Discworld: Monstrous Regiment. Characters: General. Prompts: Green, She, Choices, Orange, Birth...
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Note: Every one of these stories is set before the beginning of MR. :-)
Fandom: Monstrous Regiment (a Discworld Group)
Characters: Mal
Prompt: 14, "Green"
Word Count: 506
Rating: T (for what amounts to self-inflicted torture -- although it isn't dwelled upon)
Summary: "Suicide is Painless" only works in theory.
Notes: If you've read "Carpe Jugulum" you may know about what the wings of a pheonix can do to a vampire. Depends on how evil the vampire really is.
Title:
Strange Fire
Dying would be easier than this.
I try not to think about how long I've been in here, but the years creep in through my ears, in the sound of my own footsteps on the flagstone floors, in the rasp of my breath, the solitary beating of my heart.
Five years.
Five years.
Five years.
But stop. I know where that kind of thinking can lead. I've spent too many nights huddled in corners with my hands clamped over my ears, trying to shut out the silence.
And it never works. It only makes it worse.
The sun can't kill me any more.
I tried.
Seven times I've tried, standing at the windowpane, letting the light wash over me.
The first time I tried it, it was agony. The sun burned my skin til it blistered and blackened, til tears ran from my eyes, and I had gone farther into the realms of anguish than I thought I could endure.
But I did not die.
Godsdamnit, I didn't die!
I crumpled to the floor, weeping from the pain, my skin cracking and flaking away like ashes.
I did not think I would have the strength to do it again.
But eventually, after another year spent talking to my own echo, I realized that I would prefer to burn than to go on living.
So I tried again.
And again.
And again.
It burned less, every time.
Now the Winter sun feels no worse than a hot summer night, and Summer sunlight feels like the air above a candle-flame.
There is no release for me there.
Even if there were, would it last?
My father keeps his eye on me.
There's a nest of crows on the battlements, and I've caught the touch of my father's mind riding them at night.
He's making sure I don't just walk away.
I wonder, if I did succeed in suicide, would he care? Would he come in the night, out of spite, and shed a drop of his own blood to bring me back from my freedom?
The hublights are burning tonight. The brightest I've ever seen. Cold fire, green and gold. Even inside, standing at my window, I can feel them tingling on my skin.
I remember, long ago, years ago, in another life, someone told me the Uberwald legend about how the hublights are the wings of a pheonix, dancing in flight. And how those green-gold flames would kill us with a touch.
It isn't true.
Not for me.
I went up to the battlements earlier tonight, the closest thing to freedom that I have, and let that strange, cold fire touch my skin. It flickered, green and gold and ghostly, at my finger tips, and danced in the palm of my hand.
But it didn't burn me.
Not really.
It was warm, but not as warm as the summer sun, and it hurt, but only like the prickle of pins and needles on my skin. It wasn't painful.
It didn't kill me.
I wish it had.
Fandom: Monstrous Regiment (a Discworld Group)
Characters: Polly, OC
Prompt: 85, "She".
Word Count: 350
Rating: K+
Summary: Polly goes swimming with a friend on a hot day.
Notes: Because it had to start some time.
Title:
Remembering Molly Piper
I remember one time, not long after my twelfth birthday, when I snuck away from the Inn for an afternoon with my friend, Molly Piper.
Molly was nearly thirteen and I was slightly in awe of her, so when she tapped on the kitchen window and said "come on, let's go swimming", I wasn't about to say no. Anyway, it was oppressively hot out. You could have cut the air with a kitchen knife, it was so humid.
So I followed her down the path along the stream near the Inn, to the Krik Pond. The pond was hidden by a copse of willow trees, although everyone knew it was there. It was fed by a little water fall, and it was cold even in high summer.
We stripped down to our shifts and plunged into the water, coming up gasping and shaking our sodden hair out of our eyes.
Molly had been gifted by nature somewhat more than I had been, at that point (or at all, come to think of it), and a white shift offers a lot less cover when it's wet.
I think that's why I remember that day so well.
I'd seen plenty of boys with their shirts off. When your family runs an Inn, you see all sorts of things, including half-naked men making deliveries off the backs of carts.
None of them had ever made me feel like this.
At the time, I assumed that it was the cold water making shiver.
Eventually, I would find out that it wasn't just the water.
But not that day. That day, I simply enjoyed my time with Molly, splashing and laughing, and then shushing each other in case someone walking by heard us and told our parents where we'd gone.
I think even then I knew we were both on the cusp of something. That this was one of the last chances I'd have to spend with her before she officially grew up and started courting, before I started down that road myself. One of the last chances we'd have to be kids together.
Fandom: Monstrous Regiment (a Discworld Group)
Characters: Polly, Mr. Perks, Mrs. Perks, Paul Perks, OCs
Prompt: 86, "Choices".
Word Count: 1877
Rating: M
Summary: Polly goes a-courtin'. You can imagine how well that worked out...
Notes: Sort of a song fic. Meaning that I stuck folk-song-like verses through the story, but I wrote the "folk song" as well.
Title:
Walking Out
See the girl with the golden hair
Walking down the lane,
Fifteen years if she's a day,
And at her side, a swain
She supposed that she should have been excited.
Most of the girls her age had been walking out for over a year, and Ella Weis was actually married now. The wedding had been under a white canopy that blotted out the blue of the sky, and Ella had looked so proud and joyful, wearing her dark hair loose for the last time, white flowers crowning her head.
And now it was Polly's turn to go a-courting. The boy beside her, Thomas Tillard, had come ‘round to the Inn to drop off an order of sausages from his father's shop, and had cautiously asked her father if he might walk Polly home from the sermon on Friday.
Of course he'd said yes. She was fifteen already, and Thomas was the first to have asked after her, so he wasn't about to turn the boy down even if he'd only had two brain-cells to rub together which, unfortunately, was turning out to be the case.
See the boy of seventeen
Walking at her side,
A beard new-growing on his chin,
He's looking for a bride
While their mothers strolled ten paces behind them (slowly, in the case of her mother, who leaned heavily on a cane these days), and their fathers and Paul strode ten paces in front of them, because you couldn't let young people go walking out un-chaperoned, she tried to make conversation with Thomas.
"Lovely weather we're having, isn't it?" She said.
"Wh--? Oh, yeah, yeah. Sunny."
"Not too humid..." He kept trying to hold her hand in his large, clammy one.
Thomas smelled of sweat and turnips. It wasn't that this was an odd combination, even in a town as big as Munz, but wasn't she supposed to be catching undertones of... musk? Manly wosnames? Wasn't she supposed to find him attractive? Or at least less repulsive than she was finding him?
"So... Are you training to be butcher?"
"Oh yes," he said, suddenly more animated, "I'm getting really good at sausages." He grinned, a strange mixture of awkward bravado and sickly hope, and leaned close to her ear, "Really good with sausages."
