Storming into History

This is an entry in the ATF Story Writing Contest 2024/II. The story is posted by the organizer. The actual author of the story will remain anonymous until at least the end of the contest.

Jessie couldn’t leave well enough alone. She was a strong swimmer and hated being confined to the roped areas off the lakeside beach. She didn’t need lifeguards or any of that other nonsense. Just for fun, she decided to bob under the rope and see how far away she could get without her parents, the lifeguard, or any adults spotting her. Or any kids. She wasn’t a kid anymore! But they tended to tattle. She kept her face low, just above the water, back-floating but with most of her body submerged and very still, kicking calmly to propel herself further and further away.

It was working! She dared lift her head up and saw that she’d left the swimming area miles behind her. Well, maybe not miles. But at least a quarter mile, or maybe half. She smiled. Her parents were letting the beach staff handle safety, but they were easy to fool. Now she could explore for a while before anyone knew she was gone. She swam out to the far side where the Sandy River started. Maybe she could float down it for a little way.

It was such fun, sneaking off. The river’s current was evident as she got near it. She realized she might have to get out and walk back to the lake as she floated ever faster along its path, leaving the lake behind. But that was fine. A walk through the gentle forest in just a bikini didn’t bother her. It would be fun. She happily floated for ten, twenty, thirty minutes just enjoying the scene. She could walk back faster than she swam. But as she rounded a bend, the current narrowed and sped up, and she realized the shore was getting rocky and steep, without the gentle river bank. Walking would be harder. It was time to get out. She tried to swim for the right bank, but the current pulled her faster. Worse, she heard the distant gentle roar ahead that told her she was floating towards the rapids.

Now she kicked out hard for the bank, but the currents gripped her and pulled her in as the roar grew louder and closer. This was very bad and fear gripped her throat. She peered downstream and was relieved to see that the rapids weren’t that bad, but bad enough. She was going to tumble and get scraped up. And of course one wrong hit on her head could kill her. She frantically tried to get to the shore. She tried for the other bank, just to get out of the water, but it sucked her into the mild whitewater, knocking her around. The rocks were smooth and small, but she bounced off and over several. She was going to have a hard time hiding those scrapes from her parents. She was in such trouble now!

But then, more minutes later, the roar grew louder. Much louder. And when she looked ahead she saw some kind of structure built right across the water. All the flow was channeling through a notch in the middle. Her heart leapt to her throat as she screamed. She was heading right for an old dam! Flailing about, she tried with all her strength to get out, but the current sucked her right along as that gap approached. As she hurled towards the edge, she spotted iron railings on the dam. She could grab on! She frantically aimed for the edge and caught one then both hands on the grip.

It wasn’t the biggest dam. It wasn’t the Hoover Dam or anything. It wasn’t Niagara Falls. But the current gripped her, making her clutch for dear life as the flow dropped thirty feet onto rocks below. The rails circled around the weir edge, both upstream and downstream. She was barely holding on. There was no way to pull herself against that current, but as she shimmied outward, she got out of the flow entirely, dangling by her grip thirty feet above wet rocks below. Even if it didn’t kill her, a fall would be devastating. But the railing was bolted in place all the way to the bank. It would be just like monkey bars, except going sideways, with a huge drop, for over fifty feet. She cried and began, but she’d played on lots of monkey bars and could hold her own weight. Finally she crawled up onto land, collapsing and sputtering as the impact finally caught up with her. She’d come so close to death!

Now she sat there, coughing and shaking. She was on the wrong side of the river. She couldn’t walk back to the beach unless she crossed it, and downstream was rapids for as far as she could see. She would have to walk back to the lake, swim widely around the inlet, and then back to the beach.

Only when she stood up did she make two discoveries. On the upstream side, the river bank was made of jagged cliff walls with no obvious way to get up along them without slipping. And her struggles in the water had ripped her bikini off, leaving her totally and utterly naked!

Jessie stood there, starkers, shaking. Now she was in a bad way. And she saw only one path. She couldn’t walk upstream through that terrain, and going downstream would require scrambling down and along more cliff faces. Crossing there was impossible. The only way out was walking away from the river and trying to veer back to the lake, somehow. Looking across the river, she saw the old overgrown access road from back when the dam did anything. But on her side, there was nothing. If only she’d hit the other bank she could just walk back, humiliated and in a lot of trouble, but safe. Now she had only fear and the unknown.

But that was that. She began walking, making her way into the thick, tangled forest completely naked and lost, trying to find a way out. She picked her way over deadfalls, big boulders, cervices, thorny patches of wild weed, and other obstacles that left her struggling to push her naked body along, fighting for each step of the way. By the time she had left the river far enough back to be silent to her, she still didn’t know which direction she was going. It was a warm day, but high clouds left the sky a uniform white. She could barely even see which way the sun was from her. An hour passed. Then another, and Jessie grew increasingly despondent. She was utterly lost, tired, hurting, naked, hungry, and terrified.

But there was nothing else she could do other than keep going and try to find something. Anything. Where was the lake? She’d been trying to drift to her right. If she turned a hard right, she might just backtrack. Or she’d gone too much and a hard right would send her paralleling the downstream direction. Or she’d looped around the lake entirely. It wasn’t that large of a lake anyway. Or she’d drifted left and a right turn now would be no better or worse than the wrong way she was already going. Or she’d come across a road in just a few minutes unless she turned and missed it. Or she had to turn to find it. Or, or, or…

So she did the next best thing. She walked and she cried. She’d really messed up. She was just a stupid little misbehaving girl and now she was going to die alone. And when they found her body, everyone would be all, ‘ooh, look at the dumb little naked girl, what a way to go!’ Assuming a bear didn’t eat her.

Hours later, the sky grew darker. The sun was sinking, somewhere, but the thickening clouds now gave her no idea where it was. She had no sense of direction. The forest was clearing out a little, with taller trees blotting out light for lower underbrush, but it was still a slog, and her bare skin felt everything as she trudged through the forest growth. It was cooling a little, too, though the hot summer wasn’t going to kill her of a chill. Thirst, however, threatened. She came across tiny streams from time to time throughout the afternoon, but she didn’t know where the next one would appear.

Jessie didn’t want to stop. She was tired but still wound up. The fading light gave her no choice. The thick clouds blocked everything, and she was many miles from any town. The lake beach and a few campgrounds near it were the only human civilization, and she was only getting further away from them. A few campfires would be invisible to her, miles away through thick forest. She finally had to stop and sit where she was, letting the darkness overcome her world.

Now, with nothing else to do at all, she was alone with her own mind. It could force her to dwell on her danger. Or her hunger or thirst. Or her chances of rescue. Or wild animals. But no. Sitting there, her mind wandered to how naked she was. Naked as naked could be. It wasn’t where she wanted to be, mentally, but it was what she thought about, and being naked also made her so helpless and vulnerable. Anything could happen to her. Once, her mom had tried to explain it to her. “Jessie,” she’d said in frustration, “We’re female. You’re a girl and a pretty one and that’s just the way it is. It’s always going to give you some benefits and some disadvantages, and one of those disadvantages is that men are going to want to use you for their own ends. I know you know what rape is. Any girl can get raped at any age, but now you’re just about old enough that they’re going to want to rape you a lot more. A whole lot more. You’ve got to be careful, Jessie!”

And yet, she wasn’t careful at all. She was naked and it was terrifying, the most dangerous experience she’d ever had, so hopefully she would survive it.

And if she did survive it, someone would have to find her first. There was no way to just end it otherwise. Someone was going to find and see her totally naked. Who? One person? Two? A group? Men? Boys? Rescue workers? Crazed hermits? Sex offenders on a jailbreak? That last one made her shiver even without the cold air. What if she was ‘rescued’ but not returned home? What other options were there for her future? What would become of her?

She realized something new as she sat there alone in the dark woods. They might not be looking for her at all. Not in the way she needed. As far as they knew, she was swimming near the beach. They might be looking for her body, underwater. They might assume she drowned, since she’d snuck off so successfully. The only search party might be scuba divers and dredge crews. Help was only a few miles away, but they may as well have been on the moon and searching in the stars for all the good it did her.

Jessie never went to bed at sunset, so she sat there, wide awake, imagining all the things that would go wrong. Even in the best case, unless she saw someone walk by with a flashlight looking for her, she was in for a long night and more pain. Her stomach hurt from her hunger and her muscles all ached. She sat there, finally crying. She was broken, she realized. Only a defective little girl would be so dumb. Then it started raining, and the silent forest broke into a sustained roar as the deluge poured down over her.

