As She’s Told

Val was right about the money Anders’ little hobby cost him: thousands.

Without some discounts on materials and the use of his own labour he’d hardly have been able to afford it all. And there was always more to come.

That evening after dinner he walked his slave to the end of the yard, as was his habit. It was above freezing, but not by much. All he could see of her was the white glimmer of her haunches in the November darkness.

Above the waist she wore tight black lycra with the breasts cut out. And lately he’d let her wear thick black stockings to above her knees. Though Anders could see so little of her, he could visualize the shrivelled nipples on their twin tether, pointed toward the grass. He leaned down to feel the cold curve of her ass, thinking of Lady Chatterley’s chilled, naked haunches in the woods; once again he felt like a perverted D.H. Lawrence. At his touch the creature paused, and pressed shivering against his leg. She crawled on in answer to his tug on the nipple leads, her hands and knees rustling through dead leaves, the chain making its little jingle. Then she squatted carefully.

He could feel her tremble through the leash. There was the sound of urine hissing.

He took her straight back in; no lingering sojourns now, sniffing the night air or looking at stars. The walks couldn’t be prolonged much longer.

But Anders enjoyed them so much that he’d go on till frostbite threatened.

He took off Maia’s doggie sweater and stockings, rubbed her warm again and leashed her to the banister. As always, after being walked she was deep into abject animal mode, so shamefaced that she could barely meet his eye. Anders never spoke to her at these times, not more than the commands or encouragement or reprimands he’d use on a dog, and he didn’t require her to talk herself. He’d found she was barely capable.

But after twenty minutes or so she was making eye contact again. He took her down to the basement, sat her on his workbench and shifted a few things out of the way. Signs of old and new projects were everywhere: extra tiles from the bathroom in a box on the shelf, the door with its two round holes leaning against the wall, a wood and metal construction half finished in the corner, brackets, rivets, extra wiring, hardware of all kinds. His slave followed his eyes and then looked back at him inquiringly.

‘Look at all this stuff. A good seventy-five percent of it is for you one way or another. What an expensive little dolly you are.’

She looked abashed, and then concerned.

‘No, money is not a problem. Don’t start offering me your bank account.

I said a year and I meant it.’

She dropped her eyes and murmured a form, ‘Yes, master.’

‘I love having all this to use on you.’ He kissed the delicate skin of her inner arm above the cuff. ‘Interesting how much hardware I need to keep you in line.’ She dropped her eyes. The box he’d picked up at the post office the day before came out, a curve of metal emerging from the open flaps.

He’d been assembling already. As he took the thing out he watched her face: curiosity, fear, confusion, recognition. Then a kind of shamed excitement.

‘You know what this is.’

Her eyes travelled the connecting metal curves, caught on the complexities. Smooth silvery metal edged in black. ‘A – a chastity belt, master?’

‘That’s right. It’s been a long time coming. I measured you for it in the spring, remember?’

‘You’re kidding.’

‘That day I gave you the theory lesson. When the your landlords showed up at the door.”

“My god. Why so long?’

‘A lot of negotiation by email. Special adjustments. The guy also disappears for months at a time, and he’s not quick when he is around. But he is good, I think. We’ll see.’

She peered at the box coated with unfamiliar stamps and labels. ‘Where is he?”

“Germany.”

“Wow. Not exactly local. I guess Graham doesn’t make them.’

He locked her wrists to her neck and spread her legs. ‘No. We thought about trying it. But without experience we would have run into all sorts of difficulties. I decided it would be better to get hold of a real one and work from there.’ He ran his fingers up and down the shield between her legs, then sorted out the key and inserted it. ‘I’ll miss this, you know. Seeing this thin little shell clinging to your needy cunt.’ The double bar slid smoothly from the rings. ‘But it’s not quite up to the job, is it?’

She swallowed. ‘No, master.’

Anders tipped the thing away from her moist, be-ringed flesh, and again ran a gentle finger up and down, now on her sensitive labia. Her thighs tensed, and he stroked those, too, then went back to the soft little pillows between her legs. She began whimpering almost immediately, and he smiled and stopped.

Then began the work of fitting. There were adjustments to be made in the waist belt, a bit of reshaping, options for this hole or that to try. He had her stand and respond and give feedback. When he was satisfied with the waist belt for the time being he laid her back on the table and started on the crotch piece.

‘See, sweetheart, there’s an inner shield, very light mesh, with slots for your rings. A nice deep curve. Should clear the crucial bit. I had him add the slots, since despite his assurances I’m not convinced that you wouldn’t be able to pull yourself out from under otherwise.’ He pressed the shield down over her rings, frowned, pulled her butt forward on the bench, frowned again and took the belt off to move the crotch piece up a notch at the back. When he tried again the rings went in easily. ‘There we go.’ New little bars slid through to hold the rings in place, one on each side; he snapped them down.

‘No need to lock them, you see? The outer shield’s going to cover them.’

She craned her neck, but she would have needed a mirror. Anders flicked a glance at her face and smiled. ‘What’s so funny?’

Through shallow breaths she said, ‘You. You look like a – a kid with a new toy.’

He laughed. ‘A new gadget for the toy I’ve already got. My love of technology takes such unique turns.’ He looked at her flushed face. ‘I especially love the effect all these accessories have on you, my little string puppet.’ He pulled her breasts up by nipple rings, danced them around a little, and watched her arch her back and squirm.

Then he turned back to the outer shield, with its many slits for ventilation and the passage of fluids. It was a deep curve that fit closely on either side of the labia, and it followed the other inner piece high over the central lips. Both shields were on a hinge that rested on her perineum.

Anders fit the belt together in front and closed the padlock. There was one thin, rounded metal bar up the back, attaching shield to waistband. ‘It’s supposed to be easier that way. We’ll see how it works out,’ he said. She looked doubtful.

Releasing her wrists, he had her sit, stand, walk, crouch, bend, lie down on side and back and front. The back strap pressed uncomfortably on the base of her spine. He leashed her to the bench, refastened her hands and began reshaping the band to avoid this.

‘Speaking of my technology fetish,’ he said. ‘Something else I’ve added.’ He leaned down with the belt in his hand, pulled back the padding, slid a thin sheet of metal aside and showed her something small and plastic and rectangular, embedded on the inside of the front portion, near the lock.

‘A little modification of my own. I ground out the space for it; it didn’t need much.”

“What is it?’

‘A GPS chip. It’s a pet finder, actually.’ He held up the collar he’d dug it out from. Her stare shifted from the collar to his face. Anders watched the wheels turn behind her eyes, and waited for the flush of humiliation. In twenty seconds she was glowing like a ruby. The belt back went back down on the bench; he returned to his reshaping. ‘It’s a lovely little system. I can use either my cell or my laptop to find you anywhere. And if you get outside your boundaries I’ll get an automated call with your location.’ She knelt there, looking staggered.

