💡🐇 Naughty Thoughts

꩜⚤Stockholm

Alexi is feeling shaken after the breakup of an abusive relationship. It's like she doesn't know how to function in the real world without that asshole staring after her and telling her what she did wrong with every single decision. Even after everything, a part of her wants to forgive him.

The friends who've stuck by her say this is stockholm syndrome. She needs to get as far away from him as possible so she can stop thinking about him. Even if that means moving across the country, there will be people there to support her. But she goes full-on mid life crisis and decides to leave the country, travel the world, and learn new skills for a new career. Leave the old guy behind completely. And after all the talk of stockholm syndrome, she decides to be impulsive and crazy. She moves to Stockholm for her fresh start.

Turns out this isn't the crazy, impulsive randomness she thought. Barely a week after arriving, while she's still adapting to a new culture, Alexi meets somebody else who's done the same thing. Robin has a pretty similar story, and has come from the far side of the world for pretty much the same reasons as Alexi. And wondering how big a coincidence that is, they try searching to find out if anyone else has followed the same trail. To their surprise they find about a dozen blogs of people whose footsteps they're following in; and once they've taken a step down the rabbithole, they find reference to a local club where some of these people meet up.

Once they've been approved by the group, their backgrounds checked out, Alexi and Robin learn the big secret. This isn't just a group for former victims to make peace with their past and meet a new friends group. This is a revenge club. The Stockholm Brides Society has a pretty nice house where 7 of them live, which occasionally offers a spare room when they find out about a victim who is less able to escape abuse on their own. But in the basement it gets really crazy. There's a fully appointed dungeon down there, with everything from medieval torture equipment to souped-up dentists chairs, and enough screens to make sure that some of their victims are followed around by stobes, spirals, and mantras that they can never escape.

There's a part of Alexi that still wants to help her ex, Mark. Wants him to realise what he's done so that he can be the person she fell in love with again. But when he becomes one of the first abusers to be brought into the dungeon, she has to argue on his behalf in front of a council of her peers whether they should imprison him for life, or try to break or reform him. And in order to argue in front of (mostly) women who have seen all the tricks, she has to think about what he did to her, and really analyse what happened.

In the end, Mark does end up having a change of heart. He realises he always wanted to be a slave, couldn't find any satisfaction in being the alpha male he'd seen himself as, and had been taking it out on others. Maybe that's true, maybe not. But once he admits his faults, Alexi can still find it in herself to forgive him. He's happy to be her slave now, and to do whatever she says. And the more scientifically-minded members of the group say there's no way he will be able to go back on that promise; you can do amazing things with torture, repetition, drugs, and hypnosis over the course of 6 months. Alexi considers it, but realises she's happy with Robin now. She'll forgive Mark, and maybe they can be friends again, but his new life as a sale will start with being auctioned off to the highest bidder. It's the least he can do to make up for his sins.