Alice stared blankly ahead, sounds muffled around her like wool was covering her ears. There were people around her, she vaguely understood, although this fact did not appear to register in her mind. They were talking, talking about something of some importance. Again she understood this, although how important it really was alluded her. Her eyes were like glass, unfocussed, staring ahead at the hard grey wall ahead of her. There was a man in front of that wall, and he was gesticulating like a fly caught in a web, but what he was gesturing about she did not know. Alice just sat there, her back straight as a skyscraper, motionless and grey in her neat suit, at the end of the long grey table with men sat around her.
Suddenly a hand reached around her mouth. She squealed too late as it clamped around her face. She couldn't move, she couldn't breathe! Alice gasped through her nose, clattering against the table as she was hoisted into the air by the burly arms behind her. The men around the table, older than her, gross and balding and badly shaven, jumped up, but not to help. They grabbed at her arms, her legs, her short bob-cut hair. She kicked out at one of them, Douglas, her advertising manager, but he merely laughed and slapped her face. She tried to bite the hand around her mouth but it didn't budge, the fingers just entered her and slithered around her teeth and gums as though she were visiting an overly aggressive dentist from Hell. Her eyes widened in terror as her colleague Michael grabbed her blouse, ripping it off and revealing her neat white bra underneath. The men cheered as they tore at her clothes, hungry paws wrenching and clenching at shoes, tights, underwear, whatever they could find. Alice's prim grey pencil skirt was swallowed into the whirling maelstrom of voracious monsters, then her jacket, her tights, her underwear, sucked away and leaving her neatly trimmed bush on display. HR manager Samuel ripped away her bra, exposing her swollen white breasts, nipples betraying her as they pointed painfully up at the ceiling. Leering eyes drank her in, and fingers preened and prodded her every inch. If Alice's mouth hadn't been so tightly shut she would have loudly gasped as fingers entered her. They were like the hands of blind people wishing to describe a face. Tongues followed and writhed around her nipples, her toes, her legs. She felt wet, her face reddening at the quivering pleasure, her mind sickening at the idea! Chains materialised, clamping around her ankles, pulling her arms behind her back, a gag appeared in her mouth, a collar around her neck. She found herself standing on the table, exposed and nude and hot, a sign hung below her breasts. She dripped with sweat and humiliation as arms were raised to bid on her. This was an auction! She was being sold off, to Morocco, to Tokyo, she would be in a harem if she was lucky, a brothel if she wasn't, a piece of meat to be used and discarded, a nothing a slave a...
"Alice!" Alice jolted. She was still sitting up straight at the end of the table, still in her prim grey business-suit, her bob-cut hair untoussled and her colleagues still seated. Someone had said her name. She thought it was Douglas but she couldn't be sure. She looked at him, his little eyes focussed on her face, like a dog's staring at a squirrel in a tree. She moved for the first time in what felt like a millennia, nodding her head with a furtive embarrassed,
"Yes?"
"What are your thoughts on the company's advertising plans for the next quarter?" Douglas asked, with a slight patronising smirk on his mouth, as if he could see her mind. Alice blushed a little at being caught out like this, but she knew the company's advertising plans for the next quarter. She had opinions on them.
"I think we need to focus more on the social media side of things. It's easy to rely on TV advertising like we always have but there's a younger demographic we're missing out on who don't watch TV." Michael and Derek nodded knowingly in agreement. Alice gave herself a mental high five for sounding like she had been listening. Douglas relented,
"I think you're right. We'll set aside some of the budget to building our social media team. John and Brad have said they're keen to expand the department." Alice was the youngest person in the room. At age 26 she had done well to get into it, with everyone else in their late 40s or older. She had been brought in condescendingly, as a younger woman in her 20s who was understood to be culturally "with it". She knew this, but she wasn't going to say no to the opportunity. In any case Alice did bring something to the table. She had never claimed to be in tune with "youth culture" but she certainly knew more about the internet than the men who still remembered where they were when the Berlin Wall fell.
