Being the Hurt

She was devastated.

She had been rejected. She felt her vulnerability, despite her gown and jewelry and regal statuesque demeanor, her vast wealth and intellect . She felt on one hand an almost overwhelming desire to flee into the protection of such things; but felt even more strongly the pull of staying with the hurt, of going into it.

The hurt took her by the hand and led her away to its secret place. As they moved through the darkness she discarded all her non-essential companions, walking naked and barefoot; she discarded her defenses, letting the hurt place chains on her limbs. The hurt told her to proceed on her knees; she obeyed it. It locked a collar about her neck, and only it had the key; it attached a leash to the collar and led her forward, her ankles chained together, her wrists chained behind her back. She realized it was now driving her forward with whips; the hurt lashed her back and ass, lashed behind her legs. She struggled to move faster on her knees.

Suddenly she was hoisted up, a chain raising up her arms behind her till she was bent over and on tiptoes. The whipping continued more intensely - back, ass, thighs behind, thighs on the sides, and thighs in front, between her legs, her stomach, her breasts, her shoulders, arms, legs, torso, pussy lips, all randomly assaulted till there was no patch of skin that did not bear repeated blows.

When her beating finally stopped, she hung there exhausted; fitfully half asleep half awake. She felt more chains tightly enwrapping her painful torso, and then eventually she was lowered and harnessed to a heavily laden cart, to become a beast of burden, mercilessly whipped into pulling her unbearable load forward with straining legs, no stopping or slowing for hours at a time, only brief pauses for rests during which she was helplessly made available to be brutally used by anyone around.

'Yes, this is how it truly is, how it truly feels.'

Yet she somehow was still the same as always, still herself in all those familiar places of her life as she always had known it, with all those familiar people around her, everything just as it had always been.

But she was also there as this abject slave to it all, this beast of burden, this whipping post - the bearer of herself as hurt and nothing but hurt.

She lived alone in her penthouse apartment. She took to sleeping naked on the kitchen linoleum floor. The hard surface felt right on her bare skin. She would also crawl on all fours to get around, and never used the furniture. She did not understand what was happening to her, or maybe she understood the only thing happening to her that mattered.

When she needed to go out, or greet someone at home, she would make an effort to suppress her constant awareness of the hurt, and assume her old mantle of power; her returning old aura would appear to embrace herself. She would stand tall and statuesque, lithe and strong, magnificently dressed. And so it was tonight, at this party on the grounds of this estate. And yet inside the hurt remained.

The party swirled around her and she indifferently moved along through it. Until she felt his eyes on her.

It was as if he could see her for what she truly was. To everyone else at the party, she was this elegantly clad women, rich and witty, self assured and self reliant. But she could somehow see it in his eyes as they looked at her, she could somehow feel his look stripping her of all that others saw, exposing her as the frightened hurting slave girl she was, her collar, cuffs, and chained nakedness exhibited before him. She blushed but could not take her eyes off him and his look.

His hand slightly motioned downward to her; she instantly understood and unthinkingly submitted, falling to her knees before him. Then as everyone around looked on, she went onto her hands and knees to crawl to him. As people gasped, he strode towards her and reaching down to her while placing one hand briefly on the floor, he raised her up, saying loudly 'Here, I've found it' and gestured with his hand as if showing her something. He led her away as the crowd resumed its milling, the incident forgotten.

Outside in the privacy of the estate grounds, he led her towards the nearby forest. 'I didn't think we were this far from town,' she said.

'They weren't, but you are' he answered. Under his gaze she slowly stripped completely, leaving a trail of her discarded clothes on the ground behind them. The night air on her naked flesh felt so right.

'You can always go back' he told her.

'No. No, I can't.'

Then, naked, she fell to her hands and knees, and he led her crawling further into the trees till they came to a dirt road. He stopped.

'You called me to you once and having found me, have faithfully kept me by your side.'

'Yes' she replied.

'I now call you to me' and he turned slowly onto the road and slowly walked on.

She knew what awaited her along that road, and knew what would welcome her if instead she turned back to the party.

Crawling she turned onto the road to follow him.

The voice of her old self seemed to linger where she turned, asking 'Why would anyone make this choice?'

And as she crawled, she left behind her answer, 'No one would, if it actually was a choice.'