by Syra Bond
Lydia sat back and inclined her neck towards me. I stared at the two neat holes in her skin.
‘Yes, I am dead,’ she said. ‘But, you see, still alive for him. My death was only a door to my next life.’
I was shaking all over.
‘What was his name?’ I asked already knowing what her answer would be. ‘Tell me his name.’
‘Dawson,’ she said. ‘Father Dawson, of course! He has brought us darkness out of light. Look at me! Look what he has done to me! Look how he has equipped his slave for eternity.’
The light was coming through a high window. Looking up at it made me feel sick. I put my head down.
‘Look at what he has done!’
My head started pounding again as I looked up into the light.
I stared at her still not knowing what to make of her story. How could she be dead? But as I looked at her closely I saw her face was ashen, and her eyes were dark and lifeless. I could see one side of her head was crushed in, and her left shoulder was crooked and her arm badly bent. How could I have not noticed this before? She bared her teeth. Her upper canines were sharp and smeared with redness. Could she truly be dead?
The woman who had been licking Lydia’s cunt was still between her thighs, her tongue slobbering along the wet glistening crack.
‘Yes! Yes! He reaches even beyond the grave. Death provides his victims with no safe haven. He has broken us with his punishments and perversions, enslaved us with our own desires, and bound us to him with infected blood. Yes, we are all infected with that glorious liquor which he found for us. It is now our eternal destiny to serve him. We will forever be his creatures of the night.’
Suddenly, she swung around.
‘Look! He’s there! It’s him! My master! It’s him! He has come to see me. Yes, I must be the one he has come to see. Who else here could interest him?’
I turned. A man was just closing the door behind him. I could not see his face.
‘Yes, he is urging me to carry out his orders - whatever they are. I sense his wishes. Oh, the delights of being his slave. I have no option but to follow his every wish. If he would only tell me what he wants. My cunt is wet as I think of it.’
I saw the man’s sleeve as he pulled the door shut. He was wearing a pin-striped suit!
Lydia picked up the candle from the table and held it up.
I looked up into the light it cast; high up in the tower that rose above us, a naked woman was hanging strung up by her ankles.
‘It is a new one for his flock. He allowed me to infect her myself. He instructed me closely. I thought he had come to see the climax, but no. I have bitten into her throat as he directed, sucked her blood, mixed it with my own saliva and pumped it back into her veins. He calls me his “little mosquito” sometimes. Yes, I have given her of myself and brought her closer to my master. Only one thing remains in order for her to join us fully. She must sacrifice her old life and take on the new. Oh, why didn’t he stay? Yes, this is how my master likes us best - dropped to our deaths, crushed on the hard ground - disfigured by our death as a remembrance of the disfigurement of our old life. A wonderful mark - a beautiful handicap! It reminds us forever of our devotion to him - how we have sacrificed everything for him.’
She lifted the candle higher and held it beneath the thin rope that stretched up high into the tower. The rope bubbled and blackened as the flames licked around its fibres. One by one they crackled and burnt through, their ends spreading back in contorted coils, twisting and bubbling as if to seal their separation in eternity.
The weight of the woman’s body put extra tension on the remaining fibres. The candle burned brighter. Suddenly, the fibres broke and screwed up as if in the final throes of a delectable and excruciating agony. The last one severed in an explosive frenzy of freedom. The separated end flew upwards and the body of the woman raced headfirst towards the red tiled floor.
Lydia stared at me. She opened her mouth wide and exposed her teeth. Drops of bright red blood dripped from the pointed ends of her upper canines.
‘Now she is with us forever,’ she said as the candle guttered and we were all thrown into darkness.
THE FEEDING ROOM
The next thing I knew I was on a bed, on my back, naked except for a pair of loose pink panties pulled up tightly against the flesh of my cunt. I wasn’t tied.
I flexed my fingers and slid over onto my side. I felt sick. Lydia was lying on a bed next to mine, staring hard into my face.
