Fifty Shades of Submission (28 page)

She
shakes her head in silence, turns on her heel and slams the door in my face.

I go out into the courtyard and si
t down on the cold stone bench. A gentle north wind is blowing and the green hills in the distance are wrapped in a thin wreathe of mist. A few night stars still tremble in the pale sky.

My whole body is shaking uncontrollably.
I get up agitatedly and press my burning face against the cold stone wall. Everything that has happened so far between Saskia and I seems insignificant compared to what is happening now. She is serious about the Russian – very serious.

I feel
so utterly crushed that I suddenly began to sob uncontrollably like a child.

Lying on my bed in my cold monk’s cell
the fear of losing Saskia overwhelms me. I am overcome with despair.

Finally I
cannot take it anymore.

It is dark and it is late but
I get out of bed, get dressed, and find a candle in the kitchen. I light it and go upstairs and enter her bedroom, cupping the flame with one hand.

She
is fast asleep. She looks like a lioness that has been mated relentlessly by the male and has been driven until she is exhausted. She has fallen asleep among her pillows, lying on her back, her hands clenched, breathing calmly.

I gently touch her cheek, but she does
not awaken. I set the candle on the floor and sit down beside her bed and rest my head on her soft, warm arm.

She moves
slightly but her breathing remains even. I don’t know how long I sit there in the candlelit gloom. Finally a severe trembling seizes me, and I start to cry. My tears flow freely down my cheeks and drip onto her arm. She quivers several times and finally awakes and sits up. She brushes her hand sleepily across her eyes and looks at me.

"
Julian!" she exclaims, more frightened than angry.

I am
unable to speak.

"
What’s the matter?” she says. “Are you ill?"

Her voice sounds
so sympathetic, so kind, and so full of love that it clutches at me heart like red-hot tongs. I began to sob loudly, uncontrollably.

"My poor unhappy
love," she says soothingly. Her hand gently strokes my hair. "I’m sorry, so very sorry for you, but I can't help you."

"
Oh, Saskia, must it be like this?" I moan in agony.

"Like w
hat? What are you talking about?"

"Don't you love me
anymore? Don’t you have even a little pity for me? Has the Russian taken complete control of your senses?"

"I cannot lie," she replies
softly. "Vassily has made a deep impression on me. When I think of him I tremble with excitement. I’ve never felt like this before – not even with my husband. Vassily is like a lion. A true alpha male in every sense of the word. He is masterful and dominant and strong and beautiful, and brutal with me. I’m sorry, Julian, but he wants to possess me and I cannot refuse him. I must give myself to him completely." She looks at me with troubled eyes. “Even if he wants me to become his wife. I thought I would never marry again but I will give Vassily whatever he wants."

Her words
rob me of my breath. I feel dizzy and ill and insane with grief.

"
You’re going to be his wife?” I say sickeningly. “How can you say that? What about us? How do you know that he even cares for you? He doesn’t love you! Not like I do!” Tears are running freely down my face.

"Why do you say
he doesn't love me?" she interrupts vehemently.

"
Be mine, Saskia,
please, I beg you! I cannot live without you!

Her
expression is suddenly cold, her smile evil. "You say he doesn't love me?" she says scornfully. "Very well then, get what consolation you can out of it." She turns over onto her side with her back to me.

“Have
you no heart!"

"
You know what I am," she replies coldly. "I am a woman of stone as far as you’re concerned."

I bury
my face in my hands. Pain has loosened the floodgates of my grief and I sob wretchedly.

She
raises herself on one elbow and peers at me. "You’re beginning to bore me, slave. I’m tired, let me sleep!"

"Do not
send me away,”
I implore. “No man will ever love you as much as I do!"

"
Are you
deaf
? I said I need to sleep!" She turns her back on me once again.

I leap to my feet
and snatch up the small ornamental dagger from her bedside table – the same one the painter had used a short while ago. I place its sharp point against my left breast, over my heart.

"I shall kill myself
right here before your eyes!" I threaten dully.

"
Not you as well?” she replies with complete indifference. “Do as you please, just let me go to sleep."

For a moment I
stand there with the tip of the dagger pressed to my flesh. I feel so worthless and wretched that I wish I could die right there on the spot, but I am too cowardly to go through with it. I drop the dagger on the floor with a clatter and fall to my knees.

"Saski
a, listen to me –
please
!"

"
Didn’t your hear me? I want to sleep!” she cries, leaping angrily out of bed and pushing me out of her way with her bare foot. "
Have you forgotten that I am your mistress?
"

When I
don’t budge, she seizes the cat-o-nine-tails and begins to strike me wildly with it.

"Wretch
ed
slave
!" she screams, demented. “Get out!
Get out!”
She keeps lashing at me, the blows raining down on my shoulders and chest and back.

I shield my face with my hands and
stumble to the door. I stagger over the threshold and she slams the door behind me and locks it.

