Moonlight Mist: A Limited Edition Collection of Fantasy & Paranormal)

by Nicole Morgan

  “Get the fuck up!”

  I’m on my feet faster than he can follow up his command with my makeshift name: Dog. I’m sure to stare him, this monster who came into our home eight years ago, in the eye. If I don’t, he’ll kick me. He’ll tell me I’ll never be a man. It’s stupid, really. How can a dog become a man, exactly? I’m not stupid enough to ask him. Instead, I slowly move my left leg a few inches to the left. It’s just enough to be sure Rocky has gotten the message too. I can’t handle seeing the monster hit him in the head again with the vacuum.

  “We have shit to do,” he says.

  I nod.

  “Well? You coming?”

  I have no idea where he wants me to go, but I can take a relatively educated guess for a kid who hasn’t been to school since the monster moved in and told the witch—my mother—that I was too dumb for school. I’m a pretty smart kid. I know, by the leaves I rake into big piles outside the trailer when the monster’s gone, that it’s that time of year again.

  It’s the only time he allows me to stand: When I’m doing chores or out helping him with another haunt. I’m not sure where the monster goes all day. I only know I breathe easier when he’s gone. The second he grabs his flannel shirt from the coatrack, I know, at least for a few hours, Rocky and I are safe. The witch mother won’t hurt me. She can’t be bothered. She’s usually got a list of her own to complete before he gets back – stuff involving web cams and lace outfits that make my stomach turn and I don’t want to know about.

  His glare is so hard I swear my blood will boil. Finally, in as strong of a voice as I can muster, I spit the words out:

  “Permission to get my shoes, Sir?”

  “What the fuck are you waiting for? Meet me in the truck, Dog.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  I scramble down the hall. At the end of it, by a dog bed he forces me to lay in and then laughs about it, are the one pair of shoes I own. I wince, thinking of how I’ll have to squish my feet in them. They have to be three sizes too small by now. I’ve asked Mother for a new pair when the monster wasn’t around. She called me needy and told me she’d send me to the pound. I haven’t asked since.

  It’s not that I think the pound would be such an awful place. It’s that Mother says Rocky is a better dog than me. Sometimes, she takes him away and locks herself in the bedroom with him. He howls. It scares me. I have no idea what they do in there, but it’s enough to make me know that being the favorite dog might not be the best idea. Still, I wish I could protect him better. If I was a better friend or something, well, then maybe.

  I plop into the dog bed, spitting Rocky’s clingy gray hairs from my mouth and careful not to sneeze. I get in trouble when I interrupt Mother in her room on camera. The monster says it makes people stop buying by-the-minute chips. I don’t even know what that means. What I do know is, if I’m super quiet and I do as I’m told, I might have a chance of sitting at the dinner table. I might even get enough food to save the good stuff to share with my dog.

  I can do this, I remind myself. Last year, after a haunt, I’d helped so much that I’d made Mother smile and use my real name. She’d even said she was proud of me for almost a week. And the monster paid me $5 for my work. He even took me to the store so I could buy something. I bought a new collar for Rocky and saved the rest. He told me I was a joke. “Can’t even spend your money right,” he said. This year, if he pays me again, I’ll buy something he’d approve of – bullets, chewing tobacco, or beer. I’ll say it’s a gift. Maybe that will get me a spot at the table.

  I can hardly remember a time it wasn’t like this. I got Rocky when I was five years old as a Christmas gift. Back then, it was just me and Mother. She wasn’t so awful as she is now since she met the monster. Back then, she smiled a lot and didn’t have the wrinkles. Before the monster came, she even took me to the dollar store for school supplies and let me pick out Halloween costumes. The only one I couldn’t pick, she said, was clowns, because they scared her. “You can be anything you want, Bobby. Never forget that,” she said. And I haven’t so far. Someday, I’m going to be a surgeon or someone who can cut what Mother calls the evil out of my eye. Maybe then I can sit at the table – if I’m smart enough and people ask less questions. I can be anything I want. Just don’t give up. I think I believe it.

