Brick, Mortar, and Bruises

Anni looked up slowly and saw him in a new light. All the time he'd abused her, he'd also made sure that she wouldn't have to suffer through the realities and consequences of an unwanted pregnancy. From day one he had -- in a way -- secretly looked after her.

For a long time they stayed there, without speaking. He'd hurt her so much, done things no person had the right to do onto another. He had used her, hurt her, tormented her in truly sadistic ways, made her feel small and disgusting, worthless and dirty. He had raped her over and over to the point that she had started to lose her very mind. She wanted to be furious; she wanted to hate and despise him as she used to, but she didn't. The hate just wasn't there. Instead she felt oddly warm inside, thinking about the little hormone molecules circulating in her blood. All watching over her. All put there by him.

She opened her mouth but found no words. Even so, she didn't want him to think she was ungrateful and so she reached for his hand and pressed his palm on her cheek and held it there.

"What is it girl? Feels good, doesn't it?" Raduz murmured just behind Anni's ear a few hours later. The very same words that he'd used on her almost every night since the beginning.

He had opened up her chafed and sore ass enough to be inside her to the hilt, and then started stretching her with long strokes. He'd reached his arms under her and gripped her shoulders, fucking her slow and deep, enjoying himself. At first Anni hadn't so much as flinched but after a while she'd started responding by squirming slightly against him. He considered roughing up, making it hurt enough to make her cry and bleed for him again, but he didn't want to, not now. Tonight he wanted something more.

He nuzzled her neck and breathed hard onto her sensitive skin, and grinned as her sighs and moans turned into unabashed sounds of enjoyment. He reached his hand to stroke her hair and growled, "Good girl."

Her back arched, instantly, reflexively, and her butt bucked into him, sucking his cock deeper.

"Oh?" he teased her. "Turns you on, does it?"

Raising the stakes he fucked her harder for a few strokes. When she winced, he put his lips close to her ear and repeated, stretching the words out slow and deliberate, "Good girl."

Anni shuddered, and goose bumps rose along the skin of her arms. Raduz pinned her head to the mattress and licked her ear with a wet, lazy tongue. The icky feeling and the wolfish sounds of his heavy, rasping breath made her squirm involuntarily. She felt like he was devouring her, and the wet sounds and the invading tongue reminded her of sex and turned her on more. She was holding her breath; she didn't dare breathe for she was so turned on she might scream. She was desperate. She did not know what was happening to her. She knew only that from the moment he'd cupped her face in his hand she'd been aching to get closer to him once more, aching and waiting for the night to come.

Raduz touched his lips to her freshly licked ear and whispered as quietly as he was able to,

"Do you like having your sore little asshole stretched around my cock? Do you like being my good little girl?"

Anni bucked again and her exhale was a sharp, loud and lusty moan that seemed to ring violently in the still night.

Anni and Raduz both froze instantly and paused to listen. Somewhere a door opened and their hearts raced faster. She turned, and with their gazes locked in the darkness, they listened to the footsteps, holding their breaths. When the door to the toilets opened and closed, and they heard the steady, commonplace sound of someone taking a piss, they both slumped in relief as tension left their bodies.

"Sorry," Anni whispered and looked at him, her young face nervous and unsure. "It just came out. I couldn't help it."

Raduz cupped her cheek and growled a quiet reproach. Then he leaned down and kissed her. He never kissed his girls, never, but Anni's face had been so close, and her lips parted so invitingly in unwitting seduction. He hadn't expected a response, he merely acted on an impulse, but when he felt her kiss him back, first gently, then passionately, something inside him moved.

Raduz had spent years trying to make himself whole again by breaking, dominating and destroying others. The power thus assumed hadn't, however, done anything to purge his inner victim. In reality he was coping rather than living but even had he himself possessed this insight he would have preferred coping to crumbling. Still, even though the relief he received from dehumanizing one girl after the other was feeble and fleeting at best, he had no other outlet for his bitter, seething hate. In sweet, malicious whispers he'd told them all they had wanted it. Yet in all the years not a single woman had come alive beneath him. Not one. Not one until Anni.

