As She’s Told

>Congratulations! I will withhold all bothersome doubts and Cassandra mutterings, and offer applause only.

>Mange tak, Karl. But a hundred fatalistic forebears couldn’t bring me down right now. She’s mine, she’s installed, it’s unfolding just as I planned. That’s enough.

>neighbours may wonder

>I doubt it. Fortunately the nearest neighbours are yuppie working couples. Not the type for coffee klatches. There’s no pressure to get involved here. It’s actually harder to find a sense of community in this city than to avoid one. I’ve been careful not to interact, or they’ll be dropping by asking me for renovations advice and free help. Not that I would mind, but I’d rather they don’t come to the door. They will start to wonder if they see Maia go in and then get no answer to their ring.

>there is a couple here who use similar restrictions, but she works from home (naked and chained to her desk, they tell me).

>Very nice. I thought of that, but this is a good job for her; challenging but well within her capabilities. The subject matter is challenging for her also; it will do her no harm to face some reality, maybe develop a thicker skin. And I think it’s better for her to be out of the house on a regular schedule.

>She is comfortable to be alone and locked?

>Seems to be. Safety looks like being more my worry than hers. SSC

types would take me apart, of course, for leaving her without access to an emergency key or whatever. I’m all for safety, but let’s face it, politically-correct SSC is totally deadening. For me anyway, it’s a blanket of wet cement over anything significant. I’m reducing the risk to the smallest level possible within the range of what I’m after. Inspecting wiring and sprinkler systems monthly. Alarms, all that. Statistically, she’s probably safer locked up at home, even without an escape route, than out crossing the street.

>Your German friend is out of town again. His machine says end of June.

>Shit. No wonder he’s not answering emails.

>I saw Ole’s and it was very fine. I think you will find it best to wait and be patient.

>You’re probably right, damn it. I’ll have to see what Graham can do in the meantime.

> the sweetness of her; I can’t describe it, even when she is being punished, especially when she is being punished.

> What do you mean by this? At first it sounded obvious and bland, but this word sweet seems to have many meanings; it is following my thoughts.

>I told you, it’s hard to describe. In no way bland. Apparently simple, but in reality complex and flavourful. She changes over time; a kind of ripening. At the moment, tart and slippery. Like mango.

>She turns and opens to me as if she can’t help it. Even though she’s afraid. Even though she doesn’t know what I will do to her next, whether it will be a blow or a caress. She struggles, and sometimes she fails, and I force and enforce. Still, she tries, using all her will to give up to my will.

>This is a shy, introverted woman, Karl, making a tremendous effort not to hide or protect herself. I don’t mean physically, though naturally she has to do that, too. I mean trust, and so much vulnerability. Strange, sweet.

It takes an effort to focus on anything else. I can hardly keep my hands off her. She is under the desk at my feet as I’m typing this. More later.

***

The weeks that followed, as might be expected, were utterly disorienting and bizarre.

At home, I had no autonomy, none. Everything that took place, everything I did was determined for me, moment by moment. Zero degrees of freedom. But at work I had more responsibility than I’d ever had in my life. Naturally, I’d had summer and weekend jobs, but always in very junior positions. Now I was officially a professional, and although the information centre had plenty of routines and standard practices to follow, I was expected to take care of things. After the first few days, apart from some occasional help from Information Studies students doing the same sorts of routine work I’d done in the past, I was on my own. The contrast to my life with Anders was bewildering. I had to keep reorienting myself, from passive to active and back again. Actually, ‘reorienting’ is a mild word for the experience. It felt more like a wrenching redirection of the persona. Luckily I had the streetcar rides to provide at least a little bit of transition time.

And then, of course, at work, just as I would start to adjust and get into my job, I’d move without thinking or try to take a deep breath, and suddenly my hands would tremble and my insides would surge. I’d feel Anders holding me, manipulating me, body and mind, like the thing that I was. Then I’d have to force an impassive expression onto my face, and pretend that I existed only in the time and place where I stood.

Apparently some people with mild schizophrenia are quite aware that their hallucinations aren’t real, and manage to function normally by simply ignoring them. I seemed to have no choice but to do the same thing.

Each day became a surreal juxtaposition of oddly-assorted segments.

The morning ritual developed into a tightly-scheduled routine in which Anders shifted me from one bondage to the next – chained to the bed, to the ceiling, to the wall – while he washed and fed and harnessed me. Every morning I was led from one place to another in lockstep, with no more than a foot or two of leeway at the end of my leash.

Every morning I hunkered down on the floor in front of that red dish and felt, as I was meant to feel, like a dumb beast. A dumb beast that was capable of knowing its own humiliation. I got food on my face, in my hair till he tied it back, even on the mat. I was routinely told off and smacked for the mess, for trying to speak when I was supposed to be eating, for failing to have my bowl clean and well-licked by the time he was finished. At the end of each meal he’d come at my woebegone face with a big cloth, engulf and swab it, scolding all the while.

Upstairs, he reduced me down in another way, squeezing the breath from me as he pulled the harness tight. This wasn’t as limiting overall as the corset; I could bend more easily, get my back into things. But it constricted every breath, every move.

The only things I was allowed to do for myself in the mornings were washing and blow drying my hair (Anders kept an eye on me but said he wasn’t going to take the Barbie thing that far), brushing my teeth and putting on the outward, public layer – stockings, dress, shoes. No makeup. At his request I had shown him what I looked like in the minimal makeup I sometimes wore, and he decided I looked better without it.

