Title: Politics of Pain `Here's fine.' The cab driver shrugged. He had picked the fare up in the middle of nowhere. Now he was dropping them off in the middle of nowhere. Well, not quite nowhere. But not a place he'd like to be at this time of night. Still, a fare's a fare and as long as they paid, it wasn't his business. He took the notes he was handed and almost smiled at the instruction to `keep the change'. He doubted the passenger in the back seat had even registered what the fare was. This was his best tip since…well, ever. ************ `Come in.' The woman was waiting in the doorway, and she closed and locked it when they were both inside. There was no small talk. Just a few minutes silent wait while her client stripped. Sometimes, the clothing still bore the White House ID tag, sometimes it had been removed before the client arrived. But the face was recognisable from the TV. Even without the name tag, she knew who her client was. And they knew she knew. It didn't matter. They paid. Like the cab driver, she didn't care who they were. She just charged a little more for her time and skills. Wealthy industrialist, politician, TV star. They all came for one thing. And she made sure they got what they paid for. She had maybe a dozen clients who she saw, some regularly, some only maybe once or twice a year. But she knew them all intimately. It was impossible not to. They exposed more than their bodies to her. Before they left her, they exposed their souls. *********** Preparing the room took time. The low lighting, the right temperature – once the endorphins wore off, they would need to be warm until they were ready to dress and leave – and the right equipment and furniture. Some preferred to lean over a table. Others needed to be restrained. Her small client list ensured she remembered exactly what each client's requirements were, however long it was between visits. If she had a `favorite' client, it was not this one. She wasn't sure why they returned time after time. She prided herself on, almost without exception, being able to work out their reasons for needing the kind of release she gave them. This one was the exception. Still, she reasoned, she didn't have to like the clients. In fact, she knew she was able to feel much less involved in their pain if she wasn't thinking about their feelings while she was standing over them. ************ She unfolded the rubber-coated switch. It's sting was instantly sharp, but, in her skilled hands, it left marks which would have all but faded by the morning, leaving only a dull ache in their place. She asked: `Ready?' and saw the shoulders heave as her client took a deep breath. `Yes.' The whispered reply would be the only quiet sound her client would make until she had finished and was waiting for them to dress and leave. The switch whistled through the air and she brought it down with a practised force onto the exposed flesh. The hiss of suppressed pain was replaced with a full-throated scream by the time the tenth stroke landed on the heavily-marked pale flesh. After a dozen more strokes she heard: `Jed.' She stopped in mid-stroke, laying the switch on the table beside her client. Over the years, she had learned to listen out for the clients' preferred safe word even through their screams. She wondered if this client knew how popular that particular safe word was. ************ She left the client alone to recover and dress, and would only return when they opened the connecting door between the room they were in and the room where she waited for them. After she let the client out of the door they had come in by, she would pour herself a glass of wine and have a bath, soaking away the sweat and tension she had accumulated during the half hour or so she had been working. ************ The taxi cab stopped and the bedraggled figure, rain-soaked and shivering, climbed slowly in, hissing through gritted teeth as they dropped onto the leather seat. The cab driver glanced briefly at the face in the mirror, frowning as he tried to work out who the passenger was. But, he reasoned, if it was someone famous, they were probably not gonna want to discuss what they were doing in this neighborhood at eleven-thirty. So he kept quiet, and was pleased when his silence was rewarded with a healthy tip on the fare. *********** Lying in the bath, soaking the tension away, the woman her clients, if they spoke to her at all, called `Mistress Catherine' wondered when she would see the client again. And what had made them visit this time, after a gap of several months. She let out a contented sigh as she let her thoughts drift to what she would do with the money she had just earned. End Home Return to the X-Files Fic Index Return to the West Wing Fic Index