Read the earlier parts of Sophia’s story before this.
The thought had come to her; fanciful, foolish, ridiculously inappropriate, given who and what she was offering herself up to, but had immediately taken a hold of her, and she had let it run because, stupid as it was, it gave her a warm, soft feeling, allowed her to be kind to herself; pathetically welcome, when she was preparing herself for cruelty.
The thought was that this submission to Duncan’s group of sadists was the closest thing she was likely to achieve to a marriage, and that she should take some holiday in the few days left to her, and pamper herself, as a bride might do in the run up to her wedding day.
It was much easier to manage the constant underlying agitation when she was not at work, when her time was her own— when she could be doing something which was in service of Duncan’s plan for her. The time, too, allowed her to say goodbye to herself; she visited some places Sophia had felt were special, and found them mostly sad; the memories insubstantial; this helped her realise that, momentous as it seemed to be readying herself to give away all her human rights to a gang of self-identified abusers, that she was not in truth giving away so much. Everything she thought of was in fact insubstantial, dull, sad. Even all her things in her room seemed strange, pointless to her now.
The intensity of her day with him, shocking and frightening as it had been, and the book itself, cruel and heartless as it was, had opened up possibilities in her mind which, crazy or not, promised so much more than she had ever had; so much more intensity, so much more experience, excitement. So much more sex, to be honest.
She would look at herself in the mirror, and discover that she needed to be naked; if she had clothes on that she would soon find it necessary to remove them. She would hurt herself with the pins, but not savagely, angrily, desperately, as before, but slowly, carefully, consciously looking for the pain, watching, waiting for the ways in which the hurt took her, paying attention to her body, her face as she pulled and twisted, as she hit a nerve and really made it bite, telling herself that she would need to learn to take pain beautifully, that she was going to be hurt often, and with uncaring, greedy cruelty; she had best know herself in this respect; she had best learn about pain.
She knew that this kind of thinking was crazy, on some level, but in truth, it was all part of the dream of preparation, somehow magical, almost sweet in its sadness, even the fear— the certainty of pain and shame somehow part of the dream, and she found herself going with it, letting it flow through her, be part of her.
I will live in fear and pain and shame. And I will be raped often. Violently raped; in my mouth and backside as well as my pussy. I’ll be whipped. Across my breasts and between my legs as well as on the back and behind. I’ll be branded and tattooed and pierced.
It was like a sick mantra; she said it over and over, wondering at herself, at the hollow, excited feelings the words brought on for her; how strange it was that they calmed her— or at least made sense of her, so that she could live with the apprehension.
Unlike before, she did not masturbate. Somehow, although she was aware, almost at all times, of at the very least an underlying sensuous current to her mood, to the way her body was, sexual activity was somehow not her business any more; sex was their business; her sex was theirs, her pussy was theirs; her mouth, her asshole. She got a strange thrill from harshly telling herself this. Her business was how it would be to be cunt; to be so terribly vulnerable, so open to abuse, so helpless— in the service of their desires, in her acceptance of cruelty, and through being forced to express her own wanton responses to brutal sexual usage.
Sexual experiences were not going to be her problem; what would be her problem would be falling out of communion with her own body. It was going to be hard enough to manage to carry herself at all times as an incitement to rape; it would be impossible to do so if she was fighting herself internally.
She would revisit moments in Duncan’s violations of her on that fateful day— the most brutal, the most shaming; the most painful, the most intense, the most sexually arousing, and try to make herself accept everything about those memories, let herself feel the terror, the physical desperation, the appalling shame, the grinding sadness, the sucking guilt, the stomach churning need for sexual intensity. She required of herself that she be possessed by these feelings, as she watched herself in the mirror, as she deliberately hurt herself; watched the tears flow, felt her hips surge, her chest heave, felt the shivers take her, heard herself panting and moaning.
Through these strange sessions, she did indeed experience intense sexual arousal at times, found herself breathing hard, her hips surging, felt herself hot and sticky, felt her belly churn with need; she denied her inhibitions any say in the feelings; she was to be a whore, she must allow herself to be overtaken by lust, let them have her lust, to use as they might choose, but at no point did she caress herself, or seek her own release.
Her sexual tensions mounted with each passing day, with each of these sessions; she could feel it, her body demanding the absolution of orgasm, but was certain that she must make no attempt to pleasure herself.
Nor did she allow herself the release of hysteria, or despair, or anger. All of these were very close to the surface, she knew, but, as with orgasm, they felt denied her; all those were for free girls, girls who did not belong to another’s will.
