PUNISHMENT IV

NULL ABSOLUTE

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No name was given to them.

Family was a concept yet to be grasped.

Language remained a mystery strictly denied.

There was only the eternal march of time under the sun’s merciless and scorching glare, herded around like cattle with other small ones like them. Their pen reeked of human waste, vomit and rotting decay —the very ground they trudged through, the soiled earth their bed.

The larger ones shoved and clawed for the moldering fruit and gruel scraps thrown carelessly at them by the pale overseers. The weaker ones were trampled or starved, no matter their cries of anguish. Each day’s survival demanded fierceness, a willingness to bite in ferocity if needed.

They did not know why they were kept there, only that existence meant constant violence.

Mere shadows of the overseers incited instant panic, as all of them scattered before the long lines that flailed viciously, cracking as they sliced through the air. Those taken and chained, usually the larger and stronger, were never seen again —disappearing in the horizon aboard towering fortresses that defied the sea surface.

Night brought a cold dampness. They huddled together, a mass of trembling flesh atop the filth. The weak ones sometimes smothered beneath. Dawn brought a fleeting reprieve before the heat’s slow return, and with it, the same forms of horror.

Wake, hunger, fear, thirst, pain, sleep. The cycle repeated endlessly —and nothing existed beyond those boundaries, for worse punishments awaited those who tried to escape.

Yet even in that abysmal domain, they already differed subtly from the others. While some wailed and keened mindlessly at every fresh torment, they watched with unnerving stillness —as if they could perceive the ominous undercurrents of darkness lurking just beyond their brutal reality.

When rotten fruit scraps were flung, the others descended into a feral maelstrom of grasping hands and snapping jaws. But they waited, unflinching, fascinated by the intangible shapes of misery born and drifting outside the writhing mass of flesh seeking putrid sustenance. Only after the struggle subsided would they calmly retrieve whatever pieces remained trampled into the muck, accepting that meager bounty with the same dispassionate patience.

At night, while others shuddered and whimpered through decaying teeth, they lay inscrutable —peering inwards at visions concealed behind their hazy, dead eyes. They felt the cloying miasma of suffering saturating the air, seeping into their very beings… But they were unbroken by it, studying its ebb and flow like ocean tides.

Both overseers and the others like them took notice. To those eyes, they were unchildren —a thing outside the natural order. When the sticks rained indiscriminately, they never attempted to evade them, barely reacting to the pain. Blows landed with dull thuds as if against a leather sack, an eerie absence chilling their coarse laughter into nervous murmurs.

Unmoved by the torment surrounding them —whether shielded by some innate power or madness; their mind remained in distant contemplation, the periodic passage of suns and moons in the skies meant little.

All until that morning, in which they herded them as well onto the beach. They could sense the ominous presence in the briny air as they approached the sea fortress, engorged with its profane cargo.

Though they’d seen the vile transports from afar before, never had them witnessed one so grotesquely overflowing, birthing forth bodies smaller than their own to walk onto the sands in their replacement.

For the first time, a primal dread coiled in their hollow core, compelling them to resist as their turn came to join that somber line. Yet their famished frame proved powerless against the coarse hands binding wrists and ankles. Their defiance earned only violence from the towering pale overseer.

Whether it was death or oblivion that awaited beyond the boarding plank, they was forced to embrace it like any other other brutality before.

Crossing the threshold onto the heaving deck, a foul fog seeped from the very wood beneath their bare feet, perhaps only to their eyes. Rats, flies and other vermin populated the bloated corpses piled up, empty gazes returning theirs as the bodies awaited their ultimate fate amongst the Stygian depths.

This fortress… It was malevolent. A conduit for shades and miseries older and stronger than they were capable of fathoming.

It was… A floating tomb.

The crew of pale ones bellowed like demons, flailing their weapons as they drove their piteous souls into the sweltering lower decks where even more awaited. Misery compounded upon itself as they were chained and crushed together, naked flesh bruised against deteriorated metal and timber.

