novelzi Chapter 42 – We aren’t broken, but we are damaged. We aren’t normal.
Chapter 42 – We aren’t broken, but we are damaged. We aren’t normal.
Chapter 42 – We aren’t broken, but we are damaged. We aren’t normal.
Pre-chapter note: I have edited Chapter 39 just a tiny little bit after some feedback. If Myriad is speaking as a whole, with all voices present, it is now displayed in bold text going forward. I have also edited a few minor details in previous chapters, mainly regarding the date given in some epigraphs. After much deliberation Joytoy is now, timeline wise, much closer to 'Teddy Bears on Birgade', which means round about nine months before SCS proper. It doesn't impact any events in this story, nor will it become really important until much later on. But since I have given the timeline before in comments, I felt it prudent to inform you. Hope you enjoy!
“It shouldn’t surprise anyone when I say that many Samurai would not fall under what would typically be described as normal. The very requirements by which the protectors select the Samurai makes that almost a necessity. Many are outcasts of society, suffering from mental or physical disabilities, although I would like to take a moment to mention that I personally find the term ‘mental disability’ misleading, or simply don’t conform to societal norms. The differences which they show are vast and varied. Some might simply be resolute and steadfast to the point of being blunt and annoying to those around them, many show signs of a disregard for authority. Some may have issues understanding others the way most would. Some might be disinterested in those around them entirely. Figuring out the differences with which each Samurai has to contend with is often a near impossible task, which makes figuring out how to handle them a challenge. In most cases it is best to think of them as a force of nature with the will and the capabilities to do what they think is necessary. Personally, I feel it is important to keep in mind, however, that even Samurai are still people. Treat them with respect, the way you would like to be treated, and chances are you will not have many problems.”
- Dr. Steven Johanson, Doctor of Psychology, in a speech titled “The difference between Samurai and the rest of us” given at the “WilliowCore Inc. Psychology Summit”, 2050
Kaysa’s words left us with a lot of things to think about, even excluding where we would go from here. The thing that puzzled us most was the entire bit about us.
The news that we were a designer baby wasn’t exactly a surprise. Sure, we hadn’t known before, and truth be told we never even thought about it, but it was pretty obvious once we looked at it.
What really made us think was her conclusion that we were damaged. We weren’t normal, not by any metric.
That in itself wasn’t too much of a surprise. We doubted that there were any truly undamaged people in the redlight district. Even excluding the joytoys and their plights, drug abuse was so widespread and common that it could almost be considered a form of local sports.
But we had never thought about it. Thought about how it affected us.
Even taking those of the chorus who had no interest in sexual activities into account, none of us had any sort of inhibition about having sex. No matter with whom, when, where, or how.
Kaysa had been right that there was next to nothing we wouldn’t do. At least as long as it was legal. Although that too was a fine hair to split, since technically getting paid to take drugs while getting railed into next sunday was illegal.
Sure, stuff like necrophilia or similar things were off the board. Anyone who came to us had to be alive and of legal age, there was no discussion about that. Apart from that?
Was there any fetish we wouldn’t agree too, if the terms would be right?
Anything to do with animals. That was the one thing that immediately came to mind. No matter the price, that was something we wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole.
Maybe anything that would harm us. Blood and gore wasn’t our style, but that was mostly because we had some common sense and a vested interest in our unharmed survival.
Outside of that we had trouble thinking of one. Sure, we might not enjoy it, but at the end of the day, we would do it.
Or would we enjoy it? There are some things we didn’t like, for example feet, but that was mainly because it did very little to get us off. As long as we could enjoy it, have an orgasm or three, maybe even get to cum our brains out, we probably wouldn’t even think about how abnormal it might be.
The thought was... We wouldn’t say troubling, because it really didn’t trouble us. But we had never thought much about it, so knowing it was quite different. We typically just did what we were asked, even before we became a proper joytoy. Fucking around meant drugs, and drugs meant feeling good, that was the simple truth of things.
It made us realise something, though. We might not be addicted anymore after the cleanse, but that only reached as far as the substance addictions. The mental one was still there. We wanted to take drugs, to get drunk and wasted, to get high off our tits. We wanted to revel in the pleasure we felt when we got completely fucked up on the cheapest shit we could find and maybe getting fucked while getting fucked up.
