Dreams and Desires (33 page)

In spite of the risks, Paula had just about worked up enough nerve to make a dash for it when the other girl returned with a large, fluffy towel. Her fear and hesitation had quashed her hopes for escape. Her heart sank as she was assisted from the tub. The two girls took turns drying her. The hot desert sun plucked the moisture off of her body quickly. She was then led back into the tent and, once she had knelt and her hands and ankles had been reaffixed to the stake in the ground, her knees reconnected to her friends’ on either side of her, the girls brushed her long hair until it was straight and free of tangles. What kind of girls are these, Paula asked herself dolefully. How could they do this? They had to know that she and her friends had been kidnapped, that they were prisoners. They seemed sweet and kind, not cruel. If only she could talk to them. She tried to beg them with her eyes for help. The only response she got was a soft caress on the side of her face by one of the girls and a kiss on her forehead. When all the girls had had their hair brushed, to Paula's dismay, the poles were put back in place.

The imprisoned girls were given another snack after a little while, some rough bread with a slice of steak on it. Paula could not stop her eyes from tearing as she chewed the little meal as slowly as she could to forestall the reinsertion of the spongy ball she had carried in her mouth for what seemed days. Every time she swallowed, she could feel her neck press against the pole in the front of her throat. With her imprisoned, upturned head, she felt like an animal being fed on a feed lot. After she was given a long drink of what tasted like Sprite, the ball was reinserted.

After a short while, things seemed like they were starting to happen. Women kept on running nervously in and out of the tent. They had doffed their regular clothes and were wearing ceremonial Indian garb, long, white, clingy, doeskin dresses with colorful patterns sewn into it, moccasins, and bands of beads across their foreheads. Some of the women had painted their faces with strange, sinister designs or with broad bands of yellow or red. Paula could tell from when the tent flap opened and closed that it was getting dark outside. People seemed to be walking past the tent all in one direction, garbling their strange language, laughing. From time to time, she caught a waft of English being spoken in terse, clipped tones. The tent seemed to be filling up, with more women staying once they had entered than leaving. She saw the young girls who had washed her, now bedecked in ceremonial garb, take a kneeling position in the back.

The older woman who had worn the red dress came sweeping in. She was wearing one of the long, white, leather dresses and she uttered some commands. Her dress was fancier and more colorful than the others. She took at look at the displayed, young white women, walking down the line of them, peering into their uplifted faces, feeling their breasts and their tummies. She knelt by Paula and, once again, placed her hard, calloused hand over her sex and stroked it, letting a thick finger drag between her lower lips. She peered deeply into Paula's eyes until the pretty, white girl's extended and grotesquely displayed body shivered with fear and her blood ran cold.

The tent had become crowded with the Indian women. Something was definitely going to happen soon, Paula just knew it. She whined and, straining her neck, looked over at her naked and bound friends who looked frantically back. A small, brass bowl was placed in front of each of the unhappy, naked and kneeling, young white women and the big woman clapped her hands. Paula could hear the sounds of drums outside the tent.

All of the women sank to their knees and went silent at the sound of the big woman's clapping hands. She knelt in front of them towards the girls in between Paula and Jane, who was on her left. Samantha and Penny were on the ends. The women all placed their hands together in front of them palms up and closed their eyes. A single torch now lit the enclosure and the flame leapt this way and that, sending sinister shadows all over the canvas.

Then the big woman began to chant. It was a nasal, repetitive, staccato chant, alien and strange. Every once in a while, the other women would join in. Paula struggled to free her bound limbs. The strange ritual was a dire portent to her. She was ashamed at her nudity and the brash display of her breasts and her sex in front of all these ceremonially attired women. The desperate girl tugged and yanked at her bindings, moaning and crying, twisting her imprisoned neck frantically. After about fifteen minutes or so, without missing a beat, the leader crawled to the little bowls in front of the girls and dropped something in them. She took out a long taper from the fold of her dress and lit its end from the torch. She then transferred the fire to the little bowls and a thin layer of white smoke arose.

