The Lioness and the Black Widow 19

In my absence, order in the house had been restored. No one sat bound at the table. Lilith moved around the house, often in nothing more than a white silk slip, as if she felt at home there. I had to admit that in a depraved and perverted way, the house felt like home to me too. Octavia never spoke, she just stared straight ahead, sometimes sitting alone on the couch for hours. Alexandria remained in her cell.

At dinner, an uncomfortable silence plagued the atmosphere. My thoughts were on Lavinia and when she would return. I concentrated on her asked the question repeatedly in my head, “When will you be back?” There was no response. I focused on Damijana and thought, “When will Lavinia be back?”

Her voice replied, “She’ll back when she decides to come back.”

“How do you know she’s okay?”

“I’m sure she’s fine Clarence. She can take of herself all-too-well.”

Lilith spoke out loud, the big wads of bandages on each side of her face bobbing up and down as she spoke, “The Matriarch says I need to do strengthening exercises. I’m asking permission to use Alexandria.”

I firmly stated, “No!” Black Sally looked at me and asked, “Are you okay Clarence? You’ve been through a lot. You’re not in a delusional state or anything are you? Do know where you are?”

I answered, “I’m fine.”

Damijana let out a deep sigh, “Do have any reason for this Clarence?”

“Yes, I do.”

Black Sally rose from her chair and declared, “Well it better be a fucking good one. Otherwise, you WILL be made an example. Are you sure you want to do this?”

I looked Sally in the eyes, “I’m positive. Lilith’s not touching her.”

Damijana set her fork down and leaned forward, “Lilith needs strengthening exercises and Alexandria realization exercises. This benefits them both. You’ve been through this same process. If Alexandria doesn’t go through it, she will be killed. Is that what you want?”

“I’ll take care of her realization and strengthening exercises.”

Sally appeared at my side and stood over me. She chuckled and said, “This shit doesn’t work like that Clarence. You don’t get to pick out the pretty ones and save them for yourself. You have no more authority at this table than Lilith. If she wants to use Alexandria, you’re in no position to stop her.”

“I have murdered two Matriarchs for this table. Lilith hasn’t done shit! And I AM in a position to stop her.”

Damijana shouted, “I’m not in the mood for your shit Clarence!”

Black Sally stated, “This is another reason why I don’t like men at the table, they always want to get on this ‘Sir Galahad’ bullshit. Then we have another dumbass dick and balls prancing around here fucking everything up like ‘Don Quixote’. You don’t impress us with that shit Clarence. If a man takes his brand new jacket off and drapes it across a puddle on the street, just so a lady doesn’t step in it, he’s not being chivalrous Clarence, he’s being fucking stupid.”

“This isn’t about chivalry,” I said, “and it isn’t about me saving Alexandria for myself. It was my decision to bring her here, rather than kill her. I got here because I made some wrong choices. She didn’t do anything but be Sathanas’ innocent victim.”

Lillith glared at me, “I didn’t do anything to get here either.”

“Yes you did,” I replied, “you and your husband were so caught up the pursuit of a fantasy, you threw all caution and common sense to the wind. You two just had to have the ‘play’ home invasion and ‘play gang-rape’ that you’d been working yourselves up over for so long.”

“IT WASN’T MY FANTASY! IT WAS HANK’S!”

Damijana slammed her fist down on the table, “Enough! What happened that night was my fault. I shouldn’t have had anything to do with a couple of sorry-ass middle-class suburbanites. Their problem wasn’t Hank’s sick fantasies. It was boredom, monotony and a desperate urge to escape normalcy. You and Hank were so average, you needed a way to differentiate yourself from your neighbors. So you wanted something extreme. You wanted to look in the mirror and say, ‘I’m not just another boring suburbanite-Susie, fattening myself on the sweat, starvation and suffering of the world’s poor. I’m a kinky suburbanite-Susie. Therefore I’m not only superior to the starving one-legged 12-year-old miner in the Congo, I’m also superior to my uptight, prude and sexually repressed neighbor. Her life is boring. Her sex life is dull and she’d never have the guts to allow a bunch of strangers into her house to tie her up and gang-rape her.’ Now that you’ve lost your husband, your house, your ‘normal’ life; now that you’ve lost everything Lilith, while your neighbor is still being a boring suburbanite-Susie, do you still feel superior to her.”