‘I was watching you,’ she said giving me a broad smile. Seeing her sharp teeth reminded me of where I was. I shivered. ‘I have been watching you all night.’
I felt confused.
‘Where am I?’
‘You are in the second calming room - here they call it the “feeding room”. It is the place where they calm the spirit within, where they keep the vile odours at bay. It is here we are fed in preparation for the change. The unifying power of iron fortifies the membranes, Syra - makes us ready for our new life ahead. It gives us the strength to withstand an eternity of darkness.’
I started to recollect the story she had told me, how she had been enslaved to the Mexicans and how in the end they had sold her to - ! Father Dawson! I couldn’t believe it! It couldn’t be true! Surely I was imagining it! What had she been talking about? How could anyone act from beyond the grave? I shivered all over. What was happening to me?
‘What’s happening to me?’ I shouted out in desperation.
‘Calm down,’ said Lydia. ‘It is still day. Calm down.’
‘What do you mean, “It is still day”? What’s happening to me? What does it matter whether it’s day or not?’
‘Look at yourself.’ She held up a small cracked mirror. ‘You will soon see.’
‘I don’t know what you mean! No! I shan’t look in the mirror. There is nothing to see. This is all a cruel game! Help! Help!’
I felt out of control. I was overwhelmed with anxiety. I couldn’t stop shouting. I was shaking all over.
Lydia reached over and put her hand on my shoulder. I knocked it away angrily.
‘Help! Help!’ I shouted. ‘Somebody, please help!’
The door opened. A shaft of light came in through the opening. It made me blink and shrink back. Why was I so sensitive to light? I tried to look at it but I couldn’t. The light filled my head and made it pound.
Nurse Roslin came in carrying a shiny metal tray.
‘She’s going to knock you out,’ Lydia mocked. ‘I told you. It’s still day. It’s not our time. She’s going to knock you out. She does everything she is ordered.’
Nurse Roslin walked over to me purposefully. She fixed me with her green eyes. She took a syringe from the metal tray, held it with the needle uppermost and squeezed the plunger slowly into the barrel. A spurt of liquid squirted out in a narrow curving jet.
‘This will calm you,’ she said.
She sat down on the edge of the bed. Her short skirt drew up on her well shaped thighs. As she squirmed into position I caught a fleeting glimpse of her white panties. She bent towards me. I could see the top edge of her lacy bra and the deep cleavage that disappeared into the top of her white uniform jacket. She turned my arm over and laid the back of my hand flat on her lap. I felt the warmth of her bare thighs against my skin. With one hand she lifted my wrist slightly and with the other she levelled the tip of the needle against the vein on the inside of my elbow. Her red fingernails glittered like jewels.
I waited for the pain as it entered but felt none. A feeling of disappointment came over me. She squeezed the plunger and the solution in the syringe slowly entered my arm. I felt its warmth. She removed the needle, licked out her tongue and tasted the still dripping end. She laid my arm back on the bed and placed the palm of her hand on my forehead. I felt warmth in my cunt and lifted my leg in t
he hope that the movement would accentuate it, but I felt nothing. I wanted to drop my thighs apart. I wanted her to bury her tongue into my crack - to lick me as deeply as she could. I tried to smile but my mouth would not move. I felt warm all over. I tried to lift my arm and nothing happened. She stood up and looked down at me. She licked her red lips and then she faded away - it was as if the world around me just disappeared.
The next thing I knew was a feeling of delightful warmth in my cunt - something soft and wet. I lifted my hips to meet it. I saw a head between my thighs. It was Lydia - her face buried against the flesh of my crack, her tongue lapping at the flesh, its tip probing into the darkness within. I did not stop her, or even think about trying.
My head lolled to one side. I stared through a glazed partition into the adjoining room and saw a young woman on her hands and knees. I could just make out her panties pulled down onto her thighs. Her breasts were bare, her hair was black - short cropped and shiny. Her pale face was bent down into a trough, her naked bottom held high. I could not see what she was eating or drinking, but when she choked a man who stood behind her in a black suit brought down a leather strap across her taut, already reddened buttocks.
