The stench was appalling; drinking the water was a nauseating experience.
* * *
When Craig walked through the front door at eleven o’clock, his first thought was of a men’s room in a downscale bar. He had seen Leslie pour piss from her bucket over her head last night, but had not mentally translated that image into the rank odor that reeked in his nostrils.
Not for the first time, he felt deep sympathy for his friend. Did she really want to spend hours lying in this mess? It did not matter. He would not clean her or her floor unless instructed to do so by the contents of the envelope in his hand and he was certain that it would contain no such instruction.
Forty-eight hours was far too long for Leslie to spend in bondage, even if she were serving a penalty for losing four backgammon matches in a row. But his opinion on that point did not matter, either. Her penalty was her decision and he would not overrule her. Because, if he did, she would never trust him again.
But if she said one word about being released early, dropped even the slightest hint that she had changed her mind, he would rush directly to the wrench and unbolt her without giving her a chance to reconsider.
She did not indicate any change of heart. She said nothing, simply looked up at him silently with the most miserable expression that he had ever seen on a human face.
His one mercy had been coming late. She had said at the outset of her punishment that the times on the envelopes were not exact, that he could sleep in if he chose. He had actually been awake by eight this morning, and had swung by once to peer through the crack left by the cardboard over the dining room window but had chosen not to reveal himself then. Rather, he had returned home and delayed returning for as long as possible. He knew that, miserable as she was now, whatever was in the envelope in his hand would only put her in worse straits. If he could save her a couple of hours of that, if he could reduce her final stage from twelve hours to less than ten, then he would. And he had.
Now, he could delay no longer; it was almost eleven o’clock. While she watched in trepidation, he tore the envelope open and read:
Contemplation: You will find a hood and earplugs by the microwave in the kitchen. Use them to deafen and blind me that I will be less distracted while I spend the day in quiet meditation. If the windows are blocked, the screens should be removed so that I may think about what the neighbors might see.
Craig fetched the earplugs and hood as instructed. When he came back into the room, Leslie spoke for the first time. “There are latex gloves on the sideboard in the dining room. Put them on before you touch me. There’s no need for you to get my filth on your hands.”
He was about to reply that he didn’t mind, but recalling seeing her pour her own urine over her head, he decided that he would rather not have to drive home with that on his hands. Nor did he wish to take the time to wash them here. It was easier to don the gloves.
In anticipation, she had, with effort, flipped herself onto her face and then rocked back to rise to her knees. Now, sitting on her heels, she watched him approach with the hood and earplugs.
The earplugs were small orange foam cylinders. After compressing one for a few seconds, it was molded into a tight cylinder that easily slid all the way into her ear canal, leaving only the wide end visible. It slowly expanded inside her, effectively blocking out all but the loudest sounds. He repeated the process on the other ear.
That done, he examined the hood. It was made of pieces of heavy black canvas stitched together. She might have purchased it, but it was more likely that she had made it herself because it fit her head perfectly. Once in place, it covered her hair, ears, eyes, cheeks, and jaw. A hole as wide as her mouth extended from the tip of her nose halfway to the point of her chin. The hood would not impede her breathing and was not tight enough to keep her from opening her mouth. It would definitely block any bit of light from reaching her eyes but it would be safe to wear, even if she had to vomit.
It fastened under her chin with two small buckles that distributed the stress to the top and back of her head. It was loose around her neck and posed no danger to her breathing. There was no need to lock it; with her hands still held outstretched by the plank and U-bolts, she could not reach the buckles beneath her chin.
As soon as he finished fastening the second buckle, he said, “All done.”
She did not respond: with her ears plugged, she could not hear him.
He walked to the dining room window and removed the cardboard screen. Not knowing where to put it, he left it lying on the floor.
Leslie, having been left untouched for a minute and knowing that the hood was in place, inferred that he must have finished fastening the buckles. Tentatively, she bent over until her face was resting on the floor. She dared not remain erect any longer because she would be clearly visible to anyone outside as soon as Craig cleared the cardboard from the windows. A consideration for the remainder of the day would be that she would not know if someone were outside or not. The only way that she could remain undetected until evening would be to remain as flat as she could as close to her protected corner as possible. She knew where she had been in the room before the hood was placed over her eyes, so she knew that her corner was behind her. Twisting to put one hand on the floor and shuffling on her knees, she turned around until she thought that she was facing in exactly the opposite direction. Then twisting to place her hands on the floor in alternation. She crawled forward until she knocked against the cardboard that was leaning against the wall. Then she followed the wall until she found the corner.
Craig had been watching her slow progress and had jumped up to catch the cardboard screen that she knocked against before it fell on her. He held it and waited until she reached her protected corner before he removed the screens from the living room windows and carried them into the dining room.
