…tell him to stop and back off.

“No. No!” You turn your head away further, brushing off his climbing kisses. He stops, thankfully, leaning back and looking at you doubtfully. You use the chance to push him back, shoving him with your forearm enough to dislodge his hand from under your trousers.

“No.” Your repeat again, more composed. “I think that’s, I mean, I have to go.”

You raise the bottle by way of explanation, using it as a talisman to keep him at bay. He shrugs his shoulders but still stands between you and the exit; perhaps by chance or perhaps by design. A flat expression stirs under the hairs of his face, disbelieving or disappointed, or perhaps both, you can’t really tell. Overcoming its warding presence, he reaches up a hand to the stem of the bottle, grabbing it and your own hand in the process. It’s not a hard grip, but it’s not welcome either, especially when he rubs the uncomfortably damp residue of its last jaunt across the back of your hand. You swallow with embarrassment.

He gently brings the bottle to his lips -his hand and yours trapped beneath along for the ride- and after taking a steady deep sniff of his hand, he brings the corked top to his lips and bites upon it. A twist and a hollow sucking ‘thumb’ sound comes from the stem as the cork takes its leave, echoing slightly in the underground passage. He spits it into the dark.

“For the road.” He mumbles, lightly lifting the bottle up in salute before bringing it to his lips. With a half second tip and a bare splash of its contents upon his lips, he winces and gives a satisfied ‘Ahh’ sound. You can smell it from where you are, and it smells neither tame nor cheap.

Eyes closed, he tilts and shakes his head, dusting himself of its heady aroma before moving it to you. You begin to shake your head, before catching a dangerous look in his eye. Perhaps it would not be so wise to turn down an offered drink, considering it’s ‘for the road’? You feel him about to back away and you suppose you can always fake it.

In your hesitation, he brings it close, throwing an arm about your shoulder and aiming you towards the exit in the process.

“Don’t let it touch your tongue.”

The bottle comes to your lips, pushing clumsily further than you thought it would; past them and your front teeth. It quickly tips. And tips and tips.

Glug glug glug glug glug glug.

You go wide eyed as the bubbles shoot up the stem, the bottles contents flooding out into your mouth.

Needless to say that it touches your tongue.

You turn away and spit out a jet of what tastes like aniseed, some kind of berry, and the liquid personification of a punch to the head. It burns! It burns your tongue and your throat and even your nose and eyes! You’d swallowed twice; the first a small amount, the second a surprised and **** gulp. Even where it slides down your throat it feels like a rolling burning poison! You hunch over, hands on your knees, spitting on the floor to clear your mouth between fits of wheezing and coughing. It’s all over you, and each breath takes in its fumes.

“Not for you?”

That shouldn’t be for anyone! You shake your head; it’s all the response you can give. Your eyes close. You need to leave.

“Here, wash it out with this.”

You feel his hand lift you up by the chin and feel another bottle push past your coughing lips.

Glug glug glug glug glug glug.

For a half a second, the soreness choked into your throat eases as the liquid splashes across it. Then you taste it. You spit another mouthful of the same damn liquid out! The first time you did so, he must have taken the bottle on instinct as you let go! Why would you wash it out with what you’re washing out!? Damn idiot!

He’s close, ready to catch you as you cough again, so you shove him back, staggering toward the tunnel end. The floor feels less even here and you put out a hand, steadying yourself against the wall. With the other hand, you wipe your mouth and nose with the back, trying to get rid of the assaulting smell that claws you with each breath.

“Forgetting something?”

You look back at the bastard, seeing him waggle the bottle temptingly in the air. The words ‘just fucking keep it’ die in your throat; you need it to maintain your cover, right? With the bottle, they’ll think you came down for it and let you go back up to search the rest of the house. The nearby lantern only half illuminates you, and the rest of the way is unlit and uneven. Even where you stand grows more and more unsteady under your legs by the second.

You shake the fuzz out of your head and walk back, looking to grab it from his hand and storm away. As you approach, he lifts it higher, like a mean spirited child. Enough of this. You try and reach instead for the lantern so you can leave, finding the top of the shelf where he put it to be a touch beyond the reach of your fingers as well. He can keep the damn bottle for himself!

“Need a hand?”

The voice behind you is accompanied by thick familiar hands sliding around your hips, and you reverse your stretch up, coming down and turning to face him and get his hands off you.

“No.”