Osiris and Amun are standing
on the landing. Their eyes are wide as they stare at me. I realize that I must be quite a sight – my face is ashen and blood is oozing from the wounds where her whip has ripped into my flesh.

“You should leave this house before
that bitch beats you to death,” Amun says softly.

Osiris nods solemnly. “Yeah, she ain’t worth it.”

I have reached a decision.

I
will set myself free from this cold-blooded woman. She has broken our bond by falling in love with the Russian. Her physical infidelities with the painter and the two women meant nothing compared to this. That was purely sexual. But it’s different with the Russian. She loves for him – I have seen it in her eyes, in her every look and gesture.

So. This is
the reward I get for my devotion? For everything I have suffered at her hands in the name of love?

I pack my
few belongings in a bundle and sit down and write her a letter:

Dear
Saskia,

I
have loved you even to madness. I have given myself completely to you as much as any man can ever give himself to a woman. You have done nothing but abuse and trample my love for you. You have been cruel and heartless beyond measure. However, as long as you tormented me I could still love you. Now that you have betrayed me with the Russian I am no longer your slave whom you can whip whenever you feel inclined. You yourself have set me free by your unfaithful actions. I feel that I am leaving a woman whom I have grown to hate and despise.

Julian.

I handed the letter to Osiris to give to Saskia in the morning and left the house at first light. I hitch-hiked into town and asked directions to the railway-station. I reached the station out of breath, feeling drained and ill and sat down on one of the benches on the platform. I only realised then that I had no money to buy a ticket – she had confiscated my wallet a lifetime ago. I knew, though, that a single phone call from me to my attorneys would ensure that I was picked up in a chauffeured car or a helicopter within hours, but what was the point? Where would I go?

I felt a sharp pain in my chest
and bent my head forward on my knees and wept uncontrollably.

I want to escape this
pain and suffering but I can't. What am I to do?

I cannot go back. I dare not.
It will be the death of me. I know now with absolutely certainty that she does not care for me in the slightest and probably never did. She has been using me to satisfy her own depraved nature. Her fantasies are far darker and crueller than mine could ever be.  Somehow I had gravitated towards her instinctively and she, in turn, had homed in on me - wounded creature that she could torment and break down – both emotionally and physically.

I know now with abs
olute certainty that she is crueller and more ruthless than I will ever truly know or understand.

But how am I to leave?
Where will I go? Back to the country hotel? Too many memories.

A train arrives and I observe the hustle and bustle of people disembarking and people departing. Sitting there I feel isolated from the world, as though I am no longer part of it. This world no longer holds any meaning for me. I have been alone in it for so long. I have no family and no friends - no one to turn to for support.

If I want to cling to my sanity and survive
then I must go. But in my heart I know that I can't leave.

We entered into a sacred contract, she
and I – until death. If I am to honor that contract then I must return. She must release me verbally before I am free to go.

I pick up my
bundle of clothes and get up and walk a few strides, then stop again.

Till death us do part?
I have agreed to be her slave until she gives me my freedom - or until death. What if I killed myself? Would that not end the contract between us?

I walk in a daze to the edge of tow
n and sit down on the banks of the fast-flowing river. Its murky brown waters move rapidly in the forceful current. I sit in the tall grass with my head on my knees and think back on my life. On the whole, it’s been a rather a wretched affair. I cannot even remember a time when I was happy. Perhaps before my mother died, but I was too young to remember much of those years. And then my stepmother arrived and my life descended into a living hell, ending when my father kicked me out of the house. I never saw him again. And afterwards, the addiction to Aunt Sophia and her torture chamber of depraved sexual horrors.

All I can remember now of my short life is an abundant harvest of pain, misery,
loneliness and grief.

I
think about my mother, a beautiful woman in the prime of life who had wasted away with cancer; and my elder brother, apple of my father’s eye, who had died in a car accident at the age of 17 without ever having lived.

My whole family is under the ground. I am the last one standing
.

I
get up as though in a trance and wade into the deep murky water of the river. The current is strong and it begins to take me, but instinctively I catch hold of the low branch of a willow tree that hangs just above the water.

I want to die, t
o bring an end to the suffering and yet, I want to live.

I h
ang onto the branch tenaciously. The dark murky waters pull forcefully at me, beckoning me down to the muddy depths where I will rest forever.

Yet I hang on stubbornly, hands blue with
cold, teeth chattering.

I hang on.

I am back at the farm.

I am wet through
and trembling as though with fever. My teeth are chattering and my skin is blue with cold.

No doubt by now
Osiris has delivered my letter to the mistress. Well, let her kill me if she likes. I lack the courage to do it myself.

As I walk into
the house, she is standing on the landing above, leaning over the railing. Her green eyes are ablaze as she stares at me.

"Still alive?" she
says sarcastically, without moving.

I look up at her in silence.

"You haven't even got the courage to kill yourself. I can see that I will have to do it for you!”

I shrug.
"Do whatever you like,” I reply dully. “I no longer care.”