"Blackfriars' Web"

"Why should I?" the Matron spat, her face a mask of contempt as she looked down at her daughter in the ridiculous school uniform.

Beatrice fell to her knees, the pleated skirt pooling around her. "Please, Mummy. I miss him."

The Matron sneered. "Pathetic. I brought you up to rule men, not beg for them." She slapped her face, the sound sharp and cruel in the stark room. "Strip."

Beatrice's fingers trembled as she unbuttoned the crisp white blouse and pulled off the pleated skirt. She stood naked, her powerful body suddenly looking small and vulnerable. The Matron moved with brutal efficiency, binding her daughter tight in thick leather straps. A heavy posture collar was forced around her neck, holding her chin high. Her arms were bent up at the elbows and strapped tightly to her shoulders, rendering them useless. Shackles were locked between her legs, chaining her ankles together. She pushed Beatrice back to her knees.

"Now, beg properly," she hissed, "like the slut you are."

She grabbed a handful of Beatrice's hair and dragged her over to where Mahera lay on the rubber mat. She bent Beatrice over Mahera's struggling form, forcing her to look at the girl she idolized. Mahera saw the streaks of mascara on Beatrice's cheeks, the wet, pleading eyes, and the posture collar. She saw a broken wench.

"This is the woman you dote on, is it?" the Matron screamed at Mahera, then kicked viciously at the rubber cock gag. Mahera screamed into the gag as the chain yanked at her nipples.

The night of torture went on for Beatrice. Her mother used her body for her own pleasure, then, with clinical detachment, forced Beatrice to orgasm three times with a powerful vibrator, each one more painful than the last, a punishment for pleasure. In the end, the Matron stood over her trembling daughter, who lay in a heap on the floor.

"Make him apologize," she commanded, her voice cold and final. "Train him to take cock. Cage him. And add me to the controls for his cage."

Beatrice, sobbing, nodded her agreement.

The mood shifted instantly. The Matron's harshness evaporated. She knelt and undid all the bindings, her movements surprisingly gentle. She held her daughter and rocked her like a loving mother. "Did anyone see you dressed like a schoolgirl?" she asked softly.

"No, Mummy," Beatrice whispered. "I locked everybody down for the night."

They agreed in hushed tones that they would have to do something about Mahera. It wouldn't do for her to spread rumors about what she had witnessed. They would also need to find a replacement for Roger in the cell. The setup was too expensive to waste.

Beatrice looked up, a flicker of her old, cruel intelligence returning to her eyes. "I have an idea," she said.

Her mother leaned down and kissed her on the lips. "That's my girl.”

*** Meanwhile, Roger hung in his cell in complete darkness. There was a slow drip somewhere, a maddening, rhythmic plink... plink... plink... but he couldn't determine its origin. His mind wandered, a desperate attempt to think of anything but the constant, throbbing pain in his cock as the spiked ring bit into him with every involuntary twitch. He went back to the time when he first met Beatrice, at a gallery opening in London. He had been a glib, confident art dealer, and she had been a force of nature. He had fallen under her spell instantly, drawn to her intelligence, her cruelty, and the raw power that radiated from her.

He remembered the first time she made him kneel at her feet, less than an hour after they'd met, in the gallery's private office. He had done so without question, his heart pounding with a mix of terror and exhilaration. From that moment on, she and her mother, the Matron, had taken over every aspect of his life. His finances, schedule, and diet were dictated to him. He was expected to sexually please both of them, sometimes together, sometimes separately, to prove his devotion. He was an object, a possession, and he gloried in it. No matter what she did, no matter how much she humiliated him, he couldn't help but love her. He had enjoyed joining her games, the thrill of ruining people, of breaking them, of using them for their amusement. To be with her, he had even given up his name, becoming Roger Ashworth because she would not marry a man with a lesser title.

Then the day came when his mother-in-law told him to kneel before another man, a delivery driver of all things. The Matron had the man so drugged and pliable that he went along with everything, a vacant-eyed puppet. But Roger refused. It was one thing to be a slave to the Ashworth women, another to submit to a commoner.

Shortly after dinner that evening, he stood to leave the room, and the next thing he knew, he was waking up in one of the cells in the punishment wing. A thick metal collar was padlocked around his neck, and his arms were in tight cuffs behind his back. Every day, Beatrice came to him, her eyes red from crying, to beg him to apologize to her mother. Every day, he refused. He was exercised once a day by the little Indian girl, Mahera, whom he had loved to sodomize, and he could tell from the extra zeal in her movements that she was enjoying her newfound power. At the end of the first week, his mother-in-law visited him with a young man on a collar and leash, but he still wouldn't bend. She beat him with a crop until he couldn't stand, and through the haze of pain, he could hear his wife crying in the hallway.

