There are times when all I long for in bed is the warm, comforting feeling of being wrapped up in bondage clothing - you know the sort of thing: straitjacket or similar, keeping everything nicely in one place.
Probably thanks to my tubby-bitch body, I find it very difficult sometimes to find a position in which to sleep that is comfortable and won't end up giving me pins and needles when I wake up again. This leads to tossing, turning etc, which in turn leads to not falling asleep for ages and ages.
At such times, I fantasise about warm, fleecy bondage sleeping sacks or straitjackets, comfortable and soft against my skin, keeping me wrapped up in a nice, (in)decent, healthy posture for me to sleep. That prevents me from moving about, trying to find the perfect position that never comes because I can't help moving back and forth. That holds me close but not too tight, but means I can't end up accidentally cutting off my circulation somewhere.
In short, I dream (or rather, not dream, because I can't sleep!) of the freedom to sleep - a freedom given by the bondage.
I have no idea if it would work in practice or not, but it feels like it should work, and of course it is a fantasy anyway; I couldn't do it unless I had someone there to make sure it was safe (and to release me in the morning!)
Tuesday, 5 January 2010
Friday, 11 December 2009
Sunday, 20 September 2009
FICTION: Wise Woman and the Free
This is a story outline for what could turn into a trilogy of novels, if I ever get around to actually writing them. It started off with thinking about gynophagia fiction, which is a genre of erotic fiction that centres around cannibalism in which women are used as food (gynophagia literally means "eating women"). I always found it annoying that the fantasy worlds created by the authors were inherently unsustainable: women were being eaten at such a rate that there seemed to be no possibility of future generations of humans! Where would the next generation of woman meat come from (and indeed, the next generation of woman eaters!) if women are being eaten almost as soon as they reach adulthood? There's no chance to produce children, and so humanity would have to die out within a generation or two.
So, I started thinking about how a society of gynophages could be made sustainable (read the story outline to see what I did with that).
So it might sound a little bit odd that I think that this story is a feminist story! But it is, ecause I didn't stop with "what might a sustainable gynophagic society look like?" I continued and thought about what might happen to change that society. I thought about how, even though the men might not view the women as being fully human, the women would have the same basic intellect and abilities, and that hey would form their own worldviews. I thought about how the development of women's society in this world might undermine the power of men.
Which means that the story is not a simple gynophagia porn story, but instead becomes a story about women empowering themselves and acting for themselves. Arguably, this could also be seen as a criticism of factory farming in modern society. I shall say no more about it, but simply show you the story outline and you can see for yourselves what I mean:
***
About 150-200 years from now, following a Malthusian catastrophe that reduces the population drastically, the MRA movement has gained power and held it ever since. Womankind has been enslaved ever since, and systematically dehumanised. Women now exist only as “Breeders”, who exist purely to produce babies; “Sockets” who exist purely to be used for sex; and “Longpigs” who are slaughtered for food. As “Sockets” grow older and are deemed less attractive, they are moved into one of the other two categories No woman lives to reach menopause, because by then she is deemed useless.
Women are kept on farms, often in the open countryside, because it is believed that the freedom to roam (within limits) keeps them fitter (and therefore both better looking and better tasting) than indoor captivity. Only Breeders are kept indoors, because above all the male powers-that-be want to ensure no foetuses are damaged through falls, and also, in the name of cost-cutting and efficiency, want to ensure as much of the food energy put in is extracted in terms of a healthy child.
An innovation several decades ago made it possible to accelerate human growth so that a person can be brought to physical maturity much more quickly, in 5-6 years instead of 16-18 years. Again, this is seen as a great breakthrough because it means that instead of waiting for a girl to grow to become a woman, she can be grown physically into a woman much more quickly, thus saving on costs – a girl not old enough to bear children or to have sex being considered a waste of space and resources.
This also has the effect of keeping women perpetually ignorant and underdeveloped mentally: since they are still only 5-6 years old when they reach maturity physically, they are mentally not much more developed than children. Their 5-6 years are spent giving them just enough vocabulary to be able to understand the instructions given by the men who want to use them, and in training them to serve men sexually. This makes herding and controlling them much easier. Eventually, though, the women develop a language of their own, which uses the sexual terms but gives them other meanings, meanings that are deeper and broader than their original meanings but inspired by them; gradually, new words are created to fill the gaps that could not easily be expressed using the fragments of language that men had seen fit to give to women. This language would be totally obscure to the men watching over the women, who would see it as just gibbering, or where they recognise the sexual terms, laugh at the women repeating them.
One woman, though, escapes the herd and her fellows conspire to conceal her from the men. Since a woman who reaches 20 would be closer to 30 or 40 physically, by the time a woman reaches this age she is already being considered for “promotion” to Breeder or Longpig status, which means she disappears from the herd forever. But this woman, who escaped those fates, becomes legendary in her former herd. Because she lives longer than any woman ever imagined could happen, she is seen as a miracle and a great Wise Woman. Gradually, she starts to gather the experiences of women and learn them, telling them as tales and thinking about what they mean.
Younger women (aged 7 or 8) attend her and ask her advice on life matters. As the questions and experiences add up, the Wise Woman realises that men and women are not that different and that women could learn to fend for themselves and not have to serve men. She also forms the theory that there must be other herds somewhere, and so she hatches a plan to escape from the enclosed lands and find these other herds of women, and communicate the ideas to them. She starts to train some of the younger women to follow in her footsteps, so that they can teach the women in other herds about what has happened.
The men who run the farm notice that the women are behaving differently (“strangely” would be how they put it) and although they ignore it at first, they eventually start to investigate.
As the women put the finishing touches to their plan for escape, the men finally decide to enter the enclosure themselves and try to find the Wise Woman, whom they have finally worked out must exist. However, as they move through the grasslands in the direction of the Wise Woman's cave, they are surrounded by women. With utter confidence in their superiority and power, the men ignore the women or just bat them back with backhand swipes, maybe using a cane or some similar implement to beat them off individually. Suddenly, the women all advance at once, charging and attacking, using sticks from the woodland region in the same way that the men used their canes. The men are beaten to death.
The women continue with their escape plan, but will they manage to escape before men come to capture and slaughter them?
The women do escape, so that when the men arrive with their guns, cattle prods and more fiendish devices, they find only the Wise Woman (who is the only woman in the world to grow old enough to develop arthritis, and thus who couldn't escape). She has through her long years of learning, discovered some of the Men's Tongue, and so she greets them in their own language.
Possible resolutions of this: the men choose to interrogate her to find out what happened to all the other women; the men kill her as they would have done anyway (she's too old to be any use, after all); the men don't know what she is, because no men still living have seen a woman grow to middle age (let alone old age), so they either take her to study her, or else they assume (since she speaks their language) that she must be some form of man herself.
