Breathe

Over time, the sort of play and interactions you have with a partner change. By and large, it moves in a slow process of getting used to each other's bodies and behaviours - as with any relationship, I suppose. But sometimes, I have an experience that I feel moves me on a definite step, and these often correlate with physical experiences that push me, where what is happening becomes very difficult, and I have trouble with what I am doing, with what is being done to me. Getting to that stage and getting through it is very powerful. Last night was like that.

Now, I'm shattered, completely knackered and mostly I want to sleep, but I need to get this down right now before it falls through my fingers - already my brain is very mushy and finding it hard to recall exactly what happened when and how it felt. I've got that quiet, calm and emptied out feeling, a little like a chemical hangover, but without the sickness or the drop. Wiped clean. I've also got the physical reminders - my nipples are very sore, there's a small bruise below my lower lip and red lines running along my right thigh. But they are lonely bright marks in a map that is fading by the second. And I don't want to lose the memory of this.

It started off easy. It usually does. The pleasure of stripping off and giving yourself over, like stepping into a warm bath. I'm naked and sat on a leather bench, arms crossed in front of me, below my breasts. Captain is wrapping strip after strip after strip of black, shiny pallet wrap around my chest. He's pulling it tight, at varying angles so that the pressure builds and doesn't let up. I start to feel slightly light headed as bands criss-cross around my shoulders and rib cage reducing the amount of air I can pull into my lungs. I try to take steady breaths. Keeping to a rhythm and calming myself that way, relaxing in to what he is doing. Because it is relaxing, initially. I love mummification, the way it can make my mind go utterly blank as soon as I shut my eyes and let myself go into myself. Which is what the cocoon does - there's nowhere to go, I can't do anything but just lie there.

This isn't a cocoon though, this is an iron vice, a static bear-hug that squeezes me hard. My upper body is covered, save for two gaps which force my breasts out through the tape. I imagine what they might look like, two small white and pink mounds, topped off with circles of metal.. He moves upwards, wrapping my neck and face tightly, leaving a slit against my lips to breathe through. With each inhalation I end up pull the plastic against my nose and further limiting my oxygen supply. I'm reduced to a small space in the blackness, concentrating hard on breathing. A pleasurable absence. He lifts my head and I feel the cushioned reassurance of a heavy collar locking in place. That changes things. I suddenly feel less like an emptied out thing, and more like a person, more like me. This is a little scary - the self-acknowledgement that I am a person, a feeling, thinking person, lifts me up and out of my reverie and into an appreciation for my position not as one of safety and deep, dark space, but as one of vulnerability. With the collar on I become his, certainly, and that's a good feeling but, like the doll he once made out of me, I'm a smooth, faceless, impassive manipulable surface that contains a sensitive, fragile body, along with my self and emotions. All wrapped up and unable to move. Just to experience whatever it is that he wants. I've given all that, all of me, over to him.

That's the first point when I started to get scared. At that moment, it was still the thrilling, uncertain adrenaline rush of wondering what was going to happen, of knowing there would be pain but really thinking about the pleasure. Of hoping to be fucked, toyed with, teased and used.

He picks me up and lays me down on my back, bending and binding my legs into a tight frog position, feet resting on each other, heels together below my open cunt. He lifts me up again, and I realise how immobile I am - I feel heavy, like a dead weight - I have no flexibility or control over my own position. He puts me down then secures my legs with rope, tying my thighs and feet tight to the bench. The pressure is quite intense now, starting to get painful aches of uncomfortably held positions, especially on a number of points where the rope cuts in. Whilst he's tying the cords, he lays a light cloth of some sort - I can't tell what - over my mouth and I'm shut off. I know that I can breathe through the fabric, so I'm able to quell my instant, panic response. But I can't breathe very well. I try to take it in my stride. Part of being a good girl, of trying to please him, is about taking what is handed out. If you can't take it with gratitude, keen and happy, then take it quietly and endure without being annoying. So I keep silently breathing. Waiting.

The next few minutes, and they can only have been minutes, I don't remember very well. They are a jumble of images, sensations and actions with no clear order to them, only that they kept on happening one after the other. The order that I'm writing is probably not the order in which they occurred - a lot was going on at the same time and my brain was not engaged in the act of noting them down precisely.

There were clover clamps on my nipples, which were held firm and pulled to tightness, like you would rein in a bucking horse. He slapped my cunt, in strong, repeated blows, increasing in force. It's a familiar action from him, something I expect but that doesn't make it any easier to deal with. Each time I think I can cope with it for longer, and each time I end up screaming before he stops. The first few blows are always exciting, pleasurable even in their intimate shock - blood rushes to the area and there's a part of me that recognises them as a precursor to fucking so I respond accordingly. He did fuck me, I remember he took my hand, after I'd pulled out of the plastic, and pressed it against his cock so I'd feel how hard (and how!) my struggles had made him. Mostly, I remember not being able to breathe. He kept stopping my breath. I don't remember how many times, but it is my enduring memory. At first, he used his hand, a finger and thumb clamped around my nose, holding me in and pushing down hard against my struggles.

