Has it really been a week since the last post? Oh well. The next novel is coming on nicely, thank you, though the story that follows is nothing to do with it. Whether this eventually becomes the basis for a longer piece, sometime in the future… anything’s possible.
***
Writing a novel requires imagination and dedication.
It also requires time, freedom from interruptions, the ability to dive into a character and a situation.
Livia’s solution was a cottage, rented for the summer. A mile up a dirt track road, five miles from the nearest small town. It had its own generator for electricity, water from a spring, but no telephone and no cellphone coverage or WiFi.
It was perfect.
The first chapters ripened. The plot thickened, throwing out new strands. Characters developed. Outside, cloudless skies meant hot days. Inside, there was no air conditioning. Livia wore a loose, flowing dress. But with no one around, and the heavy air making even a dress uncomfortable, she found herself almost unconsciously wearing nothing more than panties. And then, after a few days, nothing at all.
Her central character was Rhavaniel, a name meaning ‘The Wild One’. She was half-elven and half-human, the offspring of a human male pleasure slave kept by an elven warrior princess, for that reason disowned by her mother and sent to live in the human world. In rediscovering her ancestry she entered into the elf world, where dangers awaited.
Livia followed the well-known rules of writing set down by Kurt Vonnegut, among them the injunction to be sadistic to her characters. This, she followed diligently. Rhavaniel, navigating a world she did not fully understand, was quickly captured by brigands and sold into slavery.
Livia began to imagine the ill-treatment one might receive as a halfbreed female slave among elven lowlife. There would be casual brutality and severe punishments, probably of a sexual variety. There would be frequent, rough couplings with any man who wanted her. Probably, with her heritage, many would be curious to fuck her. They’d be ruthless in their use of force and application of discipline, uncompromising in their demands. They’d humiliate her for their amusement. Loan her out to acquaintances.
The chapters moved on, but Livia found herself wondering more and more about Rhavaniel. About how she’d learn from her situation. Learn to please men. Learn to accept pain as a constant in her life. Would she resist, or find a way to manipulate the situation to her advantage?
Hot, sticky nights afforded little sleep. Naked and without covers on her bed, Livia rediscovered pleasure at the end of her own fingers. Tossed and turned in the darkness, with no need to suppress her moans for the sake of neighbours.
Heading for the nearest town next day Livia drove three-quarters of the way there before chancing to look down and see she’d forgotten to wear any clothing. Drove right the way through town anyway, identifying places she wanted to go. Next day, in a more rational frame of mind, she visited the mom-and-pop hardware store, the filling station, the tiny supermarket, the delicatessen. Found the only coffee shop in town and soaked up the sounds of human conversation. Found it difficult to communicate with people and only later realised she’d begun to use the grammar and vocabulary of elven speech. In town they probably put it down to her eccentric city ways.
Back at the cottage, Livia stripped off. She donned the thick leather dog collar she’d bought at the hardware store, the kind intended for a guard dog of about the same weight as her. She attached it to a long chain, the other end of which she padlocked to a piece of ironwork outside the front door. Ate her dinner on hands and knees from a dog bowl. Sat watching the gathering darkness. Finally, she found satisfaction in masturbating, lying splayed out on the warm earth.
Livia slept in the collar, found it comfortable and strangely comforting. Next day the writing seemed to go quickly. When she flagged, she tried another tactic: sitting at her desk, she applied clothespegs to her nipples, breasts, the inside of her thighs. Then, finally, to the lips of her labia. She became astonishingly aware of every movement of her hands on the laptop’s keyboard, yet astonishingly unaware of what she was actually typing. Until later, when reading it back caused her to seek out something to relieve the need in her. Scrabbled though her meagre belongings, dismissed the deodorant, finally settled on an outsize carrot from the kitchen. It was cool inside her, but it did what she wanted it to.
She slept that night spreadeagled on the bed, the chain from her collar fixed to the iron bedstead, a scarf wrapped around her eyes. Rhavaniel would find the bed luxurious, she surmised, and to be placed on a bed at all – rather than sleeping in a cage, or simply chained to a wall, would imply some man could be expected soon.
She relished to sensation of being chained and blindfolded. She’d left the front door unlocked. Anything could happen.
Nothing did. But that could be fixed.
The chapters moved quickly now, but seemed much more focused on Rhavaniel’s experiences at the hands of her captors, and then the underground slave market, the unscrupulous merchant who bought her as a decorative feature for his shop, the aristrocrat who claimed her as a prize when his forces stormed the city – after, of course, the soldiers had used her extensively. She spent almost all her time naked, except perhaps for high heels, and in cuffs and chains – or alternatively, tied to some framework designed to expose her breasts, buttocks and pussy for either flogging or fucking.
A gag was, Livia discovered, a path to an inner core of submission. She improvised one from a thin belt, a length of material wrapped around it to force her mouth open. After an hour or so it made her drool, but that in itself added to her sense of helplessness.
The next time she visited town, Livia remembered to wear a dress. She’d paid attention to the conversations she’d had, and the ones she’d overheard, on the last occasion. And she was grateful that many people had very free in their discussion of one particular young man. ‘Happy to sleep with any of the girls in town, but he won’t settle with any of them. Says they’re too narrow minded. And you should hear the stories about the things he likes doing in bed…’ This from the two middle-aged guys who worked in the garage-cum-filling station.
Her destination was the delicatessen, which doubled up as a sandwich bar and impromptu art gallery. The name she’d heard was the same one she’d seen on the paintings.
She looked again at the paintings. They were mainly of women, and displayed a sensual, almost harshly sexual, gaze. The models were in clearly provocative poses. They were the kinds of pictures that Livia thought might have been cleaned up for public consumption. The artist probably had the originals, and they probably showed the women in an altogether more naked state.
Livia bought a sandwich, asked about the artist and was unsurprised to find he was the young man she was talking to. Handing the bills over, she passed him a folded piece of paper at the same time. And walked out of the door without a second glance, feeling excited and nervous at the same time.
Back at the cottage, she removed the dress – and found to her consternation she’d been wearing the collar all this time.
Oh well. It had certainly underlined the point of the note.
She ate from the dog bowl again, naked on the porch. Imagined herself splayed out against its ironwork, chained to it. And, when it was dark, went to the bedroom, leaving the front door open. Collar locked to chain, chain to the bedstead. She wore the gag, the blindfold. And waited.
The sex was everything she expected. Rough, ruthless, uncompromising. Marks on her buttocks from the application of discipline. He’d removed the gag for the insertion of cock in mouth, but left the blindfold on the whole time. She’d been humiliated, but the experience had pumped adrenaline through her system, created a craving she knew she’d have to feed again. Soon.
He wasn’t there in the morning. But on her desk was a page torn from a notebook, a pen-and-ink sketch of her that captured her in her sexual bondage. The title above the sketch was the same name she’d put on the note.
Rhavaniel.
The old plastics factory burned down a couple of months ago. Arson. Kids set a fire they couldn’t control.
We walk towards the shadowed entrance to the factory building. It’s not supposed to be an entrance – just where a wall collapsed. Inside, blackened unfathomable machinery. There’s a long girder there; it was a roof support and still rests on the remaining wall but is angled now to touch the ground on the other.
You stand back and watch me for a while, as I watch you watching me. I’m getting excited. I watch you getting excited. Breeze from outside excites my nipples. The breeze carries scents of oil, burned wood, fire smoke. Why is that a turn-on? What repressed memory makes me juice up at smell of heavy engineering and disaster?
deliciouslydeviant 