There are two very early story fragments on this site (sketch1, sketch2)— described by me at the time as ‘sketches at a version of the Story of O— without the coercion.’
Despite their sketchy nature and lack of resolution, these have been consistently popular— the second of them being in the top 30 most popular stories on the site. I never could see a way to bring those sketches into a viable storyline, and have instead made various other attempts at versions of the O story over the years (1,2,3). These have been more or less successful in their own right as stories (you’ll be the judge of that), but each has, as stories do, taken on a life of its own, and diverged from the path I was wanting to explore in those early sketches.
For some reason, over the past weeks, I have found a way forward from my early false start (not that it is particularly creative, or needed any cleverness— it just happened), and this new episode follows on directly. Careful readers who go back to the beginning will notice that the plot is inconsistent between those first two pieces, and that will probably not get fixed. However, I have made revisions to Sketch 2 which should flow reasonably well into this new piece, including giving S a name— Sophia.
Picture: Sophia, not breathing
Sophia had stopped breathing again, halfway through his astonishing, appalling speech.
She had no wish to start again, honestly; did not want to acknowledge what was happening. Did not really want to live in a world where she had to seriously contemplate a choice between, on the one hand, abandoning— or being abandoned by— him or on the other being enslaved, whipped and branded like a farm animal by a gang of cruel strangers. Perhaps fainting— dying, even— might be the best way out.
Reading the book had been hard enough; sitting with her thoughts whirring, asking herself a million versions of the questions; Why does he want me to read this? What does he want from me? — the questions which had burst from her earlier.
But his disavowal of any desire to take her to the place in the book, to Roissy, to train her, turn her into a slave, now took on another slant.
He was saying that while he— they— certainly would enjoy doing such things to her, that there would be no dungeons, no entrapment, no kidnapping. What they wanted was for her to ask them, step by step, to assist her in turning herself into a sex-slave.
There seemed no way out; she could not breathe, because then she’d have to deal with the impossible, the untenable, and she couldn’t deal with it, couldn’t possibly, so she that she simply could not allow herself to breathe, and so she’d die, perhaps and …
… and then ordinariness intervened; the toasted cheese sandwiches arrived, and the tea, a bathetic ‘deus-ex-machina’, and she was inhaling rapidly, desperately forcing herself to make a smile, however artificial, at the waiter, a young man who looked at her breasts thinking she wouldn’t notice, and, just like that, she was back in the real world, where there were no sex slaves, no-one normal was ever whipped, and people ate toasted cheese sandwiches and drank strong tea after an invigorating country walk.
Except, of course, that she had just learned that there were sex slaves, and that she, Sophia Monroe, 24 years old, of otherwise normal experience, was being asked to set herself on the road to becoming one, with the prospect of being savagely whipped, of having red-hot steel pressed into her tender flesh, that she was being asked by the charming, delightful man opposite her, whom she had come to rely so completely on, to revere, almost, even if she were not permitted to even talk of love, was being asked by him to consider that as a possible future.
She looked up at last, to see him looking straight at her, with full if relaxed attention, letting her see that he has been interested by her distress, smiling at her with his eyes, almost as if she had been getting herself into a state over nothing, sharing her awareness of the jarring disconnect between their conversation and the mundanity of the arrival of the tea things, and somehow she could not help but give in to him, half smiling, half crying as she did so, for in that second, that acknowledgement to him of the intimacy of their connection, everything became true.
She was committed to him, would meet his sinister group. The reality that he was a sexual sadist with wide and deep experience, that he saw her as someone who could become as a slave to be held in common by all of them, to become less than human, to use his exact words— that reality was now alive between them, acknowledged, without him having been offered even the slightest challenge by her.
Something stirred in her belly, deep; something that had her pulse racing, a pulse beating in her groin and at her neck. He wants to make me a sex slave. He wahts to whip me, and share me with others like him, strangers to me, who will all abuse me. He wants to burn me with red hot irons, mark me for life; and I … what have I said about this? That I will meet the others who are committed to doing this to me, so that I can beg them to help me become a slave.
Why am I not screaming at him? Why do I smile at him? Why do I move for him, to set my breasts moving, to attract his eyes? Why do I have this feeling between my legs,? Why do I want him to take me upstairs and fuck me? Am I crazy? Am I, really, as he says, more than ripe for such treatment?
She felt her heart breaking a little as these realisations sank in, knew herself to be smaller than she had been— which, God alone knew, was already small enough when she was with him, and suddenly she stopped, wincing with the pain of it, the shame of it, the terror of it.
It was too hard! Too sad!
