Story: Miracle Box

The Miracle Box

by Taedis (copyright 2016)


I used to believe in God.  I believed in Heaven and angels; all of the cherubim and seraphim.  I believed everything my father taught me about sin and degradation.  The lake of fire and the fallen angel, Lucifer.  I believed that I would go to Hell for loving other women, being attracted to soft, smooth curves instead of the hairy angular men that my father and the Bible expected me to want.  Of all the things I once held true, that is the only one that I still believe, because it came true.

Someone once said that Hell is other people.  It isn't; they aren't.  Hell, true Hell, my Hell, is Eve.  She hated and loved me as much as I hated and loved her.  She believed in God as much as I used to, loves women as much as I do, and blamed me for making her a lesbian.

She had a point.

Each day began the same for me.  I woke up in a bed that wasn't quite right in a room that was just a little wrong.  The mattress was too soft; the wallpaper just a little too bright.  And a there were a dozen other pieces of a puzzle that didn't fit together until I came to full consciousness and remembered where Eve had put me.  The bed was never meant to be slept it.  The wallpaper never meant to be seen this close.  I was in a doll's bed in a doll's room under a roof that pulled away when Eve needed to punish me.  And she needed to punish me every day.

I am in the doll house.  I am in Hell.

I didn't know it at the time, but this was going to be the last day of punishment.  The last session that Eve would conduct in her crusade to make me into something that I was never meant to be.

Too little light streamed in from the window, but it's was all that I'd have until Eve took off the roof.  I wanted to sleep more, but my bladder was full and I couldn't ignore it and return to sleep; the only escape that I had from my tiny Hell.  I fumbled my way to the bathroom and sat on something that looked like a toilet, but is little more than a very large chamber pot.  I had to leave the door open to let in enough light to navigate.  There was no one else in the doll house with me, but it still felt wrong to leave the door open like that.  It's funny that I should go through so many changes, but still retain that odd echo of modesty.

The floor was cold beneath my bare feet.  The doll house was always too cold.  Or maybe there was so little of me left that I just felt the cold more.  I don't know.

I finished peeing and closed the lid.  The fake toilet is far too heavy and awkward for me to carry to a window and empty like a real chamber pot.  Eve will have to do that later when I'm not looking.

I stripped off the nightshirt that I wore to bed each night and prepared for my shower.  Like all of my clothing it is coarse and itches me constantly.  They are the clothes that came with the dolls that came with the doll house that I used to own before Eve put me in here.  Before Eve used the miracle box to shrink me down to height barely longer than one of her fingers.

Cold air flooded over my freshly exposed skin.  I could feel goosebumps starting to form on my tiny flesh.  I wrapped my arms around my torso in a futile attempt to keep me warm and stepped into the fake bathtub.  I pulled the chain that starts the shower.  Like everything else in the house, it's not real.  It's just a reservoir of water above my head that doused me with freezing cold water once a day.

I hated cold showers.  Eve knew that.  Eve knew everything about me, but she insisted that I stay clean and I didn't dare rebel against her rules.  She gave me food and water, and took away my waste.  If she stopped, I would die a lingering death.  And if the threat of death ever lost its sting, she could always use the miracle box to change me again.  And I have a very good idea of what she would change me into.

I used the nightshirt to dry off and left it hanging up in the bathroom to drip itself dry in the cold air.  I pulled on one of the cheap dresses, glad for the warmth that it provided even if it was so damned uncomfortable.  It was long and had a petticoat that made it poof out like my lower half was a flower blooming towards the dirt.  It was something that would have been at home in a 50's sitcom.  The petticoats and a few pairs of knickers that came down almost to my knees were the only undergarments I had.  I hadn't worn a bra in months and my poor nipples chaffed under the rough fabric.

I made my way through the half lit house.  After so many months or imprisonment, I had no problem navigating even the darkest areas of the house by memory.  I just had to be careful in the two rooms where Eve left things for me.

I made it to the first of them – the kitchen, and found the food that Eve had left out for me.  What there was left was so little and so flavorless that I had almost forgotten that I had eaten it as soon as I swallowed the last bite.  This hunger was all a part of Eve's plan for me.  Part of my punishment for having the wrong sorts of hunger.  To yearn for peaches when her God said I should want only bananas.

The food was the first punishment of the day.  It wouldn't be the last.

I took some lukewarm water.  I swear it was warmer than the stuff that I had to shower with.  I took it in a tea cup made for a much larger doll and brought it into the living room to drink.  The living room received the most sunlight of any part of the house at this time of day and I needed the light to help keep the paper thin grip that I had on my sanity.

This was also where the only book in the house resided.  The only book that was scaled small enough for me to read, that is.  It was a King James Bible that Eve had shrunk down to size with the miracle box.  In my first few weeks in the doll house I found solace in the scriptures, but they grew less and less comforting as my faith was chipped down to nothing.  Now it's just a book that Eve forces me to read.  And she'll know if I don't.

