Read the earlier parts of Sophia’s story before this.
The next days were, truly, terrible for Sophia; the worst in her life— the judgement sometimes tested, but never overturned— no matter what new degradations had been imposed on her, awful as they might be. None of them— nothing, she is convinced— will ever be as hard as surviving those days.
Because she was alone.
The condition of cunt is a relationship, not a fact. Unless there is someone to be cunt ‘for’, the word turns out not to mean anything. And yet, during those terrible days, all that Sophia could do was to orbit around the idea of herself as ‘cunt’.
For, whatever else he had shown her, in less than a day, it was that she was not who she had thought she was, and the only simple way of describing what she really was that she could find was the word he had given her, was ‘cunt’.
Horrible, brutal, shaming, violent and dehumanising as the word was, it was powerful. It changed her, every time she used it of herself. It helped her; made her honest with herself about what had happened, about her part in it. It frightened and hurt and shamed her— and she needed that, too, because if she let herself become cunt; if she let him guide and push her into making herself a cunt for him— for them, for his gang, then her life would become fear and pain and shame, all centred on her cunt, on her holes, on being fucked as cunt. She would increasingly become defined by the word.
I will be nothing but cunt.
She made herself use the word because she knew she needed to; it forced her to pay attention to that reality, to accept how awful it would be; to accept how far that future was from anything she had ever imagined for herself, to face up to how tragic, how small, how pathetic it would be, to make herself into nothing more than a whore for a gang of sick degenerates.
But without his presence, the relationship in the word— the implicit question; ‘cunt for whom?’— had no answer. The word became an orbit around nothing; a symbol for her loss of connection, not for any new meaning. Made it clear that he had weakened all her relationships to the world, left her existence untethered, unmoored, disconnected from any reality.
Reality for cunt, of course— as he had used the word— that reality would have a very narrow meaning— being fucked, being treated as less than human, being hurt. An unthinkable existence.
But if I don’t want to let him make me into cunt, what is left?
It went round and round in her head, hour after hour, day after day. She tried to use other words— softer, more nuanced, more specific, but none of them stuck; all of the seemed like hiding from the reality he had forced her to face;
The reality is, like it or not, that that word is the simplest, most accurate word for me; I am cunt.
But it turned out that knowing she was cunt, telling herself she was cunt, to be unable to escape from the certainty that she was cunt, feeling like cunt— all that, but without there being anyone who even cared if she was cunt, was to feel unutterably lost, confused, permanently dismayed.
The awfulness was not static, either, not at all— far from being an endless parade of identical misery, each new day, sometimes each new hour, brought fresh troubles, wildly different emotions, fresh despair, harder realisations, crueller enforced acceptances.
Thinking back to that day, as she waited to hear from him (not that this was particularly unusual— she had had to accept, early on in their strange not a relationship, that he had other interesting choices as to how to spend his time; and other girls, too— he had been explicit about that— which meant that she could only ever hope for him to choose to have her, never for her to have him; that it was always he who would decide when to make contact, not her), looking back at that terrible, traumatic day, she discovered that her feelings about what he had done to her would change, markedly, as the hours and the days stretched out, relentlessly requiring her to live, to be in the world, to respond to it, even though she had lost all meaning.
It had been almost impossible, in the days immediately afterward, to let herself recall— let alone make herself relive— even small parts of that kaleidoscope of intensities; wild emotions, fearful physical violations, horrible pain, desperate, soul-destroying shame, astonishing moments of transcendence— so many clashing, warring thoughts and feelings— everything was simply too raw for her to cope with even a little of the reality of it.
In those first days there was nothing in her head apart from the all-encompassing knowledge that she had been wrecked; ruined, destroyed. That her life had been broken by him, by her collusion with him; that it could only be a matter of time before despair overtook her, and she would have to end herself, in hope of escaping from the pain, from the shame, from the revelations of that night.
For what possessed her was an enormity— in the face of which no details mattered in the slightest. Because what that day had enforced upon her, seared into her soul at the deepest level, was that she was not a valid person; that her pathetic, stupid assumption— naively adopted in her adolescence, adopted when the change had come upon her, when everything had become strange and confusing, when everyone else seemed so certain, so assured, when she had had no idea how she was supposed to be, still less how to become a distinctive someone — that almost desperate assumption of the story that everyone else seemed to believe.
