‘Verse: Box Boy Universe Story: A Girl Called Spider Timeline: A little further along in Rayce's training
Biting, pt1 [Prev | Next]
The first time he bites, it’s an accident.
Handler Sharan pushes and pushes and every time he gives in she immediately wants more.
It’s not enough to get on his knees, it’s not enough to get into Respect with nausea in the back of his throat. She wants perfect posture even when every muscle in him is still twitching from the shocks and he can’t hold still.
You know your positions, trainee, I expect better.
It’s not enough to hold still under her hands, even involuntary flinching is punished. It’s not enough to say please, Handler. She wants him to beg, she wants him to recite the set phrases that feel like a death sentence in his mouth. If his voice shakes, that’s not good enough.
Is it standard protocol to demand so much so fast, before they’re even wiped? He’s never worked with the pre-Pets. He thought the wipe was supposed to be nearly the first thing that happens.
Sharan has him cleaning toilets and scrubbing blood from floors. She has him do pushups at her feet until he can’t get his hips off the floor. She has him bent double and trying to hold shaking limbs still while her hands explore every fucking inch of skin, grabbing and pinching and groping and slapping and taking spoken notes into her goddamn phone until he could die of humiliation, until he wishes for the wipe because at least he’d forget how fucking ashamed he should be.
Her favourite tool, aside from the collar, is an old-fashioned switch – a length of bendy wood just a little thicker than a pencil. It cuts the air with a distinctive swish and leaves red welts wherever it kisses the skin. It’s not as bad as a shock, but soon enough his whole body itches and stings with the stripes. Sharan uses it to correct his many slips and stumbles, saving the collar and the baton for when he balks or hesitates or breaks the rules.
And when he breaks down, when it’s too much and he collapses crying or struggles uselessly against whoever or whatever is holding him… it’s worse.
We can always make it worse. They need to get that through their heads.
Time slips out of his grasp faster than he thought was possible. He has no idea what’s an hour, what’s a day, let alone how long he’s been here. The pattern of her shifts ought to tell him something, but he can’t make sense of it.
There’s no respite, no rest period, even when she isn’t there. If he’s alone he’s collared to the wall so that if he starts to sleep he chokes. And mostly he isn’t alone, some handler or another is with him. Most of them don’t even tell him their names.
He sits up on his knees until the pain radiates out from the bones all through his legs, reciting set phrases to the prompt tape while the handler of the hour sits comfortably playing some candy-coloured match game on his phone, just close enough to prod Rayce with the shock stick every time he stumbles.
That tape is twenty-seven minutes long and it repeats five, six times? More than he can count.
He doesn’t sleep. He doesn’t eat except for occasional sips of shake as rewards. He used to think that crap didn’t taste of anything, but with hunger gnawing at his stomach, he’s appalled to find it’s kinda good. Savoury, with a distinct flavour that he can’t name but doesn’t hate.
Sharan has him hold pennies against the wall with his fingertips, arms as far above his head as they’ll go, standing on his toes with his legs wide and his nose and knees practically brushing the wall. Every time he twitches, the switch snaps down across the offending limb. Every time he drops a coin, it’s five strokes across the back and ass.
If he can hold it for an hour, she says he can have something to eat. If he can’t, she’s going to shock him until he blacks out.
He doesn’t get to see the time.
It could be hours or mere minutes that he holds position, limbs burning, skin crawling with the anticipation of the next swish-snap of the switch.
His arms shake, and she hits the tender skin on the inside of each arm, right then left, and he renews his efforts to suppress the tremor. His leg twitches, and the switch lands across the back of his knee – and then again across the back of the thigh when he flinches from the first. He drops a coin, and she layers stripes across stripes.
And the shaking gets worse, and worse, until there’s no pause at all between strokes, it’s just a beating. And that’s when he gives up. He’s not going to win. It’s only how many times he gets hit before he fails. He lets his knees give way, collapses bonelessly against the wall, and slides down it to the floor.
She grabs his collar and yanks him backwards. He lands flat on his stinging back, choking.
The punishment is delivered with a shock stick. You can only use the collar so many times a day without risking permanent damage. Sharan holds the end to his stomach and pins his throat with a boot to stop him trying to roll away as he convulses and caterwauls on the floor.
