He supplicates but she kills him. He appeals to her femininity, but she kills him. He turns his back, but she kills him, and she never utters a word once he is at the top.
He learns to climb over and vault to his feet before she can strike and even gains enough time to flee but she throws the axe, sending it spinning through the air to embed in his back, taking him down to squirm and weep in the mud before feeling the press of her foot on his shoulder as she prises the axe free to finish him off.
The next time he does the same, climbing over to vault up and runs for it then veers sharply to the side as the thrown axe sails by that he scoops up to brandish in the pouring rain.
‘FUCK YOU!’ he roars out in victory, expecting to see fear, expecting to see worry but she walks slowly towards him and thrusts her head back to flick the cowl off with a wry smile then arches an eyebrow and flicks her gaze down to his penis while waggling her little finger and widening her eyes as she forms a sensual pout and in that instant, he feels an absurd sense of shame at being naked. ‘Why are you doing this?’ he asks weakly. ‘What did I do?’
She shrugs and walks towards him, slow and sensual with a sway designed to capture his attention then flicks an eyebrow up and smiles.
‘Please…I don’t know you…who am I? What’s happening to me?’
‘Tell you later, tiger.’
‘TELL ME NOW!’
She tuts softly, showing a fleeting look of mock sympathy while pulling a knife from the folds of the robe.
‘Stop it…please…I don’t want to hurt you, just tell me who I am…why am I here? What did I do? Stop…STOP! I’ll fucking kill you…’ he hefts the axe to show he means it, but she laughs softly and again flicks her eyes down to his penis.
‘It is cold, isn’t it…’ she launches fast, coming in with the knife gripped and a few seconds later he drops to his knees to vomit at the side of her body while that goading smile remains etched on her face despite her insides being on the outside from the huge gaping wound across her gut.
Hot bile burns his throat bringing tears to his eyes that he tries to blink away before sitting back on his haunches, whimpering in state of pure anguish. He is dead and this is hell. It is the only conclusion he can fathom or think of. He did something awful, something terrible and this is the eternal retribution of spite from a god that has sent him to suffer damnation.
He moves away to see he is on a bleak featureless plateau with a gnarled hedgerow of vicious barbed thorns that runs from the cliff edge to cliff edge in a deep horseshoe with a single opening to a narrow track.
He can’t stay here. Something will happen. Something painful and nasty. He looks round wondering what it will be. The sea is too far away now, and the ground seems firm.
A crackle. A buzz. ‘That’s not even funny…’ the bolt scars the sky with a fractional searing of pure energy that burns his retinas and brings light to the world before it hits his chest, exploding his heart and sending him flying metres back through the air.
From death to life and he vaults to his feet, clutching his chest and decides that being struck by lightning is nearly as painful as having his dick chopped off and he lurches round, expecting to see her body but it’s gone and he sets off towards the dark foreboding path while casting fearful looks at the sky above.
He pauses for a second before stepping in, staring down a long narrow straight path hemmed in on both sides by impenetrable thorn forest. A crackle in the sky and in he goes, rushing forward with a yelp to start walking quickly, fearing and expecting the worst but nothing happens, and he walks on without incident.
It’s nerves that make him look back. A creeping insidious horror that makes him look round to cry out at seeing the entrance to the plateau is but a step behind him.
He runs harder with raw primaeval fear in his gut and snaps his head to look front to be sure he is running. He is. The ground is going by and his feet are gaining traction to propel him forward.
Then the scent of cherry blossom fills his nose and the greatest fear of all comes when he looks back to see her right there grinning at him. Just a step away on the plateau. Her injury gone. Her mouth smiling that taunting mocking grin as those hazel eyes flecked with green sparkle in the grim light.
He faces forward, giving it everything he has to run and run and never stop running but the fear magnifies. He can sense her right behind him. He can feel her warmth and when her touch finally comes, he screams out and tries to inject strength to get away but her hands move slowly across his naked back, gently, softly, her finger-tips tracing a route up and down his spine and out to the sides.
‘Keep going,’ she whispers softly then shoves hard, sending him sprawling down with a yelp in expectation of hitting the rutted path but he lands on grass, sliding a foot before wrenching up to his feet to instant change of environment surrounding him and he takes in the striped lawn stretching away to a mansion house and the path he was on behind him with no sign of the woman.
He hears them before he sees them. Snarling dogs running fast on strong legs coming into view at the end of the path and without a second thought, he starts sprinting across the lawns. They take him down in seconds, launching into his back and legs, tearing him off his feet and ripping him apart.
The second the blackness of death comes he is back at the edge of the lawn sprawled out on the grass but rises quickly with a frantic look behind to the empty path and starts running.
He keeps looking back, expecting them to come any second and is hit from the front with an impact that takes him off his feet to land on his back staring down to the arrow sticking from his chest with the word discovery in flowing script on the shaft and a length of silk ribbon tied on. Haha, gotcha…keep your eyes up.
He tries to rise, thinking a single arrow might not be fatal but stumbles and falls with a great sickening fatigue pulsing through his veins that makes every inch of his body writhe in agony.
