My Dear Mistress Diana,
I write to you from an old fashioned cage of thick iron bars, wide enough to sleep in if I'm partially curled or if I'm on my back and have my legs propped up on the bars, tall enough that I can stand, but with only several inches to spare. Samantha tells me it was designed to transport zoo animals early in the last century.
"You're joking," I said.
"No, I'm not," and from that sad, earnest look she had -- you know the one, when she has to absorb or deliver bad news or when she wants to apologize for something -- I knew she wasn't kidding after all. I suppose I'm the height of a tallish monkey or a diminutive bear.
Mistress Cecelia has had the cage decked out with soft thick blankets on the floor and a few pillows. I have my computer, my books, my pad and pen, a reading lamp, the g-string I'm wearing, and that's all. The cage is in some type of unfurnished basement with stone flooring, no windows, no decoration of any kind. My metal suitcase is in the corner along with a gym bag with toiletries and a few changes of clothes.
To tell you that I miss you is a darkly comical understatement. I ache for you body and soul and literally wept last night wishing that I could at least see you by video, but I knew better than to ask. I miss your stern and loving touch, your deviously imaginative discipline techniques, the way you humiliate and thrill me. But I know you don't like it when I get too flowery in my communication with you, so, per your instructions, I will relate in as straightforward a manner as possible my experiences during weekends and the occasional weeknight in the realm of Cecelia these last two weeks.
What little you hinted to me about her -- her absolute, unwavering command and her complete absence of sentimentality -- has proven to be shockingly true. She's a genuine, unabashed sadist. You are my mistress; she is my terrifying trainer. With you, there's always an undercurrent of tenderness and encouragement, even when you punish me. You seem to understand and believe in my potential as a submissive. She seems to doubt it and test it constantly. Her goal seems simply to shatter me and rebuild me, to make me a sexual servant without personality, to know my place, to be faceless and colorless. I do understand that. I even want it. But I also wonder -- I can't help it -- if that's what you truly desire from me. To bleed me of the person I was, the experiences I've had, my quirks and sensitivities. I know you've thought it through and feel that this is the appropriate next step for me. So I'll try to set aside any misgivings or second thoughts.
Beyond her general frostiness toward the world, I think Cecelia simply dislikes me and has from the moment she first laid eyes on me. Samantha didn't confirm as much, but she didn't deny it either. She just told me to see how things unfold and not to be too obsequious, which she said would only make Mistress Cecelia crueler toward me. Sam said she'd learned that the hard way -- that kissing up to Cecelia will only incur scorn. Do what you're told, do it without hesitation, do it with utter commitment, Sam said, and that's your best bet to eventually get in her good graces. Or not. Cecelia dislikes most people, Sam said (though Sam is clearly, at least at the moment, an exception -- Cecelia sometimes dotes on her). And Cecelia dislikes men particularly, Sam confided to me. The best I can hope for is to survive the month with my sanity and body at least mostly intact and to be the slave you've sent me here to become.
What you hinted about Cecelia's appearance was also on the mark. I love, as you know, your dark beauty and Sharon's -- forgive me, Five's. But Cecelia is stunning, too, in a very different way -- fair, tall, almost frighteningly thin, the steely way she holds her jaw and, so unlike you, never laughs or smiles, at least not around me. She can be tender, occasionally, Sam tells me, and I see little hints of it between Cecelia and Sam herself. But I foresee no tenderness on Cecelia's part toward me. She never raises her voice, but I'm finding that the quieter she gets, the grimmer and more painful is likely to be my immediate future. And when she whispers to Sam or one of her other slaves or trainees, glancing over at me in disappointment, I wilt. My worst fear is that I might fail in my time with her, putting at risk my future with you and Five. I vow every day to try, if not to win her over, than at least to pass whatever trials she has in store for me so that you and Five will tolerate me, and maybe even be pleased with me, when I see you again next month -- presuming, of course, that you will allow me to return. I understand that you haven't committed to that, that you need me to discover and fully understand my role as a submissive, as a slave. I understand that this period is a test. But I frankly couldn't bear it if you and Five turned me out. That would be unthinkable for me. Truly. I'd go mad.
