Riddick's Concubine

* The movie, Pitch Black, and the character, Riddick, belong to the Interim company, or some movie companies, and/or movie writers. I take no credit for them. Only my original material is COPYRIGHTED, October, 2002. Thanks.

Note: In this story, Riddick can't see in the dark, and his eyes are normal (Not metallic, or "shined," like in the movie, "Pitch Black"), and are clear-light-brown. And this is set in the 21st century, not later.

* * * * *

Some workmen asked, "Where does she want it?" and a man, his hair mostly white, but lightly flecked with gray, motioned to the thickly cracked, gray, cement floor. A chill wind blew through the room, rustling a few browned, drying leaves, into the building, which was about 15 feet wide. A heavy, dark-metal fork lift lowered the metal box with a grinding, screeching sound, like a bulldozer makes. The object completely lowered, five men unhooked it from the tough straps holding it in place. The woman who had been watching from the side saw that it resembled a large, oblong box, much more tall than wide, appearing, one might say, as a futuristic coffin. It's sides were encased by opaque, light glass, hiding the cargo entombed within it. She glanced downward nervously with her eyes, and remained a few steps away from the men. Two of them wore black uniforms, with white strips edging their jacket-collars. She thought, too light of coats for them to wear, on such a cold day. The temperature hung barely above freezing, and an inch of the year's first snowfall covered most of the ground, though, with many patches of bare dirt appearing. Yellow and orange leaves fluttered, yet, on some of the maple trees, and brown, leathery ones, clung to oaks. A covering of tan-orange pine needles layered over most of the landscape, where one could see them on the bare patches of ground, as well. She felt of her soft, smooth, light-brown hair, with it's pale blonde, and lightly reddish, hi-lights, and raised a section of it to her nose, breathing-in deeply. The delicate scent of coconut slightly filled her nasal passages, more lightly than angels' wings settling into place on their backs. She allowed the portion of her thick, fine hair to glide back to rest on her shoulder, and caused her blue eyes to stare with renewed focus at the large box, an object of deepest concern to her.

A tall man with dark-brown, short hair, asked her, "Are you sure you can handle this, now? It was no easy task bringing it here."

She felt uncertain, but replied, "Yes, just close the garage door again, please."

He said to her, a pleasant expression on his face, but his tone of voice held a warning for her, in it, "You could find others. Why they have such shitty plans to ship things to just anyone -- I don't know."

With some defiance, and self-pride welling up in her, though, meaning to convince them she would be fine, she stated, "I'm sure I can handle it. I'm no giddy, young thing, you know."

He scratched his head and commented, "Well, you look like it. Anyway, the government has set up the force field around the perimeter of your property, and should you wish to go anywhere with the cargo, you know they plant tracking devices... so, can't get more than 200 feet from you, then... right?"

She answered, bluntly, "Yeah."

The man laughed to him self, lightly, like air escaping, with no real sound to it, other than that. He mildly quipped, "Well, good fucking luck," and then, laughing, "Not that it will do you any good." He climbed back into a rusted, red, pick-up truck, with his buddy already seated and waiting on the passenger side, and muttered, before he was out of ear-shot of the woman, "Stupid fucking bitch," and he slammed the door shut.

She glanced in his direction quickly, rather shocked at his audacity and ill manners. The other men had come in a separate, blue, rusty, pick-up truck, and both vehicles drove away, out of the circular, tear-drop-shaped driveway, and continuing down that road, which led a quarter of a mile through the woods, and then, out onto a reddish, gravel road, which eventually turned into more roads, and then, into a country highway.

She pulled the silver zipper up further, on her fluffy, black, winter coat, and hesitantly, uneasily, walked toward, and into, the garage, which was really a rather old shed, used mainly for storing spare automotive parts. It was one of three garages on the property, the other two being much larger, which were between the shed, toward the north, and the orange-brown house, with medium-blue trim, toward the south, which had been a mobile home, though, some 40 years ago, with it's 20-year-old, large edition, attached to it's south side.

