Aqua Domination Read online

  David shook his head slowly.

  ‘OK,’ Mary continued. ‘I can see you want me to just go away now. But despite that, I’ll just go away now anyway.’

  David stared at her, and the faintest hint of a weary, sad smile appeared in his eyes and mouth. It was nothing really, hardly even the ghost or the memory of the radiant, childlike smile she had once been warmed by, but all the same it made his face less of a barrier, and it made Mary remember. She did not want to remember, but she was weakened by the feeling that had haunted her for months, that human souls were separated by vast distances and locked inside the cells of their bodies in solitary confinement.

  She remembered, despite herself, what good company David could be. Used to be. How funny and nice he had often been even though he was a fetishist and sadist.

  ‘You’ve got guts, Mary,’ David said slowly, and quietly. It was as if he were not only trying to remember how to talk, but also feeling far from sure that he should even be trying. Mary was certain that for a long time he had been living, if living was the word, buried deep in silence and solitude. ‘You’re honest. That’s everything.’

  ‘Don’t start praising me.’ Mary laughed. ‘If you’re going to start being nice, that’s not fair. I can stand anything except you being nice.’

  ‘Always do the unexpected. First rule of a cruel master: keep them guessing, keep them off balance. What crap, really! Thank goodness I’ve given all that up.’

  ‘You’ve given it up, but you don’t exactly seem to have found peace of mind.’

  ‘Oh, I’m OK,’ David insisted wearily. ‘So, why did you come back anyway? Looking for some kind of closure?’

  ‘I suppose so. Whatever closure means. I don’t really know, it was some sort of impulse thing. I’ve been very angry lately. Maybe I hoped you’d annoy me, and then I could’ve beat up on you and felt better. But you haven’t insulted me. Yet.’

  ‘Life is full of disappointments, Mary.’

  ‘You’re a difficult man to hate now that you’re so down. Look, can I cook something? You don’t look like you’re even eating properly. I could cook dinner and I promise I’ll leave after that.’

  ‘Thanks, but no thanks,’ said David, clearly worried by Mary’s friendly offer.

  ‘You want me to go quickly. I see.’

  ‘Don’t be offended.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ve lost the urge to hit you.’

  ‘Can you keep it lost? No, the thing is, I just want to be alone. There’s nothing personal in my wanting you to go.’

  ‘I believe you. Well, I might as well be off.’

  David saw Mary to his front door and they said polite goodbyes. She got into her car and told herself not to feel sorry for him. It served him right to be depressed.

  * * *

  As soon as she arrived at her parents’ home, two hours later, Mary wondered why she had bothered to come. She told herself that they were able to fully understand and appreciate her. In theory. Besides, she was feeling confused and surprised after losing both her job and her boyfriend Jack in the last ten days – why not try to stabilise herself by checking out her roots? She wondered if she had decided to visit her parents to give herself an excuse to drop in on David, whose home was on the route from her small apartment to her parents’ place – well, it was more or less on the route, if you decided, very sensibly, to take a scenic, unhurried, roundabout route instead of a straight line. Mary told herself that it was only natural to have some slight curiosity about David. What other feeling could she have? She refused to listen to her inner voice of unreason.

  ‘How’s work?’ Mary’s mother, Jill, asked at once.

  ‘I quit,’ Mary replied. It was not quite a lie.

  ‘You’re so wilful! What will you do now? Why did you quit?’

  ‘Why not quit?’ Mary shrugged. ‘It was just a boring routine office job.’

  ‘It was paid work! You always want to take it easy, have fun. Most of life is boring and routine, but that’s life and you have to accept it.’

  ‘No I don’t,’ Mary insisted, with a cold calm certainty. ‘I want something better. I’m never going to have a boring routine job ever again.’

  ‘You’re so stubborn. If only you could be more like your sisters.’

  ‘Everybody should be themselves, not try to be like other people,’ Mary snapped. She could hardly believe that she had only just got here and already her mother was criticising her. Literally, she felt breathless and suffocated, as if she could not get enough air into her lungs.

