In the dream, he stood in a house. Not an apartment as he lived in now, a man of thirty-five, but a house like the one in which he’d grown up. The floor strong hardwood that creaked in the night as if haunted, doors and stairways going up and down so many ways that a boy could get lost, and a great roaring fireplace in the den for the family to gather for Christmas eve.

It struck him as too large – surely the ceilings had not been so vast, the hallways so wide. He was seeing it not as it was, but how he remembered it. Somewhere upstairs was a little room with a canopy bed and a dinosaur-print blanket.

Outside the hearth, the house was cold and dark, and he did not risk leaving the safe ring of light. Bertie hadn’t lived here for over twenty years.

But he was not alone.

In the loveseat beside the fireplace sat a woman, in a dress of green crushed velvet lined with fur. She was both young and old, her hair a bottle blond, feather earrings dangling from beneath her layered sides. Colourful etchings ran down her arms from shoulder to wrist, and she wore leather boots that Bertie’s mother would have never allowed in her house.

He had not expected to find her here.

“Have you been a good boy or a bad boy?” she asked.

He looked, but he could see no bag of gifts, no pail of coal.

“Who are you?” he dared to ask.

“I am instability,” she said. “Insecurity. I am the dawning of the self, and the birth of the other. I hold the power of knowledge, and the knowledge that you are powerless. I am childhood’s end.”

He had known her by another name, long ago, and he averted his eyes in shame.

“And you? Are you a good boy or a bad boy?”

Bertie wet his lips. “I was a good child, a bright child. I did what my parents told me, as my teachers instructed, as my friends encouraged. I followed the rules.”

The woman said nothing, but tilted her head. Her jewelry tinkled like bells.

“I held my tongue even when I knew I should speak,” Bertie continued, unable to stop, “I followed the letter if not the spirit of the law. I lied to save face. I…”

“Finish,” she said.

“I was proud, but I was also a coward. I tricked my mother and laid blame at your feet. It was childish, yes. But I was a boy!”

“But not, it seems, a good one.”

A weight had settled on Bertie’s chest, and he could scarcely bear to stand.

“That is guilt, Bertie. For things you have done, for things you have not, and for things you cannot change. What am I to do with you?”

His breath came in shallow bursts, his lungs crushed under the mass that had attached itself to him. His feet failed him, and he thrust out his hand toward her, his only source of salvation.

“Please,” he choked, “Forgive me—“

“The time for forgiveness is past. Now there is only retribution.”

Her gaze, once curious, grew cold. He fell to his knees in front of her, clutching her leg – and in his supplication the weight lifted. He breathed deeply, taking large, smoky gulps of air.

She moved her arm, revealing a slim wooden clothes brush from within the folds of her dress.

“Do you accept?”

He nodded. Slowly, with his body only beginning to return to his control, he crawled up toward her lap. She seemed to swell before him, as tall to him as he was to a child. He lay across her mighty thighs, and did not struggle as she took his pajama bottoms in her strong hands and dragged them down to his knees.

“Will it hurt?” he asked.

“Yes,” she answered, “But it’s supposed to.”

***

He walked gingerly through the door, rubbing his buttocks through the fabric of his pants. The angry red soreness would fade in some hours, he knew, but he would feel the resulting bruises for some time to come.

Beyond the door was a toy shop, but not one as he had seen before. Instead of teddy bears and train sets in the window, he saw beads and dildos and the most obscene of costumes.

She waited behind the cash register, but she was different now. She was now a woman of late middle age, her hair a brilliant red to match her suit. Candy cane leggings peeked out from underneath the counter, wrapped around gamine legs.

“Welcome, hon,” she said, her voice cheerier than he’d imagined.

Perhaps it was not her, after all. “Are you…” he started.

“I am uncertainty,” she replied. “I am the cost of everything, and the value of nothing. I am the power that comes with independence, and the responsibility that comes with that power. Drink?”

She held an elixir out before him. It smelled of musty basements and furtive glances, of broken promises and lost chances.

“Will it help me?”

She shrugged. “Who can say?”

“Is it worth the cost?”

“You won’t know until after you’ve tried.”

She uncorked another that brought him to mind of monotony, stale coffee and mornings that began before sunrise.

“It’s a classic,” she said. He turned it away.

“How will I know which choice is right?” he asked, “How can I tell if I’m a good man or a bad man?”

“To the first question – perhaps many, perhaps none. As to the second, what does it matter?”

