I groaned as I awakened and for the hundredth time remembered that I needed to get a new mattress. My back and shoulders were killing me. I tried to roll onto my back, and metal cut into my wrists. The pain brought me to full consciousness quickly enough to make me dizzy. A headache I didn't realize I had exploded painfully behind my eyes. My body prickled with chill bumps and realized I was bare except for a thin blanket tossed across my thighs. The room was completely dark, and I felt the dirt between my toes and under my ass as I tried to pull at the restraints around my wrists and ankles.
I screamed into the dark. Frantically searched for even a sliver of light. I tried to get my brain to function enough through the fear and disorientation to let me know what happened. When I shifted to my knees, I used my mass to deadweight and tried to break whatever had me trapped. It wasn't any use, and agony radiated outward from my shoulders as I felt them begin to pop.
To distract myself, I played out what I did remember. It was Saturday, and I'd had errands to run. All I could recollect was the meeting with the financial advisor who I was speaking with to cut the payments. Afterward, I'd felt defeated. I refused to file bankruptcy to take care of the rest of the medical debt, so I'd wanted something comforting and decided to treat myself to ease my depression. That overly expensive coffee was the end, and everything else was black or fuzzy.
I wasn't worth anything. No one would pay a ransom for me. I was corrupted code in the Matrix. Useless and easily erased. A part of the scenery no one ever noticed. Maybe I spent too much time watching TV and movies.
The boards above me creaked with slow steps, treating and returning as if the person paced.
“Help! Why am I here?” I bellowed at the top of my lungs at those ghostly steps, and then they receded again. The scrape of a heavy metal lock started to build my hope for the dimmest of lights. I hated the dark. A silly childhood phobia I'd never quite been able to get over. I imagined monstrous demons in the shadows. Their clawed hands reaching to drag me into them.
The planks of stairs gave eerily under lazy footsteps. I couldn't see anything. What I assumed was a nightlight in the room above didn't broach farther than the opened doorway. The stranger didn't say a word, and the dirt floor muffled where he'd stopped in what I assumed was a cellar or unfinished basement.
I counted clicks of a chain switch on an overhead light being pulled. At five, a bare bulb flared to life, and the sudden brightness forced my eyes closed as stars danced behind my lids as the pain in my head exploded. I forced them open and stared down at the ground. The soil was wet and my knees sunk into it. Shame heated my face at my completely naked form and caused me to try and cover myself, but I'd kicked the blanket too far away in my panic.
I quickly brought my gaze to the stranger and found him in the shadows beyond the circle of illumination. He was using a crimson-stained towel to wipe what looked like blood from his hands. His face was concealed behind a mask that covered all but his mouth and the lower right of his face, but the same substance on his hands looked as if was sprayed across that exposed skin.
“What am I doing here? Let me go, I don't know…”
The laugh that answered me was guttural and without emotion. “Now, boy, do you think begging will get you anywhere with me? You woke chained in my basement. Naked and alone.”
I didn't recognize his voice, it was dangerous and barely above a whisper. His calmness strengthened my terror. I would understand anger, ranting, or a frenzied attack. As much reaction as the stranger showed, we could be conversing over coffee instead of me waking to find myself chained in his basement like a captive.
“But I'm no one.” I hated the quiver in my words.
“That I won't deny.”
“Then why…”
“I grow tired of your incessant questions. The only thing you need to be aware of is that you're mine to do with as I see fit. Are you ready to learn your rules?”
“Who are you?” I yelled in a high-pitched, cracking voice. “I just want to go home.”
“Are you ready to learn your rules?”
I continued to plead with the stranger. My limbs were cramping and shaking with cold and hysteria. His voice didn't change—it remained flat and calm. It was that which terrified me the most. I could deal with death. Rules implied the stranger was going to keep me and what would he subject me to, and no one would think to look for me.
The urge to ask him once more was tempered by the fact I grew more chilled by the second.
“What do you want from me?”
“It's quite simple, follow the rules that I set. Now, are you ready to learn your rules?”
“Y-yes.”
