Encounter with Terror

Last weekend, Master ordered a new whip. He likes a whip maker named Arturo, who makes whips that seem to be intended for the "non-kinky" market, and that seems to keep his products in a price range that is way more reasonable than what similar items cost in "the lifestyle."


Himself has been pining away for an 8-plait rubber bullwhip that Arturo makes, and so Saturday morning, He placed the order -- and I began a spin into complete terror and despair.


Whips scare the crap out of me, and that is the plain, old, garden variety of whip -- made from leather. Rubber is a material that, in my experience, is way more wicked than almost anything else that impact play implements get made out of. Rubber sticks to the skin when it hits, and it then pulls the skin with it when it pulls away. The kind of damage that rubber does is much more intense and more long lasting than leather or wood or acrylics... A rubber bullwhip seems beyond my capacity to actually imagine, and serious contemplation of that combination takes me to a place that is beyond panic. Beginning shortly after He placed that order on Saturday morning, I was obsessively contemplating the impending reality of a RUBBER BULLWHIP, and it didn't take me very long to get past panic and all the way to terror and utter and complete despair.


But I didn't say anything to Him. He was so delighted in His purchase, and I am His slave. I don't say, "no." I work hard to please Him, to do what He wants me to do. I understand that, in our dynamic, He decides how and when we will play, and with what. None of this pivots around my pleasure or my desires. It is for me to submit; to obey; to trust... So I didn't tell Him about what I was feeling -- I didn't want to be seen as trying to "top from the bottom," and I was acutely aware of His distaste for anything that even remotely appears to be "service topping."

We went to bed late on Saturday evening, and He dropped almost instantly into a deep sleep. I laid there in the darkness, and the RUBBER BULLWHIP loomed larger and larger and larger in my imagination. I know how whips cut and burn, and I know how rubber sticks and pulls. A RUBBER BULLWHIP would, I was absolutely certain, pull great strips of skin right off. I couldn't sleep. I could barely breathe. My heart was pounding wildly in my chest. Tears simply streamed down my face as I tried to keep from sobbing out loud. In my mind, I saw myself, standing under the lash of the RUBBER BULLWHIP -- skin being flayed from my body; blood running down my legs and back and pooling at my feet; knowing that I must stay in position; knowing that I must not make too much noise; knowing that I would die (really and not metaphorically) before it was all over.

It all made me very sad. Very sad. I mourned the years ahead that we would not have together. I wondered why He wanted to kill me when He'd always seemed to be completely thrilled with having me in His life. I wondered what it was that I'd done or not done that had changed things to make that happen. I went round and round with the internal voice that wanted to declare that "it wasn't fair," explaining the dynamic and the agreement I'd made and how that impacted the notion of "fair." Lying there, in the dark, awash in panic and misery, completely unable to sleep, I began to formulate a list of things that I needed to get done in the few days I had before the RUBBER BULLWHIP would be delivered: laundry, final phone calls to my son and daughter, some sort of legal transferal of the deeds to my condo and my car so they could belong to Master after I was gone, batteries in the smoke detectors, one more trip through His closet to make sure everything is in order... What a crazy hodge-podge of "chores!"

By Sunday morning, I was limp; exhausted both physically and emotionally. I wasn't angry, but I was completely without any hope. There wasn't one shred of belief in me that I'd be able to survive what was coming, and no thought to do anything to change my fate. I was completely resigned. All that was left of the emotional storm I'd been through was a slow, steady, seemingly inexhaustible stream of tears.

When He woke up, all fresh and rested and ready to go, He found me completely wrung out; compliant but without any energy or enthusiasm for anything. I was completely into a "whatever -- nothing matters anyway" state of mind.

He read the despair in my eyes immediately and demanded to know what was wrong. At first, all I could do was burrow into His chest and shiver. It wasn't the response He was looking for, and eventually, I heard that tone of command that inevitably brings me straight to whatever is demanded: "What's wrong? Tell me!"

Five words, spoken in a tiny, and very tired voice: "I don't want to die."

"What!?!?! What are you talking about? What is wrong with you?" And, so I told Him. Told Him all of it. My fear; my certainty of the outcome; my confusion as to His reasons; the whole list of things that I needed to get done before... well, before; and my utter and total saddness at all of it.

I think He might have laughed except that I was so clearly serious, and in such a state. He pulled me in very close, and began to reassure me, as if He believed that all of my craziness was, in fact, not crazy. Carefully, step by step, He walked me through the logic of all of it; He loved me -- always and all ways; would never harm me; had ordered the whip because it was such a great deal, and because He liked it; had never ever hit me with the one bullwhip we already own... so why would I believe He intended to use this one on me? It was a tapestry of reasoning and logic that began to pull me slowly back into a contemplation of the possibility that I might not be at the end of my life (and yes I know how melodramatic that sounds -- welcome to my sometimes wild internal universe).

Finally, sensing (I think) that I was through the crisis I'd created in my mind, He asked me, "Why are you still here? Why didn't you leave? How is this "protecting Master's property?"

I just looked at Him, incredulously, tears springing afresh -- "I can't leave! Where would I go? I don't know what I would do!" The idea that I would somehow leave was beyond my ability to even conceptualize. It had never once, through all the long and scary hours of the night, crossed my mind...

Which brings me to the point of this whole long, pitiful tale: slavery is about relinquishing control. It is as simple as this: all the decisions are now His. Often, when someone wants to get into a tussle with one of us who claim the title "slave," there will be the proposition that we would surely draw the line at some point -- family, work, physical injury, or death. I've always resisted getting into that sort of hypothetical discussion, because I don't think there is anyway for any of us to know for sure what we would do in the event we came to be pressed in some atypical and very difficult fashion. I've watched others wrestle with their own enconters, and I know that the outcomes are as unpredictable and variable as the people involved. There is no pattern, no prescription, and no "one size fits all." Giving up control, as it turns out, is a risky business. I only know that I encountered my own terror, all alone in the depths of the night, and I stayed put. It is a piece of information about the nature of our dynamic that I've never had before.

swan