Chapter 13. Jude
The cage smells like my own sweat. My knees are raw against the grated floor.
It's industrial steel, the kind they use in commercial kitchens, and it hurts against bare skin, on purpose.
The violet light strobes across me. The bass from the main room penetrates the walls of the private playroom.
The tight leather collar buckled around my throat sits just firm enough to remind me with every swallow that I belong to someone. I love it. I love it all.
I'm wearing the collar and leather briefs and nothing else.
The air conditioning hits my bare shoulders in waves, raising goosebumps every time.
Annoying, but just another level to the torture.
The cage is built for this, four feet by four feet, matte-black bars, a padded floor that I'm not on because Emmett removes the pad as part of the punishment.
Something I did earlier. Mouthed off, called him my little sub, or something like that.
It was funny at the time. Not so funny now that I have to keep the tears from flowing for how much my knees hurt, or from cumming for how turned on I am.
It hurts. What matters is that I earn this, and we both know it.
Emmett sits two feet away in a leather armchair, his favorite.
His legs are crossed. His dark hair falls past his shoulders.
He's wearing a green button-down and his hands rest on the armrests.
The glass of whiskey on the side table beside him remains untouched.
He never drinks during scenes. He's too meticulous for that, too aware that alcohol dulls the instrument he's playing, and the instrument is me.
My bladder is a fist. It's so full it has gone past discomfort, past urgent, into something that I can't even describe.
We've been at this for I don't know how long.
Time dissolves in scenes like these. It could be forty minutes or two hours.
The three glasses of water he makes me drink before locking the cage are doing exactly what they're designed to do, which is make me desperate, which is make me beg, even though he knows I can't.
He takes my voice tonight. That is the rule: puppies don't talk.
Puppies bark, puppies whine, puppies whimper, but they don't form sentences, don't negotiate, don't use their sharp, bratty mouths to talk their way out of consequences.
It's the worst punishment he could choose, and he knows it. I love to talk all the time.
I whimper again and again. I press one hand flat against the cage door, fingers curling around the bar. My other hand goes to my thigh, pressing hard, trying to create a counter-pressure that does absolutely nothing except give me the illusion of control.
Emmett looks at me. His black eyes study me. Then, he tilts his head.
"What was that, puppy?" His voice is gentle, mocking. "I can't understand. Such a silly little thing."
I bark and scrape my nails against the grated floor for emphasis, shifting on my knees, and the pressure in my bladder sends a spike of urgency through my body.
Somewhere behind Emmett, I hear someone laugh.
He keeps the playroom's door open, so anybody can peek.
It's part of it, the humiliation, and I love it, but I also hate it, because at this moment, I'm desperate. And so hard as well.
I paw at the door again. Both hands now, frantic, my hips shifting in a way that I can't control anymore, involuntary, desperate, the kind of squirming that strips away every layer of bratty performance and leaves only the raw animal fact of need.
My eyes are wet. Not from crying, or maybe from crying, the line is so thin here, in this place between agony and ecstasy where I live my best and worst life simultaneously.
I whine, high-pitched, pressing my forehead against the bars until the cold metal bites into my skin.
"Hmm?" Emmett uncrosses his ankles. Recrosses them the other way. Takes a slow sip of water. The sight of him drinking anything right now is so cruel. He swallows, and I watch his throat move, and I want to scream, and I can't, because puppies don't scream, puppies just…
I fake-cry. Full commitment. Shoulders shaking, little hitching yips escaping my throat, my hands pressed against the cage door like a shelter dog performing for potential adopters.
Someone watching sighs, that specific exhale of someone deeply enjoying another person's suffering.
The sound travels through me, lighting up the parts of my brain that process shame and arousal as the same signal.
I know that if I just let go and pee there, I'd pay for it.
Emmett watches my performance with calm and delight. His lips curve in a smile. He's loving every second of my suffering.
"You had such a smart mouth before, didn't you, puppy?
That's what landed you there, isn't it? Hmm?
Why don't you answer me now?" he asks, having all the fun in the world, and I whimper again.
