I felt Enyo’s fingers tighten over my upper arm and we were instantly in a dark, dank room. I sensed rather than saw, rock walls and a pounded dirt floor. Others moved in the darkness, but I couldn’t see them clearly, only their shadows. I heard whimpering and moaning. I heard soft laughter and scurrying tiny feet. I forced my mind to focus on those I knew to be present and not on shadows and imagination.
A voice that I almost recognized whispered, “She has come to play.”
Phobos’s voice boomed. “No one will hurt her.” Then, to me, “You are bait, dear aunt. And as bait, I need you living and breathing.”
“She will bring him soon,” Enyo said, her voice pouring over me like warm wine. Seductive. “He will come to help her.”
“Why do you lurk in the shadows?” I asked.
“Oh, do you think you will be in a better state if you can see what is happening? I think your imagination is better,” Phobos told me.
“Maybe she can’t even imagine what goes on in this house,” Eris said.
“You’re right. Let’s not start here. Let’s end here,” Phobos said. Apparently, there was no real plan of what to do with me. My arrival was sudden and unexpected. However, that never meant they couldn’t quickly improvise.
Then, I stood in a bedroom that was opulent two hundred years ago. In the candlelight, everything softly glowed, bathed in golden light. Candles burned all over the room, in wall sconces, two large chandeliers that hung from the ceiling, and in candelabras on furniture. In the candles’ glare, I still couldn’t see Phobos clearly or his twin, Deimos. Both men were dressed in black. Black pants, black shirt, black boots, and in Phobos’s case, a black leather vest. They waited in the shadows as if the very light scorned them.
Enyo and Eris’s dark hair hung straight down their backs and their dark eyes betrayed their inner blackness. Their bones protruded under pale skin pulled too tightly over the sinews and muscles underneath, giving them a cadaverous appearance. As in the days of old, both women wore red. Enyo wore a short red skirt and a red crop top of leather. Eris wore a red silken dress with spaghetti straps, a plunging neckline, and slits up both sides to the waist. She wore nothing underneath, it was obvious. They moved around the room like restless cats, never stopping, eyes darting as if they hunted prey. “Welcome to the Queen’s Suite,” one of my sisters said.
The large room held the five of us comfortably. A worn Persian rug of red and black covered nearly the entire floor. The bed was small in comparison to beds of today, but it looked soft under the burgundy satin duvet cover. The armoire, the vanity, and the chest of drawers were all dark mahogany and all antique. A burgundy velvet fainting couch dominated one corner of the room. In the center of the room between the two chandeliers, a heavy iron ring dangled from the ceiling. A chain hung from the ring and I learned very quickly the purpose of the chain.
Deimos encircled me with his arms, and before I knew what they had in mind, Eris placed handcuffs around my wrists. The cuffs pinched my wrists and the soft, furry lining did nothing to relieve the torture. Enyo attached the chain that hung from the ceiling to a ring in the center of the handcuffs.
With a laugh, Phobos and company left me alone in the bedroom.
No movement for long minutes. My brain still refused to function properly. Was it the wards around the house or was I in someone’s grip? I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t think or move beyond painfully slow motions.
I examined the cuffs and realized that I couldn’t open them. Struggling to pull my hands free only resulted in sore wrists. As for the extent of the chain, I could walk almost as far as the door and almost to the opposite wall. I could see out of the windows, but I couldn’t get close enough to signal anyone out there. I reached again, toward Eli and I couldn’t feel him. I tried to transport away and I couldn’t do that, either.
I decided that I may be too agitated and nervous to accomplish either task, so I sat on the bed in the classic lotus position and tried to calm my brain and my body. I reached again for Eli and thought, for an instant, I connected with him, but just as quickly, it was gone.
Foolishly, I had entered the demon’s lair. Had I been summoned? Coming here felt like my idea, but I couldn’t be certain. What was it Phobos said? I was bait? I suddenly knew. It was Aaron he wanted. Not me. Not Zeus, despite what he said in the forest. I couldn’t imagine why he would want to rekindle a relationship with his father, but I sensed it wasn’t for sentimental reasons. Phobos sought a much bigger fish and perhaps he wanted his father to help him cement a stronger power base for himself. I shook my head to remove the cobwebs that shrouded my memory and my conscious state of mind. Something blocked my thoughts, clouded them. Something distorted my memories. Something hampered my movements.
I had more pressing matters. I was a quarter of a power base, albeit a young and fragile one, and it was my duty to protect those I shared power with. Could I do it when Phobos started his show? Could I protect the men I loved and needed when Phobos... what? I couldn’t guess. I forced myself to breathe more calmly instead of panting in panic. I didn’t want Aaron to come here. I didn’t want to be rescued because it would not go well for Aaron if he came charging in.
