Part 7: The Hatch

Clang!

The metal pail that Dominique threw onto my lap reminded me of one in my parent's garage. The one that's been hanging on the wall next to dad's tools, since mom's perennials were replaced with the rock garden a few years ago. When I was a kid, mom would hand me that bucket full of weeds she'd collected, and I'd carry it out to the woods behind the house. I tried to hide the sudden flash of emotion that the thought of my parents brought on...

"If you're good, I'll let you out before it fills up completely." She said, gesturing toward the bucket.

The monstrous door of the hatch cast a dreadful shadow as she lifted it from the ground and slowly folded it over me, threading my head through a hole carved out of the top. She let its heavy weight smack back down to the floor, swallowing me into the blackness below. How long was she going to keep me like this? Watching her there squat next to me, fiddling with the lock, I had the dreadful sense that I was not getting out anytime soon.

Click!

A chill of terror rose through me as the locking mechanism snapped into place. Dominique glanced over at my head bobbing out of the floor beside her feet and smiled. There was less for her to think about now. My naked body, folded away and forgotten into the darkness below. She'd shrunk me down into impossible proportions. I was manageable and unthreatening now. Less human.

Her modest 5'9 frame, was suddenly gigantic as she stood up off the floor, towering over my head. I could feel her eyes glaring down at me ominously, a bug about to be smashed into the tread of her boot. I'd never felt so vulnerable.

"Well, I guess there's no need to explain what's happening here. You know what you signed up for." She shook her head and let out a long exasperated sigh. "This is going to take some time to get used to ... for both of us."

Even with the monetary rewards awaiting her at the other end of this, Dominique was clearly having trouble coming to terms with it. No sane person would find her role easy, but she'd have to be crazy not to try, given what she'd been offered. I weighed far too little on her mind, weighed against what Alex could afford to give her, and her family who so desperately needed the money. She'd already done all that she felt ethically obligated to do for me. More than most would have done in her position, I imagine.

"This is our new reality now. We've both got to get used to it." She said, pacing thoughtfully around my head. "The sooner we do, the better."

"By now, I hope you realize that this is going to be fucking horrible. If not, you will soon. I promise. Things are going to be especially hard for you in the beginning. I don't know how you're going to do it ... and frankly ... I don't care anymore. I tried to talk you out of this. You ignored my warnings. Now you're fucked. And I have no pity for you. If it wasn't me, it'd be someone else standing here telling you the same."

"The only thing that concerns me now is how long it will take..." Dominique cringed. " ... for you to learn to function properly. Because the longer it takes for that to happen, the harder this will be for me."

Dominique's lip curled in disgust as she squat down next to me. She held the lock of the hatch in her hand and glared down at me...

"You like soaking in my piss? Does it feel nice? Maybe you'd like to try soaking in your own piss and shit too, hmmm? If you make this harder on me than it needs to be ... I'll make things much more unpleasant for you ... No matter how full that bucket gets, this hatch stays shut until you've learned to function just like a normal Toilet. Understand me?"