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.
Then Nadia was walking out, without a word or a look, there was nothing to do for Odile, but to trot after her— each of Nadia’s stride in her flats requiring two rapid steps from Odile, in the terrible heels, to have a hope of keeping up.
Approaching the open door to the kitchen, Odile heard Lauren’s voice, talking with her man, and cringed inside; the little Lauren already knew about what Odile had allowed to be done to her was far too much, but she would soon know more, and Odile could do nothing about it but keep her eyes submissively fixed on Nadia’s shoes as Nadia paused. Odile knew she was in full view; her submissive posture, her downcast eyes, her scandalous outfit, all telling a story that she could not control. Lauren could not know! Lauren would know! Odile had to suppress a sobbing moan at the awfulness of just having to stand there, on show, as Nadia, cool and controlled as always, said;
“Continue as you have been, pretty; Claude will instruct you.”
Obedience, obvious and shameful obedience, was Odile’s only option, then, even though it devastated her that her weakness, her fall, her disgrace was thereby made even more obvious to her flatmate. Until now, shamed and degraded as she had repeatedly been, it had always been strangers to whom her shame had been exposed, either strangers whom she would likely never meet again, or who were part of Andrew’s staff. That Lauren— sharp, inquisitive, judgemental Lauren— had seen just how degraded Odile’s condition had become was past bearing.
Odile knew that, far from making a negative judgement about Andrew’s character or behaviour, Lauren would rather be highly entertained by Odile’s shameful weakness, would be fascinated, amused. If she judged anyone, it would be Odile. When she got the chance, Lauren would be demanding and clinical in her interrogation of Odile; she would skewer her with astute and humiliating questions which would admit her no hiding place.
And yet there was nothing for it but to obey, to perform, to leave Nadia to tell Lauren whatever she chose to about how Odile came to be behaving so strangely; to force herself to resume the humiliating trot, to keep her eyes down, as was appropriate for a degraded, submissive cunt. A slavegirl, whose highest aspiration was to be raped by her Monseigneur.
The words, appearing in her mind, stopped her dead in the hallway, at the top of the stairs; she made herself repeat them;
I’m a slavegirl, whose highest aspiration is to be raped by her Monseigneur.
– asking herself, with desperate intensity— were those words the truth? Could they possibly be true? Could she not wake up? See all this— convince herself— that the past few days had been a fever-dream, a temporary madness? Could she rescue herself from this ignominy, from the promise of cruel degradation?
Her knees went weak; blindly, tears suddenly clouding her eyes, she grasped at the handrail, fear of the future overwhelming her, whining softly. Fear of the shame, fear of the pain, fear of the assault on her selfhood, fear of becoming disgusted with herself, as she surely must, if she submitted herself to endless indignities— grovelling in the restaurant, all but naked, Claude beating her, that dreadful little machine, and surely worse to come.
After only a short while, though, she realised something; what she felt was fear— not the desire to escape.
The hard reality of her need was unshaken; that cold, tight clenching in her belly was real fear of losing Him. She would not be denied Him; she would not. There was no crack in the certainty within her of the urgency with which she needed His attention; she felt in her bones the reality of her submission to Him; it was somehow already part of her being.
But this— this experience of shame, of vulnerability; this public exposure as a whore, as a girl who had allowed herself to be perverted, degraded, sexually humiliated, beaten, naked, in public places— it terrified her, annihilated her; it threatened her ability to be what He required her to become. What she so desperately determined the she must become - for Him.
And this was the deep source of the fear; because it was what he offered her; what she had asked for. It was all of a piece; no half measures with Him.
She could not distinguish, she saw it then; there was no difference between what she must do to achieve her poor best for him, and what it meant for her to be with Him. It was too late; however much she felt the shame, the social terror so powerful in her that it was physical, it made no difference; it might be impossible to imagine living with the appalling prospect of having no place to hide, of losing all claim to respect, but she had no choice; she must lose it all, abandon all dignity, allow herself to be made worthless.
It was fear which was disabling her, because she knew now, deep in herself, that she was not going to try to escape, that she did not want to escape. She was frightened because she had to live through this future, even knowing that it must transform her, destroy her. It wasn’t that she wanted the change, or didn’t want it; her fear of it was perfectly sensible; because she was going to walk into it; walk into Monseigneur’s world. She would be raped, and humiliated, and beaten, and degraded, she would be friendless, every person who used her an aspect of her Monseigneur’s will, everyone else a stranger. Through it all, she would work to enable his desires, to deliver herself to him, as best she could.
It didn’t even matter why, any more. All that was over. There was just the living it, now.
