You will find that this makes more sense if you have read the previous part of Odile’s Story.
You can find all the episodes here.
Another episode where everything is in the mind. It’s pretty harsh, though, in its own way.
Andrew must have noticed the change in Odile, for he ignored Maya’s swaying breasts as she cleared his soup bowl, and leaned back in his chair, looking calmly but intently at Odile, in that way he had which made her feel bathed by his attention.
There was a long pause, during which she found it necessary, and, truly, lovely, to offer him her body anew, to move, softly; little moves, each intended, simply and totally, for him, to convey to him her openness to him, her pleasure at being the subject of his gaze, her deep hope that she could please him.
It made her blush, and it made her feel sexy, and it made her breathless again, lost in him again. It was worth anything, any shame, to feel this way, even if only for a short time. Indeed, feeling like this made the shame and the hurt important, welcome, needed. She could not have attained this feeling without the many hurts he had imposed upon her, and she made a promise to himself to remember this insight, to recall it whenever she was finding it hard to let him hurt her.
When he spoke, even before she heard a word, she knew that he was going to be cruel. He was relentless; she could not give without him taking more, and she wanted it, at the same time as she quaked inside, telling herself that she would open herself to this hurt, really let it cut into her, let it damage her, that she would not hide from the pain, nor fight it.
Deep in her, though, was doubt; an awful fear— that she might not be able to stay with him, might not be able to accept; that she might lose everything through stupid, pathetic weakness. She dug her nails into the palms of her hands, bit her tongue, hard; weak and silly little things in the face of his greed, and what she saw, clearly now, was simple cruelty on his part— he enjoyed her willingness to accept pain from him.
How? How had she been brought so low, so fast, so smoothly? Why was she, even now, working to help him take her further?
The answers didn’t matter. Her brave little smile, her deliberate, demonstrative relaxation, the tiny, high pitched hm? noise she heard herself make, telling him that he had her attention, that she was his— these were what mattered. These where what made her feel a little safer.
He made her wait before he spoke. A small, smiling cruelty. Which she took as if it were a blessing, letting him see, in her eyes, a slight weakening of her smile, even as she felt it hurt her; a little secret between them, that he had chosen to hurt her, that she accepted he had every right to do so.
That was what she could have.
That was what he would give her. And she? She made her smile warmer again, for him; to show that she understood. That he was right; that she wanted it. That she was happy to be defenceless in the face of his desire. His desire to hurt her, to shame her, to degrade her; to see her suffer.
All this, in a few seconds, both smiling, looking into each others eyes, nothing more. It was lovely, and it was rending, and she was trembling again at the power of him, to have done this to her; to have her willing him forward, working with him, helping him. She made herself smile even more, and, very slowly, very softly, licked her bottom lip with the the underside of her tongue, despite the tears that wanted to fall.
Another pause;
“Very good. Once again, you have eaten the hurt; accepted the pain, internalised the shame. You are humble and grateful again. You smile, softly, willingly, offering yourself. This is as it should be.”
“But as I said, you must never doubt yourself; you cannot fail me; never think that I am not entertained by these interludes— seeing you at war with yourself, watching all your futile, desperate little emotions written across your lovely face, seeing you choose, once again, to sacrifice yourself for me. It makes my dick hard.”
This wasn’t the pain, cool and cruel though some of it was. It hadn’t hurt, yet, not really; in fact, she took it as praise, shamingly patronising as it was; but he hadn’t finished, yet; though again, he made her wait.
And, this time, it was less pleasurable, more hurtfully shaming to smile for him, to flex her shoulders, let her hips thrust, softly forward, to feel his eyes dwell on her breasts. But it was no less a need in her to give him this, to show him that she was open to his cruel little games; that for her, they were deadly serious.
Then, it came;
“When we’re done here, I will take little Maya upstairs, I think, and rape her, rather violently. She needs frightening; her capitulation will be all the sweeter, all the deeper, the greater the horror she has of what it is going to cost her. A tribute to you— I had not though I had more in me today.”
In her mood, at that moment, this simple little speech seemed unbearable; heart-rending— this casual anouncement that he would choose to use another girl for sex when she was there in front of him, so desperately, urgently available, offering herself so carefully, so completely; terribly needy as she was for the transcendence of sex with him to take her above, outside the evening’s relentless onslaught on her decency, on her self-image, on her psyche; this was the sharpest cruelty yet— and yet he was smiling casually at her, as if it he had made nothing more than an interesting observation.
All her intentions were not proof against this. It was too much! He would never stop, she had understood, but how could she bear this?
Urgent, painful tears came to her eyes, to be desperately blinked away, yet again.
