Chapter 1

Story tags: rape, violence, coercion, death, fantasy, horror, virgin, reluctance, oral, job

“Igor, you worthless scum! Get up here!” the speaker in my cell ceiling squawked.

I hurried up the long stone stairwell to his laboratory. “Yes, Master?”

“This one isn’t a virgin! She’s been used! Weren’t you suspicious when you saw she was shaved? Didn’t you check? You’ve wasted my time!”

“But Master, she’s a neophyte nun. I thought she would be a virgin.”

“You thought? Since when do you think? Look at this! Look there, you cretin!”

He grabbed my head and forced it between the shapely blond’s knees to see her bald womanhood, cruelly exposed, a speculum stuck inside her. I staggered back when he released me. “Master, her head is bleeding.”

“Of course it is! YOU didn’t drug her enough, so she fought with me. I had to hit her with a wrench!”

“Did you kill her, Master?

“Imbecile! That’s your job! A dead subject is even less useful to me than an unclean one. Take her to the dungeon, wake her up, and chain her to the conveyor into the furnace, like the others. I want to complete my experiment by Halloween. Know this, Igor. If you don’t bring me a suitable subject by then, I’ll put YOU in the furnace!”

I undid her restraints and carried the young woman’s limp body down to my world. Master would do it. He used to burn the women himself before he made it part of my duties. He would chain me to the conveyor and feed me inch by excruciating inch into the flames if I didn’t fulfill his wishes. Either that, or he’d give me to the dogs.

When I first came to Master, I was a penniless young man, unable to get a job because of my appearance. My face and upper torso are covered with burn scars, my body twisted from the crushing force of the car that burned as it lay on top of me with my parents inside. Real doctors at a real hospital saved my life. Master worked there then in the morgue. He befriended me, staying in contact after he was relieved of his duties for reasons no one disclosed.

When my rehabilitation was as complete as it was going to get, I began working for Master, cleaning, caring for the animals he used in his experiments, and helping with his gruesome research. He paid my medical bills for me, something I would have spent the rest of my life failing to do. He gave me food and shelter when I had none. He enticed me into servitude with a promise of restoring my appearance to something acceptable in public if he succeeded with his experiments. But he treated me like a slave, forcing me to sleep in the dungeon below the medieval castle he called home.

When Master tired of his work on animals, he fed the few that remained to his dogs. Human research was next. When that began, my fate was sealed. There was no place for me in the world. I was a criminal, forced to help Master with his diabolical work, bound to him by my complicity in so much horror. I was doomed even by my name, “Igor.” Mom liked Stravinsky and never thought of the infamous creature by that name. Master did. He turned me into his fear-driven puppet, powerless against his evil cunning.

I lay the body of the young woman on the ancient hospital gurney Master had me use to use to prepare subjects for experiments or disposal. She was beautiful, a voluptuous girl torn from her life at its start.

She would live in the dungeon as long as I did. Master would kill me some day, but I was not going to my final judgment with the blood of a young girl on my hands. I had not killed anyone. I would not start now.

After bathing her and tending to her wounds, I dressed her in a faded hospital gown and pushed the gurney to the large cell my other captives called home.

“Another one, Igor?” Belinda asked. I always liked this young woman. Though she was blind from Master’s cruel attentions, she held no malice toward me. She was already hidden here when Master disposed of one of his subjects, before he left the task solely to me, so she knew where her loyalties must lie.

“Keep her quiet if she wakes up. If she screams and Master hears her, it won’t go well for anyone.”

“I’m good with the new ones, Igor. What’s her story?”

“I don’t know her name. I snatched her near the convent on the other side of town. She was dressed like a nun in training, so I thought she’d be pure, but she wasn’t. Master was furious that I didn’t check her.”

“I remember when you took me,” Belinda said, smiling at me with her ruined eyes. “I felt like someone was watching me when I left the library. I remember hearing footsteps, and then you grabbed me and held that cloth over my face. The next thing I knew, I was in your car, bound and naked, and you were looking at me.”

“I’m so ashamed you caught me. I didn’t want you to know what I did.”

“Igor, please. We’ve talked about this. You know I don’t care now. You could have been rough with me, but you weren’t. You were kind, risking your own life to take care of me after that monster’s machine blinded me. You’re the only reason I’m still alive. I wanted to be a nurse anyway, so I’ll do what I can.”

She put her head on my chest, and I stroked her curly hair as I always do. She hadn’t gotten a good look at me before Master’s abominable acts. Maybe that was why acted like she did. She never saw me. People always said I had a nice voice.