Into the Dark Wilds Read online

  “You bring a book like that into my home, I get honest. Lose it somewhere, Chloe.”

  “Maybe I’d be better off moving out with it,” I rejoined, the first nasty thought that came to mind.

  He turned back to me after he was almost at the door, and nodded. “Yeah, maybe that would be better,” he said.

  “You want me to move out?”

  He thought a moment. “Yeah, yeah I do.” I know it was relief that I saw on his face.

  ***

  Gatov called me into his office two days later. It would seem that I was pissing off every man in my life, friend or foe, and I could hardly tell which was which anymore. Seeing the administrator’s pissed-off scowl, I told him that he spent far too much time frowning, that his handsome features just didn’t look right with such grimaces on his lips. Of course he wrote that off as useless information.

  “You always disappear for days?” he asked.

  “Days? I’ve been away two. I had to move out of my apartment, and Logan was in the mood to make it a slow, painful parting.”

  “Legal arrangement?” he asked.

  “No, it hadn’t gotten to that.”

  “Well, I am sorry, but that still doesn’t excuse the fact that someone had to sub for you.”

  “I suppose that’s inconsiderate of me?”

  “I suppose you’d better take care of your personal problems and be here at work when you’re needed. Unless you’re practically dying you’re so sick, you show up.” Gatov pulled a copy of the previous night’s paper off his desk and tossed it to me. “I need you to check out these purveyors. Several new ones, the paper doesn’t want to run bogus advertisements. See if they’re legit.”

  “I thought you had an investigations department for that?”

  “And I thought a young woman posing as a neophyte would be better.”

  I looked at the ads for sexual services thinking I should be more irate being put on this non-productive task. Certainly he couldn’t have known where my recent sexual desires had been lurking.

  “Should take two days.”

  “Why me?” I tried a little annoyance.

  “Because you don’t show up for work for two days, I figure I can give you any damned assignment I want and you’ll do it. It’ll only take a few phone calls and a meeting or two.”

  This wasn’t a good thing letting him take the advantage over me. But I was duly chastised. Taking the paper in hand I disappeared for the rest of the day inside my cubicle, making bogus phone calls to sex lines and various slave trade operators. By the end of the day, I knew that this had been a totally futile effort, all the ads checked out. I bet that ‘Investigations’ had already looked into all of them, and this was nothing but penance to Max Gatov’s wry sense of justice and twisted sense of humor. But what an interesting penance it was.

  I spent most of my evening shoving boxes from room to room in my new apartment. It was a spiritless place, not like the bright rooms that Logan and I shared—that I’d so thoughtfully chosen when were new lovers in love with ourselves. Then, Logan would do most anything to please me sexually, though I wasn’t asking for the kinky things that are more in tune with my real desires. This new apartment was ten blocks from his, I figured an ample distance. It’s only saving grace was its age. Liking the feel of old things, the place certainly had an ancient atmosphere, even if it was bleak. The heat pipes clanged like someone got up every morning at five and took a sledge hammer to them. At the sink, the water dripped like the rusty spout of an old faucet, one slow lazy drop of water at a time. Grabbing my consciousness when I was about to fall asleep, I’d wait anxiously for the next drop to fall, and the next and the next until I’d propel myself out of bed to find some way to stop the aggravation.

  When I got tired of the process of moving in, I cleared a path to my lone chair, the one I had to fight Logan for. I’d have died rather than give it up. Getting cozy inside its high arms and cushioned back, I rested my feet on a carton filled with towels and let my mind drift as my eyes moved from one statement of my life to another, one box to the next, one material thing after another. All the accumulated wares of my existence really amounted to little, I knew that. What I knew I was seeking was something for my soul. I would have given up all these trappings for a decent fuck right then.

