The Bride Stripped Bare

by Rob Bliss

  “No, Elizabeth, listen to me. They’ll stop us. Maybe even kill us. We gotta sneak out somehow. But I don’t even know the way out. We gotta find an exit first before we try to get everyone out.” We stared into each other’s eyes. I was feeling more sober, now seeing what the family would do to someone I once loved…still did. To Gord too, of course. The drugs made the user selfish, only thinking about satisfying their carnal desires, no matter who got hurt in the process. “Let’s think this through…okay?”

  She wiped tears off her cheeks. Voice croaking as she said, “Okay. But if you fucking betray me, I will kill you. Even if they kill me right after.”

  “I won’t. I promise.”

  I followed her from the room, closed the painting behind us, and was about to try and figure our way through the labyrinth of the wooden hallways.

  But Venus, the twin brothers, and Gitch barred the doorway out.

  “Well, husband,” Venus said, hands on hips, exposing her nude form. “I’ve never seen a man run from a line of free blowjobs. And now I see you’ve become interested in starting a new branch of the family tree. Well done, I congratulate you.” She stepped up to Elizabeth, pried apart the thin arms keeping the cloak closed, took measure of the frightened girl’s body. Venus sucked saliva off her teeth. “But why don’t you bring this delicious little morsel to our bedchamber? I’d like to sample her myself.”

  Gitch moved behind Elizabeth, put his hands on her shoulders as Venus stepped away to whisper something to the twins. They hopped with glee where they stood and howled with delight, then rushed from the room.

  Venus turned to face us, tracing fingers around one breast, asking Elizabeth, “I hope you like women…if not, you’ll learn.”

  — | — | —

  Chapter 15

  The bed chamber —belonging to Venus and myself, apparently—was a complete circle with small square windows held in thick wooden braces, like those on ancient tall ships, the wood black and weathered as though it had once been part of a ship. (The Mayflower?) Candles in sconces attached to the walls lit the room. A crescent moon shone through one window, but no trees or scenery except for the night sky could be seen. I assumed this bed chamber was on a top floor of the mansion, above the height of the surrounding forest. Boards creaked beneath our feet, even though red and black Persian carpets covered the floor, woven with scenes depicting torture and lust like those I saw in the background of the painting leading to the torture room. A kama sutra—if it took place in Dante’s Inferno—covered the floor. On the walls hung paintings of nudes, men and women, fucking and sucking—a satyr raped a shepherdess, a minotaur mounted an obese woman who fellated an Irish wolfhound, an orgy of centaurs and medusas…the sexual mythology went on. Taking up much of the room was an immense four-poster bed covered in blue satin sheets with tasseled pillows, and three ornate mirrors stretched across the headboard.

  “I’d like her pinned in place like a butterfly,” Venus instructed Gitch.

  The musculari servant grabbed Elizabeth and pinned her hands behind her back, dragged her to the bed as she screamed and fought, but her small fists bounced off Gitch’s body and face, and he showed no pain.

  “What are you going to do with her?” I yelled at Venus.

  “Play with her, of course. Don’t worry, you’ll play too.”

  Venus folded back one side of her cloak to reveal the inner skin of the bear. With her arrow-point fingernails, she tore off a long strip of bear skin and handed it to Gitch. He took it, and the skin wound itself around Elizabeth’s wrist. Gitch merely touched the strip of skin to the captive’s wrists and it wound like a boa constrictor wrapping around its prey. He touched the free end of the skin to the bedpost, and it wrapped around the wood, pulling Elizabeth’s arm with it, restraining her tightly.

  Venus tore off three more strips of bear skin and Gitch touched them to the captive’s other wrists and both ankles until she was spread-eagled on the bed. The skin strips cut into her flesh, made her hands and feet begin turning blue the more she resisted.

  Gitch then moved behind me, kept a wide hand on my shoulder, letting me know that he would stop me if I tried to fight Venus.

  Only able to raise her head, Elizabeth yelled at me. “You betrayed me! You fucking liar—you piece of shit! You’re as doped up as my brothers and the rest of these freaks! All of you are thinking with your fucking dicks! I fucking hate you!”

