Office Subjugation

Chapter 13 - The Locked Room

She woke to her bladder.

Not all at once. The dark first, then the leather of the couch warm against her hip and cool everywhere it had not been, then the smell of the new perfume on her skin, vanilla, honey, the white floral she did not have a name for, and underneath all that the pressure low in her abdomen, dull, insistent, already building before she had woken into it. She lay still and waited for it to pass.

It did not pass.

She opened her eyes. Nothing changed. The room was black the way it was always black, no window to crack, no streetlight to seep, only the close total dark of the windowless room and the small mechanical sounds of a building running through the night without her.

The digital alarm clock on the side table held the time in red bars. 1:47.

She had stopped using her phone for the time three days ago. The charger had frayed at the connector on the Tuesday and the phone had died on the Wednesday and she had not asked him for a new one. The clock he had set out for her on the side table the night she moved in cast a faint pink glow across the silk at her chest when she rolled toward it.

The pressure tightened. A small spasm, quick, the muscles low in her pelvis squeezing hard and letting go. She pressed her thighs together. The negligee had ridden up while she slept, the straps loose at her shoulders, the silk bunched at her waist, her breasts bare against the leather where she had pressed into it. The blanket was tangled at her knees. Vanilla, honey, the new lotion she had pressed into her arms before bed, all of it sat in the air with her. Her bladder was full. The door was locked.

She got up. The leather peeled away from her bare thighs and the back of her arms with the small wet sound of skin parting from leather. She crossed the room with her hands out. The door first, smooth wood under her fingertips. Then the cool brass of the handle.

She turned it. The handle moved. The door did not.

She turned it again. Pulled. The deadbolt held the way it always held, the way it had clicked into its housing every night since Wednesday, the heavy mechanical drop she had stopped being afraid of the third night because she had decided the lock was for her safety.

He locks it for me. The cleaners. Night security. Whoever has access to this floor at three in the morning.

She pulled once more. The door did not move. She stood in the dark with her hand on the handle and her bladder full and the lock between her and the bathroom at the end of the corridor.

She went back to the couch.

---

She sat on the edge with her knees pressed together and breathed through her nose.

You can hold it. You held it on the drive to your grandmother's funeral when you were twelve and your father wouldn't stop the car. Three hours. You can hold it for three hours.

She remembered it now in the dark. The car interior smelling of stale coffee from the cup in the cupholder. Her father's hand on the wheel. Her own knees pressed together in the back seat.Mom. Mom, please.Her mother twisting around in the front, soft, anxious, looking at her father, looking back at her.Bill, can we just stop, she's a kid.Her father not turning his head.We're behind. She'll hold it. Won't you, sweetheart. Tell her you'll hold it or you'll wish you had.The pause. The mother turning back to face the windshield. The mother saying nothing. The three hours that followed.

She had held it. Her mother had not stood up to him. Her father had not slowed.

She breathed.

The pressure built. Not gradually. In surges, each one tighter than the last, each one cresting into a spasm that clenched her whole core and then let go and left her shaking on the leather. She crossed her legs. Uncrossed them. Crossed them again. She pressed the heel of her hand flat against her lower abdomen and pushed.

At two-fifteen she stood up. The room was eight paces along the wall and six across. She had measured it with her feet on the second night because there had been nothing else to do with the dark. She paced the long axis. Eight, turn. Eight, turn. Eight, turn. The carpet was rough under her bare soles where the rest of her was warm under the silk, and the walking helped for about three minutes the way the holding had helped for ten and the breathing had helped for fifteen, and then a spasm caught her mid-stride and she folded over with her hands on her knees and bit down on a sound she did not let out.

At two-thirty she tried the door again. She knew it was locked. She tried it anyway. The handle turned. The bolt held. She pressed her forehead to the wood and breathed and the wood was cool against her skin and the pressure in her pelvis was a fist now, a weight that pressed down and would not stop pressing.

He doesn't know. He locked it because that is the procedure and he didn't know I would need to. I should have gone before nine. I drank water and wine at dinner and then I drank more in the bathroom after I brushed my teeth and I should have known and I didn't go and that's on me.

