. But, she could hear the strength in Gloria’s voice for the first time the whole evening. Where she’d seemed listless earlier, now Lenore felt her old friend’s passion returning.

Perhaps sharing her ordeal was the exact thing Gloria needed right now? ’It’s probably why she asked me over in the first place,’ Lenore surmised.

“The trrreatm’nts… what’re they like?” she heard herself ask, a bit drunkenly. The wine had been exceptional, perhaps she’d finished it a bit too quickly?

“They frightened me at first.” Gloria shifted and made a purring sound. “Mmmm but then The Doctor taught me to love them.”

Lenore didn’t bother to turn but she sensed Gloria’s arms grasping at her own torso. Hugging herself perhaps, as she recounted.

“In the beginning, The Doctor insisted on complete bed rest and treatment sessions several times a day. I didn’t even believe her diagnosis at first. I thought I felt fine. I told her she was a kook.”

There was a sharp edge of regret in her voice then, “But… she kept talking to me even after I’d stopped hearing her. She told me I had to experience her treatment to find out if I was ill. If I was, then the box would make me feel better. She has such a way with words Lenore. I couldn’t stop myself.”

Lenore nodded, then she realized that Gloria wouldn’t have seen it. She was no more interested in turning her gaze away from the kaleidoscope light show than Lenore was. “I can… underst’nd dat,” she said quietly.

“She restrained me. She had the staff bring leather straps from the stables. She lashed me to the bed posts and brought the treatment box to the foot of the bed.”

The image of Gloria’s limbs stretched and bound to the four corners of her large bed tickled Lenore’s brain and other places as well.

“She told me that the worse my condition, the better the treatment would feel and oh god Lenore it felt sooooo good.”

Lenore thought of a book she’d found on a high shelf in her family’s library when she was younger. A passage where a woman had visited a macabre club in Paris where all the visitors hid their faces behind masks.

Though she secretly desired the opposite, a character had begged the people there not to bind her and whip her. A tall woman dressed as a circus ringleader had captured her and strapped her down to a wooden frame. Then she’d revealed a collection of riding crops, leather straps, and ivory tusks.

She’d used the implements on the young woman until she lost control and climaxed mightily in front of the onlookers. Lenore had taken the book to her room and indulged herself many times, kneeling on the floor, over its pages.

Even now the tome rested in a drawer at her bedside.

With a start she realized that she’d drifted off for a spell and that Gloria was still speaking.

“… I was still resisting she said. But, she was relentless Lenore. During my sessions she had been constructing a new device in the attic. Bigger than this one. So much more powerful. She bolted a chair to the floor in front of it and cut a hole in the seat. She fashioned… implements for it. Arms and gears tied to a motor. It was… oh god it felt perfect!”

She sounded awestruck. Lenore could understand why. She’d only been experiencing the Doctor’s device a short while and it was utterly compelling. Commanding in strange way.

Just to see if she could, Lenore tried to move a finger. Nothing happened.

Lenore stared into the twisting ribbons of light trying to discern if she wasn’t able to move or if she had momentarily forgotten how. It concerned her less than she would’ve imagined though.

There was a smell in the air, tangy and familiar. Her hips rocked as much as they were able.

In the periphery of her vision, Gloria’s hands drew up the length of her gown and pulled it up past her stomach. She splayed her legs wide as she leaned back into the sofa and propped her feet against the coffee table.

Lenore’s feeling of shock was as distant and weak as her useless fingers. Maybe Gloria had read a brazen book or two herself? Something that had connected her own self exploration with fingers and brush handles to being bound and treated with the doctor’s implements. Maybe she couldn’t help but be aroused by the Doctor’s firm hand and unorthodox methods.

Lenore hadn’t even met the woman but she was already forming a mental image of a statuesque beauty in a top hat & tuxedo tails above the waist and fishnets & riding boots below it. Lenore conjured a devilish smile and a French accent for her imagined Doctor character and was distressed that she couldn’t move her arms…

…so she could pull up her own dress and spread her thighs beside her friend.

The smell was stronger now and even more delicious. Lenore tried to turn and look, managing only the slightest movement. Her eyes turned counter to her head, refusing to leave the wondrous bands of light searing into them… through them… and beyond.