But on that astonishing, astounding, reality-defying day, she had been forced by him to accept that her assumption of all those apparently obvious normalities had been a weak and silly, mind-numbingly shameful failure.
To see that her adolescent self had just adopted, without any real thought, the idea that she was as deserving as anyone else of a normal life, of happiness, of a relationship, of access to everyday enjoyments, that doing her best to ‘act normal’, to learn the tricks and modes which made her most like the people she aspired to be, that everything would then somehow, magically work itself out, if only she kept on doing what she was supposed to, what everyone else seemed to be doing.
She had been made to see that all those safe, thoughtless assumptions— and everything which depended upon them— were unavailable to her, never had been real possibilities; that she had assumed she could have things which she could never have. Could not achieve; was not even sure, anymore, whether she had ever wanted.
The detail didn’t matter because it had been taken from her, all of it.
Not taken from her— because it was all still there— all her little ‘competent person’, ‘nice person’, ‘well-mannered person’, ‘neat and attractive person’, ‘kind and thoughtful person’, ‘decent and respectable person’, ‘assiduous and ambitious worker person’, ‘well-informed and culturally aware person’ habits— all of those were still part of her fabric— so it was not so much that anything had been taken from her …
Except one thing; one thing he had exposed, which she could never forget— that none of it meant anything to who she really was. That it was all an act— an assumed personality, not an authentic life. He had not ripped anything from her, but had simply, through his guidance of her, his demands of her, his enforcement of his desires onto her on the basis of her consents— simply shown her that she, Sophia, was nothing.
Nothing, at least, but her body and her feelings. That whatever all that other stuff was, it was not hers, it was not her. Despite all her habits, she no rights to any of those things that normal people expected.
Because she was not normal, was not a nice, decent, respectable person, not a conscientious worker, a kind friend, not interested in current affairs. Not really. Not at all.
She was an empty hole of nothingness which need to be filled; which was needy and desperate at all times. At all times. Insatiable; not only for sex, but for the meaning which being sexually used conferred upon her, however temporarily.
In those days, those terrible days, she would stand in her room, so carefully put together as an expression of Sophia, of who she had thought she was; who she had pretended to be, hoped to be, acted as if she was— the pretty silks over the lamps, the framed pictures, the treasured memories attached to litte objects she kept around her, the careful colours, the wardrobe of judiciously chosen clothes, the small collection of jewellery, the products, the accessories; all of it, and she knew that it was not hers. Not any more, at least. Those things were not hers, and they were not her, either.
I am nothing.
The feeling would build in her; terror, despair, need, until, in agony, she would rip her clothes from her, and force herself to the mirror, hold her breasts up, push them up and out, hurting herself, to show herself the pins she had not removed, two in each nipple, at either side; would put her hand under her knee and lift it high, balancing on one foot, to show herself the pins in her sex— the two in each of her outer labia; the cruel pins which she so desperately wanted to remove, but somehow could not.
All six pins still in her were showing dark red rims where they pierced her flesh. She had scrubbed at them until she bled, had applied surgical spirit left over from when her ears had been pierced, but they were sore and inflamed, and getting worse. But she would not; could not, take them out.
This is all there is.
The cunt.
The fuckhole.
Using the nastiest words and images she could, in her despair.
At other times, the pendulum would swing the other way, and she would work, almost obsessively, to rebuild the old Sophia from the exact same roster of trinkets and habits, and memories and achievements which, only an hour previously, she had seen for the hollow, meaningless, embarrassing shams they were. She would revile the Sophia of that day with Duncan as a skank and a whore and a degenerate, and swear to herself that that side of her must be excommunicated, expelled, suppressed, excised. She would tell herself with great conviction that she must be prepared to wall herself up in a straitjacket of conformity and relentless, severe ordinariness if she were to survive, ever to be normal again.
As the days wore on, though, the oscillation between these two extremes (of which the nothingness story would always recur, always more convincing, more obviously a match for her deepest feelings, her deepest urges) — the constant mood swings— became more and more painful, more exhausting. impossible to sustain, and she all but collapsed; a deep lassitude overcame her, and she took several days off work, hid in her room, under the covers for much of the time, too worn down to inhabit either position with any intensity, fading into depression, only one thought sustaining her; that Duncan would come for her.
