(No "action" in this one, FYI)
The Roma hobbled out of her creaking shack. The wind redoubled just then, violently whirling leaves around her, the nighttime foreshadowing of a powerful storm which matched her mood. Muttering, with an expression of rage...
A few more steps - and she exploded with sibilant Romanic curses snatched up by the fearsome wind, thrown at the speeding clouds. But not above them; at those men, those jackals who had sidled up to her youngest granddaughter, a quiet girl of sixteen, but very desirable. Apes who feigned kindness, walked with her awhile, then clutched her and carried her to the old dairy barn and took turns, laughing.
Gone now. But the wind knew where...
Not unlike other men, those Cossack pigs, who had lain in wait for her fifty years ago. She hated all men, embracing the feeling, savoring it even as she knew it was swollen with the heat of the moment. Even so.
She wanted most intensely to avenge the act. Even if she didn't see the full measure being exacted, it would be a comfort. Retribution. Better long, and slow, and cruel...
Something to chase after them - even as she, and her grandaughter, had been hunted. Let them know how it feels to be caught and dragged to where they didn't want to go, held there, and used. Big, strong men, doing as they please, cocksure and carefree. Let them know.
The old woman clenched her remaining teeth, welcoming the familiar little spike of pain from a decayed incisor. Concentrating on them, and on their kind. The beasts. Their breed... No, too wide a target; she considered, what little she'd heard about the beasts who had despoiled her kin.
Young, strong Americans. Hiking around the countryside as so many of them did, with large backpacks. Reeking of whisky and tobacco... One had an eagle tattooed on the ball of his shoulder, a rose-braced dagger inked as if plunging into his heart -
No heart. These brigands, they know nothing of love. No more than animals.
Pleasure, and more pleasure. They'd rut all day and all night if they could. Dreaming of it, release without disadvantage...
Let that be the curse, then.
Give them what they like.
Something to trap them and madden them with the pleasures they obtained so savagely. Overwhelmed with the very things they crave, a hundred times over, a thousand.
And, she almost smiled, they won't know why. Let them puzzle over their doom for countless heady nights, sweat-drenched days... never understanding what brought the torment upon them. As if they could understand.
Methods were considered, and rejected...
Another ugly fragment of memory came. Between little sobs, her granddaughter telling of the coaxing hands, a unsettlingly gentle assault coincident with the grunting thrusts. Fingers playing across her pinned feet, frantic ribs, exposed armpits. Those hands were carefully sadistic, not stopping the most gentle of attacks. Heedless of her pleas and screams of laughter... sensations amplifying each other intolerably -
Anger flared anew.
This also, then. Let them suffer this too... A frantically agonizing delight. Outside the realm of their barbaric existence. How will it be when this deceptively juvenile game turns very serious for them? These big, strong raiders, these despoilers? The warrior becoming the prey, by an ordeal half-forgotten from childhood, no longer tentative - but devoted beyond comprehension. Extreme. All but unendurable. Add that to the payment due.
Worse now than in childhood, as they're grown and fully armed. Let sport be made of their manhood, more prolonged and humiliating than what they did to their caught women. The fun would be aching and excessive for them, heady and riotous, maximized, drawn out...
She forms the concept of a tireless avenger, unquenchable revenge, reproducing itself to take more and more of the beasts.
Bent slightly, weaving in the whirlwind of leaves, she closed her eyes tightly. Concentrating on a form that was... formless. Invisible. Able to adapt.
A few scant droplets of perspiration broke out on her temples, under the tattered scarf.
With special words she formed the thing, and made it take heed.
A new awareness, filled it with vitality and stern instructions...
Kill not, nor maim, as that would contradict the pleasuring attention which shall be maximized, and prolonged.
Study them, caring not for the passage of time.
Plan and prepare, then take them far from help of their own kind.
Bind them in every cunning way, so the utmost impact of the petting can be felt.
Attend to their needs - food and water and herbs of health - in order to prolong the sentence, forestalling the day when release is made necessary by illness... instead making ready for other grueling episodes to be endured when the bloom of health has been restored.
Store up much of what they take unto themselves for enjoyment, and see that they get more than their fill.
Further the art of pleasuring them, especially in their weaponry, cleverly awakening all their flesh to the shattering delight of unseen fingers, and of those also magically gloved, of straw and scarf and quill...
Focus this knowledge and skill and patience into ultimate control - dictating what and when and how long - and let the brutes know this, remembering long after... mark them if necessary, with habit, with brand, with ink, to ever tell them they are sought and watched by that which their fellows would never believe in and can never thwart.
