Writing, writing quite happily in fact, and what should happen? The power flickered, a good 2-3 page story fragment disappeared all of three paragraphs before it would have been posted, dammit, dammit, DAMMIT!

*paces angrily, tail thrashing, her eyes narrowed and what little patience she'd been clinging to today gone right out the window*

I was pretty happy about it too, it was a continuation of the story fragment, or rather a different fragment of the same story, that I posted a while ago. I was... content. Writing was soothing. And I rather liked the bit I was writing, it flowed nicely, and I'll be damned if I am going to try to scrape around in its ashes for enough words to cobble together to fake it. Screw that. Either I'll write it later, or it won't get written at all. For now?

For now, I think I'll go with something just a bit different.

Pure wish-fulfillment.

Daydreaming.

For now, I will be perfectly content to sit here, in agonizing pain, waiting for my stomach to settle enough that I can take even more meds, mentally pacing back and forth over a filthy stone floor. High, hand-laced boots - not laced by MY hands, certainly - and a nicely-cut black velvet skirt, black silk bodice, and my eyes damn near black as well, the pupils almost completely covering everything else. Knives in sheaths, attached to damn near every scrap of clothing and fabric, leather bands strapped around arms and thighs, ready to be used. Sharp. Gleaming. Torchlight, metal cups with long-burning wax-soaked rushes in place within them, the fire dancing and flickering, casting shadows everywhere.

The room is nearly empty - a long, low bench runs along one wall, a watertrough along the other. A row of filthy cages line the third. The fourth, the door I entered through and several racks and shelves, well-used tools and devices on them, those seeming to be the only clean and carefully-kept things in the room besides myself. In the center of the room there are two large, sturdy poles; eyebolts spiral down the length of each, as well as along the crossbeam set near the top of the two poles. A couple long chains are suspended from that crossbeam, but are ignored in favor of the eyebolts on the side beams... which are used, at the moment, to hold a rather bedraggled-looking male spread-eagled and upright.

His back, which is facing me, is a solid mass of scratches and bruises. A few carefully-placed deep red lines are clearly knifecuts... many of the bruises fan out in patterns common to floggers, whips, and other such tools... most of the scratches are the sort that come from fingernails. His hair is tangled, sweaty, and would be hanging in his face if it was not for the posture collar locked around his throat, leather straps extending from it to fix his head upright. The backs of his thighs and calves are marked as well, slender heated lines that scream 'crop'.

His hands are clenched on the chains. Still enough energy in him to cling to them, barely... enough to keep from sinking down the half-inch releasing his grip would allow. Enough to keep me from upping the size of the studded toy I shoved into him the first time he let himself fall. He struggles to keep that little bit of control, to keep from earning himself even more pain.

Water, close at hand. A bucket dragged over from the stale stuff in the watering trough. I move in front of him, raise it to his lips... and as he is about to sip, the entire bucket is upended, gushing over him. He gulps desperately, mouth wide, trying to get every drop he can and in the process, leaving himself neatly open for the short, wide dildo I shove between his jaws. It buckles easily to the straps already holding his head in place.

He begged for mercy, early on. Pleaded and begged and swore he would do his best to please me, to serve me, if I would just make the pain stop. He tried threatening me, briefly. Tried tears, sobbing and crying, offering me that pain in hopes of pleasing me enough to earn a moment's kindness. Eventually he realized that he was not going to earn anything but more pain. I could see it when the realization hit him, when he nearly passed out, when his eyes opened wide and looked at me with such betrayal.

'I love you,' he said. And said nothing more after that. Once I am done with him, he won't ever speak again.