Filth

The scent of clean concrete and the rough feel of the cinder blocks was like an old friend, reaching out to her in silent greeting. She knew what came next without having to think about it... the pressure of his knee in the middle of her back as she knelt with her face against the wall, squeezing the breath from her lungs; the feel of his fingers tangling in her hair, and the unsettling jerk of her head before he asked the question... always the same question.

“Did you keep your promise?”

His voice was rough and low; a bestial growl that inspired no fear in her, only awe. Her whimpered response died in her throat. There was no point in lying... no point in saying anything. Her silence was answer enough.

She felt the pressure on her back evaporate to be replaced by hands under her arms, and she was suddenly flung away from the wall to land face down in a shallow pool of water. It wasn't an act of violence, simply expediency. She knew she was nothing more than luggage right now. She had failed to keep her promise.

“Strip.”

No patience, no emotion other than perhaps a faint trace of disgust.

“Strip. I want to see.”

She rose slowly to her knees and began to unbutton her blouse. She had gotten no farther than the third button when his impatience with her trembling hands manifested itself. Again, without violence, he spun her to face him and ripped the blouse open, sending the buttons flying across the concrete floor. She let the ruined shirt slide from her arms to the floor where water slowly darkened the red silk to a more sanguine shade, somehow appropriate to this place.

She undid the single button holding her skirt to her hips without any of her previous clumsiness. His aloof attitude galled her. She had anticipated, even hoped for some anger to be kindled in her tormentor, but he gave her only a sort of ruthless efficiency that left her unsatisfied. She realized suddenly that she feared him for a different reason than she had thought, and her hands began to shake again as she slid the zipper down her hip to let the skirt slide to the floor. Her failure thus exposed, she bowed her head and waited, her bra and panties faint protection from him.

“I said strip.”

Her head snapped up and for a brief moment she fixed him with an outraged glare. This was something he was not entitled to demand of her; this crossed the boundaries of their relationship. He couldn't be serious.

But the look in his eyes left no doubt as to how serious he was. There was no lust, no pleasure at all; simply more of that same cool efficiency. That coldness started an ache in her she hadn't expected. She had a sudden desire to break through his iciness and find out what lay in the cool depths of his dark eyes; a desire she had no idea how to fulfill.

A sharp click snapped her from her distraction, but she realized too late what the sound meant.

“I haven't got time for this,” he mumbled, as he grabbed hold of her panties with one hand and cut them off with the knife he held in his other. The cold pressure as the back of the blade pressed into her skin for a brief moment made her knees shake. Then her panties pulled up into her as the serrated edges pulled at the fabric before it gave way. She gasped involuntarily.

She wanted to cover her shame with her hands; not her sex, but the livid lines of dried blood that striped her upper thighs, scabbed and red from chaffing. She wanted to desperately but she knew better. She clenched her fists at her sides, nails digging painfully into her palms as he stuck his foot between her legs and shoved them apart.

“You broke your promise.”

Still no anger. Still nothing but cold. She raised her eyes, expecting to find him staring at her thighs, but unexpectedly she found him looking directly back at her, and for the first time she saw something moving beneath the ice that made him. Something that cast her eyes away from him in desperate search of something more familiar... less animal.

What they found to latch onto was perhaps not what most people would call comforting. Mounted between two cement block columns were two parallel metal pipes. There was a mass of chains and cables running haphazardly from both of the pipes, but there was no question as to the purpose of the design... a purpose she lived in constant fear and deep longing for.

“NO!” his voice fairly crackled with anger. The sudden charge of emotion in him shook her to her core. “You haven't earned that. You broke your promise.”

He grabbed her auburn curls and yanked her head so she was forced to look into his eyes again. This time there was nothing masking the beast that had hidden beneath the ice... his anger was unleashed wholly.

“You are MINE. Do you understand what that means?”

The question was clearly rhetorical.

“It means that when you cut yourself, you damage MY property. You hurt something of mine.” His tone was nearly that of a stern father lecturing an unruly child, but there was an edge to it that told of something deeper. “When you break your promise... when you hurt something that belongs to me...”

He pushed her legs farther apart with his feet and then grasped her inner thigh with his rough, strong hands. “I feel like you don't respect me. Do you respect me?”

He pinched the flesh of her thigh in a crushing grip, breaking the scabs over her cuts. She felt the blood begin to slicken his grip. She also felt a fluttering in her gut she found exciting. This was what she had wanted... to see the animal so casually contained by this man. Now that she saw traces of the beast revealed, she wondered if perhaps she had overestimated the strength of her will. Then, in an instant, his composure returned and she was penetrated once again by his uncaring, icy stare.

Without a word, he released her from his grasp, then swiftly, deftly, he slashed upwards with his knife, between her breasts... severing the elastic of her bra with barely a kiss of the blade against her skin. She let the ruined undergarment slide to the ground to join the rest of her clothing on the damp floor, biting down on her lip as she considered what might be coming next. To her dismay, it was almost anti-climactic. He simply grasped her shoulders and spun her to face the far end of the room from that which she had entered. Hidden in the shadows there was a small tiled stall with a smoked glass door. He shoved her more gently this time, but there was no more patience than before.

