The Azymites

By Brewt.Blacklist

October-November 2010

The Armadillo

HAVEN'T I ever tell you the story of the Armadillo? Really? No, probably not; it's not like it's a good one, anyway.

When I was a sophomore in high school, (yeah, yeah, back in the stone age, har-de-har-har), the Seniors at that time were absolutely completely ruthlessly vicious to the Freshmen in their hazing. Assembly-calling-worthy stuff. The administration was beside itself with what to do, and why couldn't we all just get along, and what do you really have to take out on these poor kids, and on and on. Not that anyone in my class had anything to do with it. See, the Seniors who were there when we were Freshmen were celestial. Grown up, mature, responsible, kind, considerate, they treated us like adults, were always willing to talk and let us participate, never a harsh word. We got off lucky. And when we were Seniors, we passed it on. Seemed the Christian thing to do at the time. Not that we were in any way as talented as our Seniors were. Funny, how the class that was 4 years (3 years? Whatever.) ahead of us were "our" Seniors.

And no, they weren't perfect; they did do one thing that might be considered a bit questionable. Not unforgivably questionable; just not quite completely honorable. And yes, it probably was a bit embarrassing for the girl. Nothing bad; she was just shy for all the attention.

At the Senior Talent Show, the final act was a country band of Seniors. I don't even remember what they called themselves. But they sang a song, and then awarded themselves the Best in Show award. Some fool country song that they kept singing over and over "I wanna go home with the Armadillo . . ." with lots of yee-hahs and whoopin'. I always thought that was the name of the song. "Goin' Home with the Armadillo". Yee hah.

The weeks leading up to the show, the Senior guys would be sitting around in the hall, making remarks like "Speak to me, Pilgrim. Didja catch any Armadillo action today?" "Yeah, the Armadillo is extra worthy today, huh." "Praise God, Gotta love the Armadillo." And they wouldn't tell us what they meant. They let us in on everything else that was going on, giving us advance copies of tests, offering us beers at parties, were always careful to explain everything to us and make sure we got to where we needed to go, and they even kept the Juniors in line, and wouldn't let any guff to be said about the Freshmen.

At the Talent Show, the auditorium was packed. We all gave it our all, and were really excited that some of us were actually fairly good; I even got some laughs in my crappy standup routine. It wasn't until later that we found out that the whole contest aspect of it was always rigged to make sure that the Seniors won. But it didn't matter because it was fun. At the end of the show, the winners were announced, and the twang band, of course, won. The prize wasn't what we expected; it was two dozen roses, which the lead singer walked down into the audience with: amidst the cheering, he found her and gave the flowers to Lynn. She looked a little exasperated, but smiled and took them, complete with a princess wave. The crowd bellowed to their feet and it was sheer bedlam until the teachers finally got everyone cleared out to go home.

The next day, I sat down next to Frank Pilgrim, the lead singer, in the hall; he was playing with his cowboy hat.

"Okay, I don't get it."

"Get what, grasshopper?"

"The whole Armadillo thing. Is Lynn your girlfriend now?"

"Oh, gawd, no. We're jus' havin' fun."

"So what was all that?"

"Nothin' serious. We had a, uh, a beauty contest, for the Freshmen girls. Lynn won. She was the Armadillo. You know; 'Wanna go home with the Armadillo . . . The Best Music is in Abilene . . . Prettiest woman I ever seen . . . .' That's really all there was to it."

And it was. All there was to it. Lynn, The Armadillo (she hated that nickname) went on to become head cheerleader, homecoming queen, and prom queen with her fullback boyfriend Gary, and was voted "Most Likely To Live A Fairy Tale Life" at Senior Breakfast when we were finally Seniors.

And we all loved and admired Gary and Lynn, and wished them godspeed at graduation.

And they lived happily ever after.

And I never saw them again.

Except, that's not how the story really ended.

WHEN I was a Junior in College, I was surprised to see someone I hadn't expected at the Student Union.

"Gary! How are you, man? Long time!"

"Oh, hey Bruce. Good to see you, too." He seemed to be a little spooked.

"Whatcha doin' these days? How's Lynn?"

"I'm, uh, I got a new job."

"Oh?"

"I'm the Ombudsman. I take student problems to Administration. That kinda shit." I had never in my life heard Gary use a curse word before. I still wasn't using them myself with any regularity, either, at least at that time.

"Well, that's . . . great. Do you like it?"

"It's okay." Pause. Then more pause.

"So, uh, you 'n' Lynn, how are . . ."

"I really don't want to talk about that bitch." And he bolted from the room. Actually, the whole building. I was rather shocked; I felt my heart clutch at my throat. I hadn't even sat down yet.

"What'd you say to your friend, there?"

"Hmm?"

Frank Pilgrim sat down next to me with a tray of cinnamon rolls, coffee, juice, eggs, cereal, bacon, toast, and a banana. "Looked to me like being happy to see your friend went 'n' pissed him off royally."

"Story of my life. I have no idea what I said."

"Didja say anything about a woman?"

"Yeeaah . . . I asked him about his girlfriend from high school."

"Well, there ya are, grasshopper. Things weren't the way you thought."

"Thanks, Frank. That was hard for me to figure out. I am perpetually benefiting from all your years of extra college experience." There were days I just couldn't stop the sarcasm; I had an anger issue or two at the time. I watched him hoover the tray as he chuckled and went back for seconds, while I thought about how things don't always work out the way we think they might.

A week later, I was in the Administration building trying to wrangle a parking place when I passed the Ombudsman's office. I only hesitated a moment before rattling the glass when I opened the door.

"Can I help you?" The English accent was obviously a student, probably a Freshman trying to work her way through.

"Is this Gary's office?"

"Ga-ry! Someone to see you!" she sang out, popping her gum. "Oh, just go back. He'll see you. He'll see anyone."

"You sure?"

"Oh, yesss." She agreed slowly, having an expression that could only be described as 'drinking'.

I stepped past her desk and knocked on the next door, rattling its glass, too. "Gary?"

He was on the phone. He looked up and waved me in. "Yeah, sure. Listen I gotta go. Someone came in. Yes. No. I will. Bye."

He hung up and fell back into the chair, with his hands behind his head, and put his feet on the desk.

"Bruce! How good to see you! Glad you could come by!"

"Yeah. Yeah." Pause. "Hey, listen, I'm sorry about the other day. I . . . I didn't know . . ."

"Naw, how could you? No, I'm sorry, man, really. I didn't . . . you couldn't . . ." Deep breath. "Things, well, it didn't work out between us. And that's really all there is to it. There's really nothing else to say about it." He was obviously trying to smile. "Listen, I got a lotta shit to do here, but you wanna catch some lunch?" I flinched again, still not being used to hearing people curse. Especially Gary.

"Sure."

"I am totally booked until, like, Tuesday. Will that work?"

"Uh, yeah."

"Come through at noon; I'm buying."

Try as I might to close the door quietly on my way out, the glass still rattled.

"I'll ssee you." The English Freshman Receptionist popped her gum until I looked at her. She winked at me, and smiled the smile that I suspected was supposed to be cute and charming. I hadn't observed this directed at myself often. Her chin dropped as she kept her eyes focused on me as I left.

When I came back to the office the following Tuesday, it was dark. I knocked at the office next door, whose glass did not rattle. "Isn't this the Ombudsman's office? You know, Gary?"

"Oh, I think he quit, honey. Do you want a job?" She leaned toward me. The lady in that office was what we would call a cougar these days, complete with leopard print skin tight top and big hair.

"No, I was just . . . he was a friend."

"You Bruce?"

"Uuhhh, yeah."

"She said to give you this." The big hair got up to reveal amazingly tight pants, complete with camel toe; in fact, I wasn't sure but that she wasn't wearing just paint down there. "I can see why she like'cha." She offered me a small folded up piece of paper and when I took it, her fingers darted in and stroked and caressed my palm until I pulled my hand away.

"Who?"

"The girl. From next door. You know. Elsabeth."

"E-lizabeth. Thhaaanks."

"It's Elsabeth. And you're welcome, hhonney." The way she said it can only be described as smoky. As I tried to look at her to smile a farewell, she drooped her shoulders, arched her back, and thrust her chest and chin toward me with a smile that said 'Drink me'.

I still thought I had a shred of decency in those days, so I'm afraid the glass did rattle when the door closed a little too hard.

"NOW WHAT are you moping about?" Frank's tray was packed, two layers deep.

"Oh, I was supposed to meet Gary for lunch, and he's gone. All I got was this." Frank snatched the paper away from me.

"So, he left you his number to call him."

"No, it's not his."

"So whose is it?"

"I think it's his receptionist's."

"Is she cute?"

"Yes." A single vertical drop of my head.

"Moron. You're supposed to call her."

"Really."

"Yes, really. How'd'ja get it?"

"This woman gave it to me."

"Good-looking woman?"

"She mighta been. Once."

"Um hm. Did she throw it at you, or did she really, you know, 'give' it to you?"

I looked at him like he was kidding. The expectation on his face belied that he wasn't. "She handed it to me. And she, uh, touched my hand a little when she did it."

"Can you not hear the universe telling you what to do here? Didn't you used to have something to do with God? You have to call this number, and you have to call it right now!"

I looked down my nose at him.

"Hot woman? Giving you the number for another hot woman? Right now! Right now!"

"Fine. Just to shut you up, if nothing else."

I crossed the floor to the phone bank, and found a quarter.

"Hallow?"

"Uh, Hello?"

"Yes, Hellooo."

"Is this, uh, uuhh, Elsa-beth?"

"Yes. And who is this?"

"This, um, this is, Br-Bruce."

"Oh. Oh, Bruce. Oh, darling, I am so glad you called me."

"Ssure."

"I'm ssorry about Gary. Let me make it up to you." Her 's' was long, like a snake.

"Pardon?"

"Come pick me up for dinner tonight at Hildebrandt Hall."

"I've got uh, band until, like 6:30."

"7:00 it is then. Ciao." Click.

I looked at the receiver like I didn't know what it was before I put it back, and trudged back to where Frank was destroying his lunch.

"And? And?"

"I've . . . I've got a date."

"See? Your old buddy Larry came through for you."

"Gary."

"Whatever. Tell me more about the woman who gave you the number."

"She's kinda old."

"What does that mean? Gray hair? Walker? Wrinkles?"

"No, you know, she's just not, like, our age."

"Yeah, I'm not our age. 50?"

"I don't know. Mid thirties."

"Speak to me, grasshopper. Where will I find this alluring creature?"

I told him, and he didn't go back for desert. Not like Frank at all. He missed band, too.

FOR ONCE, I was on time and not 10 minutes early. I pulled to the front of the girl's dorm and Elsabeth was standing there, dressed considerably better than I was. I got the wolf whistle out of the way before I got out of the car to open the door for her. She stood closer to me that I was expecting.

"Really. This."

"It's kind of a piece of junk, I know." Didn't even had a lid for the trunk. Nope. No bodies in there.

"You're going to need a tie."

"Do you want to skip this? It'd be okay."

"No no. You're in luck. I just so happen to have a tie for you." I still have it.

I apparently had to point out my "Go State Go" t-shirt.

"Oh, dear. I hadn't thought of that. How far is it to your place?"

"Like everything else in this podunk. 10 minutes away."

"Then we haven't a moment to lose." And she stepped back, withdrawing her perfume and waited for me to finish opening the door for her. She smiled demurely at me as she slithered into my heap.

"And where can I take you?"

"No, I'm taking you, and we're going to the Yacht Club."

I needed to dress considerably better for that, and I hoped my white shirt was clean. The Yacht Club wasn't a real yacht club, as the nearest body of water was Hildebrandt's Pond, and the boats on it were just fishing dingys. It was kind of a joke that the owners of the best restaurant in town prided themselves on pulling off, complete with maritime junk on the walls. Any restaurant worth its salt always seems to put junk on the walls.

"Sooo, what are you studying?"

"Oh, you're not going to believe me. English."

"I can see no way for you to not take this wrong, but you are English, right?" She signaled 'yes'.. "And you've come, from . . . .England . . .  to the middle of the god forsaken nowhere hinterlands of America to study . . . English?"

"Oh, god, no. It does sound ludicrous when you put it that, way, doesn't it?" I thanked God she was smiling while I still tried to remember how. "No, I came here for, personal, reasons. And I happen to be studying English because, well, I'm good at it, and I don't have to work very hard while my personal reasons work themselves out."

"I . . . see . . ."

"Oh, dear, that doesn't sound much better, does it? Makes me sound like a criminal."

I tried to laugh when I said, "You aren't, are you?" Har de har har.

"Nooo . . . ..I came here for . . . Gary. And Lynn."

I turned my head and felt my eyes dry out. It was a good thing the town stop light was working properly and had stopped us.

"See, I'm his, well, wife."

My feet slipped off both the brake and the clutch and we lurched to another stop as the car died.

"Woo! Didn't mean to scare you there. I guess I should get this out of the way before actual bad things happens here. I'm . . . kind of her wife, too. Lynn's." My eyeballs, having dried completely out to dust, were dissolving out of my head. "Okay, wife isn't quite the right word for either relationship. But it will do for now."

Whatever recovery I had going from the jolting of the car evaporated, and I collapsed back into the seat, and only had 3 seconds of silence before the car behind us started honking. I scrambled to restart the car and found I couldn't remember how to do it.

She reached across and touched my hand; I was hyperventilating. "It's fine. Really. Don't worry about that bastard behind us; if I have to, I'll take care of him. Breathe, Bruce, breathe."

Her hand was firing neurons I didn't know I had, and when she removed it, I was sure my hand had been removed with hers. She put it to my face, moving the current with it. She pulled my face towards hers, close enough I could feel her breathing through her nose.

She looked into my eyes. "Note to self. Save the revelations for the restaurant."

"I . . .  You mean that wasn't it?"

"She smiled. "No. And we must rush now; you still need to change." I didn't move. "Hurry." I came to, brought at least the car back to life, and somehow got back to my room and half-way presentable. I wasn't altogether sure how I got back to the traffic light going the other way.

"I think you need to turn right, here, darling."

"Uh, yeah. Right. Righto." It occurred to me that her command of the English language maybe wasn't all it was cracked up to be, and she was just confused about the things she was saying.

Waking dream states are only scary when you consider later how little in control you are of yourself and the things around you.

"SO HOW do you know Gary?"

"We, uh, we went to high school together."

"Oh, and so you actually know Lynn, too, then. Wonderful."

"And how did you . . . meet?"

"Well, that I can't explain in a sentence or two. It's actually fairly complex. Can we leave it at 'mutual friends' for now?"

"Yeah, sure. Whatever you say."

"Bruce. Darling. I can see all the little gears turning in your little head now, and at some point you're going to have a thousand questions, so let me save you some stress and tell you how this night is going to end." She leaned as far across the table as the wood and the chair would let her, which prompted me to do the same. She whispered. "I'm going to seduce you. And I guarantee to completely change your life forever. You can't keep me, sorry, luv, but you will never be the same with women again. And you will love it."

I was stunned. I had nothing to say, as would be repeated a lot that evening.

"I can see that suggestion doesn't get made to you very often, so let me reassure you that it will all be alright. There's a lot of other things we should talk about first, but you should know now: I won't hound you later. So this is sort of like a freebie. A bonus."

I started coming to. "You said something in the car that I don't understand, but you were very specific about. It wasn't casual."

"Oh, you caught that, did you."

"You said, 'Wife wasn't right.' What does that mean?"

"Ah. Well. Yes, it's true. 'Wife' isn't the right word for our relationship. I understand you know a bit about the Bible."

"Yes, I've read it. What does that have to do with you and Gary and Lynn?"

"You know how the Apostle Paul's Views on Marriage get misconstrued?"

"You're talking theology; I'm talking about my friends."

"Actually, it's the same thing. And you're involved."

"Excuse me?" Whatever she was talking about, I couldn't possibly have anything to do with it.

"The two shall become one? Wives be subject to your husbands? You know, you were expected to marry them. They were counting on you to save them."

"Okay, you have totally lost me here."

"I'm trying to explain it to you, luv."

"This is what I know so far. One, Gary and Lynn were happy. Two, I haven't seen hide nor hair of them for 3 years. Three, Gary was incredibly angry with her when I saw him. Four, you're married to them, but not quite. And Five, this is all somehow all my fault."

"Three out of five. Not bad, darling."

I closed my eyes and tried to breathe.

"They weren't terribly happy. Things, well, happened that I'm not at liberty to talk about, but that was where I came in, to try to fix what you failed at. Maybe I shouldn't have. You haven't seen them, but they've seen you, and we have been waiting for you to save them."

"How was I supposed to save them?"

"You were destined to marry them in the sight of God and everyone; then they maybe wouldn't have gone off in the directions they did, other things wouldn't have happened to them, I wouldn't have gotten involved, and they would have had a chance at being happy. Why wouldn't you marry them?"

"I . . . well . . . they, they never asked me to. Even if they had, I couldn't have. I'm not a minister."

"You were supposed to be."

Here we go. "My issues with God have ruined their lives."

"Basically, yes. And who knows how many other people that were counting on you."

"No, I don't accept that. Anyone could have married them."

"But the Universe had dictated that it be you. Among a great many other things. When you didn't live up to your end of the deal, everything fell apart for them. Things went from incredibly bad to incredibly worse. That was where I came in."

"I still don't understand what you have to do with anything here."

"I-I'm a bandaid. A tourniquet. Until you come around."

"You're still not telling me things. Start over."

She looked exasperated at me. As she continued to breathe and the heat continued to dissipate from our dinners, she transitioned to resignation. I waited, and took a bite of my now-cold steak.

"Perhaps their faith was misplaced. No matter. Let's talk about us."

"There is no 'us'. Tell me about you and them. Who are you?"

"Ah. Yes, I glossed over that a bit, didn't I. I'm . . ." She took a deep breath. ". . . I'm their slave."

That wasn't what I was prepared for at all. I could blink again. "Slavery is illegal."

"Not that kind of slave. The slave you're talking about is forced to be one. That's not what I am."

"You're a slave."

"Yes."

"Prove it. How can you prove that sort of thing?"

"Tell me to do something."

"Why would you do anything for me?"

"Because Gary told me to."

"I thought Gary was gone."

"He didn't tell me today. He told me the day you saw him in the Union. Go on. Anything."

I incredulously thought a moment, then blurted out, "Hang your spoon on your nose."

She smiled with no hesitation, picked up her spoon, licked it in a way that made my thoughts turn to sin, and hung it from the end of her nose, tipping her head slightly back. In the swankiest restaurant in town. She grinned as she tried to balance it, until it fell off. Her smile diminished to, I don't know . . . seductive?

"You could ask me to take my clothes off, right here, right now, and I would do that, too."

Huh? "Why?"

"I told you. I'm a slave, and Gary told me to obey you. And I will. Oh, and he told me I am to seduce you, like I said. So I better get started, don't you think?"

She wiggled a little and I was surprised to become aware that my legs had been apart under the table, as I felt what just had to be her foot at my crotch. Oh dearest God, please don't let that be a tentacle.

"Hold still." She started moving her foot, and my pants grew increasingly uncomfortable: I had an erection. A boner. Like I shouldn't have. My focus shifted, hard. "Oh. You're human. Thank God."

Language failed me for a moment. "I wasn't expected to be? Just how does one . . ."

"Seduce a willing slave who's trying to seduce you? You tell her what you want."

"I was going to say 'become a slave?'."

"Again with the questions that take a long time to answer. Don't you think we should go? I want to go."

"Go where?"

"You know."

I shook my head, and I still didn't move her foot, and let her do what she was doing. "What if I ordered you to answer my questions?"

"We could debate theology and relationships all night, if that's what you want. We could do that while we are doing  . . . something else. Unless you want that part to happen here. The hour is at hand."

She was serious, and I was lost. "Yeah, let's go."

THAT NIGHT I saw God. Go ahead, make whatever lousy joke you want about Saying God verses Seeing God, the absolute four-square gospel truth was that Elsabeth was an Angel. I couldn't tell where she hid her wings, but she brought heaven down and we had no need for candlelight, no bushels necessary, and the City of God shown brightly on its hilltop for all to see.

The things she did, and the things she let me do.

She didn't live in the Hildebrandt Dorm for Women, which I couldn't have gotten into anyway. No, she had a cold small flat on the third floor of a tenement building on the bad side of town. Which was only a stone's throw from the good side of town – you could see it from there.

"How long have you lived here?"

"This is Gary's place. But don't worry; he's not here. Come in."

I no sooner crossed the threshold but that she threw the door shut with a rattle, and then threw herself on me. I wasn't ready for it, and we crashed to the floor, and my right elbow ached for a week afterwards.

She kissed me hungrily, like what I had imagined newlyweds would do, and I reciprocated against all my better judgments. She started putting my hands on her in places I had never felt before on a woman, but had dreamed about at night when I was alone and couldn't keep my hands off myself. It was this longing that God could never answer for me in all the dusty tomes I searched, and whatever promises of eternities I'd heard melted away with the interventions this woman taught me that night.

When my hands started moving without her assistance, she used hers to start fiddling with buttons and zippers and snaps and hooks and ties and all the armors we wrap ourselves in to insulate ourselves from each other until there weren't any, and I was naked with a naked woman for the first time I could remember in my life, Mom notwithstanding.

I came on the spot. Yes, I can use that word now, because it is on the short list of goals in my life now, and every time it has happened since that night, it is just a warmup for the next time. There are some things in life there is simply never enough of; oxygen, water, food, and sex. Everything else you can do without for long periods of time. But not those things.

