Room Little Darker

by June Caldwell

  He came then, suddenly, with a screamy shudder. A small spurt of what tasted like leftover sweet ‘n’ sour from a drunken weekend’s Chinese takeaway. His balls were properly deflated, hanging like empty sacks of rice. Thank God that bit was over. He pulled me up and unbuckled the blindfold. Sunlight pissed all over me. He’d no interest in throwing me over the bed and riding me hard which he’d been threatening to do on email for days. No, it was now all about him and the pursuit of city centre hooch. Can’t even remember if he bothered to use the crop or flogger on me at that stage, despite my heavy hints by coyly mauling his trade tools through my fingertips every time I tiptoed by where they rested, redundant. There was just one crafty moment where I felt he had more power than me; when he grabbed my hair unexpectedly from behind and flung me down on the bed. The weight of his physicality pinning me there, face scraped in the cheap cotton of the over-washed duvet, the feel of his harsh breath behind me, the strength of his arms. I wanted to shout, ‘Keep going soldier boy, keep going!’ but he was too interested in getting out into a shite pub up around Camden Street somewhere. I’d see more of his masterly skill later, but for now it rested pretty in his emails where he’d write sexy shit like, ‘Next time slave, I’m going to introduce you to subspace, it’s about time you became acquainted.’ That excited me. I’d read a lot about it. Seemed wholly technical, like a Master or a Sir would need proficiency and artistry to get you there. To empty tingly endorphins into your system via the fever-burn of the whip. Taking you to a megalopolis of filthy sensation beyond the blandness of a naff hotel room. Beyond where you’d ever thought of going on your tod. A euphoric place only a pervert could perfectly locate on the mind map. ‘You’ll be tied to the door frame,’ he informed me. ‘You’ll dance to the music as the crop sings. You’ll be whipped all over too, hard. I’ve never met a cheekier submissive. I’ll bring ear defenders, the type we used on the ranges. There’ll be no safe word allowed for punishments. Be prepared slave, you will not be able to sit for a week.’ I’d asked how he knew when a sub reached this fabled place. ‘When she stops dancing,’ he said. ‘When she’s no longer able to wriggle at all.’ Jesus, that turned me on. The manky idea of total compliance. Unhooking me from the straps fastened to the top of the door after I’d stopped twisting and flailing, dropping me into his big animal arms; that first embarrassing tinge of intimacy. Though for now he was still a stupid wanker with no idea he’d be dumped in the morning as a display of my power. Instead of saying ‘do you want to play soldier boy, then let’s fucking curtain-raise for real’, I turned to him when he asked was I ready to vamoose and softly replied, ‘Yes Master, I’m ready.’

  In a cage in a kitchen in a farmhouse in Leitrim. Master pacing the ground with hairy belly hanging. Bog all room. Caught for days on end. Hours fleecing hours. ‘Grab that fucking bag slave, if I push your arse right up to the bars, stretch your arms out, grab the bastarding thing, pull the handles in, slide it over, from under that chair there, I’ve a taser in the bag, I’ll do the bastards.’ Then what? We’re still locked in a cage, with the pair of them pleasantly electrocuted and still no fucking escape. ‘Your fault, this,’ he says, crawling over my legs, bashing against my hips. ‘Fuck’s sake give me some room!’ Master is always prepared for these things, what with being a soldier. Except he’s not. ‘It wasn’t my idea to meet up with them,’ I remind him. The husband feeding us from Pedigree Chum bowls while the wife saunters in and out in a pink babydoll chemise filming on her smartphone every half hour or so. Jewelry, watches, bags, coats, play kit, shoes, underwear, taken, gone, confiscated. Ceiling cameras scattered around. Streaming a live feed to a website. Fuck knows what pervs are watching. Twice a day the husband enters in a leather gimp mask, fully concealed, raining down with rivets. Brass padlock on the mouthpiece. ‘Nommm nommm,’ he says. Wearing nothing but a harness with mickey pouch. Bull whip in hand. Lashes the cage bars, long noisy cracks. Grunts through his gag. The wife laughs; sweet chuckle of a librarian who’s stumbled across a chalky first edition and can’t help but wet her knickers. ‘Be good doggies now,’ she says. ‘And there’ll be special treats later.’ Makes husband a Cup-a-Soup. Mushroom. I am ravenous. The smell is intoxicating. We squash to the very back where the patio door is. Husband moves to whip the sides. Eventually the tip of the whip reaches our skin inside. ‘Fuck’s sake, I’ll knock your block off as soon as I get out of here, I’ll shit in your wife’s eyes, I’ll snap her legs, pull one off, beat you with it.’ Master needs to calm. It just makes them laugh all the more. He keeps winking at the husband like they’re both supposed to know something. ‘Can you put some briquettes in the range?’ I ask, I plead, I stare at the wife, I beg. ‘It’s freezing cold in here, please.’ She looks pissed off. ‘That’s no way to address me,’ she says. ‘How should I address you?’ Master hands me the laminated instruction sheet from yesterday, or the day before? Address Kennel Owners As Follows: 2 ‘woofs’ for a request, 3 for the litter tray, 2 small whimpers for a toy, full bark for collar and leash …’ It goes on. ‘Woof woof,’ I say. Master pulls the back of my hair, knocking me to the ground from the hind legs position.