Air turned to a fetid nebula of sweat, vomit and loosened bowels —the stench clinging to the wood even when the dead ones had been previously removed, fated to be thrown on the following legs of this cursed voyage.

There was no need for cleanliness or thoroughness. It took mere hours for more to succumb to the suffocating heat and filth of the cramped hold where they were packed, head to feet.

During every second of the trip, fear pierced and obliterated their youthful torpor. The distant memories of being trapped in one of these instruments of torment before resurfaced within that mouth of unutterable evil. Why were they made to endure it again? What new nightmares awaited on their final destination? Would the sands ahead prove even more blighted than those left behind?

Each passing day was another step down onto a nether hell, seamlessly blending the torments of the living with those of the dead.

While their limbs were bony enough for the chains not to grate their skin, others were not so fortunate. The filth-crusted floors fermented with life over the discarded corpses, stirring movement amidst the bodies reduced to cattle, bringing forth cascades of swarming afflictions. Lice, flies and other miasmic parasites laid eggs within the open sores and orifices torn by the tightened shackles embedded under swollen flesh.

Periodically, them and the others on the exterior layers were dragged above, forced to either labor, dance or sing for the overseers’ entertainment. For any perceived lack of strength, will, or even sheer sadistic delight, indiscriminate lashes rained down amidst a cacophony of laughter —as if reveling in torment delighted the pale monsters.

It was during such instances that they first tasted grains, rice, dried fish and salted meat —the first true meals he could ever recall; accompanied by the anguished but novel singing sounds of their people’s voices.

Yet many refused both sustenance and performance, minute acts of rebellion that were met with merciless consequences. They watched ears sliced off, and the defiant being cast living from the floating fortress’ boards after succumbing to either sickness or starvation. In the impervious waters, they joined the ranks of those already dead, their parting souls glimmering faintly before dissipating.

Within the hold’s depths, inferno reigned supreme. The endless galling of chains, the groans of the dying, the shrieks of the women, and the sounds of small ones tramped or suffocated in the necessary tubs of murky water —all the sounds etched themselves anew into their consciousness, never to be forgotten again.

Any corporeal sense of time they had left ceased to exist in that floating purgatory. The shadowed whispers beckoned to join them, from a realm their youthful mind could not yet grasp —an instinctive affinity that promised them understanding over this maleficent world’s true fabric.

Perhaps they wouldn’t have mourned death… Was the counter-intuitive notion growing stronger until the pitching and rolling stilled, an inhuman howl rumbling the timbers where their existence carried on against all odds.

For when the colossal fortress finally halted, those who could still see were met with fresh obscene grins and new sticks to beat them with, as they were forced to disembark upon a place like nothing they had ever known.

Squinting against the harsh glare, they took long moments to process the uncharted surroundings sprawling before them. Strange new scents assaulted their senses —one unlike the dense, vegetative reek of the pen or the beaches around it; but something drier, sharper, mingling with the still overpowering stench of their rotted cargo.

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In the near distance loomed alien structures, their angular and ornate designs contrasting sharply against the natural curves of the rolling landscape. The sand beneath their feet was different too, giving way to scrubby hillocks punctuated by gnarled bushes and large plants utterly foreign to their limited experience.

Amid such drastic change of environment, the putrid reek being carried to their face by the wind grew even fiercer, drawing their gaze to the necrotic putrescence mere meters away. Here and there, bloated corpses in various states of disintegration decorated the shoreline in a grotesque display —some stripped of flesh by beaks and claws.

Not given the relief of rest, the rude shapes interrupting the skies solidified into an orderly cluster as they were herded closer to them. Elaborate dwellings and larger buildings of blanched wood erected on top of the trails, from where human shapes bustled about in garish attires and heavy boots —very different from the sullied white fabrics that kept them from complete nakedness.

Across the muffled din of this unusual landscape, raucous shouts erupted as the other fully garbed men traded angry words near the waterline. They understood not their tongue, yet anger and violence required no translation. They seemed to argue with the crew of previous overseers about the festering corpses fouling the beach, or perhaps a tardiness in their arrival?

