Remarkable

Posted by hisdinner on December 18, 2004 at 08:21:32:

Remarkable
by
hisdinner

Beth had escaped only two hours ago, but already she had stumbled into fresh agonies. She was five miles from her employer, a harridan who used vile words when kind ones would have served, and a stick for instruction. The old woman's constant and painful abuses drove Beth to steal the last week's left scraps of bread and hide them in the straw of her bed. She had gathered withered apples from the larder, and in the night, Beth used the faded skirts of her remaining dress to make a tight bundle. Later still, she lay in the moonlight, listening to the old woman's wheezing phlemy cough, tensing her body, ready to creep out as the crone's snores filled the walls of the dank room. The moon passed from the doorway and covered the girl's trim body in a white glow. It lit the glossy sheen of dark hair and shifted, glimmering in her shifting eyes. The moon reached the only window as Beth waited for sleep to reach the old woman. Beth raised up on bare feet and crouched out, clutching her package tightly, and grabbing the wineskin from the peg by the door.
Once outside, Beth stretched under the white cold moonlight and made shallow tracks in the dust of the courtyard. It had been three years since she had been sold in bondage to the old woman by a stepmother glad to be rid of her, three years of drudgery and daily insults. She reached up to the stars, her lithe body stretching up in mute exultation. The moonlight danced in the leaves of aspens beside the rough path that led her out of the rocky stretch and into a meadow. Until this night, Beth had been allowed to walk out only as far as the cattle grazed, and then only to bring them back to the old woman's barn. Since she turned sixteen, her life had been composed of washing and cooking, of gathering firewood and water and beatings, in equal measure. Beth's consolation was in her mistress's age and weakness, and the lessening impact of the sting of the branch.
Beth resolved to go back to the world, to risk the wild and find her way through the forest rather than fill another day with slaving and bruises. Beth walked away through the meadow grass, inhaling soft night air, climbing up a gentle slope toward the dark wood and the road that must lay behind it. She sang a near forgotten song and wandered into the wood. That was two hours ago. Now her wordless song covered a range from soft tears to piercing agony, and she had come to realize how little she had known of pain.
When Beth had ventured less than a mile into the wood, her troubles had begun. She had tripped on an upthrust root and fell heavily on her knees. She rubbed her ankle, felt a swelling as tender flesh produced hot pain as she tried to stand again. She sank back to the forest floor and drew her ankle up near her face, trying to examine it in the filtered moonlight. When the band of men encircled her, she was twisted into this awkward position, holding her slim leg just before her eyes with her two hands. They laughed, she screamed, and they smiled to hear it . Their elation showed in grins decorating their small ruddy faces.
They were brothers and cousins, seven strong but stunted men. They were stout, but twisted, and they smote her with their sticks, one by one. Each attempted to lay the best and longest red lash on her white flesh. They argued and cuffed one another, disputing who could claim first rutting. Soon Beth was covered with red stripes from her calves, past her thighs, onto her round buttocks and her arched white back. They circled her and she could smell them. She tried again to plead her case. "Oh, gentlemen, you have mistaken me for your enemy, and I am just a lost girl, looking for the road and all alone, why do you torture me?" They gave not one nod at her, no indication they had even understood her words except to mimic the treble quaverings of her voice. The seven of them jostled each other and made sport of her. Beth rose up on her knees and beseeched the one who appeared the eldest of lot, his grizzled beard clinging to wrinkled skin, a stoop to his shoulders. "Please sir, tell me, has the old woman who owns me set you upon me, because I deserted her? Just tell me something to explain your wrath, and I will do all I can to fix it!"
She had reached out her hands to the man as she spoke, and he fixed his one clear eye on her fingers as his other milky orb remained cast just beyond her. She was disconcerted, not knowing if he paid her attention. She watched him as he turned full face to her and a smile slowly creased his features, though it was not a kind one, rather more like the look a hunter takes on as he sights down his arrow at unsuspecting prey. He cleared his throat, disused and rough, responding, "You have deserted you mistress? Bad, wicked girl, then, you have earned a punishment." Behind him, all around her, the others joined in, singing, "Oh, she has earned a punishment, she will have a punishment."

