“So he texts you and stuff now? Like THE Jean Paul just texts you from his personal phone like anybody else?”  Madelyn’s jaw hung open.

Jelena just chuckled. “He does. I guess that makes me one of the celebrities you always read about on your trashy websites,” she said before taking another sip of wine. The Serbian had never much liked sweet wines before, but now she struggled to imagine drinking anything else. 

“They’re podcasts, thank you very much, and they’re not trashy. But forget about that! You’ve got the real scoop. Tell me everything, girl.” Madelyn leaned over the table conspiratorially, as if the wine bar concealed any number of lurking paparazzi, just waiting to overhear. 

“There’s not that much to tell, really. In some ways he’s like any other client, indecisive, temperamental, has bizarre design ideas.” She took another sip, careful not to spoil her brand-new, white suit jacket with any errant red spots. “But in other ways he’s not like any man I’ve ever met. He gave me money to buy this jacket as an apology for when I slipped and fell, which was totally my fault. Though he insisted, it had to be white.” 

“Huh, that’s so weird. I was gonna say I’ve never seen you get so dressed up for a wine night. And why white? Maybe it’s like how Van Halen didn’t want brown M&M’s in their rider. Maybe it’s like a test to see if you were paying attention,” Madelyn said.

“I’m allowed to be stylish if I want. It’s important that I always look my best for him. And Jean Paul doesn’t need to test me. He knows I’ll always obey him,” the words came to Jelena without a thought, though they felt strangely alien on her tongue.

“Ok, what did I give you as a welcome present, when you moved to the neighborhood?”

“What? It was a handle of vodka. Why do you ask?”

“I just had to make sure you hadn’t been replaced by a pod person or something.”

“Excuse me?”

“Well, the Jelena I know would never say she’d always obey someone,” Madelyn said. Her voice sounded like a joke, but belied an undercurrent of concern.

“Look, he’s just an important client is all,” Jelena said, flushed with embarrassment. She hadn’t changed that much, had she? Sure, she usually wouldn’t just obey some man. But Jean Paul wasn't just some man. He was. . . . well, Jean Paul. 

“Sure, sure, sure. It has nothing to do with the fact that Jean Paul is one of the most eligible bachelors in Hollywood.” 

Jelena laughed a bit too loudly. “Don’t be ridiculous. Besides I thought he was married to what’s her face from that reality TV show.” 

“You really don’t know anything do you. How would you survive without me? Nadja and Jean Paul divorced last year, girl! It was nastyyyy. How did you not hear about this?” Madelyn kept rambling on about the details of the divorce. Apparently, it had been extremely hostile. 

But Jelena wasn’t really listening. One little word had captured her attention. Now it was all she could think about. “I’m sorry, her name was Nadja?”

“Yes, duh. She’s only the most famous woman in the world. She broke the internet with those pictures of her in the sheer white dress, where she practically looked naked.”

Jelena’s eyes still showed no recognition. 

“I thought you would know her, since she’s Serbian like you. She even looks a little like you, tan skin, intense eyes, straight, dark hair.”

The world started spinning, and not from the wine. Madelyn kept talking, but the words became white noise. The album had been named after his ex-wife the whole time. Marta had insisted she listen to it and now she couldn’t stop listening to it. Come to think of it, how had someone like Jean Paul even found her instagram in the first place? Was he just looking for people who resembled his ex? But that would mean . . . no . . . no . . . it couldn’t mean.

At that moment a familiar sound disrupted Jelena’s spiraling thoughts, the opening bars of Nadja. As soon as the vibrations reached her eardrum, all Jelena’s worries faded into the background. She didn’t need to ask so many questions. She didn’t need to think so much. She could just listen and obey. Her hand moved automatically into the folds of her purse and extracted the phone, without a thought for offending her companion. 

“Hello,” she answered. 

“There you are,” came Jean Paul’s friendly baritone. “I’ve been missing you. I really have. You’re special. You could be something really special.” 

