Blindfold
1386 Words
I had expected to be taken to a dark, seedy whorehouse, and my heart raced every time I saw a building that looked unsavory in case that was our final destination.
But as we walked further from the Forum I realized that I was being led away from the less savory part of the city towards the grand dwellings at the more affluent end of the city.
It was confusing - why was I being taken somewhere nice?
I couldn’t ask the woman, and even if I could ask, I don’t think she would have taken kindly to being questioned.
We stopped outside a huge white building with columns beside the doorway and a floor covered in tiny colored tiles, which formed a picture of a landscape.
Maybe this was the house of whoever owned the brothel? Or of a wealthy patron who had requested a new conquest for whatever perverted activities he was planning on subjecting me to.
The woman opened the door as I looked nervously at my feet, and pushed me through the entrance.
It took me a moment to adjust to my surroundings, but as I looked around the room, it left me completely awestruck.
There were gold cups and plates on a table which was laden with bowls of lavish, exotic fruits, meat, and bread.
There were other young women sitting around the table on lavish cushions, each of them dressed in more finery than I had ever seen in my life, and they were talking and smiling as they picked at the food set in front of them and poured deep red wine from delicate jugs into their golden cups.
A few of them turned to look at me, and those that did mostly smiled welcomingly. The woman spoke to the group, and she didn’t sound nasty or stern - her tone was almost motherly.
I didn’t have time to register everything that I had seen, but I realized in utter astonishment that this was the brothel. Except, it wasn’t a brothel. We had passed plenty of those on our way here, and they were not civilized and filled with well-behaved young women who were having a civilized conversation over dinner.
I hadn’t even seen any men in this building, so far.
It was confusing, because I still thought that I had been sold to this woman to work as a prostitute, and I didn’t have any way of asking her what the reality of my situation was.
I wasn’t sure what to expect, but the woman took me to a room with a deep pool of crystal blue water and motioned for me to remove my clothes and step into it.
It was... warm... and it smelled sweet. The water had been scented so that I would emerge smelling like some unknown fruit or flower.
I lavished in that water, letting it clean away the dirt and sweat that had accumulated as I traipsed to the city in the only set of clothes I had.
When the woman signaled for me to get out, I was handed a piece of exquisitely soft fabric, and I thought that this would be fashioned into a garment somehow, but she motioned and barked a word, and I realized it was supposed to be used to dry myself.
She looked at me as I toweled myself dry, and I felt like she was appraising her purchase. She was deciding whether I was worth that extra silver coin now that I was clean, and she nodded approvingly to herself, which both relieved me and made me indescribably angry.
I looked around, trying to see what had happened to my clothes so I could get dressed, and for the first time, I saw that there was a man standing in the corner of the room.
I don’t know how I had missed him before now, and I felt my cheeks burning crimson as it dawned on me that this man had just seen me bathing and I had not made any effort to cover myself.
He was holding a folded bundle in his arms, and the woman gestured for him to bring it over before he went back to his position in the corner of the room.
The bundle was opened out to reveal a garment as lavish as the ones the girls downstairs were wearing. The fabric felt like cool air kissing my skin as the woman pulled it over my head - it was a flowing, pale ivory fabric that was sheer and clung to my breasts in a way that made me feel as if I was still naked.
She stepped back and nodded approvingly before fixing a heavy golden brooch to my shoulder and a matching metallic belt that cinched the sheer fabric around my waist.
I was too naive to realize that this was not a game of dress-up for the sake of it. I was being dressed like this so that the woman could take me to pass my final test.
I was taken downstairs, and a fierce-looking man with a dagger at his waist opened the door.
There was a lavishly carved wooden seat with wheels, which was behind a platform attached by a yoke to two pure white horses. The intimidating man held out his hand to help the woman up onto the chair, before offering his hand to me in the same way.
I took a nervous, shaky breath and accepted his hand so that I could sit next to the woman with no idea of what to expect next.
The man stepped onto the platform in front of us, and the carriage began to lead us away from the house.
The woman pulled something from her pocket, and leaned closer to me; it was a length of fabric, and I did not resist when she tied it on me as a blindfold.
I didn’t know the city, but I wasn’t going to fight this.
The journey seemed to take forever, and when the carriage finally came to a stop, I was picked up - I think by the large man with the dagger - and carried the rest of the way.
I was slung over the man’s shoulder, but I tried to figure out where I might be, and I could tell that we were inside a building and that there weren’t any other people there.
My heart raced as I realized that this might be the situation I had been dreading - they may have washed me, and dressed me in this finery because I was being given to some horrendous person to use as an object.
It made me feel like throwing up, but as I thought of how far I might get if I squirmed free of the strong man and tried to remove the blindfold as I ran, I was dumped unceremoniously onto my feet again.
I reached for the blindfold - I wasn’t going to stay blind in this unfamiliar place. I wanted to know where I was and who was here.
Someone else reached for the blindfold before me, and my hands froze because I had no idea what was about to happen to me.
The blindfold was removed slowly, teasingly, and it dropped to my feet.
Everything in this room was crimson and gold - the walls, the floor, the ceiling - but that wasn’t what I was looking at now.
I was looking at a man, the man who was truly about to determine my fate. He looked at me with eyes that were a rich shade of golden brown but felt cold and unfeeling as they bore into me.
I shuddered as his rough hand brushed against my cheek, but that unwelcome caress was followed by a sharp crack as he struck my cheek.
My head turned with the force of the blow, but I looked right back at him with fire in my eyes and struck his cheek just as hard as he had done to me.
He looked furious, and then... amused.
He smiled, and it turned into a laugh, and I was so angry that I nearly hit him again, but I noticed a lethal-looking knife at his belt and thought better of it.
“You are lucky I like spirited women.”
- Writer
