Slaves Of Xi Ling

Adam felt the slipperiness of the oil on his naked flesh and enjoyed the heaven that it brought. A massage by slim hands brought him round to admire and enjoy the sensual nature of Chai, his pretty Chinese whore.

Now she was working his neck and shoulders, all the time allowing her open pussy to glide over his half erect prick in a soothing motion.

He felt his powers return, his cock start to push up against her slippery flesh and her nails caught his nipples in slight, almost unintentional teasing. Chai was moving toward her most elegant pleasuring.

The swallowing of him by her slim body whilst her hands massaged and teased the rest of his body with scented oil.

Now that she had sapped him the play would last for hours.

When sunset at last came, lengthening the shadows and making hiding places in the shade, she would make him come in a storm of pent up energy that would leave him sapped for days.

This was her art.

He would be in love by nightfall.

 

*** Part The Fourth

Gin, rape and the destroyer of innocence.

It was three days after the afternoon behind the Red Gates that Adam and Garry met again.

Though it had been the best of experiences for Adam he was chary of meeting Garry and hearing of his conquest. No, that was not what Adam wished to remember, the grunting, slapping and piteous cries that had emanated from the room next door whilst a slim Chinese whore had brought Adam to such a climax as he had never before imagined.

The cries of protest had seemed inextricable mixed in his own intimate experience, they had become a part of a harmonious whole that begged to be repeated as often as thirty silver dollars lay in his purse.

‘But we have agreed to meet!’ thought Adam as he waited at the waterfront bar. ‘So I suppose that I am obliged to keep my word and thank him for taking me to that heavenly bordello.’

Somehow the relationship that the two diverse Europeans had forged in this nightmare and celebrated city seemed suddenly fragile. A stuff made of porcelain and glass. Garry had spoiled that little feeling of friendship that Adam had created by his gross mistreatment of Xi Ling even though it had added to Adam’s excitement.

With a gin in front of him and his eyes cast wide to anticipate his friend’s arrival, Adam pondered when it was that he could next afford to sample the delights of Chai. He had heard, second or third hand, of Europeans buying their whores from the brothels. Paying vast sums to keep a beautiful captive to use privately in all sorts of ways, but Adam was just a lowly clerk and such things were so far out of his reach. A fantasy dream to relive once a month behind the Red Gates.

There he was at last. Garry. The man who shoved all the little Chinese out of his way like some sort of late Manchu overlord. Scattering them to all sides he arrived with a broad grin and a small bag of coins that he slapped down with a decisive clink.

Scattering the silver coins on the table he said, “So what do you think that these represent?”

Somehow the lack of a proper greeting from his erstwhile friend caused Adam to feel almost pure dislike for this boor. This noxious product of European superiority over Eastern subtlety!

Garry was nothing but a chimpanzee, a boastful lout, whose pleasure was rape and to soil the very fountain of womanhood that he had paid for, been gifted.

“I can’t imagine,” replied Adam in a frosty voice. “I suppose they amount to thirty dollars but what it is that they represent escapes me.”

Entirely missing Adam’s displeasure in his triumph, Garry laughed out loud. A sudden sound that made the drunks on the neighbouring tables start and look round in consternation.

“I got my fuckin’ money back,” laughed Garry.

“Pardon?”

“From that whorehouse,” replied the American. “That sorry whore was so unwilling. So I asked for, and got, my money back!”

Adam could only start at the comment. The thought of visiting the brothel had scared him. The idea of going back and claiming a refund was beyond his inexperienced imagination.

“And they gave the yellow slut a good caning into the bargain,” he continued. “Seeing the thrashing was almost enough to make me want to pay Lin the thirty back again! They thrashed her with wet bamboo until the blood ran and I almost came in my pants.”

Clearly Garry was enjoying the memory of Xi Ling’s suffering. The leer and the tone of his voice denoted his satisfaction and his own righteousness.

“Then I bought that little puppy that you had a shove at,” he continued. “Too soft, but ripe for a good shafting, she was limp with exhaustion after I tied her and fucked the living daylights out of the bitch. She was so tight at the beginning...”

Adam’s head was in a whirl at this evil revelation. His delicate flower had been shafted by Garry the rapist and he knew instinctively that it would never be the same. That he would no longer be able to find it in himself to return to the Red Gates.

*****

That was the last of Garry that Adam saw for several months. No longer did he answer the entreaties of his erstwhile friend. The relationship was severed, but not for good.

Because misfortune follows in the footsteps of fools and the adventure had really just begun, were they to know it.

 

*** Part The Fifth

Knives and opium.

Several months after the events recalled in the narrative above there came a curious coincidence. But a coincidence it was. Nothing more! Sometimes the fates coddle men with hope and extravagance; sometimes they curse them with ill fortune.

******

Adam had learned a smattering of that impossible Chinese language and had settled into life in that sink of humanity that is called Shanghai.

Many times had he been to brothels, bordellos and places that the denizens of Shanghai called dives. But never again had he visited the Red Gates. The golden memory was overlaid with the pain of Garry’s betrayal behind those bamboo walls.

Nevertheless, Adam had become quite the epicure of sin. Occasional visits to opium ‘parlours’ and gin palaces gave him the contact with indiscretion that he had begun to crave.

