Onus 03

He was reaching between my legs. I closed my eyes. This was it. I had been waiting for it. It was going to happen. He wouldn't have bought me unless he wanted to fuck me or kill me.

Instead, he pulled his hand back out from under the crumpled hem of the robe and he had a small silver ring in his hand. A ring that was crusted with black blood and congealed yellow pus. There was fresh blood on his fingertips.

The sight of the ring made me understand the pain. I felt the blood draining from my face, and I couldn't hold down the contents of my stomach anymore. I retched and up it came. Gnawed hunks of strawberry in an ugly brown soup of root beer and chocolate pudding.

He stayed on his knees next to me. He rubbed my back. It hurt my sensory patches, and it hurt my tender lower back, but I didn't flinch away from it. When I started to retch again, he carefully pulled my ragged hair away from my face and held it behind my neck. He didn't say anything.

When I finished retching, and spitting, I weakly backed away from the puddle of vomit. I could see the small drops of blood where the piercing had fallen out. I pressed my cheek to the cold floor, resting my eyes and breathing.

Sam was hovering next to me. When he spoke, he sounded calmer. I didn't open my eyes.

"I'm a doctor. We'll go back to the room, and I can help you."

I started to get up, but the pain was so bad that I quickly got back down. I felt glassy-eyed and apathetic with how badly it hurt. I just wanted to stay huddled on the floor and never get up again.

Sam stepped over me, and walked down the hallway. He walked into my big round room, and came out with the comforter. He folded it into fourths, and then it was a long thin pad, just big enough for me to lay on. I crawled on it, and he dragged me back to my room over the slick wooden floor. He was probably strong enough to carry me. But I was feverishly glad that he hadn't tried.

---

I stared at the conical ceiling.

My head hurt. I felt like my mouth and my ears and my throat had been stuffed with scratchy cotton. My eyelids felt hot, my eyes dry. My lips felt so so dry. I was bundled under the heavy coverlet. My chest felt hot and damp. My hands and feet cold as ice. Under the blanket, I gingerly tried to feel where the piercing had torn. The bolt of pain made me whimper and close my eyes.

The door opened and I felt a sickening bolt of pain when I turned my head to watch him.

He had a clear plastic mixing bowl with a checkered washcloth floating in the water. He had a bag. A flat black case.

My hands recoiled into fists. I shuffled my feet against the mattress, pushing myself away. Scraping my sensory patches against the sheet. The wall felt so cool against my shoulder as I cringed into it.

His hands were hovering. Half-standing, half kneeling. He wanted to touch me so bad. To hurt me or to caress, I couldn't tell.

He wrung out the rag. He kept his eye focused on the rag. Then he carefully extended it.

It was just a rag. Not the case. Not yet. I turned my head so I could lean into the touch of the rag. The water was warm. It felt good on my sweaty face. He was gentle. Did he want to put a new piercing on my face?

My head felt like it was stuffed with hot scratchy cotton. I didn't realize that I was crying until he made a soft shushing sound.

He pulled down the comforter.

He avoided the sensory patches on my sides, and on my stomach. He was very gentle with the burns between my nipples, barely patting them with the cloth, even though most of them were old enough to be dull shiny scars.

He went down my abdomen, avoiding my sensory patch on my stomach. I shivered when he rubbed my inner thighs. When he wrung out the rag, there was pink in the water.

"I'm going to... I'm going to wash the wound now." He said softly.

He touched my cock. Touched it to move it to the side. His fingers felt strange. I realized that he had pulled on a set of thin latex gloves. I shivered when he gently dabbed my inner thighs, and then moved up to my testes.

I flinched. I whimpered softly. He was holding my cock with one hand to keep it out of the way. The latex felt so smooth against my skin.

"There's some pus... If I squeeze, I can get the pus out, and it will heal faster. But it's going to hurt."

I closed my eyes tight and turned my head so my cheek was against the cool rumpled sheet.

He squeezed with his latex fingers. I felt an enormous sensation of pain, and an even more enormous sensation of relief. Of a great painful pressure being released. I made a weak rasping noise in the back of my throat and panted. He was dabbing with the cloth. When my eyes fluttered open, I saw him dipping the bloody rag into the bowl of water. He cleaned the area three times, and pulled the comforter up over my shivering body.