‘I thought a while back about putting it in your cell phone. They already have GPS trackers in those for emergencies, you know, for 911 calls. But you could leave that anywhere. This is something you can’t lose.’

He unscrewed the clamp holding the belt to the bench, shifted it and screwed it tight again. ‘I looked into possible health effects, by the way, and I’m pretty satisfied about that, but just in case, I’ve got you shielded from the signal.’

Anders tried the belt on her again. It was better but still not quite right.

As he took it off he smiled at her stunned face and kissed her between the eyebrows. She settled back down onto her heels.

‘I admit that when I started to entertain the idea seriously, it seemed a bit deranged. Well,’ he laughed, ‘more than a bit. Truly obsessive. I used to worry about what I did, whether I could be mistaken for an abusive boyfriend, a crazy stalker – and this couldn’t be worse, really, in that light.’

She shook her head.

‘But the more I thought of it the more sense it made. I want to keep track of you outside the house as well as in. The technology is there. Why not? I could have added all sorts of things if I was really deranged. A microphone, for instance. But I don’t need to listen in on your conversations.

I just need to know where you are.’

‘Master – ‘

‘What, love?’

‘I know I’ve – messed up and you don’t – I don’t deserve for you to trust me. I’m so sorry. If this helps – I didn’t know it was possible. I guess they track wild animals, don’t they, so I should have known…’

They exchanged an intense look of mutual understanding. He could see her body settling more firmly on the floor in response to this extra layer of reassurance, relaxed and content. But not for long. When they seemed to have the best fit, Anders released her wrists, sat down with her standing between his knees, and began the all-devouring kissing and sucking and stroking that drove her wild. Then he put her over his lap and used a light, thuddy flogger on her that always ratcheted up her temperature.

‘Try to come,’ he said, putting her back on her feet. She gave him a pitiful look, but obeyed, panting and soon whining. She couldn’t reach under the belt at all in most positions, until she sat on the floor with her legs widely spread. Then she could get a finger up to the first joint under the outer shield. The inner was clasped tightly to her by the rings in her labia, and she had no luck with that. ‘Can you pull your cunt out from under at all?’

She tried, and quickly desisted. ‘No.’

Still, any leeway was too much for Anders; he unlocked her and tightened her up a notch.

That worked.

‘All right, we’re safe from fingers. Try to use the belt.’

She gave him another look both guilty and piteous, and pressed and rocked the belt against her. After a few minutes, increasingly desperate, she said, ‘It hardly moves at all, master, it’s too tight.’ She had both hands clasped over the deep curve of the outer shield, and was pressing up and back. She tried this in various positions at his direction, with no change in the result. It was late. He had one last thing to try. He removed the belt altogether and inserted the new dildo into the shield, this time fastening her rings to different slots and using different bars to fix them. The rings now were fastened to the shield in two curves around the base of the thick plug.

Then an anal plug. Then he locked her up again, and made her try everything she’d tried before. Initially reluctant, then urgent.

He brought her upstairs, turned on music, picked up a whip and made her dance. She was immediately aroused to the point of madness: nipples swollen, face flushed, eyes wild. She even yanked at the belt in what seemed to be a frantic attempt to remove it, amusing Anders no end. His whip kept her dancing, right to the limit of her endurance, and he watched, entranced, as she gasped for breath and wept with frustration. When he brought her to her knees in front of him she wriggled in a helpless frenzy, scrabbled at the belt with her fingernails and begged, her voice rising to wails, fading to helpless murmurs, and then rising again; he delayed his own satisfaction for a few minutes to enjoy this. ‘Please take it off, master, please take it off! Let me come once, just once… I can’t take any more….”

“Sure you can, my sweet. What must be borne can be borne.’

‘No, I really can’t, I swear… please, master, oh, please… Unlock me, please! ….’

‘How about if I take it off and make you hold back your orgasms just because I say so?’

She stopped dead and stared at him through appalled, tear-flooded eyes, and choked out, ‘Oh, god, no! Please, not that!’

‘Well then. Be grateful for what you’ve got.’ He stroked her cheek, smiling. ‘Master, how long? How long?”

“With this equipment, more or less indefinitely, don’t you think?’

She howled, face down in his lap. He silenced her by stuffing his cock down her throat. In bed he muzzled her, ran his fingers all around the boundaries of the belt for a while, especially between her legs, and then fell into a very satisfied sleep.

***

I tried not to struggle any more, forced myself to lie still. Of course Anders was asleep. As soon as his fingers had stopped their torments, his breathing had become regular and his arm had gone heavy on my shoulder. I could feel his muscular thigh against mine, and I longed to crawl between his legs, lick his nipples and beg one more time. Jaws struggled momentarily against the muzzle, and then gave up. The new and unaccustomed appliance pressed itself between my legs and around my hips, in firm contact in some areas, intruding lewdly in others, discreetly distant just where I needed it to cuddle close. Fucking diabolical. My centre was liquid, molten, contracting around the immovable objects he’d left inside me, wondering if someday, pushed so often to the brink, I’d find myself able to come that way. Wouldn’t Anders be annoyed? That would be a spanner in his works, I thought with some satisfaction. The sadist. My shame at this childish petulance brought on an urgent desire to be punished. And my image of that brought on another surge of lust. More resentment, more shame, more lust. I squeezed, and a tiny groan escaped from me. My master stirred. I went still.

His face that evening. So delighted at the sight of me. Of me struggling and crying. How utterly sadistic of him. And how I loved and worshipped that face and its pleasure.

***

>At last! Does it work?

>So far, yes. It needed some adjustment but now fits very well. I’m glad I insisted on the modifications, because with them I think it can truly be relied on. Even when teased to the point

>of madness the other night and with permission to try, she could not get past it. (This was absolutely gorgeous, by the way.) So thank you for all your help.

>Flights are no bargain at that time but expense be damned. In any case I have saved money on clubs, as the scene is tepid and these afternoons with Ria and her victims are more amusing. Though I miss the scent of Ria and all the rest; the nose is so vital to sex. For two weeks I will use mine to the full. With brief times out for family appearances. Trying not to fall asleep in my soup.

***

That Saturday we went for a walk to test the GPS pet finder. It was overcast and a little windy, but not too cold. My internal temperature was moderate; I’d been locked up that morning without any extras.

Sure enough, when we got a few steps south of Gerrard, Anders’ phone rang. He examined the display and looked pleased. ‘Here,’ he said, turning to me, ‘I’ll give you a long head start. See if you can escape me. No back yards, though, hunhund; we don’t want to be taken for burglars.’

He turned his back and after a moment of hesitation – was I allowed to run away from him today? Guess so – I hightailed it down one block, across the street and around a corner, looking for places I could hide without looking like a nut job. I didn’t know the area well; our walks had been mostly in other directions.

