How to break a sadist.

There is a spot in my thigh where I hate being punched. It's a few inches higher than the spot where I cracked my femur a decade ago. I assume my hatred for being punched in that place has to do with the old injury, even though it developed into the phobia that it is only a few years ago, but I am not very sure. I just know that even the prospect of being punched in that spot makes me beg in the most helpless and pathetic of tones. I will instantly cry in anticipation of the pain. Well, that is the truth on most nights. Most nights i am predictable, and my behaviour is governed by years of catering to the same man, but there are other nights.

It was one of those nights. It was a quiet night, windless, and I find I am having a hard time adjusting to that. We just moved here from a violently windy place, and it was the only thing I loved about that place, I didn't realise I would miss it, but I know now that I will long for that wind for the rest of my life. I know because I've played this game before. I loathe the city where I was born, and my entire adolescent life was a quest to leave it, but it had these trees all over it, called the Scholar's Tree, and they have strange flowers that bloom only in the winter and are fragrant only at night. I didn't realise how much I loved smelling them, not until I left, and I learnt that the fragrance missing from your olfactory sense is sometimes the one that matters most. The one thing you love about a place you hate can haunt you forever. They have those trees here, but no wind, and now I miss the wind. That night the wind was conspicuous in its absence, and somewhere deep inside the quietude the jackals were howling. It bothers me when the dogs bark at night, but I don't mind the howling or the jackals, it sounds quieter than silence. Yet not as threatening, nor ominous, as the howling wind.

The only other sound I could hear was the piece of wood in his hand beating against my breasts. He was sitting on the armchair in the corner of our bedroom, and I was kneeling on the floor in front of him, holding my face between the two boots he had tied to my wrists. Omni mea mecum porto. Quite literally. He had been beating me for a long time, but i couldn't feel it. It was one of those nights. I could see my skin, already purple in some parts, and bleeding at others, but I kept feeling like I was waiting for him to start hurting me. He was talking to me, telling me how I was disappointing or shameful, but the words seemed to bounce off me as well. The only pain I could really feel in my body was the soreness of my shoulders from holding up those shoes but even that pain was a note I was making on a forgotten pad on the kitchen table. I didn't really *feel* it.

He put down his weapon and I looked at him, quizzical, because to me it still seemed like we were watching the trailer before the showing, listening to the opening act, but he stopped, and my brain couldn't process it.

"Why did you stop beating me?" I asked him.

He looked at me how I imagine i had looked a moment before, and I realised he hadn't noticed that we were in completely different places. I can see how that could happen, I am generally sexually quiet, i don't make noise while being hit and i rarely say things, and if you add to that the fact that he forbade me from making eye contact with him, it makes perfect sense that he didn't notice where I was.

"I've been beating you for well over an hour," he said.

I swear I had no idea that it had been so long, it felt like a few minutes.

"But I'm not sorry...." I said trailing off into a monologue I was completing in my head.  

It was not the right thing to say, and I didn't even notice. I said that because I was expecting to get to apologetic at some point that evening, just spontaneously effortless apologetic, it's like the masochist version of an orgasm, but I didn't feel any remorse or pain at all, and I was confused by my own reaction. He thought I was being, flippant. He thought I was challenging him. This happens to me frequently, i say things that I mean at face-value with complete sincerity, and the people before me seem miffed by my words. He seemed miffed by my words. His messaging is much clearer than mine though, he just pushed me to the corner of the room and started to punch every part of my body he could reach. I felt that more than what came before it, but really, it was nothing at all. He gestured like he was going to punch the spot in my thigh that makes me instantly break, but as I braced for it, he pulled back and laughed. I respect him least when he doesn't follow through on his threats. Something about that style of sadism makes me nauseous. I give you the leave to break me in ways that aren't sane, but don't toy with the prospect of it just do watch me be scared. Do it. He didn't. He just threatened to do the most horrible thing I can imagine to my body, just to watch me cower, he just threatened, when I was willing to cower from the impact of it.