So many suppressed tears! So much pain which she had simply swallowed, locked away, refused to allow expression! She knew, she knew— it was horribly obvious to her that she was damaging herself, just as he had shown her he would require her to do— she could feel her savage suppression of her own deeply felt emotion, denying it any voice, any attention … she could feel how this was destroying her capacity to trust herself; could see that his continual requirement of her that she demonstrate to herself that she was prepared to hurt herself for him, to serve his pleasure, was eroding everything she had spent her young life building. He was having her render herself incapable of independence, he was having her destroy herself, in public, emotionally naked, while he watched; and he was enjoying it; simply watching her with an amused, complacent smile.
And yet … and yet … his calm complacency was justified; because he knew; she knew; knew it in herself, that she was not going to betray her commitment to him, no matter how foolish she knew it had been.
Not now! Not after so much! Not without having more of him! Not without experiencing more of that intensity, that heart-stopping mix of terror and ecstasy that only he knew how to force her into. She could not lose him now! She could not fail herself!
He watched her emotions nearly overset her again. He had shown Anne-Marie how to do this, years ago; how to see when to push, and when to be soft, when to let his sadism show, and when to caress; when to reward, and when to punish— although he was certainly in charge, there was a very real sense in which he was allowing himself to be led by the girl— only by looking for, and closely following, her emotions, her reactions, was it possible to see just where the paradoxes lay— those aspects of her personality which, at any given moment, were in fine but unstable balance— those conditions where a well-judged intervention could pitch her into internal civil war, when she could be thrown into self-destructive attacks on those parts of her which sought to keep her safe, keep her walking the narrow line of self-respect, of decency, of sanity.
And this one, this one was a basket of contradictions, while at the same time possessed of a deep toughness at the core— so that he had found himself pushing her further, faster, than he had planned, than he would have thought advisable, had he been mentoring another as to how to handle her.
It had been unexpected, unplanned, that Maya should serve him— he had not known that she had returned; his exchange with her with Odile looking on could have backfired badly, but he had decided to be bold, and it had paid off. And now, with his announcement, he had doubled down, and that, too, seemed to have been an effective play.
Really, this one was almost too enjoyable! The old qualms raised themselves. He was, he knew, taking responsibility for the life of a young innocent, cruelly destabilising her simply to entertain himself, knowing that he would, inevitably, tire of her at some point, when he would casually throw her to those rapacious wolves at The Castle, where Anne-Marie would ruthlessly suborn her, seal her fate, putting an abrupt and final end to all her hopes for a life; for this one would be brought, one way or another, to sign a full-life indenture, he was sure.
He would retain her indenture; own this one himself, personally, he thought; he would visit her, too— her body was delightful in and of itself— and treat her either with surprising kindness or savage cruelty, as the mood took him, as her state suggested to him. She would know that he had lost any real interest in her, and he would enjoy having caused her that pain, too— have it open between them that he had ruined her just for fun. She would serve him, neverthleless, with desperate, eager passion, heartfelt and expressively total submission, no matter how terrible his demands, even as she knew that she meant nothing to him, that no matter how well she pleased him, how hard she tried, how dangerously she might incite him to exercise his demons on her, did things for him that no other girl would, that he would just as likely not appear for another six months, and then choose another girl anyway (as he was choosing Maya tonight),
She would know, too, that Anne-Marie would use those times as opportunities to force her still deeper into the well of depravity, and that she, in despair, would almost gratefully allow herself to be taken there, finally to be trained, in all likelihood, to apparent complaisance in the more perverted tastes of the oldest members, men so jaded that few girls could tolerate their demands without harsh coercion.
But how could he take her, knowing how it would go, how passing his fancies were, how easily he could find another to take down instead? Should he, really, destroy this lovely creature; have her become, truly, as he had told her earlier, a nothing?
He had been troubled then, too; was he, just at the point where his innate drive, his skill and his great experience were combining to make it seem almost easy to do the impossible with this girl, was he going to be overcome by doubts?
He looked up at her then, to discover that she had settled the issue for him.
Not only had she swallowed her tears, and scraped up a broken little smile for him, it seemed she had been waiting for him, for his attention; it seemed that she wanted to speak, although it took her a good few seconds to actually manage to make sound come out of her mouth; she was clearly in quite a state, controlling herself with significant effort— and doing a creditable job, too, holding herself carefully (she’d need training, of course, but she was not doing badly, untamed).
