The events from Part IV of the Story of O, The Owl, as seen through the eyes of Natalie. Later in the week, Sir Stephen and O went to the yacht club in the black saloon car to have lunch with some of his English friends. Jacqueline was picked up by the director of a movie for whom she had shot some scenes in Paris. They went off to take some exterior shots. Rene took the small blue sports car to gamble at the casino. Natalie, left by herself was restless. She took the path down to the inlet and swam in the sea, and then lay on the beach in the shade. When she returned to the villa, she went upstairs and changed from her orange swimming costume to a white sun dress. As she descended the back stairs to the kitchen, she heard Norah speaking on the phone. Her voice, which was usually so calm, and spoke perfect French with barely a trace of an accent, was raised. Speaking in an island patois so thick Natalie could barely understand her, Norah said, “she is a slut and out of control, it is because you are too soft and don’t beat her.” When she saw Natalie, Norah finished the call. Her voice more under control, she said to Natalie, “my granddaughter is a slut, my daughter is too kind to beat her.” She moved quietly and smoothly about the kitchen, putting some bread, olive oil, lemon and cheese in front of Natalie. Natalie who was a little conscious of her remaining baby fat, although she was not really pudgy, pushed them away. “Little one, those will become your womanly curves, eat up”. Natalie heard the steel in Norah’s voice and did so.
One day when Sir Stephen was out and Rene was sailing alone in the inlet below the Villa, Jacqueline and Natalie were sunbathing topless on the terrace off the second floor. O came out of the house and wearing a short skirt and lay down beside them. Jacqueline took some of the tanning oil she was using and oiled O’s back, and arms and legs. She rubbed the oil into O’s body tenderly but absentmindedly. When she finished the legs, she reached up under the skirt and oiled the inside of O’s thighs. Natalie heard the rings clink softly and then heard O’s rapid intake of breath as Jacqueline reached O’s secret places. Jacqueline continued for a moment then laughed and lay back down. She passed the oil to Natalie and told her, “use some of the oil, little one, or you will burn. Natalie burned a little with anger at how casually Jacqueline teased her beloved O.
Norah, the Haitian servant came out on the terrace with a pitcher of lemonade and three glasses. The ice in the pitcher clinked a little, making a sound similar to that O’s rings had made a few minutes earlier when Jacqueline seized her. The pitcher had frosted up in the heat and drops of moisture dripped down it, as moisture dripped from the nearly naked girls. Norah was fully clothed in a severely cut grey outfit with white lace at the neck and cuffs. Her shoes had a slight heel and were black and polished. She put down the tray with the pitcher and the glasses, and left. As she reached the door, she looked back, saw the faint marks on O’s back and smiled a little. Then she went back into the cool house. The three girls sat up to drink their lemonade. As they drank small beads of sweat ran down their bodies. One ran down the upper slope of Jacqueline’s left breast. It moved slowly but steadily down the curve and reached the aureole surrounding the nipple. Just as it reached the pink bud, O leaned over and licked it off, sucking it into her mouth. She then seized the nipple in her teeth and pulled slightly. Jacqueline reached out and took O’s hand. Then O and Jacqueline got to their feet and went into the house. Natalie took a deep drink of her lemonade.
Natalie drank some more lemonade and then after a minute followed the other two into the house. She moved quietly and entered the little alcove between O’s room and Sir Stephen’s where the linens were kept. Keeping silent, she moved a neat pile of ironed sheets to reveal the cunning holes in the wall that allowed a viewer to see all that happened in O’s room. O had removed her skirt and was sitting astride Jacqueline. She had pinned Jacqueline’s hand above her head with one of her hands and the other pinched Jacqueline’s nipples. Jacqueline lay there while O took her breasts and then releasing her hands, removed Jacqueline’s bikini bottom. Natalie could see the rings in O’s labia and the links with Sir Stephen’s name, the crossed whips and the one with his signet as O bent over Jacqueline. The marks of the brands that Anne-Marie had burned into O’s buttocks were also very evident. Jacqueline’s lips worked at O’s nipples while O used a dildo as black as Norah on Jacqueline’s sex. Then O seized Jacqueline by her nether lips, taking her harshly with fingers, lips and teeth, pulling and teasing the fleshy nub at the top of the lips until Jacqueline cried out in surrender. O having taken Jacqueline, left her without a backward glance picking up her skirt and not putting it back on until she was on the terrace. Natalie watched the whole thing, transfixed, too rapt to even touch herself. Jacqueline lay on the bed totally spent; Natalie went down to the inlet to cool herself by swimming in sea. O finished the lemonade while Norah oiled the leather encasing the crop and soaked the cords of the scourge.
