A story we write together: THE CRUCIBLE

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She had thought about it from the time she could remember. It was now or never. Rachael had pitied the ground he had so lovingly tended those last days. Having once been her soft place to fall, the dark earth beneath her bare feet felt cold and unforgiving, and this place she had called her home for so long was now an empty shell of unfulfilled dreams and nights she yearned to forget. Dark secrets were hidden so deeply within her that their edges ripped at her flesh exposing the only truths which, if she dared to confront, could free her from this evil for the first time in her young life.

As the wind swept through the valley, the blades of tall grass were dancing to their own rhythm, pulsing to the familiar beat of evening, and the faint sound of the rushing stream could be heard beyond the thicket of green as the daylight turned into dusk. She ran. Her heart pounding. Faster now, she was oblivious to the cuts in her feet as the shards of limestone dug into her, but with her escape so near, she felt nothing; not even the sting of her bloody wounds could make her stop. She could feel his hot breath on her neck still sending a shiver through her freshly bruised porcelain skin now exposed by her torn clothing that she had left behind. This time….

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how vivid…the porcelain skin, the cold and unforgiving gound, shards of limestone digging into her…these are images that stick into your mind, this is what gives people emotions without describing them in writing…
the subtleness of your words are amazing!

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[size=75](embracetrees: Sweetheart, this is a multiplayer story-creating thread, so could you not comment until we’ve finished, or if you wanna join in, post a segment which leads off from the last words on the previous post :wink: all are welcome… Right Bess…?)[/size]

This time….

…she would make it. The sea-green, icy updraft off the cliff-top sent ripples of gooseflesh rising across her near-perfect skin, nipples firming and thighs a-quivver, she felt an almost primal sexual thrill as she charged uncaring toward certain… Death.

Jack Dawkins was a simple soul, working at the smithy had finally fleshed out his once-gangling teenage frame into that of a man, nay, a youthful God of shining bronze, if one were to believe the school-girl whispers and matronly titters of the village. His master the Smith had sent him ore-hunting at the cliff-base and dilligently, Jack persued his task, his nimble but niave mind alert to the rusty seams convoluting the creamy rock.

A rawcous seagull’s cry startled him, and looking up he saw an explosion of feathers as a mating pair launched themselves off the rock 50 ft above his head…

“What the…”

At that moment a lithe, unclothed figure leapt off the crag. But not far enough to entirely clear the jutting incline. Slithering and cartwheeling down the scree, she collapsed into Jack’s bellows-hardened embrace, scraped-sore and bloodslick.

Raising her hauntingly beautiful face to her impromtu savior’s, her moist rosebud lips parted softly as she breathed rather than said:

“Shit.”

4

She fainted peacefully in his arms. He was mesmerized by her beauty and had wondered where on earth she had come from in such a state. Not accustomed to being around women and never having been as close to one, he wasn’t sure just what to do with her, but decided to remove his red flannel shirt to cover her frail body. It was the proper thing to do.

As the night started to fall along with the temperature, Jack warmed her by his breath through his shirt and lovingly caressed her bared and bloodied feet having taken his socks off and gently guiding them over the open sores on the soles of her feet. He dressed her now in the same shirt as her limp body seemed to beckon him for salvation. As he lifted her into the night, a train whistled in the distance – a sharp contrast against the quietude of this Indian summer. Resting along the way, it took Jack at least an hour to arrive at his cabin nestled deeply in the canyon, and his breath became more labored as he took the last hill towards home. Relieved to see the light from the front porch in the distance his dog Blue greeted him giving a yelp of excitement to have him near once more.

“Whoa, boy… take it easy. We have a visitor. Now, I know we’ve never seen one of these before. Pretty huh? No, Blue; get down, girl.”

He whistled for her to come with him to the porch, and Blue obeyed staying by his side, but began instinctively to lick the young woman’s hands and arms as Jack ever so tenderly laid her onto his bed…

“Shoot, had I known we were having company, I mighta cleaned the place up a bit, huh, Blue?”

