terror systems

This is an adult fantasy and storytelling blog to share and vent and communicate about fantasy.

After enduring a weekend of ritualistic torture, on Monday, you sit in a lecture at uni. Many cigarettes were extinguished against your genitals this weekend, and your ass is bruised black. You sit quietly, belly and pelvic floor clenched tight, and try not to shuffle on your seat. This is an important lecture, you try to concentrate.

Just as you wanted to go to your lunch break, your boss, who is also your rapist, calls you into his office, where he unceremoniously rapes you, quick and harsh, from behind. You pull your trousers back up and go back to work. Your lunch break is over. This happens on most days.

You have been here for two and half months now and you think you might just make it. The long hours of daily work have hardened your body. You don't mislike the muscle growing on your arms and you don't even, really, mislike the work.

Of course, you never forget where you could be, instead of here, had you been given a choice. What you are missing, who you are missing. This life disrupted by a sentence. But you think you might just make it. Maybe, even, with three or four new skills under your belt. You have learned how to raise fences. You have learned how to log wood. How to cut stone.

Maybe it is just that your expectations were so fearful, so low. That you couldn't imagine your life actually going on. But it goes on. And this is doable. Sometimes, at night, someone sings songs. You have learned new jokes. Life is everywhere. Plus, you know how much worse it could have been, for you, personally, for those you love, had the actual truth be known. You were very lucky.

You don't mislike the work, even the hard work, but you are hungry all the time. They feed you just enough. You are given a lunch packet in the morning, when you file out for work, a bag filled with a piece of black bread, two big potatoes, two hard-boiled eggs, one thick strip of dry meat, one apple. This is your breakfast and your lunch and it is on you to ration it out to yourself throughout the day. In the evenings, you eat a watery cabbage soup, back at camp. You start to develop little methods, on what and how to eat, how to make the most of it. Your belly, which used to have fluff on it, has grown lean.

One evening, you eat your supper of cabbage soup, bone-tired but calm, not unhappy with your day's work, hopeful that you might make it out of here just fine after all, when you first see him and he first sees you. A very unwelcome new arrival.

You briefly dare hope that he won't know you, won't remember, or might chose to misremember on purpose, being that you now are both here. But as he walks past you, he knocks his shoulder into yours, a hard look in his eyes. He whispers a word. He knows.

Two days later, when you are given your lunch packet for work, he comes stand at your side. He looks at your bag, then at your eyes. He holds out his hand. You swallow. Briefly, you grip your bag tighter, then you fish out your apple and hand it to him. He takes your apple and holds out his hand again. You give him one potato. He takes your potato and holds out his hand again. You give him your second potato. You continue like this until your bag is empty. His face has remained stone for all this time, but now, he briefly smirks. He gives you back your apple. He walks away.

You are stunned. Shocked. Your food bag gripped against your chest. You are already very hungry. You planned on eating one of your potatoes and one of your eggs before starting out to work. You planned on eating maybe one third of your bread somewhen during the mid-morning, and to keep your meat and the apple for lunch. You'd have eaten another third of your bread in the afternoon, as well as your second egg. Your second potato and the rest of your bread, you wanted to keep to supplement your supper, as the thin cabbage soup was not very filling. But now, all you have to eat until supper is one apple. You are very hungry now. But if you eat your apple, you'll have nothing left. You must wait until at least lunch to eat it. You set out to work with an empty belly.

You are working on road construction. You dig and shovel, you move wheelbarrows filled with earth, you crush rocks, you move stones. 12 hours, with breaks. You are faint after two. You must eat. You eat your apple. Now you have nothing left to eat until evening. When they pass around the water, which is offered often and in unrestricted quantity, you drink greedily, trying to fill the pit in your belly. It doesn't work.

In the evening, while you lick out the last drop of your thin cabbage soup, your belly growls loud enough to turn heads. As you lay on your cot, you envelop your abdomen with both hands and squeeze. You press one fist against your belly and curl up around it. It is all you can do not to whine and moan in need. It is, finally, sleep that delivers you from your misery.

The next morning, as you stand in line for your lunch packet, he comes to stand next to you again. Dread descends over you. Once you are given your bag, he holds out his hand. Yesterday's transaction repeats itself. You give him everything but the apple and an egg. You hope he might let you keep the egg. He takes the egg. You retain the apple.

