Snare of the Blood Flower: A novella from A Poisoned Land

by Craig P Roberts

  “Well done, my daughter,” a cold female voice shrieked. It came from a large woman, who lay on a bed that seemed like a bed and chair combined. She lounged on the soft throne that was raised off the ground on a platform. At first, Cauly was drawn to her bright-blue eyes, so bright that they almost looked white. Her face was blue as well. He did a double-take glance at her arms and legs that stuck out from her simple brown shawl. She has blue skin, Cauly was sure. Or perhaps his eyes hadn’t had a chance to readjust from the hot bright desert outside…or it was just a trick of the eye caused by the strange lights.

  The blue woman continued, “This is a fine blue you have found me, Lolita.” Her eyes probed him. Cauly covered his cock and balls with his cuffed hands, suddenly very aware of his bare skin. The woman smiled, announcing, “I am Grietum and you are welcome in my hive—”

  As soon as Wallace heard the woman’s name he shuffled forward and dropped to his knees, begging, “Your Excellence, Grietum, your beautiful daughter said that you could give me some of the blood flower dust. I will do anything you ask just please—”

  Hearing his little brother beg so pathetically, without any logic or reason was disturbing for Cauly. It was as if he didn’t know the boy who was kneeling on the floor of this strange place. Cauly interrupted Wallace’s wretched pleading, asking, “What do you want from us?”

  “I only want from you, Sweet Blue,” she replied. “Once you have given me your seed, you will be free to leave my hive. However I would have thought you would like to give your seed to my daughters before taking leave,” Grietum announced, waving a fat arm to the slinking figures lurking around the outside of the throne room.

  He ignored the offer of her daughters and focused on the freedom part. “You will let my brother leave too, along with me?”

  “He will not want to leave, I assure you,” she said to Cauly in a pitying voice before she snapped her gaze away. “Give him a sniff,” Grietum commanded, and one of her daughters came running out of the shadows and held a finger under Wallace’s nose. He covered a nostril and took a sharp sniff and then collapsed to the floor.

  Cauly watched his little brother—the sly trickster that could talk himself out of any situation—twitch and shake on the floor as if nothing else in the world mattered. Cauly had nobody now. Nobody would be helping him.

  “What is your name, Fair Blue?” Grietum asked.

  Lolita knows my name so there’s no point in hiding it, he thought. “Cauly.”

  The blue woman’s shriek made him jump. “Let the hunt for Blue Cauly begin!” she shouted to the roof and raised her arms. Everybody in the throne room erupted in cheers and laughter.

  A hunt?! Cauly’s chest thudded and he felt out of breath. “No! I haven’t done anything to you! Just let me and my brother go!” he shouted hopelessly as three of the beast’s daughters surrounded him to begin their fucked-up ‘hunt’.

  He spotted Lolita approaching. She put a hand on his shoulder and whispered, “They will not harm you. It is not a hunt like one for an animal. It is a hunt for your seed.”

  What the fuck does that mean? Normally Wallace would have asked the questions so Cauly made himself ask, “What the fuck does that mean?”

  “You will see,” she said with a smile. “Just know that you will not be harmed and it is best to embrace the hunt.”

  He was taken below and placed in a cell, hands chained to a pole, forcing him to kneel. The only light came from above, through the grid in the throne room floor. One level up, life in the hive went on. Occasionally he would see Wallace up there. Others would pass over the grid too but always present was Grietum, just visible, sprawled on her chair-cum-bed. Cauly had an unpleasant view of her belly that hung out of the bottom of her shawl. Her stomach was round and swollen and she always seemed to be patting it, or stroking it, and one time he was sure he heard her talking to it as if it were a baby.

  During the first visit from Grietum’s daughters, Lolita explained to him exactly what the hunt was. He didn’t believe her when she told him, “It will end as it always does, with you giving your seed to her.” Then she pointed up through the grid to the throne room where Grietum lay. However, after three visits to his cell, he began to think it might become a possibility.

  Cauly had lost hope that his constant questions about his brother’s safety would get him any answers. And he was done begging for his own release. All he could do was let Grietum’s daughters do what they must.

