Tales of the Thousand and One Shades of Alanis, the Goddess (part 6)

6. 
Alanis awakes

The sun shines through the large, half-covered window. Outside on the trees and paths of the garden, big as a park, there is the first snow. The light of the sun falls on the face of the devilish beautiful GODDESS ALANIS. Although Queen of Vampires and Mistress of the Dark, she enjoys the warmth on her pale skin, she smiles and purrs. But when she opens her dark eyes, the light is far too blinding.

 

“Draw the curtains a little further, sister Yema,” she says to her servant. The young, slim and very pretty chinese woman is dressed in a black silk suit normally worn for kungfu or tai chi. Silently, she scurrys around the large bed, preparing her mistress’s morning errands. Her hair is braided into a pigtail, and around her neck she wears a narrow black collar of soft leather studded with quartz chips. Yema pulls the front curtain a little further, so that the bedroom is now flooded with mild, soft sunlight.

Alanis stretches on her bed. She is wearing a shimmering silvery negligee, also made of the finest Chinese silk. She smiles. 

“Did you have a successful hunt in Berlin, Queen Alanis?” asks Yema as she arranges the day’s wardrobe.

“Oh yes, very successful,” Alanis replies, smiling in memory.

“Congratulations, my Queen,” Yema says, adjusting the slippers.

“I’ve already unpacked your suitcases, the laundry is already being cleaned. And …”

A smile slides across the Chinese servant’s face, ” … and the special luggage has been taken to the basement, as requested.”

Alanis smiles dreamily. She slowly wriggles free of her blanket and sheets, graceful as a cat. She thinks back to yesterday, when she left Berlin in the shape of a business woman. She thinks of the many workers who carried her suitcases onto the plane in the rain. She thinks of the large, heavy box that three men had to heave onto the jet. The box was sealed all around – only in one place was there an opening big enough for a head to look out of it. And a head was looking out of the box: the head of her newest prey, a Business from Berlin. Alanis licks her lips at the thought of this sight. 

Yema puts a cup of jasmine tea on the bedside table.

Alanis straightens up a bit and takes a sip of tea.

The man, who once called himself Max, had been stripped and tied up while still in the luxury hotel in Berlin, where the Mistress of the Dark had caught him. He was lightly sedated with a bite from the poisonous Goddess, and then put naked into this box. When the lids of the box closed, he screamed in fear. Finally, only his head peeked out. His mouth was closed with a gag. Alanis did not want to hear anything from him during the flight. She only wanted to see his face while she sipped her special champagne (a mixture of blood, champagne and juice) in the comfortable chair. She wanted to drink in the desperation in his eyes as she comfortably put her feet up a bit, on the box that was right in front of her, the whole flight. She wanted to watch as the thought gradually took possession of this Berlin businessman that he was indeed now nothing more than a captive, a prey, a helpless victim. Probably he thought this whole frightening thing would end up as a kidnap and ransom situation. If only he knew!

Alanis laughed and suddenly jumped out of bed cheerful like a young girl. 

“Shall I bring breakfast to the bedside, Queen Alanis?” asks the Chinese woman (who by the way is a vampire also).

 

“No, sister Yema. I want to take a look at my new possession before breakfast.”

Alanis looks forward to the day like a child to Christmas. She quickly selects from the offered wardrobe what seems appropriate for this morning: a laced vintage gothic dress of red velvet with black fur collar and fur trim on the sleeves, plus black gloves and elegant and shimmering red high heels. Yes, she will look like an 18th century Vampyre Queen on her new slave. That’s how it should be. Alanis laughs and puts on a greenish pearl necklace.

“Let’s go, Yema,” Alanis says. “Are you excited to see him?”

“Oh yes,” Yema says, scampering up beside her mistress, “I’m looking forward to starting the training.”

“You will, today.”

Alanis and Yema leave the bedchamber. They walk through a large drawing room. Since Alanis has been abroad for a while, she is happy to see again all the beautiful things she furnished her rooms with. The pictures on the walls. The antique chests of drawers. The old, carefully maintained furniture from all centuries. The art objects from all over the world on the chests of drawers and shelves. 

