Edge Play X (39 page)

Compton
seemed so calm, completely unaffected by what was
occurring. It wouldn’t do any good to hit him, or spit at him, or insult him;
Compton
would enjoy the treatment. Instead, X lifted up
her hand and placed it onto his cheek as if giving him a blessing.

She remembered how she had been beaten
when she had been kidnapped, remembered how the men had made her beg Terry for
ransom money as they recorded her pleas. And what had the tall one said after
the smaller one had blackened her eye?
He
said not to fuck up her face.
Now, as she looked at
Compton
, she knew who the man was ultimately referring
to, knew where the instructions had trickled down from.

“You had me kidnapped, Terry. Twice.
For your own selfish pleasure.” X pulled her hand away.

She told Simeon, “The bug, and the
software, and the list of who he was with—getting me to do that stuff—that was
clever.”

“It was
Compton
’s idea. It had to seem real. And,” Simeon paused,
“he wanted to see how you would go about it. He wanted to know how you would
complete your tasks. The way you told him that you had put the pencil up your
snatch, that
was hilarious! We laughed about it for weeks!”

Simeon broke down laughing. It all made
sense now. The way Simeon had gotten invited to the orgy; the way Simeon had
made her take photos of
Compton
,
putting the idea of blackmail into her mind; the reason they had tried to get
her to dominate
Ventura
; the reason she had been recorded when she begged
for her ransom money:
Compton
got off on it all.

X lifted up the gun and pointed it at
Simeon. “What you did was illegal. You didn’t give me a choice. You didn’t have
my consent.”

“Life is an illusion of choice,”
Simeon muttered. “We never forced you to have sex with anybody. You did that on
your own.”

Yes, she had fucked them, X knew.

“There’s nothing better than a good
mind-fuck,” Simeon said.

“I’m not your bird in a cage,” she
said dejectedly, realizing that she had only been free to fly within the
confines that they had provided.

X felt that she might laugh, might
actually break down not in tears, but in laughter. How humiliating it was now
to know that she had been fooled, not the kind of humiliation that she had
doled out to Compton when she insulted him or made fun of his small penis, a
ridicule and teasing which seemed so tame now. No, X’s humiliation was the real
thing. She had been caught in the trap of her own assumptions.

All this time, X had lived in the
illusion that she had been making her own decisions within the constraints of
the situation, thinking she had been acting in obedience to Simeon when in fact
it was Compton’s will that had directed her, shepherding her through a
labyrinth of his own making, shuttling her to this end. Shame:
 
it entered her and exploded, scattering its
shrapnel throughout her being and leaving its carnage.
Compton
recognized its appearance; its entrance changed
the air somehow. He could taste it. He wanted X to develop her own appreciation
for the cloying, fermented brine, an acquired taste to be sure.

“So, while you and Ryan and Andrew
were going over the receipts for your dungeon, Andrew told you all about me?”

“Yes,”
Compton
answered. “He told us about you. He told us what
you did to him. He told us how you did it. He said that your methods were both
physical and psychological. The man worshipped you.”

“That was none of your business,” X
said.

“Andrew told us all the details,”
Simeon said, injuring her. “He told us about how you would make him go out all
day to find you a rock, and if you didn’t like it, you’d send him back out to
look for another one. He told us how you used to make him go out to beg on the
street, how you made him polish another man’s shoes. He said you were the
perfect dominatrix, that they broke the mold after they made you.”

“And Andrew, did he have any part in
this?”

“No,”
Compton
replied. “Later, when just Ryan and I were
working together, he and I began to discuss it more, to discuss you more.
Andrew had no part in our plans other than the fact that he had told us about
your existence.”

X didn’t believe him. They had had her
bank statements. Andrew had known about the men before him who had given her
money; he had wanted to know what the largest amount was that a man had ever
given her as a tribute and then exceed it. He had warned her to make sure men
didn’t write her checks in the future, an occurrence which had happened only a
few times. He had betrayed her.

She turned back to Simeon. “Answer my
question. Why did you go along with it?” She so deeply wanted to know why.

As she waited for his answer, X’s
heart pounded in her chest. Finally, he spoke.

“I wanted to see what it was like to
truly dominate someone.”

Domination—it was about more than who
held the whip—it was about who held the power. That was true: Simeon had
dominated her. He had made her do things that she didn’t want to do. And when
she protested, Simeon had threatened her with punishments in the same way that
X had always done to her
submissives
. And though he
had struck her upon their first meeting, pistol-whipped her and nearly knocked
her unconscious, the extent of the wounds that he had inflicted now became
evident to X, the fissures, lacerations, and mutilation that Simeon had caused
was now unwrapped. Torture and abuse, X knew, could be mental as well as
physical.

Submission and domination—they were
the pasteurized versions of masochism and sadism, purified by the application
of consent, an approval which she had never given.

“You should have just gone on the web
and found a fucking sub then!”

X spit at him and it clung to his
cheek before sliding down his neck.

“And the bet,” Simeon added
haphazardly.

“The bet?” X asked, looking
questioningly at
Compton
. “You two had a bet?”

Compton
reluctantly shook his head yes.

“What was the bet?”

Compton
answered. “It was in regards to what people
respected more, submission or dominance. What a woman would love.”

“Tell me about the bet!” X yelled,
enraged.

