I came to this dark sun planet many years ago now. After the destruction of the last planet I lived - having been kidnapped from my own family too long ago to remember their names now- I was brought to this planet as a hostage. A toy for them to do as they liked.
Under a dark sun grew a pale creature. It was white fleshed, dark teethed and absolutely cruel. Shiny bald heads refracted how little light there was. It highlighted just how menacing they appeared.
It was only up close that they revealed themselves to be much worse.
Monsters they were.
I was so long numb to their monstrosities that I no longer felt human. I was monster, same as they. For my flesh was not hairless and white but my inside were stained black with their posion.
It was what kept me alive all these years with the Harkonnens as my jailer, for I was meant to be fresh meat for their cruelty, an appetizer for their bloody tastes. If only I had showed fear… I might be rid of my monster flesh.
My feet echoed in the empty hall of the guest ward of castle Harkonnen. It was smooth steel. Emotionless. Cold. Like the monsters.
It was no home to me. I was a mere body in the sea of bodies used to feed their endless hunger for torture and fear. The walls around me imprisoned a shell – not a person, no person could live in this forsaken place.
The castle felt barren with the lack of foot traffic. The entire upper class celebrated. Whatever celebrations were, they were savage and brutal. The noises filled the air outside the windows.
I crossed the threshold of my personal room. The long black leather cape dropped away from my shoulders with a sigh of relief from my lips. My skin flushed at the chill. I did not care. Anything to be free of that texture against my back.
The weight of leather – another thing killed for their liking – fueled disgust that was hard to swallow down.
There was no question to swallow it. I always did.
The open backed gown was less heavy, no less unappealing. It was ashen and lifeless atop my form.
It, too slipped away from my body with haste.
My feet padded toward the back room where a bathing room awaited my entrance.
I slid through. The want of warmth to balance my body before slumber against a cold, metal-framed bed.
Only. It was occupied.
A bald white head atop a set of wide shoulders. Arms rested along the lip of the chrome tub. The waters lapped up against his chest. It tainted his flesh with a pinkish hue.
My eyes ventured down. Crimson red.
Sullen, deep, dark eyes flicked up from the rippling surface of the blood.
He scanned the length of my stark body for a hint of emotion. When he found none, he gestured forward with two red fingertips.
I approached without hesitation. My foot lifted and rested on the tub's edge.
"Well get in," he instructed.
The bloody waters swallowed me whole. The thick warmth had the tang of iron that zapped at my tongue. The line of red grew higher and higher until it rose to my chest. Just the tips of my erect pink nipples touched the red.
My body forced all emotion away at the thick, warm pool of blood around me. It burned the edges of my nerves – almost all dead to feeling now. Numbness was the only safety. It was all I could feel.
He adjusted me so I fit between his spread legs. The darkness of his eyes brimmed deeper as he laid me back against his bare chest.
The man searched for signs of fear, of pain. He yearned to find the way to break me in ways that few did.
It was not pain or injury that scared me. Death was a welcome reprieve from the cruelty of this world.
His fingers slid slowly down the center line of my body until they reached the split between thighs. He traced circles atop the flesh. It filled me with sensation, burning against ice of my outer skin.
He nipped at my ears, breathing deep and hot against my cheeks, while the slit of my pussy was made his by exploration. They were lands he knew well.
I'd known his touch for many years. It'd found me one day in a prison cell chained to a wall. He was a young man, only a faint murmur of age above my own, when he'd opened that reinforced door.
I did not know why he came. The question mattered little.
There was no one to answer to. For he, reigned high in importance in a world that did not value life.
The girth of his monstrous fingers slipped deep inside. They swirled against the outside of my walls, rubbing the small nub inside with vigor to pull what emotion he could from me. It was all that was left. A feeling I could not remove no matter how I tried to.
My hands snapped to the sides of the chrome. The hinge of my jaw fell open, fighting the building scream inside my chest. I gripped with all my might. The joints of my fingers burned as I tried to escape the blinding pleasure that radiated from body that belonged to another's will.
