Post by Vautier on Sept 20, 2011 12:24:06 GMT -5
They’d done quite a number on him. His fine clothes were in tatters – such a waste. Such a mess.
Was this a Monday? I've never liked Mondays.
Didn’t it all start on a Monday? That would give me more of a reason to like them. I don’t know when I first noticed his watching eyes. Or rather when I came to recognise what it meant that he watched me.
I watched dispassionately as they tied him to the only other chair in the room, and tore the blindfold from his eyes. He winced at the sudden light, but I could see from the expression on his face he still believed he could bluster his way out of his current predicament simply because of who he was. The benefits of which, by the way, I had, at his request, secured for him. That repulsive and implacable conviction of superiority is one of the many things I despise about nobles.
I crossed one leg over the other and leaned in towards him, purring a greeting: “Welcome to my other office.”
When he asks, I say I’m sixteen. It might be a lie. He puts his hand against my cheek, turning my head this way and that, entranced. I look away as if I’m shy. I’m not. What I feel is something else entirely.
He looked around him, taking in the bare walls, the scarred wooden table, the sanded floor and the ... implements ... laid out at my side. His eyes were a little wild by the time he had finished playing tourist.
“I’m afraid you’ve rather disappointed me,” I said.
And it was true. He had. In a very tedious way. I do hate having to do this kind of thing. It’s so terribly vulgar. I suppose I could have left it to one of my associates who specialise in it, far beyond my mere dabblings, but sometimes a personal touch is necessary. I simply can’t afford for people to believe they can cross me.
His tongue swiped across dry lips.
“You’re going to let me go,” he said, finally, with a rather fine – if hollow – display of bravado.
“Am I?” I asked, curiously.
“Yes, you can’t do anything to me. You know who I am. Who my family is.”
I felt a faint stirring of irritation, but I don’t think I let it show. And there was a smudge of dirt on one of my fingernails. I pulled out my handkerchief and carefully wiped it away. When I was quite done, and my hands were pristine once more, I enquired absently: “I'm curious, have you perchance mistaken me for a bathhouse whore?”
He’s nobody really. But some day he’ll be somebody. Like me. My father is nobody. He’s a groom. He’s the sort of man rich, bored women like to fuck. He has a working man’s physique and large, gentle hands. I’m just a by-blow of such a hay-tossed union. I’m none of him, all her. Whoever she was.
There was a longish silence. Not the brightest, this young scion. “W-what?” he said, eventually.
I enunciated the question again, even more clearly, careful to keep my vowels the cut-glass sneer of the wellborn. “I asked: have you mistaken me for a bathhouse whore?”
“I … I … don't...”
I stood and struck him hard across the face. It was an open-handed slap, aimed more at pain and humiliation than any real damage. The sound resounded gloriously. His lip burst open like a crimson flower. “Let me put it another way, dear boy. Are you labouring under the misapprehension that I am to be fucked?”
I dropped back into my chair. Now there was blood on my hand. If I cleaned it off, there would be blood on my handkerchief as well. How vexing. It really must have been Monday. “I can only presume the answer is yes,” I said.
For the first time (finally – I did mention he was not precisely a shining star of intellectual attainment) I saw the blur of fear in his eyes.
For years, eyes slide over me like I don’t exist. I start to think I don’t. I copy the way they speak, the way they do things. I don’t know what else to do.
“No, no,” he said. “I don’t think that.” Liar. “N-n-now, you just let me go, and nobody will know what has happened here today.”
I managed to drag my attention from the blemish on my skin to his stupid, stupid face. I made myself comfortable again and leaned in, intimately close, letting my breath brush his lips as I spoke. “I had your elder brother killed for you, and now you seem to wish to forget the debt that stands between us.”
“I don't … I don't have to do anything for you.”
“You are familiar with my reputation, are you not?”
“Y-yes … but ...”
I cut him off with a languid wave of my hand. Speaking of cutting off...
“Have you ever seen these?” I asked, gesturing to one of the items beside me. He looked. He paled. Perhaps I was getting through to him at last. “They're called pilliwnks. They come from Alba. Rather ingenious.” I let my fingertips rest upon another. “Or this? From the east. It has a rather fanciful name – I believe it translates as something like Flower of Anguish. Although it's closer to a fruit, in shape, isn't it? A little like a pear? Can you, perhaps, conceive where it might be inserted?” I picked it up and pressed a button on the protruding base piece, causing the metal dome to blossom into four metal spines. He was trembling now, with body-shaking tremours. “Of course,” I went on, “not everything need be quite so imaginative to be effective.”
