Olivia (6 page)

CHAPTER THREE

REFLECTIONS

1

Once, in another life, when Olivia had lived in the real world without monsters, she had gone to college and taken a sociology class because word was the teacher was a flaky old hippie who gave easy credits.  The teacher was indeed something of a soft touch, and a flake, and a hippie, and to illustrate his various points, he liked to use the characters of
Gilligan’s Island
as the ideal working model of sociology in action.

“This show,” he used to say, “is a completely accurate depiction of the reformation of civilization.  Note the importance of class in social structure.  Note the use of gender roles.  From a sociological and psychological viewpoint, this is pretty much we could expect to see if seven people were isolated from culturally-enforced standards of behavior.”  Whereupon some jackass would invariably ask if that meant that seven people stranded on a tropical island would build a working radio out of coconuts and meet the Globetrotters, and the class would bust out in a more or less serious debate on whether or not the Professor was having it off with Ginger or Mary Ann or both or, heck, Gilligan.

Olivia found herself thinking back on that class quite often in the first days after her capture.  Not about
Gilligan’s Island
(even the slaves of cave-dwelling bat-monsters had some standards), but rather on the subject of what her teacher had called ‘instinctive sociological reversion’.  Essentially, he had put forth the idea that when separated from the security of the familiar, any individual will fall back on the same behaviors which were instinctive to his or her primitive ancestors and which lie more or less dormant in civilized society. 

Example: A front-office receptionist named Olivia Blake, twenty-four years old, college-educated and reasonably independent, has been essentially removed from the planet Earth and set down in a cave with a monster.  There’s no phone, no lights, no motorcar; not a single luxury.  Like Robinson Caruso, it is as primitive as can be…and this time, there are no coconuts.

In the movies, this would be young Olivia’s cue to devise some sort of daring escape, probably killing her captor in the process, although he would keeping popping up sporadically like some demonic Billy Bop’em doll, until she finally, what?  Dropped a giant satellite dish on him?  Shot a rusty cannon at him?  And then she would stand triumphant on the side of the mountain with the wind in her hair and utter some unbelievably bad-tasting joke (“He had to catch a call,” in the case of the dropping satellite dish, and maybe that old tried-and-true, “He’s fired,” in the event that she went along with the cannon).  Ideally, she should also have a good-looking guy under her arm, but in any case, she would definitely have all the other captive women in some state of undress scrambling for their freedom down the mountainside before her as the music swelled and the end credits began to roll.

This was not the movies. 

Olivia was caught and most of the time, she didn’t even care.  She knew she should.  She even wanted to.  But when she did care, the feeling came with such a splintering sense of anguish and loss that some vital part of her simply couldn’t bear it, overloading like an emotional circuit breaker and switching her off into disconnected darkness once more.  It was better to just go along and make the best of things.  It wasn’t a heroic way to think and she knew it, but it was the only way she had to cope.

And now and then, Olivia would look up and around the rough rock walls and think,
I’m coping really rather well with all this
, in a vaguely satisfied way and either laugh or cry and then go back to whatever she was doing.  She wasn’t going to escape and she wasn’t ever going to meet the Globetrotters, but she was coping nicely and that was fine.

Sometimes Olivia thought she was losing her mind.  Sometimes, sitting in the light of the gently popping fire and toying with the items in the cooler, she could actually hear the voice of her World History teacher addressing some invisible classroom.  ‘Here we see Olivia idling away her free hours with a device called a
Rubik’s Cube
.  Olivia has quite a lot of spare time.  As the lone female of the bat-man, she has no responsibilities apart from sexual submission.’

When the creature brought her food, the invisible teacher might say, ‘Olivia’s captor is demonstrating his fitness as a mate by providing her with nourishment.  Olivia’s most basic nutritional needs are adequately met by the foods he has hunted and gathered for her.’

When he commanded her to undress and come into the sleeping pit, that cheerful academic would observe, ‘Olivia’s captor is asserting his dominance through the use of sexual behavior, and as Olivia submits to this, she re-enforces his position both as her mate and as her master.’

