To say that I struggle with my writing is an understatement. I battle. I fight. I wrestle my characters to the ground.

It's a hobby, thank god. If I did this for a living, I'd go nuts. Sometimes I think I'm already half way there.

For a living, I work mostly with people who consistently disappoint me. Cindy. Mark. Barbara. They're always letting me down. But I'll tell you more about that later. First, I wanted to tell you about my stories, and the way I have to arm-wrestle with my characters over every little thing.

It's my own damned fault, of course. In a way, it's a little flattering. If I were writing characters without any substance, I'd never have this problem. As it is, I spend all sorts of time getting to know my characters before I even decide on the plot of the story. I imagine them in different settings, doing normal everyday things, and I get to know their little character flaws.

Denise was the one who gave me my education on character flaws. I'll tell you more about her later too.

What she taught me, though, can't wait. You see, she taught me to look at people in terms of their strengths, but especially in terms of their weaknesses. Insecurity is a big one.

That was Becky's weakness. No matter how successful she became, she somehow just couldn't believe that she was entitled. In some small way, she was always afraid that she would lose it all. I could see it in the way she saved her money. She was almost compulsive about it.

Sorry I'm throwing so many names at you at once. I'll try to slow it down a bit. It's just that when I talk about my writing, I always get a little ahead of myself.

The truth is, her name wasn't really Becky. When I first imagined her, she was firmly a Rebecca, and steadfastly refused to bend towards my will. She just didn't much like the shortened version of her name.

And it shouldn't have surprised me, because she was so intent on projecting a professional image.

Which goes back to her insecurity. I had a lot of trouble convincing her to spend a little money and change her image. She was worried about money ... a lot.

But like Denise taught me, these insecurities run deep, and can affect a person in an unexpected way. And she should know. She was the psychiatrist. At the top of her field, really.

So I decided that Rebecca's insecurities, instead of being an unattractive quality, could be used to make her see things my way. I didn't figure it was too much of a stretch to make Becky begin to worry that she couldn't continue to be successful unless she dressed up a bit. You know ... used her attractiveness to her advantage.

It worked, of course. As soon as I had her worried that one of her female co-workers would be promoted ahead of her, she withdrew some money from her bank account and bought some clothing to draw more attention.

Myself being the master of this fictional universe, I was happy to reward Becky with increased sales, and more attention from her male co-workers. This is actually the part of the story I always like best. Sure, it's fun to later see my character betrayed by the fates. I love to see them sink to deeper levels of depravity and immorality.

But the part I always like best is that first little concession they make to their fatal character flaw, before it takes control. This is where I have to work hard to keep the character doing what I want her to, against all of her good sense. This is where I make the changes that later come back to add the heat of humiliation to the sex.

Well, that's what I write, after all. I write about sex, and power, and character flaws, and they all fit together so nicely that it's hard to know which topic caught my imagination first.

Becky. Not Rebecca, I told her. I made her think about it a lot. It was the way it sounded. Becky Suedel rolled off of the tongue so much more nicely than Rebecca. It was a good professional name. People would remember her more easily. It would be a good career move.

She hated it so much. She thought it was diminutive (her words, not mine).

In truth, I don't think anyone would have thought anything about it, if she didn't react to it so much. But she did. She hated the way her secretary said it. She cursed herself for ever telling the young woman, "call me Becky. " And people noticed the way she hated the new name, and they probably thought she was a little silly for taking it ... not because it was a silly name, mind you. I still like it a lot better. They just thought she was silly for telling people to call her a name that she didn't much like.

I wasn't quite ready to start her descent yet, and she still had some fight in her. She resisted my taste in clothing. She fought the way I made her flirt with her boss. She resented the way that I made her lease a more expensive car, to keep up her image.

It all worked to her advantage of course. I gave her a promotion and a big raise, just to muscle her along the way to her downfall.

The problem is, and Denise would be the first to agree with me on this, success isn't enough to conquer insecurity. Sometimes, it just makes things worse. Kind of a stupid little paradox, isn't it?

When the promotion to sales manager came, poor Becky was filled with doubts about her abilities. She was sure that she would fall victim to the Peter principal. You know, the one that says that people rise to the level of their own incompetence. It's so goddamned true, too. The people I work with in real life prove it to me all of the time. Cindy, Mark, Barbara ... but I digress...

In reality, Becky was quite capable of handling the sales in her department, but she worried a lot about it, especially since she had spent so much money upgrading her image that she really needed to hold onto this raise just to keep pace.

That's when I gave her a secret weapon over the other department managers. I gave her a way to motivate her sales staff that they couldn't compete with.

