Addiction

Addiction.

What is it about addictions, the woman mused, sitting in a cab on her way to a supplier of fine lace and satin. Some people resist them effortlessly while others tumble at the touch of a feather. They say you have to have the right personality to trigger it, or the right circumstances. Others suppose it is a failure of the will. They say addicted people are just weak losers. Angique wondered. People who say that might very well have addictions themselves, she supposed -- to guns, often, or to movies with Jean-Claude van Damme. Ah well, she thought, chuckling, most of them are certainly addicted to sitting on overstuffed couches, judging the world and their neighbors while guzzling beer.

Maybe the girl should look at herself more objectively, but it wasn't often that she looked at herself objectively, was it? No, the woman thought, and that was exactly why she got so easily addicted.

The girl loved to escape; she was an escape artist actually. That's why she was at the Club so often. She fled things that made her feel uncomfortable, like guilt and sorrow, failure and loneliness. She also ran from stressful commitments, especially since the betrayal of her husband. It was a loss heaped upon many losses that went back to her childhood: the rejection of her mother, the cold dismissal by her father, the callous rape by her brother, and the death of the only family member that truly loved her, her sister.

The woman in the cab had read somewhere that escapists are prime targets for addiction. Some flee into booze or drugs, others into Star Trek. The girl fled into sex. Not sex as an expression of love, but sex as a route to utter distraction; it was a surrender of the mind to the body.

The woman hadn't known this when she first met the girl; she'd sensed it. She was no psychologist or therapist; the only thing she knew was what the girl craved. Which of course happened to be exactly what she wanted her for. The woman was no altruist; she had her own load of baggage, which had turned her into a predator, always hunting for girls like this girl. Funny thing was that this time she ended up being the victim as well; she fell in love with the girl. The irony made her chuckle.

The girl was perfect, the woman admitted; well, perfectly flawed, many people would say. The girl looked to escape from a boring life that offered nothing but loss and defeat; she was sex-addicted and had been a submissive victim since childhood. So, when she first saw this mysterious, leather clad woman dominating her leashed girls, pegs fell into sockets. It released new but familiar feelings, like déjà-vu's entering her mind from unexpected directions, hooking her.

Like the typical addict she was, the girl was sensitive to hypnotism. She more than once remarked that she only fell for the woman's outrageous demands because the woman's sweet voice and green eyes hypnotized her. The woman did not agree; the girl hypnotized herself. Certainly, she had helped her along.

As every religious leader knows, there is a strong hypnotizing effect in repeated rituals. It was why the woman insisted on strict rules for the girls who visited her at Villa, her secret apartment at the Club's upper floors. Her girls always had to undress at the entrance, oil their naked and shaven bodies and kneel in a minutely described submissive position. They had to do this every time in exactly the same sequence, knowing that any deviation, however small, would result in physical punishment.

The hypnotizing effect of these rituals spread just as easily as the oil the girl rubbed into her skin. At first there was just the immediate arousal of exposing her body, but soon her cunt already started to flow when she opened the first button of her dress or the zipper of her skirt to start the procedure. And then the effect started reaching back to the moment she pressed the button of the elevator taking her up to the apartment, or even further back to her leaving home to go to the Club.

Soon the daily act of shaving her pubic hair was enough to flip the proverbial switches in the girl's head, or the scent of the lather she used. And by the time she smelled the perfumed oil her fingers spread on her skin, the ritual's repetition and anticipation had her already on the brink of a premature orgasm. She often had to struggle not to explode when her knees touched the tiles of the apartment's floor. She was a helpless piece of shivering jello the moment her bare tits kissed the marble, raising her ass in the exactly prescribed way. The cool breeze invading her exposed openings were the apotheoses of a ritual decent into breathtaking, submissive bliss.

Sure, the girl was hypnotized each and every time she visited the woman, but not by her supposed Mistress. She did it to herself, and she did it gladly. After months of repeated rituals, corrective discipline and mind shattering orgasms, the girl was firmly addicted to the state of sexual submission she'd put herself into. The woman was certain that by now the girl must be convinced that becoming her slave was her destiny. But if so, what took the girl so long to accept her true existence? Why this constant running off, this flight from what she so obviously needed and wanted? The woman sighed as her cab crawled through rush hour traffic. She thought she knew why, but then again: who knows for sure?

