Prisoner 4053

When she awoke, the first thing 4053 was aware of was the anal plug. The sensation had not disappeared like the feel of the cuffs on her wrists and ankles, or the menstrual cup she often wore; it seemed like it had only gotten stronger. She flushed, humiliated, as though she'd had any part in this. It seemed like something she ought to be able to stop if she was only convincing enough.

Seriously, this is ridiculous, you are embarrassing both of us.

The second thing she was aware of was her leaser in the bathroom.

He was brushing his teeth. Four-oh-five-three wanted badly to get up and use the bathroom, or at least turn over in bed, but not as much as she wanted to avoid his attention on her at any cost. He had

raped her

. She wasn't sure she could handle looking him in the face. And what if he did it again? He was going to. This morning? This afternoon? He had said he would crop her today, which 4053 didn't have a firm handle on -- she had never been hit with anything before -- but knew regardless that it was something she wanted to avoid at all costs. She closed her eyes and moved the covers over her face, but minutes later, Nate, shirtless, was unlocking the cage door, and she had to face him.

He was as pretty as he'd been when she'd first seen him. Well, of course he was. He had a day's growth of facial hair, now, and rumpled hair. Four-oh-five-three hadn't worn makeup in days and was probably a wreck, and she was angry to find herself worried about it. What did it matter if she didn't look put-together? Look what had happened to her! It was

something else

to feel insecure that your rapist was out of your league.

(How long could she hang on to reality checks like these, she wondered? Did they help her, or did they hurt her?)

He was in a rush, and 4053 was relieved. So. To work, then. She'd have a long, silent day all to herself, and that made the morning routine easier to bear. Without chaining her to anything but keeping his hand on the back of her neck, he bent her over the padded horse, lifted her skirt and removed the anal plug, which came out with such a horribly... well,

personal

feeling, and personal

noises

, that 4053 flushed all over. "Bathroom," he told her, apparently unsurprised, and she sat on the toilet while he shaved in the mirror.

"You're going to do this for me eventually," he said. He glanced at her, found her questioning look, and waved the safety razor. "Eventually. Pretty sure you'd try to cut my throat if we tried it now."

Four-oh-five-three fought the urge to nod in agreement.

"You'll be glad to see me between placements. You don't know it now, but this room will be familiar and sex will be comforting." He glanced at her. "You think I'm a monster, and that's fair, but I'm also the best friend you have in this place. Stop huddling there like I won't notice you if you don't move."

She reached out and took some toilet paper and wiped.

"Good. Brush your teeth. I used to do this for prisoners," he added, sliding a new toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste toward her. "The first week they'd be in full restraints, lying down. I did everything. Do you know what Stockholm Syndrome is?"

Four-oh-five-three waited until she was sure he expected an answer, and then she nodded.

"You take care of someone, you see to their every need, they'll be grateful even when you're the one who took away their independence in the first place. There just weren't enough hours in the day, though, and in the end, you can get the same thing with much less effort. Even if you tell them about it." He glanced at her again, and his face contorted into a sly smile. Four-oh-five-three looked away. She could well believe that he was right, that she'd fall head over heels despite what he'd done to her. "So I'll spare you the indignity. Here's your homework for the day, though. I want you to think about the psychological benefits of bonding with your captor."

Benefits. Four-oh-five-three kept brushing her teeth as Nate rinsed his face. "Spit," he said, and when he walked out into the main room, she bent over the sink. He didn't try to touch her. Though she wore cuffs and a collar, she was completely unchained, and still wore the rough brown dress she'd spent the night in. It felt almost normal, getting ready for the day.

Until he approached and walked her back to the horse. He had sanitized the plug, or else swapped it for another, and now he bent her over again and worked it, fresh and cold and lubed, back into her anus. He inserted a soft silicone dildo inside her as well, long and thick, and she tried not to gasp. It was so strange, being so full like this: another thing she supposed she would have to get used to. She stood still while he buckled the leather strap between her legs. "A reminder," he told her, "that this body is mine and not yours."

He left her in the cage, chained by her ankle again, with a bagel and cream cheese and a bottle of water, and dressed and left. The room was quiet, the bed unmade, the bathroom light left on. Four-oh-five-three tried to get comfortable, and retreated into her head.

Stockholm Syndrome, she knew, was a defense mechanism, and an effective one at that. If she had had her cell phone, she'd have been able to look it up, but of course she didn't. That had been something she hadn't thought about missing, faced with a hundred real horrors.

