by R. Lee Smith
And now and then, Olivia would look up and around the rough rock walls and think, I’m coping really rather well with all this, in a vaguely satisfied way and either laugh or cry and then go back to whatever she was doing. She wasn’t going to escape and she wasn’t ever going to meet the Globetrotters, but she was coping nicely and that was fine.
Sometimes Olivia thought she was losing her mind. Sometimes, sitting in the light of the gently popping fire and toying with the items in the cooler, she could actually hear the voice of her World History teacher addressing some invisible classroom. ‘Here we see Olivia idling away her free hours with a device called a Rubik’s Cube. Olivia has quite a lot of spare time. As the lone female of the bat-man, she has no responsibilities apart from sexual submission.’
When the creature brought her food, the invisible teacher might say, ‘Olivia’s captor is demonstrating his fitness as a mate by providing her with nourishment. Olivia’s most basic nutritional needs are adequately met by the foods he has hunted and gathered for her.’
When he commanded her to undress and come into the sleeping pit, that cheerful academic would observe, ‘Olivia’s captor is asserting his dominance through the use of sexual behavior, and as Olivia submits to this, she re-enforces his position both as her mate and as her master.’
It was nice to hear this voice, even if the things it chose to say humiliated and angered her, because at least it was companionship of a sort. The creature ate with her and slept with her, but left her alone in his lair the rest of the time; even when he was with her, he often just watched her, usually from a considerable distance and with a brooding expression. While a part of her knew that hearing voices, no matter how interesting and academic their narrative might be, was not sane behavior, insanity had a way of looking better and better as the days crawled by and the monster who imprisoned her remained real.
But the human mind can be stubbornly resilient, and at last, wearily, she had to accept the fact that people could not simply choose to go crazy. Gradually, the voice of her World History teacher faded into nothing. Now she was utterly alone.
The days took on a numbing monotony. As night fell, the creature would wake, dress, and disappear, leaving Olivia behind to entertain herself. He came and went throughout the day, bringing her food and water, making sure she had enough of that strange, not-wood fuel for the fire, and often just sitting and staring at her. Sometimes he brought her things: a comb whose delicate teeth appeared to be carved from bone, a different magazine after he saw her flipping despondently through the pages of the others, a chew toy in the shape of a frog that croaked when she squeezed it. If she spoke to him, he seemed to listen, even if he didn’t answer; if she pointed at anything, he named it in the growling, guttural language he spoke; if she broke down into one of her not-infrequent crying jags, he left her alone. Now and then, he renewed his warning not to leave his lair, and Olivia obeyed, although her feet had a way of taking her to that front room so that she could stand and stare miserably at the dark hole that promised egress, if not escape. And so her nights passed.
Around dawn, according to the faithful face of her wristwatch, he would return with the last meal of the day and sit with her to share it. Always, patiently, he would speak the words of the food he gave her until she began to glean their meanings. Then he would take her into the washroom and speak the words for water, for clean, and on one awkward day, for her various bodily functions. When she came to bed, he told her the words for sleep, for bedding, for undress. Then he would take her, and when he took her he did not speak.
She saw no one else but him. He never told her his name.
Olivia had begun to keep a calendar, using her finger dipped in ash to make surreptitious marks near the hearth, but on the fifth day she stopped because the futility of it depressed her. The days were all the same, anyway, and if it were not for the fact that her watch kept track of such things, she would not know what day it was at all. The creature manufactured a routine for her, and Olivia fell into it with all the numb-eyed enthusiasm of complete instinctive sociological reversion.
And one day, that routine changed.
2
Olivia was sitting in her alcove playing the triangular game with stones when her captor appeared with the mid-night meal. He set it down on the bench by the fire, turned to go back to whatever it was he did all night, then stopped. After a while, it sunk in that he hadn’t moved or spoke, and Olivia lifted her head cautiously and looked at him.
He was staring at her, his eyes blazing, his nostrils flaring as he tasted the air. She heard him growl once, raggedly, and then again, a little louder.
Olivia’s hands clenched on her game, shaking stones loose. A return of that first, gut-wrenching irrational fear that he would eat her, pounce on her and rip her open with his fangs, clawed its way so deep into her brain that, for a moment, she was in danger of wetting herself in terror.
“Olivia,” he growled, and all his voice was a thrumm of raging lust. “Olivia, I am going to hurt you.” He began to move towards her, hooking his blunt claws into his belt and snapping the fishing line stays with a single pull.
Her scream was completely involuntary, but not loud, issuing as it did through a throat frozen by fear. She scrambled away in a confusion of limbs, trying simultaneously both to stand and to run on all fours. Where she thought she would go, she did not even consider. Like a calf in the sights of a lion, she thought only to run from him.
