Chapter 22: Asset Management
The thin strap of black leather across his forehead was the first thing Arthur became aware of. It wasn’t tight, just present, a firm reminder that moving his head wasn’t an option. Then the broader restraint across his lower back, pinning his hips to the cool vinyl of the bench. His arms were secured at the wrists to the bench’s legs, arms slightly behind him, a position that pushed his chest forward and left him utterly exposed.
He blinked. The Solarium was bathed in the long, amber light of late afternoon. It painted the glass walls in hues of honey and fire. The city below was a silent, glittering diorama.
Voices filtered into his awareness. Not the hushed, focused tones of instruction, but the casual, conversational cadence of a business meeting.
“We’re thinking a tiered system,” Vivian was saying. She stood near the bar cart, swirling champagne in a flute. She wore a sleek white dress that contrasted sharply with the clinical scene. “Basic obedience sessions, like the foundational work. Then the advanced technical stuff, like yesterday. And then, for a premium, the 24-hour intensive.”
Madame Lisbeth, seated in a wrought-iron chair with a tablet on her lap, nodded. “The intensive requires a dedicated recovery suite. Monitoring. It’s more of a residency. The model would be on-site, available for sequential training modules. Sleep deprivation can be a potent variable.”
Arthur’s body gave a single, involuntary tremble. The straps bit a little deeper.
A third woman, someone new with a sharp brunette bob and severe glasses, tapped her own device. “The liability waivers for that are… extensive. But the profit margin justifies it. We could offer it as a corporate retreat package. Team-building through shared mastery of a subject.”
Vivian’s laugh was a bright, tinkling sound. “God, can you imagine? A bunch of middle-managers taking turns breaking in my husband? We’d charge a fortune.”
“Precisely.”
Arthur tried to swallow. His throat was parchment. He watched them, three professionals discussing a resource. Him. The numbness from the day before was gone, burned away in the long, hot shower he’d barely been able to stand. In its place was a buzzing, hyper-aware dread. Every word landed like a stone in the pit of his stomach.
“The schedule for this week is solid,” Lisbeth said, scrolling. “We have the remaining eight from the original group for their advanced practical. Then three private referrals. One is a couple seeking… corrective therapy for the husband’s performance anxiety. They wish to observe the model’s conditioning as a demonstration of proper receptivity.”
“Arthur’s always been good at setting an example,” Vivian said, taking a sip. She glanced over at him, her eyes meeting his. There was no warmth there, just an appraising check, like verifying a lamp was still plugged in. She winked.
The brunette, whose name tag read ‘Naomi, Client Relations,’ looked up from her screen. “And the endurance testing parameters? For the premium tier.”
Lisbeth stood and walked over to her aluminum case, still open on the ancillary table. The brutal toys from yesterday were arranged neatly. In the center, cleaned and gleaming dully, was the matte black double-headed demon. She picked it up, hefting its unnatural weight in one gloved hand.
“We establish baselines today. Duration of penetration before systemic shutdown. Recovery time between operators. Threshold of somatic resistance.” She turned the toy over, her voice purely analytical. “We also test the model’s capacity for… simultaneous channel occupancy over extended periods. The data will inform the pricing for the intensives.”
Arthur’s breath hitched. A small, pathetic sound. The memory of being split open, of mechanical pistons moving inside him, flooded back with nauseating clarity. His body clenched instinctively against restraints that held him fast.
The main doors whispered open. The women from the class began to filter in. They were different today. The nervousness was gone, replaced by a focused, almost casual determination. They’d crossed a threshold. They chatted amongst themselves, getting coffee, picking pastries from a tray. They glanced at him strapped to the bench the way one might glance at a treadmill before a workout—a piece of equipment central to the activity.
Brenda, the sangria-laugher, gave him a small, awkward wave. Elena, the angry one, stared with cold, hungry eyes. The kind-faced Claudia looked away quickly, a flush on her cheeks.
“Ladies,” Madame Lisbeth called, placing the black toy back on the table with a soft click. “Welcome to your advanced practicum. Today is about data collection and technical refinement. You will be working in rotating trios. One operates, one observes and logs responses, one prepares for the next interval. We are measuring for strain, endurance, and the collapse of voluntary muscle control.”
