Chapter 13: The voltage builds
The dawn was not gentle. It was a thin, grey light that seeped around the edges of the blackout blinds, revealing the contours of the room like a developing photograph. Artemis woke to the phantom sensation of fullness, his body a map of tender places—his throat, his ass, the scored lines on his chest. Bea was already gone, the space beside him cool.
He found her in the main room of the shop, not upstairs. She was at her workbench, surrounded by tools and sheets of black latex. The air smelled of rubber and ozone from the heat-sealing iron. She didn’t look up as he entered, dressed in a simple silk robe he’d left in her bathroom.
“Coffee’s on,” she said, her focus on a pattern she was tracing.
He poured a cup, his hands steady. The silence wasn’t uncomfortable, but it was charged. Last night had been a threshold. He’d given a performance, then received a reward that felt like a deeper kind of claiming. He didn’t know the protocol for the morning after the morning after.
“I have a project,” she said finally, setting down her awl. She turned to look at him. Her eyes were bright, the creative fever he’d seen before in her. “For you. It’s… unconventional.”
“Everything here is.”
“This is more so.” She stood and walked to a garment rack, pulling off a heavy black garment bag. With a sense of ceremony, she unzipped it. “I call it the ‘Cocoon.’ Or maybe ‘The Red Chamber Suit.’ I haven’t decided.”
She lifted out the latex. It was a full-body suit, but unlike any he’d seen. The front was sculpted with a pronounced, rounded belly, a perfect, smooth swell of black gloss. Embedded within the latex, over the lower abdomen and pelvis, were a series of discreet, grey silicone pads. A thin, almost invisible wire trailed from the suit’s lower back to a small, handheld control unit.
“It’s a pregnancy suit,” she said, watching his face. “With transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation pads built in. The pads can be programmed for rhythm, intensity. A mimicry of contractions.”
Artemis stared. The suit was grotesque, beautiful, profoundly strange. It spoke to something primitive and twisted deep within him—a parody of fertility, of creation, fused with his own hunger for sensation and surrender.
“Why?” The word was barely audible.
“Because you’re empty,” Bea said, bluntly. “You were emptied by grief, then by your family, then by me last night. Nature abhors a vacuum, Artemis. So we fill it. But not with a ghost. With a sensation. With a controlled, electric ache.” She stepped closer, running a hand over the false belly. “I want to see you in it. I want to wire you up and watch you experience a phantom pregnancy. Your cock will be sheathed inside the suit, pressed against the inner lining, right where the deepest pad sits. Every ‘contraction’ will ripple through your swollen belly and straight into your dick.”
A violent shiver went through him. It was insane. It was perverse. It was the most compelling thing he’d ever heard.
“Yes,” he said, the coffee forgotten.
“Good. Shower first. Scrub everywhere. I need the skin clean for conductivity.”
The shower was ritualistic. He scrubbed until his skin was pink, washing away the last traces of sweat, oil, and spend. He dried himself with a rough towel, his mind buzzing with a static of anticipation and dread.
Bea had prepared the dressing area in the back of the workshop. She helped him into the suit, anointing his skin with talc before easing the heavy, cold latex up his legs. It was a second skin, tighter and more encapsulating than anything he’d worn. She zipped up the back, sealing him in. The false belly was a weight, a profound anterior presence that altered his center of gravity. He looked down at the smooth, black dome. A wave of dissonance hit him—it was absurd, he was a man, yet the shape felt eerily natural, a completion of a form he’d never known he lacked.
Bea connected the wire to the control unit. “The contacts are here,” she said, her fingers tapping the latex over his lower abdomen, his pubic bone. “And here, internally. There’s a conductive plug.” She held up a slender, black silicone object. “This goes in you. It completes the circuit.”
He bent over the bench, presenting himself. She lubed the plug and pushed it into him with a smooth, clinical motion. The connection was immediate—a low, humming awareness in his core, a live wire nestled inside him.
“Now,” she said, her voice shifting into a dark, pedagogical tone. “We begin in the Red Chamber.”
The room was prepared. The velvet drapes were drawn, the only light came from a dozen red pillar candles, their flickering flames casting pulsating shadows on the walls. The air was warm, close, smelling of wax and heated rubber. In the center of the room was a low, padded chaise.
“Recline,” Bea instructed. “Feel the weight. Get used to the shape of yourself.”
He lay back. The suit squeaked against the leather. The false belly rose above him, a black moon in the crimson gloom. He was utterly vulnerable, a science experiment in decadence.
