The Bridge
A man resolves to escape his current problems by jumping off a bridge. And his plan works. Sort of...
The Bridge - by Toac
Tonight was a good night to die, Mike Saunders decided, looking out over the balustrade on the eastern side of Farnsworth Memorial Bridge. It was the new moon, the 2 a.m. sky cloudless but dark, and wisps of fog were rolling out from Cede River beneath him. They hid the inky depths over which they rose behind pale shrouds of white, bit by bit spreading out into the surrounding landscape.
Slowly, carefully, Mike put his right foot against the diamond-shaped pattern of the cast iron grill and pulled himself up onto the railing. There he stood, hugging a vertical beam that disappeared into the blackness above his head, and waited. The world lay still and silent, except for the angry gurgle of rushing water some thirty-six feet below.
Then, at last, footsteps echoed through the air. They came from the town side of the bridge, grew louder with each beating of his heart. Mike turned his head toward the noise, poised to throw himself from his precarious perch, and still he waited. It wouldn't do to jump without an audience...
Another minute passed before two shapes materialized out of the mist, running along the street under a jarring cacophony of labored breaths, hoarse shouts and the shrill trilling of a whistle. It took a further ten seconds for the forms to come close enough to become identifiable as policemen. Forty feet distant, the leading officer spotted the orange-clad figure on the bridge. He stumbled in his step as he pointed and opened his mouth to shout, "There!"
Mike let go of the beam and fell into nothingness.
Time stretched like chewing gum during his fall. Mike did not see his life play out before his inner eyes, as many stories made to believe happened in such a situation, but he did question the sanity of his actions while milliseconds appeared to turn into hours, hours in which the fathomless river, ever so leisurely, rushed up to meet him.
Ultimately, it was all that hooker's fault. Why had she had to call for help when he had explicitly told her to be silent! But stabbing her had been unwise. Not because she had bled out like a pig on slaughtering day, but because Mike feared her death would goad the police into not giving up searching for him. Hindsight is easier than foresight, as they said. He should have cut out her tongue the moment he'd nabbed her. Yeah... Then she would've been quiet and compliant, the bitch!
As dire as his situation was, his plan was just as brilliant, he thought. If the law wouldn't stop searching for him until they caught him or deemed him dead, well... He just had to fake his death, didn't he? And this bridge, Farnsworth Memorial Bridge, had a reputation as being a suicide bridge, a rallying point for desperate, world-weary souls keen on ending their lives. Downstream, the remains of many a jumper washed up on the shore of the river, bloated and half-eaten by the fish. Just as many or more didn't ever turn up again. It wasn't its height that made Farnsworth Bridge so dangerous, as it crossed over the river at a measly ten meters, but the violent swirls and eddies of the wild wide stream beneath it. Still, Mike had been a great swimmer ever since he had first dipped his toes into the lake behind his family's house at the age of four; he was sure he could best whatever nastiness the river threw at him. He would let the current carry him along for a mile or so, then make for the thick forest that straddled the riverbed there. After seven to ten miles through uninhabited, thick woodland to the north he would reach the city of Havenport, where he could lay low awhile. After that, he'd catch a ride to the far side of the country. And let the law assume him to be worm food!
He hit the water with a loud splash and submerged. Instantly, he knew he was in trouble. It was as if the river had turned into a living beast and swallowed him. The icy cold water pulled at him, jostled him, seemed to toy with him like a cat with its prey, almost as if it deliberately opposed his actions. Each time he had steadied himself in the water, a new current appeared out of nowhere, just to sweep him under again. Whenever he could sense the surface of the water close by, the force of the river increased and sunk him anew. His wet prison garb became heavier by the second. It dragged him down, down, ever down toward the bottom of the stream. He drifted into strands of riverweed and the clammy, rope-like plants wound around his flailing extremities in the dark, constricting him. Another underwater swirl spun him about like a leaf in the wind. He screamed in panic, trying to orientate himself, to distinguish the above from the below. To fight back.
The river was alive, Mike realized with panic, and it was going to kill him!
He gripped a tangle of fiber that had looped around his calf, pulled frantically. It snapped on his third try and the ropes around his torso loosened and floated away. He was free for the moment, but how long would this freedom last? Thoughts of unseen tentacles, thrashing around in the dark water whilst honing in on him, flashed through Mike's brain. He let out the last remainder of the breath he had been holding and madly pulled his body into a breast stroke. Darkness was already beginning to creep in on the edges of his vision, and still he didn't know which way was up, which way was down. His strokes became frantic, more imprecise, feeble. He would drown...
Then his head broke the surface of the water and he drew in the sweet fresh morning air together with a mouthful of water. He coughed and hacked, still bewildered, until his vision cleared and his splutters died. To his dismay, he found that he was not already a hundred yards or more down the river, as he had calculated, but that his underwater struggle had kept him nearly in the very spot from where he had jumped. He was just under the bridge, flushed into a shallow at its northern side.
Even so, Mike dragged himself ashore. Anything to get out of the water! He knew in his guts that the river was sentient. A malevolent thing trying to claim any human fool enough to set foot into it. Like him...
The orange light of a bonfire illuminated the concrete foundation of the bridge in front of him. On all fours he crept toward it and fell over onto his back next to it, exhausted. The heat was like balm to his soul and while he lay there, watching the flames' shadow play reflected from the underside of the bridge, he relaxed. All was not lost. The cops would certainly expect him to be swept downstream. He would take a minute to recover, then engage in plan B: sneak off in the opposite direction, close to the river's edge, until he could make a run for the woods.
