The Naked Woman
4
In retrospect, at a time when she possessed both still the inclination and the capacity to reflect upon the past, Natalie could divide the steps of her enslavement threefold. First, there was the test on the subway. This was followed by her appraisal on the elevator. Theoretically, at least, she could still have been returned to her old life at that point. What came next, though, irrevocably ruined her for freedom.
Thenceforward, what she became was inevitable.
Natalie woke up feeling muted. Everything seemed dead inside. She was scared, truly; but her heart kept beating at a regular pace, she felt no adrenalin pumping through her veins, she was allowed no panicked state to enter her consciousness. She opened her eyes and found herself in a bed, still naked.
She didn’t recognize where she was. The bed was not her own. The bedroom was not hers.
It’s not a dream, she thought, still feeling as if every emotion inside her had been tuned all the way down. She got up and nearly stepped into a treadmill standing next to the bed. It was one of those fancy machines, the ones you usually only saw in a public gym. Natalie brushed her fingers across it.
It was real. This was really happening. She rubbed her arm where “Tommy” had injected her. There was a sense of unreality about things. She found she couldn’t really care about anything.
The bedroom was plain, undecorated, consisting solely of a bed, the treadmill, and a closet. Instead of going to that closet, Natalie drifted toward the only door. She wondered if the state she was in was an aftereffect of the injection. Or maybe her recent experiences had just pushed her past all surprises.
The door led to a short hallway, and the hallway led to the living room of an apartment.
It was a nice-looking apartment, with elegant wall coverings, several anonymously framed landscape pictures, decent furniture, and a wide balcony looking out onto the street. The lights weren’t on, but the illumination from outside was bright enough that she could see. An open hallway extended to Natalie’s left. To her right, turning her head in that direction, Natalie saw a cozy kitchen nook, with a refrigerator.
It was the thought of food that finally broke the spell.
A wave of nausea rolled out from Natalie’s stomach. “Oh my God!” she exclaimed. “Oh my God!”
She suddenly, catastrophically collapsed to her hands and knees and vomited, her whole body spasming in long-delayed reaction.
Pain sank into overused muscles. The world spun. Her stomach continued to roll. She tried to get up and could not. After a few moments, when she was capable, Natalie rolled onto her side, drew her legs up to her chest, and held herself, rocking back and forth, crying.
She kept her eyes closed and moaned loudly.
“Help me,” she muttered eventually. “I need help. Please.” She wasn’t aware that she was talking to anybody. She was just voicing aloud what she held inside for so long. Finally, she opened her eyes.
Everything in the apartment was neat. Too neat. The place had the look of having just been gone over by a housekeeper. The tables were polished. Flowers had been set out. The carpet, save where she had vomited, was fluffy and clean, with even the lines from the vacuum cleaner smoothed out.
Natalie staggered to her feet. She put out a hand to the wall to steady herself, still crying. Three doors waited back through the short hall. One was open: a bathroom. Natalie managed to stumble into it.
Like everything else she had seen, the bathroom was spotless. Even the chrome was polished. Natalie took a shower, a very long shower, scrubbing at herself until she was red and raw from her attentions.
“I can move,” she muttered while under the spray. “This is me talking. This is me.”
Another spasm rocked her, and she fell in the shower and vomited again. Her nausea was impossible to stop or control. She stayed under the spray long after the water turned cold. She let the cold water spray over her so long her skin began to prune. She might have lost consciousness. She wasn’t sure.
For a long time, all Natalie did was stare into empty space, only occasionally muttering to herself. She held herself tight.
Perhaps an hour later, perhaps longer than that, Natalie returned to the center room. The light from the balcony had dimmed. She looked around briefly, found a switch, and turned on an overhead light.
There’s no telephone, she observed. She blinked. She looked down at herself. “I’m naked,” she said. She blinked again, as if in a daze once more.
She turned and looked at the front door.
“I have to get help,” she said. She reached out a hand to the doorknob . . . and then stopped. She tilted her head strangely. She looked at her hand, as if it were a foreign thing attached to her limb.
She tried again. The same thing occurred.
Scared but determined, Natalie grit her teeth. “Come on,” she whispered. “Come on, girl.”
She strained . . . but she just . . . couldn’t . . . will her hand to get any closer to that door.
