A Penitent Season: Day 2

Note: This is a series of 14-days of erotic penance written in real-time available exclusively to my patrons. It's my our observation of a real fucked up version of Lent. You can access the entire series at this tag.

...

Day 2.

I overslept this morning. I have no idea how it happened. I woke up at four-thirty and I stayed awake for almost an hour, writing and watching him sleep, then I dozed off with my phone in my hand. Either my alarm didn't go off or I didn't hear it, but either way, this is insanity to me. This is only the second time in my life that I can recall oversleeping. I woke up and ran out of bed. The kid was alarmed that I had managed to get off schedule and I am a little afraid now that relaxation will make me unproductive, unreliable and stupid. I know that is the wrong approach but honestly, I think people who have the same personality as me will understand how difficult it is to believe that things will work out without your active, back-breaking effort. Everybody loves to poke fun at us and maybe even feel sorry for us because we appear to be incapable of enjoying life (which is not true, some us do genuinely find our pleasure in the study of verbs and the solutions of crossword puzzles), but when the building is on fire they all come looking for us. Why do you think we can help when the building is on fire? It's because we've been driven, anal and prepared on a daily basis. It's a big deal to us when we oversleep. We cannot be sanguine in this place. If it seems anodyne, that is only to you.

...

He fucked me. It was unpleasant. However, that is not as relevant as the fact that the energy seems different between us. It is not quite like living with a parent nor really even living with your master, it's like living with your executioner. Your jailer. Your warden. Your less-than-benevolent priest. I feel emboldened to prostrate my penance before him. I want to crawl on the floor until my knees bleed so he can see that I know what I deserve. I want to latibulate, every single time he finishes up with me, I want to beg him to force me into the corner and leave me there to think about how terrible one would have to be to deserve this treatment. This feeling of deserving, it circumvents dread in a way. When he hurts me, I often get to the place of fear eventually, but there is a difference in the flavour of this torture. I feel less afraid, more unfortunate. Less fearful, more wretched. Even though he doesn't always stop, I always beg him to stop freely if that is what I want, but now I feel disallowed from feeling like I have that right.

I have been thinking about why I wouldn't beg for mercy last night. When a sinner brings herself for absolution, she may beg for mercy, because the forgiveness of God seems to come from a place of mercy. There seems to be this idea that you can *almost* earn it, but the final measure of forgiveness is a result of the grace of God. Their mercy. More than you deserve. I haven't brought myself for absolution though. This is not that part of the story yet. I don't think that part of the story exists in my version of the tale. I have brought myself for atonement and in atonement there seems to be no room for mercy, it seems not just distasteful to ask but defeating of the purpose.

I cannot ask for mercy.

I spent the morning working and when I came back into the bedroom, he was sitting upright against the headboard and reading.

"What are you reading?" I asked him.

"You," he said.

It is always thrilling to hear anyone say that.

"Do you like it?" I asked.

He pushed the quilt off his legs and brandished the erection in his shorts. It was less thrilling to see that, but only because it reminds me that my words are worthwhile for his pleasure, I don't think I need to be reminded of that. I want to strangle my ego and all pride until they are blue in the face, I want to feel the life slip out of those facets of me. He snapped his fingers and pointed at his cock, I crawled onto the bed and reached inside his clothes to put him in my mouth. I feel ashamed when he needs me for things, I wish I could give him a mouth more worthy. I feel like I shouldn't be allowed to see him in states of arousal or need, they feel so private and my presence in them feels so underserved, but I do love sucking his cock. It's the scent that intoxicates me, the first time I ever put my face into his crotch, I was hooked on it like a drug. I sniff and yearn like a rabid animal.

I sucked his cock while he read, it was so different from when I sucked his cock the day before, he was trying to bore a hole in my head that day, but today, he was happy to lay back, while I savoured every inch of his cock. I let myself get lost in it, the skin so soft against my lips yet so taut and firm. There is a tactile pleasure to feeling it inside your mouth.

"Take your clothes off," he said, kicking my face to move me aside.

Until then I had forgotten that I was preparing the weapon of my own destruction, perhaps allowing myself to believe that I could drink him down my throat and escape the penetration into my cunt. The reminder was like being doused in a batch of noisome water, the kind that remains in vases when flowers die. I began to undress, slower than I should have, but quick enough that he wasn't perturbed.

"Just lose the pants, actually," he said, standing against the bed and waiting, "What do I need with your body, it's not like I'm about to derive any pleasure from seeing your parts."

I pulled my pants to the floor and tried to avoid thinking about those words. This pithy, unnecessary commentary isn't for the moment, he leaves it in my brain to fester, it will have its moment of relevance, probably when I feel most safe from it. He fucked me hard and quick, holding my wrists behind my back while I sobbed into the bed. What a thing it is, to fear being fucked by the person you love the most, I wouldn't change it for the world.

After he finished, I stayed there for a while.

