I thought they had a plan. They don’t have a plan at all. They’re winging this. None of us know where to even begin to rebel against the woman who has made herself the cornerstone of our lives. I thought they would know, being made separately, naturally. They are fully human people with a direct connection to normalcy, and right now, they are completely useless.
“I’m getting Tom back,” Ken growls. “He’d get me back.”
A cool woman’s voice comes over the speakers of the vehicle. “If the three of you have discussed the matter long enough, I would appreciate you in fact rescuing the President of Indonesia from the terrorists planning to murder him. Then you can get back to making plans as to how to defy me.”
So much for a communications dead zone. I’ve never seen a man look so petulant as Ken does right now. We all fall silent, knowing that each and every one of us is now completely fucked. I am humiliated more than ever. The Head knows that I refused to escape. She knows that I know that she knows how weak she has made me. None of us can win against her, not the most vicious woman, or the most highly trained man.
“Get back in the driver’s seat, Mary,” Ken sighs. “Let’s do this.”
The vehicle starts up, and we go off to save the Indonesian President.
Proposition
Tom
I look out the window and see nothing but ice. It stretches as far as the eye can see. The feeling of isolation is absolute. I sit and I regret everything. I should never have played along with the Head. I should have taken Electra the first time we had the chance and we should have run.
That would not have worked, though, and I know it. I could not abandon Ken and Mary that way. Knowing the Head, she would have forced them to bring me in to make the humiliation complete. There was never any way out of the trap that woman set for us. Electra knew that, but I was in denial. My ego wouldn’t let me see the truth. I lived in a fantasy where I was protecting Electra. In the end, I protected nothing. Not even myself.
I am not the only one with an ego. I am a prisoner, not because I have committed any crime, but because the woman who runs the world has an ego more fragile than any man.
I do not have time to hate the Head for doing this to us. My thoughts are consumed with Electra. I know she will be devastated. She had made so much progress, and that was all destroyed in a single capricious act of revenge.
The door creaks. It’s common enough. Sometimes the walls of the cabin shift and shuffle as if they’re made of nothing more solid than cardboard, but when I touch them, they’re real.
The door creaks again. Then it opens.
The Head steps in, closing it behind her immediately so I do not see the driven snow, only the woman who uses the weather as her jailer.
“What are you doing here?” My question is blunt. I notice she doesn’t seem to have ice or sleet on her clothing, which does not seem appropriate for an Arctic winter. Am I losing my mind? It is very possible. I think that was the aim of this exercise. The Head wants me good and broken. She’s succeeding.
She smiles at me, her expression enigmatic and completely controlled.
“I liked watching you with Electra,” she says, starting her sentence almost mid-conversation. She is not a woman who has to bother with pleasantries. She wields the power of life and death and she knows it. She has come to toy with me, like a cat with the sophistication to save a mouse for later. I don’t care what she does to me. I just hope she hasn’t hurt Electra.
“You liked watching me?”
“With her,” the Head repeats. “When you engaged in your particular brand of domineering coitus. I watched every moment of it, you know.”
She’s trying to shame me. It won’t work. Making love to Electra is the best thing I’ve ever done. If she wanted to stare at it from her embittered office, that makes no difference to me.
“It didn’t seem as though you did.”
“Oh, I surely liked it,” she says, her voice becoming arch and suggestive, and… oh no. There is a charge to her voice, to the quirk of her brow, to the sultry smile on her face. I am not being tortured. It’s worse. I am being propositioned.
“Give me what I want, and I will give you what you want.”
“And what is it that you want, ma’am?”
“Give me that cock,” she says, the crude words tripping off her lips with a smile. “And I will give you back your girl.”