She is especially pleased with that original and practical piece of art that lies as a foot warmer in front of her canapé. She stops for a moment in front of it and looks at it. From a distance, it looks like the skin of a bear that has been killed. But when you look closer, you see that this bear skin seems to move. And if you go even closer, you will see that under the soft fleece there is a human being who apparently can no longer move. He lies, sewn into the fur, on his stomach, with his arms and legs outstretched, his chin resting on the floor. His eyes are as if wiped out. But there is no doubt, this pathetic figure is alive. His soft thin breathing can be heard. Alanis looks down at him.

“Didn’t you forget to take care of the sofa rug while I was gone?” asks Alanis. “I don’t like it to get dirty.”

“I took care of all your objects and furniture and fed your animals, as always, Queen Alanis.”

At that moment, the human foot warmer’s mouth opens, a tongue unrolls and touches Alanis’s boot toe, which is right in front of his face. Alanis nods in satisfaction. “It” still seems to be working. 

They continue walking. Down the grand open staircase, past servants and maids going about their work, humbly greeting the Lady. 

They go on down, on and on. 

Alanis can’t help but think of that Moscow prosecutor who showed up at her russian house one century ago, threatening to investigate. Supposedly, he had proof that she had led her company to success by criminal means, even that she did not hesitate to murder people or simply make them disappear! The prosecutor threatened her with imprisonment, he absolutely would not listen to reason. Alanis shakes her head: “What a fool. Why didn’t he take one of all her offers? Surely they could have come to an agreement. But no, this bureaucrat wanted to prove that he had backbone and morals! Well, yes. Suddenly he disappeared from the scene. Soon nobody talked about him anymore. Only Alanis knows what happened to him. For a century he has been lying in front of Alanis’s sofa, sewn into a bear skin, as a foot warmer. He, who had imagined so much about his backbone and his morals, can no longer move under his own power. Alanis had arranged for the prosecutor’s tendons and ligaments that connect the muscles to the bones to be surgically severed. 

His job now consists of warming Alanis’s feet as she relaxes on the sofa, reading a book, listening to music, and licking her toes when her feet appear in front of his face. A career jump.

Alanis goes faster. She can’t wait to see her new slave. Hopefully he hasn’t woken up yet. She loves the moment when a prisoner wakes up and is not yet oriented and realizes very gradually that it would have been better if he never woke up… 

Deeper and deeper it goes down into the cellar vaults.

Alanis and her servant enter a chamber full of iron cabinets and shelves. It is Alanis’s armory. Weapons are kept here, whips and sticks of all kinds, but above all all every imaginable instrument of torture: ancient thumbscrews as well as the latest electric torture devices. Everything needed to train a slave can be found here. 

Alanis does not dwell on sophisticated tools for long. Today is the first day of this Berlin Businessman’s new life, and he is about to experience the plain and simple harshness and mercilessness of his fate. She grabs a powerful bullwhip and sends it whizzing through the air. The air in the chamber seems to cry out in pain. Alanis looks at her servant, “Have one too.” Yema obeys and takes a smaller bullwhip.

Then Alanis and Yema, who always walks two silent steps behind her Queen, enter the basement vault. Alanis now enjoys every step. To the right and left of the corridor are the cells of her animals and eternal slaves. She hears moaning, she hears whimpering and crying. She looks at her animals inside the cages: There, Mr. Gilmore is on his knees, an American War Hero whom Alanis eliminated during Worls War II; here, Don Bertucci is pressed up against the bars, a Mafia Godfather from Sicily who tried to fuck with the devilish beautiful redhair girl – he was seduced, bitten and… well… emasculated… Alanis is still unsure how she will continue to use him. Prego… Prego… mia Dea… She hears him whisper. He has been whispering it for 40 years.

