Chapter 13: Golden Baptism: Part II
The sound of the warehouse door closing behind her might as well have been the seal on a tomb. The silence that followed wasn’t peaceful; it was a vacuum, thick with the dust of our things and the echo of her ledger. My mother stayed on her knees, a statue of defeat. I just stood there, feeling the cold concrete through my socks, listening to the car engine fade until it was swallowed by the city.
We didn’t speak. What was there to say? ‘I’m sorry’ was useless. ‘We should call someone’ was a joke. She had our phones. She had the car. She had everything.
After a long time, my mother moved. She didn’t look at me. She crawled, stiffly, to the pile of our coats—the ones Aisha hadn’t deemed worthy of the hamper. She pulled hers on, a thin beige thing, and wrapped her arms around herself. She shuffled to a cleared space against the wall, away from the mattress, and slid down into a sitting position, drawing her knees to her chin. She stared at the opposite wall.
I found my own coat—a cheap, unlined windbreaker. I put it on. It did nothing. The cold was inside now, in the marrow.
I spent what felt like hours walking the perimeter of the warehouse, looking for anything she might have missed. A forgotten tool, a loose board, a way out. There was nothing. The high windows were grimy and locked. The main door was solid steel. We were in a cage she’d chosen perfectly.
Eventually, exhaustion won. I sat against a pallet, far from my mother, and tried to sleep. I must have drifted off, because the sound of the steel door crashing open jolted me awake. It was still dark. Aisha’s silhouette filled the doorway, backlit by the single security lamp. She was carrying two large, grease-stained paper bags.
“Rise and shine, family!” she boomed, her voice shattering the fragile quiet. She kicked the door shut. The smell of cheap burgers and fries flooded the space, a greasy, overpowering perfume.
My mother startled, her eyes wide with fresh terror.
Aisha dropped the bags on the mattress with a crinkling thud. “Got dinner. Or breakfast. Whatever.” She peered at us in the gloom. “You look like shit. Hungry?”
Neither of us moved. She unwrapped a burger, the sound loud in the silence, and took an enormous bite. She chewed, watching us. “Suit yourselves.”
She ate with a focused, casual brutality, finishing one burger and starting another. The smell was torture. My stomach, empty and knotted with dread, clenched painfully.
Finally, she balled up the wrappers and tossed them aside. She wiped her hands on her shorts. “Alright. Sleepover’s over. We’re going home. My home. Up.”
“Our… our car,” my mother whispered, her voice hoarse from disuse.
“My car,” Aisha corrected, standing up. “And I’m driving. You two are baggage. Let’s go.”
The drive was a silent, twenty-minute nightmare. My mother and I were crammed into the backseat of our own sedan, our knees pressed together. Aisha filled the entire front, the driver’s seat reclined as far as it would go to accommodate her frame. She drove one-handed, the other arm resting on the center console, her fingers tapping along to a bass-heavy song thumping from the stereo. She’d changed the presets.
We pulled into a parking garage attached to a towering, nondescript student housing complex near the university. It was nicer than I expected. She parked in a reserved spot marked with a bold “H” for Handicapped. She didn’t need a placard; her size was declaration enough.
“Out,” she said, killing the engine. She hauled herself from the car and started walking toward a set of double doors, not looking back.
We scrambled after her, two scurrying shadows. The lobby was quiet, sterile. She led us to a service elevator, wider than normal. “Regular one’s too small,” she grunted, punching a button.
The elevator groaned ominously as it rose. The doors opened directly into her dorm.
It wasn’t a room. It was a modified suite. The university had clearly knocked out walls to create a space that could, almost, contain her. The ceiling was high. The floors were reinforced concrete, covered in scuff marks and one large, visible crack that snaked from the center of the living area toward the kitchenette. The furniture was sparse and industrial-looking—a massive, low-slung sofa that sagged in the middle, a steel desk, a reinforced bedframe in an alcove. The air smelled of lavender air freshener overlaid with a permanent, musky scent that was uniquely, undeniably her.
And it was hot. Blisteringly, unnaturally hot.
“Thermostat’s mine,” she said, shrugging out of her coat. “I run cold. You’ll get used to it.” She pointed a thumb toward a closed door. “Bathroom’s there. Don’t use it unless I say. I shower at night. You two…” She surveyed us, a flicker of distaste crossing her face. “You’ll clean. Starting now. This place is a pigsty.”