She laughed. But there was no contempt or ridicule in her joy, no, it was sheer delight. She was the happiest I had ever seen another human being be, until she did the next thing that I had never in my wildest dreams imagined anyone would ever do, ever: she licked it up. The . . . stuff. I was ready to die now, I had beheld ecstasy and had what I had thought was enough of my own. I was wrong.

"Good. Now that that's out of the way, we can have some fun."

"What, there's more fun than this?"

"Oh, god, yes. Here." She straddled me, and took both of my hands and put them on her breasts. We both moaned, and she tipped her head up and inhaled sharply. "Like this." She manipulated my fingers until they were holding her nipples, and her head still tipped up, she looked down at me. "Squeeze. More. More. Harder aaahhh harder! Arrgh!"

I was afraid I was hurting her. She read my mind.

"Yes, you are. Do it."

"But . . ."

"No 'but's. It's a good hurt. Do it. Harder. More. Moremore moremore. Mmmmm. Haahhh Haahhh Harderrrrrraaagrgggh!" Her head had fallen back and her mouth had fallen open and her eyes were forced shut. Her hands left mine and went through the back of her hair as she started moving her hips on mine, and I discovered that my erection that had come back in spades couldn't finish enlarging for her weight on me.

"Don't let go. Ho. Hooh. Hhhh. Oh. Oh." She inhaled her next sound. "HhhhaaaaH"

My thumbs were turning white, but I didn't dare let up. Her head thrashed about, and she was moving everywhere at once, and forthwith my dick was free and then it was wet and warm, and we were fucking.

Yes, I can use that word now, too.

She went wild. I was inside another human being, and she loved it, and I loved it, and I was hurting her and, cherished God, I loved that, too. Her whole lower body was quivering around me and she was crying out and I was groaning and groaning and before I even knew it had happened, I hit her.

"Yes!"

"Oh dear god." I tried to sit up, and she pushed me back down.

"Again! Hit me again, you bastard!"

I inhaled long slow and hard, and felt the pressure building up in my face, and my head started vibrating and I watched it happen. I struck her again.

"God yes!"

And again. The last time, my entire being exploded. I convulsed on the floor, and I could feel myself ejaculating like a fire hose, pulsing over and over again. I could have used a paper bag to breathe into to get the room to stop spinning, but managed. She was all over me, wildly kissing me and thanking me in I don't know, maybe Latin, until I could lift my head a little, only to pound it back into the floor.

When she heard the bang, she looked up at me with a holy or maybe unholy light in her eyes, and she slithered down me, saying "mmmmm" until she reached what she wanted, and surprised me some more. I had no idea people could do this with each other. I was paralyzed until I couldn't stop moving my hips and my hands were freed and I felt myself pushing her head down onto my cock further and further and she didn't resist and I could hear her gagging and "mmmm"-ing and gagging until I emptied myself again.

"Oh–hhhhh, I love this."

"You 'n' me baby."

She had crawled back up and cuddled her head into my neck and started licking. "mmmm – is there sommmmething else you mmmmaybe wannnted to try?"

"I can't . . . imagine anything else to do."

"Oh, no." She sat up. "That was just the warm-ups. Round One hasn't even started yet."

"How many rounds are we talking about?"

She pulled me to sitting up, and moved in close, closer than anyone's face had ever been to mine. Her lips were brushing mine, and she seemed to be looking down to see them connect. "Oh, sir. We're going to do this until we can't."

The kiss she gave me was the most erotic passionate soul-shattering kiss I had ever had before or since. She seemed to melt into my mouth; supple, pliant, insistent. She had me. Eternity eventually ended.

"Stand up. Come on now, that's the way."

I managed to wrench my joints into compliance as I wobbled my way upward. She wrapped herself around me, which helped stabilize the room.

"May your slave make a request of you?"

"Oh, you're my slave now?"

"At least for tonight. Didn't you notice?"

"Okay, fine. I'll play along. This has been a good game so far."

"This isn't a game. But to play it right, you don't just give in to a slave's requests. You make them earn it."

I thought a half second. "Kiss me." She did, but not like before. "No, you can kiss me better than that." This time, she really threw herself into it, and I was having trouble keeping my knees from buckling. Light flashed all around us as I gasped. "Oh . . . . . . yeah. And what is it you want?"

She pulled away. "I really don't expect you to be able to say that yes, you liked it. But I really did. Gary won't do that to me anywhere near enough. He'll do it to Lynn all day long, but not me, and I've missed it. Please. Please."

"I seemed to have skipped a beat in there somewhere." She untangled herself from me and crossed to our pile of clothes, reached down and pulled my belt from my beltloops. She then sank to her knees, put it in her mouth, and crawled back across the room to my feet. She took the belt from her mouth with both hands and held it up to me, and looked at my feet. I couldn't see her face, but I didn't think she was smiling anymore.

"You're kidding."

Her head actually fell further, and she shook it.

"You want me to belt you." A slight shake. "With this." A definite affirmative.

I took the belt, and relief obviously washed over her, and she fell to my feet, kissing them as passionately as she had kissed my mouth a moment before.

"I don't know how to do this."

She whispered, "Yes, you do."

"What if I say no?"

"As you wish." She shuddered as she started to sit up and I swear, I heard a definite 'click'. "I didn't say stop doing that." She froze, and for a long moment, nothing happened. Then she descended back down to the floor, and started kissing my feet again. I think she was almost as surprised as I was when the belt struck her ass, pulling a grunt and then a squeal from her. Her enthusiasm picked right back up. I quit paying attention to the noises she was making after that; I had things to do. I assaulted her until I finally noticed she had quit kissing my feet, but they were still getting wet.

Guilt and horror coursed through my veins as I reached down to comfort her, aghast at what I had done. She was crying, crying hard.

"Oh, my god, what have I done, I'm so so . . ."

"No!" She snapped out of her crouch, and I could see her face, finally. It was radiant. "Don't you dare apologize!" She put her hand to my face, and the voltage picked right back up where it had left off in the car. "It was wonderful! Take me. Take me. Take me now."

"I, uh . . ."

"You know where." She turned around, and to my surprise, I did know where. I heard the 'click' again, and discovered I not only didn't mind when she screamed as I lunged into her without what I would later find to be proper preparation for intercourse in one of the places that men and women have in common, I actually liked it so much better that way that I didn't last long at all. I was completely overpowered with the pressure and the vibrating and the detonation that happened while I took her. I saw to it that I corralled my way back into her there again later.

I eventually even had to remember how to forgive her (funny, huh) for being slow at crawling to the top of the couch to look at the ceiling so I could attack her from a different angle while she swallowed something else from me.

London Bridge broke down until long after dawn; I finally collapsed when the damnable fifth need overwhelmed everything, and the world vanished. The lady and I had danced and burned with the heat of deserts as we quenched our fires with dirty filthy fluids. She drank them all, and lived up to her promises; I was never the same after that night.

I COULDN'T find her when I woke up the next day; she was gone, and I was missing class. Depression usually sets in when the girl vanishes like that.

Back at the Union Frank was Cheshiring his way through a slope of lunch, wearing the same clothes I saw him in the day before. His cowboy hat was rumpled.

"You're in a good mood."

"Fuck---Yeah!"

"And what was her name?"

"Maggie. Maggie. Maggie. God, was she hot. A real hellcat."

"Hmm. Do I know her?"

"Uh, yeah! The woman back at that office you were at. Her."

"Oh." I got to live vicariously through Frank Pilgrim's exploits with Maggie, who was a teacher here on campus. Never did find out what she taught, but Frank regularly had pictures and endless tales of some new extreme they were doing with each other, at least until she disappeared the next spring, which pretty much broke Pilgrim's heart; he took up smoking and sang bad soul songs all through his days until he graduated and left.

I didn't hear anything more from Gary or Lynn or Elsabeth until a year and a half later.

IT WAS about a year after Maggie (I think her name was Dallis) disappeared that I was haunting the Student Union where Pilgrim and I used to eat, when I looked over and practically dropped my tray.

The Armadillo was here.

She was sitting alone, and hadn't seen me yet. I paused for a moment; god, she was still staggering. I couldn't understand why the other guys in the room weren't flocking to her.

Once the vertigo settled down to tight-rope walking levels, I crossed the room and managed to sit down beside her before she knew it was me.

"Oh, my god. Bruce." She put her arms around me and held me like she had just been rescued from a mine. She shuddered a bit before she let up on the pressure. Her hand found my face where Elsabeth had electrocuted me; it wasn't the same with Lynn. It felt more like my face was frigid cold and her hand was the only warm thing in the room. I slightly pushed into it involuntarily, and she didn't pull away. She looked at me like she was about to cry.

"Holy Fuck, I've missed you. Oh, oh, I'm sorry." Her head drooped.

"No, no. That's okay. I, uh, missed you, too." I thought it odd she seemed to feel so strongly like that. We weren't that close in high school. I always thought I was just another part of the throng of admirers of her magical life.

She started stroking me, and touching me and she almost seemed to be trying to kiss me, and I let her go on. I had been rather celibate since Elsabeth. I had no illusions of saving myself for her; I would never see her again. But it's hard to gauge if a woman would let those sorts of things happen to her, so rather than risk any further alienation because of what I knew deep down I really needed, I didn't push anyone and chose instead to wait. The need built harder than before, and rare was the day I could keep my hands off myself. I later found out that looking for such a woman doesn't work. They have to look for you.

"You know, I've been looking for you. I heard you were still here."

"Yeah, I'm about to finish up. What have you been doing?"

"Oh, this and that. I'm trying out nursing school. I think taking care of people is important." She was still touching me. If we were alone, we'd have been making out by now. As we were in public, I just held her. Somehow the eyes of everyone in the room were averted from us, but she seemed to be regaining awareness of where we were, and she slowed down.

"I, oh, I've got to go to class." Her voice almost broke as she said that.

"I've . . . got . . . two to go, too."

"Oh. Can I, can I meet you afterwards? Maybe here?"

"Absolutely." She finally smiled, and a tear did find its way onto her face.

As she stood, and pulled away, she kept reaching back toward me like she was being ripped away. As I watched her walk toward the door, she kept looking back until she left the building, each time her smile got bigger. When I could no longer see her, I felt the atmosphere had changed, and I could no longer smell her arousal.

Oh, holy fuck.

I SKIPPED my second class, and practically ran to the Union. No Lynn. That was fine, I didn't actually get to eat when I saw her last, so I went back through the line and ended up with a Pilgrim-worthy pile of food. I hadn't realized I hadn't been eating well lately, and devoured it. And then I waited.

And I waited.

I missed band, and I waited some more.

It was after dark, and the dinner crowds had left and the evening bull sessions had started on the floor, when she materialized next to me. I don't know how I hadn't seen her come in.

"Lynn!" I stood and hugged her. She hugged me back, like we were in church: chaste.

"Hi, Bruce. Been waiting long?"

"Uh, no. Have you eaten?"

"Yes, of course."

We sat, and even though it was part of the style at the time, she looked like she had just gotten out of bed. She seemed calm and relaxed. Relieved might be a better word.

"Tell me all about yourself. I want to know everything." So I recounted the usual histories expected, what I'd been taking, summer jobs, how the rest of my family was out of the country. Chit chat.

"And you?"

"I've been . . . home . . . helping the family out."

"Oh?"

"My dad died last year, and I had to run things for a while."

"I am so sorry to hear that. Really, I am." The silence drew long and uncomfortable, and she looked forlorn, er, mourning. Then my foot found its way into my mouth.

"How's Gary?" She instantly changed into looking like I had stabbed her.

"I don't know. We're not together anymore."

"I kinda wondered about that. I saw him, you know. About a year and a half ago."

Her face lit up. "How did he look?"

"Exasperated. He had a job as the Ombudsman here for a little while."

"What's an Ombudsman?"

"It's kinda like a representative, or an advocate for the students. I don't know that he did it very long, and I didn't see him but a couple times. But he looked good."

"Was she . . . with him?"

"You mean . . ."

"Don't say her name. Please." She looked like she was hurting, badly.

"I was kinda fuzzy on that."

"Ah. Understandable." Pause. "I've got to study. Will you walk me home?"

"Sure. Of course."

The walk to Hildebrandt Dorm for Women should have only taken us a traditional 10 minutes; it took over 45. We walked slowly, holding hands in the night air, and we didn't say anything. Every time I would look at her, she would look up and smile, like she was trying on and risking becoming happy again.

When we reached the door to No Man's Land, she turned to me, still holding my hand, and put her hand back to the part of my face that was receptive to this sort of thing. I twitched a bit at the shock, and she pulled it away like she had felt it, too. I put my hand to her face, and felt the same thing. I left it there, and she put hers back, completing the circuit.

She started breathing harder. "Will I see you again?"

I nodded. "Yes." Oh, God, yes.

"Thank you for walking me home." She smiled as she pulled away, and this time, I was the who looked like she was being ripped away from me.

I felt my hopes kindle for the first time as I remembered that thing Elsabeth said about what Gary used to do to Lynn.

NOTHING EVER came of it. God fucking damn it all, nothing happened.

I'd occasionally run into her at the Union, and we'd talk about old times in high school, or classes, and would laugh like lovers do, and I would walk her home. And that was it. When I would ask her out, she would always say yes, please, but whatever I had in mind she couldn't make it that night, but please ask her again.

She was never at the Dorm whenever I'd call, regardless of time. And she always looked like she had just gotten out of bed: tousled.

About a month after the last time I ever saw her, I met Sarah.

I was brimming with frustration and need and had lots of pent up anger over The Armadillo, and Sarah let me take it all out on her. God woke me back up with a 'click', and I thumped that woman senseless every night, and she kept coming back for more. I still scar her every chance I get, even now, and I never get tired of it. Neither does she.

There's just a certain spark missing.

AT OUR 5-year class reunion, which was really stupid to have one at five years, and it was the last one I ever went to, I was wandering around the hotel hoping against hope to not see anyone I cared to. My mood had soured considerably since graduating; there were no jobs, and my money was almost gone. Sarah didn't come; she was tied up.

I was finishing a beer, yes, I'd taken that up by then, too, when I stumbled onto Gary sitting at a table filled with people I no longer cared about, and they were all laughing and carrying on.

"Bruce! Sit down! Join the party!"

"Hi, hi guys."

"We were just talking about how lousy the Talent Shows were. God, they sucked."

"Well, the bands weren't too bad some years. You know, 'Home with the Armadillo'. Yee-hah."

The silence was deafening. Both feet had apparently fallen into my mouth, complete with boots.

"Would you all excuse us a moment? Bruce and I need to talk." Everyone got up and slinked away, with looks that reminded me of getting sent to the principal's office. Not that I ever had been.

"You fucking bastard. How. Dare. You."

Then it sunk in. "Oh, oh crap, Gary. I'm sorry. I am so sorry. I didn't think."

"No shit, Sherlock. I'm sure you've noticed she isn't here, much to my relief. I just couldn't watch her do all that fucking ass crap ass fucking shit again.

"I'm sorry, Gary. Really . . . wait, what?"

He looked at me like I had just revealed a secret I shouldn't have to him. "You can't tell me you don't know."

"Uh, know what?"

"You're kidding. C'mon, it's a lousy joke, and it hurts. Stop it."

"Stop what? Know what?"

"Oh, my motherfucking god, you really still don't know, do you."

"Again, with the knowing what."

Gary looked down at his beer, and downed it. Three loud deep breaths later, he began.

"I guess if anyone should tell you, I should be the one."

"Yes, please. Tell me what."

"This is gonna take a while. You're buying the next pitcher." He got the waitress's attention and ordered a pitcher of Coors, and some aspirin, and pinched her on the butt as she left. She didn't seem to mind. "It all started when we were in Middle School. Lynn was a bit wild; she got in trouble a lot."

"I don't remember that."

"You were fairly oblivious to a lot of things. Your head was always in the clouds. Anyway. We started going out in Eighth Grade. She wasn't a virgin then, either; she wouldn't tell me who she gave it to. But as far as I know, she was true to me once we started screwin'. We didn't do it a lot, maybe once or twice a month. Until we were Freshmen."

The beer and aspirin arrived. I didn't do the same thing Gary did to her, and she looked disappointed as she left. I poured and gobbled a handful of the pills. "Uh huh."

"It started a few weeks before the damn talent show. Lynn didn't see me very often, and I didn't find out what was goin' on until a month after."

"The Armadillo song. The beauty contest."

"Yeah, except it's called 'London Homesick Blues', god, I hate that song, and it wasn't a beauty contest. It was a fucking contest. She 'won', because she fucked the entire Senior class."

"Wait a minute. Pilgrim . . ."

"Yeah, your boy Pilgrim was at the head of the line. And it wasn't just one round once. It was every god damn day."

"No, that can't be right. They looked out for us . . ."

"Yeah, in exchange for what they were doin' to her. Every fuck-God-fuck day. And our Sophomore year wasn't any better. Because with our Juniors, she wasn't so willing. So they raped her. She spent the first two years of high school in the boys' room, fucking her brains out and getting the shit raped out of her."

"This doesn't make any sense. How could I have not known this?"

"Because she didn't want you to know. That was part of her deal, that you not be part of it. See, she had faith in you and all you believed in. And as long as she could believe in you and what you believed in, she got better. By the time we were Seniors, she wasn't the school whore anymore. She was recovering, and all the adulation and honors were in respect of how much she'd recovered from her sex addiction, because of you. All she wanted was for you to marry us. She believed in you. She loved your idealism, your zeal, your faith, and when you didn't go through with it, it shattered her. When you fell away, she fell away too, but she fell much further than you ever could. You were supposed to become a fucking priest and marry us. Then everything would have been alright. You screwed it up."

I was flabbergasted. Everything I thought I knew vaporized. "I . . . I . . ."

"You nothin'. After high school, she started doin' porn. Not the normal stuff, the really nasty shit. She kept trying to be good, she kept trying to be there for me, and I tried to help, but the draw was just too much for her. In a few years, she thought she had earned enough money, and tried to go home. It killed her old man when he found out what she had become. She . . . she bought a woman, and tried to give her to me. You'd think having a porn star and a sex slave would be all anyone could ever want, but it wasn't anywhere near enough. I left."

"I . . . I saw her."

"So?"

I told him about the times I saw her last spring. For the first time that evening, he was quiet for a moment.

"Well, shit, man. You dodged a bullet, there. She has every sex disease known to man, and a bunch more we don't know about. She'da killed you."

We finished the pitcher in silence, except for the loud breathing sounds we were both making.

"Listen, what's done is done. We makes our choices and lives our lives." He was still panting, but his breathing was slowing down. "You can still do the right thing. We were just the first ones you were deemed to save. You can still get to the others."

"What others?"

"You know. Go with grace."

When he stood up, I finally noticed he was dressed all in black. I stayed alone at the table until the room cleared.

After I got home, I untied Sarah, and made love to her like lovers are intended to for the first time ever. She had no idea what had happened, but accepted my proposal when I decided to change everything. Our relationship is a mix of the needs she and I both have now.

IT WAS another three years after all of this had happened that my phone rang one night, just out of the blue.

"Bruce!"

"Yes, this is Bruce. Hello."

"How are ya, man!"

"Yeah, I'm sorry, who is this?"

"You don't know who this is? Really?"

"I'm kinda busy. I'm hanging up now."

"No wait, it's me! It's Frank!"

My hand hadn't finished cradling the phone when I heard that. It stopped me cold. It changed into feeling sticky.

"Frank?"

"Yeah, it's Frank, here, grasshopper! Don't hang up on me! Ha ha ha ha!"

"Well, Frank, it's . . . good to hear you." Pause, then commitment. "Speak to me, Pilgrim, whatcha been doin'?"

"How are you, man? Long time! I'm in Florida these days, you know, workin'. Listen, I wanna ask you somethin'."

"Oohkay."

"I'm thinkin' about joinin' a church. Whadaya think?"

That was out of the blue. "Nothin' I would rush into."

"Can you point me in the right direction?"

Hmmm. "Don't stop reading. You haven't seen enough yet to know you've seen enough."

"Hey that's good advice. Thanks! Listen, I gotta run."

"That's it?"

"Oh, and I have a message for you."

"Huh?"

"Lynn and Elsabeth send their best. Oh, my, God. Those two. Bye!" Click.

Looking at the receiver like I didn't know what it was seemed oddly familiar. It was actually hard to get it out of my hand.

"ANYWAY, LIKE I said, it's not that great of a story. I can't imagine it helping you at all. I don't know why you would even ask about it."

"So do you believe in God now?"

"I can absolutely affirm that God is in his heaven, and loves us dearly. But unlike our friend Mr. Franklin's proof positive of that idea being found in beer, I found it in, uh, other places."

"Thank you, Reverend. I think."

"I have a wedding to get ready for today. Kind of sudden. Go back to your life, and come back for God when you are ready. He has no use for you before then. Until then, go with grace."

The Appliance

I AM a cunt, because I have one. I am a pair of tits for the same reason. If I only had one, I don't think that would make me a tit; I think that would instead make me something I'm can't stand to be: alone. One tit isn't worth considering, two becomes a moniker, and represents part of the path to the only thing I need. As long as I have all the things that make me different from men, I can save myself from what scares me more than pain, more than death, as long so I can continue to be an object of desire.

A desert island would kill me dead from absolute terror. I am deathly afraid of dying alone in my sleep. I intend to be tortured to death instead. A real solid connection to absolute evil before oblivion is far more preferable to fading out with encouraging prayers from the gentle.

