My suicide was a black flower that shared that current with me. As I reached for it the current pulled it this way, and me that. Teased me, held it just beyond my reach that I might see its beauty and suffer its absence more. I can conceive of no explanation for the failure of my drowning save the intervention of some hostile divinity, gleeful to see me suffer more. I felt that Jade was with me there, her firm body pressed to mine, the warmth of skin and arousal cocooning me from the cold water, her arms a legs clutched about me, her weight holding me down, willing me to my longed for death.
I was hauled up and out, and I was coughing and vomiting water and my lungs burned inside me. It was bright but I could not see, then there were people standing over me, silhouettes against the brightness.
That may have been a dream. I certainly should not have been conscious for it, having lost so much blood and being nearly drowned. It was several more days before I woke again.
I woke naked in a cot. There were no covers but the room was warm. It was also bright, and there were several other white cots, all of which were empty.
Sensations of Jade, of Argyl, dwelt with me. Of Argyl inside me, Jade before me, held inside and out. I recalled no dream but must have dreamt of that one perfect moment before. Before. And with the memory a deep and violent hate welled up in me, and I thought of my suicide, drifting beyond my reach in the river as monsters pulled me out, breathed life where none was wanted.
Probably thought they were heroes, motherfuckers.
I meant to rise in order to find some new way of terminating myself, but found instead that I was bound ankle and wrist to the cot. Archmagi, when had I ceased to think of him as my faux master? He had kept me in a box, unable to move or lay to sleep. But I had the drug then, and simply floated. My old master had kept me bound for hours as a means of torture. A few tethers should not have bothered me. But I raged against them, quietly. They held me from my suicide and I hated them for it as I had never hated tethers before.
It was some frustrated hours later when a man in blue and white robes entered the room through its one door.
“You're awake.”
I made no response.
“Will you try to harm me or yourself again if I untie you?” His dialect was thick and unfamiliar.
“No sir.”
He considered me a moment, then untied my bonds. He watched me carefully as I sat, then kneeled before him.
“You are a slave?”
“Yes sir.”
“Hmm. Runaway?”
I wasn't sure how to answer that.
“Well, if your master comes for you he'll have to pay just the same,” he said, misunderstanding.
“Do not kneel, sit.” I did so. “We have no slaves here, we are a free principality. Only, we have certain fugitive slave treaties. None of your injuries were life threatening, save the hypothermia. I was able to reconnect the tendons in your wrists and minimize your scarring in general. What happened to you?”
In my mind I saw Argyl's look of hate and rage, but I said nothing.
“Well, no matter.” He was a meek and shrewish looking man. “Your charges for your, medical care, are 5,000 shekels of gold. I can provide an itemized bill if you like.”
I hated listening to him. Or maybe it was breathing I hated. Suicide. Suicide. I thought of Jade, of her perfect strong body, and the black hate in side me writhed and flexed itself.
“Are you listening?”
“No sir.” I hated him. Not just him. I hated My heart was dark and full of hate.
He was looking at me now, not speaking. I did not meet his eyes.
“Don't kill yourself,” he said.
“Yes sir.” He turned and left.
Why didn't I? I almost did, but there was some hesitation in me? Will to live? Ha! I longed to hang myself from the tethers on the cot, smash the glass window and cut my arteries with the shattered glass. I did not. I hesitated, I obeyed. I sat wretchedly and wished only to die, but I obeyed like a meek and stupid child. Perhaps my hate of myself denied me my suicide, willed me to suffer more, to carry that black and sharp regret in my chest and gut, that my heart would be cut and cut and cut.
The shrewish man reentered the room with two other well dressed men.
“This,” said a tall clean shaved man, “is a free principality. You are under no obligation to choose any particular way. You may pay the gentleman doctor the 5,000 shekels of gold. Not having the money does not excuse you from the debt. You may, of course, seek employment in the town. There are many exciting opportunities in the garment and customer service sectors. If you can find a creditor willing to front you the money that is. If you have land you can use as collateral, any number of banks will grant you a loan at 2-5% interest, which will take about four years to pay off working. If you don't have land, the banks will not speak with you, but Jacobs and Makel & co. can provide a loan at 30-35% interest. Working any of the unskilled jobs, you can pay this off in thirty to thirty five years, assuming you live in the shanty town and eat from the rubbish heap. The second alternative is to donate your flesh for medical experimentation. The going rate is 500 shekels of silver per pound of flesh. In your case, that will likely be your life. The final alternative is to sign a contract with Mr. Cuntshable, who will discharge your debt at no interest to you, provided you work off that debt in his employment at his Smiling Gentlemen Brothel.
