A 'Fall Of Women' Christmas Carol

III -- The Ghost Of Women Present

When it happens, I'm in the middle of a nightmare.

It's an odd one. There's this woman in incongruous and anachronistic clothing. Her speech pattern is internally inconsistent in a way that really annoys me. But the really fucked up part is that she seems to know so very much about the shape of my worst fears. About the alien erotic need being forcibly injected into my mind with every passing minute.

It's a nightmare about a woman... no, a wife... Ann, something. In the nightmare, she's being casually impregnated by her lord husband, like she's his incubator. He keeps her like his dog. She's his cocksheath, ready and available to bend over at a moment's notice and milk his dick with her pussy lips. And yet she talks to me, while all of this is happening.

Talks to me about the fate of women.

I'm in the middle of this nightmare when it happens. When I awaken into another nightmare.

Telescopically.

I sit up with a jolt, because my phone is vibrating. I pick it up casually, but something inside me is screaming in pure horror, is it happening again? Surely it's not happening again. Surely there can't be a second payload, surely I won't find myself once more staring at the screen - no, into the screen, into the heart of some new evil, lurking in wait just for me?

But it's not that kind of nightmare, thank fuck. It's just a text message on my phone, though the sender is unknown. I open it, flinching at the white glare of the screen in the darkness -- that's odd, didn't I turn on the light? -- as the words jump out at me.

OPEN THE DOOR.

I stare at the message, uncomprehending. Open the door? What door? And who sent this?

A chill runs down my spine as a sudden, inexplicable compulsion grips me. My body moves of its own accord, swinging my legs over the side of the bed and standing up. I try to resist, to stop myself, but it's as if I'm a passenger in my own flesh, helplessly watching as I walk towards the bedroom door.

No, no, no, this can't be happening. Not again. Please, god, not another hallucination, not again...

But my prayers go unanswered. My hand reaches for the doorknob, turns it, pulls the door open. And there, standing in the doorway, is...

Me.

Or rather, a version of me. A haunting reflection, disheveled and wild-eyed. Her once-professional attire is in disarray, blouse unbuttoned to reveal a lacy bra, skirt hiked up around her thighs exposing garter belts and stockings. Her hair tumbles in tangles around her flushed, sweating face. Her eyes are glazed with a disturbing mix of fear and arousal.

This look of a woman hanging by the barest of threads. A woman who's reached the logical end of her desperation. A woman who's about to fall.

"I've tried everything," she says, and her lips are trembling almost as much as her voice. "That makes it okay if I give up, right? If you try everything and nothing works, who can blame you? That makes it okay..."

I take a step back, bringing one hand to my chest, struggling to breathe. "You..."

Just like Ann, she looks puzzled at my reaction, and for a split second, her face phases through every iteration of expression she's capable of, until she settles on a stoic, emotionless look. "Hello, Margaret. I'm your ghost."

I recoil in horror, shaking my head vehemently. "No. No, this isn't real. You're not real."

The other Margaret laughs, a manic, unhinged sound. She steps into the room, her movements erratic, hands twitching towards her exposed cleavage then dropping to her sides. "Haven't you learned already? The war is real. The fear is real. That wet heat you feel building up in your cunt, even - no, especially when you know you shouldn't, that's real too. And you know what else?"

She holds up a smartphone and brings it straight up towards my face.

My eyes lock onto it, and a jolt of terror shoots through me. No no no, look away, must look away, but I can't look away, because I didn't look away the first time, did I? I stared deep into the screen...

Into the maw...

My limbs are heavy. My thoughts are sluggish. My frail feminine brain can muster no opposition against the collapse of female will.

The other Margaret steps closer, so close I can feel the heat radiating from her undersexed, overstimulated body. She's a furnace, a living, breathing repository of sexual energy with no outlet, and it washes over me in pulsing beats of radiation. "Look at me," she says, and my eyes obey, sliding up from the smartphone to meet her gaze.

Her hand slams against the door.

The sudden movement, the loud sound, they both make me yelp in fear and take a step backwards. But I shouldn't let it catch me by surprise. I know that motion. The voluntary self-infliction of physical pain. I've done it a thousand times by now. Hell, I've done it today.

No sooner has the sound faded that suddenly the room around us dissolves. We're standing on a busy city street.

"Look," she says, pointing to a group of women huddled together on the sidewalk.