He sighed. The ground on which he lay was bare earth, soft and fragrant, with the occasional white of a sea shell sticking out of it. It was tempting just to keep lying there until he was rested and his clothes were dry again, but he knew he couldn't afford the luxury. He had to take stock of his surroundings and get away pronto. He gazed around. The fire was blazing merrily from a bed of logs each as wide as a tricycle tire, its embers fenced in by a circle of thick stones slabs that looked heavy as hell. The flames gave off enough radiance to illuminate the whole underside of the bridge. Tall, impenetrable-looking thorn bushes bordered the alcove to its left and right, and even extended so far over the river that Mike was surprised he hadn't spotted them before. A mass of short yellowish sticks piled up to the height of three and a half feet at the left side of the bridge's concrete base, no doubt stacked there to keep the fire going.
His hideaway was both serene and hidden from prying eyes, but something Mike couldn't quite fathom still set him on edge: why hadn't he noticed the shine of the camp fire when he had looked down from atop the bridge?
Contemplating the question, he absentmindedly picked up one of the shell fragments from the ground and twirled it between his fingers. It was of an unusual size and had some jagged edges that didn't really feel like belonging to a shell at all.
Isn't it still about fifteen miles to the sea...?
Realization hit him like a freight train and he brought the thing before his eyes, willing himself to be wrong. One look and he knew he wasn't. He felt his face drain color. The white pieces in the earth - the whole heap of sticks at the back of this man-made cave, for that matter - those weren't shells, or firewood.
They were bones!
Just as horror spurred him into action and he struggled to sit up, something hard and heavy bore down on his chest and pressed him into the ground again.
"Who dares to enter my realm?"
Mike looked up, searching for the owner of the deep voice. His eyes bulged nearly out of their sockets at the sight of the beast towering over him. Well over seven feet tall, it was a strange, mind-bending apparition, as if someone had taken the head of a bull with wicked, foot-long curved horns and transplanted it onto the body of a large and strapping Mexican wrestler. Its torso was a uniform dark brown under a short pelt cinnamon in color, the chest so wide it would make athletes swoon with envy. Its biceps were nothing shy of daunting, and its humanoid, five-fingered hands looked big and strong enough to encompass and pulverize bowling balls. The creature radiated power like the sun radiated warmth.
Unlike its beringed arms, its massive legs were unadorned and more bovine in nature, with two joints each and cloven hooves instead of feet. The right one was what was currently pressing down on Mike's ribcage. It was hot, painfully hot; Mike could feel the heat even through the protective layer of his jumpsuit. He had automatically grabbed onto the beast's leg just below its lower knee with both his hands, but shifting the leg was an attempt as futile as shifting a boulder the size of a truck would be. Now he clung on in sheer desperation, hoping the brute would not put its full weight onto its hoof and crush him like a bug.
A strand of fur tickled the fingers of his right hand, and Mike noted for the first time that the creature was naked, and that the thing he had first taken to be a big leather bag was actually the beast's huge testicles, hanging low beneath an ample sheath. The scrotum was bald, except for a triangular patch of long, stiff hairs that trailed, goatee-like, from its lowest point all the way to where they brushed Mike's knuckles.
His oppressor gave off a wild, animalistic smell. It was so thick, so distinct, so male, it wedged itself into Mike's nose and stuck there like Vaseline.
"Speak! Who dares to enter my realm?" the beast demanded, applying more pressure to his hoof. Mike could hear his breastbone creak.
"Please, don't eat me!" he shrieked, scared witless.
That made the monster pause, then huff. "And why would I eat you?"
Mike blinked, confused at the curious look he was receiving. "Because that's... that's what you do, isn't it? Eating people."
"'You'?"
"You trolls," Mike ventured feebly, having put two and two together after his discovery of the bones.
This time the bull didn't so much huff as snort explosively, showering the man at his feet with a spray of mucus.
"Do I look like a troll to you, human?"
"You're... not?"
"Humph. What has your world come to that you don't recognize a minotaur when you see one?" He leaned forward and the hoof on Mike's chest burned hotter than ever as he was eyed menacingly. "For the last time, human: who are you to enter my realm?"
Mike's thoughts somersaulted. He knew trolls from stories, knew that they feasted on human flesh and marrow, but minotaurs? Damn if he had heard of them before. Were they the monsters that made you eat your own liver, or them whose heads grew a new body when you cut them off? Maybe, he thought, blanching further, maybe they were the ones that devoured your soul when you revealed your name, or the ones you shouldn't watch too long lest you wanted to be transformed into gold? He immediately turned his head sideways, determined not to look at anything but dirt.
"Please, just let me go. I won't..."
The minotaur shouted, its tail lashed out to whip hard across Mike's face. A burly hand grabbed the criminal by the throat, shutting him up expertly in midsentence and pulling him up into a sitting position.
"I tire of your pleas, human," it growled, shaking Mike like a doll. "You have crossed the veil unto this plane and trespassed on my lair. Twice you begged where you should have bowed. Thrice you refused to offer me your name and servitude. By your actions you forfeited any goodwill I had. Know that from this day forth, you belong to me. You will not beg any more. You will not complain any more. Why? Because you will not talk any more, unless I give you permission to speak! You are mine now."
The bovine snout turned into a wicked smile. "Spirit and flesh!"
And with that he completed his pull on the man's upper body, swinging him forward. The move planted Mike's face flat against the bull's testicles.
Mike struggled violently, to no effect whatsoever. The hand around his throat had moved to the back of his head and held him in place effortlessly. The human inhaled, and with his nose flattened against the leathery orbs, the animal's odor was a tenfold stronger now compared to what he had smelled before. The heavy scent threatened to be too much for the convict; he felt a tear run down his face as his eyes began to water.
