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A Prayer for Which No Words Exist - part two
🕑 Added 2021-02-27 02:42:11 +0000 UTC
[image by Pulkit Kamal]
I posted the first part of this a good while ago, and then for some reason—as often unfortunately happens with me—I never posted more. So here we are again, because as I said in the initial introduction, I like this too much to do nothing with it.
As I originally planned, I’ll post the next couple parts in addition to this unlocked and the rest will be locked to supporters. I’m intending to post every Friday. Let me once again strongly encourage you to go back to that first post even if you read it already and refresh yourself on the warnings—this thing gets messed up. As yet we haven’t reached the truly messed up parts but we will get there.
Hope you like, and thanks as always for being here. ❤️
6
Dinner is powdered lemonade and canned tomato soup heated over the small propane stove in the galley kitchen. The seeker catches a glimpse of the contents of the cabinet as the guide gets the cans: more cans, very many of them, soup and beans and vegetables and fruit, none of it especially appetizing but all of it sufficient for keeping two people adequately fed for quite a while.
They eat at the dining table. They eat in silence. The bowls and cups and silverware are mismatched, like dishes bought from a thrift store. The seeker sees them by the illumination of a lantern set between them and a standing lamp by the couch. The cloth they nailed up is thick and no daylight penetrates the windows at all. It's impossible to tell whether or not there is any daylight in the first place. It might be any time, the seeker thinks, and with a gnawing disquiet it occurs to him then that that’s the point.
According to no apparent cue, the guide sets down his spoon and looks squarely at the seeker. The seeker stops eating and looks back at him.
“Here's how this is going to work.” The guide’s eyes are enormous in the inadequate light. They are impossible to look away from. “I already told you that you'll do whatever I tell you to do, without question. I want to emphasize that I'm not obligated to explain anything to you. You agreed to that when you said yes. Do you understand?”
The seeker nods.
“Say yes if you understand.” But the guide raises a hand to stop him. “That's another thing. You won't speak unless I ask you for a response. When I ask you if you understand, you say ‘yes’ and you say it out loud so I can hear you. Nodding is only sufficient if you can't speak. Do you understand?”
The seeker’s gaze finally breaks away for a fraction of a second and flicks toward the door. If the guide notices this—and he must—he doesn't comment on it.
He still might be able to run. He might be fast enough. He doesn't have the car keys but he could make to the trees, find a place to hide until this man stops hunting for him, then head for the road under the cover of darkness, keep going until he reaches the main highway and can flag down a passing vehicle.
“Yes.”
“Good.” The guide swallows a spoonful of soup. The seeker doesn't resume eating. “You don't leave the cabin. Not for any reason. Not unless I say you can. Do you understand?”
Is the door locked? He didn't see the guide lock it but that doesn't mean it didn't happen. If he did, that's another set of keys the seeker doesn't have. The windows might work as an exit if the cloth doesn't slow him down too much.
“Yes.”
“Good,” the guide says again. “You do what I tell you to do. You also don't do what I don't tell you to do. You speak when I say you can speak, and you also eat and drink when I say you can do those things. You sleep when I say you can sleep. You bathe when I say you can bathe. You piss when I say you can piss, you shit when I say you can shit. You do not do any of those things unless I say that you can. Do you understand?”
Are there knives in the kitchen? There must be. Did he see them and he just can't remember now? Have they been hidden? How long would it take him to find them? Is there anything else in here he could use as a weapon?
“Yes.”
“Two things you don't need my permission to do. You can move, unless I've given you instructions not to, and you can make noise.” The corner of the guide’s mouth twitches, as if there's something about this that he's amused by. “You can cry, you can moan, you can scream.” He raises his hand again. “Just try to keep it down. I don't like a lot of racket, it makes me tense. I don't work well when I'm tense. Do you understand?”
Could he fight with his bare hands if necessary? He's never been in a fight. Could he hurt someone? Could he kill if he had to?
“Yes.”
The guide leaves the spoon in his now empty bowl, sits back and crosses his arms over his chest. The seeker sees, for the first time, that he's strong, all wiry muscle. Not the way a man looks when he spends hours in the gym cultivating a certain shape, but the way a man looks when he can make good on his claims.
