Truth By His Hand

by Casey Cameron

  She was gone before I could formulate a response, her wings waving behind her. “I have no idea who that was,” I whispered to Mariah.

  “Ruby Red. She was at our table at Kinky Bingo.”

  I felt a faint spark of recognition, but it was hard to reconcile with the naked pixie I’d just seen flutter in and out of the entryway. Did people really look that different without their clothes on? Maybe I’d just been distracted by the wings.

  “Maybe this was a mistake,” I muttered.

  “Hush,” Mariah said, patting my arm dismissively. “You’re just feeling your usual pre-socializing jitters. You’ll feel better once you jump in. Let’s go find Ravi and Deirdre—I’m pretty sure that’s her I hear screaming.”

  How was this my life now, that that was a perfectly normal sentence to hear?

  Walking through the house was another look at kink layered over a mundane life. The furniture was modern and tasteful, accented with rugs that added a pop of color in a very “home decorating magazine” sort of way, and all the usual pieces seemed to be there: couch, armchair, TV, sound system, all very normal.

  But lined up on the coffee table were an assortment of luridly-colored butt plugs, and I saw a guy I recognized from Speed Kink Night—Dennis—lifting each in turn and pointing out their shapes and features to a couple of people on the couch. They were wearing perfectly ordinary jeans and t-shirts, but one of them was wearing a collar around his neck, and the other was holding a leash clipped to it. I probably stared a little too long, because Dennis noticed me and gave me a quick smile and wave before returning to his audience.

  From distant corners of the house, I could hear the sounds of people thoroughly enjoying themselves—smacks and snaps and cries of pain and pleasure that almost blended together into a low background white noise. These people were obviously having a good time; surely they’d once felt this awkward about it too. Watching the people at these events sometimes gave me the impression that kinksters were formed in the womb, and emerged with an encyclopedic knowledge of quick-release knots and a bulletproof resistance to societal messages of sexual shame.

  Mariah always assured me that wasn’t the case, and on a purely logical level, I knew it—I’d watched her journey, after all, albeit largely as an outsider. It just…would have really helped if every once in a while I’d see someone at one of these events who looked just as terrified as I was.

  Ravi and Deirdre were indeed the source of the screaming Mariah had heard, and as she led me to them, I saw exactly why she’d told me he might be “a little too intense” for me. Deirdre was suspended by rope from hooks embedded in the ceiling, her body bent into a bow by the elaborate rope harness that had been tied around her. The knotwork was gorgeous—as an artist, I had to appreciate the smooth lines and whorls of it, and the stark contrast of forest-green rope against red-flushed skin.

  What I didn’t appreciate quite as much was the way Ravi was striking her across her exposed thighs with a slender cane—slimmer even than the bamboo sticks by the door that had seemed so worrisome—and the way she shrieked with pain after each resounding crack. The blows made her writhe in her bonds and swing gently back and forth, but Ravi followed the movements of her body with his swings, meeting her every time she shifted away. He radiated power, his muscles flexing, his dark skin shimmering with sweat as he punished her with focused pleasure painted on his face.

  Tears were running down Deirdre’s face, and dark red welts were showing on her skin as she yelped with every blow. I felt my chest tighten, a cold shiver running up my neck every time I heard her let out another broken sob.

  This didn’t look fun—this woman didn’t look at all like she was having a good time, and as I saw Ravi circle around to her other thigh, moving like a hunter stalking his prey, I couldn’t bring myself to look at his face. A sick feeling was churning in my stomach, a tight fear that made my breath quicken and the blood rush in my ears.

  “Baby, are you okay?” Mariah’s voice was soft and full of concern, and I realized I’d been clinging to her amputated arm like a life preserver. I let go immediately—I knew it could be sensitive at the stump—and tried to shake off the panic, but it probably looked a little more like I was having a seizure. Mariah looked at the scene in front of us, and understanding crossed her face. “Right. Why don’t we go over here?”

