by Corin Cain
But the moment the mosquito flies off, my ears attune to the sound of more buzzing in the distance – plus splashes, grunts, and the chirp of some kind of cicada-like insect.
We’re on a Toad mothership – in the depths of space – but these fetid living quarters are more like the reptile house in a zoo. The ankle-deep water and moss-covered walls are crawling with bugs, insects, and Gods-know-what else.
I shudder. I’m not exactly much of one for talk of the Gods – but if there was a literal Hell On Earth, I’m pretty sure it would resemble the interior of a Toad mothership.
As the pounding in my head eases, I turn to Tessa.
“I’m awake,” I hiss – not wanting to speak too loudly and attract something even more unpleasant than that mosquito.
I speak, but each word comes at a price. Every word I utter makes my head throb.
Tessa sees the pain in my eyes.
“Thank the Gods, Jamie. When you hit your head…” Tessa’s head flops forward. “…I thought you were dead. I tried to hide you, but… ”
“…a Toad boarding party found us, right?”
Slowly, Tessa’s head lifts.
“W-what’s going to happen to us?”
I gulp.
What do I tell her?
Perhaps I should give her false hope. Maybe Tessa’s never heard what happens on Toad motherships. I could protect her from that knowledge – until knowledge turns into experience for her, as the Toads take full advantage.
Oh, Gods – I’ve never seen it with my own eyes, but I’ve heard the stories from the slaves Ling and I freed from motherships just like this.
Unless someone will come and save us, we’re going to be enslaved by the horrifying creatures.
And no one is coming to save us.
3
I can feel panic setting in, and it’s hard to swallow down.
I know the creatures range in height – from between five to seven feet.
Don’t let the height fool you, though. Even a Toad equal to my height will be packing several hundred pounds of slab-like muscle and gelatinous fat on me. Their muscle fibers are denser than those of a human, too – giving them massive additional strength.
Likewise, the thick, warty skin of a Toad is like armor – it can stop a knife, and even some bullets. In fact, only an Aurelian with an Orb-Blade could reliably pierce that glistening, sinewy hide of a Toad.
Almost as well-known as their cruelty is their desire for human women – a reprehensible addiction that’s fueled despicable crimes over the years. Toads have to steal their woman. No woman would ever be so desperate as to join a Toad Harem willingly – not for something as petty as money (and not that Toads are generous in sharing any.)
Aurelians lure women to their harems. Toads take them – stealing any women foolish enough to be found in dark space and bringing them back within the borders of their confederacy.
Foolish women like me, and Tessa.
It doesn’t matter that slavery is illegal – not to a Toad. After the first Galactic War nearly wiped out all sentient life, even Aurelians don’t venture into Toad territory to enforce those statutes.
That means once you’re a prisoner of the Toads, and you’ve been taken behind the lines of Toad-occupied space, you’re as good as done for.
I pull at the chains overhead, panicking wildly.
I’m trapped! I’m fucking trapped!
Unlike the girls Ling and I liberated, there’s nobody coming to save me.
I let my head flop forward, and I squeeze shut my eyes; feeling the despair well up in them.
I can’t believe it’s going to end like this – me, the liberator, falling victim to the same fate I’d fought against alongside Ling.
I hear another whisper to my left, and I reluctantly turn my aching head – slowly this time, blinking in the darkness.
Gods!
There’s at least ten of us women in here – all dangling from chains around our wrists.
Now my head isn’t aching so much, I look around desperately.
First off – where is the light coming from?
There is a light, seeming to originate from a crack in the far wall. It’s enough for my night-vision-adjusted eyes to make out most of the room, and my fellow prisoners.
The light must come from behind a door – but how can I be sure?
There’s a sharp hiss as that is-it-a-door bursts open to confirm my suspicion.
By that time, though, I’d decided I had bigger problems to worry about.
As the door opens, light floods into our dark, dank prison.
The blinding light makes my head scream. I turn my head and slam my eyes shut, but the beam is bright enough to burn right through my eyelids – especially since my eyes had been adjusted to the near pitch-darkness.
Blinded, I rely on my other senses – and guttural sounds flood my ears.
At the same time, a wave of foul-smelling musk and stench assaults my nostrils.
I shudder in revulsion. That confirms it.
Toads.
I can’t speak their language, and I’m actually happy about that – I’m very sure I don’t want to know what those slimy bastards are saying about us as they waddle into the room.
I force my eyes open. It hurts like hell, but as my eyes adjust to the brightness, I realize the light only seemed so blinding after hanging here in the absence of it for so long.
My eyes focus on two Toads. Short, stocky, and with broad, flat faces. The pale light glistens on their skin. Each of them is wide like a bowling ball, and their green, warty flesh jiggles obscenely as they wade through the ankle-deep water.
Through the door behind them floods more mist and steam. I know that Toads need constant moisture, but my body is dripping from all the humidity. I have to blink to prevent being blinded by the salt of my own sweat, dripping into my eyes.
I feel disgusting – but looking at the Toads just makes that sensation worse. It’s as if the reflection in their bulbous eyes as they drink in the sight of me defiles me.