She had known, known from very early on that he was not whole, that alongside his genuine, deep calmness, his real if firm kindness, his sharp but gently teasing sense of humour, his physical kindness, his cool intelligence— that alongside all these was a deep hurt, a twist inside him; she had known it and loved the hurt in him along with the rest of him, even though, rather quickly, she had had to accept that she would not be the one to heal him. She had learned it in bed with him, too; his hard streak, his enforced demands of her body and her mind, and she had accepted those too, accepted it all, had found herself quickly consumed by the fact that, when it became tacitly clear between the two of them that she knew of his pain, his inner fractures, he had not shied away from her. Nor had he done what she had feared, had not let loose upon her his pain, or used her as a source of energy.
The opposite, in fact— he had been the one giving to her, giving everything. Even in bed, where she could sometimes feel the roaring hunger in him, he had controlled his needs, the better to to unleash hers, to show her how much more she could expect from sex, how she could be free to express her own twists and tears, to feed herself from him.
But now! Now, he had shown her how little she had really understood, how much deeper and darker the world was than she had ever dreamt. And he had offered her a chance to walk into darkness with him.
No, not with him, but for him. Not even him alone, but these mysterious others— each of them also ‘sick’ as he had himself described them.
Oh, how much she wanted again to be the girl she had been only a week before, before she had offered him ‘anything’, offered herself so sincerely, meaning it, wanting him to ask something difficult of her, something that she would have to work at, to suffer to give him, as some small token of her gratitude for all he had given her.
It was pathetic. She had thought herself so grown-up, so mature, being so entwined with this complex, damaged, kind and generous older man. But today, in just ten minutes, he had— without any overt cruelty— opened her eyes to the fact that she was just a child, a little girl.
A little girl faced with a choice she couldn’t make, didn’t want to make, bitterly regretted having offered herself up for.
She would not cry, would not let herself cry; he hated crying. She couldn’t hide the tears, though, even as she tried to blink them back. He liked tears anyway— tears are silent, passive, undemanding, but still expressive— and beautiful, too, he would say, while crying , wailing, these are demands that the world takes pity— noises designed to cause distress in the minds of those who hear; control your crying, and you may let the tears flow as you please.
And so she controlled herself when, suddenly possessed of an urgent need to look at him, to see how he was looking at her, to tell him something of how she had been affected by their conversation, she raised her head and faced him, to find him almost dreamy, so absorbed did he appear to be in watching her.
When she made to speak, he raised a finger, unemphatically, toward his lips, and she silenced herself, stilled herself, letting him look at her, breathless again at the otherworldliness of it; how this homely country pub, so blowsy and naive, could be the venue for such intense and bizarre emotionality; waiting, waiting for him, giving the moment to him.
And then, as she waited, as she realised later that night, alone in bed, feeling as if she would never sleep again, such was the boiling press of thoughts, emotions, speculations, fears, excitements, questions, urges that possessed her in such rapid and random succession and so thoroughly that she had almost lost any sense of herself— realised that, in that moment, her decision had somehow been made for her; not by herself, nor by him, but somehow become obvious, fixed, immutable, beyond challenge, ordained.
Even though she had not felt it at the time, it was clear to her later, that that had been the moment, when she had known herself in the presence of a being in comparison to whom she was just a toy; for whom she had the great honour of being interesting as a toy, and that every sacrifice was worth it to retain that interest.
“You will never be this child again …” he had said.
“… this fragile, innocent child, on the brink of a great, dark precipice, considering whether to sacrifice your fragility, your beauty, your small but precious meaning to the sharp rocks, the terrible depths, the rushing torrent, the bruising shocks, the grievous insults, the inevitable end.”
And indeed a great terror grew in her then, transfixed her; her tears dried, her heart seemed to lose all rhythm, her whole body trembling as he seemed almost to be looking through her, until he focused again, and smiled at her, mildly;
“Will you take off your sweater now?”
Her mouth worked, sounds came out, and she heard herself say;
“But … I have no bra on under the slip, it … it’s so thin …”
Pathetic ninny she chastised herself, silently, vicious with herself— to be so petit-bourgeois at such a moment…
“Lovely girl, your existence from now on is all shame. You will offer yourself up for disrespect, and since shame accrues from the acceptance of disrespect, your shame will be doubled, since you will have brought the disrespect upon yourself. The potboy will see your nipples, see the curves of your breasts almost as if you were naked. You will feel it. You will feel weak, and vulnerable. You will know that you have invited disrespect, that you deserve disrespect, and you will be the weaker for it.”
