A Subscription to Satisfaction

After struggling to get his key to turn, Gary Abraham pulled angrily on the balky aluminum-clad door opening into the vestibule of his apartment building. He expelled an irritated sigh at the wonderful start to his evening. He was more than a little annoyed that he was forced by his pathetic economic circumstances to be stuck at home alone for another Friday night. He had briefly toyed with the idea of stopping off at his usual watering hole before deciding that he had neither the energy nor the spare cash to part with. Sometimes the place depressed the hell out of him and he didn't need to go anywhere to feel that way. Juggling his keys, laptop, and briefcase, he grimly sorted through his mail as he climbed the dimly lit stairs toward the third floor. There was nothing in the handful of bills and ads that did anything but darken his already bleak mood. When he finally pushed open the door to his nearly empty apartment, he was just thankful for the meager sanctuary it provided. The bare walls echoed with each new sound as he dumped his keys, briefcase, and other accouterments on the lone table in the empty space that delineated his living room. He had only moved in here a few weeks ago to save on travel time and fuel costs. This was the second dog-rot apartment he had rented since losing most of what he owned in a bitter divorce.

His ex-wife's very expensive and thorough lawyer left him bereft of most of his former possessions and responsible for some staggering child support and alimony to pay. On what little the judge decided he could survive on, he could almost afford his one-bedroom palace in the nastiest section of the downtown area. Its biggest selling features as far as Gary was concerned were it was cheap and close to work. It was a colossal step down from the sprawling sixteen room suburban colonial he used to share with the she-demon and his two kids. She got to keep that, the children, his Mercedes, and even his fucking dog. What he got out of nineteen years of marriage was the rusty twelve-year-old pick up truck he bought to tow the boat with all of his clothes piled into the back, sans luggage. The only real property Gary still owned was an empty parcel of land by an unremarkable little lake upstate. It was a small wooded lot that the Harpy he had joined with in holy matrimony complained was halfway to the Arctic Circle. His grandfather left it to him in his will along with his three Mason jar button collection.

Grandpa always told him "You have to learn to take the good with the bad, my boy." Gary would have loved to tell granddad how well his advice had worked in dealing with the shrew-queen. He was almost certain to have to sell the plot in the next few years just to keep his financial head above water. He once had high hopes to build a retirement home on that spot for his wife and himself but the best laid plans...and all that. When he stepped into his kitchenette, he immediately started grumbling about being so effing broke that he coundn't even afford a place that had a real Kitchen! Oh no he had to settle for one with a goddamn kitchenette! Opening the freezer he began a half hearted search for something to fix for his dinner. Gary spoke aloud as he took stock of the possibilities. He realized a short time ago that he began doing it more and more since he began living alone.

"Let's see we have here a delicious frozen pizza, frozen pasta with vegetables in sauce of some kind, and some other kind of frozen noodley looking shit. Hmmmm it's a tough choice, but the winner is... frozen noodley looking shit!"

With that difficult decision behind him, he turned the oven on, ripped open the cardboard package, and threw the plastic tray onto the rack closing the door with a hollow thump. He strode out of the room loosening his tie and blowing a lusty sigh as he headed for his bedroom. The flipped on the lights and tossed his jacket at the chair near his computer desk. Sitting heavily on the edge of his bed, he dug the remote from under the covers and turned on the TV looking for something to watch while his food to cooked. He scanned through the channels finding nothing to his liking. Most of the shows quickly bored him or managed to depress him too much to watch for very long. Tossing the remote back on the bed, he walked to the window and looked down into the courtyard below his window. Across the street from where little kids were supposed to play Gary saw a scruffy looking drug dealer plying his trade. His piece of crap car parked as few spaces down had all of the windows open while his premium sound system pumped out an obnoxious blast of RAP and hip-hop into the cool night air. Over that clamor but not too far in the distance, Gary thought he could hear indistinct pops that might have been gunfire. A block or so further down from the local chemical distributor he saw what had to be the single homeliest hooker he had ever laid eyes on working hard to scare up her next "date."

"Christ what a shithole," He mumbled turning away from the blight outside his window.

