The Dom

Chapter Two-1

Chapter Two

Golden Silence

Three floors and the basement of the brownstone belonged to me, three floors of perfectly appointed, clean luxury and a utilitarian basement. The kitchen was well stocked with fresh and microwavable food of every kind. A walk in closet on the bedroom floor was stuffed with clothes for each occasion from sloppy work to elegant evening. Tasteful painted art originals hung on the walls amidst furniture that could not be bought at a department store.

Yet, as I walked in a full length, white silk robe from floor to floor, room to room, I couldn’t find any clue as to my missing memory. None of the objects brought a flash of recall. Yet, it was a perfect house, something one would see on television, where the cleaning elves come out at night and wipe away the ugly little details of life and the people living there could go on with their daily perfect lives.

But there were a couple things that didn’t fit. One was a drawer crammed full of cash - tons of crumpled hundred dollar bills that matched the money in my red clutch. I tried counting it but got lost at around fifty thousand and with still more than half the drawer to go.

The other was I couldn’t get into the fourth floor. A straight flight of stairs led up to a solid steel door. This one also had a swipe box like the one outside but no doorknob. I swiped the box with the key card provided by Lorenz, but all I got was a small, blinking red light at the top indicating non success. Giving up I searched the third floor bedroom, which is when I found the money, but there was nothing that jogged my memory. Also no clue as to who else might live here. As far as I could tell I was alone; my own private kingdom of torturous solitude.

There was no one else - physically. But the people in my head kept my thoughts focused on last night, at the desperation that drove me. And still did now. A frantic person will grab at anything resembling a life-line, but something also I realized; I slipped so easily into that submissive mode. That itself was my best clue.

And what about Lorenz? Why was he so angry at me? Did I do something to piss him off? I must have because he called me a b***h and hoped to never see me again. But those weren’t the only questions as I stood at the breakfast nook window and gazed down at all the hurrying people on their own private errands or heading to work. Did I have a job? Someplace where someone maybe, just maybe, might worry if I didn’t show up? But perhaps I didn’t work. If so, and I owned this brownstone, how did I afford it? All that cash in the drawer upstairs had to come from somewhere. Was it mine? Or a sugar daddy’s? Or was the whole thing from last night a dream? The obstinate silence of the brownstone almost smothered me in its refusal to answer.

No answers, no clues here, except the obvious. I pulled up the silk robe in back and, in a mirror, confirmed with the fading welts and darkening bruises that the ‘dream’ was all too real. Not to mention the trace of the white masked stranger’s c*m still inside me or the slight soreness in my ass. But I tried to ignore it, pretended that nothing could harm me in this too perfect place. So I stayed inside for three days, nursing the vanishing marks, sneaking peeks from the window to see if anyone on the street watched back. I tried numerous times to gain access to the fourth floor, desperately swiping the key card, then finding a hammer in the kitchen and trying to pound it open. All I got was a few dents on the door, wasted time and even more storms inside my head. Each night, when I tried to sleep, they got worse. I dreamt of three women under the lash, of suffering from the hand of one unyielding person. No matter how much they begged, the whip marked them, merciless in its torture. Rope wound about them, split their crotches. The third night I hardly slept at all, and when I did I thought I recognized the three women’s screams. Each one had a sweet, dark music, unique in their way. From behind them a pair gloved hands stuffed their mouths with wadding, cutting off their melodies one at a time while their eyes radiated terror. Yet, when not gagged they didn’t plea for the torture to stop even though used almost beyond their endurance, almost consumed by their fear. At first I thought it was a fear that their torment wouldn’t stop, but after all three were laid out on a floor in a windowless room, shivering in their bonds, I realized that they wanted it to go on, endless.

And then the hands reached for me...

I awoke, bolt upright in the bed, and gasped for breath. I couldn’t stay here. I couldn’t keep on pretending. I needed to get out, if only just to walk the streets, take the subway somewhere, anywhere. Perhaps something might give me a clue as to how I wound up like this.

But where to go? Back to the hospital? No, that was a dead end of medication and endless psycho babble. But...What about that sub-basement? The one where White Mask and the snotty british woman did their number on me? Could I find it again? It was within walking distance of the park. But things wouldn’t look the same in the light of day, and on the way there my attention was on Lorenz while afterward I wandered witless. Still, I didn’t have any better choice. If there were any path to the answers I needed, that was the place to start.

Dressing in a pair of blue jeans, white cotton shirt, practical thick soled sneakers and grabbing a fistful of cash from the drawer I stepped back out onto the streets of New York. I got my bearings based on the nearest intersection and discovered that I was in the high seventies, upper east side. I made my way to Lex amidst all the people who were out, hustling, bustling on a clear, early spring day.

I waved down a cab, gave him crisp orders to Washington Square Park and we were off, eventually doglegging around Grand Central, then down Park and Lafayette. As before, when we got bogged down in traffic within a few blocks of the park, I jumped out and found my way to the park’s south side. The fountain was back on, but there weren’t nearly as many people around it now; just a few retired folks and a bum or two.