There are dozens of cages. Alanis slowly strides past them all, considering each creature with a glance. But she does not stop. She wants to get to the Berlin Business Man who calls himself Max. The new flesh, the new soul in her power – that excites her the most.

Yema opens a heavy iron door. And even before Alanis enters the large room designed for new acquisitions, she sees him: Max hangs naked like a piece of meat on a hook, or actually on a pulley attached to the ceiling. He swings freely. His eyes are closed. Very nice, Alanis thinks. He is not awake yet. 

But his eyelids are already twitching.

Alanis gives Yema a signal. Yema presses a control button, and the rope with Max on the hook lowers a little. Until Max’ feet touch the ground and his legs buckle slightly. This puts him at eye level. Max moans softly.

Alanis walks over to her victim. She looks at him from close. She likes him. She has spotted him in a Berlin bar and made her way to him. It was no problem to seduce him, no problem at all. He is in his 40s, but in good shape. Good flesh, good blood. Still… She knew she had to possess this guy, break him, enslave him, make him her dog. It is his destiny. She is his destiny. Alanis licks her lips. She whispers softly, gently, as if to a lover in the bedroom, “Mr. Max… Mr. Max…” Her face is very close to his, she holds his head gently in her hand, his hair in her fimgers… “Mr. Max… Mr. Max…” She kisses him on the forehead. The cheek. The mouth. He smells her perfume. “Mr. Max…”

And the Business Man, who no longer would be called “Mister”, wakes up.

He sees blurry a beautiful face close in front of him: dark eyes with a green glow in them, red eybrows, red hair like flames, curved soft lips, a charming smile, an angelic face… “Mr. Max… Mr. Max…” Is this a dream?…

Alanis smiles.

“Good morning, my slave”.

He opens his eyes.

“Welcome to your new life, slave,” Alanis says, smiling at him. Max looks with a blur at the beautiful smiling face, so close before him. Into the dark and greenish, shimmering, cruel eyes of a predatory cat. He still doesn’t understand where he is … why his shoulder joints hurt so much, why his neck seems to be punctuated with deep wounds … why his arms are stretched towards the ceiling … why his wrists are enclosed in tight steel bands … But then, as Alanis lightly strokes his face with one finger, as if the predatory cat wants to play with its prey before eating it, the horror suddenly leaps back into his consciousness. Alanis – the strange girl from the Hotelbar! He is … With her! She is a crazy woman, a psychopath! He is in her power. He freezes with fear.

Alanis whispers, “Are you happy to see me, big Berlin businessman?” Her mouth is so close to his bloodless lips that he could kiss it. He feels her breath on his face. He smells her perfume, a light fruity note, of lemon and lavender, like a fresh summer morning. Her hand is now gently stroking his hair. Max’s lips tremble. He whispers, “Please… don’t kill me…”

Alanis laughs. She turns to her servant Yema, “He thinks I want to kill him. Isn’t that sweet?” Yema smiles too, it is an icy smile. Max only now sees the figure of the young Chinese woman, her shiny black silk suit, her black eyes, the black whip in her hand. A black Chinese angel from hell. Alanis turns to Max again, caresses him.

She suddenly kisses him on the mouth. Max holds his breath. She kisses him… Will everything turn out all right? When Alanis releases her lips, she says softly: “You won’t die, Max. Not so quickly. You will live here with me. For a very very long time. In your terms – for all eternity.” She strokes his hair, smiles. “But I don’t know if you will be happy about it…”

 

She laughs in the man’s face, gives him two resounding slaps and steps back a few paces. Only now Max sees her beautiful figure, the pearl necklace around her neck, the red velvet vintage dress, the slit skirt, her beautiful legs ending in slender laced red high heels. Only now does he see the huge bullwhip in her hand. Alanis slowly unrolls the whip and looks at Max with a mocking smile. Then she lashes out – and lets the whip swish through the air with relish, so that the crack echoes off the stone walls. Max roars in shock. Alanis laughs merrily. She stands in front of Max while Yema moves into position behind him. Alanis lunges again with an elegant big movement… Max tries frantically to shake himself free, to protect himself, to check from which direction the danger is greater – but there the murderous blow already hits him. The thin leather wraps almost completely around his upper body once, and when Alanis pulls back the whip, it feels as if his chest is tearing open in the middle.

