The Story of O (I)
I. Rossi’s Lover
One day O’s lover took her for a walk in a park in the city that she had never been to before, where they walked for a while and then sat side by side on the edge of the lawn. They saw a car parked at the crossroads at the corner of the park, which never stopped for cabs, but which had a meter, like a cab, and he said, “Get in.” She got into the car.
It was fall, late in the day, and she was dressed as she usually was: high heels, a suit with a folded skirt, silk underwear, no hat, but long gloves, and a small purse with her ID card, powder case, and lipstick in her hand.
The car started slowly, he never spoke to the driver, but only lowered all the curtains on the side and rear windows, she thought he was going to kiss her, or wanted her caresses, so he took off his gloves, but he said: “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.
“Your purse is in the way, give it to me!” She handed him the purse.
He put the bag out of her reach and said.
“You’re overdressed, undo the garters and pull the stockings down your legs.”
At that moment, the car accelerated, and it was not easy for her to move, and she was afraid that the driver would turn his head, but she undid the garter belt, and when the hem of the silk undergarment touched her bare legs, she felt a little shy, and the garter belt shook inside her dress, and he said.
“Take off your garter belt and panties.”
It was easy, the hands went down behind his back and he lifted his body a little. He took the garter belt and panties, opened the purse and put them in, and said.
“Don’t sit on your skirt, lift it up and sit directly on the seat.”
The seat was faux leather, slippery and cool, and it felt strange against my thighs. Then he said, “Put your gloves on again.”
The cab drove fast, and she dared not ask René why he was sitting there without saying a word, nor could she guess what it all meant to him-letting her sit there, motionless and silent, with certain parts of her body exposed and gloved, in a black car that was going nowhere. He hadn’t told her what she could or couldn’t do, but she didn’t dare to spread her legs apart, nor did she dare to put them completely together.
She pressed her gloved hands to the sides of the seat.
He suddenly said, “Here it is.”
The cab pulled up on a lovely looking side street and stopped under a tree. The street was lined with French sycamores, and there was a small building between a garden and a courtyard, a private residence common in the St. Germain district. The streetlights were far away, the car was dark, and it was raining outside.
René said, “Don’t move, sit properly.”
His hands touched the collar of her shirt, undid the bow tie and unbuttoned her shirt. She gently leaned forward, thinking he wanted to fondle her breasts. No, he just cut the strap of her bra (with a pencil sharpener), pulled it out, and buttoned it up. Her breasts were now exposed under her shirt and like the rest of her body she was naked from waist to knee.
He said: “Listen, now that you are ready, go out and ring the doorbell, go in with the person who opens the door, and do whatever you are told; if you don’t go in, they will pull you in, and if you don’t obey, they will force you to obey. Purse? You don’t need your purse anymore. You’re just a woman I sent you. Sure, I’ll come back, now go.”
*There is a simpler way of telling the beginning of this story: a young woman, dressed as described above, is sitting with her lover in the car of a friend whom she does not know. The stranger is driving, the lover is sitting next to her, and the stranger tells the young woman that her lover has been entrusted with the task of preparing her, specifically, he is to tie her hands behind her back, untie her stockings and remove them, remove her garter belt, panties and bra, and blindfold her. She would be transported to a castle where she would learn the lessons she was supposed to learn. In fact as soon as she was stripped and tied, they helped her out of the car (which had been traveling for at least half an hour), guided her a short distance, through a couple of doors, and then removed the blindfold.
That’s when she found herself standing in a dark room, where no one paid any attention to her for half an hour, or maybe an hour or two, which seemed endless. Then at last the door opened, the light came on, and the room she was in was an old-fashioned, cozy, but somewhat odd one: the floor was thickly carpeted, but there was not a single piece of furniture, and the four walls were full of closets.
The door was opened by two women, two beautiful young women, dressed in the beautiful attire of an eighteenth-century maid: long skirts made of light, soft material, ankle-length; a corset, with a lace collar button adorning the front that emphasized the breast line; a neck trimmed with crinkled lace, and sleeves that were longer than the elbows. They both wore eye halos and lipstick, and both wore collars that clasped their necks and bracelets that clasped their wrists.