  I just don’t thinks she believes it and I sometimes wonder what it is that she wanted to be. I can’t get my mind around her wanting to be a witch. But maybe. It was always her favorite costume. She was always talking about potions and costumes and hiding out in her room with some sort of triangle game while sucking down drinks with nasty green olives. “I’m conjuring up your grandfather, Bobby. Leave me alone.” Mother was just sort of strange. In other ways, she was magical. On her best days, she’d find ways to get me away from the monster. She’d let me sit with her on her bed in her room and play with her Ouija board. I’d pretend I could hear the words of my great great grandmother the way she did. In those moments, I wasn’t a dog. As rare as they were, in those times, I was an ordinary kid who hoped to grow up to make his parents proud.

  I cover my ears with my hands. It solves nothing. I can still hear it.

  I close my own eyes, hoping not to see Master on the bed with his wicked mother; conjuring up one dead person after another – teaching him that his condition makes him different than others. Giving him a complex. Petting him like an animal who’s managed to ask to go out. I can’t watch it. Reminding him to brush his teeth to prevent the rot. Telling him to do it when the monster isn’t around. Staying with the monster, who will force my Master to sleep on the floor at the end of a long, narrow hall. No. I cannot do it. I won’t. I summon my spell-given power and hastily exit the portal. Little do I know, it’s for the last time...

  Inside another of his twisted fantasies

  Boom!

  Crack.

  Boom. Boom. …Crack.

  Master’s footsteps echo off the hardwood floors, coming from what I’m left to assume is a hallway. I can’t be sure. It’s not like I’ve left the chamber he’s kept me in for all this time – since I entered the other realm and dared brave his sadistic mind. Hell, I have no idea what it even looks like outside this room. This room: My room, he tells me. More like a pretty cell.

  I shouldn’t complain. It could be worse. The truth is that I have a queen-sized, four poster bed. It is intricately carved in a white wood. It is gorgeous; something I would have loved to own before. But now, it’s a sign of my fate. It’s an omen of my captivity. It is sturdy and heavy. But it is nothing like the chain that attaches to my right ankle; secured so well that no matter how hard I try, I’ll never get loose. I don’t try anymore.

  Instead, I do my best to appreciate this cell. He’s tried. As much as I guess I could expect him to, and in the little ways most men would never think of. I’ll give him that much. It’s something. And when you live in captivity, you take what you can get. The soft plush carpet swallows my feet with every step I take. It’s one of those simple pleasures; one of the few I have left. I love the feel of it. I have never felt such a soft carpet ever. I imagine it is almost like walking on a cloud.

  And that’s not all. My room also has a chaise to lay on and read. Master—Master Holloway to others who don’t know—must have studied me well before he brought me here. He is a man who pays attention to detail. I suppose this should not surprise me at all. He even remembered a heap of erotic stories by my go-to authors. I use them to escape into yet another realm, one where the things he does to me don’t seem so strange at all. There are horror stories too. At times, I wonder if the reading materials he brings to me after long nights at the club are only warnings of what is next to come. I hope not. I try not to think about it. But, when I do, my thighs get wet and I can’t help but anxiously await his arrival. I’m fucked up, I guess.

  I have a dresser too, inside his evil fantasies. It’s filled with tiny nightgowns, like the kind the girls at his club—because being a dentist in fantasy is just too bor
ing—wear to pull tricks on shady men Master sometimes gripes about. The gowns are never longer than mid-thigh. Master seems to like me exposed. I don’t even have normal clothes, only lingerie I wouldn’t know how to wear without his instruction or ever-tapping toes.

  Ten feet or so from the heart of my cell is a generous bathroom suite with a claw foot tub and a toilet. It’s not particularly fancy, but is equally gorgeous to ‘my room.’ It is decorated in the mutest of creams and whites – so much different than the gentlemen’s club he runs and the place I first met him at. In many ways, I should be grateful, I suppose. I was the one who decided to flirt with danger. I was the one with the nagging temptation to feel pain, like the kind I suffered at the hands of my late husband, again. In truth, I only wanted to feel alive. Master did that for me. He still does. He is the key, even now, to my very survival.

