by Anneke Jacob
He smiled blandly at her. "It's Sunday. Not many streetcars. Grab 'em while you can." He put an arm around her shoulder. "Anything hurt?"
Maia took a few quick breaths. "No, just – really – tight." She wriggled slightly, and arched her back just a little, trying the limits of her bondage.
Quickly she gave up the attempt, placed a trembling, tentative hand on his thigh, and gave him a sidelong look. He immediately took possession of the hand.
He had been looking forward to this from the first moment of their acquaintance. Sending her out into the world apparently free, but in fact thoroughly harnessed and restrained. Locked up, yet vulnerably naked beneath her dress. Demure on the surface, utterly, wantonly packaged beneath. And having to cope with it all.
A quick glance around assured him there was no one within earshot if he kept his voice down. "I expect you to go straight to that stop each morning, and straight to work; no side trips. Same in the other direction. If you think you need to do anything else, you'll have to get permission from me beforehand. Preferably well in advance. If something urgent comes up you can call me for permission, but it'd better be important."
She nodded acquiescence. Usually once she knew the rules there was some release of tension, but not this time.
"Something's worrying you."
"I – yes. I'll have to use a computer at work. Is that – okay?"
"Of course. How else could you do your job?"
"What about e-mail?"
"Yes, you can access your e-mail at work. Home also; I'm not cutting you off. I was going to let you check it this evening. I think every other day is enough. And I'm not giving you more than fifteen minutes."
"That's plenty. I just don't want to lose touch with Po Ling and Heather." She relaxed, and he ran a finger back and forth across the inside of her wrist.
"Nikki's calling you at work tomorrow?"
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She nodded. "I told her you said it was okay to call us at home, but she
– thinks it's better…."
"She thinks it's better to talk to you when you're not directly under my thumb. That's all right. Though I doubt you'll have a lot of time for personal calls. At least of her variety. You might have to cut her short."
She looked up at him a little shyly. "I'm glad that you're not worried about – about my talking to people."
He raised his eyebrows. "I'm a possessive, controlling son of a bitch, but I'm not crazy. You can talk to whoever you like." He smiled a little. "What you do and where you go is a different story."
They were at Parliament now, and new passengers were walking down the aisle toward them. He stroked firmly down her side, feeling the straps, pulling her close. They got off a couple of stops past the university, and walked up the street to the Healthy Environments Coalition Information Centre. This occupied a house converted for the purpose, and had funding insufficient to remain open on weekends. Part-time staff was a tradition, a convenience for staff with school-age children, and a convenience also for the administration, which in this way avoided paying benefits. Maia had expressed guilt about depriving some working mother of an ideal job, a scruple that Anders had firmly quashed.
He looked at his watch. "You should be able to make it home by one-thirty. One-forty-five if the streetcar's delayed or something. How does it feel now?"
The calm expression she'd assumed for public consumption wavered slightly. "Almost as scary as before."
"Almost but not quite? That's good. And physically?"
"Still tight. I see what you meant when you said I – wouldn't draw a free breath." She exhaled what air she had through a wry smile.
"You got it," he said cheerily "Any chafing?"
"Maybe. Inside thigh, on the right. Feels a little tighter than the left."
"I'll check it when we get home." They headed back.
The streetcar back was long in coming, and fairly full, so they had to stand until Yonge Street. Anders took a few steps back and took in his slave from a little distance. She looked composed: a small, pretty, high-breasted girl in a green dress and sandals. No sign of the turmoil, the intense arousal, the fear he knew roiled beneath the surface; none that a stranger would 144
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notice, anyway. Just a faint shifting from side to side, easily explained by tired feet or the motion of the streetcar. A very slight sheen of perspiration on the slender neck.
Further instructions were murmured as they approached the house arm in arm. "Kneel as soon as the door is closed and locked behind you." Anders watched carefully as she obeyed. "Take off everything that can be taken off, fold it neatly and put it in here." He opened the narrow hall closet, pointed at the low shelves he'd installed.
Maia removed her sandals and dress and put them away. "These also,"
he said. He pointed to the thin leather breast coverings, which she unsnapped from the surrounding straps with some difficulty, and set on a shelf. He stood and feasted his eyes for a long moment. "Good. Close the closet door.
Make sure you hear a click." She pressed it home. "It's locked now. All your clothes will be locked up, do you understand?" He saw the significance of this sink in and reflect in the glance she gave him.
"All right, come forward now." He pointed to the floor in front of the built-in bench, and she crawled forward a few feet, past the open inner door.
"You'll find your collar and cuffs on the bench. Put them on before you do anything else."
As she fumbled with the unfamiliar hardware, he added, "You'll put on everything else I lay out here as well. And I'll leave instructions for you to follow."
The collar clicked. She looked up.
"You don't move from this spot until you've followed the instructions.
Most of what I lay out you'll put on right away, and lock. There might be some things you'll come back and put on later. Understand?"
"Yes… I think so, master, but how will I know … when to come back?"
