Desperate for a New Beginning: The Secret Life of Belle

Beads of sweat formed on Belle’s
forehead, her open mouth silently
voicing her pleasure. She allowed
herself to get completely lost in the
moment, blocking out the reality of
her circumstance and denying to
herself the true material origins of
the ecstasy she was now
experiencing, pretending the
looming orgasm was for her alone to
enjoy. Her bared chest heaved with
her heavy breaths and quickening
pulse, her vividly pink nipples erect
from a mixture of arousal and the
perpetual draught that seeped
through the decades-old window
into her closet-like bedroom.
Holding the proportionally
ginormous device that had been
delivered two days prior with both of
her pale, child-like hands, she could
not help but think, despite her
misgivings at having received it in
such a fashion, that the Hitachi
Magic Wand really did live up to the
hype. She knew other girls who used
it regularly, even to the point of
mild addiction, but she had found it
difficult to believe that anything
could be so dramatically better than
your run-of-the-mill sex toy. Now,
with all the “intensity” she had
heard so much about pulsing fiercely
against her clitoris and surging
through her petite body, Belle could
not deny that there was certainly
something “magic” about it.
Then it hit, long expected yet so
surprising. Her whole body reacted
in quite a fortuitously spectacular
way, her legs clamping the toy in
place as an immutable scream
sought to break through her ceiling
to waken, and not for the first time,
the elderly couple living above her,
whose lack of technology savvy she
had for months been capitalising on
to avoid paying for her own internet
access. The climax, if only for that
brief time, transported Belle from
her mouldy, three-roomed flat to a
world in which she felt no shame, no
self-loathing—a world in which she
felt truly sexy, and genuinely proud
of who and what she was. For those
few seconds, while physically
overcome by her orgasm, she felt
beautiful.
In what might have been construed
as a contortionist’s performance, her
back arched quite of its own accord,
thrusting her trembling hips up and
forward and bending her body in a
way she had not known possible.
Her muscles tensed and relaxed in
an orgasmic wave from the tips of
her toes to the top of her head. The
relentless pulse of the wand caused
her tight, teenage pussy to spasm
uncontrollably, gushing out an
unprecedented volume of her sexual
discharge. Breathless from the
excruciating ecstasy, she pushed the
offending device forcefully from her,
leaving it to vibrate and buzz
violently against the uncarpeted
floor.
Belle continued to twitch, her eyes
still closed and her breaths still
short and sharp, as she gradually
drifted back to the real world, the
unceasing pings from her laptop
indicating new messages beginning
to register in her mind once again.
When at last she regained her
composure, she hoisted herself up
onto her shoulders and spread her
knees, exposing her still dripping
cunt to the nearby camera which
had just broadcast one of her most
intimate sexual moments to
approximately two thousand rapt
viewers around the globe, many of
whom were now expressing their
delight at what was, even by Belle’s
standards, a top class performance.
As Belle glanced across her screen,
she wished that some of those
gentleman who happened to enjoy
her show a great deal would express
their delight in a somewhat less
graphic and vulgar fashion. Sadly,
she had grown numb in the last five
months to the perverted comments,
finding the exchanges in which she
found herself obligated to engage
extraordinarily monotonous. Donning
her best false grin, she stared
intensely into the camera as she
scooped up some of the viscous fluid
from her parted lips and sucked it
from her fingers, making a show of
enjoying the taste while mentally
noting that she should probably eat
more fruit.
With many thank yous and virtual
hugs and kisses to her regulars and
the various anonymous fans who had
provided her with financial
sustenance enough at least for
another day, she ended the show
and heaved a sigh of relief from the
amateur porn-star persona she had
grown to resent and dislike. She
grabbed and pulled on the hoodie
and sweatpants she always kept
hidden behind the camera,
grimacing at the ‘slutty’ lingerie she
had specifically sported an hour ago,
now lying discarded on the floor
near the aggressive wand; the room
fell depressingly silent once she
unplugged the grudgingly accepted
gift.
She manoeuvred around the damp
patch she had created on her
threadbare sheet, pulling her laptop
onto her lap. A dozen or so
messages had landed in her inbox in
the last hour, the majority of which
were inevitably more gratuitous,
often creepy expressions of
admiration for her pornographic
offerings; these were always
promptly deleted with scarcely a
second glance. This evening,
however, a message had appeared
which stood out and intrigued her,
appealing to her greatest desire in
life while simultaneously, though
perhaps unknowingly, taking
advantage of her biggest insecurity.
Shivering under her thin duvet, Belle
dwelt on the words of that message
the whole night, sleep evading her
in her state of conflicted indecision.
Tears dripped onto her pillow,
making her aware of the deep-
seated sadness she had long since
trained herself not to feel. She
didn’t want to live like this, but nor
was she so sure that the alternative
that message had offered her would
be any more bearable. The passing
of the night brought not a whisper
of clarity, and she wept still even as
the heaviness of her eyes overcame
her tortured mind and she fell into
a disturbed sleep in the wee hours
of the morning.
***
Belle pulled her faux-leather jacket
close around her and tugged at the
hem of her short skirt in a feeble
attempt to make it somehow cover
more of her pale, skinny legs. She
perched on the standing seat in the
corner of the crowded District Line
train, wishing herself invisible; the
eyes of every passenger in the
carriage felt to her to be silently
judging her, as though they knew
where she was going, and why. For
all the discomfort she felt, she may
as well have been naked on that
tube, exposing to the self-absorbed
commuters what she exposed to
thousands each and every night. Her
empty stomach growled not quite
loudly enough to be heard over the
rumble of the train, a slight jolt
making her feel as though she might
vomit.