***** Birds rustled and cooed up in their high roosts as the troop of men carried Beth into thick green darkness. The girl had been bound up, rough rope used to lash her arms and feet tight against her sides, and they formed two rows beside her, each man grasping a handful of the rope bindings. They carried her, trussed like a wild pig, ever deeper into the forest, and she could do nothing but look straight up and note the pine and fir tree tops and how dense they had become. The men seemed not to notice her weight at all between them; they didn't speak to her, but two in the back amused themselves by singing and whistling bawdy songs. After an hour's chafing, pummeling progress, they slowed and stopped. The girl was dropped onto a thin bed of dried pine needles. Beth was able to rock and wriggle her body to her side, and as she did, she saw that they had arrived at a low, rambling structure, more like a series of shacks than one single dwelling.
She was rudely tossed about as several hands removed her bindings. Then the men encircled her once more, and four of them placed their small hard hands upon her, grasping hold of her raw wrists where the ropes had cut into her. She stilled herself and waited. "We found you and we now claim your service," the graybeard spoke to her, his grip squeezing her wrist to emphasize his words. "We will send no word to the old woman. You will serve us all. You will begin here and now. I want you to fetch wood for the fire." Their hands left her, and Beth cast her eyes around, startled at her sudden freedom.
She staggered away from the group, her ill-used body protesting and her ankle throbbing at every footfall. She was sixteen and strong, though, and soon gained speed. She didn't look behind her, only forward as she reckoned it, straight through the trees and into the sweet night. She ran with her arms held up before her, panting, exhilarated. Quick as she had started, she was stopped by a low wall which felled her. She grunted at the sudden impact and rolled down a muddy bank and into a shallow creek bed. Beth heard rolling, pealing laughter just behind her. "Won't find much dry wood down there, girlie, best climb back up here." She slogged up the bank, grasping at roots to pull her quaking body free of the mud and icy water. The mud sucked at her toes.
The tallest of the men faced her at the top of the embankment, still chuckling. He offered his hand. She ignored it, walking past him and reached out to snatch up a long dried branch. She raised it up and drew it back across her chest. "I hope it's firewood you're selecting, and not a weapon, " he said, as he fell in beside her. "You need our fires soon, or you won't last through this night, dressed in those sodden rags." She had realized this, to her great exasperation, as her fingers and skin grew numb. His words caused a deep furrow to form between her brows, and her eyes sparked black fury. The man studied her face, shrugged, and called through the chill night air, "We have not yet claimed this one, brothers. Best bring the collar and the chain."

And so Beth was well marked that night, striped and collared and soaked through. Her claiming time came next. And two weeks passed, and in them she was continuously passed from man to man. Each one used her as he most desired, and each one marked her flesh with his special ornaments, using metal rods to impart on her white skin his secret symbols, forged in fire. Each man, from sleepy, self indulgent Samuel, to his agitated brother, Karl, had set upon her. Samuel had strapped her down before him on her knees and made her stay there for hours, stroking him and prodding, his redolence reaching her in rolling waves. When she had finally pulled a weak spurt of sticky fluid from his loins, he grunted and snatched at her hair and dragged her to him. He took her left shoulder, and holding it between his fleshy fists, he sank his teeth deep into her flesh, and shook his jowls as he bit her. And while her shoulder tingled and panged with pain, he pulled a thin metal rod from the fire and drew an X within the framework of his tooth marks. Each night the last man to use her would unlatch her chain from the iron ring set in the corner of his hovel, and pull her up and lead her out through a dark and musty passageway, and hand her to another. Beth grew wiser by the hour. She learned many clever tricks and ways to fool them into thinking she was broken. She learned to weep and never hold her gaze above the man's dirty neck. She learned that if she sank quickly to her knees before a man's hard bulge, she could stave off any beating, no matter how fiercely that man came at her, if she put his manhood in her wet hot mouth and sucked it. She learned that each of these men had his own secret dark perversions, and that if she willingly took in all the tortures they would bring her, she would get more food and more time to sleep.