He'd expected to watch her die inside as all the others but Anni proved to have bizarre depths of empathy and strength. Taking the power hadn't made him feel like a man again but being given the power did. Every move and sound she now made told him that she wanted him and wanted to be his, body and soul, and that willing, eager submission was an intoxicating rush. He hated to think that she had seen through him and somehow sensed what he most needed from her, but nonetheless the experience was healing on so many levels that he felt a new restless momentum massing within him.

His hatred had consumed him for so long that there wasn't supposed to be anything left in him; no life, no warmth, no feeling. Yet, when her soft lips started to flutter and move against his own, searching to share the moment, he felt all three pulsing in his core, taking over the desolate wasteland of his heart. Words were not uttered, nor were they necessary. He knew he wasn't alone anymore, and Anni knew she'd found the man whose ghost she'd worshiped since before she could remember.

Chapter 10

In the afternoon following their kiss Raduz stopped Anni in the corridor. He grabbed her waist from behind and pushed her against the wall. Anni resisted feebly, glancing around her, embarrassed and afraid to be seen.

"Not here," she whispered frantically, but Raduz trapped her under his frame, grinding his crotch against her big, soft ass, leaning his weight on her back until her already scratched and tender breasts squashed flat against the push pins in her bra. Under her clothes, he knew, her skin was speckled with bite marks and bruises, yellowing old ones and darker new ones, and he couldn't wait to add more to the collection.

She had followed him with her gaze all day long and he was stewing in lust and frustration because it was still hours and hours until darkness would fall and he could make her weep and suffer and cream and cum for him again. He knew she longed for it too, yet still she kept trying to push him off her. More amused than moved, Raduz ignored her and let his hands roam possessively on her alluring curves.

"Someone will see us. Please, let me go," she pleaded nervously, already panting audibly, but Raduz didn't move and she was getting desperate.

She had to come up with something that would make him leave her alone before someone walked in to see her in their boss's arms. In mid thought Raduz leaned closer and raked the skin of her neck with his teeth. Anni's planned reaction, a vexed exhale, turned into a throaty moan when he started sucking gently. Her holes were already twitching eagerly and she knew she'd lose herself if he would keep on pushing her buttons. Then she had a sudden insight.

"Who's Masha?" she squeaked, and Raduz's hands let go of her as if her flesh burned him. "I know it's a name. Why do you keep calling me that? Why does she make you hate me?"

Raduz took half a step away from her, his face disgusted. Wishing that she could take back her words, Anni reached for him in reconciliation, but before she had time to think of something to say he walked away without a word.

-

Darkness sheltered Raduz as he sneaked back to the garrison. He had no idea how long he'd been held. At first he'd been sure he'd go mad but after all that time in the dark he had become a part of it, silent and invisible. He found the right house and entered stealthily through an open window to find that the captain and his young wife had separate bedrooms. Perfect, Raduz congratulated himself. He was on a high, nothing could go wrong, and he'd make her pay.

The captain, who cared little for his bride and much about the promotion that was in it for him, hadn't cast Masha off even after the unsuccessfully hushed-up scandal. At barely 18 she lived in a grandiose house attended by servants and had all the clothes and jewelry she could wish for. Yet she'd understood only too late that she had passed from under the tyranny of her father to a life even worse. Her husband was both proud and cruel, and day in day out Masha paid dearly for dragging his name through the mud.

Raduz walked to Masha's bed and looked down with burning hate at the woman he'd still loved not two months past. She woke up with a stifled yelp when he pressed his hand over her mouth. She fought him, trying to claw his palm off and scream, but when he spoke she froze.

"Hello, dove."

Recognizing the voice and the nickname, Masha searched the darkness for the face of her former lover. From the reek of her fear Raduz could tell that she hadn't expected to see him ever again. He leaned close and Masha nearly panicked from the sight of such a monster. Shock and revulsion flickered in her eyes when she saw his familiar features so ruined and misshapen. Raduz's lip had been split and he was missing some teeth. His nose had been broken and left to heal unset. His complexion was overrun by purple and yellowing bruises, and his once handsome face had turned ugly from all the swelling. His left eyelid hung useless, almost closing the bloodshot eye, and beside it a bloody crust covered a mean looking gash.

"Did you have a nice wedding?" he asked with an ugly smile, nodding towards a white layered gown hanging on a dress form. "So sorry to have missed it."