He laced his legs around mine. I was forced to endure the torture of his touch until it was no more torture, but pleasure.
That itself was the torture.
Any pleasure that was not death did not interest me.
Still, the more time I found with him, the more likely I was to be slain by his bloodthirsty menace. It was his nature. One I did not antagonize but wanted to be spent quick in a hasty action.
A quick death.
Harkonnen's knew how to elongate life as it was tormented with the pain of death. It was their twisted specialty. It came in many forms. Ones I saw with my eyes, unable to leave the my mind now that I'd watched deaths in their slow, painful ways.
Swift action was the only way I sought to go. It took skill and balance. A tightrope edge that I walked with him.
Blood dripped down his body as he stood. Arms lifted me from the tub's contents. They cradled me against his chest almost too tight.
The slick cold bed sheets did not comfort me as I was laid atop them. My body did not move one inch from the way he left me.
He climbed atop me. It was a subtle reprieve from the cold; he gave some warmth I enjoyed. The motions we made warmed what little life was left inside me. It made it all the easier to endure the waves of pleasure.
The monstrous shaft pressed against my slit. It built pressure against my flesh as he moved his hips closer and closer until he split through me in victory. Its entrance welcomed with wet gushes.
I arched and rolled below him despite my desire to remain still.
An arm slid under each of my shoulder blades. His long fingers, still stained with the pink hue of the blood bath, wrapped around my clavicles as a vice to his body.
We shared breath as he pumped inside of me. The full slide of his shaft changed the tempo now that he'd felt the full slippery warmth of my own excitement around him.
Savage lust erupted from his body. Rough, ragged thrusts beat against my body as fast as he could go.
My teeth bit into my lip to keep the moans at bay. The joints of my fingers contorted in sharp angles. I fought every whisper of ecstasy as it washed through me.
He pressed his aggressive tongue within my mouth, battling for my pleasure, and willed me to join his in the dance. I was timid and slow with it, but he breathed quick. The edges of his nails dug against my skin as he pulled harder down on my shoulders.
He slammed our bodies together like the frantic burning would consume us both.
"How is it that pleasure is your pain?" He murmured against my ear.
That pain he absorbed with focus. His efforts of my climax made it all the delicious for him by the splintered pain across my face as he succeeded.
His release often followed the height of mine; the excitement of such pain made by him only deepened his desire.
There was a moment where he remained over top of me with my legs spread and caressed my neck before he withdrew. He quickly climbed from the bed.
I rose to sitting as he grabbed his taut leather pants from the bathing room. The sheets clung to my wet skin like a second layer.
His slender muscled legs slowly slipped into the pants bunching slight from the moisture of the bath.
Dark eyes flicked up from the lacing of his pants. "You never answered."
My focus rose to his eyes.
"How is pleasure your pain?"
There was no answer to give. I was overcome with pleasure, and it appeared as pain, but pain was not an element I felt any longer.
The haunted thoughts in my mind. There was no escape from horrors. Pain was no longer a thing.
He pulled more pieces of his outfit from the various places he'd thrown them.
I remained still. Even as he bent over and pressed a fiery kiss inside my mouth.
It took me a moment still to recover from the roll of sexual bliss to the horrid state I lived in now.
My eyes followed him around the room. "You're leaving, na-Baron?"
If he visited my chambers, he did not leave for hours.
He grimaced at me before he pressed his foot into a black boot. "We leave soon for Arrakis. I make the ready."
I was not told of his departure.
"When will you return?"
He paused. A sick grin twisted his lips as he viewed me now. "You mishear me." I tilted my head as if in boredom to hide my thickening confusion. "We make the journey for my new fief. Together."
"We?" I repeated flatly, the faintest hint of surprise.
Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen continued his satisfied smile. "You and I, my dear."
My tongue became heavy and dry. It lifelessly fell to the pit of my jaw.
Arrakis. I did not know it.
All I knew was that I was prisoner of House Harkonnen. Property of the Baron. And none made it out alive of his capture. It was a death sentence.
