Enjoy the Silence

Children often cope with trauma through their play. It may, for instance, provide a controlled and non-threatening way of delving into the dark desires of a recovering victim. The following story is one of many self-indulging fantasies I utilized. 

(Play music clip by Depeche Mode)
  
    A taste, fleeting against the incessant reminder of her dry throat. Each dry breath hindered her tongue from distinguishing the flavor. Another hint seeped in from her nostrils, vague. Her dreams lingered in her consciousness. She awoke from a darkness she had never experienced before, a sleep that brought her the closest understanding of death she could ever comprehend. Where all thoughts of life, neither peaceful nor distressing affected her being. Her mind had been empty. No sensations or emotions cluttered her awareness, just an abyss with no direction, where time had no authority.
    If death had taken her, why would such a peace now seem like a passing memory?
    That taste again. A combination of familiar ingredients, but so blended as to prevent the triggering of recognition. Perhaps her death state had been a transition to this realm where dreams were the constant experience, where the plot moves around you comprised of familiar components. A place where desires and complications were not necessarily the source behind each story, but random firings, random collages of images somehow brewed together to form a bizarre product.
    Metal. She worked her mouth, relieving the most prominent pain tearing at her throat and lungs. No moisture in the air allowed for this task, but when she lifted her head a warm syrup trickled in, soothing the withered buds of her tongue to life.
    She gagged. The connection alerted her neural pathways to work. All at once her circumstances became clear, filling her core with an anxiety at each new realization. Blood was seeping from a stinging source across her face, the iron of her blood became immediately unmistakable. The other taste was bitter, herbal, like those leaves she used to substitute in her father’s drink when he became overly affectionate.
    In an attempt to wipe the concoction from her mouth, a terrifyingly high clanging punctured the silence of the room. Arms of metal links flexed taut at her struggle forward. The wall she stood pinned against announced its domination. Restrained. The anxiety rose at an accelerated rate in her gut to a height of animalistic panic. Her lungs produced a shocked gasp that dried her throat before the full sound was released. Limbs were numb, hands unable to bend properly, no feeling in her fingers and no strength to compete with. Vainly she searched the darkness for any semblance of light. False stars teased her vision. Nothing.
    She moved her feet in an effort to test the position of her cold body. They moved freely, full circles with her toes. She was suspended. But her ankles would not respond as her toes would. More restraints.
    She lifted her face to the heavens, exposing her neck to the darkness. Despair seized her, tears stung her eyes and slipped in to clog her ears. Her dreamland of death settled in her mind, a yearning for such a state of emptiness became much preferred. When the tension in her chest had released, she drew in a deep breath to expel her terror in wracking sobs. Mouth agape, vulnerable and left with only the torment of her thoughts, she cried out to the echo of the room. A helplessness settled inside her.
    “Finally…”
    Her expelling of grief halted, bottlenecking in her throat. Her head evened its position to desperately search for what she expected to be her jailer. The echo could become her friend, if the being would speak once more. But silence ensued for too long and she began to doubt the laws she comprehended. Her hearing strained for the slightest hint of a noise, her own lungs indefinitely pausing their necessary duty to assist in the hunt.
    “I thought you’d never concede.”
    Her eyes locked, fixated on a target patch of darkness where the space pinpointed the voice.
    A face exited the darkness a breadth away from her own. She must only be lifted inches from the ground as he stood full height, meeting her gaze evenly. Eyes without pupils, a shade deeper than that which surrounded the figure that invaded her prison. Spikes seemed to extend from his cheekbones and from around his eyes, rising up to beyond his head. A helmet, completed by full body armor. His features were deceiving to her memory, twisted in an expression of anger and lust.
    “Not pleasured to see me, Crystal? Perhaps not, considering our environment. Chains and walls never suited your grace and spirit. You belong somewhere between earth and sky, not trapped, dependent upon our mercy.”
    That voice. She knew. “K..Kain?!”
    A chuckle whispered off his lips, evaporating before reaching the wall that pressed at Crystal’s back. He leaned toward her, shriveling her neck into her torso and her fear in a swirl that elicited a nausea comparable only to the effect she imagined the stench of rotting carcasses could elicit.