***
If it becomes a trilogy, Book 2 would obviously focus on the journey of the escaped women. Along the way they would face challenges of solving problems that they've never faced before such as figuring out how to feed themselves and even how to wipe their backsides. As they travel, they will also find evidence of a time before the population collapse, when women were more equal with men. Such evidence would have to be pictorial in nature since the women would be unable to read and unable to understand spoken words in the language of that time (which could be different again from the language used by the men of their time, as well as different from their own language).
In the meantime, the owners of the original farm will have been declared bankrupt with the loss of their income from the women. The men are confronted with a situation that they were unable to imagine because it was so far outside their worldview: women have killed men, and have somehow organised an escape, displaying an intelligence that they just didn't have in the opinions of the men. The question of what to do about it is therefore hard for them to understand, let alone answer. Eventually, though, they decide to cull or recapture the women. Using satellite technology to track them, the men organise a flight of helicopters from which to shoot at the women.
The women are at first caught by surprise by the airborne attack, but natural fear of the noise of the helicopters works in their favour – as the 'copters approach, the women scatter and flee for the shelter of wooded areas. A few stragglers are shot down, and for the first time the women actually see death dealt out to one of their own. The men land in their helicopters and under the cover of their firepower collect the corpses to take them back to their abattoirs and process them as meat. The hunting men celebrate their “bag” and contemplate making hunting a sport again, because they enjoyed the “thrill of the kill” so much.
The women continue their journey in a much more wary manner, always looking for cover where they can be hidden from the helicopter attacks.
Meanwhile, if the men didn't kill the Wise Woman, then there is a description of the first few days of them trying to figure out what to do with her.
Eventually, the women arrive at a barrier similar to the one they broke through in order to escape. Their most intelligent members reason that this must be where the other herds are living and so the free women break into the enclosure and make contact with the women there, bringing the news that women were not always animals but were equal with men.
***
Book 3 tells the story of how the women start to spread their story across all the herds in existence, and start to organise a real rebellion. If the Wise Woman survived in the first book, then she will also have an impact from inside the men's cities. The men are slow to realise what is happening (for instance, not aware for a while that women everywhere are coming to know about the escape and the historical evidence found of a time when the sexes were more equal) but eventually the potential for rebellion is realised, and the men start to think about how to stop it.
The story arc can end in two ways: one way is that the women eventually manage to storm a farm complex, and from there pour into the city to which it's connected, and overthrow the men there. The other way is that the rebellion fails for the moment, but that a large number (but small percentage) of the women escape into hiding in the wilderness and organise a society for themselves there, and organise how to recruit from the farms. This second option leaves open the possibility for more sequels.
Somewhere in it all, I want the women to realise where babies come from naturally – it stands to reason that some form of chemical birth control is used to keep Sockets from becoming pregnant (which would take time away from their usefulness as Sockets) but maybe one of the rebellious women manages to avoid taking it while she is being used, and becomes pregnant.
So, I started thinking about how a society of gynophages could be made sustainable (read the story outline to see what I did with that).
So it might sound a little bit odd that I think that this story is a feminist story! But it is, ecause I didn't stop with "what might a sustainable gynophagic society look like?" I continued and thought about what might happen to change that society. I thought about how, even though the men might not view the women as being fully human, the women would have the same basic intellect and abilities, and that hey would form their own worldviews. I thought about how the development of women's society in this world might undermine the power of men.
Which means that the story is not a simple gynophagia porn story, but instead becomes a story about women empowering themselves and acting for themselves. Arguably, this could also be seen as a criticism of factory farming in modern society. I shall say no more about it, but simply show you the story outline and you can see for yourselves what I mean:
***
About 150-200 years from now, following a Malthusian catastrophe that reduces the population drastically, the MRA movement has gained power and held it ever since. Womankind has been enslaved ever since, and systematically dehumanised. Women now exist only as “Breeders”, who exist purely to produce babies; “Sockets” who exist purely to be used for sex; and “Longpigs” who are slaughtered for food. As “Sockets” grow older and are deemed less attractive, they are moved into one of the other two categories No woman lives to reach menopause, because by then she is deemed useless.
Women are kept on farms, often in the open countryside, because it is believed that the freedom to roam (within limits) keeps them fitter (and therefore both better looking and better tasting) than indoor captivity. Only Breeders are kept indoors, because above all the male powers-that-be want to ensure no foetuses are damaged through falls, and also, in the name of cost-cutting and efficiency, want to ensure as much of the food energy put in is extracted in terms of a healthy child.
An innovation several decades ago made it possible to accelerate human growth so that a person can be brought to physical maturity much more quickly, in 5-6 years instead of 16-18 years. Again, this is seen as a great breakthrough because it means that instead of waiting for a girl to grow to become a woman, she can be grown physically into a woman much more quickly, thus saving on costs – a girl not old enough to bear children or to have sex being considered a waste of space and resources.
This also has the effect of keeping women perpetually ignorant and underdeveloped mentally: since they are still only 5-6 years old when they reach maturity physically, they are mentally not much more developed than children. Their 5-6 years are spent giving them just enough vocabulary to be able to understand the instructions given by the men who want to use them, and in training them to serve men sexually. This makes herding and controlling them much easier. Eventually, though, the women develop a language of their own, which uses the sexual terms but gives them other meanings, meanings that are deeper and broader than their original meanings but inspired by them; gradually, new words are created to fill the gaps that could not easily be expressed using the fragments of language that men had seen fit to give to women. This language would be totally obscure to the men watching over the women, who would see it as just gibbering, or where they recognise the sexual terms, laugh at the women repeating them.
One woman, though, escapes the herd and her fellows conspire to conceal her from the men. Since a woman who reaches 20 would be closer to 30 or 40 physically, by the time a woman reaches this age she is already being considered for “promotion” to Breeder or Longpig status, which means she disappears from the herd forever. But this woman, who escaped those fates, becomes legendary in her former herd. Because she lives longer than any woman ever imagined could happen, she is seen as a miracle and a great Wise Woman. Gradually, she starts to gather the experiences of women and learn them, telling them as tales and thinking about what they mean.
Younger women (aged 7 or 8) attend her and ask her advice on life matters. As the questions and experiences add up, the Wise Woman realises that men and women are not that different and that women could learn to fend for themselves and not have to serve men. She also forms the theory that there must be other herds somewhere, and so she hatches a plan to escape from the enclosed lands and find these other herds of women, and communicate the ideas to them. She starts to train some of the younger women to follow in her footsteps, so that they can teach the women in other herds about what has happened.
The men who run the farm notice that the women are behaving differently (“strangely” would be how they put it) and although they ignore it at first, they eventually start to investigate.
