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Onus

By: Cruel2BKind



*Hey friends!

It's been WAY too long since I've had a series going, so welcome to the first installment of Onus.

I've been told in a few comments and emails that I'm a bit of a bitch when it comes to my characters, and what I put them through. I've decided to start giving trigger warnings.

I write very violent material. It's just what I do best, so I'm sorry, but the following series has quite a bit of violence, nonconsensual sex, and cruelty.

Also, future. With the addition of Onus, 5 of my universes will be dystopian. :)

All Characters are 18+*

"Freak."

I wanted my mama.

I whined very softly in the back of my throat as my back thumped against the brick wall. It hurt.

"Fucking freak. You should know better... Strutting around in our turf. Walking around... Like you have some sort of Right!"

I wanted to speak, wanted to explain. But I was so scared. I just covered my face with my hands and trembled. The soft sensory patches on my fingertips were touching my face. I could feel how gaunt it was. How the bones jutted. I could feel every grain of dirt and mud. I could feel the dirt and grease in the ragged strands of hair that had been hanging over my face.

I flinched into a corner. I made myself small. These bullies had chased me far from my normal turf. I had no idea where I was, otherwise I wouldn't have let myself get trapped like this.

"Please." I whispered. "I'll go... I'll run... Please just let me go."

I bleated with fear as one of them lunged. I knew that he wasn't going to hit me, that he was just trying to scare me, but I was already so scared. I trembled, cornered. I started to cry.

They were laughing. I opened one of my eyes, looking for a way out. I darted between one of the jeering boys and the wall. I made it, and he hastened my retreat with a foot that hit me squarely on the skinny ass.

I fell, but I scrambled when I was on all fours. I cried out with pain when my hands fell in the filthy slush-puddles. So cold.

I ran. I ran with my blanket flapping around me. With my baggy sweatpants trying to fall down my scrawny hips. With my dog-tongued sneakers flapping and slapping and letting in ice-cold moisture. I ran with my breath hitching in my chest in little weeping gasps.

I finally stopped in the grassy weedy ice-slick patch of dirt behind a laundromat. I hid between a dumpster and a hotel truck full of linens and towels. I bent over and massaged the hitch in my ribs with the back of my hand. My breath came out in a large white fog. I wrapped my blanket tight around me. It was a small felt blanket with a large coffee stain on it. I had found it in a dumpster. It smelled like cats and mothballs, but it was warm. It was so late. The sun was low in the sky, and curfew would begin soon.

"No Onus allowed here."

I looked up rapidly, cringing at the unexpected source of noise. A man on a smoke break. He wasn't hostile, but his voice was firm.

"I mean it bug-eyes. Beat it before I call the cops on you."

The stitch in my side was still sending out throbs of hot pain, but got moving anyway. There had to be an Onii around here somewhere, there had to be.

I passed four storefronts with anti-Onus signs featured prominently in their windows. I didn't know this place. I was scared. I glanced at the window. A cartoon face with pure black eyes. Surrounded by an angry red circle with a line through it.

There was a woman on a street corner, waiting for the light to turn green. I timidly walked up to her. She could see me, and she was frowning, but she didn't say anything, or turn angry.

"Do you know where I can find an Onii ma'am?" I whispered, humble and quiet.

She curled her lip with disgust, but just as I was about to slink away, she pointed her arm ramrod-stiff from her body, one finger uncurled to point towards the setting sun.

"Two blocks. There's a park where they set up one of your filthy slums."

I bowed my head. "Thank you ma'am. Sorry to bother you ma'am."

"This freak bothering you, miss?"

I shrank slightly from the newcomer, a policeman who was scowling and fondling the butt of his regulation stick.

She shook her head. "Just a freak, asking where the slum is." I flinched at the slur, and trotted west as fast as I could. The policeman called after me.

"Hurry up freak. Curfew is in half an hour."

---

I found the Onii just as the light was getting dim, and just as the cold sank it's teeth in deep. It was a small one. Just a cluster of tents and boxes and ramshackle lean-tos in a small fenced area of the local park. Two Enforcement officers were posted at the entrance.

EO's had the authority to detain any Onus for any length of time for any reason. They had the power to lock up the Onii for any suspected activity. They had the right to dole out corporal punishment and enter any Onus-owned establishment.

The last part was a joke. My kind weren't even allowed around most businesses. Much less to own one.

I trotted towards the entrance, breathing a sigh of relief. I wouldn't get caught out after curfew. Cops had no patience, no lenience, to curfew-breakers. All Onus had to be accounted for after eight PM, any loiterers could go to jail. Bad things happened to Onus in the overnight cells.

"Hey... Hey, look. There's one right there, let's talk to him."

I felt my muscles tensing, an instant response of fear and wariness. I turned around and saw a gaggle of young men and women coming after me. In a quick jog.

The fear was a sour taste in the back of my mouth. I started to jog myself, hearing my breath in the back of my throat like a harsh tearing.

"You idiots. He's getting away" That part was soft. Then the young man spoke up louder. "Hey, listen... Please we just want to talk! Talk to us, wont you?"

I don't know why, but I stopped. Three young women and two men. One of the guys was holding a big camera. He trained it on me, and I felt my bone-dry throat tightening in fear. I started edging back. The other guy was the one who was talking. He had his hands up, like he was trying to soothe a frightened animal.

The black eye of the camera frightened me.

"Listen... We're trying to do a documentary. We're trying to help you. It's a fucking disgrace how Onus are treated in this country, and many others. We're trying to bring equal rights and priveleges to--"

I couldn't stand it for another second. I took several steps backwards, glancing longingly towards the Onii. "Please mister... Please I have to go. It's almost curfew."

He checked his watch. So few people had watches anymore. I had only ever seen them on the elderly. "Please, we have ten minutes. Don't be frightened. We're just trying to help."

I glanced up at the camera again. Then back at the one who was talking. He was tall and covered in a thick grey coat that looked very warm. He had a red scarf around his neck and his gloves were leather. He had rectangular black glasses and behind the lenses his eyes were ordinary and human and brown. His hair was hidden under a hat with ear-flaps.

"Wh-What do you want?" I stammered, looking at the Onii. I felt trapped. I just wanted to be among my own kind. To be safe.

The boy who was speaking smiled. His teeth were very white. I had better teeth than most, having lived with my mama for most of my life.

"Just some questions. Please answer them honestly. We're trying to paint a picture of what life is for the Onus. Prove that you don't deserve it."

He was fumbling out a slip of paper. As he was unfolding it he asked me. "What is your name?"

"Shiloh." I mumbled. I held the blanket tighter around me.

"Where do you live?"

"In the third-district Onii. I... I got lost, so here for the night."

"Can you tell the viewers what an Onii is? What the conditions are like?"

What was an Onii like? What was it like for someone who had never seen the inside of one?

"They are surrounded by fences. Some have tents, others have sheds. The nicest Onii is actually in a building, but there is always a line to get in, so I don't go there often. The people who are in the line after the doors shut get chased away by the EOs." I hesitated.

"Please, I could get in trouble... I just want to go." I felt tears prickling at the inner corners of my freakish eyes.

He checked that old-fashioned watch again. "Please, we have seven minutes. I just want to ask you a few things. We're trying to help."

I felt anger. A foreign emotion with dangerous teeth. Anger and fear at being trapped like this.

"Help? Then get me some food. Give me a place to sleep. Take of your jacket and give it to me. Do something that will actually help ME." I choked the words out, knowing how dangerous they were but unable to stop them. "Don't run around with your camera. Nobody cares. The only thing you people want to do to me is see me dead for poisoning my mother. You want to help? Put a bullet in my skull so somebody else wont to it for you."

I ran. I ran from his shocked brown eyes. I was so afraid. It was on camera, so people would see it. They even knew my name. They knew which Onii I normally slept in. I would have to move tomorrow. No way I could stay.

---

I crept towards the entrance, hoping not to make any more waves. Hoping I would just be able to enter without making eye contact, or any contact with the EO's.

I whimpered as one of them grabbed me by the collar of my shirt. He was taller than me by almost a foot and a half, and he outweighed me by at least a hundred and forty pounds. I didn't move. I flinched as he shone a flashlight in my face. The light was very bright. It hurt my eyes, even through the lids.

"Drifter? I don't recognize this one, Dave. Do you?"

I shrank, and moved my feet, trying to get through, hoping that his grip would loosen and he would just let me go. I wanted my mama. I missed her so bad.

"Nah... New face definitely. Prettier than your average freak. Probably makes his rounds of the zoos. Cutting it close, aren't we, freak?"

I just wanted to go. I tried to squirm away but the EO adjusted his grip so he was reaching inside my shirt. His big hand was wrapped around my shoulder, so tight I could feel the bones grinding. I went limp. I mewled and squirmed when his fingertips dug into the sensory skin on my upper back. I didn't stop moaning until he adjusted his grip again.

"He asked you a question, boy! Answer!"

"Wh-What?" I whispered, tearfully.

"Jesus, this one's slow." The officer that wasn't holding me, Dave, his name was, he sounded so disgusted.

"I asked you, if you wanted to make a little scratch. I know a few people who would pay good money for some time with a pretty-faced freak like you. What do you say?"

I stared up into the circle of his flashlight. I felt so sick and scared that my brain was just running in circles. "Wh-What?"

"You kidding me? Most freaks would jump at the chance for something like this."

I started to squirm again. "I just w-wanna go." I stuttered. "Please." My voice cracked with fear.

I could feel him shrugging. He threw me into the Onii. I scrambled away. Breathing in huge frightened gasps. I could see a dull red glow rising from a soot-blackened trashcan.

I neared the trashcan, and three sets of eyes as black as mine shone dully back at me.

---

The man across from me at the trashfire had no teeth. He was patiently gumming at some chicken bones that he had produced from his pocket. I felt my stomach slowly caving in on itself. I watched him eat. I wondered why he didn't have teeth. He was my age. And he didn't have a single one.

"Shoulda taken the deal." A girl at the fire whispered. Her white hair was lank across her face. She had scars around her mouth.

"Why?"

"I know you was scared. And I know that they was hurting you. But you shoulda gone along with Holden. He's fair, at least. I went with him once. 'Fore I got these scars. He got me the money he said he would. I even got to take a bath. A real one." 

I held my hands over the fire. The sensory patches on my fingertips tasted the sour soot. Felt the baking heat. Could even dimly sense the light. "What'd he pay you for?"

She glanced at me, expressionless. "You look soft. Like you haven't been out here for long. You didn't grow up like this, did you?"

I shook my head. I felt my heart ache. "My... My mama..."

She nodded. No sympathy. No satisfaction. She just had the answer to a question. "You were one of those lucky ones. Had a mommy who didn't abort you or throw you in a bin as soon as you were out."

"It's a hard place out here. You don't turn your nose up at anything. Not rotten food. Not perverts who pay good money to fuck freaks like us. If you get the chance, take Holden's offer. He took me to one of the zoos. Trashy little dens where pervs pay to fuck Freaks. It's hard work, but you get a cut of the profits, a decent meal, and a bath."

She stalked away from the trashfire. I watched her go. I wanted to beg for her to stay.

When I first got out on the streets after mama died, I wanted to try and find a group of my kind to stay with. I hadn't found a one. Onus became hardened and wary on the streets. The few couples or groups I had found were bitter and hostile towards outsiders. It seemed like the only thing that any of us wanted to do was to survive alone.

Even the girl's terse condescending advice, that was the friendliest thing anyone had said to me in months.

I didn't want to leave the warmth of the fire. But I was so tired.

I shuffled around for a little while. Some of the tents and lean-tos were full. Others just weren't accepting outsiders. I found a television box. Crumpled and muddy, but still intact. I crawled inside, putting the driest side under me, and moving so the open end was out of the wind.

I curled up into a tiny ball, and covered myself with the blanket. The close catty smell was almost comforting.

---

I heard the heavy crunching footsteps and jolted awake just before a hand groped inside the TV box and yanked me out by the collar of my coat. I opened my mouth to scream, but a heavy hand, rough and dirty and shockingly intimate, covered my mouth. I couldn't help it. My tongue went out to taste it. For Onus, taste was our secondary sense, right after sight and hearing. 

I tasted human skin, without the delicate sensory patches that covered my hands and patches of my skin. I tasted the salt of his sweat (the pheromones in the sweat were distinctly male) and the dirt and the faint metallic residue of coins. I tasted soy sauce and carrots and brown gravy and beef. I tasted cat and wool and soap and aluminum and plastic and everything his hands had touched within the last few days.

He shook me hard, one hand on my collar and the other arm twined under my arm to hold me up with the hand over my mouth. He shook me hard. I got dizzy. I tasted his disgust in his hormones, moments before he voiced it.

"Get your filthy tongue off of me." He snarled. The voice was familiar. I whimpered weakly, the sound muffled by his hand. I put my tongue back in my mouth. Our tongues disgusted normal people. My heart was beating frantically fast. I could hear it in my ears, feel it in my sensory patches. My tongue.

He dragged me from the box and through the snow. He kept his hand over my mouth but let me put my feet on the ground. I just walked, too scrambled from lack of sleep and fear to even think of resisting.

Out of the Onii. Out of the one place where I had even an illusion of safety. My blanket had fallen. So had my tiny backpack. Nothing was in the backpack but a fork, a can opener and some matches. He was dragging me past the entrance, and in my terrified confusion, I realized that he was the EO. The one who had tried to get me to come with him for money.

I finally tried to drag my heels when I saw the van. My soft fast breathing turned to moaning. On the street, I was not safe. But I heard stories, rumors, news about what happened to Onus at the hands of cruel normals.

Dissected by amateur scientists. Cruelly killed by religious zealots. Tortured by perverts.

I fought. I squirmed and writhed like a fish in his cruel grip. He plunged his hand down the collar of my shirt and scraped his fingernails clumsily across my skin, trying to find---

I squealed with agony and went limp, shuddering and sobbing into his hand. He had scratched the sensory patches on my upper back. Bright lights exploded behind my eyes as I fought with unconsciousness.

"You don't want to play along, freak?" He panted. "You don't want to do things the nice way? Get a square meal and a bed and a shower for your trouble? Fine. You get it the hard way. You fucking abomination."

The other EO opened the back of the van for him, he shoved me in the back and shut the door behind. For a full ten seconds I just lay on the floor of the van, crying from the pain.

I could hear them getting into the front. Their voices were muffled. I looked up, and saw that the back of the van had been drastically altered from it's original layout. The seats had been torn out. Metal mesh had been installed between me and the driver and passenger seat. The side doors and latch for the back door had all been covered with more mesh.

It was warm in here. Startlingly, stupefyingly warm. I slowly stripped out of my jacket as the van started to move. I peeled off the sweater underneath, whimpering softly as it peeled from the hurting area.

Bare-chested, I could see most of my sensory patches. The soft disks on my fingertips. The larger patch on my palms. The thin strips up my sides, and the single oblong above my navel. The patches on my back were roughly triangular, and I could feel blood trickling down my back.

I put my jacket and sweater on the ground, and curled up on top of it. A ragged sob left my mouth. I bit my lower lip to stop it from happening again. I looked at my dirty hands, and gingerly licked my fingertips and palms clean. The low-level stinging went away.

I had small circular patches on the tops of my feet, but other than that all of my patches were on my upper body. For Onus, the patches were as distinctive as fingerprints.

I reached into my sweatpants pocket and pulled out the cheap shiny plastic wallet. I never had money. The wallet was just to keep the picture safe.

My mama was human. All of the Onus had been born from human mothers. Our fathers had been nothing more than spores sent down from the Fleet.

When the aliens had come, they had not taken our resources, killed us, or declared themselves overlords. They had merely sprinkled their invasive spores over all of the landmasses, and the spores had been inhaled by fertile women, making almost forty percent of them pregnant with us. The Onus. The burden. Most of us had been aborted. In certain countries, pregnant women had been massacred, to prevent the spread.

Now we were just a remnant. A bad memory. Second class citizens that had been sterilized at birth. The very presence of the Onus spores had caused widespread birth defects in normal pregnancies at the time. And every mother of an Onus had a shortened life expectancy. Perfectly healthy women, dropping dead in their forties or thirties. Like my mama.

The van went over a bump, and I whimpered softly. My mama had found a sympathetic doctor. Raised me like a person. Kept me hidden away from the outside world. I had been sterilized and registered, according to the law, but only a vasectomy. I had not been castrated, like most of the males.

I had to run. I had to stay alert. I blinked slowly, twice. It was so warm though. The warmth was sinking to my core, soothing me.

The core temperature of a healthy Onus was around 101.4. Because of our hot inner metabolisms, cold effected us. Crippled us more than a human with a sturdier lower temperature of 98.6.

I tried to stay awake, but the warmth was heavy and made me sleepy. I hadn't had a restful night of sleep since my mama died. My head kept drooping to my soft jacket on the floor.


Onus 02



*This is one of my darker stories.  On the level of 'The Bottom Tier', or possibly a notch lower.

You have been exhaustively warned at this point.  So if you don't like it, take a hike.  I'm a little sick of making excuses for myself at this point.

If you are a fan, then thank you, for staying with me.  Thank you for reading my stories, and thank you for heeding my warnings.

All Characters are 18+*




The man was completely ordinary.

A bit shorter than average, with a bit of a pot belly.  He had a receding brown hairline and an ordinary face.  He was about forty.  Even shorter than average, he was half a head taller than me.

This completely ordinary man was staring at me with a thoughtful expression.  I looked down at the ground between my feet.  The heater had been turned off.  I was cold.

"I don't know how you do it, Rudy."  He said.  I heard his shoes clicking on the floor, and I took a tiny step back.  My heel bumped into the wall.  I was as far back as I could go.  I felt his hand clenching my jaw, turning my face back and forth.  I kept my eyes fixed on the ground.  Waiting for the touch to go away.

"Training.  You just gotta get them into the right mindset.  It's not hard, with the right tools.  They train easier than horses."

He let go of my chin, and I let my head droop back until my chin was touching my chest.  I was grateful for the withdrawn touch.  Until I saw his hand coming, and I only had half a second to tense up.

I let out a pained whimper when he cradled my balls and penis in one hand, squeezing and fondling, like he was feeling a plum for bruises.  I buried my face in my arm, moaning until he stopped.

"First male I've ever seen that still has his junk.  He's real trained, wont complain or talk, unless you ask... look at his patches, not too many or too few and--"

"You don't have to sell me, Rudy."

They bickered.  I stood, and dragged my left foot in little circles on the concrete.  I was so bored, so scared.  I didn't know that it was possible to feel both of those at the same time, but I did.

I was sold to the completely ordinary man for thirty thousand dollars.

Nelson was the one who manhandled me down from where I was chained.  I did whatever he wanted.   I was too tired, and too badly cowed.  I walked behind the completely ordinary man with my hands cupped over my crotch, and with Nelson's hand on my shoulder. 

I cringed when they opened the barn door.  The draft hit me like a solid wall.  My nipples peaked, my skin rashed into goosebumps. My sensory patches stung, my eyes watered.  I took two small steps back, before Nelson just picked me up.

He carried me outside.  My body curled up tight in his meaty arms.  I was letting out frantic mews of hurt and cold.  I was barely aware of my surroundings.

Suddenly I was dropped into a nest of warmth, and closed off.

I shivered piteously for a few minutes before my muscles could unclench enough for me to look around.  It was pitch black, but I could tell that I was in the trunk of a small car.  The trunk was padded with pillows and blankets.  I could feel a fat rubber pouch filled with hot water.  It was warm.  I hugged it to my chest, and then put it by my feet.

I bundled myself in blankets, making a cocoon.  I could feel warm air coming through the thick wall separating the trunk from the backseat of the car.  I felt as the car started to move.

The motion was soothing.  I was covered in warmth, wrapped in real soft blankets.  It felt so good.  Maybe things would be better with him.  At the same time, I felt motion sickness starting to set in.

It was going to be a long ride.

---

When the trunk opened, I leaned out and finally released the buildup of nausea.  I had desperately tried not to vomit inside the enclosed space.  Afraid of the discomfort it would bring, but even more afraid of the punishment. I leaned out of the car, dimly aware that I didn't feel the harsh outside air on my skin.  I leaned out and a gush of acidic mush leaked between my lips.  I heard a disgusted grunt, but I was too sick to take notice.

I felt a hand on the back of my neck.  Cold from the outside air.   Holding my head still as I puked.  It wasn't a comforting hold, he wasn't holding me up or trying to get my hair out of my face.  Just holding me still.

I finished up.  I spat a few times, and breathed raggedly.  I looked down at the shallow brown puddle on the slick concrete floor of what was some kind of garage.  The air was cold, but it didn't have the deadly edge of the outside air.  I couldn't look to either side, because my hair was in the way and he was keeping me still.

"You finished?  You want to yark up some more?"

I weakly shook my head.

"Okay then."

He dragged me out of the car.  I tried to grab the blankets, but they slipped out of my fingers.

I cried out and stars rocketed in front of my eyes.  Somebody had hit me on the side of the head.  I felt dizzy, and I felt the pain radiating out from the spot in a big throb.

"Walk straight ahead of you.  Through that door, no funny business."

We were in a garage.  A single car, dusted with melting snow, the other side was filled with some junk.  A lawn mower.  A pair of skis, and boots.  A ladder, an array of power tools.  A coiled hose.  Ordinary things.  Even having lived an abnormal life, I was able to recognize how ordinary everything was.

I put my hand on the doorknob, and it slid open.  We were in a kitchen.  A perfectly ordinary kitchen.  I was naked, but the windows were all covered by metal shutters from the outside.

It was warm.

I flinched as he put his hand on my shoulder, firmly leading me to a door straight ahead of me.  "Open the door."  He commanded.  I did.

Stairs.  Long and down and narrow.

I went down, clutching the rail.  The stairs were so steep.  I felt like I was being swallowed by the earth.  I felt small, and numb.

At the bottom of the steps, a tiny basement, clean, stacked with some old belongings.  Boxes of books and old toys and clothes.

"Move that wall."

I turned back to look at him.  Not sure what he was talking about.  I flinched as I saw his hand moving towards me, but I wasn't able to do much to avoid him.  I cried out at the vicious blow.  I hunched over, touching the burning side of my face.  He had a ring on his hand.  I could feel the blood from the cut in my cheek.

"That!"

He pointed to a tall square of plywood leaning against the wall.  It was behind a few boxes. 

I went over, holding my fingers over the stinging cut, tasting my blood with the patches on my fingers.  I shoved the plywood section over to the side.

Behind it, another door.  This one was thick and squat, made of metal, with a number pad on the side, and a thick bolt running to either side.  Like a prison door, or a safe.

He punched something on the number pad, with his hand on the back of my neck.

I flinched, whimpering under my breath, as the bolt made a loud sound, the metal bars going back into the bolt on the door.  He pushed the door open and dragged me with him.

I saw a lattice of bars against the wall.  He dragged me.  I saw that he had put a cage within a cage.  Inside this soundproof, code-locked room he had put up a wall of bars to lock me behind.

He shoved me in, and I fell to my knees on something soft.  I heard him close the door, and lock it.  I looked back, and he was looking back down at me.

"I have somewhere I need to be.  I expect you to be ready for me."

He pushed a painted wooden box under the bars.

Then he left.

---

When the iron bolt clicked back, I breathed a weak sigh of relief.  I was alone.

He kept the light on.  This chamber was lit by a single dim bulb.  The room was split in half by the cage wall.  It had a single door, locked.  The lock was on an S-shaped hook near the door to the basement.

I was in a cage, in a cell, in a locked basement, in a locked house.  Like russian nesting dolls.

I was resting on a big mattress, bare and silky.  I looked around my side of the room.  It was maybe a little bigger than the horse stall, over half of it was taken up by the mattress.  The tiles on the floor were made of cork.  They felt firm, but slightly spongey to the touch.

No blankets.  Nothing to cover myself with.  It was very warm in the room, but that was little comfort.

In the far corner, I had a five-gallon industrial plastic bucket.  He had put a wooden board with a hole sawed in the middle over the top. 

I had a sink.  A small white porcelain sink with the H handle broken off.  I stood up and went to it, cupping my hand under the trickle of cold water to bring it to my mouth.  I splashed my face, and looked up.

I nearly fell backwards in surprise to see another face.  Then I realized that it was my face.  That I had a mirror, for the first time since I had lived with my mama.

I touched my cheek.  I had a bright red streak, where he had cut me with his ring, and the skin around it was reddened.

My face was clean, and my hair was soft and clean, but something had changed.  I was thinner.  My cheekbones stuck out.  My eyes looked dull.

The face in the mirror had seen, and suffered, a lot more than the happy, safe boy that had lived with my mama.

I looked to the other side of the room.  I saw two large cardboard boxes, and a soft white carpet.  The walls were bare and white.  The floor under the carpet was more corkboard.  The ceiling was covered with what looked like plates of styrofoam.

There was a vent on the other side of the room, next to the door.

I glanced down at the floor, at the wooden box.

The box was of light wood, painted with flowers.  It was wide, but shallow.  Able to fit through the four-inch gap between the bars and the floor.  It had a small brass clasp on the side.

I sat down on the mattress, and took the box into my lap.  I pulled the items out one by one, feeling sicker and sicker with each one.

A small disposable razor made of blue plastic, with a single blade.

A tiny aerosol can of shaving foam.

A tube of bright red lipstick.

Mascara, and eyeliner.

A piece of silky pale fabric.

I picked up the fabric with a shocked kind of gratitude, but when it unfolded, it was a short silky slip, with lacy straps to go over my shoulders.

I kicked the box away from me, an indignant sound on my lips.  I wouldn't doll myself up for him.  I wouldn't humiliate myself.

I looked at the scattered makeup tubes and cloth.  I didn't cry, but I wanted to.  I felt so miserable and scared.  I just wanted things to go back to the way they were.  I wanted to be at home, with mama.  Or even back on the street.

My limbs felt so heavy, when I got up to pick up all of the scattered things.

The lipstick was ugly and smeary.  Even when I finally got it right, it made my lips look like a bloody gash against my pale skin.  I drew black circles around my black eyes and blackened my pale eyelashes.  It made my eyes look even bigger, soulless.

I shaved.  I only had a few long hairs under my chin.

Putting on the slip was the hardest part.  I had gone so long, wanting clothes, but now that I had this insubstantial twist of cloth, it made me physically sick to feel it against my skin.

It was pale pink, and see-through.  When I looked in the mirror, I saw myself.  A fetishized doll of an Onus.  Rouged and feminized.

I curled up on the mattress, facing the door, so he wouldn't be able to see my ass.  The slip rode up, so when I curled up, I could feel the gentle draft from the vent on my coveted balls.

---

The clank from the bolt made me stir.  The voices dragged me awake.

Voices.

I started awake.

The perfectly ordinary man had brought a man back with him.  He had ragged brown hair down to his shoulders, and a beard.  He had a leather case by the handle.

"Can't believe you found an intact Onus.  Their skin is so much softer than humans, they have very little body hair.  Very fun and easy to work with.  These will get infected for a while, so I have the antiseptic for you in here."

I cringed against the wall.

"We discussed your payment.  I have to give him an enema, and I want to take him first, but what would you like to do?"

The new man glanced at me.  "Give him a quick washing-out when you're done.  I have some toys I'd like to try out, if you don't mind."

"Course not.  You're doing me a great service."

---

I dangled from the ropes that tied me to the ceiling.  My toes barely scraped the floor.  They had shoved the silk slip above my hips, and he had filled the bag again.

I shook my head back and forth.  My face was wet with tears.  My eyes were so sore that I could barely see.  I spoke my first words in weeks.

"No..."  I begged.  "No!"  Out of my mouth the sound was an animal moan, weak and inarticulate.

"Your own damn fault."  He grunted.  "I told you to get ready for us, and you didn't shave like you were supposed to.  We had to take time to do that ourselves.  Now you need to get nice and clean."

