Authors: Frances Gaines Bennett
Slave Wife (7 page)
It was to her head he gave most attention, taking dozens of measurements from as many direction and angles. The instrument’s point poked her like a pincushion – her nostrils, her ear lobes, even her eye sockets, no spot was exempt. All the while she held herself still, ominously waiting for a mistake that maimed.
At last he closed the device and set it with the others. In relief, she sucked in breath she’d been holding tensed as severely as her muscles then dragged it in again when he opened the big bag and reached in.
When he turned, his smile was customarily bottomless. “It’s not complete,” his brow furrowed microscopically, “or perfect, but it’ll have to do for now.”
She resisted staring at the object in his hand. It looked like something from an old Frankenstein movie – three fragmented bands of shining steel held together horizontally by hinges and locking rings and vertically by long screws and turnbuckles, the whole threaded with plastic ended wires.
She stood meekly, eyes lowered, as he tugged it over her head. A band fit tight against her forehead. Another was far too thick, far too snug at her throat. The most puzzling was a band with a hinge and lock on either side of her mouth. He adjusted this screw and that.
Not until she heard a lock snap did panic strike. It was irrational, she told herself. But she suddenly choked with overpowering claustrophobia, with terror her breathing would be stopped. She yearned to grab something, hold tight and scream and then to weep when she knew unequivocally she had nothing, neither physical nor indeed psychic, to hold onto. She did none of these, simply struggled to remain upright.
Enshrouded in nauseating dread, she saw him reach deep into the big bag and lift out a bread loaf sized black box. Again the unfathomable smile as he hooked the headpiece wire’s plastic ends into their complement from the box. Her eyes were still lowered and her head and stomach still swirled but she could not help but notice the box’s dials and switches as his fingers went to them.
“Sit,” he said and pressed her onto the bed with one hand. Again the cool smile, “so I don’t have to pick you up from the floor.”
Her stomach heaved … and before she could vomit it became far worse. A strange burning jolt raced through her jaw and the experimentation began.
Over the months, Delia visited Karen’s mother often. They both missed Karen terribly.
Delia simply forged ahead, finishing her last year in high school and preparing for college at the
Karen’s mother, though, seemed seriously diminished by her daughter’s absence. Her once pretty face and body, already desiccated by years of farm life, now appeared stripped of life, shrunken and aged. A hundred new lines carved the peripheries of eyes and mouth. She moved as if under some unbearable strain, head always lowered and shoulders increasingly stooped.
Through the late spring and greening summer Delia gently probed but received no answer. Always a few tears dropped from Mrs. Johansson’s eyes at the questions. Ultimately, though, she straightened her sagging shoulders, dried her eyes and said – reassuring herself, Delia invariably thought – “I’m sure it’s for the best. He’s such a good match.” Then she sipped her tea and shifted the subject to Delia.
One perfect summer day, Delia’s battered baby blue Ford Escort slid to a stop in a swirl of gravel and dust next to the many bloomed flower bed flanking the porch stairs. Karen’s mother sat in the whitewashed porch swing, a creamy page in her thin fingers. Delia paused on the centre stair, admiring the teeming stalks of fragrant blooming lavender, pink Echinacea, yellow and white daisies alongside pastel roses and imperious yellow sunflowers, until she noticed Mrs. Johansson’s devastated expression.
Her heart in her throat, she raced up the remaining stairs and crouched next to the swing, throwing her arm around the older woman’s shoulders. “What’s wrong?”
“She says she can’t come to visit us until she finishes,” the voice dripped with anguished sarcasm, “her training.” It quavered with heavy, unshed tears. “She says maybe,” now her voice shot up several decibels, “if
he
says it’s all right, we can visit her at Christmas.”
Mrs. Johansson’s eyes raised to Delia’s then dropped in a flood of tears. The letter fluttered to the porch floor from her stiff fingers. “Look at her handwriting.” She choked on a slew of sobs as Delia retrieved the thick paper. “It looks like a spider wrote it! She …” more sobs rose toward hysteria. “He’s making her weak – sick!”
Delia lowered herself to the seat and gave Mrs. Johansson’s hand a small, determined tug. The woman’s liquid gaze was pulled toward the girl’s. “Mrs. J,” Delia’s inflection was resolute, “it’s time for you to tell me what’s going on.”
And Karen’s mother at last told her.
When the woman finished, her face hidden in haggard hands, Delia sat silent, stupefied and helpless. After some indeterminate time, from somewhere deep within, her own thoughts at the awful wedding dinner replayed loudly in her mind. She’d sworn to herself she would help her friend – her back stiffened – and she would.
