Each Day
By Cypress_z (Cypress_z@yahoo.com)
Sarah Wildermann gripped her necklace in one white knuckled hand, sighing. It was a nervous habit, one she’d tried to do away with years ago, but she always found herself doing it when she was nervous or angry. Right now she was mostly just angry with herself.
A handsome young intern had been hitting on her today, and she’d stuttered and made polite conversation until she could escape. It wasn’t that she didn’t like the attention, because she did. He was handsome and more than one part of her wanted to respond to him. Whatever she did, she couldn’t afford to accept. She’d worked herself to the bone to get where she was, and she’d seen too many women drop out of the workforce when they started a relationship. She worked hard. That was her life. She went back to an empty home each night—but she was okay with that. It was cosy, warm, quiet, and far, far better than where she had grown up. If this kind of loneliness were the price she had to keep that success, she would—gladly. Anything was better than slipping back into the life she’d seen destroy so many people growing up. It didn’t make it any easier to avoid flirting back with the cute guys, though.
The money she made was more than enough to make her home comfortable and beautiful, filled with works of fine art and well select mixes of paints and carpeting. So different from the dump she’d grown up in, with ancient carpets from the 1950’s and walls with chipping paint that smelled of wood rot. True, she didn’t spend much time at her new home, but when she wasn’t at work she could afford to buy the best tv dinners and a big, nice TV. Some habits from that poor childhood didn’t die that easily, and cheap microwave dinners like mom used to nuke were probably the only thing she remembered fondly. It helped that these ones weren’t expired.
Sarah walked down the street. Lucky enough to live near her work, her little minivan was a luxury. She almost never actually used it except when she went out on shopping sprees. She’d grown up too poor to actually afford a car until after college, and at some point just got used to walking or using public transportation. She could handle a few catcalls. She did bring the car when she went to the galleries, of course. Big paintings were hard to carry a block on your back, after all. Besides, you’d just end up looking silly. If there was one thing she wouldn’t stand for, it was looking silly.
She sighed and checked herself out in the reflection of some clothing store window, which sold ancient rags her grandmother would have been embarrassed to be seen in. Her time with the intern still left her feeling uneasy. Memories of her mother seducing men time after time to scrape by just enough to live off of sickened her, and she always overreacted. She gripped her late mother’s necklace in her hand again and renewed her vow never to end up like she did. Old, without respect or money, unable to do anything once her looks had gone away. By this point that fear was practically the core of her being.
Sarah took a look over herself again to make sure she was still neatly dressed. Keeping herself different from the slobs in the ghetto she’d grown up in comforted her. Her business clothes were nice, tight, and very conservative, but she had worn her heels today. She’d somehow managed to lose one of her business shoes while she was out a few days ago and she’d figured that she had the right to live it up a little. Of course, heels probably weren’t all that had brought him on. She was still cute despite her best efforts to keep herself plain; the one truly good gift from her mother.
The sound of busy cars filled the area, darting back and forth across. She paused, looking at their reflection in the glass for a moment. They darted back and forth, seeming to slow at the corner behind her.
Curious, she looked to see what they were slowing for. A woman stood there in a bright red... well, skirt would be a generous term for it really. It was more of a sash, not really hiding anything. Sarah gasped as she realized the woman’s panties—no, thong—was clearly visible. Her tube top was only wide enough to hide her nipples, and a bright red collar was around her throat. Tall, thigh high fishnets finished it all off, making her appearance send off a message that was as loud as a rocket. She didn’t look like she was soliciting for anything, but...
This was a busy part of downtown. Could she seriously be some kind of prostitute? Here? A car slowed down, a man’s form silhouetted by the setting sun, and the woman stepped inside.
Sarah spun, wobbling on her heels, to try to see what was going on. But the car was nowhere to be seen. No car—no woman, no sign of anything. Traffic moved as though it had not been slowed in the slightest.
She calmed herself, hand to her breast. No doubt if there was a prostitute in this part of town, the police would shut her down fast. This was a nice town, and a nice part of a nice town. She wasn’t back in those cold neighborhoods where the solicitations of prostitutes rang out every night at 3AM. No, she didn’t look like she’d been entering a customer’s car—her bearing was different than the girls she remembered. Maybe she was some rich fetishist off to a convention or something.
