Free The Department of Hate - A Love Story by Anthony O'connor Page A

have no idea what I'm talking about ." But he was having some trouble reconciling this new information with his image of Cassandra. He could not imagine this beautiful young woman clad in black leather, being hard and dominant. He couldn’t imagine her being harsh to anyone - though she did obviously have a tough side to her. He didn't mean to and regretted it instantly but couldn’t help himself - he blurted out
    "What did you do exactly?" Cassandra was amused
    "You want details?" Jarrod shook his head
    "Ah, no, I didn't mean ..." Cassandra felt like teasing him a bit
    "All the usual – whips and chains, canes, floggers - my specialty though was the strap-on." Jarrod didn’t know what that was, he asked carefully
    "What is ...?" Cassandra was still stringing him along, enjoying it
    "That's when the girl takes the initiative and boys learn to be girls ." Jarrod suddenly got it
    "Oh!" Cassandra laughed
    "Not as knowledgeable and broad minded as you thought you were?" Jarrod replied
    "It would appear not." He was still puzzled though
    "What about the clientele? Who are they?" Cassandra looked at him steadily
    "You'd be surprised - people from all walks of life.  Most of them are just jaded kinksters looking for a hit. A few of them though - really nasty little assholes." Jarrod could see some current of underlying anger there and didn’t want to push it. Cassandra looked at him calmly
    "Strange world isn’t it?" Jarrod looked back
    "Strange doesn't begin to cover it!  We're in Hell, you are, or were in a former life, a whip wielding, leather clad dominatrix and I'm supposed to be fucking Beelzebub - for God’s sake!" Cassandra quietly pointed out
    “Not exactly for God’s sake!” Jarrod replied
    “No, I guess not.”
     
    They sat together on the couch for some time. Cassandra eventually broke the silence. She asked him
    “Can I ask you a personal question?” Jarrod replied
    “Of course, anything.” He thought it would be hard to beat ‘Why are you in Hell?’ And given that they were, there didn’t seem to be much point in holding anything back.  Cassandra spoke slowly
    “You live alone now, or you did, that’s obvious. But what about past girl friends? Who were they? Were you ever married?”This was not normally something Jarrod liked to talk about but the situation was very far from normal. Cassandra looked at him, openly and honestly, clearly interested and concerned. He found that he wa nted to tell her everything.
    “I was engaged once, ten years ago, to Beth - Elizabeth Collins. We met when we were students.” Cassandra was fascinated
    “How did you meet exactly?” Jarrod smiled
    “That was amusing. I was sitting in on some psychology lectures. It wasn’t my main interest I just wanted some background. It was a very large lecture hall and even with several hundred students attending there was always plenty of space. I was sitting by myself as always. A very attractive young woman came up and sat beside me, in the very next seat. Now I was almost pathologically shy back then, and inexperienced to say the least. Obviously her actions were outside the bounds of prevailing social convention. You don’t just sit next to a complete stranger in an uncrowded auditorium with plenty of available seats elsewhere. It was clearly an invitation to me to at least say hello. But I didn’t. I didn’t know what to say or what to do. I ignored her for the whole lecture and at the end she got up and left.” Cassandra laughed
    “Yes clearly, you were a bit of an idiot .” Jarrod could only agree with her
    “Well its obvious now, but then, I just, well, I just didn’t know what to say. I certainly wanted to say something.  Anyway we ran into each other a couple of times after that. She ignored me completely. I tried to say hello a few times, eventually she relented. I explained to her that my actions were a result of shyness and incompetence and in no way intended as any kind of personal rebuke. We started