This will make more sense if you have read the previous part of Justine.
Southern France, daytime, Decision Day minus 3
Mme. Creux’ judgement kept rerunning itself in Justine’s mind, all day;
I’m not the hero of my own life, just an extra in the story of someone who is strong enough to be their own hero.
The cruel truth of it was that it fit her so well, explained so much; more, that it was welcome; if she accepted it was true, it was not just acceptable, but healthy, for her to stop trying to be ‘someone’; to give up on being anyone at all, really, and let others make of her what they willed. And, seeing that powerful and impressive people seemed to have quite definite plans for her, which involved living in swanky places with pools and servants and armed guards and not having too much work to do, the choice seemed quite attractive; very simply, she wanted it to be true.
The fact that those plans seemed likely to involve her being on the passive end of abusive sex should really have been enough to make the idea of surrender unacceptable, but— difficult to admit though it was— she didn’t believe she had the strength to resist. Or was she finding it even harder to admit the extent to which the idea of being used for sex was increasingly fascinating?
Surrender would be weak, pathetic; a capitulation, but then again, what was the point in lying to herself about being strong anymore?
Her complete misjudgement of Mme. Creux, too— she had thought that she knew exactly who the woman was, what could be expected of her, but had got it so wrong; this seemed powerfully significant, and brought forth yet another savage self-judgement.
It wasn’t just that she was weak, but that she was foolish, too; the idea that she knew how things worked, thinking she understood, understood the world, understood others, understood herself, even, had been proven to be ridiculous; time and again, she had got things badly wrong, had not had a clue. The only sensible conclusion seemed to be that she was completely lost, and this, compounded with her growing certainty of her fundamentally weak character, just made it even more obvious how much she needed the strength of others— people who were genuinely powerful, strong, clever and wise— to keep her safe.
I am lost, and I am weak; I do … I do want … more— I … I need these people’s approval; Sir Stephen’s … Mme. Danika’s … Mme. Chanxin’s— even Habib’s. I can feel the need, feel myself working for it. It … I’m … pathetic … OK I’ve said it. I accept it. I’m pathetic. And they … they are strong, certain, rich; they know what they want and how to get it and they don’t let anything get in their way. And … and if … if I please them, they’ll want me, and … and if I … if I do what they want … let … let them fuck me, I guess … then … then they’ll keep me safe.
Oh Jesus how can I be thinking like this?
It was just further proof of her weakness and stupidity that she was letting such thoughts go round and round in her head.
All that day, the best escape from these self-lacerating thoughts was to lose herself in dedication to service, in the expression of complete surrender to the work of helping them, in her small way, to be what they wished to be, at the same time as actively suppressing her own thoughts and wishes as they arose, to prevent them getting in the way.
Being ignored, taken for granted, could be interpreted as success, as a beneficence, almost, when she thought of herself as nothing more than an extra; extras were there to reinforce the meaning of the hero’s journey, not to be noticed in their own right; it made a comforting sort of sense of her surrender.
And it helped, too, to prevent herself from thinking about how it might be, that evening, in the new costume— which was undeniably pretty and delicate, but also all but indecent. It consisted of a painfully tight-laced corset with an integral skirt of frilly lace. The skirt was lovely— ever so pretty, but it was also terribly, shamefully short— the whole outfit not much more than whore-ish lingerie, a hands-breadth of naked thigh between the tops of her stockings and the hemline, her breasts lifted and offered, covered only by a cropped white blouse, the fabric so fine as to be near transparent. The only underwear was a skimpy, lacy thong, seemingly a couple of sizes too small, which did more to draw attention to her sex mound than hide it, and hid her buttocks not at all. To finish off there were new shoes, much higher-heeled; Torture heels her model friends had called heels like those, but there was no backing out now.
Losing herself in service also helped Justine avoid thinking about the way Mme. Creux had handled her while helping her try the uniform on, manipulating her like a shop dummy, reminding Justine of how dance teachers and photographers and booking agents had treated her body so many times; as if it were clay— shaping, pinching, pulling and pushing, commenting out loud;
A while since she’s been a working dancer— good to have a little softness back into these curves, but she’ll have lost flexibility; we’ll need to do something about that; yoga I think. Breasts on the small side, but good enough; need tighter lacing to push them up under this blouse though.
