010 The Cat House

Story by ziusuadra on SoFurry

, , , ,

#5 of Sythkyllya 000-099 The Age Of Azatlan

Confused? Consult the readme at https://www.sofurry.com/view/729937


Save Point: The Cat House

Age Of Azatlan

I'm stuck visiting Cleo's Cat House, which is cleverly concealed at a location near the Azatlani waterfront, somewhere beneath a large towerblock. Amongst the curious nanoforge skyscrapers, vast towers of diamond and ceramic rather than the older glass and steel, there are all too many places that remain obscure simply by hiding out of the general view. But Cleo's is the best, and certainly the best camouflaged.

Because the waterfront is stepped downwards to the sea on a number of levels, it is easy to misplace a certain amount of space. The highest ground-floor point from which one can reach her marked territories is actually located just beyond the immediate entry-way of a moderately well known shopping mall, in the form of an innocuous-looking service elevator with metallic doors, placed just around the corner opposite the bathrooms (standard up-chevron and down-chevron separating them for the functionally illiterate). Employee-only signage for the lift, and the lack of an obvious destination, is sufficient to keep out the majority of the general population.

I wash my hands, splash water on my face and generally spruce myself up, then go over and select the uppermost of the two underlying levels with labelled buttons. This level is called the Most Excellent Delights Novelty Shop, and is located somewhere above the underlying Ranthuri's Lair nightclub. The name of the shop, and indeed of the owners themselves, is the end result of an obscure historical incident, in which several boatloads of people belonging to some uncertain Asian ethnicity washed up on the Azatlani shore, having been driven off-course into the wrong ocean entirely whilst fleeing unspecified unrest in their respective homelands.

Since all of this had occurred long before the recent political and technological developments that led to extensive trade restrictions between Azatlan and the rest of the world, the travellers had been allowed to stay and even welcomed, intermarrying eventually with the local population, although only to the very limited degree necessitated by cultural survival. The result was a small Asian enclave on the Azatlani waterfront, now revived and far more overbuilt than it once must have been.

The Most Excellent Delights is a fantastic example of the use of space for a purpose to which it was never intended, having originally been a supply corridor and utilities storage point for the vast convention space located a short distance off to the right, beneath the shopping mall. Many subsequent changes and modifications to the original floorplan later, the utilities and staff access found themselves located elsewhere, which left a large open corridor with attached rooms and elevator directly connecting several locations of significant interest. Although it's not large enough for general public access, it makes a convenient shortcut between all of the points in question and so is generally visited, the owners of the Most Excellent Delights having secured the area cheaply on a long-term lease after having applied a certain amount of persuasion to the general management.

Because of its origins, it is of course a very strangely shaped place of business, long and narrow, made even narrower by the addition of a slim purchase counter near the wall to the left. Potentially saleable small items labeled in strings of Asian ideographs are packed into and cover every surface, including the sales counter itself. Just next to where I have exited from the lift, a small staircase descends pointlessly several steps to cover a difference in floor levels, ending at nothing but a recessed storage closet. Between the counter and this stepdown is a side-branch of the main corridor, which goes about three or four feet before it hits a small room with a door. Attempts to make this space more friendly by removal of the original door, and its subsequent replacement with a door that is entirely made of carved glass, have been mostly unsuccessful.

Beyond the carved glass, the Most Excellent Delights offers an interesting sideline in the form of while-you-wait hairstyling provided by pretty, young, partly-Asian girls, or alternatively a highly competent cut-and-shave executed with deft assurance by a grumpy old white-haired Asian lady barber, who doesn't say much. There are magazines to read while-you-wait.

All of the main shop is taken up by hundreds of small bins and shelves and display panels, which offer up for purchase every conceivable kind of small, cheap to almost-worthless novelty item, gift, or knicknack which can be cheaply made or pressed from brightly colored synthetic plastics. The counter and adjacent areas offer common foodstuffs and drinks. But all these trinkets pale in comparison to the most important source of profit for the shop, which is the availability of adult consumables associated with the nearby operation of the Cat House. The more specialized gear can be found on-site, but here from behind the counter on can obtain all the usual standbys such as sheaths and dildos, synthetic jism for lubrication and penetration, lightweight whips and cords. Since none of these are to my interest today, no requests are placed.

Just out of interest I take a look down the corridor side and out into the convention space, where some sort of event is indeed taking place, complete with stalls and displays and products on offer. It seems fairly brisk and is certainly well-attended.

"How's business?" I ask the Asian girl who runs the counter, just for the sake of making small talk. "There must be lots of people who're attending the convention."

"We're doing okay," answers the Asian shopkeepress non-committally. "You wanna haircut? No-one scheduled for now. Very economic price."

"Nah, I'm here to visit Cleo's. Could you get the lift for me? The Ranthuri's Lair isn't really my style, if it's even still open at this hour of the morning."

She knows what I'm talking about because it's a common request, and obligingly uses the touch screen of the checkout counter to reset the lift controls for the next ride, setting it to a value it wouldn't normally reach. The doors open again and I have the usual length of time to get inside, before it sets off to its new destination (I have heard urban myth of an express mode for elevators subsequently linked to this place, but as far as I know none of it is true).