  Blood must’ve dropped from my face—my skin felt cold. I stared at the woman on the bed, unsure of what was really happening. A part of my brain was trying to convince me that it was all a show—just bizarre theater. Another part of me wanted to fuck her. Hate-fuck her for rejecting me when we were in our teens, when I shyly confessed that I loved her, and she shot me down.

  Another part of me wished that I still had a knife up my sleeve. Had Venus disarmed me intentionally? Did she have a knife up the sleeve of her bear cloak? If I could get a blade, and if I could overpower Gitch (impossible) and Venus (beyond impossible), then I could cut Elizabeth free and we could continue our escape.

  “She’s a feisty one,” Venus said, slipping off her cloak and sliding onto the bed, stretching her body beside her captive’s, wiggling her toes with delight, tracing fingernails in circles around Elizabeth’s abdomen.

  “So, tell me, husband,” she said without looking at me. “Why is this specimen so important to you?” She sucked Elizabeth’s nipple.

  “She’s an old friend. Please leave her alone, Venus.” I tried to make my voice sound hard and commanding, but Venus terrified me—of what she could do and how she could use magic against Elizabeth or me.

  “Friends are nice to have,” my wife said, planting a kiss between Elizabeth’s breasts. “Not as nice as family, of course.” A nail slipped along Elizabeth’s jawline as Venus asked her captive, “Tell me, my dear, would you like to be a part of our family? I can make it happen.”

  “Go fuck yourself, you filthy pig!”

  A finger tapped Elizabeth’s lips. She tried to bite, but Venus pulled away and giggled. “Shh, shh, there’s no reason for foul language. Confess something to me: are you unable to have a child?”

  Elizabeth’s fury was instantly erased, replaced by fear and embarrassment and confusion. Even I could see it in her eyes, standing away from the bed.

  Venus smiled. “Ah, that’s it, isn’t it? You’re barren. Such a shame when a woman can’t perform the function she was put on Earth for. Tsk, tsk. And your brother told me you were divorced? Did your hubby leave you because you couldn’t provide him with an heir?”

  The fury returned. Elizabeth spat a stripe of thick fluid up Venus’ face. Eyes closed, Venus wiped her face with Elizabeth’s cloak, then reared up onto her knees to bring down hard an open palm.

  I glanced at Venus’ bear cloak, judging how possible it would be for me to grab it and search the sleeves for a knife. Then Gitch flexed his tightened grip on my shoulder, and the thoughts vanished.

  Brushing away strands of hair fallen across her eyes, Venus said demurely, “Only my husband—or my father—may spit in my face when reclining on my marital bed. You haven’t earned that privilege!”

  She slipped off the bed and stepped to me (my gaze snapping away from the bear cloak), sliding a hand down my arm, kissing my shoulder, but still speaking to Elizabeth. “Never fear, my little morsel, the family has ways of making life sprout in desert sand.” She kissed my earlobe and told me, loud enough for Elizabeth to hear, “Would you care to get your old friend pregnant? I won’t be jealous. A womb is a womb—it is the continuance of the family that is most important.”

  I felt centipedes race under my skin as she touched me, spoke her breath into my ear, burrowing. I swallowed hard and said, “Just let her go.” I turned to look at her at my shoulder. “Let us both go.”

  Venus’ forehead wrinkled as she looked into my eyes, but I didn’t know what she saw. I thought she may have been about to strike me for wanting out of the marriage.

  �
�You love her, don’t you? But you loved her long ago and she didn’t love you. Ah, my poor baby.” She leaned in, saw my inner core, my teenage secret. Kissing me lightly and giggling, she continued, “She’s your old flame. Isn’t that adorable?” Latching onto my arm, Venus looked at Elizabeth, as I did. “Now’s your chance to make her love her. Force her to. She’s tied to a bed. Isn’t that what you always fantasized about? Rape her. Make your wife happy.”

  Gitch’s hand left my shoulder, and I walked slowly to the bedpost to which Elizabeth’s foot was tied, tried to find a way to loosen the bond. I forgot about the bear cloak and the knife, my mind feeling fogged by an outside source. Was that a result of Venus reading my thoughts? Neither Gitch nor Venus tried to stop me, maybe knowing that the magic imbued in the strips of bear skin wouldn’t let them be loosened.