The thunder began to pound on her as lightning flashed images of the drenched woods to her. She didn’t want to sit under a tree, but trees were everywhere. She settled for crawling a few feet away from the tree trunk she had been leaning on and lying down to curl up a few feet away. It was the best she could do as she huddled there. She had to be the sight, a lost little naked girl crying on the forest floor, rolled up in a ball.

The lightning flashed and flashed. She realized it was a full-fledged electrical storm, and the ear-shattering thunder on top of her convinced her to crawl further away from the trees. Not that she could go far. It was a thick forest, and she was never more than ten feet from a tree trunk. As she stared out into the strobing forest, she blinked and wondered if her mind was fooling her. It looked like someone was out there, standing a short distance away. Just watching her. She should have called out. But if he was real, the thought was too scary. If he was real, why was he just staring at her?

The lightning continued searing the forest with light in tiny glimpses. Was the figure getting closer? Was a man stalking her? He was covered up in heavy rain gear, bulky rubber stuff. She couldn’t see his face. She assumed he was a man from his size and bearing. More flashes, and he came closer, never in motion. He was just closer, standing there, pulling ever closer. He had to be an illusion. The lightning paused, and she imagined the storm receding. But then it flared up in several rapid pulses. The man was standing no more than ten feet away from her. She let out a loud shriek, audible even over the crashing thunder.

It flashed again. Now he was five feet away, almost close enough to touch, encased in a rain slicker, an invisible man hiding in rubber. But he was no trick of the light. He was right there.

“Please!” she screamed. “Don’t hurt me!” Another flicker, and he stood right over her. She flailed out and smacked nothing. The lightning flashed again, and she was alone. Crying, she curled back up on the wet ground. She was losing it, after only a few hours. She was losing her little mind!

The storm ebbed, with the thunder fading though the lightning flashed hard and often from further away until it was just a glow somewhere far away. Then there was just the roar of the falling rain around her for hours until she couldn’t stay awake any more. She shivered herself to sleep. Waking came often and abruptly during the night. Until she opened her eyes at last in a dim daylight.

She had swallowed enough rainwater to not be thirsty, but her stomach still ached from hunger. There weren’t even any berries to eat. She climbed to her feet and began walking, hoping against hope she could find a way out of the woods. They were just so thick and grew on such ragged terrain that she couldn’t seem to go in a straight line. She walked for hours, getting more and more lost. All she knew was that she hadn’t hit the river or the lake. She doubted she could get back to the river if she tried.

She tried not to, but it was impossible not to cry. She was alone and dying out there. The underbrush cleared out a little in time, but then she was walking in a deep and dark forest with a high canopy that blocked the entire sky. She could see through the tiniest of gaps high above that the sun was finally out, and she could have stayed walking in one direction if only she could see more than pinpricks of light, seemingly blinding against the dark forest floor. They guided her nowhere, so she walked aimlessly, more or less straight ahead, giving up on trying to find anything. The lake was a lost cause.

Her sobbing came and went as she stepped her way through the endless deep woods. She still hadn’t found as much as a single berry bush, and her belly growled at her without pause. She also began to grow thirsty again. Her screams for help began to fade. She realized it without having thought about it. The first day she’d screamed out often. Now her loud, frantic pleas were coming less often and with less conviction. She was accepting her fate without even realizing it until the light faded again. She’d walked the whole day, naked and terrified, with no results.

The forest undergrowth was much thinner now, but still far from flat. She had a little time to try to pick her resting spot for the night as the light vanished and the rumblings of another summer thunderstorm picked up. She lay there in the dark, unable to see to walk any further, waiting for the skies to open on her.

They did. Finally. She couldn’t see the sky, and even the lighting around her barely penetrated the thick leaves, but the water did, and the blasts of thunder did. She lay there, on her back, facing up, her mouth wide open, drinking up as much falling water as she could. She knew she had to keep at it or risk thirst. She was parched anyway.

Lying there, slumped like a lump on the forest floor, she held her mouth open when she looked off to her side. The lightning flashes were dimmer than the first night, but bright enough for her to see. And there it was again. Her imaginary stalker, covered in a thick poncho. He wasn’t standing this time, but walking over, each flash catching him in mid stride. It was the same man. Or at least the same rain gear. And it was so real. She sat up, squealing in terror. This couldn’t be real, but it couldn’t be a hallucination. What was it?

Fifty feet. Twenty. Five. The next flash had him standing over her as she shrank back, sobbing. “Are you real?” she cried. She tried to reach out, and slapped at air and raindrops. But the next flash showed him not gone, but just stepped back, out of her reach. He was still there. “Please! Help me! What do you want?” she cried. With the next flash, he was gone.

Jessie collapsed in a fit of hysterical wailing. She was going to die insane. But then she rolled over and there were his feet as he stood towering over her. Thunder completely drowned out her scream. Then she was blinded briefly as a tree no more than fifty feet away exploded, shattered down the middle by a brilliant bolt of lightning. The crack of thunder made her clutch her fingers to her ears. But only for a moment. A strong grip settled around her wrist. His grip.

“No! Please! Don’t hurt me!” she screamed as he lifted her up by her hand, then grabbed her and slung him over his shoulder. “Oh God! Don’t hurt me! Please!” she screamed as he carried her away. She tried to fight, but he held her legs in his grip and her little fists did nothing on his back. She couldn’t see or twist away. This was it. He was surely taking her to her death. Eventually. He was going to rape her and kill her and eat the body parts! She cried all the way along until he stopped for a second. And with his next steps he carried her through a doorway and out of the rain. Warm, flickering light surrounded her as he set her onto her feet.

He wasn’t holding her against her will? He wasn’t going to tie her up? She looked around at an old-fashioned log cabin, and not a tiny one either. It was a big room, with rafters and a high roof. A big fireplace roared on one wall and closer to her a wood stove radiated wonderful heat. There was evidently a second room, but it was behind a wide curtained-off opening in the far wall. The man was pulling off his rain gear, thick old items like in a movie set in olden times.

“I need to ask you something,” she worked up the nerve to say. “Are you going to hurt me? Are you going to kill me?”

“I will keep you safe,” he replied, facing her at last. He looked quite normal aside from the dated clothing. Normal and very big. “You would not have survived a second night out there.”

“A second? A second night? So that was you last night, scaring me? Why didn’t you protect me then? Say something?”

“You don’t belong here,” he said simply, walking to the kitchen corner. “But here you are, so let’s feed you, quickly.”

Now, standing there and dripping, Jessie realized she’d forgotten she was naked. It all came crashing back, though, making her gasp and flush. She clutched her hands over herself, trying to get full coverage. “Um, can I get something to wear? Please?”

He glanced up. She wasn’t ready for his reply. “No.”

She gasped. He’d said no? “No? What do you mean? You won’t let me cover up? At all? At least give me a towel or blanket or something.”

He continued gathering meats and cheeses on a plate. “No.” He looked up at her. “You’ve got your hands if you want them.”

Now she flushed hard as shivers went up and down her spine. He was going to keep her naked? “Please! Sir. I just want to cover up! I’m cold!”

“Sit by the fire,” he replied. She stared a moment longer, but he did not waver. She finally shuffled over and sat herself on the big sofa in front of the blaze. It was warm! He walked over a moment later with a bowl of soup. “Here, start with this.”

She really wanted to get dressed, and the sofa was covered in old throw blankets. She could have just grabbed one and dared him to stop her. But, then he might have stopped her, angrily. She left it alone and began sipping at her soup. It was okay. She wasn’t done when he returned with a platter of tasties that he set on a stand in front of her.

In front of them. He sat down right beside her. She tingled at his closeness. He was choosing to humiliate her by keeping her naked, but still feeding her with something that looked like a holiday smorgasbord. Mixed signals. Was he fattening her up before he raped her. “Don’t dawdle,” he said. “Eat and drink.”

“Okay. Thank you,” she replied, trying to stay polite for the kind, scary man.

“You should not be here. What are you doing here?”

“I got lost. I lost my bikini in the river and I was trying to find my way back to the campsite.”

