by Alana Khan
“Really, Dahlia? Recite that poem? Now?”
“Prove you’re not the devil. I’m risking life and limb…” How is that possible, I wonder, if I’m already dead. Okay, limb, just limb. “I’m braving a million fucking snakes to get to you. I want you to prove you’re really Dax.”
“Why don’t you think I’m Dax? Why do you think I’m the devil?”
“Why are you answering a question with a question? That’s a bad sign.”
“‘I love you more than life itself’,” he begins. “‘I cannot count the depth and breadth of my devotion, nor your appeal’.”
I wouldn’t know the words to that poem if my life depended on it. Which is a moot point because I’m already dead.
It mortified me when he recited it to me in front of all my friends on the ship. I figured they were all judging me for not being as nice to him as I should be. He was declaring his undying love, and I was spurning him. I’m such a shit, no wonder I’m in Hell.
I'd feel completely different if he did it now. It would be thrilling and I’d be proud to have such a great guy proclaim to everyone he thinks I’m terrific. But that ship has sailed —I’m in Hell.
I keep listening to the poem and moving toward his voice. I pay attention to its soothing tone and not the fact that I’m maybe eighteen inches above a wriggling mass of snakes. Snakes that could be poisonous. Snakes that my mind knows can lift their ugly little heads higher than eighteen inches and bite the shit out of me even though I’m walking on these bars like they’re stilts.
These bars are ancient and rusty. They’re sharp and probably giving tetanus to the unprotected soles of my feet even as we speak.
I keep making my way toward his voice as I calculate when I had my last tetanus shot. Was it when I picked up that cute stray cat and it scratched the crap out of me? When was that? Ninth grade? And does it matter? I can’t remember how long a tetanus shot lasts, anyway.
“How long does a tetanus shot last?”
“‘I love you freely and purely and’… what?”
“A tetanus shot, how long does it last?”
“What’s a tetanus shot?”
“Keep reciting the poem!”
“...by daylight and moonlight. I love the curve of your…”
My palms are bleeding, but I keep moving. I pull off another hand-sized piece of old metal and toss it behind me. Perhaps I’m hallucinating, but I don’t detect as much moving and wiggling. Maybe I’ve almost passed this heinous, squirming ball of snakes.
A few minutes later I sense no more snakes nearby. I toss metal behind me and hear it clank onto the stone corridor floor. I breathe a tiny sigh of relief.
“How are you doing, Dahlia?”
“I think I’m out of snake canyon. How far away do you think I am?”
“Hard to tell, Dahl. Just keep coming.”
“Do you know where we are?”
“No idea.”
“I thought Hell would be different.”
“Hell?”
“We’re dead and in Hell, Dax, certainly you’ve figured that out.”
“I don’t believe in that.”
“Just because you don’t believe in it doesn’t mean we’re not there.”
Now probably isn’t the time for a philosophical discussion. Or maybe it’s just what the doctor ordered to keep my mind off snakes and devils and… Hell.
My foot steps off into nothingness and I shriek until I realize I’ve reached the end of the bars. Okay, back on the stone floor. That’s probably good.
Standing on solid ground, I just breathe while I allow my trembling muscles to relax.
“I’m back on dry land, Dax.” He must hear the relief in my tone. I’m not stepping on any reptiles.
I move toward Dax’s disembodied voice, hoping a) it’s really Dax and not Satan, and b) I’m going in the right direction.
I hear snakes hissing behind me and shriek.
“Dahlia, what’s going on?”
I’m running now. I don’t care how many snakes there are. I’ll get to Dax right this minute or die trying.
“I’m certain we’re in Hell. Keep talking!”
I’m running almost at full blast, my hands straight out in front of me to avoid crashing into iron bars. Dax’s voice is louder. A moment later, I’m outside his cell.
“Dax, is it really you?”
“There are no such things as hell and devils, Dahl. It’s me.” He reaches his strong arm through the bars and pulls me close. It’s definitely him, it smells like Dax.
I’ve loved his smell since they forced us to share a cell on the ship. It’s warm and pleasant and somehow reassuring.
I hear a click and the cell door opens inward
“Dax,” I whisper. “Your cell is open. Come out and —” I’m pushed inside from behind and the door slams shut. Dax and I are in this pitch-black cell together.
He crushes me to him, one hand lodged in the small of my back, one hand cradling my head. “It’s a miracle,” he breathes.
“A miracle that we’re dead and in Hell?”
“A miracle that whether we’re dead or alive, we’re together.”
“I saw Asher of Galgon kill you. He pushed a blade into your heart, then he did the same to me.”
He slides his hand down the remnants of my dress and explores between my breasts.
“I don’t feel a puncture. I don’t have one either. It’s a miracle. How else would you explain it?” Dax says.