I had hardly paid attention. The third man, a rotund and finely dressed gentleman, stepped up and spoke.
“May I count on your agreement to our terms and conditions?”
“Yes sir,” I said distractedly. I certainly did not intend to be alive, and submission to their will was always the easiest course.
“Stand up,” he said, and I did so. He inspected me, touching, poking and pinching everywhere.
“Excellent work on the scarring Doctor,” he said.
“Thank you, my good sir.”
“Well, the constable's fee here is two shekels of bronze. Do you have that?”
“No sir” I said.
“We of the public office do require immediate payment, Mr. Cuntshable.”
“Of course sir. Please, madam, and I call you madam as you are a free lady in our great land, please lean up against the cot there. Uh, no the other way, yes, like that, now lean at the waist, yes like that.”
Once you gain control of your sphincter muscles, receiving a cock anally is, while uncomfortable if not aroused, not actually painful, provided enough lubrication is used. The constable used some sort of industrial grease.
Cuntshable walked about in front of me. “Do you know what this is?” he asked, holding a wad of black tar.
“Yes sir,” I said, my voice expressing a bit of the discomfort of the situation. I had hesitated stupidly and alone when I might have murdered myself, I stood there dumbly, my will subordinated to a stranger. Why?
He pressed that tar into my mouth, and a thick black veil fell about the world, and my suicide hung thick about me, present and untouchable. It deadened the misery of my body until I hardly noticed when they led me to a small room full of bunks where dozens of us nude whores slept, two to a bunk. A room that would be small for half our number.
It locked me into my suffering. I drifted helpless in my hate and guilt, knew only Jade's soft surprise, her blood pumping from the knife I had plunged into her, Argyl's look of hate. I was the monster I was trapped inside, and that monster jabbed at me with memories of those last moments, replaying again and again without pause for mercy. And the feel of skin on skin, the feel of them both, holding me, helping me without real reason. Helping their murderer.
I tumbled over and over myself, and all there was was hate, hate of myself for my weakness, and hate for a world that had made me weak.
“What's your name?” a soft scarred voice said. Far far away my body clutched hers, weeping, both of us weeping, cold and naked together in that crowded room, waiting to be whored or worse.
“Kara,” I said, forcing the word through that thick veil, and wary from the effort.
“I am Dakra,” she said softly, and we held each other and shivered and I hated, all I was was hate. I drifted there in blackness and in hate. I'm not sure if I slept or not, but eventually a bell was rung and all the girls all pulled themselves from their beds.
They all had dark sunken eyes and were very skinny. Dakra took my hand and whispered something into my ear, but I did not understand her. Standing was hard, I felt my muscles shaking, and the light, which streamed into the room through large windows in the ceiling, hurt my eyes and made everything look pale and sick.
There was another bell and we shuffled forwards. I had to lean on Dakra, who managed to keep me moving with the rest of the group. Many others seemed to be in a similar state to me, leaning on their partners as they shuffled through.
We walked into a large cafeteria, where we collected a tasteless gruel and sat in long rows and ate as much as we could stomach, which wasn't much. A few men in white official looking costumes circled among us, asked us for our names, and marked the cost of the meal against our debt. Nobody spoke.
After we all hobbled and limped to a great shower that adjoined the cafeteria. Spigots in the ceiling sprayed us with soap, then some minutes later, with clean water.
“Hurry, it costs us if we are not clean enough to work,” Dakra whispered to me, and we cleaned ourselves and each other. The water was luke warm, and left me feeling cold and weak when it was done. Numbly I stumbled, leaning on Dakra's arm.
