Comfort Food (11 page)

If I hadn’t been reshaped and reformed into the docile little pet he wanted, I would have cowered and cringed away from him and screamed and cried. Sometimes I screamed and cried anyway, but only when the orgasm overtook me so strongly I could do nothing but empty my soul onto him.

I’d been out of the bad cell for months. I never went back there again. A few times I came close when he’d introduce something new and scary, but ultimately I obeyed whatever he wanted.

After awhile it stopped being about the cell and that perceived punishment. It became instead about him being disappointed in me. I only cared about his eyes and how they reflected me.

In the good cell the warm throbbing between my legs was almost constant. It didn’t matter what I was doing. Dancing, bathing, painting my fingernails. Because whatever I was doing, my thoughts rarely strayed far from him and memories of the last time he’d touched me. If I had been his obsession, he had become mine just as strongly.

Sometimes I imagined that when he left me in my rooms, when he was finished playing with me for the day, he went out with his friends and laughed and talked. Maybe he didn’t think about me at all. Or he watched television and wasn’t troubled with thoughts of me until some small mention, no doubt getting shorter and farther apart, would come up about my disappearance.

I had this image of him as some sort of almost Patrick Bateman from
American Psycho
. That he lived a double life. One side all privilege and creamy soft-white business cards with perfect fonts, the other blood and darkness. Monster and man.

I found myself wanting the monster because it was honest, a level of honesty most go their entire lives without confronting, always content to hide behind their social masks and business cards.

It was October. By now everything was about him, but at the same time I missed Halloween. The costumes, the parties, going out with my friends. Friends I’d forgotten, as if they’d died. I couldn’t see their faces anymore when I closed my eyes; I only saw him. That intense beauty that was almost painful to look at.

My fear had become so entwined with my arousal that I craved everything he did now. I could stay here forever. I wanted to. My family and friends, my career and colleagues, they were all shadows to me now.

I had the barest notion there had been police investigations, frantic searches, tearful panic over my going missing. I’d been a blurb on the national news, a tragic case of a young woman with a bright future and loyal fans. The speculation that a crazed fan had taken me, or someone who hated me.

Which category did my master fall into? Either? Neither? I’d never know. I’d long given up the hope he would ever speak to me.

But he didn’t have to use speech. Every touch, every caress, every lash of the whip, crop, or cane. It was all communication, a private conversation that no one else could intrude upon. Before, my life had only been words, shallow, meaningless words dripping from my mouth with no real content. Words for the sake of words to make me feel less alone in the world. But I had been alone.

Completely.

Then he took me and filled my world so much that even without words, I wasn’t alone. We were connected now so deeply that to lose him was to lose life itself. He was everything. We communicated on the primal level of touch. Dominance and submission. Master and slave. Nothing else was required.

I woke on the morning of Halloween with a vague sense of loss. I thought it was because of all I’d missed this year. Or because we were approaching the holidays, and suddenly time would have more form as I lost my first Halloween, my first Thanksgiving, my first Christmas and New Years, but that wasn’t it.

My alarm went off at 7:30 as it always did. I happened to glance over to find the door standing open.

I can’t describe in any rational way the panic that surged through me. What the hell was this? I hadn’t felt this way since the first day of my imprisonment when the blindfold had covered my eyes in that still silence, before I’d seen his face or felt his hands on my body.

Normally, he left me instructions with my last meal of the day for what he wanted the following day. I should have known something was wrong when he didn’t. Maybe I had. Maybe that was the gnawing feeling that had crept inside me.

I bathed in jasmine oil and got ready. At nine o’clock I was on my knees a few feet from the door, waiting for him. That’s when I looked up and noticed the keys. On a little table next to the door were a set of car keys.

If I took them, would the garage door be opened? Would I press the little button and hear the beeps to indicate which car? Could I leave?

That should have been my thought process. My thought process instead went:
Is this a test? Does he not want me anymore? Is he abandoning me? How can he abandon me? I did everything he wanted. How can I mean nothing to him after he’s trained me like this?