You dig out tree stumps and haul heavy stones, you pick and shovel, you carry baskets of gravel up and down the hill. 12 hours, with breaks. You eat your apple. By midday, you are trembling. You have not had this kind of trouble, yet, because you have not yet been a bad worker. But bad workers get beaten. When you put down your wheelbarrow, feeling faint, and the guard looks over you menacingly, you know to pick it right back up again.

At supper, you lick out your bowl of cabbage soup. Then you lick your bowl out again. You lick your bowl out again. You lick and lick and lick your bowl until the very last person has finished their meal, until it is time to give the bowl back and go. As you lay on your cot, you press your palm into your vibrating belly. Haltingly, tremulously, you breathe.

You stand in line for your lunch packet, the next morning, and when he comes to you again, you are not surprised, though a dizzying panic is spreading through your bones. He takes your food. He leaves you one apple. You will die in here. You will die and you will starve and you will die in here. What can you do? What can you do? What can you possibly do? You cannot ask for help. Your secret is too big, his power in holding it above you too absolute. Where, then, to get food?

You work outdoors, and outdoors there are plants. You don't really know which are edible, and the soil, where you work, is broken up and disrupted by your construction. You are watched at work, not free to wander and play scavenger on the side. You eat 4 leaves of dandelion. Dandelions are edible, you remember that. You eat an earthworm, then another. You eat one slug. You don't remember if these are edible, but you never heard they weren't. Surely, children would be warned if they weren't. They must be edible, you decide, merely unappetising. You are, of course, far beyond unappetising. Your only considerations are proteins, carbohydrates, fats. Surely a slug must contain some digestible protein.

By midday, the pain in your belly is extreme. Waves of stabbing, cramping, nauseating ache. You're not sure if this is caused by the soil invertebrates or by your hunger. Yesterday's hunger felt somewhat like that as well. This, maybe, feels worse, though it is hard to tell. Your guts churn violently and you don't dare eat any more worms.

You hide your hunger, because it seems unadvisable to make it known. You move around between breaks, never sit with the same group, so that nobody can track what you are not eating. If you were among close friends, you might share your predicament. Though even then, your problem would beg the question of what was being held above you. But you are among strangers, not friends. And this is not the place to loudly broadcast one's weakness.

You decide that tonight's cabbage soup is thicker than usual. You decide you will be very well-nourished by your cabbage soup tonight. You ration out your spoonfuls, you sip up one third of the spoon, then another third, then the rest. Then, slowly, the next spoonful. You let what fibre and texture is to be found in the watery broth slowly dissolve on your tongue. You try to mind over matter yourself to satiety. To feel yourself filled. You only feel desperately, nauseatingly ravenous. Tonight, you cannot sleep.

The next day, you decide to carefully ration your apple, so as to avoid the acuity of the stomach pain you felt over the course of the last two afternoons. So as to spread out your intake, level out your blood sugar. You decide to take one bite per hour. You try to keep the bites small, to really stretch out the apple until evening. You try to keep a bit of reserve in between, for if you feel close to fainting and an hour has not yet passed.

You pick open the earth, and carry sack of stones up and down the hills, you split rocks and dig open the soil. You do this for 12 hours, with breaks, nourished by one apple.

You sit in front of your cabbage soup in the evening, for several minutes. You are afraid to start. You are afraid to eat it, because you know that once you start eating it, you will soon be finished, and then it will be over for the day. Then there will be nothing more to hope for. This is your very last food of the day, and once you finish it, there will be nothing more.

On your fifth day of eating one apple and one bowl of cabbage soup a day (and some bugs), you get hit for the first time. You were at the sledgehammer, breaking open stones, and you needed as small break in between each hit. It was very hard work. You needed just a few breaths before slamming the hammer down again. You must have leaned on the hammer for too long.

The stick slams down your back and you are so startled, briefly shocked out of space, that you first notice yourself falling to your knees, and then the pain. You hasten to stand up and pick the hammer up again. No words are exchanged, since it it obvious what you did, and what that was for. You work harder again. As you lift the hammer over your head, your ribs flare out of your chest, and your shirt, wet with sweat, clings to the hollow of your belly.

In the evening, you eat your cabbage soup. It doesn't really matter, you suppose, whether you eat it slowly or quickly. You eat at what you believe to be a medium pace. As you lie in your cot, your belly is hollowed, yes, but your back hurts more than your guts. Your back hurts from the labour as well as from the beating.