She supposed that the girl, like a true addict, had her 'clear' moments, especially when she was away from her and the soothing comfort of her rituals. But instead of finding solace in those clear moments, the girl found failure and disappointment. By and by she must have learned to hate those moments, as they never brought what they were meant to do. They should feel liberating, but they didn't. They were supposed to be glimpses of a 'normal' and 'healthy' life, but whenever she tried to hang on to them, she failed. No wonder her already low self-esteem turned into self-disgust, which was the ideal frame of mind to welcome punishment and humiliation. It was a self-propelling wheel, fed by idle hope and certain defeat. And yet, she kept running back to them.

Someone other than the woman would have long since given up on the girl. But she hadn't. She kept nudging her on, even if she balked and fled at each new challenging step. The woman had allowed the girl to drag her through deep valleys of despair whenever she ran off, but the woman 'd had no choice, had she? Living without this girl was worse than living with her, or rather, it was impossible.

Remembering the first time the girl's tongue touched her dirty boot she had known that the girl's initial panic hadn't been all she'd felt. When the girl was ordered to undress in public for the first time, there had been flares of shame and yet, she'd done it and her pussy had started to flow. And when the first lick of a riding crop set her skin on fire, she cried out in pain, the woman remembered, but she also stuck out her treacherous ass for more.

Any other lover might have misunderstood the girl. The women she tried to live with in 'real' life were softer or more naïve lovers; they shied away from the consequences of her secret cravings. They tried to comfort the girl and smother her with their love, and it only disappointed her. She hung on to their 'normalcy' for a while, but she cheated on them at the first opportunity. She might tell them that living with them was heaven, but for her it was a secret hell of utter boredom; just as the hell she found at Villa deep down felt like heaven to her. So, why was it so hard to admit who she really was and live with it?

The woman was convinced that the girl had tried to reconcile her conflicting worlds. She knew she'd run to other women, even at the Club, to find comfort after another heartbreaking episode with the woman, and she had lured the poor women into dominating her. But she found out that they were merely going through the motions; they were too sweet to really hurt the girl.

By now, the woman thought, the girl must realize that there is no hope for compromise; there is only one choice left for her. Either she kicks her habit or goes all the way. The woman wondered if her latest return meant surrender, or if it would just prove to be another casual round-trip into tourist's paradise?

She sighed, pulling her jacket closer to her body.

The girl woke up, finding herself afloat in a sea of hurt, a true sea with swells of deep, throbbing ache. Like a sea, it was all encompassing, making her sway slowly on the chain she hung from. There seemed to be no focusing point; just a weightless sensation, leaving her dizzy. Her neck hurt from being pulled back by her tied hair, her shoulders ached from having her arms bound on her back. There was a strain in her upper legs from being spread wide open for hours now. Most of all: a million tiny piranha-teeth seemed to bite the flesh of her whipped ass, her thighs and cunt.

The girl scanned the room from her lofty altitude, slowly drifting left to right and back. The woman must have left; no one was around. She hung at the center of Villa's big room, right beside the fireplace. The afternoon light found its way through the tall windows; specks of dust danced in its beams. So many memories were here, so many experiences tying her to the place. Was it home? The thought made her chuckle with irony. She must be crazy. Oh sure, she had to be insane to end up like this and even thanking the woman for it. She'd thanked for each blow, even shaking her head no when asked if it had been enough. Her silly heart had raced when the woman allowed her to lick her to orgasm, an unexplainable cloud of arousal had taken her breath away.

Yes, the girl knew she must be crazy to accept all this, or even embrace it, but oddly enough the notion calmed her. There was no rage, no panic, nothing, just the certainty that there were no alternatives; she was where she belonged. She'd been punished, as she deserved. All responsibility had been taken away from her. For once there was no guilt, no shame. And most elating of all, the woman had taken her back, even after all this time.

She had no idea how long she'd been asleep or even if it had been sleep at all. The overload of pain must have caused her to faint. The tying up by itself had not been bad; the woman had whispered sweet things while kissing her and caressing her body, all the while expertly looping and twisting the silk cords, tying off her tits and thighs, while pulling hard on the slip knots. It all went smooth and quick; there had been no time to fear claustrophobia; she'd even felt comfortable.