For a few heartbeats man and beast stayed like that, moments in which nothing changed except Mike's appreciation for his keen sense of smell. Then his tormentor repositioned its hand to the top of Mike's head and applied enough force to its fingertips to make his skull feel like it was stuck in a vise, just one turn shy of cracking under the pressure.
"Consider yourself lucky that I do not crave human flesh the way the troll whose den this has been does, or you'd be dead and chewed upon already. I do however, as you might have noticed, crave your kind's flesh in another way."
The man's tears were flowing in streams now, mute witnesses to his stunned disbelief. This wasn't happening. Couldn't be happening. It wasn't real...
Yet the crushing pain behind his eye sockets told him the situation was real enough...
"My patience is wearing thin, human. You'd best start licking before it runs out!"
Fingertips squeezed and pain became agony. Grew beyond agony. In his heart, Mike knew nothing short of death would spare him from the task the minotaur had set him. And he realized he wasn't ready to die yet. Sobbing quietly, he opened his lips and stuck his tongue out. The taste of salt and sweat, of male and musk and more exploded in his mouth. He gagged under the assault of the overwhelming flavor. Again he tried to back off, and again he was held immobile in his spot with fingers tightening around his cranium.
Trembling, he willed himself to continue. Up and down, left and right his tongue traveled over the minotaur's scrotum, and soon he had gained the expertise to cup it in his hands to prevent the swinging pendulum from slapping into his face recurrently. At least the longer he slathered up the mighty ballsac smothering his face, the more did the heady tang diminish...
Just then, the minotaur grabbed his hair and not too gently pulled him up by it.
"Kneel, human," it commanded, and Mike struggled out from between the bull's hooves and into his new position as quickly as he could to avoid being scalped. He was big for a man, more than six feet tall; balancing on his knees he sat just high enough to find himself eye to eye with the monster that had risen, demon-like, from the depths of the minotaur's sheath - its pulsating, ten-inch erection. It looked almost like a human's, but had a thicker, conic shaft that tapered out into a helmet-shaped glans already glistening from a thick coating of pre.
"No, no, no, no, noooo! Please," Mike croaked. He got an admonishing slap across his face for speaking out of turn, and while the hit was a restrained one for the minotaur, it would have knocked Mike sideways, had not the bull still held him by his hair. His head rung like a church bell, his scalp hurt from where dozens of strands of hair had parted with his skull.
Before the human could protest further, the creature stepped forward and pushed the tip of its penis between the dazed man's half-closed lips with an ecstatic puff. The taste of ocean and beast broke on Mike's tongue like the waves must have over Atlantis, and the whole circle of experiencing the minotaur's inherent smell in a hitherto unknown intensity started anew.
When that... thing... entered his mouth, Mike almost bit down on reflex. Mere thoughts of what the beast might do to him in retaliation kept his jaw locked open. So he tried his best not to choke as he stood petrified in fear, speared by the beast's impressive erection. A growl admonished him and reluctantly he started to lick and suck, receiving copious amounts of gooey fluids from the throbbing head of the intruder. He had once heard a fairy tale about a woodcarver who turned king because of a horn he had made that magically refilled with ale whenever it was empty. The shaft in his mouth was its evil twin, birthing gobs of precum faster than Mike could clean them away. Soon, a combination of spit and bull juices dribbled down his chin and neck, into his clothing.
"You know, in times long past, people worshipped me," the minotaur stated matter-of-factly. It sounded mellower now, its eyes were half-closed as it was pushing its captive's head back and forth over its erection contrary to its hip movements. "They built me a labyrinth, and every full moon they sent in a young lass or lad to assure my goodwill. I never lacked good breeding stock for long.
"Then there was an earthquake followed by a flood, and from one day to the next the offerings ceased. Visitors to my demesne became few and far in between, and they seldom approached by choice but merely by accident. Worse, they usually came in the form of frail old men, who broke under my desires rather than bend to them. And yet I could not leave my maze, for we ancient creatures are area-bound, and cannot stray far from those places we have claimed for our own. Or for long..."
After a pause that was more owed to the beast's increasingly heavy breathing than the dramatic, it continued. "Then Grishnokk appeared. He had lived under a bridge on my island millennia ago and still wielded enough control over its ruins to materialize there and enter my home. He suggested we trade our lairs, circumventing our area-binding, for he was sick of the humans he caught these days. They tasted vile, he said, polluted, while my tunnels would offer him enough flesh to last him for years, mummified but clean."
By now the minotaur was humping its victim in earnest, with the swift, short stabs Mike would've imagined from a dog, or perhaps a monkey. Its balls hit his sternum two to three times a second and the air grew thick with the scent of bull, musky and sharp. The liquid in his mouth became richer, too, more bitter, earthen and pungent.
"So we swapped and I found myself here. I believed I had gotten the better end of the deal, but the troll had the last laugh nonetheless. His den was a filthy bone yard I had to scour for days to make livable, and he had not extinguished the water magic that guards it. Every human that washed up here washed up lifeless and cold, no use to me.
"Eighteen moons now... I had given up hope that anyone could outswim the river. Until you showed up. Alive..."
The bull licked its nose sensually with a long, grayish tongue, its eyelids fully shut now. Spittle foamed at the corners of its snout and dripped onto Mike's head, down over his forehead and the apex of his nose onto its own pulsating length, to vanish from there into the human's open mouth.
"I guess I should thank you, human, for proving me wrong," it said, lustful and ominous at the same time. "Give you a reward for your... strength... and endurance."