That alone proved that Kaysa had a point. We were not normal. And not only about our sexual interests.
Perhaps we had known, somewhere deep down, that our mental acuity was far from the norm for anyone who took that many drugs. Just taking a look at our friends hammered that point home.
Each of them were just as involved, if not more so, than we were when it came to chugging narcotics down like christmas candy.
But each was probably what most would consider a bit damaged.
Sharon was the easiest to nail down. She was such a sex addicted slut that she put even us to shame. We would hazard a guess that she would let a rabid dog rail her if given half the opportunity, and that was most certainly not normal.
Anything that she touched, did, or thought about, in some way, involved sex. That was the simple truth and, considering that she took Shiver like some drank water, to be expected.
It was the norm, that was just who Sharon was, and we never much thought about it. But now? It made us realise that she was probably much more damaged than even we were. And she didn’t have the kind of childhood and teenage years we had gone through. Not that she talked much about her past, if at all, but we knew she only started late in college, dropped out and became a joytoy. Compared to us, she was pretty normal. And even then it was clear just how damaged she was.
Nobody normal would act like that. Even if they might be a pervert and a slut in their own right. They still had inhibitions and preferences, they were aware of their limits and took great care about to what degree they let themselves go. They didn’t do half the shit Sharon did.
Tina was a bit harder to nail down. She was mostly smart and intelligent, but only in very specific ways. She could organise a whole crew of people for an orgy, or an entire division of joytoys, but she showed very little interest in anything else. In addition to that, the moment things went off the beaten path, she was basically useless. It wasn’t just that she was anxious, although that didn’t help. But she was completely unable to do anything in a situation that didn’t conform to her norms or beliefs.
She couldn’t form the simplest connections to get from point A to B if she was thrown off the deep end. And as did so many of us, rather resorted to taking more drugs to forget the problem even existed.
Looking at her from this new perspective it was clear that she had suffered some mental damage through her drug abuse. She was born and raised in the redlight district, daughter to another Joytoy that had long since OD’d. And it showed. We probably would be very similar to her, if it wasn’t for that weirdness that Kaysa had explained to us.
And of course, then there was Sarah.
It was hard to think about her, but we did regardless, ignoring the fresh tears and the unbending feeling of loss and despair that took hold of us as best as we could.
Sarah had been severely unhappy. She did the job because that was the only thing she could do, or as we now knew, the only thing she thought she even had a right to.
But that statement in and of itself showed just how damaged she had been. Something in her had snapped, leaving her convinced that she didn’t deserve anything else.
Thinking about it a bit more clearly just hammered home how badly we had treated her the day before, even if she wouldn’t have survived regardless. She probably was trapped in a mental limbo of her being at fault, and doing something because she was at fault, which just fed back on itself.
It didn’t help that she had only joined recently, within our tenure as the one in charge of the wing on the brothel. We didn’t know where she had been previously. She didn’t talk about her past and she didn’t seem to have anyone she could go to for help. Or at least, that they couldn’t have helped her and it had sent her down a very, very bad path.
Sarah... She had been so distant from the beginning. Even when we had shown her how the job worked and what she had to do it was so obviously against her liking. She had started drinking basically on her first day and afterwards we had rarely seen her sober. It was why we had started talking to her about changing jobs. At first there was something, some hope that she felt, but it quickly died down.
We didn’t know what else she took. We knew she tried shiver once, it had been the only night she had ever spent fucking herself into unconsciousness with Sharon, and afterwards she had been even more withdrawn.
But Kaysa was right. That wouldn’t get us anywhere. In fact, it might make things worse.
No, we needed to find him, not to kill him, but to see if he knew if anyone else was doing what he did and stop them. The idea grated on us, to let him live.
Maybe we didn’t have to, and once he had told us anything we could devour him, if only for our own gratification.
For the moment we vowed to at least try letting him stay alive.
No matter the fate of that asshole, there was still a Sarah shaped hole in our heart that wouldn’t go away.
We had no idea what to do about it, if there even was something we could do. We only knew that it hurt. It hurt a lot.
We would remember her. As a person, and as a lesson. That was the best we could do.
Taking a deep breath, we emptied the bottle, put it on the table and leaned back.