Blue jumped up half way onto the bed alongside their guest.

“That’s a good girl,” said Jack “You help me Blue. We’ll get her well together,”

After seeing that she was covered and warm Jack realized that he hadn’t eaten for most of the day and broke a heal from the large loaf of bread given to him my his Aunt Sara whom he had visited in the town nearby just a week before.

“Jack, you sweet thing you,” she teased, “just when are we gonna get you a nice young woman so you can bring some babies for me to rock to sleep on my porch. I need me some babies, that’s what I need. Get on the stick, would ya boy?”

She would have been so happy now that he had had a woman lying peacefully in his bed. He looked over at her and pretended for a minute that she was his. Her golden hair had a hint of red just like he had remembered of his mother’s and her complexion, blushed by the ordeal, was pure silk. She was the kind of woman that inspired dreams and fairy tales. He couldn’t stop gazing at her wondering what her name was and why she had been running so desperately into the night. Just when a smile was beginning to lighten up his face, Blue started barking fiercely at the cabin door. A thud… then another, then a pounding like he had never heard before almost breaking the door in…. A demonic voice bellowed out,

“WHERE IS SHE?”…

5

“WHERE IS SHE?”

Astonished at this stern voice, and the knock on his door,from not having many visitors these days, he ran to the door shirtless.

He looked through the peephole, but saw no one.

He began to tremble as his hand touched the doorknob, he hesitated, but then, having gone this far, he slowly turned it.

the heavy timber door creaked open, and in front of the gaping doorway, on the stone doorstep, stood------

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in front of the gaping doorway, on the stone doorstep, stood----

A huge shadow of a figure. Then, within a instant, everything went black.

                          _________________________

Fifteen years earlier…

As the sedan pulled up the long, windy, dirt road, the house on the hill came into view. It was enormous, but much more so in contrast to little Rachael. There were days at the agency when she got on her knees and prayed at night for new parents to adopt her and now her dreams had come true. She was finally at her new home with new parents and a family. She had never been sure who her real mother had been, but had heard rumors that she was a young teen who was forced to give her baby up for adoption. Rachael had been dubbed Babykins by one of the sweet old lady volunteers who had taken a liking to her the moment she had arrived at Wesleyview Adoption Agency in Queens… but soon, when she was close to two, someone had named her Rachael.

Rachael was now seven years old, and hadn’t been given any information to who had adopted her, or where she would live. She had been riding on a train for a full day and night with a nurse who had accompanied her with one small suitcase: everything that the little girl had ever owned. Rachel clung to an old teddy whose body was threadbare from being loved a bit too much.

As the train pulled up to the station the nurse, in full whites and sensible shoes, held the small hand of a frightened little girl who wasn’t sure whether to laugh or to cry at the prospect of coming “home.” She felt too old to be clutching her beloved teddy still, but she held him so tightly that her tips of her fingers turned white. There was a large black sedan waiting for them with a driver who said nothing the entire time stopping only to ask the nurse if she needed a ride back to the station. The nurse had replied curtly, ‘Yes.”

The Victorian house was huge having a wrap-around porch with a single rocking chair off to the right of it. Heavy green shutters had been closed tightly giving the house the illusion that no one was there, but as the car pulled up to the house, the huge wooded door beyond the porch opened and a gaunt man with a stern look appeared. He wore a dark suit, which hung loosely on his frame, and looked too old to want a small child, but he walked to the car, said little to the driver or the nurse, exchanged some paperwork, and took Rachael’s hand from the nurse’s enveloping his own firmly around it. “This is your new father, Rachael. Say hello to your new Daddy.”

