No Accounting for Chaos

She arrived at 7:30, appropriately late she figured, and found the house overflowing with people. The living room was completely lit up, couples chatting, a woman serving hors d'oeurves, the sound of the conversations drifting out to her as she walked to the door.

He greeted her and introduced her to several couples, names flew past, faces she would have difficulty remembering. Through the rooms, out to the back where more couples chatted. They were very interested in this new person in Monty's life. It was apparent his friendships were intimate; the faces were bright and open, inquisitive about her.

He left her alone with the crowd, making his way to freshen their drinks and she looked around. Across the grass she thought she recognized someone and panicked for a moment, thinking it might be a guy from work. She strained to see him without being seen, and then the light hit his face and she silently screamed.

Jack Wilson?

No way. Shit. No way. I've got to get out of here!

A friend of her roommate's from college; someone who knew her from a lifetime ago halfway across the country. What were the chances? It wasn't possible! She felt like a rat in a maze. He couldn't possibly be here. Not now. As she turned to find a way back into the house, he looked up, caught her eye and froze in disbelief, a smile eventually broadening across his face.

It wasn't necessarily a friendly smile and she felt like a rabbit in the presence of a coyote.

Best defense is a strong offense...

She painted a smile on her face and walked up to him, forcing as hearty a greeting as she could.

"Jack? What the fuck are you doing here?" She came up to him and gave him a hug, disengaging after a couple of heartbeats.

"Marcie. Wow. How weird. Yeah...my partner...Joel? Joel! I want you to meet someone." He waved his hand at a gorgeous young man across the lawn. "Joel works for NightSense."

"Hi. Joel Stevens." He offered his hand.

"Hi. Marcie Adams. I'm a friend of Monty's."

NightSense...oh yeah, one of Monty's companies.

"Monty's?" Jack said it with enough emphasis to indicate that only very close friends called him that. He sized her up. "How. Have. You. Been?"

"Great! How long has it been? Nine years? 10? Been working as an accountant for the past few years. Not what I had expected when I started school, but it's been working out okay. What about you?" She was nervous and tried to find a subject that didn't get too personal.

They made small talk for a few more minutes and she knew he would start to press her. As expected the questions turned more intimate.

"Now weren't you married just out of school?"

Jack had always been a weird guy. She didn't know he was gay during school, and maybe he hadn't figured it out back then. Whatever it was, he had always behaved weirdly around her, no doubt her reputation had preceded her, but of all the guys she had gone out with, Jack definitely never made the cut. He continually brushed Joel's arm, petting him, even as he stared at her breasts and crotch. As much as he weirded her out in school, he terrified her here.

"Uh...yeah.

That

didn't work out."

"But you seemed so

open

around him. Of all the couples back then, I would have thought you two would have worked out your difficulties."

She knew exactly what he was referring to and she blushed, trying to find a way to end the conversation without calling any more attention to herself. She couldn't afford him exposing her to Monty or his friends.

Shit!

"Do you come at these...I mean

to these

parties often? I'm surprised we haven't

seen

you recently..."

He thought he was being funny, but Joel wasn't getting the jokes, and she was only feeling more trapped. She could feel the sweat beginning to bead up under her arms and in the crease between her breasts and ribs. She had to leave. Now.

"Hey Jack," she said with as much lightness as she could muster. "It's been great seeing you again. Joel. Nice to make your acquaintance."

She turned quickly and left before Jack reached out and grabbed her, or did something else horribly wrong. She moved quickly, but not so as to attract undue attention, hoping to find Monty before he ran into Jack.

I'll tell him on my terms; he can't hear it from him!

She moved as quietly and unobtrusively as she could towards the back stairs. Seeing the elevator service door she knew she had to hide, to collect her thoughts and not be where anyone might find her.

Thankfully the door opened at the turn of the handle and she rushed down the hall to the elevator.

In moments she had found her way down the longer rocky hallway, the warmth and security of the enclosed space embracing her. The constant feeling of being watched evaporated; she hadn't even been aware of the pressure of the eyes on her until the feeling was suddenly absent.

