CH.07: She said don't call me again. The withdrawal map runs out of options before her resolve does. Back at 47 Eastbrook Lane, the contracts have moved into a new category entirely. Four days. The number sits in her chest like a debt she already knows she'll pay.
On payday Rich reached out. He was out of Dilaudid. He had Tramadol, weaker and longer-acting, and the next Dilaudid supply would cost more. He mentioned fentanyl. She declined without deliberating. She understood the fentanyl mortality profile precisely and she was not at the point where that profile was acceptable to her. She took the Tramadol.
Three quarters of the jar was gone within twenty-four hours. She sat with that and understood what it indicated about the trajectory she had been mapping accurately since the first dose.
The Tramadol was not sufficient. She thought about her mother's Xanax.
Two hours by bus. She had not been to her parents' house since before October. She let herself in with the code and went directly to the medicine cabinet.
Three pills.
She stood in front of the open cabinet and held the gap between what was there and what she needed. She took all three, wrapped them in toilet paper, replaced the jar so nothing was visibly disturbed. Her mother would notice eventually. She left.
Rich would not supply her again until payday. She ran the timeline against the three Xanax and the two Tramadol remaining at home and the withdrawal profile she could draw precisely and understood that the map was not acceptable.
She called Dr. Harper's office the next morning knowing before the call connected that it would not produce a pre***********ion. She described her symptoms accurately, sleep disruption, physiological stress indicators, intrusive recall, and omitted the Dilaudid and the Tramadol and the Xanax and the specific cause of all of it on the grounds that the cause was covered by an NDA she had signed at a desk in a basement on Eastbrook Lane after stepping to the left side of it because it had been positioned to be approached from the right.
Dr. Harper did not prescribe anything. Amanda thanked her and ended the call.
She had two Tramadol and one Xanax left. She took all three and sat on the edge of the bed and waited for the suppression window they would produce. The window would close in hours. After it closed the withdrawal profile would return and Rich would not supply until payday and Dr. Harper would not prescribe and her mother's cabinet was empty.
She got up and went to the hallway phone.
She stood in front of the receiver and did not pick it up immediately.
The suppression window was closing. The withdrawal was waiting on the other side of it, hour by hour, the profile she could map precisely and had been living inside for weeks. Her outer pussy lips were still carrying the sensitivity the shoots had produced. Rich's cum was still present in her throat. The sealed bags were waiting in that basement on Eastbrook Lane and whatever came after the fourth one last time was waiting with them.
She had said don't call me again and meant it when she said it.
She picked up the receiver and dialled.
Chris answered on the third ring. His voice was the same unhurried baseline it had always been, the quality of someone for whom the outcome of the call had already been decided before it connected.
She told him she had changed her mind. She wanted to do another shoot.
The pause before he responded was precisely the length she had catalogued from the contract desk. Not surprise. Confirmation.
"I thought you were done with those," he said. The faintest register of amusement underneath the neutrality. "You sure?"
"Yes. I need the money."
She did not elaborate. The withdrawal symptoms were present and measurable and the suppression window was already narrowing and she was not going to use what remained of it explaining herself to a man who had been watching her play guitar downtown for years and had known exactly what she was worth before she walked through his side door.
He told her the agency had moved on from the lingerie format. He said it with the same smooth delivery he had used to tell her it was a fashion magazine.
What he was offering was more explicit. Still manageable, he said. Just more revealing.
"When?" she said.
"Come by the studio. I'll explain when you get here."
Before she hung up he told her to wear the outfit from the first shoot. The third set. The wrap skirt, the grey blouse, the sheer bra, the thong, the suspender pantyhose. She knew exactly which ones he meant.
She dressed. The only outer layer long enough to provide marginal coverage on the bus was a black raincoat, its hem sitting several inches above the skirt's already abbreviated hemline. She left.
The bus ride was the same window seat, the same streets. She was returning to 47 Eastbrook Lane in the outfit Chris had specified on the pharmacokinetic timeline of three pills taken because every other option had closed. She had spent the intervening weeks in a process that had produced, as its most recent output, her on her knees on Rich's floor swallowing for pills that were already on the counter.
She looked out the window at the same streets she had watched from this seat the first time.
