We watched as Master left, and turned to look at one another. "I wish that they hadn't left, I am kind of interested in what they're gonna be doing in there." The girl said, a devious smile lifting the corners of her mouth. I nodded, looking down at her, feeling oddly transfixed by the interaction between Master and Cid. I'd recently re-learned how to enjoy sex, but it wasn't something I had been prepared to witness.
She stood slowly, erect she loomed over my five foot four inches by at least five inches. My eyes swept her body enviously. While my face was drawn, nearly skeletal in malnourishment, her cheeks were full, and her eyes were still bright with hope and life. Her nipples sat erect on the full perfect globes free of scars, while mine were tiny half-moons that bore nearly as many deep scars as the moon, even my minuscule nipples hadn't been spared disfigurement. I could just make out the ridges of her ribs, as my eyes traveled downward and couldn't stop from feeling the hills and valleys that indented my sides.
I shook my head, refusing to start feeling sorry for myself. A slave is not allowed to be vain unless its Master wishes it. She stood watching me as I looked over her, her face emotionless to my inspection. It was one of the few signs I'd seen that told me she had lived for any length of time as a slave.
I took a step back, lowering my eyes. Feeling guilty for scrutinizing her as though I were a Master, and angry at myself for looking on her beauty and using it to pity myself. I started to apologize, but she put her finger to her lips, shaking her head. "We all have our demons," she said, a sad smile dimpling her cheeks. "I believe that we are here to heal, and that we have nothing to apologize for."
I couldn't keep back the soured smile, nor could I hold my tongue. "I hope you are right..." I muttered, bitter because I feared that the hope that had begun to grow within me was just a cruel trick.
I turned to leave the room, but she reached and caught my arm, pulling me back and into a friendly embrace. "I can't imagine what you've been through to makes you so cold," she whispered to me, after a long minute of standing reluctantly in her arms. I wanted to pull away, but I didn't, giving her the slight pleasure of holding me. "But I would like to know."
I pulled back enough that I could look up into her emerald eyes. She sounded so old then, and I questioned silently if she was human. Her eyes sparkled wetly down at me, like a tiny lake rimming an evergreen forest. But the heat that radiated from her made me shake my head, I had never touched a vampire so warm. No, everything I saw told me she was human.
"It wouldn't help either of us if I told you my past." I said, finally backing out of her arms.
She nodded, hurt. "I haven't seen many of things this life holds. And I can only pray that I will never experience what has hurt you so much." Her voice had lost the upbeat tone, and her face had grown dark. "But if our time is limited in this house together, I would like for you and I to become friends."
"Becoming friends is dangerous. Slaves suffer even more when they befriend one another." I told her, trying to keep my voice neutral, because I had known that pain well. "I don't want to cause you more pain in this world. But if you had to watch me tortured, torn, or drained, and saw me as a friend, you would suffer greatly. You couldn't stop or even ease my pain, and if you tried, I would suffer knowing that you would share my wretched fate."
She looked at me, mortified, but I just shook my head and turned away from her, leaving the room that held so many devices to remind me of things I had once been bound to. I didn't know why, but I wanted to tell her what I had been, what I had become, but I couldn't tell her in a room that reminded me of all of that pain. I looked over my shoulder at her. "I'll tell you of my life, in hope that you will be able avoid some of the mistakes I made," I said quietly, as I paused just on the other side of the door. "But I can't tell you in there."
I made my way into the living room. The room was warm, and not a place where I had witnessed bloodshed, I hoped that fact would make my tale less difficult. I sat down on one of the three cream-and-coffee colored couches, the thick cushions rising up to support and comfort me. I'd put my back to the hallway, subconsciously trying to shield myself in case Master intruded, I feared that if I saw him while I spoke of my darkest days it would shatter the mental walls I hid behind.
I knew that if I saw him, with his caring grey eyes, or thought of his gentle lovemaking, as I told this girl of rape and murder it would devastate my soul. He wanted me to be whole, and if he could take me from this world I was about to relive, I would do that for him. He had asked me to stop being a martyr earlier tonight, and I had made it my mission from then on. Maybe if I told this girl of the atrocities I had brought on myself because I had sacrificed my body and blood to try to protect a fellow slave, as well as some of the other things I'd survived, it would be the first step I took to being less the whipping-boy. I was slowly taking down the walls I'd built around my soul.
The girl was slow in following me, she detoured down the hall, and into her room before joining me on the couch, with two thick burgundy quilts clutched in her arms. She handed one to me, before wrapping the other around herself like a huge robe. "I thought that it might make it easier for you, if you were covered."
