Into the Dark Wilds

by Lizbeth Dusseau

  Then, he’d punish me for my “impatient longing that couldn’t wait”—those were his words. I’d present myself humbly before him, usually on hands and knees. After being paddled or flogged or cut with a cane, aroused again, I’d be forced to wait while he used whatever portal suited his fancy. His long cock probed any place deeply, until I gagged, or cried in pain when the erection hit bottom. Then, before he left me, I’d masturbate while he watched, his eyes peering down at me from out of the darkness like some silent specter. My anonymous dominant drove through his fantasy with such reckless force, such energy, it never failed to sweep me inside it. His darkness stayed with me, keeping my loins hot for hours, sometimes for several days after. A trick I used to get me through the boring or the simply painful ones was to think of him and the next time we’d be together. There wasn’t anybody to climb into my mind and tell me I couldn’t think about whatever I wanted.

  To fail to please a dominant client was disastrous. As far as I know that happened only once, once that was reported to Sergei. Thoroughly punished for that failure, I was smart enough not to get into that kind of trouble again.

  I have to be honest, that failure was more like a mutiny, and an unnecessary one when I remember how it began. For days, I’d been at the mercy of seven men, who took delight in torturing me as often as Sergei would let them have me. As far as the agreement for only two nights a week and Saturday, Sergei stretched the limits, ordering me to work the bordello seven nights straight. By the seventh, I was exhausted in spirit, mind and body. I couldn’t keep one mount straight from the last, and the fatigue showed in my attitude. Whores were punished for a bad attitude, so it was a gamble to act snotty with my first date on Saturday. I thought the man might understand, he’d been screwing me for weeks, giving me the impression that he liked me as a person almost as much as he liked the sex. But then, he didn’t like me fucking with his personal fantasy, and I really screwed this one beyond repair. When I was supposed to be humble, I fought him, thinking he’d like a battle as long as he won. When I was suppose to come on to him like a tiger, I remained aloof, thinking that he’d understand that I couldn’t always perform on demand. And when he questioned me about my unexpected behavior, I made the mistake of confessing my exhaustion. He couldn’t care less if I was on my death bed, he’d hired me to perform.

  We went through a bad ending to the session, though when I left him, I thought I’d repaired the damage sufficiently—even offering a free hour or two on the side the following week, which seemed to please him. Not hearing any more about the incident, I figured it was all in the past. But I was wrong.

  The night Sergei stormed into the bordello the place was instantly paralyzed with fear. Whores who didn’t even belong to my master were cringing back into corners to get out of his way, all afraid that he was after them. Only once had I seen the man angry, the ugly sight something no one would want to see again. Seeing it repeated, it became especially terrifying knowing his wrath was unleashed on me.

  “Duchet!” I heard his voice rise into the stairwell. He made this entrance early in the evening, knowing that my night’s work hadn’t begun. It took some moments to realize that he was calling me, in particular to pull myself out of Indian’s affectionate arms where we were making love in the whore’s attic hideaway. Barging into that supposedly scared territory for slaves alone, he drug me from the room, my natural and unfortunate response to flail my arms and cry as if he was already beating me. Hauled down the stairs into the master’s quarters, I ended up being thrown to the floor of the salon, only to cower in the corner, as Sergei nailed me to the wall with his scowl, while several other masters and Kiri looked on.

  “Put your slave ass in the corner and don’t move,” he barked. “You won’t be working tonight, bitch, maybe not for weeks.”

  I watched, awestruck as he turned toward a wall of tools tacked in military order, each implement hanging equal distance from the next. Funny what one remembers in moments of abject fright. Pulling a whip from the wall, Sergei chased me into the corner with it, and though it didn’t actually strike my skin, I was sure any second I’d have a welt rising where the end had cut into my flesh. As his eyes bored into me, I saw the darkness of his mien more evident than I’d ever seen it. What had attracted me to him was disturbingly apparent. In full blown power, Sergei was breathtaking, not the man amiably subdued to fit into a world where civility counted for something. He was also dangerous this way. Locked in his gaze I watched him loop the whip in his hand, turn away from me a second to retrieve a second implement from the wall, and then turn back. Moving toward me again a step at a time, I sensed him motioning me silently towards a door. Inching that way, encouraged by his silent stare, I quickly scampered through the opening into a private vestibule.

  One look at the room and I knew I was in the infamous punishment chamber where slaves take “instruction” from their masters. The room was furnished with a rack, nothing more. Thinking that this punishment would be a private act between master and slave, I was aghast to see a number of masters, Kiri and two other women I didn’t recognize standing in the room looking on at the two of us. As I climbed up on the rack, an intuitive guess at Sergei’s wishes, I paused only to hear him confirm my worst fears.

  “Face up, bitch, you’ll watch every stroke.”

  Oh! How he poured his venom on to me, I almost fainted from the surge of energy that met my own alarmed heart. While I first figured he’d have some help securing me to the rack, I discovered that while others watched the confrontation, this was his alone to execute. Quickly jerking each of my limbs to its fullest degree, he bound my ankles and wrists with rope, my spread eagle body vulnerable for the attack to follow. To my utter dismay, my master was able to stretch my limbs apart even more. Installed underneath the struts of the rack were devices to spread the movable bars wider still. The pain of the position became instantly obvious.