I sipped my tepid water and dreamed of coffee.  I thumbed through the Bible until I came to something that wouldn't piss off my newly acquired atheist beliefs – the genealogy of Christ from the book of Matthew.  I let my eyes trace over the “begets” and tried not to think too much about what was going to happen once Eve came to play with me.

I longed for escape, but I didn't hold out much hope.  Even if I made it out of the doll house I was still only a few inches tall.  The thought of me trying to survive in the real and giant world beyond these walls terrified me.  There were challenges and dangers, predators and monsters, starvation and death waiting for me out there.  It all made the doll house seem a fairly comfy circle of Hell.

It would be different if I could be normal again, but I was stuck this way until the miracle box restores me.  I used to be able to control it, long ago, but Eve has locked me, and probably everyone else, out of the controls.  I'm this way until Eve decides that I'm fit for human society.  And that won't be until she's “cured” me.  Turned me from what I am into another hetero zombie waiting to spread my legs to let my husband's penis in or push his children out.

There was a time that I thought I wanted that to.  Wanted the normalcy that everyone else I knew seemed to revel in.  I was so sure that I was just confused about my sexuality.  Something about my past had short circuited the “good” part of my brain and if I could just isolate that one problem, delete that fragment of diseased data, I could become the wife and mother that I knew I was destined to be.

I tried men.

That was a disaster.  Some men were looking to get me alone and plant their dicks anywhere in or on my body that I would let them.  Some weren't so picky about consent.  They were vulgar and direct and easy to write off.  I could easily justify my lack of attraction to them.  How could any woman find the idea of being groped and assaulted by those subhumans to be a turn on?  I consider myself lucky that I wasn't raped.

What was harder for me to rationalize was my lack of attraction to the other men.  The ones who had a vocabulary bigger than cock/dick/pussy/ass/fuck/tits/blow.  There were men that I went on dates that I truly wanted to be attracted to.  Smart, witty men who could hold a conversation on topics that I cared deeply about and who seemed to value my opinions.

There was a man named Bill who I had met through my work.  He was a good friend and seemed to be a nice guy.  After so many years of failing to stoke my heterosexual fires I started to see Bill as my last chance at a normal life.  So I asked him out.

We decided on Chinese food and a walk through the park on a Saturday afternoon in mid Autumn when the leaves would be gorgeous.  We lingered over our lunch.  The conversation was easy and fun and I was having a great time.  We hardly stopped talking long enough to eat a few bites of General Tso's chicken or beef stir fry.  And the conversation just kept on going as we segued from lunch to our walk in the park.  The scenery was everything that we hoped it would be.  Half the sky was bright sun while the other was covered in a monolithic layer of gray clouds. The light and the dark highlighted the reds and yellows of the changing leaves.

It was a perfect date.  Only I wasn't attracted to him in the slightest.  He held my hand as we walked and I wanted to feel the loving connection that I'd read about in romance novels, but I didn't.  It was just a hand. I wanted to fantasize about him pulling me down into a pile of leaves and showering me with kisses as he held me in his strong embrace, but I didn't.  The thought seemed awkward and silly.  I wanted to look in his eyes and feel attraction, but all I saw was a pal.

There was an awkward goodbye at my car when it had to end.  Up until then it was fun and easy.  Just two friends enjoying the scenery and good conversation.  Then we were standing at the door of my car in an awkward silence as the expectations of a life time of romantic comedies and bad sitcoms weighed on both our minds.  I didn't want to kiss him, but I wanted to want to kiss him.  If there was ever a man that I wanted to be attracted to, it was Bill.  I wanted to feel the same way about him as I did about that woman in accounting who wore the lilac perfume that haunted my dreams for the past month.  I wanted to go home and think about Bill after I slipped into bed and slipped a hand down my underwear, but I knew it would be a woman I was fantasizing about, not Bill.

I remained friends with Bill, but didn't ask him on another date.  I gave up trying to find a man who would turn me on.  And while my professional life had taken me outside the insular world of my parent's church, I was still conditioned to think of lesbianism as sinful.  So I never dated a woman, only got myself off under the covers or in the shower to thoughts of being with some action heroine, or the pretty but clumsy protagonist in a rom com.  Afterwards I would pray to God for forgiveness and felt guilty until the next time that my hand wandered between my legs.

That's about the time that the miracle box came into my life and I decided to try Eve.

I had finished the water and the begets by the time the sounds of Eve in the distance broke my reverie.  Then I heard Eve walking around the tiny room the doll house was kept in.  Eve was like a storm; you could hear her thunder in the distance and guess how close she was getting based on on the frequency of the strikes.  I watched for her out the window.  I may have hated her, but she was my only human contact.  Her sadistic cure the only break in the monotony of my diminished existence.

It wasn't long before I caught sight of her outside the window.  I could just make out a part of her hip as she walked through my line of sight, blotting out everything else in the outside world before disappearing.  It was a moment that showed me exactly how small I was, like spotting a blue whale cresting out of the ocean before diving back into a world you could only imagine.

