Inheritrix Ch. 04

My Wild Lily

'You smell like a turd as well.'

The compliance systems in Bren's brain fused and derailed. His vivid new memories fuelled the blood courtesy response. The surge of stress hormones struggled to ignite in the reduced oxygen supply from his crushed throat. The blinker graft overloaded. Bren's sight closed to a dot while all motor control withdrew from his limbs. Lesser organs retired. It felt as though he fell down a hole in himself.

'All the improvements we made to men, and nobody ever thought to get rid of the stink.'

The Vixen dragged him one-handed by his neck. His limp body slid along the ground beside her. Bren gazed through his overcharged tunnel vision at the underside of her right breast. It seemed as vast, distant and lovely as the moon.

'I planned to use you as a domestic. But if you can't even keep yourself clean then I can hardly trust you to tidy up around here, can I?'

The halo round her breast changed from sharp daylight to the warm glow of foxfire lanterns. Bren felt himself glide across an osteotile floor. The Vixen drew him through sudden sharp turns. His slack limbs caught on bulky, solid objects. Bren could not see the room, but he could sense the heaped, ancient clutter around them. He heard it in the close acoustics of her voice. He tasted it in the room's musty vanilla scent.

'Poor start, boy. Very poor.'

The world grew dimmer still. Bren's body flowed down cold stairs. His view shifted to the hem of her skirt. After each step down, he caught glimpse of her upper leg. The curves of her thighs sculpted into cords of long muscle as she descended the staircase. The sheen of flayon stockings lit each shift in flesh.

'You'll be disciplined, of course. I expect you to learn from your punishments. I won't be doing it for my own amusement.'

After a lifetime in his clan's sunken shelter, Bren knew he was underground just from the taste of the air. The dungeon felt cool and damp. The Vixen threw him down. He landed on bare fleshcrete. Moisture and cold turned the material gluey and sharp, like fresh ice. Bren lay helpless where he fell. As his breath returned, his body could finally perform its programmed fit of panic. Bren processed his fear as anxiety when he could not locate his mistress. Blinking as his eyes flitted and spun, Bren saw only the dark outlines of tall, jumbled stacks. More clutter, this batch mouldy from long storage in the wet dungeon.

'Understand that when I hurt you, it's a sign that you need to improve.'

He found her again from the sound of her voice. His owner stood over him. Bren could not raise his head to gaze up at her. It did not matter. He could still hear her powerful voice. He could still understand her threats and demands. She was going to improve him. She was going to make him better.

'And you need a lot of improvement. You're going to be my little project. I'm going to hurt you until you meet my standards. I have very high standards, so you have a lot of work and a lot of pain ahead of you. Let's start with these filthy rags.'

Bren's home-sewn shammygrass clothes shredded down the weave like corn husks. His lifeless body flipped and sagged as the Vixen tore him bare. When she was done, she dropped him on his side. Bren lay naked at the feet of his mistress. The stress response exaggerated his shivers.

He had only been in her service for a few minutes, and yet she had already scoured away every trace of his lonely old life. Bren felt as though he had respawned. His cock twitched in gratitude.

'Disgusting little thing, aren't you? I usually prefer my scrotes naked, but I can't be seen owning such a pathetic accessory. Look at all those cuts and sores.'

She kicked him with precision. Every impact from the stiff shoe touched some mark of injury or illness. Even the hidden, hereditary wounds in his kidneys, ragged from a lifelong glut of fear hormones.

'Imagine if someone saw damage on you that hadn't come from me. Think how embarrassing that would be for me. You know, you actually seemed a tiny bit rugged out there in the fields. A feral boy. My wild Lily. Living by his wits. Guarding his shitty little junk stall. I was looking forward to taming you. Breaking you. Now you just look pitiful. Moids really are incapable of maintaining themselves, aren't they?'

When her foot had found and woken the last of his imperfections, her kicks grew more tender. The Vixen explored the rest of his body with the thick platform of her sole and the spike of her heel. She rearranged his limbs with a series of accurate strikes. Bren now lay on his back, spreadeagled. For one brief, blissful moment, she pinned his penis to his thigh. When she stepped away from him, his cock sprang back up, harder than before.