There was a moment of transition when he unlocked the collar, and took off the cuffs, if he hadn’t already. Then I was out the door, ostensibly free. I could use my limbs, walk without orders or a leash, choose to step this way or that around a puddle. I could walk down the street, get on a streetcar and go to work, just like a normal person. The bondage I was in wasn’t visible to the naked eye. (Good thing those x-ray glasses in the old comics never worked.) No one could tell, either, that I had in my small bag exactly two tokens, a small ring of keys, a cellphone, and some ID in case I fell under a bus.

I piloted my weird, divided self through the information centre doors and on into work, and did my best there. The trick was to focus on what was in front of me and try to minimize input from the rest of my senses. I distanced as best I could from the bound and vulnerable slave’s body beneath my clothes, kept a straight, professional face, and handed over to the afternoon shift at one o’clock. Then I walked out and headed for home.

Once on the streetcar, I found myself reinhabiting my restraints with a rush. Every strap made itself felt as it tied and demarcated the various bits of me. The harness made a display, a kind of smorgasbord of my sexual parts.

A nice breast or buttock on a platter, so to speak. None of it was mine; all of it was offered up to my owner, to take or to leave. Internal currents surged as I stared out the window, divided from the world by glass and secrets.

At first I didn’t think much about the fact that the harness was locked, just as the corset had been. There were too many things bidding for my attention. But one day toward the end of the first week I got seriously entangled in that little reality. It was the day I was on my own in the centre for the first time, and I was feeling a bit overwhelmed. I still didn’t know where everything was, and one or two people got politely impatient with me.

I tried to look calm as I took twice as long as I should have to locate what they needed. Six new boxes of reports had been plunked down in the middle of the floor, and I kept tripping over them. Then, of course, my computer locked up just when I needed it most.

At last to my relief there was a lull; the place emptied. I headed for the boxes to get them out of the way. And I couldn’t bend properly. I couldn’t take a deep breath. All at once there were straps digging in everywhere. I wriggled and tugged in irritation and impatience. I have get out of this, I thought.

The next thing I knew I was in the bathroom with my dress up to my armpits, trying to loosen the straps. I must have been way more stressed out than I realized: neurons firing in bursts, sending my carefully launched body into out-of-control trajectories. For a minute I just lost it. My fingers scrabbled on the smooth leather and met over the joins: those metal pieces with their little keyholes. The broad belt that reduced my waist had two of them at the back, one above the other. I tugged and pulled at the solid straps in frustrated jerks, my confused aggravation and helplessness rising and going nova in exponential chaos. I couldn’t unbuckle anything. All I could manage was tiny shifts forward or back. None of it would loosen any of it by even a centimetre. It was truly locked.

Anders had the key. There was an instant in which I envisioned calling him and asking him to come and let me out. I heard myself laugh. Surely, I thought, it could come off some other way, and be replaced later, with my master none the wiser.

I shivered, suddenly sick, feeling the cliff beneath my feet crumble and slide. My hands pressed the belt into my waist; my eyes squeezed shut. Self-inflicted disaster: here it came; the rumblings of an eight-point-one earthquake that would engulf me and everything I had ever wanted.

Wait. Slow down.

I made my hands move. Carefully, methodically, I felt over the whole harness. Pulled at the metal joins, felt for irregularities or ways to loosen the straps. There were none. No weak points, no way out. No way to play sly and false.

The nightmare sublimated up through cell walls, slipped out at my pores, its sour panic stink dispersing into the air above my head. My impulses had no power here. He’d made me safer than I knew.

My trapped flesh, swelling between the straps, was now responding to the lightest touch. Hurriedly I smoothed my dress down, gave myself a minute to recover, and then went back to work. By the time I’d moved the last box I’d figured out how to lift heavy objects without going to pieces.

Despite myself, the locks did prey on my mind for a while. Was I really safe? Could they be picked, I wondered? I had no idea how to do that, and even if I had, these were all behind my back, no doubt on purpose. And something told me that Anders wouldn’t have used any hardware easy to defeat.

But the urge to seek a way out still lurked, a horrid little goblin. On warmer days, sweat and irritation could overtake immediate arousal. It was, let’s face it, a long day of constant restriction and constriction. I endured, day after day like a good slave, and then I endured more strenuously, and then I suffered and resented and came close to whining when I saw the harness.

Despite myself I began to wonder, depressed and dispirited, whether such 24/7 physical control was realistic or just Anders’ fantasy. Could he be mistaken? Horrible thought. My desire had survived all the beatings and humiliation, had of course been enhanced by them, but would it survive this?

The day came when, for hours at a time, the damned thing just wasn’t fun any more.

It took several days of this before I finally admitted to myself, very reluctantly, that the harness wasn’t truly inescapable; that is, technically. It could be cut off. But this possibility was almost unthinkable in the context of the relationship we were in. Despite my rebellious thoughts the word

‘sacrilege’ occurred to me; I suppressed it because it seemed so silly, but it was pretty representative of how I felt. The destruction would extend far beyond a leather strap or two. Except, I supposed, in an emergency, like an accident or something. In which case someone else would cut it off, not me.