Barely taking her eyes off the ground, Rachael muttered under her breath, “Hello, Daddy,” As she took the deep steps towards the door, Rachael began to feel nauseous, and covered her mouth with her small hand as if to stop the inevitable. The door creaked open sending chills up her back, and in front of her was a huge winding staircase, which seemed to go on forever. Rachel stood alone in the door looking up, and at that moment her mouth dropped open in shock realizing that the two of them were not alone. At the top of the stairs were…

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At the top of the stairs were…

… two figures, shrouded in the shadows, their bizzare frames half-lit by candlelight. Rachael started in fear as the old oaken door creaked shut behind her. The gaunt old man’s hand, his fingers dry and bent, more like levers encased in old leather than flesh and bone, gripped hers tighter, urging her further away from the threshold.

“I am Viverre, the Ringmaster, but you may address me as father, now come, most beloved of daughters, meet the rest of my clan…” The old man’s voice rasped softly, like sandpaper drawn across old wood, softened by time and damp.

“Come - be not afraid, they will be as your brother, as your sister to you, you need anticipate no harm from them… Come Augusta, come Friedriche, do not linger in the shadows like ghosts, can you not see our little one is yet apehensive of her new home…? Where are you manners…?”

The two figures shuffled down the twisting staircase further into the light.

The larger of the two wore loose trousers of a heavy cloth and a threadbare shirt of what once could once have been velvet. The form beneath was somehow skewed out of true - as if some divine or demonic hand had grasped its right hand and jerked it down with inhuman force - crumpling and creasing the torso out of line.
Most horrific was the face, the lower portion swathed in grubby bandaging, leaving only red and weeping lips revealled, Friedriche’s eyes were as vacant as a moonstruck childs’ seemingly unseeing but for a fleeting spark of maleovenence quickly come and gone.

Beside him was a slight and willowy woman, dressed in torn and rumpled lace, pallid blue-grey skin glowed faintly through the rents in the bodice, as she curtsied and giggled shrilly…

"Ohh - you shall be so happy here little Rachael…! We have so looked foward to you, Daddy has been promising us a new performer for so long…" Her childish voice stuttered and faded… “So long…”

“Hush now Augusta, our new one is tired from her journey, we must put her to bed, time enough for formalities upon the morrow.” The scarecrow figure bent to Rachael, “Let us show you to your room.”

As they mounted the first step, Friedriche broke his silence and turning called out to Rachael in a bubbling voice, soft but carrying:

“Welcome little sister,” He called, “Wellcome to La’ Cirque D’Tristesse…”

Rachael leaped out of Jack’s rude bed at the sound of Friedriche’s booming voice beyond the threshold.

Jack stood vainly, stark against the night, his muscled arms pinned to his sides, overmatched by the grip of the giant. She fled to Jack’s side, fists beating like mothwings against Friedriche’s skewed shoulder.

“Ahem…” Rasped a voice from the night. Instantly freezing the trio.

Viverre stepped carefully around the tableau on the doorstep, and seated his bony frame near the remnants of the fire. Quite at home he said:

“Now, my wayward daughter, perhaps you’d like to introduce us to your friend…”

Rachael turned toward the past she’d vainly tried to leave behind and…

8

They mounted the vast staircase in an awkward silence, Rachael’s head was spinning with everything she had to take into her poor underprepared mind in the last few minutes. Wellcome to La’ Cirque D’Tristesse…, is that not what the strange man had said? She was lost and confused, and knew she looked it. As they reached the top of the stairs, Rachel felt faint, everything about the house seemed so alien to her, the stench of wood polish, the murky lay of lighting that hung around the circular walkway encompassing the top of the stairs, the uneasy footing of the thick moth eaten carpet. Rachael wanted to cry, but something told her not to, she knew it would show her weak. The other inhabitants of the house, including that peculier woman, watched in expectation from below the staircase as Friedrich beckoned litle rachel towards her new room. Friedrich smiled to himself, at last he thought, pleased now that the void in his existence had filled, a new apprentice now he allowed himself a deep smile. The girl looked up at him with startled eyes, he stared back, he felt like she has seen something in them, something hidden underneath the surface, she turned away quickly before he could compose himself, they were reaching Rachaels new room…

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Just then she felt someone shaking her violently by the shoulders. Rachael had slipped into the recurring nightmare of her arrival at The Willows, and was unaware that she had fainted on the floor of the cabin. Her head was pounding with pain having internalized the shock of seeing the Evil One at the doorway. The last fifteen years washed over her entire body and recollections of terrifying screams in the night were impossible to bury from her memory.