"That's... good..." What did she care how good he was at stuff tubes full of mushy meat?
Well, maybe it was more difficult than she thought. Perhaps she was supposed to be impressed by this revelation. "That's very... good."
He was going to stay to dinner, that much she knew already. Her mother had insisted on that point, even when she'd mentioned that if they didn't get on well, dinner would be horribly awkward. Her mother had been certain that everything would be fine as long as Polly didn't do anything abominable. Her mother mustn't have been too up on the current Book of Nuggan if she thought that was likely...
See the girl with the golden hair
Not knowing what to say,
See her walk beside the boy,
Upon an August day
"So," he said, "do you like dresses?"
What? How the hell was she supposed to answer that?
"What do you mean?" She hedged.
"Well, you're a girl. Girls like dresses, don't they?"
"Well... It's what we wear..."
"I could get you dress," he said, taking her answer as an affirmative. "A nice one with lace on or something."
"You don't have to get me anything, I don't think," she said, although, just in case she was wrong, she added: "A new kitchen cleaver wouldn't be amiss, though."
"Oh, I couldn't get you a cleaver, Polly! Those are men's tools!"
Polly gave him a long look. It wasn't that she hadn't been expecting this kind of thinking, she'd just expected it to come at a more sensible target.
"You have been inside a kitchen, haven't you?"
"Only the cutting room at the shop," he said, "And that's not even really a kitchen, right? I mean, I wouldn't go into a kitchen, what with me being a man and all."
Oh, yes, thought Polly. Kitchens were Places of Women, and so no boy who wanted to be seen as a man would ever set foot in one. Her father, of course, had got over that mental border years ago when her mother had started having her poor spells but Polly had still been too small to lift the big knives and the heavy cuts of meat that - hah! - Thomas's own father had probably handed through the back kitchen door without so much as a blink.
"Right," she said quickly, "What was I saying?"
"It's a nice dress you're wearing today," Thomas replied.
Polly thought about this. The dress was her sermon dress and, as such, it was both her best dress and her most plain and shapeless. Women showing their figures was an Abomination unto Nugan from way back. "Thank you," she said.
"I really like the high collar. It, uh, shows of the length of your neck."
The length of her neck? "Thanks," she looked him up and down. "It's a nice suit."
Thomas grinned. "It was mine from new. Now that I'm working in the shop, I don't have to get them from my brother anymore."
So this is manhood in Munz, thought Polly, An unwillingness to set foot in kitchens and a pair of pants you don't have to share...
See the boy of seventeen
Who wants to be a man,
See him walking with the girl,
And trying to hold her hand
The rounded the bend in the road, and the Inn came into sight.
"It's a good place, the Duchess, isn't it?" Thomas asked.
"It's the best," replied Polly with pride and her first real smile of the walk. "Best inn outside of the capital."
They walked up the road in silence. Polly could faintly hear their fathers, ahead of them, talking about the war - there was always a war - and the rations that were in place. They made their way up the walk, towards Polly's house, which was separated from the main Inn by a wall and door, but was still part of the same building.
"How many kids do you want, Polly?"
"Uh- I hadn't really thought about it, actually."
"I think seven's a good number. With lots of boys for the shop."
Polly thought about Ella Weis, Ella Crampon now, who was pregnant already, bulging with the baby inside her small body, walking to market on swollen feet, one hand on her lower back.
"You don't say," she managed.
See the girl with the golden hair,
Think of her future life,
The sister of an inn-keep, or
The village butcher's wife
They went inside the house, where Polly's mother invited them all to sit, as she eased herself into a chair. "Polly," she said, "Would you mind going to the ice-house for me? There's a jug of sour-apple wine that I've been saving. Would you get it, please?"
Polly nodded. These days, her mother was spending a lot of time not being able to get out of bed. The only time she left the house was when she went to sermon, and usually she came home and slept right afterwards. This was taking a lot out of her.
"I'll help," Thomas volunteered, suddenly.
"Not without a chaperon!" cried his mother.
"Oh, Deirdre," said Polly's father, "the ice house is eight feet away, and we can see it from the window. They'll be fine."
Polly headed out the door and towards the ice house, while Thomas, grinning widely, followed after her.
See the boy of seventeen,
A gleam is in his eye,
He don't know if it's gonna work,
But surely he will try
He followed Polly into the ice house. She wasn't sure why he'd volunteered to come. It wasn't as if the jugs were heavy, and she waitressed in the Inn most nights and could carry them just fine... She hefted the jug and turned to leave, but Thomas blocked her way.
"We- We don't have to go back just yet," he suggested.
Polly's heart beat faster. Although probably not for the reason Thomas was hoping for. Her eyes narrowed.
"Get out of my way, please."
"Why? We're alone together, you know? We could have a little fun while no-one's watching." He smiled encouragingly, and tried to brush her face with his fingers. She leaned out of the way.
"I don't think so. Excuse me."
"No, now wait a minute, Polly," he said, taking her arm rather more roughly. "This is how it works. Why do you think they let us go alone? They know what's gonna happen and it's fine!"
She kicked him in the shin, and the blow he leveled at her in return knocked her against a wall, the thick, stoneware jug dropping from her hands to the floor with liquid glug though, thankfully, without a crash.
Damn, she remembered, too late. He carries dead pigs around by himself, doesn't he? She raised her hands to fend him off, but he was big, and his weight alone pressed her into the wall so that her shoulder-blades scraped under her dress.
"Come on, Polly," he said, sour breath against her mouth, sweaty hands groping for her breasts. "You know you want this."
"Get off me!" she growled, low, turning her face away, trying to push him off of her.
He took one of her hands in each of his, and splayed her arms against the wall. "Didja think I wasn't good enough, Polly? Now you'll find out just how good I am!"
See the girl with the golden hair
Her angry eyes gleam hate,
See her take charge and then take aim,
And see her change her fate
He was trying to get his knee between her legs, trying to force them apart, and he was succeeding. However what that meant was that, for a moment, Polly found her own knee between Thomas's legs. Thinking of Gummy Abbens, the old sergeant who sometimes came and drank with her father, she took the chance she was offered and kneed Thomas squarely in the sausages. She kicked him in the head when he went down, and then ran for it, leaving the jug behind.
She burst into the house, wine-less and with a bruise reddening on her cheek.
"Your son has fallen down," she said pointedly to Thomas' mother. "I don't think he'll be able to stay after all."
Mrs. Tillard looked shocked, and Mr. Tillard looked down-right murderous as he strode towards the icehouse to retrieve his son.
"Wh-What happened?" asked Mrs. Tillard.
"There was water on the floor, and he slipped," she said, and saw Mrs. Tillard grasp the lie like a roped tossed to a drowning woman.
"Of course. Accidents do happen, don't they. We'll, uh, we'll take him home now. Perhaps we can have dinner another time." Although it was clear that she knew that wouldn't be happening.