From the start Natalie was fascinated by O’s enslaved condition. One day she ducked out of a sailing expedition with Rene and Jacqueline because she knew that Sir Stephen whipped O at that same time. She begged to be allowed to watch Sir Stephen whip O. After some time, Sir Stephen agreed.
O had been sunbathing topless on the terrace, she was wearing a short skirt, because she could not wear a bathing suit due to the rings hanging from her pierced labia. Norah fetched O, calling her with the one word, Come, just as one would call a dog. O was led into Sir Stephen’s room by the stern faced Haitian maid. Natalie watched rapt with excitement as Sir Stephen tied O’s hands together and then left them over O’s head to a hook in the high bed post. He then pulled off her dress while Norah handed him a riding crop. Norah watched impassively while Sir Stephen lashed O’s bottom and thighs. He then turned her and used the crop on her breasts, making them dance. Natalie breathed in sharply as O gasped in pain as first one nipple then another was reddened. Norah remained impassive.
Lastly Sir Stephen took the scourge, with it’s many whipcords tied with knots at the end and then soaked with water to make them stiff. He whipped O’s back, bottom and the backs of her thighs, sometimes running the knotted, moistened thongs up between O’s legs and across her sex. O cried out loudly then. At a nod from Sir Stephen, Norah took a cloth and roughly forced it into O’s mouth, knottin it at the back. Sir Stephen continued. In all, O’s whipping took about 25 minutes. Natalie watched throughout without speaking, but her eyes were bright. O hung from the ropes binding her hands together, softly weeping, as Norah put away the instruments used by Sir Stephen, the crop, the cane, and the cruel scourge. She cleaned them carefully of and drops of blood, and the sweat of O. Then she led Natalie from the room and went downstairs There was an alcove in the hall between O’s room and Sir Stephens. It was closed by a curtain. Linens were kept there. One day when searching for a bathing towel, Natalie had discovered that the walls between the alcove and O’s room were cunningly pierced so that someone in the alcove could observe what was happening in the bedroom without being seen. After Norah went downstairs, Natalie went into the linen alcove and watching from her dark hiding place saw Sir Stephen tenderly support O as he removed her bound wrists from the hook in the bedpost of the 4 poster bed. She watched as O was unbound. Sir Stephen turned her around and bend O over the bed. O spread her bottom checks to allow Sir Stephen access to his favourite way of taking her. He took her so harshly, the rings and tags that pierced her nether lips rattled against the footboard. Natalie watched as O was taken and thought of how much she loved her. Natalie caressed herself as Sir Stephen finished in O and left the room. O whipped and used lay utterly spent and slipped from the bed to the floor.
O tried on the mask Michael had given her. In fact, it was a very similar same mask to the one Sir Stephen had given to Anne Marie after the Commander’s ball. O tried it on and was amazed at the difference in her appearance with the two masks. With the owl’s mask she appeared to be some strange mixture of a woman and the night bird. Her identity was completely hidden.
AanonymousE4O added:
For my retelling of the Fourth Part of The Story of O, the Owl from the viewpoint of Natalie, click here.
O sat there in front of the dressing table mirror, lost in thoughts of the Commander’s party when little Natalie had led her into the party on a leash attached to the rings in her labia.
Photos from Doris Kloster’s Illustrated Story of O.