At two-forty-five she leaked.

A small amount. A warm pulse that escaped before she could clench, sliding down the bare smooth skin of her inner thigh. She gasped. Pressed her thighs together so hard the muscles trembled. The wet line cooled on her skin in the few seconds it took her to understand what had happened, and she stood in the dark in the middle of the room with the silk bunched up around her waist and a thin warm trail drying on the inside of her leg, and she made a sound closer to a squeak than a word.

She looked at the corner.

---

The bin was metal. Brushed steel. Williams had set it in the corner the night she had moved in, empty and unmarked. She had not put anything in it since. There had been nothing to put.

She stood over it for a long time.

You can't. You're eighteen years old. You have a job. You have a room. You have a man who took you out for the day and bought you the towels you dried your face with and the paste you brushed your teeth with and the silk you are wearing right now, and you are not going to squat over a metal bin in the dark like a -

Another spasm. Longer. She doubled over. Her hands found the edge of the side table and gripped. A second pulse escaped before she could clench, smaller than the first but enough to add another warm trail to the skin of her thigh, and she stood with the wet drying on both legs and could not hold it any more.

She hiked the negligee up to her waist. Lifted the bin out of the corner with both hands and set it in the centre of her measured eight paces. Squatted over it, feet on either side of the rim, knees wide, the body folding into a shape that was not a position he had taught her. Her bare cheeks dropped toward the metal lip. Her thighs trembled.

She let go.

The relief came first. Huge. A release that rolled up through her from her soles and washed out at the back of her neck. Her jaw came unclenched. Her teeth, which had been pressed into a hard line for the last hour, parted.

Then the sound.

Her urine hit the bottom of the bin and the bin rang. Not loud the way she had expected it to be loud. Loud like a bell, a thin tinny ring that filled the small room and bounced off the bare walls. There was more of it than she had known she was holding. The high ring softened to a thicker note as the liquid took up the space. She kept her eyes shut and let it finish, because there was nothing else to do.

When it stopped the silence was worse than the sound had been.

She stood. Slow. Her thighs cramped from the squat. The negligee fell from her waist back down her body, the silk catching on damp skin and clinging at the inside of each thigh. The bin was warm in her hands. She could feel the weight of the liquid shifting when she moved it. The smell rose immediately, sharp in the closed air, sharper than she had thought a body's own smell could be.

She set the bin in the corner where it had been.

---

She lay down on the couch. Pressed her face into the pillow. Pulled the blanket to her chin.

She slept in pieces. The kind of sleep that was not sleep so much as a series of dropped-into and surfaced-from intervals, each one short, each one ending with a jolt at a sound she had not actually heard. She woke. She slept. She woke again. The smell of what she had done sat in the room with her every time she came back up, sat in the silk on her skin every time she rolled over. The amber-gold pillow he had paid for on the Saturday smelled now of his vanilla-honey perfume on her hair and of the night underneath, and her body could not seem to find a position she was willing to stay in.

At 4:13 she opened her eyes and did not close them again.

The room kept the smell. There was no vent. No window. The vanilla and honey and white floral he had pressed into her wrist on Saturday morning sat in the air on top of what had come out of her in the dark, and she had stopped being able to tell which note was which.

The new lotion. The new perfume. The new pillow under her cheek, soft white, the one he had paid for at the counter with the hanging lamp. The silk negligee he had asked her to put on while he watched. The bin in the corner of her measured room.

The mixture was the most accurate description of her life she had thought of in weeks.

She lay with her eyes open in the dark and waited for him.

---

The lock clicked.

She had been listening for it since five. Her body had not slept properly for nearly seven hours. Her mind had been running the same loop, the bathroom at eight fifty-five she had not used, the second glass of wine at dinner she should not have drunk, the key she did not have. The lock clicked. The door moved. The corridor light cut a wedge across the carpet and Williams stood in it.

The clock on the side table read 10:04.

Sunday morning. He had told her on the Friday that on Sundays he came in late if he came in at all, that she should expect him after ten. She had not been able to picture what that would mean from inside a windowless room. She had experienced it now for the last six hours.

