Mirror

She waved her hands up and down my torso and three chains descended from my collar, framing my breasts, before joining together at my waist chain. She grabbed my right thigh firmly and slid her hands down the length of my leg until she held my ankle in her hand. I heard the tinkle of chain follow her movements and cool links began to tickle my flesh along my leg's length.

She pulled my foot to the side until I could barely touch the floor with my toes and secured it there somehow.

I began to shake and cry as she repeated the process with my left leg. When she was done I could barely breathe, I was so stretched out.

Besides the cuffs at my ankles and wrists, the chain did very little to restrain me. On the other hand, I was well aware of its weight. If I were to have had to bear the chain, I would've tired quickly. I could feel its presence along my frame from tip to tip.

Anais placed two fingers from each hand on the chain at my waist and traced down over my pubic bone along each side of my sex. As she did, two thinner chains sprouted out of her fingers. She continued with her fingers to a point in the air, about mid thigh and formed her hands into fists. When she opened them, two heavy metal balls hung at the end of the each chain.

Anais stepped around behind me and I heard the sound of the flogger whistling through the air again. Each stroke evoked a flash of heat on my back followed shortly by the cold, shifting chains settling back against my body. The dangling balls clicked and grazed my inner thighs. Their chains alternately pressing against my crotch as they swung about.

My screams became littered with moans.

Anais gently placed a hand on one side of my head. On the other side her cheek touched mine covering the cool streams of tearfall. "Now, Siana, do you want me to whip you some more?"

I started to whimper and shake my head again, but when I did, I felt the warmth of her cheek against mine. Her lips were so close to my ear. My crotch chains rocked like bellows and the smoldering within me suddenly flared causing a ripple of contractions through my muscles.

"Yes," I whispered.

"Yes what?" she asked.

I sucked in a few gulps of air attempting to get the courage to speak. "Whip me," I cried, "some more."

Her lips pressed softly on my neck just below my ear for a fleeting moment before she stepped away. As she did a flood of tears began to pour from my eyes accompanied by a full-voiced cry of despair. Years worth of bunched up emotion began to flood from my body sweeping me along with it. I heard the sound of the lash slapping flesh and chain links rattling for several strokes before I even felt the fires that its bite ignited. And I screamed as loudly as I could.

After this point, I was no longer a reliable witness to the events that were unfolding in that small reflective universe. All I know is that the flogging seemed to last forever. Sometimes Anais used the flogger as gently as a brush. Other times the whipping was fast and furious.

Throughout the time, Anais encouraged me to scream and cry. She peppered me with questions that I do not recall. Nor do I recall if I answered the questions with answers relevant to inquiry, or even if I was capable of answering at all.

My vision was a fuzzy, gray canvas upon which swirls of color exploded and faded with each stroke. Vaguely, I sensed a renewed ferocity in the lashes. I could no longer react, or scream, or think as I hung by my wrists. Anais was swinging so hard, that she was grunting. Indeed she let forth a desperate cry between each stroke as if to give life to my own missing voice.

Finally, she let forth a piercing feral cry and the flogger popped like a whip. Unlike all the previous strokes which were like slaps, this final stroke was a laceration that struck like a genus of daggers across my left shoulder blade. I heard the chains rattle and stared at the floor far, far away. A few red droplets of blood splattered, making perfect little starbursts on the hard gray surface.

Surely, I was half dead - hanging limply in the silence - murdered by my own reflection. Who investigates inter-universal crime? Would this be considered a suicide?

A wailing cry slowly filtered into my head. I tried to move my mouth to see if the cry was mine. I do not think that it was. A roar intruded our small universe. A train perhaps. I opened my eyes to see cold metal links of chain falling all around me and tumbling across the floor. The cuffs holding my wrists fell away and I began to collapse, but Anais caught my body and lowered me gently and naked onto the soft blankets of the bed.

When I could, I curled into a ball and Anais wrapped herself around me, holding me when I felt like I might fall off her reality, stroking my hair, and shushing me to lie still and recover.

I faded in and out. Sometimes I was shaking uncontrollably. Sometimes I was lying beside both myself and Anais.

I felt a coolness on my back. Anais was dabbing my skin with lotion. It felt nice until she touched the one last spot on my left side and my own ragged scream informed me that my voice had returned from wherever it had gone to hide.

