Sarah was calling for him now, so turning, he headed upstairs. He wondered if Helen had ever enjoyed such simple pleasures. Who was out there for her?
80
Helen cried out in pain and her body slumped forward. The impact of the blow had temporarily winded her and for a moment she struggled to breathe. But then the feeling subsided, though her heart was already thundering out a terrifying rhythm.
Max Paine raised the paddle and brought it down hard on her back. Helen bucked fiercely but straightaway ordered him to strike again. He obliged, harder this time, and Helen felt it go right through, piercing pain from her temples to her feet and back again. But still it wasn’t enough.
She couldn’t dispel those familiar feelings of hopelessness tonight. Was this because Max was new to her? Because she wasn’t comfortable in his presence? There was an edge to things tonight for sure. He seemed in a heightened, energized mood, barely bothering to conceal the lines of cocaine he took in the back room before their session, and Helen’s instincts told her that he enjoyed looking at her. He kept a professionalface on at all times, playing the role he was paid for, but she could feel his eyes on her nevertheless, tracing the contours of her body as he no doubt asked himself questions about the many abrasions and scars that covered her.
“Again.”
Why couldn’t she stopthinkingtonight? Why couldn’t she relax into it, as she had done with Jake so many times previously? Why did she suddenly feel self-conscious and stupid, parading herself in her underwear for a man she neither knew nor cared for? Was she really thatlost?
The paddle slammed into her back once more, pushing her hard against the wall. Max seemed not to be waiting for instructions anymore, and as Helen regained her footing, the paddle struck again. Helen closed her eyes and swallowed the pain. She wanted this to work. So gritting her teeth, she took the beating, hoping that Max could drive her dark thoughts away. For an hour or two at least, she needed to be free of the world and, more important, free of herself.
81
It was raining. The sun was high in the sky, beating down on her, yet still she was gettingsoaked. The rain swirled around her, saturating her clothes, getting in her ears and eyes, dripping from her hair. Where had this sudden storm come from? And why was she the only one getting wet? None of it made any sense.
The cloud seemed to be hovering directly above her, shadowing her every move. It was as if it had been created just for her. She tried to run away from it but now realized she was horizontal, her legs moving ineffectually back and forth in thick, heavy mud where she lay. The more it rained, the more the mud clung to her. Her legs felt so heavy. Soon she wouldn’t have the strength to move at all.
Then as suddenly as it had started, the rain stopped. And in the aftermath she drank in that smell—the bitter, dank aroma that storms leave before the ground dries off and the deluge is forgotten. But this rain smelled different. What was it that made it smell so odd? It smelled like petrol or...
Now Agnieszka knew she was dreaming. She had kind of known it all along, but it had been so vivid that for a while she had gone with it, indulging herself in the harmless craziness of it all. She didn’t want to remain in this space anymore, but part of her didn’t want to wake either. She had had a hard day—there was precious little respite in this job—and she didn’t want to be back in the real world just yet. But something was tugging at her now, forcing her awake. It was that smell, so strong, so suffocating, so sharp...
And a noise too now. Like an overflowing water pipe dropping its load on concrete paving. Splatter, splatter, splatter. No, not that. It was liquid bouncing off leather. The leather she was lying on.
Through her grogginess, she remembered now that she had been watchingBreaking Badon the TV. She remembered the episode finishing but little after that—she must have fallen asleep on the old leather sofa. Sitting up, she shook her head, trying to dispel her curious dream. And as she did so, she felt her wet hair swing round and stick to her face. Opening her eyes, she realized that she was saturated. But not with water. With something much worse. The smell of paraffin was overpowering, filling the small room completely.
Blinking furiously, she tried to make sense of what was happening. The paraffin ran off her, off the sofa onto the floor below. Across the room there was a figure. In the gloom she couldn’t make out his face, his head shrouded in a dark hoodie. She tried to call to him, but no words came out. And now she saw something in his hand. She blinked again and looked closer. And as he came toward her, she saw it. It was a match. He had a lit match in his hand.
She watched it leave his hand, somersaulting slowly through the air on its way toward the sofa. She could see it but was powerless to stop it. And as it made contact with the soft leather, the entire room seemed to burst into flames.
82
She couldn’t breathe now. The blows were raining down on her, faster and faster, depriving her of the time to recover and robbing her of oxygen.
“Stop.”
It came out as no more than a whisper—that was all she could muster. Max Paine raised the paddle and brought it down again. Helen’s whole body swung forward with the impact, her chest crunching into the wall.
“Stop!”she repeated, finding the breath from somewhere to raise her volume.
“You don’t want me to stop,” Max called back, delivering another duo of heavy blows.
This had stopped being enjoyable some time ago. Helen had come here for relief but had found none and their encounter was now turning into a beating.
“Stopright now,” she gasped.
“Beg me,” he replied aggressively. “Beg me to stop.”
“I want you to stop.”
“Beg me!”he screamed, raising the paddle threateningly.
“Release,” Helen finally gasped. This was their code word for a full cessation of their session. In a pursuit where consent can be a gray area, where people sometimes protest in the hope of incurringmorepunishment, it was vital to have a code word that would bring proceedings to a sudden close. It was standard practice in any S&M scenario, and Helen was glad to have uttered it.
The next blow caught her completely by surprise and she cannoned into the wall at speed.