“Okay.” He didn’t sound convinced. He sat and nibbled on her treats with her but mostly let her eat in peace. She tried to eat one handed to cover herself with the other, but it was stupid. She was going to have to show this man her body and she had no secrets anymore anyway. She ate and sat as his eyes never left her until he stood up again. She continued eating.

Outside, the thunder pounded and the lightning, visible as flashes through a couple small, high windows, flickered even harder than the previous night. It wasn’t a milder storm after all. She almost didn’t notice the one flash that came from inside the cabin. She looked up to see him pointing a huge camera at her. An antique. The flash had loudly just gone off.

“Oh my God! Are you taking pictures of me?” she cried, now clutching her hands over her chest and vagina.

He just stared for a moment. “I guess you object,” he finally said.

“Uh, yeah.” He walked away and set the camera down. Then he sat beside her again. Staring. “Do you have to stare at me?” she asked.

“I’m just trying to remember your face, your body,” he said. “Remember what you look like right now. Just in case.”

“That’s kind of creepy,” she said. She regretted it immediately. He could kill her and bury her raped body outside with no one the wiser. But he didn’t explode in anger, so she calmed down. She continued to munch on the cheese and sausage cracker spread. Nuts, olives, even a few candies. It was like Christmas.

Suddenly he stood up, fast enough to startle and scare her. Jessie stopped eating. She was warm now and well-fed. She could focus on other things. Was this the attack? But he seemed to be listening. Over the storm she didn’t know what he could hope to hear. “Don’t forget to drink plenty of water,” he said as he stepped away.

“Okay,” she slowly replied. She did drink, but now watched as he opened a large closet door. He pulled out an old rollaway bed! Her heart stopped, or so it seemed. He rolled it to the middle of the room and unfolded it. Then he went back to the closet and pulled out a big box. By then Jessie was on her feet, acutely away once again of how insanely vulnerable she was. The man was big and strong, while she was a skinny little naked girl at his mercy. Could she run for the front door fast enough? She inched towards it, slowly. It was not locked, just heavy. At least she didn’t think it was locked. She hadn’t seen him lock it but it could be automatic. He perked his head up, listening. She tried to listen too.

And she heard it!

Now she trembled and gasped before backing away from the door, looking to it, then to him, and back to the door. “What’s out there?” she whimpered. There was a rumble, a growling, above the storm and different. Not rain or thunder. She felt it as much as saw it. Not just felt it in her body as in her mind. Something was out there. Something that, dream-like, reached out and tickled her terror center in her own mind. It was bad because it was just bad. Her heart was pulverizing her chest. What horror was it?

The man grabbed her. She’d forgotten about him. But now he pulled her over to the rollaway bed. There was no bedding, just the mattress. But there were also, also, leather cuffs! Straps. Chains! “Oh God!” she sobbed but it was too late for her. The man pushed Jessie down on her back and began with first her right wrist and then her left. He locked the soft, unyielding cuffs to her and to the corners of the bed. “No! Please!” she shrieked, but even her legs were weaker than his arms. She never stood a chance. She was pulled tight, with no slack to do more than wriggle a little.

“I would tell you to relax and let it happen, but I know you can’t do that,” he said. “It won’t matter if you scream.”

“Please!” she sobbed. “Stop this!” Tears now gushed from her eyes as the manifestation grew louder and stronger outside. She could feel it, like static in the air prickling her flesh and soul mercilessly.

The latch moved, on the front door. The hinges creaked as the door swung inward. The storm still raged outside but that was not what terrified Jessie as she lay there, spread out wide, legs parted, hands held out of range of fending anyone off. The first monstrosity crossed the threshold. That was all she could call it. An abomination. Bipedal, but big. Alien. Not of this earth or even this universe for all she knew. Yet, she couldn’t even focus her eyes on it properly. There seemed to be tentacular growths around its head, medusa-like, but it was all a blur. Otherwise the thing was cloaked, hunched over but still eight feet tall.

And more followed. Some she could focus on, but their bloated, cystic faces and appendages gave no comfort for their clarity. Three. Four. Finally, six such creatures filed into the big cabin, their heads still clearing the high rafters above. And the man stood there, facing them. Jessie heard screams. Her own. She strained with all her paltry strength to break free of the bonds holding her. What would they do to her body? How much pain would she die in?

“There is nothing and no one in this dwelling that threatens you!” he said. “Your peace is absolute!”

They began to disperse, slowly at first, but separating around the room, slowly wandering, looking to-and-fro with what had to be heads. Only four of them had anything that looked like eyes. But one of them, the first one through the door, walked over towards her. Jessie whimpered, feeling her belly threatening to vomit back up her supper. Her teeth chattered and her body shivered violently. It was very cold in the room. The creature looked directly at her, she assumed. The orbs of its eyes had no pupils or irises. They were pure black. She knew nothing of which direction it looked. It could be staring at her body, spread out and helpless below it. Or it could be ignoring her. Blurry tentacles reached out from within, writhing and waving over her body. She cringed and cried as several of them touched her, sliding briefly along her chest and abdomen. And along her vagina. Her legs. Her face!

It moved on. Jessie breathed again and her heart resumed beating, though she still whimpered and trembled. But another one of them approached and studied her. It was one of the solids, she didn’t know what else to call it. It was not blurry, but had a big bony face with eyes and some opening that could be a mouth or an anus. Or something altogether different. But the eyes had pupils. Lots of them! And it stared at her, examining her. It’s clawed appendages stroked her body, up and down. Poking. A long fingernail (?) slid inside her slit a bit as it roamed over her, down to up, before skimming along her bare skin further upward. She cried more tears. It moved on. She cried more tears.

She lifted her head to see them gathering by the door. Two of them had studied her, or maybe studied the space she existed in. She couldn’t even guess what they looked at. Four of them had studied a wooden post in the room thoroughly. But maybe they were leaving! Just a few feet from the door they all stopped at once, turning back.

Then Jessie heard it, the voice. Maybe in the air and maybe in her head. Or both. “There is a girl here!” A small squeak burst from her throat. There was indeed a girl there, her! Jessie, strapped naked to a rollaway bed!

“You checked. I offered up my home in good faith,” he said back. But they dispersed again into the room. “Nothing here threatens you. You have no enemies in this building.” If they heard or cared, they did not show it. But now they converged on Jessie, all six of them. Blurred, shimmering, grotesque creatures straight from hell surrounded her, staring down at her. All six reached down at once, probing the bed, probing Jessie’s body. Slimy, bony, cold skinned appendages in their mixture, roaming all over her bare skin. Head to toe. In her mouth, her nose, her vagina. Feeling everything, like the three blind men with the elephant, not quite seeing her but noticing something. Something that made them suspect a girl was there. The girl was there, sweating and whimpering right under them.

“Nothing threatens you here.”

“You have a girl here.” That voice, it echoed in her head. It wasn’t of the Earth.

“I do not.”

“You have a girl here.”

“I’m sorry, but you are mistaken.”

Jessie lay there, listening. Praying to an empty sky that she could survive this. Or die fast and painlessly. She was a girl! She was lying chained right in front of them!

“The girl is here. You have a girl here!”

Now he walked over. They parted to let him pass, and now he too stood over Jessie, pointing down at her. “Is this what you mean?” he asked them.

Now the first one, the indistinct wraith that she took as their leader reached down and again slid blurred and writhing tentacles down her body, stopping at her vagina. They lingered there, tickling her slit in all the wrong ways. Extreme cold crackling flowed into her there, radiating out into her pelvis, making her body tense up, straining at her chains. Then a second one reached down, also feeling along her body. Also stopping at her crotch, feeling on her, in her. Flickering, vibrating her. And a third. The fourth was different. Its slimy appendage stopped at her vagina and dipped slightly into her. But now an ooze flowed down from further up its arm (?) and when it touched her opening she felt a sharp sting like an electrical boiling simmering at her special place. She cried out, too loudly, but they may not have heard or cared. It touched and sizzled right on the little nubbin, her clit. And it seeped down deeper. The last two remained upright, not touching her, though one of them was the second being from before that had probed her skin.

“There is a girl in this room! We know that there is a girl in the room!” The voice grew insistent. Agitated. But now the man pulled over a chair from the dining table and sat down beside her. He began to massage her pelvis, working his fingers to her vagina. And his fingers knew the way, unlike the swirling and revolting other flesh endings of the creatures. He flicked right at her clit, making her gasp. No, not gasp. She expected to gasp for that split second before she cried out. His touch was amplified, electrified. She’d touched herself, of course. Plenty. She knew what she had down there. But, no one else ever had! And now this scary man who kidnapped her only to feed her, only to turn her over to demons was touching her too much and too well.