Max screams for minutes. Tears well up in his eyes. Just from one blow with this devil’s whip.

Alanis steps close to her prisoner. Looks down at his face. She reaches into his hair and holds the head rolling at the nape of his neck so that he has to look into her eyes. “Slave,” she whispers softly, “look at me.” Max tears open his eyes and looks at his tormentor. Greenish gleam in her brown eyes. The pain from that one blow alone is barely bearable. His skin burns. Alanis smiles.

“Do you like me, slave?” Max stares at her. Hectically, he nods. “Yes… Yes… Mrs… I like you…” Alanis smiles, stroking Max’s face. “Do you find me beautiful, slave?” Max gasps, “Yes, Mrs … Alanis, right?… yes, I think you are beautiful!” Alanis holds his head by the hair, with her other hand she casually caresses his body. “Do you regret meeting me in your hometown?” Max wants to shakes his head, but Alanis holds his hair tightly in her fist, so he stammers, “No, I surely don’t … regret it… please forgive me.” Alanis smiles mockingly. “Would you like to be my dog?” Max swallows, collects himself, then, “Yes, Mrs Alanis, I would like to be your … dog.” Alanis smiles. She opens her mouth and licks the tip of her warm tongue once all over Max’s face. The predatory cat tastes her prey.

Then she whispers, “I don’t believe you.”

Alanis takes two steps back again and signals to Yema. Yema presses the control button of the pulley. Max feels his arms stretching and his body being pulled up into the air, so that only the tips of his toes touch the cellar floor and his whole body is otherwise free to spin in the air. Max shrieks in panic: “Please! Believe me! I like you! I love you! Please! Have mercy!”

“I don’t believe you, slave. Yema, do you believe him?” — Max hears Yema’s voice, low, girlish, cold: “He is lying, Queen Alanis.”

And then all hell breaks loose on Max.

Blow follows blow. Alanis lashes out, the bullwhip hisses as she rolls out, and she strikes, across the chest, she yanks the whip back. Max roars. Behind him, Yema lunges and cracks the dangling man across the legs with her smaller whip. Alanis moves further to the left, lunges and lets the whip dance on Max’s abdomen. Max shrieks. Yema moves the other way and pulls the whip over Max’s side. Max spits and wriggles. He hears the heels of Alanis’s boots on the stone floor. Alanis and Yema circle their victim slowly and calmly, alternating their whips and striking all around, torso, side, abdomen, legs, feet. They mercilessly let the blows rain down on his body from all sides.

Then Max slowly begins to swing in the air, to spin, to circle. Max begins to dance, hanging from his hook, simply because of the force and rhythm of the incessant lashes.

Soon Max no longer has a voice to scream. His pain is expressed only by inarticulate bubbling and mumbling. His damaged body dances high in the air. A bizarre pattern of wounds and cuts is painted on his skin. Almost no skin is visible under the tangle of blood-red welts. Max is raw meat. 

Suddenly an eerie silence falls. Max no longer screams, he is close to fainting. He hardly notices that the two cruel beauties are no longer beating him. They only look at him. How he swings there silently in the air. A poetic sight that Alanis silently enjoys like a beautiful work of art.

How long do they you whip him? Ten minutes? Half an hour? Two hours? Max wouldn’t know how to say. He would hardly know how to say his name.

Alanis watches the swinging piece of slave in silence. She lets it swing out slowly. When the body has come to a standstill again, Alanis makes a sign to her servant. Yema lowers Max further to the earth. His legs buckle, and at a half-kneeling height the Chinese woman arrests the slave. Alanis steps up to the victim, who is dangling from the rope with his head hanging and barely conscious. His head hangs on his chest. Alanis circles her slave. She slowly takes off her gloves. She strokes the fresh wounds with her fingernail. She licks from her fingertips the blood. Max whimpers pitifully like a little puppy. Alanis stands in front of Max. Looks down at him. She holds her finger to his mouth with his own blood on it. Max instinctively knows what to do. He opens his mouth. Alanis slips her finger into his mouth and smiles as Max obediently licks his own blood from her finger.