His threats.
“In return for all of this, I make two promises to you. The first is that if you do everything I say, if you follow all these rules to the letter, at the end of this you'll have what you said you wanted. The second is that if you die, it won't be because of anything I did or didn't do.” He pauses again. “To the best of my ability I'll keep you alive. Other than that, I can't swear to anything. It's not that I don't want to. It's that I can't. Do you understand?”
He could still go. He has to believe that he could still go.
“Yes.”
“Good.” The guide fingers the filigreed end of the spoon. “If you do have any questions, you should ask them now.”
The seeker pulls in a slow breath. He wasn't prepared for this; ludicrously, he thinks of his first job interview, wherein this exact question was put to him and his mind instantly went blank. He didn't get the job.
“Is this dangerous?”
“Very. Anything else?”
“This doesn't sound like…” The seeker waves a hand vaguely between them. “It doesn't sound like magic.”
The guide cocks his head. “What do you think magic is?”
“It's…” The seeker is flustered. “It's rituals? Spells?”
“No. Rituals and spells are focusing tools. They're not the thing itself. There are a lot of ways to focus. What you want requires something very specific, and it's something that has to happen inside you.” The guide jabs a finger at him. “I lead you to it. I won't be drawing any runes anywhere, if that's what you're asking. I won't be killing any black roosters or painting any sigils on the walls or laying down any salt circles. Don't concern yourself with that. Your one job, your only job, is to obey me. Anything else?”
“How long will it take?”
“I don't know. It's different every time. Anything else?”
Every time. “Yes.” Another breath. He almost doesn't want to know the answer to this. “How many times have you done it?”
“Six. You'd be the seventh.”
“How many times has it… worked?”
The guide smiles. It's a terrible smile. The seeker nearly recoils. “Anything else?”
One more thing. Can I still stop this? Can I still change my mind? Can I walk away? Is it too late?
“What happens if I fuck up?”
The guide's smile doesn't slip. He shakes his head.
“Don't fuck up.”
7
You see, when the blade is sharp enough you don't feel any pain. Not at first. And this is true, what he's being told. He believes it because it is a feature of his present experience. He looks down; he sees himself without seeing himself, his form and his outlines, his angles, feeling with his eyes as if they were fingers. Everywhere is dark. The dark is solid and warm, all-encompassing arms wrapped around him. He loosens into them and the blade opens him and he feels a warmer flow across his skin.
Ah, but the pain will come.
The pain comes. It is bright and thin. He gasps with it and twists, and the arms hold him tighter.
You said, the voice murmurs. Cool dry lips against his throat. You said you would stay. Every second, you choose to stay. Isn't this what you wanted?
I didn't know. He hears the words, although he doesn't feel his mouth form them. I didn't know it would be like this.
Yes, of course you did. You don't even want to go. We both know that. Ask me. Ask me to cut you deeper. I can't cut you any deeper unless you ask me.
I asked you already, he moans. Enormous hands stroke down his body. The blade is still inside him, motionless and firm.
You must ask me again. Every second, you must ask me over and over. You chose to stay. Every second you must keep choosing. I force you to do nothing, I force nothing on you. Everything I do is what you've asked of me. Everything I do is what you wanted.
Once you ask me you should thank me. Because for you, for the love of you, I have made this a perfect thing.
I have made you a perfect thing.
I will continue.
8
The light is like a kick in his retinas, and he winces and cringes away. His brain is scrambling in utter confusion. The light seems wrong; shouldn't there be no light? Why should there be no light? What has happened to him?
His bedroom at home is set against the rising sun. On the occasions when he neglects to close his blinds, the sunlight wakes him up and in the summer it's like blunt needles through his eyelids. This is not that light. This light is harsh even beyond that and an artificial blue-white, and he lifts a hand to shield his face and sees through the gaps in his fingers that someone is shining a flashlight directly into his eyes.
And he remembers.
A hand closes over his shoulder, shakes him roughly. Fingers dig into his upper arm and he winces again. The grip loosens but the seeker doesn't believe it's out of mercy.
