Roger awoke in a state of some distress. Though he had collapsed into sleep out of sheer exhaustion, he hadn't slept well on the bathroom floor, and his body was sore in many places, especially his testicles. He could still smell urine on his face. But as much as he was distressed by what had happened the previous night, he was yet more concerned about the future. Liz seemed to be becoming more abusive and cruel toward him as time went by. What had started as some light, playful teasing had become a brutal system of psychological intimidation and physical violence. Roger couldn't deny that at times, he might have fantasized about something similar, but fantasies are often quite different when they play out in reality, and he had a dread that Liz would only become more controlling and harsh as time went by.
Roger understood, too, that Liz was doing all of this to intimidate him into behaving the way she wanted. No doubt if he asked her about it, she'd say that he could make things much easier for both of them if he just obeyed everything she said and avoided putting up any resistance or doing anything which might displease her. A normal person might long ago have ejected Liz from their life and moved on, but neither Roger nor Liz were normal people, and as much as Roger feared Liz, he also liked her, even liked the way she terrified him, because it was clear that she was the real thing. In the past, Roger might have fantasized about dominatrixes who would tie people up and whip them for an hour, then let them slink away to their normal lives. Liz was something entirely different, a woman who clearly wanted to take absolute control of Roger's entire life, defining everything he did, everything he said, everything he thought, and everything he was. That was a sexy idea, and Roger felt himself becoming aroused just thinking about it. Liz was truly a fantasy turned into real life. On the other hand, Roger wasn't so dumb as to imagine that turning all these fantasies into reality would necessarily end well.
He cleaned himself off in the shower, got dressed, and went to work while Liz slept in what she had claimed as her bed. Roger wondered if he would sleep on the bathroom floor every night from now on. In a larger sense, he worried about whether he should take some decisive action before it was too late. Certainly, Liz had done some things which would make it difficult for him to call things off now, but really, nothing was permanent. Roger was having serious doubts, and it might be better to just end it all before his worst fears turned into reality. There was a link between him and Liz, a special bond which both of them had felt, but just because two people can share something special together, that doesn't mean that they're meant to stay together forever... right?
These thoughts mixed together in Roger's head with various sexual fantasies about Liz. He still hadn't had a satisfying orgasm in several days, and even as he worried, he relived the things she'd done to him, and he couldn't stop himself from getting another throbbing erection when he thought about how she'd made him kiss her feet, or how she'd gotten several orgasms from him while he'd gotten none from her, and even how she'd pushed his head into the toilet. As messed up as it was, as much as he'd been afraid when he couldn't breathe underneath the toilet bowl full of her urine, he couldn't deny that the thought of it was a huge turn-on, and he continued oscillating between these two poles all day, shifting from worrying about Liz being a dangerous bitch from Hell and fantasizing about her being the lifestyle dominatrix of his dreams.
With all of these thoughts spinning around in his head, Roger found it difficult to concentrate on work. This combined with the dumbing-down effect of the powder which Liz had been mixing into his food. Although he didn't know it yet, Roger's IQ had already permanently dropped by several points; he'd sustained some mild brain damage, meaning those IQ points wouldn't come back with time, and although the effect of this decrease so far would normally be approximately equivalent to that of a person who badly needed sleep, the fact that Roger also hadn't slept well and that he was constantly thinking about Liz caused him to blunder about at work, unable to focus on the tasks that he was doing, and this state eventually led him to make a careless but disastrous mistake, deleting an entire folder of important company data when he'd only meant to copy it to another location.
When he first noticed his mistake, Roger panicked; he knew the data hadn't been backed up, and there was no way to get it back. But after a moment, the terror he felt faded to a dull buzzing in his head. Roger felt as if he were drunk or on drugs; his legs seemed to be disconnected from the rest of his body, and as he stood up, he felt like he was floating in the air instead of standing on the floor. He just couldn't think about it anymore. He couldn't think of anything but Liz pulling his head against her dripping vagina, or making him kneel at her feet, or pushing his head into a bowl of her urine. Only these things were important; what had happened with the company data was not important. Even though Roger realized, through the haze in his head, that if this continued, he would be fired, he just couldn't care anymore. As he walked to his boss' office to explain what had happened, he fantasized about what it would be like if Liz were his boss, what she might make him do to avoid getting fired, how nice it would feel to submit to her every word and let her take control of his life...
