Constant Book 5, Chapter 13: Forcefem, v2

I don't often go back and rewrite quite this extensively, but I really wasn't satisfied with the way this chapter turned out. I'm still not entirely pleased with it, but at some point, I guess I've got to draw a line under it and move on. In any case, there's are substantial changes throughout, although the overall shape of the chapter is unchanged. I've added a bit to the fight at the start, cleaned up the dialogue with Quinn, added in a few flashbacks, shifted the mood in the second half, and redid Anna's entire bit about forcefem. There's even a few cheeky meta-references to other stories out there....

In any case, enjoy! I'll update the epubs and pdfs in the next day or two Next up, I'll be polishing off the end of Book 5 and the Cindy/Sin-DI meeting.

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Thirteen: Forcefem

Night air chill snapping at bare thighs, cut off by the hiss of a sliding door. Dingy lobby, musty exhalation of warm, damp air, an old sofa with cushions ruptured like rotting fruit. Once-white ceramic flooring now discolored and cracked. Chintzy wallpaper curled with age and lights flickered overhead, moths casting fluttering shadows as they danced to their artificial moon. He led me by hand to the elevator, speaking on the phone.

            “Yeah, just got here. Fucking traffic. Goddamn road was closed. No shit, there’s our taxes at work. Anyway, fire it up at your end. I’ve got a good one.” His eyes flicked my way. “That’s right, you know my type. No, not tonight. We’re live streaming this one. Start the timer. Make it an hour.”

            The elevator arrived. Smell of stale sweat, column of back-lit numbered buttons. He pressed fifteen. The lights flickered and the elevator groaned. Dim reflections in a mirrored wall grimed with filth. Pallid, half-naked girl, limp and swaying. And the man, arm snaking around her waist, still on the phone.

            “Fuck, I don’t know. Selling’s your job. The usual tags. Blonde. Ponytail. White. About twenty, looks younger.” He snorted. “Yeah, go with eighteen. I think she’s a secretary, our audience love that shit.” An idle hand groped my breast, hard, it hurt and he laughed. “Oh yeah, Ds, at least.” Chatter from the other end. The elevator sighed and stopped. He dragged me into the hallway. “Hey, if that’s what the metrics say, sure, let’s do that. Add… anal, bondage, noncon—I don’t know, Carl, use your fucking imagination. I’m in the mood, man, gonna make some Art tonight.”

            Dim and dirty corridor. From fifteen stories up, the far window was a framed black canvas punctuated by a silvery sliver of moon. Fluorescent lights flickered, illuminating patchwork patterns of mold and damp spot, inkblot tests concealed in dark corners. Sounds of a television turned up too loud, and from another door angry voices raised in argument. Shouts, then silence. We stopped at apartment 1508. With a perfunctory tap, he unlocked the door and with a heavy hand on my shoulder, shoved me through.

            The door closed behind us.

            Lights rose automatically with our arrival. Locks triggered behind us, successive clicks, three of them.

            He pushed past me into the apartment, dropping his phone on a small console table by the door, slipping the keycard into his pocket. Expansive windows looked towards the city, distant city lights distorted by the thickness of the glass. The apartment was small but in comparison to the dingy building, well appointed. Clean, fashionable furniture, expensive art on eggshell white walls. And perfectly, totally quiet.

            I turned and tried the door. The door was heavy, reinforced. There was a final lock, an old-fashioned manual chain, dangling loose. From behind, a chuckle. You ain’t going nowhere, sweetheart.

            He thought I was locked in here with him.

            I slotted the chain into the latch.

            His hand gripped my shoulder, pulling me back. Soundproofed, babe, no one’s—

            In one smooth motion, I turned and dropped and punched Quinn in the gut, hard. But I moved sluggishly. That drug still had me all fucked up. He saw it coming, eyes widening with surprise. I hit him with a lot less strength than expected. His abdomen, clenched tight in anticipation, took the blow. But still, he felt it. He grunted and staggered back a step, clutching one hand to his belly.

            I threw myself at him and he shouted—

            “Stop!”

            And I stopped, right dead in my tracks. My arm fell limply to my side and my head resonated like a bell, his voice the clapper. I felt compelled to listen to his voice, and my whole body vibrated with conflicting desires. His face was purple with anger. He massaged his stomach where I’d hit him. “You—” he nearly choked on his rage. “How fucking dare you?”

            Tears sprang to my eyes. I shook with dread at the thought of what might follow and how I’d disappointed him. These thoughts were insane, I wanted to hurt this guy, but they felt real and I wanted to please him, with all my heart. “I’m sorry.” I whimpered. “I didn’t mean to—”

            If he’d kept his calm, everything might have turned out very differently. He could’ve ordered me to sit down and then tied me up; hell, he probably could’ve told me to do it myself. Instead, shaking with outrage, he walked right up to me, eyes hard and nasty. And then he punched me, a savage cross, closed fist, knuckle to bone, right in the face, as hard as he could.

            My head snapped back. Blood burst from my nose. I was momentarily stunned but he didn’t drop me. Suddenly, my head was clear, the clearest it’d been all night. Now he grabbed me by the shoulders and slammed me up against the door. He seized my wrists and pinned my arms over my head. Breathing heavily, he snapped his teeth at me. Cunt, bitch, he hissed.