I imagined myself in the emergency room, and then I stopped. Too horrible and humiliating, and not the good kind, either. What other possible situation would justify such an action? I couldn’t imagine any, except if he got run over by a car and was no longer with me, a scenario that carried with it such a devastating tidal wave of loss that I hurriedly cut off that line of speculation also.

Anders watched my face and body, examined and soothed my skin, and made small adjustments in fit and tension. And every morning he chained my wrists above my head, pulled the harness tight with those long, firm, confident hands, closed the locks and smiled gently in the mirror at my distress.

I thought about begging for even a day of respite, with the lurking hope that he might get the message and let me off the daily regime. I even thought about saying something during question time. I could entertain that thought because the date wasn’t any time soon; once it got close my mind would reject the subject without reading it. It was like the CD player in my dad’s old car which had a mind of its own; certain CDs would go in and then come right back out again.

But the harness dilemma wasn’t going away. I was suppressing my grumpiness with a serious effort.

One night I dreamed I was in the back room at work, opening and sorting an enormous pile of mail. The sun streamed in through the high windows; I was glad the windows were high, because I was wearing nothing at all except my harness. Dust motes hovered in the sultry air; my sweaty skin prickled. I got out the snippers and attacked a pile of delivery boxes bound round with plastic strapping. When they were all open I looked down at my body, and kept going. It took both hands on the snippers to get through the strap that crossed my chest, but at last I hacked my way through it. My chest expanded in triumph. I went on chopping and slicing at the straps, ignoring the small, painless nicks I was inflicting on my skin in my haste. The nicks began to bleed; still I continued. Then a breast strap came away wet and half my breast came away with it, and I tried to scream but all that came out was a strangled whisper. Still the cutting went on, more chunks of flesh sliding their reeking snail trails down to the floor around my feet. I had the snippers at my neck. And then with a jerk I woke.

It was ages before my heart stopped racing. God, I thought, can’t my subconscious come up with anything more subtle than that? Christ, Maia, how pathetic. But scolding myself didn’t work; sleep wouldn’t come, despite the reassurance of my intact form against the sheets, and Anders’ warm arm over me. So in the morning I was too tired to behave; at the sight of the harness I lost it and burst into tears.

Anders mopped and soothed me where I stood. Gently he stroked me and kissed my wet face. ‘It’s uncomfortable sometimes, isn’t it.’ It was a statement, not a question. ‘You’re a good girl to have held on so long.’ The kindly, deep voice made me sob with shame, for my failure, my weak petulance. ‘But you’ll adjust to it eventually. Belly in.’ The belt went on as tight as ever. Then the chest straps. As his fingers adjusted the strap over one shoulder I turned and kissed his hand.

That day was better. I moved within my boundaries as if I’d finally learned where they were. I couldn’t think much that day; I was too tired, but without the threat of choice I settled in somehow. And arousal surged again at unexpected moments: a promise for the future. From that point on I seemed to be over the worst. The binding was starting to feel normal.

Probably geishas and corseted ladies and neck-ringed Padaung women have felt the same. Did they get a sexual charge out of it, too, I wondered, or was that just for the men for whom they were supposedly packaged?

I pondered this one day on the streetcar home. They’d have been lucky if they did get a sexual charge, having no choice about the bondage they were in. I began to feel very lucky myself. Paradoxically, I had chosen this; at least, I’d chosen the man who’d chosen it, and I’d known what I was getting into. It was a very private, personal deal. Bindings imposed on women by society or culture, though, that was real oppression, surely? A route to conformity and acceptance, but no joy.

I wondered why I felt good and self-righteous about having made that original choice, given that the bare notion of having any choice now was such anathema to me. Feminist slaves have a lot to sort out.

As the streetcar crossed the Don and I got closer to home, my attention shifted to the next segment of my day. My time alone but unfree, keeping company with cameras. Instructions I’d have to follow to the letter, hardware to put on. Every day I’d been chained up, one way or another, to myself or to something else. Not a minute of freedom. Every day I closed the locks under the hall camera’s watchful eye.

A couple of days back, there had been short chains with padlocks at each end, and instructions to fasten my ankles to rings on either side of my belt. His list of chores included tidying up newspapers and other debris, filling and running the dishwasher, scrubbing the kitchen floor and dusting as high up as I could reach. I crawled from chore to chore and knelt up to reach newspapers and dishes and shelves. There was no efficient way to crawl and carry at the same time, and I resigned myself to making many trips. My knees were rather red by the time Anders got home. The next day there had been kneepads waiting for me in the hall. Today there were no kneepads; there was a long chain to lock to my collar, already fastened at the other end to the woodwork between living room and kitchen. There was also a very short chain for my ankles.

Each day after my stop at the bench I was expected to take my covered red dish from the fridge, settle down on the mat, fold my hands behind my back and eat my lunch. I’d spotted the webcam in the kitchen without difficulty. Still, performing in this way in an empty house wasn’t easy. I kept wanting to use my hands. As that was forbidden, I found myself occasionally wishing for the convenience of a snout and a very long tongue.

The webcam’s eye felt palpable that day. I had a ‘watcher’ now for sure; that self-conscious sense of being observed by a critical eye had been made entirely manifest. Kind of like being a bit paranoid and then finding out that there really is a conspiracy against you. Alone in an empty house, I felt like a specimen under glass. I seemed to be stuck in performance mode, embarrassed to scratch my butt for fear of spoiling the display.

