Annihilation

After he had finished, his anticipation of his unspecified reward was almost heart-stopping. He heard her footsteps again, this time behind his head. Then, turning his head to left and right, he saw that her boots were to each side of him; she had straddled the bench, and was directly above him. He literally held his breath.

He saw that the hole in the bench was slowly being uncovered. Then, bathed in pinkish light, her pussy was revealed to him.

Her long, smooth fingers teased her labia, now rolling and pulling them around and apart, now pinching them tightly together. She spoke to him, this time in a deliciously soothing, cooing tone.

"Look at V. This is just a little, tiny, glimpse, a hint of the pleasure V can give to you. Can you imagine it? Don't you wish you could feel these sweet lips about you? Look how full and soft they are. What kisses they will give you! And they are only gates to your ecstasy. Behind them there lies a warm, cosy prison that will keep you locked up safe and sound for ever! You will be lost, forever mine, forever inside me. You will wish for nothing, for you will be nothing.

"And all you need to do to attain this is simply to listen to my Voice, obey my commands, and follow the Laws. It's so simple, little 216, so simple.

"Will you come to me again, to continue on your journey?" Her middle fingers now lightly flickered and padded at her clitoris. "Will you come? Will you?"

"Y-Yes, My All."

"Good," she said briskly, suddenly rising and replacing the cover on the hole. She walked across the room, flicked a switch, and he was once again in pitch blackness.

In the darkness, she ordered him to remain still. She removed his harnesses. She made him stand. Again he was left for many minutes. His hand strayed to his genitals, before he remembered the ninth Law and stopped himself.

She told him his clothes were now returned to him and were by him on the floor. He dressed in silence, and with some difficulty, as he was unable to see what he was doing. Suddenly a stream of daylight from the corridor appeared from the open door, although he had not heard her opening it.

He left, and returned to his car. Once inside he masturbated, bringing himself to orgasm almost instantly. Immediately afterwards he felt an overpowering need to hear her Voice once again. He retrieved his mobile phone from the glove compartment. He pressed redial.

V answered. "Name, or Number?"

"It's me, My All. 216. I... I..."

"You may come to me tomorrow at four, or tonight at ten."

"Tonight. Please My All, tonight."

For the second time he heard her loud, vulgar laugh. "I thought so. Do not forget to bring my tribute."

216 checked his watch. Seven-fifteen. He was to return to V at ten. He had spent almost exactly an hour with her. She was a real professional, he thought: while he had been transported out of space and time, she had been carefully making sure that his session hadn't overrun.

He suddenly felt hungry. He looked along the row of suburban shops in the street where he'd parked for somewhere to eat.

At a corner was a rather shabby looking cafe that was still open.

He ordered a meal.

As he waited for the food to arrive, he sipped his tea and thought. What was happening to him? He felt elated, as though a great dread, which he had until now been unconscious of, had abruptly passed.

Then his doubts started to resurface. He knew nothing about her. He hadn't even seen her face. She might be nothing like the photos on her website, which could have been doctored, or been pictures of someone else entirely.

He tried to think logically. She had been able to read his mind with uncanny accuracy, and without any visual clues, as they had been in complete darkness for much of the time. How could she have accomplished this? Perhaps she had used night-vision goggles to spy on him. He recalled the email he had sent. There were probably enough clues there to construct a reasonably accurate assessment of his character. Besides, she must have built up a good picture of typical types of client, and was able to pigeonhole him.

Her voice was certainly extremely hypnotic, but hypnotism is not magic, but simply a skill, he told himself.

And she had managed to relieve him of £500, an amount that was soon to double.

But he didn't have to go back. He could forget it, drive home, watch some TV, and sleep.

He picked up his fork to start on his food, and grimaced. His left hand hurt. He looked at the ugly bruise in his palm. He found himself automatically repeating the Laws.

Naked once more in the darkness of her domain, 216's mind slowed, and his doubts ceased nagging. The black stillness stifled his thoughts. She had ordered him inside, and told him to undress. Now he waited for her to speak.

He heard quick sharp footsteps ringing on the hard floor as she approached. Then... nothing. Silence. His throat tickled him, but he dared not clear it. Similarly to the first session, she circled him, but this time she didn't speak. All he heard was the steady tap of her heels.

The footsteps stopped. She was directly in front of him. He held his breath, and although he heard nothing, he somehow felt her leaning close to his face, examining it. But for what?

Finally she began to speak quietly to him. There was something ominous in the tone of her voice that made his skin crawl.

"You have come back to me, but you have also hidden yourself from me deep inside your mind. You hide in your hole like a rabbit. But I will dig you out of your burrow with my claws, until your belly is exposed to my fangs. You haven't yet felt my claws, 216. You are doomed. They will tear you apart."