Next we came to tables where two nude old women handed out gobs of tar. My pulse quickened a bit when I saw it, and Dakra sensed it.
“Just take as little as you can, they add the cost to your debt. You'll never get out if you eat too much.” The women handing it out had sunken cheeks and their teeth had all fallen out. They had festering soars about their bodies, and their eyes were drugged and dead. I took a large handful and crammed it into my mouth. Dakra took a much smaller amount, reconsidered, and took just a bit more. We ate it greedily and drifted into each other, leaning on the other as we trudged on.
Makeup was smeared over us next. Three old and decrepit women worked us in an assembly line, applying different pastes and powders to our faces and bodies, and a fourth woman quickly brushed and fixed our hair in a variety of styles. Some rose above our heads, others snakes long braids around their heads and down their backs. I paid no attention to what they did to me. My eyes hurt and it was hard to focus.
Thoughts of Jade rode heavy in my heart, and I fell down into them with the drug in my veins. I stumbled forwards mindless into a large and finely furnished room. Dakra led me to a sofa where we sat and leaned against each other.
“When the men come we must make love to each other, to entice them.” she whispered in my ear. I said nothing, holding her hand and drifting. My mind was heavy, numb. The events of the day seemed distant, cold and real, bright against the dim light of the cave where I had murdered them. I thought of my suicide but it seemed too much effort. Easier to lie numbly against this young whore and drift away, drift in shame and guilt, drift in a soft and gentle hate.
She started kissing me and I her, and we were making love gently on the sofa as men walked amongst the couches and picked their whores. Dakra's kisses were soft, where Jade's had been strong and confident, but she was gentle and it was easy to reciprocate the function of it. Without thinking, I gently guided her towards a better show, shifting our bodies so that our breasts and asses showed better, so that our tongues and passion, fake as it was, seemed enticing to the passing men.
We were picked by a young man who placed a flower on us. Dakra smiled up at him and I faked encouragement as well.
“Sir, you will not be disappointed,” she said.
“I hope not” he said, slurring drunkenly.
“Sir, will you pee on us?”
“Huh, uh, no.”
“Would you like to bind us?”
“Heh, well lets see.”
“Yes sir. Would you like--”
“No more fucking questions.”
“They are required sir. Please, come with us.” She took my hand and his, and led him up a shallow flight of stairs to a small dimly lit room.
I was having trouble walking. Dakra half carried me up to the bed and I fell back on it.
“You,” the man said, looking at me, “suck my cock.”
“Sir,” I said, and tried to rouse myself. I fell rather than stepped and he kicked me in the ribs. I hardly felt it. Dakra rushed to me and helped me to my knees.
“Sir, it costs extra to hurt us.”
“Yeah fuck you,” he said, and kicked me again. Dakra tried to interpose her body between me and him, but by then I had managed to get his cock from his pants and was applying my trade to it.
“You're good at that you fucking slut,” he said. Darka reached a hand up to touch him too, and put her other arm around me as if to steady or comfort me. He kicked her too then, and she fell back. It all seemed so small and insignificant, as if I watched a play or read it in a book. What was I? A little ball of hate. Too small, too small to effect my revenge. Too meek to end myself. A black little pit of nothing.
He had a knife out now and was cutting my face as I blew him. He was moaning as my blood dripped down my cheek and mixed with my saliva on his cock.
“That will cost you sir.” Dakra said meekly, fear in her voice.
“Shut the fuck up,” he said, and kicked at her again. She fell back again. When had she returned to my side? He pulled himself away from me and grabbed her hair, throwing her onto the bed. I watched his cock press into her, her gasp of pain, small, meek and resigned. He held his bloody knife to her chest now, tracing her nipples and breasts with it.
I saw then Jade, my blade penetrating her chest, her blood pumping onto me, her soft surprise. I saw Jade, and remembered her body against mine. I saw Jade, and I lost my mind.
The man hit the floor hard with a profane scream I didn't listen to. He held the knife up to me and I was standing over him.