I let out a little shriek with the last word as he shoved the narrow rubber plug of the enema tube up my ass.  The rubber bulge was small, and it didn't encounter much resistance because my anus had been softened with three bags already.

"Clench on it, or my friend will burn you again."

I let out a weak sob.  I had a small cigarette burn between my nipples.  The pain was enormous.

I clenched tight on the enema tube.  I groaned as he squeezed the bag, filling me with saline water.

His 'friend' replaced the tray between my legs.

As the man who had bought me forced water into my ass, I saw his friend go to his leather case.  He started unpacking needles.  Large curved needles, small straight needles, and rings of various sizes.

He yanked the rubber cord from me.  A spurt of water splashed into the pan, and I could feel the cold rivulets running down my legs.  I wept with the pain of trying to keep the water in.  I wept with fear from the needles.

I keened as the muscles of my sphincter softened and the rest of the water rushed out of me.  It was a terrible, cold painful feeling.  My entire lower body ached.  The muscles inside felt like they were being torn apart.

I whimpered as his friend came at me with the needles.  Whimpered because I was too weak to scream.

---
LATER
---

For a while, I tried to make him happy.

It had just hurt so much.  He had hurt me so much.  I figured, that if he was happy, he might treat me better.  He might give me a blanket.  A book.  Maybe he would let me walk up the stairs and see out the window, if I asked.

So I tried.  I tried to make him happy.

I tried to smile at him when he came through the door.  I spread my legs for him, instead of clasping them together.  I even tried to kiss his cold bearded mouth.

He got angry at me, and he burned me.

After that I stopped.  I gave up.

---

For a while, I had tried to mark the days by counting my meals.  On days that he remembered, he brought me down a plate with everything he didn't eat from his meals.  I got to two hundred and thirty before giving up, and losing count.

---

I forgot to wash for a few days.  I...  I was lost, and it hurt to stand.  Even for a few minutes, standing by the sink.  Sudsing the liquid soap in my hair and washing it off in the warm water.

Whenever I tried to think, the thoughts would slip away.

He punished me by forcing me to drink the liquid dish soap.  For two days I was puking and shitting.  My insides writhed and hurt.  I cried weakly as I sat on the board with the hole in the middle, shitting out my insides.  Burning.

When I was finally done, he called his friend over and gave me new piercings, to celebrate.

---

He stopped coming every day.

---

He stopped feeding me every day.

---
LATER STILL
---

I could hear the door.

I wasn't sure if it was just my imagination or not.

Just in case, I slowly got onto my knees.  I could feel the dull burning in my genitals.  The pain in my lower back.  The slow dull burn at the pit of my empty stomach.

I clung to the bars.  I looked at the key.  Across the room.  Hanging from the S-hook.

The door opened.

I cringed back automatically.  A pitiful strangled whine came from the back of my throat.  A happy sound, choked with fear.  I was so hungry.

He had a camera.  And the box.

He grimaced slightly at me.  He had not had sex with me for...  for...  for a long time.  He was bored with me.  I was gaunt and afraid of him.  His friend had been over a few times.  I looked forward to it.  His friend made sure that he fed me.  His friend always used lube.

He shoved the box under the bars and I crawled forward.  Whining softly.  He didn't have any food.  I felt like I was dying.

"Put the skirt on, stand up, and look sexy."

It wasn't a lacy nightie, like he liked.  It was a short pleated skirt.  I put it on, zipping it up the side.  I stood.  It hurt.  It hurt my feet and it hurt between my legs to stand.  I wobbled.

"Quit screwing up your face like that, make a kissy face, lick your fingers, pull up the skirt with one hand, something!"  He was brandishing the camera.  The anger in his voice made me cringe.

I put two of my fingers in my mouth and lifted up the pleated skirt to show the piercings.  He snapped a bunch of pictures.  I felt tears going down my face.  My eyes leaked all day, but now they were pouring.  I made a pleading noise.  I touched my stomach.

"Good, good.  Keep those eyes.  Get down on all fours, and show your asshole."

I fell on my knees with a painful crack.  I turned around and hiked up the pleated skirt.  I spread my thin cheeks and heard him snapping pictures.  I rested my cheek on the soft filthy mattress.  I could see a bloodstain.  I tried to remember when it had happened.

Had it been from the night with the ribbed dildo?

Or from when he whipped the bottoms of my feet?

Had it happened after the newest piercing?  The one in my navel?  That one had bled a little.

He put the camera down.  I heard the key in the lock.  I tried to stay still, but I was moaning.  I couldn't help it, or stop it.  I moaned as he got closer.

I closed my eyes, but I could still see the light getting blocked out.  With the sensory patches on my back and sides, I could sense his body blocking the light.

"One last fuck."  He grunted, getting down on his knees, and twisting my arms up.

---

When he was done, he gave me some food.  Fish bones and asparagus.  It was hard to chew.  I was crying, so the food kept falling out of my mouth.  After he took it away, I crawled to the sink and used some water to rinse the blood from between my legs.

---

The door opened while I was sleeping.  The noise jolted me awake.  I cringed in the corner, making sleepy whimpering noises.  I was shaking so hard that I could barely see.

"Shush-shush, honey, it's me."

It was his friend.  The one with the long hair and the needles.  I crawled to the bars, making soft happy noises.  Near the bars I had to start dragging my legs.  It hurt too badly to crawl, to move my legs.  It jolted the hot painful skin of my genitals.  Always burning.  I tried not to look, at them, not to touch.

"I haven't seen you in a while, honey, spread those legs for me."

I did.  I whimpered with the pain of turning onto my back, and spreading them.  I felt the metal in the hot tight skin.  My skin was swollen.  My skin was torn.

"Oh... That's not good.  That's not good at all."

He came in and I cringed, closing my eyes.  I couldn't help it.  The sound of the cage door opening, the metallic squeak of the hinges, it made me shudder.

His fingers were down there, gently moving aside my limp penis.  Resting it on my stomach.  His fingers were cold.  It felt good.  Felt good on my badly swollen testes.  On my chafed anus.  Even though his fingers felt good, I was crying.  Crying because I knew it would hurt soon.




Onus 02



He touched one of the piercings.  The older one.  The oldest one.  The very first set of rings that he had given me.  Two small silver rings in my perineum.  They didn't hurt anymore.  My body had accepted them.  Back then, the ordinary man had carefully cleaned them every day, and given me ointment.

He touched the navel piercing, a tiny silver heart dangling from a chain from my navel.  I moaned.  He touched the dydoe piercings on my penis, I fell back in a near swoon.  He left the piercings alone, frowning, while I wept in a crumpled little heap on my back.

I suddenly felt the bitterly stinging cold of a wet wipe.  He was gently wiping my piercings with a disinfectant cloth.  Being as careful as he could with my swollen infected piercings.  It still hurt.  I bit down on my wrist to muffle a weak scream.

"This is going to be the last time I see you, honey.  My friend is gonna sell you off.  I'd love to buy you, but I can't keep you.  Not with the wife around."

He touched the side of my face.  His hand was cool against my feverish skin.  I nuzzled into it.  He had inflicted the horrible pain and misery of my swollen genitals.  But he was so gentle with me.  So gentle where his friend was so cruel.

Who would want me?  Who would want to buy me after those pictures he had taken of me.  A hollow-eyed fetish of an Onus, cringing behind cage bars.  He hadn't tried to hide the abuse.  He had taken pictures of me, bruises and infected piercings and jutting ribs and all.

The only people who would want me would be people just as cruel.  Or worse.

My eyes always seeped tears.  Even when I slept.  But now I made soft choking sounds in the back of my throat.

"No..."  I whimpered.  The only word I could ever bring myself to say.

He finished wiping.  The wipe was pink and yellow.  It had started out as white.

"I'm going to give you these wipes when you leave.  That way, you can keep those clean.  You don't want to get sick."

He put the wipes on my mattress.  He touched my face.  I kissed his hand.  I nuzzled into it.  He was the closest thing to a friend that I had ever had.

"Get on your stomach.  I'll go nice and slow."

I crawled onto the soft mattress.  I carefully rested my body onto the mattress, so I wouldn't pull on the tiny barbels in my nipples, or the chain in my navel, or any of the horrible piercings on my testes.  The two dydoes were the only piercings in my penis.  I whimpered when one of them tugged slightly on the fabric.

I spread my legs for him, rested the side of my face on the soft mattress so I could look back up at him with one glassy eye.  He was taking off his shirt.  His body was soft and sagging and covered in hair.  He had nipple piercings himself.

He got up and pulled down his pants.  His cock was erect, a bright pink point, swaying as he stepped out of his jeans.  He had a thick prince albert ring.  I cringed a little.

He spread the lube thick on his pierced cock.

Then he knelt over me, blocking the light from my sensory patches.  He went in slow.  I moaned through my nose.

"That's it...  There we go..."  He panted.

He fucked me.  His ring hurt.  It hurt my battered insides.  The ordinary man had always been careful to stop short of tearing me wide open.  He was afraid of injuring me too badly.  There were no doctors that would treat me.

I moved my face, and pressed it into the mattress.  It was soft.  And it muffled everything out.  It was hard to breathe.  I focused on pressing harder, cutting off my air.

When I couldn't breathe, it hurt less.  I felt things getting fuzzy and warm.

When he was finished, he took a paper towel from his pocket and got it wet.  He wiped my loose sloppy asshole.

Gently.

---

I was in the cage for a while longer.  When the ordinary man came down with a trench-coat and handcuffs, I thought that it was another game.  I had forgotten about the pictures.

Then he forced me to put on the trench-coat.  It was warm and silky and secondhand.  It fell nearly to my ankles, it had been made for a much larger man.  He buttoned it in the front for me.  I was leaning against the wall.  My legs felt weak.  My feet hurt.

He was so close to me.  I was crying silently.  He got angry at me when I was too loud.  I was shaking while he touched me.  He wasn't hurting me.  That just made me so afraid and sick.  I kept expecting every movement of his big ringed hands to lash out at me.  To turn from a careless touch to a vicious hold.  I cried silently because I was terrified.

"Come on, Onus.  New home."

'You're going to a new home, beastie.'  The words were different, but the meaning was the same.  I was being moved on.

He put his hand on my shoulder.  He led me out of the cage.  He only ever dragged me out of the cage to tie me to the ceiling.  But he led me to the door.  The big steel door.

He opened it, and pushed me out in front of him.

The stairs made me dizzy, looking up their long length, and then beyond.  Looking up into this brightly lit kitchen.  So far away.  I hadn't looked that far in so long.  I whined with fear.

"Up, you numb cunt."  He twisted the handcuffs.  The metal bit into my wrists and I yelped, going to the steps.

It was so hard.  I fell on my bruised knees twice.  I hobbled up the stairs, whimpering with the pain from between my legs.  From my feet.

The house seemed so big, so huge.  I strained for a glimpse out of a window.  It was cold.  I had not been cold in so long.  He was pushing me along, fast, faster.

Shoved into the garage, and snow was caked on the tires of a car.  Not the car that I had come here in.  That car had been red.  This car was black.

I moaned when my feet touched the cold concrete floor.  I moaned again when he opened the trunk and shoved me in.  I was shaking from the pain between my legs.  I had the flat package of wipes in my pocket.  I was surrounded by softness.  The blankets, and a hot water bottle.  I felt deja vu in a wave.

The car started up.  The thrum was soothing.  I curled up around the hot water bottle.  I reached between my legs, to see if my movement had made anything tear.

---

We drove for so long.   The hot water bottle lost it's heat, but the trunk of the car was warm near the body of the car.

I rested my head on the spare tire.

I touched my tongue to the tire, tasting it.  Tasting the cheap rubber and chemicals.  I tasted my own skin.

I hadn't dared to taste a human being since my own mother, but it had been unavoidable when they wanted me to suck their cocks.  The ordinary man didn't trust me without a ring gag.  His friend had me suck his cock often.

Sucking a cock was soothing, compared to what else they had me do.

The car made a sharp turn.  We had been making smooth turns, or going completely straight for so long.  A sharp turn meant that we were nearly there.

Tears burned my eyes.  I had no hope.  Not a scrap of it.  I was incapable of hope.

The car ground to a halt on a gravel road.  I closed my eyes tight.  I pleaded for it to just be a stop sign, or that he was waiting for a car.  I didn't want this to be the end.

I was so afraid.

The car turned off, and I wiped at my eyes.  I weakly moved, sat up.  I didn't want him to drag me out.  I didn't want to fall in the snow.

The trunk opened and every rational thought fled.  It was so cold.  Like a worm recoiling from a finger, or a snail from salt, I curled up tight in the tiny pocket of warm air in the back of the trunk, crying from how brutal the cold felt on my skin.  I had been warm for so long.

He reached in and grabbed me by my hair.  I fell on the snow, and scrambled to my knees, weeping.  The snow burned like acid.  Like fire.

I opened my eyes and saw a massive house.  I could make out a room made of glass, a wide bay window, a corner of the building that was rounded like a tower.  A roof that wasn't a gentle slope, but two large spires, one of the tower, and one of the rest off the house.

Icicles hung from the roof in a toothed fringe.

I closed my eyes and dragged my feet through the snow.  It burned so bad that the skin of my feet had to be burning, had to be peeling off.  The sensory patches at the top of my feet were raw with blinding pain.

I stepped up onto the concrete porch.  He rung the doorbell.  We were sheltered from the snow, and a little of the wind. My raw feet rested on a rough mat.  I whimpered from the cold and tried to huddle tighter in the trench coat over my naked body.

My eyes were shut tight.  It hurt to open them.  The cold air stung them.

Through my lids, I could see the light as the door opened.  I opened my eyes, and saw a man with only half of a face.

I took an unsteady step backwards, forgetting the step.  I felt the sickening feeling of falling.

And a tremendous sensation of pain.





"This was a little late because I had no wifi over memorial day weekend.  Apologies.

I recently got a new internship which is a massive time-and-energy sink, so I will be doing my best to write, but the third installment of Onus may take some time.

I will do my best to write in the evenings and on breaks.

I've been kind of touchy about this story, and I want to apologize for my behavior.  But I will not apologize for the story.

Kisses and Spanks,

--Cruel*



Onus 03



*Direct continuation of Onus 2. Warning for darker content.

All characters are 18+*

***

Soft.

Warm.

The blanket was heavy, and smooth. A thick comforter, like the kind I had when I was living with my mama.

I was on my side.

I could see, because I was naked. I could dimly see from the patches on my upper back. I could see the dim shape of a man against the white light of the room.

I felt a hand on the back of my head. I could feel a wet cloth gently dabbing at the raw wound there. The sting made my stomach feel wobbly. I moaned.

"It's a myth, that you shouldn't let people with concussions fall asleep." The voice was deeper than the ordinary man's voice. The speech had an odd clipped quality. Like his tongue was numb, but he was trying to hide it.

He was spreading some kind of numbing ointment on the wound.

I weakly lifted my hand from under the bed. I rubbed my wrists. The cuffs were gone, but the welts still hurt.

"I don't think you have a concussion... I don't know how to tell. Your pupil and iris are undifferentiated, so I don't think I could do a test. You didn't hit your head that hard. Do you feel nauseous?"

I opened my eyes, a little. I saw soft white sheets, and a dark blue comforter. I saw a wall that was curved inward. I saw an electrical outlet. I saw the spindly shadow of the man spreading ointment on my scalp.

He was quiet for a moment. I could hear clasps, he was closing up a first-aid kit, I guessed.

"That man... He treated you worse than an animal. I... I don't want you to be afraid of me. I wont hurt you."

He ran his hand down my shoulder. His hand was cold. I shuddered a little. He withdrew his hand.

"You're badly malnourished. I'm going to get something to eat. Is chicken soup okay?"

I weakly turned, feeling dizzy, feeling a pang of nausea when I rolled on my back. I looked up at him, and for a heart stopping moment I thought that he was missing half of his face.

He had a whole face. It was just that half his forehead, his right cheek, his right eye, all of that was hidden by a soft black patch. The silk patch was held in place by two loops that went around his head. It also covered a portion of his scalp.

I looked up into his good eye. Brown.

I pressed my lips together. A small sound died in my throat.

"I'll go... You... You stay comfortable."

He pulled the comforter up to my chin.

"Stay on your side, in case you puke."

He left. He was barefoot. I saw his white feet sinking into the pale blue carpet. He closed a wooden door, painted blue. I could hear the door lock.

I closed my eyes again, for a moment. My body ached. Somehow, I forced them open, and I looked around my new cage.

It was a strange cage. A nice one. The wall was perfectly round, and pretty large. Much larger than my miserable cage with the ordinary man.

The floor was covered with thick blue carpet. The ceiling wasn't flat, but it rose up into a hollow cone, with a skylight. The rectangular window was currently solid white with snow. The room was lit by a dangling light. I could see the switch near the door.

The walls were plain and white, with three different outlets. The wall broke into a large bay window, with a wide sill, padded with blue cushions. I could faintly see the snow falling. There were no external lights, no streetlights, or moonlight, or porch-lights. Just the light from my cage.

There was a second door. If the room was a clock, and the main door was twelve, then the second door was three, the bay window was six, and my bed was nine. The second door was white, and the doorknob was gone, leaving just a small hole.

Near one of the outlets, was a fridge. A small one, white. It had a single magnet on it. An apple.

The blue door had a chalkboard on it. I almost hadn't noticed it. It was about two feet high, a foot wide, and it had a little plastic trough at the bottom, presumably filled with chalk.

The room seemed so barren.

I wondered where the trench coat was. It had the pads that I could use to clean my piercings.

I touched my nipples. My nipples had been the easiest piercings, they only hurt and got infected when he had been rough with them. The one in my navel was new and painful.

The dydoe piercings in my cock were sensitive. The ordinary man's friend was able to make them feel good, but they were so sensitive that it had only ever caused pain from the ordinary man.

Under my cock, in the soft skin between my cock and balls, three small ring piercings, side by side. Two were okay, but the one in the middle was grotesquely swollen. I had two small rings in my perineum that were no longer infected.

I could hear his footsteps, coming up the stairs. There were so many stairs that my anxiety just built and built as he got closer.

He knocked softly on the door before opening it. I flinched at the sound. As the door opened, I could faintly hear the chalk rattling in the trough.

I smelled the soup as the door opened. He had a big white tray with legs in his hands, and on top was a steaming white bowl and a glass of water. I stayed frozen under the covers as he came closer, not sure what I was supposed to do.

"Just sit up a little bit..."

He set the tray down. The legs on the tray kept it so it was like a table in my lap. I weakly pulled myself back and sat up, wincing as the light hit all of my sensory patches. The lines on my sides, the triangles on my shoulders, and the oblong on my stomach.

The soup was full of noodles and small pieces of chicken. It was steaming, and I could see the little particles of oil floating on the surface.

I looked up at the half-faced man. He finished fiddling with the tray legs and awkwardly backed away. "Enjoy... Please."

It felt so strange to hold the spoon. I fell on the soup like an animal. Scarfing bites of the scalding-hot soup into my mouth. It was dribbling down my chin... how was I losing so much of it?

"Careful... You don't want to get sick." He cautioned. I stared at him as he spoke. When he was done I went back to eating, but a little slower. I put down the spoon and took the bowl in my hands, slurping from the lip of the bowl.

I drank the entire glass of water. It was so nice to have it all at once, not slurped out of my palm, or lapped from the faucet.

When it was done, I had to breathe heavily. I had been eating so fast that I needed to catch up.

Tears were pouring down my face. My body still hurt. Chronic abuse had taken a vicious toll. But the tears were different. My stomach felt full. It was a beautiful feeling. A simple feeling. A heavenly feeling. To silence those terrible pangs once and for all.

I looked up to see that he had gone through the white door. The white door held a tiny bathroom. Nothing but a commode and a sink and fuzzy blue towel hanging on a wooden rack. He had taken the other towel and was wetting a corner of it in the sink.

He came back. I quickly put the spoon back on the tray and lay back, shrinking into the mattress.

He hesitated a few feet away. He was biting his lower lip.

He got down on his knees, a careful gesture, moving slowly. Like he didn't want to spook a frightened animal. On his knees, he wasn't so tall.

He extended his arm with the towel. I wanted to flinch away, but I was paralyzed.

He carefully wiped the dribble of soup from my chest and throat. I winced when he rubbed my throat. "Sorry..." He whispered.

Then, as slowly and delicately as if I were made of glass, he wiped my chin.

He took the legged tray from on top of me and folded it.

"I'm going to let you rest." He whispered. He wasn't looking at me. His good eye was cast at the floor. "The bathroom is there, and the fridge has water, fruit juice, some soda. I wasn't sure what you liked, so I got a lot of different things. There are some snacks, too."

He stood up. Despite everything, I tensed. I couldn't help it. It was a visceral reaction. He towered over me. The bed wasn't on a frame. It was a mattress on the ground.

He noticed it. He seemed like he wanted to say something, but he ended up not saying it.

When he got to the door, he tapped on the chalkboard. "Please. If you think of anything you need, write it down. I have a toothbrush and some toiletries for you in the bathroom, but if you need anything, medicine, clothes, furniture, anything that you can think of, you can tell me, or write it down here. I'll get it for you."

I thought he was going to go, but then he flipped the lid off of a small box that I had thought was an outlet. Inside was a doorbell. He pressed it, and I flinched. I could hear the dim chiming echoing through the big house.

"If you need anything, just ring this bell. I'll be up as soon as I can. Don't be afraid to ring it, if it's late, or if it's something small. I... I want you to be happy."

He looked down at the floor. His face was red. He seemed flustered. He fumbled the door open and closed it abruptly behind him.

---

I woke up with a ray of natural light.

It felt so strange. I opened my eyes. I was in a comma shape under the blanket. I poked my head out and looked up.

The big bay window showed a land that had been dipped in brilliant white. It hurt my eyes a little. The only brown was the undersides of the tree branches, no roads, no houses, just an expanse of white.

I sensed movement out of the corner of my eye, and I looked up abruptly.

The skylight was completely white with snow, but someone was swiping at the snow. Suddenly the room got even brighter as a sliver of blue sky showed through.

I watched at he cleared the skylight. First he swept at it with what looked like a broom, then he leaned in and scraped the ice off with his mittened hands. The skylight was almost as tall as he was. I could see a sliver of the roof behind him. He was bundled up in a coat and a hat and a scarf. All I could see was a sliver of skin, and even that sliver was bisected by his face patch.

He waved at me through the skylight. I lifted one hand in response. He moved out of the window. I looked at the patch of light that it threw on the carpet.

I crawled from under the comforter. It was cool in this room, but the air was fresher, I had a blanket, and windows. I crawled into the sun patch, and moaned. The sun patch was warmer than the rest of the floor. I rested my cheek in the rough warm carpet and closed my eyes. I rested in the sun patch for a long moment. The sensory patches on my back felt so good in the light.

I eventually crawled out of the sun patch. I had to urinate badly. I crawled to the bathroom. I could stand, but it hurt less to crawl.

There was some blood in my urine, but less than the last time. It was strange to see it in a white bowl. I was able to wash my hands in warm water. I held them under the flow with my eyes closed. I liked the feeling on my sensory patches.

I looked into the mirror, not wanting to see.

I saw an incredibly frail Onus. One with bruise-swollen eyes and puffy swollen lips. Dried blood along my hairline. Hideous bruised chafing around my white throat. Hollow shoulders like a cradle of bone. Slivers of silver peeking from bite-marked nipples. Bruises shaped like half-moons of teeth, all over me.

I splashed my face with water, and it got rid of a little of the dried blood.

I got the towel and gingerly cleaned my piercings as much as I dared. I put a little pressure on my swollen piercing in my testes. I gasped as it gave, and a spurt of blood and pus wet my fingers.

I wiped the blood and pus away, and saw how matted my hair was. I yanked my fingers through it a few times, but it didn't do anything. He had said that he gave me toiletries, where?

I realized that the mirror opened into a cabinet and I opened it. I saw a fat tube of toothpaste and a red toothbrush still in a wrapper. A comb, a box of floss, a small orange pill bottle. He had put a piece of tape on it and written 'aspirin' on the tape. There were only two pills in the bottle. I realized that he had done it on purpose, so I couldn't overdose.

I carefully combed my hair until it felt soft. It was greasy. I hadn't washed my hair for a few days.

I took the two aspirin. I brushed my teeth and it felt so good. My gums felt raw and sensitive. I hoped that I didn't have cavities. It had been so long since I brushed my teeth. I flossed for good measure, and then hobbled slowly into the main room.

It hurt less to crawl...but it felt so good to stand upright. Like being a person.

I opened the fridge.

The top shelf was crowded with beverages in an obsessively neat way. Three bottled waters, three bottles of apple juice, three bottles of orange juice, three bottles of milk. Arranged in neat rows. One of the bottles of milk was skim, one was 2%, the last was chocolate.

The middle shelf had snacks. Cheese sticks, three different kinds of pudding, half a carton of eggs with 'hard-boiled' written on the cardboard. Some sandwich meats, cheeses, and a loaf of bread.

The bottom shelf was a drawer. I pulled it out. It was full of apples, oranges, a grapefruit, a bag of grapes and a plastic carton of strawberries.

The inside of the fridge door had a soda dispenser. In his painfully neat way, he had ordered them, cola, root beer, ginger ale, cola, root beer, ginger ale. In the shallow door shelf, there were two small jars of peanut butter. One crunchy, one smooth.

I stared inside the fridge. I felt a slow stupid smile on my face. So much.

I didn't want to make myself sick. I took the strawberries, a cheese stick, and a cup of chocolate pudding. I took a root beer to drink.

No hard surfaces, except the window. The sill had a long curved blue cushion, but it was on top of the hard sill. I carried my spoils up to the sill and set them down. I went to the bed to get the blue comforter.

I curled up under the comforter and I nibbled on fresh cold food. I leaned against the window and stared hungrily at the sun-kissed winter landscape.

No spoons, so I ate the pudding with my fingers, careful not to spill on the blanket, loving the taste of the pudding with the patches on my fingertips.

I dipped a strawberry in the chocolate pudding.

The gentle knock on the door nearly made me drop the pudding. I set it down on the hard part of the sill, and turned my head just in time to see the blue door open.

He had short dark blonde hair. I hadn't noticed before. The sunlight brought out the paler strands of hair. He was wearing a close-fitting black sweater and jeans. He seemed lean and healthy. He was older than me. Maybe his mid thirties.

"Good morning." He murmured. His exposed cheek was still red from being outside.

I slid my hand out from under the comforter and waved a little. It was just a small unflexing of my fingers. It still brought a huge smile to his face. It softened him a little.

"I never told you my name. My name is Sam." The careful clipped quality of his words seemed stranger today, now that he was smiling. Before his language had seemed cold, distant, but now his speech still had the odd inflection. Like an accent.

I kept my eyes on him, but he stayed on the other side of the room, giving me plenty of space.

"I wanted to make us breakfast. Are you still hungry?"

Without thinking, I nodded. His smile widened by a few molars.

"Good! That's, um... Good. I have some things set up downstairs... ah... I have a robe. If you want any clothes, you just have to tell me what, and I can order some for you. He was looking down at the floor glancing up at me. He was getting nervous again. He quickly bolted, leaving the door open.

I didn't make a break for it. I didn't even stand up. I didn't know where I was. I didn't know how to drive. I didn't know where the nearest Onii was. What I did know, was that I was incredibly weak. I didn't even think I could take the stairs, much less outrun Sam, or fight him.

And I knew that Sam had fed me.

He came back, and he looked surprised to see me still huddled at the window. He had a robe in his hand, made of some thick soft black material. He started to walk across the room. I shrank into the window. I couldn't help it.

