Chapter 29 - A Noble Soul
When Mohandas started claiming that he was a joint developer of the latest viral App: Find-a-loo@Air-ones&twos and that his share had been stolen by Margery, Margery hired a lawyer.
The lawyer from the ambulance chasing firm Sly and Sleazy thought it was 'money for old jam'.
Margery had the development notes and the complete source code. Mohandas was a well-known weirdo who had cooked up some code that he'd obviously, written since, clearly reverse engineered from the published application.
Now he was in cahoots with that tramp Bianca. She'd been seen on the security cameras across the street secretly entering the block on the night of the fire; and she'd obviously, gagged him during kinky sex. She clearly knew her way around ropes.
"Maybe she'd fiddled with the thermostat and spilled oil around a candle?" Margery had suggested to him.
When a large number of pictures of Margery were discovered on Mohandas' computer at work together with some strange ungrammatical stuff about her, he'd written while off sick, it became obvious that Mohandas had been stalking Margery while plotting to steal her intellectual property.
"Whatever that story," said the lawyer "It is evident that both he and his live-in friend are now out to maliciously harm my client." Completely misrepresenting the relationship and reversing the reality of who was living with whom.
Mohandas' suit failed and he lapsed into an even greater depression. He took to a wheel chair with Mary as his nurse.
***
On Ash Wednesday, at the beginning of Lent, nearly a year after the fire, Margery contacted Mohandas. It seemed a good day to take a look at his burnt legs. He was beside himself with joy. Wednesday was their special day. He stood up and walked, very painfully, for the first time for weeks.
During their conversation Margery explained that she'd only cut him out of their App to protect him from being sacked for working on it in breach of his contract. Now she wanted to see him face-to-face to talk about his share of the huge credit stream the App was generating. As he was jobless and living at Bianca’s place could they meet without her knowing at The Plaza Grand? Perhaps in the quiet bar on level one on Friday before the happy hour began, at say 14:00?
He got there early his stumps throbbing due to sudden reuse and she was an hour late. Just when he thought she would not come she appeared. He was so relieved he staggered up onto his legs, realised that he had become stiff, and painfully tried to hug her for support. But with a strangely evil smile she pushed him off and he collapsed, trying to grab her on the way down. He could hardly speak as he struggled to get back to a chair. She stood watching with amusement, then signalled the waiter and ordered two martinis and took the chair opposite.
When he recovered from his fall and the thrill of seeing her, he asked how she had escaped the fire unharmed.
She said her escape had been miraculous. Serendipitously, the wet towels on the floor from their water fight had sealed the bathroom door against smoke. Her earlier insistence that he should open the bathroom window to clear the steam had saved her life. Initially she had been oblivious to the fire raging on the other side of the door. Then she took a quick look and realised that she needed to go for help. During their water fight they'd soaked both sides of the door thoroughly but in time it might still burn through.
All she could think of was to save him. By a stroke of good fortune, her damp clothes were in that bathroom. She looked out the window and saw that she could use the sewer pipe to slide down to the balcony below.
From there she used his smart little widget to unlock that apartment. There she'd called the fire brigade telling them where to find him. To protect his reputation and job she'd then used the stairs, below the fire, to slip out the back way undetected. It was already getting dark when she flew home.
He said: "I thought that Bianca had called the brigade."
"Oh no! That wasn't Bianca. She was too busy saving herself," she corrected him.
"But they found no trace of you at all in the DNA sweep. And because I didn't know your real name you became the invisible woman. All they found was Bianca's DNA on the knickers that she took from my mouth in the Ambulance. It was almost as if they were hers, they found so much. So, for a while they thought that she was you."
Margery explained that the full body haptic stocking she'd worn, to record their fun, so they could re-live her enjoyment later, had contained almost all of her DNA. Any that escaped must have been destroyed by the astringent body oil she'd rubbed over him; or by the flames.
"The recording's very good by-the-way. I often replay it. I love experiencing your tied-down body all over again; and again; and again..."