All I can say is "woof, woof" and it sucks, but I love it.
I love it, I'm so turned on, so humiliated, so submissive, so powerless. I start feeling tears again.
"In fact, I should leave you there for a lot more for ignoring me, hmm? You are supposed to answer me when I speak to you, aren't you?"
I whimper more, pawing the cage's door again. He sees how desperate I am, how I'd do anything for him to let me pee. I can't even pee there without permission.
"Go on, answer me," he says. I bark again, whimpering and sobbing. "What do you want, you stupid mutt? Can't even tell me what you want. Pathetic."
I make a little dance, showing I need to pee, using my best pleading puppy eyes.
"Oh? You want to go potty?" he mocks, leaning forward.
I nod, desperately, whimpering more, and pawing on the cage's door again.
"I suppose I can let you go but that would be very generous of me, wouldn't it?
I wonder what you'd be willing to trade me for it…
" he says. "Use your words now, pet. Beg me to let you go. "
"Please, please, please, Daddy. I need to go now."
"Oh, do you now? My poor little puppy doesn't want to make a mess? But I thought that was your goal when you were being a mouthy brat, calling me all those things. I wonder what changed, hmm? How's it my problem that you need to pee?"
I'm still whimpering, dancing in place.
"Please, Daddy, please, I'll do anything you want, anything at all, Daddy, please, I'm so desperate. I know I'm not worthy and I can't tell you what to do, but I'm begging you," I say, so relieved that I can speak again that tears start flowing down my face. He smirks.
"Is that so? Oh, but I thought you would already do whatever I want as my pet. Was I wrong, hmm?"
My face flushes with the realization. He always gets me exactly where he wants me.
"No, Daddy, please, of course I'll do whatever you want anyway, but please, Daddy," I'm now openly crying and I see more people peeking at the door.
One of them is Alfie. Knowing he's seeing me like that makes me even harder.
"Good puppy," he says. Two words. His voice shifts from mocking to warm.
He leans forward, and his long fingers, strong, gentle, nails perfect, painted red, reach for the cage latch.
The click of the lock releasing is the most beautiful sound I've ever heard.
The door swings open, and Emmett's hand finds the back of my neck, fitting against my collar.
"Go on, off you go," he says.
I bolt to the bathroom, passing the viewers, who all give me funny looks. I love it. I'm so hard it's actually difficult to pee, even with how much I need it.
When I'm back, he pats his thighs and I sit there.
He hugs me and puts my head on his chest. "You did so well.
You're such a good puppy for me, so obedient when you want to be.
I'm so proud of you, my puppy," he says and soothes me.
I whimper again, this time from how much the praise overwhelms me in a good way.
"I see how hard you are. Let's take care of this now, hmm? "
?
The memory ends abruptly. My body remembers before my brain does: my knees ache, phantom pain from a cage I haven't been in for over a year, and then I'm back on my couch with Tove Lo again, telling me she has to stay high all the time to keep them off her mind, and yeah, that tracks, that absolutely tracks.
The song loops for what must be the fifteenth or twentieth time.
I lost count somewhere around the third whiskey and the second bout of staring at the ceiling, crying.
The worst part is that I know I'm horribly pathetic.
The apartment is as messy as it can get.
Noa's pan sits unwashed in the kitchen sink from two nights ago as per our agreement that he cooks and I clean, which means it's been two days since I last cleaned anything, which means it's been two days since I last cared about anything, and even two days ago I barely had strength to do so.
It's been a longer time since I felt like myself but I forgot to count the days, so I don't know how long.
I've been on this couch performing my own one-man production of Jude Piaf's Greatest Hits: The Depressing Ones.
My jacket is on the floor. My shoes are somewhere.
One of my socks is draped over the arm. And the worst part: nothing huge had happened to make me spiral.
The memories just decided to make everything worse.
I just feel so sad and vulnerable, and Ford makes it worse, but it isn't his fault.
It's mine. When I think he could hurt me just as bad as Emmett did, or that I could trust him and have my heart destroyed again, I can't deal with it.