Bea knelt beside the chaise, the control unit in her hand. Her face was all planes and shadows in the candlelight. “We start low. A gentle fluttering. The quickening.”
She pressed a button.
A vibration began deep within the suit, a fluttering, buzzing sensation that seemed to originate in the core of the false belly and radiate outward. It buzzed against his actual stomach, but more intensely, it traveled down the internal channel, making the conductive plug hum inside his rectum. The vibration directly stimulated his prostate, a constant, insistent teasing. His cock, trapped and compressed within the suit, began to thicken, pressed agonizingly against the unyielding latex.
“Oh god,” he whispered.
“That’s just the baby kicking,” Bea murmured, a cruel smile playing on her lips. She adjusted a dial.
The fluttering intensified, coalescing into a slow, rhythmic pulse. A squeeze-release, squeeze-release. It was unmistakably a simulation of a muscular contraction. The tension built in his lower belly, a cramping, clenching sensation that wasn’t painful, but profoundly intense. With each simulated contraction, the internal plug pulsed in time, sending jolts of direct stimulation to his most sensitive nerve cluster.
“Fuck… Bea…” His hands gripped the edges of the chaise.
“Breathe through it,” she said, her voice calm, mocking a midwife. “Nice deep breaths. It’s going to get much stronger.”
She turned a knob further. The rhythm changed, becoming more urgent, the pulses stronger and closer together. The “contractions” were no longer a mild cramp. They were powerful, clenching waves that seized the entire lower half of his body. Each one squeezed his imprisoned cock mercilessly, the pressure and the electrical feedback creating a feedback loop of unbearable stimulation. Pre-come leaked from him, slicking the inside of the suit.
“You look so pretty,” Bea cooed, her eyes gleaming. “All full and writhing. A pregnant thing in its throes. Do you feel that deep, aching need? That’s the body wanting to push.”
He was moaning continuously now, his back arching off the chaise, the black belly obscenely prominent. The sensations were beyond anything he’d experienced—a synthetic, all-encompassing biological parody that was forcing a sexual response from the depths of his viscera. It was humiliation of the most fundamental kind, and it was unlocking a pleasure so dark it felt like annihilation.
“Now,” Bea hissed, her thumb hovering over a red button. “The transition phase. The point of no return.”
She pressed it.
A sharp, sudden shock jolted through the pads. It wasn’t a pulse anymore; it was a vicious, biting current. Artemis cried out, his body seizing. The shock was followed immediately by a series of rapid, brutal contractions, one on top of the other, no rhythm, just a storm of clenching, electric agony-ecstasy. The internal plug became a live electrode, shocking him from the inside out.
“You’re crowning, you filthy slut,” Bea growled, leaning over him, her breath hot on his ear. “You’re trying to birth the fucking electricity I’m feeding you. Push against it! Push!”
He was sobbing, tears streaming into the hair at his temples. His body was convulsing, obeying her command instinctively, his abdominal muscles straining, pushing down against the unyielding synthetic torment. His cock was a rigid, throbbing rod of pain-pleasure, mashed against the latex, screaming for release it couldn’t have.
Bea watched the control unit’s readout, her face a mask of intense concentration. “Peak contraction. Now. Here it comes. The grand mal of it.”
She twisted the main dial to its maximum setting and held down the red button.
White fire.
His world dissolved into a nova of sensation. It was not an orgasm; it was an electrocution of his nervous system. Every muscle in his body locked tight. His scream was silent, his lungs paralyzed. The current cycled—a seizing clamp, a sharp shock, a deep, rolling throb that mimicked a final, devastating birth pang. It went on and on, beyond endurance, until endurance itself was a concept that shattered.
Just as he felt his consciousness might fracture, she released the button.
The sudden silence was louder than the pain. The suit went inert. The only sensations were the aftershocks trembling through his muscles, the cold sweat sheening his skin under the latex, and the brutal, unmet ache in his groin. He was panting, wrecked, hollowed out anew.
Bea unzipped the back of the suit with a slow, deliberate sound. The cool air on his sweat-soaked back was a shock. She helped him sit up, the heavy false belly lolling grotesquely. She removed the internal plug, the action making him gasp.
Then she peeled the suit down from his shoulders, revealing his trembling, pale skin. She worked it over the false belly, down his hips, until he was free of it, sitting naked and shivering on the chaise. His cock stood out, red and angry, weeping steadily.
She looked at him, at the utter devastation she’d wrought. There was no pity in her gaze, only a deep, satisfied appraisal. “Beautiful,” she breathed. Then she sank to her knees between his legs.
