“Oh shit, you are so lucky,” Luis laughed. He was glad that the wheel didn’t stop on death, simply because he liked all of his men, who he had picked out personally over a long course of time.
“Turn around and take off your pants, bitches!” Luis yelled. He wasn’t really angry; he just wanted to have fun. If he were truly angry, he would have cut their throats.
“Yes, ma’am,” the men said in unison. The strong muscular men took off their pants, exposing their rock hard buttocks.
“Now, bend over!” shouted Luis. They did. Before he began the punishment, he took his time to check them out.
“Oscar, your butt is still black and blue from three days ago. If I didn’t know any better, I would think you were enjoying your punishment,” said Luis. Luis knew he didn’t enjoy it, and that he was still in a lot of pain.
“Oh, and Oscar, didn’t I tell you to shave?” Luis asked, as he smiled. Oscar nodded. Luis took his golden paddle from the column and walked up behind the first man. With all of his strength, Luis whacked the first man’s butt. Hector grunted, clenching his cheeks in pain. The slap echoed throughout the entire room. Luis continued spanking Hector seven more times. The harder he spanked, the more aroused he became. Then, he proceeded to the next man, until each of them had been fully punished. When Luis was finished, all seven of the men had dark red bottoms.
“Adoro golpear a mi hombre. I love spanking my men,” Luis whispered to Frank, who did his best to not laugh.
“You may go, bitches, but remember, this hurts me more than it hurts you,” Luis said, while holding in his laughter. The seven men put their tight pants back on and walked out of the room holding their buttocks. The other men in the room grinned and giggled as they sipped their drinks. Luis placed his golden paddle back in its place and sat back on his chaise lounge, crossing his legs. His chaise lounge rested on top of a small flight of four steps. Hanging from the ceiling, and surrounding the sides of where he was sitting, were white silk drapes.
“All right, Johnny, play my favorite song. And Frank, send in the models. I want them to walk the catwalk,” Luis instructed. Johnny turned on a large stereo system and played the song, “I will survive.” The music blasted through the entire room. Frank, who was Luis’ top man and lover, left the room and brought back in a dozen extremely handsome men, wearing different outfits that Luis had made himself. Luis was in heaven. One after the other the male models walked down a runway in the center of the floor, posing for their Queen while wearing his glorious outfits.
After three hours of fun, Luis began to get a bad migraine. He held his head with his hands and squinted his eyes in extreme pain. Frank walked over to him and placed his hand on Luis’ shoulder. “Are the headaches coming back, Hun?” Frank sympathetically asked. Frank was a tall, handsome Italian man, with short, dark, black hair. The other men didn’t notice as they continued to party.
“Yes, the headaches are getting stronger,” said Luis. Luis nodded to Frank, and Frank immediately knew what Luis wanted, which was his cocaine tray. Frank scurried to another room and brought back a mirrored tray with four thick lines of cocaine and a rolled up hundred dollar bill on the side of the tray. Luis thanked Frank and took the tray, putting it on his lap. He held the rolled up bill in one hand and closed one of nostrils with a finger as he inhaled the cocaine into his nose. He proceeded to close the second nostril and inhale again. After Luis finished all four lines, his nose began to run, causing him to sniff.
“Put your head back so that way the coke goes back in your head,” Frank instructed Luis, as he stroked Luis’ head. Luis put his head back and continued to sniff. After a few minutes, Luis began to feel the rush from the cocaine. The whole inside of his nasal passage became numb.
“I love that feeling, sometimes I like to put the coke on my tongue and lips so that way it numbs them. It’s like Novocain,” said Luis. Luis’ headache began to disappear. The cocaine only lasted for twenty minutes at a time, numbing his brain. Some of the cocaine began to drip down his throat.
“I hate the medicine taste of the coke, though, especially when it goes down my throat,” said Luis. Luis prepared two more thick long lines of cocaine and snorted them.
“I wish you would cut down, Luis. That stuff is going to kill you. I would die if anything happened to you,” Frank said, as he whispered into Luis’ ear.