“Weak, shamed, knowing that you deserve disrespect for having voluntarily made your sexual availability obvious, you will seek safety among we who know how it is with you, who understand your vulnerability; you will need us, even though you know that our acceptance is conditional, always conditional upon you offering us new vulnerabilities.”
He sat back then, paused, his whole demeanour suddenly much more normal, casual, matter of fact;
“Unless, that is, you make the sensible choice and walk over to the bar, now, and ask them to call you a cab. It won’t even take that, you know— you can ask me and I will do it for you— rescue you from this craziness; I will be very happy indeed to order you a cab. It will not be a goodbye, either— I am your friend, I am your lover, even, should you want that. Nothing has to change; not immediately, at least; you are free to choose— without consequence.”
“And honestly, as your friend, and more, I will be nothing but happy for you should you pull back from the brink, should you choose light, and health, and the dignity available in an ordinary life. There is no requirement, no pressure, no threat, no immediate cost, to saying No, thank you. Not now— and even in the future, no matter what happens now— whether or not you pull off your sweater and let everyone see that you are displaying your lush breasts for me— you will always be free to change your mind, come to your senses, always have my goodwill and support.”
“But you should know, that, if you are weak, if you do ask me, ask us, to take some control, however small, over your life, your body, your dignity, then there will be certain stages, certain— diminishments— along the way; diminishments, damages, destructions of self-worth, which will prove hard, if not impossible to recover from.”
“This is not a game, not a bit of fun on the wild side, not a little experiment with kinkiness; there are real and immediate costs to every step along the pathway; costs that you will pay from your psyche, from your body, from your soul. Debts to yourself that you will incur, which will be increasingly hard to even imagine repaying.”
“I would very much like you to take your sweater off now, and to prevent yourself from minimising how vulnerable you will feel in your thin slip— paradoxically, for a slavegirl, modesty is a habit that she finds herself at war with— for there is dignity in immodesty, if one has been denied the petty dignity of cloaking one’s sexuality.”
“But I am talking too much. This is interesting. In the past, I have been a much more ruthless procurer of girls like yourself, but here I am, deliberately frightening you. I wonder, is this because I am jaded— bored, wanting to increase the jeopardy of this moment, just to feel the intensity of it? Or am I becoming soft— hoping, at least in part, that you will escape— even though I am convinced— certain indeed, that you are exactly the kind of girl who will find it impossible not to take at least the first few steps towards her own debasement.”
She would never know, since it was never again her place to ask her own questions, and he never again talked to her so openly, whether this strange and disturbing speech had been part of his ‘handling’ of her, or whether he had genuinely experienced a period of uncertainty as to what he wanted.
In a serious sense it didn’t matter, since the decision had already been made for her (she never knew quite how, just that it had been, and that it was unarguable), and, as he had told her, once she had offered herself up for diminishment, making the choice to live alone, to be solely responsible for her own self worth became immediately more challenging with each step, while, in parallel, one became more and more reliant upon the relief from responsibility that being increasingly controlled and powerless gave.
In any case, something moved inside her, something determined and powerful, which had her sitting up straight, intuitively realising the meaning of his little disquisition on modesty, which had been so confusing in words, as she lifted the heavy, chunky knit sweater over her head, to reveal the slinky silk slip, so low cut, almost translucent, the spaghetti straps of the halter-neck tied in a pretty soft bow at her neck, her nipples stiff with the sudden sexual tension of the moment, her breath coming shallow, rapid, as she experienced just what he had predicted— a rush of shame that demanded that she do everything she could to encourage his approval of her, since she had made herself so vulnerable.
Her heart was racing, she knew that she was blushing crazily, that when she felt like this the flush extended to her chest and the upper slopes of her breasts, that all this would be obvious. She felt light headed, her sex was made of need, the whole of her became need, in fact; need for him, trembling and quivering with it, feeling unbearably fragile, so that when he said;
“If you ask me to take you upstairs now, I will hurt you and fill you with shame,” she became light-headed, as if starved of air. He was ripping her brain apart! He should just take her; she wanted it, whatever it was that he had for her, she would let him do, but to make her ask for it, make her ask to be hurt and shamed!
Picture: Sophia, in her slip
And anyway, she had left it too late; the silence had become painful now— except that he … he looked completely relaxed— watching her with only casual interest, it seemed— no sign of sexual aggression or even much care about the outcome of her turmoil; tolerant, entertained, apparently more interested in the fact of her emotion than in the outcome of it, until again, her body took control of her mouth, and said what needed to be said;
“Yes. Yes please. Hurt me and … hurt me and shame me, please.”
After which, it all went rather fast.
Read the next part of Sophia’s Story.