Still waiting for the timer to call him to dinner he walked over and hit the switch on his homemade PC. It was parked in the corner on a rickety desk he had picked up at a thrift store last weekend. The computer itself was an equally crotchety assemblage of mixed parts and pieces. He had thrown it together from leftovers he found lying around in the tech-room at work. It had all the basics a large CRT monitor, CD burner, a decent processor and plenty of memory. It even had an old out-dated web cam in case he wanted to do video conferencing for work. By far its weakest link was a pair of the most painfully inadequate speakers he had ever heard. Much like a telephone, they were OK for reproducing speech but for anything more demanding, they were monstrous disappointment. It was about as far from a top of the line system as his living conditions where from a year or so ago. It almost never ran quite the way he wanted it to, but it was good enough for what he needed to do with it. He only put it together so that he could work from home when once in a great while and he really needed it to keep his on-line activities from showing up on his corporate laptop.

It wasn't that he did anything extraordinary on-line. However, when you were head of the IT department for a large Investment bank it just wouldn't do to leave traces of even the most vanilla of porn on your work computer. A large part of his job was keeping everyone else from doing exactly that sort of thing on company's time and equipment. It would have been a nightmare for him to be caught at it. Worse yet that discovery would probably be made by one of his own people. He didn't want to contemplate how quickly he would be shown to the door for that kind of stupid mistake. The dried up old men he worked for had little or no sense of humor to begin with and Gary certainly didn't need to be tempting the fates. Deciding it was much better to be safe than sorry he built the beast at home in his spare time. Before the crotchety old thing had even finished booting up Gary thought he smelled a hint of something burning floating on the air.

"Aw fuck me!" He leapt out of the chair dashing down the hallway toward the accursed "Kitchenette."

Whipping open the oven door he reached inside for the little black tray before thinking about what he was doing. He pulled his smoldering dinner out of the oven in a panic. When the nerve impulses from his fingertips finally reached his brain, he ejected the 425-degree entrée in a blink of an eye. His fettuccine Chicken with Alfredo sauce landed hard on the range top in a wet sounding splat. Blowing on his stinging fingertips Gary swore between frantic breaths. He couldn't believe how asinine it was to grab the damn thing that way. He was even more disgusted with himself for being so stupid as to forget to set the fucking timer. He angrily slammed the oven door and turned to leave the room but hesitated looking down at the ruins of his diner. His fingers had almost stopped throbbing by the time he decided no matter how screwed up it was he was too damn hungry and tired to wait for something else to cook. Resigned to eating what was still edible he pulled a fork and an oven mitt out of their respective drawers and gathered up his dinner. After eating as much as he could choke down, he dumped the remains and headed for the shower hoping he could get through that without falling on his ass or the roof caving in on him.

Fresh from the relaxing shower Gary was feeling pretty damn good for the first time all day. Still towel drying his hair he plopped nude into the cheap vinyl desk chair in front of his computer. He was surprised how much simple pleasures like a hot shower appealed to him these days. It wasn't even 9:30 yet and he decided it was too early to go to bed so he grabbed the mouse and started knocking around on the internet. He was learning through adversity that there was satisfaction to be found in places he never thought to look before. He did kinda want a beer but he was finally comfortable and didn't feel like getting up right now. He then remembered with a humorless chuckle that he didn't have any. Gary didn't really know what he was looking for, so long as it didn't deepen his Friday night funk. There were only two luxuries he shoehorned into his anorexic budget. The first was a high-speed connection that would allow him to work from home should that need arise. The fast connection dovetailed with his reason for building the junk box of a computer in the first place, his desire for a little personal privacy on-line. Predictably, that privacy meant he could indulge in exploring the seamier side of the internet without the career ending ramifications.

Tonight he started out innocently scanning his usual news sites. After reading a few stories, he quickly grew bored with that. He logged into a favorite Poker website staying long enough to play a few dozen hands winning about as many as he lost. Soon his interest there flagged as well. He thought about trying some of the other gaming sites he frequented but couldn't think of one that really appealed to him. Giving in to a different temptation his mouse pointer slid upward to open his short list of bookmarks. Once the list dropped down his cursor immediately came to a stop on the link for, "Lady Emma's Private Estate." While the page loaded, he opened the only drawer on the wobbly desk and extracted a small plastic bottle setting it within easy reach.