  “Don’t you dare close your eyes,” Sergei warned me as he stepped to the end of the rack and glared his poisonous anger into my eyes. Drawing back a cat of a dozen vile strands, the full muscled force of his arm brought the tool down so it connected with my offered flesh.

  The tears were instantaneous, as were my cries. More cuts followed, each one deliberately laid on as my master’s eyes continued to keep my consciousness captive. My body heaved with tears, jerking with each strike of the vicious strands as they lapped about my arms, legs and belly like the sea laps at the shore, irregular and unpredictable. Stepping further away from me, I knew his plan and begged with ever fiber of me praying for mercy. Not swayed by sentiment, he let the leather strands cut deep between my legs, into the tender skin, some to torment just my thighs and belly, others to hit squarely on my cunt. Five or six such cuts, I screamed with each one. Then Sergei was between my legs, with clamps to hold the outer labia, each clamp was attached to a chain. These protective folds were pulled apart, exposing a ripe bud and the warm wet hole.

  Moving away from me again, I shrieked before he even laid on the cat. When it was leveled at my interiors, the pain of it forced me to close my eyes as I tried to withdraw from the horror. If not physically, I took my thoughts, my heart, my desires and my attention and fled to some safer place. By then, Sergei wasn’t as interested in forcing my eyes on his. Content that he’d seared me body and soul, he laid on the last of the cuts to my inner home, and then stopped—even while I waited to scream again.

  My eyes remained closed until I felt his hand grab my hair and jerk down. With eyelids flying open, I found him staring into my eyes. Not one iota of his rage seemed spent. The same nasty scowl and breathtaking power greeted me.

  “You don’t own yourself anymore, slave. You don’t own your body, your sex, this cunt.” His fist grabbed my pubis and jerked it. “You’re my chattel, my property. This is my cunt, these are my breasts.” He held those too with a bruising grasp. “These are my lips, my face.” He slapped my cheek. “This is my hair.” He pulled the locks with another sharp tug. “
I own you. The hours that you are my slave you are mine. You obey every word from my lips, every command I give, every order you’re given. And you give back to me what I demand. I will watch you, you unruly whore. You’d better watch your ass, your tongue, and your cunt if you desire to live. I will chew you up until there is nothing worth left of your body or your soul to save. Don’t tempt me any more than you already have.” He held my face so firmly in his grasp that his fingers were cutting into the skin and I feared he’d crush the bone.

  Turning to the watching crowd, he scowled. “Use her as you like then cage her for the rest of the night. She’ll spend the next two weeks in the stocks.”

  Sergei brusquely exited the room taking with him a whirlwind of smoke that he’d expelled like a fire-breathing dragon. Remaining was just the afterburn, my tears and his reverberating words.

  ***

  When I emerged from the cage that night, Indian rubbed my burning body with oil to soothe the flesh.

  “He is the worst you know,” she said.

  “Worst?”

  “The most chilling master. They say he whipped one slave to her death, but I think that was only a rumor he started himself to keep his slaves in line.”

  “I was just tired,” I gasped with a sigh.

  “In this world you can’t afford any failings. Some days you think you can do anything, you get too cocky and let your guard slip. Never trust a master, never trust a mount, never trust anyone in this house or outside it, not even me.”

  Without Indian saying so, I’d already come to that conclusion.

  Chapter Eight

  How unfortunate it was that every time I wanted to escape my daily activities at the paper, claiming some ailment, I felt compelled to go to work anyway. The deadline looming over me this time, I couldn’t afford to miss. But while other times, I’d managed to buck up and get through the day with little obvious grief, the day after the punishment proved a lot harder. Pulling myself from bed was like trying to tug an angry bear from its den, there was little energy in my bruised body and limbs, and no mirth on my face. I figured when I got inside the doors of the newspaper building, I’d find a way to smile and be polite, but the first copy boy that thwarted me. I snapped. I followed suit the remainder of the day, setting barbs into every man or woman who was unfortunate enough to cross my path.

  Since I ached everywhere that my skin touched clothing, I spent the day wanting to rip my clothes away so I could climb into a steamy bath. My only recourse was to barrel into my work until the project was finished, and escape out the back door early, hoping that my absence wouldn’t be noticed.

  The only thing that didn’t suffer from my previous night at the bordello was the work itself. I’d often worried that whoring and slaving would effect my writing. Punishment might be disastrous. But I was duly impressed when I found the results in that arena ran contrary to my fears. My prose was razor sharp, my wit biting and my observations astute. Even Gatov commented on the improvements I’d made. Though he didn’t give me any direct compliments, my original stories made their way to the front of the paper with more frequency. The one I wrote that day was no exception.