You understand that a prison is an economy that preys on need. You weren't needy, before, you were self-contained, as such, you were safe. Now, you are desperately needy, which makes you vulnerable for desperate bargains.

There are men who holds fights, in the evening, for entertainment. The price is food, obviously, sometimes other things. You dismiss this strategy straight away, it will do you no good to be battered on top of starving. But as you observe the goings-on, you realise that this is not so much a true fight, like a street fight, or even a real boxing match, but that there are obvious champions, and obvious losers. The bargain, it would seem, is to allow yourself to be punched around some, inevitably lose, but keep it up to the point that the type of character that is amused by such things would deem sufficiently entertaining for you to have earned yourself your reward. In other words, get slapped around for food and fun.

On your sixth day of eating one apple and one bowl of cabbage soup a day (and two cockroaches), you get hit again. This time, you were pushing a wheelbarrow and stopped doing so, instead leaned on it. You don't know for how long, but for too long. The stick slammed across your lower back. Air expelled itself out of your lungs. The stick slammed against your kidney, two fingers up from the first hit. You cried out. You hurried to resume your work, eyes wet, breath ragged.

On your seventh day of eating one apple and one bowl of cabbage soup a day (and one slug), while digging out earth, you sit down. You know as you do this that this is a bad idea, but something in you just sits down. In spite of no break having been called, you lower yourself to the floor, back leaned against the earthen wall of the ditch. You remain like this for a while. A guard sees you and he doesn't immediately hit you. Instead, he walks away, and comes back with another guard.

The two of them pick you up by the arms and stand you up. They walk you out of the ditch and over to the side, where the logs are stacked, the big stones. They push you chest down over a stone. Others are watching this happen. This is meant to be seen, and this is meant to be understood. This is a message not just for you. One guard holds you around your shoulders to keep you in position, the other beats your back. He does not beat your back once, or twice, as was bad enough to endure. You woke up stiff from the neck to the hip, today, from the last two days' minor beatings. He counts to ten. Then they switch place.

In the evening, you are in so much pain you feel near too nauseous for your cabbage soup. Of course, you still eat your cabbage soup. On your cot, you lie face down, back up. You don't feel hunger, only pain. You know, though, that the weakness that gets you punished is caused by hunger, and that you must fix that.

The next morning, your extortioner, stone-faced as ever, takes your two eggs, your two potatoes, you bread, your strip of meat, as well as your apple.

You are shocked. You thought the apple didn't matter. One apple is nothing, is just the same as starving. But the apple mattered. It is worse without the apple. The apple was everything.

You haul logs of wood and you carry bags of gravel up and down the hills. You pick open the earth and break stones. You do this for 12 hours, with breaks, on no food, with a hurting back. You do it well and you work hard, because the fear of another beating drives you forward.

The cabbage soup is thin tonight. Your portion consists of murky water, with three thin strands of texture in it. You are more nauseous than hungry. You will die if you won't eat. You will weaken at work and they will beat you for it, in an escalating merry-go-round of violence and starvation and how long will you last? Not long. You will die. You go find the rings of fighters. You are already battered. You will be able to take this.

You are quizzed about your motivations (food), your experience (none), then you are put on a list. There is a list, because there is a roster. Bets are exchanged and preparations must be made before each fight.

You are shocked. You wanted to do it now and immediately. You must have looked disappointed, for you are laughed at. "Are you this eager to get a beating? Wait your turn."

You lie in your cot at night, water sloshing around in your belly. You drink lots and lots of water to replenish yourself, as if that would help. Today, you have eaten nothing but one bowl of thin cabbage soup. This is your eighth day of getting relieved of your rations. You shouldn't count so closely maybe, but you can't help yourself. Eight days is a bit more than a week. This is not very long. Yet a bit more than a week changed your situation from one of careful hope to one of utter despair.

Of course, you consider other options. Stealing has been on your mind since day two. But everybody here is hungry. You are all fed just barely enough. Your hunger from before feels quaint, now, but you remember. People hold on to their food rations extremely closely. You have kept your eyes peeled for opportunity and found none.

You have considered violence. It is you or him, after all, a matter of survival. But violence, especially deadly violence, is easy to fantasise and difficult to execute. You already know this about yourself, because you have lived enough life to have learned this. You know what you are capable of and what not. You will not kill your way out of this.

The next morning, he lets you keep the apple. You nearly cry in relief. You want to thank him. You want to shake his hand and kiss his cheek in appreciation. Your reaction disturbs you.