When Becky first thought about it, she was ashamed that it even occurred to her. When she started doing it, and it was working, she felt even worse. Shame is one of my favorite tools from my big ol' toolbox. I love to watch it twist around unexpectedly on my characters. Every time I made her think about it, I gave her a little sexual rush that made her hands tremble.

I think that's when the people around the office began to look at her differently. I mean, the guys had always given her a fair share of attention, but these days, with thoughts of the secret weapon simmering in her head, she found herself reacting to their flirtations.

A little blush. A little dance in her stomach.

It was almost more than she could take. I was patient, of course. I could go on this way for weeks, giving her daydreams. Fueling her insecurity. Making her spend money upgrading her image faster than she could earn it. I could see her anxiety growing.

Then, in a scene that I had anticipated since near the beginning, she allowed herself a moment of weakness. You see, at the end of every week, the company rewarded the top salesperson in each department with a bonus cheque. It was Becky's job to use the bonus as a motivational tool.

It was important to make a big deal out of it. Becky would take the top salesperson out for a casual lunch. She would buy him wine, and talk about his hobbies, and flirt with him a bit. It was this last tactic that was giving her the butterflies. The guys liked the idea of going out for a nice lunch with a beautiful woman, who just happened to be his boss, and seeing her fall all over herself to make him feel like a winner. It worked like magic.

Sometimes, she would bend forward a bit, and let one of the guys see down her blouse a bit. I made sure that she wore a sexy bra on those days. It always made her blush when she noticed his attention, but she stayed in position a moment longer anyhow, just to make sure he got a good look.

She didn't want to think about how far she would go with this game. It seemed to go further every time. A little more cleavage. A little more wine. A hand on her ass as he walked her back to the car. Alan Johnson bending her over the desk in her office, and fucking her from behind.

And it was as natural as all that. Yeah, I guess it's all a little contrived, but I hope you can forgive me. It's a sex story, after all, and I really wanted to get to the juicy parts. Then I could go on to write the emotional aftermath of this lapse of judgments. Shame. Humiliation. Anxiety.

But I wouldn't let her step backwards. Not a bit. That wouldn't do. After she had finally allowed her naughty thoughts to come to reality, and unleashed her secret weapon to improve sales in her department, things really heated up. What had begun with a single indiscretion, and Alan Johnson pumping his semen into her while she squealed her approval, repeated itself in various forms each week.

Fred Brauer, a frequent winner of the weekly prize, liked to sit back in Becky's big leather chair, and let her do the work. He liked to play with her tits while she bounced, and hold her by the hips to control her pace when he was ready to cum.

It was a horrible idea, of course. Anyone rational would know that. Becky knew it too. She hated the impulses that had guided into this position, and the insecurities about her abilities that kept her from calling an end to it.

The fact was, sales had never been better. The whole staff was motivated. Becky was getting attention from upper management because her department was showing such a dramatic improvement. If she could just keep it up for a while longer, she would definitely be given another promotion.

And a raise, she hoped. She needed the money.

Then she could leave all of this humiliation behind.

But it was hard to walk through the office anymore. There was an energy in the place, and Becky was the center of it. Everyone wanted to win top sales, and Becky was the prize. It was hard to keep any semblance of authority.

Eventually, most everyone won the prize. It was just a matter of one good week. Tom. Stephen. Paul. Amy. Yes, even Amy. If you'll recall, she's the female employee who I had given Becky such insecurity about before she got her promotion.

I don't mind going into the details on that one. Becky spent the whole morning dreading the coming lunch. She added up the numbers a second and a third time, hoping that the results would change. The unofficial tally around the office had Fred and Amy pretty close to tied. Everyone was just waiting for Becky to come out and invite one of them to lunch.

When it turned out to be Amy, I don't have to tell you that it got everyone talking.

"Let me drive, " was Amy's only reaction. She made Becky fish out the keys for the Lexus right in front of everyone. It was humiliating, considering the long standing rivalry between the two women.

Now, I'll admit, it seems like Amy is being a little aggressive about this. A real woman might feel weird about it, or refuse to go along with it. She might be a little nervous about the lesbian sex.

I'll remind you, this is a sex story, and at this point, all I want to see is the exchange of power between the characters, and the utter humiliation of Becky. If I needed to nudge Amy away from some of her natural aversions to achieve this end, I'll chalk it up to dramatic license.

"I want to see you flirt with me the way you do with the other guys, " Amy told her boss. " I want you to show me all the moves that earned you a promotion."

