Put back on one's feet

Jesse felt a cool hand on his shoulder, dredging him out of his semen-drooling stupor. It belonged to Ms Julian, who offered a sympathetic smile and a soft towel. Around and about, several of the other teachers were offering similar assistance; along with Mrs Durren and her army of seamstresses who were bringing in clean outfits from each student’s personal selection. The sissy let himself be pulled into some tight but comfortable yoga pants and an oversized fluffy sweater: the cutesier side of his own wardrobe and really one of the most modest combinations he had. Still, his legs felt like jelly as he tried to clamber up onto them and his whole body shook as if caught in a blizzard.

His mental recollection of the last few hours remained hazy at best: a coalescing wash of vignettes and experiences with no real sense of time or attachment. Yet the effects of the physical exertions were all too evident. Jesse felt hollowed out and raw. As if all his insides had been scooped out when he wasn’t looking, then roughly shoved back in. He reached up a shaking hand to shift his collar a little; a constant companion for so long now that he barely even noticed its existence. Suddenly it felt tight… chokingly so.

Suzy had also managed to stagger somewhere close to vertical, aided uncharacteristically by his oft-sadistic mentor. The demon-in-frills looked strangely small without her petticoats… and about as ravaged as the rest of them. She helped the two younger femboys find each other’s support though and softly guided them towards the exit. Neither said a word, but basked in the comfort of their shared presence. Somehow, Jesse’s loved managed to make a non-verbal call to be picked up, the pair of them collapsing on the pavement outside until the Driver managed to find them. Fortunately all of the passers by simply stepped over them in the meantime… neither knew what they’d do if a potential customer came calling just then.

In a hot, steaming bath several hours later, Jesse sank into an embrace of foam. Somewhere at the far end, Suzy was assumedly doing similar. For once in their short, but fervid relationship… neither felt particularly like being embroiled in the other. They stewed in silence, listening to the slow fizz and crackle of bubbles popping. The traumatic events of the day and everything it meant for their future seeping in as surely as the heat was into their aching muscles. The Madame was gone. She was gone and had been replaced by a man who could turn a dial and take their very minds away from them. Twist and bend their emotions as easily as others could their flesh. There was no doubt at all he’d put that same power in the hands of their customers sooner, rather than later. Everyone knew a corporation had to leap on any innovation in product as soon as possible and iron out the kinks later… it was just basic business sense.

For the first time in a long while, the little sissy found his heart and soul teetering on a crumbling edge of growing insecurities. As if outside this tub of fluffy foam and slowly cooling water, there was a void waiting. A chasm of aches and questions he’d somehow forgotten. Filled with flashes of doubt and fear; like the look he’d seen on Fran’s face, or the renewed tightness of the collar around his neck, or the feeling in the pit of his stomach he’d first felt when the Algorithm had handed him that pure-white card… all those months ago. It was strange to realise: he hadn’t really felt anything as strongly as that since. Through all the daily grind of lessons and customers and making himself pretty and purchasable. He hadn’t even noticed some entire segment of his emotional spectrum go missing. It was a horrible feeling. A sense of hollow, listing lostness and self-doubt that seemed so inimical to everything his heart beat for… and yet… for some reason Jesse felt like he needed to hold onto it. Needed to cling to it like a jagged rock in the fog, even as its edges scraped against his pampered, naked form.

He glanced across at Suzy, but his femboy lover seemed to have fallen asleep. Propped up among the bubbles like any other cherubic angel would be. Voices drew his attention through the glass wall to the corridor outside: Suzy’s daddy walking swiftly in deep conversation with, of course, Madame Stanfield. Jesse ignored the connotations. Let the Master’s and the Mistresses have their politics and intrigue. For the moment he would just sink into this renewed sense of himself, listening to the blood in his veins and the sting of his recovering body.