Time Out (NSFW)

This was her new go-to fantasy. She wasn't sure when it started but it had come to consume her "secret time". She'd be put in time-out nude, in front of everyone, and be made to stand there silently for as long as they said. Her body would be criticized for the slightest imperfections - a horror at her bloated age of 47 - and any other criticisms hurled at her she'd have to hear and endure. "Please, oh, please, put me in time-out!"

The obsession had gotten to the point where it disturbed her. She had to know why. Sitting alone with her misery and afternoon drink after a rough outing of shopping (not that shopping is rough!) she mustered up the courage to finally answer herself. "Time." Time itself was the problem. She had too much of it! It had come to squeeze her like a large descending weight from which she could not get out from under. And so, on the inside, she blew out.

If life continued like this, then her lifelong calculations had been wrong. She knew she could never make it on her own, a mere working girl without status, forced to find herself. No, the homecoming queen needed the praise to keep flowing in like an irresistible drug. She made her great escape from the world hooking a high dollar marriage from a college classmate. Right or wrong, she had to have that.

At first she resisted the chains, yearning to break free - and she knew the longer she waited the higher the price of freedom. An exquisite agony, that time. She wished the pain to depart but she knew as long as she felt that pain, she was still alive, still fighting, still on the side of the angels. Then one day she could fight no more - and gave in to the idea of having children.

After that, everything became "for the children". She had no time for pain anymore, children must be looked after! They were the perfect excuse for putting her life on hold, an excuse with which no one could argue. Like a vampire she fed off their lives - all the while fearing they'd learn to live as she had not. She carried much guilt from that time. "I put my children first. Isn't that what a mother's supposed to do?" she argued.

"Hi, Mom!"

Life rejected her arguments. The children are gone. What are going to do with your time? The questions are only going to get louder! Who are you? Do you even belong here? What have you really been doing with your life? There can be no exemptions!

But to answer those questions was unthinkable. Her head grew heavy, weary of the constant carping. If she dare go to sleep her worst nightmares came true in the dark, the weight of time crushing her in totality. She thought she'd been so clever, outsmarting the world and its endless cruelties, living off money from an enslaved male. But life itself is never deceived, the day of reckoning delayed but never ducked. She gave up fighting for the angels.

Touching herself, she imagined what would be said about "the fat cow in the corner." "She really is good for nothing. Pinch her butt and make her moo!" "Yes, she should entertain us somehow. All she does is shop and drink!" A laughing, derisive friend would write "Dumb cunt" on her clever back. They'd use her for practice kicking a soccer ball. She'd be left there for hours, for everyone to see and know.

"Yes, yes. Please do!" she moaned in relief.

A character actress in public, she was a star of the artificial world. The retail servants believed her lovely lies, never suspecting money could not cure the ills of their lives (everyone needs a god!). But what would the Nordstrom cashier think of the rich bitch in corner time? She'd kick the soccer ball the hardest. Anyone not happy with money should be punished! The game goes on, the chains stay on everywhere you look.

Oh, put a sock in it.

At one point, before the children, she'd tried blogging (she was an English major, after all) at an open writing site. She got some positive feedback and that excited her, taking a few tentative steps toward having an identity. But that dream seemed too far off, too fantastical to be true. She also realized that to keep writing she'd be revealing much of herself - and that she feared to face. In the end, she turned hostile to any compliments paid her, slamming the door shut insisting she was talentless and chasing a false star.

The secret time over, she must find a way to resume her posture like a good soldier, always pretending, pretending, pretending. Emotions don't exist. Needs are a myth. The army of the dead has no eyes nor ears, marching on to a fate it dare not admit (and furiously attacks anyone who does). All hail the glorious death of the dishonest!

***

Her husband stopped at an internet cafe on the way home from work. He too needed his secret time. Seeing a link for the trailer for the buzzing new kink movie coming out, he clicked it with relished anticipation. "Come on! Get to the good part!" There had only been a few flashes of his fantasy, but that was enough. However minimal, he had to make the connection to that world, to grab a few gasps of air. He knew his wife would rather die than ever do something unconventional and unapproved.

That night on TV came the story of how the trailer for the kink movie was "too hot" to be shown. The proper couple reacted properly.

"That sort of filth should be banned! Think of the children. Society sinks lower every day!"

"I can't understand why anyone would want to see that crap. It's just sick, a bunch of weirdos who don't know how to express themselves honestly. That's not what God wants!"

But it was what they wanted, horrified though they be to see their innermost desires displayed on the big screen for all to see and know. They stood frozen in the kitchen, righteous in their anger for all the world to see, propagating before God. Oh, how could anyone (not) know?