With a flush of shame, Becky went through the motions. She bent forward and let the saleswoman look down her blouse. She applied her lipstick slowly, the way all the guys liked. She swallowed her wine a little too anxiously, perhaps hoping that a little buzz would help her through the inevitable scene back at the office.

As it turned out, Amy didn't wait long enough to get back to the office. The spectacle of seeing her boss humiliate herself at the dinner table made Amy anxious to close the deal.

A few minutes later, Becky was on her knees in the restaurant washroom, thanking god that the door had a lock on it, and watching Amy empty her bladder before demanding the sexual relief she was entitled to. When she was done peeing, she simply slid forward on the toilet seat, allowing Becky to contend with the glistening droplets of piss that stood in the way of her task.

Amy enjoyed the feeling of a female tongue buried in her crotch, but mostly, she seemed to enjoy hurling verbal abuse at her boss, who was now brought down to the same level as the toilet bowl she was resting her chin against.

She played against all of Becky's insecurities. I'll admit to a role in that. I fed the words to her while the first hints of orgasm floated through her belly.

"Useless cunt ... you don't deserve your job ... the only thing you're competent at is getting fucked in the ass by Stephen Underwood ... I always knew that you were a worthless whore..."

God, I love those little details. Even if they don't flow quite naturally from the story, I get a kick out of them. There was an expression I heard once, " The devil's in the details."

And Becky is learning all of the fine details of sexual humiliation. Just last week, Becky had time to take in all of the fine details, when Philip Frost finally took his turn in the manager's office. It was an absurd scene. Inspired by scenes from his favorite porno movies, Philip had decided that, after letting Becky suck his cock for a while, he wanted to cum on her face.

So Becky was treated to the glory of watching a middle aged man contort his face while he stood above her, jerking himself off for the grand finale. While she waited for his body to catch up with his intentions, she had time to notice all of the little imperfections of this man. She saw the red impressions his glasses had left on the bridge of his nose. She picked out a stain on the portion of his shirt that was usually tucked in.

She smelled onion on his hands, no doubt from the burger he had eaten at lunch.

And, seeing this scene, she would normally be amused by how pathetic Philip looked, grunting with impatience to cum. Despite his arousal, he was having some trouble coming to an orgasm. Maybe it was nerves. It would have been very amusing indeed, if she weren't the stupid whore who was holding her tongue out to the tip of his prick, and massaging her breasts to give him an arousing little show.

Becky was thoroughly not aroused by this man. I mean, I gave her a little tingle of arousal in response to the degradation of it all, but mostly, I just made her reflect again on why she was doing this. I made her think about the reason why she was humoring this man, and groveling at the level of his cock, pretending to be hungry for the feeling of his sperm on her face.

Every week there was another reason why she needed the extra money. There was the fitness club membership. There was the surprisingly expensive hairdresser she had chosen to go to. And, of course, there would soon be payments for the breast implants that she was getting. Yes, it was all quite expensive, keeping up the image of success that would keep her in line for a promotion.

I haven't decided what to do when stories about her antics reach upper management. Maybe Mr. Riley, who breeds Labrador Retrievers, will have a few ideas. I don't know. I have some time before I go that far with it.

Call it a work in progress. One of several. Too many, really.

My real life goes on. Another work in progress, and sometimes even more incredible than the stories I spin.

For instance, the other day, while I was having coffee, and doing a bit of daydreaming, my sister walked right over to my table.

What makes this odd, I guess, is that my sister has been dead for nearly ten years.

It was one of those little episodes that made me wish that Denise was still around to give me her perspective. She always told me not to be so concerned about when reality doesn't seem to quite add up. When I had first started seeing her, something like this would have really rattled me. I would have spent weeks trying to figure out the inconsistency. Denise would have told me about the frailties of the human mind, and not to worry about it so much. I'm sure of it.

So, on the advice of my former psychoanalyst, I took the appearance of my dead sister with a grain of salt.

"How're things, Jay? " she asked me.

"Um ... fine, " I told her. " Say Anne, didn't you die a while back?"

"I guess that would explain a few things."

She was so nonchalant about it, that I wouldn't have felt right making a fuss. It would have been impolite or something.

I suppose that I should explain a bit of it to you, though, since you don't know the story. When I was a kid, and my fantasy life was a little less disciplined than it is right now, I used to think about my sister a lot. I don't suppose there's anything abnormal about it. She had the room right next to mine, and was only a couple of years older than me, and she was pretty cute too.

Anyhow, I guess I must have been reading some stories on the internet. That's where I got some of my early ideas. That's where I became a little obsessed with bondage. Hell, it was like a smorgasbord for me back then, and bondage was just my favorite cuisine at the time. Chicken a la Parker!

