Out of the Shadows. Senta Holland

there of course. He lives here. On this island. In this jungle. Maybe he’s lived in this hotel room all the time. Waiting for my Nai to show up. Waiting to be him.

      Waiting to see me.

      What could be difficult, after this?

      I get closer. My Nai can sense it. Whenever I lose the way, I concentrate on the burning sparkles from the spanking in my ass.

      ‘Now,’ he says, ‘say: “I am such a slut.”’

      Interesting. This isn’t even a very powerful word for me. The world of sluts and, what would be the other side? Good girls? Moral women? Whatever it is, it doesn’t carry much of an erotic charge.

      But when he tells me to say it, out loud, I feel its connections to other, wilder, more humiliating words.

      I have to say, out loud, in front of another person, who I am, deep inside, in the dreams that nobody knows. I have to bring my darkest identity out and show it. Show it to him.

      Something that I have been hiding. From the outside world, from the accusations of evil, from the insinuations of deviance, from the suspicions and the attempts to change me, or cure me, or push me out of society. From myself, even, for a long time. If he only knew, my Nai would tell me to say some other words, words that are far more loaded for me, loaded so deeply that, for a long time, I couldn’t say them, not even to myself, not even to my therapist. And that was when I finally decided to talk to a therapist just about that, my sexuality. I couldn’t say the words any more. It was as if a big iron door, too long unused, had rusted and settled into its closed and shuttered state, so that the only way to open it would be to push it until it collapsed. Or to explode it or melt it down. Or to laser it away with the newest technology. Or for the earth to open up and eat it all.

      If he knew he would tell me to say: ‘I want to be spanked. I deserve to be beaten. I need the belt. Please, Nai, I need the belt.’

      These would be the words of power.

      For a long time, I would never say them. For a long time before that, I wouldn’t even write them, form them in my mind. When somebody else said them, with apparent ease, either because they said them so often they had become desensitised or because the mere saying of words didn’t have, for them, the same power, I got a charge from them, like an electrical shock. I thought it must have been visible to the speakers of the words, but maybe not. Maybe not if they don’t feel it themselves. Maybe not if they didn’t watch me closely enough. Like my Nai.

      I came closer to coming, opening up from a lot deeper inside now.

      ‘Say it, say it now. I am such a slut.’

      I opened my mouth. I ran my fingers over my clitoris. I formed the words in my mind, but they didn’t come out.

      Say it.

      ‘I … I … I …’

      ‘Say it, slut.’

      So I have to say it. Now. I dive deep down.

      My Nai holds my hand. Literally. He holds my hand away from my clitoris. He holds it hard. No way to wiggle. No way to escape. No danger of escape.

      ‘Say it, slut, now.’

      I open my mouth again but nothing comes out, not even a sigh or a syllable.

      My Nai gives me a sensuous soft stroke, with his hand and with my own hand. My arms and shoulders and neck melt away with softness. He touches my breasts very tenderly with his other hand, almost flying over them, lingering over the bruises, making them feel hot and releasing more memories.

      ‘Now,’ he says. ‘Don’t stop. In a moment I’ll let you come. Are you ready to come?’

      ‘Yes, yes. Yes, my Nai.’

      My Nai reaches into the slim triangle that I have opened up at the top of my vulva. His fingers join my fingers.

      ‘Hmm, nice. Nice and wet,’ he says.

      It’s taken me a lifetime to understand what a man means when he says that something is ‘nice’. I would probably translate it into ‘wild’, ‘exciting’, ‘makes me go crazy’. But for a man, it’s ‘nice’. So, now, here, in the presence of the tiger who is dragging open the long-closed doors of my heart with its bare teeth, I, the sexual being, am ‘nice’.

      His fingers push much harder than mine, and, at this stage in our relationship, a little too hard for me, and a bit too fast. No inkling of the clit fests to come. When I was contorted on the floor with continuous orgasms, one pushing the other, pushing the other, until my stomach muscles cramped, until I felt I was going to throw up.

      ‘Now,’ says my Nai, his mouth very close to my ear so that I could feel his breath, ‘open your eyes.’

      I open my eyes and I can see his face so close to me. He looks into my eyes, and he whispers: ‘Say it. Say it. Say it to me.’

      ‘I don’t know,’ I say, my body shivering because in all this time he hadn’t stopped rubbing my clit and I hadn’t stopped running my fingers around my labia either.

      ‘I don’t know if – if I can. I’ve never said this. I’ve always kept my eyes shut.’

      ‘Ah,’ he says. ‘Yes, if you keep your eyes shut you can always pretend it isn’t you. Look at me.’

      Actually, I think, it’s not so much that it isn’t me when I keep my eyes shut. It’s more me, even. It’s that I don’t have to bring it out to you. Show my insides, my deepest secret insides, to you.

      ‘Yes, Nai,’ I say, and I do.

      I look at him. He looks back into me.

      ‘Now,’ he said. ‘Now say it.’

      I want to have some peace, to collect myself. I want to meditate on it, make the private, secret core of me rise from the depths, slowly, as slow as it needs to be, and then I want to take a good long time to think about it, and hold it in my heart, and head, and then, maybe then – maybe –

      Maybe then the doors will still be rusted. Rusted shut from all that time in the rain.

      Maybe then it will be perfect. Maybe then it will come out in a full, mature, perfect shape. Completing the circle.

      But that’s not how it is. That’s not how it’s going to be. No peaceful retreat. No thoughts. No maybe tomorrows.

      My body trembles with different rhythms. I’m already catapulted into speaking. I feel my Nai’s body along mine, all along the length of it, the silky skin touch, the muscles that held me down, with such determination, the bones underneath.

      I look into him, I go cold with fear, I feel faint, I feel disoriented, I don’t know any more what is up and what is down, the room is slanted, it stands on its side, pierced on fear.

      I want to run away and hide, outside with the spiders and snakes. I want to stay here, close to my Nai, and just give up and crumble into a ball and cry and be held by him.

      I want to jump and rush and slide down the stream while I scream, loudly, the words, so that they can be part of the wind.

      I look into my Nai’s eyes and I can feel the shame creeping up my neck and cheeks, and for the first time I see in his eyes the satisfaction he feels at calling up the shame, and making me show it to him, to him alone, the owner. I feel his body press hard and his penis grow harder.

      Tears streaming out of my eyes, I never look away. I say the words.

      ‘I am such a slut.’

      A strange jungle sound follows them. It must be that all the animals, crowding the darkness beyond the hut, stopped for a moment in their business of killing and eating and fucking and running and fighting. The sound comes from my throat. Something ripped out of me. Something is pushing through the rusted doors.

      ‘I am such a slut,’ I say again. It’s a little easier now but my burning cheeks are only beginning to