To Serve All His Days

The sun rises. His stomach rumbles. He waits. And waits. The sun sinks and his hunger grows. After a day or so the ache in his belly becomes constant. He can live with it - just.

But nothing happens. His beard grows, his muscles remained strong. As far as he can judge by gazing at his reflection in the lake, he remains as youthful as before. It is stalemate.

Reluctantly he makes his way back to the cave and sitting by the pool waits for whichever ravisher would next appear.

The time passes slowly. He idly gazes around. Having nothing to stare at but the walls he notices the scratches he had made mark the passing of the days and realises that he has forgotten to add those of his abortive rebellion. As he adds them it occurs to him that while a prisoner counts the days and weeks to go until he would be free, he is just counting those of his servitude.

He has almost given up hope of a reprieve when there is a swirl of water in the pool and Midori appears.

'Foolish man,' she chides him. 'Thou belongst to us.'

She kisses him. First the mouth, then his chest and on down his body to his stomach. Reaching his cock she takes him between her lips, slowly sucking until he starts to harden.

He clasps her head between his hands and pushs her off his tool. 'May I not be allowed to return to my own people?'

'Perhaps, when you release us.'

He is confused. Surely he is the one that should be released. 'How do I do that?'

'When the year turns, the time will come.' She bobs her head again and runs her tongue from his balls along the base of his cock to its tip.

Groaning with desire he reaches for her breasts, grasping and squeezing. As she brings him to full firmness he rolls her nipples between thumb and forefinger.

Hands to his shoulders she forces him back to the sand. 'You know how I like it. Give it to me.'

Resigned yet aroused he groans, 'Take me if you must.'

Raising on her knees she spreads her thighs wide, one each side of his muscular waist and slowly eases herself onto him. He closes his eyes.

'Look at me, chattel,' she commands. 'Pleasure my tits.'

He reachs up to where her breasts bounce heavily up and down and once more cups their soft bulk in his broad hands, while she rocks back and forth. Her head back, hair brushing her shoulders she moans in counterpoint to her rhythm. Occasionally she nearly loses him only to drop hard on his shaft until it nudges her cervix.

Ready to climax she leans forward, tits pressed against his chest, mouth wide and lets out a short cry of pleasure. Unable to hold back he closes his eyes and cums inside her.

Feeling her weight lift and his cock slip free he opens his eyes. She is already gone. However the table is once more covered with cooked meats and wine.

Later he considers what she has said. The turn of the year, that is probably New Year. He goes back to his calendar. As near as he can figure there is another month to go. Not long to wait; he can probably stand that.

Over the next few days he occupies himself with contemplating the ways of his world. Or rather his former world; the one to which he is so anxious to return.

He recalls the sermons of his youth. The white haired priests droning from the pulpit about how He had furnished men with the means to fulfil their needs. The food and water to sustain them; for without they would surely die. The shelter from the biting colds of winter and the burning heat of the summer that could be found in caves or fashioned from trees; while hides and furs and materials woven from wool and flax could cover their limbs. And women: that they might propagate themselves with descendants to do the Lord's work. What else could a man want for all else is vanity.

Had he not got all that here? So why did he want to escape? How did that saying go? "Man does not live by bread alone." Though lack of variety will cause food to loose its flavour - oh, for a ship's weeviled biscuit. Or come to that sex three times a day can become monotonous. Also he needs companionship and something to lift his spirit.

At last it is the final day of the year. Expectantly he wakes and stands at the cave entrance ready for whatever is to come. He doesn't have to wait long for it grows progressively colder and a strong wind starts howling across the lake, bending the trees at the jungle's edge and threatening to uproot the bushes.

He retreats to the shelter of the cave and watches the pool, awaiting the appearance of coffee coloured Dawn.

The waters stir. One after another, three naked, grey, hag-like figures emerge.

He retreats back toward the cave entrance, but strutting and posing they totter and stumble toward him on thin stick like rheumatic legs.

As they approach one offers him her withered, sagging breasts. Another raises arthritic arms as if to fold him to her feeble, wasted body - her toothless gums cackle words of love and desire. The third bends forward, spasms of coughing shaking a face covered in straggly, white hair. She holds up hands with long claw like nails, rubs at an inflamed red eye, wipes a trickle of blood from a slack mouth.

In a rasping, querulous whisper so low he feels compelled to stop and listen the leading crouchback crone falls to her deformed knees and pleads with him. 'Help us. Take us. Only through your love of our bodies can we die.'

Sickened by their scrawny bodies, drooling lips and liver spotted hands, he recoils from their foul smell.

Another pushes to face him, the cracked and bent fingers of one hand lovingly caressing the naked lumpy folds of her dripping slit while the other stretches toward his flaccid cock.

'Only at the turn of each year can we seek the oblivion of death. Have mercy on us. Use us. Enjoy us. Fuck us that we might know the peace of the grave.'

Nauseous with loathing for the abominations before him he turns and flees into the wailing wind. Yet even with his hands covering his ears he can hear their weeping and ululations echo across the lake. 'SAVE US YOU BASTARD. LOVE US, FUCK US, GRANT US DEATH.'

On and on roll the days, the weeks, the months. He seems to be sleep-walking, even sleep-fucking. Some days he forgets to eat, others he seems unaware which of the three harpies he is servicing. He no longer bothers to exercise, yet he remains as young, slim and fit as ever. He stops keeping count, scratching marks on the walls is too much bother, except for that one day a year when they became hags. Much of the time his mind is a blank, with nothing to occupy it.

In a rare moments of utter melancholy he attempts to total the yearly marks. Each count gives a different answer, though what matters a dozen or so years in a span that exceeds four hundred.

He takes to staring at the sky, his imagination never the most fertile, now sees monsters and demons. At first the thin straight lines of cloud are rare. Later they come to criss-cross the blue until one, fatefull day, when a particularly ragged one races across his view and suddenly stops and blossoms into an expanding cloud accompanied by a loud, distant bang.

A dot appears below the cloud, falling and falling until suddenly a glimmer of white spreads just above it - swelling to a wide mushroom with the dot swaying below. Still it falls, but more slowly, now drifting toward him. Finally it vanishes beyond the trees.

A rush of bodies from behind the waterfall - all three maidens are frantically swimming across the lake. As they reach the shore a path suddenly opens through the trees and they rush along it, crying excitedly.

It takes time for the scene to penetrate his atrophied brain. At last he realises that here is his chance. Quickly, four hundred year young muscles propel him to his feet; sprint him round the lake edge and down the path. There...there at last, is the sand and beyond it the ocean.

And on the sea a bulbous orange coracle, its occupant paddling toward the beach.

He waves his arms, he attempts to shout with a voice rusty and hoarse from centuries of neglect. Nothing comes forth.

Suddenly weak, he can no longer stand and leans against a tree. The scene becomes hazy. He slides to the sand. The bloom of youth deserts his skin leaving it dry and withered. His eyes close. All becomes black.

The orange dinghy scrapes on the shore and its occupant, his flying suit drying in the hot sun, steps ashore. Looking around he sees the three naked maidens cavorting and dancing on the sand. Eagerly he starts toward them. They appear not to notice but dart toward the opening in the wall of foliage and vanish from his view.

Urgently he stumbles toward the narrow path leading into the jungle, his boots kicking the crumbling human bones scattered around the foot of a tree by the entrance.

THE END