And from this reality; that she, by herself, could find nothing, nothing at all to sustain her through her pain, her shame, her despair at the trauma that he had triggered; the reality that it was him, and him alone, who seemed to hold the key to her release, to her once more beginning to live, to her avoiding the spiral of despair to which the only believable end seemed to be suicide; from this reality grew the strangest conclusion.
That her day of submission, of debauch and degradation, of rape and shame, was in fact a day of revelation. Tough, traumatic, terrifying; dangerous of course, but a day of intense living— in fact the resolution of her soul-shredding extremes; that she was not nothing, even if she was not Sophia.
This made sense, too, of the strange reality— that despite what he had done to her; despite the cruelty, the mental and physical abuse, the terrible pain, the violence of his treatment of her, she could not be angry with him.
Certainly, her feelings for him had changed. Even though she had never felt those feelings for Duncan that she had had (or imagined herself to have had) for Adrian, she had at times decided that she loved Duncan.
No more; for how could anyone love a man who had done such terrible things to her, who had been so callous, so brutal, so perfectly, intentionally disrespectful? No, she did not love Duncan; she never had. Previously, she might have been infatuated, in-lust, obsessed by him, certainly.
But all that had passed too. It took time, but at one point she was simply able to access a new thought, without having consciously worked for it; Duncan possessed her; every part of her was his. He had remade her; she could no more hate him than she could hate fate. It was simply so; he had power over her, which she respected. There, it was, fully formed in her mind; Duncan had rights over her, over her body, over her mind. Her feelings for him were unimportant, beside this reality.
That through his possession of her, she could be something. That she could be what he had repeatedly called her, that she could be what she had called herself, in her misery.
She could be cunt. His cunt.
She could be good cunt; pretty cunt; ‘remarkable’ cunt, even (He said I was remarkable). Cunt that got fucked— got fucked a lot; cunt which invited fucking, which was eager for fucking. Cunt that accepted the pain, the shame, the dehumanisation. Cunt that inhabited those realities; cunt that was defined by them, cunt which consisted of nothing more than a body and its feelings. Cunt which inhabited that despair which was her inescapable lot; that she was a failed human being, but cunt that nevertheless had some small meaning, had intensity. Cunt that got fucked.
It would take her, this crazy thinking, and exalt her. It terrified her, too, but this was somehow part of it.
In order to be cunt; just cunt, she would need to be terrified, beaten, degraded— they must do it to her, she saw, in her madness. For if she was not constantly reminded of her status, then all the old, fake habits would reassert themselves, would demand to be paid lip service to.
Which was impossible, inadmissible; for, in her semi-conscious way, Sophia understood that it was the tension between herself as cunt, and herself as Sophia the normal girl, which had been tearing her apart, leading her inexorable towards self-immolation.
If she was going to be with him at all, she must be cunt. If she was going to be cunt, she could not pretend, half the time, to be Sophia— the old Sophia— that way would rapidly lead to utter destruction.
And when she was thinking like that— which could often not be sustained for long, so highly strung was she, so full of fear, shocking sexual tremors running through her, all too conscious of the insanity, the immensity of the risk of such a choice, feeling all its terrors working in her, knowing, inside herself— never mind his warning about it being hard to get herself out once she had made certain choices, that she could feel it in her gut, deep and certain, horrifying (horrifying, but also, and increasingly as time passed, more and more fascinating); when she was thinking that way, she could let herself remember that day of revelation.
And once she let the floodgates open, it would indeed flood her, floor her, demolish her with the power that had been unleashed by him on her, once she had let him know that he could use her. Once she had let him see that a large part of her wanted him to use her, and use her hard.
Each time she got into that state, without shutting own, without the whole cycle starting up again, without succumbing to the self-hating Sophia (the terrible self-lacerating cycle which led to complete exhaustion), if she could manage to stay with it, stay with how it had really been, that astonishing day with Duncan, she discovered that it became more and more apparent how incredible the experiences had been; how liberating, how complete unto themselves, how free from anything apart from what it meant to be her, the cunt, and him, the abuser who knew just how to keep her honest, how to deny her any recourse to habit, to comfortable untruths, to ‘proper behaviour’. Who knew how to help her live that reality. The reality of Sophia as cunt; fuckable cunt, cunt being hurt for fun, cunt being fucked, cunt asking to be fucked, cunt asking to be hurt, cunt being destroyed, only to discover that letting itself be degraded helped it to be better, more fuckable cunt.