And when I stood up, I fell.

...


He called me disappointing after he beat my back with his belt. I stood up from my desk and went to the bathroom, and when I came back he was standing beside the bed with his belt folded up in his hand.

"It's that time of the day," he said to me, gesturing to the expanse of sheets in front of him, "Take off your shirt."

*That time of day.* This man is so pedantic that in one day he has created an altered routine of pleasure and in it, at 1300 hours, he must beat me. I think I can predict the routine with some accuracy already: sexual torment in the morning, beat me in the afternoon, threatening and foreshadowing elements of torture in the evening in the evening then beat me more elaborately again at night and conduct some psychological warfare right before I fall asleep. I could be wrong, he will probably alter the routine at some point. I wonder if this is too much torture for one person to endure every day, I suppose I shall find out.

I am surprised by how hard he whipped my back with his belt. Usually, he will beat me for a couple of hours with an implement like that, but in forty minutes this afternoon he reduced me to a complete mess. I think I take for granted the comfort of being walked into the pain gently. When he started, he was already at a hundred, that's how he has been since yesterday. He won't give me a little time to warm up, he won't give me a moment to adjust, I didn't realise how much that really helps now that he won't do it anymore. It was just forty minutes, 2400 seconds, yet it was the worst beating I have ever gotten from that belt. I was crying. For the most part, when I am being hurt, I think about how much more of this I want, but all I could think about this afternoon was how much I wanted him to stop. There was a moment, a moment I suppressed under a silent scream directed into the memory foam, when I was indignant, I almost expressed some annoyance and anger out loud. As if I had room to take issue with beating a person this way, but as soon as that moment passed, I felt worse than before. That sentiment still feels like a single hair stuck to my skin in front of my eye, I can trying to push it aside, and failing that, I keep trying to explain to myself that a single strand couldn't possibly cause me this much distress, but it does. It's debilitating to my calm.

I know what I have done. If I had expressed my indignation out loud, I wouldn't be writing right now, I would still be bent over that bed having the life beaten out of me, and I understand the temptation to say that I don't need to be checked for something I didn't do, but I know him too. I know he would feel the same way as I do. It's because when he punishes me for behaving in ways that resemble human, it's not just for manifesting those reactions, he is doing it for even thinking about them. He would punish me as hard for thinking of screaming or wanting to do it, as he would for actually doing it. I know that if I tell him of my mental repose from exemplary behaviour, he would be immediately displeased and now it feels like something I am keeping.

I noticed I process and manifest a lot of my pain through my hands. There had to be something. It has to go somewhere and since he has criminalized screams, condemned audible whimpers, stigmatised moving, restricted crying and is actively looking down upon breathing too hard, my hands are all that remain. I grip, squeeze, scratch, hold and rub things a lot when he beats me. I was holding onto a pillow this afternoon and I wondered what I would do if he forced me to keep my hands perfectly still and outstretched while he hurt me. Even the thought was mortifying, but only because it carries such inevitability. My favourite thing about him, about us, is that the source of ideas is a nebulous mire, I can never tell if I am responsible for something he is doing to me, or he is. Am I responsible for the pain that will befall me when I tell him I had *thoughts* of revolt or is he? Whose decision will that punitive act have been? I cannot figure it out.

I will tell him, though. I know that. I will put it on the list. The list was my idea, all lists are always my idea, essentially if it's an idea that involves writing something, it's my idea. I proposed I make a list every day of things for which I think I should be punished. It's a psychological experiment. I want to find my guilt. Not things he would want to punish me for, not things based on arbitrary rules that are applicable in power exchange relationships, but things that drive the sense of guilt that leads me to this place where I am so sorry that I had to express it by turning my suffering into penance, into a season, an art project and all of my sex life. It's a bit extreme even for sex-and-kink positive mindsets. I figured by associating the telling markers of arousal to a specific feature of  guilt-diagnosis, I will be able to identify the repository of my guilt. The guilt I feel about experiencing an emotion akin to anger, it is not a construct borne from my arousal, the narrative around it, that's all colour and masturbatory fodder, but the source of the guilt that is what I want to find. I am uncomfortable with feeling angry, it feels like a sickness in my body and even short bouts of completely non-destructive anger that I don't even express and reason through instead makes me feel like I should have a pill and a cleanse to rid myself of that feeling. Punishment is cleansing. Or at least, i have convinced myself of that, and I'm keeping that belief because if you had as much fun as I do getting my ass beat and my soul crushed, you would keep it too.

I screamed once at the end of his beating. He hit me so hard I lost my footing even though I was bent over with my feet firmly on the floor. My guilt about that is not as potent or diagnostic, I still want to be punished for it, and he did, but it won't make the list.

He called me disappointing because I screamed once and told me he hoped I wouldn't be as disappointing later at night. I think his blade is too trenchant for its own good, or mine. It's too trenchant for my good.

...

