by Ella Ford
“Bad girls must be punished,” I purr finally, allowing the shoe to fall to the floor and pointing my toes out towards her.
“Yes, Mistress,” she breathes and shifts forwards, beginning our sordid dance of pleasure and pain. And as her painted lips close around my nylon covered toes for the first time, my mind retreats back to that first meeting, all those months ago, even as the wave of unrelenting pleasure sweeps through my body.
An office downtown and a reluctant meeting, a seed planted into the fertile ground of good intention with a single uttered phrase: “I had the dream again last night…”
Session 1
The beginning of my downfall started, I remember quite clearly, on a chilly Tuesday afternoon in late fall. There was nothing to mark this day as being significant in my life, no warning to herald the changes that it would bring. It was, simply, a Tuesday.
I was thirty eight, recently divorced from a man who, I believed, was barely aware of my existence. Twelve years of marriage gone with the signing of a piece of paper; not with a bang, but a whimper, as the saying goes. But my liberation from the monotony of mundanity was not the catalyst that brought about the change in my life. Oh, I took pleasure in my newfound freedom, of course, but mostly in the peace of a Sunday morning or the freedom to take long walks alone. Unlike some of my divorced girlfriends, I never felt compelled to plunge headlong into a frantic quest of sexual experimentation, to fill the gaps caused by long years of physical neglect. I never went looking for what I found - or what found me - on that cold Tuesday afternoon.
Instead, I devoted myself to my work, pushing my thriving therapist practice to new heights. I took on a new partner; we expanded our offices, moving to the richer part of town and attracting more well off clients whose personal problems could cheerfully be described as “first world”. I gained respect in my field, publishing a number of papers in minor scientific journals and spoke at several local conferences. Small success, indeed, but success nonetheless.
Everything, it seemed, was on track. I was happy.
“I had the dream again last night,” said the girl.
I looked up from my notepad and peered at the girl, raising an eyebrow with involuntary surprise. In the four times that I’d seen Kelly Connor, this was the first time that she’d given me even the vaguest hint that there was anything deeper than her shallow, mean girl exterior.
“Which dream, Kelly?” I asked patiently.
“The same dream I always have,” she said. She was resting back on the couch; long, coltish legs stretching out before her, hands folded on her chest. Her eyes were closed and her cascades of blonde curls were gathered around her head. She looked like a sleeping princess, and I suspect she knew it.
“Would you like to tell me about the dream, Kelly?” I spoke, eager not to spook her into silence. You get a kind of sixth sense as a therapist, an ability to spot when something said by a patient is important, and that sixth sense was tingling then. In her sessions so far, Kelly Connor had spoken, at length, about her friends and the boys that orbited her social circle like military satellites, lapsing into long and tedious explanations about why so-and-so didn’t deserve whatever privilege or good fortune Kelly deemed them to have. But she’d never talked about herself, how she felt, beyond the petty jealousy and envy of eighteen year old girls.
“It’s… kinda embarrassing, Dr. Vickers,” she drawled in that long, drawn out way that young women had.
“Please, call me Marie,” I said, hoping to form an attachment of trust with her. “There’s nothing to be embarrassed about, Kelly. Talking about these things is what we’re here for.”
She paused. “I don’t want my parents to find out,” she said quietly.
Kelly’s parents were Ed and Cindy Connor, tech startup millionaires who made their fortune with some unlikely idea that hit the market at the same time as the smartphone revolution. The Connors had sent Kelly to see me in an attempt to counter their daughter’s falling college grades and her generally distracted demeanour. “Give us back our little girl, Dr. Vickers,” Ed Connor had said, peering at the surly, disinterested young woman who lurked at the back of my office and fiddled aimlessly with the assorted toys and ornaments on my bookshelves. I’d assured them that I would do my best.
“Everything that you say in this office is strictly between you and me, Kelly,” I said with a parental tone. I think the girl believed that I sent a detailed breakdown of everything she said to her parents. Could that explain her reluctance to open up?
