Hopelessness (The Alien's Plaything: Chapter Three)

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Kalin finally rolled onto his back and stared up at the ceiling of his dimly lit cell. Where before he had studied the tiles for weakness or a mechanism to exploit, this time it was simply to pass the time. The pain was still there, but he could at least think now. He tried not to think about the things Zylara had done to him and focused his mind with the singular goal of… counting tiles.

Several hours passed as he continued to look up at the components of the ceiling. Finally, he was interrupted by the return of Zara. The trek through the moon’s local biome had been a rigorous one. As she stood in the doorway, her green skin shone under the lighting of the corridor, her skin glistening in places with sweat. She passed into the room, a looming shadow with emerald edges, moving towards him until she towered over him at the edge of the transparent cell wall.

The door to the corridor closed and the lighting shifted. No longer was this a silhouette of monstrous size. Her skin seemed to shift back to the more familiar shade and as it did, her confident smile became clear on her face.

Silently, she grabbed a chair from the lab’s work station and brought it near the transparent cell wall. She sat down, crossing her legs, and stared at Kalin.

Zara really was beautiful. This wasn’t the first time Kalin had noticed it, but every other time had been followed so swiftly by a level of pain that seemed to interrupt reality that he had never truly been able to take it in. Her smile spread further, her black lips parting to reveal rows of teeth that formed a beaming grin. As he continued to take it in, his heart sank. Beautiful as the smile was, it accompanied a sense of victory. A light laugh bubbled to the surface as she surveyed him. His face had betrayed him and let slip the sense of hopelessness that had crept in.

“We secured your ship,” she was almost singing, “it’s off-world now.” She leaned forward, her face inches from the transparent wall. “So, that accounts for ­­­pretty much everything you’d want to do if you got out again.” She let her mouth hang open as she finished the sentence, lingering on the last sound, tasting it, savouring the victory associated with it.

Kalin, having already pieced this together, managed to avoid reacting further. He stood up to face her in a fruitless attempt to make himself seem less pathetic, but Zara quickly recognised the gesture. Her gaze sauntered from Kalin’s eyes down to his most vulnerable area. He shrank back unthinkingly, and as he bumped into the wall behind him, catching himself off-guard. A giggle bubbled up within Zara, emerging playfully. She returned her eyeline to his.

“Unless you’re just here to encounter the local flora. And while its telepathic effects are certainly worthy of study, they aren’t quite interesting enough to go exploring if it means going without shelter and food.”

Kalin furrowed his brow. “Telepathic?” Kalin asked.

“Oh, are you stupid and weak?” Zara mused derisively, “You really hadn’t questioned why a bunch of aliens happened to speak your language?”

Kalin stepped forward defiantly and spoke up. “Stop calling me weak!” he demanded.

Zara began to bounce her crossed leg. The length of her legs meant that her boot’s vertical motion covered quite a large distance with a fairly low effort bounce. She bit her tongue playfully. Kalin backed away from the transparent wall again, purposefully stopping at the cell wall this time. “What’s the matter, human? Are you afraid of my legs?”

Kalin was silent.

Zara rose to her full height, Kalin tilted his neck back to maintain eye contact, trying not to appear intimidated. “Afraid of what they can do?” Zara stepped forward, the wall opening seemingly only in response to Zara’s intention to pass through it, with seemingly no mechanism being triggered. She stepped forward into the cell, towards Kalin. She put her hands on Kalin’s shoulders and gently raised her knee between his legs, harmlessly but firmly pinning him to the wall by his most sensitive area. She continued to look down at Kalin, her emerald green eyes penetrating his defences. “Afraid they’ll hit you somewhere vulnerable?”

“Please,” Kalin begged, “no more!”

She pulled her knee away and bounced it lightly into his testicles. “No more? I haven’t even started yet!” She cried indignantly.

“Zylara,” he began, “she hit me so mu-“

“Zylara?!” She scoffed. “Zylara recaptured you and kept you occupied. I haven’t even started with punishing you for your attempted escape!”

“But-“ Kalin started.

“I told you escape attempts would be enthusiastically discouraged. Capturing you again does not in and of itself constitute enthusiastic discouragement.” She pulled her knee away again, and he could feel her leg tense up as she prepared her next assault. “My toys need to know what kind of consequences there are for disobedience.” She drove her knee hard between Kalin’s legs. Where a hard knee like this might normally have pushed him back, this knee seemed calculated to pin him to the wall, offering him no retreat from the impact. She held her knee there, continuing to crush him as he pawed helplessly at her leg. “Awww, did that hurt?” She mocked.

She stepped back from him, Kalin dropping to the ground as had become the norm during any encounter with a Viridian. “Serves you right for trying to escape, though, doesn’t it?” She stepped past the threshold of the cell, the wall remained open. “If you do love escaping so much, why don’t you try again?”

Kalin lay on the ground, clutching his testicles and struggling to breathe. He looked up at Zara as he tried to take another deep gasp.

“Go on, I’ll give you a minute’s head start,” she offered.

Kalin gathered all his strength to pull his hands away from his aching gonads and tried to crawl, but his legs were not fully cooperating. He dragged himself on the floor towards the edge of the cell.

“Where are you going to go? Got a cosy little cave to snuggle up to the vines or are you just going to go out there and die?” Zara let out a cruel laugh. “Or maybe you’re going to go find Zylara for a rematch?” She scoffed.

Kalin let himself collapse again. Zara closed the cell wall. He let out another slow wheeze as he curled back up in a heap.

“Your punishment isn’t complete, by the way. Not even close. I’ve selected tomorrow’s experiment from one of the more intense plans to test your limits. You are going to be in so much pain.” She looked down at him on the floor, some of her short black hair drifting into her eyeline. She pulled it aside and tucked the hairs back behind her ear. “So, I suppose I need to give you some rest for the rest of the evening, or I risk tainting the data from tomorrow’s experiments.”

She stood back, crossing her arms as she took one last chance to survey her toy. Kalin rolled onto his back to look up at her one last time for the evening. ‘Curious little creature,’ she thought to herself. She turned and left.

‘How?’ he thought to himself, ‘How is that giant green alien somehow the most beautiful creature I’ve ever laid eyes on?”