Chapter 3: Niespodziewana wizyta
The morning light in Lena’s apartment was the kind that felt accusatory. It didn’t blaze; it seeped, pale and granular, through the thin, semi-sheer curtains she’d been meaning to replace for two years. It illuminated every flaw: the dust motes swimming over the unmade bed, the abandoned coffee mug on the floor, the large men’s shirt she’d worn yesterday draped over her desk chair. The shirt smelled of her sleep-sweat and, faintly, of the single cigarette she’d smoked on the balcony last night, staring at the black rectangle of her phone.
On the kitchen table, the artifacts from Eros sat exactly where she’d left them after her ten-minute vigil. The black box, the bottle of lubricant, the cleaner. A still life of submission.
Her phone, propped against a bookshelf, buzzed with the day’s first instruction.
V: Now. Prepare and insert. One hour. Begin your normal routine. Report the sensation in fifty minutes.
The words were a cold start to the engine inside her. The night’s anxious tossing crystallized into a single, actionable moment. She picked up the box. It was light. She opened it. The plug lay nestled in a molded plastic tray, black and innocuous. It looked less like a weapon here, in her shabby bedroom, than it had in the curated minimalism of the shop. It looked like a medical device, or a bizarre piece of minimalist sculpture.
Her routine was to shower. But the instruction said ‘begin your normal routine.’ It didn’t specify preparation. It assumed readiness. She understood the nuance now. The obedience was in the acting, not the preparing. She was to insert it and then proceed as if it wasn’t there, which was impossible.
Her hands were steady, which surprised her. She opened the lubricant. It was cool, clear, and thick. She squeezed a generous amount onto two fingers. The clinical smell was faint, clean. She hesitated, standing in her long t-shirt that fell to mid-thigh, her bare legs feeling vulnerable. This was the threshold. On the other side of this act, her body would no longer be just hers. It would be a occupied territory.
She applied the lubricant to the plug, coating its tapered tip and smooth shaft. The silicone was slick, strangely soft yet unyielding. She took a slow breath, held it. Then, bending slightly at the knees, she guided the tip to her body.
The initial resistance was a shock—a blunt, intimate pressure that her mind screamed was wrong. She paused, her muscles clenching involuntarily. She forced herself to relax, to exhale. She pushed, gently, with a terrifying sense of internal navigation. There was a second of burning tension, a stretching that felt less like pleasure and more like a violation of physics—and then it slipped past the tight ring of muscle and was inside.
She gasped, straightening up. The feeling was profound and alien. A deep, filling pressure. A persistent, unmistakable presence. It wasn’t painful. It was just… there. A heavyweight, an anchor lodged in her core. She took a tentative step toward the full-length mirror leaning against the wall. Her reflection showed a woman in a faded t-shirt, her hair mussed from sleep, her face pale. Nothing looked different. But everything was. She could feel the flared base, a small, secure disc against her skin. A seal. A proof.
She stood still, acclimating. The initial shock settled into a low, constant awareness. A secret she carried in her pelvis. This was the integration V had spoken of. The purchased object was now a physical reality. A part of her morning.
She was supposed to make coffee. Check emails. The normal routine.
She took another step. The movement shifted the internal weight, causing a subtle, internal ripple that made her freeze again. This was going to be a very long hour.
Then, the sound.
Metallic. Scratching. A click.
It came from the front door. A key turning in the lock.
Lena’s heart didn’t just race; it seemed to stop entirely, then slam against her ribs like a fist. No one had a key except… Piotr had given his back months ago. The landlord. And Irena. Her older sister, who believed that family transcended things like privacy or announcements.
The door swung open. “Lena? Jesteś?” Irena’s voice, cheerful and loud, echoed down the short hallway. “Wpadłam tylko pożyczyć twoją zieloną bluzkę! The wrap one. My meeting got moved to today, and everything I own is either dirty or makes me look like a sad librarian.”
Lena stood paralyzed in the middle of her bedroom. The plug inside her felt like a neon sign. She was wearing only the long t-shirt. Her jeans were in a heap by the bed. But that wasn’t the main problem. The main problem was on the kitchen table, in plain view, fifteen feet from where Irena was undoubtedly dropping her bag and kicking off her shoes.