“It’s not even locked,” she said. She had no way of knowing that or not. It was only her impression that the door was unlocked. She was morally sure of it, though.
She tried putting her hand on the door itself, but she found she couldn’t even approach it. No matter how hard she tried, her body refused to obey her. It was like before, in the office. She had full control over her body, except when it came to that bloody door.
She screamed, “LET ME OUT OF HERE!! HELP!! HELP!!!” Since she couldn’t quite reach the door, she pounded on the wall next to her. “HELP!!!!”
Natalie looked around the apartment for something to help her. “SOMEBODY!!” she yelled. “CAN ANYONE HEAR ME!?” Heedless of her nakedness, she went to the balcony, or tried to, at any rate.
The same thing happened: her feet stopped a few feet from the balcony window. She tried to push herself forward to no avail. But her muscles wouldn’t respond the right way.
“SOMEBODY!!!”
Maybe I can break the window, she thought. She picked up a lamp from an end table and lifted it as if to throw it through the glass. She only got halfway before her arm froze. “Come on,” she hissed.
She tried to throw the lamp. Instead, she put it carefully on the table. She even adjusted it back into position.
“God damn you!” she shrieked. “God damn it!!” What had they done to her?
In a fit of rage and fear, she tried throwing herself at the window. She failed, of course, but didn’t stumble or fall; she just halted herself in the middle of the movement, unable to continue it.
Natalie collapsed in the middle of the living room and sobbed. “Why are you doing this to me!?” she yelled to the air. “Please, please let me go!”
It is fortunate you are a woman, the first man (Man!) had said. You are not yet fit to sell. But you have potential.
“I won’t let you do this to me,” she said, to him, to the room, to anyone who might have been listening.
Natalie stood up.
“I won’t be turned into your slave.” Her eyes darted to the kitchen.
She went to it, opened up a drawer, found a knife. She held her wrist up. “I’ll do it!” she screamed, sobbing. No one replied. Maybe no one was listening. There was no way to tell.
She lowered the knife . . . and stopped.
“NOOOO!!!” She tried pointing the blade at her chest, tried to plant it between her breasts. She didn’t fumble with the blade. Her hands just wouldn’t perform the necessary actions.
No hesitation. No shivering. No clumsiness. Just total, immediate non-compliance.
Natalie tried to throw the knife at the window. She ended up putting it back neatly in its drawer.
She was trapped.
The second door led back to the small and simple bedroom. The closet was full of nice, simple clothes, some not entirely unlike things Natalie might have had in her own closet, in her own apartment. The most noticeable thing was the complete lack of panties or pants. There were skirts, dresses, and slips, teddies and baby-dolls, but no pantyhose, jeans, or shorts, nothing that would cover her legs or groin.
The third door in the apartment, the one at the end of the hall, was locked. Natalie could put her hands on the knob, but she couldn’t open it. When she tried to pick the lock with the knife from the kitchen, her hands once again refused to cooperate. She threw the knife at the floor in disgust only to pick it up again a second later, carry it back into the kitchen, wash it(!), and put it back into its drawer.
The refrigerator was full of food. Lots of fruits and vegetables. Eggs. The freezer was full of meat.
There were labels on most of the items, but Natalie couldn’t read any of them. The cupboards had cereal and condiments, dishes, cooking utensils. It was a fully furnished apartment, except that it had no telephone or television. There was nothing to read (Nothing I could read, she thought viciously).
Natalie continued to yell for help periodically. But no one responded. No one heard.
No street noises emanated from the balcony or the window in the bedroom. Natalie looked out that window and saw the street below was empty. The city remained weird and mysterious to her.
Trying to open the window was futile. Every time she tried, her body refused to cooperate.
So, Natalie eventually thought. I can eat. I can walk. I can even look out the window.
But no more than that, apparently. She wondered if she was in hell.
She ended up taking another shower. “I can take a shower,” she said to herself and to anyone else who might have been listening. The cabinets had toiletries and hygiene products. There was make-up in a drawer near the mirror. She had absolutely everything she needed, except her freedom.
The funny thing about absolute terror: after awhile, even under the direst of circumstances, it started to fade.
Natalie found a simple dress she could live with, she cooked herself a simple meal she could eat, she even fell asleep in the bedroom after the lights from outside dimmed to total darkness. She did not dream. She woke up the next morning, cooked herself breakfast, took a shower, sat down, waited.
