Morning comes like it always does. There are things to be done, lunch to be packed, chores to be attended to. The world waits for no man or woman, even if she was harshly used by two cruel men the evening before.
You drag yourself out of bed and begin your day. Your sole acknowledgment to your unrelenting fatigue is a large cup of coffee that you pound back quickly.
Your husband dresses, has his morning meal and grabs his lunch and heads out the door. A gentle peck on your cheek serves as his good bye to you and you watch him get in the car and hustle off to work.
You plunk down into a chair in the kitchen and flop your face down into your arms on the table. Being with Padraic is everything you hoped it could possibly be, but you feel like you ran a marathon last night and there's no reasonable explanation you can give your husband for curling up into a ball right there on the kitchen floor and going back to sleep.
Also you have stuff to do. The house needs to be cleaned and organized, you have actual work from work to take care of and you don't have time for this.
That sounds great, but as you castigate yourself you actually doze off facedown on the kitchen table for a while.
You stumble into a murky dream while your body rests. You're back in his apartment, bound and naked and he's standing over you. Other men you don't recognize sit around on the couch and watch. The cameras spin and track your naked form as you squirm on the floor.
Padraic leans over you. He taps an evil looking lash against his leg.
'Where do you want it girl?' He asks you in a low growl.
Without hesitation, you lean back and spread your legs wide. Your pelvis thrusts up and you can feel yourself flowering open.
He smiles at you, a tiny smile on his face telling you that he expected that. He flicks the lash loose and it cracks loudly. The men on the couch lean forward. All of them await the explosion of screaming and pain and tears that are imminent.
You're waiting for them too.
BANGBANGBANG! You jolt awake and shove your coffee cup away. It slips off the table and crashes to the floor. Jagged little shards scatter across the hard tile.
You look around in confusion, shaken by your abrupt return to consciousness. Abruptly you hear the loud clamouring again and your brain finally connects the sound to the cause and you realize that someone is loudly banging on your front door.
Your feet carry you gracelessly to the door as you still feel half asleep. When you slide the door open and look out, a brown uniformed delivery driver does a double take and then apologizes for disturbing you.
You sign for the package and then close the door and only once you return to the table do you realize that you completed that entire transaction in your tiny, translucent white silk nightie.
You mull that for a second, sigh, and then decide that you're liable to get packages delivered to your address with more alacrity now. You don't even get a chance to laugh at your little joke before you step on a sharp piece of broken coffee cup and shriek loudly.
The package is flung from your hand as you hop on one foot and try to land on the chair a few feet away. You don't quite make the comfortable chair and crash to the ground buttocks first.
On top of two more jagged shards of coffee cup.
The neighbours down the block hear you shriek when it happens.
You manage to dig the sharp piece out of your foot and the large piece out of your thigh, but the piece lodged in your buttock eludes you. It's lodged deep in your skin and it hurts to pluck at it.
After about twenty minutes with a pair of tweezers and a mirror you finally give up and accept that you may need help getting this sliver of ceramic out of your behind. You contemplate going to the hospital and groan, because the last thing you need is another hospital bill.
You're about to give up in frustration when you realize that your husband doesn't work that far away and you could call him for help.
You limp quickly to the bedroom and dig your cell phone out of your purse and make a pleading call. He listens to you, laughs pretty hard and then tells you he'll come home from lunch and help you out.
You thank him and then he hangs up.
You groan, limp back to the kitchen and proceed to clean up the shattered pieces of coffee cup before you do any more damage to yourself. Once the floor is cleaned up, you sit down gingerly on one of the chairs. You try to balance on one cheek and squirm around a little but finally give up and then stand up again.
It's interesting that you've done more damage to yourself with a coffee cup in a few seconds than Padraic did to you last night. He didn't even leave one welt on you.
You know why that is. He has no interest in leaving you with any marks that you would find hard to explain to your husband. You appreciate that and feel sad about it at the same time. An experience that intense should have some kind of aftermath you could at least savour a little.
You mull that as you start tidying up your home. There are toys to be picked up and some dishes to wash and a couple of loads of laundry to take care of. You spy the package over in the corner of the kitchen where it landed after you flung it away.
You pick it up cautiously, afraid that you may have broken whatever it was. It doesn't rattle or clink when you do so, which is a good sign. The label on the package addresses itself to your husband, and you feel relieved that it clearly isn't fragile. You place it on the counter where he'll obviously see it.
Idly, you wonder what it is. Neither of you get a lot of packages.
You stand there numbly for a few minutes and then drag yourself out of this odd little fugue state you've drifted into. You don't feel sick or off or upset, you actually feel great. You feel sated for the first time in... well... forever really. And that, coupled with a severe lack of sleep, seems to be throwing you off.
What exactly are you supposed to do the day after you got *exactly* what you were looking for? You half want to tear off your clothes and dance on the table. The other half of you wants to crawl back into bed and sleep for the rest of the day.
He took you right to your limit. Exactly like he said he would. And when you'd gone as far as you could handle he let you dangle for a while and then reeled you back in.
You can't sleep, and you're too tired to dance on the table, so you wander back to your bedroom and go directly to your dresser. You slip you undergarments aside and pull out the velvet bag you slipped in the drawer last night. You loosen the drawstrings and slip the soft strip of leather out of the plush little container and hold it in your hand.
The collar is soft and worn and cool in your hand. You slide it between your fingers and the little silver tag jingles quietly.
This is Tuesday's collar.
And once a week, for three or four hours at a time, you get to be Tuesday.
You slip it around your neck and slip the buckle in place. It fits well, like it was made for you.
Or maybe you were made for it.
Whatever, it feels right.
