A story of sorts, about a fantasy of sorts about events that never happened. Which by way of a introduction isn't much, but then this is simply a telling of what might happen, if the world wasn't as it was and if imagination was as powerful as the ingrained habit of reality. However as the world is as it is, and we are as we are then this is merely a phantasm conjured for your amusement and distraction.
This story if it where to have happened would take place in a quiet place not unlike where we find ourselves now, involving people not very dissimilar from those around us. Yet as it never happened we can picture our protagonists as we please, one dark shadowy and unknown the other, well you decide.
She awoke unsure if she had slept, yet certain that things had changed. The air smelt different the space around her was changed though how it had changed she couldn't say as she was enveloped in darkness so absolute that she couldn't see. She tried to think back to her last point of certainty, she'd been in a bar? No she'd left the bar and had been heading home? No that wasn't right was it? She wasn't sure so instead tried to think of when these supposed events had happened. She wasn't hungry, though her mouth was dry perhaps more through dawning apprehension than thirst, so events whatever they where couldn't have happened that long ago, could they? And yet, and yet if that was the case why couldn't she recall what she'd been doing.
She decided to start with what she did know, she was still dressed. She could feel her clothes against her skin the shoes on her feet, and something else. Something soft and resisting wrapped round her wrists and ankles, something that was gently preventing her moving. The darkness prevented her from seeing either what they where or how they where stopping her moving, concern cleared her mind but did nothing to bring forward the elusive memories of the events that must have happened prior to her current predicament. She paid more attention to her surroundings she was lying on something firm, but not hard, which gave no clues as to where or what it was. So in the darkness she waited.
Measureless amounts of time passed, she may have slept or perhaps not, she couldn't be sure. Slowly her ears detected a change in her surroundings a faint sound that wasn't there before, music. It's source was vague and faint but she could hear music, gentle soft music. Music that in other circumstances might have been relaxing, something to listen to by candlelight with a bottle of wine on a quiet evening at home. Then something soft brushed her cheek, causing her to jerk backwards hard against her restraints, which served only to convince her of their security. Time passed the music continued only just audible but gradually she relaxed, until again something soft and furred brushed against her face, repeatedly this time. Softly running down across her eyes and cheeks down her neck causing her to flinch each time it touched her. Then nothing, she tried calling out but the sound of her voice vanishing in the darkness swallowed by the soft barely audible music soon caused her to stop.
Something touched her, so gently at first she wasn't sure if she'd imagined it. Now she was sure something cold and hard was stroking her face, just very gently stroking her cheek. She tried to pull away as far as her bonds would let her but the object just followed her movement. She called out to whoever or whatever was there. There was no reply, no response from the darkness, except for the object moving to press not so gently on her lips. She fell silent again as she realised that it was a knife against her lips. The tang of blood telling of the sharpness of its blade. Yet still there was no sound above the soft gentle beat of the music in the background. The knife, as she must now think of it, resumed it's stroking just gently tracing lines down her cheek. This time she didn't pull away, hardly moved as the blade moved repeatedly down across her cheek from eye to chin.
The blood on her lip dried as the knife continued it's ceaseless stroking, first one cheek then the other, always stroking from eye to chin. Slowly though the knife carried it's gentle touch beyond her jaw line to run down the length of her neck. Never pressing hard enough to so much as graze the skin, but firm enough now that she was aware of it's sharpness against her skin. The motion of the knife swept down her face and neck continually, though sometimes she felt it must be knives as it's touch felt different against her skin, and one stroke followed too closely behind another. Her skin she imagined must by now be striped red from the knifes continual touch, then without warning nothing. The stroking had stopped. The lack of touch coming almost like blow in it's abrupt cessation.
The knife, or at least what was probably a knife and she liked to think it was the same knife, returned stroking the palm of her hand causing her to flinch against her bonds and almost grasp the blade. But even as one hand was closing the knife was stroking thin sharp lines across the palm of the other hand. Still too gently to break the skin just tickling with just enough pressure to remind her how sharp the blades point was. Still no word had been spoken by whoever was behind the knife. She felt happier thinking it was a single 'whoever' doing this, but they gave now word, no clue as to her eventual fate or how and why this had come about. Just the continual soft beat of the barely audible music and the touch of the knife as it kept time against her skin, kept her hands clutching in counterpoint to it's motion.
Silence fell like thunder into the darkness as both the music and the knife stopped, leaving only the sound of her ragged breathing. She tried to discern the sound of the other that must surely be within inches of her, knife in hand waiting with her in the darkness. The silence though was absolute except for her breathing which she felt she might almost be imagining. A glint, she was sure she'd seen something glint in the darkness just beside her head, some stray mote of light bouncing off a metal blade perhaps. She wasn't sure and had no time to consider the matter for at that moment the music resumed, louder now and somehow darker. As the new sound destroyed the silence of the room, she felt the tip of the blade next to her skin as it sliced through the fabric of her top leaving her exposed and somehow more vulnerable to the dark around her. Her gasp brought no response except the blade pressed thin and hard against her lips like a silencing finger, stifling what further sound she had thought to make.