Still, I wondered what my all-seeing master actually saw. There was no way he could monitor me more than occasionally from work; if he did he’d never get any work done. And he couldn’t possibly be reviewing four or five hours of recorded footage every evening. He must be spot-checking, and focusing on key bits of obedience, like the front hallway, and these meals, for which he had to trust me not to use my unlocked hands. He didn’t trust me very far, did he? Wise of him, all things considered. I honestly didn’t know if I’d be so obedient if there was no evidence to catch me. Perhaps he was watching at that moment. My hands gripped each other more tightly, and I dug deep into my bowl. Ack! Hair in my mouth. I’d forgotten to tie it back. I shook my head in an attempt to dislodge it, but in the end had to use my hand or choke. He’d left the hair clip right on the counter for me. I was going to be in trouble when he got home. When I had dutifully licked the bowl I got up and washed it in the sink, along with my sticky face and the pots and pans he’d left for me, splattering hot soapy water on my harnessed breasts. Wondering what deficiencies his inspection would reveal this time, and how I’d be punished. I could still feel his hand in my hair, and taste the soap and vinegar from the other day, on the floor that hadn’t been clean enough. Bleah. Apparently he chose non-toxic cleaners for this very purpose.

But no matter how meticulously I worked to meet his standards, there would still be plenty of time to wait for his return. Today I would have to go back to the bench and lock my chain to it ‘at the eighth link,’ according to the instructions. As usual, not enough length to stand. A couple of times I had crouched on knees and elbows for hours in front of the couch, a footstool waiting to be used. Other days I had waited chained at the foot of the bed, or had stared into corners, locked to the wall by waist belt and nipple rings –

those locked rings I couldn’t open. There was always a moment, an instant of hesitation before I took each irrevocable step, before I pushed the closet door home and lost access to my clothes, before I marked myself a captive in hard collar and cuffs, before I closed a padlock and ended all possibility of escape. A moment when I took a deep breath and then did his bidding. I glanced up at the camera and wanted to make some kind of obeisance to him.

If he observed the hesitation, did he think of it as a moment of choice: to obey him or not, to continue all this or not? Did I?

No, not any more. My hesitation was only the reluctance of the moment, to commit this irrevocable thing upon myself. Something like the breathless feeling before the first leap into the pool. You want to be in the water, you know it will feel good once you’re in there. It’s the irreversible plunge that’s so scary; the surrender to a different element, that enveloping cold clasp.

I did my best with the cleaning, rechecking the corners twice and three times. I visited the chamber pot. Then I made my hobbled way back to the hall bench and knelt down. Counted links once, twice. Neither seven nor nine; exactly eight. Pushed the padlock through and (pause) home. Settled back on my heels and stared through the glass of the closed vestibule door, watching the front door through which my master would come eventually, and bring the evening with him. The evening, that last and best and scariest segment of each day, the time when the hands I’d felt on me all day took possession in the flesh. I wanted urgently to serve him, touch him, feel his hands on my flesh …. I could hardly bear to wait. But having no choice, I waited. Every evening had been unique so far, though there were patterns developing. The harness came off, but the corset usually replaced it, tighter every time. And my constant bondage of the afternoon felt like freedom once Anders opened that hall cabinet. I’d spent part of one evening hogtied on the floor, another under the desk, gagged and blindfolded. His cock was down my throat at least once every night, in the mornings as well if we had time. I loved to show my devotion in this way, especially when he came really hard and I could hear it. The flavour of him haunted me all day.

Impatiently I wriggled, and grabbed my chain to stop it banging against the bench.

I’d found that there was only so long I could sit still. Inevitably I began fiddling with the chain, testing the locks. I sat, lay down, knelt again. Stared at the door. Thought about what he might do when he walked in. Thought about work, and where the household guides to energy conservation might have got to, and where to get more if they were gone. About the group of junior high kids coming the next day, and just how awful they were likely to be. I noticed that the bars of light on the living room floor had shifted a couple of feet to the left, and were now lighting up the deep reds of the rug.

Evenings had their mundane elements still. Anders would tell me about his day, and have me tell him about mine. There would be discussions about my work, usually during preparations for dinner. He did plenty of task structuring, similar to the ways he’d handled me around schoolwork. I told him what I had to do, he kept tabs, and if I made a mistake I got thwacked. I also got praise, good advice, and the underlying message that I was good at what I did. Sitting still, I listened. Silence. The soundproofing worked both ways. The only noise came from my chain, still swinging, and the tiny friction of my body against the floor. Nothing I’d notice if I’d had anything else to listen to.

What was happening outside? What were free people doing? They’d be finishing up at work, or out walking, going on errands, visiting stores.

Calling friends, making deals, making dates.

Nikki had tried to make a date with me for lunch the other day. I’d told her I’d have to ask permission first, and she’d started lecturing me as if I was seven years old. My age apparently dropped to about four when I got back to her and told her that we’d have to wait a few weeks; Anders wanted my routine well established before he would allow any variation. I listened quietly, some imp in me wanting to try an automaton, brainwashed voice on her: ‘Master decides all things. I will give my life for Master,’ just to hear her hit the roof. But I didn’t really want to upset her, and anyway she might take me seriously and call the cops, or the deprogrammers, or both. Nikki seemed to be getting more vanilla by the day. She kept trying to tell me that bdsm was for play parties, and that anybody who said they lived it for real was merely getting their rocks off by broadcasting their fantasies as if they were facts. Nikki the conspiracy theorist. She believed the moon landing was a fake, too.