This apple changes everything. You portion it out carefully. One half of a bite per hour, and some extra at strategic times. It helps to have one or two moments per day where you can take one big bite. You eat it down to the stem, obviously. You were already doing that, before. You break open stone and shovel out earth. You push wheelbarrows up and down the hill and split wood. You do this for 12 hours, with breaks, nourished by one apple. You also eat one slug and two worms.

In the evening, you are invited to fight. This didn't take that long after all. Maybe they wanted to test your resolve.

"Shirts off," you are informed by the grinning ringmaster.

Your last beating was two days ago. Your back is striped dark purple. Your opponent is bigger than you and has been battered before, you deduce this from the amount of scars on his torso. He looks you up and down, bruises and all, and smiles. You notice you have grown small. There is a depression on each side of your tensed belly, the deepest just underneath your ribcage. Your trousers slide down your hips, if you don't pull the drawstrings so tight the fabric bunches. His chest is powerful and meaty, yours narrow and wiry.

This is your ninth day of eating nothing but an apple and a bowl of cabbage soup a day (and once nothing but one bowl of cabbage soup)(and some bugs). Can nine days diminish you that much? Apparently.

Your opponent stops smiling and punches your belly. You fold immediately, neatly in half, then drop to your knees. You know you must hold out longer than that to earn yourself a reward, though. So you stand back up. You opponent punches you into your side, underneath the ribs, then again into your belly.

You have eaten your cabbage soup, before this, and drunk water. A third punch to your belly, and you puke out your supper. This causes hooting and hilarity. The ringmaster doesn't call an end to the fight, though. You must hold out until the ringmaster calls an end to the fight. You stand back up.

You can't tell for how long this goes on. You think hours, but you know it was probably mere minutes. At the end, your cheek is tender and the right side of both your upper and your lower lip are busted, blood against your teeth. Your torso and thighs are one dull, heated pain. You know it will get worse once the adrenaline subsides. Your loser's price is two potatoes.

Your stomach hurts, but you immediately eat one potato. The hurt in your stomach increases, as does your nausea. For a panicky moment you worry that you have eaten too quickly, that your stomach will expel its precious content. You keep your second potato for tomorrow, hidden snug close to your body, in your sock.

The next day, you rise stiffly. Putting on your shirt hurts. Bending down hurts. You have slept very little, because of the pain. At work, you portion out your one apple and your one potato. You supplement your diet with two roaches and one worm. The right side of your face is swollen. Opening your mouth and chewing hurts. You learn to be very attentive of the guards at work. It is possible, sometimes, to not always work very hard, as long as one is not seen. Your learning curve for this was steep but, by necessity, you learn fast.

In the evening, you eat your cabbage soup. Your belly aches. You sit very straight, tension all the way down you sides, your back. After you are done, you go find the ring of fighters. You ask to participate again. The swelling of your cheek turns your voice slightly mealy. The ringmaster laughs, and puts you on the list. "A glutton for punishment," he calls you.

There are other ways to make extra in the camp. One way is to befriend one particular guard, who will give extra, in exchange for certain acts of service. Only the very desperate, very isolated, very young or very weak use that strategy. You suppose you are several of these things. You go find the guard.

He looks you up and down, your busted face, your trousers tied closely around your waist and invites you into his room with a smile. He sits down on his chair. You are, admittedly, at loss at what to do.

"I... how... what... happens now," you ask him.

"Aw, a virgin," he says.

You are afraid you already failed your opportunity, but he explains.

"It's not advanced science. You give me a nice blow job. If you do good, and if I am pleased, I give you a little extra."

You can do that. Your bruised face hurts as you stretch your mouth around his member. He smells unwashed and you are disgusted. Twice, your stomach hiccups, but you don't puke. He grips your hair and whines out like a struck dog, when he climaxes. For this service, you are given a strip of meat. You wash out your mouth with water, before you eat it.

Even after the water, and after the meat, the bad taste in your mouth lingers, like a grimy coat. Your nostrils are clogged with the smell of unwashed cock. You decide that this food was more easily earned than taking a beating at the fighting ring. You will do this again.

The guard has a friend. You now can alternate.

After your third fight, or, more correctly, entertaining beat-down, which earns you a strip of meat and one potato, the ringmaster takes you aside and offers you a job. For moving and hiding certain packets of certain merchandise through camp, he will give you two strips of meat and one potato for a job well done. What he asks of you is very dangerous, and will get you killed, if you are found out. You agree.

