I’m chained and kneeling in the corner of the room when the doorbell goes.
He put me there – naked but for the collar around my neck, chain lead attached to the wardrobe to keep me in place. I’m on my knees, legs a little splayed, bright red cane marks striping my thighs from earlier when I voiced my disagreement about this proposed treatment. He has his own set of red marks – four little crescent moons on his side where I dug my nails in and curled them under, tearing skin. This is the reason that my hands are now bound, fists wound round and round with duct tape, nails now digging in to my own palms. Uncanny little silver paws. I feel ludicrous, hot, humiliated.
I am here because I am a bad dog. In recent weeks I have been pushy, headstrong, unable to control my impulses when it comes to biting and scratching. I have rolled my eyes and snapped my teeth and wriggled away from conversations that I didn’t want to entertain. I didn’t want to talk about my behaviour. He calls me recalcitrant. I called him an asshole.
This is why I am here. He tells me if I won’t talk then I will listen.
Before he answers the door he stands in front of me. I am stubbornly silent. After my earlier show of defiance which earned me my welted thighs, I am determined not to react. To appear unbothered, unabashed. As if he can’t hurt me like this, as if he can’t hurt me at all.
Keep your eyes down. Don’t move.
That’s all he says to me before he leaves the room.
My heart is thudding loud and heavy in my chest as I hear him open the door and greet her. Their voices are muffled by the closed bedroom door and the rushing in my ears, but I’m painfully aware of the contrast in tones, the lighter pitch of her voice compared to his. There’s a sick dizziness in my stomach at the sudden reality of the situation. My whole body feels flush with a wave of heat and I splay my toes, try to dig them in to the carpet, try to ground myself.
I tense my chest and try and breathe steadily as they come in to the room. The desire to look up is almost overwhelming but I keep my gaze trained on the carpet in front of me, further down to my mittened hands, then close my eyes. Soft shuffling of feet, things being placed on the floor – her jacket and bag, I imagine. I’m straining my ears trying to work out where their bodies are in relation to one another, to me, to the objects in the room. I try to feel the texture of the air as they move. My senses feel painfully acute.
She must have moved towards me – or maybe he is just reminding her – because he speaks. “Don’t talk to her.”
She starts to say something but he cuts her off. Warning. Repeats himself: “Don’t talk to her.”
My face burns. I can’t help it – my head lifts a fraction of an inch as I look up. If he’s talking to her, he won’t be looking at me – maybe that’s why I try and sneak a look. But it doesn’t feel like a conscious decision – more like someone pulled a string, hit a nerve, jerked me awake. I catch a glimpse of her – back towards me, dark hair, taller than me – but he sees me looking and I’m flinching backwards as he strides over and grabs me by hair. He hits me, hard, in the face.
I hear her giggle.
In that moment I hate her with an intensity that has me pushing back against him and biting down a snarl. Furious enough that I’m barely aware of what he is doing as he wraps something around my head, over my eyes. It’s nominally a blindfold, but whatever he’s using is overlarge so it’s covering my face too, which he knows I hate. Right now, I’m too mad to care. He tightens his fist in my hair, gives me one last juddering shake, and moves away. I hear the dip in the mattress as he pushes her on to the bed and all the fury drains out of me immediately, like he’s slapped me again.
I kneel, paralysed and numb. I kneel quietly. I kneel and listen to him fuck her.
She is quiet. She makes hardly any noise at all. I am suddenly ashamed of myself, of all the noises that I make, that I would be making if I was her. Occasionally her breathing is punctuated by a tiny moan, a little ‘mmm’ of something – whether pain or pleasure is unclear – and every time I feel my skin blush hot and full of new shame. My hands inside their taped mitts are aching with the need to dig in to something – the carpet, my own arms, each other. I realise I’m shaking.
I wonder if it’s worse, not being able to see – I’m aware of them moving, bedsheets rustling, the slick noise of their bodies and mouths, but having to wonder and imagine is agony. The noises he makes are so painfully familiar. They are the noises I hear when he fucks me.
I hide in my body. I hunch my shoulders, my arms in front of my chest, head down. Whatever is wrapped around my face has slipped so it’s covering my nose and the hot dark feeling of claustrophobia is unbearable. I retreat further into my body and focus on my breathing, try to drown out the noise of them, which has become more intense, frantic, harder to ignore.
I can’t ignore it. It’s all I can hear. I find myself straining my ears as I hear that familiar tension in his breathing, the cut-off groan on an indrawn breath. Sick, dread anticipation. She’s groaning, too, like a broken toy. I want to lift my hands to my ears and block it all out but I know he’ll hear the taped mitts rustle if I move, I know he’ll see. So I listen, the hated blindfold clinging to my face, wet with tears.
Afterwards they lie quiet. I shudder fitfully in the corner. I feel exhausted, and my body aches. The rest of me – the me that is not my body – feels numb. I hear them get up, start dressing, and my skin crawls with the thought of being looked at. I wonder if she is looking at me, or pointedly ignoring my presence. I feel like I’m simultaneously burning and freezing cold.
After she leaves, I feel him stand in front of me for what feels like forever. I’ve stopped crying but my heart is pounding just as frantically as when this all began. More so, maybe. He bends down so he’s crouching in front of me – I can smell him, the just-fucked warmth of his body, the sharp tang of sweat and sex. A steadying hand lifts my chin, though I’m trying to hide my face, tuck it away from him. He leans his head against mine. Carefully lifts the blindfold from my face and places his mouth directly against my ear, his breath making me shiver.
He starts to speak.
I listen.