Justine, thoroughly cowed and diminished, had done everything she could to comply with Mme. Creux’ manipulations, and in truth had found herself relaxing into being handled like a mannequin; expressing no opinions, saying almost nothing; doing her best to please.
Somehow, service had got her through the day.
When the evening came, though, it was impossible not to be horribly self-conscious as Mme. Creux insisted on dressing her and doing her make-up, then all but parading her through the servants’ quarters as she was led to the dining room, a good half an hour before dinner would be served.
Picture: Justine in her evening outfit
Southern France, early evening, Decision Day minus 3
As soon as she realised that everyone was going to see her, for real, in that outfit, it hit her. It was stupid; she’d known that this must happen since last night; but still, the immediate reality of everyone in the house knowing that she was going to be serving the bosses, dressed as she was; that they would obviously assume that— at the very best— she was letting them make a whore of her.
They are all going to be fucking me.
The thought came back, unbidden, into Justine’s mind, and with it a churning, squirmy feeling deep in her groin.
God help me but part of me wants it. I’ve never … never felt … sexy … like this before. Oh god I’m going to be fucked by all those guards. Once they see me like this, they’ll know. And … and they’ll know I know, too, that I accept…
She knew she was blushing, deeply, couldn’t help it; knew that they could see she was ashamed, felt that knowledge deepening her shame. It was crazy, but real, then, that she must act the part the outfit proclaimed— if she slouched and shuffled, dressed like that, it wouldn’t stop them thinking she was a whore, but make it worse— they’d see her as an unattractive whore, and pick her to pieces for being ugly, too.
No, she had to make herself walk elegantly, model style, feet either side of an imaginary line, had to let the high heels make her hips switch back and forth, knowing they were all watching, feeling her unfettered, uplifted breasts move in time within the filmy blouse. She was trapped.
But I like the trap, don’t I? she taunted herself. I want the trap— because I’m weak and lost and…
I do. I do.
And then, at last, she and Mme. Creux were alone again, in the dining room; austere and elegant, all dark wood and heavy cream, rich with centuries of heavy protocol; a room where strict roles were imbued in the fabric; a room where one more obedient, submissive serving girl in an outfit that made it obvious that she was at the bottom of the pecking order meant nothing; nothing at all, except for the age old truth— that the powerful, and greedy, would get what they wanted.
“Now, fillette, some reminders, and some new instructions.”
“First of all the cardinal rule; that you are here to serve your betters, to make it easy for them to get what they want. Whatever they might do, whatever they might demand of you, you will make it obvious that you are willing and eager; happy to serve. You will never cause any of them the slightest stress. There is no desire which you will not try to fulfil, to the utmost of your capacity. Is that clear?”
As had been made clear on several occasions, Mme. Creux required eye to eye contact when giving instructions, and this time she was staring, very directly indeed, into Justine’s soft eyes, making it clear that what she was saying should be understood to mean everything which was not being explicitly said.
Justine trembled as she forced herself to answer clearly;
“Yes, Yes Madame.”
“Very good. You already carry two black marks. I can assure you that you would very much regret collecting a third.”
So, if I resist being sexually abused, if I don’t make it easy to sexually abuse me, I’ll get black marks, which are beginning to sound super unpleasant.
“Your additional duties are simple; the kitchen staff will deliver food in trolleys; they’ll leave them outside the room. This indicator light will show you when. The trolleys are temperature controlled; you will let your betters dictate the pace of the meal without concern that the dishes will suffer. When they are ready, you will bring the trolleys in and serve.”
“When you are not serving, you will stand here, and nowhere else…” Mme. Creux indicated a small, deep alcove by the service door “… when you are here, your head will be lowered, but you must be watching through your lashes. This will be hard, but again I remind you, that you very much do not want to fail.”
