Heart of Steel Ch. 01

The climax was now a familiar sensation, one he had already come to dislike. All the more so because it /should/ have felt amazing. Mai was wildly ecstatic with her orgasm, squealing and crying out in joy, clinging to Tristan and kissing him passionately, over and over again. When she was at last finished, she rose from him, unshackling him but for one ankle, and retrieving the necklace from around his neck.

"I'll bring you a meal later," she informed him, "something good for my good boy."

"Thanks." Tristan said dully, blankly, feeling no passion, no more sympathy and kindness for Mai.

She left him then, alone and more free than he'd been all day. Physically. Mentally, he felt ruined. In one day, he felt entirely wiped clean of his humanity, his will and ability to make choices for himself, to decide what he wanted. He had been taken, tortured, bound, and tormented. Only one day and he already felt like a trauma-scarred victim of some great atrocity. He felt that he had truly been /raped./

Chapter 5: Release

He stopped keeping track of the days after a long while, it wasn't worth the tedium, and it only served to prolong his deepening sense of self-pity. He spent most of his time shackled in the room, on the bed. They would bring him his meals, escort him to the bathroom, and they took it in turns to shower with him, scrubbing him thoroughly clean. But those showers never left him feeling clean, not truly so. And then it was back to the bed again.

The sex was a near constant in his life, which he had grown to not fear, but hate. He forced himself to zone out, to make his mind go blank, to let his traitorous body do what it would under the thrusting hips and fondling hands of his captresses. Sometimes he would think of songs in his head, humming lyrics silently, trying to imagine the full songs playing in his mind, as if he wore headphones. Sometimes he thought of his Gods, the Nordic deities which he worshipped, thinking of their strength, their adventures, wondering if they would ever help him in some way. But still he was aware of what was happening to him, and he began to learn each girl, their personality, their wants, their style.

Crystal was entirely enthralled with the domination aspect of the sexual encounter, emotionally so. She would free Tristan from his shackles only to have him kneel before her, to kiss her bare feet and call her "Mistress." He would beg her for the tortures he so hated and feign gratefulness, lest "Mistress Crystal" use her whip or paddle to punish him. That being said, little he could do would ever stop her from using that whip to score his skin, or the paddle to violently bruise him. And between each stroke, he would thank his mistress for her beatings, and he only hated himself for consenting. But what could he do? Be beaten endlessly until he agreed?

Mistress Crystal's sexual appetite was boundless. Often she would secure his manhood, around its base, with a tight ring, forcing it to stay erect such that she could ride him for a far longer period of time, reveling in the several orgasms she received as Tristan desperately squirmed, kept from the brink of orgasm by that tight ring, forced to beg for a release of the built up tension.

Hilja was strong, her lust, her passion was all inexorably entwined with her physical strength. Often she would let Tristan free of the bed-chains and force him to fight her, to wrestle her as hard as he could. Once he'd, in a fit of this fighting desperation, clawed at her face to get her off of him, to get her knee off of his groin. This had drawn blood and he'd had to be punished. Painful clamps were affixed to his testicles, squeezing them relentlessly. And the clamps ran, via long wires, to a battery. When the wires connected, Tristan received a current of electricity through his testicles that left him flailing, screaming, and eventually losing consciousness.

After that incident, he learned to "properly" fight Hilja. He was NEVER to draw blood, never to strike at her face, or to bend her finger joints to loosen a hold. Punching, kicking, and grappling were all acceptable, and in those skills, Hilja ruthlessly dominated him, beating him into submission and then torturing him just for fun with punches to the kidneys and abdomen, violent kicks in the groin, or painful joint and neck locks.

Their sex was always the same, always with Tristan on his belly, either flat on the bed or bent over its footboard. Hilja would penetrate him with that awful strap-on, though she in time worked him up to a far larger, thicker one that left him feeling internally devastated. It was a wonder he wasn't rectally damaged. But the damage he was dealt was far more subtle, for it was psychological in nature.

Mai was the only exception to the pain related torment. So long as he never went against her wishes, she would talk to him, sitting with his head in her lap and talking with him. This was how he learned that the girls were all roommates at this location, which she would not disclose. This was how he learned that they had all agreed that keeping a man in a relationship was just too difficult.