It was easy enough to retrace my steps out of the park’s south entrance, even past the first couple of intersections and first turning, but after that it got hazy. I slowed down, studied the buildings for landmarks, anything that might point me in the right direction. But even for all my caution, I soon got lost. Well, lost isn’t quite the right word, but I sure didn’t know which way to go. The morning wore away, I got hot, my feet sore as I wandered almost in circles. Randomly I scurried down back alleys and still nothing clicked. Then, almost ready to give up, down a narrow alley, the corner of my eye caught the glint of a slim ray of sunlight on a wrought iron railing. With hesitant steps that eventually turned into a short dash, I skidded to a stop at the top guard rail, the same one that I bent over as Lorenz gave me three of the best. As if no time had elapsed at all, the old welts on my ass felt fresh, stingee and hot. In my mind I still could hear the swish of the cane, again I experienced the sharp explosions of pain on my ass. My breath caught and I doubled over the guard rail to stare at that same steel door through a combination of a harsh haze of pain and soft cloud of pleasure. I don’t know how long I hung there, but eventually I heard another sound, a voice rough and grating, yelling at me.

‘Lady! Hey, lady! You can’t stay here.’

The pain and pleasure faded away and I found myself looking down on a face that matched the voice, beefy with hard stubble and a single eyebrow across the top of his head. Hairy shoulders and muscled arms stuck out from under the straps of stained overalls. A final touch of a pair of work gloves left no doubt this was the building’s super. ‘Lady, this ain’t no place to meet your connection!’ he said, angry. ‘I run a clean building here, and that means the alley too.’

‘Yeah, I’ll bet you run a clean building,’ I said, coming around the rail. The cool memory of pain and pleasure faded, leaving me with hot anger. Anger at his interruption of my daydream, at his conceit at assuming I was some kind of junky, and just at him in general. He was a big man, and I stood eye to eye with him but only because I stopped halfway down the steps while he remained at the bottom just outside the door. But I didn’t care. ‘Get the hell out of my way!’

I bulled past him, not because I was stronger nor had momentum on my side, but more like he was taken by surprise that his physical presence didn’t stop me. I shot through the small outer room, then into the inner, much larger one. It wasn’t dark like before. Bare light bulbs burning overhead revealed a space half filled with tools, supplies, and a workbench. The dirty, oily smell of use permeated everywhere. But in the ceiling, separated by more than a yard, nearly hidden by pipes, were two small patches of caulk, like something had been screwed in there, taken out, followed by an attempt to remove all their traces. Looking up I realized this was probably the very spot where I hung in chains while whipped, f****d and ass reamed until my brain turned to mush. Just the faint visual reminder of that night already turned my p***y warm, but I forced myself to ignore it, transforming my hunger to feel that whip and c**k and hand back into anger at the super.

‘Don’t tell me you don’t know anything about what went on here!’ I said and pointed at the ceiling. ‘Look at those holes! You sure were quick to fill them in. I bet I’ll find two more in the floor near the walls.’

The super’s eyes went wide. Too wide as in false innocence. ‘Lady, I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.’

‘Oh, sure you don’t. Like you’ve never rented this place out as a dungeon ever before.’ (Dungeon? Where did I get that word? It came off so easy, so natural from my lips. Dungeon?)

Suddenly, the super seemed nervous. ‘Look, lady, I don’t want no trouble - ‘

‘You won’t get any. That is if you’ll tell me what went on here a few nights back. Or you can get ready for more trouble than you can handle.’

‘Alright, alright!’ He wrung his hands, as if trying to figure out how much or how little he could tell.

‘Time,’ I said. ‘Your time is running out.’

‘Okay,’ he said and sighed. ‘Look, this job don’t pay much. I gotta earn a little extra where I can. So when some snob of a b***h just shows up here and waves a wad of cash in my face and tells me to clear the place out - ‘

‘A woman?’ I said. ‘What did she look like?’

‘I don’t know! No, I really don’t! Look, she was short, but she wore big, dark glasses. And her hair was long and dark. It almost covered the rest of her face, y’know?’

So, someone who didn’t want to be recognized. That figured; the way those people kept their faces covered or stayed in the shadows someone hiding their face in the light of day while making arrangements to playfully torture their latest victim would make sense. But, as I gazed about the room I noticed just how big it was. Yes, plenty of room for other people to quietly hide in the dark while I hung suspended and screamed my lungs out. Again, I thought of the people who seemed to crawl in on their hands and knees. How many were there? Two? Maybe three? And, in spite of the room’s present smell and look of grease and tools, the evening had an elegant air about it. The way the woman spoke and White Mask’s formal clothes...

‘What did she wear?’ I asked. ‘What kind of clothes?’

‘Oh, expensive,’ the super replied. ‘Real high class. And stuck-up.’

‘What do you mean? Like she was too good for this place?’

The super thought for a moment and I could almost hear the wheels turning inside his head. ‘Well, yeah, but the way she talked, like one of those fancy accents. British.’