The alcove had a thick, transparent plastic curtain. Mme. Creux demonstrated that Justine woud hear very little once behind it, but would be clearly visible;
“You will not be ‘off duty’ for a single second while you are in this room. Generally, you will not initiate service, but wait until you are called for by some signal, which might be something as small as a finger pointing at an empty water glass; you will miss nothing; if you are in doubt as to whether you are needed, you will make it visibly clear that you are alert, and are ready to serve, without calling undue attention to yourself; typically you will receive a nod if you are required. If nothing, then remain extra attentive for the slightest sign of irritation, which will indicate that you are failing. Again; you very much do not want to fail”
Justine spent the next twenty minutes alone in the dining room, in the tiny alcove, behind the curtain, feeling increasingly claustrophobic and vulnerable— it was as if she were a doll in a cellophane wrapper. It was horrible, being in a large room, alone, but shut away in her little servant’s hole, the plastic screen making it even weirder.
She made herself go over and over in her mind all that she had learnt that summer about table service. She had had no formal training, and kept thinking of things which she knew she did not know the proper procedure for. It should have been ten minutes; the light was showing beside her for the hors’d’ouvres and cold drinks, but then, her time was not her own, it was theirs. She stood at her station, head bowed, looking at the empty chairs, trying not to think about how they would look at her in the outfit, so obviously an invitation to sexual usage.
They are all going to be fucking me
It was impossible to suppress the thought; what was more disturbing was that the almost physical horror the idea had brought with it when it had first intruded into her consciousness was no longer sharp, had become more of a dull ache of sadness and shame. It had become an accepted truth— knowledge, almost; still deeply uncomfortable, to be sure, but a fixed reality.
Equally disturbing, the anticipation, deep in her groin, of being fucked, fucked hard by people she didn’t know, didn’t like, people who had power over her— that was real, too. It made her breathless, so that her chest heaved randomly; it would attract attention to her breasts, she knew, whether she wanted it or not. Worse, it made her wet between the legs. It didn’t matter that she didn’t want that to be true, either; it happened anyway. And then the thinking would stray into what it might be like, being fucked like that, having no choice as to partner, or location, or position, as if she were a whore, or a sex doll… And then she would have to clamp down on herself, very hard, feeling her cheeks turn pink as she realised just where her thoughts had been going.
Silently, she begged her employers to arrive, so that she could stop thinking and start serving.
When her prayers were answered, and they trickled in, still deep in discussions, she truly did experience enormous relief— everything became simple again, and obvious. She was filled with uncomplicated pleasure, gratitude; there was a sharp pang of despair, to be sure, at the almost complete lack of attention she received— they arrived already talking, barely noticed her, and sat down, still talking.
But still, when Justine noticed, even before the movement was complete, that Mme. Danika was signalling for service to begin, everything clicked; she was needed, she had her role, and she found herself eagerly working herself back into the mode she had spent the afternoon in, of absorbed and fully engaged service to her betters, and deeply, deeply grateful for that relief. She knew it made no sense, because they were also responsible for her fears and her isolation, and were themselves the source of the threat she faced— but still, relief and gratitude toward them was what she felt, and she did not have the strength to reject it.
Even the alcove experience was transformed; somehow the business of tucking herself away behind the thick heavy plastic, of being separated from them, but still on display, felt like a sacrament, a repeated signal to them that she knew she was a lesser being, that she was more decorative than useful. She felt herself, while watching through her lashes for the slightest sign that she was needed, obsessive about how she was standing, how her breasts were presented, her mouth, her legs, hyper-sensitive whenever it seemed that any one of them might actually be looking at her.
Pushing the curtain aside to step into their space also felt loaded with symbolism of her inferiority; it immediately became obvious that she must curtsey each time, as if she were entering the room. The skirts, though, were so short, that even a slight flick of the hem was very likely to show the tiny thong. Trying to judge how little she could get away with was stressful, and the curtseys felt incomplete, so that a powerful fear arose in her that a complaint would be made to Mme. Creux at the end of the evening, that she would be awarded a further black mark.
The solution was obvious, but too much; it took a few more awkward curtseys, a head turn or two from Mme. Danika, a twist of her lips— all quite possibly unrelated, but still causing a growing tension in Justine’s mind, until it no longer became possible to resist; she started lifting the skirts right up, in a much more natural move. She was almost certainly showing everything, with only the tiny patch covering her sex for modesty; it felt agonisingly shaming, but it was not as bad as the fear, and she no longer felt she was attracting the wrong sort of looks.
That was just the beginning of it; there was more to come, and Justine knew it.