She picked up a large bottle of clear lubricant. The sound of the pump was obscenely loud. She squeezed a generous amount onto the twin heads of the toy, working it in with practiced, indifferent strokes.
“We begin with a re-establishment of the baseline,” she said, her voice cutting through the low murmur. “Elena, Brenda, Sarah. You’re first. Elena, you’ll operate. Brenda, you’ll log. Sarah, you’ll prepare the next attachment.”
The three women moved forward. Elena fitted herself with the harness, her movements efficient. She attached the black toy, the two heads swaying grotesquely. She tested the weight, rolling her shoulders.
Arthur began to shake. It started in his legs, a fine tremble, then moved up his core. The leather strap on his forehead grew damp with sweat. He tried to breathe, but the air seemed thin.
“Please,” he whispered, the word meant for Vivian, who was now chatting quietly with Naomi by the window, their champagne glasses catching the fiery light.
She didn’t hear him. Or she chose not to.
Elena positioned herself. No hesitation. No ceremony. She guided the larger head with her hand, the cold, lubed latex pressing against him. He jerked against the straps, a moth pinned to a board.
“Commence,” Lisbeth said.
The invasion was sharper today. His body, still raw from yesterday, offered no illusion of accommodation. It was a blunt, tearing re-entry. A bitten-off scream stuck in Arthur’s throat, coming out as a strangled gulp.
Elena set a ruthless, metronomic pace. In, out. Deep, uncompromising. Brenda, clipboard in hand, watched closely. “Subject exhibits pronounced initial tensing. Vocalization is a choked grunt. Flushing of the shoulders and back.”
“Note the time,” Lisbeth instructed.
Arthur squeezed his eyes shut. He tried to find the white static, the empty place. But the pain was too specific, too anchored. It was a brand, sealing him to the present.
“After sixty seconds, introduce the secondary channel,” Lisbeth said.
Sarah stepped up. She wasn’t wearing a strap-on. She held a different, shorter, thicker attachment in her hand, one with a flared base. She knelt behind Arthur.
The understanding dawned on him, a cold horror that outstripped the physical violation. It wasn’t for her. It was for him.
“No,” he moaned, the word finally breaking free. “No, not that, you can’t—”
“Log the protest,” Lisbeth said to Brenda, unmoved.
Sarah’s touch was clinical. The pressure was intimate and utterly violating. Arthur thrashed, the bench creaking, the straps cutting into his skin. “Stop! STOP!”
Vivian glanced over, a faint line of annoyance between her brows. “Arthur, darling, you’re disrupting the lesson.”
The smaller attachment pushed in, a shocking, full feeling in a place never meant for it. It was a different kind of occupancy, one that made his stomach curl. He was packed, filled, a vessel at absolute capacity.
Elena never broke rhythm. The two movements, front and back, created a horrifying, rocking contradiction inside him. His world dissolved into a cascade of sensation with no language. He babbled, sounds without meaning, tears and saliva mixing on the vinyl beneath his face.
“Excellent somatic distress response,” Brenda noted, her voice trembling slightly with excitement. “Total loss of coherent speech. Involuntary lacrimation.”
The rotation continued. Trio after trio. The attachments changed. The intervals varied. Sometimes it was just one, for a long, grinding ten-minute stretch that burned muscles into submission. Sometimes it was the double-ended toy, a symphony of anguish. Sometimes it was the new, intimate invasion, which they began to call “the seal,” ensuring no part of him remained private.
He lost track. He voided himself again at some point, a hot, shameful release he barely felt. Someone cleaned it. The chatter of the other women, the clink of Vivian’s champagne glass, the distant city sounds—all of it blurred into a nonsensical soundtrack to the ongoing demolition of his self.
The golden twilight deepened into violet dusk. The Solarium lights came on, soft and ambient.
“Final rotation,” Lisbeth announced. “We will test recovery threshold. Model will be stimulated to the point of involuntary release, then immediately re-engaged.”
Arthur was limp, a doll with glassy, unseeing eyes. A woman he didn’t recognize, someone with gentle hands, worked him with a precise, relentless focus. His body, betraying him utterly, responded to the mechanical stimulus. A dry, wrenching climax was forced from him, a shudder with no pleasure, only biochemical robbery.
