Bound: Devils' Deception

You crawl along the grass, hands and knees making gentle imprints in the soft ground. People are watching you. A lot of people. Why are you crawling again?

You’re startled from your thoughts by a very unkind yank of the collar around your throat. Following the cruel leather’s orders and continuing, you look ahead and see your mistress, back turned to you as if she isn’t even interested in the toy she’s exhibiting at the park today.

Your mind returns to all the staring people as you hear one whisper “slut!” to her boyfriend. Sure, it’s weird to be crawling, but couldn’t they lay off it? They sure aren’t making this any easier.

Wait, ‘slut’? You never even wear anything that revealing. Surely you’re just in a normal t-shirt -- oh god, then why can you see nipples? And completely bare legs behind them!? The hell is going on?

The leash pulls again, harder this time, and, oh no, you're losing your balance. You take a few quick half-steps forward, but it's not enough, and you land unceremoniously on your face in the grass. You can hear people unabashedly laughing now. Laughing at you, and your nudity, and your submission, and your clumsiness. You don’t rise immediately, part of you hoping if you stay here long enough the grass will swallow you whole, face first, so you don’t have to deal with any of these people.

“Rise and shine, whore. That’s what little doggies get if they can’t follow the leash.”

That’s Lisa’s voice. What the hell is Lisa doing here? You try to get a good look at her, but it feels like she keeps floating further away from you. More pressingly, everyone else is getting closer. Too close: one of the strangers reaches out, and before you can react his rough fingers are clamped around both your nipples, taking your breath away. It hurts! Then he pulls up, and all you can think to release the pressure is to follow his lead until you're on your feet. Looking up to his face for some kind of justification of this , you instead see him savoring your pained expression.

You have to get this perverts hands off of you, but when you try to grab the stranger’s violating hands your arms freeze, leaden. Vulnerability sweeps over you. But then some luck: the stranger is suddenly gone, as if dissolved in thin air. You see your mistress again and try to ask her what’s going on, but for some reason she can’t hear you. She’s facing you -- predatory grin getting bigger and bigger until it looks like it’s going to extend past her face. A sickening image. Then everything spins--

You wake up.

The light is a lot oranger than when you fell asleep. Looking at your phone, you remember that it’s a lazy Friday afternoon. Nothing you need to do, but then there’s nothing to do for most of the weekend either.

Your name is Mira. People say you’re all over the place, but that’s not fair because being all of the places is the only way that life is made bearable. No boyfriend (or girlfriend) -- you couldn’t be bothered to make any of the half-wits that were supposed to be suitors stick. Except Zach, but he’s been gone a long time and that’s a different story. Your town is either middling or quaint, depending on if you want to be charitable. You figure the nightlife can only sustain a person like yourself for exactly 4 years (and you’ve been here for 5) before they either settle down or move on to greener pastures. You’ve seen it happen too many times to count.

Back to the present. You’re starting to shrug off the cozy warmth of your sleep. Without anything urgent to do the rest of the day, you decide to turn your attention back to the dream you were just having. God, you looked good in that lingerie. Really good. Your fantasies haven’t ever involved showing off to your friends, but maybe there’s a first time for everything. You trace your hand down your body, under the blanket, down to your belly button, just a bit lower…

323B, just like the woman on the phone said. You knock on the door a few times. It’s almost immediately opened by someone you have to assume is Cecilia.

“Oh, thank you so much for coming! I’ve been searching for my mother for so long and the only clue I found was the pendant,” she says.

Which brings us to why you’re here. You got a call a couple days ago from Cecilia, telling you that she has some kind of long-lost familial relation to you. At first you suspected this was nothing more than a Nigerian prince scam call, but then, right as you were about to hang up, she mentioned a pendant. And it just so happens that her description of that pendant exactly matched one that your mother gave you when you were younger, telling you it was a one-of-a-kind bauble forged by one or another of your ancestors (you’ve long forgotten which).

So, she’s not just bullshitting you. Or if she is, she has definitely put some effort into it, making you feel confident enough to come out and see what exactly the coincidence is about and how on Earth she found out about you.

After you exchange greetings she goes searching for the pendant. She’s a bit older than you expected -- early to mid 30s -- with a youthful energy and small frame contrasted by a slightly wizened eye.

Re-entering the room, she holds the pendant up for you to see, and sure enough it’s a perfect match with your own -- tarnished silver with a gaudy red stone. It’s actually an ugly thing, but somehow that only makes you love it (and your identical copy) even more. You just get started chatting about where she found it when a man walks into the room.

“Ahh, and this is my partner, Cassius,” she says.

“Mmm, pleasure to finally meet you. It’s been a long time coming.” He has a silky voice and a slight accent that you can’t quite place.

You try not to judge people by your first glance of them, but this one has your brain scrambling. He’s what you would get if you gave the bad guy in a Western a day job. Independent, dangerous, even manipulative. And there’s no mistaking that you’re attracted to him, even though you mentally scold yourself for it.

You tear your eyes away from him to ask Cecilia a question.
“Oh, you told him about me?”

“Of course! You’re very important to us,” the woman says.

A moment of hesitant silence passes, and you see what feels like a secret message pass between the couple. You feel out of the loop.

He takes over conversation again.
“Aright, we can make this nice and quick. Have you heard of devils? Like the demonic things with pitchforks and the horns?”

“Sure, little red guys right?”

“Those are the ones!” You can’t tell if he’s being satirical or if he’s really that excited.

“What if we told you that we’re devils ourselves?”

You look back to the woman. The punchline was lost on you somewhere.

He continues.
“And this pendant is fake. Good replica though, don’t you think?”

“What the hell? Then why am I here?”

People don’t normally fuck with you, at least not like this. You aren’t sure how angry to get.

He ignores your question.
“And she isn’t related to you, of course. But we are interested in you. So you didn’t come here for nothing.”