Authors: Frances Gaines Bennett
Her aversion was so great it shocked her into rationality. Slowly she lifted her head, testing the chains’ limits. She discovered that she could kneel and it was reasonably comfortable. Once again, she proceeded through the four steps … and this time each line was straight and delicate.
When Steve stepped soundlessly through the door on crepe-soled nurse’s shoes, she was staring at her reflection. He unlocked the shackles and helped her dress. When Michael returned she was seated at the table, her hands in her lap.
Before he sat, he loomed over her. She so wanted to escape, to jump to her feet and run, as his long, beautiful fingers moved toward her chin. Yet not a hair on her head wavered – at least she’d learned this lesson perfectly – when his rigid fingers dug into her jaw, tilting her face upwards. Michael examined her face minutely and she held her breath, waiting for the sword to fall, slicing her open.
Instead, his eyes brightened and his lips curved upward into a celestial smile. “Excellent,” he intoned … and she filled with warmth, her fears gone, replaced by adoration. He sat, without abandoning the radiant smile. “I’m pleased that you’ve made some,” the judgmental emphasis was clear, “progress.”
His face became serious, intense but not frightening. She looked up at him, controlling any trace of her growing curiosity. He reached across the table and lifted her hand. His heat poured through her limbs to her heart, soothing her fears, soothing her pain. Stunned, she watched him lift the hand to his lips, felt his full lips touch her palm. With love? Could it be?
He gazed into her eyes and spoke to her. His words were full and rich with sound and meaning, and with something she’d not heard before. Sorrow? Remorse? “Do you see that I’ve done this all for you? Do you understand how perfect you can be, how much I want you to fulfil your potential,” he paused, and the silence seemed to her interminable, “how much I love you?”
Unshed tears hung in her enraptured eyes. Her heart melted into a spreading pool of ardour. She loved him so much, so wanted to please him. She swore to herself she would try harder. Then he would be happy with her and her life would be wonderful.
He sat back and looked at his classical blue-faced watch. “Well, I guess it’s too late for dinner.”
One solitary tear dropped unheeded to the lace tablecloth. Unaccountably her gaze shifted toward the armoire, perhaps because its door had not been properly closed – an unusual and no doubt punishable offence. Through an opening of several inches her clothing was visible. Suddenly she realized what was different. The wedding gown was no longer there.
“It’s not that bad,” that’s what Mei continually told herself. Most of the time she simply lay curled in what she knew to be a small cage – she’d explored all around herself with her hands, which were bound together and loosely attached to the bottom bars – in a dank, darkened room. At first she’d been unable to get comfortable on the hard, uneven bars. But after many days without movement the aches and stiffness in her limbs had numbed to gruelling nothingness.
The elegant voice had warned her she would die if she removed the hood. Mei spent many hours thinking about it. But every time her fingers touched the fabric edge fear stopped her. What if someone came in while it was off? Or if she replaced it incorrectly? Did she want to die? And after awhile, she was no longer capable of caring.
Someone who did not speak extracted her to be cleaned immediately prior to the large man’s – she knew he was a man though he seemed like a hideous beast – visits. Few words were ever spoken to her. Once, when she was first taken, she could no longer remember how long ago, with her bladder full to bursting, she’d begged the elegant voice, “Please, may I go to the bathroom?”
The voice had replied only one word, “Go.”
Mei felt below her and realized the cage sat on a large drain. No water or paper was ever given her but at least she could make her waste drain away. Twice a day a metal plate of food and a water bottle were put into the cage. She had to lower her head to her hands to get the food into her mouth. She tried not to think about her smell, her filth. And most of all she tried not to recognize the thought always in the back of her mind, “What will happen to me?”
The heavy door opened and a ray of light cut through the blackness. Mei heard the bars slide up. “Out,” the voice said.
She recognized the room by its subtle exotic smell. This time, though, she was not chained to the bed. Her hands were unshackled and she was pushed through a door. To her amazement, and also apprehension, the voice said, “You may remove the hood. Wash yourself and return to the room. Seat yourself on the bed and wait. If you do otherwise you will be killed.” The door closed and the voice was gone.
Mei twisted her arms and swung them limply side to side. Sensation returned in an intense pins and needles tingling so unpleasant tears filled her eyes. She was afraid to take the time to enjoy the unrestricted movement. With awful, anguished slowness, her hands lifted to the black fabric. The hood now seemed part of her. She’d become accustomed to the perpetual dim vagueness like someone newly blind. Truly she’d wondered if they’d ever allow her to see again. Her fingers slipped underneath the stretchy fabric and, weak from long restraint, she pulled.
