by R. M. Walker
I laid there on my side, unmoving for hours. Until the darkness was rolled back to the edges of the city neighborhood by neighborhood, and sleep claimed me as the sun turned itself on along with the power.
Sometime later, when the cheerful bastard was high in the sky, I awoke. I’d been covered in a blanket with a pillow carefully placed under my head. My face was tight and felt as if I’d awoken with someone else's skin attached. Pushing up from the floor, I saw on the low table near where I’d collapsed a bottle of water, two aspirin on a china plate, a sandwich, and a small stack of neatly written messages.
Gaston had been here.
I wadded up the stack of messages and threw them into the empty fireplace, then grabbed the crystal bottle of vodka off the bar cart and used it to chug down the aspirin. Done. I wobbled my way on the pins and needles of reawakened legs to the shielded intercom button, and rang for Gaston. He must have been hovering in the hallway, because his knock came not even thirty seconds later.
“Madame?” His black vest was unbuttoned inside the gray bespoke suit he wore. For Gaston this was tantamount to declaring a national emergency. I wasn’t sure what his deal was, but I agreed with his sentiment.
I plopped onto the couch with none of my usual grace and gripped the fuse tight in my teeth again. “Gaston, please start a list. There are things I need you to do.”
He nodded. “Oui, Madame. Did you happen to read the messages I left for you on ze table? Madame Claire is quite insistent that you call her immediately.” Gaston pulled out a pad and pencil poised to write, but suddenly all I could see was red.
Even with my grip as tight as I could get it, I could not pull my null shield back to me. The lights buzzed and died, while the security system chirped and went to a double-shielded battery backup. “I don’t want to hear what that traitor bitch has to say. She’s no longer a part of this business or my life. She’s nothing!”
Questions boiled underneath his well-trained facade, but he uttered none. He was paid handsomely to do what I said... and he also valued his life more than the knowledge he’d gain by poking the demon.
I huffed and puffed stupid fucking cleansing therapy breathes, picturing my trapped emotions draining like water through sand at my feet, like the overpaid quack said. Instead, my mind pictured the water rising up the inside of my shield and covering my face, drowning me.
Screaming with my mouth closed, I flexed and pushed the shield back to its resting field, which gave me a little more space and relaxed my features.
“I want to be perfectly clear, Gaston. Claire gave up her share of the business to go play house with one of our clients. I need you to take care of several things for me today.” He began to write. “First, I want you to locate everything of Claire’s in this building and take it to the corner, then take a photo. Next, I want you to set it on fire, then take a photo. Then send those to her, then delete her number.”
The demon stirred, whispering to me. “Then call the lawyers. I want to sue her for theft of client, divulging company secrets, and breech of non-compete. Make sure you lock out her security and computer codes before that.” He wrote some more, then paused.
“Madame Null, if I may, I am afraid Madame Claire is the one authorized to change security codes. I do not have the authority.” The water rose in my bubble.
“Fine,” I gritted through my teeth. “Then get the security company here ASAP. In fact, get all the staff here within the hour. And find today’s schedule. I need to hurt somebody.”
* * *
The whistle before the snap was my favorite part of whipping someone. It was the moment where anything was possible. Would I strike you in the most sensitive of areas, or graze you then allow a small reward?
There was very little reward going on in my dungeon at the moment, and also very little enjoyment from either participant. I’d had a woman who evidently was named Minerva cancel all but this appointment today, and if it took me all fucking night, he would weep for me.
My desires were as black as my leather as I coiled the single-tailed whip, readying to strike again. Pleasxxure hung limply from the St. Andrew’s cross, thin lines of blood trickling from his scarred and deformed back. I stalked around the living centerpiece of the room and his eyes followed me warily, but he said nothing.
Goddammit. I threw the whip into the basket with the rest of the blood and piss stained rejects. I’d throw Pleasxxure in there too if I fucking could. This cocksucker was supposed to fucking fix me today. He’d been coming in for months wanting to be broken, and even though I was all sorts of fucked up, I’d never been willing to push his broken and bleeding body further, even though he never used his safe word.
