So much left unspoken

Between the two of us

It's so much more exciting

To look when you can touch

You could say I am different

And maybe I'm a freak

But I know how to twist ya

To bring you to your knees

I get off on you

Getting off on me

I give you what you want

But nothing is for free

It's a give and take

Kinda life we make

When your line is crossed

I get off

I get off

- I get off. Halestorm

David stared at the beauty as she moved about the room. He couldn't move. He was unable to. She'd purposely had him restrained to the wall in a way that wouldn't even allow him to move his head. His naked cock stood erect and shame filled his mind. He shouldn't be hard. He can't be hard. Just watching her undress and bathe in the large porcelain tub shouldn't be having this kind of effect on him. Even her ignorance of him seemed to effect his manhood.

She hummed as she stood in the tub and used the large jug to rinse out her long smooth hair. The water tumbled down her body. Like a beautiful stream it made it's way over her ripe breasts and down against her flat stomach before disappearing between her thighs. That's when she turned to him and smiled. His heart stopped. Only for a moment. But he felt it. He knew to fear it.

"What's your name?" She calmly asked. Her voice lyrical. She stepped from the tub and slowly stalked towards him as he answered.

His heart beating faster. His breath becoming harsher. His cock harder.

"David."

She pressed a hand against his soft stubble and gently stroked his cheek. "Hello David. I'm going to have my girls come and make some minor modifications to you. It may hurt a little, but I know you're strong. And it will make me happy. Ok?"

"Yes..." if he could have nodded like an eager little dog, he would have. He actually felt as though he was doing right in the world by obeying her. He wondered if she had drugged him and as she turned and walked away from him, he realised he was wrong.

She was the drug.

As soon as he knew she was leaving, he craved her. Anything from her. Anything at all. He needed her. And although he loved his wife, he knew he'd do absolutely anything this queen tells him to.

He was fucked.

The queen left the room and two other very attractive females entered. They were naked other than thick jeweled anklets and white surgical masks. A brunette and a blonde. The blonde wheeled the steel tray closer. The only sound in the room other than David's breathing was the metallic quiet screech of the wheels as they turned against the floor.

His heart pounded against his ribcage as the brunette used a thick yellow sponge and dipped it into the bubbly water. She squeezed the extra water from the sponge and proceeded to wash him down. Every inch of him that could be seen and reached was scrubbed. The warm water trickling down his body. The silence frightened him. But they didn't answer his questions, no matter what he asked.

He was relieved once the brunette stood and replaced the sponge in the porcelain dish. Happy that they'd finished, he breathed in a sigh of relief.

He had no idea just how wrong he was.

Next the blonde, pulled a large thin silver needle from the tray and stepped towards him. She stared him in the eyes. Her bright cold eyes, pulling at him. The brunette picked up a thick piece of old brown leather and wedged it in between his teeth.

The blonde still keeping an unusual grip on his eyes gripped his nipple with two fingers and slowly slid the needle into his flesh. He growled out, biting down on the leather. It hurt him the most after the actual piercing. When she removed the needle and slid the metal loop through the newly pierced hole. He bit down so hard he was sure he'd break his teeth. But he was also surprised to find his cock harder than ever. He knew he didn't get off on pain, but this was definitely doing something to him.

She repeated the process on his left nipple and his response was exactly the same. In the end, he was left with a hot burning sensation deep inside his nipples and a rock hard dick. Confusion filtered through his frightened brain. Was this for the goddess? Did she want him like this? Would it please her?

The thought of his body pleasing her filled him with arousal and again, the confusion littered his mind. He was so distracted with his thoughts that he didn't notice the blonde, picking up a fresh needle and dropping to her knees.

If she didn't have the surgical mask on, he would have felt her breath on him like a lover about to give oral pleasure. Instead, he felt the excruciating pain of the slightly thicker needle slowly pushing into the flesh of his bell end. His scream was loud. Even through the leather it was too loud and the brunette roughly pushed against his leather filled mouth with the palm of her hand as the blonde continued to cut into his flesh. She smiled beneath her mask. Enjoying his screams. She took her time. And when the needle finally pushed through the opposite side of his skin, she reached out for the small ring.

She knew she was about to have the most fun of the evening.

I keep telling myself the reason I never tell

Is I’ll never feel your sweet, sweet kiss

I knit my fingers wishing you knew my feelings

Yet afraid I am you’ll feel them a mere kick

I knock soundlessly waiting for you to know

The knots which tie up the strings of my heart

“F*ck!” I exclaimed, as my keyboard f*cked me, once more.

The “*” key, was f*cking me, again.

The keyboard was an expensive one, too, that cost me a f*ckton of hard-earned money.

It worked, sporadically, as I created my work, with words, as is my wont.

Work for me was something I enjoyed; I wo*ld work endlessly, for ho*rs, at my work.

*nless, I got l*cky and could simply f*ck around.

There is a knock at the door.

I continue to knit.

I have earned my keep.

He can't kick me out.

My yarn and stomach are in a knot and I open the door.

And then we kiss, it starts all over again.

Look at the mirror!

What do you see?

A perfectly happy woman

Smiling at me

Her skin is flawless

Her hair well kempt

Her clothes firmly ironed

To the very last dent

If you look closer

Beyond the mirrored mask

A very fragile woman

With a heart made of glass

Her skin flawed.

