The Witness

Her eyes fluttered open after a heavenly doze and Amanda found herself on a white lounge. Two women were at her sides, one at her feet, and one at her head. The two at her hands cleaned up her nails as they massaged her fingers with a shimmering oil that stained her fingertips with gold leaf. The one at her feet was doing the same with her toes. The hands at her head brushed her out and massaged the same oil into her scalp before combing it through her mane, trailing glittering specks all throughout her hair. The woman at her right finished with Amanda's hand and began swirling oil with two fingers over her pale nipples. After coating her rosebuds in gold-flecked oil until they were perky, the milky-eyed woman moved between her legs and did the same. Amanda flinched a little as she felt foreign fingers on her privates. The woman at her left placed a calming hand on Amanda's shoulder as the other woman massaged an oily finger through her pubic hair and down her slit, pressing a slippery digit gently between her lips just enough to coat her entrance in the golden goop. Amanda's legs crept apart and she felt the oil dripping down between her ass crack. Her tenderized body melted into the flat couch.

Leppy reentered with a man.

"I don't know what to put her in," Leppy said, "she's neither a thrall nor a bat. She's just some human."

"Let me take a look at her," the man said, with a bit of a queer lisp, "you said she's Vexxer's?"

"Yes that monster, oh that reminds me, I have to go find one of his medallions. I don't think he's ever used one before," Leppy hurried back out the room as the man in flamboyant silks approached Amanda, holding an elbow and stroking his chin.

Amanda watched him with wide eyes as the four woman worked on her. The one at her left, now scrubbing her tongue with a brush.

The man picked up a tendril of her wild black hair with two fingers and rubbed it between them. He looked her in the eyes.

"Quite a doe-eyed stare on this one," the man said to himself, "easy on the oil, her hair is thick, we don't want it greasy. Trim the ends, instead." He glared into the woman at Amanda's head.

He was back at tapping his chin, studying her whole body, poking here, prodding there.

"Vexxer, Vexxer, what would a loveless monster like Vexxer want? No. What does he need? Stubborn to give in... those types need an excuse... an excuse to touch... an excuse to smell..." He disappeared into the outskirts of the room mumbling to himself.

The woman at Amanda's head toiled at scissoring off her split ends as the other three worked on massaging her muscles. The sensation of eight hands and forty fingers working her body made Amanda's eyes close and her mouth part. Her eyebrows quivered. What was going on?

Leppy returned and Amanda opened one eye to watch her approach holding a necklace of a golden medallion strung on a fine chain.

"I found it, Terry," Leppy said, "he had a whole stack of the original minting, like I thought, he hasn't used a single one." Leppy held up the necklace to the man who walked out of the shadows with silk over one arm and a bottle in the other.

"You know how Vexxer was," he said, "it's like he hated being a bat. Probably because he only absorbed himself in the deep hardships that came with it and never in its equally deep pleasures."

The man handed the dress to the four women and they bowed. They lifted Amanda up from the couch and set to work getting her into the black silk with white stitching. It clung tight around Amanda's narrow waist and only the deep triangle of her cleavage showed through. The sleeves were long and touched the floor along with the lengthy skirt with an opening at the middle for her legs to walk without tripping. The four women zipped her into the dress at the back as they set her hair around her shoulders.

Terry strolled over and uncorked the bottle in his hand. The fragrance of jasmine tickled Amanda's nose as he dipped a pinky in and out of the blue glass and dragged it down the left side of her neck. One of the four women hoisted up her skirts and he splashed a drop into her gold flecked bush. The woman dropped her skirts. Terry handed her the bottle of jasmine. Another of the milky-eyed servants wiped Terry's finger clean as he adjusted a strand of Amanda's hair with his other hand.

"This is the best we can do for Vexxer," Terry said to Leppy, "he's sensitive, so just a dab here and there. She feeds into him naturally just the way she is, I bet. See how her eyes are always wide like that? See how her body rides the line of being almost scrawny, but not underweight? So she has enough to endure, but not enough to be tedious to torment." He sighed, "there's so much we could do with her, she's untouched. A virgin too by the looks of her. It always surprises me the thralls that manage to capture these dead monsters just before they destroy themselves. The goddess is an artist through and through."

"That's just it," Leppy said, "she's not a thrall."

"Yet," Terry said, "not a thrall, yet."

Leppy cackled, "you really think Vexxer is going to take a thrall? We're talking about The King Staker himself, not one of the nightclub knicker nabbers we see so much of."

