Surely, both girls must come – but Carol stopped abruptly, pulling away from Faye.
‘I’m going to tie you up and tease you now that you’re all worked up,’ she laughed excitedly. ‘I’ll do strange things to your breasts. I’ll jerk off! Are you scared?’
‘Yes,’ Faye replied quietly.
‘So you should be. I’m going to gag you too.’ Hearing these words from Carol, Mary too suddenly felt afraid, of David and of herself.
Five
‘This is all very cosy,’ David said at breakfast next morning. ‘You and I together, like a sitcom. But you realise you’re leaving today, right?’
‘Whatever you say,’ Mary replied, without the faintest trace of sincerity. ‘But come on! You have to admit it was fun seeing Carol and Faye fool around in the bathroom.’
‘It was fun if you like tricking innocent girls.’
‘Which you do!’ Mary exclaimed. ‘Don’t try to be moral, David. It’s never quite convincing, coming from you.’
‘I suppose not,’ David agreed, with a brief flash of his old, childlike smile that Mary had once loved.
Or liked. Or been tricked by, she told herself. Anyway, no reason to feel warm and gooey from a glimpse of his smile, a fragment of his old, lost self like a tiny chip of bright stone from an ancient mosaic washed away by ancient cold rains.
‘You’re right, it was fun,’ David admitted. ‘But it was bad. I have to stop doing bad things because I go too far.’
‘No, you don’t have to stop. Trying to stop makes you depressed and lifeless. You have to indulge yourself, then you’ll feel better. Let’s do one more thing together, then I’ll leave.’
‘The same old story!’ David said sharply, spearing a piece of bacon viciously with his fork. ‘Just leave, Mary.’
‘I’ll tell you my idea anyway. Let’s try to get Carol and Faye to join us for a scene in the bathroom.’
‘You’re nuts. They’d never do it.’
‘Oh, I think they would. They’re absolutely fascinated by what they can do in the bathroom, you saw that. They trust us and they’re curious about us. They’re in an experimental period. They feel isolated because they’re two girls in love with one another. What more do you need? A printed invitation?’
‘I suppose they might actually do it.’
‘Sure they would! The first time, you’ll promise not to touch them, because they’re lesbians. Or they think they might be lesbians. Later on, the second or third time they join us, they’ll be fooling around with you. The fifth or sixth time they’ll be trying bondage and domination.’
‘Whoa!’ David exclaimed. ‘You’re making plans to stay weeks, then months, then years. I see it all. No way. You’re leaving today.’
‘OK.’ Mary stayed quiet, though she was seething with anger and desperation and sadness and frustration and twenty or thirty other things. She stayed quiet for nearly a whole half-minute before she began to erupt. As soon as she started she felt like she had wanted to erupt for a long time. ‘You make me sick! I come here and the place looks like shit and so do you. I cook and clean and I fuck you and I get Faye and Carol into your bathroom and I even get you some old science-fiction paperbacks, and what thanks do I get? All I get is you telling me to leave, every day.’
‘If you’d leave I wouldn’t have to say it every day, Mary. Anyway, thanks for the books.’
‘It’s too late to say thanks! And you thanked me for the wrong things of course. You must have done that deliberately.’
‘Just a little bit. Mary, I –’
‘Oh, shut up. Who wants to hear you talk? You’re just a shadow of yourself, it’s embarrassing to hear you talk now. You’re so determined to be celibate and not be a dangerous sadist and not be involved with any human being. That’s pathetic! You used to be a real man. Or at least you used to be some kind of a man. Maybe you were a shit, but all men are shits, you were just more open and honest about it.’
‘I was an arsehole.’
‘I know, but at least you were a strong and determined and confident arsehole. Or you gave a good impression. And you weren’t totally an arsehole. Sometimes you were nice, you were almost human at times. In a certain light. Maybe deep down you’re very good, a really nice guy, too good for this world, so you had to be a sadist to show what you thought of the world. To show your contempt, your hatred of all the crap in the world. I always suspected you were good despite all the evidence to the contrary, and despite my best efforts.’
