Chapter 10: Dominion's Arrival
@RGX pills
The private screening room at Highgate Hall was silent save for the whir of the projector. Grainy footage of Peter dragging himself across the tack room floor filled the massive screen, his trembling fingers finally closing around the plastic bottle of oaty sludge. On the audio, his gagging sobs were crystal clear.
“There,” Becky said, pausing the film. She pointed at the close-up of his swollen, welted feet. “That’s the moment his spirit broke. You can see it in the way his shoulders slump.”
Izzy, Chloe, Penny, and Felicity lounged in the deep leather armchairs, their faces illuminated by the frozen image of suffering. A soft chime echoed from a discreet tablet on Becky’s lap. “Dominion’s response,” she said, a smirk touching her lips. She read the message aloud, her voice flat in the darkened room.
“DOMINION said that your video was really refreshing,” Becky relayed, her eyes scanning the text. “A reversion to pure sadistic enjoyment for the sheer, unadulterated delight of cruel, sadistic and sexual pleasure.” She glanced up, her emerald eyes glittering. “They encourage us to continue down that road.”
Chloe let out a low, appreciative chuckle. She swirled the amber liquid in her glass. “They liked our style.”
“They said it caused a complete rethink inside Dominion,” Becky continued, her finger scrolling. “To move away from the cold, clinical, logistical approach they’d been sliding towards since their formation.” She set the tablet down with a definitive click. “The @RGX pills will be delivered shortly by a representative who will administer the first dose and leave us with further supplies.”
A palpable energy, sharp and eager, crackled between them. Izzy’s dark eyes held a new, feverish light. “A representative,” she murmured. “How interesting.”
The arrival was announced not by a knock, but by the quiet click of the screening room door opening. The woman who entered seemed to absorb the dim light. Lady Eleanor Sinclair was statuesque, clad in form-fitting riding leathers that whispered as she moved. Her blonde hair was swept back in a severe chignon, her face a mask of aristocratic indifference. She carried a small, polished steel case.
“Miss Rossi,” she said, her voice a cool, precise instrument. Her gaze swept over the others, a faint, approving curl at the corner of her mouth. “Your work is… aesthetically compelling. A return to first principles.”
She placed the case on a low table and opened it with a soft hiss. Nestled in black foam were two rows of vials filled with powder-filled capsules. “The @RGX pills,” she stated. “L
Penny leaned forward, captivated. “What do they do?”
Lady Eleanor smiled" one pill administered at the end of the day will send him into an 8 hour coma, just cover him with a blanket and when he wakes the next morning, his body will be completely healed, it will be in pristine condition, no cuts, welts, bruises or marks. He will be a fresh canvass ready for you to paint your own cruel and sadsitic tapestry of pain upon. I think you will all appreciate what this means," she said smiling cruelly. I will leave you with a months supply and we will arrange further deliveries in due course.
Lady Eleanor’s smile was a thin, surgical cut. “It means his total recovery time is reduced to just 8 hours” She snapped the case closed and handed it to Izzy. “His endurance becomes theoretical. His pain becomes perpetual. You are limited only by your imagination and his vital signs.”
“And the coma?” Chloe asked, her head tilted like a curious bird.
“Deep, dreamless, and restorative,” Lady Eleanor said, moving toward the door. “He will wake with no memory of the pill’s administration, only the lingering psychological imprint of the day’s events.” She paused, her hand on the polished brass handle.
The group moved through the silent manor corridors, their footsteps muffled by thick carpets. The descent to the converted wine cellar – now their ‘dungeon’ – was a journey from opulence into stark, stone-clad utility. Peter lay on a thin mattress in a corner, curled around himself, his breathing shallow. The raw, brutalized soles of his feet were a dark map of agony.
“Subject,” Izzy called, her voice ringing off the stone.
He flinched, a full-body spasm, but did not turn. The psychological breaking Becky had identified was visibly complete. Lady Eleanor observed this with a detached, professional air.
She turned, her gaze sweeping over the girls. “Who would like to administer the pill? It must be taken orally.”
Felicity stepped forward, her expression one of greedy delight. “I will.” She took one of the vials from the case Becky held open. The pill was a simple white capsule, innocuous. “Open his mouth.”
It was Penny who moved, kneeling beside the mattress. Her hands, which had held his ankles steady for the cane, now gripped his jaw with the same firm efficiency. Her fingers pressed into the hinges until his mouth fell open, a slack, helpless maw. Felicity placed the pill on the back of his tongue, then poured water from a bottle over his face until he choked and swallowed reflexively.
