Comfort Food

by Kitty Thomas

  Comfort Food

  Kitty Thomas

  Kindle Edition

  Copyright © 2010 Kitty Thomas

  All rights reserved.

  Kindle Edition License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Contact: burlesquepress@gmail.com

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you to the people who supported and helped bring Comfort Food into existence

  K: for offering critique, feedback, and copyedits, and also for taking fifteen pictures of homemade chicken noodle soup (which she made) for my cover art. We couldn't seem to find soup at the right angle for the cover.

  M, C, and SEP: for beta reading.

  C and J for their formatting help.

  Disclaimer

  This is not a story about consensual BDSM. This is a story about “actual” slavery. If reading an erotic story without safewords makes you uncomfortable, this is not the book for you. This is a work of fiction, and the author does not endorse or condone any behavior done to another human being without their consent.

  To silence.

  Not always the enemy of communication.

  One

  The first day of my captivity was like being born . . . or dying. They're both kind of the same thing with the long tunnel and the bright light at the end. Maybe it wasn't like either, actually. Maybe I'm remembering it wrong because for me that day all there was, was darkness.

  I was blindfolded, sitting in a hard metal chair, with each of my legs bound to a chair leg and my arms tied up behind me. The sharpest bit of sensory input I had was the silence. It was a suffocating blanket from which there was no escape. Unless I started talking just to hear my own voice, a desperation I refused to display in the first five minutes of consciousness.

  I remember thinking this was how spy movies often started, with sensory deprivation: the first step to get the prisoner to spill his secrets. I had no secrets. I was an open book, and maybe that was the problem. I was a minor celebrity on the public-speaking circuit, self-assured, articulate. The poster-girl for everything others wished they could become. Not a threat to anyone really.

  I'd written a few books and had started to grow a following of loyal devotees. Someone would notice I was missing, at least by the time my next speaking engagement rolled around in a couple of weeks.

  The day had started at one such engagement. A very nice luncheon, in a very nice restaurant in downtown Atlanta had been booked for the event. I usually started and ended my book tours in Atlanta because it was close to my home in the suburbs.

  The audience was mostly comprised of women, my primary demographic, though I'd never set out to become some voice of women. There was a smattering of men, but I wasn't paying much attention.

  Women go through their lives a bit differently than men. We're always cautious. It's not that we live in abject terror twenty-four hours a day thinking some random man is going to come along and rape or kill us. Only the most neurotic of us think that way.

  Still, you never know what kind of wacko out there has become fixated on you. And despite all the empowering speeches and the women's movement, in the grand scheme . . . women are prey.

  This was the place I was at, the almost complete denial it had happened to me. Me, who is always so careful. Locks her doors, doesn't walk or jog with ear buds in her ears, doesn't take candy from strangers in vans. You know the drill.

  I was listening to the silence and wondering how the hell this could be happening. Other things were running through my mind as well. Things that had me hoping maybe I did have some government secret and once I shared it, I could go on my merry way.

  Rape. Death. Dismemberment. Maybe in that order, maybe not. Though that order would be preferable to Dismemberment. Rape. Death. Or Rape. Dismemberment. Death. You always want your dismemberment to happen after the death.

  Death first would be the absolute best-case scenario. I'd seen enough woman-in-peril movies, and I was no MacGyver. I didn't really have any kind of ballpoint pens on me that I could somehow get out of a pocket and turn into a ballistic missile.

  My mistake was a stupid one. I'd left my drink unattended. Men never have to worry about this shit. I guess because statistically speaking there are fewer female psychos stalking men than the opposite, and most confrontations between men are pretty straightforward.

  Like all women raised in the current climate of fear and loathing of men, I was taught never to leave my drink unattended. All women know this. We do. Even if we aren't explicitly told, it seems to come with the packaging and wiring of being female. Just common sense in the age of the date rape drug. Expecting even the most sensitive male to truly understand any of this is like expecting a wolf to understand the finer points of being a rabbit.

  Still. We seem to think there are exceptions. Like my luncheon.

  There are no exceptions. If there were, I wouldn't be sitting tied to a chair listening to the questionably comforting sound of my breath going in and out.

  I couldn't stop thinking about how my parents were going to react to all this. My sister, Katie, had died several years ago in an accident. She was deaf and hadn't heard the car barreling around the curve. The driver wasn't used to ice on the road. No one in the south is. My parents hadn't spoken about her in years because they couldn't deal with it. I couldn't imagine how they'd cope with my disappearance and wondered if they'd curse God for doing this shit to them twice in a row.

  The door creaked open then, exactly like doors do in scary movies. At least now I knew what kind of story I was in, no sense fooling myself about it. The sound of his boots echoed eerily loud on the concrete floor as he approached me. He stopped maybe a couple of feet away as the silence stretched on for a small eternity. Finally, I felt compelled to speak.

