by Patricio
(12/22/04)

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Chapter 13

"Come on," says her Englishman as they emerge from the airport terminal, "sing along."

Violet doesn't understand. He hasn't sent her anything: well, only the tickets to fly here. How warm it is, she's never been warm, out in the air, on Christmas Day before. What the heck: she plays along with him. Sings:

The rental car's a small blue Toyota at the far edge of the parking lot. He lifts her bag into the boot. When she goes to the door to the front passenger seat, he asks her to get in the back. He says there are some soft leather cuffs there for her wrists.

It's beginning, then. Her dream vacation. She pauses to take in air. On the first day of Christmas.

Soon they are driving through the sunlit country, and her cuffed hands have lifted her purple sun-dress so that she can caress her warm, wet cunt for him to enjoy in the rearview mirror.

The holiday village complex, as it calls itself, has a number of bungalows, each secluded among palm trees. They're on a gentle slope to the sea, which Violet can hear but not see when he stops the car. She feels gentle waves passing through her. Ah, and that must be their place, then, on a slight incline, a hundred yards ahead. He gets out her bag, takes her left hand in his right, smells it --- her desire, her lust for him -- and they walk to the brightly-painted, no not violet but yellow, dwelling.

"Wait here a moment." She sits on the rocking chair on the little porch. He takes her bag inside and emerges with a leather blindfold attached to all sorts of straps. Her heart quickens. "I'd like actually seeing the place to be a reward for you."

He's already strapping the device on her. It's a kind of harness for the skull, running sideways over her head, a D-ring at the crown, and buckles beneath her chin. She smiles up at him. "What will I have to do to earn my reward?"

"Suffer, of course. And have orgasms for me."

"Does the one in the car count?" She's trying to keep it light, as the blindfold strapped to the harness blots out the world. But there's a padlock on this buckle. She won't be able to lift it free without the key.

"I'm afraid not. Up."

He's attached something to the D-ring. A leash. He leads her by it, bending her head forward, stroking her hair with his free hand. They're inside. He's pushed her up against a wall. The snip of scissors. He's cutting her dress, her pretty dress that she bought new, especially for him. The scissors touch her thighs, her belly, between her breasts. The strips of clothing fall away. He cuts the thin straps over her shoulders. Now he's pulling on the leash at her head, pulling her down. Naked, she clings to him. Make love to me. Tell me I'm yours. Hurt me beautifully.

There's a cellar. He has made her feel her way round the bungalow, on all fours. It's a tourist villa with cool tiled floors and the ordinary furniture of holiday living. Her knees hurt already. He's helped her crawl backwards down some wooden stairs. "This is why I chose this one, it's a storeroom really, not part of the letting normally. No windows."

In the cellar, she understands. He says there's a beam he's rigged up to suspend her from. And he has her, still kneeling, feel her way up a wooden stand the height of her crouched form. Between it and another stand, she traces a piece of wood, triangular in cross-section, the top of it sharpened to a line. On the first day of Christmas, my true love sent to me...

He enjoys her. He has her lie on a hard table with a pillow for her head. He admires her. Caresses her. Strokes her hair. Touches the five piercings at her cunt. Massages her with a sweet-smelling oil. Feeds her, from his mouth, water, and pieces of exotic fruits -- mango, papaya, kiwi. The juice runs from her mouth and her sex.

In the living room there's a rug for her to kneel on, by his feet. He switches on a video. It's in a foreign language. A woman is protesting, a calm-voiced man is giving instructions. German, no, Dutch perhaps. "She's seen the wooden pony, the sharpened wood, she knows he's going to make her stand astride it. Are you wet for me, Violet?"

"Yes, sir." Violet clings to his legs, trembling. He pulls her mouth to his cock as he tells her what's happening. He hardly has to. There's weeping. A long low moan. "She can only stop it hurting her cunt by standing on tiptoe. How long can she hold out?" There are screams, impassioned pleas, tears, a moan that seems to go on forever, as he strokes her hair, and comes in Violet's mouth and she herself, her hand at her own sex, shudders with fear and desire.

Violet sleeps on the floor beside his bed, a thin blanket over her nude body, a pillow for her blindfolded head. She's so tired that she sleeps all the same. It feels like the middle of the night when he wakes, and reaches down to her hair, caressing it, and says, "Are you wet for me?"

She isn't. She was climbing a green hill somewhere.

"Here's the game, you see. When I find you're not wet for me, any time, I take you to the cellar." Was he lying there awake, waiting to catch her out? He clips the leash to the D-ring on her head.

"Please let me see." He tugs. She begins to crawl. "Please let me walk."

She crawls after him. Into the bathroom, where he lets her sit up on the seat to pee. Then she has to crawl again. He's singing. "On the second day of Christmas, my true love sent to me, two painful gloves, and a sharp-e-edged wooden pony. Sing for me, Violet."

