The Black Ribbon

A NOTE from The Gardener: While this story leans much more toward the style of romance and fantasy than some of the others in its category, it does contain themes of light bondage and consentual-nonconsent. Please read at your own discretion. Thank you.

"It's one of those weird Southie things, serious. You tie a black ribbon 'round your door handle and they'll come get ya. No safe-word or nothin'. Just pure, raw animal fuckin'. Did it in the--right there in the back'a the bar, last time. Ever been fucked out a'ya body? They done it to me."

Lily Vantadeer kicked her feet up on the top of the high-backed stool beside her. The cherry-red tip of her hand-rolled cigarette glowed in the dim light of the barroom. She still wore her serving uniform; black skirt, white blouse, fake pearl earrings. Her black shoes had been kicked off under the bar stool, and her bare toes flexed slightly as she crossed her heels across the backrest of the stool. Lily was the kind of girl who could get away with anything. It wasn't just that she was pretty--she was, but that wasn't it; it was that she was fearless. She didn't look before she jumped. She was one of those people you met a few times in your life that were more like a figment of your imagination than an actual person. Katerina had heard her described as wheat-stem skinny, and it suited the girl. Her blonde hair had been pulled back from a sharp, pretty face, and stuck out from the holes in her wooden clip at crazy angles. When she smiled, it looked like her small white teeth were trying to bite through a stick. A pair of narrow grey-green eyes stared out at the other waitresses, judging their reactions.

"Even for Southies'... I don't know. Sounds like an old wives-' tale, to me."

That was Morgan Dellins. She was the only dark-haired young woman in the room; her hair had been cut flat around her shoulders, and she rocked slightly on the back two legs of her chair as she spoke. Her legs were raised in a similar position to Lily's, but lower--her heels rested on the top of a round wooden table. She also wore her uniform, though it was obvious from the way that her nipples stood out through her white blouse that she had done away with her bra earlier--whether it was before or after service, Katerina had not noticed. Her dark hair was parted in the middle of her forehead, and she hung the lip of a beer bottle between two fingers and let it swing back and forth as she spoke.

"Nah, it's a Southie thing for certain. That much be true, but as for the rest..."

The third young woman spoke with the same clipped, almost lisping intonation as Lily. They were both

Southies

, which meant that they came from South Bend, the town a few hours up the river. That was the only thing similar about the two women.

The speaker was Selka Meeres; she sat on the flat top of the bar, balancing her beer bottle on the top of her thigh. She was tall and fine-boned, with a shock of strawberry-blonde hair held over her head in a tight knot. Her serious blue eyes stared out from under long, curled eyelashes and thin eyebrows; they gave her face a severe kind of beauty. It was a face that would have looked more natural staring out from the canvas of an oil-painting than on a young woman. The bones of her cheeks were high, her mouth fixed and Victorian. She was wearing a pair of sweatpants and a baggy grey sweater over her serving blouse, but even they could not hide the almost fragile slimness of the young woman's body. She was reserved; not quiet, and not exactly unfriendly, but distant. Her cool blue eyes touched Lilys' for a moment, and she lifted the lip of the beer bottle to her own for a moment before speaking. She did not drink--she just tapped the lip of the bottle against her bottom lip a couple of times, as if she were thinking.

"The

black ribbon

," the young woman's faintly accented voice spoke, as though she were merely speaking her thoughts out loud, "I've heard people do it, though I don't know anybody who has."

"I done it," Lily grinned around the mouth of her beer bottle. The smile was all teeth, "Those boys'll know what t'do with it, tomorrow's tips on it."

Selka seemed to consider it, but shook her head after a moment. The other young women all shook their heads--even Romana, though she was not included in Lily's searching stare--as Lily turned her eyes on them, absolutely confident in that simple way of hers. Finally, she shrugged and settled back deeper against the backrest of her chair.

"Tomorrow's tips on it?" Katerina asked curiously. Lily glanced at her, and Morgan raised her eyebrows slightly as Katerina spoke.

"Tomorrow's tips.

Bet

." Lily's smile could only be described as feral.

"Done," Katerina nodded as she met the other woman's eyes. Morgan whistled between her teeth.