There was nothing to do.
Eventually, not knowing precisely why, Natalie got up and began cleaning. Beneath the cupboards in the kitchen were cleaning items, wash rags, and polish (Natalie did not consider herself a suicidal person—She wanted desperately to live!—but when she tried to swallow the bleach or polish she had found, her body refused to complete the action. She really was trapped in that apartment). A closet hid a vacuum cleaner. Natalie used it on the carpet, cleaning up the spots where she had thrown up.
It didn’t take long to whip the apartment back into shape. It had been pristine before she got there. By late afternoon of her second day in the apartment, she had even polished the chrome in the tub.
She hated to admit it under the circumstances, but she was totally bored, and so when the door to the apartment finally opened, Natalie was honestly excited for a moment. Maybe it had to do with how good the sex had been. Then she remembered she was a prisoner. She remembered “Tommy.”
Please no, she thought.
“Hey, you need to let me . . . go.” Her voice trailed off. Her mouth hung open in surprise.
The man who entered was the antithesis of the Man who had raped her, or of that Man’s blondish brother. It was the antithesis of “Tommy.” For a moment, in spite of all that had occurred, the “mad scientist” stereotype of his appearance so shocked Natalie she failed to recognize, consciously, anyway, that she could, in fact, see him. She could actually recognize him as something not a mannequin!
“. . . ah, ah, sorry . . .” he stuttered, breathily. He was short, shorter than Natalie, thin, and stringy.
His hair was dirty-white and splayed out over his head in wild fashion, almost so it was a caricature of Einstein’s famous head. He was ill-shaven. His eyes behind their glasses darted, first in one direction and then another. He smelled of greasy foods.
He even wore a lab coat. It was stained at the bottom edges. He bit his lips. His fingers twitched.
“. . . let’s see, ah, ah, Natalie . . yes, Natalie, you must obey me . . .” he whined at her. “. . . I’m sorry. Follow me . . .”
At the sound of her name of his lips, Natalie felt a shift inside her head. Twing!
She experienced a moment of intense vertigo. Then, without losing step, she found herself following the man, dreamily trailing him down the hallway to the door at the end.
“. . . sorry, I’m sorry, I have to . . .” he kept mumbling.
His head was hunched over as if from long practice. “. . . I have to . . .”
He moved in tiny little nervous jerks. She, in contrast, moved like a sleepwalker, in slow motion and underwater. He took out a key and opened the door for her.
The room beyond was strictly utilitarian. It was like a surgical suite. There was a sink, a shower stall, a medical table, and several glass-enclosed cabinets full of drugs and medical equipment.
The man turned to her.
“. . . there’s a, ah, there’s a bathroom back down the hallway to your left,” the fellow said.
He told her this as if she hadn’t already been in that apartment over twenty-four hours. He couldn’t quite meet Natalie’s eyes.
“. . . use the toilet, ah, whenever you need to, use the toilet . . and, ah, ah, eat, yeah, there’s a kitchen . . . eat when you get hungry . . . but you can’t leave, I’m sorry, you can’t leave . . .”
Natalie found herself nodding, understanding.
No one’s controlling me now, she realized. I could walk out of here if I want.
But she didn’t. She couldn’t muster up the necessary willpower. It took too much effort. When he had called her by her name, something had happened to her.
No masculine presence was in her mind. But she felt relaxed, totally physically relaxed.
“. . . ah, ah, make yourself . . make yourself clean . . .” He shuffled away again, muttering to himself.
Natalie, blushing madly, did as she had been instructed. Her utter embarrassment only fueled her terror more so, raising it to previously unknown heights. Then she used the shower and cleaned herself off.
I want to leave. Why can’t I leave? He was not the source of the power now controlling her; she felt that. I want to hurt him. I could. But she didn’t. Something new was happening to her.
A couple of minutes later, the doctor came back and stutteringly asked Natalie to come with him. As they were going down the hall, a woman passed them.
Natalie could not react, aside, that is, from a widening of her eyes in shock and surprise and more than a little fear, and then the encounter was over.
The woman was black. She had been completely shaven. Her bald head and skin gleamed with oil.