“Before I list your rules, let's discuss your punishment. For every infraction, you earn one lash, but in some cases, you will earn up to three for every rule broken.”
I was so shocked by what he said that I didn't even protest what he was suggesting. Tears began to flow hot down my cold cheeks, wetting my short beard.
“You will call me sir when you address me, is that understood?”
“S-sir?” My thoughts were chaos, and all I could focus on was the punishments. Lashes. Did he mean from a whip? What had I done? Was this all a nightmare that I would eventually wake up from—maybe a night terror. I squeezed my eyes closed and mentally begged to wake up, but when I opened my eyes, he was still there—closer. I was eye-level with his belly, and I couldn't make myself lift my gaze higher than that.
“As I give you the rules, you will respond yes, sir after each. Tonight, you won't earn correction, but from tomorrow forward, you will earn lashes from my whip.”
“Y-yes, s-sir.” My free will seemed to slip away with those two simple words. They wouldn't mean the same thing to me ever again. A statement of respect now proof of my unwilling submission.
“Rule one…you will follow each order as given.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Rule two…you will thank me for each lash given.”
My naturally shy nature fought with my will to survive. If I did what he asked, maybe he'd let me go. His appearance was hidden behind baggy clothes and a leather mask. I'd never be able to identify him.
“Do I need to repeat? Your hesitancy in the future will earn you one lash.”
“Y-yes, no, you don't have to repeat. Yes, sir.”
“Rule three…you will be ready to please me. If I tell you to suck my cock, you will do so. If I tell you to bend over and spread your cheeks, you will do so.”
I dropped my chin to my chest. “I can't do that.”
“Then you will earn lashes. Rule four…you must follow all instructions as given to earn rewards. We'll start off simple and rules will be added as I deem necessary.”
“Y-yes, sir.” They came too easily that time, barely a stutter. I wanted to go home. My life may be quiet and uneventful, but it was mine. “What are the rewards?”
“You will address me as sir. Each slip will earn you a lash.”
“What are the rewards—sir?”
“You will earn clothing. A bed. Treats. You will earn the right to come upstairs. To sleep on the floor beside my bed. To sit at my feet. Tomorrow I will bring you a few items, and you'll begin your stay.”
“Why are you doing this to me, sir? I don't know who you are.”
“Why, boy, I'm doing it because I can.”
I tilted my head back as he retreated and I watched as his arm seemed to rise in slow motion.
“No, please—please leave it on.”
“What do I get in return for the kindness of leaving your light on?”
“I don't know, sir, please, I don't—”
I threw myself back against the wall as he undid his zipper and started to free his penis.
“Rewards are earned, boy. If you don't do something to show what a good boy you are, then why should sir give you something for free?”
I couldn't answer, and suddenly, just as it was when I woke up, the room was black. I followed his steps until his silhouette was visible for mere seconds before the door slammed. I stretched as far as I could from where I was secured to the roughhewn wall behind me and wrapped the scratchy blanket around me to ease the chill in the air. My bladder screamed for relief, and I mentally cursed myself for not asking to use the bathroom or for something to drink or eat. I could only assume it was late evening, maybe just hours before dawn.
My only comfort was that he wouldn't kill me—didn't seem as if he would—but what did he want with me? He didn't explain why he was doing this to me, and because he could, wasn't an answer. Where did he see me? Why did he decide I was the one he wanted to chain in his basement? The one he wanted to call him sir.
This wasn't a fantasy of mine. I didn't understand any of it. I'd watched porn, I knew about BDSM in theory, but this—this wasn't what I saw in those videos. Was I being groomed for something else? I wasn't the type to be kidnapped for those stories of human trafficking. It was always young men and women, teenagers. Did he want to break me just because I was bigger or manly appearing?
I was nothing of the sort. I curled into a fetal position and tucked the blanket beneath my chin. Out of all the happy places my brain could go for a moment of reprieve, it went to those silly dreams I had before I woke up here. The man who would come in and love me for me. He'd hold me and make love to me. He'd accept me with all my faults. Tears started to seep from beneath my lids again while I mourned the life I'd dreamed of and tried not to think about my new reality.