Page 40 of The Sanguine Selection
“Would you like me to show you where to put that or do you already know?” I jump and spin around. The girl snuck right up behind me and I didn’t even notice. She looks at me expectantly.
“Umm…” I stutter out, wanting to say yes and no at the same time.
She must understand, and sits down on the ground just outside the door. “Sit,” she orders, gesturing at the space in front of her. I do, crossing my legs while tugging the shift to cover myself. To my shock, she spreads her legs wide, baring her...her…private areas to me. Using two fingers on one hand, she parts herself, completely unashamed, and with her other hand slips one digit next to an opening in her body.
“Right here,” she says softly, slipping the finger inside herself, “is where you put that. Just like this.” She extracts her digit and pushes it back inside her again. I can’t stop staring. There’s something so…I don’t know the right word… Attractive maybe? Something attractive about her exposing herself to me so close I can smell her musky scent. Something enticing about that finger slipping inside her. She clears her throat and I raise my gaze, cheeks heating as if she caught me doing something bad. She juts her chin towards my body. “Your turn.”
My turn… Oh, Gods…
I grasp the finger in trembling hands, and blink slow in disbelief, shaking my head. I can’t believe this is my life, that I have to do this.
“Can you look away while I do it?” I ask, wincing.
She closes her legs and stands back up. “Of course. But time is ticking. We must leave soon or someone will come looking for us.” She shifts uncomfortably at that admission then heads back to the main room. I spin on my butt, my back facing her way now and part my own legs. Just like she did, I part myself with one hand, never really having looked at it before. I slide a finger down my center, everything covered in blood, and sink into the opening.
God that feels weird, I think, as I take the gold finger and press it inside. It’s like my body slurped it up, as it disappears in a mess of blood, just the little loop hanging out of me. I have a weird, proud feeling that I accomplished something that scared me. That feeling quickly fades as I rise, and wash the blood from my hands. After drying them off, I scoop up the arm bands, and walk out to the girl. Hell, I don’t even know her name.
“I uhh…need help with these. Please.” I offer her the bands and she takes them, buckling my forearms in tight. “Oww. You’re hurting me,” I hiss.
She ignores my plight. “Better tight than have them falling off when in use. You can be punished for such things.”
Punished?
I decide I don’t want to know as I allow her to guide me from the room on bare feet. The stone is cold and hard, unyielding. The finger inside of me is a constant reminder of my lack of freedom. I feel it with every step, so foreign and unwelcome, unforgiving even. “Where are we going,” I risk asking, voice low as we pass through a corridor with low ceilings and no doors or windows.
“The moon station,” she replies like I should know what the hell that means. “Quickly now.”
She hastens her steps and I rush to keep up with her as we wind through this maze of hallways. Finally we come to a door made of metal. It’s a browner tone, but stained greenish in places, like moss has grown over it.
The girl ushers me through and that’s when I hear something. Something that sounds like muffled crying. A new fear emerges and I become reluctant to follow her but my feet keep moving in spite of myself. In spite of the terror. The sounds grow louder. Whining. Moaning.Feminine.And a cold chill snakes down my spine, skin on the back of my neck prickling.
As if sensing my uncertainty, the girl grips my upper arm, her hands stronger than I expected, and hauls me to the end of the hall where a room with no door sprawls before us. I rub my eyes, not believing what I’m seeing, my heart plummeting to my feet.
Run, a voice in my head whispers, but I’m frozen in fear, my hands clinging to my face in shock.
The stone room is long, but shallow, almost like an oversized closet, but grander. Torches emit their flickering light from the back wall, spaced every five feet, but I hardly notice them. Because lined down the entire space are around twenty seats kind of like wooden chairs connected in a bench. Except there is no seat, just this little shelf to sit your butt on. And strapped to each one is a woman, dressed just like me. They face out towards us, shifts bunched around their waists, knees pulled up towards their chests and spread wide, no undergarments to be seen. Bindings cinch behind their knees and around their ankles, holding their legs open. I can see each one of them bleeds where I do, that same secret place the girl showed me. Except these girls have no secrets anymore, every one of them is half naked, their other half barely covered by the thin shifts.
As I come to grips with what I’m seeing, my eyes roving over each girl, I notice something even more grotesque. Below them all are crystal bowls catching the blood as it leaks from their bodies, like one would collect rainwater in a barrel to water their garden.
At the end of the row is Jasper. He stands behind a chair on wheels instead of legs, the thing seated inside it greedily drinking blood from chalice. I almost puke, my stomach roiling. He doesn’t even acknowledge me as he stands there, holding a second filled cup, ready to hand it to the thing in the chair.
The girl pulls me down to the other end and points to an empty chair. “This one was saved just for you,” she says almost proudly, like the idea would excite me or make me happy. How messed up would you have to be to want to do this? How warped is her mind?
“No,” I mumble, backing away, right into the hard chest of a man. I squeal as he grips me and practically tosses me into the vacant chair. He’s not a vampire, but another servant, a human slave like me. “Stop!” I yell trying to kick out but he’s much stronger than me, much bigger, and he quickly locks my bound wrists onto the armrests, restricting me. “Please,” I cry, tears flowing freely now, desperation in my words. “Why are you doing this?!”
He doesn’t even look at me as he binds my legs just like the other women, as he bares me and spreads my legs, then locks me in place until I can’t move an inch. I want to fucking die. I now know why I could hear the other women crying. Because this is torture.
I tug and pull but nothing gives, if anything the bindings feel tighter than before. “Why…” I sob again, my head hanging between my knees. It’s then I notice the absence of a bowl below my body but don’t dwell on it as a girl cries out in pain and I yank on the bindings again. “Jasper… Help me!”
Jasper ignores me. I thought he was my friend, or at least, someone I could trust. Twice now, he’s betrayed that trust. First by telling me that I have some greater purpose before feeding me to the entombed monsters. The second is happening right now, but hearing my pleas for help and pretending he can’t hear them.
I don’t know how long I sit here with the other women, amongst their groans. Mine mix and my stomach clenches low, that finger inside me feeling like it’s growing larger by the second. Every couple minutes Jasper rolls the creature nearer and nearer, wheels squeaking. As they inch toward me, the macabre sounds of the monster slurping and sucking down the red liquid fills my ears. It spilled over his grayed, withered face and down his filthy clothes.
He’s ravenous, emptying bowl after bowl, chalice after chalice, getting closer and closer and closer to me. Two girls away. One. And then, wheels squealing, Jasper rolls him in front of me.
It’s like reliving my nightmare.
The creature pauses, sniffing, and raises his eyes up to mine. They glow red. It’s not possible. I want to cower, to hide, to drown myself, anything to get away from this moment, from this potent terror. His nose is half gone, long nostrils sniffing again, eyes blazing. Skin peels from his face like one would peel the skin off a potato before boiling. And the blood. It’s everywhere, his absent lips, and mouth filled with teeth unable to catch it from the chalice before it tumbles down his chin, his clothes.