    He lifted his fingers to brush the air that licked her cheek, a twinge of pain pulsed where he teased from a cut that still bled there. “I have waited for the moment when I could stroke your skin, and you would feel any amount of pleasure at my touch…” His thought faltered. He was not blind to the disgust she displayed. A reaction he grew sensitive to, which no amount of darkness could mask. He closed his eyes submissively, pulling his hand down to clench until he was certain his own blood would release from the pressure of his nails.
    Having witnessed his hesitation and being thus grateful, she attempted to suck in a breath in hopes some amount of courage might coalesce. “Kain, where are we. Why do you hold me prisoner?”
    He let his eyes rise back to hers, a menace flowing within them that contradicted the control he exemplified. “Zierre will use you as bait to capture the annoying one. He awarded me the honor of ensuring you cooperate.”
    Her heart tightened. “Annoying? How dare you speak of him so flippantly. Darian is your friend. He has given his life for you-”
    “Don’t!” A rage emerged. He pressed full body against her, forcing her eyes to meet his with a hand at her throat. All numbness had melted, all semblance of cold yielded to a  searing heat, like dry ice, that burned at every surface that contacted his. “You mention sacrifice as if you have endured it, when you know nothing of such torture. To have your very being mocked at every touch, at every kiss they exchange.” His hands moved to her face, a new desire unleashed, unpredictable and threatening. His breaths were short now, desperate, in anticipation of thoughts Crystal refused to acknowledge. But he spoke in a whisper, “Do you know.. how long your presence has tormented me. To not feel you against me, to not taste your lips. Yearning for the raw ecstasy I could devour you with.”
    She could feel the rise and fall of his chest compete with the integrity of her own lungs, pressing cold steel into breasts protected only by the torn garment she was chained with. But her attention fixated on the air she drew in from the lips that spoke against hers. Her back could not fall any further into the wall that propped her. The emptiness of the room now beckoned for her as a mild sense of claustrophobia sent her body trembling and her heart into overdrive.
    He paused without pulling away, noticing her shivering against his own pumping nerves. Curious. “Do I frighten you?”
    A moment passed as she struggled to regain control over her body and compose her thoughts in order to speak, never bothering to fight the bonds, only accepting the inevitability of her position. But no sound was imagined that could fit her internal struggle. Answering might only prove her vulnerability and fear. And she did not dare suggest anything that would contradict her obvious reaction. He would see through such deception.
    He licked out to taste the heat from her mouth. “My intention is not to scare you Crystal.” He swallowed, closing his lips briefly before letting them swell toward hers. “However, it does offer a shred of satisfaction to this broken man.” He halted his advance, lingering in contemplation. “If only you returned my desire.” He stepped off, releasing her body from his hold.
    Disbelief filled Crystal’s consciousness, quickly accompanied by relief. Her body remained tense as she considered the swing of intentions this imposter of a friend toyed with. When he made no repeat of an advancement, she urged her muscles to loosen, only to feel the true agonizing state of them. “You cannot be the Kain I know and claim friendship with.” She paused, anticipating a reaction. When no movement satisfied her courage, she continued. “He is disciplined, capable of resisting lustful urges you so willingly enable. A spell has enslaved him, so that now all that exists to run his body is a coward that must bind women in order to keep them still.“ The stubbornness so characteristic of her had finally erupted through the fear. She believed if she could not battle physically, she would poke into his manipulated thoughts. Perhaps she stood a chance if she could challenge his notion of identity.
    A simple sigh drifted through the room, but its echo surrounded her, somehow even behind the wall that held her. “Very well.” He lifted a fist in front of his face, a glow emerged from the sockets where his eyes once dwelled. A hidden edge sprung from his gauntlet along the back of his hand. With a single movement, he slashed her tunic down the center, displaying her naked bodice to his overripe desires. Fear gripped her beating life, arresting her thoughts with naught but terror. With the blade of his arm, he lifted her chin to challenge any hope that might be hiding behind her eyes before he breathed his will into her with his final words, “Let the feast begin.”
    Her eyes emptied and the darkness consumed.

Author’s note: It took me forever to realize this sort of play was never to be reproduced in reality. Some things were best left for the imagination.