The words wafted into her mind and filled her with a light headed giddiness. The rumbles of her own ruminations were still there, but had become almost imperceptibly quiet. “Oh that’s sweet, thank you.” 

“I’m just a sweet guy like that, you know? Yeah, sure you do. I know you do. Now listen, my canvas, whatcha doing? You busy?”

“I’m at drinks with my friend.”

“Good, so you’re free. Come up to the house. I’ve got something important for you to do. It just hit me, right, like this flash of divine inspiration. You’re gonna love it.” Then he hung up.

Jelena still drifted in the wake of his words like a fallen leaf caught on the current. “Sorry I’ve got to go,” she said dreamily, before turning to walk away. A part of her felt bad leaving Madelyn. She would never do that, but Jean Paul needed her and that was more important.

Madelyn tried to wave her friend back as she left the table, but Jelena paid her no mind. She walked out of the bar and into a dream. The drive up the mountain had become automatic. Even in the fog, even in the darkness, it didn’t matter. It was as though the car itself knew the way. Jelena certainly wasn’t thinking about the route anymore. No, she just quietly hummed along to the melody of Nadja.

Don’t you know what you could be

Baby, Baby if you could see, 

That all you need in this world is me. 

Before she knew it, she’d arrived. The warm glow of the artificial light pierced the mountain’s darkness and she walked to it. Inside Jean Paul was pacing the living room at the ground floor. Marta sat stoically at the bar, clicking away on her tablet. As the pop star saw Jelena enter, he clapped his hands and then rubbed them quickly together, sending the beaded bracelets on his wrists clicking and jingling. “There she is, my gorgeous canvas.” 

Jelena never really understood why he called her that, but it sounded so affectionate, she couldn’t bring herself to object. “Yes sir, I’m here.” She couldn’t recall when she’d started calling him sir either. Madelyn’s words echoed faintly in her mind. The Jelena she knew wouldn’t call some man ‘sir’, even if he was rich and famous. But Madelyn hadn’t seen how it made Jean Paul smile. If she had, surely her friend would understand. 

“Great, great, great. I got you a little something. It’s over there. Open it up, then we can go over my vision for the space.” He gestured to a white box with a cartoonishly large ribbon, sitting on the countertop. 

Jelena approached the box and flipped open the lid. “Oh, Jean Paul. This is so generous, but I can’t wear this,” she said. Inside lay a crisply folded, white uniform, just the same as Marta’s. Swooping, futuristic high heels sat at the base of the box with a tight mini skirt laid over them and the folded half jacket above that. It would show all of her legs, her stomach, even up to her breasts. She had agreed to a lot for Jean Paul, but this felt like crossing a line. 

Suddenly he was behind her. “Why not my little pet? Do you think you can’t pull it off? Trust me, I’ve met all the hottest models in the world. They’ve got nothing on you. Just try it.” 

Jelena flushed at his compliment, the red reaching all the way down to her chest. But she had to refuse. “It’s not that. It’s just inappropriate. I’m your contractor, your employee, kind of. This outfit just shows so much skin.” 

His arms wrapped around her waist and began gently rocking her from side to side. “Hey, hey. You make it all sound so cold. You ain’t just some cheap design hooker I hired. Do employees buy each other presents and text all night? No they don’t. Cause that’s not what we are. We’re friends. We’re close. You want to be close to me, don’t you?”

The rocking and the warm tickle of his breath on her neck made it hard to think. “Yes . . . Want to be . . . close,” she sighed. 

“Of course you do, my prize. But you know I’m an important and powerful guy. If you want to be close to me, you gotta do what I say. You can do that right? I know you can because you’re so smart. So you’ll do whatever I say, right?” 

“Um, yes?” came her bleary reply. 

“See, I knew you were a smart one. You’re doing so good. You’re almost there.” One of his hands lifted to her temple and began tracing slow circles, rubbing away the last of Jelena’s thoughts. “Now say you’ll obey,” he prodded. 

“I obey?” she answered, feeling dizzy and almost drunk. 

“Say it like you mean it.”