She tossed a roll of garbage bags and a bottle of industrial cleaner at my feet. “Kitchen. Go.”
We cleaned. For hours. My mother, moving like a ghost, wiped down surfaces. I scrubbed the stained concrete floor on my hands and knees, the chemical smell of the cleaner mixing with the oppressive heat and Aisha’s scent. She watched us for a while, scrolling on her phone on the sunken couch, then heaved herself up and vanished into the bedroom alcove, drawing a thick curtain behind her.
When the main room was done, she emerged, yawning. “Bathroom’s next. But not tonight. I’m beat.” She looked at my mother. “You. Couch.” She looked at me. “You. Floor by the bed.”
She didn’t wait for acknowledgment. She walked back to the alcove and pulled the curtain shut. A moment later, the lights in the main room snapped off, plunging us into darkness save for the faint blue glow of electronics from behind the curtain.
My mother and I stood in the dark. The couch, the only offered sleeping place, was a monstrosity of sunken springs and Aisha’s indentation. My mother walked to it, slowly lowered herself onto the very edge, and lay down on her side, facing the back cushions, as far from the lingering impression of Aisha’s body as she could get.
I found a patch of bare floor near the alcove curtain. It was hard. It was hot. It was directly in the path of the gust of heat coming from a space heater she had pointed at her bed. I lay down, coat under my head, and stared at the shadowed ceiling.
I must have slept, because the next thing I knew, a brutal, cramping need was wrenching me awake. My bladder was screaming. The heat had leached every ounce of moisture from me. I lay there, trying to ignore it, but the pressure built into a sharp, urgent pain. I remembered her rule: Don’t use it unless I say. But she was asleep. The apartment was silent. Surely…
I stood up, my joints stiff. I crept toward the bathroom door, each step a negotiation with the creaking floor. I reached for the handle.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
Her voice was a low rumble from the alcove, thick with sleep but utterly awake. The curtain didn’t move.
“I… I need to use the bathroom,” I whispered.
“No.”
“Please, Aisha. It’s an emergency.”
“Hold it.”
“I can’t.”
The curtain ripped back. She was sitting up in bed, a mountain of shadow. “I said no. You piss when I say you can piss. You understand? Your body belongs to me. Every function. Every urge. I decide. Now lay back down.”
The pain was white-hot. I took a step back, trembling. “I’ll… I’ll go in the kitchen sink. I won’t bother you.”
A deep, irritated sigh. Then movement. The bedframe shrieked as she swung her legs out. She stood, looming over the alcove entrance, blotting out what little light there was. “Fine. You wanna go? Come on.”
She didn’t turn on the light. She just walked past me, her bare feet slapping the concrete, and pushed the bathroom door open. She flicked the switch. A harsh, fluorescent light spilled out. “Get in here.”
The bathroom was a cathedral to her scale. Everything was oversized, reinforced, or bolted down. The mirror above the double-wide sink was cracked, a spiderweb of lines radiating from one corner. The shower was a tiled room with a drain in the floor and steel grab bars on the walls. And the toilet… it was a massive, commercial-looking porcelain throne.
She walked past it and leaned against the reinforced sink, crossing her arms. “Okay. Go.”
I froze. “With you… watching?”
“You asked to come in here. So go. Or get out and hold it until I give you permission tomorrow.”
The humiliation was a secondary burn beneath the physical agony. I turned my back to her, fumbling with my fly. I could feel her eyes on me. My body, tense and ashamed, refused. I stood there, useless.
“Pathetic,” she muttered. Then I heard her move behind me. “Since you’re clearly incapable.” Her hands, huge and implacable, grabbed my hips and spun me around. Before I could process it, she had shoved me backward, down onto the cold, closed lid of the toilet. “Sit. Wait.”
She turned and settled herself onto the toilet seat with a dense, final weight. She looked at me, my pants still open, my face burning. “You needed to go, right? So wait.”
She didn’t rush. She took her time, a queen holding court. She shifted her weight, getting comfortable. She picked up her phone from the sink edge and scrolled with one hand. The other rested on her vast thigh.
Then came the sounds. First, a deep, internal groan of plumbing. Then a low, prolonged release of gas that echoed in the porcelain bowl beneath her. It was casual, unselfconscious. A biological fact of her being.
