Bianca gets ready for the party

Black marble eats away at my feet. Cold creeps up from the soles of my feet, up my calves, and I stand still in front of the mirror with my hands at my sides, because that's how I was told to be. My white silk blouse reaches just above my navel. Below that, my skin. Below that, the cage that pulls me tight, and the XXL plug that fills me and keeps me open like a door that can't be closed.

The noise comes from the living room. Men's voices overlapping, a burst of laughter drowning out the others, the clinking of glasses on the marble. The smell of whiskey, cigarettes, sweat starting to warm. They're already drunk. You can tell by the way they talk—too loud, too close, as if no one is really listening to anyone else.

The mirror is tall, golden, antique. It shows me something I don't know. Blonde hair that isn't mine. Red lipstick they put on me. The locket around my neck engraved with a name that isn't mine.

Bianca.

The name weighs on me more than the golden bells hanging from my nipples, which jingle even when I breathe. Even when I don't want them to. Even when I stand still and my chest rises anyway, and they ring, and every time I remind myself that I can't stop breathing.

The door opens without anyone knocking.

Mr. Jones leans against the doorframe. He doesn't say anything. He looks at me. He's wearing a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbow, a gold chain glinting on his dark chest, and a half-empty glass in his hand. His eyes sweep over me from neck to toe and then back up, slowly, unhurriedly, as if he were reading a familiar bill.

I stay still. I don't turn around. I don't speak. I've learned.

He enters. He closes the door behind him with his foot, without looking at her. The noise in the living room fades, but doesn't disappear—it remains there, behind the wood, a murmur that waits.

He stops behind me. I see him in the mirror. He's a head taller than me. His reflection covers half my body.

“You put on your blouse,” she says.

"Yes."

«Take it.»

He doesn't add anything else. He doesn't explain. It's pointless. My fingers find the buttons and undo them one by one, and the silk slips from my shoulders and falls silently to the marble. I stand naked in front of the mirror. Naked except for the cage, the plug, the bells, the locket.

He looks at me in the mirror, not directly. It's worse. I can't lower my eyes in the mirror. In the mirror, I'm forced to see him seeing me.

"You don't need that," he says, pointing with his glass to where the blouse has fallen. "Friends want to see the goods. They don't want to guess."

“Yes, sir.”

He comes closer. I feel his chest almost against my back, the heat passing through the air between us. His hand brushes my shoulder—just his fingers, barely—and he turns me around. Now I'm facing him. Now I have to look at his face, or his chest, or his chain. I choose the chain.

“The bells,” he says. “I can hear them ringing from outside.”

"Yes."

"Do you like them?"

“Yes, sir.”

"Saves."

I don't answer. I can't answer. He's right, and he knows it.

He reaches out and takes one of the bells between his thumb and forefinger. He rotates it slowly, and the metal clinks, and my nipple tightens under the clamp as if it wants to follow. It pulls slightly. A subtle pain that travels all the way to my stomach.

"I want to hear them ring when they fuck you in the ass," he says. "I want to hear them ring when they fuck you in the mouth. I want my friends to hear them before they even see you. Understand?"

"Understood."

The word sinks into me and warms me, and it shouldn't. I know it shouldn't. But that's how they built me, and I can't undo it now, naked on the cold marble with his hand on my chest.

He lets go of the bell. The ringing dies down. Then he turns to the console, where the makeup is open, and picks up something I hadn't seen. A small, black velvet case. He opens it.

Inside, the piercing. The silver bar with the two spheres at the ends, shiny in the room light. I had it on before. I'd taken it off by my blouse, afraid it would show.

“Open your mouth,” he says.

I open it. He comes closer, takes my chin with two fingers, and with his other hand, inserts the bar into the hole in my tongue. He does it slowly, as if he were arranging a detail, not a body. Once it's inside, the spheres weigh on my tongue and touch the roof of my mouth.

«Shut it.»

I'm closing. I feel the metal between my teeth.

"My friends want to see what it does to their cock," he says. He's still holding my chin between his fingers. "They want to feel the cool silver on their dick while you suck it. They want to know if you can hold it without scratching."

My stomach tightens. My tongue trembles around the bar.

"Are you capable?"

“Yes, sir.”

"We'll see."

He releases my chin. He steps back and looks at me again, all of me, from neck to toe. The bells tinkle as my chest rises for air. The plug presses inside me, and I feel every inch of his presence, and the marble beneath my feet reminds me that I'm standing by his will.

“But I’ll try it first,” he says.

The blood rushes to my head. My fingers open and close at my sides, and I don't know where to put them, and I don't know where to look, and my tongue is stuck around the piercing.

At that moment, a chorus rises from the hall.

«Bianca!»

"Bianca, where are you?"

“Bring us a drink, you whore!”

Voices overlap, glasses clatter on the table, a laughter that drowns out everything. They're laughing at me. They're laughing at someone I'm not. They're laughing at the name they gave me.

Mr. Jones smiles.

My hands tremble on my thighs. I place them, press them, try to steady them. The marble beneath my knees is cold, and I don't even remember when I knelt. Maybe he didn't tell me. Maybe I did it myself. Maybe that's what they taught me: to kneel before they tell me to, because it's easier than asking.

He looks down at me. The glass is still in his hand, half empty. The gold chain glistens on his chest.

