(NaNoWriMo 2010) Pain-Eaters part 4-1
The Bar maid was on her knees at the corner of the building dry heaving, much to the annoyance of the horses tied to the hitching post there. Several ladies from the town had gathered around her and was helping to hold her hair and comfort her through it.
‘The worst had past, along with her breakfast’ Cinder thought as she watched the group with annoyance and disdain. How anyone could let themselves be so weak and worse, show it, she didn’t understand. She couldn’t remember when she had last thrown up from something disturbing that she had seen. No that was not true, she did remember. She wasn’t quit fifteen then, back when she had still been able to pass for a boy. Hair cut short, Cloths loose, baggy, the ones that her brothers had grown out of. Her father didn’t care that his only daughter wore boys cloths, it meant he didn’t have to shell out his precious drinking money to buy her cloths. And her mother- her mother understood how it was safer for her to pass as a boy as long as she could. It protected her from those males less moral or those less sober and with every year there seemed to be more of them. Or she simply became more aware of those that were already there.
She had been out in the fields, filling buckets with the weeds she had been pulling from the rows all day. It wasn’t enough to just pull them, you had to gather them up and take them out of the fields and burn them. This was her job and she didn’t complain. Her brothers had the harder, heavier jobs and all the girls her age were being married off or being sold off by their parents. She was safe from that future, so long as she could keep herself more valuable as cheap labor at home working the fields for her father then as a source of coins that she would fetch if he sold her or worse- rented her out.
Cinder didn’t remember now what she had been lost in thought about at that moment. It could have been about how each day it became harder and harder to strap down her chest and how it hurt to breath and how her ribs ached at night. Or it could have been about how the thorn bush weeds kept showing up in the corn no matter how much she pulled them or how deep she dug to get the roots out. Or it could have been how she hoped her father passed out drunk in the barn and didn’t come in that night. It was always better when he didn’t come in at night, Easier on her and her mother who had always taken the brunt of it to protect her from her drunken father. Some day though, her mother wouldn’t be able to do that any more.
What ever she had been thinking, she hadn’t been paying attention. Had she, she might have been able to scream before the hand closed over her mouth. She may have even been able to run before the arms grabbed her and pulled her into the irrigation ditch running along side the path. She probably would have smelled, heard or seen the two men that attacked her in time to react. And if she had been paying attentions she definitely would have realized that she was singing out loud. That boys, her age didn’t sound like that when they sang and that it was a dead give away that she wasn’t a boy.
But none of that happened because she wasn’t paying attention. What had happened was the transients dragged her into the ditch. One man held her down and silent as the other one straddled her legs, She remembered their stench and the feeling of their greasy hands on her body. How the one on top ripped her shirt open and cursed as the tight wrappings across her chest continued to hide her from him. She screamed and kicked as best as she could as he pulled a piece of metal that looked to have been worked from a larger one and crudely sharpened on a rock. It wasn’t much more then a shiv but it did its job as he slid hacked his way through the wrappings
She didn’t remember when she started crying, but remember that she was before his hands or mouth had closed over what she had worked so hard to hide. She remembered that she kept fighting as futile as it had been as the man on top slid down and worked to pull her pants down. She didn’t make it easy for him, kicking and flailing as best as she could. The man holding her mouth and upper body grew impatient for his turn and traded his grasp on her mouth for a tight hold on her throat.
Cinder remembered barely being able to breath and almost welcoming the idea of passing out through what might be coming. She remembered fighting to breath to scream as the man choking her worked at his pants and moved to straddle her chest. She kicked again and caught the guy at her legs some where on his body and earned a punch to the stomach that knocked what breath she had left out of her.
She knew she wasn’t going to last longer. She didn’t have much more breath left, and after that ended so did her fight. All she could think was ‘Breath.’
The guy on her chest tried to force her mouth open and she bit him. His hand pulled back, balled up and punched her in the jaw.
Her mind reeling from lack of air and the blow, instinct told her she couldn’t take another blow like that and she told her self ‘Think’
She grabbed at the ground with her free hands hoping to find a hand hold to use to kick up with or turn herself with.
Her hand closed on some thing. It was cold, hard, metal. Her fingers felt a strip of fabric wrapped around it. Her fingers found the handle of the shiv, one finger found the edge. She felt it turn in her hand.