I noticed that the whale was wearing my favorite skirt.  She wore all of my clothes.  They were her clothes now; everything I had owned was hers now.  Even me.

I felt the house give a familiar shake and heard the grating sound of the roof being removed.  I placed my cup and the Bible down on a side board and looked to the sky as Eve carried off the roof to the only home I might ever know again.  She looked down at me and smiled.  It was that smile that made me first doubt the existence of God.

“Good morning.” Eve said down to me.  She was beautiful.  Even if I do say so myself.

“Good morning.” I replied.

“You've eaten and read the Bible.”  It was a statement, not a question.  Eve knew exactly what I was doing at any given time thanks to the miracle box.  She was just making small talk before she got down to business.

I nodded though I didn't have to.  I couldn't see the miracle box, but I could hear the steady hum that indicated that it was coming up to power.

“Take off your dress.” Eve commanded.

I always felt dirty doing this.  Stripping down in front of my captor like this.  Putting myself through this now routine indignity as I exposed myself to the monster I had created.  But I had little choice so long as we remained our current sizes.

I had to take the petticoats off first before I could let the dress slide off my body.  Eve stared at my breasts as they were exposed to the cool air of the doll house.  I knew she found me as attractive as I found her.  It was sick and twisted on both our parts, but there are depths to the human heart that I was only beginning to understand.  I had at least come to accept myself for what I am.  Eve hadn't.  I hated the existence she had given me; she hated herself.  I knew –  I used to hate myself to.

Not that I wouldn't have traded that personal revelation to be my old height again.  Living in a doll house was too great a price for any epiphany.

I draped the dress and petticoat over a chair and walked to the center of the room wearing just the knickers.  I wrapped my arms around my chest for modesty and warmth.  I knew what was expected of me so I just planted my bare knees on the cold floor and knelt down without having to be ordered.

My skin began to crawl as I felt the power of the miracle box reach out and take hold of me.   For a moment it felt like a million electric ants were burrowing into my skin from every angle and then it was over and all I could feel was an all encompassing warmth.

Before Eve had reduced me to what I was now, a half naked atheist kneeling before her in a doll house, I had figured out how to operate the miracle box.  I knew how to make it warp reality in ways that I used to think were impossible.  But I had no idea what made it work.  Was it an alien artifact?  A piece of technology from the distant future?  A genie's lamp?  I hadn't the first clue.  And the circumstances that I came by the miracle box made it impossible for me to find out.

I dropped my hands to my knees and looked up at Eve.  Her hands were out of sight so I couldn't see the miracle box, but I could feel its power humming through me.  Eve could direct that power into changing me in ways that I didn't even want to imagine, but it didn't have the power to change me in the way she most wanted me changed.  It couldn't make me straight.

I tried it myself when the miracle box first fell into my hands.  Tried and failed.  I knew that Eve had tried the same thing.  Knowing her as well as I do she probably tries every day, praying that today will be the day that she gets to be straight.

While she's waiting for her prayers to be answered, she gets to play with me.  Try to get the box to change me through less subtle manipulations of power and force.

The image of my mother appears before my eyes.  Only she's scaled down to fit inside the dollhouse living room.  This is one of the people that Eve likes to use to establish a baseline.  Sometimes it's my high school music teacher.  Other times the old lady that rented me my first apartment in the city.  Always someone that I trust and have no sexual feelings for whatsoever.  I'm not certain if the miracle box is projecting an image of these people, making tiny simulacra of them out of nothing, or just making me think that I'm interacting with them, but they always seem real to me.

This was the only part of the experience that I enjoyed.  Eve was my only human contact, but my feelings for her were a complex blend of hatred, regret, and attraction.  And her scale made her more a force of nature than another person.  Being able to look across the room and see another person my size was comforting.  I could imagine that the last few months in the doll house were just a dream and that everything was going to be all right.  At least it felt that way until the next stage of the experiment.

My mother's image faded into nothing.  I felt a small pang of sadness to see her go and I wondered how my real mother was doing in my absence.  Would it be a man or a woman who appeared next?  During my first few weeks it was always a woman who appeared after the baseline, but Eve decided to change things around and now it could be either.

A new image began to form.  Just slightly to the right of where mother had been.  I breathed in a faint whiff of lilac perfume a heartbeat before the woman from accounting materialized before me.  I wished that I had learned her name.  I wonder if Eve ever found out.  In my fantasies, I call her Mariposa.

Mariposa stood there looking better than the real woman from accounting had probably ever looked in her life.  A woman who Eve had taken from my most private fantasies.  Mariposa's hair was longer than her real life counterpart's and gave the illusion of being wild when it was, in fact, every curl fell into meticulous place.  Her makeup better applied.  Her clothing like nothing that anyone would wear to the office.

It was a white dress.  It looked like something I'd imagine a starlet from the 1930's wearing to a movie premiere.  Mariposa's arms, back, and shoulders were bear.  A single silk strap looped over her neck and kept the bodice up.  The neckline dipped low, but not too low.  Just enough to entice, but not trigger the prudish instincts that I was trying to abandon.  The rest of her was completely covered to the floor.  The white silk clung to her every curve like it was liquid.  Her midnight skin shone in the sunlight streaming into the room contrasting perfectly with the pale dress.