A quiver went through its body now, so strong even Mike could feel it. Muscles were trembling without stop, like taut strings struck by unseen hands. "And I will give it to you very soon now..." it huffed.
"But if I see you reject... my gift to you, you will... find me in a... very... sour... dispo... sition!"
Mike was still processing the fragmented sentence when the minotaur gave the curious blend of a moo and a bellow, and a geyser erupted inside his mouth. Jet after jet of essence of bull spray-coated his palate. His cheeks blew out, first from the force of the ejaculation, then from its quantity, as the yield of months of sexual frustration was released from the bull's balls and dumped onto his tongue.
It was as if the tide was coming in, and with it the renewed danger of drowning. Wide-eyed and startled, Mike inhaled through his nose, but the longer the pulsing continued, the more he realized he didn't get enough oxygen in this way. Stars appeared in his vision. His brain yearned for a deep, steady intake of breath, which was why he kept his mouth open as the minotaur, almost spent, withdrew its battering ram in time to coat the human's face with the last three spurts of its climax. A big glob of bull semen rushed out from his lips before Mike remembered the beast's fresh threat and snapped his teeth shut with terror. His hands flew to his chest as if possessed, just in time to catch the escaped puddle in his open palms.
He swallowed hard. Five times his Adam's apple bobbed in rapid succession to relay the gill of liquid that was sent to his stomach. Then, finally, Mike's mouth was free to draw in the air he so desperately needed, and with it came the taste of the load he had just swallowed, salty and steely and ever so intensely strong. He coughed, more humiliated than ever before. And yet one glimpse at the bull's baleful stare, at its rigid stance, and he knew his ordeal had best not end there.
It took Mike all his willpower to bring his hands to his face and lick them clean. This was a whole different animal compared to just gulping down a mouthful of something simply to be able to breathe: it was a deliberate action, and the sensation of the viscous, foul-smelling substance on his palm didn't help either. Repulsed, his tongue drained the pool on his palms and cleaned the skin between his fingers; he felt the scooped-up cum spread to the inside of his mouth and adhere there. His mouth tasted of bull, his nose smelled only bull and his face and torso had written bull all over it in sticky writing. His stomach heaved as he thought of what he was doing, but that did not make him stop until his hands were free of anything but spittle.
"You did not spill my seed," the minotaur remarked, etching the shame in deeper. "Good. I would have been very disappointed if you had. You were granted a very rare gift, human. Tell me you appreciated it!"
Mike looked down at his feet, defeated. He wanted to sink into the earth and be forgotten, but fate wouldn't allow that. "Y-y-yes. Thank you." he croaked, untruthfully.
"You will always call me master, human."
"Yes... master," Mike said into the silence when it became clear the bull was waiting for an answer.
The minotaur nodded faintly in appreciation. "Good."
Leathery fingers buried themselves in the neckline of his prison overall and he was hoisted up. Once he was standing, the hands pulled sideways and denim gave under the bull's power like it was made out of disposable paper tissue, tearing from neck to groin at both the front and back of the garment. Two now very separate pieces of clothing slipped from Mike's arms and collected at his feet, leaving him stark naked.
"Now, let us move on with your training..."
Move on?!
"Please, no. No..." Mike murmured in mute shock.
This time the slap came unchecked. It spun him around and he landed ass-first in the dirt, hard.
"Twice I commanded you to be silent unless I gave you permission to speak. Twice!" The minotaur very nearly roared. "And yet again, you pipe up. Didn't I make myself clear enough, human?"
"Ye..." Mike began, his cheek burning blazing hot, then caught himself as he saw the bull's nostrils flare in mad and utter fury. He quickly turned his word into a vigorous nod.
The minotaur stopped its advance, but it was pawing angrily with a hoof. For a moment Mike feared the beast might snap, then the opposite happened and the huge form became very, very still. Eerily still.
"Then know that I expect to be obeyed to the letter! The next time you speak out of turn, you will be very regretful indeed." This was delivered in a quiet, flat tone of voice even more intimidating than any shout. Mike nodded feverishly again, scared beyond words.
The minotaur continued to stare him down, until he was squirming under the weight of the unforgiving gaze. Finally he lost his nerve and dropped his eyes. Only then did the monster incline its head once, as if in forgiveness.
"Turn around, human," it demanded. "On all fours."
The words made the hairs on Mike's arms stand up, but he choked down his protest. He did what he was ordered and, quivering, flipped onto his knees, turning away from the minotaur. For the first time in what felt like ages, he wasn't facing his assaulter, but looking out over the stream and toward the far end of the bridge, obscured as it was by the dark and the fog. In that one second of realization, Mike contemplated a sprint start. Just getting up from his kneeling position and racing off. If he could take the minotaur by surprise, he could...
He could do... what...?
The truth was like a heavy net, thrown over him to ground him in reality. He could do nothing! He couldn't flee to the left or right. The thorny bushes there were too thick and wild to let him pass, with some of the barbs long enough to pass for lion claws. They'd rip any clothes to shreds, and - as he wasn't wearing those any longer - he didn't want to imagine what they would do to his unprotected skin if he ran into them. That only left the river as a possible escape route, and even now he wouldn't go back into the water for fear of his life. He knew with an uncanny certainty that a swim in the river would kill him. And for the second time that night, he refused to throw his life away. So he did the only thing he could do: his vision blurring again with tears, he bit his teeth in frustration, set his palms on the earth and completed the order he'd been given by sticking his ass high up in the air.
The bull didn't take long to take him up by his offer.