As far as I can tell, while this was going on, they untied O’s hands, which were tied behind her back, in preparation for her bath and make-up.
They helped her take off the last of her clothes and put them neatly in a closet. They didn’t let her bathe herself, and they did her hair like a beautician. They sat her in a large barber’s chair, which was flattened while the hair was washed, and then swung back up when it was blow-dried. It took them over an hour to do all of this under normal circumstances.
O just sat there in that chair completely naked, they neither allowed her to cross her legs nor to put them together. Directly in front of her was a mirror that covered an entire wall from ceiling to floor, without a frame in between, and whenever she looked into it, she could see her uncovered body.
At last she was groomed — her eyes light-colored, her lips bright red, her armpits and pussy perfumed, between her legs, under her breasts, and on her palms — and led into a room with mirrors on three sides and one behind her to enable her to scrutinize herself. She was ordered to sit down on a low stool between the mirrors and wait. The bench was covered with black animal skins, which felt slightly prickly, the carpet was black, the walls were red, and she was wearing red slippers. A large floor-to-ceiling window opened on one wall of the small room, and beyond it was a lovely dimly lit garden. The rain had stopped, the branches of the trees swayed in the breeze, and the moon traveled through the clouds.
I don’t know how long she stayed in the red bedroom, or if she was really as alone as she thought she was, or if someone was quietly watching her through a hidden hole in the wall. When the two women returned, one carried a dressmaker’s tape measure, the other a basket. A man walked in with them, dressed in a purple, broad-shouldered, lantern-sleeved robe. As he walks in, the hem of the robe opens slightly, revealing the unique attire of the fit: it covers his thighs and calves, but reveals his sex. As he stepped forward, O saw the organ first, then the whip made from a bundle of thin strips of leather pinned to his belt. The man wore a black mask and shiny black gloves, even his eyes were covered by a black veil.
He spoke to her using the familiar word “you”, told her not to move, and ordered the two women to speed up. The woman with the measuring tape measured O’s neck and wrists, which were the same size as a normal person’s, so it was easy to find the right collars and bracelets in the basket the other woman was carrying. The collar and bracelet were made of multiple layers of leather, each of which was fairly thin, adding up to no more than the thickness of a pinky finger. The hook and loop on the top automatically locked when fastened and could only be unlocked with a very small key. The side of the collar facing the lock is embedded with a metal ring, which can be used to connect the chain, once the collar and bracelet are tightened around the neck and wrist (never because of the tightness of the wrist to cause any pain) to be locked in the part to slip out of it is simply impossible.
After the two women fastened her collar and bracelet, the man instructed her to stand. He sat where she had just sat and greeted her until she touched his knee. His gloved hand went between her legs and touched her breasts again. He told her that she would be meeting with people that very evening after she had eaten alone.
She was really alone at dinner, still completely naked. In a small parlor and room, an unseen hand brought in dinner through a small window in the door. After dinner, the two women came back to her. They put her hands behind her back and locked the loops on the two bracelets together. Then they tied a red cloak around the rings of her collar and draped it over her shoulders. The cloak covered her whole, but when she walked the cloak opened up. She couldn’t close it because her hands were locked behind her back. One woman led the way, opening doors and another followed, closing them one by one.
They walked through a vestibule, two sitting rooms, and then into the library. There were four men drinking coffee, all dressed in the exact same robes as each of the men, but without masks. O did not have time to see their faces, however, nor did she know whether her lover was among them (he was), for one of them shone a lamp directly into her eyes, so that for a moment she could see nothing. All the people sat motionless, the two women on either side of her, and the men gazing at her without looking at her. Then the light went out, the women left quietly, and O’s eyes were covered again.
