And when he looked up at her through tear-stained eyes, he saw fire.
"You scare the hell out of me," he said to her once as she held him after he took it for her. "And I am so in love with you."
It was Christmas Eve, and he was prepared to die for her.
She was in a hospital bed before him, in a coma. It had been ten days since the ice skating fall left her unconscious and lifeless.
He kneeled at her bedside, held her hand, and cried. Cried for the first time in months.
Cried for her to return, for her to hold him.
“I’ll do anything,” he said to her.
Silence in the room except for the slow, depressing beating of the heart monitor machine in the background.
He cried, and the tears from his face soaked her fingertips.
He remembered the time before. His tears were on her fingertips as she stroked his hair back between the torment. A soft kiss on his lips, her whispering, “You are my most precious angel, I love you.”
And he replied with a half sob, nodding when she asked him to take more.
She was a cruel, relentless and evil person.
He loved her more than life itself.
Cruelty for Angel was just a little streak, though. Ryan knew this more than anyone – he knew Angel as everyone did; the sweetest, most gentle and feminine creature alive.
The kind of girl that would bake cookies for him just to see him smile.
Sweet, gentle lovemaking, the kind where she held him and gasped softly into his ear, holding him and telling him she would never let go. Holding a kitten against her cheek with tears in her eyes on her 26th birthday.
Pink lipstick. Long dark hair in a big red bow. Short skirts and knee-highs, just to be cute. Eskimo kisses between snow fights.
And a long leather flogger.
“I love you,” he had said to her so many times as she giggled and held tight around his neck, pulling down on him like a child.
In thigh-high leather boots, standing over him with a glare, an intense gaze that made him shake all over until the words wouldn’t come anymore.
Gloved hand under his chin, Angel hissed at him, hissed order, humiliating and evil orders.
And Ryan shuddered, shuddered and begged but finally obeyed, crawling on hands and knees with lips to her feet. The sting of the whip on his tender flesh, his arms wrapped around her ankles.
And when he looked up at her through tear-stained eyes, he saw fire.
“You scare the hell out of me,” he said to her once as she held him after he took it for her. “And I am so in love with you.”
One time when she was holding him after her rampage of sadism had ended, she said softly into his hair, “I never feel as alive as I am when I do that to you. Nothing is so intense.”
“It scares me,” he replied after a long silence, “how cruel you can be. How lost you get in it. How you seem like you don’t ever want to stop…”
Ryan felt her grip tighten on him. Squeezing the breath right out of him, shuddering. He could hear her fighting back tears again. “Ryan, I love you. I would never…NEVER let anything happen to you…”
He looked up at her with those words and looked into her eyes.
She was indeed crying – crying at the mere image in her head. “I will always save you. Always. No matter how close it gets,” she paused and kissed him once, gently, on the lips, “I will be there, and you will be safe.”
Ryan said nothing for a long time, thinking.
And now, a year later, Ryan kneeled at her bedside begging her to come back. Begging like he had never begged before. He half sobbed and choked on his own words as he told her out loud that she was missing the best begging performance ever.
He squeezed her hand and looked at her placid, peaceful face. “You used to love to see me beg, Angel,” he said hoarsely.
Nothing.
I am such a miserable fuck, Ryan thought to himself, look at me.
He buried his head into the bed covers and cried again, realizing that without her, his life was shit. He regretted everything he had ever told her he would not do, every limit he imposed.
Only then did he realize he would do anything for Angel. She was his world.
Ryan remembered.
“No,” he said to her, pointing firmly. “Safeword. Red. Reindeer. Mercy. NO, Angel,”
His insistence obviously upset her. She sat on the couch, a defeated look on her face. A cross between a pout and a sneer. They were not in the middle of play – they were merely discussing the toy she had just bought.
A scuba tank and regulator. A mask. Rigged.
“I told you how I feel about breathing games,” Ryan paced.
“Please.” She said softly. Not looking at him. “Do it for me..just say you will, and I might not even go through with it. I just want to know…want to know you will take it for me.”
“No.” He was looking at a wall.
“I need it so bad, Ryan.”
“You are going to kill me, Angel. Is that want you want?”
“Trust me, I love you. Ryan, I could never let that happen to you. Just put…let me put it on you…”
“No fucking way.”
Angel cried. Ryan slept that night facing the other way in bed. When she curled up next to him, close to his body for warmth, he shuddered and pulled away.
The equipment sat in the back of the closet. She never spoke of it again.
And that fire in her eyes was gone.