Thomas was led away by his parents, and Polly watched them go, fierce and angry, until they were out of sight.
See the boy of seventeen,
His pride now in a sling;
See the girl with the golden hair
Who knows what her life will bring.
Fandom: Monstrous Regiment (a Discworld Group)
Characters: Lofty, Tonker
Prompt: 12, "Orange".
Word Count: 100
Rating: K
Summary: Tilda reflects on the nature of Magda.
Notes: Tilda tends to associate colours with emotions and/or people. :-)
Title:
A Fire Inside
Copper, Tiger, Amber, Spark.
That's my Magda.
A firecracker waiting to explode.
All fierce anger under the skin.
But there's another fire inside her.
I had to find it, like the spark inside the haystack on a hot, wet day.
But find it, I did.
A little flame, that I fed with smiles, with hope, with trust.
A little flame that strengthened, til it burned so brightly that we couldn't look away.
Now she warms me at night with her fire inside,
Soothes the aches in my body, and fans my own flames.
I like Magda's fire best of all.
Fandom: Monstrous Regiment (a Discworld Group)
Characters: Lofty, Tonker
Prompt: 29, "Birth".
Word Count: 100
Rating: T
Summary: Lofty had a daughter once, do you remember?
Notes: This one has been posted before.
Title:
Stolen
Tilda, my Tilda, is sobbing in my arms.
The bastards took her baby away.
I am careful when I hold her, her body is still bruised, and the cuts on her back are still healing.
The father is dead. Good riddance to him, burned alive in his mill.
But the baby...
Tilda says that she hopes she is happy. That her life is better than ours.
She says that her hope is a flame in the dark.
A single candle, burning for the child that was lost, the daughter that she will never know.
Svetcha: Our flame in the night.
Fandom: Monstrous Regiment (a Discworld Group)
Characters: Blouse & Emmeline
Prompt: 88, "School".
Word Count: 583
Rating: K
Summary: Young Blouse attends the Senior Ball at the Borogravian Royal Academy
Notes: Credit where credit is due: Lord deWincy is (pretty obviously) my DW version of Lord Byron. The piece of poetry quoted the story is from Byron's "She Walks in Beauty, Like the Night".
Title:
Thank You, Lord deWincy
The hall was decked with garlands of paper flowers in a ‘riot' of colours, red and pink and gold, and cris-crossed with streamers in the school's blue and white colours. The place fairly buzzed with conversation and excitement. It was the night of the annual school ball.
This year, the ‘gels' from Miss Amelia's Academy for Young Ladies of Quality were joining us for the event, and there had been talk of nothing else - well, almost nothing else (the school production of Hwel's ‘Octnight' was a topic of much conversation, even if I do say so myself) - for nearly a fortnight.
And now the great night was here. The other ‘chaps' discussing their prospects of winning a dance (in some cases more than just a dance, but I've never associated with those sorts of fellows) with one of the Ladies of Quality.
I confess that I, myself, was holding some such hopes in reserve, although I admit that they were not very strong hopes. I've never been very much of a ‘Casanunda', I'm afraid.
Yet, perhaps fate was smiling on me that night, after all.
Master Flautvik's Chamber Orchestra had only just ‘struck up' a gavotte, when I spotted her. She was sitting alone (and how could such a beautiful maiden be sitting alone on a night such as this?), and dressed in forget-me-not blue, a gown with a fetching but modest neckline (after three years as wardrobe-master for our school's theater troupe, a knew about these sorts of things) edged in lace. She had dark hair, the exact colour of a polished chestnut, that fell in soft curls about her face.
I ventured closer.
I do declare that my heart ‘skipped a beat' when I saw that she was reading the works of George Camden, Lord de Wincy!
I had to speak to her. But how could I?
How could I not?
Comes the time, comes the man, is that not so? I asked myself, ‘plucking up' my courage as best I could.
"I- I say," I ventured, carefully.
She looked up, and I was struck dumb by the beauty of her gaze.
"Truly," I managed, when I have found my voice, "all that's best of dark and light meet in the aspect of your eyes."
She laughed, delightedly. Delightfully.
"You've read Lord deWincy!" she exclaimed.
"Of- of course," I said, daring to sit beside her. "He's one of my favourites. I couldn't help but notice that you favour him as well."
"I do," she replied, "and I am particularly fond of that verse!"
"As am I," I told her, "and it suits you better than you know."
She blushed so becomingly.
"I- forgive me, I seem to have ‘gotten ahead' of myself. I am Rupert Blouse. I'm to become an ensign upon graduation. May I have the honour of your acquaintance?"
"Well then you will surely be a hero, ensign Blouse," she said to me. Oh, how I hoped I would not fail her! "Emmeline Forsythe," she said, offering me her hand. I bowed low over her delicate fingers, though I dared not kiss them. Not yet.
But there are some things that one must dare to do.
"I- I must say, Miss Emmeline... I have fairly ‘lost my heart' to a glance of your eyes," and then I met those luminous eyes and confessed my hope to her. "Would- would you consent to dance with me?"
"Why, ensign Blouse," she said, beaming, "it would be my pleasure!"
Fandom: Monstrous Regiment (a Discworld Group)
Characters: Mal, OC
Prompt: 7, "Days".
Word Count: ~1051
Rating: M (for madness)
Summary: Mal joins the League of Temperence
Notes: This was... interesting to write. I hope I got it right. :-)
Title:
Cold Bat
'Cold Bat', they called it, the people who had gone through - gone through and survived, that is.
You didn't eat for over a week. Not anything. Certainly nothing human.
Mal peered into the cell, small, stone floored, thick walls covered with sheet iron and insulated so that the only screams she would hear would be her own.
She had joined the League of Temperance and taken the pledge to foreswear human blood, earning the ire of her father, the sorrow of her mother, and the loathing of her brother.
There was no going back now.
She stepped into the cell and the door clanged shut behind her.
***
The inside of the cell was dark. Pitch dark. But that had never been a problem.
She sat down on the hard floor, leaning her back against the door.
It was then that she noticed the marks on the walls. Long, parallel lines, scored deep into the iron. She held her hand up to them, and the strips lined up with her fingers.
They were made by fingernails.
Mal took a deep breath.
That doesn't mean you will, she told herself, firmly. But she wasn't certain. She rested her head on her knees, long hair falling over her like a curtain.
She wondered when it would start, and what it would be like when it did.
***
It began like an ache in her belly, the ache of hunger that spread through her body, making her feel hollow, and stretched too thin.
She tried to stay still, to conserve her energy, but she could feel the sweat beading on her brow, trickling sickly down her back. She had peeled off her velvet jacket, pulled off her boots and tossed them away from her.
It hadn't helped.
She couldn't sit still.
