Chapter 21 by Zeebop

The End

Epilogue: Suffering in Silence

At work, Lois Lane could almost forget about it. She smiled at Clark Kent, teased Jimmy Olsen about his Turtle Boy costume. Wrote up her articles and received the gruff praise of Perry White. Some days, she saw Superman fly overhead. Life went on. Her investigative reporting found new targets. A minor scandal at LexCorp. InterGang's latest criminal enterprise. Arkham Asylum and S.T.A.R. Labs partnering to find new treatments for metahuman criminals suffering mental illness. Days and weeks went by, and at work Lois could feel almost normal. Could almost forget that night at the club...

...and every night since.

After the first week, Lois had dreaded coming home...yet at some point, she would always find herself walking back to her apartment. One foot dragged in front of the other. Circe was always there in her apartment; no lock could keep her out. No matter what Lois wanted to do, the sorceress would open her legs, and like a puppet the reporter would fall onto her knees and crawl toward her, tongue wagging out of her mouth. That was always the start of things.

Then Circe would unveil what new degradation she had planned. Sometimes it was something simple, sometimes it was elaborate and strange. Lois had **** in the matter. Her limbs moved on their own volition. She found she could not disobey. Could barely speak, unless Circe wanted conversation...which she did. After it was all over, as the exhausted reporter lay spent and panting, body quivering, holes aching and leaking, the sorceress would hold her close and ask her about her day...and they would talk. Like girlfriends, like lovers might talk...only there was no love between them.

The nights wore on. First, Circe had simply wanted to take her mouth, her pussy, her ass...to try different positions. There was scarcely an inch of the sorceress that Lois had not tasted. Then her Mistress had started to get more...****. Toys. Spanking. Whipping. Ropes. It had accelerated rapidly, and now there was not a not that went by where ropes weren't cutting bloody furrows in the reporter's skin, where she wasn't writhing in pain, weak and nauseous as Circe ground her pussy into the reporter's face, or pissed into open wounds.

Every morning, Lois would wake up alone. Her body healed, except for the words branded above her pussy. Those stayed with her. She would shower, drink her coffee, go into work...and know that it was all going to happen again.

"Lois, are you alright?" Clark asked. "You seem tired lately."

The reporter smiled. "Not getting enough sleep at night," she said. It wasn't a lie.

"You know you can talk to me if anything is wrong..." he said, voice full of concern.

I wish I could, Lois thought, her smile suddenly feeling brittle. But Mistress won't let me.

"Don't worry Smallville," Lois said. "Just too many late nights."

She could think about telling people. Yet she couldn't talk about it. Write about it. Lois had even tried to draw something about it, but her hand just shook, unable to commit the thought to paper or screen. In desperation, Lois started spending her days looking for some more esoteric solution...but she had to do it carefully. If Circe asked her about it, the reporter knew she couldn't lie.

The opportunity came when Lois was consulting Zatanna about the Las Vegas end of the InterGang story. The witch agreed to sit down with the reporter for coffee. They shared pleasantries, talked about the story...and then, heart racing in her chest, Lois steered her onto a different subject.

"So...do you know much about Greek magic, Zee?" Lois asked.

"A bit," the magician sipped her latte. "Anything in particular?"

"I was reading the Odyssey lately," the reporter said. "Odysseus on that island, with the sorceress that turned his men into pigs..."

"Circe." She pronounced it Sersei.

"...right. He used something called moly to defeat her magic. Is that...um...representative of a real occult tradition? Would it work?"

Lois felt herself sweating slightly. Her stomach was full of butterflies. She didn't want to use her mistress's name. Zatanna stared at Lois curiously.

"Yes, it's real. A magical herb. A white flower with black roots. Difficult for mortals to find or pluck from the ground, it normally requires a god..." The magician cocked her head. "Why do you ask?"

"You know how curious I am. It really isn't applicable for the article," the reporter evaded. "But, uh, where would someone find some moly, if they needed it?"

"Why would anyone need it?" Zatanna said, and her body language was totally focused and serious now. Lois swallowed hard, the coffee hitting her stomach like a hot lump.

"Why did Odysseus?"

Zatanna opened her mouth to speak...then closed it. Her jaw worked.

"You're right, we've gotten off on a tangent, haven't we?" The witch said. "I need to go...talk to someone. On a matter of some urgency. Can we meet again?"

"Sure!" Lois said, feeling the first ray of hope she'd felt in weeks. "Thank you, Zee."

"Don't thank me yet," the witch muttered.

Back at the Daily Planet, Lois Lane typed up her notes from the meeting with Zatanna. The butterflies in her stomach never went away...and more than once the reporter had to stop her shaking fingers and delete a mistyped line. When the clock hit five, Lois felt a sudden, terrible dampness between her legs...

Pavlov's pussy, the reporter thought as she pushed herself away from her desk, feeling the familiar tugging sensation. Her mistress was calling her home. Lois shoved her phone into her purse and was just turning to leave when...

"Flower delivery for Miss Lane?"

Lois blinked at the white-suited florist standing before her. He had a smile like a new penny. The flower was in a glass vase, the bottom half filled with water. The stalk was long, slender, and green emerging from a black bulb with hair-like roots, the flower small and a brilliant white. It smelled faintly of onions. There was a card.