Pets 2: Pani's Story (4 page)

Her hands slipped again, and both Judy and the old woman cried out in unison. She was going to fall.

Judy brought her waving legs in tightly together, hoping to lessen her injuries before she hit the ground, and closed her eyes, tucking her chin to her chest as the bark crumbled a little beneath her grip. Her hands slipped and she yelped, cracking her elbow on a branch as she fell, and yet she never hit the ground.

Two strong arms caught her right out of the air and pulled her hard up against a strong, thick chest. It was her giant. And when he embraced her, sheer reflex and relief had her hugging him back with the same measure of frantic strength. She began to shake, her elbow aching and throbbing where she’d hit it against the tree. Still, she knew it could have been much, much worse.

15

She opened her eyes. The giant across the street had turned around and was going back to his own yard. He reached over the fence to pat the old man on the head. She could all but hear the ‘Good boy’ praise from here. As if he were dog, a beloved pet who had performed a heroic trick for his master. He’d probably get an extra helping of kibble in his bowl for dinner tonight.

Judy’s stomach turned at the thought of it.

The old man, however, didn’t seem to mind it. In fact, if anything seemed to be bothering him, it was Judy herself and the look he gave her from clear across the road was almost…derisive.

There was no escaping this, she suddenly realized, hearing with only half an ear as her giant whispered something comforting and low in her ear. She was trapped here—although where

‘here’ was exactly, she didn’t know. All she knew was she was now the pet of a giant who could now do anything he liked with her, regardless of what she wanted.

“Let go,” Judy whispered, her voice shaking now as badly as her limbs. Shaking almost as much as he was shaking, even as he held her. “Let me go.” Her voice rose suddenly and she pushed backward hard enough to scream it into his startled face. “I said, let me go!” She erupted then, lashing out with both her fists and her feet, despite the stabbing pain that wrenched her elbow when she slugged his shoulder. She screamed, a wordless fury directed as much at fate as it was at him.

Her giant made no distinction. He had also reached the end of what he was willing to put up with. He took two steps towards the house and then abruptly changed his mind. Dropping to one knee, he upended her—bucking, screaming and flailing—across his strong thigh.

For all of her efforts, no matter how she twisted and turned, he wrestled her face-down, shifting the length of her until her nose was tickled by the grass and her bottom was thrust well up in the air.

She screamed again, one long last raging wail before the flat of his hand swung down hard, walloping a single stinging smack across the entire surface of bottom. All sense of fury was slapped right out of her, extinguishing her will to fight even as it infused her bare flesh with an overwhelming smart that, quite literally, knocked the breath right out of her.

Judy gasped, sucking a single, startled breath of air back into her aching lungs. Her whole body stiffened when she felt him move, but instead of following up that swat with more just like it, the giant caught her arm and hauled her sternly upright again. Balanced on one knee, his other remaining a very capable and threatening lap of discipline, he glared straight into her gray eyes.

In words she couldn’t understand, he scolded her like he was scolding a child, shaking a stern finger under her nose as he made his displeasure perfectly clear.

Bad baby; Papa has had enough.

Her hand wandered back to touch one side of her stinging bottom, already able to feel the wave of heat rushing to cover the entire surface of her bare skin. Sucking another startled breath, Judy tried to back away when her giant flattened his hand in ominous warning and held it out for her to see.

She had to blink then, forcing back a flood of watery tears. Because of the hopelessness of her situation, she told herself, not because he’d smacked her bottom. She was a grown woman; she refused to cry because of a smacked bottom.

16

Satisfied that his threat had had its intended effect, her giant once more gained his feet and picked her up again. For the first time, Judy did not struggle as he shifted her onto his hip and carried her back inside.

A doll-sized prisoner in an overlarge house.

17

Judy sat on the hard wooden seat of her highchair with her wrists strapped to the sides of the tray and her ankles to the footrest via thick bands of dark leather. The giant sat at the kitchen table on a nicely padded chair with a book in his lap and the remainder of his meal waiting in the kitchen sink to be washed.