A blink of an eye and he’s back to life at the edge of the lawn, springing up to run while watching the black sticks fly up from the direction of the house, arcing gracefully through the sky before reaching the apex of their climb only to start dropping.
He dies again and again. Hit by arrows and each one with a silk ribbon attached with words written that he reads in her mocking voice. The arrows are poisoned. Don’t let them cut you. Keep going, tiger. Attaboy handsome. Almost there my brave bear.
The pain becomes secondary to death and each death is but an ever-increasing frustration that prevents him reaching the end and he doesn’t notice that he runs faster and breathes easier the more times he does it. He doesn’t notice his reflexes becoming sharper as his instincts and reactional speed become honed.
The dogs come when he reaches the halfway mark. He panics, loses focus and is struck by an arrow to the shoulder and falls to writhe and grunt, reading the silk ribbon on the shaft.
Don’t worry about the dogs. Watch where you’re going.
He gets closer to the house and spots the open door on the ground level. It’s a big house too. Grand and high with ivy climbing the walls and a wide veranda running the length of the building.
A greater application of speed, breathing better, easier, his legs stronger. He reaches the stairs leading up to the veranda before the lead dog sinks teeth into his ankle, ripping him off his feet
An even greater application of speed this time and he leaps the steps to surge at the doors, crashing through then turning on the spot to slam them closed, scrabbling to get the locks and bolts home before the dogs’ launch at the other side, making him stagger back while gasping for air, hardly believing he got away.
3
A clink of glass makes him turn from the doors, blinking in surprise at the seated men and women dressed in formal dinner suits and exquisite ballgowns holding masquerade masks to their faces. A servant in a bright red jacket serving wine from a bottle held in a white cloth. A baroque room lined with gilt frames and a low chandelier.
‘Whe
re am I?’ he asks. ‘What’s happening?’
A young man giggles softly, covering his mouth and turning his head as though trying to suppress his mirth.
‘Where am I?’ he asks again, his voice louder.
Another low chuckle comes from behind. He twists on the spot trying to see who made the noise as more snickers roll around the room. He turns again, angry, freaked out and dripping sweat while still naked but every motion he makes seems to make them chuckle more.
‘Stop that…STOP IT!’
Bosoms heave as women cackle and the men bray deep while slapping their thighs in a manly fashion. He spots the door at the end of the room and moves off as the servant draws a pistol from inside his jacket and shoots him dead.
He staggers upright in the centre of the room and casts about at the silent faces staring at him through the masks. The servant is the killing thing this time and his hand is already inside his jacket.
‘Please…please tell me where I am…’ The chuckles start. Low and soft yet building and he resists the bite of anger to keep his voice neutral. ‘I don’t know what’s happening. Please stop laughing…please…’ They laugh harder as shame starts to steal over him with a deep humiliation, and when he covers his groin they scream out as though it’s the funniest thing ever seen and the anger bites as a chime from a grandfather clock at the edge of the room sounds out and the servant pulls the gun to shoot him dead.
He staggers upright and runs at the servant who fires.
Several more times he tries but there is no way of covering the distance either to the door or the servant before the gun fires and the abject humiliation carries on each time as they give mirth at his pathetic existence and nothing is uglier than people laughing when a great sorrow is felt by one.
Desolation, grief and confusion sink deep as he lives and dies, resetting each time in the centre of the room to be scorned and humiliated.
The grandfather clock chimes, the gun fires and he resets to lower down, naked, forlorn and lost as they laugh and cackle and in the last second before the clock chimes and the gun fires he spots one of the women is closer to him than the servant.
He resets and holds his appearance of utter misery intact. They start laughing on cue and he looks round slowly as though moving for nothing other than the sake of it. He was right. She is closer than the servant. A woman in a simple black ballgown that is markedly different to the frills, lace and extravagance of the others. Golden skin and full lips below the mask that form a wry smirk he has seen before.
A glint at the base of her neck catches his eye. A pendant hanging etched with a single word Discovery.
‘See me now?’ she asks quietly, softly. The same woman from the plateau. She purses her lips, giving that wry smile and holds the mask to her face as her head cocks over. ‘Did you like the dogs?’ she asks as the clock chimes and the servant fires.
He resets from the gunshot and looks over as the first ripples of amusement roll round the room.
‘Tell me who I am,’ he says.
She shrugs. ‘Make me.’
His eyes flick to the ground between them then to the servant, measuring the distance.
‘Try it,’ she urges as the room fills with laughter. ‘Next time.’ The clock chimes.
From death to life. He runs at her and stops with a gasp at the knife in her hand buried in his gut, the shock of it, the pain of it. He reaches an arm out, bracing himself against the back of the seat while she lowers the mask to look up through hazel eyes flecked with green. She moves closer, just an inch but it drives the blade deeper. Another inch and he cries out from the pain with veins bulging from his neck and forehead while she whispers softly. ‘Move faster…’ the gun fires.
Reset and his hand goes to his side with a trace memory of the knife wound that is no longer there while she stares at him with a strange expression, like an expectation. The mask no longer covering her face and her right hand hidden from view between her thigh and the side of the seat.