            I nearly killed him, right then and there. Instead, I forced my arms down. His eyes widened. He grunted with the effort of restraining me. My grin was feral. Adrenaline burned through me. There was a brief struggle. With all his strength, he tried forcing my arms back over my head but wasn’t strong enough, it wasn’t even close. With an easy jerk and twist I slipped free of his grip. He had a second, if that, to wonder how this tiny woman overpowered him. Then it was my turn and this time, I really let him have it. I didn’t pull my punch. I hit him with everything I had. I buried my fist in his belly and the air exploded out of him. The impact sent him flying. He hit the floor hard, tumbled over and curled into a tight little ball.

            He lay there gasping. His breath came in a desperate wheeze. He tried to speak; I grabbed him by the throat. Hauling him off the floor, I smashed his face into the wall, the corner, heard and felt the satisfying crunch of cartilage. Blood and snot burbled from his broken nose, spilled from his mouth. The flash of too-white teeth left behind on the floor. Still seizing him by the neck, I dragged him into the middle of the room. He flopped behind me like a fish, eyes bulging. His heels hammered dully into thick carpeting. His face purpled and I squeezed tighter and his eyes were wide with fear. He thought he was going to die. Had it been up to me, he would have, right then and there.

            I let go of his throat. He took a deep, shuddering breath and his foot scrabbled for purchase. He tried to turn over and lift off the ground. Then I punched him, hard, in the face, and again. He dropped without a sound. I hit him again. Now he lay still.

            I rolled him over and with a knee to the middle of the back, pinned him to the floor. I stripped off my top. He released a thin, plaintive moan, one hand fumbling at his face. My teef, he whispered, my teef. Twisting the top into a tight cord, I caught his wrists, tied them tight behind his back.

            Shifting away, I was ready to smack him back down. With my weight off of him, for a moment it seemed he might try and escape or even fight back. But he just lay there, moaning, my face, my face. There wasn’t any fight left in him. I kicked off my shoes and then peeled off my stockings, tying one tight around his ankles, the other at the knees. Then I grabbed him by the hair and dragged him over to a sofa and left him propped up there, slouched half-unconscious into the cushion, blood-flecked spit and snot dribbling down his chin. I reached into his inside jacket pocket and found there a small wallet, and inside of it, two tiny vials of colorless liquid.

            I went over to the table where he had left his phone. It was locked. I returned to Quinn and held his finger to the screen. Clumsily, he tried to resist and push his phone away. I broke his little finger. He cried out, once, and this time didn’t interfere as I held his index finger to the phone. It unlocked, I tapped in a number, connected. Anna picked up, concerned. I assured her I was okay. Darius took over the line. He confirmed my location and address. Room 1508, I told him, but my purse was still at the club. I’m dispatching a drone with what you need, he said, it’ll be with you in ten minutes. Architectural plans say there’s a balcony, leave the door open.

            Wide windows, triple-glazed and sound-proofed, looked towards the city center on either side of a sliding balcony door. Opening the door wide, I stepped outside for a moment.  Breathing in deeply, I enjoyed the feeling of the cold air against bare skin. I was nearly naked, goosebumps rising across my body but still feverishly hot with excitement. Sirens sounded from afar and a dog barked from somewhere down below. Outside, the world continued as before but in 1508, it remained very quiet except for the sound of soft crying.

            I went back inside. At that point I thought of Quinn’s conversation on the phone and quickly checked out the rest of the apartment. It was small, just the main room with a small kitchenette through an archway, and a short hallway. The living room was tastefully decorated with a large tv and comfortable sofa and chairs, reading lamp, a small bookshelf with a few green succulents and a selection of pretentious paperback books. It came off as the kind of room you might find in an advertisement for furniture or a rental property. It didn’t feel like the kind of place real people lived in.

            In the kitchenette, the fridge had a few desultory vegetables shriveling in the crisper, a box of takeaway noodles, and a single bottle of white wine. Cutlery in the drawers, a few pots and pans, cheese grater, bottle opener, corkscrew. I studied each of these objects with some interest.

            Then down the short hallway, past a narrow windowless bathroom smelling of vanilla, the first door leading to a tiny bedroom with a single bed and small wardrobe. However, the other door was locked. I took a moment in the bathroom to check myself in the mirror. Under flat white light, I looked ghastly and pale. My face was smeared with blood, and my left cheekbone swollen and bruised. I gently prodded my nose. It didn’t appear to be broken. I wiped the blood away with a damp washcloth.

            Then, I returned to Quinn. He’d recovered slightly. His good eye tracked me, the other already swelling shut, blue and black and ugly. He didn’t try to speak. I crouched in front of him.

            “The door.” I nodded towards the hallway. “Where’s the key?”

            Sullen, he didn’t answer. I raised my hand, and he flinched. “I want to hurt you,” I said. “So much. Give me a reason.”

            A slim, unmarked keycard slipped between the pages of one of the paperback novels unlocked the door and led to a large room, uncomfortably warm with the hum of equipment. Computers, cameras, lights, diffusion panels, microphones. Mattress on the floor. Wardrobe with a tidy array of clothes. A range of tools and toys lay arrayed across several shelves, gleaming chrome, matte black. Knives, whips and paddles. Straps and ropes and hooks in the walls and ceilings. Mirrors. Mop and bucket, waiting in the corner.

