As Living Art

Out of the bustling club. Through an unmarked door, down a corridor of faded wealth. Lois Lane's footsteps were muffled by thick carpet, empty gold frames stood on oak-paneled walls, their paintings long gone. Once, this was some mahogany row where merchant bankers kept their private vaults, or some upscale bordello where the elite of Metropolis came to pour their seed into the finest cunts that money could buy...all that, long, long ago, and now the doors on either side were locked, the brass grown green from disuse, dust showing in the cracks.

Except the very end of the hall; the grandest door of them all, which Blaze opened with a heavy black key she seemed to conjure out of thin air.

Lois told herself it was the dust in the air that made it hard for her to breathe on that short walk. But she could feel the heavy weight of the eggs in her chest, compressing her diaphragm, moving slowly downwards.

Light flickered on from green-shaded lamps set in the walls. The room was in good repair—the carpet cleaner, not a speck of dust or hint of cobweb. Blaze's boudoir was bigger than the reporter's entire apartment, dominated by a massive four-poster bed whose pillars were carved to resemble naked women holding up the black curtains that could be closed to blot out the world. To Lois, they reminded her of the figureheads on ships.

But there was also a long wooden bar with three stools and a gleaming brass rail; a door that showed a bathroom bigger than Lois Lane's kitchen, and other doors that led to closets. An ancient Chinese screen concealed one quarter of the room, and it was here that Angelica Blaze dragged Lois, her palm warm against the reporter's own, a bounce in her step.

The panel was drawn aside...

The four naked women were seated, facing each other. Their legs overlapped, tied together with strong black rope, the same rope that tied their arms above their head, so that they could hold hands. Rope tied their breasts so tightly that the eight tits were swollen and purple...

Lois moved quietly, ducking her head to look between the bodies. Each woman was impaled on the arm of a great wooden crucifix, the form of Christ clearly visible, his impaled hands and head crowned with thorns disappearing into their wet, distended slits. The women were gagged with red rubber balls, heads hanging, drool sliding down in thin streams, to puddle over their crotches, and slide down onto that degraded relic.

Blaze set her hand at the back of one of the women's neck, and the bound woman shuddered...and released a golden stream, that arced briefly, and then splattered against the carved form of the savior.

"We try different positions, every day," Blaze said. "Tell me, what do you think of this installation?"