by Sansa Rayne
“Abigail. You still want to see Dante’s? It’s… different. I’ll give it that.”
Different. It was exactly what I wanted. I folded up my dress and placed it flush against the building, hoping whoever found it would give it a good home. “Yes,” I said, “Let’s go.”
I slid open the club’s door and felt like I was willingly descending into Hell. The demons were laughing at me, as if I’d been so well deceived by them that I didn’t even feel their influence. Like I was the demon, and they didn’t have to claw away at my mind; I did all the work myself.
The air in the dark corridor was hot, and the music grew louder until I could distill the distorted electric guitar from the screaming sandpaper vocals. Even the corridor itself twisted around through a series of stairs, taking us underground.
Maybe the demons had won, because I could not have felt more exhilarated.
By the time I reached the club itself, I had to force myself not to run down the stairs. If I’d known what I was about to see, I wouldn’t have been able to stop myself.
At the center of the club was a bar encircled by an onyx counter; two men tended it busily, as a crowd three people deep waited for drinks. Yet, the real assembly of patrons faced away from the bar, fixated on a large stage set up along the walls. On the stage I saw men and women engaged in some sort of dirty game. They were all shockingly gorgeous, all godlike physiques and svelte figures. Salon-quality hair tossed around as women shrieked and twisted, lost in carnal delight. All the women I could see were bound in some way — mostly their hands — as they used chairs and tables to position their bodies. I approached the stage where a blonde-haired woman was bent over a table and receiving a spanking.
Immediately I flashed back to the farm, and Brady, and being punished for my sins. I knew the pained expression on that woman’s face because it was my own. What I didn’t recognize was the complete lack of contrition in her voice; she wasn’t atoning, she was having the time of her life.
Dr. Davis was right, I thought. I couldn’t believe it.
“Is this what you came here for?” Mason said at last. “To watch the show?”
“They’re doing this in public.” I couldn’t turn away. A day ago the idea of going out to a normal bar seemed insurmountable. Being watched by strangers, while being spanked, or tickled or teased…. How did they do it? How did they not pass out from sheer terror?
“Are they… you know… women who… women of…?”
“Are you asking if they’re prostitutes?” Mason took my hand and pulled me away from the scene; he cut past the bar and into another dark corridor that led to a series of small, private rooms. We sat down at an empty table and Mason pulled closed a black, velvety curtain.
“They’re not,” he said at last. “They don’t work here. They come here for fun.”
“Aren’t they worried what people will think?” I asked.
He shook his head. “The people here are open-minded. Half of them have been on stage themselves. We’re all here to have a good time.”
He made it so simple. Like it was obvious, and it was weird that I didn’t understand. I wondered if to him I was coming off as disapproving or shocked. Would that have been so bad? Everything I’d learned in my time at Good Souls told me that this was exactly the sort of debauchery in which a demon wanted me to indulge. That these momentary pleasures of the flesh would cost me an eternity of serenity by losing me my ascension.
Yet, despite the decor — which I now started to think was meant to be tongue-in-cheek — and the deafening music, the club seemed almost tame. Nobody was fighting, breaking stools or stabbing one another. There was no orgy that I could see.
“When I saw you outside this place, I thought you were totally lost. Now I’m not sure. You seemed really into what you saw on the stage.”
“Did I?” I stared down at a smudge on the table’s lacquer. Dr. Davis had said it was natural; so why was I so embarrassed? I hadn’t even felt it until now, but the panties I wore had become damp. If she were here, she’d probably tell me that was my body, not a demon, and for the first time, I’d have believed her.
“Yeah,” said Mason. “Every time that blonde had her ass spanked, you flinched a little, but you didn’t take your eyes off her for a second.”
I had no idea. I was watching the woman on stage, so how could I? But that meant… “Hey, why were you watching me?”
Mason laughed, a single note, gruff and low. “What, a little spanking? Big deal. You’re a lot more interesting.”
I checked to see if that smudge on the table was still there. It was.