I didn’t love him; he didn’t love me. But I was his. I belonged to him. That had to count for something. I was addicted to the way he touched me, the contrast between pleasure and pain he always delivered to me. Violence and gentleness. I couldn’t get enough.

I didn’t care how I’d arrived at this point. The only thing that mattered was that I was there, and I never wanted to leave. I was his willing slave, evidenced by the fact that I only looked at the keys briefly before my eyes went back to the floor, and I waited.

Nine-thirty came and then ten. Ten-thirty and I hadn’t moved from the spot. I was getting hungry. There were snacks and water in the mini fridge, but I didn’t move. I didn’t want to. I didn’t want him to find me not where I was supposed to be.

Finally, just before noon he stepped into the room. I didn’t look up at him. I kept my eyes on the ground as he’d trained me, despite my desperate desire to look into his eyes to find what was there.

Then he was standing in front of me, his feet in my line of sight. I wanted to reach out and touch him, but I refrained. I wanted to beg his forgiveness for whatever I’d done to upset him, but I didn’t. I just stayed where I was, my breath coming out in heavy pants, anticipation thrumming through me for his touch, any touch.

I didn’t have to wait long. He gripped my chin and forced my eyes up to meet his. He was angry, and I didn’t know why. Finally, I spoke.

“Master, please, whatever I did to upset you, you know I didn’t mean it.”

Had I ever seen him angry before? Truly angry? No, I couldn’t remember a single time over the past months that I had. He’d been so restrained. Everything so calm and orchestrated. Everything following his plans, even my lame attempts at disobedience.

Now seeing him angry unhinged me, and I found that old fear creeping back again. Not the fear mixed with the arousal until I writhed and panted beneath him. This was more uncertain fear.

Had he snapped? Was he broken too? What the hell was going on? He turned away from me, standing stiffly, his breath suddenly matching my own previously heavy panting.

He wore only jeans, and I could see the tension of his shoulder muscles as he forcibly restrained himself. From what? Killing me? Beating me?

He’d whipped me many times. I had a few scars which I knew would stay with me forever or as long as he let me live, but he’d never whipped me out of anger. It had all been out of desire.

Finally, he seemed in control of himself. He crossed to the closet and after a few moments returned, tossing a pair of blue jeans and a pale pink T-shirt at me . . . and the silver wedge sandals where the ribbons tied around my ankles.

I put them on. Had there ever been a day when he hadn’t come to me in some way? Was he tired of me now? Early on I had feared this day, waking in cold sweats over it. The day he got bored with me. The day he killed me. Now I couldn’t work up the emotion for it. I just didn’t want it to end.

How was it possible, given our circumstances, that he could tire of me before I tired of him? He tossed me the car keys and left the room. He was serious. A thousand thoughts ran through my mind, all whirring through my head at the same time, so I couldn’t separate one of them out.

I sat dumbly still as if it were some kind of trick, that last tiny hope that it was a test I could still pass. My mind refused to accept just yet that passing meant leaving him.

Moments later he appeared in the doorway again, an annoyed look on his face. He came back into the room and wrapped his hand around my arm, jerking me through the door, pulling me through the house.

The blindfold was no longer covering my eyes, no longer segmenting the rooms into disembodied pieces of a larger whole. Now, seeing it all at once, the house was even more impressive inside than I’d always imagined it to be. And yet . . . it was only him.

No servants. Had he given them the day off so he could get rid of me? Did they just come in on alternate days? For a moment, I had this crazy thought we were the only two people left alive on the planet.

Perhaps the servants were keeping to the shadows. Did they know what he’d done? Did they care? I held onto the wild hope that he didn’t want to be rid of me. No, some servant suspected, and he was making me leave so they wouldn’t find me. But that didn’t make any sense. Why would he set me free on the world? To hide the evidence, wouldn’t he have to kill me first?

I stumbled a bit, and my ankle twisted under my foot. Stupid wedge sandals. These weren’t the shoes for women with tiny ankles. I cried out and he turned, the smallest shadow of concern on his face before he masked it again and was back to the business of expelling me from his house.