She thought of the date -- Friday, October 18, 2012 -- and then, she guessed that was about 1:30 PM. The sky had remained quite cloudy, medium-gray and white, after the night's snowfall. It momentarily flashed through her mind that her dad had been gone two years, dying of one of plagues the alien ships had brought, which had arrived a year before he'd died. She had been left alone to care for the property, and all her needs, at age 31, and it was rather too much hard work -- chopping wood and all that. Solar panels had been attached to the addition on the south side of the house, but that solar generator could only be run, most of the time, for basic lighting and water, and occasionally, for the stove, and the clothes-drier. She had been glad, indeed, that her father, a former repair man, who had been 69 when he died, had added a black-metal, wood-burning furnace -- big, hulking, dangerous, rectangular piece that it was -- almost a year before he had died, when the aliens had first come, and had bombed some of the large cities and simultaneously killed the power for hundreds of miles around those cities. She lived 10 miles from the nearest, small city, and 200 miles from the closest, large city. She stood outside, in the cold, extremely lonely and alone, as she had been all her life; and at 33-years-old, however, she felt much more brave, strong, and confident, than ever before. And she loved to feel strong, and productive. She felt quite daring, also, despite her usually extremely cautious leanings, especially around humans. Though, her stubbornness had, sometimes, served her rather well. Plus, living through all the misery she had endured in her life, made her much stronger than most.

She entered the shed and stood there, barely within it's walls with the cracks in between old, thin boards, and closed the rickety, side door, behind her quietly -- almost as silently as a mouse tip-toeing across the top crust of the often-deep, Wisconsin snow. She gazed at the glass and stainless-steel container the men had delivered, wondering for a few seconds if anything was alive within it. Not a sound emanated from within that chamber.

A high-pitched, female voice, squeaked from behind her, "Is that what I think it is? Are you going to open it, Kate? Oh, don't! I wouldn't!" Momentarily startled, Kate spun around to look at the girl-child, with her long, pale-blonde, straight hair, that waved around her face in the light wind, and was the child's most prominent feature.

Kate answered, a little shocked, and then, protectively, "Samantha, jeez -- don't do that! And yes, it is. Now, go back inside the house, and stay there. You understand?"

Samantha begged, in an almost heart-breaking voice, "Don't let it out."

Kate joked, incredulously, in her characteristic humor, "Well, we can't leave it in the box!"

The girl, who ordinarily possessed a great sense of justice, and who would be 12-years-old the next, March 5th, hesitated; and Kate commanded, firmly, "Go!" And Kate added, when Samantha had almost closed the door behind her, "And stay calm. Remember? Like I told you. Everything's all right.

Just stay there 'til I come back in." Samantha nodded her lively head that she had stuck around the corner to listen, and then, finally, closed the door, leaving Kate alone with the box.

Kate mused to her self, her cunning intellect filling her mind, somewhat darkly, making her brave, and nearly seductive, "Well, let's see what we got." She was not afraid, she told her self, inwardly. And that was true, though, she had a secret reason, as well, for not feeling fear at that time -- something about how she healed quickly. And anyway, she did not feel fear, then, only nervousness.

She stepped up to the box, and though she was five-feet, six inches tall, she postulated that the container stood at least two feet taller than her head, and about two feet wider than her body (which was a somewhat heavy body for a woman to have, though, she was well-muscled -- but not overly done -- and not overweight). She read some small words on the box, and pressed about a dozen buttons, scattered all over the front of it. The mechanized, glass sides, slid down, and to the back, and the steel "cage" that remained, opened outwards, as if the skeleton of a museum tyrannosaurus-rex-dinosaur somehow came to life and spread it's ribcage apart. She gasped, and took a step backwards.