“No, I don’t think so. I could never do what they were doing,” I said, more because it felt like what I should say, rather than what I believed. It didn’t fool Mason.
“You’re wrong,” he argued. “Not tonight, no. But I’ve seen lots of women visit Dante’s for the first time. A few weeks later, they were on a stage, blissed out like they were having an honest-to-God religious experience.”
I squirmed in my seat involuntarily. My heart pounded as if it were trying to tear free of my chest. “Blissed out?”
Mason leaned forward. I caught his subtle cologne; it was deeply masculine, like drops of smoke in a cloud of musk. “Yeah, blissed out. Like you don’t exist anymore, you’re just a spirit, and all your entire being is pure happiness. That’s what you saw. It’s what you want.”
Shivering, I closed my eyes and thought of the times I’d been disciplined by Brady. That’s how I’d felt. Blissed out. Like how I thought ascension would feel, only forever.
“The part I don’t get,” Mason added. “Is how this is all news to you. Like you’ve been living under a rock.”
There’s that smudge again.
“Well… it wasn’t a rock. But it was like one.”
What was I doing? Trying to scare him away?
“Tell me about it,” he said, now leaning back, putting his arms behind the back of his chair, reclining but ready to listen.
“I can’t. It’s too… too weird.”
I wished he’d gotten us drinks so that there could be something to take away his focus, or maybe forget entirely that he’d asked.
“I like weird.”
“No.”
“Abigail, you think I’d talk to a woman dressed like a Mennonite outside a sex club if I didn’t like weird?”
I smiled and ignored the fact that we weren’t Mennonites. “I don’t know, Mason. I don’t know you very well.”
Mason dropped his hands to the table and lifted up off the ground; he loomed over me like a mountain. “You remember how I said this place is just all right?”
I nodded. A voice inside wanted me to run, but I couldn’t. It was like watching a tornado: you knew you should take cover, but you couldn’t, you had to see.
“To me this place is like a two-dollar beer. It’ll do, if you’re desperate. I’d much rather be drinking the good stuff. A bottle of top-shelf whiskey, straight-up.”
Squeezing my legs together, I exhaled in ragged spurts. If the woman on that stage was his cheap beer, what was the whiskey?
“I think… you’re…” My voice came out a whisper. Like a mouse, squeaking against the roar of a jet engine.
“What?”
“Like… like me.”
He smiled like the Devil himself had stolen a soul. “How is that?” he asked.
“You’re… I’m… I’m sick.”
Mason sat and stared back at me. “Yeah, but it’s a good sick.”
I clutched my knees to stop them from shaking. It didn’t help. An ache raged between my legs and refused to subside.
“Who are you, Abigail? Tell me.”
A tear slipped from my cheek and landed on my skirt. “If I do, you’re going to leave. I would.”
He nodded. “Yeah, maybe. It’s a risk. But if you don’t tell me, then I’m definitely going to leave.”
Now he really reminded me of Brady. He used to give me ultimatums all the time.<
br />
Ascension comes to those who work hard and are thankful for what they have.
Respect your caretakers, or you’ll never ascend.
Stay within my sight, lest the demons tempt you.
Submit to the punishment you deserve, or everything I’ve done for you will be wasted.
My instinct had always been to give in. Do as I’m told. Do it to get what I wanted. So why change now?
“All right. Do you follow the news?”
He shrugged. “Sometimes.”
“Did you hear about the raid on the Good Souls farm a few months ago?”
I’d told a few people up front who I was and where I was from: the jerk at the bank who needed to see a Social Security card I didn’t have, a friendly clerk at the registrar’s office who gave me college admission forms; a man who I thought was a street preacher, but was really a street performer.
Usually they reacted with wide eyes or flared nostrils. One spit soda, like a comic on TV.
Mason didn’t react at all. Maybe he recognized me from the news but didn’t let on. Maybe nothing surprised him anymore.
“The cult,” he said. Not asking, just clarifying.
