It was late in the afternoon before they thrashed out all the details. It took a while, because sometimes a seemingly minor point could set off a major lecture or a lot of digressions. In the end, however, it came down to a small but significant ceremony on the patio near the pool, with Mr. McCluskey standing tall as Helena knelt before him, holding a black collar with studs and rings in her outstretched hands before him, as Acacia stood to the side and watched.

“Ms. Curtis,” he began. “I see you hold a collar before me. Is it your wish of your own free will that you be collared and submit to me?”

“Yes, sir,” she said reverently from the high kneel position, her eyes cast downward, not looking him in the face, as custom demanded.

“Do you understand the significance of what the decision to wear this collar is, and what it means?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Very well, Ms. Curtis,” he said. “I will accept your offer, if you will accept a number of conditions. First, I am not to be your master. I am to be your teacher and protector, no more, and can never be more. You will address me as ‘Mr. McCluskey,’ or ‘Sir’, or ‘Teacher,’ or “Protector,” as you wish, and as the situation demands. When collared, you will refer to My Lady as ‘Miss Rose,’ or ‘Mentor,’ or, if the situation demands, “Ma’am,” but not ‘Teacher.’ Is that acceptable to you?”

“Yes, sir,” she said clearly.

“Ms. Curtis,” he continued. “The second condition is that there be no sexual contact between us, or between you and Miss Rose, under any circumstances whatsoever. You are not to suggest it, talk of it, even think of it. Nor are you to accept any advances made toward you by us. Is that acceptable to you?”

“Yes, sir,” she agreed without hesitation.

“Ms. Curtis,” he said. “The third condition is that this commitment will be for no fixed period of time, but can be revoked by you or I at any point. However, once revoked, it will not be reinstated. Is that acceptable to you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Ms. Curtis, the fourth condition is that in accepting this collar, you are accepting my guidance and discipline, and you will agree to the customs that we have developed and will teach you. In return, we will attempt to give you the opportunity to explore a path that you may wish to follow in the future. Should you decide of your own free will to follow it, we will attempt to offer you guidance and protection on your first steps along that path. Is that acceptable to you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Ms. Curtis, the fifth condition is that you will wear this collar on these premises only, and only when I place it upon your neck. I will remove it before you leave, with the possible exception of special circumstances, when I will be with you, along with Miss Rose. When not in use, it will be hung on the same peg as Miss Rose’s collar, but always behind it. Ms. Curtis, this collar snaps closed. It does not lock. If at any time its presence threatens you or gives you panic, you may remove it of your own free will. However, if you remove it, it may be some time before I replace it, if I ever do, for it will mean that in some way, I have failed you. Is that acceptable to you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Ms. Curtis, the sixth condition is that you will accept no master without our approval, as you have charged us to state an opinion prior to that event. Is that acceptable to you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Ms. Curtis, the final condition is that you will submit to my wishes and my teaching and my training. I do not expect mindless submission, but I do expect respectful obedience. In return, you will receive the full measure of my respect for you that you have shown me by allowing me to place this collar upon you. Is that acceptable to you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Very well, Ms. Curtis, I will accede to your wishes and place this collar upon you.”

He bent forward, took the collar from her hands, placed it around her neck and closed the snaps, as she shook internally. Earlier that afternoon, they had a long discussion about the symbolism of submission that the collar carried – as if she hadn’t learned all she’d needed to know from watching Acacia. But now, it seemed real. The collar was snug around her neck, but not uncomfortable. The way ahead was murky, she knew, and it might stay that way for a while, but there was a tremendous sense of rightness that its being there gave her. She knew that allowing it to be placed there had a good chance of meaning tremendous changes in her life, changes she could only dimly comprehend. But, if those were to be, she’d face them.

“Thank you, sir,” she said genuinely, from her high kneel position before him, as he removed his hands from the collar and stood up.

“Rise, Miss Curtis,” he said gently.