I am not hair, I am not hands, I am not eyes. A mouth is handy. Deformity, I guess, is another fear, but I don't dwell on it like the other one. The important one is what is done to me when someone wants to change me into something else. And it works every time.

I am what is desired of me.

I am a slave.

I DON'T remember not sucking cocks, or not licking pussies, or not being knocked around. I can't remember any man who didn't fuck me. I've seen a few who might have been slaves: in some ways they acted like it. But they were only around in passing, and ended up doing things to me to entertain. I never got the impression that if they were just left alone with me in a room that anything would happen. I didn't seem to interest them, which was consternating. The whole desert island scenario would probably be worse if the only other person there was another slave. I wouldn't die of fear, I would die of frustration. It would probably be entertaining, to see us slaves trying to impress the other to get them to desire us, to take charge of us, only to have the reactions be 'but look at me, don't you want to do . . . things to me'. Har-de-har har.

Mommy was a slave like me. Daddy ordered her to teach me to be a slave, and she did as she was told. She wouldn't sing lullabies to me at night to put me to sleep; she would tell me fairy tales, of how happy slaves are being slaves. My entire childhood was spent soaking in the idea of a perfect slave, and stimulating nerve endings, especially mine. I am so sensitive I am nearly clairvoyant. There was a time that it failed me horribly, but I'll be getting to that soon. I can feel someone else's change in electrovoltaic galvanic skin response, I can detect temperature changes in another human being to the half-degree, I can read body language and facial changes better than I can read words on a page. Pleasure and pain are simply variations of neural activity to me; I cannot be coerced with them, but I can make someone think they are having that effect on me through that, if that's what they need.

I do not fail at being a slave. No one has ordered me to commit crimes, but I have no question that I would. I think the idea that I would be a lousy criminal and get caught and taken away is the only thing that keeps that from happening. When I've been ordered to go someplace by myself I end up being concerned about what the people on the way around me want, and trying to figure out how I would seduce them, and please them until I would get to where I needed to go. It usually amounts to nothing more than an intellectual exercise, but every once in a while, someone will catch me staring at them, lost in my own thoughts of them, and something would happen. My devotion is always to the original order, but if there is a way I can accommodate someone on the way, and am called on to do so, there's no argument.

I was crossing the city, and the person across the bus I was fantasizing about serving caught me. He took the appearance of the lust he was observing in me seriously. He missed his stop while I lived up to his wet dreams of an unknown woman who gets him off secretly in public. It was a bit concerning that the gang members on the trip would want in on it, too, and make me miss my appointment. "Discretion is the better part of . . . ", well, however that goes. My sudden-unnamed-silent companion also seemed to have a concern that the others would want in on things with not just me but him, too, so his own fears of being gang raped on a bus are probably what kept him stoic, at least to the casual observer. I had no solid reason to fear such a thing; I'd survived it before. When he was finished, I used a tissue to wipe the interesting element he gave me from my hand and as much as I could reach from inside his pants, and when no one but him was looking, I ate the tissue. The embarrassed discomfort he was experiencing for just having had an orgasm in a public place fraught with at least perceived danger dissipated into something I occasionally see: reverence. When I last saw him in the window of the bus as it pulled away, I smiled and indicated my respects and I believe he wept.

I WAS meeting Daddy at his office that day. It wasn't uncommon for me to go there and perform for him or his clients or his staff or whoever. When I was let into his office after being touched by several people in ways some foolish people go to court over, I could see Mommy was where she usually was, on her knees under his desk. I could tell she was there by the bottoms of her shoes; I was intimately acquainted with them and Daddy's, too. I waited, as was my due. I had no more hurry in my day; I was where I needed to be.

"Uh." Daddy finally looked down away from me, and obviously was pushing toward his lap, hard. I was always rather jealous that Mommy still had a gag reflex after all these years. I don't know how she could have; maybe she's faking all the interesting noises.

"You're early."

"Not very many people were interested in getting off the bus today."

"Because of you?"

"No, sir. Well, maybe one guy."

"Um Hm. Uuhhhhhh." I didn't need to explain to Daddy. He knew what could have happened, and was never surprised or angry with my need to please.

I waited while he contemplated things that were often about the height of his navel, at least until Mommy got a hold of him, and after the inevitable happened, Mommy's shoes moved further out of sight under the desk for a moment.

"Oh, hallo darling."

"Hi, Mommy."

"Shall we get sstarted?" Her 's' was long like a snake's. She straightened her dress and brushed non-existent dirt from where she had contact with the floor. Mommy is intimately acquainted with floors. We sat in the luxury of chairs, as is unusual in this room.

Daddy finished closing the access to the interesting bits he has that I don't. "I've had contact from a young lady who has need for our daughter's services."

"For how long?"

"Indefinitely." The word was, I knew, inevitable. I had no indication that this would be the day, and found I didn't know what to feel. All my life I had been getting ready for what was to come next. I could feel Mommy starting to cry next to me without seeing it, or hearing it.

Well, maybe not so ready for that part. For some reason, I hadn't expected my tutor, my teacher, my fellow slave to act like a mother when her daughter was to leave home. I felt wetness on my own hands that I also hadn't expected; I instantly couldn't stop crying myself, and for the first time since I can't remember when, I wasn't thinking or feeling for the other people in the room. I was about to leave home for places unknown, and it broke my heart.

There was no clock to see; time stopped passing while we held each other and kissed each other the way mothers and daughters should, not the way we usually do, which men are known to pay to see. Men actually have paid to see me kiss my mother that way; it's comforting, oh so right, and one of the pleasures I am always delighted to provide to Daddy or anyone else who wanted it. The long desperate clenching of each other was new to me, and it somehow felt as right as putting my tongue in my mother's mouth, or pussy, or asshole. Maybe more so; I didn't want it to end.

Daddy didn't disturb us; we held onto each other until our arms trembled and gave way. Our heads hung toward the floor and each other, but there was finally a space between us.

"When?"

"You can still make your flight."

I snapped my head up toward him and beheld something I never had seen before, had never imagined or desired to see before, and I never wanted to see it again, but I will hold on to that image until I pass from this earth, however that may be.

Daddy had tears on his cheeks, too, and was shuddering, with a smile that can only be described as beatific.

DADDY ORDERED, and I obeyed. I didn't seduce the driver or the people at the airport or on the plane. Lord knows I wanted to: I was a good girl. It was hard as hell to disconnect the radar, which was fruitless, so I had to instead focus on not acting on it. Also harder than hell. I experienced the loneliness that I feared, and I was a wreck by the time I finally found a young lady holding a sign that said "Elsabeth".

"Are you . . . Elsabeth?"

"I am now." It was all I could do to not rip off my clothes and throw myself at her. I tried to look at her like I loved her, which I was desperately trying to do. I was relieved almost to the point of ecstasy.

"I'm Lynn. Where's your luggage?"

"I don't have . . . luggage."

"Well, we can't have that. I wasn't expecting to have to take you shopping before we even got home."

"That's . . . I don't . . . I don't need anything."

"I am reasonably sure there is going to be a near future in which you will need a change of underwear."

"I'm not wearing any. Ma'am." She was already several steps away from me, apparently still talking to me about maybe periods, or shoes, or other things I couldn't make out that the volume got softer and softer on, when I noticed she was leaving me, and I didn't know what to do. I hung my head and waited as I had been taught. The room evaporated, and I was once again accursedly alone, despite the throng of humanity full of need around me.

Somehow across the room she became conscious that she was talking to herself, and turned to try to find me, and the mix of aggravation and pity on her face broke through the mire I was stuck in to make me conclude that I had already failed her. I gave up on breathing. She stomped across the room and grabbed my hand with obvious annoyance. "C'mon!"

I tried to race after her as hard as I could; she was so much faster than I was, even just walking. She had stopped talking, and I didn't know if it was allowed for me to speak, or what I was allowed to say. It was awful, and I wanted to go home where I knew what would happen, and as bad as it would be for me to go back with my tail between my legs as a failure, it had to be better than moving forward into this terrifying unknown.

LYNN WAS breathtakingly beautiful. I tried to look across the car at her several times, and ended up looking back and forth between her and my feet numerous times before my courage finally recovered enough for me to blurt out, "I'm sorry."

"I'm sorry?"

"You don't need to apologize to me."

"Wait, what? I thought you were apologizing to me."

"I am."

"Well, you haven't done anything wrong."

Stupid emotions confused me. "But, back at the airport . . ."

"What? We got separated. No biggie."

"I-but I'm . . . I . . ."

A few more moments of road noise set it. "You've never been away from home, before, have you?"

"Not this far, no."

"Are you scared?"

"Some."

"Tell you what. When we get to the house, you can call home. Okay?"

I had never wanted anything so bad in my life. "Th-Thank you, m-m-mistress."

"What did you call me?"

Uh oh. "Mmmmisstressss." I was lost. Again.

She asked me what I was doing here, and I told her. The road noise was almost deafening.

"Yeeaahh, we're gonna make a call."

I had no idea what I had done.

"WHO'S YOUR friend?"

"This is Elsabeth. Elsabeth, Gary. I gotta make a call. Entertain her for a moment, wouldja?" She was out of the room before I had even oriented it enough to understand which direction she went.

"Well, c'mon in, sit down. Beer?"

"Thank you, no, thank you."

"Don't run off, I gotta get me one."

I perched onto the couch and tried to sit prim and proper. I surveyed a room like so many others, furniture, doors, windows, no art on the walls, TV, that must be a dining room, lights. The sun was setting somewhere; the shadows were long.

Gary came back in and sat down, swigging a brand of beer I hadn't seen before. "So, where ya from?"

I discerned I didn't have an intelligent answer prepared. People don't usually exhibit an interest in their slave's backgrounds. "Uh, around."

"Well, welcome to god-forsaken nowhere. Are you gonna be around long?"

Things weren't right here. "I . . . I'm not sure."

"Yeah, story of us. Not here long, not there long, no plans, no nothin'. I can see why she likes ya."

"You think she likes me?" I bristled, finding a touch of comfort.

"Well, yeah. She doesn't bring just anybody off the street home."

"Plane."

"Huh?"

"She picked me up at the airport."

"Oh, sure. That makes sense." This was the first time he actually looked at me. A flash of anger crossed his face, then dissipated. "Have you worked with her before?"

"N . . . no." My head tipped to the side and my mouth fell open, and I felt myself losing control over how I looked and what I was doing and what was happening around me for the umpteenth time today. I was starting to drown a little.

"Don't worry about it. She's good; she'll take care of you." Thank god. I think. I fell back into tradition and waited, and tried to feel him from across the room, believing it would soon be up to me to make him feel loved.

"Gary, can you come talk to me for a minute?" Lynn had materialized in a doorway I hadn't noticed. He looked quizzically up at her and she addressed me. "Would you excuse us a moment, sweetie? I just need him for a quick bit."

I was left to my doom. So I tried to distract myself by trying to make myself wet without touching anything, in preparation for what I just knew was going to happen, sooner or later. I dreamed about body parts and penetrations and finally getting to see the joys I wanted crossing faces and

"Elsabeth?"

Lynn's hand was in front of me, beckoning. How long were they gone?

"Yes." I stiffened even further on the couch as I put my hand toward her. When she took it, it felt nothing like it did in the airport; there, it was almost metallic, hard, firm. Now it like a soft belly on a cat, or a bunny, or no wait, the secret place of a woman when she still hasn't been touched by other human hands before. Mine never felt that way; I was, to my best memory, never a virgin. I have been there when other girls stopped being virgins, and it was always magical. So it's not like I could just make that reference up.

I was so enamored of the sensations overwhelming me so that the door clicking startled me. I was in a different room that I had no idea how I got into, it was utterly alien and in my hand wasn't Lynn's hand but this hard and black what-is-it and it was making odd noises and I didn't know what it was. Instinct told me to bring it up to the side of my face, and when I did, the world collapsed.

"Darling?"

"Mommy? MOMMY! MMOOMMMMEEEEEE!!!!" The tears wouldn't stop, again. I couldn't stop sobbing, and it was hard to hear my savior, the mother I wanted to fuck, shouting on the other end.

"Darling, are you all right?"

"Oh, Mommy, I miss you!"

"Yes, but are you hurt?"

"Oh, no, I want to come home, please Mommy please please."

"Oh, Darling, you're just fine. She was just worried about you. Did anything go wrong?"

"Mommy, please."

"Answer me."

"I'm just so scared. Nothing has happened. I . . . d-don't know what to do."

"Listen to me. It is easy. Do what you're told. Like you've always done."

"I haven't been told to do anything."

"That's a 'yet', dear. When you walk out of whatever room you are in, they will, I swear, give you something to do. And you do it. Why would there be any question? Hmm?"

"I . . . I . . ."

"Make us proud, Sweetie."

I was finally calming down. "Will I get to talk to you again?"

"Of course. We'll find a way. I've got to run. You know the kinds of chores I have here. Love you."

"I L-Love You, Mommy."

"I know you do, Darling. Now go love someone else." The line went dead. She, no doubt, had something to do at home. No doubt, to please Daddy. I had something to do now, too.

As the room began to reassemble itself around me, I became aware of what had to be shouting coming through the walls, and the unmistakable sound of a door slamming, hard. I composed myself for another moment, took off my clothes and opened the door.

LYNN WAS on the couch, sitting, wheezing, shaking. I stepped gingerly across the room, trying hard not to crush the pile on the carpet, and knelt at her feet, facing her, with my head dipped and my eyes averted to the place on a woman's body I am to divert my attention to when waiting for them. As she and I both calmed down, I recognized my daydreams had kicked in, and I was getting wet. Familiar territory at last.

"Why are you naked?"

"I didn't know what else to do."

"It's not that I mind. You're pretty." I blushed a bit, and didn't suppress my smile. "Actually, you're magnificent."

"Thank you." Pause. "May I ask you . . . uh . . . ?"

The gap in time was interminable. "Yes."

"What do you want me to call you?"

She inhaled. "I know your name isn't Elsabeth. I thought it was rather delightful. So if I call you that, it is more a matter of my convenience."

"Yes . . . ma'am."

"I don't want 'ma'am', or 'mistress', or 'goddess', or any of that other subservient shit, ever. If we are with someone else, and it is absolutely necessary to make them comfortable, you may call me 'Lynn'. Same thing with Gary. But generally, I don't want us to use names between us. It sounds silly, I know, but names are things of power that are not to be dealt with lightly or casually. It's, a, uh, bit of a superstition I have. Can you do that?"

"Yes, m . . ." I caught myself. "Yes. I'm sorry."

"Was that hard?"

"It's not what I was taught."

"I had understood that you don't know how to do the wrong thing. So don't apologize. I don't care what you do or don't do, I don't care what you say or don't say. You will either do what I want or you won't. If you don't, I may vent my anger or frustration on you or I may not. I may do that anyway for reasons that have nothing to do with you. But sorry won't change anything, now will it."

"No." I had to struggle a bit to leave it at that. And she was completely right; a slave has to re-make the decision to comply at every command. There is no failure in automation that 'sorry' can repair. A slave must continually hand over her will again and again. And my attention moved: I wasn't a little wet. I was wet like a whore.

"Stand up. I want to get a good look at you."

I rose with as much refinement as I knew how, knowing that the first time a mistress, er, I don't know what to call her in my own mind now, first beholds her property is to be a time that the slave, er, wait, what do I call myself now . . . anyway, should be a time that the slave, uh, I should try to be elegant, seductive, compliant, receptive, joyous, willing to be whatever . . .

"Turn around, please."

She was polite as she put her hands that felt like sex on me. I was thinking that 'She' wasn't right either, something was wrong with impersonal pronouns, and then I collided into the enormity of what was wanted here at the moment my sopping sex was touched, and swiftly, the world made sense.

A mistress wasn't touching her slave.

What was happening here wasn't abstract or impersonal: 'She' didn't touch 'her'.

No, You Touched Me.

I immediately fell in love, and came on the spot.

"I BROUGHT you here for Gary."

"Yes."

"That doesn't bother you?"

"No." My answers were intentionally short. I had something to do. She made little yummy sounds as I did it.

"Mmmmm what are you thinking right now?"

I lifted my head a bit so I could look up across her, tilted my head little, smiled my best smile, and said, "I'm thinking that I love you." I drank her in for a quick moment and went back to what I was doing.

"Oohhh hhhh, that didn't take long."

"Nope." Busy busy busy.

"Oh god." Her breathing got deeper. "Wait. Wait." She reached and lifted me.

"Hmm?" She looked in my eyes, god, she was bewitching, and I caught a change in her body temperature. It went down. Not what I expected.

"Why?" She held me in place, despite my slight struggles to get back to work. This was important.

So I gave her honesty. "Have you ever heard the Universe telling you to what to do? Some things you just shouldn't resist."

For the first time in a long time, I actually felt like I had done something really wrong. Not just a little wrong, like failing to hold the door open for someone, or eating with the wrong fork, or addressing someone not quite correctly as is so often used as an excuse to vent one's unrelated anger on another. This was a big league wrong, like I had just stabbed her. Her eyes went enormous, I could no longer smell her arousal, and the slight humming radioactivity I was feeling all over her body shorted out. It was all I could do to not say what I had been forbidden to.

Then another first set in. I have no recollection of failing to bring someone else off, ever. There was nothing I could do to bring her back; she had checked out. And despite there being someone else in the room, someone I had just developed strong feelings for, someone I was frantically engaged with physically, I was again alone.

I DIDN'T hear the front door open; my ears were covered at the time, to no avail, despite my best efforts. I felt pressure and then a sharp pain on my head as Gary yanked me up by my hair. Sure, I'm light, but not very many people can pick me up with one hand. He used the other to strike me hard enough across my face to make me see stars. Then he did it again, and threw me down, away.

As I shook my head to try to clear it, he was repeating the gesture on Lynn. I was trapped under her when some door slammed. The sound seemed to rouse her, and I felt her struggle off of me; there was nothing I could do to help her. I wasn't about to be left to my fears, so I rather clumsily followed her. Maybe I shouldn't have.

In the bedroom I had spoken to my mother in, they were already arguing. I knelt.

"What the fuck is this, Lynn?

"I . . ."

"You're not trying to get better! You promised me you weren't going to work any more!"

"I'm not."

"Then what do you call what I walked in on, if not rehearsal?"

"T-test drive."

"Oh, this I have to hear."

They both drew in a breath. She raised her chin a little, looked down toward me, and spoke in a low voice. Clever, trying to make it quieter by being quieter. She could almost qualify for Slave School with that kind of tactic. "She's for you."

"Me."

"Yes. You. For when I . . . can't. Which might be a lot, if I can get better."

"Bitch." He kicked her so hard and so fast I didn't see it; I heard it, and she was next to me on the floor. My breath caught, one, two, three, four, my god, five times in quick succession. I panicked as I held it; I didn't want the sound of exhaling to intrude.

"And what do you have to say about this?"

I looked to you, her, Lynn, and got nothing. She was lying on the floor, not moving. I couldn't see her face. So I decided to commit, and got up slowly, looking down, until my vision crossed where I normally kept my eyes on a man, and left them there as I ascended. I took one breath, standing before him, you, Gary, and reached for and got both of his, Gary's, your hands. He didn't struggle as I put one on my breast, and the other to my sex. I swallowed. "This is my body . . . break it for you."

Neither of us moved, and I caught sight of Lynn putting her arms around him, not knowing how she got behind him. I could hear her whisper, "It will be okay," and I smiled, and waited. This was the moment I came here for.

Slowly, the horsepower hit between her and him and myself, and even though when I looked in his eyes which said 'no no no', the arousal he was experiencing countered with the facts. His hands stiffened before he pulled them away, and I returned my gaze to where I was delighted to see an erection starting. I could see out of the corner of my eye him pulling her hands off him, as he turned, and seemed to be adjusting her before him; I lost sight of her, and decided I could look up. I felt the impacts with a flinch of my own as he beat her, and every time she caught my eye, she smiled. It was hard not to grin back; I didn't want it to be misinterpreted.

I waited, and prayed. When she could no longer get up, looking like she had been in a train wreck, he started fucking her. When he finished, and she lay drifting in and out of consciousness, I crawled to him and started plying my craft. He made the rounds on my body, but he never swung at me for the rest of the weekend. Ever, actually. I tried to get him to vent his rages on me, but whenever Lynn would recover enough to right herself, he'd throw me off and assault her until she was back down. Back and forth, back and forth.

THE CONVENTIONS of our society's ideas of schedules lost their cursed existence, until the sun had changed directions two, maybe three times and Gary staggered off to the bathroom. I could hear the shower.

"Come to me."

I drug myself across the bed. She, Lynn, you put her, your hands on my face. Electric.

"Get dressed, go with him. Do anything he says, except, don't leave him. Promise."

"I promise." Her eyes rolled back into her head, and when her hands fell away, the juice went with them. I have to learn how to do that.

When Gary got out of the bathroom, I was sitting on the bed next to Lynn, dressed in the same clothes I had arrived in. As he rummaged through his closet, I spoke quietly, not wanting to disturb the sleeping person next to me. "May I go with you today?"

"No."

"She told me to." My hand was stroking her face before I had even thought about it. No flux. One corner of her mouth lifted, and she lazily pulled my hand away from her with her eyes still closed. Fuel, then fire. I had to stand to get away from it.

"Fine. You know, she always gets what she wants."

"Isn't that why I'm here? What do you want?"

"Food. Hungry?"

My mouth watered; I hadn't eaten since I arrived, however many days ago that was. Well, not food. "Starving."