Terry sighed, "you're right, he'll probably eat this girl won't he?" He wiped a hair out of Amanda's eyes, "a shame, she really does have that perfect doe-eyed stare so many girls dream of cultivating. All of it will come down to a single zipper pull, I think. It was the best I could do." He gave another sigh, turned on a heel, and left the room.

Leppy stepped forward and clasped the necklace around Amanda's neck. Amanda glanced down. A flat golden disk the size of a thumbprint engraved with a scorpion holding a dagger in its pincers, hung from a delicate chain. Amanda looked up at Leppy.

"It's Vexxer's seal, dear," Leppy smiled, "much like his mark on your neck, it means you belong to him, no one can touch you."

Leppy curled her arm around Amanda's waist and ferried her around the steaming pool to the door, "come, I'll take you to his apartments."

-

They stood in front of a door marked with the same symbol as Amanda's necklace. Leppy patted the top of Amanda's hair, knocked at the door, and left down the hall, leaving Amanda fretting.

The door unfurled and Vexxer haunted the doorway. A lock of his hair fell down and he swept it back with a white hand. His eyes flashed at her as he stepped back into the gloom of his apartments.

"Come in," he said.

Amanda's body rushed to fulfill his command and entered his room. Vexxer was in a matching robe to her dress with long sleeves. The front hung wide open, revealing his albatross of a chest above tight pants and pointy boots. He stood staring at her as she lingered in the middle of the room.

"What a waste," Vexxer said.

Amanda glanced up at him, she didn't know what he meant.

"Dressing up food," Vexxer said, "what fools they still are here. Giving you false hope."

He stepped up to Amanda and she scurried to look down. He snatched her chin up into his dead grasp and lifted her head. His nostrils flared. His eyes traveled down her face to her neck and he plucked up the necklace into his palm, studying it. Vexxer looked Amanda in the eyes. Her gaze leaked a confession of pride she had from wearing his symbol. The narrowing of his eyes showed he had read her mind. Vexxer ripped the pendant from her neck, breaking the chain, and tossed it to the floor.

Her heart flinched.

"Why do you look at me like that?" He asked, moving her head around with both hands. He pressed a thumb on her bottom lip as he peered into her eyes, whispering, "what do you taste like?"

Vexxer lifted a handful of her hair. He admired it before bringing it to his nose. Amanda gulped. His eyes glazed over and he dropped her lock, "you probably taste like emptiness, just like everything else, don't you?"

It was then that Amanda felt it. He was like a void, a black hole, a mountain of stillness. Where everything alive moved and writhed with life, he remained inert and vast. She remembered the first time she met him in the backseat of the car, it was like that too. She didn't even know he was there, but once she did, her skin started to itch, his gravity started to yank on her every pore, her every thought, her every fear...

"Let's go, we have a summons to attend. After that, I'm going to tear those pretty threads from your body and have Leppy fetch a drone's smock for you to wear until I can be rid of your stench." Vexxer eyed her with eyes that probed her soul, searching for the right levers of words that hurt her most.

-

The two of them drifted like sweeping shadows down decrepit stairs that descended into an expansive cave system lit by car-sized chandeliers similar to the ruby one in the main hall. Amanda followed Vexxer as he plowed through chamber after chamber of the caves. Bats echoed chirps in tune with dripping stalactites from every angle of Amanda's hearing. Her feet slapped wet stone trying to keep up in the murky caverns with Vexxer. Her lack of food was making her feel faint and she felt like she was going to collapse breathing the dank air that tasted of earth.

He eventually stopped as they entered a cavern the size of a gymnasium. The chandelier that hung from above, emerged from the darkness of an abyss. Dizziness, either from lack of food, the height of the cavern, or both, swamped Amanda.

A woman reclining across a stone throne wore a room sized robe of pure gold with black stripes along the sleeves. A catsuit of Stygian lace in the pattern of spider webs, enshrined her nudity beneath the majestic kimono that glittered even in gloom. She rested a cheek on her wrist and stared into a circular pool of ink at the center of the chamber. Vexxer entered the room and she glanced up, smiling her fangs at him.

"Oh, Vexxer, my sweetie, you actually came to see your poor old mother Nox," her voice echoed out in the chamber of stone, "and what's this? You brought me a daughter perhaps?"

"What do you want?" Vexxer said.

