Dust (Hellsong: Infidels: Cris Book 3) Read online

  Don’t think about what they’re going to do to you. Just don’t.

  You’ll deal with it when it comes.

  I’m shaking.

  It’s from the cold.

  I’m not afraid.

  I can withstand torture.

  A part of me wishes it would start, just so I know what they’ll do. I’ve never really been tortured before. I mean, a little bit by Xyn and all.

  But . . .

  I attempt to silence the part of myself which wants to know my future. I try to calm down, to ease the pounding in my chest, to imagine something that will pacify my mind. I think of oceans and green fields, but old world things only remind me I’m in Hell—and all my memories of damnation are tainted. All of them.

  The river and the brineberry bushes.

  Myla.

  Aiden.

  All that has been made terrible, and I doubt I can have peace.

  The door opens and a cruel light shines into my room. I hear voices from beyond, too quiet to make out, and then I catch the last few words.

  “He’s all yours, Melvin. Remember, he needs to live.”

  Melvin is one of the naked sex slaves, except he’s not wearing any makeup on his face. He’s sporting an erection.

  They’re going to rape me.

  But that’s not so bad. It’s not like tooth drilling.

  My legs are shaking so badly that the shackle is fucking up my ankle. I can’t show fear. I’m supposed to be a God damned infidel.

  But nobody believes that anymore.

  They know me.

  I’m nothing. A trickster. A liar whose lies have failed.

  Melvin walks around, his midsection level with my eyes. I don’t dare look at the thing he’s going to penetrate me with.

  It’s okay. He’s going to fuck me, and it’s going to hurt like the worst shit ever, and I’ll get over it. I’ll heal. And then—

  He bends down, his blue eyes looking into mine.

  “Hey, baby,” I say.

  “I like your scent,” he whispers.

  Then he licks my forehead, where a cold sweat has broken out, and I feel the rough stubble of his beard on the bridge of my nose and the back of my eyelid.

  His breath, lingering and rotten, makes me want to puke.

  “You’re tasty, too,” he says in a nasal voice, and then he inhales deeply in through his nose.

  Calloused hands, perhaps toughened from mining work, trace strange circles across my back as he walks around the table.

  The shackles rattle from my fear.

  I can’t let this happen.

  No. Cris, there’s nothing he can do to you. You aren’t less of a person because of something someone else does. Rape is a lie. It doesn’t mean what people think it means, it’s his problem, not—

  He’s climbed up on the table, and I feel the hairs of his chest on my back.

  I jerk against the irons, chains jingle and my foot explodes with pain, but I can’t get away. His stubble rubs my shoulder and then my neck, and then he’s kissing my back, like a woman should, his chapped lips harsh against my suddenly vulnerable skin.

  “I hear you like to roleplay,” Melvin says, his pinched voice ending with a chuckle. “I tell you what, you be an infidel, and I, I’ll be me.”

  One of his calloused hands reaches between my legs and fondles me roughly.

  I grit my teeth and grunt as his grip tightens. Then his kisses return and I feel the stiffness of him pressing into my left buttock.

  “Stop!” And I shake and shake and shake, but it does nothing.

  I try to writhe away, but my range of motion is so limited I don’t even know if he notices.

  His breathing gets heavier and heavier, and the spittle from his wet kisses drips down my neck.

  He starts nibbling on my ear while he prepares me with a finger.

  “Stop,” I whisper.

  Rape is a lie. What he does to me doesn’t lessen me as a person. It doesn’t. It’s his problem, not mine. His. He should be better.

  I’m still worthwhile.

  I’m just a trickster. Myla was right.

  I got lucky, once, killing Xyn, and everything else has been a failure.

  The finger digs deeper inside, giving me the odd feeling I have to shit.

  Instinctively I clench, but that’s the wrong thing to do.

  “Oh, sweetie,” he says, removing his finger. “You’re a virgin, aren’t you?”

  He puts the finger in front of my face.

