Ella Writes

I couldn't believe the letter.

It just didn't make any sense. I mean, it was well written--thoughtful and detailed--but the content wasn't possible. My friend Ella had no one else to turn to. Not many female friends, only work acquaintances actually, and certainly no male confidante in her life...no, "he" would never allow that.

We didn't talk much any more. Since she'd married, I'd pulled back a little. I'd loved her from afar for so long and left everything that needed to be said hidden back in a dark corner of my brain, that it had been difficult to bite back everything that I wanted to say when she'd started dating this "man". When it progressed to a marriage invitation, I had pulled back further. Certainly, she wouldn't go through with this; how could she? She is caring, compassionate, sensitive, smart, and beautiful. Not many seemed to see it, but oh my God is she beautiful, inside and out.

And this man...this lazy, stupid excuse for a human...had somehow corralled her into a promise of matrimony? My mind boggled. I couldn't accept it. This would be like allowing a demolition derby driver to have a Jaguar and expecting that he would drive it well and with precision and care. Didn't seem possible. A car analogy isn't even fair since Ella is so much more than an exotic car, but proper analogies fail me. "Out of his league" might be a better one, but also the understatement of the millennium.

I was polite. I went to the wedding. I shook his dead fish handshake at the reception and looked into his dull, soulless eyes. Here was a shell that looked like a man but inside, it seemed that there was nothing. I think she sensed my thoughts when I looked into those eyes--that I might never look into the same way again--and wished her well in her marriage. I left early. I couldn't stand the thought that here was a life ruined. Her chances at happiness would be slim and it made me incredibly sad.

But a year later, I stood halfway between my house and the mailbox, mouth agape at what I was reading, and mind racing with thoughts, emotions, questions, and anger.

Paraphrasing, since to quote you such an intimate letter word for word would be disrespectful to her, she laid out her situation. The marriage was in tatters. He was terrible in person, in marriage, and in bed. And to top it off, he fancied himself a Dom. I stopped to laugh out loud, an action that made Mrs. O'Malley next door (and her ugly gray poodle, Max) turn towards me in surprise. She went back to watering her lawn and ignoring Max's attempts at getting into my yard where he would most certainly leave one of his presents rather than defile her perfectly maintained yard of the month.

In fact, he had demanded her submission on the wedding night. What a fool. Do people even talk anymore before they get married, let alone enter into that kind of relationship?

And his demands had been met...to a point. There were certain things--physical things--that she just couldn't do. She was fearful. I could tell that she was hurting and having a difficult time writing this part. Sure, I always had known that she was a submissive even if she didn't, but her ability to put it into words to me was clearly straining her writing skills. Something she had been loathe to admit, to be sure, but at least she was admitting it and that is the first step to recovery, right?

He'd played at disciplining her. He'd "punished" her with more housework. He'd turned her over his knee and paddled her bottom so much and so hard that she had been unable to sit for days and the bruises were so long lasting that her doctor wanted to report him for abuse over a month after it had happened, so evident was the damage to her butt. And the transgression that warranted this beating? Nothing that she could name. Despite searching for anything at all that she might have said or done, she could come up with no reason for the "spanking" other than that he wanted to do it.

She had found a terrible, low quality video of a paddling session that he'd hidden and the receipt with it showed that it had been a recent purchase. Perhaps he'd decided after viewing it that a "good" Dom spanks his sub for any little thing and that is what had brought on the beating.

I was infuriated. To treat this wonderful, gentle, caring creature this way was an affront. Ella deserved so much more.

And now the jaw-dropping part: He had decreed that she was an unfit sub for his needs and that she must endure further training from another to mold her to his wishes. She was heart broken. Her husband not only sucked as a husband, but he didn't even want her and demanded that she "go with another man" as she put it, to make her worthy of his affections.

"What kind of idiot does this? Can't he train his own sub...?" I whispered under my breath in the middle of my driveway. The poodle sat still, shitting in my flowers while his mistress clearly strained to hear what I was saying over the noise of her sprinkler system.