You now do a number of little jobs on the side for such well-situated convicts, some that put you at the front of danger, others that are mere tedious luxuries. Once, you spend a few hours you would otherwise have spent resting or sleeping shining a row of boots to perfection and mending socks and trousers, work that earned you a small corner of bread.

There are still days where all opportunity falls through. Your guards are not in the mood, it's not your turn for fighting, nobody has particular use of you. On these days, you carefully portion out your apple over the course of work, and meticulously eat your cabbage soup in the evening, then lay down to rest to not use up any more of your strength than strictly necessary. As you lay on your back, your stomach caves in. You lay a hand down on it, and breathe. Can you endure long enough to walk out of here alive in a few months? You cannot think of that, you panic. You try to survive each day, individually.

One of your guards is not in the mood and the other is out on a mission. The fights have been put on hold for a while, and so are all other contraband activities, due to a crackdown by authority. You are on your fifth day again of eating nothing but one apple and one bowl of cabbage soup a day. Your guard sends you to see another guard. In spite of not being in the mood, he gives you a tiny corner of bread, two bites. He might be taking pity.

This new guard looks you up and down and says, "Fuck, yeah, I love the bony ones."

You want to get down between his legs for the blowjob, but he pulls away.

"No, no," he says. "None of that with me. You want to earn your keep with me, you let me fuck you in the ass."

You are not shocked, but you are scared. You want to do it, you think, but you are afraid of the pain. You are also afraid of the nasty glint in this guard's eye.

You are very afraid of the pain. Then again, you have learned to live in more pain than you thought possible. Up until recently, you fought once or twice a week on average. The fighters aim not to maim you, but they do bruise you. In spite of your best efforts, you sometimes get hit at work as well. As for the work, your thinning muscle strains under the workload. 12 hours a day of shovelling and picking and hauling heavy objects on half-rations at best on a good day. You are always sore all over.

"All right," you say, and slowly lower your pants.

He wants you completely naked. You undress, carefully fold up your clothing in a corner of the room. He wants you on his cot, on all four. You obey. He pats your ass, traces the curve of your bones with his fingers. He digs his fingers into your empty stomach. You have done this to yourself often enough, but when another does it, it is very uncomfortable.

"Aw, are you hungwy," he says. "Are you starved, mmhm? Mhm? Are you starved to be fattened by my thick cock?"

The world is slipping underneath you. Your heart is racing. You can tell you are in a very strange, very dangerous situation. In fact, you want out, but you doubt he would let you go. He has locked the door.

You have, blessed as you have been so far in life, no prior experience of anal rape to compare this to. You suspect, though, that if the aim was to maximise the pain for you, this might be how to do it. He pulls your ass cheeks apart, lines himself up, and drives in hard. The pain drives you out of your mind. Then he starts thrusting.

You are surprised that when he is done with you, you still have the ability to climb down the cot. To balance your weight over your feet. That you know how to move your body. You bend down to retrieve your trousers. He kicks them away from your reach. You look up. What else?

"Do you think this earned you some food, mhm?" he asks.

"I'd... hope so," you say. Voice brittle.

"It did," he reassures you. "Take this, then."

He holds out a potato, a strip of meat. You take both in your hands. Naked as you still are, you are at loss as to where to put the food. You awkwardly hold it, then bend down to lay it down over your pile of clothing.

"No," he says. "If you want to eat this, you eat it now, in front of me."

Oh.

You eat the strip of meat, and the potato, standing naked, in front of him. He watches. When you are done, he hands you another potato. You eat another potato. He hands you another strip of meat. You eat another strip of meat. He hands you a third potato. You hesitate. You eat the third potato. This will hurt later, you suspect. He hands you a fourth potato.

"I think I've eaten enough," you say.

Two strips of meat and three potatoes did not use to be an unsurmountable meal for you. Especially not after 12 hours of hard labour on nothing but an apple and a bowl of cabbage soup. There were times in your life where, after a long hike, maybe, after a day filled with activity yet little food, you'd sit down and devour a huge supper and it would be just what you need. But now, too much food would make you sick.

"You will eat everything I give you," he says.

The door is still locked. You eat the fourth potato.

You stop keeping track of what he feeds you. Your belly swells. In between your ribs and your hips, you look pregnant. He presses down on it. You do everything you can not to puke, and you don't.