She sat on the floor, her back to the wall and cried. She couldn't do this. She had to tell him. The secrets were pressing hard on her chest. As she sat crying, she came to the conclusion she would tell him...tonight. Her deepest secret. He'd been so forgiving about her stupidity earlier in the week; she knew he would be able to accept her...She closed her eyes and let her head relax, her resolve freeing a weight from her shoulders she had grown tired of bearing.

Without warning she was under the spell of the vision she had experienced on Sunday. Once again, she was strapped against the wall, naked. Her arms pulled out to the sides and cuffed to hooks just above her head. Her legs, spread apart by a metal bar, her ankles strapped to the wall. The image overwhelmed her, as it had earlier in the week: the sense of powerlessness, the immobilization and perhaps most distressing, her inability to scream, the ball gag strapped into her mouth.

Like a disaster or studying an insect about to die, she looked at herself, stretched out on the wall, her nipples clamped and pulled cruelly to the sides, flattening her breasts, the wires clipped to eye hooks next to her. She started to feel nauseated as the pain and fear in her trapped self looked out at her through teary eyes. She could see the fear...and now, as she stared...she could see the arousal...an emotion she hadn't noticed in the last vision. The arousal was much clearer to her and it alarmed her as much as the horror of the scene. This wasn't her! She didn't want this!

She knew it wasn't real, but she couldn't pull her attention away from it. She'd never experienced anything like it -- it wasn't like she could close her eyes...they were closed! But she didn't feel she could open them and it would go away. She was as trapped in the hallway as her vision-self was trapped on the wall. She screamed softly as her tormentor...not Monty in this version...stroked her naked skin with a leather whip...softly dragged it down her breasts, over her pubis. Her trapped self shuddered and closed her eyes, only to have the whip strike her across her navel, the man wielding it shouting at her to keep her eyes on him.

The scene and her feelings at seeing herself tortured brought her to the brink of fainting. She was frozen, forced to see how it would end. Somehow she knew, if she could look over her shoulder, she would see an audience silently observing her torture, and in that audience, she was certain, was Monty; along with many of the people she had met tonight.

She felt her juices beginning to flow and she moaned in protest.

This can't be me! I can't possibly enjoy this. Oh God!

The woman,

her!

in the dungeon was struggling to avoid the whip, but she couldn't move, forcing her eyes to look at the man to make him stop.

She watches in horror as he compliments her for her obedience, like a dog being trained. And worse, he

rewards

her by slipping the handle of the whip into her exposed pussy, pushing it in as far as it can go until she screams through the ball gag and shakes her head begging him to stop.

"You see," he turns to look at her, directly in the eyes, until she realizes he's probably addressing the unseen audience. "The poor creature doesn't know what she wants. First she begs me to fuck her, and now she begs me to stop." She can hear the chuckling of the audience behind her and moans. She recognized a laugh from the audience but couldn't place it.

"You enjoy being spread open for these nice people, don't you pussy?" He plucked at her extended nipples, forcing a cry of pain through the gag. "You are practically coming just from being so

exposed

to them, yes?" Again he plucked her nipples and she cried in anguish.

She couldn't stand it but even more terrifying than watching her being tormented, was the realization she was soaking her panties. At first she thought she must be peeing from fright, but she knew that wasn't true: she was spending...coming at the vision of being splayed open and violated in the most cruel and awful way.

She heard the laughter again and realized it was hers.

The last thing she saw, before she passed out was her torturer unsnap his leather pants to reveal a monstrous cock pointed directly at her and poised to impale her.

"Marcie...Marcie!"

She was lying on the floor, her back twisted and cramped, her underwear completely soaked. Monty was crouching over her; the concern on his face scared her.

"What's the matter? Monty? Where am I? What's going on?" She didn't know how she got her clothes back on, and where the hooks were, or how she had survived the awful torment and whether her pussy was injured from the fucking she knew she had just been through. She tried to move her arm to see if she was okay, but it was asleep.

He reached under her and helped her up. "Can you stand, or should I carry you?"