O recalled the firsttime she had worn an owl’s mask at a party. It was the Commander’s ball, over two and a half years ago…
They left an hour before midnight, in the BMW, O swathed in a great brown mountaineer’s cape and wearing wooden mules on her feet. Natalie, in a black sweater and slacks, was holding her chain, the leather strap of which was attached to the leather bracelet Natalie was wearing on her right wrist. The other end was attached to the large ring that pierced O’s labia. Sir Stephen was driving. The moon was almost full, and illuminated the road with large snowlike spots, also illuminating the trees and houses of the villages through which they passed, leaving everything else as black as India ink. Here and there, groups of people were still clustered, even at this hour, on the thresholds of streetside doors, and they could feel the people’s curiosity aroused the passage of that closed car (Sir Stephen had not lowered the top). Some dogs were barking. On the side of the road bathed in moonlight, the olive trees looked like the silver clouds floating six feet above the ground, and the cypresses like black feathers. There was nothing real about this country, which night had -turned into make-believe, nothing except the smell of sage and lavender. The road continued to climb, but the same warm layer of air still lay heavy over the earth. O slipped her cape down off her shoulders. She couldn’t be seen, there was not a soul left in sight.
Ten minutes later, having skirted a forest of green oak on the crest of a hill, Sir Stephen slowed down before a long wall into which was cut a porte-cochere, which opened at the approach of the car. He parked in some forecourt as they were closing the gate behind him, then got out and helped Natalie and O out, first having ordered O to leave her cape in the car.
The door he pushed open revealed a cloister with Renaissance arcades on three sides, the fourth side being an extension of the flagstone court of the cloister proper. A dozen people were dancing on the terrace and in a courtyard, a few women with very low-cut dresses and some men in white dinner jackets were seated at small tables lighted by the candlelight; the record player was in the left-hand gallery, and a buffet table had been set up in the gallery to the right.
The moon provided as much light as the candles, though, and when it fell upon O, who was being pulled forward by her black little shadow, Natalie, those who noticed her stopped dancing, and the men got to their feet. The boy near the record player, sensing that something was happening, turned around and, taken completely aback, stopped the record. O had come to a halt; Sir Stephen, motionless two steps behind her, was also waiting.
The Commander dispersed those who had gathered around O and had already called for lights to examine her more closely.
“Who is she,” they were saying, “who does she belong to?”
“You, if you like,” Sir Stephen replied, and he led O and Natalie over to a corner of the terrace where a stone bench covered with cushions was set against a low wall. Then he disappeared into the crowd.
When O was seated, her back against the wall, her hands lying on her knees, with Natalie on the ground to the left of her feet, still holding onto the chain, O’s eyes searched for Sir Stephen, and at first could not find him. Then she sensed his presence, reclining on a chaise lounge at the other corner of the terrace. He was able to see her, she was reassured. The music had begun again, the dancers were dancing again. As they danced, one or two couples moved over in her direction, as though by accident at first, then one of the couples dropped the pretense and, with the woman leading the way, marched boldly over. O stared at them with eyes that, beneath her plumage, were darkened with bister, eyes opened wide like the eyes of the nocturnal bird she was impersonating, and the illusion was so extraordinary that no one thought of questioning her, which would have been the most natural thing to do, as though she were a real owl, deaf to human language, and dumb.
From midnight to dawn, which began to lighten the eastern sky at about five, as the moon waned and descended toward the west, people came up to her several times and some even touched her, they formed a circle around her several times and several times they parted her knees and lifted the chain, bringing with them on of those two-branched candlesticks of Provençal earthenware - and she could feel the flames from the candles warming the inside of her thighs - to see how she was attached.
There was even one drunken American who, laughing, grabbed her, but when he realized that he had seized a fistful of flesh and the chain which pierced her, he suddenly sobered up, and O saw his face fill with the same expression of horror and contempt that she had seen on the face of the girl who had given her a depilatory; he turn and fled.
