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Clipping a Raven's Wings
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Stolen sweets are best. The riders loped on by him and he heard one call his name, "If you want to save your hide and soul a-ridin on this range, Then cowboy change your ways today or with us you will ride, Trying to catch the devil's herd across the endless sky." ~ Yi-pee-yi-ay, Yi-pee-yi-oh, Ghost Riders in the sky. Even as the rest of her body slept, her wrists and ankles remained wide awake, screaming, wallowing in the agony of burning red blisters and shredded skin that was given no time to heal, as even in exhaustion, her muscles strained, twisting and flexing against the bonds of hemp rope.Days' worth of fighting had turned the muscles of her forearms and calves to swollen knots of pain, barely able to move through the tension of overuse, but no sooner would a healing layer of epidermis close over the open wounds circling her limbs, then she would shift, and tear the skin open again, and the scratchy fibers of the rope would dig into exposed sinews and nerves, waking her from whatever fitful haze she found herself into the crescendos of her own agonized screams. In her more lucid moments, she found herself wondering where she was, how she had come to be here… how she could get out… but those moments never lasted for long, and were soon replaced by the gnawing of hunger, and the razorblade sting of chill air on her skin. Only a few shreds of her evening gown remained, a few random swatches of silk and satin, just enough to cover her most intimate recesses, and scraps to drape over her bosom, but they were not enough to save her from the prying eyes that blinked in the shadows, nor the fingers of unseasonable cold that pawed at her, slithered over her curvature and invaded her, reached between her legs and pried her open, coursed up over the small of her back and stabbed her between the shoulder blades. But though the times of clarity that sprung up between the shame of icy intrusion and the raw ache of an empty belly were transient at best, there were plenty of them, and she was left to that most agonizing of tortures, the time to ponder her predicament from every angle, to reach deep and explore it from the inside, much as the drafts in the cavern explored her, made violent love to her with their protrusions of ethereal ice. Who was her captor… why did he want her… no, that was the wrong question… *why* he wanted her was the only thing clear about the situation… what was ahead… would she suffer in this crucifixion for all eternity… when would the next full moon come, and give her the strength to break her bonds… and wherever *here* was, would the devil moon that had always been her bane, now her savior, be able to reach her… was it exposure to that villainous glow, or merely the tug of celestial will upon the earth that induced her change… in all the centuries, she had never spent much time ruminating on the whys and wherefores, too busy with the challenge of hiding her nature and the demands of the energy it took to hate her curse to wonder much… Earth angel, earth angel, the one I adore ~ Love you forever, and ever more ~ I'm just a fool, a fool in love with you Earth angel earth angel, please be mine ~ My darling dear, love you all the time ~ I'm just a fool, a fool in love with you Rivers of red streamed over her shoulder blades, and slivers of pine shoved themselves under the layer of skin at her bare bosom, as the impact of the blows across her back forced her prone figure forward on the table. She could not brace herself - her hands and feet were captured by those leather straps at the four corners, and she had learned long before that it did no good to fight them. Once, she had crushed her own hand in on itself, nearly snapping the hundreds of tiny bones, and slipped free of one of the restraints, only to find herself nose to nose with a pair of brutish black eyes, the soulless, unyielding eyes of a Doberman. Slumping back in defeat, she had lain back against the table, laying her arm at her side and bracing herself for the inevitable punishment when her captor came back into the room and discovered she'd tried to escape.This was her regular beating - it might have been daily, it might have been hourly, she had no idea. But time and time again, she found herself spread out on the table, and shackled down, although the need for restraint had long since passed - she was too terrified to attempt escape, and since she had realized that he had no intention of killing her, she was resigned to take