He put the robe down on the sill and turned his back. I stood up and quickly put the robe on. It felt heavy and smothering to my sensory patches, but it was warm, and it nearly touched my toes. It was made for a larger person.

"Good... We can go to the kitchen now... if you would follow me?"

He was asking. I hobbled forward a few small steps, but then stopped, because I didn't want to get too close to him. My feet throbbed painfully.

He walked out of the door and I walked hesitantly behind him. I peeked out of the door. The long hallway to my left and in front of me looked empty and bare. Some clear plastic was hung over the hallway to the left, and taped all around.

"It's... It's just you and me here." Sam said softly. That odd isolated quality of his words seemed so strange. "I have some hallways sealed up, to save on heating. Too much room."

It was still so cold. The robe was warm, but my feet felt numb from landing on the hard wooden floor just outside the carpeted room. Drafts managed to steal up from under the long hem of the robe, and down the neck hole. I wrapped the cloth as tight as I could. It was so big that it was wrapped all around me, but the neck hole was still big enough to sag several inches.

We went down the hallway in front of us. There were three doors, each one with tape over the edges to keep out cold. The wall was papered in yellowed stripes. The place smelled like disuse. I could see oily marks on the walls where pictures had hung.

Going down the stairwell was like descending into darkness. There was a door at the base of the stairs. I tightly gripped the railing. Sam was a few steps down the stairwell and he looked back at me. I quickly averted my eyes to a square of pale blue wall paper where a frame had once hung.

I took a step down and my leg wobbled. I felt a stinging pain between my legs, and a deep dull ache in my lower back. I quickly sat down on the step, feeling dizzy, and aching. My legs were trembling. I was trembling. My head hurt so bad.

"Are you okay?" He muttered, his voice heavy with worry. He jumped up the steps so suddenly.

I scrambled up the step, and cringed behind the bars of the railing above the stairwell. For a moment his expression wasn't so guarded, and I saw an expression of self-hatred and worry on his face. Then he quickly guarded his emotions and held his face still.

"This. This was a bad idea. I'm sorry I scared you." I could hear frustration and self-loathing in his words.

My heart was beating rapidly in my chest. I had been so scared. Now that the fear was ebbing away I let out a low groan. The rapid movement had sent a vicious throb of pain through my bruised body. My lower back was shrieking, and I felt a wretched sickening pain between my legs.

His one eye flicked up to me, and I saw him tense, but then the pain was so bad that I lowered my head. I felt sick. I felt very sick. The sweet rich food that I had eaten roiled in my stomach. It hadn't been that much, but it was still so much more than I was used to. I slipped my hands between my legs. The robe was wrapped so tightly that I couldn't find the seam, so I just cupped my groin through the thick quilted cloth.

I heard a small metallic sound as something dropped to the floor.

"What was that?"

I jerked my head up so quickly that my head spun. He had climbed the stairs and was standing right over me, where I was kneeling, curled up and shaking with pain. I wanted to crawl away, but I was so sick that I just let my head droop again and I retched painfully.

I felt his hand on my back, and I cringed down to escape it. My forehead touched the cold wooden floor. I tasted my own shallow breaths. I breathed weak and fast, trying to hold down the too-rich food I had eaten.




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.




Onus 03



He opened the door. I rested my head back, and was pleasantly surprised. There was a padded edge for me to rest against. It was so comfortable that I closed my eyes for a moment.

"That looks like it feels good."

I sleepily opened my eyes. I looked up at him.

"You can spend as long in there as you want. I'm just going to check on you every ten minutes or so, in case you need anything. Okay?"

I nodded. My chin touched the water on the downstroke. I already felt so tired.

He quietly shut the door behind him as he left.

---

If he really visited me every ten minutes, then I spent about three hours in the tub.

Sometimes it was dozing. Sometimes it was lazily cleaning my body and hair with the baby shampoo and gentle soap that he had provided. He brought me cold water to drink on one of the visits. On the second, he spontaneously brought a small radio, and I listened to a channel that played soft classical music. It had been so long since I had heard music, any music.

When he came back to find my eyes red and socketed from weeping, he timidly asked me if I was okay.

I pointed at the radio. My hand was steaming from being in the water. I tentatively touched my own chest, a little above the cluster of cigarette burns.

I repeated the motion. I was a little scared, but I wanted it so so so badly.

"You... You want to keep the radio in your room?"

I nodded, looking at him fearfully.

He nodded rapidly. "Yes, of course... Of course you can." He smiled tentatively, eager to please me.

I smiled back.

---

When I was done, I drained the tub and dried off and rested on the folded comforter. The soak in the tub had made my feet feel so much better, but the moment I put some weight on them, the fierce stabbing pain came back.

When Sam came back and saw me resting, he smiled a little. "Ready to go back?" I nodded up at him. I had the robe back on, and a fluffy towel over my hair.

He dragged me to the stairs, and I crawled up the stairs slowly, careful not to strain myself. My legs and genitals hurt less. The bath had made everything feel so much better. But by the time I was at the top, I had fresh drops of sweat on my forehead.

He dragged me to my room and I saw that he had a black leather case and some papers set up in the middle of the room.

"Are you still okay with receiving a checkup?" He asked quietly.

I crawled onto the carpet, and into a patch of sun. I crossed my legs and wrapped the towel tightly around my shoulders. I nodded and took a deep trembly breath.

The first thing he did was to give me four crayons and a piece of paper. On one side of the paper was a frontal view of the body. The back side had a back view. The body was featureless and anatomically correct. The crayons were in green, yellow, red, and purple.

"I just want to get a good idea of what to check up on right now." Sam said softly. "I want you to fill in the form with those colors. Green for areas where you don't have any pain. Yellow for areas that don't feel so well, or have mild pain. Red for places that hurt badly. If you have anything you're worried about, like you're hearing, vision, or if you think you have any broken bones or serious injuries, I'd like you to circle that area with the purple crayon."

I understood, and was grateful. Most checkups, doctors figured that out by asking lots of questions. He seemed to understand that I couldn't speak.

He was pulling some things from his doctor's bag as I started on the sketch. The sketch was mostly yellow, even after the bath. I was able to fill in the calves and a bit of the chest with the green crayon.

With the red crayon, I filled in the lower buttocks and inner thighs of the back sketch. I filled in the groin and neck and feet in the front sketch. I filled in a spot on the back of the head.

Now for the purple crayon. I picked it up and scratched at the paper casing with my fingernail. What was I worried about?

Well, my feet. My feet hurt so badly whenever I put any real weight on them. I circled the feet on the sketch. I was worried about the piercings. The ordinary man and his friend had made special locking rings couldn't be removed without special tools. I wanted to remove the piercings in my testes. They were horrible and infected and I hated them.

Thinking about the piercings made me think about something else. The piercing in my navel was the newest, but I couldn't remember how long ago it was. That made me think of all of the other piercings. I tried to remember the order.

Did I want to remember?

The hand with the crayon was trembling.

When I handed back the sheet of paper, I looked down at the soft carpet under my feet, ashamed. I didn't want to see the look in his kind brown eye.

I had lightly shaded the entire region above the neck, in purple.

*

*Do the dear sweet anonymouse who squeaked that I was taking too long.

I have come out with the third installment, and I may take longer with the fourth. I will always finish what I start.

For the rest of you, thank you for being patient and staying with me. I have recently been accepted into the nursing program at my college, and will be able to drop a class that I was taking (dropping me from 17 credits to 14). This may free up some writing time, it may not.

As far as likely projects...

I have a sequel for Firecracker that sheds some interesting light on Willem's mother. This is the most likely to come out soon.

Kisses and Spanks,

--Cruel*



Onus 04



* I was unprepared for this story.

Classes, exams, 2 weeks without a computer, as well as a particularly frustrating writer's block all contributed, and for those I will not apologize.

What I WILL apologize for, is that I have another story that I've been working on. A new one. 86 pages on a Pages document. Every minute that I spent writing this new story (which will be called Blue, Like the Shell of the World) Was a minute that I should have been working on Onus, and for that, I want to give you all my most sincere apologies.

To try and make it up to everyone, Blue wont be released until I am either finished, or within spitting distance of finished. (because 86 pages barely covers the first half) When I'm ready to begin releasing Blue, I will do so one chapter per week. Regular, reliable, episodic, and hopefully, insanely popular.

As another apology, I will try to have chapter five of Onus come before July. (kidding (I hope))

I will always finish what I start.

ALWAYS.

All characters are 18+*

I think that Sam did his very best to balance out the bad news.

While I tried to recover from the bad news, he brought up gifts by the boxload. Things that I had missed so badly during the lost years. Things that I had forgotten existed.

A brand new laptop. When I opened it, I saw that he had set it up. The desktop had an icon for the internet, as well as half a dozen video games that I had never heard of.

I shut the laptop as he came up with the next gift. A cardboard box full of books and DVDs. I ignored the DVDs for a moment and picked up a fat paperback. The edges of the paper were a soft aged yellow, the corners had been worn to wood-pulp fuzz. I sniffed, taking in that smell of old paper and glue. I caressed the cover, itching to peel it back. I had no desire to look through the other books to see if there was a title I wanted to read more. I had picked this book up first. I would read it first.

I looked at the cover. A rabbit was on the cover. The title of the book was 'Watership Down'.

After bringing up a bedside lamp that I could read by, Sam waited in the doorway of my room. I looked up at him from where I sat on the carpet.

"I know that you're scared." He murmured. "But you broke an important bone in your left foot. The calcaneus. It wont heal right without surgery, and otherwise you might not be able to walk again for years. I know one of the only anesthesiologists who has ever worked on Onus before. I know that I can call her in on a favor. And while we have the tools, we can remove the locking rings while you are under anesthesia."

I nodded slowly, and blinked rapidly. I tried to stop the tears. A fat wet tear got away from me. It slid down my cheek like a drop of oil. Suddenly I felt so tired.

I pressed my tongue to the edge of my upper front teeth. I wanted to say something. I wanted to release the cushion of air trapped above my tongue and say something. Say anything. But mostly, I wanted to say 'thank you'.

"Goodnight." Sam muttered. The word had an awkward quality to it. I realized that he had been about to try and say my name. 

I wanted to speak up as he slowly closed the door, and locked it. I wanted to say, "Goodnight, Sam. My name is Shiloh." But even something that simple had been taken away from me.

I crawled to the mattress and turned on the personal book lamp. I crawled to the door and turned off the main light.

When I was in the little circle of warm white light, I started to read.

---

The next morning, Sam hovered as I scooted down two flights of stairs. I went very slow, careful keep my weight on my skinny buttocks. On one step, I accidentally pulled at one of the infected piercings and I had to bite my bony fist to stop the wretched groan.

I tightened my hand on the paperback book. A slim receipt marked my place, one third through. I had to force myself to think.

Not 'the' paperback. 'My' paperback.

Even after I forced myself to think that way, it still didn't feel right.

"Are you okay?" Sam murmured, anxiously. I craned my neck to look down the second flight of stairs. I had seven steps left to go. When I craned I could see through the front window, and see his sleek blue car. When I had first peeked out the window, my eyes still dim with sleep, the sleek blue car had been covered with soft white hedges of snow.

Now it wasn't. He had wiped and scraped the snow off, and he said that the heat was running. The inside of his sleek blue car would be warm for me.

I took a deep breath and slid down two more stairs, nodding.

I was okay.

I would be okay.

I wore a pair of his sweatpants without any underwear. He had given me underwear, but the cloth had snagged one of my piercings, so now I went without. I had thick woolen socks and slippers on my feet. I had a tee shirt and a huge baggy blue sweater that I practically drowned in. When I got to the bottom of the stairs, he gave me a multicolored wool scarf and a thick tweed coat. He tucked a hat around my ears. I was buried under warm winter clothing.

I tasted the scarf. I tasted clean wool and I smelled detergent. It smelled a little like him. But very faint. I spat and licked my lips when I got a strand of wool stuck on my tongue.

Now for the hard part.

I weakly got up, putting most of my weight on my left heel. According to Sam, I had six broken bones in my feet. But five of the breaks were old and mostly healed already. The break in my right heel was the worst, and it needed surgery.

He got next to me, and I slung an arm over his shoulders. I shivered.

"Alright, let's go."

The wind seemed to cut right to my bones.

He half-dragged me to the car. I minced, trying not to hurt my broken feet any more than I had to. I gratefully accepted his help. He bundled me into the front seat of the car and closed the door before going back to close and lock the house door.

The car was warm. I looked forlornly out at the snow. My time with the ordinary man had made me soft to the cold, on top of every other damned thing. I hated that.

Sam hopped into the driver's seat as rapidly as he could. I started to pull the seat belt into position. I felt hesitant, wondering if I would get carsick.

The car moved slowly through the long plowed driveway. Hot air blasted from the vents in the front, I slowly stopped shivering and just watched the gentle snowfall. It had never really stopped, only slowed.

We got on the road right behind a snowplow.

The windows kept me busy at first. Sam had turned the radio on, and I let the music and the passing landscape hypnotize me. It had been so long since I had been in a car and not in a trunk.

"We should have had breakfast this morning, I apologize. It's just that it's unwise to eat too soon before a surgery."

I glanced at him. I hadn't even realized. Thinking about it made my stomach twinge, but that was it, just a twinge. Compared to my time with the ordinary man, it was nothing. I shrugged, and went back to looking out the window.

It was mesmerizing. I was a fourth of the way through the book, but I didn't end up opening it once on the car ride to the hospital. Watching the land go by outside was just too interesting. It was so wide open. The car felt very small.

We started to pass more homes. More farms. I saw cows. We passed through two small towns that weren't big enough to have traffic lights.

A song finished playing on the radio. The announcer said that it was February sixteenth, and up next, more songs from the nineties, zeroes, teens, and today.

The date made me feel sick. Even more than the thought of surgery. I kept expecting to hear the year, kept being afraid to hear it.

It had been 2033 when my mother died, and I went out on the streets. Near the end of 2033 when I had been captured.

The buildings were becoming more and more frequent. We had moved onto a freeway. Cars all around us, bridges and department stores and office buildings. Not in a metropolis proper, but surrounded by people. Things suddenly felt more claustrophobic.

We moved off the freeway and stopped at a light. I was still looking out the car, and a woman in the next car looked back at me.

I flinched. She stared. Her eyes widened. She was very young. First it was surprise, then anger.

The anger on her face made me wish I was invisible. I wanted to tell her that I didn't mean it. That I didn't want to kill my mother. That the Onus man or woman who had killed her loved ones hadn't meant it either.

That none of us had meant it.

Almost every person on earth had lost a mother, a sister, or a daughter, to an Onus child. To the bewildering and nonsense sickness that claimed them.

Whether they had aborted the unwanted Onus or not.

The light turned green and she slammed on the gas. Revving hard and ahead. I stopped looking out the window. I wrapped the jacket tighter around me. I was sweating and toasty, but I felt small, and I wanted to gather it around me for the comfort.

"It's okay."

I wished that I could believe him.

---

We reached the hospital, and drove around to a back entrance to one of the buildings. The hospital was set up like a campus, and it was huge.

My stomach felt sick and wobbly. I was glad that I hadn't had anything to eat this morning. A man in a heavy parka and scrub pants was smoking a cigarette and waiting by a wheelchair. He waved when he saw Sam's car.

"That's Oliver. I know him. He's going to help you into the wheelchair and bring you in while I park the car just over there." He pointed. He had a special spot all his own, a name plate and everything. It wasn't even very far. He was dropping me off so I wouldn't have to walk it. I was simultaneously grateful and wishing that he didn't have to go.

He drove right up to the icy sidewalk. There was a ramp leading up to the doorway. The man with the wheelchair, Oliver, rolled down to the car.

I unbuckled my seatbelt. The car beeped softly in protest. The orderly opened the door and I cringed from the burst of cold air. My teeth clenched and I did my best to inch to the edge, looking down at the icy sidewalk and dreading the first step, the weight it would put on my broken feet.

The orderly stepped in and one hand was under my knees and the other under my shoulders. He hefted me up, dizzyingly fast, and suddenly I was down in the wheelchair, landing lightly, like a feather. So gently that it didn't hurt my bottom or genitals.

"I'll be right there!" Sam called from the car. "Thanks, Oliver." To the orderly. Oliver smelled like cigarette smoke and disinfectant. I was shriveling from cold in the wheelchair. We were gliding up the ramp and through the door.

It was warm in the hospital, but I was assaulted by light and noise and smells. I hunched up in my warm protective clothing, trying to hide the lightness of my skin and hair. My soulless black eyes. Trying to hide my lack of humanity.

I didn't know where this hospital was, but the hospital back in my old turf, it had been perfectly legal to turn away an Onus, no matter the injury or illness. They weren't allowed in the main areas, dining and gift shop and common rooms.

I was not welcome here.

The wheelchair squeaked under me and suddenly we were in an empty ward. Three beds in a row, each empty, each devoid of decoration or personal affects. It was quieter in here. The smell of disinfectant burned my nose, but the lights were dimmed, and easier on my eyes. I realized that I was breathing quickly and raggedly, hyperventilating.

I could hear a zipper behind me and I had to bite down on my tongue to stop a nervous scream. I bit down and looked behind me.

Oliver was just taking off his parka. I didn't stop watching him. He folded his parka and stuffed it in a basket hanging off the back of the wheelchair.

"Sam called me ahead of time. Told me what he knew and why he did it. I don't like my patients being afraid of me."

He knelt in front of the wheelchair, putting himself on my level. He was a big man, overweight. His skin was the color of coffee with cream, and lightly freckled. Probably three times my weight and a foot taller. His receding hairline gleamed in the white light from the window.

"I wont hurt you, buddy. I'm here to help protect you. We're going to get you safe to surgery, and then back here to rest for eight hours. Then Sam-the-man will take you back home, okay?"

I nodded.

The door opened and Sam rushed in. I couldn't hide the deep rush of relief I felt when I saw his patch-covered face. I felt safer with him here. Of course, my relief didn't last long.

His hand hovered over my shoulder before dropping back to his side. "I need to go and prepare the OR. I will be the leading surgeon. You are going to be in good hands. Oliver it going to disguise you and take you to the operating room.

He left, in a hurry. I was alone again.

---

Oliver had me look over some paperwork. "This surgery isn't officially sanctioned, but we're going to follow as much procedure as we can." That made me feel guilty. Worse than guilty. Sam could get in so much trouble for trying to help me.

The forms they were most concerned about were the consent forms. The anesthesiologist was in the room, getting my weight and height by having me stand shakily on a scale, gritting my teeth.

The anesthesiologist was a mousy woman barely five feet tall. She had a small pursed face and barely said a word.

Oliver and the anesthesiologist showed me a short slide show, showing me what the surgery was going to be. Two pins, putting the bone of my heel back together.

"Sam said that you also have a number of piercings with a locking mechanism. We will remove these during the surgery."

I felt a deep relief at that. I nodded, and signed the dotted line with the pen he gave me. I had to hold it gingerly in my hand, to avoid it touching the sensory patches on my fingertips. My signature was shaky and loopy. Shiloh Torres.

My name. That was my name. I hadn't thought to write it down. Sam didn't know my name, but he would know after the surgery. That felt wrong. I had wanted to tell him my name.

Oliver covered me with a blanket and a surgical mask and a woolen cap. He finished it off with a pair of thick black glasses that I could barely see through in the dim light.

I peered in the mirror. Most of my pale unpigmented skin and hair was hidden. The disguise wouldn't hold up under close inspection, but it was convincing enough.

"You ready?" Nod.

I didn't feel ready, but I just wanted to get it over with.

---

We went through the brightly lit hallways. I was thankful for the glasses. Mama had installed dimmer switches in the apartment where I grew up. Bright lights hurt my eyes, and as an Onus, I was more sensitive to bright lights and loud noises and strong smells.

I shrank smaller and smaller into the wheelchair as Oliver wheeled me through the maze. I felt like we were going deeper and deeper into a trap. My breath was whistling in my throat. The lights were intense and unwavering, I was surrounded by noise and turmoil like the bowels of an anthill. The strong smell of disinfectant was burning my nose. 

I took small breaths through my mouth. The surgical mask felt damp against my face, like a hot sticky rag. I wanted to tear it off, it was suffocating me. But I couldn't, because I was surrounded by enemies.

So many people. Patients and doctors and nurses and orderlies and visitors. People were in wheelchairs, in gurneys, with clipboards, with IV stands squeaking their wheels and making me cringe. We passed a janitor and I flinched as my nose caught the stench of blood and shit. He had a huge plastic bucket that looked like my bucket from the Ordinary Man's basement.

The smell of disinfectant sharped in my nose. I was sweating and shivering under the blanket. I felt like I was about to go insane.

I flinched at a touch on my shoulder. Oliver was leaning down. "About halfway there, just be calm..."

I muffled a whimper in my throat. We had been going for miles. Aeons. How could we only be half-way there?

Suddenly, it was a little quieter. We had walked into an elevator, and miracle of miracles, we were alone.

I moved my hands up from under the blanket and tore the surgical mask down, breathing raggedly. The air felt cool and stale.

"I'm sorry." Oliver whispered as he put the surgical mask back on. The damp patch pressed against my face. "The upper hallways are quieter, less busy."

I was surrounded by humans. Men and women that had been attacked by my species. The men and women who had named my kind as a burden.

In the landmark 2016 case, 'Karkoff v. Isaacs', the supreme court ruled that the Hippocratic oath did not apply to non-human or half-human entities. And that while hospitals or clinics could let in Onus if they wished, they were not required to. 

Across the world, the Onus had been just shy of two years old.

The elevator doors opened.

I smelled carpet cleaner. The wheels of my chair didn't squeak when they rolled on the blue-patterned industrial carpet. Arched ceiling windows were partially covered in snow, and letting in half-muted grey light that still felt way too bright. Even through the clouds and my dark glasses.

We were on an upper level, and I could see down to some kind of lobby area. A lot of shiny marble floors and a lot of incoming visitors to the desk. One wall was a big gaudy carving of the half-world monument. A copy of the 300 foot statue that had been built to commemorate the passing of the Onus victims.

We were on a walkway above the main desk below us. The rails were made of glass and bronze. I wondered if a fall down to the lobby would kill me. I wondered what the news would make of it.

---

We pulled into the operating room. The halls had been nearly empty.

"This wing of the hospital is scheduled to be demolished soon. A few of the rooms are still used for storage, so it's still open, but no one goes here."

Oliver was taking off my blanket. I pulled off the mask, hat, and glasses. The cold air felt good on my face and head. It was quiet in here.

He helped to lift me onto the table. "Can I see your arm?"

He took out a needle and I cringed in the chair. It seemed I would never be able to escape from men who wanted to poke needles into me.

Oliver sighed. "I have to get this catheter into your arm, for the anesthesia. It will sting a little. But after that you'll be asleep, and we can start the surgery."

I had a question for him. A question that couldn't be mimed out with hand gestures or facial expressions. I made a small rasping noise in the back of my throat as he tried to get closer with the needle. Trying to force my dead voice to come back.

"Esss... Ssss... Esssaa...?" I tried to speak. The noises that came out of me made no sense. Like the bleating of an animal. I mewed and jerked my arm away when he came at me with the hollow needle.

"Sssaa--aaam?" I finally managed to drag out. "Sammm?" Oliver sighed.

He pointed, and as I looked to follow his finger he took my wrist and started tapping the skin, coaxing a vein to the surface. I looked through a long wirehatched window and I saw Sam. A nurse was helping him to sterilize, putting on layers of scrubs and aprons. Taping the seams between his gloves and his sleeves.

I saw him turn away and pull off the black patch. I watched intently. I didn't even flinch when I felt the hollow needle going into my arm. I wanted to try and see.

He kept his back to me as the nurse helped him with a cap and a mask. He turned and there was nothing but his good eye. Most of his face was covered, and his bad eye was covered with a clean white dressing. Like it was a wound.

The nurse followed him into the room, and I was suddenly swimming. I looked groggily back to my right arm. The catheter was taped into my arm, and a bag of fluid was attached. The mousy anesthesiologist was slowly emptying a syringe into a joint where fluid dripped into a cord.




Onus 04



I tried to look back. I wanted to tell him that I had managed to speak. I tried to do it again, but my lips felt numb. They wouldn't open. I wanted to tell him what my name was.

It was like my eyes were a camera, and the lens had been changed into a fish-eye, or maybe a panoramic. The room was moving strangely. Voices came in and out as if I were hearing them through a wall. The brilliant lights on the ceiling made trails across the inside of my skull.

"February the thirteenth, 2037 beginning surgery on Shiloh Torres, half-human. Let's do this right, people."

The nurse was saying something, how they wouldn't need to record this surgery, since it was illicit. But I didn't hear that. I crawled from where I was deep into the round light on the ceiling with points of light in my spine and lodged deep into the growing shadow of panic deep in my throat.

Two thousand and thirty seven.

Two thousand and thirty seven.

The number was meaningless to my drugged mind, but I knew that somehow, it was the most important number in the world.

As I crawled into the light and into a deep nothingness, I couldn't for the life of me remember why.

*I would like to respond to one comment.

To the lovely anonymouse who commented on the last chapter of my story (you know who you are)

If I could, I would make it so that YOU wouldn't be able to read this new chapter.

But the only way I would be sure of that would be to not release the chapter at all, and I'm not THAT petty.

I am very capable of pettiness, however, so I will say this.

You sir, are a cunt, sir,

A cunt, yes-you-are,

You live in a cunty cottage, 

And you drive a cunty car.

As for the rest of you...

Kisses and Spanks!

--Cruel



Onus 05



*Whelp. This makes things awkward.

A wonderful thing happened to me, starting three days ago.

Ladies and gentlemen and readers of indiscriminate or expanding gender...

I... am on a JAG.

Writer's block is as common and frustrating as fender-benders, taxes, common colds, headaches, insomnia, period cramps, and many many other things.

But ladies, gents, etc... A writing JAG is a beautiful thing, with feathers.

The last time I had a jag was one year ago. When in three days, I wrote File 66.

A writing jag is when your creative brain cells are on cocaine. When every new idea isn't just fast, but GOOD.

This jag has managed to cover the writing needs of Onus, Blue, and even a new story that forced it's way down the birthing canal.

And this fifth chapter only took me a week to write, while the last one took me several months.

Fate is a bitch with a messy filing cabinet and a substance abuse problem. But today, THE BITCH CAME THROUGH.

So here's Onus chapter five. A miracle of nature. The creative thought-baby of a JAG.

All Characters are 18+*

Coming up from the drugs was like waking up.

Slowly.

My lids were like weighted metal shutters. Stiff and rusted shut. I imagined the thin skin of my eyelids wavering and waving like shutters in the wind, and I could almost hear the banging noise with every twitch of my eyes.

I knew that I was covered by something light and less restrictive than my clothes, but it took so long to realize that.

I faded away for a bit. Not really sleeping, not really thinking. Not semi-aware. Maybe five-percent aware.

Biding.

I came a little bit further awake. Under the influence of the anesthesia, coming awake felt like my entire body had become immobile and ponderously heavy, like a sandbag wrapped in woven tough plastic. Other than my observation of being unconstricted by clothing, I couldn't feel anything. I couldn't discern if I was completely naked or not. I didn't know if I was warm or cold.

I tried my eyes again. A rusted metal shutter wasn't quite right. More like... 

I imagined a string of gum. Gum chewed so long that it had become hard and rubbery. Pulling on it with both fingers, it took more and more effort, until the gum suddenly snapped in two.

I pulled. I pulled at my eyelids. I pulled and pulled until I reached some point where the gum that had sealed the lines of my lashes together broke and my eyes creaked open.

Right away I snapped them shut. My eyes prickled and afterimages made no sense. Filling my head with light and blowing out the cobwebs.

I tried to make a noise. My throat was stupendously dry.

"hm." I made a tiny noise.