Before the last tremor had even faded, Elena was back, the steel wand in place. She entered him while he was still spasming, sensitive and torn.
This time, he didn’t make a sound. His head hung, secured by the strap. His eyes were open, staring at the geometric pattern of the decking. He saw nothing. The animal was gone. The mechanism was running on a ghost of a charge.
Lisbeth nodded, satisfied. “Data is conclusive. Recovery tolerance is under sixty seconds. Premium pricing is validated.”
She walked over and began unbuckling the straps. The sudden absence of pressure made him slump. He would have crumpled to the floor if two women hadn’t caught him under the arms. They hauled him upright. His legs wouldn’t support him.
Vivian and Naomi finished their conversation. Vivian walked over, her heels clicking on the tile. She smiled at Lisbeth. “Another productive day.”
“Very. The schedule is locked. Your first private referral is tomorrow at eleven. A Mr. Darius.”
“Oh, good,” Vivian said, her smile turning private. She looked at Arthur, being held up by the two students. She reached out and patted his cheek. His skin was cold and wet. “You hear that? A private session. Just for us. Well, for him, anyway. You get to rest tonight.”
They guided him toward the door. As they passed the bar cart, Vivian paused, picking up her half-finished champagne flute. She held it out toward Arthur’s limp form in a mocking toast.
“To my useful husband,” she said, and drank.
Behind them, Madame Lisbeth was already speaking to the next trio of women lining up by the case. “For the next client, we’ll focus on angular precision. Let’s review the pelvic diagrams.” Madame Lisbeth’s voice was crisp and clinical, cutting through the hushed murmur of the Solarium like a scalpel. The glass walls reflected the city’s neon glow, painting the room in shifting hues of violet and gold.
---
**The Aftermath**
The two students—whose names Arthur had never learned—dragged him down the corridor like a sack of laundry. His bare feet scraped against the polished marble, leaving faint, damp streaks. The pink camisole, now soaked with sweat and something worse, clung to his chest like a second skin. The air conditioning hit him in sharp, icy bursts, making his skin prickle.
They stopped outside a door marked **RECOVERY SUITE 3**.
One of the students—platinum blonde with a silver nose ring—swiped a keycard and pushed it open. The room inside was dimly lit, the walls lined with soundproofing panels in muted gray. A narrow medical cot sat in the center, surrounded by monitors and IV stands. The air smelled sterile, like a dentist’s office mixed with something antiseptic.
“In you go,” the blonde said, shoving him forward. He stumbled, catching himself on the cot’s edge. His arms gave out immediately, and he collapsed onto the thin mattress. The plastic cover crinkled beneath him, cold and unyielding.
The two women left without a word, the door clicking shut behind them. The silence was sudden and absolute.
Arthur stared at the ceiling, its industrial tiles arranged in a grid he could not escape. His breath came in shallow, uneven gasps. The echoes of the Solarium—Vivian’s laughter, Lisbeth’s clinical commands, the wet smack of bodies meeting rubber, the chorus of female voices rating his responses like judges at a livestock competition—all of it played on loop in his skull.
He tried to move. His fingers twitched. His toes curled weakly against the cool vinyl beneath the thin sheet. The effort left him trembling.
A machine beeped somewhere on the wall.
Arthur turned his head toward the sound, the movement sending a dull ache through his neck. The room was small, barely larger than a walk-in closet. The cot took up most of the space, leaving just enough room for a rolling stool and a narrow shelf with medical supplies. A single monitor displayed his heart rate in green digits, the numbers pulsing in time with the throb behind his ribs.
He tried to sit up. His arms shook violently, and he collapsed back onto the cot with a groan. The thin sheet had ridden up, exposing his thighs. He looked down at himself. His skin was marked with red streaks from the straps, small bruises already forming where fingers had gripped too hard.
A thin, sticky residue coated his thighs, the evidence of what had been done to him. He tried to close his legs, but the muscles wouldn’t obey. His body felt like a foreign object, something he had been forced to inhabit against his will.
The door beeped softly, and a woman in a crisp white uniform entered. She carried a tray with a glass of water and a small paper cup containing two pills. Her name tag read "Dr. Marjorie" in neat, professional lettering. She didn’t look at him as she set the tray on the rolling stool.
