Chapter 4: Bathing in Shame
The walk from the dungeon was a silent, shivering procession. The stone corridors felt colder than before, the air biting at the fresh welts on their thighs. Anne kept her eyes on the floor, but the sound of Leah’s breathing, just a step behind her, was a constant reminder. That voice on the tape. That hollow emptiness.
Master Thorne opened the door to his private bath. The room hit them—a wave of damp, chilled air smelling of rain and faint, stale lavender. A skylight gaped open in the vaulted ceiling, a square of bruised twilight sky letting in a fine, misting drizzle that pattered on the black marble floor. The only light was a single thick candle on a broad vanity, its flame struggling against the damp, throwing frantic shadows up the walls.
“Strip,” he said, leaning against the doorframe. “Leave the clothes there.”
They obeyed, fingers clumsy with cold and lingering humiliation. The dungeon’s red glow was gone, replaced by this grey, watery gloom. Their clothes made a sad, wet pile on the floor.
“Now the shower.”
It was a massive, open tiled stall with multiple heads. He turned a single, brutal knob. Water roared out, not steaming, but icy. It hit the tiles with a sound like shattered glass.
“Both of you. In.”
The first blast was a shock that stole the breath from Anne’s lungs. She gasped, her skin pebbling instantly, her nipples hardening into painful points. Leah cursed, a short, sharp word lost in the downpour.
Master Thorne didn’t join them. He dragged a low stool from the vanity and sat just outside the spray, watching. The candlelight glossed the water on their skin.
“You’ll wash each other,” he said, his voice cutting through the chill cascade. He tossed a bar of harsh, unscented soap into the stall. It skittered to a stop near Anne’s feet. “Anne. Start with her. Wash her hair. Then her body. Be thorough. I’ll tell you where.”
Anne’s fingers were already numb. She bent, fumbling for the soap. Leah stood rigid, arms crossed over her chest, jaw clenched. The water plastered her dark hair to her skull, streamed over the generous curves of her hips and breasts.
“Turn around,” Anne whispered.
Leah’s eyes met hers. For a second, Anne saw it—the same defiant anger from the garage, from the tape. Then it banked, smothered by the deeper submission. Leah turned, presenting her back.
Anne worked the soap into a lather. She began on Leah’s shoulders, her touch tentative at first. The muscles under her palms were wire-tight.
“Harder,” Master Thorne instructed from his stool. “You’re not petting a dog. You’re cleaning a thing.”
Anne dug her fingers in, kneading the soap into Leah’s skin. She moved to the nape of her neck, then worked the lather into her hair. The action was oddly intimate. She knew the shape of Leah’s skull now, the way her hair felt when saturated. Leah kept her head down, accepting it.
“Now the front.”
Leah turned. Her expression was carefully blank, but her eyes were live wires. Anne’s gaze dropped. She lathered her hands again and brought them to Leah’s collarbone, sliding down over her sternum. She avoided her breasts.
“All of it,” Master Thorne said. “Do you think any part of her is too precious for soap? Do you?”
Anne’s hands shook. She cupped one full breast, the soap slick, the nipple stiff against her palm. She heard Leah’s intake of breath, felt the subtle flinch. She repeated the action on the other side, mechanical, her own face burning.
“Lower.”
This was the line. Anne knelt on the cold, wet tiles, the water crashing on her back. She looked up at Leah, a silent plea for something—forgiveness? Complicity? Leah stared straight ahead, at the wall, but a faint tremor ran through her abdomen.
Anne lathered the soap between Leah’s thighs. The curls were dark, plastered flat. She washed her with clinical efficiency, her fingers brushing against soft, vulnerable flesh. A job. Cleaning a thing. Leah’s breath hitched, just once, a tiny sound swallowed by the water.
“Good,” Master Thorne said. “Now, Leah. Your turn. Start with the marks. Wash the stripes I gave her.”
They switched places. Anne trembled violently now, from cold and exposure and a weird, crawling shame that was somehow worse than anything in the dungeon. Leah picked up the soap. Her touch was not tentative. It was firm, almost aggressive.
