Breakdown

Potless, friendless and demoralised, and in possession of a dead cell-phone.

Such is the condition of Marcus Parker as he makes the drive to stay with his sister in Tacoma after his wife and daughter have jettisoned him from their lives.

And done so in the most cold and unfeeling of ways,

But fate’s more malignant hand isn’t done with him yet and, as he drives the Oregon back roads, the only thing in his life he actually owns, other than his clothes and a few personal possessions, decides to become another addition to his list of personal woe.

His 2005 Ford Taurus.

Knowing that the next straw of misfortune will likely break his back, Marcus summons up the energy to leave his kaput car and walk the backroads in search of a house with a phone and an owner willing to let him use it, hoping to call his sister and arrange a tow-truck and a repair.

The house he eventually finds, and the large and physically intimidating black woman who opens the door to him, certainly has a landline and a willing owner.

A powerful former professional dominatrix who has retired from the profession itself but not the desires that had seen her pursue it in the first place. Desires triggered back into life by the desperate man standing on her doorstep and compelling her to act upon them.

And do so in a way that will not be the paid role-playing of her former profession, but something as lasting as it is real!