“Oh god,” she said, lifting her hand to her head, covering her eyes. “It’s so freaking weird Dr…. Marie,” she added.
“Take your time, tell me,” I said. Seeing a patient manifest her private fears through dreams was not uncommon, nor was using a dream as an absolution of guilt. Expressing hopes and desires through something involuntary like that kind of removed responsibility. I had high hopes that we would be able to get somewhere with Kelly’s dream. I had no idea how right this would prove to be, or where we’d get. Would I have continued if I’d known…?
Kelly fell silent for thirty seconds and breathed deeply, as if plucking up the courage to speak.
“Okay,” she finally started. “First thing I want you to know is… I’m no dyke!”
I blinked, but I wasn’t surprised. Could she be living with a suppressed sexuality. I remained silent, letting her speak in her own time.
“So, in the dream I’m alone in a room,” she said with a sigh.
“Tell me about the room, Kelly,” I said.
She thought for a second. “It’s dark, lit by candles. I remember the shadows on the walls kinda dancing around. There’s a bed by the wall. On of them old timey beds, you know…”
“A four poster bed?”
“Yeah, one of those. The other furniture is old fashioned too, dark, expensive looking. The walls are red, with pictures on them. The pictures are…”
She paused. “Go on,” I prompted.
“The pictures have girls on them… doing things.”
“What kind of things?”
“Dirty things,” she whispered, but didn’t elaborate. I glanced down at my tape recorder, double checking that it was working properly. This was a breakthrough moment, I knew it with a bold certainty that felt familiar and welcome.
“What are you doing in the room, Kelly?” I probed.
She shifted on the couch, moving her fingers to her lower lip, tugging at it distractedly.
“I’m naked,” she said quietly. “I’m kneeling on the floor. My head is lowered, my arms are… my arms are behind my back.”
“Tied?”
“No,” she answered quickly. “No, I just have them behind my back because…” Her answer trailed off to nothing. “I’m waiting for something. Someone.”
“How do you feel in the dream?”
She paused. “Terrified, uncertain, self-conscious,” she said.
I made a note on my pad: “Repressed abuse? Rape fantasy?”
Then she continued. “All those things, but something else… Excited.”
I was intrigued, but an attraction to rape was not at all uncommon.
“I’m not alone,” she suddenly whispers, her voice sounding distant and faint.
“Who is with you, Kelly?”
“Someone… a woman. She’s… sitting on the bed in front of me. I…” She fell silent, her face was creased in an expression of distress. I sat forward. Lesbian fantasies were also not uncommon, but lesbian rape fantasies, if this is what it indeed was, were quite rare.
“Who is the woman, Kelly? Do you know her?”
I felt a rush of excitement, as though I was closing in on the prize. I knew that to chase too hard would break her out of this recollection, but the urge to know more about what was happening in her mind was strong.
Kelly shook her head. “I don’t know, I can’t see her, I’m looking down at the floor. At her… at her feet.”
“Take your time, honey.”
“There’s something… I know that she’s older than me, a lot older. I feel… I feel as though I trust her, as though I feel safe with her. I know that she is clothed, I can see her legs… she’s wearing pantyhose, black pantyhose, and high heeled pumps. Her legs are crossed. Her foot is bouncing up and down slowly. I want…”
I waited for a few seconds for her to continue, but she didn’t. Her brow was creased in concentration, there was a light sheen of perspiration on her skin.
“What do you want, Kelly?”
She sighed, a long, slow exhale from the bottom of her lungs. “I want to… touch her. I want to take her shoe off. I want to see her foot. I want to… other things.”
She fell silent again, as if she thought she’d said too much.
My mind was whirling. It was such a specific fantasy, so precise. I found myself picturing the young girl kneeling on the floor, naked, hungry, sliding off the unseen woman’s expensive heel. Too my surprise, I realized that neck and cheeks suddenly hot. Patient’s confessions didn’t usually embarrass me like this.