“There are other explanations,” an unctuous male voice intrudes over a loudspeaker.
I tuck myself closer to Dax.
“Who is that?” Dax asks.
“Guess,” the voice is smug, taunting.
Dax clutches me tightly and sets his chin on my head. “Asher of Galgon.”
“You win the prize. I’ll have to decide on a good one. The snakes were fun, don’t you think? You should have seen the look on your face, Dahlia. Here.”
Superimposed over the ancient stone wall he projects vids of me clinging to the bars, stepping my way toward Dax. He shot the movie from in front of me; it shows my eyes wide in fright and my mouth tight in concentration. Over my shoulder, there are thousands of squirming black snakes. I can’t suppress a shudder.
I have no idea what’s going on, but I refuse to give this asshole the satisfaction of asking.
“And that love poem, gladiator. I can’t wait to show that vid to my friends at our monthly klempto game. It will amuse everyone —seeing a heavily muscled primate reciting the sublime words of that venerated poem.
“To hear a male such as you mouthing such transcendent words made me want to punish you even more than what I’ve already planned. But I’m a patient male. We’ve got all the time in the galaxy for such acts of retribution.”
The vid flickers out leaving Dax and me in darkness.
“We’re not dead?” I have no idea what’s going on. Is this Hell? Is Asher the devil?
“I think our deaths were a trick. I believe being stabbed was an illusion —they rigged a fake knife to administer a drug that made us unconscious.
Clapping reverberates around us.
“Dax scores a point,” Asher crows.
When the vid was playing, I had time to inspect the cell. It’s maybe twelve by twelve with a bucket for waste, a pail of water, and a mattress on a stone platform. All the comforts of home.
After pulling Dax over to the bed, I take a seat at his side.
“We can get out of this, Dax. We’ve been through worse.”
“I’m not sure of that.”
Another round of applause.
“Dax scores another point. You’re beginning to see the picture. I must say, I’m disappointed in you, Dahlia. I mean, look at the big idiot. My money was on you to figure this out first.”
“Motherfucker,” I say. It’s neither a shout nor a whisper.
“Tsk tsk. What would your merciful God think of such language?”
“Watch out asshole. Whe
n we get out, we’ll make you pay.”
“Now I'm truly distressed. Let me give you a little advice, Dahlia. When someone holds your lover’s life in their hands, in fact, when they hold your very life in their hands, it is not wise to anger them. Let me give you a visual demonstration that will make an impression on even your feeble brain.”
He dimly illuminates the cell, then Dax grunts and clutches both hands to his throat, grabbing at his pain/kill collar. His eyelids flicker, and his body spasms in reaction to the harsh jolt of current coursing through his body.
His knees come down hard on the stone floor as he continues to struggle. Then the current stops and he gasps for air.
My hand slips to my throat in sympathy, and I realize I now wear a collar, too.
I slide next to Dax and caress his back. “I’m sorry Dax. Me and my big mouth got you punished.”
He crosses his legs on the stone floor and drags me onto his lap, then rocks us both as he clutches me to his chest.
Pressing his lips to my ear, he whispers, “This is how torturers drack with your mind. There are books, there are entire encyclopedias written on how to do this: divide and conquer, punish one to punish the other, at some point he’ll try to make you hate me, just as he’s trying to make me blame you for the pain he just inflicted.”
He kisses my earlobe, then continues, “Stay strong, Dahl. Never forget we’re a team. You and I. He’s the enemy.”
“Oh, how very touching, Dax from Thrace. Keep deluding yourself you big ignorant gladiator. Do you really think this lovely Earther is attracted to you for anything other than a good dracking?
"She has what’s considered a good education on her planet, she had a respectable job, her form is pleasing —if you’re attracted to such things. You’re nothing more than a huge, classless male who doesn’t know the correct utensil to use at a meal.”
Stifling the ‘fuck off’ that’s on the tip of my tongue, I wait to see what he’ll throw at us next, but he’s left us alone, at least for a while.
Dax and I cuddle together. Now that my adrenaline from the snakes is fading, I’m tired enough to fall asleep even though I’m wondering what new level of Hell awaits us next.
Chapter Eight
Dahlia
I wake the next morning scrunched next to Dax on the mattress, his heavy arm around my waist pulling me next to him so I don’t fall off the bed. The reassuring pulsing of his cock twitches against the back of my thigh.
It’s ridiculous to be in Hell, or a facsimile of Hell, and totally focus on the guy I’m in bed with. But I am. Somewhere along the way I’ve gone from fearing him to tolerating him, to enjoying his company, to having a crush.
The lights are on. I’m about to flip over so I can stare at his handsome face and maybe kiss him when I see an alien version of a rodent staring at me from the corner of our cell. It’s rat-sized and rat-colored and rat-shaped. In fact, the only difference I can see is that its teeth are longer and sharper than any rodent I ever saw on planet Earth. I can’t control the shiver of revulsion that snakes through me.
