Chapter 14
CHAPTER 14
Lauren
I feel groggy. Did I fall asleep again? I try to open my eyes, but it’s taking too much effort, so I close them again. I feel cold, so cold. This is not right. I am not cold anymore. I am warm, and cherished. I must be dreaming again, and I feel myself sinking back into the blackness. I smell something terrible, and I startle awake. Dreams don’t have scents. I force myself to fully wake up.
“This is a pretty one, don’t you think?” I hear a strange voice say. “Do you think he will mind if we play with his little pet a bit before we return her?”
I try to open my eyes again, fighting against my heavy lids and I am almost there when I feel something touching my arm.
I am fully awake now, adrenaline is kicking in. I shriek as I open my eyes, shrinking away from the touch. My adrenaline is pouring through my veins, because what I see in front of me is terrifying .
There’s a menacing looking alien crouching right in front of me. He seems just as big as D’Var. He is a slimy greenish gray, his upper body looks like it’s covered in some sort of shell. He has beady eyes which look at me with the wrong sort of hunger and I shuffle back even further until I feel my back hit a wall.
I look around and see that I’m in some kind of prison cell. Plastered to the back wall, which is also the only solid wall in this cell. The other walls are all made up of bars, and I can see rows of cells in both directions. They are all empty though, so this is not just a regular kidnapping.
“What do you want from me?” I shriek. He starts laughing.
“You don’t think Yalix will let his favorite little pet leave now, would you?”
Yalix. Now there’s a name I hoped I would never hear again. My first owner. I feel all the color draining from my face and I start trembling.
The alien starts cackling as he stands up and towers over me.
“I see that you remember him, little human. He was not so pleased you got out of your little glass prison. He made us do a whole lot of killing. We got to enjoy the other pets before we killed them though. Fun times. And now we have found you. He has a plan for you, little pet. You will be punished for playing house with those filthy Warriors.” He pauses his rant to spit on the ground. “We will deal with them after we have returned you to Yalix. He is waiting eagerly for you.”
Then he turns around and walks out of the cell. Another alien closes the door as they walk away together. Leaving me a complete mess.
I don’t think I am processing the situation. I am shivering and I hug my knees to my chest while swaying a bit.
Yalix. If evil had a name, it would have his. He is a Caudata, an alien species who live on a planet which consists of 80% water, so his species live partly underwater. He may appear humanoid, but when you take a closer look, you’ll find his fingers and toes are webbed. His skin is slimy, his touch revolting. His forked tongue still haunts my nightmares. His beady eyes and noseless face appear in my mind. I mentally freeze, causing shivers to rake through my body. I am locked in the terrors of my mind, reliving my worst nightmares.
Yalix bought me straight off the abductor’s spaceship. I still had some kind of hope back then that it was all a terrible mistake and that I would wake up in my own bed any second. I couldn’t understand a thing back then, but the second I was in his ‘care’ he pumped me full of all kinds of shots, and they installed a translator behind my ear. Turned out, being able to hear his commands was crucial to his end goals.
The first weeks with him were all a bit of a blur, I did a lot of crying. The mental and physical pain of the rapes and beatings blended everything together. In hindsight he was testing how much I could take. Turns out I exceeded his expectations, he kept me as his personal ‘little pet’.
I shiver, and I feel a tear slide down my face. It’s pitch black in here and it is freezing cold. Must be some kind of torture-method. I do a quick body scan and I feel lucky that nothing really hurts. I still have my clothes, boots, and apart from some bruises I’m fine. I do still feel a little groggy, so I guess the drugs they hit me with were meant for a bigger person. I shiver again, the cold is bone-deep which makes me glad I am still fully clothed.
I hear noises and a door opens. I squint my eyes, trying to see as much as I can. It’s two aliens, I think they are the same ones that were here earlier, they are cackling about something. A light gets turned on, forcing me to squint against it. The light is overwhelming, illuminating the entire cell block. All empty. I inwardly cringe. This means they can do whatever the hell they want to me, nobody is going to give a damn.
One of the aliens drums his claw along the bars, making a terrifying sound as he moves towards my cell. I make myself as small as I can. My mind is working overtime, my thoughts are jumbled. There has to be a way I can fight. A way I can make my way back to D’Var. But they keep the door closed and I see nothing but empty cells and nowhere to go.
“Well, hello, little human,” the alien from before says. “We have a little present for you...”
I look at him skeptically, this can’t be good. I am not saying a word though, keep my mind clear and my eyes open.
He pulls something from his pocket and it’s a sphere the size of a tennis ball. I have seen these before, with Yalix. It’s a way of communicating….
I break out in a sweat, they wouldn’t. They...
He activates the ball before throwing it in my cell. A screen emerges and then the face of my nightmares is staring right at me.
“Hello, little pet. Did you miss me?”
It’s him. Yalix. The monster, pure evil, and he is looking right at me. I whimper, I can’t hold it in, but seeing his face again after so long is making me lose all my resolve. I am terrified.
