Power Play by Emma Southard

Power Play
By Emma Southard

Tied up in the closet Brian felt pleasantly helpless. That’s what Helen would never understand. He didn’t consider it cheating because he felt nothing for Veronique; it was simply business for her. Still, he worried of Helen finding out because he knew she would never approve - she would think it was immoral.
Sometimes he wondered why he had married such a devout Christian. But he didn’t know that when they married, all he knew was that she was cute and paid attention to him. And now every Sunday that same cute girl would put on her flowery, puffy-sleeved, Sunday dress, iron extra curls into her hair and expect him to drive her to church. She never told him that she wanted him to attend the service with her, but if he was going to drive all the way across town to drop her off he may as well stay with her rather than go home and come back to get her. So he’d attend the service in his button down shirt and tie, just to listen to the pastor tell him everything that he was doing wrong. After the service, with Helen on his arm, he would walk around and smile at the other couples, stopping to say a few words here and there. He knew that this was Helen’s favorite part of going to church.
“We can go if you want,” she’d always whisper in his ear as the congregation moved to the large room in the back of the church for doughnuts and coffee. “It’s up to you.”
“Let’s go,” he’d say some Sundays, but other days they would stay and eat the jelly-filled fat. Watching the other parishioners shove the rings down their throats like they had never seen food before, powdered sugar clinging to their sweaty faces. And Helen would stay there, on his arm, gazing up at him waiting for his lead. He would watch Helen eyeing the pastor’s family who were usually busy by the punch bowl dolling out cups to all of their children. If he happened to be feeling more tolerant on any given Sunday he may lead Helen over to the pastor’s family for the dreaded fake smiles and chitchat that would inevitably follow.
“Reverend McAlistar,” Helen would smile putting her hand on his arm. “What a great sermon today, I really appreciated what you said about giving with your whole self, the reading really spoke to me today.”
“I am so glad you liked it Helen,” the pastor responded. “Lynn here knows I sure spent a lot of time on that one.” He smiled at his wife.
“Oh Helen, do you think you could pour little Jimmy there a cup of punch?” Lynn asked, adjusting the infant in her arms and gesturing to the toddler in a tiny jacket and bowtie pulling at the bottom of her skirt.
“Of course,” Helen detached herself from Brian’s arm to help Jimmy with the punch.
It was always when the pastor smiled at Brian and mentioned that the boys club needs an extra chaperone for their camping trip that Brian would finally lose his nerve and ask Helen if she was ready to go. Just to drive her back across town to their upstairs townhouse.
When they first married his brother thought Brian was so lucky to marry a girl who didn’t have her driver’s license.
“You never have to worry about her sneaking around,” he said, “She can’t go anywhere without you.” At first Brian tried to be happy about this fact, like the rest of the guys. He would always know where Helen was, he told himself; he didn’t have to worry. But he couldn’t help but be curious about the type of relationship they would have if he had the luxury of that worry.
He would come home from work and start to tell Helen about his day “David messed up the Booker account, if I hadn’t caught it we could have had a lawsuit on our hands.”
Helen would nod, her stringy hair falling in her eyes, acting as if she knew what he was talking about, but Brian knew she was just waiting to interject; she always had a million questions for him - what should she buy at the grocery store, does he think the sink has been leaking, will he drive her to her sister’s? Sometimes Brian would get so exhausted with her, but it was always at these times when he was about to explode that he would get a call from the office. His secretary would inform him of an emergency meeting to make an immediate decision on the Booker account, or a colleague would insist that Brian had to choose the menu for the staff Christmas party, or a client was in the office or on the phone and refused to speak to anyone but Brian.
At these times, despite the fact that he had his pretty blonde wife standing meekly in front of him with a list of wants and needs, he would return to the office, where everyone would flock to him again, with their demands and questions. Time off requests, calls on hold, executive meetings across town, it all fell on him. Even if he could escape the office and the wife and head out to the bar where his brother hung out, he couldn’t get away from the demands of questions and decisions. Even at the bar, the men would congregate around him wanting to know his opinion on whether the tits of the bartender were real or not. They wanted to know what he thought of the game last night, did he think that Will could beat Jason at darts, or pool or whatever. Everyone wanted something.