  The newspaper lay beside me, the one I’d thrown into my bag when I left for home that day. A page of sleazy advertisements beckoned my eye again. None of the ads were clearly bogus, though everyone knows that the gratification promised is far less than what’s delivered. But it wasn’t my job to make those judgments. Only one of the ads really enticed me, and that one had held a lock on my fascination ever since I first read it:

  Sexual Services

  Contractual Arrangements for Submissive Females

  Excellent Remuneration

  Telly: 205-20-60547

  Howath, Limoges

  I thought of Rowena reading the words, wondering if she’d have responded to such an advertisement if there had been one available to her. Her journal was casually thrown into my bag. Funny how I’d gotten so loose with the thing. I suppose having left Logan it didn’t really matter to me if I was caught with it.

  10/25 - I did not go mad. Some moments before dawn, Boheme returned and unlocked my bonds. My limbs ached from being stretched in such awkward ways, a fact my master cared little about. He did deposit me on the bed, after he allowed me to pee. The comfort of the bed’s warmth nurtured the weariness in my arms and legs; but I’d be reminded for the remainder of the night that I was a slave. Raising my arms above my head and parting my legs, I was secured again before he drew the blankets over my nakedness.

  10/26 - Boheme decides my fate daily, so I’m always caught off guard by his schemes. Yesterday, I was chained all day over the leather sawhorse. I couldn’t even make an entry in the journal. I’m afraid I was forgotten in this room of mine. With the door left open, I heard social conversation down below, Boheme informing his guests that he had a new slave. I thought nothing more of it until later in the afternoon when the guests traipsed up the stone steps so they could view me.

  “A fine hind end. Durable I imagine for a lot of things.”

  A rough hand played freely with my ass.

  “Is her back door tight? Would be a pity to stretch it too wide, making it lose its best quality.”

  “She’ll take a decent beating on these mounds.” My rear cheeks were slapped.

  “I know you take these slaves personally, Boheme, but should you need a second, I’ll offer myself.”

  “Frankly, she seems plain, needs some decoration.”

  To that comment I heard Boheme for the first time. “The decorations start tomorrow.”

  As I write now, I’ve just finished my first session with the artist. After three hours with his painstaking needles I now have a delicately drawn vine of ivy tattooed around my right breast. While I eyed the man a little bewilderedly, he leaned into my ear, and with a gravely whisper informed me that the vine will trail down my entire body to my toes, making a particularly intimate excursion about my genitals.

  When the session was complete, Boheme came in smiling broadly, reminding the man who worked on me that there was another matter that needed to be addressed. Recalling my master’s instructions, I was told to hold open my mouth, and deliver my tongue to be pierced. That is where my first diamond now rests. The assumption is that I won’t need my power of speech enough to worry about any consequences this act might have. As it is, I know that I’ll have some difficulty eating for the next few days.

  With each piece of myself that Boheme controls, I’m reminded how I felt at that first dominant’s hands, the one who created such a state of lofty bliss.

  Boheme tells me he’ll whip my ass late this day, his intent to see how much I can take before I pass out. I know I don’t faint easily so I’ll be enduring a great deal.

  10/28 - It has taken me two days to recover from the punishment. After my session with the arti
st, the ivy now at my navel, Boheme tied me over the leather saw horse and began the systematic thrashing of my backside. The blows began with leather lashes at my shoulder, talons and biting edges wrapping like my tattooed vine around my sides, only to be drawn away and then laid on in some different pattern. My back screaming for this to end, my master descended downward spending what seemed like an hour raising the pain on my buttocks. To make the feelings more vivid, but fraught with sexual promise, he affixed a bendable rod in my cunt. Each cut of the lash, crop, cane and paddle made that rod move delightfully in that opening. I screamed at the top of my lungs by the time the cane was striking me. Afterwards, I moaned as if I was about to climax. When the caning ended, the paddling began. Then I felt that desire for heaven once more. Odd, unintelligible pictures populated my brain, things from outside myself that I could never have known appeared before my inner eyes. I cast each picture out, wanting nothing in my head but the knowledge that my tortured body would soon spasm; and in that place deep between my legs where I carried the proxy prick, I would burst, delivering me into the hands of a satiating orgasm.