Letting out a fast breath, she turned to face the store window again and looked inside. Maybe some shopping might calm her. Granny panties would at least make her feel secure right now, if nothing else.
That was when she noticed the scantily clad mannequins, wearing thongs and open breasted bras. Scattered among the granny clothes was an assortment of some of the most perverse lingerie she had ever seen. Except... she looked closer. They weren’t granny clothes. They looked drab, but close inspection revealed that they were cut to show parts of the mannequin that no clothing allowed in public would let you show. They were like strange parodies of ancient conservative clothes. Drab, plain, and when you looked carefully, diabolically wicked.
She stepped back, stumbling, almost toppling into the street. She had been looking in this window. This was right outside of her work! She looked around, furtively. Had anyone seen her? Had they gotten the wrong idea? She was not the kind of woman that would go around wearing something like this! How had this shop even gotten here? No wonder the woman was here—she must have been a customer! Her hand gripped her necklace so hard that she feared it might break or cut her.
Quickly Sarah scrambled, stepping past the crosswalk and across the street. As soon as she got home, she’d call the city council, or the police, or ANYONE, and start making complaints about the indecency of having a shop like that on the street. She walked briskly, hoping that distance might separate her from the stigma of even being associated with a place like that. After growing up in the worst place she had found in the world yet, respect was all that mattered. She could hardly call the business she worked for respectable if that was its neighbor.
The street between was a large parking lot for a grocery store. The traffic it caused was annoying, but the fact that she could go and grab whatever she wanted only a few minutes from home was nice. She let her heels click on the pavement as she moved, the heavy footfalls distinctly satisfying.
Down inside of the lot, a young woman was loading groceries into the back of her minivan. Sarah distantly noted that she seemed to have a lot. A man walked up and said something to her—apparently a stranger, but offering to help. She seemed to nod and they began loading the groceries together.
Sarah mostly ignored them, worrying about that shop. She turned to go into the store. Maybe some cookie dough ice cream would calm her nerves. It was a luxury she didn’t indulge in often, but she was already here and she felt like she had been having a lot of stressful days lately.
The man and the woman finished loading up the groceries, she seeming to adjust things in the back of the vehicle. The man gave a broad glance around, checking out the parking lot. He didn’t seem to see Sarah, his gaze never resting on her.
Suddenly he grabbed the woman and threw her into the back of her minivan, jumping in inside. A bag of groceries half fell out, a can rolling down the lot. Sarah saw limbs moving like the woman was trying to get out, but the man’s hand came down and slammed the back closed. She saw a swirl of half concealed limbs in the back windows for a moment, and then the vehicle began to rock rhythmically.
Sarah’s jaw dropped and she stood, frozen, unable to move as the minivan swayed back and forth. The can came to rest at her feet, rolling up against her shoes before bouncing away. She could HEAR the muffled moaning and grunting, the squeaking of the vehicle’s frame as it swayed. She could hear the woman saying “no... no... no...” over and over again. She looked around. There was no one else. The parking lot was full of cars, but so empty it seemed abandoned. No one else had seen what had just happened—what was happening right now.
She grabbed her phone out of her pocket and ran up to the car, already dialing 911. A feminine hand hit the window and slid back down as she neared. She only hoped that she could help—the cries for aid growing louder as she drew closer.
The trembling woman came up to the back window and looked in.
It was empty. Completely and totally empty. No groceries, no woman being ravished by a stranger. The minivan was still. It was as though it had never been moving.
Sarah clutched her phone and stopped dialing. She almost threw it on the ground. Had it all been some sort of illusion? Even though her eyes were locked on the vehicle, could she have looked at the wrong one?
Desperately she rushed from car to car, minivan to minivan. Nothing. She saw nothing at all. She turned to run home, and almost tripped over the can. It was the same kind that had fallen out of the grocery bag and rolled behind her—some kind of strawberry milk mix. She looked at it for a moment. It did not disappear or change. It was very real.
Her body turned shakily and the vehicle was no longer there at all. She ran, nearly breaking a heel, into the city park.
It was the last thing between her and home. The last place between. She didn’t have to cross the whole thing. It was just cutting through a little section of the redwood trees.
