Constant 5, Chapter 10 (Draft)

Apologies for the missing update last Friday - an intense cold floored me for a few days (and seems to be returning), and then I went camping for a few days.

Chapter 10 took a lot longer than expected. I found the scene between Mel and Cindy surprisingly challenging. In any case, enjoy! And as always, feedback and comments always appreciated.

Currently posting directly to Patreon; pdf/epubs to follow later today.

***

Ten: For What Remains

Mel moved around her bedroom. She was angry, picking up objects, putting them back. A painted porcelain cat, a tiny ceramic bowl with a chip missing from the rim, a smooth, oval stone, shiny and black. She returned the stone to its shelf and in turning, knocked a picture frame with the back of her hand. It teetered, fell over. She made no attempt to catch it and watched it fall to the floor. It hit the ground, and the glass cracked. “Fuck,” she said. But she didn’t move to pick it up. She stared blankly at the fallen photograph.

            I stopped to pick it up for her. The frame was simple unvarnished wood, rough to the touch, hand-painted with curling green ivy and tiny burst of color for flowers, the kind of thing you might pick up at street market. In it, Mel, captured as a young woman at her graduation. Mortarboard and gown and redbrick building clad in ivy in the background, on a grey and glowering day. Standing at her side, an older man and woman that resembled her, if you were looking for similarities. The man’s hand rested on her shoulder and the woman beamed with pride. At their center, Mel. She looked pissed off, betrayed by the very notion that she’d graduated from somewhere so exclusive and steeped in wealth.

            Mel took hold of the picture. For a moment, we both held it between us. Her face was drawn and taut, and in her eyes, tears. She blinked them away. She took the photograph and put it back on the shelf.

            “Fucking Emma,” Mel said.

            Willow was with her now; they took turns when this kind of thing happened. The problem, Mel explained, was that Emma had terrible taste in men. Her luck was even worse. Guys were drawn to her sensitivity and kindness; maybe by the quiet desperation that left her vulnerable. And it’s not like an occasional bad experience with a guy was in any way unusual. They’d all had them, and it wasn’t just them, pick a woman at random in the office and they’d have their own version of a common story. A slap here, a bruise there, unpleasant coercion after an otherwise pleasant night out. Expectations, too: assumed respect or diffidence, or payback for paying the bill, and in bed, too, unrealistic expectations based on years of watching porn.

            “I don’t put up with that shit, not anymore,” Mel added. “But yeah. There’s been guys in the past. That treated me badly. But not anymore.”

            “But it’s different with Emma,” I said.

            “It’s different with Emma.”

            I sat on Mel’s bed. It took up a third of the small room. The mattress was soft. Barely space left for a small desk, on which sat a battered laptop, an expensive-looking webcam and microphone, a docked tablet, her phone charger. The laptop was scuffed, covered in faded stickers proclaiming angry slogans. Opposite the bed, a dresser with a vanity mirror. The room was clean, not a speck of dust to be found, but also very messy, with clothes bundled on the floor, spilling out of drawers and the closet, makeup scattered across the dresser top.

            “What about you?” She sat at her desk, straddling the chair backwards.

            “I’ve been lucky,” I said. It was true and I hadn’t fully realized the truth of it until that moment. Even accounting for last weekend, at Noir, and Caleb afterwards. A short string of guys, Dan, Chad, Jonas and now Caleb—not counting randos met on nights out with the girls, a few tongues down my throat or sucking at my face. But four guys, really, and fuck me but that was four too many, but at least they’d all been decent, even Dan. Though saying that, I’d touched their dicks, all four of them, hand jobs for the first two and I’d sucked the other two off, so maybe not so great after all, and how the fuck that had even happened?

            Still. Not one of them had tried—anything stupid, I guess, and I suppose that counted for something.

