"Forbidden - Chapter 1" by Elizabeth Holgate

Chapter 1:

It began the same as any other day. But then my life had always been monotonous, why should I have expected any different? Same chill, same stiffness, same reluctance to open my eyes, cursing the fact that I woke up at all to spend another day in a man-made hell. I could hear the weary groans of the other slaves as they too began to stir, but watched them curl up tighter, drifting back into slumber. I envied them for that, it's something I'd never been able to do, too full of dread to do anything but shake with nervous energy.

The room stank. If you could call it a room, iron bars on the windows, straw scattered thinly on the stone slabs that made up the floor, and a tangle of limbs, some 25 naked forms cramped up in a space that would comfortably house no more than 5. All of us were male, in that room. The female slaves were kept elsewhere, though I doubt their living conditions were any better than our own. The air was stale with sweat and urine. It was a regular occurrence that some of the other slaves would wet themselves in the night, like scared children, especially the newer captives who were unused to the situation. We didn't think anything of it, but I made sure I slept at the upper end of the sloping floor, that way I'd avoid any liquid that seeped through the straw and towards the thin drain at the far end.

Of course, none of this was new to me. I've been a slave all my life. 24 years, passed from owner to owner, each one slightly worse than the other, each one more perverse. None had scared me before this point, but this one terrified me. None of the other slaves went through what I did, it was common knowledge, but none dare asked what use I was put to. Partly because I couldn't have answered if they had asked.

I'm mute. Wasn't born that way though. I think I must have been 12 or 13 when I woke up and found that they'd taken speech from me. To this day I don't know how they did it. There's no scar, it was nothing so simple as removing my tongue, but they had experts for such things, quite masterful in their techniques. I don't even know why they did it. I wasn't an argumentative child. I was too wise to talk back when I was yelled at.

Anyway, enough of that, I'm straying from the story.

As I've mentioned, my duties differed from those of the other slaves and our owner was unnecessarily brutal. Everyday after we'd been hosed down and forced to eat something that vaguely resembled food, we were taken to our varying places of labour. Mine just happened to be the Master's private rooms, and I loathed them.

Down the stairs I'd be taken, the winding, spiral staircase that seemed to descend so deeply they'd lead us straight into hell, utterly claustrophobic and getting continually darker. No windows down here, I think even the guards that led me there were happy to get away with their torches once they'd deposited me outside the door. How tempting it was to run after them, but with my ankles shackled there's not really much chance of that.

Sometimes I'd be waiting there for an hour or more before the door would swing inwards and I'd feel him clasp my arms. His fingers felt like bones, cold and hard, nails like talons biting into my biceps, then the door would close behind me. It reeked in there. Worse than the sleeping chamber did at night. But it reeked of something else, something overpowering that made me want to retch. I know now what it was; I've seen it in some degree of light, though it was quite an ordeal going back down there. Dead bodies. Some hanging in parts from meat hooks, some laid out on tables, rib cages pried apart, skins wrinkled and grey. I'm glad now, that it was dark. I'd have lost my mind if I'd seen what was making that stink.

His breath always came in hisses, as if he sucked it in and out through his teeth. They weren't like normal teeth either. I'd occasionally glimpse a flash of them in the dim light of the half a dozen candles he had scattered in the other rooms. They reminded me of wolf teeth and they tore like wolf teeth. My skin still carries the scars to prove it.

I didn't work in the room with the bodies. I didn't have to handle them either. Instead I'd be lead into a larger chamber, wall made up of bars, things roaming behind them, making inhuman noises, snarls and growls that made me flinch. The first time he took me there, I thought he meant to feed me to them. As it happens, I often wished, during the months that I worked there, that he would, because my actual task was far more hellish.

Past the chamber with the beasts behind the bars, there was another room, this one lit a little more brightly. In I'd be pushed, the door would slam shut behind me, more bars, not solid, and he would stand there watching me, a tall figure, cloak hanging from his spindly form as if he were a cousin of the grim reaper. The first time, I remember sitting there wondering what was expected of me. He gave me no orders, barely even acknowledged that I was in the room actually, just staring at the walls behind me, occasionally at the ceiling. Finally I noticed that the walls seemed strange. They weren't smooth, nor did they have the texture of any stone I knew. They moved. They glistened.

He reached to a small lectern in the archway before the bars, a large, leather-bound book resting open halfway, a black quill between his fingers. It was rather obvious at this point, that something was going to happen to me, and he intended on standing there taking notes.

From within the walls, there came strange sounds, groans and wailing, as if something was stuck there, desperate to get out. It panicked me, and I went racing towards the bars, literally flinging myself at them. He took no notice of me. He knew I'd never be strong enough to get out.