She stood and paced the chamber, walked in circles until she was sure she must have worn a groove in the floor. How long have I been in here? she wondered, slowing, resting her head against the cool of the wall.
***
The shakes had come, after that. She didn't know whether it was from honest hunger, or from something else. From withdrawal.
It's okay, it's okay, she kept telling herself, as she stumbled round the interior of her cell again.
Maybe you should sit down for a while. Yeah... she sank to her knees, tried to breath calmly. Sh felt like someone had just sloshed a bucket of ice water over her. Her teeth were chattering hard, and she was shaking uncontrollably. She groped for her jacket, grasped it with icy fingers, and pulled it on again.
You've had worse, she told herself. But she knew she was lying.
***
How long had it been? She didn't know.
She lay on the cold stone floor, body twitching, curled around the sharp center of her pain.
I must be half-way there, she told herself. I have to be!
She was avoiding the walls now. When she got up, if she got up, she was too unsteady on her feet not to use the wall for support.
And she couldn't escape the nail-bitten walls. Those lines scored in solid iron that hinted at what would happen to her, what level she would descend to, before she got out of this room.
This. Tiny. Airless. Fucking. Room! Her fist slammed into the floor, knuckles scraping on the stone.
***
Then the pain had started.
Little prickles, at first, like the sensation of near-numbness in her hands and feet, twinges in her side. But it got worse.
Iron spikes driven through her shoulders, piercing her eyes, splitting her head from the inside. Her breath came in ragged gasps, her throat raw.
"No, no," she whispered, clutching her head, rocking on her knees, as hot tears leaked from her burning eyes. "Please, no more..."
***
They had warned her, before she took the pledge.
They had warned her that the worst part was the craving.
They were wrong.
The worst was the smell of her own blood, under her skin.
The worst was wanting to rip open her own arm just for one drink.
She pressed her face to her knees, her hands tangled in her hair, her body shaking with sobs, wracked with pain.
It was too much! She wasn't going to make it. She knew people died when they went through this, and now it was happening to her!
She thought of the deep gashes in the walls. Would it come to that, after all? She dug her nails into her palms, and then stopped herself, abruptly, not wanting to go there, not wanting to rip her own skin.
She splayed her shaking fingers against the cold floor. Maybe that was why they did it... Maybe they clawed the walls to keep from tearing their own flesh. Her fingers twitched on the stone.
***
Where was she now? The pain was still there, but it seemed to belong to someone else. The world had gone red as a rose. Red as her mother's ruby rings, red as the silk dress she'd worn on her hundredth birthday, red as, red as, red as... But she couldn't finish the thought.
Someone was screaming.
She could hear someone screaming.
That wasn't right.
They said the walls were insulated.
So how could she hear-
***
The first thing she felt, was raw.
Her throat burned with every breath and her fingers felt like someone had scraped away all of the skin. The stone floor was sticky under her hands.
She could still smell her blood. Stronger now, and yet... And yet, it wasn't as bad as before.
She crawled towards the door, body screaming in protest, eased herself against the wall, muscles jumping and twitching, panting with exaustion.
But her head was clear now. The pain that had split it for what felt like months was gone. Finally, gone.
She laughed, raggedly, her raw throat making her cough.
She heard a scraping sound, above her. The key in the lock.
A faint line of light appeared around the edge of the door.
"Maladicta," came a man's voice, "Maladicta, it's Ivan." The door swung open, to reveal a bespectacled vampire of middling years. "Congratulations," he said, helping her to her feet. "You survived."
He helped her down the hallway, to a candle-lit room, where she was offered a glass of bull's blood, and learned about the process of transference.
She never knew what she'd left behind, scored into the stone floor of her cell.
Fandom: Monstrous Regiment (a Discworld Group)
Characters: Mal
Prompt: 94, "Independence".
Word Count: 233
Rating: K+
Summary: Maladicta Leaves Home. At Last.
Title:
Briar Rose
My mother always said that I should comport myself like a blood red rose: Beautiful, elegant, enticing, and with subtle thorns with-which to prick the unwise.
For a while, I did.
I could swan around a ball room in a black velvet dress, the mysterious creature of the night; a pale flame in a dark room, drawing men to me like moths.
But what did I ever want from men? When I put on the black ribbon, they ceased to have any appeal what-so-ever.
A blood red rose...
I had seen roses in the Prince's city, pruned and cultivated to within an inch of their lives. Beautiful, frail blossoms that drowned in the rain and burned in the heat, that couldn't have bloomed without help. Drugged flowers growing in prisons of stone...
But I had also seen roses growing wild near our old family castle in the mountains outside of Munz. Rambling brambles, with thorns you could see. Roses as they were meant to be: Strong-limbed and hardy and free.
"Comport yourself like a blood red rose," But what kind of rose was I?
Of course I knew.
I stole my brother's suit, my father's sword, and walked out into the meadows and the autumn breeze.
I sheered off my hair and felt a weight leave my shoulders.
I left it under a briar rose.
An offering to my sister, wild and free.
Fandom: Monstrous Regiment (a Discworld Group)
Characters: Wazzer, Father Jupe, OCs
Prompt: 35, "Sixth Sense"
Word Count: ~365
Rating: MA (for rape and physical abuse)
Summary: How Alice Escaped
Notes: Not too visceral, but I'm sure you can all imagine. :-)
Title:
The Special Room
The room is small, only a few feet across. No windows to let in the light, no grill in the door, to let out the sound. The room has thick walls, and the ceiling is cushioned with sacks of straw nailed between the rafters. This is the Special Room.
There are no hooks on the walls. No chains to choke your body til it dies. They would offer an escape. And there is no escape here.
Buried deep, so no-one can hear you screaming. No one can hear you crying.
They call it redemption.
The Daughters of Nuggan with their lips like lemons and their cruel intentions.
Father Jupe who says that pain is the way to salvation.
Father Jupe with the knife in his hands, and the knife between his legs.
Father Jupe who says to thank Nuggan for his mercies. But Nuggan is dead, and I know this. And there are no mercies here.
They think there is no escape from here.
But they are wrong.
In the Special Room, where they break the flesh, rend and tear, and the tears pour down, I can escape. To the safest place where no-one can ever hurt me. Deep, deep down I go and into my self and out, and I am free. Whatever they do to that body down there, they can not do to me.
They think there is no escape from here.
But they are wrong.
The Duchess has spoken to me in my dreams, has spoken to me in the safest place, and told me that I will go into service. In three days time, when the bruises are fading, and the angry welts have settled, I will go into service, at the home of a widow and her children. Seven children. The Duchess has told me she can move small things.
The Duchess has told me she can move small thoughts.
She can move small thoughts out of people's heads. Small thoughts like "remember to lock the door tonight". Small thoughts like "close the window".
There will be an escape from this place.
There will be an escape from this hell that is Nuggan's.