‘Act’ she thought to herself. She felt her hand raising as the man on her chest fought to open her mouth with his free hand. He forced her opened mouth open and he lifted himself up from her chest.
The edge was sharp enough. It sank into flesh with a sickening sound that reminded her of when she gutted chickens for her mother. The man screamed and fell from her immediately. Cinder held tight to the shiv an pulled it out as she gasped for air. She remembered the blood on her face on her hands.
The guy at her legs looked over to his friend screaming to know what happened.
Cinder sat up and buried the shiv up to her grip into his neck and twisted it. Something popped and the mans eyes rolled back into his eyes. His hands falling loose to the ground before he could even reach for his throat. He went limp on her legs but Cinder had continued to kick and push.
She could hear someone screaming, high, shrill but who ever it was coming from, it didn’t sound like it held any fear to it. It was a scream of anger, furry, of power and vengeance.
She kicked herself free, oblivious to being nearly naked except for the remnants of her shirt and her pants that hung onto one leg. Cinder dove onto the man who was screaming and begging for help as he held his groin and shoved the shiv into his stomach and pulled down on it. When it stopped moving she pulled it out and buried it in again. Below her the man screamed and tried to fight her off. He grabbed her hands and Cinder felt her knee raise and drop down into his groin.
The man screamed and fell back unconscious and Cinder remembered being angry that he would die in unconsciousness. She pulled the shiv and thrust it into his neck and worked it across his throat then she turned back to the other man to make sure he was dead.
It had taken all three of her brothers to wrestle her off the bodies and to get the shiv from her hands. They had heard her screaming and came to her aid. She had disemboweled both men by the time they had arrived and moments later as she laid fighting to be lot go from their protective restraint, to be allowed to finish punishing the men that had tried to rape her, the world came crashing back in and she rolled over, vomited till she could raise no more and passed out.
Cinder had laid unconscious till almost dusk the next day. When she came to she remembered waking up with a incontrollable scream waiting at the back of her throat to be let loose and a single chain of thought, ‘Breath, think, act, and you will live through this. She did just that and the scream went away.
It had taken time before she didn’t jump when a male walked up behind her or touched her. It took longer till men could pass her on the street with out her having to have her fingers on the hilt of the knife that she stole from her father and carried with her every where. But, it had been the last time she had gotten sick and thrown up from something she had seen or done and it was the last time she worried about her father coming home drunk.
“Her name is Cinder and no she didn’t kill that man.” Evan said, the mention of her name snapping her out of her memory. She looked up and over to the crowd of towns folk that stood on the other side of the street gossiping among themselves about what they believed had happened in the bar and what they felt should be done with or to the two of them. Evan and Sheriff Nine Parker, who was still smacking at his ears ever so often and asking people to repeat things because he hadn’t heard them over the ringing in his ear, were standing in the middle of the street with the braver of the towns residents and those that claimed to be the towns council.
Evan had been trying to explain to them what had happened in the inn, how one of the towns oldest and most beloved residents had become infested with a seed from a demon, “Not a demon but a seed of one, like a child or an off-spring” Evan kept repeating to those who demanded to know how a demon had gotten into the old lady. Cinder patience had quickly been stretched thin at the constant rehashing of what Evan had explained several times and she had, on several occasions prior, stepped up to explain in her ‘colorful manner’ as Evan often described it what had happened and what the town could do if they didn’t like it. But each time Evan had silenced her with a look or a motion of her hand. Finally he had instructed her to stand guard over the door going into the Inn till they could sweep the place and make sure it was clean. It was really to keep her ‘mouth’ out of the conversation and she knew it. It didn’t help, she didn’t like how they talked down to him and how they disrespected him by questioning everything he said and on several occasions accusing him of lying.
Sheriff Nine was about useless in the conversation. When asked what he had saw or to back up what Evan had said, he would answer with how he hadn’t really seen anything from behind the turned over table where Evan had pushed him and he certainly hadn’t heard much of anything after the firing had started.