As the women put the finishing touches to their plan for escape, the men finally decide to enter the enclosure themselves and try to find the Wise Woman, whom they have finally worked out must exist. However, as they move through the grasslands in the direction of the Wise Woman's cave, they are surrounded by women. With utter confidence in their superiority and power, the men ignore the women or just bat them back with backhand swipes, maybe using a cane or some similar implement to beat them off individually. Suddenly, the women all advance at once, charging and attacking, using sticks from the woodland region in the same way that the men used their canes. The men are beaten to death.
The women continue with their escape plan, but will they manage to escape before men come to capture and slaughter them?
The women do escape, so that when the men arrive with their guns, cattle prods and more fiendish devices, they find only the Wise Woman (who is the only woman in the world to grow old enough to develop arthritis, and thus who couldn't escape). She has through her long years of learning, discovered some of the Men's Tongue, and so she greets them in their own language.
Possible resolutions of this: the men choose to interrogate her to find out what happened to all the other women; the men kill her as they would have done anyway (she's too old to be any use, after all); the men don't know what she is, because no men still living have seen a woman grow to middle age (let alone old age), so they either take her to study her, or else they assume (since she speaks their language) that she must be some form of man herself.
***
If it becomes a trilogy, Book 2 would obviously focus on the journey of the escaped women. Along the way they would face challenges of solving problems that they've never faced before such as figuring out how to feed themselves and even how to wipe their backsides. As they travel, they will also find evidence of a time before the population collapse, when women were more equal with men. Such evidence would have to be pictorial in nature since the women would be unable to read and unable to understand spoken words in the language of that time (which could be different again from the language used by the men of their time, as well as different from their own language).
In the meantime, the owners of the original farm will have been declared bankrupt with the loss of their income from the women. The men are confronted with a situation that they were unable to imagine because it was so far outside their worldview: women have killed men, and have somehow organised an escape, displaying an intelligence that they just didn't have in the opinions of the men. The question of what to do about it is therefore hard for them to understand, let alone answer. Eventually, though, they decide to cull or recapture the women. Using satellite technology to track them, the men organise a flight of helicopters from which to shoot at the women.
The women are at first caught by surprise by the airborne attack, but natural fear of the noise of the helicopters works in their favour – as the 'copters approach, the women scatter and flee for the shelter of wooded areas. A few stragglers are shot down, and for the first time the women actually see death dealt out to one of their own. The men land in their helicopters and under the cover of their firepower collect the corpses to take them back to their abattoirs and process them as meat. The hunting men celebrate their “bag” and contemplate making hunting a sport again, because they enjoyed the “thrill of the kill” so much.
The women continue their journey in a much more wary manner, always looking for cover where they can be hidden from the helicopter attacks.
Meanwhile, if the men didn't kill the Wise Woman, then there is a description of the first few days of them trying to figure out what to do with her.
Eventually, the women arrive at a barrier similar to the one they broke through in order to escape. Their most intelligent members reason that this must be where the other herds are living and so the free women break into the enclosure and make contact with the women there, bringing the news that women were not always animals but were equal with men.
***
Book 3 tells the story of how the women start to spread their story across all the herds in existence, and start to organise a real rebellion. If the Wise Woman survived in the first book, then she will also have an impact from inside the men's cities. The men are slow to realise what is happening (for instance, not aware for a while that women everywhere are coming to know about the escape and the historical evidence found of a time when the sexes were more equal) but eventually the potential for rebellion is realised, and the men start to think about how to stop it.
The story arc can end in two ways: one way is that the women eventually manage to storm a farm complex, and from there pour into the city to which it's connected, and overthrow the men there. The other way is that the rebellion fails for the moment, but that a large number (but small percentage) of the women escape into hiding in the wilderness and organise a society for themselves there, and organise how to recruit from the farms. This second option leaves open the possibility for more sequels.
Somewhere in it all, I want the women to realise where babies come from naturally – it stands to reason that some form of chemical birth control is used to keep Sockets from becoming pregnant (which would take time away from their usefulness as Sockets) but maybe one of the rebellious women manages to avoid taking it while she is being used, and becomes pregnant.
Thursday, 13 August 2009
DREAM: Kidnapped for cruelty
About an hour ago as I type this opening sentence, I awoke from a 4hr nap furing which I had a rather disturbing and darkly erotic dream.
I was travelling by train to visit my parents when a couple, male and female, came and sat opposite me on the train. But as we approached the next station on the line, they grabbed me and forced me at knifepoint to leave the train with them at that station. I only had a glimpse of the station name, but it was a small holt in a tiny village, remote in the English countryside. With the threat of the knife and the strength of the male partner in this couple were able to gag-and-bag me and load me into their van.
I don't know how long they drove for (it was a dream, time is a bit weird in dreams!) but when we arrived at their destination I was bound wrists behind my back, but the bag was removed so I could see where I was (I have no memory in the dream of the gag being removed, but I also didn't seem to have it in after that).
At this point I should note that my gender and genitalia were somewhat indistinct in the dream. At times I fancied that I was female, with genitals to match, and at times I seemed to be in my normal, male-genital, body.
The place to which I had been brought by my captors was a large Victorian-style country house, which seemed to have gardens and outhosues as well. I was led first to a large greenhouse/conservatory type building (again, in the Victorian style) - I don't remember seeing it at first, but it only makes sense that it was there because of what comes later.
I was led into the building and then down through a trapdoor with steps leading into a basement. As I turned a corner in the staircase, I realised my predicament: the basement was set up as a serious BDSM dungeon, and there were cameras and stage lighting around. It was obvious that I was going to be a very unwilling star in their hardcore torture movie. They were already talking about how much fun it would be to break me and rape me - especially the woman.
She was very sexy to look at, but by this stage in the dream I really wasn't thinking about that at all. She had long black hair, was fairly tall with a very curvy figure - as they say, "goes in and out in all the right places) and of course she was wearing a black catsuit. No headgear, and the catsuit wasn't really designed to be the stereotypical "sexy" outfit. You could see that to her, it was about practicality and ease of movement. That just made the overall impression of her in my dream even more menacing.
The man was less distinct in focus, but he had blond or light brown hair, and a hint of stubble of facial hair (it is hard to say which, the dream wasn't that specific). He was tall but stockily-built and the physical type I would guess now the sort you would associate with hard physical labouring jobs. His personality was less clear, because he didn't speak as much (the woman appears to have been the main "mouthpiece" of their collaboration), but in their easy sadism the two were clearly on a wavelength and revelled in each other's cruelty to their victims. He, it appeared from their relations, was more often the "star" of their movies as torturer, but she often played a role as well.
I saw all this and I said to them simply, even as my heart filled with dread for what was to come, "Well, let's get on with it then." I was steeling myself to take whatever tortures they would throw at me, since I was in no position to be able to escape. The woman (they never had names in the dream) wasn't happy with this. Although they did tie me to a rack and beat me for a while, the fact that I took it all stoically and determined to endure and survive only made her more frustrated with me. Even though I was screaming and moaning and crying out in pain at some of her strokes (I remember particularly a crop, and a short single-tail, being used on my arse and back), I was clearly willing to accept it - the cries were purely physical responses, not anything coming from the heart or mind.
