by Jamie Knight
“Hmmm,” I thought, shrugging. “I guess even billionaires have needs to be fulfilled during the quarantine that they have to find special ways of going about.”
“Yeah,” she said, laughing. “The rest of us just have to fight over toilet paper at Walmart for days on end in order to have our basic needs met.”
In a lot of ways, Who Wants to Lock Down a Billionaire? seemed a lot tamer than most reality shows on network TV. Especially in the post social-media age. Which made sense, I guess, since the name of the show was a tongue-in-cheek throwback to the innocent and pure game show.
Sure, the winner was supposed to do whatever the billionaire wanted while on their luxury lockdown, but that just added to the fun. It seemed almost like a game of double dare.
The star billionaire Adam Leary’s well-publicized proclivities were all reported in age appropriate language, so you never quite got the full picture, leaving the reader to decide whether the handsome self-made man liked a bit of spanking or left his lovers with black eyes.
It was, of course, impossible to know for sure. Who really knows even their closest friends truly?
But there was something about him. Something in his eyes that made me think it was the former. I knew he was a Dom, at least to hear the rumor mill tell it, but I couldn’t really imagine him harming anyone. I had seen brutality. I knew the look and he just didn’t have it.
The contestant that night was an unspeakably hot redhead with skin like milk and freckles in all the right places. Her breasts were also to be admired, perfectly shaped and just the right size.
Adam seemed interested. He engaged her and made her giggle, though I suspected he was like that with everyone. It could have just been an act.
One didn’t get to be a billionaire without learning to schmooze, unless they were born into it. Even then schmoozing was probably a required course at private school along with which spoon to use and how to tie a cardigan around your neck.
Not that Adam struck me as particularly pretentious. He was always well put together, but in a style probably best described as beautiful simplicity. Boots, jeans and t-shirts were worn in such a way as to look like they belonged at an opera house. His jeans were perfectly pressed and always unruffled; his black t-shirt looked like it was designed to perfectly fit his beefy frame and his boots, Doc Martens from what I could tell, were always polished to a mirror glow.
Of course, when you had as much money as he did, no one was going to argue with what you chose to wear, now were they?
“You should go on this show!” Astrid gushed, nearly squealing with excitement.
“What? No I mean I couldn’t, I-”
“C’mon, it’ll be fun! You're super hot; I’m sure he’ll like you.”
I wished I shared her confidence. I had certainly been what one might describe as “hot” when I was younger, but I wasn’t so sure anymore. Rick walking out on me when he found out I was pregnant was quite a shock and really shook my confidence.
I had tried my best to get my figure back after having Freya but I really wasn’t sure it had worked. Truth be told, Astrid as the first person to tell me I was hot in about five years. On the upside, I had no reason to doubt her intentions. She was nothing if not honest and direct.
“There’s a ton of prize money in it,” she coaxed me, and I thought about how much it could help out my situation, and Freya’s too, of course.
“Do you really think they would want me?” I asked hesitantly.
“Sure, put in an application. I’ll bet you a turkey dinner that you at least get on the show, if not chosen to go with him on the luxury lockdown.”
“Fresh or frozen?”
“I’m serious!” Astrid objected, pelting me good with a cushion.
“My own cushion turned against me in anger! Oh, the humanity!”
“Come here,” Astrid said, squeezing me tight.
“You’re forgiven, oh traitor of mine.”
“Good. At least think about what I said, yeah? It could be really fun! The prize money for lasting the whole time is a million dollars! We both know you need the money.”
“Yeah. I’ll think about it,” I said.
I did think about it. I almost went mad thinking about it. I got so horny I could barely sleep. My mind was full of images of me bent over Adam’s knee, his strong, sure hand landing expertly on my bare ass again and again, before turning me over and having me suck on what I assumed to be a truly magnificent cock. I mean, his hands were big, so it only stood to reason. Or so I had been led to believe.
I was just desperate enough to try fingering myself when my alarm went off. The universe was no doubt laughing at its own hilarious joke. It was not quite as funny as the platypus or the minuscule length of the average human life but still, this trick was in the top twenty classics, at least.
Ignoring the fire raging down below, I got Ingrid ready for the day and did my best to prepare myself for another day of honest toil. Sadly, the pay didn’t rise along with the hours. I worked on a contract. What else was I to expect?
“Coming!” I called, in response to Astrid’s knock on my bedroom door.
Just not in the way I wish I was! I thought.
“Where is the little munchkin?” I asked her, once I was up.
“Oz, last time I checked.”
“ I’ll get her,” I said, already on my way to the living room where Freya amused herself with one of the more bizarre episodes of The Muppet Show.
“Holy smoke!” shouted Statler and Waldorf as I turned off the set, in response to Fozzie’s inquiry about what the villagers said when the church burned down.
“Oooly thmoke!” Freya parroted, clapping her little hands.
“Bit young for Black Metal, isn’t she?” Astrid queried, feigning concern.
“Hilarious. You’re a regular Jay Lame-o.”
“Wow, you are old.”
