Are We Human? Ch. 02

It wasn't uncommon for Drew to wake up with dubious interpretations of his previous night, to wake up unsure of what had happened, what had been forgotten, what had been dreamt up entirely. For the first few moments after Drew awoke, it seemed possible that it had all been fantasy; his mental movie theater opting to play a new breed of skin flick for once. The prospect of a stranger at a bar turning him into her obedient plaything was, at best, farfetched and, at worst, absurd. If it had been real, he'd have bolted from that crazy woman's house as soon as she started pushing him around.

Then the ghost of grips on his arms and his jaw arose with vengeance in their hearts, as if she had heard his thoughts and sought to reestablish herself. He could still feel her; not just the hands that had pinned him down or the thighs that had held him against her cunt, but the almighty gaze that tore away at him, shrunk him down into nothingness. In the darkness of his closed eyes, Lady Sparrow loomed over him, her presence stormcloud ominous and stormcloud ubiquitous. A person couldn't dream up someone like her; not in the darkest mind, not in the cruelest nightmare.

Drew wasn't fool enough to be ignorant of the existence of kink. He had hit puberty at the tail end of 12 and was fortunate enough to have had eight good years of Internet access and, eventually, a decent stream of short and long term partners. Those eight years had done well to refine his perception of his sexuality: girls only, curly-haired brunettes encouraged, bonus points for glasses, moderate tattoos and piercings appreciated. He liked getting head. He didn't mind giving it either. Sex was the pinnacle, best performed from behind (there was no better joy, he thought, than watching a girl's ass ripple against your hips when she backs into you. Who could resist grabbing two handfuls of that beauty?)

And so, in his traversals of porn websites, that's what he stuck to. Brunette gets her cunt split. Curly teen takes a hard twelve. Punk girls share a new toy. Nerdy hottie plays with her boyfriend's joystick. These videos had served him well. Still, this is eight years, and this is sex, so it wasn't as though curiosity never overcame him. The entire journey of pubescence, at least mentally, begins with curiosity. In time, every category on the roster got its audition; if it was lucky, it would even get itself a phase. The anal sex phase. The MILF phase. The Latina phase (his longest phase, spanning two and a half years and two relationships with, respectively, Vickie Salcedo and Maria Guerrero).

Some auditions ran longer than others. Indeed, the shortest of them all came from the little box marked with a photo of a blonde choking on a ballgag and four sinister letters: B, D, S, and M. Drew got far enough to figure out that the B stood for bondage, but after fourteen minutes of girls getting spat on, slapped past the point of bawling, facefucked while suspended from the ceiling, and drenched in scorching candlewax, he had packed his flaccid member into his underwear and closed his tabs. Somewhere out there, an audience of freaks was pounding off to this sick shit. Let them have it; he would stick to his curly brunettes, with their glasses and their moderate amounts of metal and ink.

Now, reflecting on his previous night, he realized he had been in the dungeon of one such freak. It may have looked like the bedroom of a humble yet stylish college student, but that was the room as Abby lived in it. When Lady Sparrow emerged from out of those narrowed hazel eyes, the posters and paint would melt off the walls, revealing the sweaty stone underneath. The plush mattress would decay into a hardened operating table for her to inflict her vile whim on her victims. Her dresses and sweaters would retreat back into her closet to make way for the leather, the latex, the shin-length high heel combat boots.

Drew stared down into their infinite blackness, just shiny enough to catch the reflection of the swaying candle. Their presence changed the air in the room, like a gun lying still on the dining room table. The soles seemed destined to crush him; the thin heels tapered off into points so fine they could slice a falling hair in two. When Lady Sparrow stood above him and extended one of those boots forward, the urge to beg for his life swelled in the pit of his stomach. But the fear that filled him now was the paralyzing kind of fear. He didn't speak. He didn't even try to run from her. He stayed on his knees, his mind still a prisoner to the infinite blackness.

"Do you know how much I spent on these boots?" she asked.

No answer necessary.

"I spent $350 on them. They're very expensive."

She twisted her ankle back and forth, showing off her luxurious footwear to her captive audience.

"I have many pairs of shoes, but these are special. They require special care."