  George’s Street, Dublin, on a steely Friday night in citrine taxi light when we get together again after the first hotel meet. ‘You have to taste the guacamole in this place, it’s like nothing I’ve ever put my filthy tongue on. They use whole lime skins and whatever way they mash it all up, it’s phantasmagoric …’ Big words irk him. He’s wearing a fat priest black polo neck and some shite corduroy pants (couldn’t call them trousers). ‘I don’t want no poncy place slave, all that nouveau cuisine bollix, give me steak and chips, that’s me sorted.’ We ramble through the heavy door and I immediately nab a waiter to secure us two stools at the bar for the next hour and a half. You can’t book a table in this place; I knew that’d be nothing but botheration for Master. The only other restaurant we’d been to before, he complained like fuck from the off: the cramped table top; the lack of hot spice; the tepid temperature of the curry. Commanded me to the toilet so he could bellyache without the presence of a weak-minded woman looking on. ‘It better be good slave, this is your city, not mine.’ I recommended the Taco Laguna: stir-fried Iberico pork with summer vegetables in a lettuce cup. I thought it might appeal to his virile carnivore. I loved the music in this place, clatter of eighties tunes on a loop, banging loud. ‘A lettuce cup, are they having a fucking laugh?’ There were twelve ‘rules’ he’d given me and only two I abided by. ‘I’m not shaving “from the neck down” to be hairless. It’s ridiculous, way too much effort, especially if I only see you twice a month,’ I said. ‘Have you any idea how long it takes to shave a snatch totally bald? It’s worse than plucking a Christmas turkey. Housewives gave up that shit in the seventies when supermarkets spun modern.’ I ordered the Roast Gambas: Pico de Gallo, guacamole and crema queso in a taco shell. He wasn’t impressed at the €17 price tag. ‘Are you going to pay for this slave?’ Well, given that he was the self-confessed Commandant in Charge, I assumed he’d get the bill. ‘You’re not wearing the collar either, did you think I hadn’t noticed?’ I refused to wear the thick worn-leather neckband with the cattle ring on the front. It was vile. Dog-like. Or worse. Bison-like. Or worse. I wanted a decent sterling silver band, discreet, not particularly noticeable. ‘Don’t you get this? You do as you’re told slave. You leave all the decisions to me, you obediently follow instructions, ALL of them.’ My boyfriend, The Narcissist, only recently walked. I missed him like mad even though we hadn’t humped for three years and all was rotten in our State of Denmark. I used to munch here with him, holding hands under the table, superfluity of life plans over frozen margaritas. We’d buy a small cottage in Stoneybatter when my parents snuffed it. Get the attic converted into a double sleeping platform with a ladder so his kids could stay. Tile the backyard, fling it with plants. Pay the €5k for a gorgeous white wood burner in the sitting room. He’d be sickened at this new inroad. He’d want to protect me from noxious k
ink. ‘This is not you love. You’re way too sensitive for this shit.’ Ah but I’m not. Didn’t we learn so much about our repressed selves by that traumatic parting? ‘I feel so mentally crazed so much of the time, I just want someone to take me in hand, to show me how to behave,’ I’d tell him. ‘You know? Not take any crap, knock some of the meanness out of me I feel with the pressure at home.’ His navy eyes, his lovely face, his endless love that died like a pig. ‘Ask one of those prats for some napkins slave, this tack is runny as fuck.’ On Master goes. ‘See those cheeky messages you send me on KIK all the time telling me that I’m a deadhead from a rubbish high-rise in Glasgow who can only spell phonetically, I hope your arse is able to cash the cheque for that?’ I’d already explained I was an ‘alpha submissive’, a different hybrid to the pain sluts and gormless kneelers. ‘That first night we met,’ he says. ‘We got pissed and you dumped me. You do know you’re going to have to be severely punished for that?’ They stroll in two seconds later, pre-arranged: Malcolm and Sarah from Leitrim. Master shakes the husband’s hand, kisses her sloppily on the cheek. ‘Game on,’ he says, all happy out. She scoops up the last of the tortilla chips, lathering them in precious guacamole. Tall and slim. He’s tall and creepy. Twenty minutes later we’re on our way to Leitrim in a white Hiace. Out on wide roads where growers set up spud stalls as soon as the bad weather kicks in. Maris Pipers, Roosters, Queens. ‘You’re pretty,’ the wife says. ‘Big porno boobs.’ Thistles scratch the car windows too fast. In the retina of a running rabbit there’s an ache for warmth but it’ll never arrive. ‘You’re nice too,’ I say, not knowing what I’m really supposed to elucidate back. Two and a half hours later we arrive at a dirt track too lurid to be a boreen. The house sits on its own scrubland with an abandoned boat stuck on its side filled with compost. No lights. No neighbours. No salvation.

