Surrounds (Bonds)

Surrounds

by S.L. Simps

Copyright 2014 S.L. Simps

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 1

Alasa

Alasa quickly darts down another lightless tunnel, stumbling on numbed legs. Her lungs burn with execration, cold air races down her aching throat, and her pulse thuds uselessly against the flesh of her collarbone. Her legs are weak, wobbly, as she forces the numb things into movement. Her bloody teeth dig into her lip, she tries to ignore the ache in her lower legs, and how each one of her haggard breaths causes white hot agony to race through her abdomen. A whimper falls from her lips as she is forces herself to stop and suck air into her lung, her legs nearly give out on her, she leans into the caves walls, panting.

A whistle echoes inside the tunnel behind her, bouncing off the walls, beckoning her like a dog, sending a chill down her spine, and her stomach into a churning flutter. A bark of high pitched laughter sends her into action as she forces her body off the wall, nearly throwing herself into the opposite wall, she quickly begins down the tunnel once again.

It's dark. It's impossible to see what was in front of her, but what was in front of her hardly mattered as much as what was behind her. Long dark hair, pale toned skin, and black irises. A monster with heavily hands who likes the thrill of making her suffer.

A light flickers out before her, small, a beacon, not of hope, but a way out of the blackness shines before her. She moves towards it and soon she's spit out into a round room, with a ceiling hundreds of feet high, lit only by a fire pit in the very center and a small hole at the very top.

She's unsure what exactly to do now. There's no other ways to go, but the way she had already come. The laughter behind her, manic and high, reveals that going back wasn't an option. She was trapped.

She turns quickly as the laughter grows closer, accompanied by the noise of footsteps. She quickly begins to back away, in her hace the young woman falls onto her behind.

Her very own monster appears then, briskly moving on all fours, dark hair hanging in it's face. It's lips pull backwards into an amused smirk.

Alasa freezes, fear filling her. "No - " She had barely gotten the word out before it was on her, forcing harshly onto the ground, her head smacking painfully on the ground. It forces her down, his body on top of hers, his hot tongue hits her neck his breath foul.

She gags, bawl rising inside of her, and she bites him on his shoulder. It was her first thought, a natural reaction. The young woman bites him so hard, his metallic tasting blood fills her mouth. It howls, pulling backwards, but his fist lands into her side. As she gasps, she manages to spit out the edge of his tongue and his blood.

Her vision swims.

It grunts, his hands clamp around her hips, long nails dig into her flesh, and he yanks her harshly against him. Her hips smash into his. She feels ill, racing thoughts.

No, anything but this...

He yanks at her beneath him with one hand holding both of her hands above her head. The man straddles her, his full weight on top of her. She fights him her hands breaking free of his hold, her fists landing nice, but useless punches to his chest and face. He barely seems to notice.

When he finally gets a hold of her again he becomes still like a boulder, sitting on top of her for hours as she fought against him, fought to be let go. But he's heavy and he's strong and he won't allow her up until she's still, until she finally calms.

(L)

She watches the monster of a man walk on it's hands and feet, like a type of man ape towards the tunnel opening. Her face covered in a blank mask of indifference. She hugs her legs to her after pulling her tattered pants back on. She feels weak, she feels as if she needs to do something, she feels as if she needs to fight. She feels as if she needs to stop him from doing it to her again, but... but this man... she had no weapons, and it was pretty obvious that this man wasn't at all... right. The girl was wondering if he was truly human at all.

A growl has her attention snapping to the beast, sling shooting herself out of her mental dialogue. He meets her blue gaze with his dark one, his finger pointing to the opening to the tunnel, he growls and shakes his head.

He was obviously telling her not to go out of the circular room. She looks away from him without confirming if she understood.

A wince tumbles from her lips as her hair is pulled back harshly a few days later. She goes completely still as the monster sniffs at her neck and up her face. Her lids close tightly as she feels it's wet tongue, like a hot ooze cross her face. Her stomach churns.

She's let go a second later, and she quickly scrambles away from him, she turns to look at him. That happens every time the monster returns, he grabs her, sniffs her, licks her. He manhandled her as if she were his property, and like a proper belonging, she allowed it.

Alasa angrily glares at him, though it's weak, and she's fidgets like a frightened animal. She hates how afraid she is. She couldn't help but think she needs to be braver, she needs to fight more. In her old life, the one before this hollow existence, Alasa had a bright future. In the top ten of her class, already accepted to two universities... but that before what ever happened, happened. She had no idea, honestly, 'what' happened. She could only remember waking up here, in this place.

He barely seems to notice her glare as it busies itself with setting up something over what looks like a fire pit. It begins to hook up what looks like a thing that would hold a pot over it. She watches him, still sitting, actually afraid if she moved he would remember her presence. This man, no, monster was a mystery she wants to and also didn't want to solve, but there was no other option. He was a man, but he hardly acted like one. The way he walked and his lack of communication besides grunts and harsh growls suggested he could not talk. He had fangs and long claws as well which made him look less of a man. If he's not a man, that what is he? Alasa prided herself on being a realist, facts and pure logic out weighed all. Well, the fact was, 'IT' has fangs and claws, growls, grunts and it's body temperature was abnormally high, nearly scorching at times, but he had no fever. But another fact was, none of those things made any sense. How could he be human and none-human similarly?

