The Scarlett Letters

by Jenny Nordbak

  I watched him sink back into sub space as his eyes glazed over.

  “I beat you!” I screamed with a flex of my biceps.

  Deep breath. You can do this. You can do this. Not funny. Not funny. Not funny.

  “Ta-da!” I shouted even louder, trying to practice saying it with some kind of emphasis that I could buy into. I didn’t laugh, but I was willing to bet that I wouldn’t get through a hundred more repetitions without losing it. One at a time, I told myself. Just get through one at a time.

  An hour and twenty-three minutes later, I realized that I had given up all pretense of caring without even noticing. All of my major muscle groups were trembling when I tried to flex them. I had run out of mental games to play to stop myself from playing Guess the Time, and the fact that Dom’s intensely serious session was taking place next door was making it that much harder to take myself seriously. If I could hear them conducting their interrogation, they could certainly hear my every “Ta-da.” The idea that it was distracting them made it excruciatingly difficult not to laugh.

  I felt guilty and decided I had to snap myself back into it.

  In studies regarding the nature of happiness, there is a well-tested theory that the way we rate and remember an experience is an average of the peak of the experience in terms of its emotional charge and the end of the experience. Thankfully, in my line of work, the peak of the session tends to coincide with the end of the session (if ya know what I mean). I was still confident I could blow Ted’s mind if I just gave him my focus back for the remaining twelve minutes of the session. I decided I would spend five and a half minutes soothing him and reconnecting by going back to sensual foot rubbing on his face. I rested my muscles by perching on the stool behind me and leaning both feet on his face at once. This let me find a rhythm by making slow circles around his features, pointedly ignoring the voice in my head that was screaming at me to force my foot in his mouth and make him deep throat it.

  Not this session, penetration pervert. I don’t care how bored you are.

  I put both feet over his eyes to check my watch. Twenty seconds to go. I took a deep breath, rolled my neck and shoulders, and let Wonder Woman come back to the forefront of my mind.

  When I lifted my feet and assumed the position once more, I locked eyes with Ted and sensed that he knew I was back. I glowered down at him, and struck a bodybuilder pose with my arms in the air. I looked deeper into his eyes, and without showing the slightest reaction with my features said, “I beat you. I’m. The. Winner.” It took a conscious effort not to thump my chest after each word. His sweatpants bulge had returned, and he was shaking again. His whole body was moving, hips thrusting to that rhythm as old as time.

  Deep breath. You can do this. Not funny. Not funny. Not funny.

  “Ta-da!” I screamed to the ceiling.

  Next door, I heard Dom start to giggle hysterically, and I lost it. Laughter tore through my chest, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I laughed loudly, with an edge of hysteria, but still managed to make it sound triumphant.

  Still laughing maniacally and feeling like I was starting to mentally slip, I desperately repeated the three magic phrases twice, in quick succession. Tears rolled down Ted’s cheeks. His breathing was labored with sobs. I hesitated, but his dick was still hard and he was humping the air, so I kept going.

  “I’m the winner.”

  He shuddered and sobbed.

  “I beat you,” I yelled, still laughing like a mad woman.

  “Ta-da!”

  He groaned while crying and thrashing his head. I was concerned until I looked down and realized that Ted had just come in his pants without any manual stimulation whatsoever.

  Where the fuck did he just go in his mind?

  I handed him a towel, but he was still way too out of it to care that he had just come all over his trousers and was going to have to leave like that. He scrubbed his face with his hands, and steadied himself with a deep breath. His eyes filled with tears again as he looked at me and said, “Goddess, that was incredible. No one has ever laughed at me like that.”

  I let him kiss my feet, and stroked his head gently, suddenly very glad we had at least a minute or two for aftercare. I hadn’t anticipated that I would need to worry about it for such a simple session, but he was in no state to drive. He was showing all the telltale signs of having been deep in sub space. He chattered away while he tried his best to clean off his pants, babbling excitedly about the session and about how happy and relaxed he was. The quiet, subdued Ted I had met was no longer in the room with us. This Ted was ebullient. I thought he was going to skip to his car. I felt incredible that I had been able to evoke that kind of reaction from another person and honored he had shared that piece of himself with me.

