Struck By You

Chapter Two

Consciousness started to return to me when the ringing started.  It took me to recognize and place the sound, but as the ringing continued, it became clear it was a phone.  I wondered vaguely who it could be, that being the natural instinct to the sound.  My mind moved very slowly, though, and it was difficult to think.

“Yeah,” a woman’s voice barked.

The ringing had stopped, thankfully.  It was doing nothing for the headache blooming behind my eyes.  As I pondered the return to silence, the conversation being shared in the room seeped into my head like water into a sponge.

“Yeah?” a second voice answered incredulously.  She had obviously answered by speakerphone.  “Yeah?!  No ‘Hello, sir’ or ‘Hi Zet!’?!”

“Shit,” she muttered under her breath.

“I heard that too, Chase,” the voice replied.  “Don’t forget you’ve got me on speaker phone.  Why is that, incidentally?”

“Mmm..” Chase answered.  “Very sorry about that, sir.  A bit busy here.  Still that is no excuse for not answering your phone call in a more polite manner.”

“Oh?  Have you got a new toy?”

“Mmm…”

“And you’re so vocal about it.  How nice.  Well, you can show me.  I’ll be there tomorrow.  I’ve got to be in town tomorrow.  Thought we could perhaps… have lunch?”

“Shit,” she muttered again.  “Sure.  Should I pick you up at the airport?”

“Why the sudden hostility, Chase?  What’s going on there?”

“Well,” she started.  “I sort of had plans for the next few days.”

“That’s quaint,” he answered, with out amusement.  “Change them.”

She didn’t answer, but sighed in frustration instead.

“I’m still on speaker phone, Chase.  You know I don’t like that.  Pick up the fucking handset. Now” 

He was clearly not amused.

The sound of metal hitting the floor and the scraping of feet against concrete followed, then things went silent for a while.

“I understand that, sir,” she said.  Clearly she had done as he had instructed her to, though she didn’t sound pleased.

“No, I don’t think I’ll be able to show you, Zet.  It’s sort of… a personal thing.”

More silence.

“Yes, I’ll change my plans.  Yes sir, I’ll see you then.”

The sound of the handset slamming back down on to the rest of the phone made a shattering noise, startling me.  I began to try to move my mind in the direction that would allow me to take better stock of my surroundings.  It didn’t come easily.

“So you’re awake,” she said.  “I was hoping you’d be out longer.  Is the entire fucking world against me just now, or what?!”

As I heard the shuffling sounds of her approach, I struggled to open my eyes.  Though my vision was still hazy, I could see that I was on what appeared to be a bed, in a dark room.  My sluggish mind fought to recall why I was here, and where exactly “here” was.  With the wheels of my mind slowly turning, I felt someone grab a handful of my hair and pull my head up.  Opening my eyes again, I was face to face with her.

“You’ve made my life very difficult today,” she said.  “Extremely difficult.  I can see that a quick resolution of this situation is called for, but I refuse to have my fun completely ruined.”

My hair still in her hands, she turned away from the bed and began to drag me with remarkable strength toward where she had been working before she had been interrupted.  The pain she caused me made didn’t have the effect I had thought it would.  Instead of blinding my mind to all things but her grip, it seemed to get sharper.  This new sharpness brought a sudden perfect recall to my mind of the events before my unconsciousness. I gasped for breath, fear choking me.

This was not where I should be.  This is NOT how things should be right now.  She should be dead.  I should be long gone from here.  My mind reeled, trying to put the pieces of the incomplete puzzle together.  What was going on here?  Why wasn’t I covered in blood?  Why wasn’t she in pieces?  Something was very wrong here.

Words seemed to creep into my head.  But not words, thoughts, or ideas.  But they weren’t mine.  I wasn’t thinking these things.  These thoughts were not my own.  Where did they come from?  Pondering this, I focused on these new ideas.

So foreign, they were.  It was very hard to understand them, at first.  Gradually, as I sifted them.  The emotions were easiest to sort out, even with their strangeness.  Anger must taste very much the same in every mind, I guessed.  Yet this anger was laced with…excitement… and… fear?  Anticipation was laced between the stronger thoughts and feelings.  While my mind was still digesting these new concepts with in it, I felt her let go of my hair.

Still struggling with my mind, I realize I had the need to begin a physical struggle.  But against what?  It was in these new ideas, new thoughts in my head, that I should be struggling… yet why?  I felt a sharp gab in my arm, and these new thoughts began to fade out of my mind.  In fact, my mind started to fade out entirely.  This feeling I knew.  I was getting very high, very quickly.