The door is still locked.

"Second go," he says.

Oh, God.

You climb back on the cot, on all four. Your heavy belly hanging beneath you, dragging you down. As he drives himself into you, you focus your entire self, everything you are and have ever been, on not puking. You don't.

He lets you dress, then. He opens the door. You stumble out.

The air is fresh, outside. You are covered in sweat. You're not sure much can shock you any more, still, you think you are shocked. You lay a fearful, tentative hand over you belly. It is swollen tight like a drum, pushes out against your shirt.

With one steadying hand against the wall, you take a few, tentative steps forward. The searing hot poker of agony between your legs drills further in. You walk. One foot, then the next. You realise your understanding of pain was very limited. Your horizons have been expanded.

You are very sick at night. You don't puke. Your one focus is to keep this so miserably hard earned food inside you at all cost. But you must run out five times to the latrines to shit your guts out. The shitting causes burning, terrifying pain. You try to wash out your wounds after each shitting. You are still bleeding. You sweat. You cramp. You are short of breath and your heart stumbles in your chest. You don't sleep at all.

The next morning, you are still sweating. The bulge of your belly has receded, but you are still full. You have trouble standing, let alone walking, you don't see how you will survive the day's work. You have now perfected the trick of how to subtly shirk work. On how to rest when the backs are turned to you. On how to make your load look bigger than it is. On how move tasks strategically. But the work is work. Even using all your tricks, it is hard. You enter a trance, today, as you have in the past. You survive the day's work. Your horizons keep being expanded on what a life can be like.

You eat your cabbage soup standing up in the evening, even while being so tired you can barely walk. The pain between your legs is too bad. You haven't eaten your apple today. You didn't need it. But now you eat your cabbage soup and your belly doesn't cramp. You sleep, tonight, a long, exhausted, uninterrupted sleep.

The next day, the pain in your anus is still very bad, but you feel better. Today, you will have two apples to eat over the course of work, which is good. You're still not hungry. You think the food is still in your belly, your stomach overwhelmed at what to do with it. All the better, you suppose, if it takes long to digest. There's not much more of that forthcoming for now.

You wonder if this was worth it. He has hurt you very much. But you made it out alive. Your ass will heal. Starvation, though, will kill you. And he fed you generously. You panic when you attempt to think through the motions of seeing him again. No, you won't. Maybe as last-ditch option.

Your ring-master is starts some of his operations up again. He gives you a job. This job will earn you one potato. You take the job.

Life resumes its course.

After your rape, you are not supposed to be touched, or talked to. You are to wear the mark of impurity, the red mark of the whore, so that people know not to look at you.

When you take your bath, you are to scrub yourself, not with the soft brush, made of hair, but with the hard one, with the steel wires. You are to scrub yourself thoroughly. She checks. if you did it right, your skin is covered in bloody pinpricks, is scafed raw. If you are too timid about your brushing, she does it for you. Takes the brush between your legs, presses down hard, and scrubs scrubs scrubs.

You find this unfair, because it was not your fault.

"I didn't whore myself," you protest. "They forced me!"

You have protested this from the very first moment on, and you have been rebuffed. These are good men, good boys from a known community. If they had been uncultured, outsiders, that would be one thing. But them? You whored yourself.

And yet, in spite of all the scrubbing, and the getting blamed, your attitude won't improve.

"It's unfair," you think. "It wasn't my fault."

After two weeks of this, you are sat down, for a serious talk.

"You still think you are being treated unfairly," he says. Looking at you with the kindly eyes of someone trying to find a solution.

"Yes," you admit. "I didn't want this. They made me. They forced themselves on me."

You have said this so often, and you will say it again.

He sighs. "You are making little progress," he says. "You must cleanse yourself. The brush is not going deep enough."

After two weeks of the brush, the outer layer of your skin is peeled back, your flesh exposed. You are in terrible pain. You stand before him, even though he offered you a seat, because it hurts too much. Your robes, thankfully, are wide, made to cover and not hug a body, yet, whenever the fabric brushes at your wounds, you must bite back a whimper.

In fact, standing in front of him is probably yet another way you are unruly, another mark of your bad attitude, you suddenly realise. You realise how that must look like. Prideful. You are not making things easier for yourself. You lower yourself onto the wooden seat, swallowing your hiss.

He nods, as if you did correctly.

"You will cleanse from inside out, he says. There is hope for you yet."

The first three days are the hardest.