She had conquered herself for him. She was offering herself, he realised, when, eventually, she managed to speak;
“I … I need to thank you … again …” she was almost derailed by a little rush of humiliation, then, at hearing herself so servile, but gathered herself, giving her head a tiny shake, her cheeks flushing hot and pink; “I … I am so … grateful, for … for your straightforwardness; your … your honesty.”
“This … this … I … I don’t know what to call it … this thing, that … that you’re doing to me … that, that you’re helping me to to … to myself, for … for you, is … is so very … hard … so, terribly hard … for … for me …”
And this time she could not keep it all in, and a sob almost broke her voice as she gave up on herself, on whatever she had been going to say, and jumped to what mattered to her;
“Just … Please … please, don’t … don’t stop. If … I’m silly, or … or embarrassing, … and … and I am; just… O … I … I know you will, anyway, but please, please, just, just carry on. I … I want it. What … whatever you’re going to … to do to me. I know I won’t be able to bear it, but … don’t stop … please. Do it to me, anyway; whatever … whatever you’d like; whatever would be … be good for you, because … because you can.”
She stared at the table top, too frightened to look at him, even though she was desperate, and terrified, to see his reaction; but she couldn’t look up. The last part was almost inaudible, but very clearly enunciated;
“Don’t ever stop, please.”
As so often, he was smiling, a little, but this smile, had she seen it, would have made her heart glow; for it was on the rueful side. Andrew had rarely had doubts; he had certainly never had his doubts immediately shown to be foolish by the very girl he was getting ready to destroy.
There was perhaps indeed a ‘first for everything’.
The little whore wanted it; was made for it— she really was (how could he have contemplated letting her go before giving himself the pleasure of looking into her eyes as her breasts, her sex, were whipped with real brutality for the first time, for no reason other than that he wanted to watch her suffer? Of ejaculating deep inside her throat, her mouth horribly distended by the ugly metal spreader, feeling her stifled scream through his cock as the smoking, sparking brand was applied to her belly?)— and the beast in him casually took control again, baring its teeth as he smiled at her, almost gently, now.
“Odile, look up at me, please. Good.”
“I, too, must repeat myself. You are remarkable. I will give you my word, now, that I will use you, always, so as to entertain myself. It will, for sure, be hard for you. But you will know, at all times, that I am getting what I want from you.”
He pauses, and his smile wides, softens;
“This will be horribly confusing, of course, on those occasions when I choose to behave with kindness toward you; you will not know if I am genuinely wanting you to feel cared for, or if I am preparing you for a cruel reversal.”
“You have lost yourself, pretty Odile. I do not think you will find yourself again. I will not let you. From now on, you will find that I am the only compass you have to guide yourself by. And I will not be reliable. If you can, cease to think about the future, and deal with each minute, each hour, as it comes, and find what you can in that.”
He pauses, as she trembles, lips quivering, before grinning;
“Actually, I believe that you will find ample support for that recommendation in the self help pages of those glossy girl-power magazines; ‘live in the moment’, I believe the mantra goes. Perhaps I am not such a Bluebeard, after all, but actually a life-coach?”
And the beast showed her his feral self, then, as the grin turns hard, and his lips thin, so that she found herself trembling and blushing, blinking away tears again, but this time brought on by a surge of stupid, foolish happiness at having been promised unending cruelty.
She shocked herself, then, for alongside the quivering, happy, fearful softness that came with acceptance, there arose a surge of insistence that Andrew was right about what Maya needed. If he was to give her the blessing of his attention that night, the waitress deserved every iota of the violence he would mete out. It was strange, very strange, but impossible to deny that she felt happy at the idea that Andrew would hurt the girl; that he would fill her with horror. She had offered herself to him, the stupid whore, and should be made to experience the full force of his cruel greed.
The heat of this emotion shook her, but the feeling was obstinate, and pleasurable; she wanted the girl to suffer. Wanted Andrew, in particular, to hurt her. It made her tremble, then, the idea of him doing harsh things with that lovely body. She had never, in her life, experienced such a feeling, but she could not stop herself from turning it over in her mind, half appalled, half fascinated, until she shook herself, blurted out what was in her mind, hot and urgent;
“You … you’re right about Maya, anyway; she … she deserves to be hurt.”
Odile hardly recognised the throaty, quivering, intensity of the voice, even though she knew it was hers.
Why was she so turned on?
Such savagery around the suffering of other girls is typical of the early days of a pretty’s induction into the terrors of The Castle. It is as though the girl hopes that her fear and dread anticipation of terrible suffering can be held at bay through cruel treatment of another.
Over time, though, for most girls, there is a reversal of sentiment— a gradual extension of sympathy to each other, a deepening kindness, as girls begin to see that they have all been reduced to the same state— that the degree to which they are treated and considered as both expendable and interchangeable (as indeed they explicitly are by the membership) makes them all sisters, so that the suffering of one is the suffering of all.
