Fifty Shades of Submission

by Loris James

  It takes me quite a while to drag all her luggage downstairs and get it stowed in the car, but finally it’s done. The large painting of Saskia and me in our mock Samson and Delilah pose is on the back seat of the car, carefully wrapped in sheets of bubble-wrap and duct tape. Glancing at the covered painting I suddenly feel a pang of remorse for all the terrible things I had allowed myself to be subjected to. It was as if I had been in a dream for most of my life, a nightmare filled with cruelty and pain, but now I am awake at last and the nightmare is receding. My mind is filled with clarity and purpose.

  I do not want to live in darkness and isolation anymore.

  I know also that I do not ever want that painting hanging in our house.

  I add my own meagre bundle of clothing and toiletries to the rest of the luggage, close the trunk, and go back into the house. It is dark, and cold now that the last rays of the hopeful spring sun is fading. The stars are already beginning to tremble faintly in the darkening evening sky. It is going to be a cold night.

  I go upstairs and pass through the little sitting room, and hesitate at her bedroom door.

  Why is my heart beating so fast? Am I not happy? Did she not swear to me that she loves me? Has she not promised to marry me and bear my child?

  I open the door softly. Saskia is lounging on the chaise longue in her bedroom. She does not hear me enter and does not notice me at first. My heart skips a beat at the sight of her. How beautiful she looks leaning back with her fiery red hair cascading about her perfect, flawless face. She has changed and is wearing a long silvery grey dress which fits snugly over her hips and breasts, accentuating her voluptuous body.

  I am surprised to see a fire burning in the fireplace, and she has turned off the lights and has lit candles all about the room. The candles cast a warm reddish glow, as though bathing the room in blood.

  “Saskia,” I say at last, softly.

  She notices me and smiles. “Oh Julian, I have been waiting for you so impatiently. What took you so long?”

  I smile. “I wasn’t that long. Anyway, I’m here now.”

  “Come and sit down here next to me by the fire,” I sit beside her but the chaise is uncomfortable so I slide down onto the floor at her feet and lay my head in her lap.

  “I’ve been thinking about you all day,” she whispers, stroking my hair. “Do you have any idea how much I love you at this moment? How beautiful your eyes are, my love. I have always thought they’re the best part of you. So expressive, so sensitive… Hold me, my love, let me feel your passion once again.”

  I sit up next to her and put my arms around her and hold her, but she pushes me gently to arm’s length and looks at me from beneath her long lashes. “What’s the matter, my love?” she murmurs. “Why are you acting so cold toward me? You’re holding me like a block of wood! Don’t I please you any longer?” The tenderness drains abruptly from her face. “Do you want me to be cruel towards you again? What shall I do to arouse you? Shall I whip you?”

  I begin to protest but she places a finger on my lips, quietening me. “I want to, Julian – for old time’s sake. One last time. Let me bind you. I need to see if you still love me. I need you to prove it to me one last time.”

  I get a sickening feeling at the pit of my stomach.

  I’ll get the ropes,” She says cheerfully and goes to her bedside cupboard and returns with a roll of nylon rope that I don’t remember seeing before. Had she brought it back from town with her?

  She laughs girlishly, almost nervously. “I wonder if I can still do it? Get undressed, my love,” she whispers seductively. “You know I love it when you’re naked.”

  I hesitate, but the eager almost childlike look of excitement on her face disarms me completely and I get undressed. The moment I’m naked she begins to tie my hands behind my back, and then my feet.

  “There!” she says with breathless anticipation. “Can you still move?”

  “No.”

  “Good!” She smiles happily. “Come, let me tie you up like we did last time.” She fashions a hangman’s noose from a long length of rope and slips it over my head. She throws the other end over the heavy ceiling beam above and pulls the noose just tight enough around my neck so as not to choke me and ties the end of the rope to one of the burglar-guard bars on the window so that I am held securely in place, effectively unable to move in any direction without choking myself.