            We lapsed into silence. I’d never been in her room before. There were pictures everywhere, a few framed, but most printouts tacked to the wall, and several over her bed: an array of friends, or so I assumed, and family, holiday pictures from foreign locations I didn’t recognize, and a big, beautiful dog, its coat glossy and golden. The girl hugging the dog was about eighteen, smiling and happy and it took me a moment to recognize her as Mel. I pressed my fingertips to the photo and smiled. “She’s a lovely dog.”

            “Atlas,” she said. “He.”

            The big yellow dog with soft shiny eyes sat against a setting sun on a rocky, wooded shore. Mel wore a yellow bikini, her breasts noticeably smaller than now. She sat with her arms around the dog’s neck, and both were outlined in red sunlight. Her hair was wet and slick against her head and her skin gleamed and she smiled and looked relaxed and beautiful. Just looking at her, I felt a pleasant warmth suffuse my skin, as if the setting sun of the photograph reached me as well.

            “What happened?” I asked.

            The mattress rolled beneath me as Mel joined me on the bed.

            “This girl?” My finger remained pressed to the photo. “What happened to her?”
            Mel laughed. “That bitch didn’t know her ass from her elbow.”

            “She looks happy.”

            “Pictures lie.”

            “Dogs don’t.” I tapped the animal. “He’s happy. You’re happy.” I waved a hand towards the graduation photo. “She wasn’t.”

            “And what about this girl, the one in the room with you, right now?” She took my hand, rested it palm flat against her chest. Her black pajamas were cool to touch. “Is she happy?”

            I considered her for a moment, the searching eyes, the sardonic smile. “No, I don’t think she is.”

            Her smile twisted, like someone who’d unexpectedly swallowed a bitter candy. “Ouch. Fuck, princess, you’re a cold bitch sometimes.”

            “Sometimes? You don’t know me, Mel. You think you do. But you don’t.”

            Her expression shifted subtly, more genuine but less pleasant. “I know you’re not the prissy little princess you pretend to be,” she said. “At least, not all the time. I know you’re here, with us, but not really, you don’t think you fit in.” She took my hand from her chest and held it lightly between hers. “That when you say I’m unhappy it’s because you’re unhappy, too. But when you let your guard down, just for a second, with us, and you relax, even just for a moment, I see it, you know, your smile, the possibility of real joy, it’s beautiful.”

            I didn’t know what to say to that and so I said nothing.

            Mel’s eyes flashed with satisfaction, and her smile grew. “And you know you’re not getting off the hook that easily, right?”
            I cocked an eyebrow.

            “We all shared,” she said. “Our fantasies. You haven’t. So, princess.” She reached up, swept a few stray hairs back from my forehead, tucked them behind my ear, and her nails trailed along my cheek. I shivered beneath her touch, and she asked, “What’s your deepest, darkest sexual fantasy?”

            She stared at me, and I stared back at her, and a slow flush crept up my neck. Why not? I thought, let’s do this. I saw in her the same need as mine, to play and feel and live in a fleeting moment during which we could forget, even if only for a short time, the world beyond the two of us. Outside this room sat a woman, hurt and crying; there was another woman in my life, too and her impossible, vengeful demands; and finally, a man, or the memory of a man and his demands, too, that I betray those closest to me.

            Balanced against all that—yeah, fuck it. Stealing time and sharing fantasies in an angry woman’s bedroom made total sense, like an act of goddamn rebellion against a world that didn’t give two fucks about either of us.

            “You want to know my fantasy?”

            “Yeah,” she said, in the voice of someone who already knows the answer.

            I shook my head. “Uh-uh. You tell me. You think you know me? Prove it. What’s my fantasy, Mel?”

            She laughed, clapped her hand in glee. “Oh, I like this game,” she said.

            “Three guesses,” I said.

            Mel tapped me on the nose. “Fine. But no lying.”

            I drew a cross over my heart.

            “And if I get it right?”

            I shrugged. “I’ll do whatever you want.”

