Colors and Fog

Notes:

This story uses

italics

in various places for emphasis. Titles for sections of the story are marked in

bold

.

This is not a quick-stroke story. It starts slow, and tapers off from there. There is very limited slap-and-tickle, at least on-screen. The pleasures here, if there be any, are more cerebral than gonadotropic.

There are some Mind Control elements in this story. In some MC stories, the machinery of MC

is

the story. Here all the MC stuff happens off-screen, so to speak, and the characters have to deal with the consequences, the way actors have to work around the furniture of a stage set. It is of note that the leading lady in the story is an unusual case where the victim of MC intervention fully realizes that she's been tampered with.

If you're into

anatta

, you'll find plenty of it here, though not in its orthodox form.

I hope you enjoy.

Chapter One: My name is red

When the light comes on in the closet, it is like a punch to the face. Someone, maybe one of The Help, maybe even Chief himself, has flipped the switch on the wall outside of the closet, and that is my wake-up call. After eight hours of near-total darkness, the light from the bare bulb over my head stabs into my skull, and I throw my hand over my eyes until they can adjust a bit.

My name is red. I am a domestic, and this is how my day begins.

On the other side of a thin wall, in the next closet, I can hear the other domestic, who is called black, greet the day as she does every day, with a whimper that combines pain and grief.

I take my hand away from my eyes, and look quickly around the closet, which was built into a wedge-shaped space below a staircase. The floor space is about seven feet square. Headroom goes from almost-standing at one end to zero as the stairs slope down over my head. A pallet (thin mattress) fills most of the floor area. There is a chamber pot in one corner. On the wall at the tall end is the door, maybe half-height: I have to go in and out of the closet on my hands and knees. The rest of that wall has a shelf, holding a basin, pitcher, soap, towel, a small mirror, and a small set of lipsticks and hair brush and such.

On the floor next to the door is what appears to be a wooden box without a top, maybe two feet square and a foot deep. This is my view of a drawer, the outside face of which is in the corrid--, in the hallway. The pass-thru drawer is how The Help can get items into and out of the closet after I am locked in at night. If my unif--, if my clothes are soiled during the day, I fold them and put them into the drawer on my side of the wall. During the night, one of The Help pulls the drawer open in the hallway, takes out the dirty clothes, puts in the clean ones, and pushes the drawer closed. If I happen to be watching from inside the closet, it looks like the box disap--, is sucked into the wall, and comes back out of it a moment later.

So my clean clothes for today are lying in the drawer. I do not have time to waste, and I hurry to get dressed, as I know black is doing on her side. I am on duty from the end of the owners' breakfast to the start of dinner, and if I want any breakfast for myself (and it may be my only meal of the day) I have to move smartly.

You may have noticed that I have trouble with big words. I'm sorry. Somehow, I can't say, write, or think words with more than two syllab--, those sounds that words are made of. I can read big words, mostly, or if someone says a big word, I can under--, I know what it means, mostly, but not the other way. I have mostly learned not to try to say big words, but sometimes I have to start over in a sentence, as you've seen, and it limits how complex the things are that I can think. Every domestic I've met has the same problem. In fact, it seems that the only big word I can say is "domestic." It would be sort of funny not to be able to say what I am, right?

The latch on the door to the closet clicks, and the door swings open. I arrange my face into a smile, creep out into the hallway on hands and knees, stand up, and present myself. I see black doing the same out of the corner of my eye.

Our clothes, black's and mine, are almost ident--, the same. On my feet are red wedge shoes, rather tall. My skirt is made of four panels that hang from a narrow waist band. The panels are sewn to the waist band, but not to each other. The first panel runs from below my navel to my right hip, the second from my right hip to the base of my spine, the third from there to my left hip, and the fourth from the hip to below the navel, The panels reach almost to the floor. The panels lap over each other by maybe two inches, and are made from a very light silk-like cloth, red of course. If I stand stock-still and there are no drafts, it is a modest skirt. If I'm not careful, I give any viewer an eyeful, because panties are not part of the outfit.