I squeezed up my eyelids to see more clearly. The woman lifted her head from the trough - she was young and beautiful. The man brought down the strap. It smacked her hard. She reared back but, obviously in fear of more punishment, straightaway buried her face again into the trough. I could see the red lines across her buttocks and the fresh one caused by the latest stroke already colouring up on her otherwise pale skin.
Lydia pulled back. I felt the coolness of exposure as her warm tongue slipped out of my slit. I squirmed, frustrated at its loss. Lydia looked beautiful - her smooth sallow skin set against a mass of tangled red hair. The ashen face, the injury to her skull, the crooked shoulder that I had witnessed before, had all gone. It was as if she had been rejuvenated. Her whole face was wet from my moisture. She wiped her eyes with her fingertips. She blinked, savouring the wetness that had run across her eyeballs.
‘You like to see the young girl taking her medicine?’ she asked.
I could not stop myself nodding.
‘Yes, yes, I do.’
‘The girl before her did not survive. It is a terrible test she is undergoing. I know, I have endured it myself. Let me tell you of another, just as young, just as beautiful. They brought her into this very treatment room early one morning. It was just getting light and she was already sensitive - like you are, Syra. Her youthful beauty radiated from her in a glow. She had been brought in with pains in her head, the orderly said. One of the other attendants said she had a brainstorm - but of course none of this was true.’
Lydia drew back, pulled her knees up and sat between my thighs. She reached forward and pressed two of her fingers into my cunt, ran them up and down the silky lining a few times then pulled them out again. She sucked her fingers and smiled.
‘We were friends, this young girl and me. We had come here at the same time. Both abducted, made to suffer then finally brought here. I sat by her side the whole of the morning. She stared ahead, breathing in shallow noisy bursts. She had found all the treatments difficult to bear. She was not strong. I spoke to her occasionally. Sometimes it was as if we were sitting together again in front of the winter fire in the cabin by the lake where we had spent that happy week together. It had been beyond the Canadian border, a hunter’s cabin. It was so cold. We were cruelly used, but neither of us suffered, neither of us could resist - the pleasure that came with the pain was too great. That was our bond - we were tied together by our desires, and how we found them through our suffering. Yes, I spoke to her, to try and remind her that I was here, still with her, still sharing her desire for the delights of agony. But she did not reply. She was too frightened. I talked about that week - how we had swum in the cold lake water - how we had shivered as we held onto each other naked around the fire we had been allowed to build on the shingle lake beach. I tried to remind her of our pale faces and blue lips and how we had clung to each other so tightly. I talked about how we had run our fingers along the cracks of each other’s cunts, how we had writhed and fallen to the ground by the fire, how we had licked each other’s flesh, how we lapped at it so thirstily. And how we had been bent onto all fours and thrashed with still burning sticks from the fire, and how we had been branded to show our master’s ownership of us. I could taste her moisture as I spoke - it was delectable. I can still taste it now. But still she did not reply. I listened to her strange monotonous sounds - perfectly in time with her exhalations - and imagined she was thinking of words, thinking of responses to my story of the past. It was as though she was copying the breathless gasps that came from our gaping mouths as we had driven each other time and again to delectable climax.
‘Once she tilted her head back, as though she was acknowledging one of my nervous asides - “Remember how they thrashed us both with sticks? Remember how we were forced naked into the snow and made to crawl on all fours along the lake shore? Remember how cold it was - how we shivered until we peed ourselves?” Once she seemed to raise an eyebrow as though suddenly she had become interested again in the world and me. Or perhaps she was wondering if it ever could have happened? I do not know, she did not say.
‘I sat with her for ages. It was like a hospital visit. I listened to the sounds outside the treatment room in which we crouched, like conspirators hatching a plan to replace life with something more vital. I heard the sound of leather straps being brought down on upturned buttocks, the choking of patients as they had their faces forced into the troughs for feeding. I heard the mumbled “thank-yous” as patients were forced to beg for forgiveness for any transgression from the detailed instructions which were laid out for them to follow. I listened to the vomiting of the poor souls who could not ingest what they were offered.
