Libertines

The light from five candles shifted on the raw brick of the front room.  I examined the tool in my hand wearily… a marking pin.  Genia had proved a vigorous student, indeed, she had inflicted several dark bruises on Win and me.  Tonight we would mark her, and she had went round the bloody twist at the prospect, breaking a wrist chain and punching Win in the head.  She had not been punished for this yet, and as Win promised her extra special attention, she broke down and crawled to her corner willingly, a first for her.

My head was spinning from multiple diamorphinum treatments; I had resolved to match, dose for dose in proportion, Genia’s indoctrination program.  I did not think it would be as rigorous as it was; Win had scheduled a shallow slope of ever-increasing doses over the course of two weeks.  He calculated it to yield maximum saturation without compromising Genia’s heath or mental faculties.  We needed her to be sufficiently opiate-tolerant in the shortest time without her being unconscious for twenty hours of the day.  The other factor was pain suppression.  We did not want her to be completely numb to our disciplinary regimen, however, should she deserve, we would allow some mitigation.

I stood from the desk and entered the training area. 

She slept in her corner cage now, her hair an unkempt fan around her folded arms.  She lay on her side, bent at the waist with her wonderfully round bum facing me, pressed against the bars of the cage, its dark core peeping at me saucily… I resisted the urge to take her here and now.  No, there still was a bit of time before we could have Genia with impunity… I restrained myself to planting a chaste kiss on her round hole.  I only flicked my tongue inside to taste, nothing more.

Win arrived and asked if we were ready to mark her.  ’I think that the symbol we worked out last night would be wonderful,’ he said. ‘Let’s delay no more.’  I looked at the top sheet of our sketch pad and nodded.  The sigil was two circles, overlapping at one edge, and the lenticular space created by the overlap contained another, smaller circle.  

‘We will have to splay her wide and tight,’ I observed, gathering the restraining tools.  ’It is well that she is so deeply asleep… she may feel the process less.’  I opened her cage and lifted her out.  She was not a heavy girl, and she lolled in my arms, breathing well and slowly. ‘Respiratory depression seems to have subsided… a good indicator of mounting tolerance…  she has been performing well,’ I said, laying her in the center of four stout posts.

‘She has been as good a girl as can be expected under the circumstances, I think,’ Win said. ‘We did kidnap her, after all… how old do you think she really is, Dar?’

‘Not a day over fifteen, I should think.  More’s the pity.  What satanic home situation… better, what malevolent destiny could drive her out into the world… and into our waiting arms?’  I grinned as a dog might grin, binding first her wrists to sturdy posts set deep in the concrete floor.  She stirred not a whit.  I rapidly splayed her, as if far drawing and quartering.

‘Where shall we mark her?’  This was Win.  I said, ‘I think between the base of her neck and the top of her bosom, along the top of the sternum and centered.  The circle representing her should rest on the solar plexus.’

‘That should wake her well!’ Win exclaimed.

‘Which is why we shall engrave that bit first,’ I laughed. 

We assembled the primitive tattooing device and set to work.

She did indeed awaken upon the very first strike of the pin.  She stayed awake until the last.