100 Lashes of Love

My secretary Cilla shocked me recently by announcing she had written her own novel 100 Lashes of Love. She asked me to read it, and I was aghast at what I found; a depraved yarn of beastliness which I most definitely wouldn’t want my wife (any of them) or staff (if he wasn’t dead) reading.

This is a small sample which she inadvertently left behind. Please do not read if you are easily shocked. Oh, and please do not buy – yes, she has found a publisher with a moral void e.g. mine.

100 Lashes of Love (sample) by Cilla McCready (Miss)

Lulu O’Malley took out her pencil, licked its nib provocatively, and looked up at her boss, ready for what he was about to give her. He was, as always when on the verge of getting going, settled in his armchair, eyes closed, his decanter of whiskey filled and ready by his side.

She had been in this job for a fortnight, but it already felt like years. She would turn up for work at 8am – no later or there would be trouble – and wouldn’t finish often until early evening, unless her employer fell asleep. In which case she would creep away, type up that day’s output and slip away to her small flat in Ealing where her cat, Harrison, and a Vesta Beef Curry waited for her.

At first she had been star-struck by her new employer. He was Derek Spalding, the famous author of many best-selling horror novels. Not her cup of tea, she thought sniffily, but her dad had liked them, God rest his memory. Spalding had a reputation as a playboy, with many (failed) marriages behind him, but he struck her as a fat, shiny-faced old man, long past his best, professionally and personally.

Her initial overawed-ness had soon changed to outright dislike. She grew to loathe him as he slumped in his armchair, his trouser waistband just below his ribcage, his scrotal sack bulging just above his knee, his booze-sodden breath nauseating and intoxicating her. She had fantasies about the harm she could inflict on him, the way he’d beg for mercy to no avail. At home, she had even adapted an old teddy, found in a Sue Ryder shop, to look like her employer simply so she could stick pins in it each night in revenge for that day’s purgatory.

He treated her not like the qualified secretary she was, but as a skivvy who also had to make the tea, plump up his cushion, fix his blocked lavatory, change his bunion dressing…

It was when performing this last chore that things changed. She was cursing her employer under her breath, and inadvertently scratched him. She braced herself for a tirade of scolding, maybe even the sack. But instead he grunted, rubbed his groin and whispered, ‘Do it again.’

Lulu was so surprised she did as she was told. Harder. Again, he moaned, and she stared fascinated at what was obviously groinal tumescence occurring beneath his paunch.

‘Harder’ he repeated, and she stuck her fingernail into the pathological bump on the side of his great toe joint. He writhed. ‘You cruel bitch!’ he wheezed.

Lulu swallowed, convinced that the termination of her contract was now imminent. Instead, Spalding stood up, pulled her towards him and whispered in her ear, ‘Tell me what a bad boy I am.’

Astonished by what was asked of her, Lulu’s floodgates opened. Out poured all her resentment, not just at her employer’s behaviour, but at the frustrations of her life; the lack of a boyfriend despite being really pretty and interesting and a really good cook; the old lady in the flat above who played her James Last LPs at top volume all night; her Cypriot landlord who licked his moustache in a lascivious way whenever he called to collect the rent or fix the cistern.

But the more she ranted and scolded her employer the more he seemed to like it. And before she knew it, he was naked and strapped to his bed while she thrashed his behind, bloated like all who sit down for a living, until it resembled a pair of freshly-boiled beetroots, not stopping until she was exhausted and her arm really hurt.

And so began the next stage of their relationship. By day she was the meek secretary, scribbling down his latest opus, making the tea, dealing with his mail…

But at a certain time of the day, Spalding would stop dictating and would stare at her, a certain look in his eye, a look that she knew meant it was time for his punishment.

Lulu was tentative at first, but soon grew more and more imaginative. She even spent her evenings dreaming up new practices, sometimes trying them out on the cat who eventually left home, preferring to take his chances with the local Chicken Bungalow than put up with such abuse.

She bought a wardrobe – tax deductible – which included a matron’s uniform (for the scalding hot blanket baths), traffic warden (for the severe parking fine), a two-piece C&A suit (for being Mrs Thatcher and beating him around the genitals with a handbag), and the pointiest stiletto heels (for general strutting up and down his spine).

Sometimes she’d worry she‘d go to far – not for his sake, but that she’d kill him or injure him and go to prison. But once they started their games, all rational thought flew out of the widow, and she just wanted to hurt him, and the more he enjoyed it, the more she wanted to just beat the shit out of the fat pervert.

After this it just gets relentlessly disgusting. Now I know my own books have a certain element of sauciness about them, but that is just peppercorn sauce poured on top of a really meaty steak of a story. In Cilla’s book the smut is the raison d’etre. Shameful! And I have no idea on whom the poor author character is based. Probably her landlord.