With time to dwell on a dead-end career, a recently failed relationship, and a love-life with no direction, Claudia inadvertently stumbles into scat perversions. While getting carried away in her newfound fetish, she reaches out to the scat world to help fulfill her dark fantasies only to find her limits challenged beyond all imagination.
Chapter 1 -- The Consequences of Claudia's Curious Clicks
Claudia didn't know what else to do, other than stare at the slow-moving dot indicating her current location, as if willing it on would help her arrive at her destination sooner. A futile exercise. The dot never bloody moved, or at least it felt that way. Sometimes it would freeze, even though the bus was clearly making miles - which was agonizing. Then the dot would suddenly leap to life; jumping forward to catch up.
Must be the horrible GPS coverage out here, she thought. It was all an attempt to distract herself from the kaleidoscope of butterflies rumbling in her stomach. No soul other than her own knew where she was on her way to; if something were to happen, nobody would know where to look. And yet, this somehow added to the adventure. As many people knew of Claudia's whereabouts as they did her dark fetish. Not only did Claudia not confide in anyone, but her appearance and demeanor refused to betray anything other than vanilla.
Innocent girl at the office, never joining the social rituals after work. She kept a youthful face, in a girl next door way. Walnut-colored eyes with small, but bodied lips. A homely life had returned the favor by gifting Claudia impeccable, crystal skin which contrasted adorably with her night-colored, bobbed hair. It all suggested less than her 27 years. The cute, but conservative 'girl' whom many said could be more attractive with some added effort and a dash of daring. Whenever she did attempt to dress more adventurously, she lacked the savvy to do it effectively; a problem she fixed by rarely trying.
The greatest contrast of all, however, was that the soft-spoken Claudia had a newfound penchant for perversions of the scat persuasion. Her shame and embarrassment qualified the topic as forbidden discourse, even to her younger sister - her closest confidant. She'd always told Amanda everything, including her most intimate and personal tribulations and, even though they'd drifted slightly in recent years, the taboo of this particular topic made it an appropriate place to draw a line. Who could ever understand or comprehend arousal from such an abhorrent activity? Claudia wondered exactly that when she first wandered into it. Once oblivious to its existence, the subsequent rabbit hole and array of overwhelming evidence opened Claudia's eyes to the prevalence of this subculture around the world and, crucially, in her homeland.
No one suspected anything obscure of Claudia's private life; she was a homebody who completely vanished from her small social circle as soon as she'd entered a long-term relationship. Even after Thomas left her (for the boisterous girl from work with bad skin, she suspected), the distinct absence of any dating activity thereafter aroused little to no suspicions. Her family naturally presumed she'd reverted to type; the shy, timid girl she was prior to her last relationship. To an extent, it was true. Ever the introvert, Claudia hated confrontation and social gatherings gave her anxiety; this frequently had a history of manifesting obstacles in both her private and professional lives. She never made the career progress her work ethic and nous deserved due to her unrelenting inability to speak up and defend herself. Instead, her colleagues were often the beneficiaries of her confidence deficit. Claudia identified her personal issues easily enough; she could envisage solutions to her problems, but became impotent in her execution, specifically when that execution involved a degree of social interaction or confrontation. Being marginalized to the peripheries of just about every facet of her life left Claudia increasingly despondent. As she stared out the bus window, she thought that perhaps this was why she gravitated to this fetish with such fervor, or was it always deep inside her, dormant? The passing English countryside continued rolling by; endless meadows and occasional cattle presented an opportunity to reflect on her peculiar journey. Albeit terrified, this was the most alive she'd felt since childhood; since life became... serious.
School, university, her career, settling down; Claudia was perfectly on course, the only issue was the course wasn't her own. It'd felt like she'd sleep walked this far without realizing none of it satisfied her, despite everyone's best efforts to convince her otherwise. Rather poignantly, today was exactly a year to the day that Thomas had broken up with her and moved out. This would be the catalyst.
After the credits had rolled on her relationship, Claudia was left with a lonely apartment and the excess baggage of Thomas's unwanted belongings, which felt more like trophies of her relationship's failure. Among the dross was a discarded laptop. Annoyingly, she remembered Thomas's intolerance for old tech, constantly throwing small fortunes away to upgrade his devices for the latest gadgets. Far less trivial and in need of a laptop, Claudia decided to power it up in an attempt to salvage it. Password control was easily navigated by entering Thomas's favorite footballer and his shirt number; the most difficult part was making sure she spelled the name right. "Predictable moron," she scoffed, while also being disappointed in herself for knowing in the first place. Claudia had invested in being part of Thomas's passions, despite him never caring enough to take an interest in hers, or maybe she just didn't have any.
A bombardment of software updates later and the laptop was up and running. Slow, but running nonetheless. This'll do, she thought. Some mindless scrolling offered a welcome distraction from the spring cleaning until eventually, something more tempting sprung to mind. Like any good ex-girlfriend, Claudia's eyes and mouse drifted towards the browser history.