A gay story: Onus *Hey friends!
It’s been WAY too long since I’ve had a series going, so welcome to the first installment of Onus.
I’ve been told in a few comments and emails that I’m a bit of a bitch when it comes to my characters, and what I put them through. I’ve decided to start giving trigger warnings.
I write very violent material. It’s just what I do best, so I’m sorry, but the following series has quite a bit of violence, nonconsensual sex, and cruelty.
Also, future. With the addition of Onus, 5 of my universes will be dystopian. 🙂
All Characters are 18+*
“Freak.”
I wanted my mama.
I whined very softly in the back of my throat as my back thumped against the brick wall. It hurt.
“Fucking freak. You should know better… Strutting around in our turf. Walking around… Like you have some sort of Right!”
I wanted to speak, wanted to explain. But I was so scared. I just covered my face with my hands and trembled. The soft sensory patches on my fingertips were touching my face. I could feel how gaunt it was. How the bones jutted. I could feel every grain of dirt and mud. I could feel the dirt and grease in the ragged strands of hair that had been hanging over my face.
I flinched into a corner. I made myself small. These bullies had chased me far from my normal turf. I had no idea where I was, otherwise I wouldn’t have let myself get trapped like this.
“Please.” I whispered. “I’ll go… I’ll run… Please just let me go.”
I bleated with fear as one of them lunged. I knew that he wasn’t going to hit me, that he was just trying to scare me, but I was already so scared. I trembled, cornered. I started to cry.
They were laughing. I opened one of my eyes, looking for a way out. I darted between one of the jeering boys and the wall. I made it, and he hastened my retreat with a foot that hit me squarely on the skinny ass.
I fell, but I scrambled when I was on all fours. I cried out with pain when my hands fell in the filthy slush-puddles. So cold.
I ran. I ran with my blanket flapping around me. With my baggy sweatpants trying to fall down my scrawny hips. With my dog-tongued sneakers flapping and slapping and letting in ice-cold moisture. I ran with my breath hitching in my chest in little weeping gasps.
I finally stopped in the grassy weedy ice-slick patch of dirt behind a laundromat. I hid between a dumpster and a hotel truck full of linens and towels. I bent over and massaged the hitch in my ribs with the back of my hand. My breath came out in a large white fog. I wrapped my blanket tight around me. It was a small felt blanket with a large coffee stain on it. I had found it in a dumpster. It smelled like cats and mothballs, but it was warm. It was so late. The sun was low in the sky, and curfew would begin soon.
“No Onus allowed here.”
I looked up rapidly, cringing at the unexpected source of noise. A man on a smoke break. He wasn’t hostile, but his voice was firm.
“I mean it bug-eyes. Beat it before I call the cops on you.”
The stitch in my side was still sending out throbs of hot pain, but got moving anyway. There had to be an Onii around here somewhere, there had to be.
I passed four storefronts with anti-Onus signs featured prominently in their windows. I didn’t know this place. I was scared. I glanced at the window. A cartoon face with pure black eyes. Surrounded by an angry red circle with a line through it.
There was a woman on a street corner, waiting for the light to turn green. I timidly walked up to her. She could see me, and she was frowning, but she didn’t say anything, or turn angry.
“Do you know where I can find an Onii ma’am?” I whispered, humble and quiet.
She curled her lip with disgust, but just as I was about to slink away, she pointed her arm ramrod-stiff from her body, one finger uncurled to point towards the setting sun.
“Two blocks. There’s a park where they set up one of your filthy slums.”
I bowed my head. “Thank you ma’am. Sorry to bother you ma’am.”
“This freak bothering you, miss?”
I shrank slightly from the newcomer, a policeman who was scowling and fondling the butt of his regulation stick.
She shook her head. “Just a freak, asking where the slum is.” I flinched at the slur, and trotted west as fast as I could. The policeman called after me.
“Hurry up freak. Curfew is in half an hour.”
—
I found the Onii just as the light was getting dim, and just as the cold sank it’s teeth in deep. It was a small one. Just a cluster of tents and boxes and ramshackle lean-tos in a small fenced area of the local park. Two Enforcement officers were posted at the entrance.
EO’s had the authority to detain any Onus for any length of time for any reason. They had the power to lock up the Onii for any suspected activity. They had the right to dole out corporal punishment and enter any Onus-owned establishment.
The last part was a joke. My kind weren’t even allowed around most businesses. Much less to own one.
