Chapter 2: The Bondage Photoshoot
Ashley from PR was a hurricane in a cream-colored blazer. She breezed into the dressing room, her perfume a thick cloud of gardenias that clashed with the lingering scent of brine and shame. She clicked her tongue, circling Annie.
“The fit is excellent. Really hugs the assets. But we’re missing the final components.” She snapped her fingers toward the open door. A harried assistant scurried in, carrying two items that made Annie’s stomach drop: a pair of knee-high, white leather boots with six-inch heels, and matching elbow-length gloves, each one featuring a complex web of silver lacing up the forearms.
“Boots and gloves,” Ashley said cheerfully, as if presenting a birthday cake. “Theme is ‘divine submission.’ Classic virgin-sacrifice vibe, but modern. Approachable. You’re an angel who’s chosen to descend, you know? Powerful in your surrender. It’s very now.”
Annie stared at the boots. The heels were like daggers. “I can’t walk in those, let alone fight.”
“Walking is what the rigging is for, sweetie. Fighting is what the editors are for. Come on, chop-chop. Studio time is a thousand dollars a minute.” Ashley’s smile was a immutable line, her eyes already looking past Annie to the next item on her phone.
Mechanically, Annie sat and pulled on the boots. The leather was stiff, unforgiving. She had to brace herself against the wall to stand. The world tilted forward. The gloves were worse; the lacing was tight, intricate, binding her fingers into useless, decorative claws.
Ashley ushered her out, a guiding hand on the small of Annie’s bare back. “You’re a natural. Just remember, vulnerable but strong. Confident but accessible. Think pious. Think… generously portioned nun.”
The studio was a warehouse of cold light. It smelled of ozone, dust, and the sharp tang of male sweat. Towering chrome rigs stood like skeletal trees, their arms dangling chains and cables. Banks of floodlights burned her eyes, their heat a physical weight on her skin. In the shadows at the far end, she could make out a few figures lounging on equipment cases. She heard a low laugh, the gruff baritone of Homelander, another choked snort that might have been A-Train. They were watching. Of course they were watching.
Before Annie could process the scale of the exposure, The Deep emerged from the glare, a production assistant trailing behind him carrying a bundle of black leather. He was back in full, false-friendly mode.
“Annie! Looking incredible. The team is thrilled.” He took the bundle from the PA. It unspooled into two wide leather cuffs, connected by a short, heavy chain. “We’re just adding a final touch for the key shot. Authenticity.”
Ashley clapped her hands. “Yes! The restraint element. It speaks to the burden of power. The beautiful struggle.”
“No,” Annie said, the word scraping out of her throat. The heels made her feel precarious, off-balance. The cuffs looked medieval.
The Deep’s smile didn’t flicker. He stepped close, his voice dropping to a murmur only she could hear. “Annie. We’re on the same page, remember? Team players. This is just part of the page. Don’t make me revisit our conversation about gratitude and Nebraska.”
The memory of the dressing room floor, the zipper’s sound, the fossilizing of her light—it all crashed over her again. The figures in the shadows were silent now, a palpable, waiting attention.
The Deep didn’t wait for her consent. He took her left wrist, his grip firm. The leather cuff was cool and rough on the inside. He buckled it tight, the click of the prong echoing in the vast space. He did the same with her right wrist. The cuffs were heavy. The chain between them clinked, a dull, final sound.
“Alright, let’s get you into position.” He guided her, his hands on her shoulders, toward a central rig. A motor whined above. Two thinner cables descended, ending in chrome carabiners. The Deep himself clipped the carabiners to the rings on her cuffs. “Arms up just a bit. There. Perfect.”
He pressed a button on a small remote. The motor whirred again. The chain between her wrists went taut, then began to lift. Her arms were pulled up and apart, into a Y-shape. The machinery kept going, lifting her until her toes barely scraped the polished concrete. She was suspended, spread-eagle, the stance forcing her back to arch, her chest forward. The lights burned directly into her face.
“Oh, that’s the shot,” a new voice said. The photographer, a thin man with a headset, circled her like a shark. The camera shutter started firing, a rapid, predatory chk-chk-chk-chk. “Give me that conflicted energy! Yes! You want to be free, but you also love the chains! It’s a metaphor!”
The heat from the lights was unbearable. Sweat beaded between her breasts, trickled down the groove of her spine. The leather cuffs chafed. Every muscle in her shoulders screamed. She could feel every draft in the room on the parts of her the costume left nakedly exposed. The shuffle of feet, the low tech murmur of the crew, the intermittent, mocking chuckle from the darkness—it all fused into a horrifying white noise.
The Deep stepped back into the periphery of the light, watching the photographer work. He crossed his arms, a satisfied supervisor.
“Tilt your head down, but eyes up at me,” the photographer commanded. “Think sacred. Think defiled. It’s a fine line, ride it!”
Annie tried to disappear inside her own head. She went back to the mirror in the dressing room. She focused on the fossil, that diamond of condensed rage and light. It was still there. It was growing. She fed it every chk of the shutter, every second of strain in her ligaments, every molecule of The Deep’s satisfied presence.
This wasn’t a sacrifice. This was an autopsy. They were dissecting the hopeful girl from God’s Weeper and packaging the pieces.
“Alright, let’s get the water element!” Ashley called. “Deep, you’re on.”
The Deep nodded, smiling. He walked over to a hose coiled near a backdrop. He turned a valve. Not a gush, but a slow, weeping trickle. He directed the stream onto the concrete floor beneath her, the water spreading in a dark, reflective pool around her dangling, spiked heels.
“Aquatic life motif,” Ashley narrated to no one. “The cleansing flood. Very thematic.”