            This time when I returned to Quinn, he was pulling feebly at his bonds and tried to speak and before he could utter a single word, I had him by the neck once more. My nails dug into his skin and I felt his throat tremble under my grip and thought how easily I could crush his windpipe and leave him to drown in his own blood. Instead, I dragged him to the floor and ground my knee into his chest. From the slim wallet I extracted one of the small glass nodules and snapped off the tip. His eyes went wide and he shook his head and made a desperate keening sound deep in his throat. I hit him, once, on the side of the head, just hard enough to stun him. I watched with satisfaction as the colorless liquids disappeared between his lips. Undiluted, I wondered whether it would affect him faster, or harder. Maybe it would kill him.

            Whirring at the window, and blinking red and green lights: a small unmarked delivery drone hovered patiently, the width of a dinner plate and only slightly thicker, a small parcel grasped in a metal claw. I took the parcel and the drone left. Closing the window, I returned to the sofa and sat down. Quinn moaned, writhed slowly on the floor. I gave him a sharp kick to the ribs and he stopped moving. In the parcel, a phone, an earpiece and one of Darius’s keys, amongst a few other items. I carried Darius’ key to the room behind the locked door and sat at the computer. It was on and unsecured. A timer counted down, forty-four minutes remaining. There was an active chat on the screen, expressing excitement at the coming live show. Tags displayed in lurid colors what the audience could expect: bondage, anal, noncon. How right they were.

            One-two-three: red to green, tiny LEDs on Darius’s key. As before, with Jonas and then Julia and finally with Mr. Connor’s computer, the screen flickered and I knew he was in, that Darius had seized control of the system and its contents. Previously, I’d been slow to appreciate what that entailed. In the week that followed granting Darius access to the security system at Tartarus, the murder of a prominent politician with suspected criminal ties in one of the secured VIP rooms. Jonas nearly lost his job because of that. Then Julia’s files, all her research and development and preparation, transferred to her professional rival in the days before they both interviewed for the same job. Finally, the hacker attack on Volumina International, personnel and client data seized, long hours and sleepless nights that followed. The guilt of those three incidents weighed heavily on me these past weeks.

            The phone buzzed. “Anna’s on the way.” Darius’s voice sounded tinny and distorted over the phone, in the way of long-distance calls of decades ago. “About thirty minutes.” There was a pause, and when he continued his voice sounded tired. “Luke, listen, I’m accessing a lot of bad stuff here. Forget the plan. Just get the hell out of there. People are expecting a show. When the show doesn’t happen, people are going to wonder. Bad people.”

            “The show’s happening,” I said.

            First, I dug through the wardrobe. A lot of lingerie, shiny buckles and satin straps, harnesses, gauzy fabrics, collars and cuffs. Fetish wear, wet-shine fake leather, latex and rubber. Nurse and stewardess uniforms, a pinafore, a little girl’s dress exploding with crinolines and lace. A maid’s outfit. I rubbed the sleeve of the maid’s costume between finger and thumb: cheap, scratchy, and tacky. On a single shelf, a small pile of ordinary clothes. There wasn’t a bra I could stomach wearing, so I went without. But I found a pair of jeans that fit, and a snug, cropped T-shirt, white. Finally, I browsed the shelves of sex toys and other implements and selected a few items for later.

            I returned to the living room. Quinn remained slouched on the floor, and I dragged a chair closer to him. I sat, legs wide, elbows on knees, fingers steepled beneath my chin. His head lolled to one side. Blood trickled from his nose, from a split lip; left eye, swollen shut. There was a glazed look to his good eye.

            “Well now,” I said.

            “Don’t do this,” he said. “Be good.”

            The sound of his voice, weak as it was, it still affected me, warmth unfurling deep in my belly, be a good girl, it whispered, make him happy, please, be good. I imagined releasing him, breathing deeply of his scent and the feeling of his strong hands on me. The ways I could please him and make up for the bad things I done. How, by untying his bonds and tending to his wounds, he’d thank me, shower me with praise and affection and the pleasant glow that must follow.

            I dug my nails deep into the meat of my thigh and his voice in my head disappeared.

            Then, I slapped him, hard enough to knock him over on his side. “Don’t try that fucking shit with me.” I hauled him back up into a sitting position. “You hurt my friend,” I said.

            “I can pay,” he said, tongue thick, voice slurred. “I have money.”

            “You hurt my friend.”

            “I—”

            “Shut the fuck up,” I said.

            Now I contemplated him, without any sense of urgency. There was time. His helplessness kindled a savage, angry thrill inside of me. The desire to do to him as he’d done to me, and countless other girls before, was nearly overwhelming. I could whisper in his ear and make him mine for the night, docile, compliant, and eager to please.

            But I didn’t want his compliance. I wanted him dead. But Darius had other plans for him. To an extent, I regretted wasting one of the vials of his drug on him. I’d done it in a pique of disgust. And yet, I was also curious and so, alongside his obedience, I instilled in him the desire to speak honestly. To share his genius: he liked that, perked up at my acknowledgment of his talents.  Lacking his experience with the drug, it was impossible to know to what extent my instructions took hold. But I whispered my words, and after about ten minutes, asked him the question foremost in my mind.