With hand to her breast Sarah steadied herself. This was the sort of place that always calmed her. Even after she’d seen... whatever it was that she’d seen. ‘I must have hallucinated’, she thought to herself. ‘This isn’t that part of town. And even the worst parts of this city aren’t like that! Things like that don’t happen here. When I get home, I need to call a doctor...’
Even if it was fading to dusk, it was well lit enough to see. She could hear birdsong on the wind. The steady singing chirp of the Rosefinch and robins, the early hooting of the grass owls, and the steady thwacking thrumming of the woodpeckers.
A lovely little manmade stream poured out in a steady flow, filling the air with the sound of trickling water over the riverbed. She walked over the little bridge, made out of fallen tree branches and old logs. The dip down to the little stream was small, but the bridge was nice. She breathed in the warm air, and forced herself to listen to the birdsong.
It was the time of year that birds flocked here, even the ones that didn’t normally come to cities, and the sound was lovely. She focused on hearing their chirps, whistles, low moans and hooting. It was relaxing. The scent of flowers and cut grass filled her head.
Those owls, so unusual here at this time of day, had the strangest call. It sounded backwards. Like they were saying, “Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh,” over and over again, like a pink voice on the wind.
She continued walking, but heard running footsteps behind her. She turned to see a woman was running as hard as she could, and a man was close behind. In his hand something flapped loose and red, long and thin. Like a tiny belt or a collar. She seemed desperate to escape, but he grabbed her arm and held her. She fought and kicked. His other hand brought the collar round her throat, but she grabbed him and tried to kick away sending them both tumbling into the little dip in the ground where the little stream flowed. Sarah heard the sound of water splashing below as they struggled, and then the sound of grunting and moans.
She stood frozen again at the sight of what had just happened. Was this another strange vision? Was she hallucinating? Was this real?
The hooting of the owls moaned on the wind. “Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh!” Like a woman in heat. The throbbing of the woodpeckers slamming into the trees, making them shake and wobble back and forth in a steady rhythm. The song of the Robins and the Rosefinches combining, intertwining, sounding like a ghostly cry of “fuuuuuck meeeeeee...”. And below, the rhythmic sound of splashing.
A foot emerged, held up above the bank, struggling, trying to kick away. A red heel flying off. The bare foot dipped as someone unseen thrust into her body again and again.
Sarah couldn’t stop herself. Even if she was hallucinating, she needed to do something! She ran over to the riverbank, prepared to... prepared to do something!
All at once the hooting stopped, and the moaning sound of birdsong. There were no people lying in the stream. No woman crying for help, no brutish man ravaging her.
But there was a little red collar, drifting down in the water.
Without thinking she moved down and snatched it, accidentally stepping down with her bare foot into the water.
Shocked by the cold she stopped, looking down. One of her heels was missing. She looked down the stream, and saw the woman’s red shoe that had been thrown off into the air. It looked just like hers. She couldn’t make herself move, couldn’t make herself grab it. She didn’t want to face what that might mean. She scrambled back up the bank, collar still in hand.
She looked down at it. This was built like a dog collar, but no dog would ever wear it, nor could any machine make something like this. It was insane—like a work of art, but a perverse one.
It looked red from a distance, but was made of many kinds of differently colored thread woven into the leather. It was like one of those paintings where every bit of it is a single kind of animal, and all the spaces in between were the animal too.
It was made of words. Every inch of it was some kind of word. “Obedient. Serve. Sex. Submit. Fuck. Suck. Obey. Need. Owned. Cum-pet.” It went on and on. Even the gaps between words, looked at from a distance, were words. Looking at only one color of the thread, parts of words became different words. It was the very opposite of the necklace she wore, the only beautiful thing her mother had worked for honestly in her life. A symbol that had convinced her that if she devoted every bit of her being to it, she could escape the awful life she left behind. She shivered but couldn’t make herself throw the collar away. It was an awful dehumanizing thing. But she couldn’t help the feeling of an aching warmth between her legs and pulsing out into her body at the sight of it. The thought that it might tap into some secret desire caused her to shiver.
The police... the police would need it. Or the doctors. She’d seen a man try to put this collar around a woman’s neck and then fuck her. Or did she? Did she see what she thought she saw in that parking lot? The can had been there. She SAW him throw the woman into her bright red minivan, and the vehicle swaying back and forth. She saw the man go into the lake. She saw the prostitute outside her work, and the fetish clothing store... hadn’t she?