More of this affected exclusivity is found in the fact that, although it looks like a conventional cage, at the extra level the lift opens on the opposite side like a two-way cargo elevator, which is not the case for any of the usual levels. It's a nice touch and the back of the lift looks to be purely an aesthetic detail when not in use, allowing convenient deniability as required.

The lift passes the back rooms of the Ranthuri's Lair (and whatever else may be there) in stealthy silence, then reaches its destination. I turn, and step out into the Cat House.

The entrance room is a clever reinvention of classical decadence that has to be seen to be believed. Almost the entirety of the floorspace is taken up by a moderately large sunken swimming pool, tepid or slightly heated, based on the thin veil of humidity that ever so slightly clouds the view across the room. Around the very edges of the pool to either side, narrow marble walkways extend, not level but rather broken up into various levels of stepped platforms, designed to give the effect of filling up the maximum amount of space. You can almost see the rows of non-existent columns in the distance, temple of the waters or something like that, as projected onto the clean spaces of the marble walls.

The stairs go down to either side of the lift door, then after a short poolside interval, rise again to form ramparted colonnades at the far ends of the room. The main pool continues underneath them outward to the walls, producing conveniently secluded niches in which for Cleo's girls to disport themselves. Opposite the door, however, the poolside walkway occupies several levels, each of which forms an aqueduct of its own, with a v-shaped notch in their respective centres allowing a continuous flow of recirculated and filtered water to spill down through each of them and thence eventually into the pool, in much the same manner as a small waterfall.

It is along the wider ledges of the waterfall that Cleo's girls are currently to be found, mostly unclothed except for occasional swimwear, any water-resistant decorations and a piercing or two. The slight warmth of the pool probably makes this not too-uncomfortable, and in Cleo's absence they are being kept in line by their training mistress, who has two of them practicing on one another. Spirits are high and the remainder are reading books and magazines, or conversing amongst themselves (several are students, paying for all manner of advanced philosophic or scientific study by getting laid on an official basis, rather than just going at it freestyle). The two undergoing training seem to be reasonably turned-on by today's exploration and it appears likely that they work as a team on a regular basis. It's always possible that one of them is a female client who's asked to be trained like she was a whore.

Since Cleo herself is not currently present, I hasten to skirt around the edges of the pool, up and down and along the side stairs, to reach the girls' display area and make my choice of slut from their leather-brindled training mistress. In a strange contrast to the carefully designed, elegant decadence of the rest of the room, the girls have used some sort of tacky adhesive to fix pictures and photographs to the outermost corner of the marbled wall, and also inside the corner where the steps rise highest and they are concealed by the railings.

All are buckled and curled from the unending humidity and steam, but the pictures themselves range from the girls proudly involved in the most extreme imaginable sex acts, to quick snapshots of friends and family. One picture, which seems to be the oldest and has a special place of its own, attracts my attention as it always does, reproduced on thick white cartridge paper, a sketch of Cleo in green ink and gold pen with shadows in calligraphic black, signed Mitzi.

Taking the last step, I find myself right up close with an assortment of stunning, youthful Asian whores like something out of a stained dream. They're all fine young and firm, courtesy of applied transgenics and body sculpting, with added extras far beyond the reduction in years. There are narrow waists trimmed by subdermal corsetry, high huge natural breasts of unnatural perkiness, and thick juicy pussy lips with trademarked labial folds. Cleo specializes in modified girls, but these are just the more average examples for the general public. In their own rooms out the back are the individual exotics, handsome hermaphroditic jackal-girls with enormous cocks and an unlimited supply of condoms, hot-eyed yiff-vixens with anti-gravity tits, and elegant scaled ladies who will whip you to climax whilst delicately drinking a cup of green tea with their other hand.

Original intentions regaining clarity, I single out Ysandra, my perennial lay and cash-negotiable girlfriend, known whore and sometimes exotic dancer. Our association is not easily defined, but she's excellent company in bed, moves in an interesting circle of friends, and not too demanding when we meet in other circumstances. Sometimes she drops by to get stoned, and provides a sort of affection different to the kind she gives at work. Good manners will get you everywhere.

"Hey Ysandra," I suggest. "I would absolutely love to fuck you right now, so you're definitely doing something right. But Cleo hasn't come back yet and it's getting early. Sneak out with me after and we can spend a couple of hours having lunch and shopping. There's enough spare girls here to handle an invasion of horny stallions."

The other girls look on, grinning slightly, because 'leaving early' is a time-honored game that Cleo allows them to get away with intermittently, as long as it doesn't interfere with business. The one condition is that she must not actually catch them at it, or she'd have to hold them responsible for their actions. Out of sight is thoughtful-minded, and she can always readily forgive what she can do nothing about.

"They can totally cover for you. Come on, you can always make up the hours later when there are more customers. You know Cleo'll let you get away with it."

Of course, if she does get caught, employee discipline has an entirely different meaning here. The girl who causes the most trouble gets to be whipping bitch the next time some bondage is called for, and make an appropriate show of repentance whilst being restrained with black leather. This may or may not be desirable, depending on the circumstances and how much the girl likes it.

Ysandra takes me by the hand and leads me off toward her room. The whores whistle and cheer her decision, catcalling in the most discrete possible manner.