KC Harding
09-11-2019, 04:03 AM
Hi, if people are interested I'll post The Perverted Double Life of Barnaby Simpson here in various installments. It's a story about a shy bookstore owner who comes across a book on astral projection. He doesn't believe in it at first, but gives it a try and all of a sudden finds himself in a strange world where women are powerful and in charge. This is the first chapter. Please be patient. I'm a girl and I like a slow, but good build-up. It makes the kinky scenes all the better imo.
THE PERVERTED DOUBLE LIFE OF BARNABY SIMPSON - SLAVE MARKET - Chapter 1
In a small town in England, not far from Ipswich, Barry Simpson was staring out the window of his bookshop. The market square was deserted on this rainy day in November. He’d had three customers so far. Mrs. Porter had been the first one. She came by in the morning to see if her knitting book had arrived. It hadn’t of course, because his supplier needed to order it in America. He had told her so two days ago, but still she had come to see for herself. Just before noon a man he didn’t know had bought a book about the history of Suffolk. It was written by a friend of Barry’s dad and they’d had a nice chat about that. It was a welcome break in an otherwise long and boring morning. Just after lunchtime, as the rain was pouring down, Jane Robinson hurried across the square with a big bag in her hand. She and her husband owned a little bistro on the quayside. Barry liked Jane a lot. They were the same age and had been in school together. A month ago Jane’s mother had passed away. She was known across town as ‘that hippie woman’ because of her extravagant clothes and tendency to read people’s palms whether they wanted to or not. The big bag Jane brought along was packed with books that used to belong to her mother. She was hoping Barry would take them off her hands. Together they went through them. Mostly they were spiritual books about chakras, healing stones, astrology and yoga. Although he couldn’t really afford it, Barry bought them all. He even let Jane talk him into paying her more for the books than they were really worth. She had a nice smile though, so he didn’t feel too bad about it.
After Jane had left he wrote the book titles down in his notebook. A real, old-fashioned notebook, not a computer. Upstairs he did have a laptop, but here in the shop everything was done the old way. When he was finished with the notebook he took a pencil and wrote down the prices in the top right corner of the first page.
Barry Simpson was a meticulous man. He knew there were people in town who whispered that he was eccentric or possibly even slightly autistic. Perhaps they were right, but he couldn’t change who he was, so he didn’t worry about it too much. What truly mattered was that he felt at home in this town. He was born and raised here and had been part of its community all his life. Londoners, who were moving here nowadays, had to make an effort to make friends, something which Barry would have hated. Fortunately he was in a position that he could stay to himself and just have a brief chat about the weather or the latest rugby results and still have the feeling he belonged.
At thirty-five, Barry Simpson was still single. Years ago, when he went to university in Ipswich to study Accounting and Financial Management, he had dated a girl. Her name was Pamela and she was an exchange student from Vermont, America. They had kissed a few times and had even gone to second base, as Pamela called it. For Barry the whole ordeal had been a deeply confusing experience. Not unpleasant but somehow very messy. The order in his mind, to which he was so attached, had shaken on its foundation and the fact that he was incredibly shy by nature didn’t help him. At some point he had seriously considered not going to university anymore, just to avoid Pamela. However, she had suddenly gone back to America when her mother got sick and Barry had sighed with relief, as bad as that sounded of course.
After graduation he had gone to work in Harold Chapman’s accountancy office here in town. Mister Chapman was their neighbor and he was happy to give Barry a job. He worked there for several years, but his heart was never in it. When his uncle Steve passed away and left him the bookshop and the old, rundown apartment above it, it had felt like a true gift from heaven to Barry. He had decided to give it a go with the shop and resigned from the accountancy the day after uncle Steve’s will was read. This was almost ten years ago and looking back now he couldn’t imagine doing anything else. Some changes had been made of course. He had refurbished the apartment and when the town began to transform itself from a sleepy seaside town to a place that was popular with Londoners, Barry made some changes in the shop too. He began to sell souvenirs and postcards and a year later he got a license to serve coffee. He had created a small corner by the window where people could sit and read while having a coffee and a biscuit. On sunny days he put out a couple of tables too. All of this combined generated a modest income. Money wasn’t that important to him though. More than money he valued his freedom and independence. When he still worked for Mister Chapman the days were long and his time was spent on nothing but numbers. Now that he was his own boss he could do what he liked most, which was read as many books as he could. Books were Barry’s true love. Even as a child he had read an average of three books a week, according to his parents. While the other children played football Barry was reading. Later, when he was a teenager, it was the same pattern. The other boys went out in the weekend to chase girls, but Barry stayed home and read Shakespeare. Sometimes his mom would have to push him out the door, almost literally, so he would get fresh air and some color on his cheeks. Even his parents wanted him to go to the pub, but the moment Barry was outside he looked for a bench where he could sit and read.