“Kill me! You motherfucker!” I screamed at him, and was kicking his face and head, and Dakra was screaming too but I could not hear her. There was blood dripping from her chest, her breast had been sliced. The man slashed his blade at my leg but it was a pathetic slash, I drove my heal down onto his face and he cut my leg, a thin light slice. He was screaming bloody murder then, and I heard commotion outside the room. I snatched a chair into my hands and smashed it into his face, then again and again. His skull caved at some point, splattering brains and blood onto the floor. A few hits later I realized he was dead.
Dakra was staring at me wide eyed. I looked at her for a moment.
“Will you kill me?” I asked. My voice sounded weak, pathetic. She stared at me, uncomprehending, for a long moment, before she slowly shook her head no.
The door burst open and a large man stared in at us. He opened his mouth to speak but I threw the chair at him and he ducked. He rushed the room and tackled me to the floor, spinning me onto my front and twisting my arm behind me. I could barely move, but found with my free hand the knife that had cut Dakra and I, and I used it to cut behind me. He twisted me farther into the ground and my knife never connected to anything.
“Kill me you motherfucker” I hissed at him, and there was a long silence between us. Then I twisted suddenly, into his pin, and I slipped away, a slight weakness in his grip. I plunged the knife into his throat. His blood spurt down onto me and his great weight crushed me. I struggled out from under him.
I felt that I was waking from a dream. I heard shouting from outside the room and people were running. Dakra stared down at the body, then to me.
“What are you?” she said, whimpering. I didn't know.
“I killed her,” I said, and her wide eyes took in the two dead men on the floor. “I killed her for my master commanded me. I killed her. She was my love and I killed her. There is nothing else for me but death. I will kill a thousand of the motherfuckers before I die. I will kill a thousand and drown the streets in blood and I will kill and kill until they cut me down.” I was wavering, the drug still strong in my blood, it seemed like another woman stood in my skin soaked in blood. I took into my hand the bloody sword of the dead soldier. His own blood. I said nothing as I left the room. I don't know why I did not kill her too.
Two men, fops not soldiers, were running past as I entered the hall and I cut one of the them down. “Fuck you!” I cried at him and he screamed and I cut his neck and was down bleeding on the floor. The other ran on ahead. It seemed a thousand ants running before me, pathetic little things. I felt my master in me then, his putrid body giddy with blood. I felt him surging through my veins and I cut a woman in half who rushed up to me. People were scattering before me as I descended the stairs. Two men with swords came to me and I swung wildly at them, crashing my sword into his and bearing him down with my weight. The other slashed his sword against my arm and I saw my skin flop open but could not feel it. I cut his face and was past both of them.
Cuntshabble was running about and screaming and I headed towards him. Two more toughs with long pipes closed around him and I cut at one, felt a blow from the other, and twisted as I fell, driving the blade through the man's calf. He fell and I cut his throat. The other struck me again and I fell, dazed, but still there was no pain. I turned to him and cut him and cut him and he was bleeding and holding a flap of flesh in his hand, and I cut him again and he was dead and falling.
Cuntshable was in a corner then. I raised his hands feebly and shrieked, and I cut him in half, tearing a great gouge into his side and his organs spilled from him. I sliced his face and then passed the blade through his eye. My mind felt cold, precise. I was bleeding from my arm and I hoped it killed me. This was not the giddy slaughter I had committed before. This was murder, my murder, and my suicide.
There was a ring of men in armor and bearing swords that blocked me into the corner.
“Kill me you motherfuckers!” I screamed at them, and took a wild swing at them. They backed away carefully, but did not break rank.
“Kill me! You motherfuckers are worser slaves than I! Dead pathetic things, you are dead pathetic things flopping dead and dead fucks.” I was swinging wildly at them and they continued to just contain me. I rushed one and he brushed my sword aside. I slammed myself into him and he stumbled a little, I pressed on and was past him, my sword scraping uselessly against his armor.
There was a finely dressed lady there and I slashed at her and cut her. Then I was stumbling towards two great doors and dizziness overcame me. I saw Argyl's eyes full of hate looming over me and then a man at arms was slashing his blade at me and I was running at him, hoping he would kill me, and my blade was through him somehow and he was falling. Two other soldiers were behind him and I swung my sword wildly at them. They knocked my sword aside casually and then one passed his sword through my arm and the sword fell uselessly to the ground.