The woman on the throne raised an eyebrow.

"Mother," Vexxer added with a slight growl.

"A mother can't wish to see her son?" Nox said, "she has to want something? How sad."

"You're wasting my time," Vexxer said.

"Do you not have all the time in eternity to waste now, thanks to me?" She asked.

Vexxer spun to leave. Amanda scrambled.

"Samuel," Nox called out, "I need your dagger."

Vexxer turned, "I no longer have one."

"Then, we'll make a new one." She said.

"Who are they?" Vexxer asked.

"On the night of the new moon, I sent three of our elite stakers to take care of a problem," she said, gripping the arms of her throne, "none of them have returned."

"And you want me to find out what happened to them?" Vexxer asked.

"No, I want you to kill the original target," she said, "I'm going to send Apox with you to see what happened to the others."

"What's the target?" Vexxer asked.

Nox shrugged, "I don't know who it is, just where they are."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Vexxer asked.

"It's hard to find new family for the colonies these days, most of the human young are the product of near constant brainwashing thanks to those little mirrors they carry around." She said.

"What does that have to do with anything? You know if you wait long enough, things will circle back around again." Vexxer said.

"I know that!" Nox growled suddenly, "that's why all the colonies are so sparse these days." She settled back down, "the problem is, whoever they are, they have amassed a following of brain rot youth. People are coming from all around the country to be turned," Nox said, "imagine the amount of mutation, you can't just bite anyone. Not only that, these mutts can't control themselves and have to post images far and wide of everything they do as if they're special. The whole thing is disgusting, and goes against what the goddess teaches her children."

"So you want me to wipe out the new colony?" Vexxer asked.

"Yes, we have the old ways in place for a reason," she said, "if you start turning en masse, there's no upsides, only downsides. That's why I sent those three to deal with them all, but something else must be there. There's only one other besides you I can think of who could kill those three."

"Jexper?" Vexxer asked.

Nox nodded, "I can't be sure, but it reeks of his style. Or lack thereof."

"Where is he?" Vexxer asked.

"Mistbury," she said.

"So close?" Vexxer said.

"That's why we have to take care of it," she said, "and if it is Jexper, even more reason to do so."

Vexxer went quiet.

Nox narrowed her eyes on Amanda. Amanda felt someone rummaging in the trunk of her skull.

The woman in the throne tilted her head, "a witness? Are you becoming sloppy on me now, Vexxer?"

Vexxer didn't say anything, but glanced over his shoulder at Amanda. Hate for her gushed from his stare. Amanda gulped as she fondled something in the hidden pocket of her sleeve.

"Nonetheless, I guess you'll have to take her with you," she sighed, "that's how the goddess has arranged it, I suppose."

"Can you speak with her?" Vexxer asked, "gather permission for me to end this witness' life tonight?"

Amanda's heart pounded.

The woman on the throne arched an eyebrow, "oh? does your mistake bother the perfect Vexxer that much? No. I will not ask the goddess for something embarrassing like that. You're starting to worry me son, she's not going to distract you from this task is she?"

"No." Vexxer said, "I merely wish to be rid of her already."

The woman on the throne tapped a finger once and studied Amanda, then Vexxer.

"Enough nonsense," Nox said, "let's craft a new blade, shall we?" She clapped and a drone scurried out from behind the throne. Nox whispered in her ear and licked her cheek when she was done. The drone nodded as she disappeared behind the throne.

"Perhaps we should send the witness away?" Vexxer asked.

The woman on the throne scoffed, "no, I want her to watch, I want her to witness what you truly are."

Vexxer glanced over at Amanda again, this time his eyes were sullen clouds. She fingered the item in her secret pocket as she watched him.

The drone came back from behind the throne and traveled down a set of rocky steps with a ginger young lady. The drone guided her to the edge of the black pool and then retreated. The ginger girl wore a white robe and fidgeted with her hair.

Vexxer approached the girl slowly and twirled her round so she faced the pool. Her eyes jittered as she glanced down into the obsidian surface. The tips of her toes curled off the edge of the floor above the pool.

Amanda watched anxiously as Vexxer embraced the young woman from behind, gripping her chin and drawing her fiery head into his chest. The ginger sent her frail arms up and gently gripped his forearm. He whispered three words into her ear and she nodded. Vexxer stared at her throat with hungry eyes. Then as if he remembered something, he snapped up his head and glared at Amanda across the pool. Amanda's heart liquefied.

