Darside Stories - the Fool

I'm worth a million in prizes

With my torture film

Drive a G.T.O.

Wear a uniform

All on a government loan

- Iggy Pop, "Lust For Life"

I.

Winter in Hong Kong. Me, a starving writer stuck in the middle of a project that I couldn't seem to push through. Rent needing to be paid, yesterday.

My faceless boss—some anonymous email account and a random ad that I'd responded to twelve months ago—always paid on time for ghostwritten erotica. I was happy to have an outlet and even happier to have a source of income, but apparently my muse had quit her post, frustrated about my making up stories based on an activity that I hadn't personally participated in for a long time.

Out of desperation I'd left my flat to wander the streets and hopefully kick my imagination into gear. Winter wasn't cold in Hong Kong; winter behaved like a dry Spring, which most folks considered ideal. Crazy me preferred summer—summer like running for your life in a sudden downpour, summer like flames dancing on the sword-sharp horizon of the South China Sea, summer like a hundred candles burning on an old wooden shelf, summer like a drunk kiss by some guy or girl after a shitty club. I liked things intense, and winter in Hong Kong wasn't that.

I had a lion note in my pocket, the last of my money, and just as fiery in hue as summer. A random wind slapped my face from around the corner of the nearest building and I turned from it, instantly becoming lost in a shroud of my own streaming hair. My mini schoolgirl-esque skirt tilted around my legging-covered ass like a silent bell. Fuck this, I was taking the subway.

A thing about me—my thoughts are loud, but my voice is quiet and I hate to shout. Everybody's always asking me to speak up or repeat what I've said but I can't help it, I don't like the way my voice feels in my throat and I spend most of my days working from home, away from people. If one day I woke up to find I'd suddenly come down with a galloping dose of Shakespearian actor boom-voice, hooboy—I'd blow everyone away with how rampant and disgusting my interior cum exterior dialogue could be. Lol I said cum.

Down in the subway station the red tiles and big, dragon-sexy black letters jumped out at me like urban art. It's funny how language becomes abstract shapes and scratches when you weren't born speaking it. Yikes and a strong drink in the direction of any and all non-native English speakers. Sorry, fuckers. It's like when you stare off and your vision gets blurry when you're sleepy. You have to pinch your eyeballs with the muscles of your face just to focus again—that's what it's like for me to turn those rad wanna-be kanji tattoos into actual words.

Tsuen Wan Line

. Instead of one, confident lion-note I now had several less confident and more miserable pieces of paper in my pocket after the booth lady insisted she could only break such a large bill if I bought a monthly pass. Maybe it would get me out of the house more often.

Down the clicking escalator to more pretty red lipstick tile, and finally to the plexi tube through which the train whooshed by, just fitting.

I bit my lip and and laughed (in my head, I don't laugh in public). No it was fine, just fine, I was fine with not having fucked a soul or a device in a year and two months because obviously,

obviously

, seeing trains and thinking how they fit in their tubes was completely normal.

"Fuck normal," I said in my stupid, scratch-whispery voice, and no one heard me, and that was normal, too.

###

The train was weirdly crowded for this time of night, and then I remembered the lunar festival. I could have stayed home, but my anxiety has a habit of pushing me out the door for no reason other than to wander about aimlessly, questioning my life.

When surrounded by crowds, I had a habit of nicknaming people by their smells.

There was always Armpit Guy, every day and night, on every train and in every corridor I'd ever walked.

How Sweet Pea made its way across the Atlantic to more exotic and far-away places I'll never understand; damn you, capitalism.

Ayyye

, Sweet Pea Ladies.

Oh hey, Cool Water Daddy—1993 misses you, and I would like to, as well.

Unwashed Hair Lady smelled actually wholesome tonight, and I noticed her torn stockings and fabric grocery bag that was coming apart at the seams and I wished I was rich so I could rock her world with major dollars and a back massage.

Then I smelled aftershave, six o'clock, the most dangerous hour (pro tip, it's right behind you). Aftershave is weird. It has the potential to level you to your ovarian core but it can also swerve you right off the tracks and crash in a fiery blaze of nope if it's too cheap, too blue, too plastic, too much. But this was

just

right. Vintage Old Spice and daddy fantasies, I gripped the handle above me just a little tighter.

A fingertip flicked across my ass cheek, hard.