I cuss myself. I should never have gone back to BratWorld in the first place.
I catch my reflection in the dark TV screen and immediately wish I hadn't.
My cheeks are hollowed out. I haven't eaten since yesterday's handful of crackers that I consumed standing over the sink in the dark like a raccoon with an existential crisis.
My eyes are bloodshot, the honey color gone muddy, red-veined, the eyes of someone who has been crying or drinking or both, which in my case is both, always both, because tears and alcohol have the same function in my body: they fill the space.
Ford's face floats behind my eyelids every time I blink.
I miss him like crazy but that's the problem, that's why I'm drinking in the first place.
His face morphs. It always morphs. Ford becomes Emmett.
It hurts so bad that it feels like someone pierced a knife in my heart.
It's as bad as the first months were. Regret tastes like bile.
I should never have met Ford because now it hurts all over again but I can't forget him.
I stopped going to church. I woke up, looked at the ceiling, and decided that getting out of bed required a level of self-delusion I couldn't manage.
Ford probably didn't even notice. Ford probably conducted his rehearsal with perfect precision and ate lunch at whatever restaurant serves the most orderly menu and went to his spotless home and didn't think about me once.
Why would he? I am a footnote. He said so himself, didn't he?
Not in those words, but in the spaces between his words, in the way he keeps me at arm's length.
My phone buzzes. I stare at the screen without picking it up, watching the notification preview glow and fade and glow again.
Glynn: Ford's at BratWorld looking for you. Come here.
The words don't make sense but maybe I'm just drunk. I read them again. Ford's at BratWorld. Ford. At BratWorld. The man who wore a button-down shirt to a kink club and looked at the playrooms like someone touring a museum in a country whose customs he found fascinating but barbaric.
Looking for you.
My heart does something catastrophic. It hammers, fast and arrhythmic, the whiskey in my blood thinning. My hands are shaking. They were already shaking, but now they're shaking differently, with adrenaline.
He came looking for me. Ford Ridden drove to a kink club on a Friday night to find me.
I know this is a terrible idea. I know it with the same part of my brain that knows fire is hot and heights will kill you.
I know that going to BratWorld drunk and desperate and raw is the kind of decision that future Jude will have to clean up, assuming future Jude exists, which is never something I bank on.
I'm already standing. My legs disagree with this decision. The room tilts thirty degrees to the left, then corrects itself with a sickening lurch, and I grab the arm of the couch to keep from going down.
I find my orange jacket on the floor. It's neon and makes me look like a highlighter, which I love. My boots are by the door. I shove my feet into them without bothering with the laces, grab my keys from the counter, and I'm halfway to the door when Noa materializes.
He's standing in his bedroom doorway in Henry's oversized shirt, his dark curly hair a cloud around his face, his big black eyes fixed on me with an expression that's equal parts fury and fear.
His arms are crossed. He's smaller than me by a significant margin, a furious thing with the temperament of a wasp and the loyalty of something fiercer.
He's holding a glass of water in one hand, extended toward me.
"Drink this," he says.
I look at the water. I look at my boots. I look at the door.
"Can't. Gotta go."
"You're not seriously going out like this.
" His voice is firm and annoyed but gentle, the specific register Noa uses when he's trying not to yell because yelling will make me shut down and he's learned this through years of trial and error and nights exactly like this one.
"This is exactly what you did last time, and the time before that. "
"I have to go."
"You have to sit down and drink some water and go to sleep, Jude. You're wasted. You haven't eaten. You look like…"
"Like what? Like shit?" I snap, then I immediately regret it. He's just trying to help me but no one can.
He steps into the hallway, blocking the path to the front door. Tiny, immovable, his jaw set and his eyes burning with the frustration of someone who loves a person they cannot save.
"Please," he says. Just the one word. Quiet. And for a second, I see everything he's feeling: the exhaustion, the worry. He deserves better than this.
"I'm sorry," I say, and I mean it, I genuinely mean it, but I'm already moving. He calls my name. He says it twice. Jude.
Jude!