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This link came from a discussion I had with S regarding the Gor books. If you’ve read them, I imagine it will give you a chuckle as it captures the, ah, voice of John Norman. Damn near choked on this one.

Author’s note: Assuming you are over your crushing heartbreak at losing Pluto as a planet… It has been a little while since the last installment in this series. Part of the delay had much to do with a break up with N as she served as my muse in this endeavor. It actually happened in July, but I’ve kept silent on the issue for my own reasons. As such the intended movement of the story has been a little more difficult than I anticipated.

So perhaps it will go in another direction. Predictable plots are a story’s death and well, how can you know the end when I haven’t even thought of it yet?

I pinched the bridge of my nose, a sudden weariness was weighting on my shoulders. What had I expected? I turned and walked over where the knife lay folded on the floor before walking to the bar, leaving her as she was, curled in a ball, trying desperately to control the sobs racking her body.

It went as I had planned, expect perhaps for the bite on my shoulder, the carved paths of skin on my forearms. I glanced at them and felt pure frustration for a single moment as I acknowledged that she would have to be paid in kind for her action. I had learned long ago that weakness was punished and so too, would her rebellion be. Had I expected her not to fight? I looked over at her, still in a fetal position, and felt an odd tightening across my chest.

There was a soft knock at the door. The silence, it seemed, had fallen for too long a time. I opened it, and Lou’s blank face stared at me. The men that worked with me rarely said or asked much preferring, I imagined, to simply not know what it was I did. They just cleaned up the mess, what little there was, tied loose ends and kept their mouths shut. Fear, Dante had said. They feared me. I was l’uomo nero, el cucuy, the myth come to life, the beast that would take them away in the night. It was a childish superstition, but the fear was real enough, and in this business fear and respect are what mattered.

He nodded, confirming he was there just to check on my well-being. ‘Get me the kit.’ I mumbled the order, glancing at the girl on the floor as I shut the door in his face. She was unmoving, but I doubted she slept. She was simply hiding in plain view, keeping silent to avoid attention. She, who stood out in any crowd, was hiding from me. I didn’t like it. I had never raped anyone before. That thought bothered me as I stood there waiting for Lou’s return. My gaze was focused on her back, the puddle of black hair that spilled on the carpet.

He knocked twice this time before I opened the door a second time, reaching to take the small, black package from him. I unzipped the bag and unrolled it, pulling out one of the vials and a syringe. Chemical ropes, I called them. I generally preferred to use insulin to keep people feeling weak, shaky, ill - controllable, something that did little damage, and emptied out of their system in very little time. It kept people manageable, kept them afraid, uncertain and too sick to follow through on foolish and hastily made plans.

I’d chosen a mild sedative. She needed to be calm, and it would be the first peace, I imagined, that she had experienced during her stay. The drug worked fast and afterwards the haze would keep her thinking she had dreamed it all. It would only be a temporary nirvana for her. The simple fact of the matter was, she would never be able to accept that illusion long term, even if everything were left as they were at that moment.

I glanced at Lou, a silent statue, and nodded in Annerire’s direction. ‘Where is Crowne? I want to move get this moving.’

To his credit, he didn’t turn but glanced at his watch. ‘He should be here in a few hours.’

I nodded my head and inserted the needle into the vial, pumping a shot of air into it before flipping it over and drawing the clear liquid into the syringe. I glanced at him and followed his stare to the marks that scored my forearms. ‘Problem?’

He stiffened, his gaze returning to mine. ‘No, Sir.’

‘Good. I’ll be done here in ten. When he gets here let me know.’ He started to turn and I thumped the barrel twice to remove the air bubble before pulling the needle out. I spoke just before the door closed behind him, causing him to pause and look at me as I said ‘…and for God’s sake, make certain he’s sober.’

He shut the door quietly and I placed the vial back on the counter before replacing the cover over the needle. I pulled an alcohol pad and latex gloves from a hidden box under the counter and pulled them over my hands with a soft pop of sound. She was silent, the soft sound of her crying no longer pierced the silence of the room. I hadn’t noticed when it had stopped. I didn’t care at that moment, this was business. My business, my project to complete.

I stood over her for a long moment before I kneeled down beside her. Her eyes were closed, but I caught the hitch in her breathing when my gloved fingers grasped her arm. The syringe was between my lips, the alcohol stung my nose as I raked the pad across her bicep. She opened her eyes then and turned to look at me as I popped the lid off the needle, but had no chance to react before I sank the needle into her arm, pushing the chemical into her body. She jerked and a small spot of blood appeared before I pulled the needle out and wiped the spot with the still moist pad. I replaced the lid on the needle.

Her fingers came up to cover the spot and she opened her mouth to speak, but said nothing. I studied the fine lines and imperfections of her fingers as I spoke, waiting to see the effect start to take hold. ‘It’s nothing, a tranquilizer….sedative….to keep you calm.’

She laughed. It was a soft sound, filled with the kind of malevolent spirit that she should not have understood. It was wrong coming from her. The sound abraded my ears, but I remained there by her side as it faded into the soft sound of crying.

My fingers grasped her upper arm and rolled her back towards me. I lifted a gloved hand and looked into dilated pupils. She was fading fast. My thumbs slid across her eyes to force them shut and I said, knowing I was speaking only to myself, ‘I’m not going to kill you, Annerire.’

Even I doubted the absolute truth of those words.

‘Don’t.’

It was a simple command, given without breaking the stride of my typing, my fingers stroking the keys in a practiced and overly confident manner. I was working, sitting at the bar that wrapped around half of the kitchen, my mind filled with figures, calls that needed to be made, deadlines that needed to be met.

There was silence and the pace of my fingers increased as distraction faded away, my face lit by the glow of the monitor, the light of inspiration that my muse had inspired within me. My business muse. It was dry, but necessary work; the kind of work that keeps people up nights dreaming of solutions that I - I - now had before me, waiting to be spilled out onto the keys of my laptop, the words that would force that stupid blinking cursor to stop mocking me and strive to keep pace with my thoughts as text raced across the screen.

Did you follow that? I was inspired.

I felt my lips curl with a smirk as every problem was addressed in the paragraphs that followed. Budget, done. One massive problem marked out with a crisp line of ink, or in this case, crisp lines of Times New Roman text. Genius. My fait accompli for the day, the week, the month.

The closing paragraph loomed before me and I closed my eyes as I started the sentence, my fingers slowly starting to stroke the keys. It was then that I felt her teeth, the hot fall of her breath on my ankle. My entire body stiffened in surprise, the words evaporating from my head like ash in the wind. I glanced down at her, shock, no doubt, coloring the lines of my face.

Anger following close behind. She was looking up at me with that mischievous twinkle in her eyes, that look she gets when she feels almost itching to rile me. I felt the weight of her body collapse on my foot, her teeth still lightly resting against my skin, her nails scratching the back of my leg. I moved and they dug in.

‘What do you think you are doing?’

She just stared at me. I moved again and she bit harder, her nails struggling to keep hold of my foot. I reached down, picked her up and plopped her on my shoulder. Her purr filled my ear.

I finished my work with one hand, the other casually stroking her back.

I own a cat and sometimes she owns me.