Lenore felt a little sad. Sad that she could not focus on the enticing display in her peripheral vision: the dark patch of hair framed by the creamy white skin of Gloria’s magnificent legs. The scent in the air had changed a bit and Lenore’s sluggish mind worked to process the new information. She stopped struggling and relaxed down into the cushion and felt wetness squishing between her own legs.

Then, she realized she was smelling them both.

The scent snaked through the air and slithered into her nostrils as insidiously as the writhing strings of light penetrating her eyes. It made her long for other ways, other places, she could be penetrated.

As if reading her tiny, sleazy thoughts Gloria’s hands entered herself and she began to grunt harshly along to the frantic wet sounds coming from her sex. What bothered Lenore about that was that the only thing bothering her was that she couldn’t join her friend and molest herself. Her body felt like so much sticky, hot syrup trapped in a woman-shaped bottle.

Her eyes found the wine glass sitting on the desk just next to the softly ticking light-chest. Gloria’s wine glass. Still untouched.

Detached though she was from her own reasoning, that felt wrong. More wrong than her friend masturbating furiously beside her while Lenore sat paralyzed and riveted to Doctor Sondergaard’s treatment box. What was happening?

“G-Gloria… the w-wine.” she slurred, her mouth only slightly less numb than her fingers.

In reply, Gloria mewled then bucked along to the violent sloshing sounds her hands made between her quaking legs.

Lenore fought to hold on to her panic lest it drain out into the puddle beneath her along with every other thought. Or at least every thought that wasn’t about mounting Gloria and mixing their dew in a joining of thrusting legs and grinding hips.

Lenore moaned wantonly as her fingers weakly dug into the flesh of her legs. She was wholly unprepared for how gooood it felt to be trapped inside the erotic heat surging through her body. She struggled to hold on.

“G-Gloria the… wine… drugg’d!”

Gloria seemed to rouse from the afterglow of her climax. She leaned close, her breath a warm caress in Lenore’s ear. “Yes Lenore. It’s good for you. It’s medicine.”

“W-what?”

“Doctor Sondergaard commands that you must start treatment immediately. She’s preparing injections for you.”

Lenore moaned trying to will her limbs into action. “B-but I- not… ill!”

Gloria’s hands roamed over Lenore’s dress and found hard nipples, throbbing beneath the smooth fabric. “Her diagnosis is incontrovertible. Your mind has been infected by pervasive thoughts and must be washed clean.”

She firmly tweaked the throbbing buds. “The Doctor will free you from the bondage of your predisposition for males and their insidious control. She will guide you in wielding your own wealth and power to destroy this mockery they’ve made of the world. She will lead us. Into a new order!”

Her hand stretched down to caress the inner thigh of Lenore’s trembling leg. They both gasped to feel the waves of heat coming off her sex. “She will make it feel sooooo good!”

Lenore could only shudder and moan hoarsely in reply.

“Once the treatment device activates I’ll help Lenore. With my mouth. My tongue. The Doctor has trained me well.”

Lenore groaned wildly as Gloria’s fingers crept closer to the molten core of her seething lust. She was wracked between warring emotions of ravenous craving and… confusion?

“But?” She fought for reason as the swell of desire sought to drown her. “Itsss already on!”

Just then, the rapid ticking from the box grew louder before it abruptly ended with a firm click. The ornate wooden doors sprung open like an enormous German clock. And inside…

Inside were three spiral discs of obsidian and gold, illuminated somehow from within. They were arranged like two moons orbiting a planet. Each was an animated vortex of light and shadow that drew her eyes and held her trapped; mesmerized in the undulations of their celestial movement. They sucked the last of Lenore’s resistance into their center then crushed it like so much light in a black hole.

She made a sound then, panicked and despaired.

Gloria leaned up on the sofa, her gown falling off her as she rose. She kissed Lenore across the throbbing flesh of her neck and Lenore dimly realized that Gloria’s mouth and tongue had, indeed, been well trained. Then the other woman sank to the floor, pressed Lenore back into the sofa and pushed her legs apart.

One of the doctor’s creations continued its work, ensnaring her mind, while the other took possession of the slick folds between her thighs. By the end of Lenore’s first treatment, both sex organs, the one between her ears and the one between her legs, had become a single mass of pink flesh that leashed her body and mind.