  I’m happy to report on these pages that I was successful in my mission to feel the climax. But I confess, the pictures plague me now as I lay lonely in bed, their meaning troubles me because I saw the murder of Darthganton, as his new bride looked on in horror. If that were to be, the order of things in our world would instantly change; and perhaps there would be no order at all.

  It made me cringe reading of Rowena’s first vision: the one no one was privy to until long after it came to be; the one that seers and prophets refer to as the “lost vision”; that cynics consider a ploy to substantiate a psychic gift that was never proven; and that doomsayers point to as the beginning of the end. Of course the judgment woven about that vision’s conception—in the middle of this woman’s orgasmic feast—makes it a controversy that will never die. Historians continued to argue the point. However, I’ve noticed that in this century’s most recent rendition of history there is little said of Rowena. I’m afraid she’ll eventually disappear altogether and I think that is a circumstance our world should never see.

  Reiterating my opinion of this issue to myself, I gazed once again at the advertisement lying on the box I was using for a table.

  Sexual Services

  Contractual Arrangements for Submissive Females

  Excellent Remuneration

  Telly: 205-20-60547

  Howath, Limoges

  My hand picked up the phone without even thinking, my loins were clawing me inside. Rowena clawed at me, the journal clawed at me, the lust and darkness clawed at me. Once hearing the man’s voice answer, I was bold enough to ask for what I wanted.

  “Tell me what I do to make a contractual arrangement?” I asked him.

  “You meet with me, “ he replied.

  “Where and when?” I asked.

  “I’m at the beer hall in the village every day at six. Ask for Sergei.”

  Chapter Three

  Gatov tossed the notes on my ad research in front of me. “This a thorough report?” I’d been trying to get through six stories that had to wait until I completed this ridiculous investigation. He was standing awkwardly close, so he could see in my telly screen. I hate men looking over my shoulder so much I’d bark at the ones in the building who tried doing that. I was about to do the same with this man until I remembered he was my administrator. I calmly turned off my telly screen and turned so he could see my face.

  “It’s as thorough as it’s going to be,” I answered.

  “I expected a few face-to-face encounters with these purveyors,” he said.

  “And I didn’t give you any, did I?”

  “Ms. Duchet, you realize that you’re close to losing your job.”

  “Am I?” I shot back happily. “Then I’m doing just what I wanted to do.”

  He wasn’t fazed.

  “If it means anything I’m meeting some guy, Sergei, from this ad tonight.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Why that one?”

  “I was throwing darts at the paper last night and that’s where the thing landed.”

  “I see.” He wanted to read more into my explanation than I was letting on. Let him try. He’d never know if it was personal or not, because I’d never let the man inside me that much.

  ***

  Sergei’s beer hall looked the same as all the others. A long flat bar, a half dozen drafts, a scattering of tables in an otherwise empty room. No food, no service, get your brew at the bar and that was it. I remember reading somewhere that women used to serve drinks to men, sometimes half naked. That would have been a terrific world for me, sauntering about a beer hall with a tray in hand, my body provocatively attired, offering more than just a good drink to soothe men’s passions. Why my mind raced to such things, I’m not sure, except that I know it had every thing to do with why I made the appointment in the first place. Actually, it wasn’t an appointment at all, since Sergei didn’t seem to care if I showed up or not. I’m sure he didn’t wait with a beating heart and hot loins. He probably had a dozen women a week call on the ad and never show their faces. I asked for him at the bar and was pointed toward the back of the narrow hall.

  Standing in front of his table, I waited for him to look up. “Sergei? I called you last night?”