"We must break [her/him]" she said. To me she said, "It is no use to us if you take what we give you and resist. Our viewers pay to see people broken. They want to see you broken, and we will give them what they want eventually."
Throughout it all, I was convinced that all I had to do was give them what they wanted for their movie and I would then be allowed to go free (they told me this, and for some reason in the dream it seemed perfectly logical and reasonable to believe them, and there was absolutely zero fear that they might actually be going to snuff me instead).
After a while, she despaired of me and I was led back to the greenhouse/conservatory and put in a cage that was in a permanent twilight of green light caused by the sun being filtered through the dark canopy of leaves overhead. They planned to break my resistance by keeping me there, hidden away.
Oddly, they left my mobile phone within reach. But the man did something with it that meant that it only registered the first 5 digits of a number before cutting out. I was unable to use it to call anyone for help. The woman kept coming back to taunt me and tell me that I had no hope and I should just surrender to them, that they would break me eventually.
All the time I was kept there, I looked for ways to test my bondage. The woman kept changing how much freedom I had within the cage (I was never allowed to leave the cage). I never entertained thoughts of actually escaping, but I did anything I could that would mean they had to keep an eye on me or work harder to keep me there, because it kept my spirits up and prevented me from giving up and being broken by them.
Eventually, I realised that I could use a 4-digit sequence to call the last number that called me (the 1471 number, I don't think that really works on mobile phones, but in the dream it did). I was able through that to call my parents whom I'd been going to visit, and explain to my father over the phone that I had been kidnapped. I managed to tell him roughly where I'd been taken from the train and explain how come it had taken me so long to get a message out, and asked him to send the police. As I was doing so, the couple came storming down the path to my cage and the last thing I was able to say to my father was that, "even though it's not much, it gives the police a palce to start looking!" At that moment, the phone was snatched from my hand (oddly, it was shaped like a Nintendo Wii handset and nanchuk - not sure why that was) by the woman and she crushed it beneath her boot heel. She was very angry, not just with me but with herself for not realising that I might be able to use the 1471 trick to send a message (it occurred to me after waking that I could also have called the emergency services directly on 999 - but I think the man probably disabled the "9" key or something to prevent that). But she told me that the police still had a lot of ground to search and they would never find me (stupidly, I hadn't described the place where I was being held!)
In the end, I think I was rescued but the dream was a bit vague about how that happened.
I was travelling by train to visit my parents when a couple, male and female, came and sat opposite me on the train. But as we approached the next station on the line, they grabbed me and forced me at knifepoint to leave the train with them at that station. I only had a glimpse of the station name, but it was a small holt in a tiny village, remote in the English countryside. With the threat of the knife and the strength of the male partner in this couple were able to gag-and-bag me and load me into their van.
I don't know how long they drove for (it was a dream, time is a bit weird in dreams!) but when we arrived at their destination I was bound wrists behind my back, but the bag was removed so I could see where I was (I have no memory in the dream of the gag being removed, but I also didn't seem to have it in after that).
At this point I should note that my gender and genitalia were somewhat indistinct in the dream. At times I fancied that I was female, with genitals to match, and at times I seemed to be in my normal, male-genital, body.
The place to which I had been brought by my captors was a large Victorian-style country house, which seemed to have gardens and outhosues as well. I was led first to a large greenhouse/conservatory type building (again, in the Victorian style) - I don't remember seeing it at first, but it only makes sense that it was there because of what comes later.
I was led into the building and then down through a trapdoor with steps leading into a basement. As I turned a corner in the staircase, I realised my predicament: the basement was set up as a serious BDSM dungeon, and there were cameras and stage lighting around. It was obvious that I was going to be a very unwilling star in their hardcore torture movie. They were already talking about how much fun it would be to break me and rape me - especially the woman.
She was very sexy to look at, but by this stage in the dream I really wasn't thinking about that at all. She had long black hair, was fairly tall with a very curvy figure - as they say, "goes in and out in all the right places) and of course she was wearing a black catsuit. No headgear, and the catsuit wasn't really designed to be the stereotypical "sexy" outfit. You could see that to her, it was about practicality and ease of movement. That just made the overall impression of her in my dream even more menacing.
The man was less distinct in focus, but he had blond or light brown hair, and a hint of stubble of facial hair (it is hard to say which, the dream wasn't that specific). He was tall but stockily-built and the physical type I would guess now the sort you would associate with hard physical labouring jobs. His personality was less clear, because he didn't speak as much (the woman appears to have been the main "mouthpiece" of their collaboration), but in their easy sadism the two were clearly on a wavelength and revelled in each other's cruelty to their victims. He, it appeared from their relations, was more often the "star" of their movies as torturer, but she often played a role as well.
I saw all this and I said to them simply, even as my heart filled with dread for what was to come, "Well, let's get on with it then." I was steeling myself to take whatever tortures they would throw at me, since I was in no position to be able to escape. The woman (they never had names in the dream) wasn't happy with this. Although they did tie me to a rack and beat me for a while, the fact that I took it all stoically and determined to endure and survive only made her more frustrated with me. Even though I was screaming and moaning and crying out in pain at some of her strokes (I remember particularly a crop, and a short single-tail, being used on my arse and back), I was clearly willing to accept it - the cries were purely physical responses, not anything coming from the heart or mind.
"We must break [her/him]" she said. To me she said, "It is no use to us if you take what we give you and resist. Our viewers pay to see people broken. They want to see you broken, and we will give them what they want eventually."
Throughout it all, I was convinced that all I had to do was give them what they wanted for their movie and I would then be allowed to go free (they told me this, and for some reason in the dream it seemed perfectly logical and reasonable to believe them, and there was absolutely zero fear that they might actually be going to snuff me instead).
After a while, she despaired of me and I was led back to the greenhouse/conservatory and put in a cage that was in a permanent twilight of green light caused by the sun being filtered through the dark canopy of leaves overhead. They planned to break my resistance by keeping me there, hidden away.
Oddly, they left my mobile phone within reach. But the man did something with it that meant that it only registered the first 5 digits of a number before cutting out. I was unable to use it to call anyone for help. The woman kept coming back to taunt me and tell me that I had no hope and I should just surrender to them, that they would break me eventually.
All the time I was kept there, I looked for ways to test my bondage. The woman kept changing how much freedom I had within the cage (I was never allowed to leave the cage). I never entertained thoughts of actually escaping, but I did anything I could that would mean they had to keep an eye on me or work harder to keep me there, because it kept my spirits up and prevented me from giving up and being broken by them.