Well, today was his lucky fucking day. Today, Mr. Pleasxxure was going to get exactly what he wanted.
The whip I’d discarded had one tail, and it left razor thin cuts, but I needed more. I needed to find the right combination that would finally have him call out for mercy. I needed it like I needed air, and the harder I tried, the less I felt like I was getting either. I’d pushed him harder and further than any session before with nothing to show for it.
I’d degraded him, lowering the cross by its winch to the ground and squatting to piss on his face. I’d spit on him, and coaxed his cock to a turgid salute, then climbed on top and rode him while my leathers squeaked against his piss soaked body. Tears had run freely from his eyes when he came. No shout of orgasm, just a shudder akin to revulsion.
My own cunt felt carpet burned and ached from the hateful sex. His powers were so controlled that I didn’t even get the barest hint of a contact vibration to wet me, and I wanted to scream. I wanted to scream and kick and cut and laugh as the blood pooled around his feet until the fear of my insanity pushed him over the edge.
I wanted to.
But I didn’t.
I didn’t because the only thing tethering me to this world, and keeping me from bringing on the technological apocalypse, was my single-minded need to break this man and hear his safe word bleed from his lips. His ultimate submission was the only thing I had left.
I passed the canes and crops to reach for an item I’d never actually used in a session before. The weighted feel of the cat-o'-nine-tails in my hand was dangerous and seductive. Each strand was tipped with a small, flat piece of metal the size of a fingernail. Each piece of metal was rough to the touch and covered in miniature velcro like hooks, except they didn’t stick to other velcro—no, they stuck to skin. Each metal piece that struck the victim's body hurt enough on its own, cutting or bruising... but if the flat side drug and caught? Well... from what I read, the adhesion was relatively painless, but the ripping was violently exquisite.
Dropping the tails to the ground, I let the metal sing against the concrete floor as I walked back to where Pleasxxure waited as patiently as one can when bound hand and foot. His back was a roadmap of scars old and new, his legs dotted with small round burns laid out in perfect rows. The man was a walking endorphin. From the moment his genetic encoding had turned on the latent power and the triple X’s had appeared between his hip bones, Pleasxxure had attained a level of god-like ability to flood the bodies of everyone who encountered him with rivers and oceans of feel-good chemicals. Instant happiness in whatever form you wished.
Women orgasmed at the sight of him, men crossed their legs and shook strangely. He’d foiled robberies and nuclear weapons cartels all with nothing more than proximity. He got a hundred stalker level love letters a day, and twice as many on holidays. This would all be fine and dandy except somewhere along the way, he’d also begun affecting himself. Now, similar to the woman who orgasmed all day long and wanted her nerve endings removed, Pleasxxure had only one request: to stop himself from feeling good. He wanted to feel again, and ironically enough I might be the only person able to do that.
He turned his face away from me, the look in his eyes like a whip against my own back. Fine, I didn’t also need him to watch, I just needed him to submit. I would not be a
failure in this, too. I let the whip fly.
Three tiny barbed plates caught, two on the side of his ribs and one above his shoulder blade. I tugged as if I had a fish on the line and he didn’t even flinch. The man felt pain, right? I jerked back, viciously tearing small scored areas, and it looked as if the spots had gone through a meat tenderizer. Nothing. No reaction except more of the same sad tears. I struck again, and again, finally dropping the Domme and screaming my frustration and rage out into the soundproofed room.
Did he feel pain? I don’t even know anymore. Did I feel pain? I did, but was it enough pain?
