by Amber Dawn
Later in the evening, Véronique corners me. She points to her right cheek and says, “Give me a kiss here.” I do.
She points to her left cheek. “Give me a kiss here.”
She points to her lips. “Now give me a kiss here.”
We kiss for a long time.
But in the end, it doesn’t end up amounting to anything. My kiss with Véronique is disappointing and makes me hunger for Sido’s mouth. I’m exhausted and the jetlag is catching up with me, so I decide to leave. I walk alone past crowds of people carousing in the chaotic Parisian streets. Close to my apartment, I see two men working furiously to undo each other’s pants in a doorway. It seems that the entire city is sexed.
When I get back to the apartment, it is quiet. I check my belongings. Everything is as I left it. I go to bed, relieved that Sido didn’t intrude. All the same, the shadow of her kiss is still with me. I fantasize about eating her out while she’s naked and standing against the kitchen counter in high heels.
I’m almost asleep when I hear a haunting call in the night: a long-drawn-out hooo, an uncomfortable silence, and then a startling ha! The sounds ricochet off the walls of my room, and make me shudder. There’s a flapping sound outside the window, and I open my eyes just as the beast’s wingspan blocks the moon and it comes to rest on the roof. The owl is perched on the edge of the skylight. Two massive furrowed brows come together over a hooked beak. A circular facial disk of feathers frames huge, dark eyes. A puffed-up chest rises above me. For a moment, I consider putting the mice out, but then the owl scratches at the window with a clawed foot, which I find unnerving. I’m about to move to the downstairs couch when the bird spreads its wings and lifts itself into the Parisian sky. It’s hours before I’m able to sleep.
It’s noon and harsh daylight is funnelling through the skylight.
I step cautiously down the ladder to the bathroom. The shower is a small confined space. I relax in the steaming hot water and plan my day ahead—an omelette at a café, an exhibition at Musée d’Orsay, a walk along the Seine, and maybe dinner at Troisième Lieu.
My thoughts are interrupted when Sido opens the door and comes into the bathroom completely naked. Her clothes are in her arms, and she puts them down at her feet.
“What are you doing!? You can’t just come in here!” I shout.
I try not to look at the curve of her hips, her chiselled collarbone, her lean arms, the muscle and bone of her sex.
“You didn’t feed zee owls!” she accuses me loudly over the sound of the shower.
Sido looks like a mirage through the dense steam. My body responds to her against my will. The more I look at her, the wetter I get.
“You have to leave.” I turn off the shower.
“Turn zee water back on!” she orders firmly.
“No. You have to leave.” She’s making me angry. I feel humiliated standing there naked and exposed. I open the narrow shower doors. “Leave now or I’m calling the police.”
Sido’s eyes light up with fury, which turns me on despite my better judgment. She reaches into her pile of clothes on the floor and pulls out a gun. Holding it with two hands, she points it at my gut. I recoil and back against the shower. “You didn’t feed zee owls. So now zee water goes back on, and you turn around.” Sido is flushing with anger.
I do as she says. Hot water streams down my shoulder as I face the wall with my back to her. My heart flips.
“Spread your legs,” Sido commands.
I obey. The space between us closes as she steps into the shower with me. She pushes the gun against my ass. I’m shaking as I wait for the explosion. It doesn’t come. Instead, she kneels below me. I think about kicking her, but am suddenly jolted when her hand searches between my legs. She pulls me open and plunges her fingers inside me. I brace myself against the wall as she forces herself into my cunt, pumping back and forth, each movement a burst of pain. All the same, I’m wet and I can’t help moving with her. Sido puts even more of her hand inside me, and my body takes her in. She fucks me with cruelty, plowing into me with everything she’s got. I’m helplessly driven to pleasure and ejaculate standing up. My cunt pulses and my come flows over Sido’s hand as she holds it inside me. She releases me, then stands up and turns off the shower.
She puts her arms around me. “Mon amour,” my brutish landlady purrs. She gently cradles one of my breasts with one hand while the other holds the weapon against my chest. I look down and see that it’s a child’s toy gun.
