⌽ Samael ⌽

 

I clench my hands into fists as Anna hesitates and by doing so she disobeys a direct order. But it’s my fault. I shouldn’t have kissed her.

But then again, on one hand I am not surprised that she’s reluctant to turn around and look at me. No one likes to look at me. I scare them. I feel the pang of rejection and swallow it down.

Why should Anna be different?

She is scared about being repulsed by what she will see, but she will be surprised. She will love to look at me until I have taught her that she must cast down her eyes when I am in the room, or any other male member of the church is.

Another voice inside me whispers me false truths into my ear. That she might be nervous, nervous about finally seeing me again.

My heart misses a beat.

I can’t wait to see Anna’s expression once she sees me for the first time.

As I notice that my hands relax, I clench them again. There is no room for thoughts like this.

I step back, not wanting to stand too close, as if the cage I built to prevent people from trying to bite me or free them with their teeth, wasn’t enough.

As I repeat myself once more, I can see how she flinches, realizing that she disobeyed me.

Not all hope is lost.

Her little hands tense as Anna obviously tries not to clench them into fists herself. Her hands are so tiny in comparison to mine, that they almost completely disappear behind her head.

Thinking of that, I discover how much taller and bitter I am than her. It always has been like this. She was always the tiny girl in comparison to me. I was twenty-three when I helped her escape at the age of fifteen, but I’ve still gained another inch, and bulked up a lot, through my training.

I had been athletic, but lean then. Now there isn’t a gram of fat on my body, since I am following a strict regimen including different self-taught fighting styles, every day. Back then, I didn’t care about any of that.

Thinking about how different I look now another unwanted emotion tries to take over.

What if she is repulsed by how I look now? Because it is different from the last time she saw me.

What if she doesn’t react to me anymore like she did before?

Why is this even important?

But I can’t tell her not to move now that I have ordered her to turn around.

Anna seeing me is inevitable anyway.

Apart from that, her being repulsed or terrified of me would be a good thing.

As she starts moving, I make another step back, unconsciously.

My heartbeat starts speeding up, just as her movement seems to slow down.

The chains I attached to the leathered steel collar create that typical metal sound, but I barely hear it.

The only thing I perceive is Anna, and as I watch her turn around, I can see how her determined expression changes from the initial surprise to something else.

Her pupils widen, her cheeks flush, and her mouth opens slightly, after her eyes dart down and she sees that I am bare-chested. And then, she quickly cast her eyes down to the ground as she instinctively tries to cover her intimate areas, but her hands are stuck.

I suppress a grin.

She is flustered, and she is attracted to me.

It’s not important at all that her being scared and repulsed would made things easier.

I don’t have any experience with that reaction anyway. People usually are attracted to me.

So, there has never been a reason for me to worry in the first place. Maybe it was because, to make her training work, I must make her terrified of me, maybe even make her hate me.

Usually, I enjoy having that effect on my trainee after I am finished. I have learned to love evoking terror in people. Like this I have a special kind of power over them and they leave me alone.

It is different now with my subordinates, and yet, although they respect me more than they fear me, the idea of getting on my wrong side horrified many of the boys.

I bring my attention back to Anna. Her cheeks are burning bright red.

Shame.

It is such a beautiful, powerful weapon, especially when you have no shame yourself.

All it does though is make me want her to blush even more. I had no intention to look at her bare body, especially since I already have seen everything there is to see during the last three years.

But now, as she stands here before me, completely naked, shivering lightly like a leaf in the wind, I can’t help myself.

And I hate it.

This is only to turn her shame into more, into pure mortification. That is what I will focus on.

She wasn’t meant to wear the cage this early in the process, because now there are many things I cannot do with her, like order her around, tell her to pick up the rags of her underwear, and test her willingness to submit. But it had to be done.

So, instead, I must change the game a bit, and I look at her. I look at her in a way I am not supposed to, but she doesn’t know that. I take in all the curves of her body, and the places where they are missing.