The bar maid had been of more use, between bouts of puking and dry heaving she had answered enough questions to confirm that Mrs Morris had turned into some horrid monster and attacked them. She couldn’t state who had killed Mr Tiggs, a local outland scrapper that came in to town regularly to sell what he salvaged from the waste and buy supplies. All she knew was he was dead, pinned to the wall with a pair of Mrs Morris knitting needles and it was usually at that point or the mention of removing the body from the wall that she would return to heaving. And no one seemed to care about the three traders as they were not part of the town and had ‘just been passing through’.
Cinder had caught Evans attention and reminded him of the book guy that had taken off after all of it. That had just raised more problems as it turned out he was the town scribe and currently could not be found. Which only started more speculations as to ‘What sort of terrible things these evil strangers had done to him’ from the crowd on the other side.
Evan had apparently had his fill of explaining and arguing with the town for he stepped back from the group and opened his jacket and let it drop to the ground.
The action turned heads to watch as he pulled the wrap shirt he wore open and let it fall from his shoulders to his waste.
There was gasps and cries of disgust and fear and more then a few turned away and a couple left. One of the ladies who had been helping steady and comfort the bar maid turned herself and vomited setting off a reaction from the bar maid.
Evan stood with his arms raised out to the side. Half of his upper torso and almost all of his left arm were covered in tattoo’s that moved like memories inked in flesh. Disturbing images with humans, angels, and demons, each repeating scenes that ranged from entrancing bliss to eye clawing torture and mutilation. As the crowd looked on the effect took hold, each of their eyes draw to an image that spoke to each of them individually. Giving them a honest and terrifying look into parts of their souls that few people would admit to even their own creator was inside them. Heads turned, hands covered their eyes as tears fell and others cried out in disgust.
Evan lowered his arms and pulled his shirt back up and covered the tapestry of flesh. “I was asked to come her and see if I could help on of yours that has fallen prey to a demon. If it is not to late I will do just that and should it be to late as it was for those inside the inn, I will lay them to rest where they can find peace. But understand this.” His voice climbed in level as he made sure everyone could hear him, “It is my right as an Archi-Scelus to claim dominion and to pass judgment over that which walks this earth in the flesh of man. Stay out of my way for I must only show mercy to those who deserve it.”
Cinder didn’t look away as everyone else did, that wasn’t the first time she had seen him do that and she loved it every time he did. To look into the tapestry of a Pain-Eater was to look at the stark truth about good and evil and to be left with only one choice. To embrace the truth about yourself.
‘The worst had past, along with her breakfast’ Cinder thought as she watched the group with annoyance and disdain. How anyone could let themselves be so weak and worse, show it, she didn’t understand. She couldn’t remember when she had last thrown up from something disturbing that she had seen. No that was not true, she did remember. She wasn’t quit fifteen then, back when she had still been able to pass for a boy. Hair cut short, Cloths loose, baggy, the ones that her brothers had grown out of. Her father didn’t care that his only daughter wore boys cloths, it meant he didn’t have to shell out his precious drinking money to buy her cloths. And her mother- her mother understood how it was safer for her to pass as a boy as long as she could. It protected her from those males less moral or those less sober and with every year there seemed to be more of them. Or she simply became more aware of those that were already there.
She had been out in the fields, filling buckets with the weeds she had been pulling from the rows all day. It wasn’t enough to just pull them, you had to gather them up and take them out of the fields and burn them. This was her job and she didn’t complain. Her brothers had the harder, heavier jobs and all the girls her age were being married off or being sold off by their parents. She was safe from that future, so long as she could keep herself more valuable as cheap labor at home working the fields for her father then as a source of coins that she would fetch if he sold her or worse- rented her out.
Cinder didn’t remember now what she had been lost in thought about at that moment. It could have been about how each day it became harder and harder to strap down her chest and how it hurt to breath and how her ribs ached at night. Or it could have been about how the thorn bush weeds kept showing up in the corn no matter how much she pulled them or how deep she dug to get the roots out. Or it could have been how she hoped her father passed out drunk in the barn and didn’t come in that night. It was always better when he didn’t come in at night, Easier on her and her mother who had always taken the brunt of it to protect her from her drunken father. Some day though, her mother wouldn’t be able to do that any more.
What ever she had been thinking, she hadn’t been paying attention. Had she, she might have been able to scream before the hand closed over her mouth. She may have even been able to run before the arms grabbed her and pulled her into the irrigation ditch running along side the path. She probably would have smelled, heard or seen the two men that attacked her in time to react. And if she had been paying attentions she definitely would have realized that she was singing out loud. That boys, her age didn’t sound like that when they sang and that it was a dead give away that she wasn’t a boy.
