The Art of Submission
By Helotage
Chapter 2: Object on Display
It took some doing, but, wearing precautionary gloves, Mollie placed the sculpture in her small apartment living room on a side table against the wall. There was a lamp next to it, so the piece would be well lit. She admired the sculpture while munching on a sandwich. It was Sunday afternoon. She needed to get her food shopping done before going to her bullshit job at the bank tomorrow. Why the hell had she spent so much money on this thing?
Later that night, as she was getting ready for bed, she saw the collar lying on the comforter where she had tossed it. It was a crude and ugly thing. What a weird gift. It probably was not worth that much. It was just an excuse to get Mollie in that room to see the display. More saleswomanship. Frankly, the thought of all those implements of bondage and torture horrified and disgusted Mollie. Sure, she had played tie-up with couple of boyfriends. Once, she even role-played as a dominatrix with a guy she dated for a while. He was really into it, but it was not her thing. She was pretty vanilla although she did enjoy a hard bang every now and then. A few months ago she had started seriously dating a guy she met on vacation, but they lived on opposite ends of the state. They spoke by phone and internet maybe every other day, and sent naked photos and sexted once or twice a week. Still, the long-distance thing was wearing. At this moment, she would love to put on her new collar, get naked down on her knees, and suck her man off right now.
Where did that come from? Mollie was no prude, but she was hardly wanton. And that collar held no attraction at all. She shoved it in her nightstand drawer, took off her clothes, and climbed into bed. Normally, she did not sleep naked, but she was in a sensual mood and wanted to feel the cool sheets against her flesh, a rare indulgence. She turned out the light, closed her eyes, and started running her fingers over her crotch. She was really worked up. What had gotten into her?
In the middle of the night, she got up to pee. As she was heading back to bed, she noticed that she left the light on next to the sculpture. She walked over to it, admiring its soft curves and fleshy contours. It really was a gorgeous piece. As if she were possessed by an irresistible impulse, she heedlessly reached out to place her palm on it.
The scene shifted. She was in a dark room, but this one was lit only by candles. Two strange women approached her. They were clad in some sort of diaphanous gowns, their breasts on display through the material. Her own clothes felt heavy and weird. She looked down and could see her small bosom bursting out of a tight corset. She had on a flowing muslin skirt over other layers, and something weighty was on her head. The women each took her by an arm and led her to a door. An old mirror hung on the wall, and she could see she wore a large hat or bonnet. She had white makeup on and bright rouge cheeks. What the fuck! She looked like a figure from 1800 or something. And, oh my god, she thought, she had on the collar with an antique lock hanging from it. The women pushed her out and guided her down a dank hall to a large room, again lit by candles. There was a fire burning even though the room was stiflingly hot. The women forced Mollie to stand on a small box, about a foot high, in the middle of the room. One had some sort of step stool that she climbed next to Mollie. She took Mollie’s right hand, extended it up, and clasped a metal cuff around the wrist. Where the hell did that come from? The woman climbed down, moved the stool, and climbed up to lock Mollie’s other wrist into a cuff. The cuffs hung by chains from the ceiling. She lifted Mollie’s bonnet and handed it to the other woman and then climbed down and removed the stool. Then she undid the lacing of Mollie’s corset and removed the garment while the other woman bend down to remove Mollie’s tight shoes.
One of the women stepped in front of Mollie and showed her a long dagger. Mollie shuddered in fear, and her voice was made small with terror. “Please. No,” she begged. The woman smiled smugly, bent down, and began slicing Mollie’s skirts vertically from the bottom. Mollie was relieved and abashed. A few more slashes, and Mollie’s clothing was destroyed and discarded. But for the iron collar, she stood naked on the box with her arms stretched above. Just then some men came in. Mollie was horrified and terrified. She had never felt more exposed, more like a thing, an object on display. She could not speak for shame and fear and started sobbing. The one man, the tallest and youngest, came directly to her, put his finger over his lip, and shushed her. She instantly obeyed. He smiled, but then he began tugging at her bare breasts with his hands. She cried out, “No.” He stopped, stepped back, and with a look of pure malice, slapped her face as hard as he could with the back of his right hand. The blow made Mollie’s head spin. The left side of her face ached, especially her cheekbone where his heavy ring made contact. She had never been hit so hard.