Compton
said, “I bet that your favor would fall to the dominant
man, Simeon, and he bet that it would fall to the submissive man, the rich man
who would do anything or buy anything for you. The best bet is one in which
both parties ultimately win.”

“I guess I owe you a dollar,” Simeon
said, laughing, and X struck him as hard as she could across the face, causing
his lip to split open, causing it to perforate like an overly-ripe tomato that
had bust open on the windowsill.

Compton
ignored her strike. “I wasn’t surprised when you
began to favor Simeon,”
Compton
said. “It is human nature to worship dominance. You could say that it is the
order of our species.”

The words ricocheted through X’s mind,
order of our species
. A mnemonic
phrase came into her head, one that she had not thought of since she was still
wearing training bras, something she had used to remember the taxonomic
hierarchy for her biology class—Dumb King Philip Climbed Over Five Girl Scouts.
And what was the order of our species? The primate. It made sense to her now.
Simeon was more than just a name, it was a reference: simian. He probably
didn’t even know that
Compton
was insulting him in the name choice.

“But you play the sub,” X countered.

Compton
responded, “True.
But only
because I, too, worship dominance.”

Compton
watched as X pointed the gun towards the floor.
She had never shot a gun before. It suddenly felt like she was holding a
mistake. And as much as Compton could imagine no better way to die than by X’s
hand, he wasn’t ready to leave the world quite yet.

Compton
said, “That’s right, X.
Put
the gun down. Of all the things that you are, one thing that you aren’t is a
murderer.”

“And neither are you, it appears,” she
responded.

But he was right. She didn’t have it
in her. Guns appeared at the end of so many movies, books, and lives. How loud would
the sound be if she shot it, X wondered. Maybe this gun wouldn’t go off, but
there had been an explosion, loud and injurious, the detonation of her
assumptions. But she didn’t put the gun down.

She asked, “How did you get the other
men to go along with it?”

“What other men?”
Compton
inquired.

“The man in the fake hotel room who
brought in my food; the men who kidnapped me in
Santa Fe
.”

Compton
paused for a moment. “They were told that you
were playing out a scene in a fantasy of yours.”

He had thought of everything. She
shouldn’t have been surprised, and yet, she was.

“Tell me why I shouldn’t call the
police right now, why I shouldn’t call the real authorities? It’s illegal to
impersonate an officer,” she directed to Simeon.

Legality and illegality. They were
words separated only by two letters for
Compton
.

“I can give you three-and-a-half
million reasons why,”
Compton
answered calmly. “You can donate it all to charity, of course,” he said, adding
insult to injury, negotiating again.

She didn’t know what the truth was
about what the other men had been told, but felt certain that if she did call
the police, if any of the truth did come out about what had happened to her,
Simeon and Compton would only say that they were playing out X’s fantasy, not
theirs.
Compton
had even had her sign that confidentiality
agreement which said that all of their activities were consensual. What proof
did she have?

Three-and-a-half
million reasons.
The money. X
had nearly forgotten. There was still the other part of the money that she was
owed.

There was the two-and-a-half million
that she had agreed to in the hotel room and the million that
Compton
had given her when she had blackmailed him. But
she had only gotten half of what she had agreed to.

“Go get it the rest of the money you
owe me,” X commanded
Compton
.

“I’ll have to give it to you in cash
and bearer bonds,” he answered.

“Fine,” she replied. “And the papers
for the Van Gogh. I need the papers to prove that it’s authentic.”

X undid
Compton
’s feet and then freed his hands from the metal
arcs that encircled them.

X walked over to Simeon and put the
gun to his temple. She realized then that the safety was on, had been on the
whole time.
Compton
left the dungeon and X took the gun away from
Simeon’s head. A few minutes later,
Compton
knocked at the door and X let him in.
 

“Get back in the chair,” X commanded,
and after she had secured
Compton
again, she opened the attaché case, removing a stack of bearer bonds. A few fat
piles of cash sat at the bottom along with a diamond necklace. Was the bastard
trying to give her a gift?
Now?

“What’s the necklace for?”

“I had been planning to give that to
you. It matches the earrings.”

X suddenly wanted to put the gun in his
mouth, shove the barrel back to his soft palate until he gagged, but she
restrained herself.

“I need the papers for the painting,
for the Van Gogh,” she said. “They aren’t in here. Get them for me and I’ll
go.”

“That painting has no papers,”
Compton
said.

“Of course it has papers,” X answered.
“You wouldn’t have bought it if it didn’t have papers. I want a bill of sale,
then.”

Simeon started to laugh, a risible
reaction. What began as a chuckle intensified until he was laughing so hard
that his chair was shaking. The sound echoed through the room, intensifying
into itself, piercing the air.

“What’s so funny?”

“The painting,” he said, barely able
to breathe, “it’s a fake! A reproduction! You think
Compton
would let you have a real Van Gogh? Do you have any
idea how much the real one is worth?”

The painting that she had adored was
counterfeit. Those feelings she had experienced when she had studied the brush
strokes, brooded over the technique—had that been fictitious as well? An
illusion?
 
X looked over to
Compton
. He was more than a man. He was a magician. He
invented his own morality. He had brought about not just a transformation, but
a transmutation in X. But no longer would she express her rage. There were
other ways to make him suffer.