My fantasies about Anne went that direction. Strangely enough, I think I had some intuition that these kinky fantasies weren't all fiction. I mean, Anne developed a taste for gothic attire soon afterwards, and began hanging out with friends who all seemed to be looking for the next big thrill.

When I was in my room jerking off at night, I knew that Anne was sneaking out her bedroom window. I could almost picture every moment of her evening as she joined up with her new friends, and began to experiment with tying each other up, and spanking each other, and forced sex acts.

It was all pretty coincidental, really. When I imagined that she was being anally raped by her new friends at night, I could see Anne having difficulty walking the next day. When I imagined that she spent the night being whipped until her back was raw, I could hear her cursing the sting of the water in the shower the next morning. It was a weird symmetry between my fantasies, and Anne's reality that made me feel almost guilty when I saw her suffering from a lack of sleep, and a battered body.

But I didn't slow down, and neither did she. I began writing my fantasies down. I began drawing pictures. The more extreme my appetites, it seemed, the deeper my sister delved into her night time activities.

Then, when she went too far with a game of asphyxiation, I knew before the morning came that she wouldn't be coming home.

That's was when my parents sent me to see Denise. They found my writings, and my pictures, and all of the bondage-related pornography that I had collected on my computer. They made the assumption that Anne had been telling me about her lifestyle, and making me write the details down as a journal for her. They were concerned about me. I tried to convince them that it was all a coincidence, but they wouldn't believe me.

They thought I was involved. And on the face of it, I guess it really seemed that way. The stories, I later found out, exactly mirrored the accounts of her friends. The pictures were crude, but they captured scenes that had actually happened to my sister.

How did I feel?

Guilty.

And this was why I was sent to see Denise in Portland.

It was a long weekly trip from the coast to see my psychiatrist. Ironically, it was the boredom of this bus trip that provided me with occasion to refine the fantasies that had caused me so much trouble. I had banned Anne from my fantasies. In fact, my new rule was that I would not create stories about anyone I knew.

So I just picked random strangers and built up a life around them. Like I remember one day the bus stalled as we were leaving town, and I spent a good half hour watching a family packing up a u-haul truck with their belongings. The parents were having troubles with their teen-aged daughter, who was obviously sulking about the move.

Although I never saw the girl again after that day, she was a frequent subject of my weekly bus fantasies. I kept her image in my mind effortlessly, and I built a background story slowly. There was no need to rush. There was always next week.

I guess you could say that I met Raven around the same time as I met Denise.

I'll tell you more about Raven in a minute, because she became a frequent topic of my weekly analysis sessions with Denise. But first, I guess I should finish telling you about the visit I had with my dead sister. You see, this is my problem with writing (and why I've never felt confidence in posting my stuff online); I lack structure. I sort of let the stories ramble along at their own pace, according to the moods of my characters, and how quickly I can bend them to my will. I jump around too much.

Anyhow, I don't know why my dead sister came back to visit me almost ten years after the events I've just described. It probably has something to do with Denise leaving me. I began thinking about Anne a lot more. I stirred something I shouldn't have, and in a way, I guess you could say that I brought her memory back to life.

The girl who visited me in the coffee shop the other day wasn't exactly like my sister of course. She was more like how I imagined my sister would have turned out if she had survived her experimentations with bondage. She was a little older now. She dressed differently. She smoked. Nonetheless, I could tell it was her.

"So what have you been doing?"

"Quite a lot, really, for a person in my condition. I was sort of living another life, until a few weeks ago. Then I began to have day dreams, and remembered who I was."

"Have you considered that maybe you're wrong? Maybe the life that you were living is the right one."

She shrugged. It was a typical response for my older sister.

"So what are you going to do now?"

"I think we both know what I'll be doing. I have some catching up to do."

"I guess. Just..."

Anne cocked her head, a little amused by my reluctance to speak openly.

" ... just, be a little more careful this time, okay?"

"Yeah."

And that was it. A little afternoon resurrection, and my whole day was blown.

Which, of course, brought me back to thinking about how Denise was gone from my life, and how much it had thrown me off. I can't believe I've gotten this far writing without telling you about her.

As much as I dreaded those weekly sessions at first, I soon came to a realization that I could learn a lot from a psychiatrist with her kind of insight into the human soul. She pretty much told me straight out that she didn't much care about the stories I had written about my sister.

"You obviously picked up the clues about what was happening in her life, and were able to draw a picture of her weaknesses."

Actually, the pictures I had drawn of my sister had shown her in heavy bondage, with hot wax and clothespins on her body. And they weren't really even that good. But that wasn't what she had meant. Denise talked a lot about intuition.

