Hello everyone.
My name is Howard Smith. Some of you may know me as Smitty. The good people at NUM have graciously permitted me to publish with them. Perhaps you may know my first book, "Slaves to Greed."
This time around I am working on a new a novel, fictional, just like the first, but loosely based on some true stories told to me by female slaves.
Read, relax, enjoy, and if you feel so inclined, feel free to comment. Let's have some fun.
Peep Show Palace
Howard Smith
Illustrations by Agan Medon ™
subscribestar/aganmedon
“And this also," said Marlow suddenly, "is one of the dark places of the earth.”
― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
We were once wanderers of a prehistoric earth, an earth that was as strange and mysterious as an unknown planet. The earth was innocent then. It seemed as if it was just waiting for us, as if it were meant to be explored.
We could have fancied ourselves the first to take possession of an accursed inheritance, one that needed to be subdued at the cost of profound anguish and even excessive toil, but we chose to make this planet a conquest instead. So we grabbed whatever we could, and took whatever we could, often just for the sake of taking. It was not just robbery. That taking came with violence, even aggravated murder on a grand scale. Men went at it with a passion, often blindly – all very proper for those who tackle a darkness.
Distant islands, even entire continents, were swallowed whole and plundered for such things as greed would allow. We took diamonds, gold, silver, and ivory. We made them trinkets and called them precious. And, when all that was gone, we took people too, called them savages, and sold them in the great slave markets of Rome, Byzantium, Zanzibar, the Barbary Coast.
The first captives were richly adorned. Their limbs, their necks, their ankles, and wrists, were decorated with a profusion of jewels imbedded in gold and silver bracelets and necklaces. Their skins were scrupulously cleaned and burnished with cocoa-nut oil and perfume. Their faces were carefully painted with red and white stripes.
In the true tradition of commerce, they were well advertised before the point of sale: arranged in a coffle line, commencing with the youngest, and increasing to the rear according to their size and age. A fanfare would play. Drums were sounded. They were paraded proudly by traders through the streets along the way. Should a captive strike a spectator's fancy, the line would stop for closer examination.
No exceptions were made for personal privacy. The coffle line was pure street theatre, akin to bear baiting, but only in a sexual way, a purely prurient pornographic public spectacle meant to arouse, to please the biggest crowd possible before the point of sale. A woman, or even a girl, would be stripped of all her clothing. Her breasts, even her sex, would be handled, eagerly fondled, in the most indecent manner.
Their sale would soon follow, a rude and crude financial ritual more graphic than burlesque. Slaves would stand still as a statue stark naked, on an auction block. A willing whip would always be waiting to assure her total submission.
Never mind the trappings of civilization: the monuments to gods and heroes, the lofty ideals, the written laws. Forget the shining philosopher’s stone. The great statues, the hallowed halls, the public forums, and coliseums were all built on the backs of slaves. Even the literature, the theatre, the music, were often the works of slaves.
Humanity itself has always been just another commodity, a direct result of naked aggression that formed long lines and flowed in currents inevitable as rivers from the deepest darkest steaming jungles, those places, the most remote, the lawless, the unexplored.
Civilization itself had gone wild in the conquering. In the conquering, the taking, and the violence, it became another kind of collective savage, a cannibal. The coffle lines of slave girls, flowed like rivers along jungle lines, fed the ravenous, became a veritable soylent green.
It’s alive and well today. Its remnants remain inside our music. It’s a tango, a twerk, a lambada. Its rhythms riveted in the mathematics of bars and girders, valves, and pipes. It’s an electric billboard, a city street, Vegas, Broadway, Harlem, Hollywood and Vine. It’s as savage as a Yankee dollar, a Peso, a Pound, a Euro. Civilization is a python that squeezes the life out of the masses, swallows them whole, and digests them while they’re still alive.
That line, that jungle line, waits for you today. It’s a richly potent flower. It’s the weed you smoke. It’s liquid. It’s powder. It’s crystal meth, a neon light, a penny arcade, a dime a dance, a chorus line, an all-girl review, a topless show, a can-can fanfare, the Follies Bergère. It’s a two-dollar hotel whore chained and waiting in a dirty cast iron bed. Even if you are down on your luck, you can always beg, borrow, or buy a two-bit token, forget your lousy life, and have a cheap thrill. It’s peep show time.
Go ahead. Take a deep breath Spend a minute. Drop a dime. And read.
Peep Show Princess
“I had peeped over the edge myself, I understand better the meaning of his stare, that could not see the flame of the candle, but was wide enough to embrace the whole universe, piercing enough to penetrate all the hearts that beat in the darkness.” Joseph Conrad—The Heart of Darkness
It's just another night here in the red light district, the dirty part of town. The streets are filled with winos, junkies, pimps, and whores, a couple of stoolies too. There's plenty of cops out on the prowl, predators they are. They are all on the take. Payola is Big Boss Hogg on the streets: a nickel bag, couple double sawbuck, or a bitter blow job in the badly-stained back seat of a squalid squad car.
