by J. D. Chase
‘I studied the subs at the club—that’s how I first knew Helene. I wanted her to mentor me but Paul wouldn’t have it. It would bring shame on him, he said. So I tried to copy them. But it just didn’t happen for me. He tried to bribe me, saying that he’d present me with my collar if I achieved it. But whether I was finally getting wise or just getting fed up with trying to play a game where the goalposts wouldn’t keep still, I don’t know. The idea of being collared was not a motivator for me.’
‘I’m not surprised,’ I say, sourly. I’m trying not to pre-empt her story but I’m guessing that she tried to walk away and just like when she didn’t want to move in permanently, he threw his toys out of the pram.
‘I decided to go to university. I think that signalled my subconscious decision that I’d had enough. He panicked and tried to persuade me not to go. I had a good job, he said and it was true. I was very well paid for my age but there was no progression for me in that role. I was getting bored. Work was too easy. I need a challenge. I told him that and he decided to use it to his advantage by upping the ante in the D/s stakes.
‘We made a deal. I’d go to a local uni so that I could still live with him and he’d support me—mentally not financially—if I agreed to take our relationship to the next level. He said he’d done all he could. If I wanted a challenge, I should quit work and spend the summer working on honing my submissive skills. So I did. He was amazing for a while. He surprised me with a holiday in the Maldives. He would come home and present me with gifts and, worth its weight in gold, his smile of approval. He would walk through the door and call my name. I’d run to him and he’d pick me up and whirl me in the air before carrying me up to the bedroom. I only weighed eight stone then!’
There’s no smile on her face even though her words say they were happy times.
‘I made progress with my conditioning. We were living the lifestyle 24/7. I cooked, cleaned and attended to his every whim . . . and he rewarded me by showering me with praise, smiles and gifts. I still couldn’t submit to him fully and achieve subspace. I tried so hard. But I realised later that I was paying it lip service. I didn’t fully respect him. I didn’t fully trust him. So I couldn’t fully submit. But like I say, I hadn’t a clue about BDSM. Not really. Only what I’d witnessed, and my only real guidance came from him.
‘Of course, it was only later that I realised it didn’t matter who was trying to dom me . . . I’m not a submissive. Never have been, never will be. Once I realised that, it was so liberating.’
She laughs as she speaks. But it’s a harsh, unpleasant sound. She blames herself for a lot of what happened, I can tell.
‘And in between ‘then’ and ‘later’?’ I ask, not wanting to miss a thing.
Her face clouds over. ‘Ah. That’s when he almost killed me.’
Sadly, I know she’s not exaggerating.
‘Once I started uni and he wasn’t the centre of my universe any more in that I wasn’t there twenty four, seven to cook and clean, his moodiness returned. I was doing a course with a primarily male cohort and male teaching staff and some of my independence had returned.’
‘Psychology?’ I ask in surprise. I’d have thought it would be a more even split.
‘No, economics. He also didn’t like that I was doing a heavyweight, serious subject . . . one that could be seen by some, including Paul, as being of higher status than an engineering degree. It was a double slap in the face for him, I guess. He didn’t take out his frustration in the same way that he had before. He channelled it into our sex life. He pushed me mentally and physically. I didn’t know about limits or safe words—well, I guess I knew I had limits . . . who doesn’t? But there’d been no discussion of hard and soft limits. No agreement made. No safe word agreed.’
My stomach churns. I think I can see where this is headed.
‘It got so bad that it felt like punishment. I guess it was. Punishment, frustration and fear. One night I snapped. It doesn’t matter why—use your imagination, I’m sure it can come up with something suitably nasty. I lay there until he was sleeping. I was so bruised and sore that I couldn’t sleep. I guess I had an epiphany of sorts. I knew I had to get out before it got worse. And I knew it would get worse if I stayed.
