04:16 Sep 25 2007
Times Read: 578
I so often find it impossible to title a work of mine.
Marishka sat quietly, writing down a few thoughts as she observed the girl in leather cuffs strapped to nothing more than chains. Her limbs were stretched to their own limitations until she was splayed like an "X" marking the treasure. Marishka was of average height, with stark white skin, and stark white tresses that lay bone straight down her back until they abruptly ended at her hips in a perfect straight cut. Her bangs were a long widows peak, creating a frame around the depths of eyes that held the truest form of madness yet unknown. She wore no makeup this night. Her eyes were a wild blue, brilliant and luminous. No pupils could be found, and if you should happen to have the chance to look into her eyes for more than a second you would find spheres of varying blues floating as though a universe were contained in this frail tiny woman.
The strapped youth had been caught spying on Marishka some months ago and had become what Marishka simply called her student.
The gown rustled as she stood and walked to the girl. She was dressed in a fitted black dress that flared very little from the waist until the hem touched the floor. The collar was high and buttoned to the hilt. Her hands were tucked into matte black gloves. She did in this moment look like the mistress of a strict school.
The girl had been rattling confessions, bribes, pleas, and now simply asked questions. She had admitted to collecting data for a story because of all of the rumors surrounding Ivanov manor. She told Marishka her name was Adelle, that she wanted to be a reporter. She confessed to the location of pictures and tapes. She realized two nights ago that none of this was the point for this strange woman. She had given into to reality and now wanted to sate her own curious nature.
Marishka was walking from various points around the girl and strapping thin chains to mechanisms on the floor. Adelle asked her what this was all about and Marishka stopped after a moment to look at her with a cocked head. It had been sometime since any student asked that. She smiled with a pride that made Adelle uneasy. She clasped her hands together and walked to Adelle. One gaze locked on the other as Marishka spoke. Her voice was soft, deep, calming, and yet a little frightening with the situation at hand.
"I was taught by Master Ivanov. He took me when I was a child. The plane of existence we are in now is only the first of many. It is in the blood, bones, flesh, and nerves that the knowledge for true ascendance lay. At first you can’t listen, you can only feel. Each body has a language belonging to that person alone. Only the subject or student and the true teachers can hear the lessons your blood is pounding in your heart to tell you. You feel it beat in your ears when true tragedy or suffering has occurred. Too often you all walk around ignoring it and attempting only to survive your pain. You have endured so many lessons and it is time for the final one. "
She began attaching small steel fishing hooks to the multitude of wires and chains on the ground.
Adelle was now hyperventilating as she could not think with a logical mind of a solution or way of reasoning with an obviously insane person. She then stuttered out another question. "What was your last lesson like?"
Marishka continued with the hooks as she smiled to herself thinking.
"I stood before him to receive the final lesson under his tutelage. All of the students of Master Ivanov are victims of abduction, slavery, or they had become victims of under estimating the company they kept. I was his only willing student. I had gone with him when I was eight, his eyes had captured me, a dark violet and as the color neared his pupils it shone like a pale blue light. I told him I thought it his soul.
I have spent twelve years in his care and in those long hard years I have seen death as a merciful gift none were grateful for. He has abused and broken my body in countless acts, rarely did an act repeat itself and if it should it was a matter of the student failing to grasp the lesson in one day.
He approached me and took my arm in a brusque jerk to the tub. He turned, and ripped my dress from my body in a clean downward pull. I stared at the water with an impatience I could not explain. Steam rose in great clouds above it and as I stared I felt a needle plunge into my arm with little tenderness as was the nature of Master Ivanov. After a moment of swaying my limbs went numb and I collapsed onto the floor sending a brilliant pain through my head as it hit the stone tiles.
He lifted me and laid me in the water and as blinding agony made my every nerve scream in its paralyzed state I realized his need of the drug for I would have flailed in the scalding softness of the water. I felt it blistering my flesh, I was in hell, trapped to feel all the pain without a single escape save my thoughts which were solely concentrated on the burning.
Hours later he approached the tub with a bar of soap and as he began to lather my tender skin in long slow measures I realized the soap was mixed and molded with metal shards and shavings. He spoke.