"On the second day of Christmas," she sings as she crawls, wet for him now, too late, "my true love sent to me..."

The gloves are for her to wear. Finally, now she doesn't want to stand, is afraid of standing, he makes her stand. Arms behind her. They're gloves that make her hands bend inwards, be helpless, her fingers useless. Above them he begins to fit a single leather sleeve. He laces the leather, slowly, slowly up her arms. "Please, I'm afraid."

"But wet for me."

It can't be denied. She's bent forward by the sleeve. There's a set of two little wooden steps, he explains. Then another set on the other side of the wooden pony. Perhaps this is as far as it will go. Perhaps he won't really make her sound like the woman in the video. She walks up one step; two. He supports her under her armpits as she lifts her leg over and finds the surface on the other side.

"Sing for me, Violet. Sing as you walk."

He tugs at the leash on her head. She walks down the steps. On tiptoe, she's astride the wood. She lets herself down on to her heels, to feel how it will be. Ah. Perhaps she can bear it.

How many minutes is it before, like the Dutch woman on the video, she's moaning, crying, screaming?

"Safeword," she yells, "safeword, safeword..."

"On the third day of Christmas my true love sent to me..."

He sings as he showers her. How wonderful to see again; to have been allowed to spend the rest of the night in the bed, and now, in the morning, to be washed and caressed by him.

He has the immense patience to wash, and dry, and brush her hair. He doesn't tell her what the third day of Christmas brings. The days seem to be telescoped anyway, for they're only here for a week, and wasn't it only yesterday she arrived?

And he doesn't permit her clothes, but she walks around unfettered, seeing, eats fruit and toast with her own hands, feels glad to be alive.

Please don't let him ask, please don't let him ask...

"Are you wet for me?"

Should she lie? He'll check, he'll check, it's just that, he video'd her suffering, in the middle of the night, on the wooden pony, and they've watched it together for the fourth time, she at his feet, her back against his legs, his hand stroking her hair, but all she can see on the screen is pain, raw pain.

"Please don't make me stand astride it again, sir."

There's a drawer in the long low table in the middle of the room where he's keeping their accoutrements. He takes out the blindfold/head harness, but lays it to one side for a moment. There's a silver chain, two clamps at either end, and three slabs of metal dangling from the chain. "On the third day of Christmas my true love sent to me, three breast weights...sing for me, Violet."

"May I have another punishment, sir?"

"You may be suspended by your ankles, if you want."

Blind again. He is fitting the clamp to her left nipple now, not too tight please.

"Please hang me by my ankles, sir. Oh!"

He's fitted the second clamp, and lets go of the weights. How long must she endure these? Oh please...

Violet hangs upside down, the breast-chain hanging over her face, weights pulling her nipples downwards. He has brought forward the tenth day of Christmas: ten candles waxing. One of the candles is in her vagina, alight, and she is feverishly making love to herself, because he won't let her down until she comes for him...

Kneeling on the living room rug at his feet, peeling off wax from her thighs, she watches, again and again, Violet hanging upside down, making love to herself.

Finally he turns her to him, her mouth at his cock again. She hears herself on the video. "Please let me down, sir."

"Didn't I tell you?" he's saying to the screen-Violet. "You have to come twice for me."

And he's stroking her hair again, stroking and stroking...

The fourth day of Christmas is four appalling words.

Sighted, nude, reading aloud to him stories he's downloaded from the Internet, awful, semi-literate stories of mutilations and powerful women getting their comeuppance, Violet desperately tries to keep herself wet for him.

It's a story gruesome enough to make her want to retch, which catches her out. "Are you wet for me?"

Oh, please...

Fucking slave cunt animal. Fucking animal slave cunt. Animal slave fucking cunt.

She can say them in any order. She must say them over and over again, counting four between each phrase, until he tells her she can stop.

He puts a tiny purple bikini on her. The top is a halter neck that he ties. "Fucking slave cunt animal," she says.

He's wearing an open-necked shirt and white slacks. He pulls on flip-flops. "Fucking animal slave cunt," she says, barefoot.

He's taking her out for the first time. They walk down through the trees to the beach. "Animal fucking slave cunt," she says.

There are people here: sunbathing, sailboarding. Along the sand, a couple of hundred yards away, is a little bar sheltered by a dune, shaded by straw canopies. "Cunt fucking slave animal," she says, softly.

He leads her to the bar. A cheerful Jamaican man presides. "Animal fucking slave cunt," she whispers. He has her sit at a high stool at the bar, and orders a large vodka for both of them. "Fucking slave animal cunt," she whispers.

The bartender smiles affably. "What you sayin' darlin'?"

Violet turns from the bartender to seek guidance. "Tell him, Violet."

She can't. She just can't.