When the metal garment was finished Mr. Smith ran a battery of tests to verify functionality parameters.
Most physically uncomfortable and cumbersome, of course, was the headpiece. Light, yes, but still so, well, much more than embarrassing. Her husband trusted her so little he locked her head in obstructive metal – in a cage! It wasn’t heavy weight pulling down her head. She was profoundly ashamed.
And then the waist cinch. It was beautiful, like exotic lingerie, but squeezed her brutally, reorganizing her insides she was sure, and forcing out her breath.
The rest could, if allowed, be remarkably comfortable, even the flexible probes that penetrated places she couldn’t bear to consider. Mr. Smith tested those too. Her mind lingered on the memories. Those strange contractions inside her. She’d been terrified and humiliated at once at her loss of control. Yet even out of control he made her body thrill in ways she’d never experienced.
Michael apparently had no use for that function. Though he repeatedly professed his desire, nay, need for her happiness, he’d given no indication of interest in her physical pleasure. But he did have use for the probes.
Every morning, at Michael’s order, Steve weighed her on the medical scale in her bathroom. If she had not lost weight – and God forbid if she’d gained! – she had to sit on the toilet. Steve would turn a dial and she would lose control of her bowels. She’d thought she’d numbed to every disgrace. But her body’s noxious and rude betrayal, as if an alien hand cracked her intestines like a long whip convulsively emptying them, was almost unendurable physically as well as emotionally. Like a wracking illness, she was devoid of control. The contractions ripped through her beyond tolerance, beyond sanity, until nausea overcame her entire digestive tract even into her throat.
That vileness was not the end. When nothing more was inside her, Steve’s ham hand reached between her legs with a squeeze bottle filled with warm water. He squirted her to remove – she shuddered at the memory – foul effluvia then forced the long tip into her anus and squeezed, filling her empty cavity. Only at that point did he flush away her mess.
She, however, had to remain there until her bowels emptied once again – emptied of all but Mr. Smith’s long metal trigger.
The campaign was not going well. He’d begun to wonder if he’d made the right decision and his doubts, along with the problems assaulting him daily, were destroying not only his days but his sleep as well. Restlessly he manoeuvred his long, scraggy shanks to another position and plumped his pillow. Maybe he should have stayed with his soothingly insular law practice. He turned again and corkscrewed his bony knees foetally to his chest. Maybe he should have continued his effortless milking of his family’s lavish two hundred year old
He’d had such confidence in his abilities. Without even a shred of equivocation he’d felt his impending success deep inside his body and, yes – he acknowledged the strange certainty he’d felt – in his soul. So, he gave in eagerly to the very important men’s very flattering pleas for his help. As he sank into sleep’s black hole, a thunderbolt of anxiety lit the back of his eye sockets. It all seemed to be going wrong.
Iridescent wings, gleaming with
Night after night the woman bird came to him. Each night her lilting voice became more audible. Soon he heard the words with perfect understanding as she beat her wings tenderly down into his face. “I’ve searched for someone strong enough – for you – for so many ages. Open yourself to me and I will give you your desires.” In his dream he opened himself. His grief was almost unbearable when she flew away.
The next night she sat on his bedside. She slid out of her glistening plumage, allowing it to fall slowly, inch by ripe, dusky inch, off her magnificent shoulders, off her slim, exquisitely well-formed arms, off her heavy, rounded breasts. Like a cloak, she lowered the feathers loosely to her waist, allowing him a glimpse of the darkness below. He watched, awed.
The bright eyes floated above him in aquamarine starlight until only they held his attention, even when she bent toward him. His eyes, identical in colour and vibrance, were locked with hers so that he was only remotely aware of her red lips’ fullness pressing against his own narrow, pale reflections and her effulgent breasts compressed against his meagre chest.
She spoke in low tones, right against his lips, and her voice sounded musical, like small bells ringing. He remembered her words and she repeated them, “Open yourself to me and I will give you your desires.”
Avidly he responded but she placed a long nail the colour of antique ivory against his lips. She raised her torso off his and spread her arms.
Suddenly he saw the dense, crackling, awful blackness surrounding her. He neither had time to flee nor even to flinch before it was on him, sucking his spirit. In frozen despair, he felt himself weaken, felt his life force flow out of his grasp and vanish into the formless black, never, he knew, to return unto his death. And far more horrific, as his consciousness slipped into the void, he espied thousands of faded wraiths screaming hell’s agony at him … and one of them was himself. Then he went out like a candle flame …
… until an eternity later when he awoke to her touch on his loins. He watched from some other place as the darkness flowed through her elegant hand into his manhood, watched his penis become hard and potent as an iron lighting rod. He watched her ravishing form, encased not in feathers but in silken skin the same old ivory colour of her fingernails, straddle him.
