July 16, 2008
Fiction
The Tower
I keep my hair braided and coiled around my head at all times, fastened in place by hundreds of pins. The braid is heavy. Sometimes it hurts my head. On those days, I lean my forehead against the cool glass of the window and look down at the crooked streets. I wait for the phone to ring.
•
The witch showed me how to do my hair when I first arrived, after she had led me up the endless, narrow flight of stairs into this small studio looking out over the jumble of the city. Her long, cold fingers deftly braided my hair tight against my skull. "We will never cut this beautiful waterfall," she murmured into my ear. I shivered.
As she worked over me, I took in the room — shelves laden with books, a desk, an exercise bike, a TV. We had passed a small, shining kitchen before she made me kneel down in the middle of the cream-colored carpet so she could brush my hair. I also noticed the wide bed, covered with a crimson duvet and strange silver hooks jutting out from the wall above it.
After the witch pinned my long braid in place, she stepped back to look at me. I looked right back at her with false bravado — trying to act braver than I felt. The witch was dressed in a smart black suit, made from a soft material that whispered against her pale skin. Her dark hair was cropped close to her head in a asymmetrical style that made her green eyes look large and startling. She was tall, towering almost a foot over me. I tried to imaging how she saw me — a short girl with thin lips and wide-set eyes, long black hair now coiled on my head, sharp brown shoulders sticking out from my tank top, cut off shorts covering my muscular thighs.
Whatever it was she saw, it must have satisfied her. She nodded slightly to herself, then handed me bits of black silk. Taking it, I discovered it was a negligee, with holes cut out where the fabric should cover the breasts and a lacy pair of underwear — a hole where the crotch should be. I blushed.
Her voice took on a sharp edge as she said: "You will keep your hair braided and pinned up while I am gone. When I call, you will let it down, put this on" — gesturing to the silk — "and lay down there" — pointing to the bed. I felt my whole face burning.
"You can do as you wish when I am gone, but you must keep this place and yourself clean, and you must exercise every day. And above all, never, ever touch yourself. That, you will leave to me," she said, stepping behind me and lightly running her hands across my breasts and down my stomach, across my thighs. She slipped one hand up my skirt and played her fingers lightly against the thin fabric of my underwear.
Too shamed and terrified to react, I stared hard at the floor, frozen. Nothing in my sheltered upbringing had prepared me for this. My quiet, tender parents never mentioned sex. The times I had touched myself, it had been late at night with the lights out and the covers pulled up to my ears. I had explored the secret between my legs tentatively, touching the soft folds of flesh with a mix of excitement and guilt at first until the sense of urgency grew so strong that I abandoned myself to the rolling waves of pleasure and writhed in my sweaty bed. During the mornings that followed, I could barely bring myself to look at my parents, sure they knew of my dirty secret.
Suddenly, I realized the witch taken her hand out from under my skirt and was talking to me. "Do you understand my instructions?" she was asking. I nodded mutely, still staring at the floor. "Do you understand?" she repeated, her voice gone cold as the winter wind. When I nodded again, she took me by my shoulders and whipped me around. She grasped my chin and jerked my head up. Her right palm came up in an instant and she slapped me hard across my cheek. Tears welled in my eyes, and I saw bright pinpoints of light. My skull throbbed from the tight braid. "You will always answer me when I ask a question. Is that clear?"
"Yes," I whispered. She hit me again. Harder. I gasped and staggered backwards.
"You will answer in a loud, clear voice, and you will always address me as Mistress. Do you understand?"
Then it all struck me with a blinding clarity — this was it. This nightmare I had entered was the reason for all those moments in my life when I had caught my parents gazing at me in sorrow. This was the reason why all of our happy times together — outings, days swimming in the river, my birthdays (especially my birthdays) were always tinged with a sense of sadness and fear. The three of us had been waiting for this moment — without fully realizing it — all my life. Now was not the time to be weak. I saw again the fear in my mother's eyes when the witch had finally arrived on our doorstep this morning to collect on her payment, just days after my eighteenth birthday. I could hear my mother's voice whispering, Be strong, Rapunzel, be strong.
I raised my head and looked into the witch's eyes, her pupils so wide it was like looking into two bottomless green lakes. "Yes, Mistress, I understand," I said, with only a slight tremor in the last syllable.
Her features softened and she stepped forward. She tilted my face up to her again, gently this time. I watched her glistening eyes come towards me, felt her tender lips against mine. I heard myself let out a little moan and felt my clit swell against my wishes. Then the kiss was over and the witch stepped quickly down the hall. I trotted after her, terrified of being left alone. She stopped at the door, her hand turning the knob. Looking back at me with an expression that seemed to be both tender and mocking, she said, "I will call, Rapunzel. Until then, be good." She stepped through the doorway, closed the door, and I heard the lock click from the outside. She was gone.