It was nice to hear this voice, even if the things it chose to say humiliated and angered her, because at least it was companionship of a sort.  The creature ate with her and slept with her, but left her alone in his lair the rest of the time; even when he was with her, he often just watched her, usually from a considerable distance and with a brooding expression.  While a part of her knew that hearing voices, no matter how interesting and academic their narrative might be, was not sane behavior, insanity had a way of looking better and better as the days crawled by and the monster who imprisoned her remained real.

But the human mind can be stubbornly resilient, and at last, wearily, she had to accept the fact that people could not simply choose to go crazy.  Gradually, the voice of her World History teacher faded into nothing.  Now she was utterly alone.

The days took on a numbing monotony.  As night fell, the creature would wake, dress, and disappear, leaving Olivia behind to entertain herself.  He came and went throughout the day, bringing her food and water, making sure she had enough of that strange, not-wood fuel for the fire, and often just sitting and staring at her.  Sometimes he brought her things: a comb whose delicate teeth appeared to be carved from bone, a different magazine after he saw her flipping despondently through the pages of the others, a chew toy in the shape of a frog that croaked when she squeezed it.  If she spoke to him, he seemed to listen, even if he didn’t answer; if she pointed at anything, he named it in the growling, guttural language he spoke; if she broke down into one of her not-infrequent crying jags, he left her alone.  Now and then, he renewed his warning not to leave his lair, and Olivia obeyed, although her feet had a way of taking her to that front room so that she could stand and stare miserably at the dark hole that promised egress, if not escape.  And so her nights passed.

Around dawn, according to the faithful face of her wristwatch, he would return with the last meal of the day and sit with her to share it.  Always, patiently, he would speak the words of the food he gave her until she began to glean their meanings.  Then he would take her into the washroom and speak the words for
water
, for
clean
, and on one awkward day, for her various bodily functions. When she came to bed, he told her the words for
sleep
, for
bedding
, for
undress
.  Then he would take her, and when he took her he did not speak.

She saw no one else but him.  He never told her his name.

Olivia had begun to keep a calendar, using her finger dipped in ash to make surreptitious marks near the hearth, but on the fifth day she stopped because the futility of it depressed her.  The days were all the same, anyway, and if it were not for the fact that her watch kept track of such things, she would not know what day it was at all.  The creature manufactured a routine for her, and Olivia fell into it with all the numb-eyed enthusiasm of complete instinctive sociological reversion.

And one day, that routine changed.

2

Olivia was sitting in her alcove playing the triangular game with stones when her captor appeared with the mid-night meal.  He set it down on the bench by the fire, turned to go back to whatever it was he did all night, then stopped.  After a while, it sunk in that he hadn’t moved or spoke, and Olivia lifted her head cautiously and looked at him.

He was staring at her, his eyes blazing, his nostrils flaring as he tasted the air.  She heard him growl once, raggedly, and then again, a little louder. 

Olivia’s hands clenched on her game, shaking stones loose.  A return of that first, gut-wrenching irrational fear that he would eat her, pounce on her and rip her open with his fangs, clawed its way so deep into her brain that, for a moment, she was in danger of wetting herself in terror.

“Olivia,” he growled, and all his voice was a thrumm of raging lust.  “Olivia, I am going to hurt you.”  He began to move towards her, hooking his blunt claws into his belt and snapping the fishing line stays with a single pull.

Her scream was completely involuntary, but not loud, issuing as it did through a throat frozen by fear.  She scrambled away in a confusion of limbs, trying simultaneously both to stand and to run on all fours.  Where she thought she would go, she did not even consider.  Like a calf in the sights of a lion, she thought only to run from him.

And like a lion, he sprang.  His arm hit her like an iron bar, and then she was flying backwards through the air.  She struck the tangled bedding on the sleeping pit, and immediately ensnared herself in folds of blankets and furs.  He loomed over her; she kicked at him wildly, and he caught her ankle and pulled it out from her body, filling his lungs with the scent of her spread legs, exhaling a roar before he fell on her.

