Currency in Flesh

Chapter 5

CHAPTER FIVE

I didn’t know how to reply. I took a moment to try to compose my thoughts, but another male scream rent through the air. Lady Cora smiled so casually at the sound—like her favorite song was playing on the radio.

“What is that?” I asked, my horror flanked by sick curiosity.

“When souls drink from the river, they become mine. Their lives are judged, and most are sent to the meadows, where they spend eternity in a perfectly pleasant, mundane existence. There are a small number of the dead who earn the right to enter the isles, where they are rewarded handsomely for the good deeds they enacted in their lives. And then there are those who fall to the pit.”

I didn’t need her to explain what the pit was. Sound began to trickle through the silence all around us, filled with agony and despair. The air felt heavy and I was struck by a sense of ominous dread that seemed to settle over me like a heavy blanket.

“I move amongst each place,” she continued, “seeing to the needs of each and every soul. The souls in the pit have very specific… requirements.” With this, she winked.

“I’m in the pit.” I meant it to come out as a question, but what left my lips was a statement. I wasn’t sure why I was surprised, she had already shown me that she knew I had planned to kill Sean, eventually. I couldn’t imagine anyone who had plotted murder being given a comfortable afterlife. I didn’t feel like a bad person, but maybe other killers felt the same. Maybe there was an entire pit full of people who had no idea what they had done to earn eternal torment.

“You are nowhere, for now. Your pretty little soul would never have found its way to the isles, but you also don’t seem worthy of the pit. I don’t think you had a fair chance, in life. It wasn’t your fault, I know; it never is.” She smoothed my hair where it spread across the bed beside me. “I am not in the habit of facilitating redemption, but much as life in the meadows is a pleasant monotony, so is my role at times. I find enjoyment where I can, and I think you hold the potential to be very enjoyable.”

The cuffs at my wrists and ankles fell away, and I sat up, folding my arms tight to cover my chest and embracing myself in a futile attempt at comfort. Tucking my knees beneath me, I looked up at Lady Cora with wide eyes and a racing heart. She stroked the top of my head as one would pet a labrador, but when her hand slid down over my back, it brought with it clothing—wrapping my naked body in soft fabric from my bust to my thighs. “Come, pet. Let’s take a walk.”

I rubbed at my wrists, still sore from their restraints. “You don’t need to tie me up for this?” my voice came out with a note of impertinence, emboldened as I stood. She hadn’t given me any explanation why I had been chained in the first place.

I was afraid, yes, but I was always afraid. Now, I was also annoyed.

The smile that lit her face was like sunshine. I didn’t understand. She had stolen my life from me, dragged me to hell, chained me to a bed and nearly forced herself upon me, but my bratty response to a tiny bit of freedom is what made her happy?

“Such a quick learner,” she quipped. “Did it feel good to flex your little claws?”

“I don’t understand what you want from me. You say you want me as your pet, but then act like you want to fuck me. You chain me to a bed, then say you want me to learn how to bite? What do you want? Companionship? Or do you just want something to control?”

I flinched when she stepped closer. “All of those things. Each and every one.” I hadn’t realized how much taller she was than me until this moment. She stared down at me with a sharp, viridescent look. This close, I became painfully aware of how squat and wide I felt in comparison. Sean always called me fat, but also seemed to want me for my curves more than for my face. I was sure Lady Cora’s breasts were pert and perky above her trim, flat stomach. My thoughts briefly drifted to what her pussy might look like… neat and compact rather than the plump, pink petals between my own thighs.

Jesus Christ. I should be institutionalized. Why the fuck was I thinking about her like… that? Maybe my sanity was tied to mortality and I could look forward to slowly losing my mind.

“Oh, daffodil—you are so transparent I don’t even need to try in order to see what you’re thinking. You might as well scream your thoughts at me.” She made a little hum deep in her throat. “I would like to hear you scream, in fact.”

I looked away. I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of a response. Instead, I opted for respectfulness. “Thank you for letting me free.” I reconsidered, “Well, unrestrained.”

“Come,” she said, smiling as she placed her hand at the curve of my lower back. “I have work to do.”

The pit looked oddly serene. I wasn’t sure if you’d call it a sky, but the expanse of cloudy space above me was lit with a soft orange light from some indeterminate source. It reminded me of the sunsets when Sean and I had camped in the deserts of Morocco, albeit absent of the sprawling white tents and ice-filled champagne buckets. The ground was rocky but mostly flat, and a snaking, paved walkway curled around the scattered structures surrounding us. Lady Cora must have caught my slowed steps, following my gaze down to the spotless path. “I don’t like to get my shoes dirty,” she said with a shrug.

It was surprisingly empty here, not at all the Hieronymus-Bosch-esque pit of writhing torture I expected from the sounds of torment I had heard. But then Lady Cora approached a clay building and lifted her hand, pushing aside some illusory curtain to reveal?—

I turned so quickly I nearly fell, bracing my hands on my knees as I bent double, breathing heavily and trying not to vomit.