I focus on the fact that this rat is a mammal, which is so much more tolerable than a serpent. Then I realize snakes eat rats —I wonder where all the snakes have gone.
“Dax? Dax?”
“What’s wrong?” His arm tightens protectively around me.
“There were one or two million snakes down that corridor. Where do you think they went?”
“I don’t know.”
He tries to turn me to look at him, but I’m stubbornly staring at the rat.
“There’s a rat.” I point, in case he doesn’t see the humongous rodent staring at us.
“I see it, Dahlia. There’s not much I can do about it.”
As we watch, another rat joins his friend. And then another.
“Dax, do rats travel in packs?”
“I don’t know, Dahl. They look harmless.”
“No, they don’t. They’re looking at us like we’re breakfast.” Even as I’m talking, two more join their pals.
What are the odds that there would be so many rodents still alive when there were a million snakes here yesterday? Don’t snakes eat rats? WTF?
Dax jumps, then sits up behind me.
“Drack. One of them bit my calf through the bars. Stand on the bed.” He’s worried, I can hear it in his voice.
When I’m standing, I see there are hundreds of rats gathering in and around our cell.
“Fuck.”
I had a pet gerbil once. It was kind of cute even though it had a rat tail. Hundreds of these black and brown rodents, all closing in on us? Nothing cute about it.
“I want you on the middle rail,” Dax points at the horizontal rail about four feet off the floor. It’s the same construction as the lower rail I stepped on yesterday.
He doesn’t have to ask me twice; I step up onto the rail and clutch the vertical bars.
“Why aren’t you doing the same thing, Dax?”
He grabs the water bucket and flings it at the boldest rats who are trying to bite him, then he uses the bucket to scare the animals —it does nothing, they keep encroaching. He jumps on the bed with the bucket, his back to me, trying to keep them at bay.
There are hundreds, maybe thousands of them now. My skin is crawling with the thought of them. They’re getting bolder —and closer. I turn my head from our cell, where I’ve been watching the rats, and glance into the adjoining cell; the one sharing the very bars I’m clutching.
There are a thousand rats there, too, and they’re scurrying up the bars.
A deep moan escapes my throat. I’m grossed out and terrified.
“Dax!” I shout as they bite my toes.
He’s trying with all his might to bash them with his pitiful wooden bucket, but there’s so many of them and the bucket is useless. His legs are a hair suit of rats. They’re squeaking and attacking us both. His bucket breaks apart as he smashes it at some of the rats on the bars.
These motherfuckers will eat us alive. They’re climbing up me.
“I love you, Dax. I should have told you before,” I say and then clamp my lips together so the rats don’t invade my mouth.
The sound of rushing water catches my attention. I glance away from the onslaught of rats in time to see a wall of water approaching us. The rats see it too and almost all of them scurry to dry ground.
We’re stuck in this ten-foot-high cell.
We’re both bleeding from hundreds of bites. Red blood covers Dax from the chest down. When I glance at myself, I see I’m almost as bad.
“I love you, Dahlia. I was lucky to know you. This is all my fault. I’m sorry.”
The water is fast and relentless. It’s already up to the bed platform. Dax steps onto the horizontal bar next to me and kisses me.
“Stand on my shoulders.” He helps me place my knees on his shoulders, the ceiling is too low for me to stand there. The water’s already up to Dax’s waist.
The water’s filthy and black. A dead rat floats by and I pray it doesn’t bump into me. I don’t know why this would make me lose my shit after everything that’s happened today.
“I’ll keep your head above water as long as I can, Dahl, but when I die, you’ll be plunged into the water.”
And just like that, the waters recede. Dead rat bodies eddy by. My teeth chatter. Whether it’s from the cold or the aftermath of terror, I have no idea.
It smells dank and dirty. I’m freezing. We’re both streaming blood from hundreds of rat bites. I wonder again about tetanus, but I remember rats carry worse things than tetanus —the fucking plague for one.
“Well played,” Asher’s voice bursts in. “Well done. I’ve never seen it done better. For all your efforts, you’ve earned prizes.”
He’s having fun! The bastard.
A contingent of his armed guard slogs through the five inches of fetid water still covering the floor.
“Come.”
Dax carries me in the bride-over-the-thresho
ld position and follows the males in their red uniforms.
They march us through the maze of cells. This place is ancient and in disrepair. I wonder if this wasn’t the first time this place has been flooded. Maybe that’s why the bars were so rusty.
Poor Dax is walking naked through the filthy water. We’re both still dripping blood. Just thinking of what we went through, I repress a full-body shudder and try to control my gag reflex. I don’t know where they’re taking us, but I’m thankful we’re still together.
