by Lee, Edward
Taggert shook off the past. Best to keep sharp. Wounds took longer to heal, these late years of his prime. His rivals wouldn’t miss him if he finally took enough to have withdrawn from the Rut with the other failed bulls next year. Or try one last time, half-broken, to end his days in the bleak and lonely shadows of their kind’s sacred mating ground.
The music told him he’d arrived. The steady rhythmic thumping washed over him as he opened a rusted steel door and entered the club.
Men and women glanced at him, appraised his worth, squinting so that their gaze might penetrate bone and flesh and spirit to find appetites to share. Someone offered him a drink. A voice whispered in his ear, “You look like an animal.” A hand settled over his crotch, feeling cock and balls.
“I bet you fuck like a horse.”
“You like pain. I know. And I love you for that.”
Like mosquitoes, they swarmed him, trying to suck life and blood, drain his strength. Predatory instincts urged him to lash out, desire tempted him to draw them in, taste them, take their offerings, play with their lives.
But now was not the time to graze or to play. Painfreak was not the place for satisfying appetites and exploring pleasures. Not for him, not for his kind. They were free of such burdens.
Painfreak was sacred ground, the place where their kind came from, the ground from which they were created and came into the world. The place where their tribe came to be reborn.
The world, and his purpose, came into focus. He was no young buck, to be so easily distracted.
Across the dance floor, he caught another suitor slipping into the back rooms with a flash of a pony tail, dressed in black. A young buck, moving too fast, too eager for his first Rut. That could have been him, a very long time ago.
But focused. That should be him, now.
The Queen’s scent cut through the meat stench, focused him. But there were no others moving through the crowds, appraising rivals, sniffing out their first challenges, tracking old rivals and challengers. That time had passed. In the back rooms, the first pairings were already charging at one another, the rest were searching. The herd had moved on; the tribe was in its sacred time.
No posturing or dancing, no wasting of energy. Straight to it.
He cut across the dance floor, shedding the parasites. Desperate hands slipped from the smooth fabric of his suit. Voices faded into the barbed rhythms and melodies insinuating themselves in thoughts, and in feelings.
He barely noticed the doors and veils he passed through, the entreaties and seductions of those he passed, as he cut through the club’s out layers.
“Please,” a man said, dropping his drink and tugging at his arm, “hurt me.”
“Let me make you scream,” a woman said.
“I’ll kill you if you don’t—”
But he was already gone, the threat less than puff of smoke, climbing over the grinding engine that manipulated a man and a woman trapped inside, their limbs and bodies turning, twisting, rubbing, penetrating in a slow, grinding ballet of simultaneous dismemberment, breaking, and copulation. The attendants let him pass through, focused instead on the IV lines and medical readouts of the participants. The audience members barely glanced at him, dismissing him as soon as the understood he was not a participant in the scenario.
The pair moaned in their intimacy’s ecstasy. Taggert imagined the pain, the despair, upon which they floated, into which they would soon drown. Like the Queen, perhaps, when she delivered a fresh monster.
He scrambled through the last of the machine’s grinding mechanisms, letting the Queen’s scent guide him through another doorway. Another smell, stronger, musky, choked him with its thick, soupy intensity.
He braced himself for a charge, scanned the shadowy hallway he’d entered. Grunts and snorts sounded from a nearby alcove.
A man and a woman emerged, young, thin, skin stretched across their skulls like cellophane over leftovers. They looked him up and down as they passed.
“Don’t bother,” the man said.
“They’re not even close to fucking,” the woman added.
Looking in, he saw a pair of bucks locked together in an embrace, each trying to tip the other over with legs sweeps. They hammered at each other with forehead blows, their fingers dug into flesh. A young one, and an older suitor, like him.
The old one looked weak, the younger one, too stiff. He’d take either of them, if they met later.
He went deeper into Painfreak, surprised no one had challenged him yet. Maybe they were intimidated. He was grateful for the rest.
Captives hung from the ceiling, bound and trapped in cages. In one, a man offered himself to another who’d climbed up and was hanging on to the bars. The prisoner didn’t ask for release, his visitor never offered to unlock the door. The cage swung wildly, knocking into others, their prisoners looking out with yearning at the savage fucking.
“I can do things to you your wife will never do,” one of the prisoners shouted to him.
“I can be the child you dream of,” another said.
A figure darted out from an alcove, androgynous, veiled, though boils crowded around its eyes. “I can make you into what you need to be for me,” it whispered.
Taggert grunted, flared, but the creature stood its ground, though its eyes grew larger, pushing back the boils to take in as much of what he was as it could.
He pushed past the cages, containing his rage. Immune to most of Painfreak’s provocations, the corruption of family pricked at vulnerabilities he didn’t want to face. His wife, his son and two younger daughters, they were his anchors to the human world. They channeled his instincts, focused his survival instincts. They camouflaged what he really was, what his seed was truly capable of producing.
Dragging them into Painfreak sullied everything they meant to him, to his place in the world and in the tribe. Success in humanity’s jungle fed his strength, and his stature in the tribe.
There were young bucks who tried to do their duty without a foundation in humanity. The learned tribe’s stories and traditions, but found other truths in them, old interpretations, from the days when their kind had been bound to Painfreak.