At the end of the third week, he was drugged and woke up in a specially prepared cell, completely helpless and immobile. He had been held like this for two weeks. He felt weaker, had lost weight, and the constant pain and isolation were pushing him toward the brink of insanity. He had no idea that at that very moment, his wife was begging for his release from the true head of the household.

***

David sat with his back against the cold, damp stone of the cell, the iron shackle around his neck a constant, heavy reminder of his reality. The darkness was absolute, except for a thin sliver of light from the barred window high on the far wall, a grimy rectangle that offered no view of the world, only the gray, indifferent stone of the priory's outer wall. He had tried, of course. He had spent the first hour, maybe two, clawing at the rusty metal collar, his fingers finding no purchase on its ancient surface. In a fit of desperation, he had tried to force it over his head, digging the hard metal into the soft flesh of his ear. He had torn the skin, and a thin trickle of blood had run down his neck, but the collar hadn't budged. It was a perfect, unyielding circle of captivity. He couldn't even find a seam in the tight black collar beneath or in the cage around his cock.

He gave up. The pain was a dull throb, a minor distraction from the crushing weight of his despair. He let his head fall back against the wall, the rusty iron of the second collar a coarse counterpoint to the smooth technology of the first. His mind, seeking refuge from the horror of the present, retreated into the past, not to the recent past of mistakes and ruin, but further back, to a time before the rot had set in.

He saw Clare. Not Clare as she was now, worried and exhausted, but Clare as she had been then, at sixteen. They were in his childhood bedroom, the one he'd had since he was a boy. The walls were still plastered with faded posters of bands he no longer listened to. The air smelled of teenage boy—faintly of stale laundry and cheap aftershave—and of her, the scent of strawberry shampoo and the unique, warm smell of her skin.

They were two clumsy teenagers running on pure, teenage lust. He remembered fumbling with the clasp of her bra, his hands shaking so badly he couldn't get it. She had laughed, a soft, breathy sound that was half amusement, half fondness, and had reached behind her to unhook it herself. He remembered the sight of her, the moonlight from the window turning her skin into pearlescent silver, the way she'd seemed both impossibly beautiful and terrifyingly real. Their lovemaking had been awkward and frantic, a collision of limbs and whispered endearments, a desperate, earnest attempt to bridge the gap between their two bodies. It had been over in minutes, leaving them breathless and tangled in his Star Wars bedsheets, their hearts hammering against their ribs. But in that clumsy, fumbling union, there had been no malice, no cruelty, no power. There had only been them, and a feeling so profound and overwhelming it had scared him as much as it had thrilled him.

A ghost of a smile touched David's lips, a sad, fragile thing in the oppressive darkness. He thought of the life that had grown from that moment. The small flat they'd shared, the smell of her cooking, the way she'd steal his hoodies, the sound of her laughter filling their tiny home. He thought of Liam, of his first steps, of scraped knees, of bedtime stories. It had been a good life. A simple life. A life he had taken for granted, squandered, and traded away for a foolish dream of a bigger pay cheque.

And the bitterest pill, the one that stuck in his throat, was the realization that it had taken this. It had taken Lady Ashworth systematically destroying his world, stripping him of his freedom, his dignity, and his future, for him to finally see how good he'd had it. The irony was so monstrous it was almost funny. He had to be broken to understand what it meant to be whole.

He wouldn't die here. He couldn't. The image of Clare's face, of his child's eyes, was a fire in the hollow of his chest. He would get back to them. He had to. The despair that had been paralyzing him began to recede, replaced by a cold, hard resolve. He had to look for weaknesses. In the system, in the routines, in the people. He had to look for cracks in the facade of this impregnable prison. Forgiveness? No, that was a fool's hope. But weakness? Everyone had a weakness. Lady Ashworth, the Matron, even Mahera with her doe-eyed devotion. There had to be something. An unlocked door, a moment of inattention, a flicker of doubt, a chink in the armor. Something, anything, to get back to them.

He sat up straighter, the chains rattling softly. He was no longer just a victim. He was an observer. A student. This was his new reality, and he would learn its every rule, its every secret, until he found the one that would set him free.