by _Anthology
"How can you say that?" Malcolm insisted, sitting up straight. "How can you possibly say that about me? I would never lie to you." The selkie glanced sadly back at Malcolm, tears in his eyes. "But you have. It's because I love you that I let you do it to me. If I wanted to leave, if I wanted to hurt you like that, don't you think I would've gone already? Do you think I don't know where you keep it hidden? You haven't gone back to look at it, so sure you kept it safe. What makes you think it's even still there?"
As Malcolm, shocked and hurt, tried to formulate a response, Dublin declared, "And now you'll be angry at me for looking! As if I didn't have a right to take back what you stole from me! You don't understand what it's like, Malcolm, you don't get it! I mean, what do you expect me to do? It's like some demented game of hide and seek, you know? I can't do anything else, Malcolm, I can't! You've kept my freedom away from me! That isn't love! You, you of all people should know how it hurts, being held prisoner against your nature, not being allowed to be what you are! And what I am isn't human and what I am doesn't belong here, no matter how much I wish I could stay!"
"What?" Malcolm demanded. "What? How can you say that I don't love you? I've taken care of you, bought you everything that you need. I've written you dozens of poems-" "I know!" The selkie wailed. "I know and I'm grateful, but that isn't enough! None of that's what matters, Malcolm, and you just don't see it! I don't have to justify myself to you; it's what anyone would do, what I've done! I don't get why you don't want me to be who I am; I don't understand why you try so hard to keep me here!" He cried. Dublin put his beautiful face to his hands and sobbed, and sobbed, and sobbed. When Malcolm tried to hold him close, to comfort him, Dublin bawled, "Please, Malcolm! Leave me alone!"
Getting dressed, the baffled man left the bedroom and went to walk along the soothing shore of the lake, the day dawning, hot and humid. When he returned, Dublin was gone and the attic door was open, the knob carefully removed, set beside the boxes, along with a rusty screwdriver. There was no trace of dust on the floor and the room was completely empty, but for the whisper of the wind through an open window. Around him another day bloomed, beautifully, the silence of the empty house resounding.
To Awaken from the Dream
by Ariel Graham Briony's goodbye had already started to slip away by the time he entered underground. Last night she had tried to see him off with all the depth of feeling she could muster but for Briony there wasn't much depth. She was a princess, pink and blond with her perfect Brazilian and her polished nails and toes, her hair just the right shade of blond, her nose just the right ski jump angle by Dr. Bob who did everybody's noses when they reached sixteen.
Theo didn't care about any of it. Heir apparent to his father's kingdom of software and electronics, he'd still managed to spend every college summer out west, working construction, getting sun, building muscle, getting laid. Every year he'd tell himself he wasn't going back and every fall he returned to Long Island in time to greet Briony as she returned from the Hamptons, not so much tan as golden and glowing. Sparkly. And slick. Sometimes he thought he'd slide right off her. Other times he thought there wasn't enough room for him to slide in. And the night before she had said goodbye, a last meal for the condemned man and he'd nearly choked on it. Holding her, she was all cling and need and when she took him in her mouth he felt an obstruction in his own throat.
Ari's breast brushed against his arm and Theo started, looked around at the others. Three girls, three boys, Ivy Leaguers all. Slim (anorexic). Tall (growth hormones). Attractive (money). All the latest styles, in good taste, of course. Two of the girls were blond. Ari was a throwback to some non-Aryan edge of her line. The other two boys were thin with gym-toned muscle and carefully styled hair. Just looking at the group gave Theo a surge of irritation.
He couldn't think of a group less prepared to fight for their lives.
They were hopeless.
"Which way?" he asked to break the silence and get them moving and that started them all talking, all at once, each needing to be heard above the others. Kimmy and Liam, Brad and Stephanie. Stef was trying to get a signal on her cell and almost crying in frustration. Who she thought was going to save her was beyond Theo -- it was their most loved ones who had sent them here -- their parents. Who else was there? Everyone else in such circles was busy doing lunch.
Kimmy was alternately crying against Brad's Brooks Brothers shirt front and text messaging, while Liam had his laptop out and set up, determined to find a map of the labyrinth and lead them out. Liam, the hero of the day.
