His hands were still bound tight by the rope, which
was somehow becoming dimmer in his awareness, like sheets of gauze
were being pulled over his mind, one by one. It didn’t bother him
at all. The cold silence of the room, the man dead at his feet, the
needle now dangling out of his left thigh, none of it was worrisome
in the slightest. Not knowing how or even if he was going to find a
way out didn’t cause the slightest concern.
In fact, his face was stuck in a wide, happy grin,
as the waves of warm hot pleasure began spreading from his thigh.
He felt great, better than he’d ever felt before. And knowing that
it was that black liquid that had done it to him, that was now
spreading its malignance through his bloodstream, it just made him
smile all the more, because he felt fan-fucking-tastic.
“Sullivan… ” he whispered softly, into the dark.
“Somebody… need a little help here.” And then giggled, because he
couldn’t help himself.
And that was the most horrifying thing of all.
Whispers in the dark. He’s not really hearing them,
he’s not really hearing anything, there’s nothing but his breathing
through the rope. His mind has travelled along the line up and out
of the miasma of pleasure the drug forced on him and lies somewhere
near the roof beams of the warehouse.
How did he know there was a warehouse?
He knows all the warehouse now,
from where he is on the top of the rope. There’s not much room up
here, certainly not enough for coherent thought, but that’s ok, he
can just be up there, not having to think about the what he’s been
through, what he’s done, what the future (
daughters, what about…
) may hold,
he can just be there on the rope. Far away from that person down
below, swaying against the tension in his arms, trying to keep his
legs from buckling underneath him.
His shoulders are starting to ache, but that’s a
good thing, because it’s not pleasure, it doesn’t feel good, and
that’s wonderful. He’s tired of feeling good, and would like to be
able to truly feel as crappy as he knows his body has earned. But
there’s still that drowning tide of nebulous pleasure that coats
him like oil, and is so very, very slow to drip off…
Whispers again, turning to shouts.
He doesn’t want to think, because thinking is hard when he’s on the
rope, and if he has to come down the rope, he’ll lose this nice
sense of being, of not having to worry about what comes next. Then
he feels the hands on his body, and suddenly he is aware of steel
approaching, of someone slicing suddenly into the rope, and he
moans a soft protest. Too late, the tails lose their tense life and
slither down the side of the beam to thud softly
(
not wetly, not like
sallowman
) to the floor. He hears the
voices now, and the world of hurt and worry passes over him and
into him like a tidal wave of sewage and muck. Suddenly he is aware
of the burning in his shoulders, of the biting prick as the
hypodermic is taken from his thigh, of the soft agonizing friction
of the remains of the rope being unwound from his chafed wrists. He
smiles at this, eyes still closed, but it’s not the awful forced
happiness of the drug, it’s a tired, joyous smile, and so genuine
that it makes Sullivan—for it is Sullivan, after all, who has found
him and taken him down, Sullivan and someone with smaller but no
less strong hands—wonder aloud, “Drugs and dead men and dangling on
the end of the rope for I don’t know how long… what exactly are you
smiling about, bucko?”
Brian smiled a little wider, then lost it as he
tried to form the words. “It… hurts.” His voice got a little
stronger. “For a while it… didn’t. That was… bad.”
Sullivan chuckled even as his hands travelled over
the exhausted man’s body, assessing the damage. “Here I thought you
were a Rope Dom. You’re just a painslut in disguise, aren’t
you?”
Brian’s eyes flashed open at that, anger driving
away the exhaustion for a moment, but before he could rebuff the
big man, a soft finger was laid across his lips. He turned his head
to see who was attached to the other end, and met the intense gaze
of a young woman, not more than 20, with eyes as old as the world.
She looked intently at Brian, making sure she had his
attention.
“Sullivan’s just being his normal asinine self. Pay
no attention. You were lucky; he drove the needle in, but couldn’t
inject much before—“ with her eyes, she indicated the lump of
polyester and dead flesh that had been Brian’s torturer, “whatever
happened, happened. We still need to get that stuff out of your
system, and we need to deal with some of the damage that nasty rope
did to your poor wrists.”