Today though he was feeling restless. Perhaps the weather had something to do with it too, but mostly it was because he hadn’t had a good book all week. Although he had thousands of them right here in the shop, nothing he took from the shelves could pique his curiosity. Relatively new books, written by young writers, were often too trendy for his taste. He didn’t like their style and had trouble to relate to the topics they wrote about. He had decided to read one of the classics then, even if it was for the second or even third time. Yesterday he gave Moby Dick a try, the day before he read a good part of Wuthering Heights, but in the end he just couldn’t get into either of them. This morning he had thought about The Pastures of Heaven by John Steinbeck, but decided to go with Heart of Darkness instead. He had read it before of course, but the bad weather kind of put him in the mood for Colonel Kurtz’s dark adventures in Africa. He kept having trouble with his concentration though. Normally he needed a minute or less to get into a story, but today was different.
After putting the hippie woman’s books on the appropriate shelves he sat down in the comfortable chair by the window. He opened Heart of Darkness for the twentieth time today and began to read. After a minute or two he stopped though and took off his glasses. As he polished them with the hem of his jumper he looked out the window and saw a couple of tourists hurrying across the square. What were they doing here on a day like this? The weather seemed to be getting even worse. It kept raining and the wind was blowing harder and harder. It was unlikely he would get more customers today. Should he just call it a day, he wondered. All it would take was turn around the sign on the door and go upstairs to the apartment. What would he do there though? A sound from the back of the shop broke his reverie. Martin, the twelve year old cat he had also inherited from uncle Steve, was coming down the stairs. He was probably hungry or perhaps bored as well. Barry stood up and walked over to the till where he kept some cat treats in a drawer. Martin purred and began to circle around his legs, but as soon as he got what he wanted he forgot all about his owner.
Barry opened the till, that was at least fifty years old. He remembered playing with it when he was a child and visited his uncle Steve here. Who could have thought that he would become the owner of the shop some day? Because he had nothing better to do he took out the bills and counted them. Then he counted the coins too. Today he had spent more than that he had earned. He had sold one books on which he made a profit of five pounds, but he had given Jane Robinson thirty pounds for her mother’s books. Hopefully he would be able to sell them. Perhaps he could though because nowadays people were very much into yoga, tarot and nonsense like that. Much later Barry would think back to this moment and about the coincidence that he was just thinking these thoughts, dismissing spiritual trends, when his eye fell on a little book that had fallen in the crack between the till and the table next to it. He picked it up and looked at the cover. ‘Techniques for Astral Projection’ the book was called. He had never heard of astral projection, but the cover design told him it had something to do with spiritual delusions. The drawing on the cover portrayed a man laying on a bed, with a sort of ghost hovering above him. The two were connected by a chord that was attached to the solar plexus. The book must have slipped out of the stack that Jane Robinson had placed on the table. He checked if he had already registered and priced it, but saw that he hadn’t. He opened it then, more out of boredom than real curiosity, and read the first page. The writer, an American woman, claimed that it was possible to travel out of your body. She mentioned words like ‘energy body’ and ‘astral world’, a place that was as real as the world of everyday life. Barry snorted in derision. Nevertheless a part of him was intrigued now, so he took the book back to his chair. The writer claimed there were techniques that made it possible to visit these worlds, techniques she was going to describe in this book. Many people, she wrote, had already mastered them and were traveling out of their bodies every night. She continued with a theoretical chapter, in which she talked about dream states, brainwaves and her theory that ‘reality was perhaps not as solid as it seemed’. Barry looked up and stared out the window for the umpteenth time today, thinking what to make of the author’s theories. Martin, in the meantime, jumped on his lap and made himself comfortable. It was already getting dark and the wind was howling now, blowing the rain against the storefront window. Barry scratched the cat behind his ears and continued to read.