I trotted towards the entrance, breathing a sigh of relief. I wouldn’t get caught out after curfew. Cops had no patience, no lenience, to curfew-breakers. All Onus had to be accounted for after eight PM, any loiterers could go to jail. Bad things happened to Onus in the overnight cells.
“Hey… Hey, look. There’s one right there, let’s talk to him.”
I felt my muscles tensing, an instant response of fear and wariness. I turned around and saw a gaggle of young men and women coming after me. In a quick jog.
The fear was a sour taste in the back of my mouth. I started to jog myself, hearing my breath in the back of my throat like a harsh tearing.
“You idiots. He’s getting away” That part was soft. Then the young man spoke up louder. “Hey, listen… Please we just want to talk! Talk to us, wont you?”
I don’t know why, but I stopped. Three young women and two men. One of the guys was holding a big camera. He trained it on me, and I felt my bone-dry throat tightening in fear. I started edging back. The other guy was the one who was talking. He had his hands up, like he was trying to soothe a frightened animal.
The black eye of the camera frightened me.
“Listen… We’re trying to do a documentary. We’re trying to help you. It’s a fucking disgrace how Onus are treated in this country, and many others. We’re trying to bring equal rights and priveleges to–”
I couldn’t stand it for another second. I took several steps backwards, glancing longingly towards the Onii. “Please mister… Please I have to go. It’s almost curfew.”
He checked his watch. So few people had watches anymore. I had only ever seen them on the elderly. “Please, we have ten minutes. Don’t be frightened. We’re just trying to help.”
I glanced up at the camera again. Then back at the one who was talking. He was tall and covered in a thick grey coat that looked very warm. He had a red scarf around his neck and his gloves were leather. He had rectangular black glasses and behind the lenses his eyes were ordinary and human and brown. His hair was hidden under a hat with ear-flaps.
“Wh-What do you want?” I stammered, looking at the Onii. I felt trapped. I just wanted to be among my own kind. To be safe.
The boy who was speaking smiled. His teeth were very white. I had better teeth than most, having lived with my mama for most of my life.
“Just some questions. Please answer them honestly. We’re trying to paint a picture of what life is for the Onus. Prove that you don’t deserve it.”
He was fumbling out a slip of paper. As he was unfolding it he asked me. “What is your name?”
“Shiloh.” I mumbled. I held the blanket tighter around me.
“Where do you live?”
“In the third-district Onii. I… I got lost, so here for the night.”
“Can you tell the viewers what an Onii is? What the conditions are like?”
What was an Onii like? What was it like for someone who had never seen the inside of one?
“They are surrounded by fences. Some have tents, others have sheds. The nicest Onii is actually in a building, but there is always a line to get in, so I don’t go there often. The people who are in the line after the doors shut get chased away by the EOs.” I hesitated.
“Please, I could get in trouble… I just want to go.” I felt tears prickling at the inner corners of my freakish eyes.
He checked that old-fashioned watch again. “Please, we have seven minutes. I just want to ask you a few things. We’re trying to help.”
I felt anger. A foreign emotion with dangerous teeth. Anger and fear at being trapped like this.
“Help? Then get me some food. Give me a place to sleep. Take of your jacket and give it to me. Do something that will actually help ME.” I choked the words out, knowing how dangerous they were but unable to stop them. “Don’t run around with your camera. Nobody cares. The only thing you people want to do to me is see me dead for poisoning my mother. You want to help? Put a bullet in my skull so somebody else wont to it for you.”
I ran. I ran from his shocked brown eyes. I was so afraid. It was on camera, so people would see it. They even knew my name. They knew which Onii I normally slept in. I would have to move tomorrow. No way I could stay.
—
I crept towards the entrance, hoping not to make any more waves. Hoping I would just be able to enter without making eye contact, or any contact with the EO’s.
I whimpered as one of them grabbed me by the collar of my shirt. He was taller than me by almost a foot and a half, and he outweighed me by at least a hundred and forty pounds. I didn’t move. I flinched as he shone a flashlight in my face. The light was very bright. It hurt my eyes, even through the lids.
“Drifter? I don’t recognize this one, Dave. Do you?”
I shrank, and moved my feet, trying to get through, hoping that his grip would loosen and he would just let me go. I wanted my mama. I missed her so bad.
“Nah… New face definitely. Prettier than your average freak. Probably makes his rounds of the zoos. Cutting it close, aren’t we, freak?”
I just wanted to go. I tried to squirm away but the EO adjusted his grip so he was reaching inside my shirt. His big hand was wrapped around my shoulder, so tight I could feel the bones grinding. I went limp. I mewled and squirmed when his fingertips dug into the sensory skin on my upper back. I didn’t stop moaning until he adjusted his grip again.