            “Why do you hurt these girls?” I asked.

            His first answer came too easily, a rambling and tedious evasion that even he didn’t believe. It was his parents’ fault, he said. Dad took up politics, and Mom abandoned her career to support her husband. Now Dad was making a run for senator. Neither parent had time for their son, not now or when he was a child, and he had vivid memories of loneliness in their big, silent house. Dad never played catch with him; Mom never gave him a hug. Growing up, he was closer to the nanny than his own parents. He just wanted to be loved, he said. Nobody loves me.

            “That’s very interesting,” I said. “Was this the nanny you raped when you were sixteen, the one your parents had deported?”  

            He started, like a child caught out in a lie, and then a slow smile of malevolent cunning spread across his lips. “Yeah,” he said. “That one.”

            “It felt good, didn’t it? Having that kind of power over someone.”

            He looked at me with a curious look on his face, as though somehow disappointed.

            “And your sister?”

            He frowned.

            “When did you start hurting her?”

            The way he shook his head, it was performative, I could see that. There was no guilt in him, or shame.

            “Tell me.”

            Quinn gnawed on his lip, already broken and bloodied. He tested his bonds and tried to hide his face. He fought the compulsion to talk, until I ordered him to look at me. It’s okay, I assured him, but you’re going to tell me. You want to tell me.

            “Tell me,” I said.

            Then he spoke eagerly, pleased to finally share his secrets, face glowing with the memory of years of slow torture and abusive control. She learned to appreciate, he insisted, the importance, no, the necessity of what he did. For her own good, the family’s good, he said, though nothing he said convinced me his actions were motivated by any moral sense whatsoever. It’s not like his parents ever intervened, he insisted, until they finally sent her away. He learned that silence was consent, and the simple fact that he could do the things he did, was proof enough that he ought to do those things.

            “It must’ve been a relief when your parents sent her away.”

            He nodded, a relieved smile playing crossed his lips. “Yes, that’s right.”

            “After all, you had other problems to deal with. Like your girlfriend, the one you got pregnant.”

            His face clouded over.

            “You raped her too, didn’t you?”

            “That’s bullshit,” he said. “She wanted it. Wanted me. That girl was trash.”

            After that, he set his lips firmly. I wouldn’t get anything more from him, not without pushing him harder. But that would come later. With some effort, he pulled himself straight and lifting his gaze, stared resolutely out the window. Arrogance stiffened his back. With his chin jutting out defiantly, a battered and bloodied mess with arms tied behind his back, he sat there a grotesque monument to male pride.

            I sat there without any sense of hurry whatsoever. The clock ticked down towards inevitability, but we still had time. And so, I studied him closely. Doing so, I began to feel intensely weary, as though a deep well had opened up inside of me and all my energy was slowly seeping into it. The thought of what the rest of the evening involved was almost too much to bear. It had already been a very long night, and my recollection of events was hazy. I remembered standing at the bar and first meeting Quinn. Then, I remembered dancing with him in the club. This made my heart tap irregularly against the inside of my chest, like a moth fluttering against a lampshade at night. The feeling was one of warm fear, both comforting and scary, like a child lying in bed in the dark might feel, hearing the heavy tread of their parents on the other side of the closed bedroom door.

            A dull, gentle but unyielding pressure pushed against the inside of my eyes. The desire to sleep was almost more than I could handle.

            My attention was drawn to the large windows looking towards the city center. Outside it was very dark, with only the tiniest sliver of moon hidden behind clouds. It struck me how comparable the view was to the one from my apartment. We both faced the city center at a similar suburban distance, though from different radial directions. Buildings stood tall and erect at the center of a mazework of brightly lit streets running in every direction. Against a backdrop of a night sky, the center appeared lit from below and low churning clouds glowed as though from the light of some strange conflagration. Occupying the intervening space between this apartment and the distant city, a spreading darkness of suburban sprawl punctuated by the occasional low-rise building, and in the sky a dance of tiny flashing reds and whites, like fireflies in a forest, a multitude of drones darting through the night.

            Two memories then popped into my head. I don’t know why, but they both struck me with startling clarity. First, I thought of Emma. I saw it very clearly. We were at this cheap little café around the corner from work. I’m wearing a knee-length, fake leather pencil skirt and a high-necked, ruffled blouse. The blouse is bright red and turns sheer in the sun slanting through the window, and you can clearly see the bra beneath. I remember feeling awkward and embarrassed. I wore sheer black pantyhose and sweat gathered where the waistband had rolled, also beading along my upper lip and brow, and I worried about the state of my makeup. Sitting with legs crossed at the thigh, I was acutely aware of my new pussy. I’d only had it a week. Occasionally, it throbbed or tingled, as if stirring in its sleep, reminding me of its presence. I had no idea why it did this, but it was very off-putting. Emma wore a flattering brown dress with a floral pattern, paired with a wide white belt, matching earrings and bracelets.