He instantly fell into a deep coma.
"nOW WHAT, " asked Becky.
"Now you wait for 8 hours" says Lady Eleanor. "When he awakes, you are ready to go again, but this time there are no limits. You do not have to worry about how much damage you do to him, because he will completely heal overnight after another pill is administered, "she grins.
Lady Eleanor gets ready to leave. "I look forward to seeing the video of his next session, ladies" she says. And remember, keep going with the same methods, psychological torment, using verbal taunts and promises about re-starting and using the multiplication system to keep him in a constant state of despair and anxiety. Make sure he knows this is entirely for your amusement and cruel sadistic sexual pleasure, flaunt it in front of him at every opportunity, " she says
The heavy door shut behind Lady Eleanor with a final, whisper-soft click. The room held its breath for a moment, the only sound the shallow, mechanical rhythm of Peter’s comatose breathing from the mattress. He looked like a broken doll discarded in the corner, his body limp and utterly still.
“Eight hours,” Izzy said, her voice slicing the silence. She turned to look at the others, her dark eyes gleaming in the low light of the dungeon. “We should plan the palette for our fresh canvas.”
Becky knelt by the mattress, prodding Peter’s cheek with a casual finger. There was no response, not even a flicker behind his eyelids. “Completely out,” she confirmed, a childlike fascination in her tone. She traced the vivid, purple welts covering his feet, now souvenirs from a past that would be physically erased by dawn. “It’s like a save point in a game. We can reload him… pristine.”
Chloe walked to a small table where various implements were laid out with ceremonial care. She picked up a riding crop, running her thumb along its length. “No limits,” she mused aloud. “We can focus entirely on the art. The anxiety. The despair.” She looked at Felicity. “Your plimsoll made such a wonderful mess of his face. Imagine doing that for hours, not minutes.”
“Imagine doing it after we’ve made him clean the stables first,” Felicity replied, her nose wrinkling at a hypothetical smell. “Covered in muck and sweat. The grime would grind right in.”
They left him there in the silent, stone room, ascending to the world of soft carpets and sunlight. The hours passed with the mundane rhythm of their own lives—lectures ignored, texts sent, meals shared. They spoke of him not as a person, but as a project, a resource. “The psychological parameters need tightening,” Izzy said over a salad, sketching vague ideas on a napkin. “We need a baseline terror response before we even touch him.”
Penny, who had been unusually quiet, finally spoke. “He swallowed the pill without even knowing what it was,” she said, pushing her food around her plate. “He just… obeyed. That moment of absolute submission, when my fingers were on his jaw…” She didn’t finish, but a faint blush touched her cheeks that had nothing to do with embarrassment.
When they returned as a group, the eight hours had bled the last of the daylight from the high, barred window. They entered without ceremony, switching on a single bare bulb that cast harsh, unforgiving shadows. Peter was already stirring, a low groan escaping his lips as consciousness returned.
His eyes opened, blinking against the sudden light. Confusion knitted his brow for a fleeting second—a second of blessed, ignorant peace. Then memory, a black tide, crashed over him. His body seized with a silent, internal scream, bracing for the symphony of pain he knew was etched into his very skin.
It didn’t come.
He shifted, and there was no white-hot agony from his feet. He flexed his hands, and the raw, abraded skin was smooth and whole. He stared at his palms, turning them over in the stark light, utterly bewildered. The physical evidence of his torment was gone, vacuumed away as if by a miracle. The psychological architecture, however, remained fully intact, a labyrinth of dread with no exit.
“Good morning, Subject B,” Izzy’s voice cut through his stupor. She stood over him, arms crossed, a smile playing on her lips. “Sleep well?”
He scrambled back on the mattress, his heart hammering against his ribs. His eyes darted from her to the others, who fanned out around him in a loose semicircle. Their faces were expectant, amused.
“The welts are gone,” he breathed, the statement a question, a plea.
“Of course they are,” Chloe said, leaning against the stone wall. She examined her nails. “We told you. We have medicine. We fix you up.” She looked directly at him, her gaze flat and cold. “So we can start all over again. Isn’t that clever?”
The horror of it unfolded in his mind, a vast and desolate landscape of perpetual suffering. There was no healing. There was only resetting. No end, only an endless series of beginnings, each one worse than the last.
“Now,” Izzy said, her voice businesslike. “We have a busy day planned. A lot of ground to cover.” She gestured to the floor at her feet. “But first, we need to establish the new rules. On your knees.”
