On Wednesday Helen caught the bus to work as usual but instead of getting off at her usual stop she remained in her seat and rode right to the end. To the terminus in the big city of Kings Lynn.  

  When the bus stopped Helen alighted and made her way to the nearest telephone booth. Dialling the number from memory she telephoned her office and left a message to the effect that, this morning she was ill. It was quite a believable message she thought, especially as she’d already shown some signs of sickness, entirely bogus, by late afternoon yesterday.

  “Are you alright Helen?” a couple of her workmates had asked and, faking it brilliantly she’d shaken her head. She’d faked the vomiting too, cleverly and noisily, rushing into a booth in the ladies at the very moment her supervisor came in. That apart there was no faking it now, for as she left the phonebox and walked quickly through an alley she really did begin to feel a little bit sick.

  It was excited anticipation of course and the fact that she’d come out without any breakfast. New direction, new career? She was much to excited to think about eating.

  “Get here as early as you can” the woman had said.

  “Alright!” Helen had whispered, dry mouthed with excitement even then.

                                ………………

  She found the address without any trouble, a newish looking building on the edge of an industrial estate. “Amherst Enterprises” said the plate on the door.  

  “Hello?” came a voice from within the instant she pressed the buzzer.

   “It’s Helen” Helen said to the wall.

  The door clicked and Helen pushed it open, still feeling the eyes of the woman outside.

  There were stairs and a landing and a warm cheerfully coloured reception. Helen smiled and the receptionist smiled back.  

  “Good journey? she asked cheerily

  “Yes” Helen replied “no bother at all”

  “And we have your details already do we?”

  “I hope so!” Helen said. “I sent them in……”

  The receptionist nodded, clicked the keyboard and got helen’s details up on the screen.

  “Ah yes!” she said.

  There were some tasteful nude type pictures on the walls of reception. Cleverly posed girls with very little showing; monochrome prints, you know the sort of thing.

  “If you’d like to go through to the studios” the receptionist said “Tom Amherst will be with you in a few minutes”

  Helen felt her heart lurch at this. Tom Amherst the photographer, the art entrepreneur!   

  The receptionist got up and opened the door. Helen walked through and found herself in another world.

                                ………………

  There was a piece of sculpture just inside the door, a lifesize bronze of two people fucking in a contorted upright position. Curious she gazed at it’s dark golden gleam, the detail leaping out into her amazed eyes immediately. The male was equipped more like a horse than a man and yet, by the look on the woman’s face she was enjoying him.

  “Artistic licence!” Helen told herself. “I don’t suppose he was really as big as all that”

  There were other exaggerations and peculiarities she saw when she began to look closer, then somewhere between embarrassed and aroused she began to giggle.  

  The first of the photographs shocked her when she saw it, a close up, hugely enlarged of male genitalia, quite hairless and smooth sporting a fat metal ring prominently and quite blatantly.

  She shuddered, wondering for a moment what something like that might feel like, and if it came undone, came off inside her, what then?

  The photographer had a thing about male genitalia apparently for the next picture was of a rather different sort of prick.  

  This one was circumcised, flaccid and much smaller than the first, curled round like a Cumberland sausage in a nest of bright ginger hair.

  For a moment she studied it wonderingly and not surprisingly she found herself getting all wet.

  “What do you think?” a man’s voice asked from behind her.

  Startled she turned and felt her face colouring.

  “Tom Amherst!” the man said, extending his hand.

  If her embarrassment was obvious to him he made no comment, instead as he shook her hand his eyes peered at her keenly.

  “You must be Helen?”

  “Y…yes!” she said.

  Oh his eyes were blue and he was handsome, nicely built, tanned and well dressed. His hand was warm and reassuring as well, she realised as she shook it and the thoughts already growing in number in her head increased suddenly, disturbingly, when he said:

  “You have come to model for me have you?”

  “Y…yes, I have!” Helen said.

  Tom nodded grandly.

  “Well we are all ready for you!” he said.

                                ………………

  The studio was rather disappointing to Helen at first. Dark and cluttered with all manner of equipment, more like a factory than a place where erotic pictures might be made. Its gloomy, she said to herself with a tinge of apprehension as she began to get undressed.  

  “You can slip on something loose if you want to” one of the faceless assistants told her “Nothing tight of course that might leave marks on your skin……”

  She nodded absently wishing suddenly she was somewhere else, back at home, at her office, anywhere but here.

  Someone put some music on and someone else adjusted some lights. Helen stood her shoe side by side on the floor then took off her bra and knickers.

  “We’ll do some shots for your portfolio to begin with Helen!” Tom, some distance away said.

  She stood up, reached for the shapeless robe which hung on a hook then thought better of it.  

  “Fuck it!” she said to herself “It is now or never!”

  “Ok!” she called “Where do you want me to stand?”

  “You can sit right here” an assistant told her “We’ll only be doing your face to begin with!”  

  His gaze made her shiver, in a warm kind of way, shiver and seep in all the right places when she walked across the studio floor and sat carefully in an ornate armchair.

                                ……………

  Tom himself took several dozen pictures, of her face, of her eyes and her hair. Another photographer who she was not introduced to took another dozen or so of her neck her shoulders and breasts. Then the assistant took hold of her arms and legs and rearranged her until, really without thinking about it she found herself displaying herself to the photographers’ lens.  

  They encouraged her with words and suggestive movements while the assistant, moving around with a shiny reflective board just stared at her.

  She found herself crouching, squatting, bending into poses in all sorts of positions and in the back of her mind she knew this was only the beginning of things. Soon, she knew, they’d introduce her to a partner, to another man or a woman, she didn’t know which. That would be when the real photography began, when she got fucked and sucked and all manner of things. She stared back at the assistant without seeing him and the thought of what they’d make her do then made her all hot and bothered.  

  Slowly they moved the focus of attention to a different part of the studio cameras continuing to click endlessly. She realised what they were doing when one of them said.

  “OK love! Shall we try some proper shots?”

  “Yeah ok!” she heard herself saying as she moved towards the bed.

                                ……………

  There was a slim, older looking woman sitting on the edge of the bed with her back to her. On a fake bed made of plywood and plaster and covered with lights.

  “Good girl! You’re doing brilliantly!” Tom called out as she walked determinedly towards the bed.

  “So its to be a lesbian scene for my first time, is it” she asked.

  “Whatever you want somebody said

  It will be nice to cuddle up against another pair of tits, Helen thought idly, not caring about anything at all by then.

  At the corner of the bed she paused so that Tom, smiling broadly, could get yet another shot of that soaking wet place between her legs. She moved her feet apart and, out of the corner of her eye she saw the other photographer grin.  

  “More of that!” Tom encouraged as, idly she began to masturbate. She was scaldingly hot by then. As hot as the banks of different coloured lights as she pleasured herself without a worry or care.

  Then the woman stood up, turned and put one hand on her shoulder. Her touch felt exactly like an electric shock.  

  “Hello Helen” The woman said, smiling. “This is a surprise, isn’t it?”

  “You can say that again” Helen said.

  “Do you two know each other?” Tom asked incredulously.

  “Yeah!” Helen replied cuddling up against the woman lovingly “This is Emma, my boyfriend’s mum……!”

  © Aahlu. 21.07.10.