The Smell of the Ground
#2 of Writing Exercises
Another writing exercise! Follow the day of a mouse in a very, very unfortunate situation. Somewhat dark. Tags are slight spoilers.
The constraints for this story were "No internal thoughts" and "Omniscient PoV" because I never do omniscient.
Outside the cell the time showed six o'clock in digital green, and the mouse woke with a startled squeak as the toy lodged bloated and full inside him pulsed and wobbled with the alarm. He mumbled and groaned, jaw held creaking wide by a clear plastic tube, and he thrashed and rocked on the floor, but the alarm rang out minute after minute and finally he rocked himself onto his knees and crawled blindly on the padded white cloth of the floor to the door of the cell.
It swung open, the jangling shriek of the alarm halting as it did, and the mouse stopped and knelt waiting as his nose twitched at a breeze that stirred through the sullen air, hot and spiced with his sweat and unwashed musk. The toy pulsed again; a faint buzz echoed through the wide and empty room his meager cell opened to, and the mouse moaned again and his cock stiffened uselessly inside its metal tube until it pushed up against the dull metal spikes at the head.
"Six oh five. Present for inspection." An expressionless voice rang over the intercom, and he knelt there immobile, head bowed and hands tucked away tight behind his back, arms locked in leather straps that laced them together and bound them below his raised tail. Minutes passed, and the whirring buzz of the toy grew more insistent and his whimpers more desperate, but he stayed still, barely a twitch rippling the fabric of his bindings, and the metal dome of the camera in the ceiling passed him by without another glance as it swept the room from side to side. But from across the hall he heard a faint scrabble of claws against tile, then the sharp snap of leather and a muffled cry, the strokes sounding out second by second, and he winced at the sound.
Besides this there was only the creak of pistons and motors, the squeak of wheels on linoleum as the caretakers entered the circular hall and began their rounds as the cries grew louder and louder, each swish and crack accompanied by a counterpoint of sobs and struggles. A red light blinked unseen above the other cell; a message flickered through the institute's systems, flagged and waiting in an inbox, and said that client #142 required medical follow-up, and remained there unread until it was deleted automatically the next day. The machines moved, unhurried and unchanged, and the cries grew piercing and hoarse until they stopped abruptly and only the snap of leather against flesh remained.
The alarm sounded briefly again at six-thirty, the staccato beating in the background coming to a halt at last, each solid and glistening metallic caretaker coming to rest in front of a cell. They were human-like in their upper bodies, and twice as tall as a man, bare metal chests as flat as a table, but from the waist down they were a single solid box of steel, and ran on four wheels. The mouse shivered and stayed perfectly still, and the arms of a caretaker reached out and embraced him. They took him by the shoulders, held his back up to their chests and let his legs dangle above the floor. A synthetic voice, deep and masculine, whispered in his ear.
"Your master has registered no change in orders. Your punishment is still in effect for the rest of the day." There was a pause, artificial intelligence calculating, and the voice found the next response and spoke again. "Sorry, bitch. It's for your own good."
The mouse jerked once, twice, and slumped, offered no resistance to the metal beneath him. A third appendage reached out from the box below and wrapped around the base of the plug inside the mouse and retracted. The mouse whimpered, tailhole stretched around black silicone thick as his wrist, which slowly and painfully blossomed into a knot that grew inch by inch as the machine dragged and pulled at the plug. He yelped and thrashed, shoulder almost jerking free, and he slid back down panting, the toy planted firmly back inside.
Unperturbed, chains grew from some unseen storage in the machine, wrapped and spread his ankles taut, body bound to the cold chest of the machine, and when he was unable to move it whispered in his ear. "Haven't you learned better yet?"
Now the arm twisted as it pulled, the plug dry and rough after a night spent inside the mouse's roughly used rear, and this time he could do nothing but gasp as it grew and grew until it was wide as a football and his tailhole stretched taut, a bruised, purple-red. There was no movement after that, just a tense, pained tautness to the mouse's skin, a wetness to his eyes and cheeks, and the rest of the plug slid smoothly out, almost as long as the mouse's arm in total.
The machine tucked it away. It was replaced quickly, the mouse's gaping and quivering hole stuffed again with a hose as thick as a fist, inch after inch feeding into his rear until his stomach bulged, and then warm water pumped inside.
"Extra thick and full today, slut. For your disobedience earlier."
The mouse closed his eyes, tugged half-heartedly at the bonds holding him, and for the next ten minutes his gut swelled until he looked ready to give birth, and there he was left, the machine whispering in his ear.
"Good slaves don't think. Good slaves obey. Good slaves don't struggle. Good slaves love their masters, no matter what happens to them. Good slaves obey, or are punished. Good slaves love their punishments, because it makes them better slaves. Good slaves obey."
