Cabaret

Did you enjoy the Artisan?  I sure did.  This week is a new tale, a new seduction, a new chance to delve into illicit passions.

Don't forget - there's still time to go to the page above for our Storytime Trysts  Valentine's Giveaway!! 

 

 

by

 

Ben Hannigan

 



The audience's eyes follow my soft red light as it moves across the deep rouge curtains. It is tantalising, tempting, guiding, and deceptive. My blinding beam silhouettes the figure that descends the centre aisle, step by step, more eyes are entranced, captured, dominated. The stage erupts with flames as the back of the figure reaches the final step before plunging the audience into pure darkness. My glow lights him from beneath and he begins, voice barely a whisper.

"Girls and boys, madame's et monsieur's, ladies und gentlemen...Cabaret"

I guide you across the stage, enveloping you with a soft glow; your clothes neat, tidy, not a hair out of place. You are in control of the audience, your voice and your actions, appealing to those who gaze upon you, entrancing them. Your suit a soft grey, so ordinary, so plain and yet my light touches the barest hint of what is to come.  The glint in your eyes as you hungrily watch the woman who glides across the stage past you. Gracefully, her black gauze dress swirls around her as she moves. My soft glow enhancing her features, highlighting her innocence, capturing her curls, a halo dancing around her body as she curtsies. The audience knows what is to come and yet I allow them to be fooled, drawn into the simplicity of their entrance, wit and charm. Her smile enraptures them; his self deprecating laugh holds their hearts firm. The connection between Compere and audience bound together as tightly as the very beams of light that orchestrate this scene. 

 I’m standing on the stage now. I can hear the band waiting, their breathing and the crowd; ah the crowd. How I adore the crowds.  Over time as I speak they become mine, they and I walking through this journey together as lovers. They follow my every word, their emotions dictated by my hand. I am sick in my stomach, my body churning as it always does before the show.  My heart racing though the band is playing as I begin my story. I cannot hear anything but my words and my heart. Its beat a sharp staccato rhythm. As the music comes to its crescendo, the routine a comforting welcoming blanket around my shoulders.

I know my role, my place. I have welcomed them to the club, introduced the girls and boys who are, at least as far as the audience can see and be allowed to believe, my puppets. My suit is plain, the light creating a glossy sheen of sweat across my brow as it bathes me in its loving embrace. I know the audience is mine. I see their shining eyes, their awe, their desire and fear; fear that I will let our Helga prove her femininity and most importantly fear that I will take this away, that I will return them to Berlin, return them to the drab world outside.

“Now you have met my darlings, my beautiful ladies, and as you see they are ladies.” I watch their eyes lusting over Emilia and Loren and grin a wide smile.  The smile with a razor edge to it, a dark mocking grin, that of a jester or a clown in the moonlight. “If you don’t believe these honest claims, Our Helga can perform her celebrated dance of the seven veils.”

The laughter and catcalls that had before so warmed them as they sat grinning and smirking, subtle winks and nudges amongst comrades are gone now. Extinguished as surely as it was I who blew out the candle. Their grins, now warped, show all the signs of strychnine poisoning , one grimace and I know they are under my spell. I alone control their moods. The move from giddy cheer to a sickening horror is sudden, though they cannot look away from the Follow spot for fear they may miss what so enamours or appals their comrades.

I appear on the surface much like my Vittoria, she is beautiful but she appears to be innocent, she appears gentle and delicate. And she is ... oh she is! On the surface that is, I cannot resist allowing my eyes to flash wickedly as she enters behind me. I introduce her to the crowd. Not for her the lewd innuendo of my opening act. She is the delicate flower that we protect.

My opening is filled with crudity and sleaze but also a soft, comforting compassion. It is imperative that the crowd see I love my girls, my dancers. They need to believe the myth, the magic. They need to be mine and they need to believe what I am showing them. They need to see her, this gentle sweet darling become mine through the power of just my words. They need to see her fall under the same spell I have over them. She is a comfort as she, at least to them, believes in the magic.

It is time now, I feel it. I’m flying, relying on my memories, on the way the club is filled with the atmosphere. I am standing in the centre of a storm here, the air charged with electric sexual tension and its mine to command.

And then, my glow burns red, deep, dangerous, passionate and deadly.

I feel the heat as the glow changes, deepening all the emotions flowing around the theatre. I’m looking into her eyes now, those eyes that make her perfect for this act as I talk to her, talk to the audience but through her. She is staring at me as I begin to prowl, the band now silent as they too slip under the spell. I feel the words flowing as the tension builds, I begin to weave the silky soft sentences that so entrance her and them. I am offering her everything and yet nothing. Promising to broaden her mind, to challenge and bewitch her senses.

