Getting Serious

Nanime returned the next day at about the same time.  She had ditched the school-girl uniform and was wearing a black leather bra which revealed breasts more ample that I could have imagined on such a slender girl.  An alabaster expanse of trim stomach ended at the three-inch black belt that kept her black-leather miniskirt in place.  Naturally she was wearing black-leather boots that climbed within inches of her shapely knees.  She'd done something with her raven hair--moussed it, perhaps--and it was plastered to each side of her head, separated in the middle of her skull by a razor-sharp part.  She was carrying a briefcase (black leather, of course), and when she set it down and opened it, she removed a black leather whip.

I said, "I'm not into that sort of thing."

"Shut up.  No matter what you into."

She stood behind me holding the whip handle and part of the fall in her right hand.  I couldn't imagine how we were going to proceed until she said, "Open blog."

When I did so she said, "Oh, very good.  You have fifty follower."

I could not believe my eyes.  There, in the left margin of the home page, were the avatars of fifty followers.

She said, "Don't forget:  you blog each and every day."

"I won't forget."

"Time to start book project," she said.  "Open document."

After I did so, I said, "Do you intend to whip me into action?"

"Maybe you whip me."

When I turned to look at her the expression on her face was one of bemusement.  Was she really confused about the proprieties of sadomasochism?

"How old are you?" I said.

"What age matter?  I older than I look."

"You look like you're sixteen."

"Wrong," she said.  "You have name for book?"

Turning back to the computer monitor, I said, "At first I thought about calling it Freedom Fugitive."

"Freedom Fugitive?  That make no sense--somebody who run away from freedom."

"Well, not exactly, but that is the reason I've decided to change it--because of the ambiguity."

"What you call it now?"

"This is what I'm going to call it," I said, turning to the keyboard and typing UTOMEPIA all in caps.

"Uto MEP ia," she said.  "What that?"

"It's u TOME pia," I said, "the perfect world where everybody writes a perfectly publishable book."

"What kind of world that?"

"The kind of world the State wants, where everybody is perfectly happy toiling away inanely and paying big money to do so."

"The State no want that.  The State want thinly-veiled autobiographical information.  The State want to know where you are at all time.  The State want to make money off you work.  That what the State want."

When I turned to her there was no look of confusion on her face.  She understood exactly what she was saying.

"Now write opening chapter," she said, stepping back to flick the whip in such a way that the tip of the popper barely grazed my right earlobe.

"That won't work on me," I said.

"No?" she said, snapping the whip so that the frayed end of the popper stung my right shoulder full on.

"That will make me resist even more."

"Yeah?" she said.  "Maybe this make you cooperate."

She spun my office chair around and straddled my legs, the black-leather mini riding up six inches as she did.  Then, easing herself down into my lap, she began to gyrate in a sexually-suggestive manner.  Oddly, I could hear the faint chords of a disco song emanating from god-only-knew-where.  As soon as she had me stiff as an Olympic diving board she stopped.

When she addressed me again the expression on her face was one of pure malevolence.  "That what it take for you to write?"

"It's a start," I said.

Later, as she was leaving, she got halfway out the door before turning around.  "Oh, by the way," she said, "no humor in writing."