Perry screamed. And panicked. The pain was worse than the trap. His entire body was on fire, and he was afraid to pull his arm and leg off the spikes. He didn’t know if he could get out on his own.
“Help me,” he yelled. But nobody did.
“Please,” he called again.
And then, like a ghost in the mist, he saw the face of Kharon. The man’s eyes were like black holes in a face pinched and thin. “There is no mercy here,” the man said and was gone.
Not far away, Perry heard Travis scream and knew that he’d found his own pit. He grit his teeth and worked his arm off the spikes, screaming all the time. It helped. Slowly the bloody steel tip disappeared through his arm and then the flesh jerked up, fully free. The blood quickly poured from the hole left behind, spattering his chest.
Perry refused to focus on the wound, but instead reached up to grab the edge of the pit with his fingers. His wounded arm wasn’t a lot of help, but he slowly pulled his body up from the spikes, trying not to put any more pressure on the parts of his body that remained on the steel tips. As he did, he could feel the blood pouring out a dozen hot holes in his butt and side. With both hands on the edge, he took one look at the spike that had punctured his leg and said a silent prayer. Then he pulled as hard as he could with both hands, and pulled his body out of the pit.
He could feel the spike pass through his leg, like a cold icicle dragging against his bone. Perry didn’t stop screaming the entire time, and he didn’t even realize he was. His sole focus was on lifting his body out of the pit and getting the final red snake. He would not end up in the pit of fire. He would not.
The last person in line was a thin, heavily scarred woman. She held a flogger with barbed steel points. Perry tried to get close enough to her to find the snake, but she cut him again and again, whipping the barbs onto his back and arms and pulling back.
“Damn it,” he screamed and reached up to grab her arm. He caught it and pushed, dropping her to the floor. She was a smaller woman and obviously well abused but still muscular. She kicked and punched as he squeezed the flogger from her hand. Nobody had said that he couldn’t tackle the Living Path.
He didn’t see the snake on her arms or breasts or legs or…and then he saw it. Just the faint red tip.
The damn thing was pinned up her pussy.
“Jesus fuckin’ Christ,” he complained. With one hand he whipped her with her own flogger, keeping her down.
With the other, he reached up inside her and got a grip on the rubber of the thin snake, slick with her own excitement. He squeezed it tight and pulled. Hard.
The woman gave out a cry, but Perry didn’t stick around long enough to see the damage the snake had done. He rolled away from her instantly with the wet token in hand and dragged himself past the last member of the Living Path. There were ten yards between him and Rae. He saw her standing there before The Crossing, a red snake her only covering, as it twined and moved slowly around her. He thought of her promises of S &M a few hours before and cursed her beneath his breath. She was a snake all right. She’d never mentioned spike pits and wolf traps and a contest to the death.
“Run, rabbit, run!” one of the Watchers cried.
Perry had to laugh at that. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever be running again at this rate. But he pulled himself forward with his hands, dragging his mangled leg along.
He glanced behind and saw Travis had reached the last of his snake holders, a burly man who was beating the other “rabbit” with a chain. Perry pulled himself to a three-limbed crawl, crying out with every foot he moved forward.
That’s when the floor turned to wire.
Barbed wire.
It bit into his hands and knee.
“God damn it…” He punctured his palms and knees again and again, but Perry would not stop. The pain was just his state of being now…nothing could keep him from moving forward. His cries of pain were as much a part of him as breathing now. Unconscious. Constant.
Travis limped his way forward, warned that something bad was ahead. He was wary, but fast, and in a minute he’d caught up to Perry, who now was just a few feet from Rae.
But then he ran into a thin wire that stretched across the rabbit run. Perry had crawled under it, never even seeing it, but Travis ran right into its razor edge, slicing open his gut.
He fell backwards with a woeful scream.
“Oh, you fuckers,” he cried. “This is not like whips and chains at all.”
Travis held his hand to his gut, crimson flowing fast between his fingers. Perry didn’t waste the moment. He crawled across the last two yards and placed his bag of snakes at Rae’s feet. Kharon stepped between Rae and Gordon and picked them up. He counted them and smiled. “This rabbit wins!”
Travis was still a couple feet away from Gordon, and he broke down at the pronouncement.
“I don’t want to die,” he sobbed.
Kharon knelt at the man’s chest and patted his head. “There are really no losers in this game,” he whispered. “You won’t die. You both will get what you’ve always wanted.”
Then he motioned to Gordon. “Help me.” Between the two of them, they held Travis aloft and carried him to the edge of the fire pit. The black snake slid slowly around Gordon’s arm. It wound up Travis’s bloody shoulder and then slithered around the man’s neck. In moments it had knotted itself like a spring around Travis.
“You wanted pain,” Kharon said. “You will receive it here. Forever.”
Kharon pushed Travis forward and he fell instantly, toppling face-first into the molten fire below.
His screams began instantly. Strangely though, they didn’t slow as he was swallowed by the fire.
Kharon addressed Rae. “Take him to the bridge,” he said, pointing at Perry. “He has earned the right to Crossover.”
Rae looked at the man at her feet and then back at Kharon. “Shouldn’t we take the trap off his foot first?”
“If you wish,” he said. Kharon bent down and with both hands, pried the trap open and let Perry’s bloodied foot slip free. The floor was instantly covered in a rush of new blood from the wound.
“Cross over,” Kharon said. It was a command.
Rae helped Perry up, so he stood on one foot. As she did, the red snake slipped onto his arm. It coiled around and around until it held Perry in a vise grip.
“The snake will be your strength,” Kharon said and pointed across the bridge.
Perry put his arm around Rae’s shoulders and his other hand on the bridge rail. Slowly, she walked him up the wooden planks to the rise in the middle. Kharon called from behind. “Rae, stop. This is not your time. The Crossing is only for him.”
She stopped, and Perry pushed himself down the other side of the bridge by going hand over hand on the rail.
When he reached the other side, he cried out once.
Just once.
“What’s the matter?” Rae called, but Kharon was at her side instantly. “He can’t hear you,” he cautioned.
“I just saw him,” she said. “I’d think he could still hear me.”
“He’s crossed over,” Kharon explained. “He may never talk to you again.”
He turned to Gordon and shook his head. “Your rabbit lost,” he said. “You’ll have to feel what that’s like. Put your hands on the bridge.”
“Flog him,” he commanded Rae.
She lifted the whip that Kharon had given her not long before. She raised it and tested how it felt as it came down, at first gently on the man’s back. Then she raised it and brought it down harder. And then she really gave her arm a flick and smiled at the sound the leather made on Gordon’s back. She could feel the place between her legs growing wet as she beat him, and at times she let her eyes roll back in her head as she released the leather. She had almost always been the recipient of the pain, but this energy…she liked it. It was power in its most brutal form. She’d wielded power over plenty of men in her life-using her body and promises of the taboos that she could fulfill. But that was all subtle teasing. An art and a form of power. But this…this made her belly tighten. Her lips swelled and her entire body warmed.