This sympathy, this sisterly feeling, rarely, however, grows into any sort of solidarity in rejection of the awful cruelties imposed upon the sisterhood (Anne-Marie had considered the possibility of such antipathy when she had first made contact with the ‘sister-houses’ formed by Castle ‘survivors’, and found it almost entirely asbsent— see Part 2 of ‘Liana at the Castle’). Perhaps surprisingly, it tends instead to manifest itself in the offer of reassurance to another girl that she will be able to carry herself with some grace through harsh outrage; within the confines of The Castle, events which would be elsewhere be considered unimaginably awful are imposed on girls so regularly that they seem inevitable, almost facts of nature, to be lived-through, not resisted. Quite often, this goes as far as encouragement to another to offer herself up for further degradation, if it might bring even a small reward (the behaviour of the two unnamed girls attending nOelle in Part 5 of her story is a case in point).
Beyond this, even, and for a significant number of girls— those who have truly given themselves over to a life of subjugation— the idea of supporting another girl to submit more deeply— to help her see that being subjected to yet harsher levels of cruel usage is to be welcomed— this seems not only practical, but a kindness, almost; for some, even a spiritual duty. This sort of thing is, of course, carefully but very subtly encouraged by Anne-Marie (it has been mentioned elsewhere that the strict ‘no speaking unless required by a superior’ rule is intentionally not rigorously enforced. Secret microphones in apparently quiet corners, careful interview techniques with the sorts of girls who cannot help but gossip, Anne-Marie’s famous ‘tea-time’ sessions; all of these serve as important routes to understanding of the undercurrents flowing in the ruthlessly constrained lives of her ‘stable’, and are used in her manipulations).
Having experienced that life herself See ‘Girl, Conquered’, Anne-Marie knows, all too well, that, although it is important that it be aggressively undermined and mercilessly imprisoned, a girl’s inner, core personality must not be destroyed— that its energies need careful channeling, in order to achieve Anne-Marie’s twin aims; perfectly submissive, helplessly willing sex toys, skilled and drilled in a wide variety of sexual practices, who are at the same time experienced by members as fresh, unspoiled; almost innocents. Years ago now, she had told the High Table what they deserved was; “Neither brainwashed fuck-puppets nor cynical, brazen sluts, but gorgeous young submissives, subjected to an extremely tight regime that is both savage and arbitrary; this will ensure that they are never free from emotional turmoil, and thus maximise vulnerability and entertainment value.” That is the standard she has ruthlessly held herself to, ever since.
Andrew was amused, raised his eyebrows in mock astonishment, so that Odile blushed;
“I will be no more than your servant, then, as I cause her to suffer!”
The half thoughts, strange ideas that this little joke brought into Odile’s mind, had immediately to be suppressed, so disturbing were they; after a long moment of utter confusion, she broke out in a burst of awkward giggles, as much to cover the little surge of joy in her at being spoken to as if she were a friend; not just a whore, as that any of this was in the slightest funny to her, but when Andrew grinned back at her, it made her giggle again, and she was very rapidly in danger of becoming hysterical, knew she must stop, and clamped down on herself, hard.
When she had herself under control again, she looked up, and saw that Maya had returned with his main course - a large, bloody steak and various side dishes. The girl clearly wished she could be invisible, so carefully unobtrusive was she, her cheeks nearly as pink as Odile’s, both girls finding it shaming to have to accept that the other knew what freedoms she allowed (desired) Andrew to have with her.
But Andrew wanted to order something;
“I want you to bring something for Odile, here, in ten minutes or so. A very small measure of Parfait Amour, and one of those cocktail cakes you serve. Just the one.”
Maya disappeared, Andrew went back to his meal, and to his paper.
The brief window of interaction had closed, and Odile was, once again, alone with her turmoil, her suffering, her shame; her hunger, too.
This is what happiness is, for me, now, she told herself; being with Andrew, offering myself up for pain, him entertained by hurting me.
Seeing, all too clearly, that the alternative - not being with Andrew, would not lessen the hurt, since it has been so clearly demonstrated to her that she is to hurt herself on his behalf. Being without him would be just the same mental distress and turmoil, without the possibility of him smiling at her as he hurts her, or using her for sex.
She made herself smile; attended to her posture, worked her hips a little, until the cow hide pricked at her labia, thought about being fucked, to get herself hot for him.
That was just how it was. She had to be happy with it. For, somehow, there was nothing else in her world that could match up to it; not any more.