I could feel a plastic edge digging into the corners of my mouth, my chin, the bridge of my nose. I was wearing an oxygen mask. When I breathed out, I could feel the hot air around my mouth, when I breathed in, it made a hissing noise.

I wiggled my toes. I wiggled my fingers. My body was encased in itself. Little by little, I was waking up.

I fluttered my eyes open again. The light didn't hurt as much this time, and it wasn't nearly as bright as I had thought. My eyes adjusted, while I blinked furiously.

I was in a reclining hospital bed, swaddled in puffy white blankets. I had an oxygen mask on my face, and Sam was by the side of my bed.

He was sleeping. His head was leaned on his hand, the fingers splayed over the soft cloth of his face-patch. His one eye closed, his mouth slightly open.

The room was quiet, the lights were off. The only light came from the window. Outside, it was snowing.

I stopped fighting. I stopped struggling to move my drugged body. I closed my eyes again and fell back down.

I felt safe.

-

"I don't think we need to worry about respiratory arrest. I've checked the machine, and he never stopped breathing on his own." Sam's voice. It was pulling at me, waking me up.

"I gave him too much. Damn it. You'd think I've done this enough times." A woman's voice. Soft and stressed.

"Celine... Don't be upset with yourself. I could never have done this without you. It was a difficult dose to calculate, and he'll be okay."

She sighed. I blearily opened my eyes. I saw three people by the foot of my bed. Two of them had their backs to me. I saw Oliver's eyes get bigger in his head, and he made a gesture to me. Sam and the anesthesiologist turned around.

"Looks like someone's returning to the land of the living." Oliver murmured.

I blinked my eyes a few times so they could see that I was awake. And then I rested my lids. I felt so very tired. I was more lucid now. Just drowsy.

"Hey... Shiloh?" Sam's voice was close. I opened my eyes again. It felt like I had weights on each lid, pulling them down.

He was bending down, right next to the cot. "I know you're sleepy. But I just wanted you to know. The surgery was a success. We have your foot wrapped up in a walking cast, and the other foot in a light boot, just so you don't re-injure yourself. We removed all of the piercings. They look like they'll heal well."

I gave a sleepy nod.

"We've been here for eight hours already, so Oliver is going to help me put you in your chair, and get you out into the car, so we can drive back to my house. You can sleep in the car, if you'd like. Are you in any pain?"

I shook my head twice. For the first time in a long time, I could barely feel anything.

I must have greyed out a little, because the next thing I knew, I was in the wheelchair. I was shivering a little, because I was only wearing a hospital gown. I looked down and saw my skinny white legs poking out the bottom. I leaned precariously to see my feet. One in a big black boot, one in a small grey boot. My knees were both badly skinned. Scraped and scabby.

"Arms up, Shiloh."

He had slipped a coat behind me as I leaned forward. Now he gently led my hands to the sleeves and I held my arms stiff so he could slide the jacket on. Then a pair of sweat pants that were baggy enough to go on over my boots. Then for good measure, a blanket tucked in around me.

The last measure was a cap pulled down snugly around my ears. I felt cozy.

The movement of the chair made me feel like I was gliding, flying.

-

I had another druggy nap in the car. Every nap made me feel a little more alive. A little more awake.

It was also a little bit like time travel.

When Sam shook me awake at the house, my mouth was as dry as a leather pocket. My head only felt a little fuzzy, and dismayingly, I was starting to feel pain again.

Not all of it. But my back and abdomen ached dimly. Although, part of that was that I hadn't gone to the bathroom in a while.

Sam opened the car door and I flinched from the cold winds. I put up my arm and he carefully helped me out. I leaned on him like a crutch and took feeble hurried steps with my plastic-booted feet.

Once inside he set me down on a couch and went back to close the door and bring a few things from the car into the house. It was the first time I had a moment to take a long look around.

The house didn't have the same sterile feeling down on the first level. I could see a few folders and notebooks scattered around a long shiny table, and the couches in the living room had a look of being dusted, and sat on. I could see into the kitchen. He had forgotten to put away a few things from his breakfast, and there was a basket which had some fresh produce in it. Apples and bananas and onions.

I eyed the sink in the kitchen. I was so very thirsty.

Sam came in with a few shopping bags. He must have gone out for at least a little while while I slept my over-drugged sleep.

He set down the bags and reached into a cupboard for a tall glass.

He filled it from the sink, and walked over to me. It was dark outside. The light from inside on the windows only illuminated lone puffy snowflakes.

"Thirsty?" He asked me quietly. I nodded and lifted my noodle-arms to try and take the glass. I didn't trust my arms. So I let them go limp and he brought the thin edge to my mouth. I drank, slurped.

To steady his hands, he put one hand on the back of my neck. His fingers were cool from out-of-doors.

I had so many questions. But I was too stoned to even put them together in my head.

The biggest question. The only concern that I even had the power to think about, was a number. There was a number I was trying to remember. A number that was really important, but I was scared. I was scared to remember.

"I think it would be dangerous." Sam said quietly. "To try and get you up to your room tonight. I can get you plenty of blankets down here, and you can try to rest on the couch. Are you still tired?"

Nod.

"Do you want me to try and get you up to your room?"

Shake.

"It's been a long time, and I don't think you want me to put in a urinary catheter. I'm going to take you to the bathroom."

His first floor bathroom looked a lot like the one on the second floor.

"Shout if you need help." Sam mumbled. He looked embarrassed. And so was I.

I managed without help. My genitals were sore and prickly. All of the piercings were gone, but they were still marked, still wounded. I didn't look down after the first quick glance. I only had a trace of blood in my urine.

Standing in the boots was awkward. I felt like I was wearing platform shoes. I was standing with only a twinge of pain from my feet. I could mostly only feel pressure. The warm water from the sink felt good on my hands and fingertips. I carefully used soap, trying not to get it in my sensory patches.

I wiped my hands on the so-soft green towel and tapped at the bathroom door.

As I tapped my fingernails on the door, I remembered the number. Two thousand and thirty seven.

As the door opened, I could feel the tears welling up in my eyes and I stared numbly at Sam as they started to fall.

He offered an arm to lean on. His speech impediment became worse when he was distressed. "Are you okay? Are you in pain?"

I wanted the first thing I told Sam to be my name. I wanted it to be a thank you. A thank you for rescuing me, a thank you for fixing my foot. A thank you for the simple dignities he had put back into my life.

Instead, it was a number.

"Four." I whispered.

The word clipped out of my mouth. Brief and bitter. Like crunching a pill between your teeth. I had spent four years in captivity. I was twenty-two years old.

He was hovering. Tentative to touch me when I looked so upset. His brow furrowed with confusion. "The c-couch?" He stammered. He bit his lip.

I took a few shaky steps on my own. Then I took his forearm to steady myself.

I lay out on the couch. My feet were bricks inside the boots. My misery weighed me down.

-

I didn't say anything, and I refused to gesture. Sam was worried about me.

He hovered around me for a bit. He brought me blankets and hot tea and a plate with slices of apples and slices of muenster cheese. I didn't touch any of it. Which was what really worried him.

Four years.

I had been with the ordinary man for four years. I was twenty-two years old.

Almost a fifth of my life.

"Do you want me to leave that there?" Sam was pointing at the plate of food. I didn't not or shake. I didn't react.

"I... I'll leave you alone?"

I didn't react.

"I'm in my bedroom. It's right down the hall."

The last thing he did before he left was to set up a reading lamp close enough to my head that I could turn it on if I wanted to. And he set the paperback-my paperback-on the table near my head.

He left. I could see the light from his room, and his shadow as he moved around a little bit. Watching his shadow made me think about bitter thoughts that I had repressed out of sheer instinct.

Why had he bought me? Why had he bought me and why was he fixing me? He was being kind to me, and fixing me where I was broken, but why? Why was he doing it?

I could only think of two reasons. And both of them made me scared.

I suddenly felt very cold, and very alone. I turned the reading lamp on, so I would have a little light. I wrapped the blankets very tight around me so only my nose and eyes stuck out. So I could breathe.

He wanted to have sex with me.

Or he wanted to kill me.

Once, long ago, I might have weakly rationalized that he didn't want to hurt me, because he had taken care of me. But after my long captivity I knew that his kindness could mean nothing.

Back in the barn, Rudy and the ordinary man had both been excited because my testes were intact. That never once stopped the ordinary man from hurting me with them. It might have even been a point in my favor, in his eyes.

He wanted me fixed. But what did he want me fixed for?

I wanted to run away. I wanted to be free, but I wouldn't be any safer if I was free. I was scared to be back in the streets, because eventually I would get hungry, or careless. The men who had snatched me from the Onii, they had been EOs. I had thought I was safe.

I was just so scared.

I remembered all of the time, all of the time that I had tried to repress or hibernate through. All of the time during my imprisonment where I had been weakened by hunger.

Then I forced myself to eat some of the cheese and apple slices. They tasted good.

I turned off the reading light. As I was falling asleep, I saw Sam standing in his doorway, checking up on me.

-

I slept for twelve hours.

I knew that because when I woke up, there was a note on the table, pinned under a small digital clock. The clock said 8AM.

'I should be back home by noon. I'm in the city on some business. Here is my cell number.' My eyes skipped over the digits. 'You can eat whatever you want, be sure to drink plenty of water.'

He signed the bottom of the note with a little flourish. I found myself smiling a little.

I felt strange. I felt a little woozy and tired, even after sleeping so much. All I had been doing was sleeping. I blinked my eyes to try and get the sleepiness out. I stretched under the blanket, and it was so warm.

I rolled out of the couch and winced.

My feet were all muffled up and twingy inside the boots. More pressure than pain, but the residual pain in my body was back. Achy bruisy skin, sore muscles, thudding headache.

I saw that the plate of cheese and apples and my untouched tea had been taken away.

I walked to the kitchen and poured myself a tall glass of water from the sink. I drank it down, before pouring myself another. This one I sipped at, while looking inside the fridge.

The fridge was well-stocked. I looked around. I took out the gallon of 2% milk and poured the rest of my water into the sink, filling the glass with milk instead. It had been so long since I had milk.

I ate at the long polished table. I felt calm. It was nice to be alone. I wasn't always looking over my shoulder, no one was watching. But now I had an entire house to explore.

I drank milk, had an apple, and two pieces of toast that I spread with butter and strawberry jelly.

When I was finished, I rinsed my dishes and placed them in the sink. The small clicks seemed loud in the silence.

My radio was all the way up in my room.

I contemplated climbing all those stairs with my new brick-boots but then I saw a cardboard box next to the couch. It was near the foot, and I hadn't even seen it when I got up.

I realized that it was my box from upstairs. It had my radio, my new laptop, and all my books and DVDs.

I spent a moment looking through the box again, cataloging what I had in my mind. Then I turned on the radio and fiddled with the dial until I reached a station that was playing something catchy and electronic. I bobbed my head a little, looked both ways, and turned the volume dial up as high as it would go.

I caught my reflection in the glass of the window, and I was smiling like an idiot.

I decided that before I settled down to explore the laptop, or watch a movie, or get some reading done, I would explore the house.

-

The house really was huge. Built like an uppercase I on it's side.

Both of the small 'wings' had large non-bedrooms. One was a fancy dining room with two long shiny tables that made where I had been eating look like a card table. A chandelier hung from the ceiling, covered with a massive dust-cloth so it looked like a ghost. 

A few boxes were lying around. I looked in a few of them. Fancy conversation pieces. Vases, an odd elongated african statue. A lamp base of stained glass. One box was full of deep red cloth napkins, scattered with waxy white balls that made my nose crinkle up at the strong smell.

The other wing at the ground floor was a glassed-in porch. Light wire tables, glass walls, lots of light and space. The porch felt more lived-in. I could see a few things lying around that Sam had probably left there. A mug full of pens and pencils. A calculator, a file cabinet that was dusty, but it had fingerprints on and around the handles. Scored in the dust.

The carpet was soft and white. I got down to feel it with my hands. To sniff it. I could smell dust. Taste some kind of bitter carpet cleaner. I found a long black hair. I picked it up and looked at it. Confused.

The porch was huge, and kind of chilly, despite double-glass windows. Outside the walls, I could see the pond surrounded by willows. The furniture was all made of natural-textured wood, with white cushions.

On a vase, on a round table, was a bright bouquet of dried flowers.

I touched the flowers with my fingertips, and then with the tip of my long grey tongue. It was an interesting perfumy taste.

I didn't want to leave the porch. The dining room had felt closed in, dark, like a funeral home. The porch was bright and naturally lit. Comfortable.

I got bored, and decided to check down the hallway that connected the two.

The living room where I had slept was right between the two wings of the house, it bulged out a little to the front. The front door, kitchen, and the living room were all in the same place, and only on the first floor.

I checked the hallway that connected the two. There were ten doors.

Two of those doors were bathrooms. Almost identical, but flipped. Like bookends. Six of them looked like storage space. Empty, dusty, filled with cardboard boxes and dust cloths. 

One room was a laundry room. Bare tiled floor, washer, dryer, a shelf with detergent and dryer sheets. I twisted the top off the detergent to sniff it. I dug through a small trashcan so I could draw the so-soft lint pads over my skin.

One of them was Sam's room.

I peeked in the room

Nothing made it different from the others. It wasn't bigger, it didn't have an attached bathroom, or anything. The only thing that made it different, was that it was the closest room to the front door.

He had a desk by one side of his bed, with a reading lamp. The shelf across the top was full of heavy medical textbooks and journals. One wall was taken up by a massive, detailed poster of the human nervous system. Another poster showed an anatomical drawing of a bisected eyeball. 

The desk itself had some small clutter of paper and office supplies on it.

The bed was king-sized. He had made it this morning, but not perfectly, the top covers were a little rumpled.

A few chests of drawers hugged the wall. A half-full laundry hamper near the door.

I felt like I was intruding. This was the only truly lived-in part of the house, except for maybe the kitchen. I sniffed. I traced my fingertips over the doorknob.

I could see a small framed picture on the desk, but I was too far away, and light was glaring off of the glass.

I looked both ways, and stomped back to the living room so I could check the digital clock. Barely an hour had passed since I woke up.

My boots clopped on the wooden floor of the hallway, and then padded on his black carpet.

The music echoed in from the living room. It had been on commercial for a while, and now a woman was crooning about a yellow dress, and the green light, and how she would cry and cry and cry, over the love of you.




Onus 05



I traced my fingers over the top cover of the bed. The fabric was heavy and richly woven. Warm. I plucked a short blonde hair from the pillow. I tied it around the tip of my little finger on my left hand.

The chair was a swivel office chair, with gel pads in the back.

I sat down in the chair and picked up the framed photograph.

It was old. Taken from a film camera. A little blonde boy with a fierce gap-toothed grin, with his left arm over an aging black lab. The dog had white around it's eyes, ears and muzzle, but was gamely wagging it's tail.

A woman had her arm over the little boy. She had long blonde hair, and a big crooked smile. She looked like the happiest woman in the world.

I carefully put the picture back on the desk, in the same position it was.

When I passed the bed again, I couldn't resist.

I carefully pulled back all of the covers from the top right corner. I slipped into Sam's bed. It was warm and dark. I was surrounded by his familiar smell. I buried my face in the pillow and inhaled.

I felt very relaxed.

I rested there for maybe ten minutes. When I was exploring, my fear and grief had seemed further away. But now. Resting. All of my anxieties and fears came back.

I forced myself to get up. I pushed the covers back down.

I wandered out of the room, closing it. And I walked to the stairwell.

-

The second story of the mansion (there really was no other word for it) was a little smaller, a little duller. Ten rooms along the spine, and two wings. Most of the doorways were covered with sheets of plastic.

The bathroom where I had taken my first bath was still open, but the bookended bathroom six doors down was closed. Six of the bedrooms were closed.

I was surprised when I looked into the room that had been above the laundry room. The centerpiece of the room was a huge glass aquarium without any water. The cage had some wood chips across the bottom, a few twisted logs and stumps. Some flat stones under a heat lamp.

Laying on the flat stones like a big shiny coil of rope, was a python. It was coiled up, but the fattest part of the coil was easily as thick as one of my thighs. It had a wide flat head, rounded black eyes and a soft-shaped mouth with a little flickering tongue that came in and out.

It hadn't moved at all since I opened the door. I crept inside, closing the door behind me. The heat lamp was the only light. The room was hothouse-warm compared to the rest of the house, probably because it was right above the laundry and the boiler.

Which was why the python was here.

I felt slowly towards the tank. The floor was softly carpeted, and a large cushy couch was near the tank in the darkness. I sat down on the cushy couch and felt drowsy almost right away.

I shook myself awake, annoyed with myself. I had slept for almost an entire day. I had been trapped in a single room for four years of my life. I couldn't waste what might be one of my last days.

I carefully sniffed the air above the snake's tank. The damp wood chips and hot smell of water and reptile. It was a new and slightly sour smell. A somehow warm smell.

Then I left the darkened room. The python didn't move once.

The only other open rooms were the one bathroom and another room filled with storage. I dug through the storage a little. I was puzzled. At first I thought that the supplies in the boxes had been bought for me, in case of an emergency. After all, it was saline IV solution, gauze bandages, hydrogen peroxide, and other medical supplies, but they were all in bulk. There were a lot more boxes in this room than in some of the other storage rooms.

I looked through more boxes. I found tape, latex gloves, batteries, lightbulbs, disinfectant, tourniquets, sterile scissors, sponges, insulin, bath towels, flexible bandages, and boxes of bars of soap.

When I opened one of the last boxes I felt something close to an anxiety attack. It was full of dozens of small clear packages full of sterile hypodermic needles. They were all in hard-plastic protective packaging but it still filled every bit of me with raw panic looking down at it.

I left the room feeling shivery about the room. Something felt wrong. Wrong about someone who would have that much surgical equipment in his house. He had also had the resources to give me an illicit surgery in an open hospital. He also lived alone in a massive house really far away from anything or anyone.

That burned the mood, a lot.

I could dimly hear the music from down the stairs.

I went along the hall to the wing at the far end of the house. The end on the opposite side of my little tower. My boots clopped on the wooden floor. The wallpaper on the second floor was a little older, browner, darker.

The door into the wing was bright, dusted, uncovered. The handle was shiny from use.

I opened the door.

The walls were covered in books.

I had to blink to make sure I was seeing correctly. One wall was entirely windows, the wall that faced due east. The walls on all other sides, were covered with ceiling-to-floor shelving. Every shelf was crammed with books. A few cardboard boxes lingered, but a peek inside showed that they were full of even more books. The oversized or undersized books that didn't fit well on the shelves.

The centerpiece of the room was a huge three-sided couch. Built like a square with one side stolen, with seats all on the inside.

It faced the window. The ceiling lights were new, built into the ceiling, letting out bright soft light that filled the entire room. The clock was set on the wall above the door, and it let out small soft ticks. Ticking away time.

I sat down on the couch and looked out the window for a while. It was partially cloudy. Snow piled on the trees. I could see a little geography, a slight valley behind the house that ran down to a frozen river, and some rocky formations around the river, banks and bluffs. All covered with tall wedges of snow. I could see a train of snowplows down the one long road that went by this house. Clearing away slush and putting down salt.

If I wanted to, it would be perfectly physically possible of me to walk out the front door of the house, walk the half-mile or so out to that road, and hitch a ride.

Not many people would pick up a hitch-hiking Onus.

Sam had to know that I could run away. The doors were unlocked, he had given me free roaming power around the house. Why did he trust me?

I wanted to see some of the books, but my feet were starting to twinge painfully. I decided to check out the other wing, and the top level of the house. It had been darker on the third floor, emptier. I figured it wouldn't take me as long.

I clomped over to the other wing and opened it. It wasn't nearly as fun, exciting, or even aesthetically pleasing as the library.

I couldn't figure out what you would call a room like this. It had three windows, but all of them were covered up and muffled by heavy velvet drapes, smothered in dust. When I flicked on the light, a few fixtures lit up on the ceiling, but they were out of date, and three of them didn't even spark. One flickered unevenly.

The most beautiful thing in the room was still there. A gigantic grand piano. The wood was deep cherry-red, and the color looked like it would be beautiful under the dust. The keys were covered. The seat was cushioned in oxblood leather.

The ceiling was dominated by a cloth-covered chandelier. Parts of the floor were carpeted, but a wide oval space was bare wooden floor. Boxes cluttered the floor. I opened them, and found pictures taken down. Broken and outdated statuettes, covered in dust. I found a single loose photograph, but this one didn't excite me the way the one in Sam's room had.

It was faded, yellowed and curled at the corners. It was a picture of a portly older man, with an elegant pointed little beard. He was sitting at the piano, and at one corner of the picture I could see a woman looking away. She wasn't supposed to be in the picture. I could see her bare shoulders rising above a small black dress. I could see her cheek and her big elegant twist of braids gathered at the nape of her neck. She was holding a flute of champagne.

Her lips matched the oxblood piano seat.

This room seemed like a place that had gathered the brunt of the junk left in this old house.

It felt a little sad, when I closed the door behind me. The photo had shown an elegant place. A place where parties had happened. Where men and women had danced.

I had a feeling that no one had danced in there for a very long time.

-

One floor left to me. My room had been on one side, and all the doors along the spine were closed and plasticked off. I only felt relieved. My extended walking and standing was starting to hurt my back and legs and feet, and even set a stitch of pain in my kidneys.

All the doors were closed, except for the mini-staircase that led up to the small tower. The round room that I had woken up in.

And a heavy door with small windows near the other end. I poked my head into my room first, just to see if anything had changed.

My stuff wasn't in here anymore, except for the soft black robe.

The room seemed smaller. I rested on the sill to the wide bay window. The window faced the road. I watched two cars pass far away. Neither of them turned onto the long twisty driveway. The only reason I could see the road was because the trees were skeletal with winter.

I used the bathroom while I was up here. Some blood. The holes in my groin were starting to close. They all looked drier, smaller, less colorful.

One more wing to check. I was feeling tired.

I clopped over in my walking boots. I realized as I got up close that the last set of doors led outside.

I peeked out the small windows, but they were both of cut glass, so the view was distorted and too small.

I gritted my teeth, and clutched the handle.

I pulled it open and shivered as a wall of cold hit me. I started closing the door right away, after getting a quick peek.

It was a balcony. A balcony on the opposite side of the small stumpy tower. Several snowy humps of outdoor furniture and a grill.

I closed the door and shivered. I kicked at some of the snow that had fallen inside, and was melting into little puddles on the hardwood floor.

-

I ended up going back to the python room.

I felt more tired, and I knew that I was going to sleep no matter where I went. The python room was dark and warm. Being above the boiler and laundry meant that there was this low-grade humming in the walls. It was better than the odd silence in most parts of the house.

I lay myself out on the cushy couch. The python had moved a little since I last checked, but was frozen again.

-

"Shiloh? ... Shiloh! ... Shiloh!"

When I first heard it, I realized that he had already been calling my name. I didn't know how long.

I heard his footsteps thumping up the first set of stairs. He was flinging doors open. I could hear the dramatic loud way each door creaked as he threw it open.

He was scared. I could hear the fear in his voice.

"Shiloh? Where are you?" His voice sounded clipped and distorted.

I flinched as the door to the snake room flew open. I sat up and peeked over the back of the couch. I squinted because the light from the hallway was brighter. It surrounded Sam like a corona.

I saw the outline of his shoulders slump.

"Jesus... Oh Christ, I'm sorry." He was a little out of breath. "I... I just didn't know where you were. I was quiet when I first came in, but after I checked the couch and your room, I started calling out and you didn't answer... And I thought that maybe you had passed out or something."

It was a gush of words, for a man who handed out his words like notes.

I had so many questions. About the house, about the things I had found. It seemed like so much to try and ask about when I still wasn't sure I could form a coherent sentence.

Sam was making a mumbling apology, and getting ready to leave the room, leave me to my thoroughly disturbed nap,

I shook my head.

He stopped closing the door. "You... You don't want me to go?" I shook my head again. I cautiously sat up and made a gesture with two fingers of my hand. I curled them towards my palm twice.

A 'come here' gesture. I felt like the back of the couch was a shield between me and him.

I heard a small scraping sound, and I turned around. The formerly motionless python had extended his triangular head above the ground and was pressing it's nose up against the glass, moving back and forth.

"She's hungry. I was going to feed her today."

Oh. *Her* triangular head.

Sam was standing by the back of the couch. I could feel the cold coming off of him. It was so cold outside that I could feel it on his jacket, when he had only come from the car into the house.

I curled my legs up to the couch so I could hug them. Sam was hovering. Waiting for me to say something, watching me.

I pointed to the snake.

"N-Name?" I whispered.

Sam rubbed his face. If I had rubbed my face in the same way, my fingers would have ruffled through my hair, but he was rubbing the skin under his patch. The patch wrinkled a little as he itched at the skin underneath. I watched, with a morbid fascination.

Trying to catch a glimpse of scars.

"I named her before I found out that she was a girl. She's a twelve-year-old female burmese python, and her name is Hippocrates." He chuckled a little. "Now, I call her Hippo. Sometimes Pocky."

He was cautiously moving around the couch. I looked at Pocky. She was still slithering around the cage, trying to sniff at the weighted wire mesh top.

"So... Did you like napping here?" I nodded. "Did you explore the house?" I nodded.

He cautiously sat down on his side of the couch. An entire cushion was between us. An eternity of space, but we were still seated on the same piece of furniture, so he was moving slowly.

"I thought about having this be your room. I know... I know that Onus are sensitive to the cold. But... But I wanted you to have the view. There's only one small window in here, and I keep it covered to keep out drafts."

I nodded slowly, listening to him. He was starting to get into a rhythm. We had never spoken before. Not more than a question, or trying to see if I was okay. If I was in pain. If I needed help. Now, he was speaking.

And if I couldn't do anything else, at least I was a good listener.

"I didn't want you to wake up after you came here and be sharing the room with Pocky. I thought that that would be scary." He shrugged. "The tower had a bathroom, and more space, and better light." He gave me a look with his one good eye. "You aren't frightened by Pocky, are you?"

I shook my head, and mouthed no.

"What was your favorite room?"

It was the first question he asked me that required an answer. Not a yes or a no, or a nod or a shake, but an answer.

I mouthed the first three words. 'I liked the...' and then I managed to put a little body into my voice. "Library."

He smiled. He just looked happy. Happy that I found the library, happy that I liked it. He had a nice smile. It relaxed the lines on the half of his forehead that I could see. It made him look years younger, less withdrawn.

"When I first came to this house, I slept in a different room every night. I wanted to find a room that I liked the best. The place was really run down. But I needed a place like this. I liked the space."

"The man who made this house wasn't an architect. He just built it how he wanted it to be built, where he wanted to build it. But one thing that he did understand..." He sighed, and leaned back on the couch, spreading out a little, relaxing. "He understood how important light was. My favorite rooms in the house are the ones where he built entire walls of windows, all facing the sun."

I realized that I was wrong. The first time this man had spoken to me for real, it had been two days ago.

When he had showed me the scars on his arms.

"Are you hungry?"

I was.

I had hunger of the body, and hunger of the mind. I was no longer starving. I was no longer captive. I was no longer wracked with pains, or helpless with fear.

I could speak.

And I wanted to learn.

I could have nodded, but I forced myself to say.

"Yes."

And with my fourth word in four years, I spoke the truth.

*Kisses and Spanks,

-Cruel*



Onus 06



*Surprise, Bitch.

All characters are 18+*

*****

"What would you like?"

He was standing in the center of his spacious kitchen, with its slick granite counters and shiny chrome finishing. The sleeves of his green sweater were rolled up halfway to his elbows, showing toned forearms and lines of scars as neat as cross-ties on a railroad track.

His hands were open, palms tilted towards me in a universal gesture of plenty and benevolence.

