The Obedient Doll Who Stopped Sighing

Dry mouth, a headache, a thick daze that keeps me from thinking. That is all I can feel when I come to. Where am I? What happened? They are questions I ask myself, although I learned long ago that knowing or not knowing changes absolutely nothing about what is happening and what is to come.

My body jerks on instinct. Senses on alert demand answers, my heart pounds, my skin prickles, everything on the verge of collapse. I want to scream, but something thick fills my mouth and silences me. I want to open my eyes, and I discover that a tight cloth covers them. I can’t see anything. I only feel: cool air over bare skin, a damp spot between my legs, the question repeating itself without an answer.

I move my hands to touch myself and understand where that chill is coming from, but something digs into my wrists and stops me. My legs respond on their own too and find a limit as well: straps at the ankles, fixed, immovable. An accident? Am I injured? A hospital? Every hypothesis one might imagine, and none would ever come close to the reality I was living.

—I think the doll has woken up —says a voice.

It is a heavy voice, deep, male. It is not the voice of the man I was with. And in that instant a flash of lucidity brings back a memory from before, of the last thing I experienced while awake. Yes, I was with him. With… with Damián.

I want to scream his name. I want to tell him I’m here, to explain to me what the hell is going on. But that gag lodged in my mouth reminds me once again that I am no longer allowed to speak.

—She’s dazed, but that’s normal —says a second voice—. Once she understands what’s going to happen…

That voice. That’s Damián’s. I tell myself with a knot in my stomach. The man who promised me a life without decisions was one of the voices holding me tied to that table.

—I took the opportunity to extract everything necessary from her —the first one continues—. You can inject her with a stronger anesthetic now. Between how she moans and how she writhes, she’ll make the trip more exhausting.

A stab in the hip. A dull cry of discomfort. Spasms growing farther apart, a pause, and then again the black calm.

***

My name is Mariela. Or rather, that’s what I was called when I was still someone. The one who has owned me until now, the one who ordered these lines to be written, tells me that was my name as a person, as a female being in the world everyone sees. In this other world —the one that truly rules the one you inhabit— I am no longer anyone. I am a doll. An object.

Here, every thing is whatever others decide it is. To choose, to want, to decide. Can a table choose whether it is used to hold plates? Does a trash can choose to be a container for garbage? No. In this world, what I am has exactly that condition. Not even that of an animal: an animal still chooses where to eat, and even rebels and bites. I am beneath that. Rebellion is impossible. Only use.

They explain to me that among those who inhabit this place —for some, a hell on earth; for those who control it, their own paradise— the highest sum ever raised has been paid to push to the limit the endurance of the one they call “the doll who no longer sighs.” They do not know whether I will survive, so they want me to bear witness to all these years. The object dragged through the most infamous situations, described by her own mouth. These lines will accompany the photos and videos in the catalog that has been such a source of profit for those who owned me.

Why write it, if they can watch as many times as they want? Very simple. They want to give me back a trace of identity, of humanity, just before what they call the great trial, so that what is about to come can break me a little more than my mind, body, and whatever was left of me have already been broken.

A table, a glass, a piece of clothing. They are bought, used, and, over time, worn out and broken. If they can be fixed, they are repaired and continue to serve. If not, they are discarded. And if possible, reused. They are inanimate objects, without conscience: they do not know whether the person using them was satisfied, nor do they care. That is what I am to them and to them. Hence this gift they say they are giving me, or perhaps this torture: a little identity so I can feel something again at the exact moment they are about to take everything from me.

If you’re wondering, I’ll put it another way. Have you ever heard a table sigh, a trash can, a dress? People sigh as a reflex of what they feel; it is a gesture of theirs, something native to you. At some point in this conscious survival —because I cannot call it life— I stopped sighing.

With indoctrination I first stopped pleading, crying, denying, screaming. Moaning? I know you were thinking it. That primitive gift nature gives us, the most animal pleasure, the last recourse of survival, also abandoned me. That instant of feeling alive in every orgasm, that endless cumming that sometimes came after torment even if my skin was burning or I was on the brink of suffocation, went out. After every orgasm there were no longer bitch whimpers in heat, as one of my mistresses said, nor slaughterhouse sow screams, as one of my masters said. Nothing. But at least there remained that subtle panting, that sigh that proved I felt something. Until even that was gone.

***

As part of this sensitization process, in addition to making me speak, they have dressed me. I don’t know what they like more: that I describe what I was or what I am now.

I’m not wearing shackles. Just the collar, with that torturous needle inserted in the neck that serves to administer shocks, chemical liquids of all kinds, the intravenous line par excellence. Fine brown hair reaches my shoulders, lengthened with extensions to display a lush mane, as sensual as the one I see in the mirror in front of me. A tight red silk dress outlines the shape of my body and disguises the permanent marks of the lashes, the burns, the scars that, if they could speak, would also give their testimony.

