Page 42 of The Doll and The Domination

“Get off her! I’ll rip your fucking heads off!” Dessin is louder, angrier, and more unhinged than I’ve ever heard him. Niles tries to encourage me, Ruth begs for my release, but Warrose’s voice stands out like a shining beacon.

“Find your strength. Go into the darkness, and don’t come back until you find that light.”

Another fist punches the side of my face, swiping the blindfold from my eyes, yanking out those staples puncturing my scalp. I blink in surprise, clearing out the fuzziness, the tears, adjusting to the red and yellow circus bulbs. And as I focus on the Blood Mammoths towering over my beaten, bruised, feeble body, I can’t help but scream.

Their hair is black, hanging down to the floor, and eyes small, like tiny charcoal. Their skin is waxy, shiny, and covered in oozing boils. That rusted metal on their heads is in the shape of a birdcage. They smile down at me with only three or four teeth and large, rotting gums.

Before the next foot comes down on me, I let the void drape over them like a body bag. I follow them into the darkness as their consciousnesses tumbles, ignoring the grotesque images I saw before. We whiz past that.

And now they’re mine. Now they’re in my kingdom, suffering the same fate they’ve just made me suffer. Being chased naked, beaten, scared, screaming.

“This is who you are now.” My voice comes out like that of a god. Laced in echoes, in an otherworldly, thunderous presence. “Scared. Small. Powerless.”

I hover above them, like the devil over his pit of writhing souls. And my words are their gospel, their command, their only way of existence. I can feel their fear set in. A feeling foreign to them, never before felt. My words rewire the essence of their very beings. Because here in this prison void, I am the creator. The god. The devil.

And they are my dolls to play with.

I’ve fixed them.

With the sound of whooshing wind and my stomach dipping, I fall to the ground by the cages of my family. A loud thud. Looking up, the Blood Mammoth’s eyes are leaking tears of blood.

And they scattered like cockroaches.

10. The Side Effects

Skylenna

One cage automatically opens.

I’m unaware of the person above me as I get scooped up, carried, and held in someone’s lap.

“She’s cold as ice. What do I do?” Warrose asks in a quiet panic.

I breathe in through my nose. He smells of a winter storm, of dark spice. I try to focus on that as I tremble ferociously as if I’m seizing. Ice coats my bones, splinters through my veins.

“Mm?ake it st?op,” I stutter through chattering teeth.

This is much worse than last time. When I took Aurick to the prison void, I was cold for a few long moments, but it passed. This feels different. It’s as if I’ve been tossed into a blizzard without an inch of clothing. It’s as if I’ve been frozen at the core of an iceberg.

It’s agony.

“Her lips are blue,” Warrose says to someone. “Why is this happening?”

“She went to the prison void again,” Marilynn suggests.

“Take your pants off, Warrose. She needs body heat.” Dessin. His voice is hoarse, strained, broken. I want to reach out to him. I want to tell him I made it. I made it back to him.

Warrose sets me down. Moves quickly. I hear pants hit the floor.

“I’m sorry. I have to,” he tells me in a rush, then hisses. “Christ, her skin is ice.”

But his is fire, and damn, it feels good. I’m held, squeezed, and secured tightly in his naked lap. He puts my face in the crook of his neck, wraps his large arms around my body, rubs up and down until the friction builds warmth.

“Bring her closer to my bars,” Ruth begs.

Warrose doesn’t object. He swivels to the left, bringing our naked bodies closer until a pair of arms are holding my legs.

“Tell Dessin—I made it,” I whisper to Warrose. My breathing is low, but I need him to hear it. I need him to know I’d do it again to be with him. I can’t imagine the stress, the anguish, he went through worrying about me.

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