He was not in a suit. A soft pale-blue button-down, no tie, the cuffs already rolled to the forearm. The coffee in his hand was an oversized takeaway cup from the cafe on the ground floor instead of the small ceramic from his kitchen.

His eyes found her on the couch. The blanket had ridden down to her waist somewhere in the long lying-still and she had not pulled it back up. The negligee was twisted at her hips, the silk strap of the right shoulder hanging loose at her arm. Her hair was loose around her shoulders. He looked at her the way he looked at any morning's first sight of her, and then his nostrils moved.

His face did not change. His eyes moved away from her, slow, and tracked across the room from her side to the corner. They settled on the bin.

He set the coffee down on the side table. Walked across her measured eight paces. Stopped at the bin. Looked into it.

The silence lasted long enough that she heard the building.

"Chloe."

The name hit her under the sternum.Chloe, notgirl. The name on her contract. The name he used when a client was in the room. She flinched. Her hand pulled the blanket up to her collarbone.

"Sir, the door, I woke up and I needed to and I -"

"An eighteen-year-old professional assistant urinated in a waste bin."

His voice was flat. The voice he used to read contract language. Not loud. The flatness was what landed.

"Like an animal."

She sat on the couch in the negligee with the blanket clutched to her collarbone and absorbed the sentence whole. Without defence.

"I'm sorry, Sir. I'm so sorry, I tried to hold it, I held it for over an hour, I -"

"Had an accident."

The word landed differently than the others.Accident. The light, forgiving word for a puppy that had not made it to the door. She had not heard it about a person since she was four, in the front seat of her mother's car after a long drive. Her face went hot.

"Yes, Sir." Her throat was dry. "I had an accident."

"Clean it up."

---

He stood in the doorframe. Arms folded. He did not move while she got off the couch.

She walked across the carpet to the corner in the negligee. The bin was where she had set it. The corridor light from the open door was enough to see the contents now, a dark yellow against brushed steel, a thin film of foam at the surface where her stream had stopped.

A roll of paper towels and a folded plastic bag from the kitchenette appeared on the side table behind her. He had set them down. She had not seen him do it. The plastic bag was the same plastic bag she put the kitchenette bin liner into on Wednesday afternoons.

She knelt by the bin. The carpet was rough through the silk against her bare knees. Her hair fell forward. She pushed it back behind one shoulder. Took the first sheet off the roll.

She folded it. Reached into the bin.

Her fingers went into the liquid. Tepid now, hours old. She felt the temperature on her fingertips, the slickness on her skin, and her stomach turned over once and she swallowed it back because he was watching.

She wiped the inside of the bin. Sheet by sheet. The paper came away dark. She dropped each used sheet into the open mouth of the plastic bag at her hip. Sheet, fold, wipe, drop. Sheet, fold, wipe, drop.

The negligee covered nothing in the corridor light. Her breasts hung heavy under the champagne silk where she leaned forward. Her nipples were hard from the cool air and visible through the fabric where the silk lay flat against them. Her bare ass jutted behind her where she crouched, the yellow-green of last week's welts a faint stain at the edges of her cheeks where the silk did not reach. She knelt in the silk he had paid for in the lingerie store with the assistant and she scrubbed her own urine out of a metal bin while a man in a three-thousand-dollar shirt watched from the door with his arms folded and his coffee on her side table.

Her hand went back into the liquid for another sheet.

He's letting me clean it up. He could have fired me. He could have called the cleaners and had them find this. He's letting me handle it.

"Rinse it."

"Yes, Sir."

She stood. She picked up the bin in both hands. Tied the plastic bag in a knot one-handed and held it at her hip. Walked past him in the doorway. He did not move. Her bare shoulder brushed the wool of the throw he had over his arm on the way past.

The bathroom was at the end of the corridor. She turned on the light. Set the bin in the sink. Set the knotted plastic bag down beside it. Ran the tap. Scrubbed the inside of the bin with more paper towels and the hand soap from the dispenser, the lavender-scented one she had used on her face the first morning. Rinsed it. Filled it half-full with hot water and a long pull of soap and swirled it and tipped it down the drain. Rinsed it again. Dropped the tied plastic bag into the larger bin under the sink.