She took him into her mouth without ceremony, swallowing his length to the root in one wet, hot glide. He shouted, his oversensitive flesh screaming at the sudden, engulfing pleasure. She didn’t move, just held him there, the deep, wet heat a shocking contrast to the electric torment. Then she began to suck, hard and rhythmic, her hand working his base.
It was too much. After the prolonged, denied agony, the direct stimulation was instantaneous. He came in less than three pulls of her mouth, a raw, guttural sound tearing from his ravaged throat as he spurted hot and violent down her waiting throat. She took it all, sucking him through the last painful pulses until he was limp, shuddering, spent.
She pulled back, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. She looked up at him, his come glistening on her lips. “There,” she said, her voice rough. “Delivered.”
She helped him to the shower again, this time washing him with a gentleness that felt alien. He leaned against the tiles, water sluicing over him, his mind a blank, smooth stone.
Later, wrapped in a blanket on her sofa, a cup of broth in his hands, he finally spoke. “What was that for?”
Bea, sipping her own tea, looked at the ceiling. “I told you. To fill the emptiness.”
“With a phantom?”
“With a sensation,” she corrected. “A memory in the muscles and nerves that has nothing to do with your past. A new artifact. Your body now knows that. It’s yours. Not Arthur’s. Not your wife’s. Not mine, even.” She met his eyes. “I just built the church. You did the worshipping.”
He sipped the broth. It soothed his throat. The profound, electric ache in his pelvis was fading to a deep, satisfied hum. He did feel different. Re-calibrated. As if his internal compass had been violently demagnetized and was now pointing to a true north he couldn’t yet name.
“Eleanor called,” Bea said casually, setting her cup down. “While you were in the suit. Your phone buzzed on the bench. I saw the name.”
The real world, cold and sharp, intruded like a shard of glass. “What did she say?”
“I didn’t answer. But there was a voicemail.” Bea picked up his phone and tossed it to him. “Your emptiness, it seems, has a echo. You should listen to it.”
He stared at the black rectangle in his hand, a mundane object that felt like a bomb. The warmth of the broth, the phantom echoes of electric birth, the safety of the blanket—all of it receded. The new artifact inside him felt suddenly fragile.
He pressed play and put the phone to his ear. His sister’s voice, strained and formal, filled his head.
“Arthur. It’s Eleanor. We need to talk. It’s about the house. Mother’s been going through your wife’s things. She found… some papers. Legal matters. You need to come. This weekend. Please.”
The message ended. He lowered the phone. The Red Chamber, the suit, the electric contractions—it all felt like a dream from which he’d been abruptly, coldly awakened. He looked at Bea. Her expression was unreadable.
The emptiness had been filled, but now something else had taken its place: a cold, sinking dread. The past wasn’t done with him. It was waiting in his dead wife’s paperwork, in his mother’s hands, in the hushed, judgmental silence of his old life. He would have to go back. But he would not be going back as Arthur.
But he would not be going back as Arthur. The realization was a cold, solid knot in his stomach, a counterweight to the fading, phantom contractions. He looked from the phone to Bea, who watched him with the patient stillness of a predator.
“Papers,” he said, the word tasting of dust and legal pads. “My wife’s things.”
“The detritus of a life,” Bea replied, not unkindly. She lit a cigarette, the flare of the match illuminating the sharp planes of her face. “It always waits. You can burn it or box it, but you have to touch it first.”
He set the phone down, the blanket falling from his shoulders. The room felt different now, the red candlelight not opulent but feverish. The suit, a puddle of black latex on the floor, looked like a shed exoskeleton. He was naked, vulnerable in a new way. The performance was over. The real test was a silent house full of ghosts.
“I have to go,” he said.
“I know.”
He stood, the broth forgotten. He walked to the garment bag, still hanging open. He ran his fingers over the sleek, unsettling swell of the false belly. It was an armor, but of the wrong kind. It would scream his truth into the quiet, judgemental spaces of his old world. He needed something else. A different skin.
He turned to Bea. His voice was quiet, stripped bare. “I surrender control of my outfit to you. For going back.” He swallowed, his bruised throat tight. “You are coming with me, I hope?”
Bea took a long drag, exhaling a plume of smoke that curled into the candlelight. Her eyes narrowed, assessing him. This wasn’t a scene in the Red Chamber. This was a request. A plea for an ally in a cold war he had to re-enter.
“To your mother’s house?” she asked, a faint, incredulous smile touching her lips. “Darling, I’d corrode the wallpaper.”
