PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

The cellar room which you occupy is illumined only by the

daylight that streams through one window uppermost in the

wall opposite you; unless he is with you.  Then candles and

placed in arrays that bear significances to him---

significances which, he has assured you, you are neither

capable nor required to understand or appreciate.

The chain and shackle that confines you to that cellar room are

no longer very uncomfortable, although they once were; and

no longer very heavy, although they once seemed so.  You

may choose to stand, sit, or even sprawl out---when you are alone.

When he is present (and he keeps a regular schedule for that),

he decides what posture you assume---mostly kneeling, as a

supplicant; or prone, as a victim to be sacrificed to the only

deity in which he places faith---his own inflated and bulbous

ego.  The mark of his ownership, to which you consented before

you fully understood, was seared into your flesh and permanently

scars it.  The bruises and welts---the result of his need to inflict

suffering upon you, and your need for the ecstasy (as he has 

taught you to consider it) of suffering for him, with screams of

unfeigned terror as your flesh, unbidden, writhes in agony---

will have almost healed when he returns to renew them.  The

water in your pail will have almost evaporated, and the loaf of

bread will have almost mouldered before he returns:  but these

will be replenished by unidentified hands, that reach through an

orifice in the wall, to refresh and replenish.  Once, when all this

was still new and unusual to you (it is always unspeakably

horrific), the unidentified hands, also bearing scars of the mark

of his ownership, erred in the delivery of provision; not a major

error, but certainly one that he had forbidden; and these hands,

neatly and cleanly amputated at the wrists, were tossed toward

you as both a warning lesson and possibly delectable morsels.

The fingerbones still remain with you, to be tossed on the floor in a

game of random chance of your own making, perhaps you only

amusement.  He despises most amusements because of the

distraction they present, diverting your full attention from him

(whether present or absent), and the sole purpose of your

entire existence which is to model for him the the abstract

concept of pain rendered both tangible and immediate by the

carefully controlled injury:  this transformation, which he

creates and arranges with the finesse of an artist, the skill of a

craftsman, and the patience of a scholar, supremely fascinates him.

These are not sudden whims arising from random rages or

disappointments:  he is not capricious.  He expects as much

discipline from himself as he demands from you.  This is both the

cause and effect of his life in the world, and the success he enjoys

among the vast herd of lesser men, over whom his accomplishments

tower.  In this same way, he has guided and cultivated the

bestowal of the privilege that has forever released you from the

heaving morass of your personality to the balanced and perfected

dignity of being his property.  He believes, with the fervor of a

spiritual creed, that manhood requires him to care for his property,

no detail being beneath his concern, to sow with concerted effort so that

he may also reap (with as much concerted effort) the luscious and

plentiful fruit of produced by that property; and the fruit he

expects and harvests from you must always, always, conform to his

liking.  In this proprietary way, you have become acceptible, even

precious, to him; but in another, more paradoxical way, your

pride in the manner in which he has developed you must always be

toppled by the swift and precise blows and lashes, precisely laid on, that

represent a relentlesly continuing degradation.  And this also reveals

another paradox, even more mysterious:  that, while you are suffering,

you scream for both more and less of that which he imposes with

neither smile nor frown.  Of course you did not comprehend the

nuances of this when you offered yourself to him as his slave:

you and he were novices together---he, at the maintenance of

suffering, and you, the acceptance of such suffering.  At the

end of the customary sessions, when (as you are doing now),

you regain consciousness---having fainted under a

deluge of pain that most people cannot even imagine (let alone

endure)---you must recite these very statements, in order and

with the expected deference and inflection that he has taught you. 

Now that you have done so, he turns his back to withdraw, for

he has many projects to oversee in the businesses that enrich

him.  You are not permitted to say that you love him, for he

does not believe in love:  property, as he has often reminded

you, neither loves nor hates but only conforms to and complies

with the proprietor's will and power; power to create or

destroy, to raise up or crush down as may seem good and

appropriate.  You watch him depart, knowing that this

vocation for which he has chosen you depends entirely

upon his diligence, as the earth and the teeming life

upon it depend upon the sun for sustenance and renewal. 

Through the window, you can observe his jackboots

ascending the wellworn stone steps slowly, perhaps

even wearily.  You feel sadness at his departure, a

sadness which will not resolve until he returns.

But, suddenly, some monstrous thing, that must have

been lying in wait, springs upon him.  His shrieks of

fear and terror are both loud and shortlived, as you

hear the cracking of his bones, the dislocation of his

joints, and the explosion of blood from his flesh as

his body is torn assunder.  And that is not enough for this

assailant.  After a moment that seems to linger forever,

but really only lasts for a snall number of heartbeats, it

bursts through the massive door that had been

quadrupally locked and bolted for your safety.  You

know of no words that would adequately describe the

wretched horror of its appearance.  Like a man, it

stands---but upon multiple legs; arachnid and

octopoid are its upper limbs upon which humanlike

hands flex and clench---except for two, which bear

only stumps that can neither clutch nor grasp.

Starward