The tight ropes hugged her like an outside skeleton, the bones of a corset. They held her together, gripping her, protecting her; it was a cage to feel save in. There had been nothing she could do, especially after the ball gagged her into silence. It made her feel -- free? How utterly ridiculous; could one find freedom in being tied up? But it had been how she felt. It still was. There was nothing she could do, so there was nothing to worry about; nothing to be held responsible for, no mistakes, no confusions, nothing. Just nothing.

Maybe 'nothing' was what she needed? Her days outside, on her own, had been hell. After fleeing, she'd stayed in her house, in her bed for days. Friends tried to reach her, but she'd ignored their calls, even the ringing of her doorbell. There had been an important business deadline; she'd let it slip and never responded to e-mails or phone calls. She'd at last proved to be what she'd always known she was: zilch, nada, nothing.

Ignoring her growling stomach, she'd just lain there, looking at her ceiling; too afraid to close her eyes and see her demons gloating or hear their gleeful mirth. After a while she'd started touching the lily brand that the woman had burnt into her hip, running a fingertip around its familiar pattern, always the same route, counting the rounds, feeling the magical spell of repetition.

On the morning of day three she had an epiphany, or at least she thought she had. She felt like the proverbial hermit, fasting in his grotto way out into the desert. The unbearable lightness of her head was caused by lack of food, no doubt, but her vision was clear enough to make her decide. The decision hadn't been too difficult once she realized that she only had a choice between one hell and another. There was the hell she'd always lived in. She suddenly saw that she'd only preferred that hell because it had always been there; she'd grown up in it, hadn't she? It had a soothing familiarity.

Then there was the hell the cruel woman offered, a hell with real pain and real fire. The hell she'd wanted to escape from, over and over again, to return to her homegrown, boring kind of evil, but it never stopped pulling at her, did it?

That morning she wondered what 'home' really meant, other than a place of disappointment, betrayal and abuse. Why had she ever considered that being the fuck toy of 'real' women was part of that home, part of 'real' reality? Why did she ever think her dogged loyalty to reality might save her? Was it to prove something -- anything? Or just plain stubbornness? Whatever did she think? Did she ever think? Did she think too much?

Living with the woman had its own brand of hell for sure, but she suddenly saw a difference, a real difference. It was a revelation, a shift in thought, the one where 'up' suddenly is 'down', where black is white. Everything she ever thought seemed to be jerked into its reverse.

What she saw was simple, really. She saw that she'd never fled

from

the woman; she'd always fled

to

her. Maybe fear and panic caused her to leave the woman, but she'd never felt safer at home than with her; to the contrary. She felt unhappy in her demon-ridden 'real' life, an unhappiness she'd never ever felt with the woman. Every time she'd left her it had been because she feared losing herself in the thrill and the exhilaration that overwhelmed her, calling it 'wrong.'. She panicked. But now she realized that this precious 'self' she might lose was nothing but the result of her repressed upbringing; it wasn't 'hers' at all; never had been.

Her mind might often have balked at the outrageous moments she shared with the woman, but her body always knew better. Returning to the woman was the true flight back; Villa was her true home. Her so-called 'real life' was no more than an ongoing depression. When at home, she felt homesickness for Villa; at Villa she never felt a yearning for home.

The girl knew her sexuality was a caged animal aching to get out; it lived inside her, always rattling at its bars. She'd maybe always known that, but never acknowledged it, too scared to even look. When things got unbearable, the animal escaped and she'd pretended not to look, not to know. But it had always been she herself who'd thrown the animal the key to her cage, so it could escape. She never took responsibility for doing that, so she could always deny that she did. She'd allowed herself to become two persons, both irrational, both denying each other, and both unhappy.

That morning, in the sad loneliness of her bed, while her fingertip caressed the branded lily, the girl at last saw a glimpse of what had eluded her all this time: she'd been walking through life looking the other way.

And now she hung from chains, bound with ropes and hurting from relentless flogging. Her muscles ached, but her mind was clear. Her heart was calm, her soul at ease. There was no place she needed to run to.