Time passed, but I don’t know how much. The candles seemed to have burned much lower than they should have. Did I fall asleep? I had not eaten anything or had anything to drink since my arrival at the house, so it couldn’t be drugs or poison. It had to be an effect of the dark magic in the air around me.
The door opened and my sisters entered, startling me. Had I been asleep, again? “Your attire is deplorable,” Enyo told me. “Brown is such an unflattering color.” Eris closed the door. Enyo pulled me from the bed by grabbing the chain that connected me to the ceiling and tore my shirt open down the back.
Eris’s voice was smooth as the silk dress she wore when she said, “Enyo, dear, there is no reason to use brute force to remove her clothes.” She pulled a knife from the sheath around her thigh. She walked toward me, her face a mask of evil hidden behind the crooked grin. She dragged the point of the knife across my cheek. It had a slender blade and didn’t look threatening. I felt the sharp edge, but she didn’t press hard enough to break my skin. The point trailed across my jaw and down my neck under my ear where a slight cut could open my jugular. She grabbed the fabric of my shirt and sliced it down to the sleeve. Then she cut the sleeve from my shoulder to my wrist allowing the fabric to fall away. She repeated the maneuver with my left sleeve and I stood before the two in just bra and pants. Three quick flicks with the knife and the bra fell away. I felt my nipples grow taut with the sudden chill in the air and with my own nervousness. I breathed fast and shallowly, again.
Next, they cut away my leather pants, removed my boots, one at a time and Enyo pulled my socks off. Eris used her knife to remove my panties.
Both of my sisters hovered around my naked body, trailing fingers across my flesh that raised goosebumps.
“She is lovely to behold,” Enyo said to Eris in the ancient tongue.
“Small wonder Helios keeps her to himself,” Eris replied.
“Such a waste, keeping to only one man,” Enyo said.
“She could have commanded thousands with that body,” Eris responded. She allowed her fingers to slowly caress my naked breasts. “She kept her charms to herself even in the Golden Age of our kind. Always better than the rest of us.”
For my part, I wasn’t embarrassed by my nakedness. That is an American thing--a country that is collectively sexually repressed. My sisters repulsed me. Not because they gazed at me so wantonly, but because of the badness that exuded from the pores of their skin. These two I loved not at all.
My sisters continued to talk about me as if I wasn’t in the room. Enyo said, “If it were my choice, she would go down to dinner dressed thusly. I would put her in the center of the main table, legs spread wide open as a vision of what dessert could be with her.”
“And such sweet dessert,” Eris said as she probed my secret places with her fingers. Her long, long bright red nails scratched the delicate tissues inside. “And now, I smell the sweet scent of her blood.” She removed her fingers and licked the blood from her nails.
Enyo moved closer to me, her face an inch from mine and she inhaled deeply. “I can smell her blood flowing under her skin. No need to damage her.” She sniffed my neck the same way a dog sniffs something he is unfamiliar with. I shivered when her nose actually followed the line of my carotid artery.
“But, such delicious damage,” Eris responded.
“Do not damage her. Phobos doesn’t want her harmed. At least not physically.”
Good news, that. Physical abuse didn’t worry me because I would not die from it. In fact, the opposite more concerned me. Namely, that I wouldn’t die, but rather suffer endless minutes, hours, days of agonizing pain. I thought about Prometheus, chained to a rock by Zeus for giving humans the gift of fire. Daily, an eagle came to eat his liver and daily, he healed so the torture could begin, again. I helped Heracles rescue him. Prometheus was still messed up in his head as a result of hundreds of years of enduring the torture. How long did it take before the mind broke as a result of torture? It probably varied from person to person. I didn’t want to endure what Prometheus did.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Enyo stepped to the vanity and removed a hair brush. She brushed my hair until it crackled with static electricity, then she smoothed it down with her hands. She made it a sensual ritual, brushing and caressing my waist-length hair. She whispered little words to me: Beautiful. Such a nice color. Sexy. Sweet. None of the words had any meaning for me.
Enyo opened a dresser drawer, removed a mound of black fabric, shook out the diaphanous length, and began to drape it over me, somewhat hiding my womanly features. She added three clasps to hold the fabric in place and then unchained me from the bedroom ceiling. She left the handcuffs on. My sister held me by the elbow so I could step into black spike heels that were instantly uncomfortable on my feet.
Eris took my other elbow and the two led me out of the bedroom. We walked down a long corridor that ran the length of the house and then down a grand staircase. The entire way, I felt like I was floating.