They motioned her forward-she stumbled a little as she moved forward-until she felt that she had come to the fireplace where the four men were sitting around, and she could feel the heat radiating from it, and in the silence she could hear the quiet cracking of the burning wood. She stood with her face to the fire as two hands opened her cloak, and two others first examined her pair of locked bracelets, and then ran down her back straight to her hips, two ungloved hands. Suddenly, two fingers were inserted into both her orifices at the same time, she shrieked, someone laughed, and one of them said, “Turn her around, let’s see her breasts and lower back.”
They turned her around so the heat from the fireplace sprayed behind her. There was a hand on one of her breasts and a mouth on the other nipple. As they opened her legs and gently brushed her labia, she suddenly lost her balance and fell backward. (Whose skeleton shoulders caught her?) One’s hair rubbed gently against the inside of her thighs. She heard them say that she should be made to kneel, which they did, a position which made her uncomfortable, for the hands locked behind her back forced her to lean forward, and as they did not allow her to bring her knees together, they made her lean back a little, so that she sat half on her heels, as nuns are accustomed to do when they sit on their knees.
“You never tied her up?”
“No, never.”
“Never whipped her?”
“No, and never whipped her. In fact…” It was her lover’s voice.
“In fact,” another voice picked up, “if you tie her up often and whip her often, she will begin to enjoy it. But that’s not enough, you have to get her beyond the state of pleasure to the point of tears.”
They helped her to her feet and prepared to untie her wrists, perhaps with the intention of re-tying her to the post. While this was going on, someone objected and said that they would be the first to take possession of her immediately, right here and now.
So she got back on her knees, the difference being that this time her upper body was bent over a low stool, and for the moment her hands were still locked behind her back, her hips above her torso. Just then one of the men wrapped both hands around her hips and thrust in, and then switched to the second. The third attempted to enter that narrower orifice, proceeding with such vigor that she couldn’t help but scream, before they finally released her.
She drank softly, her eyeshade wet with tears, and she fell to the floor, feeling a man’s knee against her cheek, and realizing that even her mouth had not been spared. At last they let her go, and like a vulgarly clad female captive she bent over the fireplace, where she heard now and then the sound of wine-glasses being filled, and men slurping, and chairs scraping across the floor, and some one throwing some firewood into the fire.
Suddenly her blindfold was lifted and she saw an expansive room, lined against the walls with bookshelves that glowed dimly in the light of a lone lamp and a fire in the fireplace. Two men stood smoking, another sat with a whip in his lap, and another leaned over to fondle her breasts, who was none other than her lover. All four possessed her, and she could not recognize her lover from among the four.
They explained to her that as long as she remained in the castle she would repeat the experience again and again: she would not see the faces of those who had ravaged her and tormented her, and she would never know who was the one who had tortured her most. But all this would only take place during the day and not at night, and the same would be true when she was whipped, unless they intended her to see her whipping, when they would remove her blindfold and they would put on a mask so that she could not recognize it.
Her lover helped her to her feet, helped her with her cloak, and then sat her in an easy chair near the fireplace, listening to what they had to tell her, looking at what they had to show her, her hands still locked behind her back. They showed her a riding-whip, slender, black, and very fine, the leather wrapped in thin sheets of bamboo, of the kind often displayed in the windows of fine riding-shops; a leather whip, of the kind she had seen the first man here carry on his belt, long, and made of six strips of leather knotted together in a bundle; and a third whip, braided from a bunch of rope, hard, as if it had been soaked, which, as O found out, it really was. For when they touched her lower parts with it and brushed her legs together, she felt the whip against her tender skin hard and wet.
In addition, there were buttons and chains on a long table. In the middle of one wall was a beam supported by two columns, one of which had an iron hook embedded in it, just as high as a man could reach on tiptoe.
O’s lover took her in his arms, one arm around her shoulders and the other between her groins, which were burning like fire, so that it was almost too much to bear. At this point, they told her that her hands would be untied, but only to then be re-tied to the post, still with the bracelets and a chain. They told her that, apart from her hands, she would still be able to move her body and see how the whip would come: in principle, only her thighs and buttocks would be whipped, in other words, only between the waist and the knees, which were the parts that had been prepared in the automobile when she had been brought here – the parts that had been exposed when she had been sitting on the seat of the automobile.
