As so often happens, the trouble, when it came, was a combination of little things that built and built. Jude had come off a punishing shift schedule to be told that, despite passing all her exams with flying colours, what with the recruitment freeze and all, there would be no promotion to sergeant in the current fiscal year. She returned to her desk, where a pile of paperwork waited for her, wondering why she put up with it all, the stupid hours, the abuse from the public she was only trying to protect, the lack of respect from the male police officers, and now this kick in the face. Really, why did she bother?
When she got back home she flopped down exhausted on the sofa. All she wanted was to get into her pyjamas, take herself up to bed, curl up under the covers, and hide away for a while. She needed a cuddle; she needed, just this once, to be the one protected, not the protector. However, as a Domme, she was supposed to be the one doing the cuddling. To admit to Karen just how much she needed her would be an act of weakness, which would undermine her position. She sighed as she looked at her watch. Time was getting on, and she was supposed to pick up Karen. But the thought of slogging all the way across town and back didn't help her mood in the slightest. She just wanted to sit there, but she'd made promises, she'd made arrangements and, as ever, people were relying on her. 'Why is always me that does the heavy lifting?' she asked herself.
Halfway across town she got caught up in emergency sewer works on Fowler Street. The ensuing chaos and confusion was not helped by two drivers who, by trying to push through the same gap, had had a minor collision. They had nearly come to blows before the police had stepped in and told them to move their cars. Bloody motorists, Jude thought, not for the first time. Why, oh, why couldn't they just co-operate? The net result was that the area all around the bus station was completely gridlocked and, although she knew most of the coppers who were trying to sort it out, it still took nearly thirty minutes to drive little more than a couple of miles, and her temper suffered further as a result.
As her car pulled up outside Karen's house, Karen came bounding out with a big smile on her face and a spring in her step. She threw her overnight bag on the back seat, got into the car, reached across and gave Jude a peck on the cheek. Normally this would have been just the thing to raise Jude's spirits, but she had reached that point in her cycle of depression where other people's good moods just contrasted with her own and made everything worse. And while they headed back to Jude's house, this time carefully avoiding the town centre, Karen's cheerful chatter was, to Jude's ears, inane wittering, and she felt as if she was getting a headache. When they returned, Jude pointedly sat in the lounge whilst Karen cooked supper in the kitchen and, when Karen called her to the table, she sat over her meal in sullen silence.
At the club it was hardly any better. Jude seemed to sink her first pint almost before they had sat down. Before any of the others had finished their first, she was sending Karen to the bar for a refill and, when Andy gently commented that she was drinking a lot, she got told to mind her own business. By the time they were ready to leave Jude had sunk four pints Again Andy enquired gently if she felt that she was in the right mood for "playtime".
"What's got into you tonight?" Jude snarled. "Just because I want a drink or two for a change, you come on like I'm a right dipso."
"I'm just saying...." Andy started but then backed off as Jude gave her look that would have scorched paintwork.
There was an uneasy air in the cab to Jude's house and, when they arrived the atmosphere was forced. Karen was ordered rather nastily to go to the kitchen and sort out the drinks; Jude once again ordering beer. And then, when Karen brought the tray downstairs, she was so apprehensive about Jude's moodiness that she missed her footing and the tray went over, spilling drinks and glasses everywhere. Beth and Kathy rushed over to help whilst Lucy went upstairs to get a dustpan and brush.
"You clumsy idiot!" Jude snarled as she got up out of her chair. "That's my beer you've just spilt. Why don't you look where you're going?"
She strode off into the other half of the cellar and returned with a riding crop. She grabbed Karen from where she was tidying up and told her to bend over. Karen looked at her nervously. Reluctantly she complied, reaching for her calves as usual. As soon as she was in position Jude lashed out causing Karen to scream out loud and lose her balance, toppling forward onto her hands and knees. Scared by Jude's ferocity, Karen stayed crouched down and reached for her backside as if to protect herself but Jude grabbed her arm and pulled it away. The riding crop was just about to fall again when....
"Jude! No! Stop now!" Mel had jumped up from her chair and was now holding Jude's arm.
"What?"
"What on earth do you think you're doing? This is supposed to be fun, not assault and battery."
"Are you telling me how to discipline my sub?" Jude retorted.
"I'm saying you're too drunk to be holding a riding crop," Mel replied firmly. "Karen, are you OK?"
"Please, Jude," Karen said from the floor where she knelt, "not like that, please, not like that."
"Not like this, not like that; all I ever hear from you is about the things you won't do!" Jude wrenched her arm free from Mel's grip but she did let her arm drop and didn't go to use the crop again. "You're supposed to be my sub. Why don't you act like one? How about I get a little obedience for a change?"
"That's unfair." Karen got to her feet. "Just because there are some things I won't do, some things I can't do, some things... they're just not right...." She trailed off, uncertain that she wanted to have this conversation right now.
"Not right! Hark at Miss Morally Superior. No one else objects. Why should you? What makes you so bloody special? Do you think you're better than us? Do you think you're better than me?" Jude's anger was out in the open now.
"No! No! Of course not. It's just ... it's just ...." Karen trailed off. It would have been hard enough at the best of times to try to explain the conflicting roil of emotions around her position, and she certainly couldn't now, but she never, for one moment, thought that Jude or the others were wicked or immoral. Just because she couldn't do certain things didn't mean she looked down on those who did. Her head dropped as she realised she couldn't answer, not now, not here.
"I'll tell you why you can't answer. It's because it's not about morality, it's because you're scared," Jude sneered. "Scared of what you are, scared of what you want. You hide away behind your 'limits'," Jude all but spat the word, "so that you don't have to join in, not properly. You're quite happy to go to bed with me but won't accept that you're a lesbian. You hide it from yourself and you surely hide it from others. You won't come out to anyone, not even a little bit. Take you sister's wedding as an example, you don't even want me as your 'plus one'. You all but disowned me, right there in St George's Mall. I'm surprised a cock didn't crow. You lock yourself away in that closet because you're far too frightened to come out into the real world."
"The real world?" Karen looked about at the various items around the playroom. "You think this is the real world?" Karen now stood face to face with Jude. "All this stuff with Dommes and subs, it's a fantasy, that's all, a fantasy. I won't deny that it's fun, I won't deny that we don't all enjoy it. It's sexy and exciting and I want to keep on doing it but that doesn't make it real. You and me, we're real, what we have is real, or at least I thought so."
"Please, please, the two of you." Lucy stepped between them. "Please don't argue like this." There was a muttered chorus from the others in agreement but Karen and Jude had already gone too far.
"To think that I thought...." Jude started.
"Thought what?" Karen asked.
"Thought that you could be one of us."
"But I am, aren't I?" Karen glanced around at the others who muttered assent.
"No you're not, not really. You're scared to commit, you won't come out, you won't join in, you just want to sit on the sidelines dithering."
