by Ward, Deena
The increased lighting greatly improved the quality of the video feeds, removed the graininess. The views in the corner feeds were still distant, but clearer now.
The close-up view of me improved as well. My red lips and nipples were even more garish in the brighter light. The hood. The awful hood. My trembling chin and half-open mouth. Panting, I realized. I had been panting.
Michael removed his shirt then began pulling the covers off of some equipment in the rear of the room.
There was a movement at the door.
A man. Not Michael. Entering the room.
My heart seized. No. Not possible. Another man?
I clenched the remote so tightly that the plastic edges bit into my palm and fingers.
Michael had allowed another man to join him.
No. He could not have done this thing.
The man was shirtless, like Michael, and dressed like him in every other way, too, including the mask, leather pants and boots, except everything was brown instead of black.
I remembered the description on the Web site. Master Black and Master Brown. Both of them punishing the disobedient sub.
I thought I might be sick. It hadn’t just been Michael and me that night. He had let someone else in the room. Master Brown. Whoever he was.
I barely registered Master Brown heading over to Michael and helping him with the equipment. I could now tell what they were uncovering: tall, free-standing lights. One by one, they carried four lights over to where I was chained, setting them up around me, not too close, leaving plenty of empty space around me, giving the men room to maneuver.
Men. More than one. Moving around me, chained spread eagled, naked and helpless.
I didn’t think I could watch any more of this, didn’t think I could handle any more.
Then there was movement at the door ... again.
Two more men entered the room.
I blinked. No. But it was true.
Two more men.
There was a roaring sound in my ears. My vision narrowed, became tunnel-like. I felt an intense need to run, but there was nowhere to hide from this. Nowhere to go. Panic, panic rising ...
Then something clicked in me. A flipping of a switch. I suddenly and simply went numb.
This thing that Michael had done, it was too big, too much, too far. I couldn’t manage it, make sense of it.
So something inside me threw the numb switch. It was like being in a waking stupor. I felt nothing. I was only eyes and ears, thumping heartbeat.
The two men were wearing simple black masks, jeans and black t-shirts. They were carrying equipment, and soon set up a station on a table, complete with laptop computer. It only took a few more minutes to realize that one of the men was the hand-held camcorder man, and the other was the sound man, holding a microphone. The sound-man also had a still camera slung around his neck.
Between the four men, they soon got everything wired the way they wanted it, including me. I recalled Michael fiddling with something at the back of my neck, but I didn’t know what it was at the time. Turned out, it was a box, with wires leading to a small microphone he clipped into the hood, near my mouth.
After they plugged in the free-standing lights, the pictures in the boxes became perfectly clear. I remembered how hot it was in the room, and how I had attributed the heat to the confining hood and the difficulty of enduring the punishments. Now I realized much of the heat was caused by the lights.
The sixth feed on the screen, which had been black all this time, flickered to life. The video-man moved around with his camcorder, and the sixth feed filled up with close-ups of my various body parts as the man moved around me.
Michael and Brown stood off to one side of me. The sound-man hustled up to them, wearing headphones and holding out the microphone which was plugged into a box clipped on his belt.
The video-man focused in on Michael and Brown, centering them in the frame. I selected that view as the largest box on the screen.
I had been suspecting it, somewhere down inside, but had tucked the suspicion away because I didn’t want to look at it. Now, though, I couldn’t deny it anymore, not with the camera close on him. Plain to see.
Master Brown had tattoos circling both of his upper arms. I could just make out the tiny thorns and barbed wire, the red-inked drops of blood. There was no mistaking it. I’d remember those tattoos for the rest of my life.
Master Brown was Kamun.
Of course he was. Who else could he have been? On this day when only the worst could happen, when only the most despised, unwanted outcome was possible, of course Master Brown would be Kamun.
I tried to swallow, but my mouth was too dry.
The sound-man nodded. The two “masters” began to speak.
Michael said, “Time to teach the little whore a lesson, Master Brown. She’s disrespected me for the last time.”
Kamun said, “Indeed it’s as you say, Master Black.”
Michael was a decent actor (and didn’t I already know that), but Kamun was beyond bad, his delivery wooden and flat. The stilted dialogue would have been laughable if it weren’t such a horror show.
Michael said, “And she has no idea we’re filming it. I’ll make her watch the video some time when I’m fucking her.”
Kamun said, “Hey, what about me?”
Michael said, “She’ll suck your cock while I fuck her.”
Kamun: “She’ll like that.”
Michael: “She will. She’s a fuck slut. But she won’t like what she’s getting tonight.”
They both moved behind me, the sound and video men taking up positions nearby. I knew what came next.
Michael began to spank me. They must have turned on the microphone on my hood, because now I could clearly be heard, my small cry of surprise, my cries growing louder with the increasing force of his smacks. I switched back to the wider feed, off the handheld, since the video-man was focusing on my shaking breasts and reddened ass and I really didn’t want to see that.
I wasn’t surprised when Kamun took over the spanking. Master Brown was there to help, the description had said.