The main event started with a soft, straining grunt from her. Then a solid, heavy impact. Then another. The smell hit me a second later—a warm, overwhelmingly organic blast that filled the hot, enclosed space. It was dense, a mixture of digested meat and something sourly chemical from the burger meal. My eyes watered. My stomach, empty, flipped.
She sighed, a sound of profound relief. “God, I needed that.” She glanced at me, her eyes glinting with dark amusement. “You still gotta go?”
I shook my head, the need completely strangulated by revulsion.
“Good.” She finished, the noises subsiding into final, wet details. She reached for the toilet paper, using a wad the size of a football. She wiped, the motion casual and thorough behind the curtain of her shorts. She dropped the paper into the bowl.
Then she stood, but she didn’t flush. She turned to face me, her back to the sink. “Get on your knees.”
My breath caught. “Aisha…”
“Get on your fucking knees, Joseph.”
I slid off the toilet lid, my legs buckling under me, until I was kneeling on the cool tile floor. She was standing over the unflushed toilet, a towering, warm monument.
“You see that?” she said, pointing behind her at the bowl. “That’s my work. My body’s work. You made a mess in the warehouse. Now you’re gonna clean one up in here.”
She reached down, her fingers digging into my hair. “Open your mouth.”
“No, please—”
The grip tightened, yanking my head back until my neck screamed. “Open it.”
Tears of panic blurred my vision. I let my jaw go slack.
With her other hand, she reached back, not looking, and scooped into the toilet bowl. Her fingers came back. They were wet, brown. The smell, now up close, was a physical blow.
“This is worship,” she growled, and shoved her fingers into my mouth.
The taste was instant and catastrophic—bitter, salty, horrifically organic. I gagged, my body convulsing, but her hand clamped over my mouth, her fingers pressing down on my tongue. “Swallow.”
I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t retch. My survival instinct, filthy and absolute, took over. I swallowed. The mass slid down my throat, a burning, shameful lump.
She released me. I crumpled forward, dry heaving, spitting onto the floor. My saliva was streaked with brown.
“That was just a taste,” she said, her voice calm. “Now, the real thing. You’re going to lick the bowl clean. Every last bit. With your tongue.”
I stared at the tile floor, vomiting air. This was the line. The final, un-crossable line. I shook my head, a tiny, desperate movement.
Her foot connected with my ribs. Not a kick, but a hard, bony nudge that stole my breath and sent a shockwave of pain through my side. “Now.”
Crawling felt like moving through tar. I reached the toilet. The sight up close was worse—the brown water, the floating, disintegrating paper. The smell was a solid wall. I closed my eyes. I leaned forward.
The first touch of my tongue to the cool porcelain rim made me shudder violently. I gagged again, pulling back.
“Deeper,” she commanded from behind me.
I pushed my head further in. My nose brushed the water. I extended my tongue. It touched the surface. The taste exploded, a concentrated, foul soup. I scraped along the curve of the bowl, gathering a slurry on my tongue. I pulled back and forced myself to swallow. Tears streamed down my face, mixing with the filth on my chin.
“Good boy,” she purred. “Get the sides. Get it all.”
I became a machine. A cleaning machine. I scraped and licked and swallowed, over and over, until the porcelain was slick under my tongue and the water was gone. The bowl was empty. I was empty. I hung my head over the rim, spent, drool and brown-tinted saliva dripping from my lips into the clean bowl.
I felt her move behind me. She didn’t pull me away. Instead, she stepped closer. She placed one massive hand on the back of my head. She pushed down, gently at first, then with increasing pressure.
“You missed a spot,” she murmured.
My face was forced deeper into the bowl. My nose and mouth were pressed against the drain hole at the bottom. The world narrowed to the smell of old porcelain and my own ragged, echoing breath. Then her hand pushed harder. My forehead jammed against the far curve of the bowl. My nose was flattened. I couldn’t breathe in. I tried to turn my head, to find an airway, but her hand was an immovable press.
Panic lit up my nerves. I thrashed, my hands scrambling against the slick sides of the toilet, finding no purchase. My lungs burned. Spots danced behind my eyelids. I tried to push back against her, but my strength was nothing. A high, whining sound escaped my throat, trapped and echoing in the porcelain chamber.
The sound of my own distress seemed to please her. I felt her shift her weight above me. Then came a new sound—a sharp, focused stream hitting the waterless bowl just above my ear. It was loud, percussive. It spattered against the porcelain and, instantly, began to run down the curve of the bowl toward my trapped face.
The first warm drop hit my cheek. Then another.