Having made herself prepare for it while she waited, she had thought she would be ready for the first indication that her new status and changed conditions had made a difference (the advanced hour, the flow of wine, the obvious invitation of her short hemline, the high heels, her naked thighs, the way her breasts moved in the blouse, the way she was curtseying— everything pointed the same way).
The reality, though, when a hand found its way between her thighs as she was pouring wine, was nothing that could have been prepared for.
Of course, similar things had happened in the daytime sessions, and again, she had imagined that that would have helped her cope.
But no— because the Justine who had accepted those abuses, managed then, complied then, had considered herself at least partly in control, that she was the hero of her own life, that she understood what things meant. She had felt as if it was her choice to allow such liberties, or deny them.
But she had lost all that; all her imagined certainties had been demolished, had crumbled— she had been utterly destabilised; the incidents with Habib, Chanxin, Danika, Mme. Creux, had each removed a layer of unexamined self-deception, of entitled assumption, of simple habit.
In the dining room, with everything changed, bent right over in an explicitly submissive pose, knowing that it was forbidden for her to object to, or obstruct, any sort of manipulation, that each of the people around the table would see just what was being done with her, would see just how weak, how vulnerable she was, how could she cope?
Standing in the alcove, these thoughts boiling in her mind, Justine began to understand just how much everything had changed for her, and began to tremble in anticipation.
But still, still, the reality, when it eventually happened, was far more intense than any imagining, no matter how fevered; imagination was immediately exposed as nothing more than the palest, most two dimensional, weakly coloured approximation of how it actually felt, while pouring a glass of wine, to have a stranger’s hand slide up her inner thigh, casual, unhesitating, entitled.
For the very first thing she found was that the new Justine could not be passive, not just accepting, but felt it urgently necessary to encourage the hand, stopping what she was doing with the wine for fear of her trembling hands causing a splash onto the immaculate snowy white tablecloth, deliberately shifting her stance a little, so as to make it easier for the hand to do what it wanted, which was to pull aside the scanty gusset of the thong, and tease out the folded sex lips within, in search of the hot, moist slit of her.
The new Justine was going to bend over still more exaggeratedly, was going to let her eyes close, was going to let the urge to roll her hips, to experience the sensation of being played with in public take its full effect on her highly strung body.
The new Justine had no armour, was raw, vulnerable, destabilised, hyper-sensitive, a Justine waiting, needing to be remade; a Justine for whom the humiliation of making her submissiveness obvious, her invitation to abuse unmissable and overt, was not to be allowed to give the slightest cause for complaint.
When the hand made it clear that it wanted to explore her sex, Justine swallowed all the shame and outrage and inner turmoil this caused, and managed to accept; bent over further, offering herself, face lowered until she was looking at the fine weave of the table cloth from close up, forcing her mind to blank itself as much as possible.
And this, this particular experience, so simple, so stark, was enough, it seemed, to define the core of new Justine, who would be so much less than the old Justine had thought herself.
For the central meaning of the new Justine which presented itself to her desperate, flailing need was just this:
I’m just a body, helplessly opening itself to strangers, for their use.
She heard herself moan, out loud, then; a sound of defeat, despair and urgent, helpless pleasure, all rolled into one soft, plangent cry. She almost died of shame, at the same time as she experienced something that could only be described as a blessed relief— Justine was not at all religious, nor spiritual, but in that moment, there was a profound sense of having been granted the blessing of some outside power.
She was going to be allowed to give in. Even better, they were going to simply and casually take her over, as of right; She would be both forced and permitted to give up, to cease to strive, to abandon the project of the old Justine, in favour of this stark new simplicity. In favour of being used, of offering herself in service to the pleasure of others; whatever dignity she might have access to would be decided by others, the new Justine having no rights whatsoever, neither claimable nor deserved.
For Justine, that moment when she was penetrated— so casually, so publicly, so lewdly— was profound; the universe had shifted on its axis; nothing would again be the same; it was as if a hole had opened up in her world, and she had fallen through it. For her employers, though, nothing at all seemed to have happened; none of them took the slightest bit of notice— the talk continued unabated, the clank of knives and forks, the drinking and the chewing— there was no change at all in the emotional atmosphere of the room. Justine had been wholly dismantled, then radically remade in a new arrangement, and it meant nothing at all to anyone save herself.
