It's stupid, you think to yourself.
You have a good life, a good home, a faithful hardworking man and a family. You have everything that you ever wanted and longed and hoped for. You man is gentle, faithful, loving, successful and attentive to you and your needs. He's a good provider and a better lover. He's just slightly kinky in the bedroom in what should be just the right amount.
You should be happy. Any normal person would be happy with this.
So why do you feel so dissatisfied?
You think about this while you pedal the bike at the gym. The wheel spins and so does your mind.
What is wrong with you?
The dreams keep coming. They keep haunting you. They aren't nightmares. They're something else.
You've been dreaming for a while about being trapped somewhere. It's a dangerous place. There are violent, evil men there, and you're hiding from them. But they always find you. Always.
And when they do it starts, your clothes are torn away, and you're forced down, made to obey, to serve in horrifying and brutal ways. You can't remember all the things they do to you. It seems too punishing and violating to recall.
Yet when you wake up from the dreams you're always beyond aroused. Your loins are slick with your own passion and twice you've awoken with your own hand inside you.
The first couple of times you rolled over and nudged your husband until he woke up to the happy prospect of spontaneous sex. And like a happy, wonderful husband he complied and you spent a few minutes making the sheets sweaty and sticky and after he'd thrust into you a few dozen times he climaxed and was spent.
Unfortunately you were not satisfied or spent. So he'd doze off happy and you'd be left laying there aggravated, wet and sticky with a set of sheets that you'd need to wash tomorrow.
After a while you stopped waking him up. He was gentle and caring and attentive and apparently not at all what you needed.
You took to surfing in the evening when you should be sleeping. You'd surf around various risqué sites and look at things that should be disturbing to you but were titillating instead.
Eventually, that wasn't enough either. You couldn't just look at them, you started to touch yourself as you looked at the pictures. And as you did so, a pattern emerged.
The more degrading and humiliating the pictures were, the more aroused you became. And if there was an aggressive man in the picture, using the bound and helpless and sometimes suffering woman, it was all you could do to not scream in passion as you released the urges you were feeling.
It felt weird. Only sad, lonely guys sat in front of their computers and masturbated to this pathetic, degrading... pornography. But you weren't a sad lonely guy. You were a mature, beautiful woman with a family and a sleeping husband two rooms away with a very serviceable libido.
It was making you crazy.
And then you made it worse.
You stumbled on a site that featured all sorts of writing. And the writing, naturally, was about sex.
Most of it was drivel. Pathetic, ham fisted masturbation fantasies composed by what you assumed were more sad lonely men most likely living in their parents basements.
And then you found the story.
That fucking story.
You thought about it as you peddled away on the exercise bicycle and you felt your pace pick up. It was par for the course.
It had been on a list in the BDSM section (naturally...) and it had been pretty highly rated by everyone else. So you took a look at it and the story just... owned you.
Two characters, two normal, flawed human characters connecting in a way you could barely conceive of and doing the things that you were literally dreaming of.
You couldn't stop reading the story. It was ridiculous how you obsessed on it, how real the characters felt, how deeply, utterly *erotic* the sex scenes were.
It was also completely absurd that the author hadn't finished the story yet and left you desperately looking for more. What was worse was that he'd left it on a pseudo cliff hanger with no resolution and you anguished to know what was next.
The gearshift on the bike whined with the strain as you peddled harder. It was hopeless. This stupid story got into your head and you kept fantasizing about it.
You reached out to the author and he sent you back a completely banal reply telling you that he appreciated your feedback and he was working hard on the next section.
You could strangle him for that, the ridiculous prick. How dare he make a story that compelling and just throw it out there unfinished?
As you contemplate hideous violence against this man you have never met, a drop of sweat slides down your nose and splashes on the odometer on the bike. It rolls over onto forty three and the little tenth of a mile markers spins rapidly as you realize you've been frantically pedalling for forty five minutes now.
Slowly you dial down the pace until the tenth of a mile marker languidly circles the dial and you stop and immediately grimace as your thigh muscles scream their displeasure at you.
You'd hoped that exercise would give you respite. Instead you couldn't stop obsessing on your dark dreams and that stupid story and your leg muscles feel like you ripped them from the bone.
'Nice job Arianna, you dipstick.' You mutter to yourself as you stagger to the change room. You plunk down on a bench and try to get your heart to stop pounding. It takes a little while, but you gradually slow your breathing and pulse down to normal levels.
You look around, and the change room is mostly empty. A slim, young university student strides out of the shower area and slips off her towel and starts dressing in her modest street clothes.
You sigh as you quietly eye her. She's tall and lithe and her body has no stretch marks or scars like yours does. You take a little solace and note that her long, lean runner's body is as flat as a board and nobody will ever accuse you of that.
You feel oddly deflated and yet proud at the same time as you wander into the shower and try to blast away this obsession with high pressure hot water. You emerge ten minutes later pink and clean and still obsessed.
As you comb out your long dark hair you eye yourself in the mirror. The tiny, pretty girl with long, almost midnight black hair trailing down to her waist stares back.
God her eyes are hungry.
How is your husband not seeing how desperate you are? Is he completely oblivious to this? Can he not sense your screaming *need*?
You press your hands to your face. It feels like you're going insane. You can't think about anything else. You're walking around in a hazy perpetually aroused state and nothing at all seems to satisfy you.
The gym has been a bust. Maybe on the way home you can stop in at that sex shop you spotted the other day and purchase a disturbing dream in a can. Or a heavy duty vibrator.
'Wait..' You say out loud to nobody in particular.
Maybe that could help. An intense, powerful vibrator. Maybe that could get your mind off... whatever this obsession is.
This new idea compels you, and you rapidly towel off your hair to a light level of dampness and then slip back into your clothing. A snug pair of jeans and a tight little t-shirt mould over your tiny black underwear and you eye yourself approvingly in the mirror.
You smile to yourself as you preen just a little in front of the large pane of reflective glass. You do look pretty hot. It's nice that you still got it.
Your eyes still look hungry though.
You sigh and head out to the car.
The sex shop is less than you hoped for. It's in a strip mall with little parking so anybody watching can clearly see you walk into the storefront clearly labelled 'XXX' and there are two male shoppers wandering around the endless racks of porn DVDs.
This place isn't erotic. It's depressing.
One of the male customers eyes you and licks his thin lips. You can see furtive movements at his waist level and you realize it's creepy here too.