Katerina was nearly a foot taller than Lily, and only a few inches shorter than Selka. She was not as slim as either woman, though she was far from heavy herself. A pair of soft brown eyes, a brown so light that they almost seemed beige when the light passed over them, stared out from a pair of round glasses. Behind the thin metal circles, her eyes were wide enough that she should have appeared constantly startled, but did not. It was the face that held them, which stopped her from appearing surprised by anything; her cheeks were smooth, her lips touched by a coy, secret smile--as though she were constantly laughing at a private joke. She wasn't; it was just the shape of her mouth. It was a face that would have taken well to womanhood, but had forgotten to let go of the roundness and carelessness of childhood.

"You really going to take that bet?" Morgan's voice asked from the other side of the table.

"Sure," Katerina shrugged, "It's either free money or good sex."

"It's one step away from being rape," Selka's voice was distasteful.

"Like I said," Katerina grinned at the other girl. Across the bar, Lily laughed--a light, knowing kind of laughter.

Katerina Lynn-Fedorov was twenty-seven, but kept the last seven years hidden away somewhere that nobody could find them. She might have kept them in the circles of her soft brown eyes, which were too old for her body, if not for how set and open they were behind her glasses. She might have hidden them in the blonde hair that hung in loose curls around her temples and neck, or in the pockets of the woven sweater she wore over her waitress uniform, or between the rosy-beige of her lipstick and the soft pink of her real lips. She looked twenty. She knew that the other waitresses thought of her, genially, as bookish. She wasn't.

She touched Lily's eyes across the barroom--the deal was done.

The final figure in the room, who sat drinking quietly as she listened to the young womens' conversation, was Romana. She was the youngest among them by a decade, at only eighteen. A girl, truthfully. It hadn't really been a choice to let the girl drink with them after service--she had just kind of done it her first night, and none of them had said a word about it since. Maybe it was because she was quiet, and her occasional interjections--usually questions--made the other girls laugh; occasionally even Selka, though the tall young woman laughed as though the idea of feeling humor hurt her in the way of a personal insult.

The objects of their conversations' attention were the two young men who had come in out of the rain a few hours before closing. They were Southie boys', by their accents and their mannerisms. They had sat at the bar for only the time it took to drink a single mug of beer, and then disappeared to their room upstairs. It had been more than enough time for each waitress to get a good look at them--and a good look it had been. Both men were attractive. One was slightly taller, with a swath of sandy-brown hair and dark brown eyes.

The other was dark-haired, with the same brown eyes as the other. Both men were sun-tanned and had bodies that made it obvious they did hard labor for a living. They wore slightly faded jeans and button-down checkered shirts of different colors; one grey-white and the other orange-brown, which they kept rolled to their elbows. They spoke quietly, nodded respectfully to Selka, who had been working the bar, and tipped exceedingly generously. Then they had disappeared, and had not reemerged since--much to Lily's disappointment. There had been much speculation since. Katerina's bet was that they were gay, and had come to the inn to get away from Southie for a few nights of privacy. The bet, she figured, was easy money.

"You girls go on and get some sleep soon, yeah?"

The man's voice called from the doorway, slightly chiding. The girls looked toward the open doorway, which led down into a long hallway of dark carpeting and paneled wood. They recognized the man's voice immediately. Lily draped her head back over the backrest of her bar-stool so that her blonde hair hung down toward the floor and she stared at the man upside-down. He was Mr. Hatch--never Bernard--only Mr. Hatch. He was about sixty-five, though the hunch in his back and the heavy grey eyebrows added another ten years to him. He did not use a cane, but he certainly should have. His hands were liver-spotted, and shook slightly even when they were tucked into the pockets of his khaki pants. He wore a heavy tan rain jacket, and a golfing cap was pulled down over what remained of his birds nest of white hair. He and his wife Lorinda--Mrs. Hatch,

always

--owned the bar and the inn.

They were kindly, though slightly old-fashioned. Mr. Hatch let them drink beers after service was over for only a dollar-coin each, which they left in a small wooden cup behind the cash register. Usually, out of respect, they even paid it. It was impossible to take any kind of offence to the man. Despite being their boss, he acted more like a surrogate grandfather to the young women, and left the actual running of the business to his wife. She was much the same as the man, about five years younger but with the same hunch near the top of her shoulders and grey hair that had obviously once been orange; now it looked like the ash at the bottom of a fire-pit the moment the last of the fire left it.

