Chapter 2: The Weekend of Rooms, day 1

Keira was trying to reconcile her feelings. She dreaded Harker Manor and Vincent Harker himself was making her nervous just by his presence. Not to mention that she had somehow agreed to sign a contract where this scary man would hold a lot of power over her large portions of time without her being able to say anything about in what way.

On the other hand she’ll pull in wages nearly on par with what her dad had before he got laid off. And the estate was a beautiful place. And finally, while the owner seemed strange and somewhat frightening he had that special allure. Not that she intended to do anything with him even if he asked, thank you very much. He was like twice her age and her boss. But still...

The Friday that was was supposed to be her first day at work she didn’t have time to go home between school and her appointment at Harker Manor. She had packed a backpack with essentials but she showed up at the door of the great building still wearing her grey and green school uniform.

This time the front doors were closed and not wanting to be too sure of herself, she pulled the rope to the antique doorbell hoping it wouldn’t fall apart. It had a loud, comforting clang and moments later Harker opened them. “Ah, good you’re on time.” he said and showed her in. “And these doors have two locks. I will give you a spare key to open them from the outside, but I’m afraid you’ll have to ask to be let out.”

“Oh... That seems like an odd thing. But I guess Harker Manor has always been an odd place...” She suddenly realized that she had spoken out loud. “Uhm, I mean... So they say, Sir.”

He gave her another one of his wry smiles. “Hall.” He stated.

She looked about the lobby, which might be referred to as a hallway she assumed. “Uh... yes, Sir?”

He coughed, possibly to cover up a chuckle as he was smiling. “This is Harker Hall – the building. Harker Manor is the estate as a whole. And if we’re on the topic, since I saw your Facebook status, I’m lord Vincent Harker not Sir Vincent Harker. ‘Sir’ is the title used for address...”

She felt the redness creep up her neck as the blush spread. “Yes-.. Yes, Sir.”

“It is my hope that by the end of this weekend you will have earned the right to use a better title, however” he stated slightly cryptically as he looked her over and then interrupted himself. “This is your school uniform, yes? I like it, but I have a different uniform I shall prefer you to wear while you work here.”

She nodded. She hadn’t expected that and wondered what he might prefer her to wear. Apparently her attempt to be chic for her interview had failed, but he liked the boring conservative uniform. Maybe he was one of those old-fashioned types who didn’t think women should show their ankles in public?

He showed her the way to a room close to the kitchens that had likely been a servant’s quarters during the time the house had been in full use. The room had been dusted off but not very thoroughly. The bed had no mattress, but there was a pile of clothes laying on it. “Don’t worry,” he said with an amused smile. “These are not your chambers – I merely had your uniform placed here because it is a good place to start the tour of the parts of Harker Hall that you will need to familiarize yourself with.”

She nodded and tried not to sigh too loudly. Truth be told she had been afraid her dreams of staying at the mansion would have been reduced to something like this. “Thank you. I’ll change immediately, Sir.” She walked over to the pile and took off her jacket while looking his way, waiting for him to leave before she continued. He seemed to contemplate something but then turned around and left the room.

The clothes she had been given had seemed very proper at first, seemingly confirming her suspicions about her employer. There was a white button-up shirt that went all the way up to the neck and that was still completed with a black choker. And there was a rather strict black skirt, or rather it looked rather strict when she first held it, but as soon as she put it on she realized that it was so short that sitting down without showing her knickers would be a challenge. She would have expected that to come at least with some leggings to make it more decent, but the only things left on the bed were two leather wristbands, black stockings, a garter belt and a pair of fairly low-heel shoes. When she had finished changing she felt like her upper body was about to attend a funeral or business meeting while her legs were ready to walk the streets as a prostitute. Especially with her white knickers a rather stark contrast to the black.

Finally she took a deep breath and exited the room to find Harker standing in the hallway. He looked her over with an approving smile. “Good. It seems I guessed your sizes correctly.”

She blushed under his gaze and felt an urge to try to pull her skirt down in an attempt to cover a bit more. “I..” she stopped her protest, this was her first day and starting by arguing didn’t seem like a good idea. “If you say so, Sir.”