He found that the way she'd said this produced a sudden recollection of their physical intimacies. It excited him in a way that he'd not experienced since the fire. She became surrounded in an aura of sexuality that took his breath away. He was hardly listening to her words now.
She was telling him that the fire was partly the fault of the manufacturer of the deep-fat-fryer and that he shouldn't feel totally responsible for the little boy's death, despite the inquest finding that a number of his actions had contributed to the speed of the fire's spread.
She still had the receipt for the fryer thing somewhere. As soon as the coroner's report was published, she intended to sue the manufacturer and the retailer for the emotional trauma she'd experienced as a result of learning that her charity in lending her brand-new fryer to a fellow at work had resulted in a child's death.
Mention of the child's death snapped his attention back to the meaning of her words.
It must be even more terrible for him to have the death of that dear little boy on his conscience, she was saying. And when she thinks of the dreadful turn that his life has taken, now that he is unemployable and reliant on Bianca's charity, and all that, she's come to see what she can do to help.
"So, I've looked into the copyright on my App. It turns out that for legal reasons I can't share any of the credit stream with you. Do you think that if you can ever get another job that you and Bianca might make a life together? Does she still respect you or are you just a charity case hobbling about like that?"
"We're getting on very well."
"How's your sex life? Are you sleeping with Bianca? Or can't you get it up?" she asked.
He didn't want to admit that they were just friends or his shame that Bianca had to look after him in some very intimate ways. Nor did he want to admit that Bianca was at arm's length and he had been sleeping with a sex worker who specialised in working with the disabled. But without success, what with his injuries and so on. So, he changed the subject to something more positive.
"I have a job interview next week," he told her brightly.
"Good luck with that! Everyone thinks you're either a nut or a monster. Oh sorry! I shouldn't have said that. Can you forgive me?" She looked so mortified.
She slipped from her leather armchair pushing their small drinks tables aside at arm's length and knelt on the floor in front of him. She took his hands. He could feel the warmth of her body and could smell that familiar musk. She pulled his hands and he responded by slipping forward off his chair onto his knees too, his artificial legs lying on the floor behind him like the tines of a fork-lift truck. They kissed; her hand behind his head; his body pressed to hers. He felt the familiar pill pushed into his mouth with her tongue and his Pavlovian response made his erection grow. When he swallowed, she bit his lip so hard that it bled. He didn't know if to cry out or cry for joy. This was his Kat and she was preparing him for obeisance.
Then with a fluid motion, recalling her first night in his apartment, she rose and left him there kneeling on the floor; with his prosthesis legs behind; his arms reaching out to the sides; unable to reach either small table for sufficient support to get up; on the floor in the hotel bar. He'd been crucified; abandoned in a vast Persian carpeted desert. She was over there metres away, sitting sat back on her chair taking a sip of her drink; watching his predicament; smiling delightedly as the scene she'd choreographed, with those wicked eyes, as she spat a little swirl of his blood back into her glass.
She motioned him to her and he had no option but to crawl to her: slowly; painfully; awkwardly; on his hands and knees; dragging his prosthetic legs behind. When he was almost to her, she pulled back the hem of her skirt and parted her legs allowing him to see her nakedness as she motioned him to come closer between her thighs, smiling lovingly. He put his hands on her hips and shuffled between her knees. Her arms enveloped him and she kissed his forehead.
"That's nice, isn't it?"
Her scent was wonderfully strong now and her hot breath thrilled him as she whispered in his ear: "The reason you can't perform with other women is because I haven't given you my permission. If I told you to push that young woman in the grey suit out there in the lobby to the floor right there and now and rape her, you'd do it for me wouldn't you?", indicating the woman with a nod of her head.
He looked around out through the archway to the pretty young woman standing there. It was true. If that was what Kat wanted, he knew he must obey.
"Think about it," she whispered suggestively. Then she imagined the scene for him.