His hands were weapons for the first time in all the days she had known him, shredding her clothes when he could not pull them from her fast enough.  He didn’t even bother to uncover her completely, but just ripped her slacks away, leaving faint scratches over her belly and thighs.  The sight of that, and of the thin ribbons of blood that welled there, undid what was left of Olivia’s control.  She began to scream and kick and thrash at him.

His strength, scarcely hinted at before now, was brutal, mindless, and utterly without emotion as he yanked her legs wide and reared between her thighs.  In a last, desperate act of fear, Olivia sent her fist smashing into the center of his face.

He rocked back, unfazed, then seized her arm as she struck again.  She had the disorientating sensation of spinning bonelessly through the air before she landed face down in a suffocating pile of sleeping bags.  His claws dug into her hips.  He yanked her up, and knocked her thighs apart with his knees. 

Then she was shoved violently forward with the awesome splitting force of his penetration.  He had never been what she would call skilled, but had always been gentle, always.  Olivia’s mind reeled with panic and fear as he fucked hard into her, driving at her like a piston in increasingly short and brutal thrusts, his flanks thudding against her, spreading her wider and wider until she could feel her bones screaming out in protest.  She clawed madly to escape him, gaining inches only to be slammed back against him, harder, faster, until his roars reached feverish pitch and he came convulsively and fell atop her.

She lay, arms sprawled out, sobbing, while he continued to grip her hips and snarl his panting breath hot on her back.  Then, without warning, she felt him begin to swell hard and hot inside her.  He reared back, dragging her with him as she struggled, and then he was fucking her again, fucking her in curt shuddering bursts until his cock was a weapon once more and he could stab her with it again and again.

Olivia scrabbled for purchase in the bedding and managed to brace her hands on the stone rim of the pit.  The sudden resistance only allowed him to thrust harder, baying pleasure like a bull and ramming into her until she felt the furious spray of his seed and it was over. 

This time he dropped back and out of her.  She was able to gain her feet and make a clumsy bolt for the doorway, but he was on her before she had gone five steps  He fought her all the way to the ground, pinning her arms over her head and grinding his hips against her until he hardened.  Grunting and growling, he drove himself at her until his blind thrusts brought the head of his cock against her sex, made slick and ready by his first attacks; he was in her easily, so easily, even as she bucked and struggled.  Every muscle stood out in sharp relief, even through his pelt, as he rocked and pitched and heaved and finally came, only to continue thrusting and thrusting until he was hard again.

Olivia, her throat raw with screaming, her face a sticky mask of tears and terror, finally reached the limit of her lucid mind and snapped over into blind hysterics where she knew no more.

3

She came around to the sound of her name, called over and over in strained, inhuman tones.  She flinched, her eyes snapping open, and saw that she lay safely swaddled in the sleeping pit and that her captor was bent over her, cradling her head.  She tried to get away, but the pain was so immediate and overwhelming that she collapsed back into his lap and burst into tears.

“Why?” she wailed, forgetting even to attempt his speech.  “Why?  What did I do?  I’ll never do it again!  I’ll never—” 

His hand clapped hard over her mouth and pressed down, forcing her silent.  She could feel him shaking through his palm, could feel the pulse of his heart beating just as she had felt it through his monstrous cock when it was deep inside her.  She lay and breathed and gradually wound down from the heights of terror and confusion, but he wept on.  Finally, she reached her shaking hands up and tugged timidly at his wrist.

He released her, crawled backwards out of the pit and huddled, not looking at her.

Olivia sat up woodenly and rolled onto her side.  There was an awful moment when she feared she might have dislocated her hips and then it took her weight.  She stood and backed away from him onto the solid surface of cool rock.  He let her go.  She thought of running then, but running was beyond her.  Walking with the slow, ragged dignity of great pain, Olivia moved her aching body into the washroom.  He did not watch her go.