On Pleasant Street


Most mornings, Donald Pastko of 2326 Pleasant Street in East Sheffield, Massachusetts had a hard time getting out of bed, but this particular Saturday morning was a singular exception. Today, he was up with the sun, smile on his face, hardly able to contain his enthusiasm to be alive and to be Donald Pastko. 
For today was that no-longer distant today on which it would at last arrive.
He was not a man given to platitudes, but truly, today was the first day of the rest of his life. Years of saving, months of preparations, even a new home with good soundproofing and an impregnable privacy fence! He found himself repositioning his favorite chair so he could answer the doorbell a fraction of a second sooner. 
After what felt like eons of breathless anticipation, it rang. Donald Pastko sprang at the front door, throwing it wide open. His initial reaction was of mild disappointment, but after taking a moment to inspect the young woman before him, he granted that she was perhaps pretty enough. After a fashion. A little older than he had anticipated, and he’d been quite sure he’d specified brunette whereas this creature’s hair tended decidedly into the reddish end of the spectrum. 
No matter. She was here.
“Welcome, my–”
Before he could say “pet,” the girl began talking over him. She spoke with a dim warmth but in a rote sort of way, as if these words had been said many times, and would be said many more. “Good morning, I’m canvassing on behalf of Congressman Joe Navitzky, and I wondered if you’d be willing to speak with me about–”
That was as far as she got before she was curtly invited to go fuck herself and the door slammed in her face. She was not the package. But it would be here soon.
________________
Around the same time that Joe Navitzky’s volunteer was telling herself to shake it off and keep fighting the good fight, another man, Alan Burton, also of 2326 Pleasant Street, was answering his door. It was his only day of the week to sleep in, and so, rubbing sleep from his eyes, he shuffled to the door of his Sheffield, Massachusetts home, making sure his robe was cinched properly in case it was another neighborhood kid on a fundraising mission.
It was not, in fact, a child, nor was it anyone on a fundraising mission. As it so happened, there were not one but two individuals standing on his doorstep. One was a uniformed gentleman bearing one of those digital clipboards, the unfamiliar patch on the breast of his shirt matching the delivery truck still running at the end of the driveway, plumes of exhaust visible by the tailpipe on account of the brisk morning air. The other individual he could see far less of but was nonetheless far more arresting, for the back of her was still a sight worth seeing.
“Mornin’,” the delivery man said, redirecting his attention away from the backside of the woman beside him. “Delivery for you. Sign here.”
Curious what sort of delivery might merit two delivery people, and only one of them in uniform, he accepted the bulky device. Immediately, he rolled his eyes. Another one for East Sheffield. Different name on this one; perhaps Harry finally up and sold the place.
Alan Burton signed for the package, as he had always done in such cases. Harry and he had simply developed a comfort dropping the errant packages off themselves; they each so happened to pass within minutes of the other place on their way to and from work. If there was indeed a new occupant, he could make introductions and see if they would extend the old arrangement he’d made. Better to have a stranger handle his packages than endure weeks of bungling by the postal service by sending them back, and like as not having the whole screw-up happen all over again.
“All right, you have a good one, sir,” said the delivery man. What followed was very confusing to Alan Burton, for rather than fetch a parcel from the truck, he instead withdrew the laser scanner embedded in the clipboard and aimed it at the young woman. Only then did he return to the truck, but to the front seat rather than the rear end. Then… he drove away. Without his trainee – or whoever this was.As Alan was still staring after the departing truck, she at last turned around. “Good morning, master.”
________________
By noon that day, Donald Pastko’s eagerness had become anxiety. Where was it? They had said she would be delivered Saturday morning, and according to his watch – and his cell phone, his microwave, his oven, his laptop, the U.S. nuclear clock and even the recorded voice at the time and temperature number – it was no longer Saturday morning. It was noon. Then, a mere sixty seconds later, it was already afternoon. He proceeded to the company’s website and occupied himself with a grumpy review regarding their timeliness, all the while his eyes flitting to the front door at ever shorter intervals.
________________
“Hubwhuh?” asked Alan Burton. At least, the upward inflection indicated he was asking, as it was not readily clear whether this constituted a question or some heretofore undocumented method of communication.
