Chapter 13 - returning to earth part 1

I awoke from that dream feeling odd.

One would suppose that I'd eventually get used to waking up from these dreams feeling odd, but I was reeling from everything that happened in a way I had never experienced.

So these dreams... were real? I had accepted that so easily last night, but now in the morning it seemed just too impossible, maybe even insane. How could those dreams be real? How wasn't I tired all the time from lack of sleep? How did I travel to the dungeon every night?

None of it made any sense.

And my mistress was really Rebecca? How could that be? How did she find me, how was she the president of one of the biggest corporations in the state? How could such a person be coming to me in dreams?

No matter how I tried to rationalize, it just couldn't be.

It had to be my own imagination. I had to have seen her when I was on that tour and my mind twisted her into this... this dominatrix. I must be seeing what I want to see when she visited my office. There had to be some explanation, some perfectly sane explanation.

While my mind was running in circles attempting to figure out the logic of it all, a small part of my mind kept interrupting and making me squirm and writhe in mental torture.

Did my mistress even care about me?

So many truths had been unearthed yesterday that I hadn't been able to process them all in the moment. From her mentioning that there were or had been other pets, from her distracted way of talking about me as if I wasn't really there, from her pulling her pleasure not from me but from my belly...

Was I just a body to her? An object to play with? What did she know about me? Anything at all other than what made me orgasm? What made my body grow?

I groaned, out of frustration not pleasure, and rolled to my side. I spent the next two hours laying in my bed trying to pull any sense from everything. Part of me just wanted to go to sleep, but I wouldn't let myself incase I would just end up back in the dungeon before I had worked through my thoughts.

It felt like my bubbles had popped and I was left in a sticky mess, like my world was off kilter but I had ignored it until it now when it was no longer ignorable. Did I really want to be giving up my life for this woman who might not care? Because I had been. I had slowly cut out my friends, it was only thanks to her that my boss wasn't down my back at work, my body had changed so much it barely registered as mine in the mirror.

What was I supposed to do? Did I just keep going with how things were? Is that what I wanted?

I probably would have laid there for hours more if my doorbell hadn't rang.

It sounded into the silence of my apartment.

I didn't move at first, not wanting to deal with anything more. I knew I was acting like a kid, wishing that if I didn't move whatever it was went away.

When it rang a second time a few moments later, I sighed and rolled over to get to the edge of the bed. I grunted as I sat up and let out a huff of air as I stood and teetered for a moment; I felt there hadn't been a moment in the past few months where I was used to how much weight my legs now had to support.

I wondered out of my room, kicking aside pizza boxes and stepping on chip bags that were littered around the couch.

I opened the door a few inches, expecting some delivery man I could just tell to leave the package on the floor and I'd grab it later. If I remembered or cared to.

"Jess! Hey!"

My eyes widened as I realized was behind the door. "Heather! Wha... what are you doing here?"

"I've set up a little surprise for us and I'm here to grab you and take you on it!" she said with a grin. I lifted an eyebrow. This wasn't like her, her voice was somewhat stiff, her smile too wide; she had practiced this offer. I narrowed my eyes some as I tried to decide what her ulterior motive was.

"I know it's last minute, but you still keep Sundays open for relaxing and hanging out, yeah?" She smiled again. Curse best friends and their intimate knowledge. Granted, if she had more knowledge of me, she'd know I hadn't been doing anything on my Sundays OR Saturdays except siting on my couch watching TV, ordering take out, and munching on the junk food I kept around.

I leaned away from the door to try to think up some excuse not to go, but my mind was mush after spending the last two hours emotionally draining myself.

"Oh," Heather said, he voice faltering the tiniest bit. I glanced at her face and saw her eyes shoot down then up my body. "Sorry, I know you like to sleep in, but I figured you would have been up by now."

I looked down and realized I answered the door in nothing but a t-shirt and underwear. The shirt wasn't even covering my whole stomach, which was too round for it to hide. I blushed, glad someone other than Heather wasn't at my door but embarrassed all the same.

"I think now isn't a good time..." I said quietly, making to close the door.

Heather slid her foot into my apartment. "Come on, there is no way you have plans if you are still in your PJs. Let's get you into something cute and blow this popsicle stand."

With that, she smiled and pushed passed me into my apartment. She made a beeline for my room, stepping gently past wrappers and take-out boxes. I felt myself blush again even though I couldn't see her reaction; walking into your best friend's apartment to find it covered with the remanence of many weeks' worth of binges had to seem horrific.

I slowly stepped forward to follow her, suddenly filled with shame.

She didn't say anything about it, though. She just waited as I picked out some yoga pants that was 5 sizes bigger than the pair I was wearing last time she saw me and a large t-shirt. She actually started making light small talk, filling me in on what the various members of our group had been up to. Nothing deep, just light stuff she noticed or found interesting. It helped to ease the tension I noticed was there, tension that hadn't existed between us since we became friends. I could feel it was emanating from me; It was like my mind was in a fog and I didn't know how to interact socially, so I just stayed silent as Heather babbled on.

Soon we were in her blue Toyota Corolla, pulling up in front of Posh Nails. Heather and I had frequented this salon monthly before my dreams started, taking a chance for just the two of us to catch up doing our own special bonding thing. I couldn't help but feel a little warmth spread through me as I realized she was bringing me on our old ritual.

I placed my hands on the sides of the car door and huffed with the effort it took to lift myself out. Then I followed behind Heather as she breezed into the salon. I looked around at the familiar message chairs and manicure tables. It felt like I was visiting an old life I used to live, like going back to your elementary school after a decade. I was amazed at what had and hadn't changed. Was it really only six or seven months ago that this was a frequent haunt of mine?

"You want the usual color?" I snapped back to the present, realizing Heather was holding up a bottle of nail polish. "Not Really a Waitress, right?"

"Yeah," I said, grabbing the bottle, the memory of hunting for it amongst the other colors filing my mind.

Heather picked a color for herself and the nail technicians ushered us over to the pedicure chairs. I sat with a grunt and had to wiggle my hips to squeeze myself in. I found my stomached seemed to stick out even farther in these chairs with the backs leaned so far towards the wall. I was suddenly filled with a wave of embarrassment; how had I let myself get this huge? Sitting here in a place of beauty, I felt suddenly sure everyone in here was judging me. It was like I didn't belong; something so unattractive simply didn't fit amongst the beautiful. The realization of that made me feel that much more bloated, that much heavier, like my shirt fit that much worse.

"Oh, you missed the stupidest argument at the bar last week," Heathers voice brought my attention back to her. "Chad bet Trevor that Trevor couldn't go a month only getting drinks that came with those little umbrellas which meant every time we got together, Trevor just sat that with a margarita or daiquiri looking all superior."

I smiled, that sounded like them. Again I was wrapped in her pleasant conversation, again she let me just sit without actually participating.

It was so easy, it felt like being surrounded by a childhood blanket. The tension my mind kept trying to sense, trying to build, dissipated as she acted so normal and happy I was there. It was increasingly comfortable, soon I was just enjoying the luxurious feelings of a pedicure while marinating in the gentle tales Heather spun.