  She took my arm again and led me down the hallway to a door with a sign taped up on it that said “Chill-Out Room.” The scene inside was very different from anything out there. The lighting was dimmer, soft music was playing from a speaker in the corner, and the air was faintly vanilla-scented from a couple of candles that were burning on the windowsill. This room had a couch, a couple of beanbag chairs, and a few cushions and blankets piled in the corner. Everything looked very inviting and pleasant, and as the door clicked shut behind us, the sounds of reckless hedonism dulled to something I could mostly tune out.

  “Here we go,” Mariah said, leading me to the end of the couch, and as we approached I noticed that the other end of the couch—the one that had been obscured from sight by a bookcase, had another party attendee “chilling out” and idly thumbing through a book.

  It was Ellison.

  I fought a sudden resurgence of panic, but Mariah guided me to sit on the couch, and she crouched down next to it, her hand on my knee and her face looking up at mine. “Is this better, baby?”

  I nodded mutely, my hands finally relaxing from the tight fists I hadn’t realized I was making.

  Mariah took in a deep breath and let it out, patting my knee softly. “Okay, so…in retrospect, maybe bringing you straight to watch one of the biggest masochists I know getting absolutely thrashed wasn’t the very best way to introduce you to play parties. My bad. I sometimes forget what this can look like to someone who’s not familiar with it.”

  “Maybe,” I agreed with a weak laugh. “Sorry for freaking out. It was just…you know…”

  “I know.”

  Ellison closed his book. “I’ll get out of your way,” he said, pushing himself to his feet.

  As much as I hated the idea of having a near-total stranger witness my breakdown, it was even worse to imagine him politely leaving the room so I could—as far as he knew—cry my eyes out like a little baby. “You really don’t have to leave,” I said quickly. It’d be marginally less embarrassing that way.

  “You’re sure? I don’t mind.”

  “No, really—I’m not, like…in need of privacy or anything.”

  Ellison gave me a long, considering look, then nodded almost imperceptibly and lowered himself back onto the couch. He went back to his book, which, really, was about the best thing he could have done. I sagged back onto the couch cushions, pinching my eyes shut. The press of my hair against the back of the couch made me suddenly aware of it again, and I brought my fingers up to brush the top of my head. Still there. Good. At least that still made sense.

  “Well, this right here is the chill-out room,” Mariah said, waving her hand to indicate our surroundings, “and it’s really where I should have brought you first. This is for anyone to use if they get overwhelmed, or just want some peace and quiet for a little while. Nobody’s allowed to play or fuck in here—it’s just a safe space for anyone who needs it.”

  “Do people tend to need it a lot, or am I special?”

  “It wouldn’t be here if people didn’t need it sometimes,” she said with a smile. “Don’t go thinking you’re special. It’ll give you a big head.”

  The door swung open, and a muscular guy wearing a collar poked his head in the door. His face brightened when he saw Mariah, and his eyes flicked down to the ground. Apart from the thick leather collar around his neck, he looked like he could have come right off the cover of GQ—or more likely, Playgirl. “The cross is free, Mistress. Is now a good time?”

  Mariah looked at me. “Do you want me to stay? I’m happy to wait here with you if you want the company.”

  “No, go ahead,” I said, waving my
hand in the air feebly. The last thing I wanted to do was inconvenience Mariah when she was trying so hard to make me feel included and at ease. Anyway, I really didn’t need the company—I was already feeling like I could breathe again. This room was really doing its job. “I’ll just hang out here for a while, and come find you if the screaming stops.”

  “Oh, honey—the screaming never stops. That’s why I love it here.” She grinned at me, then turned to the guy in the door, her entire demeanor changing in an instant—her face went sharp, her tone cold and hard-edged. “Go wait by the cross, and I’ll be there when I’m good and ready.”

  “Thank you, Mistress.”

  The guy slipped out of the doorway, the door clicking shut behind him. I stared at Mariah with wide eyes. “That’s the guy? You know, the…” I wiggled my index finger like a caterpillar creeping across the ground.