That’s why his time with Veronique was so valuable.
Brian struggled against the ropes that tied his feet to the plastic chair trying to slightly reposition without causing the knots to grow tighter. He let a low growl escape his lips. Around the edges of the blindfold he could see the glow of the cheap motel lights trickling through the folding door of the closet.
He’d found Veronique’s ad on Craig’s List. He hadn’t known that services like hers were on such a common website until he saw a special feature on the evening news. He and Helen had been sitting in their small living room and Helen was rapidly swaying in her rocking chair. With each rock the chair made an irritating creak that was timed perfectly with the clicking of her knitting needles. Brian had to work very hard to ignore the sounds and focus his attention on the nightly news.
“Coming up next, exchange of erotic services on Craig’s List,” the broadcaster stated in a deep dramatic voice. The screen showed a woman in tight angular lingerie, her face blurred smacking the handle of a whip against her hand.
“Brian could you turn that off? I really don’t think we need to witness that debauchery.” Helen had asked with a tight smile. Brian turned off the television and left the room.
It wasn’t until Helen had asked Brian if they could get a new headboard for their large bed that he found himself first exploring Craig’s List. Directly beneath the “For Sale” section, where he was about to click on the “furniture” link, was the “Services” section, which had links for “labor,” “financial” and “erotic” among other things. He thought back to the blurred picture of the woman with the whip that he remembered from the news and clicked on the link. The following screen hosted a list of warnings and disclaimers clarifying that the following ads were not for prostitution or solicitation purposes. At this point Brian almost closed out of the screen, unsure of what he was getting himself into but he inevitably clicked the below link agreeing to release Craig’s List from any liability that may arise.
By the time he found Veronique’s ad he had already spent an hour and a half exploring the page. Veronique’s headline stood out among the misspellings, abbreviations, and all capital letters, it said simply- in all lower-case letters- “domination” and was missing the obligatory w4m, t4m, or m4m that seemed to accompany every other headline. Her ad stated that she was a dominatrix that would “fulfill all of your BDSM fantasies.” Unlike the other ads that talked about payment of 150 hugs for a half hour or a donation of $40 for fifteen minutes of “massage,” Veronique’s ad didn’t state anything about payment. And instead of a picture of her “better parts” in little to no clothing she simply had a picture of handcuffs on her page.
It wasn’t until his secretary spoke to him over the intercom to make sure he was ready for his conference call, that Brian finally closed the page and deleted his website history.
Brian and Veronique arranged to meet at a coffee shop. He spotted her immediately; she was a rush of long nails, fishnet stockings and lipstick. She demanded the attention of the coffee shop, and when he went to her he was uncomfortably aware of all the eyes on him.
“Veronique?” he asked.
Her response was a slight flutter of dark lashes.
Brian looked around nervously. “Let’s get out of here,” she nodded.

Brian tugged on the ropes wrapped tightly around his wrists; he flexed his fists to keep the blood flowing. His briefs had ridden up in the back and his bare bottom was sticking to the plastic chair. He yelled against the ball gag that filled his mouth.
Brian and Veronique always conducted their business in trashy motels alongside the highway. He was impressed with her businesslike demeanor. She started by asking him what he wanted, but when the only answer he could give were some awkward mumblings about restraint and a statement that this was his first time she pulled out a typed list.
“This is everything I’ll do, so just tell me what you want.” She didn’t look at him while she talked, her eyes were focused down accentuating the curve of her long lashes, which Brian could now see were coated with thick mascara. She sat on the desk, critiquing her slightly pointed scarlet nails, while Brian nervously sat on the standard motel print comforter. He loosened his tie as he read: some of these thing’s he’d never heard of before, and he was shocked to realize that the list went on to the back of the paper. The list included everything from tickling, to triple penetration, whips, wooden paddles, tattooing, spanking, kneeling, and hot wax.
“I suppose, some sort of gentle restraint,” he stared at the list instead of at her, “ehh… ropes? And umm… yelling,” he finally decided. She nodded, her streaked hair falling in her eyes. She got up and started searching in her body-sized duffle bag.
“Get naked,” she demanded, turning on him.
“Oh… umm, well I didn’t really want to do anything, so explicitly…sexual.”
“That’s fine. Get naked,” she screamed this time.


By their sixth meeting Brian had developed somewhat of a comfortable routine. Every Saturday afternoon he would drive Helen to her sister’s house for the day and then he would rendezvous with Veronique for a few hours. In the car driving to her sister’s house Brian would always find himself feeling surprisingly nervous. He had convinced himself that he wasn’t doing anything wrong, it wasn’t an affair exactly because he and Veronique never had sex. But on those Saturdays in the car with Helen he would notice her soft hands and the small curves of her petite body and at times he would become overwhelmed. He would consider turning the car around, heading back to their townhouse, the bedroom, their large bed. He would think of Helen laying on their bed begging him to be inside of her, pulling him towards her- both of them hot and wet with sweat, Helen digging her neatly manicured nails into his flesh as he came inside of her.
But then he would look at the woman sitting next to him in the passenger seat of his BMW, and he knew that those small soft hands could never dig into his flesh the way Veronique’s did and Helen’s demeanor was too soft and gentle for her to ever raise her voice at him. He knew that all he could expect when they made love was for her to lie silently on her back while he moved around inside of her. Helen was incapable of ever comprehending that there were lists out there like the one he and Veronique worked from.
As their meetings continued Brian and Veronique began to experiment with more items on her list. Veronique would scream at him about how his company was going to fail. She would smack a riding crop against her hand, dig her nails into his shoulders and tell him that Helen hated him, that one of these days Helen was going to blow up at him, walk out on him. And when Veronique would tie him to the bed, gag him, and leave the motel room for what seemed like hours, Brian felt euphoric. He would scream, and struggle, and just remain there, helpless because he had no alternative. Veronique would always come back after a time period they had previously agreed upon. She always untied him, un-gagged him, set him free, and he always paid her, in cash for both the motel room and her services.
He would arrive to pick up Helen from her sister’s feeling relieved and jovial, so that when they went home, he wouldn’t feel annoyed that he had to pay the bills while Helen made purchases online, he wouldn’t get upset with her when he had to make the decision about what to eat for dinner, and he wouldn’t mind that while they made love he did all the work. Those few hours of powerlessness seemed to make up for all of demands of his life. Those few weekly hours with Veronique were enough to release the tension and stress of his daily life and carry him through the following week. It didn’t matter if he had scratch marks on his back that he had to carefully hide from Helen, or that he had to be careful the pastor didn’t notice his raw wrist when they shook hands on Sunday mornings, or that he had to pay off the receptionist in the lobby of the hotel to keep her from reporting the screams she heard coming from his room. Brian knew that no matter what he had to go through Veronique would be there after the allotted time to set him free.