"Let's go."

We left the house. He drove across town to what might have been a college. We parked, and I scampered along side of him. We went through a food line, and I tried to not overindulge, but I was shaking I was so hungry. Not to mention tired.

"Listen, would you mind sitting here? I kinda need to think a bit."

"Sure." He left me on the side, and went half-way across the room. I tried to recover while I ate like I hadn't and watched him sit alone. I started dreaming.

A man approached Gary and sat down. They were talking. The other man seemed to be genuinely glad to see Gary. I was thinking how delighted I was to see he had a friend, when Gary was abruptly gone; the man even looked bewildered. Vanished. Another trick I will need to learn, this vanishing thing, after I find him. Might come in handy. I circled the room twice, and finally went out the way we came in. I could see him down the street on the sidewalk, and I ran to catch up with him.

"Oh. Sorry."

"Are you all right?" I was panting.

"Uh . . . yeah." He was thinking hard.

"Who was that? May I ask?"

"Hm? Oh. He's the reason we're here."

I stopped, watching him walk away. I had to run again. He wouldn't talk any more about it for the rest of the day.

He went to a small office, much smaller than Daddy's, where he informed me that if I was going to hang around him, I was going to need to earn my keep. I had seen receptionists before but had never played the part of one. It wasn't hard; I just had to make the people wait until he was ready to see them. And he saw everyone. I tried to listen to what was going on in the inner office, but couldn't make much of anything out. When the people were waiting, I couldn't help myself: I imagined fucking them blind.

HE FINALLY came out and said, "Let's go."

I had nothing to gather up, but was starting to think that maybe Lynn was right. If I'm going to be in here with him, I might need some other clothes.

"Dinner's ready," was the first thing I had heard when we went in to door at, dare I say it, home.

Lynn looked like what had happened to her all weekend, but she at least had cleaned up a bit. I still needed to. We ate in silence until we were mostly finished, when Gary stood up and said, "I saw him today."

Lynn fell out of her chair, and wrapped herself around his legs. He extricated himself from her after petting her and closed the door to the bedroom.

She had trouble getting up, so I did what I should have and helped her to the living room couch. "Don't you worry; I'll take care of them." I went back and figured out where the dishes I cleaned went.

When I returned, she hadn't moved an inch. I wasn't convinced she had blinked. I knelt next to her and put my arms around her. "Oh, god. You need a shower."

"If you wish."

"Yes, please."

The water was glorious and I was sure I took too long in it. When I got out, I understood that putting my clothes back on would undo it. I had nothing to hide, so, rather than face being ordered back into the bathroom, I walked out a bit wet, and crushed the carpet pile a bit more because of it, but probably less because of the lack of clothes.

"I haven't taken you shopping yet, have I."

"No." It was all I could do to not say 'Ma'am'. This was still hard.

"Go get something from my closet, and we'll go."

I bent my head, and crept into the bedroom. You, he, Gary was asleep, but I couldn't keep my hand off him after I put something, I'm not even sure what, on. No conductivity. I still needed more practice.

Lynn almost brought me to my knees when she took my hand on our way to the car. She thought I was hesitating. "Anything wrong?"

"No. No. But I want to ask you something." Only later did I remember that I hadn't asked that like a slave.

"Ssure." We backed out of the drive as I told her what I felt when she touched me. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

As we drove and shopped, I think she was starting to relax a little. I was on my best behavior; I didn't try to seduce anyone while we were out.

"Listen, when we're not at home, Gary and I both need you to behave as normally as possible, like a friend, or, I don't know, are you his employee now? Can you do that?"

"Yes, of course." I had no idea what I was saying.

"You are so . . . so tempting. Gary . . . Gary can't know if I'm playing with you. Can you keep that from him?"

"What if he asks me?"

"Lie."

It's not like I haven't been asked to lie, or pretend, or fake anything in the past. But not like this; not to who is to be the thing I'm not allowed to pronounce. "I've never lied to a . . . a . . ."

"Go ahead. Say it."

". . . a masssterr." I was surprised how hard it was to pronounce the word I had said every day of my entire life. Mommy used to tell me it was my first word.

"You'll do it for me. Does that make it easier?"

"No. But thanks for that." It caught my attention that my reply was nothing like a slave's response, but more like a friend's and I congratulated myself on succeeding on transitioning toward whatever it is our relationship was turning into.

More silence prevailed until the bags had been brought in, and I believe she was more uncomfortable with it than I.

"Listen, we need to have a normal day tomorrow, okay?" I had no idea what that meant, but concurred, putting the last bag down. "But I have got to do this." She, Lynn, you took me into your arms, and decimated my soul. There was wattages everywhere. That was the first time she kissed me, and I had to be held up as my knees became worthless. I was going to have to wash the pants I borrowed now, and wondered where to do that. As the room insisted on my return, she said, "Normal day tomorrow. Go in there and try to get some sleep. But if he wakes up, fuck his brains out."

I DON'T even remember getting into bed before Lynn was shaking me. "He's gonna go in a minute. Can you get up? I want you to go with him." I wrenched myself out of bed and managed to get dressed, but still had the tags on. Gary kissed her goodbye, quick, almost chaste, and I didn't get to. As I felt myself trying to lean toward her, she shook her head slightly, not even looking at me. Gary was halfway out of the parking lot before I caught up to the car, running. Seemed I spent a lot of my time running after him.

That day was, for all practical purposes, normal. I worked for Gary during the day, Gary beat Lynn at night, I slept with Gary, being available to perform wifely duties as needed, and I would steal kisses with Lynn, keeping me melted. Lynn slept on the couch. She extended advice as to how to seduce her husband every night, things like 'when you blow him tonight, don't put his cock in your mouth – just lick it like you love it – and make sure he can see how much you're loving it', or 'tonight, no matter what happens, don't take his cock out of your mouth', or 'make sure he only fucks your ass tonight'. None of these things were hard, given all I'd been trained to do. Gary perked up a little more each day.

Every day, when things were quiet at his/our office, Gary would tell me stories of Bruce, the guy I saw him with at lunch that first day, and how he was some kind of shaman and they had planned to have him actually marry Gary and Lynn. I was surprised to find out they weren't. They fought like they were married, but only after the evening beatings. The beatings never came up in the fights: is that a sign of a good relationship?

I started becoming aware of where he, er, we worked. I met the woman in the next office. She was a teacher at the college, and I had a few things to learn from her about coming on to people. I finally had to tell her I had a boyfriend to keep her from trying to seduce me. I certainly wouldn't have minded, and I'm not sure if Lynn would have, but I was darn sure Gary wouldn't have liked it. I don't know what made me blurt out 'Bruce' as my boyfriend to her; maybe it was because he had just left Gary's office. She insisted and insisted until she finally made give her the only phone number I knew, in case he dropped by.

Normality only lasted a week. One morning, while I was trying to get Gary to pee in my mouth (per Lynn's request) in the bathroom, he went out to make coffee. I heard glass shatter in the kitchen.

"Oh, fuck. Oh fuck. Fuck fuck! FFuck!" He had dropped the coffee pot; I stared at the floor, wondering where the broom was.

"Not that! This!" He was wadding up a piece of paper that he threw in the sink. "We're leaving. Today. Now."

"What?"

"You wait here. We are leaving town, right after I get her back. Shit." And he flew out the door. I still wasn't dressed. After everything had been quiet for a moment, I started to clean up the broken glass when curiosity got the best of me. I opened the crumpled paper and read two words: "At Dad's".

I paced around home, getting more and more rattled when the phone exploded after lunch time, not that I ate. I nearly went out the window. It was Bruce.

I am worthless as a liar, but I couldn't seem to stop when I was speaking to him. I knew this man was important, and I needed to do everything I could for him. I had forgotten about his lunch with Gary and before I knew it, I had made a date with him. I was in full panic mode now, and I tore around the house, looking through everything. Not very trustworthy of me, I know, but I finally found at least one thing I was looking for: money. Not much, but enough to get through dinner, which I had foolishly promised I would pay for. I'd be happy to let them take it out on me later; maybe they'd finally (maybe?) whip it out of me. I don't know what I was thinking; slaves have no money. Maybe, oh god, please, no, maybe I was starting to think of myself as something else. I just didn't know what that could be.

As I continued to look around, I found a large stash of video tapes. Damned curiosity overwhelmed me again, as I was amazed for the next four hours. I finally had to turn it off, because it altered so many things for me my head was spinning, and I had to get ready to go. I had discovered I didn't know who I was with. This was obviously why Gary was so hard on Lynn; to keep from going back to this.

My Lynn, my She, my Her, my You, was a porn star. There was nothing she didn't do. Sex with every shape, size, age and color of men and women. Hand jobs. Blowjobs. Anal. Groups. Animals. Watersports. Scat. Vomit. Bondage. Rape. Torture. There may have been children; I quit looking. And it wasn't just one or two of each kind. There were over a hundred tapes, and I had just seen what looked like a four-hour highlight reel. I put in a couple others at random, and they were all the same. One four-hour highlight reel after another. This girl worked. In spades.

Not that I minded the idea of porn, or of being owned by someone who worked in porn; I knew that I myself had done some, and would no doubt do more, given my occupation. But the certainty that Gary was trying to get her out of it started to make everything sharpen and define, and his stories of the would-be-preacher-as-redeemer clarified what I needed to do next.

I needed to get his help. I just proved terrible at it.

THE LIES that I had started on the phone with him continued throughout the evening until I was so confused about what I had said to him and what I hadn't that I recalled one of the earliest lessons in slave school: slavery abhors a lie. I finally couldn't keep it up anymore and broke down and started to explain the honesties of the situation as best I could, but I was alienating him, I could read it. I recklessly offered myself to him, and he accepted.

I kept him at me until after sunrise when he collapsed, asleep. The man had stamina, and needs he didn't know he had.

After we had gotten through the preliminary round of fucking, I was sure I was reading him right, and did my best slave-girl act to bring him a belt to nail me with. It took only a little persuasion before he forgot himself, and was raising welts on me. It had only been a couple weeks since it had last happened to me back home, but god, how I had missed it.

Some people, once I got them started on abusing me, yes, I've broken people in before, could never get enough; everything feeds their need to hurt. 'They had the need, the need for screams' was the usual joke my Mommy and I used to share while hanging from various ceilings waiting for the next thing to happen. Sure, it sounds disrespectful for a slave to make a joke about their master's needs, but we would make sure they heard it. It would reliably drive them harder to try to break us, which was what they really needed: to feel power. They had somewhere had so much power stripped from them that the only way they could get it back was to strip it from someone else. Rip it from someone else.

Not this guy. He didn't have a need for power. He had a need for a connection to another human being that he had always been told 'no' about. He needed to feel like he could trust me; he needed me to trust him. He needed someone who would say 'yes' to him. I was the right girl in the right place at the right time.

After he had extracted the requisite tears to demonstrate there was no question he was having an effect on me and my ass, he faltered, but only for a moment. He was so close to the breakthrough he needed, that I wasn't about to let him back down.

"Hit me. Hit me. Hit me."

"No, no no, what have I done?" He dropped the belt.

"You are doing the right thing. You are doing it for you, you are doing it for me. Please don't stop."

"But I'm h-h-hurting you!"

"Is that all you're afraid of? Watch and learn."

I knelt even further down onto my side, until my left breast was laying flat, and my nipple was touching the floor. "Come here, move around this way, lift your foot a little, yes, that's it." I had positioned my nipple under the heel of his shoe. Hard sole, not a tenny-runner. "Don't fall." With that, I reached up his leg with both hands, and lifted myself up a bit, trying to get as much of myself off the floor as I could.

"Aaaahhhhhhhh."

"Oh god."

"No. No. Ahhhh hhhh ststay. Arrrrrrgh nowwwww liffftt up your oththerr fffooot. Baalaannnnnghgnce. Hhh. Yes. Yes. Yes. Nowbounceonthisheel hhggh doit hhh doitdoit ssssmmmaaaashshsharrggghhhgggooodd ohgod hohgod."

He lost his balance and fell on me, his hand landing on my stomach, knocking the wind out of me. As he scrambled around, trying to get off me, I reached behind his neck and pulled him to my lips and kissed him, then kissed him harder, moaning. "MHh hh hh that was awesome . . ."

"I'm so . . ."

"What did I say? About 'sorry'? Look at me. Am I angry?"

"N-no . . ."

"It. Is. Okay. I liked it." I caught my breath a moment, dipped my head, rolled my eyes up to him, and smiled. "Want to do the other one?"

"No. I want s-something else." There was somewhere he hadn't been yet. I could feel my eyes widening as I did the math and easily surmised what was next.

"Take me. Take me. Take me."

"I . . . uh . . ."

"You know where." I turned my welts to him, and wiggled them until he did.

Later, during a rest from our exertions, I cuddled up to him to find out how our progress was coming along.

"Do you like hurting me?"

"No." He stroked his fingers through my hair. I looked up at him.

"Tell me. Don't fib."

"I like that you'll let me hurt you, and it is, I don't know, somehow acceptable."

I reached up, and starting running my fingers though his hair. "Oh, baby, it is more than acceptable. It is good." I lay my head down on his chest and tried to purr.

"Your turn. Time to tell me something."

I was still laying on him, listening to his heartbeat.

"Would you like to hurt me?"

I startled up. "Is, is that what you want me to do?" I had hurt other slaves for the entertainment of masters before. I wasn't very effective at it. Mommy always said I should work on that, but never said how.

"I didn't ask you to ask me if I wanted you to hurt me." The room started to turn. "I asked you what you wanted. What do you need?"

Holy fucking god of fucking in heaven. I had always been taught that a slave should want what their master wants. A slave has no needs, no wants, no desires to get in their way. I have never been asked what I wanted, as long as I can remember, unless it was to confirm that I wanted to do something someone else wanted.

"I don't know what I want."

"Let me help." He resituated us around a bit. "Open your mouth." I did, and he put his cock in it. "Close it." I did.

"Now, I don't think you're going to get very much out of that for a while; you've been taking from it all night." I smiled around it, and instinctively started to move my tongue around on it. Nothing moved; I couldn't even feel a pulse on it. "So, take me out of the equation. What do you want to do?"

I rolled my eyes back and forth a couple times, trying to look cute. When he didn't move or twitch or throb, the floor fell away from under us. I looked up at him and he smiled; mine disintegrated. A darkness welled up in me that I couldn't control and I did something I have never done, ever.

I bit him.

His breath caught, but he didn't move. The head was caught in my back teeth, and I bit him as hard as I could, squeezing my eyes out, until my jaw hurt. His stomach was fluttering and his fists were clenched, but he hadn't otherwise moved or made a sound. I spat him out and jumped up, suddenly appalled and revulsed by what I had done.

"Oh, my god, what have I done, I'm so . . . so . . .  I'm sorry I'm sorryI'msorry . . ." My face was in my hands.

"And what did you say earlier?" The ice water of his words jabbed me, and I looked back to see him smiling, And true, gritting his teeth.

Gary and Lynn were right. I saw God in this man.

I INSISTED we spend our remaining time together extracting penance from me. He had finally relaxed, and so was I, in ways I had never relaxed before, and we laughed as he'd try some new atrocity on me. I volunteered to let him break a finger, but he declined. We found things in the flat to clobber me with, or otherwise hurt me. Toothpicks did find their way under the nail of the finger I had proposed. Hand injuries are the worst, which was why I suggested the sacrifice. I had a lot of demons to purge. He also drew the line at using the iron on me, but we did have some fun with matches for a while. He even managed to get back in my ass, and we both screamed for it this time. And yes, he did do my other nipple, too.

After he lost his ability to respond, or move, or see, I sucked his tooth-marked cock as gently as I could for a while just to be sure it was over. It was. Having our night together be finished didn't offer the kind of relief one feels when something bad is over: it was, it was, satisfaction. I later learned that this was peace.

I set out to pray that Gary and Lynn would come home, please, just come home, when the front door ruptured. Well, okay, that's a slight exaggeration; but the thumping sounded like gunshots, and it might as well have detonated with what was behind it.

I hadn't even bothered to dress when I opened it. My still knees hurt from when I fell to them as fast as I could.

Daddy.

Daddy.

Oh, my god, my Daddy was here!

I threw myself around his legs and hugged like I never wanted to let him go, ever. I felt a relief of stress I didn't realize I had.

"We're leaving, Darling. Now." He walked in with me hanging onto his feet like I did when I was small.

"Go? What? I don't . . ."

"No time, bitch. We are leaving immediately." Whatever courtesy he had extended earlier by calling me by a pet name was gone. As he turned to leave, reaching for my hair, I ducked out and ran to the bedroom and grabbed a top and denims, maybe the ones I came here in, I don't remember. We found our way to his car with me unsuccessfully nagging him incessantly about what was going on.

"Get in, cunt." He had opened the trunk of the car. The boot. The stern look told me I had used my allowances, and I got in. This wasn't the first time I'd ridden there. I managed to get dressed amid the bounces in the ride; I had forgotten shoes, but I would at least not get stopped for public nudity, as had happened to me on occasion in some distant past I couldn't understand why I now had a hard time remembering.

Daddy got me some sandals from the Gift-News in the airport, and it wasn't until we were in the air and half way home that he finally spoke to me. I had given up trying to talk to him before we were even off the runway, so it startled me.

"They weren't any good. They proved to be a problem."

I knew what that meant. They didn't really have the money Daddy had sold me for. And that was the last thing he said to me for over a year. He never tried to sell me again after that. He never shared me with anyone else again, and came to me less and less over time. But when he did, he was much rougher with me, offering me a redemption with his fists and his needles and his cock until he died 3 years later that I still crave even unto this day. He never explained where Mommy was, and I haven't seen her since I left home the first time. I miss her.

I'D LIKE to say that's the end of the story, but it isn't. After Daddy died, I floundered around the house for a while, the money quickly drying up. His business fell short and then failed soon after I got back, and I decided to try to take some courses at the nearby college. No real plan, just a chance to get out and do some things. I was so lonely. I'd asked Daddy about it several times when he was still alive, but he would always just shake his head. I found that his continued refusal to even say anything about it prompted me to begin keeping secrets from him. I was starting to quit acting like a slave, even around him; I had already stopped thinking like the slave Mommy and Daddy wanted me to be at Gary and Lynn's. I felt like I was drowning continuously, but a place inside me rejoiced in it, too.

It wasn't like I could talk to anybody about it. So I started making stuff up to myself, about how things were going to get better, and how maybe I could be happy doing what I wanted, instead of what others wanted. I can't tell you how surprised I was to find myself sitting in a church one day; probably more so than the people sitting next to me would be if they knew they were sitting next to a sex slave. A former sex slave? What am I now?

The fairy tale that I had grown up on wasn't there anymore. Maybe it's no different than the fairy tales other parents tell their children; no princes, no white horses, no dungeons, no chains. It's got to do with childish things and mirrors. At least, that's part of the fairy tales they tell me now on Sundays.

I was getting out of an English class I had decided to take, might as well get good at something, you know, and I did enjoy that recluse's one book, when I passed the corner of the building and suddenly the charged hand of a goddess who didn't want to be one was on the back of my neck, and I was being caught as I fluttered before I felt the ground. As things started to come back into view, the kiss I was experiencing was sucking the soul right out of me. When oxygen deprivation started to kick in and I was twitching and I was sure my joy was about to be complete, the angels themselves sang the next words I heard. My life changed on the spot: truths rained down on me I had been told all my life.

"Listen, you busy? We got things to do."

The Agonistarch

I WAS ordered to read Wittgenstein, and was expected to contemplate his idea about us not being here to enjoy ourselves, and how so very well I lived up to the philosopher's expectations yet again, when I saw my beloved husband, God bless his soul, waiving animatedly across the room. I had looked up to see him on the phone, and the expression on his face was the one I had been praying to see. Thank you, Lord, for a respite from the grueling reading I hate so much.

"Yes. Yes. I understand. No, that won't be a problem."

He appeared to be listening, and the ends of his mouth turned up and up and up.

"Oh. Oh . . . you mean she's there? Oh, god, yes please." He beckoned me.

"She's there. Here, you talk to her. I'll go get on the other line." And he handed me the phone.

"Hello?" Nothing.

"Hellooo . . . Elizabeth? Darling?"

"Mommy?" I fell to my knees. I praised God during the long silence only to be jarred from my reverie. "What do you want?"

"Oh, Darling, I want you to come home."

"Will it be different?"

"I don't know what you mean, Darling. Please, just let us come get you."

"No. Leave me alone." And the line went dead.

I put the phone down; it was no longer useful to me. My hands fell onto my face, and I wept.

"What happened?" My life everlasting was kneeling beside me. "I picked up the other line, and it was dead."

I blubbered. "Oh, she hung up on me. As soon as she found out it was me, she hung up." I reached for my breath and found him drawing me in. I gasped my tears out some more.

"It will be all right. I know where she is. I'll leave in the morning to get her."

We didn't make love that night; we rarely if ever did when Elizabeth went missing. I found myself wishing we had after my bulwark had left. I wish we had.

HE HAD already left when I came to in the morning. The quiet of the house is often something I look forward to; today, it was oppressive. I said my prayers where I should by the side of my bed until I could no longer retain the night's hateful accumulations. I drank what I could of them.

I did plan for my one indulgence and prepared a half a pot of coffee which brewed while I went toward the basement. It would be a nice reward.