To the giant man’s credit, he had tried to feed her. Regrettably, what he’d tried to feed her had been a foul-looking purple and grayish glop, bound together into a lumpy playdoh-like mess by sticky strands of white stuff. She’d never seen anything so gross in her life, and she wasn’t fooled for a second by his painstakingly expressive mmm’s and pantomimed yummy-for-your-tummy belly pats. If he wanted to get a spoonful of that disgusting mess past her tightly clamped lips, he was going to have to kill her first. Period.

Fortunately for her, he’d concluded this, their first shared meal together, without resorting to violence. And now he sat reading, every so often turning a page, or flipping back to consult the index, all the while keeping up a calming, cheerful chatter that was probably meant to lull her into some semblance of cooperation. They’d been here for quite some time now; he reading, she warily watching him flip back and through the book, reading certain sections before looking at her. Exactly how much time had passed though, she wasn’t sure, but outside the sun had gone down and the world had grown dark.

Judy leaned sideways in an effort to catch a better glimpse of the book’s cover, but one glance at the front photo pretty much killed her curiosity. It was of two humans, a man and a woman, both naked but for their collars and both smiling back at the camera as if nothing at all were the matter.

Judy swallowed hard, her throat already feeling tight despite the lack of any collar constricting her neck. Yet. Her gaze flicked back to the giant. With his eyes locked on the open pages before him, she cautiously bent sideways again, this time working first to pull her arm out of its bonds, and when that didn’t work, to twist her hand around enough to reach the buckle.

She managed to hook two fingernails under the top fold and, as unobtrusively as possible, struggled to pick it loose.

She had only just managed to work the strap up enough to hook it with the tip of her finger when he snapped his book shut and turned to face her. His smile died when he saw the partially-unfastened restraint, but returned just as sunny as before the second he’d tightened it back into place.

Judy slumped in her highchair, glaring at him but not completely surprised. As difficult as it was to believe, she knew she wasn’t on Earth anymore. She had to be someplace else.

Someplace that had whole suburban neighborhoods filled with families of giants that kept humans as pets. Being a stubborn person, given enough time she knew she could escape, but then what? Where was she supposed to go? Her giant might well be the devil incarnate for all she knew, but he was also the devil she knew. Despite having a very hard hand—she squirmed in her seat, but the sting from that single spank had long since receded, leaving her bottom feeling normal again—he didn’t seem inclined to hurt her.

18

In fact, she perked slightly when he pointed back to himself, what he seemed inclined to do now was communicate.

“Tak’buh,” he said, tapping his chest with two fingers. He looked at her expectantly, waiting before tapping himself again and repeating, “Tak’buh.” Hesitantly, Judy bent down far enough to mimic the motion as best she could, restrained as she was. “Judy. My name is Judy.”

Tak’buh shook his head, canceling that with a slash of one hand in the air. Reaching over her highchair tray, he gently tapped her on the chest between her breasts. “Pani.” Dammit. She knew it.

Judy scowled again as he tapped his finger between her breasts and repeated, “Pani.” Then he tapped himself, enunciating slowly and clearly as he said, “Tak’buh.”

“Tak’buh,” she grumbled, and glared at him again. Whatever she’d said, it made him extremely happy. So happy that he continued to tap at her until she repeated the word twice more. If she could have tugged her hands free, she’d have broken his damn finger. At the very least, she would have bit it.

And yet she barely did more than glare at him when he finally unfastened the straps and picked her up, so effortlessly balancing her on his hip, his strong left arm hooked around the small of her back to keep her there despite what she wanted.

“I can walk,” she growled, squirming to get down. If she could have brought her legs together, she might have slid right out from under that arm and down the side of him to stand on her own two feet. But another sharp slap to her naked bottom stilled those struggles. This one wasn’t as hard as before, but Judy knew another ‘learn to like it’ smack or worse would come next if she continued to push him.

Bad baby, she thought blackly as he carried her back up the stairs. Bad babies got spanked.