There will be an escape for us all.
My Personal Table
Please give me reviews. I like them. :-)
Note: Every one of these stories is set before the beginning of MR. :-)
Fandom: Monstrous Regiment (a Discworld Group)
Characters: Mal
Prompt: 14, "Green"
Word Count: 506
Rating: T (for what amounts to self-inflicted torture -- although it isn't dwelled upon)
Summary: "Suicide is Painless" only works in theory.
Notes: If you've read "Carpe Jugulum" you may know about what the wings of a pheonix can do to a vampire. Depends on how evil the vampire really is.
Title:
Strange Fire
Dying would be easier than this.
I try not to think about how long I've been in here, but the years creep in through my ears, in the sound of my own footsteps on the flagstone floors, in the rasp of my breath, the solitary beating of my heart.
Five years.
Five years.
Five years.
But stop. I know where that kind of thinking can lead. I've spent too many nights huddled in corners with my hands clamped over my ears, trying to shut out the silence.
And it never works. It only makes it worse.
The sun can't kill me any more.
I tried.
Seven times I've tried, standing at the windowpane, letting the light wash over me.
The first time I tried it, it was agony. The sun burned my skin til it blistered and blackened, til tears ran from my eyes, and I had gone farther into the realms of anguish than I thought I could endure.
But I did not die.
Godsdamnit, I didn't die!
I crumpled to the floor, weeping from the pain, my skin cracking and flaking away like ashes.
I did not think I would have the strength to do it again.
But eventually, after another year spent talking to my own echo, I realized that I would prefer to burn than to go on living.
So I tried again.
And again.
And again.
It burned less, every time.
Now the Winter sun feels no worse than a hot summer night, and Summer sunlight feels like the air above a candle-flame.
There is no release for me there.
Even if there were, would it last?
My father keeps his eye on me.
There's a nest of crows on the battlements, and I've caught the touch of my father's mind riding them at night.
He's making sure I don't just walk away.
I wonder, if I did succeed in suicide, would he care? Would he come in the night, out of spite, and shed a drop of his own blood to bring me back from my freedom?
The hublights are burning tonight. The brightest I've ever seen. Cold fire, green and gold. Even inside, standing at my window, I can feel them tingling on my skin.
I remember, long ago, years ago, in another life, someone told me the Uberwald legend about how the hublights are the wings of a pheonix, dancing in flight. And how those green-gold flames would kill us with a touch.
It isn't true.
Not for me.
I went up to the battlements earlier tonight, the closest thing to freedom that I have, and let that strange, cold fire touch my skin. It flickered, green and gold and ghostly, at my finger tips, and danced in the palm of my hand.
But it didn't burn me.
Not really.
It was warm, but not as warm as the summer sun, and it hurt, but only like the prickle of pins and needles on my skin. It wasn't painful.
It didn't kill me.
I wish it had.
Fandom: Monstrous Regiment (a Discworld Group)
Characters: Polly, OC
Prompt: 85, "She".
Word Count: 350
Rating: K+
Summary: Polly goes swimming with a friend on a hot day.
Notes: Because it had to start some time.
Title:
Remembering Molly Piper
I remember one time, not long after my twelfth birthday, when I snuck away from the Inn for an afternoon with my friend, Molly Piper.
Molly was nearly thirteen and I was slightly in awe of her, so when she tapped on the kitchen window and said "come on, let's go swimming", I wasn't about to say no. Anyway, it was oppressively hot out. You could have cut the air with a kitchen knife, it was so humid.
So I followed her down the path along the stream near the Inn, to the Krik Pond. The pond was hidden by a copse of willow trees, although everyone knew it was there. It was fed by a little water fall, and it was cold even in high summer.
We stripped down to our shifts and plunged into the water, coming up gasping and shaking our sodden hair out of our eyes.
Molly had been gifted by nature somewhat more than I had been, at that point (or at all, come to think of it), and a white shift offers a lot less cover when it's wet.
I think that's why I remember that day so well.
I'd seen plenty of boys with their shirts off. When your family runs an Inn, you see all sorts of things, including half-naked men making deliveries off the backs of carts.
None of them had ever made me feel like this.
At the time, I assumed that it was the cold water making shiver.
Eventually, I would find out that it wasn't just the water.
But not that day. That day, I simply enjoyed my time with Molly, splashing and laughing, and then shushing each other in case someone walking by heard us and told our parents where we'd gone.
I think even then I knew we were both on the cusp of something. That this was one of the last chances I'd have to spend with her before she officially grew up and started courting, before I started down that road myself. One of the last chances we'd have to be kids together.
Fandom: Monstrous Regiment (a Discworld Group)
Characters: Polly, Mr. Perks, Mrs. Perks, Paul Perks, OCs
Prompt: 86, "Choices".
Word Count: 1877
Rating: M
Summary: Polly goes a-courtin'. You can imagine how well that worked out...
Notes: Sort of a song fic. Meaning that I stuck folk-song-like verses through the story, but I wrote the "folk song" as well.
Title:
Walking Out
See the girl with the golden hair
Walking down the lane,
Fifteen years if she's a day,
And at her side, a swain
She supposed that she should have been excited.
Most of the girls her age had been walking out for over a year, and Ella Weis was actually married now. The wedding had been under a white canopy that blotted out the blue of the sky, and Ella had looked so proud and joyful, wearing her dark hair loose for the last time, white flowers crowning her head.
And now it was Polly's turn to go a-courting. The boy beside her, Thomas Tillard, had come ‘round to the Inn to drop off an order of sausages from his father's shop, and had cautiously asked her father if he might walk Polly home from the sermon on Friday.
Of course he'd said yes. She was fifteen already, and Thomas was the first to have asked after her, so he wasn't about to turn the boy down even if he'd only had two brain-cells to rub together which, unfortunately, was turning out to be the case.
See the boy of seventeen
Walking at her side,
A beard new-growing on his chin,
He's looking for a bride
While their mothers strolled ten paces behind them (slowly, in the case of her mother, who leaned heavily on a cane these days), and their fathers and Paul strode ten paces in front of them, because you couldn't let young people go walking out un-chaperoned, she tried to make conversation with Thomas.
"Lovely weather we're having, isn't it?" She said.
"Wh--? Oh, yeah, yeah. Sunny."
"Not too humid..." He kept trying to hold her hand in his large, clammy one.
Thomas smelled of sweat and turnips. It wasn't that this was an odd combination, even in a town as big as Munz, but wasn't she supposed to be catching undertones of... musk? Manly wosnames? Wasn't she supposed to find him attractive? Or at least less repulsive than she was finding him?
"So... Are you training to be butcher?"
"Oh yes," he said, suddenly more animated, "I'm getting really good at sausages." He grinned, a strange mixture of awkward bravado and sickly hope, and leaned close to her ear, "Really good with sausages."