“Please don’t!” she blurted out, then caught herself. She couldn’t blink with her eyes bugged out. She’d spoken right in front of them, her first words since their entry. Now they would know for sure. But they continued to stand back. And he continued to play with her clit. Far too roughly. She cried out and then just plain cried as the sensations blasted through her. As she lay there bawling, he vigorously rubbed and scratched at her vagina. Soon enough, it happened. That good feeling, the one she’d finally learned was called the orgasm. She knew them well now, but never like this. She’d never touched herself so roughly she sobbed as she came. But he did, and the sizzling tingling of that fluid permeated ever deeper into her.

She noticed slowly that it stopped. As the tears rolled out of her eyes she lifted her head up to see that the man was undressing. So now it happened. Now she got raped. But her clit was aflame and that sensation of want and craving was all over her. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad way. It was happening. She knew of erect penises, but now she saw one, her first. So this was it. This man, in his forties or possibly thirties, or possibly fifties, was going to take it from her, her virginity. That thing, that penis, it was going into her vagina. That was how it worked. She’d had sex-ed. She knew everything except anything about what to expect. He knelt between her spread legs and leaned down. His penis touched her slid. He guided it in for a clean piercing. “Oh God!” she whimpered, again speaking, but now she knew it didn’t matter. She grunted and cried out as he pushed slowly into her slick opening. Still, she moaned. Any speed was too fast. Was she going to bleed? She led an active life. Her fingers had never encountered the hymen. It was probably long gone from other activities. But still, that stuffed feeling that made her breasts tingle and formed goosebumps on every exposed bit of skin grew and grew. He pushed it in. All the way, until his hairy crotch pressed on her smooth one.

“There is a girl in the room!” The voice burst out, knocking Jessie away from her scant sensation of pleasure and hope that she wouldn’t be dismembered and eaten. It would have been laughable. Six alien demon spawns watching this man rape her, and they were declaring a girl was in the room. And that girl was being pounded! Jessie cried out as the thrusting began. She was already aflame from his touching and from the situation and definitely from that alien finger slime that had dripped into her slit before. Oh how her nipples tingled, but she gasped on realizing that two of them were massaging her chest, one on each side, one with ghostly tentacle and one with a bony finger set. When they moved on, away from her nipple, she actually felt… felt… empty. She cried out as the penis in her hit her clit just right, or just wrong. It was excruciating. Real pain blasted her vagina. A set of pliers yanking her clit could not have been less painful. And yet. And yet…

“Aagghhh!” There were no words. Another orgasm. Her first ever with a penis in her. She expected to choke on her screams. What had they done to her? She knew her own body. No sensation that strong should have been possible. It was wonderful! And she needed it to stop! It was too much. Too fast. Too harsh. Real pain hurt and made her cry, and she cried as he hurt her while the lightning and thunder pounded around her. Bad. But he was not going to stop. Not ever!

Her brain went there. It would have to stop, but it could be hours. Less than two minutes had her in agony, wracked by orgasm but still in true agony as her little body twisted itself trying to escape that hell. She lay there, enduring, being raped and violated and ruined. And as she looked up through copious tears, blurring her entire world as she sobbed without restraint, the whirling, indistinct face of the leading demon for one moment came into crystal clear focus. Her tears allowed her to look upon the monster of the ancient world hovering above her. Her brain recoiled, blasting the image out of her memory, willing no long-term memory to form of that visage. And the man’s penis continued to pump her. To pummel her innards. She came. She cried. She quivered and spasmed.

Her older friends were unclear. Could she feel a man’s cum in her. Some said yes. Some said no. She could. Now she knew, as the warmth of semen filling her womb seeped into her nerves. His sweaty body collapsed onto hers. He was heavy, for sure. But it did not last long. He kissed her, suddenly, on her lips, and then rose back up. Now, without the sex, Jessie still lay there utterly helpless and terrified, alone under six creatures. The man put a robe on.

He stood beside them. The stared at her. A few probed her body, their very touch making her scream out. Loudly. It was over. Now they would chew her up and eat her. Death would be a relief.

“We suspect you harbor girls.” That voice. Eating at the inside of her skull.

“I can’t prove anything for when you are not here. But now, here, nothing threatens you,” he replied. “No girl is here.”

“Do not violate our agreement!”

“I have violated nothing. Nothing at all!” His words smacked Jessie. He’d violated her. Not two minutes ago. She’d been raped! She was a raped girl now, and nothing would change that. Still, given the circumstances… Had he saved her life? Somehow.

They turned and floated away, lumbering back to the door. It still hung open, with the raging storm and lightning outside. They did not stop. One by one, they filed out, exiting into the storm and out of her sight. He closed the door.

Now Jessie returned to crying. It was so much. Too much. Sex. Terror. Abominations. Ecstasy. Terror. He stood above her. Now she knew. She was the reason they came. She was why they invaded his home, why he did not want her there. He said nothing but walked away, returning a moment later with that gigantic camera. He also had a tripod in tow and set the camera atop it. She didn’t even try to protest as he snapped a single picture of her. The mechanical whirling of the camera parts and electrical charging reminded her of noir movies. It was absurd. And terrifying. A cell phone was so much less intrusive into the soul. This naked picture of her abused young body was an event, at least to him.

“Don’t escape,” he said to her.

“Wait, what’s happening?” she cried as he walked out of her view. She tried to turn, but he’d gone somewhere she could not see. And that was it. She waited for his return but there was none. She just lay there, staring up into the shadowy rafters above, tickled by firelight and hiding, hiding something for sure. The firelight slowly faded and she heard a few faint snores as the thunder outside subsided and calmed. For a long time she lay there, quivering, trying to process what had just happened. The horror. And, she had to be honest, the joy. If she ever chose to have sex again, it would never be as memorable. In time the weight of her eyelids won out.

There was sunlight. One two windows graced the room, but they let the light of day in, one of them shining bright with the rising sun. She was still chained to the bed. Bare, exposed. She had no blanket or sheet, nor pillow. She’d slept chained and naked in the same position he’d locked her into the night before. “Hello?” she called out meekly, barely audible. But then she heard stirring. She tried to remember, had there been a normal bed in that big room? Or was the curtained off area the bedroom for non-captive-naked-girls?

Now he shambled into her view, robed and bleary-eyed. He yawned and then unlocked her ankles and wrists, allowing her free movement again. “The bathroom is over there,” he said, pointing. She started to get up, but squeaked in new fear as he grabbed her shoulder and sat her back down. “First, what is your name?”

“I’m Jessie,” she said.

“Jessie, alright. Jessie. I had no time to explain anything yesterday and you would never have believed what I told you. But now you’ll believe me, won’t you?”

“Oh yes!”

“Jessie, I can’t even begin to explain what you saw, but those entities are real. And if you leave this cabin today, if you go out into the light, they will see you. They will know exactly where you are. Believe me, they are not blind. If you don’t want them to see and seize you, stay indoors! Got it?”

“Yes! I get it! I won’t leave!”

He nodded and backed off, allowing her to rise and attend her morning needs. “Can I shower?” she called out. To her relief, he replied in the affirmative. She wanted to clear herself. She’d been grossly violated. His semen was still in her, whatever hadn’t been processed and flushed yet. And that slime! She turned the water on hot and stood under it for a long time, soaping up and cleaning out. His bathroom fixtures were as old-fashioned as his kitchen and his photography, with a clawfoot tub and old brass fixtures. But the hot water faded. She dried off and hit a quandary. Should she wrap herself in the towel when she walked back out? She wanted to. It would be the decent thing for him to allow. But after last night… She dried off and hung the towel, not once wrapping it around herself fully. It was her fate to stay naked for a bit longer. Or a lot longer.

“Feeling better?” he asked.

“Yes. Thank you,” she said. He made no comment about her body, though he did look at it. Her rapist. Would he bring it up, or would she have to ask. What happened? She smelled bacon. He was cooking.

“Can I ask your name?” she asked.

“It’s Morton,” he replied. “Did you not know that?”

“No. How would I?” He did not answer her. “Okay, Morton,” she began.

“Mr. Morton. That’s my last name,” he said.