"You guys just aren't easy to trust." she said. "And guys don't like what we want, they don't understand how to please us, how to properly respect us."

"So this was your alternative?" Tristan asked. "This isn't respect, it's servitude."

"But you don't know how it arouses us," she explained quietly, "you don't know how it arouses us to have you this way, little Tristan. You're our perfect lover."

"This isn't about respect or love, it's about power." Tristan murmured, and he'd been slapped for that comment.

Mai would ask him questions about himself, but Tristan was not forthcoming. He didn't want to get to know her, to connect with any of them. He had no desire to feel anything but cold, slow-burning contempt for Crystal, Hilja, and Mai.

Mai was a tender lover, as tender as an abductor could be. She would often let him stay unshackled as she moved astride him, bringing their bodies into a slow rhythm, working them together. If this were consensual sex, she would have been an astonishing lover, so in tune with Tristan's body and what excited it. But out of tune entirely with his mind and its protestations. She would work them always to a simultaneous (or nearly so) climax, and lay with him for hours afterwards, often spending the nights curled around him, after shackling just one of his limbs to the bed to keep him safely captured.

It was on one of those nights, where they lay together, drenched in sweat, Mai draped across Tristan's slender body, her head against his neck, her lips brushing his skin lightly, punctuated by soft kisses and gentle bites. Her body shook, and suddenly Tristan realized that Mai was crying as she held him, weeping uncontrollably, silently shaking.

"What is it?" he asked. "What's wrong, have I done something? Do I have to be punished?"

"No, no you sweet, sweet boy." Mai replied, her voice thick with sobs. "The others are tired of you, they think they've worn you out, broken you. It's not fun for them anymore, they're, they're getting rid of you."

"Oh Gods, are they going to kill me? Mai, you have to protect me."

"Mai?"

Tristan realized, in his haste, he'd used her given name.

"Oh, sorry. I uh, I named all of you in my head, so I could help differentiate you." he explained. "I called you Mai."

"Mai," she repeated, "I like it, it's cute. But the girls aren't going to kill you, and they won't let me keep you. They're letting you go."

"What?" he exclaimed.

"They're letting you go, they're not interested in you anymore." Mai replied. "Oh Tristan. Sweet boy, my boy, my Tristan."

She dissolved into incoherent sobs, hugging him and kissing him. Tristan hugged her tight, more a reflex than sympathy. He'd learned he could be kind to Mai and she'd be kind to him, in certain ways like this, but she still was one of them, one who had taken him against his will. There was no love in his heart for Mai. But still he held her, stroking her hair as she so often did to him at night, until she wept herself into a fitful slumber. Tristan was soon to follow, sleeping as he always had since arriving here, tentatively and surrounded by dreams of oppression and pain...

The next morning was a flurry of activity. The light came on sharply, jolting Tristan awake in time to see the three girls at the foot of the bed. Crystal was the one who approached suddenly, lunging in with a cloth in her hands, with which she blanketed his mouth and nose. Tristan reflexively struggled, which earned him several disciplinary blows from Hilja. Mai just stood there, watching quietly, somberly, sadness written like great glowing letters in her teary eyes.

Again Tristan felt that sensation from the night of his abduction: a suffocating sensation as the drug vapor forced its way into his lungs, followed by a loss of control, a sense that he was slipping out of his body, up and out of his head, falling out of his senses and out of control. The last thing he saw was their pale faces, all three of them. Crystal's indifferent, cold look, Hilja's amused smirk, and Mai's trembling lips and wide eyes. And then, like phantasms in the night, the faces were gone, the room was gone, blackness consumed him, and he knew nothing more...

The warmth of the sun on his face was an odd sensation, it was unfamiliar yet not at all unwelcome. The cool wind, the heat on his face and hands, and the sensation of hard ground under his back. These were all unfamiliar yet welcomed sensation. And one familiar sensation was entirely gone, the steel rings around his wrists and ankles and the collar around his neck. / They're/ /gone!/

Tristan sat bolt upright, half expecting the sensations around him to melt away, to find himself back in the room with "Mistress Crystal" leering down at him, whip in hand. But all that happened was that his head rushed, his stomach churned, still feeling unwell from the drug. His eyes shut tight from the sudden brightness of the sun, but slowly he was able to open them and survey his surroundings.