"That's... good..." What did she care how good he was at stuff tubes full of mushy meat?
Well, maybe it was more difficult than she thought. Perhaps she was supposed to be impressed by this revelation. "That's very... good."
He was going to stay to dinner, that much she knew already. Her mother had insisted on that point, even when she'd mentioned that if they didn't get on well, dinner would be horribly awkward. Her mother had been certain that everything would be fine as long as Polly didn't do anything abominable. Her mother mustn't have been too up on the current Book of Nuggan if she thought that was likely...
See the girl with the golden hair
Not knowing what to say,
See her walk beside the boy,
Upon an August day
"So," he said, "do you like dresses?"
What? How the hell was she supposed to answer that?
"What do you mean?" She hedged.
"Well, you're a girl. Girls like dresses, don't they?"
"Well... It's what we wear..."
"I could get you dress," he said, taking her answer as an affirmative. "A nice one with lace on or something."
"You don't have to get me anything, I don't think," she said, although, just in case she was wrong, she added: "A new kitchen cleaver wouldn't be amiss, though."
"Oh, I couldn't get you a cleaver, Polly! Those are men's tools!"
Polly gave him a long look. It wasn't that she hadn't been expecting this kind of thinking, she'd just expected it to come at a more sensible target.
"You have been inside a kitchen, haven't you?"
"Only the cutting room at the shop," he said, "And that's not even really a kitchen, right? I mean, I wouldn't go into a kitchen, what with me being a man and all."
Oh, yes, thought Polly. Kitchens were Places of Women, and so no boy who wanted to be seen as a man would ever set foot in one. Her father, of course, had got over that mental border years ago when her mother had started having her poor spells but Polly had still been too small to lift the big knives and the heavy cuts of meat that - hah! - Thomas's own father had probably handed through the back kitchen door without so much as a blink.
"Right," she said quickly, "What was I saying?"
"It's a nice dress you're wearing today," Thomas replied.
Polly thought about this. The dress was her sermon dress and, as such, it was both her best dress and her most plain and shapeless. Women showing their figures was an Abomination unto Nugan from way back. "Thank you," she said.
"I really like the high collar. It, uh, shows of the length of your neck."
The length of her neck? "Thanks," she looked him up and down. "It's a nice suit."
Thomas grinned. "It was mine from new. Now that I'm working in the shop, I don't have to get them from my brother anymore."
So this is manhood in Munz, thought Polly, An unwillingness to set foot in kitchens and a pair of pants you don't have to share...
See the boy of seventeen
Who wants to be a man,
See him walking with the girl,
And trying to hold her hand
The rounded the bend in the road, and the Inn came into sight.
"It's a good place, the Duchess, isn't it?" Thomas asked.
"It's the best," replied Polly with pride and her first real smile of the walk. "Best inn outside of the capital."
They walked up the road in silence. Polly could faintly hear their fathers, ahead of them, talking about the war - there was always a war - and the rations that were in place. They made their way up the walk, towards Polly's house, which was separated from the main Inn by a wall and door, but was still part of the same building.
"How many kids do you want, Polly?"
"Uh- I hadn't really thought about it, actually."
"I think seven's a good number. With lots of boys for the shop."
Polly thought about Ella Weis, Ella Crampon now, who was pregnant already, bulging with the baby inside her small body, walking to market on swollen feet, one hand on her lower back.
"You don't say," she managed.
See the girl with the golden hair,
Think of her future life,
The sister of an inn-keep, or
The village butcher's wife
They went inside the house, where Polly's mother invited them all to sit, as she eased herself into a chair. "Polly," she said, "Would you mind going to the ice-house for me? There's a jug of sour-apple wine that I've been saving. Would you get it, please?"
Polly nodded. These days, her mother was spending a lot of time not being able to get out of bed. The only time she left the house was when she went to sermon, and usually she came home and slept right afterwards. This was taking a lot out of her.
"I'll help," Thomas volunteered, suddenly.
"Not without a chaperon!" cried his mother.
"Oh, Deirdre," said Polly's father, "the ice house is eight feet away, and we can see it from the window. They'll be fine."
Polly headed out the door and towards the ice house, while Thomas, grinning widely, followed after her.
See the boy of seventeen,
A gleam is in his eye,
He don't know if it's gonna work,
But surely he will try
He followed Polly into the ice house. She wasn't sure why he'd volunteered to come. It wasn't as if the jugs were heavy, and she waitressed in the Inn most nights and could carry them just fine... She hefted the jug and turned to leave, but Thomas blocked her way.
"We- We don't have to go back just yet," he suggested.
Polly's heart beat faster. Although probably not for the reason Thomas was hoping for. Her eyes narrowed.
"Get out of my way, please."
"Why? We're alone together, you know? We could have a little fun while no-one's watching." He smiled encouragingly, and tried to brush her face with his fingers. She leaned out of the way.
"I don't think so. Excuse me."
"No, now wait a minute, Polly," he said, taking her arm rather more roughly. "This is how it works. Why do you think they let us go alone? They know what's gonna happen and it's fine!"
She kicked him in the shin, and the blow he leveled at her in return knocked her against a wall, the thick, stoneware jug dropping from her hands to the floor with liquid glug though, thankfully, without a crash.
Damn, she remembered, too late. He carries dead pigs around by himself, doesn't he? She raised her hands to fend him off, but he was big, and his weight alone pressed her into the wall so that her shoulder-blades scraped under her dress.
"Come on, Polly," he said, sour breath against her mouth, sweaty hands groping for her breasts. "You know you want this."
"Get off me!" she growled, low, turning her face away, trying to push him off of her.
He took one of her hands in each of his, and splayed her arms against the wall. "Didja think I wasn't good enough, Polly? Now you'll find out just how good I am!"
See the girl with the golden hair
Her angry eyes gleam hate,
See her take charge and then take aim,
And see her change her fate
He was trying to get his knee between her legs, trying to force them apart, and he was succeeding. However what that meant was that, for a moment, Polly found her own knee between Thomas's legs. Thinking of Gummy Abbens, the old sergeant who sometimes came and drank with her father, she took the chance she was offered and kneed Thomas squarely in the sausages. She kicked him in the head when he went down, and then ran for it, leaving the jug behind.
She burst into the house, wine-less and with a bruise reddening on her cheek.
"Your son has fallen down," she said pointedly to Thomas' mother. "I don't think he'll be able to stay after all."
Mrs. Tillard looked shocked, and Mr. Tillard looked down-right murderous as he strode towards the icehouse to retrieve his son.
"Wh-What happened?" asked Mrs. Tillard.
"There was water on the floor, and he slipped," she said, and saw Mrs. Tillard grasp the lie like a roped tossed to a drowning woman.
"Of course. Accidents do happen, don't they. We'll, uh, we'll take him home now. Perhaps we can have dinner another time." Although it was clear that she knew that wouldn't be happening.
