Please Don't Beat Me, Anymore.

Content Warning; Consensual Non-consent, Total Power Exchange and General Morbidity.

.....

I can see him accumulate an arsenal of implements on the bed but my brain is too foggy to internalise what is happening. I understand, completely, that he is putting these things out to hit me, but absolutely no part of me is willing to acknowledge that possibility as real. I’m not backing off in a panic, it just doesn’t feel like we are even in the same room, or realm. I feel a sanguineous safety, like I *know* that there is no way this execution will be carried out today, but he doesn’t. I feel so confident in my prognostication that I am not even sure I need to discuss it with him in order to ensure it. He puts out the flogger made of wires, the cane that always feels like it is one good stroke away from breaking and a folded-up section of the bright, green garden hose.

“I don’t think you should beat me anymore,” I say to him.
He sniggers.

“How cute,” he says, slamming the flogger into the mattress, “Fortunately, I don’t need your input on what I *should* do to you. You’re welcome to continue to feel like I shouldn’t beat you, while I am beating you.”

He gestures for me to come over to him, but I don’t feel like moving. I feel a strange impatience, an entitled impatience, I feel like I have already decided that he shouldn’t do this and that should mean he won’t. Usually, the reminder that I may not exercise my will is alluring, I want to be reminded that I chose to outsource my will to this person, but today, I feel like I would like a reminder of a different kind. I just want him to show me an ounce of compassion. I have been begging for it, for days. Even if he does eventually beat me, I want him to tell me that he won’t because I asked him not to. I just need to see a single sign that he sees how much I am suffering and that I *deserve* just a little bit of his consideration.

“You’re not moving,” he says.

“I can’t,” I tell him.

I expect him to launch at me but he calmly walks over to where I am seated, instead, and I feel a surge of hope inside my heart. I kneel up so I am able to look at him and put my head against his chest. He doesn't put his arms around me, but he doesn't push me away, either.

"What's the matter with you?" He asks, his tone is impenetrable, always unchanging, I have no idea what he is feeling.

"I can't.." I start, but fall silent, because I can't.

I want to explain something to him, and even though I feel like I have been trying, it's not going through. Two days ago, he was beating me, and at one point, I told him that I was *petrified*. I used that word deliberately, not a choice made for lexical ornamentation, I said it because that's exactly what I meant. I was ossified in fright. I turned so pervasively to stone that I stopped being able to react to his blows in any way, I felt them on my skin but then they dissipated into vapour before they ever got to me, as if they were moving outward from my body, instead of inward. I could give him no indication of how much I was hurting and for two hours, I stood silently under assault, I swear, the way I remember it, I wasn't even breathing. I have no idea how that night ended, but I know I never lost consciousness. How is that possible? I remember the colour of the pants I was wearing when I took an ill-fated road-trip with my grandfather to an as-yet unconstructed dam in the year 2002, how can I not remember what happened just two nights ago? The pants were red because my mother hated me, but the night, is hazy. I woke up still petrified, and the feeling hasn't left me. It feels like a part of my heart is frostbitten, even thawing it, doesn't restore the sentience.

"Tell me why you don't want me to beat you," he demands.

"I am concerned that if you do, I will try to fight you in some way," I say.

He pushes me away and looks me in the face, he blinks slowly, as if he is giving me time to understand the gravity of what I have said. It is the truth, I am not trying to goad or bait him at all. I have poor timing with sincerity, but I really just want to tell him the truth. I sense the possibility of resistance and I don't want it to manifest in reality.

"Do you think it was wise to tell me the truth right now?" He asks, as if to give me an out.

"Yes," I confirm, because it is still, the truth.

The man does not like retort. He does not appreciate resistance and the extent of what he considers resistance is pretty unhinged. In his conception of the world, pushing back against him is the same as *thinking about* pushing back against him.

"You want to fight me?" He asks, pushing the hair off my face, like he does when he is about to slap me.

"I don't *want* to fight you, but I feel like I will," I admit, and continue, "Even right now, you're just standing in front of me and I want to push you and beat against your chest."

"Have you lost your mind?" He asks, genuinely surprised.

I am surprised as well. No one is making me say any of this.

"I'll tell you what, I won't beat you," he continues, and I start to feel a crack in the ice.

"You won't?" I ask, almost beaming.

"No," he says, gripping my throat, "I'll just hurt you a different way, let's see if you really are going to fight me."

I should have seen it coming. Semantics. It's infuriating when he plays my games with me, and wins. It's impressive but it is infuriating.

He pulls me by my hair and pushes me onto the bed. I suddenly feel so fatigued that I just let him move my body, until I am lying on my back, with my legs apart. He picks up the garden hose and before I even have the chance to recoil from what he is planning to do with it, he is stuffing it up my cunt.

"Don't be shy," he says, forcing its jagged folds and crevices so deep inside me, "Why don't you fucking fight me now?"

I don't want to fight anymore. I never even wanted to fight at all. I plead with him to stop, but with each passing breath, every plea feels more pointless. Each time I beg him to stop, he screams at me to fight him. He doesn't usually scream, he is not that person, and even though I know he is doing it for effect, this imitation-anger is so terrifying, and so reminiscent of monsters I killed and buried inside me, it is making my head spin so hard, I feel nauseated.

"You don't understand what you are doing to me," I finally muster.

He leans over me, his hand still gripping the hose and fucking me, as he looks into my eyes.

"No, you refuse to accept that I see everything that you are going through and I am still choosing to put you through more because that is what you deserve," he says with the intonation of a nail in a coffin, "And because, I can."

You ever feel your body give up? You ever experience resignation in your veins and defeat in your muscles? I don't know what's worse, this feeling, or the realisation that I am addicted to this feeling. I feel myself sink into the feeling. I feel like I am walking through a hallway, surrounded by locked doors, and I can hear the inmates of those prisons, banging on the doors to be let out, yet I keep walking as if their agony is merely the ambient noise to this track. Something inside me is screaming, but it doesn't feel real anymore, nothing feels real anymore. He continues to assault me with the pipe I once bought, but it doesn't feel real, maybe I never picked it out of the pile in the hardware store. He doesn't feel real either, maybe this madness is just a manifestation of my devolution and all the cruelty I see isn't even there. I don't feel real, maybe I'm just a figment of the imagination of a deranged writer in a basement and tomorrow they will erase me.

Tomorrow.

Tomorrow I won't remember any of this, will I? Tomorrow this violation of my cunt that guts me will feel like nothing but residual soreness. Tomorrow, I won't remember how I yearned for his compassion and how misguided that was. Tomorrow, I will have forgotten this feeling, there is some solace in that. Tomorrow, I will just wake up thoughtless and petrified.

I won't remember any of this.

But I will remember one thing.

I think I'll remember not to fight him.