But none of that happened because she wasn’t paying attention. What had happened was the transients dragged her into the ditch. One man held her down and silent as the other one straddled her legs, She remembered their stench and the feeling of their greasy hands on her body. How the one on top ripped her shirt open and cursed as the tight wrappings across her chest continued to hide her from him. She screamed and kicked as best as she could as he pulled a piece of metal that looked to have been worked from a larger one and crudely sharpened on a rock. It wasn’t much more then a shiv but it did its job as he slid hacked his way through the wrappings
She didn’t remember when she started crying, but remember that she was before his hands or mouth had closed over what she had worked so hard to hide. She remembered that she kept fighting as futile as it had been as the man on top slid down and worked to pull her pants down. She didn’t make it easy for him, kicking and flailing as best as she could. The man holding her mouth and upper body grew impatient for his turn and traded his grasp on her mouth for a tight hold on her throat.
Cinder remembered barely being able to breath and almost welcoming the idea of passing out through what might be coming. She remembered fighting to breath to scream as the man choking her worked at his pants and moved to straddle her chest. She kicked again and caught the guy at her legs some where on his body and earned a punch to the stomach that knocked what breath she had left out of her.
She knew she wasn’t going to last longer. She didn’t have much more breath left, and after that ended so did her fight. All she could think was ‘Breath.’
The guy on her chest tried to force her mouth open and she bit him. His hand pulled back, balled up and punched her in the jaw.
Her mind reeling from lack of air and the blow, instinct told her she couldn’t take another blow like that and she told her self ‘Think’
She grabbed at the ground with her free hands hoping to find a hand hold to use to kick up with or turn herself with.
Her hand closed on some thing. It was cold, hard, metal. Her fingers felt a strip of fabric wrapped around it. Her fingers found the handle of the shiv, one finger found the edge. She felt it turn in her hand.
‘Act’ she thought to herself. She felt her hand raising as the man on her chest fought to open her mouth with his free hand. He forced her opened mouth open and he lifted himself up from her chest.
The edge was sharp enough. It sank into flesh with a sickening sound that reminded her of when she gutted chickens for her mother. The man screamed and fell from her immediately. Cinder held tight to the shiv an pulled it out as she gasped for air. She remembered the blood on her face on her hands.
The guy at her legs looked over to his friend screaming to know what happened.
Cinder sat up and buried the shiv up to her grip into his neck and twisted it. Something popped and the mans eyes rolled back into his eyes. His hands falling loose to the ground before he could even reach for his throat. He went limp on her legs but Cinder had continued to kick and push.
She could hear someone screaming, high, shrill but who ever it was coming from, it didn’t sound like it held any fear to it. It was a scream of anger, furry, of power and vengeance.
She kicked herself free, oblivious to being nearly naked except for the remnants of her shirt and her pants that hung onto one leg. Cinder dove onto the man who was screaming and begging for help as he held his groin and shoved the shiv into his stomach and pulled down on it. When it stopped moving she pulled it out and buried it in again. Below her the man screamed and tried to fight her off. He grabbed her hands and Cinder felt her knee raise and drop down into his groin.
The man screamed and fell back unconscious and Cinder remembered being angry that he would die in unconsciousness. She pulled the shiv and thrust it into his neck and worked it across his throat then she turned back to the other man to make sure he was dead.
It had taken all three of her brothers to wrestle her off the bodies and to get the shiv from her hands. They had heard her screaming and came to her aid. She had disemboweled both men by the time they had arrived and moments later as she laid fighting to be lot go from their protective restraint, to be allowed to finish punishing the men that had tried to rape her, the world came crashing back in and she rolled over, vomited till she could raise no more and passed out.
Cinder had laid unconscious till almost dusk the next day. When she came to she remembered waking up with a incontrollable scream waiting at the back of her throat to be let loose and a single chain of thought, ‘Breath, think, act, and you will live through this. She did just that and the scream went away.