She strolled past Natalie without stopping, her pace as languid as Natalie’s own, as if they were both sleepwalking. Lethargic body language aside, her eyes mirrored Natalie’s own: the same fear, the same lack of control over her body, the same dreadful anticipation of what was to come.
Natalie realized sickly that she wasn’t alone. She wasn’t the only female prisoner being kept there.
Where did she come from? she asked herself. She must have come into the apartment while she was in the bathroom. Back inside the medical suite, Natalie noticed another door on the opposite wall.
Did that door lead to another apartment? Another prisoner?
The walls were polished white tile. Equipment filled various wall spaces and cabinets. The doctor had Natalie stand before him. He inspected her.
He looked her up and down with a minute examination. His expression, now that he was at work, was studious, clinically disinterested, a physician performing a medical check-up, nothing more. He laid his hands on her, checking her pulse, feeling the texture of her skin, probing the firmness of her breasts.
On the inside, Natalie wept with rage, fear, and confusion: he was handling her like a piece of meat!
It was, in a way, even worse than her sexual assaults earlier, which because of the control these men had over her, she had been an active, if unwilling, participant in. She had been involved. Here, the man inspected her like a piece of livestock! He even opened her mouth and checked her teeth, like a horse!
He was completely impersonal, and as a result Natalie’s sense of alienation from herself, her own body, increased vividly. It didn’t help that she felt dazed, psychically numb. She felt like a doll.
The sensation was different from before. That was masculine, automatic. Here, the man told her to do something, and she did it. Without command, she stared blankly. Maybe she was hypnotized?
Whatever it was, she couldn’t draw up the necessary resistance to disobey. She had no willpower.
The first “procedure” the doctor performed on her involved her breasts.
After finishing her “check-up,” the doctor turned to a cabinet. He came back with a needle and a syringe. Natalie’s eyes widened. He was going to give her a drug!
Instead of putting the needle into her arm, the doctor took hold of her right breast and lifted it.
Holding the syringe carefully, he licked the tips of his fingers of that same hand and tickled Natalie’s nipple, causing it, to her shame, to grow erect under his ministrations. When he was satisfied, he took the syringe and inserted the needle directly into the nipple.
He injected a clear substance into her breast. Natalie gasped involuntarily, and because it was involuntary on her part, the sound actually filled the room. It hurt! It hurt like a sonofabitch!
The man withdrew the needle slowly, then rubbed his thumb over the nipple roughly, tweaking it back and forth. Natalie’s breast began to throb weirdly, all over. Replacing the needle, the man performed the same operation on her left boob. He left Natalie’s chest tingling, tender, and sensitive.
She could only glare at him as he turned around and came back with more supplies.
She received two more injections, this time both in her left arm. He was careful of infection. He wiped down the surface of her skin with an alcohol pad.
The examination table had a pair of gynecological stirrups. The doctor gestured for her to climb up and put her feet in. With her legs soon spread, he bent forward and peered inside, probing with fingers and instruments. Natalie’s head lay flat at the top staring at the ceiling. She had the sensation that she was at sea: everything was still, yet at the same time she felt a peculiar sense of motion at the edges of her awareness, as a ship may gently bob up and down.
This was worse than before. Much worse.
She felt muddle-headed and empty. She knew she should leave. But she couldn’t.
The doctor injected Natalie labial folds. The shots were painful, but Natalie only reactions were a few more involuntary moans. Almost immediately afterwards she felt an electrifying sensation begin working inside her, enough so to fill her entire stomach with butterflies and warmth.
She began to feel randy.
The next thing he did to her involved a tool that looked very much like a dildo. Natalie felt herself grow warmer and even a little involuntarily wet at the sight, an instinctive response. She used—had used—a similar looking device quite often, which she kept in her bedside drawer.
The doctor filled one end of this “dildo” with the contents of yet another drug vial. The vial had no label; its contents appeared to Natalie’s eyes as nothing more than water. The doctor turned to her.
“. . . ah, well, ah . . when I put . . put this in you, ah, squeeze down on it, like, ah, you would a . . a cock . . . okay?” With no fuss, his actions more precise than his words, he inserted the dildo and twisted.
The wild tingling spread through her labial folds, making them, in her imagination (or so she believed at the time), puffier, more responsive. The doctor touched her clit with the tool, and Natalie orgasmed.