I dropped the whip and fell to my knees. The sad fact of both our sorry lives was that the thing that should have made them better, in fact, ruined them. See, I was different than most Supe’s. Where they all came into their powers around fifteen, I’d been born Null. My power mark came later, but all my life, until that day, all I’d ever been told was that I was defective. That not feeling anything was just childish dramatics, to go outside and play. Describing, in detail, how your anger and sadness seem to rebound off a wall surrounding you, then hit you again, meant you were a depressed teen like everyone else. So, swallow this pill, or talk to another joke of a therapist who spoke in metaphors and didn’t have a clue. They might as well have handed me that stupid cat poster that said Hang In There for all the good it did.
I pushed the fucking prison that was my null shield outward from my body, enough where I could move without touching its edges. I needed to be sure about the pain. I was beginning to think the world might have shifted, and that happiness was pain now or vice versa, and I’d never know because I hadn’t felt it. My only respite from the dark of my condition had been the odd vibrating side effect when I came into contact and nullified someone's powers. I felt none of that now... nothing at all actually.
I slid a slim knife from my boot and looked up at Pleasxxure who was watching me from above. “Would we know if the world had changed?”
“What?” His voice crackled like a broken radio.
“I think the world might have shifted somehow. I can’t ever feel anything outside my shield... just myself over and over again like an infinity mirror pointed at a horror movie. But Claire left and now I can’t feel anything. I can’t feel anything and I think I need to check and see if maybe something changed... maybe what hurt before feels good now.”
I pointed the knife tip at the skin on my arm and pulled back, parting the white skin like the flesh of a fish's belly. I hissed at the shocking pain of it, drawing my legs up as my eyes and arm both welled up.
“Hey,” he called out, but I ignored him, watching the blood run down my arm.
“Mistress. Ma’am please!” Instinct had me meeting his eyes with disinterest. Pain had not become happiness. I was stuck in the same world as always. Alone again, locked in my invisible prison. Sensation was not emotion, and without it what was the point?
“Nothing changed,” I answered the man who only felt the thing I wished for.
He struggled against his bonds for the first time. He fought like I’d wished for hours before. I’d solved neither of our problems today.
“Yes, something did change. You changed.”
I glanced from the red river coursing down my arm, to him, and back. “What a load of movie theater bullshit.” I scrubbed the tears from my face, smearing blood everywhere in the process.
“Please,” he begged. I knew he could beg. “Please, tie something around that before you pass out.” I snorted. All this time and still not the words I’d beaten us both up for.
“If you’re worried no one will find you, they will. Gaston has the cleaners come through every evening to sanitize. You’ll be fine, and I’ll finally be done.”
I leaned back against the pillory and watched the naked flesh of his back jiggle, opening cuts anew as he strained against the cuffs. “No, you won’t be. You’ll have quit. It’s not the same thing,” he spit out at me, and then went back to pulling. His fingers were turning purple.
Anger pooled low in my stomach, mixing with the loneliness and despair. Claire had been the one to quit, not me. I’d finally begun to fill my fishbowl with some emotions that came in shades other than black and red, and she’d left me. Told me she’d always be my partner, then dumped me just like he had.
“See? What is that? That’s anger. Anger means you aren’t done yet. You have to stop the bleeding now or you’ll never get to show whoever what they’re missing out on.”
His words bobbed around in my head like balloons and I chased thoughts like kite strings, trying to find the one I needed, then realizing it was already on my tongue. “How do you even know... know what anger is? What this feels like? Who are you to judge me? You would have let me go on until I killed you, and never said the words that could have stopped all of this?” I gestured, scarlet drops emphasizing my point.
Bowed over, I watched the arm in my lap do what I never could. Let go of something forever. I considered stopping it, but it was so beautiful to watch.
“Fara.” My name on a stranger’s lips was not something I heard often. “I know because I remember the feelings. I remember hate and jealousy and aches and pains. I remember them all, and without them, eternal happiness is just as lacking as a life without ever feeling the love another person has for you. But lacking and meaningless aren’t the same thing.”
Our eyes met, and I finally saw my pain reflected from a distance further away than my shield.