It was all residential, just streets of narrow detached and semi-detached houses. One corner store sat at an intersection with a stack of milk crates out the front. Too obvious. I nipped down an alley, stumbled over a pop can and giggled. A woman getting into her car looked at me oddly, so I collected myself and walked as if I knew where I was going. The alley smelled of cat, and car oil, and as if the raccoons had gotten into the green bins. There were some open garages, but those were private property and better avoided. I stepped into a bit of waste ground between two garages and waited. How accurate was his GPS tracker? What if someone saw me? The hell with it, I’d tell them I was playing hide and seek.

As a kid I’d always loved the tiny hiding places that no one else could squeeze into. Behind the luggage in the upstairs closet; in the narrow gap under the porch. I’d hug myself in my tight little refuge and listen for the approaching voices, muffled by surrounding blankets or concrete. They rarely found me. The drawback was that when I did get caught I was in too tight to run for it. My sister always went for the lookout spots where she could see but not be seen, and could make a dash when anyone got too warm.

Were those footsteps? I suppressed the urge to peek, pressed myself to the wall and held my breath. Footsteps, sure enough. But the sound receded again, and I heard a back door slam. Suppressing a triumphant chortle, I let out my breath and gasped as I was snatched off my feet. Then I was laughing down into Anders’ triumphant face. I wrapped my arms around his head and kissed him, the crinkles at the corner of his eyes, his cheekbones, chilly in the cool wind. He squeezed my ass under my coat and set me down.

‘Wow. Pinpoint accuracy.”

“Within two metres.”

“I didn’t even hear you!’

He grinned. ‘You can run but you can’t hide. Let’s try again. Off you go.’

I ran off. This was fun. The illusion of freedom with none of the risks.

Nothing but houses. I zigzagged, turning at every corner to prevent him finding me by sight alone. No capture yet. Wow, a good sized park! This looked promising. A few dog walkers being tugged across the dormant grass, three boys in the distance riding bikes. Any bushes big enough to hide in? I checked a clump, but the nest of beer bottles and used condoms put me off. Anyway, there weren’t enough leaves left for cover. I trotted toward a couple of small buildings in the distance, panting. All my accoutrements were making it a little difficult to get up to speed. There was a storage shed, a concrete dish of a wading pool half full of dead leaves, and a public toilet.

If I hid in the Ladies would he come in after me? I circled the building looking for the entrance. The door had a whacking great padlock on it. Hell.

Cautiously I peeked around the corner, back the way I’d come. There he was! He was back at the street, looking at his phone. I retreated, keeping the building between us, and ran for the playground, aiming for a hideous little orange castle that had ropes up its sides and footholds up to the drawbridge.

Skirting a stroller, a bored mother and a determined toddler with a shovel, I folded myself up and ducked through the plastic archway.

Two little girls in puffy purple jackets were already in possession. They stared at me wide eyed. The mom peered in, winked at me and disappeared again. I wondered how old she thought

I was.

‘Shh!’ I whispered. ‘I’m hiding!’

‘From who?’ said the bigger one, peeking through the footholds. Arrow slits, actually, from this vantage point.

‘From my boyfriend. Wait a minute. He’s going to find me.’

‘Is he the bad guy? Should we kill him?’

I put my fist up to my mouth, suppressing laughter. ‘No, you don’t need to kill him. Maybe you could rough him up a little.’ The concrete floor was very cold, and was jamming the metal belt hard up into my butt.

‘Do you looove him?’ said the littler one, drawing out the word in charming schoolyard mockery, trying it on for size. The other one was continuing her reconnaissance with an air of fierce efficiency.

‘Passionately. Hey, I have an idea. When he shows up – he’s a big blond guy – you run out and capture him, okay?’

The older girl tipped her head to one side and gave this some thought.

‘Only if he’s cute. Is he cute?’

Oh, how soon they start. ‘I think so. You have a look.’

‘Ooh! There he is!’ she whispered excitedly. ‘Yup, he’s cute. What’s he phoning for?’ Silently I put my fingers to my lips and pointed them to either side of the entrance, and they flattened themselves into the corners, suppressing giggles. There was a breathless pause, straight out of an action movie.

Then the older one yelled, ‘Here he comes! Get him!’

Anders found himself grabbed by the legs and weighed down by two little girls sitting on his feet. He waddled back and forth to shrieks of laughter, then bent down with some difficulty and peered into my hideout.

‘You can’t have her!’ the little one said, bouncing hard on his instep.

‘She’s ours! She’s a maiden in distress and you’re a bad guy!’

‘An evil giant!’ said the bigger one.

‘An evil giant!’

He roared and walked them around some more. ‘Gimme my princess!”

“No!’ they shrieked. ‘Never!’

Anders was stomping away in the other direction when I slipped out and ran. Might as well try my sister’s strategy for once. ‘Thanks, kids!’ I called over my shoulder.

‘Great job!’ He told me later he only got away by showing them the phone and explaining the game, though naturally a sanitized version in which I had the chip in my pocket.

In the meantime I hit a main street and ducked into an antique store, which was the first shop I saw where I could browse and not buy anything.

The sign said antiques, but junk shop was more like it; I would have bet on there being nothing there older than 1970. Anders found me behind a pile of used stacking chairs, took a firm grip on the hair at the nape of my neck and kissed me until I could hardly breathe. Then we went for coffee.

‘You evil wench!’ he said, stirring his cappuccino.

I snickered. ‘Serendipity. Hey, they asked if they should kill you, and I said no. Be grateful for what you’ve got.’

He stared at me, and I thought I’d gone too far. Then he threw his head back and laughed, so big and deep that the windows rattled. The whole place stopped talking, turned around and smiled despite themselves.

‘God, you’re evil! All right, you get that one.’

‘Thank you. Only because you get everything else.’

‘Naturally. But we’ll have to do that again some time. I like tracking my little animal through the urban jungle. Taking you captive.’ His hand under the table had me hard by the wrist. The pressure made my other hand tremble a little as I sipped my tea. Something told me I was going to pay for my little triumph, in some coin or other.

He released me and leaned back. ‘Speaking of animals, we had a cat problem the other day, did I tell you? This huge cat wandered in and kept getting in the middle of whatever we were doing. Stupid thing must have been deaf; it was actually about to jump up on the table saw while Rizal was using it. We kept throwing it out and it kept turning up again.’

‘Was it white?’

‘Mostly. Might have been white under the dirt. Why?’

‘Some pure white cats are deaf; I read that somewhere.’

‘Dead, too, at that rate.’

‘Is Rizal working out okay?’ This was a Filipino of few words whom Anders was considering grooming for more responsibility.

‘Not bad. I got him to supervise the finishing details on that Etobicoke apartment, and he did okay. He doesn’t say much but what he does say is to the point.”