Realizing the stranger really was Raduz and not some nightmare illusion brought on by her guilt, Marina's shoulders slumped and she covered her eyes, sobbing.

"I'm sorry. Oh God. Those animals."

Then she looked up at him with terrified eyes.

"Radek, my darling, you have to believe me, I never meant for dad to—"

"Shut up you lying little cunt!" Raduz hissed, and backhanded her across the face as hard as he could. He put both his hands around her throat and squeezed.

"You told them I raped you. Well," he leaned to kiss her trembling cheek and whisper into her ear, "I'm raping you now."

Masha knew better than to fight the enraged man but as soon as he loosened his grip she continued begging.

"Please, don't hurt me. I had no choice. You don't know what dad's like! You don't know what Ondrej's like!"

Then, realizing that Raduz knew their cruelty better than she ever would, she looked at his bruises and whimpered desperately, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean—," until Raduz punched her in the face and stomach, silencing her to gasp air back into her lungs. This deranged beast clearly was a different man than the lovesick puppy she'd known.

Marina bled on her first time with Raduz -- and she bled on the last. Scared out of her mind and head swimming from pain, she wasn't ready for him when he forced his cock into her, ramming hard, hatefucking her so vehemently that her whole bed shook. Breathless and cramping, she gurgled from pain when he punched in and out, splitting cuts and sores into her dry flesh with his cock. The mattress squeaked as Raduz's weight crushed the girl into it again and again. Pain from his broken ribs struck him on every thrust but hatred and adrenaline gave him strength to ignore it and keep on shoving his cock into her with increasing savagery. In furious barks and hisses he listed for her all the luxuries around them she had sold herself and betrayed him for. It was all on her and now she was paying.

"Remember this, dove?" Raduz hissed, and showed her a gnarled tree branch. "It's from our tree. The tree I carved our names on. I wouldn't want to leave you with nothing to remember me by."

He had to gag her, tie her up, and choke her by the throat to keep her still and silent when he destroyed her cunt, tearing her flesh, fucking her with the branch, beating her with all the hatred roiling in him, listening to her bones crack. When he watched her suffer and bleed from the torture, a part of him wanted to kill her then and there, choke the bitch to death with his own hands, maybe stab her all over until she'd bleed to death, watch the life go out of her, witness her agony and fear, rid himself forever of the memory of her.

In the end he decided it was more of a punishment to let her live out her cursed life. She'd never recover from his last gift, so neither of them would ever be whole again.

When he finally removed her ties she still breathed weakly but didn't move. The branch jutting from the open wound that used to be her cunt was covered in blood, and so, as his last words, he snarled into her ear,

"What a bloody mess you've made, you filthy bitch. You could have told me you were on the rag."

-

At supper Anni kept glancing in his direction but Raduz didn't even look at her. In her room she curled on her bed and squeezed a pillow against her chest. She buried her face into it, trying to pry out even the slightest trace of his lingering scent. The whole situation was insane. Why did she feel safe when he hurt her? Why did he hate her if he wanted her? She had never known it could hurt so much to care.

She lay awake, watching hours tick by on the little clock on the screen of her phone. 11pm. 12pm. 1am. 2am. Without Raduz and the pain he always brought, there was no place to run from the barrage of thoughts and memories she could bear even less than pain. With an all-seeing eye she saw her past self dancing away while her struggling friend was being dragged to a room down the hall. She saw herself laugh and flirt while Riikka was forcibly stripped and stretched on the floor. She saw herself kissing and groping frenziedly with a guy who's name she didn't even know, while the first man kneeled between Riikka's writhing legs. In the surrounding darkness her own mindless laughter and the taunting jeers of Riikka's rapists mingled into one monstrous, cruel cacophony. She'd been having fun while faceless men shuffled in and out of the forgotten back room, in and out of her sobbing, begging friend. The self-accusations were unbearable. She should have noticed. She should have known. She should have helped. She should have done something. Useless. Stupid. Selfish. Drunk.

She took out her keys and dragged a sharp edge along her forearm with gusto. Again and again she dug the key into her flesh, dragging and scratching until skin broke and tiny globules of blood rose like rows of miniature mushrooms along the scratches. She curled under the blanket and felt the stinging pain override the anxious clutch of guilt until she was able to breathe again.