I’d give anything for a cold, clean shower right now – far away and safe from these disgusting creatures.
The worst part?
I mean, none of it’s good – but the worst part is that these two Toads wear only loincloths slung around their swollen waists.
If you can even call them waists. The creatures are revolting, and their huge, gelatinous guts spill out over the top of their loincloths. The Toads look distended and full – the same way a swollen animal corpse does by the side of the road, baking in the sun and filled with noxious gas and poison.
One of the Toads waddles forward, licking his huge lips. He points a gangly, webbed finger at me.
My heart skips a beat. I start to fight desperately against the cuffs holding my arms above my head, but it’s hopeless. A warbly chuckle – which must be a laugh, I suppose - gurgles from the nearest Toad’s fleshy, glistening lips.
For a moment, the revolting creature just watches me struggling to get away. It’s as if he’s enjoying my mounting desperation.
Finally, the Toad reaches forward with one of his glistening, webbed hands and grabs the front of my shirt – right between my breasts.
With a gurgle, he rips my shirt and bra apart – leaving them hanging by my sides, and exposing me to his bulbous, unblinking eyes.
I shudder and turn my face in revulsion – and it gets worse. So much worse.
Suddenly, the Toad’s slimy, wet fingers are sliding between my breasts. I press myself as far away from the disgusting creature as I can – my bare back slick against the moss-covered wall behind me – but it’s no good. There’s nowhere to run. I hang there, molested by the slimy hands of this revolting alien, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.
The two Toads laugh, delighting in my revulsion. Their beady eyes open wide as they drink in the sight of my bare breasts; now glistening and slimy with the trail of the first Toad’s fingers.
As he squeezes and knead
s my breast, I glance down – and immediately regret it.
The Toad’s loin-cloth moves - and suddenly I realize that his disgusting, green cock is hardening as he touches me; filling and stretching the material of his loin cloth until I’m scared it’ll tear right through it.
I bite my lip to try and stop myself from screaming – fighting desperately against my shackles as I try to fight him off.
It’s useless, though. I could barely dislodge that mosquito, earlier – and this Toad is a million times more powerful than that blood-sucking bug.
As I hang there, trembling and squirming, the Toad reaches for my nipple – his wet fingers sinking down to crush my flesh between them.
I gasp, but the pain is nothing compared to the disgust I feel.
Then, suddenly, the Toad freezes in place.
I blink, and watch as he becomes the one squirming and shivering. As I watch, the Toad’s bulbous eyes stretch open, and he begins gyrating and shaking right in front of me – before screaming in pain and flailing to the floor.
I look up and see what happened. A third of their species had quietly entered this room while my face was turned away in disgust – and this new arrival jabbed the first Toad with one of their species’ dreaded electro-rods.
The Toad who’d been groping me lies in a heap, splashing in the ankle-deep water. He’s cowering in the fetal position, still twitching from the thousands of volts sent sparking through his amphibian nervous system.
The second Toad jumps back at the demonstration – holding his arms up desperately, as if to wordlessly assure the new arrival that “I never touched her.”
Not that Toads are renowned for caring about such things.
The Toad who’d just entered this room is bigger than the other two – six feet tall and comprised of at least four hundred pounds of muscle draped in a hundred pounds of flabby, quivering fat.
My eyes widen – both at the horrific countenance of this new arrival, and at that electro-rod.
Gods, I hate those weapons. They’re made from razor-sharp, serrated carbo-steel – which would make them deadly enough. That’s how Ling had spent her last few moment – skewered on a blade just like this one.
The first Toad didn’t get the blade – but he did get what followed: Thousands of volts that left him limp and twitching.
This third Toad isn’t just scary because he’s so much bigger than the other two – or that he’s clutching that lethal electro-rod. It’s the fact that he looks at all us women without lust in his bulbous eyes. This Toad is interested in something more strategic than just emptying his balls into an unwilling human slave. That makes him smart, disciplined – and dangerous.
The Toad reaches gangly, dripping fingers toward my face. I turn away in revulsion – cringing as I imagine what it’ll be like to feel the cold, slimy touch…
…instead, with a gurgle, the Toad reached right past my head. Instead, he presses a button on the moss-cover wall, and suddenly my cuffed hands are released from the wall.
Not just mine – mine, and those of all the other women hanging in this swilling, humid room.
All twelve of us fall forward.
My hands are restrained, and I have no way to break my fall. I splash into the water, but it’s not deep enough to cushion my impact. My cheek smacks against the ground, and as I emerge from the water my head is ringing yet again.
I spit out the brackish water, desperately trying to cling to consciousness. My head is pounding – but if I black out, I’ll drown.
I splutter desperately for air, trying vainly to catch my breath. Instead, I gag as I taste the disgusting water on my lips.
The Toad snaps his fingers at the two others, and together they grab the long rope of chain that fell from the ceiling the same time our wrists did. I realize that single length of chain is snaked through each of our cuffs – connecting all of us.
The Toads yank the chain, and are strong enough to effortlessly pull all us women up from the water at once.
