Now, Soapy stared at Melinda 109 as Webb kept babbling at her, holding her hand as if she was a real, live woman.
Melinda had been in and out of The Little Shop a lot after Gridwell had reluctantly returned her...
Most clients couldn't afford more than a half-hour visit, and Soapy would wince as he'd hear their agonized shrieks as Melinda caned them in the storeroom.
Now and again, someone would come up with two grand and take Melinda home for a week. The majority of the renters were submissive males, sometimes a sub woman.
Soapy would have to endure the sickening goodbyes, as the poor schlub would be on his knees, or rubbing his butt, as he told Melinda how much she'd meant to him.
Sometimes frustrated women would come in and go into the storeroom and there would be a sound of paddling and wailing, and then out they'd come, refreshed to fake orgasms for their husbands.
Soapy's favorite experience had been of the mother who had come in with a surly 19 year old, long dirty hair, concert T-shirt, the like.
While the mother and Tamulevich had gone to get Melinda 109, the kid had sold Soapy a switchblade and a dime bag and said this:
"I've broken five psychiatrists, two military academies, a nut ward and a Toughlove group. There's nothing the old bag can do to me, man."
Melinda had gone home with them for only forty-eight hours, and when the boy came back, he was wearing a crew cut and bow tie, and he handed Soapy a Get Saved tract.
The most irritating of Melinda's drop-in customers, it seemed were the Chastity Boys.
There were at least ten guys who had been stupid enough to buy chastity belts, chastity tubes and cock cages through the Little Shop, and they'd given the keys to Melinda 109.
Then they'd get upset because she wouldn't release them?
Or at least, not for long. Soapy's stomach still turned as he thought of Sterling Ostheimer, who was a regular Chastity Boy...
It had been a few weeks before, and Sterling had dropped in. Soapy had looked up from where he was sorting Heavy Weight Chain Mail Bikini Tops.
"Soapy, is Melinda available?" Sterling had asked, his cueball head glistening.
"It's been so long. I'm dyin' in here." Sterling gestured to his crotch, which was bulging, and Soapy had looked away, but then he'd become businesslike.
"Okay, Mr. O, you know that's three hundred dollars, you want me to charge your Visa number?"
Sterling had nodded breathlessly, and Soapy punched in the numbers, adding a $80 charge to his connection Abner, pharmacy clerk at West Concord Drugstore for some Tylenol 3 and a bit of Vicodin. Sterling Ostheimer was so obsessed with Melinda 109 that he'd never notice.
Soapy had led the bald submissive to the storeroom, and they'd gone in, and Soapy had turned Melinda 109 on. As her glass eyes opened, she'd smiled.
"Well now, Sterling, how are you doing today!" Melinda's hair had been tied up in bun over her head, and she was clad in a red velvet tube top and hot pants, and of course the requisite fishnets and six inch black heels.
Melinda put an elbow next to a case of Jelly Pearl Multi-speed Vibrators and smiled fetchingly.
"I-I'm so horny, Miss Melinda." Sterling said breathlessly, cowering by the pack of Flat Nipple Screws."I-it's been so long."
Soapy thought that Sterling looked like a calf about to be slaughtered. His face was pale and his bare pate was not glistening quite so much in the darkened storeroom, though Soapy had switched on a light.
"Please, Miss Melinda, it's been two weeks since I last could afford to see you, and it's been 185 days since you let me..." Sterling looked at Soapy and then turned his head back to Melinda. "release myself."
"Well, that's the breaks, Sterling dear." Melinda said, and walked up and patted Sterling's egg head affectionately. "You just don't get to cum when you want to, you know."
At this point, Soapy had heard a customer, and he'd gone out of the storeroom and ten minutes later Melinda 109's strident voice had interrupted Soapy as he was swigging some Benadryl.
"Clerk-boy, can you bring me one of the leather tawses?"
Soapy finished off the cough syrup, emitted a sigh, and ambled over to the tawse display.
"Melinda, you want the Devil's Tail Tawse with the black hide and the steel reinforced handle?" Soapy moved over. "Then there's the flat studded tawse, the razor strop tawse, and the multi tail tawse."
"Soaperstein, please bring the studded tawse." Soapy'd picked up the tawse and gone back into the storeroom.
This, where Sterling was now naked, his flabby body lying over a crate of Leather Strait Jackets, his clothes piled next to a box of Boot Dildo Straps.
"And you might wash Sterling's chastity belt, dear. It's by the shipment of Black Mini-Suede Floggers.
No not there, but where the--no those are the White Willow canes, Past the case of Mayfair Latex Mini-dresses, don't be stupid, darling. Yes, that thing. Don't make a face, dear."
But it was hard for Soapy not to. Picking up the chastity belt, filled with the groin sweat of a fortnight, he realized that he put up with a lot for twelve-fifty an hour.
Kicking a crate of Remote Control Butterfly Obsession Vibrators, he left the storeroom and shut the door.
For about fifteen minutes there had been a lot of howling emitting from the storeroom, which Soapy had explained to customers as a disgruntled plumber.
Knowing not what to do with the chastity device, Soapy had gone upstairs to the little apartment that Tamulevich had allowed him, and put it in the dishwasher, and when he'd come down, Melinda was once again summoning him.
Soapy looked in, and had to look away again, as Sterling's butt was now a riot of welts, scars, blotches and slashes.
Melinda 109 hardly seemed disturbed. "Soaperstein, you are a sleazy boy...and you must have a set of dice don't you?"
Soapy reached into his vest and brought out his bones, and handed them to Melinda 109. "Now then, darling, I've whipped you, fucked you--"
Melinda had indeed removed her shorts and her big dildo had shot out from her hips--"and had you suck your dingleberries off my big dildo...and now it's time to see if you get to jerk off, or do you wait another two weeks?"
Melinda smiled. Sterling was leaning against the towering cases of Diktator Penis Whips, his hands cuffed behind his head.
Soapy could see that Melinda 109 had been rubbing her long fingers up and down Sterling's cock and it looked quite swollen, and drooling with pre ejaculate.
"The poor baby hasn't had a squirtie in several months, Soaperstein, and he's begged me to let him jerk off. The last time I let him jerk off--do you remember?
I put electrical tape all over his cock and balls and ripped it off while he was pounding his pud? And the time before that, I had Myron and Byron from the Kennel downstairs paddle little Sterling as he beat his meat?"