Chapter 1
I had no idea what the fuck was going on. I looked at the two other women chained to the poles next to me, and desperately tried to figure out what we had in common, what on earth would destine us to experience the same ordeal. Me, I was a middle-aged, very average woman - with one exception: I was an esteemed academic. Member of Mensa, the club bringing together people with an extraordinarily high IQ of above 150. I looked back on a 15 year tenure as a professor of psychology, with a respectable publication list about human interactions, with a focus on what attracts people to one another. Given my obvious lack of appealing physical attributes, this question had haunted me for my entire life.
Next to me trembled a stunning girl. She was sobbing, could barely hold it together in her panic. Yet, even in this moment of pure terror, she was very possibly the most angelic figure I had ever laid my eyes upon. Her body was simply perfect. Her jawline must have been modeled by a sculptor. Her black hair was flowing down her shoulders like a soothing waterfall. Her deep red, full lips were jittering and still tantalizing. Her body was petite, with relatively large tits. Her lusciously full and round young breasts swang in the rhythm of her sobbs. I could not see her ass, but her legs were breathtakingly long, shaped curvy and slim. She was so perfect that she would have won any kind of beauty contest in the split of a second. It made me jealous, how attractive she was. The glow of innocent beauty around her was in now way compromised by her tears.
Next to this teenage beauty, another woman was chained to a pole. She, too, was young, possibly in her early 20s. However, she had nothing of the innocence of the beauty next to her. Rather, she looked like a wild animal in heat. She was tearing on her chains, roaring in anger. Her dress was one of a working girl, possibly a stripper. It revealed a tattoo of small stars on her neck, and when she howled, her tongue exposed a piercing. The way she moved to maneuver herself out of her restrains was impressive. Her body battled the bonds in the flexible, quick, smooth ways of a wild cat, in powerful and elegant waves. Her white top was clinging to her sweaty, slim breasts and flat stomach.
Both of them would have made for wonderful study objects for my work on attraction. In this context, however, my mind was numbed by the situation I found myself in. We were forced to sit on a cold linoleum floor, our hands cuffed to a pole. Until today, I am not sure whether it was fear or my low body temperature that made me shiver so much. I heard steps in the corridor, hard, quick, determined. I looked around me and, in the moment the door was opened, I realised we must be in a sort of hospital or laboratory.
Grey, wild hair. A flickering mad look in his eyes. The raw energy of intelligence paired with a disturbing amount of confusion shining through each of his erratic gestures. He ushered quickly towards us. Once he was standing in front of us in his white lab coat, he pulled his medical gloves over his fat fingers. His tall silhouette was lightened from the back by some sterile LEDs. I shuddered. What a mad scientist, what a crazy place to be held hostage.
"Here you are, my little birds", the mad scientist uttered through his grinning, old teeth. "Did you know that there are different forms of love? Did you? Let me give you a small introduction. A bit of knowledge doesn't hurt, does it? John Lee developed a typology of six love styles between 1973 and 1988. You should read his works, if you haven't yet." I was stunned. What was he doing? And I was intrigued. I had always appreciated Lee's work, it had become part of my belief system. What the fuck did this man rant about, where was he going with this? He continued while gently stroking the wild cat of a woman who furiously tried to evade his touch: "There is Eros and Ludus. My Joy, you should know this all too well. Eros is a passionate, physical and emotional love. What is most important here is aesthetic pleasure and joy. Yes, you are sensual, you enjoy the chemistry between two bodies more than anything else. You, my dear, tend to combine it with Ludus, a love type that is playful. In fact, you treat love like a sport, a conquest. You play it to win it, my dirty little stripper girl. You would never commit, because then you would be trapped with only one player. When you are not challenged anymore, you move on. In fact, I believe you are addicted to sex, you indulge in it like others do sports." Joy snapped at him at the sound of his voice, her teeth trying to get a hold of his unwelcome fingers.
The mad scientist laughed behind clenched teeth when he moved over to the transcending beauty next to me. The old man tapped her head while talking to her. "And then, there is Philia and Mania, sweet Isabelle. You should have experienced this a lot. Mania is defined as obsessive love, the kind of experience with very high and low emotions, the possessive and jealous type of your teenage years. And Philia, my Belle, is the affectionate, innocent love that is developing slowly, sometimes from friendship, but in any case based on similarity. I bet you are thinking of your high school sweetheart, right now, my beautiful one. Yes, he gives you what you need: admiration, trust, reinforcement, value... You are obsessed in your own little way, you know that? Ah, who would have thought that a Beauty Contestant ends up on this cold floor, mhm?" Belle could not stop crying, but our kidnapper seemed to be absolutely cold towards emotions. Instead he approached me.
He held my chin up while he talked to me. He took my glasses off, which left me in an helpless, half blind stage. His wrinkled fingers felt oddly warm on my skin. "Have you figured it out, already, smartass?" He drew nearer to me, his smell was intoxicating and foul. Mhm, Sage, my little professor? That's right: Pragma and Agape are the remaining love types. You don't really know sexual pleasure from your own life, do you? You have restricted yourself to Pragma, the kind of love driven by your rational mind. If you have sex, then you do it on a cost-benefit analysis. You choose your partners like others choose products on the market. And you always comforted yourself with your naïve belief in Agape, the love that is selfless, altruistic, giving, never expecting anything in return, eh? You were always willing to generously give, unconditionally. How did it work out for you so far?" It stung. He knew me better than was rationally to be expected. And it hurt, to be told that I was sexually not exciting and a failure.