you belong to me

if after reading the following short story, you would like to read my first novel, it can be found here;

http://stores.lulu.com/store.php?fAcctID=1076784

The following short story is to be published in the up coming book of short stories,
"From the Mind of L. A. Nantz, 11 Tales of Dread"

I truelly hope you enjoy it as much as i do, the story itself was inspired by "God Modules - Still so Strange" check them and the song out, listen to it if you will while reading the story, they really do go very very well together.

and now...

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“You belong to me”




"I CAN'T, it's too much!"
Levee screamed out, the tears in her eyes a lie, as the whip came down again on her back. The leather pealed across her flesh with a sick sound of wet tearing, blood exploding into the air, spraying the face of Dominick.
"TELL ME!" Dominick screamed at her, his right hand knotted up in her hair, pulling her head back as far as it could go.
"Tell me what I want to hear and it will be over!”
Levee looked into his eyes and tried to say what he wanted but she could not, not with her head held back the way it was. She was gasping for air, choking on her own tears, the burning on her back from over 100 lashes was beginning to hurt more than she had wanted it too. She wanted to give the safe word but she was getting weak and Dominick had had way to much to drink was in no shape to continue this safely.
The whip went up and came down again, again, again, again, again, and again, each lashing tearing at her back even more. Levee choked hard, trying to form the word, but could not.
Dominick pulled back on her head harder, Levee’s hair tearing loose in his hand, between his fingers. Then something popped and all the life went out of Levee. Thinking she was faking, he lashed her back another 10 times but he saw no spasm of pain, no flinch, no regret, just the flesh ripping, the blood spraying.
Dropping the whip, he quickly undid her bindings and pulled her down from the cross. Her body was warm and limp; her head rolled to the side with a sick sound… her eyes were frozen, looking at nothing.
Dominick knelt there holding her for almost an hour before he began to cry, every muscle in his body was screaming out in pain, but he didn't care. All he wanted was to sober up and take back what he'd done, to undo the murder of his precious divine Levee. He knelt there holding her body crying for an entire day and night, not moving, unable to look away from her lifeless eyes.
When the door to his dungeon opened and his friends Tomas and Lucy came in, he did not move. When they tried to pull her away, he would not let them, but still he would not move, at this point he could not move.
Lucy looked around and saw the empty whiskey bottles, the blood on the walls, all over Dominick's face, the bloody whip on the ground at his side. Tomas was trying to talk to him to try and convince him that he had to get up and let go, but he would have none of it.
"Dom, come on, she's dead, you have to let go and get up. We have to call the police or something, we cant just leave her here like this…"
Tomas looked around the room, the impact of what had happened coming clear to him, too clear. He had to run upstairs and into the bathroom to relieve himself the of the sickness that overwhelmed him.
Lucy took over where Tomas left off, but she had more success than he had. Slowly Dominick let go of Levee and allowed Lucy to help him sit back on the floor. His face was a wreck of tears and blood, his green eyes almost swollen shut from too much crying and no more tears to shed. His lips were cracked and chapped from dehydration.
Slowly he looked up at Lucy and said he didn't mean to, that they had been drinking and she had convinced him to come down for some fun.
"So she asked you to do this while you were drinking?" asked Lucy, trying hard to understand why they had been down here alone drinking when levee was the one that set the rule that there should always be someone else here just in case.
Dominick looked at her and started to cry again.
"Yeah… you know how she can get… could get. I guess I was too excited and too drunk to think about it clearly. it was fun at first, she said that the whiskey was making it hard to feel anything… I should have known she was too drunk…"
Dominick looked over at her lifeless body and heaved heavily, letting out a shuttering breath that made his entire body tremble.
"I can't live with out her Lucy… I … just can't!"
And with that he was lost in his misery again.
Tomas came back down and knelt beside him and Lucy, and she tried to explain what she understood to him. He just sat there and tried to take it all in.
"We should call the cops…" he started to say but Dominick gave him a look of such utter hatred for even suggesting it that Tomas found himself backing away. When Dominick began to talk, neither Lucy or Tomas could believe what was coming out of his mouth!
"We can bring her back… we can make her live again. I have this book… it's been in my family for gods only know how long. There's a spell in there, me and Levee promised each other that if one of us was to die, that the other was to bring them back. I promised her I would… "
Dominick's eyes were way too open and full of madness for either Lucy or Tomas to say no or try to talk him out of it, let alone say anything at all. Dominick got up and ran upstairs.
"Lucy, we have to do something, he's gone mad, we can't let him do this."
"Tom, I don't know what we can do. Do you have your cell phone?"
"No…it's in the car"
They looked around for either Levee's or Dominick's phone but didn't see them. At that moment Dominick came back down stairs with a huge book that looked ancient. It was bound in iron with a huge golden clasp. There were no markings of any kind on the front or back. As far as they could tell it was just an old book.
Dominick set it down and ran upstairs again. They could hear him going through things and breaking stuff as he hunted for whatever it was he was looking for.