And besides, she was a girl getting ready to be married (to be given away at least— even if it was she that was doing the giving); when she wasn’t naked in front of the mirror, educating herself for her future, she wanted to keep everything light and soft, and simple; walking in the park, watching the trees move in the wind, children and dogs playing, young lovers walking together. Shopping in the expensive shops she had never allowed herself, looking to buy only the best and the skimpiest— little slips she could wear as dresses, as short as possible, pretty high heels, as strappy as possible, all with ankle straps. Lace chokers, little waist-cincher corsets, quarter cup brassieres with maximum cantilever.
In these little boutiques, run by older women with a knowing look in their eyes, she looked in the mirrors in a different way; doing all she could to see through Duncan’s eyes, to see herself as a man who had all the choices in the world, all the time in the world, all the girls in the world, all the cunt in the world — as he might see her; what would it be, what would be special enough, enticing enough, provocative enough to get this man to risk himself and rape this pretty girl? This pretty girl who would beg for it if he asked her to; this pretty girl who would permit any outrage?
It took a while, but she realised that the best shops were run by women whose stock in trade was to help young women answer this question for themselves; they were shops for girls with sugar-daddies, for women who were, or who wished to become trophy wives and, without ever becoming vulgar or presumptuous, these women were able to elicit details about the tastes of the man in question and gently support a girl— particularly one who was ready to allow herself to be accompanied into the dressing room; a girl who was— no matter how blushingly— willing to let it be known that she had been subjected to cruelty in the form if the colourful little pins which pierced her flesh at her nipples and her labia— who were professional about the shocking nature of this, who were pragmatic about it, seeing an opportunity to sell some of the more risque and overtly slutty items which were not typically displayed in the front window.
One woman in particular, in one of these shops, made it very plain that she both understood and accepted everything about Sophia’s condition. Not all at once, but step-wise, over a number of visits, as Sophia assembled her list of possibles (for she was not rich enough to buy everything, and so was not going to commit until she was certain). This woman, after introducing herself into the changing room when Sophia was naked from the waist up, far from being shocked, or, as some did, affecting not to notice the bright colours of the pin-heads, had boldly remarked upon them;
“Oh my, pretty; I can only imagine how those hurt. But they’re so lovely— so eye-catching! He did this to you, did he? Or did he have you do it while he watched? And you keep them? For him? How sweet of you, pretty. He’s a lucky man!”
Sophia had been shocked, first by arrival of the woman (on the pretext of having found some other stock), then by realising she was on display, then, most of all by this direct but softly asked question, and she could not answer. She did not have to; the woman had simply smiled at her confusion;
“Oh! Like that, is it— all new to you? Oh my sweet girl, you must let me look after you. Let me show you some things, and you can show me which you think he’d like you in.”
And like that, Sophia had stopped shopping. She had found the place. The woman had brought her things, lovely things, tiny things, with simple but inviting details, and she had fallen for them. Shyly, she had revealed her budget and the woman had simply smiled at her;
“My dear, your money is no good here; you’ll tell your man where these lovely things came from, how helpful I’ve been, and we’ll see how it goes, shall we?”
The days became a dream— a kaleidoscope of emotions, intense but unreal, often distressing, sometimes delightful, always changing.
Sophia’s nights were no less fantastic; she would wake every two or three hours from some dream of extremity— either horribly frightening, so that she would wake with a scream, in a cold sweat, hering her voice echoing in the room; “No! no, please, not … not “— or, at other times, full of deep erotic intensity, hot, sweaty, quivering with desire.
Her heart would pound, her pulse race, her chest heaving, either tears spurting from her eyes, her body wrenching itself, thrashing in some instinctive avoidance mode, or slick between the legs, her hips grinding and writhing as she tried to recall the dream penetration.
It could take an hour or more to recover from an awakening like this, gradually calming herself, hugging herself, taking herself to the mirror, looking at her naked body, telling herself that it was good; good to experience these terrors, these excesses, since she would have to face them in reality.
Hoping to find answers, or sleep, she reread his book, obsessively, looking for clues, answers, only to conclude that, as Duncan had claimed, none of the details applied. Yes, there was an organisation of cruel monsters and libertines which abused young women; yes those women were raped and whipped, yes, O was branded and prostituted. It was all there. But all the details were different. Most importantly, O had had no idea what she was letting herself in for— nothing beyond her lover’s few portentous words, before she had been first taken into the maw of the Roissy Chateau to be prepared, then brutally gang raped and whipped.
