Shalia's Diary Omnibus

by Tracy St. John

  From time to time, Oses came to me, temporarily halting the Earther’s torment. He reminded me in hushed whispers to be strong for the baby, that it would be over soon, that he would someday repay Finiuld for all the horror we’d been forced to endure. Then he straightened and loudly announced, “As you wish, my Matara.” The cries started all over again.

  Let me say here that I do not blame Oses for what he did. I have gotten to know how the Nobek mind works. As a protector first and foremost, Oses had a job he had sworn to do above all else: keep me and my unborn safe from harm. He was able to submerge all conscience, compassion, and humanity in order to achieve that goal. He had to in order to save his own soul while he went about his duty. He could have done a lot worse than the horrors he performed.

  I am no Nobek. At last I couldn’t take what was happening anymore. I yelled, “Enough!” Because I didn’t want Finiuld to take out any frustrations he might have had on Oses, I added, “I’m bored. This man is as weak as a child and sickens me with his crying.”

  It was only a microscopic bit of a lie. I was sickened, all right. I was nearly crying myself.

  Since Oses had to obey me for appearances sake, he ended the assault. I opened my eyes before turning to Finiuld. I tried not to look at what had been done, but I saw the blood. The Earther rolled from his stomach to his side, curling in a fetal position as he sobbed.

  Somehow, I managed not to fall apart. Instead, I faced Finiuld. My face felt numb, so I doubted that I managed the haughty ‘Her Highness is Displeased’ expression I went for. I could have cared less at that point. The ship could have blown to smithereens, and I would have been more relieved than anything else.

  I said, “It’s a start, Finiuld. Thank you for giving me retribution.”

  Finiuld wasn’t happy, but he didn’t seem angry either. Just disappointed. “I am sorry he didn’t perform as well as you deserved. When you refused to abuse him yourself, I knew he was lacking. Unfortunately, the Earther men are scattered few and far between in this part of space, so they’re hard to come by. However, I will endeavor to find someone more befitting your needs.”

  I swallowed a tide of nausea. I hoped it would be a long, long search before the bastard found someone else.

  Finiuld jerked his head to the Tragoom who stood behind him like a stone monolith. “Be ready to pull him out. Earther, leave the room.”

  The weeping heap on the floor didn’t move. “Fuck you,” he managed to gasp between sobs.

  Finiuld set off his collar. When the Earther finished screaming, the Little Creep again ordered him out of the containment.

  “I thought you were giving him to me.” I was worried that this failure to please me would earn the man more torment than he’d already endured.

  “He is not good enough for you, Shalia.”

  The Earther crawled pathetically across our fake grass towards Finiuld and the waiting Tragoom. God, I felt awful for what he’d been through.

  “You’ll keep him as another of your exhibits?” I had the crazy urge to ask Oses to carry the poor man. He moved with an awful slowness that was painful to watch.

  “No, I don’t care for the males of your race. They disgust me now that I comprehend the full extent of their abuses.”

  The man neared the containment field. Finiuld patted the Tragoom’s arm. “Be ready when I activate the phase.”

  The Tragoom shuddered and winced at his touch. Without the collar, the big monster could have squashed Finiuld.

  That the Little Creep wasn’t adding the Earther to his collection gave me a surge of hope. Would he let him go free? Would the man perhaps tell others of the Ofetuchans? Maybe word would get to the Kalquorians, and they’d pick up our trail.

  I was brutally disabused of that notion with Finiuld’s command to the Tragoom. “All right, snag him and he’s yours. You will not eat until I return you to your cell, however.”

  Behind me, I heard Oses’s sharp intake of breath. I stared at Finiuld. “Wait. What?”

  Oses gripped my shoulder, and he pulled me against him. “By the ancestors. If I’d realized, I would have granted the poor bastard a merciful death.”

  Finiuld and the Tragoom disappeared. The Earther was close to the containment shield, shaking and crying. I saw a flicker in the shield and tried to yank free of Oses. “Finiuld! You gave him to me! The Earther is mine!”

  The man disappeared, and the containment flickered more strongly than before. They were dragging him out. Taking him away.

  I remembered that Tragooms do not kill before they feed.

  “Finiuld!”

  “You can’t help him, Shalia,” Oses whispered as the containment field stopped its rippling. “Mother of All, I am going to rip that tiny monster’s heart out for this. I swear it on my ancestors’ names.”

  I kept yelling. “Give him back, you damned Little Creep! You said I could have him! Finiuld! FINIULD!”

  It was too late. They were gone, the Earther was going to die in the most awful way I could conceive of, and it was all my fault.

  I hadn’t been strong enough to torment the poor man, so Oses had taken on the terrible duty to keep me and my child safe. The Earther had suffered because of my ridiculous agreements to Finiuld’s drunken arguments that men such as him needed to pay. When I couldn’t bear to do it myself, Finiuld had taken it as a sign that our victim was adequate only for Tragoom fodder.

  My fault. All my fault.