Tomas turned the book around so it was facing him and unfastened the clasp, the book popped open, the pages fluttering a bit until they settled about half way open. They looked at it and it was covered page to page in drawings and some language they had no idea how to even begin to read.
Lucy went to touch the page closest to her and the words on that page began to glow, giving off a warmth she had not expected to feel. She pulled her hand back quickly and moved away from the book, looking at Tomas as she did.
"This can't be happening!"
"It is…" came Dominick's voice from behind them, his arms full of objects that he began to set down on the floor next to Levee's body.
"Tomas I need you to move levee to the middle of the room. Try not to hurt her, she's been through too much already. Lucy will take these candles and place them in the holders set around the room."
As they started to do as he asked, still not sure if they should run or stay, Dominick pulled the carpet up and revealed on the floor a great big circle of white, the details of it matching those of the circle in the book on the page that had opened to when the clasp was undone.
Tomas watched as Dominick washed Levee's body in wine and some foul smelling oil. He then placed copper coins on her eyes and took 9-inch barn spikes and nailed her hands to the floor, then her feet as well. Lucy almost screamed when Dominick did this, but he looked at her, and the eyes that she saw in his head were not his anymore. They belonged to some insane monster. All she could do was back away and into the far wall where she stayed.
Dominick went up and closed the door. He stood there for a moment looking down, his mad expression softened for a moment and then he came back down, and a tear in his eyes. He wiped the tear with one finger and put it on the lips of Levee.
Kneeling down beside her and the book, he asked Tomas to back up and not interfere at all. Slowly he began to recite from the book. As his hand hovered over the page, each word flared with an almost blinding light, and every word lit a candle.
After the candles were lit, he kept reciting from the book. He took a knife and cut his hand and with the tip of the knife used his blood to draw glyphs and symbols on Levee's naked body. As the symbols were finished, they began to glow with an eerie green light.
Dominick stood up and began to chant over and over in the language of the book as more symbols took shape in the air about him. With each new repetition of the chant, a new symbol burned in the air, filling the room with smoke, smoke that fell to the floor and clung to Levee like fog.
A scream pieced the air that came from no where and everywhere at the same time, a scream so shrill and high pitched that it made Tomas and Lucy's ears bleed. They fell to floor clutching their heads to try and block out what sounded like millions of voices. They could not; it filled every inch of them with dread, making them feel as if the scream would consume them. When they looked up, Dominick was still standing, still chanting, his own ears bleeding from the sound of what Tomas could only assume was the sound of the dead.
Now all they could see of Levee was her face, white and glowing in the blackness that clung to her, seeming almost alive. Her body lurched and arched up in the middle, her back bent almost to breaking, held down only by the nails driven deeply into the cement floor. Her mouth was open now and the scream, though still way too high, was only a single voice and coming from her mouth.
Dominick continued to chant, but now he stood over Levee, his legs straddling her body as it floated in the air beneath him. Dominick held the knife up high, calling out to who or what Lucy and Tomas didn't know. When Dominick looked up at the knife it was struck with lightning. Where it came from they didn't want to know but it made the knife glow red then blue with heat, and still it did not melt. They could smell the flesh of Dominick's hand begin to burn, they could see the smoke rising from his hand but still he held tight and continued to chant without showing any signs of pain. As the blade cooled, Levee's body slowly lowered to the floor.
Now Lucy and Tomas could hear the words Dominick spoke, they could now understand them.
"Everything is just so strange that it just hurts my mind
And I still want to believe in the misery and agony and suffering
I still want to believe in a world where you still belong to me"
Lucy looked down at Levee, away from Dominick, she could not believe what she was seeing, hearing, and to her horror, Levee's mouth was mimicking the words,
"You belong to me"
Slowly the nails began to rise up out of the floor, pulling the flesh of Levee's hands and feet up with them, until they came free of her, and her body fully collapsed onto the floor.
Everything went dark, quiet, still.
Lucy and Tomas, fearing the worst huddled together, waiting for their eyes to adjust to the dim light of the basement. They saw Dominick slowly sink to his knees next to Levee, holding her, and to their wonder she was holding him back. He was crying again and saying he was sorry, she was saying that she forgave him.
She looked over at Lucy and Tomas, her eyes were shot black, her teeth were whiter than they should have been, all jagged and terrible. She smiled at them as she spoke to Dominick.
“Its okay love, I forgive you. We will now be together forever. I believe in the misery, and agony, and suffering,” Lucy could hear the Corus of voices in Levee’s words again, though no where near as loud or shrill, it still hurt to hear her speak, just not the way it had, “I have been delivered into the world where you still belong to me."
And as the words dripped out of her lips like acid, she raised her head and took a grizzly bite out of Dominick's neck. Dripping from her mouth was Dominick’s blood as she looked at Lucy and Tomas, slowly rising, dropping his now lifeless body hissing at them.
"You belong to me".


*This story inspired by -God module’s- “Still so strange”.