Found in Amber

The watchman pulled the latch with trepidation. One hand gripped the cold pull-lever, the other his gun. The door clicked and creaked heavily open. There was darkness within.

He peeked behind him. He would have some time before he had to get back, as he had skipped most of his rounds to get straight here. The coast was clear. He flicked on his flashlight and peeked inside, then left the door slightly ajar. The room was cold.

There it was, in the middle of the room. He gave the room the once- over with the beam, and his breath poured out in billows of steam. A few gizmos, a few blinking lights, but it looked safe. He flicked on one bank of lights, and holstered his gun.

A tarp draped over the large, rectangular block. Being over seven feet tall, its appearance was imposing, suddenly illuminated just a few feet away. He couldn’t fathom why they would keep the thing carefully wrapped and refrigerated now, after it had weathered eons of harsh treatment by the elements on its own.

He drew nearer. On inspection, he found with relief that the specimen was not that carefully wrapped. He placed his hat on some shelving. Then, he bent and grasped the heavy cloth with both hands, and snapped the tarp sharply upwards. The covering was surprisingly heavy. Not only did the tarp fail to clear the top, but the watchman felt the painful, familiar pinch of his ailing back.

Cursing, he stamped his feet in the freezer, psyching himself up. He seized the tarp again and pulled at it, grunting ferociously. He stopped after making little headway. Determined that his curiosity would not be denied, he ran to the opposite side, shorter and dangling from the top. He stood on his tiptoes, and with all his might threw the end over. Breathless, he fell back and sat. Staring up through the clouds of his exhalations, he beheld her.

She was crouched in that same position that he had seen in the newspaper photos, except now that he stood beneath her she was so much more imposing. Actually, she wasn’t crouched down so much as curled aggressively forward, as if jumping down to pounce upon him, her prey. Her long hair was suspended up behind her. Her knees were bent and splayed apart. Her rigid torso leaned forward above her hips, and her arms raised menacingly before her and above her head, hands and fingers clawed out and hooked. Frozen at the moment of kill–long, sleek and angry.

Strictly speaking, her face wasn’t beautiful, but it was sexy in its attitude and frame of mind. It was unmistakable what had been on her mind. Her lips were full, and ominously raised in a sultry, arrogant snarl. Blue eyes glared large and hard down at him.

The frozen position was awkward and tense, demanding a coda, a next and final moment. She sought a murderous rest she would never feel. He recalled discovering a praying mantis as a boy, a wiry, evil-looking creature unlike anything he had seen before. It sat large and dangerously still forever before him, like it could explode at any moment. He had that same feeling now, so long forgotten. But this time he had already resolved, he would draw near and touch.

She was covered from head to toe in a glorious, tight leather, slick and tight beneath the heavy translucent amber. The leather seamlessly conformed to her muscular thighs and the curve of her hips. The supple stomach and her breasts, conical and jutting proudly out, were outlined perfectly. He could distinctly see the indentations beneath her biceps, smoothing to her armpits, and strong calves sloping dramatically into the tops of pointed stiletto boots.

He unzipped his slacks, and walked slowly around the slab, surveying her body from all angles. The sleek catsuit revealed more about the body by its wrinkles than it did in the areas where it was stretched tight. The long creases that ran down the front of the suit between her meaty breasts, which had been frozen at the moment of weightlessness, and inflated against the inside of the suit. Those folds behind her bent knees, illuminating in relief the powerful muscles of her shapely legs, the vertical lines of strong calves and hamstrings, that could crush a man’s neck.

And that complex of folds and creases in the cleft between her legs, reaching from the rounded bottom of perfectly toned buttocks into that mysterious area, where bumps and pinches and a definite protruding bulge promised at what lay beneath. He had never had a chance to really stare at a woman’s genitals enough to comprehend them.