The wife was not outside when she arrived. Amanda went around to the side of the house and let herself in.
Chris was at the desk. He looked up when she came down the stairs and his gaze ran the trajectory she had catalogued across every previous session. Then he gestured toward the chair.
She sat. She asked about the magazine. She said he had told her it was a fashion catalogue and she had read both contracts with the precision her father had taught her and had assessed the vocabulary and not the application and she wanted to know about the lies.
Chris did not flinch. His voice remained at its usual baseline. He said he had not lied. It was a magazine. Women's content. Not much, but content.
She said nothing further about it because drawing that conclusion further was not going to change the suppression window or the withdrawal profile waiting on the other side of it.
He explained the shoot. The agency wanted explicit material. Masturbation on camera. He laid out two contract options with the same deliberateness he had used at the original desk.
Option one. Masturbation with a dildo.
Option two. Masturbation plus full penetration with the dildo.
"What do both options pay?" she asked.
"Thirteen hundred for the first. Seventeen fifty for the second."
She picked up the pen. She signed for option two. She placed it back at the same diagonal.
He led her to the changing room.
The collar was on the table. The same leather collar from the second session. She picked it up and read the engraving.
Big Titted Slut.
She set it down and went through the single set on the rack. The bra was full mesh, the cups constructed to frame rather than cover, her nipples visible through the open weave at rest and fully defined under any contact. The panties were matching mesh with an open crotch panel, the design removing the front coverage entirely, the outer pussy lips and the clit hood exposed through the gap with no fabric between them and the studio air.
She applied the makeup. Darker than her usual smoky liner, as Chris had specified. She checked the result in the mirror and reached for the collar.
She buckled it at the back of her neck and felt the leather settle against her throat and the words press against her skin and stood in the changing room for a moment and then put the mesh bra on.
Both nipples hardened against the open weave immediately, pressing through the mesh as distinct points. She stepped into the open crotch panties. The waistband settled at her hips and the mesh sat against the outer edges of her pussy lips on either side of the open panel, the freshly cleared bare skin in direct contact with the fabric at the edges and exposed to the changing room air through the gap. The elevated sensitivity at the outer labia and the clit hood was immediately present.
She walked out into the studio.
Chris straightened when she came through the door. Mark was at his equipment to the right. Both gazes ran the same trajectory. Chris held at the collar first, then the mesh bra, then the open crotch panel, the outer pussy lips visible on either side of the gap. Mark's attention followed the same sequence and did not return to his screen.
Chris moved her through the standing poses with the same calm deliberateness he always used. Each position presented the open crotch panel from every angle the camera and the mirror could reach simultaneously.
For the third position he directed her into a squat, weight forward, thighs spread wide.
"Two fingers," he said. "Part yourself for the camera. Wider."
She reached down and parted her outer pussy lips on either side of her clit hood and held the position. The studio air reached the exposed inner surface directly. The warmth between her legs sharpened immediately with the direct exposure.
"Hold it there," Chris said. "Don't move."
He ran approximately forty frames from the front and then circled for the side and rear angles. She held the position and kept her fingers parting her outer pussy lips for the full sequence and felt the warmth progress from its resting level to something more specific and insistent.
Chris straightened. He looked at her with the expression she had catalogued when he first stepped out from behind the softbox in October. Systematic. Patient. Already certain.
"You didn't come here to shoot," he said, his voice dropping to the register he used when the professional framing had served its purpose. He paused. "You came here to cum."
He offered her two surfaces. The floor with cushions or the table surrounded by mirrors positioned to capture every angle simultaneously. She chose the table.
He produced the toys when she was positioned.
A butt plug, medium sized, the silicone firm and tapered. A realistic vibrating dildo, anatomically precise, the same category of instrument as the one he had handed her on the studio floor the previous session.
"The plug is mandatory," he said.
He handed her the anal lube. She applied it to the plug and to her anal entrance and positioned the plug and applied steady pressure. The resistance gave and the plug seated fully. She moaned at the stretch of it, the silicone filling her entrance and pressing against the posterior wall with an immediacy that was specific and impossible to separate from the heat already building between her legs.
"Good girl," Chris said. "One rule. You don't leave until you cum for the camera."
He handed her the dildo. He looked at her on the table in the mesh bra and the open crotch panties and the collar and then he said it.
