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 TRAINING Day 4: Nothing When Kat awoke, she was free of her bonds.  She
slowly sat up, trying to steady herself against the dizziness.  She reached
up to remove the blindfold, but realized that there was none.  The room was
black.  Kat waved her hand in front of her face, hearing the air move, but
she couldn't detect any movement with her eyes.  She was still nude, but
there was no way of showing anyone anything, so it didn't matter.  She
stood up slowly, easing her tired body into working again.  It was painful.
She had been dragged, drugged, abused, fucked, and any other number of
things in the last few days that just standing took its toll.  Her limbs
ached, and she felt stabbing pins and needles in her feet.  She stood on
one leg and wiggled the opposite foot around until the pain eased, then
followed with the other one.  She felt around, but couldn't feel a wall. 
Waiving her hands above her head, she couldn't reach a ceiling.  Hopping
up, there was only open air.  Taking tentative steps forward, she waved her
arms around, hoping to feel something, but only emptiness awaited her.  She
walked a grid like this before giving up.  There was nothing around her
except the darkness.  Kat started pacing back and forth, wondering what was
going on.  She wasn't tied down, there was no gag or blindfold, and there
was no one around to ogle her, punish her, fuck her, or even talk to her.
She was alone.  All of a sudden, Kat felt her toe kick a small pebble, and
it rattled off into the darkness, and she scrambled after it.  Any
imperfection in the room would give her something to feel, something to do,
but try as she might, she couldn't locate it again in the dark.  She ended
up sitting down on the smooth stone floor and waiting.  She didn't know
what she was waiting for, but it didn't really matter anyway.  It wasn't
like she was going anywhere.  She sat and thought about what she had went
through the past three days, and some of the memories filled her with
disgust and loathing, others with fear.  She thought about how it all
started, Susan, the car, the parties, Mr.  Nielson.  The incomprehensible
Mr.  Nielson.  Kat thought back upon the day that she had met an elderly
gardener out near one of the cabins.  She had been sitting on a bench,
reading a book, when the gentleman had come by and began to weed the
flowers around the first cabin.  She began to watch him, and when he stood
up to take a breath, she invited him to sit down.  They began to talk and
he had said his name was Boothby.  No one had called him anything else for
over forty years and he had forgotten his first name anyway, so it didn't
really matter.  "I've been working here for almost half my life.  I've seen
`em come and I've seen `em go.  Seen everything between." He winked at Kat.
"I've seen things that would make you blush and curl your toes.  You
younguns have got some interesting ideas.  What I would do if I was thirty
again." He smiled at himself, thinking.  "So, you've known just about
everyone that has worked here?" Kat asked, hopefully.  "Just about." He
looked at her with a sly look.  "Why do I have the feeling you're gonna ask
me about Mr.  Nielson?" "How'd you guess?" "Everyone does, now and again.
He's a sort of mystery.  He started here about ten years ago, working for
the bosses then.  He's moved up and now he runs the place himself.  He's
got the owners to answer to, and his co-workers, but they trust him and
stay outta his way.  I wouldn't want to be him though." He paused.  "Why
not?  It seems like a decent job, running the Club and everything.  It's
quite a responsibility." "Yes, that's true, but still.  He is a lonely man.
He barely talks to anyone, and I've never seen him leave except to retrieve
new members.  Occasionally, I'll see him up early, watching the sunrise
from his office balcony, or he'll be strolling the paths alone, but I've
never seen him with anyone that he could call a friend.  You can see it in
his eyes.  He doesn't have anyone.  He just does his job and stays to
himself.  He is the boss and all that, so nobody really tries to get close
to him.  But," he paused again, "Whatcha gonna do?" Kat thought about it
for a moment.  She had never taken too close a look at the man.  She had
seen him overseen some of the activities, or helping members sort things
out, but he never participated in anything.  She could imagine how lonely
it must be.  Her own life had been that way for a while.  She had grown up
with her parents in the flatlands of Iowa.  She had never really had any
major friends to speak about, and mostly just played around in the yard as
her mother went about her business maintaining the household.  Growing up,
she had never been invited to any parties, and although she was beautiful,
she never really tried to call attention to herself.  She wore her hair
plainly with her bangs over her eyes, and nobody really paid attention to
her.  She hadn't lost her virginity until she was eighteen, and that was
after getting drunk at prom.  She had gone stag, and left with a boy that
she had liked from afar, but never mentioned it to him.  It was quick and
disappointing, but she had had a revelation.  She had discovered that she
liked sex and that she wanted more of it.  Through college, she had many
partners, but no real relationships.  She discovered new things that she
had never thought possible, and experimented widely.  One guy had once
asked her to tie him down and spank him, and she found that she had a real
liking for being a dominant.  This became known to some of the people that
she went to school with, and she became a hit at some parties that people
threw.  They were discreet about it, and everyone enjoyed themselves, but
most of all, Kat got to hone her skills.  This had gotten her noticed by an
alumni that had become wealthy in the real world.  He had invited her to do
a party in a couple of months, and had also invited a woman named Susan. 
