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“Jesus fucking Christ, stop it!” I curse.
“I will not stop. You need physical consequences if you’re going to learn anything.”
The lash or whatever the hell it is, lands again and makes me squeal. This hurts. Not like, horrific injury hurts, but more than paper cut hurts. There’s more to it than just pain. There’s the warmth of his lap, and the presence of the alien king all around me. I am being held and comforted, and disciplined and punished, and I hate it, but I might actually love it if I’m not careful.
I’ve gone out of my way to feel pain in the past. He doesn’t know that, but he’s feeding right into that dark little part of me, the same part that sort of didn’t care if we got vaporized by a missile when I was standing on that pier, the part of me that even kind of sort of welcomed it. The instinct to Armageddon, I call it.
It’s not that I want to die. It’s that I’m tired of clinging. When you've been through enough, every day becomes a challenge. And sometimes, you get tired of those challenges, and sometimes…
“Ow!” I gasp as the lash lands yet another time.
I look around over my shoulder to try to see what the fuck he’s using. Seeing it doesn’t help. It looks like a cane, but if a cane was a belt. It’s sort of a long, thick stick which packs an intense sting when it meets my cheeks for a fourth time.
“That really hurts, guy. You could really be hurting me. Have you considered that?”
“I’m not really hurting you. If I were, you'd have some response other than arguing, which is what you always do.”
“You don’t know what I always dooooOWWW!”
The cane-belt thing lands again, harder than before, and this time it really does fucking hurt. I gasp and I curse and I try to crawl away, but there’s no escaping. He keeps his grip on my waist and lashes that thing down three more times in quick succession.
“Okay okay okay! I get it! You can stop!”
“That's not what you say when you are being punished,” King Brawn tells me.
“What do I say?”
“You say I’m sorry, please forgive me.”
“I’m sorry. Please forgive me.”
THWACK! The cane thing lands again.
“OW, what the fuck! I did what you told me to do!”
“I expect you to mean it,” he intones, as if he can tell. I am humiliated. I am sore. I am being forced to endure real punishment for what might be the first time and I really don't like it. I should be getting away with things. That is the real way of the world.
“How do you know I don’t mean it?”
“Do you mean it?” He asks the simple question, and I could completely lie the answer right out of my face.
“No.”
“Exactly.”
He lifts the cane thing again. This time I squeal before it lands. My ass is swollen and absolutely fucking burning, and I’ve run out of my capacity for recreational pain — something I didn’t even know I had.
“I’m sorry!”
I shout the words and the cane stops less than an inch from my ass.
“What are you sorry for?” He asks the question in a dominant growl which I feel to the very core of me. I am sorry for so very many things, but I’m not going to air any of them here and now. I haven’t lost so much self-control that I’m going to throw my dignity away.
“Whatever you want me to be sorry for.”
I know that’s lame, and probably not what he wants to hear, but it is all I can muster. I don't know what I am supposed to be sorry for. What does a multidimensional alien king want from a simple beast like me?
“This is probably closer to submission than you have been in a long time,” he notes. “It’s a start. It will not be the end. We will work on this together. But first, you will see the doctor.”
Wrong. First, I’m getting dressed.
Eep
I am seeing a doctor.
The king’s doctor, no less.
He is smaller than the king, but not smaller than me. He is much, much larger than I am. He seems to be older, but I don’t think he’s super old. Maybe middle aged. His hair has more than a hint of silver, but does that mean anything for his species?
I find it difficult to sit still for the examination, mostly because my ass is marked with the remnants of the king’s punishment. The medical bay is freaking me out too. I’ve never liked hospitals, and this place looks and smells like one. Antiseptic and the absence of real life, that’s what it is. Crawling up my nose and into my sinuses, taking my life from me.
I really fucking hate hospitals.
But I have the cane in my memory. And I have that kind of weird warm feeling in my stomach and chest, the sensation you get when someone is looking after you. I feel really fucking cared for, though logically it doesn’t make any sense. The king whipped me because I didn't obey him. He demanded my submission, and then he enforced it. I had a huge problem with authority on Earth, and I guess I have an even bigger one here.