My blouse is sort of on the same model, also made of four panels, of the same cloth. The panels are joined only at their top corners: at the pit of my throat, the tip of my left shoulder, the nape of my neck, and the tip of my right shoulder. The panels hang to about the level of my waist, and any breeze reveals all I've got. The panels do not lap over each other, and skin is visib--, skin shows through in the gaps between my breasts, below each arm, and down the middle of my back. If I slouch, the panels sag away from my breasts and expose me to the world because a bra is also not part of the kit. To have any hope of keeping my breasts covered, I have to stand up very straight, which has the effect of thrusting my breasts proudly forward like a cadet at brace.

To my right, black is clothed the same way, except, of course, in black.

Chief is standing in front of us, and gives us a quick inspec--, once-over. I guess we pass, because he motions us toward the kitchen. We scamper that way. We sit at a little table in the corner of the kitchen to wolf down our breakfasts, which are mostly leftov--, food from the owners' dinners the day before, a cup of tea, a slice of bread with some jam. I try to cheer up black, and get a wan crease of thanks at the corners of her mouth in reward.

An increase in bustle in the kitchen is our signal that breakfast is about to be served upstairs, so black and I guzzle the last of our tea and hurry up the back stairs to the dining room. The driver and the men who work in the garden are having their breakfast in the other corner of the kitchen, and elbow each other as they look forward to a show. In order not to bare my bottom to them, I have to reach back and pinch downward on the two back panels of the skirt as I go up the stairs, and I manage to deny the guys their show this time.

We come into the dining room and take our places. I stand against the wall behind The Mister's chair, and black stands behind the chair of The Missus, facing me. Chief and The Help stand along one end of the room. The Mister and The Missus take their seats, The Mister in front of me, with his back to me, and The Missus on the other side of the table, facing him.

Let me describe the hier--, the social layers to you. At the top, of course, are The Mister and The Missus. Their sons, too, but they are away at univ--, at college, though I hear talk among The Help that they will be home in a few days.

Below The Mister and The Missus is the Chief of Staff, or "Chief." Chief manag--, runs The House.

Below Chief is The Help, which has its own layers, with the driver and cook at the top, layers of Maids, and the garden workers at the bottom. The Help are normal workers: they get hired and fired, they get paid, they quit and move on. Then there is a long gap before you come down to the next layer, which is...the pets.

And then, below the pets, you come to the domestics. The only thing below the domestics is the vermin in the cellar and attic, the mice and cockroaches. Sometimes The Help will say that the domestics are below even the vermin, but I think they're just being mean. But domestics don't get to quit: in some way that I don't quite get, we belong to The Mister.

One other thing that my mind won't do is plan escape, or running away, or like that. I know what the words mean, and they sound like a great idea, but when I try to think about, "OK, to get out of here, the first thing I need to do is...," the mind stops.

Being a domestic is like being in a car driving on a foggy road. I can't see very far out the back window, which is my past. My first memor--, what I can recall are of climbing out of the van that brought black and me to The House. Who was I before that? What was I? How did I come to be a domestic? No domestic knows her past, and rumors run wild. Some think we're being punished for some crime, or that we were sold to pay off bankrup--, that we couldn't pay our bills, or that being a domestic is inher--, is passed down from mother to daughter. (I have heard that there are male domestics, but I've never seen one.) None of us knows how we came to be here.

Just as I can't see out the back window, I can't see very far out the front, which is my future. What happens when a domestic is fired (for want of a better word)? None of the domestics knows, and again the rumors are wild: a whorehouse in every men's prison, butcher shops south of the border. My theory is that they wipe our minds clean with a damp cloth, install a new sense of Self, and resell us to a new House. If that's so, you're older than at your last sale, so you won't fetch as good a price, and maybe your new owner, having got you on the cheap, will treat you even worse. But none of us knows, and you'll never meet someone who "used to be" a domestic.

(I use the word "owner" just to make it easy, but I don't know the real way it works. For all I know they lease us, or rent-to-own, or it's a loaner program or something. But "owner" is close enough.)

Breakfast for The Mister is very simple: a cup of coffee, and maybe a roll. The Missus gets a full breakfast. They chat about the day to come, mostly in tones too low for us to hear. When they finish, black and I step forward to help with their chairs, and our work day begins in earnest, with black following The Missus to her boudoir, as I follow The Mister to his study.