His eyes followed the path of her laces as they snaked through golden eyelets.

"I can't clean them the way I do my other shoes."

A leather strap with a gold buckle fastened around the neck, high up her calf.

"These have to be licked clean."

His breath stuck in his throat, as if a leather strap with a gold buckle had fastened around his neck.

"And they aren't gonna lick themselves, boy."

She tapped her foot on the stone floor, and the shattering of Drew's eardrums finally freed him from paralysis. To his horror, there was no hesitation. There was no protest, no bargaining. He watched himself lean down, watched his tongue unfurl against the dark leather and lap up every day of use that those boots had ever had. From the tip of her toe up to her gold buckle, he left a slug trail of saliva in his wake. He pulled away.

"Do you think you're done, bitch? Don't make me tell you again."

But his paralysis had returned; not from the blackness of the boot, but from the reflection staring back at him.

Why did it look so happy?

The fantasy faded around him, leaving him alone in his bed with his shock, his confusion, and his pulsing erection. He wasn't supposed to have thoughts like that. His wandering mind had betrayed him; Lady Sparrow had poisoned him. He wasn't a freak. He wasn't like them, wasn't like her. She didn't have power over him. She wasn't going to turn him into some kind of slave. She had manipulated him last night, but he would never serve her again. He would never lick her fucking boots.

When it comes to scapegoats, alcohol is something of a Superman-type character. In some people's eyes, it's the ultimate trump card: totally bulletproof and godlike in its abilities to explain away questionable comments and behavior. Bad mouth one of your best friends? That was the tequila talking. Steal two armfuls of traffic cones? Shouldn't have shotgunned all those beers. Hooked up with your ex again? Well, you know how those mojitos are always pulling pranks.

And so, Drew played his trump card. He had been drinking, after all: two whiskey gingers in an hour. Normally, this would only be enough to net him a comfortable buzz, but on this particular night, it had made him weak-willed and persuadable. Maybe he hadn't eaten enough at dinner. Maybe the bartender poured them too strong. Either way, that had to be the answer. He was probably only a minute away from jumping onto the dancefloor and making an ass of himself before Abby slithered in and led her drunk, vulnerable prey back to her nest. How treacherous. How deplorable. How utterly blackhearted.

It wasn't a strong excuse, but like wet clay, memory can become set in permanence if one shapes it early enough. Drew reshaped his memory in late morning and let it dry into the afternoon; slowly, his revised interpretation of the night's events began to feel natural. A filter of drunkenness had been added to all his recollections, and the picture seemed to come together nicely. As he had said that previous night: drinking out at the bar makes everyone regress into animals. In his sober state, he would certainly be immune to the sadistic advances of any freak he might come across.

In late afternoon, one such freak sought to test this. When the unknown number rang on his phone, Drew answered before he could give a thought toward who would be waiting at the other end of the line.

"Hello?" he greeted.

"How is my pet doing today?" Abby inquired warmly.

Although he had retroactively coated his memories in haze, her voice was unforgettable. The outer sheen of hospitality, so thin above the cruelty beneath, was gift wrapping on a hand grenade. A knife had leapt out of the phone and driven itself through his brain, and now his planned speech, all the searing words he had dreamt about using to sever his ties to this sick woman, were leaking out along with the cerebrospinal fluid. He could hardly draw a breath, much less form a reply to her question, which stayed hanging in the tightening air of his kitchen.

"I asked how you were doing," she insisted, the warmth in her voice now absent.

Finally, he squeaked out, "I'm fine."

"I want to see you again. I hope you didn't make any plans for this evening."

The crossroads spread itself open in front of Drew: the path of least resistance, and the path that was blocked off by a towering figure cloaked in shadows whose fangs dripped with venom and whose eyes never blinked as they stared at him. When he envisioned the scene earlier, he had stepped up to this towering figure and condemned it to the depths of Hell, pushing his way past it without fear to come out powerful on the other side. But Abby's voice was in his ear, her spirit was waiting at the other end of his table. She had put him on the spot, and under her observation, he had changed.

"I'm free."

And isn't it ironic.

"Wonderful," she cooed. "Come by my house at 8. You remember the way, don't you?"

"I do."

"That's good. I'll see you soon."