  “Why are you doing this?” My voice shook when I said it, and I hated that. I sounded weak. I'd never sounded weak before in my life.

  It was such a cliché question. If these were to be my last words, they felt like stupid and unimportant ones, but I had to know. Why had he taken me? Did I send out a vibe or was he just obsessed? Was there something about me that screamed Victim?

  I'd always tried to give the impression that I wasn't easy prey. I'd been fooling myself. It had been ridiculously easy for him to take me.

  Then again, maybe I was being all wrong-headed in assuming right from the start my captor was male. Theoretically, it could just as easily have been a woman.

  Somebody jealous of my professional success. Someone who hated me for some imaginary reason, like that her husband thought I was pretty or something. As if I can control who thinks I'm pretty. There was always that one-in-a-million reason for some woman to go apeshit psycho on you.

  And I don't hate men. There is a very small percentage of men who choose to perpetrate violence against women, despite the ease with which they can do it. Most women don't hate men. Those that do, though, probably do so not because most men are violent towards women, but that they could be, if they wanted to. This knowledge sets up a kind of helpless rage in some women. One I'd never succumbed to until today.

  He still hadn't spoken. I was carrying on this internal monol
ogue in my head because I was afraid I might say something that would get me killed. Or worse. It was naive, but I wanted to believe I could somehow alter the course of events here by saying the right thing. My words, the thing that had made me so compelling to people, were more useless than I wanted to admit. My only weapon had the efficacy of a squirt gun.

  I could feel the heavy lump forming in my throat as he stepped closer. I couldn't see him because of the blindfold still covering my eyes, but I knew he was observing me, probably taking me in with amusement. It pissed me off that he held my life in his hands, and yet he might be amused with me.

  I continued to wait for him to answer the why are you doing this question, but the answer didn't come.

  There is a standard victim/victimizer protocol, an etiquette if you will. Why are you doing this? is the introductory question, sometimes followed by screaming or crying. I wasn't screaming or crying. I wanted to conserve my energy for my one possible moment of escape. Eventually he'd do something stupid. He had to.

  After the victim's opening line, the victimizer usually says something so terrifying the victim wishes they'd never opened their mouth. This man, however, seemed to be capitalizing on the terror of uncertainty.

  After all, if he spoke to me perhaps there was something human in there, something I could reason with, some tiny, frail hope I could bargain somehow. A large, cool hand rested softly against my cheek.

  There was no violence or threat in the way he touched me. It was my cheek, so it certainly wasn't an overly sexual touch. Still, it was a threat to me. It said, I have no problems breaching your personal bubble or touching you at any time.

  His hand remained pressed solidly against the side of my face like that for a couple of minutes at least as my heart continued to hammer in my chest. That huge, strong hand. He could easily beat me to death with it, or he could be gentle. Although at this point, even gentle was an act of violence. I didn't know which I preferred.

  With violence I could have the appropriate socially-approved victim response. I knew from experience anything else could produce a very different physical reaction.

  ***

  At seventeen I'd gotten involved with my first real boyfriend. He was cute and had that edge of danger that girls of that age are so fond of. He gave off an air of something wild and frightening, and I'd been along for the ride

  We'd fooled around a lot. My strict religious upbringing didn't allow for more without fear of God's wrath coming down on me, and orgasms weren't worth an eternity in hell. Though in hindsight, the idea that some deity could be bothered to punish any one individual for what they chose to do with their clothes off, seems stupid at best.

  He'd pressed me down on the bed, my legs hanging over the edge. We were in his room; his parents were downstairs. The sounds of the nightly news drifted up to the bedroom. I was lying there, my pants forgotten on the floor, though I was still wearing a shirt.

  He wanted to go down on me. It was more than I was ready for at the time, and I was paranoid about getting an STD, the STD. Yes, this was how empty my education in sexually transmitted diseases had been in the abstinence climate. Still, I'd said no. I'd meant no.

  He'd ignored me, spreading my legs wide for his perusal, gripping my wrists tightly against my thighs as he held me down. “You'll like this, I promise,” he said.

  I struggled, but he was too strong, and I didn't have the proper leverage to shove him away. He buried his head between my legs, slowly laving the bundle of nerves there. I wanted to cry out, but I couldn't face the shame of his parents running up there and finding me half naked on his bed.

  Somehow it was worse knowing I could have stopped him. It was one violation or another. His tongue on my clit, or his parents knowing what we'd been up to, thinking I was a slut.

  “Please, please don't.” I'd begged him, and yet he hadn't stopped.

  It was incredible how little time it took for my resolve to melt, for “Please, no” to turn into “Oh God, don't stop.”