The Mister is an archit--, he designs buildings for people. From what I can hear when he's on the 'phone, or when he has a custom--, a client come visit, he's very good at what he does. He takes tough jobs that no one else will take, and gets paid to match. He's also very careful at what he does. His buildings don't fall down.

On the side, he likes to tinker and build little things for The House, and he really is a craftsman. Some of his stuff is complex and beautif--, very pretty.

The Mister is pretty rich, because of his work. I have heard The Help say that this is one of the biggest Houses in town. He can afford two domestics, and I have heard The Help say that he even has options on two more domestics, but I don't know what that's about.

His study is a big room with book shelves filling three walls and a floor-to-ceiling window on the fourth side. There is a sofa and such, but the biggest piece of furnit--, the biggest thing in the room is a huge stand-up table, sort of in the middle of the room, where he can spread out the papers and drawings for his current project. Sometimes he sits on a kind of bar stool, but mostly he stands, facing

away

from the window. He says he doesn't want the distrac--, he needs to keep his mind on his work.

My job in his study is mostly to be silent and invis--, to blend into the walls. He's working, after all. So I keep his teapot full, dust the bookshelves, that sort of thing. He has a little dome-shaped bell on his table, like the ones you see on a hotel front desk (How do I know about that?). Now and then he'll tap the bell and give me a slip of paper with the name of a book he wants, and the number of the shelf it should be on. Now and then he is done with a book, taps the bell, and I look on the inside cover to see what shelf to put it back on.

At noon, I go down the back stairs to the kitchen to fetch his lunch tray, and I often see black on the same mission for The Missus. This is a high point of the day for the driver and the garden workers, who sit at a table at the bottom of the stairs, grinning. Going down the stairs isn't too bad, as I can hold down the panels of the skirt and blouse in front. Going up is tough, because the tray takes both hands, so there's no way to avoid giving them a show. Worse yet, I have to move quickly, not only because The Mister's lunch mustn't get cold, but also because, when I have my hands full, the driver or one of the garden guys may see a chance to tweak a nipple or run a hand up between my legs if I'm slow, and I have to be careful not to drop The Mister's lunch tray when they do.

Most of the time, there's a little bowl on the side of his lunch tray with food for me. If not, then if The Mister doesn't finish all the stuff on his lunch tray, what's left is my lunch. Failing that, my next food will be breakfast in the kitchen the next morning, though we try to steal a bite in the kitchen after dinner if the cook isn't looking.

I said that my job in his study is

mostly

to be silent and so on. There are a couple of excep--. Damn. There are some times when that's not so. As I said, he takes tough jobs, buildings that push the edge of what can be done, and the answers to the problems that come up aren't always in the books. Sometimes the books give contrad--, don't agree. This doesn't happen every day, but maybe a couple of times a week. Then he starts to get angry. I can hear it build up for an hour or more, as he starts to cuss under his breath, and slam the books around.

When I hear this all starting to happen, my heart sinks, because I know what will follow. I hate what he does to me, and I am ashamed of myself for how I always respond, how I can't

not

respond, but no matter how much I hate it, believe me that I know better than to let it show.

At last, he swats the little bell hard with the flat of his hand, and I start the part of my job that makes me more and less than an unpaid Maid. There's a funny thing about that little bell. Sometimes it means "My teapot is empty." Sometimes "Fetch a book." Only when he swats it hard does it means "Get out the A-frame." But my pussy doesn't know which is which. Any time the bell rings, I drip. It's like that Russian science guy and his dogs, right? I saliv--, I drool when the bell rings, like the dogs, but at the other end.

Look, when he gets this way, it's because thinking by-the-book hasn't worked. There's some assump--, some habit of thinking in there that's blocking him from seeing the answer. The idea of this thing that he does is to provide a

gentle

distrac--, to take his mind partly, but only partly, off the problem, to let that wrong way of thinking wiggle into the daylight where he can swat it dead.