            It was early September, the sun outside was too bright, and heat rolled through the window in waves. This was only a few days after Dan publicly humiliated me in the office. I’d been out for drinks with the girls, once. Of the three, I’d spoken to Emma the least. Now, she sat with me at lunch. I hadn’t asked her to join me. Quite the opposite. Given the choice, I preferred to eat alone. In fact, the very reason I chose this cheap diner, stinking of grease and overheated vinyl seats that stuck to the back of bare thighs, was to avoid meeting anyone I knew. Yet here she was, beaming that beautiful smile of hers. And I sweated and felt terribly anxious, because I was a fraud and for some reason felt that if anyone would see through my disguise, it was her. I don’t know why I thought she had this ability, but I’d always avoided her. Perhaps I sensed in her a deeply kind and empathic soul, a woman whose outward placidity concealed a keen, perceptive mind. Maybe it was because she reminded me of the distant past. She reminded me of Shangri-La and Sophya and the trembling anxiety of a teenage boy in the presence of an older girl he’s desperate to impress. Inexplicably, I wanted Emma to think highly of me and felt certain she would pick out the flaws in my presentation, catch the man still lurking behind the makeup. Also, I felt she was the one most likely to infect me with femininity, lure me into conforming to the girls’ habits, the girly weekends, the nights out, the social norms of young women in the city.

            That first lunch—the first of many—she lightly touched my hand, and this is what I remember most clearly. Fake pearls flared at her wrist in the sunlight. It’s not easy, is it? she said, but we’ve all been there. Making new friends in the city. That was me, less than a year ago. Mel, Willow, I guess they can be pretty full on. But they like you, Cindy. They really do. She smiled: guileless, authentic, kind. I think we’re going to be good friends, she explained.

            After that, I thought about Tom. I don’t know why. But for some reason I remembered an evening out with Tom, a very specific memory of a perfectly ordinary night. This was only a few years ago. We were at the pub with a woman called Katsia. She worked with an advertising agency and joined us for a drink after work. Needless to say, both Tom and I tried our luck with her, and at the time it never occurred to me that she could’ve joined us expecting otherwise. Katsia was a very attractive woman, dressed for work in a slim skirt and low-cut silk blouse, with short spiky hair dyed pink and red, and several piercings across nose, lip, ear and brow. Her lips were painted vivid purple. At the pub, Tom elbowed me and joked she was probably lesbian, maybe one of those transgirls. In fact, she came home with me in the end. She was very drunk. It struck me that my old condo had a feel to it much like Quinn’s, in that it resembled something out of a glossy magazine.

            The woman was in the bathroom, and I sat on the sofa, with a drink in my hand. She said she wanted to freshen up but I remember overhearing her voice on the phone. At the time I thought nothing of it, but now I wondered whether she called a friend. Had she felt trapped? I don’t remember forcing anything. In fact, quite the opposite. Though I hadn’t thought of that night nor that woman since, the overwhelming feeling that emerged was one of exhaustion. And that night, waiting for her, rather than anticipation or excitement, all I felt was tired. It felt like grey tendrils uncurled from the sofa and softly wrapped themselves around me and gently dragged me down. My limbs felt impossibly heavy.

            Of course, I rallied in the end. She joined me in the living room and bit her lip, clearly nervous. Seeing this, I asked whether she wanted me to call her a taxi. Part of me desperately wanted her to say yes. Instead, she seemed to briefly struggle with some inner decision before flashing a sad, wry smile and shaking her head, no. She sat next to me on the sofa. Her freshly painted lips gleamed in the dim light, wet like a split grape. I whispered comforting words, unbuttoned her blouse and massaged her back. Eventually, I led her to the bedroom and gently lay her down on the bed. I went down on her. I really took my time with her, lapping carefully at her labia, drawing my tongue in slow circles around the clitoris. I didn’t touch any other part of her. She moaned and ran her fingers across my scalp, again and again, as if wishing my hair was longer. She hissed another person’s name, her knees clenching tight around my ears. After she came, a few little ones and one big one, I left her sleeping on my bed and returned to the sofa, alone. I poured another drink and jerked off, and then watched the sun rise, and with its rise felt the return of the same hollow lethargy as before.

            That same feeling bled across a gap of years. Sitting in Quinn’s living room, I felt the very same lassitude seep into me. As sometimes happens in that state, I began to detach from myself, almost like an irresistible hallucination in which I felt unanchored, the outer delineation of my body growing fuzzy. In this state I saw myself from outside and wondered at how tired this young woman looked, her makeup faded as she drooped in her chair. The air itself felt heavy. Increasingly, it felt as though I was trapped within a nightmare, though it remained unclear whose nightmare it was.

            The tired woman took a deep breath.

            “I raped a girl,” she said.

            There had been no direct correlation between the before-memories and the after-words spoken that I could make out. Emma, then Tom, a girl called Katsia and then: I raped a girl. But those words jolted through me like an electric shock. I jerked awake and sat ramrod straight. My insides churned and sweat sprang out across the back of my neck. Nearly twenty years, and I’d never spoken those words out loud before.

            Quinn turned to face me, not gradually, as a plant seeking sunlight, but with a rapid jerk, like a dog smelling meat. A smile spread across broken lips and I hated him, intensely, and yet could not stop myself from continuing.