In two huge strides the beast was behind him and grabbed him by his hips. Mike barely had time to react before his feet were lifted off the ground. As soon as his rear kissed the tip of the minotaur's still swollen penis, the beast thrust forward, holding its human in place. Mike was impaled in one smooth thrust, and even though the invading lance of flesh was well lubed from Mike's oral administrations and from the bull's own bountiful and steady flow of juices that gravity had smeared all over it, Mike never expected such a swift and powerful act of penetration. Even if he had, his virgin ass suddenly had to accommodate more than seven inches of bull. Thick and solid seven inches of bull. Nothing could have prepared him for that.
He knew the minotaur wanted him to be silent, but it was just too much, too fast. His attempt to bite back a cry failed abysmally and a howl of agony broke from his chest loud enough to wake the dead.
The bull just snorted; it sounded pleased. In what might have been an act of bovine benevolence, it paused for a few heartbeats, then continued its rhythmic rutting dance. It pushed its pelvis forward and pulled the human close, pulled them apart, then pushed and pulled again. And again and again and again. Even though it was just minutes since it had ejaculated, it didn't show any mercy or sign of exhaustion, quite the contrary. Its thrusts became faster, harder, so that by the tenth time their bodies met with bestial force, Mike felt as if his arse was being spanked. His balls, too, were increasingly in danger of being squashed by the bull's larger, free-swinging ones. He audibly shared his suffering with the world, a Morse code serenade of long and short shouts of pain that echoed from the bridge and mingled with his tormentor's grunts of pleasure.
To lessen his misery, Mike extended his arms so that his hands could just reach the ground close to his feet. He pushed his fingertips against the earth, to lift his chest higher up into the air, increasing the angle that was formed by his upper and lower body. The wider the angle, the lesser the ache. One time he managed to push his torso so high that it was level with the bull's forward thrusts, and as these two forces lined up perfectly, the pain faded to a throb. Mike concentrated on his fingers from then on, determined to keep his upper body on a steady height.
As he worked on his new task, his gaze fell to his chest and his concentration fled in shock at the sight of the red shape he noticed on his skin. Its form was elliptic, almost round. It looked like the outline of two pieces of tangerine laid next to each other by their concave side, with a slim runway of unmarked flesh separating the two pieces. The bottom end of the silhouette lay just above the lower end of his ribcage, with the two tangerine pieces curving up between his nipples, to end just an inch above them. His aerobics forgotten, he lifted his right hand to trace the strange imprint with his fingers. The skin was hot and raw, and as with a cut one didn't know was there, it started to throb painfully now that Mike was aware of it. The thing felt and looked like a burn. Like a...
Like a cattle brand. In the form of a hoof!
The minotaur heard his gasp and chuckled at his horror. "I told you I you are mine. I marked you when I stepped on you, human! Every creature shall know you are my property and that they will incur my wrath if they try to steal you from me, or help you sneak away. You belong to me, human! Forever. You had best get used to it."
Tears filled Mike's eyes again as the finality of the statement sank in, as it was drilled into him with renewed vigor by the beast behind him. He pushed himself up by his fingertips once more, sobbing silently into his chest, lost in his fate.
That was when he heard the voices.
They came from above, but grew louder by the second. People were coming down the slope by the side of the bridge.
The policemen!
Mike never would have imagined one day he'd be happy to see a cop, but now he was overjoyed at the thought of his pursuers catching up with him. They must have watched the river for a sign of their quarry in vain long enough to decide to search for him on the riverbank under their feet. They were close enough now that Mike could hear their footsteps as well as their voices, and even though he couldn't see them yet, he knew they must be near the base of the bridge, well within calling distance.
"Help me!" he shouted. "I'm here. Help me. Help me!"
His speaking out of turn would anger the minotaur, he knew, but he didn't care anymore. No matter how strong the bull was, it too would meet its match looking down the barrel of a gun. Maybe it knew that and would flee. Secretly, Mike hoped it would not, and that the cops would empty all of their magazines into it.
He noticed a beam of light shining white against the underside of the bridge. He shouted again, bellowing the words out before the minotaur would knock him unconscious for his disobedience. He expected the hit to come any time now.
Only, it didn't come. The only sign the bull gave of its disproval was a change in the way it was breeding Mike. Its movements were harsher now, sheer force and no giving of any quarter. Its fingers gripped the human's hips hard enough to leave bruises, its pelvis hammered forward with enough strength to push an extra inch of the beast's member in. Mike yelled his ordeal to the world, but at the same time his mind was on the figures whose flashlights he could now see over the wild hedge of thorns. They would be here any minute, and they couldn't possibly overhear his cries of torment.
He was saved!
The first officer stepped through the thorn bush into the minotaur's lair a good six feet to the left of where Mike was getting his ass stuffed, looking around guardedly.
And Mike froze in confusion.
Because the officer had literally stepped through the thornbush. Like, literally stepped through it: as if the bush wasn't there!
As Mike watched, a second and a third man drew level with the first one, then a fourth cop appeared, leading a German shepherd on a leash. They, too, had passed the thicket as if it was made of air.
"Be careful," one of them whispered to the others, "he might be armed."
On this, they split. The first cop shone his flashlight at the bridge's concrete pier and moved carefully toward it, the second and third man walked down to the river, trailing the water's edge. The fourth policeman covered the space in between, swinging his flashlight left and right and back again, his eyes following its beam, while his dog was sniffing the earth frantically. Sweeping the ground before them methodically, the pair walked forward step for step. The fifth step led the man-dog team directly into the minotaur's ring of bonfire.
But it was Mike who screamed at the sight of flames swallowing the shepherd and licking up to the cop's waist, not the victims of the burning himself. The young police officer just turned his head to look into Mike's direction for a second, then continued his search as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening. And indeed, when the man stepped out of the fire a few seconds later, his body and clothes were unscathed.
