by Zac Strong
I know exactly what she wants.
“Fuck it,” I whisper under my breath, as I dive into her lips with mine. I kiss her with a fire hotter than all the stars in the universe. She ignites wrapping her arms around me, throwing herself into my grasp. Our lungs racing. Our hearts beat in rapid unison. This is long overdue.
“I’ve wanted you since the first time I laid eyes on you,” she whispers into my ear just before my teeth land on her neck. A subtle moan escapes her.
My bite breaks only long enough for my lips to lightly blow over her chill bumps. I can feel her smiling.
Her hand goes straight for my pants.
Walking her through the doorway, I throw her on her back across the pallet bed.
Ripping open her blouse, I expose her perfect, teardrop breasts. One fits completely in my mouth. My palm finds the other.
Her back arches off the pallet as my tongue digs into the center of her tiny pink nipple. I slide my hand down to her bare stomach, fingers walking slowly around the rim of her skirt before circling back to her navel.
Her body responds.
Slowly, I work my way down. My lips meet her soft skin every few inches. She raises her hips and eagerly slides her skirt to her ankles before giving it one final kick to the floor. Her war paint ignites the room. Her body is on fire, and tonight she’s mine.
My kisses inch further, becoming hungrier, more aggressive. Forcing her legs apart, my lips suck the inner sides of her thighs. Like a magnet, my hand finds her warm essence.
A finger slips inside her. Her back arches further until she can’t handle it any longer, grabbing my head forcing me to her center.
My lips graze her clitoris as they land a kiss on her wet lips. She doesn’t let go as she grinds into my mouth without remorse, exhaling a quiet grunt of pleasure.
With two fingers I spread her open and push my tongue into her vigorously.
She explodes. Her legs wrap snugly around my head. Her toes curl. I attack her sweet innocence with a hunger quenched only by the sound of her screaming with pleasure.
Her legs squeeze tighter. Suddenly, I’m lightheaded, high from her nectar. With two handfuls of my hair, she pulls my face deeper into her raised pelvis until she finally lets out a roar that echoes throughout the stillness of the room and down every corridor of Elysium. Fucking animal.
Lowering herself back onto the bed, her body quivers. I feel her dripping down my stubble. The bulge in my pants rages. Quickly shedding them on the floor, I position myself between her welcoming legs. Fuck, I’ve never been harder in my life.
She raises the shirt from my shoulders and hurriedly throws it to the ground.
Our eyes meet. I push into her.
Jacee’s perfect pink lips part and she screams soundlessly as I thrust into her. Her body adjusts, pushing me further, taking me all.
She wraps her legs around firmly as I begin to pump faster. Her nails digging into my back.
“Palin,” she whispers.
I lean in closer and wrap both of my hands around her ass from beneath. My thrusts getting faster, harder.
Her eyes burst wide. Her back arches. Her mouth snaps open. She moans as her body shudders around me. Violent waves crash through her. We’re going to wake up the entire cave.
I slam against her using her shoulders now to move in and out of the warmest thing I’ve ever felt in my life. She lifts her pelvis high and she wraps her legs around me as I feel myself about to erupt.
Our eyes lock. I push as deep as I can and release myself into her, collapsing into her gentle embrace. She rocks her hips and pulls me into her deeper. Lying on her back, she takes everything I have as our tongues swirl and twist in each other’s mouths.
Both breathing heavily, I roll over next to her completely exhausted, soaked in sweat and lust.
The smile on her face is too much. I can’t help but smile back. She throws her leg over mine and slides a little closer to me.
My arm wraps around her glistening body as my lips place a kiss on her forehead.
“Wow,” she says interrupting the symphony of our hearts and lungs. Her fingers trace the spade-shaped birthmark under my ribs.
“Wow is right.”
“About time you come around. We could’ve been doing this weeks ago,” she adds, still smiling, still fixated on my birthmark.
“We should be doing this every chance we get. Every day, do nothing, just stay in this room and fuck. The perfect life,” I half-joke.
Her head nods on my bare chest while she continues to catch her breath. I can get used to this.
A silence fell over us for a few seconds. It was in those few seconds I realized I want to stay in this moment for the rest of time, forever if I must. With her lying next to me, not caring about a single thing in the world except each other, all our problems seemed to disappear. Nothing to remind us of our pasts.
“So, you were right by the way.”
“Well obviously,” I laugh, “but what about this time?”
“Something beautiful coming from something tragic. I believed you and you were right.”
My arms wrap around her bringing her closer to me. Something stirs within the hole in my chest.
We let silence comfort us for the few hours of the night we had left. Her head rests gently on my shoulder. One leg straddled around me. I feel completely at ease with the world like nothing else exists other than us in this moment. Every instant of my life, both the
good and the bad, has faded from my memory. Right now, she in my arms is all that is.
“Will you be ready?” she asks without moving.
“What’s that?” I smile drowsily without opening my eyes.
“The time is near,” she replies, lost in her thought.
The time is near? I smile, kiss her head, and crack my eyes open. Every muscle in my body tenses.
Her silky blonde hair isn’t pressed on my lips.
