by Loki Renard
I have never seen Itch this irritated by anything. I have seen her angry and hurt and fierce, but not plain pissed off the way she is right now. Humans have unique effects on one another, and they are not always positive.
“Everything okay in there?”
I hear Tyank outside. I’m not sure if he is checking in on Itch’s continued existence, or if he is trying to be a good host. I have never met a scythkin who was a good host, but there is apparently a first time for everything.
“Behave yourself,” I growl at Itch. “We’re going out there to talk to those nice… to those two. And you’re going to say sorry.”
“I am not.”’
“You’re going out and apologizing, or you’re having your ass whipped and then you’re going to apologize.”
She grits her teeth in defiance. “Not going to apologize.”
“Yes, you are.”
Itch
His nose is right up against mine, his eyes burning into me, but I am not apologizing to Karen. I did nothing wrong. I don’t care how badly he wants to make a positive impression on Tyank. I did not escape a dozen owners and endure years of hell to bow down to some five-foot-fuck-all tyrant named Karen.
“No, I’m not.”
“Yes, you are.”
He drags me out by the arm, my feet barely touching the floor. He is treating me like a misbehaved juvenile, and I do not appreciate it one bit. I am a strong, independent woman who refuses to make apologies to any Karen.
“Say. Sorry,” John grinds out. If he could make me, he would. But even the most powerful alien in the universe can’t make words come out of my mouth if I don’t want them to come out.
“Apologize, or I will punish you more thoroughly than ever before,” he rumbles underneath his breath. I know he wants to prove that he has me under control, but I am just as eager to show that nobody will ever control me.
I turn to Karen, who is looking at me with a smug expression, and I know she thinks I am about to say sorry to her. I am, in a way.
“Karen. I’m sorry. Sorry that you’re a bitch.”
“Itch!”
John thunders my name and I know I am in trouble. I know he’s going to punish me, and I don’t care. It was worth it. I will never allow anybody to control me again. Not even John, if he thinks he can make me humiliate myself by apologizing to that woman.
The only individual who is not angry right now is Tyank, who is grinning broadly, his toothy smile indicating he is in no way offended by my refusal to apologize to his mate.
“Tyank doesn’t care! He knows what she’s like.”
“How dare you!” Karen huffs. “I am due respect. Tyank is the captain of this ship, and I am the manager of humans. That makes me the manager of that human,” she says, pointing at me. “And it means I am due respect.”
“You said the thing about being due respect twice,” I point out.
“I had to say it twice, because you seem to be a slow learner.”
“Now, Karen,” Tyank intervenes. “Itch has just arrived on the ship. Perhaps we should cut her some slack.”
“Yes,” I say, looking at John. “Maybe someone should cut me some slack.”
“You’ve had enough slack for the both of us,” John growls.
John
She has been testing me since we came aboard Tyank’s ship. And I am no longer in the mood for being tested. I am in the mood to spank a deserving human ass.
I think she expects to be taken to our room, but I have no intention of giving her privacy. If she wants to act out in public, I will punish her in public.
I warned her. I ordered her to behave and here we are. I always knew it would be difficult for Itch to integrate into a scythkin system. We are creatures of order and hierarchy, and so too are humans. But Itch is a law unto herself, and that is why she had the nerve to escape her alien captors so many times. It is also why she is resisting now, when it would be far more convenient for me if she would behave.
I slap her ass. Hard.
“Ow! What was that for?!” She dares ask the question, as if she doesn't know, as if I haven’t spent what feels like the last eternity asking her to apologize.
“That was a warning. You say sorry this instant or…”
“Hey, Karen,” Itch calls the woman’s name, but not before glancing at me and smirking.
I know she’s not going to apologize. I know before the words even come out of her mouth that she’s about to say something spectacularly rude. I’m not waiting to hear what it is.
Itch
“Bad girl!” John slaps my ass hard before I can tell Karen to fuck herself again.
I blush furiously, all too aware that my chastisement is public, and that Tyank and Karen are watching what happens to me.
He’s spanked me before but not like this. This is pure punishment, sending jolts of heat right through me. The outfit Karen doesn’t like also provides precisely fuck all protection against John’s stern scythkin discipline.
“Okay! Okay! I’m sorry!”
“It’s too late to be sorry now,” he lectures me. “Be sorry before I have to spank you for your insolence and disobedience.”
That’s all the apology he is going to get from me. His palm can thunder against my ass all he likes, I swear there and then over the propped-up thigh of my scythkin lover that I will never do what he says, or behave the way he wants me to. He loved my rebellious nature when we were alone on Patch. But it’s different when there are other scythkin around. He has something to prove to them, and he is trying to use me to prove it.
I can take his punishment without absorbing the lesson. I spent years learning how to resist pain, how to hold myself back from another and hide within the shell inside my mind. I retreat there as I have retreated many times before… but it doesn’t work.
For reasons I don’t understand, and can hardly come to terms with between sharp slaps, I can’t escape John the way I escaped all the others. I can’t hide away from him and take refuge in hatred. When he spanks me, I feel it. The heat sinks through my suit and finds my flesh, and little bolts of embarrassment charge through me as I realize that I am being spanked like a spoiled brat in front of Karen and her scythkin lover.