And like a lion, he sprang. His arm hit her like an iron bar, and then she was flying backwards through the air. She struck the tangled bedding on the sleeping pit, and immediately ensnared herself in folds of blankets and furs. He loomed over her; she kicked at him wildly, and he caught her ankle and pulled it out from her body, filling his lungs with the scent of her spread legs, exhaling a roar before he fell on her.
His hands were weapons for the first time in all the days she had known him, shredding her clothes when he could not pull them from her fast enough. He didn’t even bother to uncover her completely, but just ripped her slacks away, leaving faint scratches over her belly and thighs. The sight of that, and of the thin ribbons of blood that welled there, undid what was left of Olivia’s control. She began to scream and kick and thrash at him.
His strength, scarcely hinted at before now, was brutal, mindless, and utterly without emotion as he yanked her legs wide and reared between her thighs. In a last, desperate act of fear, Olivia sent her fist smashing into the center of his face.
He rocked back, unfazed, then seized her arm as she struck again. She had the disorientating sensation of spinning bonelessly through the air before she landed face down in a suffocating pile of sleeping bags. His claws dug into her hips. He yanked her up, and knocked her thighs apart with his knees.
Then she was shoved violently forward with the awesome splitting force of his penetration. He had never been what she would call skilled, but had always been gentle, always. Olivia’s mind reeled with panic and fear as he fucked hard into her, driving at her like a piston in increasingly short and brutal thrusts, his flanks thudding against her, spreading her wider and wider until she could feel her bones screaming out in protest. She clawed madly to escape him, gaining inches only to be slammed back against him, harder, faster, until his roars reached feverish pitch and he came convulsively and fell atop her.
She lay, arms sprawled out, sobbing, while he continued to grip her hips and snarl his panting breath hot on her back. Then, without warning, she felt him begin to swell hard and hot inside her. He reared back, dragging her with him as she struggled, and then he was fucking her again, fucking her in curt shuddering bursts until his cock was a weapon once more and he could stab her with it again and again.
Olivia scrabbled for purchase in the bedding and managed to brace her hands on the stone rim of the pit. The sudden resistance only allowed him to thrust harder, baying pleasure like a bull and ramming into her until she felt the furious spray of his seed and it was over.
Olivia, her throat raw with screaming, her face a sticky mask of tears and terror, finally reached the limit of her lucid mind and snapped over into blind hysterics where she knew no more.
3
She came around to the sound of her name, called over and over in strained, inhuman tones. She flinched, her eyes snapping open, and saw that she lay safely swaddled in the sleeping pit and that her captor was bent over her, cradling her head. She tried to get away, but the pain was so immediate and overwhelming that she collapsed back into his lap and burst into tears.
“Why?” she wailed, forgetting even to attempt his speech. “Why? What did I do? I’ll never do it again! I’ll never—”
His hand clapped hard over her mouth and pressed down, forcing her silent. She could feel him shaking through his palm, could feel the pulse of his heart beating just as she had felt it through his monstrous cock when it was deep inside her. She lay and breathed and gradually wound down from the heights of terror and confusion, but he wept on. Finally, she reached her shaking hands up and tugged timidly at his wrist.
He released her, crawled backwards out of the pit and huddled, not looking at her.
Olivia sat up woodenly and rolled onto her side. There was an awful moment when she feared she might have dislocated her hips and then it took her weight. She stood and backed away from him onto the solid surface of cool rock. He let her go. She thought of running then, but running was beyond her. Walking with the slow, ragged dignity of great pain, Olivia moved her aching body into the washroom. He did not watch her go.
She hadn’t thought to bring a candle and after a moment’s tentative exploration of her body, she thought that best. She had no desire to catch even a glimpse of herself in the surface of the running water. She ran her fingers over herself and felt raised welts, slashes, and the rubbery crust of dried semen nearly everywhere she touched. It was as vivid a picture as she ever wanted to see.
Olivia found her little towel in the dark and wet it. She scrubbed her face and that felt good. She lifted her hair to wipe at the back of her neck, and that felt good too. Beginning to cry, quietly and without tears, she wet it again and pressed it to her throbbing sex.
Her sobs became a terrible moan, one she knew he’d have to hear and still she could not contain it. She could not bear to rub, even a little, but just held it there, bleeding agony into its coolness until it had no more comfort to give her. How long had she been unconscious beneath him? How many times had he forced his way back inside her while she lay limp and bleeding on the floor? She didn’t want to think about it, but the thoughts were there and so was the dark, and between the two of them, Olivia wept and wept.
After a long time, she finally wet her rags again, found the soap, and tried to wash up, hunting out sticky clots of semen by touch and scrubbing them away. How many times was a drumbeat in her mind, but in due course even that lost its meaning. She’d live, wouldn’t she? As bad as it was…she’d live. Eventually, she become conscious of the fact that she was still wearing the legs of her slacks in pools around her ankles, so she stepped out of them and stooped to scrub at the dried patches of blood and cum that had trickled down her legs.
