She has had a bad day, one comprised of large-scale professional setbacks and laced with innumerable personal squabbles and petty grievances. It is a day that included a pot of coffee doused over her clothes, and the clandestine hiring of an outsider for a newly created position above her. It ended with her walking out to her car, hissing into her phone. "I want you kneeling beside the cross when I get home."
He’s had a pretty bad day too, but he’s home from work before she is. Usually, he’s supposed to greet her at the door, but on bad days, days where she has to work through her traumas, she has him wait beside her cross. She says that she doesn't want to see him when she gets home. She needs a minute to adjust, to change shoes and shed her coat, to become the person she wants to be instead of the one her job requires. She has him wait there because if she sees him at the door, she may rush things, and then the whole process will take longer.
Now he waits on his knees in the spare bedroom where no guest has ever slept.
He hears her come in, the rush of air off the door is like a malevolent force surging through the house. He hears her go to the kitchen, where he has left an open bottle and freshly poured glass of Chardonnay. He hears her feet coming up the stairs. They walk past this room, down the hall to the bedroom.
Moments later he hears them walking back. His stomach tightens.
They are going to play the bad day game.
He keeps his eyes lowered as she walks in. In this room his eyes are to live on the floor. She's wearing a pair of shiny black vinyl ballet flats. They’re both comfy and alluring. She wears them out in the world when she wants to tease him.
She says nothing, merely guiding him to the cross. She gently binds his hands and feet with padded leather cuffs. He is facing the cross leaving his back exposed to the room.
He hears her lay out her implements on a coffee table behind him. He can guess what they are. He has played this game before. It's a scary game.
She begins by rubbing him up and down, all over his back and bottom. This is the first stage of the game. Her hands delve ever more deeply into his erogenous zones. Occasionally she even brushes against his cock, but always as if by accident. It took him a few times before he realized just how purposeful her accidental touches are. He knows that this stage is to open him up, to focus his mind on taking what she gives, to fill his thoughts with his own skin. As usual he's practically hard by the time she finishes.
Her face leans very close to his, her breasts press into his shoulder. He draws a deep breath.
"Just relax, baby, I need a while tonight."
"Yes, Mistress."
She starts with a light flogger, working over his back, ass and shoulders. The flogger is so insubstantial that she can't really hurt him with it. These strokes are meant to warm up her arm. They land fast and break like a summer breeze on a stone wall.
She puts down the light flogger to begin in earnest. She selects a heavy flogger, her favorite. It's black and thuddy, with wide leather tails. She lays into him with abandon. This flogger hurts more, but not too much, she can hit him really hard and the pain is still fairly light. Over time, however, there is a slow, mounting ache that fills his skin.
She’s quiet while she does this, retreating into her own head. This part is just for her. This beating is about summoning, exorcising and purging her demons. He has seen the look in her eyes during this phase, although he can’t see it now. Brow furrowed, looking through him. Her flogger spinning wildly. He has seen the look of peace that reaches her when she has done enough. He has seen how her pursed lips begin to go slack, and felt how the knots in her shoulders drain out of the end of the flogger. He knows that won't come quickly tonight.
She will take several shots, building the power with each one. Then she will pause. She will come close and touch him. She will rub his buttocks. She will reach between his legs, accidentally or the other kind of on purpose. The touches feel very good. Each is designed to lure him back, to refocus his mind on the feelings in his nerves, to make him yearn for more of her pleasure, to lower his guard. When she feels his body lean into her, she will strike.
In a short time, the sensations begin to overwhelm his brain’s ability to manage them. He breathes hard, he is warm all over. He trembles. He shivers. He whimpers.
"Silence, slave."
Today is an especially bad day, the game goes on and on, working him up and beating him down. He loses sense of how long they’ve been playing. The ache rises and then seems to fall, or maybe it’s his ability to resist the ache that has fallen. By the end she's hitting him hard enough to make him really hurt, to fear the flogger, to shrink from it. But every time he does, her hand is there, leading him back to the spot under her aim. Her hand takes his mind and concentrates it on the place that is about to be struck.
Again and again.
Finally, he hears her take a deep, vital breath, the kind someone draws in a soap commercial.
She is close to him.
"That was good, you took that good little whore."
"Thank you, Mistress."
"Are you ready for the next part?"
He gulps. The next part is much harder.
“Yes, Mistress.”
Once she’s worked through her anger and channeled that energy into the flogger, she wants catharsis. She wants to purge them both, boil it over and let it all come out. And for catharsis, she likes to work quickly.
She picks up the cane. He hears it cut the air three times in a vaguely melodic phrase of notes.
"Are you ready, slave?"