  Mary had been born when her mother was forty. It had been an accident, she guessed. Always she had felt unwanted, and always seemed to be the victim of unfavourable comparisons made between her and her two elder sisters, who her mother seemed to think were perfect.

  ‘Now, now, let’s not start arguing,’ said her father, a weary man in poor health since an accident had made him retire from the factory where he had worked for so many years. Now the factory’s site was a car park.

  Next morning, Mary awoke in her old bedroom. It certainly had been a mistake to come here. David should have stopped her. Not that it was any of his damn business, but all the same, he should have stopped her. So that was one more item to add to the list of David’s mistakes and crimes.

  Suddenly she heard Jack’s voice, and thought that she had finally begun to hallucinate. The way her life was going, it was only to be expected that she would go crazy. She went downstairs and there he was. Jack. He and Mary had argued and broken up after Mary had humiliated him with her bum.

  ‘I had to see you again, Mary,’ said Jack. He looked impressed by his own impulsive action. ‘Your friend Alice told me where you were going.’

  ‘Did she really?’ Mary sighed, writing off another friend. No more Alice.

  ‘Jack said he just had to come and see you right now,’ Mary’s mother gushed. ‘Even though he has so much important work, he dropped everything and came here. That’s so romantic! It’s like something in a film.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mary. ‘Unfortunately.’

  ‘Let’s go and sit down like civilised people instead of standing around here like antelopes,’ Mary’s father insisted. He was obviously a lot less impressed by Jack’s romantic action than his wife and Jack were. Part of Mary was a little impressed and flattered, but mostly she was annoyed.

  The four of them sat down and had coffee in the perfectly clean and tasteful house that Mary’s parents had worked so hard for over the decades, driving themselves to exhaustion, enduring boredom, surrendering their freedom and embracing routine so that they could have this house to decorate and furnish and clean and clean and clean and then decorate again, acting as servants to the house while it devoured their money and their years. Mary could not see the point. It was like listening to a joke and not understanding the punchline.

  She devoted a few per cent of her attention to Jack’s conversation with her father. Jack was taller, more handsome, much more communicative and currently more successful than David, Mary thought, and he had never scared the living daylights out of her. He would be a good partner for any woman, a fine father, and an all-round good human being. Jack was virtually perfect. It was obvious he was David’s superior in every way, especially now that David had burned out in depression, despair, apathy or laziness or whatever the hell it was. David was finished, he was history, a wreck. By God, Jack was boring.

  How Mary wished David had come chasing after her instead of Jack! Then she could have had the satisfaction of saying no to David, no matter how he begged. It would have been a sweet victory.

  No doubt David had wrecked himself attacking the barriers around the human mind and human sexuality. The odds had been too great for him, it had always been hopeless, all his exertions had been futile, he himself was doomed. His strength had given out, the barriers were too strong. He had tried to escape from the prison that most human beings spent their lives building and maintaining and strengthening around their souls, everybody
a prisoner and at the same time a guard. David had tried to live, so, of course, he must die.

  ‘Why did Mary quit her job?’ Mary’s mother asked Jack.

  ‘So she can get a better one,’ Jack replied. His eyes met Mary’s and she knew he was proud of the way he was covering up the appalling truth about the day that Mary had gone mad, as everybody put it, in the office, in the sacred workplace.

  ‘We invited Jack to stay the night,’ Mary’s mother told her quietly when the two women were in the kitchen. ‘You’ll share a room with him, won’t you? Even your father says it’s OK.’

  ‘I am not spending the night with Jack. We broke up. It’s over.’

  ‘Why not? He’s a good man. At least think twice about him. Look at how good he is compared to that crazy David. Jack would never make you so upset you got ill.’

  ‘No he wouldn’t,’ Mary conceded gloomily. But she still slept alone that night.

  Next day, Jack and Mary drove to the shops with her parents. Mary pretended to be good. That night, Mary’s parents went to bed early, leaving her and Jack in front of the TV. Jack soon started trying to persuade Mary that they should get back together, but when he put his arm around her, she thrust it away angrily.

  ‘Don’t touch me. You and I are finished, and the sooner you accept that, the better.’