Someone has replaced her.
Who is laying on me!?
The dim luminescence of the room begins wildly flickering.
I hear the banging of a drum right outside my door. It's gnashing against my eardrums, growing louder and louder.
I hesitate for a moment, slowly backing my lips away from the stranger's long, dark hair.
Her head snaps up at me!
She’s inches from my face.
Kalli glares at me with no emotion as she screams around a smile that will forever haunt my dreams, “The time is near, Palin!”
A fury of knocks collides with my door, loudly rescuing me from the night’s terrors.
Another nightmare. Thought I was over those, along with the blackouts. It’s been weeks and I haven’t had an episode since the pit. I’m not sure if there’s an exact science to it, but I’m hoping I won’t lose myself after all. This place has given me something to live for. I’ll starve to death before I poison myself for Lethe again. Another mindwipe could hit any minute though. I must be ready for anything.
Cyrus’s words yesterday quickly dawn on me decapitating any peaceful thoughts that decide to float into my mind. I’ve been brainstorming a hundred excuses not to go. It’s pointless though. I know I’m going. I have to. People are counting on me. Plus, they need a reason to let us stay.
Jacee’s eyes meet mine before she wraps her arms around, bearhugging me.
“I’ve got to go,” I softly whisper into her sleepy, little ear.
“Nooo…” she whines as she digs her face into my chest.
Cyrus beats on the door with audible impatience.
“Okay. Okay. He’s coming!” she screams out while releasing me to the cool morning touch of the cave floor, but not before stealing another kiss. I never thought I would feel like this again.
Forcing myself to get dressed I steal one more glance for the road, then open the door. Jason and the two oddities that shadow him are waiting with Cyrus and the others outside my room. Two more faces stick out from the group that I don’t recognize - a bearded guy th
at twitched every few seconds, and an older fellow that could easily pass as a younger brother to Jason. One look at the dark spots on his skin and you could tell he’s never seen the inside of an infirmary. That goes for all of them. They have more scabs than teeth, and there’s a weird rash on Twitchy’s face I didn’t notice until now.
We gather our supplies and perform the same routine as we did what feels like mere hours ago. The Outland’s sun blazes with the same intensity. The air suffocates with the same heat as before. The only difference is the silence. Everyone feels the same way, even the new guys I suppose. Words are elegancies that we didn’t care to afford.
Seconds slowly fade to minutes as they too turn into hours. The bright sun sails across the sky as my mentality begins to evaporate. It’s fucking with me again. The harder I try not to think about something, the more I think about it. I’ve come to the long, thought-out conclusion that it is absolutely impossible to not think about anything, even for a second. There is no such thing as quiet, especially in this silence.
Moments before dusk, after an all-day hike, we finally arrive. I must admit the longer we trekked, the more skeptical I became of Jason’s mystical Argo, but sure enough there she waits.
Capsized in the deepest trench of this desert valley, the ark he spoke of lays. A R G O still printed on its bow. The remnants of a cargo ship forever lost in time. Gigantic. Some of the containers,
wrapped in rust, rest half-swallowed by the Outlands. Some of the others are fashioned into abandoned huts.
The ship’s far larger than I expected it would be. It stretches into the sand like a sleeping giant rusted and decaying at every orifice. I had no idea such a structure still existed. This may be one of the last known relics of the old world. Still debating if it’s worth the hike though.
We unpack our things and set up camp for the night. It’s too dark to scavenge for supplies right away, plus everyone is worn out and hungry. If we don’t rest, we die.
I can’t help but notice Twitchy acting more peculiar than usual. I’m not sure if he’s excited to be back or just flat-out crazy. Whatever it is, he gives me an uneasy feeling. I don’t trust these people. Maybe Leon was right. For the sake of caution, I bury my short sword under my sleeping bag when no one is looking just in case.
Trying not to think about the rumbling in my stomach my eyes gaze upon the grandeur of this place for hours as I try to force myself to sleep. I vaguely remember seeing images of ships similar to this in the intro video after I was reborn, but this place is so much more surreal. My imagination pictures thousands of refugees fighting desperately to escape their doom from the asteroid. They push and pull struggling to board their only chance of survival.
Suddenly, I hear a noise in the silence coming from inside the ship.
It’s probably nothing.
I wait a few minutes listening tentatively. Everyone has been asleep for hours. Have my ears deceived me? Am I losing it again?
Curiosity slowly conquers the fear creeping through my veins. I rise to my feet and step into the darkness of the ark. There’s a sense of something waiting for me. With my hands out I feel my way around the entrance before hearing the shifting of sand on a noisy metal floor.
“Who’s there?” I ask the noise.
It replies, “It’s just me. I, uhh.. I can’t sleep, see?”
“You scared the shit out of me man! You can’t be creeping around like that,” I half-heartedly joke.
“Oh.. I’m sorry,” he says maliciously. The tone of his spine-chilling voice sends my skin crawling.
I can’t see anything but a silhouette in the shadows, though I know from his posture he’s one of the quiet ones that follow Jason around everywhere.