The audio files looped endlessly, permuted slightly to avoid over-repetition, and across the room the echoes of a similar tape filled a painful corner of their own.
At seven there was a click and then suction, light and irresistible, and the mouse sighed as his belly flattened, the outline of the hose still faintly visible. Another tube clamped around the tip of his cage, cock puffed slightly from the filling he received, reddened and stinging under the cool steel. "Piss," the voice commanded, and he did, urine finally flowing out of a bladder full since the mouse had woken and amplified by the water in his gut. Almost a minute later it stopped, and the tube slithered away and the mouse huffed into his gag and leaned back against the cool metal.
The hose in his gut coiled lazily. He gasped as it pumped back and forth inside him, a few inches of motion making his gut swirl like a nest of snakes. The room lay motionless beside, empty and silent except for labored breaths and soft squelching. At twenty past seven each caretaker turned and wheeled away as one. The mouse was carried through the halls, still gasping and writhing from the pressure inside him.
The caretakers traveled through gleaming white halls, staying carefully within the bounds of infrared paint on the floor set up for them. Some passed through halls with phrases like "Administration," and stopped carefully in front of wooden desks, cameras staring blankly at the empty seats. Others entered rooms locked with careful biometrics and nameplates, with insides as idiosyncratic as the names of the owners, some rooms with decorations as simple as a set of stocks and a closet, some intricately covered in rubber, some with sharp blades and soldering irons displayed menacingly along the walls, and each of them empty of any living being. The caretakers still stood at the door, politely, waiting for a command or to release a prisoner they no longer held, and the door remained closed and the hinges rusted quietly.
The mouse passed by these rooms, blind and senseless to the rest of the world, conscious only of a slow and steady grinding inside him that turned each stop and turn into a squeak and made him squirm in his bonds, until finally his captor arrived at a metal door which creaked open at its arrival. The room inside was tiled and clear, on three sides, the ceiling and floor strangely paneled, and the last side was a flat metal pane of glass. In the middle of the room there was a metal frame, one broad plank jutting from the floor and four poles extending outward from it.
Slowly, the chains unwound from around his limbs, and one last push of the hose sent him into a pained ecstasy of convulsions, a low and hoarse moan echoing off the sterile halls, and he slid twitching to the floor. He pushed himself up to one knee, muscles tensed, head whirling in its blindness, and as always he was snatched up by unseen limbs that appeared from the rest of the room and dragged him to the frame. Etched shackles snapped closed around his limbs, and lights flashed on and turned towards the mouse in the center of the room. Each welt and lash on his body, each black or green bruise, each straining fiber and lock of matted fur was flooded in white.
A monitor blinked in the corner of the room; the Windows logo appeared, and disappeared, and the dim silicon awareness began to idle. A slim metal pole came up from a panel in the floor. Data blinked between the caretaker and the room's systems, and the end of the pole was unscrewed and a rod three times as thick was put in its place. The caretaker left, trundling silently outside the room, and missed the cries and twitching as the mouse was impaled upon the thick shaft, legs trembling upwards and away from the shining monster beneath him, arms straining and hole twitching violently in anticipation, but not a second was gained, not a moment, before the shaft plunged in him with stinging force until his gut was bulging and full. Metal tendrils sprang up and curled around him, entwining his arms and legs while he struggled, caressed and stroked and all the while pulled tighter, tighter until they had wound all over his chest and his belly and neck and left him unable to do more than twitch and curl his toes, until even that faded; Only his labored breathing gave any sign he was alive. Even when the toy began to pull out, centimeter by painful centimeter, each step visible in the shrinking bulge in his gut, until it was halfway out and reversed direction, not a single movement came from the mouse's tortured body.
From outside the glass came sounds of motion, lights flicking on in the dim lobby. Nine thirty. Another robot appeared, scanned a code printed on the other side of the glass, turned to face the empty hall beyond the mouse's small world.
"I see we have a small group today." The blank face paused, scanned the empty walls and blank air for faces, and found none. Still, it continued. "We have reached the demonstration portion of our tour. A randomly selected client is displayed here for you viewing enjoyment." Another pause. Intelligent algorithms listened for responses, calculated the speech that would please its audience the most. "If no one has objections, perhaps you will wish to see what we can do?"
The mouse began to whimper. No other response came, and the machine gestured towards the room and sent sharp signals to the process inside. The mouse was tilted upwards, turned around, stretched rear displayed.
"This slave is currently on an extended punishment cycle, indefinite until countermanded, and provides an excellent opportunity to demonstrate our operant conditioning procedures." A gesture from the robot, and the rod inside him pushed in as deep as it could and expanded. The metal core slid out, and his wide and gaping hole was left on display.