I still hated the word, but I nodded. “Yeah. I was there for six years. Ever since I ran away from home.”
“No shit.” His face scrunched up for a minute, then he said, “But you look… 22? Maybe 23? You must have been…”
“I’m 24, and yeah. I was not even an adult when I ran.”
“Wow.”
So far, he hadn’t left, which surprised me, because in his shoes I probably would have.
“Wait. They told you sex was a sin, right?”
Here it comes.
“So while you were there you didn’t…”
“No.” I stared daggers back at him. “I get it, all right? I believed them when they told me someday I’d ascend into heaven. I believed him when he told me one day it’d be my turn.”
“Him?” Mason raised an eyebrow and shifted in his seat.
“Brady Booker. The guy on the Most Wanted list. He got away the night of the raid.”
“Oh, yeah. Right.” Mason seemed embarrassed, like he’d heard the name before but was surprised he’d forgotten. “Listen, I don’t know what you’ve been told in the past, but I know what I saw out by the stage. And if you want to explore that, I’m the guy you want.”
I took a deep breath, needing a moment to think. Mason wasn’t the first man to make that kind of offer, though he was the first to do so in person. My mail came forwarded from a post office box, and mixed in with the donations I received from benevolent souls was the occasional marriage proposal. Sight unseen. Men who liked what they heard on the news and thought I’d make a good wife.
“You’re not just saying that out of pity, are you? Because I’ve had enough.”
“Pity? Fuck that.” In a flash he leaped out of his seat and planted his lips on mine. I gasped, but didn’t press him away. I felt like a wall had been blasted open, my panties soaked as I tasted his warm, salty lips. I’d never been kissed like this before. Like he had wanted to do it since he’d first seen me, but didn’t know it until that very second. That’s how I felt, anyway. As soon as it was happening I knew it had to happen. My mind had been made up, but hadn’t been nice enough to pass along the memo. He didn’t let go and I didn’t want him to. But when he did, he put his arms on my shoulders and looked me in the eyes. “This isn’t about pity. I don’t care if you’re a little fucked up. I can take it. Crazy or not, I want to do with you everything you saw on that stage, and then some.”
I don’t know if Dr. Davis would have approved of being swept away by the first man I met on my first night out, but how many people like Mason did she expect me to meet? I didn’t care what she’d say, or what a demon may have been telling me to do: I listened to my body, and it wanted Mason.
“You’ll go slow?” I asked.
“I’ll try. I can’t promise.”
Screw it, I’ll learn fast.
Mason grabbed my forearm and pulled me out of my seat. Before I could protest he used his grip to march me out of the booth and back through the club. “Where are we going?” I yelled over the music.
“Your place.”
“Wait, why not yours?”
Then I felt it: something hard and fast smacking my backside. “Because I said so.”
I yelped and jumped forward, shocked and hurting, but then I felt it: the lingering dull throb of the hit. I drank it in like nectar; I wanted more. “Yes, sir,” I said. Laughter and applause faded out as we took the stairs; I couldn’t help thinking it had been directed at me.
Sometimes there’s just no preparing for something different, like seeing an apartment without any decor and no television. Mason gawked at the spartan residence as I stashed my purse away in my bedroom. He knew I’d been living in the city for only a few months, so I don’t know what he expected.
Living without all the extra noise felt right to me. Even before I joined Good Souls, life and circumstance deprived me of the concept of routine shopping, so fulfilling needs through purchases was an instinct I failed to develop. I made do with what I had. Farm or not, the behavior was fully ingrained.
More importantly, I’d never felt any urge to furnish the place because I never expected to stay for so long. Part of me never let go of the farm, and thus treated my new home as temporary as a hotel room. Mason’s reaction, though, made me feel foolish.
The empty shelves and bare walls suddenly struck me as inhospitable, and I worried about how that reflected on me. Unfairly, I thought. What did I know of cable subscriptions or dinette sets? And it’s not like I didn’t have any possessions back at the farm: I used to own lots of books, but I wasn’t able to take them with me. Apparently they were needed for evidence.