Then she realized that she had seen the remains of her slacks because there was light in the washroom. She turned and saw him standing in the doorway with a candle in both hands.
She thought she could be brave, but at the sight of him, her eyes welled up again and she blurted, “Why did you do that?”
He did not answer.
“I would have…I would have…” She broke off and hid from him behind her hands, braying hoarse and ugly sobs.
He set the candle on the ground in the doorway and left her.
4
He was gone more than ten hours, and when he returned with his ancient canvas backpack, she was hunched in her alcove, wrapped in a sleeping bag. He inched towards her as if fearing she would try to flee from him, but she only watched him come with glazed, pain-dulled eyes. He set the backpack on the stone ground before her and retreated to the doorway, where he hunkered down and looked at her with helpless remorse.
Olivia stared at the backpack expressionlessly.
The fire hissed and snapped.
She saw one of her hands reaching out to unzip the pack. There was a skirt in there, a stiffish leather skirt to replace her office slacks, and under that, a good-sized bundle of food: Bread, mushrooms, a haunch of something that might be rabbit or dog or whatever came little and blunt-legged like that, a handful of smushy blackberries, and an unopened bottle of apple juice. Real apple juice. Treetop, even.
She peeled back the plastic tie that kept it safety-sealed for her protection, unscrewed the top, and sniffed it. Smelled applely. She took a sip. Sweetness burst in her mouth; tartness stung it. She held the juice in her mouth, closing her eyes to savor it. Swallowed. Capped the juice and looked back at her captor. She could see the whites around his eyes.
She looked down at the food again, selected the haunch of meat, thought a moment, and held it out to him.
His face clouded in wretchedness. He crept towards her, still hunkered low to the ground, low enough that his folded wings dragged behind him. He stopped just beyond her arm’s reach, tentatively stretched out and took her offering. Then he just sat, holding it in his hands and gazing at her unhappily.
“Food,” Olivia said, in his language.
He closed his eyes as if in pain.
“Meat,” she amplified. “For eating.”
He said something she did not know; it sounded like he pulled it from his throat with razors.
Olivia looked up, watched their shadows flicker over the ceiling, and then looked back at him. He hadn’t moved. She said, “Are you hurt?”
He groaned, twisted his face away, said nothing.
“I’m sorry,” she said, her breath beginning to catch in her chest. “For… whatever…I did.”
“Please, stop.” He breathed raggedly for a long time. “You did nothing. You were—” And he said something else she did not know.
She shook her head, too tired to puzzle out the meaning of it.
“I am sorry,” he said heavily. “I am very sorry.”
Olivia picked up a berry and ate it. Sweet and just a little tart, very juicy. She did not know how to tell him that she thought she was all right. She did not know the words for forgiving. She didn’t know if it was true, but she knew she couldn’t live here with him with all this awful hurt and unhappiness between them. When she finished her blackberries, she ate a few mushrooms. When she was done with that, she started in on the bread. Halfway through that, he also began to eat.
They finished the meal in silence and Olivia stood up.
He flinched back, as though expecting her to strike at him, but she just moved past him and took a candle to the washroom. She washed her hands, her face, the blood-scabbed marks he had left on her flesh, and dabbed again at the aching bruise of her vagina just for the gratification of the cool, damp rag on that place of pain.
He was still crouched by her alcove, looking at his hands, when she returned to the pit room. She contemplated the black outline of his body, backlit by the dying embers and tried to feel something for him that she could live with for the rest of her life. At last she went to him and touched his back between his great, spreading wings.
He glanced at her an
d she stepped around him to touch his arm, tug him gently towards the pit. He resisted minutely, then gave in with a sigh and followed her to the pit. She faced him, holding his gaze, trying to tell him with her eyes alone that she didn’t understand, but she could cope, and that was all right. Slowly, deliberately, she removed her shirt and stood naked.
They looked at each other in the firelight.
Olivia lay down and turned on her side. She heard him remove his loincloth, felt the bedding shift as he lay awkwardly beside her. She looked at her watch, counted out thirteen minutes before his hand brushed lightly over the claw marks on her hip.
She lay her hand over his, sighed, and placed his arm around her waist.
He pulled her slowly back against him and draped his wing around her.
He owned her. She was his. It wasn’t horror anymore.
It was despair.
5
How long did it take to come back from that to some semblance of normalcy? For days, Olivia stayed in the pit and indulged her sore muscles and self-pity. Her captor brought some thick, white paste wrapped in leather to daub onto the worst of her wounds and they healed up okay. The mental hurts took longer, but what were her options? She couldn’t be just be afraid all the time, not of the only other person she ever saw.
So she lived with him. She came naked to his bed at the end of the day, not easily or happily, but she went there. They were back to that first night in both their minds, to that same nervous, untrusting truce. They lay beside each other without speaking, without touching, and the days somehow passed.