“Oh. Okay. Mr. Morton, I’d really like to know what’s happening to me. Are you going to hurt me? Am I in danger?”

He continued pounding the scrambled eggs. But he did reply. “Yes, Jessie. You are in danger. I meant it. If you wish to die in more pain than anyone should ever experience, just go outside.”

She felt slightly nauseous. But she had to ask. “What about you? Are you going to hurt me?”

“Before this is over? I will probably cause you pain. Yeah, Jessie. I’m going to hurt you.” Before she could ask, “A lot.” She nearly lost it, but sucked down her distress. He didn’t seem threatening. And there was last night.

“Because you have to,” she finished for him. He nodded. “Am I going to die anyway?”

“I hope not.”

“But I might? I might be murdered?” She whimpered. He nodded. Wordlessly he began scooping breakfast food onto two plates. Eggs. Bacon. Toast with marmalade. Apples. OJ. She sat down at one of the chairs. It was such an odd sensation. She was almost used to standing around naked in front of this man, and cloth from a sofa or a mattress on her body seemed familiar enough. But her bare butt on hard wooden kitchen chairs smacked her in the head how naked she was and how odd that was for her. But she said nothing and joined Mr. Morton for a breakfast.

“Can I still ask questions?” she asked.

“I may not be able to answer them all, but go ahead?”

“Why did you take my pictures? Last night?”

“It was a stopgap measure,” he said. She wasn’t expecting that answer. “I’ll take stronger measures today.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Have you heard the theory that a lot of primitive tribes, like the kind they’re always uncovering down in the Amazon or out in the Guineas have this believe that a camera steals your soul?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Well, it can also protect it.”

“I see.” She didn’t see. “From those creatures?”

“It’s not a good strategy, but it’s better than nothing. Today, I will paint you.”

“Paint me. Like a portrait? Or just throwing house paint on me?”

He smiled. “Now how would that latter option relate to photography in any way? Yes, I will paint your portrait.” He pointed to the curtain. The room beyond had a lot of sunlight. “That’s my studio in there. I’m a painter. An artist.”

“Oh. Um, will this be a nude painting?”

“Yes, certainly.”

“Okay.” She didn’t know what else to say to it. His tone didn’t make it clear if he was leaving her a choice or not. He’d already raped her and denied her clothing. Was he going to paint her chained to a bed? She finished eating. Asking about those creatures seemed pointless. What would he even say that he couldn’t just volunteer to say? He had to know she was dying of curiosity. When they finished, she gathered up the dishes. It seemed polite, odd as it seemed. He did not have a dishwasher, so she hand-washed everything herself. He left her alone, slipping into the studio and out of sight. She could have easily run away. The door was right there. She just had to open it. And then…

She stayed inside. She believed him. After last night, she couldn’t not believe him. She sat down in front of the newly restored fire. It seemed oddly chilly inside without it. After a bit of time, he emerged and opened the curtain. So he wanted to get started right away. She got up and strolled over to find…

The cold brick wall, chipped in places and worn down. Chains set in the walls, slightly rusted but strong. Blood stains? On the wall and floor, were they real? Whips on the wall! A skylight let in natural sunlight from high above, and heavy studio lights were positioned around at the corners, not turned on yet. An easel and paints were set up to one side, with a large canvas set up and ready to start.

“Oh! Oh wow! Mr. Morton, I really don’t want to do this kind of thing!” she protested.

“I did not think you did,” he replied as she backed away. He followed.

“Can you please explain what’s going on? What’s happening here?”

Now he paused. “Jessie, do you believe me, that I’m trying to save you? To help you survive this?”

“I guess! But I don’t understand!”

“And that’s what I need to capture,” he said. His arm lashed out, fast. Faster than she could react, and he grabbed hold of her own arm, yanking her towards him. She screamed as he pulled her into the dungeon set. The open wall still showed her the big comfortable cabin, but she was still standing with her back pressed to a brick wall.

“No!” she cried as he put her wrist in a shackle. A steel cuff this time, with no comfort or give, but holding her hand just as firmly, raised up over her head. And then the next one, spreading her out wide. Now he backed up and viewed her as she stood there, utterly defenseless. But it was no worse than being on the bed, except cold brick on her back and butt felt so odd. He chained her legs the same. Wide. Wider than on the bed, but basically the same position. Spread eagled. Buck naked. Being watched by this man. He paused and touched her, running his fingers over her chest, her nipples, pushing on the slight padding that was her breasts so far.

“P-please, just tell me why you’re doing this,” she sobbed.

“Your image fades you away,” he said.

“What does that mean?” she cried, but he had nothing more to say. So he was going to paint her chained and naked in distress. Except he didn’t go to his easel. He went for the whip.

“Mr. Morton!” she cried out. But he swished the whip around a few times before facing her, staring at her body. It was really going to happen! He was going to whip her naked body! For real! She tried to struggle but the chains and cuffs were too real for her. Then he swung it. The lash crashed into her bare skin, on her chest. The tip smacked her breasts. Pain shot out into her body. She wanted to protest. Instead, she screamed. It was no play whip. It was a whip. And he swung it again. And again.

Jessie tensed and writhed and screamed as this man swung and blasted new pain after new pain into her body. Five, ten times he swung. And then he stopped. She shrieked as he approached her, but he just reached down and rubbed her clit. She gasped as it came alive for her. It wasn’t right, that he could make her sexual while he was torturing her. But there it was, that joy. It was true. She was horny. It was impossible, but she wanted the touch. Not the whip. Well, that much would have been obvious. Except the touch wasn’t the less bad option. She wanted it. It was the good option, and he stroked her several time.

Then he stepped back and whipped her. Again, she screamed, eyes flowing tears from the pain and unfairness of it. She was just a little girl. How could he hurt her like this? What was happening to her life that she was trapped in a log cabin with a rapist hiding from monsters? All she ever wanted was some adventurous swimming! Not a whipping! But her cries and screams did nothing to stop it. Only time did. He whipped her and then stopped to stroke her. That was so much better. She felt herself nearing an orgasm, but he stopped! And the whipping started.

On the third time, he stroked her to orgasm. Her whole body clenched up, trying to pull away from the bonds, but mostly just pleasuring her mind. Even as she came, he kept at it, pulling more and more of a cum from her. Too much! But he kept at it until stepping back and slicing her vagina with that whip. The tip landed right on her opening, careening right into her flesh as far as it went. Pain and climax. To her horror, she looked down at herself and saw welts forming. Even cuts on her body. He was marking her up. It hurt! So much! By the time he stopped to stroke her clit again, and to play with her nipples, she was aching for it, for the good touch. Which was really the bad touch all the teachers told them about, but now it was the good touch. Whip. Stroke. Whip. Stroke. It went on and on. Jessie cried from the pain. She cried from the pleasure. But she cried, sobbing, inconsolable as he pulled life from her body from endless pain and unstoppable climax. Blood seeped from her chest and belly downward to her pelvis, mixing with her juices coming out of her vagina, dripping down her legs. She felt faint and nauseated, shivering as he pulled more and more life from her little sexual body.

Finally, he unlocked her wrists, letting her slump to the floor. Her legs were still chained, and he pulled her up to kneel, still with her legs spread so wide. She glanced up through teary eyes to see he was naked. His big penis bobbed in front of her. Did he really want…? Pressing it to her mouth confirmed it. Well, she knew of such things. She didn’t know what to do, but she opened her mouth, taking it in. The smell! It was, something else. But it was in her mouth, man smell. Penis man smell, and taste. Well, she knew to flick her tongue around, and she did. She knew to focus on the head, the tip, the purple part that looked like a swollen fleshy helmet. It was leaking a little, but she kept at it, too exhausted to try to resist as she came down off the quivering highs of so many orgasms of her own. She must have done something right. He came without much of a pause. His penis was only in her mouth for five minutes as she tongue-massaged it and it pounded the back of her throat before finally squirted out a big glob of salty hot slime. She was working to work it more, but he pulled out, and the next globs all landed on her face, some in her hair. She remembered now. A facial. Modern TV was so good at telling little girls the names of the sex acts they would endure long before they were supposed to have to endure them. But it was good. One friend’s older sister said the taste and texture was like hot fermented pig snot, but Jessie couldn’t see that. No, it was fine. She gulped it up rather than let it linger. Spitting on the floor seemed just rude.