I looked at my fantasy Mariposa and wanted her to pull me into her arms.  I wanted to feel her left hand resting on my hip while her right ran through my hair.  I wanted her to pull me into her; to feel her warm lips part mine, to feel the weight of her breasts resting on mine.  To look up into her eyes when we were finished and do it all over again.

That's when the first jolt of pain ripped through me.  It started at the base of my spine and ended somewhere behind my eyes.  It feels like my spine has been turned into a lightning rod and for all I know it has.  There are two more jolts, one just as strong as the first followed by a weaker one, before all of my sexy thoughts about Mariposa have been purged.

The miracle box responds to the thoughts of its operator, but it isn't really a mind reader.  It couldn't tell what my fantasy with Mariposa was, but it could pick up on the physical side of my arousal.  An arousal that Eve wanted to burn out of me.  As long as I could be around my fantasy woman and not fantasize about her, I was fine.  No jolts.  No lighting rod spine.  But as soon as the miracle box picked up on a dilation of my pupils, a flutter of my heart, or a little lubrication, then Eve would make it shock me again.  Her plan was to condition me to associate my natural desires with searing pain.  Turn me into Pavlov's lesbian.  The first time Eve put me through this, I ended up passed out on the floor spasming.  I would have died if it wasn't for the miracle box.

“I was wondering if you'd like to go out with me tonight.” Mariposa asked.  “I know a great little dance club.  They pack you in so tight.”

Verbal interaction was the next stage.  Mariposa would flirt with me and Eve would see if I could control myself.  If I couldn't – zap.

I focused on Mariposa's eyes.  Anything else was too risky.  I looked deeply into them and I imagined Bill's eyes looking back at me as we said our awkward goodbyes outside my car on what should have been our perfect first date.  I superimposed his face over Mariposa's; his voice over hers.

“No thank you.” I replied.  “I really don't want to go out with you.  Not on a date and especially not to some crowded club.”

In my mind I was talking to Bill.  And I thought about Bill the way that Eve wanted me to think about Mariposa, so there was no pain.  I won't claim that I'm perfectly sane after all of this time and torture, but I'm still me.  And this piece of mental gymnastics was the key.

“Pwetty pweaseeee.”  Bill/Mariposa said, making a pouty face.

If I'd let myself see Mariposa, I'd probably be on the floor again.  But the sight of Bill being coquettish was laughable.

“No.” I said.  “And please speak like an adult.  You have no idea how ridiculous you sound.”

I knew that Eve would appreciate that last part.  She knew how much that sort of cutesy-poo flirting turned me on.

“You're no fun.”  Bill/Mariposa said in a normal voice.  “But I could make you have some fun … If you wanted.”

I felt a hand on the back of my neck.  I closed my eyes and tried to pretend that it was Bill and not Mariposa who was touching me.  Tried to imagine his rough hands instead of her smooth fingers running down my back.  Tried to substitute the smell of Gold Bond and aftershave for the scent of lilac.

Things were heating up a lot faster than normal.  Every other day that I'd been put through this scenario, my fantasy woman would flirt up a storm with me.  Up to two hours some days.  I had to give Eve credit for coming up with Mariposa's side of the conversation.  But then again, Eve got off on my fantasy as much as I did.  Playing Mariposa gave Eve the chance to act out her own fantasy while keeping up appearances.  It gave Eve a thrill to know that she could do the things she wanted to do, no matter how sinful she thought they were, under the guise of showing me the hetero light.  We got to see the same show, we both got to be with a pretty woman, we both responded, we both got wet.   But I was the one to get punished for my “sins,” while Eve smiled and played with herself.

I'd gotten to the point where the flirtation was the easiest part of the trial.  I'd always get zapped when I first saw Mariposa, or whatever other fantasy woman Eve trotted out for me to drool over.  It took me some time to bend my mind around to seeing Bill instead of Mariposa and I'd always get at least a little hurt until I psyched myself out.  Not as bad as the first few weeks,  but still pretty miserable.  But once I saw her as him, I was fine.

Until she touched me.

I could put maintain the pretense that this was Bill touching me for only a very short amount of time.  It was one thing to imagine it was him standing there in front of me, but I couldn't keep the illusion up when she came in close to me and I felt her warm hands on my bare skin.

It was Bill's fingers that I felt meander down my spine, stopping at the waistband of my doll underwear, deciding whether to go any further down or make the slow trip back.  It was Mariposa's fingers that walked up my spine.  All at once it was her perfume that I smelt, her dress that was brushing the backs of my feet, her lips on my neck.

I had barely felt the first twinge of arousal when I felt the pain.  It wasn't as sharp as it had been before.  Eve sometimes liked to lower the settings by this stage of the game.  Make it so I could endure it long enough for Eve to get off.