"It's clean now, and bleeding just a little. I'm going to get you some medicine now."

I kept my right eye open just a slit. Watching him. He opened the black case and I felt my stomach throb painfully with fear. But when it was open, I didn't see needles. Just different bottles and cases of medicine.

"Antibiotics." He shook two white pills into his palm, before closing to pick up another bottle. "Anti-inflammitories... Painkillers." He listed off the use of each pill he shook into his hand. He set the pills down into the palm of my sweaty upturned head. "I'll get water."

He stood slowly, and walked over to the fridge, opening it to get a bottle of water. When he came back, I put the pills in my mouth, shrinking my tongue away from the bitterness.

The half-faced man could have lied to me. These medications could have been something worse, or even something dangerous. I closed my hand into a fist, and the sensory patches on my fingertips could taste the bitterness of the medicines that had leeched into my sweaty palm.

It was in my best interests to trust this man.

---

I could smell garlic and melted cheese.

I could smell tomatoes and peppers and onions.

I could smell bacon, and sausage, and hot greasy steak.

My nostrils twitched, and I opened my eyes. I reached between my legs. I could feel a hard dry scab, but the skin around it felt soft and warm.

"I didn't want you to get anything you didn't like, so I made a couple." His voice was soft and anxious still. He was standing in the middle of the room with the fold-out tray. 'A couple' turned out to be six three-egg omelets. Each on a separate plate on his tray.

The laugh was startled out of me. Completely foreign to me, and as sweet as candy.

The furrows on his brow smoothed. The look in his one eye was hopeful and happy. He smiled too. In his strange clipped voice, he murmured. "They'll get cold..."

I sat up, and the coverlet fell around my waist. I felt cold, and my head felt a little foggy. My mouth tasted chalky and awful. I wanted to wash out the taste with the steaming food on the tray. I hesitated, and then patted the edge of the mattress.

The eyebrow that I could see nearly shot into his hairline. His smile widened. "R-Really?"

I nodded a little. And he sat on the floor next to my mattress, putting the tray between us on the small standing legs. I picked up a plate and a fork and took a bite of the omelette nearest to me. I could taste spinach and sausage, garlic and mozzarella.

He hesitantly took a plate. I reached over with a fork and took a bite of an omelette on the tray. I tasted bacon and cheddar cheese, and onions.

We ate breakfast like that. Trying the different omelets on the tray. I liked all of them, except for the one that had mushrooms and swiss cheese in it. I surreptitiously touched each bite of food with my fingertips. I loved to taste things with my sensory patches. My sensory patches had higher clusters of olfactory sensors than my nose, so the flavors seemed more intense.

I looked at him out of the side of my eye. The black silk patch hugged up to the side of his nose. It covered the top half of his cheek, his entire right eye, and part of his hairline. I couldn't even see an edge of whatever disfigurement he had to cover up. Now that he was close, I could see that he had a very faint scar on his upper lip. One that went up one of the ridges of his philtrum, as to be nearly invisible.

His hair was dark. Maybe paler if it got a chance to see the sun. His left eye was brown. Brown and looking intently at whatever food he was trying. Though he kept looking at me. Kept edging his line of vision my way.

I wanted to to ask him. It was the first time in so long. So long, that I actually wanted to try to speak. My throat felt like a rusty lifeless thing. But even more than the physical disuse of my voice, it was the lock that silenced me. The heavy lock that Rudy and Nelson had put on my tongue so long ago.

That lock had been cemented with the ordinary man. I closed my eyes for a moment. I longed weakly, fiercely, uselessly. I wished with all of my heart, that I had never been sold to the ordinary man.

I took a big bite of the omelet with red peppers and cheddar and ham. I tried to let the sting of the peppers numb my tongue. I tried not to let a single tear drop from my welling eyes. I tilted my head back and closed them.

"I thought that you might want to take a bath."

I chewed twice. I opened my eyes to look at him.

He looked at his hands. "It would probably feel good to soak. You can get cleaned up, soften up any scabs. It would warm you up, too. I have the heat on in this room, but I know that feeling, when you just can't get warm."

He took a bite of omelet. "And... I... I just want you to get better." His face was flushed.

I nodded, but he couldn't see me when he was looking away. I reached out and quickly brushed his sleeve with the back of my hand. When he looked at me with his one eye, I flinched a little. We had made eye contact. I nodded my head.