“Slave, do you like me?” asks Alanis. She pulls her finger from his mouth, touches his chin and gently pulls it upwards. Max looks up at the cruel woman. Max immediately begins to tremble. His whole body burns and trembles. Fragments of thoughts race through his brain: She is as beautiful as a panther… I hate her… She is not even 30 years old and so evil… She is the devil… Max does not understand why fate has sent him to this hell. His eyes roll woozily, his spit gathers at the corners of his mouth, along with the blood he has licked from Alanis’s finger.

He nods. He gargles sounds, “Yes… Like you… Love you… Please… Don’t hit me anymore… Like you… Your slave… Your dog…” Alanis smiles. Bends her head to his ear and whispers, “I don’t believe you.”

Max wants to scream in desperation and fear, but all that comes out of his throat is a shrill squeal. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Alanis stepping back again and Yema reaching for the whip again. He doesn’t think he can take another beating like that. He squeals in fear like a pig at the slaughterhouse.

But Alanis puts her whip away. Yema places a red upholstered leather armchair in front of the fomer Businessman, now raw meat in the power of a Devil. Alanis sits down on the armchair. Yema presses the control button again. Max is lowered down. But not quite. His head is now level with Alanis’s hands, which rest loosely on the backs of her chair. Max’s legs are pulled back by Yema and there locked tightly to a ring on the floor. Max hangs directly in front of Alanis, like a taut rope, his head close to her hands. Dangerously close.

Max is crying. Alanis looks at him. The helpless victim. She let him cry for a few minutes.

“Slave?” she finally says. Her voice is so soft, so cruelly gentle… Immediately Max stifles his tears, tries to be quiet. “Look at me, Slave.” Max lifts his head to look at the she-devil. It hurts to push his head so far down his neck in this position. He sees Yema standing sideways next to her Queens chair. Yema’s face is sweaty from the whipping. But her cold gaze is on Max like a piece of cattle.

“Have I introduced you to my sister and servant yet? Oh no, I am so thoughtless sometimes. I have forgotten that. Forgive me, slave.” She puts her arm around the Chinese woman’s slender waist. “This is Yema. She is originally from Shanghai. She was very young, only 22 years old, when the Powers of the Dark Divine caught her and made her one of us. She has lived in my service since then. Maybe Yema will tell you her story sometime. Look, slave, isn’t she pretty and sexy?”

Max wants to nod, but his neck hurts too much and he lowers his head. He can’t do anything about it. It is too exhausting for him to hold his head up against the gravity. Then his head is yanked upwards by the hair and Alanis gives him two resounding slaps. “Slave, you disappoint me,” says Alanis angrily, and her voice is hard as iron, “I introduce you to my beautiful servant and you turn your head away! You will be punished for this, slavedog.” Max whimpers an apology. Alanis looks at him sternly. Yema’s expression remains expressionless, but no… a faint smile now seems to appear on the Chinese woman’s face. Alanis strokes Yema’s hip lightly and nods at her. Yema stands behind the hanging Max.

Then Yema’s whip swooshes down onto his back. Once. Twice. Three times. In quick succession.

Alanis continues to talk as the whip dances relentlessly across Max’s back, “You will see a lot of Yema in the near future. She will take over your training. I’ll come occasionally when I feel like it and check on your progress. But Yema will train you. You should obey her. She doesn’t regard slaves like you as human beings. They’re animals, no… less than animals. And she doesn’t even like animals… So be kind to her, slave.”

Yema slaps. Max howls. Alanis speaks.