“Please, no.” I said, but not to the woman who was kissing my neck and rubbing her hands over my shoulders.  She was just a puppet.  Not even real.  I was begging Eve.

“Don't tell me you don't like this.” Eve said through Mariposa's lips.  “How many months have you been here?  How much pain have you suffered because you are so stubborn?  All because you can't give up liking women.  I'm starting to think that I have a better chance of turning you into a masochist than I do of fixing you.  Is that what you want?  To be my little doll sized pain slut?”

Mariposa traced her right hand down my front until her fingernails lightly grazed the nipple of my right breast.  I took in a deep breath and tried to suppress my reaction, but it was too late for that.  I could feel the charge begin to build up in my spine just as surely as I could feel the first signs of dampness on my pressed thighs.  Mariposa rolled the tender nipple between her thumb and forefinger in the way that I loved.  Eve knew every atom of my body and how to exploit it.

I don't know which one I felt more, the sharp pain of my nipple being roughly pinched, or the sudden zap as my body responded to the pain of the pinch.

I looked up.  Past the smiling face of my ebony fantasy woman.  Beyond her to the pale skinned woman who pulled the strings in this S&M puppet show.  Eve had a contented look on her face, her eyes were half closed as she looked down on us.  I could only see Eve's head and blouse covered chest, but I knew that she had one hand on the miracle box while the other was between her legs.

I wished that her hands would fall off.  I wished that her heart would grow so large and so fast that it exploded her ribcage and came out her mouth.  I wished that I had the miracle box for five minutes and she was the one in the doll house being tortured while I masturbated.

Eve's half open eyes locked onto mine.  She saw the hate that was there and knew exactly what I was thinking.  The same thoughts that she would have if I had my wish.  She saw and knew all that, and she smiled and worked her pussy faster.

My view of Eve was cut off when Mariposa bent down and kissed me.  Her lips were everything I imagined they'd be.  Soft and warm, sweet and inviting.  Without saying a word they were able to make promises that I knew Eve would never keep.  But I was too far under her spell to care.  I just kissed her back and felt the sparks start to build up.

The pain was different this time.  Instead of letting it discharge all at once in one big zap it felt like it was being allowed to slowly leak out into me.  A steady pain that walked hand in glove with the lust that my fantasy woman had inspired in me.  A slow torment that had left my thighs drenched and the rest of me sweaty.

The simulacra pulled away from me.  I saw a single string of saliva stretch between our lips until it finally broke apart as her face drew further away.  She placed her hands on my shoulders and pushed me down onto my back on the floor.  The constant pain was overwhelmed by the strength of my desire.

       Mariposa put her hands on my hips and worked the long knickers down my trembling legs.  The cold air only emphasized the heat between my legs.

Eve never let me get this close before.  Was this just a change in the script or was there something more going on?  I expected the miracle box to shock me into unconsciousness as Mariposa kissed her way from my lips and down my neck.  Her tongue lingered for just a moment over my rigid nipple and moved on to kiss my belly button and perform a rehearsal of what I hoped she would do a little further south.

The slow leak pain was still with me, but it never reached the point where it took me out of the moment.  I was feeling both pain and pleasure, but the latter was strong enough for me to deny the former.

When Mariposa's lips kissed my clit I thought I would explode.  I forgot about the threat of any greater pain and just let myself be caught up in the skillful ministrations of my fantasy woman's tongue.  I wrapped my legs around her neck and rode her face until I couldn't stand it anymore.

I'd never been with a woman.  Not in real life.  I had imagined what it would be like, but my conservative background kept me from following my heart.  After months upon months of torture and punishment Eve had given me what I had always secretly wanted.

Why?

I disengaged my legs from Mariposa's head and pulled her face up to mine.  I could taste myself on her lips.  I expected it to be pungent and salty, but it was subtle and sweet.  I longed to taste her.  I had no idea how far or how long Eve was going to let this go on, but I was determined to enjoy every aspect of my fantasy.  As long as the pain was tamped down like this, I was going to explore the body that I had dreamed about for so long.

The dress came off with ridiculous ease leaving her nude before me.  There was a thin sheen of sweat on her body that made her glow like some erotic angel in the light.  I followed the same path that she took with me.  Mouth, neck, nipple, navel, clit.  I tried to take my time, make the experience linger even if I was the only one who was going to remember it, but the fear that it would all be taken away from me at any second kept my pace up.

She tasted better than I did.  It felt strange for a moment, having your mouth up against a part of another person's body.  Especially such an intimate area.  But that feeling quickly disappeared as I moved my tongue and lips across the folds of her sopping pussy.  Where I squeezed myself around her, Mariposa did the opposite with me; opening herself up more and more as I worshipped her body with my tongue.

It was only when I brought her to her own orgasm that Eve released all of the pent up punishment that had been building in my spine over the last hour.  To say it was the worst pain that I had ever experienced would be an understatement.  It felt like my blood was gasoline and my flesh nothing more than flash paper.  All Eve did was light the spark.