When we were putting lunch together in the kitchen, I was so overwhelmed by an emotion so granular, I don't think they've made a term for it yet.

"I feel like I cannot stand on my feet around you," I told him as he brought cutlery from the other end of the kitchen.

"Crawl, then," he said.

It was all the permission I needed to drop to the floor. It has never felt so much like home before, the sheer act of being on my hands and knees felt like being touched by a lover in places only they can find on your body. He walked over to where I was, beside the counter with the plates and he kicked me out of the way.

"If you're going to crawl, do not get in my way," he said, so unimpressed with my gestures of subservience, they feel completely selfish.

I crawled behind him to the table. I was hurt when he asked me to sit on the chair and eat.

...

I asked him not to touch my cunt with his fingers except to hurt it on the insides. He was fucking me with a dildo and he stopped for a second to graze my skin and my clitoris. It felt so wrong. It's not that I don't like it when he touches me like that, it's quite the contrary, it's the only sexual thing he does to my body that makes me feel like he sees me as a human being, a lover even, not just his slave.

But I feel like I should have to give up my pleasures.

I commit a little too well to constructs, I'm afraid. I cannot engage in a minor dalliance, it has to be a complete affairs that leaves my world annihilated. That's why I do any of it. It would be counter-productive to choose not to commit. It seems like Lent requires a sacrifice of my pleasures and his fingers are one of the most potent sources of my pleasure. I could give up orgasms but for me orgasms are like a teetotaler giving up alcohol.  It's not something I often do and when I do there is almost nothing for me there. His fingers though, when they touch me and tease me, allowing me to actively swim in the cast expanses of arousal in all of its shades, that's where I derive all of my direct, sexual pleasure. I should have to give that up.

So, I asked.

He agreed immediately. Usually, he may have chided me for chiming in with my own idea at that moment and in contradiction to what he was doing but I think he sees something I see as well. Penance is internally driven. It's not about what he thinks I deserve, it's about what I think I deserve.

This is what I deserve.

...

I pulled my own hair. I hadn't done that in a very long time. I was lying on the floor, on my back, and he was kicking me with his boots. He walked around me in circles, stepping on my hands, grinding into my toes, kicking my arms, sides, thighs and shoulders, stepping on my breasts and my cunt. I screamed at the second kick, it was not possible for me not to do it. He has kicked me before, in the same boots too, but never so hard. There wasn't even an intervening period where I could pretend to enjoy it. He has stepped on my hands and feet before but never with all of his weight.  It felt like he was crushing them. Did you even know hands could bruise?

It was still unacceptable to him that I screamed. He kicked me four times in response to my scream, each time on my left thigh and I thought for sure that I would die. I made it to the third kick in relative silence but at the fourth one I screamed so loudly the dog came over to our bedroom and started scratching at the door. He laughed at me and told me that no one was coming for me before reassuring the dog through the door. He leaned down over me and slapped me. Twice on each side and once in the mouth with the back of his hand, the way his knuckle hit my lip caused it to swell up instantly. Did you even know lips could bruise?

I started crying in the first five minutes of his violent assault. *Five minutes*. It started right after he hit me in the face, I had taken for granted that he wouldn't do that for a few days because my face still hasn't healed from Sunday. The thing about being slapped and hit in the face a lot is that it's not the potential bruises nor the swelling that is the real long-term problem, it's that each intense facial-beating fucks your skin up for at least five days and the pain of a bruise has nothing on the pain that lasts, the kind that's bone-deep, and it takes time to heal from both of those things. The moment I realised he wouldn't give me the simplest of comforts, cut me the most humane of corners, I really couldn't keep it in anymore. One slap in the jaw and I could feel it all the way inside my mandible. Did you even know bones could bruise?

I didn't scream after that. Well, I didn't scream out loud but I screamed in whispers. It's the most pathetic sound, it's a whisper but it's coming from harrowing depths of disbelief and terror. I suppose I should be grateful that he allowed me to scream in whispers. Sometimes it is hard to believe that he will keep going even though it is so, so clearly visible that I cannot take it. It breaks my heart a little every single time I realise exactly how cruel and cold he can be. Despite the fact that I cried so many tears, I got the floor wet, he didn't stop for one sympathetic moment. Despite the fact that I went hoarse from silent screaming, he didn't reduce the intensity of the pain he was causing me. Did you even know a heart could bruise?

I do.

I know exactly what it looks like when it does. He hit me so hard in my shoulder and when I put my hands together in prayer to beg, he decided it was unacceptable that I aspire to mercy so he hit me again, in the same spot, again and again, until the only course of action that remained to me was to pull my own hair. I pulled so hard, I plucked them out of the roots. For one fleeting moment, I wished I had the will to run away and lock myself in the bathroom, but I didn't, so I pulled my hair to distract from his pain.

"Let me do that for you," he said, displeased with the distraction I had found.

He pulled my hair.

Did you even know the scalp could bruise?

...