On day one, even, you think you cannot possibly make it, cannot possibly endure this. You are slightly shocked by your weakness. Surely, one day without food can't be that hard? But even just the skipped breakfast has your stomach in knots. By the mid-morning, it is growling loudly, near incessantly.

Lunch, too, passes without you, and you realise that this is really happening. You really, actually, won't get fed today. You are besides yourself. You do your chores, with your empty stomach in turmoil. You scrub the floors. You hang the laundry. You are glad of the work, because it is a diversion, but truly diverted, you are not. You are ravenous.

By evening, your stomach is in pain, and you feel faint. Supper passes without you, and you dread the night. How could you sleep, with this roaring beast within your guts? Maybe this is the beast they are trying to drive out of you.

On the second day, you find that your hunger doesn't increase. It has reached a maximum already, maybe. Your fingers itch for food, when your brothers and sisters go to breakfast. But you won't go. Your brothers and sisters will eat breakfast, eat lunch, eat supper, and you will not. This is how it will be like. You press both fists into your stomach. You breathe. You must accept this.

On the third day, they put you to work in the kitchen, which is mind-bending. In a waking dream, you see yourself reach a hand out for the food in front of you, and put it into your mouth. You know you are being watched. You know you are being watched closely. You don't reach out for the food. You clean it, and cut it, and stir the soup, and flip the patties, and you help carry the food into the dining hall, and then you help clean the dishes, and where someone left a lick of sauce, left a bite, some crumbs, you ignore them, as they are not for you.

In the bath, you scrub yourself extremely hard, today, between your legs, of course, but also your stomach, all the way up your ribs, you press the brush in and scrub scrub scrub until the water is coloured pink.

On the fourth day, you think it gets maybe easier. You feel slightly feverish. The robes rub and burn against your chafed skin and you think, this is simply too much body to have.

You expected that this would last one week, or maybe two. You have learned your lesson, you think. There is a beast of need within you, and it is her who must have attracted the violence. This beast is vicious, expansive, and powerful, and you subdued it. Your brothers and sisters eat breakfast, and lunch, and dinner, and you don't, and you don't complain of it. You are being good.

But as he sits you down at the end of the week, and asks about your progress, and you tell him of the beast, of the lesson, he just nods, and doesn't call an end to the punishment.

Another week passes. Then another. You are confused. Maybe, you think, you haven't understood the lesson yet.

Your thighs and hips used to be a firm gourd of flesh, skin-covered meat curving in, curving out. Now your body is changing. As you scrub and cleanse the skin between your legs, which by now is tough and scarred from being chafed and chafed open again, you must work the brush around the architecture of your bones, these emerging ridges and nubs.

You did the laundry today, scrubbed and beat and carried and folded. It is hard work, laundry. Your brothers and sisters ate breakfast, and lunch, and dinner, and you didn't, and you don't complain of it.

He asks about your progress. You tell him that you believe that you are making very little progress. You are bad at heart and deeply soiled. Maybe to the bone.

He nods sympathetically. He doesn't call an end to the punishment.

You are not exempt from work, even if you are weak. You are weak, and lazier than most. It is the beast dragging at your limbs.

You scrub the floors and you beat out the carpets. You try to put your weight behind the beats, to do your work correctly. It is very hard. You help in the kitchens where you clean and cut the food, stir the soup, flip the putties, portion out the cooking into bowls and plates. You help carry out the food, and then you help clean the dishes. You sit and mend socks, a work you are grateful for, as your limbs are slothful.

In the bath, you scrub your limbs as well. Your limbs, too, are affected by the beast. As you work the brush up your sunken belly, you scrub out the hollow under your lowest ribs. This here is where lots of weakness and evil lives, though your stomach is by now very concave. You scrub hard, the beast must go.

You are not hungry any more, haven't been for a while. Sometimes, you envision food, you envision a feast, even, but your stomach does not growl. When you work in the kitchens, surrounded by the smells, the textures of food, you feel sliced off from the world. This real food, under your real hands, repulses you. You are filled with one long nausea.

"Tell me again what happened," he asks.

"The beast in me called out for attention," you say, "and seduced the men."

You start crying, sorrowed. You are ashamed.

"I am so sorry for how badly I hurt these good men and boys. I don't know how I can ever make up for it. For the destruction I caused. I am so sorry."

It is true. This is what you feel. You are very sorry.

"Mhm," he looks at you, pensive.