Now exhausted, he had to pull her back up to kneeling against the wall. He chained her hands up, but lower down so she knelt there, legs awkwardly spread, resting on widely-spread knees, hands above her head. Cum on her face. Shaking in post orgiasmal bliss and shock. Her eyes couldn’t focus for a while as she tried to get her wits together. When she paid attention again, he had donned a robe and was painting her. “Hold still,” he said. She didn’t argue. The position was not comfortable at all, but what could she do? She was chained up and drooping in a post-sex stupor.

The sun noticeably changed position outside in the time it took for him to work. Portrait painting was not a short, brief activity. Her knees began to hurt, quite a lot. She squirmed and fidgeted a bit, which he allowed. The lights shining on her were a bit blinding, but she just looked down. She just knelt there as he painted. It had to be hours. He took a few breaks to drink water, but offered her none. She stopped bleeding from the whip lacerations.

But finally! It ended. He stepped back, looking pleased. She still hadn’t seen it, but now he turned the easel to face her and she could look on the big portrait of…

Her. Jessie. Naked. Bloodied. Her face was worn out, pain and shame writ large all over it as she hung limp in her chains against the grim dungeon wall. The white goo on her face sat festering, a perpetual mark of conquest and defilement. That girl had Jessie’s face and body, but it was someone else. That girl was beautiful, but ruined. Strong but brutalized. She faced a long life in which the soul had been raped out of her. That girl in the painting was an amazing, alluring wreck. A failure. A perpetual victim that no time could make whole. A lost creature wallowing in her spent sexuality, never again able to resist in the slightest the deprivations of any man wanted to fuck her soul and dance on her spirit. She looked like Jessie, but would anyone ever confuse them? Would anyone ever mistake the real Jessie with this spent, sliced, sexually brazen lump of girl meat kneeling in shame on the floor? Anyone, that is, other than Jessie herself?

“She’s beautiful,” she muttered. “Does this mean I can live?”

“I really don’t know. But I’m more hopeful now,” Mr. Morton replied. He again released her chains, wrists and then ankles. She crawled to a waiting chair and pulled herself up. She glanced up in time to be blinded by the flash as he took another loud picture with that ancient camera. “Go ahead and clean up,” he said.

So Jessie got back in the shower, cleaning herself off. She scraped the dried cum from her cheeks and nose. Getting it out of her hair took longer, but he had some brands of shampoo in there she had never heard of. They seemed to work. The hot water on her cuts burned in new agony, but there was no way around it. Again she drained the hot water before getting out and drying off. She really wanted to wrap the towel around herself but knew that was a non-starter. He wanted her naked. She would be naked.

It was past lunch time, and she eagerly gulped down the sandwiches he’d made up for her. Then she joined him on the sofa, sitting as far from him as she could but not otherwise bothering to protect her modesty. He was reading a book. There was no TV to be found anywhere, but that was artists in a nutshell. “What now?” she asked.

“You insatiable little minx,” he said.

“No! Not that. Well, I don’t know. But what do we do? Those creatures will be back, right?”

“Yes. They won’t leave the house alone today. They’ll be back tonight. And it won’t be a surprise that I have to restrain you.”

“What are they?”

He shook his head. “Difficult to explain, and I’m not entirely sure myself.”

“Aliens? Demons?”

He shrugged. “What’s a demon, really? They’re as good a candidate as any if you think about it.”

“But I want to know!”

“And I don’t have the answers for you. Sorry, Jessie. But it would take more than the whole day to answer that, and as much as this isn’t what you want to hear, the less you know the better. If you get out of this alive, the best thing you can do is literally forget them. I know you can’t, but try.”

She sat, staring at the fire. Mr. Morton wasn’t giving out answers. She doubted she could trick him into it. She really doubted she could cry to get her own way. She’d cried plenty already. It just made his penis harder. “Can I read a book?”

He gestured to several bookshelves. She walked over, finding only older books. Classics. Dated non-fictional works too. She finally picked out some Mark Twain. At least she knew the name and had basically enjoyed what she knew so far. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. She had heard good things about it over the years, mostly from teachers, but in this case, she soon found they weren’t wrong.

The afternoon passed into pleasant surrealism, sitting naked on a strange man’s sofa in his log cabin, reading about a time-travelling guy while she herself hid from eldritch abominations. She’d almost selected some of the Lovecraft off the shelf, but preferred the comedy where she didn’t have to ponder her own grim and dismal fate for a few hours. Eventually he went to make supper. She’d been reading all afternoon. A personal record.

“Jessie, come over here,” he said as he worked. She closed the book and strode over. That she was totally naked while he was fully dressed no longer seemed to matter, at least until she saw that he had no pants on. He’d paused in meal prep for this.

“But why?” she begged. It got her nothing. He grabbed her and bent her over the table. She groaned and went along with it. But then she felt something slimy and greasy up her butt crack. “Whoa!” He was lubricating her butt! Her ass. She almost asked, but then she remembered. This was something else that people did.

Other people! “No! I don’t want that!” she cried, but he held her down. She tried to kick but he parted her legs and stepped in too close. “Please! Mr. Morton! Not in my butt!” she cried. She felt it pressing at her. It was going to hurt. She knew it was going to hurt. She was afraid it… It hurt! She screamed as his penis slid into her anus. The worst dumps she took sometimes hurt, but nothing like this agony. Her throat erupted with a fire alarm of loud as it slid in, and in, and in. Like that worst crap in history going back up in her! She cried out so much but he just pumped her. Short, stabbing thrusts as her body writhed and contorted under her. And she was stuck in her own body, feeling all of it. When he stopped, she assumed he was done. His stuff was up inside her ass. She felt nothing, but slumped to the floor after he pulled out and let go of her. Sobbing lightly.

He dressed and resumed cooking up some spare ribs. She sat up finally, and stood. “Go wash the butter off your buttocks, but don’t clean deep. Don’t try to get my cum out of your ass. Just leave it,” he said.

“Um, okay,” she replied meekly. “Um…”

“The cum will help mask you,” he said. “Now run off now.”

She went to the bathroom and cleaned up. As he said. She returned to the book but had trouble getting back into it. When he was done cooking, she was glad to eat, even if the cold wood on her bare ass again felt so weird. She was feeling naked again. Naked and vulnerable and ashamed. Of course, she knew what the evening held. She cleaned up for him after, but in a daze. Neither spoke. They both knew what the evening held. She found him painting again, but when she looked it was just a floral thing. She sat and watched for a while, but finally returned to her reading. She wanted to finish the book before he had to chain her down and abuse her again. The sun sank lower. The light faded. And looking out the two windows or the bigger skylight, she saw clouds forming even darker and thicker than the past two nights. Never in her life had she seen such a collection of summer thunderstorms.

“Come on, Jessie. It’s time,” he told her. She walked over and laid herself down on the rollaway bed. He cuffed her again, locking steel cuffs on this time with big padlocks to keep her still and steady. “You know, you’re a very beautiful little girl,” he said.

“Uh, thanks,” she said. It actually did mean a lot to hear it. Once she was secured, he brought the easel and her portrait over, placing it near the bed where she could easily see it, see herself. Or that mock Jessie, the girl so sexualized it broke her. It was a gorgeous painting, she realized. She wanted it. Not that she could ever hang it at home. If she ever saw home again. She just wanted to go swimming!

He sat beside her on the bed, quickly stroking her pussy. “Pussy is the right term, right?” she asked.

“Yes. Cunt is also common.”

“Hmm. Okay,” she said. It felt good. He was attacking her opening, but it didn’t hurt like the night before. She gasped. She moaned. She whimpered. And she came. But though it hurt, the pleasure washed it out. The imbalance was different. This was a harsh, good, loving, appropriate sexifying that she could slish to the memory of for years to come. And her nipples. They’d been neglected so far, but he massaged her little breasts and tweaked and pinched at her nipples. They seemed to be connected to her vagina. She’d never quite realized that, but he was making her wet down there just playing rough with them.

“Ugh, a little slower. Please?” She had to guess that he would speed up, which he did, making her moan in distressed agitation. When he devoted one hand to her chest and one to her pussy, she sucked in air as her body vibrated, trying to keep an emotional grip on her senses. It was too fast, and maybe a bit too hard. But, so strong! She came. Many times. Or maybe just once but without stopping. TV lied! Little girls did like sex! Not that she was that little. Not too long ago her treatment would have been painful and weird, not painful and wonderful. Sex. It wasn’t just for molesters and deviants.