Helena didn’t have Acacia’s – Miss Rose’s – grace in the move, but she got to her feet as best she could, only half thinking about it, as one small word resounded in her head, telling her more than all the discussion of the afternoon, and she understood it implicitly, without a word of discussion: until now, Mr. McCluskey had called her Ms. Curtis. Now, it was Miss Curtis. “Ms.” was the symbol of a liberated woman, a woman on her own. “Miss” was the symbol of an unmarried woman – a throwback, a woman still in submission to her father … or her teacher.

She was concentrating on a routine claim report when she realized Mr. Snow was standing at her desk; she realized that she had been a moment noticing him, and only really took notice when he spoke her name. “Helena, could I ask you to step into my office for a few minutes, please?”

“Certainly, sir,” she said, rising from her stool. “Is anything the matter?”

“No,” he smiled. “Other than the fact that we’re a little late on your six months’ performance review, and Personnel has been bothering me about it.”

“Has it been six months already, sir?” she said. “Time really flies.”

“Actually, close to seven,” he said, turning toward his office, as Helena followed along behind. Like most offices, the words ‘performance review’ were enough to set people cringing, and Helena was no exception. She was next to the most junior person in the department, but a couple months before she’d watched a woman considerably senior to her come out of a performance review in tears and head for the door, never to return. That example was enough to make her nervous, although she didn’t think that she had anything to be nervous about.

She followed Mr. Snow into his office, where he told her to take a seat. “How have the problems been with your back, Helena?” he asked while he shuffled papers on his desk, looking for a particular file.

“Much better, sir,” she said.

“Good to hear that,” he said. “I realize that we can’t offer executive chairs for junior people in the department, but your solution seems to have worked out.”

“I hope you don’t think it’s been any sort of a problem, sir,” she said respectfully, making eye contact with him, fighting the urge to cast her eyes downward.

She really had been having back problems, but not as the result of the cheap chairs that the office staff had in the department. After she’d accepted the collar from Mr. McCluskey, she hadn’t had any idea what would come next, but she would not have been surprised at anything. While there had been several goals laid out to work toward, back on that memorable day – what, over three months ago? – spending hours on end in a rigid high kneel in lectures and discussions hadn’t been exactly what she had been expecting. Back then, she could manage an hour or so in a high kneel comfortably, but an hour had often proved to be a warmup. She hadn’t mentioned the problem to Mr. McCluskey, since she’d known without asking that he would tell her that it would be something that she would just have to get used to – it was, in several ways, part of her training.

She had mentioned the problem to Acacia on the way home one night after an aching evening at high kneel, but Acacia hadn’t been much help – “My back is hurting, too,” she’d said. “I haven’t spent that much time at high kneel in years. You just have to get used to it.” But the pain of the position was irritating, and worse, took her attention away from some of the sometimes extremely interesting things that Mr. McCluskey and Miss Rose were talking about. On thinking about it, she realized that practice and training on her own was the only way she would solve the problem, but getting the opportunity to spend several hours a day at high kneel was obviously going to be difficult.

But, the next day, she’d been walking through accounting on the way back from the break room, and had noticed a woman there using a strange ergonomic chair, half kneeling, half sitting. She’d stopped for a moment to ask about it, and the woman had told her that it had helped with a chronic back problem. That evening, Helena happened by a garage sale, and found a small, padded footstool that would leave her head and hands at about the normal sitting height. When Mr. Snow had asked about it, she’d said she’d been having some back problems, and kneeling on the footstool got her into a different position for a while, giving her some relief, and he hadn’t appeared to mind. Now, she often spent more of the day in high kneel on her footstool than she did in the chair, and was capable of staying in the position for hours at a time.

The interesting thing was not that Acacia had picked up on the idea almost immediately, but that two other women in her department had – obviously not for the same reasons Helena and Acacia had done it, at least the real reasons, but for the public reasons. A couple of women in Acacia’s department up the hall had done so, as well, and the idea had been slowly spreading around the building. Helena suspected that any of those women would have turned very red in the face if they knew where the idea had really come from … and occasionally, she allowed herself the giggles over it.

“No, no problem at all,” Mr. Snow said. “If the chair giving you backaches was causing you problems, then finding a solution that works for you makes you a more productive worker. Commendable initiative, Ms. Curtis.”

