Atlas #2
It abuses it thoroughly, its cold tongue licking away at my chest. My cock throbs, and I can feel the hot wetness of my own tears as it soaks into my hairline.
And when long fingers wrap around my shaft once more, pumping at an inhuman speed, I feel my entire body lock up.
“Hngh,” I groan, feeling my own hot release coat my stomach and slide down and in between the fingers surrounding me.
A predatory, deep growl meets my ears, and the length inside of me pulses, slamming relentlessly into my body, until suddenly I’m being filled with something ice-cold and thick.
In this moment, I wish I were terrified. I wish I still hated this the way I did two years ago.
Then, as if all the energy within my body is being sucked away, my consciousness begins to fade away.
I awake to the sunrise bleeding into my room from the southeast. My body is tired, as if I haven’t slept at all, but it is thrumming with the aftermath of release.
My chest is covered in my own dried arousal, my clothes discarded onto the floor beside my bed. My hole is sore and abused, my nipples aching and bitten.
The only real upside of the morning after encountering it is that it never leaves its own evidence behind. I can feel it when I’m filled painfully to the brim with its release, yet I never find any residual fluids other than my own the next morning.
With shaky legs, I hobble to my bathroom and fill the large bathtub with hot water. The steam licks the walls and dampens the air, and I stare blankly at the clear water until it’s full enough to sink into.
Once I’m cradled in the porcelain, I finally let it all out.
I sob, and I sob for a long while.
I came again. In the beginning, I was so constantly overcome with fear and confusion that I wouldn’t even get hard. And now, as something in me has shifted sometime over the past two years, I come every time. And I do so with force so great my muscles lock up completely.
“Terrible, disgusting, sweet little thing,” I whisper between choked sobs.
A knock sounds loudly at my bedroom door. I don’t respond; I’m thinking of how long I’ll sit in the chapel and pray once I leave this tub.
Whoever it is does not care that I’m unresponsive; I hear the door open and shut anyway. Moments later, my mother walks in, and she sits on the side of the tub in her robe, her long brown hair hanging loosely around her.
“Darling boy,” she coos softly. “Are you alright? Was it bad?”
I say nothing, wiping at my eyes as I sink further into the steaming water. She extends a hand, resting it against my cheek, but I flinch away.
I’m scared of what sensation I’ll feel when she touches me. Sometimes, it’s hard to feel anything other than that electric tingle.
“Sorry,” I murmur upon seeing her crushed expression.
“No, no,” she rushes out. “You have nothing to apologize for. I… I should have asked first, considering you just… You just…” Her voice trails off.
“What are you doing up here?” I ask her, using whatever I can to get her to stop staring at me like this. Like I’m broken.
“I came to get you for breakfast, and I heard you crying.”
She normally doesn’t fetch me for breakfast. Most of the time, I’m left to exit the tower on my own, just in case I’m recovering. So, what was it really?
My mother can see the doubt in my eyes, because she sighs and reaches over me to the shampoo resting on the shelf in the corner. Squeezing some onto her well-polished fingers, she begins to rub it into my hair.
So much for not touching me.
“Julian came to me,” she starts. “He was readying Abigail for the day and heard your cries from her bedroom.”
An immense guilt at the fact that Abigail probably heard too overwhelms me, and just under that is the embarrassment that Julian heard my wailing.
“We should move Abigail to the guest room,” I state, feeling my eyes well up again. I close them before she can see.
My mother sighs again. “No, darling, we can’t. She already feels excluded, without really understanding your… condition. Moving her away would make it worse. Plus, there is nothing wrong with crying.”
“But what about when it’s not just crying, Momma?” My cheeks flame, my embarrassment heightened by the second.
“She doesn’t understand what it means, Atlas,” she says quietly.
“Please,” I beg. “It would make me feel so much better knowing she’s not so close.”
My mother is silent for a long moment. She washes my hair thoroughly and uses a nearby glass to pour water over it, rinsing out the suds. When she’s done, she nods once.
“How about we compromise? We can switch her and Atticus’s rooms. That way she’s further, but not alone.”
“Okay,” I concede. “That will be fine.”
My mother leans down and presses a chaste kiss on my wet hair before standing and wiping her hands on a decorative towel. “Come down and eat, alright?”
I only nod in response, watching as she floats gracefully out of the room, and I wonder for a moment if things will always be like this.
If I’ll always be the man hidden away, drowning in his own shame and hurting the ones he loves.
Will I… will I ever be loved? Would the monster even allow it? Or would he hurt any man who tried to touch me?
And if it did allow it, who would want to hold a man who’s been fucked by a demon?
I sink below the hot water, my eyes open and stinging in the blurry water now contaminated with soap and sweat. The answer to that question is nobody; no one in their right mind would love someone who lies with a monster.
Because, by extension, doesn’t that make me a monster as well? At the very least, I’m tainted by one.
My mind wanders to Julian. Beautiful, curious Julian. Even if he were into men, and even if I were his type, I couldn’t seduce him. Not while in my right mind, at least.
I wouldn’t want to contaminate him as well.
I’m not that terrible. I’m not that cruel.
It’s time to pray.