Chapter 41 - The Charnel Pit part 7

And I did, but not that night.

About midways through the night, my maker returned with two more monkeys for me to feed upon. I launched myself at him immediately. Again, I caught him by surprise. This time I believe he was surprised more by the rapidity of my recovery than the speed of my attack. Only a few hours before, I was too weak to stand. I had crawled across the corpses of his Neanderthal victims to attack him. Now here I was, leaping into the air at him, fangs bared, fingers hooked into claws.

The look of surprise on his face was almost comical. His eyes bugged out and his jaw dropped to his chest. He flung the monkeys away and just managed to grab my wrists before I collided into him. The force of the impact drove him into the wall and we danced there a moment, jaws clenched, muscles straining.

"You dare… pit your strength… against mine?" he gasped, but I could see that he was having difficulty holding me back. The muscles in his neck and shoulders and arms stood out like taut ropes, quivering.

"You killed my father… my friends," I grunted, pressing my advantage. "I'm going… to destroy you!"

He lunged forward then, snapping at my face. His teeth came together with an audible clack and I jerked backed instinctively, closing my eyes. An instant later, he was swinging me into the wall.

He threw me so fast that centripetal force flung my legs out to the side of me. My body was nearly parallel to the ground when I smashed into the wall. From my hip, a muffled popping sound. It was the sound of my pelvis shattering inside me. There was a burst of starry pain, and then my entire left leg went numb. I crumpled to the earth in a shower of rubble. My maker fell with me, driving his knees into my stomach, and then he began to pound my face and upper torso with his fists.

Again.

He beat me until he had exhausted his rage. Finally, wheezing from his exertions, he grabbed my bloodied head and swung my entire body into the air with it. I pinwheeled across the chamber and hit the wall on the other side, breaking my spine. I slumped to the earth, paralyzed from the waist down, blinded by blood, but I did not lose consciousness. Unwilling to surrender, unwilling to submit, I rose to my elbows and began to drag myself across the ground at him.

He stalked toward me, livid with fury. "I try to be kind to you! I try to be a generous master, but I see that you recognize only cruelty. Ulh'wheh! You are as stubborn as a child! You will learn who your better is, little one!"

He turned and clutched one of the slick stalagmites that ascended from the ground. With a grunt of effort, he snapped it off. It was nearly as long as the fiend was tall, and so wide at the base a man would have had trouble encircling it in his arms. Grinning, he brandished the stone like a club.

Realizing what he intended to do next, I turned to retreat. I started crawling away from him, using the stiff limbs of the dead Fat Hands to drag myself across the floor. My legs trailed out uselessly behind me. My injuries were healing, but not swiftly enough. Not swiftly enough by half.

"You will call me master!" he shouted.

"Never!"

He raised the limestone bludgeon, holding it high over his head, then with a gleeful flash of his teeth, he brought it down on my legs in a whistling arc. The pit resounded with the thunder of the assault. He crushed my legs in one fell swoop.

The force of the impact shattered the limestone. Chunks of rock skipped across the dead Neanderthals. Others caromed off the walls, some of them breaking into smaller pieces to ricochet again. Several large pieces struck my head and shoulders.

I screamed in agony. In all my life, I'd never experienced such pain. The Living Blood had repaired my spine just in time to feel it all.

The Foul One cast aside his broken bludgeon, then set upon me with his fists again, pummeling my back and shoulders and head. I tried to protect my skull with my arms, still screaming, my vision bursting with black dots and bright flashes.

At any moment, I expected the killing blow. In truth I would have welcomed it. That, too, would have been an escape. An escape from the pain. An escape from the horrors of the charnel pit. An escape from the temptation to submit to him, to surrender, and accept him as my master.

But there would be no escape that night. The killing blow never fell. Oblivion eluded.

After a while, my maker grew bored. I ceased to struggle and he lost interest. He rose from my back in disgust.

"It is only you who insists on this cruelty," he said. "Just submit to me, little one. Submit and I will show you wonders you never knew existed."

I turned on my side and drew my body into a ball, closing my eyes. I closed my eyes to the nightmare world that I'd been imprisoned in. I closed my eyes to my hateful imprisoner. I pressed my bloody brow to my shattered knees and removed myself from reality. I withdrew as if I were diving into a dark pool. I swam away from the world.

My body was a network of fissured flesh and shattered bones. My skull was cracked open, my flesh hanging in flaps. The pain pulsed like a living thing in the darkness. My physical body seemed a shadow-twin that floated slightly separate from me, connected by only the faintest umbilicus. I was closer to death than I have ever been in my life. But for the Living Blood, the frayed thread that held me to the world would have snapped. It would have been a mercy.

But life is as merciless as it is unfair. Already the Blood was reknitting the thread. Already it was pulling me back from the dark. I struggled for oblivion. I fought to stay away. But the Blood was implacable. It would not set me free.

"I will break you, stubborn one," my maker promised. "Fight me all you want, but you will call me master. You will serve me. You will serve me, and you will love me."

I didn't respond. I swam further within my mind-- down, down, to its deepest recesses. I fled as far away from the monster that tormented me as I could. I dived into the abyss.

Finally, frustrated, he left.