Once at the foot of the stairs, I bowed my head, and slipped my robe off. My master had left what I was to do on the table on the far side of the darkened room. I performed the journey, well, journey makes it sound so far when it is only a few meters, as I was expected to. Once I arrived, I stood, and the tacks had already started falling off. We haven't figured out yet how to get them to stick hard enough to not do that by simply pulling my prostrate body over them; maybe they need to be sharper.

I lit the candle, and warmed the first and only discretionary needle in it until it turned black. I tried to think of a place that the nerves weren't damaged too badly, and settled on pushing it into my belly button. The second through seventh ones went into my armpits, the eighth and ninth ones went, as they traditionally did into my areola, the tenth and eleventh into my outer labia, the long way today, and the twelfth into my evil tongue. Again, the long way, directly in from the front toward the back.

I then picked up the candle, and dripped it over the needles until the candle was gone. It was a shorter candle than usual, and only took about an hour until all I was handling was wick. I had long not felt the heat in my fingers or much of anything else in them, and I missed the delights of stroking a cat or a rough beard, or . . . other things.

After it was again dark, I slid and shimmied back toward the stairs, taking a different route to try to pick up some more tacks. Once I reached the stairs, I brushed the tacks that did stick off, and tried to rescatter them back into what would most likely be my path tomorrow. Oh, wait, I'll have to come back to do laundry later. After I poured my cup of coffee that I couldn't taste for all the wax in my mouth, I made my way back to the bathroom to pick off the wax and pull the needles out at different angles than they went in.

I can in no way suggest that I am used to my penance for having the misfortune of raising a slut, but I can at least keep myself calm enough that I can perform it with a modicum of dignity. I was so distracted with the possibilities that my shameful harlot daughter might be coming home soon, that I didn't even notice if I whimpered or moaned during it at all. I must be more mindful of these things.

"I DON'T mean to pry, but I want you to know that I am concerned, and am thinking and praying about your family."

"Oh, oh, thank you, Pastor." His sermon today, which seemed to be on the idea that a life devoted to pleasure is the least pleasurable life of all, had caused my mind to drift off toward the hair shirts and self-flagellation of the saints. Much more interesting fare.

"Have you . . . heard from Elizabeth?" He almost seemed to wince at the shy invasiveness. It made him all the more endearing.

"We think we may have found her, thank the Lord. Robert flew out this morning to try to catch up with her. She may be home by tomorrow, with the grace of God."

"I am so relieved to hear that. If there is anything we can do to help . . ."

"I appreciate you more than you know. You've done so much for us already, with the counseling, and the school for my niece, I could never thank you enough."

"No, you have suffered so much. The Lord wants you to know he cares, and what little I can do is just that: little."

"Again, thank you so much."

"I mean it; we're on your side here. I'll be checking on you later."

"I enjoyed the service today."

"Go with grace."

I smiled as I wondered who Grace was, har-de-har-har, and if she liked the kinds of secrets that I did. When I got home, I opened my darling husband's computer and perused the porn collection he didn't think I knew about. I had no need to risk trying to find any myself; he had so much, I would never run out of things to dream about.

It never ceased to amaze me how many people are utterly willing to be imaged in the acts of love, not to mention whatever the rest of this, this disgusting pile of doodoo is. In a way, I can understand the anti-pornographers who hold that there are always guns trained on the women from off-camera; so many of them don't look like they want to be there. But there is no denying that so, so many of the people in these pictures and movies are there of their own volition. Amateurs beyond the counting who are doing this without getting paid, I simply can't continue to deny that this is what they want to do. The guilts set in as I consider reciprocating in ways I know I'll never do, and then I prayerfully consider just why I do this, which I clearly don't understand. It is so wrong, so wrong.

My soul-mate's collection is vast. Sex with every shape, size, age and color of men and women. Hand jobs. Blowjobs. Anal. Groups. Animals. Watersports. Scat. Vomit. Bondage. Rape. Torture. There may be children; I don't look that hard. The temptations of the pictures is often great, but the draw of the written porn is overwhelming. That's the stuff I can't resist. There can't be rifles trained on the men and women who write. I've tried a little myself, but wouldn't dare show it to anyone, and it was most dissatisfying. Because I actually hate reading so much, writing for me is sheer pain. All the keys seem to have nails sticking up from them. It seems odd to me that I don't mind reading this stuff. I can't seem to keep myself from going back over and over to the guy who only writes in conversations, or the girl who can't stop writing about getting hit with a belt, or so many, many others who should be writing professionally. Maybe they are. I don't know that I could ever bring myself to go into a porn shop to buy it; I've looked at some books there once, and they didn't seem to be that special. I couldn't get out of there fast enough.

The written porn has the decided advantage over the visual in that it is always idealized. In my mind, the women's makeup never runs, she's always pretty the way I think she should be, and the strains on their faces from being choked on manhood is always colored with the desire that I believe a woman should always have for whatever the man is doing to her. The pictorials always belie the notion that maybe it's not completely magical, and I can't stand that idea. Sex should always be perfect, and the story porn always is, even if the events are horrific. The story I've selected today was short, and had to do with buttons. After I finished relishing it, I made a decision to not finish an orgasm, but to only arouse myself. I'd only heard about 'edging' recently, and I found that I liked it. A lot. I spent the rest of the day doing my household duties naked, and performing my womanly duties as I'm sure my master would want, keeping myself full of desire for the offering of my holes to my dear heart when he returns, hopefully with our errant offspring.

No.

I won't.

Do what you want, but I won't.

No.

No, please.

No, please, don't.

Why do you even ask me?

No.

Because I don't want to.

It's dirty.

No.

Why can't you leave me alone?

Wait. I can't.

No. Ah.

I . . .

But I don't. No. Please. Don't.

Oh, god, it's so tight, please don't, I'll, I'll be . . . exposed if you do. No. No. No. No. Oh, god.

Not in front of them, please. I'm begging you. Yes, no, yes no no no no, Ahhh.

I can't move. Why are you doing this? Ohhh.

Please. I . . .

. . .

OUCH!

Fine. You win. How can I stop you? Ow.

Look, I . . . I . . . please, don't open it now, take me down, please, not here, I'll do what you want, I will I will, No, no nononono. Haah. Haah. Haah.

I swear, I'll do what you want, yes, I'll do it, please, let me go, I can't stand this. Mmghm.

You don't have to hurt me. I'll crawl for you. I will. I will. Just let me down, oh, please, not in front of them, oh, oh, oh, oh.

Oh. Fuck.

Okay, you have your way now. Yes. It doesn't matter anymore, it doesn't matter now, does it. You're going to make me, aren't you, ahh ahhha hhhaahhhhh.

No, I don't want to, aahhh, but you're not going to ow ow ow stop. Please stop that. No. Oh, if, if, I . . .  will you end . . . .oh, ohhohhhhgg.

Oh, fuck. How can it matter now? You've ruined me. Let them look. Can you see how he's ruined me? Uh. Uhh.

What does it matter. I can't go back. Whatever you want.

Yes, that. Why not. Oh, god.

Yes, them, for them, too, call more people in, I don't care. Anything you want. Everything you want. Hhhhh aaarrrrrrggghhhh.

Please, let me, let me, I'll do it, I'll swallow it all, morethananythingintheworld I want to I want to nooooo no noaarrrgrghghhh.

Call them. Call them all. Please wait. I'll go wherever you want. I'll take it all off in ohhpublic yes yes yesyesnonononooooo hhuhhhh.

Why. Why. Why. Why. Why, oh, god, please help me. I know. I know. Oh, but you don't have to . . . .uh.

I can do that. I will. Yes.

It will sound just like the real thing, On my mother's life, it will. I'm yours. I'll scream for you. I'll make every sound you want. You won't know the difference. No no. You don't have toooo, pleeease, pleasepleaseplease ah. Ah. AAARRGHYENODON'TICAN'TNONONOOOOARREEEEEEE!!!

"Sarah."

I felt a monstrous grasp on my shoulder, and I was sure it was ripping my bones out. The burning was excruciating when suddenly my hand was free, and I roundhoused wildly. I made contact. A palpable hit. I could feel the flesh and the bone and my hand hurt, and I knew I hurt him. Good. Good. I couldn't stop panting.

My eyes snapped open; I bolted upright, suddenly awake. The room was unbearably bright. Robert was lurching through the room away from me. Rubbing the side of his face. Head bowed. Hunched. Was he limping?

"H . . . honey?"

"Yeah, we're home." The door closed, and I was alone.

What happened. My god, what did I do? Oh, no. No. No . . . How can my marriage be but full of suspicion?

AS I climbed from the basement, I could already tell that the coffee was too strong; the extra acids from the three-quarter-pot I would force myself to down would upset my stomach later. The fact that all twelve needles this morning went into my sinful tongue for all the evil it wished to do wouldn't diminish the burn, either.

As I opened the way to the kitchen, I had to remind myself that I had already donned a matronly housecoat as is befitting a mother of a wayward daughter, and to keep my hands from continuing the edging I had already started this morning to counter the tears from my penance.

My beloved husband had graciously poured me a starter cup and had left it by the pot. I swirled the first swigs around the fresh holes in my topmost hole with my eyes closed, doing my best to feign that I was enjoying it. Elizabeth was silent at the table across from Robert. Both heads were hung; Robert's hands were gingerly stroking where I had struck him. After she did not return my embrace, I sat and waited for an opportune moment to welcome my little girl home.

"It was the same story."

I paused a moment for the echo to die down. "Darling, we were so worried about you."

"Fuck off."

The echo went on longer that time.

"We need more help. I'll make some calls." Robert levitated with dignity and power, shuffled around in his coat I hadn't even noticed he hadn't taken off, and stepped out of the room. The door to the garage opened and closed, and in a moment, the garage door closed itself.

"Oh, Elizabeth . . ."

"Elsabeth. My name is Elsabeth."

I ignored that she had decided to mispronounce how she was named after my mother. "Darling, we love you dearly, but please, please, tell me how to convince you that there are no slaves." My hand, the one I had struck Robert with, was on the side of her face. I had turned my head and was trying to smile as sweetly as I knew how.

She sharply drew her breath through her nose so I could hear it. Her eyes narrowed ever so slightly and her chin dropped almost imperceptibly. But it was the feel of the upturn of her cheek under my hand, my hateful sinful hand I hadn't washed since before yesterday, that conveyed she in no way believed the lie I had just told, especially considering my sister I didn't think she knew about.

I couldn't put it into words right then, but on later reflection, I knew of and accepted the silent oath I had made to myself and my daughter to redeem her from her demon-haunted world, no matter the cost. How could I have known it would be so steep, so long, so deep.

IT WOULDN'T take long for my fealty to call on me. Despite two weeks of glowing adulation and attention, daily talking cures we could in no way afford without the intervention of our gracious Pastor, and constant reminders of and exposures to the comforts and luxuries that modern life bestows onto those of us fortunate to live in the first world, Elizabeth ran away again. We woke to a daughterless house. Again. Robert was beside himself; we hadn't yet rekindled our passions since she came home, and he in no way could bring himself to attend to his own needs, let alone mine. I offered to take care of him, but he declined. The poor man is such a saint, able to be celibate for much longer than I ever could be, weak and atrocious needy whore that I am. My master ordained my daily needles to double, and I was grateful to triple them.

That very evening, while Robert was having to work late as hard as he ever does to keep our meager lifestyle in balance, the phone rang during one of my atonements. I shouted admonishments to the Lord as I ran up the stairs, not even bothering to grab a robe or a towel.

"Habbow?" I hadn't even bothered to pull the needles from my tongue, and groaned a little too loudly when I corrected my mistake.

"Hello?

"Oh. Uh. Tthhorry, Ssorry. I, I'm a lipple oud o' breaf from . . . ruddning. Hallow?"

"Hello? Sarah?"

"Yeth, this is Tharah. Cou . . . could you hag on a mome'?" I didn't wait for a response before I put the phone down, and grabbed a glass for water. I dribbled down onto the parts of me that men seem to be obsessed with before I realized the wax was still in my mouth. I yanked as much out as fast as I could, and was surprised to discover that my nerve endings still did work, with an extraordinary sense of bad timing. This call was important, I just knew it.

"Hello? Sorry about that. Dance tape got the better of me today. Who is this?"

"It's Lynn."

Lynn? "I'm, I'm sorry?"

"It's Lynn. Lynn Reid."

Oh, my god. No. I collapsed on to the floor with a thump I'm sure she heard. "Lynn. Lynn! I . . . what a surprise."

"Listen, um, E..lizabeth is here. She's telling a kinda funny story." I'll bet she is. "Do you want to talk to her?"

Praise God from whom all blessings flow. "Yes! Yes! Oh, thank you! Yes!" I prostrated onto the floor, forcing some of the needles in harder and deeper than ever before, and I loved it and I loved God for his redemptions and my master for his wisdoms. In my raptures, I could hear the phone being picked up on the other end.

"Darling?"

"Mommy?" I bolted upright.

"Darling, are you alright? I miss you!"

"I'm fine."

"Are you hurt? Please, please, Elizabeth, come home." Uh. I couldn't stop my other hand from alternating playing with my needles and the other temptation that was suddenly very awake. I only had time to consider what was wrong with me once.

"Don't worry about me. Nothing's wrong."

"Darling, please!"

"Listen to me, bitch. There's nothing to be scared of. Do what I say and leave me alone." I compensated for the language my daughter was using by finding a needle that wasn't far enough in, and put it in order.

"Dear, I'm coming to get you, like I always have and always will."

"No." And there was another errant one, which I reformed.

"Sweetie, I'm coming right now. Wait for me."

"Don't. I'm where I want to be."

"I love you, Darling . . ." and the line emptied. The salt from my tears stung where the needles they could reach were, and I had to wait until I could compose myself enough to finish cleaning up and finalize my mortification before I could call and tell Robert where she was, and that I was catching the next flight.

The Lord works in mysterious ways, but I will never understand why he didn't make me wait for Robert, as a dutiful wife should wait for her husband, walking behind him if necessary, to reinforce her position. The best advice I didn't heed. Foolish headlong modern pride set out to destroy me, and it probably still will.

I AM deathly afraid of flying. I rocked in my seat beseeching the Lord's mercy on my ill-considered crazy plot to retrieve the fruit of Robert's loins from the clutches of evil the entire way, much to the annoyance of the other people around me. Several of them offered whatever small comforts they could, pillows, drinks, sleeping pills. Oblivion tempted me sorely, but I persevered until the leviathan of the air found its way down from the hell that is in the sky, and I threw up with relief as the wheels again touched the planet. Just call me Mrs. Jonah.

It had been a long time since I had been here, and I felt a bit lost. Not much seemed familiar. The airport was new, and I wasn't even sure which way North was. The cab driver, a pleasant young man named Ernie who claimed to have just started that day, was very helpful in getting me to the Reid house. He seemed to know just where to go, despite me not knowing the address. When I tried to pay him, he wouldn't take my money, insisting he was actually off duty and just on his way home to his new bride, this was on the way, no, no wouldn't hear of it. I heard the car noise fade away and managed to look to see it turn the corner and vanish, leaving me standing with nothing left to do but turn and face the Reid house.

The Reid house. My own personal Nineveh. Only things didn't turn out for me like they did for Jonah. There would be no repentance here, and it was more likely I would suffer Jeremiah's fate. I was prepared to be stoned, as long as it wasn't on a plane. I just wasn't prepared for who answered the door.

"Sarah!" I feinted into my naked sister's arms.

THE WORLD returned, and was still bizarre. The room was sparse, all white, and I had a headache. No, a migraine. It still wasn't enough to keep me from noticing that I was naked. Not that I minded, I was just surprised. My bottom was sore; I decided that it had been used by something large. In fact, I had several sore things, and as the lights calmed down I found bruises I didn't remember.

It took me a while to figure out that the chains on my ankles weren't long enough to let both feet onto the floor at the same time if I tried to get up on either side of the bed. It would work if I went off the end of the bed okay; it just felt funny to get up by going off the end instead of the side. After failing several attempts to the sides, I finally got myself up to standing for when I knew the door would open. I implored to the Lord it would be before my habitual morning pollution reliefs would overwhelm my decorum.

There was one morning habit I couldn't keep myself from indulging in, try as I might, and as it started to overtake me, I didn't hear the door click open. But I did see the motion of the door, and yanked my hand away from where women smell like women just as the contractions started, but not fast enough to keep my sister from seeing what I was doing. She smiled at me; she'd seen it before, but it had been a while. My orgasm was ruined, at least that's what it's called: in edgeplay, an unpleasant release that keeps one from fulfilling themselves, but keeps the desire turned on high, for a very long period of time after, and when it fades, it returns instantly without hardly any provocation. When that's what one wants, it's actually a lot of fun to find what silly ridiculous things can suddenly change one's mind into sex in this state. When it's not wanted, though, it's a pure self indulgent humiliating torture that should be oppressed and burned in hell with satan.

Her head tipped and her arms went up toward me as she crossed the room, and as soon as our fleshes reported contact, my emotions took over and I shuddered; if I had put on makeup before leaving home, it would have run.

"Sarah, Baby, what are you doing here?" I couldn't answer just yet; I had other things to do for a while. Once I had gotten enough of my good cry out of me that I could again command some semblance of language, I blubbered something about Elizabeth.

She took my face in her hands and held it, forcing me to look up at her, where I saw her eyes indicating something over her shoulder, which only took two glances to see. Ah. How could I forget the cameras. "I don't know where she is, Baby. But I'm glad to see you." And she kissed me, chaste, like sisters should, unlike how I knew the cameras would require of us, sooner or later. "Do you need anything?"

I dropped my head out of her hands while responding with it, whispering, "Bathroom."

"Of course, Baby. In a couple minutes. You know what they're gonna want for that, don't you?"

My head acknowledged that I did for me as I meditated on the floor behind her. Maybe my arousal would be enough to overcome my revulsion at the idea this time; not like that it's worked before. It's always bothered me, try as I might to get used to it; Robert's porn collection did little to desensitize me to the idea of lesbian sex at all. Especially with my sister.

AFTER THAT didn't work as was desired by those who watched, and we were cleaning up the mess my damnable body made without my consent, my dear sister broke some news to me in small whispers.

"I couldn't stop them, I'm sorry."

"They put something in you to make sure you obey."

"I've got one, too. All the girls do. It doesn't come out."

"Do you remember Jill? Jill Darrow?"

"Her brother Danny gets them for us."

"It hurts. Hard. Enough to make you not like things that hurt anymore."

"Just do what they want."

We didn't get many opportunities to talk after that, and I didn't get to tell her that her daughter was doing well in school. It was way too risky, and I didn't want to endanger her position here more than I already had.

I knew my master would have a keen interest in me finding out what she was trying to warn me about, and the corrupt parts of me did, too, knowing it was probably inevitable. It didn't take but a few days for my sister's fears to be realized.

I was taken into a long candlelit room. Naked women lined one wall; I recognized a couple of them. The years had been hard on them.

Amos Reid himself was in attendance. It was the second to last time I ever saw Lynn's father. "I'd like to introduce you all to someone we've missed for a very long time." He looked at me, and beckoned with a slight glance down to what should have been hidden by the fucking old pervert's pants. I inhaled what I knew to be my last breath as the woman I had become on the outside, and stepped to his side. His fingers tangled into my hair as my life, my Robert, my everything evaporated. "We've missssed you." The snake sounded venomous.

I felt him turn his head and signal, as he held mine in place, facing the women. And just like a dance routine, one by one down the line, they dropped to the floor screaming and thrashing and convulsing. Panic was everywhere.

He pulled his head in front of mine, blocking the view of what he considered fine entertainment, smiled the sickening smile I had grown to hate so long ago, and before he sucked on my mouth and tongue, uttered the words I knew would be a large part of the price I would pay for my daughter. "Welcome home, Baby."

When his lips, still chapped after all these years, made contact with mine, it hit. The device my sister had promised they had put in me went off like a bomb, and I had no power to stand, no power to move, no power to think or remember the light of my life or the joys I knew were out there on the outside. All I knew was the excruciating pain that brought its unholy joy to this terrifying monster who once again had me in his iron grip.

MERCIFULLY, PRAISE God, that wasn't the end of the story. Despite the Reid's best efforts, my loathing of pleasuring others of my gender didn't diminish. And my sister was wrong, too. The electrical device they implanted in me fed my faith, and my master insisted I rejoice when they use it, and so after the first few times, I did just that. They can beat me, but they will never beat me. Eventually, while Amos was trying to recover, I was deemed to be the final exam test for his trainers, and I saw to it they all flunked.

About a week after I was incarcerated there, I heard a sound that had already become novel. There was a knock the door of the closet that was my room. I didn't know what to do, and it happened again. "C-come . . . in?" I didn't recognize her; she was so grown up now.

"Hello? Are you decent? No, ha ha, guess not. Mind if I come in?"

Lynn? I lowered my eyes. "M-mistress."

"Oh, it's nice to see you again. It's been so long. And you know I hate that 'mistress' shit." She put her arms around me and held me, which I couldn't return. My hands were, well, fettered. "I was so surprised to hear you were here. I thought you were going to come see me first."

"I . . . I didn't know where else to start. I thought you were here."

She put her hand to the side of my face. Icky. "I am so sorry Dad did this to you again. I can't redeem you just yet, but I want you to know that I won't leave you here." The feel of her hand transformed to something that should have been wet to go with the warm and inviting. "No, don't worry; the sound is off. But they can still see, so kiss me."

I don't know how she did it, but for the first time in memory, I didn't feel like barfing. I actually went back for seconds.

"I always liked kissing you, but for different reasons than Dad did. Listen, about Elsa . . . sorry, Elizabeth."

