Forbidden Desire

2 - The Spitfire

Creaks and groans line the hall that stretches for miles. The damp smell of salt and blood settle into my nostrils, and a reflux to recoil threatens my abdomen. A small light shines down into the center of my section, casting a slight but welcomed warmth on my frame.

It's much better than the artificial laboratory conditions along the halls of the encampment. The rust iron walls I'd choose over there any day. It matters not it's drenched in degrading metals of wrought obsidian, or that rats of unknown disease climb along their dug paths looking for bread. It's better than the lab.

The metal glimmers under the light allowed, humming with a bioelectric ripple through the thickness of possible escape. Should one be able to find such ways to escape their gilded cage onto the molten grounds, the heart conditions monitored by an electric collar, designed to fit frail ankles gives some their surprise. The tracking implant in the head and nape, supple an electric current. The floor itself is obstacle. A maze of passages leading back in circles.

Each has their roles. Dishes to make escape worthless enough to dream. The refined war encampment of New London's Royal Auction House, oozed with a scented current. A playground for the masses. A paradise on earth. One girl had slept soundly enough, rolling over thee bars and fired to death. Her screams I cannot much remember.

Making one's way to the ground, if lucky, was torture. The conductive surface of the molten floor wailed, following the blinding red blares of high frequency resembling sounds of metal being torn apart, was enough to result in deafness.

The masters were much crueler. Categorized into simplicity. Beasts who care not for the well-being of their slaves. The Collector was usually the more kind going up the spectrum. They dolled their pets off to be shown, primed with irrelevant talent making them no different than the uneducated. They pampered them enough, not to the point of fattening a pig, but to keep skin glowing. These slaves were an art to be assessed, not whipped.

Along went the Butcher. Punishment came even when undeserved. Used as lethal psychological entertainment parallel to the lenient masters. He feeds with a lack of restraint, enjoying the laughter of his guests directing their humor to his slave. The kind didn't get bored with their toys. The Butcher beat them towards the line of life and death. The Look were an in-between. One moment granting lashings for the unspoken tongue, the next delivering scrapes as a form of forced forgiveness. This master views his pet as a display. Not a doll.

Dolls are to be played with. Displays looked upon. These masters tended to get bored and when the meter hit, he or she preferred them returned in a somewhat similar fashion, or granted them to a spouse, family, or friends and businessmen.

I've only ever known kind and the in-between, the latter more up the scale of madness. He'd been the one to return the tool that did not yield to his amusement.

My internal ghosts are shattered by the reality along the halls. A commotion breaks, getting louder at a peak of my section. The blares bleed my ears out and my attempt to block them fails. I press my hands harder into her ears, jumping back to the wall as one of them begins to open the cage. He grabs at me, despite my jabs and kicking. My nails dig across the cell as he hold my ankle, no gentle consideration gifted before suspended into the air.

A shock runs jags me, extending into a bolt of blue-white, racing from the lead band of my dominant, surging into a unexplainable speed, a cramp pulling my body into unknown territory before coming to a rigid stop. The man stabilizes me on the platform, pressing a sterile sharpness and its thick substance into my as he rides his hands along my unshaven c******l and pulls my dress back into place.

The dress is modest. Short, open-wide at the hem of its sleeves, white and well-kept, riding mid-way towards my knee. LH-28604999 identifying me as someone. Not just some slave. It's my dress. Just as Lyra is my name. It offers protection and warmth, a connected conscious feel to reality. The drug eventually hits. A syrupy darkness follows as we pull down towards the molten ground. When the dress is wrenched, I don't feel naked. I feel erased.

________________________________________________________________________________

I awake, faced with sharp coldness, strapped face-down to the stainless steel table, a soul sucking chill replacing the unfamiliarity of my nudeness. Heavy leather restrains me, biting into arms, my wrists, the place below my ass, pinning me like a maladjusted specimen under the scope.

The light is too blinding to look for. I'm exposed to the septic glare and translucent stare of the man who had me dragged out of my confinement. He's dressed in white scrubs, and as is the woman next to him.

"She's awake," he grates.

