Constant 5, Chapter 13: Forcefem (draft)

I really struggled with this chapter. The initial pass went very well, the first half emerging in a single sitting. Then I decided to insert the dialogue with Quinn, and that took a lot longer than expected. A lot of moving bits around, deleting and rewriting, and it's still not where I want it to be. I may end up cutting the whole, though I'm hoping not to. The same with Anna's musings at the end of chapter, which I wanted as a sort of meta-commentary on the genre but which currently feels anemic. Finally, I'm hoping to add a little more tension with the next revision - crank up the threat a bit, intensify the violence.

For now, however, here's the first draft of what should be the penultimate chapter of Book 5. Enjoy, and as always, feedback and comments appreciated!

***

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, stained brown with damp and dirt. Chintzy wallpaper curled with age and neglect 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.” Eyes, hard and cold, 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, dual column of back-lit round 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 in heels. 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 nineteen.” He snorted. “Yeah, go with nineteen. I think she’s a secretary, guys love that shit.” An idle hand groped my breast, hard, 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. We’re pushing boundaries tonight.”

            Dim and dirty corridor. From fifteen stories up the far window at the end looked across blackness punctuated only by the silvery halo of a nearly full moon. Cry of a child behind closed doors; fluorescent light flicker; water stains and carpets stained with damp and age. Somewhere, a television turned up too loud, shooting, sirens, violence. 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, babe.

            Fucker 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. The air exploded out of him. He folded in two and crumpled to the floor. He lay there curled over and 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 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. I wanted to kill him.

            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. I hit him again. Now he lay still.

            Now, 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 whimpered, and this time didn’t interfere as I again held his index finger to his 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 and everything were still at the club. I’m dispatching a delivery drone with what you need, he said, it’ll be with you in ten minutes. Leave a window open.

            Wide windows, triple-glazed and sound-proofed, looked towards the city center on either side of a sliding balcony door. Opened the door wide, I stepped outside for a moment.  Breathing in deeply, I enjoyed the feeling of the cold air tickling my bare skin. Sirens sounded from afar, the whistle of wind; 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 ragged, moist breathing and soft crying.

            I went back inside. Ten minutes. 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 leading to a bathroom and two closed doors. The main 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. In the kitchenette, the fridge had a few desultory vegetables shriveling in the crisper, a box of takeaway noodles, a bottle of white wine. Cutlery in the drawers, a few pots and pans, cheese grater, bottle opener, corkscrew. Down the short hallway, past a narrow windowless bathroom smelling of vanilla, the first door led to a tiny bedroom with a single bed and small wardrobe. However, the other door was locked.

            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 from 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. Undilluted, I wondered whether it would affect him faster, or harder. Maybe it would kill him. That would be a shame.

            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.

            But not tonight.

            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. Bad, and dangerous. Forget the plan. You should get 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. 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 was gone.

            “You hurt my friend,” I said.

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

            “You hurt my friend.”

            “I—”

            “Shut 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: 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 want him alive and kicking, fighting what came next. He had to feel it, know what was happening to him, and for the pain to remain with him, forever. To an extent, I regretted wasting one of the vials of his drug on him. I’d done it in a pique of rage and disgust. But I didn’t need chemical intervention to break this bastard.

            And yet, I was curious and so, instead of obedience, I instilled in him a desire to unburden himself of the weight of his past, an ache 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 seem to believe. It was his parents’ fault, he said. Dad took up politics, and Mom abandoned her career to support her husband, rebranding herself in the classic tradwife image. Now, she sat on the board of trustees for Daughters of Virtue, a women’s charity dedicated to traditional values and guiding young women into the future. And Dad was making a run for senator. Neither parent had time for their son, now, or then either, when he was a child, and he held powerful 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.

            “Was that the nanny you raped when you were sixteen?” I asked him, “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.”

            His good eye brightened, and he nodded.

            “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, his broken and already bloodied lip. 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.

            And this time he spoke eagerly, proud of his past, 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. It’s not like his parents ever intervened, until they did, and sent her away. Silence was consent, and the simple fact he could do the things he did was proof enough that he should.

            “It must’ve been a relief when your parents sent her to boarding school. She was a big responsibility. You already had a lot going on, right?

            He stared at me, eye momentarily hazy with confusion, and then he nodded, and a relieved smile crossed his lips. “Yes,” he said, “that’s right.”

            “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, wanted a way out, money, a name worth having.”

            He continued in this way for a bit, and I allowed his little rant, watching with some fascination as he wove his little story. And still, he lied to me. Just as he hadn’t been able to draw out the reason for my anger at the start of the evening, without further prompting he wouldn’t reveal the truth of why he raped his nanny, or tortured his sister, or abused his high school girlfriend.

            “That’s very interesting,” I said. “But it’s not true, is it?”

            He stared back at me, unblinkingly, and his lip trembled with the effort of suppressing a grin. “No, it isn’t.”

            “So, tell me, Quinn. Why do you hurt people?”

