Rufus’s suicide and the open gloating of his wife and cousin had been bitter to endure, but that was merely the beginning. The next morning Vipsania had taunted me before the household, daring me to act, to prove I was divine and undo the acts she had set in motion; and I had been powerless, knowing in my black and burning heart that the Romans themselves had stolen my divinity from me?tearing me from my lands and the comfortable dominion I had enjoyed, burying me in the stinking swamp of their worthless and corrupt myths and beliefs. What place was this, amongst brick and stone and the poison of a city, for the Huntress?

Note: what follows may be disturbing and/or not safe for work

My ultimate humiliation had come after the death of my doomed love, after she showed me the cold and lifeless body of the old Greek who despised me yet had won my affection and respect. She told me Marieko cursed my name before he died.

“You should die as well,” she told me, “Though Livius says I should deny Rufus the final honor of his dying wish, but I believe I will keep your pretty throat intact.”

“You would do well to heed the words of your husband-to-be,” I had snapped at her, seeking to goad her into action, “lest he suspect you might have designs on yet another man.”

She laughed at me then, the sound made ever more cutting by the clear beauty of her voice.

“Oh, no, little one, Livius has no such concerns regarding me. He shall be Senator, and I shall have what I desire?a path to power for my sons. Our match is too perfect for either of us to risk it. No, I am free to do with you as I please. And I am mindful of my debt to you, for I am certain my late husband would never have been moved to such a bold plan had you not filled his head with silly notions of Destiny and Prophecy. And of course, I know the perfect solution… the perfect place for the likes of you.”

And so I finally came to the great city of Rome herself not as a victorious goddess, but in chains in the back of a slave cart to be sold as a whore. Sometime on the journey to that city, somewhere in the back of that cart, something inside me snapped and I was overcome with numbness. My rage and anguish still burned furiously hot, but somehow it became distant, muffled and far away. When I tried to reach out to embrace it, to feel it… there was nothing, just numbness, nothingness. It was as if I had been torn asunder and that part of me, the part that knew the taste of rage and fury and all other passions now sat apart, screaming in some dark secluded place separate from the rest of me.

By the time I was sold in the marketplace in Rome, specifically to a whoremaster at Vipsania’s orders, I had become disinterested in all that surrounded me. I watched my own actions with detachment as I did what was expected of a slave, a role I knew well and that came back to me without effort. In the coolly intellectual part of myself I knew this could not last, that this submission was more than odious. Yet that knowledge could not stir in me the urge to rebel against it. I submitted to every indignity, iron chains and a mark upon my hip. I could seem to take no action of my own volition.

My new master’s name was Pavlos. He was a freed slave who ran his patron’s brothels in Rome and Ostia, seeing that they turned a profit whilst never allowing his patron’s name to be too closely associated with them. He dragged me to the adiles to register me as a prostitute under the name Felicia, then set me immediately to work. He fancied himself a strong-willed man and a demanding master, but I had his measure in a day. In a way his pathetic nature eventually drove me to some action beyond listlessness. It became my plan to endure this place until I could leave Rome without worry of being pursued, and then make for my old lands. I kept a civil tongue when that bloviating fool spoke to me and I bided my time.

I turned out to be popular amongst his clients, at least those who preferred the company of women, for without any pretense to vanity I can say I was easily the most attractive of the girls there. I wore a mask of cheerful servitude that I had learned many centuries before?the instincts came almost automatically and while part of me recoiled in horror I could not find the energy to break out of it. Still, my cheerful demeanor endeared me to many clients so that my earnings were always good.

The House of Pavlos was decidedly not a high-end establishment. Pavlos was a terrible manager, and a worse master?he beat girls who failed to perform to his satisfaction, that in itself no unusual thing, but he lacked the good sense to avoid bruising their faces. Of the sanitary conditions, the less said the better.

Seeing that Pavlos somehow had to be turned I made certain to pay special attention to him, for his suspicious and brutal nature stood in opposition to my half-hearted thoughts of escape. It never occurred to me to simply dispose of him, such was my subdued condition, but he proved ridiculously easy to manipulate, as did all those around me, and within a few weeks I had him convinced I loved him and could not stand to be without his touch. It suited his ego and certainly amused the other whores, but once I had him firmly in hand I was able to effect changes in the house, making subtle suggestions that come morning he would swear were his own thoughts.