There was another girl, very young, a girl with bare shoulders and a choker of pearls around her neck, wearing one of those white dresses young girls wear to their first ball, two tea-scented roses at her waist and a pair of golden slippers on her feet, and a boy made her sit down next to O, on her right. Then he took her hand and made her caress O’s breasts, which quivered to the touch of the cool, light fingers, and touch her belly, and the chain, and the hole through which it passed, the young girl silently, did as she was bid, and when the boy said he planned to do the same thing to her, she did not seem shocked. But even though they thus made use of O, and even though they used her in this way as a model, or the subject of a demonstration, not once did anyone ever speak to her directly. Was she then of stone or wax, or rather some creature from another world, and did they think it pointless to speak to her? Or didn’t they dare?
It was only after daybreak, after all the dancers had left, that Sir Stephen and the Commander, awakening Natalie who was asleep at O’s feet, helped O to her feet, led her to the middle of the courtyard, unfastened her chain and removed her mask and, laying her back upon a table, possessed her one after the other.
Instead Michael gave O a mask that covered her entire head. He said, “You are to be an owl tonight.” O remembered the first time she wore an owl’s mask.
AanonymousE4O added:
For my retelling of the Fourth Part of The Story of O, the Owl from the viewpoint of Natalie, click here.
Being an attempt at a modern version of the Story of O, without the love.
“Chloe, I have something to say to you”
‘Yes?’
‘Listen now. We’ve been together for over 6 months now. We’ve been lovers, haven’t we?“
‘Yes.’
'And I’ve shown you things, haven’t I? A different life. Shown you that you can be beautiful, that you can wear pretty things, that you can be sexy, that you can enjoy life - eat well, sleep late, dance, laugh, sing - all these things are beyond what you knew before. That’s so, isn’t it?’
'Yes,… yes - it is. And .. and I’m grateful - really, I am…’
And she was, but there was something cool about him today that frightened her, a little. He had always been kind, but always with a little reserve, always a coolness. She had always known that she wasn’t his only girl, that she had to accept that he wasn’t really hers - even though she knew that she was his; that this wasn’t a 'fair’ or 'equal’ relationship.
Chloe didn’t care - because all those things he had said were true - he really had helped her to transform herself - to trust herself, trust her body, trust her joy, trust her desires, trust her instincts. She wasn’t a new person - her old shyness, her reserve, her uncertainties weren’t gone forever - she was still essentially passive, quiet, but they weren’t crippling anymore.
Nevertheless, his coolness today had a different quality, and her belly tightened, just a little. Was he going to break up with her? Had she done something wrong? Chloe felt her heart speed up, and took herself in hand, hearing his voice - 'be strong, be yourself, keep hold of yourself, think how you would like to be in the situation, and be it’.
What did she want? Easy - she wanted him to find her so beautiful, so attractive, so sexy that he couldn’t break it off - and she wanted him to understand how deeply her gratitude ran. Chloe straightened her back, pulled her shoulders back, chest forward a little, managed a small smile;
'I .. I’m more grateful than you could know, R, and .. and whatever it is that you have to say to me, nothing will change that. I .. I love you.’
Before, when Chloe had said that, he had simply smiled at her, in one way or another, depending on his mood. He had never responded, just let the declaration hang, until he or she moved the conversation on. She had never pressed him, tried always not to expect anything of him.
This time, though, he answered her;
'But I, Chloe - I don’t love you - I have been clear, honest about this - you know it. I enjoy you, I appreciate you. I find you beautiful, sexy, pleasant to be with, lovely to watch as you have flowered. I enjoy sex with you a great deal. Your eagerness to please me satisfies and entertains me. But I don’t love you, and I never will. What I have to say to you is nothing to do with love. Nor to do with gratitude, either. I am flattered by your love, and appreciate your gratitude, but I don’t want either of those to determine how you respond. I am going to ask you to decide how your life will go - you must answer correctly, for yourself. Do you understand?’
Chloe’s belly felt hollow, and she was trembling a little, but again, she held herself as well as she could, kept her face smooth, lips still curved in the faintest little smile. She couldn’t control the deep breaths which lifted her chest, but could move so that they made her cleavage swell, an effect she judged he had liked in the past. Once, she had got on her knees and play begged him for something - she doesn’t remember what, but he had liked it, and told her so, had her beg again. She had played along and it had led to great sex. It had frightened her a little though, so she’d never done it again, and he had never suggested anything similar. She wondered whether she should beg now, though. She would - happily - except that she doesn’t know what to beg for.