At the left end of his table as he faces it is a kind of cupboard on the floor. From the back side of the table I hurry to open the cupboard (on my right). Inside is an odd piece of furnit--, something he built. I said that he likes to tinker and build stuff. The thing looks a bit like a dog house with a very steep roof. I call it the "A-frame." It is on wheels that roll on tracks that are sunk into the carpet, like a narrow-gauge railway, tracks that run from side to side under his table. From the cupboard I quickly roll the A-frame to the other end of the table (his right, my left), where there's an open space, and now it's easy to see it.

The top of the A-frame is a padded bar maybe five inches wide and three feet long, about three feet above the carpet. The two sides of the A-frame slope downward steeply. There are what appear to be two shelves on each of the down-sloping sides, each shelf being about a foot long and maybe five inches wide. Across one end of the padded bar, the end toward his side of the table, is a cross-piece like the cross of a "T", about two feet from end to end, also padded, with a gap in the middle of it. The cross-piece ends are shoulder pads. Sticking out beyond the gap in the "T," off the end of the padded bar, is a half-round piece, padded on the inside, like if you had cut a large tin can in half top-to-bottom and took out the end plates. The half-round piece is a headrest, and is made of steamed bent wood and varnished. It is really quite beautif--, quite pretty, if you don't think about what it's for.

I have to hurry, because when he's in this mood, he doesn't like to wait. I lean over the A-frame and lie down along the length of the padded bar, with my shoulders against the shoulder pads and my forehead resting in the half-round headrest. The panels of my skirt fall away to either side, and the panels of my blouse fall away from my breasts.

The headrest bends my head sharply up and back. It supports my forehead and reaches from my hairline to below my cheek bones, with a notch cut in the bottom edge for my nose to stick through. The padding of the headrest total--, it covers my eyes all the way, so as soon as I am in place, I am blind.

My pussy just reaches the other end of the padded bar and hangs over the end of the padded bar by an inch or two. I rest my forearms on two of the small shelves, and my hands grab the hand grips that are there. My shins rest on the other two shelves. My elbows and knees almost touch, like a jockey on a race horse. My breasts hang down on either side of the padded bar.

All is now ready. I lift my left shin off of its shelf, blindly reach down to the carpet, and with my foot give the A-frame a little shove before putting the shin back on its shelf. I feel the A-frame roll along the tracks until it stops with a click and a small jolt. Even though my eyes are covered, I know that I am in the center of his table, with my head sticking out just below his side of the table, at the height of his waist. I am not in any way bound, but trapped as I am between the bar of the A-frame and the bottom of the table, I really can't move.

I hear the sound of a zipper going down, and a second later the soft flesh of his penis brushes my lips. With my head trapped by the headrest, my technique is pretty much kept to lips and tongue, but I work as best I can to get him hard. Since I can't move my head at all, this is more of a face-fuck than a blow job, and he slowly strokes in and out of my mouth. My head is bent back by the headrest, so his penis has a straight shot into my throat, if he wants to use it. Which he doesn't, just now.

At last he is hard. He pulls out of my face, and I stretch my jaw down for what I know is coming. A second later, a padded cup lifts below my chin, and in the same instant, a prod-gag enters my mouth, all the way to the very back of my mouth, and the cup clicks into place. The cup is made the same way and is the same size as the head rest, and when the cup is in place, the bottom of the headrest and the top of the cup meet almost without a seam. The only way to see that there is a woman inside that curved surface of pretty wood is that the tip of my nose sticks out through the cutout.

One other thing: the prod-gag tickles the back of my throat, and I drool, a lot. He built a drain into the bottom of the chin cup, with a hose leading into a small bottle inside the A-frame. I have to empty the bottle after each time he uses me.

It has been three seconds since he pulled out of my mouth. I hear a click as he touches one of the pedals at the bottom of the unit, and feel the A-frame start to spin. A couple of seconds later, there is a new click, and the spinning stops. I know that my bottom is now facing him. A moment later, he buries his meat in my drenched pussy. I know it's going to happen, I'm ready for it, but I can't help the groan that is forced from my nose when he hits bottom. That groan earns me a sharp spank on the rear. I'm supposed to be silent and still.