I gesture to my associates, who obligingly came forward from the shadows, released one of his hands and placed it flat upon the table before us. He struggled instinctively and futilely but his mind still denied what his eyes could so clearly see.
But then they start to take notice. Some of them at least. Their gaze snags like I’m a hook and they can’t get loose. That’s why I let him catch me in a corridor. That’s why I lie. That’s why I let him touch me.
“This is simply an exceptional honed blade,” I said, displaying it momentarily.
It was only the tap-tap-tap of his own dripping blood that alerted him to the loss of his little finger. He stared dumbstruck – too horrified even to recognise pain – at the space where there had previously been an appendage. And then he started to scream. A messy bubble of spittle, obscenity, tears and pleas.
I think I'd made my point. And about time too.
My attention flicked briefly to one of my associates. “Give me your coat,” I said.
He blinked idiotically as if he couldn’t understand simple words. “What?”
“Give me your coat,” I said again, voice climbing slightly. I do so hate having to repeat myself. Monday, it had to be Monday.
The man struggled out of his coat with appropriate haste this time, and handed it to me. I used to clean the gore from the curved sweep of the blade.
He whispers what he wants in my ear. I go to my knees before him, looking up through my lashes. I don’t know where the words come from, but I say them anyway. I say it as they would say it. He looks shocked to hear himself in my mouth. “You’ll owe me a favour,” I say.
By the time I was finished, my guest had fallen silent again, the whites of his eyes flashing like those of a mindless beast. I said: “You have me in a bit of a bind, you see. I have my reputation to consider. The truth of the matter is: you owe me. And since you have expressed your intention to renege, and on a debt of honour no less, which is most ungentlemanly conduct, I fully intend to take my payment in blood, pain, and eventually, when I am inclined to be merciful which may take me some time, your life.”
“But .. but … I'm the Lord of...”
“Trust me, dear boy, one horribly mutilated corpse floating down the river is very like another. Death is a great social equaliser. And you have … I believe … a second cousin who stands to inherit?”
“Has he … have you ...”
“Oh please. Unlike you, I have some sense of honour, and I keep my promises. Now, where to begin, I wonder?”
I picked up a pair of coldly gleaming shears. As it so happened I was merely moving them around but it was enough to break him. I was actually rather relieved. I have better things to do with my time than hack bits off lordlings.
He begged, not especially coherently, for his life, and I let him run his course, my eyes fixed politely on his blotchy, pain-scored, terror-twisted face, while my mind ran through the various other things I had to do today. This had thrown off my whole schedule. I was tempted to kill him out of sheer annoyance but I suspected it would be both discourteous and somewhat wasteful.
He thinks I’m playing. Offers to give me some coins instead. But I hold to it, and he laughs. He doesn’t think he’ll ever have to pay. When I find him, a few years later, when I’ve made my way to the city, and he’s somebody and I’m somebody, he looks at me the same way. Until I tell him I wasn’t sixteen, which may be a lie, and then he gives me my favour. That’s how it begins.
When he was done, I steeled myself – for he was a disgusting state by now – and slipped across the distance between us, arranging myself like a lover across his thighs. He cringed back from me, as best he could. So he had, at least, learned something.
“And again,” I said, sadly, “you have me in a bind.”
Ironic … really … because actually … oh never mind.
“P-please, I'll p-p-pay the debt. I'm s-sorry. I'll d-double it. T-triple it.”
I put a finger gently against his lips to shut him the fuck up.
“I would,” I said, as if considering, “be potentially willing to settle for double but that still leaves me with a price to extract today. And the problem is that once you're out of here you might take it into your silly head little to get all vengeful on me. And, although you could never pose even the mildest threat to me, I simply can't abide loose ends.”
“I w-won’t,” he babbled. “P-please, I w-won’t. Take your price, I’ll pay it, I’ll pay anything.”
I was at least 90% certain I’d broken him sufficiently that he would feel nothing but gratitude towards me for the rest of his days and I knew shame would keep him silent about this. It always does. They make their deal with me and then they cringe away from my gaze as though my eyes are mirrors. I wonder, sometimes, at the world that would have no place for me. Not very often though. However, the unpredictable 10% bothered me.
I sighed, thoughtfully.
But in the end I severed two more of his fingers, accepted his gratitude for having done so, and let him go with an assurance that I would be quite irritated if he put me in the position of having to remove his body parts again.
Fucking Mondays.
But I recognise it first in that corridor. I do what he wants me to do, and I’m not very good at it. But it doesn’t seem to matter; he responds like I am. And the taste of it stays with me for a long time. It’s the taste of power.