“Val hasn’t left yet, has she? How’s she doing?’

‘Giving off sparks. She might set off the gas tank any day now.’ He told me about the conversation in the truck.

I shifted my chair forward to accommodate someone behind me, large and with packages.

‘Val may be tense about setting up her business and so on, but I’ll bet she’s more bothered by splitting from you.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Well, you’re buddies. Obviously she’s going to miss you.’

‘She’s tearing strips off me at the moment.’ He thought. ‘But that’s how Val would deal with separation. Yeah, you might have something there.’ He finished his coffee. ‘How’s it going with your colleague of the afternoon shift? She still hiding the stapler?’

‘Yes,’ I groaned. ‘And the keys to the desk drawer. And she keeps changing the network defaults for some reason. On purpose just to aggravate me. What is it with that woman?’ Dearest Vera, the sticky letter in the keyboard of my life.

When we emerged it seemed colder, or maybe it was just that I was no longer on the run. The clouds had assembled closely overhead, and were considering their precipitation options. We wandered east. As we waited for the traffic to pass so we could jaywalk, Anders directed my attention upward to the hydro wire across the street. I was puzzled; all I saw was a squirrel travelling along it. But as I watched I realized that the creature was on quite a journey, with no trees available as off-ramps for a whole long city block, only concrete poles right next to the street. It seemed very exposed.

‘How often do you see a squirrel going that far in a straight line?’

Anders asked.

‘Well, only for a second, heading for a tree. Usually they dodge about.’

‘Like you.’ He squeezed me, his eyes still following the squirrel. ‘Not that it has a choice at the moment. On the street you never know which way they’ll go. Back under your tires often as not.’

‘It does look odd. I have never been under your tires, by the way.’ We watched the critter cling and scuttle on its narrow path, on and on above the sidewalk, above the traffic, tail whipping back and forth for balance. ‘Like a tightrope walker over Niagara Falls.”

“Looks like it’s on a mission. Like something out of a Looney Tunes cartoon.”

“I’ll bet he’s got a girlfriend in the next block.’

Halfway down the next block the squirrel finally reached a tree and disappeared. We crossed, and Anders turned us south, through small but thoroughly renovated houses. We’d reached the Beaches; east-end upscale. I hugged his side to keep warm.

‘Well, well,’ he mused. ‘A fleeing hunhund. A crazy cat. And a disturbingly methodical squirrel. This is our day to consider unusual animal behaviour. What next, I wonder?’ I dug into his chest with my head, either protesting or confirming my animal status; he could take it any way he wanted.

On Queen my eyes raked the outside bins at Book City, and Anders indulged me; we went in. He ended up buying Jane Jacob’s last book, about the decline of Western civilization, from which I averted my eyes; I got a Penguin Classic edition of an Arnold Bennet novel, the story safely set in 1910.

We ended up in a fancy pub-slash-bistro, eating grilled chicken pizza and talking about Christmas.

‘Christmas traditions? I don’t know,’ I said. ‘The usual. A tree, a pile of presents. A free-range turkey with dried apricot and organic wild rice stuffing.”

“That was it?’

‘Let’s see…. My uncles and cousins watched football down in the rec room. My parents went to a million parties, and came home trashed. My sister complained about turkey sandwiches and sent out for pizza.’

‘What about you?’

‘I ate leftover wild rice and read the books people gave me.’

‘That doesn’t sound like much fun.’

I shrugged. ‘I like wild rice. Anyway, it could have been worse. My friend Laura’s parents did their drinking at home and fought through the whole thing, every single year. Broken crockery and all. One year she had to call 911. What was your Christmas like?”

“Oh, well, a Danish Christmas is something else. It’s a very big deal.”

“Is it?’

‘Oh, yeah. A big lead-up, first of all. The whole month. Weeks of baking and decorating. We had Advent calendars, of course, with little presents, one for each day. Chocolate, mostly. When Janne was three she ate all of hers at once and threw up.’ Janne was his little sister. ‘Svend teased her about it every Christmas for years; she’d chase him around the house trying to tackle him.”

“Now there’s a golden memory. Did you have big presents too?’

‘Of course. Everyone spends a fortune on presents. Plus days of feasting and parties and games and visiting back and forth. It goes on and on. But it is fun. I’ll have to take you back there some time; you should experience it.’

‘Not this year, though?’ I tried to keep the anxiety out of my voice. A big friendly noisy family taking me in, requiring me to have social graces, speaking another language over my dark swarthy little head. Oh, boy.

‘No, I think we’ll just have fun at home. But I’ll do some baking. Deck you out in pretty chains and sprigs of holly.’

While we were eating the clouds had decided on sleet; there was a thin layer on the tops of cars, and some slush piling up on the sidewalk. As I wasn’t wearing boots we took a streetcar. At the next intersection my eye was caught by a man, broad, drab and blank-faced, wandering off the curb into the slow traffic. He began meandering in circles and figure eights, ignoring all honks and verbal advice. I nudged Anders, and he leaned past me to take a look. ‘Wow,’ I said. ‘The sun’s not down yet.’

A car edged past the wavering figure. The man weaved toward the sidewalk, then changed his mind and headed out again, his path describing a curve, as if one leg was shorter than the other.

‘Something tells me time of day isn’t what he goes by,’ Anders said.

‘Poor bastard.’ I half expected Anders to get up and take steps, but he stayed put. ‘No urge to rescue?’

‘No need. Look.’ There was a cop car, a pair of policemen just emerging with that slow and deliberate convergence thing they do.

The streetcar moved on. ‘Hey!’ I said, sitting back. ‘Squirrels going in straight lines and men going in circles!’

Anders grinned down at me, and in his Danish professor voice said,

‘Aha! Very significant.’

‘What does it mean, Doctor Thygesen?’

‘Obviously, the squirrels take over after our decadent society implodes and we succumb to global warming.’

‘I thought that was supposed to be cockroaches.’

He stroked his absent beard. ‘The squirrels want you to think so. They are gaining in intelligence by picking up the washed-away brain cells of tavern customers. Elite rodent cadres are preparing to rule the world.’

‘Rodent cadres, of course! Rats I can believe.’

‘Very well, the squirrels are in league with the rats. Brothers in arms.

The city rodent and the country rodent.’

The woman sitting in front of us glanced over her shoulder, amused, or possibly alarmed. Anders put an arm around me and said in my ear, ‘Of course, the real meaning is that the boundaries between human and animal aren’t clearly defined. Some creatures might need to remember at which end of the continuum they belong.’ Payback. I knew it. What was he planning?

It turned out he was planning to emphasize my captured animal status by hanging me from the ceiling again, tying my labia rings to my thighs, and tormenting and teasing me until I howled.

Val was right about the money Anders’ little hobby cost him: thousands.