There was never a clock in sight when I was chained. My watch, of course, was locked away in the cupboard. Time stretched on before me like a prairie highway, and my helplessness expanded like the fields on either side.

I felt a faint vibration through the floor which increased for a while until I could almost hear the low, rumbling rush of a train going by. An afternoon GO train heading out to Pickering. I tried to see how long I could sense the vibrations; that lasted a while. Then I began wriggling, tugging at harness straps, flipping idly at my nipple rings. I listened for the sound of a key in the door. I adjusted the clip I’d put in my hair, too late, and tried not to worry too much about punishment.

But I knew it was coming. Probably a whipping. Wincing, I ran my palms lightly over my already sensitive buttocks. Escape urges ricocheted around my skull in lightning bursts, seeking a way out of my dilemma, like a mouse careening frantically from one stopped hole to another. I pulled away from the bench and felt the now-familiar pressure of the metal collar against my neck. My fingers examined the locks again, and the solid built-in bench.

There was no escape. Anders was on his way home. When he came home he’d punish me. Simple; inevitable, inexorable. It would hurt, probably a lot.

Anything I did or said would only make it worse. I began to pant.

I was already soaking wet, my cunt unfurling, right there by my hand. I imagined touching it, sliding my fingers through soft folds to the firm, velvety clit; the breathless, acute pleasure of each tiny stroke, the build-up….

No! Even if the camera didn’t catch me, the guilt would. I had a terrible longing to disobey, followed immediately by a deep-down feeling of panic.

But oh, god, how I wanted to! I was spending each day back and forth over the borders of lust, trying so hard to behave, to pretend that my pussy was on some other planet. Remembering that enormous hand gripping it, that deep voice saying, ‘This belongs to me.’ It’s not mine, I kept saying to myself.

I’m not allowed to touch it. I knelt and pulsed in the silence: no distractions now, no outward face to maintain, no clothes, no escape, no choice but to suffer and wait.

Knees under me, face-down on the floor for a while, head on my arms, I tried not to think ahead or back, tried not to lust, tried just to be. That level of zen was beyond me, however; my thoughts continued quietly squirreling away around the edges, and the lust continued unabated. When I sat up the light had moved off the rug and onto the wall. I stared at the door longingly.

When would he come? My whole body, each erogenous zone sectioned off and presented for his pleasure, reached toward the place he would materialize. The collar pressed on my windpipe and I sat back, sighing.

Patience.

Then the key hit the lock, and suddenly there he was, all six-and-a-half feet of him, filling the inside doorway, flipping through a handful of mail.

My heart seemed to leap right out of my chest and then spring back again, like an Animaniacs cartoon. The door thumped closed; the long legs were within reach, smelling of dirt and concrete. I looked up, longing to wrap myself around a warm leg, but waited for orders like a good slave.

‘Here’s my little pup, just where she’s supposed to be. Nice to be greeted at the door.’ He sat down on the bench, put the mail down beside him, and took hold of the chain. I could feel him testing the padlock between finger and thumb, counting links. Then he grabbed some hair, including the clip, and narrowed his eyes at me. ‘Not very difficult, girl.”

“I’m sorry, master,’ I whispered. Yup, I was in trouble.

‘Let’s take care of that first, then.’ He lifted me, whimpering, face-down over his lap, still leashed to the bench, and pulled my right wrist up between my shoulder blades. My god, he hadn’t been in the door thirty seconds. I hadn’t been wrong about the punishment, only about the instrument; he used his hand, which was almost as hard as a paddle. It was so painful that within three smacks I was leaking tears, as if the blows at one end were forcing liquid from me at the other end. ‘You’ve had this coming since two o’clock, haven’t you?”

“Yes, master!’ I gasped. ‘You got careless, didn’t you?”

“Yes, master.”

“Are you allowed to use your hands when you eat? For anything?’

I choked out a ‘No, master’ that wasn’t clear enough, and had to be repeated.

By the time he was done, my backside was ready to burst into flames. I followed along on the chain, step by small step, as he inspected the areas I’d cleaned. To my vast relief I only had to straighten some furniture, and take some slaps to my thighs rather than my ass.

‘Better, girl,’ he nodded approvingly. ‘You’re learning.’ He took the chain up short and delicately licked my wet eyes, and then my neck above the collar. I moaned and tried to press myself against him, but the chain and collar pulled me back.

‘Stop; I want to have a shower first. Come upstairs and keep me company.’ He drew keys jingling from his pocket, and unlocked the padlock at my throat. ‘I spent all day in a basement pouring concrete.’ A leash came out of the hall cabinet and was fastened it to my collar. ‘Had my head in the damned joists half the time.’ I looked up at Anders’ silvery hair, darkened with streaks of dust. ‘I told them it needed digging deeper, but they didn’t have the money. And they’re short. Small, I mean. So it doesn’t worry them.’

He turned me around and locked my hands behind my back. ‘All right, short one, up you go.’

