Thursday Night's Tenants Meeting

The following days were not the hardest in Delilah's life. But it was the most uniquely challenging, if strangely routine. "If this bitch wanted a maid, why not just hire a prostitute or an actual maid," she spat as she folded laundry. Now it was her laundry she was folding, so from an outside observer there wasn't a clear reason to be resentful. But Delilah was standing on the principle of the matter. At the same time, this was a skill she definitely had waited too long to learn, as most peers in her housing situation, well before the rewrite anyway, had mastered. The belt creaked as she bent to retrieve a sock from beneath her bed. The sound had become the soundtrack of her existence, a metallic protest accompanying every movement. Three days. It had been three days since the blackmailer had emerged from her bathroom like a specter, three days since the spanking that had left her sitting at a permanent angle, three days since the lock had clicked shut with a finality that still echoed in her dreams. And three days since she had last managed to get off.

Now Delilah had an arsenal of foul language to describe the people and events in her life. While she would have likely called the blackmailer a bitch regardless of the suspected knowledge that the blackmailer was female, or someone who had a feminine body type at least, bitch felt particularly appropriate. Delilah also felt like a bitch, but of a decidedly different kind—the kind found at the bottom of the hierarchy. Delilah had spent more time post-belt cleaning than anything else: making beds, folding laundry, sweeping floors, and cooking meals. When she figured her entire reality was written around all of the erotica she wrote, she figured it would be a parade of non-stop humiliating sex. That was the initial fear, at least, and the humiliation did come. It was around her waist, and it announced itself with a creak or squeak every time she bent over. "Now I'm just waiting for the sex," Delilah grumbled, not choosing her words carefully, folding panties she hardly ever wore at this point, as barely any of them fit over the belt comfortably. They would also be one more obstacle between her and her locked sex, another frustration she didn't have the emotional bandwidth to handle, so she went without. To her surprise, this was less of an issue given the only skirt she owned was on the maid's dress forced on her, and she was currently wearing it.

Given the apartments were a former motor lodge, the office was a motel office, meaning it was small, dated, poorly ventilated, and had a safe capacity of four people, not the ten that had packed in with Delilah for this meeting. Delilah scanned across this dirty old room that had previously hosted a mailbox where she dropped her rent checks in and a desk where she might, on an extremely rare instance, see her crazy conspiracy theorist landlord pulling apart some device he stole, like the red light camera, looking for micro audio processors or other spy tech. It was a who's who of those who couldn't find something better to do.

Still, ten was a decent turnout given the residents of the motor lodge, Delilah included herself in this count. But she couldn't help but notice some, but not all, looked and acted a little different. Mrs. Baker was the shining example of this. Before, she was a crazy person who blasted the TV 24/7 and stayed in her apartment. Here and now, she looked put together, something not just resembling a normal human being but an actual normal human being. Her hair was brushed; she wasn't wearing a stained bathrobe but a shirt that said VideoLand Staff, pants, and shoes that weren't slippers.

Delilah tried to get her train of thought back on track. Small beads of sweat started dripping down her neck. Everything seemed mostly fine up till this point, but her thoughts were racing. Sure, things were different, but everyone seemed the same. Sebastian seemed fine, and Hartwell was the same down to the flaking office hours. Then she thought of Raven, who wasn't working at a vape shop anymore but looked fine from the window. Delilah went cold, realizing that she hadn't actually talked to Raven since the night everything changed. She tried reassuring herself that nothing was wrong, that her sad-girl self-insert fiction didn't overwrite someone's entire identity. She tried to convince herself of that, but each time she repeated that she didn't do anything wrong, the more she was convinced she did, in fact, do something wrong. And if her creations could rebuild someone's life, it could create new life or even take it away. That sent her into a quiet existential spiral. She tried pulling out of it, but it wasn't to be, which was a problem because this was not a safe room to spiral in. Her neighbors were not the kind of people she felt safe having a panic attack in the presence of. The murmurs of the small crowd became louder and more distorted, the small room now getting smaller. David, her creepy neighbor whom she had caught watching her from his apartment window late at night, was running his eyes up and down her body like a slab of beef at the state fair.

She almost jumped out of her skin when a hand rested on her shoulder. The hand rested a moment longer than comfort allowed, slender fingers pressing into the muscle where the blackmailer had gripped her three nights ago.

"Are you alright, Delilah? You seem distracted." It was Jane, as she had one of those "hello my name is" stickers Delilah thought was so stupid looking. She carried three boxes of pizza balanced well onto one another. She was far from what Delilah was expecting from someone who worked for Midwell. She had to be about thirty, not much older than Delilah herself; tall, with a professional posture as she moved. Jane stepped into the dim, cheap lighting of the room, a midnight-black shoulder hair cut that framed her face. Heavy, smudged kohl ringed her eyes, lending an intense, predator-like focus to her gaze, while her lips were painted the color of bruised plums. She wore a black T-shirt from some Goth band, accented by a heavy silver necklace that caught the lights, like a spider in its web. Every movement was slow, deliberate, and commanding—a mesmerizing aura that demanded the room's attention.