His body moved before his mind could protest, the conditioned obedience a deeper wound than any cane strike. He knelt on the cold stone, the clean, unmarked skin of his knees a cruel mockery.
Becky stepped forward, holding up her riding boot. It was crusted with dried mud and flecks of stable manure, a topography of filth. “You’ll start by making these presentable,” she said, her voice light, almost sweet. “With your tongue.”
A sound, half-whimper, half-gag, escaped his throat.
“The multiplication system is still in effect,” Chloe reminded him conversationally, as if discussing the weather. “Every hesitation, every poorly cleaned spot, every unsatisfied sigh from one of us… it all adds up. We’ll tally the total for your first proper punishment session later.” She smiled. “Wouldn’t it be terrible if we decided to restart the count mid-way through?”
Penny walked over to a wooden stool and sat, smoothing her skirt. She watched him, her expression one of intense curiosity. “I want to see how he approaches it,” she said to Izzy. “The methodology of degradation.”
Felicity placed her own boot next to Becky’s. “Mine too. Pay special attention to the tread. All that horse shit gets really packed in there.”
Izzy remained standing, a orchestrator of the scene. “Begin,” she said, the single word a gunshot in the quiet room.
Peter stared at the boots, the reality of the command constricting his lungs. The dirt was dark and granular, studded with fragments of straw and worse. The smell, a rich, loamy decay mixed with ammonia, already filled his nose.
“Tick-tock,” Becky sang softly. “The clock on hesitation is already running.”
A tremor ran through his hands. He bent forward, a marionette with cut strings. The first touch of his tongue to the stiff, cold leather was a blasphemy against his own being. The taste was an immediate, overwhelming assault—earthy, bitter, chemical. He recoiled, sputtering.
“That’s one,” Izzy stated calmly. “Poor technique. Lack of commitment.”
He forced himself forward again, his eyes squeezed shut. He licked a broad, desperate stripe along the boot’s toe, the grit grinding against his teeth. The fragments of stable bedding were like tiny shards in his mouth.
“Oh, look at his face,” Felicity giggled, nudging Chloe. “He’s trying not to chew.”
Chloe nodded, a slow, pleasured smile spreading across her features. “It’s better than I imagined,” she murmured, her hand drifting absently to her own thigh. “The absolute revulsion. It’s so… pure.”
Peter worked in a frantic, messy rhythm, his mind dissociating, trying to flee the scene of the crime his own body was committing. He cleaned the visible surface mud, but the ingrained filth in the seams and the deep tread of the sole remained.
“Stop,” Becky commanded.
He froze, his mouth hanging open, panting.
“You’ve missed entire sections,” she said, pointing with a toe. “The side, there. And the heel is completely neglected. That’s… let’s call it five infractions for sloppy work.” She looked at Izzy. “Agreed?”
“Agreed,” Izzy said. “Five. Keep going, Subject B. But know the tally is growing. And we haven’t even started on Felicity’s boot yet.”
He whimpered, a low, animal sound of despair, and bent back to his task. Tears of shame and nausea now mixed with the dirt on his face, carving clean streaks through the grime. The sounds in the room were the wet, horrible scrubbing of his tongue on leather, his own choked breathing, and the soft, contented sighs of the young women watching from the shadows.
Penny shifted on her stool, crossing her legs. A faint, rhythmic movement of her hand beneath her skirt was just visible. She was staring at Peter, her lips slightly parted, her eyes glazed. She was discovering something profound about herself in the intimate spectacle of his ruin.
Izzy watched them all, a queen surveying her domain. The promise of the @RGX pills hummed in the air, a permission slip for infinity. This was only the prelude, a gentle opening note in a symphony they could now play forever, each movement louder, more daring, more exquisitely cruel than the last.
She saw Peter’s shoulders shaking with silent sobs as he licked and he retched and he licked again. She saw the eager fascination on Penny’s face, the cool appreciation on Chloe’s, the giggling delight on Felicity’s, the analytical hunger in Becky’s eyes as she mentally recorded every detail. The momentum was building, a terrible and beautiful engine of torment now freed from all physical constraints, ready to roar into the long, dark night ahead.
The momentum was building, a terrible and beautiful engine of torment now freed from all physical constraints, ready to roar into the long, dark night ahead.
Peter’s tongue scraped over the caked mud on Felicity’s boot tread, a gritty, granular paste that coated his mouth. He choked, the sound wet and ragged, but forced another lick. The ammonia-tinged stench of old horse urine filled his sinuses, making his eyes water.