No, this was wrong. A part of her knew she shouldn’t say it, but that part felt so small and distant. “I obey.” Her voice sounded more sure this time. 

“That’s it. Now with more passion,” Jean Paul commanded. As he did, his touch glided down the curves of shoulders all the way to her nipple, where it resumed its lazy circles. 

Jelena didn’t mind that though. She couldn’t even consider it, really. Only those words echoed in her thoughts. “I obey!” She yelled so loudly it bounced off the concrete walls and reverberated across the atrium. 

“That’s better. Now get dressed.” 

“Yes, sir.” In a haze, Jelena’s hands took the box and she began wandering towards the restroom. 

“Nah, you can change here, my pet,” Jean Paul cooed. 

That seemed wrong to part of Jelena’s brain, but that part was ensconced in a thick, billowing fog. Jelena could barely make out its objections at all. With her thoughts so clouded, Jean Paul’s voice slipped in easily to fill the void. So she simply answered, “Yes, sir.” 

The blazer crumpled to the floor, totally forgotten. The skirt and blouse joined it moments later, leaving Jelena totally exposed. She had forgotten that she had forgotten to wear underwear. That had been happening more and more lately, but it didn’t matter.  

Jean Paul beamed as he watched her dress. The skirt had been sized carefully to hug her ass as tightly as possible, while still letting her walk. The slit revealed just enough tanned thigh to draw his gaze between her legs. Seeing her wrapped in his creation was even better than seeing her naked. He thought he’d outdone himself with the jacket. Who would cross a blazer and a crop top? Nobody that’s who, nobody except for Jean Paul. The effect was spectacular. The plunging neckline revealed a mouthwatering view of Jelena’s cleavage, while the high bottom cut matched it with a steaming helping of underboob. Finally she stepped into the heels, showing off the muscle of her legs and pushing her ass out even further. The singer watched those legs with a barely contained hunger. He let out a whistle as she finished. “Wow, babe. Just wow. You’re going to be even prettier than her.” 

“Prettier than who?” Jelena asked, feeling a faint tickle in the back of her mind. 

Jean Paul shook his bald head. “Just forget I said anything. We’ve got important business to get to.” 

Jelena instinctively stood at attention, ready to listen and obey. 

“I finally figured out what’s been buggin’ me about this room. It’s so damn obvious. Just been staring me in the face this whole time.”

“What is it?”

He placed a hand on the bare, concrete wall before him, fingers splaying out across the rough surface. Then he turned to her triumphantly, as if that was all the explanation needed. 

“The wall?” Jelena asked, still feeling far too disoriented to follow whatever her employer was trying to say. 

“Right, right. Sometimes I forget I’m such a genius. I’m like the modern Leo Da Vinci, ya know? So It’s hard to explain my brilliant ideas sometimes. It’s all the gray, all this cement ‘n’ shit.” 

The talk of design had rattled a few fragments of awareness loose from the clouds inside Jelena. “Oh right, that was part of my design proposal,” which had largely gone ignored in favor of Jean Paul’s sporadic notions. “I suggested we introduce some warm tones to soften the space.” 

He removed his hand from the wall and patted her on the head, like a child. “That’s cute, when you try to design stuff. But you don’t have my vision. Which one of us has the record breaking clothing line? Yeah, Jean Paul of course. So leave the thinking to me. No warm nonsense. It needs to be white.” 

“White?” Jelena’s eyes slowly wandered up the three story wall in front of her, as she tried to imagine the whole thing painted white, all the natural texture of the concrete erased. “That might be a bit much.” 

“It’ll be a lot much. That’s the point. Look at all these little scratches ‘n’ shit. It’s imperfect. It shows what it’s made of. But it should be a blank canvas for me to shape however I want.” 

“So you want to paint on it, like a mural or something?”

“Nah, it’s a metaphor. That’s why you leave the thinking to me. Now get to work.” He gestured to a pile of paint cans and a lift in the corner that Jelena hadn’t noticed before. 