I was beyond appalled, beyond shocked. Still numb.
Kamun only struck me a few times before saying that spanking was too easy on me. He picked up a longish wooden paddle from a table and rubbed it between my legs. I remembered that. But, of course, I never heard what Kamun said afterward.
He pulled out the paddle and the video closed in on it, showing wet streaks on the wood.
Michael said, “She’s such a slut.”
Kamun smiled. “She won’t be enjoying herself much longer.”
Then he proceeded to paddle my ass. My screams were so loud I had to turn down the volume on the television. My body was lunging around, I yanked on the chains, twisting and pathetically trying to avoid the blows. I cringed, the memory of that time so clear, wondered that I hadn’t dislocated my shoulders in my struggles. I remembered how hard I tried not to yell, how I wanted to use the safe word but didn’t. I remembered the burn on my flesh.
After seven or so blows, Michael took up a different paddle, tagged out Kamun and took over from him, landing a handful more.
It didn’t last long, watching it here. But when I was in that moment, it felt like forever.
Michael said, “Be quiet. I’m turning off the headphones.”
The three other men stepped back and stilled.
Michael pushed the remote control that he had clipped to his pants. He said, “The first punishment is over, sub. Thank me for paddling you.”
But that wasn’t what he actually said at the time. This was a dubbed line, obvious from the quality and change in his voice, the disappearance of ambient noise, obvious even if you weren’t me and remembered what he actually said. He actually said that the punishment was over and he forgave me.
My response was raspy, reedy. “I’m sorry, Master. Thank you, Master.”
The video showed him giving me a drink. Then he told me it was time for
my second punishment. My response was always the same, a weak and frightened, “Yes, Master.”
There were a few dubbed lines of him calling me a slut, telling me I deserved pain, and that he couldn’t wait to hear my whorish screams. “Yes, Master,” was ever my response. Then Michael pushed the button in his remote and the other three men swarmed around me.
The video-man adjusted the lights, Kamun changed out some gear on the table and the sound-man lifted up the camera hanging around his neck and began clicking photos of me, circling, getting different angles.
In the midst of this, I almost missed Michael walking over to the door.
And then he was through the door.
Gone.
He left me there, restrained, helpless, with those other men.
My stomach clenched.
The sound-man looked around, as if he were checking for something. He was. He wanted to see if anyone was paying him any attention. They weren’t.
He reached out, stuck his hand between my legs. He squatted down. I could see from the closer view that he was working his hand up and down, and with his other hand, taking pictures of what he was doing.
Of course I remembered that, except I thought it was Michael. I had basically dried up after the severe paddling, and those fingers inside me felt like they were scraping me half raw. But it hadn’t been Michael’s fingers hurting me. It had been the sound-man’s fingers.
The me in the video began to whimper, which soon drew Kamun’s attention. He strode over and pushed the sound-man away. But he wasn’t saving me; he was taking over.
Kamun drove his fingers inside me and began pumping. The video-man was close behind him, and recorded close-ups of the action. Meanwhile, the sound-man managed to get back in there, snapping more photos.
My whimpering sounds grew louder then, and I struggled mightily in the restraints.
Kamun said, “Look at the slut, thinking she can get away. Guess she doesn’t care for dry fucks.”
The three of them laughed.
It was appalling watching this, degradation of the worst sort. The three men surrounded me like cackling jackals, their leers and insults like so much tossed viscera.
Their masks. My hood. Everyone dehumanized.
And Michael ... nowhere to be found. I was alone. Small. Unprotected.
Foul. Befouled.
I couldn’t watch anymore of it.
I fumbled with the remote control, found and pushed the stop button. The disk menu took over the screen. The remote fell from my hand to the floor.
I sat there, staring at the television, my hands clenched into fists, my temples throbbing and stomach churning. The numb switch wasn’t working anymore.
Horror. To see something happening to me that I wasn’t aware happened -- truly horrifying.
Trepidation. What else occurred that night that I didn’t know about?
Humiliation. Deep humiliation and shame beyond anything I’d ever experienced.
And that was only the beginning. I stared at the menu on the screen, reading it over and over again. “Photos,” “Main Video,” “Bonus Video,” “Sample Other Available Vids.” It became like a chant, a mantra, giving my brain something to focus on that wasn’t nightmarish.
Then one of them stuck. Bonus Video.
Bonus Video.
Bonus Video.
Of me?
I didn’t know if I could stand to discover what was in that video, if I were in it. Couldn’t decide which was worse: knowing or not knowing.
I leaned down and picked up the remote control from where it had fallen. I highlighted “Bonus Video.” I went back and forth, wanting to know, not wanting to know. Finally, after taking a deep breath, I pushed the select button.
A pause, then one word stretched across the screen: “Afterfuck.” There were no multiple feeds this time, just one single, large video filling the television screen.
It was the inside of a large shower, and a big, naked man with a blurred face was fucking a woman lying prone, on her stomach, on the floor. Her face was turned away from the camera and water streamed over her head and limp body, her sprawled legs. Her long black hair was spread around her, all shiny wet and moving with the flow of water.