As it pertains to the nature of his reply, the nature of the young woman is worthy of mention. Of a similar height to the man she had referred to as her master, and of a similar age (though perhaps a few years his junior). There ended the similarities. She was a pretty girl, very pretty, with broad, rounded cheeks framing a button nose, a mane of soft brown hair over softer, browner eyes. Her brows were neatly groomed; lip gloss accentuated full lips with the lower somewhat plumper than the upper; her makeup was applied in a rather minimalist way, not at all the way one might expect from a strange woman who is dumped on one’s doorstep and addresses one as master. 
As for her body, it was quite like her face, actually, down to the rounded cheeks which had previously arrested his attention when her back had been to him. Soft, neatly groomed, full, though with the lower somewhat plumper than the upper. Which was not to say her breasts were not ample, only that they were, like the rest of her, best suited to being admired for their prettiness rather than leered at for more vulgar proportions.
She was dressed like any woman one might pass on the street, though on a street in a much more seasonable time and place, for here it was well into autumn and her simple shorts and sleeveless t-shirt were nearly as out of place as the sockless neon green sneakers on her feet.
The young woman watched him carefully. She was as perplexed by his utterance as anyone might be expected to be, so she settled for merely repeating herself. “Good morning, master.”
Alan Burton took a few moments to compose himself before replying this time. “I’m sorry, but did you say ‘master’? To me?”
“Of course, master. You’re my master. What else would I call you?”
“Most people call me Alan. I suppose my creditors call me Mr. Burton.”
“I’m not one of your creditors”. It went without saying that she was not most people.
“Well, who are you?”
She arched an eyebrow. “Who am I? Why, I’m yours.”
“But what does… confound it all, you must be freezing. I am, anyway. You can come inside, if you like. Or don’t. But I’m going in.”
The woman followed, right into his living room, where he settled onto one end of the sofa, and was perplexed to see the young woman sit not in the arm chair across from him, nor even on the far end of the sofa, but on the middle cushion immediately next to him, her bare, shapely legs crossed in his direction. 
When she didn’t speak, seemingly perfectly more at home in Alan’s home than was he himself, he initiated the dialogue. “So, do you have a name?”
“If you give me one.”
“But… why don’t you have a name?”
“So you can give me one.”
“Didn’t your parents give you a name?”
“Probably. But I don’t remember them, or it.”
“Don’t remember? Were you hit on the head or something?”
“Maybe. I’m not sure.”
“How can you not be sure? Does your head hurt?”
“No.”
“That rules that out, then,” he grumbled.
“Would you like me to take off my clothes, master?”
His eyes widened like saucers. “Would I what?!”
“Would you like me to take off my clothes, master?” she repeated patiently. “I’ve noticed your eyeline keeps going down to my breasts and my legs, and so I thought you might like me to strip my clothes off for you. I’d be happy to, you know.”
“And if I said to take them off, what then, you’d just…?”
“If you said to do anything at all, I would do that thing. You’re my master, after all.”
“Well you can start by not calling me ‘master’ any more. It gives me the creeps.”
“What should I call you then?”
“I told you before, my name is Alan. Burton.”
“All right, Alan Burton.”
It was quiet a moment, but she seemed right at home sitting next to this stranger. The occupant of the home, ironically, did not feel at home at all.
“So, my anonymous guest, do you mind telling me what exactly it is I signed for this morning?”
“Me.”
“Yes, that seems obvious, but what does that mean? Are you a… prostitute?”
“No. Prostitutes get paid. You never have to pay me. I’ll serve you however you want, as long as you want, forever, for free.”
He crossed his arms. “Look, I don’t know what game you’re playing, but I wasn’t born yesterday. This is clearly some kind of setup. You’re trying to rob my house, is that it?”
“No.”
“That’s it, just ‘no’?”
“Yes.”
“That’s not exactly convincing.”
She shrugged. “I don’t think there’s any way to convince you of what I’ll do in the future, but if you want the honest answer to whether or not I intend to rob you, it’s no. I could never hurt you, nor do anything that would displease you in any way, unless you told me to.”
“So your story is actually that you’re just a beautiful stranger who’s now my lifelong slave. That’s what you’re saying.”