What was likely to happen was that one of the four would use the whip to leave marks on this part of her body that would leave lovely long deep marks that would not fade away for a long time. She will have plenty of time to scream and struggle and cry as she endures the whipping. They would judge the effect of the whipping not by her screams and tears, but by the condition and color of the whip marks. They explained that this was not only a fair way of judging the effect of the flogging, but also made it difficult for the victim’s attempts to gain sympathy by deliberately exaggerating the extent of her suffering. Moreover, this method was even more necessary outside the castle walls, for example, in the parks – which would be a common occurrence – or in ordinary houses and hotel rooms. There it is assumed that the gag is employed, and that the gag will shut out all but the most violent moans, though it cannot restrain the flow of tears.
They saw no harm in doing it that night, and they were eager to hear her moan in agony, the sooner the better; O’s concentrated patience and pride in silence did not last long, and they even managed to get her to beg them to let her go, even if it only stopped for a second.
She struggled too hard to avoid the bite of the whip, so that her body turned almost completely around. The chains that held her were long, and though incredibly strong they were not tied very tightly, with the result that her belly and the front of her thighs were covered with whip marks just as her back was. Unshaken in their resolve, they simply tied an additional rope around her waistline, making her body tighter against the post.
The whipping resumed, her hips appearing to protrude even more as her waist was bound extremely tightly and her body was slightly tilted. From that moment on, the lashes hit their targets squarely, except for a few that were intended to land elsewhere. As it was her lover who had delivered her into these hands and brought her to this state, O knew that begging him for mercy would only redouble his cruelty in order to get from her the undoubted proof of his power and great pleasure. It was he who first pointed out that the whip should be used, which, as it did not immediately leave marks (water-soaked rope whips and horsewhips leave immediate whip marks), would enable them to prolong the flogging, and to begin or stop it as they wished, and it was he who demanded that they should use only that whip.
At this point, as O’s buttocks, bound at the waist, wriggled desperately to avoid the whip, and thus became doubly attractive, one of the men felt greatly tempted — he liked women only in the same way as men — and asked for a pause in the whipping in order to make good use of it. With both hands he separated the two pieces of flesh that burned hot under his hands, and plunged in – not without difficulty – commenting as he did so that the orifice should be made more accessible. Everyone agreed that this could and should be done.
When they let go of the young woman, she stumbled and almost fainted, wrapped tightly in her red cape.
Before sending her back to her own room, they seated her in a chair near the fireplace, and gave her an outline of the rules to be observed during her stay in the chateau, and after her departure, which did not imply a return to freedom. They then rang the bell, and the two women who had first received her came in, bringing with them the clothes she was to wear during her stay, and her sign — a sign that would enable the masters of the chateau, and those who would become her masters after her departure, to recognize her.
Her dress was similar to that of the other women: a long skirt tightly bound at the waist over a tightly-fastened whalebone corset, and a stiffly-pasted linen petticoat, with a neckline so low that it scarcely covered her breasts, which were held up by the corset, and were only slightly concealed by a net of lace; the petticoat was white, and so was the lace, and the skirt and the corset were of sea-green satin; and when O. resumed his chair beside the fireplace after dressing, the color of the skirt contrasted with the pale color of her dress. the color of the skirt reflected her pallor.
The two young women were quietly preparing to leave when one of the four men reached out and grabbed one of the women as she passed him, and greeted the other by asking her to wait. She brought the stopped woman to O, turned her around, put one arm around her waist, and with the other lifted up her skirt, which he did in order to show O the practicality of the dress and the ingenuity of its design. He explained that all that was required to keep the skirt rolled up was to fasten it with a strap, so that everything underneath was always available.
In the castle or in the garden they used to order the girls to roll their skirts from the back or front to the waist. They asked the young woman to show O how her skirt should be done: rolled up a few folds (like hair curling) and then tied tightly with the band that showed the belly in front or the buttocks in the back. In both cases, the long skirt and underskirt would hang down like a small waterfall. Like O, the young woman’s buttocks bore fresh marks from the whip. After explaining this, the girl left the room.