  “I will have him first after Mother has had her way,” the youngest blonde one said to the other three daughters that were currently kneeling with their faces next to his hard cock.

  Cauly had been chained with his hands above his head and they had been chattering away in front of him for what seemed like an age, playing their games of seduction.

  “No, Iana. He will be mine,” the one with the curvy hips said, her breath puffing across the head of Cauly’s cock when she spoke. “Why do you continue to resist, Blue Cauly? Simply submit to Mother and then we can all experience you.”

  They knew exactly what to say. It was a dream to have four girls kneeling in front of him, begging for him to fuck them. But Cauly wasn’t sure they really meant it. The cell that he was kept in and the big blue woman sitting in her throne room above were constant reminders of the shit situation he was in.

  And Wallace…

  His cock began to go soft at the thought of his brother. Cauly knew the girls would spot this and immediately force him to become hard again. And within seconds there was a hand around his cock, rubbing agonizingly slowly—up and down. If he were to rock his hips, she would copy the movement to deny him anything more than she was willing to give.

  In the same way that your tongue savors a sweet cake in your mouth, Cauly’s eyes were feasting on the sight kneeling in front of him. He’d give anything to cum right now—shoot his seed over all of them. Going from fucking four, perhaps five, times a day, to being teased every hour and never having any release was like an itchy nose…No! Not just an itchy nose. It was like having a fly land on your nose, seeing its little tiny feet tickling your skin and not being able to flick the fucker off and run your nails over the begging skin.

  Now there were more hands on him. One girl cupped his balls. Another reached through his legs and tickled the bit of skin leading to his arse while the blonde one continued to rub slowly up and down.

  His heart skipped with hope and excitement when he saw the one with short brown hair lick her lips and chew inside her mouth. She’s getting ready to suck! And sure enough she moved her head in closer and took his cock into the warmth. Her tongue moved around the head of his cock and then she began to rock her head backwards and forwards.

  It was fast this time—a perfect pace! Don’t let them see how you’re feeling, he told himself, hoping that he could build up to cumming without them noticing. Don’t stop, he thought in his head as a tightness grew. Unable to resist, he clenched his arse cheeks and instantly one of the powerful daughters pushed his hips back and the other that was sucking raised her head and smiled. They all stood with playful smiles on their faces.

  No! he thought, still wavering on the edge, nearly reaching his release. Please don’t bow. Please don’t bow, he begged inside his head.

  All four of the girls bent forward into a low bow, signaling the end of their visit.

  I can’t go on like this forever.

  Wallace

  He was in that blissful time between sniffs. The dust still ran through his body, not enough to give him a full high but enough to satisfy his need so that there wasn’t the constant craving. But soon, the thirst for the dust would be back.

  Cauly! He had to see Cauly in these moments where his mind wasn’t clouded. Wallace went down to the cells below the throne room. He didn’t sneak; it was far better to walk confidently, spear tucked under his arm, nodding politely to any of Grietum’s daughters and his fellow workers (rats, as Grietum called them) that he passed on the way.

  Wall
ace hated to think of himself as a rat, serving another person, but he had to. If he served Grietum she would reward him with the gift of the special ‘dust’. His duties included standing guard—although Grietum’s daughters were far more effective at protecting their mother than the small army of brown-eyed males that Wallace was forced to be part of.

  “Cauly,” he whispered through the bars as those who were in the throne room above slept.

  His brother knelt naked on the floor of the cell, sleeping, with his hands chained to a pole. He began to stir. When Cauly’s eyes locked on to Wallace they drifted down to look at the ridiculous leather kilt and pelt waistcoat that he had been given to wear in order to fit in with the other rats. Cauly’s face winced with confusion and then he whispered, “Are you okay? I hadn’t seen you in days and thought—”

  “—Listen,” Wallace interrupted, “I came to tell you that I’m going to get you out of here.”

  “You don’t have to,” Cauly said, shaking his head. “I’m going to tell them that I’ll lie with Grietum and end the hunt if she agrees to let us both go.”