They visited other tribes and planted their seed in them while playing out mock challenges, as bucks came from other tribes to visit their sisters and test themselves against strangers to win their own Queens. So many could not live the two lives, in and out of the tribe, in and out of the world outside their kind. They remained tied to the world that made them, but the children they sired rarely reached or became a Queen. It was as if they lacked an edge, as if bonding with a human, making children with them, cracked open barriers to the depths they could reach, the power they could call on.
It was no wonder the tribe’s sisters so often produced viable Queens from their human husbands, rather than children from bucks outside the tribe, or much more rarely, from within the tribe.
Taggert glanced back at the cages before turning a corner. If there was time, if he felt like it, maybe he’d come back this way and visit that creature. See if he could make it fit into one of those cages. Perhaps, it would be a celebration of at last having his seed accepted by the Queen. Or, it might relieve the frustration of another failure.
No. He shook his head, pounded a wall with his fist. Forget all of that. He had his human family. This time, he’d prove their kind needed what he offered. As a mature buck, he wouldn’t have many more tries before the Rut left him behind.
He passed open rooms, some empty, others occupied by players performing acts for themselves, for the few witnessing for their own needs. Blood and semen mixed with sewage drawn from well holes, with meat, vegetation, with sacrificial creatures and insects massing to feed, with flowers and the glitter of jewels in candle and torch light, provided beds and veils and aromas and mood.
The old ways, the memories inherited by blood, the rites of passage of his kind, took on the flesh of the now and for an instant, distracted him. Rooted him in a different time,
another world in which he’d never lived, but which still lived inside the small part of him that was purely, indomitably of the kind born in and set free from Painfreak countless generations ago. The world of monsters born and bred in the bowels of Painfreak, in its heart, womb and spirit.
It took so little to belong to the kind. But it took so much to pay back Painfreak, to surrender the occasional daughter capable of delivering pure breds, to follow the old instincts and fight for the honor of keeping ancients, and their birthplace, in the world.
Painfreak needed what it needed, to keep the engines of its existence running. Freedom, for its children, monsters from them. Fear and lust from the humanity on which it fed.
He took all of it in, the past and present, the futures both likely and impossible, and let it all buttress the bones and muscle taking him one more time through the Rut.
A young buck, blindly eager for a challenge, stumbled to stop in front of Taggert. He smiled, brushing long hair from his eyes, and curled his fingers as if they were claws.
Taggert remembered the boy’s initiation. He’d beaten his father several times in the Rut, lost to him once.
He growled. Straightened. Bared his teeth. In that moment, he was his own ancestor, a creature at home in the womb of his making, a stranger to the life he had now.
His challenger froze. His eyes opened wider, his lips twisted, half in rage, half in terror.
In that young face, Taggert saw a reflection of all that he was capable of being.
The young buck turned and fled, hardly worthy of the Rut. Taggert had challenged three times before winning his first match.
He shook his head, as if memories of unlived pasts were nothing more than snowflakes coating the hair on his head. He held on to his human wife, the son and daughters who might one day manifest and join the tribe, one to Rut, the other two to be mothers to their tribe and their kind, perhaps even a Queen, and a mother to monsters.
An urge to keep moving focused him. The Rut’s reality sharpened his attention. His children showed no signs of possessing another nature. Unlike his father, he would never see a child take his place in the tribe. The Queen was his last chance to contribute to the tribe’s future.
He took a deep breath. The Queen, her scent, the bucks—
A powerful blow to his left side knocked Taggert off of his feet. He flew into one of the alcoves, slipped, fell. Hands grasped his limps, fumbled with his belt and zipper. A hungry mouth sought his, kissing his shit-covered face. Voices whispered:
“Don’t fight me,”
“Be what I want you to be.”
“Turn me into what you want me to be.”
A bloodied buck, fresh from a challenge, rushed after him. His eyes blazed with a fierce hunger. He licked his lips, even as sewage sprayed his face, and tossed aside Painfreak’s denizens with little effort so he could get to Taggert.
This one was younger, but just entering his prime. His father had long retired from the Rut, and had beaten him every time they met. His mother was dead. They’d met once, years ago. He’d filled out, earned a few scars.
Taggert recognized the expression, the drive that possessed them all. He tasted the Queen, too, in the shit on his lips. She was passing close by, perhaps on a floor above or below, or a corridor adjacent to the one they were in. Her scent, wafting through vents and pipes, teased him. He could almost hear the snuffling of monsters following in her wake.
He beat back the men and women trying to drag him into their orgy, raised a forearm in time to deflect a kick to the head by his challenger. He grabbed the leg, turned at the hips, pulling his rival out of balance.
They staggered together for a step before Taggert let him go. They faced each other. The people in the alcove retreated to the walls and entrance. More came over from up and down the corridor, as if their fight were a special event, a fresh perversion not to be missed.
They charged each other at the same moment, knocking heads like football linemen, with a crack of bone instead of helmets. Their arms locked into holds as they settled shoulder to shoulder, like sumo wrestlers, shoving, shifting, sliding on the slippery floor to shift position and find new angles of attack, or ways to pull each other off balance.