“He asked you a question, boy! Answer!”
“Wh-What?” I whispered, tearfully.
“Jesus, this one’s slow.” The officer that wasn’t holding me, Dave, his name was, he sounded so disgusted.
“I asked you, if you wanted to make a little scratch. I know a few people who would pay good money for some time with a pretty-faced freak like you. What do you say?”
I stared up into the circle of his flashlight. I felt so sick and scared that my brain was just running in circles. “Wh-What?”
“You kidding me? Most freaks would jump at the chance for something like this.”
I started to squirm again. “I just w-wanna go.” I stuttered. “Please.” My voice cracked with fear.
I could feel him shrugging. He threw me into the Onii. I scrambled away. Breathing in huge frightened gasps. I could see a dull red glow rising from a soot-blackened trashcan.
I neared the trashcan, and three sets of eyes as black as mine shone dully back at me.
—
The man across from me at the trashfire had no teeth. He was patiently gumming at some chicken bones that he had produced from his pocket. I felt my stomach slowly caving in on itself. I watched him eat. I wondered why he didn’t have teeth. He was my age. And he didn’t have a single one.
“Shoulda taken the deal.” A girl at the fire whispered. Her white hair was lank across her face. She had scars around her mouth.
“Why?”
“I know you was scared. And I know that they was hurting you. But you shoulda gone along with Holden. He’s fair, at least. I went with him once. ‘Fore I got these scars. He got me the money he said he would. I even got to take a bath. A real one.”
I held my hands over the fire. The sensory patches on my fingertips tasted the sour soot. Felt the baking heat. Could even dimly sense the light. “What’d he pay you for?”
She glanced at me, expressionless. “You look soft. Like you haven’t been out here for long. You didn’t grow up like this, did you?”
I shook my head. I felt my heart ache. “My… My mama…”
She nodded. No sympathy. No satisfaction. She just had the answer to a question. “You were one of those lucky ones. Had a mommy who didn’t abort you or throw you in a bin as soon as you were out.”
“It’s a hard place out here. You don’t turn your nose up at anything. Not rotten food. Not perverts who pay good money to fuck freaks like us. If you get the chance, take Holden’s offer. He took me to one of the zoos. Trashy little dens where pervs pay to fuck Freaks. It’s hard work, but you get a cut of the profits, a decent meal, and a bath.”
She stalked away from the trashfire. I watched her go. I wanted to beg for her to stay.
When I first got out on the streets after mama died, I wanted to try and find a group of my kind to stay with. I hadn’t found a one. Onus became hardened and wary on the streets. The few couples or groups I had found were bitter and hostile towards outsiders. It seemed like the only thing that any of us wanted to do was to survive alone.
Even the girl’s terse condescending advice, that was the friendliest thing anyone had said to me in months.
I didn’t want to leave the warmth of the fire. But I was so tired.
I shuffled around for a little while. Some of the tents and lean-tos were full. Others just weren’t accepting outsiders. I found a television box. Crumpled and muddy, but still intact. I crawled inside, putting the driest side under me, and moving so the open end was out of the wind.
I curled up into a tiny ball, and covered myself with the blanket. The close catty smell was almost comforting.
—
I heard the heavy crunching footsteps and jolted awake just before a hand groped inside the TV box and yanked me out by the collar of my coat. I opened my mouth to scream, but a heavy hand, rough and dirty and shockingly intimate, covered my mouth. I couldn’t help it. My tongue went out to taste it. For Onus, taste was our secondary sense, right after sight and hearing.
I tasted human skin, without the delicate sensory patches that covered my hands and patches of my skin. I tasted the salt of his sweat (the pheromones in the sweat were distinctly male) and the dirt and the faint metallic residue of coins. I tasted soy sauce and carrots and brown gravy and beef. I tasted cat and wool and soap and aluminum and plastic and everything his hands had touched within the last few days.
He shook me hard, one hand on my collar and the other arm twined under my arm to hold me up with the hand over my mouth. He shook me hard. I got dizzy. I tasted his disgust in his hormones, moments before he voiced it.
“Get your filthy tongue off of me.” He snarled. The voice was familiar. I whimpered weakly, the sound muffled by his hand. I put my tongue back in my mouth. Our tongues disgusted normal people. My heart was beating frantically fast. I could hear it in my ears, feel it in my sensory patches. My tongue.
