Usher House

Amazing locale that it was, Elenora was beyond reaction by this point. The tour of the house, not all together her idea, had thus far drained her. She was overcome with emotion and stress. She turned toward the king-sized bed. She wished beyond hope to just climb into the bed, onto that mattress and to drift off to the guiltless sleep of the comatose. Like an automaton, she walked to that bed, turned and collapsed down onto it. Arms flayed outward and soon enough she drifted dead away. Soon after, the fire in the fireplace followed suit and died away, its light fading.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Startled, but by some unknown event, perhaps real, perhaps imagined, Elenora awoke with a start, sitting up, fully awake, with such speed and force that her still exposed breasts swayed and jiggled uncomfortably. Thus reminded of her state, Elenora looked down at herself, moved to cover her exposure with an arm, then remembering her predicament, giving up and re-lowering her arm, her modesty already long since flown away.

What had awakened her? Elenora looked around. Something happened, but what? Then she saw it. On a table that had not been there the night before, was a silver serving tray, with opened bottle of wine and filled glass adjacent. Elenora sat motionless and suddenly realized that she could hear footsteps walking away down the hall outside of the cell door. She ran to the door and screamed through it for whoever had been there to come back to her. There was no response.

Again, Elenora was overcome with emotion and crumbled to the floor by the cell door. At first, focused on her torment, she did not notice them. However, as she worked at recovering her composure, she noticed that a pair of stiletto heels was sitting just next to the cell door, on her side. They looked just the ones that she was...

Here, she looked down at her feet, naturally assuming the heels that had been locked onto her yesterday were still there. They were missing, so were the sheer white stockings.

It felt so erotic to Elenora, crouching there by the door, staring down at the naked flesh of her thighs and feet. She adjusted her position into one of sitting, her back to the door, her legs now outstretched. Somehow, her legs, which she had obviously looked at thousands of times as she had grown up, now being exposed without shear silk stockings for the first time since she had awoken yesterday, became the center of her physical and emotional focus. As she stared down at them, they seemed so soft, so subtle, so smooth, and so beautiful.

Overcome by temptation, Elenora hesitantly and softly placed a hand down on a thigh. Beautiful sensuous feelings swelled within her. As if it had a mind of its own, her hand gently lifted until just her finger tips remained in contact with the smooth sexy exposed skin. Her fingers traced ever so gently across her thighs, first one then the other, back and forth. As her fingers became more insistent, inserting themselves between her thighs, she responded by slightly parting her legs, allowing ever increasing access to what she had never previously given a second though, the tender smooth sexy skin high on her legs.

A sigh escaped from Elenora's lips as she again leaned back against the steel door, her eyes closed. She reached up, with her other hand to untie the ribbon holding her diaphanous robe together. Why was beyond her to reason, for doing so did not expose her breast anymore that they had previous been. But still, as the robe fell to the sides of her body, Elenora's second hand moved up to caress one breast, then the other, one areola, then the other, one hardened nipple, then the other. Her first hand, having won the victory of insisting on her widely splayed legs, now slid fingers along Elenora's dripping wet vaginal slit, back and forth, and upward to her engorged clit. There was a coldness about her fingertips, that coldness transferring itself to her breasts and her vagina. Yet, that coldness enhanced the feelings that Elenora was experiencing rather than detracted. The pleasure that she was giving herself was unlike that which she could receive from anybody else, for anybody else would be warmer to the touch, not cold as the grave.

Elenora was in heaven in this dungeon hell. She exploded onto her heaven and hell in ecstasy, her mind focused only on pleasure, a white-hot oblivion of orgasmic unconsciousness from stone cold fingers. As wave upon wave ripped through her, crashed over top of her, taking the previously mounting stress with it as it did, Elenora's breadth became so labored that she momentarily teetered on the brick of blacking out.

Long moments after, as she relaxed and regained her composure, as her breathing eased, her hands remaining on her own erect nubs and sopping slit, not in any way ashamed of her actions, rather Elenora sat engrossed by them. What had brought all of that on? She had never been a frequent practitioner of masturbation, never had seen anything wrong with it, but had never been a frequent practitioner nonetheless. And yet, she had thrown herself body and soul into what had just happened. Why? How?