But he was moving on, watching her with that new coolness; interested, paying attention, more as a naturalist watches an animal than a man watches his lover. It was somehow intrusive and cold, not as he had looked at her before. But it made her feel special somehow, as if everything about her mattered. Everything to do with how she looked and acted at least - he was rarely interested these days in what she was thinking or feeling.
Chloe felt herself becoming incredibly self-conscious: it made her blush, but that wasn’t really it. What it really was, was that she experienced again that incredible sensation that he was going to pay attention to her, about to help her feel more alive, more immediate, more .. intense. It frightened her, yes - but at the same time it made her feel on the edge of something - something profound. Something that really meant something.
She realised that she hadn’t responded to his question, felt stupid, but he simply smiled at her; amused, as so often, but not annoyed. He was never annoyed with her. Firm, yes, uncompromising, yes, uninterested, yes, demanding, often, cruel on occasion - all these things, but never angry - even when she had done something spiteful or stupid. He would calm her, then tell her what he was going to do about it. She would beg forgiveness, and accept his decision. Sometimes he spanked her. She was shocked by this, the first time, but made no trouble. After she had transgressed, she was always desperate to make amends, always grateful to him for not being angry, always meekly complied.
And afterwards, he always fucked her savagely, sometimes hurting me, and Chloe .. Chloe gloried in it, in knowing that she had aroused him to such a pitch.
To tell the truth, she liked being fucked that way sometimes - even when it hurt. Liked the wildness of it, the feeling of being helplessly carried away by his strength and will.
Now, she found herself smiling at these memories, as he smiled back;
'It doesn’t matter - you can’t know really what I mean, and I can’t tell you, so you don’t need to answer - just listen. In fact, only one answer is needed from you today, and it will be a simple yes or no, so there’s no need to talk. Let’s walk.’
He left a large bill on the table - she still hadn’t got used to how rich he was, to how never having to worry about money changed things. She was looking at the money as she stepped away, when the waiter, arriving, caught her glance, looked meaningfully at the money, then back at her, letting his eyes slowly work their way down her body and up again, taking in the pretty short dress with the floaty skirt and low cut cleavage, my long tanned legs and high-heeled sandals, grinning at her insolently, letting her know he thought she must be a tart, that she had given the game away with her interest in the money.
Chloe flushed, and hurried to catch up with R, skipping a little, knowing that she didn’t care what the waiter thought - could even think it funny - even if it was true, perhaps.
When Rene told O that they were leaving, she took a hasty bath, then Rene brushed her hair, handed her powder and lipstick to her. When she returned to her cell, her suit, her blouse, her slip, her stockings, and her shoes were on the foot of the bed, as were her gloves and handbag. There was even the coat she wore over her suit when the weather turned brisk, and a square silk scarf to protect her neck, but no garter belt or panties. She dressed slowly, rolling her stockings down to just above her knees, and she did not put on her suitcoat because it was very warm in her cell. Just then, the man who had explained on the first evening what would be expected of her, came in. He unlocked the collar and bracelets that had held her captive for two weeks. Was she freed of them? Or did she have the feeling that something was missing? She said nothing, scarcely daring to run her hands over her wrists, not daring to lift them to her throat.
Then he asked her to choose, from among the exactly identical rings which he showed to her in a small wooden box, the one which fit her left ring finger. They were strange iron rings, banded with gold inside, and the signet was wide and as massive as that of an actual signet ring, but it was convex, and for design bore a three-spoked wheel inlaid in gold, with each spoke spiraling back upon itself like the solar wheel of the Celts. The second ring she tried, though a trifle snug, fit her exactly. It was heavy on her hand, and the gold gleamed as though furtively in the dull gray of the polished iron. Why iron, and why gold, and this insignia she did not understand? It was impossible to talk in this room draped in red, where the chain was still on the wall above the bed, where the black, still rumpled cover was lying on the floor, this room into which the valet Pierre might emerge, was sure to emerge, absurd in his opera outfit, in the dull light of November.