            “Damn right you will,” she said, and smiled. “But it’s too fucking easy. Like, the whole office knows. Mr. Michael Connors, with the serious face and stern voice.” Mel puffed herself up in imitation of a male pose, hopping to her feet and stance wide. “Cindy! In my office, now, you stupid bimbo!” and then, in a squeaking mimicry of femininity, “Oh, yes Mr. Connor, sir, I’m coming Mr. Connor, sir, I’ve been ever so naughty, sir, please don’t punish me too harshly!”

            “He wouldn’t call me stupid,” I said. “And I don’t sound like that.”

            “The fuck you don’t when you’re around him,” Mel said. “But everyone knows, girl. We’ve all seen the way he stares at you. And the way you love the way he stares at you.”

            “Not true,” I grumbled, and tendrils of heat uncurled from my neck towards my chest, coiled around my ears and cheeks. These fucking girls. They love nothing more than a little projection, creating drama where none exists. I stuck my tongue out at Mel. “That one doesn’t count, you already said it, earlier.”

            “Fine.” Mel thought for a second. She looked at me with an evaluative look, clearly weighing whether to go there. “That bitch from upstairs, then.”

            I tugged on my braid, hard. “I don’t—”

            “Yeah, sure you don’t. What’s her name? Joan? Julia? Director, two floors up.” Something both cunning and curious entered her gaze. “Less obvious than Mr. Boss Man, I don’t know if the others noticed. Maybe Willow. But I have. You sure seem to spend a lot of time with—her.” A sort of naughty amusement lit her eyes. “How old’s Boss Lady? She’s got to be pushing forty, at least? And Michael, too. You seem to have a thing, Princess, for cougars and silver foxes.”

            I shook my head vehemently. I tried to dispel any thought of Julia, and last weekend. Not just for the horrible experience of trawling for men at Noir and actually taking one back with us, the trashy outfit and first blowjob—or so Julia thought. Nor the maid service that followed, humiliating as that was. But rather the guilt: the memory of Julia collapsed on the sofa, overwhelmed by her own guilt and shame, and how I left her there and slipped into her office, which she’d left unlocked, and without hesitation extracted Darius’s security key from the corset, and finding her computer unsecured, slotted it into the port. A few seconds, and the job was done. My stomach churned, then and now; though then, it was balanced against the anger and resentment I felt towards her.

            “Cat got your tongue?” Mel laughed. “Fine. Guess number three.” She sat on the bed again, very close. Our thighs touched, the coolness of silk black pajamas against the gauzy, light trailing hem of the pink babydoll. Her hand rested over my thigh and her nails made a sharp contrast with the paleness of my veiled skin. At some point, she’d shifted her nail color to black, to match her pajamas, and little gold stars flickered and flowed across their surface. With her other hand, she reached up and held my chin, firmly, cradled in the crook between index finger and thumb. I blinked at her, slowly and she smiled. “I’ve watched you, you know. The way you look at us, at Willow and me, and Emma. The other girls in the office. You date boys, but you don’t look at them the way you look at us.” Her smile grew, and an eager brightness illuminated her eyes. “You’re not like other girls, are you, Cindy?”

            “No,” I said, voice catching in my throat. “I’m not.”

            “Neither am I,” Mel said, and kissed me.

            Her lips, so often set in a hard, thin line were now soft and warm, even as she leaned into me forcefully, pressing hard and I was more than willing to invite her in, lips parting with a sigh, an exhalation of shared breath in which the taste of our lipstick, the faint scent of moisturizer and floral shampoos mingled, and then her tongue was in my mouth, and that was good, too, and heat blossomed in my chest and belly. Her hand slid from my chin to lightly gripping my neck and I breathed heavily, and light lingerie draped across lavish curves suddenly felt stifling, intensely so and my nipples tightened and the urge to grab hold of Mel and press her to the bed was almost overwhelming.

            We parted. Her touch slithered from neck to chest. Beneath the touch of her palm, I felt the rhythm of my heart and felt it echoed below, too, the tingling heat of her kiss spreading. Feeling the pressure in my groin, I squirmed, just a little, and knew that I was wet, and she knew it too. Her lips curled in a small, subtle smile.