A tear fell from Lilith’s eye, “I just wanted to make my husband happy. He had a fantasy, we discussed it and I trusted him to take care of everything. He didn’t say anything to me about the possibility of having a GODDAMN CANNABILISTIC DEATH CULT show up at our door!”

Black Sally placed her hand over heart and said, “Oh Lilith, we’re so sorry that reality interfered with you and your husband’s fantasy. If only you could just swipe your credit card and have the whole world become subordinate to your whims, right? It looks like you and Hank spent so much time in fantasyland, you fucked around and fell down a rabbit hole; you ended up in cold-hard reality. Maybe it wasn’t your fantasy that got you here, but it definitely was your STUPIDITY. I don’t know how things work out there in fantasyland, but here in reality, stupidity will get you killed.”

Damijana pushed her chair away from the table and stood, “Sally, I’m with Clarence on this one. I don’t want Lilith torturing Alexandria.”

Black Sally replied, “I’m won’t argue the point with you Dami. However, Lilith still needs strengthening. If Lilith can’t use Alexandria, someone will have to take her place.”

Damijana pointed at me, “Clarence volunteered to take Alexandria’s place when he ruined my peaceful lunch with all this talk and debate. Don’t even open your mouth Clarence. My decision is final.” Damijana exited the dining-room, followed by Black Sally.

Lilith raised her eyebrows at me, “Hmmm, it looks we’ll be spending the afternoon together Clarence.”

“Look, you’re not cut out for this. Why don’t you just go to your room and I’ll tell everyone I let you torture me.”

“I think I can handle you just fine. I used to dominate Hank all the time.”

“Lilith, at first I thought you were just in shock and traumatized by recent events. Now, I know that you are either exceptionally stupid or completely insane. In this house, we don’t deal in domination. We deal in subjugation. Do you know the difference?”

Lilith rose from her chair, “Damijana said that you have to take Alexandria’s place. That means I get to do whatever I want with you.”

“Oh, I see, so you don’t know the difference. Let’s talk about rules, formalities and unspoken social pacts. Have you ever seen one of those nature shows where the two goats meet up on the rocks and start ramming their heads into each other? It’s like they met at an agreed upon place, at an agreed upon time, to settle who is dominant in an agreed upon manner. Then the other goats acknowledge the victors dominance in, guess what, an agreed upon manner. This all has to do with their little social set up, and obviously there are unspoken, but agreed upon, rules. Did you get the ‘agreed upon’ part Lilith? Now I want you to pay attention, this has everything to do with the position you’re in now.

“You ‘dominated’ Hank in an agreed upon manner. Damijana subjugated you. You didn’t agree to be kidnapped and held prisoner in this house. You didn’t agree to Hank’s murder, you didn’t agree to having your face scarred and you also didn’t agree to being raped in the ass by me while Brianna broke fingers. Are you beginning to understand the difference? You’re weak Lilith. You never should have been snatched out of your 9-to-5 world. You could only dominate me if I agreed to it, which I don’t. And you’re nowhere near being strong enough to subjugate me. I guess that leaves you with what you came in with, your fantasies and nothing more…doesn’t it Lilith?” I slowly rose from my chair and walked out the room. Lilith remained fixed in her chair.

I went upstairs to Alexandria’s cell. She laid on the floor, curled up the fetus postion, shivering and crying. I gathered some blankets from Selene’s old room, brought them back to the cell and covered the shivering young woman. I knelt down beside her and whispered, “I know that you wish that you’d died, but you didn’t. You need to get up and start moving around. You still have a choice here. The men who raped you are all dead, so is the man who forced you into prostitution. You weren’t brought here to be made a sex-toy or whore. You were brought here because it was the only way I could save your life.”

When I was back in the hallway, Lavinia’s voice entered my mind, “Well Clarence, I’m impressed with your development. I’ll help Alexandria get back on her feet. She is a blank slate. I can mold her into whatever I wish…the same way I molded you. Lilith is down there plotting. I don’t think your lesson set in. I want you to SHOW her the difference between domination and subjugation. I want her to feel that difference to such a degree, that she will never forget. And I want her to feel it for an extended period of time…indefinitely.”