The smell was pungent and strange and Paula tried to wave her head around so she wouldn't breathe it. “Oh god! Oh god! Oh god!” she thought. “They're going to burn us! They're going to sacrifice us!” She had read in history class how the Indians used to torture white people and had always remembered a colorful painting of a man being burned to death in the midst of a chanting, dancing crowd of Indians. The terrible image had stayed with her a long time and now she recalled it.

Paula had remained obediently silent but for her sobs and moans all during her captivity. Now she tried to call out to the women for mercy. “..leeee! ... leeeee! ... leeeeee!” she tried to yell, her filled mouth unable to form the complete words. Her frantic voice was muffled by the stifling object they had put in it. She could hear the muted and strained voices of her friends as they made their own supplications. Their noises could barely be distinguished amidst the monotonous, rhythmic chanting. Paula pulled at her bound wrists in agonized fear.

The big woman waved her arms and the chanting sunk down to a low moan. The girls who had washed them ran up to the bound and frightened girls and, stepping behind them, took solid grips of their heads, immobilizing them. The big woman approached Penny, to Paula's right and two other women came with her holding wooden bowls in their hands. Out of the corner of her eye, Paula could see the woman daubing the contents of the bowls on Penny's pretty, uplifted face. She came to Paula next, and the girl felt the woman's strong fingers make lines and circles on her. As she moved to Paula's left, the girls released her. Paula looked over at Penny and moaned in despair when she saw the bright green, yellow and red markings covering her cheeks, chin and forehead.

When all the girls had been painted, the big woman stood. She had some kind of rattle in her hand and she began to shake it and walk around the helpless, bound girls. Two of the women in front released the pole which had so cruelly pressed against Paula and her hapless friends’ necks. Two others approached Paula and, when the big woman untied her hands and ankles from behind her, quickly forced her to the ground onto her breasts and belly. A woman sat on her flailing legs and she felt strong hands pull her arms up behind her back and cross them. Paula cried and screamed in pain as her shoulder muscles strained. She felt a leather thong tying them together tightly and then she was pulled back up to her knees and the ends of the thong were draped across her shoulders, between and under her bare breasts and than back around her where they were tied off together.

Her arms aching, oddly trussed, Paula felt the ball being pried from her mouth. She opened it to scream for help, mercy, anything, when a thick piece of wood covered thickly with leather jammed between her teeth. It had leather laces fixed at its ends and she felt them being tied behind her. When the primitive gag was secured, a coarse, leather bag was pulled over her head. Before it shut out her vision, she saw her friend Jane, her eyes widened with terror, her lips pulled back in a strange grimace, her painted face almost unrecognizable.

The girls were led by a leash around their necks. A strong hand held it close to Paula's chin and every time her knees gave out from frantic fear, it pulled her up and made her keep walking. The drums were loud now and she could hear what sounded like hundreds of people chanting and singing all around her. She sensed people on either side of her, jammed closely together. Her head was swimming with foreboding and her stomach churned. The drums stopped and there was silence. Suddenly, her hood was lifted and she was dragged forward. Her eyes couldn't believe what she saw although her ears had given her sufficient premonition of it. There was a large raging fire in the middle of a vast crowd. Its dancing light made macabre the crowd of people that encircled it. All of the people wore Indian costumes, and the dark, strange faces of most of them were painted. She didn't have much time to look at them since she was hurried to a large dais. Two naked women were kneeling there, bound to stakes on either side of it. They looked like they were in some kind of trance. One was white, with pale skin and flaming red hair. The other was clearly an Indian girl, with dark skin and long, black hair. Their red painted faces were slack and their eyes rolled back strangely. Sitting in chairs on the platform were two men, one an old, wizened Indian man with a cruel expression and half covered by a heavy, fur robe and the other, a tall, broad shouldered white man dressed in a bright, white costume and a large, black, furry hat.

Paula felt like she was being presented to the men. She became conscious of her nakedness, her cruel bindings and her lurid, painted face. The tall, younger man's eyes caught hers and a wave of fear passed through her. She felt like the man had penetrated her mind. She was struck by a painful, inner loneliness, despair so deep she almost fainted. She was grateful when he shifted his steely, mesmerizing gaze to the other grotesquely bound women.