"Yeah, I'm alright, just tired," trotting out the familiar line that was always the first excuse to be thrown out and the first to not be believed. "Busy with classes," Delilah mumbled, her belt temporarily forgotten as the sound of her rapid heartbeat filled her ears.

"Well, alright, just don't work yourself too hard. No sense getting all frustrated," Jane said, really not believing Delilah's line. Delilah could see it on her face, the way purple lips pushed into a tight pucker. Going forward, Delilah would notice Jane always had one eye on her when not addressing the room, her attention split between Delilah and David. David, whom the other tenants kept a close watch on to make sure they were not going to run into him. Being in his late thirties, one couldn't say he had the disposition of a school shooter, but no one would be surprised, and in fact they highly suspected that the Texas man did something in his home state that necessitated him moving to a small town in New York.

"Okay, thank you all for attending. There's pizza and drinks on the table if you're hungry," Jane started. The pizza would last about halfway through; the nine residents plus Delilah were not going to say no to food they didn't have to pay for. Everyone took at least one slice and a small cup of soda. Delilah attacked the pizza with the ferocity of a swarm of locusts, not out of hunger—this time—but out of habit, and by the time she finished her second, she was actually full, a rather strange sensation for her, but not an unwelcome one. Jane stood at the far end of the small room behind the desk, pausing to let the munching and crunching finish. "Now we have a lot to get through, but I won't try to take up more than an hour of your time."

"The good news is there are no plans to raise your rents," Jane stated with optimism. The tenants, Delilah included, let out a collective sigh of relief, with hearts and wallets unclenching. "But there is going to be significant work done to the exterior and plumbing. The first of which is going to be repaving the parking lot." Jane paused as the crowd worked through the irritation of not being able to enjoy the one convenience the Lodge offered: parking right at your door. The disgruntled murmur passed over the crowd like a wave cresting over a beach.

The meeting dragged on with what was expected of a tenants meeting: plumbing inspections, exterior painting schedules, a new policy about trash disposal that required tenants to use designated bins rather than the dumpster because of "rodent activity," until further notice. Normal, logical stuff, only worthy of such a production because prior management couldn't be bothered to. Delilah nodded when appropriate, performed the sounds of acknowledgment, all while feeling the weight of Jane's attention like a physical pressure against her sternum.

In a moment of absent-mindedness, Delilah leaned in, letting the metal of the chastity belt rest on the edge of her folding chair. The pressure against her denied sex sent a jolt up her spine, and she had to bite her lip to keep from gasping. She shifted, trying to find a position that didn't torment her, but every movement was a reminder. The room was hot, too hot, and she could feel sweat pooling at the small of her back, trickling down to where the belt sat like a brand against her skin. She needed to get out. Needed to move. Needed to do something, anything, to relieve the building pressure that had been mounting for seventy-two hours of enforced celibacy. But there was no relief to be found for the next twenty minutes, as Jane wasn't finished, and bolting up from her chair was not a safe option.

When the meeting finally broke, she didn't linger. Didn't wait for Jane's parting words or the suspicious glances of her neighbors. She silently disappeared, her steps awkward and hurried. The walk back to her unit was a blur. The key turned in the lock smooth, well-oiled, perfect. She slammed the door behind her and leaned against it, her hand immediately going to the belt, pressing against the steel, trying to find some angle, some pressure point, some way around the engineering that kept her sealed away from herself. "Come on," she whispered, her fingers probing, seeking, finding only metal and the frustratingly small gaps that allowed her to feel her own arousal but never to satisfy it. "Come on, come on..."

She stumbled to her bed, fell back onto it, and spread her legs. The belt gleamed in the light from her lamp, a mocking silver smile between her thighs. She tried to slip a finger beneath the waistband, to reach the sensitive nerves above where the metal stopped, but the fit was too tight, the angle impossible even for her small fingers. She tried the shower head. Tried the vibration of her phone against the metal—just enough to tease, to make her gasp, to bring her to the edge before the sensation dissipated, leaving her panting and more frustrated than before. She tried humping her pillow, the arm of her couch, grinding down on anything she could with desperate force, seeking the friction that would push her over, that would end this torture. The belt absorbed the pressure, distributed it, denied her the concentrated sensation she needed. Delilah screamed into her pillow. A raw, animal sound of pure sexual frustration that tore her throat and left her gasping.