What If? (My Biggest Fear)

I would never have believed his displeasure to be as this. So crushing, final, and instilled in me fear beyond measure. All I had expected of him he did not supply, was the hate, the pain, the savage explosion of reprisal. He was calm, serene like a deep pool, and deathly quiet. Staid in his deliverance. The kind of silence a frigid winter's night brings, shrouded in deep snow.

I felt I was cheated of my predetermined fate. Tears, vast tears, and recrimination as he removed his steel from my throat and wrists. He never said a word. My shoulders light in the absence of his steel circlet, my heart indescribably leaden. Was he freeing me? Oh too terrible to contemplate, though I had fantasized of it often. Now it appeared as a possibility, and I did not feel so brave. Would he show mercy and at least deliver me to his brother? It was midnight, oh let me make the night.

His hand on my shoulder guided me toward the black maw of the bedroom we shared. The iron bed then, the strap, more than ten? Please let me endure, help me through, and yet I was so faithless I had no God to listen to my prayers.

You are a fool, Lidia. More tears, he did not turn on the light pulling me into the familiar bed. I did not understand. I was begging him, blind fumbling words of apology, and penitence. A voice like a child. No answer just his body against mine in the darkness, his dire need rising.

Streetlights cast their thin tungsten light on the curtains, a glimmer of brightness seeping through, though there was no light from his dark heart.

"Please Master, I am very sorry. I was so alone." I beseeched him, wanting him to hear me, wanting him to hold me, reclaim me.

Nothing but his callous use in response, delivered with textbook precision between the covers. Clinical and cold. No slaps, no bites, just detachment, a divorce of the body and the mind. On completion of the act, he pushed me away.

I lay on the edge of the bed, the scent of him on me and in me, my fingers on my naked throat in mute disbelief. If I was not a slave what had I become? The answer eluded me and terrified me as well. Suppression of more uncontrolled tears, wracking sobs, a broken gesture.

No sleep, the sound of the alarm clock, dawn. He had not hit me, perhaps today he would vent his ire? Have it done with, and we could press on in this fallen house of cards. His eyes on me cold, disappointed, I looked away rising from the bed eyes sore and sleepless.

"Pack your things." He said as he turned over to get some more borrowed time before he really must rise.

I stood numb at his words. It would be his brother then, the hint of a smile rueful, yet one of hope. The world had not yet ended.

I did as he asked, it did not take long and I made him breakfast. I found it almost impossible to eat, only attempting a few spoonfuls of cereal. I regarded the box of Harmoni breakfast cereal before me, harmony, what an ironic word. A word that had no place in my life. I put the box away, and he appeared. He sat and ate in silence, I poured him coffee.

"Komme," he said. The accompanying sound of his car keys scraping on the old Formica countertop that had seen better days. He had unzippered my bag, and he was rifling through its contents, why he was doing so I could not guess. Did he not trust me to not take what was not mine? I felt stung by that, but uncertainty reigned my feelings in.

Satisfied, he closed the zipper and escorted me to the car. I had not been to Arhus more than once but that was east and we were headed west. I looked at him his wild hair flying in the wind, I was cold, shivering. Where was he taking me? I was feeling beyond scared.

The international airport, no!

He drove into the parking lot, the throaty rumble of the Vette engine bouncing off the walls of concrete as it pirouetted through the series of tight turns. I loved the sound, yet today it seemed to echo in mockery of my situation.

"Oh please Sir no."

He looked at me, and my protest trickled to silence as a river run dry. I hung my head he was sending me home. He would cheat me, and his brother. My mouth was dry, my mind entrenched in the specter of my past.

"Out," he said with not a vestige of passion. He took my hand his clutch cruel, and he held my documents. Items I had not sighted since my arrival last February.

He turned, magnificent to me still. He towered over me I felt insignificant and powerless in his shadow. I saw him cast his gaze over the car park, seeing we were unobserved before he chose his words for me.

"You Lidia made a mockery of what we had, you made a fool of me, a public fool." His voice was as sharp as a blade. "My wish and my first instinct is to hurt you." He crushed my hand, and I winced. "But girl you have no idea of my feelings, you are a self absorbed little whore. All American girls are. Go back there, go home, find some weak man, ask for this, take that, whore yourself for his money." He spat that last line at me, and I cowered. Then I broke.

I was on my knees holding his strong leg, blubbering, my words filling the void. Anything to stop him from this course, anything to make him reconsider. He would send me from Svend, and I would have no more than poverty and ridicule just as I had dreamed. A fate so terrible I would abase myself before him now. People passed us I am sure they stared, he was resolute as timeless stone.

A fist knotted in the neck of my T-shirt dragging me up.

"Stop!" He growled in a voice laced with warning. I kept expecting a slap, but he did not lay a hand on me in this public setting. A middle-aged woman stared as she passed us on the way to the elevator, he returned her look and she hurried away. She could feel it just as I did. I bowed my head, he had won. I had invited him to pass judgment on me. He was right my writings were a betrayal of the most grievous sort.

"What now Sir?" I did not have the courage to refer to him as Master. I only had eyes for the scratched and worn bluebird on my finger. I was no longer sure what I was to him and I did not want to know. He took a deep breath.

"You will be going to Master Noctis, and I am going home."

More tears, this was unbearable to me.

"Don't send me to my parents Sir."

