Hard Corps (20 page)

‘Oh! You don’t have to get naked. Just lift the back of your shirt.’

‘Well, it isn’t just my back, Remy. It’s everywhere. He beats me every day to keep the marks fresh. His constant reminder of my position, he says.’ She went on, talking faster now. ‘I don’t usually get careless like that. I don’t want just anyone to see, of course. They wouldn’t understand. Even you Corps slaves — ’ Again she faltered, but then she pressed on. I could see that really she was dying to share it. It must be lonely to suffer like that for one man, and have no one to share with, not even him, except when he could spare the time from his wife and family.

‘Show me, Eloise. I won’t betray your trust. Show me what you have suffered for your master.’ My words, and her own evident desire to show someone got the better of her. Rising, she went inside, beckoning me to follow. I came after her, curious and a little nervous. She opened her bedroom door and went in. It took my eyes a moment to adjust to the darkened room. All the shades were drawn.

‘Jesus,’ I couldn’t help but utter, as I saw the incredible array of whips and chains hung on every wall in the room. There were small leather whips, rubber whips, cat-o’-nine-tails, chains of every thickness, coils of hemp and nylon rope. Crops with small loops and long rectangular loops, manacles, cuffs, collars. And from the ceiling hung pulleys, hooks and chains to rival anything at the bell tower. I kind of fell into the little armchair near her bed as I took in the amazing torture chamber.

‘Well,’ she said, smiling a little nervously. ‘It’s something, huh? The colonel hung every whip and chain himself. One by one, after they had been used on me.’ As she spoke, Eloise slowly peeled her tank top from her slender body. Her torso was revealed, braless and slim, with round, heavy breasts and large, pink nipples. Her breasts, like the rest of her, were crisscrossed with whip marks, some purple, some red, some faded to pale pink. But she didn’t stop there. Unzipping her short skirt, she stepped out of it, now standing completely naked before me.

‘I never wear underwear,’ she explained. ‘He doesn’t allow it. He wants my body sensitive to its surroundings. Just like O, I never sit on furniture without lifting my skirt first. In fact, he calls me E. I love it. Just like the novel.’ She looked at me, and again that little defiant tilt of the chin dared me to say anything negative. I was too busy staring. Her pubis was shaved bare. I had seen a few naked women completely shaved, since entering the Corps, but somehow I could never get used to that plucked, little-girl look. Seeing my glance linger at her sex, Eloise spread her legs and gestured toward the labia. I looked and saw an oblong gold ring hanging heavy from one side. She was pierced.

‘Are you happy?’ I asked, seething inside with confusion, arousal, and my own judgmental attitude toward her evident ‘perversion’. Even as I asked, I knew the answer. It radiated from her.

‘Gloriously happy.’ She smiled like an angel. ‘I know my situation would freak most people out, even people initiated into SM like you are in the Corps. But you can trust me when I say that I am never happier, never more at peace, never more fulfilled, than when the colonel is here, and I am suspended from the ceiling, covered in welts, dildos shoved up my ass and cunt, a penis gag silencing my cries.’

Who was I, who only dallied in this business, to judge what moved her or anyone else? She had more to say, though. It seemed, once the veil of silence was lifted, she couldn’t wait to tell her tale. I reproduce it here, in her own words as best as I can remember.

*   *   *

‘When I first joined the Slave Corps I was so excited. I’ve been a “pervert” since the minute I could think clearly. All my fantasies revolved around being taken prisoner, being ravaged, beaten, and sold into sexual slavery. Even when I was a little kid, I would do my best to manoeuvre the boys into some game involving kidnapping and some kind of bondage. I used to get my two older brothers to play this pirates game, where they would capture me and tie me up and pretend to flog me. I didn’t recognise it as a little kid, but these were very sexual games for me. I would beg them to play until they got bored and told me to get lost.

‘In high school I discovered
The Story of O
and the Victorian anonymous works and you couldn’t pry me out of the bathroom, where I masturbated so much I got blisters on my fingers. I was constantly in a daydream about being whipped till I bled, like in the Victorian novels, and being chained and used by the guards and drivers like in
O
. I would never wear panties, even then, and I secretly shaved my pussy from like age sixteen.