The sharp punch of the liquid begins to do its work; more noticeably slowing your mind as you gut burns it into your blood.

“I don’t-“

“No what?”

He cuts across you and you struggle to understand what he said, each second bringing a heavier haze. He’s close to you again, his fingers playing idly with the button of your ugly sleeveless leather jacket.

“Just-“ you swallow, “Just let me go.”

Clouded thoughts push through cotton wool and find themselves lost and alone. His hand slips up under the material and you feel it stroke your skin, lifting, squeezing.

“Are you sure?”

You push him and his hand away, feeling confused and headachy as a growing unease yells at you from further and further away.

“Yes.” You shake your head, your push on him only keeping him from pushing you. “I don’t want-“

His hand slides from your chest to your belly and further, hoping to continue where it left off.

“Fine. You can go.” He lifts up the bottle, pretending to swig. You see his lips remain sealed. “One more though, for the road.”

He pushes the bottle to you and your eyes cross as it approaches your mouth, watching it like a knife blade approaching your throat. You shove him back and try to run, taking only a single step before the tangle of your stolen trousers causes you to fall flat on your face. They’re dropped around your ankles, though you have no memory of when that happened. You move sluggishly, struggling to stay upright, even on your hands and knees.

“Maybe you don’t need another.” He snorts. “Featherweight.”

You feel sick and dizzy, and while you don’t remember much else after the fall, you recall being on your hands and knees for a while.

---

---

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! “Up! Anyone on crew for Captain Roland or Captain Wendigo, up! Or get left!”

The man outside the door barks at a head splitting volume, shaking the frame with his fists as though wanting to break it down. It drags you from a deep sleep, bringing you to life in an incomplete world, turning and dripping with a nauseating lethargy. He doesn’t bother waiting for a reply, and the room next to yours receives a similar hammering and rote ultimatum. Similar noises come from elsewhere, both above and below.

You’re on a bed, you think. The warmth and relative softness are like a warm anchor at your back, keeping you in place while dragging you back into unconsciousness. Unfortunately, the morning comfort is terribly soured by the foul taste in your mouth and the grinding oppressive throbbing in your head, pulsating with each unwanted beat of your heart. Your muscles and body ache as though poisoned, your nose feels stuffed as though with cold, and your eyes crust painfully with sleep, opening with weak resistance only for their first sight to be the stabbing light of a thousand suns. Gods but you feel wretched!

“Uuurgghhhfffuuuuckk.”

The voice, so full of your sentiments, isn’t yours, and what you took for a soft and warm pillow shifts beneath you, dropping your head into a pool of your own loose tangled hair on the bed proper. A man you don’t recognise sits up, swings his legs off the bed, and holds his head in his hand, baring his pale flat buttocks to you and the door in all their naked glory.

‘What?’

The sight doesn’t register as real. The light come in through a window beyond him, bathing him in stinging light, and your morning slug of a mind refuses to comprehend how a bed could become a man, or vice versa. He has short dark hair, you think, currently curled into a birds nest far neater than your own, and his body looks average for a man, if a little thin. He looks back, his plane pale face littered with red spots, yet lacking the youth of a teen, and he stares at you briefly with confused and tired blue eyes. Before he looks away, they wonder greedily down your naked body.

He blows out his lips and you hear him whisper to himself, “Nice.”

After his fresh assessment of the previous night’s ending, he stands and picks up some clothes off the floor.

‘Wait,’ you think, ‘Why were you and he in bed together?’

“Mmmmmnnnnneeeeerrrrrr.”

The noise comes from your other side, nearer the door, and the warm length of leg that was under your own is pulled away. The mattress tips and rocks like the sea as another man pulls himself together, his movement and presence doing nothing at all for the welfare of your stomach. Rubbing his empire sourced dark face with the white palms of his brown hands, he kneels on the bed before you. Rather than a pasty behind, his position shows you an equally naked well-muscled torso, leading down to the thick set rod of his manhood. It looks sickly, congealed, with a white clotting in his shorthairs standing out against his dark skin. His flaccid dick still looks damp, and its position in sight of your spread naked legs, pulled wide by his untangling, tells a piece of visual storytelling that reaches through even your sluggish perceptions.

‘Oh no.’

‘Oh. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No.’

‘Both of them?’

As if on cue, the pasty man to your left, dancing into his trousers and kicking as he does, impacts something on the floor.