He loses all place and time, loses track of even where his eyes are pointed, whether they are open or closed – but every time he gets a glimpse of her, her face is blank and emotionless and she’s looking straight down into his eyes.
He comes round with the stink of his own piss in his nostrils. Handler Sharan is right there above him with the baton in her hand and he moans in involuntary terror. Her hand cups his cheek and it’s everything he can do not to flinch away.
“You gave up,” she tells him sternly. “I saw you. You stopped trying. That was wrong.” You were going to do this anyway, he thinks. I was going to fail anyway. He says nothing, because talking back gets him shocked without fail. The gentle hand turns to a bruising grip on his chin. “What do you say, Pet?” “I’m sorry, Handler,” he recites. He barely recognises his own voice.
“If you had really tried, if you had kept at it until you couldn’t keep those coins up anymore, I wouldn’t have shocked you,” she says. “It was a test. I know you couldn’t do it for an hour. But if you’d given it your all, I wouldn’t have shocked you. All you have to do is do as you’re told.” Tears leak from his eyes and seep down the wet tracks already coating his face. She’s lying. He knows she is.
But he can feel the little seed of doubt worming its way inside his chest. Next time he’s on the verge of giving up, it’ll be right there, and he’ll hope for mercy if he’s just good.
“Now look at you.” Her voice is cold and smooth, like the curve of glass. But her hands are feverishly warm on his skin. “What a mess you are.” She strokes his cheeks, smearing the tears. The touch is suffocating. He sobs, then bites down on his tongue in terror as she tsks disapproval. Blood fills his mouth.
“Is this what you want, trainee?” Her hands don’t stop moving. One cups the underside of his jaw like she’s going to choke him. The other slides up the side of his head into his sweat-drenched hair. “Is this how you want to be? Sobbing in a puddle of your own piss?” “I – s-signed up for – this,” he offers desperately. Trainees don’t get to want. Sharan chuckles drily. “Not quite what I asked,” she says.
But her hands stay gentle. Her fingers trace the shell of his ear. It itches wildly, nettle stings in the wake of the skin contact. He wants to crawl out of his skin.
“I’m asking you.” Her palm rests over his Adam’s apple. There’s no pressure but he can’t breathe anyway. “Do you want the rest of your existence to look like this?” This is a test. Everything’s a test. “I –” he forces out breathlessly “-- want what – you want, Handler.”
She pinches his earlobe. It shouldn't feel like anything, not beside the cramps still tearing through his abdomen. But her fingertips are hot coals and he makes a hollow, helpless squirm of a sound.
"You know your lines," she says, "but you don't do as you're told." I do, he wants to protest. Nearly, nearly all the time he does. He's trying. She picks up the baton again. When he flinches, her hand tightens on his throat. "Do you want to hurt?" "I want what you want!" he insists through tears.
The tip of the baton touches his twitching stomach and his whole body jolts with anticipation – but the power isn't on. He sobs.
"I don't think you want this," she teases, digging the hard metal-and-plastic in just a little. "I want what you want," he recites desperately. His hands are fisted at his sides. He can feel the slightly oily slick of urine on his skin.
"Do you want to be good, trainee?" "Yes," he cries, "Yes, Handler." Her hand moves to his face, squeezing his cheeks together like he's a little child. "Say it," she commands. "I want to be good," he sobs, "I want to be good, I want to be good!" The tip of the baton slides lower, even as her gaze holds his with stifling intensity. Her fingers are needles through his cheeks. “I want to be good,” he repeats, “I want to be good!” The tip of the baton nudges against his naked cock.
After, he won't be sure exactly what happened. Maybe he thought he heard the click of the power switch. Maybe the little snap was just inside his head.
It happens faster than thought. Some deep, animal instinct takes hold, and before he knows what is happening his teeth are buried in her hand.
She doesn't shock him, she just hits him. The baton cracks hard against the bone of his hip.
He screeches. She reels back at the same time as he does.
He scrabbles backwards with strength he didn't know he still had.
His mouth hangs open but all the words are logjammed in his throat, a mad hysterical mash of no fuck no and please and I'm sorry I didn't mean it and don’t please don’t and fuck you fuck you fuck you go to hell.
She doesn't hesitate. She lays into him with the baton. The power is on and every bone-cracking impact carries a shock and he howls and howls and curls up and tries to shield his face.
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