Dangerous (6 page)

She wasn’t really into
all
that stuff, right? This was simply a complete list of everything under the sun.

Right?

Twenty minutes passed while I completed that checklist. It took another thirty minutes to finish the second part: essay answers to direct questions about my personality, my expectations regarding submissive training, my hard limits.

Had I been given these forms at work, or the coffee shop, I’d have blown a fuse. But in this bizarre setting it didn’t seem as crazy.

Alone in the room, I poured myself onto the page. When I was done, I set down the pencil and waited.

A few minutes later Val checked on my progress. She took the completed forms and asked, “Have you thought deeply about this? Answered the questions truthfully?"

“Yes, Ma’am,” I replied.

To my astonishment she threw all those pages of soul-searching into the fireplace without so much as a glance, where they burst into flame. I made no sound, but she saw the outrage in my eyes.

“Good. That exercise was for
your
benefit, so you can begin to think objectively about this relationship. Remember what you wrote today. Weeks from now you may be surprised by how different your answers may be. However, I have my own ways of learning what’s inside you.” And that was that.

Next, she sat and motioned me to kneel beside her feet, where I answered questions about preexisting medical conditions, prescriptions, allergies, of which I had none.

Then she gave me The Rules.

A doll has certain obligations that, if not met, will result in the severance of the contract. They are as follows:

A doll must obey, and learn.

A doll must trust the Keeper.

A doll must anticipate the Keeper’s will, or at least try.

A doll must take care of itself.

In addition, a doll should comport itself with grace, courtesy, and intelligence. If it does not, it will become familiar with the tools and methods of punishment.

A doll should expect the Keeper to be courteous. But she is difficult to please, and often seemingly arbitrary.

The Keeper does not coddle dolls, nor heap affection on them.

Dolls should expect to be challenged.

But if they do well, dolls can also expect to receive diligent interest, lessons, and a continued desire to see them grow.

“Do you have any questions?” she asked, as she handed me the hard copy for my review.

“No, Ma’am.” I knew I would later, but at the moment my mind was a blank.

“Then we’ll begin. Stand and undress."

I’d been half-expecting this, but it was still scary. I felt the same terror I’d known as a young girl, with my toes hanging off the end of the high-dive board. After a moment’s hesitation, I stood on unexpectedly numb legs, stumbling a bit. Val’s expression was completely unreadable, which I took as a sign to hurry.

Could I actually go through with this?

It’s like going to the doctor
, I thought.

I took off my pumps, unbuttoned my blouse and slipped it off my shoulders, then unhooked my bra and dropped it on the floor along with everything else. Unzipped my jeans and stepped out of them. Panties last of all. The air was cool on my skin.

I stood, not knowing what to do with my hands, or whether to kneel again. I kept my head lowered and hands at my side, and was powerfully tempted to fidget.

A long moment passed, and another, and still no response from Val.
Tick tick tick tick
.

A door closed somewhere else in the house. The maid going about her duties.

“Ma’am?” I ventured, after a minute of agonizing silence. What had I done wrong?

“It throws its clothes in a heap on the floor? It had better dress and try again.” It? Oh, she meant me. Her measured words dripped acid.

This is just a game
, I told myself.
She’s play-acting.
I put my clothes back on and started over, taking great pains to make sure everything was folded neatly. Jeans, blouse, underthings, shoes, arranged in that order from bottom to top.

“Now it puts its clothes on the
bare floor
, and not the rug. Perhaps it wants to anger me? Dress and try again. Faster.” Val’s voice was controlled, menacing.

And yet I had to laugh, mostly from nervousness, but also because of the Keystone Cops nature of this game.

“Oh, the doll is amused?” She swooped close, grabbed my right ear and twisted hard, just like my mom did when I talked back. I cried out from pain, but also from the shock of those long-forgotten childhood memories being wrenched free. The body remembers, even if the mind does not.

Val’s face was inches away, eyes hard as drill bits.