“Go. If you want what you came for, you will have to earn it. You owe me for the damages.”

Her gut wrenched. Utterly without protection of any kind, even without the familiar sense of clothing to hide her, real fear began to seep into her mind. What could he possibly demand of her? What did she have to give that would be enough to pay for what she had done?

She walked slowly towards the stall and reached for the handle of the door, hearing the faint plop of water droplets on the far side. Before she had grasped the door he spoke again. “When its clean, then I will see to you. Don't come out until it is done,” With that he turned and headed back towards the way they had come, stooping down to gather her clothing on the way.

She pulled the door open and was nearly overwhelmed by the sight and smell before her. The tiny shower stall reeked of mildew and something less pleasant still. She fought back the urge to vomit and stepped cautiously onto the sickeningly slick floor, feeling the filth there ooze between her toes. In the faint light trickling in from overhead, she glanced around looking for a brush or a rag to begin wiping the fetid filth from the walls. She was mortified to discover that the stall was absolutely bare of anything but grime and mold.

“He said not to come out until its clean,” she whispered. She ran a finger along the wall in an attempt to dislodge some of whatever it was that encrusted it, but her efforts were useless against the clinging grime. She tried scratching it with her nails, but soon realized her fingers would be shredded to the quick long before she made any noticeable progress. Frustration grew, competing with her yearning to finish the task and receive her reward. She couldn't disappoint him a second time in one day.

With near panic in her heart she knelt down to search the floor, hoping that somewhere in the shadows she would find a sponge, a rag, anything to make the job before her possible. Her hasty search yielded nothing more than more of the scum clinging to the walls. The stench was so bad near the floor she struggled to keep her stomach contents intact, feeling the bile rise at the back of her throat.

Rising quickly, she slapped her open hands viciously at the wall, slinging to the stinging tingle and burn like it was the hope of a new day. She would NOT be beaten so easily. She wouldn't let her prize slip through her fingers. She took two steps back from the wall in front of her, only to find herself smack up against the other. She slammed her head backwards into the filthy tile hard enough to see a bright flash. Unconsciousness would have been easier to deal with. Having failed was easier than failing. Waking up to failure wouldn't leave the hollow desire... just an emptiness.

Tears began to leak from the corners of her eyes, and she sniffed at herself, almost a laugh in spite of the sense of failure. As she scrubbed the back of one hand against her face, a thought struck her. She leaned close to the wall and grasped a handful of her dark hair. At only shoulder length, she nearly had to press herself against the wall, but at last she maneuvered the hair into reach and scrubbed vigorously for a moment. She pulled herself away from the wall to look at the results and felt a fierce sense of satisfaction.

Without thought she flipped on the water and was rewarded with an ice-cold spray that tore the air from her lungs. She jammed her hair under the stream to soak it quickly then turned off the water as quickly as she could, shivering violently from the drenching. With a more tentative touch, she reached for the warm water handle, only to have it spin freely in her grasp. A wave of disappointment overwhelmed the satisfaction she had felt only moments before, but she gathered herself and began to scrub diligently at the muck on the walls with her hair.

At first she hummed to herself. There was a sense of congratulating herself in the wordless song. She would please him. She would exceed his expectations and astound him. She would make him appreciate what she was, how much she needed him. She would make him want to do the things she needed. No matter what he asked her, she would be worthy of him... of the gift he gave her.

As the scrubbing went on, her optimism began to fade. It was taking too long. He wouldn't wait for her to finish. Her hair was crusted and sticky. He wouldn't touch someone as filthy as she was. She wouldn't be able to get the shower clean enough. How could she possibly get all that slimy scum off the walls in the dark? He would see her failure. He would know how dirty she was. He would no she couldn't hope to please him.

Her fears and her hopes warred with each other as the muscles in her neck and back began to tense and knot from the unnatural use she was putting them to. Her legs were cramped from crouching and kneeling and bending. Everything about her ached, her heart not least of all. She struggled against her rising insecurity and tried to think only of the reward. She pushed her mind ever closer to the sweetness of release that she was working towards. Her mind pushed back with the possibility of disappointment. The simple chore of scrubbing became an epic battle of will.

Finally, hours, days... it didn't really matter... passed and she looked at her work with a sense of pride. He couldn't expect more of a shower in a 5 star resort.

She turned the shower on, one last time to rinse as much of the filth and grime from herself as she could before she pressed timidly against the door, peering, mouse-like, past its edge. She gasped to find him leaning against the shower right beside the door... inches from her face. Her eyes traced the line of his arm from where it crossed under his sternum, up to his shoulder, his neck, until at last she found those icy eyes, gazing at her dispassionately.

“Is it done?”

She nodded, afraid her voice might fail her in her surprise.

He leaned down and grabbed a bottle of shampoo, a rag and a bar of soap and passed them to her.

“I won't touch filth. Clean yourself.”

He pushed the door shut on her.

She cleaned herself as vigorously as she could remember in her life, scrubbing with the rag until her skin fairly burned even under the freezing stream of water. She despised the time it took to wash her hair thoroughly, but she new better than to tempt fate when she was this close. She ran her fingers through her recently abused tresses again and again, trying to pull loose every bit of the filth she had scrubbed away from the shower. The irony was not lost on her.