'No, you need to be covered up. I'll grow you a synthskin. A nice tight little suit. I still want people to see how scrawny you are. You can wear that until you're repaired. Maybe after that I'll find you something from storage. Something pretty and skimpy. You'd like that, wouldn't you? You look like you'd make a good little tart. But these need to go.'

She threw the remains of his clothing away. Bren heard a dull metallic chime as the blood pact landed near the rags. His mistress exhaled through her nose and then grew quiet. Bren felt empty and abandoned by the Vixen's sudden silence. Had she tired of him already? He had known it would happen eventually. He was unworthy of her.

'Would you like to explain why there's silver on your pact? It's supposed to be deep red. They only turn silver from a semen sample. Have you been dribbling your disgusting seed onto it? Not the best way to begin your service, is it? Pleasuring yourself all over your employment contract.' She paused to grunt in revulsion. 'Let's review your failings so far. You were late. You fucking stink. You arrived with a deficient, probably diseased body. And you've been using a compact I graciously gifted to you as some sort of tragic little sex toy.'

She stepped on his face. The triangle base of the platform sole braced his eye socket. The heel pressed into the hollow of his cheek. Bren felt the weight of her hundred-kilo body against his skull. She ground the other side of his face against the cold floor. As his jaw slipped open, she drove down harder with the stiletto point. Bren's teeth tore against the strained flesh inside his mouth. He tasted blood.

'That merits quite a lot of correction on your first day, doesn't it? Not yet, though. I don't have time for that right now. I have a holding to run. You're supposed to be my hobby, not my entire fucking life. Let's get you cleaned up, and then I'll find some way you can be useful. And then, at the end of the day, you can look forward to your punishment.'

She opened the hose without warning. Freezing water struck Bren at force. The pressure from the spray drove him to a corner of the room. Bren had not known water could feel so cold and still remain liquid. The fluid struck like needles. His skin seemed to shrink. The cold drilled through to the bone. Bren choked on his breath. His heartbeat turned hard, fast and irregular, like impacts from a hailstorm.

'You could have avoided this if you'd presented yourself to me in a more fitting condition. Remember what I said. Learn from your pain. I want you spotless from now on.'

The Vixen stepped closer to focus on particular parts of his body. At close range, the water pressure felt like a scalpel. The Vixen turned and posed him with kicks to expose his folds and corners to the hose. When the water struck his cock, it shrank to a slug.

'Oh, look at that. It does have an off switch after all. Good to know. I'm already sick of looking at the thing.'

The ice shower ended, but the pain remained. The keen, acid sensation seemed to radiate from within, as if he had been poisoned by cold alone. Bren shuddered on the floor. A seizure of shivers twisted him into a knot. He looked down at his mottled lilac skin. Pores in the fleshcrete opened to absorb the water pooled around him. The walls and floor grew harder when nourished. Bren felt his skin grate against the iron surface as he rattled in the corner.

'Better. You don't look like you're rotting anymore. See how I'm improving you? You've already crawled up one level from turd to worm. At this rate, you'll have advanced to the rank of bitch by the end of the day. Get on your knees. I want you properly attired. Collar and a skin. I'll see if I can find something tight enough for that skinny little neck. I'm not wasting tailored synthskin on you, so you can take it as an implant. It'll burn while it grows onto you, but you deserve to be burned. Come on. Get up.'

Bren longed to obey. His body defied him. Worse, it defied his mistress. He lay quivering on the floor. Bren wondered how he had ever before willed his body into motion. It seemed like he had spawned paralysed. He imagined instructions moving from his brain to his limbs, but the deep ache in every bone blurred the information.

No. He could not blame the pain. Bren had been created to suffer for her. Courtesy had frozen him before, but the Vixen had broken it before. At the market, she had bidden him speak and expose himself with a few simple commands. She had been calm in the wastelands. Indifferent and unflappable. Now she was furious from his many failings. It should have worked. Her words should have snapped him into the shape she dictated. Bren wept in frustration.

'Stop fucking crying. I said get on your knees, worm. I know you haven't got the spirit to defy me, so you must just be too stupid to understand my orders. Up. Now. Oh, for fuck's sake. Don't tell me you've crashed already.'