She shuffled her feet under her and realized she was unhurt, and completely disoriented. "It happened again...that horrible...thing..." she waved her hands at the wall and put her arm around him, letting him lead her back to the stairs. "Why is this happening to me?"

"Let's get you upstairs. You can clean up in the bedroom and rest there if you'd like. I'll let everyone know you weren't feeling well and had to go..."

By the time they made it up to the bedroom, her body had returned to normal, even if her mind was still recovering. He left her in the bathroom. "It's okay, Monty. I'll be okay. Don't send them away. I'll be out in a minute."

She splashed cold water on her face and took stock. Her dress was a little dusty but not soiled. She brushed it off and felt the cold wetness from her underwear. It wasn't just uncomfortable it would likely smell. She was stuck; she couldn't go out with her panties, she didn't have another pair here, and...a wicked thought passed through her...she couldn't...she couldn't go out without any...

it would be tempting

, the devil voice said, sending a plume of electricity up her spine...

it would be tempting fate

, her adult voice countered.

"Which would be worse," she argued with herself, peeling them off and looking for a place to put them. "Going commando and risk being caught, or wearing one of his..." she looked around the room briefly trying to figure out where he kept his underwear..."and risk being caught." The electricity at the thought of being just a slip of her dress away from exposing herself intensified and she struggled to push it down.

"What the fuck," she sighed, resignedly. Brushing her hair, she took a last look in the mirror, adjusted her make-up and rejoined the party in the living room.

* - * - *

As he left the room, he made a call. "Jeremy. We've had another incident. Same guest, same place. What did your team find out?"

"Hey Dr. Green. It's all clean. I looked over the report yesterday. They did a full sweep, all frequencies, no residual radiation, nothing out of the ordinary. It's all normal. What happened?"

"Hell if I know, Jeremy. Hell if I know. It doesn't feel right, I'll tell you that. She's traumatized. It's not good."

"Was it operating? 'cause we checked it without it operating..."

"...no it's not on..."

"I can send you the report...but it's clean..."

"Please don't. Let me see if I can sort this out."

By the time she re-emerged, most of the guests were already leaving -- off to other engagements. There had been an invitation to the two of them to join a group going to a nightclub, but he put his arm around her and suggested they had other plans.

"Oh you two...there's plenty of time for that later. Come on -- it's a great gig tonight!"

They both smiled at the implication, not denying its accuracy, and not apologizing for it either.

Within 30 minutes, with the exception of the staff, everyone had left.

"We've got it Mr. Green. We'll let ourselves out. Leftovers are in the fridge; there's a few bottles of open wine in the cellar."

He thanked them and turned to her. "Marcie. I'm worried. I don't understand what happened to you. How are you feeling?" He grabbed a bottle of wine and a couple of glasses, suggesting they sit in the living room and talk about it.

"What is going on down there, Monty?" She sat on the end of the couch away from him, letting her legs dangle down. She was careful not to let her dress slide up, at least not while the help was still walking around. "It feels so...relaxing...to be in that hallway. I've never felt so

protected

, and then, Wham! This horrible vision of being...being...it's too awful to even describe..." And worse, too awful to contemplate how even its memory stirred that glow in her groin.

"I'm really not sure, Marcie." He poured two glasses and leaned back studying her. "I'm very worried about you. After last Sunday I thought maybe some of the equipment down there was acting up, but I've spoken with my facilities guys and they say it all reads normal."

Facilities guys? Who has facilities guys taking care of their home?

She took a sip of wine, feeling the cool air drift up her naked thighs. The thought of being stripped, strapped and helpless, exposed to an audience, an audience that apparently included her, while she was fucked mercilessly kept plucking at her, like the torturer had done to her nipples. She shivered, disgusted at the vision and disgusted by the desire it raised in her. She looked at him studying her and realized there was something going on he wasn't telling her.

"Do you want to talk about it...you had passed out down there...but you weren't drinking a lot, right?"

She shook her head. "No, in fact I had just left looking for you..."