Mike gasped. Above him, the minotaur huffed heartily, pausing in its action for a moment.
"You really expected them to rescue you, didn't you, human? It is as I said: you have passed from your plane of existence onto mine. Here at the edge, where those two planes meet, you can still see some of your old world, but make no mistake: those humans are part of that other world. They can't see you. Your kind has become too blind and ignorant to our kind to spot my lair. Or us," it added quite nastily, starting into motion again.
The cops' search of the place continued, quick and efficient, just as the minotaur's fucking did. It ground its hips into its human time and again without any further thoughts to his welfare. Mike could feel tears running down his face at the hopelessness of his situation, and more than one cry escaped his lips as he was invaded by something that combined the frequency of a piston rod with the feel and the thickness of the wide end of a baseball bat.
At Mike's shouts, one of the policemen, the guy who had stepped through the bonfire without noticing, ever so often turned his head in their direction, then looked away again with a puzzled expression. Finally, he led his dog back over and halted right next to Mike, shining his beacon down at the earth where the naked man was rocking back and forth with his body on the wave of the minotaur's stabs.
"Oh," the minotaur commented, chuckling, once it too had noticed the nearby cop/dog duo through its bliss, "looks like this one is slightly emphatic to our world." It paused for a moment, pondering. "Hmm, perhaps I should tell Cerbs. He still growls furiously about the fact that humans leash and command dogs like they own them. He'd surely like to turn the tables on them for once, and he would owe me a favor...
"Anyway..." Another chuckle. Mike began to hate the sound. "We should give him a good performance, human, even if he can only sense it."
Mike yelped in pain as he was pulled close with enough power to leave another contusion on each side of his chest. He would have believed it impossible before, but the beast still increased the pace of its already mad fucking spree. Under the onslaught, Mike let out a howl with every intake of air, as he was bred like an animal, the minotaur's dominant body slap-, slap-, slapping against his ass every half-second, its hard member spearing him ever deeper, ever remorselessly. It was as if his buttocks and his innards were on fire. His cries got louder and louder, and most of them seemed to reach the human before him. The officer grew visibly uncomfortable; he shifted from foot to foot, and his searchlight flitted erratically over the ground around him.
Suddenly the minotaur pulled hard on Mike, pulled him closer than he had ever before. Mike hollered another scream, but it was drowned out by a magnificent bellow that lasted for a full ten seconds. All the while he felt the monster inside him pulse wildly as his guts were showered in thick hot liquid.
He was too overwhelmed to notice the cop's face flush, but dimly registered that the young man hastily moved away from them, as if a hive of angry bees were after him. The other three cops all turned toward their comrade.
"Gary?" one of them asked. "Found anything?"
"I... Ahh... I'm..."
The officer paused, and in that pause the minotaur dropped Mike unceremoniously to the ground. Gary's eyes followed the movement, even though for him the space he was looking at was must have been empty of anything but dirt. Mike heard the cop swallow hard, likely thinking he was going mad. "No," he finally said. "Nothing here."
A hoof appeared on either side of Mike, who lay unmoving, heavily bruised in body and in spirit, as the minotaur stepped over him. Gobbet after gobbet of cum dripped from its erect member onto his back, coating the human in liquid humiliation.
"We've got nothing either. No footprints, no wet spots, no flattened grass, nada. You, Jim?" The guy down under the bridge shook his head. "Then let's search the river for this son of a bitch. If we're lucky, he got himself drowned and whoever finds his corpse can piss on it. Jim, you and Gary go upstream, Jeremiah and I will look downstream."
"Aye, sir," the three addressees said. With this, the police force split. The two guys at the waterfront followed the course of the water to the west, while the other two cops and the dog disappeared east, through six feet of impassable barbed shrubbery that they weren't even aware of.
Mike knew his last chance of escaping his tormenter was disappearing with them. A torn, drawn-out "Noooooo!" broke from his lips. But he was too beaten to crawl after them, and although this cop, Gary, stopped briefly in his tracks at the noise, he didn't turn, and ultimately followed his partner to trail the bed of the river.
The minotaur bent down, picked up the shreds of clothing lying next to Mike and tore at it. One of the former prison uniform's sleeves split from the seam at the shoulder. The beast took it and flung the rest of the garment into the fire with a contemptuous gesture. Damp though the cotton still was, the flames didn't need long until they were licking at their new prey merrily, and orange fabric became orange light. The sleeve was used to tie the human's wrists together behind his back. Mike was too dispirited to resist. Silent tears were running down his face to wet the earth beneath him, and he was sobbing "stoo-oo-oop, please!" silently over and over again, rocking back and forth in his spot.
The beast walked over to the fire and knelt down beside it, where it leaved through the many bracelets adorning its muscular wrists until it found a plain ring of copper, about as thick as an average electric cable, but still looking sturdy. It took the loop off its arm and snapped it in two as if it was a brittle twig. The smaller of the two fragments it placed on one of the stone slabs of the fire circle, close to the flames.
A minute later, it retrieved the piece and turned back to its captive. Once more Mike was yanked to his feet by his hair, his eyes widening as the heat of the metal that was brought close to his face punctured his bubble of despondence.
He began to struggle, but the minotaur needed only one hand to subdue him.
"Despite my warnings, you spoke out of turn for a fourth time. You will learn not to question my word."
It plunged the copper wire forward, into the man's nose. Mike screamed as he felt something rip, pierced by the sharp breaking edge of the metal. Agony as he had never felt before shot through his nose and blood rushed out of his nostrils until the hot wire, pulled halfway through the new hole in his nasal septum, cauterized closed the wound it had created.