The air heady with anticipation, I feel my sweat dripping down into my collar as I talk. My mouth on her ear but the audience can hear every word. My darling is smiling inside. I can feel it by the heartbeat trapped beneath my thumb. She knows this game, a dance as old as time. She begins to move, slowly shedding the persona of the delicate innocent slip of a girl, peeled away layer by layer as if it were the soft skin of a snake.

My words sensual and teasing fuel her shivers as she begins to shake. The audience hypnotised by her as I prowl, watching, devouring her and her alone, as I work my slow seduction. She is unsure, nervous and the audience are caught on our baited hook.

I have them in my hand, just as I appear to have this beautiful morsel. I am talking to her, they can see that but to each lady in the crowd I am talking to them and them alone as each man watches her hungrily.

"My flower, my lily, you are so delicate, so pure, so...tantalizing.” my voice almost oozing like a thick rich chocolate, they can see the words engulf her, her gentle blush, her coy movements, they believe her to be young and fresh. Naive.

Now in this place, in this time. It is real.

I run my hands across her bare arm eliciting a soft moan, the slow seductive sound moving through the mind and body of each of our guests, they are craning closer, flushed hearts pounding just as my Vittoria’s  is on the stage.

 “Your scent, your grace, is intoxicating. I see you, I gaze upon you, my fingers running over your silken folds, tracing my way up your stem, so innocent and yet so dangerous. For you have thorns, do you not?”

 My movements delicate and slow, somehow totally innocent.  Yet they ooze sex, my words mimicking this torturous blur, each innocent gesture and word seemingly more obscene than any depraved act seen on this stage before.

 “My love, you like the danger, the nips, the plucks, the spins, the way I cause you to whirl in the wind and yet forever find yourself back in my hands. I peel away your layers, a bright cheerful buttercup you rest under my chin, spreading yourself across me, hair tumbling like liquid fire. I want you, I will take you, pluck you from the earth and carry you to new heights." I undress her hair, gently easing the coils of tied plait out until her tendrils caress and almost lick her skin bathed in red light. She is mine as I weave the spell.  Asking her consent, begging for everything I have offered in my speech as if I need it!  

And... she begs, she pleads on the stage, dropping to her knees in ecstasy, the audience watching this pure innocent flower become something much, much more.  My words continued as I stare into her eyes, the line between innocent hints and direct overt, almost lascivious, demands blurred in the sheer poetry of my description.

“I take this silken flower, stroke and caress each petal in my explorations. This plucked flower, fresh from the bush, is torn as I begin to peel away each petal slowly.” The rose in my hand has become the whole focus of my attention and drawing the audience both to me and her.  She writhes and shakes falling back on one hand showing just a hint of lace the audience coming with her on this ride, on this release.

Her movements giving the audience, what I want them to feel. What I command them to feel; this and nothing more.

“I walk through the city and I peel away each petal until” I pause, my voice husky and unhurried. My Love looking up at me, needing me to continue. Her sanity held by this pause, the rose stripped to its very central folds a symbol and more.  I bring it to my lips and smile. "I gently kiss the centre of the rose. The perfume, the pollen contained in its core, its essence, the pure centre a divine taste on my lips.  Its glorious scent filling my nose, this moment of heaven, this beautiful flower giving up everything to me.”

My tongue flicks over the centre of the flower and the audience gasps at my audacity. My tongue parting the lips of the flower, reaching for its very core and then it comes; it rushes up, this sweet glorious nectar.  The first shaky orgasm of a young girl on the cusp of adulthood, playing a game she doesn’t truly understand with a man who wants . . . oh, so much more. I hear the audience gasping and moaning with her.

They experience everything she does as the feelings run through her. I see and hear the moans and gasps of this young woman, not just coming from her but from the women watching.  The men torn between her and their relatives; sisters, lovers, wives and daughters. The air is thick with tension and the tantalising smells of arousal. I raise my hands in ascension falling backward onto the waiting wires that balance me there. The rose dropped and crushed by my foot as I step back, a dark symbol for those few who can see past the magic. A warning of what lies ahead.

 I’m raised into the air just a foot, only I can smell the leather, the sweat and the strain we are under. I feel the taut wire cutting into my flesh. But to them I am floating, the master of all. I survey the demon incubus taking this girl through a journey. I smile beatifically at this group, consumed by the character I portray. They are mine.