At first even the muted light cut into her eyes like knives, blinding her. Gradually she was able to see. Joy rushed into her along with vision … until frightful questions intermingled into the flood. Why the change? Mei could not imagine it was good. Dread filled her. Her shoulders slumped and once again horrible lassitude consumed her.
Quickly though, hopelessness was cut apart by terror. She’d been told to wash and she must obey. Her eyes widened at the opulent bath, every surface and wall of marble the colour of pale honey. A glass shower big enough for six people was fitted with gold edges and hardware and filled with many fancy bottles, containers and scented soaps. Hesitantly she stretched out her dirty hand – shamefully she avoided acknowledging the dark streaks of dirt, old food and … well, she wouldn’t think of that – opened the glass-sheeted door and stepped in.
The beat of hot water against her hair and skin, the wonderful, fragrant, soapy washing away, was, she thought, as close to heaven as she’d ever been. As many times as she dared, all the while worrying about her instructions, she soaped her body and rinsed. Finally, reluctantly she stepped from the shower, dried herself with one of the thick, tawny towels and made her way to the bed.
Emotions overwhelmed her senses as she sat primly between the handles that had held her imprisoned and – she pushed away the painful, degrading memories – exposed. This room, the room where she’d been repeatedly, hideously violated, was opulent as the bath. The walls were papered with Chinese scenes as richly coloured and patterned as tapestries. The furniture was black, ornately carved and gilded. Everything was draped with black and deep red silk. Incense and the perfume of magnificently arranged flowers drifted in subtle air currents. Against her will, images of her abuse played across her mind accompanied by irrevocable fear about what awaited her.
The door handle’s quiet turn jolted her like an electric shock, tensing every muscle. She gasped. Into the room walked the most beautiful man she’d ever seen, a lovely enigmatic smile lifting his full lips. With amazing grace he approached and lifted her chin with courtly fingers. Meekly she stared up into his large luminous black eyes.
“Yes,” he said, his angelic gaze sweeping her face and flicking lower to her naked breasts, “you are a pretty little thing.” His voice was deep, lush and aristocratic, but at his next words her half-formed smile froze then shattered into a million pieces, taking with it her feeble hopes. “My European buyer should find you quite enjoyable.” His rosy lips curved downward and the flawless eyes crystallized to gleaming obsidian. Effortlessly, with only a touch of fingertips, he pushed her backwards onto the bed. “Now let’s look at you.” His voice became steel in her ears. “Spread.”
It was not even a second, she knew it. That was the length of her hesitation. In a dream, or so it seemed, she saw his finger move toward her thigh and then there was pain greater than she’d ever experienced. Her wail rose into the air before she could bite it back into silence. “Quiet. Spread.” The razor-sharp voice was no louder, no more insistent but her legs jerked apart.
She couldn’t help herself, despite her previous abuse she quivered when he touched her … there. Again the terrible tone. “I do not want to hurt you but if do not obey me, if you do not stay perfectly still when I touch you, I will, unfortunately, be forced to do so.”
Now she lay still. To do so was effortless because all hope, all will had deserted her. Thoroughly, exhaustively he examined her. First her front-side. With obvious absorption so focused it seemed to her clinical, or perhaps like a businessman pricing a commodity, he touched, probed, spread her vaginal tissues. By relentless, painful example she’d learned not to resist. Over the weeks her humiliation had been maimed almost to deadness. Her primary emotion was panic so intense she thought her ribcage would burst apart. She wanted to scream, “Why? What is going to happen to me?” but knew she couldn’t possibly.
Finally he lifted. “Well,” he said softly, clearly to himself, “some damage but acceptable.” He bent again and rolled her like an inert log onto her belly, availing himself of her backside. She buried her face into the silk and, with anguish, prepared as best she could for his onslaught – but it didn’t come. Again he probed, slipping first one then two fingers inside her anus and firmly spreading. After far too many minutes she heard the soft displeased click of his tongue and his almost plaintive sigh.
For a moment her rigid muscles relaxed. He rolled her onto her back, gripping her hair as if to rip it from her head and pulling her to a sitting position. “Now you will service me, little whore.” The words – the name – struck her like hard slaps. He unzipped his trousers and pointed. Brilliant, shameful red rose into her cheeks.