Nox rose and glided down the stairs, her room sized robe of gold rippled over the steps like a waterfall at sunset. She descended upon Vexxer from behind and was at his left ear. Nox watched Amanda. Her eyes turned from black into the molten inferno of dripping treasure that was a dragon's gaze. Nox glowered fire at Amanda as she whispered into Vexxer's ear.

A shadow passed over Vexxer and his eyes lowered. He bowed his head and devoured a chunk out of the ginger's neck. She screamed into a gurgle as blood instantly stained her peachy skin. Splurts of crimson splashed across Vexxer's face and hit the cave floor with a loud splatter.

Amanda gasped.

He peered up at her with fear in his eyes. The fear morphed into anger, then died into hate, before finally being washed away with an overwhelming tidal wave of ecstasy. Amanda realized Vexxer no longer recognized anything with those eyes. He only knew the feeling of the ginger's life rushing down his throat.

Vexxer tore his fangs out of the ginger's neck and let her drop forward into the pool of black. She sank like a stone, her white robe falling in after her like a scroll of parchment. Vexxer stood, gazing through Amanda, lost in some pleasure that had seeped into his tongue. Nox crossed her arms around his front.

She observed Amanda with combusting marbles as she snaked a hand down Vexxer's front, tugging out his erection over the waistband of his pants. She kissed his neck, whispering things into him as she jerked off the euphoric Vexxer until he twitched in her grip. His alabaster balls scrunched against the rigid base of his shaft and pumped out a hearty streamer of white into the black pool. Nox swiped a finger across his meaty head and caught a drip of platinum fire. She jammed it into her mouth with an embellished toss of her eyes, smiling at Amanda.

The whole scene sizzled like a brand on Amanda's memory. Nox laughed madly as she sucked Vexxer off her fingers like he was some delicacy. Amanda swallowed.

A bat the size of a cat swooped down from nowhere and dove into the pool like a smear of ochre across Amanda's vision. An instant later, it crawled back out by hooking its thumb claws on the edge of the pool and hefting itself out onto the cave floor. It shook its head free of the ink like a dog as it ambled towards Nox. She bent down, patted the bat's head with her black stained fingers, and retrieved a copper dagger from its mouth.

"Thank you Elixir, you always did have a fondness for Vexxer didn't you?" Nox said.

The bat squeaked and a drone woman sporting the signature milky eyes scampered out from the shadows with a celadon towel. She squatted down to dry the frisky bat off. Elixir stretched out one of his giant wings and let her rub him down as he licked her.

Nox turned, presenting the ginger dirk to Vexxer across the flats of her two hands. There was a long pause until he emerged from the coma of his blood daze. He came alive with a snarl as he snatched the dagger from Nox.

"After I do this," Vexxer said, "I want nothing to do with this colony any longer."

"You have my word," Nox said.

"I want more than your word," Vexxer said.

"Fine then, kneel." She sighed.

Vexxer knelt in front of her and Nox stepped up to him so her crotch was in his face. She lifted his head with a sharp nail.

"If you do this for me, you can have your freedom," she said, "on one condition."

"What's that?" Vexxer asked.

"You have to dispose of that girl on the new moon," she said, pointing to Amanda.

He scoffed, "it's already done."

Amanda's stomach lurched.

The woman dragged a nail down the center of her own tongue. She gripped Vexxer's hair and spat black blood in his face.

"There's your blood promise," she said, releasing his head, "now go. Apox is waiting for you in the sleeper."

Vexxer stormed past Amanda gripping the new dagger with white knuckles and wiping a mixture of Nox and the ginger off his face.

Amanda turned to follow.

"Amanda," Nox whispered.

She halted, how did Nox know her name?

The woman drifted over and was at Amanda's right ear.

"My goddess wanted you to have this," she said, holding a dainty gold dagger with a sheath out in front of her.

Nox slowly rolled up Amanda's skirt and ran her nails down her right thigh. She clasped the band of the dagger round her leg, cinched it tight, and let her dress back down.

-

"Despite tagging along with you stakers after all these years, I've still never seen one of these made," Apox said, revolving the dagger in his hands.

"She's gentle," Vexxer said, retrieving the blade back.

"Gentle?" Apox asked.

"The blades retain their mind and soul. This one's already forgiven me for turning her into an object. Most times, the blades hate you and you have to watch your back with them. Otherwise, they always find a way inside you." Vexxer explained.