"The Initiation"” is a short story from a collection by an author called "Bill" that I edited and published a couple of years ago with the title
"Streams of Dominance". It’s one of my favourites from all the short stories I’ve published by other authors – but I think this is the first time I’ve posted it here.
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The whole point of hazing is that a man can find loyalty in oddities. What I mean to say is that it is a walk into weirdness, very nearly, or actually, a mind block. It is a dramatist's fascination with control, and a brainwashing taken from a game and made serious.
*
"What the fuck is that?"
"That's the smotherbox."
"Smotherbox?"
"Yes."
"You mean someone gets sat on in that?" Ted picked it up, carefully weighing it in his hands. It was heavy.
"Yes. She sits here, and this is where he puts his head."
Ted turned a wheel underneath the contraption and two padded rubber arms folded down.
“That’s right, and then they’re locked together. She cannot escape any more than he can."
"Jesus Christ! That thing's fucking spooky."
"It's the initiation. We have a girl who does it and she claims she loves it."
"You're serious."
"Yup."
"How long is he in there?"
"It starts at night and lasts until morning."
*
You would have thought it was a military command post from the way they sat at a round table and watched slides from a projector.
"His name is Jack Olson. He is a chemistry major."
Grades?"
"3.0."
"Does he have a girlfriend?"
"No."
There was a brief silence, and then someone else in the darkness of that room spoke quietly:
"You always ask that."
There was another silence, for longer this time. It was as if no one wanted to be the first to confirm that they should go ahead.
"You forget your mandate, Eddy. The hazing works best when he doesn't have a girlfriend."
"Why?"
"It's the psychology. It’s from our grand master, Master Charlie. He says the hazing is particularly effective when the subject is not preoccupied with any romance with any woman whatsoever."
"I agree. That is the way their loyalties stay with the fraternity."
"Is Becky ready?"
"Becky's always ready." There was laughter at that comment.
“No, seriously. She will break off whatever she was doing. She knows the importance of this."
*
It was not dissimilar from those smotherboxes seen on some of the more specialized Internet web sites, but this went much further. In this smotherbox, the two of them were locked together, she on top in the dominant position as with those ‘normal’ boxes and he underneath her, half smothered, or more, under her naked body. But this smotherbox did not give her the option of finishing the smothering when she had had enough or even when she thought he could take no more. No way. She was as helplessly locked onto him as he was helplessly locked under her. Sure she could move her arms around and, to some extent, her legs too, but she could not undo those heavy locks and release the two of them until someone turned up with the keys. Once locked, they were both trapped there.
Becky, of course, knew all about it. She had done it at least a dozen times before, ever since some bright spark had come up with the idea and constructed the thing. At first she thought it was pretty weird, but they gave her so much encouragement that she tried it a couple of times and found... well, she found that she was rather addicted to it, although she would never admit it. She was just doing a favor for her friends. That was all.
The whole idea was pretty crazy, but for those involved in the initiation it had a certain satisfying psychology to it. “You can have too much of a good thing” was what it was all about, and there was no question in any of their minds that Becky was undoubtedly a good thing – if taken in small doses.
So they locked him in under Becky to make that very point. He had to take the good with the bad. He had no choice. What might have seemed quite enjoyable at first would, undoubtedly, be far from enjoyable by the end of the night. Quite apart from anything else, Becky would inevitably need to go to the bathroom at some point during those hours she was locked on top of him. Much as there might be some men who would not object to having her urinate all over them, few would want to be trapped in it for hour after hour.
On the first occasion she was persuaded to do this, Becky found very quickly that the arms of the device locking her in place on him did actually allow her some movement. This was a deliberate feature, and one that she used to its full. She had exactly three inches of movement available to her: three inches backward or forward, and three inches up and down. It was not much, but the difference of those three inches was the difference between a relatively comfortable facesit allowing him plenty of air to breathe, and a face-crushing suffocation that totally blocked his air supply and felt to him as though the bones in his face would crack at any second. Without a doubt, thought Becky, any man locked down there would very quickly discover how precious oxygen is.
Tonight, however, was different and it turned into a night that none of them would ever forget, particularly not the young man in the smotherbox.
Becky was having a bad day, and no matter how hard she tried to calm down she was becoming more and more angry at everything and everyone around her. It was an odd trait of Becky’s that the more she became angry, the more she had the urge to find sexual satisfaction, and the more physical she needed to be to find that satisfaction. After Becky had had a bad day, more than one man had run from her room in fear of the beautiful young woman who had suddenly turned into an uncontrollable, insatiable wildcat.
By the time they called up Becky to ask her to do her usual job for the new initiation, she was frustrated to the point of fury.
“No,” she shouted. “Fuck off.” And then she called them back thirty seconds later. “Of course I’ll do it.” She slammed down the telephone.
They were not at all sure she would turn up, and when she did it was with an attitude that kept them all at a distance from her.
“If you don’t want to do it, it’s OK...”
“Why? What’s wrong?” she snapped, daring anyone to tell her she was in a bad temper.
She did not wait for an answer. She just strode over to that young man already strapped naked into the smotherbox, slapping his hardness that saluted her as she approached, shed her clothes with not much more than a wriggle, and positioned herself on top of him, her attitude as naked as she now was.
“Well?” she glared round angrily. “Isn’t someone going to lock me in?”
There was fear in the room, and not just from that young man helplessly squirming to breathe. The shy, young female they knew so well had turned into something else, and it was something outside their experience. She was moaning and grinding herself down onto him even before the arms of the box were locked around her waist.
“Jesus, we gotta stop her.”
“This is getting out of hand.”
And then she was screaming in fit after fit of orgasm, and not one of them dared to go near her. She loved him more completely than a woman might love her vibrator, and with less consideration. His body twisted and jerked, but the smotherbox did its job and held him just where she wanted him while she was grinding herself down on him like she was never going to stop.
They could not watch. It was not the entertainment it had always been, and yet no one stopped it. One by one they slunk from the room as if ashamed they could neither bear to see any more of it nor intervene to bring it to an end. The look on her face was truly terrifying, and all the time she is smothering the shit out of the man underneath her.
“She can’t control herself. We have to do something.”
They were wrong, and even not knowing they were wrong still they did nothing. Becky knew exactly what she was doing even through the haze of orgasm and the grinding anger finding its outlet on the unyielding face beneath her. However much he and the watchers were sure he could not survive much more of it, she knew just where the limit was and she took it up to that edge until it was balanced precariously right there.
Something happened to that man that night, something that was quite unexpected. Only he and Becky knew about it, and it changed both of their lives forever. In the midst of his terror, his suffering, and her wild sexuality, there was a beauty, a trust and a nurture that stayed with them.
And no one except the two of them ever knew why it was that from then on Becky frequently borrowed that smotherbox.
”Streams of Dominance”