Gloria was still between her legs when Lenore felt her stiffen. She raised up on one knee and looked at something past her, behind the sofa. Lenore turned and saw… a woman. Beautiful and regal, padding down the stairs in a sheer black robe.

Gloria bowed her head and intoned deeply, “This is Lenore. I have initiated her as you have commanded. She has already learned the pleasure of your teachings. When she is fully illuminated, she will serve you well and help build the new order that will rise at your feet!”

Doctor Sondergaard regarded her with a smirk as she came to stand before them. “Gloria told me you’d succumb even quicker than she did. She has such an analytical mind. Cracking it took longer than I’d imagined. But even in her moments of resistance she was such a useful subject. Showing me all the ways to improve her ‘treatments’ and bind her to me forever.”

She extended a hand and gently stroked Gloria’s face. She whimpered and Lenore could smell her friend’s need all over again. The Doctor turned her focus back to Lenore and she opened to it like a flower in sunlight.

“I used everything I learned from enslaving her to conquer you this evening. Tell me, how did it work out?”

Lenore searched her mind for an answer that would be helpful. “More? Please more?”

Doctor Sondergaard laughed sharply, seeming surprised and delighted. “Eager little thing aren’t you?” She pushed some loose strands of hair out of Lenore’s face, stroking her lovingly. “There will be many, many more sessions for you soon. Though I imagine not so many as my dear Gloria required. With you two in my thrall, I will have everything I need to prepare for what occurs next.” The Doctor’s gaze was hungry and wild, her hips rocked back and forth impatiently. “But, we’ll get to all that later.”

“For now…” she said, dropping her robe, “…give me your face, you gorgeous bitch!”

Lenore lurched forward offering up her tongue and mouth as joyful tears streamed down her cheeks. The Doctor grasped her head and pulled her into her slick folds, screaming like a animal as Lenore worshiped her sex for the first time.

Then, Gloria was kneeling behind Her, pressing her face deep into the valley of The Doctor’s supple ass. Lenore and Gloria continued to pleasure Her in front and behind, their chins and tongues writhing against one another as they tasted her exquisite flesh again and again. Drowning in the flood of her pleasure.

Some time later, Lenore and Gloria returned to the sofa and stared into the treatment box once more. They listened devoutly as Doctor Sondergaard explained that an insidious illness had infected the powerful members of The Holden Street Women’s League.

The two heiresses masturbated feverishly as they pledged to help the doctor cure every single one of them.

Epilogue

Lenore lifted the iron knocker mounted on the door while Gloria stood silently beside her. She struck the heavy ball on the plate set beneath a sculpted falcon, bearing the eye of Horus. The nude woman at their feet trembled on her hands and knees at the thunderous clap, then twice more as Lenore rang the metal a second and third time; pausing perfectly between each strike. The lock clicked open followed by the heavy oak door.

They led the crawling woman on a leash and collar into the Lodge’s innermost shrine. The women of the inner circle were gathered, already drinking kisses and slipping hands between succulent breasts and creamy thighs. They were all eager for the rite they would soon partake in.

Gloria pulled the nude woman before the recently appointed ‘Sacred Foremost,’ the highest office in the new hierarchy of the lodge that formerly housed The Holden Street Women’s League. Doctor Sondergaard stood before them wearing only heavy eye makeup and an ornate necklace. She leaned casually on her carved, ceremonial staff.

“Welcome initiate,” she intoned deeply, her voice reverberating powerfully in the large chamber. “Here in the sanctum of our great new temple you enter on your knees, where you have always toiled in the world of man. But, once you have a faced the rites and beheld the epiphany of Her Divine Illumination you will rise anew… as one of us.”

A grin broke out uncontrollably on her face, “Did you like that? I’m still writing the prose for the ritual. Its fascinating how powerful symbolic language can be in these matters. The grandeur is half the reason people join.”

The Doctor’s eyes were bright and piercing as she held the nude women’s gaze. “Although, I’m sure it must be quite a shock for you to find yourself joining us. Particularly when you’ve been such a vocal opponent of our glorious new order. But then its your glorious new order as well. Since we are the same humble fellowship of women you’ve been a part of all these years. I just think The Sororal Order of Her Illumination is a more fitting name to go along with our new… priorities.”