The techniques to accomplish out of body travel, the author claimed, were easy to learn. Everybody could do it, all you needed was practice. In the following chapter she explained how to do it. Close your eyes and relax all the muscles in your body. Let yourself sink in a deep trance state by imagining you’re walking down a staircase or going down and down in an elevator. Whatever you prefer, she wrote, as long as you get this sinking feeling. Barry closed his eyes and imagined it. He hadn’t done the first part of the exercises, the relaxation of his physical body, but well, he just wanted to see if he could possibly imagine that this stuff was real. First he thought of himself walking down a staircase, but that didn’t work. He imagined the elevator then. Same result. He opened his eyes and read the page again. ‘As long as you get this sinking feeling.’ Again he closed his eyes and imagined that, the feeling that his body was sinking down, falling even. That did work for some reason, because within seconds it was as if he had fallen into a wormhole. He felt himself being sucked into it and falling deeper and deeper. It was a very pleasant sensation too, as if he had opened a door in his subconscious mind and stepped into a new world. Not the world this author was talking about, because all he saw in his mind’s eye were colors that swirled and moved. Nothing substantial, but the sensation was there. He opened his eyes again and took a deep breathe. Staring out at the dark square he wondered what it meant that he could imagine this so easily. Would it be like that with the other exercises too? He felt like trying it out now. He looked at the cover of the book, still wondering what this was about and made a decision. Putting the cat back on the floor he walked over to the door and turned around the sign that now said his shop was closed. Then he went upstairs to the apartment, to his cosy living room where a comfortable chair stood by the wood stove. First he made tea and while the water was heating up, he built a fire. Ten minutes later, when the wood was burning and a nice heat started to come from the stove, he took a sip from his tea and opened the strange book again.
TO BE CONTINUED...
Thanks for reading.
Kim
THE PERVERTED DOUBLE LIFE OF BARNABY SIMPSON - SLAVE MARKET - Chapter 1
In a small town in England, not far from Ipswich, Barry Simpson was staring out the window of his bookshop. The market square was deserted on this rainy day in November. He’d had three customers so far. Mrs. Porter had been the first one. She came by in the morning to see if her knitting book had arrived. It hadn’t of course, because his supplier needed to order it in America. He had told her so two days ago, but still she had come to see for herself. Just before noon a man he didn’t know had bought a book about the history of Suffolk. It was written by a friend of Barry’s dad and they’d had a nice chat about that. It was a welcome break in an otherwise long and boring morning. Just after lunchtime, as the rain was pouring down, Jane Robinson hurried across the square with a big bag in her hand. She and her husband owned a little bistro on the quayside. Barry liked Jane a lot. They were the same age and had been in school together. A month ago Jane’s mother had passed away. She was known across town as ‘that hippie woman’ because of her extravagant clothes and tendency to read people’s palms whether they wanted to or not. The big bag Jane brought along was packed with books that used to belong to her mother. She was hoping Barry would take them off her hands. Together they went through them. Mostly they were spiritual books about chakras, healing stones, astrology and yoga. Although he couldn’t really afford it, Barry bought them all. He even let Jane talk him into paying her more for the books than they were really worth. She had a nice smile though, so he didn’t feel too bad about it.
After Jane had left he wrote the book titles down in his notebook. A real, old-fashioned notebook, not a computer. Upstairs he did have a laptop, but here in the shop everything was done the old way. When he was finished with the notebook he took a pencil and wrote down the prices in the top right corner of the first page.