[i]And I repeat my dearest daughter, “

”Perhaps you’d like to introduce us to your friend…"[/i]

“Don’t call me your daughter, ever again,” she said. “I am not your daughter, and take your filthy hands off me, you swine.”

Rachael recoiled in disgust, and could barely stand up almost stumbling over from exhaustion.

“Ah, she speaks," seethed Viverre, " The quiet one speaks out. Well, my darling daughter, you may have been an apprentice once, but I have groomed you for years now to be our blood-mother, and if you think that I have spent all this time sacrificing myself just for the sake of La Cirque d’Tristesse for nothing, think again. Now, sweet lovey, get over here right now, and leave this man to live his life in peace. If you don’t, my dear, we will be forced to take care of him our way… We’ve already taken care of his dog.”

Jack had forgotten that Blue would have been barking madly by now at the strangers’ arrival. He had been a loyal watchdog since Jack had found him starving by the riverbed five years before. Jack became uncontrollable against the brute force of Friedrich.

Rachael began to sob knowing that she couldn’t do this any more. She looked over at Jack who had begun to cry out in agony of the thought of his beloved Blue… Jack was like putty in the hands of the monster, Friedrich, who held his arms hard behind his back.”

“You bastards. You filthy bastards,” he cried.

The couple looked at each other in despair. Rachael stood up and moved unwillingly towards the door knowing she must yield to the Evil One in order to save this poor soul from the slow torture that she had witnessed so many times in the past. She had stood in the circle every Sunday amidst the fifty brothers of the Tristesse in their cranberry robes and blood-smeared faces in the belly of the house far beneath the damp cellar of The Willows. She knew what they would do to him if she didn’t surrender herself. The rancid smell of it all was in her nostrils still, and the very thought it made her sick …

As the trio got to the door, without any warning, Blue came careening through the open window like a shot. He was covered with blood over most of his hind end but came after Viverre with a vengeance. He was like a rabid dog and, with jagged teeth bared, his savage look even surprised Jack. Blue tore through the old man’s pant leg and ripped off his…

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Blue tore through the old man’s pant leg and ripped off his…
testicles
…

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An inhuman bellow of pain shrieked into the silent night, starting at a low monotone it finaled with a high-pitched gargle. In the ensuing confusion Jack found himself momentarily shed of his iron grip enough to quickly assess the situation. Jack saw blue was now satisfied that he had dealt with his first target, which was now lying on the floor clutching his midsection. Blue now rounded on the Giant that was engulfing Jack. The giant, understandably, lost his composure faced with the already bloodied dogs jaws, and what they might do to him . Jack gave him a hard elbow shove in between the giants lungs and he gasped a deep exhale as the air flowed out of his lungs. Now Blue was free to do his worst, the dog took run up and leaped high at the mans upper torso, hoping to make contact in the neck area. The giant managed to swing his arm around and got off with a deep arm wound, then jack witnessed a flash of silver fly through the air and heard the dog give a pitying whelp and went to the floor. The anguish and hate Jack now felt was unfathomable, he had thought his beloved life companion dead, only to see it come back and now, Blue was lying on he floor, completely still. It was as if someone had ripped his heart out, twice. Jack felt his upper jaw tense and his temples begin to throb, that bastard, he thought as he watched the man, who was preoccupied with his wounded arm and his comrade sprawled out over the floor, oblivious to jack standing still a few feet behind him. Jack took a deep breath stepped forward, putting all his wait into it, gave a right hook which a boxer would have been proud of, the giant who was just turning to deal with jack, was caught in the upper jaw. And with a look of utter bewilderment, collapsed first to his knees, and then joined his friend on the floor in utter defeat. Instinctively Jack rushed over to Blue, who was now on his side, his beautiful eyes closed, looking impossibly serene. Jack noticed what had finally killed him, a throwing knife that had entered into his side and almost pinned him to the floor. As jack was bowed over his beloved dog, he felt a presence behind him and turned to see Rachael standing there. Their eyes made contact, and Jack saw her begin to utter something, but was interrupted by the sound of excited voices coming from somewhere outside the cabin. Shit!, was what next went through Jacks strained mind…