In the back of her head she wondered if there was anyway she might be able to wear something to cover up a bit more. But at the same time she suspected that her employer might want her to be a bit... exposed. She wasn’t exactly sure if this made her face flush in anger over what she suspected would fall under him being a ‘dirty old man’ or if it gave her butterflies that he might want to look at her.

With that they started the tour and trying to keep up and learning all the corridors and stairs and half-floors that made up Harker Hall required so much of her attention that she almost forgot how little clothes she was wearing. It would be very embarrassing to not be able to find her way to the dining hall and finding out that there were three of those, not counting the Great Hall, made her head spin. She counted it as a fortune for her that Harker was not intending to take all rooms into use at this point. She was also pointed to large portions of the house – including most of the west wing – that she was not to enter regardless unless specifically told to.

Eventually they entered a big room in the east wing on the third floor. Along the entire width of the far wall ran tall windows overlooking the grounds, a table and two heavily ornamented chairs placed nearby to enjoy the view. Against the inner wall on her left Keira saw a big fireplace with another two armchairs in front, a pair of ornate double doors on the far wall. To her right was a writing desk and, snuggled up to a small door on the right hand wall, a sizeable vanity desk. “These,” stated Harker as they entered, “are your chambers. A little empty at the moment, admittedly bit we’ll see what you might require with time. You may ask permission to entertain guests but never more than a few at a time and you will restrict them to this room unless otherwise specified.” He pointed towards the small door to the right, next to the vanity desk. “Behind there is your bathroom and other such facilities.” He then pointed to the big double doors with gold ornaments on the opposite side. “In there is your bedroom.”

Keira stared at the various objects in the room. This single room was twice as big as any of the rooms they had at home. Her eyes went to Harker standing beside her and noticed he seemed to have a very curious smile on him. “Wow...” she said. “...This is... Wow. Thank you.” Quickly she added: “Sir.”

He grinned. “Oh, you will earn it.”

Looking about again she noticed that there were dark square areas on the walls – places where there had obviously been paintings that were now gone. Again the place seemed more curious, she thought as she followed her employer over to the bedroom doors.

Inside was a big canopy bed with gold ornaments and and a sturdy frame in what might be mahogany. But that was only the first thing Keira noticed. Looking around, this room had a lot of art painted on its walls. And these murals were not for the faint of heart. Most of them displayed some sort of sexual activity. There was one where a man was held down by two women while a man raped him. On one two women were in a 69, but the one on top was obviously peeing onto the other’s face as they did. One showed a woman being whipped bloody by a man while another woman looked on and masturbated. Another had a woman being taken by a pack of wolves. And that was not all. To Keira it seemed like she had walked into an extreme porn section from the nineteenth century. “What?” she said in shock as she looked around. “What the-” she stared at Harker, searching for a good explanation. “What is this?” she demanded.

He had an expression somewhere between amused and annoyed. “It is a statement about what is important and what is not, painted by my great-, great-, great grandfather Anatole Harker.”

“Bollocks. This isn’t a statement – it’s porn. Sick and twisted porn at that!” She stared at the various paintings again.

“And now you made a statement. You stated that these images are sick and twisted.” He remained very calm. “You are arguing with them and therefore they must have made an initial argument.”

She stared at him. She had read something in Cosmo about how to deal with it if you found your boyfriend’s porn collection and that was the closest she could get to being prepared for this conversation. But that article had assumed that said boyfriend would first of all be either angry because you snooped or ashamed and secondly that he was in fact a boyfriend and not one’s employer. She gave up. “Fine. What is it that the images are trying to say is important?”

Harker walked into the room and studied the paintings. “Pleasure. The game. The never ending struggle to find something – anything – in this life worth living and dying for.” He smirked. “But what you should pay attention to is what they say isn’t important.”

“And what is that?” At least she knew what he was talking about. Life always seemed like a struggle and as soon as she found something fun someone seemed to try to take it from her.