“Now I’m actually sorry!”
“How nice,” he deadpans, landing another swift slap to my already overheated ass. “You’ve just remembered it hurts to be spanked, you mean?”
“Yes!”
“Show the little human some mercy,” Tyank intervenes on my behalf. “Karen is not without blame I am sure, and it is not an easy adjustment for any human to come to terms with life among our kind. Your Itch seems especially feral.”
Feral. Yes. Wild and dangerous. I am rather proud to be described that way.
John cups my ass with his big, clawed palm, giving me a brief reprieve.
“Apologize,” he says. “To us all.”
“Sorry!”
I don’t mean the word, but hey, I can make a sound if it means I’ll be able to sit for whatever passes for dinner on this ship.
John sighs and pulls me up from his knee. When I look into his face, I don’t see anger. I don’t even see disappointment. I see resignation. He knows this is the price of having me around. I’m not going to behave myself. I’m not going to fit neatly into the little human-sized slots of the scythkin world. I’m going to be myself in every way, and at every turn.
I didn’t notice with all the spanking going on, but Tyank must have sent Karen away, because she’s no longer here, looking at me with those judgmental eyes. That is an even greater relief than John stopping spanking me.
John wraps an arm around me and pulls me against his body, keeping me close and offering me some comfort after the swift, harsh discipline he imparted. I know I probably deserved maybe sixty percent of that spanking, and I’m grateful to Tyank for trying to help me, so I’m not as mad as I thought I’d be.
I’m comfortable in the presence of scythkin. Even when I’m sore and partially
shamed, being in this space with Tyank and John doesn’t feel the way it did when I was trapped with aliens in the past. I don’t feel the same need to protect myself. I actually felt comfortable enough to misbehave and trust John to deal with me.
“You going to be a good girl now?” John murmurs the question in my ear.
“No.”
“Didn’t think so,” he growls, clenching my ass again. “Thank you for your understanding, Tyank, but I think it is time I take my human to our room.”
“Make yourselves at home,” Tyank says with a broad scythkin smile which indicates he knows precisely what will be happening in our room.
“We are home,” I tell John as he carries me off. “I feel it.”
John looks at me askance. “You feel at home here, where you’ve been publicly punished and had a fight with a woman you hate, and your future is uncertain, as is your safety? Where we will no doubt be joined by other hostile scythkin who will not necessarily be as welcoming as Tyank, who may try to take you from me…”
“Yes. Yes, to all of that and more.”
Home isn’t a place. It’s a struggle. It is where we feel most alive. It is the battleground of our existence. That is where John and I belong. Among his kind and mine, in the midst of chaos, in a never-ending struggle between all manner of forces, scythkin, human, even Karen.
He kisses me deeply, passionately, his blades extended in all their terrifying, dominant glory.
“Me too.”
Welcome Home Again
Itch
“Almost home! Come look, Itch!”
I am summoned to the control room by a very enthusiastic Tyank who seems eager to show us our destination. I like Tyank. He’s laid back and pretty nice, and he didn’t slaughter John, or try to, and I guess I am grateful for that.
Laid out before us is the place of my alleged origin. I am looking at a very large disc, pretending to be a planet, but not quite making it in the sphere department. It is a massive piece of geo-engineering, larger than I thought possible, spinning in space between several others like it. None are as large as this one. None draw my attention as it does. I have the strangest feeling in my stomach, a remembering which is not quite a remembering.
“I’ve been here before?” I murmur the question more to myself than anything.
Tyank answers it.
“This is the Interstellar Human Petting Zoo. This is where you came from, before Galactor was defeated and driven out. Tens of thousands of humans live inside this simulation, unaware of the existence of aliens. They currently believe the year is 1992. They listen to Nirvana, wear Doc Marten boots, and layer denim on denim.”
“I have no idea what half of those words mean.”
He pushes a button and a feed appears from somewhere inside the simulated reality below. I see people just like me. People with artificially light hair frizzed out from their heads like manes. I see blue cloth wrapped around their bodies, time and time again, blue pants, blue shirt, blue jacket.
“They really like blue?”
“Denim on denim on denim. They call it a Canadian Tuxedo, even though in this simulation, there is no Canada.”
I don’t know what Canada is either, but I don't care. I am entranced by the music coming through the feed.
Hello Hello Hello… Hello Hello Hello Hello…
It is almost as if the music is saying hello to me.
With the lights out, its less dangerous. Here we are now, entertain us!
Tyank cuts the feed. “I’ve never understood their music, but they enjoy it.”
I keep staring at the blank square where a small window of the world I used to be a part of was displayed. I feel that dissonance even more now, a yearning to return to something I cannot recall.
“Are you okay, Itch?” John puts his big, clawed hand on my shoulder.
“I don’t know. I feel…”
“It’s normal for humans who have been removed from the simulation and had their memories wiped to have trouble adapting to the concept of it when they see it again. That’s why we don’t return humans to the simulation anymore. Once you’re out, you’re out.”