Thomas was led away by his parents, and Polly watched them go, fierce and angry, until they were out of sight.
See the boy of seventeen,
His pride now in a sling;
See the girl with the golden hair
Who knows what her life will bring.
Fandom: Monstrous Regiment (a Discworld Group)
Characters: Lofty, Tonker
Prompt: 12, "Orange".
Word Count: 100
Rating: K
Summary: Tilda reflects on the nature of Magda.
Notes: Tilda tends to associate colours with emotions and/or people. :-)
Title:
A Fire Inside
Copper, Tiger, Amber, Spark.
That's my Magda.
A firecracker waiting to explode.
All fierce anger under the skin.
But there's another fire inside her.
I had to find it, like the spark inside the haystack on a hot, wet day.
But find it, I did.
A little flame, that I fed with smiles, with hope, with trust.
A little flame that strengthened, til it burned so brightly that we couldn't look away.
Now she warms me at night with her fire inside,
Soothes the aches in my body, and fans my own flames.
I like Magda's fire best of all.
Fandom: Monstrous Regiment (a Discworld Group)
Characters: Lofty, Tonker
Prompt: 29, "Birth".
Word Count: 100
Rating: T
Summary: Lofty had a daughter once, do you remember?
Notes: This one has been posted before.
Title:
Stolen
Tilda, my Tilda, is sobbing in my arms.
The bastards took her baby away.
I am careful when I hold her, her body is still bruised, and the cuts on her back are still healing.
The father is dead. Good riddance to him, burned alive in his mill.
But the baby...
Tilda says that she hopes she is happy. That her life is better than ours.
She says that her hope is a flame in the dark.
A single candle, burning for the child that was lost, the daughter that she will never know.
Svetcha: Our flame in the night.
Fandom: Monstrous Regiment (a Discworld Group)
Characters: Blouse & Emmeline
Prompt: 88, "School".
Word Count: 583
Rating: K
Summary: Young Blouse attends the Senior Ball at the Borogravian Royal Academy
Notes: Credit where credit is due: Lord deWincy is (pretty obviously) my DW version of Lord Byron. The piece of poetry quoted the story is from Byron's "She Walks in Beauty, Like the Night".
Title:
Thank You, Lord deWincy
The hall was decked with garlands of paper flowers in a ‘riot' of colours, red and pink and gold, and cris-crossed with streamers in the school's blue and white colours. The place fairly buzzed with conversation and excitement. It was the night of the annual school ball.
This year, the ‘gels' from Miss Amelia's Academy for Young Ladies of Quality were joining us for the event, and there had been talk of nothing else - well, almost nothing else (the school production of Hwel's ‘Octnight' was a topic of much conversation, even if I do say so myself) - for nearly a fortnight.
And now the great night was here. The other ‘chaps' discussing their prospects of winning a dance (in some cases more than just a dance, but I've never associated with those sorts of fellows) with one of the Ladies of Quality.
I confess that I, myself, was holding some such hopes in reserve, although I admit that they were not very strong hopes. I've never been very much of a ‘Casanunda', I'm afraid.
Yet, perhaps fate was smiling on me that night, after all.
Master Flautvik's Chamber Orchestra had only just ‘struck up' a gavotte, when I spotted her. She was sitting alone (and how could such a beautiful maiden be sitting alone on a night such as this?), and dressed in forget-me-not blue, a gown with a fetching but modest neckline (after three years as wardrobe-master for our school's theater troupe, a knew about these sorts of things) edged in lace. She had dark hair, the exact colour of a polished chestnut, that fell in soft curls about her face.
I ventured closer.
I do declare that my heart ‘skipped a beat' when I saw that she was reading the works of George Camden, Lord de Wincy!
I had to speak to her. But how could I?
How could I not?
Comes the time, comes the man, is that not so? I asked myself, ‘plucking up' my courage as best I could.
"I- I say," I ventured, carefully.
She looked up, and I was struck dumb by the beauty of her gaze.
"Truly," I managed, when I have found my voice, "all that's best of dark and light meet in the aspect of your eyes."
She laughed, delightedly. Delightfully.
"You've read Lord deWincy!" she exclaimed.
"Of- of course," I said, daring to sit beside her. "He's one of my favourites. I couldn't help but notice that you favour him as well."
"I do," she replied, "and I am particularly fond of that verse!"
"As am I," I told her, "and it suits you better than you know."
She blushed so becomingly.
"I- forgive me, I seem to have ‘gotten ahead' of myself. I am Rupert Blouse. I'm to become an ensign upon graduation. May I have the honour of your acquaintance?"
"Well then you will surely be a hero, ensign Blouse," she said to me. Oh, how I hoped I would not fail her! "Emmeline Forsythe," she said, offering me her hand. I bowed low over her delicate fingers, though I dared not kiss them. Not yet.
But there are some things that one must dare to do.
"I- I must say, Miss Emmeline... I have fairly ‘lost my heart' to a glance of your eyes," and then I met those luminous eyes and confessed my hope to her. "Would- would you consent to dance with me?"
"Why, ensign Blouse," she said, beaming, "it would be my pleasure!"
Fandom: Monstrous Regiment (a Discworld Group)
Characters: Mal, OC
Prompt: 7, "Days".
Word Count: ~1051
Rating: M (for madness)
Summary: Mal joins the League of Temperence
Notes: This was... interesting to write. I hope I got it right. :-)
Title:
Cold Bat
'Cold Bat', they called it, the people who had gone through - gone through and survived, that is.
You didn't eat for over a week. Not anything. Certainly nothing human.
Mal peered into the cell, small, stone floored, thick walls covered with sheet iron and insulated so that the only screams she would hear would be her own.
She had joined the League of Temperance and taken the pledge to foreswear human blood, earning the ire of her father, the sorrow of her mother, and the loathing of her brother.
There was no going back now.
She stepped into the cell and the door clanged shut behind her.
***
The inside of the cell was dark. Pitch dark. But that had never been a problem.
She sat down on the hard floor, leaning her back against the door.
It was then that she noticed the marks on the walls. Long, parallel lines, scored deep into the iron. She held her hand up to them, and the strips lined up with her fingers.
They were made by fingernails.
Mal took a deep breath.
That doesn't mean you will, she told herself, firmly. But she wasn't certain. She rested her head on her knees, long hair falling over her like a curtain.
She wondered when it would start, and what it would be like when it did.
***
It began like an ache in her belly, the ache of hunger that spread through her body, making her feel hollow, and stretched too thin.
She tried to stay still, to conserve her energy, but she could feel the sweat beading on her brow, trickling sickly down her back. She had peeled off her velvet jacket, pulled off her boots and tossed them away from her.
It hadn't helped.
She couldn't sit still.