Something emerged from the wall. It was the size of two men at least, and I remember it straining, as if to get through some membrane, as if it were being born, head coming through first, horned and grotesque, eyes sunken, sockets so deep you could barely see the vermilion glow they pulsed with. My shaking at the bars increased. I think that's what drew its attention. The next thing I knew, it had forced its shoulders through - massive, every bone visible, skin transparent and faintly yellow. The rest of it followed soon after, humanoid arms covered in a thin layer of coarse, brown hair, and from the ribs down, entirely boneless, built like some great slug, covered in putrid slime that came gushing through the wall around it, viscous and quivering. The hole closed up after it had hauled itself through, leaving a dark mark, like a bruise upon pale skin.

It crawled towards me. I felt my throat constricting as I tried to scream, looking desperately to the thin figure of my master, praying he'd let me out. No chance of that.

A hand wound around my waist. One hand - that was all it took - easily large enough to grab me and pull me off my feet. I kicked and flailed, weeping silently, sure it was about to eat me and the force with which it flung me down on my back was enough to knock the wind from my lungs. Its breath was all over my face, immense weight almost crushing me. I couldn't move my arms or legs, they were too firmly pinned by its boneless lower half, its torso raised above me, gaunt face leering, row upon row of sharp teeth on display.

I exhausted myself with my struggling, until finally I lay panting beneath the thing, unable to do anything except wait. My master was scribbling hastily in his book; I could hear the scratch of the quill even over the sounds of the monster. I closed my eyes and lay there limply. I didn't have the energy to react when I felt its tongue on my neck, trailing over my face. Tasting me before it takes a bite, I thought.

Instead, I felt my ankles grasped, its weight shifting off me, and before I had even opened my eyes, I was being dragged across the floor, towards the bruised section of the wall, and the creature was forcing itself through. It meant to take me through with it! More of that foul liquid spurted from the broken membrane, utterly drenching me, but the wall would not let me through, no matter how hard it pulled at me. Time after time it slammed me up against it, bruising my ankle and  nearly knocking me senseless. That would have been a blessing. Finally, with a tormented growl, it released me, and I went tumbling onto the floor, the wall whole once more.

The chamber went dark, the door creaked open, and then those bony fingers plucked me from the floor. My master slung me over his shoulder like a rag- doll, chuckling to himself. It seemed he was pleased with his experiment, though I wouldn't find out why until later.

Still drenched in the foul muck that had spewed through the wall, I was dumped on a flat, metal table, large enough for me to spread my limbs out upon and not be able to feel the edges, and painfully cold. I heard the rustle of clothing as my master paced incessantly alongside the table, shedding his ceremonial robe, back to me, a shock of white hair hanging flat against jutting shoulder blades. I've never seen anyone so emaciated, so lacking in muscle. Within moments he was all over me, licking at the slime that covered my skin, relishing the taste as his long tongue darted and flickered as if it had a life of its own. He gathered up my blood and pried at the scratches in my flesh.

I had no energy to resist, but I don't think it would have done me any good if I had. He might have been little more than a skin-clothed skeleton, but his strength was far greater than my own, and not by natural means.

"Yes, it liked you. It always likes the pretty ones. They have to be pretty or they just get eaten." I felt talons leaving fresh tracks and ragged tears in my skin. "Yes, you're perfect. None of the screaming that the last one made. Pretty, pretty tears." He licked them from my face too, and pinned my arms above my head. "But I'll have you before they get to play with you."

I didn't really understand what he meant, ignorance was bliss, but when he did it I was thrashing around beneath him, running on some pain- fuelled energy. He liked it when I struggled, and he became all the more brutal.

Things like that became a regular occurrence, though he was never so bad as he was on the occasions when I was incarcerated with that monster, and reeking of its slime. He seemed to take some perverse pleasure in watching the creature struggle, more determined each time to get me through the wall.

My days weren't just spent struggling with demons however. Sometimes he'd just shut me away and have me copy texts word for word, the pages crumbling despite the care I took to be gentle. I don't know what the words were, it was in some foreign language, and I'd never been taught to read or write. I could copy the symbols though, without knowing what they meant. Several times a week, he'd chain me up on my knees, stand before me and chant as if he were giving me some kind of unholy blessing, and after each time he performed this, the monster seemed to make progress in its efforts to get me through the wall. He was perfecting some spell or other that would grant passage into that hell world where the demon and its kin worked, and I was his big test. If he could find the right spell to get me though, he'd get in before long.

So, as you can see, I had good reason to wake up terrified every morning. Had I known what was going to happen on this particular evening however, I might have died of fright right there in the sleeping chamber.