When she came back out into the corridor, the bin clean in her hands, he was still in the doorframe. He had not picked the coffee back up.

She set the bin in the corner where it had been. The wet metal caught the corridor light.

She knelt on the carpet in front of him. Hands in her lap. Head down. The silk pooled around her thighs.

"From now on you use the bathroom before I lock up. Every night. Without being told. Understood?"

"Yes, Sir."

"At eight fifty-five. The same time you brush your teeth."

"Yes, Sir."

"This will not happen again."

"No, Sir."

He looked at her for a long moment. She could feel the look on the crown of her head. He did not reach for the coffee on the side table. He did not say a word about the lock.

He won't unlock it. Why would he. The bathroom is twenty feet away and if I can't think ahead enough to use it before nine, I deserve to hold it until morning. That's what an adult does.

"Shower first. Then dress. I'll be in my office."

He picked up the coffee. Walked out. The door stayed open.

---

She showered in the corridor bathroom. The cubicle was small and the tiles were institutional white and the water came hot when she turned the tap to its limit.

She washed her thighs first. The fronts, the insides, the place where the trail had dried by the time she had given up holding. Lavender soap from the dispenser, twice over each leg. Then her hands. Then the rest of her under the spray for a count of sixty.

She dried with one of the new white towels he had bought her on the Saturday.

She dressed in her room. The lingerie went on the way it went on every morning. Cup-less bra, settled, the underwire seated, the nipples bare above the band. Mesh thong, up and over the points of her hips. Garter belt at her waist, four clips. Stocking, one leg at a time, pulled up the calf, up the thigh, clipped front and back. Other stocking. Other clips. Heels, one foot at a time, the strap settled at the ankle.

She tightened the elastic in her ponytail. Tucked the loose strands back behind the band the way she had taught herself to do them on the bus the second week.

She walked the side-corridor through the outer office to his inner door. Pushed it open. Crossed the rug. Stood in the centre on the wool.

She had not put the dress on. The dress went on after the inspection.

---

"Resting."

She set her feet shoulder-width on the wool. Crossed her wrists behind her back, left over right. Pulled her shoulders back. Pushed her chest forward. Lifted her chin.

He came around her. Slow. Slower than he had come around her any other morning. His shoes did not make a sound on the rug. He stopped at her right side. Looked down at her chest from above. The bare nipples lifted on the underwire. He did not touch.

"Bra."

She cupped her own breasts. Pinched each nipple between thumb and index. Lifted. The full weight of each breast strained against her wrist. He looked at the bra-line under each lifted breast and ran the back of one knuckle along the seated underwire on the right, then the left. The knuckle was warm. Her bare nipple sat hard and exposed at the top of his hand and his knuckle did not touch it. He looked at the nipple. He did not comment.

"Back."

She turned. Squatted. Arched her spine. Hands on her knees. Head down. Her ass rose behind her, the mesh thong stretched between her cheeks where it had been wedged the morning before, the strip of fabric thin and dark against the pale skin where the welts were a faint yellow-green that took looking for now.

She heard him crouch behind her. Not the rustle of his shirt. The displacement of air.

His finger tapped the mesh at her covered slit. A single precise pulse, directly on her bare entrance through the strip of thong. Her body tensed.

He did not move on.

His finger stayed. The pad of it pressed through the mesh into the bare skin of her sex. Warm. He traced. Not up along the seam toward her tailbone the way he traced every other morning. Down. He pressed the mesh into the seam of her closed lips and his finger followed the line of her sex from her entrance down toward her mound, the fabric dragging against the bare skin underneath, the friction sharp at the base of her spine.

She did not move.

"Empty."

She did not answer. He had not asked a question. The single word sat in the air at the small of her back like a stamp.

"Most girls have this part figured out by five." His finger had not lifted off the bare skin. It pressed once, slow, where her bladder sat behind her mound, the smallest amount of weight, just enough to register. "Eighteen years old and your own body still gets away from you in the dark. We'll be working on that."