"People block out intuition as a valid source of information. We're constantly getting information from our world, and filtering it out according to our own biases. You're just a lot better at sorting it all out than most people. I don't think it's anything to be concerned about."

Even though she was convinced that the stories I had written were harmless, she kept up with the sessions. It made my parents feel better to be able to do something about it.

Instead, she used the sessions to educate me about the strengths and weaknesses of the human mind. It was a subject of great interest for her. She was always making examples of her other patients, many of whom she knew she would never be able to help, but gave her just another angle to look at the frailties of human motivations. Week by week, she shared her conclusions with me.

Denise changed a lot in the time that I knew her. Early on, she had written a paper about some obscure psychological phenomena that I couldn't have been bothered to understand. Three years later, she reversed her opinion entirely, causing a stir in the psychiatric community because her original conclusion had been so well supported.

A few times a year, she changed her image. Sometimes, the changes were subtle. Other times, the changes were intentionally shocking.

She moved her offices twice, and she was always talking about moving to another state, or dropping her psychiatry practice entirely.

I think that with all of her analytical powers focused on other people, she missed the weakness that was a part of her own personality. Denise was always looking for a new start. She never wanted to stay in one place. Denise was always reinventing herself.

It was this need for change that prevented her from advancing in her field, despite being an incredibly talented doctor.

But I'm getting a little ahead of myself. It was years before I drew these conclusions. In the meantime, I was learning her craft, and she showed a great interest in mine.

"What have you written about Raven this week?" many of our sessions would begin. I would still be absorbing the effect of the doctor's new dredd-locks, or a new addition to her facial jewelery, or a redesign of her office, when I began updating her on the story.

As you remember, Raven was a girl I saw in passing as she was moving away from Astoria. She had been fighting with her parents about the move. In the following weeks, I filled in the details. She was upset because she had been doing so well in the local high school. Everyone had been impressed by her talents.

Raven was an artistic girl. She had taken up photography and drawing at a young age. I have no hesitance in saying that she showed much more talent that I had ever done in my own works.

In Astoria, growing up in a community where west-coast artistic ideals were highly valued, no one doubted that she could find her place in the local galleries, and would be able to make a living off of her talents too. Unfortunately, her father was less able to find a living here, and accepted a position at a department store in a city south of Portland.

For the first few weeks of imagining Raven, on my long bus trip to the city, I was satisfied to fantasize about her in an almost passive sort of way. She was a pretty girl. In fact, she was just the kind of girl I would normally have had a crush on. So, at least to start, I was happy just to think about what she would look like changing her clothes in the locker room. Sometimes, I would embarrass her by giving her a moment of inappropriate sexual arousal (a subject which, as a teen aged boy, I knew a lot about), but that was about it. Otherwise, I just watched as her new life unfolded, and I learned about why she was so miserable moving away from Astoria.

"Is she just afraid, or is there something else?" Denise knew exactly the right questions to ask.

Well, yes, Raven was afraid of change, but it was much more. She was afraid of anonymity. The hallways here were filled with unfamiliar faces. They didn't know about her. They didn't know how talented she was. Or worse. Maybe they wouldn't care. The years of work she had put into building her own personal brand name were thrown away. They were wasted on these people. Here, they cared about gangster rap, and hip-hop attire, and more traditionally, the high school football team.

It was a culture shock.

"But why does that concern her so much? Surely there are still art classes. She can still pursue her photography."

That's not the point. No one cares anymore. It used to make her the center of the universe. Now, she was a dark cold moon, waiting for a moment of sun on her face. I'm not making this stuff up. These were the heavenly and melodramatic terms that Raven painted the world in.

"That's her weakness?"

Yes. Her need. Her weakness. She needed to be looked at again. To be warm again.

"And what's she going to do about it?"

Football.

Well, I guess that was more my idea than hers. I don't know if Raven ever would have allowed herself to drift into the orbit of those, the brightest stars in the social constellation. Maybe she would have just allowed herself to be miserable. But I played with her weakness a little bit, and drew her towards the football team. Denise agreed with me that it was a natural move for a girl so driven by a need to be noticed.

Raven hated football, of course. It was so bloody heartland America, Lord's Prayer, Betty Crocker ... it was the kind of thing she would have made a loud point of ignoring in her previous life. But Denise was right. With just a few weeks of toying with her weaknesses, I had her watching the players' girlfriends, jealous of the attention they commanded in social circles. She began to slowly reconcile herself with the idea that she might, maybe, just perhaps be able to date one of the players, if he were intelligent or sensitive enough.