Certainly Trudy would never allow him to, nor would he ever ask, or want to. He had only extracted what he needed from them, the hole somewhere within. The rest was pure awkwardness. They sure didn’t look like those neat diagrams in books, where everything was very distinct and labeled with a name and an arrow. In real life, there were no separate colors and shapes. It just melted together in a mishmash of skin, too intricate and embarrassing to be of interest. Just so the glorious hole could be found.

But this woman, he wanted to see this one. They were so intricate and strange that he would never know them. He could stare at hers forever, just inches but eons away, trying to touch it with his mind. He exhaled and grunted deeply, grinding his hips forward.

Ah, but he knew she would never let him gawk at her this long were she alive. She was suspended above the ground, and due to her posture, it was impossible to tell how tall she was, but he could see she was a tall lady. Maybe 5-9, 5-10. Not a short, stubby kielbasa woman. No, she was tall, lean, powerful, unforgiving. She wouldn’t let him roll atop of her and let him do his business in her on the dark bed before sleep.

She would not allow him to lasciviously stare at her womanhood while he rubbed on his dick. She would spit angry words on him while he played with himself. She would cuff the side of his head while he turned his gaze down in humiliation.

“Don’t look down now! Go on, look at my beautiful body,” she taunted, and his groin wrenched at the sound of her catty growl. “Look at me!”

His head trembled as his gaze lifted slowly from her pointed toe up her shin and knee, along the mighty thighs, to her pussy. “Look at me while you finish your dirty business, you little shit! Now!”

At her forceful command, his shaking hands once more sprung to life, doing her bidding, pulling on his swollen penis with urgency and fear. She growled to the rhythm of his strokes, louder and faster, to intimidate him, until he felt her hot breath and saliva beating on his crown.

“No. No,” he fearfully wailed. She was hissing and cackling obscenely under her breath. In her guttural animal gurgling he could a barely intelligible mantra of threats and curses and hatred. Her pussy was so near, he needed to see it, to throw himself on it, to please her. Please, please, if it could only be. His face, chest, thighs and penis ground desperately against the block, and finally, he grunted, and shouted, and light erupted all around him.

“Gierzyck, what the fuck are you doing?”

The soundstage bulbs blare heat and light down upon the platform, glistening on the edges of the translucent obelisk below.

An irritable voice barks orders over the public address system. “Jesus! Pull those lights downstage! You’re burning my monitors up.”

“Can we get this damned thing over with?” yells the kinky-haired talent standing beside the pale yellow block. “This whole scene really blows. Right, Georgio?”

“Yes, babe,” again from the loudspeaker. “Let’s look alive. Are we go on the effects shot?”

“Check, G!” calls an engineer.

“Come on!” The talent snaps her dark plastic eyeframes on.

“Audio!” An aggressive hip-hop beat begins to pound. The roomful of young dancers springs to life. The music cuts, interrupted briefly. “We’re patching in from L.A. Everybody’s watching the red clock, got it? Watch it!”

The music resumes, with a voice-over. “Five, four, three, two, one, we’re active!”

The talent barks into her mike, “Yeah, Pauly, we’re here at Club Dom on the Lower East Side. Are we partying our asses off, people?”

The dull red lights turned to blue, and the dancing crowd screams above the music. “Whoo!”

“Yeah, and we have to be very good tonight, as you know, because tonight we are entertaining The Lady.” The talent walks to her left on the platform, until she is standing next to the tall translucent block containing the suspended form of a savage woman bedecked in a catsuit. A manic strobe flashes through the block from behind her.

The talent coyly raps the slab with a riding crop. “That’s right, history’s very own mistress, and we’ve got her right here. She’s making her list, checking it twice, so you’d better be good, heh-heh. . . . What’s your name?”

“Lisa,” the blond red-leather dancer yells through the music.

“Well, Lisa, have you been a good girl this year?”

“No way!” she screams, leaning close to hear.

“What do you think of our mistress of ceremonies, Lisa?”

“Oh, I think she’s very liberating and inspiring to me as a woman. To think that back then in prehistoric times, women were choosing their own roles as individuals.”

