“Who?”
Cary moves around the table
to stand on the other side, watching me. “You called the girl last
night Grace.”
I look up at him, still
trying to get my body to relax. I’m not wearing a shirt, so the
flexing of my arms and chest is clearly visible to him. I sit back,
forcing my one hand to flatten on the table, the other to pick up
the spoon again. I force a smile on my face too. “I must’ve been
more shitfaced than I thought.” But I can see that he’s not going
to let it go. “She was one of my products.” That’s not entirely a
lie. She would’ve been.
He only nods but keeps
watching me until I start eating again. Finally, he turns to leave.
“I’m heading back. Call me when you have a new girl; I’ll stop by
to help out.”
When I hear the bedroom
door close, I let the spoon drop again. Fuck. I can’t believe I let
myself get so angry with him, all for mentioning her. This
obsession is taking over.
I need to do something and
soon. I can’t let myself be preoccupied with Grace any longer. I
have two orders waiting, and I haven’t even tried to look for new
girls.
For one moment, I think
about grabbing Grace, taking her, training her and selling her off.
It’s what I’d planned before, what I told Cary I did already, but I
can feel my body tensing at this thought.
I can lie to myself, say
it’s because she’s off limits—my own stupid rules. But I know
that’s not it. Grace is only partially in my circle. She’s a
fucking model for fucksake, with absolutely no connections that I
can find. She’d still be perfect to take, perfect to train, a
perfect product for me.
Getting up and dumping my
uneaten breakfast down the sink, I can feel myself tensing even
more. So why the fuck can’t I do it?!
It would end my obsession.
Once I have her chained and broken, I know I’d be done with her.
Except the thought sounds hollow to me now.
The longest I’ve ever been
with one woman is seven months. She was the first girl, Raquel. I
dumped her after she agreed to marry the man of her father’s
choosing. Well, to be fair, I was only sixteen. It wasn’t like I
was going to ask her to wait for me or anything. And I’d already
had my fun with her by then, but that was the longest that I’d
spent with one girl.
The girls I train usually
only take a few weeks, a few months at the longest. Breaking a
woman is easy once you apply simple mindfuck techniques. Lack of
rest, sleep, food—these are the basics, plus equal applications of
pain and comfort. The first few days are the hardest, getting to
know fears and tolerance levels. Get them to eat from your hand and
they’re broken like any other animal. And I prefer to hand off
ownership as soon after they’re broken as possible; there’s less
confusion that way.
But Grace has been with me
now for over sixteen months. I haven’t had her physically for that
time. She hasn’t been chained in my cave the way I wanted. She
hasn’t been broken and trained for all that time. But I’ve thought
about her, thought about what I would do to her. She has been
mine , even
if she didn’t know
it.
So now the thought of her
being with anyone else, the thought of making her available to
anyone else... I don’t even want to finish the thoughts.
I want her broken.
But I want
her.
So now I have a plan again.
This calms me.
Smiling as I head into my
room, I think one more happy thought about her. Maybe I’ll rename
her. She’ll be broken. She’ll be anything I want her to be. Maybe
I’ll call her Scarlet.
San Francisco: Simon
Lamb
I wait. I know she’ll be
here. I just wait for her. I’ve decided today is the day she comes
to me. Willingly. Freely.
Or forcefully.
I don’t care.
Today is the day, Grace.
And this time,
you’re not getting away from me.
I look up each time the
door opens. I reach for my cup of coffee each time it’s not
her.
Finally, I watch her enter
the diner. Her hair’s pulled back but still a mess of tangles
K. Sterling
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Jonathan Maberry
Jane Hunt
James Kakalios