He mimicked her send off, and the click of the line finalized his sentence. In an act of cowardice, he had dug himself even deeper; the light from the Sun was dimming, and the heat from the Earth's core, or perhaps Hell itself, was nipping at his soles. That phone call was his last, best chance, and he had turned his back on it. Every time his fingers twitched at the numberpad, urging him to call her back and call it off, he was barraged with thoughts of her looming over him in her glistening leather boots. He wasn't prepared to confront her again, so now he would have to. If the sound of her voice was enough to put him under her spell, how could he ever stand tall with her staring him right in the face?

Anxiety racked his body like consumption, so when the butterflies started hatching and fluttering around his stomach, he chalked it up to nervous adrenaline. He could feel it though: the small part of himself that purred whenever an eclipse in her shape rolled over his thoughts. Perhaps Lady Sparrow had planted that seed of desperate longing inside him; perhaps it had always been there, lying stillborn for 20 years before taking its first breath of life the previous night. Throughout the course of the day, stifling and ignoring it had been working out fairly well. However, now that his appointment with Lady Sparrow was made flesh, the purring intensified with every second spent wallowing in the kitchen.

This was excitement. This was anticipation. This was hunger. Regardless of where it had come from, it was part of him now. His organs rocked back and forth as conflict erupted in his gut, a bloody war of ideology between Drew's need to regain control of his life and his newfound desire to give himself wholly to Lady Sparrow. He had surrendered last night for a reason. Could it really be written off as impaired judgment, or was there something about himself that he was just now discovering? The truth of it was, despite his fear of throwing himself back into Lady Sparrow's clutches, the answers he needed to set his mind straight were waiting for him in the cold candlelight of her dungeon.

He could've knocked on her door by resting his heart against it. The street he had walked down to reach the beige house with the flower boxes resembled any other street in the neighborhood and likely many other neighborhoods throughout the country. What differed about this street was the way the breezes blew right through him, the way the world fell silent around him so that every step on concrete sidewalk rang out like the mournful tolling of the church bell. The path up to her front door had been another war between his senses encouraging him to turn back and never return and the magnetism of Lady Sparrow drawing him closer and closer.

At 7:58pm CST, two minutes before the deadline, knuckles clacked against Abby's door. She didn't rush to open it either, allowing Drew a few extra moments to regret, to panic, to hope, and to never take a breath. A ghost had been haunting him since the moment he awoke this morning, and it hadn't let him rest since then. Now, the only thing between him and that ghost was a slab of wood, and he had just dared it to throw away the slab. Regret. Panic. Hope. Not a single breath. Even if he had inhaled, the swinging of the open door would have sucked it right out of his lungs.

"What a good boy, showing up on time," Abby greeted.

Her outfit was noticeably different than the Friday night huntress ensemble he remembered, and bore no similarity to the leather-clad uniform he couldn't help visualizing. This version of Abby (one of many, of course) wore thick-rimmed glasses and rolled up the sleeves on her red-print flannel, keeping the buttons open so that the faded t-shirt underneath could show off with pride the lone gray elephant printed in the center. Her loose jeans of darker gray led down not to shiny leather boots but to bare feet and a familiar shade of blue paint on her toes.

Even though she was dressed casually, almost lazily, the woman beneath the clothes was unmistakable. The same eyes he had cowered from last night were peering out from behind the glasses. Looking at her hands, his skin throbbed in the places where she had clawed at him, held him down, choked the fight out of him. And he knew, underneath those gray jeans and whichever pair of underwear she had on that night, her vagina was waiting with glee and glisten to be served. He wondered what he would be forced to endure before Lady Sparrow finally curled her fingers in his hair and made a toy out of his mouth.

"I didn't want to keep you waiting," he told her.

She offered her cheek and allowed a soft kiss that Drew gave with only minor hesitation. Although he was still terrified, his survival instincts forced him to turn a paralyzing fear into a silent fear and follow along with her lead. He accepted that the path of least resistance was the path of least pain, and he let the door shut behind him. Abby took him into her plushy dungeon and lit her candles, some of which looked newer than they had the night before. Clinging to that small observation helped keep him from melting down completely once the ritual was finished and Abby turned her attention to him.