Without some discounts on materials and the use of his own labour he’d hardly have been able to afford it all. And there was always more to come.

That evening after dinner he walked his slave to the end of the yard, as was his habit. It was above freezing, but not by much. All he could see of her was the white glimmer of her haunches in the November darkness.

Above the waist she wore tight black lycra with the breasts cut out. And lately he’d let her wear thick black stockings to above her knees. Though Anders could see so little of her, he could visualize the shrivelled nipples on their twin tether, pointed toward the grass. He leaned down to feel the cold curve of her ass, thinking of Lady Chatterley’s chilled, naked haunches in the woods; once again he felt like a perverted D.H. Lawrence. At his touch the creature paused, and pressed shivering against his leg. She crawled on in answer to his tug on the nipple leads, her hands and knees rustling through dead leaves, the chain making its little jingle. Then she squatted carefully.

He could feel her tremble through the leash. There was the sound of urine hissing.

He took her straight back in; no lingering sojourns now, sniffing the night air or looking at stars. The walks couldn’t be prolonged much longer.

But Anders enjoyed them so much that he’d go on till frostbite threatened.

He took off Maia’s doggie sweater and stockings, rubbed her warm again and leashed her to the banister. As always, after being walked she was deep into abject animal mode, so shamefaced that she could barely meet his eye. Anders never spoke to her at these times, not more than the commands or encouragement or reprimands he’d use on a dog, and he didn’t require her to talk herself. He’d found she was barely capable.

But after twenty minutes or so she was making eye contact again. He took her down to the basement, sat her on his workbench and shifted a few things out of the way. Signs of old and new projects were everywhere: extra tiles from the bathroom in a box on the shelf, the door with its two round holes leaning against the wall, a wood and metal construction half finished in the corner, brackets, rivets, extra wiring, hardware of all kinds. His slave 280

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followed his eyes and then looked back at him inquiringly.

‘Look at all this stuff. A good seventy-five percent of it is for you one way or another. What an expensive little dolly you are.’

She looked abashed, and then concerned.

‘No, money is not a problem. Don’t start offering me your bank account.

I said a year and I meant it.’

She dropped her eyes and murmured a form, ‘Yes, master.’

‘I love having all this to use on you.’ He kissed the delicate skin of her inner arm above the cuff. ‘Interesting how much hardware I need to keep you in line.’ She dropped her eyes. The box he’d picked up at the post office the day before came out, a curve of metal emerging from the open flaps.

He’d been assembling already. As he took the thing out he watched her face: curiosity, fear, confusion, recognition. Then a kind of shamed excitement.

‘You know what this is.’

Her eyes travelled the connecting metal curves, caught on the complexities. Smooth silvery metal edged in black. ‘A – a chastity belt, master?’

‘That’s right. It’s been a long time coming. I measured you for it in the spring, remember?’

‘You’re kidding.’

‘That day I gave you the theory lesson. When the your landlords showed up at the door.”

“My god. Why so long?’

‘A lot of negotiation by email. Special adjustments. The guy also disappears for months at a time, and he’s not quick when he is around. But he is good, I think. We’ll see.’

She peered at the box coated with unfamiliar stamps and labels. ‘Where is he?”

“Germany.”

“Wow. Not exactly local. I guess Graham doesn’t make them.’

He locked her wrists to her neck and spread her legs. ‘No. We thought about trying it. But without experience we would have run into all sorts of difficulties. I decided it would be better to get hold of a real one and work from there.’ He ran his fingers up and down the shield between her legs, then sorted out the key and inserted it. ‘I’ll miss this, you know. Seeing this thin little shell clinging to your needy cunt.’ The double bar slid smoothly 281

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from the rings. ‘But it’s not quite up to the job, is it?’

She swallowed. ‘No, master.’

Anders tipped the thing away from her moist, be-ringed flesh, and again ran a gentle finger up and down, now on her sensitive labia. Her thighs tensed, and he stroked those, too, then went back to the soft little pillows between her legs. She began whimpering almost immediately, and he smiled and stopped.

Then began the work of fitting. There were adjustments to be made in the waist belt, a bit of reshaping, options for this hole or that to try. He had her stand and respond and give feedback. When he was satisfied with the waist belt for the time being he laid her back on the table and started on the crotch piece.

‘See, sweetheart, there’s an inner shield, very light mesh, with slots for your rings. A nice deep curve. Should clear the crucial bit. I had him add the slots, since despite his assurances I’m not convinced that you wouldn’t be able to pull yourself out from under otherwise.’ He pressed the shield down over her rings, frowned, pulled her butt forward on the bench, frowned again and took the belt off to move the crotch piece up a notch at the back. When he tried again the rings went in easily. ‘There we go.’ New little bars slid through to hold the rings in place, one on each side; he snapped them down.

‘No need to lock them, you see? The outer shield’s going to cover them.’

She craned her neck, but she would have needed a mirror. Anders flicked a glance at her face and smiled. ‘What’s so funny?’

Through shallow breaths she said, ‘You. You look like a – a kid with a new toy.’

He laughed. ‘A new gadget for the toy I’ve already got. My love of technology takes such unique turns.’ He looked at her flushed face. ‘I especially love the effect all these accessories have on you, my little string puppet.’ He pulled her breasts up by nipple rings, danced them around a little, and watched her arch her back and squirm.

Then he turned back to the outer shield, with its many slits for ventilation and the passage of fluids. It was a deep curve that fit closely on either side of the labia, and it followed the other inner piece high over the central lips. Both shields were on a hinge that rested on her perineum.

Anders fit the belt together in front and closed the padlock. There was one thin, rounded metal bar up the back, attaching shield to waistband. ‘It’s 282

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supposed to be easier that way. We’ll see how it works out,’ he said. She looked doubtful.

Releasing her wrists, he had her sit, stand, walk, crouch, bend, lie down on side and back and front. The back strap pressed uncomfortably on the base of her spine. He leashed her to the bench, refastened her hands and began reshaping the band to avoid this.

‘Speaking of my technology fetish,’ he said. ‘Something else I’ve added.’ He leaned down with the belt in his hand, pulled back the padding, slid a thin sheet of metal aside and showed her something small and plastic and rectangular, embedded on the inside of the front portion, near the lock.

‘A little modification of my own. I ground out the space for it; it didn’t need much.”

“What is it?’

‘A GPS chip. It’s a pet finder, actually.’ He held up the collar he’d dug it out from. Her stare shifted from the collar to his face. Anders watched the wheels turn behind her eyes, and waited for the flush of humiliation. In twenty seconds she was glowing like a ruby. The belt back went back down on the bench; he returned to his reshaping. ‘It’s a lovely little system. I can use either my cell or my laptop to find you anywhere. And if you get outside your boundaries I’ll get an automated call with your location.’ She knelt there, looking staggered.