As they arrived at her destination
station—a part of London to which
she had never been—she squeezed
out onto the platform, flinching and
shrinking with every inevitable brush
with a fellow Londoner. The air felt
close as the train sped away through
the dark tunnel, and Belle stood
alone for a minute next to the tiled
wall, close to tears as she struggled
for breath. Weak legs carried her
blindly through the ticket barrier to
the exit where she was able to
breathe air about as fresh as the
capital had to offer, lightening her
head further but relieving her panic.
Looking around, she recognised
nothing, but knew where to go; her
hesitance was apparent in her every
mannerism, from the darting of her
pale green eyes from side to side,
expecting danger, to the trembling
removal of her phone from her bag
to check the time.
Her battered old phone told her she
had thirty minutes in which to make
the five-minute walk, should she
decide to do so—she still did not
know with certainty that she would.
It was little more than desperation
and the memory of a now dust-
covered dream of her youth, buried
away in a rarely visited corner of her
mind, that had brought her this far.
What prompted her first step in the
direction of the address that
repeated on loop in her head was
the daunting realisation that her
purse contained scarcely enough to
cover her return journey, and her
bank account still just shy of her
overdue rent payment.
The shield that deflected the
imagined stares from passers-by,
that protected her vulnerable self
from the shame and self-loathing
that more than a few times had
driven her to the edge of giving up,
rose invisibly about her as she
walked with increasing steadiness. It
was the same shield that allowed
her to sell her body each night on
the internet and show her face on
the streets the next day without an
apparent modicum of disgrace. It
felt weaker today than it usually did,
as though it might crack and
disintegrate at the first direct
assault, shattering the outward show
of composure and confidence it was
apt to give her.
She faltered in her low heels as she
turned onto the street, reaching out
and grabbing the metal rail to stop
from crumbling to the dirty
pavement. Her staccato breaths and
painfully quick heartbeat were the
manifestation of her anxiety,
contradicting her facial expression of
cold indifference. The street before
her was long, but a quick mental
approximation indicated she had
barely a quarter of its length to
cover. Belle extracted from her jacket
pocket the half of her last cigarette
she had been saving for the
neediest circumstance. The first
drag, normally conducive to a
soothing of her stress, felt hollow
somehow; perhaps she expected too
much of the pathetic little dout, or
perhaps the situation was too big
for her usual tricks of self-
preservation.
On reaching the door almost fifteen
minutes prior to the agreed time,
she paused to take stock. The
outside of the building gave nothing
away, its plainness putting to rest
any doubts she had that any of the
relatively few pedestrians passing
her by did not know the purpose of
her visit, while simultaneously
raising suspicions about the
legitimacy of the invitation she had
received. Bearing in mind that the
message had said “low-key”, and
telling herself that it would be
stupid to turn back now, having
come this far, she pressed down
with excessive firmness on the
buzzer next to the name she
recognised, preferring to make the
social faux pas of arriving early than
to give herself waiting time enough
to talk herself out of it.
“Hello?” came a low, raspy voice with
a volume that managed to startle
the on-edge Belle.
“It’s Belle,” she croaked, speaking to
another human being for the first
time that day. She cleared her
throat and repeated, “Isabelle
Buxton.” Her dear grandmother
would likely be spinning in her
grave to know that her maiden name
was being used for such purposes; to
Belle it was the last remaining
thread linking her to a family that
never wanted her, and for whom she
had no love left.
The heavy black door clicked and she
pushed into a dimly-lit stairwell with
a faint aroma of damp. The same
raspy voice bellowed, “Third floor,”
from above, the noise echoing
jarringly off the cold concrete. She
started to ascend, each step a battle
against her own trepidation and
rising nausea. Nothing felt
welcoming about this place; only the
protection of her shield, weak
though it was, prevented her from
fleeing all the way back to her
coldwater flat. Even as she reached
the landing of the third floor and
was greeted by the broad smile of a
jolly-looking man, her distrusted
instincts told her to turn and run.
“Belle!” The cheeriness of his deep
voice sent an uneasy chill up Belle’s
spine and she froze uncomfortable a
few feet from where he stood in the
doorway. “So glad you could join us
this morning; please, come in.” Her
last chance to walk away from the
opportunity she had thought she
had been looking for came and
went; she followed him into flat, her
heels clipping loudly on the wooden
floor of the narrow hallway. As the
door slammed shut behind her and
caught on the latch, her stomach
lurched and she steadied herself
against the wall.
The raspy-voiced man led her into a
large but rather bare bedroom
where the distinctive smell of stale
sex hung in the air. The door closed
behind Belle and she jumped at
noticing the tall, scruffy man with
the thick, brown beard who had
silently followed them in carrying a
small digital camcorder. Without
acknowledging Belle, he took a seat
in the corner of the room and began
fiddling with the device, apparently
readying it for what was to follow,
while the first man attempted to fill
the awkward silences with even more
awkward and misguided small talk.
She noted that at no point did
either man introduce himself to her,
retaining their comparative
anonymity whether intentionally or
not.
Fulfilling the request of her to sit on

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THE END