Duncan had assured her that there was no institution, no centre to the ring she was preparing to give herself to, but that had come as part of his bizarre ‘full-disclosure’ warning; so strange— it woud have been so much easier for him to have cozened her along, step by step (she had no doubts at all that he could have done so; she was putty in his hands— still, after what he had done to her; still even though any faint remaining hopes of a real relationship between them was gone, still the thought of him made her heart beast faster, made her feel warm and eager and hopeful).
But no; instead there was his emphasis on her— his insistence that she must play her own part in what would be done to her. Where O had been completely an innocent, repeatedly imposed upon and demanded of, she, Sophia (would they reduce her to a letter? Except that only the letter O conveyed the notion that a girl’s meaning had been radically reduced, to the three fuckable holes of her body), Sophia would be complicit— not so much a victim as a supplicant— asking for the devastation they wished to wreak upon her.
And she would be back with the unanswerable questions, forced back to another section of the book— the initial rape, the handing over of O, without consultation, to the older Sir Stephen, the rings, the branding, the party at the end.
Sleep would come, eventually, but the idea of night and day had gone; there was just time; episodes of time, during which she would either distract herself or think about being a sex slave, owned by cruel strangers.
Would she? Could she? Why was she going along with all this?
In the end, what made the difference was that she kept on getting herself ready, and did nothing about delaying or avoiding the bizarre fate which Duncan had so casually, so confidently proposed for her.
In her new finery, she would parade in front of the mirror, astonished that what she saw was the same face as ever; it seemed impossible that that simple looking girl could— no would — be subjected to extreme sexual abuse, if she went through with what had been asked of her; which it seemed certain that she would do (she would check herself, again and again, in this period; ask herself, incredulous; am I really doing this? — and each time, there was no answer to the question; there was no definite Yes — of course there wasn’t; what had been promised to her could not be easily, happily welcomed— but equally, she kept doing the things which would deliver her to the rendezvous, and never did anything that would prevent it).
It was continually astonishing that the girl who that face belonged to was at that very moment pushing at the pins in her nipples, in her labia; hurting herself, trying to get used to the idea that she was offering herself up for a world of hurt, a world of shame, a world where strangers would have automatic access to her most intimate places, would rape and beat her, a world of being made to feel weak and worthless and dirty; a world where feeling like that would likely push her into inviting further degradation, in return for nothing more than the promise of being valued for her weakness, for her openness to abuse— or— as Duncan had made her see it, for her strength in being able to hold herself in place to accept such treatment.
It was all impossible madness; the thoughts, the feelings, the words— even the recollections of Duncan’s shattering abuses, were what she could hold in her head, but the reality would be very different, she knew— a thousand times more powerful.
It was madness perhaps, but at the same time, being Sophia as she prepared herself was the most compelling, the most absorbing, the most utterly engaging condition; she was fully alive, fully awake at all times, tingling with sensation, her mind darting from one possibility to another, her body never still, her awareness of her sex, her nipples, her lips, her posture— everything; how men looked at her, how women looked at her; how, by a simple movement of her shoulders, she could encourage a man to look at her breasts; knowing that, for some people, some strangers to her, such a move would be, very simply, an invitation to throw her down and rape her.
That her only protection from such rapes (invited rapes; she was finding herself at times acting as deliberately provocatively as she could, this side of overt sluttiness)— her only protection was the strength of social morality. And giving herself to Duncan and his club of sadists would be to declare herself outside that protection; fair game, in the hands of practised and shameless monsters.
It was completely extraordinary to have such thoughts— and a million other variants on the theme, constantly occurring to her over-stimulated mind; it was as if she lived two lifetimes every day, such was the density, the rapidity with which such imaginings possessed her, the bodily intensity with which they played out in her, the internal quivers and lurches they engendered. At home, with the girls she shared the apartment with, she had constantly to be in control of herself, watch herself, lest she betray what was really going on with her.
Sometimes this filled her with a bubbling sense of specialness, as the possessor of a secret and remarkable private world, far beyond the imagining of her colleagues and friends; a feeling which disturbed her greatly; it was not so much that it was frightening— she had begun to be used to being frightened all the time— but that it spoke so powerfully to the certainty that she was to be changed— that she was offering herself up to be changed, and that the change would indeed make her more special— it being ever more obvious that such specialness would render her less and less able to participate in normal life, to assume her place among these people whom she lived with.