  I walked back to the dressing room with a shit-eating grin on my face, feeling about ready to skip myself. I opened the door and was greeted by a chorus of, “I beat you! I’m the winner! Ta-da!” We were all laughing hysterically. Dominic and Storm were clinging to each other trying to explain how difficult I had made their scene. Darling Ted had given us all a good laugh that day, and for many more to come.

  25. ELEANOR

  Rich came in to work one morning with a huge smile on his face, looking younger and more refreshed than I had ever seen him. The source of such a transformation could only be trouble.

  He hummed and danced while filling his coffee cup, saying with a grin as he passed my desk, “Mornin’, Jen!”

  “Morning…” I replied skeptically, giving him the side-eye. I followed him to his office trying to figure out what his deal was.

  “Okay, I give up,” I said. “I don’t smell booze on you and your pupils aren’t dilated, so I’m ruling out substance-induced happiness for now. You didn’t win the lottery or you wouldn’t be here.”

  He cocked his head with a guilty smirk and shrugged.

  “Could it be that Mr. Rich got proper laid?” I said in a pathetic excuse for an Asian accent.

  “The Young Grasshopper is correct.”

  I gasped and nudged him in the ribs. “Am I also correct in assuming that this didn’t occur at home? Who is she?”

  “Right again. God, Jen, I’m a new man. I’d forgotten what this was like. She’s young enough to be my daughter, but for some reason is into a wrinkled old dude like me. And, God, she’s wild. It’s like anything goes. She calls me ‘daddy’ and lets me turn her over my knee. And her ass … God, her ass when I spank it is like poetry.”

  “Well, then … I guess I should be scolding you, but your marriage is none of my business. It’s good to see you happy.”

  He kept whistling as he booted his computer up. I rolled my eyes playfully and went back to my desk.

  Vance appeared at the door carrying a child that I assumed was his daughter. The smile on his face as he looked at the girl made it obvious that this little girl was the light of his life. She had platinum blond hair that fell in ringlets to her shoulders. Freckles dotted her cheeks, and her long eyelashes gave her an angelic look.

  “Jenny, I’d like you to meet my daughter, Evie. Evie, this is Jenny.”

  Evie reached out her hand in my direction, and looked up without making eye contact. I took her hand as I connected the dots. She was blind. Vance had a blind little girl. As we talked about Evie, a number of puzzle pieces fell into place. Vance was always the first out the door so that he could get home to his family. He was impatient to the point of being disrespectful because his priorities were elsewhere, and when we slowed him down it kept him away from this little girl.

  Everyone is fighting a battle that I know nothing about? Now I knew what Vance’s battle was. I looked at him through new eyes, seeing the loving father who must struggle in ways that I could only imagine. I felt like a dick for thinking that he had been an asshole.

  As he carried Evie back out of the trailer, I mumbled to myself, “He could still be a little more polite about it.”

  * * *

  That evening, S
torm, Raven, and I had just returned to the dressing room after a triple trampling scene. I had definitely been the odd girl out. The gentleman was visiting from Switzerland (he brought us all a box of Swiss chocolates), so he had picked us based on our profiles online. He had properly assessed that Storm and Raven were both around six feet tall and had ample curves, ideal for a man who wants to be crushed under their feminine weight. I was about six inches shorter and forty pounds lighter than either of them, but I had done my best to look heavy and use my strong muscles to compensate. Our Swiss friend wanted us to crush him under gym mats and take turns walking on him, which had been delightfully fun. It was like a kinky jungle gym. He also said some CBT would be fine, but once we got in the room and he undressed, we were appalled to discover that his man parts smelled like a construction site porta potty. He was uncircumcised, but I didn’t think that was the reason since I’m partial to the uncut penis and had never encountered an issue like this before. His dick fucking reeked, so none of us would go near it with anything but our shoes. At the end of the session, he complimented us thoroughly, but expressed disappointment that we didn’t interact more with his genitals. Except he pronounced genitals in his accent with a hard g as in garbage. We were still giggling about it and mimicking his pronunciation as we settled on the couch with our laptops in the dressing room.