All twelve of us captured women are dragged up off the ground, and then we’re sent stumbling forward through the water as the leader of the Toad tugs on the connected metal chain.
We’re powerless to resist. The water sloshes between my feet as I steady myself.
Tessa is still to my right – and now, to my left, is a terrified young woman who is still unsteady on her feet.
Hell, we all look scared, but her knees are literally knocking together as she shudders in terror.
The leader of the Toad yanks the chain, and we’ve got no choice but to trudge out in single file – wading through the water towards the door.
The Toad with the electro-rod waves the barbed spear at us, but there’s no sadism in his cold eyes. He has a job to do.
My feet slosh through the water. I glance down and shudder as I see fat little tadpoles swimming between our ankles. The stench of the fetid water makes me gag. It’s not a rotten scent – it’s the opposite, in fact: A disgusting, fertile smell like growing mold and bacteria; one that attacks your nostrils and makes your skin crawl.
All around us, flies and mosquitos buzz through the air. That same fat mosquito buzzes toward me, and I jump as the leader of the Toads shoots out his long, pink tongue and snatches the bug right out of the air.
I grimace as the Toad gulps the bug down – the mosquito’s spindly legs sticking out from between his flabby lips until he swallows the last of it; slurping the legs into his mouth like a regular person might do spaghetti.
That’s disgusting enough – but it’s the tadpoles swimming between my feet that make this all the worse. I know Toads are hermaphroditic – and, unlike the all-male Aurelian race, they don’t require human females to reproduce.
At least the Aurelians have that to defend their obsession with human women – since all Aurelians seek that single, biologically compatible woman in the universe that can bear them their naturally sired sons.
You can perhaps have some understanding for a species that’s very existence relies on such things.
But Toads? They have no such compulsion. Toads just enjoy the power of terrorizing human women and exerting their control. They have many animal urges, and the need to empty their swollen balls into sobbing human slaves is just one of them.
As I stumble forward, I ache to pull up the remains of my ripped clothes – to cover up my shameful nudity, and the glistening handprints that remain on my flesh. They’re like a brand – marking me as the victim of a Toad’s squirming, inquisitive fingers.
With my hands cuffed, however, I’m helpless to do even that. My cheeks burn. I feel so exposed – so vulnerable.
I’ve heard that Aurelians can turn feral with the sight of a naked female’s breasts – descending into a mating rage that turns them into more animal than man.
Even if Toads don’t suffer that same mating rage, it’s still humiliating to be paraded around with my breasts swinging free; and there’s no doubt I’m going to draw a lot of attention with my nakedness.
The kind of attention that’s the last thing I want.
I need to disappear. I need to disappear.
I wanted to disappear before – that’s why I’d fled to planet X12. Or, at least, tried to.
Now, my urge to vanish is even stronger. I know each second I linger in this Toad mothership, the closer some sickening fate awaits me.
My thick, steel-toed boots give me my only shred of certainty. They plow through the filthy water of the Toad mothership just like they were designed to wade through puddles, rivers, and lakes.
As I walk, one of the thoughts that occurs to me is how even the deck of this Toad vessel feels wrong beneath my boots. It’s as if the corridor we’ve been led into isn’t even made of metal – but instead, some kind of oozing, fleshy material that I don’t want to think too hard about.
The woman behind me stumbles, and I plant my feet hard into the squishy deck – trying to use the strength of my lower body to avoid being dragged down with her as t
he chain between us snaps taut.
Thankfully, I succeed – and the woman is able to use my stability to remain upright herself. There’s no splash as she falls into the brackish water, and the Toads watching us look almost disappointed.
The leader of the Toads turns as we slow. Seeing us struggle to right ourselves, the glistening abomination presses his finger onto the control of his electro-rod, and the razor-edged tip crackles with menacing electricity.
I gasp. I don’t need to understand the Toad’s language to know he’s warning us to hurry the fuck up – before he hurts us.
We stagger forward a little more, until one of the women at the back of the line finds the courage to demand: “Where are you taking us!”
I wince. Bad fucking idea.
The Toad at the front of our procession stops, and slowly turns to identify the source of the defiant question.
The woman freezes – as if she realizes she’s fucked up.
If she didn’t before, she does the moment the Toad steps forward and presses the tip of that electro-rod against the woman’s cuffed hands.
Blue electricity crackles out – and that’s when I understand why the Toad pressed his blade against the cuffs the woman is wearing.
The cuffs are all connected by that long chain – and the moment the Toad electrifies that defiant woman’s cuffs, a rippling arc of voltage crackles through the rest of the chain and shudders through each of us.
Gods! Nothing could have prepared me for the shock of lightning pain that’s suddenly traveling the length of those interconnected chains; arcing right through each of us into the ‘ground’ of the water at our feet.
The screams hit one by one. I bite down hard and every muscle in my body contracts as the electricity shudders through me. It’s only for a second – but it’s the most intense pain of my life, and it powers through me and sets every one of my nerve-endings ablaze. I barely stay on my feet as my whole body convulses.
Then, it’s done.
I’m left panting and gasping, shivering in horror.