The evidence. The box, the bottle, the cleaner. A catastrophic museum exhibit of her descent.
Panic was a white-noise siren in her skull. She couldn’t reach the kitchen to hide the items without crossing Irena’s path. The bedroom offered no hiding places for something like that. Her sock drawer was a million miles away.
Think. Move.
“Lena?” Irena called again, closer now. She was in the living area. The kitchen was an open archway to her left. Any second.
Lena’s body moved before her mind could form a coherent plan. She snatched the men’s shirt off the desk chair and pulled it on over her t-shirt. It was too big, swallowing her, but it provided a layer. She buttoned it haphazardly with trembling fingers. It covered her to her thighs. Maybe it made her look just lazily dressed, not half-naked with a sex toy inside her.
She strode out of the bedroom, trying to walk normally against the strange, filling pressure, her gait instinctively tightening. “Irena! Cześć. You scared me.” Her voice was an octave too high.
Irena stood by the sofa, a canvas tote bag at her feet. She was thirty-four, with the same dark hair as Lena but cut in a sharp, practical bob. She wore a tailored pantsuit in charcoal grey, and her sharp eyes, magnified slightly by stylish glasses, were already doing a rapid inventory of the apartment—and her sister. Her gaze swept over Lena’s chaotic hair, the oversized shirt, the bare legs.
“You look like you just fought a bear,” Irena said, a smile playing on her lips. Then her eyes moved past Lena, into the kitchen. They paused. Narrowed. “And lost. What’s all that?”
Lena didn’t need to turn. She knew the angle. Irena could see the corner of the table, the distinct black box. “Oh. That. Just… some stuff.” She moved quickly, putting herself physically between Irena and the kitchen archway, forcing her sister’s attention back. “The green top is in the wardrobe, I think. Let me grab it.”
She tried to steer Irena back toward the bedroom, but Irena was a boulder. She tilted her head, the social worker’s assessing stare fully engaged now. It wasn’t judgmental; it was analytically concerned. That was worse.
“Stuff,” Irena repeated, her tone light but needle-sharp. “From a pharmacy? You’re not… is everything okay?” The question hung, heavy with unspoken meanings: Are you sick? Are you doing something weird?
“It’s nothing. Just… skincare. A special order.” The lie was pathetic. The box was too small, too sleek for skincare.
“Since when do you order special skincare and leave it on the kitchen table?” Irena took a step forward. Lena mirrored her, blocking the path. It was a tense, silent dance. “Lena, move. You’re being bizarre.”
“I’m not. You’re the one bursting in at eight in the morning.” Lena heard the defensiveness, the childish tone, and hated it.
“I have a key for emergencies. A fashion emergency counts,” Irena said, but her humor was gone. She reached out and gently, firmly, took Lena’s elbow and moved her aside. “Let me see what has you so spooked.”
There was no stopping her. Irena walked the three steps into the kitchen. She stopped at the table. She didn’t touch anything. She just looked. Her back was to Lena, rigid. The silence in the apartment was absolute, broken only by the hum of the old refrigerator. Lena watched her sister’s shoulders. She saw the moment of comprehension. Irena’s head tilted as she read the small text on the lubricant bottle. She leaned in slightly to see the cleaner. Then, slowly, she turned around.
Her face was not disgusted. It was deeply, profoundly worried. Her professional calm was like a sheet of ice over genuine alarm. “Lena,” she said, her voice soft. “What is this?”
“It’s mine. It’s private.” Lena crossed her arms over the bulky shirt, a shield.
“I can see that. Why is it here? Out in the open like… like groceries?” Irena’s eyes searched Lena’s face. “Is this for you? Or… is someone else involved?”
The question was a trapdoor. Lena felt herself falling. “It’s for me. Obviously.”
“Since when?” Irena pressed. “You never… we never talked about this stuff. You were always so…” She trailed off, not wanting to say ‘prudish’ or ‘conservative,’ but the words hung in the air.
“People change,” Lena muttered, staring at the floor. The plug felt enormous, a guilty secret screaming to be confessed. Every second under Irena’s scrutiny amplified its presence.