‘At some time during the night, I went to the toilet. Passing urine hurt like a bitch and maybe I cried out or maybe he realised I wasn’t next to him, I don’t know. All I know is that I heard him thundering down the stairs, bellowing my name. I couldn’t face him in that mood. I was too exhausted and too weak. I locked the bathroom door and waited until he found me. Rather than talking to me rationally—I’d planned to say I was vomiting or something to keep him at bay—once he found the door was locked, he kicked it in. He was furious.’
‘Because you’d gone to the toilet? That’s . . . ’ I didn’t mean to interject. I don’t want to stop the flow but I can’t get my head around it. What a fucking nut job.
‘He thought I’d left him,’ she shrugs, as though that explained his behaviour as completely normal. ‘He’d got himself so worked up by the time he realised I was still there that he had to unleash it somehow. He grabbed me and slammed me into the wall. I felt my ribs pop. He was shouting that I needn’t ever think about leaving him, that he’d keep me there no matter what it took. He threw something or other and the mirror smashed, sending glass everywhere. I heard him shout and I thought he’d got glass in his eyes. I ran, not feeling the shards of glass cutting into my feet. I was too terrified.
‘I got as far as the hallway before he caught me. He was livid. He’d started to renovate the spindles on the banister rail but got bored within five minutes. He kept the tool bag there, insisting that he would finish the job soon but, a fortnight later, he hadn’t bothered. He grabbed a cordless drill and decided in his madness that he could screw my foot to the floor to prevent me leaving.’
My stomach lurches as images flash inside my head. I’m no faint heart—I’d witnessed and heard of some fucked-up methods of torture in my time in the Corps but this? She’d be, what—nineteen? And he’d be my age . . . that’s some fucked-up shit.
‘He didn’t screw my foot to the floor,’ she says, hurriedly. I think she’s read my expression of horror.
‘Oh thank fuck!’ My stomach does one final roll.
‘No, I think my hysterical scream got through to him when he drilled through my foot. Cut through his madness and made him see what he was doing.’
I push back the vision that’s trying to form in my mind. I don’t want to see it. ‘Did he let you leave then, once the red mist had cleared?’
‘No. He carried me down into the cellar that I hadn’t known existed. He’d prepared for the eventuality of me wanting to leave. He cuffed me and attached the cuffs to a chain that ran down the wall. Then he came back and I thought he’d seen sense. He’d fetched a tea towel that he tore into strips and used to bind my foot to stop the bleeding. Then he left me. For over twenty four hours, he didn’t come near.’
I stare at her as her words make their way inside my brain. I want to stop them, as if not hearing it would prevent it being true. She watches me, presumably for my reaction.
‘I don’t want to recount it all. I’m sure you get the idea but that cellar was my home for almost twelve months. He was hell bent on preventing me from leaving and forcing me to submit. I’m sure your imagination can conjure up something suitable. I became convinced he was quite mad. Clinically insane. Especially when he would come down and speak to me as though we were chatting over a beer in the pub. Other times, he would stumble down the stairs, pissed as a fart, and taunt me. The rest of the time I was either ignored or tortured. Eventually, I didn’t know which was worse.
‘Ignorance when you’re in a pitch black cellar, chained against a wall, can be more difficult to bear than the pain and humiliation of the torture. Chained like an animal—sometimes with your hands over your head, sometimes with only your toes touching the floor, sometimes by your neck and occasionally, and b
lessedly, by your ankles. That was only when my wrists were chafed so badly by the cuffs that I bled. I told myself to submit to him, to try to achieve it and if I couldn’t, to fake it, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I honestly didn’t believe that it would make a difference. It certainly wouldn’t have ended my nightmare. And not giving in became the one thing that kept me going. He would not defeat me. I would not submit. One day, the nightmare would end.’
‘Never give up hope. Sometimes hope is all you have,’ I whisper, suddenly understanding her mantra. It’s not New Age counsellor shit . . . it’s real life survivor speak.
She smiles at me and there’s such warmth in that smile. It’s like praise from her for understanding the significance of those words. Her hand goes to her neck and grips The Kid’s gift.