An eerie sort of feeling comes over you. You could be clean as a whistle, but still want a shower. You’re not all innocent. You crossed a line. You abandoned your sense of pride, your conscience, and blotted out your inner shame. know you shouldn’t be here, but you came anyway. You made a choice. You wanted to sin, so you came here to wallow and rut. It’s a jungle here, a seedy wasteland, past the reach of morals, common decency, and sometimes even John Law. You might as well face it. You're just another John Doe, a pervert, a denizen of the streets.
The night grows darker now. The lurid glow of neon, the fiery flicker of the arcades, the twenty-watt marquee boards, or the sudden blue flashes of passing squad car lights comingle in the air. It’s the siren call straight from the heart of human darkness. This place begins to come alive.
I should know. I'm a full-time resident now. I moved in when my lover left me on a bright summer’s day. I gave up on him and even myself after that. I chose to become a sex slave. I don’t blame him. I don’t blame the moon. I’m a willing captive of place and time.
I don't like to work--no one does--but I like what does to me. It gives me a chance to go deep into myself, to find my own reality--mine not others—something no one else would ever understand and never really know.
Antoine is my owner. He takes me here every night. He shows me off, makes me stand here on display, stark naked except for cuffs. My whole body is stretched out lewdly. Every square inch can be seen: wrists pulled tight to the ceiling, feet barely touching the floor. I have no name. I’m just a body. "Peep show princess" is what he calls me. I’m the girl in cell 3.
A couple tokens drop in the slots, then a couple more. A bell rings. The windows open. Men look through the glass. No one greets me. No one even nods. They just watch. Their faces are different. They come from every race, every age, every walk of life.
And yet they all look the same, almost like papier-mâché masks, behind them dead shark eyes. They rake my body up and down groping me like hungry hands. They look right past me as if I wasn’t there, a complete, deathlike indifference of unhappy savages, desperate for a drink, a meal, a shot, or even a kill. Sometimes they masturbate, or so I think. I can't really see their hands and what happens down below.
I don't really do that much, but mine is not an easy job. You would never really know unless you've done it. I cannot move. I have no freedom, no choices, certainly no morals now. I’m just a female body, a sex toy, a living doll, to be used and abused, fuck fodder for the lascivious pleasures of men, some who even have wives or daughters as old as me.
The loudspeaker system suddenly crackles to life. Hard rock music plays fast and loud, heavy on the drums and bass. The words are indistinct. They don’t really matter. It’s a tribal rhythm from long forgotten times. I look down at my body. It's trembling like a leaf. My heart is pounding hard inside my chest. My belly is turning flip flops. I'm so scared, and I am soaking wet.
Antoine's voice blares over the top up the music. "Turn!"
I know I must. I do. I show every part of my body to every empty face.
"Turn!" He orders again.
He walks in. He is a monster of a man easily twice my size. He’s got muscles everywhere, but he knows his real strength is deep inside. He knows the weakness of men. Some say Antoine is a walking nightmare of a human being. Maybe so, but then again, he is my nightmare, my nightmare of choice. He’s stark naked too, half erect already, whip in hand. Spittle forms on his lip. He is a walking nightmare of a human being. Maybe so, but he is mine.
He swings the whip. I scream. He swings it again.
"Suffer. Suffer pretty, Princess. Make 'em hard. That’s what they came here for, very, very hard," he says gesturing in grand fashion as if he was an actor on a stage. He swings again.
The bell rings again. The windows close. More tokens drop into the slots, lots more. It’s making quite a racket like a crowded casino on a big pay day. My screams must have echoed through the building. We’re making a scene.
Antoine squeezes my nipples. His hands close tight as a vice. I scream again. He laughs.
"Makes 'em hard," he says. More coins fall.
All those windows are all filled with faces now. Their heads crane forward, buzzards waiting for the kill.
Antoine whips me again and again answered by another series of screams. I recognize the voice. It's mine. My body dances around like a puppet with no mind of its own. My feet leave the floor. I swing in place, even spin around. I’m losing all control.
My breathing grows fast and deep. My lungs gasp for air. It's like I just ran a three-minute mile. My body has gone into overdrive. I can't get breathe hard enough.
My eyes grow dim. My vision blurs. I'm barely conscious now. I'm hoping to pass out, but Antoine revives me. He fondles my cunt with his big meaty hand.
I look up, but just a little. The windows have steamed up, the faces blurred. Everyone else is breathing hard too. Antoine's hand continues, having its way with me.
"Oh," is all I manage to say. I cum.
The bell rings again. I cum. The windows close.
“Five minutes,” he tells me. “Till the next show.”
Antoine is so terribly cruel. I just love him so.
As always you wrote a great story and the illustrations are erotic and well done...