“What happens next, Kelly?”
Kelly frowned and shook her head. “That’s all. I mean, all I remember anyway. Just that weird longing, that odd feeling of security and…” She opened her eyes and turned to face me. “When I wake up, it’s all that I can think of.”
“How many times have you had this dream?”
She shrugged and lifted her eyes to the ceiling, as though performing some complex mental arithmetic. The her face was gripped by a guilty look of concealed shame. “For as long as I can remember,” she whispered.
I paused and wrote in my notebook, then lifted my head to her and smiled. “Fantasies are not uncommon, Kelly, everyone has them, I have them.”
“I know. But this is an obsession. It’s all I can think about. I’ll sometimes find myself staring at the feet of other women… of my teachers at college, of girls in the mall. Anything to recapture that feeling of the dream. If they’re wearing pantyhose, then I…” I noticed her eyes flick briefly down to my legs, crossed before me, tan pantyhose and black pumps. I felt a sudden wave of self consciousness, as though I was being scrutinized. Kelly’s cheeks flushed a ruddy pink. “Oh god, Doc, am I insane?”
I smiled and gathered my thoughts.
“No, Kelly, you’re not insane. You’re just a young woman with a healthy sex drive who has what we call a fetish.”
“Like… a dirty old pervert?” she said, gaping.
I laughed. “Not quite.” I glanced up at the clock on my wall. Nearly four. “Listen, Kelly, we’re almost done here, but I think this has been a good session. Next time, we’ll explore ways that you can cope with your dream and live with your attraction in a healthy way. Okay?”
She nodded and smiled uncertainly, then stood and stepped out of my office.
I watched her leave, without conscious thought, finding myself following her with my eyes, studying the firm curve of her bottom, wrapped in tight, white shorts; the long length of her tanned legs, the pristine white of her sneakers and the little ankle socks within them. With a sigh, I caught myself and blinked quickly, turning to the window and wondering what on earth had come over me.
After arriving home from work later that day, I slipped out of my crisp office clothes and into a slouchy t-shirt and silky shorts, then poured myself a glass of red wine and curled up on the sofa. This ritual had become my mental refuge, my blissful retreat from the trying challenge of dealing with the problems of other people.
I sat back and closed my eyes briefly as the modest space of my apartment filled with the relaxing tones of classical music. Sinking into the comfortable sofa, I glanced around, then sighed. It wasn’t a huge home, nothing compared to the mini-mansion I’d lived in with my ex-husband, but it was mine and it made me feel safe and secure. I took another sip from my glass. The red wine tasted rich and full bodied, easing my mind with a familiar buzz after only a few tastes. I never could take my alcohol. I was a cheap date, my ex-husband always said.
My thoughts turned to Daniel and the time we’d spent together. Nearly ten years. I’d been barely a woman grown when we met, scarcely much more when we married. It was good at first, exciting yet safe. But as time went by, I couldn’t escape the feeling that something was missing, something wasn’t quite right. As the years went on, I never stopped loving Daniel, but I fell out of love with him. Physical intimacy dried up to nothing, we became tense, argumentative. In the end, we’d decided to call it a day, going our separate ways to find what we both needed. Daniel soon settled with a lovely woman called Lydia, and I… Well, I hadn’t quite found what I was looking for yet. Or, more accurately, I hadn’t quite figured out just exactly what it was I was looking for.
I sighed and glanced down at the pile of case notes on the coffee table before me. On top of the short stack was a sheet of paper headed with a name: “Kelly Connor”. I hadn’t thought about the girl since her session ended earlier that afternoon, but I picked up the note paper then and skimmed through my neat, precise handwriting, recalling the details of her nervous confession.
I was convinced that the dream that Kelly had described was the root of her distractions, the reason for her falling grades. Confusion about sexual attraction can be so unbalancing, especially the obsessive nature of fetishes. Luckily, I was convinced that I could help her to face her attraction, to overcome the debilitating nature of her desire and incorporate it into a healthy, normal sex drive. But how?
