Toys

People within the Village started to gather some curiosity regarding the fate of little Fawn and her two perished siblings. But no one had yet accumulated the courage to go to their home, or ask any questions of the vicious Soldiers that prowled at all times. So often, the Cast were a moment away from declaring any questions to be heresy, and therefore subject to one or other of the punishments that they seemed so eager to dole out.

So far, people had limited themselves to wondering only, as the risk of even being overheard was too great. Once curiosity had started to take hold, however, it was becoming evident that more and more people were beginning to reflect the same wonder:

Where is the Girl Child?

They knew that the boys had been tortured to death, so they were a good deal more subdued as a result—given it had been at least a generation since anyone had taken a punishment on behalf of someone else.

Regardless of professed love, it was a rare animal that would sacrifice itself, especially to a very slow and agonizing demise.

All the same, the collective thoughts were asking the same question, and there was as yet, no answer. Some were notably missing the little giggling, smiling, crystal-eyed girl they used to see enjoy herself in so many ways. Now only the broken-hearted and gray-spirited children of the rest of the Village remained.

Whether any of them would break silence to discover the fate of one they admired, or ask about the truth behind where she had gone, was yet to be discovered. There were those few who had love for her in their own way, but once they found out what she had done to her mother, there was no guarantee their affections would remain.

For now, the disapproving and authoritarian were winning the battle of wills, as there were, of course, far more who felt the child deserved her fate, and were angry that she had been spared the true payment she owed. Worse still, she had caused the loss of two strong, diligent workers of breeding age. Those who still wanted to see her pay would say so.

“She should still hang for what she is, disgusting child, foul flaunter, Witch of skin.”

Hanging was a truly monstrous punishment, even in this world.

There were Cast Soldiers looking now. Not with great intent and focus, but with a cursory involvement in the belief that a Girl Child was not allowed to be like she was, nor get away with her crimes. Above all else, she could not be seen to make the Cast look fallible: that had never happened.

Not in any living person’s memory had anyone outmaneuvered the Cast, certainly not a low-born Dust Cloth girl, and none would ever have imagined a child of any kind causing such trouble.

Trapping and punishing this escaped deviant had become crucial––she must pay, and suffer, and bleed, and regret, and revere the might of their control.

This extreme thinking had come to define the Cast over the course of time and obviously had never been checked or even challenged. With no rival Villages or settlements, no overall mass sense of reason or reasonable behavior, there had been nothing for so long to even suggest that the status quo was bad, so there was now no belief that things could be different.

Patrols continued to wander around the Village in confident assumption that the idiot Girl Child would make herself obvious soon. Their frustration grew and showed no sign of ebbing.

One unfortunate young woman passed by an aggravated Soldier and neglected to acknowledge him. With a swift and focused movement, he skewered the small toe on her cloth-wrapped left foot.

She stops immediately and screams. He moves forward holding the blade through her foot so she can’t run and reaches out to her loose garment.

There is a callous lecherousness in his voice.

“What are you doing, Dust Cloth?”

“Ahh! Just passing by, Superior.”

His anger becomes increasingly evident.

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“What makes you think it’s acceptable to ignore me?”

Tears build in her eyes, heart racing and sweat quickly accumulating at her hairline, she attempts to placate him.

“I’m so sorry, Superior.”

The Soldier reaches out his free left hand to grab at her waist, squeezing the small amount of her lithe body he can fit between his thumb and fingers, hard enough to make her cringe. She jolts and crumples.

She dares not recoil, as the blade remains through her toe, and the penalty for retracting herself from his wants will be much greater than that which she currently endures.

Suddenly, a voice comes from the shade of a nearby shelter.

“Please Superior, she’s a compliant girl, I beg of you—”

But before it can finish, the Cast has turned his attention to the new presence.

An older man, looking withered and drawn from cycles of labor, walks toward the entanglement of the Soldier and his most recent prey. His upturned palms submissively presented out in front of him, he has a desperately mournful look on his face and pleading in his eyes.

The Soldier’s focus is now firmly fixed on the old man, his eyes trace as though they are being led by the man’s movements, not following them.

The Soldier’s tone demands immediate response, his left hand still affixed to the side of his victim.

“What do you want?”

“Nothing but to ask for your lenience, Superior.”

The old man is clearly afraid for the young woman in the Soldier’s grasp.

More focused, the distempered Soldier begins to make a sound, not one originally associated with humans. A sound like that of an animal warning off its lessers, coupled with a strange clicking faintly in the background. The kind of sound one might imagine would come from a poisonous creature.

Suddenly, the woman in his grasp shrivels.

“Please Superior, ignore my grandfather. He knows only that I am in danger, not that I was rude to you. I beg you, please go no further, I will comply with all orders.”

Slowly the Cast turns to the scared, shivering thing in his hand. His iris now clearly an orange shade, he peers at her.

“You remain at our grace, like a herd.”

He moves his left hand from her now bruised waist and tracks down her hips to her crotch.

“Or a toy ... ”

Finding the softest part of her, he squeezes with an utterly unreasonable amount of pressure, and begins to lift her by her pelvis as she curls forward, feeling the awfully specific tips of his fingers bruise and scrape at her skin.

With overwhelming speed, the Soldier pulls his blade from the young woman’s toe, and points it at the old man approaching.

“And you are of no value whatsoever, do not presume to speak to me.”

In the space of a blink, he lunges forward with the struggling woman in hand, and cuts a spiral down the old man’s wrist from his thumb, halfway up his forearm—slicing to the bone. The captured woman howls in his grasp behind him. Before the old man can even react to the atrocious wound, the Soldier returns his blade to its scabbard.

He turns back to his captive, now crying and writhing in pain.

“Stop struggling.”

All the while moving his fingers as though there was no weight on them, making her suffering much worse.

Suddenly, ... a distant scream from outside the Village, like a child protesting, crosses his hearing. Dropping his quarry, he shifts his weight and is obscured by the dust left in his wake.

Crumpling to the ground and clutching at her bruises, she called for help for her grandfather, who had passed out from the pain and loss of blood.

“Why did he do this?”

She asked her question as though someone might be able to answer and explain some part of what she just experienced.

“He was no threat, he wasn’t being rude, why did he do this? Help!”

But there was no help coming. The presence of a Soldier had been more than enough to keep away any would-be assistance, or even the most dedicated of brave souls.

There was no predator here like that of the Cast. They seemed nearly superhuman, and there were none among the Dust Cloth that were ever going to risk running headlong into the fanged predations of these terrible overseers.

Too many had seen a defiant rebel try and fail, or a well-meaning friend suffer far beyond what seemed fair. And here again was yet more evidence, as her grandfather bled out on the dusty rock-covered ground. A miserable thought occurred to her as she watched him expire.

He died for nothing.

He could not have saved her, and in the end, the Soldier’s attention was taken elsewhere.

The doting elder she had valued her whole life was gone now, just more red tinge on sharp rocks. Another cautionary tale.

As she sat sobbing over his fallen frame, the wound on his arm began unraveling like the coils of so much dirty red cloth, falling away from lack of purchase.

The Soldier had sliced flesh from bone. Not simply cutting inward, he had fileted the arm. The sight of her dear grandfather’s arm methodically taken apart was much worse than an accidental rock wound or broken limb, as it was so ... clinical. Seeing the savagery so driven by a remorseless hand, she could no longer cope.

The strain on her body from the ordeal and sight of her butchered grandfather compounded as her stomach wretched, expelling her day’s food. She fainted.

–Garrick M Lynch–