The minotaur twisted the wire so that it formed an oval, like the link of a chain, and pressed thumb and forefinger together over its two ends. Then it whispered something under its breath, and when it removed its fingers, the ends had fused, leaving no sign that the copper had ever been anything but one solid band.
The monster dragged the human, who had gone limp in its grip, toward the base of the bridge. A three-and-a-half inch long metal rod, piece of the steel net used in the construction of the bridge's foundation, stuck out of the concrete there, fairly at the center of the wall, and about as high above the ground as Mike was tall. The minotaur bent it into the form of a hook and hung Mike over it by his new nose ring. It further curved the steel rod into the form of a U, effectively chaining the human to the wall. As it let go of its victim, Mike realized that he had to stand on tiptoe to reach the earth with his feet at all. And because he had to stretch his body taut, the slightest movement tugged at the copper wire and shot stabs of pain through the sensitive parts of his nose, right into his brain.
The minotaur regarded its handiwork, huffed in satisfaction and patted Mike's head, eliciting another shout of suffering from its new plaything.
"I rise at dawn, human. Once I sated my thirst and my hunger, I will approach you. And then, when I have given you permission to speak, you will ask me - and ask me properly - to fuck you right away, just on the glimmer of a hope that it might get you off your feet. And after I have granted your request to be fucked, perhaps, perhaps, I'll lift you off that hook and let you sit in my lap near the fire, to recover from the cold night's chill.
"Assuming, of course, that by then you will have learned your place and behave according to your station. You are mine now, human, never forget that!"
With this it walked back to its camp, not waiting for a reaction.
Mike was left alone. His nose pulsed terribly to the rapid beatings of his heart, the brand on his chest prickled and itched and, because he had to make his torso long on a sustained basis just to be able to stay on his toes, hurt like hell from overstretching. He tried the impossible feat of keeping stock-still, failing abysmally. The slightest movements sent javelins of agony through his nose. He winced, groaned, sobbed and outright cried with every twitch of a muscle. On his back, just above his bound hands, he felt the minotaur's cum pulling at his hairs and skin as it dried there, indicating that time was still going by, if ever so slowly. Although dawn was only a few more hours away, those were the longest hours yet in the conquered convict's life.
With every passing minute, with each new stab of pain, Mike had to agree more and more with the minotaur's prophecy:
By dawn he would beg the beast to fuck him raw!
Gareth Barnes sighed in frustration, hunched low over the case file of Mike Saunders (male, white, 32, inmate no. 56335 of Kingsburrow Penitentiary), which as the police station's most junior officer he had the dubious honor of writing up. It was a six-page manifest on how nobody from the local law enforcement involved in the affair had screwed up at any point during the chase and the following investigation, but if you dug through the fluff, the darned thing could be summed up in two words:
Prisoner escaped.
The fact ate at Gareth. Mike Saunders was a high-profile criminal, a convicted rapist and attempted murderer. Havenport police was warned and on the lookout for him, yet Barnes doubted they would find him. Saunders wasn't the brightest tool in the shed, but born in a neighboring town only twelve miles to the south, he would know this country like the back of his hand, know how to slip through the grid of patrols and sentries they'd established. And they had nothing - absolutely nothing - that would give them a lead on him. Ever since he'd jumped into the river, the trace went cold. They'd dog-searched the riverbanks the whole length of five miles downstream from where they'd lost him, and even two miles upstream, and hadn't so much as a single footprint to show for their efforts. It was as if Saunders had disappeared from the face of the earth with his jump off the bridge.
The bridge...
Barnes shifted uneasily in his chair. He got goose bumps just thinking about that thing. Underneath it, he had felt... something. It was odd, he knew, but he could have sworn that the fugitive had been there with them somewhere, concealed in the shadows under that metal monstrosity. Even when he clearly couldn't have been there, or their thorough search would have revealed him. It didn't change the fact that Gareth still felt guilty for not sharing his intuition with his colleagues. More than that, he still itched to go looking there again, as if against any common sense Saunders would have kept hidden beneath a cold and wind-swept river bridge without food and necessities and proper shelter for three days.
He grunted a laugh and closed the file for good after signing it. He had written down everything he could possibly write without sounding crazy. It was now for the higher-ups to make of Saunders' escape whatever they wanted. What he needed, now, was a good night's sleep to get over the case.
Nonetheless, fifteen minutes later, Gareth Barnes found himself not driving home, but out of town, through the rapidly falling darkness of an early autumn evening. He pulled onto the soft shoulder of the road just after crossing Cede River. Rex was already whimpering on the back seat, eager to get out as well. Gareth got his flashlight from the glove compartment, checked that it worked, and stepped out of the vehicle to open the back door. The two-year-old German shepherd immediately ran off parallel to the road, lifting his leg on the occasional shrub while Gareth locked the car. It took only one whistling, though, for him to come running back to his master. Gareth patted him proudly as he attached the leash to his leather collar, then the duo made the familiar descent into the space beneath Farnsworth Memorial Bridge.
As a police officer, Gareth was a very analytical man. Deep down he knew he couldn't possibly find Mike Saunders there. Not only because it was unlikely bordering on ludicrous he'd have stayed for sixty hours, but because at this close a distance, Rex would already have indicated someone else's presence with a change in his stance.
It came as an utter shock, therefore, when he heard people speaking nearby.
"Where..." said a gravelly, male voice. Only bits and pieces of the speech reached Gareth's ears. "Do... any idea... much ener... costs me... ...ifest here?"
Another deep baritone answered. "Calm... ...sure he'll... ...ck any minute now."