Chaos only continued to intensify as more lavishly dressed pale figures converged from the strange outbuildings, barking harsh orders. Their bellowed commands were punctuated by the crack of leather on exposed flesh as they moved the newly arrived forward, and outside of the baking soil.

They were separated into groups —some hustled off by their decorated handlers, while others were set upon with buckets and rags. They found themselves shoved into one such cluster, coarse bristles scraping away the caked filth as frigid water sluiced over their weakened body.

It was an indescribable shock after the endless broiling torment of the floating fortress’ confines. Some collapsed to the ground, retching and shuddering as months of accumulated toxins and parasites were forcibly purged.

Once the meager ritual of cleansing was completed, they were carried to a shaded outbuilding and thrust into troughs brimming with a strange, viscous gruel far richer than anything he could recall. They shoveled the warm prepared meal hungrily by hand, feeling a faint pang as their withered stomach first balked at the nourishment by devouring every piece given to them —mouthful by mouthful.

Sated yet still wet, they were lined up for assessment by bewigged overseers circulating with ledgers. Probing fingers inspected their skin while barked queries determined age and condition. When their eyes met, the leer the pale man turned momentarily befuddled before hardening into resolution.

After more indecipherable words, spoken through initially quivering, yet increasingly detached lips, they were separated and manacled once more. An inchoate sense of displacement fell over them as they were brought into a less populated room —the intangible fingers of darkness overwhelming every corner as an unnatural heat reached their face.

The spectral whispers were stronger there, an ominous chorus of chanting voices that crawled like shivers on their bruised skin —were they embracing them, or were they warning them to try and escape?

They had evaded this part of the ritual before during previous torments —but that would be no more. They led the march, bringing them first while others of their kin, also separated, stood back in preparation; while the hovel’s perfume of smoldering cinders drifted on the air like a set of fangs ready to bite.

Forced to their knees, they gripped tightly at whatever stone or dist was in reach, yet their fingers lost all sense as a charred instrument descended upon their right shoulder blade. Its unearthly radiance sent them into an agony unlike any other.

Their shrieks carried beyond the outbuilding’s interiors as their flesh was seared, rent and blistered, filling the walls with the smell of cauterized meat. The branding irons carved out their gruesome pattern and symbols into their being as they fell, sobbing and trembling.

Drifting in and out of a waking delirium, the sickly-sweet stench of their burnt flesh overwhelmed even the background miasma born from accumulated anguish. Rough hands gripped them under their shoulders, dragging their useless form from the branding pit, and back into the pitiless glare outside.

Voices echoed indistinctly around them, muffled by the thunderous ringing in their ears from their own screams, torn from the soul he once thought numb.

They were vaguely aware of being propped upright, something warm and viscous forced between their bloodless lips. Bitter, salty fluids dribbled down their chin as their jaws worked mechanically, the mere act of swallowing a trial arduous enough.

Whenever their recalcitrance became too burdensome, stinging slaps shocked them into compliance. Blearily cracking their eyelids, they found themselves surrounded by impassive overseers, gesturing for their eating to be doubled under edicts that cared not for their awareness or desires.

Their ruined back erupted in molten agony as they were wrenched upright and hustled off once more. Another strange aroma assaulted their senses not long after another intrusive pair of hands moved across their body —that of oil and animal fat.

Slimy palms glided over their flesh in firm, methodical strokes, slathering every exposed inch. The pungent unguent seeped into their brand’s oozing wounds painfully, aching fiercely before granting a slick, shimmering veneer. The hands didn’t limit themselves to solely cover them in oil, as the sounds of scissors too close to their ears for comfort snipped away as strands of hair fell down to their feet.

By the end of that unknown ritual, their entire form gleamed with an obscene luster, wounds and bruises concealed to the best efforts of that glistening facade.

Floating in and out of consciousness, they could only watch impassively as strange hands remade their broken vessel into something perversely unblemished. A living trompe l'oeil to be displayed, their grievous suffering veiled behind that decorative veneer of false vitality.