  “I had a feeling your blood-lust was on the wane,” she said, pacing to the side of the bed to gaze along the length of Elizabeth’s body. “When you rushed like a coward from the dance, most likely attacked by your conscious.” She leaned in to suck Elizabeth’s nipple into her mouth and scrape her teeth along it. The captive convulsed, tried to shake my wife off of her. “I saw a man butchered for the first time when I was six,” Venus said, then winked at me. “And look how I turned out.” Elizabeth tried to twist her body away from Venus’ mouth and hands, but she couldn’t go far. I tried to pry fingernails beneath the strips, but the seam was tighter than mortar and brick. “I offer you the chance to take what you want, my husband, but you deny my gift.”

  She kissed her way down Elizabeth’s ribs to her hipbones, fingers spidering over skin dotted in goosebumps, to trace the outlines of the bound woman’s pubis mound, a finger sliding down her slit.

  “I’ll fuck her for you,” I said sedately, staring into Venus’ black eyes. “But not with a bodyguard watching, getting his jollies.”

  She giggled and clutched a fingernail between her teeth, then glanced at Gitch behind me. I turned to see him slip out of the room and close the door behind him. Venus returned to molest her bound victim.

  “Come on in, Chris, the pussy’s fine! I’ll warm her up for you.”

  I ignored her words, kept one eye on her, making sure she didn’t see what I was doing. While she was distracted, my mind cleared, and I shifted quietly to the bear cloak at a corner end of the bed. Wiggled a hand up each sleeve, found a knife. A purely golden blade with gems and ornate designs covering the handle. I hoped the knife had enough magic in it to cut Elizabeth’s bonds.

  Slowly sawing the blade against the bear skin strips, I watched the bond begin to split. Pressing harder, the blade cut deeper, and I felt elation that I had discovered a secret of the family which had been staring me in the face the whole night.

  The bear cloaks, the uniform worn by me and Gord and Poppy with their intricate designs and esoteric symbols, the knives that were a part of the uniform—there must have been magic in them all. And in what else? The bear heads? The cloven hoof shoes? The mansion itself? I couldn’t know to what extent the magic existed or how it could manipulate or be manipulated. But at least I knew how prevalent it was.

  The knife cut through the bear skin, and I saw Elizabeth glance at me, feeling the tightness around her ankle suddenly vanish. Blood flowed back into her foot and a smile tried to bloom on her mouth, but she held it in. Venus was digging into the sex of her captive, tongue swirling around Elizabeth’s clitoris. I could tell that Elizabeth felt nothing but revulsion.

  The magic golden knife.

  I stared at it, held low, then glanced between the shoulder blades of Venus as she was bent over the bed. Elizabeth nodded to me, but I doubted the blade would kill my bride. It hadn’t before. But if I plunged it in, would it give me enough time to cut the remaining bonds and free my teenage love?

  Before I could try, however, Venus swept off the bed towards me, snatched the knife from my hand, broke the blade from its hilt, and threw both across the room.

  “Really, Chris,” she said, licking a line of blood off her palm where the blade had dug in before being so easily snapped. “I’m your wife now. I’ll always know you better than you’ll ever know yourself. Men are stereotypes of themselves. Yes, it has magic, but little boys shouldn’t play with forces they don’t fully understand.”

  Elizabeth and I were both in shock. I froze as Venus paced the room.

  “You’re not being very good family material anymore,” she told me. “I don’t mind wedding night jitters, but when I give you something, I feel insulted when you don’t accept it.” She stopped to look at Elizabeth, still bound by three restraints to the bed. Venus tickled the captive’s free foot, and Elizabeth kicked away her hand. “You, too, sweetheart. A woman of your age should have at least one baby. I’m offering. But it will mean you’ll be an active part of our family. For life. Not just genetic fodder for experimentation…like your parents and brothers.” She stepped to the door, hand on the crystal knob. “If Chris won’t volunteer—his morality getting the best of him once again, as I knew it would—I have someone else who will.”

  Venus turned the knob and the door swung silently open.

  Gord stood in the door, nostrils red with either coke or blood or both, eyes bulging, sweat slicking his skin. Gitch and the blonde twins loomed behind him.

  Elizabeth’s brother leered at the woman on the bed, licked his lips, and pulled open the flap on his pants.