Obscene pleasure rocketed through her lower body and made her squeal. Damn you, she wept inside.
The doctor examined her mouth next. Using a needle, he injected a fluid into both her upper and lower lips. Then he picked up another “dildo.”
“. . . when I, ah, when I put this in your mouth, press, ah, press your lips down upon it.” He closed his eyes for a moment and slumped his head. “I’m sorry. I’m truly, truly sorry. But, ah . . . I have to.”
He lifted the tool, and, helpless not to, since that was his command, Natalie opened her mouth to receive it. When she pursed her lips about the tool, she felt them coated on all sides with the clear liquid seeping from inside. The doctor turned it, coating the inside of her mouth liberally.
Natalie’s lips started to tingle now as well.
After a minute, the man removed the dildo and picked up another. He went beside Natalie and told her to get on her side. He put his hand on the small of her back. He pressed forward, and she bent.
Again, she managed to express her dismay with an involuntary moan. The man inserted the tool in her anus and twisted it as before.
“Clench,” he instructed her, and she did.
A heat, unmistakably a sexual heat, slowly rose in her veins. She was ashamed of herself, but there was no denying it. What this man was doing to her, or maybe what he was putting in her, was making her want to have sex. Her breasts, nipples, mouth, ass, and genitals were left throbbing and stinging.
The next thing the doctor did was wash her hair. He ordered her to kneel in front of the sink, then, using an extendable showerhead, wet the top of Natalie’s head. Putting on a pair of rubber gloves, he worked yet another chemical solution into her short brown bob. Whatever he used smelled foul.
“. . ah, ah . . . take this,” he told her. He handed her an unmarked bottle of what looked like liquid soap. “Take . . take a shower.” He led Natalie to the stall. There was no curtain, no privacy.
Natalie used a sponge to wet down every inch of her skin. Per her “doctor’s” directions, she went up her front, squeezing her already hypersensitive breasts. She squeezed down each arm and leg, swept up between her thighs, rubbed down her ass and back. The man watched carefully, his attention less voyeuristic, in Natalie’s opinion, than it was merely being complete. Making sure she was carefully balanced, he even had her soak the soles of her feet in the colorless solution from the bottle.
Last of all she washed her face. The man let no part of her body go untouched.
Afterwards, while she waited on him, he used a hose to wash out the stall. He doesn’t want whatever he soaked in me to get on his skin, Natalie realized. The thought did not make her feel particularly good. Whatever it was, it worked like a muscle cream, going on chill but warming over time.
She felt very strange. Her scalp felt like little ants were crawling over it. Her skin was cold—she hadn’t been toweled off or anything—and yet she felt curiously warm at the same time.
“Come . . ah, come with me,” he told her. He had Natalie climb on top of the table and lie on her stomach. Helplessly, she felt herself responding to him sexually.
Her breath was coming faster. Her breasts felt warm and plump. Her pussy was a moist furnace.
She wanted to have sex.
What is he going to do to me? she thought.
Soon enough, she had her answer. Taking ankle in hand, sitting down on a stool beside her, the man lifted up her right leg at the knee. Natalie didn’t know what was happening until she felt the needle go into the back of her leg, right above the ankle. She felt something injected.
A moment later a blinding pain filled her ankle, the sharp gouging agony extending all along the tendon.
It was like the worst cramp in the world, in the universe! Natalie yelled out.
She actually yelled out, though the sound of her scream was muffled by the fact that her face was still all but pressed into a towel in front of her face. Unlike the relatively mild tingling and pinching of whatever else he had done to her, this was pure pain. Pure agony! Natalie gasped and wept, but still she could not move on her volition. She was trapped by her obedience.
She felt the man pat her ass gently, as if in preparation. Then he repeated the agonizing procedure with her other foot.
The backs of her legs felt like they were shrinking! as if the flesh and bones of her ankles and lower legs were constricting, squeezing down upon themselves. At the same time, the sensations in her ass, her mouth, sex, everywhere, steadily grew stronger, more urgent. She still wanted to be fucked hard.
He gave her another injection, this time in the middle of her back. The agony multiplied even further.
Natalie could neither see nor hear after a time, and at what point she simply lost consciousness, fainted from all that had happened, was purely impossible to say.