The second indulgence he allowed into his meager budget was the reason he was not sipping a cold beer at the saloon this evening. It would also end the moment he some other necessity came up that meant he could no longer afford it. Gary was a new but sincerely devoted subscriber to Lady Emma the English Mistress. Her website specialized in a host of male oriented fantasies up to and including a little BDSM. There was the naughty nurse, a dominating female boss, and a decadent leather clad bondage mistress among others. He found the thought of a woman with a whip torturing his cock and balls more than a little frightening, but when the dominatrix was as gorgeous as Lady Emma it might be a price worth paying. He knew some guys actually got off on that but the idea pretty much scared the shit out of him. Most of her nicely produced videos centered on her skill at the drawn out tease. They usually culminated in her masturbating her willing victims to completion. Occasionally a scenario would allow her intended target to gain the upper hand and her subscribers were treated to watching as Lady Emma herself took a serious screwing. Of course when that did happen Mistress did not seem at all displeased. Her naughty videos and the site in general were presented in what Gary thought was an interesting rather upscale manner.

He rationalized the $49.95 monthly expense by considering how much a girlfriend might cost him. Hell, just thinking about inviting a woman into this dump depressed him all over again. The embarrassment of having to reveal his circumstances to someone he had any feelings for or designs on was more humiliation than he was prepared to handle. He could watch or download as many of Lady Emma's videos as he wanted without enduring any of the perils of sharing this miserable existence with a woman. Nope, Lady Emma was the girl for him! At least right now she was. He also figured he would probably get as much sexual gratification from watching her videos than he did in his entire marriage. Lady Emma did all kinds naughty things that his sexually retarded ex-wife would never have dreamed of doing. The fifty bucks seemed kind of cheap since could get every thing he needed and never have to worry about being financially emasculated by his web mistress's lawyer. After what he'd been through at the hands of the evil-princess it was a wonder he hadn't sworn off women forever. So what if it was his own hand providing the sensations he enjoyed. If he had bothered to do a cost benefit analysis using all of the available evidence, Lady Emma would have still been a bargain at twice the price.

His screen filled with the familiar image of Lady Emma smiling and displaying a generous amount of her delightful cleavage on the login page. She was a tall, slender, middle-aged brunette with wonderfully round boobs a slender waist. He paused for a moment to examine her pleasant features trying to figure out what exactly made her so undeniably sexy. She had a wonderfully creamy complexion with arresting grey-blue eyes but the mystery of her enchanting beauty still eluded him. Her hair was cut somewhat shorter than appealed to Gary in the past. It was expertly streaked with red highlights and looked perfect for her. He couldn't explain why short hair on a woman was something that didn't strike him as sexy. Before getting married, he had always been drawn to women with very long hair. He always thought it somehow enhanced a woman's femininity. Her features didn't exactly fit into his idea of classic beauty either, nose a little too strong, lips a touch straight, waist just a bit short of perfect but there was something about the whole package that was stunning. The more he examined her photo the more he realized it was the presence she projected. Even in a photograph, she looked confident and assertive. The balance of her physical attributes only compounded the allure. He distractedly keyed in his username and password still marveling at her digital visage and clicked the login button.

As soon as he clicked "OK" he heard a richly accented feminine voice tell him, "Thank You Gary314 and welcome to Lady Emma's."

Even coming through the tinny speakers connected to his system her voice was something of a sensual feast. Her precise diction and the rich modulation of her British accent were almost musical to ears so used to hearing the same language spoken in a flat Midwestern twang. The login page faded to black and an options page appeared in its place. Gary slid the mouse pointer from one choice to the next. When he lighted on each of them, Lady Emma's delicious voice softly described what he would find in each.

"In the Office," She purred.

"The Examination room," her voice offered a hint of suggestion.

"The Slaves quarters," She sternly intoned.