Brian mumbled something, and she cocked her head
questioningly. It had seemed important to him. “I’m sorry, Brian, I
didn’t hear you. What was that?”
“Not… the… rope’s fault.”
She sat back, thoughtful, looking
at Sullivan, who was grinning with the satisfaction of a good
“I-told-you-so.” “You were right, Sullivan, I think we’ve got
a
Nawashi
here.”
She sighed. “Gaia help him and his. Let’s go.”
The two of them helped him to his feet, and they
walked out of the warehouse into the brightness of the Chicago
morning, the tails of the rope still trailing behind.
Brian actually lost consciousness in the car, his
head resting against the woman’s breast as her arm held a blanket
around him for warmth. He muzzily woke enough to be able to walk
with them when they arrived at a small house set in a neighborhood
filled with old-growth trees that, for some reason, had not been
chopped down by the developers. Brian didn’t notice much as they
helped him stumble into the house, but he did see a tiny cauldron,
about a foot high, at the start of the path to the house, and the
back of a sort of ceramic clam-shell. As they passed them, he felt
a slight resistance in the air, for just a moment, like the feeling
of pushing through cobwebs. He shivered, and for some reason the
“Walrus and the Carpenter” poem began running through his head.
“Sailing ships and sealing wax… ” he muttered in a stream of
consciousness blur. His head swerved just enough as they helped him
along the path to see the other side of the clamshell, and the nude
figure standing just inside of it. He realized it was a sylphlike
representation of the Birth of Venus, guarding the entrance to the
house.
Then they were in the door, and
there were more voices and hands helping the blanket off of him and
laying him down on a (
so
warm!
) comforter spread on the floor. His
nose plunged into the soft fabric and it felt so good that there
was actually some debate within his body as to whether he should
actually try to move and breathe, or if it would be preferable to
simply suffocate in downy bliss. The decision was made for him as
gentle hands—the same hands, he realized, as had helped Sullivan
bring him here—lifted his head and put a crescent shaped pillow
under his face, allowing him room to breathe without having to turn
his neck.
The voices sounded urgent above him, and he wished
he could help, he really did, but his skin had been filled with
barley and was just a weighted sack with the inertia of
granite.
“He’s been marked, Sullivan. We
brought a strange marked
Man
into my house?” The voice didn’t sound alarmed,
but rather curous in a clinical sort of way.
“He’s been more than marked. The
bastard’s budding rope mage, a
nawashi
; the ‘pressors are after him
like paparazzi on Presley. Vashte—you know Vashte, tantric slut?”
Brian’s tired lips curved into a smile at Sullivan’s
characterization of the woman. “She hooked up with him at random,
and didn’t have the sense to check before she began her marking.
Almost blew herself away, and would’ve burned him out as well…
”
Brian felt sudden heat on his
neck, a glowing warmth that sank through his skin and flesh until
his bones felt radiant. His awareness came back again, and he
could—no, not
see
exactly, but he
knew
—that the woman with the
clinical voice had her hand over the nape of his neck. The hand and
warmth held for a moment, then was gone. “This healing. It was
yours?”
Sullivan’s voice took an edge of defensive pride.
“Yes it was. Took care of him right after Vashte, and while it
might not be as fancy as your Wiccan weavings it did the trick,
I’ll have you know.”
“It is adequate. I merely wanted
to know so that we know where to begin the re-alignment. Nawashi,
you say?” Brian felt the sudden proximity of the woman’s lips next
to his ear. “Man.
Nawashi
. What do you call
yourself?”
He managed to force a muffled “Brian” past his
leaden lips, but she seemed to be able to understand him. “I need
to know your paradigm, Brian, so that we can heal you before
untwisting what the Tantress did to you.”
Brian murmured something else, and for a moment the
woman’s face was puzzled. “Four nickels? Your paradigm is four
nickels? What is… ” Then she noticed Sullivan chortling next to
her, and her face—but not her eyes—darkened. “Ah. A trickster, too.
No wonder you like him, Sullivan.” She looked down at the limp form
of Brian again, and said, “I’m glad you have that much strength,
Man, but you need to save it. It’s going to get much worse before
it gets better.”