He moves fast, clumsily trying to block the knife, but she is quicker than he and it slides deep while she searches his expression, seeing into him as though looking for something.
Death to life. He charges again but the knife plunges in, making him grunt from the searing agony and he slumps forward, barely bracing his weight with a hand on the back of the sofa as he lowers towards her. A moment in time and the goading smile fades as she studies the contours of his face. ‘Fight me,’ she whispers in the second before the gun fires.
Death to life. He tries to block it, but the knife goes in and once more he leans over her, searching for compassion, for humanity, for anything. ‘Why?’ he whispers, swallowing the agony.
She shakes her head, staring up, ‘not yet…you have to fight me.’
‘I won’t,’ he says, squeezing his eyes closed from the agony.
‘Look at me…you have to fight me…do it…’
‘No!’ he snarls.
‘COME ON,’ she shouts, twisting the knife as the gun fires.
He resets with a spark of anger inside and charges at her, but the knife comes up and in, stabbing hard as her other hand reaches up to grip the back of his neck. ‘You have to fight me,’ she spits the words out, anger in her expression. ‘Pathetic,’ she sneers. ‘You’re not what I thought at all…’
The gun fires but that withering contempt sparks a blind fury and his body rams into her so hard the next time the sofa tips over backwards. She slews across the floor with him on top, but she twists the blade into his side while he grips her throat, squeezing hard but seeing only delight in her face.
He resets and screams out, slamming her over in a vicious never-ending fight while she urges him on. ‘That’s it, tiger... Attaboy!’ They bite, rake and claw with savage brutality as the rage builds to vent but she shows only playful delight until suddenly the seething violence is gone, and he resets to stand sickened, ashamed and bereft of hope, hating her but loathing himself more.
A flicker of a thoughtful expression shows for the most fleeting of seconds as she takes him in before smiling slowly and cocking her head over. ‘Oh,’ she says with mock sadness. ‘Was that it?’
A snarl and he charges. He loses count of how many times he resets. He loses all notion of time or anything other than attacking to fight to win to hurt her for hurting him.
She stabs again, plunging the knife in but the pain of it isn’t the shock it once was, and his hand closes over hers holding the hilt and pulls it out to stab it into her stomach, sinking down on top of her as she gasps in surprise. ‘Nicely done,’ she whispers.
Reset and he takes her off the sofa, wrenching her up and on into the wall behind. She tries stabbing into his side, but he wraps his arms round her waist, squeezing with everything he has. She grunts and wriggles up with the swell of her breasts pushing into his face and her dress riding up as her bare legs wrap round his body and his world fills with the scent of cherry blossom and the heat of her form, the shape of her, the narrowness of her waist. She grunts and wriggles as he jerks his head free to catch air, staring up as she stares down, both squeezing and holding on for dear life with eyes locked. She goes still, exerting all her strength into her legs squeezing his mid-section. He tenses, feeling the muscles contracting then she bucks and heaves to get an arm down between them, but he stays put, knowing he’s got her. Then his eyes widen as the hand she pushed down grips hold of his penis and testicles.
‘No,’ he gasps, ‘that’s not fair…’
‘Everything’s fair in a fight,’ she says, her grip tightening as he grimaces.
‘I wouldn’t do that to you…’ he squeezes his eyes closed in expectation of the explosion of pain that doesn’t come, and she looks down at him with a gentle frown.
‘You really wouldn’t, would you…’ she whispers as the gun fires.
Reset and a few seconds later she lifts her head to look down her body at the knife stuck in her belly while he lies at her side, his head but an inch from hers while
his hands clutch the stab wounds to his gut. She lowers her head and turns to look at him, their noses almost touching, their breaths blasting over each other.
He comes to know every pore and freckle on her face and neck, the flecks in her eyes and the strands of hair that come loose to hang down. The creases in the corners of her eyes and the light wrinkles in her forehead. He also starts to win more than he loses and gets to the point he can grip her wrist and pluck the knife away regardless of which direction or angle she stabs him from and all the time the room laughs with men slapping thighs and women cackling, but no matter how fast, he gets he cannot stop the servant shooting him and she is the only one closest enough to reach.
He charges, tips the sofa, lets the blade sink into his gut and scores a victory when she shows the first look of surprise at him not fighting back. He smiles at the quasi-victory as she tuts and chuckles at him. ‘Getting tired?’ she asks.
‘Maybe,’ he says, impervious to the pain of the knife sticking in his side and reaches up to gently tuck the strand of hair away dangling by her eye with an action that makes her frown.
Reset and he charges, tipping the sofa back and showing his speed learned by plucking the knife from her grip and sending it scooting across the room. She lashes out, but he grips her wrists, pinning them down while she bucks and heaves.
‘Help me,’ he says simply.
She goes to shout, to yell and spit before huffing and looking up at him. ‘Fine,’ she says with a strange glint of mischief, of humour or pride, of something he can’t understand. ‘He’s only got one bullet, you idiot.’ The clock chimes and the gun fires.
A Town Called Discovery Page 2