Simon's Number One Admirer - Chapter 1

Hey! Here is the first of five chapters in this new Simon series. It is a commission by Joshii, who's welcome for supporting Simon. There are female characters, I'm afraid, so be warned!

Simon’s Number One Admirer

Chapter 1 – The Impostor

Sylvia Thomson has never felt so helpless. A proudly independent woman, she’s been a reporter for almost two decades, ever since the war broke out in Europe back in 1914. She writes theatre and art reviews and seldom felt threatened doing her job. Resentment and drama may arise from her pen, but she’s never been assaulted—until today.

She’s travelled from the city to upstate New York to see the act everybody is speaking about: Simon the Escape Artist and Stilo the Magician. Their prowess and showmanship had her long to see them live.

She is settling in at the small town’s most luxurious hotel when her world is turned upside down. Someone knocks at the door, and she opens to the cutest bellboy, resplendent in his tight red silk uniform. He pushes a cart inside.

“Room service,” he announces. Sylvia starts to close the door, but someone pushes his way in. Her way in, actually: a forty-year-old woman draped in silk, angora wool, and fur.

“Good evening, Miss Thomson. As a prestigious guest, you get the hotel’s special welcome package.”

Sylvia doesn’t sense anything is wrong, but when four hands seize her from behind, and the older lady placates her palm on her mouth to silence her, she is flabbergasted. Another very young bellboy was hidden in the cart’s bottom with gear in store. The young men start binding her ankles and her wrists behind her back, while the woman expertly holds Sylvia’s head to keep her mouth shut.

She waits until her prey is neutralized and her accomplices can help her to make the silencing more permanent. Poor Sylvia can’t fight her attackers off when they stuff her mouth with balls of wool and silk, using small handkerchiefs and tiny knitted pads. Sylvia fights, but with her limbs restrained and up against three skilled assailants, her resistance is quickly thwarted.

A thin silk strip bites the corners of her mouth, making her gurgle; the woman tightens the ends over her nape tightly, packing the mass further and muffling most sounds. Her henchmen—or henchboys—have flesh-colored surgical tape at hand. One pinches her lips shut as the other plasters them, sealing the thick mass behind her teeth.

The woman adds five scarves across Sylvia’s already gagged mouth, each tighter than the previous one. Then the trussing up continues.

Her attackers strip her of her dress, leaving her in her blouse and bloomers. Using ropes, they methodically immobilize her body folded in three: her heels against her buttocks and her knees placated to her bosom. They pick up the balled-up woman and set her on the lower shelf of the trolley table.

“This should keep you quiet, Miss Thomson. Don’t worry. I’ve got a place where no one will come and disturb you. Relax, it could last a few days!”

“Mmmrph!”

Simon is tightly bound to a metal pole. A fiendish rope network and a pair of cuffs locking his wrists behind the iron rod imprison him. His red ball gag presses the rolled-up rag crammed in his mouth. A steel tube comes down around him, concealing him from the outside.

“Now, let’s turn the heat on,” says a voice outside. Simon hears a match being lit and gas burning, but he’s already rid of the handcuffs, thanks to the hairpin he’s kept hidden. He lowers himself to reach the knot at the top of his thighs. From there, he squirms to slip off the white cotton cord.

Once free, he opens the trapdoor he’s standing on. The hole is tiny, but Simon is lean and limber and he slides down easily. Once at the bottom of a five-feet-high passageway, he runs to the other end of the stage. Patrick is waiting for him. He and another acrobat bind Simon to an identical steel rod; the ropes are already bound to the pole and the two young men know the drill.

They hear the music and Stilo taunting the crowd.

“The flames are still bearable. Has Simon freed himself or will he be roasted alive?”

Simon is bound to the pole in time. The platform lifts up, and the escape artist ends up six feet above the floor with another thin steel tube hiding him.

“Still no news of Simon, but the fire is now raging. I hope he escaped. I’ll cast a safety spell.”

It’s the cue: the screens lift up to reveal the loose ropes on one platform. On the other one, Simon is squirming and twisting, rolling wide eyes and playing the distressed captive to the audience’s cheers. The fact he’s still bound gets laughs.

“I must have cast the wrong spell. Now, Simon, my magic saved you from the fire, but you’re still bound and gagged.”

Simon acts annoyed.

“Calm down. It’s going to work this time.”

Stilo moans his incantations, and the steel tubes come down to hide the two platforms. Simon slides off the ropes as he descends, and while Patrick and his colleague push the platform to the other end of the stage, he unlocks the gag’s strap and spits the rags out.

The other platform has come down, and Simon, free from the ropes around his feet, climbs back. The change took less than thirty seconds. Stilo is doing his comedy routine, wondering whether he remembered his spells correctly and having the audience laugh at the prospect of having cast out the one turning Simon into a newt.

Simon gets ready for his final appearance. The screen slides up swiftly. He spreads his arms, a wide smile on his face as he salutes the audience. The crowd is wild, and the show ends with a thunderous row of applause.