She stood and paced the chamber, walked in circles until she was sure she must have worn a groove in the floor. How long have I been in here? she wondered, slowing, resting her head against the cool of the wall.
***
The shakes had come, after that. She didn't know whether it was from honest hunger, or from something else. From withdrawal.
It's okay, it's okay, she kept telling herself, as she stumbled round the interior of her cell again.
Maybe you should sit down for a while. Yeah... she sank to her knees, tried to breath calmly. Sh felt like someone had just sloshed a bucket of ice water over her. Her teeth were chattering hard, and she was shaking uncontrollably. She groped for her jacket, grasped it with icy fingers, and pulled it on again.
You've had worse, she told herself. But she knew she was lying.
***
How long had it been? She didn't know.
She lay on the cold stone floor, body twitching, curled around the sharp center of her pain.
I must be half-way there, she told herself. I have to be!
She was avoiding the walls now. When she got up, if she got up, she was too unsteady on her feet not to use the wall for support.
And she couldn't escape the nail-bitten walls. Those lines scored in solid iron that hinted at what would happen to her, what level she would descend to, before she got out of this room.
This. Tiny. Airless. Fucking. Room! Her fist slammed into the floor, knuckles scraping on the stone.
***
Then the pain had started.
Little prickles, at first, like the sensation of near-numbness in her hands and feet, twinges in her side. But it got worse.
Iron spikes driven through her shoulders, piercing her eyes, splitting her head from the inside. Her breath came in ragged gasps, her throat raw.
"No, no," she whispered, clutching her head, rocking on her knees, as hot tears leaked from her burning eyes. "Please, no more..."
***
They had warned her, before she took the pledge.
They had warned her that the worst part was the craving.
They were wrong.
The worst was the smell of her own blood, under her skin.
The worst was wanting to rip open her own arm just for one drink.
She pressed her face to her knees, her hands tangled in her hair, her body shaking with sobs, wracked with pain.
It was too much! She wasn't going to make it. She knew people died when they went through this, and now it was happening to her!
She thought of the deep gashes in the walls. Would it come to that, after all? She dug her nails into her palms, and then stopped herself, abruptly, not wanting to go there, not wanting to rip her own skin.
She splayed her shaking fingers against the cold floor. Maybe that was why they did it... Maybe they clawed the walls to keep from tearing their own flesh. Her fingers twitched on the stone.
***
Where was she now? The pain was still there, but it seemed to belong to someone else. The world had gone red as a rose. Red as her mother's ruby rings, red as the silk dress she'd worn on her hundredth birthday, red as, red as, red as... But she couldn't finish the thought.
Someone was screaming.
She could hear someone screaming.
That wasn't right.
They said the walls were insulated.
So how could she hear-
***
The first thing she felt, was raw.
Her throat burned with every breath and her fingers felt like someone had scraped away all of the skin. The stone floor was sticky under her hands.
She could still smell her blood. Stronger now, and yet... And yet, it wasn't as bad as before.
She crawled towards the door, body screaming in protest, eased herself against the wall, muscles jumping and twitching, panting with exaustion.
But her head was clear now. The pain that had split it for what felt like months was gone. Finally, gone.
She laughed, raggedly, her raw throat making her cough.
She heard a scraping sound, above her. The key in the lock.
A faint line of light appeared around the edge of the door.
"Maladicta," came a man's voice, "Maladicta, it's Ivan." The door swung open, to reveal a bespectacled vampire of middling years. "Congratulations," he said, helping her to her feet. "You survived."
He helped her down the hallway, to a candle-lit room, where she was offered a glass of bull's blood, and learned about the process of transference.
She never knew what she'd left behind, scored into the stone floor of her cell.
Fandom: Monstrous Regiment (a Discworld Group)
Characters: Mal
Prompt: 94, "Independence".
Word Count: 233
Rating: K+
Summary: Maladicta Leaves Home. At Last.
Title:
Briar Rose
My mother always said that I should comport myself like a blood red rose: Beautiful, elegant, enticing, and with subtle thorns with-which to prick the unwise.
For a while, I did.
I could swan around a ball room in a black velvet dress, the mysterious creature of the night; a pale flame in a dark room, drawing men to me like moths.
But what did I ever want from men? When I put on the black ribbon, they ceased to have any appeal what-so-ever.
A blood red rose...
I had seen roses in the Prince's city, pruned and cultivated to within an inch of their lives. Beautiful, frail blossoms that drowned in the rain and burned in the heat, that couldn't have bloomed without help. Drugged flowers growing in prisons of stone...
But I had also seen roses growing wild near our old family castle in the mountains outside of Munz. Rambling brambles, with thorns you could see. Roses as they were meant to be: Strong-limbed and hardy and free.
"Comport yourself like a blood red rose," But what kind of rose was I?
Of course I knew.
I stole my brother's suit, my father's sword, and walked out into the meadows and the autumn breeze.
I sheered off my hair and felt a weight leave my shoulders.
I left it under a briar rose.
An offering to my sister, wild and free.
Fandom: Monstrous Regiment (a Discworld Group)
Characters: Wazzer, Father Jupe, OCs
Prompt: 35, "Sixth Sense"
Word Count: ~365
Rating: MA (for rape and physical abuse)
Summary: How Alice Escaped
Notes: Not too visceral, but I'm sure you can all imagine. :-)
Title:
The Special Room
The room is small, only a few feet across. No windows to let in the light, no grill in the door, to let out the sound. The room has thick walls, and the ceiling is cushioned with sacks of straw nailed between the rafters. This is the Special Room.
There are no hooks on the walls. No chains to choke your body til it dies. They would offer an escape. And there is no escape here.
Buried deep, so no-one can hear you screaming. No one can hear you crying.
They call it redemption.
The Daughters of Nuggan with their lips like lemons and their cruel intentions.
Father Jupe who says that pain is the way to salvation.
Father Jupe with the knife in his hands, and the knife between his legs.
Father Jupe who says to thank Nuggan for his mercies. But Nuggan is dead, and I know this. And there are no mercies here.
They think there is no escape from here.
But they are wrong.
In the Special Room, where they break the flesh, rend and tear, and the tears pour down, I can escape. To the safest place where no-one can ever hurt me. Deep, deep down I go and into my self and out, and I am free. Whatever they do to that body down there, they can not do to me.
They think there is no escape from here.
But they are wrong.
The Duchess has spoken to me in my dreams, has spoken to me in the safest place, and told me that I will go into service. In three days time, when the bruises are fading, and the angry welts have settled, I will go into service, at the home of a widow and her children. Seven children. The Duchess has told me she can move small things.
The Duchess has told me she can move small thoughts.
She can move small thoughts out of people's heads. Small thoughts like "remember to lock the door tonight". Small thoughts like "close the window".
There will be an escape from this place.
There will be an escape from this hell that is Nuggan's.
There will be an escape for us all.
My Personal Table