It began as simply having the ten girls and four young men spend an hour or two every morning just cleaning rather than standing out on the street trying to attract customers, who seldom visited during those hours anyway. We began keeping clean cubicles and making more use of the laundry Pavlos’s patron maintained. Pavlos complained bitterly of the cost, but soon the combination of a clean house, well-groomed whores and fresh bedding did have the predictable result: business increased and our prices rose accordingly. From there it slowly became my responsibility to discipline the bad performers and see to it the establishment gathered in the monies Pavlos demanded. In order to do this I was forced to endure more than one beating at his hands, but such were of small consequence, and once the changes had taken place the weekly tallies were easily met, then well exceeded.

Some ten weeks after arriving in Rome I found myself in charge in all but name and I ran the brothel with an efficient if sunny brutality, gathering in more control as Pavlos became happily preoccupied with counting his patron’s money and skimming profits for himself. I disposed of the older and less comely whores, dipping in to the brothel’s accounts to purchase new slaves, youthful and attractive and at least less diseased than their predecessors. I set my own medical knowledge to the task of keeping them as healthy as was reasonably possible. There were now thirty girls and seventeen boys and our establishment began to gain more respectable clients as word spread through the subura that ours was an entertaining place to spend one’s free time. Profits increased even more as I raised our prices and hired boys to escort some of the prettier girls out during the day to drum up business, and I often went myself, since I remained better looking than all of what passed for beauty in this place.

All in all, perhaps four months’ effort on my part, just to reach a point where I could be out upon the streets without Pavlos to keep me in check. Once that was accomplished I set my sight on being shut of the place, to buy my freedom so I would not have to flee and risk being caught and in even worse circumstances… but something still held me in check.

It served a purpose, all of this activity on my part. I cared not one whit for those whom my actions gave benefit, not Pavlos’s pocketbook or the young men and women whose lives were still miserable, but certainly less so now. It all helped me to avoid looking back upon that tiny, scintillating spark that dwelt within me, yet so far from me I could not even feel its warmth. At night my dreams were fevered and I would awaken sometimes with my heart racing, my breast filled with panic and hate, but it would fade so swiftly into the numbing grey that cocooned my thoughts and my life. I would almost look forward to those nightmares because for one brief instant I would actually feel something, anything other than the cold and passionless plodding of the days as they passed. I confess the numbness at times was so bad that alone in bed at night I would occasionally cut myself with a knife, just to feel something, but even that pain was usually so dull and distant it brought almost no reaction. One night in frustration I thrust the knife through my left hand completely. But even that brought only a brief surfeit from the numbness that enveloped me, the pain a thing I could feel only as a phantom, removed from me, unreal. By the next day of course the wound was gone. I took at least some comfort in the fact that at least this visible manifestation of my strange nature had not abandoned me, even if it frustrated: I could not even truly hurt myself.

We had begun hiring out to banquets and other festivities, sending a dozen or more to act as servants and entertainment for the assorted guests. I usually took part in these for I was in fairly high demand amongst our regular patrons. Pavlos preferred that I go because it spared him the need to see that everyone returned the following along with whatever accoutrements they might have taken with them. I would send everyone on their way, remaining behind to ensure nothing and no one had been forgotten, and then I would make my way back on my own. I told myself that I would one day use just such a day to take my leave of Pavlos and Rome, but I never truly acted on this, not even so far as to scout the ways out of the city.

I was returning from just such an engagement, this having kept me at our customer’s dwelling well past midday, when I encountered the man who led me to feel something again. He was a taller man, and older, perhaps forty, and I spied him walking with some five others of similar bearing, headed to some purpose. I noticed him because his eyes locked onto me with recognition, and then he made some excuse to his companions and parted from them. Not one of them even chanced to glance in my direction.