Christmas Eve. Ryan shuffled through their apartment and everything still reminded him of her. It still smelled of her scent. He had tried everything; reading books to her, playing her favorite music. He had spent every free moment at the hospital at her side, talking to her. Pleading with her.
In a daze, he packed his gym bag. He took another novel, he tossed in a handful of her CDs that he had not yet played for her. He found her sentimental shoebox under the bed and pulled out his early love letters to her, cried a little when he read them, then put them in his bag to read to her later.
He went to the closet to get his coat and saw the box pushed far into the back corner.
Ryan froze. He looked away, then back. Without thinking, pondering, he reached into the closet for the tightly sealed unmarked box.
When Ryan arrived back at the hospital he found a note from Angel’s mother. She had been there all day with Angel and said she would be back first thing in the morning, and invited him to come over on Christmas Day if he was free. Her note was laced with sadness. She was losing hope, too, he could see it in her words.
Angel’s mother had put her in a Christmas dress, brushed out her long hair and even painted her nails. Ryan fought back the tears when he saw her – even in her lifeless state, she was the most beautiful, gentle creature. The thought of her never coming back devastated him. He could not fathom reality without her.
Ryan kneeled down next to the bed and spoke softly to her, begging her once more to come back. Her head remained turned the other way, her expression unchanged. He took her by the chin and turned her toward him.
“You can hear me, Angel, I know you can,” he said.
There was nothing from her.
Ryan lowered his head and sighed. No crying this time. He felt rational, calm. Determined.
The night was still young. Ryan lit a few candles, turned down the blinds so they could have some privacy. He pulled a chair close to the bed and picked up a small book.
He read “The Night Before Christmas” to Angel, and by the end was fighting back his own tears.
Ryan shut the door to her hospital room and turned down the lights even more. It was well past midnight on Christmas Eve, and he knew the staff was working with a very light crew. The chances of someone coming by to check on Angel were slim; they all knew he was there, sleeping curled up in a chair next to his girlfriend, hoping to have her in his arms Christmas morning.
Sentimental as they were, he knew the staff would leave him alone with her for the night. Leave him alone with his hopes.
Ryan took off his shoes and socks, removed his shirt, but kept his pants on. He knew how much she used to like to see him this way – how it provoked her.
“If you opened your eyes now, Angel,” he said to her, “You could see how good I looked. I’m waiting for you, I’m here for you.”
Ryan knew how her urges worked – for a week or two nothing, then suddenly she would have this overwhelming need to have him totally submit to her. To dress for her. To serve her. To be used by her. To be her complete slave and property.
To do things – scary things. Dangerous things.
Like the box.
His eyes fell on the box as he stood next to her bed. Her head was still turned slightly toward him. He was beginning to grow used to that look on her face – pale, expressionless. Distant.
Dead.
He shuddered, held his own arms with his hands, shut his eyes. “Angel,” he said, “If you love me…” he kneeled down next to the bed and took her hand into both of his, pausing. “If you love me, you will save me.”
Silence.
The slow, quiet beat of the heart monitor was all that existed in the room with him. Ryan lowered his head. It just seemed so obvious.
The feel of the handcuffs felt foreign to him. He held them, almost clumsily, looking around and finally pulling the wooden chair toward the bedside in her line of vision, should she open her eyes.
He realized he had never held them himself. She had always been the one to hold them, to put them on him. How many times she had locked them around his wrists at the beginning of a night, only to take him through a series of painful and humiliating challenges, ending the evening in his arms, showering him with tears and devotion.
How many times he had worn them. Tight, confining. Struggling against them and wanting free so bad. That paradox – the need for escape, for freedom, combined with that need to please her, to push her just a little more, to get her where she needed so desperately to go.
Ryan paced. He realized he wasn’t being logical. He needed order, a process. The way it would work. How he would lock himself up, render himself helpless, be helpless in the gear she had so much wanted to see him in.
Helpless. To the degree that he would die.
Unless she freed him.
Ryan remembered back to some of the times he and Angel had played. Indeed, she became relentless and cruel, almost a different person. But he always felt he could search through her eyes and find his way to her soul to communicate to her. To communicate his fear, his need. His desperation.
One time she’d forced this terribly uncomfortable latex gag into his mouth that made it nearly impossible for him to breathe. With her body pressed close to him as she fastened some shackles onto his wrists, he found himself writhing, helplessly, slipping so deeply that he felt he was free falling.
