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Allison Crocker pulled at the chain locked around her throat, shifting it to a more comfortable position. She watched the shadow creep slowly across the bedroom floor, watched it slide across the room with the implacable tedium of a glacier. After it had covered the floor it would start its climb up the wall. Moments later the room would give way to darkness and then Connie would return from work. It was the same routine (routine – was there any more appropriate word to describe Allison’s life?), every day, seven days a week. Each morning Connie, an early riser, would clean house and dress for work before waking Allison. “’Morning”, Allison would say in a sleepy voice as she climbed naked – naked except for the shoes on her feet, shoes with twelve inch soles - out of the bed, pulling the chain behind her and take up her position on the floor. Connie would make the bed then lean down for Allison to give her a kiss on the cheek. “Have a good day,” Allison would say, her voice still rough from sleep. Connie would depart, closing the door behind her.
Allison pulled at the chain where it chafed her throat. – though it did not hurt as much as the first few…what, months? Months? Was that her increment of measure now?
The first day – the day Maxine had assaulted Allison, left her a quivering, broken mess on the drive of a vacant estate – Allison had measured time in seconds; how many seconds until the current explosions of pain subsided? How many seconds until she could swallow back enough agony to manage a scream? How many seconds until neighborhood security noticed the gate was open and came to investigate? How many seconds until this orgy of suffering ceased?
“You’re a mess,” had said Maxine when finally the torture was over, “Get naked and get in the truck.” Allison had done as she was told.
Maxine fired up the truck and they drove away. It was at that juncture Allison moved from seconds to minutes – any minute now police cars would come screaming up; any minute now a phone would ring and this insane woman would be informed she had abducted the wrong person – she is not spy, damn it – she’s a fucking real estate executive!. Any minute now this nightmare would be over. Any minute.
The trip ended at a seedy little downtown bar called “The Bird’s Nest”. Maxine fished behind the truck seat, pulled out a grease-stained towel and thrust it at Allison.
“Go inside and wait while I park.”
It was broad daylight and the towel was so small and threadbare it covered nearly nothing. Allison checked the street to make sure no one was watching, jumped out of the truck and dashed through the door. Inside, the place was dark and empty. The air was thick with the smell of disinfectant masking an underlying stench of vomit and beer.
The thought of running never crossed her mind. The agony she suffered outside the Eastman estate had drained her of any volition except the need to avoid pain. If she was going to escape, help would have to come from an outside source.
A bell over the door chimed and Maxine strode in. She rummaged behind the bar, pulled a crumpled paper sack and shoved it into Allison’s hands. Motioning to a door near the rear, she said. “Go wash. Do yourself up extra nice. Tonight you’re dancing.”
Behind the door was a tiny bathroom with a stained toilet and sink. The walls were covered with graffiti, most of it angry and vulgar..
The paper bag contained a mishmash of combs, brushes, cosmetics and nail polish, all of it used, probably collected from what patrons had lost or left behind over the years. There was even a pair of mismatched false eyelashes and a crumpled tube of glue to apply them.
Allison set the bag on the toilet lid and washed herself in the sink. She dried with the crusty old towel and then wrapped it back around her. Any minute now, she was still thinking – any minute now. In the meantime she leaned into the cracked mirror and began applying makeup, a hopeless task given the tears streaming down her face..
There was pounding at the door and she jumped, spilling the bag into the sink.
“Get the lead out!” shouted Maxine, “Earl’s on his way to tattoo you!”
The shadow was halfway up the wall now and any moment the room would be swallowed in darkness. And soon after that Connie would be home. The routine – was there any better way to describe Allison’s life – was simple Connie would return and Allison would be on. On. What was it they said in theater just before the curtain rose and the actors assumed their roles? Noises off? Yes, noises off.
Probably because it filled some consensus fantasy of the middle-aged dykes who frequented the Bird’s Nest, Maxine required Allison to act like a sullen teenager. Allison had learned the part so well that one day, with a gasp, she realized she was no longer acting.
And then she became, as the tattoo on her hip said: “Connie’s Girl.” Connie wanted bright and bubbly - a cheerleader. A cheerleader eager to lick cunt.
So all the piercing – the studs and rings that riddled her body and made her look like a walking pin cushion – were removed and after a few months the holes healed shut.
The bleach and garish makeup was washed away and Allison was given a wholesome look. As wholesome as you could look wearing nothing but twelve-inch heels and a tattoo.
The shadow was halfway up the wall now. Any minute Connie’s old Cadillac would come rumbling up the drive, tipsy from the three martinis she would have consumed at King Arthur’s Lounge.. Time to go to work. Allison opened her thighs, moistened a finger in her mouth and then began rubbing her clitoris with it. The trick was not to spend it, to arouse herself and sustain the arousal until Connie came home, and beyond.
Allison could act happy to see Connie, act eager to make love to her, but Connie wanted her to prove it, and proof was a dripping vagina.