Barry Simpson was a meticulous man. He knew there were people in town who whispered that he was eccentric or possibly even slightly autistic. Perhaps they were right, but he couldn’t change who he was, so he didn’t worry about it too much. What truly mattered was that he felt at home in this town. He was born and raised here and had been part of its community all his life. Londoners, who were moving here nowadays, had to make an effort to make friends, something which Barry would have hated. Fortunately he was in a position that he could stay to himself and just have a brief chat about the weather or the latest rugby results and still have the feeling he belonged.
At thirty-five, Barry Simpson was still single. Years ago, when he went to university in Ipswich to study Accounting and Financial Management, he had dated a girl. Her name was Pamela and she was an exchange student from Vermont, America. They had kissed a few times and had even gone to second base, as Pamela called it. For Barry the whole ordeal had been a deeply confusing experience. Not unpleasant but somehow very messy. The order in his mind, to which he was so attached, had shaken on its foundation and the fact that he was incredibly shy by nature didn’t help him. At some point he had seriously considered not going to university anymore, just to avoid Pamela. However, she had suddenly gone back to America when her mother got sick and Barry had sighed with relief, as bad as that sounded of course.
After graduation he had gone to work in Harold Chapman’s accountancy office here in town. Mister Chapman was their neighbor and he was happy to give Barry a job. He worked there for several years, but his heart was never in it. When his uncle Steve passed away and left him the bookshop and the old, rundown apartment above it, it had felt like a true gift from heaven to Barry. He had decided to give it a go with the shop and resigned from the accountancy the day after uncle Steve’s will was read. This was almost ten years ago and looking back now he couldn’t imagine doing anything else. Some changes had been made of course. He had refurbished the apartment and when the town began to transform itself from a sleepy seaside town to a place that was popular with Londoners, Barry made some changes in the shop too. He began to sell souvenirs and postcards and a year later he got a license to serve coffee. He had created a small corner by the window where people could sit and read while having a coffee and a biscuit. On sunny days he put out a couple of tables too. All of this combined generated a modest income. Money wasn’t that important to him though. More than money he valued his freedom and independence. When he still worked for Mister Chapman the days were long and his time was spent on nothing but numbers. Now that he was his own boss he could do what he liked most, which was read as many books as he could. Books were Barry’s true love. Even as a child he had read an average of three books a week, according to his parents. While the other children played football Barry was reading. Later, when he was a teenager, it was the same pattern. The other boys went out in the weekend to chase girls, but Barry stayed home and read Shakespeare. Sometimes his mom would have to push him out the door, almost literally, so he would get fresh air and some color on his cheeks. Even his parents wanted him to go to the pub, but the moment Barry was outside he looked for a bench where he could sit and read.
Today though he was feeling restless. Perhaps the weather had something to do with it too, but mostly it was because he hadn’t had a good book all week. Although he had thousands of them right here in the shop, nothing he took from the shelves could pique his curiosity. Relatively new books, written by young writers, were often too trendy for his taste. He didn’t like their style and had trouble to relate to the topics they wrote about. He had decided to read one of the classics then, even if it was for the second or even third time. Yesterday he gave Moby Dick a try, the day before he read a good part of Wuthering Heights, but in the end he just couldn’t get into either of them. This morning he had thought about The Pastures of Heaven by John Steinbeck, but decided to go with Heart of Darkness instead. He had read it before of course, but the bad weather kind of put him in the mood for Colonel Kurtz’s dark adventures in Africa. He kept having trouble with his concentration though. Normally he needed a minute or less to get into a story, but today was different.
After putting the hippie woman’s books on the appropriate shelves he sat down in the comfortable chair by the window. He opened Heart of Darkness for the twentieth time today and began to read. After a minute or two he stopped though and took off his glasses. As he polished them with the hem of his jumper he looked out the window and saw a couple of tourists hurrying across the square. What were they doing here on a day like this? The weather seemed to be getting even worse. It kept raining and the wind was blowing harder and harder. It was unlikely he would get more customers today. Should he just call it a day, he wondered. All it would take was turn around the sign on the door and go upstairs to the apartment. What would he do there though? A sound from the back of the shop broke his reverie. Martin, the twelve year old cat he had also inherited from uncle Steve, was coming down the stairs. He was probably hungry or perhaps bored as well. Barry stood up and walked over to the till where he kept some cat treats in a drawer. Martin purred and began to circle around his legs, but as soon as he got what he wanted he forgot all about his owner.