“Human restrictions.”

“Huh?”

“Humans have a tendency to declare things right or wrong, sacred or sick, appropriate or twisted. And for some reason we have spent a lot of time teaching ourselves that this is the way it must be, even when it goes against what is important.” He was studying her now, with those intense eyes.

“The game?”

“Exactly. We let ourselves be stopped by ideas that aren’t meaningful so that instead of playing to find what gives us pleasure we look for reasons not to get it.” He pointed to the man being raped. “Is this man happy?” he asked harshly.

Keira felt like she was back in school and was tested. “No?”

“And why not?”

“Because he’s being raped of course!”

“Wrong.” He stated with sharpness. “He’s unhappy because he thinks that was is done to him is something that should be avoided. He didn’t expect life to treat him that way and his disappointment is making him unhappy. Now!” Harker pointed to the man doing the actual raping. “Is this man happy?”

She knew there was something off in his logic, of course, but she was in too much shock to find a good way to give a comeback. “...Yes?”

“And why?”

“...I guess he wanted to...” even in this context, talking to a grown-up about these things felt slightly wrong. “To fuck that other man...”

“Right. He wanted it and he got it. He played the game for pleasure instead of looking for restrictions.”

Ok, Keira thought to herself, you’re working for a lunatic and you have no way of escaping. But she kept staring at the faces of the men in the painting and she wondered what would have happened if the raped man had tried to enjoy the situation. Suddenly she was yanked out of her thoughts by Harker. “I’m sorry..?” She asked and remembered that she had forgotten to append a proper title to her words since they entered the bedroom. “Sir.”

“I asked: do you masturbate? It’s a simple enough question.”

She pressed her lips together. How dared he ask that sort of question?  But she saw no other option than to answer right now. “...Yes...” She blushed and looked away. “...I mean, not often or anything...”

“Good.” he said with a smile and walked over to a chair by the doors. “Show me.”

Surely she must have misheard. “Wha- what?!”

He sat down and waved a hand at the part of the bed in front of him. “Lay down on the bed and show me.” His voice was perfectly calm and somehow that made it even worse.

“Why?! Why would I do that in front of you?!”

“Do you enjoy it when you masturbate normally?”

“Yes, of course, but-”

“And I feel rather confident that I will enjoy watching you. We will both find pleasure, so what is stopping you?”

“Well!” she exclaimed, already feeling herself losing the logical part of this argument. “It’s private! It’s not something you do in front of people you barely know!”

“If you are to work for me,” he stated calmly with a voice that simply didn’t allow for disagreement. “You will learn that such arguments are not valid. Get on the bed. Now.”

She swallowed but found herself unable to respond. Instead she slowly climbed onto the bed and realized too late that her short skirt meant that the movement very much showed off her bum in only her knickers. And she would have to take of her garters in order to reach anywhere. At least it was better than taking of her underwear she thought and slowly took it off with shaking hands.

She laid down on her back, raising herself slightly on her elbows and looked beggingly at Harker. But she knew there was no way she’d get out of this now. She reached down into her knickers and blushed even more when she realized that being this exposed in front of the man she had met for the second time ever today had already made her wet.

“Spread your legs so that I can see better,” Harker commanded. She cursed silently but did as she was told. “At least your knickers betray that you are playing the game for the right reasons.” he noted, causing her to try to hide her face from him as her fingers danced across her clit and then entered her, causing a slight involuntary moan.

Her breathing was getting heavier as she pushed a second finger inside. She had almost managed to not think about the man watching her when suddenly his voice made the girl very aware of how exposed she was again. She wished that hadn’t made her get closer to an orgasm. “Take off your knickers.”

She took her fingers away from her pussy with mixed feelings before sliding her knickers down her legs. She looked at the man sitting on the chair. He was studying her intently. He didn’t actually do anything but she could tell that his breathing was heavy and that his eyes were glazed with lust as he watched the fourteen year old and her now exposed shaved pussy. “Go on.”