            “Like that, did you, princess?”

            “You keep calling me that,” I pouted. “I’m no princess.”

            “But you’re my princess, aren’t you?”

            I bit my lower lip and glared at her through half-lidded eyes.

            “Say it,” she said.

            “I’m your princess,” I said and then, petulantly added, “just for tonight.”

            Mel laughed. “I only need tonight,” she said.

            I waited, wanted her to kiss me again. I was—excited, eager for—anything, to cleanse away my experience with Caleb. The guy seemed like a good guy. He hadn’t treated me badly. But Julia was another matter. And she’d kicked me out afterwards and I’d gone running into the arms of another man, Jonas. And why the fuck hadn’t I come—here? to find solace in friends who seemed to genuinely care for each other, and for me. It could only be pride, a foolish, idiotic pride that looked down on the value of female friendship and somehow saw it as lesser. I’d seen their friendship as too easily won and therefore found it lacking in depth. And I’d been wrong. These women, they’d paid a deep price—one that all women knew and paid—and which I was only now beginning to understand, though still only dimly felt. Their friendship wasn’t cheap. I was lucky to have their friendship. And this sudden realization nearly brought tears to my eyes.

            Mel watched me closely, head tilted to one side. “So, princess, tell me. What is this fantasy of yours?”

            God, I needed—this, whatever the hell this was. Mel, make me whole, I thought. Or at least, less broken.

            I shook my head, blinking away tears, and crossed my arms in defiance. “No way. You still have to guess.”

            “Oh, baby,” she said, and stroked my face. “We both know what you want, what your fantasy is, at least right now. You just have to say it.”

            I glared at her, and she smiled, and the corner of my mouth flicked into a tiny smile, and red rose in my cheeks. “You,” I said. “You’re my fantasy.”

            “Damn fucking right, I am.” Mel said.

            Biting my lower lip, I nodded.

            “And what do I do to you, in this fantasy?”

            My forehead felt hot, my neck as well. My mouth opened but nothing came out. Mel grinned, flicked her tongue against the inside of her teeth. “Hmm.”

            I shrugged, helplessly.

            “Close your eyes,” she said.

            I stared at her.

            “Close your fucking eyes,” Mel repeated, her voice snapping at me like a whip.

            My eyes snapped shut.

            “I’m going to tell you to touch yourself. You’re going to tell me what’s going on in that blonde, bimbo head of yours.”

            I frowned, bit my lip.

            “What is it?” Mel sounded amused. “Don’t like it when I call you a bimbo?”

            “I’ll be your bimbo,” Already a sexy secretary, and a naughty maid and fetish doll to others; what was another humiliating title? “But before we start anything, you should know, I can’t—”

            I trailed off. She waited. I raised and dropped my shoulders. “I can’t, you know. Um. Finish?”

            She drew in a sharp breath. “Excuse me?”
            “I can’t—”

            “Open your eyes, Cindy.”

            Mel was staring at me with a look of mixed disbelief and genuine horror. “Are you—are you telling me that you can’t, you don’t masturbate?” She blinked. “Have you never had an orgasm?”
            “No! I mean, yes.” Flustered, I took a settling breath. “I’ve—”

            Mel laid a comforting hand over mine. “Listen, babe, it’s okay if you haven’t. It’s—not uncommon, you know. For women. Especially penis-in-vagina sex, if that’s your thing. Fuck, these days, more women don’t than do, especially het chicks, the statistics are pretty fucking shocking if you dig into them.”

            “I’ve cum,” I said flatly. Then, I added. “Just never on my own.” As a woman, anyway, and Christ did I miss my cock, then, and felt it almost like a phantom presence between us. Which was fucking confusing, but also exiting, and I squirmed with discomfort and arousal.

