Bedtime Story for a Stolen Child

He had been there a long time. On the good days, he couldn’t remember how long. On those days, he floated in color and sensation and pretended to be a prisoner of his own mind rather than one in body. He didn’t notice the stale air in his cell then, or the current of magics which constantly danced over and inside of him, raping him more deeply than flesh ever could. He ignored the fact that at any moment, They might return. He ignored the possibility that They might take from him anything and everything that they desired, including his humanity. That They would open his cell to a world gone mad, and mold him to match it. On the good days, he didn’t have to worry if the Fair Ones would love him or hate him, lust after him from afar or beat him, fuck him or play puppet while he was made to dance on razor strings. On a good day, he could breathe.

It wasn’t a good day.

He’d been petted and pampered until one of his owners had become too excited, then he’d been stripped and rammed down hard onto an impressive length and split painfully while the others still cooed over him. When They grew bored of the diversion, he was thrown into his cell again. Deprived of all his senses and shifting uncontrollably, trying to remember what he’d looked like as a man, trying not to lose any more of himself than They had already stolen, he folded into what he thought to be a fetal position by memory alone. Being unable to feel himself bend, he couldn’t know if he was squeezing his legs too tight, or if he’d missed them all together and was only floating in a jumble. He could see, but only a kaleidoscope of colors, no hint of reality or form through the faerie dust.

He hated that dust. It made his blood heat and his body become liquid. It made his legs spread and his cock hard. It made him want and need and beg, and he hated it as much as he craved his captors’ cocks while on it. They broke him with it, over and over, and one of these days he wouldn’t be able to piece himself together again. But when he was on the dust, he didn’t care.

I cannot forget, he reminded himself in the soundless void. I am a man. I think I am a man. I was a man, once. I had a name. Leinad…no, that is the name They gave me. A shadow, a mirror. Leinad is a mirror. Daniel. “Daniel! My name is Daniel!” he screamed without sound. He couldn’t remember his own voice. He was losing himself. Or am I Leinad now?

A smell brought him from his musings. Air, fresh, clean and crisp.

Leinad choked on it, the sensation of oxygen in his long unused lungs overwhelmed him. He felt something solid beneath him and began to drag himself through the thick nothing and toward the wonderful smell. They did this too, at times. Teased him with hints of his world, watched him crawl to them in desperation, struck him down painfully then hugged him, letting his blood coat their hands while They rocked him like a beloved house pet who’d almost gotten outside. He should have learned, but like the animal They’d made of him, his instinct always won. And so he would crawl, every time. If he was lucky They would just rape him and throw him back in his cell. If he was unlucky, They would hold him down, force the faerie dust upon him, then skin him inch by inch while he writhed and begged for it. Then if he was lucky, he wouldn’t be conscious long enough to lament his decision.

Leinad was very unlucky.

Instead of the whip though, instead of the knife or the cold fingers, he felt soft loam and plants beneath his palms. He blinked the colors from his eyes, rolled onto his back and stared up at the sunlit sky framed between a canopy of trees.

“My name is…” he said cautiously, and flinched at the hoot that echoed in his words. He hadn’t held on to himself tight enough.

The sound of a door opening caused him to sit up and look through the thick woods to the cabin beyond them. He knew that cabin. He’d been born there. He was home.

Leinad held his head in his hands and laughed.

* * * *

The road hadn’t been paved for a while. In fact, the further he drove, the rougher it became, until the jeep was practically dancing with the force of its bouncing. It reminded Daniel of that fairy tale about the girls who were forced to dance until their feet were broken and bloody. His mind supplied a strange image of the jeep, tires ragged and blown, oil dripping from the undercarriage, as it kept jumping and dipping in the rocky back roads.

Daniel didn’t remember the roads being that bad, but then again, he hadn’t been back to the family cabin since he’d been a kid. Maybe back then he’d enjoyed nearly vibrating out of his seat. Or maybe the car from their childhood had better shocks than his pieced together Franken-jeep.

“Dude! Either learn how to drive, or let me do it,” came the gruff and annoyed voice from the back.

“He lives,” Daniel deadpanned and grunted as they hit a particularly large pothole.

His brother Matthew peeked a sleep tangled head over the seat and asked, “Are we there yet?”

“Yes,” he nodded. “I am now driving in circles for my own amusement, look at how we glide over the smooth—” He winced and held back a curse when another bump made him bite his tongue.

Matthew smirked. “You deserved that.”

Daniel refused to answer. He suckled on his tongue a bit, grimacing at the coppery taste of his blood.

“Where are we?”

“On a road,” Daniel teased. “In the woods.”

“No shit, Sherlock.”

“There probably is, actually. This is the woods and there are a lot of animals.”

Matthew groaned and let himself fall back to sprawl out once again in the small Jeep bed.

Daniel smiled to himself and kept driving. His brother was eight years younger and acted half his age most of the time, but when he wasn’t cranky from days of endless driving, he was decent company.

“Put on some music or something,” came the gruff voice in the back again.

He sighed and slid a CD into the player, happily singing along to Kimya Dawson until Matthew threw half of his body over the seat to steal the disk and replace it with something death metal and deafening.

Both brothers asked in tandem, “Are you sure we’re related?”

There was a short, bemused silence before they began to laugh. Matthew climbed into the front seat and flipped through the music they’d brought with them. “So…what do you think of all this?”

He glanced over at his brother before shrugging. “Lynn wants us all together on the anniversary. She’s lonely, and she’s our sister.”

“And what if she wants to try a séance or something? Isn’t the first anniversary a good time for that?”

“Matthew, I’m a folklorist, that doesn’t mean I believe in those things. I just study the stories.”

“But would you try it?”

Daniel’s eyes shifted off the road to Matthew and he frowned again. “What is she planning?”

“Nothing.”

He narrowed his eyes. Matthew was lying. “Matthew…”

“She’s our little sister, she’s lonely.” he mimicked Daniel’s voice and finally settled on Damon Marley as an acceptable medium on the music front.

The older brother remained silent.

“Would it be so bad? To try it?”

“Yes,” Daniel insisted. “It won’t work. It’ll only upset her.”

Matthew sat back in his seat and refused to talk about it anymore.

Eyes back to the road, Daniel gave a soft sigh. He and Matthew had never seen eye to eye when it came to their little sister. Three years Matthew’s junior, eleven years Daniel’s, Lynn was joy and exasperation, caring and comedy all wrapped into a tiny, five-foot five-inch package of dynamite.

“You know, if you say no, she’ll look at you.”

“Mmm.”

“She’ll look at you.”

“Yes, Matthew,” Daniel sighed. “She’ll look at me, and I’ll instantly want to wrap the world up for her in a big red bow.”

“You can’t resist a damsel in distress,” Matthew teased.

“Uhuh.” Daniel’s tone was pure sarcasm.

Matthew grinned. “See. You can’t deny it!”

“Unlike you, I can have the urge without trying to follow through.”

Matthew gave a strange, hacking cough, and Daniel realized that his brother was convulsing with laughter.

“Matthew.”

“Did you just call me a man-whore?”

“No, Matthew. You aren’t good enough to get paid for it,” Daniel quipped and grinned at his brother’s indignant noises. “Oh look. We’re here.”

“So…séance?”

Daniel stopped grinning.