  This room he’s provided me is really nothing more than a cell. There are times I believe he’s made it as nice as possible to excuse himself for what he’s done. Like it or not, the windows are smash proof. Like his eyes, which happen to match now in his private fantasies. Like his heart. His soul. Possibilities of us ever being normal: Only he can open them up. On days where he’s most generous and only after I’ve performed for him, there are times he will crack them just enough to allow fresh air in. Even then, they only open enough to allow a slight breeze. He—my captor—thought it all down to the last detail. Brackets on the windows will not allow them to open far enough to fit even the smallest of bodies through. Even if they did, I am not small. It’s hopeless: Just the way Master intended it.

  I hear Master getting closer. I suck in a burst of stale air and pray he won’t mind that I’ve neglected to bathe today: Caught up in another story. He is almost at my door. I stand, ready to assume the position.

  Boom.

  Boom. Boom. Boom.

  Boom.

  Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom.

  His footsteps come faster, but softer now – as if he wants to surprise me. As if I will disobey. As if I don’t spend all my time waiting for his arrival. I am nearly as sick as he. My heart races. I can hear the keys he carries rattling as he walks. I have been told that when I hear the three knocks on my door I have exactly two minutes to be kneeling in front of the bed with my head down and palms face up resting on thighs. It doesn’t matter what I am doing before he knocks. All that matters is that when that door opens, I am in that position. The position. “Assume the position,” it’s a thing he’s said to me and the others so many times he no longer needs to say it. As if it was something new or something Greg hadn’t already taught me. It was funny how men like them underestimated their slaves. Predictable. And somehow? Hot as hell too.

  Knock.

  Knock. Knock.

  I stand there, eyes bulging heart racing. It has been a week since his last visit. This is the one where he will touch me – also predictable. I know this because he has told me. And again, it’s as if I don’t have mind enough to know or notice the patterns. Still, I will play dumb like I always do. A big part of me wants to just stand there and fight him when he comes in. But another part, the self-preservation, part, says drop to your knees, assume the position, remember what Greg used to do to you if you didn't listen, it would be nothing compared to what a man that abducted you is probably capable of. If I’m honest with myself—which I’m usually not—I’m predictable too. These same thoughts and temptations race through my head every time he knocks. But they are better than thinking about the truly scary thing – that I’m excited by it all too. Like usual, as the knob turns, I have seconds to decide what to do. And like always, in the very last second, I drop to my knees and assume the position.

  I keep my eyes down like I’ve been trained to do. All I can see is Master’s bare feet as he walks up to me. I don’t look up. I know I need to wait until I am addressed. Minutes pass, but it feels like hours. I am shaking and tears are pooling in the corners of my eyes. I will not cry. I will never give a man my tears of fear again. Not after Greg and what I did to him. Good riddance, bastard. I breathe deeply, trying to calm myself. As I inhale the fresh sea breeze smell of him mixed with his $300 per ounce cologne, I begin to get dizzy; my head soaring to the same clouds the carpet is sewn of. I hate myself for wanting him, but can’t help it. It’s just how it is and has always been with Master Holloway.

  Master bends down. He reaches out with his right hand. I flinch. It’s a reaction I have had for more years then I can count. Thank you, Greg. Master lets out a deep breath, lifts my chin, and tells me to look at him. I slowly raise my blue eyes to meet his chocolate ones. I gasp. It’s not right, and I wish I could change it, but he is gorgeous. Well, to me he is. I’m aware of his cooked nose and sharp feathers which other women may find too severe. But what about him, isn’t? Everything about Master is extreme. Including his sense of humor.

  He grins at me as I fight the heat flooding from my round belly to my pussy. He releases my chin and strokes my cheek with his thumb. I lean into his palm and hate myself for it. I can’t help it. I’m lonely. It’s been a month since I’ve gotten off. And the stories. Oh, the stories.