Here’s what they said to O.
“You have come here to serve your masters: during the day you have to fulfill the duties assigned to you, such as sweeping the floor, organizing the books, placing the flowers, or serving the food, and there is nothing more complicated than that. But when you are called upon, you must immediately drop what you are doing and fulfill your only duty: to give of yourself. Your hands do not belong to you, nor do your breasts, and especially not all the orifices of your body, which we can explore and enter at will. Remember, or try to remember, that you have forfeited all right to privacy and concealment.
As a constant reminder of this fact, when they appear to you, you must never close your mouth completely, or put your legs together, or put your knees together (which you may have noticed, and which Dadi has been forbidding you to do since arriving). This will be a constant reminder, not only to you, but to us as well, and it is a reminder that your mouth, belly, and hips are always open to us.
You shall never touch your breasts in our presence; your corset holds them up to us; they belong to us. During the day you will dress neatly, and when anyone commands you to raise your skirts, you will do so; anyone may use you in any way he pleases, and they will do so without a mask, but with one thing that is always available: a whip. The whip will be used only between dusk and dawn, and in addition to receiving whippings from anyone who wishes to whip you, you will be routinely whipped during the night as a punishment for transgressions committed during the day: for slowness of movement, for lifting up your eyes to look at the person who greets you or asks for you-you must never look at the face of any one of us.
Our nightwear reveals our genitals – as I am wearing this one – not for convenience, for it is convenient even if it does not, but as an expression of our arrogance. Keep your eyes on it and don’t look away, and you will know that it is your master and that your lips are its supreme goal.
In the daytime, when we are formally dressed and you are dressed as you are now, the same rules apply, with the difference that when you are wanted, you will open your garment and close it when you are finished. Also, during the night, only your lips will be free on your whole body, and they will be at our disposal – as well as your open legs – your hands will be locked up, and your whole body will be naked as you were not so long ago, and your eyes will be covered only in the case of ill-treatment and whipping, which you have already witnessed yourself being whipped.
By the way: when you have grown accustomed to whipping – and you will be whipped every day during your stay – it will be less for our pleasure and more for your enlightenment, as will be proved by the fact that, on those evenings when no one wants you, you will be awaiting the arrival of the servants, whose task will be to go to the room of solitary confinement to finish the whippings that are your portion, but which we are not in the mood to give you. In fact, the whippings and chains are not meant to cause you to suffer, to cry out, and to weep, but to make you realize through these sufferings the truth that you are not free, but are in chains. It is to warn you that you are completely subject to forces outside of yourself.
When you leave this place, you will wear an iron ring on your middle finger, which will be your symbol. At that time you will learn to obey those who wear the same symbol. When they see this sign they will know that no matter how well dressed you are or what kind of public place you are in, you will always be naked underneath your skirt, and this nakedness is for them. Whoever finds you a little untamed will send you back here. Now you will be sent to your own room.”
While they were speaking to O, the two women who had been dressing her stood at attention by the pillar where she had been whipped, but never touched it, as if it frightened them, and as if there was a prohibition against touching it (probably the latter). When the man had finished, they came up to O. O understood that she ought to stand up and follow them, so she rose, at the same time holding her skirt with her arms to avoid falling, for she was not yet accustomed to wearing long skirts, nor did she yet feel steady enough in the thick-soled, high-heeled slippers, which were only adorned with ribbons. As she bent her head she turned her head; the women were waiting for her, the men had ceased to notice her.
Her lover sat on the floor, leaning against the low stool on which she had been thrown. He had his hands on his knees and was fiddling with the whip, and when the hem of her skirt brushed him gently as she stepped to follow the two women, he looked up and smiled, called her name, and stood up as well. He stroked her hair tenderly, touched her brow gently with his fingertips, and then kissed her tenderly on the lips, and in a very loud voice, he told her : he loved her.