  “Fuck,” groaned Raven. “I have so many papers to grade. It’s like the one thing in my life I don’t like doing that I can’t have a slave for. I love lab work and lecturing, but grading is the worst.”

  “I was sure you were going to lecture our Swiss friend about personal hygiene for his stinky gen-eetals!” I told her.

  “I almost did, but he was so sweet I just couldn’t do it.”

  “What? Raven’s got a soft spot for the little Swiss man and his stinky gen-eetals? I never thought I would see the day. Poor guy is never going to know now why women won’t go near his junk.”

  She smacked me with a pillow.

  My Web browser had opened to the Yahoo homepage as I prepared for some mindless surfing of the Interwebs. The first headline that caught my eye was about a murder suicide in the town in Texas where I grew up. Appalled, I clicked on it. That click was another delineating moment in my life. The day I started at the Dungeon, I knew I would forever be different. This time, I was unaware that I had just clicked the link that would drop a bomb on my life.

  The headline read, “Man finds wife, son shot to death.” The man was my father. The wife was my stepmom who had torn my family apart. The son was the seven-year-old half brother I would never get to know. Crime news is reported like entertainment, and most of us are guilty of indulging in a little sensationalism from time to time. I can’t properly describe what the moment feels like when you realize that the people in the story aren’t distant strangers, but your family.

  I closed my laptop and dropped it on the table next to me, as though getting it away from me would make the story less true. I had a moment of confusion, and then it all exploded in my mind at once: They were dead. She killed him. She killed herself. He was seven. My dad came home from work and found them dead in the living room.

  My entire body was shaking from the shock, and I was sucking in the deepest breaths I could manage trying to regain control. Control of what? I didn’t know.

  Raven and Storm thought I was trying to be funny, and then they realized something was legitimately wrong with me. They couldn’t understand what had gone that wrong in the space of a few seconds.

  “Scarlett, are you okay? You need to breathe, honey!” Raven said, trying to take my hand.

  I jumped up from the couch. I didn’t want human contact.

  I stood there and stared at my own chalk-white face in the mirror trying to understand how this could be reality when it felt so distorted and wrong. In the movies, moments like this are depicted with warped sound and visuals, but in real life what is warped is that the world keeps moving as though nothing has happened. From one second to the next, everything is the same and yet nothing can ever be the same again.

  My phone was ringing on the couch, but I didn’t care. Raven looked at it and said, “It’s your mom. Maybe you should talk to her.”

  I stared at her blankly and continued to shake.

  She handed me the phone, and I answered it and held it to my ear automatically. I didn’t want to hear her say it, so I preempted her by saying, “I just saw.”

  “Oh, God, sweetheart, I’m so sorry. Are you okay? Where are you?”

  I could hear the tears in her voice, and didn’t think I could talk to her without crying. And if I cried I wasn’t sure I would ever stop.

  “I’m okay. I don’t really want to talk right now. I just want to go home.”

  “Okay. Where are you, though? Are you with Wes? You don’t sound like you should be driving.”

  “I’ll be fine. I just want to go. I love you. I’m fine. I just don’t want to talk.”

  I hung up the phone and grabbed my work bag. Raven and Storm were staring at me as if I might explode, and they weren’t sure how to approach me. In so many ways, I felt close to them, but in this there was a void too big to fill. I needed someone who knew the history but who wasn’t personally affected by it. I couldn’t be around anyone who was as raw as me. I knew my family would take care of one another, but I wanted space. I just needed Wes.

  “Can you tell Cat that I needed to leave? I’ll e-mail and explain later.”

  I got to my car and felt the flood of tears that I had been holding back start to burn my eyes, but I didn’t give in to it. It was an abyss I refused to step into.

  I called Wes, looking to be steadied.

  “Hey!” he answered, mid-laugh, obviously with someone in the background.

  “Umm … hey…” I responded, hearing my voice crack.

  “What’s up, pookie bear?”