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the sound of excited voices coming from somewhere outside the cabin. Shit!, was what next went through Jacks strained mind…

… Clapping her hands and almost skipping with glee, Augusta pranced into the firelit cabin-room.

“Got you, got you, naughty doggy…!” She sing sang - then she skidded to a stop, noticing for the first time her downed comrades and the deeply breathing Jack standing rigid over the corpse of Blue.

Wrenching the throwing knife from Blue’s chest, Jack took a slow pace toward her, “YOU WITCH - YOU’VE KILLED HIM - YOU KILLED MY DOG…”

Augusta recoiled, circling until her back was to the fire guttering in the grate. She began to fumble with nervous hands at the neck of the hooded robe she wore. Jack advanced. The robe slipped to pool on the floorboards. Augusta stood sickly and naked in the firelight, the ruddy glow flickering across her breasts and stomach, leaving deep shadow at crotch and thigh. Holding Jack’s murderous gaze with her own she began to undulate, her whipcord body languidly writhing to unheard music.

“JACK !!!” Cried Rachael - “Don’t look at her…!”

In a flash of fire on steel, another dagger seemed to matierialize in Augusta’s hand - whirling on spot, and without missing a beat, she hurled it. It span once and ‘thukked’ meatily into Rachael’s right shoulder, grazing the collarbone. Rachael went down in a heap, too far to touch the seemingly mezmerized Jack.

Rachael screamed.

Jack shook his head like a wounded bull, and renewed his advance on Augusta. Augusta smiled, her canines wet and glinting. She swiftly raked her hooked hands from thigh to throat, ragged nails leaving wheals across her skin. Jack was close enough to smell her sweated excitement. He bunched his great calloused fists.

Inkstains replaced the red wheals. Blooming from beneath her pallid skin.

The inky trails like fat, coloured worms flowed living over Augusta’s writhing form, cavorting in spirals around her small breasts and belly, sinking out of sight at navel, only to spout anew at nipple, fast becoming a hypnotic blur, manic washes of carmine reds, deep azures and moonstruck silver. Jack stood like a puppet with his strings cut, entranced.

Catlike, she slinked nearer. Her hands flashing to her cunt, she gathered a clot of living colour and smeared it over Jack’s face. Like a ghastly bruise across his cheeks, Augusta’s jucies lingered momenterily, then burrowed in.

Jack keeled over like a felled sapling on the spot. Eyes rolling in his head, foam on his lips.

"Augustaaa - " Came the hoarse voice of Viverre, “Augustaaa - attend to meee…”

Augusta span to the hunched form.

“Noo - I am done for, the beast has unmanned me… The blood-mother must be quickened, the dog…” Viverre coughed wetly, “The dog, they may still serve…”

Augusta ran to the still form of Blue, bent and with slight effort wrenched open its jaws. Not finding what she sought she prised the dagger from Jack’s unfeeling hand, and used it to slit open the belly of the dog. Reaching into the bloodless wound she rummaged like a child through a bowl of sweetmeats, till with a gasp of delight she pulled her befouled hand free. Like bloodied eggs, those which had been Viverre’s lay in her palm. She rose from her squat and walked grimly toward Rachael, who lay, still whimpering with pain, by the threshold.