"Listen to what they're calling you," he says. "They're already yours. You just have to come down."

“Yes, sir.”

"But first," he repeats, and leans over. He takes my chin with two fingers, lifts my face toward his, and looks me in the eyes. "But I'll try it first."

The voices from the living room rise again. My name—the name they gave me—bounces off the closed door. Someone knocks. Someone laughs. Someone says the whore is keeping them waiting.

My fingers tighten on the marble. The piercing weighs on my tongue. The bells tinkle with the slightest breath, and every time they tinkle he hears it, and every time he hears it, his smile widens a millimeter.

Behind the door, the hall still calls.

I remain on my knees, with my face raised to his, and wait for him to decide what I am.

He straightens. His knee creaks, and for a moment he's just a man in a room getting up from an awkward position. Then he's back to his old self, and the glass shifts from his right hand to his left, and the right is now free, and I don't know what he'll do, and the not knowing keeps my back as straight as a rope.

He goes to the console. I gaze at the marble, the reflection of my knees, the white of my thighs, made lighter by the black floor. I hear him open the drawer. The wood scraping. Something metal touching something metal.

«Get up.»

I get up. My knees burn from the cold, and for a second my legs give out, and I have to brace myself on the edge of the bed with two fingers. He doesn't look. He knows I'm getting up anyway.

He comes back to me with something in his hand that I don't immediately recognize. Then I do. It's the leash—the thin chain with the snap hook, the one they keep hanging inside the closet with the rest of the stuff. I'd never seen it on anyone before. Just hanging.

«Turn around.»

I turn around. The back of my neck exposed, my blond hair falling to my shoulders, the medallion thumping against my chest when I breathe. I feel the clasp open behind me, then close on the collar, and the chain tighten slightly, and the weight pull my head back an inch.

"Like this," he says. "If you run, I'll hear you."

I wouldn't run away. He knows that. But he says it anyway, because the point isn't that I run away—the point is that he can say it.

He pulls slowly. The chain forces me to take a half step back, and my heel touches the heel of my other foot, and the bells ring, and he laughs softly.

"Did I feel it?"

“Yes, sir.”

"I can hear them from here too. Imagine the living room."

I imagine drunken men raising their heads at the first clinking, like dogs. Nausea rises and lingers in my throat, and beneath the nausea lies something else I don't want to name, and I won't.

He passes in front of me. The chain tightens to the side, and I must follow it or fall, and I do. He leads me to the mirror. He stands behind me, and now we are both inside the gilded frame—he tall and dark, I naked and pale, the chain dangling between his hand and my neck like a rope that binds and separates us both.

“Look at you,” he says.

I look. The reflection is someone I don't know. The golden bells on her nipples, the piercing glistening faintly between her parted lips, the cage that pulls and holds me, the locket with a name that isn't mine. And the face—my face—that is neither scared nor happy. It's something in between. It's the face of someone waiting to see what will happen, and meanwhile, she doesn't move, because moving is pointless.

"Do you see the whore?"

“Yes, sir.”

«Say it.»

"I see the whore."

"And do you like it?"

The question lingers in my mouth. The piercing weighs on my tongue. The bells tinkle as my chest rises, and it rises because I can't stop breathing, and he waits.

“Yes, sir.”

“Good girl,” he says, and the word sinks into me like before, and like before it shouldn’t, and like before I can’t do anything about it.

The chain loosens. He places it on the marble,

It moves down my back. His fingers count each vertebrae, slowly, as if checking to make sure they're all in place. They reach the hollow of my back. They stop. Then they move further down, finding the edge of the plug, and they barely touch it—just the base, the disc that holds me open—and he rotates it a quarter turn.

My legs give out an inch. I take them back. The noise I make isn't a moan, it's a breath that's too shallow, and he hears it.

“It fills you up nicely,” he says. “Madame never gets the measure wrong.”

"No, sir."

"How long have you had it inside?"

«Since this morning.»

"And did you get used to it?"

“Yes, sir.”

“You’re lying again.”

I don't answer. He's right. I'm not used to it. I just gave up, which is different, and he knows that better than I do.

His hand moves up. It runs over my side, over my rib, and reaches my chest, and takes a small bell between two fingers, and tugs on it. Just enough to make my nipple tense and the pain shoot up to my navel, and my fingers curl into fists at my sides.

“These,” she says, “I can hear them ringing even when you’re standing still.”

“Yes, sir.”

The silence stretches a second too long. Voices behind the door rise, someone laughs, someone bangs a glass on the table. I look at my reflection in the mirror and don't know what to say, and he waits, and the wait is worse than the answer.

His hand lets go of the bell. The ringing dies down. He stands still behind me.

Then the door shakes. Someone hits it with an open palm, once, twice.

"Jones! Are you keeping this all to yourself?"

«Let her out, it's my birthday!»

«Bring her here, we want to see her!»

The voices overlap again, and this time they are closer, and the wood vibrates under the blows, and I hear my name—the name they gave me—pass from one mouth to the other.

“Feel how much they want you,” he says.

«Yes, sir.

The chain returns to my hand. The clasp snaps back onto the collar with a sharp click, and the weight pulls my head back, and the bells ring, and behind the door someone hears them and shouts my name again.

He leans in. His mouth touches my ear, and his breath warms the skin beneath my hair.