"Painkillers," she said, her voice neutral. "And electrolytes.
You’ll need fluids after the session."
She tipped two capsules into her palm and offered them to him. Arthur stared at them like they were foreign objects. His tongue felt too big for his mouth.
"I—" His voice cracked. He swallowed hard. "I don't think I can—"
"Swallow or refuse." She didn’t so much as glance at him this time. "Vomiting will delay your recovery. Hydration protocol is mandatory."
A tremor ran through Arthur’s shoulders. The pills seemed to pulse with malice in her palm.
"Please," he whispered again, the word catching in his throat. He wasn’t even sure what he was begging for anymore—release, mercy, the chance to disappear.
The pills lay on his tongue like chalk. The water tasted metallic. He swallowed, feeling each capsule lodge in his esophagus with a dry, clicking insistence, as if they were small, unrelenting stones.
Dr. Marjorie took the glass from his hands with efficient detachment and set it back on the tray. "Rest. No fluids for twenty minutes. Now flip over, let's get a look at your bum."
Dr. Marjorie's voice was clinical and unyielding, the same tone she might use to ask a patient to say "ahh" at the dentist.
Arthur's body obeyed before his mind could protest. He rolled onto his stomach with a groan, the thin mattress creaking beneath him. The cool air of the recovery suite hit his exposed skin, making him shiver. His face pressed into the plastic cover, the smell of antiseptic filling his nostrils.
The doctor's gloved fingers prodded at his bruised flesh, pulling his cheeks apart and looking inside. "Wow, they really tore your asshole up." Dr. Marjorie's voice was detached, almost amused. "Looks like you got the full treatment today. I'm surprised you're still conscious."
Arthur didn't respond. His face burned against the plastic sheet, the cold seeping into his cheekbones. The doctor's gloved fingers probed deeper, pressing against swollen tissues. He flinched involuntarily, his body betraying him even now.
"Hold still," she instructed, her voice sharp. "I need to check for internal damage."
Arthur clenched his jaw as the examination continued. He could hear the doctor's breathing, steady and professional, as she worked.
The latex of her gloves made a soft, wet sound with each movement. Arthur squeezed his eyes shut, trying to retreat into the numbness that had carried him through the Solarium. But the pain was too immediate, too specific.
"Well, your tissues are really stretched and torn," Dr. Marjorie said finally, her fingers withdrawing. "I suspect you'll need to wear a diaper if you're going to be on your feet for a while. If you insist on continuing with this behavior, the damage could be permanent. I'll never understand why "size queens" like you keep going bigger." Dr. Marjorie looked at him with frank disgust.
Her gloved fingers snapped off a single square of gauze from the roll on her tray and pressed it against his anus where a thin trickle of blood had begun to seep. "Pathetic," she muttered. "You were probably some quiet accountant who thought his mean wife would actually fuck him one day. Now look at you. A used tissue being passed around for spare change."
Arthur's body jerked in response to those biting words. In that moment, past humiliations and future terrors all tangled together in a knot of self-loathing that burned through his haze of pain. Why hadn't he fought back against Vivian's cool dismissal for so many years?
Why had he let her turn him into a living, breathing punching bag for her boredom? The question echoed in his mind like a taunt.
---
**Recovery Suite 3**
The gauze pressed against Arthur's torn flesh felt like a brand. Dr. Marjorie's words hung in the air, sharp and unyielding. He could feel the dampness of the gauze, the sticky warmth of blood seeping through. His muscles tensed involuntarily, sending a fresh wave of pain through his body.
Dr. Marjorie sighed and stood up, stripping off her gloves with a sharp snap. "I'll be back in an hour with a diaper and some ointment.
Don't fuck up the gauze and don't even think about touching yourself. That's an infection risk." With that, she walked out, the door swinging shut behind her with a soft click.
The silence that followed was thicker than the antiseptic smell in the room.
Arthur hadn't moved since she left. He was still facedown on the thin cot, his cheek pressed against the plastic cover. The gauze sticking to his raw flesh was the most immediate thing in his world, but there was also that other sensation coiled inside him - a tight, hot ball of something that felt almost like anger.
Not the old, useless kind that had simmered in his chest for years whenever Vivian dismissed him without a second glance. This was different. This burned.