“Open wide, dear sister, this is not the way we planned it, but needs must, when the devil drives, does it not…?” Augusta took a firm hold of Rachael’s jaw and slowly levered her mouth open…

Rachael gargled and writhed, her heels drumming on the bare boards, childlike in Augusta’s unnatural grip.

“Rejoice Rachael - you have usurped me - in but a little time you will be mother…” Augusta spoke softly… “Mother to us allll…”

Rachael, mewing with pain…

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Rachael, mewing with pain…

was not as conscious of her bloody, dislocated shoulder as much as the gruesome orb that had been forced into her mouth, and though she had tried to clench her teeth tightly against the foul, warm taste of Viverre’s bloody scrotum, Augusta was determined to be triumphant in her strategy in making Rachael the blood-mother of the clan. She would take great lengths this night to do so…

Rachael had been well aware of Augusta’s powers since being led that first night toward the turret bedroom at the highest point of the Willow’s garret. Viverre had made it clear that he had wanted her to be far from the Pièce Vivante where the others had grown up under the his watchful eye. Friedrich was the first. He had been bought for five hundred dollars from the daughter of an elderly hooker when he was four years old, and later, Augusta, who was Viverre’s own blood was the offspring of a young girl whom he had abducted from a department store and had locked in the small metal cell beyond the earshot of their peculiar abode inside what resembled an abandoned outhouse. Her sobbing was deafening at first and then petered to a wimper, and then after a short while -a bizarre muffle. He took her daily into his four-poster bed to have his way with her until he was sure that she was with child, and then, finally, he allowed her to eat with the rest of the family making sure she had had her three large glasses of milk laced with his blood, which he had drained from his ulcerated leg every morning.

He kept a linen dressing around his leg mid-calf, never allowing it to heal properly so the supply of his blood for these purposes was within his grasp at a moment’s notice. He insisted that all members of the family ingest his pus-infested blood every morning. Breakfast at the Willows was the same for everyone - every morning of every week: two raw eggs, toast with homemade jam, and a small juice glass of Viverre’s own. Sunday was blood-letting day, and the weak, but determined Viverre spent hours on the marble slab in the basement while the letters squeezed and prodded his upper thigh towards the wound, then infecting the lesion with splinters of glass, and reopening it daily to the screams of delight from Viverre’s grainy gullet.

Once the mid-wife delivered Baby Augusta, her young mother was left on a highway, half naked, half-starving, and breasts engorged with milk. She had been blindfolded when first arriving at the sight of the Willows as well as most of her stay, so she could never retrace her steps to the police. It didn’t matter much anyway when they drove her to the asylum weeks after the trucker had rescued her.

Augusta was the epitome of Viverre, and had loved the land at the Willows just as he had tended to each arbor vine and leaf of each fruit tree as if touching them was his own form of seduction. “Ah, to love its sap like seeping cum, and its nectar sweet and warm like the loins of a woman in heat. I so love my land beyond any tender passion that some wanton whore could provide. Give me my trowel.”

He worked for days on end teaching Augusta….

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entered twice … .delete please

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He worked for days on end teaching Augusta…

the dark arts. The dark arts that Rachael was about to experience in their full force…

Rachael realised that as soon as those befouled things touched her tongue, the evil that they contained would begin to quicken inside her, and that she would be helpless to the doom they entailed. She had to get them out of her mouth. She reached deep inside and summoned the strength that only exists in times of deep fear and terror, grabbing Augusta’s throat with her delicate hands and squeezing with all her might.

Rachael momentarily saw a flash of fear and shock in Augusta’s eyes, a look she had never seen before. It was the look of a master in his last moments, mortally wounded by the slave who finally crossed the fine boundary between oppression and rebellion. This look was short lived. Augusta let out an unnatural bellow, a bellow that seemed to reach into the darkest regions of her soul. It was the sound of torture, filth and death. Augusta’s normally pale blue eyes turned black, an eternal black that seemed to swallow all the light in the world, as she fixed her eyes on Rachael.

“YOU FILTHY BITCH! You will pay for that!” she shrieked.