“You look very well,” he purrs, I see his forked tongue flicking. I feel nauseous, because I feel that tongue on my skin.
He cocks his head and I start trembling. That is not a good sign.
“Lost your tongue there, little pet?” he says. “Nothing to say to me?” When I remain quiet, he continues .
“Well, she doesn’t need her tongue then, does she. Dax you can take it out.”
I scream. “NO, NO, PLEASE DON’T! What do you want me to say?”
The aliens start cackling and Yalix gives me a mean, smug smile. “Now she talks. What do you two think we should do to the little pet? Does she need her tongue? Or her eyes?”
I whimper and start crying. It’s too much. I try to find some inner strength, but all I see when I look deep inside is fear. I was just starting to come back to being myself again, but two sentences from my tormenter and I am back to a blubbering mess.
Yalix had a knack for torture and pain. He was very creative with the torture, but he never left any permanent physical marks.
“You’ll need the tongue when you fuck her mouth,” one of the aliens says grinning. “I don’t know about the eyes.”
“But torture is so much more fun when they can see what you’re doing to them,” the other adds and a shiver is working its way across my spine.
“Please,” I whimper, but I don’t know what I beg for.
He raises an eyebrow and looks at me. “You didn’t think I would ever let go of you did you?”
“But… but the whore house?” I am terribly confused.
He grins. “That was just temporarily, I hoped it would break you, but I see I still have some work to do when you get back.”
He turns to the Sternotheri. “Brand her,” Yalix commands. “Make sure she never forgets who she belongs to. She will never be free, will always be mine.” The aliens start cackling and one of them walks towards the corner.
“Can we play with her a bit before we give her to you?” the alien from the beginning asks Yalix. Yalix lets out a growl .
“What part of mine don’t you understand? The only way you can touch her is with my permission and when I can see. Right now, branding her is all you can do.”
I am silent in horror. A brand, something that will forever be on my skin. I think of a tattoo, but when I hear sizzling, I know to expect the worst. They are going to brand me like I’m a cow.
“Here we go,” the alien says in a sing-songy voice when he gets back with the branding iron.
“I got your house emblem, Yalix. Funny we had it lying around here.” He giggles a strange giggle. This one is clearly mentally deranged and that is going to make it so much worse for me.
Alien number two opens the cell door, and I can see Yalix’s tongue flicking again and again in excitement. Desperately, I scramble towards the far corner.
It does me no good at all and I start screaming when one holds me down and the other slices my pants with his claws and pushes the iron into the skin of my inner thigh.
The pain is overwhelming. The white-hot heat is searing my skin and I start sobbing. I have the feeling this fucking asshole of an alien is pushing it in even deeper then necessary. The smell of my own flesh burning makes the contents of my stomach rise. I throw up all over the alien holding me down, which makes the other back off.
I curl myself into a little ball in anticipation of the beating that will surely happen but the alien who branded me just laughs, while the other curses because I threw up on him.
They back out of the cell after grabbing the sphere, but not before Yalix gets a final say.
“I’ll see you soon little pet, and this is only the beginning. I have a nice little box waiting for you when you get home.”
They all cackle, then it’s lights out and I blissfully black out, only to fall right into another nightmare .
“ No,” I say defiantly against the monster that has been whipping me so violently I feel the blood streaming down my back.
“WHAT DID YOU SAY?” he yells in anger. I slowly push myself to my feet, but I am swaying.
“I said No,” I say. “I will not submit. I will not beg. I would rather die.” I have been with the monster for a couple of weeks now. Every day the rape and torture worsen. He is testing how far he can go, testing what my body can handle. Right now he wants me to beg him, to crawl towards him, pleasure him with my mouth, so I can have a sip of water. And I refuse. If all Aliens are like this, I am glad we did not encounter them sooner. Because they SUCK.
The monster looks at me funny, then he grins maliciously.
“I will break you, little pet.” And then he leaves the room. I collapse when I see him retreating. I will not cry, I mentally will myself. I will not break, I am searching for that safe space in my mind that has gotten me through the bad stuff. The fantasy of going home, of hugging my mom, of running in the woods with my dog. But before I can get there, I hear the door open again and I try to push myself up, but I fail.
I open my eyes and I see a couple of his servants bringing in a big black box. I try to get up again, because I am sure I will not like what will come out of that box. I feel the servants picking me up. I struggle and fight. Then I hear his voice, smugly.
“Put her in the box, let’s see what she has to say in a couple of days.”
I scream and fight but to no avail. I am locked in the box, surrounded by blackness.
I don’t know how much time I spend in the box. I have no place to relieve myself and a girl can only hold it for so long, so I end up lying in my own pee. It’s cold, so so cold and I am longing for that safe space in my mind. I think of my dog again and of how good it feels to run in the sun with him, I almost get there. I almost get to the zone. But then I remember: I need to keep it together, I need to survive, because something better awaits me. He cannot break me.