‘Hope has power. Hope is power. It’s what prevented me from allowing my body to sag and the neck brace to crush my windpipe. I was sorely tempted some days. I don’t think he realised I could have killed myself—that’s the last thing he wanted. Some days, hope fuelled my defiance and probably earned me more beatings than I would otherwise have had. It was easy to fuel the hate in the early days. Eventually, I stopped hating him. What was the point? I became indifferent. I didn’t even fear him. I just accepted his visits and his punishment as I accepted his neglect and ignorance.’
‘How did it end?’
‘He was drinking more and more. I hadn’t known but he’d quit his job because he refused to go away on business . . . how could he fly off to Indonesia or Pakistan or anywhere else for a week or a fortnight? I’d be dead when he returned. It was bad enough when he didn’t come down for forty eight hours . . . mind you, at least no food or drink meant less waste products.’
I hadn’t been going to ask. I’d realised the implications of being kept chained up. Her eyes probe mine. I get the feeling she’s wondering whether she can shock me . . . or whether she should try at all.
‘He kept a hose pipe and would hose me down before he’d come anywhere near me. As he got pissed more often and more severely, he would sometimes hose me off and then beat me for shitting myself and stinking like a sewer. He’d bring a bucket of warm soapy water down—I think it had disinfectant in there too and he’d tip it over my head before hosing me off. At first, it was every day. It got less and less. It burned my eyes so badly . . . I used to hate it—being clean meant more pain—not just from my eyes but it meant that he was horny.
‘In the end though, he didn’t even bother to clean me up half the time. He’d flog me then fuck me with shit down my legs, my pubic hair matted with his come . . . I don’t think he cared. When he was sober, he’d be ashamed of fucking such a filthy, dirty whore and he’d lash out with the back of his hand. Once, when I turned my head away as his hand came towards me so that it lessened the blow, he punched me squarely in the face to teach me not to try to evade my punishments. That’s why my nose is so squat.’
I keep my face impassive. For some reason, she’s provoking me. Does she want to shock me? Does she want me to judge and condemn her? Does she want me to recoil in disgust? I just don’t know. I don’t plan on doing any of those things but I still want her to stop her attempt.
‘How did it end?’
I see her eyebrow twitch. She’s registered that I’ve repeated my question. She looks out of the windscreen and into the distance before she speaks again.
‘Like I say, he was drinking more and more. I suppose it was only a matter of time before that took its toll. It would occur to me that if he fell and hit his head or choked on his own vomit, I’d be stuck down there for God knows how long. He was practically a hermit. Who would know? He’d told me how he was using my phone to text my parents, making lame excuses for not visiting and giving them the impression that I was too busy for them. Doing it all in my name, obviously.
‘He told them we were going away on a cruise for three months when it became too much of a bother for him. He lorded it over them how much it was costing and how he bet they wished they could afford the lifestyle I had. They’d turned up at his house a couple of times but he’d hidden and avoided them. I think they were suspicious. I know they were hurt. They’d seen my car so they knew I was still living there so they left me to it, coming to terms with the fact that their daughter was a snobby bitch who thought herself too good for them.’
I hear the malice in her voice. I’d bet that those were the things that were hardest for her to bear—even now. Harder than the brutal physical and cruel mental torture she’d endured. No wonder she’s such a fucking control freak.
‘One night he was particularly pissed and, when he chained me back up, he left the stool he’d been sitting on when he verbally abused me—he was too hammered to get a hard-on so he’d just come down to give me some bread and water and to piss on my legs . . . that was his latest humiliation tactic. He thought it was so funny that he’d be laughing so hard, most of stream of piss missed me. I didn’t realise at first. I was too weak. I barely existed.
‘But then the fog cleared and the stool was right there, like the Holy Grail. I thought that it was too good to be true. I was secured by my wrists above my head and I knew he’d begun to leave the key in them after he’d mislaid it one day. My muscles burned—I was on my tip toes—but I managed to hook my toes under the rung on the side of the stool. I tried to pull it towards me but I couldn’t even pull a little wooden stool.