Rachael was helpless, transfixed by the gaze of the demon. Her heart knew all was lost…

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CRAP!! Bugger it all, you were too quick for me Bessy…

EDIT: The above post has been altered to fit in with Bessy’s post…

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[size=75]Crap… bugger. I can’t stop editing, Noely - up up to seven times total. [/size] :astonished:

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Her heart knew all was lost…

…Tattered skeins of inky blight began to seep from the windows of Augusta’s blackened soul - questing toward Rachael’s face. Augusta renewed her grip. The air grew stale in Rachael’s lungs, her body took over and demanded breath in evermore powerful heaves.

Augusta took on a newer, fatal radiance - her living tattoos writhed like serpents mating beneath her skin… “NOW YOU DIE - YOU VAPID SOW !!!”

A withered hand wormed its fingers into Augusta’s thin hair and wrenched her head back with surprising force.

“DO NOT HARM HER !” Wheezed Viverre, his breath rattling in his wattled throat. “Foolish daughter - She is our hope, our future…”

“NOOO !!!” Screamed Augusta - “You had promised ! Promised… I was to be the one… the mother… It was my role - MINE” She spat full in Viverre’s face.

“Flawed… You are flawed, a cracked vessel.” Viverre, with his last strength, dragged Augusta toward the fire, away from Rachael.

Rachael’s throat spasmed, she gulped involuntarily. Viverre’s seed squirmed down into her belly. Her eyes widened in horror. Unoticed by the struggling pair, she rammed her fingers into her mouth clawing at the root of her tongue…

With a tearing of hair and scalp Augusta wrenched herself around in Viverre’s embrace - toe-to-toe and lip-to-lip like old lovers, her murderous gaze locked onto his and the tears of hell spilled into the old man’s eyes. Reeling, blinded by pain, Viverre bellowed like a steam-shovel and up-ended them both… into the fire. Augusta’s hair caught quickly and the old-man’s clothes flared - they writhed like spitted maggots in the flames, kicking embers in all directions.

“Rachael - run, run my dearest of daughters…” Cried Viverre in a last warbling shriek… “Make a new nest - grow fat, fecund…”

The cabin was quickly ablaze from floorboard to rafter, dragging the still groggy but rapidly-recovering Jack from the fire, Rachael collapsed sweaty and sooted into the chill grass. Already she could feel a liquid roiling in her belly. Jack elbowed himself up, shaking his head.

“Who - who the hell are you…?” Jack gasped - his face contorting in grief for his burning home.

“Rachael, I’m Rachael… We must get away - Friedriche the strong man may still make it out, The tattooed lady too - she is more powerful than we ever imagined…” Rachael tugged at Jack’s arm. “I’m sorry for the madness, but we must run. They’ll kill you too now, there’s nothing else for it - we must find somewhere safe, somewhere to think.”

The two of them, hobbling at first but soon breaking into a ragged jog, put distance between themselves and Jack’s cabin.

“We can’t keep running in this darkness, one of us will break an ankle.” Gasped Jack “There’s a shepherd’s hut on the rise over there if I remember rightly - let’s wait out the night…”

Later in the guttering light cast by a stump of tallow-candle, Jack turned to Rachael’s uneasily sleeping form, his eyes rested on her midriff, and the slight mound rising and falling with her breath.

Pregnant…? He wondered… He could have sworn…

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He could have sworn…

that he had known her forever. She would be his, and he knew there was nothing to stop their union. It was only weeks before that his cabin had been reduced to ashes and he had been left with nothing but the clothing on his back. Rachael and Jack were like fugitives running from the evil Viverre and his surreal flock of madmen. Never in Jack’s imagination could he have conjured up anything that could rival this nightmarish episode and the unseen fate that had brought these two souls together.