Across the foyer and then into a large dining room where at least thirty people hovered around the horseshoe-shaped table. Evenly spaced over the table were six people I didn’t know. These six were naked and hung by their wrists like grotesque chandeliers. Three women and three men and all looked to be in their late teens or at most, early twenties.
Hovering around the table were my relatives, nightmares all.
Phobos approached me and with a wave of his hand, the handcuffs fell away. Because additional chains hung from the ceiling, I feared he would use them for his pleasure which is to say, for my torture. I was right. This time, he chained my hands individually and forced my arms over my head. He pulled on the chains until only the tips of my toes held prisoner inside the uncomfortable shoes touched the floor. He rearranged my shroud so that my female parts were uncovered. He, too, lingered over my breasts and my pubic hair. He, too, leered at me. I felt very uncomfortable, both physically and mentally. I reminded myself that it was Fear’s game.
With a clap of his hands, the feast began and I was, in essence, the centerpiece for their table, but at least I was still on the floor. The others who hung didn’t even look frightened. Or at least the four that I could still see didn’t look frightened. I wondered how many others hung from the ceiling in days past as my relatives feasted on...what were they eating?
The door opened and people dressed in white jackets and black pants placed mounds of raw meat on platters and the table. They poured wine from decanters that was viscous and red. A metallic stench hung in the air and I tasted blood on the back of my tongue. I was just as happy to not be invited to eat with all of them. Their meal of blood and raw meat was sickening to me and threatened to make me vomit. The white starched linen tablecloth was soon dotted here and there with blood from the crystal goblets and their wine of choice made them drunk.
Another man brought in large empty bowls and placed them on the table directly under the ones that hung over the table. I began to get a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach and I knew what would happen next. Eris started the show by climbing up onto the table and standing in front of one of the men who hung there. She caressed him until he was erect, all the while whispering sweet things in his ear. His face went slack with the pleasure he felt. He writhed and wiggled as much as he could while hanging. Not from pain or discomfort, but from ecstasy. And at the moment of climax, she cut him with her knife, opening the femoral artery of his left leg. He seemed not to notice that blood ran down his leg and dripped from the bottom of his foot into the large bowl that had been placed under him. Or maybe he didn’t care what was happening.
I watched with morbid fascination as the young man bled and then passed out from blood loss. It was like watching a wreck on the side of the road. I didn’t want to see what was there, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away. After a few minutes, his head hung to one side and he stopped bleeding. The bowl under him was full of blood. A man entered, lifted the bowl and carried it oh so carefully, out of the door.
My arms started to ache and my shoulders hurt, but still, the feast continued. Someone behind me screamed in rapturous delight and I was just as happy not to be able to see who it was and what was happening. It sounded a little too much like sex to me. They got louder and louder with their revelries and I could see the ones in front of me joining in the fun.
For a moment, I saw one of Eli’s offspring, Circe, standing just inside the dining room door, apparently detached from the scene before her. She stared at me, long and hard, before vanishing back into the shadows. Had Circe thrown her lot in with Phobos? I didn’t think her presence was a good omen.
Suddenly, the chains dropped from the ceiling and the release of the pressure hurt as much as the stretching did. I collapsed on the floor amid a pile of black fabric and chains. Someone pulled on the chains that bound my wrists and I looked up. Phobos dragged me the length of the room by those chains to the head of the table. He leapt over the table. I ended up, belly down, across the table. Deimos and Enyo each took one of the chains in their hands and pulled, renewing the pressure on my shoulders, and Phobos, I presume, chained my feet to the floor. He moved the fabric away from me and I was exposed to everyone in the room.
“Behold, the Virgin Goddess, who was so precious that no one could touch her,” Phobos shouted. “She is in my realm of her own free will and that makes her mine to play with.” Phobos was right. I entered his realm alone and willingly. I would be hard-pressed, in an Olympian court, to even claim rape. And that is what was happening to me, at that moment. Hard, torturous rape.
I wasn’t even surprised to feel him inside me, grinding and pushing. His weight shoved me deeper into the table and the edge of it bruised my hips. In front of me, Deimos and Enyo took turns kissing me, forcing their tongues into my mouth. They both tasted vile, like the blood they drank from the crystal goblets. Then, someone else entered me from behind and I didn’t even know who it was. Over and over, I was assaulted by unknown people. I found no pleasure in the violation.
Something wet ran between my legs, whether semen, blood, or my own urine, I didn’t know. Finally, Deimos and Enyo released the chains, but I was still held prisoner by someone who sat on my back. I could barely breathe and I could not move to prevent the rape that began to hurt more with each new person who gave me their attention.