How was her tormentor so easily affecting her mind and body? Moreover, why was he, or she, doing this in the first place?

Elenora sat contemplating all of these questions, wondering long into the morning, her satiated and exposed body with legs akimbo relaxing lazily at the base of the cell door. Then, from around the one interior corner in the room, that which separated the comfortable cantilevered bed that hung from one wall from the pornographic portrait that hung from another wall, she heard a clanging of metal. This was followed by the pitch of metal hinge moving against metal hinge-pin, all as if another cell door, as the one that she lay against, was opening.

Elenora, perplexed, stood up and went to explore, naked and leaving her now discarded diaphanous gown behind her at the door where she had lain during her recent erotic interlude, the door through which she had entered the night before. She padded, now knowingly aware of her bare feet, across the stone floor of her cell around past the intruding corner to discover a second steel jail-cell door, this one open. Now, she knew, or Elenora thought that she knew, that when she had collapsed on the bed the night before that she had at a minimum, glanced at this wall. Yet, she did not recall seeing this second jail door. Had it been there, she would have noticed, would she not? However, it could not have just appeared, could it have? Was she hallucinating? Was she going mad?

Not knowing, not caring to know, only seeing the escape and jumping for it, Elenora ran toward and through the opening...only to find a true torture chamber. Manacles hung from the ceiling, from various sections of the walls and from a central stone manse. Whips and iron bars, their usage unknowable, where placed in an orderly pattern, as if easily reachable by a torturer, against various other parts of those same walls. A stone outcropping, waist high and just wide enough to bend a body over extended from one stone wall, with what appeared to be wrist and ankle sized constraints placed into the floor below it.

In addition, and an important addition at that, over in one corner, the only other entrance to this room, aside from the one through which Elenora had just come, a descending stone spiral staircase disappeared through the stone floor.

Elenora could not explain it, but somehow she had expected exactly what she found here. She found it repulsive, yes, but completely expected, down to the locations, number, and types of whips hanging from the walls. Further, even with her repulsion, Elenora in some deep way, found the entire room...thrilling.

Not wanting to understand her excitement at the disturbing, Elenora ran for the exit, choosing the unknown of the downward spiral to the known of the commonplace and otherwise inescapable bedroom to her back. Downward through the spiral staircase she ran as if somehow descending into the grave. At the bottom of those stairs, she found herself in a long narrow hallway, again lined with stones but also with hard chiseled or otherwise natural rock as if in a cave, including ceiling and floors. Emanating from the far end of that hall came the sound and the smell of the shore.

Escape! The shore, the outside, escape out of the house must be down that way. Escape! Elenora ran, bare feet against wet slippery rock and stone, Elenora ran. Escape! Suddenly she felt more against her feet, wet sand! Escape! Yes, this must have been some sort of sea-cave before it had been stoned up as the foundation of the castle above her. Escape! Here she turned a corner, bouncing against the far wall as she did, suddenly light shown through high windows in the wall. Had it not been for the foundation, she would be outside at this very instant. Escape! Yes, escape was mere feet away! Escape! She could hear seabirds calling; she could hear the surf crashing against the shore. Escape! One last corner, she must be able to see the sea from this next corner. Escape! She made the corner and rounded it.

"Good day, Mistress!"

Stopped dead in her tracks, frozen dead in her tracks, Elenora screamed with an alacrity and a volume that stunned even her. There, standing in front of her, not five feet beyond her reach, had she desired to do so, stood, in proper servant tuxedo, what could only be described as a brooding sad man. That man, that as yet unknown being, with dark slightly tussled hair, a dark slightly unkempt moustache, and black-as-a-cat dark, even wounded eyes of infinite sadness, eyes of such sadness, as if they had witnessed horrible things, such as uncountable and unrespited murders.

"You do not remember me, but I am your servant, and your companion, my name is Edgar."

