The Book of Revelation Read Online Free Page A

was, in that white room, his wrists and ankles shackled.
    Even in his dreams there was a part of him that knew.
    •
    Waking in darkness, not knowing where he was. Then noticing a faint light falling from the window high above. Landing on his body, soft as snow.
    Night now.
    He lay still and listened. There were no sounds coming from outside. No police siren in the distance, no drunk man singing—nothing.
    Knowing nothing, and then remembering. The smell of rubber. Thin. Almost comforting. The cold grip of the stainless steel. The delicate, metallic chinking of the chain’s links shifting as he turned over. . . .
    After the women were done with him, after they had finished, they adjusted the rings so as to give him more freedom of movement. By sliding the rings along their rails, he found that he could alter the position in which he slept. He could lie on his stomach, if he wanted. Or turn on to his side. He could bring his hands close to his face or draw his knees up towards his chest. He was freer, but not free.
    What had that woman said?
    You’re ours now. You belong to us.
    He felt nothing but shame and humiliation. No, wait. That wasn’t entirely true. There had been another feeling there, a feeling that lurked behind the others, shadowy and sly—insidious: a feeling of excitement. . . .
    Once he had an erection, it had taken him almost no time at all to come, the sperm seeming to leap out of him, to catapult across his stomach. The women had taken it in turns to lick him clean, bending over him with warm, wet tongues. They had even argued over who should have the cloudy pearl of liquid that had formed at the tip of his penis, the last remaining evidence of orgasm. There had been a moment when he tried to say something, but one of the women put a hand over his mouth, a hand on which he could faintly smell himself.
    “No, don’t talk. You’ll spoil it.”
    Afterwards, he needed to urinate. This time they chose not to take him to the toilet. Perhaps they were afraid that it might break the spell. Instead, they allowed him to use a metal bedpan, which they had brought into the room with them.
    Later, they removed his clothes completely and washed him, every part of him. He felt as if he was in a painting, the darkness all around him, a tin bowl full to the brim with water, his naked body, and everything lit by candles. Shadows jostled on the walls, like people who had been drawn to the event. Like crowds.
    When the women had dried him, they dressed him in clean clothes, then slipped a pillow underneath his head. They left the room in silence, blowing out the candles as they closed the door.
    “Sleep now,” he heard one of them say.
    •
    He woke again at first light. He was lying on his side, one hand under his cheek. Two or three drops of candle-wax had landed on the floorboards close to him; they could have been old coins, coins that had been handled for so many years that they had been worn quite smooth. He looked down at his body. He was wearing a white T-shirt and white underpants. They were not his clothes. The events of the night came back to him, and he felt a sudden queasy hollowness in the pit of his stomach. He had allowed the women to do exactly as they wished. He had submitted without an argument, without a struggle. What sort of man is it, he thought, who just submits?
    He turned on to his back and watched a cloud drift through the skylight. There was another dimension to what had happened too, a dimension that was even harder to acknowledge: the excitement he had felt, despite himself. Had the women identified some kind of need in him? Had he tacitly encouraged them? Was he, in some fundamental sense, responsible for all this?
    This was a version of himself that he didn’t recognise.
    Perhaps, in the end, he had simply been taking the path of least resistance.
    He still had not decided what he thought when the door opened and a woman appeared. She was carrying the bowl they had used for