The convoy system.

It seemed like such a good idea at the time... and it did work, for a bit. I joined one myself. It allowed us to go to work, or head out, with a reduced fear that a random man would just approach one of us and collar us on a whim. A sanitary cordon to stop us from crumbling so easily.

Only that as the vision speeds by like a timelapse, I see the convoy growing thinner and thinner with each passing day.

The scene shifts. We're in a tiny, cramped apartment, where a woman sits huddled on a couch, rocking back and forth. She's alone, the curtains drawn back, the door locked.

Isolation. Cutting herself off from the world, hoping the payload can't reach her here. But the payload reaches everywhere. It's already inside her, after all.

The woman twitches, muttering to herself. Her hands drift between her legs, almost unconsciously, rubbing at the seam of her jeans. She whimpers, a broken sound of need and self-loathing, as her hips buck against her hand. She'll be an animal soon, I realize. Incapable of mastering her impulses. A sexual animal whose instincts will be tailor-made for men to exploit.

To own. To master.

So many women, trying so many things, all over the world. Just to keep being themselves, just to keep their lives, their identity, their values. Women everywhere, and everywhere, the war. Everywhere, the fallen: women descending to their knees in a perfectly elegant motion that the virus has drilled into their subconscious, a choreography meant to maximise the erotic appeal to the male gaze.

Women fall in every walk of life. Feminist protesters kneel before their arch-nemeses as marches dwindle into a humiliating nothing. Female CEOs crawl under the desks of the men they used to supervise. Female scientists surrender their labs to their male betters. Their coats come off, their tits plop out. The downward arc of womanhood proceeds, inexorable, until our gender itself lies prostrate at the feet of our conquerors.

Women everywhere let out a sigh, uttering the cursed words that make them trade torture for slavery:

I acknowledge myself owned.

I cover my ears, squeezing my eyes shut against the words. "Stop, please stop! This can't be the future, it just can't!"

My heart is hammering against my ribcage in pure, unfettered terror. My sex is pulsing in eager anticipation of a cock to break it in, to put it to its evolutionary purpose. My mind is caving in on itself. And everywhere I turn, I hear the chorus, coming at me from every direction.

I acknowledge myself owned.

"Shut up, shut up, SHUT UP!" I clamp my hands over my ears again, and I turn at the other Margaret, ready to beg her, to please just make it stop.

But she's not standing next to me anymore. She's on her knees, panting, glassy-eyed, her tongue lolling out of her mouth. There's no one in front of her, just empty air, so this isn't... she isn't submitting to a man, but...

She's rehearsing...

-- THAT'S HOW YOU'LL LOOK WHEN YOU KNEEL

-- ONLY A MATTER OF TIME

-- SO GOOD, LOOK AT HOW YOUR CALVES AND THIGHS BULGE WHEN YOU KNEEL... ACCENTUATING YOUR EYE-CANDY-NESS... ALL THAT BEAUTY IS FOR MEN...

I slam my fist against the wall. As hard as I can.

The vision fades, at least in part. I'm back in my bedroom, and the knuckles of my left hand look red and swollen. The other Margaret is standing before me, now, and she's back to her emotionless expression.

"That was not real," I say. I'm surprised at the sheer anger oozing from my voice. "You're not a woman. You're just the payload. I haven't forgotten that, you son of a bitch. Remember, you're a hallucination. You're in my head. No, you're part of my head. Don't you know what that means?"

The other Margaret inclines her head, her eyes narrowing, shining with a glint that's not quite fully human, as if dying to know what point I'm about to make. But she should know already, precisely because we share a headspace.

"We have identical knowledge," I say, smugly. "I know what you're going to say before you say it. I know what you're going to show me before you show it. You only exist in here with me, that's your boundary condition. Nothing you can do could catch me by surpri--"

She slaps me.

The slap stings. The humiliation stings more. The shock stings the most.

I stagger back, my hand flying to my cheek where the imprint of her palm burns like a brand. For a moment, I simply stand there, mouth agape, mind reeling. She hit me. The hallucination, the ghost, the manifestation of my own tormented psyche, she actually hit me.

It hurts.

Not just the physical pain, though that's bad enough. No, it's the message behind the blow. We both know that I wasn't expecting the slap. That she--it--the payload--can surprise me.

Can hurt me.

The other Margaret flashes me a devilish smile, her eyes glinting with malicious triumph.