  Once he gazed up at me, I had a full appreciation of Sergei’s appeal. He was a swarthy man, bushy dark eyebrows, hair alike, a dark complexion and a heavy beard, that he’d shave in the morning, and by five would show a thick afternoon shadow. Though he was sitting, I suspected he was only five feet ten or so. His husky body was strangely alluring, what I expected from a master. He seemed much less refined than Rowena’s Boheme whose picture in my mind was distinctly aristocratic. Even Charlie Hustle would have had more polish than this Sergei.

  “Humph.” He cast me an amused smile, and someone sitting next to him slipped out of the chair as though he’d been given a clue to leave.

  “Most women are older than you, how old are you?”

  “Almost twenty-three.”

  “That’s too young for this,” he declared flatly.

  I hadn’t planned on his objections. I’m a good looking woman who men enjoy watching even if they do it in secret. I know my sexual charms and I couldn’t fathom why he was about to dismiss me on account of age.

  “I’ve been on my own since I was sixteen,” I told him.

  “Ever turned a mount on the sly?” he wondered.

  “No. I’d rather keep it legal if I’m going to do it.”

  “Not as dangerous,” he seemed to be agreeing. “We’ll talk if you like, but understand, I’m very particular about the women I put on contract. The money’s too good to throw away, and I can’t have some romantic young bitch coupling with a guy the first week out. It happens all the time in the trade. But it won’t happen to me. I write that into the contract, first thing.”

  “I just left a relationship, I’m not looking for another.”

  “That’s another bad way to start,” he said.

  I was annoyed by his negativity. “Do you want to talk to me or not?” I asked, letting some exasperation show.

  “Sure I’ll talk, but I make no promises.”

  “Maybe I won’t want to make any promises either,” I said. I took the seat opposite his, not the one at his side.

  “So what kind of contract do you want?” he asked.

  “I have a job, and a life. I want this strictly sexual, part-time, and the more deviant the better.”

  “You’d better watch that language,” he warned.

  “I want what’s legal. The bondage and whips. Women, multiples, the variations thereof. What else is there?”

  “Legal, huh,” he nodded. “I’ve got a lot of call for what’s not these days. So where do you work?”

  “The news office.”

  “You’re not doing this as a reporter?” His face bore an angry scowl. But that was natural since journalists had reput
ations as worthy as lawyers.

  “No. It’s strictly personal. I’d like to keep my job, put in the hours we agree to, evenings and weekends work fine, but I’m flexible, since my hours at the paper can be adjusted.”

  “I don’t do less than two years,” he said. “Though I rather have you three.”

  “Two would be fine.”

  “And you’re opened-ended sexually? I can’t have it any other way.” he asked.

  I looked perplexed until it dawned on me what he was asking. “You mean anal?”

  He nodded.

  “I can learn,” I said.

  He shook his head toward the negative. “I don’t think you’re ready.”

  “But we don’t know, do we? Isn’t there a trial period? I go through your trial, if it’s not going to work, I’ll back out.”

  “Sorry, that doesn’t happen. Oh, it’s possible, but I’ve never known it to happen. And I don’t want to be bothered. No, we’ve both got to be sure before the contract’s drawn.”

  “Then I’ll be sure.”

  He eyed me with such suspicion I figured it a fifty-fifty chance I’d get what I wanted. Part of me couldn’t believe I was actually begging to sign my life away to this unknown quantity for the next two years. But the longer I was in this man’s presence, the more certain I became. I know he could feel that. How much I’d longed for this to satisfy my fantasies and satiate my flesh. All that was silently nurtured inside me couldn’t remain locked up forever. I knew I was walking into murky waters, but I could see no other way. The world had opened the way for me, Logan disappearing so easily and without much pain at all, and Gatov’s assignment there to stir the boiling pot. Giving my sexual faculties to this man for pleasure and money gave me a power over my life I never expected to have. Though I’m sure that Sergei would have thought me crazy to have breathed a single word of this.

  “You think you’re sure, but have no real clue,” he said. “No woman does until they’re in the middle of it.”

  “And do most regret it?” I asked.

  “Most compromise their visions of this life,” he said. “Regret? Probably not.”