  ‘I know what the problem is. David taught you to like kinky sex, domination or whatever you call it, and you’re angry with me because I’m not even willing to try it.’

  ‘Yes. It’s like saying you don’t like oranges when you’ve never even seen one.’

  ‘I admit I was wrong, OK? Let’s give it a try. Tomorrow we’ll go to a hotel. After a great meal, we’ll experiment with domination. You teach me. I’m willing to learn.’

  Mary was shocked, not so much by Jack’s idea as by the surge of lust that filled her, rushing through her like a cooling wind on a terribly hot day.

  ‘All right,’ she agreed. ‘Let’s try that. But nothing now.’ She already had the feeling that Jack’s idea would not work out, that in fact it would be some kind of fiasco. But she was strong enough not to be afraid of fiascos, which at least had energy and life. Besides, she was curious. Nobody had ever dominated her except David. What would it be like to be tied and teased by another man?

  Next day, after lunch, she said goodbye to her parents with relief on both sides, and then Jack drove his Rover and she followed him in her Golf. Since they both lived and worked in Leeds, it was convenient to stop at a hotel near Nottingham, where they had stayed before, in the days before Mary suddenly realised that Jack was the world centre of boredom.

  When they arrived at the hotel, Mary carried the black plastic bag of items she had taken from David’s collection to their room, and she refused to be embarrassed by the curious glances it attracted. Certainly it was an unusual item of luggage for that expensive hotel where everything was so carefully designed to create a subdued atmosphere of lifeless good taste. She also refused to tell Jack what was in the bag, which excited his curiosity, and instead hurried him outside again. They did some shopping, then went to a Chinese restaurant and enjoyed a good meal. Back in their hotel room, Mary felt aroused, more by the situation than by Jack.

  ‘Now will you tell me what’s in that bag?’ he asked.

  ‘Domination gear,’ Mary replied, and emptied it out onto the bed.

  ‘Oh, my God. That’s frightening. This is obviously stuff you and David used. It looks so cruel. It’s terrible.’

  ‘Yes, but we don’t have to use all of it,’ said Mary. Jack’s reaction made her a little ashamed of having used these items, and it was natural for her to transform her shame into irritation. ‘We can just use these cords to tie me to the bed.’

  ‘Tie you to the bed. It’s so strange.’

  ‘You suggested this,’ Mary snapped.

  ‘Yes, but I was so afraid of losing you. Now that it comes to the crunch, I’m shocked all over again. It’s awesome. I’ve always been shocked by perversity.’

  ‘For fuck’s sake,’ Mary sighed, and opened a bottle of strong cider. She poured a glass and drank it quickly, desperate for alcohol to numb her sense of sickening disappointment and cruel betrayal. ‘You’ve tricked me, Jack. That’s horrible.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to trick you. It’s just that I hate to take advantage of you. An obsession with sado-masochism is surely a symptom of childhood trauma and deprivation. Wouldn’t it be better to consult a good psychologist?’

  ‘You can’t imagine how bloody awful you are. Couldn’t you just tie me up and spank me?’

  ‘I could never hurt and humiliate a woman like that.’

  ‘Well, how can you hurt and humiliate a woman? I’ll take whatever I can get.’

  ‘The very idea is disgusting.’

  ‘You can’t dominate me? All right then, I’ll just have to dominate you.’ Mary did not feel she was making a serious suggestion. Rather, she spoke out of her exasperation with Jack’s disapproval of her deepest desires.

  ‘You’ll dominate me?’ said Jack. ‘Really? That would at least be easier. You’re the expert, so it’d be more logical too.’

  Jack’s tone of suppressed excitement made Mary realise just how much he was aroused by the idea of being dominated. Suddenly she understood him much better. ‘Maybe we should try it at least once to find out if it helps our relationship,’ Jack said. It was pathetic how hard he was trying to sound cool.

  ‘Yes, let’s try it,’ Mary said with a slight shrug. ‘It’s no big deal.’ She felt a surge of curiosity. Revenge was also a motive, though she could hardly have said why. It was as if everything had gone wrong, and so she would take her revenge for that fact against Jack simply because he was making himself available as a victim. Most of the relationships in the world, she reflected, were formed like that: here is a victim.

