Ariadne
The rope is a pacifier. I’ve never met a girl it didn’t silence, a sudden plunge into quiet as the binds tie, one after the other,wrapping around and over and under and in knots, until you’re all but mummified, restricted, withheld. Your lips are free, but your body isn’t. I could say your mind is, too, but I think that’s a misnomer; your thoughts aren’t necessarily restricted, just given a little more focus. Funneled through a pinhole, but with enough intensity to burn.
Brief forays into the mechanics of hypnotism make it hard not to recognise certain similarities. The trance is a layered thing, something that takes place over time, slowly accumulating until you’re swimming in it. You build it on foundations of consent and calm, sooth and lull until the mind is nothing but white noise, happily wallowing in a sea of not-quite-thought.
The same thing happens with the rope, just on a more primal level, with less conscious intent. Every utterance is an interruption, the frown washing over the face with all the incongruity of a wave breaking over an otherwise calm sea. “Too tight?” Becomes a moment where the immersion is broken, where you have to surface, return to conscious, deliberate thought to say “Yes”, or “No.”
So I keep such interruptions to a minimum. I let you get lost, because I know that I can just find the loose end, and unravel you back to waking thought. I’m Daedalus, sending you into the Labyrinth with a ball of string. A few tugs and I’ll get you back.
But while you’re gone, I feel like I’m fondling your subconscious, letting it play along my fingers like silk, enjoying the base reaction to a touch, or a word, everything sluggish and quick, all at once. You’re just there, close enough to touch.
This is exactly it.