He thought about replacing the screens and eliminating the risk that her neighbors would see her. Now that she was blind and deaf, she would not know if the windows were unblocked or not. The problem was that, if she started to move about, she might knock against one of the screens and feel it topple onto her. If that happened, she would know that he had not followed her instructions. He had to leave the windows unblocked.
But he could stay and watch over her for a while. Deafened and blinded, she could not tell if he had left or not. She had flipped over onto her back, that being slightly less uncomfortable than resting with her face on the floor and her butt in the air. As well it gave her a lower profile if someone peeked casually into her window.
On her back, though, the plank held her arms wide open and the chains forced her legs far enough apart to open her pussy lips slightly in a faux invitation to coitus. No matter what she might be thinking, no matter what she really wanted, her bondage forced her body into one inviting “fuck me!” position or another.
After watching her for a long time, Craig slipped quietly out of her house, went home and made passionate love to his own wife. As always, she appreciated his ardor and knew better than to question its source. She was wise enough to know that some stones should never be turned over lest something quite unpleasant crawl out.
* * *
Leslie could do nothing but wait and think. Though she could hear nothing and see nothing, she was feeling everything more acutely in compensation for missing her other two major senses. She could feel every ache and pain in her body, her desperate hunger, the chill of the room, and the pressure of her bonds against her arms every time she tried to move.
She knew that focusing her attention on her pains constantly only intensified her misery, so she tried to turn her thoughts in some other direction in the hope of finding a modicum of relief.
Unfortunately, her fears were as intense as her pains.
Foremost in her mind was the fear that she was being watched. She could no longer see if there was a face peering through her window, could no longer tell if she was tucked as far into the corner as possible. She thought that she had put herself
there, but maybe she was mistaken. She could not feel the walls with her hands because the plank extended beyond her fingertips. The only way that she could confirm her position was to push backward to confirm that the plank was jammed against the baseboard on both sides. But maybe it was hitting something else. Maybe she was lying in the middle of her floor, her legs spread wide in the direction of the window, the plank pressing against an irregularity in the floor, the plastic bucket at the end of its chain, or a chair that had been left out of place. She could not get enough traction by pressing her bound feet against the floor to be certain that she was butted up against a wall.
Maybe someone had discovered that she was on display in her living room like an animal in a zoo. Worse than an animal in a zoo because she could not see or hear her tormenters, could not crouch in a distant corner. Maybe word had circulated throughout the neighborhood. Maybe, even now, dozens of men and boys were lined up at her windows, three deep, silently jostling for a better position to see the slut living next door. Maybe cars had stopped all up and down the street, passersby curious to know what had drawn the crowd to this house.
Was a man’s cum dribbling from her asshole and cunt? Was her face dyed with yellow streaks of urine? Were people pointing at her in revulsion?
Surely it was not possible. But she could not know otherwise for certain; she would not be able to hear them if they were chatting among themselves outside her window, pointing and laughing. She would not know if they were taking picture after picture to post on the Internet.
Maybe, by this time tomorrow, she would be the latest international viral YouTube phenomenon.
And if that were happening, how long would it take for the police to arrive? Burst open her front door? Arrest her for lewd conduct? Ruin her life?
Maybe there were already reporters among the crowd at her window, already writing their stories, determined to make the deadline for the evening edition.
Surely not.
Once more, she pressed hard against the plank, trying to force it as firmly into the corner as she could, trying to reassure herself that she was positioned to protect her modesty as best as she could.
And if the worst had happened already, or would happen before darkness fell, there was nothing in the world that she could do about it.
Time passed ever so slowly. She had suffered long days of punishment before, but this would be the longest of all.
She could not help but think about how Alex had used her and discarded her. He had treated her exactly as she had asked. She hoped that he had enjoyed using her. She was bemused to remember that she had climaxed when he had fucked her. What in hell was that about? She had been hurting bad, her tailbone jammed against the floor every time he thrust into her, her back scraping against the edge of the plank every time he rammed into her, the bruises on her abused arms beating against the steel bands that held them as she jerked back and forth. How in hell had that added up to arousal? How in hell had that brought her to a climax?
If she needed any confirmation that she was a genuine, sick-in-the-head masochist, that orgasm provided incontestable empirical proof.
Sometime in the middle of the morning, the two bottles of water that she had consumed in the previous night caught up with her. She could not longer bear the mounting pressure in her bladder and saw no reason to try. She relaxed the sphincter muscles at the top of her urethra and let the warm urine flow down her crotch and across the floor to puddle under her hips and back.
Had anyone seen that? Was there a crowd at the window oohing and ahing at the spectacle of a naked woman pissing herself?