Soon enough, the person whose hand was in her sex soon lost interest and withdrew (it was Mme. Danika; Justine knew it could have been any of them), to rinse her hand in the finger bowl that was part of the place setting, turn to her neighbour and interject a sharp remark into the monologue.
There was nothing for Justine to do but somehow recover herself, finish the pouring of the wine, straighten up, and return to her alcove.
On fire, in turmoil, devastated, ignored.
This is what it is like to be nothing.
It was like a fire burning her, burning everything, leaving her outwardly unaltered, but inwardly drastically changed, her sense of what Justine was radically simplified, reduced, diminished, belittled. It was a tragedy; a whole life deleted; there was deep pain there, she knew— pain that would have to be experienced. But there was liberation, too. The new Justine was free. She was free because she was prepared to be nothing. No-one could expect anything of nothing, least of all herself— for how could a nothing expect anything of itself? The nothing would be what it was required to be, and bear no responsibility at all for anything.
If the calm she had felt in dedicating herself to service over the last few days had been a gentle, soothing ripple, which smoothed everything out, this new sensation was a tidal wave, rushing through Justine’s mind and through her body from that moment on. Her performance remained exemplary; she was lucid, hyper-aware of the slightest hint that she was required; she was elegant, subtle, unobtrusive but communicative of her eagerness to serve, but there was uproar inside her.
There was no instant free-for-all, not the slightest feeling that any log-jam had been broken, any pent-up desire liberated from her employers. Rather the opposite, in fact; it was another fifteen minutes before any of them touched her again— fifteen minutes Justine spent in an agony of self-consciousness, warring with her intent to offer selfless service. Over the course of the meal, several other hands did explore her sex, but equally, others made no attempt at all; she did her best to be elegantly encouraging and responsive each time, at great cost to her own equanimity, but without making any kind of fuss. No-one spoke to her; she did not speak; the tight gusset of the thong, pulled to one side, was sore; she did not adjust it.
In the periods when she was not needed, she burned, feeling the turmoil, the rushing violence of her emotions flushing the old Justine away, letting herself be turned inside out, offering herself to the simplification, letting herself understand that she was losing everything that meant anything to her, that in order to be free, she must let it all go.
It was not easy, but she had given in already; she just had to let go, whatever it cost her; she had lost faith in Justine; nothing could be saved.
The hardest part was around Sir Stephen; intensifying when she had to serve him, at its most searing when Habib, sitting to Sir Stephen’s left, chose to cup her mound in his hot, fat hand as she served him an extra portion of the lamb, and made her gasp and whimper by pushing his thumb into her ass. Sir Stephen gave no sign of having noticed that she— with her head bent low over the table— could discern. He himself had not touched her, or indeed paid her the slightest attention.
She almost could not look at him, even through her eyelashes, with lowered eyelids; she could not bear the thought that his eyes might betray disgust, or disappointment; she would die, she thought, if that happened. But any eye contact at all might simply kill her of a heart attack, it felt, so impossible to process was the idea that he had watched her accept several of his colleague’s fingers work their way into her sex, had seen her continue to offer herself, bending at the waist, splaying her thighs, open her cleavage, for as long as their interest persisted.
At the same time as fearing his disgust, she was in turmoil at the certainty that, very soon, he too would have his hand between her legs, his fingers inside her sex; soon, for sure, his cock inside her. That Stefan, friend of her father, would be fucking her, not on the basis of any sort of relationship, but impersonally, with her in her role as a servant, a bought-and-paid-for slut. There was so much wrong with that thought that it tied her stomach in knots.
The thought that he might not fuck her, though, her was worse; if he watched as his colleagues fucked her, abused her, and did not join in, that surely would imply disgust, or that he found her sexually uninteresting, and she wasn’t sure she could bear either of those.
The contradictions, the shame, the despair and the shame began to build inside her, threatening more direly with every minute to drive her to some explosion, some breaking of the rules, fear growing inside her, until from nowhere, a voice inside her spoke, in Mme. Creux’ voice;
Arrête, connard! You are being ridiculous! What does it matter what you think or feel, you nothing? He will do what he will do. Fuck you or not fuck you. And you will be fucked or not fucked. He will find you disgusting or not. What right have you to fail in your duties over this foolishness? Your stupid feelings are just fluff; get it through your head, fillette! You are of no importance to anyone! To risk your place with these powerful people over some fluff in your head is ridiculous! Focus! Look at them, now! There! Mme. Chanxin has just discovered that her water glass is empty and you nearly missed it! Hurry!
