Tina had become comfortable with how things were.  She’d spend a long time writing dozens of stories detailing the ups and downs and twists and turns of her sometimes intense, frequently surprising and always challenging exploration of her life as a submissive.  The more Tina wrote, the more she learned.  But as counterintuitive as it seems, the more Tina learned, the more she forgot as well.

Things changed for Tina this weekend when she was visited by a ghost from her past.  A message lost in cyberspace that finally found its way to Tina’s inbox.  A conversation began.  How many of these has she played her part in.  A friendly hello usually followed by the same questions anyone who read one of her stories would know the answer to.  Courteous enough but not serious.  Someone to spend time sharing surface conversations and a few fun stories or insights about life and power exchange and maybe some self-bondage ideas.  Tina settled in and prepared for a nice fun chat.  One never knows.  A few of these have turned into good friendships and partnerships and creative outlets.  One never knows until they press “enter,” and send their replies out into the ether.

Not expecting much and hoping for only slightly more than that, Tina was in the more unfamiliar situation of being unprepared for what she encountered.  As Tina read her words, those of Ma’am, they floated from the screen and blew around her like hands formed of a mist.  They stroked her hair and caressed her cheek.  The firm touch was lightened by sincere affection and appreciation.  Tina was spellbound.  She was intoxicated.  But this was not a ghost.  And this is not the past, either.  This echoed the past and the memories that Tina had recreated in her stories, but they also carried the feelings that she’d forgotten.  They were imbued with the truth that would disrupt the comfortable, compromised pattern Tina had sorted out to allow a submissive’s spirt to coexist with the expectations of reality.

 

—————-

It was the next morning and Tina cried out in alarm as she jerked against the tethered leather cuffs holding her down tightly onto the air mat.  She jumped from sound asleep to life or death as fast as her muscle memory could process the false signals of distress.  She looked about and was back in her playroom.  It was dark.  The rising sun had only just begun breaking over the hills.  The morning mist filtered the daylight into an eerie glow that hovered around her on the floor.

Tina was awake but her mind was not working in a state of consciousness.  Her mind was replaying Ma’am’s observations.  It did not make sense.  Somehow, as guarded and Tina had been, Ma’am had cut through Tina’s casual-sub persona and shined the spotlight on her truth.  The truth that this wasn’t Tina.  This was the outfit that Tina put on to wear throughout the day that allowed her to glide back and forth between a semi-submissive casual life experience and the real life that she physically carried herself through.  Ma’am had reminded Tina that her “journey” hadn’t answered the question that launched it.  It hadn’t even addressed the question.

Tina’s chest heaved and she growled and strained against the system of bondage she’d spent over a decade perfecting.  There were no weak spots in this simple, strong machine.  Tina flexed, knowing full well that she’d remain pulled out taught like the strings of an instrument.  She continued pulling and gaining nothing.  Her biceps warmed as the lactic acid pumped in response to the sustained effort.  Tina may have been trying to lift the house from the footers.  But she continued pulling and crying out to call upon her deepest reserves of strength.  Tina clenched her teeth and eyes tightly, fighting for slack that wasn’t there, and longing for the comforting sense of control that bondage always provided but eluded her.  Tina didn’t stop struggling.  She couldn’t stop yet.

The screen on the tablet was propped up and Tina didn’t look but she knew what the message in the guy chat feature stated, “Good morning my pet.”

Tina could remember.  And her muscles suddenly relaxed.

 ————

Tina finished the preparation for this first task.  It was exhilarating.  It was challenging.  Not a challenge of engineering.  Tina had taken to increasingly intricate engineering challenges to seek her fulfillment.  Each time, dominating when she should have been submitting.  This conflict inside of her is what made the revelation of Ma’am such a cataclysmic event.  The system and pattern and cocoon of comfort that Tina had layered around her to distract her from the questions she was never equipped to deal with was unraveling.  It had been unraveled.  The trappings of it hung from her like torn clothes made of tissue paper.  The emperor’s new suit was a lie.

She published the first part of the first chapter, which she had never done before.  She’d never written the story before the task.  But she wasn’t sure what she’d be like after it was finished.  Tina pressed the button to publish the story.  Then she’d clip her bound wrists to the tether above her and wait for her lesson to begin.