‘I thought a while back about putting it in your cell phone. They already have GPS trackers in those for emergencies, you know, for 911 calls. But you could leave that anywhere. This is something you can’t lose.’

He unscrewed the clamp holding the belt to the bench, shifted it and screwed it tight again. ‘I looked into possible health effects, by the way, and I’m pretty satisfied about that, but just in case, I’ve got you shielded from the signal.’

Anders tried the belt on her again. It was better but still not quite right.

As he took it off he smiled at her stunned face and kissed her between the eyebrows. She settled back down onto her heels.

‘I admit that when I started to entertain the idea seriously, it seemed a bit deranged. Well,’ he laughed, ‘more than a bit. Truly obsessive. I used to worry about what I did, whether I could be mistaken for an abusive boyfriend, a crazy stalker – and this couldn’t be worse, really, in that light.’

She shook her head.

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‘But the more I thought of it the more sense it made. I want to keep track of you outside the house as well as in. The technology is there. Why not? I could have added all sorts of things if I was really deranged. A microphone, for instance. But I don’t need to listen in on your conversations.

I just need to know where you are.’

‘Master – ‘

‘What, love?’

‘I know I’ve – messed up and you don’t – I don’t deserve for you to trust me. I’m so sorry. If this helps – I didn’t know it was possible. I guess they track wild animals, don’t they, so I should have known…’

They exchanged an intense look of mutual understanding. He could see her body settling more firmly on the floor in response to this extra layer of reassurance, relaxed and content. But not for long. When they seemed to have the best fit, Anders released her wrists, sat down with her standing between his knees, and began the all-devouring kissing and sucking and stroking that drove her wild. Then he put her over his lap and used a light, thuddy flogger on her that always ratcheted up her temperature.

‘Try to come,’ he said, putting her back on her feet. She gave him a pitiful look, but obeyed, panting and soon whining. She couldn’t reach under the belt at all in most positions, until she sat on the floor with her legs widely spread. Then she could get a finger up to the first joint under the outer shield. The inner was clasped tightly to her by the rings in her labia, and she had no luck with that. ‘Can you pull your cunt out from under at all?’

She tried, and quickly desisted. ‘No.’

Still, any leeway was too much for Anders; he unlocked her and tightened her up a notch.

That worked.

‘All right, we’re safe from fingers. Try to use the belt.’

She gave him another look both guilty and piteous, and pressed and rocked the belt against her. After a few minutes, increasingly desperate, she said, ‘It hardly moves at all, master, it’s too tight.’ She had both hands clasped over the deep curve of the outer shield, and was pressing up and back. She tried this in various positions at his direction, with no change in the result. It was late. He had one last thing to try. He removed the belt altogether and inserted the new dildo into the shield, this time fastening her rings to different slots and using different bars to fix them. The rings now 284

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were fastened to the shield in two curves around the base of the thick plug.

Then an anal plug. Then he locked her up again, and made her try everything she’d tried before. Initially reluctant, then urgent.

He brought her upstairs, turned on music, picked up a whip and made her dance. She was immediately aroused to the point of madness: nipples swollen, face flushed, eyes wild. She even yanked at the belt in what seemed to be a frantic attempt to remove it, amusing Anders no end. His whip kept her dancing, right to the limit of her endurance, and he watched, entranced, as she gasped for breath and wept with frustration. When he brought her to her knees in front of him she wriggled in a helpless frenzy, scrabbled at the belt with her fingernails and begged, her voice rising to wails, fading to helpless murmurs, and then rising again; he delayed his own satisfaction for a few minutes to enjoy this. ‘Please take it off, master, please take it off! Let me come once, just once… I can’t take any more….”

“Sure you can, my sweet. What must be borne can be borne.’

‘No, I really can’t, I swear… please, master, oh, please… Unlock me, please! ….’

‘How about if I take it off and make you hold back your orgasms just because I say so?’

She stopped dead and stared at him through appalled, tear-flooded eyes, and choked out, ‘Oh, god, no! Please, not that!’

‘Well then. Be grateful for what you’ve got.’ He stroked her cheek, smiling. ‘Master, how long? How long?”

“With this equipment, more or less indefinitely, don’t you think?’

She howled, face down in his lap. He silenced her by stuffing his cock down her throat. In bed he muzzled her, ran his fingers all around the boundaries of the belt for a while, especially between her legs, and then fell into a very satisfied sleep.

***

I tried not to struggle any more, forced myself to lie still. Of course Anders was asleep. As soon as his fingers had stopped their torments, his breathing had become regular and his arm had gone heavy on my shoulder. I could feel his muscular thigh against mine, and I longed to crawl between his legs, lick his nipples and beg one more time. Jaws struggled momentarily against the muzzle, and then gave up. The new and unaccustomed appliance pressed itself between my legs and around my hips, in firm contact in some 285

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areas, intruding lewdly in others, discreetly distant just where I needed it to cuddle close. Fucking diabolical. My centre was liquid, molten, contracting around the immovable objects he’d left inside me, wondering if someday, pushed so often to the brink, I’d find myself able to come that way. Wouldn’t Anders be annoyed? That would be a spanner in his works, I thought with some satisfaction. The sadist. My shame at this childish petulance brought on an urgent desire to be punished. And my image of that brought on another surge of lust. More resentment, more shame, more lust. I squeezed, and a tiny groan escaped from me. My master stirred. I went still.

His face that evening. So delighted at the sight of me. Of me struggling and crying. How utterly sadistic of him. And how I loved and worshipped that face and its pleasure.

***

>At last! Does it work?

>So far, yes. It needed some adjustment but now fits very well. I’m glad I insisted on the modifications, because with them I think it can truly be relied on. Even when teased to the point

>of madness the other night and with permission to try, she could not get past it. (This was absolutely gorgeous, by the way.) So thank you for all your help.

>Flights are no bargain at that time but expense be damned. In any case I have saved money on clubs, as the scene is tepid and these afternoons with Ria and her victims are more amusing. Though I miss the scent of Ria and all the rest; the nose is so vital to sex. For two weeks I will use mine to the full. With brief times out for family appearances. Trying not to fall asleep in my soup.

***

That Saturday we went for a walk to test the GPS pet finder. It was overcast and a little windy, but not too cold. My internal temperature was moderate; I’d been locked up that morning without any extras.

Sure enough, when we got a few steps south of Gerrard, Anders’ phone rang. He examined the display and looked pleased. ‘Here,’ he said, turning to me, ‘I’ll give you a long head start. See if you can escape me. No back yards, though, hunhund; we don’t want to be taken for burglars.’

He turned his back and after a moment of hesitation – was I allowed to run away from him today? Guess so – I hightailed it down one block, across 286

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the street and around a corner, looking for places I could hide without looking like a nut job. I didn’t know the area well; our walks had been mostly in other directions.