In shear panic, Elenora screamed again and ran past the man, ran into a large open room. Everywhere she looked, there were more torture devices all with ever-increasing connotations of sexual desire about them. Everywhere that she ran, there were objects of deprivation. There were handcuffs and ankle-cuffs all neatly hanging from hooks on the one wall, each properly in its place. There were neck-sized restraints hanging from the ceiling inside of barred cells to one corner of the room. There were ankle restraints, several feet apart buried in the floor. There were full body manacles hanging from the ceiling over top of smooth stone blunted pillars, those full body manacles just low enough that anybody retained and restrained by them would inevitably find their vagina or ass in contact with the very apex of those pillars. There were wooden platforms of several variety, all with large eyelet shaped loops and hooks embedded within them, all those loops and hooks perfectly capable attaching to chained restraints attached to bodies.

"Madam, please, let me explain!"

Elenora came face to face with the intruder, her tormentor again. Again, she screamed and ran frantically away. However, towards what she could not tell.

She turned and ran around one hidden corner in the torture chamber and she came face to face with frightening banality! There in front of her, a commonplace king-sized bed, not unlike the one in which she had slept just this past night. However, in this bed, emanating up from it was the statue of a full sized horse, rearing up on its hind legs, its fully engorged phallus, apparently connected to a pumping mechanism that kept it moving inward and outward, arranged just so that a victim could be impaled on and raped by it. Enthralled, amused and appalled all at the same time, Elenora again turned and ran in a new direction through the dungeon only to come upon another platform. This platform sporting a statue of a demon, with the same mechanical structure as the horse and at the same relative position, so that a victim here could just as easily be assaulted and raped by a demon. Hysterical in fright, Elenora again took another running crying direction, this one taking her out onto the wet sand of a tiny beach at the end of a long neck of the sea, with unscalable shear cliffs all along the alcove. Those cliffs so high that unless a person was standing on the very edge overlooking the hidden arm of the sea, they could not have heard the loudest scream from the bottom where Elenora was. This had truly once been a spot where tempest-tossed pirates had hidden their ill-gotten gains, their gold bugs, their loots. This beach, this pirate cave turned sexual torture chamber, remained Elenora's prison.

Just then, from the entrance to the cave behind her, "Please madam, please let me explain!"

Elenora turned toward the voice, the brood man again a mere few feet from her. She started to back her naked form away from him, her nude body stepping into the ice-cold waters of the hidden cove stopping her dead in her tracks. She was lost; she could not retreat further into the freezing water she could not dare to hope to run past him back into the cave. She had no weapons with which to defend herself. She dreaded what her future at his hands, and those diabolical tools of despicable sexual depravity inside, would be. She shouted for him to not come near her. She tried, valiantly, to use her arms and hands to cover her flesh.

"Do not worry, madam, I shall not draw near to my mistress." Then, "I do wish that you would let me explain, madam. After all, I am your servant and companion, you are my mistress!" True to his promise, he stood his ground and did not advance on Elenora's helplessness. Rather, he just stood, looking as unthreatening as his uncanningly sad demeanor would allow.

Elenora's heart remained beating at unhealthy levels, which, when combined with here hyperventilation, almost had her in shock. If he, this Edgar person, had made one threatening move, she would have died away at that very moment. But, as he didn't make such a move, as he did just stand there, hands folded across his stomach, legs straight and together, slightly bowing at the waist, sad yet noncommittal expression on his face. Despite the odd juxtaposition, her panting and nude, he calm, collected and in evening attire, Elenora eventually settled enough to talk.

"Okay then...who are you?"

"Why, I have already told you! Although, at the state that you were in, you may not have understood. I am Edgar, you manservant. I also honor myself to think of myself as your companion and friend. I hope that I am not too forward in doing so." Politeness pouring forth from this strange sad man.

"Why did you bring me here? Why am I here?"

"Why, this is your home! It always has been your home. It always will be your home!"

"No, no, I have NEVER been here before..."

"But, you have madam, you have! You just may not recall at the moment." Why was he contradicting her?

"No, I've never been here before, NEVER!" Elenora's ire rising.