Of course, I realize that my landlady has just raped me, but the feeling of her skin against mine sent me into orbit. To my surprise, I find it difficult to kick Sido out of the apartment after that. Her beauty makes her sick mind worth tolerating.
It’s a sweltering day in Paris. Thirsty birds tip their heads back in silence on the streets. Walking is painful and sitting even more so. My cunt is a raw, pulverized piece of meat, yet I can’t stop thinking about her. She seems to have eclipsed everything else.
I’m obsessed and unmotivated to explore the city, so I guiltily skulk into the darkness of Troisième Lieu.
Not many people are in the bar in the early afternoon. I make eye contact with the bartender and slump at the bar to flirt with her. “You should come home with me,” she suggests charmingly.
“Maybe another time,” I decline, even though it would be a thrill to have her fuck me.
“Are you sure?” The sexy server is clearly never declined.
I nod.
“You have someone?” she asks.
“I have something.” Since she’s probably heard it all, I decide to tell her about being held up by Sido with the toy gun in the shower.
“It was just a game,” she pronounces.
“She manipulated me.”
“You like zat, maybe.”
She’s right of course. I can’t escape the grip that Sido has on me. My pull to her is fierce, even though she acts like she despises me. After several more drinks, I leave the bar late without really having noticed that it became filled with beautiful women.
Back at the apartment, I lie under the skylight, and wait for Sido’s pet. Tonight, there are two owls. They are aggressive and repeatedly bellow coo-wik! while scratching at the window. This time, I look back at them. It makes me feel like I’m under Sido’s cruel gaze, and it turns me on.
“Where were you last night?” Sido’s arms are crossed, her jaw is clenched, her eyes are on fire.
I blink at her from the bed. She looks quite out of her mind, and yells at me in French. The language sounds beautiful in her mouth, and I find her fiery rage exciting. Nevertheless, I interrupt. “What are you talking about?”
She looks at me with disgust. “I left a note and some mice for you to feed zee owls, and you didn’t—again!”
I am weighing the situation. Sido is wearing a tight camisole that shows off the sexy curve of her shoulders. Her mouth, reddened by lipstick, has the most luscious curves. I could easily kiss her—or kick her out.
“Let me punish you,” she says, with a wild look in her eyes.
The thought of her libidinous body next to mine excites me. Something in me responds to being humiliated by her. Perhaps it’s that I want to be corrupted by whatever it is that has corrupted her. Sido kneels down to me. Her face is stone cold. I want her on the bed with her ass in the air. I want to fuck her from behind and make her scream. In the middle of my fantasy, she takes off her camisole, revealing her torso, which is chiselled like a Greek statue. She’s cut like a piece of meat. Her breasts look buoyant.
“Do you want to be punished?”
Sido pulls off her skirt, revealing her voluptuous ass crack, which is accentuated by a floss of G-string. I feel a sick attraction to the violent subtext of her gaze.
“Yes, punish me.”
“Lie on your back and spread your arms out,” she orders.
“You first.” I move to kiss her.
She raises her hand, and slaps me viciously across my face and eyes. I’m in s
hock, and fall backwards on the bed, in harrowing pain. I want to see how bad it is, how much damage she’s done.
Disoriented, I try to get up so I can get away from Sido, but she swoops down and straddles me. She’s stronger than I would have guessed and forces her weight on me until I’m lying back on the bed. I try to fight her, but my face feels like it’s bleeding.
I’m bucking her off me when, in the midst of the struggle, Sido’s body language suddenly shifts, and she thrusts her wet cunt on my naked abdomen, making a mewing sound of titillation. We stop fighting each other. She leans over my mouth and kisses me deeply. My body responds with limp submission, and I stretch my arms out on either side of me.
“Zat’s better,” Sido coos in my ear.
She binds my wrists to the legs of the bed with rope, then reaches into the bedside table and pulls out a harness and strap-on. I am splayed out before her like an offering. Sido kisses every part of my body except my mouth. Wordlessly, she places the harness on me and pulls the straps taut, fastening the buckles around my legs. As she adjusts the apparatus, the cock rises erect on my pubis into a massive hard-on.
