The Eternal Door

THE ETERNAL DOOR
Lady E.

I walk the cool streets. Dark thoughts pinion my heart. Night encloses me. I think a stranger will leap from imaginary corners and push me against the stonewalls that border and darken the alleyways. He will be cloaked and hooded. His breath will smell sweet and fine, the taste of fecund fruit still wet on his lips. He will be breathless as if caught up in the mistake of the moment but unable to stop. These are my imaginings when he escapes out into the alley moments after I walk by the clawed iron door. I turn the captive and in his eyes, from their depth a haunting hunger lays wait in his dark story. An unrelenting battlement of wanting pulls his arms around my body and against my resistance. I remember the fear that pulsed like an angry desire around me. But the sweetness of his breath held me in suspension, held me to his captivity, and I will never know why I let go into his embrace as his violence warmed into the purity of the carnal, of the primal, that core of man awakening every need of my woman at that moment. He pulls my head back to bare my neck, winds his fingers through my hair and commands my eyes into his. He stares into me, breathes into me and draws his hand down my body, to my breasts, to my belly, to my sex. I lay open to him. If I catch my breath he will disappear. I swallow down my swollen need and wrap myself around him. This man. This invisible moment. This torrent of wills.
“Are you her?”
“Yes,” I say, as quiet and delicate as my body allows. He is like a tower over me – dark and foreboding. His skin is hard and rough, but wickedly sweet – the deep intoxication of his man, his sweat, his temptation.
“Why did you not attend the dinner? Why, when you were commanded to do so?”
Here I falter. Did I ask for this resistance? Did I hope only for this moment?
“I was unable.” It is a weak answer and will never be enough. That if the light were stronger, if the air were not vapor in the cloak of night, he would have seen the lie in my eyes as surely as he knows my betrayal in the dark. Though each step I had taken through the unfolding of the evening – the invitation, the commitment, the giving in, the command, the guests of privilege lined up like a parade of hedonists – seemed perfectly reasonable. It had been too much. I did not truly believe it would happen. It was a dream of transparency. As much as I had wanted to adorn myself in the beautiful beaded corset and the woven silk stockings of imprisonment, as much as I had wanted to breathe the scents of my presenting, led in before the approving eyes of his entourage, when the moment arose in fury, I could never open the door. At the appointed hour of eight o clock, when my entrance was commanded, I stood frozen in the apocalyptic gesture of hand raised to the iron knocker, breath held, eyes closed – the stillness of the night suffocating me as the weight of their presence, all of them, dressed and painted with eyes like lascivious animals hungry to take me, my resolve, my obedience melted from my skin, off my body and into the mysterious unknown of free will. He had trusted me to be there. To dress my finest. To raise my hand and pound three times the iron ring, to be led willingly into the candle lined hallway of the house of Lady Bisset. I almost laughed aloud then. Instead, I committed myself to being a statue, frozen in midair, hand on the iron ring until the cold air of night lifted my coat and pinched my bare flesh with reality. It had been hours. I did not flee, but waited for him to fill the open doorway and roar his astonishment and violence into my skin. But I know he dined with quiet patience, nodding steadily with the unspoken truth of my absence. He would of course be even wittier, finer in his gestures, more gracious to his lovely and alluring host. He would have had concern in front of the guests and they of course would quietly echo concern… for she was so willing, so prepared, such a jewel… what a possession, what a night this was to be. I recoil at the thought. Can I rewind the clock? But would I have gone still? For here I am in his arms. He wants to take me. He turns me around and opens my coat to the cold bricks of the wall. He pulls it from my shoulders and down my arms to viciously throw it to the ground – this coat, this hiding, this mask thrown down and laid waste. My back is pressed to his body as he holds me on the tenuous bridge of a tender embrace and the back lit violation of suppressed anger – a subterfuge of the missive. What will win out? The night is still to aching and the cold whips my bare arms, my naked breasts, my stocking-ed legs. He pulls my arms tight behind me as a groan seethes from him chest. He whips my head back, hand on my throat, one arm pushed through the arc of my elbows pulling me in until my back is arched and my pelvis is thrust hard to the wall. He lifts his knee into the crevice of my ass and pushes me harder forward while arching my back, my head into him. I feel distorted. I am immobile. He pulls on my arms – small pulses of control – his control, his power. Breath comes sharp in my chest and tiny sounds of fearful pleasure escape my lips though I tighten them in feigned defiance, feigned bravery, willfully maintaining what little composure is left in me. He holds me here for an eternal silence. Again he pulls my arms and presses against the small of my back. Silence invades. I fear to make a sound and only his hoarse rhythmic enraged breath keeps the mantra of my silence. My body aches and I wish to cry. How long will he hold me, so bent, so open, so vulnerable. And then slowly he lowers his knee, slowly releases my arms, slowly, so painfully slowly unwinds my hair from his fingers and uprights my head. My legs straiten, my pelvis curves in again denying the wall’s forced kiss and the night air passes again between me and my warden wall. An easing of tension touches me. I turn slightly to see behind me. To see the man who presses against me but does not hold me. I turn a moment more. I see his dark amber eyes - so still, so hard baring into me. His skin glows. He is radiant.