  In that moment Wallace could possibly picture himself leaving, but he knew that his craving would return. The thought of being stuck outside those huge metal doors knowing that the blood flower dust was trapped on the other side would kill him. Added to that, he knew better than his naive older brother, telling him, “She’s not going to let me go. And she won’t let you go either!”

  “We don’t know until we try though.”

  “If you go with her, then it’ll be too late. She’d have no use for you anymore. I’ve seen what they do to the blues that lie with her. They don’t let them go. My plan will get you out, but just you alone.”

  “I’m not going to leave you behind.”

  “We don’t have a choice!” Wallace snapped, still trying to keep his voice low so as not to wake the sleeping beast above. And I need to stay here for the dust, he thought but held that part of his reasoning from his brother, feeling the shame of being so attached and dependant on specs of dust…wonderful dust…

  “No!” Cauly’s voice was breaking up and his chin was quivering. “What did Mum say to you before she died?”

  Trying to think of the best words that would fit this situation, or at least distract Cauly from the answer he really wanted, Wallace whispered, “She said ‘stop telling lies, Wallace Ryder’.”

  Cauly managed a sad laugh at those words. “Apart from that.”

  Wallace didn’t want to say it in case emotion crept out in his words. With a lump forming in his throat, he took a deep breath and whispered slowly, in an attempt to keep control, “She said, ‘Cauly will look after you now’.”

  “Exactly! And that’s what I’m going to do,” his big brother told him, firmly. “And Dad’s last words to us were to look after each other! So I’m not going to walk out of here and leave you to rot!” Cauly’s voice was beginning to become louder than Wallace would have liked.

  “We can’t both get out! I can’t think of a way for us both to get out,” Wallace lied. Well, he didn’t totally lie. There were perhaps ways they could both escape together but not one with the same likelihood of success. But the main reason Wallace didn’t want them both to escape was because he couldn’t leave. He had to have the blood flower dust. The thought of being marooned in the desert with not only a thirst for water but the thirst that was a million times worse—the wrenching, consuming, overarching, life-threatening thirst for that wonderful, ecstasy-causing, life-giving, blowing-your-load, sniff of black dust…

  Wallace snapped himself out of his lustful addictive thoughts, realizing he had begun clicking his fingers manically, long enough for Cauly to begin staring at him. He looks at me like he doesn’t know me anymore, Wallace thought, then became aware that he was having trouble recognizing himself recently. Even his fake name, Nate, was becoming more familiar than his old name…My real name, I mean…

  Wallace shook his head and got back on track. “At least listen to my plan.” Not bothering to wait for Cauly to agree, he continued, “I can control the doors now—the main doors I mean—to the outside. There’s a blue in the next cell that’s close to breaking point on his hunt. He’s going to fold soon and when he does the main doors get locked down and all the rats and Grietum’s daughters run for the throne room. You’re going to use this,” he said, holding up the key to the cell, “and then you head for the main doors. I’ll go to the control room and let you out.”

  “Why can’t you just leave with me at the same time?” Cauly asked, screwing his eyes up, confused.

  “Because I only know how to control the main doors from deep inside the hive.” That wasn’t a lie. He actually hadn’t been shown the direct controls on the external doors.

  “We’re not going to split up. Mum and Dad never wanted us to split up!” Cauly’s last few words echoed off the walls of the cell but still nothing stirred above in the throne room.

  A heat was building in Wallace’s reddening face. “It’s pointless both of us rotting in here. There’s a chance for you to get out and you’re going to fucking take it!”

  “Stop getting annoyed at me. You always do!”

  “I’m not getting annoyed!” Wallace snarled, feeling the urge for the blood flower coming back.

  The naive bastard added, “Just let me see if I can make a deal with her.”

  “You can’t make a fucking deal!” Now Wallace was annoyed. “Fuck knows how long she’s been doing this but she knows exactly what to do. She knows how to manipulate people’s minds. She knows how to protect herself, and her hive, and she’s not just going to let us wander away from here to tell everybody about her sordid little setup.”

  “We’ll just say we’ll not tell anyone.”