"Yes, Mistress."
"You will thank me for each stroke."
"Yes, Mistress."
The first slices the air, striking his ass so fast that he yet hasn't inhaled after speaking. His yelp of pain is sucked down his throat as he does. He knows he can’t take much of this pain. He knows the emotion will overwhelm him soon.
Then, "Thank you, Mistress."
This game is one of the first she taught him. But it doesn't really work to full potential unless they have both had bad days. When that's the case, the catharsis can be much deeper. Bad days are about a loss of control. However, there are multiple ways to get it back. The most intense are realized not through destruction, but through creation. The power to heal, to fix, is the strongest form of control. Anyone can destroy, only Gods and Goddesses can resurrect.
"Tell me about your day?"
She punctuates the sentence with a second cane strike. He gasps.
"Thank you Mistress." He sucks air. "That new supervisor, she blamed one of her mistakes on me again, only this time it was in an email that got sent to the whole team. In all caps!"
"That fucking bitch!"
She strikes again.
He lets out an agonized moan. "Thank you, Mistress.”
“So what did you do?”
“I yelled at her about it. We got in a big fight in the hallway.”
“You did what?” There is a subtle change in her tone. Her playful meanness is colored by a real displeasure with him.
“I…”
“I heard what you said.” She cuts him off. “Never fight at work, slave. Never. It just makes you look bad, no matter how right you are. It makes you weak. It puts you in the position of depending on the sympathy of others.”
She strikes.
“Thank you, Mistress.”
“So then what happened?”
“I talked to my boss, and he understood. Everyone in the unit knew I was right and she was wrong… But I still had to eat shit to her. I had to write her a long email, detailing all the shit I was about to eat and then proceed to eat said shit, while describing how great it tasted.” He says it all with a despairing air of defeat. It’s too bad he can’t see her stifle a giggle.
“See what I mean. Never fight at work.”
She strikes again.
“Yes, Mistress. Thank you.”
Her previous playful tone returns. “Still, it’s understandable. You were right, and she was wrong. That fucking cunt. People like that make me so mad. Like she earned some fucking privilege to be terrible at her job.”
She strikes him again, quicker, sharper, harder than before. He lets out a real yell. He can’t hold it in. It pushes out of him like a stomach full of vomit. He pants afterwards, struggling to breathe.
Softly she says, “That’s it, deep breaths, you can take this, boy.” Then her anger returns. “I mean who the fuck does she think she is? Who the fuck does she think you are? Her slave? Her fucking slave?”
She strikes harder still. He screams, gasping to recover after it.
“Thank you, Mistress.”
“You’re not her fucking slave!”
She strikes him so hard that he feels his eyes begin to water.
“Thank you, Mistress.”
“You’re my fucking slave!”
She grabs a fistful of his hair and hits him with the cane.
He chokes on his words. “Thank you… Mistress…”
She fires off three fast cane strokes. She has learned to read his breaking point.
“Ungh!!!” He moans out, now too weak and too hurt to scream.
She lets out a soft, sigh of pleasure. “What are you?”
She strikes.
“Your slave, Mistress.”
She strikes instantly, harder than ever and the tears start to build in his eyelids.
“You didn’t say thank you!”
“Thank you, Mistress”
“What are you?”
“Your slave.”
She strikes again, and again he moans in agony. The tears begin to roll down his face.
“Thank you, Mistress.”
“What?”
“Your slave.”
Again. As hard as she has ever hit him. Hard enough to remember forever. He shrieks so loud the windows rattle.
“I can’t hear you!”
“Your slave, Mistress. I’m your slave!” He is sobbing, shuddering, crumbling. “Please, I’m your slave, Mistress. I’m your slave.”
Her hand again finds his hair and pulls his ear to her lips. He can hear her breathing, panting. Her voice is husky and satiated.
“That’s right, slave. You are mine. And now, I’m going to fuck you like I own you. I’m going to make you come so hard, you’ll never forget whose slave you are.”
He tries to speak, but his sobs are in the way, so he just nods, his red eyes pleading with her.
“So that way, you’ll be able to smile at her, and do everything she says. Because it won’t matter, you’ll know you still belong to me. Everyone at work will be so impressed with you, with how calm and professional you are. When she inevitably gets fired for incompetence, you’ll be able to take over her job, because everyone will know that you were doing it all along.”
“Yes, Mistress.”
“Good boy.”
In the time between wake and sleep, when they lie together in bed, he will offer advice on her workplace dilemma. He will listen to the full details and mull the options. He will come up with several trenchant and useful recommendations, all of which bring her great comfort. Granted, compared to her recommendations, his will be offered in a much less forceful tone.