She was too terrified to hesitate yet had no idea what he wanted her to do. Again his fingers moved toward her. She quailed, shrinking into herself. This time, though, he grabbed her hand and pressed it against his groin. The soft fabric of his black trousers and undergarment – silk, she realized – startled her. “Suck it,” he said. “Let’s see what you can do.”
The bulge under her hand seemed to grow larger as she tried to remove it from its covering. After some interminable, excruciating seconds – or minutes? – his penis lay across her hand. She’d never seen one before. The thought that her horrible familiarity did not include vision dizzied her. “Suck it,” he repeated, chilling her to the marrow.
Distaste that she tried desperately not to show surged through her as she awkwardly took his flesh into her mouth. It tasted mildly of sweet soap. “No teeth,” his tone was threatening. “In and out,” again he gripped her hair, “like this,” and forced her head backwards and forwards. His penis was instantly hard as a rock and so big it choked her. She gagged and might have vomited if her stomach hadn’t been empty. Tears streamed down her cheeks and onto her breasts. He laughed melodiously and pulled her head against him. Then the pounding she’d experienced elsewhere was in her mouth. She heard him moan and her mouth was filled with thick goo that coated her throat, suffocating her, before it ran out between her lips.
A soft knock sounded and the door opened. A man dressed in a grey suit with a headdress she’d seen in pictures of Arabs entered. He held a syringe. The beautiful man nodded toward her. As the other man approached, his face emotionless, fear rushed through her. She tried to curl into a ball, to hide herself from him but his steps never paused, never abated. Then the needle penetrated her thigh.
Apprehension gripped her as Karen heard the drop bolt’s heavy tumblers clack. For what seemed an eternity but, she realized, was probably only a few seconds, there was only silence. She sat perched on the bed’s high edge with back forced rigidly straight and knees clamped primly together, dressed in the pale dress he’d told her to wear. Compelling herself to control the breaths conscripted by the choking corset, she stared at the door and willed it to stay shut.
With dismay, she heard the key make its inevitable progress in the lock. Another short pause and the door handle turned. Michael stepped into the room, cool appraisal on his handsome face, and her already chilled blood ran like ice in her veins.
She didn’t understand why she he scared her so, like so much that was incomprehensible since he’d taken her to
Yet at this moment every one of her instincts – instincts she’d never previously needed in the bond of her parents’ care – made her fear him. Her empty stomach churned with it, almost to the point of nausea.
He held the door open to allow a second man to enter then, as she now knew to be his custom, locked it behind him. Though average in build, the other man was dwarfed by Michael’s dramatic height and persona. He was dressed entirely in mysterious black, in soft black trousers and dress shirt, but had a pleasant, unassuming face. He carried a small black leather satchel in one hand and a large, rounded case, like an extra large bowling bag, she thought, effortlessly in the other by its luggage-like handle. The unbearably sweet memory of hanging out with her friends in her town’s small bowling alley cut though her like a cleaver.
Michael leaned tenderly over her. His authoritative voice swirled balefully in her brain. “It’s time to make you well.”
She peered up at him, stupefied, and at the softly smiling man beyond. Michael straightened to his full forbidding height and turned slightly. “This is Mr. Smith. He is going to make it easier for you to fulfil your objectives.” Michael smiled and, as always, her emotions surged and she wanted to please him. Incomprehensibly, she heard his words, “I think you’ll like him.”
But then, as was inevitable, his beautiful mouth turned downward. “You are to do exactly,” he repeated the word with autocratic emphasis, “exactly as he tells you.” Michael cordially shook the man’s hand, “I’ll leave you to it,” and strode toward the door. She heard the lock turn and turn again then the drop bolt’s metallic clank as Mr. Smith moved quietly toward her.
Her impulse was to panic like a cornered animal. But as he closed the small distance she sensed her muscles and even her spirit relax. It was something about him. She seemed safer than any time since she’d left her parents’ house.
He took her thin fingers in his large, strong hands and she felt their warmth move into her, penetrating even her bones. She looked up into the shimmering depths of his grey eyes and suddenly she realized how tired she was. All she wanted was to sit on his lap like a small child and go to sleep – forever.
His calm voice was soporific but his words, when they finally adhered to her attention, shocked her to her core. “Have you thought about what you’ve done to bring yourself here? What is it you desire?” His eyes were firm but kind. “If you understand yourself it will be easier for you.”