*
My first Friday evening, after work, I took the commuter train to East Street Station. Samantha met me there, which is good because had it been a stranger, or even a friend I didn't know as well and under such particular circumstances, I would not, could not have done what was required of me. I'm a devoted submissive, after all, but certain common-sense cautions are hardwired within us all.
It was already dark. Samantha took me to the parking lot -- I rolled my heavy metal suitcase and she took my gym bag. We stopped at a commercial-looking black van. "Hop in," she said cheerfully. I got in the passenger seat, noting the darkly tinted windows up front and lack of windows in the storage area in back.
"So where are we headed?" I asked. "No address. No last names. This is like some kind of spy novel."
"You've known me for the better part of a year," Sam said, seriousness and worry casting an abrupt cloud across her face. "Do you trust me?"
"I wouldn't be here if I didn't. I consider you a representative of Diana, and a friend to me and Sharon. And you're my personal trainer. You've transformed me physically. I'm seriously grateful to you for that."
"To you and whom?" she said, with the voice of a patient grade-school teacher. "You said 'a friend to me and Sharon.'"
"To me and Five."
"And I am, all those things," she said. "Your friend, your trainer. But I'm also a slave to Cecelia and a domme in training with her. So I have dual roles here with regard to you during this next month. I want us, now and forever, to be friends and confidants. But -- and it sounds strange just to say it -- now that we are in Cecelia's neck of the woods, I need you to obey me the way you would her or Diana. Do you understand me?"
It made perfect sense, but I also felt a shift I wasn't prepared for in the gravitational field between us -- our friendship had taken on new and different hues, frightening but not entirely unpleasant.
"I understand," I said.
"It's really important that you do," she said, "because if not you'll be putting me in a very awkward situation. If you misbehave you won't be the only one to suffer the consequences. I will too. It will be seen as a failing on my part."
"I'll obey you. You needn't worry. I won't put you in jeopardy."
"Thank you," she said, looking genuinely relieved. "And in return, as I suspect you already know, I'll do my best to champion you and protect you and see you through this."
"You make it sound like I'm in for quite an ordeal this month," I said, trying to lighten the mood.
But she didn't reply, and that scared me the most.
"Are you waxed and shaved?" she said, impersonal and authoritative. "You need to be hairless except, if you like, for a thin strip of pubic hair. As with Diana, but Cecelia's even stricter about it."
"I am."
"What are you wearing beneath your jeans?" she asked.
"Black bikini briefs."
"Get in the back of the van -- here's the hatch -- and strip down to those briefs. You can put your clothes in your gym bag." With only the dim light from an overhead bulb, I did so. I was, predictably, erect.
"Do you have a condom?" Sam asked.
"Yes."
"You'd better put it on. I don't mind a little drippage. In fact, I think it's kind of cute. But Cecelia won't abide it."
I did as I was told so that no excitement would seep through my underwear, though the hardness of my cock was still embarrassingly evident.
"I'm going to help you into this," Sam said, pulling a leather straitjacket out of a sack. My arms bound crosswise, she tied it tight in back, pulled the crotch straps beneath me, and snapped them in back right above my buttocks. "Sit," she said. I lowered myself onto the seat.
Next, she rolled my heavy metal suitcase over, turned it on its side, opened it, and sifted through some items until she found the full leather hood, complete with snapped-on blindfold.
"This shit's getting real," I said.
"That's not an appropriate way to speak to me anymore, Edward. Be careful." She slid the hood over my head and started to tie it tight in back.
"Don't you mean Six?"
"Yes, I do, and you're still being impertinent. You don't correct me."
"Jeez, Sam" I said, "lighten up. It's me." I knew it was a mistake before the words had even left my mouth. But after all, this was Samantha. I'd had dozens of beers and intimate friendly conversations with her. As my gym trainer, she'd seen me through hundreds of sets of free weights and pushups and crunches and burpees. We'd had as many chats about whey protein and smoothies as we had had about S&M. But this was a different kind of training.