Regenerate into more and more avengers, multiplying the careful fingers to harry their kind.
She raised her trembling arms.
"Curséd," she said venomously.
Extending her open palms to the racing clouds, she demanded acknowledgement of all the directives, and felt the hungry excitement - so well pleased! - come racing back from the avenging thing, vowing its compliance.
The power in its reply made her fall back... and hands were there, cradling her with such tender respect, withholding the depthless vitality they contained for the moment. She regained her footing, and let her arms fall to her sides.
A finger touched her face. It stroked her jaw, down to the chin - and at the same time she was informed, without words, of the thing's ruthless determination to observe every command to the fullest. Then it was going, receding...
Beginning the hunt.
Her newest progeny - an sentience of vitality and tightly focused purpose - whirled away with the upswept leaves.
There was no sign of the laughing savages, carrying dark bundles on their backs. So the town was examined, streets and inns, taverns...
There were others there, crude and loud. More of their type. It pondered this, as comprehension began to occur. Men such as these were deserving of its attention -
Perhaps all of them were eligible. That was intriguing...
Eager to start, it understood quite clearly that more information would lead to greater success. So - not quite yet.
It followed the road again, studying the moving metal boxes below. While the devices moved slowly, in its estimation, there was the possibility that certain beasts being sought had used them to travel a respectable distance from the dairy barn. There were only the tattoos to provide unmistakable identification...
But the animals were all cloaked, as if the wind would harm them. Each realization generated a dozen new questions, many of them abstract. It continued to ponder, while it searched.
The wind finally subsided, and then the night.
By the time it finished searching the nearest city, the sun had started back down in the west. They were not found. They were in hiding, or they had departed...
It investigated the train station, watching men leave and others arrive. Among those milling about was a group of three men, laughing and smoking. They carried cases, instead of bulging humps from their backs, and one of them had bare arms - but no tattoo.
There were, however, three of them. That was the correct number to be found, for its first revel. It was aware that the beast with the tattoos might had taken leave of the others, and another had joined them in his place. Possibly one or two of these animals were the ones...
They went to a building with many rooms. There was at least one bed in each room. Then, off to another place where they ate, and drank...
It studied them for the next five hours, as they ate and smoked, got drunk, flirted with the barmaids, shot darts, joked and roared, urinated. As before, it learned much and yet desired to understand far more.
When they stumbled back to their rooms - two in one chamber, and a lone man in another - they uncloaked the upper parts of their bodies, and their... feet. That was the word. The old woman had included them in her thoughts. While they were used for walking, there was a much more important regimen -
Certain facts became interrelated. She had commanded it - gloves, straws, scarves, quills. Those were its tools, to be gathered and used... on the feet.
With growing curiosity, it studied the beasts. They would kick. Try to run. But the command to bind them had been given, and the logic was suddenly obvious enough.
It observed the animals for a few minutes more, and then gave thought to the man who shared a room with no one. When it arrived, he was grunting softly. There was a rhythm in the movement -
Other references from the old crone were explained.
When his pleasure was complete, the beast moved less and less. A new sound occurred regularly, and it came to recognize the symptoms of sleep.
His cloaks were in a pile, next to the bed. A thin sheet lay over him...
Cautiously, it peeled the sheet away.
He didn't react. As his chest continued to rise and fall, it kept studying his body. The crone had visualized the ministrations it would perform - on this area, and these, and all along here. The fur could be removed - and that should increase the sensitivity of the underlying skin. Muscle groups, joints, estimated range of movement for his limbs...
By anchoring any location, he would be kept here. Clearly the type of restraints used would be crucial. The goal would be to keep a target area from moving, while all of his efforts must also not harm any other part. Extensive bondage seemed best, then. Thorough and tight.
They could be loud - and that illuminated the directive to isolate them.
So much to learn... It was delighted to contemplate taking all the time it wanted to not only perform its duty, but also to excel at the task!
This very animal could provide the introduction it craved...
No beast was more important than the tattooed man and his companions, of course... but perhaps it could better hunt them with the knowledge it would gain from the animal, sleeping so peacefully, below it. Separate him now, from the others, or later in the day? Maybe it should let him escape, until the initial revenge had been accomplished.
Yes, he would be given the full punishment of pleasure.
There was no thought which appealed to it more. How gratifying - fulfilling, and yet never satiating enough - to keep a man like this one... maddened.
16sep98