These long days and nights together gave Jack time to reflect. His purpose in life had been diverted giving him a woman now to protect, making him feel stronger and more virile than he had ever dared to consider. He wanted her body now more than before, but she had been through so much that he kept his distance only to show his affection through a fleeting glance, a helpful deed, or a soft touch as he brushed against her in their travels. It was she who had made the first advance, and it was she who allowed him to take her.

They had been on the run for few weeks when they spotted a cave in the distance at the edge of the river. The weather had been lovely up until now and as luck would have it the night skies had been overflowing with a celestial array lighting their evening path of the unknown. Through broken branches and deep gullies they pushed forward every day half-ignoring the aches in their muscles and scratches on their limbs.

Arriving at their newfound shelter they were exhausted and filthy, and found themselves seated across from one another on large boulders too hungry or tired to speak. The silence between them was broken only by an occasional sigh. If he closed his eyes he thought he had heard the pounding of her heart and the blood rushing through his own veins. She held her hand out to his and pulled him towards her. They stood. They remained across from each other for what seemed like an eternity, barely touching. She slowly unbuttoned his shirt and peeled it back dropping it slowly to the dirt floor. She then took off her blouse above her head revealing the lacey underclothing beneath it. She held his face between both hands and lovingly pushed his hair back away from his forehead. He didn’t know what to say.

“I want you to wash me, Jack. I want you to wash my body, and then I want you inside me –only you – to cleanse my womb of this filth that festers within.”

She unhooked her silk bustier throwing it to the ground. She slid off her skirt to her ankles revealing her full nakedness, and as she stood there in the moonlight he saw that the chiaroscuro of deep shadow made each curve of her breasts and hips more alluring to him. He couldn’t have wanted her more – his body now aroused with the thought of her pleasure. She looked at him and nodded for him to remove the rest of his clothing as well. Holding himself back still, he waited. She kissed his shoulder, than licked the nape of his neck, sending chills down the small of his back. “I want you to melt inside me Jack,” she whispered. “I want you now.”

“Yes, woman… Oh, yes.”

Nearby there was a gentle hill towards the inlet, and, just as if they had been children at play, Jack and Rachael fell together on the soft ground. Filled with only the steamy scent of each another they began rolling slowly down the hillside towards the water. Naked, and oblivious to anything but this moment between them, they became one with the soft bed of forest earth until they found themselves covered with mossy green with only their laughter filling the quiet warm air. They…

20

They clashed in passion until their souls enveloped in a bursting spring of ecstasy and warmth and drained them of their heated climax. They sighed in eachothers arms and uncoiled their bodies and gasped towards the crystal sky and let their thoughts flee still in a half embrace.
The two lovers rested in the sun, gleaning power and warmth from its mystical energy. After a time they stirred from their sleepy trance and faced eachother. Now was when the questions came, they both sensed it.
After little real dialogue when they were out the run, Jack, although in complete respect and love for his new found goddess knew his questions would have to wait, but could barely stir aside his feeling impatience about what had really happened back at that ungodly estate.
‘Jack’ uttered Rachael ‘I have known little true happiness in my life’ she stopped, gathering herself, ‘I lived my life trapped in my mind when I lived at that place, in a nightmare, with evil people with evil intentions’
“I am always here for you” said jack firmly
“What I am trying to say jack is that you have brought me back by showing me their is good, you have bought me back from the dark side of angst and chaos, you have given me hope. The only thing which kept me going was hope somewhere, hope for a greater good, you have empowered me”
“You too have-” Started Jack, but Rachael continued
“Jack, those people back when we were at your house, they will never stop hunting us, and they think themselves above any mortal boundary or authority, and they wield cruel power. They abducted me as a girl an have grown me to be their next mother, the next bearer of the future clan. They will find me, and I think you can protect me. We have been chosen. I cannot make sense of it now, I should not be like this, but you have saved me, Jack. I am not of the other side yet.”
Jacks mind was now whirling, he expected those were pretty sick bastards, but now he really was scared. He had hoped it might all be over, everything else would have seemed so easy after this. All he knew was that this woman was what his path had laid out for him, nothing would stop them.