‘Jesus,’ David murmured. He ate toast. Mary was annoyed that he could eat when she was pouring her heart out like this. She would stop him being so cool and calm like an ice Buddha. She would break through his reserve and make him angry just to show she could, just to prove she was as good as him, and not some crazy woman he need not get excited about. She would make him angry if it was the last thing she did, which knowing David was always a possibility.
‘You are wrong, Mary. I’m bad. There’s no good in me. That’s why I have to give up all that bathroom domination stuff. It’s too risky because I’m bad.’
‘OK so you’re bad, who gives a toss? The point is that at least in the past you had a kind of strength. Maybe it was a crazy and bad kind of strength, but that’s a hell of a lot better than no strength at all. Look at you now! You can hardly get out of bed, and then you’re so depressed and weak and aimless you don’t know what to do with yourself. Whereas in the past you had strength. If you don’t have strength and energy you don’t have anything, and now you don’t have any strength, because you’re trying so hard not to be true to your own real self. Nothing can exist without strength, energy, power, so these things are the only really good things, because they make everything else exist, so you have to get back to the roots of your own strength and be your real self again. You have to be a sadist.’
David stared at Mary with some intricate mingling of fear and anger all mixed up and feeding on one another. She liked it when she got through to him like this and made him stop ignoring her. Let him do what he damn well pleased, but he could not ignore her.
‘I think you’re drinking too much coffee,’ said David, obviously trying to stay cool. ‘Your argument is the heart and soul of fascism.’
‘So what? Why don’t we go to the bathroom right now and do something perverted?’
‘No way.’
‘You’re so pathetic nowadays. I can’t stand it! You used to be something and now you’re nothing. I won’t allow it. It’s nonsense. And it makes nonsense of my life as well as yours. Now you don’t even have a life. You’re too cowardly to listen to your own heart, let alone mine. Everybody has to be what they truly are, or there’s no point in anything, anywhere, anytime. You have to be a sadist because that’s what you truly are. Don’t be frightened. You can do it. It’ll be OK. Everything will be OK, I promise. Let me help you be what you are.’
‘This is crazy,’ David protested. ‘You want to be Baron Frankenstein. You want to revive the monster, like in a Frankenstein sequel. All we need is a lightning storm.’
‘Yes, that’s a great idea! I love the classic Frankenstein movies. Do you remember when we watched The Bride of Frankenstein together? We used to have such fun in all kinds of ways. We love the same movies.’
‘Don’t get nostalgic, Mary. I can’t stand nostalgia.’
‘Oh, you can’t stand anything nowadays. So, you’re Boris Karloff and I’m Baron Frankenstein, and I’ve found you frozen in a block of ice and I’m going to revive you.’
‘Don’t you realise what a disaster that would be? Haven’t you ever noticed that in every Frankenstein movie nothing good ever comes out of making or reviving the monster?’
‘I know, but the Baron has to do it anyway, he can’t help himself.’
‘You’d end up as the bride, not the Baron. And look how Elsa Lanchester ended up. She was crazy, the monster was disgusted, and he destroyed the castle. Everybody died.’
‘Oh, it’s just an analogy,’ Mary said dis
missively. ‘The point is you were strong in the old days. Think about what you did! You restrained me, you took all responsibility and choice away from me. I’ve never been so free as when you restrained me because I didn’t have to do anything. And you were strong enough to chastise and punish me. Nobody else has ever had the guts to do that to me. You made me afraid, and so everything became a hundred times more intense and real and vivid, and an hour stretched into an eternity because I knew fear and humiliation and helplessness. All of the rest of my life only seems to occupy a few minutes compared to the millions of years I was your prisoner, your slave.’
Mary paused for breath. She was on the verge of panting. David had finally stopped eating, and his hands held his knife and fork in a motion half completed, so that he looked like a still from a film of a man eating breakfast. His eyes stared at Mary so intensely it looked like he could never blink again.
