Trussed
1
Maude gathered while Ottilie watched. The long silk ribbons. The soft strips of muslin. The velvet scarf for her eyes, the silver bell for her ankle, the wooden ball for inside her mouth. And the candles. Of course, the candles: the room must be sensual, intimate, low-lit like a lovers’ tryst. More importantly, they both must be able to hide things in the shadows.
The room smelled of wax, polished wood, Maude’s skin: to Ottilie, the scents of desire. Maude laid everything out on the velvet-draped table, pausing between each item to place a soft kiss on Ottilie. Ottilie wasn’t tied yet, and could reach for the kisses herself. But she didn’t want to; she wanted Maude to be in control.
Ottilie’s corset was laced tight enough to present her breasts like a gift to be unwrapped, though still lax enough for her to slip things in and out of it. She felt her breath come quick and her head go loose every time Maude came near. After a year of this, their afternoon routine for their nightly work, Maude could still make her mind go empty, turn from plans and logic into feathers and fluff with the simple touch of her hand.
Those hands. Ottilie took a moment to watch them as Maude arranged everything they’d need. The hands pale as milk and strong as iron. Hands that stroked Ottilie to muffled cries every night – and every morning. And perhaps a few times in between.
Ottilie’s breath caught as Maude knelt at her feet, holding the silver bell on its fine chain. With a smile, she slid Ottilie’s skirt up her calf, over her knee. She could have stopped there, but she didn’t. Slowly, she pushed Ottilie’s skirt up her thighs, revealing the nothing she wore underneath. Scandalous, they both knew, though how else could she have easy access to the strips of muslin she’d use to mimic ghostly figures in the soft light? But there would be time for that. The bell came first.
Ottilie watched as Maude tied the chain around her bare ankle – another scandal, should anyone see. She took a moment to enjoy the contrast of Maude’s skin against hers, the paleness against her own acorn-coloured calf. Next should come the muslin, but Ottilie allowed herself this one demand: she reached out and stopped Maude’s hand; moved it instead to the wooden ball, worn smooth as a fingertip, small enough to hold invisibly in her mouth. Maude raised an eyebrow, but followed Ottilie’s desire.
Unexpectedly, she slid into Ottilie’s lap, shifting up her own skirt to press her bare cunt to Ottilie’s own. Ottilie couldn’t help letting out a gasp – and that’s when Maude slipped the ball inside, following it with a flick of her tongue. This was what Ottilie wanted: to muffle the sounds of what was to come, to be forced into quiet while her body cried out.
The scarf over her eyes, the ribbons on her wrists, the glowing rows of candles: all of this could wait until later. But Ottilie could not. She felt the heat, the steady blood-beat in her cunt.
Maude slipped one hand down to where their bare skin touched. She slid a finger inside herself, then inside Ottilie, who felt a moan build in her throat, held in by the wooden ball.
With her other hand, Maude rolled up the soft muslin, ready to slip inside Ottilie. But she wouldn’t do that, not yet. First, Ottilie knew, she would make her come.
The men arrived early. They always did. It wasn’t always men – or not all, though mostly – but they were always early. They didn’t want to miss a single moment of what was to come. Maude understood; she fell asleep beside Ottilie every night, woke with her every morning, trussed her in silks every evening in between – and still it wasn’t enough. She’d stretch the days to twice their length if she could, just to have more of Ottilie.
Maude welcomed in the group of eleven. Plus herself and Maude, this made thirteen – the ideal number for a seance. Her voice was hushed, her head veiled, her back artificially bent to make her look older. All this costuming to make her seem like a venerable widow, or a fallen woman grasping for respectability. She didn’t say it out loud; she let her appearance tell the story. It was a role, and she played it well. For Ottilie, they took the opposite approach. Although she was twenty years old, half of Maude’s forty years, her hair was left loose and her cheeks scrubbed clean to make her look younger still. Both, for different reasons, seeming to be the type of woman a man can trust. Why else would two women live together, if not mother and daughter?