  I was told on my first day here, and many times since, there are cameras in my room and if I touch myself in any way sexually I will pay the price. So, I have withheld from touching myself. Master is a man of his word and I do believe him when he says I’m being watched – constantly. Even on earth. I just don’t know for sure who by. It doesn’t matter. He’s here now – watching me in person. Stop complaining, Ester. It’s what you asked for. For him to see you…To even want to.

  Master runs his hand down my arm. I break out in goosebumps which betray me as he chuckles. Heat rises to my face. I want to kill him like I did Greg. Yet, I couldn’t ever live with it like I have just fine the brutal death of my shitty, dead husband. Always in control, Master tells me to spread my legs. I stare at him in shock. I mean, I knew this was coming but another part of me didn’t really believe it would actually happen. Not again. Not this time. But it is. Do I fight and risk being hurt or killed? Do I pretend? Do I even know what I want any more or who I even am? Ester. Your name is Ester. Never forget.

  There is no other way. I spread my knees apart, exposing my bare pussy to him. I was getting ready for bed before he knocked. I blush a little because I know he will see that I am wet. He inhales deeply and tells me what a good little slut I am. I recoil a little, as that word has always been used to hurt me. Somehow, though, it’s different off his lips – like he approves or something else I don’t quite understand.

  Master misses nothing. He pulls me forward and tells me a ‘good slut’ is a title to be proud of. I decide to tuck that away and process it later. I try my hardest to muster a smile that says that I get it and that, though I do not, I like being called a slut. I fail and I know he doesn’t fall for it, but he also doesn’t call me on it. Instead, he slips the straps of the dusty rose silk nightgown down my shoulders. It drops and hangs at my waist; clinging to my less than tiny hips but at least offering me a little relief from my total exposure to the man who now owns me. My skin burns with nervous anxiety, cooled only by the wetness of my excitement and sweat. I try my hardest to look willing and pliable as I can. The cool air hits my nipples and they harden immediately, causing him to take notice and pinch them as more heat floods to my pussy.

  Breathing deeply through my nose, I lick my lips in a battle with myself to let him keep touching me and enjoy this moment of pleasure or take the risk to swat him away. At the moment he and my body are winning the war. I reach out to touch his bare chest, wondering what impact it will have. He came in only wearing tracksuit pants. He slaps my hand away. I cringe and he tells me he hasn’t given me permission to touch him. I must ask first. He raises an eyebrow no doubt in invitation for me to ask. I decide not to ask—fuck him—and to just let my hand rest at my side. My own little rebellion. Fuck him. Fuck him. And fuck Greg too.

  Master’s face goes a little dark. He knows what I a
m doing. He tells me to stand. I do. My nightgown falls to the floor as he pushes me face down over the bed, my feet still engulfed in the plush carpet, and that ridiculous chain on my ankle. I lay there, ass and pussy on display, belly and face on the mattress, quivering. I should have just gone along with it, I decide, cursing myself for messing with him even a little. Or maybe not. God that feels good. Too good. It’s wrong, Ester, wrong. He runs his fingers down my back, down my ass crack over my hole and along the slit of my glistening pussy to my clit where he rubs. He bends down and blows cool air on my ass while running lazy circles around my clit. I’m mortified, but not.

  He doesn’t seem to want me to. He doesn’t care that I am involuntarily moaning into the mattress. I think I may just have one of the biggest orgasms I have ever had. I want more, I need more, but I will not ask for it. Master knows I am trying to fight but show some submission all at once. At least, I think he does. His right hand is still buried in my ass, so he reaches around with his left hand and squeezes and pinches my left nipple. Lightening runs from my nipple to my pussy on an invisible chord so intense it’s like all my nerve endings are on fire. I might just explode.

  Master must sense this. I feel my body tightening. He says, in a deep commanding voice, I am not to cum yet. Instead, he informs me, my first orgasm has to be on his dick. But I have to beg for it. If I don’t and I cum, I will be punished “like the others.” Where do they live? In this portal? Inside of him? Or somewhere else? The others: I don’t know what that means. He’s referred to ‘the others’ before but never elaborates. I imagine them as dead as Greg.