“Thank you, Alan Burton.”
He blinked. “For what?”
“You called me beautiful.”
________________
By two o’clock, Donald Patko was transitioning from frazzled to frayed. When he ran out of websites to post negative feedback on, he finally decided it was time to pick up the phone, with a sigh that was well and truly exasperated. He navigated the customer service automated answering service like it was directly responsible for his displeasure, mashing the buttons on his phone as if it were a voodoo doll for the culpable party.
“To speak to a representative, press 1,” the digital voice said at last, remarkably collected for a machine which had been rebuked so vociferously. Donald Patko pressed what he prayed was the last button so firmly he quite nearly heard the glass in his screen crack.
“Thank you. A customer service representative will be with you shortly. All representatives are presently occupied helping other customers. Estimated wait time is…” Rather than complete the dismissal with a number, however, it cut right to elevator music. Frayed went right out the window, and Donald Patko fumed, glaring balefully through the curtains over the front window of 2326 Pleasant Street, in East Sheffield, Massachusetts. Which was not the same as Sheffield, as so many parcel services failed to recognize. This was something Harry had not mentioned to him when handing over the key to his former home.
________________
By that afternoon, Alan Burton was well and truly convinced this woman would do anything he said. He tested her commitment to the ruse with tasks ranging from mundane to ridiculous to simply uncomfortable. Cluck like a chicken, spin in circles for two minutes, do a handstand. (She had been entirely unconcerned when her shirt slid down – or did it ride up? – to her chin, revealing a bra in the same navy blue as her t-shirt. When she noticed him noticing, her only reaction, aside from beginning to turn a bit red from the blood flow rushing to her head, was to renew her invitation to remove her clothes altogether.)
As for answers, time made her no more forthcoming. She had neither name, nor home, nor family, nor friends, nor employment, nor other identifying information –  at least none she professed to be able to recall. She didn’t even remember the drive over to his house, not a solitary detail beyond opening her eyes on his front step that morning. Or so she claimed.
Of course, that the woman was scheduled for delivery to East Sheffield was of note, he thought. If she were meant to be casing his house, surely she would not be sent to the wrong address. Yet pointing this out to her, that she had been meant to go to the address that was visually similar while still so technically distinct, merely caused her to reply that maybe so, but it was nevertheless Alan Burton who had signed for her.
“So if you’re here, and if you’re ‘mine,’ as you keep saying, what am I supposed to do with you?” he asked at last after running out of patience for his tests of obedience.
“Whatever you want.”
“What if I wanted you to rob a bank for me?”
“Which one?”
He laughed. “You know, I can never tell if you’re being subtly funny or absurdly literal.”
“I can be whichever you want.”
“See? Like that.” He poked her in the arm.
She smiled, revealing the presence of a pair of conspicuously adorable dimples. “You know, that’s the first time that you’ve touched me.”
“Did you know that’s the first time that you smiled?”
“I guess I must like to be touched.”
“You didn’t know?”
“I do now.”
“What else do you like? You’ve spent all day probing what I like, but I’d like to do something you enjoy.”
“If that’s to be the case, would you mind touching me while we talk about it? I don’t care how.”
After a long moment’s consideration, Alan Burton took her hand.
________________
“Wrong address? How in the nine hells do you deliver a custom sex slave to the wrong fucking address!” Ronald Patko shrieked into the phone some hours later.
The customer service representative’s scripted apology officially checked off all the boxes of an apology without actually covering any of the elements the customer presently required. An insincere expression of commiseration coupled with a regret for his displeasure lacking in any stated intention of providing restitution.
“Well? How long is it going to take you to get my property to me?”
“We’re very sorry you’re experiencing a delay, sir, and hope that you’ll–”
“You know what? Fuck that. I want a new girl. The asshole you sent it to has already used this one by now, no doubt. In fact, I want an upgrade. Or two girls. Something!”
“While we understand the occasional frustrations in dealing with a commodity as unique and challenging as our inventory, we unfortunately cannot offer refunds, exchanges, returns for credit, or other terms and arrangements. All sales are final. Your property has been delivered and signed for, and if you wish to claim a discrepancy or error on the part of the signatory, we can–”
“Are you saying you won’t even get it back?!”
