Technicolor Memories

Trigger Warnings: Mentions Sexual Abuse, Mental Health, Physical Violence, Gaslighting, Men's Mental Health Month, Male abused by Woman, Manipulation in a Fantasy Setting

He looked between us once more and said, “It’s either her or me…..”

Zunesc’s discerning green eyes were cold, but not completely devoid of his affection for me. Despite the bitterness laced in his tone, I saw it: a flicker of hope.

Hope that I would choose him.

Choose us.

Choose the Resistance.

The movement we built together to protect witches like ourselves and purge Silvaine of every human who dared to collar and cage our kind in the name of the Calamity that happened over a century ago by our ancestors on the surface world.

A calamity that witches still paid for by our subservience to humans in the underground, rebuilt city of Silvaine.

But ever since I met Hera, held captive by her, and found love for her, I began to question the very core values of the Resistance. I turned my eyes away from him, guilt biting the edges of my resolve.

“Zunesc, please don’t make me….” My voice trailed off, cracked with the raw remnants of love I still held for Zunesc, who stared down at me so callously.

Tears stung my vision as he stood looming on the stairs above, framed by the dim light like an infamous, cruel jailor, he was. Never would I have thought in a million years, I would be on the receiving end of his cruelty.

The basement was dank and humid, thick with gnats and the acrid stench of feces of past, long-dead prisoners.

He couldn’t leave me.

He just couldn’t.

My breath hitched. Panic swelled in my chest as I tightened my grip around Hera. Her inky black hair haloed her once flawless, now scarred caramel skin. Her hair spilled over my arm in soft waves. Her eyes didn’t open, yet her lips writhed from discomfort and pain.

Blood soaked the fabric of her nightgown, dark and sticky where the bullet tore through her side from Zunesc’s pistol.

By the ones who came to save me. Gods, this is all of my fault, my dear sweet Hera.

Zunesc slammed his powerful fist against the prison walls, rattling the rusted iron, causing me to jump.

“Zunesc, please, what?” He mocked my pathetic voice bitterly.

“You take up for a filthy human woman that locked you in a cage for nearly a year and did God only know what to you. You ask me to spare her life and the bastard that swims within the womb. All for what, Aslan?”

His voice trembled with betrayal, causing me to stare down at the floor. I hurt him as much as he hurt Hera. According to the rest of the Resistance, Zunesc turned over all parts of Silvaine searching for me after I went missing, barely catching a full night’s sleep in almost a year before getting word that there was a glimpse of me in Hera’s backyard from an anonymous lead.

How cruel it must have been for him to spend all this effort in his search and to find me, his boyfriend of five years, sleeping peacefully beside his now pregnant captor.

Yes, Hera was quite cruel before she loved me.

She wanted me tortured, not dead. She made that very clear in the beginning, eleven months ago, on that fateful night in wealthy Upper Silvaine, when I crept through the arched windows of her mansion dressed from head to toe in all black.

I remember that night as clear as day, eleven months ago.

I had almost made it. The fine china was packed neatly in the sack slung over my shoulder. A quick job,

I thought. Silent. Painless.

But then-

The bang.

The pain.

My knees hit the marble floors within her parlor hard, and I crumpled forward with a strangled cry, breath catching as blood-stained dampened the loose black t-shirt.

Heels clicked against marble behind me, deliberate and cruel. Each footfall echoed like a countdown. I tried to push myself upright, tried to speak through the agony.

“Akitver Donda-”

Before I could finish casting my spell, her heel drove down on the wound, forcing the bullet deeper into my flesh. A scream tore from my throat, sharp and animal.

“What do we have here?” she cooed, voice like silk dragged across glass. “A thieving little birdie, fluttering into my home uninvited…”

She leaned closer. I could smell her perfume, expensive and alluring, like a warm rose-scented bath. She bent down, twisting my head at an uncomfortable angle, forcing me to stare up at her as she pressed her foot further against my side. She wore a silken, red bathrobe that opened carelessly, exposing the valley of her breast. She appeared to be in her late twenties or early thirties, tall and beautifully dangerous.