“Come on you two. Time to go.”

“Aaaaaaafuck.”

“Ffffffffffffk.”

Two more men, one younger even than you, and the other older and bald, stand and search for their clothes. Finding them, the youth begins to pull them on with almost shy fervour, while the latter simply balls them up and carries them with him, walking out the room naked and uncaring. He doesn’t even look at you. Both have the hairs of their naked hips more matted and unclean than mere sweat would allow. The inns main room peeks in briefly as the door drifts shut. It looks like you’re on the first floor. You feel sick.

The man who was your pillow moves to the beds end, tying a grimy white ascot about his neck to hide an old rope scar. He look at you while nodding to himself, satisfied demeanour oozing off him. You bring your legs together.

Moving to the door, he calls back to the other two, “You comin?”

The young teen pipes up in response, “Yeah, I’ll be right there!” but doesn’t move, looking at the dark skinned man who had yet to dress. You follow his gaze, looking to the man whose fat lips swell in a smile, shining yellowed teeth at the boy. He leans over to you, and when you lean back, he pinches your chin and holds it in his hand, keeping you still while planting a smothering kiss on your lips, his mocking eyes looking at the frowning boy. He ends the kiss -nothing more than lips to lips- and breathes a sigh of satisfaction as though they were a fine vintage. His breath smells as bad as you feel. Satisfied, he shuffles off the bed, picks up his clothes, and walks to the door.

“Do not let her break your heart boy.” He opens the door as the boy spits his words bitterly back at him.

“I’m not a boy, I’m a man now!” The dark man separates out his trousers from his bundle before smiling back and leaving. As the door closes, the boy turns to you, smile chasing away his previous frustration.

“Thanks, by the way. You were- I mean- It was really good.”

He smiles as he leaves.

You feel sick.

You don’t move for a solid few minutes, hearing all the footfalls, some booted, some bare, thumping a beat as they all march out of the building. The thumping and yelling had stopped, though some doors opened and closed as the rooms were checked, and complaints at peoples slowness were met with roars of still semi-drunken counter-complaints barked back at them. Eventually, you try to move, lifting yourself up as though lifting all the weight of the archipelago, assaulted with fresh waves of nausea with each beat of your heart. You have to see it. Have to know, even though you already know. Even though you already feel it.

You look between your legs at your battered flower, finding a red raw rose glistening up at you as though still beaded with morning due. Some spots are darker than others, explaining away aches with the promise of future bruises, and your dark hairs look matted in their curl, sweated to a black tangle and decorated with shots of male essence, some wet and mashed, and some drying and crusted, both kinds plastered across the inner flesh of your skinny thighs. In one case, a snail trail of it reaches almost to your knee. You clench yourself, and watch as a thick finger of seed is squeezed from you, rolling free to the cleft of your buttocks. Finally, as though still not comprehending, you reach down with two fingers and open yourself a little, wincing at what you see.

You feel sick. Soul sick. Violated, again and again. H-how many? You try to think back. What do you remember? The big house? Memories of walking toward the building mingle with walking away. The inn? A similar problem occurs. Think. Think! There was a man, who you recall as being quite handsome?

---

It’s loud, the noise of talk and cheer and mangled music clashing together horribly. It’s hot as well, and unless you look at him, you cannot hear anything he says.

“What?”

“I said it looks like you’ve already had some fun!”

He holds up his fingers in the air between you, pulling them apart to show the strings of gloopy wetness he’d dug from you. His other hand is still on your thigh.

“He did.”

He laughs.

---

The face you picture isn’t even one of the men who just left. Who was he? Did he...

---

The store room is quieter, but everything bleeds through the walls. Easer to speak in? isn’t that what he said? You can hear his words at least, but he still talks loud. It also has barrels of ale, some huge and some only half your height.

“Ah! How long have you been on Roland’s crew then?”

You stroke the wood barrel under your fingers. “Who?”

“Your top! It’s yellow! People will think you’re with Roland’s lot!”

“Oh. Ah! It’s, errnf, it’sfffff not mine!” You throw out your hands, as though you don’t remember.

It smells oaky and boozy and sweaty, and the wood barrel hurts your hips. You came here to talk, to find out… something. His hands feel strong on your hips. His cock feel big in your-

“I’m glad you came back! Ugh!”

---

No, no, no. Come on! The memory stands defiant in your head and your hands come up to your eyes as though to block it. The barrels reminded you of your father’s woodshop.