I was too much of an addict to fight the high.  It was too warm.  The embrace of it was too sweet.  My body went limp, and I slumped onto the floor, no longer even trying to hold myself up.  Things started to get darker, and I let the beauty of intoxication overtake me completely.

I felt my hand being roughly secured to something behind me, but I didn’t care.  My lover, my peace, my freedom was with me now.  It caressed me in my veins, and I didn’t care about my body just then.  Eventually, I had the sensation of someone moving my legs, but it didn’t matter.  The resistance had drained from me entirely, and nothing mattered.

I don’t know how long I drifted in this blissful fog, but all too soon the fog was burned away.  Literally.  It felt like white hot coals were being laid on my chest, searing my skin.  Again my mind went into hyper awareness, much to my confusion.  Somehow, though, it made it easier to ignore the pain that way.  Easier than drugs had ever been.

The awareness was different this time, though.  Things were much clearer.  When I opened my eyes, even the colors stood out differently.  Even the new thoughts were back, but they were different, too.  Instead of being jumbled and confusing, I knew exactly what they were.  They weren’t my thoughts, but HERS. 

Testing the waters of this new consciousness, I separated each of her thoughts quickly while my eyes scanned the room for her.  She was close, but no longer in front of me.  Her back was to me, her mind in concentration of her current task, which was, I could clearly see now, heating bits of metal to a glowing heat.

Processing her thoughts, I looked at my chest, which was still on fire.  Her task was very determinedly set in her mind – a jumble of anger and passion, she was intent on branding patterns into my chest, as well as the rest of my body.  IF she got that far, I thought.

With a shocked look, she whirled around again to face me.

“What did you say?” she demanded.

Realization flashed through my mind.  I still didn’t understand what was taking place in my head, but it was becoming clear what I could do with it.  Instead of answering her, I decided to instead test how far my abilities would go.

Tell me what you are doing, I thought.  Explain it to me.

She hesitated.  Her intentions were clear in her head, but she struggled to bring herself to say the words.

“I’m torturing you for my own personal gratification,” she mumbled, sounding confused at her own words.

Stop it, I thought.  It hurts.

Testing how far I could go, I threw out a feeling of just how deep the pain went.  Her screaming response told me it had worked.  She shuddered and fell to the ground.  Fear controlled her thoughts now.  Well, fear and me.  Yet was there more I could do?

Unchain me.  Now.

Slowly, trying to fight it, she struggled to bring herself to her feet.  As if fighting some internal battle with herself, she started to turn toward me, but stopped.  At the exact time she stopped, my mind hit a brick wall.

“Stay out of my head,” she spat out.  “Get out and stay out, fucking bastard.”

Turning her back to me, she started again heating a long piece of metal over the flame of a blowtorch again.  I fought with the brick wall, trying to break it down.  It was no use, though.  Her thoughts were again her own; I could neither hear them or control them.  With a sign of frustration, I hung my head, digesting mentally exactly what my fate was going to be.

I had seen it clearly enough in her mind.  I knew exactly what she was going to be.  I knew a lot about her, actually.  The most pressing thing at the moment wasn’t to understand her, but to figure out a way to avoid my ultimate fate.

She had every intention of killing me, that much was clear.  She had done it before.  Many, many times.  Her method was flawless.  Entrapping someone in with sex; drugging them; branding them; then cutting their throats, their arms, and their legs.  She would lick the blood as if flowed warmly out of their body.  Her practice fulfilled all of her desires and needs. 

A word flashed across my mind, but it wasn’t the right word.  It was my word, the only word I had for a creature, a thing like her.  As soon as it was thought, it was replaced with a different word, a word I had never heard before.  Hemira.  I repeated it in my mind, and finally it crossed my lips.

“Hemira,” I muttered.

She turned again and stared at me.  Her eyes flamed brighter than her torch, and pure anger danced across her face.

“You’re dead,” she stated.

Too quickly, she lunged at my throat, a razor flashing in her hands.  My body struggled to defend itself, but I had been too effectively restrained.  Tearing against the bonds, I fought to regain my freedom, my mind searching for an opening, any opening, that I could use to defend myself. 

Only then did I realize that there were two people very close.  It was like they knew what was happening to some degree, and were waiting the outcome.  The first mind was inpenetratable, firmly locked from me.  The other, however, was unprotected.  Instantly finding my way into that mind, I raced through the thoughts there, trying to find something I could use to my advantage.

He was armed, I realized.  He was armed and he was just outside the door.  It was too easy to take control of him, to put my consciousness into his body, and use him as I would.  My first step in his body was strange, shakey.  His companion noticed this.