"Okay... The nearest bathroom connected to water is one floor down. Would you like me to go and fill it up?" He seemed embarrassed. "I can also get the soap and shampoo and things up there, I don't use it, so it's empty. I really should have... I should have tried to clean things up." He firmly shut his mouth, flushing bright red.

I slowly nodded. He smiled sheepishly and got up. "Do you want me to leave these here?" He pointed to the half-demolished remains of the omelets.

I took one more bite of the mozzarella omelet, and shook my head. He took the tray and left the room.

I rolled out of the bed and put on the soft black robe. I could feel a stiff spot near the back, where my blood had dried. But it was warm, and I had to move down stairs soon.

The thought intimidated me, but I was excited. I tried to remember the last time I had had a real bath.

Before the ordinary man. Before all of the times I had washed my hair with dish soap in the sink with the broken H handle. Before Hanson and Nelson, with the hose and the heater. Before my time on the street, when sometimes an Onii would have a hot water faucet.

I remembered the last hot water. Mama was dead. She had died in the night.

I knew that the police would come eventually. I had stayed in the apartment as long as I could, for another week after she died. The smell drew the neighbors. I still remembered the last hot bath before the police came and forced me to go to the nearest Onii.

I crawled over to the bench by the window and stared out at the snow. It was falling in fat flakes. I could see the road in the distance. A highway glimpsed between the naked branches of the trees. It had melted from the cars passing over it.

I tucked my hair behind my ear, but my hand froze in motion. Instead, I twined my fingers in a long strand of my greasy hair.

When I held the strand taut, it reached my collarbone.

I tucked the robe tighter around me. My last bath in the apartment, my hair had been cut short and neat. Close to my scalp.

When I closed my eyes, I could hear his voice. I could hear the Ordinary man's voice.

"Quit crying, little bitch. It's just hair. If you're going to be a fucking slob, you're going to lose it."

I could feel the phantom agony of my scalp. When he pulled me up by my hair and hacked away at it with a pair of scissors. When he had been done, it had been in uneven tufts short enough to run my fingers through.

I looked at my nails. The friend, the one with the long hair and his needles... he had always been trimming my nails. He did it so I would stop scratching myself bloody in my sleep.

I had spent my eighteenth birthday with my mother, and been on the street before my nineteenth.

I stared down at my bony hands. I curled up and started to suck on my knuckles. The tears were coming. I tried to fight them back, bite my first knuckle, but they came anyway.

I didn't know how old I was. No matter how hard I tried, I had no idea how long I had spent in that basement.

A year. I tried to tell myself. It was snowing again, and I remembered counting about two hundred meals.

But...

He had cut my hair in the summer. I had known that it was summer because he was coated in sweat, and he had been wearing jogging shorts and a tee-shirt. How could my hair be this long if it had only been one year? I had lost count of how many meals he had given me. Lost count of how many times my nails had been clipped.

How long?

How long had I been down there? With nothing to distract me from the boredom and loneliness? Nothing and no one except two men who had raped me and hurt me so bad that even now I could barely stand.

I remembered the beatings. The fucking. The toys. I remembered crying with mingled relief and joy and terror whenever the door opened. Remembered biting my own arms, just to feel something. I remembered masturbating until my penis bled.

But I could not figure out how long I had been down there.

A hot frightened pressure was building up in my chest. Something a lot like panic.

I bit down on the soft meaty part of my forearm. Tears came to my eyes at the same time that I tasted blood. The hot pressure in my rib cage went down, calmed down.

I stopped biting, and licked the blood away. I had only pierced the skin with my canines. Some of the other scars on my forearms were deeper.

It was the only thing I ever did that hadn't gotten punished. The Ordinary man had always assumed that it was his friend, and his friend had always assumed that it was him. They had reason to believe. They had both been fans of biting.

"I only ever used razors."

I nearly fell off the padded bench. I cringed against the cold pane of the window. It wasn't just the visceral fear that I felt when I saw Sam standing in the doorway. I also felt ashamed.

Sam didn't look angry. Just sad. His eye was cast to the ground when he rolled up the left sleeve of his black sweater.

"I guess you didn't have razors, though."