"It'll be quite clear in the instructions. After you've finished certain chores, for instance, or at a specific time." He nodded toward the next ankle, and she worked away at the cuffs. When they were all in place, he squatted down next to her. "Now, in case you're wondering how I'm going to enforce all this, let me point something out to you." He turned her face up toward the juncture of wall and ceiling and pointed at a pale little object there. "See what that is?" It took her a moment. "A webcam?"
"That's right." He watched her face. "I'll know the time you walk in the door, and what you do when you get here. There are several more 145
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throughout the house."
Her chest was heaving rapidly against the harness. "I won't disobey you.
Honestly, master."
He got to his feet, and slipped a finger through the ring at her throat.
"I'm sure you'll try to be good, little one. This will help. And I'll feel much happier knowing that you're where I expect you to be, safe and secure."
He felt her nuzzle forward to kiss his palm.
She wasn't objecting. She was grateful.
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Chapter Eleven
Zero Degrees of Freedom
>Congratulations! I will withhold all bothersome doubts and Cassandra mutterings, and offer applause only.
>Mange tak, Karl. But a hundred fatalistic forebears couldn't bring me down right now. She's mine, she's installed, it's unfolding just as I planned. That's enough.
>neighbours may wonder
>I doubt it. Fortunately the nearest neighbours are yuppie working couples. Not the type for coffee klatches. There's no pressure to get involved here. It's actually harder to find a sense of community in this city than to avoid one. I've been careful not to interact, or they'll be dropping by asking me for renovations advice and free help. Not that I would mind, but I'd rather they don't come
to the door. They will start to wonder if they see Maia go in and then get no answer to their ring.
>there is a couple here who use similar restrictions, but she works from home (naked and chained to her desk, they tell me).
>Very nice. I thought of that, but this is a good job for her; challenging but well within her capabilities. The subject matter is challenging for her also; it will do her no harm to face some reality, maybe develop a thicker skin. And I think it's better for her to be out of the house on a regular schedule.
>She is comfortable to be alone and locked?
>Seems to be. Safety looks like being more my worry than hers. SSC
types would take me apart, of course, for leaving her without access to an emergency key or whatever. I'm all for safety, but let's face it, politically-correct SSC is totally deadening. For me anyway, it's a blanket of wet cement over anything significant. I'm reducing the risk to the smallest level possible within the range of what I'm after. Inspecting wiring and sprinkler systems monthly. Alarms, all that. Statistically, she's probably safer locked up at home, even without an escape route, than out crossing the street.
>Your German friend is out of town again. His machine says end of June.
>Shit. No wonder he's not answering emails.
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>I saw Ole's and it was very fine. I think you will find it best to wait and be patient.
>You're probably right, damn it. I'll have to see what Graham can do in the meantime.
> the sweetness of her; I can't describe it, even when she is being punished, especially when she is being punished.
> What do you mean by this? At first it sounded obvious and bland, but this word sweet seems to have many meanings; it is following my thoughts.
>I told you, it's hard to describe. In no way bland. Apparently simple, but in reality complex and flavourful. She changes over time; a kind of ripening. At the moment, tart and slippery. Like mango.
>She turns and opens to me as if she can't help it. Even though she's afraid. Even though she doesn't know what I will do to her next, whether it will be a blow or a caress. She struggles, and sometimes she fails, and I force and enforce. Still, she tries, using all her will to give up to my will.
>This is a shy, introverted woman, Karl, making a tremendous effort not to hide or protect herself. I don't mean physically, though naturally she has to do that, too. I mean trust, and so much vulnerability. Strange, sweet.
It takes an effort to focus on anything else. I can hardly keep my hands off her. She is under the desk at my feet as I'm typing this. More later.
***
The weeks that followed, as might be expected, were utterly disorienting and bizarre.
At home, I had no autonomy, none. Everything that took place, everything I did was determined for me, moment by moment. Zero degrees of freedom. But at work I had more responsibility than I'd ever had in my life. Naturally, I'd had summer and weekend jobs, but always in very junior positions. Now I was officially a professional, and although the information centre had plenty of routines and standard practices to follow, I was expected to take care of things. After the first few days, apart from some occasional help from Information Studies students doing the same sorts of routine work I'd done in the past, I was on my own. The contrast to my life with Anders was bewildering. I had to keep reorienting myself, from passive to active and back again. Actually, 'reorienting' is a mild word for the experience. It felt more like a wrenching redirection of the persona. Luckily 148
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I had the streetcar rides to provide at least a little bit of transition time.
And then, of course, at work, just as I would start to adjust and get into my job, I'd move without thinking or try to take a deep breath, and suddenly my hands would tremble and my insides would surge. I'd feel Anders holding me, manipulating me, body and mind, like the thing that I was. Then I'd have to force an impassive expression onto my face, and pretend that I existed only in the time and place where I stood.
Apparently some people with mild schizophrenia are quite aware that their hallucinations aren't real, and manage to function normally by simply ignoring them. I seemed to have no choice but to do the same thing.