There was no map of this place. Technically it didn't exist. Theo grew up in Silver Peak's corporate offices, harassing secretaries, reading stock reports, eating lunch out of vending machines with the cleaning crew because his daddy was too busy to go to lunch or was lunching downtown with Someone Important. As a boy Theo had explored every inch of the building, hidden in air ducts in the women's bathroom, and the men's, and ridden the elevators, hindered the plant people (greens, the staff called them), read annual reports and learned how to make creme brulee from a bored caterer. But every time he got close to underground his father's radar kicked in and someone brought him back.
All that time, trying to find the source of the sounds that periodically shook the building -- the roaring, bestial sounds.
"It's just the heating/air conditioning/waste system/shredder," people told him. "It's nothing, Theo, don't worry about it." He worried about it. And he searched. But he never got underground. Now he was here and it was the last place on earth he wanted to be.
"I got a signal!" Steffy cried. Her face flushed and her hair was almost in disarray. She waved the phone at them all, then shushed them and listened intently for an instant before her face crumpled.
"I told you so," Brad said. "Gold Company is not going to let any Silver Peak signals out. We are cut off." He looked ready to cry. Ari slipped to his side and laid one hand on his arm. Her other hand continued to worry the ball of string she carried and refused to let go of. "What good would it do? We're here. People know we are here. If someone was going to do something, they would have." She looked around at the circle of faces, her eyes large and dark. "We are the spoils of war. Gold Company has taken Silver Peak. We are the sacrifices."
"But here," Liam said. "I used to have nightmares about this place when I was a kid."
Theo felt his own eyebrows raise. "Why?" He'd spent so much time trying to get down here.
Liam shrugged and pointed straight ahead with his chin. "Look at it." Hallways leading off of hallways. The walls were institutional gunmetal gray with a high sheen. The airy twelve foot ceilings upstairs gave way underground to seven or eight feet. Theo kept wanting to duck. And everywhere the hallways. They should lead to things, to mechanical rooms and electrical rooms and plumbing rooms, but the doors led to more hallways, marked only at intervals and only with fire extinguishers and the ever present axe under glass.
Tableau. Brad and Stephanie still argued about the cell phone. Stephanie was actually crying now, but in a refined and proper way. Her mascara did not run. Liam still searched for floor plans that didn't exist. Kimmy had given up and leaned against a wall, waiting. The two men wore Brooks Brothers and white starched shirts, cuff links, tie pins, aftershave and razor cuts. The two women wore Prada and Ann Klein, inappropriate heels and expressions of betrayal and distrust.
Beside him Ari wore a dark pullover sweater and jeans, running shoes. Theo was dressed similarly, in functional clothes. His mother had been incredulous, his father scandalized. "You're going in that?" Old tshirt, vibrant blue. Blue jeans. Briony had asked the same things as she dressed after her pre-dawn visit. "You're wearing that?" She blotted her lips on a tissue and Theo wondered again how she did that, how she could suck him off without even smudging her lipstick.
"I'm going underground," he had said. "It's not like it matters." "It always matters," she'd said and Theo, now standing by the elevators which had locked behind them, thought two things: first
, that no one ever came back from underground. No one. Ever. And second, that at least he no longer had to marry Briony. There was a bright side.
The sound came then, the sound from his childhood -- a rough, angry roar that shook the hallways. Everyone flinched and moved closer to what they were doing, trying to ignore it. Only Ari reacted. She nudged him. "Let's go." She held the ball of string in her hands, the first couple feet of it knotted and grayed where she'd played with it nonstop.
"Go?" He sounded incredibly stupid to his own ears. "We're just supposed to wait here." He spread his hands reasonably, a gesture his father had made countless times as Theo was growing up.
Ari turned away from the hall in front of them and glared. "Who told you that?"
"My father." He'd told them all. They were Silver Peak's tithe, the answer to Gold Co's demands. They were the future of the corporation, its life's blood. They were special. They were chosen. "You always do everything your father tells you?" Theo flushed. "No." He sounded sulky. And six. He'd gone away every summer, hadn't he? Worked with his hands and sweat.
