WARNING - this is probably one of the most graphic pieces I've written, and it's very sadistic, probably the darkest I've written, and considering that i wrote this about 2 years ago in the 10 minutes between college lessons, that's worrying lol. No sex or anything, just brutality. You have been warned.
A Dystopia
He gasped for breath, kneeling on the dusty ground, feeling the pain sing through him. The whip gave an impressive crack, slamming into his back like a cudgel, knocking him flat. He slowly pushed himself back up, and looked up at the bandit queen not stood far away in the ramshackle arena, beyond her the jeering shapes of the rest of her gang.
She was probably beautiful, he realised, but she was twisted, like an apple with a maggot at the core. Her hair was a silken cascade of silver-blonde, but it was cut short, and ragged, gummed together with dark blood, blood that wasn’t hers as there wasn’t a scratch on her porcelain pale skin. Her face was striking, young, and with those sharp eyebrows and cheekbones and satin smooth lips, she was elegantly gorgeous, with those wide eyes framed in long black lashes, but they were patterned with writhing black tattoos, swirling across her high forehead and smooth cheeks, playing over the love heart mouth.
She was gazing at him, almost unrecognisable, but he could never mistake the pale blue eyes that were assessing him. Her slender body with those gentle curves coiled within the battered leather armour, as patterned with blood as her hair, as her arm arched down and he braced as the whip flattened him again.
“Let me tell you a story old man,” Her voice said, the softness of her words a complete contrast to the brutality of her appearance. “Once upon a time, there was a girl. A pretty little girl whose only family in the world was a daddy she adored. She adored him.”
The whip slammed down again and he yelped.
“This little girl and her daddy lived in a refugee camp on the edges of the wasteland, and they had everything they wanted, on the one condition that they never left. If they left, they could never come back. But one day, the little girl’s daddy did just that. He left her. And all the people of the refugee camp turned on her, sure that she must know how her daddy left and why. They killed her friend and hurt her badly and destroyed her house, but they didn’t learn anything because she didn’t know. He never told her. He didn’t trust her.”
He yelled as the whip snapped back across, tearing a bloody line across his cheek.
“And that was the day that everything changed, the girl, sick of the hostility of her former friends, wandered out into the wastes to find her Daddy. She thought, naively, that he’d be waiting for her, that he’d be able to explain everything, make all the suffering worth it.”
The woman absentmindedly switched the whip to her left hand, keeping it in constant motion, drawing hypnotic black patterns in the air.
“But he wasn’t. The only thing waiting for her in the wastes was hurt and hunger and fear. And slowly the little girl came to realise that her daddy had left for good, and he wasn’t coming back for her. That he’d run to save his own skin,” The whip cracked down. “The pathetic,” CRACK “cowardly,” CRACK “loveless,” CRACK “son of a bitch!”
He could feel his skin weeping, flayed alive, every inch of him burning. The rain of strikes stopped and he looked up at the woman, who was panting hard under her leather breastplate.
“So the weak little girl got strong. The weak little girl learned to take care of herself and became an all-powerful bitch. She joined a gang and within months she ran the gang, she was the gang,” She continued in that deceptively cool voice.
She slowly advanced on him, the whip still twirling in the air.
“And then, one day, a foolish man wandered into her territory with a band of scientists, claiming that they’re studying to fix the wastes. And that foolish man learned what happens when he screws with the leader of the Black Jackal Gang.”
The whip lashed out, curling securely around his neck, squeezing like a boa constrictor. He pried desperately at it, tearing his nails in his desperation as she adeptly began to throttle him.
“And do you want to know who the foolish man was?” She continued with an eerie calm. “He was that little girl’s father. And do you know, he recognised the little girl and thought that he could ‘talk her down’. He forfeited that right a long time ago.”
She flicked the whip and it uncoiled adeptly, and he slumped the ground, gasping for breath, red welts screaming around his neck.
“WHY WON’T YOU FIGHT BACK?”
The scream was like a verbal slap. She stalked over to him and kicked him hard, turning him up to face her, that tattooed face twisted with pain and totally obliterating fury.
“Why won’t you fight back?!” She demanded again. “Fight me! Take me down! Fight back! Tell me that I don’t understand, that I’m being selfish, that it’s more than me and you. Tell me that you’re trying to save the world, tell me you left me because you believed that it would keep me safe, tell me.... Tell me you love me, tell me you always loved me, that you did all this for me. Tell me something daddy, don’t just submit. Don’t just lie there and surrender. Don’t just give in like you gave up on life, on mum, on me. Tell me how the story ends, Daddy. Don’t give up on everything, or you really are the pathetic man I always took you for, the worthless piece of flesh that I’ve convinced myself you are, a despicable piece of vermin that’s not even worth hating!”
She panted for breath, as if her words had torn the very heart out of her and left her broken. Even behind the tattoos, she looked sad, those blue eyes damp. He just gazed at her, flat on his back, as those eyes raked over his face. It was pale with blood loss, smeared with dark blood and dirt, made paler by his matted and greasy dark brown hair, around his face. Even his intense blue eyes were fading, she realised. And she saw his lips move...
And the tattooed face twisted into the familiar mask of fury and hatred.
“You’re sorry?” She snapped, then gave a bitter laugh. “Sorry Daddy, you’re twenty years too late.”
The whip descended. And so did the eternal darkness.
1074 words.
Subject: The day it changed