I writhed on the floor for I don't know how long.  Mariposa held me in her arms for a long time as I shrieked and sobbed into her breast.  She held me until Eve turned her off and I was left alone, naked, and convulsing on the floor of the doll house.

I don't know when during all of that that Eve got off, but I knew she did.  She'd gotten her jollies from much less than me going all the way; there was no way that she hadn't been working her fingers raw getting off on seeing me do all the things that she wished she could do.

I slowly recovered enough to crawl to my discarded dress and cover myself with it.  I lacked the strength to stand up and get dressed, but I could at least keep Eve from staring at me in my naked glory.  I wanted to say something, but my breathing was too ragged and my attempts only led to me going off on a coughing jag.

I waited for the next stage.  The man who would show up and take all the pain away.  It was all a lie of course.  It was just Eve using the miracle box to flood my system with endorphins and a bunch of other feel good body chemicals.  The carrot to Mariposa's stick.  Sometimes the scenario played out with me rejecting the man and being punished by a female fantasy, but when it started with a woman it ended with a male hero coming in to rescue me from my sins.  When I had to deal with this, I went the other way and overlaid Mariposa on top of whatever man Eve used.  As rebellions go it was pretty pathetic, but it was all I had.

Only this time nothing else materialized no matter how long I waited or how much I prepared myself.  

I looked up at Eve.  She just sat there staring at me, flipping the miracle box back and forth from one hand to the other.  If I could only make it work for me for five minutes, I'd have my life again.

“I thought you were improving.” Eve said.  “I thought this was working.  It may have taken me a while, but I know that you're faking.  And I know how you're doing it.”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”  I answered.  A cold dead lump formed at the pit of my stomach.  Eve almost never spoke to me directly; it was never a good thing.

“You know you can't lie to me.  Why do you even bother?”  Eve said.  “That was pretty clever of you, pretending that your little Mariposa was a man.  Must have taken you weeks to brainwash yourself into that one.  The only question is whether you used Bill or one of the others.  Frankly, I don't care enough to want to know.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel guilty?  After all the shit you did to me.”

“I hate myself because of you.”

“Boo, fucking, hoo.” I yelled up at her.  “I hate myself to, but I didn't turn anyone's life into some fetish puppet show to get even.”

“Seeing as my attempts to rehabilitate you have failed.”  Eve said, ignoring my point.  “This will be out final session.”

“Do I get to be normal again?” I asked.

“You were never normal.”

“You know what I mean.”  I said.

“You're still a lesbian.  Even after all I've tried to do to help you.  I told you before that you'd stay in the doll house until you were cured.”

“You just said you were giving up on that.”

“I'm not giving up.” she said. “Just changing tactics.”

-----

I was left alone, more or less, for the next two weeks.  Eve made her presence felt indirectly. I could rarely hear her moving around in other parts of the real house that the doll house was trapped inside.  The distant thunder of her footsteps as she ran up the stairs.  A snatch of conversation as she talked into her phone as she passed the door to the room where the doll house was kept.  The faint and echoed sound of music I could almost hear, but never place.  These were the closest contact that we had during those days.  And there were days when the only proof I had that Eve hadn't had a heart attack or run off to join the circus was the fact that my toilet had been emptied and the shower and larder filled.  As much as they ever were.

The absence of the daily horror show wasn't as comforting as I'd imagined.  Eve had failed to condition my sexuality, but that didn't mean that I wasn't conditioned.  Every morning I would still go through the same morning routine.  Part of it I could justify as biological imperatives; I needed to use the bathroom, I needed to eat.  But when I finished eating I still went to the living room and waited for Eve to arrive.  The first day I legitimately thought that this might be another part of her bizarre experiment, some sort of test of faith that she was putting me through.

But as the minutes passed with no sign of Eve I began to get nervous.  I felt profoundly worried that something was wrong.  Like I had done something so terrible that it weighed me down like a net.  It was the same feeling that I had when I was a little girl and had done something wrong, wicked, and sinful.  I felt like I was drowning; I felt like I had disappointed God.  

I thought I heard something and strained to see any signs of her passing, but there was nothing outside my window than the mostly empty room which housed the doll house.

The usual time of her arrival came and went and my anxiety spiked.  I tried to sit quietly and read the Bible like I knew Eve wanted me to, but my mind was racing too fast to focus on the words in front of me.  I kept looking at the wristwatch hanging over the mantle and thinking about what stage of my torture I'd be in if Eve were there.

I put the Bible down and began to pace across the living room.  There was no reason why I should stay here; I had the run of the rest of the doll house, I didn't need to stay in the room where I'd been mind fucked for months. Not that there was much else for me to do in the house other than stare at the walls, but I could have stared at different walls and not been reminded of the pain that these had witnessed.

I left the living room and started to go upstairs.  My head was full of vague plans to search the place again, something I hadn't done since my first week here.  Maybe there was something that I had missed.  Something to keep my mind occupied other that the one book that I had stopped believing in a long time ago.