“No, sir. I’m saying that while we understand the occasional frustrations in–”
With a final expletive – one sufficiently loud and creative as to wound even the thoroughly jaded representative for almost thirty whole seconds before she responded to the next call – Ronald Patko snatched his car keys and stormed out without even hesitating to don a coat.
________________
There turned out to be a great many things the woman liked. Many were of the predictable sort – fizzy cola, upbeat music, the feel of his cat Skittles. His joy at seeing her simple delights only spurred him to indulge her further. Only, as became increasingly clear, the two things she liked best were touching and being touched by Alan Burton.
His father’s lectures on gentlemanly behavior, while dated, had nevertheless taken, and he was loathe to take advantage of this exquisite creature’s boundless generosity where matters such as touching were concerned. Yet he was quite helpless to rebuke the girl when her fingers strayed from holding his hand to squeezing his thigh to stroking his neck to – after she quite firmly insisted was her sincere desire – rubbing his back, a task with which she possessed exceptional aptitude.
“Alan Burton?” she asked as she kneaded the dough of his shoulders.
“Yes, um… miss?” He really did need to help her come up with a name.
“I think I would enjoy touching you with other things than my hands.”
He didn’t know quite what to say to that, so he said simply, “Oh.”
“Would that be all right?” she prompted.
“You’re sure you want to?”
“I’ve wanted to since the moment I laid eyes on you. I just didn’t know I could tell you what I wanted.”
“Go ahead,” he said at last.
He was surprised by her protracted hesitation until he heard the sound of a garment hitting his bedroom floor. Soon after, her bra dropped beside his face, and in the next moment she was lying down on top of him, her bare breasts sandwiched between their bodies. Her skin cold, for a moment, but warmed quickly as her lips explored his neck while her hands – evidently not yet done with their own sojourning – rubbing along his arms and ribs.
“Are you enjoying this, Alan Burton?” she whispered into his ear.
“Are you?”
The rustle of her hair against his cheek told him she was nodding. “Very much. Would you like to roll over? I think I would enjoy that even more. If you’ll let me.”
Alan Burton obliged her, and without his even asking, she somehow shed the rest of her clothes in that brief span of time in which he was transitioning to his back. It was his first glimpse of her naked body, and as she removed his underwear he took the opportunity to admire it. She was gorgeous, a physique that was exactly suited to the prettiness of her face. Her nipples were pink pebbles on her breasts, and her nethers were visibly moistened. It was confirmation, as if he by now needed more such, that she was utterly sincere in her intentions.
She knelt bestride him, his turgid member nestled in the cradle of her womanhood as if it the two were made for one another, which of course in more than one sense, they were. The softest whimper of anticipation escaped her lips as she raised herself to accept him. Alan Burton tried to remember this exact moment, the one in which he already expected his entire life to be divided neatly into a Before and an After.
She adjusted her hips, seeking the exact position that would align their desires with their anatomies… when the doorbell rang.
“Would you like me to get that, Alan Burton? Or can we start having sex?”
He smiled. “They can come back later. Let’s–”
It rang again. And again, and then in rapid succession as whoever it was also began pounding on the front door with a fist, yelling fit to wake the devil. That is, if the sort of fiend who might interrupt their coupling was not themselves the devil, which was Alan Burton’s initial surmise.
________________
Donald Pastko’s fist was well past sore by the time someone finally answered his pounding. He’d harbored no doubt that they would be here. After all, what sort of man would receive such a gift and make it out of the bedroom before dehydration loomed? He shouted once more for them to open up; the shrill voice of a neighbor woman yelled for him to be quiet, which only caused the man to redouble his volume.
At last, through the high window set into the door, a light turned on, and a moment later, the door swung open to reveal an ordinary-looking man in a striped bathrobe, instantly indicted for this theft by the smears of lipstick up and down the sides of his neck. As if to remove all doubt, he then saw a brunette girl – his brunette girl! – peering around the corner.
“Can I help you?” the man asked. If he sounded annoyed, his anger paled in comparison to Donald Pastko’s.
“You surely can. Earlier today, you received a package that belonged to me. I’ve come to reclaim it.”