What would I like? I mouthed it, changing the 'you' to an 'I', tasting the words and contemplating just how completely foreign they felt in my mouth. How strange my own sense of autonomy felt, resting on my shoulders like a weight.

I shrugged. Trying to shrug this strange new feeling off my shoulders.

He shrugged right back at me, his palms tilted towards me as if his hands were boats, and the palms were tilted towards heaven.

"I don't buy things that I don't like to eat. You can pick something, and you wont have to worry about it being something gross. I like to cook, so it wont be any trouble." He laughed, a little self-consciously. His arms, tired, dropped to his sides. "Remember the omelets?"

I nodded, and I felt a faint smile on my face.

"I cooked them all in about twenty minutes, but that was after at least an hour of prepping everything, so it would be perfect. Whatever you want, it wont be as long or messy as those omelets were."

He started looking in a pantry and pulling some things out. "Just spitballing here..." He murmured, his head buried in the cupboard. His voice was so much quicker, easier. He was almost hyper. It was a change.

I stood back a little, watching as he pulled out a few things. Pasta, cans of soup, pancake mix. He moved to the fridge and pulled out a package of hamburger, some asparagus, a frozen pizza.

I poked my head in the refrigerator when he backed away a little, and looked around. I started pulling a few things out, putting them together in one spot on the counter. A little hesitantly, looking at him for confirmation.

Orange juice. A red string bag of clementines. A shiny yellow pepper. A jar of salty green olives. A bag of shredded cheese.

I edged around the kitchen, glancing at him. I went to the basket on the counter, and I took out a tomato, an onion, and pried a clove of garlic from the half-bulb in the basket. I put that in the pile.

Last I checked the cupboard hoping against hope. It was a little dizzying to see so much food at once, and so much of it was fresh. I found an open bag of rice, the torn end twisted and clamped shut with a red pin. I brought it out and put it in the pile.

I moved the things around. I put the pepper, tomato, garlic, rice, and shredded cheese in one pile, and everything else in another pile. Then I wiped my hands together and looked nervously at him from under the fringe of my hair. It seemed like too much. I felt foolish, and a little embarrassed. I should have shrugged harder, gotten him to make a choice.

"Stuffed peppers?" I nodded, and reached out to tap the tomato. "Stuffed peppers and tomatoes... Do you want to try stuffing them with beef and rice? Or just rice?" As he spoke, he was putting away the other options. He went to the sink and started washing his hands.

I moved the three pound package of hamburger decisively into the pile, and he grinned, shaking off his hands.

"Let's get started, then."

--

I wanted to stay in the kitchen, and I also wanted to help make the food. It was fun, and I was hungry and I wanted to help.

But I was also pretty timid about handling the food.

Lots of people thought that Onus were dirty because of the sensory patches. That we had sensory organs that were always exposed, and often damp because of natural secretions that cleaned them, like tears. And every Onus had small patches on their fingertips, and on the upper part of the palm.

I washed my hands over and over. So many times that the skin on my knuckles became flaky. I tried not to touch any food that wasn't covered or in a package or covered by a skin, like the fruit and peppers.

I tried not to touch the inside of the peppers or chopped onion for a simpler reason.

The radio was on. I saw Sam's foot tapping. The way we were moving, it was like a very careful dance. Or like two magnets. We were near each other, but whenever he moved a little closer to me, I would take a step back. Whenever he crossed the kitchen away from me, I would follow a little ways behind. I couldn't seem to stop.

Before we got the two stuffed peppers and two stuffed tomatoes in the oven, my feet were starting to ache, and Sam reminded me that I had just had surgery yesterday, so I took some pain pills and rested on the couch while Sam cleaned some dishes and countertops and prepared the non-entree elements of the meal.

"Catch." He threw a clementine orange at me. I missed, and the small fruit bounced off my forearm, and onto the couch. I felt my face flushing a little, but I picked up the orange and started to peel.

Oranges were something I hadn't tasted in a very long time. Apparently, they used to be really cheap. But after the Onus, there was no such thing as cheap labor. Population had decreased too rapidly. 

I wondered if they were cheaper now because the Onus in California were old enough to pick fruit.

Orange peels were an exercise in frustration. I had to peel it with my fingers, and the peel pelted my fingertips with bitter zest as I bruised it. I made a face from the bitter taste on my fingertips as I tried to use my nails.

When I finally got the peel off, I nibbled at a slice until the membrane was gone from one side of the wedge. I touched the peeled juicy flesh with my fingers, soaking away the memory of bitterness with the sweet.

"Does it taste different? With your fingers, I mean?"

I quickly put my sticky fingers in my mouth, eating the ragged slice as well. It was sweet, popping on my long grey tongue. I looked up at Sam, feeling guilty, like a dog.

He bit his lip. "You don't have to stop. I was just wondering."

He went back to rinsing the cutting board.

"St-Stronger." I whispered. He looked up quickly. 

Suddenly he was the one looking at me with guilty puppy-eyes. "Sorry, didn't catch that?" 

"T-Tastes..." I had a problem with the pause. My voice felt like it was trying to die in my throat while I tried to force the second word out. "... Stronger."

He nodded, thoughtful. "It's okay to touch the food. You don't have to hide it around me, or be embarrassed when I see it. If it tastes better, then go for it."

I nodded cautiously, but I still put the next slice of my clementine directly into my mouth.

--

He was easing the steaming stuffed peppers and tomatoes onto two plates. The smell was heavenly. The melted cheese near the top oozed.

I had a yellow bell pepper, a tomato, ten green olives, half of my clementine, and a tall glass of orange juice.

I worried about the table. The chairs were too close together, but the table was too wide. I didn't want to sit far away. But I didn't want to sit next to him. Across was too far.

He solved the problem by sitting at the corner of the table. I sat at the end, so we were kitty-corner to each other.

Sam spoke a little during the meal, but we spent most of it in content silence.

After, he helped me to move my things into the snake room. It was warmer in there. He said he could work on getting me a cot, or I could sleep on the couch if I preferred. I nodded and touched the couch.

"It's getting late, so I'm going down to my room. It's the middle one, in case you need anything. Don't worry about waking me, okay?"

I nodded solemnly. I was so full it made me drowsy. I started digging through a box of his old clothes, keeping one eye on him, and the other eye for some comfortable sleeping clothes. He awkwardly backed out of the room and left the door open a crack, before padding down the hall.

I waited until I could hear his footsteps down the stairs, before padding to the door to open it. I left it all the way open. The light from downstairs made the doorway into a rectangle of yellow light.

I changed into a shirt that must have been huge even on him. On me, it went to the top of my walking boots and I had to keep pulling it up over one shoulder or the other. It had a faint picture on the front and was soft-worn and holey around the seams. It had a good smell. Fabric softener and linens. A dry smell. A quiet smell.

I had lights to both sides. The faint yellow light of the doorway, and the hot yellow light from Pocky's lamp. She was slowly moving. Her coils gleamed. I could see a fat lump in her body, about a foot behind her head. Sam had thawed a frozen rabbit for her.

I pulled the soft knit blanket up and closed my eyes. I could still see the light beyond my lids, but that was good.

For so long, things had been dark.

--

The note was on the side of Hippocrates's cage.

"I left some quiche in the fridge, if you'd like to heat it up. I have some pain pills down in the kitchen if you need them. Go to my room, and turn the TV to C-SPAN at 2PM. If you want to get a glimpse of yours truly."

He signed it with an S. When I pulled the note from Pocky's cage she looked at me with flat reptile eyes.

I didn't know what time it was. My bladder felt painful and I felt relaxed and awake. My ankles were singing painfully.

I clunked and clumped down the stairs and to the kitchen. The big clock on the wall said it was fifteen to one.

Taking a piss felt almost as good as when the pain pills started kicking in. The quiche was full of sausage and spinach.

I clumped into his room and sat down on his bed. The bedsprings squawked at me. I turned on the TV, wondering which channel C-SPAN was on. I wasn't even quite sure what C-SPAN was.

It was a news station. I sat on top of Sam's bed and I hugged one of his pillows to my chest while the clock ticked closer to two. I liked how the pillow smelled. It made me feel safe. The coverage was panning over a large semi-circular room, with a couple hundred people sitting at the benches. The chairs all faced a large american flag hanging on the wall.

I checked the clock on the wall. The minute hand was hovering slightly to the left of twelve.

"Recess is over at the House of Representatives, and now it is time to hear a speaker on behalf of the Onus Recognition Act, or as many are calling it, The Bill of Nonhuman Rights."

The footage changed. More focused. "This is day fifteen of the case, and today we will hear the much-anticipated live testimony by Dr. Samuel Desta, a major voice for Onus rights and a leader on the team that developed the Kinicke treatments in 2027."

My heart was pounding in my chest. I felt like I had to shout, or do something. I didn't know what to do with the new information. The intense rush of joy and relief. 

The Kinicke treatments came out when I was twelve years old. A regimen of medications and vitamins that had extended the lives of Onus mothers, on average, by seven years. By the time it came out, a two thirds of the mothers had already been dead. I remembered helping my mother to inject when her hands were shaky, or when she had to inject into her dominant arm.

He wouldn't hurt me. Not if he had researched the Kinicke regimen. Not if he was 'a major voice'. No wonder he had wanted me to watch this. I didn't know how to express the sheer relief, so I just kept quiet and hugged the pillow very tight, watching Sam on the television, walking up to the podium and shuffling his notes. 

The bright lights in the semi-circular room shone brightly off of his black silk patch. He was wearing a white doctor's coat over a black sweater. He set down his notes and cleared his throat. Two women were struggling with a projector stand, and he took a moment to help them hold it up while they locked the legs in place. The room was silent, except for shuffling, and the clicks of the unruly projector stand. When it was set up, two long awkward minutes later, he ran a hand through his short hair and stepped up to the podium to speak.

"I find it funny, that I hear people on the street talking about the 'nonhuman bill of rights,' or the 'Onus bill of rights.' I think people only call it that because it inflames both sides." 

He spoke rigidly, slowly. I could hear his speech impediment now more than usual. The microphone seemed to amplify it, make it sound much worse. He spoke slowly, so he could sound almost normal.

"To my side. The side that wants to give Onus the same rights as us, as all of us, it makes it sound so much grander." A murmur of dissent washed up at his words. He waited for the room to quiet.

"To those who have only ever seen the Onus as a threat, a burden, a pestilence, even, the nonhuman bill of rights is a mockery. A cruel dig. I have heard some of our 'news' anchors referring to it as surrender to terrorism. And many people seem to agree with them."

He flipped a notecard to the back of his pile.

"The majority of this debate has been focusing on clause 1 of the Onus Recognition Act." He spoke the name of the bill deliberately as if to draw attention to the wording. "Which makes it illegal to own or run human-exclusive facilities. Makes all streets, hospitals, colleges, and businesses open places for Onus men and women to frequent, work, or study. All of the attention has been on Clause 1. The last three have been afterthoughts, if mentioned at all."

He clicked his notecards down on the podium. "As a co-writer of the bill, I want to set the record straight. And in layman's terms. So we can see what is at stake here.

He was suddenly holding a clicker, and as he pressed a button, the screen behind him lit up with an image. It was a long white table down the middle. On the left, Onus, on the right, humans. The humans were mostly young, volunteer workers. They were giving bundles of clothes, canned goods, sandwiches in baggies, paper cups of coffee.

"This is an image from one of my Onii clinics." Sam murmured. "Right now, my ten clinics make up more than half of the Onus-directed charity in the city. We are funded by myself and private donations. Clause 2 of the Onus Recognition Act is to de-stigmatize and protect organizations and individuals who give medicine, food, or shelter to Onus."

He clicked to the next picture. A building in flames. "This is one of my clinics two months ago. Burned to the ground. Along with tens of thousands in damages and destroying a field hospital I had been using to treat injured Onus. The only surgical center within four hundred miles open to them. The police were no help. Thankfully, no one was hurt."

"Right now, it is not mandatory for police to write incident reports where the victim is an Onus or an Onus-run facility. This Clause would change that."

He pressed the clicker again and this time, my hands closed into tight little fists. I bit down on the pillow and hot tears gathered in my eyes. Of embarrassment. Of shame.

It was me. The picture was me. My face was blurred. It was the picture that he had taken of me. I was in that little pleated skirt. The bruises on my body stood out in raw dark splotches. The ring in my navel, the rings in my nipples, they were swollen, and dried blood trickled down from each piece of metal. Everyone could see that I was behind bars. See the bloodstained mattress behind me.

"I found these pictures on craigslist." Sam said softly, bitterly. The camera panned to the rest of the faces in the room, I saw disgust, shock, intense interest. Sam's speech was probably the most heated and interesting debate that they had seen all day.

"This young man was detained in an underground cell, six feet by eleven feet, for four years. When I called the authorities on the man who imprisoned him, the worst they were able to charge him with was the unlicensed sale of exotic animals." Sam rubbed his temple. His brow was furrowed. His jaw set. "He was sentenced with two months in jail, as well as a fine of fifteen thousand dollars. For the capture, rape, imprisonment, and battery of a nineteen-year-old boy."

It was so quiet, that the cameras caught the ticking of a clock on the wall. "Clause 3 is about trying to get Onus back into the eyes of law enforcement. For too long, the EO's have had sole responsibility. The EO's are strictly for regulation of the Onus themselves. They are corrupt, unregulated, and abusive. All of those have been documented." He pressed his clicker several times. Pictures of Onus getting beaten in the streets. "And they do nothing to protect their charges. Full humans have been able to assault, kidnap, and even murder Onus without getting charged at all, much less charged on an equivalent basis to crimes of the same nature against full humans."

"Clause 3 is about integrating the EO's into the regular police, stricter sentencing for crimes against Onus, allowing Onus to have jury duty, and to be taken as credible witnesses in a court of law. To give them a voice. To recognize them."

He clicked to the next image. It was a three-story building, run-down, with several broken windows, scrawled with graffiti. Surrounded by a tall chain-link fence crowned with razor wire, with several familiar signs on the outside. Blank white faces, with dead black eyes.

"This is a picture of the North Central Onii. It has cold running water and the heat is kept running to a maximum of fifty degrees. It has sixty rooms, that hold about eight people on average. It has indoor plumbing, eight rooms to every bathroom stall." He pressed the clicker a few more times. A picture of ten Onus women, huddled in a single room together. Four squeezed on the bed, more on the floor, all staring at the cameraman. A line for the bathroom, many of them holding plastic bottles or empty milk jugs. Two Onus men trying to put up a blanket over a broken window.

"This is currently the largest and best-run Onus facility. Every night, there is a massive line of Onus trying to get in. Most facilities are more like this." More pictures. Empty lots with trashfires, piles of filthy bedding, an Onus woman cringing from a snarling dog at the end of an EO's leash.

"Clause four of the Onus Recognition Act is to create a census of all Onus individuals in the United States. And to divert funds to rebuilding and maintaining the Onii."

"Back to how I started. This is not a bill of rights. It is nothing as advanced. The Onus Recognition act is a long-overdue first measure. Basic rights. Rights to shelter, charity, and help from authorities. Recognition by the law. For too long, we have treated the Onus like an infestation."

He was becoming emotional. It made his speech impediment worse. I leaned forward, my eyes burning. I felt like every eye in that room was on me, as well as him. 

"They are half human. They had no say in their birth. And it is time for us to recognize our children."

He stepped down. To scattered applause, and a lot of whispering.

I buried my face in the pillow for a long minute, and I couldn't hear what any of them were saying.

When I looked back up, a woman was speaking, but I didn't care about her. I wanted to check the other news stations. I wanted to see more of him. More of Sam.

I flipped past a sport channel, a cooking show, and then a news show. I was excited when I saw a still from Sam's speech in the upper right hand corner, but after a few seconds, my excitement withered up, and the joy in my chest went sour.

"Who the hell does this freak think he's fooling?" I didn't recognize the man. He had a flushed red complextion and thinning grey hair. His face was heavy and pallid. His eyes beady and dark. "Yeah, I call him a freak. It's what we call the Onus, and he wants to be like them so much it's painful to watch."

"He wants to give to the world's largest population of murderers and thieves. The US has been the kindest country to Onus. We have the largest population of them. Precisely because we were giving them charity. We let them live and grow up in our cities. We gave them food and homes, even after murdering half of the world's fertile women. How did they repay us?




Onus 06



A line graph. I couldn't see it through a scrim of angry tears. "By becoming the most criminal group in America!. Onus fill the streets like detritus, stealing, loitering, begging, assaulting who they can get away with, and Desta has the goddamn nerve to try and push this cancer of a bill through barely a month after the Detroit Massacre. Twenty-eight humans dead by the hands of Onus thugs.

The shouting man had a partner. A younger thinner man with wire-rim glasses and lines around his mouth. "It would have been bad timing whenever, Roger, the crimes from the Onus community have always been constant. The last time they were as low as the crime rates from the regular population is when they were all under twelve years old. Just five months ago, there was that crime spree in Colorado..."

"Exactly my point Jenk. And this lunatic doctor wants them walking among us. He wants them serving our food, teaching our children, infecting our hospitals."

Jenks let out a low laugh. "At least it's not like they could have gotten a worse spokesman than 'Doctor' Desta." He started mocking Sam. Thickening and imitating his small speech impediment until it became a brogue. The other man was laughing. His face was so red and shiny, the skin almost translucent, like a tomato close to bursting.

I fumbled with the remote, finally managing to turn the TV off with my shaking hands.

I slowly brought my knees up to hug them. I clenched my wrists in my hands as hard as I could. I felt a buzzing in my ears. A ringing. Was it just the blood going through my ears? Was my heart beating that hard? It felt like it. It felt like I could feel my temples pulsing.

"No." I mouthed, not making a sound. "No. Don't. Don't."

My wrists hurt from how tight I grasped them. I felt the plastic of my walking boots clack as they were pressed together. It hurt, but I couldn't let go of my arms. I had to hold on.

The thin noise in my ears wouldn't go away. Neither would the pulsing. I moaned softly and let go of my wrists. My right hand was in my mouth and I bit down, stopping just before drawing blood. I whimpered a little, muffling the sounds on the webbing between my thumb and index finger.

I had a callus. The buzzing didn't go away until I broke that callus. Until my hand stung and I tasted blood.

I looked down at my forearms. At my freak-white bite-stippled skin. The red oozing out. Red and white. Red and fucking white.

I could feel my mouth trembling. I was so angry with them. Those men. I wished that they were bleeding. The fat one was so red he probably wouldn't notice if not for the pain.

I wanted to do it again. When I was with the ordinary man, I never bit myself only once.

I shook my head so vigorously that my hair flopped back and forth and my neck hurt. "No!" This time I whispered it.

The second time, it was easier to listen to myself. By the time I clopped myself to the kitchen to wash my hand in the sink, I didn't want to bite myself at all.

I told myself.

--

I could hear the door lock clicking, and when I glanced at the wall clock, it was about eight. I shakily stood up from the couch. My legs felt wobbly. My chest felt hot and achy. I must have been getting sick.

I waited for the door to open. He shouldered in. The wind was howling outside, his coat was crusted with snow, even though he had just left his car. He was carrying a large grease-spotted brown bag.

He shut the door behind him. His back was facing me. My face flushed. I suddenly felt stupid. Just waiting here for him. How pathetic did that look? Like a dog running to the door when master comes home. My chest, under my arms, my groin, all felt swampy and hot, but suddenly I shuddered. I was cold with unease. I twisted the long baggy shirt around my right hand, hiding it from him.

I took a step backwards, then I had to grab the back of the couch to keep my balance. The walking boots were so clumsy. I still wasn't very good at walking in them.

He slipped the coat off and turned around. He jumped when he saw me. Startled. He had high red patches on his cheeks from the cold wind. He smiled when he saw me. "Wasn't expecting you." He said softly. "It's hard to get used to someone at home. Did you see the speech?"

My throat felt swollen up. I opened my mouth, but nothing would come out. Making me flush darker yet. I leaned against the couch back. I felt like if I let go, I would flop down to the floor. I only nodded. Cold air emanated from the foyer, and I realized I was still only wearing a sleeping shirt and a pair of boxers.

His smile was slipping a little. He seemed concerned. "Are you in pain? I have some pain pills with me, could you tell me when you dosed yourself last? It's not good to have them too close together." He took two small steps towards me, hesitating where he stood. He had snow crusted onto his boots. Making small piles of slush on the floorboards. Melting into dirty puddles. His good eye was brown and warm and worried about me.

He had developed the Kinicke treatments.

He had spoken for me.

I tried to say how grateful I was. How much I thanked him. But my stupid throat felt swollen shut. My eyes felt hot.

I did something else.

I felt like I was a stranger in my own body when I stepped forward. Towards him. He looked just as surprised as I felt. I closed my eyes.

His chest was surprisingly slim.

My arms crossed at the wrists. behind his shoulders. He was warm. His sweater smelled like him and detergent. I could hear the thump-thump of his heart below his sweater and below his skin. Feel it thump faster and faster. I was doing that to him, I realized.

For a split second, the shock of his body in my arms was almost enough to make me let go. To run. But after the moment passed, I only squeezed tighter. My chest felt hot and tight.

He carefully put his hands on my shoulders, then he draped one arm around my back. I could feel the heavy heat of the paper bag against my back. "I... I guess you watched it then." His voice was soft, and kind, if surprised. I didn't want to let go. I didn't want him to see the way my eyes were leaking.

We stood in the foyer for a long time.

--

He gently untangled me and I wiped my eyes, embarrassed and looking at the floor. "I was going to bring some supplies to the clinic, but first I wanted to have dinner with you. I brought some chinese?

My head was still swimming. There was something confusing and intoxicating about how hugging him had made me feel. I shrugged my shoulders and nodded. Now that I was less distracted, I could smell the hot greasy food from the bag and it was making my stomach grumble.

He sounded so calm, as if nothing had happened, but I was still a little shaken up. I had hugged him. Squeezed him. It had felt so nice. I wanted to say something but I didn't know what to say and I felt so flushed and embarrassed.

I didn't know what to feel.

I clumped over to the table on my walking boots and sat down while he pulled some sodas from the fridge. I reached and put my fingertips against the stained paper bag. Tasting the grease and the salt. My mouth watered and my stomach cramped up.

"Open it up, if...if you want to." His speech was a little slower and clumsier than usual. I stole a glance at him from the corner of my eye, and he didn't look quite as calm as he seemed. He kept staring at me and back at the fridge. He seemed nervous. I wondered if it was because of me, or the speech, or something else.

--

He did a lot of the heavy lifting. I helped him when I could. My boots made the trip up and down the stairs overlong and unbalanced. My sensitivity to the cold made trips to the car impractical.

We brought down the boxes and boxes of supplies from the storage room. Me, at my own pace. Disinfectant and insulin and IV bags of saline. The saline boxes were the heaviest. The hypodermic needles were the lightest.

I had a wide-tipped red marker, and Sam told me to check inside each box, and write the number of units, as well as what was in the box.

16 liters, Saline IV fluid. I wrote. The marker squeaked. 1 oz bars of soap, 116 count. Boxes of latex gloves, 112 per box, 36 boxes. I tried to make my letters as big and neat and square as I could.

Once he had moved all of the boxes into the foyer, he started taking trips outside. While I finished labeling. I saw a flash of bright yellowish headlights in the windows. The car we had driven had blue-toned headlights. I peeked out the window and saw him driving a different vehicle out of a low barn that I hadn't been able to see from the upper floors. This was a big white van, with enough room to actually carry all of our boxes.

"Part of why I had to sneak you into the hospital." He murmured while I helped to stack a box on top of the other boxes in his arms. "My field hospital was burnt down. But I have a new one, and this first batch of supplies is mostly for the new location."

I caught the emphasis, but not the significance.

He never asked if I wanted to go outright. But around nine, I bundled up and clopped through the bitter-cold snow to jump into the passenger seat of the big white van. I carried a large box of surgical dressings on my lap. My feet rested on a soft bulk-sized package of sanitary napkins. The back was stuffed with boxes, save for a narrow gap so he could see through the rear window.

The heat was roaring. We started to move and I jumped a little at the engine sound. The blue car was almost silent, the white van, less so.

The day of my surgery, I had been sick, and scared and tired. Today seemed different.

His patch was facing me. I could see just a hint of his long eyelashes past the bridge of his nose. I looked at it out of the corner of my eyes. It was advantage that Onus had. You could never tell if one of us was looking directly at you or not. I had learned that full-humans got angry, or uncomfortable if I didn't face them directly when speaking.

They thought our eyes were emotionless. Dishonest.

Sam had his blind side facing me. When he glanced to look at me, I knew it beyond a shadow of doubt.

He smiled a little. "Do you want to listen to the radio? You can pick the station."

I fiddled with the old plastic controls, different than what I was used to. As I was scanning the stations, I felt him looking at me. I felt a sudden heady rush of blood to my head. I felt almost dizzy.

My fingertips were shaking a little. I left it on the station. The classical station that had given me my first music.

--

"I... I did something bad."

The land was mesmerizing, just watching it pass out the window. It took a moment to register his words. I sat up, and faced him. He had to keep turning his head. Turning to glance at me with his sad brown eye. Back to the road.

I wasn't afraid. I don't know why I wasn't afraid. His voice was taut with anxiety. His speech stiff and awkward because of it. I should have been afraid. It felt reckless not to be afraid.

"During the speech. For clause three. I..."

I realized why I wasn't afraid. He sounded afraid. Of me. I could barely wrap my mind around that concept, but I wasn't afraid.

He let out a long painful sigh, as if frustrated at how his voice failed him. I felt an instant rush of sympathy.

"I shouldn't have used that picture." He got the last phrase off of his chest in a quick rush of breath. I could see his knuckles whiten on the steering wheel. He wasn't turning his head to look at me. He was afraid. Afraid that I would be angry with him.

My throat felt thick. I wasn't angry. I wasn't sure what I was feeling. All I knew was that it was good.

I felt my mouth curl up a little bit. I carefully reached over and touched his sleeve. His hand was on the wheel, so I touched gentle, slow.

"... 'S'okay." I whispered. I bit my lip for a second, this was important. He had to know. I had to tell him right, without wasting words.

He was about to talk, but he shut up when I started. He knew how hard it was for me. The headlights of the car lit up the cauls of fine white powder, snaking across the hard white snow-pack of the road.

"Was scared before." I mumbled. "But after... After the speech..." I shook my head, and smiled at him. 

"I wasn't."

He turned his head back to the road, smiling. And we were both speechless for a small time.

It was hard to tell from the dashboard lights, but I thought I saw his eye gleaming.

--

We got into the city. The city proper. Into the slums.

There was a small section where five separate Onii were within a mile of each other. I had never slept in these Onii, but I recognized them. The trash, crude or makeshift shelters, long lines for water.

But now I saw something else. Something new.

A long white RV-type vehicle was sitting on a curb. One of the side panels opened, like a food truck, and a line of Onus, almost a hundred long was wending down the sidewalk. A smaller line was waiting by a door into the vehicle. The long line seemed to be moving quickly. The small line, not much at all.

"My field hospital was excellent." The bitterness in his voice made me feel his anger. "Now, we have a mobile one. Right now, my associates are giving emergency medical care that Onus can't really get anywhere else. A few will need surgery, a few always do. We have to perform those during the day, before curfew. The Mobile is only allowed inside the Oniis until midnight. We pick a different one every night."

He brooded for a moment, but then a he put a determined smile on his face. He held up a box of bandages. "Are you ready?"

I looked out at the line of Onus. Men and women, wearing dirty layers of clothes as protection against the cold. I saw several bundles against a fence. The clothed ones were sleeping. The naked ones were dead, their clothes scavenged to the last stitch. 

They all looked so small.

I nodded.

--

The inside of the Mobile was tight, capable, and quiet.