“You will live down here. You will stay here for at least three months without ever seeing daylight. Maybe it will be six months. Or a year? Or ten years. We don’t have your notion of time here. That’s up to you. But you won’t be bored, slave. Yema will visit you every day. At least five hours a day my sweet Yema will train you.”

Max shrieks. Yema whips. Alanis chats.

“In the beginning, she will seem uninspiring to you. In the beginning she will just beat you. With the bullwhip, with the nine-tailed whip, with hardwoods, with leather paddles, with the bamboo stick, ah, with anything she can get her hands on. She is also good at hitting with just her hands! She knows kungfu, taekwondo and shuaijiao. And of course she knows magic, like we all do. She will talk little to you, or not at all, but just hit you.”

Yema whips. Max squeals. Alanis smiles.

“Later, of course, she will inflict pain on you in other ways. She likes that. She will torture you. With electricity, with needles, with water, with knives. As she pleases. There is nothing you can do about that. This part of the drill can take a week.”

Max whimpers. Yema wipes her sweat from her forehead. Alanis takes Max’s chin in her hand and holds his head like a fruit. Looks him in the eyes. Yema strikes. Max twitches. Alanis smiles.

“Then, when you are ready, the real training will begin, slave. You will learn my language. You will learn how to move. You will learn how to wait on me. You will learn how to look at me. You will learn what it means when I snap my fingers once, and what it means when I snap them twice, and what it means when I click my tongue briefly or when I raise my eyebrows. You will learn to obey like a good dog. Because that’s what you are now: my dog. You will learn… to love me, slavedog.”

Max no longer makes a sound. But he is conscious. His eyelids flutter. He looks at Alanis. Alanis raises her hand. Yema puts the whip away. Max’s body is lowered to the earth. Powerless and soft, the body sinks into itself as if there were not a bone left in it. Yema releases his wrists from the steel ring attached to the winch. Max’s arms crash to the ground. Max groans. His joints have held his own body for 36 hours. He cannot move under his own power.

Alanis looks at the bloody heap of flesh and soul at her feet.

“Show me you like me and how grateful you are. Slave.”

His torn skin burns on the cold floor as if he has been held in flames. He lifts his head. Alanis looks down at him with interest. Max obeys immediately. Max begins to lick her boots.

“Thank you…” He cries as he licks and whispers, over and over, “Thank you… Mistress… Thank you… Thank you… for making me your slave… Thank you…”

Alanis smiles. She likes how this man immediately gives her the appropriate thanks without further prompting. She likes how devotedly and intimately he licks her boots. She let him lick. For minutes. On and on Max whispers his “Thank you… Mistress… Thank you…”

“It is Goddess for you, slavedog”, Alanis corrects him.

“Thankyou Goddess…” While Max licks his Goddesses boots and Alanis enjoys the sight, Yema goes to a small stove that stands in a corner of the huge vault, banging quietly away. She opens the door of the oven. Flames flicker from the opening. The gloomy cellar suddenly flickers reddish. Like hell. Max, however, is too busy licking Alanis’s feet, he doesn’t see what Yema is doing at the stove. Fortunately, he doesn’t see it.

Alanis leans down to Max and strokes his hair, like a dog.

“You are sweet. We’re not quite done yet, though, Slavedog.”

 

Max, however, continues to lick his Goddesses feet. He doesn’t hear Yema approaching again. He continues to lick Alanis’s boots as if his life depended on it.

Suddenly Max feels Yema sit down on his back. He cries out, for his back is one open wound. But Yema pays no attention, she pushes Max’s powerless arms under her thighs. Max is now lying flat on his stomach on the stone floor, his face is on Alanis’s feet, and the Chinese woman is squatting on his lower back, his arms tucked under her legs.

Max gets scared again. And yet – he continues to lick Alanis’s boots.

But then Yema, hands clasped, grabs his face by the jaw and bends his head brutally upwards. Max screams. He feels that if the Chinese woman pulls his head up just a few centimetres more, his spine will snap like a piece of dry wood… He panics, but he cannot move. Yema’s strong legs hold his arms, his torso in place, Yema’s hands hold his head.