The fear didn’t go away, but she became able to live with it. The burning awfulness of Lauren knowing even a little of what Odile had become was no less tragic, but she could, as she must, walk again; walk carefully, walk beautifully, hold herself well. It was wonderful to have rules to cling to.
And so Odile trotted, accepting her own absolute requirement of herself that she ensure that her hands were kept, as Andrew liked them, out of her sight, flapping pathetically from limp wrists, behind and just above her hips, that she make her feet follow, one in front of the other, as if on a invisible line, so that her hips twitched and her upthrust but otherwise unfettered breasts swayed so terribly obviously. She had to attend too, to the feeling between her legs— she was shortly to present herself to Claude, in just the thin slip dress, high heels, collar and bangles. If he wished to, it was his right to investigate the state of her sex; she must try to have it hot and slick for him; she must think about last night, how turned on he had made her, slapping her there, then fingering her, then slapping her again, harder …
… to be lost in such thoughts made it devastating to encounter Mme Henri, in the lobby, with her little dog, to see the woman’s shocked and disapproving stare, her mouth tighten in a moué of disdain, when she saw Odile dressed as she was, it was indeed devastating, but at the same time there was nothing Odile could do but accept, keep moving, swallow the shame, concentrate on obeying, on performing.
It was hard, incredibly hard, to hold everything together, just walking, stepping out into the street; the obvious and needful thing to do was just stop, collapse, curl into a ball, crawl into a corner, and hide. This couldn’t continue; it was too hard, there was no let-up, He demanded too much of her, it made no sense, hurt too much, scared her too much…
Her steps faltered, slowed; weakness and lassitude washed through her, tears building in her eyes. She couldn’t do it. Not for real. It was over; she had lost everything. She couldn’t follow through. Her whole body knew one thing. It needed to hide. Hide from the shame, from the failure, from the loss of Him, from the appalling mess she had made of her life, from the cowardice, the perversion, the shame, the shame, the shame….
Except that there was Claude, in the street, leaning nonchalant against, not the limousine, but a much more modern, anonymous, black mini-van with tinted windows, and everything fell away. As with a light coming on in a darkened room, everything was still exactly the same as before, but her experience of it was transformed.
If she was worthless, meaningless, useless, disgusting— and she had proved this to be true again and again— then what right had she to any feelings? To any respect? To any self-worth? It was Him; Him. Her value, her worth, her usefulness was all in His eyes; even more so in His abuse of her. She had no rights at all to such self-pitying nonsense; she might experience those feelings, they might affect her deeply, but that didn’t mean anything, anymore; her feelings were worthless, too. She was His; she must live for Him.
For the first time, then, Odile experienced what was to become the defining characteristic of her existence, where her shame, her pathetic weakness, her neediness, became one with her Monseigneur’s requirement of her that she be an incitement to rape; she found herself not having to school herself to offer her body, but needing to, wanting to; because her only route to being anything other than worthless was through being abused. And she did; she did want to mean something to Him; once she had internalised that her only meaning to Him was as a sex-toy to abuse, then her need for meaning became a need to be abused, a deeply experience desire to be abused, to encourage it, to incute it, to advertise herself as an eager victim.
It was terrifying, and shameful, and, oh, so deeply, gloriously welcome; it ripped through her in a microsecond, leaving her electrified, quivering, simplified.
Nothing mattered but Him; in His presence— even His servant’s presence— she was nothing; nothing but need, and vulnerability. She was on a knife edge; would always be on a knife edge, must always offer herself to that knife edge— between being discarded, and being abused.
There was nothing else. It consumed her, possessed her, elevated her, defined her.
Just be cunt.
She became acutely conscious of every aspect of her body that might be of interest to Claude; those parts not of interest to him must serve her efforts to channel her abject, all-consuming need for his attention, his approval, or be ignored. Her body was all she had, all she was. So weak, so frail, so unsatisfactory, so imperfect.
But since she had nothing else, then every moment on that knife edge required her to use her body to attract his attention, in the hope of being abused.
It was pathetic, ridiculous, disgusting, weak, stupid, hopeless; she was so terribly, terribly frightened, knowing she would be hurt; that Claude was a real sexual sadist, that her Monseigneur, who had put her into the hands of this Claude, was a sexual sadist; that He wanted her weak, like this, hungry for His attention like this, so that she would accept pain from Him, hoping that He would pay attention to her while He hurt her, while she suffered for Him.
But none of this mattered; everything, everything since she had woken up had seemed at the time to be extreme, elevated, intense, full of surging and grinding emotions, but, once in Claude’s presence, it was obvious that none of it mattered, That had all been about Odile. Odile didn’t matter any more; she had failed at life. For sure, silly, hopeful, weak little Odile would need to be managed, need to manage herself; the times when she was left to her own devices would be filled with her petty concerns, her futile hopes and dreams, her fears, her shame.