  Unfortunately, the day after my punishment, I wasn’t able to escape the city room until nearly seven o’clock. It seemed that every attempt I made to leave work was met with another small dilemma, most frequently one initiated by Gatov himself. I began to wonder if he somehow understood my predicament and this was just another way to infuriate me. When I finally left, I cried all the way home; and so weary by the time I reached my apartment, I forgot the bath, and Rowena’s journal that I was planning to read, and everything else that I wanted for my night off from the bordello. Falling asleep, I expected to sleep until morning, which is exactly what happened.

  With dawn coming at five a.m. that next day, I was surprised how refreshed I felt at that hour. Awake before I needed to be, I wasted no time thinking about what might happen to me that night as Sergei’s slave, but I picked up the journal instead.

  2/6 - Days are passing so quickly now. Boheme and I have settled into a regular ritual. Sex, writing and passionate discussion of the visions that come from the dark designs of Boheme’s fantasies played out on me. I don’t need the sex that much to instigate the visions anymore. They come to me in dreams, when I bathe, and even in those times when I’m allowed to walk the gracious garden of Boheme’s home, something that for months I only saw from the window above. I wondered, before I had the chance to see it close for myself, if that garden might be the one that regularly appears in my visions. With my first real glimpse at the meandering footpaths and flowers however, I realized that it was not. Still, it gives me a feeling of tranquillity to add to the heady mix of sensations that have become my life.

  4/8 - Boheme continues to publish my writings. I have expounded in detail on the role of sex in the living world. I have chronicled, relying on Boheme’s extensive histories for my facts, the sometimes covert and sometimes obvious ways that human sexuality has been controlled, shut down, reviled, and nearly destroyed by spiritless men with no dicks, no passion, no spirit and a handful of lies they base on “godly” inspiration. (My father was one of those men, though I’ve not yet revealed that fact to either Boheme or my eager readers.) I haven’t found women as guilty of perpetrating these lies as men, though they are guilty of letting the men get away with their crimes against nature.

  I think of God often in the process of producing my shocking diatribes and whimsical poetry on the sexual nature of existence. The God I worship is a flagrant hedonist like myself who could never have created this world unless he, or she, as is likely, didn’t revel in the things of the flesh, in food and drink and the copulation of one body with another.

  I’ve been surprised by the response to my meandering thoughts, both by Boheme and the public that I’ve reached. My master tells me that there are many who write stern lectures, even to the underground papers, denouncing my ideas. But apparently there are more, many women in fact, fanned by the flames of discontent, who suggest their inner fires burn with unspent, unrealized passion that requires its fulfillment. I fantasize about appearing in the bedrooms of countless households where these pent-up women have become liberated, and their vaginas and breasts and the breath from their lips are beginning to speak to the hungry but uninventive erections of their partners. I dream of creating explosions of fire, unions of wildly commingling desire and appetite, where in the end, sweet and intimate peace follows and love pours forth.

  Love, you might ask? Where would love be for a sexual slave? Ah, there has been something taking place so tender and precious that I cry easily thinking of it. This benefit of my odd arrangement with my master has brought us together on levels of understanding I never knew existed. As often as Boheme is cruel to me, continuing to unleash his devilish deeds that leave me bruised and breathless, he is kind. The intimacy shared between us leaves me whole and healed and at peace. If I were to have guessed in my wildest dreams that this outcome of our arrangement would lead to this end, I would have thought myself insane. Of course, at the time of my first days with Boheme, and certainly in all my days before that, I had no clue that there were such pieces to life and my existence missing, unheard of and not yet imagined. My consciousness contains so much now it bubbles over with mirth and darkness, with joy and love, with fear and fulfillment. And what I realize for my lover: he is as bewildered and awestruck as I am, but as wholly grateful that he read that special something in my eyes and purchased me for silver.

  5/27 - My prose has changed over these months, from hard-line, angry lessons about the betrayal of the species by the ignorant, to something much more sweet, to poetry in the form of prose with delightful metaphor and even lyrical verse. There is a jubilant song inside my bones and flesh when I write. I am so sure of my treatise on the verdant sexual nature of human kind that I no longer have to browbeat my readers into understanding the truth I write. I find that I can wrap it in glorious verbiage that explains it
more clearly than raging rhetoric. I’ve been telling little sexual stories to explain myself, and Boheme tells me that there is such a plea for my identity to be exposed that he can hardly contain himself. The editors of the papers insist that he reveal me. (Now it’s not just the underground paper that publishes my work. The stories and lectures have been picked up by the legitimate papers because the public demands it. )

  One editor suggested that it is Boheme himself that writes these things—but he scoffed at them. They know it isn’t true, but they are grasping everywhere for an explanation. I know my love relishes every attempt they make to get at the truth; and I know as well, in the back of his mind, he visualizes that moment when I’ll be revealed. I’ve already seen that moment, or at least the results. I see the picture so clearly at the carnival in mid-July. Being the bawdiest of the pagan rites makes it the perfect occasion to bring Rowena out of hiding. Because of me that carnival will be the most reckless in decades. When the feast has become an institutionalized moment of subdued revelry, this year will return it to the havoc, the utterly beautiful chaos of celebration that will mark a new era. The excitement fills me and the power of it inspires the visions even more.