Chapter 8
As the weeks pass by, I start to feel a little more comfortable, even with Seeker’s disappearance.
I like the forest. I don’t think I’m from here, because it doesn’t feel completely familiar, but it feels safe and the people down here are very focused on survival—which sounds terrible when you think about it, but in practice is actually very relaxed.
All anybody here wants is to get by, and once they’ve gotten by, they stop.
There’s relaxation in between scrapping for survival.
I am walking in the forest one afternoon gathering berries from bushes. I want to make a pie for some of the others. I’m learning how to make flour and I think I can make a pie crust. I don’t actually know how to make a pie crust, but one thing at a time.
A bush ripe with berries catches my eye.
There’s enough on it to feed everyone, and it looks like the birds haven’t gotten to it yet.
I rush toward it with excitement, not considering the fact that most of the bushes around here have been picked clean by birds and other animals and it’s actually quite weird that there is one that doesn’t seem to have been touched.
Fwomp! Arrrgh!
That is the sound of me being swept up in a net, caught like an animal in a trap.
“Fuck!” I curse at the top of my lungs as my heart hammers in my chest. I am squirming all over the place, trying to free myself from the rope weave.
This isn’t like any of the snares I’ve seen set in the village, or nets made by hunters or fishers.
This is made of a material that feels uncomfortably hard against my teeth.
This is a trap designed to catch something exactly like me.
“Let me out!” I scream. “Help!”
I have to hope that my cries will be heard by others.
I’m not the only one out here in the wilds.
I am almost certain of that. But nobody calls back, and that makes me feel uncomfortable.
And then I am aware of the other bad thing.
The forest is silent. No birds are singing whatsoever.
I remember being warned about this. I was told to run.
But I can’t. And the more I move inside the net, and the harder I try to free myself, the more it wraps around me.
I wish I had a knife, but I came out here without weapons. I’ve never needed them, and I never hunt, so it never occurred to me to take one.
“Quiet.”
Something speaks to me in a strange way. I can hear them quite clearly, though they seem to be at a great distance. It’s almost as if someone is speaking directly into my ear, though I remain alone.
Motion catches my eye.
Slowly, but surely, emerging from the bush, a creature approaches.
It is walking on two legs so at first I assume it’s a human, because why wouldn’t I?
People are all I know. But the closer the thing gets, the more it is so obviously demonic.
The others have warned me about the things that appear in the forest from time to time.
Some said this was what happened to Seeker, that she was stolen away by a demon. Am I about to be spirited away?
The creature gets closer, and I let out a little shriek of fear. It’s little, because screaming at the top of my lungs feels like a waste of time, and because there’s something about the way the thing is looking at me that makes it hard for me to move my lips.
This is definitely not human. It has big, murderous eyes, like some kind of strange insect.
Its face is not at all personable. The nose is flat against the skull.
But that’s not the weirdest part. The strangest thing is that there are tendrils around its mouth, sort of like the legs of an octopus. The mouth has no lips, but a beak.
“What are you?” I ask the question in raw, hushed tones. “Please don’t eat me. Let me go.”
“Quiet, human,” it says. “I am going to let you out of this net, but you must promise me not to try to run away.”
“Okay,” I say quickly. “I promise.”
He reaches to a tree and unwinds the rope that is holding the net up. When he lets it play out, the net sinks to the ground, and then sort of opens up enough for me to scramble free. The first thing I do is run.
“I warned you,” the creature rasps.
The next thing I feel is pain. Extreme, terrible, body-wide pain, a complete agonizing electric charge crackling over every bit of me.
I fall to the ground, writhing and shrieking.
Why isn’t anybody coming to help me? The forest is still so quiet.
I have the feeling nobody can hear me. I’ve been isolated and picked off from the pack.
“Stop! Please!” I beg for mercy as the creature walks over to stand over me. He looks down the length of his black-clad body. “I don’t know what you want, but I don’t have it.”
“You have three hot, wet holes. That is all anyone will want from you.”
“Oh, dude, gross,” I reply, instantly icked out. It is funny how evil terrible things can become somehow weak and pathetic just by being generally disgusting.
“You are going to come with me now. You will obey my every command. You will do as you are told, or I will make you suffer even worse than you already have. I will enjoy the cruelty of it.”
“I…”
He does whatever it is that makes the pain rack my body. It feels like there could be a device I can’t see, or maybe it’s some kind of mental or spiritual thing.
“Stand up,” he says. “Be still.”
I do as he tells me, because I can clearly not escape by running.
“Where are you going to take me? To hell?”
“Human, I am going to take you to the stars.”
I am taken apart in an instant, and reformed in a big metal area. I can tell that I am inside some kind of a machine. There are no machines in the village, but there are big metal drums, and this feels like being inside one of them.
The creature is with me, doing things to me, wrapping things around my neck and my wrists. Cuffs and collar, and then…
“What are you doing?” I squeal as I am tipped over a solid rubber bench.