"Shhh," Anais comforted. "The salve will numb it in a moment."

My head was cradled in her lap. I wrapped my arms around her waist and held on as tightly as I could.

Later when I had some strength, I raised my head slightly and pulled Anais even more closely. I ran my hand up her back. It felt textured and hot. I looked into her eyes and saw that they were red and swollen from tears of her own. Indeed, her back was red and swollen as well. It was covered in raised welts and a vicious cut was ripped into the flesh of her right shoulder blade.

"Oh my god, Anais, you're bleeding!"

She nodded her head and coughed up a ragged chuckle. "Sympathy welts... I am your reflection after all..."

I reached for the tube of salve, but Anais snatched it before me. "No!"

She heaved the tube up towards the ceiling and I watched in fade into the haze.

"We need to put something on your back," I complained.

Anais pointed to a space on the bed, and, when I looked, a new tube of salve dropped from above.

I smirked at her, but picked up the tube and began applying it to her back just as she had mine. Soon, I found that attending to her wounds made me forget my own.

After I had applied the salves and they had absorbed into her skin, Anais rolled over and looked up at me smiling. She was so pretty and soft lying there beneath me, not the hard, whip-wielding bitch that she wanted me to think that she was.

I leant over and kissed her lips. She pulled me closer and returned my advance. She tickled my sides with the lightest touch of her fingers. We rolled onto our sides and looked at each other for a moment with smiles on our faces. Then Anais placed her hand on my abdomen and slowly slid it down until her fingers began to thread through the thatch of my sex.

"Marmot!" she croaked in a froggish voice and we both started laughing while tears ran from our eyes.

Once settled, though, we kissed again and the bed became flooded with a tide of arousal and we swam together - tucking and twirling, twisting and thrusting. Our hands sculled the arousal into small pools from which we drank with our tongues and lips. Belly to belly we porpoised atop the surface of the bed. We pressed one another for fingerholds and textured places and breathed when we could above the lapping waves of love.

We surfaced, legs kicking, holding one another closely. In a syncopated dance we raised an arm to the sky in a graceful curve. Our backs arched and we sang a note, then another, and another, sustained, then another and slowly sank below the surface - a descending spin until we settled, exhausted.

A coil of chains snaked their way onto the bed and gathered my limbs, neck, and waist. The links shortened me into a soft round drop. Anais wrapped her body around my back and pulled me close - a soft, warm fortress against the elements. Her breathing behind my ear became slow and deep. I was safe, secure, loved.

---

I awoke from a peaceful sleep, alone. I expected that I would open my eyes to find myself in my own room and that my story had all been a dream. But, alas, I found myself still in Anais's room with it's stacks of books and featureless ceiling.

The chains had fled me, mostly. I wore a single matted steel plate that covered my sex like a thong panty. The belt was tight and the fit was seamless. The single aberration upon the smooth surface was sturdy D-ring deep between my thighs. And, from there ran a chain across the sheets and over the edge of the bed.

I pressed my palm hard against the plate to sooth a buzz that lingered from the night before, but the surface was impenetrable and my sex lay well locked away.

I crawled to the edge of the bed and saw that the other end of my chain, my chastity leash, was connected to a staple embedded in the floor.

"Anais?"

I stepped out of bed and tiptoed into the bathroom.

As luck would have it Anais also entered the bathroom at the exact same time, yet she was on the other side of my mirror. She was on the side on which I was supposed to be. And I had no choice but to mimic her movements as we brushed out our hair and checked our lipstick.

When Anais spoke, I formed the same words and they fell from my lips, but they were not mine. Neither did my face belie the sense I had of blood draining from it.

"Hey Fuckypoo! Good night's rest? You snore, bitch!" Ah... vile Anais.

"I was thinking about this girl in England, Jenny, as you slept," Anais continued. "I looked into the future. Extrapolated, if you will. You two would fall in love, deeply, no doubt - a disgustingly sweet love. You would be together. But after a few years you would both realize that something was missing. You would both wait for the other to be the bitch for once. Perhaps, you would alternate, desperately trying to fill the bitch roll that you both need so badly. But, it's a role that neither of you want. You will become sad. You'll cling to one another out of duty, or fear of the alternative. You'll fucking die with only half lived lives. And that's just a big ball of fucking suck!"

Anais and I checked our eyelashes for length and appeal. Behind them my eyes were cool and calm, not dilated with fear like they should have been.