His forearm had a larger muscle than mine. The meaty part of my forearm was still just a slim bulge of muscle near the elbow, where most of it was bone. He had a defined muscle. He had soft golden hairs growing on his arm. On the back of his forearm, he had dozens and dozens of neat slim scars. Perfectly straight, like they had been drawn with a ruler. Each line precisely placed, all the same length. He had two columns marching up the back of his left forearm, from the bony knob of the back of his wrist, to the crease of his inner elbow.

The lines on his forearm reminded me of the neat drinks inside the fridge.

He rolled the sleeve back down. "I have the tub full. It takes a little while to fill up, but it has jets and a heater, so it should stay nice and hot. I bet it will feel good." He rubbed his arm unconsciously. "Better than pain."

I carefully put my weight on my feet. The pain made me grimace. I looked up hesitantly. He was still in the doorway, giving me my space. I had a sudden fierce desire to thank him. Just to open my mouth, and thank him for everything. I even opened my mouth a little, but nothing would come out. I took another few steps, limping and making little painful noises under my breath.

I saw him grab the comforter. He folded it in the doorway, and I saw what he was doing. He was making it into a stretcher again. He would be able to drag me over the smooth wooden floors outside my room.

"If it's okay with you... I would like to give you a checkup after the bath. You have some injuries that I don't know about. Injuries that I could help."

I nodded, just as I dropped to all fours. I finished the distance across the circular room on my hands and knees. It hurt less than trying to walk.

---

The second journey down the stairs was slower, more careful. He dragged me down the hallway, and then I scooted down the long wooden stairs with the comforter under my bony buttocks.

The second floor was lighter than the third. He had the hall lights on, and there was a big window at the end of the hallway that looked out over a frozen garden and a frozen pond.

He pointed out the window. "The pond is beautiful in the spring. There is a little bench, and two willows give you shade. The ducks like to stop and splash in the water, and there are little fish, no bigger than your pinkie."

I sat on the folded comforter. My legs felt weak and shaky from sliding myself down the stairs. My buttocks felt bruised, and I felt a deeper aching pain in my rectum. My genitals throbbed, and my feet burned. I looked out the window at the pond. I wondered how soft the grass would be, and if the sun would feel good. I had never walked barefoot in the grass. And I had never-ever gone swimming.

He pulled the comforter to the one door that had a light under the crack. He fumbled the door open and pulled me inside.

The bathroom was spacious. It had a mottled granite counter and pewter-colored fittings. The walls were rose-colored, and the mirror was round, held up with metal fastenings, like a jewel.

The bathtub was enormous. Made of porcelain, at least three feet deep. When I peeked over, I saw that the inside of the tub was molded, so you could recline, with your head above the water. It was filled nearly two thirds full, and I could see small jets on the inside. It was all controlled with a film-covered button pad on the side. There was a tray that went across the tub to put small objects in.

Steam rose slowly from the surface. "Would... Would you like me to leave? I have all of the supplies in the niche."

I tried to stand up. I felt dizzy when I got to my knees. He nervously hovered nearby. He held out one hand. I took it, without really thinking.

His hand tasted like clean soap. I could taste traces of our breakfast. Some kind of medicinal ointment.

He was not a big man, but his hand was bigger than mine. He helped me to stand and I swayed a little. The ordinary man's hand had been bigger. Big enough to close around my entire wrist. He had squeezed hard enough for me to hear the small bones creaking.

I was glad that Sam's hand wasn't that big.

I leaned against the wall, releasing his hand. The robe was soft and warm, but I needed to shed it to get into the tub. He had seen me naked before, but I couldn't bring myself to shed the robe with him standing right behind me.

"I'll be right outside the door." He said softly.

---

The water was blisteringly hot. Blissfully hot. Sweetly hot.

I reclined in the bath and it felt like every pain, every ache and sting and chafe and deep bruised throbbing leeched away into the hot water. It soothed my strained atrophied muscles and softened my scabs. The hot water made my sensory patches feel healthy, really and truly healthy and clean, for the first time in so long.

I dipped my head back to soak all of my hair. I rubbed my face with my warm hands.

"Are you okay?"

I grabbed at a small hand-towel and submerged it, using the soft waterlogged cloth to cover my groin. I made a small "mmm" sound in the back of my throat. It was the most I could do.