Barry opened the till, that was at least fifty years old. He remembered playing with it when he was a child and visited his uncle Steve here. Who could have thought that he would become the owner of the shop some day? Because he had nothing better to do he took out the bills and counted them. Then he counted the coins too. Today he had spent more than that he had earned. He had sold one books on which he made a profit of five pounds, but he had given Jane Robinson thirty pounds for her mother’s books. Hopefully he would be able to sell them. Perhaps he could though because nowadays people were very much into yoga, tarot and nonsense like that. Much later Barry would think back to this moment and about the coincidence that he was just thinking these thoughts, dismissing spiritual trends, when his eye fell on a little book that had fallen in the crack between the till and the table next to it. He picked it up and looked at the cover. ‘Techniques for Astral Projection’ the book was called. He had never heard of astral projection, but the cover design told him it had something to do with spiritual delusions. The drawing on the cover portrayed a man laying on a bed, with a sort of ghost hovering above him. The two were connected by a chord that was attached to the solar plexus. The book must have slipped out of the stack that Jane Robinson had placed on the table. He checked if he had already registered and priced it, but saw that he hadn’t. He opened it then, more out of boredom than real curiosity, and read the first page. The writer, an American woman, claimed that it was possible to travel out of your body. She mentioned words like ‘energy body’ and ‘astral world’, a place that was as real as the world of everyday life. Barry snorted in derision. Nevertheless a part of him was intrigued now, so he took the book back to his chair. The writer claimed there were techniques that made it possible to visit these worlds, techniques she was going to describe in this book. Many people, she wrote, had already mastered them and were traveling out of their bodies every night. She continued with a theoretical chapter, in which she talked about dream states, brainwaves and her theory that ‘reality was perhaps not as solid as it seemed’. Barry looked up and stared out the window for the umpteenth time today, thinking what to make of the author’s theories. Martin, in the meantime, jumped on his lap and made himself comfortable. It was already getting dark and the wind was howling now, blowing the rain against the storefront window. Barry scratched the cat behind his ears and continued to read.
The techniques to accomplish out of body travel, the author claimed, were easy to learn. Everybody could do it, all you needed was practice. In the following chapter she explained how to do it. Close your eyes and relax all the muscles in your body. Let yourself sink in a deep trance state by imagining you’re walking down a staircase or going down and down in an elevator. Whatever you prefer, she wrote, as long as you get this sinking feeling. Barry closed his eyes and imagined it. He hadn’t done the first part of the exercises, the relaxation of his physical body, but well, he just wanted to see if he could possibly imagine that this stuff was real. First he thought of himself walking down a staircase, but that didn’t work. He imagined the elevator then. Same result. He opened his eyes and read the page again. ‘As long as you get this sinking feeling.’ Again he closed his eyes and imagined that, the feeling that his body was sinking down, falling even. That did work for some reason, because within seconds it was as if he had fallen into a wormhole. He felt himself being sucked into it and falling deeper and deeper. It was a very pleasant sensation too, as if he had opened a door in his subconscious mind and stepped into a new world. Not the world this author was talking about, because all he saw in his mind’s eye were colors that swirled and moved. Nothing substantial, but the sensation was there. He opened his eyes again and took a deep breathe. Staring out at the dark square he wondered what it meant that he could imagine this so easily. Would it be like that with the other exercises too? He felt like trying it out now. He looked at the cover of the book, still wondering what this was about and made a decision. Putting the cat back on the floor he walked over to the door and turned around the sign that now said his shop was closed. Then he went upstairs to the apartment, to his cosy living room where a comfortable chair stood by the wood stove. First he made tea and while the water was heating up, he built a fire. Ten minutes later, when the wood was burning and a nice heat started to come from the stove, he took a sip from his tea and opened the strange book again.
TO BE CONTINUED...
Thanks for reading.
Kim