"From this point on your name is StripAmanda. Via is retired. This is no longer photography." He paused. "You're doing real amateur porn now."
She held that for a moment. Via. Gone. Then she picked up the dildo and looked at the mirrors and at Chris with the camera and Mark at his equipment and she began.
She ran her tongue along the length of the dildo first, coating it from base to head until the silicone was thoroughly slick, the faint taste of the lubricant mixing with the clean specific taste of the silicone itself. She brought it down between her legs and ran the head along her outer lips, the bare cleared skin reading the contact at full resolution with each slow pass.
She brought the head to her clit and applied pressure in slow deliberate circles.
Her breathing shifted on the second stroke.
"That's it," Chris said from behind the camera. "Show me, StripAmanda. Slower. Make it last. Let the camera see what a greedy cunt you've got."
She slowed the circles and turned the knob at the base of the dildo.
The vibration arrived with an immediacy that pulled a sharp moan from her before she had registered it coming. Her hips rolled forward without permission. The plug shifted with the movement, pressing harder against the posterior wall, the sensation transmitting forward into the space the dildo occupied from the other side. The two pressures compounded with each roll of her hips. The studio air had thickened with the warm dense scent of her arousal and the audible wet sounds of the vibrating head moving through her moisture, both carrying clearly across the room.
"Look how wet StripAmanda gets," Chris said. "Don't you dare stop."
"Deeper," he said. "All of it."
She pushed the dildo into her pussy in one steady stroke until it seated at the base. The vibration reached the anterior wall immediately. She moaned, longer and less controlled than anything before, her hips rolling with each stroke. The plug drove against the posterior wall with every forward movement, the two pressures working from opposite directions through the shared tissue, each amplifying the other. She withdrew to the first third and drove back in. Then again. Then faster.
Her 40F breasts swayed heavily with each drive, pulling against the mesh bra, the motion visible in the mirror and impossible to stop.
"Look at those fat tits going," Chris said. "Say your name. Tell the camera who you are."
"StripAmanda." Her voice was not entirely steady.
"And what are you doing?"
The collar sat at her throat. She was still impaled on the dildo with the plug seated behind it and the cameras running and she had agreed to all of it and she would agree to it again because the bottle at home was nearly empty and this session covered four days and her hips drove forward anyway. "Doing porn."
"Good girl. Spread wider. Give the camera everything."
She spread her thighs further and brought two fingers to her clit simultaneously. Mark leaned forward from his position. There was no stop command coming and she knew it and kept going because the arithmetic had already been run and her body had decided the rest.
The orgasm arrived as a full physiological event. Her back arched completely off the table. Her hand drove the dildo to its base. Her fingers pressed hard against her clit. A long unbroken sound left her she would not have recognised in another room. Her pussy clenched around the shaft in repeated contractions, the plug transmitting each one backward through the posterior wall, the two surfaces working against each other through every pulse. Four days. The thought arrived clean and cold in the middle of it, underneath the moaning and the squirt running onto the table and dripping from the edge, underneath everything. Four days and then back here.
The orgasm extended in waves. She stopped moving. Her hand fell from her clit.
"Keep going." His voice from between her legs. The same unhurried baseline. Not a suggestion.
She brought her fingers back.
The post-orgasmic sensitivity read the contact at full intensity and her hips rolled toward it anyway. Her nipples were raw from sustained mesh contact and registering every small movement.
"Look at the lens," Chris said. "Don't you dare look away. Show me what StripAmanda does when she's told to keep going. Come on, my greedy little porn slut. Show me."
The second orgasm arrived sharper and more concentrated than the first. A focused detonation at the clit. A loud broken sound from her. A deep clenching that ran through her pussy and transmitted backward into the plug and came back through the tissue again. Her thighs locked and released. Her breasts shook once with the force of it and then she was still.
"Stop," Chris said. His voice carried something close to satisfaction. "What a good little slut you are when you try."
She stopped.
The aftermath settled through her in layers. Shaking thighs. The specific deep ache of the plug still seated, its fullness present and insistent even in stillness. The slickness cooling on her inner thighs. The studio held the dense warm smell of sex and effort and the particular quality of a room where something has just finished that cannot be taken back.