His words plunged her into paroxysms of self-doubt. She remembered the Christmas party. Had her desire for wealth and refinement, for Michael, been so overpowering she’d influenced her fate and his actions? Her husband, reluctantly she thought the word, was doing this all for her. He’d told her so many times. Could all this be her fault and … did she desire his torture?
She was aware how meticulously Mr. Smith observed her. In a trance, she saw his lips begin to move again. “I know this has all been uncomfortable,” the words struck her like an ironic slap before they transformed in her mind, transformed to truth, “but you must understand – don’t you?” She nodded dumbly, anticipating his words, “that he is doing this all for you. He sees perfect beauty in you and is doing everything in his power to make it real.”
He gently squeezed her hands. “You want it to become real, don’t you? You want to fulfil your wonderful potential?” His words carried a languorous, drug-like peace that continued from his warm hands through her limbs to her chest. She smiled timidly up at him. He gently released her fingers and straightened definitively, giving her right hand a paternal pat. “Good. We’re ready to begin. Please remove your clothes.”
She stared horrified at him, snapped instantly back from the warmth to her perpetual chill of anxiety. He simply waited, dispassionately observing her until slowly, with quivering fingers, she moved to comply.
His eyes never left her as she bent to remove her high heeled pumps, demurely lifted her skirt and unhooked her stockings front and back from the garters, then reached behind and struggled to lower the taut zipper. She looked at him plaintively, but when his gaze didn’t waiver she rose slowly to her feet, dropped the dress to the floor and stepped out, laying the dress carefully on the bed.
What about the corset? Michael had mandated she remove it only to bathe. And each day Steve tugged it inexorably tighter. Her fingers strayed hesitantly to the difficult metal front hooks. Self-conscious confusion froze her in place with lowered eyes and blushing cheeks.
“Remove the corset.” His cool voice acted on her like a cattle prod. With a clumsy jerk, she reached behind, fumbled with the doubled bow and loosened the laces. Inadvertently she sighed with relief as the hooks came apart in her fingers.
Her cheeks flushed a lovely pink as she stood naked before him, eyes dropped shyly to the floor. He stepped forward and … she stifled her gasp as his fingers touched one of the deep corset marks at her waist. His lips twitched and she knew he saw and understood his profane effect. Her cheeks’ pink deepened to fuchsia – she felt the heat – and spread down her throat to her breasts’ tops.
“I’m going to make some measurements,” he said. She realized he held a tape measure as he slipped it around her waist. He used the tape measure impartially as if she was inanimate, moving first upward around her ribcage.
When his fingers brushed the underside of her breast she flinched, she couldn’t help herself. His smile was pleasant, even kindly. But he took a nipple between his thick fingers. This time she was prepared and didn’t stir, even fractionally, just stared across into his eyes – he was not much taller than she – half wondering, half beseeching. Until, with no apparent effort whatsoever, he brought his fingers together.
Did she scream? She couldn’t remember. Her knees buckled beneath her yet she couldn’t fall, held upright only by unendurable pain. With that one nipple he jerked her upward until she balanced – almost – on her feet. One searing point was all there was.
Through it his voice penetrated, unwaveringly warm and calm, “I will touch you wherever I desire and you will not move.” She didn’t believe his grip could tighten but pain building almost to numbness again consumed her. “Do you understand?” Mutely she nodded and the agony diminished. The pleasant smile never wavered.
With dull compliance she stood still. The measurements began again, continuing upward to her throat and her head. At eye level, the tape wrapped her eyes, momentarily compressing her eyelids and blinding her with a fearful bolt of yellow lightening in the darkness. Next he moved downward to wrists, thighs, calves and ankles. Each measurement was noted in his
With hope she knew to be faint, she watched him return the tape to his satchel. With the same motion he retrieved several shining steel objects. He turned her. “Please bend over. Spread your legs and place your hands on the bed.”
She struggled, strained, to restrain her body’s shivering. What would he do to her? A silent tear dropped to the coverlet, making, she noticed incongruously, a small stain. The images passing through her mind were almost beyond her conception. Her husband refused to have sex with her, well, with her body. Would he ask someone else to do it for him? Would it be rape if her husband gave permission?
She was terrified, weak with nausea, when she felt his fingers spread her bottom. Her fears were certainly going to be realized, she just knew it. Several more tears dropped to the coverlet. She was so rent with helplessness that her limbs felt dissociated. She tried to flex her fingers against the bed but they were numb and uncooperative.