Rain pattered lightly on the roof of the bar, tittering against the wood-framed glass in a sound that almost sounded like laughter. The only light in the room came from a couple of kerosene-filled lanterns, and a candle on the round table between Morgan and Katerina. They filled the room with warm, wavering light. There was a chorus of good nights and we wills as the elderly man shuffled toward the front door of the inn. He lifted his hand to them in a farewell gesture before he left, though he barely glanced at them. He and his wife lived in a small, three-room building just a few yards away from the back wing of the inn. Any of the waitresses would have done anything for the elderly couple, if asked--no matter how much they groaned about them during service.

"You need a hand home, Mr. Hatch?" Selka called out as he disappeared from the doorway.

The man's laughter sounded like papers being rustled. His voice called back.

"No dear, no no. I'll be just fine. Night girls." They heard the slightly echoing creak as the wooden door opened, followed by a muffled bang as it fell closed behind him.

Above the bar, Selka yawned. Eyeing her beer bottle, she raised it and emptied the last of the liquid from inside. Swinging her legs over the bar, she hopped down behind it and dropped her beer bottle into a cardboard box. It clinked against the other bottles.

"Anyways, I'm beat. That's bed for me,"

Selka gave them a small salute as she withdrew from behind the bar and departed the room. They all called their goodbyes after her. At the table, Romana yawned. That was it for the rest of them--the gesture set them all yawning, and they discarded their bottles behind the bar before Katerina turned down the lanterns and blew out the candle. She followed the other young women down the hallway, toward the set of wooden stairs that connected the two-story inn to the bar.

At the door, Morgan and Romana were pulling on their overcoats. Katerina and Lily said their goodbyes quickly, each young woman telling the others they would see each other tomorrow and exchanging quick, familiar hugs. The stairs creaked quietly as the two girls made their way up them; Lily lived in the inn full-time, though to Katerina's knowledge nobody had heard the story of how that had come to be. She and Selka lived there during the busy season, because they both lived too far to walk back and forth each day. Katerina trailed the other young woman as they made their way to their side-by side rooms at the end of the hallway. Before she entered her doorway, one hand resting on her door-handle, Lily turned back to Katerina and raised an eyebrow.

"You

really

gonna give the black ribbon a go?"

"Sure," Katerina shrugged, "No harm in trying."

Lily's laughter was the sound of fingers tapping on thin glass, "That's what you think. It 'aint be me coverin' your shift if you can't walk tomorrow, that's for a damn."

Reaching down, Katerina put her fingers at the bottom of her serving skirt. The fabric tore between her fingers as she worked her hands around it, tearing a thin strip from the bottom, about a half-inch tall and six inches long. With tired fingers, she tied the fabric around her door handle so that one long ribbon hung down about two inches. Lily chuckled at the back of her throat as she nodded, one eyelid dropping in a wink.

"Have fun, Kat."

With that, she turned and disappeared through her doorway. Katerina followed a moment later, turning the handle of her door and stepping into the rectangle of blackness that greeted her as she swung it open. She didn't need to turn on the light to find her way around the room, but tonight she did so anyways. She hung her sweater over the door, undressing quickly from her serving uniform and throwing it into the clothes basked beside the bedstand. She had four copies like it, in the top drawers of her dresser. She turned toward her bed. Then, about halfway across the room, Katerina paused. She eyed the dresser. Slowly, she made her way toward it and bent down, pulling open the bottom drawer.

It was filled with her underclothes, and she searched through it carefully. Tucked away against the back right corner was something she would certainly not wear in the barroom. It was a matching set; bra and panties, but the color of pale lavender and trimmed with cream-colored lace. The ribbon that tied the bra was about finger-thick, and beige. Katerina examined the lingerie for a moment, and then put it on. Stepping into the panties, she pulled them up around her legs. She reached her hands behind her back, squinting one eye in concentration as she tied a loose knot in the ribbon that held the bra to her chest. After a moment of consideration, she pulled the knot tight.