She registered Chris and Mark without looking at either of them directly. Chris had the camera lowered but had not set it down. Mark sat back with the stillness of someone who has just watched something he will not forget.
She removed the dildo first. Then the plug, its withdrawal slow and specific, the stretched entrance registering every fraction of an inch as the silicone cleared it, a small involuntary sound leaving her before it was done. She sat on the edge of the table and ran the number one more time. What remained at home. What this session paid. How many more times she would need to be on this table before the arithmetic stopped requiring it. The answer was not a number she looked at directly. She stood.
The slickness ran freely down her inner thighs. She pulled the thong cord back into place, the lace settling between her still-sensitive outer lips, and stepped into the wrap skirt. She reached for the blouse.
She removed the collar last and set it on the table. The engraved plate caught the light for a second and she felt the absence of its pressure at her throat like a brand that had already sunk in. Via is retired.
She picked up the envelope without counting it. Four days. The number sat in her chest like a debt she already knew she would pay again.
Chris watched her cross the room. His eyes stayed on her the whole way, quiet and satisfied, the camera finally down at his side. He said nothing until she reached the base of the stairs.
"Amanda."
She stopped but did not turn.
His voice was at the baseline she had catalogued since the first phone call. Unhurried. Already certain of the result.
"The Dilaudid," he said. "I can get you what you need. Come by tonight."
She stood with that sentence at the base of the stairs. Her legs were still carrying the residual tremor of two orgasms. The slickness between her outer pussy lips was still present and cooling. The collar's absence at her throat was as specific a sensation as its presence had been.
He had watched her play guitar downtown for years. He had moved her from Via to StripAmanda and from lingerie to penetration and from photography to real amateur porn and he was now offering to supply the controlled substance she had been managing a dependence on for six weeks.
She understood exactly what coming back tonight would mean.
"Okay," she said.
She walked up the stairs and did not look back.
She bought a prepaid phone at the convenience store on the corner, the cheapest one on the rack. She paid cash and walked out.
She had the number memorised. The arrangement had moved into a category that required a prepaid phone and she had bought one without deliberating.
She called Chris from the street. He answered on the second ring, his voice at the unhurried baseline she had catalogued since the first phone call. She told him she needed pills. She had money from the shoot. She asked about three for two hundred.
He said eight for five hundred.
She said yes.
He made a comment about the squirting. He used the phrase one in a million in the particular tone of someone offering a compliment that is also a record of ownership. He mentioned another video.
She told him she would think about it. She needed the pills. He told her to come by and they would talk.
The days that followed had a specific quality she could map symptomatically. She worked the market shifts on autopilot, her attention occupied with the arithmetic of the remaining pills and the intervals between doses and the withdrawal profile that would arrive when the supply ran out. Her boss watched her from across the stall with the particular quality of attention that precedes a question he has not yet decided to ask. She gave him nothing to work with.
She met Rich in a cafe by the market on a Thursday evening. He was already there when she arrived, sitting with the quality of someone who has been waiting long enough to have decided what he is going to say.
He told her the Dilaudid was gone. His supplier's source had been shut down, a prescribing physician flagged by the college. The supply chain was closed.
"Tramadol," she said.
He shook his head. She had burned through the last supply in twenty-four hours. He did not have the margin to supply at that rate.
He mentioned fentanyl. She declined without deliberating. The mortality profile was not acceptable to her and would not become acceptable regardless of the supply situation.
Rich looked at her across the table with the specific quality of attention that had nothing to do with what he had asked her to do on his floor and everything to do with someone who has watched a situation develop past the point where he can affect its trajectory.
"You're on your own from here," he said.
She walked home.
She had one Dilaudid remaining. One pill was not a solution to anything. It was a suppression window of approximately four hours. She took it anyway because four hours was better than nothing and she had no alternative to offer herself.
She sat on the couch with the blanket her mother had given her and waited for the warmth to arrive. It settled low in her pelvis the way it always did, dulling the ache between her legs that the shoot had left behind and that the withdrawal had been sitting alongside for weeks, the two sensations occupying the same anatomical location and refusing to separate cleanly. She noted the interaction and let herself sleep.
Sleep came eventually. The tail end of the pill's suppression window carried her into it. It was not restful.