Eventually, I realised that I could use a 4-digit sequence to call the last number that called me (the 1471 number, I don't think that really works on mobile phones, but in the dream it did). I was able through that to call my parents whom I'd been going to visit, and explain to my father over the phone that I had been kidnapped. I managed to tell him roughly where I'd been taken from the train and explain how come it had taken me so long to get a message out, and asked him to send the police. As I was doing so, the couple came storming down the path to my cage and the last thing I was able to say to my father was that, "even though it's not much, it gives the police a palce to start looking!" At that moment, the phone was snatched from my hand (oddly, it was shaped like a Nintendo Wii handset and nanchuk - not sure why that was) by the woman and she crushed it beneath her boot heel. She was very angry, not just with me but with herself for not realising that I might be able to use the 1471 trick to send a message (it occurred to me after waking that I could also have called the emergency services directly on 999 - but I think the man probably disabled the "9" key or something to prevent that). But she told me that the police still had a lot of ground to search and they would never find me (stupidly, I hadn't described the place where I was being held!)
In the end, I think I was rescued but the dream was a bit vague about how that happened.
Friday, 17 July 2009
Violent movies and "torture porn"
Renegade Evolution has a post talking about violence in movies, and reading it I was struck by self-questioning. Particularly when Ren talks about not liking the gory horror movies, and in particular about (realistic) rape scenes in movies.
My sexuality is what it is, and trying to change it only hurt me and didn't achieve anything. I have to face and accept that there are some pretty dark things in my mind and all I can do is decide what effect they have on the real world. I'm a sadist, and I get off on fear, humiliation and pain in others. There are safe ways to enjoy that in real life, but in fantasy you can go much further. Ren talks about how she goes to extremes in her written fiction - where "there is NO question of fiction….there are no real people and no real people even acting." She adds, though, that "it is not designed to be 'erotic' in any sane sense of the word."
There are accounts of torture, rape, and murderous violence that I have watched or read and not found erotic. Most of them have been accounts of real-life events, and I am just sickened by them: the book "4 Hours in My Lai", about the war crimes committed by US forces in the Vietnamese villages collectively known as My Lai has several such accounts, and there is no way I could see that as anything but sickening and deeply disturbing. The fictionalised account of what happens to "disappeared" people in totalitarian regimes presented by "Requiem for a Lost Soul" is another such story (I think it's set in a Latin American country, but it could easily be somewhere else). I can't watch Crimewatch UK on televsion when they have appeals for help in rape cases because of the effect it has on me.
And yet, fantasies of rape are very much a part of my sexuality. My readers will no doubt be aware of the post I wrote about when those fantasies almost crossed into real life. That's the dangerous side of my nature, and I cannot get rid of it, only control it and know myself well enough.
So, very often, gory horror movies do turn me on. They deal with fear, desperation, and pain. The genre sometimes called "torture porn", for me, really is porn. It pushes my buttons in the way that porn is supposed to push non-sadist folks' buttons. I am confident that for most people, the sexual aspect is still there, but it is not so clear: the point is not to turn people on directly, but to provoke horror and visceral reactions. I am not most people. I am a sadist, and I have grown used to this. But it does trouble me that maybe people do find themselves being drawn to potentially harmful sexual expression, through harder forms of porn, and through these "torture porn" movies, and maybe not have the tools to deal with it. God knows, it's not something we're taught in school or anything!
There is a very strong boundary for me in representations of rape in fiction or non-fiction, as mentioned already. I have seen rape porn scenes that have really bothered me and not turned me on at all, because even though I feel confident that they are fictional, they just look too real - too much like it was just something caught on camera, rather than a well-designed set with lighting and camera angles and everything worked out. At that moment, it just becomes disturbing and not erotic to me.
Then again, I have occasionally been perplexed when reading a novel, to find myself rebelling and resisting a scenario that seems just like the things that in porn or erotic fiction is exactly what turns me on. In "The Brilliance of the Moon", from the Tales of the Otori series by Lian Hearn, there is just such a scenario; but because the victim was a character for whom the reader is invited to feel a sharing of dreams and objectives (that is, not just an immediate empathy, but an empathy on a broader level), I feel only a desire to work out a way for her to escape from the scenario instead of revelling in her defeat.
This leads to another consideration, which is that from this observation, it seems as though I have proven that porn really does involve the objectification of women. But this is misleading. The cortrect conclusion is that porn involves the objectification of female characters. The sickness and disgust I feel at real life rape is the proof that my tastes do not lead to my objectifying women, but instead I see women as people - as ends in themselves. When a fictional character is constructed well, so that I can identify with her, then the same non-objectification is found.
But that, in turn, leads me to the other point I wanted to make in this post. Like Ren, I am a big fan of action/adventure movies, and enjoy many of the movies she lists as favourites (and have the others on my "to-watch" list). But there are plenty of action movies that I find utterly disgusting. They aren't necessarily very graphic in their violence, but the problem I have with them is the way in which they treat violence and violent death, and their characters' relationships to these. What I like about movies such as Seven is that when heroes/protagonists commit violence, it is to their ultimate downfall (this is also a key element of many of the Saw movies, and why I like them). But some movies - too many, in my opinion - present violence as almost being good in itself, as being THE heroic way. It is violence without consequence for the perpetrator, and violence as first resort. An example, in fact, is the movie Ghost (famous for the pottery sex scene!) Eventually, the bad guys all get killed off by the hero who is throughout portrayed as ultimately good and noble, and then the movie ends - there are no consequences, there is no follow-up regarding all these corpses...
One exception I will make to this distaste is the James Bond/comic-book style of movie, because these either a) just go over-the-top with the portrayal, making the violence outside of any sensible understanding, or else b) have a hero who is not portrayed as purely heroic (for example, Batman in the Tim Burton-directed movies, and likely in other recent incarnations) but as being avowedly amoral in his or her dealings with the bad guys - so the viewer/reader is left in no doubt that violence isn't a "good" thing, but sometimes a "lesser of two evils" or even an approach taken by the not-quite-as-bad-as-the-other-guy-but-still-not-quite-good-guy. Going one step deeper, and making an exception to the exception - in some of the early Bond movies especially, Bond commits rape and gets away with it with no consequences (or even, is rewarded for it!) This is definitely beyond the pale for me, and certainly I have struggled to see Bond as the ideal hero for that reason.
All these concerns about violence in movies and television lead to one reason why I love Doctor Who so much: the central, heroic, character is someone who always seems to seek a non-violent solution (this isn't always the case: for example, in the very first Daleks story, the Doctor and his companions actually reintroduce violence to the Thal society - the Doctor is not a blanket pacifist but simply resists using violence until all other solutions are exhausted).
All this said, I think that the important thing is that for both Ren and me, there is this clear line that says "real-life is Not Okay" when it comes to violence (especially sexual violence) and fantasy. How close we get to the line before it becomes unpalatable may differ, but we both have this gut instinct that tells us "this is no longer fun", and it always comes somewhere in the realm of fiction, and well before we reach any possible suggestion of this stuff happening in real life (yes, I know there was that crisis I wrote about before - that is well and truly the past).