  — | — | —

  Chapter 16

  She led Gord by the hand into the room, his penis growing as he ogled his sister and the woman on his arm escorting him to the forbidden. Venus glanced back to give a signal to the twin brothers, and I saw them leave, very disappointed. Gitch didn’t go anywhere, however. He stood behind me, a hand again on my shoulder.

  “The Patidean brothers said I get you again after this,” Gord commented to Venus, desperation in his drugged gaze. “You’ll take me back?

  “Of course, darling. One can always trust twins. They’re proof that experimentation is natural and good. And we are a very natural family. That’s what shocks so many outsiders. Homo sapiens are such a ridiculous species.”

  “All is forgiven?” Gord asked, pleading again.

  “It was such a silly little error,” she said soothingly, patting Gord’s arm. “We won’t let a minor thing like secrecy come between us. Wives and husbands shouldn’t have secrets, should they?”

  Gord looked at my shyly, tried to keep his voice low as he glanced at me and asked my wife. “And…he’s not the husband anymore? I am?”

  She raised an eyebrow my way. “Well, we’ll have to have another marriage ceremony, of course.” She cradled Gord’s face. He glanced down at her body, then up to her gaze. “Do you think you’ll be able to fuck and kill as he did? Maybe even come up with something more horrific? To stimulate the family’s appetites before dinner?”

  He smiled and nodded and began stroking himself. “I’ll fuck and kill everyone in the wedding party—except you, of course.”

  She took his arm, stood with him at the foot of the bed, gazing over Elizabeth. “That’s the spirit. Now, to prove your loyalty and to give me a good reason to take you back, all you have to do is rape your sister. Can you do that for me, my love?”

  He fist sped up as he glared at his sister’s nude body. “Should I fuck her to death?”

  “Won’t be necessary,” Venus said as she pulled Gord’s manhood to guide him over to the bed. A man following his cock, a woman in control of it. “We need her alive, to be bred, of course. You never made it to the family level, so I’ll have to step in and assist.”

  Gord hop-stepped from foot to foot, excited. He was like a child, someone lobotomized, all Id with no Superego. The blonde twins must’ve filled his veins with red cocaine again, or a cocktail of drugs. His personality as I knew it was gone. “Okay. You and me and her? Sounds perfect. Let’s fuck!”

  He crawled up the bed between his sister’s legs. Her free leg kicked at him as she screamed for hi
m to wake up and realize what he was doing, but he batted her leg away and lined himself up. I tried to charge at him to pull him off but was stopped by a thick arm around my neck, Gitch dragging me away from the bed and holding me tightly, but not too tight to strangle me. I had to stay alive to witness the horror.

  Gord aimed himself as Elizabeth screamed and twisted her body. He plunged into her and his hips pounded like a jungle cat mounting its mate. He grunted as his sister screamed and wept, then he mashed his mouth against her breasts.

  “Gotta grow the family tree into a mighty Douglas Fir!” he laughed as he fucked. “I’ll shoot a baby deep inside you and we’ll start our own incest branch!”

  Elizabeth wept, her body going limp, free leg tiring from vainly kicking the bed. She couldn’t fight anymore.

  “You won’t have much of a branch without my help,” Venus said as she knelt on the bed, Gord’s bearfur ass in front of her. She looked back at me and winked, “Wanna see some magic?”

  She wrenched down Gord’s pants to bunch up at his knees, but he didn’t notice, kept thrusting, his exposed ass cheeks clenching. Shock swept over me as I watched Venus’ tailbone grow. Like an obscene snake, the flesh-covered bone grew longer and longer, slithered down the crack of Venus’ ass and curled under, kept growing until it rose up like a cobra between her legs. She angled her hips to the side for me to see the tail phallus jutting out. She stroked it as she licked her lips and gazed at me. Walked on her knees until she could put a hand on Gord’s ass cheek, aiming the tip of her tail.

  “Hold still for a minute, sweetie,” she said to Gord. “This may pinch a bit.”

  Guiding her appendage into Gord’s rectum, Venus sighed as her lover arched upward and his arms shook. He grunted curses under his breath as he felt himself penetrated.

  “Ah fuck, baby—goddamn!” he hissed between tight teeth.