I felt my eyes dry out as they widened, and my mouth fell open, and it started to dry out, too.

"No no no, still have to act, now. I can guarantee you the lechers are watching. Look, I know you hate it, but you can't be looking like you do, it will arouse suspicions. C'mon, you know what they'll expect." And curse me, I did. I reminded God to not let me be sick, and He came through for me. I started humming a hymn. A Mighty Fortress, if I remember right.

"Oh, that's nice. Oh." Pause. "Okay, so she's with me, and she's fine. I'm not letting her play at being a slave, I making her play at being a wife. That's what you want, isn't it?" I nodded my head, and then held it still, while I continued to be surprised at how much I didn't hate what my spiteful foul tongue that missed its needles was doing.

"I do intend to keep her, at least for a while. I kinda need her. Dad doesn't know about her, and he won't. She's everything he's ever looked for in a woman, and he would take her completely apart to figure out what you did to perfect her."

"I . . . I didn't . . . do . . . anything." Lick. "I tried . . . to . . . to keep . . . her out of it." Lick lick lick. Suddenly, she tasted better.

"Well, it's amazing. Fuck, if I didn't know better, I'd say you were enjoying this as much as I am. Oh."

I didn't know how I could be, but I was. Lynn started singing along with me.

I continued my duty humming in harmony until a muffled voice blasted through the door, rattling it. "Lynn!"

I felt hands buzzing on my face, lifting me to look her in the eye. I'd forgotten they were green. I don't hold this opinion for other women often, but, oh man, she was dazzling.

"That's Gary. I've gotta go. Don't worry, I'll keep her safe. And I'll get you outta here, too, I just can't right now. Trust me." She stood and redid her pants. She turned as she was leaving and whispered with a smile that succeeded in seducing me. "I'll be back to finish this later."

Except she didn't come back. No sooner did my door close but I heard a barrage of profanity and anger that faded away with some door slams as, I assumed, was because Lynn and Gary were taking their argument elsewhere. And as soon as it was quiet, my heinous hands, bound though they were, went back to doing what they were doing before she came in. And just before the popping sounds intruded, I was fantasizing about Amos getting shot, and with the firecrackers, I came and I came and I came, fuck the cameras.

I SHOULD believe in these bastards getting shot more often. I mean, it worked with Amos. And it did take another six months for that villain to die, but die he eventually did, thank God.

And fuck you, God and all your motherfucking universe, for the price. My sister joined the saints when she got caught in Gary's crossfire. I later found out they buried her next to Mother without even a ceremony at the well at the ranch. Which is a stupid idea of honor they try to impose on us, as if being buried in solid rock somehow makes up for all they do to us.

At Amos' funeral, they set our devices off and let them go on and on in another insane cover of honor for the malicious evil they were putting in the ground until Lynn intervened and shut the remote power off. I had to fake the anguish; I was the only one who orgasmed at the whole affair. Glad to be rid of the criminal.

Lynn inherited her father's legacy, and she tried to dismantle it, to no avail. Amos had masters, too, and they let her play at taking it a little bit apart, but she quickly found their limits and they wouldn't let her cross them. One night, I once again heard a peculiar knock on my door.

"Sarah, we have to go. Get up. We're leaving now. Right now."

I didn't even get the opportunity to get dressed. The ride in the trunk reminded me enough of flying that I made a mess that was hard to clean later. It didn't seem to anger Lynn, though, and I was appreciative.

"Listen, before we go in, I have to tell you. She's not here." My heart fell. "She's back at your home with Robert. He's not doing well, and he doesn't want to see you. Neither does she. She hates you, you know."

My head fell. I knew all about the hate of my step-angel. "Yes, I know."

"Robert, I'm sorry, he blames you for her running away. Something about some crap you kept doing to yourself, despite him begging you not to."

Oh yeah. I knew what that meant. And now that I was out of the Reid house, standing naked next to a ravishing young woman I've known all her life, in a place I didn't recognize, it was dark after all, I realized I had nowhere to go.

"Please come in with me. You can't go anywhere like that. And I want to talk." How could I refuse?

She made coffee, and I waited, as was my due. "It's okay. You can sit. No, no, at the table, silly." I hadn't sat at a table since I fell back into the clutches of her father. It felt as alien as the robe I let fall off me.

"First things first. We need to get that thing out of you." She produced a small box with a button on it and left it in front of me.

"No."

"You can't possibly want to leave it."

"Actually, yes, I do." I looked up from the device on the table to her green, I remembered now, sea-green eyes. "I . . . I deserve it." I flashed my hand over and punched the button.

Nothing.

"It needs a remote power source. It doesn't work outside of the house. All the other women have had it taken out and been let go."

"Get the generator. I'm going to need it."

"Look, I've been trying to kill off my father's little business since I was old enough to understand what it was. I've always liked you, and of everyone who ever went through there, you were the only one who ever got away. You're the last one. The last slave."

I looked at her with a purpose. "Do you really think that just because you wanted it to end, it does? They're just going to move it, start it up again. Maybe to the ranch."

We sipped our coffee in the quiet, which I finally broke. "We might need some help. Vigilance is forever."

She told me of a man who would fit the bill. I eventually married him and steered him back into the ministry. We raised a son. And even though he was surprised when I gave him a small box with a button on it, he had no problems with pushing it whenever my master thought it best.

The Adeptist

"YES. YES. I'm happy to cooperate in any way I can. I honestly don't understand why we're going over all this again, I mean, they found her, didn't they? And she's back and hasn't gone missing again or anything like that or anything, right?"

"No, I'm, uh, uh, of course."

"Yeah, I did hear that story, and I tell ya, it's all bullshit. No, it's not a complete fabrication, but there's so much wrong with it, I don't think you can trust it a bit."

"You did know it's on the internet, right?"

"Well, like, right at the start. I mean, c'mon, when we were Seniors, we hated the Freshmen. Honestly, we hated everyone who wasn't a Senior on general principle, but in truth, we were brutal to the Frosh. I personally remember pantsing that little prick every chance I got in front of the girls."

"Why? Because it was pretty fuckin' funny. I mean, he had boner every last time. The girls would laugh and laugh. His nickname was 'Brucey the Boner'. He just has to have a complex over that."

"Okay, yeah, sure, we did play a song that night, it was on the radio all the time and we got a lot of cheers for it, but there was no beauty contest, there were no flowers, there was no girl, and there most certainly wasn't any fucking going on in the boys room or the girls room or the locker room or under the bleachers or anywhere. I personally did not learn anything of the ways of love until this alluring creature came along and edumacated me. Isn't she ravishing?"

"Yes, that is an interesting coincidence, but I can assure you, my Elizabeth here has nothing to do with the 'Elsabeth' in Bruce's horseshit story. Say something, lambchop."

"See? She isn't even English. Just a good ol' country girl."

"No, I never met her."

"Well, he lied."

"No, I don't know why."

"Yes, I did know who Professor Dallis was. I had an English class with her."

"No. We did not have an affair. I didn't think she was all that attractive, and it would have been weird; I mean, she was so much older than I was. Well, I guess, she still is, isn't she."

"Well, yeah, I mean, everyone was concerned when she disappeared and all, but it wasn't like, a life changing tragic event for me."

"Like I said, I think his story is full of holes. And shit."

"No, I didn't particularly like him in college, either."

"Naw, I don't go to church. And to my best knowledge, he doesn't even know how to spell the word 'bible' or 'church' or even 'Jesus'. I never saw anything in him to indicate he was any kind of 'holy man'. Oh, and this isn't exactly Florida, now is it."

"Well that's just, that's just, I don't know how to answer that. I mean, isn't that kinda your job? Find out why people lie? Motive, or somethin'?"

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean anything by that. I really don't know."

"Sure."

"Yes."

"You bet. Come by anytime. Let me know how else I can help."

"Thanks. 'Bye."

"GO GET Lynn. Now."

"I don't think she's done."

"I didn't ask your opinion of her progress on her little project. I told you to go get her . . . And you're waiting for . . ." My head was dipped and I was looking up and to the left toward the little harlot with my lips compressing. There. That worked. Think it's about time to commit a few of my regular crimes against humanity on those two. There were footsteps fading, and then louder and louder scrambling until they raucoused into the room.

"Oh, for shit's sake. Are you kidding me? Really? Really?" Nothin' like keepin' 'em thinkin' they're in trouble for just walking in the door. If I narrow my eyes a bit, well that's a start.

"It took you long enough to get to your knees, and in case you hadn't noticed, our ugly-ass guest from law enforcement is gone." Wait just a second. Stupid twats. Fine, give them a better hint: "Annnnd . . . how are you supposed to be?"

I totally love the mix of panic and disgust and embarrassment of women who are trying to get naked to keep from having bad things happen to them. I'll just take a seat, and start to make some of those things come about.

"Elsabeth. Come over here and blow me."

As she crawled across the floor, I reminded her to drag her nipples, and noticed that I wasn't hard. Hmmph. Must be getting used to some of this. Something else for me to take out on them. "You know, I'da thought you'd know this by now, but it would better if you at least looked and sounded like you were enjoying it."

"Yes, sir. Mmmm." Yeah, hmmm. She's wasn't having the desired effect. Maybe my mind was a bit troubled.

"So, Lynn, Elsabeth here tells me you might not be done with your little chore yet. Is that true?" She shook her head. "Ya lost me there, bunny-cakes, did that mean 'no I'm not done', or 'no that's not true'?"

"N-no, I'm not done yet." She whispered it.

"I don't think I could hear you over the noise that angel-tits here ISN'T MAKING."

"Mmmm Mmmm Mmmm Mmmm!" Still nothing.

"No. I'm not done yet. S-sir . . . mmaster."

"And why would that be."

"Mmmm oooh, llluululll ohhmmmmm. mmm"

"I keep, I keep throwing up. Sir."

"Gng gnkng gnkng" and all kinds of other satisfying slurping sounds were simply not doing anything for me.

"So let me get this straight. You're saying that licking the toilet that I use is making you barf. Right?" She sank to the floor, a bit behind the unsuccessful fellatrix. "So, I'm making you sick." I couldn't see her head now, but I knew it was shaking, like the rest of her.

"Get your skank-ass over here and get your tongue inside my asshole and worship it right now! Make room for her, bitch!" Usually this works for me. Maybe I needed to talk some cure some more, get my troubles out of my system.

The girls were sounding like pornstars now, and frantically trying to earn my release, to no avail. Shit, my dick is getting smaller, down to laughable sizes. The kind Danny and I used to make fun of in gym class showers on the boys who hadn't entered puberty yet.

"So, this disgusting-looking flatfoot comes by and asks me about a story I only found on the internet yesterday. Some bullshit tale of my mis-spent youth. You two are mentioned in it, too. Do you remember Bruce?"

Both girls stop what they are doing, and are looking up at me like they had just gotten caught with their hands in the pants of the little boy down the street. I don't know about Elsabeth, but I know Lynn used to do that a lot. Kinda funny, considering what they were just doing. They sat back on their haunches, blowjob over. Not like it was working out so well, anyway.

"No I don't give a flying fuck about what you two did or didn't do with that little twerp, or what you think he is. What I do care about, is Maggie."

They looked at each other, and Lynn finally confirmed what I already knew they were thinking. "Who?"

"Never the fuck mind." Good. One problem solves itself; on to the other. "What I really want is to see bruises on those tits. Make it happen. Now." Shit, I was going to have to make a call.

The girls look at each other again, as if they didn't know what they looked like, and for a quick confirmation between each other that yes, they were in fact going to carry out my order. They helped each other up, and I heard the slap.

"Uh, hello? I can't see with you two facing that way. Turn. Jesus." Morons.

Lynn raised her hand and slapped Elsabeth's right boob. "Bouncing is always good, I like that. But I see four tits that are the wrong color, and playing with each other ain't gonna fix that. Let each other have it like you mean it. Or I will."

I could see Elsabeth's eyes widen as she wound back and threw a decent punch right into Lynn's chest, causing her to stagger off balance a bit. Lynn returned it.

"Harder."

Chick fights are entertaining sometimes, but these two just don't have their heart in it today. And I still got nothin' happenin' below the waist. I let them pelt each other a few more times until they were at least flushed before I finally gave up.

"Fuck you both in the ass with something splintery and full of rusty nails. God damn it. Elsabeth, go find the needle box, and put 'em all in yourself. I don't care where, surprise me. Just make sure it's a surprise I'd like." She ducked out of the room, leaving her pile of clothes where they were. Points for obedience, points off for the mess.

I forced Lynn to look me in the eye when the room started to get disturbed by some quiet whimpers from where I knew Elsabeth found the box. She was shaking. "You know what I want you to do, don't you." She swallowed hard, and nodded. "Come see me when yer done. I still haven't gotten off yet today, and you will fix that later, won't you." Again with the swallow, again with the nod. Her eyes dropped. I slapped her hard across the face, so hard my hand hurt. It's like I've got a cervical block for guys; I felt absolutely nothing. Would that be a penile block? Oh, crap. Do I have erectile dysfunction?

Maybe this phone call is the trouble, though I cannot fathom how getting it over with is going to help me with my man problems.

"YEAH, LET me talk to her."

"It's Frank."

"Okay, please let me talk to her."

"Of course it's important."

"Whaddaya mean, call back later?" Click.

Fuck.

Trying again. C'mon c'mon c'mon pick up.

"Yeah, don't hang up on me. Please."

"Okay, fine, we got disconnected. Can I talk to her now, please?"

"It's Frank. Frank Pilgrim."

"Yes, she knows me. Please go ask her." Click.

God damn it.

. . .

"Yes, it's Fr . . . yes, yes, I'll hold."

. . .  stupid motherfu . . .

"Frank?

"Yes, hello?"

"Is it really you?"

"Yeah, hello? Alana?"

"Frank, how good to hear from you. I thought you were mad at me."

"I am mad at you. Just shut up a listen to me for a second." Click.

Ain't no way I'm gonna get off today, what with this bitch causing me stress. Dial again. Wait some more. Prepare for the lackey.

"Yes, I was talking to Alana." C'mon, put the phone down, not in the cradle, go tell the cunt I'm back on, take her a phone because sure as shit she's lost it again in the 30 seconds since she just had one in her ha . . .

"Frank? Oh, the international connections are just terrible today. What were you saying?"

"The cops. The cops are looking into Maggie again."

"So?"

"Doesn't that get your attention?"

"Why would I care, Frankie? She's home, she's fine. Sounds like it's your problem."

"I think I can make it your problem."

"Not a chance, Frankie-poo. You're the one who sold her to me, and now I don't have her any more. Seems to me like you still owe me a girl."

"No, I fucking don't. I delivered."

"We can quibble about this later. Go see Maggie, make sure she's alright."

"What? Why?"

"If the police are looking into you, seeing that you're concerned about her will speak in your favor. Don't worry, she'll see you. She likes you."

"I, uh, s'pose."

"Oh, and Frank? Might wanna take the two little tramps with you. Wouldn't want you to lose them."

The dead phone in my hand had no answers as to how the hell she knew about them.

ONE DOES not simply stroll up the walk of the Dallis Palace, knock on the door, and ask to speak the crazy lady inside. Not if there is any intention of going home with fingers and toes and nose, or anything else that sticks out. Nosiree.

But it only took another visit from that fucking deformed badge, with his threats of the Mann Act and its mandatory life sentence, to convince me that maybe Alana was right; no one could declare innocence like the victim. Especially one as far around the bend as Maggie. It had been brought to my attention that the little games she and I liked to play were in no way considered to be games to her anymore; they were now her whole reason for being. There've been rumors of the idea that no one used toilets in the mansion anymore, and that Maggie threw herself at anyone or anything at any time, no holds, er holes, barred. As of now, she is a Town Whore of the First Water, and anybody who could get close enough was gonna get laid, blown, sucked, fucked, licked, stroked, swallowed, and have their bladders emptied, with the one-stop-shop of Maggie Dallis. Not altogether unlike the way Lynn was in high school.

It was the extraordinary good luck of me opening my front door, with my own intent of removing anything that stuck out of whoever was disturbing as good a wank as I had had in so so long, that I found my old school hooker kneeling there with her little tart girlfriend. It was cold outside, and I hadn't bothered with tying my robe back up; I'm sure any of the neighbors who would have had the sense to look would have seen me let go of the front that wasn't gonna stay shut on its own, hello world, can I get arrested now please, and wondered just what we said to each other before the girls dove across the threshold, shoving me down back into the house, slamming the door shut behind them.

It was a while later that the younger one crept back outside to grab the one suitcase on the front walk. And yes, she was naked at the time, and has spent most of her time that way ever since. Except, of course, when we have company. Like the not-much-to-look-at law.

The chain of events that is indeed life from that moment of fortune until now is mostly a blur. The girls seemed to have no end of resources and imagination to extract the stuff I can't wait to get out of me. Their one suitcase between them was half sex toys. When they weren't fucking me to oblivion, at least until the last few days, they fucked each other blind. Oblivious blindness ruled the house. I don't think newlyweds are as desperate for sex as those two, which made it easier to come to the conclusion they should see Maggie. I'm sure they'll all just get along fine. And if a quick trip as prescribed by Alana would solve my ghastly pig problem, so much the better.

This is not to say old man Dallis sounded all that glad to take my call.

"Mr. Dallis?"

"Yes."

"This is Frank, Frank Pilgrim. I'm a friend of Maggie's, and I wanted to call to see how she is."

"Who?"

"Frank Pilgrim. Actually, I was one of her students some years ago, and we became friends. I hadn't heard from her in a while, and was hoping to get to speak with her a moment. I've missed her."

"Pilgrim, huh." Long pause. "I don't think you should speak to her on the phone. I think you should come see her. She's mentioned you. Yes, I think, Tuesday would be good. Say around lunch time."

"That would be fine, sir, and thank you. Would it be okay if I brought a couple friends along? They, uh, they were students of hers, too, and were hoping to see her, as well."

"Hmm? Oh, yes, that would be fine. Until then."

I didn't notice I had even hung up the phone. The possibility of the release of some of the stresses of late reintroduced a friendly old-fashioned one, one that made something stick out, at god damn last, and I was sure the girls would be able to help me with it now. Not that I think they were all that glad to: I had found a box of matches, that set my imagination, dare I say it? Har-de-har-har.

TUESDAY MORNING brought an inspection and cleanup for the nubiles of the house. The little burns had mostly faded, and they still clean up good. The worst looking working girls are the ones that take to drugs and give up sleep as being for the weak. Whenever I've had control of any of my prostitutes, I've always made sure they got a good night's sleep, and couldn't get any recreational pharmaceuticals. It's nicer to be performing atrocities on a woman who is still enticing, not one that is worn beyond her years.

The matches burned their pubic hairs all off quite nicely. No razor stubble for my little stable. I afforded us some breakfast at a restaurant, and they were almost bubbly afterwards. I made sure they drank lots and lots of coffee, water, juice, whatever we could get, knowing what the possibilities of the afternoon would hold. I was starving and ate like I hadn't for a while.

We strolled right up the front walk and knocked on the door. I made a "release the hounds" aside that only Elsabeth heard; I don't think she understood the reference. Funny how she's never talked about TV or music or movies like I would expect from a girl her age.

We were let in by a silent old man that I knew wasn't Dallis. He seemed to recognize me, but for the life of me, I couldn't place him. He led us to a room in the back of the house, where we sat and waited. And waited. The girls were getting bored and giving each other knowing looks that I had to remind them to not act on; we were guests, and playing with what was under each other's new clothes I had bought that morning wasn't going to be considered proper behavior. Not that the trip to the store had anything to do with proper; they fucked each other in the dressing room until the store manager tried to insist we leave. The girls took care of that little problem; they're welcome back anytime. They still break down and giggle like schoolgirls a lot.

The clock had chimed a couple of those ding-dongs the bank tower does, I think that made it 30 minutes when Dallis finally breezed in, his hand extended toward me, "Ah, Mr . . . Pilgrim. No no, don't get up. I'm so pleased to finally make your acquaintance. And who might these enchanting creatures be?"

"This is Lynn, and Elsabeth."

"Ladies." He kissed each of their hands, which set them to tittering. He kept holding both of their hands, beckoning them up. "It is such a lovely day outside, why are we in here. Come." He led us back up the hall and then down one I missed seeing on our way in, and after going around in what seemed to be circles in the house that didn't look that big from the front, we were suddenly on an outside patio.

"And here is the reason we are all here today. Oh, don't mind my son, there." Maggie looked up from what she was doing, making a long sucking sound as she pulled her head up with a pop that left the cock she'd been sucking flopping around, erect, wet, like mine hadn't been yet today.

"Aw, fuck." The kid stood and was gargantuan. He pulled up his boxers and sulked off with heavy feet slamming the door, rattling the windows on the whole side of the house.

"Frank? Frank!!" Maggie squealed and bounced across the patio, throwing herself onto me, kissing me like she missed me. I think I've already pointed out that bouncing is good, and Maggie had lots to bounce.

"Ah. You two do know each other. Very good, very good. Bring us some drinks, would you please."

As it turned out, it was a good thing he wasn't talking to me; I had my hands full and wasn't going anywhere. My elbow hurt for a week where we had crashed onto the flagstone, and Maggie didn't seem to even notice there was anyone else even there while she was finding her way into my pants to make my state of dress match hers, and thank god, I had a boner the size of a baseball bat. This worn woman who is kind of nasty if you think about it too long still does it for me, and I lost sight of the fact that I was a guest in a rich man's house with people looking on and put it to her.