My sexuality is what it is, and trying to change it only hurt me and didn't achieve anything. I have to face and accept that there are some pretty dark things in my mind and all I can do is decide what effect they have on the real world. I'm a sadist, and I get off on fear, humiliation and pain in others. There are safe ways to enjoy that in real life, but in fantasy you can go much further. Ren talks about how she goes to extremes in her written fiction - where "there is NO question of fiction….there are no real people and no real people even acting." She adds, though, that "it is not designed to be 'erotic' in any sane sense of the word."
There are accounts of torture, rape, and murderous violence that I have watched or read and not found erotic. Most of them have been accounts of real-life events, and I am just sickened by them: the book "4 Hours in My Lai", about the war crimes committed by US forces in the Vietnamese villages collectively known as My Lai has several such accounts, and there is no way I could see that as anything but sickening and deeply disturbing. The fictionalised account of what happens to "disappeared" people in totalitarian regimes presented by "Requiem for a Lost Soul" is another such story (I think it's set in a Latin American country, but it could easily be somewhere else). I can't watch Crimewatch UK on televsion when they have appeals for help in rape cases because of the effect it has on me.
And yet, fantasies of rape are very much a part of my sexuality. My readers will no doubt be aware of the post I wrote about when those fantasies almost crossed into real life. That's the dangerous side of my nature, and I cannot get rid of it, only control it and know myself well enough.
So, very often, gory horror movies do turn me on. They deal with fear, desperation, and pain. The genre sometimes called "torture porn", for me, really is porn. It pushes my buttons in the way that porn is supposed to push non-sadist folks' buttons. I am confident that for most people, the sexual aspect is still there, but it is not so clear: the point is not to turn people on directly, but to provoke horror and visceral reactions. I am not most people. I am a sadist, and I have grown used to this. But it does trouble me that maybe people do find themselves being drawn to potentially harmful sexual expression, through harder forms of porn, and through these "torture porn" movies, and maybe not have the tools to deal with it. God knows, it's not something we're taught in school or anything!
There is a very strong boundary for me in representations of rape in fiction or non-fiction, as mentioned already. I have seen rape porn scenes that have really bothered me and not turned me on at all, because even though I feel confident that they are fictional, they just look too real - too much like it was just something caught on camera, rather than a well-designed set with lighting and camera angles and everything worked out. At that moment, it just becomes disturbing and not erotic to me.
Then again, I have occasionally been perplexed when reading a novel, to find myself rebelling and resisting a scenario that seems just like the things that in porn or erotic fiction is exactly what turns me on. In "The Brilliance of the Moon", from the Tales of the Otori series by Lian Hearn, there is just such a scenario; but because the victim was a character for whom the reader is invited to feel a sharing of dreams and objectives (that is, not just an immediate empathy, but an empathy on a broader level), I feel only a desire to work out a way for her to escape from the scenario instead of revelling in her defeat.
This leads to another consideration, which is that from this observation, it seems as though I have proven that porn really does involve the objectification of women. But this is misleading. The cortrect conclusion is that porn involves the objectification of female characters. The sickness and disgust I feel at real life rape is the proof that my tastes do not lead to my objectifying women, but instead I see women as people - as ends in themselves. When a fictional character is constructed well, so that I can identify with her, then the same non-objectification is found.
But that, in turn, leads me to the other point I wanted to make in this post. Like Ren, I am a big fan of action/adventure movies, and enjoy many of the movies she lists as favourites (and have the others on my "to-watch" list). But there are plenty of action movies that I find utterly disgusting. They aren't necessarily very graphic in their violence, but the problem I have with them is the way in which they treat violence and violent death, and their characters' relationships to these. What I like about movies such as Seven is that when heroes/protagonists commit violence, it is to their ultimate downfall (this is also a key element of many of the Saw movies, and why I like them). But some movies - too many, in my opinion - present violence as almost being good in itself, as being THE heroic way. It is violence without consequence for the perpetrator, and violence as first resort. An example, in fact, is the movie Ghost (famous for the pottery sex scene!) Eventually, the bad guys all get killed off by the hero who is throughout portrayed as ultimately good and noble, and then the movie ends - there are no consequences, there is no follow-up regarding all these corpses...
One exception I will make to this distaste is the James Bond/comic-book style of movie, because these either a) just go over-the-top with the portrayal, making the violence outside of any sensible understanding, or else b) have a hero who is not portrayed as purely heroic (for example, Batman in the Tim Burton-directed movies, and likely in other recent incarnations) but as being avowedly amoral in his or her dealings with the bad guys - so the viewer/reader is left in no doubt that violence isn't a "good" thing, but sometimes a "lesser of two evils" or even an approach taken by the not-quite-as-bad-as-the-other-guy-but-still-not-quite-good-guy. Going one step deeper, and making an exception to the exception - in some of the early Bond movies especially, Bond commits rape and gets away with it with no consequences (or even, is rewarded for it!) This is definitely beyond the pale for me, and certainly I have struggled to see Bond as the ideal hero for that reason.
All these concerns about violence in movies and television lead to one reason why I love Doctor Who so much: the central, heroic, character is someone who always seems to seek a non-violent solution (this isn't always the case: for example, in the very first Daleks story, the Doctor and his companions actually reintroduce violence to the Thal society - the Doctor is not a blanket pacifist but simply resists using violence until all other solutions are exhausted).
All this said, I think that the important thing is that for both Ren and me, there is this clear line that says "real-life is Not Okay" when it comes to violence (especially sexual violence) and fantasy. How close we get to the line before it becomes unpalatable may differ, but we both have this gut instinct that tells us "this is no longer fun", and it always comes somewhere in the realm of fiction, and well before we reach any possible suggestion of this stuff happening in real life (yes, I know there was that crisis I wrote about before - that is well and truly the past).
Thursday, 12 March 2009
The Witch's Fingers
I was just a 22 year old journalism student working for the local paper for a summer job. It shouldn't have ended up this way, trapped in a body I no longer control, in a mind that I can barely call my own...
I volunteered to write a piece on the town's own "haunted house" mystery where supposedly a dozen or so young men and women had vanished without trace in the 19th Century, and to research the history of the building and the stories surrounding it.
Easy stuff, really - there wasn't anything new in the story, and most people in the town knew most of what there was to find out about the place anyway. The evolution of the story over time might be more interesting, going through the local library archives to see if the story changed much since it first started to be told.
Then I hit upon the idea of breaking into the house itself and snooping around. It had been abandoned and empty for as long as anyone could remember, and yet strangely no youths had made it a den of their own, nor had anyone proposed knocking it down and building new developments there. Something about the place kept people away, and I thought it would be great scoop if I could get inside and find out what - or, more likely, prove that it was just the power of superstition.
