Chapter 44

“Please… Not— not like this?”

Dana paused, holding the latex hood. Valerie’s expression was sad— grieving. Dana could tell that the feelings were genuine, that the girl was not bratting. She did not understand why that day was so different from past days, and did not understand the plea— not like what?. She felt heat rising in the back of her neck.

She shook her head to clear her thoughts, and stepped up to Valerie, lifting the hood and preparing to stretch it over the girl’s head. Valerie was quiet, holding herself back from sobbing; but she could not stop or hide the tears that rolled freely down her cheeks, spattering across the shiny latex stretched across her chest.

Dana half-expected the girl to resist. It was pointless, but her head was not yet meaningfully restrained, and she could make it difficult to get the hood on, if she wanted, despite that she could not stop it. That would have given Dana an excuse to mete out more punishment, and she was not sure if she was disappointed or gratified by the lack of resistance.

Playful resistance would have been better than resignation, defeat, and trembling fear; but Valerie only dropped her head, her breathing uneven amidst the tears.

Dana worked the hood over Valerie’s head, tugging and pulling with little regard for the girl’s comfort. Finally, she smoothed the short neck section down, overlapping with the neck of the catsuit. The hood left Valerie’s eyes and mouth exposed, and had two small, precisely placed breathing holes aligned to her nostrils. Two pairs of buckles built into the hood would accept the blindfold and gag that waited on Dana’s desk.

She moved on to the layered collars. First, the sturdy leather posture collar fitted just above Valerie’s permanent collar, and the inch-wide steel collar would go on top of that. The steel collar would in turn be secured rigidly secured to the wall.

The posture collar laced up at the back; Dana pulled the laces as tight as she could, watching to be sure that Valerie could still breathe. She tied the laces off and locked the steel collar closed over the new leather one. It was a snug fit, and Valerie could feel it as an additional pressure even through the posture collar. Dana pressed the steel collar back to mate against its corresponding anchor on the wall.

The posture collar and the subsequent rigid attachment forced Valerie’s head up and straight; she followed Dana’s movements as well as she could with her eyes alone. Her breathing grew more shallow and rapid.

Valerie began, then, to sob audibly, and her trembling became shaking, as much as her bonds allowed. Dana could see her arms and shoulders pointlessly struggling against the binder; she had no hope of freeing herself.

“Please,” she begged. “Dana, please… please talk to me… I’m sorry… I didn’t mean… I was so scared..”

She was barely intelligible, begging abjectly, and struggling to get words out amidst her sobs.

Valerie hated herself, as the sobbing began, finally unable to hold it back. That angst was perhaps the only thing that stopped her from uttering her safe word. She felt ashamed, frustrated, and angry at herself for all of the decisions that had brought her there. She had tried to be strong and obedient and she had ended up pathetic, and begging; and still terrified of what else Dana had planned for her.

She could see the patterns repeating in her life, and the way that each time she had escaped abuse, thinking her life would become better, she found herself worse off, an endless series of frying pans and fires.

The controlling fundamentalism of her parents and the suffocating provincialism of the small town they lived in had given way to her financially and academically struggling through college, ridiculed by her peers and feeling more alone, strange, and unwanted than ever.

Heather had seemed like a bright spot, and she felt ashamed for not recognizing the red flags that were so obvious in retrospect. The girl had seemed to genuinely like her— at least until she had worked up the confidence to come out as transgender. The brief honeymoon phase of what she thought was love had quickly become hateful, degrading codependence.

Even once she had escaped that relationship— if one could call Heather’s leaving of boredom and spite an escape— she had been left in an unwinnable financial position, with a job that sought only to extract as much labor and talent from her as it could before crumbling away into nothing.

She felt like an idiot for believing, again, that Dana was truly some kind of rescue from that. She had defended the woman to Lucca — convinced them of her virtue. Yet she could see the relationship closing in around her, the patterns of fear, abuse, and retribution that she seemed unable to escape.

“Please, Dana, please…”

If she begged, it was not for relief in the moment, not really— it was simply a feeble plea for Dana to be different. A plea to the universe that this time would be different, beyond changed set dressing for the same abuse.

The bitter old lessons her parents had drilled — and beaten, one or twice — into her resurfaced unbidden. For her shortcomings, she must deserve what was happening; because their god rewards and punishes according to his flock’s merits and sins.

If she had been a better son, her parents would have disciplined her less. If she had been more attentive, and pushed down her struggles with gender, Heather would not have grown to hate her. If she had been a better employee, she would have had a job that did not feel like a car speeding toward a brick wall.

If she had been more submissive, more obedient, more the simple, passive toy that Dana so explicitly demanded, she would not now be facing down her mistress’s cold wrath.

She felt less certain than ever that Dana would honor the safe word, in that moment, if she did speak it. She had no plan for what she might do afterward, if Dana did let her go; and life had shown her time and again that this was her lot. Things would not be better if she stopped fighting, but so far all her struggles had accomplished was to make her life worse.

Dana had cleared her debt and promised her a place to stay, but she had no money to live on beyond that. Her job was gone, now, certainly; she would have been fired with cause after her disappearance. Finding another tech job seemed an impossible feat, with a months-long unexplained gap on her resumé and no ability to provide a reference. She had no other marketable skills; no value to society.

Using her safe word would mean being ejected into that world, perhaps the final fire that would completely burn her up. At least Dana kept her fed and housed.

Those few days she had spent with Lucca had been faint glimmers of something different; they had seemed somehow invested in Valerie’s well-being; but their silence and absence was convincing evidence that their interest was transient, if it had been real at all.

Perhaps they had meant what they said, at the time; but the only purpose ultimately served by their momentary kind intentions was to make them feel better. Perhaps, instead, Lucca’s sadism extended to emotional torture.

Dana stepped in front of her, holding the blindfold and gag. Valerie had the same fear in her eyes that Dana had seen when she had opened the car trunk, months before; but this time it was Dana who had put it there.

"…please talk to me…"

Valerie couldn’t meet Dana’s gaze; she closed her eyes, still sobbing. She would have collapsed into a huddled ball if she were not held so immobile, but she knew she had no real choice other than to endure.

Her begging felt pathetic and she regretted immediately having spoken. Dana would punish her more harshly for it, she was sure; but she was panicking. Beyond even the anxious panic attacks that occasionally brought her cold sweats and a thumping heart, she felt truly scared, as much as when her parents’ hired thug had taken her from her own home.

"…I’m sorry…"

She felt trapped— not only in latex, leather, and steel; but also in the seductive web that Dana had woven for her. She felt stupid and ashamed for having walked, smiling, into it.