Onus

*Hey friends!

It's been WAY too long since I've had a series going, so welcome to the first installment of Onus.

I've been told in a few comments and emails that I'm a bit of a bitch when it comes to my characters, and what I put them through. I've decided to start giving trigger warnings.

I write very violent material. It's just what I do best, so I'm sorry, but the following series has quite a bit of violence, nonconsensual sex, and cruelty.

Also, future. With the addition of Onus, 5 of my universes will be dystopian. :)

All Characters are 18+*

"Freak."

I wanted my mama.

I whined very softly in the back of my throat as my back thumped against the brick wall. It hurt.

"Fucking freak. You should know better... Strutting around in our turf. Walking around... Like you have some sort of Right!"

I wanted to speak, wanted to explain. But I was so scared. I just covered my face with my hands and trembled. The soft sensory patches on my fingertips were touching my face. I could feel how gaunt it was. How the bones jutted. I could feel every grain of dirt and mud. I could feel the dirt and grease in the ragged strands of hair that had been hanging over my face.

I flinched into a corner. I made myself small. These bullies had chased me far from my normal turf. I had no idea where I was, otherwise I wouldn't have let myself get trapped like this.

"Please." I whispered. "I'll go... I'll run... Please just let me go."

I bleated with fear as one of them lunged. I knew that he wasn't going to hit me, that he was just trying to scare me, but I was already so scared. I trembled, cornered. I started to cry.

They were laughing. I opened one of my eyes, looking for a way out. I darted between one of the jeering boys and the wall. I made it, and he hastened my retreat with a foot that hit me squarely on the skinny ass.

I fell, but I scrambled when I was on all fours. I cried out with pain when my hands fell in the filthy slush-puddles. So cold.

I ran. I ran with my blanket flapping around me. With my baggy sweatpants trying to fall down my scrawny hips. With my dog-tongued sneakers flapping and slapping and letting in ice-cold moisture. I ran with my breath hitching in my chest in little weeping gasps.

I finally stopped in the grassy weedy ice-slick patch of dirt behind a laundromat. I hid between a dumpster and a hotel truck full of linens and towels. I bent over and massaged the hitch in my ribs with the back of my hand. My breath came out in a large white fog. I wrapped my blanket tight around me. It was a small felt blanket with a large coffee stain on it. I had found it in a dumpster. It smelled like cats and mothballs, but it was warm. It was so late. The sun was low in the sky, and curfew would begin soon.

"No Onus allowed here."

I looked up rapidly, cringing at the unexpected source of noise. A man on a smoke break. He wasn't hostile, but his voice was firm.

"I mean it bug-eyes. Beat it before I call the cops on you."

The stitch in my side was still sending out throbs of hot pain, but got moving anyway. There had to be an Onii around here somewhere, there had to be.

I passed four storefronts with anti-Onus signs featured prominently in their windows. I didn't know this place. I was scared. I glanced at the window. A cartoon face with pure black eyes. Surrounded by an angry red circle with a line through it.

There was a woman on a street corner, waiting for the light to turn green. I timidly walked up to her. She could see me, and she was frowning, but she didn't say anything, or turn angry.

"Do you know where I can find an Onii ma'am?" I whispered, humble and quiet.

She curled her lip with disgust, but just as I was about to slink away, she pointed her arm ramrod-stiff from her body, one finger uncurled to point towards the setting sun.

"Two blocks. There's a park where they set up one of your filthy slums."

I bowed my head. "Thank you ma'am. Sorry to bother you ma'am."

"This freak bothering you, miss?"

I shrank slightly from the newcomer, a policeman who was scowling and fondling the butt of his regulation stick.

She shook her head. "Just a freak, asking where the slum is." I flinched at the slur, and trotted west as fast as I could. The policeman called after me.

"Hurry up freak. Curfew is in half an hour."

---

I found the Onii just as the light was getting dim, and just as the cold sank it's teeth in deep. It was a small one. Just a cluster of tents and boxes and ramshackle lean-tos in a small fenced area of the local park. Two Enforcement officers were posted at the entrance.

EO's had the authority to detain any Onus for any length of time for any reason. They had the power to lock up the Onii for any suspected activity. They had the right to dole out corporal punishment and enter any Onus-owned establishment.

The last part was a joke. My kind weren't even allowed around most businesses. Much less to own one.