His mind had spun totally – dizzy, almost. Fear. Just the inability to speak or communicate, and when she came back into his view he saw his vision blur before his eyes. Tears.
Her hands were on his chin. So soft. Caressing his cheeks. “Are you ok, baby?”. Words so soft they could not come from such a creature.
He choked back what might have been a sob. Fear. He nodded but couldn’t look into her eyes.
She gave his chin a nudge to lift his eyes to her.
In her eyes, Ryan saw concern. Her own fear. Hunger. All intermixed. He could see it – he could almost smell it. Her need to keep going. Yet this torn pain in her eyes. It was killing her to see him so scared, yet it was turning her on immensely. He could feel that in the heat between her legs as she straddled his naked thigh.
He wanted to sob more out of confusion and frustration.
“I’ll stop…” she blinked and looked away, then down, shutting her eyes, breathing deep.
He shook his head hard, abrupt. No, he thought, no, I have gone this far. I have to finish this.
Angel looked at him, slowly, and into his eyes. “Do you want me to stop, Ryan?” she asked. That firm voice. The serious voice, he called it. When she stepped back out of her dominant self and checked on him.
He shook his head, no. Swallowing hard, only seeing her eyes for a moment as she gave him a half nod, then got up and left the room to get something. More toys. More devices. More pain. More humiliation. More torture.
Left alone, he threw his head back, looked at the ceiling. Pondered his helpless, desperate and pathetic state. How could I do this to myself, he asked himself.
I love her so much. If seeing her happy meant stripping down every last bit of his pride, so be it. Damn roses, damn jewelry, damn brand new fucking BMWs. Angel had the greatest gift of all. He was being cynical almost, and his conscience cursed himself for a moment before he realized just why he could do this for her.
Because she never took him for granted. And never took his suffering for granted, either.
“This is my fault, isn’t it?” Ryan wondered out loud next to Angel’s hospital bed on Christmas Eve. “Is it because I took you for granted?”
Ryan lowered his head and squeezed her hand. So many times had she held him so securely, sobbing into his arms after he had allowed her to do unthinkable things to him.
“I don’t deserve that from you,” she sobbed. “You give me so much. You are the most beautiful thing in my life.”
“It’s ok,” He had gotten used to saying. A ritual. Coming down. Sometimes it hit her hard after she did those things to him, where he would need to hold her until she cried herself to sleep, just telling her over and over again that he loved her and the things she did were ok.
And they would be closer than they had ever been from simply making love. So he loved those games, even though he hated them at the same time. They were like a dangerous drug to him – he would avoid them, nervous, but she would seduce him with it and he would be caught in the web when it was too late to escape, and the downward spiral would begin.
And down he would go, plummeting to what felt like the death of his soul, his pride.
But Angel was always there waiting for him. To carry him through, and to bring him back.
Finally, Ryan realized he was procrastinating. Pacing in her hospital room, handcuffs in his hand. She still lay there lifeless on the hospital bed in a coma, and nothing had changed.
But Ryan was stalling.
It made him laugh, softly, out loud, because he remembered times when Angel had accused him of stalling. He knew she wanted to play, and he agreed, but he kept making up excuses to put it off a little longer.
“Can I finish watching the end of this movie?”
“I need to make one quick phone call before it gets too late.”
“I better get my clothes out for tomorrow, I will be too tired in the morning to deal with it…”
And Angel just laughed, arms folded. Her toys were already sorted. She had gone through them again and again in anticipation, much like a kid that took an hour to set up a board game because his favorite uncle finally agreed to play with him. As if the setup itself was as fun as the actual game.
And Ryan went reluctantly, like a prisoner to an execution, hands up in defeat as Angel pushed him toward the bedroom. “No more stalling!” she told him, and the door would close with a loud “CLICK.”
Ryan wasn’t a diver, but he knew enough about scuba gear to figure out the equipment. There were some photocopied instructions in the box with the regulator and tank, obviously something handmaid by a breath-control enthusiast, outlining the do’s and don’ts of rigged scuba gear.
Ryan sat reading it, the room silent except for the hospital noises around him. “I can’t believe I am doing this,” he said out loud, closing the papers and setting them on the table.
Then he looked at Angel, one last time. “Yes, I can.”
Ryan got up, walked over, and kneeled down next to the bed. He took her by the hand and kissed her on the head. “Save me. Please, save me, Mistress.”
And from there, he set up what would be his own execution should she not wake up from her coma.
The strong, wooden chair faced her bed on the side, it’s back toward the hospital room window.
The oxygen tank was next to the chair, tubes running up toward the chair.