Her quest to find the company of people had been perversely accomplished. She ruminated on her circumstance as she took up a rough cloth, and, dipping it in the water bowl, wrung it out and gingerly pressed it to her latest marking. This mark came from the dark, silent Seamus, and Oh! it stung as she touched the tepid water to it. She twisted around to gaze down on her rounded firm buttocks, and viewed this newest ornament. Her eyebrows lifted, eyes widening, as she realized now why her screams had lasted longer than when the first three men had marked her. What she saw, still red, puffy and raw, was the largest brand yet, an intricate pattern, as large and ruddy as one of her nipples. She gently depressed the white skin around it, prodding one fingertip at the ruby ridge that swirled into a spiral with a darker, raised rod slashing through it. It was still quite painful, yes, she thought to herself, but I will not deny how wet I grow, just touching it. Beth took her pleasures when she could, and so she spent the next few minutes in a fog of sweaty exploration, fingers delving into her hot cleft, cooing softly as she finally tensed and shuddered, eyelids fluttering open, blinking hard at the daylight, back to earth now, and a bit bemused.
If this is what society would provide, she thought, then, I am better off here, with these seven men who love me, than in the world where I may suffer worse, and get nothing in return for it. After all, she mused, her stepmother had cast her out, because Beth's beauty had surpassed her own, and all the people in the village had remarked on it. As she straightened her clothes about her and blotted the wet trail from her thighs, Beth corrected herself. No, not cast out, she remembered, ...I was sold. If I am chattel, then better to be traded among these men than stay with the old woman. When the old woman died, I would have just been taken, and sold again. My stepmother would have come and tried to double her profit from me, but she could not anymore. Beth smiled, and it was an eerie sight, such a corrupted smile on such a clear skinned, cherub's face. Not any more could my stepmother proclaim my innocence, and ask the highest premium for me, for now I am well marked and well plowed. Beth touched her sex once more, patted it as she might acknowledge a loyal pet. And what if Beth took perverse delight in her predicament? Shouldn't she revel in her life, rather than despair of it? Beth slept very well at night, no nightmares had this girl, and her belly always was well-filled, her lips touched with spice and oils and honey. She slept well, she was sated, and she was almost content.
What she had not yet overcome was her chain and collar. Since her first night, after she had failed the test, when she had tried to break through these impenetrable woods and find the road, they had kept the heavy leather collar on her always. She was kept chained, though after the first two nights, they had doubled the chain's length. This allowed her access to the chamber pot and to the kitchen. The hearth could warm her, should the man who, after filling her with drippy hot seed, might walk away from her and nod off in his cups before he put her in her bed. Beth probed the skin under her collar, shivering at the tautness even one of her slender fingers added to it. That first morning, the men had collared her, and put her on two short chains between two posts to sport and tame her. She had tensed, coiling inside, gathering up all her rage and strength, then burst into a run, grasping the collar in both hands as she snapped up hard against the chains. What had that got her? Choked, and roughly, too, her windpipe bruised, and her speech squeezed into a thin whisper for days.
She learned that pressure against the collar, even a gentle steady pull would cause her to lose consciousness. Rudy, the third crude cousin of this pack of grimy men.... Rudy loved to choke her breathless. He used the collar, yes, and his hand over her mouth. He loved to feel her body tense and tremble, quiver, buck. He waited 'til she passed out, his member growing huge between her thighs and when she dimmed, oh, how he thrust in her. Her thighs still bore the bruises of his rutting, and her throat, she imagined, would bear his marks as well. She wondered at his need to gaze down on her sleepy helpless form as he panted and pounded his immense gnarled sex into her. When her senses rejoined her body, through slitted eyes, she saw his burning gaze feast on the limp responses of her flopping limbs as he spurt his hot jets into her. He drooled, and spittle dripped from his mouth onto her mound. She had learned that she should not tense herself, or respond with either cries or moans of pleasure. She must not hold herself still, either, but lie in a state of absolute acquiescence. If he detected her awareness, he grew angry and struck her and sometimes held her breath away again, but longer. However, if she remained limp and as a doll for him, oh, how he gently played with her after his first hard fucking. He petted her ripe uptilted breasts and suckled at them, gurgling and butting his head against their round ripe curves. He moved his hands in soft circles on her belly, and dipped his hands in and out of her wetness, and tickled her tiny knob until she thought she'd die if she could not cry out. Of all the men, Rudy loved her best of all. His mark was on her breast, a single small letter, R, just