She had been starved in preparation - the black and white oxygen bottle at her side and the dry drip line up her nose, her only nourishment. I held her hand - it was cold and sweaty. Her face was so beautiful; her skin was white and smooth - perfect. I remembered how she had always held me so tightly when we had met, clung to me perhaps too long in her enthusiastic embrace, kissed me, whispered in my ear - drawn too much attention to our secret intimacy. I remembered the scent of her cunt when I kissed her back. I squeezed her fingers but she did not squeeze mine. I took them into my mouth and sucked them but she did not respond.
‘I did not know what she was remembering. I could not tell if the images of our destruction were still in her mind - how we had been so suddenly abducted by our cruel tormentor, and later in captivity how we had knelt before him, and worshipped him as he treated us with disdain, and degraded us in every way he wanted. I could not tell if she was recalling the pain we had both suffered at his hands or if she was picturing how we had delighted in our misery - how we had reached the heights of ecstasy as we were thrashed, bound, and buried in the desert sand.
‘I knew they would come soon and take me out of this terrible place - this waiting room for entry to the abyss - I had been put to the trough already. For the last few minutes, I sat back on the hard chair and stared at her in a way I could not stare at someone who was aware of me. I analysed her - eyes fixed, barely blinking, and the rhythmic panting breaths sounding the nonsensical single note of all that was left of her voice. She was already preparing to emerge on the other side. This was the point of her rebirth - as if she was a chrysalis giving life to a new form.
‘As they grabbed my arms and lifted me into a wheelchair, I looked across at her. I realised the difference between us, our different and opposing grip on life - mine for the time being still to the fear of darkness, hers now to the fear of light. I bent and kissed her. I spoke again, saying goodbye but not wishing her well or reminding her of the next time we would meet. I did not want to know of the next time. This pointed lack of nicety brought a sudden flush of tears to m
y eyes. I wanted to say she would be alright, but how could she be alright in the abyss of experienced death?
‘They wheeled me to the door. Just before they gagged me, I said goodbye again and waved - almost cheerfully, unable to suppress the association of a fond goodbye to someone I would see again. And she lifted her arm and waved back - silently saying goodbye, bidding me farewell, leaving me with her best wishes for my own journey which would follow with certainty and soon.
‘They drew the ball gag tightly into my mouth and pushed me to the door. I felt elated by her wonderful departure and realised that it was she, not me who was passing on the good wishes, it was me returning into the abyss of life - as yet not fully prepared to move on even though I realised it was my destiny. I envied her so much, and struggled against the bonds at my wrists and ankles not to be free but to hasten my sacrifice to the new life of complete service to my master.
‘They wheeled me behind the curtain which was draped at the back of the door. Her watcher - one of his faithful acolytes appointed to observe the transformation time - had been sitting in the corner all the time I had been there. He had not spoken, was thin with gaunt features, sunken cheeks and thin lips. I smiled at him once but he just stared right through me. He leant over and bent his face down to his charge’s beautiful skin. He kissed her shoulder, opening his mouth and lapped his tongue slowly against the ivory-like surface before he moved closer to her neck. She kept panting - perhaps a little faster as she detected his presence. Her breathing was now like that of an animal. He lingered, his open mouth just allowing his tongue to hang forward proud of his narrow lips. I clung to the edges of the curtain, suddenly aware of being caught spying on him, of his potential anger towards me should he feel I was intruding into this private moment. He caught my gaze, fixed it and gave me a thin, barely expressed smile.
‘Still fixing me with his gaze, he opened his mouth and exposed his teeth - his canines had been sharpened and stood out prominently from the rest. He lowered his face to her neck. She gasped as he made contact with her silky skin, raising her chest and dropping back her head as he pressed the sharp tips of his teeth into her beautiful flesh.