“I need you there.” The admission was harder than taking the electric shocks. “I can’t… Artemis can’t walk in there alone. Not for this.”
She stubbed out the cigarette. She stood and crossed to him, her fingers lifting his chin. She studied his face—the lingering tears, the resolve hardening in his eyes. “You want me to dress you. To arm you. To stand beside you while you sift through your dead wife’s drawers.”
“Yes.”
A slow smile spread across her face, this one reaching her eyes. It was a smile of pure, wicked delight. “Oh, you beautiful, brave creature. Of course I’m coming.” Her thumb stroked his lower lip. “But we don’t arm you. We don’t disguise you. We reveal you. Just enough to keep you sane. A secret for you to hold onto while they pick at the bones of Arthur.”
The next two days were a new kind of preparation. Bea was a whirlwind of purpose. She dismissed the pregnancy suit as “too on the nose.” Instead, she brought out a different set of garments.
The foundation was a simple, high-waisted pencil skirt in a stretch wool, charcoal grey. It was severe, professional, unremarkable from a distance. “But feel it,” Bea said, guiding his hand to the inner waistband. His fingers met not soft cotton, but cool, slick latex. A hidden panel, sewn into the lining, pressed snugly against his lower abdomen and the base of his cock.
“It’s a constant, subtle pressure,” she explained, her voice clinical. “A reminder. Your little secret. No one will see it but you’ll feel it with every step, every time you sit across from your mother.”
The blouse was ivory silk, conservative with a high neckline. But the cuffs fastened with a series of tiny, intricate loops over minute buttons, requiring concentration and steady hands to open. “A tactile distraction,” Bea said. “When the conversation gets too much, you’ll focus on these. On the mechanics of keeping yourself together.”
The final piece was not clothing. It was a harness, but unlike the sturdy leather of her strap-on. This was delicate, a web of thin, black suede straps. It held a small, discreet silicone plug, no larger than his thumb. “This stays in for the drive,” she instructed, holding it up. “A low, constant presence. You’ll feel it when you shift in the car seat. A private anchor.”
The morning of the trip, she dressed him herself in the quiet apartment. She helped him into the skirt, zipping it with care. She buttoned the impossible blouse, her fingers deft and sure. She had him bend over the bed to insert the plug, her touch firm and impersonal. He gasped softly as it seated inside him, a small, insistent fullness.
“Comfortable?” she asked, stepping back to survey her work.
He nodded. He looked in the full-length mirror. He saw a smart, slightly austere woman. Someone’s efficient secretary, perhaps. A librarian. The figure in the reflection was a plausible fiction, but the sensations beneath the wool and silk—the tight embrace of the hidden latex, the subtle plug—were screaming truths. He was both, and neither. It was perfect.
“Good,” Bea said. She was dressed in black trousers and a severe jacket, her hair pulled back. She looked like a chic, slightly dangerous architect. She picked up a small, locked metal case. “My kit. Just in case.”
The drive was three hours of mounting tension. The plug was a relentless whisper. The skirt’s secret panel hugged him, a constant, gentle squeeze on his cock, which remained half-hard, trapped and throbbing with the vibration of the car. He was painfully aware of every minute shift, every bump in the road. Bea drove in silence, the radio off, the hum of the engine their only soundtrack.
They pulled up to the curb of the familiar, detached house. The garden was neat. The windows were blank. It looked like a museum diorama of a life he’d once lived. His stomach churned.
Bea killed the engine. She turned to him, her gaze fierce. “Listen to me. That plug? That pressure? That’s real. Their questions, their judgments, the papers in that house? That’s the phantom. Hold onto what’s real. Squeeze your thighs around it. Feel it in your ass. That’s your ground wire.”
He took a shaky breath. The hidden latex gripped him. “Okay.”
“Okay.” She leaned over, not for a kiss, but to bite his earlobe, sharp and quick. “Now go be a good girl for your mummy. I’ll be right here.”
Walking up the path was an out-of-body experience. The skirt whispered around his calves. The plug shifted inside him with each step. He rang the bell. The door opened, and his mother’s face, lined with a pinched concern, appeared. Behind her, in the dim hall, stood Eleanor.
“Arthur,” his mother said, her eyes scanning him, lingering on the blouse, the skirt. A faint, confused frown creased her forehead. “You look… different.”
“Hello, Mother,” Artemis said, and his voice didn’t break.