The knife didn't resume it's stroking instead a hand grasped her arm and she felt something thin and sharp being pressed against her skin. A small soft sound escaped her lips, still wary of the knife that could so quickly be pressed against them, as the needle pierced her skin. What it was seemed more certain as the tip slid out through her skin again, like a needle slipped into embroidery so that it can be put aside for a while. The first needle was soon joined by others in a line running along both arms, and now the knife returned. The tip of its blade running across the needles within her skin like a stick against railings. She felt small beads of blood form where the metal pierced her skin.
The knife left her arm, ceased it's rapid tripping along the needles held within her skin. Now it moved downwards with a swift harsh motion to remove the last of her clothing. She felt the blade run along her legs tearing through the fabric, from hem to hem, to leave it lying in ripped immodest shreds against her skin. Then even those tatters where removed, pulled from around her by the unseen hand, leaving her exposed to unseen eyes and what ever was planned for her in the darkness that surrounded her. There was a slight breeze playing over her legs, cooling in contrast to the heat in her arms and face from the attentions of the knife and the metal shards piercing her skin. Still there was no word from her tormentor just the music playing quietly in the background.
The pinching resumed as more needles where pressed through her skin, this time lining her legs in rows either side of her thighs like pins in the seams of some over intimate trouser. The unseen hand seemed to be moving not quite in time to the music nor yet randomly. Piercing first one leg then the other, inside or outside of legs moving towards her ankle or in towards the apex of her thighs with no obvious pattern or motive. Inspired perhaps only by some dark whimsy, as from time to time this needle or that would be pulled gently as though straightening a picture. She lost track of how many times her skin had been broken, how many times the sequence of a slight pinch followed by a soft sharp pain had been repeated. As the music changed to a softer movement the needles moved from her legs, their pattern there perhaps completed, upwards to form obscure patterns on her breasts and sides. Eventually they stopped the pattern complete though what the pattern was she couldn't say. For a while nothing happened except the breeze blew across her skin as she lay there aware of each individual needle piercing her skin, burning gently like innumerable stars embedded in her flesh.
The knife returned, once more to trace new lines amongst the burning needle points. Roaming in some complex dance pattern along the paths made by the twin points of pain caused by each needle. The knife moved in a slow waltz in time with the soft gentle music which still played in the background. A soft crescendo and the knife swept upwards from ankle to inner thigh, from thigh upwards before trailing back downwards across her breast. The music ended and with it the knife's motion amongst the starlit points that pierced her skin. She felt something, someone, pulling gently at one of the needles in her arm and thought perhaps the unseen hand was going to undo the pattern it had spent so long creating in her skin. This thought soon faded as she felt a pull at another needle this time on her leg, then on her other leg and arm, and so it continued the hand pulling at needles first on one side then the other. Pulling at arm, leg or inner thigh. This time though it seemed less random, as though there was a pattern that was hiding just out of mind in the order of the needles tugging. The tugging moved to her side and she felt something trail against her skin. At first she thought she'd imagined it but then as something pulled against the needle between her breasts she grew certain, the needles where being joined together by some silken thread.
Now she felt the thread weave it's way across her body, tugging first one side then the other binding her tight against herself, so that every breath pulled against some remote and tender spot. The pain building casting her as her own tormentor, each ragged gasp pulling across her body. She slowed her breath trying to avoid such self inflicted pain, only to have the knife return to stroke against the thread that bound her, to glide along her burning skin causing her breath to catch again pulling at her skin. As if to force her onwards the music gathered pace, the knife forcing her breath to match.
She was trapped the pull of the metal within her skin forcing the next breath from her body, keeping time with the frantic tune just audible in the back ground. Then the darkness was rent by a single bright flash, in the distinctive click of a camera capturing her woven within a metal sheath. With it the music broke, no longer a storm building but instead a triumphant shout to defy the elements. As the call continued she felt the needles slipping swiftly from her skin, each one being drawn faster than the last, each going with a sting of loss. The skein around her slackened as the needles fled her body.
The pain of the needles desertion took her over an unexpected edge that had been lurking within her since she'd first awoken. Her body acknowledging the release it had been granted as a soft red black mist descended, muffling all further thought and sensation. Preventing comprehension of the three words her captor finally spoke, until later.
Later when she found herself in her own room, in her own undamaged clothing with late evening sunlight seeping into her eyes. Then as she moved, her body protesting it's freedom, and beheld the double lines of pin pricks covering her body, then she recalled the events preceding her abduction, and her lovers words whispered to her in the darkness, "you did ask".