“Oh, and not only are you of age, you're a little witchie-poo, too?” she purred. “How lucky am I tonight?”

Her voice darkened into something hungry.

“I’m going to have so much fun with you from now on.”

I saw only the blur of her grin before the pain pulled the world out from under me, everything going silent and black.

Her bloodlust only worsened when she found out I was unregistered. A witch with no collar, no owner. That’s what she loved the most. She could do unto me without anyone coming to look for me.

No one until the Resistance came for me.

Back in the present, I stared down at Hera, too ashamed to look up at Zunesc as I answered.

“She didn’t mean it. Her mind was twisted… rotted with grief.” I whispered, I hover my hands over her wound once again, in another failed attempt to heal her.

“Kragbli He-”

The collar Hera placed around my neck months ago pulsed to life with a crisp, crackling jolt. An electric pain surged through my body, ripping the spell from my throat before I could complete it. My limbs stiffened. I collapsed forward, gasping, the taste of copper on my tongue.

Damn it, all.

Zunesc didn’t move. He only watched, arms crossed, his jaw clenched.

“Tch. Whatever the hell she put on you... Even our best couldn’t get it off.” His voice was low with disgust. “It’s not the standard magic block-collar that the Silvaine council uses. This is something else. Something twisted. Something personal.”

“If this is the type of 'love' you had with her, I wouldn’t want it. I never disallowed you to use your powers or be who you truly are, and yet…” Zunesc glowered at Hera, pure venom pierced his emerald orbs.

“You chose her over me, over us, over the Resistance.”

“You sicken me, bok parsci.” He shook his head and spat on the ground near him. He turned to walk back up the stairs.

“Zunesc, please! She will die down here.”

“And you will, with her.”

And with that, he closed the door just as Hera began to groan softly in my arms.

“Hera, you’re awake. Hera, love, I am so, so sorry. This is all my fault.”

Her eyes opened achingly slowly as she stared up at me with sharp, accusatory eyes. “You… you’re part of the Resistance?” Hera asked, her voice marred with betrayal. She recoiled from my touch. “You sent them after me, didn’t you? After you people have taken so much from me already.” Her raspy voice rose to a hysterical octave.

“Was this all a part of your plan? To be caught stealing in my house, seduce me, and impregnate me?”

The sharp slap of her accusations hurt more than the shock collar. It was she who had locked me in a cage and forced herself upon me those many nights before our love became true.

On the night of the vicious sexual act that would create our child, she wore a thin silk robe the color of garnet, knotted loosely at her waist, as she leaned against the bathroom doorframe with a wine glass in hand. Her hair was hidden beneath a matching color bonnet.

“Are you done cleaning my bathroom, boy?”

Her voice slid into the room like oil.

I gritted my teeth. “Yes, Mistress.”

It was the only title she would accept. Any other name, anything that even hinted at equality, would earn punishment. The silver and red collar around my neck pulsed faintly, a constant reminder of who held power.

She stepped forward slowly, bare feet whispering against the tile, until she stood before me. I didn’t raise my eyes. I had learned better.

“Good,” she said, her voice predatory and silken. “You’re going to help me make another child.”

Hera glided into the room. Her fingers reached down and tilted my chin upward while her other hand slicked beneath the cashmere boxers she forced me to wear. I flinched. Not from fear of her touch, I had grown used to that, but from the part of myself that betrayed me, that shameful part that responded.

There had been nights when her cruelty bled into hunger, when she took from me what I did not offer freely, and a sick, broken part of me welcomed it.

I was not innocent.

But I was not free either.

And somewhere, far away, was Zunesc.

Still looking for me.

Still calling me his love.