"Oh well, you need to down that in one gulp, Violet. We have to be getting back to feed the pony."

Violet, blind, weeping, the single sleeve pinning her arms behind her, the weights hanging from the breast-chain, screams, shuts her eyes very tight so she can see herself running, running, running, escaping -- only she can't, she's trapped, trapped astride the terrible sharpened wood, trapped inside her love and lusts, trapped inside a man's dreams...

On the fifth day of Christmas my true love sent to me, five go-old rings.

She already has the rings, of course. But later, after she's rested from her latest torture, and has been allowed to pee again, he kindly doesn't even mention that he finds her dry. He has her sit on the edge of a hard chair in the dining room/kitchen. From her four labia rings he hangs four gleaming golden weights. At her clitoris hood he places a tiny bell.

He has her wear her purple dress, halter-necked and above the knee. She wears shoes, for the first time since her arrival. He is taking her out for dinner.

The weights clack against each other as she moves. They aren't especially heavy. But they make her feel oddly like merchandise.

It's dark as he drives. Is that right, the time of day? Violet can't remember how long she's been here. She has a white wrap for the cool of the evening. He keeps reaching across to stroke her hair.

There's a restaurant with a view across the harbour of a town, on a slight promontory. They sit at a window table. The weights dig into the flesh of her thighs. They talk together of news and books and music, as if none of the tortures had happened to her, as if he were always as charming and considerate as this. She eats with a knife and fork as if it were entirely normal, beginning with a spinach roulade, then an entree of delicate local white fish, finishing with a lemon sorbet to wash her palate clean.

The wine has made her a little tipsy, but he wants to have another drink in the downstairs bar. It's not as stylish as the restaurant, it looks as if the people of the town come here too. A group of men look at her lasciviously. To her astonishment, he seems to know them. He brings her a vodka. "On the sixth day of Christmas," he softly sings to her, "my true love sent to me, six creeps a-laying you..."

He sings the rest of the song. 5 Rings, 4 words, 3 weights, 2 gloves, 1 sharp. She makes her smile freeze on her face. The six creeps are still looking at her. Halfway through her drink she tells him she needs the women's room. He tries to grab her arm but she smiles and walks across the bar. Even makes herself wink at one of the men.

There's an emergency exit just past the washrooms. She pushes through it, frightened she'll set off an alarm. Nothing happens. Where can I run to?

Is it so obvious that she'll be on the beach? He finds her, shivering and sobbing. Where could she have gone? There's no escaping. She has to face this.

She lets him comfort her. "Surely you didn't really think I'd give you to six men? It was a story, that's all. I wanted you to pretend it happened, and tell me what they were like."

She lets him drive her home. Inside the house, she refuses to take off her clothes, or wear the blindfold. "You have to let me have a while as a human being. As myself. As your equal." He doesn't demur.

She wants to talk to him, but when there's coffee on the table and they're in armchairs on either side of it, equals, she doesn't know what she wants to say. This adventure is giving me the deepest, most appalling pleasure. But I can't let it go on affecting me like this. I'm afraid of who I'll become. I just want to weep and weep and weep.

"In the morning," he says, "perhaps we can..."

She'll make no promises for what happens in the morning.

She showers herself, locking the door against him, and insists on sleeping on the couch.

And yet, in the night, she wakes to find her hands between her thighs, enmeshed in a dream not of running, but of hanging, blind, upside down, in a cellar somewhere...

Violet has taken control. She's driving today -- "I'm not sure you're insured." "I don't fucking care, I'm driving today." -- and they're touring the island and she's fully-clothed and wearing no signs of their games.

It's interesting how he dithers, when he's not in sole charge. From choice of routes to selections from menus, he hums and haws. Does he not know how to negotiate, when he's not in sole charge?

By the early afternoon, stopping to sunbathe on a secluded beach, soon lying on the sand in only her bikini bottom, Violet realises how angry she's been feeling, because the anger is easing from her. Perhaps her driving has been a little manic this morning. Perhaps she's been a little brusque with him.

Sunbathing isn't his thing. He's wandered off to look for rock-pools. Violet dozes and tries not to dream of being kidnapped from a beach in the middle of nowhere.

When he returns, she tries to explain to him. "It really turns me on, it does. What you do to me. But I keep feeling you're going too far." He protests a little. "Sometimes I may seem to consent but, no, OK, yes, at that moment I do consent, but that doesn't make what you're doing right. I feel like you're trying to drag me over an abyss. Where I'll consent to things that hurt and degrade me beyond reason. Informed consent, that's what I have to give. That's what you have to let me have."

There's something distrustful in her, left over from the anger. When he weeps a little, and stares into the distance, and says he's sorry, he understands, she wonders if he's ever been an actor. Something's chilled in her heart towards him. "Hey, let's go back."