---

“M-My father owns a w-woodshop you know.”

You stroke down the side of the barrel, feeling its weathered grain jumping in your hand. It’s been treated for the sea; not something your father would often do in his work inland. You look back to see if the handsome man is listening. He’s not. He’s not even the handsome man. He leans over you as a sudden wet heat flushes inside. Familiar. You yell out in shock, making him jump.

---

You hold your hands on your eyes, smothering out the sight of world. You feel tears prickle your palms.

Bang!

You jump as the door opens, more from the pain of the sudden noise than the shock of it. You peek out from your hand and see a man in the doorway looking at you red faced, but his expression cools as he see’s you. Before you would have covered yourself at the sight of a strange man, but now? What’s the point?

“Briny’s doing breakfast for all whores. Get it or lose it.”

He wears an innkeepers apron over his innkeepers gut, and a big black eye upon his wide face. He seems tired, the night before having run him ragged.

Wait.

You lower your hands to look at him and his appearance immediately turns sheepish. You know his face. It was your yell of surprise in the storeroom that had given him that black eye; not from you, but from…who was it? Your protector?

---

You mumble sorry to the man sitting next to you, looking at the sick in his lap. You feel real bad for it, after he promised to protect you for the night! Jeers come from all around you; his friends sitting at the same table.

You look up at him, sick on your chin and tears in your eyes, but it’s clear in his bullish rounded face that he doesn’t accept what you say. His hand is still in your hair and he pulls you back down, pushing it once more past your lips and again letting the bell shaped head ride in the back of your throat.

“Too big is the problem!”

His friends laugh. You wish they wouldn’t say the things they do.

---

“Hey! No throwing up!” He bangs on the door frame, drawing your paleing face back to him. “Better get back on yer ship lassie.”

He lets the door drift half closed, moving to open the next in his search for stragglers.

You close your eyes again, forcing away the memory that, with cruel insistence, gradually grows clearer and clearer. What can you do? It’s a question that provides answers; you want to do something after all, other than think, and the basic busywork of a morning come to you with unthinking autonomy.

First thing, get up.

You begin to shuffle towards the end of the bed, slowly easing you aching hips forward, unwilling to depart from either of the same sides as the men did. The mattress is large, but cheap and warn, with the canvas cover torn enough in places to see the woven straw mat beneath, and with all your heart you try to ignore the myriad of stains painting it, like a map or the archipelago itself. This is not the richest room, and from the way the fresh smears dwarf the old, you doubt its rent has gone up in value with your stay.

When you reach the bed end, you let your legs fall to the floor, sitting for a moment. Since raising your head, it hadn’t stopped spinning. You dig the heel of your palms into your temple. You scrape the taste off your tongue with your teeth. You try to stand.

Pain! It shoots up your back from the moment you put any weight into your legs. Your hips feel even more violated than they appeared; sore, soiled, and worn with cuts and bruises all over that reach even inside you, all twinging with shock and protest. You sit back down and spend a few minutes gathering yourself.

Looking about, you see mugs and dirt, damp patches and general litter, but no clothes that you can see. They don’t have to be the ones stolen from the night before -anything would do- but apart from one suspect looking dishcloth and the tattered bedding there’s nothing. Salvation comes from the half open door. A pair of familiar worn trousers lie in the hallway, looking trodden and forlorn, but better than nudity in a place like this. That will be your first goal when the pain in your rear settles down.

You stretch out a leg and delicately begin to stand, easing your weight forward and staying bent like a crookback. It seems to help with the pain and you manage to take a few steps forward until you can rest against the wall just opposite. Your whole lower back feels raw, bringing tears of pain to your eyes as the ache rises and falls, leaving only its source when you still. You look back at the bed. From the feel, it’s almost as though-

---

“Unnf! Unnf! Unnf! Unnf! Unnf!”

“Haaah haaaah haaaah ffffff mmmm.”

You scream as the twin cocks saw lightning back and forth into your pussy and your rear, reaching for each other in the soup they make of your guts. You try to scream anyway. The man below, lazy and drunk, mashes his fingers across your lips and into your mouth, spilling your drool down his arm. He’s not the problem, laid back and panting as he is. It’s the man behind, who rams you into motion. It hurts! And not good hurts, but bad hurts. Where’s the last man? He started this, can’t he stop it?

