Domina (dulcepericulum) wrote in light_of_may, @ 2010-10-18 23:34:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | #solo, 2009-07-30, domina |
such exquisite suffering
Who: Domina, and a few unfortunate NPCs
When: Early morning
Where: Ad Gustum
NSF-Work/Possibly NSF-Life
With enough of the slaves recaptured, Domina had finally felt secure enough in doing what she had wanted to do all along. The previous night, before retiring home, she had given orders to take the first five that Tanith had retrieved and have them placed in the largest torture chamber together. Let them take the night to wonder what was in store for them. Domina was confident that their worst nightmares wouldn’t touch upon the punishment she had selected.
She woke early, before the sun rose, and crossed the street to Ad Gustum. Ancilla had readied a large black leather case for her, and one of the large male staff members that escorted Domina to the dungeons carried it for her. He walked her inside the torture chamber, where her five scared little rabbits awaited her. Two were female, three male. While most of them had fallen asleep, Domina found one awake and waiting and she wondered if this man had been elected to stand guard.
One of Domina’s escorts dragged a heavy chair into the room, and the scraping against the floor roused all her captives from their sleep. The five of them immediately huddled together, looking wary of this woman they had never seen. Domina smiled, a truly creepy expression that never reached her eyes, and sat in the chair like a queen on her throne. She was in no hurry to speak – first, she simply regarded each of them in a slow, thoughtful manner. One of the men – a sandy-haired twenty-something with the face of a movie star – spoke up. “What do you want?”
Domina ignored the question. “Do you know who I am?” The question was one she had posed to many different people over the years, but this time it was spoken with no indignant malice. It was honest – a rarity for Domina Moriarty. None of them answered. “I am the woman that owns you.” Their reactions to this were interestingly mixed. Two of the men – the ones that were older than her – were taken over with scorn and disgust. The third male, a boy of about fifteen, stared at her like she was speaking another language. Both women – who were both third-year college students, albeit from different sides of the country – were perhaps already too broken to receive this statement with any sort of shock. One of them – a blonde – still had something resembling a spark in her eyes. The other, daughter of Thai immigrants who had come here for a better life, seemed to be struggling with whether or not she could weep. The Asian, Domina knew, was a low-level clairvoyant. She probably didn’t know exactly what was coming, but she would have a feeling. She knew just enough to know that it would make the rapes and vampire buffets seem like a cake walk. Domina nodded faintly, pleased with these reactions.
“I am the woman that owns you,” she repeated. “And when your cell doors opened and you made a run for it, I’m sure thought wasn’t part of the process. You did what any caged animal would do, instinctively. And I suppose you can’t be blamed for that. Were I in your situation-“ Here, Domina actually chuckled a little bit, because it was so ludicrous to imagine ever being anything like these people, “-I would have probably done the same thing. Of course, I’m much stronger than you lot. I probably would have made it.” Yes, she had were strength, flight, and magic on her side. These five? Were all painfully, pathetically human. Psychics, elementals, and a grey witch. None of them of a high enough level to put up a decent fight when someone caught up to them. “I am here to make sure the same mistake does not happen twice.”
Domina looked to one of her escorts, and he set the leather case beside her feet. In perfect unison, the eyes of each slave slid nervously to that case. Domina was still for some time, simply watching them. She let five minutes slip past in silence. She waited until they were fidgeting, and the Thai girl was weeping, and the teenage boy was rocking back and forth and wringing his wrists in fear. “Oh, get on with it!” the oldest male, an empath shouted. The collective mood of the room must have been the greatest torture of everything he’d encountered in Ad Gustum so far. The collective fear, strong and thick enough to be considered material, choking him while Domina’s contempt and amusement taunted him from across the room. The corners of Domina’s mouth tilted up into the faintest of smiles. She stood abruptly, to be greeted with flinches and alarmed cries. She ignored them, and nodded to one of her guards. He dragged the chair out of the room, while the other escorted her into the hall. He pulled the barred doors shut, and Domina turned to look back into the room. Once her chair was pulled to the doorway, she seated herself again.
“Should you ever find yourselves facing another window of opportunity, I am going to make sure you think twice about it,” she told them. “Open the case.” None of them moved. Domina smirked. “And here I thought you were so eager to get it over with.” Slowly, the empath inched towards the case. “Very good,” Domina encouraged, her voice as soft and smooth as if she were comforting a small child or wounded child. “Go on. You’ll feel better once you do.”