The men kept their eyes down and their hands tucked in close, nodding courteously as they passed. She seated them at the velvet-draped table where she had made love with Ottilie just an hour before. She wondered if the men could smell them still.
The men were the usual mix. Maude ticked off her mental list: the crumpled waistcoats, the ink-smudged thumbs, the shoes high-shined to hide the places they’d worn quite through. She was proud of their establishment, the type of work that she and Ottilie did – but she knew it wasn’t what most would call respectable, and neither were the men who came here. One seemed around her own age, his shoulders wide, his calves strong, his hair thick and black. His hands were clean and his shoes weren’t too worn; Maude might have been interested, if her heart and mind and body didn’t already belong entirely to Ottilie. Still, just for fun, she reached for the man’s hand as he passed. He blenched, but didn’t pull away; she pressed his clammy hand to her bosom, over her heart, and murmured something about the spirits, the lost loved ones, the insight and sensitivity she knows he possesses.
As he bumbled off, cheeks aflame, Ottilie caught Maude’s eye and gave her a chiding look. Maude winked back. Why shouldn’t she have some fun with them? Work and play don’t have to be opposites, as Ottilie well knew.
With all the men seated, Maude locked the door theatrically and glanced around to make sure everything was in place. The room was lit by the buttery glow of candles – just enough to make Ottilie’s skin glow, but not enough to vanquish the shadows beneath the table. She knew Ottilie had the wooden ball in her mouth, the bell around her ankle, the muslin in her cunt – which, Maude liked to think, was still throbbing. The ribbons and scarf were strewn on the table like a lover’s discarded undergarments.
Maude approached. The show was about to begin.
Ottilie tried to keep herself steady – though she did allow her breaths to shallow and quicken, just to make her breasts swell above her corset. She sat neatly at the table, unspeaking, unmoving, trying to keep her props silent.
She let her mind wander as Maude ran though her usual speech. Oh the spirits, oh their power, gentlemen, heed the dangers, we must remember not to get too close to Miss Ottilie, we must not touch her or speak directly to her, we must be respectful as it costs her ever so much to make this contact with the other realm and even if she swoons we must stay back, and so on and so on.
Well, if Ottilie was going to swoon, she’d have done it an hour ago when Maude was between her legs. She felt her cunt pulse at the thought of it; after the men left, she’d let Maude come to her again and take her right there on the table. Perhaps she’d use the ribbons on Maude this time: bind her wrists to the table legs, fasten the scarf around her eyes, and sit right on her face.
The tone of Maude’s voice changed, and Ottilie tried to focus. She could feel the eyes of the men upon her. She’s never said to Maude, but she likes it. She likes that the men see her bound, moaning, voice raised to the heights of ecstasy and possession – and yet they cannot touch her. She’s thought about what it might be like to allow one or more of the men to stay after the seance, to watch what she and Maude do with one another. She never would, of course – she and Maude may skirt the bounds of respectability with their work, but this is no bawdy-house. More importantly, she belongs only to Maude, and intends to keep it that way.
With reverential steps, Maude approached Ottilie, then lifted the velvet scarf and fastened it over her eyes. Immediately, Ottilie’s other senses heightened: she could smell the sweet-musk scent from Maude’s skin, hear the throaty breathing of the gathered men and the shifting of their feet beneath the table. She arched her back a little, allowing her breasts to rise and her throat to stretch enticingly. She kept her hands palm up on the chair arms, allowing Maude to bind her wrists with the black silk ribbons – though of course, one of the hands was a false prop, a model made of wax, and her real left hand was tucked to her side.
She ran through the show in her mind: she would fall silent as the spirits approached, swaying against her bonds. She would shake her leg so that the little bell rang; she would knock her knee against the underside of the table: one knock for yes, two knocks for no. As she was overtaken, she would pant, she would sigh, she would gasp and shriek and moan. With her hidden hand she would pull the long, soft strips of muslin from inside herself and fling them to float down like sinister ghosts in the low light. In the commotion, she would let her head drop down so her hair concealed her face, and then she would spit the wooden ball from her mouth and let it thud-thud-thud across the wooden floor.