Sullivan grunted. “Isn’t that always the truth?”
and was silent again at her sharp glance. She put her hands over
Brian again, this time one palm hovering between his shoulder
blades and the other over the base of his spine. Again he felt the
warmth, but this time there was a dissonance as it seeped into his
bones, as the warmth seemed to first travel through his spine, then
suddenly meet resistance, tangles in the flow where the energy had
no where to go, twining in and around itself, tighter and
tighter—and where it stopped, it burned, sharp enough to make even
his depleted muscles spasm. He flopped once and let out a moan of
protest.
She moved her hands away quickly,
a look of concern on her face. “We need to get those knots open,
and soon. You’ve still got power in you, and it’s going to start
eating its way inward if we don’t help it find a way out.” Again
she leaned forward and asked, “What path do you follow? Hindu?
Taoist? Not… Christian?” She let out a small smile as his head
shook violently. “No, but you used to be. So sad, what they do to
their own. Buddhist?” She looked thoughtful as he gave a small nod
into his pillow, again muttering something. She heard as if the
pillow wasn’t even there. “Soto Zen,
des
ka?
Hmmm..” She addressed Brian again.
“You study the rope. Have you learned of such things as meridians
and flow of ki?” As he nodded again, she frowned. “Unfortunately; I
don’t know of any shiatsu healers close enough to help. But
perhaps… ”
She closed her eyes for a moment
and hummed. Brian didn’t recognize the tune, but it soothed him,
winding in and around his consciousness with a soft, relaxing touch
that had just enough syncopation to add a little energy to his
spirit, and keep him from losing consciousness entirely. The melody
went on for several minutes, then her hand again hovered for a
moment over his neck, and he felt the heat of her hand sinking in
again and sealing the melody into his bones so that when she
stopped, a moment later, he still heard the soft flow of notes
weaving through his useless muscles and frame. She leaned forward
and whispered, “Stay with us a bit longer,
Nawashi
. They are almost
here.”
He couldn’t even murmur his assent or thanks. In
spite of the song, he felt his reserves draining around, and the
sounds in the room, the feeling of the comforter, they all grew
more distant, no matter how much he concentrated on staying in
touch with them. He suddenly wished for the rope again, just to
give him that line, that place to go and hover in the luxury of the
now…
“That’s all?” Sullivan’s voice, suddenly harsh,
gave him a momentary respite, a rock to slow his rush into the tide
of unconsciousness. “You’re going to hum some tune and that’s going
to take care of him? How about calling someone? You’ve got to know
someone… damn, if only Mistress Alicia wasn’t at the Crucible this
weekend… Come on! We have to do something! I didn’t lose my house
and get fucking shot at just so we could bleat a little Irish ditty
at him and let him fade!”
“Bleat?” The single word came out of her mouth with
a soft tone that still seemed to stop Sullivan’s tirade with the
suddenness of a slap. “Sometimes, Sullivan, you are the true avatar
of the Green One, and we love you for it. Right now, though, you
are simply being Man, and I would ask you to stop it while in
Inanna’s house.”
Brian could almost hear Sullivan’s pout. “I just
think that one of us should be calling for somebody that knows how
to… ”
“They have been called. They are, in fact, here.”
The faint sound of a door opening somewhere in the house came to
him.
Sullivan’s dismayed grunt was
followed with an explosive “Fuck, you bunch are
telepaths
now? I don’t believe it… ”
but then it all grew dimmer, and the voices began to lose their
timbre as everything got further away. It was much like when his
awareness had hovered at the top of the rope… except that there was
nothing to hold on to, this time, and so he was simply…
falling…
He heard a sharp
snap-hiss-pop
come
through the fog, and felt the vague stirrings of alarm as he
identified the source as match being lit near his head. There was
no energy to respond to it, though, and so he simply lay there with
only the mildest curiosity as to what might be going on around him.
His back barely twitched as he felt a cool roundness, like the rim
of a thick drinking glass, press against his skin, just between his
left shoulder blade and spine.