“Your punishment is not to move,” Sido commands, as she very tenderly touches my face where she struck me. “You understand? ”
“Yes,” I gasp, my skin aching beneath her touch.
With her legs spread on either side of me, Sido walks herself over the cock and teases her cunt over it. She leans back against my knees, so I have a perfect view of the pink areolas of her luscious tits. I feel primitive when the tip disappears into her, but I don’t move. Breathing heavily with excitement, Sido takes in more of the cock, and with one strong thrust of her hips, slips its entire length into her. The bewitching look of pleasure on her face makes me want to come. She rides me, bucking up and down, plunging me into her pussy. The base of the harness pushes against me. My clit is hard and inflamed. I don’t move even though I want to fuck her hard. When Sido comes, she throws her head back and howls in a low guttural noise that doesn’t sound human. I come during her long orgasm, but I don’t move or make a sound. Sido collapses next to me all, sweaty and spent. Her exquisite body thrusts post-coitally against my hip for several minutes.
After a moment, Sido undoes the rope. Making little cooing noises, she kisses my wrists, running her tongue along them. At one point, she looks into my eyes, lingering on the one that she struck.
“Will you hit me?” she asks in her sexiest voice.
“Hit you?”
“I want to be punished for what I did to you.” She starts tearing up.
I stroke her short hair and the beautiful sloping nape of her neck.
“I love you,” she tells me tearfully, and spreads her legs. We writhe around the geography of the bed. At the end of it, I get between her legs and make her come over and over again. Her labia are like two beautiful outspread wings, and I can’t get enough. We hold each other tightly as we fall asleep, but I wake up alone.
In the afternoon, a few hours later, I’m dizzy when I open my eyes. My face is all swollen around my eye and mouth. I keep coaxing myself to get out of bed, but it hurts to move. I finally make it to the bathroom and look in the mirror. I don’t recognize the person looking back. My eyelid is bulging, making me look ogreish. My lips are swollen and it hurts to wince.
I agonize over what to do, but every time I look in the mirror at my puffed-up face, the answer is clear. I have to go to the police and file a complaint against Sido. The ferocity with which she hit me was totally out of control.
At a station in the neighbourhood, I wait for a long time with dozens of people before my number flashes up on the screen.
When I get to the front desk, the officer gazes impassively at my bruised face. “I’d like to report an incident,” I tell him. “I was assaulted.”
“Luc?” he calls over to the officer beside him. “Quelqu’un qui parle anglais. ”
The officer who speaks English summons me over and checks out my eye with the same indifference. He takes notes as I tell him about Sido assaulting me, but I leave out the sex part.
After a while he stops writing and looks up at me. “Why not tell her to leave?”
“I have.”
“Lock zee door.”
“She has a key.”
“We’ll look into it,” he sighs. “It could take a while. You might want to leave in zee meantime. Stay in a hotel.”
I knew he was going to tell me to leave—it’s the advice any rational person should take. Despite the rational part of my mind, the irrational side wants to stay in the apartment and fuck Sido.
I take a long, slow walk back to the apartment. It’s a sunny day, and I’m feeling optimistic. I stop at a café for a sandwich and a glass of wine. After I’m done, I decide to pick up my laptop so I can check my email and catch up on a few things.
The second I get back, I notice that something’s not right.
My coat isn’t hanging from the hook, my computer isn’t at the kitchen table, almost all my toiletries have been taken, and the fridge has been emptied of food. I rush up the ladder to check for my passport, and discover that the loft has been emptied. All of my luggage is gone.
There’s a note from Sido on my bed. “You didn’t feed the owls, so now I punish you. And you were stupid to go to the police.”
A sick part of me loves that she followed my movements through the city. I want to see how far she’ll go. Just then, the front door clicks shut, and I hear it being locked from the outside.