By the morning she's agreed to try again. As if beginning again. She wakes in the bed beside him, embracing him.

He washes her in the shower. He murmurs affectionate words, praises her body. He dries her. He blindfolds her. While she stands there, hands on her head, he kneels between her legs and makes her come with a modest joy. Then:

"Here, wait. There's something I wanted to do but we haven't tried."

"I won't crawl."

"No, no."

It's a leash to be attached to her labia-rings. She doesn't know what to do with her hands. She wants them bound, but doesn't want to ask him. She puts her arms behind her, each hand grasping the opposite elbow, while he leads her around the house, leashed by her cunt.

He sits her down to breakfast, and feeds her grapefruit, orange segments, and coffee. He lifts each item to her lips.

He strokes her hair.

"Do you want me to cuff your wrists behind you?"

No. "Yes, please."

She half-turns, leans forward. He cuffs each wrist, quickly, and links the cuffs together.

He strokes her hair. "I'd like to cut off all your hair..."

"No."

"...and have you bald."

"No."

"You'd like that, wouldn't you?"

Ah. How he's kept stroking and stroking it, the whole time. "No. Even if I say yes, listen..."

"You'd look so beautiful."

"Even if I say yes, you must not cut off my hair, do you hear me?" He strokes her hair. "Do you hear me?"

The days of Christmas have jumbled into a delirium. Violet has heard tell of the twelve cummers, coming. Now she hangs by her cuffed wrists, nude, blind, in the cellar, and endures the seven clothespins pinching. Or was it nine?

"Do you want me to cut off all your hair?"

"No."

He yanks off the zipper of clothespins up her inner left thigh. When her body subsides, he begins to pin them again, exactly where they were before.

"Do you want me to make you bald?"

"No."

Does he even want her bald, now? Or is it simply a battle of wills? He caresses her, gives her pleasure in pain, yes, but -- "It's just a torture scene, Violet, that's all."

Does he know the difference between a "scene" and what is in the depths of his heart?

Violet, still nude and blind, kneeling at his feet, his cock in her mouth, ripples to orgasm from her own hands at her cunt.

When he feels her coming, he pisses in her mouth, holding the hair that he wants to cut off so she can't get away, she's half-gagging on him, and he twists and twists her hair, and -

She's sick.

"Lick it up," he says.

A storm breaks in her head. She's surprised he can't hear it. Thunder, lightning. The disgusting taste of his urine. She crawls to the kitchen, and fetches a cloth, and a bucket, and mop.

"I said--"

"I heard what you said," she answers, willing herself not to cry, not to bite off his cock, cleaning up the mess.

A little later she insists on going to the bathroom alone. She slots the bolt in the door. Despite the lock, she finds she can pull off the blindfold. It must have been like that all along. Where has her willpower been? On vacation? She removes the cuffs at her wrists and ankles. She washes herself clean. She cleans out her mouth for five minutes solid and still it tastes of him. He bangs at the door.

She looks at her body in the mirror, and finds it beautiful.

He's waiting for her outside the door. "I'm leaving," she says.

He's in her way. It takes a few moments for him to let her by.

She puts on a blouse that covers her arms, and a pair of jeans. She packs her bag. "On the first day of Christmas, my true love sent to me..."

"Don't start," she says.

"...a Violet i-in a cage." He's lolling on the bed. He's opened a bottle of white wine and is swigging from the neck. She feels she needs to hurry. There's an edge of danger to him. "You know," he says, "what American Violet really is?"

She glances at him, then does a last survey of the bedroom for things of hers. He talks through wine: "You thought it was a pretty pretty flower, didn't you?"

She zips up her bag. She looks down at him. "I realised the initials were A and V. And you wanted to put an S and an L in front and an E afterwards."

"Yeh, yeh, I did. I did."

He follows her as she goes to the door. The car keys? Where has he put the car keys? She knows she cannot ask him. Ah: there they are, on a hook next to her purple blazer.

"But there's another kind of American Violet. Hey," as if realising what she's doing for the first time, "how am I gonna get out of here?"

"Call a cab. Rent another car." She's out of the door, she's walking to the car. He's not following. He's just standing in the doorway, drinking. "It's a lovebird. The kind you keep in a cage. American Violet. That's what I wanted. I'm sorry."

Violet, sobbing, drives away. She doesn't look back.

Violet changes the locks to her home and has new window-locks installed, then a week later there's an anonymous white pick-up at the door and two anonymous people take all her things somewhere else. She mails everyone but him with her new e-mail address. She misses him terribly, doesn't she? But she never gets in touch again.

What name does she use now? I wish I knew, so I could keep telling her story. I hunt the Internet for aliases she might be using. Pictures of beautiful bald women. Shadows of Violet. Write to me, Violet. I need you. I know you wanted me. I'm not going to give up hunting for you.

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