"Yes! Oh God, yes!!!" I rolled over on top of her. "Fuck me, Frank! Fuck me like you mean it!" The oceans roared around us, and the daylight cranked on high, making everything everywhere fade to white, and the pressure in my head built and I could vaguely feel myself grunting as Maggie shouted epitaphs and curses and blessings above the din. Even though the girls had succeeded in fucking a smidgen of something out of me yesterday, which they weren't able to repeat, I didn't last hardly any time at all with Maggie, and I came in buckets. This filthy old disgusting nymph had what it took to make me young again. Her hands found my face, wuf, and my erection didn't shrink; I was still hard inside her, and I fucked her some more in my own sloppy seconds, not lasting much longer the second time that I did the first. More buckets.

I was panting and heaving and my arms were buckling when I caught sight of a black trouser leg moving by me, and the old guy was kneeling next to us, offering a beverage. Suddenly I was parched. I tried to get up, but Maggie held me down, and started kissing me all over again. I had to reach up for my drink; I put my weight on my other hand on her while I tried to drink some of it. Maggie was struggling to reach me, so I decided I was going to give in anyway, and took a large amount of the drink in my mouth, reached down, and kissed Maggie, letting it flow into her mouth.

"Mmmmm . . ." It seemed to consternate her and then it calmed her down a bit. "I've missed you, Frank. Mmmm. Mmmm. Why'd you take so long to come and see me?" I was still hard as a rock. "That's my boy. Fuck me some more. More. More, Frank, oh praise god, yes. Mmmm." We were moving again; at least, slower this time. The world started rematerializing around us, and I became aware of Lynn and Elsabeth having a discussion with Dallis.

"Yes, I knew your father. Actually, both your fathers. Fine men, both. Yes. Yes. Couldn't get anything past them."

"You, you do know about them."

"Yes, yes, horrifying tragedies, the both of them. Cut down in their prime. I miss them both, I do, I do. Couldn't get anything past them."

"You have a lovely home."

"Yes, thank you, yes, the missus, god rest her sainted soul, saw to it we all lived in splendor. I miss her terribly. Terribly. I do. I do."

Maggie and I came quietly that time. "Mmmhhhoooooo." Her eyelids finally fluttered like her sex had been nonstop since we started as she relaxed her grip on me. She let go, and slipped to the ground, asleep. I managed to get out of her, completely drenched. My clothes did little to hide how wet I was.

"Ah yes, you've done a fine job of putting her out, young man, good show, good show. If you were to piss on her, it would wake her right up, and you could start again. She loves that, she does, she does."

"Sorry, I wasn't expecting her to be, you know, quite like that."

"No, no. World of good for her. Couldn't have done better myself. When a lull in the conversation arises, we'll have a handy remedy. Do you ladies like . . . ladies?"

Lynn and Elsabeth looked at each other, then to me for guidance, of which I had none.

"Ah, very good. Always entertaining to see the fairer sex go at each other. We'll need more drinks to rouse my wanton sister, if we want to see how she . . . would do with you two. Should be quite the show. Quite the show."

"Daddy?" We all turned. "Daddy, you didn't tell me we had company. Who are your friends?"

The young woman was on par with Lynn: traffic stopping. When two women who are usually the most exquisite things around get together, they almost always take a dislike to each other, and today would prove no exception. Elsabeth was a looker, too, but she just isn't in the same league.

"Daddy?" She was young and sublime and slender except for her breasts, which were not slender. She was wearing a sweater and skirt and she stood with perfect posture, expressionlessly. Supermodel material.

"Ah, yes. Friends. This is Mr. Pillbox. No, wait. Pilgrim. Like John Bunyan's hero. No, Frank. Frank Pilgrim. And these young ladies are Elsabeth and Lynn. Lynn Reid. You might remember her."

"Lynn. Reid. The Armadillo herself. I did not recognize you, girlfriend. It has been such a long time. You look . . . ssenssational. Still working?" Lynn shook her head, then hung it. "Pity." The disgust from the multi-hundred dollar hairdo was palpable.

"I knew their fathers. Fine men, both. And this, my new friends, is my precious daughter, Deborah. Isn't she heavenly? Takes after her mother. Miss her."

"Please excuse my father. He's not as he used to be. I'm afraid his sister has been a . . . a bad influence on him."

"Bad. Yes. Bad. A bad girl. Corrupt. Foul. The blight of all that is good and fair. Virtue-bane. Ha. Ha."

"Yes, Daddy, Little Miss Anti-Integrity. One of your little jokes. They've been through so much, I'm surprised they still have any semblance of functionality. And the smell, oh my god. At least they had showers today, or we wouldn't even be able to sit out here in the breeze." She was staring at me and how wet my clothes were. The one side of her lip went up just a bit. "Well, at least she's quiet for a while. Might be a good time to try to get away."

We sat for a split second. "That was a hint. Get out." One breath later, we stood, the air having left all of the great outdoors. It obviously belonged to Deborah, and here we were, breathing it like we could.

"Going so soon? Oh, she'll be so disappointed she missed you. Disappointed. Do come back. Yes. Yes. Thank you."

Lynn and Deborah glared daggers at each other as we left. Deborah's head was slightly moving side to side, her nose lost elevation, and her eyes became slits.

Half way back home, I couldn't stand it anymore. "So, you two know each other."

"You could say that. She wanted to take my boyfriend, and she was relentless. She tried to get him to throw her the lumber every damn day. Every single last fucking one. I'm half-surprised he wasn't there."

"Huh?"

"Never mind. Listen, when we get home, can we go the bathroom?"

"Do you mean together?"

"Whatever. Sure."

DESPITE THAT little setback with the Dallis Daughter there at the end, I thought it all went fairly well. I got to reacquaint myself with an old flame, I got over my little man cannon problem, and the hard-featured flatfoot himself couldn't help but acknowledge that we got along famously. After the girls recycled bodily fluids for a while, I decided it was high time I bent my bitches. I didn't have any canes or whips, but there was a weeping willow out front, and that would do just as well.

I lopped off a large bundle of switches, and spent the next hour stripping off the bark, cutting them to size, and soaking them in brine.

I always liked to effect my women without tying down to anything; it means more to me to have them hold themselves in place. But tonight would be a different sort of night. I would definitely want to immobilize my little dainties for the weakness I intended to rip from their bodies. I laid them both over the dining table, facing up, so their heads were next to each other, and their feet were hanging off opposite ends. I got out as much rope as I had; certainly not enough to actually immobilize them, but enough to keep them basically in place.

Tits were gonna be first. I am interested in blood. The namby pamby play slaps they did the other day were going to be a happy memories. Despite all her big talk, I don't think Elsabeth had ever actually had this kind of accomplishment happen to her before; her screams were as much a matter of continued surprise, one after another, as never ending panic. It was fun hitting her and leaving marks.

But Lynn was a tough girl. She was determined not to make the required noises, which just infuriated me to flog her more and more until my original ideas started happening; she was bleeding fairly freely when she finally broke down and started begging.

"Oh, god, please stop!"

"No." Smack!

"Aahhh. Oh haven't you done enough? Please!" Thwack. Thwack. "Arrrgh!" Thwack. "AArrrgghHH!"

"I'm begging you. Pleeeaasseeeaarraarraggghhh!"

"Please stop hurting her!" Elsabeth even started chiming in, which I decided I couldn't fail to counterpoint. Thump! "Aahh!"

Striking either end of the table made the middle so gratifyingly exquisite. The human female face in pain looks so much like the human female face in ecstasy that I decided must experiment with that confusion more. Later. I had all the time in the world, and there was some serious fucking to do. Which, praises to the god I don't believe in, I was up for. In spades.

The evening turned out to be long. The girls joined the race of bruise, and my arms hurt so bad by the end that I couldn't lift them enough to untie my victims, and left them to weep on the table, kissing each other chastely, like it would help. I had my first solitary no-event sleep in weeks. Dumb that I should have missed this; the world blissfully went away.

I FELT my face being touched, no, lightly slapped.

"Wake up, sunshine. Let's go. Now." More light taps. I finally discovered it was day and squinted as hard as I could to avoid looking.

"Yeah. Let's go, pansy. Ya got places to go, things to do, people to see."

Fuck. Five-oh. Mr. Familiar Ugly, Five-Oh.

"Frank Pilgrim, you are under arrest, and man oh man, have I got a list. Now, first they say I gotta tell ya, you can shut the fuck up, but I don't want you to, 'cause I'm gonna use everything you say against you, and despite my better judgment, you can have a lawyer. You've seen TV; you know all that shit, so now we can get on to the good part."

"Number One. You are under arrest for aggravated assault and battery causing serious bodily injury, and first degree aggravated rape. Now, the young lady in the next room did survive, so we're only going for attempted murder to go with that. The post traumatic stress she's gonna suffer would scare the shit outta me; probably kill you dead just ta think about, you fuck-ass bastard."

"No, there wasn't anyone else out there, but if you say there was, I guess we're going to add kidnapping, let me guess, sexual assault against persons unknown, possibly a minor, and hey, if we can't find her, she must be dead, so you'd better speak to me and start coming clean about what the fuck you did with her."

"I don't know what yer carryin' on about. There hasn't been anybody else here when we've talked before. Jus' you 'n' me. Ya done? Can I do ma damn job here now? Ya sure? Wouldn't wantcha to think you can't talk to me here now, but we got shit to do today. Bit of a schedule."

"Alright, so, second, you are under arrest for breaking and entering into the Dallis home, some fine upstanding folks there, holding everyone at gunpoint, that's assault with a deadly weapon, and oh, hey, we got another rape charge there, too, uh, repeatedly, let's see, against his sister, man, three times, that's awesome, dude. Penthouse Forum-story stuff. And the sister? Ach, what a dish. Her hair could do things I've never seen hair do before. Oh, and can ya believe it? There's a semen match to the young lady from your table. This doesn't look good, buster."

"I don't know what you're talking about. I've known the Dallis family for a very long time; he's got no kids, no servants, nothing. Just him 'n' his sis. And I've never heard him so much as mispronounce a word ever; he's the smartest guy I know."

"Which brings us to the big guns here, bucko. You are under arrest for direct violation of the Mann Act against Human Trafficking for Sexual Purposes for selling and transporting one Maggie Dallis across state lines and international borders. Not just once, twice. Couldn't pin it down on ya the first time, but I got a foreign witness who has a lot to say on the subject. In fact, she's hinted it maybe isn't just this one gal you approached her about. Slavery is a human rights violation of the first water, dude. World-wide-kinda crime against humanity."

"Yeah, she's missing. Ya raped her, she reported ya, then ya sold her. So the only thing that's going to keep you out of the chair is if you tell us what you did with her."

"No? Your funeral, pal."

"Ya know, there ain't much point to ya gettin' dressed; they're just gonna strip ya at the big house. But I'm nothin' if not a nice guy, 'cause I can imagine how you might feel riding around naked in a cop car. Wanna ride in the trunk?"

"PRISONER 8675309! Front and center! Your lawyer is here!"

The little twit has been about as worthless as he could be. Probably coming to tell me the astonishingly best advice he could come up with was to hope for is the mercy of the court.

When I sat down, it wasn't the soulless jerkwad the courts assigned me, it was a woman. Big hat tipped down. She reached over to the phone, and waived it at me until I picked mine up. The brim of her hat heightened, almost elegantly, but I still managed to recognize her, despite the huge sunglasses.

It was Deborah Dallis. The daughter who didn't exist. The scene that ran through my mind about how I could prove things my way by shouting and pointing at her evaporated when she spoke her first sentence.

Cold as ice; purring ice: "Frank, darling, how are you doing here? Are they treating you well?"

Crap. If she's avoided detection or is manipulating things the way she seems capable of, a tirade of a generally hated low life prisoner isn't going to bring her down or change anything. The river I'd been swept in got very chilly, and the thing down there that should stick out retracted, but my nipples started sticking out. I couldn't help looking down, and I could see them through my shirt. They itched. When I looked back up at her, the slight smile whispered she knew what she had just done to me, and I hated her and I feared her all at once. In a way, I was grateful for glass, which I could now cut with my chest.

I scowled at her, "What the fuck are you doing here, and no they're not, and everything is generally shitty."

"I'm sso ssorry to hear that. Listen, I know you're concerned about Lynn, and I'm here to tell you she's completely fine. Happy, even."

"I thought you two hated each other."

"She's my best friend on earth, sweetie. There's nothing we wouldn't do for each other. She insisted I come see you."

"It wasn't Maggie who filed against me, was it."

"Of course not. And your little friend Alana? The one from Bangkok? She's been most helpful with the authorities. Thought you should know."

Of course. Who else could it have been?

"The immunity deal she got was just awesome. She still seems to think you owe her something, though."

Bitch. We'll see if you can collect now, you motherfucking cunt.

"Oh, one last thing, dearest." She knocked on the wall by the phone, and Elsabeth popped around the corner, grinning and giving a quick wave, like a schoolgirl before popping back, like a slutty jack in the box. Er, jane in the box. Hated the pigtails. "Our best girl is making arrangements with John, an old family friend, to make sure you fulfill the universe's earnest desires for you to become the prison bitch slut. So you won't be lonely at night."

I fell back in my chair, dropping the receiver like it was hot. Yes, I knew who John was and the kind of authority he commanded here. I was lost. I could still hear her voice crackling through the accursed thing on the table top. "Ta ta, luv. Be good."

The Armorer

AND THEY lived happily ever after. Jesus fucking Christ. No they didn't. Couldn't. Too many forces of evil conspiring against them, forcing them to do things they don't want to, forcing them apart, forcing them into things no human being on earth should have to do. Murder. Rape. Torture. Lies. Theft. Good God. Why he lets his creation keep on doing the horrors we seem to love to do to each other is beyond me. I wouldn't have the patience to be God; I'd wipe us all out and start over. Why can't we all just get along? Because we're too busy hating each other's fucking guts.

When I was young, I still had idealism. I still had hope. I still had faith. Don't have any of that shit any more, but back in the day, yeah, I had it all. In spades. And like all stories about a man, the story ultimately isn't about the man at all. It's about a woman.

I didn't know any better at the time, but Lynn was charming, funny, graceful, attentive, caring, all the things a good personality needs to get past that one thing: the fact that she was not gorgeous. Sure, she was geeky, socially clumsy, always in the wrong place at the wrong time, and she couldn't help most of the stupid things she said. But her heart was in the right place, and what did I know about anything? I mean, for pete's sake, we were in 8th grade. I couldn't see anyone who wasn't a dweeb.

We went to the movies on our first date. Nothing special happened, and I couldn't tell you what it even was any more. I've since lost interest in movies and restaurants and music and everything that's supposed to keep us occupied, and have been trying hard to forget the crap I've been exposed to. There's a book or two I still read, but that's about it. We did several things together before anything actually happened romantically between us. I finally kissed her good night at the end of, I believe, our fourth date, just a trip to the malt shop, and it wasn't a particularly long kiss, and there certainly wasn't any tongue or groping or even very much of a hug. It was almost chaste, but not quite. Something about it triggered puberty in both of us; the next day I found some hair down there, and suddenly Lynn's shirt started changing shape. Literally, the next day, at school, the guys all noticed her, and by the end of the week, she started wearing a bra. Okay, a training bra.

I found her at her locker, and noticed how large her eyes were. She took a moment of staring, and then smiled ever so slightly. I was getting more and more uncomfortable, I mean, I was no looker myself, when I felt her hand touch mine, right there in the hall in front of God and everyone, and she whispered the first word of our real relationship, and then looked down, making her smile bigger on her way: "Hi."

Dumb, huh.

But it worked, she had me right there. And by the end of the week, she was already teaching me how to take off her new bra, and at the movies that night, I found she had hair down there, too.

As her body chemistry changed over the next few years, it all worked in her favor. I guess mine didn't do so bad, either, but some of the kids? Jeeze-Louise, they never got any better looking at all. And to this day, they still aren't. That'd be another thing I'd make sure of if'n I were God: there's be no duds. Everyone I've known that fell out of the ugly tree has had more issues about that than you can shake an ugly stick at, and honestly, god, I think they all deserve a little peace, too. Not that having the looks solves all your problems; in Lynn's case, it simply made them worse. If she hadn't been so drop-dead gorgeous, maybe the things that happened wouldn't have, and we could have gotten on to the damn fairy tale.

Naw, probably not. There were some other factors working against her, too. And part of it had to do with the aforementioned body chemistry. By the time Middle School let out, she was horny as hell pretty much all the god damn time. I had a ways yet to go down there before I would be much good to her, but that didn't stop us from trying. My first wet dreams were of her in the spring. She was tickled pink when I told her about it, and tried to recreate it under the bleachers between classes.

That was the first time we got in trouble for expressing our feelings for each other. The administration didn't take too kindly to us discovering our bodies on school grounds, which just made Lynn more and more determined to make sure that we explored each other there, lots. In the boy's room, the locker room, the bleachers, empty classrooms, everywhere we could. And it was worth it.

That summer was the summer we were happy. We spent nearly every waking hour with each other, and we didn't keep our hands off each other very much. Nor our lips. I finally developed enough to actually do what men and women are supposed to do with each other, and we didn't do it much, but it was enough to seal us forever before God. She would even go to church with me, and that was about the only time we were actually good. It seemed to mean something to her. There was this kid at youth group who didn't impose himself onto anyone or anything, but he knew the Bible, and always was setting out to do the right thing, even to the people who didn't belong to our church. Lynn admired him a lot, and when my own petty jealousies would start to flare, she would constantly re-assure me that she wasn't interested in Bruce, but she wanted him to do something for us. She would usually make this familiar addictive reassurance with the bits of me that developed in her mouth.

At the end of summer, at the height of our happiness, she set the course of our lives forever. She asked me to marry her. She, of course, did this while she was licking parts of me that most people don't think should be licked, or even talked about. Her contention was that as it was a part of me, so she needed to be regularly intimately acquainted with it and all that happened there, too, just like lips and hands and eyes and hair; perhaps more so since it was so reviled by so many people. As I said 'yes', she found something else inside me through that freshly licked way that made the stuff come out of me, the stuff she was always so interested in, that I was always so happy to give her. She knew all the right places to touch, and she touched them as much as I could stand. She showed me all the right places to touch her, too, and it didn't seem to matter how I touched her, gentle or rough, or hard or soft, she would melt and moan and exclaim her love. That was also the night she revealed to me who she wanted to perform the ceremony, 'No' never even crossed my mind. How could I have known?

WHEN WE started High School, the Handbaskets of Hell took over, and even though I never had any doubt about her feelings for me, or the allowances she would give me toward herself, nothing was ever the same. She would never blame me or god or anyone else for the problems, and I missed her. But I grew to have some serious issues with it all, that I still have to this day. Which is kinda stupid, if you think about it too long.

Despite us having several classes together, Lynn was regularly not in them. And when I would ask her about that, she was evasive, for the first time ever. "Lynn, when is your period going to happen?" or "Lynn, would you tell me about the last time you masturbated?" or "Lynn, what's the filthiest thing you like?" were the kinds of, I mean, she never reserved anything from me. But when she'd cut class, she wouldn't tell me what was going on "Lynn, why do you smell of sex?" was on the short list of questions she wouldn't answer. She'd always reassure me that everything was alright in ways I had come to expect, and maybe I shouldn't have. The hindsight of being so easily manipulated into blindness never fails to deepen all the dumb-ass guilt I have over her.

One day while she was cutting class, I excused myself to the bathroom, and couldn't get in. The Senior at the door wouldn't let me past, and I really had to go, so I went into the girl's room instead of going clear over to the other side of the school. He snickered. As I was trying to leave without being seen by anybody else, one of Lynn's few friends came in.

"I, oh, gosh, I'm sorry, I . . . I'm just leaving . . ." was as much as I could stammer out as I ran by her, still pulling my pants up.

"Gary . . ." was all I heard before the door fell shut behind me. I didn't even hear the Senior laughing at me as I ran back to class.

I was mortified at my desk, which only got worse when the girl, the one from the bathroom came back in the classroom. I'd completely failed to make the connection of who she even was, or where she sat: three seats behind me, and she had to pass me on her way back. She dropped a note in my lap as she went by. In and of itself, it was fairly innocuous. But compounding where she has just seen me made the "I'd like to talk" fraught with threat.

I didn't talk to Deborah that day, nor the next. Every day I'd get more notes from her, escalating the importance of her speaking with me. I finally gave in three days later. We met outside of school at lunch; it was cold out, and I could see my breath like I smoked as she approached and stood by me for a moment before I started blurting.

"So, talk."

"Gary, I'm sorry about, well, the other day. I would have waited if I had known."

"Known what, that I wasn't where I was supposed to be?"

"Sorta. You, you know why you couldn't get in the boy's room, don't you?"

"I don't know what you're talking about. So go ahead, make your little demands and . . ."

"It was Lynn."

"Huh?"

"Lynn. She was in the bathroom. The boy's bathroom. That's why they wouldn't let you in."

"I really don't understand."

"You'll have to ask her. I just want you to know, that I'm on your side, here, and if you need a friend, I'm, uh . . ."

"You're what?"

"If you want to, I mean, to . . . talk, I'll . . . talk with you." And she gave a half smile, like she was embarrassed. Her head fell along with her hair, and she looked up once back at me as she trudged away, like she was hoping I would beckon her back.

Lynn and I had our first fight that night.

"WHAT DO you mean you have to? No you don't."

"Yes, yes I do. And I don't expect you to like it or condone it. But you have to let it happen, or . . . or . . ."

"Or what, Lynn?"