  “Yep, that’s the disgusting worm who worships the ground I walk on,” she said cheerfully, straightening up and brushing herself off briskly. “I’ll go pick up some stuff from the snack table and eat it in front of him while he begs me to notice him. He’s gonna love it.”

  “Wow,” I whispered after she left the room. “Just…wow.”

  “You were expecting something different,” Ellison said, amused, and I nearly jumped out of my skin. I’d almost forgotten he was there.

  “Yeah, I guess,” I said. “I mean, now I realize I was totally stereotyping, but I kind of imagined he was this weaselly-looking balding guy who no woman would look twice at. It never occurred to me that he might just be some guy with a weird kink.”

  “You get very focused on the appearance of things,” he said, closing his book again and leaning forward to tuck it onto the bookshelf. I swallowed, faintly dreading what was about to come. Time for another riveting episode of Self-Analysis With Ellison Fitch.

  “Well, sight is the first way we tend to interact with the world,” I said with a shrug. “You can usually see something before you can hear or smell or touch it, so it’s natural to form assumptions based on the way something looks. Maybe I’m more prone to doing it because I’m an artist—the appearance of things is how I express myself.”

  “I see that,” he said, indicating my tattoos. I suddenly felt self-conscious about the twisting ink and had to fight to keep from shrinking in on myself in a vain attempt to cover it. Once you go so far as to have your hands tattooed, you kind of have to accept “covering it up” is no longer an option.

  I laughed, holding up my hands to look at the light bulb and moth inked into the skin. “This isn’t really about self-expression,” I said, and I turned my right arm toward him so he could see the patchwork of mismatched images across it—skulls and vines and chains and one surprisingly good rendition of Harpo Marx. “This one was 18-year-old me being idiotic and letting the guy I had a crush on practice on me with his first tattoo gun because I hoped he might fuck me.” I turned the other arm toward him and said, “This one is because I couldn’t stand being lopsided, so I went to a tattoo artist whose work I liked and said, ‘give me something cool.’”

  He smiled at me, that measured smile I remembered from before, but with a bit of a softer edge to it. “And yet both of those things say something profound about you. I would say they tell me more about you than I would have known if you’d told me some elaborate story about their deep personal meaning.”

  “I’m a mess, and I was even more of a mess when I was young,” I said with a shrug. “Neither of those things are exactly big secrets.”

  “The ones on your hands look different, though,” he said, one finger crooking in their direction. “And they’re more visible—ones you can’t cover up even by dressing differently. I’m guessing those are more in the vein of self-expression.”

  I looked at the moth on my right hand and frowned, wishing I had some easy way to change the subject. I knew what was coming next.

  “What does that one mean to you?”

  “Well,” I said with a sigh, “it mostly means I spend a lot of time saying, ‘It’s a moth, not a butterfly.’”

  Ellison’s laugh was soft, and I could hear something in it—something unguarded, like maybe he hadn’t quite meant to laugh just then. Somehow that made me warm to him a little. I pulled my legs up under me and worked myself into a more comfortable position, curled tight around my sensitive bits.

  “It means a couple of things,” I said, relenting to his curiosity. “I mean, there’s the obvious ‘moth to a flame’ metaphor. I’ve got…well, I wouldn’t call it OCD, because it’s not technically a disorder if it doesn’t have a significant negative effect on your life, but I have a lot of compulsive tendencies. Things that I can’t help but do, even though I know they’re meaningless. But maybe that’s a shitty metaphor, because a moth probably lacks any self-awareness about its compulsion to fly at lights.

  “And, uh…the other meaning is kind of fuzzy. So, I’m sure you know that a moth’s markings are a form of camouflage.” He nodded, and I shifted under his gaze, pulling myself in a little tighter. “What a lot of people don’t know is that sometimes the point of the camouflage isn’t to completely disguise the moth, it’s to direct attention away from vital areas so that if a predator strikes, it won’t kill the moth. It’s a reminder to myself that I can’t avoid misfortune entirely, but if I’m careful, I can manage it and minimize it, to some small extent.