He dragged me from the box and through the snow. He kept his hand over my mouth but let me put my feet on the ground. I just walked, too scrambled from lack of sleep and fear to even think of resisting.
Out of the Onii. Out of the one place where I had even an illusion of safety. My blanket had fallen. So had my tiny backpack. Nothing was in the backpack but a fork, a can opener and some matches. He was dragging me past the entrance, and in my terrified confusion, I realized that he was the EO. The one who had tried to get me to come with him for money.
I finally tried to drag my heels when I saw the van. My soft fast breathing turned to moaning. On the street, I was not safe. But I heard stories, rumors, news about what happened to Onus at the hands of cruel normals.
Dissected by amateur scientists. Cruelly killed by religious zealots. Tortured by perverts.
I fought. I squirmed and writhed like a fish in his cruel grip. He plunged his hand down the collar of my shirt and scraped his fingernails clumsily across my skin, trying to find—
I squealed with agony and went limp, shuddering and sobbing into his hand. He had scratched the sensory patches on my upper back. Bright lights exploded behind my eyes as I fought with unconsciousness.
“You don’t want to play along, freak?” He panted. “You don’t want to do things the nice way? Get a square meal and a bed and a shower for your trouble? Fine. You get it the hard way. You fucking abomination.”
The other EO opened the back of the van for him, he shoved me in the back and shut the door behind. For a full ten seconds I just lay on the floor of the van, crying from the pain.
I could hear them getting into the front. Their voices were muffled. I looked up, and saw that the back of the van had been drastically altered from it’s original layout. The seats had been torn out. Metal mesh had been installed between me and the driver and passenger seat. The side doors and latch for the back door had all been covered with more mesh.
It was warm in here. Startlingly, stupefyingly warm. I slowly stripped out of my jacket as the van started to move. I peeled off the sweater underneath, whimpering softly as it peeled from the hurting area.
Bare-chested, I could see most of my sensory patches. The soft disks on my fingertips. The larger patch on my palms. The thin strips up my sides, and the single oblong above my navel. The patches on my back were roughly triangular, and I could feel blood trickling down my back.
I put my jacket and sweater on the ground, and curled up on top of it. A ragged sob left my mouth. I bit my lower lip to stop it from happening again. I looked at my dirty hands, and gingerly licked my fingertips and palms clean. The low-level stinging went away.
I had small circular patches on the tops of my feet, but other than that all of my patches were on my upper body. For Onus, the patches were as distinctive as fingerprints.
I reached into my sweatpants pocket and pulled out the cheap shiny plastic wallet. I never had money. The wallet was just to keep the picture safe.
My mama was human. All of the Onus had been born from human mothers. Our fathers had been nothing more than spores sent down from the Fleet.
When the aliens had come, they had not taken our resources, killed us, or declared themselves overlords. They had merely sprinkled their invasive spores over all of the landmasses, and the spores had been inhaled by fertile women, making almost forty percent of them pregnant with us. The Onus. The burden. Most of us had been aborted. In certain countries, pregnant women had been massacred, to prevent the spread.
Now we were just a remnant. A bad memory. Second class citizens that had been sterilized at birth. The very presence of the Onus spores had caused widespread birth defects in normal pregnancies at the time. And every mother of an Onus had a shortened life expectancy. Perfectly healthy women, dropping dead in their forties or thirties. Like my mama.
The van went over a bump, and I whimpered softly. My mama had found a sympathetic doctor. Raised me like a person. Kept me hidden away from the outside world. I had been sterilized and registered, according to the law, but only a vasectomy. I had not been castrated, like most of the males.
I had to run. I had to stay alert. I blinked slowly, twice. It was so warm though. The warmth was sinking to my core, soothing me.
The core temperature of a healthy Onus was around 101.4. Because of our hot inner metabolisms, cold effected us. Crippled us more than a human with a sturdier lower temperature of 98.6.
I tried to stay awake, but the warmth was heavy and made me sleepy. I hadn’t had a restful night of sleep since my mama died. My head kept drooping to my soft jacket on the floor.
—
COLD!
My head jerked up, my skin leaped into goosebumps, I snatched for my jacket, crying out at the draft of icy murderous cold on my bare upper body.
“Enjoy your nap, freak?”