My cheeks are spread, and a thick rubber plug is pushed inside my ass. A generous amount of lube is provided, but little time to adjust. I feel my ass spread wide, the tight ring of muscle snug around the tool.
“Preparing you for what is to come. Be quiet. Be submissive.”
“Leave me alone!”
“Animal, you will never be left alone again,” he laughs cruelly, grabbing me up from the bench and tossing me into a room full of other women. It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust to the light, and when they do I wish they hadn’t.
There are at least a dozen women in here. They are clad in very little, and all of them look miserable. Most of them don’t look at me. I get the feeling that they don’t want to see someone else brought into their hell.
I look at them, though. I want to see what is going to happen to me. I am scanning for injuries. I see plenty. Mostly superficial, but very unpleasant looking.
And then I see someone I know.
My heart drops into my stomach.
“Seeker?”
She looks so frightened she is barely recognizable. Her mass of curls hangs limp and greasy around her face. She has a nasty bruise on her right cheek and chin. Someone has hurt her.
I turn and throw myself at the bars.
“I’m going to fucking kill you!” I scream in the direction the tentacled alien went. “I’m going to fucking kill you all!”
“Quiet in there! Or we’ll come in with the lash!”
The women let out a collective gasp of horror and move away from me with great haste. Even Seeker slides away with the others. Whatever is done to them is obviously terrible. And it will soon be done to me.
If I am afraid, I feel it as rage.
“Please, don’t,” Seeker says. “We’ve all tried fighting. There’s no use. They’re so much stronger than we are. They have machines and tools and…” she trails off.
“What is happening?”
“They sell us,” she says. “They let creatures with all manner of awful bodies mate with us. Sometimes several a day.”
I feel even more rage inside me so complete I can hardly handle it. I am so completely infuriated. Memories are trying to break through. I can feel their content, even though I can’t bring it to mind.
“Feisty, are we?”
Tentacle face is back, carrying a thick leather lash that looks like one of his tentacles, but it’s dead and floppy and attached to a stick.
“Come out and learn your lesson,” he says, opening the door.
I step out immediately. It’s hard to be staunch when you have a plug you didn’t ask for in your butt; however I refuse to let that fact humiliate me.
Before the tentacle face can say anything, I kick his knee as hard as I possibly can in the wrong direction. His scream of pain tells me he might be used to hurting women, but he is not used to taking damage.
Fighting, I discover, is not locked away from me in my memories.
Fighting is very much at the top of my mind.
Fighting can be about technique, or skill.
It can be about strength and pure might.
But what it’s really about is how fucking insane someone is prepared to be, and how much feral damage they are willing to do.
As I hurl myself at the stumbling creature with a mind to gouge its eyes out, it turns out I am willing to do an almost endless amount.
It screams as my weak, but nasty fingers find its sockets.
“Come on!” I yell to the others. “He’s just a fucking fish!”
He’s obviously not a fish. He’s some kind of water demon, maybe. I don’t know where we are. Maybe this is what’s going on up in the floating cities. Maybe we’ve been under all of this horror the whole time.
There’s so much screaming. The creature is screaming, the women are shouting, someone is coming through the door. I knew there wouldn’t just be one, and I know there’s a chance some of us will be hurt. But everyone is already hurt.
Brrwwoaawww!
A deep bellow fills the room as a massive red-hued beast with huge horns crashes through the door, knocks me to the side as gently as a charging bull can, and gores our captor to death.
His horns pass straight through the apparently quite vulnerable flesh of the octopus face and cause it to start to hemorrhage what I can only describe as green goo.
It’s a disgusting way to go, but very satisfying. The bull creature keeps the evil alien pinned to the wall until the light fades from his eyes, and some of the malevolence leaves the room.
I and the other women are suitably shocked and impressed, some more than others.
Seeker is whimpering and covering her eyes. I put myself between her and the bull man. I want to protect her. I want to protect all of us. I don’t know why, but I feel immeasurably guilty for some reason, as if this is my fault.
“Don’t hurt us,” I say. “If you do, you’ll regret it.”
The Minotaur pulls free of the wall and lets the body slide down to the floor. It’s so pathetic, how quickly it went from being our biggest threat to being nothing but a sack of squid.
“I would never hurt you, pet,” he says.
He speaks with a familiarity and a warmth that indicates he might be a friend. The fact that he just gored our combined enemy to death is also a bit of a hint.
“We got captured,” I say. “All these ladies and me. The squid things have been selling them…”
“I know. I’m sorry,” he says.
Two others come in the door behind him. One is a tall, stern male with scales around his face and hands and a sort of patriarchal air about him.
Very strange. Very daddy. The other is a big beefy hunter type.
Both are covered in bits of green gooey blood.
They must have been doing battle with the demons… if they are demons.
This is a very confusing situation, but even a rabbit knows when it has been freed from a snare without having its neck snapped, and I have that feeling now.
“She’s safe,” the Minotaur says. “She’s okay.”