But none of that would ever really matter; nothing more than stupid, pointless noise; a distraction that must be quelled, suppressed, ignored as far as possible.
What mattered was being with someone who knew what she was, how willingly vulnerable she was to abuse. In the orbit of someone like that she would be on this knife edge; someone who might abuse her, if she could be interesting enough. If she was really lucky, for a moment here and there, the abuse might take her beyond everything, take her out of herself; destroy her, free her from everything … but she could not expect that— still less demand it.
It took her, it shook her, it showed her what was real, all in a second, and her body was at once fully alive, tingling, and the effort to present herself as Monseigneur preferred ceased to be mechanical, and became her body’s purpose, thrilling, electric, deadly serious.
Claude had not looked up from his paper, but that didn’t matter; she would be ignored, mostly, it was obvious. She was of no use unless she was being abused for entertainment. Entertainment was an activity for free time, time in between things which mattered. It was obvious.
All the shame, all the fear of the social consequences of her neighbours seeing what it was that she had become, all of the ignominies of the Nadia’s treatment of her, the astonishing, shocking catalogue of events from the days before— all those were still alive in her, but were collapsed, locked away in a tight mental box as she attended to her pose, her presentation as she stood for him, in the street, making no demands of his attention, focused on becoming the softest, most alluring, most inviting offer she could become, in case he should look at her, at which point she must convey to him her humble, eager willingness to be abused. It was obvious, now, that this was everything for her, but it was hard, endlessly hard, to know how to achieve it.
This was the knife edge; it would never be easy.
How was it … what was it I was doing when Monseigneur said I was doing something right with my tongue … what, exactly?
The shame of holding her lips apart, of deliberately setting her tongue onto her lower lip, of keeping it in motion, in order to make explicit and unmissable the offer of her mouth for violent rape was real; somewhere inside her it was damaging her, degrading her, she knew, but in the moment, on the knife edge, it could not be allowed space.
He had looked up for the briefest of moments, then gone back to his reading, uninterested; it had burned her, made her tremble, but he had ignored her.
The simplicity, the certainty, the intensity of the knife edge, Odile then began to learn, was a blessing, cruel as it was, for as the minutes stretched, in the quiet street, as Claude worked his way through the paper, occasional small noises and shifts making it clear that he was absorbed by it, interested, sometimes amused, irritated at other times; as she trembled for him, her nipples, her sex, her mouth, her hips all working in service to him, as he continued to ignore her, the intensity became harder to sustain.
A paralysing despair grew in her; bile rose in her throat, her knees weakened— she could have staggered if she had not taken herself in hand. This Claude, a virtual stranger to her, knew just what dirt she was, knew how corrupted she had been, knew how quickly, how easily she had been suborned; it was certain that, soon, all too soon, he would have the use of her body; had promised to be cruel and heartless in his use of her, and she knew already that she would be unable to do anything but submit without reserve.
He cannot but despise me. He knows just how dirty I am; lower than the worst junkie street whore; A degraded slut.
I allowed him— encouraged him— to treat me worse that you would treat an animal. I proved myself depraved, perverse beyond anything, by working myself to orgasm for him in the most degrading way.
All her thoughts in the night, everything with Nadia in her room— these were nothing beside what this man knew about her through his own hands, eyes, and ears.
The worthlessness rose in her, then. Beneath contempt. Beyond saving. Despair and shame took her, threatened to utterly demolish her, so that it was all she could do to keep standing, eyes lowered, to wait, to offer herself, to hold herself on the knife edge, not to fall, not to fail, not to be discarded.
The previous night, dragged out into the cold night by the uniformed doorman, her spirits had lifted at the sight of Claude. Now, feeling as if she might as well be naked, in the public street in a dress that was little more than underwear, collared and cuffed, devastated by crushing shame, she felt her whole being crying out for the smallest acknowledgement from him of her existence, of her having some value.
But there was nothing, no sign at all from him that he was aware of her presence, or interested in it.
It was quickly terrible, and rapidly worse; the need building the despair, the despair fuelling the need, the terrible vulnerability of her position, and all the time fighting to maintain her posture, the position of her hands, ready to smile, to simper, to giggle for him— to fall to her knees and kiss his feet should he want it, she thinks; to suck his cock in the public street— anything, if only he would give her some little sign that she was more than dirt to him.
He turned the page of the newspaper without looking up. Bleak, Odile made herself wait, understanding that this, too would be a part of her life from now on.
She had to go through it all again; was nothing; less than nothing, and so she would be routinely disregarded, ignored, abandoned, but unable to abandon herself; condemned to endure, to pay attention, to consider Monseigneur’s requirements of her, without the slightest, simplest choice, beyond her presentation of herself as sexually available.