what punishment he deemed fit to dole out to her, until some opportunity should present itself, or until he should decide he was done with her, whichever came first. Sometimes, it was a single leather strap across her backside… sometimes, she was lain face up, and brutally used, violated with all manner of objects… the chauffeur was allowed to take his pleasure with her sometimes, and sometimes, it was razors, or needles, or branding irons… at first, she cried every time some new implement took its bite out of her flesh and her psyche, but eventually, she would grow accustomed to the pain, until the tears were less and less, and then he would bring out some new atrocity. She once thought that feigning misery might lessen her punishment, but she learned, in time, that he did not gauge her punishment by the amount of tears or the volume of her sobbing… he always seemed to know the limits of her body, innately, and whether he stopped or did not stop was a matter of his whim alone… The only thing constant was that, just when she began to think that dying would be preferable to going on under the whip (and this from a woman who had never once groused about her immortality, but suffered the indignities of monthly beastliness in order to claim the precious prize of never-ending life), he would stop, and send her off to the pens. Life there was almost worse, of course, its monotony making her heart almost yearn for the tortures, after a time, making her long for the precious moments when the spiked crimson attentions of her master and owner rescued her from the dull grey landscape of the cage. There were other girls there, in the pens, of course, but none other like her, that she could tell. They came and went, appearing and disappearing, and, she presumed, died eventually. None of them carried the familiar scent of immortality, only the stench of unbearable misery, and none of them ever talked, so aside from the variances in size and shape, she had nothing with which to distinguish them, one from the other. Until the day the collar came, that is. Rescue me ~ Oh, take me in your arms ~ Rescue me ~ With all your tender charms ~ `Cause I'm lonely, and I'm blue ~ I need you, and your love, too ~ Come on and rescue me ~ Come on baby, and rescue me ~ Come and baby, and rescue me ~ `Cause I need you, by my side ~ Can't you see that I'm lonely ~ Rescue me Somewhere in the cascade of days, a black leather collar appeared about her neck, but she was so numbed to captivity by then that she hardly dared remark on it, only noted, at last, that all of the other girls wore them, as well. The leather had no power to bind her, of course, was merely an ornament, with its occasional use for chaining her to a tethering ring, particularly when she was bathed. That was one thing that the master held firm on, that she must hold perfectly still as she was hosed down, and if she didn't, she was beaten mercilessly, and if she did, if she accomplished utter still against the torrent of icy water battering her skin and intruding at every aperture, she was not. It was that simple. And it was the only time he was fair about a beating, the only time he suspended the rule that punishment was to be at his whim, regardless of how careful she was to please him.But back to the collars… As the days stretched into weeks and years, the band about her neck remained, stiff, buffed black leather with a common steel buckle, while some of her sisters in bondage were adorned in chrome and platinum, or chains set with jewels, or even bands with inlays of precious metal. Why it should be that no matter what she did, she was always to bear the drudgery of a plain leather collar, like an animal harnessed, escaped her. She thought, perhaps, it was her owner's mocking way of referring to the lupine blood that coursed through her veins, his way of making a pet of that which could not be tamed any other way. No one ever had to lecture her about the symbolism of the collar… one day it simply struck her, like a lightning bolt, as she watched the other girls being led in and out of the pens. Most of the women seemed to be crawling, even on their feet, but a precious few stood tall, even in rags, squaring their shoulders with determination and wearing their collars proudly, as though they were trophies. There comes a time in every slave's life, when defiance deteriorates into complacency, and then blossoms into pride, but it is still defiance, only wearing a different costume.
I hear hurricanes a blowing. ~ I know the end is coming soon. ~ I fear rivers overflowing. ~ I hear the voice of rage and ruin.
