Chapter 8

okay. Valerie sent the first message quickly, rapidly typing out the four letters and hitting send before her mind had a chance to reconsider yet again. She immediately tapped the message and her finger hovered over the delete button while she agonized. The Read indicator showed up a moment later.

–

She had been staring at her phone for a long time, the glowing rectangle face-up on her coffee table showing a plain black-text-on-white PDF. In fact, staring at these words on her phone had been all she’d done during every spare moment since Dana had sent them to her the night before.

She was barely able to sleep that night, only forcing herself to put her phone away, and try to get a few hours, when she realized it was well past midnight.

A glass of red wine stood untouched on the table, forgotten as she alternated between pacing around the small living room, staring down at the text on the screen, and repeatedly unlocking her phone when the display idled out.

She and Dana had talked for another hour last night. Valerie had been tired from a long work day— a normal occurrence lately. Between that and the way listening to Dana’s voice on the other end of the line made her feel, it had been hard for her to concentrate on the details. Dana seemed to know this- after verbally outlining the proposal, she had emailed over the formal offer, and given Valerie strict instructions to take her time in considering it before deciding. Valerie promised that she would.

She’d been drowning in her consideration ever since.

The legalese was straightforward, if thorough. She didn’t think there was anything meant to trick her— the simple meaning was bad enough (or good enough, a part of her whispered compellingly). In her work, she had reviewed the kind of user agreements that seemed written primarily to confuse and obfuscate; this did not seem to be such a document.

The gist of it was that, for the next year, she would be provided with food, housing, and medical care, including transition care. Her belongings would be placed in storage. She could terminate the contract at any point — the contract called it the “safe word clause” — in which case she would be relieved of all obligations and given a thirty-day runway to find a new job and housing.

At the end of a year— and only if she made it a year— she’d be paid a million dollars. Technically one point six million— enough to cover taxes and to walk away with precisely seven figures. If she quit early, she’d receive nothing.

That was all the carrot part of the offering. The stick was, as Dana had asserted, not of her own making— she could walk away, forget all of this, and try to survive her impossible work situation, with no other prospects, and no safety net. She couldnot think of even the outline of a plan for what she would do if that happened.

Mentally, she only tiptoed around the core of the “offer,” the consideration she’d be providing in return. The work she’d be doing. The job.

_"I, [Valerie], hereafter referred to as 'toy', acknowledge and affirm..."_

The legal framing was complex. She’d spent hours today reading and re-reading, even jotting down some notes. It was, she understood eventually, challenging but not impossible to legally construct the concept of one person owning another person, through a complicated web of powers-of-attorney, conservatorship, and explicit waivers of various rights.

She would give up virtually every human right she had and turn herself over, mind and body, to this strange woman that she couldn’t even really say she’d met, in exchange for an almost iron-clad promise that she could start over completely, afterward, and create a new life for herself,

Valerie couldn’t decide if she thought this was impossible, if she deeply hungered for it to be real, or if she was terrified that it was real. Her mind rotated through each state in turn like clockwork.

_"...neither Owner nor Owner's Designee shall injure or allow injury to toy
that would result in permanent disability or impairment..."_

Click. She decided that this can’t be possible; it was a joke, or some kind of trick or scam she wasn’t seeing. The woman had broken in and kidnapped her, after all, and.. She couldn’t finish the thought. There was nothing else anyone would want from her; she didn’t have any money, any property, or anything of value.

_"...shall be held in escrow until the one year anniversary of toy's formal
agreement to this contract, provided that, during this period, toy has not
invoked the Safe Word clause of this agreement..."_

Click. Her mind switched into wanting to believe it. She had been entirely at this woman’s mercy, but then set free. What would be the point of a trick or a scam? And nobody would go that far just to fuck with her. If the goal was something darker, something more sinister, she wouldn’t be sitting in her living room right now staring at a contract. As oddly-shaped as it might be, this seemed a miraculous chance to truly live.

_"...toy acknowledges that all activities engaged in by toy or by Owner or
Owner's designee until/unless the Safe World Clause is invoked are
consensual and voluntary..."_

Click. The thought of it set her heart racing, a warm tingling spreading out from her chest and down through the rest of her body. She thought of that woman, with that voice, and those arms, having total control over her.. her life, her body. Every nerve in her seemed to light up at the thought of it and she couldn’t honestly say it was an unpleasant sensation..

_"...Owner shall comprehensively ensure the health, safety (as defined
above), housing, and feeding of toy for the full one-year duration of the
contract or one month following invocation of the Safe Word Clause,
whichever is sooner..."_

She downed half the wine in one gulp; it burned as it went down, and she almost had a coughing fit. It was not good wine, and the warmth of it sat uneasily in her stomach.

She picked up the phone and switched over to signal.

okay. She sent the first message before her mind had a chance to rotate into another position. Her heart hammered so hard in her chest she worried she was going to pass out as she watched the “sent” check mark turn the solid white of “received”, and then “read”. It’s not a signature, but.. it’s the button that starts the wheels turning.

The phone blinked a low battery indicator at her, but she ignored it. She had been staring and pacing for hours, and finding a charger for her phone at that moment felt like too much of a distraction.

i have some questions.. she sent, her second message. She was mid-way through typing the first of them into the input box when her door bell rang.