Was she speaking literally or figuratively? A crazy impulse came to him to voice this question aloud to her.

Without warning he felt an excruciating blow across his face, as though an eagle had lunged at him with its talons. He felt another blow, like a hammer, to his groin. He crumpled to his knees. As he reeled, disoriented in the blackness, his arms were forced behind his back. He heard a tearing sound. She bound his hands together and shoved him to the hard floor onto his front. Now the flesh-rending blows resumed, across his back, his ass, and the back of his legs. It felt as though she were flaying him with a sharpened metal comb. He arched his back and convulsed with each strike. He felt V straddle him widely, across his shoulders, and dig and tear sharply at his lower back and buttocks. She really did seem to be using claws. She spoke to him, in a quiet, vicious snarl, continuing her rhythmic torment all the while:

"I have made a mistake, little 216, I misjudged you. Your mind yields to me less easily than your body. I am now stigmatizing you, so the world will know you belong to V. What will your little wife think? How will 216 explain these marks to her? What will they all say in the office? Did you think I was playing your game? Your game? Don't you understand? There is no you."

Eventually the blows stopped, but he barely noticed. He was dragged upright, and guided roughly to another part of the room.

Then the room was illuminated. His eyes slowly recovered.

He had been positioned directly before a large mirror, which stretched from the ceiling down to the floor.

He hardly recognized his reflection. His face and body were lined with bloody scratches, as though he had been dragged over barbed wire. His nose bled and his eyes were blackened. But more than anything, it was the expression on his reflection's face that was so unrecognizable. Its half-closed eyes were those of a stranger. He'd seen such eyes before, but never staring at him from a mirror. They were the eyes of a derelict, or of a condemned man, hopeless, resigned to a life of misery.

From behind him, in the far corner of the room, V spoke to him, in a half mocking, half pitying tone:

"216, you forget the seventh Law: Turn around and face me."

He turned, and he saw V.

She was tall. She stood so motionless that she seemed almost inhuman, a store mannequin. She was dressed, or rather wrapped, head to foot, in a black metallic material. Not a single part of her skin was visible. Her gloved fingers terminated in short chrome blades, some of which dripped blood.

Her domed head was totally covered also, so that she appeared bald. There was a small grille where her mouth would be. There were no eye-holes.

He had seen stylized images, drawn or painted, of dominatrices wrapped in leather or plastic, almost as though they had been dipped into a vat of black shiny paint, like car bodies in a factory. He had found these images exciting, but had never really understood why. But to face V, in reality, before him now, was overwhelming. He felt as though the images he had seen had all been based on her. But they had all been such feeble, childish attempts at rendering her terrible beauty.

She resumed speaking, this time in her slow, rhythmic, hypnotic voice, which seemed to issue within his own head. "You understand so little of why you are here. You know so little of life, of pleasure, or of pain. Your mind, your silly little fluttering mind, has imprisoned you.

"I will teach you now. You will see that your desire, your fear, your pleasure and pain, your birth and your death are all one. Come to me now. We will begin."

Mindless, he approached her. He felt drawn in towards her by a gravitational pull, like a rock in space drifting inevitably into a black hole.

She motioned for him to kneel. She gently placed around his neck a twisted chiffon scarf. "Very pretty, 216. Blue suits you." He looked up at her, surprised at her jocularity. But her face was hidden, replaced by the expressionless mask of her black hood.

Holding the ends of the scarf, she twisted until it tightened. He put his hands up to his neck and swayed from side to side. With a jerk, she tightened the scarf even further, and pulled, as though he were a wayward dog.

He started to choke. He didn't like, this, no he didn't like it at all, he wanted to go home. He wanted to stop playing now and go home.

Again she spoke, half-taunting, punctuating her words with ever-tightening twists of the scarf. "What is it that you seek? What is your end? Do you seek to become one with V? Do you wish to crawl inside me? My womb is your tomb, 216, you will end as you began, as nothing, and all your worries, your silly little life, will all be over. Would you like that, 216? Would you like to end it all? Will you come inside me? Will you come inside?"

He began to lose consciousness. Around the edge of his vision a blackness grew, as if he were withdrawing backwards into a dark tunnel. Now the light that was the room was no more than a dot of white before him. The walls of the tunnel were not quite dark, but were of a deep brown, and swirled like clouds, as though he were caught in a smoky tornado.

Suddenly he felt that he was leaving his body, and perceived himself from above, kneeling before her. They looked so small, so silly, two little people playing silly games in a silly little room. The room vanished into the white dot, and the dot shrunk, and dwindled, as he felt his life drifting away like a sigh.

But the dot remained, and grew. But he knew he was now on the Other Side, he was hurtling out through the other end of the tunnel towards his new Life, in a green and pleasant land.