Not quite ready yet to trust you. Not quite ready yet to call an end to your treatment. It was never a punishment, of course. It is a therapy.

He'd beaten you so hard the back of your thighs was practically flayed. Each step caused searing pain and you could barely stand. "Aw, are your little ouchies bothering you?" he said.

You aren't shy about your body. Today, at work, you wore a translucent shirt that revealed your narrow, chiselled midsection. Gold and mint makeup. Eyes followed you. You work in fashion, everybody is skinny, everybody looks good, or at least, everybody is supposed to. You know you set standards.

"I appreciate that you keep yourself lean and engaging," your boss recently told you. "This is an appropriate look for your position. I strongly dislike those that won't make an effort." Coming from his lips, this was supreme praise.

You are proud of your looks and why wouldn't you be. You put in the work, after all. No less than 20 hours of training per week, often more, and that's only counting studio, gym, and class time. At home, you usually sweat some more, bodyweight exercises, rowing machine. You eat a small dinner once a day.

You keep your dinners small because you severely restrict your caloric intake. You don't know why you should lie about that. Lots of vain assholes restrict, but lie about it. "Oh, I have no appetite, oh, I have allergies, oh, I just naturally feel very little hunger, oh, I eat like a pig yet I'm a beanstalk, haha, convenient for working in fashion, though, isn't it?" Liars all. You keep yourself very hungry on purpose, to maintain your extraordinary physique, and if asked, you admit it.

You think yourself remarkable, because you don't believe many people would be capable of maintaining this level of performance, this level of physical prowess, on this little, and for so long.

or:

When the Semni celebration starts, your face is still bruised, but you can see through both eyes again. You go naked, as is custom. The rhythm of feast and fast in your community allocates you, who are the artifact (*), two weeks of restricted eating to two weeks of water fasting, consistently, throughout all seasons.

It is therefore with inner resolve rather than with much padding flesh to spare that you enter the long month of Archimens, your personal longest fast of the year, spanning two people's fasting weeks and the time in between. During Archimens, every morning, you trek up the peak to shine the beacon, you perform your necessary dances, you still have your chores to accomplish. It is taxing. At the end of Archimens, which is now, you are whittled down to the minimum.

As you walk through the streets of town, eyes follow you, with devotion, but no pity. Little pieces of machinery are thrown at your feet, as offerings. You aren't a potential subject of human empathy. They do not see a starved, battered youth, when they look at you. No belly twinges in empathetic pain for your hunger, no flesh winces at your damage. No one would want to soothe, feed, or protect you. This is what it means to be the artifact. You are something else entirely. You walk to the middle of the town square and start your dance.

or:

As you rise from your kneeling position, you are briefly afflicted by severe dizziness. You wait for the blackness in front of your eyes to recede, and you don't fall. It is important to not fall, because your Mother Superior would then chide you for your pride.

The problem of your pride has more than once been a topic of discussion, which is why you do everything to not draw attention to yourself. Your fast is between you and God and should not be made into a spectacle. During your first fasts, you used to brag--as many a young girl has, you will add--about how long you abstained, how strong your devotion, how immense and elated your faith. Well, you bragged silently, covertly, the way one does, but you had your ways to let it be known just how very long you hadn't eaten, how interminable your wake had been, how very narrowly you had cinched the barbed belt around your belly. You'd been admired. You had competed, amongst each other.

"I will rape you now", he says. Would it be better if he claimed it was something else, would it be worse? "I have invited my friends over to rape you," he says. But then he also tells you: "Did you enjoy it, you little slut?"

A beating is called nurturing. He nurtured the back of your thighs with a beating. A beating is called taking care of. "Let's take care of your ass now," he says, which means you must present yourself and endure your belting. You were waiting for it, with not just a little fear. A beating is called pampering. Your thighs and sides have been pampered by his fists, are swollen black-purple.

You have been starved for three days, and when he makes you swallow his cum, you are being spoiled with a generous dinner. That is the correct use of the term, though, isn't it? After all, he could also have let you starve.

They might have one little breakfast, religiously, or postpone the first food of the day as far back as possible. They have opinions on the management of hunger growls. They categorise days according to the development of their hunger.

You arrive at work late and limping, the ass and back of your trousers caked rust brown. "Sorry," you tell your boss, "for being late, I was assaulted on the way to work." "That's no excuse to slack off and let down the team," he scolds. "Sorry," you say, and get to work.