  “Genius!” Wallace said, making sure his sarcasm was clear, completely shocked at his brother’s continuing stupidity.

  “It’s better than your plan!”

  “No, it’s not!” Wallace grunted through the bars. “Nothing you’ve ever done is better than the things I’ve achieved. All you’ve ever done is live off my ideas. If it wasn’t for me you wouldn’t have a roof over your head and you’d be begging for scraps on the street.” He knew what he said was true, and that it would hurt his brother, which he didn’t want to do, but it had to be done to make him want to leave. My head hurts, Wallace said to himself, pining for tonight’s gift of dust. “Now is your chance to fuck off and let me live my life! If it wasn’t for you, I’d still be living with Mum and Dad back home in Arland. I wouldn’t be a pathetic brown-eyed boy, never even getting looked at by a girl. I could’ve been something but you fucked that all up getting seen by the viceroy’s men. It was your fault we had to run!” Wallace hated the things he was saying but the desperate situation fueled his emotions.

  With each word spoken it looked as if Cauly was being punched in the gut. He shook his head.

  Wallace threw the final blow: “So you’re going to do me the favor of taking my advice one last time before you do me the great deed of fucking off!”

  Cauly didn’t respond. He just knelt with his head hanging—making an attempt at trying to use his brain most likely. Wallace stared at him, wanting to tell him that he didn’t mean the things he had just ranted at him (even if they were true).

  “Here,” Wallace said, kneeling to place the key just past the bars. “When he,” Wallace pointed to the next cell, “calls for his hunt to end, count to two-hundred-and-thirty, slowly. You can do that, right? Then, put this on.” He pulled out a cloak that he had tucked into his kilt and pushed it through the bars of the cell and reached to hide it in the darkness off to the side. “And make your way out. The halls will be clear because of the ending of the hunt—everyone will have gone to the throne room. Wait at the main doors. I’ll see you on the glowing panels. And I’ll let you out.”

  Cauly mouthed ‘glowing panels’ as his face twisted in bewilderment.

  “Look, just wait for the signal from next door, coun
t to two-hundred-and-thirty, put on the cloak, use the key and get to the main doors. They’ll be open for you. Then go.” Wallace paused, feeling his throat aching with emotion. “And don’t look back.” He tried disguising a sad sniff as one of his new ‘itchy sniffs’ that he had developed ever since taking the blood flower dust. Wallace turned and walked away.

  “I’ll come back for you,” Cauly whispered. Wallace wasn’t sure if he was supposed to hear it or not but then his big brother repeated, a little louder this time, “I’ll come back for you.”

  A day passed before the call of the ending of a hunt rang through the hive. Wallace was just coming down from a dust high when he heard the whirring-tone rumble through the hive walls, calling everybody to the throne room to witness the giving of seed to Grietum. He began counting—hoping that Cauly would be doing the same. Shit, maybe it’s Cauly who’s given in. He’s maybe backed out of the plan. Fuck, I’ve lost count. He tried to estimate the timing. The alarm stopped. That’s normally at around one-hundred seconds, he thought, readying himself to run from his chamber to the control room.

  When he got to two-hundred-and-thirty, he ran out of the room. His head span from the remnants of the blood flower dust. The halls were empty. Every time he came up to a set of doors, his whole body would tense at the thought of there being another rat on the other side—or one of Grietum’s daughters. The old Wallace would know how to spin a tale to get him out of the sticky situation but now he would only be able to stumble and babble.

  He reached the door to the control room and stroked the panel next to it in the way he’d been shown, and the doors parted for him. Inside the room, a glowing panel showed images of the entrance from different positions. There was no movement—no sign of Cauly.

  The fucking idiot’s counted wrong, he worried. Or it was him that called to end the hunt after all. Then relief came when he saw a cloaked figure appear on the glowing panel—a stumbling, panicked figure, constantly looking behind his back. Wallace saw his brother’s face. For the first time since before Perony’s Saloon, Wallace actually felt a wave of happiness come over him, then the thought of never seeing his brother again darkened his mind like a black cloud passing over the sun.