She always thought of the Vikings in the context of Stockholm Syndrome, how they would kidnap women to be their wives. Was that accurate? She didn't know. Supposedly the abducted women would actually fall in love with their captors, or at least begin to look at them as people, which 4053 had always found appalling. Those poor women: captured and raped, and then, somehow, complicit in their own captivity. Not escaping when given the opportunity. Developing feelings for the men who had brutalized them.

In evo psych terms, it made sense. Which women survived the anger of the men? The ones who didn't make trouble. Which ones didn't die early of stress? The ones who found acceptance in or contentment with their situations. It was such an awful exchange: one's dignity for one's well-being. Four-oh-five-three suspected she was a meek enough person that Nate wouldn't have a difficult time nurturing that bond, and she knew he meant for her to come to the conclusion that it would be in her own self-interest not to fight it. She wasn't sure he was wrong, but she also wasn't sure she wouldn't hate herself once her sentence was over. How would something like that change a person?

Already she had found out things about herself that she didn't like: her involuntary arousal, her willingness to go along with some of the things that he'd done to her because fighting was more effort. Her dignity, she was pretty sure, was worth

effort

, and yet, on the third day of her captivity, she was already submitting to having things inserted inside her without having to be in full restraints.

Every time she moved she could feel the dildo. And the plug, she felt constantly. He was right; it was a good reminder. Her body was no longer her own.

Around mid-morning, a cleaner came into the room and tidied while 4053 sat awkwardly in her cage. She half felt bad for not helping (how could she?) and half felt embarrassed, as though she'd been caught out in some kind of voluntary sex game, and was inflicting it on this poor woman. Was she a victim, too? Four-oh-five-three would have liked to know. In some sense, she was no matter whether she was an inmate or not; if she was free, she was complicit, certainly, but was it really a

choice?

How much easier would it be to find yourself in a cage as a debtor if you had a job like this to begin with?

In the end, 4053 turned toward the wall and waited for her to leave.

She was dismayed to find herself awaiting Nate's return with anything other than dread, but as the day crawled on, she began to long for something to happen. When the door finally opened her heart leapt, but no -- she didn't want this, she didn't want him. He was going to hurt her today. She sat huddled in the cage, unsure if fear was preferable to boredom.

It was a pointless comparison, though, because it didn't matter what she thought; fear was what she was going to get. He was dressed in his work clothes, and paused at the door to take off his heavy boots, and after he pulled her out of the cage to use the toilet, he changed out of his tactical pants and shirt into jeans and a soft tee.

Four-oh-five-three sat on the toilet for as long as she could get away with it, enjoying the absence of the plug. Out in the main room, Nate opened a cupboard and examined various instruments that 4053 could not see well from where she sat, but which looked like crops or floggers or whips. She hugged her arms to her chest and leaned forward on the toilet. Hunger had been creeping up for hours, but she had lost her appetite and felt more nauseated than anything. She hoped he wouldn't try to feed her. He laid the instruments out near the horse and examined and oiled each of them, and moved clips around on the horse to where he wanted them. With mounting fear, she tried to figure out what was going to happen, how he was going to position her, which parts he would crop. Whether he would rape her afterward. How angry he would be while he did it.

When he came into the bathroom to collect her, she lost whatever calm she had, and stumbled away from him, backward into the shower, and flailed and slapped at him when he reached for her arms. Some part of her watched this with calm horror, knowing it was a mistake but completely unable to stop it. She shoved his face away from her and felt the rasp of his cheek against her palm.

He grabbed the hair at the back of her head, tight and close against her scalp, and held her head still while she scrabbled at his arms. "Breathe," he told her.

She tried. A fresh wave of panic crested over her, though, and she struggled harder. He shook her, tightly and firmly, and when she was calmer and he was satisfied that she was not going to fight him anymore, he, with his hand still in her hair, pulled her up by an arm. He clipped her hands together behind her and walked her to the horse. This close, she could see the instruments: two crops of different sizes, and a spreader bar.

He buckled a soft gag into her mouth and helped her climb onto the horse. She laid on top of it the long way this time, and he clipped her collar to a length of chain at the front to keep her in place while he secured her arms and legs. There was a head rest he raised for her, then, that allowed her to look down at the floor, and he fastened a net of thick nylon straps tightly across the back of her head. Four-oh-five-three felt sick. She laid still as he checked all the straps and hooks again.

She had expected him to start immediately, but he spent long moments trying to calm her. He ran his hands all over her body, as he had the evening before in the shower and after, and lingered on her breasts and neck and inner thighs, until her breathing was steady. He fingered her vulva gently and moved his fingers in and out of her. She feared he would put them in her anus, but he only played with her clitoris.

