Rhoda's Pet

People look at us and mistake our relationship for romance. They see my six-foot-four frame, strong and chiseled, and then look at her—short, dumpy, though pretty. They think I am genuinely devoted. When they see me pulling her chair, holding the door, asking if she needs anything, they call me a good man. They see us as a happy couple.

If they only saw the truth. If they knew that my obedience is bought with pain and something darker.

My back bears a map of welts from her temper. My cock is locked in a metal shackle, an electronic torment device that buzzes and shocks me if I try to feel pleasure without her permission. I sleep in a cage when I've displeased her, a metal box meant for beasts.

And when her mother visits, I put on lipstick. A bright, gaudy color was forced onto my lips because the old woman likes seeing her son-in-law look pretty. It is humiliating, a form of submission that screams at everyone who looks at me.

The hatred I feel for her is a roaring fire, but her grandmother’s spell is the ice that quenches it. I am a puppet on a string, and she is the one holding the scissors. Twenty-five years of this, and I am broken.

I was fifteen and extremely insufferable. My parents had money, so I realized early on that I didn't need to be a decent human being; I just had to be rich. I spent three weeks terrorizing the residents of two caravans that had parked in the old railway yard at Furrell's Road. I threw rocks, tagged their walls, and enjoyed every second of their misery. I was untouchable.

They were ‘travelers,’ and nobody wanted them around. I knew the police wouldn’t step in unless someone got hurt. It was the third week I’d seen her. I had crawled through the broken fence at the back of the yard, walked around the old sheds, and there she was leaning against the fence. 

She was a light in the dark, wrapped in purple silk and leather. Just looking at her was enough to snap my teenage cock to attention; I was rock hard, aching with a mix of fear and lust. My heart was hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird.

She smiled at me, a slow, knowing curve of her lips that made my stomach knot. "Have you got a light?" she asked. It wasn't a question; it was an order.

I fished in my pocket anyway, pulling out a box of Swan Vestas that I kept with my cigarettes. I struck the match, the sulfur stinging my nose, and held it up to her. She took a drag, a long, slow inhale that seemed to suck the air out of the world, and then she blew a thick plume of blue smoke directly into my face. I coughed, choking on the scent of her, feeling small.

The world spun wildly. One moment I was in the dusty yard, and the next I was blinking in the dim light of a caravan. She was standing over me, holding a cup. "Drink this," she ordered. The liquid was thick and sickly sweet, coating my tongue. I tried to pull away, but her fingers clamped tight on the bottom of the mug, forcing me to swallow every drop.

"Take your jeans down."

I obeyed immediately, the words acting like a trigger I couldn't resist. "And your underpants, too."

I stood there, exposed and trembling, while she handed me a small glass beaker. "Wank yourself into that."

My cock was hard, but there was no fire in it, no pleasure. It was just a mechanical necessity. I gripped myself and stroked, my eyes fixed on her, waiting for the release she demanded. I came into the beaker within moments. She snatched the glass from my hand. Then, without warning, she yanked a chunk of my hair, making me wince, and dropped it into the jar.

She turned and handed the beaker to the girl sitting behind her—a plump girl, about my age. She spat into the beaker with a wet, vulgar sound and pushed it back, her expression bored. She placed the rim to my mouth and ordered me to spit. I did, feeling completely degraded, watching the mixture swirl inside the glass.

The woman yanked the beaker with an unexpectedly strong grip. She stomped over to a chipped countertop and started tossing in herbs and spices with names I didn't recognize—dried roots, strange powders, and crackling substances. She heated the beaker over a flame until the liquid began to fizz fiercely. I watched in horror as the hair she had pulled melted into the bubbling sludge.

"Drink it," she rasped.

I drank it. It was tasteless, thick, and cloying, coating my throat like cold glue. My knees buckled underneath me. She yanked my hair back, forcing me to look up at her. It wasn't the pretty girl anymore; it was an old, toothless hag with a thick, rolling Romany accent.

"You love my granddaughter," she said, her voice like grinding stones. "You will always love her. You will always obey her. You will always obey every female in her family. You will be at Rochester Castle on your twenty-first birthday, and you will fall to your knees and beg her to marry you, because you love her."

She leaned in closer, her breath smelling like rot. "You also hate her, but you will still feel forced to obey her. You will lead a life of devotion to her, and you’ll be haunted by the fact that you have no choice."

She grabbed my chin with a gnarled hand. "Every night, you will chant, 'I love and must obey Rhoda ‘ twenty times.' She let go of my hair and pushed me away. "Now be gone." The world went dark.

I blinked, blinded by the sudden flash of red and blue lights. A flashlight shone into my eyes. "Found him," a voice said. "Come on, mate, up you get."

My head was pounding, groggy, and heavy. Hands grabbed my arms and pulled me out of the dust in the shed. My parents were waiting, looking worried. They told me I was found drunk, surrounded by empty bottles of Woodpecker cider. As they drove me out of the yard, I twisted in my seat, looking back into the darkness. The caravans were gone, vanished into thin air.