Part 4 - Emily

The day came when Howard suddenly announced: “We’re going out, Jason.”

I knew by now that ‘going out’ usually meant experiencing more adventure, but I didn’t ask any questions and just got in the car with him.

The 'adventure' turned out rather boring. We just drove into town, ordered a drink in a very vanilla bar, and sat down.

“What are we doing here, Uncle? “, I asked.

“We’re waiting.”

I looked around the place: “Waiting for what?”

“For a text from Marcy.”

“Marcy? But we left her behind?”

“Yeah. And she’s receiving Emily right now.”

A rush of blood raced to my face, I must have looked like a pumpkin. Emily was at the ranch, right now? And Marcy was trusted with the task of not blowing my cover and my relationship to ashes, the very same Marcy I had enjoyed playing for weeks now?

Howard had a look at my face, and chuckled: “Relax, boy. She is very good at this. She will lead Emily the first steps of her path to kneeling for you. And when Marcy does this, Emily will follow her, I promise. “

I still shifted uneasily in my chair. So much could go wrong! Howard always sounded so sure when he said that Emily could be corrupted, but somehow I had doubts about that. After all, Howard didn’t actually know her, and I did. Or did I? When I was honest with myself, did I know anything about Emily’s secrets and desires?

“So… what will they be talking about? The full monty, all the rules and the tools and the whips and the… life?”

Howard said: “Oh no. Not by a long shot. More something like… Well, let’s imagine Emily gets there and makes Marcy a compliment about the size of the house… and she asks what price you paid for it. Marcy will say that she doesn’t know, and Emily will say it is strange for a wife, not knowing what price her house was bought for. Marcy will tell her that it is not her house, that she doesn’t own anything at all, and everything belongs to me. Emily will freak out, and feel pity for this **** victim she just met, but Marcy will make her calm down. Marcy will reply that she doesn’t see it that way, that she believes that the man is the head of the household and that it means he owns and decides, while his woman follows and obeys. How it provides clarity and prevents discord when roles are clearly set. How she feels that my judgment is superior to hers and that she trusts me that her well-being is always on the top of my mind. ”

Howard paused to take a sip from his drink, then continued: ”Not a word about sex or slavery or sluts or anything, you understand? Just posing a philosophy, emphasizing how good that philosophy is and how happy it makes her as a woman, knowing that I have taken all the burden of responsibility from her shoulders, how she is glad to be allowed to serve and obey a worthy and loving husband like me…”

He paused again, then said: “Well, she may not go that far. It all depends on the responses from Emily, of course, Marcy is just supposed to create and guide the conversation in the right direction… and when things go well and Emily shows some hopeful responses, she’ll turn that conversation around to Emily. You know, if she agrees with all that, and if not, what her alternatives are as the basis of a relationship. And when the politically correct “equal union” thing comes up, she’ll question the foundations of that, and make Emily doubt the truths she was taught. When she manages to make Emily wonder if it is really this “equal union“ that she wants, she has succeeded, and she’ll text us, we go home, and I take the relay stick from her. “

“I can hardly believe you are so sure, that this will actually work! She’s just your usual girl-next-door type, you know? A child of the time! “

“So are you, Jason. But did it take very much trouble to corrupt you?”

I sighed. Maybe he was right. Maybe down under all that thick carpet of #MeToo-shit, there was a little girl who just wanted to kneel, hidden deep inside the ostensible independent woman the whole world expected her to want to be? It hadn’t been like that for centuries, millenia, for all of biology… genders had never been equal, women would submit to men. Who were we to suddenly decide that that’s wrong in our time? Or could a girl like Emily, poisoned by fashionable mores, actually be saved by guiding her away from false prophecies? But what if she couldn’t, if she really was too far gone into the present age… would I lose her forever?

We were in that cafe for hours. I was already nervous at first, and it only grew worse as time passed without any word from Marcy. I couldn’t stay seated, and started pacing around the place. Howard understood somehow that I wasn’t in the mood for conversation; he left me alone and buried himself in his phone instead.

Finally the text came. Howard read it out to me with a “told-ya” kind of broad smile on his face: “Thick taboo layer, but susceptible core underneath. Good progress. Doubt of mainstream sociology seeded. Recommend proceed. “

I stuttered: “Do you… do you think…she will…”

He pocketed his phone and shrugged: “How would I know? It is still very early days. But Marcy says she shows promise, and she has a good eye for that. “

Images of the near future flashed through my head as Howard drove the car back to the ranch. What did “Good progress” mean? Would I find her naked and bound, like Marcy? Probably not… but what, then? How would I talk to my sweet girlfriend, staying in the house of the man who intended to enslave her for me? Would we really be discussing our plans to go to the cinema on saturday, gossip about highschool friends, share the new songs we had discovered on youtube? It sounded uneasy and deceitful, artificial.

When we entered the mansion again, Emily walked up to me and embraced me with a small kiss on the cheek. Then she shook Howard’s hand, and said: “Hello, Mr. Weaver. I have heard so much about you.”

Howard replied: “Now did you? So what was it that you heard, and who did you hear it from? “

“Well Jason already told me some things on WhatsApp… and Marcy extended that quite a bit. Nothing bad, I assure you. “

We went into the living and Marcy served drinks. Howard, Marcy and me all did our best to pretend that this was a perfectly normal household. Well, almost. Marcy wore her dressing gown, and only three of us knew that there was nothing underneath. It was a bit of a strange combination with the stiletto heels, and I’m not sure if Emily noticed the little padlocks on her ankles. Could be some fashion statement as well, couldn’t it? I noticed that she had trouble not interpreting Howard’s words as commands, but maybe it could only be noticed when you knew what kind of relation they really had. She did all the work in preparing a welcome dinner for Emily, but then again, in how many vanilla households that was the common procedure anyway?