Two full-human women, doctors or nurses, I wasn't sure, were manning two small stations. The black woman was shining a small flashlight into an Onus man's mouth. The man had missing teeth, and the few remaining were badly rotted. The look in his eyes was feverish and pained and grateful.

The Caucasian woman was asking an Onus woman questions, and writing things down on a chart. As I watched she stood up, whirled a curtain around the both of them, making a small private space. Through the thin curtain, I could see a shadow-woman taking off her clothes.

Sam and I had slipped in through a nearly seamless door in the back. "I can start taking patients." He murmured. I glanced at him, startled. His voice sounded smooth and businesslike. His impediment all but gone.

The black doctor looked up and smiled hugely. "Santa Desta, you're here. Did you bring me any presents this time?

I could see lines of strain around her mouth and forehead. She glanced at me, but the smile didn't slip.

Sam was unfolding a third bench from the wall. Setting up his own station. "We could have the security start bringing supplies from my van. Celine got her hands on a practical goldmine of Lidocaine, we'll have the stuff coming out of our ears, and she got twenty units of whole O- blood from the North Central Onii. Charlie and his gang have gathered more non-medical supplies. Camping blankets, socks, chemical handwarmers, clothes, menstrual supplies. Sami said that financial donations stopped trickling and started pouring today."

I felt a little bewildered. Not in a bad way.

Sam leaned out of the door. "I can help who's next?"

He helped a young Onus woman up. She was holding a dirty wad of cloth over her eye, and looking up at Sam like she had caught a glimpse of the face of God.

They found a place for me, in the tiny Mobile. Near the side window where another volunteer was distributing care packages to the long line. I helped to assemble them, and that freed another volunteer to help bring in more supplies.

The volunteer was a college kid with glasses, a heavy gut, and a shaved blonde head. He smiled a lot, and talked in my ear about some project they were working on. A trade school, for Onus who had been misplaced and undereducated their whole lives.

I listened to half of it. Nodding, putting together the simple elements for the packages. Food bars, soap, rain ponchos, foil body-heat blankets that folded to the size of a book of stamps. For women, I added a handful of sanitary napkins. For a limited number, we could give out OTC medications, from a dwindling bucket of samples.

The Onus were mostly as silent as I was. They were scared and mistrusting, most of them. Like half-feral dogs. Maybe one in five said thank you. Some snatched the care packages away from the volunteer, like they were afraid it would be taken away.

--

The EOs didn't talk to us. They just banged on the side of the Mobile with clubs, and all the Onus in line scattered, fleeing to the crude shelters that filled most of the Onii.

I sat up and my back creaked in protest. I had been sitting here for hours, only rising occasionally to grab a new big box of soap, or food bars. The time had just flown.

The volunteers were working to break up and store away the parts of the Mobile. Almost all of the supplies were taken out of it, given to Elise, the exhausted-looking doctor. She who could grin with pain in her eyes, and call him Santa.

"I'm glad you've been feeling a little better." Sam murmured to me. "You helped us a lot, and these are busy times." He grinned. "Things are really changing. For the first time. It's too late, and too little, but we can't waste a moment."

I nodded. We were walking to Elise's minivan with a small gaggle of volunteers. I was walking slowly in my boot-casts, carrying a half-empty box of disinfectant. I gestured with the box towards the van. Asking the question with my eyes and my shrugging shoulders.

"We can't leave the supplies in the Mobile. It's cheaper than the field hospital, and we can move it from night to night. But if it gets destroyed like my last facility, I want to at least not lose the supplies."

I shivered. I was sick and tired of the cold. It was very late. I felt a jolt to my stomach. I was going into a warm van. Back to a house that was more like a mansion. All the Onus that we had helped. They would be curled up under body heat blankets and ponchos, eating our protein bars, but still shivering out in the Onii. Sick, cold, afraid.

The thought had a bittersweet dissonance to it. I felt like a stranger, in my own life.

I set my box down, and slipped on a patch of muddy ice. Suddenly I was breathless, on the ground, with a fierce stinging from where I had landed heavily on my left hip. My air came out of me in a startled whoosh.

For two beats, I lay, frozen, waiting for a deeper pain to sink it's teeth, but it didn't come. I had landed awkward, but I had taken some of the fall with my arms. At least I hadn't dropped or broken anything.

"Jesus, are you okay?"

He was on his knees in less than a second. His boxes carelessly cast aside on the dirty icy ground. His hands were hovering, and his words with distorted with distress and worry.

I was surrounded by people. I was flushed and stinging so I just popped a quick thumbs-up with my gloved hand. Nuzzling down into my scarf to hide my face. Sam's gloved hands hovered for a second more, so I took them, to help me stand.

I hesitated when I was up, feeling off balance. I was very close to him, still holding his hands for support. I leaned into him for a second, to regain my balance. The wind blew a hard edge against us, and a wide bank of lights for the Onii faded into darkness.

I stayed against him for as long as it took my eyes to adjust. All of his friends were watching him. His peers. He didn't say a word to them.




Onus 06



"Home?" I whispered. The fabric of his coat was rough against my lip.

He nodded. I turned and started walking towards the van. Confident that he was one step behind me.

--

His hand was very gentle on my upper arm. I blinked, and the dashboard steadied and sharpened. We were in front of the house. Surrounded by skeletal trees and under a crust of stars. The heat from the dashboard was heavy and stupefying. 

"How is your leg?" He asked me. It wasn't snowing outside. It was perfectly clear. I gave him a thumbs up. My hip was a little sore, but the fall hadn't hurt me.

"It's pretty slippery out there. I'll come to the door, be your crutch."

He slipped out of the driver's side. I was under layers of jackets and sweatshirts, in a heated car, and I still shivered at the draft that came in through his side. He helped me to stand. My feet slipped, but I was clutching his arms for support, so I stayed upright. I held on tight. Fingertips digging into the meat of his upper arms. Face buried in his jacket to stay away from the wind.

We scurried to the house. As soon as the door was closed, I could feel the warmth of the house. The emptiness of it. It was late. Nearly one in the morning. I heard Sam yawn behind me. He had a long day. A long day of fighting. For me, for my kind.

"H—ah—how's you're level of pain? I can give you one more tablet today" He unstrung his scarf and hung it on a hook. I shrugged out of his heavy coat. I tried to hang the coat, but the hooks were high above my head and I almost lost my balance trying to tip-toe on my stiff walking boots. "I can get that..."

"Please." I whispered, hoarsely. Now that I was standing again, my feet were aching from all the walking.

I sat at the table, rubbing the sleep from my eyes.

"Shiloh?" I flinched, and looked up. He was holding a green glass bottle. "I... I was going to have a glass of wine before I went to bed. Did you want one?"

He was sad that I flinched. I could tell by the way he looked at me. I felt guilty. He hadn't hurt me. Not once. But I was so...

I nodded. I had never tasted wine. Never tasted any kind of alcohol.

He did one better than a glass of wine. He sliced a few apples with a paring knife, so quick and efficient that I was a little mesmerized by how fast he dismantled them. He saw me watching, and smiled. "The glasses are in the cabinet behind you."

The stems of the glasses looked so delicate. I looked down at my hands. I didn't have nimble steady hands like Sam. When I held my hands flat they shook. I was very careful with the glasses. I moved slow and set them on the table deliberately.

Sam brought the bottle and plate to the table. He had added a wedge of chalk-white cheese and a tube of crackers to the plate.

He filled our glasses. I could smell the wine right away. It was almost overpowering. A purple fruit-smell that practically clawed it's way up my nose. I could taste it on the air when I opened my mouth and inhaled air over my sensitive grey tongue.

I felt him watching, but I did it anyway. I carefully dipped my fingertip into the wine glass.

When the sensory patch on my fingertip was hovering above the wine I could take in the strong purple smell. The wine was so dark that it was only red at the meniscus. When I actually touched the wine, I wasn't quite sure that I liked the taste, but I was sure that I didn't dislike it. I took a sip, holding the glass with both hands so I wouldn't drop it on accident.

I covered my mouth with my hands so I wouldn't stick my tongue out. The wine was burny-tingly all over my mouth. But it wasn't a bad feeling. Just funny. I knew how to make a knot in my tongue, work the knot from root to tip to cleanse the burny-tingly spit away. I wanted to do it. But I couldn't do it with my mouth closed.

"That bad?" He asked, a little smile on his face. I shook my head, but the taste was clinging to my tongue, heavy and a little nauseating.

I gingerly got up, he started to rise, too. I shook my head and held up my hand tentatively. It felt wrong, wrong to do that. To tell him not to get up. I dropped my hand right away. "Back." I whispered hoarsely. "I'll c-come... back."

I clopped to the bathroom. As soon as I was out of sight I opened my mouth and watched my long grey tongue in the mirror. Long and grey and shiny, made of softer tissue than human tongues. It was smooth to the touch except for a double-line of darker buds on either side of the middle crease. Mucus glands. My tongue was much longer than a human's. When I stuck it out as far as I could, I could tap my Adam's apple, or the middle of my hairline with the pointed tip.

I stuck my tongue out so the tip hung below my chin, and I flexed the base of my tongue into a knot. The movement was reflexive, once I started to knot my tongue, I couldn't stop or speed up the way the knot slid down to the tip of my tongue.

A thick gob of pinkish mucus landed in the sink, and the burning sensation was gone. I put my tongue back in my mouth. I ran the water until the mucus slid down the drain.

I opened the door a crack, and hid. He was facing three quarters away from me. I could see the laces of his patch making horizontal parts in his short sandy hair. The black void of his patch was on my side. 

He glanced my way and I didn't think. I flinched back, slamming the door shut. As soon as I did, I mouthed 'stupid' and clutched my head in both hands. My heart jackhammered frantically in my chest and I felt flushed and angry. Angry at myself. I couldn't tell if I was angry for spying, or angry for being caught. Maybe a little of both.

I sighed and opened the door, hanging my head a little.

"Shy? Are you okay?"

I nodded, and finished clacking back to the dining table. I liked it when he said my name. Somehow, I liked it even more when he only used half of it.

I sat and took some apple slices. The taste of those was sweet and uncomplicated. Singing in my fingertips.

"Shiloh?" I looked up at him. "Were you just shedding your tongue lining?"

I suddenly felt naked. I flushed and looked down at the table, covering my face with my hands. He knew. It didn't matter that I had tried to hide my ugly eel-tongue from him.

"Hey, hey, shh. It's okay. Shy... If you ever need to slough your tongue, just do it. A healthy Onus is supposed to shed the lining about four times a day." I looked at him, startled. I had never heard anything like that. I could see sadness in his eye, and something like quiet rage was slipping into his voice. "I know what most humans say about your tongue. I know you're probably used to hiding it. If you ever want to taste the air, shed the lining, make silly faces, whatever, you can do it. You don't need to hide in the bathroom." He shrugged. "You can if you want, but it's important that you try and shed at least twice a day. It's just part of oral hygiene for Onus."

I took a bite of soft cheese on a cracker. After knotting my tongue, food always tasted better, my sense of smell sharpened. I took another sip of wine, and this time, the cloying taste didn't stick to my tongue like a stench. "Mmm."

"It's good? You like it?" When he said that, his face lit up, almost transformed. I liked it when he smiled. I nodded earnestly, taking another bite.

When the plate was reduced to a waxy rind and a spatter of crumbs, I decided to scrape together as many words as I could.

"sssSam?"

"Hm?"

"Tha... Thank you."

"Don't worry about it. You helped out at the Onii tonight, and I thought you might be hungry."

"For... Everything. Kini-Kin... Kinick-ke." I pointed to a spot on the table. "Food." Another spot, punctuating my gratitude. "For... " I felt my face crumple a little and I couldn't say anything else. My collection of words had scattered to the winds. I was so angry that I hit my forehead with the palm of my hand over and over again, my mouth screwed into an angry cut.

"No... No please, don't do that Shiloh." He didn't want to grab me, didn't want to physically restrain me. I was too upset. I crossed my arms tightly, tucking my hands into my armpits, and crying with frustration.

He stood and opened a drawer, looking back anxiously, watching me to make sure I didn't hit myself again. I followed him with my eyes. He came back with a pen and notepad.

"Here. Just use this, if the words wont come out."

I took the pen and wrote angrily. I could barely see the paper through my tears. When I blinked, I could see my angry pointy scrawl for a moment. I could see my bloodless knuckles tight on the pen.

'You saved my life, my mother, my mind, my kind. I can't even say thank you.'

I let go of the pen, and it rolled away from my loose hand. My breathing was slowing. My mouth and eyes went soft and relaxed. I let go of my arms and wiped my eyes with the heel of my hand.

"Well, now you can, Shy."

His hand was resting on the notepad, his fingers splayed under my frustration. I nodded, and tentatively reached out. His fingers were wider than mine, darker. He had fine golden hairs on the back of his hand, the back of his fingers. I wanted to see if they were soft.

He let me run a fingertip down his middle finger, from the smooth white bed of his fingernail, to the gentle blue-tinged ridge of a vein. I followed the vessel with my fingertip, feeling the thin coarse hairs. The vein branched, a tributary runneled down his thumb, another to the contour of his wrist.

When I followed his blood to his thumb, he reacted for the first time, turning his hand over slowly. I touched his palm with two fingers, then three. Sliding my fingertips over a valley of lifelines to the three crevasses between four digits.

His palm tasted like wine and soap and apples.

The gentleness of his fingers closing over mine was a balm.

--

I fell asleep in Pocky's room. I wrote a note for Sam, asking him to leave the door all the way open. He told me goodnight, and gently squeezed my hand.

Sleep evaded me. The green digital readout on my radio measured one hundred and seventy-three fragments of time before I gave up.

I turned off the hall light as I left Hippocrates' room. I closed the door behind me. It was dark, cut off from her heat lamp, but my eyes adjusted quickly.

The stairs creaked twice, but the house was very sturdy.

The house felt alive, but asleep. It made quiet sounds. Water and electricity and air. That was all any life form needed. The house was as alive as I was.

I shuffled my boots on the carpet so I wouldn't clop. I was barely breathing. I could hear the house breathing, the air humming through the vents, the faint buzzing of it's synapses, the gurgle of it's pipes. And as I crept closer, I could hear him breathing.

He wasn't snoring. Not quite. His breath did catch a little every time he inhaled. Nothing so vulgar as a snore.

The doorknob shocked me when I tried to touch it. The blue spark leapt from my finger to the cold metal with an audible snap. The tiny afterimage was burnt into my tired eyes.

It may have taken thirty seconds to open his door. It may have been closer to three or four minutes. Inching it open. Creeping it open. Freezing at every individual fraction of a creak.

I slipped through the gap.

The only light was the faint blue glow of his alarm clock. His soft rough breathing was slow and even. I could see the long hump of his body under the covers.

His mattress was memory foam. Not springs. I never would have dared, if the bed had been able to announce my presence.

I perched myself at the very edge of the bed, facing the door. I didn't cover myself with the blanket. I was as close to the edge as I could be without falling off.

I let his breathing lull me to sleep.

*****

*Round and round and round she goes

When will she post?

Nobody knows.

I keep my promises.*



Onus 07



C'mon y'all. I have a little song, sung to the tune of the William Tell Overture.

Ready?

I'm the worst I'm the worst I'm the worst worst worst

I'm the worst I'm the worst I'm the worst worst worst

I'm the worst I'm the worst I'm the worst worst worst

I'm the woooooooorst

I'm the worst worst worst.

That's a song I sing to myself more and more lately.

I seem to remember saying that I would have this chapter out by December.

First of February is close enough, right?

Right?

Oh well. Hopefully this opens up a little more of the world. I've written six chapters so far in Shiloh's perspective. Honestly, Sam needed to speak up.

All characters are 18+

-----------

He had a dream where his teeth fell out, one by one.

He touched his remaining teeth, trying to be sure of their solidity. Testing their roots. Each tooth gave with a sickening lack of resistance, but he couldn't stop. Wiggling them out with his fingertips, with his tongue.

When he touched his right cheek, the dream evaporated, and the tips of his fingers brushed against the same spongey scar tissue that had been there long as he could remember. His breath came out in a jagged little sigh. He hated that one.

Behind him, Shiloh made a soft noise. Sam held very still. So far as he could tell, the young Onus had started to sneak into his bedroom every night after he addressed the senate. After waiting for a long minute, Shiloh settled into a deeper sleep. Sam could hear his breathing get deeper and slower.

Sam wouldn't disturb that gentle breathing for anything.

--

He opened his eyes. His vision was clear out of his left eye, a dim grey blur from the right. He looked at the inside of his coverlet, at the sunlight needling through the quilting.

He almost rolled out of bed, but then he realized he wasn't alone. Shiloh was still breathing quietly behind him. He twitched the coverlets so he could get a glimpse at his alarm clock. It was nearly six thirty. In a minute or so, his alarm would ring. His visitor always left before the alarm.

Sam felt a smile pull at the corner of his mouth. Shy had overslept. He didn't want to force a confrontation, so he stretched and yawned, groaned once, and settled under the covers in a different position. He left himself a crack in his blanket nest so he could see.

Shiloh woke with a slight jerk. His hair was a sleep-mussed white halo. His black eyes were huge, almost perfectly round with a caught-out look. The younger man was visibly startled that he hadn't woken up on his own. Sam had bought him some new clothes, but Shy always slept in an old shirt of his. The neck-hole sagged, and even with his sleep-fuzzy left eye, Sam could see the cluster of shiny pink burns on his sternum. 

The young man carefully crept out of the bed, and slipped out of the room, closing the door ever-so-slowly behind him. If not for his walking casts, Shiloh might have been completely silent.

A handful of moments later, his alarm blared in his ear. He was slow to hit it. He lingered, putting his clothes on. Over his head, he could hear the plastic boots clicking on the hardwood of the hallway. He drowned it out by moving to the bathroom and playing his voicemails on speaker.

"Hey, Desta. It's me, Sami. You wont fucking believe this. Somebody dropped off two derelict bloodmobiles by the fourth district, earmarked for us. They had it soaped on the windows; 'For use by Our Children.' One of them has a shot transmission, and both need to have the insides gutted and refitted, but we're getting more and more volunteers. I'm thinking Pellagro could head one, the other is a toss up betw—"

The message cut abruptly, and Sam smiled as he scrubbed shaving cream over his cheeks, he waited for the second half of Sami's message.

"Fuck your message time, man. I think the second Mobile should be headed by either Stanton or Duvall. Good luck with Burns, I'll see you at two."

Shit. That was right. If Sam had his druthers, he would have spent all day, every day, in the Mobile, doing what he was best at. Instead, he had to beg funding from corporations. He ground his teeth slightly, and drew the safety razor over his smooth left cheek.

The voice on the third message was unfamiliar. "Dr. Samuel Desta? I got your number from Elise Pellagro. My name is Charlie Gould, and I've been working on a documentary for some time. I've got lots and lots of good footage, and I think that if we collaborated, we could do some really great things for the Onus community. I've been speaking with Elise, and I'm volunteering in the Mobile on the evening of the sixteenth. I can't wait to meet you."

The unfamiliar voice left a number, and Sam saved it with the touch of a button. He hadn't heard anything about a documentary. Either Gould was a student, or full of shit. But it was absolutely a lead worth following. Since speaking at the senate, donations had been pouring in, and support for the Onus Recognition Act was starting to gain momentum. If nothing else, Sam knew the power of publicity.

One last message. Shorter than all the rest.

"G-Good morning! S... Sam!"

He was looking in the mirror, carefully grooming the skin on the right side of his face that still grew facial hair. He was so surprised by Shiloh's voice that he dropped the razor. He stared at the phone for a moment. A female voice was droning, asking him if he wanted to save the message, delete it or-.

Sam saved the message. Shiloh must have called his phone during the night, left a message for morning. He felt a small point of warmth in his stomach. So much had changed. Changed from that first day. It almost felt surreal.

He looked at his bare ruined face in the mirror. "I'm doing the right thing." He said softly, out loud.

His reflection looked back at him, accusing. Even to his own ears, the statement rang false. How could he be doing the right thing?

His reflection shook it's head. Then why was there a lock in the tower? He imagined the words coming out of his reflection's mouth.

"He doesn't sleep there anymore. I wouldn't ever h-hurt him." He told his reflection. This time, it seemed to smirk. There was an insolent glint in his listing right eye.

He covered the right side with a clean silk patch, tying it behind his head. Cosmetic surgery had been an option for the last twenty years. He had considered it more times than he could count.

Even with the clouded eye hidden, his reflection grinned broadly. That is your real face. The smooth part, that's just a mask.

Sam closed his lips over his teeth, relaxing from his taut grimace of a smile. "Shut up."

--

Today was an important day. A suit-and-tie day. Sam left his pale blue shirt, silk tie, and grey suit coat folded over a chair for now. He stood at the stove top in a white strap-style undershirt and his suit pants. He felt flecks of bacon grease pelting his arms and the top of his chest.

Odd. After everything, that he still enjoyed bacon. He breaded some fresh red slices of tomato and dropped them into the grease with a satisfying hiss.

Over the crackle of the tomatoes, he could hear the soft creak of a door. There wasn't a good view of the second-floor bedrooms from the kitchen, so he stayed put, waiting for the soft click-clack of Shiloh's footsteps to draw near.

The entrance to the kitchen was on his blind side. He could hear click-clack-click, then silence. He resisted the urge to turn his head. He had spent most of his life overcorrecting for his weakened (or patched) right eye, but Shy... Shiloh needed a moment to scope out the room. The young Onus had earned his nickname many times over. Sam knew by now to let him initiate contact.

Shiloh rapped the cabinet with his knuckles, and Sam knew it was safe to look. He turned his head. The doctor in him quickly noticed that Shiloh was standing straighter than ever. It was good to see him walking with good posture. Not mincing, like his insides hurt.

"Morning, Shy." Shiloh flicked his face up before looking back at the floor. He had a hard time maintaining eye contact. But the young man smiled a little, flicking the tip of his grey tongue out to taste the air. "Smell good?" A slight nod, and Shiloh patted his stomach. His ward had a very hard time speaking, but he was very good at communicating.

"Help yourself, I'm almost done with the tomatoes. I'll join you in a minute."

Sam was not an imposing man. He stood all of five-foot-six, and he weighed maybe a hundred and fifty pounds soaking wet. Many Onus stood taller than him, not to mention full humans. But Shiloh was very small, even for an Onus. He flipped the tomatoes and watched Shiloh lean forward on the toes of his casts so he could reach a plate. His doctor's eye saw that Shiloh's hands were trembling more than usual this morning.

"Actually..." Shiloh halted instantaneously, looking at him. A week ago, he would have flinched. Progress? "Let me get that for you."

Sam's plates weren't made of glass. But the last time Shiloh dropped one it had made a loud clattering noise and startled Shiloh into one of his (thankfully rare) panic attacks. It had taken almost an hour for Sam to coax him out of his hiding place, the nearest bathroom. To convince him that he wasn't angry.

Sam put the finished tomatoes on a plate lined with paper towels. He forked two directly onto Shy's plate. He checked his watch, he wasn't expected at Generations for an hour and a half, yet. He piled his own plate high with scrambled eggs, bacon, and fried tomatoes.

Starting recently, with a few notable exceptions (soup, mainly) Shiloh ate almost exclusively with his hands. Distribution of olfactory receptors among Onus was maddeningly random. Sam wrote his thesis on Onus sensory organs before going on to research an immuno-booster for the mothers of Onus with the late Marion Kinicke.

Onus had eyes, they had ears, and noses, and tongues. But they also had patches of hypersensitive skin on their bodies that seemed to pull triple, or even quadruple duty. The patches always had bilateral symmetry, but remained unique from individual to individual. The unique sensory organs were referred to as SSO's (Squamous Sensory Organs), or light-sensitive derma in scientific company. In more common parlance, Sensory patches or Onus spots. Among certain social and political strata, the terms were... earthier. Snatchskin and Freakrash being the most popular.

Sam had already done a few simple tests, asked a few questions. Shiloh was one of the approximate 80% of Onus who could sense light with his SSO's. He was in a rarer sliver of the population that had more olfactory and taste receptors in his SSO's than he did in his tongue.

Sam watched him smile at picking up a slice of tomato, tasting it already. It was worth it. Worth getting up early and going through the trouble to cook. If only just to see Shiloh smile like that. After taking a small bite, the young man wiped his fingers and scrawled a quick note in one of his notebooks. He slid it across the table to Sam, so he could read it.

YUM. Shiloh made the letters blocky and three-dimensional, with little comic-book lines bursting away from them, for emphasis. In the upper right hand corner of the page, he had sketched Pocky, but crossed it out so Sam would know that YUM was the point of the exchange. It was a shame. The sketch was quite good.

"I wanted to give you another checkup this afternoon." Sam spoke between bites of egg. "It's been a few weeks since your surgery, and I just want to see how everything is going."

Shiloh glanced up at him, and Sam thought the young man's pale skin looked a little pink. Especially around the ears and high up on his neck. "You look a lot healthier, Shy. You've forgotten to take your pain pills a few times, walking easier. I could even get you into some lighter casts." Shiloh nodded hard enough that his clean white hair flopped into his eyes. He smiled with his teeth. It was a good thing to see. Shiloh's smiles had once been a very rare thing.

Now for the hard part. "I... ah. I also managed to pick up some things for you. You told me about your family doctor. I contacted him. He keeps good records, which is unusual for doctors who provide care for Onus. You were fairly up to date on your vaccines, but there are a few that you need to catch up on."

The look that came over Shiloh's face was enough to make him pause. Shiloh fiddled with the pen for a few long seconds. He started to write, and scribbled out his starts three times. Finally, he just scrawled and circled a large question mark.

"HPV, for one. You also haven't gotten the Tdap. That's tetanus, diphtheria, and pertussis. It also couldn't hurt for you to get a flu shot." He could hear his voice settling into professional rhythms. It was easier to speak as a doctor than as... than as whatever they were to each other. Sam knew he still had to try.

"I don't want you to do anything you hate, but—"

Shiloh was writing. Sam trailed off. Shiloh flipped the notebook towards him. He had excellent handwriting, but the lines were uneven and a bit smudged. Some days it was better, but today his hands were shaking too badly.

Sam could see Shiloh's half-starts, despite liberal scribbles.

Do I have

Why

Please don't

I don't have to like it.

"No, I guess not." Sam felt a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, but didn't give in. He slid the notebook back across the table.

Shiloh was a magnetic presence for Sam. Whenever the younger man was in the room, it was difficult to avert his eye. Some of it was just analytical, but not all of it.

Not even most of it.

He was fascinated by the structural beauty of Shiloh's cheekbones. Mesmerized by the way his skin was almost translucent in some light. He wanted to know how soft those lips would be against his skin. He wondered how it would feel, to have Shy's long sensitive tongue lick him all over. If he came over the patches on Shiloh's back, would he like the taste?

This wasn't a healthy way to think. No one knew that more than himself. He filled the silence with his words. Trying to get away from the worry-circle of his thoughts.

"I went through the emails you sent yesterday. You do some great work, sometimes Sami calls you my secretary."

Shiloh smiled and his cheeks flushed bright pink. The color on his pale face made him look like a china doll. He didn't reach for the notepad. He just made a gesture, a lazy beckoning with two fingers. go on.

Sam checked his watch. It was about that time. "I have to go now, but I want you to think about maybe doing that sort of work more... officially?"

Shiloh cocked his head.

"You never ask for anything. I could put you on Our Children's payroll. You could get some spending money—" Shiloh was vigorously shaking his head. He reached for the notepad.

"No, n-no, Sam." He stammered, and then slid the notebook over.

Every cent should go to the ones who NEED it.

I don't need anything.

Sam smiled wryly and got up. He washed his hands and buttoned his blue shirt. "Well, you can tell me if you ever change your mind about that. You help maintain the website, you know how many of my assets go to Our Children. I can afford it if you want something. Books, clothes, a pet?"