An old smell -- sweat, and something more -- released into the cool air. Inside the container, what she saw was a creature -- that was the first word she'd call it -- with a steel bit in it's mouth, strung by two, thick, metal cables, around it's head, and attached to the cage, or holding chamber. She knew what the creature was, of course, instantly, and she had known all along, really, though, she was quite unfamiliar with it's smells. And yes, it smelled badly. It raised it's head, slowly, like a psycho-killer acknowledging some wannabe-hot-shot psychiatrist who's come to question him, and angled it towards her direction. The large bulge in the front-middle of it's black, well-fitting pants, like sweat-suit pants, with a dark-gray strip down their sides, told her that it was a male. He wore large running shoes that were black and white, somewhat striped, with bright yellow underneath the tongue, and a rather impressive, mens', black, tank-top shirt. She felt, immediately, that he must be cold. His arms were stretched out to his sides, as if someone had tried to crucify him, and were held with heavy, steel chains, and with incredibly-tough, black-leather bands, as was his torso, and his legs -- all, in several places. The most creepy thing, she felt, next to the bit, like a horse-bit, in his mouth, had to be the blindfold of black cloth, tied well around his completely-shaven head. His arms and chest, and his whole body, were extremely well-muscled, like a body-builder, but not overdone, with not too many veins raised above the normal skin surface, except for the upper parts of his biceps; he was well-toned all over, though, as someone who had done a great deal of hard work. Kate reached forward and quickly ripped some stapled, paper forms off of the side of the container; and read that he was 35-years-old, six-feet-two-inches tall, born July 18, 1977, and had lived for seven years in a maximum-security prison, called Slam City, on another planet -- a prison planet. He had escaped from the cargo ship, Hunter-Gratzner, after it had crashed on a mostly dead planet that had three suns (two yellow suns and one blue sun, with a large, ringed planet near to it, that had been visible in the sky), and after the extreme ordeal that he and several others had survived on that alien-predator-infested planet, and had escaped it through a disposable type of space-ship, called a skiff (the creatures he, and only two others, had escaped, were called raptors), he had been caught on a trading planet by some no-good bounty-hunters who had turned him in for the reward money. So, he was a murderer, and an escaped convict. But instead of sending him back to Slam, they had sold him to slave-traders. Slavery was something that hadn't been seen in most places on Kate's planet, Earth, in at least 170 years, but the aliens (though, they were actually human, simply more advanced in technology, but were called aliens by the earthlings because they were from other planets). Kate had sent for, and bought (in advance, at an extremely hefty price), a healthy slave -- maybe a more docile one than the one she had received, however -- but she needed help on the 49 acres of land she owned. She didn't plan on treating anyone like a slave -- she mainly needed a gardener, she chose to believe. And she wasn't entirely new to it -- buying slaves. Samantha was actually a slave that Kate had bought a few months after Kate's father had died; but Kate had bought her to be like a daughter, and a help-mate, not a slave. Though, Samantha was nothing like the man in front of her.

Thoughts raced through her mind -- not the least of which being that she should send him back. However, she couldn't stop staring at his chest and arm muscles, displayed gloriously and complemented by the black tank-top he wore. She skimmed reading his name on the papers: "Riddick." Then, she zoned out, gazing at him, slipping into something, perhaps deeper than lust. It almost surprised her that her loins suddenly ached, and little zings of pleasure rushed through that area. She shook her head somewhat and stopped that line of thought, after a few seconds of daydreaming. What was she thinking of, she thought? Yet, no, she knew exactly what she was thinking of -- that she was a 33-year-old virgin, who'd still never even been kissed, on the lips, and had nothing for male company except a large, jelly-type vibrator she'd mated with for 11 years -- she was fucking frustrated, that's what she was! Well, she had always been very shy, and the aliens had come into the way of any potential dating, not that she'd had any other date since her one and only pathetic date at age 20. She was eccentric, she reasoned -- just too weird -- always had been. She sighed lightly.