The hall smelled of lemon polish and stale flowers. He was led into the front room, where boxes were piled neatly. His wife’s handwriting on the lids was a physical blow. He sat on the very edge of the sofa, the plug pressing up, the hidden panel tight. He crossed his legs, the pressure exquisite.
“We found these in the attic,” Eleanor began, her voice overly bright. “With her journals. There are… discrepancies, Arthur. About investments. About a separate account.”
His mother handed him a sheaf of statements. Numbers swam before his eyes. But all he could feel was the slow, leaking dampness of his own pre-come seeping into the hidden latex panel, a secret humiliation, a visceral anchor. He listened to their worried, probing questions. He gave vague, accounting-approved answers. His fingers, as if of their own accord, went to the intricate loops of his cuff, fumbling with the tiny button.
“Is that new?” Eleanor asked, pointing to the blouse. “The detailing is… unusual.”
“It is,” Artemis said, finally freeing the button. A small, ridiculous wave of triumph washed over him. “I like unusual things now.”
The conversation dragged. The boxes yawned open, disgorging photo albums, trinkets, the intimate archaeology of a marriage. Grief tried to surface, but it was blunted, kept at bay by the sharper, more immediate sensations in his body. He was a sieve, and the pain of the past was finer grain than the coarse, present grit of his need.
After an hour, he excused himself to use the bathroom. Locked in the downstairs cloakroom, he braced his hands on the sink. He was trembling. He looked in the mirror—the careful makeup, the styled wig, the woman holding a screaming man inside. He uncrossed his legs and squeezed his thighs together hard, sending a bolt of sharp, grounding sensation straight to his core. He breathed.
When he returned, Bea was standing in the doorway of the living room, having been let in by a flustered Eleanor. She looked utterly out of place, a sleek panther in a room of doilies.
“I’m sorry to intrude,” Bea said, her voice smooth as oil. “I’m Bea, Arthur’s associate. We have a critical appointment back in the city. I’m afraid we’ll need to reschedule the rest of this.”
His mother blinked. “An associate? But we’re not finished—”
“I believe you are,” Bea said, her smile not reaching her eyes. She looked at Artemis. “Darling, get your coat. The car’s running.”
It was a rescue, blatant and glorious. Artemis stood, murmuring apologies, promises to return. He collected the relevant papers. The goodbyes were stiff, stunned. He followed Bea’s straight back down the path, feeling their confused stares on him.
The moment the car door shut, he shattered. A ragged sob escaped him. Bea didn’t speak, just pulled away from the curb with smooth acceleration. She drove for ten minutes, away from the neighborhood, into the anonymity of an industrial park. She parked behind a large, deserted warehouse.
She turned to him. “Show me.”
Her voice was a command. He was crying freely now, the adrenaline and tension bleeding out in hot, silent tears. He hiked up the charcoal skirt, revealing the soaked, hidden latex panel, glossy with his moisture. He was painfully, achingly hard, his cock trapped and leaking against the constricting material.
“Good,” Bea breathed. She unlocked her metal case. Inside, nestled in foam, was a vicious-looking violet vibrator, a thick leather strap attached to its base. “You held onto what was real. Now let it out.”
She didn’t make him wait. She undid his fly, freeing his cock, which sprang out, red and slick. She spit into her palm, stroking him once, twice, a rough, dry friction that made him hiss. Then she pushed the buzzing head of the vibrator against his perineum, right where the strap of the plug harness bit into him.
“Fuck!” he yelled, his hips bucking. The vibration wasn’t pleasure; it was a violent interrogation of his nerves.
“This is what you earned in there,” she snarled, holding the device hard against him. “This is the reward for not breaking.” She used her other hand to pump his cock, her grip tight, her pace punishing. “Come for me. Come all over this pristine, fucking skirt. Mark it. Make it yours.”
The orgasm was ripped from him, a convulsive, brutal release that splattered hot and thick across the wool of the skirt, the silk of his blouse. He screamed, his body bowing against the car seat, as she milked him through it with the relentless vibrator and her ruthless hand.
He collapsed, spent, shuddering. Bea turned off the vibrator. The silence was absolute, broken only by his ragged breaths. She looked at the mess on his clothes, at his wrecked face. She nodded, once.
“Now you’ve left your mark on that house, too,” she said quietly. She handed him a cloth from her case. “Clean up. We’re going home.”
As he dabbed at the cooling come on the grey wool, the ghost of Arthur finally felt distant, a faded signature on a document he no longer recognized. The car, the industrial desolation outside, the deep, satisfied ache in his body—this was his country now.