  “This type of moth in particular is called a Gray Hairstreak. Part of its camouflage is these markings at the back,” I said, pointing to the orange spots that stood out in stark contrast to the blacks and grays of the rest of the design. “They’re a false head—when the moth has its wings up, it looks like it’s facing back, not front. And that kind of ties into…not getting caught up on looking back, because if my head’s looking the wrong way, I’m dead, you know? So it’s about just…looking toward the future, and…well, it makes a lot more sense in my head.”

  I fell silent, feeling unbearably foolish as I rubbed my thumb across the back of my hand. This was why I never explained this shit to people.

  “That makes perfect sense. It’s a powerful reminder,” Ellison said, and as I looked up and caught sight of his ice-blue eyes twinkling in the flickering candlelight of the room, I could tell he really meant it—he wasn’t just saying what I wanted to hear to placate me. “Is the light bulb on your other hand related?”

  My hand closed into a fist, and it took me some conscious effort to flatten it back out. I’d thought I was okay with where this was going, but now that we were here, it didn’t feel good at all.

  “That one I don’t want to talk about.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “So what does that say about me?” I asked, unable to keep the biting edge from my tone.

  Ellison pierced me again with that blue gaze. “That you know your limits, and you’re comfortable enforcing them. Which is a very helpful trait when you’re doing all…this.” He nodded toward the door, then waved his hand jerkily, and I instantly recognized my hand gesture from our first meeting.

  “Oh, would you just—” I rolled my eyes, groaning with exasperation. “Look, don’t treat me like I’m completely naive just because I can’t always express myself perfectly.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make fun,” he said without any hesitation. “It was a joke, and possibly in poor taste. I apologize.”

  “Apology accepted,” I grumbled, placated and faintly irritated about it. Anger would have been a lot easier to deal with than…whatever this was.

  “I mean it when I say I don’t think you’re naive because you’re inexperienced. You’re obviously working on educating yourself, and I respect that greatly.”

  “Okay, buddy, don’t lay it on too thick.”

  Ellison gave me a small smile that kind of made me melt a little inside, and I was grateful for the dim light in the room, because I was pretty sure I was blushing.

  “Were you hoping to play with someone tonight?” he asked, his tone shift
ing to something lighter, more like small talk. Well inasmuch as asking about getting beaten and fucked in front of a bunch of people can count as “small talk.” “Or are you just here to watch?”

  “Just watch. I, uh…got to try some stuff out a couple nights ago, and I think I’ve got a little more to process before I’m ready to be pushed around in front of a crowd of friends and strangers.”

  His smile widened a tiny bit, and if I wasn’t mistaken, he leaned forward with interest—maybe only a couple of millimeters, but I could see a shift in his posture, a slight straightening of his back. “You did? Was it everything you’d hoped it would be?”

  “No, it really wasn’t,” I said with a small sigh.

  “And yet you’re back here and talking about doing more in the future, so it clearly didn’t turn you off.”

  I laced my fingers together carefully, lining them up one against the other. “No, it was definitely fun, and I feel like there’s something there for me, but…I dunno, it seemed like there was something missing.” I let out a soft chuckle, looking up from the soothing tidiness of my hands into a roiling sea of blue. “I guess it was a case of me getting too hung up on appearances again.”

  He leaned forward more, elbows on his knees and chin in his hands as he watched me with an unreadable look. “Hmm.”

  The sudden silence in the room was too much to bear with his attention focused so intently on me. That couldn’t be just curiosity—he was interested, I knew it. I may as well risk making a fool of myself. “Look,” I blurted out, “I know we got off on the wrong foot before, but would you like to get together sometime?”

  “I told you before, I don’t want—”

  “An unwilling sub, I know. But I promise you I’m not unwilling. I was skeptical, and maybe I still am a little bit, but I know that this is something I’m interested in. I don’t know if it’ll work with you, but I’d like to try, if you’d be into that. And I mean, if it doesn’t work out, we can hang out and chat and you can psychoanalyze me to your heart’s content.”