Ryan sat there, first duct taping his ankles to the legs of the chair, secure enough that he wouldn’t be able to get out of it without scissors.
The regulator posed more of a problem, for he needed a way to make it impossible to get off of his face. As much as he detested duct tape, it was all he had to use. Fumbling, his hands shaking, he secured the regulator into his mouth, nose clamped shut, and wrapped the tape securely around his head over and over, making sure there was no way, without two free hands, he would be able to get it out of his mouth.
He wrapped more duct tape around his torso, behind the chair, to make sure he could not lean forward at all. With the hose to the regulator dangling free, he still breathed normal air, until he leaned to the tank as best he could and read the meter.
Fifteen minutes, the tank read, and then no more air for him to breathe. He locked the regulator hose to the tank and fastened it secure, opened the valve so he could breathe the air from the tank. To be sure, he taped the hose to the tank so he couldn’t yank it free.
I must be insane, he said to himself.
Or really, really, in love.
And so it came to be. Ryan sat in the chair, breathing what felt like fake air. The handcuffs felt cold in his hands as he leaned forward what he could, setting the key on the table next to Angel’s head. The key sat alone on the white countertop, and he pointed the lamp down toward it enough that it was the only thing in the room that was illuminated.
So if Angel were to wake up, she would see it. Right away.
Ryan sat back in the chair and reached around behind his back, the handcuffs dangling. He locked the first cuff around his left wrists then shut his eyes.
This was it, he told himself. This was really it. Fifteen minutes before he would suffocate. Fifteen minutes before he would die.
His vision blurred as he stared at her lifeless form laying peacefully before him.
The click was loud. And instead of doing it slowly, a little at a time, he had forced the second cuff on tight. Too tight.
Silence. All he could hear was the beating of her heart monitor machine, and the hissing of the tank that held all the air he had left to breathe.
Within seconds, he was bombarded with thoughts that terrified him. What if the tank was wrong, and there were only 5 minutes of air left. Not that ten more minutes would matter, would it?
What if..what if Angel, in her coma, didn’t know he was even there? Unable to talk or beg, he couldn’t show her he was close to death. With her eyes closed, she had no idea he was even there. Sure, maybe she could hear, but he could make no sound!
There was no safety net. He had not set up a way out should he change his mind. He shook his head hard, cursing himself, reminding himself that suicide was suicide, that to set up a safety net would defeat the purpose.
No, he needed her. Angel. He needed her to save him.
But in doing such a thorough job in setting up his timed demise, he’d forgotten one thing. He had no way to communicate with her.
A few precious minutes ticked by, and Ryan sat staring at her, imploring her to open her eyes. Begging in his mind for her to see him, to hear him, speaking to her. His vision blurred, the tears came. Out of curiosity, he tested the regulator, pushed with his tongue to see if it would come loose. It didn’t budge. He’d really done a thorough job.
Oh, Angel, he thought to himself, you would be so proud.
Choking back sobs, he shook his head and his hair fell into his face. He moaned out loud, then whimpered, and begged her. He begged with his eyes. As if her eyes were open and gazing into his.
He gave her the look that had worked so many times. The please stop look, the I have had enough..the hold me look.
Safeword, safeword, safeword.
He kept thinking that word.
Angel, listen to me.
Nothing.
At twelve minutes he felt it. His heart started to pound. He had to work to breathe. The chair started to creak because he was struggling. Yes, he changed his mind. This wasn’t a good idea.
His wrists ached from the cuffs, and he felt them piercing into his skin as he rubbed them back and forth. His ankles would not even move. He eyed the key on the bedside table, calculating the possibility of tipping the chair over, getting to the key with his mouth.
But he knew that was nearly impossible. So many times had he played escape games with Angel (oh how she loved to watch!) he knew that the chair would hold him to the floor, and without the use of his teeth because of the regulator, it would be impossible to get the key.
Instead, he sat helplessly looking at her with begging eyes, whimpering until his voice started to get caught in his throat simply because the air was not there for it.
And he thought, oh god, this is it I’m going to die. Angel, I’m going someplace, and you aren’t even there yet.
He threw his head back, for the first time breaking his gaze at her, and held still, because for some reason it was the only position that seemed to give him those last precious bits of air.
A momentary lapse into darkness, he snapped awake and lifted his head. Bangs were wet and stuck to his head. His ears were pounding. For a brief second, he thought it was all a bad dream.
But then he saw her, he realized there was no air left to breathe, and he felt his own heart feeling like it was going to burst inside his chest.
