Chapter 1: The Parade of Pain
The air in the parade grounds was thick, flavored with ozone and the musky sweat of a hundred different species. Anya felt it coat her throat with every ragged breath. The thong was a revelation of cruelty, the silvery alien fabric no wider than a wire digging into the swollen, overstretched flesh between her cheeks with each tentative step. Every shift made her want to scream, but she bit the inside of her cheek until she tasted copper, focusing on the screen floating just ahead of her.
It showed her, two hours ago, in the private training chamber.
Xorgon’s shadow had fallen over her, cold and immense. “The architecture of submission,” his voice had rasped, a sound like stone grinding against stone, “is built in the spaces we open. Today, we lay a new cornerstone.”
On the screen, she watched a tendril, slick and dark, press insistently against her. She saw her own back arch, not in refusal, but in a traitorous, pleading curve. The memory of the stretch was an ache that lived in her bones now, a deep, full sensation that had blurred the line between violation and a strange, terrifying completion. She’d sobbed openly then, tears cutting tracks through the sheen of sweat on her face.
“Thank you, Master Xorgon,” her recorded voice gasped, tinny through the screen’s speakers.
“Louder,” the recorded Xorgon commanded, his four arms moving in a slow, balletic rhythm around her trembling form.
“THANK YOU, MASTER XORGON!”
A sharp pinch on her right buttock brought her violently back to the present. She yelped, stumbling forward a step on the smooth, obsidian pavement.
“Your attention is a gift to the audience, pet. Do not squander it by drifting.” Xorgon walked beside her, his scaled skin shimmering from deep purple to a contemptuous blue. His upper pair of hands were clasped behind his back; the lower right casually administered the corrective pinches, his claws sheathed but the threat present. “They paid to see the product of my work. The living sculpture. Not a daydreaming slave.”
A guttural chatter rose from the roped-off sidelines. A being with too many eyes clacked its pincers appreciatively. Another, smelling of damp moss, pointed a fibrous digit at the screen, which now replayed, in hyper-slow detail, the moment her body had betrayed her with a shuddering climax under the relentless tendrils. Anya’s face burned hotter than her abused flesh.
“Look at it,” Xorgon murmured, his lipless mouth close to her ear. His breath was cold. “See the artistry in your breakdown. The precise moment control becomes obsolete. That is my favorite brushstroke.”
She forced her eyes up. There she was, on screen, mouth slack, eyes rolled back, a thin cry torn from her throat. The humiliation was a fresh wave, cold and sickening.
“It’s obscene,” she whispered, the words slipping out before she could cage them.
The pinch that followed wasn’t a warning. It was a brutal, twisting vise of his three fingers on the tender undercurve of her cheek. A true pain, bright and shocking, cutting through the dull, pervasive throb. She cried out, her knees buckling slightly.
“Obscene?” Xorgon echoed, his voice a dry, amused rustle. “No. That was biology. A predictable chemical spill. This…” He leaned in, his two sets of yellow eyes boring into hers. “This defiance in your tone, that is the obscenity. It is an ugly, human flaw in the otherwise clean lines of my craft. Correct it.”
The crowd had gone quiet, watching. She felt a thousand alien gazes on the fresh, no doubt blooming, bruise. On the wetness in her eyes. The required phrase felt like swallowing ground glass.
“Thank you, Master Xorgon,” she said, her voice hollow.
“Insufficient.”
She drew a shuddering breath, filling her lungs with the weird air. She projected the words, aiming them at the leering crowd, making them a part of the spectacle he demanded. “THANK YOU, MASTER XORGON!”
He straightened up, a cruel smirk forming. “Better. A veneer of gratitude is acceptable. We will sand the rest down later.” He gave a slight signal with one claw-tipped hand.
The screen shifted view. Now it showed a live feed from a drone floating just behind and above them. It framed Anya from the back, her pale skin a canvas of red marks and shimmering old scars, the cruel line of the thong bisecting the vividly presented focus of the day’s training. The image was clinical, magnified, undeniable.
A collective, approving hum rose from the crowd. Anya wanted to vomit.
“They admire the tension,” Xorgon commented as they began walking again, her every movement broadcast. “The pull of the garment against the… expanded aperture. It speaks of recent industry. Of a will properly broken and re-set.”
“It hurts,” she said, the simple truth a pathetic weapon.
“Of course it hurts,” he replied, his tone one of bored enlightenment. “The hurt is the point. The memory of the stretch is now tied to the stimulus of the bite. One sensation layers upon the next, building my architecture within your nervous system. You are learning a new alphabet of feeling. ‘Hurt’ is merely the first letter.”
They reached the end of the main boulevard and turned. The return walk seemed miles longer. The pinches came more frequently now, not for offense, but for pace, for posture, for the dead look in her eyes. Each one was a lightning bolt grounding her in the terrible now.
“Tell me what you are feeling,” he commanded, not looking at her.
She fought for the clinical words, the ones that might satisfy him. “The fabric… abrades the tender tissue. The muscle aches with a deep soreness. The presentation is… exhausting.”
“And the audience?”
She swallowed. “They are watching the… the ache.”
“They are watching my success,” he corrected. “Your body is a document. They are literate.”
A new alien, tall and smelling of metal, leaned over the rope as they passed. It uttered a series of wet clicks, one elongated finger extending towards the screen. Xorgon paused, allowing the interaction. The alien’s finger did not touch her, but traced a line in the air millimeters from the projected image of her most private violation.
Anya froze, a small, wounded sound escaping her.
“She is responsive,” Xorgon said to the alien, as if discussing a finely-tuned engine. “The neural pathways are freshly paved. Every input generates a vivid output.”
The alien clicked again, what might have been a question.
“The threshold is not yet found,” Xorgon replied, a note of thoughtful pleasure in his voice. He finally turned his gaze back to Anya, who was trembling, holding herself impossibly still. “But we near it. The foundation is poured. The next lesson will begin to build upon it.”
He placed a heavy, cool lower hand on the small of her back, a mockery of guidance, and urged her forward. The walk continued. The screen blared. The thong bit. The crowd murmured.
And Anya, her soul fraying at the edges, understood this was just the intermission. The main performance was yet to come. The phrase coiled in her throat, a automatic, broken prayer.
Thank you, Master Xorgon.