            But how to explain that I’d only ever cum, as a woman, with Julia, under her stewardship? She’d fucked me with a dildo, fingered me to orgasm. Last weekend, she’d ordered me to touch myself and I came—so goddam hard I could barely walk afterwards—but when I tried on my own, afterwards—nothing. I could rub myself dry and raw, grope my tits until they hurt, shove that dildo deep in my cunt and—nothing, just groaning moaning frustration and… shame, the terrible desperate ache that following my own depraved, failed pursuit of pleasure.

            I shared a version of this, an abridged edit of my sexual frustration. Mel saw through my deliberate ambiguities but let it slide. “So. Yeah. I can’t finish on my own.”

            Mel nodded, and there was almost something clinical in the way she did that. She stood, pulled her chair a little closer, spun it around and sat once more, facing me so that our knees nearly touched. “That changes tonight,” she said.

            “Mel,” I started.

            “Shut the fuck up, princess,” she said.

            Smiling uncertainly, I shut up.

            “Now,” she said, and her voice deepened slightly, thrumming with hypnotic tenor. “Bring your left hand to your right breast, like this.” She raised her left hand and brought it to her right breast.

            Mirroring her, I raised my hand and rested it, palm flat, over my breast.

            “Squeeze your breast, gently.” She massaged her full breast, and I did the same, feeling the soft, full flesh through the babydoll.

            “Good,” she said.

            She stared directly into my eyes. It was—strangely intimidating, this tall, slender woman, in her silk black pajamas, almost a man’s cut, really, and there really was something mannish about her, the short hair and authoritative demeanor, and the way her will rolled over me, demanding, compelling. Equally, utterly feminine, powerfully so, those breasts, her smell and the terrifying empathy with which she now seized my attention. It was terribly erotic and when she raised her other hand to neck, and gripped herself lightly, she didn’t need to say anything, I knew what to do. I mimicked her, holding myself by the neck, and felt her hand at my throat.

            She touched herself, I did the same. A caress, a sigh, and was it her voice or mine? In the depth of her eyes, I saw myself, or imagined that I did, blonde and busty with lips slightly parted, face flushed with passion; this was how Mel must see me. And God, what a sight! I gasped and so did she, though her expression was far more wicked than mine. This continued for a time, simply—touching, in reflection of her unspoken motion. And gradually, it became her touch, that I felt: Mel’s fingers tracing lazy lines across a taut belly, and her forefinger and thumb, rolling my nipple between them, and her palm, gently pressing down over my belly.

            Without needed instruction, I languidly lifted the babydoll over my head even as she slowly undid the buttons of her silk top. Mel stood, and so did I. With a wiggle of our hips, panties and pajama bottoms slid to the floor and were kicked aside. She brought me to the bed, sat me back, drew my hair to one side and propped me up with some pillows.

            At times gentle, at times stern, she led me along paths of personal pleasure I’d never explored. I’d masturbated before, of course. Often, as a man. And often enough, as a woman, at least recently. But under Mel’s expert instruction, I realized how I’d approached the act in much the same way as I had as a man: with an expectation of success. Jerking off was a race to an inevitable finish line. But as a woman, that conclusion melted away no matter how intently I groped and rubbed and fucked myself raw. Now, wrapped in the sound of her voice, imagining her touch as fingertips lightly traced the contours of my labia, dabbling in the wetness found there, slowly circling upwards, and touching my clit—I shuddered and that finish line didn’t so much retreat as melt into irrelevance.

            She joined me on the bed. We did not touch each other. I fingered myself. So did she. Our earlier synchronicity faded. Fingertips dabbled at my lips, and I imagined something more there. This aroused me, and with this arousal, shame, blossoming hotly in my chest and my groin. I saw, as a sequence of rapid images, Jonas’s pale white belly, Dan’s firm chest, the fine purple lines of veins scribbled across Caleb’s thighs. Chad’s eyes, kind—no, Mr. Connor’s, stern—a memory of an early morning, office gym, I was on the treadmill, and he was working the shoulder press, neck and arms flecked with sweat. A glance passed between us—he saw me, and he liked what he saw.