"As you can see, we can modify and train our clients to your exact specifications, although in this case our modifications were purely part of his punishment." The mouse gasped, tail lashing slightly in its bonds. Stress sensors in the metal detected movement, slackened just slightly to let the absent audience view his discomfort, the ceaseless squirming and panicked pants. His rear was stretched more than half the width of his hips, the mouse almost more hole than person, ring stretched a taut and angry purple-red around the gaping darkness inside. Another tendril came from the ceiling and vanished inside his open rear while the guide continued to speak.
"Questions? Concerns?" Head cocked, the machine listened. The moans grew to squeals and the struggles of the mouse intensified, until his bonds locked themselves tight again. "No? Very well."
The mouse was turned over again, bend backwards until his hands were level with his ankles, back and belly arched around the metal tube inside and the squirming tendril probing even deeper, and his bound and aching cock and soft balls were presented to the glass.
"Usually, we allow our slaves some measure of release, both from their own and their master's preference. This slave is forbidden to do so until his punishment period has lapsed, which will be in-" a brief pause, an address lookup failed, "-an undefined period of time."
The mouse's cock leaked freely, clear liquid dribbling from the sides. It did so almost constantly, stimulation never ceasing for the mouse. Another cable came up to flick lightly at his balls, swollen and full.
"As you can see, he has been denied release for quite some time. Perhaps in the future he'll think more carefully about his actions."
The cable began to flick harder, tapping against his vulnerable orbs, until the mouse jumped and cried at each touch.
"Isn't that right?" The machine turned towards him for the first time. The mouse nodded frantically, mumbling through his gag, yes, yes, he'd do anything they said, and all the while his cock dripped and the sticky fluid ran down his cage and reddening balls into a small puddle on the floor.
There was a programmed smirk in its voice as it turned again. "Do you all agree? Has he had enough?" Silence. "No?"
The noise was audible, each snap now left a welt before changing sides, the mouse squealing with each blow, frame rocking back and forth against the hard metal, cock still spurting clear fluid. A minute passed, cries growing louder with each passing moment.
A metallic shrug, and the guide on to the next part of the sequence. The cables still beat, unceasingly, and another rose behind him. The metal frame split apart, the bonds around his limbs pulled and stretched him taut, held spread-eagled facing the glass. His whole body shivered and twitched, his balls reddened and bruised, each feeble moan and cry accompanied by throb in his still-caged cock.
"Our punishment procedures range from light to heavy. Let's move on to a more weighty demonstration, shall we?"
The cable lashed against his back, and the mouse shrieked and arched forward. It snapped again, and again, and again, each slash leaving a thick welt across his back.
"If any of you are concerned about his safety, or the safety of any clients, due to the automated nature of the systems, be assured that we are observed at all times by a human specialist on staff. The health and well-being of our clients is our top... well, our second top priority."
In a chair two floors up a seat sat empty, a login screen splashed blue light across a dark room. There was a thick layer of dust on the floor. A red light began to flash.
"Please observe the demonstration while our specialists prepare the next observation area."
The mouse screamed, sobbed and moaned into his gag, and his eye caught a glimpse of the open door to the lobby. Traces of glass still glittered in the corners, the maintenance robots too low on power to bother with the lobby anymore when so little traffic was detected. The carpet was moldy and rotten, the door still standing solid but the windows long since blown out. Display models, of leather and metal and rubber, stood exposed and weathered, metal lumps standing out in piles of mush. Outside, every building was the same: old, rotted, and worn.
Near the entrance to the lobby were two piles of clothes, simple cloth. The clothes were dirty and worn, torn and strewn across the entire room. Two brown and stained backpacks, two Nalgene bottles, two rolls of blankets lay abandoned. Two sets of tracks in the dust led inwards, to the holding areas, still visible every day to the mouse.
A buzzer sounded. The cables stopped. The mouse breathed, chest heaving upwards and downwards, still twitching and writhing from residual pain, the toys never ceasing their motions. He coughed, a few times, a wracking moan that went on and on and on, until finally the mouse shuddered, and lay still, his breath coming in short, shallow pants.
Ten o'clock.
"Since our supervisor has not indicated otherwise, we have stopped the program just as our model was about to lose consciousness. The next display model is ready. Please, step this way."
The robot turned, and the mouse was left with the sight of an empty hall. A whirr of cables sounded, a blindfold placed over the mouse, the toy inside him expanding yet again as it made his body bulge and ache, as it would all day until the facility's schedule stopped the tours. From down the hall the sound of a raccoon's scream echoed.
Ten thirty.
"I see we have a small group today..."
The blindfold lifted, and the mouse took one more look at the empty lobby, the clothes and possessions a few dozen feet away, and began to sob.