The designer really wasn’t sure about the idea. Normally she wouldn’t let her clients make such an ugly choice. But her place wasn’t to question, only to obey, the voice in her head reminded her. “Ok, I’ll get started. I’ll just put on my work clothes,” she said meekly. The late hour no longer mattered to her. 

“You’ll do it like that. It’s part of the performance. It’s art.”

“Is the performance me tripping and falling and making a fool of myself?” She asked with annoyance. 

He only smirked and then spoke. “The art is the obedience.”

The words hit Jelena like a tidal wave, knocking her thoughts into an ocean of submission and washing away the brief clarity she had gained. “I obey,” she sighed. Then she got to work. 

The white covered the bumps and grooves of the wall like a fresh dusting of liquid snow. Drops of paint spilled down on Jelena's new uniform and her face, but she didn’t care. She’d been given a task and she would see it through. The night passed in a blur. As the sun crept through the branches of the pines outside, she had finally finished. She took a step back to study her work, 

All the variations and texture had vanished into the white oblivion. Now the space was as blank as Jelena’s own mind. Her orders finished, she turned to leave. “I’m going home,” she announced absently. 

Jean Paul emerged from his bedroom wearing a plush bathrobe. He took in the sight of the alabaster atrium. “Looks spectacular. But you are home.” 

“What are you talking about?” She asked, sleep deprivation only deepening her confusion. 

“You live here now.” He said it so matter-of-factly, like it was obvious, like she’d been staying there for weeks. 

His confidence took Jelena aback. For a moment she wondered if she had been, in fact, living here already. But she knew that wasn’t true. She wanted to object, to say that she was his designer not his live-in servant. She wanted to say it was inappropriate and even if she wanted to live here, it needed to be a conversation and not an order. But none of those words could traverse the seemingly insurmountable distance to her mouth. So she simply said, “yes, sir.” 

—-

Jelena stood in the kitchen completely naked, save for a white leather collar. She never thought of herself and someone who would cook meals for a man, certainly not in the nude. But it had become one of her favorite parts of the day. She just loved to serve him. 

The Jelena that I know wouldn’t . . .

Jelena shook the thought from her mind. Maybe Madelyn just didn’t know her as well as she thought.

The rattling bang of a slammed glass door pulled her away from her work. 

“Fucking pricks. They don’t know shit about shit, they don’t,” Jean Paul’s voice boomed in the stark building. 

Jelena rushed to the living room. She saw Jean Paul slumped in an arm chair with Marta standing behind him and kneading his shoulder. He turned as she entered. “You get it right?” He asked. 

“Uh, yes sir?” Jelena answered, unsure what she was supposed to be getting. 

“Exactly. Fucking podcaster prick.” 

“Oh, you did a podcast,” She said. 

“If you can call that ear parasite a podcast, yeah. You show up all friendly and nice and such and they start grillin’ you.” 

“I’m sorry,” she offered, unsure how to help. 

“Just cause my new album’s called Nadja, all that little shit stain wanted to talk about was Nadja. ‘Oh did you see what actor she’s with now?’ And shit like that,” he hissed, before slamming his hand down on the countertop. 

Jelena hesitantly approached beside Marta. The other woman backed away, so that Jelena could take over the massage duties. “I’m sorry, that must have been difficult. You two were an item right?”

“An item? An item? Is an exploding sun an item? Are the deepest depths of the ocean an item? Is the air that keeps you alive and lets you ask such dumb questions an item? Then yeah I guess we were a fucking item,” he spat. 

Jelena recoiled from his harsh tone. The crack in his veneer had exposed something to her. It weakened the hold of the voice in her head enough for a few thoughts to slip through. “You. . . you don’t actually care about me, do you? You only hired me because I reminded you of her,” she said in a small voice.

Jean Paul noticed her start and softened. “Hey, hey. Calm down, pet,” he cooed as though he hadn’t just been shouting seconds earlier. “You don’t just remind me of her,” he rose and approached the naked woman.

Jelena’s heartbeat started returning to normal. “Oh, thank goodness.”

