Own Me Wholly! Read online

I make another futile attempt to snap the Velcro, straining until my muscles give in, exhausted. Brian keeps doing his thing.

  Shit, I think, I don't want to hear about me, I don't want to be immortalized and all that crap.

  It's a pretty good song too; he has talent. There's a beat, a melody.

  "Caroline, don't sleep no more, Caroline wake up, Caroline come out to play, Caroline today..."

  I'm awake all right.

  "Caroline today..."

  We've hit the chorus.

  He smiles at me now, his eyes all aglow. I can't believe it. Is this the same guy who pissed on me and made me fucking like it?

  "Looking forward, looking back, won't you give her ass a smack. Pretty Caroline in chains, guess her secret, Caroline needs pain..."

  Deviant frigging prick. I stick out my tongue.

  He turns up the vibrator; I throw back my head. “Brian, no..."

  "You can take it,” he assures me.

  The song goes on. More flattering stuff about my body and my looks and then back to the chorus. Caroline needs pain.

  Caroline needs pain.

  I can't stop coming.

  I'm getting hysterical. “Please ... Brian ... stop..."

  Haven't heard that line in a while, have we?

  He tickles my toes. It feels like needles pushing into my soft flesh. I scream. Brian starts another song.

  "Just one more and we'll turn it off."

  He starts up with Bye, Bye Miss American Pie.

  "Brian that has like a hundred fucking verses!"

  "But it was written in Saratoga,” he points out. “By Don MacLean. At Lena's."

  "I know who fucking wrote and it was at the Tin and Lint not Lena's."

  "Really?” he stops.

  I fall off yet another cliff, down into a sea of liquid black glass. These climaxes aren't satisfying; they're only winding me up.

  "Don't stop, fucking play, just get it over with!"

  "From the top..."

  "Arrggghhh!"

  I feel like a vampire, strapped down, out of my coffin at dawn, my nerves curdling for blood, my system starving, my insides boiling.

  This is cruel, shadow sex.

  "Drove my Chevy to the levee, but the levee was dry..."

  What I wouldn't give for an honest to goodness cock, or two or three.

  Rape by an army of Cossacks might be preferable to mechanical deflowering, again and again, that pathetic little buzz, ripping me apart, so deceptively gentle. I need a man's hands, squeezing, I need attention, I need a body on me, at me, I need to be put down, oh, god, with all the sex today and all the heavy BDSM I am just one thirsty little cunt, craving.

  He's singing about the father son and holy ghost, taking the last train to the coast ... I just want him to fuck me like the devil.

  "Brian, Master, fucking use me ... I surrender, do you hear me? I surrender to you!"

  He stops playing. He sets the guitar down, not saying a word.

  The tape comes off and the vibrator is removed. I inhale in expectation, my belly sucked in, I'm so wet, I've soaked the bed under my ass, my nipples are still vibrating, pussy still twitching, the little needles everywhere.

  He moves like a panther, all sinew and muscle, my own personal jaguar, ready to spring and I am terrified of what more power he might have to unleash but I have gone too far, been pushed too far and there isn't any turning back, I have surrendered and if I am not conquered ... no, if I am not occupied at this very instant, I do not know what will be left of me, if there is anything even now, anything apart from his breathing, from the predation in his eyes, the hardness, the graceful, powerful ... catness.

  Tiger, tiger, burning bright....

  William Blake.

  He falls down on me so hard, pounces more like. I am robbed of breath; every inch of me is ... his.

  He takes my earlobe in his mouth. “Caroline ... needs pain."

  The orgasm is his confirmation. I do not have it; it has me. It is shame and desire and confession all rolled into one. I might spend a lifetime denying, but this can never be taken back.

  Strange, but I feel him staying out of the way. Never has a man so completely imposed his form, the restrictions of bondage, prolonged sensory assault, testosterone bombardment, and yet he lets me endure ... enjoy? ... this moment alone.