Her teardrops sounded like drumbeats in her ears. His fingers spread her vagina and she used every bit of her strength to quiet her body’s quivering. But she could not repress a small cry and lurch when something hard and cold went inside. He laid one hand flat on her spine above her lovely bottom’s abyss. His palm’s warmth seemed to counteract the coldness and even the device’s uncomfortable movement as he did something with his other hand. Then her tissues tried to rip apart.
One shrill scream and she was silent. But her tears streamed onto the bedding. Michael never hurt her. Why did this man?
And then, thank God!, the pain subsided. Her attention riveted down … there and she tried to understand. Nothing seemed to have changed. In fact, she felt air currents moving inside her opened vagina and also strange and, with chagrin she realized, pleasurable sensations.
His soft shirt and, she felt herself redden, his body’s warmth rippled across her bare back as he leaned over her. His voice was quiet in her ear, “Don’t worry. Michael has instructed me not to stretch you.” In her mind, she saw his chilly smile. “He reserves that privilege for himself.”
He lifted off her. Almost immediately she heard the click of metal on metal. Something poked her, this place and that, inside. Suddenly, without warning and with shocking intensity, something indescribable – like a giant tidal wave – happened inside her. Again she screamed. Now, though, the scream was rapturous. It felt so good! Her breaths burst out in huge gasps and her chest heaved for many almost unendurable minutes – or so it seemed to her. All her pent-up tension, every emotion she hadn’t dared recognize, exploded out of her in giant convulsions.
Still, it was over far too soon. When her body calmed, she yearned to beg him, “Please Sir! Do it again!” but was too timid. But he did, without her pleas. And it happened again, shaking her uncontrollably almost to the shattering of both substance and consciousness.
This time, as her body heaved with aftershocks that surged all the way to her throat, he said, “Good girl!” His tone was that of a trainer to his well-trained dog. Her body had relaxed, become wonderfully languid when he slipped the now-warmed metal out of her vagina – as always, pleasure short-lived.
To her shame, his fingers were opening her rear and sliding cold metal into that hole. Worse, it ached and pinched. Once again her muscles constricted into anguished knots. “Never peace,” she silently lamented, labouring not to writhe away from the awful device. But the metal didn’t stop moving deeper. His hand tickled her bottom and there was stretching and pain, strange and also unbearable.
Then her face flamed hot and red when he pushed something inside her, even deeper between the metal jaws. The thing, whatever it was, probed deeper and deeper into that dark, dirty hole and, replete with shame and fear that quite literally grabbed at her entrails sickening her, she tensed against it. Endlessly it penetrated her, delving and poking, until she couldn’t imagine it going further … but still it did.
Without warning it stopped and withdrew. In scalding mortification, her imagination vividly painted the fouled instrument’s withdrawal and his requisite cleansing or disposal of it. She couldn’t bear him seeing or God forbid! touching her filth. Yet, her dismay mingled with something else, with a strange, forbidden pleasure as the retracting thing sucked at her tissues. The pleasure moved deep inside her and her humiliation increased a thousand-fold.
“You may stand,” he said when she emptied of metal. Shyly she stood, still facing away from him.
“Turn.” She recognized his economy of speech as customary. With lowered head, she obeyed. Her downcast eyes snuck to the formidable silver metal items on the small table, nervously trying to discern what violated her … and, she shivered with disgust, how dirty it was. But she couldn’t tell.
He lifted something long and narrowly rectangular with a needle sharp end. It spread apart in his hands into two flat sides of a triangle. With head lowered she couldn’t avoid seeing the points move downward. She was tense as a board when one point pricked one side of her clitoris. Quickly, fearfully, he rotated the device from side to side, to top and bottom taking what she assumed – and then realized to be correct when he scribbled them onto a piece of paper with one hand while holding the device still with the other – to be innumerable measurements. The needle points hurt but her fear that they would pierce her was far worse. Methodically he began to measure – every minute part of her, moving meticulously around her genitalia then upward to her breasts.
She watched, morbidly fascinated, as the point approached her right nipple’s very centre then, though she was somehow certain it was simply a gratuitous enjoyment for him and not truly part of the process, penetrated. True to her dire expectation, the pain was sharp and cutting. From a distance she watched and felt and so wanted to scream, but didn’t – at least didn’t think she did. He simply continued his intricate measurements, dispassionately rotating the implement around the terrible notch of pain. Then he moved to her throat, hampering her breathing with her fear, and finally, upward to her head.