But he'd come back every fall, too. "Look, we can stay here with them, or we can try to get out of here." Ari waved a hand at them and the others didn't even flinch at her contempt. Liam still worked frantically at his laptop, sobbing now, apparently unaware the screen had gone black and blank. Kimmy sprawled on the floor, alternately shaking her phone and saying into it, "Mommy? Mommy? Please pick up. Please don't do this to me. Mommy. Please." Brad had backed Stephanie into a wall. Her shirt was open and Brad kept nuzzling her breasts while Stephanie stared over his head and down the hall, where the lights were going off, one by one. Her eyes were wide in unreasoning panic.
Theo nodded. "Go where?" "Anywhere. Out. We're supposed to just wait here. Some kind of character test? Some kind of test of will? Or what? Stay here till they come back for us? What kind of test is that? Or do they think we'll believe we're going to enter into mentor relationships with Gold Co? Is that what we're supposed to believe? How stupid do they think we are?" She pulled on the string, apparently testing the strength.
Theo looked doubtfully at the others and nodded. "Nobody ever comes back from underground," he said, and Ari nodded. "What's the string for?" The sound came again, closer now, something like a beast in the jungle, something no one could identify until all hope was lost and it was far, far too late. The sort of sound that comes before the screaming and the snarling and the rending.
Ari shuddered and crossed the hallway without looking in the direction of the sound. "If this is a pick up location, where they come back for us, we'll come back to it. If we don't get out some other way." She tied the string to a doorknob and tested it. It held. "If it isn't it won't matter much but at least we can find our way back to the elevators."
"And them," Theo said. Ari nodded. Brad bit Stephanie's breast, Liam typed on his unresponsive laptop, Kimmy cried. Down the hallway another light went out, the darkness advancing slowly, as if savoring their fear. Ari eyed the darkness. "This way." She took Theo's hand in hers, grasped the string in her other hand, and lead him away from the elevators and the others and the life he had known.
The sound came again, a booming echo, like nothing he'd ever heard before, and Theo couldn't tell if it came from behind them or if they were heading directly toward it. "We've been going forever," Theo said and he felt Ari's hand twitch in his, but she wouldn't let go of him to check her watch. If she'd even be able to see it. The lights had stopped blinking out ahead of them and behind them and now just faded down dimmer and dimmer. Theo trailed one hand along the wall as they walked, Ari unraveling the string to lead them back through the maze behind them. He doubted it mattered, didn't believe they'd ever go back. The darkness was complete and the sounds came from all around them now, distant, then closer, echoing. Angry.
Finally, he stopped. Ari turned to him, impatient and afraid. "We can't stay here." She pulled at him and Theo used both hands to hold her still.
"Ari, there's no point. There's nowhere to go. There's nowhere to go to. There's no end to this, there's only maze."
But she stared past him, eyes wide, something on her face he couldn't read, maybe she'd seen a way out, maybe light. Her hand shook in his though and he turned slowly, afraid, heart pounding again.
A being strode out of the darkness or the darkness fell back from it. Tall, Theo thought. So tall. Over six feet and his skin glowed, gleamed like satin, a dusky blue gray, cloaked with iridescent pearl white that flowed behind him. Black hair fell straight and smooth, glossy raven's mantle across his shoulders which were wide and strong and capped, to chest and stomach, hard and smooth and a funny color of dusk or sunset. Corded legs that ended in taloned feet and the V of shoulders, chest and abs led down to a lean waist and a roused, hard cock.
Theo tore his eyes away from the figure, looked behind them, but the hallway, blank and featureless, receded like a dream and when he turned back he saw the creature of the maze did not wear a cloak of startling pearl white but wings cascaded from his shoulders, longer than he stood tall, iridescent in what remained of the light.
Ari fell. Theo might have let go of her wrist or she might have tugged too hard to free herself. But she fell, breath jarred from her, and scrabbled, gasping, hands and feet pushing her backward. Theo stood alone as the creature reached them and he lifted a hand against it -- stop, or please, or don't.
