"I am a slave."
Meeting ex boyfriends in the street goes like “Oh hiya! How’ve you been? Still working on that important mega project at The Institute? Still with whatsherface? Oh, sorry to hear that. Yeah I’m good thanks, busy as ever. There’s just so much to do isn’t there? Catch up? I’d like that, give me a call, we’ll arrange something.”
We never do. After “Gotta go, nice to see you.” I hurry off allowing myself a wry smile because even though I remember most of the naked fun we had, I remember the clothed exasperation more. I don’t even want to flirt now, politeness will do.
There is one man however who, no matter how long we spend apart, maintains a grip on my thoughts so powerful that meeting him renders me helpless. I mean that literally. He too is an ex boyfriend but during his time as my lover he discovered my weaknesses and exploited them mercilessly. I’m not sorry about that at all.
Don’t think of me as insecure or fragile, I’m not. I feel safe enough to let my demons run riot and they do. He discovered that and how to uncage them. He always will and there’s nothing I can do to stop him. His thrill was to deny me and he exerted his control over me with such surgical precision he taught me to be thrilled by it too. Deny me what? Everything.
He’ll tell you he “trained” me. That’s a simple word for the process of psychological manipulation he used to reduce me to willing subservience. He made me want to depend on him so completely that my whole life was his. That is until he no longer wanted it, or me. Please don’t think it tragic that I was betrayed, replaced then discarded. I wanted that. I wanted to feel crushed by the ultimate denial of losing him. I tried hard to think of that as positive, a kinky point of view of a real life challenge, and I succeeded. I’m fine, I’m well adjusted, sort of, and my life is peaceful and productive, but for the sake of wickedness, I still return to face those demons.
Although we didn’t see each other after we split, we kept in touch by email. His new love fulfilled him in ways I couldn’t. She was real and the woman he needed, as opposed to just one he wanted. However we carried on the part of me he wanted to keep in a sort of permanent on line fantasy role play. She couldn’t replace me there. He bullied me, asserting his authority over me because I thought I was letting him. In truth I was addicted and those times he wasn’t there were hard to fill with my ordinary real life. In truth he’d addicted me.
He joked that if we ever met again he expected me to behave in the same way I always had, and still did on line. I laughed “Yeah right, like I’d do that now!” I have to confess I thought of it often and it scared me to wonder if I’d want to if we ever did bump into each other.
Predictably, one day that happened.
It was lunch hour in the city and just like everyone else, I was hurrying between shops, cafes and the urgent return to offices. Why does everyone else on the pavement always seem to be going the other way? I’d just twisted myself through a gap in the traffic and looked up to see him walking towards me. He was some distance away and more people quickly filled in my line of sight as the throng fought for walking space. My heart fluttered and I realised I had seconds to decide what to do. I was sure he hadn’t seen me, yet.
I could do nothing and let us bump into each other. Balked by the crowds of people around us, I’d ignore the role I’d played by email. I imagined him smiling at me and his obvious smugness as he taunted me by thinking “Now’s your chance to play for real!” I’d see him think it. It felt like cheating the game if I didn’t keep playing.
I could turn and run. I could scramble into the first useful doorway I found and hide in the shadows but what if he saw the disturbance my panic caused? Would he look for whoever’s fault it was and see it was me? I couldn’t let him do that. In the game that would have been a capital offence.
Or I could do it. I could drop to my knees in the display of willing submission I’d recently written a hundred times. When we were together I would do this for him daily around the house.
I stopped dead in my tracks, suddenly left breathless by the idea of doing it now, in public. He’d made me repeat “I am a slave. I have no shame.” over and over again so many times it was the first thing that came into my head at the thought of meeting him. I didn’t want to kneel, not here. I wished we were somewhere else, then I could. Then I would instantly. “Fuck, I can’t not do it!”
Thinking fast, I invented the excuse that I needed to look in my bag and crouched to put it on the ground. I opened it with my heart pounding, praying that the people who had to walk round me would think only that I was inconsiderately obstructing them. No one would notice my knees accidentally touch the pavement while I was distracted by my bag’s contents would they?
A moment later the crowd before me parted and I looked, not up but ahead, and I recognised his shoes. They stopped. It was always important where I directed my gaze. Eye contact was for me to be told, not for me to ask. I learnt “My desires have no meaning.” too. I tried to breathe without panting and realised I wouldn’t be able to speak past the lump in my throat even if he spoke to me first. I wasn’t properly in position but still hiding in pretending to need my bag. He was with two friends, I think. Two more pairs of shoes stopped.
“Gimme a minute will ya.” He said. I looked up as far I dare, as far as his belt buckle in weathered Levi 501s, his favourites. I remembered those, and the belt! “Get me halloumi and roast veg, I just want to deal with this OK?” he said laughing. The two pairs of shoes moved on after acknowledging his request, one pair either side of me. I’m sure they looked down at me, I’m sure they knew who “this” was.
Would anyone be intrigued if I crossed my wrists behind my back? I was more frightened than I thought I would be and tried it to impress him, planting both knees on the floor, shoulder width with my feet pointing backwards. Would anyone think “What ever is she doing?” I prayed no one would interfere. Was I making a dreadful mistake?
He moved behind me, I felt shaded and a moment later I felt him grab my hair to hold my head still. In a low growl close to my ear he said “A hundred yards up the street there’s an alley on the left, behind Tesco Express. Go.” Then he let go of me.
Without looking back I picked up my bag, stood up and walked off in the direction he’d sent me. I knew he’d be following me. If this was simply a story I’d tell you I had no idea what he as going to do to me once we got there, but I did know. This was one of our email exchanges.