Luis placed his hand on Frank’s arm, reassuring him that he loved him and that he was grateful for his compassion. Luis wasn’t quick to trust just anyone; however, he knew that he could trust his life to Frank, and his friend, Jesse Kincaid. Ever since Luis had turned twenty-one, he started to get painful headaches once a month. As he got closer to turning thirty, they began to increase to a daily occurrence. He had been to five different doctors this year, and each one had given him a different diagnosis. Luis knew that the doctors had no idea what they were talking about, and truly didn’t know what was wrong with him. He was worried that his condition was becoming terminal.
“Oh, my God,” said Frank, as he covered his mouth.
“What is it?” Luis asked franticly.
“The black part of your eyes is almost completely covering the white part,” explained Frank, in awe. Frank ran and got Luis a mirror, then came back and held it up to his face.
“Oh God, it is getting worse,” said Luis, as his heart began to pound with fear. His eyes were now almost completely black. Only a small area of white remained. Luis didn’t want it to ruin his fun, so he shook it off and strutted down the catwalk with his men, as Frank watched him with a sad, scared look on his face. Luis’ men cheered him on as he showed off his master technique as the song, “I’m coming out,” played throughout the colossus room. Later that night, as Luis and Frank held each other in bed, the two men didn’t speak as they stared off into space, while wondering what was in their future. Luis was contemplating if he was going to die, and Frank was worried that he was going to lose the only man he had ever loved.
***
Jesse woke disturbed from yet another restless sleep. Although his room was pitch black, he was having trouble sleeping. This time, it was a disturbing dream that had woken him instead of his insomnia. He took a couple painkillers to help him relax. He lay wide awake and put his hand behind his head in an attempt to analyze his dream. Jesse’s forehead beaded with cold sweat. The first part of the dream began with him in the flight chair of the Black Ice. He was picking up a distress call from the Horizon. An unknown force was attacking them. He responded to the Horizon’s call and flew to them. When he reached the Horizon, a section had been blown apart, and dead bodies were flying out into space. One of the bodies hit his flight window, smearing blood all over it. There was another ship nearby, but he couldn’t see what kind it was. In the second part of the dream, he started to see flashes of the beautiful woman, with blue hair and blue lips, which he had dreamed of before. The last part of the dream was only a feeling he had gotten, a feeling that he was taking the woman in his cargo hold to her death. Jesse thought that the dream was probably meaningless, since the Horizon was two years away, and he didn’t know of any woman who had blue hair. As far as the woman he was transporting, he had a bad feeling that maybe he was taking her to be someone’s slave, or worse. Jesse wiped the sweat from his forehead and made another attempt at sleeping by rolling over to his right side.
The young space pirate found it difficult to fall back asleep because his thoughts turned to the frozen woman. He wondered if his friend, Luis, really knew that there was a person inside the obelisk. Jesse doubted it; he didn’t think Luis would do something like that. “Could she be a criminal?” he asked himself out loud. Maybe she was a murderer. He had no idea, and that bothered him. Finally, after twenty minutes, he fell back to sleep. That’s one of the things Jesse loved about his painkillers, that even if he were shot or stabbed, they would still relax him.
Four hours later, he got up. He normally couldn’t sleep for too long. This time, he did feel more refreshed than u
sual. Jesse quickly checked his radar and then decided to take a stab at working out. He was determined to get back into shape. He knew he was becoming too lazy and wanted to put a stop to it. The space pirate worked out for twenty minutes and could feel the soreness in his muscles already. It would take time to get used to a workout routine again. He hated the fact that he was going to be thirty soon. It seemed to him as if he had just been twenty-one a little while ago. Jesse found two gray hairs on his head and dreaded getting older. He put off making too many trips to his cargo bay so he wouldn’t end up staring at the woman again, so he took a quick shower and got something to eat.
“Yummy,” he said, while eating another disgusting salad. Jesse didn’t care much for greens. He was a meat-and-potato kind of man. There was nothing better than a big juicy steak, in his opinion.