The band plays for a final parade around the ring, where all the circus artists get the audience’s appreciation. The artists gather backstage, relishing the big crowd and the show’s success.

“The new number really works on the audience,” Stilo comments. “I could read genuine fright on their faces. They thought you’d fry!”

The party goes on. The circus director comes to see Stilo.

“Remember, there’s an interview scheduled with an influential New York journalist. She was in the audience, but I didn’t see her when the audience left, or else I’d have invited her to stay for the interview. It’s planned in the hotel lounge, anyway.”

The circus is touring the East Coast, with several stops in the state of New York, mostly in rural areas. The director was very excited at the prospect of a prominent nationwide newspaper providing publicity.

“Let’s get rid of this chore quick, Stilo. I still have to feed the rabbits and the doves.”

“I’ll do it,” Patrick says.

Simon’s acrobat friend is always eager to help if it means they can spend more time together.

“Thanks, I’ll be quick,” Simon says, winking.

He dresses up for the occasion and leaves with Stilo.

The circus is settled in the middle of a small town on a large grassy square. The most luxurious hotel stands across the street. Simon and Stilo go to the reception to introduce themselves.

“Miss Thomson is waiting for you in the eastern lounge,” the receptionist tells them, pointing to a door at the end of the hall.

It opens on a long corridor that serves reception rooms and the lounge the man indicated. A woman stands up as they enter. Tall, in her late thirties, the elegant lady catches Stilo’s eye; he admires her satiny dress, her thick angora shawl, and the expensive fur scarf wrapped around her neck.

Simon reads admiration in her eyes. He is getting used to being famous and looked at; he often sees this look, but its intensity gives him a pang of pride. Her dark eyes under the long eyelashes devour him. The woman claps.

“Hooray! Bravo! Your show is one of a kind! Sit down, please. I can’t wait to write this review, hoping you get to perform at Madison Square Garden before you move on!”

Simon sits, his chest puffing from the praise, Stilo to his right. The woman starts by asking them about Simon’s arrival in the circus, the many numbers they’ve performed, and the veracity of the pulp-fiction stories written about Simon’s ‘curse,’ and his falling into nasty people’s hands.

Stilo brushes off these anecdotes as widely exaggerated. Simon says there was some truth to the stories, which leads the reporter to ask for details. He has made up a sanitized version of his kidnappings by Wilhelm and the Chicago mob, which he’s happy to deliver.

Simon has seldom seen someone so engrossed into what he is saying: he goes into details on the time André the evil clown abducted him and kept him under a bed. Stilo is squirming on the couch, but Simon can’t let go of the hypnotizing eyes, explaining how tight and inescapable André’s ropework was.

Simon’s nose twitches. The smell of burnt tobacco appears just as he is telling about André’s trick, which consisted in blowing up smoke to trigger an ‘episode’ in Stilo. The black eyes open wider; the woman leans forward and removes a silk scarf on the coffee table that was covering coils of rope, locks, chains, and endless supplies to gag someone.

Simon’s vigilance has been dulled by the woman’s praises: he doesn’t catch Stilo going into a fit before it’s too late. He realizes what is going on only when his magician friend grabs him with the extraordinary strength he acquires. Taken by surprise, Simon cannot resist Stilo’s mad persona, who stars binding him in tight coils cruelly biting in his skin, hellbent on the boy’s total immobility.

The woman prevents Simon from warning the hotel staff by clamping her wool-gloved hand on the boy’s lower face and sealing his lips. She whispers something in Italian, humming a tune, which has Stilo freeze. He stands up and dashes to the double door leading to the backyard, his intoxicated mind telling him to flee.

“He’s gone, Simon, but I’m going to take good care of you.”

A bellboy appears and kneels next to Simon to assist the woman. He holds Simon while she crams a square of wool inside his mouth, not letting the least sound go out, before she cleave-gags him with a silk strip. She has more, and the escape artist is powerless to call for help.

To undress Simon, they remove the ropes and add cuffs at wrists and ankles, leaving him in his shiny blue underwear.

“That’s how I want to see him.”

The fiends get their prey wrapped in a leather harness. It encircles his neck, chest, waist, crotch, thighs, and ankles with connecting straps that can be fine-tuned for maximum rigidity. The woman adds gloves on Simon. They look like mittens but keep each finger in leather tubes sewn together.

“It should keep you busy for a while. Before we go, one more thing. I wouldn’t want you to catch a cold, little one.”

The woman takes a large garment from behind the couch that looks like a sleep sack. It’s thick, made of blue angora wool, with leather bands sewn onto it. She slides it up from Simon’s feet, her aide lifting the lithe body to get the boy wrapped to his neck in the warm fabric.

The seven straps are tightened, making escape more difficult yet.

“You’re all tucked in, sweet Simon. Let’s take you out. It’s getting late, and we don’t want you to miss bedtime,” the woman coos.

TBC