Feyd's interest in me was a momentary pause to the demise I knew waited for me. If, I survived Feyd.
"As property of House Harkonnen, I must be given leave by the Baron, na-Baron."
He scoffed. The heavy footfall of his boots against the floors echoed throughout the room as he came toward the bed.
The muscled arm through chiseled white skin dragged its thumb down my lips.
"You are property of House Harkonnen, but not the Barons."
My eyes shuttered a slow blink.
"That look." He moaned.
It pleased him. The adoration shuddered through his spine. He leaned forward, his thumb hooked upon my bottom lip, to bite the flesh long enough to pierce it.
The lack of reaction fueled his satisfaction. He slurped the droplets of blood that seeped up from the bitten flesh.
"How long?" I finally asked. "How long have I belonged to you? Na-Baron."
In my shock, I near forgot his title.
Savage as Harkonnens were their honor was cherished above all else. Even their own life.
I'd seen what happened to those, even of noble blood, who transgressed against the Harkonnen family honor. Death in the worst possible way. Torture, deviancy on display for amusement and warning.
I will not forget.
He licked the length of my bottom lip. "Would not my family's honor be broken, I would take you as my wife to see the pain it would cause."
A sheet of pure ice coated every inch of my skin.
That was not like the young heir.
"Na-Baron has better prospects than a prisoner." My lineage was a good reminder of how unsuitable I was for him. Harkonnens wanted strong and brutal. I could not produce that. "A harem of your people may hold one that is worthy of your title."
Feyd-Rautha glanced back at the tub. The rim splattered with blood.
"There they are. All that is left of them."
My eyes watched the drips abandon their height to the sleek black tiles of the floor.
"Did they displease you, Na-Baron?"
It was three days prior, when the celebration for Feyd began, that I was forced to endure a formal meal with his harem of white hairless lovers as they served him food and stroked him beneath the table. They were given rags strung across their bodies to keep covered. It did not do well. All of their intimate parts were exposed to the world.
I was invited to dine at his birthday celebration table, fully dressed, but in the presence of monsters. So many monsters.
Why, a prisoner, was given a place amongst them, I did not understand. It was foreign and strange.
Feyd had brought me to his court, his part of the castle where the heir lived, many times. I was never brought to the hollow lifeless sex chambers he kept the harem in. I had never seen the doors.
I suspected they were kept separated for a reason.
"No." He exhaled. "They did not."
That was a promising prospect. They pleased him and he still drained their bodies of blood. Nonsensical savagery.
Feyd turned his attention back to me. "I convinced my uncle that you are Bene Gesserit. You were mixed with survivors by accident in the confusion of the invasion."
He kneeled before me off the edge of the bed. His face even with mine. A hand atop each of my thighs.
"I am not Bene Gesserit."
"You are," Feyd demanded. His hands gripped my face suddenly. It held me so tight. "You are Bene Gesserit. Say it. Say it now."
Even in the face of his fury, I did betray a quick breath.
"Mintha, do as I say. You are Bene Gesserit. You will serve as my witch. Say it."
"I am Bene Gesserit," flatly fell from my lips.
Either way, I was dead. Either by his hand or his uncle for a blatant lie.
"You will serve as my witch companion. My uncle knows better than to mess with Bene Gesserit. He will not order your demise."
Feyd released my face from his hold. Red marked the peachy skin. Each was the defining line of a finger.
He urgently kissed me with the might of a hungry animal. "I make ready. We depart in a few days. Be ready. Arrakis awaits."
It was the parting words in the haste of his exit.
Choice of the matter was beyond me. Feyd intended me to go with him to Arrakis. Why we journeyed there or what would be required of me when we arrived, I had not the faintest clue.
As serious as moving planets was, my eyes could not stop drifting back to that blood filled tub.
The blood of his own lovers so easily gutted. I'd hated them - mostly in disgust of their animalistic appetites - but not ever yearned to see their lifeblood so plainly.
Or on me.