Tall pine trees grew up around him in every direction, the ground was blanketed in light grass and the occasional patch of tall grass and low foliage. The ground on which he sat was a soft bed of grass, and the trees provided him with shade. Behind him, a gravel and dirt road ran, and from the angle of the sun, Tristan could ascertain that it was an east-west road. / Probably, I'm in West Wood, in the undeveloped areas./ If that were so, Pine Ridge proper lay to the east, and so he turned to his right, after having climbed shakily to his feet and clearing his head.

But before Tristan set off, he performed a hasty self-inventory. He was clad in new clothes, not his own, save for the socks and boots. The pants were uncomfortably tight, but he assumed they were the same size as Hilja's, which would fit her legs more loosely. The shirt, also small, was plain and black. That was all he had in the aspect of clothes. In his pockets, he found his cell phone (with a dead battery), and his wallet, which was empty but for his ID. He had /nothing./ Strangely, he found himself missing the ticket stubs from his first metal show most of all, more than the $50 in cash he'd kept in his wallet, more than his own clothes. He'd have missed his pendant, but it was hanging around his neck, adding its comfortable weight to his body.

He began to set off eastward along the curving gravel road, hoping his guess was right as to his location. His feet crunched on the gravel, adding a rhythm section to the orchestra of the wild: chirping birds, rustling trees, and the whirring of the wind in the brush. The unbroken wilderness enthralled him. Were he in a better mood, he might have erupted from his quiet, reserved shell, with a mighty roar and raced down the path like Conan from the Robert Howard tales, or "yarns" as Howard called them. He would have found a stick to swing like a blade and battle his unseen foes. But today was not a day for such merriment.

Tristan's trek was long, but not unbearable. The sun was not scorching, the wind was cool, and the humidity was strikingly low, lending a clean, open feel to the surroundings. The land felt free. Tristan made good time on his journey, until houses became more frequent, as evidenced by mailboxes and winding driveways leading away from the dirt road. Soon, he saw a sign that read "Pine Ridge," indicating the more developed areas of the town.

Pine Ridge was somewhere between a town and a city. Its suburbs were fairly rural, but its heart was fairly developed. Its northern reaches were most prominently noted for Pine Ridge University, the liberal arts college which Tristan attended and lived near in his apartment. Without money, Tristan could take neither bus nor cab, and so his walk continued through the streets, over sidewalks and crosswalks, moving east and north until he found himself on the south end of his small college campus. From here, it was not a long walk until he arrived at his apartment building.

"Tristan," came a voice as he approached the complex, "is that you, son?"

Mrs. Anita McKinley, the 70 or so year old land lady was walking down the sidewalk with a trash bin rolling in front of her. Tristan moved across the parking lot to help the blonde-haired old woman with the heavy bin. As they wheeled it to the corner and made their way back to the complex, Tristan spoke with her.

"I haven't seen you about in a dog's age." she declared.

"It's really been a long time, huh." Tristan sighed.

"Yes indeed," she said, "Arthur went to your room a few times after the first of the month passed, to try and collect the rent."

Tristan cursed himself silently. / The/ /rent!/ It was well overdue by this point.

"Mrs. McKinley, I'm so sorry." he said. "I have been... away, and unwell, for a while."

"I know you're good for it, Tristan," she assured him as they reached her doorstep, "just bring the check by later this evening, will you?"

"Yes ma'am."

The aging woman moved up the short flight of stairs to her ground-floor apartment door, grasping the knob with a slim hand, and stepping inside. But she did not close the door, she turned instead to Tristan and looked him over. Maybe it was the unkempt appearance, the odd clothes, the dirt in his hair from when he'd been lying upon the dirt out in West Wood. Maybe she saw how much thinner he'd gotten, fed on meager meals. Or perhaps it was the defeated, broken look in his eyes, which stared at everything like an alien observer, watching not from inside Tristan's mind, but from well over-head, detached from the world as it happened around him. Whatever she saw, she spoke to it then.

"Tristan," she said, "what happened to you?"