It was then that they realized, vacillating in and out of consciousness between that shuddering numbness and the still-present ghosts of pain.

They were a thing, not a person —for even an animal might be given more consideration. A breathing creature only similar in appearance to the pale overseers that handled them, but ultimately nothing more than merchandise to be processed and packaged for the highest bidder.

Though how exactly remained a mystery lost to the haze of their clouded senses, they undeniably continued standing on their trembling legs. At some point or another, any coherent understanding of their surroundings had dissipated entirely —reduced to an unaware witness to all the discussions and environment shifts transpiring around them.

The blurred sensations of being jostled and prodded gradually faded into a merciful, blank abandonment.

When their senses finally rejoined reality, they found themselves resting on a thin pallet in a dimly lit space. Gone were the acrid stenches, from the rotten or burnt flesh, to the rancid oils. Instead, musty scents of aged wood and damp earth wafted through the still air, mingling with the aroma of unknown spices distilling an unfamiliar semblance of warmth.

Shallow breaths brought to focus a reassuring lack of anguish searing through their body for the first time they could recall. Though stiff and leaden, their limbs responded without screaming jolts of agony at the slightest motion. Peeling back the rough-spun blanket, they inspected themselves with trepidant bewilderment.

Their blistered skin had been covered under coarse linen wrappings, imbued with strange, pleasant-smelling ointments lingering on the fibers. The ruinous brands of shackles were still angrily visibly on their wrists, but there was no longer any steel weighing down their body. Even the myriad of smaller lacerations they sustained had been treated in what seemed to be an effort to prevent further festering.

Glancing around, they took in their surroundings with the furrowed uncertainty of one emerging from a lengthy delirium. The barren, windowless space contained many other identical pallets spaced amid the deep shadows; and feeble lantern light seeped from an open doorway, accompanied by the murmurs of distant voices.

Drawing the blanket tighter, they nestled themselves into its cottony embrace. Whatever profane rituals and transactions had filled the void from their last recollections seemed almost irrelevant now. They had survived… and for the moment, that was enough.

For fleeting as it may be, they were given a moment to exist away from torment.

The creaking of footsteps approaching from the lantern-lit doorway, however, reminded them of how short-lived their reprieves were fated to be. They instinctively tensed, shrinking back against the rough wall as a silhouetted figure stepped through the threshold.

She was a woman different from the ones they’d laid eyes upon before. Her deep umber skin had been rendered leathery beneath the sun’s harshness, and thick dreadlocks framed her weathered features —hair now graying but still predominantly jet black.

Simple loose clothes dressed her stout and heavyset frame as she turned to face them. Though surprise registered in her face at finding them awake, there was no alarm in her eyes. Etched by difficulties, they held an aura they could easily perceive, that of a gentle inner strength brought forth like the tunes of a peaceful melody.

With a previously undiscovered grace, she crossed the cramped space and knelt beside their pallet, radiating a warmth they didn’t comprehend but which instinctively calmed their mounting panic. They shrank back further, clutching the blanket protectively as the strange woman leaned in with a clear intention.

Despite their babbled protests, she deftly enveloped them in a profound embrace, hugging them firmly as their body went rigid with dread. Such contact, devoid of any malice or infliction, triggered something deep within their psyche that they were unable to process.

She offered no words, as if already knowing their insignificance to them. Instead, tenderness became the language of choice to help them understand.

Tremors ran through their entire being as long-buried emotions found sudden, overpowering release. Hot, stinging streams began coursing down their cheeks, eyes closing shut as ragged sobs escaped from their trembling lips.

And she simply held them tighter still, her coarse fingers cradling their head as she shushed and cooed —the first instance of compassion they had ever experienced; and the same with which she would continue to guide them in the days, months and years to come.

Gradually and gently, she taught them the meaning of each spoken syllable.

That she was Mammy Moonlight. That they were their family.

And that their name was Enuill.

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