Nora

“There. Isn’t she beautiful?”

Anik Onyx is staring at a sun, a giant ball of continuous fire. The screen on this spaceship provides enough protection that we can look right at it without fear of going blind, but still the light is so strong I can only peek through my eyelids.

“Why are you showing me this?” I growl.

My wrists and ankles are bound, and the bastard has even put a leash on me like a dog. Anik Onyx is a sadist, pure and simple. He yanks my leash and I nearly trip over.

“Stop barking, little doggie, and watch. You know what’s going to happen? Do you have a suspicion yet, hm?”

I do, but I don’t even want to think about it.

A wide smile spreads across his creepy voice.

“That’s right, doggie. I’m launching that little lover of yours straight into the sun. And I’m going to make you watch, oh yes.”

“You’re a sick fuck,” I bite.

He runs a finger across my cheek. There’s two guards at the door, but they just stare straight ahead. His twisted behavior must be nothing new to them.

“Oh, I know,” he says. “I know. Why do you think my family placed me here? Their youngest son, their most brilliant, their crowning achievement, contender for the family throne… I had it all, you know. Power. Money. Women. Yes, so many women…”

His hand moves down to my neck. I swallow the lump in my throat, and his grip on me tightens.

“So many women… but when you have an endless buffet of pussy, it all loses its taste after a while, you know?”

I can’t breathe.

“You start chasing highs, one after the other, and they all need to be bigger, better, grander…”

All light seems to dim, and his voice sounds far away.

“You choke out one little whore and suddenly you’ve ‘shamed the family’,” he grits through his teeth. “You promise to be good, but what do you do, hm? What do you do once you’ve had a taste?!”

His eyes are filled with darkness, and it’s all I see. Just a void, an endless sea of nothing. The warden isn’t just a bastard and a sadist — he’s a fucking psychotic murderer.

His grip loosens and I fall down to my knees, coughing, crying, gasping for air.

“That’s right,” he hisses. “You don’t stop because you can’t. You have to feed the beast, feed the hunger. People start asking questions. And that’s when your family moves you away to a faraway planet, gives you some busywork and tells you to fuck off and never besmirch their name again.”

He grabs my hair roughly and pulls me up to my feet. I cry out in pain, but this only makes his smile wider. “Don’t worry, pet. I’m going to make it last. I have big, big plans for you.”

His hands move to the zipper of my jumpsuit. The warden leans in and whispers a sickening threat into my ear. “I’m going to be inside of you when you watch him die, pet.”

Oh hell no.

I’d rather die than let him lay a single finger on me. He may have me in chains, he won’t break my spirit. Not and now and not ever.

I pretend to sink down to my knees, and he buys it. Of course he does. He thinks the world revolves around him, around his sick, twisted idea of pleasure. “That’s a good pet,” he muses. “Obedient. I like.”

I kick off as hard as I can, smashing the top of my head into his lower-jaw. He stumbles backwards, bashing his head against the window, putting a fine dent in it. I reach for the stun-gun on his hip, yank it out, whirl around and shoot the two guards right where they stand.

They were so flabbergasted they hadn’t moved an inch — and now they crumple onto the floor.

“You bitch!” Onyx cries. “Whore! I’ll make you pay!”

I point the stun-gun at his head.

“Give me the keys,” I say, my voice trembling. “The keys!”

He sneers. “It’s too late. You can’t save him. You might as well stay and watch.”

“The keys!”

“If you give up now, I’ll let you live,” he says, rubbing the back of his head. “But if you persist, I won’t make any promises.”

I shoot him right in the neck. The warden drops to the floor like a brick. I frantically search his body for the keys and find them in his left pocket. I quickly undo my chains and bolt out of there. I bump into the chest of a guard outside, and before he realizes what’s happening, I place the stun-gun against his neck.

“Where is he?!” I say. “Torin! Where is he!?”

“D-d-downstairs,” he stammers. “The a-a-armory.”

I pull the trigger and he falls to the floor, unconscious. I sprint down the hall, frantically searching for my lover. Was the warden telling the truth? Is it too late? Or was that simply more psychological torture?

I jump down the stairs, my heart racing a million miles per minute. It’s like a damn maze in here. I follow the signs pointing me towards the armory. A left, a right, a left, another set of stairs, another left. I breeze past guards and other personal, and they’re too stunned or surprised to act before I’ve already turned the corner.

There. The armory!

My heart feels like it could burst right out of my chest. I run in and there he is. Torin.

Wearing a spacesuit and tied to a rocket with thick, heavy chains.

“Torin!” I scream as I run for him, opening the door despite the computer’s automated warnings.

“Nora!” he says, his eyes wide. “You came!”

“Thirty seconds to launch,” the computerized voice says.

I pull at his chains, but they are too tight for me to remove. I fiddle with the keys, trying to find the one that frees him.

“Run away!” he says. “Nora! Listen to me! It’s too late!”

“It’s not,” I say, “it’s not!”

Yet with every second that passes, my heart rate is ramped up.

“Twenty seconds to launch.”

“Go!”

“I’m not leaving you! I’m not!”

“You’ll die!”

“I’ll die with you!”

“Ten seconds to launch.”

I fumble and drop the keys. It’s too late. In a final bid of desperation, I jump on Torin’s body and hold him. I hold him as tightly as I can, sliding my wrists underneath his chains.

There is no other place for me in the universe but here. I want to be at his side. In this life and the next.

“You fool,” Torin says, but I can see he’s smiling, his eyes filled with tears. “I love you, Nora. I love you.”

“I love you, too, Torin. I love—”

“Launch initiated.”

Doors slide open, revealing the darkness of space — and the intense, overwhelming brightness of the sun. I close my eyes as all air is sucked out of the room, and the rocket launches with an unbelievable kick. I hold onto Torin as tightly as I can, and I think about the time we shared, the way he made me laugh, made me cry, made me feel alive and understood and loved.

Everything goes dark as my consciousness slips away. We’ll burn up, together. We’ll die as we loved one another — a bright, intense flicker.