She ran unevenly on her one shoe, all the way across the park. It was getting dark, and the morning star was already bright in the crimson twilight sky. The others would soon follow, and whatever was happening to her or her adopted city, she didn’t want it happening in the dark.
She ran up to her front door, hitting her shin against her minivan and almost smashing into it. Cursing she scrambled at the lock, almost dropping her key, and bolted inside. She grabbed the chain and slid it home, scratching up the worn steel and scraping up the flaking paint on the lock, but uncaring.
As the lock slid closed, she felt it all at once. A vision, so real it was as if she was there. A man had grabbed her from behind, her face in his hand, her back arched. She was on her side in bed, and his cock slammed between her legs inside of her again and again...
She fell to the floor and the vision was gone. Her limbs were shaky, her muscles almost painful with tension. It had felt real. She had FELT him inside of her, felt his hand on her face, felt her back painfully arched, her legs spread so wide it was like she was doing the splits. His flesh pounding inside her, splitting her open. Her being used.
She blinked her eyes. She was going to have to call someone. Do something. This couldn’t be right. This couldn’t be real. But here she was. Slid down to the floor, all alone in the dark, the echoes of the vision still ringing in her mind.
She stood up, and noticed that in her dark house, she could see lights dancing on the wall at the end of the hallway, and the sound of voices. Was this another hallucination? Was someone here?
She grabbed an expensive brass candlestick off of one of her cherrywood end tables and stumbled forward, kicking off her other shoe as she tremblingly advanced. She walked up to the doorway, body shivering, barely able to hold onto the candlestick.
“I-is someone there? Is someone in my house?” She said, voice warbling, too afraid to scream.
No answer. The lights and voices continued.
She peeked in the doorway, candlestick at the ready.
The TV was on. A commercial playing about some kind of clothing store. She sagged, almost sobbing with relief. “Oh god... oh god..” She let the candlestick fall to the floor, and brought her hands up to her mouth. It was just the TV. She’d left it on this morning. She would have a horrible power bill, she realized.
She crossed the room and reached down to turn it off, and the screen changed. On a dark black background, red words appeared on the screen.
“TURN AROUND.”
The TV went dead.
She turned around, pivoting on one heel like a squeaky windmill turning. That wall behind the couch held her pride and joy. A beautiful landscape she’d commissioned an artist to make, depicting the city park in a golden frame. A symbol of everything in this city she didn’t have growing up. An image of perfect hope.
“HE’S WAITING UPSTAIRS.”
The words were painted on a black canvas, paint still wet and running.
She froze, staring at the words. This wasn’t possible. She’d seen the painting this morning. The wet paint dripped down, leaving long trails down the canvas.
She looked at the shadowed staircase down the hall, daylight’s last red rays casting long shadows. Leadenly, one foot in front of the other, she stepped toward it.
She had a double staircase. It led up halfway, then switched to another set of stairs. She’d had a lovely painting of a rose put on the wall between staircases, so that she could see it whenever she went upstairs.
“NO CLOTHES.”
She stared at the black canvas dripping with red paint. It had run out over her nice frame in little red trails, running down and staining the carpet.
She reached down and pulled off her dark maroon jacket, letting it fall to the floor. She unbuttoned her shirt, each button popping free one by one. She unzipped her skirt and let it fall down, revealing her underwear. Somehow, she felt blank and couldn’t stop herself as each bit slipped off. She felt like some sort of machine on autopilot.
She reached behind herself and unclasped her bra, her large breasts spilling free, her eyes never pulling away from the paint as it dripped down the canvas. Could a canvas hold that much paint? Her hands went down and slid her panties off, her full and firm behind relieved at the lack of confinement, her sex cool in the well conditioned air of the house. She was completely naked.
She left everything on the ground and continued up the stairs. She had one more painting between here and there. A recreation of the work of a famous artist.
“PUT IT ON.”
“CRAWL INSIDE.”
The paint seemed to bubble as she looked down at her hand. She’d never let go of the collar. She lifted it up and looked at it a moment. Even the inside of it was woven with those horrible, degrading, dehumanizing words.