Such manifestations! Such wonders! Such uncontrolled power in one so young and innocent!
And was it a genuine attempt for these men to contact their loved ones? Or was it just an excuse to watch a pretty little thing writhe against the bondage of silk ribbons and cry out as if possessed? Ottilie didn’t care. All that mattered was that they came here, and that they paid, and that she got to carry on living her life as she wanted with Maude. And if she’d grown to like the feel of strangers’ eyes upon her, if she got to reach a genuine climax as she pulled the muslin from her cunt, if she got to enjoy Maude’s strong hands trussing her up and unfastening her and slipping into every hidden place – well, she does enjoy her work.
Afterwards, in the privacy of their bed, Maude wrapped her arms around Ottilie. The room was black as the night outside, and no one could see into their top-floor window, so there was no need to close the drapes. The full moon shone on their bare skin, lighting the contrasting tones to the same silvery gleam.
There were no props here. No audience. Nothing to prepare for, nothing to plan, no roles to perform.
Maude reached out and rapped her knuckles on the wall. One knock: yes.
Ottilie smiled. Languidly, eyes closed, she reached for Maude’s nipple. She sucked it into her mouth, rubbing her lips against the hardening nub. Maude gasped, and Ottilie slipped her thumb into Maude’s mouth. She could feel the heat from her cunt – from both their cunts – and she slid her body up Maude’s, their mouths meeting. She could taste herself on Maude’s tongue.
This was it. This was all she needed, in this life and in whatever came after: the knowledge that they could bind one another, and not be hurt.
She could go again. They both could. But they didn’t need to. For now she could sleep, and when she woke Maude would be there with her. They have tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. They could be together now – and who knows? Perhaps it’s true what they say about spirits. Perhaps they would be together then too.
2
The rule was: dead girls only. You’ve got to have rules, you know? You’ve got to draw the line somewhere, and Mallory and Orla drew it at the dead. It was weird enough, doing what they did; no need to imitate some woman they might bump into at the supermarket or the coffee-shop queue. Not that she’d know. But they’d know. Plus there was always the potential that they were assisting a stalker, or there’d be some kind of criminal case, or they’d get sued. But dead girls – they’re fair game. You can’t defame the dead.
Orla and Mallory got to the house first: a detached Victorian, chopped into flats sometime in the 1970s. The one they were viewing seemed to have the original frontage, wide bay windows and Rosebud picked out in curling letters over the door. The black thorns of roses twined between the letters, and the gold paint was faded.
‘Do you think it was called Rosebud originally?’
‘I guess so,’ replied Mallory, rubbing a thumb over the tarnished brass doorknob.
‘Do you think rosebud also meant arsehole then?’
Mallory laughed, then covered her mouth with her hand. ‘Orla, come on. Show some respect.’
‘To my rosebud? Or theirs?’
They smelled the estate agent before they saw him. He must spend a good chunk of his commission on aftershave, the amount he’d get through.
‘So who’s Cameron and who’s Lee?’ he asked, extending a hand that, Mallory could see without touching, would feel damp and overly soft.
‘We’re the Cameron-Lees,’ she said, shaking the hand anyway. ‘Ms Cameron-Lee. Both of us.’
‘Let me guess. Sisters?’
‘Guess again.’
He smiled indulgently. ‘You just look so young to be mother and daughter.’
Orla barked out a laugh, and Mallory, who was after all two months older, took the opportunity to pat Orla on the head. ‘We do, don’t we?’
Orla added: ‘Reckon we could charge extra if we were?’
The estate agent had already stopped listening, and was unlocking the door.
Of course they took the flat. It had lesbian energy. Or if it didn’t before, it soon did when Orla ate Mallory’s cunt out on the kitchen counter. At certain points, Mallory was sure she could hear a single knock coming from somewhere in the house. The pipes, maybe. When she came, she was loud enough to drown it all out.
‘Now you,’ she said, when her legs had steadied, patting the counter beside her.