I sat back and lay the sheet of paper beside me, then closed my eyes and tried to imagine myself in Kelly’s position, tried to put myself into her head, to fathom a way out of the prison of obsession that she’d found herself in. It was a common technique that I used regularly, one that helped me to empathically connect with my patients. It helped to have a good imagination!
Taking deep breaths, I pictured myself in a room, a room with a bed, a room much like the one Kelly had described. Not identical, but close. It was dimly lit, as if by candle light. It felt warm and rich, with ornate furniture. I tried to fill my mind with the sense of it. The subtle perfume of the room, the rhythmic tick-tock of the clock in the corner, the wind against the window. I pictured myself turning my head, surveying the room, imagining it as Kelly would see it in her dream.
But something was wrong. Some small detail that was out of place. Something that sent shivers down my spine. In Kelly’s dream, she’d been on the floor beside the bed, kneeling before the unseen woman’s feet. Whereas in my rendering of the scene, I was sitting on the bed. My subconscious mind had placed me here without realizing it.
I took a deep breath and tried to realign the scene, tried to place myself on the floor, but always I returned, as if secured by elastic, to the bed. My heart began to beat faster, pounding in my chest, insistent. I felt a sudden and familiar warmth, a pulsing between my legs, and I realized that this was becoming more than just an exercise in empathic understanding. Intrigued, I let the scene develop in my mind.
In my mind’s eye, I turned my head, glancing down at the floor before me. The girl was naked and kneeling, fuzzy and indistinct in that peculiar way that dreams and fantasies have, more of an impression, a sense, than anything solid.
Without thinking, I laid back on the sofa and parted my legs, eyes closed, focusing on the scene in my head. Trembling, my hand fell to my thigh, stroking up and down along the length of the soft, creamy skin there. I barely noticed that I’d moved.
I tried to process how the scene made me feel, why it was taking on such a life of its own. My breathing was quick and deep now, long sighs and a racing heartbeat. I pictured myself looking down at the girl, studying her from above, gazing at her from a position of power. I felt strong, in control, dominant. Strange urges filled my mind and I let them, intrigued by these new sensations and novel urges. Distantly, I realized that this was no longer about Kelly. It was about me.
My hand slid up my leg, pushing aside my shorts without thinking, fingers slipping into my sex
. I was damp down there, warm, slick flesh beneath my fingertips responding to my touch. I shifted on the sofa, giving myself better access to where I wanted to be, two fingers starting to move in time with the beat of my imagination. My other hand lifted to my chest, massaging my breast with lazy motions. My nipples ached, my pussy throbbed. Oh god, what was happening to me?
In the dream scene, I shifted on the bed. The girl was still, perfectly posed like a doll. Naked breasts pushed forward by the crossing of her arms behind her back. New thoughts raged at the doors of my consciousness, demanding to be let in, strangers in a strange land, but oddly familiar.
I’d never had sexual feelings about women before. Does that surprise you? Most of my college girlfriends had experimented in one way or another, brief flings, furtive trysts or even long relationships. But I’d never felt the same temptation. In recent years, I’d come to think of myself as asexual more than anything. But now… deep in the grip of a borrowed fantasy, all of my preconceived notions about who I was dropped away like fall leaves. It scared me, excited me, thrilled me.
Between my legs, my hand began to move quicker, sliding through the slick folds of my sex, manipulating the firm bulge of my clitoris with practiced ease.
In the dream, I leaned back on my hands, perched on the side of the bed. The girl looked up at me, features still indistinct, but I knew the look in her eyes. With a flick of my ankle, I slipped the shoe off my heel, allowing it to dangle from my toes. I knew, with an instinct I couldn’t explain, what I wanted, I knew what the girl wanted.
“Take off my shoe, honey,” the dream version of me said. In the solid reality of my apartment, I mouthed along to the words, driven along by the pulsing rhythm of my heart and the quick motion of my hand.
