It begins in total darkness. Hushed murmurs and clinking of glassware in the cavernous space ahead and behind. Lights come up, deep blue, only enough to define the space of the stage. An elongated oval, exits at the narrow ends, terraced seating facing both long sides, rising strata of watchers, faceless in the dark. The music begins with a heartbeat rhythm, then syncopates into a complex braid of layered drums and cymbals, thump and crash of primal resonance, human desire translated into sound.
She stands centerstage in a pool of bright yellow-white, barefoot, hair down, wearing a tanktop and short shorts in friendly pastels. The floor beneath her transforms into black and white tile, glimpsed impression of translucent bathroom fixtures surround her, towel rack, sink, shower curtain, toilet. A smattering of applause. She smiles an easy, practiced smile.
“This has always been my safe space, a place to retreat from the pressures and worries of life. Here, I see visions of myself that cannot exist anywhere else and indulge them. Here, I am at my most private. Here, I am totally exposed.”
As she speaks, she slowly undresses. Shorts slide down her pale thighs and pool on the illusory tile, tank top pulled overhead and tossed aside. Naked, she luxuriates in a series of stretches before crossing the imagined space and turning on a faucet that does not exist. Hot water splashes forth, filling a tub-sized space of nothing in the middle of the stage. Steam wafts towards the lights above in billowing clouds. She steps over the edge of the tub that isn’t there and lowers herself into the near-scalding bath.
“It has to be hot. As hot as I can comfortably stand, and then a little more. The heat frees me, allows my mind to empty, my body to exist only here, only now.”
She sinks deeper into the water, her hair flowing out into a widening circle around her head, beyond the perceived bounds of the not-bathtub. She floats there, center stage, arms and legs spread wide. The music reduces to a low steady pulse before evaporating entirely.
“A clean blank canvas. A limitless field of possibility, aching to be filled with color, form and purpose. An open door. An invitation for anything sleeping just below the surface, waiting just behind the mirror.”
The impression of the bathroom dissolves, darkness collapsing in on her floating form. Among the shadows, a pinprick of light. A candle’s flame without the candle. Two, ten, dozens. All remaining illumination comes from this chorus of tiny flames, floating in a static swarm around her body. Her knees rise, her legs spread wider. Her left hand slides down her torso and lingers on her smooth pubic mound. The lightest of touches, at first. Glancing contact of fingertips against labia. She shudders in her invisible bath.
And then it’s there. A coalescent form born from the flickering shadows cast by the disembodied flames, flowing black smoke given shape. Head, torso and arms swelling from the pool of darkness below her, matching her pose and action. Below her, one of its hands moves to its head while the other quickens its action between a suggestion of legs. As below, so above.
Two, then three, then four. Finally she’s straining to force both hands into herself. Her vagina ultimately stretches to accommodate while her mouth simply cannot. She and the shadow thrash in exact replication of each other, fisting themselves, her gasps and gags and moans echoed in a soft, sibilant mockery. The bodies flip in unison, arms reorganizing. Mouth abandoned, she reaches back and begins to force her hand into her ass, with the other still relentlessly pounding between her legs. They scream. Eventually, a voice, masculine yet genderless, saturnine, unctous and cruel, melts out of the air.
“Now.”
She groans a final orgasm and the invisible tub collapses. Water rushes out across the stage and spills over the sides as she falls hard to the floor. The dark figure is gone along with the cloud of candlelight. She is alone, wet and naked, within a puddle of water and a pool of widening white light. With a centering breath, she pushes herself upright, her legs folded under her body, and nods politely in recognition of the swelling applause.
Standing, she reaches into the darkness off-stage and wraps herself in a robe made of yellow light, holographically transparent or convincingly opaque, depending on angle. She paces the length of the space as she addresses the audience.
“Control. It was always about control. It made me do things, but I let it in. I came to crave these fleeting connections, to wish for more time behind the mirror. Every time it would push me further. Harder. I was afraid. I was fascinated. I thought I was in love.”
The music pulses back into life as objects appear in a line on the stage as she passes- a wide tube of makeup, a black rubber dildo, a large shampoo bottle, a fat cucumber, a baker’s balloon whisk. Thread-like wisps of her robe of light separate from the hem and reform, whirling into translucent visions of her nude body kneeling before each item. Bending, contorting and spreading, each image methodically inserts an object into its holes. Orally, vaginally, anally these copies abuse themselves, each progressively more brutal than the last, the whisk vision shaking with unheard sobs as the wire bulb forces its anus open well beyond the limits of natural tolerance.
“No matter how far it pushed me, I only obeyed because I wanted to. The submission and pain and humiliation felt incredible, beyond words. It felt so good to be so cruel to myself. Still, I knew I was in control. Until one day…”
One by one, the images flicker out leaving only a single version, spotlit, center stage. She sheds the robe of light and takes the position of the last remaining copy, the two becoming indistinguishable. Holding herself open with both hands, she lowers herself onto the wide cylinder of the shampoo bottle, slowly rocking back and forth, gradually working it ever deeper. The light narrows to a tight, dim beam, illuminating only her face. As she fucks the massive object, her voice coming between panting breaths.
“I am lost in the frenzied lust of the moment, sunk deep into the furthest recesses of myself, entirely free from thought. The pain has given way to a recursive torrent of orgasms, storm-fed waves crashing against the breakwater of my blissfully empty mind.”
Alone in the spotlight, she tenses and shudders, repeatedly cumming on the bottle. Encouraging whoops and applause are cut short as thick arms of shadow emerge from the encroaching gloom, gripping her by the shoulder and neck. Pulling her to her feet, a vaguely human form emerges from the darkness behind her, binding her body in a webwork of black ribbons, ropes and strands that sprout from its suggestion of chest and arms. When she speaks, her voice, high and strained, is overlaid with an inhuman oil-slick richness.
“I’m drowning, mentally kicking for the surface, desperate to leave this place and breathe normal reality again. I fight and I beg and I plead. It laughs.”
Mirthless and atonal, the thing fills the space with a sound antithetical to human laughter. She struggles against the bondage causing the myriad cords and straps and to tighten into her naked flesh. There is fear in her eyes. When she speaks again, her voice is gone. Only the shadow remains.
“Wrapped in your illusions of control, you have been so eager to follow me down, always willing to dive deeper. Now you will learn. Your will is a lie, your determination farcical. You behave as I command or you behave as I allow. I own your mind and I own your body. So it is, so it has been and so shall it ever be.”
The bindings snake and seethe around her body, reordering themselves to coil around her neck, her breasts and her thighs, the bottle forced even deeper. The terrible voice continues.
“Admit the truth. Call me as I am. Accept your true nature and be released.”
She is weeping, bound in darkness, agonizingly stretched, shamed by his words. Her head slowly rises, peering out into the watching void, and chokes out the words.
“Yes… Master.”
Instantly, the black bindings evaporate into smoke and she collapses into a heap, the bottle slipping out of her onto the floor with a thud. Blue light floods the stage once more. The previously enraptured audience erupts in raucous cheers and applause, many rising to their feet.
Blackout.
(Thanks for reading.)(PS. Let me know if you’re interested in Act II)
Source: reddit.com/r/eroticliterature/comments/rhgvu4/act_i_solo_f_magical_realismmild_fantasy