The last couple of days had been a mess, to put it simply. We just hoped that the future would bring better, happier times.
We sat there for a while longer, the alcohol now fully in effect, bringing us the familiar haze that made so many problems disappear into irrelevancy. Eventually though we took the pill, clearing our head.
Being drunk was nice, but Kaysa was right that it didn’t help anything. We wouldn’t stop, not entirely. Taking drugs was something we enjoyed. But we would at least make sure to do so with a little more care. If only... If only to show that respect to Sarah and how far it had taken her down a path that we couldn’t pull her away from.
Jenna was the first to join us. She wore a simple nightgown, parts of which were slightly transparent giving us a very good look at her figure. She smiled as she walked in, obviously still waking up and rubbing her eyes with one hand.
“Hey,” she said gently, sitting down next to us.
“Hey,” we replied, and for once didn’t suppress the urge to give her a small, gentle peck on the cheek, mainly because her presence was like a healing salve on a burning wound.
“Hope you don’t mind?” we asked, a bit timidly after the fact.
She shook her head with that same gentle smile, “No. Just... don’t overdo things, okay?”
“Of course,” we replied, then nestled into her, just enjoying her body next to our own.
“How are you feeling?” she asked, one arm wrapped around us and slowly and gently rubbing our arm up and down with one hand.
“Better. We talked to Kaysa earlier. I talked to Kaysa earlier, sorry. I know you don’t like it.”
“It’s okay,” Jenna said, “It’s a bit creepy, but I think I’m getting used to it.”
“Thanks... To be honest, having... them there... it helps. We are one, yes, but it still means I’m not alone with my thoughts. Without them I think I’d be a lot worse.”
“Kaysa might have mentioned something like that. How did that talk go?” she asked, obviously eyeing the bottle on the table, which I only saw with my echolocation since my head was nestled gently into her shoulder.
“It went better than I expected. Kaysa did most of the talking to be honest. But she knows how I tick. She gave me a run down on what probably happened with Sarah,” we couldn’t quite suppress a small hitch at the name, “and why. It helped me work through my mental blocks. I always did best with logical explanations.”
“Oh? Care to share?”
We sighed, “It was a case of redlight district bullshittery. I don’t want to go over all of it, she can probably send it to you if you are interested, but basically someone took advantage of her, pumped her full of drugs to the point of near death, then did that a couple more times basically brainwashing her. By the point any of us realised just how messed up she was, she was already basically dead. In Kaysa’s words, ‘It was a miracle that she survived this long.’”
We scowled at the idea, “It’s... it makes it easier to take... a little at least. But it still hurts like a bitch. To know that this had gone on for days without me even realising... And how we exploded on her after the fact... I feel so bad about it...”
We wiped away the few tears that tried to escape down our face.
Taking a deep breath, and nestling ourselves a bit more into her, we continued.
“Kaysa gave me some ideas to make sure stuff like this doesn’t repeat itself. And I thought about them, and a few others. Will need to talk to Tina and co eventually. But I would lie if I said we didn’t have a wish to find that asshole and devour him whole.”
We might have been a bit too aggressive at the end, considering how Jenna tensed up next to us.
“Sorry,” we muttered, “She’s right to say that it doesn’t do us any good. But we need to find him, if only to figure out if there have been others like... her, and if there might be others like him. Not sure yet if I can bring myself to let him go... but I promised myself to at least try.”
She squeezed us gently, “It’s good that you are better. Chloe mentioned that it might take a few days for you to work through it all. To be honest, I’m a little surprised that you are so... normal.”
We chuckled, even if we weren’t really feeling it, “Well, that would be because I’m not normal. Kaysa mentioned that I was quite unlike normal people in many regards. I think this is part of it. It hurts like crazy, yes, but I need to carry on. I will take a day or two, just to calm down a bit. But afterwards I need to do something, if only to make sure shit like this doesn’t happen again. I don’t think sitting around doing nothing will do me any good.”
“Good,” she said, squeezing me again, “We have three days before we have to head out.”
“Oh yeah,” we said, looking up at her, glad for the change in topic, “That meeting. Completely forgot about it. How was it?”
She thought for a moment, “The best I could describe it would be... informative.”
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