O shuddered, almost startled by her own answer of “I love you”, she really loved him. He pulled her towards him, murmuring “darling, sweet” as he kissed her neck and cheeks repeatedly. She let her head rest on his shoulder, which was covered by his purple robe. Again he told her with extreme tenderness that he loved her, and said to her softly, “Get down on your knees, touch me, and kiss me.” Then he pushed her away, signaled the two women to step aside, and leaned over the long table.
He was tall, the table wasn’t too high, his long legs were wrapped in his purple robe, slightly bent, the open robe taut under his legs, the tabletop slightly holding up his heavy shaft and the hairs that gently covered that. The other three men gathered around as O knelt on the carpet, her green skirt embracing her like petals, her corset squeezing her, her nipple-slightly exposed breasts just her at the height of her lover’s knees.
“A little brighter.” A man said.
They adjusted the wall sconces so that the light shone directly on his prick and her face, which was almost touching it.
While she was caressing René from below, he suddenly ordered her: “Say it again: I love you.” O repeated happily: “I love you.” She did not dare to touch the head of his prick, which was still wrapped in a layer of soft skin.
The three men smoked cigarettes, commenting on the way her mouth moved up and down on the shaft, on the tears that streamed down her twisted face as the erection gagged on her throat and pressed against her tongue, causing her to feel a wave of nausea. The mouth, half gagged by all that hard flesh, still murmured, “I love you.”
The two women stood on either side of René, left and right, and he had one arm around their shoulders; O could hear the comments of those next to her, but she struggled to hear her lover’s moans through their voices. She caressed him carefully and with infinite respect, in ways she knew would please him, and O felt so good in her mouth because her lover had put himself in it, because he had openly given it to her to caress, and because he had given her all his semen in it, and she had accepted it like a god. She heard him scream out, and at the same time heard the others laugh, and she fell back, her face on the floor, and the two women assisted her up, and this time they let her go.
Slippers tapped on the red brick floor of the corridor, where door after door, tight and clean, with small locks on the doors, like rooms in a large hotel. o had a hard time mustering the courage to ask: “Are all these rooms occupied? What kind of people are they?”
One of her companions–O had not yet heard her voice together–said to her, “You live in the Red Zone, and your servant’s name is Bill.”
“What servant?” O asked, surprised at the softness of the words, “And what is your name?”
“Angie.”
“I’m Jenny.” The other woman said.
“The servant is the one who holds the key,” the first woman went on, “whose duty it is to lock you up or unlock you, or the one who whips you when you deserve to be punished and no one else has time.”
“I was in the Red Zone last year,” said Jenny, “and Bill was already there then, and he always comes in the evening. The servants have keys and the right to use us in their rooms.”
O wanted to ask what Bill was like, but she did not have time to do so when they took her round a corner and stopped at a door not unlike any other, and she saw a robust man sitting on a bench between the two doors, with the appearance of a peasant. His hair was shaven, his small black eyes were sunk deep into his skull, the flesh of his neck was folded, he was dressed like a servant in a little opera: a black waistcoat showing the lace of his shirt, a red jacket of the kind commonly known as a spencer, black breeches, white socks, and shining shoes, and a whip was attached to his belt, and his hands were covered with red hairs. He took the key out of his waistcoat pocket, opened the door, led the three women in, and said.
“I’m locking the door. When you guys are done, ring the bell.”
The rooms were small, two in fact. They were now staying in a living room set in a small room with another door leading to the washroom. There was a window on the wall opposite the door, and on the wall to the left, between the two doors and the window, rested a queen-sized bed, very short and covered in animal skins. Angie pointed to the bed and told O that it wasn’t really a bed, but a mattress-covered platform covered with a black faux-beastskin material, with a pillow as hard and flat as the mattress, made of the same material. There was nothing hanging on the wall but a heavy steel ring that glimmered from the bed at the height of the steel hooks on the columns in the library, a long chain trailing from the ring down to the bed in a small pile, the other end of which had an arm’s length of edge on a padlock, just as the curtains of a window hang from a window hook.