We were in the entry hall, the front door just feet away. He seemed to have every intention of throwing me out onto the lawn and leaving me to my fate with the elements if I was too stupid to use the car keys to leave. The keys now clutched in my hand. I couldn’t remember how they’d gotten there.

When we reached the door, I panicked and jabbed him in the ribs hard with my elbow. I’m sure it hurt some, but it wasn’t what caused him to let me go. It was simply shock that I still had enough fire left to in any way seek to go against his wishes.

I moved away from him, but he latched onto my arm with one hand. I didn’t hesitate. The keys were in my other hand, and I drove them into his skin. I expected him to cry out, but he didn’t. Instead, he let go of me and cradled his hand like a wounded animal.

I felt the smallest amount of pity well up inside me and an almost compulsive urge to bandage him up, despite the fact that I hadn’t drawn blood.

He gave me a look of shocked betrayal as if he had any right to it after everything. I was the one that was being betrayed. I was the one being thrown out without explanation. I turned and ran down the hallway.

It did remind me of a castle. The stonework, the extreme ornateness, the woven tapestries on the walls. I ran to the end of the hallway until I came to an open door. To call it a living room or den would have been to understate it. It was more of a home movie theater. A giant screen played CNN on one end of the room.

I stopped to watch for a minute, wondering if I was old news or if they would mention me. I wondered if they would flash my picture across the screen, back when I’d been another person. They didn’t. My momentary distraction allowed him to catch up to me.

Strong arms wrapped around me like a vice, and for one insane moment I sagged back against him, soaking up the feeling of being in his embrace, even if it wasn’t really an embrace. I could feel his hot breath on my ear as he bent down.

“Please don’t make me leave. Whatever I did wrong I won’t do it again. Just don’t throw me out.”

I know how this sounded, how completely pathetic, but I couldn’t make my mouth not form the words. I think there was something left of me that knew this was all wrong and that I should take the opportunity for freedom that he handed me, but I didn’t want that choice anymore.

He continued to hold me, everything pausing, the universe just stopping while he decided to keep me or make me go.

“Please . . . ” I whispered.

He turned me to face him, his eyes locking with mine. And I couldn’t read him. After months of his eyes and his body being my only signs of anything, I couldn’t read him. He shoved me away onto the couch and left the room.

I sat there, numb, the keys and my freedom finally in my hands. I was afraid of him again. Actually afraid. I hadn’t been actually afraid in months. Obedience had always brought reward. I learned my lessons from the cell and never repeated the mistakes.

One would think that in itself would set up a constant fear, but it didn’t. After the day he’d made absolutely plain that all he expected was effort, after he proved that time and time again over months, I came to trust him more than I’d ever trusted anyone. Because even if he was a monster, he followed his own rules. And he was my monster.

He was stable in his way, dependable, predictable, and in complete control. But as I sat on the couch on the verge of a panic attack, I knew this wasn’t the case any longer. He was finally behaving in the manner in which one expects a psychotic to behave, and that was truly frightening.

In this state it wouldn’t take much for him to kill me, and I wasn’t so far gone I would rather die than be free. Was I?

I laughed, a hollow little sound against the droning backdrop of CNN. What kind of a complete mental case has to weigh whether they would rather die or be free? Die or be a slave? Yes, that's logical. Die or be free, no.

Still I didn’t move. I wondered if I was in shock. It was as if I was just beginning to realize the danger I was in.

That wasn’t true.

I’d realized early on, but he’d made me forget. I’d forgotten because I’d fallen into that fathomless gaze of his and the way he made me feel everything so strongly.

He returned a few minutes later, and I tensed. He stood in the doorway, a red leather book in his hands. My journal. I didn’t want to read that now. I’d just kept writing straight through without going back to reread.

In the beginning it had been a way to salvage sanity after a fashion, or else a way to document so someday when I was free I could remember all he’d done to me and make him pay. Now I couldn’t go back and read it all. I wanted to keep moving forward, writing new diary entries, never looking back to what had gone on before.