“It matters to me. How can I tell, without reward or reprimand?”

“Which do seek, reward or reprimand?”

She set down her vial and reached for her waist. Her belt slithered out from between her loops like a serpent, and she folded it double in her hand.

Bertie lowered his trousers and leaned over with both hands flat on the counter.

“Will it hurt?” he asked.

“Yes,” she answered, “But you’ll get used to it.”

***

The belt had been savage, tearing at his skin and leaving welts might last for days. His eyes were wet with tears, his voice hoarse from yelling. His expiation had left him exhausted, and he sought the comfort of a soft pillow, and maybe another one for his head.

The next door brought him into a familiar bedroom. It was a small space, with bland white walls and a window that looked out to a city below. The full moon shone through the glass, the only light in the tiny cell.

She moved in the shadow, and he saw only her silhouette. She was smaller than she’d appeared last, her black mini-dress lined with fur and cut just above her pale, round thighs.

“Who are you now?”

“I am the indefinite. That which can be seen but not touched, that which can be felt but not seen. I am where souls meet. The real relation. The underlying theme.”

Something seemed off. He saw but one set of pillows, one bedside table. A single row of men’s clothes hung in the closet. Immaculately clean and orderly, placed there by a single will.

“Are you… love?”

She chuckled, a sound like the rattling of a snow-covered bough. “I suppose. But not the selfish love of a child, nor the transactional love of an adult.  The love that comes from acceptance of oneself and of another.”

She stepped into the light, and he was not surprised to recognize her face. He had assumed her close-cropped hair was black, but as she moved he saw instead that it was iridescent like a crow’s wing, and with each move she left behind an aura of colours – green, pink, orange, and blue, everything that she had been, or would be.

She had been young not long ago, but she would be beautiful forever.

“Are you going to punish me, too?”

She reached behind him, her slim fingers creeping under his belt line, tracing over the marks left from the brush and the belt. Her touch was like frost, cold but calming.

“Why should I punish you?” she asked.

“I have… not been good. Not as good as I could have been, as I should have been. I have been self-absorbed and self-involved. I have been distracted and indecisive…”

“You cannot lie to me.”

It was not an accusation, but a statement of fact.

Bertie fought to keep his voice level. “I need to be punished. Please—“

She set a frozen digit to his lip, and the words froze in his mouth.

“Listen to me, Bertie. No one, man or woman, has ever been bettered through the application of paddle and strap. You were a boy pretending to be a man, then a man wishing to be a boy, all so that your world could make sense – good and bad, crime and punishment.

“But making something simple does not make it right. You have been a giving partner, a generous lover, and a fair and considerate man. Punishment is not something you need, but something you want.”

She lifted her finger.

“You think I want this?” he hissed.

“Darling, I’ve made you come from a spanking alone.” She sat on the edge of the bed, her feet barely touching the floor. “Have you not had enough for now?”

Her lap was warm and ready for him… but without her touch, the ache in his backside returned, a slow but insistent burn. He had already been given his lesson; there was nothing more that she could teach.

“No? How about my own desires, then?”

She leaned backward onto the bed, the hem of her dress moving with her body. She wore nothing underneath.

Bertie’s throat itched. He had not taken the other woman’s potions, and now he was thirsty.

He joined her, a hand on each knee, spreading her legs apart. Her touch was cold, but he was close enough to feel the heat that radiated from within her. Between her thighs, she wanted for him.

He drank of her deeply, greedily. Her nectar was hot but delicious, and he lapped it up as if he would never taste its like again. His tongue worked her tender recesses, and she gasped and writhed from his ministrations.

“Ah! You naughty, naughty—“

She bucked like a mare, nearly throwing him from her. Not to be cast down, he closed his hands around her wide haunches and held on, holding his breath, probing ever deeper. She tensed, then threw back her head and let out what started as a roar before it ascended to a pitch that Bertie could not hear. Then, finally, she was still.

He crawled up beside her and laid his head on her breast. She kissed him on lips still thick with her scent.

“I’m naughty, you say?”

She exhaled. “Delightfully so.”

“Does that mean you’ll punish me?”

She laughed, and he could hear her heart joyfully beating.

“I don’t want to punish you,” she whispered, a glint in her eye, “but you will be spanked, and soon.”

“Not too soon, I hope?”

She rolled her eyes and cradled his head. “Merry Christmas, Bertie.”

“And to all a good night.”