“I’m twenty-seven!”
“Still, yikes. What’s next? Five minutes on 8-tracks and airplane food?”
“Here, have a baby,” I said, foisting Freya upon her.
“Just what I’ve always wanted!” Astrid enthused, wiping away a phantom tear.
Freya applauded her approval.
“At least someone thinks you’re funny.”
“I do appeal to a younger demographic,” Astrid confirmed, taking Freya to her playroom.
My “office” set up wasn’t much, but it was enough to do what I needed. Usually I worked as a researcher for academics and sometimes in the business sector. Researching books and articles, I got paid for writing reports in which I summarized my findings.
The pay was great, but jobs could be a bit inconsistent. After the outbreak it dried up almost completely. Maybe one or two contracts a month. Even at $30 dollars an hour, they usually only needed six to eight hours each and so the overall pay just wasn’t enough to get by on.
So, I did the unthinkable. Like an artist doing greeting cards or an actress modelling for burlesque photos, I started doing market research. It was really just a fancy name for consumer surveys.
It didn’t pay nearly as well, but I was to the point where I could do over fifty per day, which kept our heads above water. The rent-controlled apartment I’d inherited from my grandmother helped immensely.
It was worse than usual today, though. Most of the surveys I clicked on were dead ends. The preliminary questions determined that I wasn’t qualified to take the survey because I didn’t represent the right demographic, or some such rot.
This made me angry. I could understand if the survey was about men’s protective sporting wear or some other very specific niche, but who didn’t like coffee and power tools? Okay, a lot of people, but that shouldn’t be enough to preclude me from counting in the stats. A lot of the time, I realized I was a very rare case of someone crying internally, ‘I just want to be a number!’
Finally, after much disappointing and shameless lying as I tried to give the answers I thought they wanted, I was finally
let through the gates and into the promised land of paid level surveys. After twenty thrilling minutes of multiple-choice questions about frozen vegetables for a whopping total of thirteen dollars, I was about to pack it in.
When I went out into the kitchen area of the apartment, the wine filled the glass in a delightful way. So scrumptious looking was the beverage that I gave into temptation, nearly emptying the glass in one go. Replenishing the level, I went back to the office before it was too late.
The submission page was still up, complete with the paltry sum being transferred into my bank account. Faced with a similar day tomorrow and many more besides, I did what I knew I wanted to do underneath all my layers of self-doubt and inhibitions.
The page was easy to find. The producers of course made sure to maximize the search engine optimization. Some people likely ended up with it on their list when looking for something else, like its classic namesake Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? or a list of living billionaires.
The very image of more multiple-choice questions should have sent me screaming and running away from the application. Ordinarily it might have. But by focusing my will and remembering the million-dollar prize, I had the entire thing completed in ten minutes flat. I didn’t mention that I had a kid, but they also didn’t ask about that, either.
I told myself it didn’t really matter, because there was no way they were going to pick me, anyway.
Chapter Two - Adam
The view from the health club was beautiful. The white capped mountains were still visible in the pale blue glow of the light pollution against a background of the starry black sky. There were many views like it in Seattle, but that one was mine. At least at that moment.
It was never overcrowded, but a $200,000 per year membership fee ensured that. The private health club had become appointment only ever since COVID-19 had struck. Every member got their own run of the cutting-edge equipment. And an army of staff was deployed with masks, gloves and spray bottles of specially formulated cleaner to wipe everything down for the next user.
I always tried to leave them something. Such as a clip of bills under the treadmill that I must have ‘forgotten.’ Occasionally, I would be surprised by the reappearance of the cash the next time I checked in. The custom made, monogrammed shamrock money clips clearly marked them as mine.
Slowly, I got into the zone. The thump of my feet on the treadmill matched almost exactly the drums beats on my earbuds and the thumping of my heart. Things can really fall into sync when you’re focused enough, especially if you are willing to take the risk of not being ‘normal.’
The greatest accomplishment of my life, in my own tally of things, was that I was never in the strictest sense normal. Even my mother described me as an ‘odd duck’ by the time I was ten. Even the circumstances of my arrival, the only child of a nominally Catholic single mother, fit clearly in the abnormal column. Nurture had very little to do with it, anyway.
Ours was the kind of happy town where people would sit out on the front porch with frosty lemonade on a hot day and converse with passersby. Everybody knew everybody else, and their business, for generations running. Skeletons were displayed out on the yard as opposed to hidden in the closet. No one was safe from an entertainment’s worth of judgement.
Instead of becoming embittered about this fact of life, or oppressed by it, I decided to give them all something worth talking about. Rather than running with the herds of kids seen about the town, playing football or roving on their bikes in search of the perfect flavor of ice cream, I was more of a loner. It was a point of pride rather than shame.
My conspicuous absence at Sunday Mass was the first point of conflict between myself and traditional society. As it would be a scandal to have gentlemen turn up at my mother’s door, a deputation of the parish’s most upstanding lady members came to redress the issue.
“Adam wasn’t at church today,” I had heard Mrs. Walpole say, as though announcing a tragic death.