It was all residential, just streets of narrow detached and semi-detached houses. One corner store sat at an intersection with a stack of milk crates out the front. Too obvious. I nipped down an alley, stumbled over a pop can and giggled. A woman getting into her car looked at me oddly, so I collected myself and walked as if I knew where I was going. The alley smelled of cat, and car oil, and as if the raccoons had gotten into the green bins. There were some open garages, but those were private property and better avoided. I stepped into a bit of waste ground between two garages and waited. How accurate was his GPS tracker? What if someone saw me? The hell with it, I’d tell them I was playing hide and seek.

As a kid I’d always loved the tiny hiding places that no one else could squeeze into. Behind the luggage in the upstairs closet; in the narrow gap under the porch. I’d hug myself in my tight little refuge and listen for the approaching voices, muffled by surrounding blankets or concrete. They rarely found me. The drawback was that when I did get caught I was in too tight to run for it. My sister always went for the lookout spots where she could see but not be seen, and could make a dash when anyone got too warm.

Were those footsteps? I suppressed the urge to peek, pressed myself to the wall and held my breath. Footsteps, sure enough. But the sound receded again, and I heard a back door slam. Suppressing a triumphant chortle, I let out my breath and gasped as I was snatched off my feet. Then I was laughing down into Anders’ triumphant face. I wrapped my arms around his head and kissed him, the crinkles at the corner of his eyes, his cheekbones, chilly in the cool wind. He squeezed my ass under my coat and set me down.

‘Wow. Pinpoint accuracy.”

“Within two metres.”

“I didn’t even hear you!’

He grinned. ‘You can run but you can’t hide. Let’s try again. Off you go.’

I ran off. This was fun. The illusion of freedom with none of the risks.

Nothing but houses. I zigzagged, turning at every corner to prevent him finding me by sight alone. No capture yet. Wow, a good sized park! This 287

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looked promising. A few dog walkers being tugged across the dormant grass, three boys in the distance riding bikes. Any bushes big enough to hide in? I checked a clump, but the nest of beer bottles and used condoms put me off. Anyway, there weren’t enough leaves left for cover. I trotted toward a couple of small buildings in the distance, panting. All my accoutrements were making it a little difficult to get up to speed. There was a storage shed, a concrete dish of a wading pool half full of dead leaves, and a public toilet.

If I hid in the Ladies would he come in after me? I circled the building looking for the entrance. The door had a whacking great padlock on it. Hell.

Cautiously I peeked around the corner, back the way I’d come. There he was! He was back at the street, looking at his phone. I retreated, keeping the building between us, and ran for the playground, aiming for a hideous little orange castle that had ropes up its sides and footholds up to the drawbridge.

Skirting a stroller, a bored mother and a determined toddler with a shovel, I folded myself up and ducked through the plastic archway.

Two little girls in puffy purple jackets were already in possession. They stared at me wide eyed. The mom peered in, winked at me and disappeared again. I wondered how old she thought

I was.

‘Shh!’ I whispered. ‘I’m hiding!’

‘From who?’ said the bigger one, peeking through the footholds. Arrow slits, actually, from this vantage point.

‘From my boyfriend. Wait a minute. He’s going to find me.’

‘Is he the bad guy? Should we kill him?’

I put my fist up to my mouth, suppressing laughter. ‘No, you don’t need to kill him. Maybe you could rough him up a little.’ The concrete floor was very cold, and was jamming the metal belt hard up into my butt.

‘Do you looove him?’ said the littler one, drawing out the word in charming schoolyard mockery, trying it on for size. The other one was continuing her reconnaissance with an air of fierce efficiency.

‘Passionately. Hey, I have an idea. When he shows up – he’s a big blond guy – you run out and capture him, okay?’

The older girl tipped her head to one side and gave this some thought.

‘Only if he’s cute. Is he cute?’

Oh, how soon they start. ‘I think so. You have a look.’

‘Ooh! There he is!’ she whispered excitedly. ‘Yup, he’s cute. What’s he 288

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phoning for?’ Silently I put my fingers to my lips and pointed them to either side of the entrance, and they flattened themselves into the corners, suppressing giggles. There was a breathless pause, straight out of an action movie.

Then the older one yelled, ‘Here he comes! Get him!’

Anders found himself grabbed by the legs and weighed down by two little girls sitting on his feet. He waddled back and forth to shrieks of laughter, then bent down with some difficulty and peered into my hideout.

‘You can’t have her!’ the little one said, bouncing hard on his instep.

‘She’s ours! She’s a maiden in distress and you’re a bad guy!’

‘An evil giant!’ said the bigger one.

‘An evil giant!’

He roared and walked them around some more. ‘Gimme my princess!”

“No!’ they shrieked. ‘Never!’

Anders was stomping away in the other direction when I slipped out and ran. Might as well try my sister’s strategy for once. ‘Thanks, kids!’ I called over my shoulder.

‘Great job!’ He told me later he only got away by showing them the phone and explaining the game, though naturally a sanitized version in which I had the chip in my pocket.

In the meantime I hit a main street and ducked into an antique store, which was the first shop I saw where I could browse and not buy anything.

The sign said antiques, but junk shop was more like it; I would have bet on there being nothing there older than 1970. Anders found me behind a pile of used stacking chairs, took a firm grip on the hair at the nape of my neck and kissed me until I could hardly breathe. Then we went for coffee.

‘You evil wench!’ he said, stirring his cappuccino.

I snickered. ‘Serendipity. Hey, they asked if they should kill you, and I said no. Be grateful for what you’ve got.’

He stared at me, and I thought I’d gone too far. Then he threw his head back and laughed, so big and deep that the windows rattled. The whole place stopped talking, turned around and smiled despite themselves.

‘God, you’re evil! All right, you get that one.’

‘Thank you. Only because you get everything else.’

‘Naturally. But we’ll have to do that again some time. I like tracking my little animal through the urban jungle. Taking you captive.’ His hand under 289

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the table had me hard by the wrist. The pressure made my other hand tremble a little as I sipped my tea. Something told me I was going to pay for my little triumph, in some coin or other.

He released me and leaned back. ‘Speaking of animals, we had a cat problem the other day, did I tell you? This huge cat wandered in and kept getting in the middle of whatever we were doing. Stupid thing must have been deaf; it was actually about to jump up on the table saw while Rizal was using it. We kept throwing it out and it kept turning up again.’

‘Was it white?’

‘Mostly. Might have been white under the dirt. Why?’

‘Some pure white cats are deaf; I read that somewhere.’

‘Dead, too, at that rate.’

‘Is Rizal working out okay?’ This was a Filipino of few words whom Anders was considering grooming for more responsibility.