I'm struck but a lethal blow to my backside. One I cannot get the gasp out of myself fast enough to comprehend. This primal fury returns. A detached whipping meant to break me before the stage. Before a master. Every blow followed the same rhythm, air forced from my lungs as the puncturing leather stabbed pain, making the clinical hum of the room pulse in tune with my weakened heart.

Tears pool onto the table, mixed with the drool of my cries before the whipping ceases. Hot blazes of ash replace the lashes, and an inimitable pain follows, similarly lingering and etched into forever on my back like the silent howl sent to its graveyard.

.

They turn my body to face the surgical lights. A slap, from my punisher, welcomes me back into reality. It a women. One of them. She too dressed in white scrubs. She waves the man over. Without fail or hesitation, two gloved fingers stimulate my uterine walls and a moan threatens to part from me. More shape edges are inserted into my system, subduing me to numbness.

Before long, I'm hosed down with water, dried to stiffness and lapped with a sweet smelling and buttery lotion. I'm presented no underwear, but a stiff corset constructed from whalebone forces my structure into an unnatural straightness, tightening my airway, and placed under a volumous bell-shaped dress. The fabric is soft, a light tulle of dark emerald as my fingers can grasp, the sleeves barely hanging off my shoulders and ending in a puff just below my elbows. The length continues and stops midway between my calves and ankles, hiding the blues and purples along my melanin. Short white pumps give me lift and it unifies with the green straw hat that doesn't quiet fit, to create the perfect doll.

The make up is light and minimal. No mirror adorns the four corners of the white room. The single moment isolating that of my seeing my reflection is a concept I'm more than familiar with. My old masters allowed me not such a privilege to comprehend my beauty or features. I'm blind to the results of my transformation. Down to the how we are fed through plastic tube, mediocre to metal cutlery, I will never know what I look like. My red locks are the only constant reminder that I have a face, eyes so glassy they reflect as world as beautiful as the ones inhabiting it.

The white room disappears in a series of dark halls, my feet hissing against the marble, a ghostly rich sound mocked by the iron shackles of jewelry. They bit into my wrist as I'm sure they did the other girls chained in the ghastly line. Others like myself who has been primmed and propered until we resembled a row of china glass.

My skin tingled. A map of nerves generating beads of sweat the managed to escape the gloss of my fluff, dripping along my temple to be lost in the emerald forest. Doubts crawled into my internal thoughts: Will I be good enough? Not for their rose colored eyes, but to survive long enough to see Leo again.

Some nameless lord's evaluation of my worth like some porcelain doll turned my anemic blood into a sea of savagery. I'd been a silent shadow with my first two masters, fearing tantrums would reach the prestigious household Leo held his life of servitude.

Not today.

I would be a spitfire. A reckoning that emerged from hell. His beautiful destruction. A list of mental rebellion brews in my mind, calculated havoc that would dance the edge without jeopardizing my brother.

Should he crave conversation, I'd be silent as a ghost. A hollow void of opposition. I'd tear at his suits and tailcoats, stain them with his vintage wine and blood the color of my anger. My gaze would not seek the floor as he desired. It would be he who flinched as I met his vitreous stare.

The line of chains drag along, an itching sound that drive me to the threshold of metal madness. From my view of the men and women meant to bid, playboys of proper upbringing sip blood mimosas, reeling back into the comfort of their seats and they let their more serious companions throw coin for a piece.

My heart thumps heavier, louder. It consumes my sight, my being. I'm dragged by my chains to a cold ground of soul marble, shivering from the lights that pool my vision. I understand little of what the auction master says, nor the posters and signs. The bidding begins. The auctioneer sweeps his hand under my nape, presenting his fine collection. I don't allow it.

I bite at his fingers, chewing until a crack rumbles in my throat. I smile back at him, pulling my chains to swipe at his feet as he stumbles. The crowd is wild with amusement. It sucks me in. I indulge in the taste of being in the spotlight, addicted to the power I can protect myself. My neck cracks to some side. I stumble and there are his eyes.

They manage to calm the thumping and the building nerves. I collect myself, attempting to stop the quiver, the urge to cry in front of him. For some reasons, the reality is not that the auctioneer stuck me. No. This vampire did. He wants to punish me. Own me. Break me. He's annoyed, holding up his past bid as men around him sabotaged the other. The tears break frees, before I'm pulled back to the center. I've lost.

"One hundred million."