This time, it feels different. It is because I am not watching her on a screen. She is standing right in front of me, bare to me. And no one knows she is here. She is all mine, and she is silent.

Another blasphemous thought takes form in my head, asking me why I should give her to my father? Why not simply keep her all to myself?

No one knows. Not my brothers. Not my father. No one to judge me and demand punishment, apart from myself and God. But God has turned a blind eye on so many things already. And yet, he has put Anna in my path, repeatedly, as if he is trying to tell me that she is mine to have.

This all could be the devil’s work. Her sudden obedience. Anna staring at the ground with those deliciously burning cheeks annoys me all of a sudden.

“Look at me,” I bellow, before I can stop myself.

The last thing I need is for those eyes to look at me, pleadingly and innocent. It only makes me want to destroy her. Show her what happened to me, and teach her that only pain is absolution.

And I don’t want her to be obedient, when I do that. It is dawning on me that I want her to fight. I want to know that my sacrifice was worth it. That she became strong, independent, and free.

I want her to fight me.

I don’t want her to tremble in terror. Not now, not yet, not when she hasn’t learned what terror truly is.

“Look at me.” My voice was softer than I wanted it to be, this time.

I can feel how this pit of lava inside of me starts to boil again. Wrath, my only companion, the only entity I really trust, my only confidant, my protector, and my source of power. His protector.

There it is again, her hesitation. Why is that?

“Was I unclear,” I need to catch my breath, to tame my anger, just a little bit, “about the consequences of your disobedience?”

I watch Anna fight against herself but eventually she lifts her head, her glance following lazily. However, her reaction, once she sees me again, was the same.

I want to be angry with her, furious with her.

This is what you made me, and you cannot see it, Anna. That is what I want to tell her.

But she has not truly seen what I have become. I will have to teach her.

“You are just like everyone else.” The words flee from my mouth before I can stop them, but when I see how they affect her, hurt her; I don’t want to stop. “You are pathetic and weak. You are not even trying to fight. Not now, not then. Disgusting.”

I make a step towards her, and narrow my eyes, whispering icily. “Leaving me behind was the best you could have done for me. I was as weak and pathetic as you are. I was lost, but I have been found. I was given a purpose, from which you made me stray. But not anymore. You are not worthy of me. You never have been.”

I say these words to her, but it is not her that I see when I speak them, it is not her that I talk to, that I see in front of me. I still need to say them because this is part of her training.

The easiest part. The part where I make her long to please me, enduring it all, enduring the shame, getting used to it, so that in the end she is as broken as I am.

“Maybe I should just give you to Joshua right away.” These words come out before I can stop them.

They are what I think, what I wonder.

Not because I hate her so much, because then, I would know, at least her soul would be still intact. It will not be safe, alone with me.

 

೦ Anna ೦

 

I just stand there, thunderstruck.

It’s not what he said, nothing he did. His words, they were sinking in, cutting into me from the inside until they had settled in my mind.

They were exactly what I never wanted to hear from him and that was probably the reason he said them, since his eyes were pitch black and full of pain. I am petrified because of what I see when Sam turns around to leave.

I didn’t know that he wasn’t wearing any shirt when he walked in, until he had me turn around. His looks put my mind out of order and pressed the stop button on me. In my memories, he had been athletic, in my dreams he had been ripped, but reality was a whole different level of stunning.

He was perfect. Not as if some classic artist had set him in stone, like all the novels I’ve read usually put it. No, Sam isn’t part of this world. He is neither beefy nor meanly lean, there is nothing over the top about his body. It was exactly like it should be, better than I could ever imagine.

The sheer vision of him makes my mouth water, my hands twitch, my pussy to pulsate, and has me feeling as empty as I’ve felt every time I tried to imagine him having sex with me. He looks like sin incarnate, and he knows it.

And all I wanted during those first moments when I sucked in everything of his seductive form, was to touch him, every single inch of him. I didn’t even notice how he looked at me. Until I did.

Instantly, my hands twitched to cover myself, but I couldn’t, as they are still attached to my collar. My heart was trying to jump out of my chest and my face burned doing its best to compete with a fireplace.