‘Not bad. I got him to supervise the finishing details on that Etobicoke apartment, and he did okay. He doesn’t say much but what he does say is to the point.”

“Val hasn’t left yet, has she? How’s she doing?’

‘Giving off sparks. She might set off the gas tank any day now.’ He told me about the conversation in the truck.

I shifted my chair forward to accommodate someone behind me, large and with packages.

‘Val may be tense about setting up her business and so on, but I’ll bet she’s more bothered by splitting from you.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Well, you’re buddies. Obviously she’s going to miss you.’

‘She’s tearing strips off me at the moment.’ He thought. ‘But that’s how Val would deal with separation. Yeah, you might have something there.’ He finished his coffee. ‘How’s it going with your colleague of the afternoon shift? She still hiding the stapler?’

‘Yes,’ I groaned. ‘And the keys to the desk drawer. And she keeps changing the network defaults for some reason. On purpose just to aggravate me. What is it with that woman?’ Dearest Vera, the sticky letter in the keyboard of my life.

When we emerged it seemed colder, or maybe it was just that I was no longer on the run. The clouds had assembled closely overhead, and were considering their precipitation options. We wandered east. As we waited for the traffic to pass so we could jaywalk, Anders directed my attention upward to the hydro wire across the street. I was puzzled; all I saw was a squirrel travelling along it. But as I watched I realized that the creature was on quite a journey, with no trees available as off-ramps for a whole long city block, only concrete poles right next to the street. It seemed very exposed.

‘How often do you see a squirrel going that far in a straight line?’

Anders asked.

‘Well, only for a second, heading for a tree. Usually they dodge about.’

‘Like you.’ He squeezed me, his eyes still following the squirrel. ‘Not that it has a choice at the moment. On the street you never know which way they’ll go. Back under your tires often as not.’

‘It does look odd. I have never been under your tires, by the way.’ We watched the critter cling and scuttle on its narrow path, on and on above the sidewalk, above the traffic, tail whipping back and forth for balance. ‘Like a tightrope walker over Niagara Falls.”

“Looks like it’s on a mission. Like something out of a Looney Tunes cartoon.”

“I’ll bet he’s got a girlfriend in the next block.’

Halfway down the next block the squirrel finally reached a tree and disappeared. We crossed, and Anders turned us south, through small but thoroughly renovated houses. We’d reached the Beaches; east-end upscale. I hugged his side to keep warm.

‘Well, well,’ he mused. ‘A fleeing hunhund. A crazy cat. And a disturbingly methodical squirrel. This is our day to consider unusual animal behaviour. What next, I wonder?’ I dug into his chest with my head, either protesting or confirming my animal status; he could take it any way he wanted.

On Queen my eyes raked the outside bins at Book City, and Anders indulged me; we went in. He ended up buying Jane Jacob’s last book, about the decline of Western civilization, from which I averted my eyes; I got a Penguin Classic edition of an Arnold Bennet novel, the story safely set in 1910.

We ended up in a fancy pub-slash-bistro, eating grilled chicken pizza and talking about Christmas.

‘Christmas traditions? I don’t know,’ I said. ‘The usual. A tree, a pile of presents. A free-range turkey with dried apricot and organic wild rice stuffing.”

“That was it?’

‘Let’s see…. My uncles and cousins watched football down in the rec room. My parents went to a million parties, and came home trashed. My sister complained about turkey sandwiches and sent out for pizza.’

‘What about you?’

‘I ate leftover wild rice and read the books people gave me.’

‘That doesn’t sound like much fun.’

I shrugged. ‘I like wild rice. Anyway, it could have been worse. My friend Laura’s parents did their drinking at home and fought through the whole thing, every single year. Broken crockery and all. One year she had to call 911. What was your Christmas like?”

“Oh, well, a Danish Christmas is something else. It’s a very big deal.”

“Is it?’

‘Oh, yeah. A big lead-up, first of all. The whole month. Weeks of baking and decorating. We had Advent calendars, of course, with little presents, one for each day. Chocolate, mostly. When Janne was three she ate all of hers at once and threw up.’ Janne was his little sister. ‘Svend teased her about it every Christmas for years; she’d chase him around the house trying to tackle him.”

“Now there’s a golden memory. Did you have big presents too?’

‘Of course. Everyone spends a fortune on presents. Plus days of feasting and parties and games and visiting back and forth. It goes on and on. But it is fun. I’ll have to take you back there some time; you should experience it.’

‘Not this year, though?’ I tried to keep the anxiety out of my voice. A big friendly noisy family taking me in, requiring me to have social graces, speaking another language over my dark swarthy little head. Oh, boy.

‘No, I think we’ll just have fun at home. But I’ll do some baking. Deck you out in pretty chains and sprigs of holly.’

While we were eating the clouds had decided on sleet; there was a thin layer on the tops of cars, and some slush piling up on the sidewalk. As I wasn’t wearing boots we took a streetcar. At the next intersection my eye was caught by a man, broad, drab and blank-faced, wandering off the curb into the slow traffic. He began meandering in circles and figure eights, ignoring all honks and verbal advice. I nudged Anders, and he leaned past me to take a look. ‘Wow,’ I said. ‘The sun’s not down yet.’

A car edged past the wavering figure. The man weaved toward the sidewalk, then changed his mind and headed out again, his path describing a curve, as if one leg was shorter than the other.

‘Something tells me time of day isn’t what he goes by,’ Anders said.

‘Poor bastard.’ I half expected Anders to get up and take steps, but he stayed put. ‘No urge to rescue?’

‘No need. Look.’ There was a cop car, a pair of policemen just emerging with that slow and deliberate convergence thing they do.

The streetcar moved on. ‘Hey!’ I said, sitting back. ‘Squirrels going in straight lines and men going in circles!’

Anders grinned down at me, and in his Danish professor voice said,

‘Aha! Very significant.’

‘What does it mean, Doctor Thygesen?’

‘Obviously, the squirrels take over after our decadent society implodes and we succumb to global warming.’

‘I thought that was supposed to be cockroaches.’

He stroked his absent beard. ‘The squirrels want you to think so. They are gaining in intelligence by picking up the washed-away brain cells of tavern customers. Elite rodent cadres are preparing to rule the world.’

‘Rodent cadres, of course! Rats I can believe.’

‘Very well, the squirrels are in league with the rats. Brothers in arms.

The city rodent and the country rodent.’

The woman sitting in front of us glanced over her shoulder, amused, or possibly alarmed. Anders put an arm around me and said in my ear, ‘Of course, the real meaning is that the boundaries between human and animal aren’t clearly defined. Some creatures might need to remember at which end of the continuum they belong.’ Payback. I knew it. What was he planning?

It turned out he was planning to emphasize my captured animal status by hanging me from the ceiling again, tying my labia rings to my thighs, and tormenting and teasing me until I howled.