I recognized him, of course. He had been in Rufus’s villa in Arretium for a day during my first year there, but his name escaped me. He did not offer it when he spoke to me, but simply asked if I were indeed the Felicia from that house and I told him that I was. He enquired as to my current circumstance and I was truthful regarding that as well, though I made no mention of my odd status within the brothel. We chatted in as amiable a fashion as was appropriate as he accompanied me on my way, and I maintained a friendly flirtatiousness with him, but inside I was deeply annoyed?he brought up memories of those closing days and of my humiliation.

But the annoyance lit a small spark, and I began to blow gently upon it as we reached the alley that would take me into the heart of the subura, what in modern America would be called the Red Light district. I thought to part with him there, but then he noted in a very matter-of-fact way that he had always fancied me.

“Well of course you do,” I replied, smiling, “you have excellent taste, after all. If you come to the House of Pavlos tonight I can promise you…”

“Oh, no, that wouldn’t do,” he protested, “I shall be on my way soon, with much to do. I was thinking we might just try one of these.”

He walked to one of the stalls forming the entrance to the alleyway and tried the door, which was surprisingly not even fastened shut. He smiled charmingly and seemed to like me. I smiled in return. He looked around and no one was about so he ushered me inside. The stall was really the back of a workshop, perhaps where a mule was kept, though it seemed unused as he peered out front and pronounced the place unoccupied. We haggled briefly on a price, since this was obviously not the most accommodating place, then I stripped off my garment, a robe somewhat more modest than my usual raiment, and I spread it on the ground, reclining upon it as he worked open his own clothes.

He descended on me in full heat, but I was accustomed to such treatment and bore his rough penetration without complaint, relaxing to accept him even as I made quite sounds of encouragement. I danced on my back underneath him for a bit but he seemed intent on taking as full advantage as he could, first urging me onto all fours that he might mount me from behind, then laying back and having me straddle him.

It was strictly utilitarian from my point. My purpose was to bring him to climax quickly, but one had to be sure to play to the male ego, so my face was a mask of pleasure and excitement while quiet sighs of passion passed my lips. All the while I was growing angrier and more impatient. I hated him for recognizing me, for being a part of a past that had robbed me of so much, for his easy acceptance of the circumstance that led me to be here on this day and in this manner, and for taking advantage. In another place, under other circumstance I would have killed him for far less than what he inflicted upon me now. I would have killed him just for being Roman, and the visceral thought of that sent a thrill through the core of me, like some deep well of fire had been tapped and was seeking release. The anger fueled it such that my pelvis now ground against his with renewed purpose as I imagined taking this fool’s life in the most gruesome fashion even as he urged me to greater effort, his body straining upwards beneath me as his finish approached.

I looked upon his face, seeing him straining close-eyed, his hands firm like clamps upon my hips as he held me tight against him, and it burst through me as a storm?not orgasm, but screaming rage so hot it burned through all thought and caution. He shuddered as his own pathetic pleasure took him and I struck him, first my right arm driving the knuckles of my balled fist in to his exposed throat and then my left, feeling his windpipe fracture as he jerked beneath me, his body now rigid and trembling, his spine arched as his climax poured forth.

He began to thrash, his hands suddenly as fists, lashing out at me, but I held him imprisoned beneath me and batted aside his flailing arms, his body already so spent in this furious copulation there was little left for his final, defiant spasms, and as his face darkened and his motions became but trembling, it swept though me: a pleasure so sweet, so utterly delicious in its source and flavor I could hardly believe it could be real but for the convulsions of physical joy rippling through my flesh. I was so very alive!

It subsided slowly as I held myself atop him, unwilling to so much as move unless it should bring this joyous convulsion of pleasure and hate to a sudden end, but it could not last and as my heart slowed and the furnace of my rage banked and cooled I felt tears in my eyes, so desperate I was to hold onto that delicious pleasure, that white hot feeling. When it was gone I sprang up to my feet in sudden revulsion, standing over the corpse, stifling my sobs of anguish as the dead and icy vault of numb resignation returned to claim me. I kicked the body, trying to reclaim the savage glee I had felt as I struck him and crushed his throat, but it fled from me, returning to that far away place I could not reach, that I could barely look upon.