“Face the wall”
I was foolish to turn to him, but I cannot look away just yet. He has me caught. His arms are at his sides as are mine but the heat of our bodies entwine in the restless struggle of the moment.
“Face the wall.”
“Now”
I turn to the wall. The dark space of unknown.
“Reach your hands above your head and onto the wall,”
I rise up, my arms reaching to the night sky as if in victory, a brief moment of self sacrifice yielding this second of freedom. My arms reach high and I stretch my fingertips to the sky.
“Enough” He howls and the violence shakes my world. He strangles my wrists in the power of his grip and slams my hands onto the wall with a sting that whips through my body. I cry out into the muted night as the weight of his body crashes into me until I can hardly find my breath. The wall is no sanctuary as my body hits its unyielding surface.
He speaks low and hoarse into my ear.
“Keep your hands on the wall, your hands high and on the wall. Do not move, my pretty defiant one. Do not make a sound, you wicked slave. Hardly breathe. This is not a game. You are alone here. You are mine. I can love you or take you to the ground. I can calm this childish defiance with kind understanding or tear your skin and force your opening. It is my choice. Your choice is gone. There is no room to hide in, no eyes to meet to read your plea. There is no more assuredness of your truth, of your word for it means nothing. I can have done with you here. When I pull away from you, you will not move from this wall. You are slave to it. You are slave to me.”
I have never known fear. I have known danger. I have swum in the waters of unknown. I have played out the mysteries of these passions as if they were games for there seemed to always be an outcome, a safe haven, a blissful state of exhaustion from the pain to his whip. But now I know the seeds of fear, the truth of danger and the pain of unknown. I wish desperately to step back in time. I wish to cry out, to kneel at his feet. I am the betrayer. His rightness flows through me and yet I wish to hate him for as he pulls away from my body, pulls into the night, I do not move. I hardly breathe though I wish to weep, to weep into the pungent bricks pressing against my breasts, pressing against my face. Above me my hands hold onto this painful refuge. I feel him close. Heat stings my body even in the cold night and I see nothing but black behind my eyes and the breathless aching fear of his power.
“Now open your legs wider and arch your back. Slowly. Slightly. Raise your pretty ass up. More. Up on your toes. Higher. Head down.”
I cannot hold my tears, but I stand and position as he commands. I feel like an imposter, and yet the true barer of this moment, for my costume no longer fits the instance. The delicate jewels and fine brocade of my corset, deep red and purple encircling the lines of the boning like vines, like rope – bound around me like the hands of a magical creature capturing my waist, pulling me in, defining me. The fine silk caressing my legs, the pathway to my high forbidding shoes, my secret pride. The simple leather band around my neck clasped with a heavy silver ring, the small insignia pressed into the leather like a tattoo, invisible but to my fingers and my knowing. My breasts exposed and powdered, my nipples delicately painted. The small red jewel, a gift for this night, which is suspended in tension between the two halves of a ring that pierces my sex. And so I bend as directed, this wayward slave, this wicked girl, the prideful defiant. As if to echo my thoughts, he slides his hand suddenly against my thigh, fingers under the thin strap of my tiny jeweled panties and in one quick pull, he angrily rips them from my body. I am exposed. His hand is on the small of my back pressing gently, directing my back to arch and my ass to rise. His hand pushes against my inner thigh and again so gently presses my leg out wider. I strain to hold my arms high, my toes raised, my back arched, my buttocks upward, my legs spread. I strain to hold in my breath, the cry that wishes its freedom. The night enfolds my sex.
“Open yourself to me. Open your sex to me.”
He fingers the jewel between my legs, pulls down on the skin of my clitoris and slides his fingers to my opening. He stops and holds himself, his hand in utter stillness. I feel my sex pulse. Then his fingers pull me open. Slowly, he pulls me open wider.
“Do not make a sound.”
Wider, he opens me. One hand, two fingers, commanding my sex to yield. He presses harder into me straining my flesh, my sex, this wanton tool until I feel the angry sensation of my seams being pulled apart, my sex opening out until it is a river of need like the torrent rain of nature’s wild torture, up through my body, to the breath of my swollen lips. And then I am released. My skin burns, but I hold my position. My legs shake, but I do not move, my soul weeps but silence is my guide.
“I am going to open your ass.”
“No” I whisper
“Do not speak. You have lost this luxury. You have lost yourself tonight. I come to seek you, to see if you can be found. Your flesh is beautiful but mine to take.”
His two hands round the skin of my buttocks, cradling me with an anchored tenderness that I fear will give way too soon. And so it does as he spreads me apart. Shakes my flesh with his hands, lifts my ass and widens my flesh.
“Please.” I weep
“Silence. Open your ass.”
“No”
But I am caught. He has me. He spreads my sex, my ass with a hardness unknown before. A force that I do not recognize. He pulls me open wide with his hands to expose me. I stand revealed. He does not move but holds me open, this statue I have become, forced in this exposure, my sex and my ass wide and held open in stillness. The night looking into my body until I think I will collapse. For whom does he show me? For whom does he expose me like this?