It took a moment for the echo to die down; I had been shouting. She whispered. "He'll kill you." Her breath was heaving, and she looked absolutely terrified.

There was only one person on earth who could inspire this kind of fear, and I resolved right then and there, that I would take care of it. I just didn't know the kind of years it would take for such resolve to come about.

I'D BEEN to Lynn's house for dinner many times, and Lynn had been to mine at least as many. But the two homes were two different worlds.

My house was quiet, reserved. Many was the meal I had eaten there that nothing was said beyond the prayer at the beginning and the "may I be excused, please" at the end. When Lynn would come by for dinner, once some of the pleasantries were gotten over with, she seemed to relish the silence, although I knew my own parents were uncomfortable with having a guest that was as silent as they often were. You'd think they'd feel like they were getting along excellently, but I never got the impression my parents actually liked Lynn, and in later years, I would find out how true that was.

Lynn's house was a carnival. Amos Reid was a stoic stern man that hardly seemed to notice all the maids and kitchen help that was constantly flitting in and out of the dining room making sure everything was constantly perfect. The service was better than any restaurant I'd ever been to, and twice as noisy. The laughter in the kitchen was almost constant.

"So, what are you going to do with your life, there, Gary?" was the question he would ask me every time we sat down. After the first twelve dozen times, I got tired of taking it seriously, and started coming up with the craziest answers I could. Lynn would break out laughing, but Amos never ever cracked a smile, as long as I knew him, and he mostly just ignored me. His question was his one concession to civility.

"Astronaut."

"Ditch Digger."

"Television Programming Executive."

"Bush Pilot." Lynn thought that one was particularly funny, considering what we had been doing just before dinner.

The night of our fight she begged me to stay for dinner, that we would talk more later, and it would be alright, and please, please, I love you, I do, I do.

Fine.

We'd no sooner sat down when the traditional question was raised, and I was feeling smart-alecky, and annoyed with Lynn, and in a fuck-it-all-to-hell kind of mood.

"So, what are you going to do with your life, there, Gary?"

I thought about what we'd been studying in history for only a split second before I let it fly. "Slave Owner."

Amos actually turned his head to me, and his eyes bore into me until I felt my soul exposed. The carnival fell silent. No one was moving, no one was breathing, not even in the kitchen.

"Good man." His eyes softened toward me for the first time ever. A plate was dropped in some other room, and the servants all bustled around like they had a purpose, the purpose being to get the hell out of here.

"Good man, indeed." I still wanted to kill the bastard, but this was the first time he had engaged me on any of my answers for a very long time. I wasn't about to miss the opportunity to dig at him or his daughter that I was mad at.

I leaned back, cocky. "Might be a bit of a challenge to make a living at it these days, though. But I think I could make a decent go of it."

"Ha. Indeed." And he leaned over the table toward me, as far as the chair and the wood allowed, prompting me to do the same. "But not as hard as you might think." And he leaned back and laughed a hearty laugh like I had never heard before. I didn't think he even knew what the meaning of the word 'humor' was. "There's some hope for you, there, lad."

"Yeah, I've given it quite a thought now, and I've decided that the only hard part is acquiring slaves." I played it up.

"That's not the hard part at all. The hard part is feeding all the little bitches."

"Ha ha ha ha." I tried to mimic his laugh from earlier. I sounded more like a deranged Santa Claus.

"I'll get you started. You can have Lynn."

Wait, what? I didn't have the presence to actually pronounce those words, but my face did it for me.

"Daddy . . ."

"Yes, you can have Lynn. Do with as you please. Strip her, fuck her, beat her, it would all be good for her. There's only one thing I demand. There's a little task she's doing for me at your school that I insist she perform without fail. Do you know the one I speak of?"

"I, uh . . ."

"She's been tasked to seduce every man, woman and child at your school. Repeatedly. She has begged for one dispensation, and I have granted it. The price she is paying for this little gift is to do it for two years running."

I had no words.

"She is doing this for my own evil purposes, that you will not be party to. But do it she will, or you will lose your rights to her forever. I will put you out, completely. Do you understand me?"

I didn't feel my head affirm anything, but he responded as though we had just signed a contract with drinks, and it was a win-win situation.

"Very good. It's done. Lynn, stand up. Come over here." She obeyed instantly. "Take off your clothes." Also, instantly.

Amos stood up before his trembling daughter. "As your father, I do hereby give you to this man: body, heart, mind, and soul, completely. You are his slave, to do with as he wishes; obey him utterly. You shall retain your status as mistress in this house, except as he deems. I retain fatherly rights, and you shall complete the task I have set forth for you."

"Ye-Yes, sir." Her head was bowed, her shoulders hunched. She was trying to look small.

He turned to me. "You need have no further concern about me knowing that you two have been fucking each other's brains out for months. I still do love and care for my little girl; if you need anything, don't hesitate to come to me."

He left the room, the carnival long silent.

I stared for a long time. A very long time. I observed a few tears fall off her face, but as she slowly seemed to relax a little, she didn't move. Not one inch, in any direction.

I finally found something to say, lame as it was. "Well, that was different."

She swallowed, but said and did nothing.

"So, I own you now?" Quiet. "Answer me."

"He didn't give you anything you didn't already have." That wasn't altogether true, and I said so.

"You're right; he gave you a warning, and a lot of responsibility."

"Ah, yes. Now I have to feed you. And what are fatherly rights?"

"That was the warning. If you do something he doesn't like, he'll take me away."

"And what might that be?"

"If . . . if you interfere. With what I'm doing at school."

"And what is that, exactly?"

"I'm becoming a whore. I'm to fuck everyone I know, and everyone in between."

"And are you getting paid?"

"No. But he is. Somehow. I don't understand how it works; I'm having to cut math, remember?"

"And why is he wanting to turn his daughter into a prostitute?"

"That's all he knows. It's . . . all I know. It could be worse."

"Oh? How?"

"I heard of one father who made it so his daughter couldn't talk any more. Then he made her into a whore. Daddy wouldn't do that. He likes to hear . . . things."

"I see." And I considered one of the other things Amos said I could have. "He said I could beat you." I considered another moment. "Or was it should?"

At last she risked looking up at me. "You've hurt me before, and it was alright."

"I don't remember hurting you."

"You're a little rough some times."

"I thought you liked it. What we did."

She found my eyes, and her chin drooped with her eyelids, and was that a smile starting? "I do." And I suddenly understood why that was said at wedding ceremonies; they're the sexiest words in English.

I could barely croak out my response. "I do, too." I was lost; our fight was over, at least for that day.

"Wanna ffffuck?" Her 'f' was long; her 'k' was soft. I still had a small part of me that knew why those words weren't used at weddings, but the rest of me really wanted them to be.

I HADN'T owned a slave more than a couple hours before I already had an insurmountable problem, one that made me do something I had to do a lot over the years. This was the first time I got to emasculate myself, and I felt my pride vaporize. I knocked on the study door, going in before I was invited. That might have been a mistake. "Mr. Reid?"

Amos looked up from his desk, but didn't get up. "What?"

"Can I, can I talk to you for a second?"

"I'm a little busy." He looked down, and his hand flashed toward his lap; he had cuffed something. "Shut up." He exhaled hard, glared up at me and slumped back in his seat, resting his head on his thumb and two fingers.

"I'm, I'm really sorry to bother you here, sir, but I, I, I can't take Lynn home with me."

"What does that mean? That you don't want to own her, that you just want to fuck her?"

"No! No, I just, I mean, I, I'm just a freshman. My parents won't let me keep . . . a pet, let alone a girl."

His eyes did something I don't know how to describe, and he smiled and sneered at the same time. It was the scariest face I'd ever seen. "Ah yes. I can see how that might be a problem. For you."

He leaned back, and I saw a flash of hair in his lap, then another, and I heard what had to be a gasp. "So, you don't want to give her back, you still think you want to keep her, but you don't want to . . . feed . . . her."

"No, I'll feed her. I just can't have her . . . stay with me. For right now. Sir."

Another disembodied gasp. I could see his stomach rolling. He looked down and grunted, and shook the way I knew that I shook when Lynn did . . . things . . . to me. He took a deep breath, letting it out long and slow.

"Very well. You two are welcome for dinner here any time you like, and she can continue to sssllleep here. But the rest of the time, she's your responsibility."

"Tha . . ."

"Get out. Now."

"Yessirthankyousirthankyou." I backed out of the room as quickly as I could, trying to make myself small. Before the door closed, I heard what just had to be a slap, and a cry.

Lynn was standing by the front door, still naked. I put my hand to her face; she leaned into it. "You've, uh, you've been to my house. You know they won't let you stay there, let alone anything else. I just made arrangements with your dad so you can still stay here." Her lip trembled. "I gotta go. I'll see you in school tomorrow."

She fell to her knees with a heavy blow as she collapsed a bit more. "Yes, mm-mmaster."

I ran out of there as fast as I could. I had no idea what I'd just gotten myself into, but I knew one thing: Baby's gotta eat; I needed a job. But by the next morning, I had a better idea, the one that actually mattered, the one that started to change me. Moron.

I WAS standing by the side of the school again. It was still cold. And right on schedule, just like the note said, Deborah came up to me.

"What are you getting yourself into, Gary?"

"I don't know what you're talking about." I'd started smoking by then.

"With Lynn! Oh my god!"

"What." I sneered, arrogant bastard I had become.

"If he catches you skimming, he'll kill you dead for sure!"

"And just what do you know about it, bitch?"

"Because the money used to go through me, Gary, so I know how much she was making."

"Huh. Some friend you are." I blew smoke at her.

"Yeah, she insisted it be me. I was the only one she could trust. But now she says it has to be you, and you're taking money off the top."

"Look, I've got responsibilities here. She's just working a little extra so I can fulfill them. So she works through lunch. Big deal."

She thought a second. "If you need a job, Gary, I'll talk to my father, and get you started with us. It's a real business, it's legit."

"Oh, yeah, right. The mighty Dallis & McKnight Publishing Company. Woo-frickety-hoo. I understand y'all ain't exactly pure as the driven snow, either." I was such a prick.

"I'm trying to help you, Gary. I'm trying to help Lynn."

"Whatever." I walked away.

Woulda Coulda Shoulda. How are we ever to know.

SO HIGH school was, stressful, to say the least. I pimped my girlfriend, er fiancée, er, slave, out all through it to everyone we knew. Less so the last coupla years; I worked her hard the first two. Except for one guy. She held it was the one refusal she was granted by her Daddy. She babbled on endlessly about God and faith and shit, and wanting him to be pure even if we weren't, and then I'd make her do something horrendous. Like the time I took her to the pound and made her pick out a dog she could fuck in front of our friends at a party one night. Made her kill it later, too. I laughed at how hard she cried over that. We both got straight 'A's'; she saw to that. I even made her fuck Deborah. That was fun to watch.

Amos and I even got to where we got along famously. Ba-dum-bump. Dinner at his house, well, it changed in nature. The servants were in what I grew to understand was their natural state. They'd only gotten dressed before when I came over, before Amos gave me Lynn. And the carnival got wild. Amos started letting the girls, his girls, entertain me, and entertaining they were. I had no idea human beings could do some of they did to each other. They were absolutely vicious to each other. I asked Amos about it.

"Well, first of all, they know I like to see that sort of thing. Two girls doing everything they can to make each other scream with pleasure and then scream with pain, back and forth, is just what does it for me. At some point, they quit caring which way they do it to each other, and that gets boring. I want to see involvement: 'yea, I love ya baby' and 'yeah, I hate ya baby' are so much more interesting to watch than 'I don't care if I'm making you feel good or bad'. Usually have to change things around to keep that from happening. I want them to feel shit deeply."

The girls on the table were, I had no doubt in my mind, feeling something deeply. All four-hands-were-lost-from-sight kind of deeply. Amos snapped his fingers, and both girls started screaming their lungs out. "Forks. They each have forks in their hands, and use them to hurt each other or don't when I command." He snapped his fingers again, and the screaming died out. The girls went back to comforting each other with their lips near one of the other's entrances, near one of the places each of them had a lost a hand. They squirmed and made a lot of interesting noises, until Amos snapped his fingers again and they went back to the other sound.

"You know, you're right. Watchin' Lynn screwin' one of her friends, say, Deborah, is a whole lot different that watchin' her take on someone she doesn't know or care about."

"Who did you say?" Snap. Aaaaahhhhh. Mmmm . . . Mmmmm . . .

"Uh, Deborah. Deborah Dallis."

"You might want to leave that girl alone, there, son."

Son. He called me 'son'. I was suddenly waaay too busy thinking about how much more this place felt like home than my own home did, and I completely missed his warning.

The entertainment went on long that evening, and Amos carried on about how to hurt the girls, and how to countermand the pains with forced orgasms, and making them pray, of all things.

"Pray to what? Pray for what?" Church had become such a good joke by then; just a bunch of assholes trying to control the world.

He pulled me aside and whispered, like he was telling me a secret he didn't want the girls to hear.

"If you try to make them pray to you, they'll hate you in no time flat. You need them to pray to whatever the hell they believe in. It doesn't matter what they believe. What matters is that they believe. Encourage it. It's in all our damn DNA; just because you don't like one doctrine or the other don't mean you ain't gonna develop your own anyway, 'cause ya will. All religion really wants is for us to all just get along. Look at them. I torture the shit out of them all day, every day. Do they look unhappy?"

"No. No they don't."

"It's not the idea that somehow things are gonna somehow get better, make shit easier. It's the idea that somehow, we are gonna get better. I am going to get better, no matter what happens to me. That's the 'what' to believe in that matters. Don't care how."

I thought he was full of shit. No wonder his daughter was so fucked up.

AFTER AMOS' Obligation was completed, I thought I was rolling in dough with what Lynn brought in. That is, until graduation happened, and Amos called me into his office. He called me into his office regularly, usually to lecture me on how to have slaves, or more often, to reprimand me for doing it wrong, or jesus christ, he even tried to get me to pray with him. As annoyed as I'd be about some of his talks, I grew to love and respect him. He had a certain magnetism to him. This was only the second time someone else was in there with us. Not that I saw who it was this time, either. This one was much noisier under the desk, and Amos socked her lots to try to quiet her down. I thought it was funny.

"You should be far enough along now that you can take Lynn out of here, to live with you." Ngyk ngyk ngyk ngyk.

He was right; I had enough money on hand to get our own place.

"I don't recommend prostitution and pimping as your living. It's dangerous. The law takes exception to that, and then where would my daughter be? Hmm?" Hhhhaaah mmmm ngky ngkygk nngyk. Slap.

"I agree." I realized he was about to offer me something. "Do you have a, uh, direction I should, er, could look into?"

"Pornography. It's legal, it utilizes her talents, and fairly profitable. What do you know about videography?" Mmmm oohhh mmmm nngggyyyykkggnnn.

"Nothin'. But hey, I'm nothin' if not a learner. Is there a 'Pornography for Dummies' book?" Amos had finally gotten comfortable enough with me to laugh at my crappy jokes.

"No. But I know someone who'll take on an apprentice. You'll like Robert. Hold still, bitch." Ngyyy! Hhhh!!! The desk was getting rattled as it shook. Amos was apparently holding something, er, someone that he was thrusting hard into until he shouted. I never looked, but I assumed it was always a girl that was crashing around under there when he barked out some epitaphs along the lines of "stupid fucking whore".

Thus, my career was launched on some great advice from a man I considered to be an icon. And the money Lynn made me in High School was chump change compared to what she did as a porn star. Too bad she didn't like it much. Yessiree, too damn bad. She tried to quit lots of times, but I wouldn't let her. I saw to it she worked, and she worked a fucking lot: fucking. Har-de-har-har. She kept falling back onto old dreams of God and marriage and castles and white knights and happily ever afters. Stupid fucking whore. Like I would marry her now.

WE HAD gone around the world two or three times, shooting everything I could think of: hand jobs, blowjobs, anal, groups, animals, watersports, scat, vomit, and especially bondage, rape, and torture, everywhere we could, when we were visiting home for a little while, and Lynn offered me a present: a replacement. For when she would quit porn, when she would quit whoring, when she would quit being my slave and become just a wife. I recognized Elizabeth right away, and didn't think Robert would take too kindly to me having much of anything to do with his darling little angel.

With God as my witness, nothing happened between me and Elizabeth. Nosirree. Nope. Zilch. Nada. There are parts of me that stick out that I would like to continue to do that. Unless, of course, I can get away with Robert not knowing what won't hurt him. However that goes. It took a week for Robert to be able to schedule to pick her up. I let her tag along with me as I made some arrangements out of an office I had found empty on the local campus. I thought it risky to leave her alone with Lynn.

None of this stopped Lynn and I from fighting about it and everything else every night. She took her beatings like she should and Elizabeth was always locked away in some other room while we, uh, worked out our differences.

There were evenings that it almost seemed like old times.

Smack. "Cunt."

Thud. "Uhhh." "Bitch."

The old TV show sound-balloons sometimes played through my head as I thumped her.

Ka-Pow. "Oohhhggg." "Whore."

Biff. "Aaaccchhh!" "Worthless."

Wham. "Aarrrgghhh!!!" "Pig."

Splatt. "Hhhhhh hhhh hhh hhh!" "Slut."

Whack. "Nnnoooooo." "Useless."

Some nights it went better than others. I'd fuck her those nights. I sometimes still miss those times.

AFTER OUR last fight, I got up the next day to find Lynn had gone home. I scrambled out to Amos' as quickly as I could get there. Once inside, I found Lynn in the basement, and chased her upstairs. We shouted at each other the whole way. Amos was in his office, with a woman kneeling in front of his desk, quiet, masturbating. Her panting at least made me stop shouting for a moment. I had to slap Lynn to get her to shut up.

"Sit down, Gary."

"Yeah, yeah, sure." There was only one other chair in the room which was holding what just had to be Amos' pants, besides the big one Amos held court from. I couldn't see under the desk, but I knew. Lynn got to stand. The woman continued her obligation in not-silence.

"Lynn tells me you won't let her stop working, despite her condition." Apparently, she'd already spoken to him before I got there.

"Yeah. So?"

"She's asked to come home, to take a break. And she asked nicely."

"Actually, I've got contracts with some Japanese AV producers to make a film series, torturing her throughout her pregnancy. Should sell well there."

"Well, what a good idea." Pause. "Lynn, go with your master."

"No."

Amos and I looked at each other, understanding what was about to be done. Amos stood up, imposing.

"Yes. Do as you're told."

"No!" Without warning, Lynn pulled a gun from her purse, and where the fuck did she get that, and shot her father twice. I dove for her, and she managed to get a pair of shots off at me, tagging me in the shoulder and in the stomach, before I could get the gun away from her. Enraged, I fired and fired again at Lynn, but the woman who had been kneeling managed to get in my way, and took both hits before falling over, inert. Lynn screamed as I continued to pull the trigger of the empty gun. The room was suddenly filled with naked women, scrambling around, tending to everyone but me. I finally crumpled, groaning, swearing. I got stepped on and kicked a lot.

Lynn stood over me, and spoke with a venom I never knew she had. "As mistress of this house, I revoke your rights here. You are banished. Lament all you want; I shall not be moved again. No end, no limit, you are dead to me. Ladies, remove him."

I was unceremoniously dumped out of the trunk on the doorstep of St. Raphael's, where they fixed me up right. Took two operations and six weeks of bedrest time. The nurses weren't anywhere near as attentive as I had grown to expect from the women at my disposal. The police showed up, as would be predicted in reported gunshot wounds. I was all too happy to fill out the paperwork to have Lynn arrested for shooting me and her father. My own innocence was obvious, even if I shot a naked woman in self-defense. The police had trouble seeing it that way; there was another story that said I was the one shooting everybody in the room, including Amos, and they shot me in self-defense. Lynn seemed to have a lot of witnesses to corroborate her story, but ultimately, there was never enough of anything to charge me. The witnesses proved unreliable, because they were so compliant with anything anyone would say to them. And I do mean anything. The cops and the lawyers had more fun questioning the girls than they expected.

I heard that Amos finally died about six months later. I felt worse about that than I did my own father's death. Bitch wouldn't let me attend the funeral; a wall of goons kept me away. But I liked what I could hear was going on from outside the church. The weeping and the wailing really felt good, knowing other people felt the way I did about him.

About a year-and-a-half later, I ended up working in a crappy twang bar when that motherfucker Bruce showed up. And man, the story I told him. I had a horrible time controlling the sarcasm and could hardly keep from laughing my ass off. I was feeling really good about things by the time I left, and I remembered I had something even better to go to. To soak my sorrows in and try to re-learn how to manage my regrets. It was nice to believe the Universe was on my side, like Amos insisted.

WHEN DEBORAH answered the door, I watched her eyes close, rapturous; she descended to her knees, gracefully.

"Welcome home, my Lord." The 'L' was long, the 'd' was soft, and the word breathed into a whisper. "I've mmisssed you . . ." Her head continued her plunge, and her lips kissed the ground hungrily, paving the way before my feet as I stepped inside.

Note:

"Azymite" is a liturgical insult from a millennium ago. The Greek church spat it when referring to the Roman church members, some squabble over whether the Eucharist should be celebrated with leavened or unleavened (Azymitical) bread. The appropriate response insult is "Prozymite" (you leavened bread Eucharist celebrator, you). Spitting is required on both sides. Some fool argument over the idea of the yeast rising being symbolic of the rising of the spirit, vs. a solid symbol of the way God intended things, sans yeast, i.e., the non-fluffy sacrificial Passover body of Christ . . .