            Unexpectedly, I moaned.  Then, the wet sound of Mel finger-fucking herself, and she moaned, too. Shame and arousal were like one as I slid first one finger, and then another, deep into my sopping wet cunt. I heard a groan that might have been a laugh. Mel said—something—a grunt that may have been a question, or encouragement, or simply a shared sound of our pleasure. My hand was on my breast—it was hers, it was his—and down below, I felt—but no—and it felt so good—and Mel’s voice—the sound of her pleasure—was like mine, once more—rising to a keening pitch—I clenched down hard on the fingers invaded my snatch, clutched my throat and cried out—a name—and…

            Mel grinned at me, triumphant. “That’ll do, pig. That’ll do.”

            I—wanted more; I—felt an upsurge of some powerful and undefined emotion sourced from the very depths of my being. I held myself tightly even as my pussy tingled and throbbed in resonance with my heartbeat and—I cried.

            Fuck, but did I ever, and Mel was there to hold me.

            After, I touched her face tenderly. Briefly, the bitter mask slipped aside and in her unguarded moment I saw the girl from the photograph, happy and glowing with ruddy sunset glow. We kissed and there was a tenderness in our embrace like I’d never felt before. Then, she pulled away. I saw the hardness return to her eyes, a deliberate pushing away of what we’d just shared.

            “Enjoy that, princess?”

            A little hurt, and confused by this pain, I nodded dumbly. We were both naked, sexes still slick with wetness. Her eyes roamed across my body, unabashedly. “Fuck, you are a sexy little bitch, aren’t you?”

            I nodded.

            She looked around for her panties, tugged them on, and then her pajama bottoms. Bent over, breasts hanging, she looked back at me and grinned. “Like the view? Save it for next time.”

            I most certainly would.

***

Afterwards, we left her bedroom but when we returned to the living room, the other girls were still absent. The room was silent. It was nearly midnight. The moon had escaped its soft halo and now cast its sharp white light through the window. I padded to the kitchen and grabbed us a pair of beers. We sat on the sofa, bottles dangling between our fingers and talked, softly, as we drank.

            Eventually, I nodded towards Willow’s room where, as far as we could tell, Emma was spending the night.

            “What happened?”

            Mel sighed. She touched my shoulder, and I imagined that in her touch there was an easier intimacy than before. I leaned my head against the back of her hand. “What do you mean?”
            “With Emma.”

            Mel frowned.

            “She seemed—fragile, tonight,” I added. “More than usual.”

            She stood up and walked over to her room. When she returned, she had her tablet in hand. “Last weekend,” she said. “You weren’t around.” Accusatory tone, but of course she didn’t know how I’d spent that weekend, first fellating some guy Julia picked out for me, then spending the night at Jonas’s and finally returning to clean her condo, dressed as a fetishistic maid. If I felt any guilt, it wasn’t because of a missed night out with the girls.

            “We went out to Tartarus. The usual shit, drink, drugs, dance and a couple girlfriends tagged along, too, it was all shaping up to be an epic night. At some point, this guy I know, he got in touch, too. Busy night. Fun. You should’ve been there, Cindy.” She grinned, though without humor. “We missed you.”

            “What happened, Mel?”

            “At some point, I lost track of Em. Last I saw her, she was with this guy. Pretty sure I’ve seen him around before. Banker or some shit like that, real charming smile, you know, the kind a monster wears over its real face. We’ve all met them. Sometimes, that kind of asshole, it can even be fun, like playing with fire so long as you know what you’re getting into, if you’re in control. But that’s not Emma. And she never sees the wolves. Never, ever.”

            “She can’t see them,” I said. “Because she believes everyone’s a good person.”