Roger's boss realized that something was wrong as soon as Roger sat down in his office. Although he was initially furious about the loss of the data, he became more worried about Roger's condition as their conversation continued. It was apparent that Roger was in some state of mental distress: his eyes were clearly not able to focus on anything for more than a few seconds, his breathing seemed to be shallow, and his hands were trembling visibly.
"Roger, I've got to ask you... Are you okay?" the boss asked with genuine concern. "You really don't look so good. Are you having some kind of medical problems? You know that you can take some time off if you need to see a doctor or get some kind of treatment."
"I'm fine," Roger lied. What else could he say? It wasn't a medical problem. He knew exactly what the problem was, but he didn't know what the solution was, and taking time off work wouldn't fix it, because if he went home, that would just mean that he'd have even more time under the influence of the source of the problem.
The boss was a sympathetic but firm man, and he had a good working relationship with Roger. After being unable to get satisfactory answers from Roger about what had happened and what was happening, the boss sent Roger home for the day with a gentle warning that Roger needed to shape up. Roger understood the hidden threat: if this kept up, Roger's job was on the line. What would he do if he lost his job?
Liz looked surprised when Roger came home early. She was sitting on the sofa in the living room, which was visible from the front door, and so the two of them saw each other as soon as he walked in. "Hello, slave!" Liz called from the sofa. "You're home early! What are you doing here at this time?"
"My boss sent me home," Roger explained absently. For some reason he didn't want to talk about it; he just wanted her to hurt him, to push him down and make him please her sexually, to degrade him and make him submit to her in every way. He needed to feel the taste of her crotch on his tongue, the sting of her hand as it slapped him, the humiliation of her insulting him...
"Why did he do that?" Liz asked. "Was there not any more work for you to do?"
"No, there was, I just... I wasn't able to do it any more," Roger concluded flatly.
"Oh, you poor dear," Liz cooed, coming to him and putting an arm around him while using the other to stroke his hair gently. "Are you sick? Do you need to go see a doctor?"
"No, I'm fine," Roger insisted. "Actually I need to talk to you."
"Oh, of course, dear, I'm happy to talk to you if you want to talk. What do we need to talk about?"
Roger hesitated. What was he going to say now? He'd been too muddled to actually plan what he was going to say, and now here was this woman, this powerful woman, this intimidating woman, this commanding woman standing in front of him. She'd been passing the time in a light-colored tank top, and the bulge of her breasts peeking out from behind it made him feel that she should be the one giving him orders, not the other way around. And yet he was contemplating being insistent with her. The idea seemed completely out of the question.
"Can we sit down?" Roger asked. "I'd like to sit and collect my thoughts for a while."
"Certainly, my dear. But first, get me a drink from the fridge. I'm a little thirsty."
It was thrilling how casually she ordered him around, as if he were her servant. It felt so good to get orders from her, and it felt even better to obey them, because with every act of obedience, he was conditioning himself to be what she wanted him to be: a person who would comply with her orders without even thinking about them. Perhaps he could be her robot, only capable of doing whatever she wanted him to do and lacking any independent will of his own. These thoughts accompanied him to the fridge as he pulled out a drink for her and as he walked back to the living room, at a time when he was contemplating taking the authority.
"Thank you, sweetheart, you're a dear," she said, accepting the drink from him. "Now, would you like to tell me what's on your mind?"
"I would, thank you," he said, beginning to sit down on the couch.
"Oh no, darling, you don't sit on the couch... You're only allowed to sit on the floor, like the servant and the doggie you are."
Roger looked into her face for a moment, trying to decide what to do. Would he take this moment to refuse her order and tell her that things had gone too far?