Deeply embarrassed I stared at the floor, believing that it couldn’t get any worse.

I felt feverish. I wanted to crawl under a stone or beg him to toss me around, push me up against the wall and fuck me, hard, relentless, as if he meant it. My body wants him even worse than my mind. I felt as if I was losing it.

This is just beyond crazy.

The horror of what he might think about me was paralyzing. I didn’t dare to look up again, once I glued my glance to the floor. I believe that he certainly wouldn’t like what he saw. I’m too thin by now, my hair is deranged, I hadn’t slept well, and my breasts are too heavy, not standing all perky and firm.

When he told me to look at him again, my body didn’t want to move.

I just couldn’t.

I didn’t want to see his expression, and yet I knew I had to obey if I wanted to get on his good side. If I wanted him to kiss me again.

 It was when he reminds me of the consequences that I realized the off tone of his voice and remember that he sounded off almost the entire time.

“You are just like everyone else” he then tells me and those words struck deep, just like every word that follows.

They dawn on me right now, as I watch him leave.

I’m like everyone else. Not important, not special, not worthy of him.

His voice drowns my mind.

I wanted to listen to him, to hear him, to comprehend his words, but I can’t. My senses are still overloaded and my stupid body is drugging my mind, silencing me with need, with the desire to reach out and touch him, while my mind is trying to make sense of those venomous words that drip from his mouth like acid.

This mouth that looks so hard, as if it is carved from stone when it can be so soft and breathtaking.

And then he turns around.

My breath is stuck in my throat as I see his back. Fresh burning-red streaks, along with those that already are fading. And scars, so many scars and red lines are covering his back. There is barely any unharmed skin left on that part of his body. Seeing his back, it’s dawning on me there had been scars and streaks on his chest, too, but not as many. And that one sun-shaped scar below his right collar bone…

This must be the scar from when he was shot.

So much pain. So much hurt.

My eyes start to burn from the tears that try to bleed into life. When his body looks like this, what must his soul look like if I ever catch a glimpse on it?

I know that Sam had met a gruesome fate. There had been no way around it, but seeing it up close, as he walks away and towards the door, sucks all the air from my body.

Instinctively, I want to follow him, but as I try, the chain rattles and suddenly my head stops while my feet want to continue moving. I almost fall on my butt. I barely keep my balance.

The metal door falls shut.

The shock and sound makes me snap out of it and look around. My headpiece and collar are attached to the same chain that is directed though metal anchors at the walls and ceiling. I won’t be able to get to the door, or to the hole up in the wall to my left in which a small vent is circling.

It’s also my only source of light as the bulb at the ceiling goes out. An odd reflection catches my attention, and I see that next to the door is a large mirror. The second I get a glimpse of myself in it, I quickly turn my back on it.

It’s then when I stare into the dimness of my cell that the words Samael spoke eventually sink in.

Samael doesn’t only hate me, I disgust him. I have been trying to be compliant, hoping it would soften him, make him more approachable, and give me a chance to convince him to listen to me, maybe even make him believe me.

But as his hateful words reach my consciousness, I can feel hope bleeding out of my body, just like my warmth was sucked from me into the icy ground.

Carefully, I shuffle backwards, and my heels butt into something that makes me lose my balance. Panic shoots through my veins, and makes me snap wide awake once more, as I fear another yank at my head when I fall backwards.

I land softly. There’s no backlash. A mattress.

 

⌽ Samael ⌽

 

After I pull the door shut behind me, and lock it with the two metal bars, I want to turn around, to watch Anna.

It takes a moment for my body to obey. When it does I see her staring right at me, quickly turning away. She has not seen me, of course, but her own reflection in what she must think is a mirror.

Still, for a second, I feel the pang of rejection. It is familiar to me. I experience it almost every time when I meet my father. The man who has never once told me that he loves me in my twenty-nine years. Anna told me within a week.

And I still hold her captive. I still don’t pack all my things together, take her, and leave.