She bit her lips in an effort both to keep in a moan and to stop herself from crying. She felt violated as she returned the fingers to alternate between pushing inside and playing with her clit. She tried to think of the raped man in the painting. How would he feel if he had tried to just enjoy himself?

And so she tried to think about the physical sensation of her fingers. And she tried to think about how someone enjoyed watching her and how it felt sort  of good too.

Her orgasm surprised her. Suddenly she found her moans become louder and her muscles cramped around her fingers. She fell down flat on the bed, panting for a long while before opening her eyes. Harker was standing next to the bed, watching her with a pleased smile. “You’ve been a very good student. That was lesson one.”

She didn’t know if she was ashamed of just having been masturbating in front of him, angry because he had used her or proud that she was being praised. In any case she felt tears in her eyes.

His cold gaze simply looked her over. “You can leave your underwear here while we go downstairs for dinner. It should be served about now.”

She only nodded and pulled herself up from the bed. No underwear? She wasn’t even allowed that cover? Shaking she looked at him for approval of some sort. She didn’t even know why but it seemed important. She got a nod back and to her confused mind that seemed important.

The dinner was indeed served in the small dining hall on the first floor. It was a stew of some sort and she was pretty certain it was very well made, but she had trouble concentrating as her mind was still boggled by what he had made her do. And not being allowed to put her knickers back on just served as a constant reminder. There weren’t much talking during the meal, but she did get some additional instructions as to what parts of the building she was to keep clean, what parts a cleaning company took care of and a reminder about the parts she was not allowed to enter.

She felt almost more naked wearing what little clothes she had on as she couldn’t help but focus on how she wasn’t allowed any underwear. And she had touched herself and come while he had watched her. It was humiliating and degrading and... she couldn’t figure out why it made her feel cared for.

“Sir?” She asked. She had started to feel like the incident on the bed had been a dream as conversation had moved to ordinary topics. “May I ask... What is it with all these rooms?”

He tilted his head and studied her. “You may ask that much and no more, for now. Those rooms are closed to you until you are ready for them.”

“Ready, Sir?” What, there was an age limitation or something?

He leaned back, swirling the wine he had with his dinner in its glass. “Tell me when you want to see one of the rooms. But!” he made sure she understood the condition. “That means lesson number two.”

She swallowed. He had called it lesson one to have her masturbate for him before... So in order to see what was in one of those rooms she would have to do that again? “I see...” Well, he had already seen it once... So maybe... “I’ll... I’ll get back to you, Sir...”

For some reason he seemed amused by the answer.

The rest of the evening progressed more like she had expected. She was shown where different things were stored and mostly left to her own in the big library where she amused herself by taking a random book – which happened to be Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte-Christo – and read that while Harker worked by his computer.

Eventually Harker decided that it was time for bed and declared that he would tuck her in at night. And so they once again found themselves entering the bedroom with all the strange paintings. “Undress.” He commanded her.

She blushed and was ready to protest. But he had already seen a lot of her naked and seen her finger herself, what was left to hide was not much. So she just nodded and took off her clothes. He studied her young body with his usual wry smile. Part of her felt disgusted at having the much older man look at her like that... But she caught a glance of the paintings around her and decided that if nothing else, for this weekend she would agree to play the game.

She slipped in under her blankets as he picked something up from the floor next to the bed. It was the end of a chain with a manacle on it. She stared at it and then at him in horror. “You really think I’ll be chained up in here?! What if I need to use the bathroom!”

His eyes were as intense as always. “Yes I do think so. You will spend your nights with both arms chained to the bed. But don’t worry, both chains are quite long – you will have no trouble getting to the chamber pot under your bed.”

She opened her mouth to protest but couldn’t find words. How insane was this man? She soon got an answer as he didn’t wait for her but simply attached the end of the chain to her left wrist and the lock made a distinct click.

Later she had cried herself to sleep in the dark, both arms chained and her sense of privacy lost. She had no idea how she would manage another two full days like this. And she could feel every slice of dread as lord Vincent Harker had locked her up and turned off the light as he left the room. And there was something very menacing in the way he had said “Welcome to Harker Manor.”

 

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