Was this a Monday? I've never liked Mondays.
Didn’t it all start on a Monday? That would give me more of a reason to like them. I don’t know when I first noticed his watching eyes. Or rather when I came to recognise what it meant that he watched me.
I watched dispassionately as they tied him to the only other chair in the room, and tore the blindfold from his eyes. He winced at the sudden light, but I could see from the expression on his face he still believed he could bluster his way out of his current predicament simply because of who he was. The benefits of which, by the way, I had, at his request, secured for him. That repulsive and implacable conviction of superiority is one of the many things I despise about nobles.
I crossed one leg over the other and leaned in towards him, purring a greeting: “Welcome to my other office.”
When he asks, I say I’m sixteen. It might be a lie. He puts his hand against my cheek, turning my head this way and that, entranced. I look away as if I’m shy. I’m not. What I feel is something else entirely.
He looked around him, taking in the bare walls, the scarred wooden table, the sanded floor and the ... implements ... laid out at my side. His eyes were a little wild by the time he had finished playing tourist.
“I’m afraid you’ve rather disappointed me,” I said.
And it was true. He had. In a very tedious way. I do hate having to do this kind of thing. It’s so terribly vulgar. I suppose I could have left it to one of my associates who specialise in it, far beyond my mere dabblings, but sometimes a personal touch is necessary. I simply can’t afford for people to believe they can cross me.
His tongue swiped across dry lips.
“You’re going to let me go,” he said, finally, with a rather fine – if hollow – display of bravado.
“Am I?” I asked, curiously.
“Yes, you can’t do anything to me. You know who I am. Who my family is.”
I felt a faint stirring of irritation, but I don’t think I let it show. And there was a smudge of dirt on one of my fingernails. I pulled out my handkerchief and carefully wiped it away. When I was quite done, and my hands were pristine once more, I enquired absently: “I'm curious, have you perchance mistaken me for a bathhouse whore?”
He’s nobody really. But some day he’ll be somebody. Like me. My father is nobody. He’s a groom. He’s the sort of man rich, bored women like to fuck. He has a working man’s physique and large, gentle hands. I’m just a by-blow of such a hay-tossed union. I’m none of him, all her. Whoever she was.
There was a longish silence. Not the brightest, this young scion. “W-what?” he said, eventually.
I enunciated the question again, even more clearly, careful to keep my vowels the cut-glass sneer of the wellborn. “I asked: have you mistaken me for a bathhouse whore?”
“I … I … don't...”
I stood and struck him hard across the face. It was an open-handed slap, aimed more at pain and humiliation than any real damage. The sound resounded gloriously. His lip burst open like a crimson flower. “Let me put it another way, dear boy. Are you labouring under the misapprehension that I am to be fucked?”
I dropped back into my chair. Now there was blood on my hand. If I cleaned it off, there would be blood on my handkerchief as well. How vexing. It really must have been Monday. “I can only presume the answer is yes,” I said.
For the first time (finally – I did mention he was not precisely a shining star of intellectual attainment) I saw the blur of fear in his eyes.
For years, eyes slide over me like I don’t exist. I start to think I don’t. I copy the way they speak, the way they do things. I don’t know what else to do.
“No, no,” he said. “I don’t think that.” Liar. “N-n-now, you just let me go, and nobody will know what has happened here today.”
I managed to drag my attention from the blemish on my skin to his stupid, stupid face. I made myself comfortable again and leaned in, intimately close, letting my breath brush his lips as I spoke. “I had your elder brother killed for you, and now you seem to wish to forget the debt that stands between us.”
“I don't … I don't have to do anything for you.”
“You are familiar with my reputation, are you not?”
“Y-yes … but ...”
I cut him off with a languid wave of my hand. Speaking of cutting off...
“Have you ever seen these?” I asked, gesturing to one of the items beside me. He looked. He paled. Perhaps I was getting through to him at last. “They're called pilliwnks. They come from Alba. Rather ingenious.” I let my fingertips rest upon another. “Or this? From the east. It has a rather fanciful name – I believe it translates as something like Flower of Anguish. Although it's closer to a fruit, in shape, isn't it? A little like a pear? Can you, perhaps, conceive where it might be inserted?” I picked it up and pressed a button on the protruding base piece, causing the metal dome to blossom into four metal spines. He was trembling now, with body-shaking tremours. “Of course,” I went on, “not everything need be quite so imaginative to be effective.”