•
I was good, in those early days — too stunned by what had happened to do much more than spend long hours staring out the window. Some mornings, I woke up disoriented. Then, everything would flood back. Cold pricks of anxiety mixed with a weird sense of elation and arousal would wash over me. Those were the times badly I wanted to let my fingers wander down, to run them over the tangle of hair, to touch my wet lips and circle my engorged clit fast and hard until the fire in my cunt spread to my stomach and my whole body shook. I just wanted a release. But fear and years of shame kept my fingers clenched at my side. I had no doubt the witch had cameras hidden all around the apartment, and I didn't want to find out what would happen if I broke her rules. Not yet.
One night, about a week after I first arrived, the black phone on the table next to the bed rang. Startled out of my reverie at the dark window, I leapt up and grabbed the receiver. "Hello," I said, my voice husky from days of silence.
"Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair." The witch's clear voice filled my ear. I shivered like I had done that first day. "Hello?" I said again, stupidly. But there was only a click, and the empty silence of a dead line.
Shaking, I pulled at the bobby pins. Finally, the braid came down and lay like a heavy snake against my back. I untied the elastic at the end and shook it out. My scalp warmed in relief, and the thick curtain of hair brushed against my shoulders, touched the small of my back. I stripped out of my t-shirt and jeans and put on the scandalous outfit the witch had given me that first day. I couldn't bear to look at myself and quickly lay down on the bed like she had instructed.
My breasts rose from the negligee, bare as peeled mangos. I crossed my legs and squeezed my thighs together. I felt terrified at what the witch was going to do to me, but I realized in horror that my clit was throbbing and my cunt was getting slick.
In a moment, I heard a key click in the lock, and then the hollow sound of the witch's high heels against the wooden floor. I realized I had my eyes shut tight. Slowly, I opened them. There, staring down at me was the magnificent figure of the witch. She wore a skin-tight outfit, black with a bright sheen. It was made from latex, I would later learn. Her strapless top was cinched up the front like a corset and showed off her heavy cleavage that rose and fell as she looked at me. The low-slung pants clung to her ass and thighs and I found I wanted to touch the shiny fabric, to feel her curves beneath my palms.
She reached out and circled my nipple with a long, cold finger. "What a good girl you've been," she cooed. I felt my nipple grow hard under her caress. She pinched it and I gasped in pain. "Such a tasty treat," she said and laughed softly to herself. For the first time in a week I felt myself waking up and entering my body. I shook my head, trying to rid myself of the strange, disturbing reactions this woman elicited in me.
She set down a large bag next to me on the bed, and I felt its cold leather through the flimsy fabric of my negligee. She lifted my head and spread my hair across the sheet, running her fingers through the dark strands. She closed her eyes for a moment and sighed.
Then she unzipped her bag and took out a length of rope, which she wrapped around my wrists. With a complicated set of knots, she secured the rope. "Scared, my little treat?" she asked. I nodded, then caught myself. "A little, Mistress," I managed.
Still holding the rope with one hand, she slipped her other hand between my thighs — no longer clenched together — and brushed the lips of my cunt. I gasped again, in pleasure this time. "Scared but damp," she smiled. "We're going to get you soaked tonight."
In a graceful move, she straddled my chest. She lifted my bound wrists, tying them to the large eyehooks above the bed. Her crotch was so near my face I could smell the strange chemical odor of the latex, and, underneath that, the musky scent of her cunt.
The rope was rough against the skin of my wrists and I uncurled my fingers. A current of panic ran through me, and I twisted to look up at the witch. "Don't you worry, little chickadee," the witch clucked. "I won't hurt you . . . much . . ." and laughed throatily again.
"Yes, mistress," I whispered. By now, my whole cunt was throbbing, and I felt a sensation almost like pain deep in my pelvis. My wetness slid down the curve of my ass. Almost as if she could feel my longing, the witch slid down and jammed her knee into my cunt. I let out a cry and ground myself hard against her. Just as I was starting to feel the tingling of an orgasm, she moved her knee and slapped my face like she had that first day. "Who said you could pleasure yourself, bitch?" The warm cooing voice was gone, replaced by the ice queen. "You do nothing until I give you permission."
My eyes filled with tears of frustration, pain, and confusion. "I'm sorry Mistress. I didn't know . . . I won't do it again," I sobbed.
"Such a child you are," she sighed, and got off the bed. She reached into her bag and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. She rummaged more and found her lighter. Walked away from me towards the window. I felt abandoned. Exposed. Helpless.
The witch cracked open the window, lit her cigarette and took a long drag. I watched her red lips curve into a small "o", and saw delicate smoke rings float from them, out the window, into the dark black sky.