“Oh, really? And what are you going to do then to appease the goddess,” she taps the amber expectantly, “and to help her ring in the new year?”

The blond drops to her knees and presses her face to the clear stone, at the spot closest to the toe of the catwoman’s stiletto boot, and licks as if at a bowl of milk. The cameraman zooms in.

“Whoa, what is this? The things they show on TV these days, huh! Lisa? Lisa? Well, you just have a good old time, girl, and we’ll just go to Bill down on the floor. Bill! Bill, are you there?”

“We’re here, baby, we’re here. Your homeboy’s here on the dance floor, where things are pretty hot and slick, I’m saying. As you can see, all the right kinda wildlife is out and playing tonight. It’s going to be a bad, bad New Year. See?”

The lights pulse yellow-over-red to the beat, and the cameras pan around the dungeon. The cameraman is jostled by bumping and grinding leathermen, whip-women, chained people, ladies dancing in bras and hotpants.

“What’s your New Years resolution, little boy?”

The dancer wears black Dockers, a black leather cap and two nipple clamps. “Whoo!” he answers.

“OK,” the male talent replies facetiously, and moves to the man’s partner, a no-nonsense brunette with tasteful make-up and a leather collar set with sparkling gems. “And what’s your New Years resolution?”

She waves toward the platform, her eyelids heavy. “If I could be like her.”

“Oh yeah, I know what you mean. By the way, it looks like you’re line dancing.”

“Huh?” she draws closer.

“I say, it looks a lot like you are line dancing.”

She dances away.

The male talent laughs. “Tell you what, let’s go to our sizzling cyber-corner, where hundreds of people nationwide are joining our party, doing a little of the cerebral tango, shall we say. Oh yeah!”

The dancers part before the approaching camera, revealing carrels scattered about the far end of the dance floor, each with a flashing computer terminal, and one or several people hunched before them.

“Yes, these people are practicing cyber- bondage with real, hot- blooded kinksters all across the country on one of America’s biggest online services, which shall remain nameless!” The host leans down to a skinny gent. “How’s it going?”

“OK,” he states in a monotone.

“You two better hurry,” the host shouts. “Midnight’s coming!”

“Yeah, OK.” He sits motionless but for his hands, which fluidly clack keys.

“Right.” The host rolls his eyes for the camera and moves to the next table. “Here’s the organizer of Cyber-And-Gomorrah ’95, Dr. Che Liebowitz, professor of psychology at New York University. Doctor, how’s things going?”

“Bill, we’re very pleased with the participation and enthusiasm here. We’re very convinced that the virtual community is the next realm of human interaction. Cases of people falling in love in cyberspace are now commonplace. Why, then, can’t society embrace this tool as one of liberation and experimentation in sexuality? We’re saying, there’s nothing wrong here. It frees us from the constraints of our bodies and our day-to- day responsibilities, into the realm pure ideas. Hence, this vivacious, exciting woman I perceive on my screen right now, is probably in fact a fat, boring housewife in Iowa, for all one knows.”

Bill leans to read from the screen and pats the doctor on the back. “I see! Safe sex, right?”

“Right. For instance, right now, I’ve got this woman . . .”

The host yanks the mike away. “Ho! Watch that! We gonna have New York’s finest throwing down on us.” He thinks a moment. “Man, tell her to. . . .” He whispers in the doctor’s ear. They both chortle.

“I don’t think she’ll go for it,” the doctor replies as he types. The host peers to the screen.

They both laugh after a moment. “I told you! I told you!” bellows the host. They slap a high five. “I gotta be going, but I’ll be back! I’ll be back here.” The host walks away.

Bill’s voice is now heard loudly over the sound system, the hip-hop now in the background. “We got business, crew. Listen up. The moment has arrived. It’s time to ring in the New Year. Give it up for our ladies of the night.” The people look up to the platform and cheer. A spotlight shines on the hostess standing beside the block of amber.

“Ready to count in the New Year, devils? Fine, together: ten, nine, eight . . .”

