Free Stacking in Rivertown by Barbara Bell Page A

whip, I find my distance and stance and go to work on him. And something about those pictures flares up in me. For the first time, I want this fucking man to feel the bite. I want him to suffer. Goddamn anesthesiologist.
    I walk around, grab the top of the hood, and yank it off, standing back so he can see me in all my leather glory. His eyes go bright with lust. Sliding the whip around his neck, I stand nose to nose with him. His eyes are wan with desire. After a few more whacks he doesn’t take long, erupting and making a mess as I’m getting in a final lick. I stand silent as he wilts down, trembles, and hangs harder on his hands.
    Then I turn and glare into the mirror, throwing the whip down, knowing Ben’s back there, watching. Smiling.

    When Jeremy first brought me home from the hospital, I wouldn’t go out of doors. He thought that a little strange, me being twenty-six and all, but he’d had so much practice with coaxing strays that he worked his dog talents on me.
    Jeremy used words and phrases like “T-bonds” or “buying futures.” That one always stumped me. How the hell can you buy a future? And I’m thinking that if the past weren’t so great, why the hell would you bother?
    Once Jeremy got me to leave the house, we went out to eat almost every night. I cut dainty bites from wet, rippling hunks of beef. I scooped out my potatoes. And I thought of all my leavings gathering into one place, all those red fatty hanks of leftover meat and green stuff too rotten to eat, all filling up Dumpsters in a row.
    Paradise.
    After Jeremy taught me to drive, there was no stopping me. And I learned to manage a house and how to cook. Kat had taught me some cooking basics at Ben’s. But now I pushed on cantaloupes. I could choose a peach, thump an eggplant, and squeeze an artichoke. I had a talent for it.
    I was picky about my shrimp, the white sauce for the crab, the beluga, the foie gras, the morel dressing for the veal.
    That’s what I’m thinking of now as I look back at that anesthesiologist’s white, whipped ass. Veal. I pick up the hood from the floor and fit it over his head again.
    “Come back and see me,” I whisper in his ear. He quakes a little at the thought of it. Then I pick up my whip and head for the door.
    No one’s there. I sit in a chair and wait. Eventually, the boys come and take the anesthesiologist out.
    I’m thinking about the people in Rivertown all frozen in place. I wonder about being frozen and if it’s better to watch the tooms or be stacked in them.
    The girl I whipped earlier comes in the room. In her hand is Ben’s black bag.
    “I’m sorry,” she says.
    You’re sorry, I think. Why you?
    She reaches in the bag and takes out a collar, then walks behind me, fitting it around my neck and buckling it on.
    She’s sorry?
    Then she returns in front of me and removes my gloves and boots, kissing my fingers and feet.
    The whole world’s sorry. One great big fucking sorry.
    Violet haunts. She swims the air.
    “Turn around in the chair,” the fawn says, her voice just as one might imagine coming from so gentle a creature as a young deer.
    I turn and lean onto the chair back, exhausted by the dangers.
    Once she’s removed my corset, she rubs my shoulders and back like Violet would do after Ben had worked me for too long. She kisses down along my spine, again like Violet. Ben has prepared her for me.
    “Another play already?” I say.
    “Shh.”
    I wait, feeling myself respond to her as I would to Violet. She gently takes both my wrists, cuffing them together in back. Now a blindfold is placed over my eyes.
    She stands me up, leading me back into the room where the smell of the good doctor permeates. I hear the motor run and feel her put the hook in the ring of my collar. She raises it enough to keep me standing straight.
    Now she goes into high gear, caressing me, fondling, kissing. So much like Violet, worming her way through my tough outer layers, the ones that made me so hard