"Did you not hear me?"

A pause, more crying. He stood motionless waiting for me to stop.

"Master Noctis will be collecting you I have spoken with him."

He handed me my ticket, along with my passport, from Copenhagen nonstop to Atlanta, this could not be happening. Was he really so angry he would scare me this convincingly? I was his, he would never part with me, he had told me so. He would relent, yes?

The plane was not due to depart until late morning, it was still early and he sat opposite me in the visitor's lounge unmoving taking me in. He was looking at others too, happier girls, younger, prettier, more alive than I, his beaten and tortured muse. Yes, girls with fresh possibilities. If he would leave I could call Svend, however, he was not going to, he was going to make sure I caught that flight.

Restlessness as the hours closed to my impending departure. He even stood guard as I used the restroom. I thought about making a scene, but really what would I accomplish. I was illegal here anyway, better to just slip away unnoticed, the same way as I had entered.

There was always the possibility he was taking this right to the last moment, ah another parallel with my historic heroine Anne Boleyn. She too was serene and secure in her last moments waiting for the sight of him, his stay of hand. Convinced wholly he would relent. As history records the sword still fell. King Henry did not even attend to her demise.

The call at the gate for my fight, now he will tell me we go home, it's over and have I learned to be good. I will say yes and be somehow absolved. Instead his hand on my arm, escorting me to the security gate. His fingers left my skin, his last touch leaving finger marks white, and he stood as I dumbly filed through the gate he could not pass.

I took one last look at him, but the press of people forced me not to linger. The next time I dared he was gone in the crowd, and someone from the airline staff had engaged me at his behest.

No elation, just a vast absence of joy, I slept on that flight exhausted, beaten, and sad. Be strong Lidia, is this in many ways what you wanted? Not quite but close, freedom the taste of it not sweet. My journey home, to a home and sentiments I could no longer embrace. I did not have the energy to even write about it.

Hungry, with nerves ragged I stood uncertain in Atlanta airport. All about me strangers pressed. I was lost cast in the sea of their haste.

Surrounded by accents and voices familiar I felt a rush, products I had missed and longed for with but only one Danish Kroner in my pocket. It was as though I had stepped from a surreal dream, and Denmark and the beast had never existed.

What now? I have no choice but to await Master Noctis. What if he did not show? Too terrible to dwell on. I searched the crowd knots in my vitals. A soft Georgian accent and a hand on my shoulder addressing me by name. I turned and there he was, Master Noctis, with a neat brown goatee, and narrow eyes so dark to almost appear without pupils. The epitome of the American barbarian, the smiling sadist. He looked to me no different than when I had last seen him in this very same setting when he had sent me to Europe and into the beast's arms...

That was one possible future, the veritable fork in the road that was mine possibly to grasp, however, that is not to be. I am happy to say something much more desirable did, and I am the most sublimely grateful woman alive. My prayer answered and I am finally freed from his tyranny...

Well, at least I think I am. Much has transpired in these past few days, and as I settle into my new life here I will feel freer to write more. Right now though my mind is far from serene and I don't feel I am grounded enough to write well. Master Frej never freed me of his steel, nor was he so gentle in the distribution of his wrath. We never got to the airport, Master Svend arrived at the house when he and I were still asleep. A terrible physical and verbal altercation ensued. I have never seen two men fight with such terrible earnestness.

He cut my former Master's collar and bracelets from me, and I felt overcome with emotion. He told me I must earn the right to wear his. I feel light in the absence of his steel. Yet I feel no sense of emancipation, I am freer as a slave.

He tells me I must dwell on if I truly am a slave, or if I am something else. I do not fully understand. He is unlike my former Master proactive in my life, he looks at what I do, and he reads what I write. As a result, it is harder for me to write now. I hope in time I can feel freer to let my mind open before him and to be able to again commit my feelings and adventures to this journal. He tells me, and I know this, I have much work to do to reclaim my life and he will be pressing me toward those goals and fears without remorse.

Sunday he commanded me to lie in front of one of the large glass windows that overlooked his manicured garden. I felt strangely self-conscious before him, he had an expensive camera in his hand which he was sitting on a tripod.

"I want to show you that you are still very beautiful slave." He said his voice quiet and lustful too.

Yet I did not wish to lay there as he arranged my body on the crumpled fabric as though I was a marionette doll. My previous Master's mark was ugly and ebon on my belly, and my own self-inflicted scars made me squirm in my nudity before him. I felt like a used thing, something tainted and cheapened at the hands of another.

He was careful and deliberate in is photo-taking, as he is in most of his actions. He only took a few. Satisfied he bid me to rise and he informed me he would be posting one of these to my profile. I hope they are not ugly...

As for Master Frej........

I hurt for him. Yes, I love him still. He was the first, he was everything. He showed me secrets and dark places, things of himself most would hide. A brutal unashamed honesty that I will not forget. I know he is fundamentally flawed, yet I cannot hate him for what he was made.

I am not a hateful, vengeful being, he is hurting enough in this life without my vitriol. I hope with time he can get better, learn and grow. He needs intensive help, and I know he is probably reading this in his broken home mired in his aggressive hate. It scares me his obsession, and I do fear he will try to take me. So I will be adhering to Master Svend's rules and doing my best to not be careless, and be proactive in my own safety. Get well Master Frej...