  When he was finished, I just laid there, my legs shaking from the force of my orgasm. They'd turned to jelly, and I felt weak, drugged in the post-orgasmic afterglow euphoria. The orgasm I couldn't possibly go to hell for. He looked up into my eyes, a self-satisfied smirk on his face and said teasingly, “I told you you'd like it. Now, what do you say?”

  “Thank you.” It was our little inside joke. It had never previously been applied to anything sexual. The words had slipped out of my mouth before I could stop them, and on some level they were true.

  He and I never talked about the incident after that, and he never directly forced me again. He never had to. I didn't give him the opportunity because it was too confusing. In his mind, I'm sure he believed he hadn't done anything wrong, since he'd successfully changed my mind by turning my body against me. In the end I'd liked it. The entire sordid event from start to finish.

  The juxtaposition of fear and helplessness, set up next to complete pleasure and eventual surrender. I'd masturbated for months afterward to the memory of the event. It was several years before I mentioned it to a friend.

  She'd insisted it was no different than rape. I suppose she was right, but I'd never seen it that way. I'd for some reason never had the normal emotional response. I'd gotten off on it. Something was different in the way I was wired and that, perhaps, was the only thing that had saved me. Over time I developed an intense shame about it, not because I'd been violated, but because I wasn't properly traumatized by what had been done to me. Because I sometimes still touched myself thinking about it.

  ***

  I thought he'd left me alone again, but then I heard another metal chair scrape against the floor. His heavy weight fell into it, and he placed something on a table. My breath hitched.

  Moments later, a spoon was prodding at my lips. I opened my mouth, and warm chicken noodle soup slid down my throat. Comfort food. Oh, sweet irony. I wasn't worried he'd drug me. Why would he?

  Drugging had been a convenience of transport. He had me where he wanted me, no doubt in some eerie sound-proofed basement cell. I heard him crumble crackers into the soup before feeding me another bite. I hadn't realized how hungry I was. Intense fear tends to shut down the hunger response.

  After the second bite, his hand gently fondled one of my breasts through my clothing. I stiffened and flinched away. He didn't yell or hit me. He simply placed the bowl back on the table and got up. Then his footsteps started to recede in the direction they'd come from.

  So this was the game he was playing? Either I would accept his touch, or he'd starve me to death? I hear it's a horrible way to die, second only to drowning or suffocation. Those things could still be on the menu. It was early yet.

  “Please . . . wait.” I hated myself for saying it. Hated myself enough that had my hands been free and a razor been nearby, I might have pressed the blade into my skin and bled out right there in front of him.

  I was already bargaining, doing the appease the captor and maybe he won't hurt you too bad thing. In turn, he would show a small kindness here or there to gain my total dependence on him And voila . . . instant Stockholm Syndrome.

  His footsteps stopped, and I heard him turn, still as silent as ever. After a moment, he returned and sat back down in the chair.

  I was trying not to hyperventilate. I wasn't sure what I'd have to allow him to do to let me breathe into a paper bag. This was how our agreement began. He never said a word, never made any kind of verbal threat. He didn't need to.

  It was a tacit agreement. I would give him what he wanted, or else. Right now the bargaining chip on the table was food. I was still arguing with myself over that one, berating myself for not being stronger, not holding out longer. He hadn't tried to fuck me yet. Having my breast fondled was a small price to pay to eat.

  The spoon prodded at my mouth again and I opened up for the warm liquid. He'd gotten the good crackers. The oval-shaped Townhouse kind. The kind I liked. I had a moment of almost hysteria wondering how long
he'd watched me, how much he knew about me. Did he know this particular food somehow idiotically made me feel safe?

  I tensed as I heard the spoon clank into the bowl again. I knew what that meant. Every cell in my body felt poised, on edge, trying to inch away as his hand closed over my breast once again. He hadn't moved to take any of my clothes off. He seemed to want me to agree to every step of my desecration.

  I didn't want to respond, but his thumb caressed over my nipple through the layers of clothing so gently, so enticingly that I found myself arching toward him. I wanted to jerk away, but if I did he'd leave and take the food with him. This time my begging might not bring him back.

  This pattern repeated itself over and over. First a bite, then a fondle, until the soup was gone. He wanted to make sure the conditions were clear to me, that nothing would be given to me freely. I would pay for it all.

  I kept rewinding the day in my head. What if I'd done something differently? What if I'd never left the table? Had it been necessary to reapply my lipstick that close to the end of the day? Had a tube of waxy color called Sassy Vixen really been the catalyst to take my freedom from me?

  I knew it was crazy to think that way. He would have gotten me sooner or later if he was determined enough. That moment in time wasn't the definitive moment. I would have had another unguarded moment later and would have paid for it then.

  We'd gotten through the bowl of soup and an awkwardness descended. It was as if he'd only planned this far and had no idea what his next step should be. Maybe he was waiting for me.