Fugue

Fugue By Rick R. Reed It’s the kind of damp and filthy basement you read about in novels written by the Marquis de Sade or authors who sign their books with only the initial “O.” It’s the type of cellar you’d discover in a true crime book by Ann Rule or Gregg Olsen, a shocking chiller about twisted men who keep their victims shackled, naked, and desperate for long periods of time. Men who enjoy seeing their victims suffer, who enjoy playing long, drawn-out, and elaborate versions of cat and mouse. There’s the whiff of decay and mildew in the air. You just know that beetles, roaches, and other creatures that scurry from the light make their homes here, hiding within c****s between bricks and black areas where the walls don’t quite meet the floor. Somewhere, water drips endlessly. The only light is from a dim-watted bulb that hangs in the middle of this space, unadorned with even so much as a shade and which is turned off and on by a rusting, beaded cord. It hums. Some grayish natural light might seep in during the day through high horizontal windows, besotted with grime and covered with yellowing newspapers taped over their glass. The darkness skitters into corners, hiding in shadows where the walls disappear. Here, the cinder blocks are broken up by rough and dripping mortar. The floor is concrete, stained, cold; the feel of grime is palpable, gritty beneath my bare toes. These are my surroundings. Pipes run the length of the ceiling. It is to these pipes that I am chained, my arms raised above my head to accommodate leather cuffs and the links of steel that marry me to the pipes. For now, it is painless, but I am a seer of pain and know what the future holds: how the muscles in my arms will first ache, then scream for relief, and finally succumb to the numbness that I will curse. It is as if the muscles and tendons in my arms have a kind of sense memory. They know what’s coming and their prescience fills me with a sense of delicious dread. You may wonder how one can both anticipate and dread pain at the same time. I do not. Some things about the dichotomy between pleasure and pain are not mysterious to me, although they might be difficult for me to put into words that you’d understand. To stoop to a cliché…it’s just something you have to know on an instinctive level. It’s a slave thing. Shackles embrace my ankles, keeping me anchored to the cool, damp floor. This sense of immobility ratchets up the tension and anticipation, and these feelings war within me, causing tingles throughout my body in much the same way as the restraints holding me in place do. I ache for something to happen, yet know I am powerless to bring anything about. Patience is a virtue I have learned, honed in its tutelage now for several years. Ever since I met my master. That man of mine. The one I love. The seer and deliverer of pain, of pleasure, of love…and discipline. Waiting. Anticipation pulses like a drug, pounding and surging through my body, binding me more thoroughly than these cuffs, chains, and shackles. The air against my naked body is especially cool, its dampness almost like a second presence, like an icy caress. Part of the chill comes from the fact that I am bereft of hair; earlier, he shaved me clean, right down to the hair that sprouts between the cheeks of my ass. He has clamped my n*****s, and the bite of the steel hurts and, at the same time, keeps me in a constant state of arousal. My balls hurt as well; he has pulled them low with metal cuffs that twist around the top of the sac, gripping and tugging….a constant, dull ache. This is true love. Yet all this dull sensation of pain is but a prelude to the full symphony of hurt that’s on its way. I keep my eyes shut tightly; a lazy smile moves across my lips, disappears. Waiting. Anticipating. Almost overriding the pedestrian ache of my constraints is the roaring of my blood in my ears, the pounding of my heart, the quickening of my breath, all of these racing with each little noise I hear. My mouth is dry with want, with need. I almost ache to shout out into the murky light: “Hurry! Hurry! I almost can’t bear you making me wait like this. The anticipation is too much. It’s torture even I don’t want. Hurry!” But I don’t dare. I keep my own counsel and stay mute. A good slave knows his place, knows when to groan, when to scream, when to whimper, and when to sigh. And now, in this waiting, is not the time. Behind me, my master busies himself, arranging lashes on a table: cat o’ nine tails, bullwhip, riding crop, and even a wooden paddle with holes drilled in its smooth oak surface that transports me back to junior high school. I remember being in seventh grade detention, the paddle whistling through the air, singing through those holes as the gym teacher, Mr. Wright, brought it down hard on my adolescent ass, not knowing that the pain he was delivering was also filling me with the most delicious pleasure, or that my d**k was hard and dripping in my jeans. Had he known, would he have continued? Would it have been a kind of pleasure for him, too? Thinking about such a prospect makes my d**k hard even now. My master comes up to stand behind me, firm touch of his hand on my chest, then moving away. His hands are warm and strong. I am his. I smell the leather: deep, musky, manscent. Leather aroma deepens as he pulls my head back and I close my eyes. Leather fills my senses until it’s all that exists. My master slides the hood over my face, obliterating this dusky space where we will be together, making me his and his alone. Darkness.