Chapter 5

The shoes we had bought the day before were perfect, I thought as I knelt. 3-inch heels, flat black, just right. Mistress said I would not be wearing hose with the outfit. She preferred my bare legs.

She preferred. What Mistress preferred now was more and more becoming the commonplace standard in my life. My input, my dimension of choice, had become so narrowed, so sparsely used, it had been rendered inert.

How quickly it all had happened, I thought as I took my position for the posed shot.

In my new maid's outfit I kneeled, my right arm curled around Mistress' leg as she stood next to me. I glanced up at her, and she smiled down at me. I wasn't even sure how long it had been, but I knew it was less than a week. I had been struggling uphill through the brambles of a failed marriage, shattered finances, and an aggravating job. Then, I collapsed on a jogging path, and--whoosh! Up rolls my future, in a red string bikini. How little I knew then, as she carried me through the bushes to safety, what was to become of me, and how fast it would happen.

I must have needed this...

"Ok, look at the camera, straight face, Traci, no smiling," Master Ryan said, behind the tripod that held the digital camera.

"Yessir," I found myself saying. Day by day—no, hour by hour, my surrender became more complete to this new lifestyle.

Yes, I must have needed it, without ever knowing, or perhaps it was a part of the plan that was always there for me. She, I thought in wonder, was part of the plan. Her persona was so powerful, so persuasive, and she knew me, it seemed, like a book. I held my breath as the flash went off. I'm captured now forever in this image, in this pose of servitude. Others will go to her website now and see not just her, but me, too, represented as her servant girl. That's what Mistress told me would appear in a caption under this picture: "Mistress Dana at home with her new servant-girl, Traci."

A shiver went through me. I was her servant-girl. Just the sound of it, when I had said it to myself in the mirror earlier today, seemed to cast an atmosphere of other-worldliness on everything. It was if my life was now being acted out on some stage, except this was not acting. This was not playing.

This was real.

I sucked in my breath, and the flash went off.

"Two more..." Master Ryan said, and Mistress cupped the side of my head with her hand, pulling it closer to her thigh. Her skin there, against my cheek, made me purr. What was it about her? I wasn't a lesbian, had never knowingly desired to be with a woman. It was her, then. Because I didn't feel attraction to other women when I was out of her house. At work, for example. The females there were females, though I admit I was looking at everyone a bit differently now. What made them tick? What were there secret desires? Were they dominant... submissive? How many of them, like me not too long ago, never even stopped to think about it?

It took an exertion-borne calamity to bring me face to face with my own persona. And that persona, Mistress Dana's servant-girl, was something I could not have fathomed if you had given me a year to do nothing but guess.

Two customers came and went that day, and I spent the interim time cleaning the house, answering the phone, getting the mail—yes, in my outfit—and watering the plants in the kitchen and on the patio. During a break, I sat at my computer in my room (I had moved a few things in my apartment now--the rest was in storage), and investigated my own disappearance from mainstream life.

On the web I looked up, "Dominatrix," and got "A woman who acts out the role of the dominating partner in a sadomasochistic relationship." I stared at the words. Misleading, I thought. Mistress Dana is not "acting out" a role, is she? No, she seems to truly be dominant. And what does that make me?

I looked up more things, and found that there is this incredible, secret subculture of "doms" and "subs," both male and female in both roles. There was oceans of material on the subject, by doms, by subs, and by outsiders. There were organizations, websites, stores, pics and movies, chat rooms, real life night clubs and meetings...

I found out that some submissives serve their Masters or Mistresses on different levels. Some domination was light, and unstructured. Other types involved downright enslavement, bondage, and pain. Where did I fit in? What was a servant girl?

At 2:30 the next morning, sleeping soundly, I found out.

"Traci... Traci..." the intercom speaker next to my bed spoke in brittle tones of Dana's voice.

I sat up. "Yes, Mistress?" I rubbed my face. Was something wrong? I thought. It was 2:30am.

"Bring me and the Master a glass of water each. We're thirsty."

I sat there for a second, and realized I wasn't answering, and a stab of fear found its way into my chest.

"Yes, Mistress," I answered, pulling off the sheets. And then, "With ice, Ma'am?"

I was in deep!

"With ice for me, not for Master Ryan."

"Yes, Ma'am."

And so that's where I was, where I fit in. Obeying and learning on the fly. Not knowing just how subordinate I had become until the next order from her mouth.

They were sitting up, watching a movie in bed when I got there with a tray with both glasses. Wearing the white negligee Mistress had given me to sleep in, I walked to her first, and handed her the glass, then to Master Ryan, where I did the same. They were transfixed on the movie. I turned and started to leave, and that's when Mistress said, "Good girl."

My mouth went dry. I could sense Ryan's eyes on my ass, but I could feel Mistress' words, at once humiliating and comforting, pushing me deeper into my place, more tightly under her control.