            “Her name was Julia. This was a long time ago,” I added, and faltered, took a deep breath and continued. “I hurt her. Because—I wanted to and because I could and because I was curious and because I despised her for being weak and for letting me do it.” And Quinn nodded, as though he understood. My hatred for him intensified, yet I told him the rest, in abbreviated form, in a sequence of short, choppy sentences, like bricks building a wall, the story of how I manipulated a girlfriend into joining a threesome she didn’t want and at the end of it, left her there, broken, in another man’s bed, and then almost entirely forgot she ever existed.

            Recently, I explained, we met again, our positions reversed. In the past, I’d been in a position of dominance over her, but now she had the upper hand. And she was cruel to me. But there was more to it than that. She loved me, even after what I did to her. Maybe I thought her feelings would protect me from the worst of her revenge. But her pain was greater than her love. Or maybe, to truly hurt someone, you have to love them.  In the end, she did to me precisely what I’d done to her. I, too, was left broken.

            He nodded and seemed to express genuine interest in what I was saying. What he made of my story, I could not tell. How did he reconcile the details I shared with the reality of the young woman in front of him? Perhaps it didn’t matter. With his head tilted slightly to the side, he reminded me of the start of the evening, and of the man who seemed better than others by virtue of his simple willingness to listen. There was, perhaps, a genuine human being in there, somewhere, who’d gotten lost years ago.

            “I don’t know if I’m a better—” I nearly said man, and my mouth twisted bitterly—“Person than you, Quinn. I’ve hurt more people than I care to imagine and I’ve killed a few, too. That’s something you haven’t done, as far as I know, though how long, I wonder, until you tried? And even then, all these girls you’ve hurt, what happened to them, afterwards? You never cared. I never used to care, either.”

            I paused, passed a hand across my face. “Does any of this sound familiar, Quinn?”

            He gave an enigmatic little smile through broken and bloodied lips.

            “Maybe we’re not so different,” I said. “Maybe we’re more similar in ways you can’t understand. I suppose it doesn’t matter. Because right now, you’re there and I’m here, although for what it’s worth, I’ve been there too, Quinn, I’ve been taught a few lessons, believe me. And now it’s your turn. Because it seems to me that you lack empathy, Quinn. I speak from experience here. Most men don’t have any idea what it feels like to be helpless in the way you make girls feel helpless. Most men never experience what it’s like to be penetrated in the way you penetrate your victims or humiliated in the way you humiliate them.

            “And I don’t know if there’s a lesson to be had. We’re going to try anyway. But I’m going to give you something you never gave my friend. A choice.”

            I showed him then the items I’d selected earlier. I’d taken the largest one on display. It was smooth and slightly warm to touch, twelve inches and covered in a layer of realistic synthetic flesh. The other was much smaller and narrower, vividly bright and rigid, lined with bulges, protuberance and small, rounded plastic spikes.

            “One of these is going up your ass, Quinn,” I explained. “The other in your mouth.”

            Now he found his voice: “No.” His head jerked side to side. “No!”

            “Anal,” I said. “Bondage. Noncon. Isn’t that what you promised the viewers?”

            His eyes widened with understanding.

            “Yes, that’s right, Quinn. The show must go on, after all. Frankly if it was my choice, I’d head back into that kitchen of yours, have a look in there. Actually, that’s a lie. Left to me, Quinn, you’d already be dead. But it seems we’re trying something different tonight: redemption. So here we are. You ever wonder what a cheese grater could do to your scrotum, Quinn? Or a corkscrew to your cock? Maybe you’ve got a rolling pin in that kitchen there. Fuck it, if you don’t make a choice, I’ll just shove a glass up your ass and kick you so fucking hard you’ll be picking splinters out your shit for a year.”

            “But—” He grasped for anything that might help him avoid his fate. “You said—you learned a lesson—that girl—empathy! If you do this, you’ve learned—”

            “Nothing?” I leaned in close. “Oh, I learned my lesson, I’m still learning those lessons. But I’m a terrible person, Quinn, I’m what’s left after you tell a good girl to swallow down everything that makes her good. I’m the monster that’s left behind. Now—” and I gave him a hard slap across the face, just to emphasize the point—“what’s it going to be?”

            He made his choice, and then it was time to move him into the other room. I cut my stockings from his legs with a knife from the kitchen and hauled him to his feet. Quinn half-walked, half-stumbled, supported by my steady grip as I led him by the arm. Whispering in his ear, I convinced him to be good, and to make me happy, that my happiness was his happiness, and that this would all be over before he knew it. We were making art, after all.

            A vacant, wistful look settled over his bloodied face. I placed him face down on the mattress. He offered no resistance as I stripped him naked. Trousers, white shirt, boxers in a crumpled pile in the corner, and his pale ass shining under diffused lights. Convenient loops at the four corners made it easy to tie him down. Perhaps at this point he returned to some kind of awareness of what was coming. He stirred, and he released a faint, low moan. A little blood still bubbled from his nose and stained the white mattress red.

            On the computer, the counter read fifteen minutes remaining. The camera clicked to life and the lights glowed brighter as Darius took control. Controlled from afar, they freed me to run the show. Now I inserted the earpiece and heard Darius’s voice. Are you sure you want to do this, he asked, and I laughed. This was your idea, remember? There was a pause and then he added, Anna’s there, she’ll be up in a minute.