Then, as suddenly as she appeared, she's gone.

But the pain from the slap lingers.

IV -- The Ghost Of Women Yet To Come

It will happen in the middle of a nightmare.

I'll be dreaming of a fallen gender, of a cause of equality turned to dust with a single stroke, of a woman who's me and yet not me slapping me with impunity. And that's when it will happen.

It will make me sit up, heart hammering with fear. It will tug me from sleep, sucking me in like a vortex. It will make me jolt awake. It will drag me from one nightmare, and into the next.

Telescopically.

My bedroom is pitch black, when I sit up. My skin is clammy with sweat as I look around, listening for sounds. But there's nothing to see, and nothing to hear... until, without warning, a figure emerges from the gloom.

I gasp as the figure glides towards me. It's a woman, but at the same time she is more and she is less. If there ever was a personification of female sexual allure, it would look like her. But this is allure without teeth, sex without sexual power. This is a woman who's on the receiving end of power, just like she's on the receiving end of cock.

Sculpted, and stunning, and hot, and sexy... but also harmless. Dumb. Docile. Accommodating.

Submissive.

She looks more like a prized specimen of sexual cattle than she does a person.

The closer she gets, the more details I can make out: her lips are perpetually puckered, her eyes large and doe-like, her body draped in translucent veils that do little to obscure her shapely curves.

I swallow against the lump forming in my throat. Is this meant to be endgame? Does every female action, every plan, every ambition culminate here, in this pliant, sexual form? Is this meant to be the fate of women?

She reaches out a hand, her fingers long and elegant, more so than any woman's have any right to be. Specially modified fingers, I think to myself. Perfected for giving the best handjobs in the history of sex...

She opens her lips to speak, and in spite of myself, I find myself leaning forward, closer to her grasping fingers, straining to hear what she has to tell me...

"Guuuhhhh," she says simply. "Eeeeek..."

What?

I recoil in shock. Something about that sound just makes my heart race like it's trying to pop out of my chest. I shrink back against the headboard, trying to put as much distance between myself and this apparition as possible. But there's nowhere to go, nowhere to hide.

Nowhere to look, but in her eyes, as they loom larger and larger in my field of vision.

They're vacant, glassy, yes. This is a woman who's no longer capable of articulated speech. She's been mindbroken by her sexual defeat. Cock has pushed all thought out of her mind, leaving more room for service and obedience...

But she's aware.

I know this, because this is my hallucination, so her and I share the same knowledge. She's not a drone. She doesn't see her situation as happy normality. Her mind has been rearranged beyond recognition, simplified, reduced, broken down... but there's just enough of her left that she's still capable of recognizing what has been done to her.

Capable of feeling the raw, unadulterated sting of humiliation.

Capable of sexualizing it.

Is this what I will become? A non-verbal fucktoy, a sexual pet in truth and not just metaphor? Will I have to live through the slow, systematic annihilation of my personhood and humanity, all the while rubbing my clit to it until I see fucking stars? Will I be...

-- FREED FROM THE BURDEN OF THOUGHT

-- IRREVERSIBLY DOMESTICATED

-- DAMAGED SO FUNDAMENTALLY THAT EVEN IF THE PAYLOAD WERE EVER REVERSED, MEN WILL ALWAYS BE MY MASTERS

... like this? I try to tear my gaze away from the ghost's vacant, glassy eyes, but I find myself transfixed, unable to move. Her fingers reach for my left nipple, stroking it lightly through my PJs, and then... twisting, gently but firmly, making me gasp, making me arch my back, making my eyes roll back into my skull...

And suddenly, we're no longer in my bedroom. The familiar walls melt away, replaced by an opulent hallway lined with gilded mirrors and plush velvet curtains. Crystal chandeliers hang from the ceiling.

Oh.

It's not just mirrors that line the hallway. The curtains hide alcoves, and within each alcove is a naked woman. Some kneel on cushions, their bodies arranged artfully to accentuate their poses. Others stand in various positions, like living statues, or hold candles in each hand, or even support mirrors on their backs.

Living furniture. Vacant, placid, compliant, fuck-ready furniture.

The ghost's fingers continue to tease my nipple as the visions shift and morph around us. I see women, auctioned by lot before a leering crowd. Women, provided and delivered by the state to every adult male in the name of economic redistribution. Women, sold at market prices in sleek and fancy shops called collar stores. Women chained in rows and on display like livestock, their collars bearing price tags. What was it I thought of before?