The orange light illuminated the shadow that pulled itself over her face. The casual Abby of the outside world receded into the recesses of her psyche, making way for the persona of Drew's nightmares. The phantom of his past 24 hours emerged before him in a thin lipped smile and a narrow pair of eyes, and with a single finger, she beckoned her plaything to approach. There was a condemned man's dignity in the footsteps that brought Drew forward, brought him into the outstretched palm of Lady Sparrow that closed itself around his stubbled chin. Her nails sank coolly into his flesh, and her gaze sank sharply into his skull. The fear he had tried to suppress was bubbling to the top, but still he did not resist.

"What a difference a day makes, wouldn't you say?" she began.

She tilted his head from side to side and inspected her recaptured prey. The blade of her vision scraped against his neck, running the sharp over the eroded but enduring indentations of her fangs.

"24 hours ago, you were a brat with no manners. Talking back, disrespecting your mistress. But now, look at you."

Her grin opened up, and Drew felt the indentations burn at the sight of her teeth. Images flooded his mind of Lady Sparrow gnashing at his flesh from neck to chest to stomach to thighs, decorating him in bruises until the blood trickled down his sides. Staring at her now, he could already see the red stains pooling across her white, beaming rows. The unrelenting urge to break free barked once more, but what barked even louder was the echo of the term she had just uttered: "your mistress." The sound of those words slithered inside his ear and crawled throughout his vessels. It felt warm.

"Resting comfortably in the palm of my hand. No fuss, no fight. Just how my darling pet is supposed to act."

She brought his head forward and planted a kiss on his forehead. This compassion lasted only the duration of the peck, for the moment that followed right after saw Lady Sparrow toss her darling pet aside by his jaw. Stumbling over to the bed, Drew stretched out his arms and braced himself against the mattress. There was time for one breath, then his face was pushed down into the comforter; his arms flailed impotently as Lady Sparrow pressed her hips against her plaything's backside, keeping one hand on his head and the other on the small of his back.

"I bet I could peg your ass right now, and you wouldn't even try and stop me. Do you think I should?"

She slapped his butt and buried his face deeper in the blanket to smother his screams of protest. This was the breaking point: he had never been penetrated before, and there was no way in hell Lady Sparrow would be a gentle first for him. The only thing that scared him more than standing up to Lady Sparrow was bending over for her. She shoved her hips into him a few times, then pulled him back up by his hair to laugh in his ear.

"Don't you want to be my little fuck toy?" she asked him. "Doesn't it make you hard to think about Mistress pounding you like a whore?"

"No!" he cried in fearful defiance. "Don't do that, you're fucking crazy!"

Her hand slid to the front of his waist and ran over the emerging bulge in his pants. Drew paused to sigh and, for a fleeting moment, surrender crossed his mind. If he stopped fighting, if he bent over for her, if he begged for forgiveness, then maybe this whole ordeal could end well for him. Maybe she would be merciful and play with his cock the way she had the night before. Her grip on him had been so tight, stroking him in a fury as her hand glided along the slick skin until he trembled beneath her, too close to the edge to even form a sentence. Now he felt the pressure of her hand once more; it would be so easy for him to throw down his arms and lean back into her, allowing Lady Sparrow to swallow him whole.

"You're rock hard at the thought of being ass-fucked with a fake dick, and I'm the one who's crazy?"

Surrender probably would end in someone getting a blowjob, but Drew wasn't ready to roll the dice on which one of them it would be.

"Fuck off, I'm not a freak! Let me go!"

She pushed him back onto the bed and stepped away in disgust. Drew whirled around, making sure he stood in between his mistress and the hole that she deeply wanted to claim. She tossed her flannel onto a chair and ran her hand through her black hair. Anger spilled out over her face, but it was met with a parallel rage on the face of her pet.

"You haven't learned a damn thing. I shouldn't have gotten my hopes up for a worthless skank like you to be well-behaved," she snapped.

"I'm not a skank," Drew spoke, slow determination in his voice. "I'm not a whore or a submissive or whatever you call it."

Her eyes narrowed, and she began to approach. This was an intimidation tactic, he knew, but he backed up to the wall anyway.