Technicolor
The worst of all was the embrace of the giant metal sarcophagus, the iron maiden. The first time the Master and his chauffeur shoved her into the thing, she was incredulous, lying to herself that he only meant to frighten her with this mockery of a stately woman, whose body was hollowed out and lined with spikes. But her worst fears were confirmed as the door closed over her, and she felt each thick point lance through joints and pierce muscle,immobilizing her in pain's eternal embrace. And she thought she'd long since lost the power or the will to scream... I am just seven hours old, truly beautiful to behold, and somebody should be told my libido hasn't been controlled. Now the only thing I've come to trust is an orgasmic rush of lust... Rose tints my world and keeps me safe from my trouble and pain. Fighting back her fears, she pressed her body neurotically close to the upright of the wooden harness that held her, in spite of the chill of lacquered mahogany against her bare bosom. As always, her wrists and ankles were lashed to the four corners of the giant "X", but something, perhaps that shred of lupine instinct that had not been stifled through all the years of captivity, told her that this time would be different. Perhaps it was the occasional clinking of metal she heard, as the Master and his trusted servant shuffled around behind her, making ready.[WHAM!] She threw her head back and howled with pain, as a steel spike was hammered through the myriad bones and sinews and nerves of her left hand, pinning that palm flat to the wood. [WHAM!] Before that cry of anguish had even begun to recede, the air in the chamber was filled with another piercing shriek, as a thick spike was thrust through her right hand. "Noooooooo... ," she sobbed hysterically, as she felt the oil-slicked hands of the chauffeur tugging downward at her ankles, pressing her feet flat and turning the soles outward. [WHAM!] Pain exploded in the bottoms of both feet at once, that agony splintering off and shooting up her legs, into the core of her being, a core she had long ago believed numb to the endless tortures to which she was subjected. Her body was one large, exposed nerve, throbbing erratically, and inside her mind, she saw herself traveling at high speed down a long, black tunnel, the edges of which pulsed with psychedelic layers of color, the sickly colors of her own misery and the tapering off of her consciousness. She didn't even realize, until her throat began to go raw, that she was screaming, screaming loud enough to rouse the dogs from their rest in the corner of the room, screaming loud enough to cause the Master to laugh, and loud enough to overpower the jangle of the whip, the strips of finely-wrought silver that cut across the backs of her thighs as she hung, crucified... screaming for the first time in almost fifty years... Blue skies smilin' at me ~ Nothin' but blue skies do I see ~ Bluebirds singin' a song ~ Nothin' but bluebirds all day long Perhaps it was that scream, that vocal symbol of finally being broken at the hands of her Master and his cohort, that changed everything. She would hear it in her nightmares for years to come, that never-ending, high-pitched tremolo, but to suffer that haunting, it would turn out, was to be well worth the trouble.Her first glimpse of the outside world in... oh, had it been decades?... proved to be quite a shock. In spite of the fact that she wore blinders, and was conveyed through the streets in the back seat of a car with windows tinted far past legal standards, she was dazzled by the profusion of neon and the ear-splitting roar of car engines. She could feel the crush of the population even through the steel walls of the limousine, could smell the stench of overcrowding and the rot of progress. Just once, she tried to look out, to drink in more of the detail of a much-changed Hollywood, but just as she caught a glimpse of a brightly lit sign that read "Cantor's", her reward was a vicious tug on the chain that held her collar and trailed down into her Master's lap. "Try that again," he hissed, "and I'll have this car turned back around, and you won't see moonlight for another fifty years." From then on, she held perfectly still, like an ivory statuette, attempting to lose herself in the thumping of tires on pavement, hiding inside the sound to ignore the shame of being clad as she was, in little more than a leather harness that wound between her legs and pressed painfully tight across her bosom, but left the most intimate regions of her anatomy exposed. Between the blinders, and the harness, the plumage woven into her hair, and the bleached white horsehair flogger that lay across his lap, with its smoothly polished handle, she could only guess at the horrors he intended for her, and she shuddered at the thought that other eyes would see. But somehow, with that knowledge, came a sense of pride, and while her first instinct was to wish that he would, indeed, turn the car around, it was followed by an odd determination to display herself as best she could, to find that kernel of dignity inside the morass of humiliation. When the car lurched to a stop at last, the Master pulled a white velveteen cloak from the floorboards, draping it over her shoulders and tucking it close around her, treating her, for the first time in her history with him, as