  “Smell it.”

  I hold my breath.

  Then the finger goes and he presses himself into me, starting to penetrate me.

  Don’t give in, Cris. You have to do something.

  But there is only one thing I can do, one act of defiance.

  I shit all over his dick.

  It’s a diarrhea shit too, and loads of gas escape with the gushes of liquid feces.

  “Oh motherfucker!” Melvin shouts, and he slams a fist into the back of my neck.

  I have a moment of near unconsciousness, but then I hear the door open.

  “I need a fucking bucket!” Melvin is yelling. “It fucking burns.”

  I start to laugh, and I feel some relief, but it ends up coming out as sobs as my stomach clenches.

  Melvin is not gone long.

  “Just lube for me, fucker,” he tells me.

  “Okay, shit dick,” I say, but my voice waivers when I say it.

  Then he violates me truly, and I cry, and it hurts, and he begins the slow process of taking away from me what it means to be a human being.

  “You deserve this,” Myla tells me as I’m rocked back and forth.

  “No I don’t,” I insist.

  “Yes you do.”

  The men I’d killed, and turned, just so she would die.

  Yes I do.

  I do deserve this.

  I do.

  I do.

  I do.

  I feel hollow inside, as if he’d carved out a place in my intestines, but I feel full there at the same time, as if I need to shit—but I don’t. His semen and the blood from my own ripped asshole leaks out of me slowly, mixing with the dried shit caked to the insides of my thigh.

  I can smell it all.

  Melvin, perhaps sated, is breathing against my neck and ear. I struggle again, for all the good it does me.

  His sweat drips onto my neck and back as he stands up, the slick sound of his skin rubbing on mine filling my ears. He moves in front of me and begins washing himself with the bucket and sponge.

  He’s getting aroused again.

  I just want this to be over. I wish I could sleep until this was over.

  Like Igraine did, he pets my cheek. Then he leans in and nibbles on my ear. “Don’t worry. I’ve got another one in me. And then I’ll call for back up. We’ll be gentle with you, we don’t want your insides ruptured too much.”

  My ass is split, like the motherfucker of all hemorrhoids.

  But you can’t defile a person. You just can’t.

  You’re not supposed to be able to. Because I have to be the one that makes me less of a person. He’s not allowed.

  But inside me something has died.

  And I know it.

  And not even I have a delusion ready to deny it.

  So Melvin takes me again, and then his two boys do, and then he leaves. And they wash me, and someone inspects my ass and says the damage is superficial, and that Melvin can come again tomorrow.

  And they say that the next day.

  And the next.

  “I was raped once.” Her voice comes to me from above.

  I struggle weakly against my irons. They clink a little. My neck is sore, so I try to turn my head to the other side. It’s too stiff. I can’t move it. I just lie there in pain. And compared to the agony of my insides, do I really care about my neck?

  “Oh,” she says, and the concern in her voice seems genuine, “are you crying?”

  Of course I’m not crying.
r />   No wait. I am. I must have been crying in my sleep.

  Soft, slender fingers and the subtle touch of their fingernails find the knot in my neck. They dig into that piece of agony. This is pain too, but a good kind. As my neck considers loosening under her warm ministrations, I hear the cartilage of my back and shoulders popping and cracking. Relief floods that part of me, but the false need to defecate, and the utter pain of my ripped rectum and my bruised, swollen prostate are too primal for it to matter.

  At least I don’t know anyone anymore. At least no one will see me like this.

  Her fingers continue their work, moving along my back. I didn’t know I was this tense. Finally, I’m able to turn my head to the other side. She comes to one knee, her black robe rustling as she brings herself down to my level.

  She has sharp, Asian features—Japanese heritage, perhaps. Her hair, black in a way that a Caucasian’s cannot be, falls straight, almost disappearing against the sable of her cloak. Thin, blood-red lips purse as she studies me.