  ‘Let’s start,’ said Mary. ‘Strip off.’

  Jack obeyed instantly, a fact that Mary found curiously pleasing. So, she thought, this is what it feels like to have power. Soon Jack was naked. His fully erect cock pulsed, rising and falling with every beat of his heart. Usually he took longer to get it up.

  From the goodies on the bed she chose a tawse, a gag, some cords and a box of clips. Suddenly she had an inspiration: she would dominate Jack in the bathroom rather than the bedroom. Why not? That was what David had done to her, so she was used to it. She could do a better job on Jack in there, and she would surely come more.

  ‘Go and take a shower,’ she ordered.

  She gave him two minutes, then followed him into the coldly sterile hotel bathroom. Jack looked alarmed as he read in her face and superb bearing a new depth of motivation and resolution. She put her pieces of domination equipment in the sink.

  ‘Lie down on the floor,’ she ordered sharply. ‘Other way round, you fool. Your head here, your feet there.’ Quickly, Mary tied his hands together behind the toilet bowl, and then she fastened his ankles together, using red cotton cords that David had used on her. So many times. So many ways.

  ‘I feel so helpless,’ Jack murmured, gazing up at Mary in awe.

  ‘Yes, it’s easy and exciting to be helpless, isn’t it?’ she replied with real bitterness. ‘Any damn fool can be a victim, and so every damn fool is. The hard thing is to take the responsibility of refusing to be helpless and passive and weak. The acceptance of the dominant role is the beginning of courage.’

  ‘You’re thinking of David. As usual.’

  ‘No, I’m not! Oh, now you’ve made me angry. Shut your mouth. You’ll regret what you just said, you bastard, you’ll regret it the rest of your stupid, lousy life.’

  Contempt for Jack filled Mary as she saw how frightened he was. As if I were as dangerous and crazy as David, she thought. How could Jack think that? He must be a coward. She hated cowards.

  Slowly and with great pleasure, the pleasure of anticipation, Mary began to strip. Nudity seemed to pad stealthily towards her like an animal she secretly loved, a deadly
carnivore that visited her in blackness and silence. Pride warmed her as she revealed the magnificence of her body, and she thrilled to the imminence of ecstasy. Pleasure stalked. She haunted Jack with an unhurried revelation of her height and strength, her curves and her femaleness, all her perfections suddenly untouchable, and so transformed into the ultimate desire of unattainability.

  Hunger and fear ran across his face as she taunted him by her very existence. By her own experience she knew that not only was he afraid of her, but also of his own dark desires, his own personal and solitary abyss.

  How good it felt to have him helpless! So this was how David had felt when he dominated her. No wonder that used to be his consuming passion. Mary knew now why she had to dominate Jack: it would help her to understand David.

  ‘You’re so gorgeous,’ Jack gasped.

  ‘Of course. What, you only just noticed?’

  ‘I never saw you clearly until now.’

  ‘Oh, shut up. Who cares about anything you think or feel or say?’ Mary snapped. ‘You’re nothing. Now there’s only one real person in this room. You have ceased to exist.’

  What would David say if he could see her now? She seemed to actually hear his voice, and what he told her was that she had not fully secured Jack’s legs. It was odd to virtually hear David like that. She put the ends of the cord around Jack’s ankles under the bathroom door and closed it firmly. There, now he was secure. Thanks for the advice, David, she thought.

  ‘I’m going to sit on your face,’ Mary stated. ‘You will use your tongue to worship my bum.’

  ‘I can’t do that,’ Jack replied in a tone of disgust. ‘It’s dirty.’

  ‘You’ve just made the greatest mistake of your life,’ Mary snarled. ‘You’ve made me angry.’ Suddenly, she squeezed his balls and, when Jack opened his mouth to cry out, she slid a pear-shaped red rubber gag between his teeth and fastened its leather straps around his head to hold it in place with a swift certainty.

  Shocked, Jack tried to cry out, but the bloated, bitter gag reduced his efforts to unimpressive bleatings through his nose.