Let them have to rip it

.

She shook her head at herself, rolling her eyes behind her closed eyelids. It was stupid, she knew--the whole thing was stupid. At that moment, she didn't care. Making her way to the bed, she twisted the small metal knob on the lantern to dim the light so that it was little more than a wavering nub of fire at the bottom of the smoke-darkened glass. It gave the room a warm glow, but was not bright enough to make her sparse furniture more than indistinct blurs in the darkness.

The room was quite small, but she didn't mind. It had just enough space for a single bed; draped with grey sheets and a thick comforter, with a raised head and footboard on either side, a tall wooden vanity-dresser and a lower dresser that contained three sets of drawers, her side-table, and a single tall window. Grey drapes, matching her bedsheets, hung on either side of the window. The floor was carpeted, the walls made of the same tall wood paneling as the bar below. Rain struck the window of the room, and it let out a quiet rattling sound as the window shifted ever so slightly, the fitting having come loose--she didn't mind, the sound was comforting. It sounded like home. Kicking the comforter down to the foot of the bed, Katerina crawled underneath the thin sheet and drew it around her body. Closing her eyes, she breathed deeply as she felt the cool linen of her pillow beneath her cheek.

Despite her exhaustion after a day of work, and the comfort of the bed beneath her, she found that she could not sleep. After a few moments of pretending, she rolled onto her back and let out a long breath. She tried to pretend that she wasn't listening for the sound of footsteps outside of her door. She closed her eyes again, focusing on the sound of her own breathing. Suddenly the thought struck her--what if it wasn't the Southie men, who found the fabric tied on her door handle? What if it was someone else? Her eyes flashed open in the darkness. Did it matter? It did. For a moment she prepared herself to stand, half-ready to cut the fabric off herself. Don't be stupid, she chided herself quietly--to anybody else, it would just look like a decoration... right? She hadn't known anything about the meaning before Lily had told her of it, that night. It likely wasn't a thing that was very well discussed, or well- known.

Besides, she knew all of the guests who were staying in the inn; a woman from the neighboring town of Worsville, a young couple, the three waitresses, and the Southie men. There really weren't many people to find it. Closing her eyes, she tried to ignore the small voice in the back of her head. Finally, she could ignore it no longer. Cursing quietly--though whether she was cursing herself or cursing to herself, she didn't know--she rolled over and kicked away the light sheet from her body. Pulling open a drawer in the nightstand, she searched blindly inside of the drawer until she found what she was looking for.

It was a small pocket-knife, which folded into a wooden handle. Though she couldn't see it in the unclear, shadowy light of the lantern, she knew that her name was inlaid on the handle. It had been a birthday gift from her father, for her...

thirteenth

? birthday. Rising, Katerina made her way across the room. Despite the fact she knew she would hear someone coming down the hallway, she anyways stood off to the side against the wall as she reached across to open the door. The pocket-knife flicked open in her other hand.

It flicked closed again immediately. Katerina stood, staring at her doorhandle for a moment--too surprised to understand what had happened. The length of black fabric was gone. Moving closer to the open doorway, she looked down and peeked around the corner into the hallway. It had not fallen. The fabric was nowhere to be seen. Frowning slightly, she closed the door as quietly as she could. Moving back to her bed, she replaced the knife in her nightstand drawer and crawled beneath the thin sheet. The fabric was gone. Not just gone--somebody had taken it. Somebody

knew

. She felt fairly sure that it wasn't the Southie boys. Their room was down the hallway, toward the back of the inn; they could have passed, but Katerina was fairly sure she would have heard it. Her thoughts turned endlessly as she forced herself to close her eyes, focusing once more on the sound of her breathing. She was certain that she was too awake now to sleep.

Despite this, the next time Katerina opened her eyes it was morning. Weak morning sunlight fell in through the open drapes of her window; pale and watery. Obviously, the rain had not stopped until only an hour or two previously. The first thing Katerina felt, upon opening her eyes, was disappointment. Then she felt annoyed about feeling disappointment--it was stupid to be disappointed about something she wasn't at all sure she believed in, something she had been willing to bet against, and something that she wasn't even really sure that she wanted.