I was a warm and sultry summer night as I headed out to the abandoned house, a bright moon casting eerie shadows along the lane as my torch picked out the road ahead. Sounds seemed at once heightened and stifled in the night air, as though I could hear anything for miles around, and yet there was nothing there. Of course, in reality there were traffic noises from the main road nearby but that just added to the sensation. And, I was breaking a taboo that it seems even the rebels dared not break, so even though as far as I knew there was nothing wrong with what I planned to do, yet I had opted for the secrecy of darkness, and my heart felt like I was breaking some ancient law.
I wore thin jogging trousers and battered trainers, and an incongruously sexy red top (I had never really liked it, and therefore didn't mind getting it messed up - and it was nice to feel the air on my skin where the top failed to cover it). In my little backpack, I had my notepad and digital SLR camera, and fingerless gloves in case I needed them to protect my hands while scramlbing about inside. I also had a bottle of water, and my phone in case I had an accident and needed to call for help.
The house itself was more like an old-fashioned manor house or stately home, althouh rather small for one of those. It had a sturdy brick wall about 5 feet tall all the way around, with a rusty iron gate as the main entrance. The gate looked as if it would be too stiff to move easily, and because the wall had plenty of footholds, I decided I would climb over the wall and then see where everything went from there.
Getting up the wall was ridiculously easy and I was starting to feel really pleased with myself. I could see I would have a nice, soft landing, although there were many bramble patches and other signs of the decades of neglect, so without hesitating I lowered myself down the other side of the wall.
I don't know what happened next.
As my foot hit the ground, everything seemed to... change around me, and I felt myself slipping from consciousness, falling towards the ground, and panic ran through my mind - absurdly, the thing that seemed to frighten me most was the crazed thought, "Oh God, I'm going to break the camera!" Then there was nothing.
***
I awoke to find myself in front of an empty fireplace, lying on a soft fur rug. It took me seconds that seemed like millennia to remember what I had been doing before I lost consciousness. I started to look around me for my backpack, before I realised that my trousers had been removed, leaving me in just my panties and the now humiliatingly skimpy top. Someone must have found me and brought me back to their home - but that meant they'd taken off my shoes, socks and trousers - what sort of pervert were they? Where was I? And why wasn't I panicking as much as I should be?
A door opened behind me. For some reason, I didn't turn to see who was there. I was just kneeling, facing the fire, feeling strangely calm and unbothered by everything. It just seemed to me as though now everything would be explained, and I would understand, and there would be no reason to worry. I didn't like this feeling, because there was no sense to it at all, and it seemed like there were suddenly two parts of my mind, one that was serenely calm and happy to let everything happen, and the other that was yelling at it that something wasn't right - that I should be scared of whoever took my trousers, and that I should at least find out who was now standing behind me!
I felt soft, small hands on my shoulders. A voice spoke. It was a woman.
"You're lucky I found you," she said, "But what were you doing trespassing on My property?" The authority in her voice was unmistakable, irresistable.
I stammered, 'I'm sorry Ma'am, I thought it was abandoned..."
"That's what you're supposed to think - and yet, you came anyway, nosing where you do not belong, meddling with forces that you cannot comprehend. I ask again - why?"
"I... I was just curious, Ma'am, I didn't mean any harm..."
"Harm!? There will be no 'harm!'" I felt her fingers running through my hairon the top on my head. "You could never do Me any harm, and never will!" Suddenly, I realised she wasn't running her fingers through my hair but was stroking, rubbing, pressing, my scalp. I felt a wave of panic as never before, and the calmness that had engulfed me, anaesthetised me, subjugated me, was washed away - but it was too late...
My lungs tore out a hideous scream as I felt the witch's fingers push through my scalp, white fire and energy seeming to pour down them, my eyes opening wide with horror at the unimaginable pain of this totally unparallelled penetration, my arms stretching outwards in search of an imposisble rescue from this impossible rape of my skull.
I felt Her power flooding my brain, and all light except that which streamed from Her fingertips seemed extinguished, there was nothing in the universe except me and Her, and Her power.
No part of my mind, body or soul seemed unviolated by the witch's invasion of my identity and self. For eternity, it seemed, She stood there, and in my mind's eye I could see Her haughty features utterly indifferent to my suffering, or even my existence it seemed - for She was Everything, and I was nothing compared to Her.
And then, my entire being drained, burnt out, exhausted, I felt her fingers slide from my brain, exit my skull, and miraculously heal te entry points as if they had never been there, and, released from her spell, I slumped, collapsed, spent, upon the floor.
I lay there for an Age, or for a millisecond, I have no way of knowing. Was she there the whole time, gloating over her conquest of me, or did she just leave me as a wasted, blasted piece of ore, that has given up its precious metal to the fire and has no other use? I just know that I woke to her imperious voice: "Stand!"
I stood up.
"Face me!"
I turned to face her. Saw her cruel, heartless face, her contempt for me, it seemed, written into the very features of her bone structure, it was that deep.
"Listen very carefully, girl. You are now My property, as surely as this house, as surely as the rug beneath your feet. Your mind is now Mine, your body will not obey you against Me. This is the penalty for setting foot in My garden."
I stared at Her as she spoke, but I could not, would not, believe it was true. I did not believe in magic. I turned to leave. Or, I thought I did, and yet, I was still in exactly the same posture...
"It is true, and your belief is not necessary," the witch sneered. "As I shall now demonstrate..."
Se made a gesture with Her hand, and my own hand rose from my side, and I found that there was nothing I could do to stop it, it was moving with a will of its own - or, more accurately, it was moving according to her will, not its own, and not mine. Fear filled my face and my voice, "What are you doing?" But the witch ignored me as my wrist turned, my hand formed a clasp. I could do nothing except watch with wild, staring eyes as my own hand irresistibly closed around my neck and unbelievably started to strangle me.
"No!" I managed to croak, but any further protests were cut off as my lungs franticly sought to bring fresh oxygen past the ever-tightening blockade that my hand had formed My mouth worked, yearning, straining, but to no avail. I felt my knees begin to sag, consciousness leaving me, and still Her will held my arm and hand in place as She strangled me with my own fingers. A slow, whirling blackness overtook my senses.
She must have released me then, because I am still alive, still breathing. But She has commanded that I keep my eyes closed, and that I hear nothing unless She speaks to me. I have no senses, nothing can break through Her spell, and so here I lie, telling this story to myself and wondering if I could have escaped, and thinking, if I had the decision to make again, I would not have been so adventurous...
I volunteered to write a piece on the town's own "haunted house" mystery where supposedly a dozen or so young men and women had vanished without trace in the 19th Century, and to research the history of the building and the stories surrounding it.
Easy stuff, really - there wasn't anything new in the story, and most people in the town knew most of what there was to find out about the place anyway. The evolution of the story over time might be more interesting, going through the local library archives to see if the story changed much since it first started to be told.