I was still fumbling numbly with the cloth when he grabbed my upper arms and yanked me out into the freezing cold. I shrieked and squirmed. The snow was landing on my skin, burning the sensitive patches were the skin was soft and pink and unprotected. I broke away and I fell into snow that was soft and loose, crying out when my hands landed in the cold. Burning
I looked up and it was dark. No city lights. No roads or skyscrapers or streetlights or cars or shops or pavement. Just a single narrow asphalt tendril, peeling away from a single two-lane road, leading to two buildings, with a single yellow porchlight between them. The porchlight was obscured by flying snow, turning it to a fuzzy gold corona.
We were in the country. I was further from the place I had been born, than I had ever been in my life.
“Mama.” I moaned softly. Then one of the EO’s grabbed my upper arms and yanked me away from the deep snow on either side of the narrow driveway. He marched me up the path, gripping my upper arms tight enough to make me whimper softly. Feel it even through the shock and numbing fear.
My eyes were closed, and my feet were dragging. Through my lids, I could feel the yellow porchlight getting brighter.
The door opened and we were inside. I breathed in the warmer air. The EO dropped me and I scrambled to my feet, trying to run inside, find a back door, get out.
I ran into a man that was built like a wall, who snatched me by my upper arm and my hair. I whimpered and stood still, so he wouldn’t pull my hair. I tried to look around, but the lights were so bright that they hurt my eyes.
“Damn… You’re really cleared out.”
“Ayup. There was a chinaman who came through here. Bought my whole stock. Lemme see what you brought me here.
He put his finger under my chin and forced my face up. The lights were so bright. I kept my eyes closed, but I could dimly see his outline through my lids. See his silver hair and the gleam of his glasses.
“You been holding out on me, young man? Last two girls you brought me were nowhere near as pretty as this one. It’s a shame there isn’t a bigger market for young whelps like this. If he was a girl, I’d be able to sell him for maybe eighty thou. Take off his pants, I want to check something.”
I struggled weakly when the EO came behind me and grabbed my sweatpants. He yanked them down while the man in front of me shook me like a disobedient dog. I whimpered and tried to hold my pants up with my hands.
I felt a chill draft on my upper thighs as he managed to yank down the sweatpants. All that was left were my badly stained briefs. I was ashamed at how dirty they were. I tried to keep them clean, but they were the only underwear that I had.
He made a low disgusted sound in the back of his throat while pulling down my underpants.
“Hold his arms… Goddamn, would you look at that.”
The EO grabbed my wrists and yanked them behind my back. He kept his other hand on my hair, to hold me up and keep me whining and barely able to move. I felt a cold dry hand cupping my groin. I felt him pinch my penis hard between two fingers to move it aside. He squeezed and fondled my balls. I couldn’t make a sound. The pure indignity of it had just shut me up. I let out a small squeak of pain when he patted my scrotum, jiggling the tender flesh.
“Ha, not a gelding, but a stud! I change my mind. This little stud still has all of his tackle. He has the vasectomy scar here, but still has his widdle nuts. Do you know how fucking hard it is to find one of the bug-eyes that still has it’s junk?”
“I can imagine.”
Tears were streaming down from my eyes. I tried to open them, the lights were still very harsh. I could see that we were in a barn, standing on concrete floor dusted here and there with straw. He had several large boxy horse stalls on either side of a narrow path. I could see a small door open, and a little well-lit office behind it. A large young man with a boiled-pink birthmark on his face was leaning against one of the stalls, eating corn-nuts from a bag. Staring at me was muddy emotionless eyes.
“Please.” I whispered. “I… I wanna go home.”
They ignored me. The grey-haired man with the glasses and the cold hard hands turned to the young man leaning against the wall. “Nelson? Get the new stock into one of the stalls. Give it a bath and some feed. I’m going to dicker for a bit.”
Nelson got closer. He was massive, over six feet with a broad body hard with muscle and fat. Nelson grabbed me by the throat and manhandled me over to one of the stalls, my pants still tangled around my ankles. I was gasping and crying for air.
I greyed out for a few moments, from the stress and the fear and the lack of oxygen. When Nelson released his cruel grip on my throat, I looked around dumbly and I was in one of the stalls, sitting on the ground with a heavy metal chain around my wrists and Nelson yanking my sweatpants and shoes and socks away. I kicked at him, trying to get him away. I wanted to pull my pants up. I didn’t want to be so naked.
He dug his thumb into the sensory patch on my lower shin. I squealed and stopped fighting, I let him take my pants away, cringing from him. It wasn’t fair. It just wasn’t fair.
He left the stall without closing the door. I weakly stood and walked towards the door, but my chain only let me go to the middle of the cell. I tried to work my hands out of the chain but it was too tight.
Nelson came back with a hose.