  My face is swollen, I can feel the bruising on and around my cheekbones, and my left eye has only partial vision. I must look like a monster to her.

  But I’m not. I’m a victim.

  It’s like the utter disgust I felt for Melvin has somehow been implanted into my insides with his sperm.

  My body shakes as it tries to wretch, but it has nothing left to give.

  “I know how you feel.” Her lips move before my eyes.

  There is no trace of accent in her voice. My ankle hurts. My balls ache. My stomach muscles are cramping, and that causes movement in areas which very much need to be still right now.

  “But if you think about it, you deserve this, you know?” she asks. “Now that you know how it feels to be treated this way, you can probably think about your own life. About what you did in the old world to make you responsible for something like this. Maybe it was the flippant way you treated a joke, or the way you tacitly agreed with the objectification of a girl.”

  I try to get my stomach to stay tense, but it won’t. It fucking won’t.

  Her fingers move farther down my back, and the muscles she relaxes there send shockwaves of agony up through my body as my insides are allowed to shift.

  “To men, it seems like such a foreign concept,” she goes on, “this idea that minor words might cause something so terrible. Maybe watching cartoons will make one child in a million hit another with a mallet, who knows? But if one joke in a million causes rape, or if it even contributes to one, that’s too many. You know that now. I mean, you guys usually understand why it’s not okay to joke about genocide. But now that you’ve felt this—and believe me, this isn’t the worst part—you know what you’ve done. Think back. Is there a time you pressured some girl to sleep with you? Maybe you lied about how committed you were, denying her right to properly consent?”

  Her fingers get lower and lower, and the shifting of my insides becomes unbearable. I shout out. The effort that shout takes wounds me even more fundamentally. Even breathing ruins me. I try to breathe as shallowly as possible to keep everything in place.

  “Now that this is real to you, you’ll know it can happen again. The worst will come in a few months. It’s when you realize what parts of you, of your soul, aren’t healing. When you realize something, some piece of your autonomy or purity or self-respect or wholeness has been taken, and you won’t ever get it back.”

  Her fingers find my left buttock, and I shout in pain again as she begins working on that muscle.

  “Don’t worry,” she says. “Don’t worry.”

  The relaxation continues and I hear gas bubbling out of my insides. Liquid cum and shit and clotted blood, trapped there by my swelling, now release themselves. I’m too tired to move or fight against the agony.

  “Help me,” I whisper.

  She circles around the table and stops for a second time before my face. She lowers herself again so I can see her perfect features.

  “I think another session with Melvin would endanger your life,” she says. “And I know Igraine wants you to face another few sessions after we return, so you’re going to have to heal on our journey. Do you understand?”

  I can’t take more of this. I have to find a way to die.

  Her eyes, black in the dim light, seem like a wight’s for a second, but then she looks up to the ceiling, and I see the white in them.

  “This is your home now,” she says thoughtfully. “You’ve seen how the slaves live. How things are down here, where you belong. And you’ve seen how much better they have it above. And you’ve seen the soldiers, the men who’ve gone through the baptism.”

  I have.

  “Do you care what gods you pray to?” she asks.

  I shake my head.

  “Good,” she says. “I like your body, and I’d enjoy taking what Myla had. You’ll have to do some severe penance because you royally pissed Igraine off, but I can put in a bid to own you, if you want. You could be one of mine. It would take a lot of work to get you to be my consort, but wouldn’t that be worth working for?”

  I look at her. She really cares about me. She doesn’t have to care. But she does. She thinks I’m attractive. I’m so grateful.

  I nod my head quickly and tears spill out from my eyes.

  “It won’t be easy,” she says. “You’ll have to be a good boy and show me Blood Pass. Do you think you can do that for me? I might be allowed to keep you then.”

  I nod again.

  “Good. You’ll address me as Domina, you understand?”

  “Yes,” I manage.

  She raises one eyebrow.

  “Yes, Domina.”

  “Good boy. Now stay here. I’ll see if I can’t get you some rest someplace soft and warm before we go.”