Then I hit upon the idea of breaking into the house itself and snooping around. It had been abandoned and empty for as long as anyone could remember, and yet strangely no youths had made it a den of their own, nor had anyone proposed knocking it down and building new developments there. Something about the place kept people away, and I thought it would be great scoop if I could get inside and find out what - or, more likely, prove that it was just the power of superstition.
I was a warm and sultry summer night as I headed out to the abandoned house, a bright moon casting eerie shadows along the lane as my torch picked out the road ahead. Sounds seemed at once heightened and stifled in the night air, as though I could hear anything for miles around, and yet there was nothing there. Of course, in reality there were traffic noises from the main road nearby but that just added to the sensation. And, I was breaking a taboo that it seems even the rebels dared not break, so even though as far as I knew there was nothing wrong with what I planned to do, yet I had opted for the secrecy of darkness, and my heart felt like I was breaking some ancient law.
I wore thin jogging trousers and battered trainers, and an incongruously sexy red top (I had never really liked it, and therefore didn't mind getting it messed up - and it was nice to feel the air on my skin where the top failed to cover it). In my little backpack, I had my notepad and digital SLR camera, and fingerless gloves in case I needed them to protect my hands while scramlbing about inside. I also had a bottle of water, and my phone in case I had an accident and needed to call for help.
The house itself was more like an old-fashioned manor house or stately home, althouh rather small for one of those. It had a sturdy brick wall about 5 feet tall all the way around, with a rusty iron gate as the main entrance. The gate looked as if it would be too stiff to move easily, and because the wall had plenty of footholds, I decided I would climb over the wall and then see where everything went from there.
Getting up the wall was ridiculously easy and I was starting to feel really pleased with myself. I could see I would have a nice, soft landing, although there were many bramble patches and other signs of the decades of neglect, so without hesitating I lowered myself down the other side of the wall.
I don't know what happened next.
As my foot hit the ground, everything seemed to... change around me, and I felt myself slipping from consciousness, falling towards the ground, and panic ran through my mind - absurdly, the thing that seemed to frighten me most was the crazed thought, "Oh God, I'm going to break the camera!" Then there was nothing.
***
I awoke to find myself in front of an empty fireplace, lying on a soft fur rug. It took me seconds that seemed like millennia to remember what I had been doing before I lost consciousness. I started to look around me for my backpack, before I realised that my trousers had been removed, leaving me in just my panties and the now humiliatingly skimpy top. Someone must have found me and brought me back to their home - but that meant they'd taken off my shoes, socks and trousers - what sort of pervert were they? Where was I? And why wasn't I panicking as much as I should be?
A door opened behind me. For some reason, I didn't turn to see who was there. I was just kneeling, facing the fire, feeling strangely calm and unbothered by everything. It just seemed to me as though now everything would be explained, and I would understand, and there would be no reason to worry. I didn't like this feeling, because there was no sense to it at all, and it seemed like there were suddenly two parts of my mind, one that was serenely calm and happy to let everything happen, and the other that was yelling at it that something wasn't right - that I should be scared of whoever took my trousers, and that I should at least find out who was now standing behind me!
I felt soft, small hands on my shoulders. A voice spoke. It was a woman.
"You're lucky I found you," she said, "But what were you doing trespassing on My property?" The authority in her voice was unmistakable, irresistable.
I stammered, 'I'm sorry Ma'am, I thought it was abandoned..."
"That's what you're supposed to think - and yet, you came anyway, nosing where you do not belong, meddling with forces that you cannot comprehend. I ask again - why?"
"I... I was just curious, Ma'am, I didn't mean any harm..."
"Harm!? There will be no 'harm!'" I felt her fingers running through my hairon the top on my head. "You could never do Me any harm, and never will!" Suddenly, I realised she wasn't running her fingers through my hair but was stroking, rubbing, pressing, my scalp. I felt a wave of panic as never before, and the calmness that had engulfed me, anaesthetised me, subjugated me, was washed away - but it was too late...
My lungs tore out a hideous scream as I felt the witch's fingers push through my scalp, white fire and energy seeming to pour down them, my eyes opening wide with horror at the unimaginable pain of this totally unparallelled penetration, my arms stretching outwards in search of an imposisble rescue from this impossible rape of my skull.
I felt Her power flooding my brain, and all light except that which streamed from Her fingertips seemed extinguished, there was nothing in the universe except me and Her, and Her power.
No part of my mind, body or soul seemed unviolated by the witch's invasion of my identity and self. For eternity, it seemed, She stood there, and in my mind's eye I could see Her haughty features utterly indifferent to my suffering, or even my existence it seemed - for She was Everything, and I was nothing compared to Her.
And then, my entire being drained, burnt out, exhausted, I felt her fingers slide from my brain, exit my skull, and miraculously heal te entry points as if they had never been there, and, released from her spell, I slumped, collapsed, spent, upon the floor.
I lay there for an Age, or for a millisecond, I have no way of knowing. Was she there the whole time, gloating over her conquest of me, or did she just leave me as a wasted, blasted piece of ore, that has given up its precious metal to the fire and has no other use? I just know that I woke to her imperious voice: "Stand!"
I stood up.
"Face me!"
I turned to face her. Saw her cruel, heartless face, her contempt for me, it seemed, written into the very features of her bone structure, it was that deep.
"Listen very carefully, girl. You are now My property, as surely as this house, as surely as the rug beneath your feet. Your mind is now Mine, your body will not obey you against Me. This is the penalty for setting foot in My garden."
I stared at Her as she spoke, but I could not, would not, believe it was true. I did not believe in magic. I turned to leave. Or, I thought I did, and yet, I was still in exactly the same posture...
"It is true, and your belief is not necessary," the witch sneered. "As I shall now demonstrate..."
Se made a gesture with Her hand, and my own hand rose from my side, and I found that there was nothing I could do to stop it, it was moving with a will of its own - or, more accurately, it was moving according to her will, not its own, and not mine. Fear filled my face and my voice, "What are you doing?" But the witch ignored me as my wrist turned, my hand formed a clasp. I could do nothing except watch with wild, staring eyes as my own hand irresistibly closed around my neck and unbelievably started to strangle me.
"No!" I managed to croak, but any further protests were cut off as my lungs franticly sought to bring fresh oxygen past the ever-tightening blockade that my hand had formed My mouth worked, yearning, straining, but to no avail. I felt my knees begin to sag, consciousness leaving me, and still Her will held my arm and hand in place as She strangled me with my own fingers. A slow, whirling blackness overtook my senses.She must have released me then, because I am still alive, still breathing. But She has commanded that I keep my eyes closed, and that I hear nothing unless She speaks to me. I have no senses, nothing can break through Her spell, and so here I lie, telling this story to myself and wondering if I could have escaped, and thinking, if I had the decision to make again, I would not have been so adventurous...
Tuesday, 13 January 2009
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