“Get up. You have work to do.”
What work? Vaguely he recalls the rules laid out the night before—was it the night before? How long has he been asleep? In this one of two small bedrooms they also covered the windows; the covered the windows in both. There were the rules but nothing explicit about work.
Only that his one task was to obey. Without question, without hesitation.
Another shake, harder than before. It hurts. He tries to shrug the hand away but it holds on. Puff of warm breath against his face: “Get your ass up. I'm not telling you again.”
For a second he considers seeing if the guide will in fact tell him again. Or, if not, what might happen as a result. The guide set the rules before him but offered no hint as to what consequences there might be if the rules were broken. The seeker assumes some manner of punishment would be forthcoming but beyond that he doesn't have the first notion. Anything might be possible.
He pushes himself up to sit and the hand releases him. The light withdraws slightly, although he still can't make out much beyond the range of its beam. He recalls the room; he saw it in the light of the lantern the guide gave him when the guide announced that it was time to sleep. Both bedrooms are furnished with beds, dressers, bedside tables, and while there was a lamp in this one, the guide took it away. The room the guide selected for himself boasts a double bed. This one is little more than a cot.
This arrangement was unsurprising to him. He's already beginning to glean the nature of his place.
“There'll be food for you on the table,” the guide says. “You can put on clean clothes and use the toilet however you need to and brush your teeth. Nothing else.”
The seeker is about to protest; however long it's been since he last showered, he feels badly in need of one. But then another rule pushes into the forefront of his mind: You speak when I say you can speak.
He says nothing. He swings his legs out of bed and sits, scrubbing his hands over his face. The flashlight is withdrawn further and then away as the guide turns. The seeker watches his shadowy form moving to the door and into the fall, fumbles for the lantern as the dark descends. It's glow is softer and kinder and he's grateful to it.
At least he's being allowed what he's being allowed.
He digs clothes out of his overnight bag and takes them and the lantern to the bathroom, does as he’s been told. He's dressed only in shorts, and the air is cool, prickling his skin. He looks longingly at the tiny shower stall and wets his toothbrush, reaches for the toothpaste and raises his head to the mirror—
His face has been shattered into a thousand tiny shards.
He stares at it for a time. Glances at the sink; yes, a few fragments of glass have fallen into it, although surprisingly few. He returns his attention to the mirror. When was it broken? He doesn't remember hearing it, and surely something that violent would be loud. Could he have been sleeping that deeply? Was there something in the tomato soup?
Why has the guide done this?
Not taking his eyes off the broken mirror, off the thousand pieces of himself, he brushes his teeth.
9
Sitting down to eat is when he makes his first mistake.
It's strange that he caught himself moments after emerging from unconsciousness but he forgets himself now. The bowl on the table is dry cereal, a cup of water beside it. The guide is seated across from him, cereal as well and half-eaten, leaning intently over what appears to be a journal and writing something in minute, neat script. The seeker regards the cereal resignedly, almost asks the guide whether diet is part of whatever process he's being put through, and then as he slides the spoon into the cornflakes he asks something else.
“Why did you break the mirror?”
The scratch of the pen stops dead. The silence is deafening. The seeker freezes, raises his eyes, and the black eyes of the guide pin him so hard there's almost literal pain.
Then there is.
It was so fast that he missed the movement. Faster than a human being should be able to move. A blur as the guide springs to his feet and then the seeker’s head is being jerked backward so sharp and so far that he can't swallow, his neck straining, the fingers knotted into his hair merciless and flooding tears into his eyes.
“You get three strikes,” the guide says calmly. “That was one. I'd keep the other two in reserve if I were you.” He bends closer. The lamp by the couch seems even dimmer than before and his form is nothing more than darkness on darkness. “There's a time limit on them. If you do decide to use them you don't have much longer to do it.”
The pain is excruciating. The tears are hot on his temples. Can you be scalped without the use of a blade? I'm sorry, he comes dangerously close to saying, and bites down on his tongue. If this is a strike that means it's not the consequence he would ordinarily be facing. This is in fact mercy. What would it be like if he wasn't spared? What would happen to him?