That was the high point of her day. She spent the next few hours feeling the puddle of her piss quickly grow cold then slowly dry to a sticky, smelly film of goo beneath her hips.
As the afternoon wore on, the ache in her muscles grew to unbearable intensity yet she dared not move. If she tried to turn over, she would greatly increase her risk that she would make some clumsy motion that would be visible through her window and attract the attention of a neighbor. And, even if she succeeded, that would leave her with her ass thrust high in the air and her face pressed into the sticky half-dried piss that had pooled underneath her.
The pain was unbearable, but she had not choice except to bear it anyway.
So she waited and suffered and then waited even longer and suffered even more.
And, as she suffered, she cursed the game of backgammon, cursed the anonymous men who had invented it, and cursed her folly in playing it.
As time passed, the one fear that emerged as more prominent than all others was her fear of Alex’s approbation. What did he think of her? Did he think that she was perverse? Disgusting? Insane?
She admitted that she was all of those things, but did he think so? That was the question. She liked him. A lot. She didn’t want to lose him. She had dated a variety of men over the past fifteen years. Usually she dated nice guys, but they could never satisfy. When she hinted that she sometimes liked a man to treat her brusquely, they failed to understand what she meant. No hint was enough to make them deviate from their natural course. And when she tried dating bad boys, she always regretted the result. She had no interest in being mistreated full time by some egocentric sociopath. She wanted someone who would care about her – care about her one way most of the time, but be able to care about her in a completely different way on those rare, specific occasions when she asked to be treated differently.
Finally, she had decided to come right out and put her needs on the line; take the big risk that she would turn a man off by laying herself bare to him; or, worse, turn him into a man that she no longer liked.
During the two months that they had been dating, she had begun to speculate that Alex might be the one man that she would like to spend the rest of her life with. And he seemed to be equally interested in her. But that could not happen unless he passed the test. She had needs and she needed a man who could accommodate her needs.
He was the one that she would tell, clearly and in specific detail, about what she needed. And then hope that he was both willing and able to come through for her.
But there were so many ways that he could fail. He could fail by not accommodating her: either by walking away without giving her the abuse that she needed; or by rescuing her from her self-imposed distress. If he had freed her or taken any step to relieve her suffering, he would have shown either that he did not understand her or that he did not trust her. She would have broken up with him. On the other hand, he would equally fail if he continued to abuse her after today. Up to this point, he had always treated her with kindness. Would he interpret this weekend as a signal that he no longer needed to do that? Would he think that he was now free to treat her as a weak, promiscuous woman? In the future, if he ever gave the slightest indication that he considered her less of a person now than before, she would drop him like poisoned fruit. The next few weeks would tell the tale. She hoped with all her heart that he would understand and be able to compartmentalize their relationship. That he would accept that he could never take the initiative in abusing her; that his role was limited to being a means for her to abuse herself, in the way that she specified, on the schedule that she determined. If, just once out of anger during an argument, he brought this weekend up to humiliate her, she would walk out on him and never return.
Was that fair? Was it too much to ask?
She had instructed him to take whatever pleasure from her that he wished last night, but she hoped that he had not enjoyed abusing her too much because she had not given him carte blanche to abuse her any time the whim struck. If he did not feel that shared pleasures were the best pleasures, then he was not the man for her.
Maybe the point was moot. Maybe he had already decided that she was too perverted for his tastes. Maybe he had already broken up with her and was going to tell her that as soon as he saw her again. Or maybe he would never see her again. Maybe there was already an email in her inbox that simply said, “I never want to se
e you again.” Maybe he was already telling his buddies that she was a disgusting slut and he had found out just in time; that he was no longer interested in her; that if any of them wanted to bang her ass, they were welcome to use her any way they wanted just like he had. No need to ask for her permission, she got her jollies from being tied up and raped.
She might have to quit her job, change her name, and move to another city just to keep from getting raped daily by Alex’s friends.
Her day was a maelstrom of fear, stoked by one uncertainty after another.
Her self-punishment was complete.
* * *
Craig spent most of the afternoon and evening sitting in Leslie’s dining room with The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver’s novel about a family of desperately incompetent missionaries living in the Congo during the revolution for independence in 1960. The struggle of the wife and four daughters to cope with the self-centered and increasingly abusive husband against the backdrop of a culture and people that they were incapable of understanding and appreciating seemed appropriate for his current situation. He had to ask himself if he was as blind as the husband in the novel. He thought that he was doing the right thing for Leslie but he could be entirely wrong. Maybe he should be getting her psychiatric help rather than helping her abuse herself. Was she merely seeking strong physical stimulation or was she actually self-destructive? Had he become her enabler, paving the road for her slow, protracted slide to suicide?
A Lady Pays Her Penalties Page 17