Chanxin chose that occasion to not only investigate Justine’s sex— Justine, in her anxiety over nearly having missed a service request exaggeratedly subservient as she bent low and opened her legs— but set out to test the girl’s limits, using her long, fake nails to capture and manipulate Justine’s clitoris, to hurt her and tease her, until she could not suppress a short cry of emotion, followed by a shuddering sigh as pain turned into a caress, eliciting a few relaxed chuckles around the table, and an urgent wish to die from Justine, blinking back tears. Once again, an emotional earthquake for Justine provoked nothing more than a moment’s ripple in the flow of the evening for the principals, and within a minute, Justine was walking, carefully sexy, back to the alcove, her insides in turmoil, her mind insistently repeating;
My feelings are irrelevant— dangerous, meaningless. Just swallow them, stupid, and concentrate!
The pain of doing this was like a freezing, heavy stone in her chest, but she made herself comply.
I’m hurting myself she realised. I’m destroying my mental health like this. If I carry on, it will eat into me, this awful stuff, and there will be no undoing the hurt.
It made total sense; she had no doubts about the truth of it. Another freezing stone settled itself, hard, on top of the first, though, as she had to accept that she did not have the strength to do anything about it.
She wanted to cry, but could not let herself. An image came to her, of herself, as she had been, kneeling at Mme. Danika’s side. She wanted to be back there, right then. It hadn’t been healthy there, either, but at least she had felt safe, for a moment.
And it all became clear for Justine, then. Everything; everything that had happened to her was a monstrous, evil plan; they were all in on it— Sir Stephen too— in fact he must be the originator of the plan. They had done this to her, all of them, Mme. Creux, too, with her cruelty and her pragmatic wisdom, all so very conveniently disempowering.
She saw it all, understood at least some of how it had been done, saw her own foolishness as having made it easy for them, her own yearning for intimacy having led her to lean in to parts of their plan, saw how she had been led down a crooked path, how they had made it hard for her to ever reverse out of the trap that had been so subtly, so smoothly set for her.
And it was so clear, everything, in her mind, right then, and it was so, so sad.
Because seeing it made no difference, understanding made it worse. Because she knew, with a heaviness that was unbearable, that she was not going to find a way back.
That she was too far gone, too ensnared, too complicit. All of it, all the psycho-drama, the abuses, the isolation, no-one speaking to her as if she were a person for days on end, Sir Stephen ignoring her, Danika’s mind games, Mme. Creux, the leering hard men, the sneering house-servants. It was all real enough, but also, it was all disconnected from the real world; she, Justine, had been disconnected, and manipulated, like a hothouse flower; and the madness of it was, that none of it need have any effect on her, if only she were able to break free.
And there it was, the nub of it. The impossibility of imaging she could break free.
The implication of which … was that it was all going to happen. And it wouldn’t really be their fault— even though they had done it to her. She would deserve it, really, for being so stupid, so weak, so pathetic …
They are all going to be fucking me. And I made it easy for them.
And it all came full circle, then. The bullshit they had been feeding her— it was now her own view of herself…
With this further inversion, she was lost— all her clarity, all the certainty that could see how everything fit together, tumbled in on her, and this time, she knew, she really was beyond saving. She knew nothing, understood nothing, was nothing. They had more of her than she could salvage of herself.
Everything seemed to go dark, and there was a roaring in her ears, her mind sinking into a mass of darkness….
“Hey! Dreamer!”
Justine was jolted out of her trance, started violently,
It was Mme. Danika— right there, in front of her, pulling the curtain back with one hand, smiling her cool smile, eyes almost warm, almost friendly, a laugh in her voice;
“You’ve been away with the fairies, you know? But don’t worry, Mme. Creux has been helping with the coffees and the dessert.”
Justine was instantly possessed by fear of the certainty of a further black mark and its unknown threat, so heavily emphasised. But Mme. Danika was saying nothing troubling, only;
“We’d like you to serve the brandies, now, and then, if you would, stay for a while; we’d like to learn a little about you, pretty girl.”