"Maybe you really do need me to show you some insanity," he said, "Maybe you really need some cruel, heartless madness to be sorry."

It was not the right thing to say, and he didn't even notice it.

"Don't play madness with me," in striking departure from my usual "yes master" routine, "You won't win."

I didn't say it to be challenging or mean. It wasn't banter. It wasn't an invitation to take me down. It was quite simply, the truth. I lose many games, but I don't lose at playing insanity. It's my game. I'm convinced that I invented it. He wasn't convinced. He was incensed. Men, really, it's so easy to get them to beat me and I had forgotten the joy of toying with them. I got so accustomed to the poetry of being at the bottom, I forgot the rush of bleeding victory from my mouth.

"You want to push me?" He asked, a certain madness glistening in his eyes as he bent down to pick the shoe-brush off the floor, "I will make you polish those shoes with your mouth."

I opened my mouth.

The truth is he is far more concerned about germs, poisoning and contamination than I am. I sit on sidewalks and lick shoes, what's terrifying to me about a dirty brush in my mouth?

"I don't think you can do it," i said taking the deliberate route with my instigation, "I will do it, just put it in my mouth."

He did. He had to at that point, he shouldn't have, because in shoving that brush between my teeth, he handed the baton of power to me. The wise, textbook dominant thing to do would have been to shut down my instigation and lead me away from madness, but I'm glad he is a little less wise than a man should be. He rubbed the polish on the brush and held my head by the hair as I drooled all over the leather, but I kept at it until I got both shoes. The ache in my jaw, at least, felt real. After i finished i let the brush drop to the floor, i could feel the polish on my cheeks, and see in all over my blue breasts, and I felt such a violent urge to lick it, my eyes rolled to the back of my head.

"You did a shit job," he said.

It made me laugh. I just couldn't imagine how he could expect any other outcome.

"Oh no," i said in my most facetious tone, "Are you going to punish me for an hour that feels like a minute again?"

He shouldn't have taken the bait, but i think we were stuck in a penis-measuring contest that neither one of us was willing to lose. That time he pulled me up to my feet and pushed me onto the bed. He got on top of me and started to punch my arms, and slap my face. It should have hurt, it should have really hurt, but it made me laugh. Each time I laughed he got more determined to hit harder. I could hear his punches inside my ear.  I could tell the moment in which bruises were forming but it tickled me so much to watch him try to break me that I couldn't help but laugh.

"Is this the heartless madness you talked about?" I asked, because it didn't matter anymore, this game we were playing, it wasn't master and slave anymore, it was the death-match to madness, and i *only* lose when I want to.

"No," he said, punching the hateful spot in my thighs over and over, "This is the madness."

It didn't hurt. It didn't make me cry. It did nothing. However I could see that his ability to keep hurting me was coming to an end, my eyes were closing from the fatigue of the evening that had flown past midnight somehow.

I laughed again. I couldn't stop.

"You're not going to win," i told him, and from my end it was a kindness, I know how it feels for men to wake up the morning after going too far and i didn't want his soul to hurt anymore than it already would.

"I'm not, aren't I?" He said, finally laughing with me.

"You're not mad, my love," i told him, wiping the blood from my mouth, "Your sanity is the best thing about you."

He leaned over and kissed me. Wiping phantom tears from my face, as he usually would after a night like that. I giggled him away and he sat down beside me. I sprang up onto my feet on search of my water bottle.

"Aren't you in pain?" He asked, squinting his eyes as the sane often do when faced with true madness.

"Honestly, I don't feel a thing," i said, and it was the truth.

Some nights i worry death may come before pain, and that is why I choose to love the sane. The sane keep me alive, even when they allow me to prod them just enough to taste madness. They shouldn't, but sometimes they can't help themselves.

"Do you need aftercare?" I asked him, and it was a sincere offer.

"I really do," he said coming up to me and taking me into his arms, "You crazy bitch."

If you knew that, why'd you try to out-mad me, my love?