‘I tried desperately to get the few boys I dated to treat me rough or something, but they just didn’t get it. I would hint that I “liked a strong man” or something, but they would just end up flexing their muscles or something. When I dared to be more specific, or show them some bondage magazine that turned me on, they would run for the hills. I was so lonely and confused, but always horny, and always dreaming of submission.

‘I stumbled on the Slave Corps totally by accident. When I was in secretary school, several openings came up at the Academy. I applied for one and got the job, as a secretary in the central office. The work was fine, and the pay decent. I started to notice that one other secretary in the office was always being called away ‘on assignment’. Something to do with army training: it was all rather vague. I became friends with Jane — that was her name — and one night we went out for drinks after work.

‘I asked her where she was really going all the time. I was only joking when I said, “Come on, I know you’re out servicing all the officers, satisfying their sexual needs. Don’t deny it.” I expected her to laugh it off, but she blushed suddenly and looked away from me.

‘I knew I was on to something. Call it pervert radar. Anyway, I pressed her, pretending I knew more than I did. Finally she admitted that where she went wasn’t exactly “protocol”. “It’s like this,” she explained, the margaritas we’d been drinking all night no doubt causing her to let down her guard. “I like to play the slave girl. I like to submit.” Well, as you can imagine, my hair just stood on end at the very words. I was riveted to her, willing her to say more. She did. “There’s this kind of club see, but it’s secret. I could get in big trouble just for saying anything about it. So don’t you ever breathe a word, you hear me, Eloise?”

‘ “Never,” I whispered, almost dying with excitement. “Tell me, Jane. Tell me. I have to know. I want to be in the club. Please. How do I get in?”

‘ “Wait a minute, you nut!” She laughed at me; I was probably being way too intense for her. I couldn’t help it. These were my deepest secrets, my most constant longings she was hinting at. “You don’t even know anything about it!”

‘ “So tell me, Jane. Please.” I guess something in my tone finally convinced her I meant it. She started telling me about the Corps, whispering, and looking over her shoulder all the time to make sure she wasn’t being overheard. I was enraptured. I wanted to enlist right away. She explained that it wasn’t so easy, that I would have to apply, with her recommendation, and that I would have to pass certain tests.

‘The very next day I got Jane to take me after work to a stage show. I was floored by what I saw. I was so excited I almost came right in my chair without even touching myself. I was allowed to try out, or whatever you wanna call it. I actually fainted when they were whipping me, but it wasn’t from fear or pain or anything. I think I just swooned from sheer pleasure.

‘Well, needless to say, I got in. I loved it from the second I was in. I could barely focus on my job. I started getting more and more assignments. I would do any and everything asked of me. I kept waiting for someone to really take me to the edge. It sometimes just seemed like a game. A fun game, but not the real-life suffering and submission I craved.

‘I think I got a reputation or something, because I started getting the really hard-core masters. Like the colonel. I didn’t know anything about him back then. I didn’t know much about the academic side of things, you know, or who was who. I just got my next assignment, and I went.

‘He used me the very first time. Which I found out later is very unusual. The second time he took me down to the chambers in the tower. He suspended me upside down and fucked my mouth with his cock. Then, after he came, he whipped me really hard. I remember swinging and twisting, hanging there upside-down, the blood in my head making me dizzy and disoriented. I was blindfolded and gagged.

‘After the whipping, he left me hanging there, and spread my legs far apart, fingering me until I came. Which was in about ten seconds. I have never been so turned on in my life. Thank God I pleased him, because I was obsessed by him. Totally absorbed. I was actually bored now by my other “assignments”. They couldn’t give me what I needed. They were too tentative, too careful. They didn’t want to mark me, for God’s sake. Bunch of wimps. I only wanted to serve him.

‘Well, by some glorious chance, he had found his soul mate at last in me. He wanted me for his own. When he asked me if I would resign from the Corps and become his personal property, there was no hesitation. I instantly agreed. That was two years ago. I couldn’t imagine life without him.’

She looked at me expectantly. I didn’t know what to say. It wasn’t the extremity of her lifestyle that bothered me. I mean, it was too intense for me, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t right for her. What I was thinking of was the sadness. Her obvious loneliness and the fact that he was still married, whether or not happily, to someone else. I didn’t feel I had the right to pry, though.

‘Well,’ she pressed. ‘What do you think? Bet I had you fooled the first time you saw me in the office, right? Sweet little goodie-two-shoes type, right? People always think that.’