            Dangling from a hook, I found a waiting ball gag and slipped it behind his teeth. This seemed to startle him into wakefulness. He suddenly jerked, spasmed, pulled at his restraints. A keening moan escaped from behind his gagging. I tightened the straps and left him lying there under the bright, white lights and returned to the entrance. There was a soft knock, and I opened the door. Anna swept in immediately, paused at the sight of blood on the floor and wall, gazed at my hands and for the first time I realized my knuckles were bloodied, too, and two nails broken, microLED chromatic layer slowly bleeding rainbow colors.

            “Are you okay?” she asked and because it was Anna, only because it was Anna, I answered truthfully.

            “No,” I said.

***

The show was by necessity brief. Almost instantly after we started filming, Darius warned me of activity, digital attempts to take back the system, and cars dispatched to my location. Yet he kept the cameras rolling, switched feeds, blurred my face and Quinn’s, distorted our voices and controlled the lights.

            Quinn took the whole twelve inches, a perfunctory ass-fucking live-streamed to his audience. Even in his drugged haze, he wriggled and he whined and he cried from behind his gagging. Not that dissimilar to Emma, I thought. She’d cried, too. On this same mattress. Begging him to stop. That video of her rape was still online, though not for much longer. But before it was taken down, this one would be joining it.

            I expected viewership to drop off quickly but instead the numbers climbed steadily. I left the dildo buried in his ass and released his wrist binding, roughly hauling him into a kneeling position. Out came the gag, and then, I passed him a cheap, gauzy negligee. He looked at it and then at me and then at Anna. Her size and strength more than intimidated Quinn; she terrified him. Quinn was a broken man. Put it on, I told him. He tugged it over his head. The negligee stretched tautly across his muscular frame. Now look at the camera, I said, and tell them, tell them this is who you really are, who you want to be. This is who I am, he said. This is who I want to be. Prove it, I said, and passed him the other dildo, his second choice. He took it without argument and wrapped his lips around the bulbous tip. A minute of him fellating the dildo, and then I had him lie face down once more, over a pillow, pale ass high in the air. The whole time, off screen, Anna watched, frowning. Reaching for a plastic paddle, I raised it high and then gave him a quick, hard spanking, a few solid hits that left him squirming in pain, then limp, his ass glowing with heat.

            Anna handed me the final items from Darius’s delivery, a needle and squat vial containing clear fluid. I filled the needle and stuck it in his rump. He jerked, looked up at me over his shoulder in wide-eyed shock.

            “Estrogen,” I said. “Good for the month. Let’s add forcefem to that list of tags.”

            Darius cut the feed. Anna had another injection ready, a second, quick jab that knocked Quinn unconscious before he could react.

            We left the apartment after that, Anna carrying our unconscious prisoner down to the waiting car. We bundled in and shot off into the night, looking behind for pursuit. But Darius assured us we were safe, that we’d cleared out with plenty of time remaining. At least two minutes, he added dryly. But don’t worry, I’ve got you covered: and for the first few blocks, every traffic light we passed turned red immediately behind us.

            After a tense, silent drive along dark and empty back streets, we eventually emerged into the lurid brightness of the suburban fringe. The car slipped onto one of the major arteries, merging with late-night traffic. Thirty minutes to The Pit, the screen read.

            Anna was as unhappy as she was concerned.

            “What happened?”

            I shrugged, passed her the wallet with the remaining vial of Quinn’s drug. “This happened.”

            She pocketed the remaining vial of the mind-control drug. I sketched in the few details I could remember. Mostly, I tried to convey the general feel of the night, the gnawing sense of wrongness, the abiding knowledge that Quinn took advantage of me. The details were already hazy. A look of growing horror spread across my friend’s face as I told her what little I remembered. Eventually, it became too much for her, and she drew me into a crushing embrace.

            Gently, I extricated myself from her. Truth was, I could have happily stayed there, nestled in those arms. The excitement of leaving the apartment and carrying the body to the car had held it at bay, but now my previous exhaustion returned. The warmth of the car, the comfort of resting my head against that broad chest, safe and protected after everything that happened tonight: I wanted desperately to sleep.

            “I’m fine,” I said.

            She looked doubtful.

            “I am. Honestly. Later, maybe not. I don’t know how much I’ll remember in the morning. I think—I don’t know—it’s already slipping away—tonight, it just seemed so clear, so… obvious. Cindy, this life of mine. It’s hard to pin down.” I shook my head. “It’s gone. But for a short while there, in the bar, on the dance floor? I was happy. Or rather, it felt as though happiness was a possibility, something I was allowed to feel.” I nudged the limp form slouched in the seat opposite. “I wasn’t expecting to discover anything like that, considering why I was there in the first place.”

            Anna looked at our prisoner. She remained silent, hands resting palm down on her knees.

            I stifled a yawn, then said, “You don’t like Darius’s plan.”