—
I felt so numb. Numb to the pain, to the cold. Numb to any emotion but misery.
I was shivering in the corner of a horse stall. Naked like an animal. My body red and raw from the powerful jets of the hose. Straw sticking to my legs and hair.
After shivering like a wet puppy in the corner, after crying weakly for what must have been an hour, Nelson came back.
I cowered against the wall. The only sound I could make was this weak frightened mewling under my breath. He threw in a blanket. It was a large pink blanket. Made of rough quilted wool. It was stained and frayed and stiff, in a strange shape. With odd clasps dangling from bits of it. I realized that it was an old horse blanket. But I didn’t care. I reached for it and I wrapped it around my wet raw skin.
Then he took a shallow paper plate and walked in. As he walked in I cringed into the corner. I could see a smile on his dopey birth-marked face. He liked how afraid I was. He set the paper plate down in front of me, and I whimpered as he loomed over me.
He just grinned. He reached down for the plate. I saw that there was a meal on the plate. A real meal. White rice and some carrots and a greasy chicken leg. He took the chicken leg and took a big bite of it. Grease smearing out of his mouth. He was less than two feet away from me, eating my dinner while I cringed. Too cowed and afraid to do anything about it.
He stripped the chicken down before leaving with a smirk on his stupid face. I waited till he closed the door before falling on the dinner. Eating the rice and carrots with my fingers and picking scraps of chicken from that bone. Even the gristly bits. I gnawed the bone, sucking on it to get the flavor. Sucking and chewing on the bone was soothing. It soothed my frantic brain.
I realized that I was gnawing on the bone like a dog. That I was naked and chained up in a horse stall, with a filthy horse blanket sticking to my damp skin. I cried weakly, while sucking on the knob of the bone for grease.
I eventually fell asleep with the bone in my mouth.
—
“Up, Up.”
I dragged my eyes open. I had barely been able to sleep, drifting in and out of consciousness all night. I stretched my long legs, looking at the bits of straw stuck to my skin. I folded them back under the horse blanket, wincing at the pops and crackles. The chain clinked as I clumsily wrapped the blanket tighter around myself.
The horse stall was made of wood for about five feet up. Where the wood ended, there were vertical iron bars up to the ceiling. I saw the older man’s face appear between two of the iron bars, glancing down at me before using his keys to unlock the door.
I was just glad that it wasn’t Nelson.
He stepped into the stall. He was wearing a grey plaid shirt and jeans. He had brown work boots and was wearing gloves. The keys were in one hand. A long thin bamboo cane in the other. It had a wrapped leather handle, and it was thinner than my little finger.
He stood over me. Looking down at me with a thoughtful expression. I was about to try and speak, when he spoke over me.
“Hold out your arm.”
I just did it. Without thinking. He brought the cane down with a flick of his wrist, not even swinging.
I let out a wounded yelp and drew my hand back. The skin wasn’t broken, but raw and bright red. The pain was hot and throbbing. A darkening welt on the web of flesh between my thumb and forefinger.
“Did you see how I barely moved my arm? This particular toy is illegal to use on anyone under eighteen. Any more than twenty-four strokes. The law applies to humans of course. IF you disobey me, I will whale on you with this. Until I feel you have learned your lesson. I’m a very fair man, and if you are a good boy, that will be the only time my cane touches you here. Got it?”
I nodded, surprised tears gathered in the corners of my eyes.
He got down in the corner and unlocked the padlock that fastened the chain to the stall. The other end of the chain had been padlocked to a metal socket in the wall. A loop was around his wrist, so even when the cane wasn’t in his hand, it was close.
“Get up and walk out of the stall in front of me.”
—
When I was six years old, my mama tried to bring me to a fair.
At the time I didn’t know, but the bulk of the Onus children were in government ‘homes’. A place like a jail, overcrowded and filthy and low on resources.
She hid my white hair under a baseball cap. She rubbed spray tan all over my exposed arms and face and neck. I whined when some of the stuff got in my sensory patches, it felt caustic. She covered my unnatural eyes with sunglasses. I didn’t mind, because the sun usually felt too bright to my eyes anyway.
The disguise was not very good. Spray tan was supposed to add a sheen of color over naturally pigmented skin. It just made my skin look an odd orangey-peach color, like a burnt doll. She hadn’t been able to put any on or around my fingertips and palms. So we went to the fair, but to my confusion and dismay, we hadn’t gone to any of the rides or games. We had just wandered around, my mama too afraid to get close to the attractions for fear of the ruse being discovered.