“No, Ma’am!” I squealed, with a racing heart.

“Did I just hear the doll laugh?” Another twist.

“Yes, Ma’am!” My eyes watered from the pain.

“Doll is a
liar
, then?"

“No, Ma—” I began to think she might actually injure me, with her twisting. The word
frogspawn
flashed in my mind, begging to be spoken. This was happening too fast, it was too scary, but capitulation seemed a shorter path than rebellion.

“Yes, Ma’am! Yes, Ma’am! Doll is lying!”

“Look at me,” she hissed. “I do not tolerate lying dolls. Is that crystal clear?”

“Yes, Ma’am!” I said, with watering eyes.

She released me and stepped back a pace. “The doll will dress again, and undress properly. Quickly.”

Shaking, I did everything again, and arranged the small pile of clothing on the rug under the coffee table.

“Hmph,” she said, indicating her lingering displeasure. “Arms out at the sides. No, higher. Legs spread, back straight. Chin up, eyes down.”

I did as I was told, the pose recalling da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man. And that poor hooded Iraqi in Abu Ghraib, standing on a box with electrical wires on his out-flung hands. The memory gave me gooseflesh.

After putting on supple, expensive-looking leather gloves, she began a thorough, humiliating inspection of my body. She scrutinized my ears, my teeth, under my arms.

“From now on, it will shave more closely. And between its legs, too; I can’t abide poor hygiene.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“Arms down. There’s a bathroom in the main hall, on the right.” She indicated the direction with a tilt of her head. “It will find the shaving cream and razor, and make itself tidy. Remember to clean up when finished. Go. Quickly, now."

I did as she instructed, and returned fifteen minutes later to suffer another inspection.

She sighed dramatically. “That will have to do, I suppose. From now on the doll will attend to these things on its own, and not
waste my time
. Does it understand?"

“Yes, Ma’am."

“Then kneel on the rug, and attend. Back straight, chin up, eyes down. Hands on its thighs."

I obeyed.

She walked around behind me, out of my sight, and I knew better than to break position. My eyes found a framed reproduction of Bruegel’s
Hell
on the wall before me, lit by a halogen spotlight. The painting showed a tableau of rioting people and impossible monsters, under a layer of sulfurous haze. The unsettling image did nothing to lessen my apprehension.

A hissing voice, close in my still-burning ear. “Is the doll nervous?”

I twitched. “Yes, Ma’am.”

She tucked my hair out of the way and traced a gloved finger around the curve of my ear. “Good.” Goosebumps rose all over my body.

“Now you will learn the basics of poise, and movement. Most dolls come to me knowing these things. Because you’re a complete innocent, I suppose we’ll have to start at square one.” She grabbed a handful of my hair and pulled me close, twisting my head to face her. She was
strong
, and it hurt. “Pay attention now; I don’t like to repeat myself. It vexes me.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” I mewed. Held thus, an electric current of emotion sliced through me: not quite terror, not quite lust, but something akin to both. It grounded deep in my belly, sparked a spreading warmth, and I knew with absolute certainty I would grow to crave this woman’s touch, and yet fear it.

She released me roughly, and walked a couple of paces before turning to face me again.

“This is ‘front’, meaning ‘come here’,” Val said, snapping the fingers of her left hand. “And this is ‘kneel’,” she said, pointing to the floor before her. “These two signals tell the doll to approach and kneel before me, where indicated."

I did this, not quite sure if I was supposed to. But she didn’t complain, so I must have guessed correctly.

“This is the sign for ‘heel’.” She patted her left hand against her thigh firmly enough to make a sound. “The doll will come stand behind me, half a pace to my left. Here.” I stood where she was looking. When she pointed downward, I knelt.

“There will be other signs to learn, but this will serve for now. Would it like to see the rest of the house?” Val asked.

“Yes, Ma’am."

