Chapter 14: The Sunday Ritual

It starts with the creak of the door—a small, ceremonial sound, as though someone were opening a coffin to check on the remains. Piggy blinks in the dimness, vision raw with sleep, and sees Nadia standing over her, already dressed: black cotton leggings, a plain white tee, the blue surgical mask riding the curve of her nose. She is back in the apartment, but has no memory of returning there.

Nadia moves briskly. She snaps a pair of leather cuffs around Piggy’s wrists, tightening them behind her back until her shoulders threaten to pop. The plastic teeth of the buckle gnaw at the skin. Nadia inspects her work, then threads a broad leather collar around Piggy’s neck. The pressure is immediate, cold, and clinical; the leash, a rubbery strip with metal rivets, clips to the D-ring at the front with a soft click.

“Up, on your knees” Nadia says, the words smoothed down to a command by repetition.

Piggy rolls awkwardly to her knees, the robe sloughing from her shoulders, and discovers that in the night, Nadia has twisted her hair into a ponytail, high and tight. Piggy barely recognizes her own reflection in the wall mirror: pale flesh, scabbed-over marks, neck ringed with rawness. She tries to swallow and finds the collar presses her voice flat.

Nadia gives the leash a gentle tug, leading Piggy out of the bedroom and into the hall. The corridor is cold; Piggy’s skin pebbles. She shuffles, knees skidding on cheap laminate, the joints stiff and untrustworthy after a night pinned and abused. The leash is short, so she cannot straighten her head; she must keep her eyes glued to the floor, watching the patchwork of dust and scuffed shoe prints.

They reach the kitchen. The light is brutal—a panel of LEDs that sets the world to greyscale. The three men are already there: Yaseen, dressed in a soccer jersey and sweatpants, barefoot; Jonas, arms folded, watching the coffee drip into a carafe; Kareem, perched at the end of the table, chewing methodically on a cold sausage and scrolling through his phone.

No one looks up. Nadia tugs the leash again, and Piggy shuffles to the centre of the room, knees splayed to keep from falling. The collar pulls at her trachea, making each breath a negotiation.

Nadia releases the leash and crosses to the table, retrieving a blue plastic plate from the counter. She sets it on the floor, right in the middle of a patch of sticky linoleum. Piggy sees the meal: a pyramid of muesli, half-drowned in milk, the dried fruit already reconstituted into swollen, obscene shapes.

Nadia gestures at the plate. “Eat.”

Piggy hesitates, the humiliation so pure it blanches everything else. She lowers her face to the plate. Her arms, trapped behind her, wobble with the strain; the only way to eat is to dive, nose first, into the mess, jaw scraping the lip of the dish. The first mouthful is sharp with sour milk. She tries to chew without smearing the food everywhere, but her nose clogs, breath rasping through the pain of the collar. The men keep eating. They do not speak to her, or about her, or even acknowledge her. This is the new law of the house: Piggy is just another fixture, like the bin or the rack of chipped mugs.

Nadia stands behind her, silent, watching. Then Piggy feels hands on her thighs—Nadia’s, gloved in latex. The sensation is so clinical it almost doesn’t register, until the hands force her knees wider, spreading them until her hips ache.

Piggy senses, rather than hears, the camera being switched on: a soft bleep from somewhere behind her, the shifting presence of the tripod. She tries not to look at it. She tries not to exist at all.

Then cold, a slickness at her cunt. Nadia, without prelude, is massaging something into her labia—lube, the bright, menthol-scented kind. It tingles, and then it burns, and then Nadia slides two fingers inside, twisting and stretching, not rough but not gentle, either.

Piggy gasps, choking on a glob of cereal. She tries to rock away, but the collar keeps her anchored, and Nadia just matches the movement, fingers going deeper.

The first knuckles slide in, then out, then back again, each thrust a little bolder, a little crueller. The world tunnels: food, floor, the blue of the plate, then the pressure at her cunt, then the shame of knowing she is on display, that she is being watched and recorded and maybe even streamed live.