Just then, while she was still stunned, one of the women pushed Mollie hard toward the man as the man kicked the box backward from under her. Mollie experienced a new agony as she fell downward, her arms stretching against the shackles that dug into her wrist and her toes inches above the floor. She yelled out but immediately stifled herself out of fear of this man’s discipline. The other men in the room, two or three, lurked in the shadows. The first man, the one who slapped her, was handsome in a rugged way and leered at her naked and vulnerable body. He held up the looped leather whip that had been attached to his belt and pressed the hard handle under her chin so that she was looking up into his eyes. He towered over her even though she was suspended above her height. He spoke slowly and distinctly so that the sincerity of his words would not be missed. It was French. Molly did not know any French, but somehow she understood him through the pain in her wrists.
“You will soon feel this whip just as you will feel these three men. Each of them has his own, shall we say, predilection when it comes to penetrating women. You will accommodate each of them accordingly.” She well knew what he meant. Mollie was experienced sexually. She loved a good fucking and even enjoyed sucking a boyfriend off once in a while, but her one attempt at anal had been a disaster. It was just not her thing, and she wondered how far their “predilections” would go. The man continued to press her chin up as he spoke, so close she could sense his spittle. He had already described her nightmarish fate—a whipping followed by a triple rape. In her terror and anguish, she noticed a strangely pleasant feeling in her stomach, the same butterfly feeling she might get when going out with a hot guy for the first time. She realized she had had that feeling in the store with that woman. At the time she ascribed it to her hunger. Now, she recognized it as hunger of a different kind.
The man removed his whip from beneath her chin and stepped back. Mollie’s head bowed in despair, and he mocked her willing submission. Whatever defiance she had tried to muster succumbed to the pain in her wrists and resolved into resignation mixed with a degree of desire. He smiled: “You are a slut, aren’t you?” And, as he positioned himself behind her with the whip dragging on the floor, she thought maybe that was true. He snapped the whip once past her head. The sound was fearsome, and she jumped out of her wits. Maybe this was all there was. Maybe it was all a feign. He would threaten and bluster, and that’s it. Afterward they could all go out for a nice glass of wine.
Instead, the next crack of the whip was across her back, right between the shoulder blades. This guy knew how to work a whip. The pain of the blow instantly displaced the pain that had been shooting through her wrists, arms, and shoulders even as she felt her body writhe against the fetters and swing forward uncontrollably. She heard a terrifying scream, more terrifying than the pain she felt radiated from the welt rising on her naked back. It was her scream.
She was standing in front of the sculpture, her hand hovering slightly above its surface. Her naked body was drenched in sweat. Her sex was drenched in desire. She fell to her knees, weakened by a blow she could no longer feel. Without a thought, she jammed her hand between her thighs, fell to her right side, and masturbated shamelessly in front of the sculpture, which had somehow come to dominate her. She had never been so sexually excited as she was at that moment. She thought of what she just witnessed. She thought of the antique store and the powerful woman who presided over it. She thought of her boyfriend, and she even speculated as to whether she had remembered to lock the front door. Maybe anyone could enter her apartment and find her like that, vulnerable and utterly willing. She came harder than she imagined possible and then came again and again. It was her greatest sexual experience to date—masturbating to the white marble of a modernist abstract sculpture.
When she was thoroughly exhausted from coming, she roused herself and headed to the bedroom. Checking the clock, she realized that while her time in what she thought of as the waking dream world seemed quite long, in reality, only minutes had past.
Before climbing into bed, she had a strange impulse. She opened the drawer to her nightstand, removed the heavy iron collar, and placed it around her neck. The hasp’s squeak was almost welcome. The uncomfortable object would keep her up all night, which was just as well. She was afraid to sleep for fear she would have more dreams. As exhilarating as they were, she just could not stand any more.