The warmth couldn't be stopped, jetting from impact point to pussy in under a second flat, then to the tiny thumb as I called him (himb? ham), down my inner thighs to the bottoms of my feet. Why the cat's connected to the feet has always confused me, but when I meet my maker, I'll ask Her about it.

Meanwhile, Aftershave Man had just touched my butt. Now he placed his full palm on an ass cheek and squeezed.

And no I hadn't seen enough daily versions of what Pornhub had to offer on this subject to not know what to do. Except I didn't do that. I did the opposite.

I turned around and stared at him like a dork.

He withdrew his hand as if my ass was a hot coal and blushed—his thick-lashed, small eyes darting right, left, down, at me for a sec, then left again before he edged his way through the cloud of bodies to someplace out of my line of sight, and out of flicking range of my extremely horny ass.

Fuck.

The doors whooshed open and I stepped off the bullet, full of self-rage and sexual angst.

So inside my own head over the missed hand-job opportunity was I that it took me five blocks to realize I'd gotten out at the wrong stop.

###

I turned to look back the way I'd come.

The night had fallen fast, faster than it should have by nature's laws I guess. Everything was a gross, dead, blue color and I could barely see the facades of the businesses I'd passed.

"

Gweilo

lost?"

I turned around and squinted at a skinny white guy in a cheap suit. He looked tired, though his eyes sparkled like rhinestones, plastic and cheap. "Look who's talking, Gweilo. And no. I just got off at the wrong stop."

"Train's not running this line anymore tonight."

"The fuck it isn't?"

"The festival. Everything's on a different schedule until the morning."

"How far are we from Dōng Hǎiyáng apartments?"

He shrugged. "I'm not an expert. But which stop is your stop?"

"The last stop."

"Then you're in luck. This is the Lai King stop. So only five more stations to go."

"How many kilometers between stations?"

"No idea, little queen. But you've got your good walking shoes on, so. Just don't get lost."

I raised a brow at him. What do you say to that? Weirdo-suit and his whimsical speech. "Hey. Which direction?"

He shrugged again and walked away, opening his umbrella though there wasn't any rain

###

Since when does a festival stop trains from running?

I decided to head back to the station to wait for the next train. Out of season thunder announced a storm's arrival from somewhere across the sea, and the salt-smell had already began to gather up and mingle with the odd, heavy chill of the night. I walked faster, then sprinted.

Up the steps and down the escalator to the Lai King stop, and I found the station deserted. A newspaper tumbled along the tracks, pushed by a sudden gust of cold air. The train!

I stood at the edge of the platform, struggling to determine any mote of light from the mud-thick darkness. Nothing yet. I cocked my head and squinted. This was tiring; I headed for a bench.

Walking away from the platform, the muscles in my neck on the right side began to pinch. What the fuck, Byx?

I'm 31 I can't sprain my neck just by

using

it

.

I felt the effects of the toxin twist up my sternum and flutter into my chest like an expensive sleep-aid before my eyes saw double and I slid along the bench and passed out.

###

I woke up before I opened my eyes, and my brain tried different scenarios and room-choices as it does whenever I wake up in an unfamiliar place. Lobby of shitty hotel? Cabana by the beach? Ex-boyfriend's mother's pantry?

I opened my eyes. Nope, the train station bench.

I blinked a few more times and the room came into focus.

Nope, a prison cell. What?

I slid my legs off the bench and felt my bare feet touch the cement floor. And, I was naked.

II

I had to pee.

I continued to sit on the bench while I figured this out. Logic said nobody here cared if I had to urinate; they certainly didn't care if I was cold. My clothes were gone, the bench was concrete, floor was concrete, and by my sharpest estimation my captors were keeping the thermostat at a manly 18º C.

Of course I was an asshole for assuming they were men, but fuck being polite honestly.

I hopped off the bench, nipples leading the way in this godforsaken chill to locate a bucket, and found one in the corner to the left of the bench. I actually bent down and

sniffed

the bucket. Why? I don't fucking know, I guess if it was going to be my shitbucket I didn't want anyone else's shit

in it

.

It was clean. Then I stopped and thought about drip-drying. Nope, didn't like that.

My head snapped to the right because there it was—a miracle-faucet, coming out of the wall at about a meter off the floor. Not a bidet by any means, but good enough for gas.

I squatted and pissed, duck-walked over and rinsed.

Now what.

