16. Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Sixteen
T hrax
I try to hold on to the present, wondering if I should reach for Skye’s hand to keep me from sliding back in time. Even as I tell myself this memory happened two thousand years ago, that all the people in the dining room that night are long dead, their bones ground to dust, it doesn’t keep the memory from barreling at me like a quadriga , a four-horse chariot.
“Well, it looks as though our dessert has arrived,” the woman says as she eyes me up and down, assessing me.
Time has gotten lost, but I think it’s my fifteenth or sixteenth year. I’d been loaned to my dominus’s friends before. So many times, I’ve already learned how to vanish into a back corner of my mind and only emerge when whoever had used me last climbed off me and ordered me to get out of their sight.
There’s something about this “party,” something about the cruel smirk on my ludus master’s face when he put me in the carriage to leave the barracks, something about the looks on the guest’s faces that reminds me of the hungry wolf statue in the Lupus Fames Forum, that tells me this is going to be worse than anything I’ve experienced before .
“Get him naked, Aurelia,” a woman urges, then pops a grape into her mouth. “It’s certainly not his face I wish to see.”
Aurelia strides closer, puts one fingertip under my chin as though she can barely tolerate touching my face, and tips my head to examine my left ear.
She leans closer and barely controls a shudder. “Repulsive. Remind me to ask for some money back on his price. Whatever I paid was far too high.”
There is something about the depths of her distaste, the way she shivered in disgust at my mangled flesh, that kills a part of me. I’d disappear into the back corner of my mind if they weren’t demanding things that require a response.
“Strip, boy.”
I do as I’m told and then stand still as the group appraises me. Usually, people who buy my services for the night like it when I get hard, but no one seems to mind that my cock is soft as a damp cloth. This, along with everything else I’ve seen thus far, terrifies me about what’s to come next.
Aurelia uses one arm to push everything off the banquet table, resulting in a clatter of glass, dishes, food, and wine. Absently, I imagine that what just fell to the floor is worth more than all the purses I will earn in my lifetime as a gladiator.
To everyone’s murmured delight. I’m ordered to lie on my stomach on the table. As I step closer, I spy a small table nearby. My stomach coils in a knot as I notice the items on top of it. Ten candlesticks with lighted candles, several daggers with sharp, curved points, and an ornate silver bowl filled to the brim with large darning needles.
The men in my barracks talk about their sexual experiences when they return from being rented out for a night. I’ve heard stories of being urinated on or being ordered to stick their tongues into filthy places. Though no one has ever mentioned knives and needles, somehow, I have a clear idea of the hell I’m about to experience. It makes me wish for the usual abuses I’m forced to endure when I’m rented for the night .
Aurelia’s voice turns colder as she orders, “We won’t shackle you. It will be part of the fun to know you’re holding still of your own accord. Trust me when I promise that if you so much as move a muscle, the punishment you’ll receive will make what we’re about to do feel like a trip to Elysium.”
As the true meaning of her threat registers in my thick skull, she adds, “But feel free to make all the noise you want. I find it… arousing.”
My blood turns cold as terror surges through my body. Are they going to torture me to death or just torture me until I wish for death? I’m wishing for it already.
The eight of them—four women and four men, all dressed in perfect white togas and stolas with purple piping at the hems, indicating their high patrician status—converge on me like a pack of wolves wanting to get the best bite of a downed prey animal.
“Let’s start with wax,” Aurelia gleefully announces. “That way, this will last.”
They jostle each other to reach for a thick candle and laughingly argue about who will get the choicest areas of my tender flesh to burn with scalding wax.
It’s impossible to retreat to the little room in the back of my mind. The pain is too excruciating and I need to stay aware so I don’t move, as ordered. It goes on endlessly, until one of the men says, “I’m bored. Pass the bowl of needles.”
“I know just what I want to do. Right on the back of his thigh. A daisy with many petals.” This, I think, is the woman who couldn’t wait for me to remove my loincloth.
As Aurelia promised, it goes on for hours. The pain is so intense, I feel as though I’m just one open wound. There are moments when I can’t tell the difference between the needles and the knives. The wax, though. I always know when someone drips hot wax on me, especially when it’s poured into an open cut .
Funny how, though my howls of pain are loud, the sounds that register in my mind are the soft ohs and ahs of their pleasure as they pierce and cut and burn my flesh.
Since I can’t escape to the private spaces of my mind, I use my hate to push the pain away. I swim in hatred. Stew in it. Nurse it. Committing every word and deed to memory, I vow I will buy my freedom someday and return to kill them all, saving Aurelia and her poisonous tongue and eager glee for the last.
“Thrax?” Skye’s voice is soft, almost as soft as her gentle touch on my forearm.
Though I try, I can’t control my urge to yank away from her tender grip as my eyes flare open. My brain must be broken, because the scene here in this cafeteria, which is far from authentic, keeps flashing to the banquet room of two thousand years ago. The quiet discussions surrounding me keep flipping to the sounds of the Romans’ Latin as they urge each other to cut deeper and make the wounds prettier.
I don’t know how it’s physically possible, since I haven’t eaten since breakfast, but I vomit without warning, barely missing Skye’s stola as the brown liquid splatters on her shoes.
All talk has stopped, and every eye is staring at me. Without another thought, my feet carry me out of the room and I break into a run the moment I reach the hallway.