“Thank you, sir,” she said, stifling some amusement inwardly. If those women would have gotten red in the face at the real truth, then what would Mr. Snow have thought?

A lot of Mr. McCluskey’s lectures had involved honesty. Honesty with herself, with her master, her husband, her employer, whatever. He was very serious about the subject – but said, at the same time, that their oddball pursuits that a lot of people might have looked down on weren’t adequate reason to tell a lie. So he’d spent some time teaching them how to tell a lie while telling the absolute truth. If Mr. Snow was satisfied that the chair was the cause of her back problems, not being in high kneel so much, then there was no reason to set him straight, was there? Briefly, she examined her logic again. Telling him that spending time kneeling on the stool helped with her back problems was the truth, and she’d never said that the chair was the cause of the problem … a tight fit, but honest. She was comfortable with it.

“It certainly hasn’t affected your productivity, except perhaps to improve it,” Mr. Snow said. “We’ll go over my report in detail, but in general, it’s very commendable for a young person just out of college as yourself. You have really taken hold here, especially the past few months. Your process rate is the best in the department, your work is neat and on time, spot checks for errors have shown an absolutely zero rate, which I find very impressive. I think you’ve only had two reports kicked back, and that was back when you were going through that obvious bad patch earlier in the summer.”

“I had some personal problems, sir,” she said honestly. “I tried to not let it affect my work.”

“To a degree, it did,” he said. “Which is not unusual. Most of us have problems that affect our work at some point. You did a commendable job in minimizing them. Even during that bad patch, your performance was the best in the department that month.”

“I’m very happy to hear you say that, sir.”

“I’m pleased to say that whatever the problem was, you managed to clear it up very nicely.”

“Just homesickness, I think sir. Loneliness and a lack of direction. Once I realized it was a problem, it was easily dealt with.”

“It’s that way with many problems, isn’t it?” he smiled. “Just out of curiosity, what did you do to clear it up?”

“I signed up for some classes sir. Ballet, aerobics, and that sort of thing. They are something to help keep my mind occupied and improve my fitness.”

Helena had wondered a little just how much she was going to learn with only one or two sessions with Mr. McCluskey a week. Quite a bit, once she realized the amount of homework involved. The classes – perhaps sessions would have been a better word – with Acacia and Mr. McCluskey were the most important of those, but fell in the category of “that sort of thing”. The ballet classes had been decided upon early on that memorable afternoon in late June. Helena had always been amazed at Acacia’s grace, especially in lowering herself into a high kneel on the floor and raising herself from it, but Helena had no idea of where she might acquire that kind of grace. She still wasn’t as graceful as Acacia – those two particular moves weren’t something that would be taught in ballet class, but it had given her some grounding in the art, and Acacia’s coaching had improved her performance considerably.

The aerobics classes were a little different. They were the normal sort of classes, and Mr. McCluskey’s comment on the affair was pretty much limited to, “A master always appreciates a sub that will keep herself fit,” and let it go at that. Acacia enlightened her on the way home, explaining that a fit woman could give a man a better, more enjoyable ride in bed than a fat slob. “Just be glad it’s aerobics,” Acacia expanded. “Back when he laid that line on me, it was Marine calisthenics, done at a cadence.” Even so, Acacia had enrolled in the class with her. When classes got back under way at the local community college, he had suggested that she sign up for yoga – not only would it help her limber up for uncomfortable positions and improve her flexibility, the training in the mental attitude involved would help her slip into subspace when it was needed … something the yoga instructor probably hadn’t thought of, but obviously good advice. A beginner’s class in karate was on the drawing board for sometime in the future, when she could fit it into her busy schedule, but probably not until spring. Now, after three months, Helena felt as fit as she’d ever been in her life, although she could see that there was still plenty of room for improvement.

Clearly, there was more to being a good sub than just being tied up, kneeling, and saying ‘sir’ a lot …

“Good,” Mr. Snow said. “That indicates to me that you’re a person that takes a pro-active approach to dealing with such problems, rather than just sitting back and waiting for something to happen. Helena, in a way I’m sorry to note that your monthly performance has been the best in the department ever since.”