They snapped at each other. Taggert pulled away from a neck bite, caught his rival ear. He bit hard, his opponent stiffened. He pulled his head back, the other buck went with him. Pushed. Taggert gave way, drawing him off balance for an instant. With a twist, and a trip, Taggert pulled him down.
He landed on top, but his challenger worked to throw him off. Taggert moved to stay on top, did his own work for a choke, landed a few elbows, finally over committed on a throat punch and nearly wound up on his stomach.
He rolled, they both scrambled to stand up first.
“Take that shit off,” someone from the audience shouted.
His fine clothes were ripped and ruined, as were his opponent’s. It was time for a more intimate struggle.
They stripped. The audience encouraged them to embrace. To fuck. To bite and pull and suck.
Again, they charged each other, and this time his rival’s youthful quickness caught him. Taggert lost his balance, flipped through the air. But he kicked out, heel first, landed a blow on bone. It was enough to give him time to regain his footing.
They clashed again, hands slipping on blood-slick flesh. Taggert threw short, sharp punches and elbows strikes, close in, careful with his footwork, putting his weight behind them. The boy winced as a rib cracked.
Taggert worked his advantage, upper cutting to the jaw, countering a knee and throwing his own up into the hip, the belly, the lower ribs.
The buck backed up, didn’t charge. Taggert waited, stood tall.
“Are you going to fuck him, now?” a woman asked.
Taggert held out his fists. The challenger looked down. Taggert walked away, leaving the audience to surround his rival. They sank into a mound of writhing flesh.
He’d taken comfort in Painfreak’s embrace often enough after his defeats. But the audience didn’t let him leave without trying to seduce him into their company.
“Let me be your slave.”
“I can give you what you need,”
“Taste this,”
To each, he answered, “If you were my Queen, I’d say yes. But you’re not.”
The alcoves vanished, the corridor walls closed in, the path turned and circled and twisted, rose and fell, and at the second junction Taggert realized he was in one of Painfreak’s mazes. Sometimes, they were backwaters where challengers became trapped, losing their chance for the Queen. Taggert had lost his way more than once.
But this time, the Queen’s scent was strong. He was getting closer.
Visitors were few, and those who were coupled or in groups gave him no attention, lost in their own winding passions. The single ones ignored him more often than they begged for release, or for the way out. They huddled deep in corners, far from lamps and torches. Having been lost, and having found his way out, he understood those who chose not to escape. They were the ones his ancestors left behind in Painfreak.
He ran into two more challengers in the maze. The first was an old friend who’d beaten him regularly when they were young, but hadn’t healed well after one close approach to the Queen and never recovered. Taggert beat him, with his fists until his hands were swollen and cracked and bloody and his challenger stopped fighting back.
Through a blood haze, Taggert looked up to see the Queen looking down at him from a window to a parallel maze path in the wall. The opening was barred, but large enough to see her court of monsters, twisted, demonic, haunting reflections of humanity, passing behind her.
She was the third Queen he’d tried to win over the years. He’d stopped counting those years, but not the Queens. They didn’t last as long as the strongest of their suitors.
“Do you remember me?” he asked.
She didn’t answer. He wasn’t sure she was really looking at him, or at indistinguishable
bodies fighting for her.
He’d been close the last time, but she hadn’t acknowledged him. He’d never had the chance to look her in the eyes. He’d never been closer to any Queen in all the Ruts he’d joined.
Except, perhaps, in his dreams.
Through the window, she became a shadow, then mist, a figure of mystery and sex, a promise of sensations, ever changing yet immutable in her essence. Another of Painfreak’s seductions. Her court of monsters slipped away into darkness behind her, yet she lingered.
Taggert stood, pushing his fingers through the bars. Her eyes were the last to fade, the image of twin black moons receding into a starless sky. She seemed to promise that he could create whatever he desired, even if she had to mine his depths for him to find those lost and secret weaknesses he’d never dared to drag into the light. She seemed to promise that he could satisfy each of those desires, through her.
Passion woke and crashed, fulfilling Painfreak’s purpose. He closed his eyes against the promises—what he’d make could never be what he wanted. All these years in the Rut, all that had come from his kind’s teachings, all that he learned from surviving so long when so many had died or retired and that kept him strong in the world’s and in Painfreak’s illusions, protected him.
What he desired had to come from without. From her, and only her.
“I’m coming for you,” he said.
She laughed, then said, “You’re all coming for me.”
She vanished beyond his reach, again. Tears welled in his eyes, as the feeling of defeat overwhelmed him. He backed away from the window, took a breath, roared a challenge. A test, she’d only been testing him, to see if he was worthy.
He was close. So close. He tasted her in the air, felt himself in her, already, thrusting desperately, savagely, whether she wanted what he offered, or not.
He staggered off, cutting deeper into the maze, chasing the Queen as he’d done all his life.
The last challenger was a beast. Younger, but scarred and knotted from wounds and blows. Another he’d fought, but had lost to more often than beaten. Bigger than him, a touch slower. Vulnerable in the legs, in his balance. One of those who liked to take whatever a challenger had to give.