Chapter 6

Ever since that day, it became a tradition for me to spend weekends and holidays at his apartment. He would strip me in the entryway and keep my clothes in a ziplock bag until I left. He allowed me to bring a few books and use his laptop to study, but most of the time, I watched films and played video games with him.

My study habits deteriorated, my grades dropped, and my influence in class declined drastically. Before I met Axel, I had been a top student. As a high achiever, people took me and my words seriously. I had a major say in how group assignments were divided, and my suggestions for seminars carried significant weight.

Classmates would approach me for help, and those I had assisted often came to my defense in arguments or tense moments with my rivals. I was respected, relied upon, and recognized for my intellect and consistency. That version of me slowly faded away.

Now, I was just an average student--someone who had fallen from grace, someone who had failed to realize his potential. People made blatant remarks about my mediocrity and shortcomings, and teachers treated my questions as a waste of their time.

The wolves I once tamed and ruled over in my class exploited my downfall, and I had to rely more and more on Axel to keep them at bay. It reinforced my image as Axel’s lackey and deepened my need for his approval just to feel good about myself.

I started to look forward to the weekends, when I could quit the campus and leave my anxieties behind. There, in his apartment, I didn’t have to try. I wasn’t expected to be excellent. My lack of power did not feel out of place.

I felt right at home. To earn his approval, I would polish his shoes. Oh! How did I while away the hours spending on my hands and knees beside his shoe-rack with a wooden brush in one hand and a can of shoe polish in the other.

He treated me like a maid at home, asking me to clean the rooms, do the dishes and his laundry. Those tasks gave me a purpose, a sense of achievement. They were the ways I could earn his praise, admiration and perhaps even love. They were the tasks I could be good at, the victories I could be proud of.

Each night, I filled the diary with details. The chores that I did. The praises that Axel made. During moments of despair and despondency, I would read them to soothe my pain and to find solace.

Axel rewarded my obedience in mainly two ways. The first way was by making me hump a hug pillow on the bedroom floor. He would show me AI-generated deepfakes of Emma on a projector while I narrated various scenarios where Axel would fuck her. The stories escalated from mundane consensual sex in a bedroom to Emma being Axel’s slave, where she did not have a say on what he did to her.

I would cum--grinding into the pillow, breath ragged, my voice breaking as I described her being raped. Sometimes he’d watch silently, arms crossed. Other times, he’d sit behind me and whisper corrections, reshaping my fantasies to fit his.

Once, I turned around and caught him with his fly open, jerking off behind me. I only caught a glimpse. His cock was big, way bigger than mine. I looked away immediately, eyes snapping back to the projector, to Emma, to the rhythm of my humping.

When I was done, flushed and ashamed, he’d wipe me off with a damp towel and toss it aside like nothing had happened. That was my reward. And over time, it became the only way I was allowed to get off.

I was never allowed out when I spent the weekend at his place. Once my clothes came off, that was it--I was expected to stay inside. He’d often head out to bars or clubs, leaving me behind with a list of chores to finish. I cherished those times, when I could be alone by myself. There was something so serene about scrubbing the bathroom floor alone, naked.

He exploited this routine to reward me in another way. Sometimes, after I had finished every task--floors spotless, dishes dried, his bed made just the way he liked it--he would bring me somewhere.

One evening, he brought me to Panomorph, a night club, a low-lying sprawl in the heart of a far-away red-light district.

When we left for it, the sun had already set. I had just finished washing and drying his clothes, and, suddenly, he had told me to wear a black T-shirt and a pair of jeans, which he picked out from the pile of clothes that I now kept in his apartment. I didn’t wear any underwear.

Although Axel kept me as a pathetic, obedient, degraded, and thoroughly tamed creature in the apartment, to the outside world, I was a wholesome, clean-cut young man who looked like he was just out for a night of fun with his friend. No one could see the truth beneath the surface.

The bouncers joked with us as we entered the club. Some dancing girls checked us out as we walked past them, just like they would with any pair of young men. The jolly, plump waitress at Panomorph smiled at me with the same warm, casual grin she gave to any ordinary boy.

Seated in a secluded booth at the far end of the club--past the dance floor and to the right of the bathrooms--Axel ordered a whiskey neat for himself and a strawberry daiquiri for me. I, meanwhile, was preoccupied with the smoothness of the leather seats.

“Also a pack of cigarettes,” he added.

The waitress, still smiling, asked which kind.

“Marlboro Mint,” he said in that familiar, slow drawl of his. “I’ll also take a bottle of whichever rum you guys are using.”

Bottle girls surrounded our booth like a swarm of flies, some making their offers to each of us while others sat down on the sofa right next to us. Axel pretended to not be interested, saying, “We are not interested.” But eventually he got a good price for Carrie and Scarlet and shooed the rest away.

Carrie seemed like someone who had just turned twenty-one. She was wearing a black crop top with thin spaghetti straps and a matching ruched-up skirt. She reminded me of a girl I had a crush on in high school; she too wore crop tops and skirts to school events with the same wavy brown hair parted right down the middle.

Then, there was Scarlet. She was a lot older than me--perhaps in her late twenties. She reminded me of Emma, though her dainty red halter dress, which ended just beneath the curve of her hips, was something Emma would never wear.

Carrie sat next to me, while Scarlet took the seat beside Axel.

No sooner had they sat down than the waitress returned with our drinks. She handed the whiskey to Axel and pushed the strawberry daiquiri toward me before setting down the rum and cigarettes on the table.

“Enjoy your night, Gentlemen,” she said before disappearing back into the crowd.

The leave of the waitress brought my attention back to Carrie. “Isn’t a cocktail too soft for you?” she asked, clutching my arm.

Oh God! She smelled so good--sweet, feminine, and warm, like vanilla mixed with something floral I couldn’t quite place. It was refreshing, honestly. After weeks of being around Axel and his relentless, sharp cologne, Carrie’s perfume was a breath of fresh air.

I swallowed hard. “Umm ... I like the taste.” I lied.

“Let me make it stronger for you.” She took the bottle of rum on the table, twisted its lid open and poured a bit into my cocktail, making it overflow a little.