The door. He should swing with his fists, beat this man off of him and run. His hands are locked into claws on the table, his forearms trembling.
Another second. It feels like many seconds. Then as quickly as he was seized the guide lets him go and he drops forward, only just catching himself above his bowl. He looks up, the tears flowing freely, and the guide is back in his chair, writing. As if it never happened. Except for the fact that his head still feels as though tattoo needles are driving into it.
He eats, wordless, shaking, watching the spoon empty the bowl little by little until only crumbs remain.
10
“Come here.”
The seeker looks up. He had been gazing blankly at his bowl, at the crumbs, the spoon between his fingers. Already there's a slippery element to time that he profoundly dislikes. It's not just that he can't be certain of the time of day; the minutes themselves are beginning to run together. He doesn't know how long he's been sitting here. Now the guide is standing in the middle of the floor between the table and the little seating area, pointing at a spot in front of him. The seeker looks at it and at him, frowning.
No hesitation.
He rises and goes to where the guide is pointing and stops. Waiting.
The guide doesn't stop pointing. The seeker can't parse his expression; the lamp is behind him and it's difficult to see him clearly anyway. “Get on your knees.”
He hadn't known that he was expecting something like this. But now that he's been given the order, now that the words are out there, he's not particularly surprised by them. Of course he's supposed to get on his knees, especially after what just happened. He should perhaps feel some disquiet at this but if anything there's mild relief; being on his knees is relatively tame in the grand scheme of things that might be happening to him.
He's lowering himself to the hardwood before it occurs to him to wonder what might happen to him next once he's there.
He's been haunted by lurid visions of being tortured. Killed. Those are bad enough. But he hasn't thought much about what else might be done to him. What else he's potentially exposed himself to.
His knees hit the floor a bit hard. He hisses in breath as the sudden discomfort shoots up his thighs. The guide looms over him, silent and without distinguishable features. The seeker looks at him and wishes very much that he could see any hint of a face. Any hint regarding what's coming now.
“Not like that.” The guide nudges him with the toe of his shoe. “Don't sit on your heels. Lift up. Thighs and back straight.”
He does. It feels slightly awkward in that it's not a position he's used to, but other than that it's not so bad. If anything he feels refreshingly solid, the whole of his center of gravity located at two discrete points. Now and then he does wobble, but correcting for it is easy.
“Stay there.”
The guide steps past him and returns to the table. The seeker turns his head to see him sitting back down in front of the journal, picking up the pen.
Freezing as their eyes meet. The guide slowly shakes his head. “Eyes front. Don't move. I told you to stay there, I meant for you to stay there. That means all of you.”
Swallowing, the seeker swings his gaze back to the space in front of him. To the wall, to the covered windows. To the door. He focuses on the door, once more measures the distance between him and it. Estimates idly how long it would take for him to cross that distance. How quick the guide might be in stopping him. There's the matter of the locked door. How to handle that?
He doesn't move.
And little by little it stops feeling good.
It's about the gravity, how tight those points of weight and contact are. His knees. His kneecaps, pressing into the wood and the wood pressing mercilessly back. His kneecaps are a cushion his body is sinking into, and they weren't meant to be that, at least not for this long. He tries to shift and the dull ache flares into real pain, and he inhales, bites down on his lip, clings to the distraction until it fades and the ache returns. There are his feet, but when he tips himself backward just a bit it's immediately obvious to him that he risks unbalancing if he puts any but the most minute pressure on them. He has only his knees to hold himself up, and the ache is deepening, somehow growing cold. Perhaps the blood is being forced from the capillaries there. Perhaps his nerves are going numb, going to sleep. Perhaps that would be a good thing. He rocks forward the smallest amount and the pain merely shifts to the little knobs of bone a the very top, and the lessening of pressure on the lower parts of his knees makes them hurt worse.
He has no idea how long he's been like this. He crawls from second to second a second at a time. He was told to stay here. He has to stay here. The agony in his scalp; the prickle hasn't completely left him. Two more strikes. He needs to save them. There's no way he doesn't fuck up again. A strike in and of itself seems bad enough.
