This post is in the CRUELTIES category. Don’t read it.
“OK you can have me.”
Spoken, clearly enough, softly enough, but clearly at great cost, into an ugly, cruel, grinding silence.
Four people, sitting variously around a large, low, expensively faux-folksy table (littered with laptops, printouts, remains of delicatessen snacks, plates, soiled napkins and and glasses) in a large, expensively faux-folksy room, self-consciously and irregularly diamond shaped, high sloping ceiling with exposed pole rafters, beset with deeply inappropriate Native Americana and jarring slabs of performatively weirdly-shaped high-end consumer technology. Over-large angled windows opened onto a massive deck, offering a breathtaking, obviously expensive view down into a gorgeous wooded valley, golden in the mid-evening autumn sun.
Aspen, Colorado.
The speaker is the youngest of them, an unremarkably pretty woman in her early 20s.
Her face is deathly pale, but there are angry patches of red at her cheekbones.
She is making an enormous effort, almost entirely unsuccessfully— apart from the fact that she is still in a nominally normal position, her mouth closed, her eyes dry, not doing what she clearly needs to do, which is scream, rant, yell, throw things, drown herself in tears— but she is trying; trying to look as if she has just said something ordinary.
The older man, seated facing her, the only one whose relaxed position actually seems to reflect his inner condition, comes to attention.
His movements are controlled, unhurried, not costing him anything; but still, she has caught him, and his eyes are all for her as he slowly straightens up, a slow relaxation of his lips and small lowering of his brows giving some clue as to his burgeoning, smug satisfaction.
Yet again, he is winning. It never grows old, this feeling of winning, even though he almost always wins. And the winning is never better than when he’s winning something almost impossible, and when the people— the person— he’s winning from is feeling the losing intensely; where it is obvious between them that this win is going to guarantee all sorts of other, demoralising losses for them in the future. When it’s going to mean that they can’t escape, that they will have to accept defeat again and again.
He feels his cock stirring, and his mouth almost smiles. He’s handsome, despite— even through— his age, and his smile is almost beautiful. But it’s ugly, nevertheless.
By contrast her expression of deep and acute distress and apprehension, controlled at great cost makes her suddenly, strikingly beautiful, the intensity of her emotions animating everything about her body. He had known it, deep in him, the first time they had met, this potential for aliveness in her; seen it, fleetingly, when she has been ‘in the zone’, at her most creatively productive.
It was a shame, what he was doing. A tearing, wasteful shame, and he knew it; he understood just what he was intending; how awful it was, understood exactly why it was unjustifiable, on any arguable grounds. He was going to brutalise a small but remarkable creature, and he was going to enjoy it; a terrible, cruel and destructive thing to do.
It made no difference. He was going to do it, and enjoy himself. His experience of winning, of the spoils of winning, was paramount. Nothing else really mattered, no matter how heartbreaking the loss might be, how large the damage, how socially unacceptable. Even if it included a significant risk to future business value on a game-changingly large investment.
He knew better, though, than to press his advantage right then. He had won, and he would win more, and again and again, but now was not the time to do more than watch. He let his smile go, widened his eyes a little, neutralising his expression; he was attentive, now, interested for sure, but masking his greed, his triumph. There would be time and aplenty for that, later. First, there would be negotiations; hard, enjoyable negotiations. More wins; smaller wins, in the wake of this huge one, but consolidating, building on it, reinforcing it, enforcing it, leveraging it. Manipulating, working at it. Dominating. Dominating them all.
He was going to enjoy himself in a cold way, before he got to enjoy himself in a hot way.
It was all good. As usual. But definitely, this one was a big one. A prize beyond the ordinary, and with prospects for a long enjoyment. He’d send the maid home and get some whores in, once it was over; once they’d been trussed up, once they’d left in their shame and defeat. Get some whores in and terrorise them. It would be unsatisfying, having to stop long short of what he would want, but it would do; he had something in prospect, now, which would more than make up for such limited, limiting experiences.
She surprises him, by standing up; still impressive in her control, still utterly incapable of hiding just what it is she is having to maintain her control in the face of, the ugly reality that is now present in the room. Her voice is on the edge, but still, she keeps it together, controls the screaming which they can all hear fighting to get loose;
“The details don’t matter, but they will need to be worked out. You scum-suckers will have to do that part. I hope you enjoy yourselves. Don’t disappoint me.”
She was magnificent in defeat, even if she couldn’t manage to look him in the face, look any of them in the face. He was impressed, he had to acknowledge. Things just kept getting better.
Her walk was painfully self-conscious; she was normally free and casual, entirely natural, unconsciously at home with herself, her body. Now, she walked as she had learned to do in childhood, as a beauty pageant girl— controlled, walking to be watched walking; upright, shoulders set back, belly in, measured strides, not too fast, but fast enough to set her buttocks swinging, clearly feeling the eyes on her, working for the benefit of those eyes, trying for even the smallest dignity in her defeat. He could almost hear her heart breaking, and once again, his cock stiffened as she opened the door and left.
She was gone, but she was his.
He would undo her; her specialness his to trample on, carefully and deliberately tear down, at his leisure, without the slightest concern about comeback.
This time, it was going to be contractual.
