When Demons Are Redeemed: The Dominant's Muse

Seventy-Eight - Foreseeing Death

SEVENTY-EIGHT

Foreseeing Death

Catherine’s heart beats powerfully against her chest, races to keep her rapid breathing company, as she quietly walks down the aisle to Tristan’s work station, keeping the clicking of her heels to a minimum. She has not calmed down some more as she had wished. She is not fine to return to him as she had hoped either.

As she nevertheless travels towards her master, her eyes fall into those of two of the true submissives who were recently in the buffet room when she was, and, in both instances, those eyes ask why she did not immediately follow her peers back into the ballroom.

I allowed freedom to slip away, and now, I’m walking back to Tristan. It’s all so absurd.  Will I ever be able to get over what I did? Or, rather, what I didn’t do? When I next suffer at his hands, and I think back to what could’ve been . . .  Or not, if I’d been caught. I . . .

When Catherine once more pushes all such thoughts from her mind, which allows her eyes to once again register the stations all around her, she imagines the grand room as an emergency morgue, following some catastrophic event. One that killed only men.

You’ll be lucky if Tristan doesn’t sniff out what you did, and didn’t do.

If he were dead, then he could do no sniffing . . . She replies to healer, her eyes on the “corpses” that her mind has created using each master’s body, within each station, on each cot. What if . . . What if I just imagined the whole scene in the tunnel? Just composed it? Because, with only twenty true submissives here this weekend, how could I have not noticed Laura before?

The twenty true are spread out all over the room, so you’ve competed in different areas and in different groups, during contests. You just didn’t see her, healer replies.

Well, what about Vivian just disappearing the way that she did? How I looked back, and she was just gone? So, maybe I didn’t have a decision to make after all, because maybe there was never a way out for me. So I can’t blame myself for . . .

You saw the symbol, on the tunnel wall, healer interrupts. You weren’t composing.

Like I wasn’t just now, seeing what I did? Seeing a makeshift morgue?

You knew, just now, from beginning to end, that what you were seeing wasn’t real, healer counters. You’re tired, so the line’s not as firm, but you still know. Just like you knew when you imagined that clothed woman in the hallway, and just like you knew when you imagined that therapy session with Tristan.

I knew, but I still felt it as well. Really felt it. And . . . I’m terrified, with every step that I take back to him, Catherine acknowledges, as her eyes tear up.

You can’t cry. Enough.

I have STUPID stamped across my forehead. And I’m mean as well, because a part of me hopes that Vivian gets caught, so that I can tell myself that it’s a good thing that I didn’t go with her. How can I be going back to those awful games, and plus, knowing about the existence of that super-virus now . . .

You went through quite a bit, while you were away from Tristan. Just stay even now. Keep cool.

I must need one of my pills, Catherine realizes. She wants to hold on to that thought to steady herself with, but is instead extremely annoyed that her thought is “must need” and not “do need,” because she usually knows very well, without a doubt, when she needs one of her pills. This is crazy.