She was far less shocked when he undressed. It had been a few hours since supper. He was hard and ready. She’d seen it twice already, and she could smell it already, though he wasn’t going in her mouth. He mounted her like before. Another position might have been nice. She knew two. Knew of two. But bound as she was, this was it. He pushed it in, and she groaned in pain and happiness. One sex act hadn’t loosened her up that much. She was tight and timid as she took her second act of sex and rape in stride. It wasn’t like he asked her. But she was past trying to resist or evade it. He said his cum masked her from the demons. If they couldn’t be sure there was a girl in the room when she was right under them, maybe a girl with semen in her was nearly invisible. That was as far as her thoughts took her before his thrusting and stuffing drove words from her mind in favor of overpowering, sickening, degrading and wonderful sensations. Carnal cravings beat introspection any day of the week. He fucked her, and she took it. He pierced her vagina with his cock. That was it in simplest form. He was fucking some protection into her. She gasped, bucked, and writhed. It was too much, too fast, and perfect as she came and came and came. Only his own ejaculation put a stop to it, and she lay there practically convulsing as her edge finally faded away.

She opened her eyes and screamed. They were already there! Six of them, like before, circling the pair. She hadn’t even felt the distress in her heart as they entered the cabin. The front door hung open as the rain outside picked up and the lightning started.

“You did not open the door. You have not confirmed that there is no girl here.”

“I didn’t hear you, but nothing threatens you in this cabin. Not a girl, nor anything else. You have no enemies here,” he replied as he got up and threw on a robe.

If the last day had made Jessie calmer about sex, accepting of her several rapes, and utterly blasé about her nudity, nothing had blunted the absolute horror of the six entities surrounding her. Now several reached down, touching her, stroking as they felt along her body, along her breasts, into her slit. Searching a girl for a girl. She had no doubt they could shred her cell by cell. She whimpered as every muscle she had pulled tense.

“We sensed a girl here. A girl is an enemy. We have many enemies!”

“You have no enemies here,” he repeated. “I know you’ve watched this house. No girl left and no girl is here now.” Jessie cringed, tears flowing from her eyes as more, finally all six of them fondled her body, trying to find her? To test her? Did they even know what a girl was? The odor of death filled her nose.

He stood. They stood. Slowly each pulled their appendages away from her body. “You had a girl here!”

Suddenly, the one she considered the leader reached out with its blurred and smokey arms, grabbing him by his neck, and lifting! He clutched at the entity. Jessie screamed. At once it dropped Mr. Morton and turned in her direction. But it was looking elsewhere? Up? Out? She could not see where its eyes pointed. It heard her scream.

“You’re in a deadly peril, Jessie.” She wanted to clutch her chest as her heart fluttered and palpitated. It was Mr. Morton speaking, but with a mock high falsetto voice. He was probably using the highest pitch he could. “I’m so sorry. If you get the chance, just run away. Just run fast.” They couldn’t hear high pitches! Her loud scream was loud enough to overcome it, but they couldn’t really hear her! And something less obvious had to be happening for why they couldn’t see her, though what that was was impossible to guess. She was in danger. And she was shackled naked to a rollaway bed! Even if she were willing to pull her hands clean off, she lacked the strength. She was trapped as they went on the hunt for her.

“Where is the girl! We know there is a girl here! You have broken our agreement!”

“You always say that! You never find anyone. No one threatens you here.”

“The girl is here, and somehow she is connected to this item!” Its voice grew loud and shrill, higher pitched that it should have been able to hear, as she understood it. But Jessie understood none of it. Only that she was in deadly peril. “What is the girl’s connection to this item?” it shrieked. It flicked its arm and appendages downward at her, and with a twisted screech of metal on metal, the parts and joints of the rollaway bed shattered.

Jessie felt it. A wave of energy that passed through her helpless body on its way down. And as the pain in her mouth erupted, the result of her one filling shattering and blasting her back tooth to pieces, the bed shattered under her. Directly under her pelvis it was the worst and loudest, but the metal frame popped apart all the way out to the corners where the cuffs held her limbs out helplessly. She fell to the floor, the mattress protecting her body from the jagged metal. And, she was free. The cuffs still clung to her wrists, though the ones on her ankles broke apart. But the cuffs were not attached to anything. She just dangled chain from both wrists.

For all the pain in her bleeding gum, she rolled off, screaming, and scrambled for the front door. They thought a girl was there, pondering it as they felt her up? Well, if they couldn’t see that, they couldn’t see her running. She got to her feet and bolted out the front door into the raging electrical storm and buckets of downpour all around her. Lightning flashed like a strobe, several times a second. She could see all around her. The trees were a bit cleared around the cabin. The thunder, repeated just as often, blasted like cannon fire, hurting her ears as much as her tooth hurt. She didn’t look. She just ran. The next flash was the brightest, lighting up the inside of her skull. She didn’t know it was possible to see her own cerebral cortex. Or smell her head cooking. The ground flew at her but she was already out before it hit.

The throbbing in her mouth where her tooth used to be was the worst pain, but nothing like before. She opened her eyes. “Hey, are you alright?” Someone was talking to her. It was light. And someone was there. Not Mr. Morton. She rolled onto her side. She’d been face down on asphalt, in a parking lot. She rolled onto her back. She was still naked. The cuffs still latched onto her wrists, dangling a few inches of chain. But her hair was dry. Some guy stood over her.

“Huh? Oh, I don’t know. I guess I’m alright,” she said. She sat up and looked around. “Where am I?”

“The museum parking lot,” he said. She furrowed her brow. “The Regie Morton historical house,” he added.

“Mr. Morton! Is he alright?”

“What?”

“Is Mr. Morton okay?”

“He’s dead.”

“He’s…” She couldn’t finish. They’d killed him! “They killed him? Oh God, they killed him.”

“Who? No one killed him. Well, no one else. Morton killed himself,” the young man said. “In 1955.”

“In, what? No. No, I saw him last night. They…” They what? What was she going to tell this guy? That six demons from a revolting pit in hell had killed him? Now he was looking at her funny, and she sounded like a raving mad girl. The kind of insane lunatic found lying in a parking lot. She looked around. There was a big log cabin at the end of the lot. She hadn’t gotten a good, or any, look at the outside, but it seemed like the right size and shape. At the side of the parking lot was a smaller modern building. The sign said ‘Regie Morton Historical Museum Office and Gift Shop.’ The sign by the cabin just said ‘Regie Morton House.’

“Let’s get you inside,” he said, offering his hand. She stood up. She hurt a lot. The cuts all over the front of her naked body had closed, but were forming ugly scabs that would probably take weeks to peel off. She didn’t seem to be torn up from falling on asphalt. But her tooth! She felt with her tongue. A tooth was gone, leaving a jagged foundation. It still smarted. He walked her in and guided her to a chair in the front.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

“I was going to ask you the same thing. You don’t look alright. Let’s be honest, you look like you’ve been tortured and abused. Are these, um, recent?” he asked, pointing at her many cuts. And then it dawned on her. She was still stark naked! She gasped and tried to cover herself, but already she figured it was a losing battle.

“I don’t imagine you have any spare clothes here at all?”

“No. Nothing. Sorry.”

“Just my luck,” she said, lowering her hands. It was stupid to try to hide her body now. “Look, I think my parents are trying to find me. I’ve been gone like three days now.”

“Wait a sec. What’s your name?”

“Jessie LaSeine,” she said. “I was swimming and, well, stuff happened.”

“It sure did. You were all over the news.”

“They can stop searching now. Can you give them a call?”

“They stopped searching a long time ago. You were in the news alright. Six years ago!”

“I, what?”

He pointed at the wall. At the wall calendar. Sure, he could have planned it, a joke, a gag, running in and changing the real calendar to a mock calendar he just happened to have ready. One that said it was six years later than it should have been. But…

“No!” There was no doubt. She grabbed some random papers from the front desk she was sitting by. All had dates six years out. “How? How?”

“You said you were with Regie Morton? Last night?”

“Oh, not exactly. Never mind that,” she said.

“No. Mind that. You were with him last night?”

“I was just waking up,” she began, but he shook his head. And he locked the front door.

“We’re closed to the public on Tuesday and Wednesday,” he said. “I’m Joseph. Jessie, let’s have a talk. Do you know anything about Regie Morton?”