a prized possession, not to be coveted by the strange, prying eyes that would seek her out wherever it was they were going. She was shielded from seeing and being seen as her Master hurried her down the paved and carpeted walk, and through the press of bodies into the shadows of the nightclub. The air smelled of clove and alcohol, and as she progressed through the crowd, her peripheral vision latched onto sights that nearly made her heart stop beating - women barely dressed, like circus clowns with their huge hair and brightly-colored clothes, animal skins and neons everywhere, and men in fringed coats, reeking of drug corrosion, barely distinguishable from the women with their long tresses. Everyone was dancing, but she would hardly have classified the sounds that filled the air as music... screeching, metallic wailing, like an animal screaming at its slaughter. Passing through that door was like entering a portal into another dimension. As soon as the steel trap had slammed behind them, all semblance of protection was withdrawn, and the cape was ripped rudely away, putting her on bold display before this circus freak show. Only a few people watched as the Master thrust her to her knees, and a few eyes widened when the purpose of the horsehair flogger was made known - a tail, to swing across her backside and complement her pony's regalia - but most were too absorbed even to notice. She gritted her teeth against the discomfort and held her head high, keeping eyes downcast as she was driven at the end of a leather strap across the dance floor, her crawl forced to something between a prance and a sway, but something very definitely equine, by the pressure of the flogger handle pressing uncomfortably inside her. Ninety thousand screaming watts ~ Honey dripping from her pot ~ Fill the cup to the top tonight ~ This deadly sin is all we know ~ Pleasure victim, who's next to fall ~ The question is will you please us all tonight? As the bodies of curious onlookers converged around her, her heart hammered out a nervous, irregular beat, and her posture stiffened, the effort required to force a graceful posture making itself evident. While her muscles grew more rigid, her eyes began to dart wildly, bouncing from one side of the blinder wall to the other, in time with the rapid, erratic breaths lifting her chest to strain against the harness. She forced herself to move across the dance floor, silk stockings shifting and tugging over her knees.Suddenly, an intrusive, booted foot kicked out, deliberately buckling one of her elbows. She faltered, slumping clumsily onto her forearms and scuffing her chin on the lacquered wood. Her icy facade began to crumble, splintered by the raucous laughter that surrounded her, and as she struggled to right herself, the fight made deliberately difficult by the prodding of another booted toe, that of her Master, angling itself sharply against the exposed inside of her thigh, her lower lip began to tremble, and silent tears of outrage of outrage splashed down the insides of the blinders. In fifty years, the only eyes she had dared to meet had been canine, the watery jet lenses of the Dobermans that Master kept always at his side. But now, swarmed by touching, feeling hands and buried in thick layers of wanton hunger, she found herself looking... *up*... up, for the first time in decades, searching for some way out, some way to rescue herself from the carnival of atrocities at which she was the main attraction. The whole room seemed to list from side to side, stretching at its seams and twisting into irregular oblongs. The hallucination extended to the sound, which turned upside down, skidding across the raw nerves of her consciousness like a crash victim on pavement. And there, among the leering faces and stretched, contorted sawing of strings, a pair of glittering black eyes winked out of the morass, lucid as diamonds, but dark as a coal scuttle. Suddenly, all the industrial whining was sucked up into a funnel and compacted into the beating of two hearts - his, and her own - and the sound of her labored panting provided a rhythmic backdrop. She snapped back onto her haunches, and ripped the blinders off, and suddenly, it was as if she were seeing clearly for the first time in her centuries-long history. As eagerly as a child in a candy store, she looked this way and that, thristing for the details of every body... All she could make out were outlines... But they were outlines that defined, prophecied... Some were surrounded in auras of sickly green, some in flames of red, and some blotted out by the black of dried blood. She was not the only immortal in this room. Old souls and new, and those not destined to remain long on this earth, were revealed in sparkling clarity by the thin lines of color surrounding them, and the needles of veins and arteries pulsing just under translucent skin. From that moment on, everything happened too quickly to recount in much detail. At the invitation of rescue in those jet eyes, she leapt to her feet, and she heard the hollow scream of outrage as her Master grabbed at her, instead catching the fluttering end of the tail, inadvertently dislodging it with a grinding tug and a sickening scrape. But there were arms to catch her, and even without knowing the fate that lay on the other side of that rescue, she fell into them gladly, and