"Marishka …we have been doing this for twelve years now. This is the last lesson I give you. The pain has spoken to you in all of our lessons, revealing the mysteries and truths of your own soul through blood rushing, the pounding of your heart, and the screaming of your nerves. You’re reaching the final stage of true enlightenment. You will ascend tonight to the next plane far beyond this world of the weak minded."
Tears spilled from my eyes, the only sign my vacant expression gave that I was in pain and with the exciting promise those tears held for him he began to vigorously rub the soap into my skin.
I felt it tear and scratch as easily as one rips paper, the water was clouded in blood and soap and as the soap vanished the metal revealed itself more and more. He leaned me forward as he started on my back, my face hitting the water and then with it all I couldn't even breathe, my eyes stung from the soap, my damp locks of white hair were now streaked in the diluted color of my blood. I felt the screams strain in my throat, choking me. The soap burning my wounds and as I felt I would pass out he pulled me upright and continued.
"Marishka I do not seek your screams this night. You need to feel it all without distraction from the sound of your own submission."
When all but my face was damaged he placed his boot on the rim of the tub and overturned it letting me spill out in a wave of pale crimson. When I ceased rolling my eyes rested on the curled remains of flesh all around me, my flesh. My fingers skinned and blistered were all I could see of my own body. I shivered uncontrollably as I watched his boots walk toward me … I would have run then if I was able.
He lifted me into his arms and I looked to his face, holding my eyes at a painful angle to watch him as if to anticipate his next move. My own gaze streaming tears still that dropped from my chin, their salty trails burned fresh on my skinned body as we came to the exit of the manor. He opened the door and swirls of snow and freezing air bit into my body. My breathing quickened and I shook terribly as he walked me out to a patch of land barren of all save the ocean of snow. He laid me there gently, smiling down at me with a tenderness I would know only in this moment. He took a small ball of clay from a pouch at his side and parted it into two. He slipped a piece in each ear and sat in the snow near me. With open eyes looking toward the heavens, the snow burning as it kissed my gaze. My skin burned and screamed as I would have, had the ability been there. I wept freely from pain alone. I regretted nothing. With my ears blocked all I could hear was blood rushing and my heart pounding loudly in my chest and as the hours crawled on my heart slowed to a faint thumping I could barely make out, my skin was numb now and though the drug had worn out I was frozen to the ground. He removed the clay and looked down into my face. He smiled as I was not yet dead.
You’re dying my Marishka.
I have always believed this plane exists for the ignorant.
Your blood speaks the truth of your soul, of every mystery to the eyes of man. Your pain speaks the language of those truths into you, each students pain is a language unique unto them.
The blood is silent until the pain makes it speak, pounding it in your ears.
I seek to teach those most in need of me the language of their soul so that once they have learned all the divine mysteries of this plane they can ascend to a new plane more enlightened.
You will teach my Marishka ...
With that he knelt over me and bit into the soft frozen flesh of my neck, still finding my blood warm beneath it. For an instance I felt outside myself looking down, icy torn skin shimmered with frozen sanguine rivers making beautiful patterns over the pallor complexion of my flesh, frozen tears sparkling on my face. He drank deep of me then an fed me from his wrist, in the warm sweet nourishment of his blood I knew the truths of him just as he knew my own now. As I felt my soul depart, my living death take on I was comforted to know I would be doing the work of a saint for eternity. Helping and sacrificing to better the world through knowledge.
Adelle had not fought the pain that Marishka dealt as she very carefully placed numerous tiny hooks into her skin, It was done by the end of the tale. She now took a sharp thin blade and started cutting lines in the perfection that was this girl’s flesh. She took more than an hour before it was complete and Adelle had done and said all she could. Marishka stepped back to the lever behind her and smiled at Adelle. "If you see my master tell him how good of a teacher I am now, will you?" She pulled the lever and each mechanism turned in unison pulling each hook sharply. They lingered in a stretched state only a few moments before the device flayed her and sent her into a state of severe shock. The blood sprayed over Marishka, and she smiled softly. She licked her lips and smeared the drop gathering on her lashes. "Pupils never linger long in my care."
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