The woman’s face was blank, her numb mouth working hard to form words. She could still taste the delicious wine on her lips. “Kid… napping,” She finally managed.

The Doctor smirked and shook her head dismissively. “I don’t think anyone is going to see it that way. Soon, not even you. You didn’t actually come here to ‘break bread and hear out our side of things’ like you told the papers. Just a publicity stunt to further your own ends. Forgive me if I take the opportunity to turn your gambit on its head.” She nodded and there was movement behind her, near the curtain on the far side of the room.

Then, writhing beams of light began dancing behind the heavy fabric, spilling out around the seams. The nude woman could feel them licking her skin as they twisted through her vision. Her body shuddered, though she was far from cold.

The Doctor leaned close. “Conversely, I have finished writing the statement you’ll give to reporters once you leave here. I won’t ask you to memorize it now. I’ve got more… transformative ideas for your mind to absorb first. But rest assured, soon you’ll put your political acumen to good use… deftly navigating a complete reversal in your public stance on our organization.”

The woman shook her head as much as she was able, which was nearly none.

The Doctor smiled wide at this. “I’ve decided that you were being very hypocritical in your outcry against us when you’ve had no issue whatsoever with arcane fraternal orders.” She shrugged casually, “I think a rhetorical question is always a nice way to start a letter to the editor. ’Are they really so different from Freemasonry?’ has a nice quality.”

She breathed deeply, savoring the moment. “I, of course, will be a very gracious winner in the press. I’ll even invite you to publicly join us as a gesture of our shared devotion and love for all women. Of course, you’ll be a bit more devoted than I.”

The Doctor leaned on the staff, staring down with wild light in her eyes as she slipped two fingers into herself. “You might be interested to know…” she bit her lip, cooing softly as she played with herself , “…that you’ve been quite close to the mark about me and what I do.” She withdrew her hand with a soft groan, her fingers glistening with dew. “I think you’re beginning to get a very good idea of just how ‘prolific and devious’ an ‘influencer’ I am.”

The Doctor leaned in close. “For example, I’ve ensnared enough minds now that I’ve learned there are some rather unexpected and thoroughly lovely side effects to my mental conditioning process. The wine you so foolishly drank at lunch was laced with a compound of my own devising.” She held her fingers in the air between their faces. “For reasons I don’t fully understand yet, it amplifies the olfactory sense many times beyond normal. And, that will be a very helpful tool in the introduction of the new… appetites I’ll be instilling in you.”

“But it also means that if I do this…” then The Doctor pressed her fingers to the nude woman’s upper lip, coating the skin beneath her nostrils with a thick dollop of perfumed juice. “Then, all the while my device is bending your mind to my will, it will also be conditioning your very soul to crave my essence.”

The woman tried with all her might to hold her breath in. But she could no more stop her lungs than move her limbs. She inhaled the delicious aroma of The Doctor’s womanhood and felt a strange tingle at the back of her head… and within her own swollen nether lips.

“I’m afraid that the next time we see each other, you will be quite unable to stop yourself…” the Doctor smiled wolfishly, “…from offering your face as tribute.” She leaned close, whispering hotly, ”Tribute to my glorious… irresistible… cunt!”

The Doctor laughed as she stood and struck the floor once with her staff. All around them, the women began moving towards the nude figure. Their bodies were ghostly and distorted by the threads of divine light filling the chamber. Their eyes and tongues were like those of hungry animals.

The Doctor blew her a kiss as she turned to leave. “Welcome to slavery… Madam Governor.”

Then, the women were on her, pulling her to the curtains. They parted the fabric and held her face before the device. The writhing streamers of light wrapped around her like the coils of a serpent. All the while, they taught her body new truths about its craving for the curves and smell and taste of women. Soon enough the pretty Governor’s own flesh had turned against her: urging her mind ever-deeper into the bright vortex of depravity she was drowning in. As surely as it urged the fingers and tongues of her captors deeper into both of her dripping passages.

She howled and moaned like a whore as she pleaded with them to use her. Offering every part of her glistening body up to their pleasure if they would only give her the ravishing she needed. But, they would not finish her off.

Not until she finally begged them.

Begged in the name of their ruler: the good Doctor Sondergaard.