It was just around the time that early deaths of the mothers was being correlated to giving birth to Onus children.
I was having some fun anyway. She bought me cotton candy, and I was delighted with the fluffy sugar-rush that I could taste with my fingertips as well as my long sensitive tongue. Just being outside was a novel experience for me at that point.
Then we saw the ponies. Mama let me watch by the fence.
The ponies were bored and tired and thirsty in the intense heat. Four ponies tied to a metal contraption that went in circles. Being ridden by kids way too big for them.
One of the ponies made me jump up and down with excitement. It had a pure white coat, a white mane, and deep black eyes, with only a teeny white ring around the edge. The pony looked like me.
After seeing how excited I was, mama finally got in line with me, looking around nervously, terrified that someone would see through my disguise.
We got to the front of the line. I watched closely, and I thought that I would get to ride the white pony. I was bouncing with excitement.
I ran up to the pony when it was my turn. I wrapped my arms around his thick warm white neck. I nuzzled my cheek against it’s short velvet coat.
The pony whickered softly into my ear.
“What the hell do you think you’re trying to pull, lady!”
I let my tongue leave my mouth and I touched it to the side of the pony’s neck. I wanted to taste him, taste the beautiful white-haired pony with eyes so like mine. Back then, I didn’t have the inhibitions, the paralyzing fear and shame that I had now.
“That’s one of the freaks. Get out of there, get that little monster away from my animals!”
I saw a mother dash into the ring and pull her child off of another pony. People were backing away from the ring. Someone threw a half-full can of soda at me. The soda splashed on me and the can knocked me on the side of my head. I cried with fear and ran to my mama. She gathered me in her arms. I could taste the sticky-sweet soda on my hands, on my sensory patches.
“Please.” My mama begged. She was tired and frustrated and stiffening her shoulders. She could hear all of the bad things people were saying about us. “My boy just wants to ride the horse. Just one circle, and we’ll go after. He wants this so bad. I’ll pay you three times the admission… please.”
I remember seeing a security guard getting closer. The man running the booth shouted at him. “This crazy bitch let an Onus brat touch one of my animals! Little freak was licking it!”
The security guard pulled out a pistol. The carny started to protest, and I screamed a moment before the man put the gun to the white pony’s forehead and sent a bullet into it.
—
All of this flashed through my head in less than an instant. I was naked, walking in front of him, and we walked into an open space of the barn. The metal device, the leader, the circle, whatever it was called, it was in the center. A big metal cross that you could harness ponies or horses to, to give them exercise.
“Come on boy.”
He fastened the padlock at the end of my chain to the end of one of the spokes. Then he backed away. I looked at him, wanting answers. I covered my crotch with my hands. I had never felt more like an animal.
I remembered the spray of red that had come from the pony’s head.
“You’re cold in the stall. You need to exercise. If you can go for fifty revolutions, then I’ll put a heater in your stall. You get a thwack with this for every revolution under fifty. Go.”
I put my hands on the rusty bar. Careful so I didn’t put any pressure on my sensory patches. I wanted to cover my groin with one hand, but my wrists were chained together, so it was impossible.
I started to walk.
The exercise was easy enough for the first few revolutions. It became repetitive. Dull. I forgot about the shame. That I was naked.
But it took a lot of effort to turn the wheel by myself. My legs felt very weak. I had eaten a meal last night, but for some reason, I felt weaker than I had out on the street. I was so cold, and I was shivering so badly, that my legs felt like they would collapse.
“Thirty two revolutions so far, beastie. Don’t slow down now.”
As an incentive he thwacked the cane against one of the steel bars. The clang made me flinch, and the sound sent a visceral reaction through me, one of fear and nausea. I whimpered. I had been able to feel the vibration in my hands. I hated the texture of the rusty metal.
I steeled myself and started to walk faster, staring down at the concrete under my feet. There was a piece of straw on the floor. I started counting my revolutions for every time I passed the piece of straw. I got to five, before losing count. My mind felt scattered and weak, unable to process. Like I was half-asleep.
“Forty.”
I whined low in my throat. I was so close to exhaustion. If I had been wearing my clothes, if I had had a good night’s sleep, this would have been easy. But my strength had been sapped by the vicious hosing and the poor sleep and just the constant state of stress and fear.
I closed my eyes, not caring about trying to count the revolutions. I just forced myself forward. Drawing on my last reserves of strength.
I was slowing badly, barely able to put one foot in front of the other. He came up behind me, smacking the metal bar with the cane. The vibrations, the sound woke a small panicky terror inside of me. I groaned and walked faster.