            He opened his mouth, as if to reply, but said nothing. Then, he shut his mouth and set his lips firmly, as though stubbornly refusing to answer. He searched my face; slowly, a sly smile spread; and his good eye lit up with understanding. With some effort, he pulled himself straight, and looking at me directly, his face split in a broad, bloody grin, defiant, insufferably pleased with himself. “I’m an artist,” he said proudly.

            I laughed. “You’re no fucking artist,” I said, and he looked hurt, and retreated into a sullen study of the carpet. I watched him for some time after that, as the awful silence of that apartment enveloped us. But then he returned to himself. He lifted his gaze and stared resolutely out the window, and renewed confidence stiffened his back. With his chin jutting out defiantly, a battered and bloodied mess with his arms tied behind his back, he sat there a grotesque monument to male pride. He appeared awful and pathetic, a manifestation of everything wrong with the world. Proud of his power to abuse and control and dominate others, a birthright steeped in wealth and privilege. But his true inheritance was little more than arrogance.

            And watching him, I shuddered and felt a momentary wash of pity for this monstrous man, though in truth, the pity I felt was for myself.

            “Listen.” I paused to collect my thoughts: “Someone I trusted hurt me. Recently, a few weeks ago, and I’ve been fucked up ever since. A friend—no, more than that. Someone I could have loved, even. It was…,” I exhaled loudly. “Bad. She did to me the kind of thing you do, maybe not quite as vile but what’s the scale for this kind of thing, what’s the unit of measurement for cruelty?”

            Gradually, as I continued, he turned to face me, and his bruised face revealed interest in what I was saying, reminding me of the man in the bar, the man who seemed better than the others by virtue of his simple willingness to listen.

            “I never wanted to see her again,” I continued. “Obviously. But I didn’t want to hurt her back. Because…” and I took a deep breath, “because I’d already done that to her, hurt her, long ago and her revenge, it was….” and I let the breath out, loudly. Passing my hands over my hair, I felt the ponytail, and undid it, and my hair fell loosely. I gave my head a shake, felt my hair dance over my shoulders. “Just doesn’t feel right. Or fair. I don’t know. I didn’t deserve what she did to me. But. Still. I don’t think I can forgive her. But I understand why she had to hurt me.”

            He looked at me with open, eager curiosity. “What did you do to her?”

            “I raped her,” I said and then the reality of what I’d just said hit me. I raped Julia, all those years ago, and for the first time I accepted that awful truth. Tom played his part, but I set it up, coerced her and then left her in his care to pick up the pieces. She never forgave me and how could she? Do the same to me, knowing how much it hurt, yet that was the way of pain and retribution.

            Quinn’s face betrayed neither shock nor surprise, just an intense curiosity. “Why?”

            “I think you already know.”

            He licked his broken and bloodied lip, leaned closer, eyes bright. “No,” he said. “Please. Tell me.”

            I smiled, bitterly. “You and me, we’re more alike than you realize. I’ve hurt people too, you know. Never felt guilty about it, either. Until recently. But these new friends of mine, the ones you’ve hurt, they’ve taught me a few things. A lot, actually. Changed me. For the better. So. Here’s the thing, Quinn.

            “You like to think you’re an artist. You’re not. You’re just a soulless piece of shit. Weak, you’re fucking weak and you’re desperate, not for love, not even for control, of your own life, or others. And these women you hurt, it’s not because you hate them, it’s worse than that. To feel hate you’ve also got to know love. But you don’t love anything. You don’t feel anything, do you? You hurt them because you can. Because you can, and there’s nothing more to it than that.  You’re a mindless, fucking cancer, Quinn, searching for a reason to exist. You’re a dog, eating its own shit.”

            His face, already swollen, flushed red. He grimaced, and pulled at his bonds, and his whole body writhed with anger, though only briefly, before he slumped back against the sofa.

            “So, one last time, why don’t you tell me,” I said, “in your own words, and truthfully: why are you like this?”

            He drew himself up as straight as he could, and pronounced, “What you know, you know.”

            I laughed. “Oh, you’re no Spartan dog.” His surprise was almost comical. “Yeah, you arrogant dick, the girl knows a spot of Shakespeare. And hey, if it’s torture you want, don’t you worry, I’ve got you covered.”

            I showed him my early selection from his shelf of tools and toys. I wanted the one he’d used on Emma but couldn’t find it. Instead, 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.

            “I’m giving you something you never gave my friend. A choice. One of these is going up your ass, Quinn. The other in your mouth.”

            “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. Ever wonder what a cheese grater could do to your scrotum? Or a corkscrew to your dickhole? Maybe you’ve got a rolling pin. Fuck it, if you don’t make a choice, I’ll just shove a glass up your ass, Quinn, and kick you so fucking hard you’ll be picking splinters out your shit for the next year.”

            “But—” He grasped for anything that might help him avoid his fate. “If you do this, you’re no better than me, you’re—”

            A quick slap shut him up, and I leaned in close. “But I’m not better than you, haven’t you figured that out yet? 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. Now—” and I gave him another quick, hard smack, just to emphasize the point—“what’s it going to be?”