A sexual pet in truth, and not just metaphor.

Many different versions... one fate.

One future.

The woman's fingers pinch my nipple harder and I cry out, back arching as pleasure-pain lances through me. She smiles knowingly, as if she can sense my inner turmoil, my weakening resistance.

She may be incapable of speech, but she knows sex. Her fingers clamp around my chin in an iron grip, forcing me to look into the telescoping imagery.

Women crawl on all fours, leashed and collared, led by smirking men. They pant and whine like bitches in heat, rubbing their thighs together shamelessly.

Women kneel in neat rows, mouths open and tongues out, awaiting their turns to service the hard cocks before them. They look up at the men with worshipful, eager eyes.

It's too much, it's all too much. The ghost's fingers are relentless on my nipple, twisting and tugging, sending jolts of agonized bliss straight to my aching clit. My pussy clenches on nothing, so empty, so desperate to be filled...

But it's not for her to fill it. It's not a woman's purview.

I jolt awake and the visions clear, as I find myself sitting in my own bed. Alone, and shattered, and with a name on my lips.

"Peter..."

***

It's Christmas morning when it happens.

The concentration of drugs in my bloodstream has fallen low enough that I haven't hallucinated any more since last night. And when I woke up from that series of telescoping nightmares, the first thing I found waiting for me, waiting right there at the actual logical end of my desperation, was the thing.

The virus.

The payload.

It was still there, ready and waiting to bombard me with intrusive sexual thoughts, to condition me, to rewire me. A woman may tire, but not the virus. A woman can fight, but the virus can't lose.

I've decided I can't take it anymore. This is what the logical end of a woman's desperation really looks like. It's ringing the doorbell to her boyfriend's front door on a cold Christmas morning, knowing full well that I'm telescoping myself from a series of nightmares, into the one true nightmare, the one to supersede them all.

The door swings open and there he is. Peter. My boyfriend. My love. The man I've fought so hard to resist submitting to, even as the virus wormed its way deeper into my mind. He looks confused, concern etched on his handsome features as he takes in my disheveled appearance.

"Honey? Is everything okay? Why are you..."

His voice trails off as I sink to my knees before him, my legs folding almost of their own accord. Instantly, the payload floods my mind with a dizzying cocktail of endorphins, dopamine, oxytocin - nature's reward for a woman fulfilling her biological imperative. Submitting to her man.

The ritual is etched into my mind, drilled into me night after sleepless night by the virus worming its tendrils through my thoughts. Every motion is choreographed with meticulous attention to detail, optimized to be as graceful and erotic as possible, to turn my subjugation into a visual feast for Peter's eyes.

My knees hit the cold hardwood with a soft thud that seems to reverberate through my bones. There's something profound about that sound, something final. The last echoes of my resistance, silenced at last. This is where I belong now. On my knees.

I spread my thighs automatically, arching my back to present my breasts, even though he can't exactly see them through my thick coat. The seam of my jeans presses intimately against my sex and I can't suppress a shudder as I feel how wet I am. My body is primed and ready, desperate to be claimed.

Peter makes a choked sound above me and I risk a glance up at him through my lashes. His pupils are blown wide, his breathing heavy.

"Maggie... what are you doing?"

I swallow hard, trying to find my voice. It comes out as barely a whisper.

"I can't fight it anymore, Peter. I don't want to fight it anymore."

I reach into my coat pocket with trembling fingers, feeling for the small velvet box inside. My heart is pounding so hard I'm sure Peter can hear it. I pull out the box and hold it up to him, my hands shaking.

"I bought this on the way here," I say softly, flipping open the lid. Nestled inside on a bed of satin is a simple black leather collar. "I want you to put it on me."

The sight of the collar makes every neuron in my body flare to life. It's like a jolt of electricity straight to my hindbrain, bypassing all higher cognitive function. The response is incredible, all-encompassing, a chasm of pure sensation that threatens to swallow me whole. I can feel my nipples tightening, my pussy clenching and dripping with need. It's beyond arousal, beyond desire. It's a biological imperative, as fundamental and inescapable as breathing.

Peter's eyes widen as he stares at the collar, then at me. He takes a step back, shaking his head. "Maggie, no. This isn't right. You're not thinking clearly."