This post is in the CRUELTIES category. Don’t read it.
You will want to have read the previous parts of Yolanda to make sense of this.
Trigger warning: this Part is as close as we will get to Dolcett territory. No details, but clear references to death, cruel sadism and torture. You don’t need to read this part to follow the plot of Yolanda’s story— just skip straight to Part 4 (not yet published)
If Gerald hadn’t beeen as relaxed and at ease about everything, of course, he might well not have ended up having her.
She reflects upon it, every now and then, when she thinks about how it will be, when it is her time; when she will know that she is about to be ended in shame and pain and ignominy, avidly and cruelly slaughtered in front of those she has lived among, as she has seen other girls ended; killed for fun, for no more purpose than the entertainment value Gerald and his friends will derive from her destruction.
Because she did feel blessed, that day, to have been taken aside by Gerald, treated so kindly, to have had all his attention.
But if he had seemed greedy, needy; if he had pushed or pulled her less subtly it might have gone another way— she might well have become frightened, or frozen up, lost his interest, and then … oh then, she might have the prospect of a long life, an old age, maybe a family; might have …
But she would certainly have missed out on this, her life, the trembling, terrible glory of which, she is certain, depends, bizarrely enough, on the reality which is so strong and certain within her, that the time will come, and come relatively soon, when she will pay the price for Gerald’s rescue of her, for the life he has given her, the life she does not deserve, such an abject failure at living as she had been. As she still would be, without Gerald’s decision to entertain himself by taking her.
She tells herself, demands of herself, promises herself, that she will be sweet about it when the time comes; meet her end with the mild docility the best of her sisters have managed. She is determined that she will give good value.
Not that Gerald will care; they find it amusing each time, whatever; the screamers, the ones who become angry, who call down curses, who fight like wild beasts, who dissolve into pathetic bubbles of fear and mucus, those who lunge toward death, seeking an early end, those who fight, struggle, to the last helpless, hopeless breath to suffer for just a few seconds longer; they enjoy it all. For the singular mystery of life that is death, and how it takes a powerless human being— preferably a pretty young female one of course; naked, marked by the whip and still dripping semen from a brutal fucking— this is the drug that alleviates their sickness. The detail is always different, but the main event is always the same; the extinguishing of a sweet and unique life, the spice which drives them, the other breed; the killers.
And, in the end, she freely accepts, it is that fell drive which has given her this life, which she could never have otherwise have hoped to attain. The cost to her— a weak and silly victim— is appalling, unthinkable, will at the end be unbearable; but here it is; she has had this life, and may have it for some time longer, if some whim or after dinner conversation of Gerald’s does not take it from her tomorrow. But the price is already booked; inescapable. In many senses, she, Yolanda, is already dead. Legally dead, too— she has seen the video of her own funeral, her poor mother and sister burying some unidentified body, certain that it is she.
It was she of course who— bizarrely shy, jittery with nerves, weak with neediness— had begged Gerald to take her; begged to be allowed to give her life to him; she, Yolanda, who had asked if she might be permitted to pay the price; under no duress, no threat, not even in answer to a request or suggestion from him. Just, that she had got to the point where she knew it was what she needed.
For there are women in the circle, women in their thirties and forties, who could have been full slaves, dead girls like Yolanda, and who chose not to. And Yolanda had looked at them and known she could not bear to be among them. Not that she thought ill of them, not that they were obviously miserable; some were, some weren’t. No. It was that she, Yolanda, was certain that she would not be able to bear life as one of those. Would rather die. Literally.
For somehow she had known— and been proved correct— that, for her at least, giving up on herself utterly— accepting that she was not, and never could hope to be, an independent human, a person with her own meaning, that giving up on that, finally, irrevocably, openly acknowledging the surrender of her right to life to all who would understand what it meant for her, that it would be a liberation, would allow her to live and appreciate to the full whatever time she might be allowed.
And she has never regretted her surrender, despite the the reality of it, which is that the portent of horrible pain and final humiliation is alive in her at all moments; comes to her first as she awakes, tinges her thoughts as she drifts into sleep, takes her into bitter despairing tears in the small hours of the morning when, cruelly tied in some vicious hobble, she cannot sleep; despite all this, it is certainly true that she is calmer, more able to take joy from the world, sweeter in her service of Gerald and those he gives her to, more giving than before, more humble, more docile, less conflicted, less complex— in short, happier; happier than she had been before she had given herself over; even accepting that life as Gerald’s willing whore had already been immeasurably better than her life before that.
And so she will be sweet at the end, she tells herself; even though Gerald won’t care. She will be soft and accepting and strive to make herself pretty as best she can, as she is destroyed; will remain eager, as she can manage, to give sexual service right up to the end. He likes variety, she knows; one reason she is certain to be ended; he will tire of her, cease to find her entertaining, have no new horrors to laughingly introduce her to, that light in his eyes as he smiles at her, having announced his latest idea; the ordeal which will be enacted on her psyche, through the medium of her weak and willingly offered body. She hopes that her death will provide entertaining variety for him, make him grin, give him something to talk about over a beer with the others, afterwards.
And she will hold herself to it, hard, as the payment for the trembling intensity of the experience of the lyrical flow of casually imposed and extreme indecency which is her life; a life punctuated, yes, by interludes of darkness, pain, humiliation and terror, but those experienced as intensifications, tightenings, switchbacks in the flow— an absolutely necessary part of it all— for the fundamental animating energy of the flow is their cruelty— Gerald and the others— their sadism, their knowledge and enjoyment of their unchallenged dominion, the power of death in respect of their helpless and willing slaves, among whom she was impossibly lucky, both to be Gerald’s special possession and to find her submission— the light and the dark of it— to be an all-consuming, liberating glory.
For it is a continual astonishment to her to experience just how immediately, how directly the knowledge of her extreme vulnerability to Gerald’s caprice makes every moment of her existence special.
Moments with him, in particular— even mundane moments, watching the TV together, helping him dress, massaging his shoulders— every second lived in the knowledge that he could turn his head, look up at her and smilingly ask if she would like to be entered into a lottery that weekend (she has been in three death lotteries, one with only seven candidates, ‘second prize’ in one of which gave her the still visible line of tiny white scars, points along the length of both her lower and upper lips, marking how both orifices had been sewn shut with fine stainless steel fishing line, her own horrified whimpers drowned out by the heart-rending screams and desperate, pathetic, pleading of the unlucky ‘winner’; he’d waited a week before having the steel line removed, spending an hour or more each night manipulating her pussy, smiling at her as she slowly and painfully worked herself towards horribly conflicted orgasms).
But even alone, just walking along the road, the knowledge is with her. Knowledge that makes her life— every second of it— precious; to be lived as something rather than nothing. She has not been nothing for a single moment, since she gave her life to him. In despair, in terrible pain, in fear, in pleasure, in boredom, in joy, in shame, in ecstacy, she has always been something, in some sense exalted; every step one which she needs to make count, every breath of breeze against her skin a wonder to be savoured, every cock thrust into her a chance to be more thoroughly servile, more completely a cunt.
And it is this bargain she thanks him for, every day, with her every action.