At the stroke of twelve, a huge bank of strobelights fire off from behind the amber block, lights aimed at the slab from different angles. The catwoman suspended within appears to dance, as lusty bodies crowd and writhe, making love to the obelisk.

“Come, my pet, awake. Rouse thyself. I have your treats.” A thin man of effeminate features and sickeningly pale skin, clad in black, called in a reedy voice into the huge open-air observation tank below. The tank comprised most of the cavernous room, and consisted of a circular ten foot wall, paneled within by white easy-wash vinyl. The solid white walls of the arena were interrupted only by a huge ground-level plexiglass observation window, and a small hole of two-to-three feet in diameter opposite the observation window. The hole was used for access in and out of the open-air terrarium, and the gaunt man was particularly proud of it, as this was his idea. As he predicted, his subject could no longer escape through the hole.

The huge tank contained only a few objects. A jungle mat, a beanbag chair, rubber playballs of various sizes and colors, building blocks and a wide-screen TV.

The tank was also ringed at its top by black steel scaffolding, which allowed onlookers to walk around and observe from any angle. The waiflike black figure stood upon the scaffolding, as he reached into a greasy brown grocery bag.

“Up, my friend. It’s time to eat!” He pulled his hand from the bag, and tossed packages wrapped in white paper to the floor of the tank. He grabbed another handful and tossed them. Some remained wrapped until they hit the ground. Others fell from their wrapping, and hit the floor as scattered buns and ketchup-laden patties and pickles. “Come on, it’s the fun time!”

On the far side below, a makeshift wall of building blocks tumbled down, and an animal- like grumbling emanated from beyond. When the next volley of burgers splatted upon the floor, a large creature charged out from behind the rubble of blocks, across the tank toward the debris.

The creature charged huffing to the culinary litter scattered about the tank floor, scooping up and devouring the scraps as it moved along. The brute was obese, his body clad only in a large diaper. Food bits sprayed to the ground as it hunched and ravaged its food. The subject wore meaty sideburns down its cheeks, and a long, silvered pompadour, which it repeatedly tossed away from its face as it fed. As it ate the smaller bits, the brute scooped and gathered larger burger chunks in its cradled arm. Still chewing, it stood, still holding its armful of booty.

It crammed a whole burger into its mouth, then shook a fist up at its captor. “Ah’monna get you, Michael.” It choked, and then stuffed another patty in, with some effort.

The observer giggled like a child from the scaffold. “Be happy, my friend,” he reassured in his thin voice, “I have a surprise for you. We have a new friend to play with.”

The wraithlike man-boy snapped into motion and nimbly danced down the stairs. He reappeared at ground-level, at the plexiglass viewing window, and knocked on it. He called the brute over with his finger. The diapered hulk moved closer, then looked perplexed as it took in the sight.

“Say hello to our new friend.” The gaunt man stroked lovingly at the yellow encasing surrounding the leatherclad catwoman. “I don’t have a name for her yet. Can you think of a name for her? She’s very pretty, isn’t she?”

The amber block had fresh cuts on four of its sides–above the woman’s head, below her feet, and at both of her sides–as large sections of the slab had been sawn away. Parts of the woman were now only millimeters beneath the surface.

“Soon she will be free,” the thin man said dreamily, “and then, the fun we will have. . . .”

“Do you like her?” the thin man asked. The brute only stared and chewed from the other side of the window.

“Well, Mr. Merrick likes her,” he continued, and turned to address the human skeleton hanging from a nearby pole. “You like her, don’t you, Mr. Merrick? Yes, Mr. Merrick likes her. Yes he does.”

“Yes, soon she will be free.” He flipped some switches on the side of an oblong coffin-like machine, which began to hum and whir, and fog rose out, illuminated from within. “And then we can all play together, here in our secret world.” He climbed over the side and into the open chamber of the machine. He sat up inside of it, with the fog rising all around him. “I just have to think of her name,” and he laid down into the haze to sleep.