I guess I should have been curious about why Brady never inscribed what he knew in a book. Everything at Good Souls was passed on by word-of-mouth. That’s how Brady said he was taught, and that he’d teach his followers the same way. Once I asked if I could be one of his followers. He laughed and reminded me I was there for my ascension, not to be a farmer. I didn’t care much for farming, so I opted not to press him further.
“I’m sorry,” Mason said. “But what the hell do you do for fun?”
“Study,” I grunted, planting kisses along his neck, addicted to the taste of his skin.
“For fun?”
I didn’t reply, I kissed him again and hoped he’d rather do that than ask about me. I didn’t have fun at Good Souls, so I didn’t think about it now. I filled my hours with studying and reading. But kissing Mason — that was fun. That, I could do more of.
“Stop.”
I let go, surprised. I’d heard Brady bark that command so often, it had become a reflex. I waited for Mason to speak, but when he didn’t say anything, I looked up. Hands on his hips, he stared at the ceiling, shaking his head, his expression awash with frustration and confusion.
“Mason, what’s wrong? What did I do?”
He turned back to me, his face softening slightly. “You did nothing. I shouldn’t be here.”
“Why not?” I couldn’t believe it. Was this some kind of cruel joke? Or was he really having second thoughts? I could imagine the demon tempting me was having a nice laugh at my expense.
Mason rubbed his forehead. “You sure this is what you want?”
Who was this guy? Back at the club he didn’t strike me as the type to question himself. I could see if I’d had a shrine to Jesus, or had an extensive collection of creepy porcelain dolls, then maybe that would scare him off. And yeah, I was a little different, but I thought he liked that?
“I’m sure, Mason,” I said. “I’ve been waiting for this a long time, I just didn’t know it.”
He shut his eyes for a time, and when he opened them he was back to the man I met at Dante’s. “Take off your blouse.”
I’d never been so excited to bare myself. I’d done it for Brady every time he’
d demanded it, but that was for my punishments. I wasn’t supposed to be so eager, so I forced myself to pretend. Now I didn’t have to.
Mason paced toward me slowly, undressing me with his gaze. I’d felt that sense of invasion from the men at the farm, always wanting to see what was under my dress; I’d hated the demons causing them to stray. No demon controlled Mason, though: his lust came from nowhere but his own soul.
My instincts told me to put my hands over my breasts, to shield them from his gaze and preserve my modesty, but I paid them no heed.
“Cross your arms behind your back.”
I did as told and felt electricity crackle through me. I stiffened as Mason approached, every part of me tense. I willed myself to stand still and let him close the gap between us. As soon as he did, he slipped his fingers under my pretty red bra. He licked his lips, which turned up in a grin, and then with one quick move he tore the bra in half. The bridge between the cups snapped, revealing my chest.
I gasped as the pieces flew apart and fell at my sides. I moaned, lamenting the loss of my nice lingerie, but the wetness left between my thighs told me it was worth it.
“Beautiful,” he said, taking my breasts in his hands. He squeezed softly, massaging them and flicking my nipples with his thumbs. I shuddered as every touch sent arcs of pleasure through my body. It was like nothing I’d ever experienced.
Then he pinched my nipples with his fingers. I cried out and shook; Brady had never done that before. His grip felt like a vice: powerful and unrelenting. Keeping my hands still behind my back required the entirety of my willpower. My body warred with itself: half sought protection or escape, while the other half ached for more.
He let go and slipped the ruined bra off of my shoulders. “You’ve got ten seconds to take off whatever you don’t want me to tear off you.”
I froze for a moment. The way he played with my ruined bra told me he wasn’t joking. In a panic I kicked off my sneakers, which banged into the walls, and then threw off my skirt. I started to slip my hands into the panties, but stopped. Instead, I replaced my hands behind my back.
“May as well do the set,” I said.