All of it, the pleasure, the fiery joy of it, the delicious sensation of such total arousal, left me trembling and confused, but I quickly realized I had a very real problem on my hands. In all our thrashing about on the floor my robe had been kicked aside so I fetched it up, donning it swiftly as I moved towards the door, peering out between the cracks to look on the street beyond. Traffic was normal, nearly all on foot, but this end of the alley had no open shops so people were not venturing in this direction. I found a bit of cloth hanging from a post and used it to wrap up my hair so that its color would be less obvious, then watched the ebb and flow of the crowds. When I judged the moment right I swiftly slipped out the door and began walking away from the alley. I would circle around and approach the subura from the opposite direction.

As I made good my escape I felt a cold certainty within my heart: I knew what was needed now. Escape would not serve, not until I had recaptured that part of me these Romans had stolen.

As time passed the memory of that killing became more muddied, and I began to doubt I had experienced those things. It was the deadness inside me, the numbing lack of anything that deceived me, pushing away that fleeting moment of absolute feral ecstasy. Still, there was that searing spark, buried so deeply in me, so very hot and painful yet so far away?that far away part of me watched, and waited.

It was more than a month before I took another life. My second victim was barely a man, just seventeen. Drunk on wine and so very full of his own needs he accosted me as I sought to join others from my House on a job just off the Aventine Hill. I let him draw me in to an alley before the fury awoke within me and I slipped his grasp, twisting to one side as my left arm caught him by the neck, pulling him off his balance. My grip tightened and he made a noise, a quiet, desperate gasp as his throat was closed and I continued to twist, leaning back as he fell forward, turning his head until I felt the sudden cracking of bones and he went limp. I let him slide to the ground, dragging his corpse to the wall and dropping him there, then moving on down the alley and out onto the street again, walking as if I had not a care in the world even as my blood sang with the fire of this newfound delight.

It was so easy to do because I hated them so. I hated their pretensions to civilization, their fascination with blood sport, their arrogant assumption of superiority. The very soul of their culture was warped and diseased and I had allowed it to infect me, to deceive me into believing that I could become a part of it, could rule over it. Then I had watched it destroy the man I loved and bring all my hopes?hopes I had never dared allow myself before they gave them to me?to ruination.

So it became a game, truly a sport for me, taking my trophies in dark alleys or even in the most public of places, each death restoring to me just one more shred of that which had been lost at the hands of this vile race.

I grew bolder as I realized they were unable to recognize what was happening, treating my acts as individual events. A family would send hired men to hunt down the killer of their loved one, only to fall upon some hapless thief who stumbled on the body and stripped it of anything of value. I would hear the uproar and go to the square where some magistrate would condemn the fool to death and then watch with glee as the Romans did my killing for me. If anything those deaths were sweetest of all.

There was a hunger, a ferocious need within me that could only find satisfaction in wanton slaughter. I once took an entire household, poisoning the wine they had purchased for a son’s wedding, then watched in astounded glee as the fury of the neighborhood turned on a cousin who had some petty squabble with the family, ending in his suicide. It was as if they could not help but step into my bloody grasp, helpless to resist, even eager to feed my rage.

The butcher’s bill grew longer, years passing as I struggled to reach that point, so tantalizingly close, yet always just beyond my grasp, where I could call myself satisfied and whole once more. My ferocious appetite began to leak out around the edges of the carefully cheerful persona I affected, frightening my master, Pavlos, such that he shipped me off to Ostia. There I found even better game amongst the transient merchants and sailors who regularly flooded that port city. For who noticed another dead sailor apparently waylaid by muggers?

I lived for nothing but the kill. More than a decade passed, a savage, bloodstained collection of years where my vicious sport left a trail of death and heartbreak in two cities and even across the sea, and though I came close to being discovered once or twice, I always managed to outwit the fool Romans. Yet it never seemed enough, and my determination to see it done, to complete this tapestry of murder and vengeance, began to overtake the fury that drove me, the pleasure of each act falling prey to the desperate hope that this one would put paid to the debt I sought to collect.

How many lives would it take to quell the hunger within me? After some time, I ceased to even ask the question.

Posted on February 8th, 2006 by Zsallia
Filed under: The Past