“You chose this life over the one you were adopted into the day your powers were known. You create with your madness an order in the chaos, a lifeline for the powered. You give to others every single day the thing they need as badly as we do—a break from the lives we didn’t choose. So you can take that away in the hopes that everyone is as miserable as you are, or you can stop yourself from bleeding to death and give meaning to your life by choosing the best kind of revenge. Success.”
I’d never been much for the big speech that won the hearts of the enemy in the movies, but in this room, we weren’t enemies. We were soldiers fighting in the same trench, just trying to survive. Exhaustion almost made the choice for me, the pull to close my eyes and decide later was so strong I almost gave in... until I heard six words that energized me like no other. Victory was at hand.
“The safe word is safe word.”
“The safe word is safe word,” I repeated. The phrase was a key turned in a lock, and the door it opened was freedom of a sort.
“Now let me out so we can get out of this room. I think I finally got enough pain today.” I cracked up a little at that as I used my garter belt to tie off my arm, then crawled over to him to hit the quick release. He fell like a sack of bricks, looking worse than me, but bouncing back much quicker. “It’s the whole pleasure thing,” he explained wryly in answer to my unasked question. He shoved a shoulder under one of my arms and we helped each other to the locked door, and out.
Gaston stood there, my French sentinel, with several robes and what almost looked like a worried expression. He waited until Pleasxxure had limped away to the spa like bathroom where a private nurse awaited, before helping me into my robe and speaking.
“I’m sorry to disturb your private time, but there are two urgent matters.” I raised my eyebrow since it was the only part of my body that did not ache. “The police are here to speak with you about the blackout, and the super known as Entropy is in the penthouse level receiving room. He left messages yesterday, but now insists he see you immediately.”
6
Entropy
Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.
“Help me to the bathroom and get the nurse. Which police are here? Friendly or unfriendly?” Gaston held out a gallant arm for me to cling to as I shuffle-limped toward my private elevator in the building. Once inside, he pressed in the code that would allow it to open into my apartment and it shot up like a carnival ride.
“Definitely unfriendly, Madame. There are a variety of letters on their badges, an
d the nurse has been waiting for several hours.” My usual tactics wouldn’t work then. Claire, the bitch, usually was the one who dealt with the legal end of things if a Supe got antsy before or after a session, and the one time at the beginning of our partnership when I’d similarly lost control. Which also happened to be around the last time I saw Entropy.
Sighing, I replied, “Well, have them wait in my office and make sure you give them—” Stepping off the elevator had my knees wanting to buckle, but I caught myself on Gaston’s arm... right where I’d sliced it open. “BAG OF DICKS!”
Unfazed, he paused while I collected myself. “Will any size of genitalia do, Madame or would you like a selection sent over?”
Still hissing over the freshly opened gash, I managed to pant out. “Did you- tsssss- make a joke? Mmmm.”
A single arched eyebrow was the only answer I received. Wow, laughing hurt. “Okay then. The good cigars and brandy, and turn on the one way glass to the voyeur’s dungeon in the next room. A couple rented the room for the day, maybe that will keep them busy for a while.”
Gaston was like that waiter that takes your order but never writes anything down. I was always irritated at first, but in all our years, he’d never forgotten an order. As soon as we shuffled into the apartment, the nurse descended. Stitches and shots and all manner of things were shoved at me, but I brushed her off, yelling “Five minutes!” Then nearly falling into my bathroom.
I threw the walk-in shower on, then stumbled past to the makeup bench where it sat next to the cream—a mason jar of black and white beads, neatly separated into all black on top, and all white on the bottom.
I should have known. I’d gone to bed one night in his arms, blissfully happy, and awoken the next day to that fucking jar and a note: When the light shines for one person, darkness falls for someone else. These beads will tell you when darkness is falling, and then I’ll back. His powers were different. Disorder was the natural state of the universe, but not chaos. He had a sort of future vision that allowed him to know whose life to touch, and then while he was in proximity, a divine conversion of perfect order happened on a nearly cosmic level for that person.