I padded over to the wall of bars where a huge metal door was set. The door must have been two meters high, which seemed excessive (I was closer to 1.6 but okay). I pressed my cheek against the bars, trying to catch a squint down the corridor, then did the same in the opposite direction. Nothing moved in this silence so heavy it pounded in my ears. I sighed, and the sigh ended ragged, defeated. I slapped myself in the face like you do when you're trying to stay awake during a cross-country road trip.

"Hey!" I yelled, my voice bouncing off the walls.

I stood there for who knows how long in silence and felt terror well up, felt my thoughts click into place like a clock's gears. This was serious. I was probably going to die in here.

Then I smelled the aftershave. Not the same as the train, but delicious nonetheless.

A broken, lunatic laugh escaped my mouth and I pressed my face against the bars again as a tear rolled down my cheek.

The door's lock turned and the sound of that broke the silence like a hammer breaks a brick. My heart flew out of my chest to hide beneath the bench, though I could still feel it shuddering behind my ribcage.

Please please please.

The door swung open and I stepped back to avoid being hit by it, to get as far away from my captor as possible.

Please don't hurt me.

Pressed against the wall with the water spout, I squinted to better see who'd entered the room. I'd discovered the source of the aftershave.

They came closer, taking slow, casual steps in gorgeous, expensive, size 14 dress shoes. Huge, well-manicured hands folded over a crisp suit so well-tailored it somehow managed to make this thickly-muscled creature seem lean, lithe, sinuous. I glanced up towards the face, noticing the long, almost graceful throat, not thick and overbuilt like one would expect. Then I saw the strong jaw, full lips curved like a violin, high cheekbones.

Huh.

Thick eyelashes, beautiful eyebrows, glossy hair the color of the most arrogant crow...and kaleidoscope-green eyes that seemed to glow in the gloom of this crypt.

He still could be a killer Byx hold yourself together for fuck's sakes.

"Hi," I said, my voice getting caught in my throat so I had to clear it for half a minute, unglamorously. "Can I have my clothes back?"

The eyes wandered down to my feet then back to my own, and my captor shook his head. "Turn around. Face the wall with your hands behind your back."

"I'd rather not."

"That doesn't matter here."

"Are you going to hurt me?"

"No."

The voice of my captor brought to mind lazy, growling tigers, indigo dye and midnights spent in the loneliest cave on Earth. Fighting back tears, I turned and faced the wall as instructed, but before I did, I watched him take off his suit jacket and carefully place it on the bench, folded.

Oh, shit.

"Hold still," said my captor.

I took a deep, unsteady breath.

I felt his hand take my hand by the wrist and pull it away from my other hand, and I gasped, because his skin was hot. Hot like a kid with the flu in the middle of the night hot. Hot like

whoo, smoking

hot. It was a comfort, actually, in this cold cell to be handled this way. Something snapped around my wrist and I wanted to reach for it, touch it with my other hand to determine its material, but I didn't. It wasn't cold; it didn't hurt. It somehow felt like well-worn wood, narrow enough not to bite into the flesh of my palm, but wide enough not to dig into the wrist itself. Soon my other wrist was locked into one of these cuffs. I instinctively held my hands as wide apart as possible, but whatever held them together was tightened by my captor as soon as I did. I felt his breath against my ear and the good smell of him raced from my olfactory bulb to my pussy to my feet, as it does. He

tsked

once, and I could tell his lips were a hair's width from my skin.

My legs trembled and he pulled away; I felt as if he watched me. I could hear him take a deep breath.

Join the club, buddy. Deep-breathing exercises, all day.

I heard him grunt as he knelt, and larger cuffs were placed on each of my ankles. Then he moved one foot away from the other, forcing me into a wide-legged stance. My curiosity fled like sunlight before a thunderstorm and I began to tremble, heart going at it again like a construction site's jackhammer. I heard a subtle

click

as something locked in place. My legs couldn't move from their stance. Hearing a grunt, I believed my captor stood up again.

Their hand pressed against the middle of my back, gentle, impossibly hot, and I began to tip forward. Unable to push back from the wall with my shackled hands, I met the fieldstone wall with my chest, turning my face to avoid kissing the cold stone and mortar. The hot hand went around to my belly, and pulled me back to my original position. Then it gently pressed me forward again. Then back, then forward.