  My heart begins to hammer wildly and a cold chill of fear seizes me. It suddenly occurs to me that I am alone in the house with her and she can choke me to death and leave my handwritten suicide note next to my body to be found by the next occupant of this hellish house.

  “Am I to be executed tonight?” I say in a low, dull voice.

  “Executed?” she laughs gaily. “Perhaps. Perhaps not. We shall have to wait and see. One thing I do know is that you will be thoroughly punished tonight!” her eyes are on fire with excitement.

  She stands in front of me and looks at me unhurriedly. “It was you who made me aware of this side of myself, Julian. It was you who opened Pandora’s Box. It was you who unleashed the cruelty within me. If you hadn’t come along I would never have known this dark side of me even existed. I enjoy having a human being in my power and making them suffer. It’s like a dangerous drug and I have become hopelessly addicted. You have no idea how much pleasure I have taken in torturing a man who is not only physically stronger than I, but also intellectually superior - especially a man who loves me. Do you still love me, Julian?”

  I can’t bring myself to speak. My heart is in my throat and my mouth is dry.

  “I hope will you will truly enjoy what I am about to do to you now. You see, I am about to make your worst dreams come true.”

  “What’s the matter with you?” I manage to say at last. “I don’t understand! This morning you loved me and now you hate me again. Now you want to inflict pain on me once more. I don’t understand.”

  Without replying, Saskia puts her arms around my neck and kisses me. “I do it because I can,” she whispers in my ear.

  It is the end for me. Within minutes she has succeeded in pushing me back into the black bottomless pit from which I thought I had escaped. I’m falling once more, my heart in my throat and a sick horrible feeling at the pit of my stomach.

  “Very well,” I say dully, “do with me what you want. Where’s the whip?”

  Saskia steps back from me and tosses her red mane back with a flick of her head. Suddenly her face becomes completely transformed, disfigured by brutal cruelty.

  “The slave’s ready!” she calls over her shoulder. “Whip him!”

  I have no idea who she is calling to, and then suddenly the Russian’s handsome face appears between the closed curtains of the four-poster bed. He pulls the curtains aside and swings his athletic legs gracefully over the side of the bed. His feet touch the floor and he stands in front of me, completely naked, his huge penis flaccid, holding the cat-o-nine-tails casually in one hand.

  I am speechless, horrified.

  The Russian sees the look of fear on my face and laughs. He turns to Saskia with admiration. “You’re the cruellest bitch I have ever come across. A bitch after my own heart!” He leans into her and kisses her, sticking his tongue down his throat and at the same time grasping her breast roughly and squeezing hard. His penis begins to stir and grow.

  By the time he pulls away from her his cock is rock hard. He grins at her. “You’re a whore, you know that? You give me a hard on just thinking about what a sadistic bitch you are.”

  Saskia smiles at him adoringly. “I enjoy making slaves of weak men. I love making them pay for my pleasure with their blood and pain. I used to make my husband suffer too – especially after he became a cripple and was confined to his wheelchair. I used to bring men home and fuck them in front of him. I knew it drove him mad. In the end I’m not sure whether it was his illness or his grief that killed him.” She laughs malevolently.

  The Russian’s grin widens. “Pleasure and
pain, freedom and slavery, love and hate – they all go hand in hand. If you and I were gods we would have had hordes of slaves at our disposal to do with as we pleased. We would have tossed them to the wolves to be eaten alive, and we would have owned gladiators who would have done battle on our behalf and spilled their blood while we watched and banqueted.”

  Saskia’s eyes are wild with excitement. “Yes, we would have hurled our slaves to their death in the colosseum, to be devoured and torn limb from limb by the lions. What do we care if their blood bespatters us while we feast and engage in an orgy of sex and lust and pain and death?”

  Her words to the Russian are like a dagger in my heart. She has at last revealed herself to me.

  “Untie me!” I shout angrily.

  She turns on me venomously. “Aren’t you still my slave, - my property? As my property I have just given you away as a present to my lover. Now that you are his property he can do with you as he pleases!”