I am in a prison from which there is no escape—there is no phone and the windows are all barred. I spend the rest of that day shouting for help. The apartment is perched on top of the building, so none of the tenants below hear me. Eventually, I go hoarse, and my plea turns to a low, raspy whisper.
The second day, I come up with a different plan. I break one of the large barred windows and yell as loudly as I can to the street below. This time my voice is carried up into the sky as soon as it leaves my mouth. I am quite alone with the shattered glass and the cool Parisian wind surging through the sharp, jagged hole.
By the third day, I realize that Sido has no intention of releasing me. I wash my clothes in the sink and lay them out to dry. Even though it’s midday, I go to sleep. There’s nothing else to do. Except eat.
Sido leaves me delicious meals by the front door every day. Mostly it’s fattening food such as large, undercooked pieces of red meat, baguettes and Camembert, and chocolate croissants from the bakery. She also leaves me several bottles of wine, which I always polish off effortlessly. I gain weight.
The days blend together as I lose track of time. It’s always the same. I wake in the morning and walk around the apartment for hours until I’m exhausted and the room starts spinning. The rest of the day is spent reading out loud—books by Collette, Victor Hugo, and Albert Camus. They’re all in French, and I don’t understand a word, but I read them phonetically to pass the time. The sound of my voice struggling with French pronunciation is comforting, and quells my growing desire to talk to myself.
As soon as the sun sets, I go to sleep. The owls staring at me through the skylight are the only creatures keeping me company.
I’ve grown accustomed to their voracious gaze and their still, patient presence.
Sido and I don’t cross paths, and I never hear her leave my meals. I realize that she must have a way of monitoring me, because she leaves food only while I’m asleep. I turn the apartment upside down and find two hidden cameras, one in the kitchen and one in the loft.
Those cameras are my only way of communicating with her. I do my best with the français-anglais dictionary, and write single stark words on pieces of paper that I hold up to the camera for hours on end. Arrêter. Aider. Libérer. S’il vous plaît. Finally, I write, “Voulez-vous coucher avec moi?” and it works.
One evening I wake after a long nap to find Sido in the kitchen. She’s sitting at the table, which is set with a large meal. I take a seat opposite her without pr
otesting. She’s got a handgun, and this time it’s real.
Sido raises her glass in a toast. “Santé,” she says, looking deeply into my eyes. I look back into her insane gaze and am shocked that I still find her so incredibly attractive.
“Why did you go to zee police?” Sido asks in gentle tones.
“You should not have done zat,” she admonishes me tenderly.
She takes a sip of wine, while keeping the handgun pointed at me. “Zere’s no need to be afraid. If you’re not enjoying zis, zen we go our separate ways. It’s simple.”
We eat in silence. She unhurriedly nibbles at her meal, while I devour mine. It’s three days since she brought food, and I’m starving.
“So?” she asks, after I’m finished eating.
“So?” I look at the gun.
“Would you like dessert?” Sido reaches over and squeezes my arm with the hand that’s not holding the gun.
“Like what?”
“Like me,” she suggests seductively.
I feel shaky. I don’t need to have sex with Sido, I need to escape from her. At the same time, I’d be a liar if I didn’t admit that the idea of fucking her at gunpoint arouses me.
“Is zat a yes, or am I going to have to shoot you?” Sido aims the gun at my head.
“It’s a yes.”
Sido gestures for me to stand and tells me to go to the bathroom to get my electric toothbrush. She also directs me to bring a bottle of wine and the wine glass beside it. With my hands full, I can’t defend myself. I do as she bids and climb slowly up into the loft. Sido follows behind.
“Pour us some wine,” she instructs once we’re up there. She presses the barrel of the gun to my heart, and extends the glass she brought with her.
I fill her glass, then my own, and sit on the edge of the bed. She holds me at gunpoint while I drink.
“Take your clothes off, lie on zee bed, and open your legs,” Sido commands.
I do as she says. She kneels between my legs. Not for one second does she take the gun off me.
“Follow all my orders or I’ll shoot you,” she warns. “Understand?”