I approached the stairs apprehensively. With my ankles so closely hobbled, there was no way up, walking or crawling, especially with my hands fastened behind my back. I looked plaintively up at him, and he smiled back, the glint amused and wicked. ‘Consider it the next instalment on your punishment. And a bit of exercise, lazy girl.’ I gave a broken sigh, half a moan, and lowered my sore butt gingerly onto the second step. Oh, for an elevator! I pulled my linked feet up to the step below me, shifted my weight forward and pushed myself up a step. I made the mistake of sliding myself back, and winced. There were sixteen steps. I’d had prior opportunities to count them. New tears began dripping onto my knees.

Anders had made me do this before, but not with a freshly-spanked ass. I had fantasies of him taking pity on me and lifting me over his shoulder.

Childlike plaints of ‘Carry me!’ burbled through my head, though fortunately not out of my mouth. Although he let me stop part-way while he fondled my breasts, he seemed uninterested in any strong-man rescue.

At the top, feeling utterly grilled, breathless and full-out crying, I knelt, tethered, in the bathroom while he showered, watching his long form through glass. That exercise up the stairs had been ‘the next instalment;’ this was ominous. Evidently there was more to come. All that because I forgot to tie my hair back! It hardly seemed fair. ‘Fair’ being, of course, a laughable concept under the circumstances. He made the rules, he enforced them, he was judge, jury and executioner, just like Fury the Dog in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The heat from my rear end was starting to have its usual after-effect, spreading outward in a heavy burn. Please, I thought, please use me, touch me, handle me, anything….

He slid the shower door aside and stepped out, towelling his head, and I leaned toward him so far I choked myself. He came closer and let me lick drops of water from his thighs, and then his hand was pressing my face hard against his body. I buried my face in wet pubic hair, licking fervently. Then he pulled me back by the hair, and smiled down into my face. ‘My eager little hunhund.’ He felt my red butt. ‘Definitely in heat. More of a monkey than a dog today.’ He finished drying himself, one step out of my reach.

***

This was a fitting reward for a day in a basement, Anders decided.

Something out of a porn novel. His own luscious, well-spanked slave, panting and whining for sex. He fastened her face-down over the footboard, which was exactly the right height and thickness because he’d constructed it himself. And then he examined and squeezed and stroked, starting from the extremities and working his way in: small helpless hands, slender arms, straining feet up on their toes, trembling legs. He felt his way up her back and around her shoulders, pulling straps, checking locks.

The smooth, swollen tits were worthy of a good deal of attention; he squeezed and manipulated them for a long time. The reddened ass shuddered and clenched at his touch. At last he parted the slippery cunt lips and tested the salty sea of liquid there. Her panting immediately upshifted, taking on a pleading, frantic quality. He withdrew his fingers.

‘Please…please, master…please…’ she whimpered.

‘Do you think you deserve it?’ he asked lightly.

She groaned. ‘I don’t know, master.’

He pinched some ass flesh hard and she shrieked. ‘You know the answer, girl.’ His fingers tightened their grip.

‘Ow!’ she wailed. Her back arched and twisted. Then she dropped her head and whispered, ‘No. I don’t deserve it.’

‘That’s right.’ They had already agreed to this. If ‘agreed’ was the right term under the circumstances. She deserved nothing he didn’t choose to give her.

He lubricated her asshole and slowly inserted himself, feeling her sphincter stretch around him. God, she was tight! Slowly, he pumped himself forward, inch by inch, until his belly was rubbing up against her punished flesh. Thrusting hard, then, he listened and gauged her pain, drank it in, prolonged it. He gripped a breast in each hand, felt her urgent body struggling. His cock was sliding, forward and back, through a dark, exquisite halo, hot and radiant, and he was gradually taking on that heat and turning it into energy. Adding to it, adjusting the currents just so. He slowed, to gather up as much of the charge as he could. There was a sparkling sensation, a tiny vibration somewhere behind his balls. Anders took a harder grip and felt the rush beginning, sliding past the point of no return, past anything that could stop him. Suddenly he was storming forward, surge after surge until he was exhausted, renewed, light as air. And there were hours of evening yet to enjoy, and more hours the next day and the next; no end to the delights.

Anders began to move his slave and himself on through their evening. There was a loose end that had dangled for a long while that he had plans to tie up.

But dinner first.

Anders chopped garlic and shallots at the counter, while his girl peeled carrots at the sink, her ankles again linked. ‘My brother emailed me from Toulouse,’ he said. ‘Lucky bastard. He’s having a fantastic time.’

‘Still with the same friends?’

‘No, he’s sponging off some different ones now. He’d never be able to afford it otherwise.’ Anders rinsed off the knife and wiped the cutting board.

‘Amazing how many people are willing to put him up and put up with him.

He must have charms I’m not aware of.”

“Did – did you go to that area, when you were there?’

‘No, we went south through Germany.’ Right after university Anders had taken two friends to stay with some Danish relatives, then sent the friends off to try the Aalborg nightlife and North Sea beaches for a couple of days while he and kinky cousin Karl enjoyed Copenhagen in their own way.

After that he and his companions had moved on southward. But the cost had driven them home before they were ready to go. ‘We got as far as northern Italy. I’d love to go back, but now, with my business, I’d have to plan a year in advance. And this isn’t the best time.’ He bent and kissed her shoulder. ‘I think I have a line on that mantelpiece, by the way. Guy at the lumber yard says he’s seen one.”

“Oh, terrific!”

