Illegitimate Children Of The Night.

'You and I, illegitimate children of the night. We know, don't we, darkness is not the opposite of light.'

It was dark. The kind of darkness you cannot grow accustomed to because it never abates. It doesn't get dark like that in the city, and in the last decade it doesn't get dark like that in most mountains either. The last time I experienced darkness like this it was in a tiny fishing village on the South-West coast. It was beautiful and too quiet. All you could hear was the wind and the ocean, and all you could smell was the salt and the fish. It's not until the blackness is absolute that you understand just how much light can come from the flame of a single candle. In such darkness, you can see much better by the flame of a candle than in flourescent lighting. In such darkness, the brightness is just another assault.

I sat alone in the darkness. I had no idea how long it had been because you can wear as many watches as you like but without the light you still cannot tell the time. The room was dusty and I imagined the next time I washed my hands I would be able to see the water turn brown as it ran over my palms and fingers. I felt the dirt in my hands and it made me uncomfortable, like putting oil in dirty hair and then going for a run. My knees were scraped and my bare feet throbbed with an ache that I couldn't explain. I had been on the ground for hours, I am sure it was hours, and that caused no strain on my feet. Perhaps it was the shackles on my ankles, they weren't too tight, but they weren't soft either. Each time I moved, the sound of the chains clanging against the metal trunk in the corner scared me. I hate that trunk. I'm never scared of the darkness until I am in the trunk, but I didnt have to go in there unless I was noisy, and just a little time spent inside its confines rid me of all desire to make noise. They were only screams of panic, nothing is scarier than an ant crawling on your leg when you cannot see it.

Nothing is scarier. Not even the sight of the shutter rolling up and a faint moonlight that seemed altogether too bright lighting up his silhouette. The sound of the shutter startled me and I let out a shriek but I had learnt to do it quietly. A shriek only I could hear was a safe shriek. As he entered, and struck up a match to light the candle lying on the discarded table lying beside the entrance I noticed someone beside him. I love the smell of matches though, I spent years avoiding lighters altogether because they don't emit the same scent. I tried to get up from where I had been lying, not all the way up, just high enough to see somewhat clearly as the candlelight flickered into darkness when the gust of air coming from the force of the shutter rolling down put it out.

"Is..someone with you?" I asked weakly.

He ignored my question. He always does. I felt him fumble in his pocket for the matches, that's what darkness does, it makes it harder to find things on your own person. As he lit another match I saw the two of them. The person with him was a man I had never seen before. He was tall and strange. His shirt looked blue and was unbuttoned halfway down his chest; his face was scruffy and wider at the cheekbones that was proportionate for someone whose jaw was so narrow. He had the quality of being almost handsome, but not quite. As I looked at him I realised I would have preferred it if he had had a scar on his face, I like scars, they add colour to the world. I had the maddening temptation to draw a knife and slice his face, just a couple of inches, just on the cheek.

The man who put me in there, my keeper, he sat on the side of the room. Sliding down the wall until his posterior was planted firmly on the ground, he fiddled with the matchbox in his hand, and the sound wooden sticks rattling on the inside seemed like the loudest thing I had heard in a while.

"Go ahead," he told the man he had brought, "I won't look."

He didn't really need to look, I was his eyes and I didn't even need to see to recreate every moment for him perfectly. The man looked at me, I wonder how it was possible for him to find me attractive looking like that. My legs were shackled to the wall. When this started I had been wearing a white shift which was no doubt brown, bloody and cowered in shreds at that point. Outside the garage-like tenement there was a flash of lightening, and a few moment later the thunder followed.

"It's going to rain," the man said to my keeper, as if that inconsequential detail had somehow missed everyone but him.

"Does that make your dick not work?" My keeper asked the man, and I stifled the desire to laugh a little.

Such a strange man. Such a strange thing to say.

"No, no.." the man said, trailing off, and walking towards me.

I got up on my knees and took a moment to look at my hands. As I suspected, and based on as much as I could see by the light of the candle, they were filthy. Halfway to me, he turned around to face my keeper.