            “I do not.” I waited for her to continue. A frown creased that wide, expressive brow, and she looked profoundly uncomfortable. “I have,” she eventually continued, speaking slowly, as though each word was difficult, and without making eye contact, “certain perversions. A fetish, you might say. In the many years before realizing who I was, I found solace in certain types of fiction. These stories were about men turned into women, often against their will. I appreciate that to you this must sound ridiculous. Perhaps an example might help clarify. In one story, a businessman may become a secretary in his own company. Or in another, a young man dresses as a woman for a job interview secretly arranged by his sister and finds himself trapped in the role of a pretty receptionist. Or perhaps it is Halloween, and a man wears a female android body that slowly consumes him, turning him into a maid. There are many variations. The plot rarely made sense. Why would a male CEO disguise themselves as a female secretary to expose corporate espionage? How could a brother stand in for his sister’s wedding? These stories offended my literary sensibilities, the writing was so often poor, the formatting terrible. They were an insult to my moral sensibilities. The transformation invariably involved, how do you say, a downgrade in status. Strong men were made weak; powerful men became powerless. Femininity was equated with punishment and inferiority. These fictions were often misogynistic, racist and classist.”

            She offered up a helpless shrug as way of apology. “I read hundreds of these stories. These stories touched me deeply.” Anna paused, took a deep breath: “I found them arousing,” she said, and rushing on, “you must understand, I mean this in a wider sense. Yes, these stories were sexually exciting for me. Through reading these stories, I found sexual relief. But also, guilt in equal measure. Beyond that, they aroused feelings within me that are difficult to describe. As a youth, terrible confusion, shame, guilt. Now, I understand that what I felt was many things: most obviously, a desire to share in these feminine experiences. Also, an impossible hope to someday embody them. In these stories, there were lavish descriptions of makeup, for example, entire pages spent on meticulous explanations of its application. Hair and nails and clothing, of course, but also fashion styles and the feel of certain fabrics and the tactile joy of a tight dress, or a loose skirt flaring with a nimble spin. The tickle of lace, the tug of garter straps, or constriction of a corset. Yes, I could wear such things in real life, though only with shame. But I could not experience any of these things as a woman would. I would never experience them as a woman would.”

            There was a long pause. I waited. In fact, the gentle rumble of her voice was irresistibly soothing, like a lullaby leading me to sleep. You are a woman, Anna: a fleeting thought, but words took on a dream-like quality, and with eyes growing heavy, I couldn’t tell if I spoke those words, or merely thought them, or maybe even dreamed them. In fact, it became difficult to distinguish whether she spoke of fiction, or her life, or mine. The three blurred together in my mind. A dream, she said, or I think she said, or perhaps the words were within me.

            Kidnap and dress and train, punish as well; important, the punishment. Deserved. To mortify guilt. And all forced, to embody a life so utterly contrary to the one lived, all the better to efface the male past. Dreams of misogynistic stereotypes. The pleasure found. Secretaries. Receptionists and maids, forced to dress and act in the most typical of ways. The vivid image of a young man tugging at the hem of a short, tight skirt that reaches only halfway to his knees, face flaming hot beneath makeup. A single strand of blonde hair sticking to lip gloss. The mincing step of too-high heels. And stares, everyone always watching, and always the fear, am I pretty enough, is the right, is it enough, do they know? Startled eyes reflected in a compact mirror.

            To wake up with a body like in the stories. Free of guilt and shame after futile resistance. Forced femininity. A dry laugh. Her large hand, resting gently on my head. “I dream of your story, Cindy,” Anna said. Silence, for a while. “Because my story does not exist, outside of pure fantasy. There is little else for those who could never pass as female, no matter how thickly you layer the makeup.”

            Stirring myself, I murmured, “I’m sorry.”

            “You asked me what I thought of Darius’ plan,” Anna said. “And the truth of it is, I look at this—man,” and her voice was scored with disdain, though whether for Quinn or herself, I could not tell, “and I think, God, I wish it were me.”

            Nestled in the crook of her arm, I spoke in a quiet voice: “It’s not fair.”

            I felt rather than saw her shrug. “What would you do?” Anna asked.

            “Kill him,” I said, without hesitation, even though my answer was half-slurred by near-sleep. “And be done with it. Let the world know what he did and why died.”

            Her voice rumbled through the top of my skull. “Is there no possibility of redemption?”

            No, I tried to say, not for him and not for me, because some things were beyond forgiveness, and the harm spread too far, the hurt felt too deeply. Sometimes, the only solution was to burn everything to the ground. Maybe, new life could spring from the ashes. But all I managed was an exhalation of breath.

            We remained lost in our own thoughts for some time after that. Diffused light and silence, the quiet hum of the car. My profound lethargy pulled me down towards a deep, dark sleep and I was on the very cusp of dream when I had a sudden idea. This idea was both absurd and compelling, and it struck me with such vivid intensity that I began to softly laugh.

            Anna gently lifted my chin and looked at me with curiosity.

            “Remind me,” I said. “Tomorrow, Anna. Please, remind me, because by tomorrow I’ll forget. I need to organize a funeral.”

            With a bemused look on her face, she nodded. I leaned back into my friend. Her arm rested as a comforting weight across my shoulders. This time, I gave up on fighting it and allowed the cloying tendrils to pull me down. My eyes closed, and safe in her arms, I gave myself over to sleep.