‘You hurt me and humiliated me and made me so afraid, and so my old self, the normal boring person I used to be, broke up and shattered and all the pieces flew away so I could never have put them together even if I had wanted to, so I had to start again from scratch and make myself out of nothing, so I could be what I wanted to be. I can never be the sort of woman my parents and everybody else says I should be. And for that I thank you. Thank you, thank you.’
Mary laughed abruptly. Suddenly, she felt happy. Her laughter did nothing to reassure David, she was glad to see.
‘You made me know myself. I could feel like we could feel the heat if the top came off hell, and there it was, hell. I came to know my every bone and muscle and organ and nerve. Gagged and whipped and confined and compressed by thirty leather straps and probed and caressed, mocked and teased and hurt, I couldn’t daydream or sleepwalk or be anything fake like they said I should, they said I had to. No, when you made me helpless I knew I was real, it was me all alone inside this body of mine, and so I met myself and became myself and I knew nothing else existed, it was all lies and crap, there was just me and all my nerves tingling and nothing mattered any more except the next breath, one more long slow breath, and an orgasm as big as death seeming to get further and further away even as you forced me towards it slower and slower so it got further away and bigger, until finally, after a million years you made me come, and I was so helpless and so breathless, and it was bigger than death. So together, you and I, we beat death.’
Mary finished her coffee and shrugged, to show David how much she was in control of herself, how calm she could be even though she was insane. And she gave him a nice smile.
‘I don’t care if you think I’m crazy for talking like this. That’s another great thing you taught me about myself. Now I know I really don’t give a shit about anything, that’s lovely. After what we did together, who cares about anything? It would be ridiculous.’
‘You’re not crazy,’ David said quietly. ‘That’s what scares me.’
‘I don’t care either way. I was young and innocent and then I met you and your big cock and your bathroom and your collection, and then I wasn’t so young and innocent any more, and that was good, because being so young and innocent was such total crap. End of story. That’s all there is, there is no more. I’m whatever the hell I am and you’re tired and depressed, washed-up. So according to you it’s all over. Now there’s just the boring real world where everybody goes to work when they don’t want to and has children they hate. And they get into debt and think about what to buy next. And women read books on relationships. Boy, do we ever read a lot of books on relationships. And they get old and they die. You and I had everything once. We had it all in that bathroom, we had a world of our own and it actually was our world. Infinity, eternity, we had the lot. For a brief moment you and I were one, because you dared to be my master and I dared to be your slave. We weren’t bored and lonely. Well, everything good comes to an end very quickly. The brave and the bold, the bright and the beautiful, all burn up in a flash and leave a lot of ash. What a mess. Crap wins. Loneliness conquers all. How sad it all is. How sad.’
Mary fell silent, having said everything she had held inside her all locked up and secret. She had brooded for many a day and night, and she had wept. Now she had given voice to all her pain and joy, and it felt good to have spoken once in all sincerity and without fear of being judged. Once and for all she had given voice. For the first time, she no longer cared what David thought of her, or what he did. She did not want revenge or an apology, she did not want love or suffering.
‘So,’ said David, ‘you understand nothing. You don’t understand me or anything I’ve said. You don’t see any dangers. You just think I’m weak. Instead of congratulating me on my strength of will, you say I’m weak. Thanks. Thanks a lot.’
Mary was surprised by David’s bitterness. She had thought he was invulnerable and beyond her reach, but now here he was getting pissed. Good. Progress at last. At once she lost all her indifference and her short-lived peace of mind.
‘Why can’t you praise me a little for trying to give up all that bathroom domination crap?’
‘You’re whining,’ Mary sneered.
‘OK, that’s it,’ David yelled. ‘Come to the bathroom now and I’ll show you how bad I am and how stupid you are. Submit to me.’
‘No,’ Mary replied.
‘What? Why the hell not? That’s what you’ve practically been begging me to do.’
‘Well, now I’ve changed my mind. You haven’t said anything nice to me, you haven’t shown me any respect. You haven’t even been polite. You should know that without politeness there isn’t anything except garbage.’