Arthur turned his head slightly, the plastic crinkling under his cheek. The gauze pulled at the torn skin, sending a fresh pulse of pain through him. He ignored it. On the small shelf beside the cot, Dr. Marjorie's tray still sat untouched save for the emptied water glass and the crumpled paper cup. The pills had done their work - dulling his mind even as they sharpened the edges of everything else.
Thinking back on everything, he realized that Vivian didn't love him at all and probably never would. She had thrown him away without a care for his health and now he was paying the price with potentially permanent damage. The realization struck him to his core and he broke down in tears.
The sobs came in silent, wrenching heaves that shook his entire body. His fingers clawed at the plastic sheet beneath him, the sound of his own breathing loud in the confined space. The gauze shifted with each sob, pulling at the torn flesh, but the pain was distant now, drowned out by the overwhelming tide of despair.
He had spent years trying to please her, to be the man she wanted, but it had never been enough. She had always looked through him, as if he were a piece of furniture rather than a person. And now, here he was, reduced to nothing more than a living doll for her amusement and the amusement of others.
The realization was like a knife twisting in his gut. He had been so desperate for her attention, so willing to be whatever she wanted him to be, that he had let her strip him of everything. His dignity. His self-respect. His very humanity.
Arthur's tears soaked into the plastic sheet beneath his face, the cold material sticking to his skin. His body ached in ways he had never imagined possible, but the physical pain was nothing compared to the crushing weight of his humiliation. He had let this happen. He had let them turn him into this.
The door beeped softly again, and Arthur tensed, expecting Dr. Marjorie to return with the promised diaper and ointment.
Instead, the door opened to reveal a different figure entirely.
Vivian stood in the doorway, her white dress still immaculate despite the day’s events. She held a fresh champagne flute in one hand, her other resting lightly on the doorframe. The soft lighting of the recovery suite caught the golden highlights in her hair, making her appear almost ethereal.
Arthur’s breath hitched. The tears stopped. His body went rigid.
She stepped inside, the door clicking shut behind her. The air in the room seemed to shift, becoming heavier, charged with something electric and dangerous.
“Well,” Vivian said, her voice light, almost amused.
“Look at you.”
She took a slow sip of champagne, her eyes traveling over Arthur’s broken form. The plastic sheet beneath him crinkled as he shifted slightly, the gauze still pressed against his torn flesh.
“You’re a mess,” she continued, stepping closer. “But then again, you always have been.”
Arthur didn’t respond. His throat was raw from screaming, from sobbing, from the sheer effort of trying to survive the day. He watched her through swollen eyes, his body trembling beneath the thin sheet.
Vivian set her champagne flute on the rolling stool, the glass clinking softly against the metal. She reached out and brushed a strand of damp hair from his forehead.
Her touch was cool, almost clinical, and Arthur flinched instinctively. The gauze at his anus tugged with the movement, sending fresh pain through him. He whimpered.
"Poor thing," Vivian murmured, tilting his chin up with one finger. "Look at you shaking. Did they hurt you? Or are you just upset that you're not getting any attention anymore?" She let out a laugh that was light and musical—just like the bell of a champagne flute—before pressing a kiss to his forehead, her lips lingering just a second too long, tasting of cold citrus and alcohol.
Her hands moved lower, tracing the damp camisole clinging to his torso.
The fabric was translucent now, soaked through with sweat and something darker. She pinched the hem between her fingers, lifting slightly before letting it snap back against his skin. The sound made Arthur flinch.
“Still so jumpy,” she said, almost fondly. “You used to be such a sweet little thing when we first met. Remember? You’d blush if I so much as looked at you.”
Arthur’s breath hitched. The memory surfaced unbidden—Vivian in that café, her laughter bright, her fingers brushing his wrist as she leaned over to steal a bite of his pastry. He’d been smitten instantly. Before the sexless years. Before the hand jobs he had to beg for.
Before the space between them became a great, gaping canyon that even his silence couldn't bridge.
Before he learned to hate every inch of himself that wasn't wanted.
“Do you remember?” Vivian’s voice was soft now, almost nostalgic, her thumb tracing the shell of his ear in a way that made his gut clench.