Quietly, she unclenched her hand holding her mother’s necklace, and felt her hands slip behind her neck and unclasp it. Like it was a piece of garbage, she quietly dropped it to the floor. She couldn’t force herself to look at it—her eyes instead fixed on the red collar in her hand. She slipped it around her neck and fastened the buckle, her fingers tracing the words engraved into the steel clasp. She turned to face her bedroom, and sunk to her knees.
She couldn’t stop herself. Warm feeling pulsed inside of her over and over, waves of pleasure and anticipation rolling through her, making it difficult to even crawl as she moved to the door. Her ass swayed in the air like she was some kind of animal moving on all fours. Somehow, collared and crawling, the dignity she’d sacrificed everything in her life for evaporated.
She pushed the door open.
The room was empty. Just a dark room lit by a single dim lamp, her bright red bed sheets looking almost black in the light.
Out of the corner of her eye, she sensed motion.
She felt him there before she saw him. His body lean, long and fit, his muscles tense, his features dark and chiseled and his body completely nude. She felt a horrible resistance whenever she tried to look at his face. It was like it was covered in shadow, and her eyes couldn’t linger there for long enough to look through it. He rose out of the chair in the corner and walked over to her, patting her on the head. Like a pet. A little part of herself that was still herself shivered with horror and with a supreme act of willpower she forced her head up to look at him.
His eyes caught hers for only a moment but that alone made her shiver down to her core, shaking so hard she could feel her bones creak. Like two black holes, they almost sucked her in in that brief moment. Her body rolled with warmth and pleasure, and she almost came. His other hand reached down to her throat with a leash, hooking it on the collar. He said nothing.
He turned away and her mind started to return. He tugged on the leash and led her to the bed.
She crawled, following his lead up onto the bed where her owner wanted her. The sudden feeling of that word waiting in her mind like a trapdoor spider to spring forth at just this moment enveloped her. He was her owner. This was not a question, it was a fundamental truth as certain as her name. How long? How long had this been happening?
He came up behind her, and his body pressed against her. His cock resting between her ass cheeks, the warmth of his body like a furnace next to hers. She felt freezing cold, like he was the only heat in the room. She couldn’t see him. She could only feel him behind her, feel his body, feel the warmth of his presence as he pulled back with his hot hands grabbing her hips, the leash pulling her head back by the collar.
He pulled back, and his member pressed between her legs, against her sex. He rubbed against her soaking wet lips, tracing the outline of her sex, the head of his member rubbing into and teasing her. She whimpered tried to press back into him, filled with insane hunger, horrible need, but found that her body wouldn’t obey. Her breathing came in short, ragged gasps as she realized she was under his complete control. Without even saying a word he had somehow made his wishes clear to her. Quivering with the desire to drive herself back onto him, instead she lowered her head and spread her legs wider. Her body was his to use when he desired; not when she desired it. She began to sob under the pressure of the desire that filled her and the need denied her.
The waiting and teasing finally ended as he grasped her hips and slammed himself inside as deeply as he could, filling her with his fiery hot member. His hips pressed to hers, his rod feeling like hot iron inside her, and he began to thrust. In and out, back and forth, he pumped himself into her, his hips slamming against her butt cheeks, his thrusting so forceful it forces her head down into the pillows, her whole body moving forward. It felt like her insides were consumed with a fiery inferno, and her head spun as she struggled to control the butterflies that had escaped her stomach and flitted throughout her whole body.
He didn’t slow or stop, but picked up speed, pumping into her again and again, leash pulling her body back, arching, as his cock thrusts inside. Her body was on fire, forced into all consuming arousal by this familiar stranger, butterflies in her stomach, butterflies in her brain, her whole body tingled. The heat of him inside of her is too much, and she could hear herself grunting low and deep, unable to speak actual words.
Suddenly he held himself against her, and his cock began shooting pulsing wave after pulsing wave of sticky white cum inside her and tickling her with the sensation as it coated her tunnel of passion. Her body twitched in the throes of orgasm, the world going white with pleasure, mind and thoughts fleeing from the waves of joy. Anything she could have thought at that moment was gone, washed away in the overwhelming experience that struck her mind like a club of endless orgasm.
Their bodies still entwined, but pleasure fading, muscles now only slightly twitching, he leaned down, his body covering hers, and put his lips to her ear. He spoke in a soft whisper:
“Each day you forget.”