  I guess I had a breakdown then. There is a period I don’t remember. Oses later told me it lasted about two days. I curled into a ball on the ground and wept. Except for falling asleep for some hours, during which I screamed from nightmares, I did nothing else.

  Oses spent that time holding me. He tried to coax me to sense, murmuring words he was sure I could no longer hear. He said my eyes, even as they spilled nonstop tears, were blank.

  “That may have been the scariest torture I’ve ever been through,” he admitted when I rejoined reality and began talking sense again. “If you hadn’t cried, I would have believed your mind had been broken beyond repair. I hated seeing you weep, but it gave me hope you’d return. If you were in there somewhere, feeling pain, then you weren’t completely gone. That’s what I told myself.”

  Maybe Oses was right, because after an eternity of blankness, I became aware of my surroundings once more.

  I was in the pond, naked in Oses’s arms. His hands moved carefully over my body. He was bathing me. It soothed but was also utterly strange to have this wild, muscle-bound Nobek caring for me like a father with a baby. I was safe for a few precious moments before I remembered where I was and what had happened.

  At that point, my consciousness begged to be taken away again. I didn’t want to be there anymore. I wanted to hide in the void I’d fled to, where psychotic leprechauns didn’t drag off people to be eaten by monsters.

  Yet I couldn’t go again, and after a few moments I realized why. I had a hostage to fortune on board. I had to gather my strength and get the fuck out of there before the baby arrived. God only knew what Finiuld would do when he had a child to use again me.

  Oses’s voice penetrated my foggy cocoon of madness, as if catatonia had decided to release me once I remembered I had somebody to fight for. In his deep, growly voice, the Nobek crooned, “That’s it, Shalia feels better when she’s clean. Soon she’ll wake up and stop crying. She’ll be okay again, and we will find a way to tear that nasty bastard to dripping shreds. I will eat his heart in front of his dying stare, and Shalia won’t cry anymore.”

  I guess that was the Nobek version of a lullaby. I blinked up at him.

  “Oses?”

  He drew in a sharp breath. “I thought you were looking at me, but I was afraid to get my hopes up. Are you back? Can you talk to me now?”

  I lifted a shaking hand to caress his jaw. “Did I freak out? Damn, I feel weak.”

  Oses carried me out of the pond. “I haven’t been able to convince you to eat. I’ve been saving your meals
for when you came out of it. The last two should still be edible.”

  Remaining as solicitous as a parent with a sick child, Oses fed me. “I hope the baby is okay,” I whispered to him between bites. “What with me not eating and all.”

  “I don’t know for certain, but I think your body would continue to nourish the child. It’s not that far along, so it hopefully doesn’t require much.”

  I felt better after putting some food in my stomach. I apologized up and down to Oses for going weak on him.

  “No, don’t ask me to forgive you. There is nothing to forgive,” he insisted. He managed a smile. “I’m just glad you regained your senses. That took strength.” He nodded to the ever-sobbing Plasian a few cells over. “She may never return. At least you summoned the bravery to do so.”

  I asked Oses if anything important had happened while I was on my mental vacation.

  He shook his head. “There has been no sign of Finiuld. No doubt he is hunting around for another man for you to claim justice from.”

  I shuddered. “I’m not as courageous as you give me credit for. I can’t do this, Oses. It’s too much. I’ll go insane for real if he brings another Earther male here. What the fuck do we do?”

  Oses rubbed the palms of his hands over his angry face. “We must lure Finiuld into the containment. We have to kill him and escape before this goes any further.”

  Our opportunity came the very next day, before we had any sort of a plan for it.

  February 26

  I woke with Oses wrapped around me. If there was a favorite time of day since our captivity began, this was it. Warm and sheltered in the Nobek’s arms, I was sufficiently sleepy-brained to revel in the sensation. The hell of our situation wasn’t fully present. I could pretend for a few precious moments that I was safe and secure.

  I was basking in this half-awake state of near-contentment when it happened. I felt what seemed to be someone lightly thumping low inside my abdomen. It happened twice.

  I puzzled over this for a second when it hit me: the baby had moved.

  I sat up in our cave with a gasp. Oses also rose, quizzical.

  “The baby kicked. I swear, I felt the baby,” I said excitedly.

  Oses’s brows drew together in concern, and the euphoria of the moment passed for me too. My child was growing, and in a few weeks, I would be showing. Damn it, we had to escape.

  I pushed past Oses to get out of the cave. Unable to stay still, I paced back and forth. My child was running out of time before Finiuld discovered its existence. We had to get out of there!

  “It has to be soon,” I said as I passed Oses, who stood quietly, watching me fret. “And if we fail to get out, you’ll have to – you’ll have to—”

  I broke off and stared up at him. I swallowed hard, unable to voice what had to be done if we couldn’t escape Finiuld’s ship.

  He nodded. No words were needed to finish my sentence. Instead he pulled me close and hugged me hard.

  “If it comes to that, it will be quick and painless,” he whispered into my hair. “I promise you have nothing to fear, and I’ll follow you soon after. We’ll meet the ancestors together.”