It had taken time before she didn’t jump when a male walked up behind her or touched her. It took longer till men could pass her on the street with out her having to have her fingers on the hilt of the knife that she stole from her father and carried with her every where. But, it had been the last time she had gotten sick and thrown up from something she had seen or done and it was the last time she worried about her father coming home drunk.
“Her name is Cinder and no she didn’t kill that man.” Evan said, the mention of her name snapping her out of her memory. She looked up and over to the crowd of towns folk that stood on the other side of the street gossiping among themselves about what they believed had happened in the bar and what they felt should be done with or to the two of them. Evan and Sheriff Nine Parker, who was still smacking at his ears ever so often and asking people to repeat things because he hadn’t heard them over the ringing in his ear, were standing in the middle of the street with the braver of the towns residents and those that claimed to be the towns council.
Evan had been trying to explain to them what had happened in the inn, how one of the towns oldest and most beloved residents had become infested with a seed from a demon, “Not a demon but a seed of one, like a child or an off-spring” Evan kept repeating to those who demanded to know how a demon had gotten into the old lady. Cinder patience had quickly been stretched thin at the constant rehashing of what Evan had explained several times and she had, on several occasions prior, stepped up to explain in her ‘colorful manner’ as Evan often described it what had happened and what the town could do if they didn’t like it. But each time Evan had silenced her with a look or a motion of her hand. Finally he had instructed her to stand guard over the door going into the Inn till they could sweep the place and make sure it was clean. It was really to keep her ‘mouth’ out of the conversation and she knew it. It didn’t help, she didn’t like how they talked down to him and how they disrespected him by questioning everything he said and on several occasions accusing him of lying.
Sheriff Nine was about useless in the conversation. When asked what he had saw or to back up what Evan had said, he would answer with how he hadn’t really seen anything from behind the turned over table where Evan had pushed him and he certainly hadn’t heard much of anything after the firing had started.
The bar maid had been of more use, between bouts of puking and dry heaving she had answered enough questions to confirm that Mrs Morris had turned into some horrid monster and attacked them. She couldn’t state who had killed Mr Tiggs, a local outland scrapper that came in to town regularly to sell what he salvaged from the waste and buy supplies. All she knew was he was dead, pinned to the wall with a pair of Mrs Morris knitting needles and it was usually at that point or the mention of removing the body from the wall that she would return to heaving. And no one seemed to care about the three traders as they were not part of the town and had ‘just been passing through’.
Cinder had caught Evans attention and reminded him of the book guy that had taken off after all of it. That had just raised more problems as it turned out he was the town scribe and currently could not be found. Which only started more speculations as to ‘What sort of terrible things these evil strangers had done to him’ from the crowd on the other side.
Evan had apparently had his fill of explaining and arguing with the town for he stepped back from the group and opened his jacket and let it drop to the ground.
The action turned heads to watch as he pulled the wrap shirt he wore open and let it fall from his shoulders to his waste.
There was gasps and cries of disgust and fear and more then a few turned away and a couple left. One of the ladies who had been helping steady and comfort the bar maid turned herself and vomited setting off a reaction from the bar maid.
Evan stood with his arms raised out to the side. Half of his upper torso and almost all of his left arm were covered in tattoo’s that moved like memories inked in flesh. Disturbing images with humans, angels, and demons, each repeating scenes that ranged from entrancing bliss to eye clawing torture and mutilation. As the crowd looked on the effect took hold, each of their eyes draw to an image that spoke to each of them individually. Giving them a honest and terrifying look into parts of their souls that few people would admit to even their own creator was inside them. Heads turned, hands covered their eyes as tears fell and others cried out in disgust.
Evan lowered his arms and pulled his shirt back up and covered the tapestry of flesh. “I was asked to come her and see if I could help on of yours that has fallen prey to a demon. If it is not to late I will do just that and should it be to late as it was for those inside the inn, I will lay them to rest where they can find peace. But understand this.” His voice climbed in level as he made sure everyone could hear him, “It is my right as an Archi-Scelus to claim dominion and to pass judgment over that which walks this earth in the flesh of man. Stay out of my way for I must only show mercy to those who deserve it.”
Cinder didn’t look away as everyone else did, that wasn’t the first time she had seen him do that and she loved it every time he did. To look into the tapestry of a Pain-Eater was to look at the stark truth about good and evil and to be left with only one choice. To embrace the truth about yourself.