  “Untie me!”

  “Can he get free?” she asks her lover. “He has threatened to kill me.”

  The Russian tests the tight noose around my neck. “No chance. You’ve done a good job.”

  “I’ll call for help,” I threaten stupidly, knowing that we are alone and isolated in the middle of nowhere.

  She smiles coldly. “Shout as much as you like, slave. In fact, you will be screaming in a moment. No one will hear you. The women are gone. There is no one here but the three of us. No one is coming to save you. No one is going to stop me from torturing you to death tonight. No one!” Her eyes gleam demonically.

  I marvel that it has taken me so long to see her for the devil she really is. Perhaps that’s what drew me instinctively to her in the first place – her natural born talent for evil.

  “Do you still love me, slave, or have you grown to hate me?” She laughs coldly.

  Her lover steps closer with the whip in his hand, black eyes burning.

  “Don’t you dare!” I shout ferociously. “I won’t permit it—”

  “You won’t permit it?” he repeats mockingly. “Why? Because I have a cock and she doesn’t?” He pushes his face up close to mine. “You’re not in any position to permit anything you weak pathetic fool!” he snarls.

  Saskia laughs and he glances at her. “I have your permission to whip him?” he asks.

  “Do with him as you please. He’s yours. A gift of love from me.” She blows her lover a kiss. “Be harsh with him. I told you this morning when we were in town - he raped me yesterday. He almost tore me in half. I had to pretend to love him once more in order to calm him down. I had to sleep with him again last night and pretend I enjoyed having his cock inside me and all the while I was gagging with loathing. His touch disgusts me.”

  “Bitch!” I shout, enraged. “Liar! You’re a lying bitch! You loved my cock inside you!”

  The Russian glares at me. “Lying bitch? That’s no way to talk to a lady!” His muscles flex and swell and he draws back his arm, making the cat-o-nine-tails hiss through the air.

  I wait for the blows to begin, staring fixedly at the Rubens painting on the wall. It is a metaphor for passion, lust, love and betrayal. It is the story of the blinding love of a man for a worthless woman who betrays him for a paltry sum of gold.

  “Now we shall commence the first phase of your punishment,” the Russian says. His face has acquired a hard, brutal expression.

  Saskia yanks the rope that is tied in a noose around my neck and draws it tighter, choking me. I look into her eyes and I am looking into the soul of a she-devil. I have seen those eyes before – it’s the eyes of Aunt Sophia. I am suddenly struck by how remarkably similar they are, these two women. They both have the same green eyes.

  The Russian begins to apply the whip with frightful force and terrible precision. I shudder and gasp under each blow.

  Saskia draws the noose tighter still, her face flushed with excitement.

  The act of being whipped by the naked lover of the woman you love cannot be described in rational words. I felt as though I was losing my mind.

  Her lover whips on and on, blow after blow. My skin bursts open and blood spurts and flows over my skin. He carries on relentlessly, his body glistening with sweat, his big cock erect and swinging with each blow - while Saskia hangs onto the noose and drags it ever tighter, while laughing insanely.

  Finally he grows weary of the sport and flings the whip away and takes the rope out of his lover’s hands and curls it around his fist and tightens it further so that I have to stand on my toes in order to breathe.

  Then she approaches me with her small dagger, her eyes gleaming with bloodthirsty lust. “I am going to leave you with a special souvenir, slave, as a permanent reminder of the time we spent together.” She looks at her lover and laughs. “Doesn’t he look like a broken, frightened rabbit?”

  “What are you going to do to him?” the Russian asks, grinning.

  She shrugs. “I have a few ideas. I want to disfigure him permanently so that he will never forget me. I could blind him of course, or cut out his tongue, or even castrate him as punishment for raping his mistress…”

  The Russian grins. “Permanent disfigurement, the idea appeals to me.”

  She steps up close to me, her green eyes are deep pools of merciless hatred. “I am going to carve my name across your groin with this little knife,” she breathes, on fire with excitement. “I am going to carve it so deep that you will bear the scars for the rest of your life. You will never forget me! And every time you look at them you will loathe me as much as I have come to hate you.”