In her torment, without an idea, in her suffering, in her self disgust, in her ignominy, she allowed some insubstantial half feeling to take her then, and discovered, something; half discovered, at least; for she did not understand then, or for some while afterward, just exactly what she had done, so strange and perverse was it.
Her yearning, despairing neediness, the claustrophobic certainty that her only hope of attention was to be violently used for sex, the intensity of it forced its way through some remaining resistance in her mind, until, the realisation came to her; she wanted it, really wanted it; I want Claude to rape me, she knew then; and not at some point in the future; but now, right now.
It was frightening to be possessed by that desire but also liberating; a resolution of it all; she just had to let this defeat, too, become part of her, accept it, give up on herself, abandon all pretence at dignity, self respect, and let herself feel it, right at the heart of her, concentrate on it, encourage it— the desire to be brutally taken: she was breathless with it, transfixed, trembling with it, and she let it take her.
She had found a way back to the knife edge.
Whether by coincidence or not, right then, it seemed to her that this acceptance of possession by such a dark desire had earned an immediate reward— for Claude shifted, looked up, folded his paper and looked at her, really looked at her (she did not dare look up herself, but she knew it from his body language; he was looking at her), and she felt her body respond, automatic; her shoulders pulled back a little, her breasts lifting, nipples tightening, her lips parting, her tongue tip at her dry lips, the flush of warmth in her groin, her hips shifting— all for him, wanting his strong hands on her, anticipating pain, violence, rough handling— fear and shame, too— feeling herself wanting it, her whole body yearning to be taken out of itself through sexual abuse.
I am becoming a nymphomaniac she realised; so lost and degraded that it is becoming embedded in me that only through being used for another’s pleasure— no matter how perverted— can my existence find meaning.
And there was no resistance in her to this thought, but only wonder, almost delight. Because this, surely, was what Monseigneur wanted of her?
“My my, pretty; less than forty eight hours, and he’s made a desperate, eager whore of you.”
He was grinning at her, she knew, with that casual cool of his, but, God help her she was blushing, feeling soft, stupid pleasure burst in her chest, her hips, unbidden, doing an excited little shimmy of relief, experiencing it as a compliment.
I am so lost — the thought came to her.
And she gave herself to it, gave herself to weakness, to being controlled, to being helplessly needy, easy, gave herself up for disgrace, let it happen, found it pleasurable, gratitude flooding her.
And then her voice said it, small, breathy, full of fear and vulnerability, but the words sounding clear enough in the quiet; sincere and needy;
“Please … please, Sir. Please … please rape me.”
And she wanted to die and she wanted the street under her to open up and swallow her … but mostly; mostly, she wanted him to rape her, was doing everything she could to signal to him her neediness, her eagerness, and when he stepped toward her, and put his hand between her legs— the slip so short that he could do this directly— when his fingers; three of them, bunched, penetrated her directly, her heat, her wetness, her shifting to make it easy for him to push into her tightness, the softness of her squeak, the way she let her mouth fall open, lifted her hands back and apart, the way her breasts swayed— all this and more; the jerk of her hips, her trembling low moan as he investigated her, when this, when all of it was obvious between them, it was undeniable that she was his for the taking; that her whole being was dedicated to encouraging him to do just as he willed with her.
“The little slut is just begging to be ruined, isn’t she?”
Nadia’s voice, behind her— how had she not heard her approach? The shock and shame of it had to be absorbed, contained, though; couldn’t be allowed to matter; for Claude was pulling his fingers out from her sex and she must let him see just how deeply he had affected her, how grateful she was, and yes; yes, in response to a vague movement of his hand, the slightest lift, she must understand that he wanted her to clean his fingers with her mouth, must bend at the waist, hands up, expressive of their uselessness, and softly lick at his fingers, let him push, push them, then, deep into her mouth, so that her throat convulsed, must suppress that convulsion, must attend as best she could with her tongue to her task, must hold herself open to let Nadia’s hands, now at her crotch, to once more install the hateful device into her pussy.
They were so casual, so matter of fact, so direct in using her like this in the public street; her mouth and sex both invaded at the same time, and she, Odile, she was so pathetically, weakly servile. The meaning of they’re all going to be fucking me — that phrase which had run through her head the previous evening, which she had found herself blurting out, repeating, became real for Odile at that moment, not just words— she felt it in her body, and her knees finally did give way. Claude caught her without effort, Nadia slid the side door open and she was unceremoniously bundled inside, a a crumpled heap, trembling; mind empty, fuddled, her hips still working as the machine inside her went through some random sequence; shocking and buzzing and jerking.
Truly, a nothing.
