Page 7 of Submissive Lies

It was eerie how calm I felt. Composed and yet filled with a rage unlike anything I’d ever experienced before. I took in the room, slowly turning my head. Ben, standing there in his black pants, black tee, the flogger hanging limply from his hand. A young woman—call her Submissive Number Two—hung naked, suspended from the rigging Ben had done her up in. Her head was turned back over her shoulder, staring at us with deer-like wide eyes. I swung back to face Ben, the sound of blood pounding in my ears.

“You’re home,” he croaked in a voice filled with both panic and disbelief.

“That’s it?” I hissed as my body began to quiver, my fury banking to blast furnace temperature. “That’s it? That’s what you have to say?” My voice grew in volume to every syllable.

“I—”

“Can explain!” My voice rose to a crescendo. “Is that what you’re going to say? Because there is nothing for you to explain, you fucking sonofabitch!”

“Jen, you need to calm down…” He took a step toward me.

“Are you fucking insane? Did you really just say that?” I was screaming now. I stood there, fists clenched at my sides, as Ben stopped mid-step. My breathing was labored from the strain of suddenly having my life destroyed. He stared at me, his face twitching, each tic giving life to a random emotion or thought that flew across it like dust before a storm.

“You need to stop yelling. Now!” He scrambled to put on his Dom voice, trying for that sharp hard tone as if it would somehow cause me to back down.

You idiot. I couldn’t hold back the maniacal laughter which poured out of me.

“Oh my God! Really? Nice try, asshole! Fuck! You!”

Now he looked panicked. His head swiveled back and forth between me and the girl still hanging there silently.

“Okay, Jen. We can work this out like adults.” He held his hands palms up towards me.

“We can? We can?” The sound of my laughter had reached pyscho-killer stage. I stepped towards him, rolling my eyes. “Get. Out.”

“Jen…” He took a tentative step backwards.

“Get! Out!” I took another step forward, and this time he did not yield. Stopping just shy of him, I stood there, my body shaking. He held his ground, observing me. I hadn’t started crying. My face felt hot, livid with rage that poured through me, but there were no tears.

He nodded.

Letting the flogger drop to the floor, he turned away. Moving out of the room, he marched down the hallway. I followed to just outside the door, watching as he strode to the living room. My eyes never left him as he grabbed up his wallet and keys from the end table. He went to the front door and stopped. My gaze must have seared his flesh because he turned his head towards me.

The look he gave me was filled with concern. Sympathy.

Pity.

“Out!” I screamed, flying down the hall in a surge of violence. It was the pity. That he would have the gall to stare at me with that look in his eyes was all my rage needed to ignite into an all-consuming fury.

I would not be pitied. Not by this bastard. Not after what he had done.

He fled through the door, slamming it behind him. I tore down the hallway until I came up to the door, stopping to lean with my forehead against it. His car started, tires screeching as he pulled out of the driveway and roared down the street. I rested there, closing my eyes.

And then I cried.

Adrenalin was still pulsing through my body, and I was doing everything I could not to fall apart. I was in pain, serious pain, and not the good kind of pain that I expected Ben to provide. I was definitely on the opposite end of the desired, craved, get-down-on-my-knees-and-beg-him-to-provide spectrum. What I was experiencing was the pain you get when you discover that someone you trusted, who you loved and you thought loved you in return, decided instead that they’d rather rip your heart out by the root, tear your soul from your body, and then casually take a shit on them.

I sobbed, my eyes blurred with tears, and for a moment all I could think of was my missed opportunity. My missed chance to call Ben all the things I should have. Cheater. Liar. Piece of shit. Not just those, but other things too—things that were bad, really bad, but not nearly bad enough. I gasped, ran my wrist across my eyes to wipe away the wetness, doing my best to get myself back under control. My sobs shifted from choking to heaving, finally to just sucking deep breaths. I didn’t remember moving, but I found I was standing in the living room, staring at a picture on the wall. It an abstract print, black flowing lines on stark white simulating in minimalist fashion a woman in repose. Her head was turned, looking back over her shoulder at something, someone, out of sight. The only color on the print was the red slash that indicated her lips. I’d bought that for Ben. Purchased it because I thought it symbolic of who we were. An abstract representation of our dynamic.

Now. Now it was blood—blood from my heart—splashed against canvas. I wanted to rip it down, tear it into a million pieces. Burn it in the fireplace below. Once again, anger stoked itself to replace the grief of only moments before. I was moving, crossing the space that separated me from the image when I heard it.

“Hello?”

It was a soft voice.

It was coming from the playroom.

Oh. Fuck.

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