As she whispered, in Mohandas' mind's eye he grabbed the little slut. Reaching down forcefully dragged up her tight grey skirt; tearing the seams; exposing her bare thighs and firm bottom. Now while Kat looked on approvingly, he pushed the young woman to the carpet, ripped off her underwear and penetrated her violently. The woman screamed in surprise and then delight as he ravaged her.
"You know you must always obey me," Margery added, her head bowed to him; her breasts against his face: "that's why you're so hard now."
Then she said: "I want to see it. Unzip your fly. Take out your cock… your balls too."
So, he did.
"Yes, very good," she said, reaching down to check and grant her approval.
"Now stand up."
So, he did.
His genitals were now at her eye level, his back was to the bar that was beginning to fill for happy hour. He was fully exposed to her. Could anyone else see? He didn't care. She arranged his fly like Moroccan door, lifting the zipper below his balls to push them up and out, to display his manhood. Then she lightly touched the head of his penis with an index finger and smeared his pre-cum over the head to make it shine.
"Perfect!" she exclaimed. "That's my big dickybird. Now, I want you to walk out into the hotel lobby, past those other women with their kids over there, and show this to them on the way. Then you already know what to do to that young slut, to please me."
So, he did.
***
After Mohandas had been pulled off the young woman; charged with indecent assault; and registered as a sexual deviant, he was held for a month then chipped and counselled not to approach women or children in any circumstances on pain of castration, before being released on probation. He hobbled painfully away using crutches, the prospect of that job, or any job lost. It was Good Friday again.
The last he'd seen of Margery was her sitting back relaxing in that big leather chair smiling at him over her cocktail glass as the women screamed and pulled their children away. His attempt to rape the blonde was brutally forestalled by several large men who hurt him badly, despite his being a cripple. With her knees crossed and a glimpse of white thigh and bottom visible under her skirt, framed by her dark stocking tops, Kat looked amazingly sexy.
His dream of a future with Bianca, the other witch, was a foolish, unrequited and he now saw, impossible. He could never go back to her place. He was homeless.
Kat was his one true mistress and he could never love anyone else. He went into the first Voluntary Euthanasia Clinic he saw.
The synthetic hemlock was indeed very pleasant and his last dream was of pleasing Kat, knowing that this was what she had wanted for him. She needn't have gone to the trouble of having him expose himself or attempt a rape. She could have sent him here directly. But this chance to demonstrate his devotion to his goddess through this final sacrifice was her parting gift to him. How he loved her!
"Oh, willow, titwillow, titwillow," he sang as he passed away.
***
Initially Bianca didn't look for him. He'd left her a pretty poem in which he'd cast himself as Odysseus returning to Penelope. His prospective Odyssey was to conclude in a blissful reunion that he hoped would last for eternity. Bianca was pleased that at last he had shaken off his months of depression and wasn't overly concerned when he didn't return that evening. She strongly suspected that he'd gone back to Margery, who must have called him in. But that was his choice. After a week she sent the annoyingly worried Mary home with thanks and a handsome bonus.
Bianca only discovered he was dead on Easter Monday when his family were contacted as next of kin and messaged her for his things. She copied them the poem and asked Mary to come to see her. The poor girl was devastated and now Bianca was worried for Mary and had her move back in while she recovered. His family interpreted his 'beautiful poem' as a suicide's swansong. But Bianca knew better. She immediately saw Margery's hand in his death. For him Margery had been a force of nature, in Odyssean terms his Nemesis, and this outcome had been inevitable the moment Mohandas left that Christmas party with his Kat just sixteen moons ago.
Perhaps it was kismet, inevitable since the dawn of time. Does anyone have free will? Had Mohandas been a guileless innocent, lured onto the rocks by the siren's call? Yet Bianca felt responsible. In pointing him out, knowing all the while that he was investigating her and getting a bit too close, her hand had jogged the tiller that steered his life's boat to that fatal shore.
She didn't tell his family about the events leading to his death, they were irrelevant to who he was. For them he remained as he had always been, a pure and noble soul, their Mahatma.