“Come, Grace,” Lady Cora said with a sigh. “It is just blood, you all are filled with it.”

I didn’t want to turn, to look again, but I knew it was pointless to fight. I knew she wanted to see me weak so she could point out all the flaws in my weakness. I wanted, for once, to not be predictable and powerless. And Lady Cora was right—I had dealt with PCOS my entire life, I’d bled for months at a time, even had to get iron infusions at one point to compensate. I was no stranger to blood, just very unaccustomed to seeing so much of it outside a human body. So I straightened and turned back toward the open entryway.

The man was tied up in an intricate series of ropes and knots, suspended in the air at eye-level. As I stepped into what had appeared to be a small building, my feet landed on the floor of a vast, dark cavern. This was what I had expected. The man’s heels nearly touched the back of his head and his arms were tied at the elbows and wrists, resting atop his back at an angle that made his chest jut forward unnaturally. His mouth, held open by a thick rope between his open jaws, dripped blood from what I could only guess was his missing tongue. His eyes flicked back and forth with the feverish, feral gleam of an animal who would chew off its own leg for freedom. I wouldn’t—or couldn’t, however, look at the mess beneath him or the ragged, gaping gash that split his abdomen.

I tried to keep my voice steady and impassive. “This is exactly what I always imagined hell to look like.” I met Lady Cora’s eyes, feeling an irrational pull toward their faint glow. I noticed the slight elongation of her pupils, more apparent in this place. “What did he do?”

Her steps were measured and smooth—approaching the man and bending down until their faces were close enough to touch. He made a garbled, pitiful sound, and I tried not to look at the viscous stream of black blood that dribbled from behind the rope gag. Lady Cora tutted. “It would likely be less arduous to tell you what he didn’t do. He was a teacher with very particular tastes, and he indulged them far too many times.”

My lips pulled back in a grimace, and a bit of my pity began to dissipate.

“Well,” she went on, “I suppose his tastes weren’t really that discerning. He had no preference between sexes, so long as they were still too young to read or write.” She brought her knee up swiftly, colliding with the shredded tatters of his stomach and sending a grotesque, wet sound throughout the cavern. “He couldn’t get his dick up for his wife, probably because she was an adult, so he got his pleasure from her in different ways.”

The slow sound of something scraping over rough rock came from Lady Cora’s other side and she knelt, extending her hand into the shadows. When she pulled it back, a black snake slithered around her forearm, tongue flicking at the air as it curled its body to rest its head in her palm. It was bigger than any snake I had seen up close, with a deep red underside that would have been beautiful had it been literally anything else. “Did you know,” she said, looking at the snake fondly, “that the black mamba can inject up to twenty drops of venom into its victim from each fang? It takes only two drops to kill a human, so it seems like quite a waste.” I stepped back, putting more space between the reptile and myself. Noticing, Lady Cora winked at me. “This, however, is Pseudechis porphyriacus—the red-bellied black snake. She is also venomous”—she kissed the snake’s head—”but it would take her a great deal of venom to kill someone. Her venom is better for causing pain, and I particularly like its anticoagulant properties.”

She reached her arm toward the man’s body and the snake slipped from her arm to curl between his shoulder blades, keeping its head slightly raised. “She is pretty,” I said, keeping my eyes on the reptile and not bothering to try to hide the quiver in my voice. “Snakes have always made me nervous. Do you… control them?” I managed to get out.

She chuckled lightly. “No, unfortunately. This is the only animal in the Underworld. I simply enjoy watching her, and after many years together, she seems to understand me pretty well.” Lady Cora’s voice spoke softly against my ear and I didn’t know if she had quietly moved behind me or simply appeared. “Do not be afraid of them, pet. Snakes are gentle creatures who only strike when cornered and endangered. Or?—”

She made a sound like air between teeth, remarkably close to a hiss. The snake reacted instantly, its scales glinting as it moved around the man’s head and struck him directly in the eye. I flinched—the desperate braying of his voice so loud it hurt my ears.

I felt a sharp fingernail trace my hip before Lady Cora’s hand moved around my stomach, holding me from behind. I closed my eyes, trying to ignore that hand and tune out the blubbering cries and wet noises coming from in front of us.

“Or,” she whispered into my hair, “if asked nicely.”

Her fingers pressed into my soft middle and I was almost more uncomfortable from that than from the man being tortured not even three feet away. As she had before, Lady Cora seemed to read my thoughts, moving her hand down, inching toward my pussy with devastating slowness. I tried to ignore the heat conjured by her touch, but it pooled between my thighs anyway as I silently begged her hand to keep moving even as I prayed it would stop. Just before reaching the soft, chubby mound of my sex she stilled. I felt her tongue flick against my neck, so serpentine that my skin broke out in goosebumps. “Do not worry, little blossom,” her low voice said with a brush of her lips, “I will not touch you again until you beg.”

“I won’t,” I choked out in a raw, unsure tumble of words. “I’m never going to want this.”

“Oh, I know,” she replied. I felt her smile against my skin. “You are going to need it.”