“They do.” Irena nodded slowly. She pulled out a kitchen chair and sat down, not taking her eyes off her sister. It was her ‘client’ pose. Open, non-threatening, relentlessly attentive. “Okay. So. You’re exploring. That’s healthy. But the way you’re acting… Lena, you’re vibrating. You look like you haven’t slept. You’re jumping at shadows. And this,” she waved a hand at the table, “left out like it’s a packet of pasta? This isn’t exploring. This feels… compulsive. Or performative. Who is it for?”
The insight was a laser. Lena flinched. “It’s for me. I told you.”
“Bullshit.” Irena never swore. It was like a gunshot. “Look at you. You’re hiding in Piotr’s old shirt. You’re standing like you’ve got a rod up your ass.” The crude observation, so out of character, made Lena’s blood run cold. Did she know? Could she tell? “Is it a man? Some guy online? Is he making you do this?”
Lena’s silence was confirmation. She couldn’t muster another denial. Her eyes filled with humiliating tears. She blinked them back furiously.
Irena’s expression softened into something like grief. “Oh, Lena. Kotku. No.” She stood up, approached her slowly, as if Lena were a spooked animal. “Talk to me. Please. This isn’t you. The Lena I know wouldn’t leave this on the kitchen table. She’d hide it in the back of a drawer, wrapped in a sock, and feel embarrassed for a week. This… this is a display. Even for just yourself, it’s a display. Why?”
The accuracy was unbearable. The sock drawer. The shame. Irena saw the architecture of her old self perfectly, which meant she saw the stark, alarming deviation.
“You wouldn’t understand,” Lena whispered, the words sticking in her dry throat.
“Try me. I’m a social worker. I’ve seen a lot. I’ve heard a lot.” Irena was close now. She didn’t touch her. “Is it the thrill? The… the taboo of it?”
Lena nodded, a tiny, miserable jerk of her chin. It was easier to let Irena believe it was just about sexual exploration, a kink gone overboard. The truth—the systematic stripping of autonomy, the addiction to commanded shame—was too monstrous to say aloud.
“Okay,” Irena breathed, processing. “And this… person. Does he respect you? Does he care about you, or just about… this?” She gestured vaguely at the table, at Lena’s body.
Lena thought of V’s messages. The intersection of the professional and the primal. You are learning control within the lack of control. It sounded like care. It felt like care. It was the most attentive anyone had been to her in months. “He cares,” she heard herself say.
“How do you know? Have you met him?”
“No.”
“Have you seen his face?”
“No.”
“Jesus, Lena.” Irena ran a hand through her hair, her composure cracking. “It’s a fantasy. You’re giving pieces of your real life to a fantasy. This,” she pointed at the plug’s box, “is real. Your job is real. I am real. He is not. You are letting a ghost rearrange your furniture.”
“You don’t get it,” Lena said, a spark of defiance igniting. “It makes me feel… alive. Seen.”
“Seen?” Irena’s laugh was short, bitter. “He doesn’t see you. He sees a puppet. A set of reactions. If he saw you right now, terrified that your sister is going to find out, would he tell you to put the toys away and have a coffee with her? Or would he tell you to take a picture of your face and send it to him?”
The question was so specific, so devastatingly close to the truth, that Lena recoiled. Her phone, in the bedroom, felt like a live wire. V would want a report. He would want to know about the intrusion, the confrontation. He would frame it as a test.
Irena saw the recoil. Her eyes widened in dawning, horrific understanding. “He would, wouldn’t he? This is a game. And you’re the only one playing for real.” She stepped back, her professional detachment finally shattering. “This has to stop. Now. Give me your phone.”
“What? No.”
“Give it to me, Lena. Let me see. Let me talk to him.”
“You can’t! It’s private!” Lena’s voice rose to a shout. The invasion of that idea—Irena reading the messages, seeing the commands, the photos—was worse than any physical exposure. It was the total annihilation of her secret self.
“Private? Nothing about this is private anymore! It’s spilling out all over your life!” Irena’s own voice was raised now, frustration and fear eclipsing her usual control. “You’re leaving sex toys on the kitchen table! You look like hell! What’s next? Are you going to wear something he tells you to a family dinner? Are you going to do something at work? Marek already called me, you know. Last week. Said you seemed distracted, jumpy. He’s worried.”