I trotted towards the entrance, breathing a sigh of relief. I wouldn't get caught out after curfew. Cops had no patience, no lenience, to curfew-breakers. All Onus had to be accounted for after eight PM, any loiterers could go to jail. Bad things happened to Onus in the overnight cells.

"Hey... Hey, look. There's one right there, let's talk to him."

I felt my muscles tensing, an instant response of fear and wariness. I turned around and saw a gaggle of young men and women coming after me. In a quick jog.

The fear was a sour taste in the back of my mouth. I started to jog myself, hearing my breath in the back of my throat like a harsh tearing.

"You idiots. He's getting away" That part was soft. Then the young man spoke up louder. "Hey, listen... Please we just want to talk! Talk to us, wont you?"

I don't know why, but I stopped. Three young women and two men. One of the guys was holding a big camera. He trained it on me, and I felt my bone-dry throat tightening in fear. I started edging back. The other guy was the one who was talking. He had his hands up, like he was trying to soothe a frightened animal.

The black eye of the camera frightened me.

"Listen... We're trying to do a documentary. We're trying to help you. It's a fucking disgrace how Onus are treated in this country, and many others. We're trying to bring equal rights and priveleges to--"

I couldn't stand it for another second. I took several steps backwards, glancing longingly towards the Onii. "Please mister... Please I have to go. It's almost curfew."

He checked his watch. So few people had watches anymore. I had only ever seen them on the elderly. "Please, we have ten minutes. Don't be frightened. We're just trying to help."

I glanced up at the camera again. Then back at the one who was talking. He was tall and covered in a thick grey coat that looked very warm. He had a red scarf around his neck and his gloves were leather. He had rectangular black glasses and behind the lenses his eyes were ordinary and human and brown. His hair was hidden under a hat with ear-flaps.

"Wh-What do you want?" I stammered, looking at the Onii. I felt trapped. I just wanted to be among my own kind. To be safe.

The boy who was speaking smiled. His teeth were very white. I had better teeth than most, having lived with my mama for most of my life.

"Just some questions. Please answer them honestly. We're trying to paint a picture of what life is for the Onus. Prove that you don't deserve it."

He was fumbling out a slip of paper. As he was unfolding it he asked me. "What is your name?"

"Shiloh." I mumbled. I held the blanket tighter around me.

"Where do you live?"

"In the third-district Onii. I... I got lost, so here for the night."

"Can you tell the viewers what an Onii is? What the conditions are like?"

What was an Onii like? What was it like for someone who had never seen the inside of one?

"They are surrounded by fences. Some have tents, others have sheds. The nicest Onii is actually in a building, but there is always a line to get in, so I don't go there often. The people who are in the line after the doors shut get chased away by the EOs." I hesitated.

"Please, I could get in trouble... I just want to go." I felt tears prickling at the inner corners of my freakish eyes.

He checked that old-fashioned watch again. "Please, we have seven minutes. I just want to ask you a few things. We're trying to help."

I felt anger. A foreign emotion with dangerous teeth. Anger and fear at being trapped like this.

"Help? Then get me some food. Give me a place to sleep. Take of your jacket and give it to me. Do something that will actually help ME." I choked the words out, knowing how dangerous they were but unable to stop them. "Don't run around with your camera. Nobody cares. The only thing you people want to do to me is see me dead for poisoning my mother. You want to help? Put a bullet in my skull so somebody else wont to it for you."

I ran. I ran from his shocked brown eyes. I was so afraid. It was on camera, so people would see it. They even knew my name. They knew which Onii I normally slept in. I would have to move tomorrow. No way I could stay.

---

I crept towards the entrance, hoping not to make any more waves. Hoping I would just be able to enter without making eye contact, or any contact with the EO's.

I whimpered as one of them grabbed me by the collar of my shirt. He was taller than me by almost a foot and a half, and he outweighed me by at least a hundred and forty pounds. I didn't move. I flinched as he shone a flashlight in my face. The light was very bright. It hurt my eyes, even through the lids.

"Drifter? I don't recognize this one, Dave. Do you?"

I shrank, and moved my feet, trying to get through, hoping that his grip would loosen and he would just let me go. I wanted my mama. I missed her so bad.

"Nah... New face definitely. Prettier than your average freak. Probably makes his rounds of the zoos. Cutting it close, aren't we, freak?"