Paula had not noticed the painted and feathered men who had been standing near the platform when she was brought there. One of them came up next to her and took hold of her leash from the Indian woman. The man's appearance terrified her. He was painted all over with strange designs and had a sinister, macabre headdress on filled with feathers and shells and little pieces of bone. He was breathing heavily and was wearing only a loin cloth. His strong, muscular, dark skinned body was covered with sweat.

The old man stood and waved his hands at the crowd and the drums and chanting began again. Paula felt herself being dragged away from the dais toward the fire. “Oh, god!” she thought, “He's going to throw me in!” She fought against the man. He was strong and he dragged her by the leash, his hand under her chin, until they reached a place on the side of the fire. He pushed her to her knees harshly. Paula tried to crawl away. He grabbed her foot and dragged her back. He pulled her up by her hair and forced her back against a wooden stake. She felt him tying off her bound wrists behind her to it. When he was done, he wrapped a wide leather band around her neck and secured it there too.

Paula peered hopelessly out at the crowd of weirdly decorated, lustful faces. The fire behind her lit them grotesquely. She could see her shadow and the shadow of her captor flutter about, long and large, as the huge flames danced behind her, throwing out an intense heat. Through the crowd's rhythmic, tonal singing, she could hear the loud crackle and pops of the raging conflagration. The demon like man who had bound her to the stake placed looped thongs around her ankles and then raised them, tying them off cruelly to her thighs. Her knees were spread and tied off to stakes on either side. She was completely immobile, balanced on her knees, her bare body ready for whatever these mad, devilish people wanted to impose on her. Her heart cried out in frantic fear. “Uhhhh! Uhhhhhh! Uhhhhhhh!” she screamed through her enforced grimace. “Uhhhhhhhhhh!"

The demon man began to dance around her as the dread filled drums reverberated through her whole body. “This can't be happening!” she thought dismally. It was like a horror movie! It couldn't be real!

Blackthorne felt the lust arise from the crowd. The strangely painted faces of the bound and naked white girls had been pretty. Their eyes had been full of fear. He had probed each of their minds and filled them with sharp stabs of despair. He read their stories quickly, enjoying reliving their days of terrified seclusion, their mind numbing anxiety as they were prepped for the ceremony. This was his test. The Apaches had kidnapped these women, women he had never seen before, to see whether his manipulation of the other females was a trick of some kind. He could imagine them tearing him apart if he failed. But he would not fail. It would be easy. His powers were surging as a result of the lustful crowd and the abject fear of their sacrifices to him.

Slowly, Blackthorne rose from his chair and stepped from the platform. The ominous drums and the musical chants from the crowd seemed an appropriate backdrop to his prospective subjugation of the forlorn, desirable young girls. He decided to do the long haired, blond girl first. She was facing east, where the sun rose. He walked over to within a few feet in front of her. He drank up her frantic terror as her wild eyes met his. The Apache dancer stopped and pulled away to give him room. He sent the powers of his mind into the mind of the kneeling, helpless, spread-eagled girl. Her body shuddered and her eyes, already wide from her bone chilling fear, grew wider as she felt him alter her, twist her perceptions, bind her to him.

Paula felt like the fearsomely attired white man had reached his hand into her brain and clenched his fist over it. She immediately saw him for the god that he was, an evil, vengeful god who fed on pain and fear. She could not break from his gaze and her body shook in her bonds. Suddenly, a pain worse than she ever felt before surged through her. It was not a physical pain, but a pain in her soul. Her insides twisted in agony. All of her fear and despair over the last few days seemed to become magnified a hundred fold. She watched as he stripped his loincloth and flung it on the ground. His cock was hard and thick. And then she felt the man caress her brain with his mind, mingling an irresistible wave of intense, sexual desire with her agony. She began to hunger for him to possess her, lay his hands on her flesh. She tried to resist the dreadful urges he had forced upon her. What was left of her conscious mind rebelled while all other parts of her yearned for him. She had been right, in part, in her speculations about why the people had captured her, prepared her, said their heathen prayers over her. She was a sacrifice. This man was their god of lust and she was their offering to him. And she had been thrown into a fire, or rather, one had been built inside her, as every pore of her body burned with desire for the cruel god who was now her master.