forced her feet to plot one after the other, as fast as she could go, through the sluggish sea of bodies. Behind her, she could hear her Master's voice, calling her back, but here, in this very public pit of humanity, she no longer felt obliged to answer, no longer felt leashed by the mere sound. Ahead of her were more bodies, and at the urging of that rescuing hand, they seemed to part like the Red Sea, then swarm in behind the escaping pair, swallowing them up in an ocean of flesh and sweeping them along to the back corridors. As they burst through the back doors, the first gulp of polluted air threatened to scorch her lungs, but it tasted better than the finest wine to her, at that moment, rife with the sweet succor of freedom. The shock of deliverance was all the impetus she needed, to tear away from her liberator and race off into the night... For hours, it seemed, she ran, through dimly lit alleys and across crowded sidewalks, tripping over gutters and bodies nestled inside cardboard houses. At every turn, she found herself hissing at some passerby who had the poor taste to overlook her desperation and grab at her scantily clad figure. Somewhere along the way, her shoes were lost, and the gravelly pavement dug into her tender soles, soles too long softened by captivity to withstand even the slightest infringement, but still she ran, only occasionally glancing over her shoulder, to see the specter of ominous shadows trailing behind, and then she forced herself onward, even harder. The boy with the thorn in his side ~ Behind the hatred there lies ~ A murderous desire for love ~ How can they look into my eyes ~ And still they don't believe me? ~ How can they hear me say those words ~ Still they don't believe me? ~ And if they don't believe me now ~ Will they ever believe me? ~ And if they don't believe me now ~ Will they ever, they ever, believe me? ~ Oh ... The glow of dawn was just beginning to peek up over the eastern horizon, just enough to illuminate the skyline, as her body finally gave out on her, and she collapsed in a heap of panting shoulders and muscles trembling from the exertion, skin crawling with the chill of being bared to the early pre-morning coastal breeze, and feet bleeding profusely from numerous slivers and cuts.As she curled up against the side of a brick building, curling her extremities around her to form a protective shell over the indecent exposure of her most intimate secrets, she found herself lost in a moment of awe for that barely lit, jagged row of skyscrapers. It wasn't her city anymore, was more like a foreign land, and she realized, for the first time, that she had nowhere to go, knew no one. Her former friends were likely all nothing but names on headstones by now. Of course, it had always been like that, as she drifted from vignette to vignette over the centuries, but never had she suffered the ravages of stolen time, never had she had it ripped from her very soul. In that moment, she knew the first tremors of genuine fear. All that she had once was lost, all the years of fortunes built, all the comforts she had once known... gone... Was it, she wondered, perhaps better to return to Malphader, and beg his mercy, if only to know that she had a home again? "No. It's not," answered a deep baritone from somewhere at her shoulder. She snapped around, curling into a tighter ball, eyes startled and wide, only to find herself staring into the diamond and coal eyes of her savior. In the murky shadows, lit more by the neon of street lights than by the impending sunrise, she could barely make out the sheen of a leather jacket, and a long cascade of ebony silk, resting down over one shoulder like a broken raven's wing. "Come on," he rasped, extending his hand. "I can help you. But we have to hurry." He turned his head towards the street, offering a significant glance to the approaching glow from the east. Without a second thought, she reached for him, but as her hand curled into his, it occurred to her that she may well be walking into captivity once more. But she had no choice - she was at the mercy of the hand fate had dealt her, for the moment, and that thought inspired a slow, bubbling rage that welled up from deep within and rose like a volcanic flow, spilling out to curl her lips into a sneer. "That's it," he hissed, giving her hand a comforting squeeze as he pulled her from the pavement to her feet. "Feed on that rage. Let it fill you. Let it fuel you." Releasing his grip, he shrugged off the leather jacket and settled it over her shoulders, closing it protectively over her bared skin. But she, almost defiantly, shirked her shoulders back, causing the front of the jacket to open, and bearing herself proudly as she turned to him. Gratitude was written in her eyes, but so, too, was fury. An eye for an eye, she told herself. An eye for an eye... She would reclaim her life, and never again would she be the prey, but the predator instead... With an understanding, almost proud, smile, he took her hand once more, and they hurried away into the shadows of an alleyway, disappearing into the darkness before the sun could rise to catch them...
I know where beauty lives ~ I've seen it once, I know the warmth she gives ~ The light that you could never see ~ It shines inside, you can't take that from me
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