“He’s actually getting the deep tread clean,” Becky observed, her phone held aloft to record the process. Her voice was clinical, amused. “Look at the focus. It’s almost artistic.”
Izzy paced slowly, her boots clicking a soft rhythm on the stone. “Art requires intent,” she countered, stopping to stare down at his labor. “This is just panic. A conditioned response.” She crouched, her face level with his. “Are you creating art for us, Subject B?”
He froze, his eyes wide with confusion and terror, unsure how to answer.
“Hesitation,” Chloe stated flatly from her perch on a wooden crate. She didn’t even look up from the dressage whip she was braiding. “Add it to the tally.”
Peter sobbed, a broken, helpless sound, and resumed his frantic scrubbing with his tongue. The leather’s texture, once polished, was now a landscape of ingrained dirt he could only smear.
Penny’s breathing had become audible, a soft, quick rhythm matching the movement of her hand beneath her skirt. “He doesn’t know what to do,” she whispered, mesmerized. “Every choice is wrong. Every action is a mistake.”
“Exactly,” Izzy said, standing up. She smiled, a flash of white in the gloom. “That’s the foundation. Now we build the architecture of dread upon it.” She nodded to Becky. “What’s the current infraction count?”
Becky made a show of counting on her fingers. “Initial hesitation, poor technique, missing sections on my boot… and the ongoing verbal non-compliance. Let’s call it a solid twenty.”
Felicity giggled, swinging her clean boot. “Don’t forget the gagging. The disgusted faces. Each one is an insult to our property.”
“Thirty, then,” Becky amended without pause. “A good, round number for our first proper session post-reset.”
Peter’s head drooped, his forehead resting against the cold toe of Felicity’s boot. A string of saliva and dissolved filth hung from his lip. The number echoed in his hollowed-out mind, a death sentence.
“Stand up,” Izzy commanded.
His body obeyed, shaky and stiff. He stood barefoot on the stone, the phantom memory of pain in his soles making him shift his weight unnaturally.
Izzy circled him. “You have thirty strokes owing. But we’re not starting there.” She stopped behind him, her voice a cool whisper at his ear. “We’re going to the stables. You’re going to muck out three stalls. By hand.”
Chloe looked up, her braiding complete. “And if the work is unsatisfactory?” she asked, though she already knew the answer.
“Then we add to the thirty,” Izzy said simply. “And then we restart the thirty from the beginning, multiplied by… let’s decide in the moment.” She walked towards the door, the others rising to follow. “Bring him.”
The night air outside was a shocking slap of cold after the dungeon’s damp warmth. The path to the stables was gravel. Each step was a small agony of anticipation for Peter, his healed feet hypersensitive to the sharp stones.
Becky swung a lantern, casting long, dancing shadows. “Bluebell’s stall is especially filthy,” she said to Felicity. “She’s been restless.”
“Perfect,” Felicity replied, her voice bright.
The stables smelled of hay, manure, and warm animal. A soft whicker came from one of the stalls. Izzy pulled open a heavy wooden door to a box strewn with dirty straw and fresh droppings. She handed Peter a rusted manure fork and a wheelbarrow.
“No gloves,” she said, her tone leaving no room for argument. “You have one hour for all three. Your time starts now.”
The work was brutal, intimate, and degrading. He scooped the warm, reeking mounds with his bare hands, his fingers sinking into the soft, awful texture. Straw scratched his skin. The wheelbarrow grew heavy.
The girls leaned against the opposite stall doors, watching. They spoke of casual things—a lecture they’d skipped, a party next weekend—their conversation a surreal soundtrack to his labor.
“You’re missing a spot,” Chloe called out midway through the second stall, pointing to a corner. “That’s laziness. Add five.”
Peter’s shoulders slumped. He shuffled to the spot, retrieving the overlooked dung.
“His posture is so defeated,” Penny noted, her earlier arousal replaced by a cold, analytical interest. “It’s in the slope of the spine. Total capitulation.”
Izzy checked a sleek, expensive watch on her wrist. “Thirty minutes left. He’ll never finish the third stall.”
“So we add a time penalty,” Becky said, shrugging. “Another ten strokes? Or do we make him clean our boots again, but now with his hands covered in this?” She gestured to the muck clinging to Peter’s arms.
“Both,” Felicity decided. “The boots need a fresh coat anyway.”