            He chose the smaller, bulbous one. There was hardly any resistance left in him and for the next ten minutes I had him kneeling there, licking the dildo, sucking on it, eyes squeezed shut, cheeks wet with tears, the apartment silent but for the sound of his effort. The repetitive motions seemed to calm him. He gradually slipped into a calmer, lethargic state, one I dimly remembered experiencing myself earlier this evening. To be honest, much of the night was a blur. There was only now, and the two of us, in apartment 1508.

            Then it was time to move him into the other room. I cut my stockings from his legs with a knife 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, wasn’t he an artist?

            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 brilliantly 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 color.

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

            “No,” I said and brought her to Quinn.

***

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 around his gagging. Not that dissimilar to Emma, I thought. She’d cried, too. On this same mattress. Begging him to stop, a lull in her forced passivity. That video of her rape was still online. And this one would be joining it, too.

            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. He was broken. 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. 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 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 in sudden 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,

            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.”

            Later, I’d learn more about the drug. Darius did some research, discovered it first emerged from the South Seas shitshow of the 30s. After Taiwan cooled down, the men coming home were fucked up real good. The government invested in the recovery of those traumatized soldiers. One research lab took a chemical approach and Somnaurenix was the outcome, a sleep therapy compound, a drug to help the troops coming home cope with their biochemically induced PTSD nightmares. The drug helped compartmentalize traumatic memories, suppressed critical thinking, and made the subject more receptive in therapy.

            The drug also had unfortunate side-effects and was consequently discontinued. Several subjects became overly pliant and open to suggestions. For an even smaller number of patients, the psychotropic effects lingered on well after the session. A few never really recovered, remaining overly compliant for the rest of their lives. Darius stumbled across a case study of one unfortunate guy who never emerged from the drug’s compulsion—he spent a full year undiagnosed, suffering under the programming of an abusive ex-wife and her domineering boyfriend.

            Eventually, a private company, a major pharmaceutical, got hold of a sample and bought out the government patent. A few molecular tweaks and a shit ton of R&D, and presto, the colorless, tasteless serum I now passed back to Anna.

            She pocketed the vial. 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 at best. 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 powerful, enveloping embrace.

            Gently, I extricated myself from her arms. “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. For a short while there, in the bar, on the dance floor? I was happy.” I nudged the limp form slouched in the seat opposite. “Or may, I felt the possibility of happiness.” I shrugged. “Even in the company of this scumbag.”

            Anna looked at our prisoner and frowned.

            “You don’t like our plan,” I observed. “Do you?”

            A frown creased that wide, expressive brow, and she looked profoundly uncomfortable. “He is a bad man and he deserves punishment. Death, most likely. But this?” She sighed. “We will lock this man in the basements beneath The Pit, cage him in the pleasure chambers of the Empyrean, and we will train him to serve. Over time, he will come to resemble the very thing he despised. And he will do so willingly, under threat of blackmail and pain and worse. It is no more than he deserves. And yet….” She trailed off, sighed, dug a thumb into her thigh.

            “This is punishment? How is it that we define as punishment my most dearly held desire? How is it that my gender is taken as a degradation of his? And yet, the idea of this—man,” and here, her lip curled with disdain, “being forced to—what?—mimic femininity? To parody woman? is accepted as the cruelest of tortures. And of course it is, because what could be more humiliating for a man than to be forced to live as a woman?”

            She shook her head in disgust. “Were it reversed, an evil woman, a vile, abusive woman, would we punish her by forcing her to live as a man? Carve off her breasts, cut her hair, swell her flesh with muscles and mass—twist her body into a shape she hardly recognizes—and then force her to dress and talk and present as a man— to live as one—and enjoy all the innate privileges of her new sex—yes, enjoy, these new freedoms, the liberties of masculinity—would this not be perceived as a reward?

            Now she gestured at Quinn. “He will grow breasts. And long hair, and his skin will soften and his muscles, too. We will twist his body into a shape he hardly recognizes—and force him into dresses and skirts and have him talk like a girl, present as one—and live as one—and he will suffer, and rather than freedoms he inherits the bondage of femininity, as it is universally perceived, the cruelest of punishment.”

            Anna sighed. “What does this punishment say about me, that his downfall is my greatest desire? That I would suffer his every pain, his… degradation,” she sneered, “gladly! If I emerged as the woman I know myself to be, and that he so despises.”

            She fell silent.

            “It isn’t fair,” she said.

            We sat, each lost in our own thoughts, for some time after that. Diffused light and silence. A profound lethargy rolled over me and it was a struggle to keep my eyes open. Just then, a sudden idea, both absurd and compelling, struck me with such vivid intensity that I laughed out loud.

            Anna raised an eyebrow.

            “Remind me 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. Eventually, I leaned into my friend. Her arm rested as a comforting weight across my shoulders. My eyes grew heavy once again, and safe in her arms, sleep overtook me.