‘You crazy fucking bitch!’
‘Thank you for proving my point.’
This, thought Mary, was it. This was the moment she had been waiting for. It was perfect. David wanted her now with all his heart and soul and cock. Now was the moment she had to leave once and for all, never to see David again. Then she could look back for the rest of her life on this, her final and crushing victory.
But she could not let go just yet. It was too interesting. Here was David all worked up. She was getting to him at long last. There had to be some way she could turn this to her further advantage and so win an even more stunning triumph.
An idea came to Mary that was so perverse and risky she knew she had to do it. She dug in her pocket, took out a dulled pound coin, and tossed it on the table. It bounced and spun, until it hit David’s coffee cup with a satisfying ping. Shivering, it lay down and died.
‘Toss you for it,’ said Mary. ‘Heads I submit to you and you can do what you like to me. Tails you submit to me and likewise.’
‘You’re even crazier than I thought. I never submit.’
‘Up to you,’ Mary said with an irritating shrug.
‘OK, we’ll do it,’ David exploded. ‘And you’ll regret it. But that’s your problem, not mine. You toss the damn coin. If I do it you’ll say I cheated.’
‘You would.’
Mary tossed the coin. She had a strong feeling it must be tails, because she was on a winning streak and she felt good, full of beans and piss and vinegar. The coin flew up into the air, flashing again and again with renewed life. Mary decided that if David submitted to her, she would not hurt him. Instead she would make him come again and again, so that he would miss her when she left. That would be a fine revenge. The coin nearly hit the ceiling, then started to fall. Mary caught the coin. She would win. She slapped the coin onto her left hand and held it out. It was heads. Quite a surprise. Yet it must be fate.
‘Congratulations,’ she said to David. In fact, she decided, this was just as good as tails, if not better. Now David would dominate her, and he would once again be an addict. Then she would leave him alone with his revived addiction. That would be another kind of win.
But when she saw the look in David’s eyes she began to be afraid.
‘Let’s go,’ he said.
Mary nearly refused. She was bigger and stronger than him after all, he could not force her
to do anything. But she knew that if she left the house now she would feel she had been chicken. Never could she see it as a victory.
‘All right,’ she said.
So they entered that bathroom once more, where too much had already happened. Mary was afraid, but she was suddenly, almost sickeningly, aroused. My own body, she thought, is a traitor.
‘Strip,’ David ordered.
He and Mary undressed in silence. The bathroom was warm and bright, with sunlight gleaming on tiles and taps and stainless steel rings. When the man and woman both stood naked, David tossed and kicked their clothes and shoes out of the bathroom and closed the door. It was all too obvious that he was terribly angry, and Mary felt a tingle of fear that shuddered along every nerve of her body in a way that was intensely voluptuous. David’s cock was fearful in its massiveness and quivering rigidity. Never had it looked so much like a dreadful weapon.
‘Put this on,’ David told Mary, taking a belt from the big cupboard that contained most of Mary’s old nightmares.
Fingers fumbling with nervous clumsiness, Mary fitted it tightly around her waist. It was a broad, thick belt of strong, shiny black plastic, and firmly attached to it were eight shiny steel rings.
‘Put these on,’ David stated coldly. ‘Ankles and wrists.’
Mary fitted the four black leather straps he gave her. Each of these also had an attached steel ring. Then David took four red cotton cords. He had Mary stand in the slanting patch of sunlight near the windows at one end of the bathroom. Her heart was beating very fast. This was it. She was once again submitting to this man. He had her spread her legs, and he tied the rings of her ankle straps to rings set in the floor. Then he told her to stretch her arms out as far as she could to either side and tied a cord to her right wrist strap. He passed it through a ring in the wall and pulled hard, then harder still, forcing her to lean forwards. She felt the stirrings of panic. Then he fastened the cord. David repeated the process for her left arm. Mary was forced to lean well forwards. It was already an extremely uncomfortable position.
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