The rest was history.  Kat watched all this in her head, living it again.
Finally, she returned to the present.  "Ah, Mr.  Nielson," Kat thought. 
"That Mr.  Nielson.  What had he done to her?" This isn't what she had
wanted.  She had thought it was going to be training on technique, on
certain situations, on rules of conduct, not this.  This was inhuman.  This
was torture.  It had been unfair to ask her if she wanted to do it before
she knew what would be involved.  "However," she thought, "He did warn me
that I would have to do something extreme, and he did say that I couldn't
quit once I started.  He just did what I asked." "It is his job to fulfill
the members' wishes, even if they do not know what they are asking." Had
the other MD's really gone through all of this?  Or did someone just have
it out for her?  If this was normal training, she wasn't going to tell a
soul.  She understood why nobody talked about it.  Could you really look at
someone and tell them that you were just a pussy, passed around at a party,
or the fuck buddy of a dog, or even some businesswoman's toilet?  No, even
if Susan asked, she would just say that she just was gone for a week." Kat
held her knees up to her chest, rocking herself.  She started thinking
about her cat.  She hadn't seen it for two weeks and wondered if it was
doing ok without her.  That was the life.  No worries, no complaints, just
needing food, a good petting every once in a while, and a sunbeam.  "I wish
I was a cat." Kat got on her hands and knees.  "Meow," she said in the
dark. "Meow." She started to crawl around her, laughing between cat cries
at the idea that someone might catch her acting like this.  She curled up
into a corner, licking the back of her hand.  Up her arm, her forearm, she
started licking herself.  She didn't know why, but she felt that it was
helping.  She felt that maybe, just maybe, in a past life, she had been a
cat.  "What?" Kat wondered where that idea had sprung from.  She lay onto
her back, looking into the ebony sky.  A cat?  That didn't make any sense.
Now, a cow, that would make sense.  "MOO!" she called out.  There was no
answer.  She was alone.  Kat started to see pictures in her head again. 
She saw her mother, putting laundry on one of those old fashioned
clotheslines.  It was what she remembered.  Kat was playing in the yard,
picking flowers and generally being happy.  She had asked her mother if she
could help, but she was too young and too small to do much.  She wandered
off, running her hands through the daisies and the dandelions.  She came to
a slope that went down and she ran, still running her hands along the tops
of the flowers.  She looked down upon the dress that she was wearing.  It
was old fashioned, made out of a thick blue material.  Kat kept running,
feeling the wind in her face, wondering to herself, "Where did this hill
come from?  I grew up in the flatlands." Suddenly, she saw some words
floating in the sky in front of her.  They stayed away, always moving
forward to match her running.  Trying to read them, she noticed that they
were names, but they were backwards.  Finally, the stupidity of the
situation struck her.  She was in the closing credits of `Little House.'
Kat started to giggle, then burst out laughing.  Rolling to her side, she
put her hands on her mouth, then moved one to her waist as it started to
ache from the shaking of her body.  As she laughed, she couldn't help
thinking, "I might as well be the blind daughter, for all I can see in the
dark." Her daydream had switched over to an old TV program that she used to
watch.  Why couldn't it have been the Beverly Hillbillies, or Lifestyles of
the Rich and Famous?  Even her dreams lacked substance.  This just made her
laugh harder.  Kat calmed after a while, then stood up and resumed her
pacing.  All this darkness was starting to wear on her.  She needed
something to do.  What were they doing to her?  Was this it?  I've gone
from a person to a horse, a dog, a toy, and a toilet.  Now what, am I
nothing?  Her head started to ache a little, and she rubbed her temples. 
This was driving her nuts.  Walking around in circles, twiddling my thumbs,
kicking imaginary pebbles on the ground, pretending to be farm animals and
fictional characters.  "Next, I'm gonna start talking to myself," she said
to herself.  She smiled.  The next few hours were spent like this, Kat
wandering around, talking to herself, laughing and fooling around.  It
wasn't too long before her mind started to hallucinate some more from the
lack of input from her senses.  She dreamed she was at the beach, lounging
around on the sand, the water licking at her toes.  Then she was flying,
swooping in the air like a bird.  She thought she saw a couple having sex
in a cloud, and was going to ask about borrowing one of their earphones,
but the vision switched before she could get to them.  She then became the
cow from earlier, just munching on the grass, wandering around.  "Moo." She
whiled away the hours, slowly going more and more crazy.  Her last, sane
thought of the day was, "This IS what they're doing to me today.  I AM
nothing." She soon passed out on the floor.  She never saw them come in, or
felt herself picked up and taken away.