  I wish I could describe that dark ocean I am on, no stars, no moon, only crack of lightning, silent thunder, silver flashing over water, a ship, the prow breaking waves into endless night. There will never be sun here and this is a good thing, never another inhabitant ... or will there be?

  The mystery of solitude.

  He is still biting my ear. Or is it my breast?

  Thomas ... Thomas couldn't do this, he doesn't have it in him, or rather he won't go to the place of his darkest beast. He stays in another part of the jungle. At least with me.

  It dawns on me. Alcoholics hide, or think they need to.

  Brian, he's built without that fear. Something else drives him. He's born to pursue. To chase. He's chased Thomas down, now he's chasing me.

  And he very nearly fucking has me in a lot of ways.

  Would he know what to do with me? Outside the bedroom and shower that is?

  I hold perfectly, perfectly still as Brian comes inside me.

  He's used me so hard today and this is the culmination. What an imagination he's got. His cock is the thickest, hardest yet. I can feel it through the rubber.

  Thank god he remembered one.

  I am having to trust him so much. I don't have a brain in my head right now; I haven't since the heart attack.

  Everybody, a lot of people have been looking at me to be so strong, the tough employee and friend, level headed Caroline, but that is Thomas’ creature, none of these people knew me before, they don't know the real me, inside, still just the lost little girl.

  Thomas’ baby girl.

  They should think of me as a five year old lost up and down the aisles of a store, parent misplaced, or maybe up at the service desk, sitting prettily on the counter as the blue haired lady clerk describes me over the intercom.

  "Chestnut hair, green eyes, born to fight with sighs. Pretty Caroline in chains, guess her secret ... Caroline needs pain."

  A car passes by outside, head lights rush in, the world, rushes in, and with it reality.

  Thomas on life support.

  Caroline needs pain?

  She sure has her fill now, doesn't she?

  After I met Thomas and we fell into each other, I begged him not to take me to any of the meetings, I rationalized six ways from Sunday that I didn't need it, that we had it under control, that there was no way in hell I would ever drink with him around, all he had to do was say, “C, no.” And that was it. But he told me it didn't work that way, and I knew he was right, it wasn't fair to make him be the entire program for me. He knew I was scared, though, so he let me be baby girl. I held his hand the whole way.

  "Do I look pretty, Daddy?"

  "You look beautiful, baby girl, are you ready to go inside and make Daddy proud?"

  "I'm scared, there's so many people in the room."

  "I know, but Daddy will be with you."

  "Promise?"

  "Baby girl, you know Daddy will never leave you..."

  He has left, though, hasn't he ... at least in the ways I need him.

  "Do I have to talk?"

  "Yes, baby girl, you need to tell the people about yourself."

  "I can't.” I bury my head against his chest.

  He soothes me, telling me what we will do later, what my reward is going to be if I am a good girl.

  It is a very adult reward.

  I sigh, and discretely touch his erection. “I love you, Daddy."

  "I love you, baby girl."

  Brian is undoing the straps, I am limp as a rag doll, think I might be sobbing, but I don't have tears left. How long does it take to make more? I wonder.

  He's whispering things in my ear and he's holdi
ng me, very, very tight. I let go in a different way, sharing it all through the pores of my naked body skin to skin, far too much life experience than he could understand, but it's funny, I don't feel older, superior, I feel like woman, embraced by man. Fresh, strong man.

  "Brian ... I don't know what I'll do without him."

  He doesn't answer me with any platitudes, for Thomas or me. He just rolls us both under the covers. He makes a cocoon, cradling me against his back. Together we make it feel okay.

  I must have dozed off. The next thing I recall is hearing a cell phone, not my own. I sit up, groggy. Brian is facing away, talking. His hand is on his hip. I love his naked ass. The rest of him is good, too. Solid. And man shaped.

  He clicks off the phone and turns back, a strange look on his face. “It's Thomas,” he tells me. “He's ... awake."

  "But that's good news."

  "Yea ... I guess I'm still just in shock. From the whole thing."

  "I know the feeling."