above her aureole. She had quickly come to treasure it, for it evoked her deepest thrills of tingling pleasure. Now she bore five marks, from Seamus, Sam, and Rudy, Karl, and that first, from Ian. She shuddered and grew hot as she recalled it. He took first claim, on that first day, while she still was bound to the twin posts on chains so short that she could not sit down. No, she was made to stand for hours as they watched her. Ian was the tall one, the one who had fetched her so easily back from the woods. He stood scarcely as tall as Beth, but his stout frame was heavy with hardened muscle. As he approached her in the midst of that first morning's mockeries, the others fell away, and sank to their seats all around Ian and his captive. They had set her in the yard, using hitching posts to hold her, and now the sun beat down as well, and the men fanned themselves and slouched down, drawing the brims of their peculiar conical hats forward to shade the sun and better take in the spectacle. They lazed about, passing wineskins and murmuring, as if about to watch a puppet show. As it turned out, that is precisely what they did, for in the space of five minutes, the girl was jerking and responding without hesitation or modesty, to every vile command from Ian's sneering mouth. For he had set a fire below her, and her quick obedience was forged with licking flames and no mercy whatsoever. Ian did this with a relish and the jaunty air of a circus impresario, and soon his kinsmen roared with laughter. Here is what they saw. He spoke to the girl, so sweetly, "Miss, will you serve us now without a collar?"
Beth spat out , "No!" and Ian crisply nodded, and eyed the men, and gestured to a pile of straw and kindling beneath her, then bent and sparked it on each side with flint and stick, the smoldering flames bursting forth. As her screams began, Ian raised his voice but continued his sweet-toned questioning.
"Ready now to serve us? I must have a clear statement, girl, no gibbering or whimpers," he smiled and smacked hands against a spark which flew up from under the girl's bare feet and landed on his vest. Beth shrieked, her toes now licked with flame, the orange fire darting to her heels. She tried to leap high in the air, but she was trapped by chains on each wrist, and they held her fast. Meanwhile, Ian shouted out commands, such as , "Bare your chest, and pull those nipples hard!" or, "Show us your puckered tiny hole, you slut!" She choked and gasped, and tried to please them, drawing up her dress and pinching herself, grasping her buttocks, revealing her tiny tight bud. Her eyes streamed from the smoke as her feet pattered and skittered within the circle of hell in which she abided, and at last, her face burned as much from shame as from the fire, she gathered her wits enough to form the words she needed,
"Yes!! Yes I will serve you, Yes!" She was reduced to sobs and fell quite limp at that point. Beth's lithe body lost its grace and sagged down between her wrists, her heels raised from the fire, her knees sinking ever nearer the burning earth, her tattered dress dancing just above the growing flames. Ian, sensing the climax of his little show had passed, said, "Oh, brothers, then, let's piss out this fire!" The seven trollish men rose as one, and used their acrid urine to stop Beth's first burning. As he walked away from her, Ian murmured, shaking his head, "Her feet are well marked now, and I doubt she'll want to stray for some long time, my brothers."
And did he then remove the collar? Of course not, Ian was a liar. Her neck would never lose its chafing leather encumbrance. Of these seven small dark men, his marking time would be the longest. He could never gaze on her without a grin appearing at the edges of his thin lips.

Two weeks later, Beth rubbed the calluses formed from the immense blisters which had since hardened her soles. She absently drew her hand across each mark, her inventory of pain. Now, she winced as she thought of her day with Karl, the youngest and least sure of these devils. Seamus had dragged her through the passageway, so low she stooped to clear the heavy beams, and as they emerged into his room, Karl had jumped up and started like a deer. Seamus shook his immense head and left the chain in Karl's diminutive hands. Karl never raised his voice above a whisper, she recalled, and never raised his eyes above her thighs. Of all the kinsmen, Karl hurt her least, he used her gently, if not sweetly, his rapid strokes entering her wet walls, but so small he was, she scarcely felt his roughest poundings. She fell asleep on his bed, a luxurious indulgence, and drifted near awake to find him preparing his rod to mark her. She watched, lulled by his soft bed, and sleep, and his small stature. He will not hurt me, she told herself, her eyelids closing. She slept. Wrenched awake by searing pain, she screamed shrilly and tried to grasp at his two arms, which held the branding wire to her tender skin and pressed in deeply. He had shown the sly forethought to bind her tightly as she slept, ropes pulled taut around her waist and below her knees, her arms bound across her breasts. When Beth woke shrieking her wordless pleas, his iron was already setting into her quivering rigid muscle, and she lay helpless and received it. He had burned a cat's eye into her right thigh. "It is a powerful sign," he murmured, almost in apology, as later, he unbound her and led her to her bed.