I walk up to the window, and look at her, how she is standing there, wearing the collar and the cage, I’ve built for the training. I measured the collar to her size, but the cage has already been used several times. I still remember when I built it. I did not buy a bird cage on purpose. It would have been faster and easier to do so and just remove the bottom, but I did not because it would make me think of her, the girl I called ‘little bird.’ What an irony it is that she is now wearing it.

While I look at her, it becomes obvious that she needs more food. She is too thin. It is important that Anna is well-fed, because otherwise she might not be able to endure what I have in store with her.

I will teach her to be ashamed of herself, ashamed of her desires, ashamed of her dreams, ashamed of her life in the outside world.

I will teach her to loathe the same things I have been taught to loathe. And then, I will give her to my father. Untouched only one way, the only way he asked for.

Or, maybe, in none.

My heart starts to beat rapidly as a thought forms itself in my mind. Instantly, my body is filled with desire, demanding of me that I follow that idea, and execute it right away.

My breath gets stuck in my throat, and I hold it back in my body, close my eyes and clench my fists.

So many unclean thoughts when it comes to Anna. All these years of discipline, punishment, and shame, and still nothing has changed when it comes to her. The only difference now is, that she is twenty-one. She is not a child anymore.

I open my eyes again and look at her, who now sits on the mattress at the wall to my left, her legs pulled up to cover her crotch.

One of my biggest, secret fears, I must admit, was that I might not want her at all anymore, that I would be repulsed by her, like I am repulsed by all the young women that are presented to my father every three months. I do not feel attracted to any woman within the fences of the Church’s property, and beyond.

I ignored my worry. Ignored that I might have the same impulse my eldest brother had.

So, as ashamed as I am for my mad desire for her, as relieved I am that it is there. I am attracted to her and although I will never speak of this in public, it is a good thing in some way.

It’s only forbidden, but nothing to be ashamed of.

 

೦ Anna ೦

 

As soon as I realize I can sit down on the mattress without my head being pulled back by the chain. Since I cannot wrap my hands around me, I still try to cover my lower intimate parts by crossing my ankles. I lean back and my shoulders barely brush against the cold wall as the cage on my head touches it first. The only comfortable position for my hands is with my palms placed at the back of my neck, which almost feels normal.

The cool cellar air perking my nipples and reaching my still moist lady parts reminds me that I am still completely naked. And my cheeks start to burn. I stare at the wall opposite to me, but watch the mirror from the corners of my eyes. Since it’s right next to the door, my mind still connects the dots and I’m sure that it’s a see-through mirror.

Sam might be standing behind it, watching me. Sam as in Samael.

But why a mirror and not a window?

The latter has to be cheaper. But as soon as I’ve asked myself this question, I already know the answer: So, that I can see myself in it, while he tortures me. The mere thought of having to watch myself while God-knows-what is done to me makes my stomach turn.

It has started sinking in the moment I woke up in this place, but I’ve ignored it. But now, now that I’ve seen Sam with my own eyes, the expression on his face, the scars on his body, the scar from the shot wound, the fresh red streaks on his back, I feel in a way I don’t know words for.

It’s like looking at a mirror that shows a picture you have imagined, and all of the sudden it starts to crack and splinter, until you realize it’s not the mirror, it is you that cracks, breaks and burst. It’s you that starts to crumble and fall into thousands and millions of pieces, while you desperately try to hold yourself together, but there is nothing left of you to do that with.

I look at that mirror now, but there is nothing there. Nothing but my heart kept in that dome I’m carrying on my head.

I am so ashamed of myself.

Shamed, because all I thought of in the past six years was what I lost, that Sam was gone, that I was all alone.

I wore my sorrow like a shield, like a sign for everyone to see and read. I wallowed myself in sadness and self-pity. I’ve wasted my freedom, my life, while it was Sam who lost it all and everything. He lost himself.

When the tears dwell in my eyes this time, I do not fight them. And I do not shed them for myself. I shed them for Sam. I shed them full of shame.

I deserve his disgust and his scorn.

I deserve it all.