  “Yes, Domina.”

  She really is beautiful.

  After another session, they lay me down upon a couch with velvet cushions.

  I’m shaking.

  Domina kneels beside me, her face concerned. “I’m sorry, baby. There was nothing I could do to stop them from hurting you. And they’re going to keep on hurting you. But if you’re a good boy, and you do what I say, someday I can make sure they don’t hurt you so much. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Domina.”

  I want nothing more than to curl up into a fetal position and cry, but bending my midsection causes feelings in my insides I don’t want to have. Slowly, inch by inch, I dare it.

  And after an hour of effort, after my back eases and the warmth of the cushions sinks into my body, I’m able to finally curl into a ball.

  There’s food when I awaken. I’m starving, I need it—but I don’t dare. I’m provided with a grey shirt of the same color as the slave robes. After some concerted effort, I’m able to get it on.

  A Little Lady comes, a blonde girl, maybe seven years old. “You better eat it,” she says. “Shy will be mad if you don’t.”

  I don’t know who Shy is.

  “You want to disappoint your Domina?” the Little Lady asks.

  “No.”

  I can’t afford to disappoint her. She’s the only one who wants to stop the pain.

  My stomach growls angrily as I eat and drink.

  I don’t dare shit. I try to hold it.

  The Little Lady comes back and makes me eat again, and I hold it.

  And I hold it.

  “You’re not so pretty anymore,” she says.

  My stomach is swollen.

  She’s right. Domina only likes me because my body, unlike most of the slaves’, looks good. Or looked good. Eating food I can’t shit out isn’t going to make me any more attractive.

  And Igraine wants me punished. By the time her anger ebbs, and Domina can finally make a play for me, she might not even want to.

  Fuck.

  This is so fucked.

  I hold it.

  I hold it.

  She comes again, and I eat.

  And I hold it.

  Shitting hurts so bad I
pass out from the pain. I hadn’t even meant to do it. It just happened. I almost made it to the chamber pot. The Little Lady makes a slave clean up my feces. She makes him do it with his tongue.

  He looks at me, his dark eyes full of the hate and ire he dare not express to a priestess, as the brown of my shit stains the sleeves and knees of his grey robe.

  “You didn’t get any on the Domina’s couch,” the Little Lady congratulates me. “You really are trying to be a good boy, aren’t you?”

  I nod.

  Of course I am. Anything less and I’d be licking my own shit up off the floor.

  I eat.

  For the sake of my poor compatriot, I shit in the pot.

  You’re welcome, buddy.

  Again come her relaxing fingers.

  “We should wait until he’s good enough to walk,” a male voice says as Domina works on me.

  His accent is odd. African, maybe? South African?

  “That’s what Fellman is for,” says Domina.

  “Blood Pass isn’t going anywhere.”

  “Nor is he. Igraine says he has a knack for escaping bonds.”

  “We’ll have the hound. We can track him and kill him if he escapes.”

  “I told you,” Domina whispers, “I don’t want him dead.”

  “It’s because you’ve fallen for Myla.”

  “You can be unbaptized, you know.” Her voice silences him.

  The Little Lady wakes me. “I have a map.”

  I’m still curled up. I move over and look down at the floor where she’s spread it out. I see nothing I recognize—wait, there’s Maylay Beighlay, its name scrawled over a city by the top right edge.

  And there’s the Erebus. Seeing the line which represents the river of darkness reminds me of something Neb said long ago, in his castle of ice, which I’d nearly forgotten. My son will still be near the Erebus. He has to move away from it slowly so he has time to heal.

  Aiden is by the river. Or at least had been, God knows how long I’ve been here.

  Cid and Q, even if they’d managed to follow me all the way to the stadium chamber, would be long gone. Aiden might still be on the banks, though . . . but if he sees me like this . . .

  My heart sinks.

  “What’s the last thing you remember about leaving Blood Pass?” she asks.