Tristan stopped, his hand nervously clutching one of the quaint wooden rails that flanked the steps to Mrs. McKinley's apartment. He looked at her in silence, fighting the urge to run and hide, and the urge to break down there on the steps, to tell her everything he was feeling, everything he'd endured.

"I'm fine, ma'am," he assured her without much feeling, "nothing happened to me, it's just been a... a long day."

"If you need anything," she said, "anything at all, Tristan, come and see me and Arthur. We're always here, okay?"

"Yes ma'am, thank you."

"Even if it's just a home-cooked meal or a person to talk to."

"Yes ma'am."

"Alright," she chuckled, "I won't keep you busy with my rambling. Have a nice day, Tristan."

"You too, Mrs. McKinley."

And then she was gone, the door to her apartment closed and locked. How many times in the past many days had he heard that sound? Slam, click, and then the aloneness after the door was sealed. But this was different, this time he was not left with a feeling of exhaustion and defilement, this time he was not immobilized in some way, this time he was free to go at his will.

A hurried rummage through his pockets and Tristan managed to find his apartment key, tucked into one of the sections of his wallet. / Must have missed that earlier./ His room was on the second floor. Mounting the stairs on the building's right side and then doubling back along a railed walkway to the front of the building at the second floor level, he came at last to his door. Room 201. His home. Genuinely, Tristan had come to believe, during his captivity, that he would never again see this door or the walls beyond, that he would spend the rest of his life in that austere room feeling used and ignored.

The key rattled in the lock, and Tristan felt the give of the dead-bolt. Replacing the key in his wallet, he turned the doorknob and stepped into his apartment, hastily locking the door behind him. He didn't know what he expected then. To wake up suddenly back in that awful, impersonal room? To find Crystal, Hilja, and Mai standing in his apartment with chains and shackles ready for him? Whatever he was expecting did not in fact come to pass.

The apartment seemed as he'd left it, a bit dusty and dry of air perhaps, but untouched. The short hall led from the door into the living room, whose large rear window looked eastward, with a smaller, adjacent north-facing window. A sofa sat under the longer window, with a coffee table in front of it. Off to the right was the kitchen: a long counter with a sink embedded in it occupied the kitchens farthest wall (the south wall of the apartment), a window looked out from the eastern wall, a refrigerator between the window and the stove, which itself was between the refrigerator and the counter. A little island designated the border of the kitchen and the living room, with two bar stools on the living room side. And off to the left, across the living room, was the bedroom.

The living room was just as Tristan had left it. The coffee table held a few metal magazines, a Robert Howard book, and a paper he should have finished for his sociology course. The wall opposite the couch housed Tristan's television, stereo, and wide array of music and movies. It was all just like he'd left it, so normal, so real, when it had faded into only vague memory in his mind. He turned on the ceiling fan to get some air circulating a bit more and brought the thermostat down a few degrees, having raised it before that night at the concert. / That/ /night./ How long had it been?

The stereo had a clock which was always on, regardless of whether or not the unit was fully active. It read, "Time: 1:30 pm, Date: November 1st." /November! A whole /month!/ They'd kept him for the whole month of October, kept him away in their prison for their own pleasure. Tristan's mind reeled, he sank onto the couch, breathing hard. A whole month, what had happened in this time?

He sprang up from the couch and hurried into his room, plugging his cell phone into its charger. Surely he'd missed calls in this time. The phone "beeped" to life, lighting up slightly to show its power had at last been restored. Tristan took this opportunity to retrieve his debit card from where he'd left it in the drawer in his bedside table before the concert, lest it disappear on him during the show, and replace it in his wallet. The girls had taken his cash, which he'd withdrawn, but they didn't have this, they had not drained his savings. / Thank the Gods for foresight./ Well, foresight in a way. He'd never foreseen what actually befell him.

Now he watched as his phone came alive, with its background picture of a Dio album cover and an icon in the upper left portion of the screen that read: New Voice Mail Messages. Tristan clicked the icon with the arrow keys on the phone pad, calling his own Voice Mail to retrieve the messages. Then he listened.

1. Hello sweetie, it's your mother. How was the show? I bet you're exhausted, aren't you? Well I hope you had a good time, and I'm sending you a rent check with your allowance for the month as well. I love you Tristan, bye.