I ran to the shower to scrub their remnants off my flesh. Every cloth and sponge was used.
A thick layer of lotion could not rid me of the raw skin I'd almost flayed from my bones. I simply laid on my back, shivering and wincing, as I tried to find sleep.
Na-Baron was seldom seen in the castle after that.
Meals were lonely affairs. Despite the guests visiting for his birthday celebration, much of his court was absent. Perhaps their own Arrakis plans required attention.
I felt idiotic for not seeing sooner how I was owned by Feyd-Rautha. I was given quarters and limited freedom within the castle that other prisoners were not. There were gifts of clothing - not regal but better than the harem's scraps. Food foreign to Harkonnen taste was on my plate at every meal.
Even the chair at Feyd's high table - what I considered a mocking of my position - was an obvious sign of his favor over me.
Why had I been blinded? An idiot could have riddled it out, the way I did with the information now.
With few noble ladies or their attendants to speak to, I wandered a small section of the castle not traversed by royals or the guards, for a distraction. Captivity under Feyd was a confusing place. The change in where my sentence would be served, too, was an uncertainty I did not like lacking preparation for.
All I thought of was that moment when I'd first found him in the tub of blood. There was a twisted forlorn look in his eyes. It unsettled me with the humanity I saw in the expression.
My stomach soured.
Monsters were not human.
The conflicting debate in my own head blinded me to the surroundings of the cold halls. How many monsters lurked within those shadows that I knew to anticipate, yet still underestimated in my moment of recollection.
A figure of black emerged from a shadow, in the blink of an eye.
A woman cloaked in a dark veil. The empress style dress billowed from beneath her low-cut bust. It was a matte black fabric with texture to it.
A hint of gold peeked from beneath her head covering.
"You are no witch," a demonic voice called.
It halted my steps. My entire body froze stiff.
The woman approached. Her approach was soundless on the hard tile that echoed every scrape against its surface.
Her arms were crossed at her waist. She did not relax them once.
She opened her mouth and a haunted voice emerged. "Who are you?"
My throat knotted. It refused to swallow, breathe, speak. I fought hard for control of myself.
"Speak," she demanded.
What was it that Feyd said? I am Bene, something.
"Witch companion to Feyd-Rautha."
"Do not lie."
The woman moved faster than light. Her hand grasped my throat. The tender flesh was pinched between her fingers.
"Who are you?" She demanded again.
My mind was no longer under my power. It was pulled free of every restraint I'd built.
All my years of work tumbled to her will.
"Prisoner of Harkonnen house. Na-Baron convinced The Baron I was Bene Gesserit to accompany him to Arrakis. He demands I act the part. Or else the Baron will order my demise. I am not witch. Only prisoner."
The woman listened intently. A twist of her eyebrow was the only change in her expression.
I almost envied the way she held herself. She stayed calm despite the present action. Her face was indifferent to the violence she seemed ready to cause should I fight.
"Interesting," the woman hummed. "The na-Baron favors."
I swallowed.
The witch - as now I realized that was what she was- turned a coy smile. "Tell me why."
"Why?"
"Why he favors you."
The Voice leeched into my mind once more. There was only one way to make it stop its assault. "I did not respond to pain, no matter how hard he tried. It is only when I feel pleasure that he finds pain. Just a toy. That's all. A plaything until he bores of it."
I remained clutched in the woman's grasp. My neck, an anchor of her control.
"Hm."
The witch thought a moment. There was no rush to being caught. Despite that, what could be done? My life was nothing. Any could kill me without repercussions.
The witch then spoke again. It was not in a deep terrifying voice from before but a subtle hum, like a distant lullaby. Although what was said, I cannot say. The memory of it was all blacked the moment it entered my head.
I only remember being aware of my bed chamber. The vision of the castle hall behind me, without explanation of how I got there.
Exhaustion pulled at my body with the weight of unstoppable fatigue. I crawled into bed fully clothed. My mind begged for release. The mortal confines of my flesh felt so heavy, inescapable.
Pretending to be a witch would be more difficult than I thought.