It was madness— she knew it was madness.
But then, so what? Self-hating Sophia was already half mad, and would end up killing herself, it felt inevitable. Just keep pretending Sophia would not really be alive, even if it were posible to hold herself together, to suppress the powerful and urgent needs and desires of Sophia the cunt.
Her heart would beat very fast then, and she would tremble, feel her knees go weak; often sink into a chair, or down onto her knees, her eyes unfocused, as she let herself become possessed of the knowledge that she was going to let him control her; just as he had said she would.
That she was going to help him, and his group of mysterious awful strangers, help them turn her into cunt.
She told herself;
At least … at least I’m going to give it a try… See how it feels. I’ll be cunt. I’ll be their cunt.
Knowing, deep inside her, that once started they were going to get her; that she was weak and needy, and naive, while they were greedy, manipulative and cynically experienced.
Knowing that she was going to lose herself; that she was going to lose everything. Apart from that aspect of her which was defined by the word; cunt.
And she would feel— at least for a short time— she would feel at peace. Not complete peace though; for increasingly, the outcome of such thinking was also a deep hunger, centred in her belly; the need to be ruthlessly fucked.
I’m becoming a nymphomaniac; fixated on the need to be fucked. And I’m not fighting it. No… No; not at all… I … I’m looking forward to it; to being lost in sexual need, so that I have to show my neediness to everyone, so that I get fucked … fucked hard; fucked extra-hard… get myself raped, even … Oh Jesus…
Then the peace would be quickly overtaken by lust, by hard need for intensity, in which her hands were a poor substitute for Duncan’s cock, but the only accessible means without him, and she would be masturbating, working herself towards orgasm.
But when they came, those climaxes, they were not the same as they had been before, when she had caressed herself for simple relief of a mainly physical urge.
What went through her head as she worked herself, urgently, increasingly roughly, even deliberately pushing at the pins in her sex and her nipples so that they hurt her, bringing tears to her eyes even as tremors made her hips thrust, her pelvis jolt as if electrified, all sorts of terrible things would be in her mind; Duncan’s violence as he had used her … in my cunt, in my throat, in my rear … the shameful, painful orgasm she had suffered at his hands, the searing memory of how it had been to stand, naked, in the corridor of the pub, and let him push a steel pin into her clitoris…
I will never have another ‘normal’ orgasm again; or if I do, it will be a disappointment, in any case, now that I know how it can be when the sex is properly intense— both physically and emotionally— violent, rough, degrading; when I’m hurting, when I know it’s rape, when I feel dirtied, shamed, when my pleasure is not the point. I’ve been changed; couldn’t go back if I wanted to. But I don’t want to, anyway; I need to live, need to feel … feel … this … this! … A! AAAAh! Aaaaaaack! Akk! A-a-a-aaahh…
Thus, Sophia had answered, simply;
“Yes”, when the ‘phone rang at work one morning.
She had been sitting, possessed by these thoughts, staring into space when it sounded; she had had to shake herself and make herself breathe again, in order to refocus, to be able to pick it up, to be ready to speak.
When an unknown woman’s voice, steady and rich-toned and certain said;
“Duncan has told us about you. About how easy you are, how ripe, how compliant. You will meet me at Hotel __, tomorrow at noon; do you understand?”, she had been thrown into utter confusion for a long moment, during which something had welled up in her, something powerful; both liberating and undoing her, so that her voice was filled with emotion when she said the obvious, the wonderful, the terrifying thing, when she had said;
“Yes.”
“Very good. You will wear very little— a tiny summer dress, high heels, no bag, just your keys and your phone. Do you understand?”
And again, Sophia had simply, straightforwardly answered, and now the emotion had resolved itself into equal parts immense and unlooked for relief and intense nervousness, made her voice husky, vibrant;
“Yes … Yes, thank you.”
“That will be ’Yes, Madam’ to you, slut. Do you understand?”
The tone was as steady and even as ever; it was a simple, unemotional assertion of an inevitable and obvious reality, not a request or even a command.
“Yes … Madam.”
And the line went dead.
The feeling of blessed relief lasted all of five wonderful minutes, before the fears set in…