“Please call my parents,” she said. “Or let me call them.”

“Regie Morton?”

She sighed. “No. I just met him a couple days ago. He said he’s an artist. He painted my portrait, but I can’t prove it.”

“Oh, you don’t have to. It was quite the scene, a brutalized girl with cum on her face, chained, kneeling with her legs spread wide, hanging at a cell wall!” She stared at him. So, he’d seen it? And it was in a museum! “Okay, I’m going to tell you a story. A brief one. About an artist who dominates early Twentieth Century American art. Not quite to the level of Whistler or Georgia O’Keefe, or Rockwell. But he was prolific and revered, even in his own time, but he was such a recluse I doubt he cared. Or maybe he did. He hung himself in 1955. He was sixty-one at the time.

“After his death, his family found a few items. A lot of items. Stuff he never released. Stuff they never wanted released, but the siblings who wanted to destroy it clashed with the siblings that wanted to preserve it. Portraits. Nudes, not that that was a huge problem. But these nudes, well. Girls. Underaged girls, like you. Mostly girls in distress. Chained girls. Brutalized girls. Injured girls. Terrified, sad, angry, or just plain frantic girls. And, he had photographs of them too. Color photographs. He was skilled in the use of Lumicolor Autochrome and could develop his own prints, so he probably never showed anyone. Not counting the paintings and prints destroyed by his brother Hugh or sister Leticia, there are seventy-one girls with photos and usually one portrait surviving. Six girls with photos only, and four with portraits only.

“And, Jessie, here’s the kicker. None of these girls can be identified. All his public works with models, well, we know who the models were. Even the occasional nude. But these unreleased works, all mysteries. Now I’ve studied them, since I’m a student of Morton’s works. Want to guess what I remember seeing now that I think about it?”

She didn’t have to guess. It was so blatant even her mom would have figured it out. “Can I see them?” she asked.

He got up. “Come with me.” She followed him into the back of the office building and down a flight of stairs into a climate-controlled vault. The basement was larger than the building above, extending underneath the parking lot. She followed him through the cool air, wafting over her bare skin, to a vault in the back. There, he opened one of the panels labeled only ‘Girl 1936 C’ and slid out a long drawer. Framed, the bulk of the drawer held a painting. A bit old. Faded. The frame was unstylish. She hadn’t seen the painting since yesterday. It was still beautiful.

And her photos were there, all three of them, held in plastic foil. Kind of dark, but in the bright light overhead she was still plainly visible. The cum on her face. The cuts across her chest and crotch. At least on the last one. And seeing them side by side, his painting had captured the marks accurately. Looking down at her abused body, still fully naked and exposed for Joseph’s eyes, they both matched her reality. Day-old cuts on her naked body matched a photo and painting from over ninety years ago.

“We uncovered a lot more. That is, his heirs and later scholars did. This was all long before I was, and even longer before you were born. Writings. Journal entries. Regie Morton had a lot to say. He reported a lot of odd things. One might think he was H.P. Lovecraft’s ghostwriter or biggest fan. He lives with some terrifying hallucinations, and he painted some of them. Also not for the public.”

Joseph paused. Jessie put the prints down, suddenly very much aware that he was blocking her exit. She was standing stark naked in a heavy vault. And likely no one was expected to show up for a day or two, depending on if it was Tuesday or Wednesday. No one was looking for her anymore. Not now. Surely it was a cold case. So Jessie stood, trapped, with a possibly nice man as her only hope for rescue. She looked again at the painting, sitting on the sliding drawer.

“Hey, Jessie, face me for a moment,” he said.

“What?” she asked as she turned. He had his phone out and before she could react, he took her picture, standing there stark naked with her painting right beside her. “Hey!”

“This needs to be documented,” he said. “Especially before your cuts start to heal. Come on, I want to get some more.” He snapped several further shots. She sighed but posed beside the painting for his photographs. She just hoped they didn’t end up on the internet.

“Do you have enough yet?” she asked after he took a few dozen shots of her body, front and back, even from angles Morton never used. “Am I really that important?”

“Not one of those girls was ever identified, Jessie. Not one. Until now. This is the biggest story ever. Not just for art history or human history. For physics. You travelled back in time and then forward again! I’ll wager a doctor will verify you haven’t aged. So, let’s go over to the table and have a talk.” He walked away. She followed, far enough to see the door out of the vault was closed and latched. It didn’t have to be, but it was. So, he was that kind of man. The kind to take steps with his girls. To keep them where he wanted them. There was a round table over in the corner. He gestured her over. Before she sat down, he ran his fingers through her hair. She stiffened up for a moment but made herself relax.

“Can I see the house?” she asked. “The studio?”

“Alright, we can do that first,” he said. She walked ahead of him and pushed on the door. It was locked. He just chuckled. “Real subtle, Jessie. But it locks automatically.” He pushed in the code and it opened. “There’s about fifty million dollars’ worth of stuff down here. Security is tight.”

“Does that mean I’m on camera?”

“Of course.”

They reached the upstairs and walked across the parking lot. “Jeez, I feel like some kind of porn star walking around naked like this,” she said.

“In a way, you’ve been one for ninety years. Just not a very well-known one.”

“No. Mr. Morton made art,” she said, but he laughed.

“Do you know how many Renaissance nudes were painted for hanging in private bedrooms? Don’t fool yourself. Being beautiful doesn’t stop art from being pornographic. We fetishize the purity of the past, but people have always known what they’re getting when the brushes come out and the clothes come off. I should show you the other hidden pieces. Some of them will knock your socks off, so to speak.”

He unlocked the front door and Jessie stepped into yesterday. Not quite. He had some electrical appliances in the kitchen that she hadn’t seen. But the sofa was unchanged. And his bed, off in one corner, not that he’d taken her to it. There were ropes blocking sections off, but Joseph unhooked them. She opened the closet and found a new rollaway bed. Even the box of chains was there. “We keep that door closed to the public,” Joseph said. “So how much of the cabin did you see?”

“Just this main room and the studio. What else is there?”

“The back. Didn’t you see it?”

“No. I didn’t know there was more.”

“Oh yes, and a basement too. I think you had one of the shorter stays of his various unknown models. He kept a diary about you all, but never a word about how any of you arrived or left. And never any names. Maybe we can figure out which one is you. Do you make any distinctive noises when you’re being genitally stimulated?”

“Huh!” she cried. “Uh, maybe. I was kind of out of it, um, when he, you know. Rubbed. There.” She flushed and turned her face, realizing as she did it how silly it was. Joseph had literally never seen her with clothes on, live, photographically, or in art. Her bashfulness hardly seemed appropriate. She continued to roam about. She’d only spent a day in the place, but now she felt like she’d lost a long and rich memory to time. Knowing Mr. Morton had offed himself just made it worse. He’d tried so hard to protect her, and apparently many dozens of others. How many had he failed? How much had he had to debase himself abusing them to do it? How many of them ever understood?

“He must have been real unhappy to end it,” she said. “Does anyone know why? What happened at the end of his life?”

“The caecumites were relentless, according to his diaries. He stopped trying to convince anyone they were real in 1921. They drove him mad.”

“The poor man. He tried so hard. I know he abused me, but I hope I gave him some pleasure too. I was so mean to him at first. I thought he was kidnapping me!”

“I imagine he had to act forcefully at first. To save you,” he said, and she nodded.

“Are any of his family still around? I’d like to show my gratitude and tell them about my time here.”

“Sure, a few. His great grandson runs this place, the bastard.”

“Oh. Do you think I could,” meet him, she almost finished, but figured it out. “You?”

“Joseph Morton, at your service.” He ran his fingers through her hair again. “So, gratitude?”

“Lots of gratitude,” she said. “I’m sure I would have died, maybe even before those things, those, um…”

“Caecumites.”

“Yeah, them. I might have died in these woods even before he rescued me, before they found me. And, well, I can tell you all the details. How he saved my life. Maybe, even show you, the details,” she said, nervous as hell to make the suggestion.

“Is that right?” he asked.

“Yeah. You know. If that sounds good.”

His grip tightened. “It does.” She winced. “You know, Regie Morton was a man of his time. He felt bad about the stuff he did because he had to. But we live in a different time now. You don’t have to feel bad about stuff that you do because you have to. Or even just because you want to. I sure don’t.”

“Yeah? Maybe I don’t believe you,” she said.

“No?”

“No. Prove it!”