She was wrong, Pierre did not appear. René had her put on the coat to her suit, and her long gloves, which covered the bottom of her sleeves. She took her scarf, her bag, and carried her coat over her arm. The heels of her shoes made less noise on the hallway floor than had her mules, the doors were closed, the antechamber was empty. O was holding her lover by the hand. The stranger who was accompanying them opened the wrought-iron gates which Jeanne had said were the enclosure, which was now no longer guarded by valets or dogs. He lifted one of the green velvet curtains and ushered them both through. The curtains fell back into place. They heard the gate closing. They were alone in another antechamber which looked onto the lawn. All there was left to do was descend the steps leading down from the stoop, before which O recognized the car.
She sat down next to her lover, who took the wheel and started off. After they had left the grounds, through the porte-cochere that was wide open, he stopped a few hundred meters farther on and kissed her. It was on the outskirts of a small, peaceful town, which they crossed through as they continued on their route.
O was able to read the name on the road sign: Roissy.
In the space of a week she learned fear, but certainty; anguish, but happiness. René threw himself at her like a pirate at his prisoner, and she reveled in her captivity, feeling on her wrists, her ankles, feeling on all her members and in the secret depths of her heart and body, bonds less visible than the finest strands of hair, more powerful than the cables the Lilliputians used to tie up Gulliver, bonds her lover loosened or tightened with a glance. She was no longer free? Yes! Thank God, she was no longer free. But she was light, a nymph on clouds, a fish in water, lost in happiness. Lost because these fine strands of hair, these cables which René held, without exception in his hand, were the only network through which the current of life any longer flowed into her. This was true to such a degree that when René relaxed his grip upon her - or when she imagined he had - when he seemed distracted, when he left her in a mood which she took to be indifference of let some time go by without seeing her or replying to her letters and she assumed that he no longer cared to see her and was on the verge of ceasing to love her, then everything was choked and smothered within her. The grass turned black, day was no longer day nor night any longer night, but both merely infernal machines which alternately provided, as part of her torture, periods of light and darkness. “Story of O,” Blue Moon edition p. 95
This blog is an homage to and expansion on the French erotic novel, “Story of O.” It was written in the 1950’s by Pauline Reage, a pseudonym. In the novel the main character is O, a pretty Parisian who works as a fashion photographer and is initially in love with Rene. One day as they are walking in the park, Rene gets O into a car which takes her to an estate called Roissy. There O is raped and whipped. Rene leaves her there to be trained as a sex slave for several weeks before taking her away. Back in Paris, Rene gives O to his older half- brother, Sir Stephen, when Rene is smitten with another woman, Jacquelyn. Sir Stephen further abuses O and eventually takes O to an older woman’s home in Samois. The older woman, Anne Marie, has several other girls at her home who are basically sex slaves like O. Anne Marie has one of them whip O between her wide spread thighs to reinforce O’s status as a slave. To further reinforce O’s status, Anne Marie pierces O’s labia with a ring and later brands O’s buttocks with Sir Stephen’s initials. In the final chapter Sir Stephen takes O, Rene, Jacquelyn and Jacquelyn’s younger sister, Natalie, to the South of France. There O is shown to the mysterious man known only as the commander. Finally O, pubic hair now completely shaved, is led into the commander’s party on a leash attached to the ring that pierces her labia. There is a second novella, Return to Roissy, which delves more into O’s story. In it, Sir Stephen sends O back to Roissy which we learn is basically a high class bordello. We also learn that there are two district classes of girls at Roissy. There are women who are basically prostitutes who are paid for their services and are free to come and go with the understanding that while at Roissy they are to abide by the rule that they must spend the night in chains and be whipped from time to time. O and a few other girls are different though – brought to Roissy by their lovers, they are treated more harshly –abused and whipped daily. Return to Roissy ends with O having to decide whether or not to leave Roissy.