  “Thank you.” Tears filled into my eyes.

  My weeping was, shockingly enough, out of relief. Now that I had sensed the first stirrings of my child’s life, contemplating death should have more frightening. Not so. For the first time in weeks, I could look forward to not being afraid anymore.

  I understood why some people opted out when life grew beyond endurance. It was freeing to realize that this could be over soon. A great weight lifted from me. Whether our escape attempt from Finiuld succeeded or failed, I would not have to wake up or go to sleep terrified of the future anymore.

  I was leaving one way or the other, and my child would not suffer.

  I smiled my first real smile since I was taken prisoner. I gave that smile to Oses. “Thank you from both of us. From me and the baby.”

  “You’re pregnant?”

  Finiuld’s voice, shrill with delight, came from behind me.

  As if caught by the monster in a nightmare, I slowly pivoted. The nasty bastard, wearing neon pink from his cap to his boots, was there inside the containment. He’d snuck in to hear our quiet conversation. He fairly danced with glee.

  “You’re pregnant? Is it this man’s? Will it be a boy or a girl? Oh Shalia, I so hope you’re having a daughter! Two lovely female Earthers in my collection! Everyone will be insane with jealousy!”

  That was all Oses needed to hear. The moment the Ofetuchan stopped talking and Oses emerged a second later from the hypnotic weave of his speech, the Nobek launched himself at Finiuld. The next second Finiuld shouted, and Oses writhed on the floor, screaming with pain.

  Despite the agony, he managed to inch across the ground towards Finiuld, murder in every fiber of his being. He battled the hell of his collar to attack our captor.

  For his part, Finiuld’s good humor heightened at the Nobek’s valiant attempt. “You’d better order him to calm down before that collar drives him insane, Shalia.”

  He was so busy being amused that he failed to notice me coming at him until I was there. I knocked him on his back, my fingers wrapped around his throat.

  “Nobek Oses’s collar commands off!” I screamed, praying that Finiuld had given me power over the Nobek as he’d promised. Oses’s shrieks ceased, but I was too busy killing the Little Creep to check on him.

  Finiuld’s black eyes bulged out at me, mostly because I was choking the life out of him, but there was also an expression of disbelief. He hadn’t figured out I had switched my collar off. Sometimes I do get lucky.

  I wanted Finiuld dead. Let there be no doubt on that account. I have never wanted anyone six feet under more than him. I throttled him, squeezing his throat as hard as I could, sitting my weight on him to keep him down. I wanted to kill him so bad I couldn’t feel his four fists battering me as he fought. A bloodthirsty beast inside me thrilled in cold delight as Finiuld’s struggles grew weaker.

  I have seen that face in my nightmares since then. I’ve watched the light fading in Finiuld’s eyes over and over. I’ve seen the tears rolling from their corners. I’ve seen his mouth gaping wide as he fought desperately for breath. I’ve watched that ruddy face purple, then hedge into blue. I wake screaming from it. I have no idea how much worse the dreams would be if I had actually killed the Little Creep.

  However, Oses wouldn’t leave that awful necessity to me. As I attempted murder, Oses committed it by grabbing hold of Finiuld’s head and yanking it backwards.

  There was an unimportant cracking sound, like someone popping their knuckles. Then Finiuld went limp and Oses jerked clear with a last agonized yell. I stared at the back of the Little Creep’s head with its wild orange spikes. Finiuld was dead.

  I sat on top of the Ofetuchan’s body, my fingers still clenched around his throat. The wildly drumming pulse beneath my palms had disappeared. If his head twisted about 180 degrees hadn’t been enough to convince me, that would have.

  Oses’s hands curled around my wrists and he tugged. “Let him go, Shalia. It’s over.”

  My suddenly numb fingers lost all tension, and my grip slipped away. We’d killed Finiuld. Well, technically it had been Oses who finished the deed, but I’d been ready to murder.

  At that moment, I felt little except relief. It was over. Finiuld was dead. He couldn’t hurt my child. We’d done it.

  Except we hadn’t taken care of the whole situation. We were still stuck in our containment cell without a clue as to how the phase mechanism worked. A sense of horror stole over me. We were far from out of our predicament.

  “Now what?” I asked Oses.

  “Good, you’re still sane.” The relief was obvious on his expression. “Take the phase control off him and hand it to me.”

  I did so. As Oses flipped the device over and over in his hands, I stood and stepped from the corpse of our tormentor. I couldn’t bear to touch him anymore.
<
br />   The Dantovonian Lurb buzzed urgently at us. I imagined he begged to be liberated too, which made perfect sense to me. All the other prisoners were at the containment fields of their cages, watching us with hope. Even the Plasian had stopped crying.

  I raised an eyebrow at the glowering Tragoom. I was pretty sure Oses wouldn’t go out of his way to free that nightmare. My thought was for us to dump him and the rest of Finiuld’s Tragooms on the nearest moon or planet. They didn’t deserve to be prisoners, but I sure as hell wasn’t ready to let them run loose either.