“Kill me motherfucker!” I screamed at him, rushing him with my naked body and I was on top him, we were falling and I was choking and choking and he knocked me aside and I tasted blood in my mouth. And I was on the ground and there were two men on top of me, and my arms were held behind me, and I was stuck I could not move, and I screamed and swore and writhed beneath them, screaming “Kill me kill me kill me!” They clubbed at me, then somehow I was loose and lunging forwards then falling again, then I was stumbling through the doors and onto the open street. Two of the soldiers were behind me. They were more weary now, holding back. I thought I saw Archmagio there, in the crowd of men in the street, and I lurched at him swinging as if I had a sword, but he stepped back and I lost sight of him.
“Kill me!” I screamed, but nobody moved against me. I stalked towards a group but they pulled away from me, so that I was surrounded but not confronted. “Fucking cowards! Fucking kill me!” I screamed and screamed and was crying and stumbling forwards.
Darkness closed in about my vision and I stumbled to the ground. Of course, they only had to wait for me to die, to bleed my wounds out. Well, death was death.
“Don't let them take me to that doctor,” I said, now quietly. One of the guards was watching my closely, sword at the ready. “Don't let them. Make them kill me. Make me die.” His expression did not change.
There was a trail of blood behind me turning the dirt road to mud. I stumbled on. I pulled at a door but it was closed and I heard swearing behind it.
“Please someone kill me. Please.” Nothing. I fell to the ground but stumbled up again and on. I fell onto another door, this one open. I fell onto cool stone and nearly lost consciousness.
“Not in the house of the lord!” cried a voice, and I looked up, seeing an old man standing above me.
“Father, she has killed, she,”
“No! Wait there, you may have her when she leaves. But this is the house of God, and all may be safe here.”
“Father!” shouted one of the men.
Another started barking commands, “Get the back, you and you, make sure she doesn't escape there. You, check for windows.”
The thick dialects prattled on. The old man took my hand I helped me up. I fell onto a pew, one of many that lined the room.
“Child, may I bind your wounds?”
“No,” I said, not looking at him, “I would die.” My voice hardly a whisper.
“Oh my child,” he said. He cradled my face in his arms and I wept against his robe.
“What god is this?”
“He is the true God, there is no other name.”
I rose, stumbling, and walked forwards. There was an alter there, and symbols on the wall. I put my hand on the alter. The man walked closer to me, but stayed back.
“The one God, he can absolve you, you need but to ask. The men outside, they will still punish you, but your soul will be bound to the one God.”
My blood smeared the alter. Hate welled up inside me. The one God. Absolution. I pulled the alter down and smashed it to the floor.
“My child!” the man said, rushing forwards. I kicked him back and he looked up at me.
“You have suffered so much, my child.” he said, though his voice lacked conviction.
I smeared the signs of my master into the fallen alter, and onto the walls. I stumbled as I did. I would have spread my organs about the room as he had demanded, one last sacrifice to set myself free.
“Kvathka,” he said, and I knew my master's name.
And then there was light. It filled the room, horrible bright light that filled my vision and blotted out the temple, and a loud and impossible rumble that blotted out the sounds of shouts and men grumbling in the street, and a bright light that thrust through my eyes and I fell to the ground and fell, and there was nothing there, I was suspended weightless in that terrible white, droplets of blood drifting off of me as I tumbled head over heels.
Then I stood in a long white marble hall, with great pillars and vaulted ceilings, with reliefs of men and women locked in combat, ferocious scenes of violence that shifted under my vision. Great slaughters of men and women beneath swords and arrows, with great winged angels flying overhead with blades of light, directing the human slaughter this way and that.
I stumbled under the sudden gravity, and felt heavier than I was. An angel, a massive forbidding man three yards tall and hefting a massive sword that seemed to be only light, entered the hall opposite me.
“You have seen an angel of the lord and so you will die.”
“Fuck you, murder me you motherfucker!” I screamed at him, and meant to rush him and pummel him with my fists, but fell instead, my weight too much for my limbs to support.
“You have defiled the temple of the lord with the symbols of the foul one, and so you will die.”