You catch sight of him out the corner of your eye, approaching.

“Told you” he sniffs, stepping up on to the already strained double bed. “Always room for one more.”

“Y-you had your, mmmmff, turn, right?” The drunk man sounds confused, dodging his head as he looks up at the underside of what confronts you.

“Bitch has got to clean me off.”

The hand is swept away, and you moan out a few tired breaths before a belly blackens your vision and a man’s hairy sack is draped cross your chin.

Your throat bulges.

You taste shit, and blood.

---

You heave, dryly and noisily, looking at the sight where it happened as you drop painfully to your knees. The ring of your rear clenches tightly in red agony, your nails scraping the wood floor. You don’t know what’s worse and there is so much to choose from, coming together like a jigsaw. The man who **** you like a dog; who treated you like a thing as he fucked your throat. He was the man who walked out with his clothes and didn’t look at you. Why would he? To him your purpose was done the moment you choked on him. The others in the room come clear as well; sucking the fingers of your drunk pillow, the dark man’s weight and vigour and stretching size as he followed the older man’s example of how you should be treated.

They had made the boy go first. Given him time with you. Gods, he probably wasn’t even the tenth!

You heave again, instinctually, swallowing and sweating as you try to keep the vomit in your belly, and there you stay for another solid minute.

Eventually, you crawl over to the door and peek out, grabbing the pair of trousers when all you see is the innkeeper still going from door to door and assessing the damage. You put them on without standing up.

Eventually, you have ****. You brave your own feet and begin to limp like the waking dead, feeling little better than a corpse as you stagger and shuffle onwards. When you encounter a man, you cover your chest, but he is similarly restless and looks doubly mindless, actively swaying on his feet after each step they take. Eventually, you find something to wear over your chest, thrown and forgotten on the floor, and while it smells of piss, it’s in good company. You make your way out into daylight.

Standing before the inn, you take a minute to let your eyes adjust in the blinding daylight. Seagulls crow and caw, both above and thicker in the direction of the distant docks. Bells as well, calling all to port, and a breeze that blows only slightly, ruffling your tangled hair and feeling very welcome in the growing heat of the late morning sun. Needless to say it was all awful.

The lumbering brute who had followed you with bleary eyed slowness, bumps into you as he also steps out into the light. You bounce of him and stumble, kicking a discarded bottle and gripping the wall to stay standing. He doesn’t notice, going on like grinding millstones as he sleep walks towards the docks.

Looking down, you notice the bottle has a familiar shape.

---

“You’ve never been drunk before? Really?”

You shake your head, still holding the bottle. The bald man laughs.

“Well you sure handle yourself like a pro.”

The hand he had about your hips slips to your buttocks, grabbing between them. It’s both a brutish and intimate gesture, which is fitting considering what he did. You don’t like him, but he’s the only one on the path with you.

“Come on, let’s get another drink!”

He points to the tavern down the road.

“But you said you’d take me home.”

“Noooo, I said we’d get another drink.“

His hand slides up, then slips down, under the back hem of your trousers. His fingers dig. You squirm.

“Nooo.”

He rolls his eyes at your soft protest.

“That Jorassa’s right: the only way that tight pussy of yours is getting wet is if its drowning is booze.”

He gets close, his bald face filling your vision and your memory. His lips and tongue taste of the same booze you’ve both been drinking.

“mmmnooo.” You mewl softly through twisted lips, until he stops kissing you. His hand had switched to the front of your trousers; an attack you are helpless against.

“Shhh shhhh shhhh. Hey, hey there, don’t cry. See that alley?” You don’t. “Come on, there’s one last thing I wanna try.”

---

What was it? You can’t remember, and you don’t really want to. Dust swirls about you, from the dry road, and the nearby greenery of the woods throws the last seeds of summer your way. You sneeze.

In a single moment, your mussels contract. Stale sour seed, split and set into chunky curd and sickly liquid, are squeezed in a moment from both bruised holes of your hips, wetting the inside of your trousers front and back with grotesque speed. Your nose expels a night of snot that you realise instantly is not snot as it lays itself across your lips and tongue and departs a taste somehow fouler than the **** already there, made so for the knowledge of its source and the length of your unfinished carry.

You throw up.

And then you throw up again.

What now? There is no way you can get to Captain Washkin. There is no way…anything. Just no way at all.

What do you do now?

You have no fucking idea.