            “Except herself.” Mel shook her head. “You get it. Willow, she doesn’t get Emma. Not like you do.” She looked at me curiously, almost suspiciously. “Anyway, later, there were a couple text messages and then nothing. I was worried, so was Willow but what the fuck could we do? We tried tracking her phone, but she’d left it in the club, we found it in the lost and found. That’s when we got worried. The last message, she was telling us how great things were going with this guy. A few photos of herself. Nothing of the guy, he always seemed to be just out of frame, you know? I asked a few bouncers, but they couldn’t help. They were crazy busy, they said, something about the security system acting up. Logged her missing with the local cops, then came back here.”

            Mel’s face darkened as she continued. District security found Emma in a ditch a few blocks over at 4am. The cop identified her, brought her home. Drunk, the cop said. Stupid, you girls should know better. Still had her purse, her wallet. No foul, the cop said. And then left, didn’t want to know more. But Emma wasn’t drunk. It was worse than that. In taking care of her, Mel found the bruising on her breasts and thighs and at her throat, the raw marks at her wrists and ankles. And the tearing, the blood. In the morning, Emma had no clear memory of what happened. But they all knew.

            Mel hesitated, then handed me the tablet. “I had—other suspicions, too” she said. “I’ve seen shit like this before. Sites, specializing in this kind of sick shit. This popped up online within a day.”

            On the tablet, a video hosted on a subscriptions service dark web site. All real, the website proclaimed, no AI slop here, just the good stuff, the real stuff. I watched the video all the way through. I watched what the man with the blurred-out face did to my friend.

            “Does she know?”

            Mel shook her head.

            She saw the look on my face. I don’t know what she saw there but judging from her reaction, it wasn’t pleasant. She blanched, pulled away from me.

            “Cindy?” Her voice sounded funny, like it came from very far away and hard to make out over the rushing sound in my ear.

            “I have to go,” I said. “I’ll bring this back later, I promise,” I added, holding on to the tablet.

            I changed back into the clothes I arrived in. It was just past midnight when I left my friends’ apartment. The streets were quiet, and a blustery wind threw grit and filth into my eyes. I ordered a taxi. Mel watched me from the downstairs window as I waited, hands holding my skirt down in the wind. When the taxi arrived, I climbed into the back seat and fired off a message: I’m coming in.

            Staring out the window, the city strobed past, lights flashing, blurred faces, a kaleidoscope devoid of meaning. The car dropped me off at The Pit. The usual crowd, and everything about my appearance made me stand out, the short, pale dress, pink spotted pattern, pink heels: I looked beautiful and ridiculous. I approached the VIP entrance. People stared, shouted comments, insults. But nobody got in my way. Or rather, when somebody tried a bouncer intervened, quietly, efficiently.

            At the door, another bouncer went to stop me. Luckily for him, as he opened his mouth to speak, he paused, held a finger to his earpiece, and then frowned. “She’s good. Let her through.”
            I pushed past the muscle into the bar. Music throbbed like a headache and the walls bled the colors of a bruise. I stalked through the heaving crowds, unimpeded, spiral stairs leading downwards into the deeper and darker depths of the club, until I reached one of the unassuming doors to Elysium.

            Anna was waiting for me on the other side. “Very pretty dress.” Her smile faltered. “What is it?”
            “Darius,” I said. “Now. Right now.”

            She escorted me through the twisting corridors and chambers of erotic fantasy following a previously untraveled route. Soon, we stood within one of the antechambers to Darius’s chamber, boudoir decorations, soft-lit mirrors, closets and shelves neatly organized with the lingerie, hosiery, bondage gear and decorations I’d become all too familiar with on previous visits.

            “Not tonight,” I said.

            “If Darius insists—”

            “Darius can go fuck himself.” I directed this to one of the hidden cameras. “We need to talk. I’m not in the mood for any bullshit.” I turned back to Anna. “I’m going in there. I’ll kick the door down if I have to.”

            Conveniently enough, the door swung open of its own accord.