These people did not want to, could not be, friends or colleagues of cunt. It wasn’t a matter of their outrage or discomfort (many of them would have just such reactions, she felt sure, but equally, some of the men would likely think of other responses, especially if they could get her alone)— it wasn’t their imagined reactions that were the real problem (much as Sophia knew that the shame and exclusion which would land on her would be grievous to bear), but something much deeper; it was that she would have left their world. That there could be no way back.
Already, after just that day with Duncan, after reading his book, already, she looked at them as almost a different species. The girls who did not know that it was possible to offer oneself up for rape; accept sexual torture. The men who could not see that she was vulnerable, open, to sexual abuse; that a great part of her was expecting it, open to it, breathless at the thought of it.
She feels special, but also horribly frightened, and terribly alone.
The dreamtime made the fears less sharp, but no less deep.
She had learned, through that surreal evening, something of what it meant to experience repeated and remorseless diminishment; serial, relentless elimination of layer upon layer of her self-image, of her unexamined, thoughtless assumptions as to what she could expect of the world (thoughtless simply because those assumptions could reasonably be taken for granted by any normal person, so that they merited no time spent in pondering them).
If this was how her thoughts, her mind went when she was feeling specialness, it was true that, far more of the time in fact, her mood was less positive; it was not that she had second thoughts— somehow, even in the absence of that definitive Yes, it seemed to be a given that she would prepare herself as requested; deeply frightened though she was, she had bought the clothes.
A given, that she would go to the rendezvous, and would try her best to go along with what was required of her— (she had been almost completely successful in preventing herself from speculating in detail about what those requirements might be— some wisdom in her knew that such imaginings could have no positive outcome, so that she would shut her thoughts down if they strayed in that direction).
I said yes. I can’t think of anything else to do but to go. Duncan said I could ask him for help to escape but I’m not going to. I know I’m going to suffer; that I will be unable to bear it at the time— he told me; it’s in the book; but it’s too late. Too late now.
And she would cry a little, just a few tears, no sobbing allowed; and she would hug herself (somehow knowing that this would be forbidden her in future; that she was to be denied all comforts— that this was inevitable, so that they could break her heart, which was so obviously what the book was really about; the breaking, the complete, ruthless despoliation of a sweet and soft girl’s heart, with her consent.)
In the end, she asked the woman at the boutique to help— about her hair, her make-up, and in the end she spent the last morning there (she could not have borne to be alone, and the woman’s matter-of-fact manner as she prepared her protegee for what she thought was a hot date, though she had an inkling might be more, her manner was what got Sophia through).
The preparation was spun out until the taxi came, keeping her busy, so that she had not had time to thrash herself into a state, and she wore, as she had been instructed, the shortest, cutest summer dress— like something a six year old might wear, but with a tight waist, some very strappy nude heels, excruciating to walk in.
She was both entranced and shocked by the vision in the mirror— attractive, yes, in a way she had never expected of herself, but impossible to ignore; definitely hard not to be pleased about; but at the same time sexually obvious to a degree that was beyond Sophia’s ability to feel confident about. Sophia the vulnerable rape victim, then; right there in the mirror.
So when she walked out of the boutique, holding her keys and her phone in her hand, she felt somehow more than naked, unutterably exposed due to the lack of underwear, to which she had become accustomed in the changing room. Utterly unsure of herself; terminally nervous. It was far too early in the year for such a dress, though; the breeze was chilly on her exposed flesh and she knew she would stand out a mile by contrast with the warm jackets and coats still being worn by most.
Sophia in a skimpy dress Click here to reveal.
Suddenly there was an alarm bell going off in her head, every jiggle of her unfettered breasts, every gust of wind at the flirty hem threatening to reveal her lack of panties, all making her desperate, while at the same time she was having to school herself not to be grabbing at her skirts all the time. She was trembling…
I should not be out in public dressed like this. Oh my God, I’m really doing this. I’m going to let them abuse me; rape me and hurt me and shame me and I can’t, I won’t be able to bear it! What…? Why…?
She turned back, eyes filling with tears, to see the owner of La Parisienne firmly smiling and nodding her on; no friend she, but a commercial operator, hopeful of a long-term revenue stream and Sophia knew herself to be alone, having voluntarily cast herself adrift from decency, from normality, so that the closest thing to safety she could imagine was awaiting her in the hotel; the very person who would assess for for her suitability as a candidate for enslavement.
So that, with nothing but fear in her belly, she walked toward the waiting taxi, feeling the driver’s eyes hot on her body.
A lamb to the slaughter.
A girl to her wedding.
A sacrifice to monsters.
