Follow the instructions

Last night I did my homework. Captain sent me a track - just a few minutes shy of an hour long - alongside instructions for how I should listen to it.

I lay out my ipod on the bed, turn off the light and get undressed. I lie on top of the bed, put in the earphones. They are the bud type which cancel out external noise so suddenly I've shut off a sense. I spread my legs, close my eyes and press play.

The music starts. Ambient electronic trance, it;s layered and moves elegantly through different phases, sometimes lighter, sometimes heavier. Trance is the key word here and almost immediately I'm pulled under by the music. It's a good track with a strong beat and makes me want to dance. I can't dance, but I circle my thumb and forefingers together, unconsciously calling to invisible butterflies, whilst my heart follows the bass line as it deepens. Inside my head, I'm like a clubber reaching up to the ceiling, eyes closed and lost in the rhythm. I'm salivating, and clenching my jaw slightly, another club reaction. But also something else. Anticipation. My cunt is wet and I want sex. My hips arch upwards slightly, dancing or fucking the cold, empty air. Both, perhaps.I am allowed to play with myself ("tease" was the word used) but not to come, so I stop and start, every now and then putting my hands down by my side, like I'm floating on water.

After a few minutes I start to pay more attention to my body. I'm cold, the room has no heating at night: being on my back makes even me more exposed, especially with my legs the way they are. I can feel myself losing heat. I hate the cold, it is extremely unpleasant and I'm finding this very difficult. My feet and fingers are already cold, most of my skin is cool. The only heat is coming from my cunt, where the sensation of numb, abstracted fingertips on my clit makes it feel hotter than it is. In my disengaged state I imagine that I am lying on the ground with snow falling all over me. I imagine that icy particles are touching my eyelashes and I can feel the cold of each flake as it lands. I start to freeze. I know that as the snow carries on falling eventually I will start to feel warm again, smothered by their weight.

Although it is dark, occasionally shadows and light will pass under my eyelids, as if someone is moving in the room with me disturbing the neon from outside. I do not open my eyes. I know that I am alone. I focus on the blackness in front of me and let my mind wander. My thoughts flow in two contrasting directions, in tandem with the contrast between my cold body and warm insides.

The first part of me is thinking about my task and how I am doing. I'm trying to work out how much time has passed, how much longer I have to be here, numb and tormenting myself with masturbation. My legs start to shiver, the cold has moved from being unpleasant to painful, all the more so because I'm not sure how far I've come, how much more there is left. I'm losing time. Deliberately in a way - refusing to count or to keep track. I want to be in a place that is absent from reality, so I need to let go of time. I know that I can't stop the music and just go to sleep, I have to be there for the full length of the track. I make a rule for myself - if I stop or do anything that I shouldn't do, I have to start again. I know there's a limit to how long I can be here, motionless and cold, so that helps me to keep going. The other part that pushes me forward is my own growing excitement both in what I am experiencing and where this might ultimately lead. From a naked girl, eyes closed, frozen fingers light on her clit in the darkness to what? It's a prologue and I like narrative.

My other half, the half that is not feeling the cold but instead coiled up in the music isn't thinking but feeling. I'm trapped in my own head, high above my shivering body. I go through waves of emotions. Expressions flicker over my face for no-one to see. There's no-one but myself to experience what I am going through, no-one to feel pleasure or concern at my reactions. I'm a game of me. At one point deliriously happy, the endorphins mixing with the fuzzy high of where the track is taking me, flowing with it like water. Then, I suddenly feel scared, a weight upon my chest like the beginnings of anxiety, a nervous tension, matched by the tension in my thighs clenched against the temperature and the actions of my own fingers. I am held in place and feel almost claustrophobic with it. Then it goes and I am soft once again. Another point, I start to feel sad and lonely, a gnawing emptiness in the pit of my stomach accompanied by a terrible sensation of loss, remembering that I am alone, remembering what I have lost and how there is no longer anyone to comfort me or to love me. I almost start to cry. Then the music changes and I change with it.

Alongside all of this - the cold, the emotions, the drive to complete my task - my desire races. It is constant in presence but not behaviour, sometimes gentle, tingly and exciting, other times hard and desperately needy. At one stage I mouth at the air, biting my lip, seeking kisses that are not there. Muscles in my cunt twitching for a penetration that isn't going to happen. I know I can't orgasm (the fact that I'm on my back reinforces this) but that's not really what I want right now - I want another body, specifically his, I get little flashes of how his skin smells, how his cock feels when he's fucking me. But there's nothing there.