Beth recalled each one of her five markings, and the day of idle indulgences which followed those small tortures. They rewarded her with ample food and raw red wine. The fresh red swellings were salved with unguents. She was made to do no work at all, save holding herself ready for any of them who wanted a moment's relief, jousting into her wetness, leaving her filled and thrumming. The remainder of her days, she filled her belly and drank her fill, and endlessly traced the patterns decorating her white flesh. She idly lay and watched them, as they clambered on the hillside, mining red chunks of heavy ore and trundling it to their forges. She grew voluptuous and heavy lidded, and she thought very little. When she was moved to speak, it was to ask for more wine, or bread, and she received all that she asked for. She supped, and watched the small men toiling on their hillside mine and wondered how Albert and Eugene would use her. They were the two remaining, and neither had yet approached her.
On the last day of her life, she woke slowly, grasping at the chain strung from her collar to the floor, pulling herself upright. She was surprised to see that none of the men had left for their day's work. They were gathered around her corner, and watched her waking. Rudy had been crying. She could see wet tracks on his small cheeks. Wonder briefly crossed her face, and then her bladder overtook her, and she frowned and rose, took the pot and squatted above it. They waited. Calling over her shoulder, she chided, "Must you hang about? Take it away now, I hate the smell of it. " Beth lifted the pot, walked to the end of her chain, and handed it to the tearful Rudy, who would not look into her face. She thought little of it, but when the men parted their circle to let the young man walk past, she gasped in amazement. While she had slept, they had transformed this hovel. Behind them, their rough plank table had been covered in the whitest cloth that she had ever seen. All around the room, tall candles burned and lit the room with dancing orange flame. The table held gleaming silver knives and forks, and wine and bread. Behind the table, a high bank of coals glowed from the hearth, and outlined the twin forms of Albert and Eugene. She shook her head, and smiled, and asked, "Is it some festival? Some holy day? Oh, goody!" She clapped her plump hands together, as her eyes took in the gleaming cutlery, the snow white cloth.
Approaching from both sides of the table, Albert and Eugene chuckled and nodded. "Yes, as we mark it here, this will be our highest feast day, and you, our most marked guest. You shall adorn this table." Albert rumbled laughter.
The others sang, "O, Mark this feast, oh, we marked it well." They hummed and took their places round the table, lifting shining knives in every hand. The stupid girl still smiled as she was led before them. There, before the fire, she was stripped and washed and oiled, Eugene and Albert expertly working the fats into her every curve and crevice. At each moment, Beth expected one of these remaining two to go and fetch his iron from the fire, but meanwhile, she enjoyed this rough caressing. Beth glanced between them, and said, "Will you mark me before this feast begins, or after?"
"We are all who remain to claim you, and we do it now," Eugene spoke softly, as from the table, he lifted a long blade. Albert strode behind the girl and used her chain to pull her collar, and she began strangling, once again. Her toes scarce reached the ground. Albert grasped her wrists and flung them up above her, wrapping the chain around them. Eugene gained an unobstructed view of her rounded belly as she writhed before him, glistening breasts quivering in the reflected fire. Eugene stood, legs wide apart, gleaming knife in his two hands. "Here is my mark, girlie, wear it well." With one mighty stroke, he pierced her belly through.
As her ruby gouts of blood began to spurt out in rhythmic splendor, Samuel strode forward to catch it in a deep pot, for cooking later.
The feast that night was succulent, the meat so tender. None argued over their portion, for all had claimed their choice and marked it, including Albert. His marks were made by the wires that held her calves and arms as she was trussed and placed above the coals. He sighed in satisfaction as she sizzled on the fire.