"Does she really want it?" He asked him.

What a wonderful way to enquire whether someone wants to fuck you, as someone else entirely.

"Man, look at her," my keeper said to him lighting a cigarette, not his usual brand I could tell from the smell, "What do you think?"

"I don't know, I think she..." He started to say before trailing off to look at me.

On my part I put on a look that was perfectly pathetic yet sufficiently pouty to be confusing. I imagine the pout looked good too, a bruised mouth is better than lip fillers.

"Do you want her to say it?" My keeper asked the man before he addressed me, "Say it cunt, say you want it."

"I want it," I said immediately to the man looking at me.

He came up to me with a little more confidence. Before he could bend down to touch me, I unbuckled his belt, and unbuttoned his trousers. He put his hands in my hair and pushed my face towards his crotch. With my dirty fingers I took his cock out of his underwear. Uncircumcised. Even though that's the norm, it always surprises me. Immediately, I put it in my mouth and sucked it. There was no finesse to it whatsoever, and I like that sometimes, I like the functionality of a blowjob designed only to get a cock hard. He started to groan as I closed my eyes and focused on the task. I do better in the dark. In a few minutes, he was ready to be inside me. I fumbled as I got on my feet and the chains rattled so loudly I wanted to rip my dress to shreds and stuff it in my ears. I bent over the trunk and lifted up my dress. Behind me I could hear him fumbling with condom, whatever, it wasn't my job to put it on. I suck at it anyway, I am always ripping them. I leaned back and spread my ass apart to allow him a clearer visual but perhaps it wasn't necessary. He slid inside me easily, but all I could feel was the condom. It always feels so weird inside me. It didn't take him long, a few minutes and he was pulling out of me, grunting like a pig. I stayed like that for a bit. I imagined he was holding the condom in his hands and wonder where to throw it. A few seconds later I heard the sound of it joining the other discarded bits of man and latex in the other corner of the room. I turned around to see hin standing further away from me that I had anticipated. My keeper, no longer smoking, stood on his feet too.

"That'll be 500," my keeper said to him as he zipped up his pants.

"Wait.. You don't tell me she's a prostitute," he said genuinely surprised.

"So you thought it was out of the goodness of my heart I brought you to a chained up girl ready to fuck?" My keeper asked, as he walked to the shutter, ready to open it.

The man caved easily, the price was too low for trouble, he took his wallet out of his pocket and handed it over to him. He opened the shutter and let him out. He hurried away in the darkness as the candle flickered.

"Look at all this money you made," my keeper said to me holding the bill out to me, "You want it?"

I didn't, not really, but I'm accustomed to saying yes whenever he offers me something.

"Nah," he said, setting the money aflame and dumping it on the floor.

He walked up to me. I shivered in the cold wind coming through the crack at the bottom of the shutter. He pulled me up by the arm and sat me on the trunk. He put his palms on the wall behind me and kissed me. A minute. Maybe ten. It hurt my mouth to respond but the pain was for tomorrow. The light of the candle was too much, I closed my eyes and kissed him back. There is no functionality to kissing, and maybe that's what is nice about it. It's entirely luxurious. He pulled away from me and I smiled. He smiled too.

"Do you think he'll feel bad about what he did?" I asked him, putting my head on his stomach.

"You want him to, don't you?" He asked stroking my head dirty hair.

"I do," I said.

"You know he won't, right?" He asked, pulling me by the hair and looking at my face, "They never do."

"They never do," I repeated as if the words would change meaning if I said them.

He walked away from me and a deep longing to walk out beside him engulfed me for a second. It hurts so much to do the things we love.

"Good night, little girl," he said blowing the candle out.

The darkness returned and I didn't feel so much pain anymore. I lay back down on the ground drifting off into a land that is thoughtless and timeless, and full of warm fear.

Good night daddy," I said to him as he pulled the shutter back down.

'I lay in the darkness where everything was okay, because you and I, illegitimate children of the night. We know, don't we, darkness is not the opposite of light.'