But there was more. He had, after much crying and pleading on her part, allowed her the chance to pick her own Dom since his "friend" was busy with "two others" at the moment. "Sure," I thought, "he's got friends who are Doms and they're so tied up right now with training that they can't take on this woman?" More like the dumbass has heard from one of his equally stupid buddies how he bosses his woman around and decided that that is actually what the BDSM lifestyle is. And that further, since he probably liked whoring his woman out for his own pleasure, he'd decided that sending her out for "training" was a good thing. She'd come back with stories that would turn him on and perhaps be a good little slut for him from then on, since he would shine in comparison to such oafs and their treatment of her.

But the acceptance of her request to allow her to pick her new, temporary Dom had been an error on his part. A big error. No doubt he believed that she didn't know any Doms, let alone have the guts to approach a man about taking her on. Big mistake, fella. Huge. (Thanks Julia Roberts!)

The rest of the mail was still lying in the driveway when I backed the pickup out into the street. I was on the way to her house within ten minutes of picking up the mail. And eight of that had been reading and re-reading the letter.

Once more the impulsive knight errant charges forth on a tired sway backed steed with rusty and chinked armor to rescue yet another fair maiden who has found her own dragon and not seen the danger until the flames of his breath were blackening her very soul. Why does this imagery come into my head? I'm not on a horse; I'm in a truck, an old Ford half ton. I carry no bent lance nor wear any armor; a legally concealed polymer pistol is all I've got for protection. And this dragon was of her choosing; she had plenty of time to back out before being enslaved in his lair.

But perhaps this time was different. I thought I'd learned that you can't save them all. That you can only hope to save yourself. But perhaps the redemption of saving this one would earn me the peace that I longed for. Perhaps saving her is a way to save me. Why on earth does my brain screw these things up?

"Hold on, Ella, I'm coming. Wait..."

I pulled over into a parking lot to re-assess my decision. Did I want her? Yeah, even if it meant merely saving her from a greasy, hairy, onion-breathed, heavy-handed would-be Dom who meant to abuse her and not actually understand that her submission was a gift. Am I able to separate the emotion from the act? Does getting her out of there for her own safety actually make sense or am I trying to capture her charms for myself? Why would it be different? We didn't have physical relations before and now, she is married. Can you hold off on telling her...?

My re-assessment led me to the inescapable conclusion that no matter what my answers, she would be better off if I simply got her out of that house before he hurt her, irreparably. I looked around to clear my head and realized that I was sitting in front of a Krispy Kreme doughnut shop. The sign said, "Hot. Fresh. Now!" as if to say, "Get on it boy!" and I re-started the pickup and put it in drive with a clear purpose in my head.

"Just like I like my women," I joked to myself as I reflected on the sign's message. "God, you're an idiot," my grown up brain told my teenage brain as the tires jumped the curb and I steered the truck towards her house.

What can I say? Do you want to hear that we spent months talking and asking questions, establishing a real communication between two people that goes so much deeper than a playtime Dom/sub relationship and that now she understands what an ass he was about it? Do you want to hear about our games and the way I was able to make her laugh and cry and actually feel again? Do you want to hear about the gentle, sweet, needy, anxious, vigorous, angry, slow, fast, quick love-making that occurred in the next two months, or do you want to hear about silliness like spending "Naked Sundays" at home or sneaking out to the lawn in the middle of the night with a shovel to fling Max's poodle shits onto the O'Malley roof and kissing the breath out of her mouth to keep her from giggling so loud the entire neighborhood wakes up? Do you want to know about what my heart feels to watch this beautiful soul blossom into the woman that she always wanted to be and become so much more than just a live in girlfriend? Do you want to hear about how he gave up calling and trying to get her back after less than two weeks and moved some nineteen year old skank in with him and that they've both been arrested for meth use? And do you want to hear about how her willing submission and her collar mean so much to me that I now know that it is me who has been saved? Me, who has been taken? Me, who is collared by bonds that nobody can see but that mean so much more than the silver ring around Ella's pretty neck?