Surely, Hera could not forget that those nights were not of my free will. A cold sensation washed over my body as I stared at her wound. I was free from shackles, and I wore my thick-soled gardening boots that Zunesc allowed me to put on before taking both Hera and me back to the hideout. I pressed my hand over the scar Hera had left after she brutally pressed the bullet deeper into my wound that night. I could very well do the same thing to her.

Zunesc had shot her in the side to silence her during the search and retrieval. My hand trembled as I ran it along my boots, remembering the pain and humiliation. Here was Hera, weak and at the mercy of the witch and the Resistance she had sworn vengeance upon.

I could make her suffer.

I could.

However, my stomach twisted in dissatisfaction.

How could I think such a thing? Hera was good now and was carrying my child.

I had made her good.

She would never hurt me now.

How could I think such a thing? Hera was good now and was carrying my child. I had made her good.

She would never hurt me now.

“Hera, my love, I did not know they were coming for me. It was a surprise to me, too,” I say instead. There was no need to remind her of those times prior to us finding love with each other.

She didn’t answer, and her back was still turned from me. I waited with bated breath. I could still hear her shallow breaths before she let out a mirthless laugh.

“Maybe this is what I deserve, or karma. I caged and killed so many people after those Silvaine enforcers burst into my home searching for resistance members five years ago,” she said plainly.

The first time I heard this story was the first night she did not force herself upon me after setting me free from my cage. Instead of making the harsh, violent love I was used to, Hera asked me to hold her within the second month of her pregnancy, and to feel her stomach.

“I used to have one once,” Hera said, breaking the long, unaccustomed silence in her California King Bed that we lay in the nude in.

“Have what, Mistress?” I asked her, my voice frail and afraid. I was unsure if she wanted me to speak or not. I hoped I had not spoken out of turn.

“A Baby. She was the loveliest baby with curling hair, a bubbly laugh, and the sweetest smile. She looked just like her father, my husband.”

She paused, her brown eyes glassy as if she could still see the child in her mind.

“But the enforcers came. The ones who tore through my home five years ago, hunting witches and resistance alike, back when I lived in the cozy little house in West Silvaine.I lost them both that night while my husband was in there comforting her in the nursery, and they burst into our home.”

Hera continued, “ I loved that home, it was always filled with love and laughter. My daughter’s name was Lilly, and she loved being in the garden of that home whenever Chris would work at the library. I used to be quite famous for the roses and Red Camellias I used to grow in my backyard in West Silvaine. It was harder to garden there because of the soil, but I did it and had the best garden in that section of town.”

Hera was silent for a long moment.

Her voice cracked. “They took everything from me. And after that, all I could do was fight, cage, punish, and control whoever I could. I hate that I became this, and for that I am deeply sorry to the things I’ve done to you. I think what I want now is to start over.”

I swallowed hard, the weight of her grief pressing down on me like chains. Five years ago, I was sixteen and Zunesc was seventeen, we were running from the enforcers and tore through the backyard of a home with roses and Red Camellias. We hid there as the enforcers burst into the home and fired multiple shots from the home, and a woman’s terrible scream ripped through the night. Zunesc and I laughed, grateful that it was not us being killed by the enforcers before sprinting to our hideout. We both knew that the newest lead enforcer, Vanessa, was hungry for anyone’s blood and did not care where she got it from.

Lying with Hera in silence, her words settled over us like ash. I didn’t know what to say then. So I did the only thing I could: I reached for her hand, and for the first time, she let me hold it without flinching. I couldn’t forgive her back then, at least not yet, nor could I tell her the truth of that night.

In the present, I still cannot utter the truth to her. I was not strong enough to. Instead, I crawl over to her in our cage and hold her as she sobs at her memories. We were both monsters imprisoned by the past on the long, winding road to death.

However, as I watched the dim light silhouette her broken, pregnant body, I began to wonder if she was even a monster I would have softened my heart for if the shots that rang from her backyard to my ears still did not pierce my mind.