"He'd better!" replied the first voice in a growl that had multiple echoes.
Why hadn't his canine partner given any warning? Gareth was baffled, but had already released the safety on his gun without thinking. He knelt down and unclipped Rex, who registered the change of behavior in his partner and immediately became alert. In silent tandem, cop and dog continued their descent, halting at the base of the bridge.
Gareth lifted the flashlight in his left hand and clicked it on as he took a step forward, gun raised. He swung its beam right to left, at head's height, trying to blind whoever conspired under the bridge. Rex shot past him into the open, barking wildly, as Gareth shouted, "Police. Freeze!"
However, nobody complied.
For there was no one there...
Rex skidded to a halt, his snarls dissipating in the cold air. He looked back at his owner with a puzzled expression on his muzzle, as if to say: "what in Lassie's name were you seeing down here"? Gareth staggered forward, sweeping the place mechanically, finding nothing. He searched the graffitied concrete base, then walked toward the edge of the river. He shone his light across the water to inspect the space below the bridge on its other side. It, too, was empty.
Just like three days ago...
He pressed his eyes shut, wishing he'd wake up. Hearing voices that weren't there was never a good sign, and this was the second time in half a week now that he had imagined things.
Am I...? He swallowed hard. Am I going mad?
Rex noticed the distress of his master, sat down by his side and pressed his flank against Gareth's legs in moral support. He whined uncertainly, a note that suddenly changed in pitch as the world around Gareth seemed to contract. For a moment it was as if his stomach had turned into the center of the universe and everything was collapsing in on it. The pressure threatened to become too much, then it disappeared as abruptly as it had come, leaving the officer in a daze, his ears still ringing, his gun and flashlight fallen from his grasp without him noticing.
It took Gareth five steadying intakes of breath before he could open his eyes. Around him, the world had transformed. He was hunkered down in the shadow of a huge rank growth hedge that had not been there before; its equally new twin sister stood silent sentry about fifty feet to his right. Both walls of thorns were illuminated by the flickering light of a bonfire that took center stage in the space beneath the bridge. Even two dozen steps away, Gareth could feel its heat on his face.
Close to the fire stood a quadruped monster right out of The Twilight Zone or some other weird fantasy tale. It looked like a centaur, brown and brawny, but with the head of a bull and white rear legs that were much frailer than the rest of its colossal body. Gareth blinked rapidly, sure his imagination was playing tricks on him.
"I told you he'd be back," the thing spoke. Gareth's jaw dropped at the words, which he knew were uttered in a strange language, yet he somehow understood perfectly. It fell even further when a human head emerged from behind the beast's torso. What he had taken to be one creature, he realized, was actually two separate beings: a bipedal minotaur (it had to be, even though Gareth was still very much in denial), and, and...
I'll be damned; that's Mike Saunders!
A very battered and beaten Mike Saunders, he couldn't help noticing with immense satisfaction.
The beast growled. "I didn't tell you to stop, human!"
Quick as a flash, the man's head disappeared again behind the minotaur's naked hip. Gareth could hear slurping noises and his face flushed red as the meaning of the beast's order dawned on him. The visual image that had sprung up in his mind spurred him into action.
"Rex, gib laut," he commanded. He wasn't yet sure how to proceed, but if there was even the slightest chance that Rex's aggressive behavior would make the beast flee, he would take it. He waited for the booming bark, wanted to see how the monster would react.
What he got, instead, was silence.
Puzzled, he looked at his dog. Rex was cowering on the ground, shaking all over, with his tail tucked under his body in a clear sign of submission. He was like a pup confronted by a pack of wolves. But it wasn't the minotaur that had him spooked, Gareth noted. No, his dog was staring up ahead, right along the hedge. The officer swung his head round too, blossoming fear quickening the action.
Maybe he hadn't detected the second monster before because he had been distracted by the fire, or simply because its short black fur was dark as the night. Or perhaps it was because his brain had refused to accept it as real, as it was an even stranger sight than a creature that was half man, half bull.
More than six feet tall, the beast that was striding up to him unhurriedly had the body of a dog, but was walking on two legs, like a human. Its muscular torso was clad only in fur, so Gareth's gaze instantly fell on its prominent balls and sheath, where just a hint of redness could be seen peeking out at the top. Even for someone who owned a male dog and knew canine anatomy, those organs looked impressive. They would easily have been the animal's most conspicuous feature, if not for the fact that this giant of a monster had three Rottweiler-like heads.
Cerberus, some part of Gareth's brain told him, a name plucked from one of his old mythology lessons in school.
Each head was looking sternly at the human, as if a wrong move or a false word would make him its prey. Gareth shivered under that stare; he couldn't have run or spoken even if he'd wanted to. Unwillingly, he dropped his eyes, and stood rooted in his spot as the hunter came closer.
The beast stopped before the duo, then turned its attention on the dog, kneeing down.
"Rex, is it?" the left head asked. Fingers that combined the look of a canine paw with the flexibility of a human hand scratched Rex's chin, to which the German shepherd rose and gave a tentative wag of his tail. Cerberus patted his head affectionately and unclasped the collar, and as simple as that had won a new best friend and loyal beta.
"Well, you are going to be his king in any case," the right head said, indicating the human, whose downcast gaze was observing the rising dog's slowly emerging member with a curious mix of horror, fascination and incredulity. Gareth snapped out of his state of shock the moment Cerberus tightened the collar around his neck, but when his hands reached for the clasp, he found it to be gone. In its stead was only warm, unbroken, unyielding leather.
"Now, boy," the middle head spoke, flanked by two cruel leers on the muzzles to its left and right. "Sit!"