The Art of Submission
By Helotage
Chapter 3: Return to Normal
Monday morning, she woke from her fitful slumber, removed her collar, and headed to the shower. In the mirror, she saw a redness around her neck from where the collar rubbed, but the hot water of the shower made it disappear. She headed to work after breakfast and tried hard to stay focused on customers and meetings and paperwork. Her best work was barely good enough. Her head was still woozy from the previous day’s experience, first the weirdness of the antique shop, that wonderful and wondrous sculpture now displayed in her living room, whatever that intense dream was—so real, so lucid, so debased and disturbing—and her newfound attraction to that iron collar.
That night, she went out with friends mostly so that she did not have to go home and face that sculpture. Avoidance behavior was the term she learned for this in her psychology class in college. She was avoiding going home, avoiding having another dreamlike experience with the sculpture. Or, if she were to be more honest with herself, she was avoiding the crazy desires that were awakening and welling up in her. She was beginning not to trust herself.
After dinner at the bar, over too many drinks with friends, she started talking about the sculpture she had bought. She described it, but not the power it seemed to have over her. She also described the woman in the store. They had a good laugh at her depictions and wanted to see a picture of this incredible and incredibly expensive sculpture. Like most everyone, she took pictures with her phone all the time. She had even that evening already posted a picture of her dinner on Instagram and had taken several selfies with her friends at the bar. Oddly, though, she did not have a photo of the sculpture. Her friends thought that was the funniest thing of all. If only they knew of her waking dreams, of her iron collar, of the warm flutter she felt just thinking about it.
After saying her good nights and promising to invite everyone over to see her sculpture, she walked the short distance home. One of her friends, Mike, had flirted with her all night. He was pretty hot, but she was no cheater. She flirted back a bit for fun, but she was pretty serious with her boyfriend, Roy, who would be in town Saturday evening, in less than a week. And she had the sculpture to consider as well, she reminded herself.
What the hell was that? Where did that come from? The sculpture was becoming the focus of her thoughts, the center of her life. She even started fantasizing about inviting her friends to touch the sculpture and submit to its power.
As soon as she got in, she headed directly to the bathroom and then to bed. She never turned on the living room light. She resisted even glancing at the sculpture. Her resistance took some real effort.
In the middle of the night, she woke up. It was like she had an itch that needed scratching, a mental itch. Before she could think about it, she reached into her drawer and pulled out the collar. The lights still out, she went over to her closet where she kept her luggage and felt around until she found a small lock inside a suitcase. She put the collar around her neck, closed the hasp with its welcome squeak, and clicked the lock through the metal loop. A moment of panic set in when she tried to recall the combination, but then it came to her. She climbed into bed and drifted away. The collar was no longer uncomfortable. Maybe she was getting used to it.
Later, lit only by dim light from the street, she found herself kneeling naked and collared before the sculpture. How had she gotten here? She stretched her hand before her and could see its silhouette against the soft white glow of the sculpture. She laid her hand upon it.
The three men had moved out of the shadows to get a better look as she hung by her wrists from the ceiling. The men were much older, not handsome like the man with the whip, and two of them were fat, one really fat. One was taller than the others. All were, in fact, ugly. That’s all she registered through the tears that streamed from her eyes after that whip had raised the vicious welt she sensed between her shoulder blades. The next blow was horizontal across her lower back. Her body jerked forward, waist first, and as she screamed the next blow and the one after that crossed her upper back. One more hit her left ribcage with the tip of the whip propelled around her side and across her left breast and nipple. He was a superb whipsman, but she was not very appreciative of his skill at the moment. Every fiber in her was focused on the pain, and she had nothing to compare it too. All she knew was that her nakedness did not matter; her humiliation did not matter; the intentions of the three men did not matter. Only the pain mattered. She would do anything. The man switched sides, and the next blow flipped around her right ribcage with the tip of the whip striking her right nipple perfectly. She screamed, the men laughed. So did the two women. She kept screaming as the tall man started working on her ass and upper thighs, front and back. It felt like her skin was on fire. She was sure she felt her flesh tear.
Hanging freely from the ceiling, her body writhed and jerked with every blow. She swung from side to side, back and forth, and occasionally in lazy circles. At one point, in a futile effort to alleviate the pain in her swelling thighs, she spread her legs wide. The whipsman rewarded her with a perfect vertical shot, the whip wrapping under her vagina and its tip shocking her clitoris. Never before had she been seriously assaulted in that part of her body. At once, the pain, the humiliation, and some vague arousal welled up in her as she closed her legs tight in unbearable agony. She felt herself passing out.
Kneeling again in front of the sculpture, she contemplated what she endured in her waking dream. Was it a vision of someone’s past, perhaps her past, a past life? She didn’t believe in that crap, but then again she didn’t believe in magic sculptures that could make you see visions and take over you mind. She fell asleep with these thoughts there on her side on the living room floor with her hand buried between her thighs.
Mollie missed her alarm, which shrilly hooted away in the bedroom for half an hour before she woke up. Fumbling with the combination lock while looking in the bathroom mirror was hard enough without her haste to not be late for work. She showered quickly, dressed, and made it to the office just in time.