The Feminist

By

DragonLady of Avalon

A/N: Ever read the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”? It’s about a girl who goes insane because she’s locked up due to a “nervous condition” that women supposedly got at the time, which gave proof to the males at how much weaker we are to them. Her brother and husband were doctors, so when they told her she was sick, she went, “Okay.” and didn’t question it. Back then, a female was depressed and sickly not because she was in a corset and couldn’t talk back to her husband or have an original thought (Ryli: Ooh, females with original thoughts! How frightening!), but because she was a physically, mentally, and emotionally weak female.

I tell you, you put a guy in a corset and he’ll pass out, too. Reading “The Yellow Wallpaper”, I heard guys laughing and the ludicrousy of what was thought about a female’s biology. I also had a number of…amusing images of the corset being explained to a certain Chupacabras female and what would have happened if she had ever been there.

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The darkness didn’t frighten her. No amount ever could. It was in her nature to love the dark, to shun from too much light, and even if it wasn’t, she would have liked the darkness anyway. She was accustomed to it and even welcomed it, because with this terrible pounding in her head she didn’t need any light aggravating the migraine.

She was on her knees. Odd. The pressure on them, the weight of her body on the ground, hurt, and there was pressure on her shoulders that hurt, too. They felt stiff, not just sore, as if she hadn’t moved them in awhile. Her wings were just as pad, pinned and crushed beneath her arms. She grunted and moved, flexing her stiff rib and back muscles, aching to spread her wings, but she couldn’t

What is going on here?

She wasn’t cold or thirsty. That was what came next. It was the price her species paid for being wired tighter than a good piece of welding and able to leap almost twenty feet in the air, change their colors at will, and see heat. They had extremely high body temperatures and required external heat to help keep them that way, so wrapped themselves up in warm, flowing, lightweight fabric made from a spider native to their planet. They drank the crimson, flowing, nutritious blood of animals, partially digesting the internal organs before drinking them, and boring into the bones to get the marrow.

This meant they were constantly cold and hungry. The bloodlust, the bloodhunger, was always present and only satiated directly after a meal, only to come back within hours of feeding. She currently wasn’t either of these things, which was strange because there didn’t seem to be any heating units around, though the floor was a little warm under her shins, and there wasn’t the salty, metallic taste of blood in her mouth or the sweet tang of iron-infused fruit juice.

There was something, though. It was rough and sucking the juices out of her mouth, making it dry and uncomfortable. That was a strange feeling because her species wasn’t known to have much saliva to begin with, just enough to deaden the area of a bite. Not to mention that her tongue felt strange, flat and rough, and very, very short.

Still groggy, she pushed the fabric around in her mouth, trying to figure out what it was. She had never chewed on anything in her sleep, though Ryu or Breanna might have played a trick on her during the night. She bent down on it and found that it went around her head, tying in a painful knot at the back of her skull that didn’t seem to be upsetting any spines.

She then realized that fabric was wrapped around her hands and feet so tightly that they had gone numb and prickly. She could feel spots where the fabric had worn down her fur and into her flesh, making raw, open sores, and—

Wait, fur? That was utter lunacy. Her species had no fur or hair of any kind, just feathers that grew only on the top of their heads, and that was it. Obviously, some feathers or fur from someone else had become trapped under her bonds…but it didn’t feel that way.

When she strained against her bonds, the fur on her wrists and ankles pulled painfully, feeling exactly the way her feathers felt when pulled. She could feel the friction of fur rubbing on fur in places where her clothes didn’t reach, which was even more unusual because her species kept themselves covered because of their need for heat. It felt as if her clothes had burst, ripped open by…what?

She opened her eyes and felt something in them, strands of hair that grew from the lids…eyelashes? No Sarbacapuch has eyelashes! Yet she seemed to, and they pushed against more fabric tied around her head.

It was settled. She was gagged and bound and had obviously been kidnapped. But by who? And why? And why did she seem to have fur and eyelashes?