He slithers closer before hissing, “I was just looking for something to chew on - nothing wrong with that is there? I’m not doing anything wrong.”
I backstep slowly towards the entrance.
Trying to keep my cool I ask, “What’s your name again?”
“Bones.”
“Bones? Why on earth do they call you Bones?” I ask with sincerity. I could just barely see his head cocked to the side.
“Come with me. I’ll show ya. Come.. Come,” he whispers as he motions for me to follow him into the dark.
I hesitantly concede. Every inch of me tells me not to. I‘m assuming his name comes from how scrawny he looks. In all honesty, he does look like a sack of bones. How harmful can he really be?
He leads me past the flashing light of a computer screen near an exit and through the dark, metal labyrinth into a small room dimly lit by a lambent panel light, definitely brought in from somewhere else. I guess everyone outside the cities are scavengers, living off the scraps of Lethe.
The ghastly flickering causes me to stumble over something hard in the path just as my nose gets a whiff of a smell worse than death. I look down and sheer horror stares back.
This room..
Carcasses are everywhere..
… human bones!
The floor is a fucking graveyard covered with skeletons and half-rotted corpses!
As quickly as possible I back myself against a wall still on my hands and knees.
I feel my heart slam the lining of my chest like a hammer.
He stands between me and the door.
“This is my room,” he declares proudly with an open palm. The other hand holds a piece of his collection.
“Where.. um. Where did you get all of these bones?” I stutter as my brain frantically searches for a way to escape. A million thoughts race through my mind simultaneously, none of them a clear way out of here.
Cold sweat drips down my spine.
“I got them from the food,” he says as if the question was obvious.
I bolt for the door.
He grabs me.
Seconds later I feel the sharp pain of his strike on the top of my skull.
My vision blurs.
My legs give.
A warm liquid drips down my face.
I hear him murmur something I can’t quite make out, and the flickering stops.
When I come to, I’m tied to a heavily rusted metal beam in a different, larger room.
It takes a second for my vision to return.
No..
Please, no...
Two bodies lay lifeless on the floor in the dimness. Their faces bloody and cut open, but I know who they belong to.
What have they done!?
Tears immediately pour from my eyes.
They stand above the mangled corpses tearing at the flesh with their teeth.
Rage swells through me.
This can’t be happening…
This must be a nightmare.
Wake up.
Wake up, Palin!
Save them, Palin!!
My eyes frantically scan for a way out.
It’s useless.
I’m trapped.
I picture this place on another day. The smell of rusted metal and rotting flesh lingers through the air. Xander’s first to find my body, mangled and eaten. The smell is too much for Leon. I see a distraught Jacee crying uncontrollably after they tell her the news. We’ve all been missing for days. She already knows in her heart I’m never coming back but hearing it out loud makes it real. It breaks her. She’ll never be the same.
“Aww, look who finally decided to join us.”
They direct their attention to me.
I put all my effort into breaking the plastic straps keeping me from bashing their skulls with my bare hands.
I don’t say a word.
Jason emerges from the shadows holding a limb. Blood drips from his mouth down to his chin before landing on his yellow sash as he sinks his teeth in and pulls another mouthful of raw meat from the bone.
“Not to bite the hand that feeds or anything, but sometimes I just can’t help myself,” he says pompously as he laughs at his own joke like a madman.
My restraints begin to give a little as I labor vigorously for my
freedom. I’m going to kill this man.
“Don’t get too comfortable over there you two. We’re saving you’s for dinner,” screams the demon that knocked me out from across the room.
I notice Cyrus tied and crying on the post behind me.
The plastic gives.
One hand breaks free.
The other slides out behind it.
I’m free. Now what?
Motionless, I stay in place waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike. As far as Jason and his men are concerned, I’m still their prisoner.
I don’t think I can take all of them at once, especially unarmed and injured. My only shot at this is to run.
No one is guarding the exit. Why would they? I’m supposed to be tied up.
I try to position myself without them noticing, giving the illusion I’m still restrained. As soon as they weren’t looking, I sprint to the doorway.
One of them shouts something.
Footsteps immediately behind me.
I race down the stairs and through the maze of Argo praying desperately for a sign of escape. Metal beams and steel walls collide with my attempt at freedom.
There!
I see the light from the Outlands shine through an opening in the bow.
A hand grabs me through the skeleton of a wall.
No!
It pulls my shirt. Completely stopping me.
More footsteps getting closer.
I jerk as hard as I can, ripping my shirt and breaking free from death’s embrace. With every ounce of energy left in me, I run through the opening without looking back.
He jumps and grabs my foot, tripping me. I snatch my hidden sword from the sand and shove it straight through the eye of the first cannibal.
As the second one exits, my sword separates his head from his body, splashing red across the side of Argo.
The third meets me on the way back to Cyrus on the stairs. He swings a machete and misses. I aim for his head and find his wrist instead, removing it from his arm. He sobs as the edge of my blade slides across his scrawny neck.
The terror in their cold eyes when I stepped back into the room empowered me. Jason and Bones rush for their weapons.
I kill Bones first. His back to me, he slides off the tip of my blade, dead before his body hits the ground.