‘I’m good,’ said Orla. ‘Not really feeling it today, you know? I want to fix that curtain pole.’
‘Hot,’ said Mallory, pulling her jeans back on. Despite her post-orgasmic chill, she knew Orla was right. The sooner they got the flat sorted, the sooner they could get back to work. The second bedroom was going to be the filming room. There was enough space for four different set-ups. In the old place they’d only had two, tucked in the corner of their living room: the standard set-up, as generic as possible, silky sheets and a plain wall; and a teen girl’s bedroom, basically a rip-off of a Britney Spears photo shoot, puffy pink bedspread, stuffed bunnies and candy-coloured undies like something you could tear off a cheerleader, the same one these guys never got to fuck when they were fifteen. They’d initially thought they might be doing Britney Spears, but there had been zero requests. Not just for Britney; for celebrities in general.
Most men wanted their ex-girlfriends. They didn’t say as much, but the photos they supplied were screengrabbed from social media, and the phrasing examples were one-sided text messages.
So they’d shifted focus. Now they did deepfakes. Dead girls only. They didn’t actually check on this, but it was in the T Orla, petite and small-boned, deep bronze skin with a dark urchin haircut. Two women couldn’t possibly encompass the entirety of female appearance, but with digital tweaking, the right mannerisms, and a customer who sees what he wants to see, it was good enough.
Mallory made more doing this than she ever had working in tech, which was still a rancid boys’ club, and Orla had never really settled to anything in particular. Mostly the guys didn’t even want porn. Mallory spent a lot less time putting items into herself than she’d anticipated. They wanted a girl they could never have, in underwear or PJs or some girly dress, saying ‘oh honey, come here, I love you, I want to hold you, I never should have left you, you’re the best man in the world, you’re the only man I need, oh honey, I love you, oh honey’. It was kind of sad, actually. Was Mallory the only person in these men’s lives who said I love you?
But she couldn’t let herself get weepy about it. She ripped the tape off a box marked ‘KITCHEN?’, wondering what exactly Orla meant by the question mark.
Orla’s bedtime kiss tasted of dust. Mallory’s toes were cold. They had a mattress on the floor and a duvet cover, but they hadn’t unearthed the pillows or sheets. The uncurtained window glowed yellow from the street lights.
Orla twined her fingers through Mallory’s, watching the moving shadow on the wall. Mallory made sentences in her mouth, then swallowed them without speaking. Orla already knew it all. Her schedule for tomorrow, what she planned to do in the videos. What she would make for dinner at the weekend. Where she wanted to take Orla and what they’d do when they got there. What she hated, what she missed.
‘I’m going to sleep,’ said Orla, peppering soft kisses behind Mallory’s ear. ‘I’ll miss you.’
‘Miss you too,’ echoed Mallory.
‘Still love me?’ asked Orla.
‘Still love you.’
She pressed a kiss to the top of Orla’s head. They lay back-to-back in the pale light.
It was true: she did love Orla. Of course she did. Orla was funny and hot and creative. She was also impulsive and easily distracted and, sometimes, a little shallow. Her favourite band was the Foo Fighters. She’d seen every Mission: Impossible film. She loved macadamia nuts. Was that really enough? Could that really be it forever?
But then Mallory knew she wasn’t enough either. She was loyal but pedantic, loving but nitpicky, generous but self-absorbed. She wasn’t even a full person, and yet she was meant to be Orla’s best friend and lover and confidante and life-organiser and make a home with her and build a career with her and be gentle and patient but also not be a doormat and be spontaneous but also dependable and be mature but not boring and how was one person meant to be everything? What was she meant to do when they were having an argument and Orla was upset but Mallory was upset too; who got to cry and who had to comfort? And what was Orla meant to do when she wanted to go to a sex club and Mallory wanted to have a weed gummy and watch old crime shows? What if neither of them wanted to shop around for the best home insurance deal? What if no one wanted to unload the dishwasher, ever, for the rest of her life? What if they both had things they needed to say out loud, but could never let each other know? Yet they were supposed to lie beside one another every night, knowing everything and nothing about one another.