I just wanted to go. I tried to squirm away but the EO adjusted his grip so he was reaching inside my shirt. His big hand was wrapped around my shoulder, so tight I could feel the bones grinding. I went limp. I mewled and squirmed when his fingertips dug into the sensory skin on my upper back. I didn't stop moaning until he adjusted his grip again.

"He asked you a question, boy! Answer!"

"Wh-What?" I whispered, tearfully.

"Jesus, this one's slow." The officer that wasn't holding me, Dave, his name was, he sounded so disgusted.

"I asked you, if you wanted to make a little scratch. I know a few people who would pay good money for some time with a pretty-faced freak like you. What do you say?"

I stared up into the circle of his flashlight. I felt so sick and scared that my brain was just running in circles. "Wh-What?"

"You kidding me? Most freaks would jump at the chance for something like this."

I started to squirm again. "I just w-wanna go." I stuttered. "Please." My voice cracked with fear.

I could feel him shrugging. He threw me into the Onii. I scrambled away. Breathing in huge frightened gasps. I could see a dull red glow rising from a soot-blackened trashcan.

I neared the trashcan, and three sets of eyes as black as mine shone dully back at me.

---

The man across from me at the trashfire had no teeth. He was patiently gumming at some chicken bones that he had produced from his pocket. I felt my stomach slowly caving in on itself. I watched him eat. I wondered why he didn't have teeth. He was my age. And he didn't have a single one.

"Shoulda taken the deal." A girl at the fire whispered. Her white hair was lank across her face. She had scars around her mouth.

"Why?"

"I know you was scared. And I know that they was hurting you. But you shoulda gone along with Holden. He's fair, at least. I went with him once. 'Fore I got these scars. He got me the money he said he would. I even got to take a bath. A real one."

I held my hands over the fire. The sensory patches on my fingertips tasted the sour soot. Felt the baking heat. Could even dimly sense the light. "What'd he pay you for?"

She glanced at me, expressionless. "You look soft. Like you haven't been out here for long. You didn't grow up like this, did you?"

I shook my head. I felt my heart ache. "My... My mama..."

She nodded. No sympathy. No satisfaction. She just had the answer to a question. "You were one of those lucky ones. Had a mommy who didn't abort you or throw you in a bin as soon as you were out."

"It's a hard place out here. You don't turn your nose up at anything. Not rotten food. Not perverts who pay good money to fuck freaks like us. If you get the chance, take Holden's offer. He took me to one of the zoos. Trashy little dens where pervs pay to fuck Freaks. It's hard work, but you get a cut of the profits, a decent meal, and a bath."

She stalked away from the trashfire. I watched her go. I wanted to beg for her to stay.

When I first got out on the streets after mama died, I wanted to try and find a group of my kind to stay with. I hadn't found a one. Onus became hardened and wary on the streets. The few couples or groups I had found were bitter and hostile towards outsiders. It seemed like the only thing that any of us wanted to do was to survive alone.

Even the girl's terse condescending advice, that was the friendliest thing anyone had said to me in months.

I didn't want to leave the warmth of the fire. But I was so tired.

I shuffled around for a little while. Some of the tents and lean-tos were full. Others just weren't accepting outsiders. I found a television box. Crumpled and muddy, but still intact. I crawled inside, putting the driest side under me, and moving so the open end was out of the wind.

I curled up into a tiny ball, and covered myself with the blanket. The close catty smell was almost comforting.

---

I heard the heavy crunching footsteps and jolted awake just before a hand groped inside the TV box and yanked me out by the collar of my coat. I opened my mouth to scream, but a heavy hand, rough and dirty and shockingly intimate, covered my mouth. I couldn't help it. My tongue went out to taste it. For Onus, taste was our secondary sense, right after sight and hearing.

I tasted human skin, without the delicate sensory patches that covered my hands and patches of my skin. I tasted the salt of his sweat (the pheromones in the sweat were distinctly male) and the dirt and the faint metallic residue of coins. I tasted soy sauce and carrots and brown gravy and beef. I tasted cat and wool and soap and aluminum and plastic and everything his hands had touched within the last few days.

He shook me hard, one hand on my collar and the other arm twined under my arm to hold me up with the hand over my mouth. He shook me hard. I got dizzy. I tasted his disgust in his hormones, moments before he voiced it.

