F Campbell - Margo

"I cannot abide a young woman without some restraint. Here, let me have your hands. These are not going to bother anything you and I will do."

He snapped the cruel circlets on her wrists and clicked them together tightly. Margo wondered if he knew how little she cared. For her, handcuffs bad become no more than costume jewelry. She said demure thank you and then added, "Would you like me to wear leg irons too?"

They were on the same wavelength – evenly matched. He took her to the lounge for drinks and then ordered a picnic lunch from the kitchen. It was all the greatest fun and a tremendous relief after the weight of Rossland's authority. Margo flashed her handcuffs, and her animated conversation was increasingly lively. When they returned to bed, it waste begin the most hectic night of abandoned sexuality she had ever heard of or dreamed of. But she was not aware of the erotic stimulus Henry Ross provided for the entire class. His maleness was quite inexhaustible. Before they slept, he brought Margo to total surrender and an exquisite satiety. In the morning, he was gone. But by some magic feat, while she was asleep, he had contrived to move her handcuffs from front to back. No doubt it was a bit of pixie humor he enjoyed. After dreaming happily for more hours than Rossland usually allowed, she went in search of someone to take them off.

Margo knew the status quo could not endure. No sooner had Henry Ross taken his magic and departed than Mildred Harridance moved in to fill the gap. Margo's mouth, tongue, and lips were expected to replace and erase the male. But the male was now a factor in her life.

Previously, Henry Ross had been abstract. Now he was a terribly, vitally real to her. They had reached a togetherness, a sense of belonging and common purpose. Mildred Harridance was an intrusion. But she was a lovely, forceful, authoritative intrusion. In between the visits of the male, she held Margo's life within her hands. She could demand everything and give as little or as much as she chose. Mostly, she gave lavishly. It was this wish to please her prisoner which told the prisoner herself she had the upper hand.

"Darling, I suppose I arranged an escape for you. I could keep you conveniently in an apartment somewhere. You would always be there, waiting for me. Since I cannot be free of his authority, I can at least take from beneath his nose."

It was tremendously tempting. But selfishly, Margo realized that Henry Ross could offer her far, far more than any female. Mildred was an employee and could be summarily fired. But suppose she and Henry had formed a more permanent bond. True, even as his wife – and this was aiming high – she could be whipped and chained and probably popped into sundry cages or cells as pleased his fancy. Still, she would be his wife. She would home some inevitable portion of his power. She could visit Rossland, not only on equal terms but as a superior. Margo had glimpsed a more rapid road to fortune than she had originally planned. But she ate Mildred assiduously, and with the zest of momentary superficial acts enjoyed doing so. Margo saw this as reprehensible and knew consequential guilt. But she also knew she had not yet reached any point of security with Henry Ross. He would need careful handling. And if Mildred suspected her intentions, she would unquestionably work upon him to thwart her slave girl's desire. It was a thin and narrow line Margo must tread. It came to an end on the evening Henry Ross unexpectedly visited Rossland and discovered Margo and Mildred inhabiting the same bed, busily engaged.

He had not fired Mildred. Henry Ross was a man of measured and cautious decisions. He knew the angles. He ordered Margo to be locked in a cell and prepared for a flogging before the assembled school on the following day. What he did or said to Mildred, Margo never knew.

It was a miserable little cell in the best tradition of TV and movie sets.

It held the bare essentials for existence. A girl could be kept there forever, simply by passing food through the already prepared opening in the bars of her cage. She was naked and handcuffed, but that was all. Her imprisonment could have been far more punitive or much longer, but what awaited her at the end of it was horrendous enough to absorb all her concern. To be flogged in front of the whole school!

It sounded beyond bearing. She remembered the flogging of her dream.

But that could hardly be comparable. She would simply inhabit the dismal little cell until the event was ready to happen. Meanwhile, elsewhere in Rossland, Mildred Harridance was facing her own future.

She was furiously angry and terribly afraid.

"But, Henry, it would destroy me utterly. My authority would vanish. You cannot possibly flog a headmistress and expect her to continue to function."

"Not if you flog her before the assembled staff and inmates, Mildred. This, I understand." Henry Ross was examining the woman who was totally in his power. Mildred would never be dull, even in adversity. There were lessons to be… learned from her. Quietly, he spoke.

"The staff and the pupils will know nothing of it. I will flog you personally. The only witness will be Margo, who will herself be flogged. In her case, it will be before the whole school."

"Henry, that's horrible! The poor girl?"

"Poor girl nothing! She was eating your cunt when I caught the two of you. I'm not giving her up, not by any means. But I'm taking her away from your influence. However, I want your work at Rossland to continue. You will simply be flogged as evidence of my authority. If you want to go, then go."

"You know I won't. Henry, are you are a bastard. You leave me no choices. You've got everything figured."

"You are a beautiful woman, Mildred. It will be one of the high spots of my life to see you under the whip. It will give me immense pleasure to witness your submission to being bound. I ask myself, 'Why are you doing it?' I'll be damned if I know!"

Mildred glared and sniffed defiance. But she knew her defiance was limited. "I suppose the fact is, Henry, you've got under my skin. I have a feeling for you. And then there's Rossland. I've got a feeling there too. You know as well as I do it would devastate me to either part from this place or from you. If the price of my retaining these things is to allow you to punish me, then that's what I'll do. But I still say you're a son of a bitch to make me do it."

Margo hated the tiny cell. Her sleep was intermittent, bothered to an unusual degree by the handcuffs on her wrists. She had said they didn't matter, but they did. They told her she was not free. They told her she would be flogged. They told her she would never escape. In fitful periods of slumber, she slipped hack into that other world of the dream she had never forgotten. She had been flogged there and had been a plaything of men and women. She wondered what Denby Wright would have done with her, or to her, or about her had the dream been real. In morbid fascination, she wondered too if Manley would have been allowed to flog her had his lash held fast in its entwinement of her ankle. She shrugged the whole memory aside. Her condition was morbid enough without nightmares. But suppose Mildred Harridance was actually Marcia Tremont and Henry Ross was Denby Wright.

But the idea was absurd. There was absolutely no resemblance other than their hold upon her person. That was terribly similar. Margo spent the morning clutching the bars with handcuffed fingers and gazing through them at what was almost nothing: a blank wall, a passage. She asked herself what she was hoping for, what she expected to see. But she realized she had become one of those caged animals in the zoo, who perpetually paced up and down against the bars. She supposed she should be devoting though to her behavior and attitude while being flogged, noble resolutions to silence crossed her mind. She visualized a contemptuous hauteur as she was led to where she would be fastened.