Shiloh cocked his head the other direction at the last offering. Sam laughed. "You're here alone all day. I feel bad. I don't have any pets other than Pocky because I'm not here to give them the attention they need."

Sam suddenly felt cold. It wasn't entirely true. He had one other pet. One he had bought and paid for. His fingers stiffened and fumbled, messing up the knot of his tie. His face felt hot.

Shiloh could sense the sudden change in mood, if not why. "Sa-am?" He whispered. He got up with awkward suddenness. Closed the distance between them with his graceless walk.

Onus had body hair. It was a common misconception that they didn't. Sam himself had studied the incredibly fine hairs on Shy's skin. It was so fine and short, that when the light dining room light lit him up from behind, his outline was softened. A literal silver lining. He didn't seem quite real. What was the word he was looking for? 

"Sorry, Shy. A goose walked over my grave." The nonsense saying brought a tentative smile to the younger man's face. Shy had a square face. The impression was given by his jutting cheekbones and wide jawline. His large eyes and hollow cheeks made him look waifish. But when he smiled, two deep dimples cut into his cheeks. His dark eyes practically lit up. The faint stress-lines at the corner of his eyes and the center of his forehead disappeared. He looked radiant. Lit up from within and without.

Sam slid into his suit jacket, and his heavier winter coat. The young Onus waited patiently. Rocking slightly on his casts. Sam knew what he was waiting for. The light from the dining room gilded his cheekbones with a faint silver corona. His silk-fine hair floated in a fine halo around his head.

The word he was looking for? He found it.

Ethereal.

"Come here." He said softly.

Shiloh had come to him once. The day after the address. Sam could still remember how the Onus had trembled with daring. Since then, he had to be invited. Otherwise he couldn't build up the courage.

Shiloh was more gentle now. He didn't grasp like he was drowning, and he needed to hold Sam to stay afloat. He tucked his head under Sam's chin and hummed quietly. "Hmmm." And gave Sam an extra little squeeze before unmooring himself. Sam was ever-so-slightly behind schedule. Shiloh's hugs were good 30-second affairs. But he wouldn't have interrupted one for the world.

"Buh-...B-" Sometimes Shiloh was able to salvage the words, sometimes they got away from him. This was one of those times. Sam could empathize with that. The sudden sadness and shame in Shiloh's eyes made his heart hurt.

Part of him just wanted to kiss him. To kiss the hurt little frown off of those soft pale lips.

The madness passed. Instead he murmured. "I have my cell. I'll text you if I get lucky." The invitation for Shiloh to text him was unspoken, but clear.

--

"Anyone else would have listened after the first ten times we said no. Why are you still here?"

The man was a glorified secretary. A young dark-skinned man with thick eyebrows that almost met above his nose. His white shirt was immaculate, whiter than Shiloh's skin. He was crammed into a tiny desk outside the elevator to Geoff Burns' office.

Sam made his face very still and stared at the young man without speaking. He knew the effect his face had on people. The not-quite-monobrowed secretary set his mouth in a hard line, visibly uncomfortable despite his anger. "Mr. Burns didn't make any time for your appointment. His schedule is very busy. Go bother a church if you want charity. We've said no..."

"I have heard no." Sam knew the trick to speaking softly. The trick was not to stop. "I've heard a no from you, I heard a no from several lower-level cogs looking for approval. I have not heard a no from Geoff Burns, or really any confirmation that he knows I am here. Until I hear that no, you haven't seen the last of me, Mr. Suresh." He gave the young man a bland confident smile that he didn't feel at all. "And besides. The Vatican insists that Onus are foretold in Revelations. No neighborly feelings from that quarter."

Suresh was starting to babble about calling security. Sam was distracted by the buzzing against his right thigh. One buzz, then done. He only knew one person who preferred to text him.

"Listen, Mr. Suresh. You can call security if y-you'd like." He felt his jaw tighten at the slip. "It isn't the first time, and it sure as hell wont be the last. But be prepared to look me in the eye tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that. If you truly know Geoff Burns better than I do, then just let me get my no from him, and I'll go quietly. You wont see me again."




Onus 07



Sam was a few inches shorter than the secretary. He knew he was not a physically imposing man. He hoped that his face would be enough. At that moment, he wanted to read the text in his pocket badly enough that he didn't care whether or not the secretary stepped down from his power-trip. He just wanted this pointless little interaction to be done with.

Suresh put a finger to his earpiece. "Mr. Burns, Samuel Desta is here to see you. He has been repelled from the building many times, but he's been persistent. Would you like me to have security escort him from the building?"

There was something monumentally satisfying about the way Suresh's face worked silently during the inaudible reply. Once, twice, thrice, the young man's face twitched. Each time in a new and interesting combination of fury, resentment, and fear.

"Go." The sound was guttural to the point of barely resembling human speech.

Sam decided not to press his luck. The other trick to speaking softly? Having the last word could be problematic. Pride was expendable.

As he stepped into the private elevator, he reached into his pocket to check his phone.

>This is ground control to major Sam. Have you made the grade?>

Sam felt laughter pressing up through his nose. He sent his own reply.



>Good thing ur a brick shithouse.>

The elevator let out a soft electric chime. The smile on his face felt wrong. He wasn't used to smiling this big. Shiloh's new cell phone had given him a voice, even a sense of humor. And Sam liked that voice.



>luckluckluck>

Sam slipped his cell phone into his left pocket just as the elevator opened. Geoffery Burns didn't believe in doing anything in a small way. The elevator emptied into a lobby of sorts. Deep red walls with rectangular panels cut in. White orchids grew from the blue glass of the vases tucked in each panel. The music was quiet, but not soft. Something heavy, full of grandeur, Wagner, or Tchaikovsky. The lights threw gently rippling shadows on the wall, reminiscent of water reflections.

The doors were made of some dark polished wood. They opened, but the person that slipped through was about as different from the CEO of Generations as it was possible to get. She was a practically Amazonian woman. A few ticks above six feet tall, showing long dark legs from under an ivory skirt that fell to four inches above her knee. Her hair was black, with streaks of bright artificial red through it, twisted into a bun with faux-ivory needles to hold it in place.

Her lips were shiny with some kind of gloss. She had a tablet in one hand and a tall glass in the other.

"Welcome to reception, Dr. Desta." The woman murmured. Her voice was a low purr, her words were welcoming, but barely inflected at all. "Unfortunately, though Geoff Burns has cleared some time for you in his schedule, he is currently in the middle of some urgent business."

She set the glass down on a low table. The table was a slab of polished geode, oblong, six feet in diameter at the widest point. Crystals the color of wine glinted in the rippling light of the room. Drops of condensation sweated from the cool glass. Sam weighed the possibility that Burns was actually tied up against the likelier possibility that he was being screwed with. He resisted the urge to check his phone. The room was elegant, and there were no obvious cameras. But he knew a ThirdEye security system when he saw one. He was being watched.

He found himself thinking of him. He thought about Shiloh a lot. The young Onus was like a sore in his mouth. He couldn't leave his thoughts of Shiloh alone, any more than he could stop worrying a sore with his tongue.

Last night, they had watched a movie together. Sam's only free time was quite late into the night, so Shy had struggled gamely to stay awake, resting one lazy hand in the bowl of buttery popcorn.

Midway through the film, while an animated dragon shed his skin, the sleepy young man had closed the gap between them on the couch. He was wrapped in a very thick comforter, his eyelids drooping, and he snuggled up under Sam's left arm.

Even through the thick quilted fabric, Sam could feel how light and sharp Shiloh's shoulderblades were. He reduced the volume with his right hand, while Shiloh rested his sharp cheekbone against Sam's chest. Within minutes, Shy had been asleep.

Sam took a long drink of the icy lemon water. It was bad manners to leave an offering like that untouched.

A few minutes after one, when the movie was almost over (yet long forgotten, by both parties, for different reasons) Shiloh had begun to stir. Not awake, not quite asleep. He moaned softly. His body twitched and stirred under the thick coverlet he was cocooned in. His brow was furrowed in a look of intense fear or concentration.

The heavy piece of music ceased, and gave way to a new one. Equally heavy, but more familiar. Beethoven's fifth symphony.

Sam felt his pocket buzz quietly. He clasped his hand over it, through the cloth of his pocket. What could it be? Shy was usually very good about not texting him during meetings. He knew how important this one was. So what was it?

Decorum notwithstanding, he took out his phone and swiped to get the message.

The double doors opened once more, just as he read the words.

>Call me 2 tell me what happens. I might not B able 2 answer, but I want 2 hear ur voice>

Sam slipped the phone in his pocket and stood in time to greet the CEO of Generations, one Geoffrey Artemis Burns II. He walked side by side with his tall elegant assistant. It was like comparing an elderly Shetland pony with a thoroughbred. One was above and beyond six feet, the other was barely clearing five. One had skin that was smooth and dark and tight. The other was a bundle of wrinkles, nearly as pale as an Onus. He certainly had the wispy white hair. His temples were blighted with liver spots.

The man had a handshake solid as houses, despite his frail stature. "I've only ever heard about you after the fact. My staff seem very eager to keep you from me."

There was no graceful way to respond to that. But Samuel Desta did his best. "Will your faithful staff be getting bonuses this Christmas? They play a g-good game of keep-away."

Burns had jaundiced eye-whites. It made him look like his irises were dissolving behind his square wire-rim glasses.

"That depends on the outcome of this meeting, I suppose." Burns cracked a smile full of jumbled age-yellowed teeth. "I can't say you haven't earned it."

Without ceremony, the elderly CEO turned around and Sam followed. The assistant seemed to disappear. One moment she was swaying elegantly behind them, the next minute, they were alone.

"Technically, the board should be here. I assume you have a good reason for trying to push us into a solo meeting." Burns sank into an oxblood leather chair. "You've gotten yourself this window. Let me see what you do with it."

The old man didn't have a hint of a smile on his face. He stared up at Sam over the rims of his glasses, his eyes bleeding into the whites. Sam could feel cold sweat trickling down his back. He had to step carefully.

"You know why I'm here. I have a reputation by this point, even before I spoke to the senate. You must have heard stories over me. Maybe over cigars and whiskey. Maybe on the news. The folks on channel forty are quite enamored with me."

Sam forced a smile, to show how little those 'comedians' affected him. He met the other man's gaze, but this time, his one-eyed stare seemed to be doing jack. Geoffrey Burns was a man that had moved up in the world, he knew how to stare down a man with the best of them.

For a long dreadful moment, Sam thought that he would have to keep talking. Burns showed no inclination of speaking, but after a painful half-moment that lasted an age, he picked up the slack reins of the conversation.

"The St. Anthony Baptist church started openly donating to Our Children. A hot weekend later, someone planted a pipe bomb. It was only through the grace of whatever that they happen to have a veteran in their congregation that was able to warn folks once he heard the ticking. That tech company with all the B's in it's name, they started donating openly, and their shares dropped from 45 dollars a pop to three fifty. You had a hard time giving those peanuts away."

Sam felt a bead of sweat down the center of his chest. "That was from earlier. After I addressed the senate, our anonymous donations have increased tenfold. We know that we need to protect our beneficiaries. It is one of our first priorities."

"And your first priority? Dr. Desta?"

There was an odd gentleness to the wizened man's words. Sam was wary of it. Far as he could tell, it had come from nowhere. He wondered if a lie would serve him better, or the truth.

After a fractured second of agonized thought, he went with the truest thing he knew. "Our first priority is in the name. To protect our children. Them. Like my sister."

It was the first time he had provoked any surprise from the old man. His wiry eyebrows, black where his wispy hair was white, flew like startled birds. Sam rode that surprise, grateful for it. Negotiating was so much easier when the other was uncertain. "We all have, or had them. It's not a question of whether or not the average person has an Onus relative. It's a question of how far they went to distance themselves."

The unspoken insinuation lingered in the air like incense.

The old man gestured to the second armchair. Samuel Desta had earned the right to sit.

"Distance themselves, eh?" The Amazonian assistant was suddenly, inexplicably there again, slipping through the double doors. This time, she had two cups with ice cradled in one hand, and a bottle of top-shelf bourbon in the other. Sam discreetly checked his watch. It was all of twenty-one minutes past nine. "Most folk 'distanced themselves' as soon as they saw red on their pregnancy test. Refresh me on the numbers from America, back in the good ol' days, when it was still fifty states, and we were still worried about overpopulation."

The sarcasm in the old man's voice could have corroded steel. Sam had a feeling Burns knew the numbers perfectly well, same as he did, but he obliged.

"Forty-six percent of American women aborted their Onus offspring within the first two months of pregnancy. Another twelve percent joined their ranks before the slew of births."

Burns let out a humorless laugh as the assistant poured several fingers of dark bourbon into each glass. "I was one of the baby boomers. If only our fathers and mothers had seen this boom." He made a twirling motion with two fingers. One that didn't need explaining. Go on those fingers said.

"Out of all of the Onus that were born in America, an estimated ten to forty percent didn't see their first birthday."

Sam took his glass, but didn't drink. Burns took a sip, and interjected.

"The dumpster babies."

Sam continued. "B-By that year, the h-ousing p-pr-ojects were standardized and required by each state." He took a shaky breath and a sip of the bourbon. It burned on the way down, but he didn't stutter again. "The bill that required housing for homeless Onus was drastically re-written. When our children collectively turned twelve, the communal houses were radically reduced. Feeding, clothing, medical care was no longer required. Just a place for them to sleep. Onii, they called them. Slums, I call them. Ghettos."

"When did your sister die?"

The question was flat. Geoffrey Burns drained his glass and held it up to his assistant for more.

"She probably is dead. But I wouldn't know. I had a great uncle, very wealthy. My mother's only family. He left me the house I live in, now. He offered to take my mother in, pay for my medical school, pay for corrective surgery and speech therapy for me..."

The other man finished his sentence.

"...But only if she would abandon your sister, is that it?"

Sam nodded. "The first time he offered, my sister was two, and I was sixteen. I was taking my first year of college and the bills were mounting up already. Mother still didn't relent for another three years."

Burns stared him down with melting eyes. He gave his assistant an imperceptible signal, and she was off again. "Did you know something my contemporaries don't? Or did you come to me out of intuition?"

Truth or a lie? Thought Sam. The truth had served him well enough.

"There are those who have suspected you for a while. Not all of your contemporaries. Only those in similar predicaments."

The man gave a short humorless laugh and threw back the rest of his glass. "The bleeding-hearts network, instead of the old-boys network. I like it. You probably have your fingers sunk in that network to the knuckles."

"The elbows, more like."

Another joyless bark. "Well, you've coughed up more than enough of your secrets. Time to get everything, everyone out on the table. Jane? This is the man from the TV."

The door opened behind him without his noticing, and when he turned around, the tall assistant had been joined by a small pale shadow. Jane had pale pink sensory patches on both of her cheeks. She was wearing heavily tinted sunglasses, and her white hair was cut into a neat white bob. She wore a blue checkered dress that made her skin look even more translucent. Her fingers were twisting and untwisting a blue silk handkerchief.

"His name is Dr. Sam Desta. His cure helped your mother live a few years longer than some of the others. Doctor? This is my granddaughter, Jane."

He stood to meet her, and she shyly proffered one hand. It was cold and slight, but she gripped him like she never wanted to let go. He could feel the slight dampness of the sensory patches on her fingertips and palm. 

He had never expected it to be so quick, so easy, once he penetrated the ranks. Geoffrey Burns had built himself a careful façade. Loving an Onus was, as he said, not good for business.

As if to underline his thought, Sam felt his phone buzz again.

"Desta? Tell me more about what measures you've taken to protect your beneficiaries." The man wiped his mouth. "And clear your schedule one of these evenings. I think Janey and I would love to have you for dinner sometime. Other than Jacinta and a few key others, we don't have much company."

--

When Sam was back in his car, in an underground lot, he felt something in his core finally unclench, and he leaned back into the seat, taking a deep breath and loosening his tie. He felt fragile. He still couldn't believe that it had worked.

Geoffrey had kept the meeting relatively short, and for appearances sake, security had escorted Sam from the building. Sam had to keep a devastated look on his face, while inside he tried to grapple with the numbers. Comprehend them.

He felt for his phone, and Shiloh's words greeted him.

>had a strange dream last nite. When we watched the movie? I'll try 2 tell u when u call. I DON'T want to text it to u>

He smiled down at the screen in his hand, called Shiloh's cell on speed-dial.

The phone clicked open on the second ring.

"Hah... Hell-o." Sam reclined in the front seat of his car. His cheeks hurt from smiling.

"Do you want to go first? Or should I tell you what happened?"

He could hear the soft sound of Shiloh's breathing. Then, "You. You fff-first."

Sam told him. Told him that they had a larger donor than ever before. That Burns donated more than their top five donors combined. That they had found a powerful, if 'closeted' new ally.

Sam could hear how happy Shiloh was for him. The young man punctuated his report with excited one-note laughs. Breathy, and sexy. His voice was low and husky from disuse. Sam felt guilty at the reaction his body had to that hoarse little voice. 

"Shy, you said you had a dream?" Sam felt vaguely helpless as he listened intently to the other end of the line. He could hear the young man's distressed breathing, as if the words were physically caught n his throat. Shiloh could communicate very well when he could supplement his words with gestures, and body language. When they were in person, he could use notes and drawings to get across whatever his mimicry couldn't. But over the phone...

"It was night." Shy managed to blurt the words out in a rush. 

Hearing Shiloh struggle reminded Sam of his own form of mutism. One that had been physical as well as psychological. It was harder to comfort Shy over the phone. He was cut off from his own repertoire of body language. He felt his own breath catch in his throat, an empathetic response. He knew better than to ask for clarification. He knew it would come. One way or another.

Sam could picture the young man on the other end of the line. Whenever Shy tried to speak, he would comb his fingers through his hair. The small worry-line between his eyebrows would crease. When he was reaching for a word, sometimes he would bite down on the first knuckle of either hand. Sam hoped that if he was biting, he was doing it gently. Shy had a tendency toward self-harm.

The near-silence stretched out. Despite himself, Sam was about to give Shiloh a gentle prompt when the young Onus came through on his own. "I could see all... all around me. Buh... Behind me, below, ab- above."

Sam could sense Shiloh's growing frustration. It was an emotion he was painfully familiar with. Most people didn't have to think about what they said. It was effortless for them. Their words were just a part of them, like their fingers, or their ears. Most people never seemed to realize how important their voice was. Unless it was broken, or gone.

"Lights." Shy managed to force out. He sounded tired. His voice was waning. Even on his best days, he couldn't find a lot of words. This wasn't one of his good days. "Sky was... burning." Sam flinched when Shiloh let out a frustrated little screech.

Sam checked his watch and made an executive decision. "Shy? What do you say I come home now? I have to be at the Mobile by two, but until then I'm free." That wasn't entirely the truth. But he was feeling reckless.

"Mm. Mm-hm." 

Sam turned the key in the ignition. "You should write down the dream. Lots of detail. I can read it when I get there. We can take care of your checkup, and then I'm yours."

"Good." Shiloh murmured. Already he sounded relieved. Sam hung up. He stayed in the parking lot for a few extra moments, flushed and slightly ashamed.

"I shouldn't be thinking about him this way." He whispered. He rubbed at the itchy scar tissue under his patch, and started listing the elements on the periodic table until his unruly erection went down.

Somewhere between Cadmium and Tin, things finally settled down, and he was able to pull out of the parking lot. It was time to go home.

--

As he pulled into his long driveway, he was thinking about needles, and Shiloh's genitals. He considered both subjects with considerable guilt.

He had a rather intimate knowledge of Shiloh's body. He had spent twenty-six minutes removing and cleaning ten badly infected piercings from the Onus' genitals and nipples. The rings had all been designed so they couldn't be taken out. The holes, even the well-healed ones had all been much bigger than they needed to be.

Given that, it was easy to understand why Shiloh hated needles. Now he had three vaccines on ice in a lunch bag, and he was not looking forward to administering them. He wished for the tenth time that he had thought to administer them at the hospital. He could have told Shiloh beforehand, taken care of them while he was unconscious.

He drew nearer to the overgrown mansion that his great uncle had designed. Thaddeus Montrose had hardly been an architect, and it showed. The house looked overgrown. Too many windows, too many rooms. The design was practically simplistic. More like he had been designing a hotel than an opulent house. Sam had thought about selling it more than once. The proceeds could have gone to Our Children. But every time, it came down to the location. Montrose's estate was in the middle of nowhere. And that was one of the best things about it, as far as Sam was concerned. The odd design and out-of-the-way locale made the mansion worth about a quarter of what had been sunk into it's construction.




Onus 07



Most of the windows were curtained. Shining and empty in the clouded light. On the ground floor, he could see yellow light, and the outline of somebody's head and shoulders. When he started pulling into the garage-barn, the outline disappeared.

Sam sat in his car for a moment after he pulled the keys from the ignition. He could hear the cold winds whipping around the corners of the barn. He could hear the buzz from the ceiling light. Thinking about the surgery, it made him think about the first time he saw Shiloh naked. That first night.

The thing that had struck him most was his eyes. He hadn't known Shiloh's name, but the hurt Onus had followed him with glassy leaking eyes, shivering convulsively. He was so frail. Nothing but a bundle of bones and bruise-mottled skin. His sensory patches hadn't been a healthy pink, but a diseased-looking grey.

So much had changed since that first day. Sam got out of his car and wrapped his coat more tightly around him for the short walk to the house. He tucked the insulated lunch-bag under his arm, and hoped that it's contents wouldn't change anything. He hoped that Shiloh wouldn't look at him with fear ever again.

The bare trees were dumping their loads of snow. Not because of warmth, but because of the harsh winds. The tops of the trees scraped the sky, like hands elongated in supplication. The wind flung them back and forth, scrabbling them against the side of the house. The sound was thin and high.

In vain, Sam searched the windows for a familiar silhouette.

Shy was waiting for him when he walked into the entryway. He was bundled up in an old crewneck sweatshirt of Sam's. And a pair of baggy cut-off sweatpants that didn't cover his walking casts. He hugged the legal pad to his chest, a pen twined between his fingers.

As soon as he made eye contact, Sam felt muscles in his shoulders relax. Muscles that he didn't even know had been tense. Shiloh mirrored his sudden smile. The smile transformed him, turned up the corners of his eyes. He had the deepest dimples of anyone Sam could think of. He closed the gap between them with clunking footsteps. Sam had time to open his arms, but it wasn't really his invitation. Shiloh had come to him.

"Thanks." Shy whispered. "For coming home." The words almost sounded normal. Like it wasn't so hard for Shiloh to find them.

"I... It's good to be home. When you're here, anyway." It felt sappy-sweet to say. But it elicited an extra squeeze from the young man in his arms.

What are we? Sam despaired.

Shiloh broke the hug and eagerly pushed the legal pad into Sam's hands. Just a glance told him that it wasn't a simple note. A third of the page was filled with painstakingly neat script. Shiloh had titled it.

A Strange Dream

"Can I sit down first?" Shiloh shrugged impatiently and clopped away to the couch. Something was important about this dream. If it was making Shy so impatient.

Sam was grateful for it. It was good to see him impatient. Good to see him roll his eyes at the gentle rebuke. Every joke, every sign of Shiloh's wry humor, or emerging confidence, was a good sign.

"Well, how about while I read it, you go to the scale in the laundry room. I can see you've put some meat on your bones, but I need the numbers."

Shiloh pooched out his stomach and cradled it in his hands. He made a face. Even when he strained, he couldn't make his stomach very big. He shuffled off to the stairs while Sam balanced the legal pad on his knee.

A Strange Dream

It's like I'm an eye. I'm a single point, but I can see in every direction at once. More than an eye, really. An eye can only see one little slice of 360 degrees. I see all the degrees. Only, even that isn't right. Because a two-dimensional circle has 360 degrees and I was in three dimensions. I could see every direction that there was, all at once. It was so bizarre. Like dreaming of a new color. I'm floating/flying/weightless. All around me, there was light. Like the northern lights. There were also stars. Incredible colors. Colors that I couldn't even begin to describe. I could see in every direction at once. I saw so many things, but I can hardly remember any of it. I remember a light that should have blinded me, all of me, but I just wanted to stare deeper into it. I felt like time was going a million years at a time. That's how fast the stars were moving all around me, if they were stars at all. I don't normally dream, but when I do it's nightmares. This was different. I know how it sounds. There's really not very much, but it felt so important while it was happening. 

I wish I could describe it better.

The tone of the piece was sheepish. Sam could sense it in Shiloh when he came back down the stairs. Shy wrote 92 on the corner of the legal pad, before abruptly sitting on the couch next to him. Shy's shoulders were a little hunched, and his hands were folded.

"Not quite time to start dieting. Not for another thirty-forty pounds at least. For now, the doctor's order is to stuff your face."

Shiloh's laugh was breathy and soft. He gently drove his fist into Sam's left shoulder. He mock-punched while Sam mock-flinched, dramatically thrown back by each blow. Shiloh's giggles doubled, trebled, went silent with intensity. He leaned into Sam while he remembered how to breathe. The sudden friendly gesture was definitely part of a trend. Shiloh was becoming far more comfortable, physically. He was actively seeking out contact.

Sam longed for every touch. Ached with guilt for wanting it so badly.

"I don't dream very often." Sam lied. "If I do, I must not remember them very well, or I forget them." Sam could feel Shiloh's breathing. Jagged and rapid at first. But steadying and slowing at his words. He was a very good listener, after all.

"You wrote that it wasn't like the nightmares. It's a strange dream, but is it good?" Sam could feel Shy's shoulders when he shrugged.

"S'not bad."

It just felt so natural to put his arm around Shiloh. The younger man tensed, ever so slightly, but then he leaned closer. This felt like new territory. Shy didn't like to be confined. Not by anything. Even when they hugged, Sam was careful never to lock his arms behind Shy's back. Yet here he was. Relaxing. Tucking his head under Sam's chin. No comforter between them. Breathing slow and shallow. In a moment of comfortable silence. 

It felt dangerous to break it. It also felt like there was no better time. "If you'd like, I can keep a notebook on my nightstand. If you have it again, you might be able to get more details while it's fresh."

Shiloh pulled away a little. They weren't pressed together, looking away, but facing each other. Sam felt like he could fall into those enormous black eyes. Shy's eyelashes were very long and white. When his eyes were half-closed, those lashes shuttered his eyes like blinds, but now they radiated out like pale rays. Shy's mouth was pale and tightly closed. Sam felt his shoulders wilting a little. Shiloh was cringing like a dog about to get hit. The young Onus was only able to keep eye contact for a few seconds, before hanging his head.

Sam hastily tried to pull his arm away, but Shiloh held his wrist with both hands, keeping his arm close.

"I'm a v-very light sleeper." Sam confessed. His face felt hot, his words filled his mouth like marbles. At that moment he wished more than anything that he could reverse time. Take back what he just said. Go back to that perfect silence.

"Sorry." Shy had lost his voice. He was only able to mouth the word. It broke Sam's heart to feel how he was shivering. "Do... Do you..."

With a frustrated moan, Shiloh snatched the pad. He scribbled his question down and shakily thrust the legal pad at Sam.

How long have you known?

"Well, I woke up and realized you were in the bed the night after you first came out and volunteered with Our Children. Shy, you don't have to be—"

Shiloh cut him off by writing furiously. Sam's hand started to slide off of his shoulder, and Shy adjusted it without thinking, shoving the pad in his face again. Shiloh stared at his knees, holding Sam's left hand with both of his. Holding it to his cheek, rocking slightly. 

The skin was hot and smooth against Sam's palm.

Do you want me to leave?

"Shy..." He wanted to repeat himself, if only so Shiloh would look at him. "You can sleep wherever you want. If you want to sleep in my bed, then that's—"

Cut off again. Sam was too grateful that Shy was gaining confidence to be annoyed.