I kept waiting for the hit, for the cut, for the punch or the knife, but instead, here I was being pressed, tits-first, against a stone wall. I was terrified and confused.

I was being turned around

.

He smiled, a self-indulgent wickedness dancing at the edges of his mouth and his eyes. I was panting like a dog.

"Sh," he hushed, and traced a finger down from my lips to my throat. "Just a little game." The fingertip ended where a well-manicured, inch-long crimson claw began. I panted faster. The claw skated down my skin and circled my breast, getting closer to the areola but never intruding upon it. Now he held my breasts in both hands, and squeezed them together gently.

Two claw-tipped thumbs flicked across my nipples, then went immediately to my inner thighs, grabbing the flesh there, his hands always gentle but firm, and always desert-sand hot.

My captor cupped my outer labia together, squeezing my fattening clit within.

My mouth was open now and there was drool but I couldn't stop shaking either.

"Just wanted a taste," he said. "Were it that I could actually have one."

He knelt down and unlocked the bars between my feet. His beautiful head was

right there,

dammit. I imagined easing my hips forward.

Then I noticed them: twin mahogany horns, each nested against his gorgeous, glossy locks and curled like a miniature ram's.

He brought my feet together.

"I'll have to carry you from here on in. Don't fight me."

###

"Where are we going?"

"To meet some people."

"Sans clothing."

"Yep."

"Great."

"It'll be a little warmer when we get topside."

We'd left the cell and followed a corridor as wide as the cell door was tall. Up four landings of concrete steps and we gained the street above, seeing no one in our journey so far.

Above the unexplained warren of hallways and jail cells this world was a canvas of sepia tone high-rises and strange, spiraling spires amid whispery, bent trees, with the wind hurrying herds of dead leaves and random paper scraps. Every window was black; I could feel the absence of life but also feel a heavy presence hushed, as if it waited in the shadows and watched as we moved across this monochromatic landscape. I blinked several times to somehow command the color into correction, but it wouldn't obey.

"It takes a while to get used to it."

"How long's a while?"

"For me? 2 years I guess, I'm not really sure."

"Are you used to it?"

"Not really."

If I squinted, the dullness of the light didn't seem as bad and the overall effect was strangely beautiful, but as somber as a church bell cast off in the dirt and stuffed with straw. The constant wind felt warmer than the chill air of my former cell, but its movement over my bare skin made me shudder. I burrowed harder against my captor's unnaturally hot body, the warmth remarkable even through the layers of his expensive suit.

"What's your name?"

"Li Jun."

Li Jun carried me over streets devoid of vehicles; large cracks crisscrossed the pavement like lines in an old man's face. Up ahead, a small, white cat sat atop a concrete pylon, watching us pass by. Its small eyes shined briefly in its odd little face, its tail lashing twice. I shivered for some reason I didn't understand.

My deliverer shifted me in his arms to hold me closer, his large hands pressed against my skin as if to warm me. "Sorry you're cold. We'll be there soon."

###

"I wish I could touch you," I said to Li Jun as he carried me up a series of steps. We appeared to have entered a pedestrian walkway, one that was leading up to an office high-rise. Granite columns carved in dancing shapes framed the entrance to the lobby; all of the doors were blown apart and tiny, green cubes of safety glass glittered dully over the marble floor, crunching beneath Li Jun's feet. "You're beautiful."

"And I, you, again. Thank you."

"Uncuff me."

"I can't until we reach our destination."

There wasn't a shift of weight or any sense that Li Jun struggled carrying me as his burden. I felt light as a feather (and stiff as a board).

We stopped before an elevator. Blueish light flooded the lobby as its doors slowly cranked open. When Li Jun stepped into the car, the elevator groaned in protest.

"Don't worry, it's safe," he said.

"It wouldn't be, if I were uncuffed." I grinned.

To my great satisfaction, Li Jun grunted, and shifted his weight again, his hands widespread across my flesh tightening until he shook his head, blinking his eyes to shake off whatever verbal spell I'd managed to cast upon his troubled mind.

The elevator opened and we entered a board room, mahogany paneled, immaculate, with a gleaming, black marble floor, and filled with a dozen hungry faces and eyes combing my naked body so hard I could feel their stares like disembodied tongues flicking me from toes to tonsils.

I snuggled harder against Li Jun, but he thrust out his shoulder to push me off. "Not here," he muttered. I sat up straighter in his sheltering arms.