The Deep let the hose drop and approached Annie again. He stood just outside the frame, looking up at her suspended form, his head tilted. Water dripped from the nozzle behind him, a steady, ticking beat.
“You’re doing great,” he said, loud enough for others to hear. Then, softer, just for her: “See? This is the job. This is the team. You’re part of something bigger now.”
The camera kept firing. The lights kept burning. The water soaked through the thin soles of her boots, a creeping cold.
Annie looked past the lens, past the lights, directly at The Deep’s pale, triumphant eyes. She didn’t blink. The smile she had practiced in the mirror was gone. Her face was utterly still, a mask of perfect, cold acceptance. Inside, the fossilized light didn’t flare. It didn’t pulse. It simply sat, heavier and harder than any chain they could forge, a geological truth forming in the dark.
The shutter clicked. The motor hummed. The boys in the shadows lost interest and their conversation resumed, a rumble of trivialities.
She hung there, a beautiful, dangling thing, and began the meticulous, silent work of plotting the collapse of everyone in the room.
The photographer finally lowered his camera, the rapid-fire clicks dying. “Alright, we’ve got it. That’s a wrap on the divine submission series. Killer stuff, kid. Really worked that conflict.”
The motor above her whirred again in reverse. Her arms, numb and shrieking, lowered slowly. Her spiked heels touched the wet concrete, and she buckled, the world swimming. Strong hands caught her under the elbows. It was The Deep.
“Easy does it,” he said, his voice a parody of concern. He made a show of unclipping the carabiners, his fingers brushing the raw skin of her wrists. The heavy cuffs remained. “Let’s get these off you in the back. Can’t have marks for the evening interviews.” He guided her away from the set, a firm proprietor steering his purchase.
The studio emptied around them, the crew dispersing with bored efficiency. The lights on the main rig snapped off with a series of hollow pops, plunging that section of the warehouse into a deep, swimming gloom. He led her not to the dressing room, but to a secondary storage alcove lined with forgotten props and coiled cables. The air here was thick with dust and the smell of stale rubber.
He closed a flimsy accordion partition behind them, muffling the distant sounds. The false concern melted from his face.
“You held up okay,” he stated, not asking. He produced a small key and unlocked the leather cuffs. They fell to the concrete with a thick slap. He didn’t step back. He was still too close, his body boxing her against a rack of moth-eaten velvet drapes.
Annie rubbed her wrists, the feeling like fire returning to dead limbs. She said nothing. Her eyes were on the dust motes swimming in a sliver of light from under the partition.
“Thing is, Annie,” he continued, his tone conversational, almost weary. “The gratitude from before? That was for the spot on the team. This,” he gestured vaguely at the air between them, at the lingering atmosphere of the shoot, “this is for the hassle. For the attitude. You made that shoot tense. I could feel it. That’s not team spirit.”
He reached into a pocket of his uniform and pulled out a ball of black rubber. It was a ball gag, the strap dangling. “See, I talk to sea life. I understand creatures that can’t speak. Sometimes silence is better. More polite.”
Her heart, which had slowed to a thick, sludge-like rhythm, began to hammer again. “No.” It was just a breath.
“It’s not a request.” He moved fast. One hand gripped the back of her neck, fingers digging into the tendons. The other brought the gag up. The rubber was bitter, chemical. It forced her jaw wide, the strap buckling tight at the back of her head, crushing her hair. A choked sound escaped her, swallowed by the gag.
Her mind split again. One part was pure, shrieking animal panic, her body straining against the leather gloves and ridiculous boots. The other part was that cold, observing satellite, watching from a million miles away. It noted the texture of the velvet against her bare shoulder blades. It counted the three water stains on the ceiling tile above her.
He didn’t bother with the costume’s flimsy construction. He just pushed the fabric aside, the silver material tearing with a sad, ripping sound. He didn’t look at her face. He was looking past her, at the wall, his own expression one of focused inconvenience, like he was performing a tedious but necessary maintenance task.
There was no pretence of mutual participation this time. It was a brief, brutal transaction. The physical sensation was a distant, pressure-like ache, disconnected from any specific part of her. The sounds were worse: the rustle of his uniform, the creak of the prop rack, his shallow, rhythmic grunts of effort. The salt-brine smell of him was everywhere.
It was over quickly. He stepped back, adjusting himself, his breathing slightly elevated. He looked at her now, at her tear-streaked face, the gag distorting her features. He seemed satisfied, as if he’d corrected a ledger.
He reached behind her head and unbuckled the gag. It came away with a slick pop. She didn’t move. She just breathed, the air scraping raw down her throat.
“Don’t forget to fix the costume,” he said, nodding at the torn strap. “Ashley will have a fit. And wipe your face. You’ve got a live fan greeting in an hour.” He straightened his own suit, gave her a final, empty pat on the cheek, and slid the partition open. He stepped back into the world of light and sound without a backward glance.
Annie slid down the velvet drape until she hit the floor. The cold concrete seeped through the torn costume. She pulled the fabric back into place, her movements slow and precise. Her hands didn’t shake. She stared at the opposite wall, her vision tunneling.
Inside, the fossilized light did not stir. It did not warm. It underwent a new process, a sublimation from diamond into something even denser, a neutron star of pure intent. The meticulous plotting from before was no longer academic. It was a schematic. It had foundations. It had a first target.
She used the dusty drape to wipe her face. She stood, the tall boots making her unsteady for only a second. She found her balance. She walked out of the alcove, back into the bustling indifference of the studio, a perfect, empty smile already rehearsing on her lips for the fans waiting outside.