“That’s true,” my mother answered. “He preferred to stay home and read.”
“And you approve of this?” Mrs. Brown injected.
“It makes little difference to me either way. Though he does seem to know the Bible better than even Father Drone.”
I was known locally as ‘the little heathen’ as long as I remained in the town, a moniker that took some years to top.
I never thought much about my proclivities. They seemed as natural to me as my height or hair color. Most people think that BDSM is about violence or at least pain, and that could well be true for some. There were a lot of fetishes that required significant amounts of pain, which was perfectly fine if that was what both parties wanted.
It was about getting pleasure from hurting someone. It was a mutual erotic behavior, involving people who get off on hurting people who want to be hurt.
For me, it was about having complete control over those who wanted to be controlled, who got a thrill out of being entirely under the power of another whom they trusted not to actually harm them. The distinction between ‘hurt’ and ‘harm’ was extremely important for people like me.
The ads were running everywhere. My online show was getting coverage in traditional media. It was a coup if there ever was one. But I had a history of doing the impossible. The only way to know the limits of the possible is to go past them. It was the secret of my success, as they say.
I was skeptical at first. The studio had come to me rather than the other way around. Basically, their number crunchers had realized I would draw ratings by name alone and my kinks had been an open secret for years, which gave the whole thing a whiff of sex and scandal. A whiff turned into a stench when it came down to the actual format and promotion.
Still, I went with it. The studio tried to pay me, but I turned them down flat. The last thing I needed was more money. It wasn’t even the sex that was the seller. I liked sex quite a bit and wasn’t about to turn my nose up at it, but to be honest, I did quite alright on my own and didn’t need the show to get me women.
The clincher was when the producers allowed me to pay the one million in prize money from my personal account. The CEO, one of my good buddies, agreed to match any donations I made to a charity of my choice. It was likely to upset the shareholders to no end, even with the positive press that would have come had they bothered to promote it in the adverts.
The onus was put on the sex and money aspects. Not that I didn’t understand it. I had learned quite a lot about effective promotion while building my publishing empire from the ground up.
I couldn’t get home fast enough. The workout was a necessity for my sanity, but there was still a lot of work to do before I could rest my weary head. I did my best to doze in the back of the limo.
Once I was in my large, marble tile shower, the water cascaded down like a warm blanket, washing away the work and worry of the day in preparation to pile on more. Life was a cycle more than a straight line. The trick was plotting the pattern so that you knew when a curve was coming along the way.
There was a near plague of silk amongst the rich. I had seen it enough times to know. Silk shirts, silk sheets, silk robes. For the life of me, I’d never understand how the corpses of worms became such a popular fabric. Give me fleece any day of the week.
Wrapped snugly in a high thread count robe made of what else but silk, I opened a bottle of Guinness and headed towards my home office, the very seat of my power, from where I ran my entire empire.
Pushing the button for the automatic blinds, I basked in the cool moonlight as I booted up the custom-built PC tailored for the work I had to do. I used to have a second machine for video games and the like, but an opportunity to use it didn’t come up nearly as often.
A dear friend had gifted me with a first edition of As I Lay Dying by none other than the mighty William Faulkner and that was it. The little bit of free time I had was thereafter dedicated to literature. My freshly built library numbered nearly 1,200 titles, mostly esoteric, all in print, every l
ast one of which I had read from cover to cover at least once.
Digital print may have made up a major part of my business, but I was still an anarchist in some ways. The majority of my similarly extensive record collection was on vinyl.
Likewise, I was really sticking to my guns when it came to what was in the contract for the show. I knew enough about how executives and producers worked not to give them any more control than was absolutely necessary. I wasn’t trying to keep the power for myself so much as preventing the show becoming what it easily could if I were to give the dragons in suits free reign.
One of the points on which I absolutely insisted was picking the contestants myself. My criteria was based on a combination of genuine need and potential sexual chemistry. I strongly preferred the million dollars to go to someone who really needed it as opposed to, for example, a trust fund baby looking to add to their family fortune.
The second factor was harder to judge. There was only so much one can tell from a photograph and a write up, no matter how thorough. It was part of the reason for the three-step process. Again, at my insistence, the applications were little more than a preliminary round.
The screen above the treadmill ran one impossibly pretty face after another. They were all glamor shots obviously done by professional photographers and write ups meant to appeal to who they thought I was based on my public image.
All of sudden, one of them caught my eye.
The image struck like a bolt from mighty Thor. The crystalline eyes. The healthy glow. The unpretentious, natural expression. She was beautiful.
I scrolled down so fast the mouse nearly broke. The write-up was different if nothing else. Much of the points of interest were at least similar to mine. For the first time since the whole thing began, I felt the faint pang of true hope.
Try as I might, I couldn’t get her out of my mind. Every time I would falter, my mind breaking out of the self-imposed fugue state of turning data, focusing only long enough to process before saving or moving on, there she was. Smiling awkwardly in what could only be a selfie, the amateurishness of the photo adding to her appeal rather than detracting from it.