She started on Anne’s back, scrubbing at the skin where the straps had bitten. Then she moved to Anne’s thighs. Her fingers found the raised, angry welts from the crop. Leah’s nails, short but sharp, dug in as she scrubbed, not around the marks, but directly over them.
Anne cried out, the pain bright and sudden.
“Does it hurt?” Leah asked, her voice low, barely audible under the shower.
“Yes.”
“Good. You sounded like you enjoyed getting them.” She scrubbed harder, the soap stinging in the broken skin. “On the tape. You sounded like you loved it.”
It was an accusation. A bonding of their shames. Anne squeezed her eyes shut. The cold water and the hot pain and the memory of her own moan in the speakers mixed into a nauseating cocktail. Leah’s hands moved to her front, washing her flat stomach, her small breasts with a rough, impersonal efficiency that felt more degrading than any groping.
“Inside,” Master Thorne said.
Leah’s hands stilled. She looked at him over Anne’s shoulder.
“You heard me. Clean her. Everywhere. Be meticulous.”
Leah’s jaw worked. For a moment, Anne thought she would refuse, would swing the soap at his head. But the rebellion died, shifting into something else—a grim determination to prove she could be just as debased. She knelt. Her touch here was different. Not rough, but slow. Deliberate. Intrusive. Anne’s hands balled into fists at her sides. She stared at the ceiling, at the rain falling through the skylight, feeling like she was dissolving into the water, into Leah’s clinical, hated touch.
“Enough.”
The word was a release. Leah stood abruptly, stepping back as if burned. Anne sagged against the tiles.
Master Thorne turned off the water. The sudden silence was deafening, broken only by the drip-drip from their bodies and the distant patter of rain. He threw two thin, rough towels at their feet.
“Dry each other. Then come here.”
The drying was another silent, brutal intimacy. They dabbed at each other’s skin, avoiding eyes. The towels scraped. When they were done, dripping and shivering, they stood before him at the vanity. The candle highlighted every goosebump, every shadow in the hollow of a throat, the curve of a hip.
He picked up a single sheet of parchment and a fountain pen from the vanity. The ink was a deep, cruel black.
“You’ve confessed to past degradations,” he said, placing the paper between them. “Now you will document this one. A joint statement. One sentence each, alternating. You will sign it.”
He handed the pen to Anne. “Begin.”
Her mind was blank, frozen. She stared at the empty page. The words from the tape echoed. A useful thing. Some random, filthy thing.
She put pen to paper, her handwriting a shaky scrawl. Tonight, I washed Leah everywhere Master commanded.
She passed the pen. Leah took it, her fingers leaving damp spots on the paper. She read Anne’s sentence, her lips pressing into a thin line. She bent and wrote, her cursive stronger, angrier. Tonight, I cleaned the welts from Anne’s thighs and made her whimper.
Back to Anne. The pen felt heavy. I felt her shame under my hands and it felt like my own.
Leah snatched it. I heard my confession in my head while I touched her, and I hated us both.
Anne: The water was cold but my face was hot the whole time.
Leah, her writing becoming a savage slash: I hope the soap stung.
They finished, the page a testament of shared, poisoned intimacy. Master Thorne examined it, a faint, satisfied smile touching his lips. He held the candle close to dry the ink, the wax spattering near their hands.
“Sign it.”
Anne signed her name, a childish scribble. Leah underlined hers with a final, aggressive line.
He lifted the page, blowing on it gently. Then he folded it, once, twice, and tucked it into his shirt pocket, next to the tape.
“A new entry for the archive,” he said. His eyes moved between them, glinting in the candlelight. “Every interaction, every touch, every hidden resentment—it all becomes evidence. Proof of what you truly are.”
He blew out the candle.
The room plunged into near-darkness, lit only by the faint, rainy glow from above. Their shared vision swam with afterimages of the flame.
“Go to your room. Sleep. Tomorrow,” he said, his voice disembodied in the dark, “we’ll play the tape again. And you’ll read this aloud. I want to hear how your shared history sounds.”