As the pirate sat in his flight chair eating his salad, he stared out into space. Jesse felt tranquil when looking out into space, the same way he felt when he lived on Earth, when he would stare out into the ocean or up into space. Space, to him, was a vast ocean of stars and adventure. He was currently traveling close to an amazing purple and red-colored nebula. Jesse was an avid art lover. To him, there was nothing more artistic than God’s creations in space. The young space pirate thought back to his old Captain Barakat. There were things of his death that he wished he knew. A year after Jesse had broken away from him and went into business with Luis, Barakat called on him for an unexpected visit. He remembered how strange his old captain had acted. When he visited Barakat, he gave Jesse an ancient cutlass and a cloth with strange markings on it, both of which had belonged to the pirate captain, Black Beard, Barakat’s ancestor. When Jesse asked Barakat why he was giving it to him, he simply said that he wanted him to have it, and that he was going on one last side smuggling job for the UPG. Jesse always wondered if Barakat knew that the UPG was going to kill him.
Jesse’s thoughts were interrupted by his radar, which began to beep. The radar was picking up two approaching ships several miles behind him. They were both traveling at top speed. He was three days away from the Blue Neon, so it couldn’t have been the Haven sisters.
“It must be scavengers,” he tried to conclude. Scavengers were worse than pirates. They would raid your ship for anything they could find, and then kill you just for the hell of it. Sometimes, they would just jettison your body into space for the fun of it, and then steal your ship.
He wasn’t in the mood for killing anyone today. The space pirate decided to change his course away from his secret base. He pressed a green button on his flight console, bringing up a three-dimensional map, which hummed and hovered above the console. He looked for an alternate place in which he could lose the two ships that were following him. After a few seconds, he found a wormhole that he had used before. Jesse grinned to himself. The Black Ice was the only ship he knew of that could safely travel through a wormhole. He found that fact out purely by accident. Several months prior, Jesse was traveling near the special anomaly while he was sleeping, and it sucked him in. He thought that he would be crushed to death, but to his amazement, his ship survived without a scratch. Theories on wormholes suggested that they were doorways to different galaxies. This one only took him a few thousand miles away. It was another mysterious technology that his ship possessed.
Slowly, the two ships grew closer. His ship was traveling just fast enough to reach the wormhole before the scavengers could fire upon him. Within two hours, the ships were almost in visual range. Jesse still could not determine who his pursuers were. Even though they were in range for communications, they had not attempted to contact him. Jesse really didn’t care what they would have to say anyhow. To his surprise, his radar picked up a missile coming straight for him.
“What the hell!” Jesse was pissed. On another part of his console, there was another scanning device that he used to analyze incoming missiles. In two seconds, the missile was identified as an EK-23, an Engine Killer, for short. It was a missile that would electrically blow out a ship’s engine without damaging the ship, or the persons inside. It was good for the scavengers who wanted a ship intact, as it lay dead in the water.
“They must really want me,” Jesse bragged. The space pirate was more than prepared. He tapped a red button on his console that released a charge that locked onto the incoming missile and destroyed it. His pursuers attempted to blow out his engines three more times, but failed.
“Hello, beautiful,” Jesse said, as he looked at the wormhole, which was now in visual range. It was still half an hour until the Black Ice would reach it. Ten minutes later, Jesse received a blinking blue light, indicating that he was being hailed by one of the ships. He thought for a second and wondered if he should even bother pressing the receive button. He did, and a familiar voice came over his radio.
“Jeeeeesssssseeeeee, I’ve found you, my love.” Jesse’s heart stopped.
“Oh shit…Monica!” he said to himself. Jesse took a deep breath, and then clicked over the intercom to talk to Monica. “How in God’s name did you find me?” he asked her in disbelief. Jesse wasn’t afraid of anything.
Except being held prisoner by a psychotic ex-girlfriend. Only God knows what she would do if she caught him. He wasn’t about to find out. The image of his last ship exploding shot in his mind. “What do you want, Monica?” he asked, even though he already knew the answer.
“You, my love. Slow down, I just want to talk to you, and give you a big kiss on those cute little cheeks,” she said in her sweet Australian accent. Monica was born in the outback of Australia. Jesse always loved her accent, but right now, it was the last thing he wanted to hear.