“Sorry, sir?” Helena frowned.

“Sorry,” he grinned. “You understand that this department is mostly an entry-level position, where we can evaluate new workers. I will be the first to admit that the job is dull, boring, and repetitive, although important. Those with good performances are usually quickly promoted to better things. While I’d like you to stay here to keep things running smoothly, the quality of your work, along with the excellent performance review I’m going to turn in, will mean that you’re going to be in a different department come Monday. That will mean a promotion, which, along with the step increase you receive with this performance review, will mean a substantial increase in salary for you.”

“Thank you, sir,” she replied. Wow, wait till Acacia hears this, she thought. And, Mr. McCluskey, too. He had a lot to do with it … “Where will I be going, sir?”

“My understanding is that you will be moving over to adjudicated claims, under Mr. Young,” he said. “Helena, I feel that I should point out that Mr. Young has something of a reputation around the company as being a hard man to work for. He really isn’t, so long as your performance is adequate, and you show him the respect he feels he deserves. That is one of the main reasons why you were selected for this position. You are respectful of your superiors, always tastefully dressed, notably polite, and say important words like ‘please’ and ‘sir’ and ‘thank you’ a lot. He will appreciate that. I think that if you continue the way you have been going, you’ll get along with him just fine. Helena, a word of comment. If you do a good job for him, and continue to get performance reviews like this, I think it safe to say that you’ll find yourself earmarked for much higher things in this company.”

“Thank you indeed, sir,” she smiled. And thank you, Mr. McCluskey …

“You’re quite welcome,” he smiled. “But it’s nothing you haven’t earned on your own. You have ample reason to be proud, Helena.” He let out a sigh. “I suppose we’d better go over the actual review, although you’ve already pretty well gotten the summary …”

It took about ten minutes to go over the actual performance review, although now there was nothing much there that Helena wasn’t ready for. This was really incredible, and the incredible part was that she didn’t think that the review would have been anywhere near as good as it was had she not knelt down in front of Mr. McCluskey over three months before. In a lot of ways, she was a better person for it, but they were ways that she didn’t dare tell Mr. Snow about, or how it had happened.

“So all in all, that is an excellent performance review, Helena,” Mr. Snow said finally. “I really appreciate the job you’ve done for me, and hope you the best of luck in your new department.”

“Thank you, sir,” she said, “Both for the excellent review and for your support.”

“You were the one who did it, Helena,” he said, closing the folder and setting it on his desk. “Tell me,” he added casually. “Are you planning on going to the company Halloween party?”

“I must admit, I hadn’t really thought much about it, sir. I’m new here, I really don’t know what’s involved, and frankly, I’ve been rather busy.”

“You would do well to consider it,” he suggested. “We usually manage to have a good time. This isn’t just something where we get together over a small catered buffet and have a drink or two of some rather bland punch.” He let out a sigh. “In fact, it’s a company tradition, and over the years has become quite an event, mostly because the wife of our president has wanted it to be that way. We do have a sumptuous buffet, and a wet bar. Costumes are, well, not necessarily extravagant, but expected to show some imagination.”

“Like I said, sir, I haven’t thought much about it. Is this something where I’d be expected to bring a date?”

“Well, yes,” he said. “It’s not absolutely necessary, of course. But it is a fun time, and it’s a good way for the relatively junior people in the company to come to the notice of higher-ups, and I wish more people of your seniority would attend. Since everyone is in costume, no one is officially supposed to know who they’re talking to, but of course, everyone does. I know of no better way to make a good impression on high management than to show up for the party in some spectacular, exotic costume. I should point out that I said exotic, not erotic.”

“Sir,” she grinned demurely, “I would never do anything like that.”

“I doubt you would, Helena. But show up in something memorable, and you will be remembered.”

“I’ll certainly consider it, sir,” she smiled. An obvious idea for something really memorable came quickly to mind … “It’s still a few weeks off, but there’s a chance I could come up with something.”

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