Not quite true, but I'm not ready to tell him yet

"...to get that drink, and thought I'd take a detour. I just feel so...safe...there, until of course I'm tied up, stripped and tortured for you and an audience of your friends. Except then."

It was the first she had spoken of the details to him and he turned to her, shocked. His hand came up to rub her shoulder. "What?"

She related a few of the details but stopped when she realized she was getting turned on by it.

He opened his mouth to say something and then closed it. It reminded her of a fish...gulping.

"There's definitely something going on here, Marcie. I'm just not sure what it is. I've been having a feeling lately, especially when we're together, that there's a deeper rhythm in play...a

sense

of powerful strange attractors." He did his theatrical eyebrow thing again and put on a Groucho Marx voice, "I'm strangely attracted to you..." He put down his wine glass and sat up, staring at her. "Seriously, there's a strong confluence of...something going on...something I've never felt before..."

She put her glass down and leaned over to kiss him. She'd heard the staff's cars drive away and knew they were alone. "There's something weirder, Monty." She took his hand and slipped it between her legs, drawing her dress up so that she was exposed to him. She put his fingers on her sex. "I don't enjoy S&M fantasies. I've never enjoyed them, and yet, I was gushing down there. I must have come at least twice." She pushed his fingers into her to emphasize her point: she was still juicy. "I don't understand what that means." She whimpered a little as she pressed his fingers into her further.

He looked at her and stared between her legs, letting his fingers play with her softly. "Let's go somewhere more private," he suggested quietly.

* - * - *

They made love quietly, gently as if he was concerned about hurting her, or as if she had been injured already. It was sweet, but not the fireworks they had been having, and it wasn't sufficient to wipe away the fragments of memories at what had happened to her in her dream/vision.

She wasn't tired; if anything she had gotten her second wind and was sitting up looking at him. He had rested his head on his elbow, the covers spilling off him. She loved looking at his body, the muscles rippling under his skin. She thought back to all of their conversations, to the intimate details of his introduction to Tantric sex by his guru, Sundar. She recalled the images from the book he'd shared with her in the den...when was it...just a week ago! It seemed like a year. It was obvious his spirituality was deeply intertwined with his sexuality.

What do I know? All I know is it feels fucking fantastic!

But the connection between his "belief system" and String theory...that was just too weird....

"So all of this talk about life forces, infinite universes, strange attractors...it's just your way of thinking about the world, right? I mean, it doesn't change anything one way or the other, does it?"

Even now, after he had been gently rocking her, his cock, stiff as ever sliding so nicely into her, gently bringing her off in small wavelets; even now, relaxing in the after glow, her hands resting on his chest staring at the night sky through the ceiling of his bedroom. Even now. For some reason she needed to talk about it. She knew something was going on between them. He hadn't been completely open about that thing that happened to her downstairs, and it scared him. Lord knows she hadn't been completely open with him, and it scared

her

to think about the consequences...and she suspected he knew she was hiding something.

"Well, 10 years ago I would have had a quick and dirty answer, something you could have read in a textbook. Here, at this moment, I am choosing among several possible futures, just in terms of what direction I want to take this conversation." He sat up, holding her hand and giving it a kiss. "We confront these choices all the time, but the question I ask myself is not whether to choose one path over the other (that's just politics) but rather why I should choose one path over another?" He emphasized the point by raising his eyebrows, as if she was supposed to answer. She shook her head and shrugged.

"Once you start answering that question, another pops up, and once you keep asking yourself why, you eventually find yourself at the quantum level." His passion for the topic was contagious. "And then..." he dragged her hand down his chest, across his ripped abs to his pubic hair. She could feel his cock getting stiff and moved her hand to hold it, "you re-discover it wasn't your choice down there."

She smiled at the double entendre, but looked confused.

"None of which has been an answer to your question. Okay, 'does any of it change anything...?'. 10 years ago I might have argued that it was simply a way of believing and it didn't really make a difference in the world. But six months later I found out my belief in quanta and all that stuff makes a real difference in the world. You remember the other night at the restaurant, your comment about 'praying?' And later, in the den?"

How could she forget the den? Every time she thought about it she got moist.