  We dress quickly and quietly. A united front. A terrible way to have to end this latest “session” as he puts it, but probably the best way, because it keeps us from breaking into our usual post-coital fight.

  I let him drive.

  His hand moves across the seat, I find it and hold on for dear life, even as I tell him we should probably go in separately.

  "You want to go first or should I?” he asks.

  "You're the dominant,” I say, only half joking.

  "I'll go first,” he declares before I can tell him if I'm joking or not. “Wait outside, follow me in after about five minutes. I'll tell them I called you."

  I do as he tells me. My hands are shaking too much for a cigarette.

  I wonder why Monica didn't call me.

  My mind starts playing tricks. She doesn't want me here. She knows.

  Something worse is going on, though, ever since I had that feeling in the shower of a spirit passing through me. I feel like the worse kind of traitor for thinking this way and I wouldn't dare say it, but I don't think this waking up is good or permanent.

  I drop my lighter and kick it in frustration.

  "Caroline."

  It's Brian. Behind me.

  "You scared me."

  His face is expressionless.

  "He's gone,” I whisper.

  He runs his hand through his hair. “I don't get it, he had his eyes open, they said, he squeezed Monica's hand."

  "He was saying goodbye."

  Brian's eyes tear up. “Not to me he fucking didn't. He was always leaving me in life now he does it in death."

  "Brian, it was more than he could handle. He held on long enough so we could come and see him and talk to him. No other man would have been that strong. Who knows what extra pain he went through?"

  "Is that it, then? Nice and cut and dried? Your hero Daddy dies and now you'll worship him in death? How cozy, for you, Caroline. A taker, right to the end."

  My lip trembles. Experience tells me he is wont to turn like this, opening me for love and then ripping my guts out, but that doesn't keep it from hurting. “You really shouldn't talk to me anymore right now, Brian."

  I go to walk inside. Can't let him see I'm barely able to stay upright.

  "Stop, Caroline, that's an order."

  I ignore him; I have to.

  Monica's upstairs and Kasey and Erin. They need me.

  CHAPTER V

  I'm going to have to see him at the funeral. I hate myself for obsessing. This should not be about me or about Brian either. Unfortunately he has this way of preoccupying me.

  I hate to say I'm glad for the distraction of helping Monica and the girls, but it is helping to keep me on track. I think if they were to turn to me individually or as a group and say, Caroline, you just don't matter, I think I would go into a tailspin the likes of which I have never known.

  It's strange, but I feel Thomas’ absence less than when he was in a coma. At that point, I was seeing his body and just feeling torn apart that he wasn't really in it. Now I have this sense he is free and I hear him constantly in my brain. He's the one guiding things, he's in control.

  Monica seems to be drawing on this, too. She's calm, resolved, focused. At least when it comes to business and funeral arrangements. The psychologist in our building has warned me this won't last.

  "She's in shock right now. It's like when a limb is severed. The body shuts off the nerve endings. This is survival mode. She's getting through the funeral, doing what she has to. At a certain point the natural anesthetic will wear off and she will feel an explosion of emotion. Guilt, fear, anger, you name it."

  I can't help but read me in there. The psychologist has no clue what Thomas has meant to me.

  The girls are acting true to form. Kasey has emerged to rival Monica as the executor of the estate. A couple of times Monica has had to remind her whose spouse this is going in the ground and whose decisions they are to make.

  Erin is quiet.

  Except with me. She seeks me out constantly, talking about her groups, clothes, everything in the sun other than Thomas. This is normal, too, says the psychologist. She is filtering everything through her fairly fragile adolescent self.

  Monica misunderstands it as selfish and has lectured her on more than one occasion. I think Monica sees herself in her daughter and that makes her unhappy.

  Kasey would probably be all over Erin, too, if it weren't for the fact that she were already catching heat from her mother. I find Kasey surprisingly empathetic with her little sister.

  She's growing up. You have to in a situation like this.

