Wow, got some more done...
-----
Five
At first Aura just lay on her back on and the bed and cried, hopelessly. They’d gone, thank odd, but… that was small comfort, they could be back any time…
She’d tried fighting Yax off, when he’d first approached her, under the bunk, reflexively biting his nose when he got too close… He’d just laughed at her, as though it was a game, and sank his teeth into her shoulder, holding her like that while he did what he liked with her, ignoring her frantic sobs, the taste of her blood seeming to awaken even baser instincts… When the elder mud arrived, he finally dragged her out from under the divan with his teeth – the mud had laughed and asked if it was a love bite, lifted her by the tail and dumped her on the mattress-
Her shoulder burned, but not as badly as her mind… She lurched to her paws and all but fell into the bathroom, switched the shower on and scrubbed her skin clean, sobbing frantically as what had happened properly sank in…
Then, once she’d rubbed herself dry with the rough towel beside the sink, she returned to the shower and started again.
Four showers and half a bottle of liquid soap later, and still feeling filthy, she finally crawled out into the room. It looked horribly large, she retreated back to the bathroom doorway, shoulders hunched, whining fitfully, as though expecting someone else to come bursting in through the main door and demand she service him as well… Suddenly panicked, she darted across the room, dove under the valance around the bunk, and huddled into her corner, shivering, wide-eyed, too scared to even think of getting to sleep.
“You look glum.”
Jan looked up from the paper Arrun had given him at the comment. “What?”
“I said,” the elder mud stood at the sideboard, making tea. “You look glum.”
Jan nodded, went back to the paper. “They didn’t bring Aura back last night.”
“No, they wouldn’t have. She’s in the West Wing, now.”
“The West Wing?”
“Yeah,” Arrun clanked a spoon in his mug, fished out a soggy teabag and with a flip of his wrist flicked it neatly into the bin. “Better quality accommodation. Most of Management lives over that side. Sometimes they put up guests there, too, if they pay enough – kinda like a hotel for the ones what travelled too far to go back the same night.”
“So what’s she doing over there?” Jan asked, indignantly.
“Jealous, my little friend?” Arrun asked, amusedly, lounging back against the sideboard. “I wouldn’ be. She ain’t there for her comfort, that’s f’sure.”
“What… what do you mean?”
“Well, I sure as hell wouldn’ want to go down there to collect payment,” Arrun sipped the scalding fluid in his mug; ‘down there’ referred to where the prisoners – Jan included at the moment – were housed. “For one it’s cold an’ uncomfortable, and for two I sure as frack wouldn’ want all of you lot watchin’…”
“I… don’t think I understand you…” Jan actually had a rather good idea what the older mudokon was talking about, he just hoped he’d got it wrong.
Arrun shrugged and smiled, vaguely. “Apparently I fought best of the lot, las’ night – if yer exclude Yax an’ Ren who no-one beats – so they let me have a bit of fun wi’ her, once Yax had satisfied the urges, if y’know what I mean….” Absently, he scratched his stomach, speculatively, and mused, out loud; “…she’s better than that last one, she just used t’sit there an’ scream…”
Jan stared at him in something akin to horror. “You’re not trying to tell me,” he demanded, his voice shrivelled. “That you are quite happy to abuse her as casually as those other brutes in here…?”
Arrun gave him an icy look. “Don’ you get an attitude wi’ me, young sir, else we can settle our differences the hard way,” he said, frostily. “Sides, what are you so worried about? ‘S only a slig.”
Only a slig… the words left a sour taste in Jan’s mouth. “But…” he struggled on. “Don’t you… I mean…”
“Don’t I care?” Arrun swigged back the last of his tea, and shrugged. “Not really. Law of the wild, down here. Survival of the fittest – least, all the perks go to the fittest. An’ if it weren’t me doin’ it, someone else would, an’ at least I don’ hurt her like I know a lot of ‘em do… Least this way they ain’t killed her. She ain’t no use out in the ring, an’ ain’t no use nowhere else, if she weren’t, eh… gainfully employed… she’d be dead. Simple as that. The Boss can’t afford to feed mouths what ain’t earnin’ their keep.”
Jan swallowed, thickly, and decided not to pursue it any more.
|