“Did you get hold of your boss?’

‘Uh-huh. She says I can put the catalogue together if I can find the time.’

‘Well, it would save time in the long run.’

‘Yes.’

‘Can you fit it in?’

‘Here and there. Summer is supposed to be slower, so I might be able to finish it by fall.’

‘I’m surprised no one’s thought of it before.’

‘Me too.’

‘But you’re seeing things there with a fresh eye. My clever girl.’ He checked on the rest of her task, and satisfied, looked down. ‘You’re getting carrot parings on the floor. And on yourself, hunhund.’

She picked them up hastily, apologizing, and he gave her a casual, painful swat with a wooden spoon. Then he licked the traces of carrot juice off her breasts.

Anders ate his dinner while watching his slave eat hers, the top of her dark head hovering over the red dish, bound hands riding high on her tailbone. It was worth forgoing the pleasures of dinner conversation to see her like that, meal after meal, breasts lowered between folded knees, nose in her food. Repetition had not dulled the piquancy of this sight; the routine continued to add an indescribable savour to his meals.

Actually, the fact that it was routine was part of the joy. Although he allowed her to be human in conversation when he chose, when it came to mealtimes she was a dumb beast. It might have been a role for her to play. It might have been a game, if it happened less often. But three meals a day, week after week, can make any routine into the norm. Behaviour became identity.

After her meal, as he crouched to mop her up, he observed that the little face was, as usual, painfully abashed. He made her kneel up, facing him, and tugged on her nipple rings. ‘We have something to clear up, little girl. These piercings happened on your own initiative, if you’ll recall.’ She looked up at him with instant, anxious comprehension. ‘Is that the way a slave is allowed to behave?’

‘No, master.’ Pupils dilated, the brown eyes shifted fearfully to either side of him, then settled, intent on his face.

‘You’ll also remember I promised to punish you for that later. Now’s the time. Get up.’ In the living room he released her from the harness, rubbed the pink lines it left on her skin, kissed a few. Then he held her two breasts as if they were small animals trying to escape. His fingers went through the rings, pinning the little creatures down. ‘You need to learn,’ he said, ‘ that these belong only to me. Stay where you are.’

He came up the basement stairs with an old eight-panelled door. The hardware had already been prepared to fix it solidly, if temporarily, between kitchen and living room. Anders had cleaned and varnished it, and made a few structural changes.

‘All right, girl, come here.’ He pressed her belly-first into the kitchen side of the door, and cinched the waist strap he’d attached to keep her in place. Next her collar, its ring fastened directly to a ring in the door. Her arms were fastened to the surface at wrist and elbow. And then the point of the whole exercise.

He went round to the other side of the door and gently pulled the breasts through the panels he had modified. It had taken some time to find a door with a centre rail narrow enough. Anders had removed the two relevant panels, cut and lined holes for her breasts, and replaced them again. For a minute he thought that he’d miscalculated and made the holes too small, but patiently he worked the soft, pointed mounds toward him, until they bulged and distended gorgeously. He watched for signs that they were too restricted, but their colour remained good and didn’t darken. Anders smiled to himself.

He was already thinking of them as disembodied objects; just the effect he’d hoped for.

Checking the other side of the door, he found Maia’s head turned toward him, eyes glazing. Hands warm. The ragged breathing of arousal, not pain.

He went back to work. There was a little T-shaped construction he’d fastened to the rail between the holes, projecting forward parallel to the floor, with hooks on springs at the ends of the arms. A simple matter to hook the nipple rings to the springs and make the brown flesh stretch forward. Just enough and no more. There was a some hard breathing from beyond the panels. He stood to one side and watched her for a minute or two for signs of real distress, and saw none. She was staring at him, her mouth hanging open.

Good.

The release of her collar surprised her. Then Anders screwed the gag into place in front of her mouth. ‘Open up.’ She closed her eyes and stretched her jaws wide. Anders pressed the head forward over the wooden ball and fastened the collar again. Her nose tip was against the surface.

Could she get enough distance to disengage from the gag? He tried pulling her head gently back and to either side. But he’d estimated correctly; the ball was too big and deep to escape. He listened with pleasure to her stoppered moans, and stroked gently down her back, below the tight belt at her waist.

The striped buttocks drew themselves up tensely. ‘That’s for another time, girl. Right now you’re learning something different. Pay close attention to the message.’

He snapped off the kitchen light and went to the other side of the door.

Nothing visible but the pale wood and two conical hillocks of flesh, squeezed into bulbous shapes at the base, and stretched into points at the tips. He got out a light cat and applied it with care, creating slightly darker lines of pink. Pretty. Then he sat down to watch a documentary on medieval Islamic architecture.

When he went into the kitchen for a beer he caught sight of a slight movement; Maia was pressing her pelvis ever so slightly against the door.

He slapped her hard. ‘Bad girl!’

The drool from her gag had run down the door; she wept succulently as he spanked her, and then screamed at each impact of the cane. Anders mused for a minute, then inserted a thick horizontal bar of wood between her and the door at hip height, forcing her to arch her pelvis back from the door.

Once this was screwed in place he stood by her side and growled in her ear, ‘You weren’t paying attention to your lesson, bad girl. Let’s try again.’