  He couldn’t hear in my tone that something was wrong, and that pissed me off. I heard him laugh again, and concluded that he was stoned. I blurted out what had happened anyway, needing him to snap out of it and be there for me.

  There was a long pause, followed by more giggling and, “Who did what?”

  I hung up.

  It wasn’t worth trying to explain it to him. I told myself that it wasn’t his fault that he had been high when I called, but I couldn’t shake how angry I was that I needed him and he was useless. Angry wasn’t good, but angry I could work with. It was a feeling I could control better than mindless grief.

  I kept breathing deeply and started the engine. Driving gave me something else to focus on. My gas light was on, so I eventually pulled into a gas station, but I kept pulling up on the wrong side of the pump. I must have pulled to the wrong side six or seven times before I eventually got it right. The shock was having more of an impact than I was willing to credit. I acknowledged that I probably shouldn’t be driving, but just wanted to get home.

  When I got there Amelia was waiting with the front door open. I could only assume my mom had called her. She gave me the hug I didn’t know I needed and we made it to the living room. I don’t remember much about the hours that followed. She let me babble about it all and if she thought it was strange that I was eerily calm, she didn’t comment. I didn’t cry. I stopped hyperventilating. But by the time I went to bed that night, my whole body was still shaking with repressed emotion.

  26. SPANKSGIVING

  Thanksgiving arrived too quickly on the heels of tragedy and I still wasn’t ready to spend that much time with family. Deep down, I think I knew I was burying my head in the sand, but I was convinced that if I could compartmentalize it for long enough, it wouldn’t hurt so much, and I could just move on. Turns out repressed feelings don’t fade. They fester.

  I told my mom we were spending Thanksgiving with Wes’s family but really made plans to spend “Spanksgiving” at Raven’s house with a big group from the scene. The holidays are a surprisingly busy time at the Dungeon. It seemed to be a combination of lonely guys
who didn’t really have family and guys who had too much of their families. By the time Thursday rolled around, we were all exhausted from fulfilling everyone else’s fantasies and ready to blow off some steam fulfilling our own.

  Like a traditional Thanksgiving, there was an abundance of food at Raven’s because everyone had brought a few favorite dishes. We shared dinner, drinks, and laughs like a normal family—if your family openly discusses the merits of using kitchen utensils for cock and ball torture, tentacle fetishes, and the distractingly awkward squeaky noises the girls always make in Japanese bondage porn.

  When other families were gathering around their tables to play board games, we were gathering around a huge pile of tarps for a giant sploshing scene. Sploshing falls within the wet and messy (WAM) category of fetishes. It is an attraction to throwing and smashing food items on another person, usually covering them in a creamy, sugary mess. We were basically going to have a sexy food fight. Everyone had brought extra cream pies, cupcakes, and whipped cream, which we laid out around the tarps at the ready.

  We were all naked or very close to naked. Wes, never one to be shy, had stripped everything off, but I had elected to leave my underwear on in the hopes that it would keep frosting out of my lady bits, which didn’t sound particularly pleasant. Wes and Boy were the only men present in a small crowd of women. Their grins indicated that they liked their odds.

  Raven stood in the center of the tarps, pie in hand, and said, “On my signal!”

  She smashed the pie in Boy’s face, and mayhem ensued. I raced to grab a can of whipped cream, but before I could get the cap off, Storm was standing in front of me with two cupcakes. I was pretty sure I knew what she was going to do with them. We giggled as she smashed one on each of my boobs. It felt so silly and wrong, but was naughty and hot at the same time. She smeared the frosting all over my chest and stomach, and I retaliated by spraying her utterly perfect fake breasts with a whipped cream bikini. I turned to show off my handiwork to Wes, but found him occupied. My boyfriend was wrapped in the arms of Raven’s friend Gwen. Her body was pressed against him. His tongue was in her mouth. Until then, I hadn’t witnessed such an intimate moment between Wes and another woman. I paused to consider how it made me feel. It was thrillingly erotic and not the least bit threatening. If anything, it strengthened our bond because we each appreciated that the other allowed us to experiment. It also reminded us that we were in a relationship because there was more to it than just sex.