Orla waited until Mallory’s breathing deepened into sleep, then scrolled through an online dating app on her phone. She never messaged anyone; she was only catalogue shopping.
And sure, she’d thought about fucking other people. She didn’t want to. She knew if she was fucking someone else then she’d just be thinking about Mallory. But also she didn’t want to just fuck Mallory for the rest of her life. Mallory is everything to her, but realistically, how the fuck can one person be everything?
But that’s what she agreed to when they got married, and she doesn’t regret that. She knew marriage was just heteropatriarchal bullshit designed to trap women, that they were literally given away from their fathers to their husbands, traded like sacks of corn. So why shouldn’t they take this hetero institution and queer it right the fuck up?
But were they actually queering it, though? Or were they just living the standard cishet marriage-and-mortgage life, with the difference being that the only penis in the house was a strap-on?
Orla meant what she’d said that day. She did want to love Mallory forever.
But, shit. Forever was hard.
It happened when they were both being other women.
Mallory was in a pink Juicy Couture tracksuit with diamanté bunnies on the arse-cheeks – the customer’s request, what the fuck is wrong with men, honestly – and arranging toppings on a pizza while making teasing comments about how much she fancied sausage tonight; later, on the computer, she’d tweak her accent to be more Home Counties, tweak her tits smaller and her arse bigger, tweak her lips wider and hair darker.
Orla was lying on her front on a bed, playing a zombie-killing PlayStation game in lilac cotton underwear, holding the controller as if she’d never seen it before and squealing about how he was so much better at it than her, which of course was total bullshit as she was a fucking machine on the PlayStation, and in fact could be a professional gamer but didn’t fancy getting called a whore and a bitch on her headset every time she won; later Mallory wouldn’t have to do much at all, Orla was good at accents and already looked a lot like the reference photos, just needed a wider forehead and narrower chin.
‘I feel …’ said Orla, and Mallory, hearing the change in her tone, was instantly alert. This wasn’t part of the performance.
‘Ottilie?’ said Mallory, and why had she said that, what the fuck was Ottilie, was she having a stroke, what was she even –
‘Maude,’ said Orla, ‘oh, Maude,’ and she rolled off the bed and threw aside the controller, the zombie-killing game still yammering away in the background, and she came to Mallory and sat on the counter, right on the pizza, which actually Mallory had been planning to heat for their lunch after they’d done the videos, she’d got some burrata and hot honey, she’d done a rocket salad, she was going to use that nice garlic sea salt, and Orla kissed Mallory and Ottilie kissed Maude and Orla kissed Maude and Ottilie kissed Mallory and ‘I missed you,’ she said, ‘I missed you so much,’ and they kissed and they kissed and they kissed.
Afterwards, in the privacy of their bed, Mallory wrapped her arms around Orla. The room was black as the night outside, and no one could see into their top-floor window, so there was no need to close the drapes. The street light shone on their bare skin, lighting the contrasting tones to the same golden gleam.
It was just the two of them.
For now.
‘Fuck,’ said Orla.
‘I know,’ replied Mallory, but of course she didn’t know. She didn’t know anything at all.
All she knew was that whatever was happening, it was happening to both of them.
Or – all of them.
Mallory reached out and rapped her knuckles on the bed frame.
‘One knock for yes,’ she said. Orla looked at her for a long moment, then knocked the mattress once.
So this is how it was. They’d bought a house, and with it had come something else. Someone else. Mallory didn’t believe in ghosts. She didn’t, she didn’t, she absolutely didn’t. But –
‘Fuck,’ said Mallory.
Orla reached for her phone and deleted the dating app. ‘I was only ever looking.’
‘I know. It’s okay.’
A solution they never imagined to a problem they couldn’t admit they had.
They twined their fingers together in the cold gold light.
How familiar those hands were. How strange.
‘Still love me?’ asked Orla.
‘Still love you,’ replied Mallory, in a voice that was both hers and not hers.