•
Hours later, I didn't feel like a child. My negligee was scattered on the floor, shredded to pieces. Small, angry red marks circled my belly button where the witch had touched the glowing tip of her cigarette to my skin. My ass was mottled with red welts from the witch's thin cane. Fourteen clothespins pinched the flesh of my breasts and my nipples were clenched tight beneath silver, jagged-edged clamps. My still-bound wrists felt numb and cold. My body was a collage of searing pain.
For the first time in a week — no, for the first time in my whole life — I felt alive. I felt like I truly understood what it meant to live in this body. I wasn't able to articulate it then: the capacity of speech had long left me. But I felt it. I felt it in the cigarette burns, the cane marks, the flesh of my almost-bleeding nipples, in the slippery folds of my cunt . . . where the witch was now bending over, a clothespin in her hand.
"I told you we would get you good and wet tonight, didn't I?" I nodded mutely, all manners gone. The witch didn't seem to mind, now. I thought she might be panting, but I wasn't sure. I wasn't sure of anything anymore.
She placed the clothespin on one of my thick outer lips. The pain traveled right to my clit, and I grunted. Quickly, she covered my outer lips with the wooden pins and worked her way to the inner lips. The pain was more intense than anything I had ever experienced, and I felt that my clit was swollen obscenely. More than anything, I wanted some sensation against it. After the witch had ground her knee into me, she had carefully avoided that little button, and now I thought it might burst at any moment.
She placed the last clothespin a breath away from my clit and stepped back. I looked at her — this goddess who had taken away everything and given me what I never knew I wanted. I whimpered.
"Do you want something, my dear," she asked in her bell-toned voice. "Please . . ." I managed from my cracked lips.
"What is it?" she asked again, drawing out my desire.
"I want . . . I want . . . " but I couldn't finish. Tears were streaming down my face.
The witch walked to the foot of the bed and looked down at me, her trussed and bleeding captive. She knelt on the bed, grabbed my hips and raised them in the air. Without a word, she slid out her red, wet tongue and flicked it against the piece of flesh that had been longing for her touch all night.
I felt my body explode. I heard a thin high wail, and realized it was mine. The sensation traveled rapidly from my clit to the pit of my stomach to my fingertips to the base of my neck to the top of my head. My hips wretched in her firm hands. I came, sobbing and screaming.
She lowered my hips gently, a wild look in her eyes. She reached up as if she was going to stroke my face, but then lowered her hands to my breasts. Rapidly, she plucked off the clothespins and I shook again as the pain of the blood rushing back to the pinched flesh seared through me. She removed the nipple clamps. I howled.
Bringing her face to my tits she began to cover them in kisses. Her lips were soft like balm, like honey, like clouds. She murmured softly and I knew I would give her my life, my first-born child, anything she wanted. Fleetingly, I thought perhaps she had done the same to my mother, but then the notion was gone as her kisses grew firmer and more demanding.
My cunt was hot again. As I started to pant with desire she slid down and pulled the clothespins off my cunt lips. I screamed again as the blood vessels filled and my nerves trilled in ecstasy. Again she kissed the bruised flesh — softly at first, and then harder, her tongue licking and swirling across my pussy.
I felt her slide one long finger into me and I moaned. Another finger, and then a third. I groaned as she filled me. She let me rest for a moment, and I felt myself contract around her fingers. She slowly slid them almost all the way out and then slipped them back in, and repeated — in and out, in and out while her tongue continued to circle my clit. I jerked my hips, matching her rhythm. Then she found a spot inside me, under my pelvic bone. She began to rub her fingertips against it steadily. It felt strange at first, almost as if I was about to pee, but then the pressure began to build, a feeling of pure physical ecstasy emanating from that spot. I rocked against her, my hips bucking, my hands grabbing fistfuls of the sheets. My whole body was drenched in sweat, and my hair, tangled, fell into my face.
I managed to whisper, "May I come, Mistress?" I heard her grunt and then I lost it all. I came, not with the fierce urgency of before, but as if I were being carried by a huge wave, rising up and up and up and then being plunged into the salty depths, and then up again. I filled the room with my cries.
When my body grew still and I returned to my senses, I kept my eyes shut, wanting this feeling of utter calm to last. But after some moments of silence, I finally opened them. The witch was gone. I thought my heart would break. Then I heard noises in the bathroom, and she emerged. She had taken off her latex outfit and was dressed in the same black silk pants and blazer that she had worn on the first day. I smiled at her weakly as she approached the bed, but she didn't return my gaze.
Briskly, she untied the ropes and coiled them neatly. She placed them in her bag and zipped it up. The only evidence left in the room of what had taken place was my battered body and the scraps of silk on the floor. Finally, she looked at me.
"You'll do," she said. "I'll call again."
And then she was off, down the hall and out the door. Just before I slipped into an exhausted sleep, I heard her turn the key, locking me in, again.
• • •
is a poet, freelance writer, and writing workshop leader. Her erotic fiction can also be found on theeroticwoman.com. She lives in Brooklyn, NY with her girlfriend and two cats.