His penis submerged in her intoxicating heat and then, before he could pull away – though God, or perhaps the Devil he mused, knew he did not want to pull away – the awful darkness rushed through her into his waiting totem. He understood and was shocked by his rank readiness for it, whatever it was.
It raced through her and she threw back her head. In paralytic fascination, he saw her throat, stretched long and sleek above her magnificent breasts, contort. A sound like a raven’s shrill call reverberated on his eardrums.
Infinite blackness poured into him, filling him up to overflowing and beyond in a ceaseless torrent. He swirled in sensation, acutely aware of her primeval, orgiastic female hunger at the centre of the vortex. Then he felt his skin give way. Indeed he exploded in one terrifying, ear-splitting pop and in doing so he merged with the blackness.
Some indeterminate time later, he had become the blackness. It had its own consciousness also and that consciousness was beside him, even, he realized with fear that burst in his vision in vibrant manifestation, inside him … and it was huge and horrible and terrifying. Whatever it was – at first he had no idea – it was old as time. Its ghastly laughter pealed in his ears as it played its gruesome history across his awareness. It showed him not only events but techniques – how it had done its awful deeds, how it had captured and held the spirits drifting hellishly in its wake, and so much more – and the experiences became his.
In an ecstasy of power and knowledge he spread out his arms and revelled in the sibilant current flowing from his fingertips, from his very being. He turned his head and observed the agonized entities swimming in his etheric wake, saw he could feed off their energy. He sucked and a burst of power flowed through his mouth to his genitalia. He looked upward and again saw the blue eyes but now they seemed more tame, more manageable.
He pulled her down against his chest, her lips and breasts and pelvis against his. His desire was to mate her and for some time he did, their heated juices intermixing like fluid curtains of electricity. He’d never before experienced such sex – so gorged, so alive with rapture, power … and dominance, his dominance.
Effortlessly, as if she was insubstantial as his dream, he flicked her off him onto her side and mounted her. One lush libertine leg nestled at his waist and the second was trapped between his thin thighs. He looked down on her from his awesome height and was caught by the site of his own penis. Current, like electricity, rippled through veins running along a fecund rod – he marvelled at the instrument’s potent fertility – far longer, thicker and harder than he’d ever known. He watched the member spark with animus and knew he could now bring intense pleasure and – his cruel lips lifted – pain.
A sound turned his attention. Her gaze held more than exultation and triumph. The sparkling blue eyes held fear. He knew she recognized his power and that he could feed off her fear as surely as he could the wraiths. Now it was he who locked eyes with her. Now it was his visage stamped with mastery and ruthlessness. He smiled down into her eyes and with exquisite brutality impaled her to the womb.
Her scream rent the undulating ether and the blackness’ bestial laugh harmonized with the sound. Together he and the blackness raped her accompanied all the while by her banshee wail. With each penetration, her power became his.
Amidst his thrusts grew a new desire, strange to him yet overpowering. He wanted, needed, to impregnate her. But did she exist in corporeal form? What would he impregnate? The blackness whispered in his ear, “You must seed her with your power and through her the world.”
The desire grew overwhelming, building inside his testicles in a giant tide that lapped back into every microscopic aspect of his physical and psychic being. He was torn between that need and his pleasure in her violation. He looked down upon her, watched her vivid tortured blue pools become increasingly vacant, with gratification previously unimaginable. To the blackness he asked, “Can I do this again? Rape whenever, whoever I desire? Crush them beneath my feet?”
The hideous laugh rolled through him and, to his surprise, he gained strength and buoyancy on its abomination. “Of course,” it told him.
His testicles grew heavy with dark power. He thrust savagely, violently, and in one massive expulsion he shot his manifold seeds inside her. Then he watched the spurts of his power make their way into her womb and into every part of her.
He saw she absorbed his energy. Her eyes focused and she smiled a goddess smile. “My dearest nephew. The cycle has completed.” As before, her words chimed musically in his ears.
At first he was stunned – his aunt many times removed, Marie LaVeau, the infamous Voodoo Queen of
New Orleans
? – until he realized how logical, how perfect it all was. Gloriously, he leaned over her like a bird of prey and observed his softly pulsing penis’s withdrawal between her flaxen thighs.
And her womb opened and expelled his – their – cursed power into the world.