Strange Hunger

And perhaps that was the gift that fed the hunger most of all. Here in this Room was the crucible that taught a cumslut that it was the very meaninglessness of the act, its utter impersonality, that was what her hunger most required. It did not matter whether this man or that took what they wanted of her. Only that they took it, as many of them as could be had at a sitting, and gave her their spunk as proof of their domination and their pleasure. There was no love here, no shame, no mercy, no seduction. Just the brute fact of lust and of the givers and takers in its pitiless equation.

This understanding came to her with pellucid clarity in the dark in the precise moment when she realized that she had utterly lost all track of how many cocks she had taken, how many were left to go, how much time had passed or how much might remain. No, more than that she had lost all track: that she didn't care. That she was unattached to anything at all except feeding the hunger.

She simply accepted the next cock in her mouth like a communion, and lost herself in it all, and let go.

* * *

Hanna had no sense of transition from the dark back into the light. At one point she was in the Room, her whole body streaming and bursting with cum as she was reamed at both ends; and at another, as if she'd blinked and teleported, she was opening her eyes and finding herself lying naked on the plush carpet in Claudette's office.

She looked down at herself, feeling the ache in her shoulder sockets from the prolonged suspension, in her abused holes and in her jaw which had opened for so many rampant pricks. She was still naked... but she was clean, her skin a little pinkish as if someone had lovingly buffed her. She had that same brutal exhaustion that she'd experienced after the sojourn with Eamonn in the House, only worse; her head felt packed with cotton in much the same way. She reached up and found the dog collar was still around her neck.

Hanna looked around. She was alone. She weaved to her feet on rubbery legs, looked around for her clothes, her shoes. She couldn't see them anywhere.

She felt dizzy, put a hand to her head. Oh, fuck. Shook the cobwebs out, or tried to. Some impulsed of curiosity took her around behind the desk to look at that monitor she had noticed earlier.

That was when she caught her breath, feeling her adrenaline spike. Nobody was visible in the theatre lobby... except for Nomi.

Nomi was concentrated fury. She was pacing back and forth, raging, kicking at the locked lobby doors, her eyes wild. There was no telling how long she'd been there except by the number of bootprints already visible on the thick glass. There were a lot of them. Hanna put her hand to her mouth. Bae!

"Yes," said Claudette's voice from the doorway. "She showed up about half an hour ago. She's quite determined to see you."

Hanna looked up and saw the woman looking just as before, except that she was holding two objects. One of them was a leash, the kind that had been used to lead Hanna into the Room; and the other was her little zebra-print dress, paired with the cheap pumps. Hanna frowned, feeling a vague sense of dread rise in her. "What is this? Why haven't you just let her in? I'm sure Win - uhhh, Gerald must've told you she knows me."

"Does she?" Claudette raised an eyebrow, her blue eyes impassive.

"What do you mean." Hanna blinked, got a searing image of Windows' cock penetrating Nomi's defenceless pussy as she watched on and laughed. Blinked it away and said: "I don't know what you-"

"Oh, come now." Claudette shook her head. "You were a natural in the Room. You took to it so beautifully that you must surely have learned its lesson. There is no hiding. We must face what we are and make a choice."

"A choice." Hanna looked back at Nomi pacing frantically in that lobby. Reached out her hand as if she could soothe her right through the monitor. "What choice?"

"You are welcome to our little club if you wish to be." The blue eyes twinkled. "We'll make you a member in good standing, you'll have a place at every event. More fuel for the hunger than you ever dreamed of having, satisfied in a safer and purer environment than you could find anywhere else on the continent. Perhaps in the world."

"I see." Hanna felt the point coming clear. "And you want me to choose between that and Nomi. Don't you."

"I don't want any such thing," said Claudette. "But I'm willing to wager that this is choice you face regardless of what I want. I simply offer you the chance to make a clean break with one or the other."

"Why would I do that?" Hanna tried to sound pugnacious, but she felt her heart pounding. She gave another agonized look to Nomi's form on the monitor.

"Because you know how this ends." Claudette's voice was gentle. "Look at her. You know that you'll be nothing but pain to her in the end... and that she'll never be able to truly accept what you are and what you need unless she's in control of it. 'Protecting' you. Does this sound familiar?" At Hanna's dumbfounded look, she gave a sad smile. "It's not telepathy and I have not spied on you. It's the same story all of us have lived, Hanna. All of us who created this society. We made this so that our needs would no longer be dependent on others, so that we would no longer hurt the ones we loved. Have you hurt... Nomi, yet?"

Hanna's eyes stung with tears of shame. She didn't move, just looked at her bae going wild on that monitor, wanting to run to her but afraid to. What if she's right? What if I'll be nothing but pain to her in the end? What if she can't truly accept me... accept this? They were the deepest fears underneath the fragile surface of love and trust the two of them had built together. Like cracks forming in winter ice with oncoming spring. And yet on the other hand... a different fear lurked in her, looking at Claudette, at that leash. She remembered other attempts to control her, and her brow crinkled in suspicion.

Claudette laughed now. "I suppose I remind you of Maxine?" she said, and seeing Hanna's look of shock she just shook her head. "Again, it's not telepathy. I recognized her artwork on your back, all her religious fixations are written there. She might have mentioned knowing someone like me."

After a moment, Hanna nodded as it fell into place. Yes, she had mentioned it. Aloud she said: "Her religious fixations?"

"I was never into the Satanism mumbo-jumbo," Claudette said matter-of-factly. "And I'm not offering you this leash in token of some hackneyed master-and-servant nonsense. This is a token of your ties to the Room. If you take it you can come down with me and meet the other girls. They will be delighted to know you; they will be friends who truly understand you." In the other hand: "Take the dress and the shoes and you can go down and reunite with your lover. You can try seeing where that leads, and if events permit, you can even try to return here. But I think you'll find that in the end you must choose between her, and that return. Maybe she's worth it." Claudette shrugged. "Maybe you can change."

Hanna looked levelly at her. "If you were really that different from Maxine," she said. "You could simply let Nomi up to see me and we could all talk about this choice together, in the open. Make like we're all sane people for a little while."

"There's method in my madness, Hanna." Claudette radiated an air of hard-won wisdom as she said: "Remember, all of us have been through choices like this. Maybe I'm trying to help you make it without illusions or false hope."

"Or maybe you're just as much of a sadist freak as your friend ever was," Hanna replied. "And maybe you've been trying to set this all up from the beginning. Jerry works for you, right?"

"Gerald—Jerry—is just what he told you he was." Claudette shrugged again. "If you wish it, you can find conspiracies behind any coincidence, but I have no reason to deceive you."

Goddammit. "So you're not going to change your mind, then? You're going to insist on this 'choice' crap?" Claudette nodded with an amused smile, and Hanna said: "Fine. Then you've made my choice for me. Nobody who I'd want to call a friend would put Nomi through this, I'm going down there and make it up to her and we're getting the fuck out of here."

Hanna had her hand up at the dog collar as she was saying it, striding decisively forward, unbuckling the leather as she reached out for the dress, her decision made, ever fibre of her anxious to get down there and hug Nomi like she'd never hugged her before.

But just as her fingers were about to touch the fabric, she felt it in her. The hunger. Coiled. Waiting. Still and always. She remembered the Room. The helpless pleasure. The pure meaningless ecstasy. The revelation. Friends who truly understand you.

Her fingers stopped. And for the longest moment in her life, she looked over at the leash... and hesitated.

FIN.