“We must give you a bath,” said Jenny, “and I’ll undo your skirt.”
The most eye-catching part of the washroom was a Turkish toilet, mounted in the corner of the room near the door, with mirrors lining every inch of the wall. Jenny and Angie let O walk in undressed, and they hung her dress in the closet next to the bath tub, where her slippers and cloak were already inside. As she crouched on the magnetic table, she found herself caught in the mirrored shadows, as uncovered as she had been in the library when she fell into the arms of those men.
“Use that position when Bill comes,” Jenny said, “you’ll know then.”
“Why?”
“He’ll probably want you to crouch when he comes to chain you up.”
O felt herself grow pale, “But what for?” She said.
“Because you had to,” Jenny replied, “and you got lucky.”
“Why?”
“Did your lover bring you here?”
“Yes.” O said.
“They’ll be much harsher on you.”
“I don’t understand…”
“You’ll get it soon enough. I’m ringing for Bill, and we’ll come back in the morning.”
Angie smiled at her as she left and Jenny caressed O’s breasts and followed Angie out.
O turned around and stood at the foot of the bed, wearing nothing but a leather collar and bracelets that had gotten a little tight from being soaked in water.
“Look at this lovely lady,” said the servant as he came in, and seizing her hands, he fastened the hooks on one bracelet to the other, so that her wrists were fastened together, and then both hooks to the rings of the collar, so that her hands should be lifted to the height of her neck as if in prayer, and then he fastened her to the ring of steel from which the chain that hung down from the steel ring. He unhooked the chain and tightened it, and O had to move to the head of the bed, where he made her lie down with a “rattling” sound from the chain, which was only long enough to allow the young woman to move from one side of the bed to the other or to stand up at the head of the bed. As the chain pulled the collar backward and her hands pulled it forward, it created a balance. Her locked hands rested beside her left shoulder and her head hung slightly down as the servant lifted O’s legs, moved them towards her chest and examined the gap between her legs, and with that he placed the black comforter over her, not touching her or saying another word beyond that. He extinguished the table lamp that sat between the two doors and walked out.
O lay motionless on her left side, feeling hot in her two layers of fur. Alone in the darkness and silence, O tried to figure out why her terror was laced with so much sweetness, or rather, why her terror itself seemed so sweet. What bothered her most, she realized, was the fact that she was denied the use of her hands, which she didn’t expect to protect her (did she really want to?) , it was just that if her hands were free, she could at least make gestures, try to deflect the hands that grabbed her and the organs that stabbed into her, and make her body dodge the whips.
Her hands were taken away, she could no longer touch her body, and what a strange feeling it is when one can no longer touch one’s knees or groin. Between her legs, the lips of her cunt burned, perhaps it burned because she knew they would be open for the first visitor: that servant Bill, should he wish to enter.
She was astonished that the whipping she had received should have left her so indifferently and so calmly, and the idea that she would never know which of those four men had wanted her from the hip, and whether it had been her lover or not, vexed her greatly.
She gently rolled over onto her back and thought to herself: her lover loved the orifices of her buttocks, but had never entered them before tonight (if it was in fact him), and she hoped it was him. Should she ask him?
Ah, never! The hand that had taken her belt and panties in the car, the hand that had straightened the belt so that she could pull her pantyhose down to her knees, was reflected before her eyes.
The memory was so vivid that it made her forget that she had rattled the chains by locking her hands. But if the punishment she had received was so thin in her memory, why did the thought of a whip, the word whip, the sight of a whip, make her heart beat wildly and close her eyes in terror? She couldn’t stop to consider whether it was just panic, she was completely overwhelmed by panic: they were going to lift her out of bed by her chains and whip her.
Her stomach was pressed against the wall, and they would whip her, whip her…, the words kept turning over in her mind.
Bill would whip her, Jenny had said he would. “You’re lucky,” Jenny said repeatedly, “they’ll be much tougher on you.” What the hell did that mean? At that point, she felt nothing but the collar, bracelets and chains, and her body floated away as she sank into sleep.