John Everson - NightWhere

Mark’s breathing was now coming hard, and he bent over, struggling to catch his breath.

Damia stepped up to the woman, ran a finger down her back and held the finger up, dripping with blood. Then the hermaphrodite used it to draw a circle around her sex.

“Let’s see how well you’ve mastered the whip,” Damia said. “When you hit the bull’s eye, we’ll move on to the next stage of our little…game.”

“Jesus,” Mark said. “I can’t hit her there. C’mon.”

“You’re going to quit now?” Damia taunted. “I knew you’d never go through with this. Rae is better off where she is-without you.”

“Fuck you,” Mark said and pulled his whip arm back. As he did, he felt something tug against the leather. He looked back to see one of Kharon’s helpers holding the last tail of the whip. A black-haired woman with deathly white fingers fastened something silver to the edge of the whip.

A metal hook.

“Time to go fishing,” Damia said. “Remember, the faster you hit it, the faster you quit it!”

Mark felt a sinking sensation in his groin. The first time he hit this woman, he was going to rip her skin. And to hit the place he was supposed to…with a hook? Jesus fuckin’ Christ! His arm felt frozen in place…he couldn’t do this.

“Rae never loved you,” Damia whispered behind him. “She only loved to be defiled. Think about that…marrying you was her way of being degraded…”

Mark struck out with the whip without thinking. The anger took him over. The hook caught just to the left of the woman’s belly button, but instantly pulled free, a trickle of blood flowing in its wake.

“Nice shot, Sherlock. Maybe aim next time? You didn’t even hit the circle!”

The next slap caught her above the belly, beneath her left breast. A jagged wound appeared as soon as Mark pulled the whip back. He held the whip in his hands for a moment then, and stared at the three-hooked implement that was tied with a heavy filament to the end of his whip. It really was just an old-fashioned, three-pronged fishhook.

“If that were me up there, would you miss?” Damia asked. Her voice was a seductive tease in his left ear.

“No,” Mark growled and readied his arm to release the whip once more.

He caught her five more times across the belly and with one horrible strike hooked her breast, stretching the skin out taut before the flesh released the hook and began to drip blood, down across her belly and down across the target Damia had drawn in the woman’s own blood.

With each miss, the woman’s body shook, and when the hooks caught her breast, she did give out a faint, gurgled scream.

And then Mark held his arm back and took a deep breath, really focusing before he let the whip go. The slap of the end of the leather hit right between her legs, in that narrow cleft where every man wanted to go, and where now, none would enter without seeing the scar that Mark had made. When he pulled the whip back, setting the hook and then gouging her as he called it back, there was skin stuck to the hooks, and the delta of the woman’s crotch instantly blossomed in angry red.

Someone stepped up and took the whip from Mark’s hand, replacing it with the hilt of something heavy. He brought his arm down and saw that he now held a black-handled dagger.

The robed figures moved as one and released the woman from the pole. Her arms fell from above her head like dead weight, and she clearly needed support as the group escorted her to a stone table in the middle of the room, behind the pole she’d been tied to.

They lifted and laid her on her back. Damia took Mark by the elbow and led him to the table. “Now comes the fun part,” she said. Mark didn’t like the way she emphasized the word fun .

“You’ve made your mark on her backside, but now you must make our mark on her front. She will forever be marked as a sacrifice to NightWhere.”

Mark looked at the hermaphrodite with total incredulity. He held up the knife. “Are you suggesting that I cut her with this?”

“Not just cut her,” Damia clarified. “You will follow the pattern we have drawn on her belly. And please don’t make any mistakes…you only get one shot at something like this.”

“I’m not going to stab somebody,” Mark said. “I could kill her!”

“Don’t stab too deep then.”

The Watchers moved and stood in line on either side of the table. The woman lay still. Mark held the tip of the knife to the top of the spiral snake. His hand shook visibly.

“Cut her,” Kharon commanded. “Use her flesh as your own. She is nothing. Clay to mold. Make her in our image.”

He’d come this far and already had turned the woman’s back into a bloody, torn mess. If he could keep his cuts very shallow, he wouldn’t hurt her too badly. And then this nightmare would all finally be over. Mark took a deep breath and pushed the edge of the knife against the woman’s skin. It resisted only for a second, and then the blade sank in. The blade was sharp . A thin trail of red instantly bloomed around the edge of the knife, and Mark struggled to keep its contact with her skin very gentle. He only wanted to break the skin, not go deeper.

He moved it a few inches, beginning to make the first arc, when Kharon stepped forward and put a hand on his wrist. “Cut her, don’t tickle her.”

“I don’t want to kill her,” Mark said.

“She is aware of the risk. Press harder. I want to see her flesh part.”

Mark’s heart beat harder, and he felt the tears well up in his eyes. He had done a lot of things in his life that he was ashamed of. He had done a lot of things that he really didn’t want to do.

Nothing had prepared him for this.

Mark pressed the knife in farther, and the woman on the table moaned. The blood flowed out from around the blade now, heavily. Drips poured over her side and spattered the rock slab.

“Much better,” Kharon said. Then he began to speak. The words were guttural, foreign, but the rest of the robed figures apparently knew them. They soon joined in, until the small room echoed with the sound of chanting in unison.

To Mark, the words sounded evil.

He pressed the knife along the snake drawn on the woman’s belly, and gulped as the blood flow increased. He could see the flesh pulling apart under his knife, opening an inch deep to reveal her insides.

Sweat poured down his sides and tears wept absently down his face.

Mark cut.

And then the knife seemed to disappear inside her as he pulled it around the final curve near her belly button. Blood sprayed out and pooled across her middle, before flowing to the table. The woman screamed faintly beneath the burlap, and Mark could see the pink of her guts inside…the blade had slipped through her dermis to breach her belly.

“Oh shit,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

He drew the blade out and stepped back from the table.

The chanting rose to a fever pitch as the woman’s cries grew. At last Kharon raised his hands, and the room went silent.

“She is ours,” Kharon announced, as four of his followers went to each corner of the table. “Now make her yours.”

Damia suddenly curled around Mark’s leg, brushing her breasts against him. With a cool hand, she stroked his penis, which despite Mark’s wishes, instantly grew erect.

“Take her,” Damia said. “Use her for your pleasure.”

Mark shook his head. “No, I can’t. We need to get her a doctor-one of those cuts is too deep. She’s going to bleed to death.”

Kharon shook his head. “She will have no help until your defilement is finished.”

Mark hesitated, and then realized that the only way to end this was to go through it. Protesting would only lengthen the time it took to get help.