Riddick could smell the woman. He could smell her well before she had entered that building, which he guessed was a shed by the musty, mildewed, earthy smells, and the scents of old grease and metal, and wood; and those cock-suckers had left him there. Seeming years of solitary confinement in pitch-darkness had allowed his senses of smell and hearing to develop well beyond normal. That's when the Primal kicks in, in a man. He inhaled deeply, catching her scent thickly through his well-developed, slightly above average-size, nose. They were fresh scents -- clean scents, coconut shampoo, melon-like scent of hand-soap, and he could also smell that she had about finished her period -- light scent of waning blood, and musk-like odors of a woman's other fluids. He thought -- wonderful scent -- that; and he would like to draw her closer. Fuck, he hadn't had a woman in over seven years. He would wait and see. He had tons of patience. If she was in charge over him, well, he'd just wait his chance... though, to escape, if nothing else. But he was angry. He had escaped that fucking predator planet, and Carolyn had died for him -- stepping in the way to help him along, risking her life, when one of the raptors swooped in, and stabbed her with it's talons, instead of him, while she was still in his arms. She had been trying to help him back to the ship, after he'd received a bloody gash in his leg from one of the vicious creatures that resembled huge bats. It had ripped her away into the darkness, winging her off into the night. The night would have lasted for months because of the unique planetary eclipse that had happened, and they'd had to try and escape the planet, lest they'd starve to death, or more likely, be eaten by the creatures that were only harmed by light, or his shiv [a shiv is any curving piece of metal, used as a knife]. Yeah, he'd killed some of the fuckers before he'd left the planet -- but only he, the girl, Jack, and the holy-man, Imam, had survived, and escaped to tell about it -- not that Riddick had gone telling anyone; he was still an escaped convict, afterall. Carolyn had sacrificed her self for him, in one way or another, and he remembered it in his mind -- his gasping the words, in agony: "Not for me! Not... for... me!" He couldn't have the sacrifice of her life be for him -- but it had been. It had taken death to change him -- but he had left the planet changed. He had said the old Riddick was gone. But now, these fuckers imprisoning him, again... Well, he knew how to survive. He had been thrown in a trash bin behind a liquor store right after he'd been born, with his umbilical cord wrapped around his neck -- his own mother had thrown him out with the garbage, and had tried to strangle him, first. And his life had not grown much better, since. He remembered telling Imam, the holy-man on his way to New Mecca, back on the raptor planet, after the fool had tried to pray with him when the others had thought they'd all die, about how he, Riddick, absolutely believed in God -- and how he absolutely hated the Fucker. Riddick had said, you couldn't go through all of his life, and not believe in God -- and not hate God. But that wasn't really true. Riddick was an atheist, actually, but, if there was a God -- be sure, he hated Him.

Anyway, now here was this obviously-civilian woman, thinking she could handle him. Yes, he had heard that -- her comments. But he sensed she wasn't sure. He had heard her pause; heard her breathing quicken, slightly; and somehow had felt her stare. It both pissed him off, and made him laugh inside. Though, he had also been informed, roughly, by the slave-traders, of the energy shield around the property to which he'd be going (though, he was told nothing about the occupants of that property; he had assumed it was a work-farm, but maybe he had been wrong), and of the implant (which had been aligned to the bio-structure of his new owner) he had received -- after they had knocked him unconscious with metal pipes in order to surgically place it in his neck -- and so, he knew it'd still be tricky to escape, even with a woman in charge of him. But he always had escaped -- and from much, much more threatening situations than that. Hell, his current situation was, so far, somewhat laughable.

She approached him, slowly leaning-in closer. Normally, he'd wait, and then, jump forward, the little movement the chains and belts allowed him, to scare the shit out of whoever might dare come close. However, he decided to wait and see what she did. He only listened intently. He could always use more information.

Kate felt a little trepidation -- her shyness around men -- but not fear, really. She felt intimidated by him, overwhelmed. She began to feel sorry for her self, remembering a couple of the times she'd been afraid of people, or rather, men. Then, she commanded her self, No!, not this fucking time! She'd be brave. At least, she'd use her impulsiveness to proceed, or else, try to feel nothing -- just stay calm, like she'd tried to teach Samantha. She drew close and touched his clean-shaven cheek, her hand feeling cold on his bare skin. Riddick sat perfectly motionless. She smelled him, slightly below his chin, inhaling deeply. He had the old scent -- well, he stunk, basically -- because his clothes, and him, too, she calculated, hadn't been washed or changed in a very LONG time (but when had he shaved, she wondered?). She wondered how he'd went to the bathroom, but not smelling shit or urine, she figured they'd allowed him the little "luxury" of eliminating his wastes into something. Imagine, thinking of that as a luxury, she thought.

He could smell her quite well, then. He knew what she wore, already, and that she wore no underwear -- the female scent lightly moistening the cloth at her crotch, was what he smelled most strongly -- and how that aroma smells when it has impregnated cotton cloth, especially directly pressed against the tender, fragrant skin of a woman's nether-area. He felt momentarily desperate (which was not a feeling he to which he was accustomed, in any realm), and realizing that, he thought, Oh, he'd been away from women too long -- much too long. However, he had to remain focused; and he was certainly never vulnerable. Nothing made him afraid -- it was his nature, by long before that time -- a complete part of him, and of his mind, as much as his own breathing was a part of his body.