Arthur didn’t answer. His eyes burned. The gauze at his anus pulled again as he swallowed, and for a moment the pain in his body eclipsed everything else. He tried to find the memory she referenced, but it dissolved like smoke the moment he reached for it.
Vivian sighed, her breath warm against his temple. “You were so eager back then.
So desperate to please.” Vivian’s fingers trailed down his neck, her nails scraping lightly against his collarbone. “I remember the first time you touched me. You were trembling like a leaf. I thought it was adorable. Now? It’s just pathetic.”
Arthur’s breath came in shallow, uneven gasps. The gauze at his anus pulled with every inhale, a constant reminder of what had been done to him. Vivian’s words cut deeper than the physical pain, slicing through the numbness that had settled over him.
“You never fought back,” she continued, her voice a low purr. “Not once. Even when I started ignoring you. Even when I stopped pretending to care.
You just accepted it. Like a goddamn door mat."
The champagne flute in her hand remained untouched, the golden liquid catching the light as she swirled it absently. The ice cubes had long since melted, leaving her drink diluted and weak—just like Arthur felt.
She traced a slow circle around his nipple with her free hand, her touch light but deliberate, sending a shiver through his broken body. The camisole clung to him like a second layer of skin, damp with sweat and the dampness of his own tears. The fabric was translucent in places, the outline of his ribs visible where the material had ridden up during his collapse.
"You could have left," she mused, watching his reaction carefully.
"You could have walked away at any point. But you didn’t. You stayed. And look where that’s gotten you."
Arthur's eyes burned with tears he refused to let fall. Vivian's perfume—something expensive with notes of jasmine and bergamot—drifted toward him, wrapping around him like a shroud. He remembered the first time he'd noticed that scent, how it had made him feel sophisticated and grown-up. Now it just smelled like captivity.
"You're enjoying this," he whispered, his voice raw from screaming. The words tasted like ash in his mouth.
Vivian tilted her head, her blonde hair catching the dim overhead light like spun gold.
The champagne flute paused halfway to her lips, a fraction of an inch from that perfect cupid's bow mouth.
A slow, dangerous smile curled her lips. "Enjoying you?" she repeated, the words caressing each syllable with razor precision. She took that sip then, the liquid barely disturbing the surface. "Oh Arthur, I’m not enjoying you. I’m using you. There’s a difference. Enjoyment implies some kind of investment. Something I might share a memory with." She set the flute down with deliberate finality, the glass chiming against the metal stool. "But do you know what’s amusing? Watching you squirm. Watching you break. That’s where the real enjoyment lies—not in you, but in the power of it. In the way you can’t even muster the courage to hate me back."
Arthur exhaled through his nose, a broken sound. The gauze at his anus had begun to dry in places, pulling taut with every tiny shift of his weight. He should have been focused on the pain, on the way the plastic cot creaked beneath him, on the sterile scent of the room.
But all he could hear was his wife’s laughter, the mocking lilt of it wrapping around his ribs like barbed wire.
Vivian’s fingers had stilled on his collarbone. She watched him with an unsettling intensity, as if he were a specimen under glass rather than her husband. The overhead lights cast sharp shadows across her face, exaggerating the hollows beneath her cheekbones, the sharp angle of her jaw.
Arthur’s pulse hammered in his throat, each beat a dull reminder that he was still alive—barely.
“You’re really something,” she murmured, tilting his chin up with two fingers, forcing him to meet her gaze.
The gauze at his anus pulled taut, sending a sharp jolt through his lower body. He gasped, eyes squeezing shut, but Vivian’s grip only tightened.
“Look at me,” she commanded, her voice low and sharp as a scalpel.
Arthur obeyed, his lashes damp with tears and something like shame. Vivian’s eyes were cool, almost clinical, yet there was a flicker of something else—something dark, something thrilled. She studied him like he was a problem she’d already solved.
The champagne flute sat half-empty on the metal stool, its condensation tracing lazy rivers down the glass. Vivian’s perfume—something expensive and namesake of a tropical flower—hovered around him like a second skin.
“You’re my little bitch now and forever.”
The sentence fell between them, its weight settling over the Recovery Suite like a dark cloud. Vivian’s lips curled into a lazy, satisfied smile as she traced the edge of Arthur’s ear with a perfectly manicured nail.