Tak’buh, however, didn’t hold a grudge. As he walked, he patted and stroked her back, rubbing between her shoulders as he carried her down the hallway past five closed doors and one partly open one. She glanced inside as they passed it and, strange though it was, Judy recognized a bathroom when she saw it.

“Oh hey, wait!” She made a grab for the threshold, but missed. “No, wait... but...” She tried again to get down, but stopped when his soothing hand dropped ominously down to cover her bottom again.

“Fine,” she said, glaring and holding herself very still. “I’ll just pee on you instead!” Tak’buh took her back to the nursery, reaching up to shut and lock the window before he placed her in the crib. Whistling, he left the room, and Judy hopped up from her knees. She had one leg thrown over the rail before the door had even fully closed behind him and was standing in the middle of the floor by the time he returned, a drill-shaped tool in his hand. They both froze when he opened the door. He frowned until Judy made a great production out of bending down to pick up that hard, cubed maze toy off the floor.

Backing cautiously away from him, she shook it next to her ear and then began to turn it in her hands. The silver beads thunked and rattled as they moved through the maze, but it did as it was intended. Tak’buh looked pleased again. He actually smiled as he crossed the threshold, the door not quite closing behind him as he approached her. Though she ducked when he reached 19

for her, that three-fingered, claw-tipped hand patted her gently on the head before he turned his attention back to the window. He pushed the crib back into its rightful place and then nailed the window firmly shut.

Still, those few seconds of redirected attention was all the time Judy needed to put the maze back on the floor and dash out the door. She ran down the hall to the bathroom and quickly shut the door. Tak’buh’s toilet didn’t use water, but she got it figured out. She was standing on tiptoes at the sink, trying to figure out how to make the curved spigot gush water when he came barging into the bathroom. Scolding her all the way—bad, bad baby!—he scooped her up under one arm like a football and carted her back to the nursery in disgrace. When he swung her up and dropped her back into the crib, however, he did so gently.

It wasn’t until he picked up a fresh diaper that Judy abruptly renewed her bid for freedom with yet another unsuccessful escape attempt. With a diaper in one hand and just pulling a bright yellow dress from the closet with his other, Tak’buh still managed to kick the door closed before she managed to get both feet back on the floor.

She couldn’t get out the door; she couldn’t get out the window. The only option left to her was so pitifully childish that, even when she was belly down on the carpet and crawling under the lower half of the rail, Judy couldn’t believe she was actually trying to hide under the bed. As if he wasn’t watching her do it. As if he’d somehow magically not be able to find her there.

Tak’buh fished her back out again with discouraging ease. Back into the crib she went and, despite all her best efforts to the contrary, the diaper was fastened into place around her hips.

The bright yellow dress turned out not to be a dress at all, but a simple sack, decorated with neatly stitched bird-like creatures and flowers, and which fastened tight at the neck via a dishearteningly slave-like collar. She fought being put into the sack even more wildly than she had the diaper, but the end result was the same. She was swaddled, she was covered with a blanket, and she was—bad baby—put to bed.

Judy lay on her back, glaring up at the high ceiling, furiously resentful and determined to ignore him as he bid her goodnight. At least until he reached in to caress her cheek with the backs of his three-fingered hand.

“Don’t touch me!” she snapped, and when he persisted, made a show out of biting at his fingers. She missed by a mile, but he put an abrupt halt to any repeat attempts when he flicked the very tip of her nose. It didn’t hurt, but it did startle her into clapping both hands over her nose through the yellow sack. Scowling, she thrashed under the blanket until she lay on her side, casting her sour glares at the wall instead of him.

Tak’buh was not offended. He stroked his hand down over her hair instead and then her cheek, growling what she could only assume might be a fond goodnight.

Rankling under the soft caresses, she awkwardly bucked and wriggled, tangling herself in both the sank and blankets, until she lay on her stomach, pressing her face into her pillow to keep him from touching her cheek again. He patted her diapered bottom instead, and Judy drummed her feet against the mattress in frustration. Sighing heavily, she waited, unresponsive until he moved away. With a soft click, the overhead light winked out, and then the door slipped closed and Judy was finally left alone.