NO. Not ME. Do YOU want me to leave?

Shiloh tucked his chin to his chest, unable to look him in the eye. He was biting his lip and swaying back and forth very slightly. He ran one hand through his hair, before firmly putting it in his lap. Sam realized that Shiloh knew all of his own nervous tics perfectly well.

And likely despised them.

Shy shook his head like he was irritated by an insect, and leaned hard against him, almost aggressively. Sam realized with faint astonishment that Shy was afraid of rejection. The realization evoked tenderness, and something else that was far more embarrassing.

It seemed to take forever just to open his mouth. Sam nervously licked his lips, surprised by how dry they were. A million possible ways to say what he had to say flashed through his mind. But he settled on the simplest answer. The simplest truth.

"No."

He took a deep breath just as all of Shiloh's air went out of him in a sigh. The answer was too short, he rushed to clarify, stuttering worse than he had in ages. "I...I w-wouldn't muh-mind... no, I want you to stay. You d-don't need to st-stay. You don't have to d-do anything. But... I like your company. I-I'd miss y-you if you went b-b-buh-back upstairs."

"Izzit okay?" Shiloh whispered, but he was already smiling. The corners of his mouth dug cute dimples into his cheeks.

This time, Sam's physical response wasn't so subtle. He felt his cock practically leap to attention, instead of twitching. He not-so-casually yanked his bag into his lap. He couldn't tell if Shy flicked his eyes down or not. Every once in a while, Shiloh's head movements seemed exaggerated. Sam suspected that not unlike his tics, Shy was very aware of how his eyes looked. Sam suspected that he knew how to use that undifferentiated look to his advantage.

Regardless, Shy didn't react to his clumsy evasion.

"Yeah." He laughed, feeling his cheeks flush. "B-better than okay, really."

"Good." Shiloh nodded, as if to underline himself. "Good. Should we..."

He gestured to Sam's lap, and for about five seconds too long, he stared stupidly at the young man. "Oh... Yes. The um... checkup. Let's get this show on the road."

Sam felt like his face was on fire, but Shy was smiling. Showing his teeth. He was embarrassed, but this wasn't like the agonizing stress of being out there. In the real world. Constantly feeling the pressure of stranger's eyes, hearing their hushed voices, the weight of the silence that followed him from room to room.

With Shiloh, he didn't feel like hiding. The embarrassment didn't hurt. Instead he felt like he was in on some fantastic joke, instead of being the butt of it. He felt goofy, giddy. 

Exhilarated.

Behind Shiloh's silvery hair, he could see the bank of windows. Nothing to see for miles except bare brown trees, a ribbon of empty road, so far away that the occasional car was noiseless in passing. It was snowing very lightly, or perhaps the wind was just kicking up a fine ice-dust. The air seemed to glitter in the lights from the house.

"Well, I guess we don't exactly... Exactly have to worry about scandalizing the n-neighbors." Shiloh covered a laugh behind his hand. Sam felt like if the corners of his mouth opened any wider, they would meet around the back of his head. His face hurt from smiling. He struggled to straighten his face, but it was impossible. "Your call. Upstairs, curtains, no curtains, whatever makes you comfortable."

Sam wanted to see how Shiloh's piercings were healing. Sam was expecting some hesitance, resistance, even fear. He knew that he could be outwardly professional with Shy's nudity, but he was sickened with how much he was looking forward to it. Inwardly he could think of nothing else but how much of a pervert he was. How predatory this felt, how monstrous.

So when Shiloh nodded and matter-of-factly squirmed out of his sweatshirt, Sam was barely ready for it. The Onus neatly folded the sweatshirt and started to untie the drawstring of his sweatpants before Sam gestured for him to stop.

"You can leave those on for now if it would, ah... be warmer." Sam wasn't feeling the cold much at all. He was sweating, but he didn't want to take of his own shirt. That, wouldn't feel right. To start stripping as Shiloh was...

Shy sat with his knees together, his feet slightly askew with the bulk of his casts. His hands slowly strangled each other in his lap, he watched them with his head bowed. Despite the young man's apparent nonchalance, Sam noted that his sensory patches on his upper back were flushed bright pink. Almost red. He wondered again, if Shy was looking at him. Using his undifferentiated eyes to peek.

Sam pulled on a pair of blue latex gloves. Shy didn't have any open wounds. The gloves were just a proxy, a tool for detachment, professionalism. He scooted a little closer on the couch. Was Shiloh shivering because of fear, or cold? Was he wringing his hands with worry, or just to still the ever-present tremble?

The young Onus turned to face him, and put his arms firmly at his sides as Sam reached out. His view was unobstructed.

Shy's skin was covered with faint yellow bruises, like coffee stains on his soft white skin. Especially around the left side of his ribcage. The initial x-rays had shown dozens of half-healed hairline fractures. He applied very gentle pressure with his thumb. "Tell me if this hurts."

Shiloh shrugged. "S'okay."

Sam took out the stethoscope slowly, handing the business end to Shiloh. "Can you put that on the right side of your chest? It's a little cold."

Shy warmed it in his hands, looking up at Sam in a rare moment of direct eye contact.

Shy's heartbeat seemed a tad fast. His breathing sounded much better. Deeper. Sam shifted position to better listen for crackles. He didn't think Shiloh had any fluid in his lungs, but he wanted to be sure.

"Breathe in deep... Hold it. Exhale. Again, hold it." His lungs were quiet, and he was breathing deeper than he had been able to since he came.

Despite warming it, and despite having it pressed against his chest, Shiloh still started a little bit when Sam pressed the drum of the stethoscope to his upper back, an inch or so below his sensory patches.

"Shy, does it bother you? When your clothes or your hair rubs against these patches?"

The younger man shrugged. "Used to it. Loose cotton... best." He ran fingers through his shoulder-length silky hair, and stared off like he was deep in thought. Sam waited for him to continue for a long minute, and was just about to ask him something else when Shy finally finished his thought. "Can you..."

He opened and closed his mouth silently for a second. Struggling. Then he lifted a hand and scissored his first and index finger.

"I cut my own hair. I'm no stylist, but I wont mangle it too badly. Now breathe deep as you can go."

Sam noticed some discoloration on Shy's pale nipples. He touched the skin just under with his thumb and pulled down to get a better look at the scabs.

The stethoscope was still pressed against Shy's back. He could hear the young man's heart stutter rapidly in response to the touch. Outwardly, he only twitched a little. Sam wanted to see if the scabs were loose. At the touch of his fingertip, the young man squeaked and flinched a little.

Sam hastily withdrew his hand. "Oh god, did I hurt you?" His voice cracked. Like he was a kid again.

Shy's cheeks were very pink. He silently shook his head.

Sam could feel some of that heat, as if Shy were transferring it. The young man was sensitive. He had overshot professionalism and directly into being obtuse.

"Oh. Oops. Um, I'm... sorry."

"S'okay." Shiloh whispered. Sam picked up Shiloh's sweater and offered it. "Sam?" Shiloh tucked his head and arms in the sweatshirt, fumbling for the neckhole.

"Yes?"

Shiloh stopped squirming inside the sweatshirt. He hesitated. Sam could see the crown of his head through the neckhole, but the young onus preferred to speak while his face was hidden.

"What happened?"

Shy's hand was so light on the side of his face. He felt the touch of the young man's fingers through the silk patch. Sam leaned into it, and Shiloh's hand relaxed, flattened. Cupping his scarred and pitted skin through under the thin silk.

He had been low-key dreading this moment since the very beginning. But when Shiloh finally asked the question, touching his left cheek, yet too shy to look him in the eye... 

He didn't feel any dread. Only lightening in his chest. And a sense of incredible tenderness for the young man who slept in his bed.

"When I was a child, I had a twin." Sam felt himself saying. It was so quiet. The falling snow muffled everything outside. He was surprised how easy it was to say it. How much he wanted to say it. Shy's hand on his face made it easier, somehow. He could feel it with every word. "When my brother and I were born, it bankrupted my parents. I had a split palate. A harelip. Not just a split lip like some kids with the defect. I had a big slit connecting my nasal cavity and mouth. My top gums were misshapen, the bone never developed properly in utero. Half of my nose was just a snotty hole. I had a hard time breathing when I was a baby. Could barely latch on. I needed dental surgeries before I even had teeth."

"Even when they fixed my upper jaw and palate, so I could suckle and breathe, they didn't have money for 'cosmetic' reconstructive surgery to fix the split lip. No money for speech therapy either. I hardly spoke at all when I was young. When Isaiah and I were four... There was an accident. My mother was making bacon. A lot of it, some people were coming over. I wanted to have some while mom wasn't looking, and I convinced Isaiah to help me."

He could feel how bitter the curve of his mouth was. He made sure to speak very slowly. So he wouldn't stutter. "I managed to knock it off the stove. The pan hit him on the head. I just got splashed. But he had a head injury and grease burns on forty percent of his body. He died in the hospital after a week and a half. My mother got left with... With the broken one."

When Sam quieted, he felt so empty. But then Shy adjusted the sweater with his hands. One large black eye peeked out. He met the young Onus eye-to-eye. "Well, you d-did ask." He knew his voice wasn't right to carry the joke. It was just a little too crooked, same with his smile.

Shiloh wanted to say something. He reached for the yellow paper pad. As he did, the collar of his sweatshirt fell down to his shoulders, his hair in a soft dandelion puff from the static. He wrote, and his hand seemed a little steadier, if anything. The skin under the patch felt cold, without the gentle heat of Shy's hand.

It wasn't your fault.

After the slightest of pauses, Shy was writing again. Sam held his tongue, unsure he could speak, even if he could think of what to say. Shy tilted the pad towards him. His eyes were gigantic, liquid.

Is it Isaiah? In the picture by your bed?

Sam touched the roof of his mouth with his tongue. Feeling the seam. "Yes." He reached out, held out his hand. Shy held it without hesitation. "She took pictures with both of us. I destroyed a lot of them when I was a teenager. It was so st-stupid. She was in all of those pictures, too. I have a few pictures of her when I was older. She died before the Kinicke treatments reached human trials. The only older pictures I have of her are the ones where she's with Isaiah."




Onus



---

COLD!

My head jerked up, my skin leaped into goosebumps, I snatched for my jacket, crying out at the draft of icy murderous cold on my bare upper body.

"Enjoy your nap, freak?"

I was still fumbling numbly with the cloth when he grabbed my upper arms and yanked me out into the freezing cold. I shrieked and squirmed. The snow was landing on my skin, burning the sensitive patches were the skin was soft and pink and unprotected. I broke away and I fell into snow that was soft and loose, crying out when my hands landed in the cold. Burning 

I looked up and it was dark. No city lights. No roads or skyscrapers or streetlights or cars or shops or pavement. Just a single narrow asphalt tendril, peeling away from a single two-lane road, leading to two buildings, with a single yellow porchlight between them. The porchlight was obscured by flying snow, turning it to a fuzzy gold corona.

We were in the country. I was further from the place I had been born, than I had ever been in my life.

"Mama." I moaned softly. Then one of the EO's grabbed my upper arms and yanked me away from the deep snow on either side of the narrow driveway. He marched me up the path, gripping my upper arms tight enough to make me whimper softly. Feel it even through the shock and numbing fear.

My eyes were closed, and my feet were dragging. Through my lids, I could feel the yellow porchlight getting brighter.

The door opened and we were inside. I breathed in the warmer air. The EO dropped me and I scrambled to my feet, trying to run inside, find a back door, get out.

I ran into a man that was built like a wall, who snatched me by my upper arm and my hair. I whimpered and stood still, so he wouldn't pull my hair. I tried to look around, but the lights were so bright that they hurt my eyes.

"Damn... You're really cleared out."

"Ayup. There was a chinaman who came through here. Bought my whole stock. Lemme see what you brought me here.

He put his finger under my chin and forced my face up. The lights were so bright. I kept my eyes closed, but I could dimly see his outline through my lids. See his silver hair and the gleam of his glasses.

"You been holding out on me, young man? Last two girls you brought me were nowhere near as pretty as this one. It's a shame there isn't a bigger market for young whelps like this. If he was a girl, I'd be able to sell him for maybe eighty thou. Take off his pants, I want to check something."

I struggled weakly when the EO came behind me and grabbed my sweatpants. He yanked them down while the man in front of me shook me like a disobedient dog. I whimpered and tried to hold my pants up with my hands.

I felt a chill draft on my upper thighs as he managed to yank down the sweatpants. All that was left were my badly stained briefs. I was ashamed at how dirty they were. I tried to keep them clean, but they were the only underwear that I had.

He made a low disgusted sound in the back of his throat while pulling down my underpants.

"Hold his arms... Goddamn, would you look at that."

The EO grabbed my wrists and yanked them behind my back. He kept his other hand on my hair, to hold me up and keep me whining and barely able to move. I felt a cold dry hand cupping my groin. I felt him pinch my penis hard between two fingers to move it aside. He squeezed and fondled my balls. I couldn't make a sound. The pure indignity of it had just shut me up. I let out a small squeak of pain when he patted my scrotum, jiggling the tender flesh.

"Ha, not a gelding, but a stud! I change my mind. This little stud still has all of his tackle. He has the vasectomy scar here, but still has his widdle nuts. Do you know how fucking hard it is to find one of the bug-eyes that still has it's junk?"

"I can imagine."

Tears were streaming down from my eyes. I tried to open them, the lights were still very harsh. I could see that we were in a barn, standing on concrete floor dusted here and there with straw. He had several large boxy horse stalls on either side of a narrow path. I could see a small door open, and a little well-lit office behind it. A large young man with a boiled-pink birthmark on his face was leaning against one of the stalls, eating corn-nuts from a bag. Staring at me was muddy emotionless eyes.

"Please." I whispered. "I... I wanna go home."

They ignored me. The grey-haired man with the glasses and the cold hard hands turned to the young man leaning against the wall. "Nelson? Get the new stock into one of the stalls. Give it a bath and some feed. I'm going to dicker for a bit."

Nelson got closer. He was massive, over six feet with a broad body hard with muscle and fat. Nelson grabbed me by the throat and manhandled me over to one of the stalls, my pants still tangled around my ankles. I was gasping and crying for air.

I greyed out for a few moments, from the stress and the fear and the lack of oxygen. When Nelson released his cruel grip on my throat, I looked around dumbly and I was in one of the stalls, sitting on the ground with a heavy metal chain around my wrists and Nelson yanking my sweatpants and shoes and socks away. I kicked at him, trying to get him away. I wanted to pull my pants up. I didn't want to be so naked.

He dug his thumb into the sensory patch on my lower shin. I squealed and stopped fighting, I let him take my pants away, cringing from him. It wasn't fair. It just wasn't fair.

He left the stall without closing the door. I weakly stood and walked towards the door, but my chain only let me go to the middle of the cell. I tried to work my hands out of the chain but it was too tight.

Nelson came back with a hose.

---

I felt so numb. Numb to the pain, to the cold. Numb to any emotion but misery.

I was shivering in the corner of a horse stall. Naked like an animal. My body red and raw from the powerful jets of the hose. Straw sticking to my legs and hair.

After shivering like a wet puppy in the corner, after crying weakly for what must have been an hour, Nelson came back.

I cowered against the wall. The only sound I could make was this weak frightened mewling under my breath. He threw in a blanket. It was a large pink blanket. Made of rough quilted wool. It was stained and frayed and stiff, in a strange shape. With odd clasps dangling from bits of it. I realized that it was an old horse blanket. But I didn't care. I reached for it and I wrapped it around my wet raw skin.

Then he took a shallow paper plate and walked in. As he walked in I cringed into the corner. I could see a smile on his dopey birth-marked face. He liked how afraid I was. He set the paper plate down in front of me, and I whimpered as he loomed over me.

He just grinned. He reached down for the plate. I saw that there was a meal on the plate. A real meal. White rice and some carrots and a greasy chicken leg. He took the chicken leg and took a big bite of it. Grease smearing out of his mouth. He was less than two feet away from me, eating my dinner while I cringed. Too cowed and afraid to do anything about it.

He stripped the chicken down before leaving with a smirk on his stupid face. I waited till he closed the door before falling on the dinner. Eating the rice and carrots with my fingers and picking scraps of chicken from that bone. Even the gristly bits. I gnawed the bone, sucking on it to get the flavor. Sucking and chewing on the bone was soothing. It soothed my frantic brain.

I realized that I was gnawing on the bone like a dog. That I was naked and chained up in a horse stall, with a filthy horse blanket sticking to my damp skin. I cried weakly, while sucking on the knob of the bone for grease.

I eventually fell asleep with the bone in my mouth.

---

"Up, Up."

I dragged my eyes open. I had barely been able to sleep, drifting in and out of consciousness all night. I stretched my long legs, looking at the bits of straw stuck to my skin. I folded them back under the horse blanket, wincing at the pops and crackles. The chain clinked as I clumsily wrapped the blanket tighter around myself.

The horse stall was made of wood for about five feet up. Where the wood ended, there were vertical iron bars up to the ceiling. I saw the older man's face appear between two of the iron bars, glancing down at me before using his keys to unlock the door. 

I was just glad that it wasn't Nelson.

He stepped into the stall. He was wearing a grey plaid shirt and jeans. He had brown work boots and was wearing gloves. The keys were in one hand. A long thin bamboo cane in the other. It had a wrapped leather handle, and it was thinner than my little finger.

He stood over me. Looking down at me with a thoughtful expression. I was about to try and speak, when he spoke over me.

"Hold out your arm."

I just did it. Without thinking. He brought the cane down with a flick of his wrist, not even swinging.

I let out a wounded yelp and drew my hand back. The skin wasn't broken, but raw and bright red. The pain was hot and throbbing. A darkening welt on the web of flesh between my thumb and forefinger.

"Did you see how I barely moved my arm? This particular toy is illegal to use on anyone under eighteen. Any more than twenty-four strokes. The law applies to humans of course. IF you disobey me, I will whale on you with this. Until I feel you have learned your lesson. I'm a very fair man, and if you are a good boy, that will be the only time my cane touches you here. Got it?"

I nodded, surprised tears gathered in the corners of my eyes.

He got down in the corner and unlocked the padlock that fastened the chain to the stall. The other end of the chain had been padlocked to a metal socket in the wall. A loop was around his wrist, so even when the cane wasn't in his hand, it was close.

"Get up and walk out of the stall in front of me."

---

When I was six years old, my mama tried to bring me to a fair.

At the time I didn't know, but the bulk of the Onus children were in government 'homes'. A place like a jail, overcrowded and filthy and low on resources.

She hid my white hair under a baseball cap. She rubbed spray tan all over my exposed arms and face and neck. I whined when some of the stuff got in my sensory patches, it felt caustic. She covered my unnatural eyes with sunglasses. I didn't mind, because the sun usually felt too bright to my eyes anyway.

The disguise was not very good. Spray tan was supposed to add a sheen of color over naturally pigmented skin. It just made my skin look an odd orangey-peach color, like a burnt doll. She hadn't been able to put any on or around my fingertips and palms. So we went to the fair, but to my confusion and dismay, we hadn't gone to any of the rides or games. We had just wandered around, my mama too afraid to get close to the attractions for fear of the ruse being discovered.

It was just around the time that early deaths of the mothers was being correlated to giving birth to Onus children.

I was having some fun anyway. She bought me cotton candy, and I was delighted with the fluffy sugar-rush that I could taste with my fingertips as well as my long sensitive tongue. Just being outside was a novel experience for me at that point.

Then we saw the ponies. Mama let me watch by the fence.

The ponies were bored and tired and thirsty in the intense heat. Four ponies tied to a metal contraption that went in circles. Being ridden by kids way too big for them.

One of the ponies made me jump up and down with excitement. It had a pure white coat, a white mane, and deep black eyes, with only a teeny white ring around the edge. The pony looked like me.

After seeing how excited I was, mama finally got in line with me, looking around nervously, terrified that someone would see through my disguise.

We got to the front of the line. I watched closely, and I thought that I would get to ride the white pony. I was bouncing with excitement.

I ran up to the pony when it was my turn. I wrapped my arms around his thick warm white neck. I nuzzled my cheek against it's short velvet coat.

The pony whickered softly into my ear.

"What the hell do you think you're trying to pull, lady!"

I let my tongue leave my mouth and I touched it to the side of the pony's neck. I wanted to taste him, taste the beautiful white-haired pony with eyes so like mine. Back then, I didn't have the inhibitions, the paralyzing fear and shame that I had now.

"That's one of the freaks. Get out of there, get that little monster away from my animals!"

I saw a mother dash into the ring and pull her child off of another pony. People were backing away from the ring. Someone threw a half-full can of soda at me. The soda splashed on me and the can knocked me on the side of my head. I cried with fear and ran to my mama. She gathered me in her arms. I could taste the sticky-sweet soda on my hands, on my sensory patches.

"Please." My mama begged. She was tired and frustrated and stiffening her shoulders. She could hear all of the bad things people were saying about us. "My boy just wants to ride the horse. Just one circle, and we'll go after. He wants this so bad. I'll pay you three times the admission... please."

I remember seeing a security guard getting closer. The man running the booth shouted at him. "This crazy bitch let an Onus brat touch one of my animals! Little freak was licking it!"

The security guard pulled out a pistol. The carny started to protest, and I screamed a moment before the man put the gun to the white pony's forehead and sent a bullet into it.

---

All of this flashed through my head in less than an instant. I was naked, walking in front of him, and we walked into an open space of the barn. The metal device, the leader, the circle, whatever it was called, it was in the center. A big metal cross that you could harness ponies or horses to, to give them exercise.

"Come on boy."

He fastened the padlock at the end of my chain to the end of one of the spokes. Then he backed away. I looked at him, wanting answers. I covered my crotch with my hands. I had never felt more like an animal.

I remembered the spray of red that had come from the pony's head.

"You're cold in the stall. You need to exercise. If you can go for fifty revolutions, then I'll put a heater in your stall. You get a thwack with this for every revolution under fifty. Go."

I put my hands on the rusty bar. Careful so I didn't put any pressure on my sensory patches. I wanted to cover my groin with one hand, but my wrists were chained together, so it was impossible.

I started to walk.

The exercise was easy enough for the first few revolutions. It became repetitive. Dull. I forgot about the shame. That I was naked.

But it took a lot of effort to turn the wheel by myself. My legs felt very weak. I had eaten a meal last night, but for some reason, I felt weaker than I had out on the street. I was so cold, and I was shivering so badly, that my legs felt like they would collapse.

"Thirty two revolutions so far, beastie. Don't slow down now."

As an incentive he thwacked the cane against one of the steel bars. The clang made me flinch, and the sound sent a visceral reaction through me, one of fear and nausea. I whimpered. I had been able to feel the vibration in my hands. I hated the texture of the rusty metal.

I steeled myself and started to walk faster, staring down at the concrete under my feet. There was a piece of straw on the floor. I started counting my revolutions for every time I passed the piece of straw. I got to five, before losing count. My mind felt scattered and weak, unable to process. Like I was half-asleep.

"Forty."

I whined low in my throat. I was so close to exhaustion. If I had been wearing my clothes, if I had had a good night's sleep, this would have been easy. But my strength had been sapped by the vicious hosing and the poor sleep and just the constant state of stress and fear.

I closed my eyes, not caring about trying to count the revolutions. I just forced myself forward. Drawing on my last reserves of strength.

I was slowing badly, barely able to put one foot in front of the other. He came up behind me, smacking the metal bar with the cane. The vibrations, the sound woke a small panicky terror inside of me. I groaned and walked faster.

"Last one, last one, hurry your miserable ass!" He barked.

He stopped banging the cane against the bars and I fell to my knees, my arms hanging limp, but still held up by the chain around my wrists. I was crying under my breath. My whole body was shaking, and my vision was fading in and out. My skin felt cold and numb all over, except for under my arms and between my legs where I felt hot and damp and rank with sweat.

"Good." He barked. He unchained me, and basically dragged me back to the stall. The concrete chafed me where my legs dragged against the floor.

I managed to pull the horse blanket over me, where I was curled up on the floor. An exhausted trembling mess. A little later, I felt some heat on my shoulders, and I knew that he had put the heater in my stall.

---

I sucked on the bone.

It didn't have much taste anymore, but the smooth knob of the bone was soothing. I closed my eyes, and let the heater bake my back. Every few minutes, I turned over, let my back get cold, and warm up my front, and then my feet.

The heater was a little plastic box that he had set in the corner, out of my reach. I turned towards it like a flower to the sun, trying to warm up. I felt so cold.

---

The days started to blur together. Exercise on the frame. Spotty constant sleep. Eating scraps from his meals. Having my meals decimated by Nelson in front of my eyes. Random acts of cruelty from Nelson. Hosings.

---

I recognized that my behavior was becoming animal-like. I never spoke. Any words that I did utter were usually silenced by a welt from the cane. I was being conditioned. Certain keywords and sounds, like a crack from the cane, or a harsh tone, made me flinch and shut down mentally.

---

I was losing track of time.

---

Four other Onus came and went. I never saw them, because I couldn't reach the edge of the stall with my short chain. I couldn't even stand up all of the way. They were all girls. I heard them scream and cry and suffer, during their baths, exercise, and during Nelson's wanton cruelty. He raped them. I had to listen.

I also listened as they were sold. Men came in, wanting girls for whatever depraved reason. They looked in, and said which one they wanted. Money was exchanged. The girls were dragged out.

---

One day, it was my turn.

I flinched and cowered into a tiny ball in the corner of my stall. Nelson and the old man who had bought me were standing in the door. I watched them warily, under the listless fringe of my matted hair.

Nelson had a large plastic bucket.

Nelson held me by the throat, as I cringed against the wall, my breath coming out in short terrified pants. The older man took my chain and clipped the padlock to the iron bars at the very top of the stall, about seven feet up. My chain was so short, that this forced me to stand, with my hands in the air. 

Even after several days of being naked and objectified on every level, being this exposed brought frightened tears to my eyes.

I cried brokenheartedly when I dropped the bone and Nelson took it away.

Standing, I was able to see that the bucket was filled with soapy water.

Nelson scrubbed me down like I was an object. I was crying and struggling as he raked a plastic brush up and down my skin. He was a little gentler on my sensory patches, not using the plastic bristles, but a washcloth. Still, the cloth scraping against those sensitive patches was enough to make me scream and thrash.

I was hanging like a slab of meat by the time he was done, crying very softly. He dumped a few buckets of water over my head to rinse away the suds. Then he swept away the straw and took away my waste bucket. He left me wet and naked and completely exposed in my stall. Forced to stand, when my legs felt like they would collapse at any moment.




Onus



The heater was still there, but I still shivered convulsively.

Because I could stand, I saw when the older man was walking down the hallway. I saw him heading towards my stall.

He came in and brushed my wet hair. Raked through it with a comb. He grabbed the hair near the root to insure that he wasn't pulling too much, but it still hurt a little. When my hair was hanging soft and white as silk around my ears, he nodded, satisfied. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and licked a corner of it. He used the damp corner to wipe my tear-streaked face.

"Going to a new home, beastie." He grunted.

I felt scared. But mostly, I just felt numb.

---

*If that made you uncomfortable, I'm sorry, but the worst is yet to come.

I predict this story being between 3-5 chapters. It just recently became clear to me that I will be able to finish this story (not always clear by the beginning) and I have the second chapter finished. I'll release the second chapter in two weeks time, and hopefully have the third chapter ready two weeks after that.

And if not?

I'm slow, but I've always come through in the end. Onus is a story that will be told.

Also, quick update. I mentioned a possible sequel to File 66 a few months back, and don't lose hope! I had writers block on it for a month or so, but now I'm back into the swing of things.

You'll all have an update on Tam and Taylor sometime soon.

Everything else is uncertain, but some ideas have promise.

Kisses and Spanks,

--Cruel*