A Victorian Christmas Tale

Gas lights flickered through the freezing fog, glimmering dimly in the gathering gloom, their flames catching the ice crystals forming from dripping gutters and spreading across the thickly frosted cobbles. In the butcher’s window, fat geese hung from hooks festooned with shining holly, and light spilled from the grocer’s shop as the door burst open and the errand boy mounted his bicycle, its wicker basket overflowing with oranges and sultanas and nuts. He peddled furiously past the pub, the tyres of his bicycle sending up a fine spray of icy sludge, splattering Lucy’s skirt as she trudged wearily through the glowing-cheeked crowds, her thin shawl pulled tightly around her shoulders.

Lucy stopped by the frosted window of the pub, standing on tip toes and peering in at the rowdy press of bodies inside. She huddled in the doorway, each time the door opened a waft of warm air and gin washing over her. But despite her entreaties, each man leaving was on his way home to hearth and family, and none wanted to do trade with such a poor specimen as Lucy. Not even the pot boy, who in hard times could usually be counted on for a tot of gin and hot water in return for a quick fuck over a barrel in the cellar had time for Lucy tonight. He was too busy drawing flasks of port and warming ale with a poker from the fire to even notice her.

With a resigned sigh, Lucy slowly wound her way off the main street and down into the alleys between the buildings, which gradually became smaller, brick turning to wood, home turning to hovel. The sole of her boot flapped loose as she walked and her hem dragged in the mud, the ripped sleeve of her dress slipping from her shoulder. She passed men in small groups and alone, some standing around braziers warming their hands, some top-hatted and muffled, striding quickly. As she passed, she muttered, “Looking for business? Anyone looking for business?” A gentleman stared at her, horrified, and beat her away with his cane. A group around a fire let her hover for a few minutes, warming herself, but then backed her against the wall, holding her roughly and tugging up her skirt, their hands between her legs as she struggled and kicked.

A voice from the darkness called out, “Unhand her!”

“Nah mate, this one’s ours, you get your own.”

“I said, put her down, sir!”

“Ooh, ‘ark at ‘im callin’ me ‘sir’ ever so lah-di-dah. She ain’t worth your bother squire, she’s just a tuppeny whore, I’ve seen ‘er do it for a glass of gin an’ a warm by the fire. Well she’s ‘ad a warm by our fire so now we’re takin’ our ‘alf of the bargain!”

A pistol shot into the air cut through the coarse laughter of the men. They grew suddenly still and their hands dropped from Lucy’s limbs.

“I’ve told you twice. Now for the third and last time, unhand that girl or by God you’ll suffer the consequences.”

Muttering and cursing, their courage restored by distance, the men slunk away and Lucy slumped to the ground, shivering and sobbing.

“None of that now girl,“ said the strange gentleman, stooping to grip Lucy’s arm and pull her to her feet. “You’re coming with me.”

He set off at a brisk pace, dragging Lucy with him, trotting alongside him, clutching uselessly behind her as her shawl slipped from her shoulders and fluttered away behind her. They turned towards the Thames, silver in the moonlight, glimpsed between the looming warehouses and rotting jetties and Lucy cast anxious, sidelong glances at her companion, his black cape billowing flashes of scarlet lining, his ivory-topped cane clattering and echoing as it struck the ground, his handsome profile and dark, waxed moustache set off by his tall silk hat. Lucy shivered in the cold but sensed money.

Suddenly he yanked her up a set of rickety wooden steps and rapped sharply with his cane on the door at the top. A grille shot back and Lucy glimpsed shining eyes taking them in for a second before the door creaked open and she was shoved inside. Blinking in the dim, smoky room, Lucy slowly took in her surroundings. Coloured paper lanterns hung in strings from the high beamed ceiling, the candles inside guttering and casting leaping, sinister shadows across the walls. Wooden bunks, intricately latticed with carved ebony, each with a bed roll and littered with silk cushions, lined the walls. Beside each bunk, a small table held a candle, an inlaid box and a long-stemmed pipe. At some tables, young Chinese girls knelt; their heads bowed as they poured jasmine tea and lit pipes, passing them to the gentlemen who reclined on each bunk.