"So, I decided that since I have the one ingredient that you lack, not to mention, some practice with a flogger, I will go on your three month trip to England. I will bring back the love of your life."

We were admiring the sparkle and movement of some dangly earrings that Anais had chosen.

"You'll have to wait for me to return, Siana. Rest. Read some books. They were all custom written for you, after all. Do whatever you do when you're not doing anything... Er... Except, you may have noticed that you are wearing a chastity belt. So, you can't do that!" We smiled a sassy smile at one another. "There is no key. Sorry! I figure that the more frustrated that you are, the more satisfied that I will be. Balance!"

I don't know anything about her universe. What could she possibly know of mine? I wanted to scream at her. I wanted to stop her, even if just to warn her. But, she was in control. "They say that to love someone you must first love yourself. So, after last night, it sounds like I'm all set to seduce Jenny, eh?"

We adjusted our blouse a bit and flinched from the pain in our shoulder blade. "Ooo! That still hurts like a fucking bitch, doesn't it?" Anais said. "I left more salve for you in the steamer trunk."

I didn't remember seeing a steamer trunk in Anais's room...

"Apply some whenever it becomes too sore... One more thing..."

We turned around and picked up a hammer that I had not noticed before. "I need to do this to keep you safe. I'll get a new one when Jenny and I come back home. A better one. One that doesn't leak so badly."

We winked at each other and smiled a pretty smile. A fucking smile. I didn't want to be smiling!

"Safe travels! Don't die!"

No! Anais, wait! The screams in my head did not crack the surface of Anais's smile.

We lifted the hammer high over our heads and swung it at the mirror.

I jumped back in order the avoid the shards of glass as the mirror shattered into a million pieces. All the shards however seemed to fall onto Anais's side.

The chain attached to my chastity belt suddenly pulled sharply and I tumbled backwards through the bathroom door and into a heap on the floor of the bedroom. The bathroom door slammed shut and faded into the wall. A new bookshelf covered in randomly placed colorful books filled in the spot.

I jumped to my feet, ran to where the bathroom door had been, and began tearing books off the shelves trying to see if I could still get back into the bathroom. I only found a hard, grey cement wall.

With an angry scream, I pulled an entire row of books from the shelf and flung them out across of the room. As they tumbled and slid across the floor, I discovered that Anais's universe had changed. The room was smaller. The rack of clothes were gone. Even the shirt that Anais had been wearing in the mirror had been ripped from my body. I placed my trembling hand over my beating heart - my naked breast. The bed was gone. All that remained were the books and a large steamer trunk into which my chastity leash led. There were no doors. There were no mirrors.

I ran from wall to wall pulling more books from the shelves, throwing them about in frustration, until I tripped over some and landed sprawled across a pile of hardbacks and bent pages and chain. I lay, out of breath, whimpering in denial.

A piece of paper was taped to the open lid of the trunk - a note. I stumbled to my feet and clambered over piles of books.

"Dear Siana," it said. "Grab some books to read and close yourself in the trunk. I know you are angry at me right now, but I really love you with all my heart. So, trust me! Get in the fucking trunk. If you can't trust me, who will you trust, right? I love you!"

The note was signed simply, "Me".

And there was a post script: "Get in the fucking trunk, Siana! Do it! Now!"

I ripped the message off the lid and wadded it up into a ball. "Fuck!" I screamed. "I hate you!"

I threw the wadded note as hard as I could. It bounced off one of the bookshelves and shot up towards the ceiling, where it disappeared into the void.

A sense of horror crept over me as I realized that the ceiling void seemed lower than it had been before. Wispy tendrils of nothingness slowly streamed briefly from the featureless surface. Holy shit! The room was being eaten by this nothingness!

A strange guttural roar echoed through the space shaking the very foundations of the universe. I grabbed a couple of armloads of books and heaved them into the trunk. I jumped over the edge and landed on soft padding. I yanked my chastity leash inside with me.

The lighting in the room had started to flicker and a swirling wind arose causing book pages to flap and swirl. I took one last look around and with a whimper pulled the heavy lid down over me. The rim seated itself firmly within the tight groove to form a perfect seal and locks ratcheted closed sealing me inside.

I crouched, trembling in the trunk as the sides shook and creaked, strafed by blowing debris.

Oh, please, Anais, please come back for me!