This is what happens. At first, it's a nice feeling. His skin against my mouth, the excitement from being completely closed in. It's intimate, it's a game of trust and I like that. There's warmth, wetness and quiet as I am totally stopped up. Sealed. After a moment or so of enjoying this, I need to breathe, but I don't because I know I can't and also because I know I'm able to hold like this for a good few seconds. Calm, comfortable and confident in my ability to do so. I feel strong, secure, happy at being able to withstand and even enjoy this moment of submission. There's a buzzy high starting in my brain, and although I can still feel some of the ache in my legs, really my world is my mouth, nose and lungs. After a few moment more, I really need to breathe. There's a pressure growing in my mouth, throat, nose and lungs, it starts off like an acidic sensation, acrid and bad tasting. It's a pain that keeps going the longer I have to hold my breath. I've passed the point of doing this comfortably, I am now pushing myself to keep still, to take what he is doing to me even as I start to panic, realising that there is no give to this pressure. There is a burning heat in my lungs and no way to get it out of me. All of the muscles in my body start to clench with the effort of holding it in. And it is a holding in: even though what I most want to do is take in air, the act of breathing is an expansion of the chest so the sensation is horribly confused. I feel turned inside out. And all the time there is nowhere to go. I cannot do anything about it. I give in and start to struggle. I feel guilty about doing so - struggling is a failure on my part, a bad thing which demonstrates my weakness and my unworthiness. But I can't not. My body cannot take more of this and I'm deep in an animal response which desperately wants to claw out of these carefully made bindings and rip apart anything that stands between me and lungfuls of fresh, cool air. I thrash around, I scream and keep screaming. There's no rationality to what I'm doing. I know that my noises won't suddenly make him stop, I even know that the fact I'm still moving is a sign that I'm still alright, still able to take a little bit more. But I do it anyway. Because I literally cannot do anything other than this - the pain and pressure within me is driving me. The calm and control that I thought I had is long since lost, there is just internal agony and a blinding desire to breathe.

He lets go. I inhale, hugely. Oxygen is pure relief. I shake and gasp lungfuls of air as hard as I can manage.

He fucks me for a while then goes back to hitting me, or to pulling on the clamps. To stopping my breath. He takes a strip of plastic and tapes my mouth shut. Each time he stops my breathing it's harder, because I'm more tired, because I'm still reeling from the last time, because I am getting more scared and because I know that when I think I want to stop is never, ever when he will think I am ready to stop. The tape is over my mouth forever. I am a disorder of violent fear, of panicked confusion. I can't breathe. I really can't breathe and I'm in pure agony - part of me hoping that I will pass out but for some reason I'm still conscious. My screams are coming out of a raw throat, an aching chest. They do me no good because they use up air and energy but they are all I've got and the pain and panic has to go somewhere. My thrashes are huge now, erratic, wilder and without even the glimmer of trying to lie still and be a good submissive. Fuck that noise. I need to breathe. I know I'm fighting back, I know I've let him down but I need to breathe. My arms are slippery with sweat under the plastic and I can work a hand free to reach for the tape. He stops my hand and for a split second I let him, out of habit, out of hope that by doing this one last thing he will let me breathe. He doesn't. I press my fingers against the tape and cry out that I just can't do it any more. I've given up. I'm part sobbing, part sucking up air and all of me is in some kind of despair. I start to apologise, immediately, as he begins to remove the tape, the rope, the collar.

I feel awful. Misery washes over me as I hold myself in painful stillness - all of the deep aches in my legs return as he slowly peels off each bit of tape, cutting me free for what seems like eternity. I'm silent. I think that I should go home, and hide myself away for a while, until I'm worth all of this time and effort. I didn't manage to do it. I called out. Then, I'm surprised. He reaches his arms out to help me sit up and lets me fold myself against him. I rest my face against his chest and sob some little apologies into his skin. He strokes me hair, tells me that it's ok, that I'm a good girl and that he wanted to push me, that it was a hard thing to do and that he's happy with me. Relief floods over me as blood starts to return to my legs. I keep holding him tight, not wanting to let go. It's such a strange moment, to know that what you thought was weakness, giving up, was also a climax, an expected and desired result. That by trying and failing you have done well. It's akin to having those ugly parts of you admired. The things we are ashamed about lauded. It raises all of you up, realising that the time you thought yourself at your worst, you were not.