Questions And Cleaning

Everything was exactly where she'd left it, meaning she couldn't put this down to a messed-up wet dream or some breakdown in her sanity from too many self-study quizzes for Hartwell's class. She took a moment to sit down on one of the chairs and turned on a TV that hadn't been there before. The local package included news from Albany, ABC, a college football channel. The sound of football would be welcoming as it would choke out the silence. She didn't even like football and found it a good way to get an inflated ego and repeated head trauma. Still, it allowed her to shut her eyes and just… disassociate a few minutes to not think. But when the screen turned on it was a black screen that had two options. Business, which had a collection of documentaries some of which she had seen like *Paris Is Burning*, *Freakonomics*, and the collected works of David Attenborough. While pleasure listed such titles as *The Submission of Sophie*, *Santiago's Orgy Collection*, *The Slave Huntress*, and *The Empire of Sin*. Television was not going to offer the mental opioid she was looking for, so silence would have to be her companion for the moment.

The phone buzzed in Delilah's petrified hands and dragged her back into personhood.

Delilah's hand flew to her throat, fingers finding the fabric band, the hollow pendant that chipped her like a dog. She stared into the middle distance, paralyzed. Her brain speeding to recap the last few hours in the vain hope her body would start working.

"Who are you?" Delilah whispered, knowing that such a straightforward question would go as far as a snail on toast.

Her face burned. This must be reality squaring the circle, she mused, but she also drank a lot so there might be a kernel of truth to what she was being told, as she had far more drinks than her tolerance would allow for.

Delilah remembered nothing and everything at the same time. She remembered passing out with clothes on, and she remembered borrowing bites of other people's lunches when she worked at Walmart when the funds weren't there. She remembered writing a frighteningly similar scenario while she listened to Brandon and Melissa Kudlow scream at each other all night when sleep was no longer possible. She definitely did not remember anyone ever aside from Mr. Midwell—and that was only when he first gave her the key—in this apartment. Not even Sebastian.

"I didn't consent to this," Delilah typed, her thumbs shaking. Her voice getting stuck somewhere between intention and anxiety.

The phone buzzed again.

Her driver's license was there. Her student ID. And two cards she didn't recognize. A black credit card with her name on it. And a small photo of herself—she knew it wasn't something she did, but if she had, she might have been a bit more popular with some of the men on campus.

In the picture she is down on her knees in front of this unknown guy, sucking his cock while she was rubbing her own wet pussy under her skirt in order not to give the guy holding the camera a peek at its obviously humiliating state. Hell, even for sex with a random stranger this looked completely undignified. It felt less like making love and more like just submitting to another, giving him as much pleasure as she could in the hope of getting some herself. Delilah had never done anything even close to that; she had only ever been with John, her ex. Which was a one-way ticket to the most basic dicking down she ever had.

Delilah's stomach dropped through the floor. She sat there, confused and blackmailed, staring at the decadent sheer between her fingers, and felt something hot and shameful curl in her belly. Not just fear. Something else. Something that had been there for years, hiding under her black eyeliner and her pretentious music taste.

Want.

"Fine," she whispered.

Delilah grabbed the box from where she'd dropped it this morning. It had everything from before: the sprayer, the duster, and the uniform. She did have to admit this probably would make her look sexy—the manicured fabric so sheer she might as well be wearing nothing at all. "You have got to be kidding me." The French maid outfit was a contradiction now wrapped up in erotic tradition. A servant, yes—historically the most senior of the noble lady's household staff, valued for their knowledge and expertise in European culture—reduced to a skimpy submissive costume. There was somebody to blame, probably the patriarchy, probably generations of horny writers, but she could really only blame herself for this particular humiliation. "This is cliché," she argues aloud—to whom she is arguing with was not apparent—unwilling, but donned the outfit that might have been less scandalous than if she were naked. She started with the duster; she had no cleaner to put in the spray bottle. "For when you need to see yourself clearly, my ass," she said, dusting the top of her kitchenette. Then the TV, which still held a list of extremely hardcore but somehow expensively done pornography. Twirling the duster in her hand, it didn't so much as clean but move the dust around. But she ran the feathers over every surface, bending over and feeling the draft, leaving her exposed and unguarded holes, sending a shiver up her spine. The cameras looking into the clear glass to see the two pale cheeks bounce and wiggle as she gets down on all fours, leaving her vulnerable but distinctly lacking the previously instructed belt. Her little rebellion lasting as long as a brunch service at a downtown restaurant. But the figure on the other end distinctly noted that there was never an explicit instruction for Delilah to not wear panties. A soft hmmming sound crossed their lips and serveral calculations were made or redone.

The Price Chopper on Black Bear Drive was a twenty-minute walk from The Pines, nestled between a ninety-nine-cent card shop and a store that sold nothing but model trains. It was the kind of place that was the stop for when Walmart was too classless but Whole Foods was out of the budget. And no matter what your purpose was for being there, you left with that disinfectant smell that could strip paint clinging onto your clothes.

Delilah waited at the booth by the window, wearing the only jeans she owned that still felt like hers, and a long sweater that she'd found folded neatly along with the rest of the new wardrobe that was just the perfect fit for a day that was still cool but not cool enough for a heavy jacket. She waited for the others to go, then arrived at the counter to receive a small box marked fragile, along with a note that said:

Wear this. It smells like me. —A

It smelled like expensive perfume and something darker. Musk. Ownership, the bottle had a red tint to it, the color of blood. A sensory reminder that clung to her. Then she grabbed a cart and started going down the aisles, because fuck it, if someone else was paying, she was going to shop like a condemned woman. Which, legally, she supposed she was.

When she returned to the apartment loaded with the type of groceries that a formerly poor college student thinks is expensive—the small act of petty vengeance that was more bratty than anything else but satisfied the small remnant of Delilah's ego—the phone buzzed as she walked past the doorframe.

"I'm going to class," Delilah told the choker, while putting the coffee in her cabinet along with a box of rice that wasn't boil-in-a-bag for once, and a bottle of Chateau Diana because cheap alcohol partially made this mess; it can't make it any worse."Dr. Hartwell Fiance 301 I hate it" she really did that wasn't a secret to anyone who saw her come out of that classroom could see it. And it wasn't like she had poor mathematical abilities either Delilah was quite capable when it came to numbers but the atmosphere she found always drained her.

She said this a little louder as she took the belt she was already supposed to be wearing and shoved it in the cabinet underneath the counter. Out of sight, out of mind, she supposed.

"I do okay."

"You're going to give me structure by making me wear a French maid costume and a chastity belt?"

Delilah shoved a piece of cheese in her mouth to avoid answering. Then silently spitting it out after realizing the sharp tang of an imported Swiss was not the same thing as the stuff she got on sandwiches when Sebastian bought her lunch at the Subway.

She almost choked.