"This is not going to be anything you can't handle," he said, while he rubbed. "We're going to start slow, like we did with the plug."

His fingers withdrew from her, and she heard him pick up one of the crops. Instead of hitting her with it, he touched it to her thigh, and then moved it down toward her knees and up over her behind. He touched it gently to her vulva and ran it down to the soles of her feet.

And then there was a pause with no touch at all. Four-oh-five-three heard it before she felt it, a

whack

and then a sudden, sharp sting on her inner thigh that made her jump against the restraints. He waited. The pain bloomed across her thighs, and, to her shock, the sensation caused a not-unpleasant feeling between her legs. She was completely at his mercy. If he had been angry and hitting her with his hands, it would have been an entirely different feeling, but he was in control. As she was absorbing this, he cropped her again on the other thigh, and she jumped again. God help her, it was turning her on -- not the pain, but his measured force and control. There was evidently no end to the humiliation her body was going to put her through.

At first, the embarrassment was strong enough to temper the pain, but Nate began to apply the crop with a heavier hand, a more rapid pace, and with better attention paid to the more sensitive areas of 4053's body. He worked the soles of her feet, and up and down her thighs, moving closer in as he struck blows closer to her vulva, until she feared he would land one directly on it. He withdrew and cropped her sides, up and down until he got to her breasts, and, finding her nipples not as exposed as he'd like, tugged her breasts with his hands until they were in the right position. He flicked her nipples with the crop, worked her sides harder, moved down to her inner thighs again, and jumped around until she couldn't predict what he'd do next. It hurt. He hadn't been wrong when he said she'd be able to handle it, but he seemed to keep her constantly at the edge of whatever tolerance she had. There was nothing but the crop: no thoughts, no future, no past, just the pain of the tool and the sweat pouring off her, darkness -- though her eyes were open -- and the rain of blows like bright little lights all over her back and legs.

When it stopped, she felt dazed surprise. She had expected it to go on forever. Nate unhooked the net at the back of her head, and raised her head with his hand. He put a straw in her mouth. Cold water. Her hair was plastered to the sweat on the back of her neck, and he brushed it off her and let her put her head down, and played with her hair for a long moment, as if in sympathy or affection. Her body felt hot where he had struck her. She had thought he would rape her right there and was relieved when he didn't; it would have hurt too much to have his warm body against hers. Instead, he unstrapped her and unclipped her, and supported her on the way to the shower.

The water was cool and he was gentle. Four-oh-five-three, lost amid a wave of confusion, of arousal and fear and gratefulness for his gentleness, cried softly as he washed her. "You're okay," he told her, and rubbed her back and pinched her shoulders like he hadn't been the one to inflict this on her. In this moment, 4053 didn't care. She only wanted comfort, and she was too far gone to be picky about its source.

He patted her dry and brushed her hair, and walked her to the bed, where he laid her down on her front and attached her wrists together in front of her, then to the top of the bed. She lay still while he spread cooling cream on her body. She had a clearer head now, but the experience had left more than physical marks on her. There was something even more wildly attractive about this man, who acted without regard for her consent, who could impassively punish her and then turn around and comfort her without anger or contempt. As though it was some unpleasant medical procedure he had to perform.

Four-oh-five-three, now cold, her hair damp, allowed him to roll her on her side away from him, and wrap his arm around her neck in what would have been a choke hold had he tightened his grip. His naked body was warm against her back -- the crop marks stung -- and he edged his upper leg between her thighs. She was too tired to fight him. She was too tired to care. He ran his hand up and down her side, and played with her breasts while she lay against him, captive and chained and secure and resigned to whatever he chose to do with her tonight.

His hand, eventually, found its way between her legs, and she lay still while he explored her with his fingers. It felt nice. There was nothing she could do about it, so she might as well stop fighting. Eventually he relaxed his grip on her and turned her gently onto her back again, and she saw his erection and knew what he meant to do with it. She didn't try to stop him. He applied lubricant and slid into her, as he had the night before, and held her head so she had to look at him while he moved in and out of her.

It was just as erotic as it had been the night before, with the added point that she was completely subordinate to him: that he would apply his mercy at his own discretion, without considering her feelings; that she had no power at all. Why would this be a turn-on? Four-oh-five-three didn't care, in this moment. She was tired of thinking about it.

Moments later, when she was rolling in the wake of an orgasm, she'd feel stupid and foolish and hate herself again, but right here, right now, she had found acceptance in her situation.

He let her finish first, and thrust hard while she shuddered and spasmed. If she could have cried out, she would have. And he laid there with her long after they were done, while she cried again and wished she were anywhere else.