"Older generations trust the brand," she said, "but younger people see a lot of competition. We need to see our adverts appearing outside of just Facebook and Twitter. We need to buy more advertising spaces on niche sites, on maybe even open accounts. People respond well to companies responding to the news of the day. Stuff like that." The older men sagely nodded. They didn't understand how this all worked but they knew a young attractive woman was saying it, and that was all the proof they needed.
"It's good you've given this a lot of thought Alice thank you." Douglas smiled. He turned to Michael, "Michael are you happy to lead this new campaign?" Michael grinned and replied,
"Yes I think I can take this on. Focus on more websites and advertising space, very good." It took a second for Alice to realise what was happening. These were her ideas!
"Douglas," she found herself saying to her surprise, "I'm happy to take on this campaign. As you said I've given it a lot of thought." Douglas nodded at her appreciably like an owner would their dog when learning a new trick,
"That's great to hear Alice but I think we want someone who's been with the company for a while to steer this one. Don't worry though we'll certainly keep you in mind in the future." Alice smiled, nodding, and quietly imagined Douglas and Michael being throttled,
"Of course," she simply said. Inside she fumed.
The meeting was ended, and Alice returned to her general duties. She was a sales coordinator for the dental hygiene company Great White Smile. It was the first job she got fresh out of school at 18, and here she still was, eight years later and still being treated as the fresh young face. She was certainly one of the only young women at the company. There was Sharon the older secretary, and Grace the admin team leader, but everyone was either old or a man. Alice returned to her station, cringing with humiliation at her wondering mind at the meeting.
She was still wet, although luckily her tights and underwear hid this fact. She considered going to the bathroom to "fix" the problem but she couldn't imagine anything more sad and pathetic. Like a neutered spaniel humping a chew-toy. No thanks, she wasn't going to stoop that low, not at work.
2
She hadn't always been like this. She had always been fairly vanilla. She had been brought up in a quiet little town on the east coast, safe, quiet, uncontroversial. She had played around with local boys as a teenager, discovering things about them and about herself, but nothing dramatic. She had lost her virginity at 17 to a High School jock. He was nice and sweet, and was very easy on the eyes, but when time came for them to be together, she couldn't do it. She felt trapped. So when she left the little town, she went to New York, hoping to become someone.
No such luck. She couldn't afford college or Manhattan real estate. She hung out with college students and took night classes to keep up, but she never felt truly connected. She wasn't rich enough. She had considered becoming an actress and had originally got the job at Great White Smile to fund her dramatic works. But as the college students went on to become actors on the stage, and later on in TV and even one in film, she was left behind. It wasn't that she didn't have the talent, she did! It was when her director tried to feel her up, not for the first time, that she just couldn't do it anymore. She felt like she was selling herself, and though she wasn't college educated she was feminist enough to know these guys couldn't pull that crap with her. She got the reputation of being difficult, offered dried up, and she was left marooned in Great White Smile, friends with awkward grimaces leaving her behind as they accepted the ass-grabbing and nipple-pinching to succeed at the game. She regretted not going for it, of course, but she could never get past that humiliation.
So she quietly kept working, never really asserting herself, just vanishing into the background of this sad little company on the edge of New York State. Aspirations vanished, boyfriends vanished, excitement vanished. Just her and sales.
Then one day, about three months before, she had said fuck it, and gone to a bar to get screwed. She spent the night mostly bored, sitting at the bar with a cocktail, the music too loud and the sweating flirting guys too gross. Then he had walked in.
His name was Gabriel (pronounced GAB -riel). He was French, with sweet olive skin and smooth black hair. He was travelling the world, at least that's what he said, and he had just finished his soiree in New York. They caught each other's eyes at the bar, and she couldn't help but breathe in his leather jacket, his light, charming cologne and the mysterious handcuff tattoo on his neck. When she looked back, she could barely remember what was said that night. Only his aura, like a strange pheromone, existed in her mind. When he ordered her a drink he had briefly brushed her hand and she enjoyed the touch. It had been too long.
He stayed the night, and they did not sleep. In the early hours of the morning she caressed his neck and asked him about his strange handcuff tattoo. Was it a prison thing? Political? He tickled her between her thighs as he candidly responded, "It's a BDSM thing."
"Oh?" she smiled as his fingers played with her.