But the night dragged on; pain was starting to abate and still sleep refused to take her. Raduz wasn't coming and she felt her body ache for him. She reached to find the thought of Him to keep her company but mere fantasies weren't enough to make her really feel anymore. Besides, she didn't dare to examine her feelings too closely for fear of what she might find.

No one had ever made her feel as good or as wretched as Raduz did. The moments after the torture was over, when the horrible pain finally abated and he held and soothed her, she felt so light, relieved and calm that she'd never experienced anything like it. The punishments that she imagined she deserved gave her a convenient excuse for wanting to be hurt but the intrinsic need for domination and pain had always been there. She just hadn't been ready to admit to herself the truth, that what Raduz did to her was what she'd been dreaming of since she first started following the opposite sex with hungry, lustful eyes. It was all so obvious but she had wanted to lie to herself just a little while longer -- and play the innocent for her lord and master.

At half past three she slipped into a nightgown and stepped into the corridor, full of confusion and self-loathing. From the crack under his door she saw that his light was still on and tiptoed towards it.

Raduz woke up with a start to a rapping at his door. Disoriented, he sat up in his bed and cursed under his breath as the sound came again. He snatched a bunch of papers from the floor, donned his reading glasses with great haste, and tried to lean casually against the headboard as if he'd been reading all along. The door opened slowly and Raduz stared with his mouth open as Anni slipped in and closed the door with trembling hands.

When she turned from the door she avoided his eyes and crossed the floor. Raduz made a choked noise of protest when she fumbled for the switch on the bedside lamp, but whatever it was died of shame in his throat and so the light went out. In the darkness Anni crawled into his bed. Timidly she reached for his glasses and papers and laid them down on the bedside table. She lifted his blanket and snuggled tightly against his side, coaxing him with soft hands to lay down beside her. When he did she laid her head to rest on his chest just above the dent in his ribs, tracing it with her fingers. The dent was the crack through which hatred filled him up, but when Anni let her fingers rest in it, her touch seemed to stem the flow of poison.

"Anni," Raduz started, his voice thick and throaty. He wanted the girl back in her own room, so that things would be uncomplicated again and under his control. Something was happening to him and he didn't like it.

It had been so long since he had felt anything other than hate, that even the weak, stirring emotions felt something akin his all too familiar panic attacks: aggressive, uncontrollable, terrifying. The feelings came unbidden and wouldn't bend to his will. He did not want them but they refused to go away. For weeks he had thought it was indigestion but finally he recognized the gnawing knot of inner heat right below his sternum. He cared for her. And all the tender words he'd whispered to her while fucking her hadn't been just the malicious jeers he'd thought them to be.

When he was on her, he loved her and hated her at the same time. As he had loved and hated Masha. No, he told himself. No love. The kiss had been a mistake. This girl was a mistake. She would have to go. Soon. She wasn't normal. She got wet for him. Was she wet now? He cursed at himself but the thought of Anni's warm, slick, pulsing cunt, waiting and aching for him lingered. He heard in his head the wet noises her tight, dripping hole made when he pulled out and plunged back in.

It wasn't supposed to be like this.

When he inhaled to tell her to leave, Anni moved in the darkness, pressed a finger on his lips and quickly cut him off.

"Please," she whispered innocently like a little girl, begging for permission to sleep in her parents' bed after having a nightmare. "Please," she repeated, and reached her arm around him, her tiny hand resting on his side, shyly caressing his skin. The nervous, hesitant touch expressed what she hadn't dared to voice, "Please ...I need you."

Raduz knew he should send her away, but before he had the chance the dreaded darkness got under his skin, as always, and triggered his accursed panic. Hating himself for his weakness he fought to keep it secret, yet still the inevitable and unexplainable terror hit him like a tsunami, drowning him, choking him. He couldn't breathe, he thought he was going to die. All he felt was blind terror. His clothes felt tighter and tighter, the room too small, the air too hot, too stuffy. His mouth watered as he tried to gag down nausea. Reality slipped from him. He couldn't feel the bed beneath him or hear the hum of the heater. Instead he heard the hated, never-changing soundtrack of his panic attacks: doors, boots, thuds, screams -- his own screams. He shivered, his body rigid, covered all over with cold sweat.