The revelation was a new blade. Marek had called her sister. Her professional life was already bleeding into her personal, and Irena was there to stitch it up. The humiliation was total. She was a patient. A case.
“Get out,” Lena whispered, the force gone from her voice.
“Lena…”
“Get out!” This time it was a scream, raw and guttural. “Take the stupid green top and get out of my apartment! Don’t you ever come here without calling again!”
The fury was real, a geyser of misplaced shame. Irena stared at her, hurt and anger warring on her face. Finally, the anger won. She threw her hands up. “Fine. Fine! Play your fucked-up little game. But when it goes wrong—and it will—don’t call me to clean up the mess.”
She stormed past Lena into the bedroom. Lena heard the wardrobe door yank open, hangers screeching. Irena reappeared moments later, the emerald green wrap blouse clutched in her hand. She didn’t look at Lena. She marched to the door, shoved her feet into her shoes, and wrenched it open.
“You’re losing yourself,” she said, her back to Lena, the words flat and final. “And I don’t know how to follow you into wherever this is.”
The door slammed. The lock clicked shut.
The sudden silence was a physical blow. Lena stood alone in the center of her apartment, the echo of the slam vibrating in her bones. The argument replayed in jagged fragments. You look like you’ve got a rod up your ass. The pressure inside her, forgotten in the adrenaline of the fight, reasserted itself with a vengeance. She was sore. She was exposed. She was alone.
And she had a report to make.
She walked stiffly to the bedroom, retrieved her phone. She had five minutes until the fifty-minute mark. She sat on the edge of the unmade bed, the cool air from the still-open balcony door washing over her. She typed, her fingers clumsy.
Lena: My sister came. Unexpectedly. She saw the items on the
Unexpectedly. She saw the items on the table. We fought. She left.
She sent it, then sat there, the phone a dead weight in her hand. The fight played on a loop. You look like you’ve got a rod up your ass. The plug within her pulsed, a cruel punchline. Irena’s words had carved grooves in her mind: He is not real. You are letting a ghost rearrange your furniture. But the furniture was her spine, her pelvis, the very molecules of her shame. It felt more real than Irena’s pity, more solid than the hollow where her pride used to be.
The phone vibrated. V’s response was not immediate. The delay was a new torture. Five minutes passed, each second measured by the dull, pervasive ache of being filled. She stared at the mess of her apartment, seeing it through Irena’s eyes: the chaotic testament to a coming unraveling.
Finally, a buzz.
V: An unexpected audit of your compliance. Her intrusion was a variable. Your emotional response is noted. But the core task remains. The hour is not complete. You have eight minutes left.
Lena let out a breath she didn’t know she was holding. He wasn’t angry. He was analyzing. The hour. She’d almost forgotten. The normal routine. She stood, her movements careful, and walked to the kitchen. The items on the table seemed to mock her. She opened a cabinet, took down a chipped mug, filled the kettle. The simple acts of making tea felt absurd, a pantomime of normality performed for an audience of one who demanded proof of something else entirely.
As the kettle whined to a boil, another message came.
V: The confrontation alters the parameters. Your sister sought to reassert a former reality. You must now reaffirm the current one. The integration must be visually cemented.
A cold trickle of dread wound through her gut. She knew what was coming. A demand for proof. A new photograph. The tea forgotten, she waited, her knuckles white on the counter’s edge.
V: You will provide confirmation. A photograph in a compromising pose where the plug and your wet cunt are clearly visible.
The words were a clinical shock, blunt and obscene in their directness. No more skirts hiked under desks. This was explicit, a directive to display the very mechanics of her degradation. Your wet cunt. The vulgarity was a weapon, stripping the last pretense of sensuality or mutual exploration. This was raw exposure.
Lena’s thumb hovered over the screen. She could say no. Irena’s furious, frightened face flashed in her mind. This has to stop. She could walk to the bathroom, remove the plug, throw it and the bottle and the cleaner into the bin, and block the number. She could call Irena back, apologize, go for coffee. She could be the Lena from before, the one who hid things in sock drawers.