I look at Tyank, and wonder if I am angry at him for not letting me back in. Is that what I want for myself? Do I want to wear thick, blue fabric and listen to repetitive lyrics? Yes. A part of me that nothing could ever erase wants to return to what now seems to me to be a time of innocence.
“I’m glad you’re here,” Tyank says to John. “We could actually use your help as an experienced human handler…”
I let out a growl. I don’t want John handling any humans besides me.
“No,” I say. “Mine.”
“And I thought we were supposed to be the possessive ones,” Tyank laughs. “Don’t worry, Itch. He’s not going to fall for any other human. You have him wrapped around your pretty little finger.”
“I better,” I say to John, who is smiling with great pleasure at seeing my jealousy.
“You do,” he assures me. “But Tyank, why are you saying you need help? The simulation seems well under control.”
“It’s not the simulation,” he says. “It’s… let’s dock and I’ll show you both.”
We land beneath the simulation. None of the humans above know that underneath their world is a complex set of machinery running it. They could not begin to suspect that the ground beneath their feet hides this grand alien conspiracy which tries to keep them safe.
I cannot remember when I shared their innocence, but I wish it had never been taken from me. I love John. He has become my universe, but the hardships I was forced to endure before I met him have left me damaged in some way the people inside the simulation don’t seem to be. They get to believe in the 1990’s, and for that, I am jealous.
Tyank leads John and me through the warren-like halls of the underground world. Karen has already departed with a comment about needing to manage something.
“You can take one of the Galactor executive suites for yourselves. There's a lot of space down here,” Tyank says. “My brood barely takes up a fraction of it. Make yourselves comfortable.”
I don't think I can be comfortable in this twilight metal realm. Sunlight is refracted and reflected through series of prisms to glow brightly in some places, but in between there is a fluorescent green glow which feels unhealthy.
Many of the spaces feel abandoned. Tyank’s brood is obviously far smaller in number than all the Galactor staff who must have once occupied these spaces. If this was a natural place, I feel as though there would be cobwebs and skeletons, but nothing organic lives down here. There are no scuttling insects, there is no smell of decay, there is just a sense of hollow emptiness which makes me very uncomfortable.
Suddenly, I am regretting having left Patch. Yes, we had to eat slugs and cabbage, but that was a real world, and real things happened there. This is a manufacturing station.
I keep my opinions to myself. Perhaps this place will grow on me. This is, after all, the only place I can be with John without starting a war of some kind, and I would live in a hole in the ground if it meant being able to be with him.
DON’T KEEP
OPEN OUT
We approach a door with bold warnings carved into it by what look to me scythkin claw marks.
“Don’t keep open out?
“Don’t open. Keep out,” Tyank says. “I’m not the best sign writer, and the murketeers were too afraid to get close enough to these doors to put one up.”
Wow. Whatever is inside must be terrifying, and more dangerous than the scythkin themselves. I can’t even begin to imagine such a creature. It must be massive. It must drip with poison and be so powerful it could destroy a scythkin with a single bite. I hear something shuffling around inside, something so dangerous and so utterly uncontrollable it has to be locked away in the dark behind big reinforced doors with warnings carved into them.
I am impressed, and slightly scared.
“Is it an Antiklan Tiger Elephant?”
“What?”
“I saw one of them once, a juvenile. It was only small, but it trampled half the audience at the circus.”
“It’s not an Antiklan Tiger Elephant.”
Tyank opens the door.
It is dark inside. I hear something. A scuffling and rustling and whispering. It doesn’t sound scary to me. It sounds frightened. And it sounds familiar.
But it can’t be what I think it is. This is the one place humans are looked after as though they matter. The scythkin are our guardians, looking after us when other alien species want to exploit us.
And yet…
My eyes don’t lie. When Tyank flips the light on, there is no denying that there are human women in there, locked up in a cage in the same way I once was. They look at us with hunted, angry eyes. Their hair is messy and matted, and their bodies show the unmistakable wounds of captivity. Bruises and sores on their legs and arms. They are not well tended to. There is a stench in the room, unwashed human and worse.
“What the fuck is this?”
I need more swear words desperately. Fuck doesn’t cover what I’m seeing. It doesn’t begin to touch my rage. I turn and punch Tyank as hard as I can right in the middle of his gut. It does nothing to him, but it hurts my hand very badly.
I curse as I am swept into John’s arms. I’m sure he’s going to punish me, but he doesn’t.
“Same question,” John growls, though he doesn’t punch Tyank.
“Calm down. It's not how it looks,” Tyank says.
“It looks as though you’ve locked up human women like food-class animals.”
“Okay, then it is how it looks, but we had a very good reason. These aren’t women from the simulation. They’re free humans who joined an organization exceptionally hostile to our own kind.”
“What are you talking about?”
“They’re Q’Ren rebels,” Tyank says. “We caught a pack of them out by a grass planet. Most of them have been shipped off to their original species of origin to be dealt with by their authorities. But these ones are human, and they have nowhere to be held to face justice.”