“Murder me. Murder me!”
He advanced towards me, powerful stride that crossed the huge corridor with too few steps. I pulled myself forwards towards him, a pathetic effort. He stood before me then and placed his sword against me.
“Fuck you. Lord of everything, fuck you! I will murder you! You who let this evil live, who made me what I was, made me weak, made me weak to thrust the knife through my lover's heart, made us hurt, fuck you I will murder you!”
He looked down at me, unmoving now.
“You, scraps of blood and filth, made this, made us filth and filth and death and you let me thrust the knife, fuck you, you let me thrust the knife, I killed her. Motherfucker I killed her.”
I made it to his feet now and pummeled them with my fists. It was like striking stone, but I did not stop. I raged against him, grabbing his ankle and wrenching it with what might I had, but it had no effect. He stood over me coldly, impassively.
And then in my hand was the silver knife, the knife with which I had slain my love. I drove it into him, into his legs and he screeched and tumbled and I was on top of him and drove the knife into his chest and he dissipated into dust that choked my lungs. I coughed and stumbled on, clutching the knife. My master's knife, he must be there with me, I felt his presence with me, smelled his stench drifting form behind me. I did not care.
A great white light burned out my vision and I strode to it, each step a tremendous effort, each step all determination. I could not look into the light, behind me five giant angels closed ranks around me, one the angel I had slain. They wore dark and rageful expressions, and it seemed an act of will that they did not rush and slaughter me there.
I thrust my puny knife into the light and heard my master laughing in my mind. Not loud like it was before, now it was a weak thought, almost subconscious, tickling the edges of my mind.
Then I was falling, my mind obliterated in a sudden onslaught, all my thoughts torn from me, I had no mouth with which to scream, I was nothing, heaved out of existence, my mind casting desperate tendrils towards my body, which fell and twitched helplessly on the marble floor. Then as suddenly I was back in myself, helpless, seizures, twitching and then my whole life was playing before my mind's eye. Not chronologically, but all impossibly at once, a great rush of everything I had been and had thought. Foremost among them that silver knife plunging into Jade's chest, my master's cackle, Argyl's hate, over and over it burned through me and I could not breath, the memory of Jade, of my tree lover, of Argyl, of all the nameless men I had fucked for my master's profit, all the tortures, all the thoughts, all the moments lost in drugs, the murder of that woman, the infant I could not slay, it was all there at all once.
And then suddenly gone, and I was alone in a great white space. White as far as space could be seen. I stood naked, my silver knife gone, melted to a pool of metal on the floor. And then a man was before me. A massive man, ten times my size and stooping to look at me.
“You are of the first side,” he said.
“You will murder me!” I screamed at him, and would have rushed him save he was insubstantial, more phantom than physical.
“You will not be of the third state.” he said.
“What?”
“You will not be of the third state. Not now. You wish to be free of the foul one?”
“My master?”
“You are of the subordinate state with it, yes.”
“Yes, I wish my freedom.”
“He has great force. You will not be free easily. I have this for you.” He stooped and placed into my hand a sword sheathed in a scabbard.
“But you must choose. There, the ones you love, the two you love. They are of the second state, but not of the third state. You may still find them. I have not the possession of their state. It must be found and they may be restored. But then the foul one will be ready when you come to free yourself. Or you may go to your master now and free yourself, but then your lovers will pass into the third state and be gone to you.”
I stared at his massive form. He stared down at me with mild curiosity, as if I were a cute mouse he would prod towards a bit of cheese for lack of a better idea. The sword I held was longer than any I had welded before, but not, I think, all that long. Resting at my waist it almost reached the ground. It was curved very slightly. I did not draw it.
He was bleeding, a small cut on his calf, hardly a trickle of blood from it. A paper cut. My silver knife. All my rage and hate, a tiny nick on the calf of a god, useless.
Then I was back in the temple, holding the sword still, bloody and naked before the fallen alter. The priest was staring at me.
“What, where, did you get that?” He was pointing at the sword.
“He gave it to me.”
“The true God?”
“Yes, I think, he was very tall.”
His eyes opened very very wide, awe on his face, his mind boggling inside him.