Her Darling

"Where are you, my darling?" she said, peeking around the door.

There was no answer.

She walked into the room, allowing her eyes time to adjust to the dim light. Oh, he was being crafty again today. He was hiding from her. He must be.

"Are you hiding, my darling?" She crept through the room, looking under the furniture. "I think you must be hiding."

He was nowhere to be found. She became slightly cross. She did not have time for silly games now. Mumsy and Poppa would be there in just an hour, and she'd wanted some quiet time with her darling before they arrived.

"My darling," she called out again, "you really must stop this at once. I have plans this evening, and have no time to--" Her foot struck something soft. She looked down.

It was her darling. On closer examination, she discovered he had died.

"Oh, my darling," a tear ran down her face. "How did this--"

Then she remembered. It was when Mopsie and Kitten had come over the other night. Yes, that was it. They'd had vodka and hashish, and Mopsie had brought some PCP.

"Oh, I remember now," she said. "It was after we'd smoked the hashish. We'd finished the vodka, and the PCP hadn't come on just yet. Kitten was complaining that she hadn't had sex in so long, and Mopsie was just beginning another of her tiresome lectures on the benefits of bi-curious experimentation, when I mentioned you, my darling." She gestured lovingly at the corpse of the young man chained at her feet. "You'd been so much fun, it seemed rude not to share you with two of my most bosom friends." She nodded, smiling in fond remembrance. "It was fun at first. You'd stopped fighting me weeks earlier, you took to the psychological conditioning rather quickly, and Kitten was simply having the most lovely time with you. I seem to remember Mopsie being awfully anxious to have a turn as well."

Her mood turned somber as she struggled to remember more of the night. "Hmm. That must have been right about when the PCP kicked in, because I don't remember much after that." She looked down at him with detached regret. "Oh, dear me. We must have done something dreadful to you, my darling."

She sighed and then shrugged. "Nothing for it but to mulch you and burn you, I guess."

She walked out of the hidden slave room, into the main part of the apartment, still talking. "I'll have to cancel with Mumsy and Poppa, of course."

She went to her bedroom, opening the closet and selecting her trashiest outfit. "I'll be a while out at the bars if I'm to find a new darling." She stopped, finger to her lips, considering something. "Perhaps I'll ask Mopsie and Kitten to help me condition the next one. Mopsie always gets the best psychotropic drugs, and Kitten is just so good with people."

And then she set about the task of disposing of the body, humming a cheerful tune all the while.