It was that fateful day that he, with clay pipe in the hand, met up again with Garry. They were in an opium den that passed itself as safe for the myriad of foreigners who haunt Shanghai.

Both eyed the other up in assessing glances. Garry was falling to seed. His violent lifestyle and uncontrolled vices were plainly destroying his physical presence. His face was red and he sucked the opium from the pipe with almost passionate strength and then blew a cloud of blue smoke over his former friend.

“Well I never, it’s ‘too good’ Adam!” exclaimed Garry with a leer. “Too fuckin’ good to talk to the likes of me. Just a goddam clerk and he’s too grand for Garry!”

“No! It was your depraved behaviour that led the parting of our ways,” replied Adam in a stilted voice. “You are no gentleman.”

“Gentleman, you say? To hear you speak like that brings a poetic tear to my eye,” said Garry with heavy sarcasm.

“Oh, just fuck off!” cursed Adam. This was not his normal tone but the ejaculation of months of pent up anger at Garry.

“Oooh! Fuck off! That’s a bit high and mighty from you, you English tadpole.”

It looked as though there was about to be a fight. The righteous clerk against the drunken, drugged American, but as Adam raised his fists to signal his readiness to spar, a sudden fracas broke out on another table.

Two Chinese in coolie dress had drawn knives and were circling around each other with grim implacable expressions.
The blood was already flowing from a savage cut on the larger man’s face but it had by no means disabled him.

Knife work at close range is almost as much a matter of luck as skill. A blow can ram home or slice flesh with no significant disabling result, but small nick can cut a vein and all is lost.

Around both combatants there was now a respectful gap that allowed the spectators of this dispute to watch and enjoy the blood and pain without a chance of becoming involved.

Adam and Garry found themselves pushed together, the excitement of the knife fight expelling all thought of their own petty disagreement.

It was then that Adam felt his wrists being held in an iron grip by someone behind him in the yelling crowd. He had but a moment to react before the rough scratch of rope bound his wrists and he was knocked to the floor in a welter of blows.

To his side he saw three Chinese dressed in black cotton who were giving Garry the same treatment as he was receiving, before a kick aimed at his face forced him to turn away.

As the excited crowd yelled and the two knife-fighting Chinese feinted and thrust, Garry and Adam were pulled free from the back of the yelling crowd and pushed into a small funeral rickshaw that was waiting in the noisome alley at the back of the opium den.

They were captured! Rough hoods like bags were pulled over their heads and the lacquered top of the rickshaw was closed to imprison them both in a nightmare smell of death, incense and horse dung.

 

*** Part The Sixth

Philosophy and rickshaws.

In later years Adam often thought about that ride in the rickshaw. Bumping heads with Garry, the smells and cries of the city all about, but accompanied by a stygian darkness that was deeper than the grave.

Was it an hour or ten? For sure it was further than the two former friends wanted to go because it was the road to captivity.

******

But the author is getting ahead of himself and giving away the plot of this tale to his own distress. I cannot any longer call it a story because a story is a fiction, a white lie, a fantasy and no closer to the truth than a rhyme or joke.

This is the first and last time, in all my myriads of written words, that I pray the reader understands that this is no simple and entertaining fiction.

No, this is a elucidation of the actions that actually happened, there is a compact core of truth in the matter. It is all clearly remembered and told and this moment was the first ‘worst moment’ of Adam’s life.

Worse was to come.

The truth is that Adam was the victim of fate. To be with the man that had been shadowed for a week by the Tongs at the moment of his kidnapping was nothing more than an outrageous twist of providence.

That is the truth of it...

...there in that curse word, ‘Fate’.

 

*** Part The Seventh

Whips and Fetters.

When the ride finished, both of the victims of that kidnapping were battered and bruised. The team who pulled that yellow lacquered cart had no interest in the comfort of the ride as far as their passengers were concerned. They had been paid to do a job that, today, was the transport of two gwialo who were going to feel the whip of revenge that lay comfortably in the slender hand of Xi Ling.

The cart stopped, not for the first time. But for the first time the lid was lifted and the two Europeans were unceremoniously dumped on the rough ground in a welter kicks administered by soft sandals but hard feet.

Both looked up to see coolies dressed in simple black cotton and emerging from behind them, into full sight, Xi Ling.

In her red sheath of Chinese silk she looked like a goddess. Not a goddess of mercy because she had a whip in her hand. No she was the personification of Chu-Jung, that Chinese goddess whose breath is the fumes of the lotus, revenge is in her heart and her cunt is the grave that men go to die in pain.

The whip was a snake of leather twice the length that a man is tall but she wielded it with skill and ferocious intent. The leather cracked across Garry and Adam with the sound of a strong man slapping wet meat. It tore their shirts, revealing its bite of red welts.

“Stop! You fuckin’ whore-bitch!” cried Garry, as if a single word or order from him would set the world to rights and put this woman back in her place at the Red Gates.

At this outrageous interference in her revenge Xi Ling caused the whip to strike the cheek of Garry on its next stroke. Missing his eye with just an inch to spare, the end of the whip tore a ragged gash in the skin of his face. Adam felt the blood splash his face as the whip drew back with a flurry and a crack.

Xi Ling shouted in Chinese, but the meaning was lost. Each had received five strokes and Xi Ling was exhausted. Her high and emotional voice moved her companions to furious action.