The woman was me, of course, and the man was Michael, and the cameraman must have been standing in the doorway of the shower. There was sound as well, the sound of the water, the sound of Michael’s grunts, which meant the audio-man was likely there, too, somewhere nearby.
Michael’s blurred head turned toward the camera. He waved an arm, appearing to be waving the two men away. The filming didn’t stop.
Michael turned back to me then, reached down and fisted my sodden hair, making certain I wouldn’t be able to surprise him by twisting around and discovering the video crew. I recalled wondering why he bothered to restrain me, remembered thinking that I didn’t have the strength to do anything more than lie on the floor and take whatever he chose to give me.
One particular underlying sound in the video disturbed me more than others. That sound came from me, the woman on the floor. It was an ongoing whimpering, an undulating keen, not harsh in any way, too low for that. Plaintive acceptance perhaps.
My eye was drawn to one of the shower walls. Since the water had been cool, there was no steam in the room, but there was plenty of spray hitting the glass walls, which distorted whatever view lay beyond them. A shadowy, dark shape grew in one of the walls behind the glass.
It quickly revealed itself as the outline of a tall man. He pressed his face against the glass, peering inside the shower. I couldn’t clearly make out his features, but I knew who it was.
It had to be Kamun.
No more. I couldn’t watch any more of that.
I stopped the video.
Resumed my blank stare at the menu screen.
I couldn’t stop thinking about how many times after that night I had been aroused by the memory of Michael and I in that shower. Too many times to count. Even after I split with Michael, I continued to consider the hours following my punishment as some of the most erotic of my life.
It was the first time I had deeply given myself over to someone else, the first, and still the only time I experienced the ecstasy of submission totally void of any consideration for myself, took it to an extreme I had yet to match. I had thought of it as a peek into what might be, what I might really be capable of.
And that made it sacred to me, in a way.
But now that memory was profaned, polluted by secret intruders with only the basest motives. My achievement made invalid by a lover’s betrayal.
I was nauseated. My gorge rose in my throat. My stomach heaved. There was no stopping it. Not this time.
I jumped up and ran to the bathroom, barely making it to the toilet before it was too late.
I don’t know how long I stayed in the bathroom before I hauled myself up off the floor, rinsed my mouth and staggered to my bed. I don’t know how long I lay there, either.
It’s no simple task to adjust one’s view of the past, the present and the future. It took time to fully realize that I’d lost my job. That I was currently starring in a pornographic video on the Internet. That people who knew me might see that video. And that any job I might get would likely be in jeopardy because of what Michael had done.
As for his betrayal, my loathing was complete. Now that the initial shock was over, several realizations clicked into place.
The Web site belonged to Michael and it was likely the same one he used to exploit Lilly.
Michael was a stranger to me, had never been honest with me, had manipulated me from the very beginning.
I had been a naive fool.
I found it strange that in all my debating over what might be on the DVDs, I didn’t once wonder who had sent them to my workplace. Now that I had thought of it, I knew Michael had to have been that person.
Why had he done it? Revenge, I could only assume, but for what? Leaving him? Being with Gibson? Not answering his t
exts and email over the weekend?
I remembered the subject line of the email I got from him on Saturday, “Last Chance,” I think it read. I thought he meant my last chance to be with him. It seemed now that it meant my last chance to stop him from posting the video, ruining my life.
I forced myself out of bed and went into the living room, dug my phone out of my purse. I opened the email app and searched through the trash. There was Michael’s email, not yet erased. I opened it and read.
Dearest Sweet,
I’m through with being patient. You must stop denying the truth. I want you back, I know you want me. You surely realize I can force the issue, and I’m beginning to think that you’re only waiting for me to claim you.
If you don’t answer this, then I’ll know what I need to do.
Your Master
Well now. It was possible that Michael had lost his mind. Or he was just the same old, narcissistic bastard who would do absolutely anything to get what he wanted.
I reread the email, growing angrier and angrier. Claim me. My master. The sorry mother ...
I thumbed up his number and called him. He answered in seconds.
He said, “I was waiting for your call.”
My voice shook from barely-restrained fury, “I hate you.”
He chuckled. “That’s okay. You know I don’t mind that.”
“I fucking despise you in every way. I wish I’d never met you. The thought of you makes my skin crawl.”
“That’s harsh. But as I said, I don’t mind. You’ll come around, once you accept what’s happened and see the truth.”
I ground my teeth together. “There’s nothing for me to come around to. You are nothing to me. Everything was an illusion you created to manipulate me. Well, way to go. You sure fooled me.”
“That isn’t true.”
“What isn’t true? That it was all illusion? I don’t know what else to call it. I was sincere, accepting my punishment and trying my hardest. You praised me for it and I was proud to please you, thought you were worthy. But you were actually a filthy, fucking liar who sneaked other men into the room and secretly filmed me so you could make a quick buck. Sounds like illusion and manipulation to me.”