“I can hold you here for a very long time. This is your punishment. Now, open yourself for me. Take your hands from the wall. Keep your back arched, your legs wide. Put your hands on mine.”
I do as he says and balance my face and chest against the wall as I lower my hands, reach behind me and cover his hands with mine.
“Feel your sex.”
I obey and reach down to this opening, this vessel, this wet flesh that is mine. He pulls me harder now, and I ride on the edges of a slow pain. His strength frightens me as he commands me to feel the opening of my flesh, the opening of my loins, the opening of my woman, the opening of my soul.
“Now, when I take my hands away you will hold yourself open for me.”
“Yes” And I do.
“Open these disobedient holes of your woman, of your slavery. Show me your insides.”
He walks away behind me as I hold myself wide to him. I pull my flesh out, my buttocks hard until I feel the stinging hurt that he has left on my spreading sex. I am the river through which this submission flows. I am the woman on the floor of the stony cave with no words but my grunting forgiveness, no learned postures of societal perfection, societal walls and entrapments, no sense but that which opens my sex, no feelings but that which swells my carnal pleasure, for it is not my mouth he spreads to silence my words, it is not my hands he binds to halt my selfish struggle, my resistance he knows will give me pleasure, it is not my eyes he blinds to quiet my mind and focus the pointed pain, it is not the whip he wields to punish and to love my flesh and raise me higher, it is not the cane he strikes upon my flanks and up onto the delicate swells of my sex, it is not the orgasm he withholds. It is this. That I should stand so prone, the vast cavern of my soul open in the red flesh he beholds; that I should take my own ass, my own skin, my own woman vessel and spread it out to his willing; that I should spread my pussy, my holes, my ass, my clitoris, my lips swollen and wet forced open, flayed open by my own hands, my own obedience, my own that he commands for the night to witness, his bidding to take, his forbearance to garner, his hand to strike, his power to woo the last of my liquid self open this vulnerable chasm that is my wet and wanting, unfastened misbehaved ill-disciplined wayward cunt. For all this I lift my ass higher, I arch my back deeper, I raise my toes within my stiletto-ed heels to the full length of my widening legs and in silence I beg him to take me in, to take me down, to force his way, to show me, to please find me, to release me, to forgive me.
His voice is low and deliberate, slow and seething.
“You bare yourself to me. You stand and expose this sex of yours to me. You brave each moment not knowing if I should strike you. And yet you have failed to keep your word. Do you think this magic that has laid itself before us, you and me exists alone? How easily you obey me. How quickly your fear has passed. I see you losing yourself in this fine torture. I see you raise yourself. No, don’t move. Keep your hands on your ass and spread yourself. Now. Wider. Wider for me. And you will stand in this position exposed until I beat you, until I beat your disloyal flesh.”
His words strike me. I am sinking again and yet I withstand the tidal flow.
“But first you will answer me. Tonight I bade you farewell with the knowledge of your true submission to me. That before me had knelt this brave soul of beauty, now beset to emerge from our sheltered rooms, now to test this seemingly impenetrable world of our creation, to step out into the vastness of outside if only to match and make stronger our own inside. Tell me, as you are spread here. As you are mine here. Tell me with a word. Only one word do I allow you to utter. Tell me.”
I breathe out. I know this is the only chance that will become me here. I know the realness of my submission to him. It is palpable and the air is lofty.
“Overcome.” I whisper.
And in one quick movement that cuts the silence of the air, his hand strikes down on my open flesh. I scream in shock. Again he strikes me. My hands lose their grasp on my sex and I fall to the ground spun around, body twisted to face him. He takes my arm and lifts me to him, and heaves into me with violent love. He lifts me into his arms then. He holds me tightly, tightly like a magnificent animal. I close my eyes into his shoulder and taste the scent of him. I slowly look up into his burning eyes and I wish to hold his fire stare, but the reflection of our bodies in a window compels me to turn, for there is movement beside the flowing curtains pulled apart now. He shakes me and takes me in as if to never let me go. I look from his eyes to the soft reflection in the long narrow window next to the heavy door, the door whose entrance laid forbidden to me hours before. I see the glow of a figure standing proudly between the open fabric. I see the curve of her hips then, the tightly corset-ed waist, the white of her pearls and the slow fire glint of pleasure in her luminous eyes. Lady Bisset stares down at me like a mirage. And now I know for whom I have shown myself. Now I know for whom I have laid bare. Now I know for what pleasure he devised my exposure. I want to crawl into him or to run and free myself from a torture I cannot resist. And like the summoning of the ghosts whose vaporous venom I seek to drink, I do not speak or struggle as he turns toward the door and holds me to his sacrifice. We stand before this entrance. The doorway. This crossing whose threshold will be the making of me for which I will never be the same. And then like the dawn that breaks the barrier of night, I reach my hand to the iron knocker, take its cold skin in my fist and with cries to match this ardent call to surrender, do I raise this heavy iron circle and lay it thrice down upon the sounding with the force of my will, the rapture of my captivity, the fury of this surrender.


Lady E.
October 2006