Her hair disheveled

A prisoner of her own past

Who dreams shriveled

She knows no joy

She feels no pain

Her lips painted with smiles

Wrapped in golden chains

Her mask serves well

To restrain her pain

Of unfulfilled desires

and dreams constrained.

I have perfected the craft

Of painting my skin to become

The flawless mask that people see

And hide what’s truly within

I have perfected the skill

Of become a chameleon

And change my skin to match

The problematic environment that I live in

Master of disguise

I start to loose who I truly am on the inside

Since I twisted and shift who I am so many time

Taught as a child not to draw attention to one self

Fading into the background became second nature

Automatically done without a single word  

I faded so well that the disguise became my true nature

My mask is my face

My face is my mask

My mask is my face

My prison is my mask that is permanently etched to my face

Manicured words are the jailers that hold the key to unlock my prison

But my lips, the wardens, are not financed by my tongue or my brain

Who is in cahoots with my inner-self

They are in contract with puppet master who pull my strings

It is they who authorize the word that get to see the light beyond my prison mask

I was sentenced to a lifetime of perfection

To live eternity as a slaved puppet

In the life that someone else has written

Soon enough my limbs will be made to act without my consent

A new mask is worn by her each and every day,

Unknowingly it carves a piece of herself out along the way

Superiority amongst one another

It is merely an illusion

We are each different yet also strangely the same

But still knowing this,

Lurking there is an recurring event of undoubtedly fear.

Underneath that mask lies,

Hiding her true authenticity

Even though her masks irritate her skin, she can’t relax and be herself, she still can’t help but resist the change

Anxiety....

Why do I hold up a vast array of masks to my sticky face, one after the other? Behind them, my erupting fear is a team of runaway horses. ‘My’ fear belongs to no-one else, though I try to blame others and abstract things like my culture, my heritage, my gender, and so on. It shifts my carriage at terrifying speed across dark moorland to an unknown destination!

This fear gallops off whenever a scent of love or hope reaches my nostrils: One whiff and the stallions tug their reins out of my hands, their ebony manes adamant. I can no longer drive them. It has happened many times but this time the fragrance of someone who has universal courage to be wholesale himself, no single mask, openly refusing to turn the other cheek to mediocrity and dishonesty, incites them to tear away like scalded devils. This is unprecedented. I rear up before they can.

Such wild reaction is in the name of protection, of keeping myself in the good books, of being fully approved of by all beings. I blindly cherish my reputation and status as if they are black and white treasures. My delusional condition convinces me that they are solid, my raison d’etre, my sum total. But their ‘permanence’ diverts me from the rapid stamping of masks in succession into the very flesh of my face. The hoofs of my equestrian team gouge and kick, repetitive, relentless, but the jolting and jostling is the worst thing. My mind is shaken away from my true nature, wracked. It wants to annihilate the now-sour stench of this paragon man.

I spit out my dislike and rejection of you like a mad witch, trashing you outright. But your fragrance remains to irritate and waft at me so you can stay close to my spirit in spite of all the racket and destruction of slow moors as the gallop accelerates.

To balance the fear and guilt of not living up to people’s expectations of us we so quickly judge others instead of honestly reflecting on and evaluating ourselves. We react viciously, needing always to have the last word, the upper hand, some trace of control. Our thoughts are like caustic soda, stinging and purging away any dangerous or natural feelings.

This impulsive destruction and rejection of your flesh and blood is plain fear that I am not attractive enough to you. That you may pass me by, reject my flesh and blood as un-beautiful, on a whim. But I want you to feel it too, so I lash out. The ridiculous thing is that I am putting all my energy into jettisoning and rejecting mere figments of my own imagination.

The visible aspect of the invisible is random, obscure, a rapid sketch which I grab at and add to my collections. I scrupulously classify all items of course, dividing them into fans and enemies, good and bad, useful not useful, fragrant and odious, and so on. But it is virtually impossible to delete them from my excellent misused memory, even though I may hide them. I long for my archives to be erased.

How I misjudged you and folded you away in my ‘redundant’ files like a Spring wind! I struck out at you in a fury and almost lost my chance. Now, thanks to your clarity, you are striding steadily towards me, with neither horses nor carriage, to bring your full fragrance to meet mine. You have always known that we will blend together for eternity, waiting patiently behind my masks with me.

Your uninhibited tall striding turfs me out and away from my carriage so I can stand finally still, damp-footed and trembling in the dawn.

The furious team steeds have vanished forever, and with them ‘I’ and ‘my,’ and my wardrobe of masks. We are one silence, one stillness. It has no need of racing on to the future or pelting back to the past.

Keeping Luccia happy is Mom's priority. Her stupid cat who nibbles on the knots of my shoelaces and knocks over furniture that conveniently gets broken and blamed on me. Luccia scratches my mom while she works then gets knit booties and kisses. All my life, I've sat by every foster home door, waiting for the person who knocked to be my mom demanding that I come with her immediately. But nope. I aged out and reconnected with her only to watch her kiss her cat and kick me to the curb once again every day.

Knitting club, sixth grade, and Isabella Stein had my heart and my stomach in worse knots than my would-be scarf.

You gotta go for it, Tom and JC told me, so when she asked me to help her with a dropped stitch I caught it and held my breath and leaned in for the kiss. Way too fast.

Foreheads collided with an audible knock. I jerked back, shut my eyes, kicking myself, but she just said Keep trying, so I said, Ice cream tomorrow? and she said Ok.