He wanted to scream her name but could do nothing. She had not moved an inch. Her eyelashes hadn’t even fluttered. The heart monitor remained stable (unlike his, which was throbbing incessantly in his head, threatening to deafen him).
So peaceful. She laid back and enjoyed his demise. Tears stung his eyes. This is it, I am going to die, and you don’t care.
You never cared.
Choking. He rocked the chair but had no strength left. He talked to God. God, I changed my mind. This was a bad idea.
He wailed for nurses, but the Christmas music was blaring and no one heard.
Eyes stinging, he struggled to breathe anything left, and when he felt his own heart stop, he saw her eyes slowly open and meet his.
Then nothing.
Her body was wracked with pain and her head was clouded, yet she saw him there, and her instincts were screaming something at her that she couldn’t comprehend.
Her mind screamed it, but the words wouldn’t come when she tried to shout them, “Ryan, what are you DOING?!”
When she sat up in bed, she inadvertently ripped the IV from her arm, screamed in pain. From outside the hospital room, nurses turned to try to peer in between the closed blinds, not believing what they had heard.
And when they burst into the room, they saw her holding his lifeless body in the chair, sobbing, and none of them could even begin to make sense out of the situation.
Of course, Angel couldn’t put anything into words. She still couldn’t speak, but she knew at once what he had done. But her body wouldn’t respond, none of her muscles would work. The words were clear as day in her head, but they came out in a series of inaudible sobs and grunts.
It was all a dazed blur to her – a room full of nurses, then doctors. Medical scissors cutting through duct tape, a drained regular replaced with an oxygen mask.
And worst of all, she had no idea where she was or how she got there. She just remembered how warm his nose felt on the ice rink, how she’d bribed him into buying her a soda at the concessions stand, and how her thoughts of him filled her with warmth while she waited for him to return.
A catch in the ice, a sudden, not-so-unfamiliar loss of balance, a few gasps of fear, and then, blackness.
Tears on her fingertips. Still images in her head of the ice beneath her. His tears on her fingertips, frozen. Crystal tears.
The nurses were holding her down but she was screaming. Screaming because she saw the flatline on the monitor they had hooked up to his heart. Screaming because it all made sense to her now – the way he was dressed (just how she had made him when they played) – the equipment that he had ordered her to put away. The duct tape. The handcuffs.
And she heard the word in her head. Safeword. Over and over.
She was sobbing, uncontrollable tears, screaming at the corpse that was her boyfriend, and the words suddenly, without warning, came back to her. “You aren’t allowed to do this to me!” she screamed.
“Angel, lay down, stop,” one of the nurses was saying to her.
“How can I save you,” she sobbed, “When you do this to me?!”
When she looked into the eyes of the stern, concerned woman in white above her, it all seemed to clear to her but no one seemed to understand. “Let me go, I need to talk to him!”
The fight became more intense, more desperate. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the doctor shaking his head, the lifeless body of her boyfriend under him on a stretcher, wrists still locked behind him in the steel handcuffs she had first used on him so long before.
Then they were taking him away – out of the room – and she screamed. Angel shut her eyes and screamed his name.
She heard the nurse call for a sedative as she clawed toward the end of the bed to follow where they were taking Ryan, and when they wrestled back even harder, she threw herself back. Away. Defiant.
Angel slipped out of their grip and plunged toward the floor, her head hitting the nightstand hard. Her fingers caught the key, and as her vision blurred she held it to her, but by the time she hit the floor there was nothing but darkness.
Laying on the ice, when her eyes flickered open she saw his face first. Ryan, concerned, holding her head in his hands. Ice skaters lingered in the background.
A huge bright light came from behind him, the sun blinding her.
“Angel,” he said as he squeezed her hand. “Are you ok?”
Angel blinked and felt tears slipping from her eyes, tears that promptly turned crystal from the cold just as they hit the ice.
Words wouldn’t come. She saw the light behind him and shuddered only slightly. The ice beneath her was freezing but she was so warm. Too warm.
Ryan wrapped her up in his coat and helped her to her feet, pulling her close to him and whispering, “I thought I’d lost you forever.”
Angel still couldn’t put any words together as she let him lead her off the ice.
They were alone, suddenly, and she struggled to keep her eyes open. Her feet didn’t move but she was moving, and all she could hear was his breath against her cheek.
“Everything is ok now,” Ryan said to her. “We’re together.”
(c) Copyright 1996, 2021 Akasha
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