There’s a group of us sitting around the living room: Mistress, me, my mom, my best friend. Since it includes my mom, I’m allowed on the furniture. Mistress is next to me and makes some gesture or movement I forget now, and I not only flinch, but approach the full on, Hallmark movie recoil. Fuck.
My best friend raises a knowing eyebrow at me, almost laughing. Mistress feigns noticing nothing. But we all covertly eye my mother, coming to the conclusion at about the same moment that she didn’t notice, bending to reach for her drink at exactly the right time.
Phew.
I actually kind of admire that we’ve gotten to the point of that reaction, the telling reality of it, but that doesn’t mean my mother—who already accepts a lot—needs to be involved.
…
But where does it come from?
9:30 AM. I hit the pager transmitter button as always to signal that brunch is ready. I wait behind my usual chair in the assigned position. Mistress comes downstairs and greets me with the usual successful inspection of the table, my uniform, the position, then slaps me, which sends me defensively reeling out of it.
“What, are you crazy? Get back in position.”
I do, still jumpy, but also kind of hoping she’ll do it again. I’ll be ready and be good this time. But she lets me sit, and we eat brunch. At the end, leaving to finish the rest of the morning task inspection, she tells me to go put in an anal plug and leave it until she tells me otherwise, before or after cleaning the kitchen.
“Yes, Mistress.”
My body is still a bit wired from yesterday, from, as she said, being used, sex without me being allowed to come (as usual, which I prefer, the focus it brings); I didn’t feel well, she told me it didn’t matter (true); still, I was kneeling on the bed, head in my lap, crying, by the end of it, pains exacerbated, but as a slave, glad it all happened anyway and managing a twinge of unresolved arousal.
…
Positions…
Once, I’m in my standard kneeling position as we chat, legs going numb. “May I stretch?” I ask, by which I mean sit on the floor in a more comfortable position.
“Beg.”
It’s not really that bad yet, but an order’s an order. “Please, Mistress?”
It’ll do. “You may.”
…
Today, we do our weekly maintenance discipline session. Despite managing to stay still enough under the attentions of the discipline wand, which I retrieved from the mantel and presented in position, and counting properly, I still feel soaked with sweat. I ask for permission to take a “rinse off” shower (meaning I’m allowed to skip shaving and therefore the inspection after), and she grants it.
I haven’t been in the shower long, but am almost done, when she returns, throws open the shower door, shuts the warm water off. I shiver.
“Kneel.”
I do. The shower floor is small and unforgiving.
She pisses on me—at least it’s warm again—orders, “Clean me up.” I do, using my mouth as efficiently as I can. “Now you can shower,” she says, and leaves me there.
I turn the water back on—it takes a second to find the right temperature—and do it all again.
…
This isn’t so uncommon.
Another day, we’re talking in her office, me in my usual kneeling position again. She says, “Come with me.”
I do, to the bedroom.
“Remove all of your clothing.”
I do.
“Kneel. In the shower.”
I do. I had just showered before our conversation.
She pisses on me this time, too, trying to get mostly my face, my hair, for added effect, using the latter to dry off, and turns the water on me on full blast cold before leaving, as I scramble against the opposite wall of the shower.
She doesn’t wash my mouth out with soap while I wait for the water to heat up again this time, though, I think, with mixed relief and wistfulness.
Well, time to shower again.
…
There are only two times I remember forgetting about being on my leash. One, at night. Two:
With friends, at home, we’re eating dinner. Just to mix things up, for fun, I’m on my leash, now that I’m done cooking, allowed to sit at the table.
We talk a long time, lingering, and as the meal concludes, we stand to head to socializing in the living room, or, for me, cleanup.
Except that I’ve forgotten about the leash. So I’m not especially prompt or mindful about standing and pushing in my chair and moving the opposite direction of the intuitive—looping around the head of the table, where Mistress was sitting.
But it almost doesn’t matter: she’s also forgotten, the leash clipped to a belt loop, heading a way that I can’t follow fast enough and that tangles around her own chair.
I have one second after I remember to think, Oh, shit, before I choke when the leash hits its end, stumbling in the right direction.
“Oh, shit,” she says out loud.
We all laugh.
…
Our friends are used to us.
My best friend is staying with us at the time, and I’m standing in the doorway to their room, talking about, of all things, the fandom of a children’s book series, while Mistress passes behind me, getting something from the garage—we’ve all recently moved—for something she’s cooking.
She starts to pass by me again, then thinks better of it, and says, “I wonder… come over here,” brandishing the small cast iron skillet.
I step out from the slightly narrow hallway into the wider opening of our front room, still in range and continuing the first conversation.
Crack.