It then began throwing what looked like a type of skinned rodent into the iron pot it had set up. It left, came back with water, and more logs for it's fire. After about an hour, it filled a bowl with a large hunk of the boiled rat and moves towards her.

She completely stiffens, staring at the bowl as it is set in front of her. A soft growl comes from the man looking monster.

She continues to stare at the bowl. Though she was hungry, her stomach growled, she had no appetite, let alone for a bowl full of rat. The odor it caused wasn't helping.

Another growl, this time more threatening comes from him. He lightly moves the bowl closer with a pale finger.

Alasa bites her lip. "I'm... I'm not hungry." She quietly says.

Another low growl comes from it.

Alasa's eyes meet the beasts accidently, it lunges. It's claws dig into the back of her neck as it's breath hits her in the face, foul and hot. It growls, it's other hand presses the bowl into her face. The hot liquid splashing into her face burning her.

She turns her face away, tears welling up inside them. She was so fucking afraid.

His claws leave her neck as his hand removes the food from the bowl and pushes it against her face. Another growl.

Shaking, she opens her mouth because that's what he wants, she takes a bit, chewing slowly. She gags. Alasa manages to keep it all down as it force feeds her.

Chapter 2

Alasa

"Mom!"

Alasa's body surges forwards as she comes from her dream. Her dirty T-shirt is soaked with sweat and her breathing is haggard. She looks around, a numbness settling over her upon discovering herself still in the circular room.

She's been here for awhile now. Too long. A month, maybe longer.

The young woman shakes her head, standing onto her feet. Thinking about it changed nothing. Alasa tries to shake her dream from her mind. Alasa tries to forget about her parents, her friends, and her family. It was the only way to get through this, forgetting everything she was missing made her hurt less. She felt as if that was the opposite of how she was suppose to feel. Wasn't the correct thing to do was remember her family and friends and use their welcoming memories as a reason to move on, to fight to live, to escape? Alasa couldn't explain it, but every time her mind would stray to her parents a feeling of dread would spread out across her, wiggling underneath her flesh. It was almost as if she was forgetting something. As if she were trying to do a puzzle in a black room with numb fingers. She held all the needed pieces but couldn't feel nor see them.

Pretending as if her life with the monster was normal made her hurt less.

Alasa cracks her aching shoulder and limps to the other side of the fire to a large bucket, cupping water into her hands and splashing it over her face. Her reflection in the water is a sad one, a shell of a once happy, pretty girl, messy black hair, bruises under her dull blue irises.

A sigh escapes her. Her gaze flits upwards to the ceiling, watching the blackened shadows dance across it. Then her gaze lowers to the fire pit, the flames still a blaze. Her attention then goes to the blackened hall which could very well be her way to freedom, but the last time her attempt at escaping was still fresh on her mind, nearly suffocating thick. She couldn't breath thinking about blindly moving through those blackened halls again.

She hears him coming. The quickly patter of his bare feet along the floor. It was like he was announcing his presence to her, because there was often times she couldn't hear him coming before he appeared. She carefully sinks herself to the floor, wanting to seem as unthreatening as possible. Whatever he was, he was very much like an animal, like an alpha wolf who hated being threatened in any way, and if he was, he would react with violence. There had been less of that as of recently, mostly because Alasa had learned and wasn't busy screaming her head off about wanting to go home. Now the beast could simply get his point across with a threatening growl. She had learned.

He appears in all his feral glory, a beast. He carries with him another string of rats, dropping them before her. Her stomach clenches at them, but feels she honestly should be use to his idea of a meal by now. She blankly stares down at his catch, not looking up at him. She flinches when a blade thumps into the ground beside her. She looks up quickly, careful to avoid his gaze.

He growls once.

Having no idea what that means, but being a fairly smart young woman, she assumes skinning them is what he wants. Usually, he would do it, quickly, perfectly without any thought. Never really watching him do it, Alasa was at a loss. Her gaze falls back down, landing on the blade. It wasn't very big but it was sharp, she could quickly tell from simply gazing upon it. It was a weapon. It could be her weapon... She bites her lip. He was strong but... if she could hit him in... a...

She looks back up at him, seeing he was still watching her, his features covered in a mask. Something quickly dawns on her... He was testing her. Seeing if she would dumbly take his bait.

Quietly scoffing, she looks down again. Did he think she was stupid? Did he think she would do something stupid and reckless enough to give him a reason to beat her again? Anger gnawed at her. It was he who is a dumb animal, not her. He was stronger but Alasa was smarter. She, with flinching fingers, grabs onto the blade and string of rats, beginning to sloppily skin the rodents.

It takes a couple of minutes, but finally he walks away, doing something with the fire. The young woman is finished with her disgusting task, so she carefully stretches her aching legs out in front of her, wincing quietly. Her legs were covered in bruises, dark and ugly against her light tan legs. Her pants had been lost a couple weeks back, shredded and useless anyway, still she wished for her pants back. Inside the cave it was insanely cold, she constantly shivered.

Sighing, she looks down at her handy-work, surprised at how horrible it was. Yes, she had never done it before but... the animals weren't even recognizable anymore, hunks of flesh now.

His growl brings her attention to him.

()

Chapter 3

Lacey

Once upon a time, his hands were gentle, warm smoldering rocks against her skin. His fingers, light over her flesh, setting her body a flame.