§

Being shown someone’s house is a very different thing when you’re completely naked (for one thing), and busy concentrating on your guide’s left hand. I wanted to gawk, but didn’t dare miss Val’s signals. After a while I began to anticipate her rhythms, however, and was able to look around more freely.

Val’s house was quite large. There were four bedrooms, and the downstairs pair were for her dolls’ use. She had the nicest bathrooms I’ve ever seen. I envied her kitchen; all stainless steel, marble, and glowing wood. Everywhere I looked, the house was expertly and tastefully decorated, and
spotless
. Her maid—whose name was Yolanda, I learned—was one hell of a duster.

Val loved art. Paintings and photographs decorated almost every wall. Her taste in art, however, was unusual. For while it was all beautiful, the imagery was also slightly disturbing in its single-minded depiction of the relentless advance of entropy. The Bruegel painting of Hell was entirely consistent with the rest of her collection. Whether the subject was a still life, or nude, or landscape, the images reminded me of those online galleries of photographs taken in abandoned asylums and decaying factories. She
loved
that texture of apocalypse, of hopeless ruin. It made a shocking and quite deliberate counterpoint to the obsessively tidy spaces she lived in.

Val then unlocked a stout door, and showed me into, incredibly, a dungeon. It was a medium-sized room—medium-sized for
this
house, which meant it was still twice as big as my living room—containing several pieces of furniture which were clearly designed to restrain a person, though in most cases I couldn’t guess their exact purpose. The big, brushed aluminum X-shaped cross with attachment points along its sides was obvious. So, too, were the rings set firmly in the walls, the floor, and hanging on the ends of chains from the ceiling. The padded saw-horse thing, a little less so. Other items were simply enigmas.

There was a rack on the wall from which hung various things: cuffs, whips, crops, chains, clamps, gags, tidy bundles of rope of varying diameters and materials. She had me explore all of these things unhurriedly, and I did so, touching the various surfaces, fascinated and afraid at the same time. I was not eager to experience their intended functions. Little scuff marks on the rack, the pegs, told me this was not merely a display case. These implements had been
used
.

But it was not like any dungeon I’d ever seen in movies or fetish photographs. For one, it was just as immaculate as the rest of the house. For another thing, it lacked the usual Gothic clichés such as stone walls or big wooden beams; it was all very modern. The room was unnervingly quiet, like a recording studio, probably because of the black, sound-sucking anechoic padding mounted in big squares on the walls and ceiling. Attached to the wall opposite the big X-cross was a sleek, expensive sound system.

“The room is completely soundproof,” Val told me. “You can scream and scream and no one will hear a whisper outside these walls, while the door is shut."

I hoped she was simply being dramatic.

Unlike all the other rooms of the house, however, there was not a single painting or photograph on the wall.

I was relieved when she ushered me from the room and locked the door again.

§

Val led me back through the aromatic kitchen, where Yolanda was cooking dinner. I might have been invisible for all the attention she paid me.

I was apprehensive when Val slid open the big glass door leading to the back yard, unsure about neighbors seeing me naked. But I kept pace with her, maintaining the proper distance.

I needn’t have worried. The back yard was ringed by tall, dense hedges and shielded by a curved hillside. There weren’t any houses near or high enough to see onto the property. Beyond the covered patio was a swimming pool with an attached hot tub on the right side. On the left was a small but well-landscaped area with a few trees and a gazebo. Nearby, a small waterfall tumbled over an artistic rock wall to fill a pretty koi pond. In the early evening light, with the yard lights on and crickets starting to chirp, the scene was unreal, dreamlike in the manner of a Maxfield Parrish painting.

The air was still warm, the light breeze delicious on my bare skin. Far overhead, a hawk circled on the last thermals of the day. A hush lay upon the scene. Val led me around the yard, allowing me to see everything. Her mood was more serene, contemplative, but I didn’t know how long that would last.

She sat on a bench beside the koi pond and pointed to the grass beside her feet. I knelt.