But that Lena felt like a story she’d read about someone else. That Lena was a ghost. The woman standing in the kitchen, with a foreign object nestled inside her and a cell phone burning a hole in her hand, was solid. She was real. And she was terrified, but she was also… curious. The shame had a flavor now, complex and metallic. Irena’s rejection had dialled its intensity higher. To obey now would be a defiance of her sister’s world, a full-throated scream into the void V provided.
Her reply was a single word.
Lena: Where?
V: The kitchen table. Clear the items. Sit on the edge. Part your legs. Use your left hand to hold your labia open. Right hand to take the photo. Ensure the plug’s base is visible, and that arousal is evident. Lighting must be clear.
The instruction was meticulous, a perverse photography brief. He was directing her, the graphic designer, on composition. Lighting must be clear. Her professional mind, always seeking the clean line, the perfect visual, latched onto the detail. It was a hook. She could do this. She could make it a task.
She moved mechanically. She swept the black box, the bottle, the cleaner into the empty drawer with the socks. The table’s scarred wood surface was clear. The morning sun from the east-facing window was strong, slanted, creating sharp lines of light and shadow. It was good light. Clinical. Revealing.
She pulled out a chair. She sat on the very edge of the table, the wood cold and hard through the thin cotton of her t-shirt and the men’s shirt. She let her legs fall open. The position was profoundly vulnerable, her knees bent, feet planted on the chair seat. She could feel the plug shift, a deep internal reminder of why she was here.
She looked down at herself. This was the moment. The hinge.
Her left hand trembled as she reached. The touch was a shock—her own fingers, cold from the kitchen air, on her own heated skin. She followed the command, holding herself open. The exposure was absolute, a humiliating, medical display. She picked up her phone with her right hand, fumbling. She opened the camera, switched to front-facing. Her face appeared in the small square at the top of the screen, pale, eyes huge and dark. She angled the phone down, trying to frame the shot.
It was wrong. The light glared off the screen. Her hand was in the way. It looked clumsy, desperate.
She took a breath, a designer’s breath. She adjusted. She shifted her left hand, creating a clearer frame. She tilted the phone, catching the sunlight to highlight the slickness V demanded as proof. She made sure the black silicone base of the plug was visible, a stark punctuation mark against her skin. She took three photos in rapid succession.
She lowered the phone and looked at them.
They were graphic. They were devastating. They were, in a horrifying way, well-composed. The light was indeed clear. Every detail was crisp, undeniable. A record of total surrender.
She selected the best one. Her finger hovered over ‘send.’ This was the point of no return Irena had warned about. Sending this was crossing a border into a country from which there might be no visa back. It wasn’t just a picture of her body. It was a picture of her choice. Her complicity. It was a signed confession.
She sent it.
The image whooshed away into the digital ether. A transaction completed. She sat there for a long moment, her legs still open, the phone limp in her hand. The shame arrived then, not as a hot rush, but as a deep, cold sinkhole opening in her chest. It was quiet. It was vast. She felt empty and full at once.
Her phone buzzed. Not a message. An incoming call. A video call.
The identifier was blank. Just a pulsating green circle.
V.
He had never called. Never used voice. This was a new escalation, triggered by her sending the ultimate proof. Her heart hammered against her ribs. She almost dropped the phone. She wanted to ignore it. To throw it across the room.
She answered.
The screen remained black for a second. Then it lit up. Not with a face. The camera was pointed at a desk. A different desk. Dark, weathered wood, not steel. She saw a hand enter the frame. A man’s hand. Pale, long-fingered, clean. It held a charcoal pencil. It began to sketch on a large pad of paper, swift, sure strokes. The camera was angled so she could see the emerging lines, but not his face, only the slope of a shoulder in a grey sweatshirt.
“The composition was adequate,” a voice said. It was calm, modulated, with a subtle, unplaceable accent. It was a voice that matched the hands—precise, controlled. It was also deeply, unnervingly ordinary. “The use of natural light was appropriate. You understood the brief.”
Lena said nothing. She was frozen, listening to the sound of charcoal scratching on paper. He was drawing. While looking at her, presumably on another screen. The intimacy of it was paralyzing.