Lucy’s gentleman dragged her into a bunk, laying her down, his knee pinned between her legs while he clicked his fingers. A serving girl ran over and Lucy watched, fascinated, as she filled two glasses with a viscous, green liquid and balanced a silver spoon across the top of each, a sugar lump balanced on top which she lit with a candle. For a second, the acrid scent of burnt sugar filled Lucy’s nostrils then her gentleman tipped the sugar into the drinks and pressed one to her lips. Lucy choked as she swallowed, immediately dizzy from its heady hit of alcohol. Meanwhile her gentleman took a lighted pipe from the serving girl and drew deeply on it, his eyes growing dark with pleasure as he lay back, propped up on one elbow. He pulled Lucy towards him and kissed her, pipe smoke filling her mouth and nostrils, her head buzzing and her eyesight blurred.

Lucy felt her limbs grow heavy and she put up no resistance as she was hauled by unseen hands from the bunk to the centre of the room, her ragged dress ripped from her body. A rattling and creaking noise above her head made her look up sharply and she started as she saw chains swaying and unravelling, lowering a worn wooden board towards her head. It swung open on hinges and was placed carefully around her neck and wrists, clanging shut and secured with a heavy padlock. Lucy tottered for a moment beneath its weight before, with a groan, gears above her head began to turn, the chains grew taut and Lucy was pulled up onto her tip toes, her chin tipped up. She peered over the edge of the board towards the bunk where she knew her gentleman lay, but all she could see of him was his cane, signalling ‘up’ as the chains creaked again and she was lifted, kicking and gasping, off her feet.

The board obscured the view below and so Lucy only heard the yapping and scuttling of Pekinese dogs that accompanied the entrance of the blank-faced Chinese lady, her long scarlet fingernails curled around the handle of her whip, the dogs chasing its plaited, frayed tip as it dragged the floor behind her. With a CRACK it curled around Lucy’s waist, stinging her belly. Another CRACK and it slashed across her breasts, striping them pink. CRACK across her thighs, its tip kissing the swollen lip of her pussy. CRACK across her jiggling buttocks as she screamed and squirmed. Slowly, remorselessly, the Chinese lady worked away at Lucy’s body, whipping her until her flesh glowed with scarlet stripes, her nipples swollen and engorged to a deep purple, her cunt dripping onto the filthy wooden floorboards beneath, her trembling lips open in a silent, hopeless scream of torment and lust. Lucy whimpered as she drew the whip between her cunt lips, rubbing it against her throbbing clit and, with a flick of the wrist, smacking its tip against the tender underside of her clit, making her squeal. She longed for just one more, so close to cumming she could feel her clit swelling, a tight knot in her belly, her heart racing.

With a sharp rap on the floor with his cane, her gentleman ended the entertainment and Lucy groaned in disappointment. She listened to the tip tap of the lady walking away, followed by the skittering and panting of her tiny dogs. Then the sound was replaced by a loud scraping of something heavy being dragged across the floor.

Below her, the machine was manoeuvred into place. A small brazier occupied one end of the apparatus, and this was busily filled with hot coals by serving girls. Above it, a water tank was filled. Pistons attached at one end to a fly wheel and at the other end to two upright levers with screw-thread ends. Onto these were screwed two monstrous phalluses, each at last a foot long, one carved of ebony, the other of ivory and each thick and ridged and shining with oil. Lucy flinched as she felt their tips pressed to her cunt and arse. The serving girls clapped and barked orders to figures in the darkness and with a rattle, Lucy was lowered onto them, screaming as they pierced her, stretching her holes wider than they had ever been before. The tank rattled as the water inside began to bubble and a tiny puff of steam vented. Lucy’s ankles were locked into heavy iron manacles and spread wide, their chains bolted to rings in the floor. She shrieked as the phalluses inside her jerked slightly and suddenly the serving girls vanished and Lucy was on her own in the centre of the room.