But each step that I took made my heart beat faster, my breath come just a bit quicker.  The feeling of being caught in a net intensified the further I got from the living room.  My head began to spin and my vision tunneled out before me.  For a split second I thought that this was the miracle box punishing me in a new way, but I knew that this was something else.

I sat down quickly on the stairs before I lost my balance.  I'd never had an anxiety attack before, but I was pretty sure that I was having one now.  I tried to get control of myself, but I wasn't having any luck.  I thought about crawling upstairs and into my bed, but that just made it worse.  I made the decision to get off the stairs before I passed out and tumbled down.  I pulled myself forward with my legs and let my butt fall to the next step while my arms gripped the step above me for support.  I repeated that process until my feet were on the floor.

I managed to crawl back into the living room.  I felt some relief as I closed the door.  This was where I was supposed to be even if I didn't want to be here.  Even if Eve didn't care if I was here.  But it wasn't right.  I still felt like my heart was going to climb out of my throat.

I pulled the dress off and knelt on the floor in the position that Eve made me take for so many months.  More of the anxiety washed away and I was able to breathe normally for the first time in several minutes.  I could still feel a cold dead lump of nervous energy pressing against my chest.  I wanted to be done with this place, but was too afraid of what might happen to me to make any serious attempt to leave.

I should be feeling pain, now. I thought to myself.  This is the time for pain.

My breathing became more ragged as I knelt alone and nearly naked in the living room of the doll house.  The lump of nervous energy began to grow in my chest.  I could feel it blotting me out like the sun during an eclipse only I didn't know if there would be anything left of me after it had passed.

I needed to do something to make this stop.  I needed to feel normal again, even if my new normal was toxic.  I'd come into this room every morning for more mornings than I wanted to count and didn't crawl out until I was a quivering mass.  And I was melting down because the pain hadn't come when it was supposed to.

And it didn't look like it was on its way any time soon.

I felt so cold kneeling there.  Normally the power of the miracle box was flowing through me and I couldn't feel how cold it was.  I closed my eyes and put my head to the floor and cried.  Everything just came spilling out of me in one slobbering mess.  Eve had tried so hard for so long to break me.  I'd prayed that it would end until I stopped believing in prayer and now that it had I was right back where I always was, unable to leave the room without going through a different type of hell.

My breakdown lasted for several minutes as my hot tears seeped into the cold floor.  I finally managed to stop crying, but I'd be lying if I said that I had regained my composure.  Crying had only distracted me from the anxiety that was welling up inside me ready to burst.

I scrambled for my dress and the cheap vinyl belt that hung around it.  I pulled the belt from its loops and let my knees fall back onto the cold floor.  The buckle was cheap tin that I could bend if I tried hard enough, but it had no sharp edges and would be good enough for what I needed it to do.  I let the buckle dangle on the floor as I held the other end in my right hand.

Was I really going to do this?  Was I that desperate to make this feeling go away?  The answer to both those questions was yes.  The only real doubt was whether it would work.

I whipped the belt around behind me.  The buckle reached the end of its arc and came back around to strike me hard in the back.  Just below my right shoulder blade.  I yelped at the sudden, though expected, pain and felt the belt go limp in my hand.

It helped.

The pain was a different flavor than what Eve delivered with the miracle box, but it was enough to take the edge off of the anxiety that had been building up in me.  But it wasn't enough.

The second blow landed on my lower back.  The third on my buttocks.  Each was a quick slash of pain followed by feeling of cathartic relief as my body and mind were getting what they had come to expect.

I didn't think it was possible, but I hated Eve even more.  She had taken my life from me, punished me for what I was, and turned me into this miserable creature who had to punish herself before the PTSD drove her mad or gave her a heart attack or both.

I was bruised and sore by the time I finished hitting myself.  A blanket of numbness had fallen over my mind; my body was in agony, but I felt nothing emotionally.  I got to my feet and managed to get myself dressed and up the stairs without thinking too much about what I had just done.  I didn't bother eating the food that I knew would be in the kitchen; I just went to bed.

The first few days I tried to fight it.  The conditioning.  The PTSD.  The addiction.  Whatever it was and whatever it is you want to call it.  But that feeling of utter wrongness was too strong for me and I inevitably found myself flagellating myself on my knees in the living room of the doll house.

It became easier once I accepted it.  Which isn't to say that I ever stopped hating it; I had just bowed to the inevitability of the situation and cursed Eve every time the belt landed.  I found that I could ease the stress with weaker, shorter punishment sessions if I didn't get agitated first.

I was in the middle of whipping myself on the morning of the 13th day since Eve had stopped visiting me when I heard the sound of another human voice coming from the house outside the doll house.

Voices.

I couldn't make out what they were saying, but I recognized Eve's voice.  The other speaker was a man with an unfamiliar voice.

I stopped whipping myself and strained to hear what they were saying, but I couldn't make anything out.  Then the voices stopped and I heard two sets of giant, thunderous, footsteps walking up the stairs and into the room that Eve stored the doll house in.

