4. Yvonne

4

YVONNE

Consciousness swims over my body in a torrent, quaking from head to toe. My eyes flutter open, a heaviness plaguing my chest as I’m engulfed by my mysterious surroundings. There’s the flickering of a torch upon a nearby wall, a sense of dampness, and a cool, crisp chill. This isn’t anything like the eternal black oblivion I longed for.

I yearned for the sweet embrace of death, the infinite escape from the relentless horrors of slavery and abuse. My clothes aren’t wet, but they have a musty scent to them. I pat them, my hands trembling from the shock of awakening. My vision is beginning to sharpen as I gaze around the chamber, drinking in that the walls are sloped and made of stone.

My memory returns to me in a torrent of images. There is a sense of relief that I did not disappear. Yet, a continuing hum of despair pokes at me. I am thankful but all at once discouraged that my life did not end.

I begin to shuffle across what feels like a bed. My thoughts move languidly, but I’m beginning to comprehend. There are human elements to this cavern, like the bed I lay upon, something that appears like a writing table, and a wingback chair tucked into the gloom…

Then, something moves in the darkness. Fear clenches its icy fingers around my throat, suffocating my curiosity as I try to scramble upward in the bed. But the creature in the corner is far too daunting in its surreal appearance. The sight freezes me in place, terror possessing my flesh and bones.

The creature steps into the light, his features crystallized in the dim. My eyes wash the monster with an agonized panic and a hint of curiosity. It has eyes like infernos, hair like luscious seaweed glistening beneath the torch’s glow, and a swarm of argyle green glossy scales down like armor to his chest.

He doesn’t appear to breathe in the normal sense of the word. Gills flare out and in like sails as he moves in closer, an eerie focus on me with eyes that do not avert nor blink.

Maybe it’s his curious, soft look or the glimmer of the cave’s reflection on his skin, but I feel a magnetic pull to the monster. Some invisible force beckons me to him. Is this the savior I’ve been waiting for?

I try to shrink away from him as he reaches out a long sleek arm, pulling my body into a tiny ball. His eyes are studying me with a cold sense of intrigue.

“What are you doing?” I blurt out.

The creature says nothing as he lays a damp hand on my shoulder, gliding it down studiously to the cliff of my elbow. My body quivers, doing everything it can to distance myself from his attention, but it is futile. There is nowhere for me to go in this strange place where I am his pet to keep.

“Stop!” I scream out, attempting to push him away. "What is going on? Where am I?"

The creature abruptly stops his ruthless exploration at the threshold of my bust line. He stands up tall and gazes at me with a terrifying indifference, the red eyes ever blazing.

“I have heard of the allure of the human female,” he says in a clipped, flat manner. “I watched as you plummeted to the seas, and I removed you from potentially eternal slumber. Now, you are mine to play with.”

I should be upset, but I mostly feel numb. I have been a slave and a pet for as long as I have been a woman, and I fear that any semblance of feeling has been pummeled from me.

Yet, something small in me remains defiant. That spark hasn’t been entirely snuffed out, despite the dark elves’ attempts.

“You cannot decide my fate!” I bellow into his lair. “I refuse to be your experiment! I would rather have become one with the damn sea than this!”

But the creature remains unmoved. He merely returns to the sadistic exploration of my form, resting his hands against my back and crawling downward toward my rear.

I continue my attempt to pull away from him, my muscles seizing in a contorted, unnatural shape. But I cannot escape his touch, nor the clinical glare that beams through the dark like a sinister siren.

“Please,” I whimper, still pitifully moving away from him. “Please, I have suffered for far too long. Please let me rest. Take me to the sea.”

The creature shakes his fish-like head, his cold demeanor a fresh kind of horror.

“I insist that you comply, dear human woman. Should you continue to disobey, your punishment will exceed the suffering of death. I promise you this.”

There is no space for understanding, manipulation, or even seduction. There were many ways that I managed to avoid unwanted affection in the past. Being a woman had its rare advantages, albeit pithy and shameful.

I think of my master and the way he used me for so long. At least, until my originally healthy and robust form, diminished with neglect, no longer satiated his appetite.

Though my disheveled appearance was entirely this doing, he was aloof to it and tossed me away like a discarded, rotting meat.

Then I somehow end up here, in a painfully similar position of utter powerlessness. The savagery of existence is truly boundless.

I tremble as he lowers his hands to my bottom, caressing his long fingers along the barren curves, then back up along the thinning hillsides of my waist. I am thankful briefly for his avoidance of my bare skin. But I have no doubt that further humiliation is yet to come.

“Please,” I implore, my mind lost in a frenzy of fear and survival instinct. “You must stop, you must…”

Desperation has erupted in my words, followed by an earnest, anguished spill of tears. I am surprised that there are any left in this dry body, but I let them flow, the floodgates shattered by the relentless torture of existence. My whimpers quickly grow into sobs, and my body quakes.

My eyes sting as my voice wavers between my whimpering. I can still feel his hands examining me like I am a corpse upon a slab.

The weeping is real and not done for the creature’s sake. It is something that has been in me for years that I refused to allow to the surface. The utter sorrow of my existence. Now, it is flowing like a volcanic explosion, a wild expression of deep-seated grief.

The creature, though, is having none of it. His fingers creep up to my throat with a spider-like chill, then he forcibly raises my head from its defeated droop. I am startled out of my misery by both the power of his hands and the malevolence of his devil-eyed glare.

“There is no time for this nonsense,” he hisses. “Now, remove yourself from your hysterics. Sit up. Tell me your name.”

I gulp, my throat dry from the salt of the sea. He continues to stare at me, through me, his gaze penetrating into my skull.

It is a true marvel that I feel anything at all. But I manage somehow to feel the conviction of his words. He is not mincing them. The creature will punish me if I do not comply.

I am paralyzed in fear. He glides his fingers through the willowy locks of my hair. He then leans in closer, craning his head into the nape of my neck.

“Do as I say,” he says curtly. “Sit up. No more of your tripe.”

I follow suit, like a good pet.

There are simply no other options. All I can hope is that he tires of my woes and tosses me into the sea. There is a romance to that, and it is what I will cling to.