 “You’ll be the new her, only better.”

“Excuse me?” This time she did take a step back. Everything Madelyn had told her now felt profoundly ominous. 

“You’re perfect or you will be. Marta was a good first try but she couldn’t fully lose herself. But you, go so deep. I know you can do it.” 

Despite the pit of dread forming in her stomach, Jean Paul’s praise still tingled between her legs. 

“You kind of look like her. A little work and you could pass for her. Your personality is close too. Just a few little changes and you’ll be her. You’ll be my masterpiece.” 

“That’s impossible. I’m . . . I’m me. You can’t turn me into someone else.” 

He laughed, a deep, booming laugh. “You haven’t figured it out. I already have. You’re almost done. You think you’d be out here naked before hearing my music?” 

The old Jelena wanted to tell him to shut up. She wanted to slap him. She wanted to get dressed and storm out of here. But the old Jelena had become barely a ghost in her own head. 

“Even now, you’re not running away because you can’t. Nah, you’re waaay too far gone for that. I was gonna give you a few more weeks with the music. But fuck it. Let’s finish it now. On your knees.”

“No,” she whimpered, but her body was already complying. 

Jean Paul stepped in front of her and dropped his pants. His manhood sprung free with a lascivious eagerness. He gripped her dark hair and brought her gaze to meet his own. “Jelena, listen and obey.” 

A strange calm came over her. Her heartbeat slowed and she looked up at him blankly. 

“When I cum inside you, it will fill you completely, every corner of your mind, every cell in that smoking hot body, every piece of your identity will all be covered in me. They’ll all be my canvas to paint, however I see fit. If you understand, say yes, Master.” 

“Yes, Master,” she answered automatically. Deep, deep down inside, Jelena’s old self was still panicking, but Jelena couldn’t feel that panic. She observed herself like an animal behind glass in the zoo with a passive, apathetic curiosity. 

“Now suck.” He tilted her head down and brought her lips towards him. She didn’t resist. Resistance was behind the glass. Instead her lips dutifully accepted all of him. He kept his grip on her hair, controlling the pace of her ministrations. Even in this, her final act as herself, he would allow her no control. With a grunt, he increased her pace, plunging himself deeper down her throat. 

The act of pleasing him sent shockwaves of desire through her own body. She could feel her arousal build alongside her terror. Her nipples hardened and she wanted to yell, but couldn’t. Her sex began to drip. She needed to run, but could only kneel. In these desperate moments her thoughts turned inward, focusing on the part of herself that had been locked away, trying desperately to break the glass in her mind. She could see her old self pounding furiously on the transparent barrier. 

As the fear grew, she could feel the glass beginning to crack. Maybe with a little more effort, she could break this spell. She had to escape. This wasn’t about a job anymore. It wasn’t about money. One narrow line formed in the clear enclosure, then it built into a spider web of hope. This was about herself, about who she was at her core. She could do it. She could break free. She knew she could. 

Then the entire chamber in her mind flooded. 

The liquid was white and sticky and hot. It pooled on the floor, but quickly rose past her ankles and her knees. Soon it was up to her breasts and then her face. It filled her mouth and her nose. It stung with a heady, salty musk. As it poured into herself within herself, everything disappeared, the glass, the room, her old self, all turned white. And then Jelena wasn’t. 

—-

She leaned over the yacht’s railing, basking in the warm, Mediterranean sun and the gentle lapping of the waves. Music played in the background, but she paid it no mind. Her lover ran a hand possessively down her back. The moment couldn’t be more perfect. Then her phone buzzed. 

It flashed a name, not one she recognized, which seemed odd. So she answered, “Alô.”

“Jelena, it’s Madelyn. I’m so glad you picked up. You haven’t answered any of my texts in weeks. I thought maybe you got in an accident or something.” 

“Sorry, there’s no one here by that name. I don’t know how you got in my phone, but you’ve clearly got the wrong number.” Then she hung up and deleted the contact. 

“Who was that?” The man beside her asked. 

“It was no one,” said Nadja.