  Back to Brian. He never did come back upstairs. The four of us women said so long to Brian, waiting for the men from the funeral home, with their dark, pinstripe suits and squeaky shoes. They zipped him in a blue velvet bag, and oh god, was that hard. In that single act, seeing his face get covered over, all the injustice, the total impossibility of it washed over me. But then, just as fast, the numbness set it.

  The men in the suits were right there, with forms to fill out, distracting and focusing Monica. Not as cruel as it seemed.

  Two days later we were gathered at Bushnell.

  The national military cemetery south of Orlando. It is located in the country. The ride was long. Erin had headphones in the limo, Monica told her twice to turn them off.

  "She's only thirteen, mom,” said Kasey.

  For once Erin didn't dispute the implications that she was just a child. Folding her arms, she leaned her head on my shoulder and fell asleep, or pretended to, the headphones in her lap.

  I'm only in the car, by the way, because of Erin. She insists I be there.

  It's a little embarrassing, a little flattering.

  I'm very grateful, though, because I don't have it in me to drive myself.

  Through the country.

  Orange groves.

  Be strong, baby girl...

  Fall apart later ... you'll get your reward ... you and me, George and Gracie. Wish I could remember exactly the first time he called me that, but I guess that was part of the mystique, a totally self-effusive humor, he said.

  His hand is holding mine, the whole way, I swear it, and he has one for Monica and the girls, too, I don't know how that's possible but it must be.

  "Do you think there's an afterlife?” I asked him once as we lay next to each other covered in sweat in the bedroom of his condo, always there, never my place, I barely wanted him to visit me there, he respected the boundary, unlike Brian, who doesn't know the meaning of the word.

  "If there is I'm screwed,” was his first answer as he adulterously and deliciously put his hand on my breast.

  My body began to sing for him, ready for another round. “Really, Thomas, what do you believe?"

  "I think maybe what happens to you is just what you want to happen. If you need to go on, you do, if you have some purpose to come back for, you can, and if you want to just fade away, no one stops you."

  "That's depressing."

 
"Why?” He makes my nipple hard, working the rubbery flesh between his fingers with all the skill of a doctor.

  A fuck surgeon.

  "Cause it's just a cop out, like grown ups always tell you. They don't know shit about the future, except it'll be worse than today."

  "Turn over."

  I roll to my back.

  "Are you going to spank me, Daddy?"

  "No."

  He takes the butt plug from the dresser drawer—I'm always forgetting he has this shit lying around.

  "Open, baby girl."

  My pussy gapes first and my anus follows. I love when he tells me things like that, when he gives me the orders; I have to be dirty.

  I grunt as he pushes it in place.

  "That's ... a bigger one...” I declare.

  "You noticed."

  "It's a little hard not to, Daddy."

  "You can take it now, though, that's a good girl. All that practice has helped."

  "Thank you, Daddy.” I blush, I glow, I gush. I love practice. “But what does this have to do with the after life?"

  "It has everything to do with the afterlife.” He pushes the plug into place. “Because all we really know of heaven and hell is right here on Earth."

  "If my grandfather heard you say that he'd throw a Bible at you. A burning one."

  My grandfather was a dairy farmer, touched by the Lord. Touched in the head more like. He did things to his wife, probably even to the cows. No wonder he was such an expert on sin.

  "I'm good at ducking."

  "Daddy, may I suck you?” The butt plug is doing its thing, turning my insides to jelly, cramming my will, leaving me antsy, horny.

  "No, baby girl. You're going to heaven first."

  He makes me get up on my knees, pushing out my ass so he can reach my cunt. He works his tongue into the crack.

  This is where his mastery shines. One or two men had given me oral before Thomas, usually drunk. Nothing like that feeling of waking up with beer breath in your pussy.

  The men acted like it was some stupid dare or a bet they had lost. A couple of other men wanted to do it to me as a way to submit, but I never let them. It was their trip after all; they wanted to do this to me to get themselves off.

  Slavery is selfish.

  You're so pumped full of images and what you want done and you have to orchestrate your partner and he has to be the puppet on your string.