"A tradesman's visit," a certain pique seeped into her voice.

"The Ladies come to Tea," Her voice projecting a touch of amusement hinting that the ladies might be in for a special brew.

Last but certainly not least, his cursor rested on, "To the riding stables," and Gary knew all too well the horses were rarely even saddled down there.

Each time she spoke, it sent a bit of a thrill through him. When he glanced downward, he could already see as well as feel the beginnings of tumescence building in his naked cock. It always seemed to happen to him whenever he got to this page. The anticipation of seeing such a gorgeous woman using all of her considerable talents to give a man pleasure was like an elixir to his spirit. Lady Emma did indeed have many talents. None of her visitors ever left unhappy. Gary was certain they would all wish for a longer stay, much longer.

He noticed that there was a new window today. There were usually only the six choices. Curious he parked the cursor over top the new picture and Lady Emma told him brightly, "Visit my new Projection Room."

Gary wasn't sure what he was in the mood for just yet so he let curiosity be his guide and clicked on this newest window. As soon as he did, a stark slightly ominous looking warning splashed across his screen. There were no dulcet vocal tones telling him what this page held. Apparently, they wanted the members to read it for themselves to retain the message. He read it quickly thinking that the language bordered on the overly dramatic even for a porn site.

WARNING: Due to the anticipated high demand for the "Projection Room," subscribers will be allowed entry only once per 24-hour period.

For years her members have watched Lady Emma performing with her many friends and guests with the greatest satisfaction. Inside Lady Emma's exciting new "Projection Room," we utilize patented technology. Exclusive to Lady Emma's, this cutting edge Technology affords you a unique opportunity to set the performance of your choice. For a limited time regular subscribers will be allowed access to our exciting new "Projection Room." However, after this trial period expires a Premium subscription of $89.99 will be required.

Click here to install required Browser plug-ins.

Gary barked a cynical chuckle, "That figures," he mumbled convinced he was looking at a clever marketing ploy, one intended to extract maximum income for a minimal expenditure. He clicked and then waited while the browser extensions loaded he glanced at the bottle of lube sitting on the desk. His mind wandered and he wondered if he wouldn't be better off just going back to the menu page and maybe picking a nice video to watch. A few seconds later, his monitor rolled and flickered erratically, his speakers emitted a series of peculiar sounding hisses and pops. For a frantic moment, Gary thought he was witnessing a complete meltdown of his cobbled computer, but it all ended as abruptly as it began.

"Jesus Christ! What the fuck was that?" he asked almost afraid to move and looking over at the beige cabinet for signs of rising smoke.

Turning back to the monitor, he found a large new icon centered on his screen.

"Enter the Projection Room"

Once he decided the damn thing wasn't about to explode, he tentatively grabbed the mouse and decided to follow along where he was being led. He clicked on the button fully expecting another disappointment to cap off his night. The instant his fingertip relaxed pressure on the mouse button he felt an in explicable wave of dizziness wash over him. His heart started racing and he felt the beginnings of panic tearing at him. He noticed with a start that he could no longer hear the distant wail of police sirens or the pounding RAP music from outside his window. Gary sat there clinging desperately to his sanity when his vision started going dark or was it something wrong with the lights. His panic increased as he tried to reason it out but found he couldn't concentrate so he just wasn't sure. Using every ounce of his intellect, he definitely remembered paying that bill it so it shouldn't be a problem with the lights. He decided therefore, it was his vision that had to be failing. He tried to make himself calm down but he felt beads of sweat forming on his brow and trickling down his back. It made him feel as though the clammy hand of death were closing around him.

He could still feel himself breathing although a lot more rapidly than normal. He could tell that he was still sitting and could feel the cool hard desk mat under his bare feet. The texture of the cheap vinyl under his ass and against his back was unmistakable. He could feel the edge of the desk rubbing on the underside of his arm, and the hard shape of his mouse still gripped tightly in his hand. Everything else felt so wrong, it was an odd disconnected feeling that reminded him vaguely of being under water. He shook his head hoping the unnerving sensation would pass. He wondered if this was how it felt to have a heart attack, or worse.