She sat down as I stood, following suite and wrapping the quilt around myself. "Thank you," I whispered, as I sat back down keeping my back to the hallway. I took a few long deep breaths, trying to prepare myself for the flood of pain I was about to release. "If you had asked me on the ride from the sale to tell you about my world up to that point, I could have told you everything without the slightest hesitation." I laughed nervously. "It's hard to imagine that it's only been a day. Whatever our Master is doing, he is good, because I'm afraid. I don't want to remember what life was like before coming to this house."
She smiled sadly, nodding with sympathetic understanding.
"I used to fantasize that I would meet up with one of the vampires from one of the many books that I had read, and that they would fall madly in love with me, and that they would keep me like a wife eventually turning me."
I shivered under the blanket, then pulled it even tighter around me, as if the blanket could protect me for the memories. I lowered my eyes, focusing on the intricately woven threads of the blanket, as I began to speak. "I brought everything that I've been through on myself." I stated coldly. "I was obsessed with vampires. I'd read every book I could get my hands on. From Bram Stoker to Laurell K. Hamilton, and Anne Rice to Poppy Z. Brite. If it was about vampires I would devour it. I dressed the way I thought a vampire would like me to; low cut, tight fitting dark crimson and black baby-doll, and spaghetti strap tee-shirts overflowed my closet. I'd even go so far as to paint bite-marks onto my neck." I brought my fingers up and let them run absently over the flesh that once only bore sanguine eyeliner, not true scars.
"I'd go out alone, walk the darkest streets. I'm surprised that I didn't fall victim to some gutter-snipe, it would have been easier that way." I shook my head, my eyes beginning to cloud with remembrance. "I would go to the worst clubs, thinking that it would be prime hunting ground.
"It wasn't. I was abducted leaving a sushi restaurant with my best friend." I felt tears filling my eyes, but I fought them back. If I started crying now, I knew that I wouldn't be able to stop. "We had gone to Harney Sushi to celebrate Hitomi's nineteenth birthday. She was six months, to the day, younger than me. We were best friends since our young child-hood. Looking back, I can't remember a time that Hitomi and I weren't together. People used to ask us if we were sisters, sometimes twins. We were nearly inseparable..."
I shock my head, re-aligning my thoughts back to the night we were taken as slaves. "After we'd finished eating, we took a long walk to burn off the little bit of sake we'd been slipped by the server. We talked about the road trip we had planned for spring break, about driving up the western coast, and visiting a few high school friends that lived in Seattle. On our way back to Hitomi's car, an older suburban pulled beside us on the street, and a man leaned out the window asking us for directions. We walked over to the passenger side door, and started to tell him how to get to the William Heath Davis House. Before we knew it, two people came out of the rear doors, and threw us into the back of the suburban.
"The first few days were horrifying, though nothing bad happened. We were bound in the rear of the SUV, as we traveled around the clock for almost a week. The four abductors never spoke to us, regardless how loudly we pleaded or begged. Late in the night we reached our first Master's house.
"He stood on the porch of his cabin, as the four abductors unloaded us from the Suburban, his platinum blond hair billowing in the freezing wind. He barked orders, telling the four to hurry us into the room, that he needed to start the training as soon as possible. We were carried screaming into the cabin, and then into a room that, up until that point of my life, was the closest thing to a dungeon I had ever seen.
"We were stripped quickly, our clothes long soiled by waste after days of traveling in the rear of the SUV. Quickly we were bound to the walls, opposite each other, a rack dominating the room between us. One of the men used a hose to hastily wash the rest of the filth from our bodies. Once he deemed us clean, we were left bound to the walls alone.
"It wasn't long before our Master entered the room, smiling to himself, obviously looking forward to the training he had in store for us. He wore smooth black leather, his streaming platinum hair pulled neatly back. He chose Hitomi as his first victim. He took her in his arms after releasing the pitted iron from her wrists. She struggled against him, shrieking obscenities, as he forced her flat on the rack and quickly bound her spread-eagle.
"Silently, he ran his cold fingers over Hitomi's sun-kissed skin. Licking his lips, he leaned down and took her breast in his mouth. My scream matched Hitomi's when I realized that he had bitten her. He moved from one tender space to another, biting viciously, drinking little. Leaving the wounds to ooze, and to scar later.
"I screamed at him, begging him to release her. She didn't deserve this. Hitomi never shared my obsession in these creatures. Never had I fantasized that Hitomi would ever share in my dreamed fate.
