Narthex: A Progressive Novel

 

Narthex Prologue: The Sadist's Pain

Ray sat on his hotel bed and looked out of the window. The lights were not on because when he got back to the room it felt like another migraine was starting- didn't those used to be like three months apart? He just threw the duffle bag down on the bed and had a lie down beside it. Upon awaking, he was disconcerted to find himself cradling it like a lover.
It was the twilight of Christmas Eve and Ray had finally decided not to call his family even though the headache had receded after his rest. He just didn't feel like making up some story as to why he was in Tokyo. Instead he imagined what the conversation might have been like, long after he'd swung his legs over the side of the bed and assumed a slightly hunched sitting position, feeling like he should go eat something but lacking any real desire to do so.
As he gazed from his upmarket room he noticed something strange in the brightly lit window of what appeared to be another hotel directly across the way. Something green and luminous- a Christmas tree, of course. But that was odd. Though Asian people went for all the glitz and gloss of Christmas ornaments in thoroughfares and department stores, and some even brought it into their homes, he didn't think they'd go so far as to decorate a hotel room.
Things were cleared up when a fair haired Western woman appeared next to it holding a shiny red ball, visible only as a glint of scarlet light. Though he couldn't make out the tone of her skin under the circumstances, her bright wave of blonde hair was unmistakable. In a short time, she'd made several trips offstage to the right and had reappeared each time to place something else upon the tree, finishing with the angel. She then disappeared for a longer time, to reappear at the window drinking a cup of coffee in an apparent mood of contemplation. She appeared to be alone.
Ray didn't concentrate on her explicitly through all these proceedings but his eyes distractedly focussed on her as she caused him to ponder what an alien environment he was in, so far from Illinois and just before Christmas too. His lifestyle as a professional bondage and discipline dominant had alienated him from mom and apple pie and carols and many other such cultural keystones but still, to see that there was someone just across the street who he could well walk up to and hold a conversation with about Gumby And Pokey or Rocky And Bullwinkle or some other verbal secret handshake comforted him.
With the same eye that he used to quickly analyse and evaluate a new client upon first face-to-face meeting so that he might know best what they wanted from him, he had already calculated her floor and the number of windows removed from the left side of the building her room was. He could go and knock, invite her to dinner, perhaps have a date that would involve some conversation and not conclude with him either beating or selfishly f**king someone who was so convinced that they deserved punishment and pain that they would pay him to inflict it. It wasn't that he didn't enjoy it, but now that it had been his work for the better part of a decade, it had gotten so dry and formulaic.
He was good at it though, and an underground fetish site had listed him amongst the top five masters working. But as impressive a boast as it was in his circles that his reputation was such that he was regularly hired over the internet by wealthy professional business woman (and the occassional business man, but the rates went up and Ray only consented for transvestites) in such locales as Japan and Europe to fly over and work his methods, he had a feeling that there was a chance it would not go over well with the lady across the street.
Reminiscing about Rocky And Bullwinkle was a permenantly closed door it seemed. Ray's eyes went back to the woman's cup and he wondered if she really was drinking coffee or perhaps hot chocolate. He could never let the clients find out that he liked to drink one himself of an evening. He liked that Swiss Miss stuff but hadn't thought to bring any and so would do without tonight.
Eventually the woman's light went out. There was a sigh.