"Get your filthy tongue off of me." He snarled. The voice was familiar. I whimpered weakly, the sound muffled by his hand. I put my tongue back in my mouth. Our tongues disgusted normal people. My heart was beating frantically fast. I could hear it in my ears, feel it in my sensory patches. My tongue.

He dragged me from the box and through the snow. He kept his hand over my mouth but let me put my feet on the ground. I just walked, too scrambled from lack of sleep and fear to even think of resisting.

Out of the Onii. Out of the one place where I had even an illusion of safety. My blanket had fallen. So had my tiny backpack. Nothing was in the backpack but a fork, a can opener and some matches. He was dragging me past the entrance, and in my terrified confusion, I realized that he was the EO. The one who had tried to get me to come with him for money.

I finally tried to drag my heels when I saw the van. My soft fast breathing turned to moaning. On the street, I was not safe. But I heard stories, rumors, news about what happened to Onus at the hands of cruel normals.

Dissected by amateur scientists. Cruelly killed by religious zealots. Tortured by perverts.

I fought. I squirmed and writhed like a fish in his cruel grip. He plunged his hand down the collar of my shirt and scraped his fingernails clumsily across my skin, trying to find---

I squealed with agony and went limp, shuddering and sobbing into his hand. He had scratched the sensory patches on my upper back. Bright lights exploded behind my eyes as I fought with unconsciousness.

"You don't want to play along, freak?" He panted. "You don't want to do things the nice way? Get a square meal and a bed and a shower for your trouble? Fine. You get it the hard way. You fucking abomination."

The other EO opened the back of the van for him, he shoved me in the back and shut the door behind. For a full ten seconds I just lay on the floor of the van, crying from the pain.

I could hear them getting into the front. Their voices were muffled. I looked up, and saw that the back of the van had been drastically altered from it's original layout. The seats had been torn out. Metal mesh had been installed between me and the driver and passenger seat. The side doors and latch for the back door had all been covered with more mesh.

It was warm in here. Startlingly, stupefyingly warm. I slowly stripped out of my jacket as the van started to move. I peeled off the sweater underneath, whimpering softly as it peeled from the hurting area.

Bare-chested, I could see most of my sensory patches. The soft disks on my fingertips. The larger patch on my palms. The thin strips up my sides, and the single oblong above my navel. The patches on my back were roughly triangular, and I could feel blood trickling down my back.

I put my jacket and sweater on the ground, and curled up on top of it. A ragged sob left my mouth. I bit my lower lip to stop it from happening again. I looked at my dirty hands, and gingerly licked my fingertips and palms clean. The low-level stinging went away.

I had small circular patches on the tops of my feet, but other than that all of my patches were on my upper body. For Onus, the patches were as distinctive as fingerprints.

I reached into my sweatpants pocket and pulled out the cheap shiny plastic wallet. I never had money. The wallet was just to keep the picture safe.

My mama was human. All of the Onus had been born from human mothers. Our fathers had been nothing more than spores sent down from the Fleet.

When the aliens had come, they had not taken our resources, killed us, or declared themselves overlords. They had merely sprinkled their invasive spores over all of the landmasses, and the spores had been inhaled by fertile women, making almost forty percent of them pregnant with us. The Onus. The burden. Most of us had been aborted. In certain countries, pregnant women had been massacred, to prevent the spread.

Now we were just a remnant. A bad memory. Second class citizens that had been sterilized at birth. The very presence of the Onus spores had caused widespread birth defects in normal pregnancies at the time. And every mother of an Onus had a shortened life expectancy. Perfectly healthy women, dropping dead in their forties or thirties. Like my mama.

The van went over a bump, and I whimpered softly. My mama had found a sympathetic doctor. Raised me like a person. Kept me hidden away from the outside world. I had been sterilized and registered, according to the law, but only a vasectomy. I had not been castrated, like most of the males.

I had to run. I had to stay alert. I blinked slowly, twice. It was so warm though. The warmth was sinking to my core, soothing me.

The core temperature of a healthy Onus was around 101.4. Because of our hot inner metabolisms, cold effected us. Crippled us more than a human with a sturdier lower temperature of 98.6.

I tried to stay awake, but the warmth was heavy and made me sleepy. I hadn't had a restful night of sleep since my mama died. My head kept drooping to my soft jacket on the floor.