“Last one, last one, hurry your miserable ass!” He barked.
He stopped banging the cane against the bars and I fell to my knees, my arms hanging limp, but still held up by the chain around my wrists. I was crying under my breath. My whole body was shaking, and my vision was fading in and out. My skin felt cold and numb all over, except for under my arms and between my legs where I felt hot and damp and rank with sweat.
“Good.” He barked. He unchained me, and basically dragged me back to the stall. The concrete chafed me where my legs dragged against the floor.
I managed to pull the horse blanket over me, where I was curled up on the floor. An exhausted trembling mess. A little later, I felt some heat on my shoulders, and I knew that he had put the heater in my stall.
—
I sucked on the bone.
It didn’t have much taste anymore, but the smooth knob of the bone was soothing. I closed my eyes, and let the heater bake my back. Every few minutes, I turned over, let my back get cold, and warm up my front, and then my feet.
The heater was a little plastic box that he had set in the corner, out of my reach. I turned towards it like a flower to the sun, trying to warm up. I felt so cold.
—
The days started to blur together. Exercise on the frame. Spotty constant sleep. Eating scraps from his meals. Having my meals decimated by Nelson in front of my eyes. Random acts of cruelty from Nelson. Hosings.
—
I recognized that my behavior was becoming animal-like. I never spoke. Any words that I did utter were usually silenced by a welt from the cane. I was being conditioned. Certain keywords and sounds, like a crack from the cane, or a harsh tone, made me flinch and shut down mentally.
—
I was losing track of time.
—
Four other Onus came and went. I never saw them, because I couldn’t reach the edge of the stall with my short chain. I couldn’t even stand up all of the way. They were all girls. I heard them scream and cry and suffer, during their baths, exercise, and during Nelson’s wanton cruelty. He raped them. I had to listen.
I also listened as they were sold. Men came in, wanting girls for whatever depraved reason. They looked in, and said which one they wanted. Money was exchanged. The girls were dragged out.
—
One day, it was my turn.
I flinched and cowered into a tiny ball in the corner of my stall. Nelson and the old man who had bought me were standing in the door. I watched them warily, under the listless fringe of my matted hair.
Nelson had a large plastic bucket.
Nelson held me by the throat, as I cringed against the wall, my breath coming out in short terrified pants. The older man took my chain and clipped the padlock to the iron bars at the very top of the stall, about seven feet up. My chain was so short, that this forced me to stand, with my hands in the air.
Even after several days of being naked and objectified on every level, being this exposed brought frightened tears to my eyes.
I cried brokenheartedly when I dropped the bone and Nelson took it away.
Standing, I was able to see that the bucket was filled with soapy water.
Nelson scrubbed me down like I was an object. I was crying and struggling as he raked a plastic brush up and down my skin. He was a little gentler on my sensory patches, not using the plastic bristles, but a washcloth. Still, the cloth scraping against those sensitive patches was enough to make me scream and thrash.
I was hanging like a slab of meat by the time he was done, crying very softly. He dumped a few buckets of water over my head to rinse away the suds. Then he swept away the straw and took away my waste bucket. He left me wet and naked and completely exposed in my stall. Forced to stand, when my legs felt like they would collapse at any moment.
The heater was still there, but I still shivered convulsively.
Because I could stand, I saw when the older man was walking down the hallway. I saw him heading towards my stall.
He came in and brushed my wet hair. Raked through it with a comb. He grabbed the hair near the root to insure that he wasn’t pulling too much, but it still hurt a little. When my hair was hanging soft and white as silk around my ears, he nodded, satisfied. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and licked a corner of it. He used the damp corner to wipe my tear-streaked face.
“Going to a new home, beastie.” He grunted.
I felt scared. But mostly, I just felt numb.
—
*If that made you uncomfortable, I’m sorry, but the worst is yet to come.
I predict this story being between 3-5 chapters. It just recently became clear to me that I will be able to finish this story (not always clear by the beginning) and I have the second chapter finished. I’ll release the second chapter in two weeks time, and hopefully have the third chapter ready two weeks after that.
And if not?
I’m slow, but I’ve always come through in the end. Onus is a story that will be told.
Also, quick update. I mentioned a possible sequel to File 66 a few months back, and don’t lose hope! I had writers block on it for a month or so, but now I’m back into the swing of things.
You’ll all have an update on Tam and Taylor sometime soon.
Everything else is uncertain, but some ideas have promise.
Kisses and Spanks,
–Cruel*