The finger on her clitoris quickened. Sometimes she imagined making love to her ex, or boys she had dated, or Rod Harper, but as the months passed the faces had begun to fade and the fantasies with them. So she created imaginary lovers like the ones on the covers of romance novels.
The door would burst open and there he would stand, his hair wind tossed, his chest nearly bursting from his half buttoned shirt, his shoulders too wide for the door. His would stride in, his steely blues eyes moving hungrily over her nakedness. He would spy the chain, scoff, and snap it in his hands like a thread. He would scoop her up in his strong arms and move for the door, but think better of it, turn and lay her on the bed and then ravish her then and there.
Allison’s breath quickened. The trick was to bring herself to the height of arousal by the time Connie arrived. Over the months she had discovered that sometimes her fantasies could become quite vivid, and this one was particularly so, so vivid that she failed to hear the Cadillac pull into the drive or the door to the bedroom open. The bedroom light snapped on.
Noises off.
“Hi!” she said in her perkiest voice, rising – despite the shoes - to her feet in one smooth motion. “How was your day?”
Connie, tossing the fast-food bag onto the dresser – Allison’s only meal of the day – muttered a reply, but her words were too slurred by the martinis to be discernible. Not that it mattered.
“Oh, I missed you so!” Allison continued. She could see herself reflected in the dressing mirror affixed to the bathroom door, naked, slender, all legs in those shoes, her sex shaved hairless, her small breasts bouncing as she talked.
“H-happy to see me?” managed Connie, so drunk she could hardly stand.
“Of course I am,” Allison replied. She opened her legs and thrust her hips forward. “See!”
Connie’s hand groped at Allison’s sex, her fingers fumbling and digging for the opening. “Ah!” cried Connie in delight when her fingers finally found the dripping wet slot, “You are! You are!”
Allison let out an almost audible sigh of relief. The hard part was over. Connie was highly emotional – especially when she was drunk. The objective was to keep everything in the positive. Connie’s fickle attitude could swing on the smallest sour note (Allison not being wet and aroused was a very sour note indeed), and when they swung the first thing she started thinking about was phoning Maxine.
“Oh, it looks like you had a terrible day. You poor baby! You’re exhausted. Let’s get you out of those sweaty old clothes.” While undressing Connie, Allison showered her with kisses, kissing the turkey wattle at Connie’s neck, kissing her withered, sagging breasts. Then, cooing and still kissing, she coaxed Connie towards the bed. The point was to have Connie asleep as quickly as possible, while the effects of the alcohol were still on her.
Allison slipped into the bed with her, wedged her face between Connie’s wrinkled thighs and began furiously licking.
With a shudder, as she licked, Allison thought of the other things she could be doing for Connie, revolting things the old dykes at the Bird’s nest had taught her, had forced her to do over and over until she could perform them to perfection. But Connie was, in a sense, innocent and inexperienced. As far as Allison could surmise, she was Connie’s first and only sexual partner and a straight gamming was all Connie knew. Which was fine by Allison. A straight gamming was quick and easy, and she wasn’t about to mention to Connie the countless other things at which she was so skillful.
In a few minutes Connie groaned, dug her hands into Allison’s hair, arched her back, gave a few quick jerks, and was done. Allison waited for her to drift off to sleep before pulling her face out of her thighs.
Allison climbed out of bed. Tugging the chain behind her, she went to the bathroom, leaned over the toilet and vomited. She brushed and gargled vigorously and then bathed in scalding hot water.
As she lay soaking in the tub she noted how her feet, so accustomed to the sharp pitch of the platform shoes she wore constantly, curled naturally into an on-her-toes position. Standing flat-footed now would be painful and almost impossible.
With a razor she shaved her sex. As she often did with the razor in her hands, she contemplated how easy it would be to slit her wrists – up and down, she knew, not across, slicing the arteries lengthwise - then sliding down into the hot, soapy water and quietly, peacefully leaving. Only the thought of not dying, of being discovered, of opening her eyes and seeing Maxine standing over her, made her put the razor aside.
She toweled herself dry, put the shoes back on, went back into the bedroom, opened the bag of food and ate. Then, to the sound of Connie’s snores, she resumed her position on the floor.
Allison was a prisoner here, held captive by the chain padlocked around her throat, the other end fixed to a bolt in the floor at the foot of the bed. More thoroughly though, she was held captive by the fear of Maxine and the pain Maxine could inflict upon her. Allison was the prisoner and Connie was the prison keep. But in a sense, Connie was just as much a prisoner – prisoner to her guilt- guilt of having stolen Allison, robbed her of her children, her freedom, her life. That’s why she worked so hard and long, seven days a week, because the work was a distraction that could make her temporarily forget. That was why each night before coming home, Connie stopped off at the King Arthur Lounge and numbed herself with drink. The drink made her almost forget that Allison’s cheerfulness, her fervid affection, her eagerness to make love to Connie, was just an act, and act of fear and desperation.
A few hours later Allison grew drowsy, climbed into bed beside Connie and drifted of to sleep.
A day in the life.
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