I feel something uncomfortable between my legs, but I was ordered to wear it: a black silk thong that very neatly frames the lips of what they taught me to call pussy. When I slid it upward and saw those narrow lips define themselves, I remembered the moment they were cut. It is as if the body has its own memory. The brush of the fabric against my skin made me shiver, just like when I still had them whole.

Yes. They rebuilt my genital area just for this occasion.

In front of the mirror, among the marks and the tattoos that look like pictograms, I also saw two erect, almost perfect nipples on my breasts. With bewilderment, I brought my hands to them to feel their shape. I remembered the first time they were pierced, and everything that came after: the candles, the cigarettes, the serrated clamps, the shocks, the needles. The piercing, compared to the rest, had been a caress.

—The doll has shed a tear! —announced a voice.

The one who writes what I am telling you said that a tear had left my right eye. Exactly seven months after the sensitization process began. It took them seven months to wring a single tear from me.

Seven months since they took me out of that aquarium. I lived surrounded by fish, mollusks, and octopuses, fed by a tube and breathing through a tube fixed to the nasal septum so it would be impossible to loosen it. I passed out twice during that surgery. They only covered my eyes and mouth so the substance with which they glued that tube wouldn’t get in and burn me: it was like hot welding, I don’t know how to describe it better. I didn’t cry then, because I had no expression left, but my body defended itself for me, and losing consciousness was my only anesthetic.

They gave me just enough not to die. If I was hungry, I had to eat from the same aquarium animals, alive, underwater, following instructions not to ingest anything toxic. Pulling an octopus or some shrimp out of my own openings while spectators had fun was the daily show.

***

That morning, what I thought was a routine checkup became the start of all this. They cleaned my skin, removed the animals, and fucked me, as always, even though I had already lost sensitivity in every hole. It was part of the ritual.

—Doll, today your mermaid life ends —my owner said over the speakers—. Whoever is watching you wants a great trial, and they have gathered the necessary sum to make it real. They call you the doll who doesn’t sigh, and after reviewing every video, every game, every punishment from all this time, we already understood why you stopped entertaining anyone. Today something new begins. Let’s hope you know how to endure it as much as we’re going to enjoy it.

—Today we begin with gifts —he went on—. Let’s hope they work. You are thirty-eight years old, you’ve been a doll for twenty years, it’s summer, and you’re on a tropical island. Your name was Mariela.

Why say all that? Being thirty-eight or eighteen made no difference to me. I didn’t understand the purpose of those words, and much less do I understand it completely now.

—It’s astonishing. She shows no emotion at all —said another voice—. This will be quite a challenge!

—Begin subjugation test one —the first voice ordered the one transcribing these lines.

I, in front of the mirror, looked at my reflection with a curiosity that was barely warm. I saw a woman with green eyes and brown hair down to her waist, thin lips, two firm breasts crowned by dark nipples and pink areolas. Arms, belly, and legs crisscrossed by fine marks, traces of each torture, tattooed like pictograms that could also tell these twenty years without uttering a word. And between my thighs, that black fabric, soft, finished with a pink bow.

Breaking into that static reflection, I saw two hands gripping the breasts of that being who looked at me. I had gone so long without seeing myself that I took a while to react, to understand that what I was seeing was me, and that what I was feeling was exactly what I was seeing.

The strong, hot body of the one who owned me pressed against my back. His lips sucked, kissed, lingered on my skin. His fingers pinched the nipples I had just touched in wonder a moment before. I felt a hard member seeking my entrance. Something tore, the fabric gave way, and that hot flesh brushed the edge of my sex.

—She’s getting wet! The reconstruction worked! —the one subduing me exclaimed while the tip entered, stretching me open.

Faster and faster, deeper and deeper. My hands remained clamped to the thong straps; my legs, open and fixed to the floor like a statue; my hips moving to the rhythm of that invader, and my breasts to the rhythm of my broken breathing.

—She’s wet, very wet. She’s tight, but she’s not squeezing me —he commented out loud, describing what he felt.

—Increase the force. Add pain and caresses to the breasts —ordered the voice.

He obeyed. His fingers were stabs and breeze at the same time, pain and caress mingled on my flesh.

—I’m going to come! I can’t stop. Permission to fill her!

It was granted. I felt him pour everything inside and that mixture sliding between my thighs, while my gaze remained fixed on the mirror. He pulled away, left the room. Another person entered, took me by the arm, injected me, and returned me to darkness.

I don’t know what the great trial will be. I don’t know whether I will withstand it. I only know that, for the first time in twenty years, a tear slid down my cheek, and they celebrated it like someone discovering a new crack through which to keep going in.