  Saturday or Sunday in early glow as Lord Canine and Mrs Mutt are nowhere. Certain moments are elementary, so simple they become eternal. Photons of electromagnetic radiation travel forty-five billion years to reach earth and we’re still only at the stage where microwave ovens are modern. With these moments of clarity we learn to value tiny things … chronology makes everything solid and strong. That’s what I’m telling myself. We’re fuck all on the grand scale. Master has only recently (within the last few weeks) admitted it has all gone very wrong. Intended as a coaching exercise on compliance for me. His stomach is deflated. There are large sores on his legs; hag’s faces painted in dangerous red. When I look at them I remember the first satsuma I scoffed in school in 1974, digging my fingernails into the scabrous skin, smelling and tasting the miniscule bursts that shot out onto my chin. He’s not speaking much. I too have lost weight, but am feeling hopeful. During the day I take turns crouching on each bum cheek, still plump enough to supply some cushion at least. If I press up against the front of the bars I can stretch my legs partially lengthways the full width. Up out and over the cluttered window pane full of dusty toby jugs, the honeysuckle French kisses the sunlight, bowing to our subjugation. Panicles of whorled branches, purplish-brown, prised open, spreading in fruit. Tufted grass with creeping rhizomes. I’ve never felt happier scoring the different colours in the sky, diffracted through the air. Here, a field of phantom cattle clump about joylessly scaring the púca that once leapt on a local man’s back. We were given a handbook of local legends as our only reading material. The man, who is forever nameless, managed to stab the entity with a penknife and throw it to the ground. When he returned the following day he found a wooden log with a knife-sized hole along one side. ‘What was it like fighting in the Falklands?’ I ask Master. He doesn’t answer straight away. The only avenue of punishment left. ‘There was logic to it,’ he replies. He hasn’t taken the beatings well, sobbing for hours, refusing to communicate or look at me. Squashed into the furthest corner, throwing up some gobbledygook at an absent wife. ‘When I get back I’ll get the gas boiler serviced love, I’m sorry I’ve been away so long.’ Unlike me, when I reach the puddle of tears, no longer feeling a thing – when Lord Canine uses the really thick rattan cane – it purges every bristle of stress, setting me up for the whole of the next day. Our bodies are deeply marked in thick purple stripes. Skin on my thighs broken open a number of times. Pain so excessive and profound, I pass out cold.

  In they saunter with a group of five rubber gimps. One doused in duck yellow from head to toe. His rotund vacuum-packed belly and peaked hat a delight in a way. Master whimpers dejectedly. ‘Here are our precious doggies!’ Mrs Mutt says, pulling out wooden chairs to form a neat row for the spectators to get comfortable. I immediately fall on all fours, turning fast in manic circles so they can see the butt plug with fawn fur tail wagging devotedly. ‘Woof woof woof woof!’ I say. I’ve perfected a deep meaningful growl that represents not aggression but cute little playing sounds to please my owners abundantly. ‘Isn’t she a joy!’ one of them in a black and white Victorian maid outfit declares. ‘Totally smashing!’ says another in a gas mask. God knows what rural hills and crannies they slipped down from for a few lost hours. If they’ve emerged from the stinking steam of packed dairy sheds or if they’ve run out of Rosewood French doors in architecturally designed contemporary bungalows facing strategically southwards. ‘What breed is she?’ someone else asks. Master flings me a stingy look, very like the first time I climbed into his van and he told me to prepare for a journey like no other. ‘She’s a Dandy Dinmont Terrier, cheerful nature. He’s the opposite, Golden Retriever we’d great hopes for, but he won’t even mount her anymore.’ Lord Canine piles stray wood into the range. His fetish flippers smacking the ground as he carefully plops about. ‘Are the bold doggies hungry? Do the bold doggies want some succulent strips of beef? Have the bold doggies done pee pees on the floor?’ I leap up and tear at the first piece of overcooked meat flung, licking the residue of grease pearls dripping down the fortified steel billets. It’s twenty years since I’ve eaten animal flesh but endurance has taught me to accept every small gift graciously. We’re no longer fed from bowls since Master began attacking in rabid fits. Mealtimes triggering his prey drive. As if deep in his medulla oblongata he knows to bite a human moving too quickly. I hear his stomach rumbling like distant thunder muttering imperfectly from the purl of clouds. It’s unlikely I’ll be able to date a normal bloke after all this is over. I’ve thought about this a lot. Sitting in a heaving sports bar in Dame Street all faux giddy when Manchester United score a goal. All that droll macho nonsense. When escape comes, whether in three months, eight or a year, I will recall all these particulars. ‘We’re never getting out,’ Master says. I’m shocked his army training hasn’t served him in more callous or mercenary ways. He really is a depressed moron. ‘It can’t be that far to the N4,’ I’ve told him, numerous fucking times. ‘Remember we only beetled off the main road for a few kilometres to get here.’ Even if it was a miserable day with flea fogs of rain obstructing vision in every direction … when our cage is being cleaned and one of them makes the systematic error of turning away for a microsecond, we’d bolt. Once, Master grabbed me by the throat when I described this very scenario, banging my head so hard Mrs Mutt tore in from the sitting room hurling hot tea at his snout causing incalculable torment. ‘Whoever picks us up on the main road eventually will hear us yelping like we’ve never been able to yelp before.’ Master bangs his rump against the padlock to get attention.