The dame was waiting in the dump I call my office. She was a looker; long blonde hair, short skirt, high heels. Coulda walked outta the pages of some adult mail order catalogue.
Hell. I remembered. She did walk straight off a page from the one on my desk, under the tax bills. I poured bourbon into two chipped shot glasses, offered her the cleaner one.
“What’s up, babe?”
“I need you to track someone for me.” Her voice was low, husky, the way it can get when a woman’s mouth has had too many… I stopped the thought right there. I didn’t need the hard-on.
“I run a mail order company, the adult kind,” she told me. “There’s this guy. People call him the Professor. Word is, he’s invented some new sex toy that makes people incredibly horny. I want to find him, and get the rights to sell it. Or find out how it works, and get someone else to manufacture it. Whichever.”
“Sure,” I said. “Where do I start looking for him?”
She shrugged. “That’s your job. What’s your daily rate?”
I smelled her perfume. It was expensive. I told her double my usual rate and she didn’t even blink. “What about a retainer?” I asked.
“I can do better than that,” she said. She came round my side of the desk and put those silky knees on my crummy floor. She showed me why her voice was low and husky. I’d needed that hard-on after all.
***
Mandy was always a good lead. The lap-dancing club is never busy until late in the evening. We talked while she swayed and shimmied in my face.
“No one here’s mentioned anything like that,” she said. “But then the punters don’t talk much, and among us girls, you’d be surprised what counts as a turn-on.” She did a twirl. “See Devon, two tables along? She’s into–” and her voice dropped to a whisper, “computer programming. She’s paying her way through a Master’s degree.” Mandy brushed up gently against me. “Anytime someone mentions Linux, she goes gooey-eyed and breathes heavy.”
The music stopped and she fought her way back into the tiny outfit. “Try the pro dommes,” she advised.
It’s a hell of a job when you can claim a lapdance from your son’s girlfriend on expenses. But I’d have to change my underwear before I could follow up her leads.
On my way out, Devon tried to persuade me to have another dance. I spoke to her in code. Left her panting for more.
***
Finding a pro domme was easy. I just called the number on one of the business cards I found in phone booth. Mistress Anjelika.
“No funny business, I just wanna talk,” I grated.
She smiled. “They all say that the first time, dear. But if your money’s good, it’s your call.”
She’d heard nothing. She showed me amyl nitrate, whips and canes, a thing called a violet wand she claimed was her specialty. None of it was new. The violent wand was a real antique, made in 1926 according to the label on it, and still working.
“Try the swingers’ clubs,” Anjelika suggested. “But can’t I tempt you to a little caning, just to remember me by?”
“I said, no funny stuff,” I reminded her.
“OK, fine,” she replied with a grin. “But you’ll be back. They always are.” She looked at the clock and said my time was up. She reached out to shake my hand. I didn’t realise the violent wand was on and she was holding the terminal.
Sparks flew between us.
***
As a single male, you can’t just walk into a swingers’ club. Sure, I could persuade the bouncer. But this was supposed to be undercover. I spoke to Mandy, who spoke to Devon. She came out from the club after her shift, wearing a dress that was more holes than material. Not that I was complaining.
We interviewed a dozen couples. Nothing. No one had heard of anything like the Prof’s gizmo. They were keen on dripped liquid chocolate, though, and the special type of lube that gives a warm feeling when you use it.
Devon liked the lube. I just felt ill and bloated from all that chocolate.
I got one clue. A fetish club where new and extreme stuff was all the rage.
When we left, around dawn, I nearly forgot my hat.
***
To get into the club, I had to play dressup. Leather pants, an Errol Flynn style pirate shirt. I’m supposed to be a private dick, but it felt like I was going to make a dick of myself in public. What the hell, I’d add emotional injury compensation to the bill. I kept my battered trilby, though.
“The Professor? He’s a bit of a recluse these days.” I was talking to a character whose main form of body covering appeared to be piercings. Everywhere. He was a living, breathing pincushion.
“So how do I contact him?”
The guy sniggered. “You don’t, not unless someone introduces you.”
“And you could introduce me?”
He shrugged. I snapped, and yanked on a huge metal ring connected to his nipple. It made him gasp.
“Well, if you do that some more, I’d think about it…”
It was more fun than I expected.
And I kind of liked the feel of the leather pants.
***
Pincushion made a phone call.
The house was out in the suburbs. It was nothing fancy. I rang the doorbell, and a small guy with greasy hair and three-day stubble answered it. Pincushion explained who I was. The guy blinked twice and let us in.
The Prof lived with a girl maybe half his age. Long black hair, good legs, slim build, wearing a tight rubber minidress, thick leather wrist cuffs – and fluffy slippers. Whatever turns you on, girl… She made coffees and left us to it.
It would be easy to steal the gizmo, if that was what it took. Assuming I could recognise it under the litter of books, papers, filleted computers and half-built electronic gadgetry.
“The thing is,” the Prof explained, “everyone is used to consumerism these days. They expect every new sex toy to come in a nice box, with instructions. They expect it to require batteries, maybe even a mains power supply. Or feel good when you strap it on. They expect something that makes you feel like a god, or a goddess.”
Where was he going with this?
“So lately,” he rambled, “I’ve been working on the ultimate sex toy. Something that doesn’t come in a box, doesn’t need electricity, doesn’t need to be strapped on, but still makes you feel like a god. In your case. Unless you particularly want to feel like a goddess, of course?” I laughed. Then I realised it wasn’t a joke, he knew people with all kinds of kinks.
“If you want,” he said, “I can show you what I’m working on.”
He led me to a small back room. It was empty except for a rug on the floor, candles in little glass jars around the walls. He lit the candles, told me to sit on the rug. There was a blank wall in front of me.
“Just think,” he told me, “that on the other side of that wall is young Starlight – the girl who brought us the coffee. This room, the whole room, is a kind of device. If you try, you can see her through the wall. You’ll see what you might do with her, what she might do with you… I’ll leave you to it. Enjoy.”
Nothing happened for a while. But then, in the candlelight, I could see a shape, dimly. The wall wasn’t as smooth and regular as it looked. There were legs akimbo. Breasts smooth and constrained by the rubber of the dress. Arms splayed out in different directions, held by the wrist cuffs she’d worn. Head back in ecstasy, hair flying everywhere.
My leather pants felt like they’d split under the pressure.
Eventually I snapped out of it, realised I could hear low voices from the other room. I went to find them. The Prof, Starlight, and Pincushion were sitting in armchairs, sharing a bottle of single malt. They were having a conversation about the best vegetables to plant at this time of year.
The Prof looked up. “I see it worked,” he observed dryly, looking at the bulge in my pants.
I shrugged. “So what’s the deal? Wires embedded in the walls? Some drug mixed into the candles?”
The Professor cackled until the single malt spurted out of his nose and he started to choke.
Eventually he recovered the power of speech.
“The ultimate sex toy,” he replied, “is something I call imagination.”
Fulani is socially isolated, often insomniac and suffers from a highly deviant imagination. You don't want to know about his personal life. No, really you don't. His stories appear in Erotic Review and are included in a new online e-Xcite anthology. His first erotic novel will be published in 2010 by Pink Flamingo.