Then he sees it.

Alanis is holding a red-hot branding iron.

“You are mine, Slavedog. Forever. Everyone will see it,” Alanis announces.

The next moment Alanis presses the branding iron right into his forehead. It hisses. It burns. Max screams like a banshee, but without a voice. He smells his own charred flesh….

… and then he loses consciousness.

When he wakes up again, he is shivering. He feels feverish. Sweat covers his sore body, the sweat burns in the wounds. His forehead feels numb like a piece of wood. There is still the smell of burning.

He is no longer in the terrible cellar vault. He is in a no less terrible, dim cellar vault. He is lying in a cage so low that he can only rise up on his knees, so narrow that he can touch the bars opposite with his arms stretched out. Next to his cage is another cage. A naked man, bald, pale, full of scars all over his body, perhaps 60 years old, kneels in it, his eyes lowered humbly to the ground.

Max realises that there are dozens of cages and crates lined up in this cellar corridor. Men are everywhere, crouching on their knees, all in the same humble position…

Alanis walks slowly from cage to cage, looking at her slaves. Yema accompanies her like a shadow. Alanis moves slowly and lasciviously. She knows that all her animals are looking at her now. She moves as if she wants to seduce someone. She licks her lips. She stops in front of each cage. Looks at each slave for a long time. She smiles when she puts her foot in the cage and when the slave immediately presses his face against the bars and starts kissing and licking her boots. She purses her mouth, smiles mockingly, she looks down at her animals, one by one. With each creature, she fondly remembers who it was before it landed here. With her.

But now they all bear her mark on their foreheads.

 

“I haven’t had breakfast all morning, Yema. It’s about time,” Alanis says cheerfully as she looks down at a fat man who is tied to the bars of his cage with a nose ring and can only move his head up and down the bars. “I’ll have breakfast served to you upstairs right away, mistress,” Yema says.

But Alanis replies, “I will have a slave for breakfast today”.

Her words echo through the corridor, booming in the minds of her creatures.

Alanis strides on. She looks around – at Max, who stares after her, pale with fright and feverish. She smiles almost coquettishly at him over her shoulder. Then she stops in front of a cage containing a giant. “Good afternoon, Mister Morris.” The dark-skinned shaven-headed man crouches naked in his far-too-tight cage, looking humbly down at the ground like everyone else. Alanis licks her lips. The giant trembles. She sticks her foot through the bars. The giant lunges at the foot like a man dying of thirst at a water source and licks her boot.

“Yema, get him out, wash him, then send him up to me in the breakfast room.”

Alanis withdraws her foot and now walks carelessly past all the other slaves. Towards the exit. Gone she is.

Yema opens the black man’s cage. She taps once briefly against her legs with the whip. The giant crawls out of the hutch like an insect, kisses both of the Chinese woman’s feet and then willingly holds out his neck to her. Yema attaches a leash to the steel slave collar, then gives it a quick tug. The massive man follows immediately, crawling on all fours down the aisle next to the small, petite Chinese woman. His face is always close to her feet. They leave the catacombs, the heavy iron door closes.

It is now almost completely dark.

Max hears the other men moaning. How they take rasping breaths. How they try to shift into a different position. No one speaks.

Max whispers to the man next to him, the old bald man who is now lying down and curling up to sleep.

“Hee… Shh… What happens to the poor devil now?”

For a while the old man does not respond. But then he replies, “Nobody knows. Maybe you’ll see him again in a few hours. Or maybe you won’t see him for a few weeks. Or maybe you will never see him again.”

Max shivers.

Max lies slouched on the floor. He is completely exhausted. His body is a single pain, a single wound. He feels so weak that he thinks he will die if he falls asleep. But he wants to sleep. To sleep… To die… He touches his own forehead with his index finger. Runs his finger along the fresh, unscarred brand.

 

It is a circle in the middle of his forehead. Inside this circle is emblazoned one stately letter: A.

 

TO BE CONTINUED