‘I psyched myself up and tried again. That little word “hope” was suddenly huge and I wasn’t going to waste it. I think I cried out loud when it fell over. I thought that was it but I managed to get my big toe under the ledge of the seat and slowly nudge it closer, bit by bit. I thought my shoulders were going to dislocate again. He’d put one back in several times—the perks of being abused by a rugby player.
‘I managed to upright it but it took what felt like hours. I stood on it and rushed, trying to open the cuffs but my fingers were numb. I couldn’t feel a thing. Hope gave me patience. Standing on the stool meant that the weight was taken by my legs, weak as they were but I could flex my hands and roll my shoulders to get some feeling and mobility back.
‘I’ll never forget the sound of that click. That tiny sound was huge to me. It meant freedom. I walked around the cellar until my wasted muscles limbered up to whatever pathetic level they could manage and then I took the stairs. Or tried to. I fell down them and thought I heard a bump from above. I was so terrified he’d heard me that I dashed back, moved the stool and put my hands back in the cuffs, without fastening them. Just enough of an illusion that if he’d walked down the stairs to check, all looked in order unless he came too close.
‘I waited for what felt like hours before trying again. I crawled up the stairs on my hands and knees and blissfully, he’d not closed the door at the top. It was ajar and I managed to slide through the gap without moving it. I think I weighed about six stone then. As drinking took priority, he’d often forget to feed me. Some days the only water I got was when he hosed me down. I’d gulp at it greedily as he sprayed my face.
‘I could hear him snoring. I crept to the front door but it was locked and the key wasn’t there. I daren’t walk past him to get to the back door. I remembered that the utility room had a door. It had been so long since I’d been up here, I almost forgot. It was locked. No key. I could have cried until I noticed the pet flap that the previous owners had installed. It was for a medium sized dog but it had been blocked off with a metal plate that slid down two runners. My fingers fumbled with it but partly because of their weakness and partly because it hadn’t been moved for years, I couldn’t move it. I needed to lift it up about a foot to access the flap behind.
‘I saw a screwdriver on the window sill and put the tip against the ridge at the top of the panel and hit the handle with the palm of my hand. It nudged it up slightly but it made, at least to my ears, quite a noise. I’d made a gap of about an inch and I could see the darkness outside through the transparent dog flap. I was elated. If he�
�d heard and come looking for me, he’d probably check the cellar first. There was no way I was going back there.
‘I put all of my fingers in the gap and tugged upwards. Little by little, it inched up. Because of my size, I was able to scramble through when the gap was only about six inches. I was free. And there was no way he was going to catch me.’
‘Where did you go?’ I assume she was naked and covered in excrement. She hadn’t said anything about grabbing her car keys or clothes.
‘I tried to run but my legs wouldn’t coordinate and I fell flat on my face so I walked to the nearest neighbour. They were out. I could have screamed in frustration. I contemplated hiding in their garden until they returned but I was too worried he’d find me. I started walking down the lane. I don’t know what time it was but it was dark and it was cold. It was very quiet so I think it was the early hours but at the time, I don’t remember thinking about it. I was so tired it was all I could do to put one foot in front of the other.
‘A car approached, I got out of its way and waved my hands frantically but it didn’t stop. A naked woman, clearly in trouble and the fucker didn’t stop. My legs struggled to keep moving. It didn’t help that it was an unsurfaced lane. I was walking in the bumpy rut so even shuffling along was difficult. I stumbled around, tripping and falling, my arms and legs burning from the effort of using my wasted muscles and eventually fell and couldn’t get back up.
‘I heard another car approaching and prayed it wasn’t the same one, or if it was, they’d reconsidered and were willing to take pity on the mad woman. I crawled out into the road and, as it slammed on the brakes, I suddenly realised that it could be his car: the evil one. Fear and panic coursed through my veins when I heard the door open. I couldn’t see anything; the headlights were at my eye level and they blinded me. I’d only had darkness or dim lighting for so long that any light was difficult to take.