I nodded and smiled, glad that she had shifted the direction away from requiring a response from me. But just as quickly it shifted back. ‘You think I’m a jerk, don’t you?’

‘What?’ I was genuinely surprised.

‘Sure. I know you do. You think I’m an idiot for staying with a guy who won’t leave his wife.’

‘I never said that. Anyway, maybe he will.’

‘No. He won’t. He made a commitment to her, he says. Duty, all that shit. I’m just a slave; a possession. I don’t rank. No status. Just a toy.’

‘You don’t believe that.’

‘I have to. I don’t know what to believe. I can’t believe he loves her, but I don’t dare believe he loves me. So I just console myself with the fact that he is the best thing that ever happened to me. I’ll take what I can get. I do get to see him every day. I work for the guy, for God’s sake. And he takes me here, every day at lunch time, and beats me and uses me until I taste the stars in heaven. What more could a person ask for?’

What more, indeed?

Just then there was a knock at the door. Eloise, who was still curled up naked on her bed, jumped up, alarmed. ‘Oh, my God! Get the door! Oh, shit! What if it’s him. I’m not ready! Hurry!’ She was racing around the room, pulling on her clothing, smoothing her hair, all in a frenzy. The knock sounded again, more insistently. Eloise fairly shoved me out of her room saying, ‘Tell him I’m in the bathroom. Hurry, don’t keep him waiting!’

I walked quickly over to the front door and looked through the little peephole in the centre. It was the colonel, just as she had said. He must have ditched the wife and kids somehow and popped over for a quickie. I wasn’t sure if I should open it, when the colonel saved me the trouble by taking out his key and inserting it in the lock.

Quickly I pulled the door open. He looked up, angrily, and then looked confused, when he saw it was me, and not his slave girl. ‘Hello, sir. Nice to see you again, sir.’ A lie. Just seeing him reminded me of his humiliating treatment of me at our last meeting.

‘What the hell are you doing here? Where the hell is Eloise?’ If he even recognised me, he gave no indication.

‘She’s in her room, sir. Um, in the bathroom. She’ll be right out.’ Thank God, Eloise burst out of her room at that moment, smoothing her hair, smiling nervously at the colonel.

‘You kept me waiting, E.’

Eloise blanched visibly. I know it was what she said she wanted, but it was just a little too close to abuse for me to stomach. I didn’t want to stick around for the ‘angry master exacting retribution show’.

‘Well, wow. Look at the time,’ I said, aware that my voice was falsely bright. ‘I have to get ready for inspection. It was fun, Eloise. Goodbye, sir.’ I practically ran out of there. Neither one of them said a word. I don’t even think they had heard me. I guess true love will do that to you.

A
fter I left Eloise’s I was in a kind of a funk. Here I was, twenty years old and I had never experienced the kind of intensity of feeling that she seemed to experience on a daily basis. I don’t know, though, that I would call what she had with the colonel love exactly. I was clueless myself. What was love, anyway? I had to laugh at myself just a little. I mean, isn’t that the age-old question?

I had thought I was in love with Jacob last year, but I came to realise it was just infatuation. He was older, handsome and sure of himself. He was the first one to finally sneak a little way into my heart. But not very far. And I eventually realised that I had never loved him. I mourned the loss, not of him as a human being, but the loss of the situation. It had been nice to have a boyfriend, to have someone to look forward to seeing every day.

Not to mention the sex, which was great. But really, he was still my one and only. I had had lots of sexual adventures in the ‘Hard Corps’, but I had never made love again. Not only was it against the rules, but the Corps wasn’t about that. The Corps satisfied a deep longing in me to submit, to surrender to another, but it sure wasn’t about love.

Spring break was right around the corner. I drifted through my classes and army training and before I knew it, the break was here. I wasn’t going home this spring. My parents were travelling to Italy for a vacation. Instead I was to go see my aunt in Columbia, South Carolina. She was a widow, who had lost her true love, my Uncle John, about five years back, to cancer. She had told me she would never remarry; a love like that just doesn’t happen twice, she told me. But she was so full of life and vigour that nothing would keep her down. She had as many beaux, as she called them, as she could handle. Her life was always exciting, it seemed to me. Always spur of the moment.