He raced towards the end of the tunnel, and he saw that the edge of it where it gave out was lipped with deep red. And it was not a circle but a red lidded eye. And then he saw that it was inside her, into her womb that he raced.

As he died, he exploded inside her, a blinding, cosmic orgasm that shot him like a cannonball into the dazzling bright world inside her, where he was to begin his new life, safe inside her...

216 came to. He was alive. He was lying, curled up on his side, on the tiled floor of her room. He opened his mouth to stretch his face muscles. He felt that he had dried semen on it. He stirred. He looked up, and saw her. She sat on an armed chair, with one leg casually swinging over the other. She rested her elbows on the arms of the chair, her metal-nailed fingers pressed together and touching the part of her mask that covered her lips, as though she had been waiting patiently for him to awaken. Although her face was hidden, there was something in her posture that convinced him that she was smiling behind it.

"I hope you had sweet dreams, 216. You died and saw the gates of heaven, but like Lazarus, you are reprieved. It is time for you leave my domain now, and return to me another time."

He tried to stand, but felt he was going to be sick. He remained on all fours, breathing heavily. He felt as though his body were a lump of inanimate matter. He puzzled over how he had ever been able to move it at all. Somehow his mind had been separated from it. He watched helplessly as the body refused to move when he willed, like a driverless car.

V waited, her leg swinging slightly. She asked, "Does 216 need a little assistance?"

With a huge effort, he replied hoarsely, "I can't move my body, my All..."

"It is no longer your body. 216. It is mine. And only I have power over it. I could make it jump from the window, or pick up a knife and slit its wrists. But I wish it to live -- for a while. I will play with it, until I tire of it. But not now. Now V has other business, and 216 must leave her domain, and return to her tomorrow morning, with a nice, fresh tribute." She stood. "But first, I wish it to crawl to me, and kiss my boot, and thank me for freeing it from its mind. Come. CRAWL TO ME!"

216's body crawled. It kissed her boot, and thanked her.

"Now dress. There are your clothes. The body obeyed, as V sat, her foot flicking with impatience like a cat's twitching tail.

Then V stood. From the floor beside her chair, she picked up a long whip and began to walk towards him. Disembodied, 216's mind watched with idle curiosity as she advanced.

Her high heels wobbled unsteadily. All of a sudden she slipped and fell to the floor, landing awkwardly on her side. The whip left her hand and rolled across the tiles.

On witnessing her fall, a wave of shock immediately overtook him, and with a jolt his mind reunited with his body. He suddenly felt a great sadness, mixed with a pang of anger, as though he had been woken from a pleasant dream.

Involuntarily he started to go to her to help her up.

She screamed at him to get out. Her voice was shrill. Confused, he turned and left, and shut himself out in the corridor, where he stood indecisively. From within her apartment, he heard the sound of her quick footsteps, then a door being slammed.

He was already by the door of his car before he became fully aware of what had occurred during the last hour. He felt his neck. The scarf had chafed it. His face and body stung with the still raw scratches. Trembling, he opened the passenger door of his car and sat down heavily. He opened the glove compartment and retrieved the identifying items that V had disallowed him from bringing in with him: His wallet, house keys, and mobile phone.

He looked at his watch. It was nearly midnight. He leaned back in the seat and closed his eyes.

V was simply evil, he decided. She had ensnared him, taking advantage of his fear and loneliness. She had taken his money, crushed and abused him, all the while pouring lies in is ear that she was his salvation. She had used her overwhelming personality and her hypnotic skills to render him vulnerable to her sadistic urges. She had enjoyed torturing and nullifying him, but had cleverly convinced him that it had been his desires she was satisfying. But she had tripped and fallen, and the spell had been broken. He could escape.

He felt strangely empowered and euphoric. It was ironic, he thought, that spite of her intention, she had somehow managed to cure him of his gloom. And as he came to this realization, a new doubt overtook him. He opened his eyes. Had this all been some elaborate therapy? Perhaps even her fall at the end of the session? Was the "annihilation" of his ego she had continually spoken of actually the destruction of his depressive psyche?

So, perhaps she was not evil after all. She had been harsh, extremely so, but maybe his disorder required such severe measures. After all, a year of antidepressants had had little beneficial effect on him.

Inside his head the debate raged to and fro. She was heroin, turning him into a helpless addict, in return for sweet oblivion. No, she was an Angel of Mercy, freeing him from his evil heart. She was simply a professional dominatrix, trying to make a living.

In the end there remained only one fact he was sure of regarding V: It didn't matter any longer whether it was his will or hers that drove him to her; until he had visited her just once more, he would never be free of her. He would go back to her tomorrow morning, and this time he would see her unmasked.

He lowered the back of the car seat. He leaned back, folded his arms, and waited for the dawn.