“Your sister,” the voice continued, the sketching never pausing. “She operates from a paradigm of preservation. She wishes to preserve the Lena she knows. A museum curator for a self that no longer exists. Her concern is genuine, but it is a rear-guard action. It is about her needs, not yours. Her need for stability, for a predictable narrative.”
He was dissecting Irena, their fight, with terrifying clarity. He was giving her the language to reframe it, just as he reframed every humiliating act into a lesson.
“She cannot follow you,” he said. The scratching stopped. The hand lifted the pencil. “The path you are on is singular. It requires the shedding of those old, ill-fitting skins. The shame you feel now, sitting there, is the friction of the old skin separating. It is necessary pain.”
Lena found her voice. It was a rasp. “What are you drawing?”
A pause. The hand turned the pad around. He held it up to the camera. It was a sketch of a woman’s form, abstracted, suggestive. Not a direct likeness, but the lines captured a tension, a vulnerable curvature. It was her, translated into his medium. He saw her, and he was rendering her.
“I am documenting the integration,” he said, turning the pad back. “The photo was a snapshot. This is a study. Your obedience today, under external pressure, was notable. You chose the path of growth over the path of comfort. This is the core of it.”
“Why are you doing this?” The question burst from her, stripped of everything but raw need.
“Why are you?” he countered, his voice never shifting tone. “You have agency. You press ‘send.’ You sit on the table. You answer this call. I provide structure. A curriculum. You are the one who shows up for class, Lena. I am merely the professor setting the syllabus.”
It was the perfect, toxic answer. It placed the responsibility, the ownership, squarely on her. It made her the active participant, the eager student. It was a lie, but it was a lie she was desperate to believe because the truth—that she was prey to a predator—was too annihilating.
“The hour is complete,” he said. “You may remove the plug. Clean it. The lesson for today is on endurance under duress. You endured the physical object. You endured the familial audit. You endured the act of documentation. This is resilience.”
The call ended. The screen went black.
Silence poured back into the apartment, thicker than before. It was infused with the echo of his voice, the memory of the charcoal lines. She slowly, stiffly, climbed off the table. The removal of the plug was another intimate, vaguely shameful process. She cleaned it at the kitchen sink with the antibacterial soap, watching the water run clear. She dried it meticulously. She walked to her bedroom, opened the sock drawer, and placed it back in its box, next to the lubricant.
It looked different now. It was no longer just a purchased object. It was a tool that had been used. A part of her history.
She closed the drawer.
The rest of the day passed in a strange, hollow drift. She tried to work on the logo refinements for Marek, but her focus was shot. Irena’s words and V’s voice tangled in her head. At one point, she opened a blank document and typed: A curriculum. She stared at it. Syllabus. Integration. Paradigm. He used the language of academia, of therapy, to describe this slow dismantling. It made it sound rational. Progressive.
Her phone buzzed with a normal notification—a calendar alert for a dentist appointment next week. It felt like a message from another planet.
Evening approached, painting the room in long, amber shadows. She hadn’t eaten. She thought about Piotr, about how their breakup had been a slow, quiet fizzle of mutual disinterest. He had never demanded anything of her. He had never looked at her with the focused intensity V did, even through a blank screen. Piotr had taken her for granted. V never would. Every sigh, every tremor, every sent pixel was noted, analyzed, valued.
This was the addict’s logic, and she knew it. She traced its contours with a detached fascination.
A new message arrived as the last of the sun bled away.
V: Tomorrow’s instruction will require preparation. You will go to a public location. You will wear a dress. No underwear. The plug. For two hours. You will conduct a mundane errand. You will be seen, but not overtly. The goal is the sustained awareness of your state, amidst the flow of ordinary life. Details will follow in the morning.
A public location. Seen, but not overtly. The next step. Her heart gave a treacherous, eager thump. The fear was there, cold and slick. But beneath it, coiling warm and dark, was the anticipation. The need for the next assignment, the next proof, the next hit of that devastating, clarifying shame.
She looked at her reflection in the darkening window. The woman looked back, a silhouette against the rising city lights. She didn’t recognize her. But she was intrigued by her. She wanted to see what she would do next.
She typed a single word, her final obedience for the day.
Lena: Understood.