The last person to enter me had to be Tychon. He was a phallic demon whose penis was huge and eternally erect. He seriously hurt me with his disregard for my size and for the torture I had already endured. I knew him of old because a large segment of the Athenian population worshiped him. He leaned over and whispered in my ear, “I waited for this for a long, long time. I have wanted to bed you for three thousand years.”
Boldly, I said between thrusts, “We are not in a bed.”
Big mistake. I offered him a challenge. “We will be.”
He was instantly off me. “Phobos, I want this one in a bed. I have tried to have her since I first laid eyes on her.”
I heard Phobos laugh, somewhere to my right. “We have all desired her.” A pause, then, “She is yours for the night, Tychon, but in the morning, be away from her. I don’t want her raped to death.” He laughed, again.
Tychon leaned over the table and then said to me, “The advantage I have, dear Aunt Athena, is that I am always erect and I always want something to satisfy me. I would rather have sex than eat or drink or sleep. You will see what it is like to be loved by Tychon.” I heard Phobos laugh, again.
Tychon grabbed a handful of my hair and pulled me upright. I was dizzy and unsteady on my feet, but the fog that covered my brain earlier lifted. Better it remained.
Tychon loosed the chains around my ankles and I stepped out of the shoes Enyo had given me. My feet flat on the floor were better than swaying in the heels, but I still felt shaky. My legs quivered from being too long in one position and my shoulders and shoulder blades ached, terribly. I was very thirsty but dared not ask for anything to drink. Blood would make me sick if I drank it.
Two held onto my chains, Lamis and Gemon, Satyrs who once belonged to Dionysus. They must have preferred the debauchery of Phobos’s lifestyle to that of Dionysus, who was all about having fun and making merry. These were having fun, but not the kind of fun most people enjoy. I quickly surveyed the scene before me, hoping to find an opening in which to escape. Not yet. Nothing. No idea presented itself. Tychon grabbed the chains and tugged on them, forcing me to follow him.
Naked and sore in a hundred places, I had no choice but to follow him. At least I was out of the dining room orgy that apparently had no end in sight. Was it this way every night or was there some special occasion going on? That was a question I didn’t want an answer to, either.
Tychon pulled me up the stairs and twice I stumbled on the steps. Instead of taking me down the hallway to my room, he led me to the right to another room that was much smaller but dominated by a bed that was much larger than the one in my room. Tychon attached the chains to the ring in the ceiling and I was left to wonder if every room had an iron ring in the ceiling. He walked out of the room leaving me alone, naked and shivering in a red, red room. The walls were red, the rug on the floor, the blanket on the bed, the chair, the drapes. Tychon returned to the room with a pitcher of water and a bowl that he placed on the commode. A glass waited on the commode and Tychon filled it with water from the pitcher.
I drank, tentatively.
“It is just water,” he said in his booming deep voice. I drank deeply and held out the glass for more. After the second glassful, I felt better. He placed a linen washrag in my hand and then poured some of the water into the bowl. “You would probably like to clean yourself up. I am going to unchain you, but I can’t let you leave this room. I will have to stay with you. But, if Phobos thinks we are enjoying each other’s company, he will not come in here.” With a wave of his hands, the chains fell from my wrists. Handy trick to have. I wondered if Tychon learned it from Phobos. Maybe my magic was totally incompatible with the dark magic that oozed into the tiniest crevasse in the house. Automatically, I examined the damage to my wrists.
I felt numb. I hadn’t taken the time to process all that happened to me in the past hours. I was separated from Eli, held prisoner by the one we would have to kill, and I felt very much alone. I wet the cloth and began wiping my skin, from my face, down. When I had finished the front of me, Tychon gently took the rag from my hand and wet it again. He washed my back, my buttocks, and the backs of my thighs, careful not to touch between my legs. I was grateful because it felt like the raw meat that everyone enjoyed at dinner.
Tychon rinsed the cloth in the water and handed it to me again and said, “I will turn away while you wash yourself.” Somehow, I was oddly touched by his concern. I gently daubed the tender flesh and was not surprised that the rag came away bloody. I couldn’t imagine the damage that had been done and the thought of facing more of the same with Tychon was more than I could take at that moment. I sobbed and collapsed to the floor.
My tormentor picked me up like I was a priceless porcelain doll and carefully laid me on the bed. With a finger, he moved the hair from my eyes and said, “Cry as long as you like. You deserve it. I am not going to touch you. You have had too much for one night and more importantly, I prefer my women willing. Most are, you know.” He pulled the red blanket over my shoulders and lay on the bed beside me. I pulled one of the pillows close to me and hugged it to my chest, feeling reassured by its presence. I cried again and for a long time. I hate to cry, but I felt better after. I fell asleep, the tears wet on my cheeks.