  The Russian leans on the rope and the noose tightens further around my neck until I am balancing precariously on my toes, barely able to breathe. If I lean back I will choke to death. My eyes are bulging and I am on the verge of blacking out. I know that if I do it will be the end of me.

  I scream as the blade of the dagger slices into my flesh and she begins to carve out the big bold letters across my groin: S-A-S-K-I-A. Blood flows freely into my genitals and down my thighs. The pain is excruciating. I can’t breathe. I can’t keep my balance a moment longer. And suddenly my body has taken all the pain and shock that it can stand and I pass out.

  I sag back against the noose, unconscious. This is the end.

  Chapter Sixty-One

  I float back into consciousness in a sea of pain. My body is on fire from the whipping and my genitals and thighs are sticky from the blood oozing from the letters carved into my flesh. I am manacled and caged, and it takes me a while to realise that I have been locked in the steel box of the iron maiden once more. I am gripped with a sense of claustrophobic terror.

  As before. My genitals have been threaded through the small hole in the door of the torture device and hang outside, vulnerable and exposed.

  I blink my eyes in a daze of excruciating pain. Movement catches my eye in the candlelit gloom and I try to focus my eyes as I look through the iron maiden’s steel grill into the room.

  The Russian and Saskia are on the four poster bed. They are both naked and the Russian has mounted her. He is fucking her. Her legs are spread wide open and her thighs are raised with her legs draped over his shoulders. Her arms are flung back submissively as he thrusts his cock back and forth inside her. The muscles on his back ripple and his buttocks contract each time he pushes hard into her. She begins to mewl and writhe under him and his strokes become faster and more urgent, and as he grows excited he begins to slap her in the face and hit her breasts.

  “Come on, bitch!” He snarls. “Open your legs wider! Let me ride you, whore!” His movements become faster and rougher and then his back arches in spasm and he throws his head back and growls like a beast in agony. His orgasm goes on and on and finally he collapses on top of her.

  I lose consciousness once more.

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  I have no idea where I am.

  I turn my head slowly and see the dying embers of a fire in the grate. I gradually realize that I have been
released from the torture chamber of the iron maiden and am lying on the floor of the bedroom, in the dark. The candles have been blown out and the fire has all but gone out.

  I strain my ears to listen. There is no sound and no movement. I am alone in the house. They have gone.

  My hands and feet are still tied. Have they left me here to die? I feel a hard metal object dig into my ribs and it takes me a long time to figure out that it’s the she-devil’s dagger. It takes me an even longer time to manoeuvre my body in such a way that I can get hold of it. Finally I manage to grasp it with trembling fingers and slowly and painfully begin to cut the ropes that bind my wrists behind my back. Once my wrists are free I sit up and sever the rope on my feet with the sharp blade of the knife. I begin to crawl painfully and slowly across the room, leaving a trail of blood behind me, and switch on the bedside lamp. The room is flooded with an eerie light. I manage to drag myself into a sitting position on the bed.

  Now that the room is devoid of her and her possessions it seems different - unfamiliar even. There is no sign of her clothes or her cosmetics and brushes on the dressing table. There is no hint that she has ever been here – except for the smell of her perfume which still lingers in the room.

  She has gone with him. It’s all over.

  I am overcome with grief and sob uncontrollably.

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  I cannot remember much about the last few weeks. I remember only pain and delirium and horrific nightmares. In my dream Amun came to me and lay naked in bed with me and cradled my face against her large voluptuous breasts and held me while I sobbed. It was only days later that I realised that Amun’s presence was not a dream, but that she had in fact come back for me.

  “I knew what that bitch was gonna do,” she murmured in my ear as she held me. “I knew she was gonna run off with that no-good Russian bastard – she told Osiris and me that morning when she took us into town. She said she was gonna run away with the Russian but that they were planning on hurting you bad first.”