She’s more fierce each time she comes to me. Her claws, or spines, whatever they are seem to go deeper—she veritably ravages me, and I’ve been nipped on other parts of my body, although not, thankfully, on my manly bits. I’ve awakened from the venom’s stupor to feel blood running down my legs from the wounds she makes on my flanks. If she does not kill me outright, I fear I may succumb to weakness from blood loss or infection of my wounds. Sometimes crabs find their way into the chamber and I can hear them scuttling around in the dark. I kick them away when they get close, but what will happen when I can’t? I actually prefer the future when it’s more abstract, I think. Dark. Yes, I’ve made friends with the dark. More than friends. I’ve learned to fuck the dark. We are one.

And now, she comes. Past my legs, around the chamber, a splash from a fin or tail, the water swirls with her gravity. Behind my legs—she seems bigger, wider, the picture in my head changes, and it’s harder to hold the winsome, flaxen-haired maiden perched on a rock in my mind’s eye. She is power, she is the dark.

She slides up the front of me, smooth, slick, and I brace myself for the claws. This is the worst of it, before the venom takes me away, when I’m still sore and raw from the last high tide. I try not to scream but scream I do and she works her claws in, like a fisherman setting a hook.

“Fuck’s sake! Easy, Viv!”

I’ve named her Vivian, after some poxy English legend of the Lady of the Sodding Lake. It didn’t seem polite, her having me off every turn of the moon, me not knowing her name.

But she doesn’t ease into the sex like usual. She’s pulling at me, yanking at me. Her mouth or whatever soft part of her that does me, locks on, hard, the suction hurting. I’m pulled straight out from the wall, the chains taut. My wrists are ripped against the shackles, then my shoulders feel as if they will come out of the sockets. There’s crackling noise from the wall. The chains slip, and slip again, each time my wrists are scored, her claws sink deeper. Her tail is thrashing the water in the chamber so violently I can barely hear myself scream, and I scream and I scream, and the chains let go—

Six: The Players

SIX

The Players