The man folded his arms across his chest. “Aha. 2326 Pleasant Street, East Sheffield? Ronald something or other?”
“Donald something or other. Does this sort of thing happen often?”
“Are you asking if we got our deliveries swapped, or if it’s common to have an impressionable young woman with her memory in tatters deposited on my doorstep? Yes and no, respectively.”
“She’s not an ‘impressionable young woman,’ she’s a brainwashed sex slave – more specifically, my brainwashed sex slave. Now stand aside and let me at my property.”
The man turned to look at Donald Pastko’s precious acquisition. “Is that right? Did this man buy you? Pay someone to delete your memories, make you… like this?”
She stepped around the corner, revealing a naked body that so nearly matched the model he had selected in the company’s catalogue she might have been a twin. “I believe so, Alan Burton. I don’t remember, as you know by now, but I think what he says is true.”
“Of course it’s true, my pet. Now get your ass out here. You’re coming home with me so I can break you in properly.”
“Do… do I have to?” she asked in a small voice.
“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do,” the man assured her, but Donald Pastko was on hand to dismiss his glib consolation.
“She does, in fact. Doing what she’s told is quite literally all she wants to do now. She’s been bought and paid for, and you can be grateful to have stolen what time with her you did. But you’re meddling in matters in which you have neither business nor concern, and unless you want to fork over the six figure price tag she set me back, you’d better stand aside.”
The man was clearly uncomfortable with confrontation, so rather than reply, he addressed the creature in his hall. “Is that true? Is that all they left to you, obedience?”
“I love doing what my master wants,” she answered simply. The man on the doorstep grinned darkly, already savoring this admission. “I don’t know how I would’ve felt before today, but now, that’s all I can think about is how wonderful it feels to serve and please my master.”
Donald Pastko’s desire to shove this man aside and claim his rightful property was muted only by the change in the man’s face, clear signs of the losing battle the man was fighting within himself. “All right,” he said at last. “You can go. I’m sorry this happened to you, but since it did, I just want you to do what makes you happy. Whatever that is.”
“Thank you, Alan Burton,” she said, and began at long last towards the door, where her purchaser awaited. Her purchaser hold out his hand, ready to take her to his home and use her according to his will – which is only to say he was ready to do to her what most men surely desired to do to her upon getting a good look. Standing on the threshold of the man’s home, she took his hand.
Then she gave it a firm tug towards her and slammed the door on it.
He could only hope the sharp sound he heard was the door and not the bones in his wrist, but he couldn’t be sure. As he crumpled to his knees, howling in pain – and trying not to hear fresh rebukes from the the woman next door – she planted a foot on his chest and shoved him backwards into what turned out to be an especially thorny bush along the front walk. As dozens of needles raked along his exposed skin almost as if to punish him for forgoing his coat, Donald Pastko thrashed reflexively, which served only to intensify his plight.
“Please don’t knock again. I’m trying to get my master to have sex with me and you’re getting in our way.”
She closed the door.
________________
“You beat that guy up for me!” exclaimed Alan Burton. He’d never picked a fight before, and certainly had never had anyone do so on his behalf. He could see why women in movies swooned over such things. The wails of pain from the fellow who’d pounded on the door still made their way in from the other side. He made a mental note to apologize to Mrs. Adler for the ruckus at such a late hour.
“Was that all right?”
“That was amazing! Did you really mean all that, about the, you know, serving, and the pleasing?”
“Of course. I’ve been trying all day to get you to let me fuck you. I was beginning to worry you didn’t find me attractive until right before we were interrupted. Would you like to pick up where we left off?”
He glanced to the door. “Do you think we need to worry about him?” He wasn’t sure whether the concern was aimed at the man’s anger or his well-being.
“What’s he going to do? Tell the police you stole his sex slave? Invite us to beat him up again?”
Alan Burton took her into his arms, where she fit every bit as naturally as she had over his penis. “You’re a delight. Why don’t we head back to the bedroom, and do… whatever we want.”
“I want you. I want to do you, Alan Burton.”
“Back at you… dammit, we really need to give you a name if you plan on sticking around.”
“As long as you’ll let me. But for now can we please, please enjoy something else first?”
“Hell yes. Let’s give you a proper welcome to Pleasant Street.”