The tank rattled again, harder this time and the phalluses jerked. Then slowly, the fly wheel began to turn, easing the phalluses deep into her, one filling and stretching her cunt, probing the neck of her womb, the other agonisingly filling her bowels, making her groan and writhe. One, two, three times the wheel turned and Lucy’s moans grew more desperate. Then, all of a sudden, the tank reached full pressure and the pistons began pounding the wheel, driving the polished cocks with a blur into Lucy’s helpless body. She began screaming, jerking violently at every thrust, brutally fucked.

Each time her violated body tried to rescue her from this humiliation by passing out of consciousness, there was a serving girl on hand with a bucket of freezing Thames water to revive her. Finally, not even that could restore her and she was hauled up, off the machine, both holes gaping and dripping a mixture of her own juices and the machine’s oil, then lowered back to the groung where she slumped on the floor while she was released.

Lucy briefly recovered consciousness as she felt her head banging against the edge of the steps she was being dragged up by her ankles. Two Chinese sailors were hauling her up into a cavernous warehouse, filled with tea chests above the opium den. One wall was open to the night sky and the river below, its doors flung open and its landing stage lowered. The sailors argued bitterly between themselves, one finally elbowing the other aside and unbuttoning his cock, forcing it down Lucy’s throat and fucking her face, holding her by the ears and banging her head off the floor. Lucy sucked weakly, reflexively, an echo of the service she’d given to so many paying gentlemen since childhood. Gratefully, she swallowed his spunk, thankful for the first nourishment she’d had that day. His mate replaced him, sliding his hands round her already bruised neck and squeezing them tightly against his cock as it plundered her throat. Lucy moaned and stretched her tongue out to lap at his balls.

With their spunk still trickling down her chin, the sailors grabbed Lucy by the wrists and ankles and swung her through the air. On the third swing, they let go and watched her sailing over the landing stage, kicking and flailing and screeching as she flew through the air in an arc, her terrified eyes staring up at them as she plummeted into the freezing river.

Every nerve in Lucy’s body sang as she hit the water, choking and spluttering as it filled her burning lungs, her hair streaming around her horrified face, her limbs struggling more slowly now as the life drained from her body and the current of the murky river began to take her.

“A fine Christmas morning this is.”

“It’s sad indeed and I’m sorry to have to call you to the River Coroner’s office when you should be celebrating, but it’s the fifth in a row, one every day now.”

“No, you’re wrong, if the time of death is as estimated on this chart of yours then she’s the second in the last 24 hours, he’s gathering pace as the madness takes hold of him.”

“Thank the Lord that’s the job of the police, I’m just here to determine the cause of death. She’s the same as the others. Malnourished, her stomach empty but for a small quantity of ejaculate…”

“Human?”

“Yes, human ejaculate. This man might be a monster but there’s no evidence he…well, not yet anyway. She has general bruising, most of it old. I’d say she took a few knocks as part and parcel of her trade.”

“A prostitute?”

“Like the others, yes, someone who wouldn’t be missed. Her neck, wrists and ankles are freshly bruised and she’s covered in lacerations from a whip. I’d say quite a brutal one of a type seen mainly in the Orient. She’s been brutally violated vaginally and anally, there’s evidence of lesser violation of her throat. Her lungs are filled with water which indicates she was alive when she went into the river, so actual cause of death is drowning.”

“Thank you. As you say, this is a matter for the police now. If you wouldn’t mind giving me a few minutes alone with the corpse to begin my investigations…”

“Be my guest. Oh, and merry Christmas!”

The Inspector snorted as the Coroner slipped out of the morgue and back to his fireside. Gently he ran a hand across the dead girl’s brow, feeling the cold marble smoothness of her skin. He trailed his fingers across her shoulder and cupped her breast, stroking down to her belly. Her eyes were open, watery and vacant, gazing impassively up at him, agreeing – as he reconciled it in his own mind – to be touched in this way. Unbuttoning his fly, the Inspector climbed up onto the marble slab, parting the folds of her cunt with his fingers and sliding his cock into her cold, damp flesh. As he laid his weigh on top of her and began with a grunt to fuck, a trickle of foetid river water spurted from between her cold blue lips.