“Yeah, right, you just want to tie me up and throw me in your closet,” Jesse said.
“You never complained before when I used to tie you up,” she giggled.
“Very funny…psycho,” he said, wryly. “It’s not going to happen, Monica, just let it go,”
“Don’t be angry with me, my love. I just want to know why you left me. I want to patch things up. If you come back to me willingly, then I won’t have to force you,” she explained, as she laughed.
“I left you because we don’t want the same things in life. You want to rule and conquer the universe the way Elijah does. I don’t care if I’m rich. I just want to do something meaningful. I was thinking about deep space exploration and leaving these systems far behind, and soon,” Jesse explained.
“No, you can’t leave; we have to get back together! Please, love! I promise I’ll change. We can compromise. I know you don’t believe me, but I do love you very much. I have been thinking a lot lately, and we can get married, if you want,” she franticly pleads.
“No, Monica. I know you love me, but I don’t believe you will ever change. You’re just saying that because you know it’s what I’ve wanted to hear for a very long time. I have asked you many times to marry me, and each time you gave me some stupid excuse on why we should wait. Then, when you finally said you would, you never showed up. I waited with the priest for five hours, and worried if you were even alive. That was the last straw,” he tried to explain.
“Heh, Heh…sorry about that one, my love,” she said. She knew she would never live that one down.
“Also, you kill people like it is in fashion or something. Not to mention, you’re becoming powerful, like Luis. I heard you also have your own base, and you have like, what…a thousand female followers,” Jesse asked.
“Actually, it’s more like three thousand, but who’s counting. You know I like women, too. But, I’ll give it all up, my love.” He thought that maybe she would, but he was tired of hearing it and being let down.
“No, I’m done, and that’s the end of it. I’m sorry, Monica, but I’m leaving all systems that are run by the UPG. Goodbye,”
“I’m sorry you feel that way, but you will be mine…love,” she said in a crazy tone, then cut communications. He felt his stomach knot up.
“Fuck,” Jesse said, realizing she had gone mad.
Monica was now fairly close to him, as were the Haven sisters. The Merrick fired its cannons first, just grazing his hull. His ship was still the faster of the two, and he was able to pull hard around them. Jesse locked on and fired on the Haven Sister’s thrusters. He cut across their right thruster, leaving a nasty scar on their ship. Their engine caught on fire, as a chunk exploded off of their ship. Jesse thought about the digital image of their parents he saw in their flight room, and decided not to kill them. Monica, having a large crew, pushed her female pilot aside, took over the fight and weapon controls, pulled a hard left, and came to the right of Jesse’s ship. Monica showed no mercy, and aimed for his engines. The Huntington was considerably larger than the Black Ice, and was equipped with a multitude of weapons. Jesse also had very powerful weapons, but Monica had more of them. The White Skull pressed a button on his flight console, and a large gun turret lifted up on the top of his ship. He aimed at the Huntington, Monica’s ship, and gave her a warning shot across the nose of her vessel. Since Jesse maneuvered his ship right at the last second, she only clipped the corner of his engines, causing it to smoke. Jesse stayed behind the Merrick so they couldn’t fire on him. He blew out their second thruster, causing their ship to come to a dead stop. Jesse swung around, dodging Monica’s failed attempt to continue to blow out his engines. It was an exciting game of cat and mouse. Except, Jesse knew that he was the mouse of this game, and that Monica was the hungry cat.
The White Skull fired his gun turret and blew out the Merrick’s right cannon. Just before he could get past them, they shot out a magnetic mine, which stuck to his ship and exploded. It left a nasty dent in the side of his hull. Luckily, the structure of his ship was made up of incredibly strong material. Part of the mine had hit his engine, however, causing it to smoke further. He was tired of fooling around and came up with an idea. He flew toward the wormhole and they followed. Jesse zipped and zagged his ship, as the Merrick and the Huntington fired on him. The Merrick couldn’t move, which gave Jesse more of a chance to make it to the spatial anomaly.
Voyages of the White Skull Book 1 Page 11