            Once more, into the long rectangular hall of Darius’s Xanadu, lit by the digital glow of dozens of screens, now turned a soothing blue. He was waiting for me, the usual projection of an imagined digital self, capturing the memory of a man five years gone, suit and short hair, stubble and flinty eyes. He must have changed in the intervening years; everything declines into a pale shadow of what they’d once been. Though something always survives, and it’s for what remains that we act. For it seemed to me then that everyone must carry within themselves a singular belief by which they defined themselves, an idea that no passage of time or experience of human trauma or ravages of the flesh could erode or transform.

            Darius frowned as I stalked to the table at the center of the room.

            “This isn’t how we do things, Luke.”

            I placed Mel’s tablet on the table. I knew the passcode, she’d shared it freely enough before. Now, I unlocked the tablet, docked it and brought up the video of my friend.

            “He hurt her, Darius.” I tapped the screen. “This piece of shit, whoever he is. He hurt my friend.”

            For the duration of the video, the projection froze. And then, in his eyes I thought I saw an anger to match my own, a fiery rage that was gone almost as quickly as it animated the illusion of his face. This was almost instantly replaced by a flicker of sympathy or sadness. Finally, the entire projection disappeared, only to rematerialize next to me, palms down on the table, as though staring into the tablet. He looked at me. “What do you expect me to do about it?”

            I took a deep breath.  “Find him,” I said. “I want to know who this guy is.”

            A grin slowly appeared on Darius’ face, an ugly one. “Ah, there he is,” he said. “There’s the man I once knew.”

            Speaking through gritted teeth, I asked, “Will you help me?”

            “Not for free,” he said.

            “What the fuck do you want? I’m already—I got you into Jonas’s system, I got you into Julia’s, too. For Michael, I need more time, I’ll get to—"

            “No.” The projection settled into one of the seats around the table, leaning back, watching me over steepled fingers. “This is—different. That was a previous agreement. A done deal. You’ll finish the job, and I’ll help you as promised. But this?” He shrugged. “What’s in it for me? Why should I help you?”

            “He hurt her,” I said. “This man. And he’s hurt other girls before. He’s running a fucking subscription service, the sick fuck.”

            “And?” Darius’s voice sounded bored. “This is new, how? There are people hurting other people everywhere. There are bad people everywhere. Some of them are in this club. Maybe we are the bad people, Luke. All of us, working for Sakura, how much harm do you think we did?”

            “Not like this. Never like this,” I said.

            “This man, you want to find him and punish him, yes?”

            I nodded.

            “What about the service that allows this website to exist?” The hologram of a hand rested over the tablet. “What about the men who pay to watch it?  Or the government that fails to legislate, fails in its duty to protect the vulnerable? The politicians that embolden these cruel and brutish men? The tech companies that lobby in the name of ‘freedom of speech’? Will you punish them, too?”

            “You fucking asshole.” I openly sneered at him. “Always some goddamn distraction, an excuse for doing nothing. Fine, whatever. Absolve yourself of responsibility. It’s too big. Everyone’s guilty and so nobody is. Bullshit. This guy, he’s a monster.” I jerked a finger at the tablet. “He’s going to pay for what he did to my friend. And you’re going to help.”

            “Am I?” Darius smile was hard and cold behind his steepled fingers. “I ask you, again: why should I, Luke?”

            “Because you owe me. You still owe me a favor. For saving your life.”

            “Yes, yes I do.” Now he sat up, leaning forward. “This is a price you’re willing to pay?”

            I could do a lot with that favor. It was a backup plan, for one. If everything else went tits up, I had Darius’s favor to fall back on. The guy clearly had some serious influence. He couldn’t give me back my manhood, but he could give me a way out, if it came to that. I didn’t want to start over—again. Especially as a girl. Cindy’s life meant something to me. More than something. I had friends, people who seemed to genuinely care for me, even after such a short time. But still, a way out was a valuable thing to have.

            Still, I didn’t hesitate. “Yeah.”

            “This man, you want him?”

            “Yeah.”

            The wall opposite lit up, and on the screens there, the picture of a man. “He’s yours.”