I gesture to my associates, who obligingly came forward from the shadows, released one of his hands and placed it flat upon the table before us. He struggled instinctively and futilely but his mind still denied what his eyes could so clearly see.
But then they start to take notice. Some of them at least. Their gaze snags like I’m a hook and they can’t get loose. That’s why I let him catch me in a corridor. That’s why I lie. That’s why I let him touch me.
“This is simply an exceptional honed blade,” I said, displaying it momentarily.
It was only the tap-tap-tap of his own dripping blood that alerted him to the loss of his little finger. He stared dumbstruck – too horrified even to recognise pain – at the space where there had previously been an appendage. And then he started to scream. A messy bubble of spittle, obscenity, tears and pleas.
I think I'd made my point. And about time too.
My attention flicked briefly to one of my associates. “Give me your coat,” I said.
He blinked idiotically as if he couldn’t understand simple words. “What?”
“Give me your coat,” I said again, voice climbing slightly. I do so hate having to repeat myself. Monday, it had to be Monday.
The man struggled out of his coat with appropriate haste this time, and handed it to me. I used to clean the gore from the curved sweep of the blade.
He whispers what he wants in my ear. I go to my knees before him, looking up through my lashes. I don’t know where the words come from, but I say them anyway. I say it as they would say it. He looks shocked to hear himself in my mouth. “You’ll owe me a favour,” I say.
By the time I was finished, my guest had fallen silent again, the whites of his eyes flashing like those of a mindless beast. I said: “You have me in a bit of a bind, you see. I have my reputation to consider. The truth of the matter is: you owe me. And since you have expressed your intention to renege, and on a debt of honour no less, which is most ungentlemanly conduct, I fully intend to take my payment in blood, pain, and eventually, when I am inclined to be merciful which may take me some time, your life.”
“But .. but … I'm the Lord of...”
“Trust me, dear boy, one horribly mutilated corpse floating down the river is very like another. Death is a great social equaliser. And you have … I believe … a second cousin who stands to inherit?”
“Has he … have you ...”
“Oh please. Unlike you, I have some sense of honour, and I keep my promises. Now, where to begin, I wonder?”
I picked up a pair of coldly gleaming shears. As it so happened I was merely moving them around but it was enough to break him. I was actually rather relieved. I have better things to do with my time than hack bits off lordlings.
He begged, not especially coherently, for his life, and I let him run his course, my eyes fixed politely on his blotchy, pain-scored, terror-twisted face, while my mind ran through the various other things I had to do today. This had thrown off my whole schedule. I was tempted to kill him out of sheer annoyance but I suspected it would be both discourteous and somewhat wasteful.
He thinks I’m playing. Offers to give me some coins instead. But I hold to it, and he laughs. He doesn’t think he’ll ever have to pay. When I find him, a few years later, when I’ve made my way to the city, and he’s somebody and I’m somebody, he looks at me the same way. Until I tell him I wasn’t sixteen, which may be a lie, and then he gives me my favour. That’s how it begins.
When he was done, I steeled myself – for he was a disgusting state by now – and slipped across the distance between us, arranging myself like a lover across his thighs. He cringed back from me, as best he could. So he had, at least, learned something.
“And again,” I said, sadly, “you have me in a bind.”
Ironic … really … because actually … oh never mind.
“P-please, I'll p-p-pay the debt. I'm s-sorry. I'll d-double it. T-triple it.”
I put a finger gently against his lips to shut him the fuck up.
“I would,” I said, as if considering, “be potentially willing to settle for double but that still leaves me with a price to extract today. And the problem is that once you're out of here you might take it into your silly head little to get all vengeful on me. And, although you could never pose even the mildest threat to me, I simply can't abide loose ends.”
“I w-won’t,” he babbled. “P-please, I w-won’t. Take your price, I’ll pay it, I’ll pay anything.”
I was at least 90% certain I’d broken him sufficiently that he would feel nothing but gratitude towards me for the rest of his days and I knew shame would keep him silent about this. It always does. They make their deal with me and then they cringe away from my gaze as though my eyes are mirrors. I wonder, sometimes, at the world that would have no place for me. Not very often though. However, the unpredictable 10% bothered me.
I sighed, thoughtfully.
But in the end I severed two more of his fingers, accepted his gratitude for having done so, and let him go with an assurance that I would be quite irritated if he put me in the position of having to remove his body parts again.
Fucking Mondays.
But I recognise it first in that corridor. I do what he wants me to do, and I’m not very good at it. But it doesn’t seem to matter; he responds like I am. And the taste of it stays with me for a long time. It’s the taste of power.