"But, you built this place, many long years, and oh so many cycles, ago I admit, madam, my mistress, but you did design it and build it and have ever been redecorating it since."

"No, cannot be, I did not decorate that place! Not those torture chambers, and not those innumerable pictures of all of those different women! No, I did not have ANYTHING to do with that!"

"But, you did nonetheless madam. Moreover, as for all of those 'various women', madam, my mistress, they are all of you! The master, the mistress, of this house!"

Elenora was shocked into silence.

"You see, madam, this occurs every time. You have come to expect it, and even though I hope that it does not repeat, you, in your wisdom warn me every time. This is just as you did two nights hence. I am so foolish, you so wise,...and so kind to keep me as your servant."

Elenora's mind was spinning. She recalled knowing things about the house as she had explored over the previous two days, déjà vu moments, where she had known things before they had been shown, the bathroom in the gallery for instance, of the locked garden gate and locked front doors. She could recall calmness in her expectations as well. Was what this Edgar fellow telling her actually the truth? However, if so, how was it possible? What did it mean?

"You see, madam, each time that it occurs, you give me the honor of protecting you as you pass through and start anew. You give me the honor of..."

Pass through? Start anew? "Wait! What did you just say? What do you mean? Stop talking in circles; tell me in plain English, now!"

"But, I am trying, dearest madam, honestly, I am trying. Please, hear me out and you will realize the truth. 'Veritas vos liberabit' as they say." The meerest hint of myrth crossing the corners of his demeanor, quickly replaced, yet again, by his melancholy.

Something told Elenora that this Edgar was somehow trustworthy. It also told her that she would not believe, would not WANT to believe, what he told her. It also made her realize that she had to hear this man out.

Still standing now calf deep in icy cold seawater. Still nude and exposed to this strange fellow. Still attempting, beyond reason, to cover her nakedness with nothing but her hands. "Go on, keep talking."

"Please, madam, before you catch your death of cold, step out of the water. Besides, it's too soon for that yet this cycle, not now." Here he took a couple of steps backward to allow Elenora safety to advance completely out of the cold, an action to which she then took advantage.

"Madam, as I said, this is your house. You are the mistress of this house. Moreover, there is no master. You do not need to be afraid of anything in this house. You designed it, you paid for it, you built it, you own it, and it is yours."

"But, what? How?" Elenora, slightly crouching, not comprehending, asking for more.

"Countless generations ago, madam, you, having built this mansion, this castle, this...palace, became aware of the machinations of others that coveted it. These others were powerful and you, a mere woman in an age, unlike today, when mere women meant nothing, became determined and slightly desperate to keep it. In order to do so, madam, you went in search of a witch, this being back in the time when such beings were celebrated. That witch, seeing the goodness in your heart, gave you the option of keeping this house forever. To make the long story short, madam, you took that option."

Elenora, with distant memories flooding back to her from unknown locales, from unknown times, started to comprehend. "As long as I stayed in this house, within its grounds, from the first time that I stepped in it, the house would always be mine."

"Yes, my mistress, your memories are returning. And..."

"...and, as long as I did so, when the inevitable came, when I, ah, died, I would re-awaken, in a new body in the prime of that body's existence, within this house. My spirit never dying, merely passing from cycle unto cycle. As long as I never leave the grounds. Generation after generation."

"And your house would not decay, but only grow in size and stature with each passing generation. And, so you have, mistress! And, my mistress, if I may be so bold, you have done so very well at growing the prideful house of yours."

Reality rushing back, "But, the torture chambers? The manacles? The whips?"

"Those, mistress, were your amusements this past life. If they do not amuse you this time, it is your right, as mistress of the house, to redecorate as you deem. As you always do."

"And, you say that those pictures are all of me?"

"Yes, and it seems that having them made is something that does not change, never has changed, with each cycle that you pass through, mistress. You simply insist on getting another picture, sometimes more if you are overly fond of that particular form, of the 'new you' made. Why, I have already made arrangements for the artist to arrive, later this week, as a matter of fact, for I already suspected your desire! Please, forgive my boldness."