I could have done nothing, I could have run, but I did that because “I am a slave. I have no shame.”
My heart felt like it was going to burst by the time I found the alley. I turned into it, stopped, then felt his hand firmly between my shoulder blades, pushing me. I let him push me all the way to the end, to a small yard with trade entrances and bins. He turned me round, walking round with me so he maintained his place at my back. “Now then, as you were.” he said.
I fell to my knees again, but this time without the shock of surprise, I had time to carefully present myself properly, my shoulders back, my tits out, my posture upright. People walked past the end of the alley, bright in the sunlight where we were darker and surrounded by buildings but we were far from invisible. “C’mon, tell me.” he said.
I tried to say “I am a slave.” as he ran his right hand up through my hair and rolled my head around. My voice sounded cracked and shaky. He pointed me at the busy street fifty yards away and made me watch it as I forced out “I belong to my Master.”
As I said “I am property.” I felt him crouch behind me. I felt his knee touch my arm. At “My purpose is to serve.” he lifted his left hand to my breasts and held one. I wanted to look but I couldn’t without moving my head, he’d notice that. I said “My desires mean nothing.”
He let go of my tits while I said “I have no shame.” and placed his hands under my arse, encouraging to me to let him lift me off my legs. He needed that so he could pull my dress up, clear of my hips. “Keep going.” he demanded.
“I am a slave.”
I continued to repeat the mantra he’d fixed in my head while he tested me. If I was as willing and compliant as I he wanted me to be I’d be relaxed enough to allow him to reach between my arse cheeks easily. I fought to be. He slipped his fingers into the back of my knickers and touched my arsehole. “I have no shame.”
“I don’t have time for this. I have much more important things to do than take a twisted slut like you for a kinky ride out.” he said, playfully taunting me.
“I belong to my Master.”
I heard him slide the sheath off his knife. He still carried it? He reached round me to hold it up in front of my face to show me how much trouble I was in. I thought “Fuck!” and stumbled over “I am property.” making him laugh.
“What do you think’s going to happen now?” he asked. “My purpose is to serve.”
In our early days I’d have wanted to plead for mercy. I’d have thrown myself at his feet in tears and begged for all I was worth to ask him to be satisfied with scaring me witless. Later I leant to understand he wanted me to swallow my fear. The last thing he wanted was an ugly display of unbridled anguish, from a terrified sub who thought she still had a way out. It took me a long time to believe “My desires have no meaning.”
Of course I still fear him, more than ever. My chest felt so tight I could hardly find the breath to spare for “I have no shame.”
I felt his hands gather the fabric of my dress and the knife momentarily pull it off my back. I let my arms fall by my sides because “I am a slave.” I knew the ripping sound meant he was cutting it off me. Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck!
“I never loved you. You know that don’t you? You fucking whore.” he said as he sliced through my shoulder straps.
“I am a slave.”
My dress fell, settling over my thighs before he pulled it away behind me. With his voice loaded with fake disappointment and resignation, he said “The only reason I keep you is ‘cos you’re so much fun to humiliate. You’re bugger all good for anything else.”
“I belong to my Master.”
“I am property.”
I lost my bra next. That too disappeared after my breasts dropped loose.
“My purpose is to serve.”
“Well you were fun. I don’t want you turning into a chore.” he laughed. He stood up and I heard the top of one of the bins slide open then fall shut. Had he dumped what was left of my clothes? Although I wasn’t completely, I felt brutally naked. I mumbled “My desires mean nothing.” with as much conviction as I could, because later I would want to get home, somehow.
He always dragged me around with my hair. He pulled me to my feet, walked me round and marched me the few steps to the wall at the end of the alley, this time facing away from the street. He pushed me up against it, nipples against the brick. He twisted my arms to put my hands on the back of my head and kicked my feet apart. It took me a few seconds to compose myself in order to continue “I have no shame.”
I heard him pick up my bag and tip its contents out onto the ground. “What the bloody hell is all this shit?” he joked. Then he found my phone. He knows the access code. He pulled my head round enough to show me he’d set my alarm to sound in ten minutes. “Don’t you dare move before it goes off.” he snarled in my ear.
“I am a slave.”
To complete my degradation he cut a slit in the crotch of my knickers to make sure he exposed me sexually, leaving only my shoes still intact.
“I belong to my Master.”
Did he walk away then? I dare not look or want to.
“I am property.”
I had to assume that he would at least watch me trapped by my own submission, for most of the ten minutes it held me up against that wall. Would he guard me? Would be stand at the end of the alley to deflect the attention of whoever might glance up it? Was he close enough to help me if someone used these shops’ back yard? “My purpose is to serve.” He wanted me here, shaking chilled and terrified by it.
When the alarm sounded I turned to survey my options, to collect my scattered possessions and my further scattered thoughts. First I had to put myself back together. I couldn’t return to work although it was closer than a home which felt so far away.
He’d be chewing his way through that halloumi and roasted fucking veg whatever it was by then, satisfied the humiliation he wanted me to suffer had only just begun. “My desires have no meaning.”
I thought “OK what now?” I found bits of wire in the bin where he’d thrown my dress, the spiral binding from stationary. I managed to roughly repair it so it sort of covered me. I worked in a frantic hurry with trembling hands, desperate to achieve something before someone caught me, aware all the time of the draught teasing me between my legs. He knew I’d appreciate that!
How on earth could I explain myself to anyone who found me? They’d be concerned and horrified by their own perceptions. “I have no shame?” Would they call the police? I’d die of it then.
“Are you in trouble Madam?”
“Yeah, I’m driven to need the erotic power of torment, persecution and oppression. I’m addicted to the thrill. I am a slave.”