Finally, he opened it. Inside were four common hammers. The five of them looked back and forth amongst each other, utterly puzzled. “Each of you feels a victim, because you are,” Domina explained. “You didn’t ask for any of this, and it’s not your fault you’re here. You’re all so sure if you actually got out of here that the world would want you back. That there would be something to go back to. Sure, the memories of this place may haunt you and wake you up in the night, but you could live with that, right?” The Thai girl’s body was shaking with sobs. She had put it together. No one else had yet.
Domina raised her wrist and looked at her watch. “It is five-oh-four AM. By six-oh-four, one of you will be dead,” she said, simple as could be. “If not? Then I’m sending my hunter to bring back one of your family members. Each. And then they will watch you all die, and they will take your place in my dungeons.” The teenager and the empath couldn’t seem to piece together what she meant, but Pretty Boy and Blonde Girl were staring at her with wide-eyed horror. “You’re going to have to decide which of you deserves to die, and you’re going to have to kill them. Then, next time that little window of opportunity opens, maybe you’ll think about what you’re doing. Maybe you’ll wonder if the world would want you back again. If your hands could ever wash clean. If the nightmares of this place would be of the things done to you, or the things you did yourself.” They stared at her. Domina stared back. There was no smile on her features anymore. Her face had hardened into something chiseled from ice and stone, a glare that spoke volumes that she would not be crossed again. After a short time, she heard the long hand on her watch move. “Five-oh-five. You have a decision to make.”
All at once it was pandemonium. The Thai girl started screaming in hysterical sobs, the others shouting all sorts of colorful statements in Domina’s direction. She didn’t really listen to them, and didn’t care. They could spend their time however they wished. She had meant what she said.
The progression was very slow. Eventually, it was the blonde girl who started to say something to her fellow prisoners. “Oh God, guys, she’s serious. Oh God.”
And even still, it was not the huge struggle for one of the weapons that Domina would have expected. Had she been in their position, she would have been the first one to reach for a weapon. None of them seemed to wanted to go first. Did they think they could be diplomatic about this? Vote one of them off of the island of life? And if that was what they did, did the honestly think it would help them feel any better about it in the long run? Yes, Mom, I killed a man, but we took a vote. That was just… stupid. In Domina’s mind, there was only one possible mentality that could be respectable in any possible light. Yes, I picked up the hammer, and yes, I helped beat his brains in, but dammit, it was either him or me, and it wasn’t going to be me. I survived too much in that shithole to go out like that. I had tasted freedom and I had hope of finding it again and it wasn’t going to be me. At least it was honest.
They did try to talk it out. But after twenty minutes of talking, voices just became louder and louder, and they shouted in circles. Should the oldest be the one to go? Should one of them volunteer? Who had the most to go back home to? Who had the least? It all erupted into arguing, and finally, it was Blonde Girl who crossed the room and reached in the case. “Fuck it,” she spat. She pulled out two hammers. One, she tossed to Thai Girl. The other, to Teenage Boy. Then she grabbed a third for herself. “Women and children first.”
Empath and Pretty Boy stared at her in open-mouthed shock for a moment, before each dove for the case at the same time. Emapth was too slow. And before long, Empath was dead.
It wasn’t swift. None of them knew what they were doing, and before anyone could make the first swing, they were all sobbing. The first few swings were clumsy, as if they were afraid to hurt him, and didn’t realize how ridiculous they were being. Domina was proud to see that it was both of the girls that finally put their all into it. Blonde Girl gave Empath one good swing upside the head, and when he went down, they both tackled him, screaming and sobbing and bringing the hammers down. The unspeakable things that had been done to them in their time here fueled them, and once the dam broke, Pretty Boy and Teenage Boy had no trouble giving it their all. They all worked together, filling the dungeons with the sounds of wet crunches and cracks, hammering way past the point of turning Empath’s head into a paste. They all hammered until they could no longer raise their arms, until the four of them were just sobbing on their knees in a circle around their victim. Their bodies sagged with the weight of what they had done.
Domina smiled. Satisfied, she looked at her watch. 5:59. They even had a few minutes to spare. Not bad. Not bad at all.