I bolted to the window and pressed in as close to the glass as I could.  A pair of giant hips passed in front of the window, but I couldn't get a clear look at Eve or the man that she was bringing into this.

I had a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that this was not going to end well.  I retrieved my dress and put it back on.  I had no idea what was about to happen, but I knew that I didn't want to face any of this in just a pair of doll panties.

“I'm sorry it's so cold in here.” Eve said to the unknown man.  “The AC has been acting up.  I really need to get someone in here to take care of it.  I'd shut it off, but with this heat snap ...”

“No problem.” the man said.

I tried to imagine a face to go with the voice, but wasn't having any luck.

“I'll just get my tap recorder going and we can begin the interview.”  Eve said.

“That's a tape recorder?”  the man asked.  “It's glowing.”

I heard the sound of the miracle box powering up.

“I picked it up online.”  Eve said.  “It has a ton of features I'll never use.  Shall we get started?”

“Sure.”

I wanted to yell to this strange man, warn him to run away from this place and never look back, but the words froze in my throat.  I ran out of the living room and rushed from room to room hoping to see what was going on, my anxiety pushed aside by the panic I was feeling over whatever Eve was planning.

“For the record this is Eleanor Carmichael.  The date is May 14th, 2016 and I'm speaking with a gentleman who wishes to be known as Michael.  Hello, Michael.”

“Hello, Eleanor.”

Eve was using my name.  It wasn't anything that I hadn't expected, but it was hard hearing her pass herself off as me.

“I met Michael at the very first Sizecon a few weeks ago in New York.” Eve said. “Michael is one of a large number of people who have a size related fetish and he's here today to speak about what that means.  You are just a hair under six feet tall, but when you fantasize, you imagine yourself a lot smaller than that.  Can you tell me about that?”

The window in the other bedroom gave me a view of Eve and Michael.  They were seated at a small table.  Eve held the miracle box in her hand and was speaking into it like it was a voice recorder.

“I'm a tiny.” Michael said.  “I imagine myself shrunk.  Usually to about the size of an action figure, and interacting with normal sized people.”

“Normal sized women?” Eve asked.

“Men, actually.” Michael corrected her. “I'm gay.  There are a lot of men who do imagine being in the clutches of a woman, women who want giants, and women who want giantesses.  There's a full range of orientations in the size community.”

I knew what Eve was going to do.  It was twisted and evil, but I knew what she was going to do.

“GET OUT OF HERE!” I screamed at the top of my lungs and kept on screaming.

Eve looked like she was about to ask another question when my warning stopped her silent.  I don't think that she thought I could still rebel against her, but I was.  There was no way that I was going to let her ruin another person's life.  It was bad enough to be in hell, but to know that I was responsible for another person going through the same shit that I had to was too much.

“Is that your tape recorder doing that?”  Michael asked.  “It doesn't sound like it's coming from it.”

“Oh, you'll like this.”  Eve said and smiled.  “Let me show you.”

She stood up and walked straight towards the doll house, Michael right behind her.  Why wasn't he running?  I kept screaming until the roof was pulled off and two pairs of giant eyes looked down at me.

Michael looked at me and looked confused.  Then he looked back at Eve.

“You … she … how.”  Michael said, being more articulate than I had been when I first found out about this.

“Don't move, Michael.” Eve ordered.

The miracle box glowed in her hand and Michael stopped moving.  It was too late for him now, he was in her power.

“You aren't the only person interested in size, Michael.  Although in my case it's a bit more practical than your fantasy.”  Eve said.  “This is for her own good.  Yours to.”

“You made a little copy of yourself?” Michael asked.  “Some sort of clone?”

“No.” I yelled up at them.  “I made her.  I used the miracle box to make a copy of me.”

“You're confusing the poor boy, Eleanor.”  Eve said while she stared into the light of the miracle box.

“I'm gay.” I said.  “And I hated myself because of it.  I used to think that it was a choice.  That if I had to do it over again I could be normal.  I used the miracle box to make a new me.”

“But I turned out just as big a lesbian as her.  Just as full of self loathing as her.  Only I didn't have any problems  blaming my creator.  So I stole her magic box and put her in a doll house and tried to fix her, but she refuses to cooperate.”

“I don't need to be fixed.  There is nothing wrong with me!”  I said.  Words that I would have never said in my old life.

“See what I mean.”  Eve said.  “You're my last hope, Michael.”

“What?”  he asked.

“You know how otherwise perfectly straight people can turn gay when they are in a single sex environment?  Prisons.  Boarding schools.  Those sorts of places.  I'm going to do that with you two. Only you'll be inching to the straight side of the Kinsey scale.
The miracle box will keep you fed and watered.  I'll check in on you from time to time, but you won't know about that.  The only human contact you are going to have from now on is with each other.  You'll either fall in love and be cured of your sin or you'll drive each other so mad that you kill each other.  Either way, two fewer gays in the world

“I don't even have to feel bad about shrinking you, Michael; it's what you want.”