“What are you doing?” he demanded. 

I recognized the voice from earlier.  But more, combing through the thoughts of the man whose body I now controlled, I now had a name for that voice.  Zet Thane.  None of this mattered to me, though.  Not heeding his question, I threw the weight of this new body at the door standing in front of him.

The scene before me almost threw my mind into a spiral of confusion and unrest.  I could see myself, and I could see me staring wide eyed at this man.  Both our mouths opened at the same time, and we stood in silent recognition of each other.  I had never seen him before in my life, but I knew what he looked like to himself.  I had also now a new image of exactly how I looked in the flesh.

The bursting of the door had an effect on the other people in the area.  Zet slipped in behind my puppet, while Chase whipped around, bloody razor in hand, and froze.  Using this moment to my advantage, I forced the man to withdraw his gun.  Not bothering to aim very much, I fired off four shots.  The man’s amazing marksmanship naturally flowed into the shooting of the gun, and each bullet found center body mass of the woman.  Not taking a moment to scream, she lunged at the man.

I fired off four more shots, landing two in her right shoulder, another in her chest, and the fourth in her stomach.  Instead of taking another step forward, she fell hard to the floor.  As her blood began to pool below her figure, gave no mind to her, instead walking my puppet across the room and making him undo my bonds.

While my attention was distracted, Zet must have moved, because when I looked up, releasing my puppet from its strings, he was kneeling down in front of Chase’s limp body.

“Well, well, well,” he said to her.  “It looks like you SHOULD have told me about your new toy.”

Laughing to himself, he turned her over to lay face up.  This exposed the ragged wounds on her chest, and the smell of blood filled the room.  She stared, unseeing, to the ceiling, and tried to mutter words which wouldn’t come out.

“She’s saying that she wants you to save her,” I spoke.  “She’s dying.  She’s begging you.”

Casting an amused look at me, Zet focused his attention onto her face again.

“And I would have,” he said, with contempt in his voice.  “I certainly would have saved you.  If you would have been so kind as to share.  You know better than to keep things like this from me.”

“She’s saying that she didn’t know,” I relayed.  “And she didn’t know.  She had no idea until the end, really.”

“Then she knew soon enough,” he answered, both to me and to her.

Getting up, he kicked her with his foot, moving her body out of his way.

“She knew soon enough to save her own life, if she would have been smart,” he sneered.  “Stupid bitch was always too impulsive to be good for much.  No control, always focused on her immediate needs.”

Walking towards me, we locked eyes. 

“I won’t save her,” he said.  “No, she deserves the fate she chose.  But I will save you.”

Before I could think, his hand was at my throat.  I hadn’t realized till that moment that I was bleeding significantly.  Realization dawned on me that I had lost a significant amount of blood, but my fear of him fought against my desire to pass out.  My hands tore at his ice cold grasp around my neck, but my struggle only made me weaker.  Conceding defeat, but still unready to welcome death, I collapsed.

Somehow, with his hand still at my throat, he caught me gently in the other and laid me on the couch.  The ice cold from his hands spread through the gash on my neck, soothing the pain.  The discomfort receding, the coolness seemed to spread through my body, and I let it take over.

Relaxing completely – did I really have a choice? – closed my eyes and let the couch support my weight.  After a time, I felt his grip around my neck release, and his hand slid down to the burns on my chest.  Blissful coolness followed his touch, and the tension I had been holding in my mind released.  I vaguely wondered if this was what dying felt like, but my mind wouldn’t dwell there.  My thoughts were dulled, but not like they had been with the drugs.  This was a relaxing dull, a healing dull.  I let these feelings surround me and closed my eyes.

“I need satiation,” he said.  “Go.”

I had no idea what he was talking about, but I knew it wasn’t to me that his words were directed.  I felt the other man, my discarded puppet, leave the room.  My mind didn’t follow him.  Somehow I knew the threat to me was past.  My curiosity at Zet and the meaning behind his words took over, and many questions burst forth in my head.

I moved to speak, but he stopped me.

“Don’t,” he answered.  “You’re going to live, but it was close.  I have questions for you, but we’ll have time for that later.  Right now, we both need to rest and sate ourselves, then we can consider this new situation that has developed.”

Knowing my questions would not be answered at that moment, I sat myself to the task of relaxation instead.  Somehow, I could sense in my body the drugs that had been given me were still present.  Using my mind to focus my thoughts, I granted them access to my mind again, letting this known comfort wash over me in a warm embrace.  Drifting on this cloud, I sank into a dreamless sleep.