That thing is staggering, as it collides with my ass. “My point is—” crack “—the second series really—” crack “—it does age with the audience—” crack “—but kind of depressingly.” Crack.
My best friend is nearly crying, they’re laughing so hard at me trying to make my fandom point between cast iron strikes. Mistress declares that the skillet is too heavy and pointless to swing this long.
Well, I made at least one point.
…
Besides pure fun, there are all kinds of cathartic uses for pain, and one I particularly like is actually more cathartic for her: the punching bag scenario.
Frustrated with coworkers or friends or telemarketers, she bends me over the nearest counter and lays into me with the nearest wooden spoon, or over the bed with always handy punches and slaps and kicks.
I just like the release of feeling in it, without having to be the source of frustration. The whipping girl thing, y’know. Maybe it’s what some people get out of brat taming. But I behave.
…
Mistress: What percentage of being a slave is just like, keeping your mouth shut?
Me: About 115.
…
I’ve always wanted a shock collar, and when a reader requests an electricity play scene for one of my fiction series, I make it an excuse to get one. I avoid writing kinks I don’t know about, and I could’ve written about the neon wand or a tens unit or anything I’ve already done, but… let me be clear: I just wanted a shock collar.
It arrives among a few other items, and Mistress helps me test it out immediately. She fastens it around my thigh—it’s bulky, and I already have my normal collar; it seems a little safer, and its two metal prods leave very visible pink marks.
Its shock settings go from 1 to 99. 1, okay, I felt that. Around 5 gives me the feeling of a strong static shock from a doorknob. “Higher?”
“Yes.”
She keeps pushing the number higher, increments of five or so. Before the forties, my leg spasms each time, a feeling weird more than just painful. Then I have to sit down, or lose my balance. Still, higher.
“You’re going to ninety-nine, aren’t you?” she asks, in that you are a masochistic idiot tone.
“Of course.”
Eighty-five or so knocks the wind out of me briefly. Just a few notches higher, though. It’s nice, really.
Ninety-nine. Jesus. A little glad it doesn’t go any higher. A little wishing it did. But I do ninety-nine a few times. It’s a massive but pleasant jolt. Like a roller coaster.
Mistress rolls her eyes.
…
I really like blood. I might even say I need it, and, like shock collars, you can get scalpels delivered and keep them in stock. The future truly is now.
Since I’ve asked, Mistress tells me to go collect the needed items and meet her in her office. I was already undressed, leashed for the night or about to be, at the beginning of this conversation, and goosebumps rise on my skin in anticipation and from exposure.
I kneel next to her in her office, prepped. She selects a spot and tells me to cut a K there, her first initial. I cut the first line, a strange thrill, but am unsure if it was deep enough and actually cut, the bleeding delayed. She’s also unsure, and I’ve redone it when the first one begins to dot with blood. Now, they both do. Oh, well. I cut the next two lines of the letter carefully and without redos. She adds a few miscellaneous lines of her own, a kind of decorative monogrammed pattern.
I clean up, adding enough gauze to not bleed on my slave furs and enjoying the lingering stinging sensations.
…
Me, from slave furs, to cat looking down at me from the bed: You’re not better than me just because you sleep in the bed.
Mistress, nearby: Am I not better than you because I sleep in the bed?
Me: I mean, not because you sleep in the bed.
…
You might notice I’m a little hard to challenge as a masochist.
The physical stuff is fun, but I’m in the masochism business for the emotion more than anything else. The ever worn down feeling of work well done. The asceticism of the slave life. The self discipline and focus required in 24/7 high protocol service. The creative inspiration it provides; the tortured artist thing.
The talk, with an element of truth, is crucial, too—the themes of Stockholm syndrome and victim blaming and possessiveness.
“You like being owned, don’t you?”
“Yes, Mistress.”
“Good girl. That’s exactly what you tell people when they ask.”
And the occasional catharsis. In the moment: fear, humiliation, despair.
Today, she yanks me onto the bed, pinning me. There’s already been the usual hair pulling, collar grabbing, bites, scratches, in this conversation. But on the bed, she clamps her hand over my mouth and nose, not around my throat, her usual choking method.
It’s strange, but it’s the slight change in method that makes me panic. I know what happens with her hand wrapped around my throat. I don’t worry about that. But as my lungs drain the air in the small gap between her skin and mine, the seal kicking in, nothing coming, unable to breathe in, and out of air, like I’m in a vacuum, the edges of my vision start pulsing black, and I panic. Not sure what comes next or when. Not much comes of the panic; I mostly freeze, and she releases me. I gasp for lungfuls of breath. Relief floods me with the oxygen.
That. That was good.
…
All in a day’s work?