The final stall was the largest. Peter worked in a frantic, silent frenzy, sweat mingling with filth on his face. The hour ticked down in his head, a bomb he couldn’t defuse. As Izzy called time, he was still forking the last of the soiled bedding into the barrow.
“Incomplete,” Izzy announced. “Time penalty enacted.” She looked at the others. “Boots first, then we settle the main account. In the tack room.”
They marched him back, his hands blackened, the stench of the stable rising from him like a fog. The familiar, sunlit space with its polished leather and hanging bridles felt like a cruel parody of sanctuary now.
“The boots,” Becky said, placing her freshly dirtied riding boot before him. “With your hands. Make them spotless.”
He knelt again. Using his fingernails and his own sweat-dampened shirt, he began scrubbing the leather. It was a messier, more desperate process than before, smearing more than cleaning.
“That’s just making it worse,” Chloe sighed, as if disappointed by a clumsy child. “You’ve rubbed the dung into the grain. That’s another five for incompetence.”
The tally was a living thing now, growing in the dark corners of his mind. Forty? Fifty? He lost count, the numbers blurring into a monolithic wall of impending pain.
Finally, Izzy called a halt. “Enough. The main event.” She pointed to the center of the room, where a grooming stool stood. “Assume the position. You know it.”
He did. He bent over the stool, gripping the legs, presenting his back, now clean and unmarked, a pristine canvas as promised.
Chloe selected a cane from the rack, not the thin one, but a thicker, more brutal model. She flexed it, the air whistling. “Forty-five confirmed strokes,” she declared. “But we’re feeling generous. We’ll call it forty.” She walked slowly behind him. “And we’ll use the multiplication rule. Just to keep things interesting.”
The first strike was a thunderclap of pain that seemed to ignite his nervous system. A single, perfect line of fire burned across his shoulders.
“One,” Chloe counted, her voice serene.
Before the echo of the pain faded, Izzy leaned down. Her lips were close to his ear, her breath warm. “What if we multiplied by two now?” she whispered, her voice a venomous secret. “Would you be able to take eighty?”
A wild, animal terror seized him. He whimpered into the leather seat of the stool.
“He didn’t answer,” Becky noted from her filming position. “Is that disrespect?”
“It is,” Felicity said. “Add two.”
“So forty becomes forty-two,” Chloe said calmly. “And we’re considering a multiplier.” The second stroke landed just below the first, a parallel line of agony. “Two.”
The psychological game was more vicious than the cane. Each stroke was accompanied by a whispered speculation from one of them—a restart, a multiplication, a new, horrific rule. His mind fractured, trying to hold the real number while braced for an imagined, exponential one.
At stroke twenty, Penny spoke. Her voice was soft, almost kind. “You’re doing so well. Really. But what if, just as you think it’s over, we started all over again from the beginning?”
He screamed then, a raw, tearing sound that startled a horse in a nearby stall. It was the sound of a breaking point being reached and shattered.
Chloe paused, the cane held high. She looked at Izzy, a question in her eyes.
Izzy nodded, a slow, triumphant smile spreading across her face. “That’s the sound I wanted,” she said. “That’s the foundation.” She addressed Peter, her voice cutting through his sobs. “We won’t restart. This time.” She let the word hang, a cliffhanger. “Finish the count, Chloe.”
The final twenty-two strokes fell in a driving, rhythmic rain. He lost count. He lost everything but the pain, each impact layering upon the last until his world was a white-hot sheet of soundless fire. When it stopped, the silence was itself a new kind of shock.
He slid from the stool onto the cool stone floor, boneless, a river of hurt.
Izzy retrieved the steel case. She shook out a single white @RGX pill into her palm. She knelt, pinched his nose, and when he gasped, placed it on his tongue. She held a bottle of water to his lips, forcing him to swallow.
The effect was swift. A heavy, chemical lassitude seeped into his limbs. His vision tunneled, the faces of the girls looming over him blurring into smears of cruel light. Their conversation reached him as if from underwater.
“The psychological yield today was exponential,” Becky was saying, her voice fizzing with excitement. “Did you see his eyes when you mentioned the restart? Pure system collapse.”
“Tomorrow,” Izzy said, her voice the last clear thing he heard, “we don’t wait for him to wake up disoriented. We begin while he’s still under. We whisper the new rules into the coma.”
Darkness swallowed him whole, a void more absolute than sleep. The last sensation was the faint, distant touch of a hand—Penny’s, he thought—stroking his hair as if he were a pet, just as the nothingness took him.