Why did she allow this? Why did she stay here, knowing that this (and so many, many other things) will happen?
Happen? No, these things don’t just happen — they are forced upon her. If her compliance now, holding herself as required, should falter, then there will be no respite, no let off, no safe word. None. She will be chained, restrained, forced, humiliated further, and then, in the end, ravaged, begging, she will comply anyway.
But why?
She knows, of course. She isn’t stupid, not some simple-headed ninny or ensnared romantic — still less has she been tricked or trapped into this; they have always been honest (if at the same time, laconic).
At first, of course — when things were much less extreme, though perhaps more shocking to her innocence — the days when being made to show her breasts to strangers felt like the ultimate transgression — at first, she hadn’t really understood what it was that kept her coming back, even once she had realised that the requirements made of her would become more severe, more obviously about psychological domination than sex per se.
No, understanding had taken much thought, much tearful introspection, intense, distressing.
Not, as might be supposed, in the hours and days immediately following some new outrage, some further impossible degradation in the service of on overlord’s greedy desire or intentional cruelty — no, not then, but rather in the period during which she began to know that she was once again going to commit herself, voluntarily, to be taken into the dark; in the weeks, days, hours and minutes which inevitably (no matter what craziness she went through) ended with her entering the indicated apartment — always a different one, always in some dingy block where comings and goings were of zero interest to the poor souls who existed there — entering and (lately) immobilising herself — with some assortment of handcuffs, blindfolds, gags: more recently nooses and unsteady platforms — after removing more or less (actually ‘more and more’ would be accurate) of her clothing. After which, of course, her time, her body, her life, even, were not her own. Not until they dumped her back into the real world.
And it is this observation about the timing of her maximum distress that eventually led to clarity.
The fact that, in the time immediately after these violations, these debasements, these crushings of her humanity, these immolations of her self image, that is in these periods that she is calmest, most serene — able to look at the physical signs of her abuse (a category which has expanded over time, now including welts, burns, bite marks, piercings, bruises, abrasions, contusions) with tenderness — almost fondness; to savour them, to venerate them, and at the same time to be able to relive the darkest, most unbearable moments in the same spirit — see her wanton-ness, her self-abasement, her helpless opening of herself to abuse almost as sacraments.
The realisation, in fact, that it is these periods during which the horrors of the moments she is put through by her overlords feel sweet, when they seem mostly to make her special, to make her valuable, worthy, that it is the desire for these periods of serenity and acceptance that she seeks, that make it all worth it. No, not just worthwhile, but necessary.
The understanding that this condition could be described as a mental illness has, of course, occurred to her.
But on the other hand, there was the offer, made to her only last week, of giving herself over on a permanent basis. Of becoming one of those creatures (alluring, mysterious, tragic) who have been transformed, sculpted — physically and mentally — into vehicles for the casually cruel fantasies of rich and powerful sadists. Who have lost themselves, given themselves away, become chattels, playthings, gone from the world of individual will, of rights, of consideration.
She was going to hover on the cusp of this decision for as long as possible, she realised — tremble deliriously on the edge between calmness and mental anguish.
Until.
Well, she realises, when she thinks about it calmly, until they decide to force the decision. After all, it has never really been hers to take, has it?
And at that moment of realisation, her fate is sealed. For it is visible, to experienced hands at least — the change that comes over a girl when she accepts in her soul that she is, at the end, just a piece of cunt, whose total existence depends upon the will of those prepared to take control of her.
Amused smiles pass across the room — for they had had little doubt that this one would allow herself to be taken all the way. The bets had been only about how long it would take, about who would be ‘at the helm’ when the change came, about how much money she would fetch at auction.
Amusements. That’s what they called these ex-girls. Amusements.