The beast came on, long strides, black hair and white wings, pressed forward until Theo's hand pressed flat against its chest and then it stopped and all motion was forgotten. The bluegray skin gave off heat. Theo's hand ached with it. Startled, he tried to pull back but the being pulled Theo against it, with a strength he couldn't hope to match. The labyrinth brightened as the wings came up around them, holding Theo in a close embrace. He heard Ari shout but the sound was already distant and muted.
This is what he had heard all those years as a boy growing up at Silver Peak. This was the source of the sound that had haunted his dreams, driven Liam to nightmares, the sound that had filled Theo's wet dreams as a boy, turned to nightmares for him as well in recent college years.
He stared blankly at his hand where it pressed against the creature's flesh. His hand trembled. He could still hear Ari shouting and taste the metallic fear in his mouth. His stomach muscles spasmed and his pecs caught the motion and shook. He felt as if he were coming apart.
When he looked up into the creature's eyes, he stopped moving. There was fear, yes. But the terror that had driven him through the maze with Ari had vanished, replaced with a kind of awe. The eyes were full of ancient wisdom, with cunning and strength and stealth. Theo saw death in the creature's eyes, but also life.
The being lowered its awful head and took Theo's mouth with its own. The mouth was both hard and soft, different than a woman's. The creature didn't wait for Theo's acceptance; its mouth covered his and the rough/soft tongue slipped inside, different, deeper and rougher than anything he had experienced before. Theo panicked, struggled and the creature clasped his upper arms, holding him, pulling him into the kiss, tongue lightly lapping the edge of Theo's lips until Theo felt an undoing, an unraveling, like Ari's string played out behind them to guide them back.
Something fell away from Theo at that moment. A pulse started pounding in his head. His hands moved involuntarily, seeking purchase. Hunger woke. His cock stirred inside his jeans, stiffened, beat against the denim in jerks and twitches, straining.
The kiss broke and the creature stared up and out of its own wings, Theo still locked inside. It watched something, Ari perhaps, though Theo could no longer hear her calling and he wanted to draw the creature's attention back to himself when it stirred again, looked back down at him. The hands moved up to Theo's shoulders and slowly pushed him down.
He sank to his knees before the creature and as Briony had ever done, he opened his mouth. Panic again. He didn't know what to do. He'd had this done to him, but to do it -- he'd never imagined, never thought, never even wo
ndered.
As Theo opened his mouth and the creature plunged inside, filling him, hard slick salt feeling, he sucked and tasted and wondered, there was texture and taste and the sound of his own mouth like the sound of Briony's on him. The creature's hands played in his hair, twining and pulling, keeping him trapped. He couldn't see its face when he looked up; it had thrown its head back and looked up beyond its own wings even as the hips began to buck and Theo stiffened, afraid again, wanting to pull away but held close and tight by his hair.
He tightened his lips around the creature's cock -- hard and thick and long -- and the being came into him, filled him while Theo swallowed and drank and something in the taste was familiar and welcome, something in it shot down below his belt and his dick swelled harder against his jeans. He moaned, realized he hadn't spoken. Realized he could no longer hear Ari at all. He started to call but the creature pulled him up, hands with clawed nails caught his arms and spun him and Theo wondered if he'd seen contempt in those eyes.
With a single motion the creature shredded Theo's pants, had him poised naked before it and Theo shouted, stumbled forward, but the wings held fast as any wall that cannot be breached. He put his hands out against the wings, pushing forward, away and out, he told himself -- or only bracing himself.
He felt the dark hands roam down his body. Hands cupped his ass and squeezed and pulled his cheeks apart. Theo made an uncertain noise. One of the hands moved away, came back slick and wet and slid into the crevice between his cheeks, stroked and prodded and slipped inside, wet, so wet and slick, preparing the way. Theo cried out, tried to move away, and felt the tip of the being's erection find his hole.
Penetration, at first just the head, a mingling of pain and pleasure that made him jerk and gasp within the grasp. He shouted again and in that moment the being behind him slid all the way in, deep inside Theo, and took up a rhythm that rocked them both, fucking him while Theo struggled to keep his feet and cried out over and over.