Each day became a surreal juxtaposition of oddly-assorted segments.
The morning ritual developed into a tightly-scheduled routine in which Anders shifted me from one bondage to the next – chained to the bed, to the ceiling, to the wall – while he washed and fed and harnessed me. Every morning I was led from one place to another in lockstep, with no more than a foot or two of leeway at the end of my leash.
Every morning I hunkered down on the floor in front of that red dish and felt, as I was meant to feel, like a dumb beast. A dumb beast that was capable of knowing its own humiliation. I got food on my face, in my hair till he tied it back, even on the mat. I was routinely told off and smacked for the mess, for trying to speak when I was supposed to be eating, for failing to have my bowl clean and well-licked by the time he was finished. At the end of each meal he'd come at my woebegone face with a big cloth, engulf and swab it, scolding all the while.
Upstairs, he reduced me down in another way, squeezing the breath from me as he pulled the harness tight. This wasn't as limiting overall as the corset; I could bend more easily, get my back into things. But it constricted every breath, every move.
The only things I was allowed to do for myself in the mornings were washing and blow drying my hair (Anders kept an eye on me but said he wasn't going to take the Barbie thing that far), brushing my teeth and putting on the outward, public layer – stockings, dress, shoes. No makeup. At his request I had shown him what I looked like in the minimal makeup I sometimes wore, and he decided I looked better without it.
There was a moment of transition when he unlocked the collar, and took off the cuffs, if he hadn't already. Then I was out the door, ostensibly free. I 149
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could use my limbs, walk without orders or a leash, choose to step this way or that around a puddle. I could walk down the street, get on a streetcar and go to work, just like a normal person. The bondage I was in wasn't visible to the naked eye. (Good thing those x-ray glasses in the old comics never worked.) No one could tell, either, that I had in my small bag exactly two tokens, a small ring of keys, a cellphone, and some ID in case I fell under a bus.
I piloted my weird, divided self through the information centre doors and on into work, and did my best there. The trick was to focus on what was in front of me and try to minimize input from the rest of my senses. I distanced as best I could from the bound and vulnerable slave's body beneath my clothes, kept a straight, professional face, and handed over to the afternoon shift at one o'clock. Then I walked out and headed for home.
Once on the streetcar, I found myself reinhabiting my restraints with a rush. Every strap made itself felt as it tied and demarcated the various bits of me. The harness made a display, a kind of smorgasbord of my sexual parts.
A nice breast or buttock on a platter, so to speak. None of it was mine; all of it was offered up to my owner, to take or to leave. Internal currents surged as I stared out the window, divided from the world by glass and secrets.
At first I didn't think much about the fact that the harness was locked, just as the corset had been. There were too many things bidding for my attention. But one day toward the end of the first week I got seriously entangled in that little reality. It was the day I was on my own in the centre for the first time, and I was feeling a bit overwhelmed. I still didn't know where everything was, and one or two people got politely impatient with me.
I tried to look calm as I took twice as long as I should have to locate what they needed. Six new boxes of reports had been plunked down in the middle of the floor, and I kept tripping over them. Then, of course, my computer locked up just when I needed it most.
At last to my relief there wa
s a lull; the place emptied. I headed for the boxes to get them out of the way. And I couldn't bend properly. I couldn't take a deep breath. All at once there were straps digging in everywhere. I wriggled and tugged in irritation and impatience. I have get out of this, I thought.
The next thing I knew I was in the bathroom with my dress up to my armpits, trying to loosen the straps. I must have been way more stressed out 150
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than I realized: neurons firing in bursts, sending my carefully launched body into out-of-control trajectories. For a minute I just lost it. My fingers scrabbled on the smooth leather and met over the joins: those metal pieces with their little keyholes. The broad belt that reduced my waist had two of them at the back, one above the other. I tugged and pulled at the solid straps in frustrated jerks, my confused aggravation and helplessness rising and going nova in exponential chaos. I couldn't unbuckle anything. All I could manage was tiny shifts forward or back. None of it would loosen any of it by even a centimetre. It was truly locked.
Anders had the key. There was an instant in which I envisioned calling him and asking him to come and let me out. I heard myself laugh. Surely, I thought, it could come off some other way, and be replaced later, with my master none the wiser.
I shivered, suddenly sick, feeling the cliff beneath my feet crumble and slide. My hands pressed the belt into my waist; my eyes squeezed shut. Self-inflicted disaster: here it came; the rumblings of an eight-point-one earthquake that would engulf me and everything I had ever wanted.
Wait. Slow down.
I made my hands move. Carefully, methodically, I felt over the whole harness. Pulled at the metal joins, felt for irregularities or ways to loosen the straps. There were none. No weak points, no way out. No way to play sly and false.
The nightmare sublimated up through cell walls, slipped out at my pores, its sour panic stink dispersing into the air above my head. My impulses had no power here. He'd made me safer than I knew.