The pen scratches and whispers over the paper. He tries to focus on it but the ache is now immense, filling his marrow and flooding acid into his muscles. His back is protesting; like his knees, it wasn't designed to support him in this way. He breathes, each breath like a counted second. He tries counting and loses track after three hundred and sixty. Are those literal seconds? Was he counting too fast or too slow? How much longer does he have to be like this? What is this for?
The questions scream silently inside him, echoing off the walls of his skull. He bites down harder on his tongue.
The guide doesn't look up. He waves the hand not holding the pen. “All right, you can stop.”
The seeker collapses forward, catches himself on his hands, and a whine of awful new pain slices out of him, because it is indeed so much worse now, worse in a different way—his knees sob as the sensation pours back into them, and he rocks onto his side, rubbing furiously at them as if that might do anything, and again he wants so much to demand to know why.
He raises his head and through his watering eyes he just catches the smile at the corner of the guide’s mouth. And he wonders if he might grow to hate this man.
“You better be able to take that,” the guide says placidly. “Because you're going to wish that was all you were doing.” He pauses another moment, then waves his hand again. “Get back to it.”
The door. No way he could reach it before he was caught. He's not positive that he could even stand.
He lifts himself back up and returns, shaking, to his knees.
11
It goes on like that.
He's beginning to understand that he's unlikely to ever know how long things last.
He’s also beginning to understand that time itself can slip away from him in ways he didn’t know were possible, ways he never anticipated. The seconds and minutes once more stretch out and warp and seem to bleed into his knees, which are by turns numb and compressed balls of hot lead. The second round is so much more difficult than the first, because the pain from that hasn’t left him and this one only builds on it, brick by agonizing brick, his muscles hardening into steel bars, until his entire body is a cage of hurt. He throws himself against the bars. He manages somehow to keep from moving. He believes the pen’s scratching has ceased and he misses it, wants it back with a bewildering and pathetic intensity, because as poorly as he was able to focus on it, it was one other piece of sensory input to focus on.
The guide sitting at the table in the corner of his left eye, a blurred and folded man-shape. Sitting very still now. Watching him. The seeker locks his gaze on the door. The dark wood featureless but for two panels above and below. The knob. He imagines the cool metal nestled into his palm. The slight catch as it turns.
The way the door catches more firmly against the latch, because the guide still holds the keys. A tremendous rush of fury and despair; even in his mind the door is locked. Even in his mind he’s a prisoner.
But: Is he being overdramatic? Is it really that bad? Might he in time become accustomed to pain to the point where something like this is merely uncomfortable?
You better be able to take this, says the guide. In this internal tableau, the voice comes from behind him, low and amused. You better be able to take it because soon you’ll wish it was all you were doing.
Not that you won’t have to do it anyway, even if you fail now. It doesn’t matter whether or not you can take it. Either way, you will.
He gasps when the guide’s voice strikes the side of his head.
You can stop.
For a moment he’s certain he didn’t hear it at all. He wavers, doesn’t fall, resists the shiver that plucks at his spine like a cord. He has a special talent for hearing what he wants to hear. It’s gotten him in trouble before.
“Did you hear what I said?” Faint impatience. He cringes at it and marvels at how little it’s taken to cow him. “You can stop.”
Pen scratch. As the seeker crumples forward and to the side he turns his head and the guide is sitting sideways in the chair, legs crossed and the notebook on his knee, studying the seeker as his pen moves across the page. Making notes? Is there an element of the experimental in whatever this is? Does it make any sort of difference?
He curls over his knees, touches them, whimpers. They feel like clenched fists pressing against his skin. He must have been on them for hours. Surely only a few minutes would never hurt him this much.
Only a few minutes. Then, clipped: “Break’s over.”
He doesn’t move at first. When he raises his head the guide is sitting forward, his black eyes narrow. Daring. Test me, he’s saying wordlessly. Test me. Run through another strike. I want to punish you. I want to show you what happens when you disobey and my own rules are preventing me from doing so. Just give me an excuse.
I am alone, the seeker thinks, with a sadistic psychopath. Even if he doesn’t murder me, that’s still what he is..
He shoves himself up to his knees.