He unhooked the nipple rings and used a flogger on the isolated tits, hard this time. The leather tips hit the breasts and the door as well; he didn’t need to worry about aim, or hitting anything he shouldn’t. And the lovely bounce at each blow was mesmerizing. Once the skin was well-marked, and the rings rehooked, he got some tiger balm from the bathroom and rubbed it into the abraded nipples. The muffled howls from beyond the door went up an octave and became muffled shrieks.

After a while these subsided. He’d try the flogger and a tawse a little later. For now he practiced his fiddle for an upcoming folk club performance. His mind ran ahead of the melodic line, testing out the limitless variations and innovations yet to be tried.

***

I watched rain slide down the windows on the streetcar from a standing position, though there were seats to be had. I would probably stand all morning at work as well, for obvious reasons. My aching breasts and nipples felt a bit more protected beneath their leather carapaces. But carrying armfuls of anything, like those pamphlets on West Nile, might be something to leave to Vera.

The shift to my working persona was hanging partway, like a computer screen stuck between two programs. I seemed still half submerged in subspace. When Anders had at last released me from the door the night before, it had been a long, slow process to reconnect my synapses, especially those connecting my mouth to my brain. I thought I’d taken in, on some visceral level, the lesson he had been trying to convey, but I hadn’t been able to articulate it for the life of me. He had held me gently and had allowed me to come up gradually from the depths, his hands describing slow circles on my back and arms and legs.

What had I said, finally? Something about slavery and objectification.

‘This – isn’t a human body,’ I’d halted at last; ‘it’s a slave body.’ He’d nodded. ‘It always has been. Parts, whole, all of it.’ Long pause. ‘I can’t – I mustn’t ever think – I can decide about it. I don’t own it; I don’t own its parts.

I can’t own – anything. It’s all – yours.’ Words of one syllable. Inarticulate, even for me. My god, I must have been out of it. Had there been any sense in all that? Had I said anything that he hadn’t already told me? He’d seemed satisfied, at any rate, and put me to bed. Perhaps he’d figured that was all the sense he was going to get out of me. Or perhaps he’d seen that whether it made sense or not, I’d felt what he’d wanted me to feel. And I still did. I’d spent ages in the dark, with my tits out in the light. They were in a different room, in a different space altogether, a place where my master was and I was not. Warmth, light, music and his hands. My breasts got plenty of attention, in that other dimension they’d been moved to. The rest of me was peripheral.

There was a story of Kafka’s, about judicial torture and execution. I’d read it in English class one year, and I remembered being secretly enthralled by the bizarre bondage machine, whereas the torture had upset and preyed on me for days. The idea was that a prisoner, unaware of the crime for which he’d been condemned, was strapped into a mechanical contrivance of gears, wheels and knives. This machine, hour after hour, carved elaborate words into his flesh that explained his offence, going deeper and deeper, until he achieved enlightenment and died. Was that what Anders had had in mind, without the knives or the grisly ending? Enlightenment? Time, after all, was part of his equipment. A brief sojourn behind the door wouldn’t have had anything like the same effect.

The early period had been dominated by arousal. Then beatings, pain and the loneliness on my side of the door. But gradually I’d drifted and detached, begun to visualize myself as two distinct types of matter: The part of me that he wanted to use, or play with, or hurt, and the unimportant remainder. That portion was on hold until called for. If he had no use for my parts, they would be stored away out of sight until he did. It was a lesson in objectification that I’d been left to soak in, like a piece of meat in one of his marinades.

Each afternoon spent chained and waiting was a similar lesson, of course. And the harness that sectioned me off. I really got it now.

The car reached my stop and I got out, raising the umbrella that my master had kindly handed me when I left the house. There was a rumble of thunder somewhere over the lake. My steps were measured, despite the rain; there were people hurrying past me. This was going to be hard, and strange.

Part of me hadn’t left the house. Part of me was still safely on a chain. All at once the harness wasn’t enough; I wanted to be back where I belonged. Why did he want me out of the house and working? I didn’t belong out here. The pretence suddenly seemed too much. But the phone was ringing when I got through the door, and my helpful, professional voice turned on like a switch.

The junior high kids got there and kept me so busy it was noon before I noticed the time. I even managed a stern voice when I found a couple of them messing with the photocopier. Of course they were undismayed, but that was more about their age than my stature as an authority figure. I swapped internet resources with their teacher and chatted about the development of the teenaged social conscience. She took me for a normal human being, and for all intents and purposes, I seemed to inhabit the role without much difficulty. On the way home, it occurred to me to wonder whether I’d be able to take such constant subjection at home if I didn’t have some kind of life and a modicum of autonomy somewhere else. Maybe, maybe not. All part of my master’s master plan? Probably.

I thought ahead to the weekend; two entire days in his company without a break, and bit my lip to stifle any sounds that might escape. Deep in the convolutions of my fervid brain, hands, mouths, genitals made contact, one set bound, the other free. I hoped intensely that he’d let me come. I hadn’t come the night before, had really been beyond it by the end of the night.

Although he hadn’t been hanging me out on the edge before work, he’d been teasing me increasingly at home. My forbidden pelvic activity of the night before, shameful as it was, had been almost unconscious. One of these days I was going to come in my sleep, or get caught in the act; it was increasingly hard to get my mind out of my crotch. Bad girl! I heard at the back of my mind, and my heart began to race. Sooner or later I was afraid I was going to be a very bad girl indeed.