She strained to think back to the previous day, but her pounding head made it difficult. An emissary from the Stith had had a meeting with her. They had wanted Earth, had so for several hundred years, but hadn’t taken it over or in any way done anything with it. Then she had come along and conquered the planet in a matter of months. The Stith had not been happy and insisted that this…female had stolen from them, and should be punished as a female should when she displeases a male in any way, including breathing out of the wrong nostril.

It had been assumed that it was all Stith bigotry. A highly patriarchal species, they had been insulted when a female conquered the planet they had deemed theirs. They had few allies because of their grossly swollen heads and misguided conceptions of how wonderful their males were and how extremely pathetic anyone with anything remotely resembling in function a uterus was.

Let me tell you, even a patriarchal species will get annoyed when told that their leader’s wife and daughters are useless, lazy veekas who don’t know their place, as Stith have a tendency to do when they see a female outside of the home and in public view.

Obviously, the Stith had a long-term rivalry with the Sarbacapuch, who veiled females only to help them keep their sway over males, who cannot tell what a female Sarbacapuch is thinking, and to keep them from becoming so infatuated with a pretty face that they lose sight of what is important in life.

To the Sarbacapuch, a female is capable of anything and more than a male, who, of any species, are easily distracted. Therefore, of all the species the Stith think are beneath them (and there are quite a lot), the Sarbacapuch are the most hated.

The talks had not gone well. She had managed to keep her temper under control for some time, with Thylac brandishing his weapon, Sini mediating between her and the emissary (he was seen as a sub-equal because of his gender), and Indrid simply being nearby. Unfortunately, the emissary had demanded wine and she, being the good hostess, had not denied him. Soon the Stith male had become tipsy and unmanageable, complimenting her on her beauty in with a crude, insulting comment, telling her that one so lovely should not be at a man’s table doing the work of men.

That had been when she had lost it. She had sliced the hand he had been drinking with open, probably permanently damaging the nerves, and then licked the blood from her fingers in front of him. Obviously, negotiations had ended short.

She remembered nothing unusual about that. Overstressed, she returned to her dwelling and her slaves and curled up in one of the nests in the social room, snuggling with the human toddler she kept as a pet, and brainlessly watching TV. She was very much aware at how angry the Council would be, while they would also say her actions were justified and back her up against the Stith.

Of course, they’d do that if she had slit his throat upon seeing him, which, she figured, she probably should have done.

Her head was clearing. That was a good sign. She wanted her reflexes sharp for when she had to gut the person that did this to her. It was also a bad sign because it meant that she was more aware of strange things about her body. Her tail and lost weight and strength, and it flicked behind her, making not a sound as it landed. Her sickle claws were gone, but there was no pain or blood from amputation or clipping, and she didn’t seem to have spines, either.

She remembered to just prior when she had conquered Earth, the human boy, the only true friend she had ever made with the humans, chained against a wall in a dungeon she called “oubliette”. He wouldn’t have been there if he hadn’t have stumbled across them in their underground city, preparing for invasion. Things had not played out the way she wanted them to; she had intended to offer the boy the gift of being a Sarbacapuch, but not force it upon him. As it was, she had to, because he would have told his leaders if she hadn’t given him an…incentive to come back.

Young and still new with her powers, she had put him on the edge of death. It made it easier for her to bring him back to her outpost, but he had almost died, which she had not intended. A coma would have been enough.

Was this payback? She had thought Ryu had gotten over the trauma, even forgiven her. Vengeance wasn’t in his nature, at least, not in his human nature. Besides which, he had waited an awful long time. Not to mention that if Ryu wanted rid of her, all he had to do was contact Thanatos and he’d be more than happy to drive Ryli as crazy as he is.

THANATOS! Could this have been his doing? Ryli doubted it. He hated to see any animals chained up when a simple cage, the right food, and a few calming words would do. He had a freakish connection with animals, able to control even the most violent, untamable of non-sentient creatures. He, of course, said he wasn’t controlling them, just asking them favors. But that’s the guy that talks to potatoes for you.

A pirate, maybe, but she doubted he could get a-hold to transformation fluid, which wasn’t even transported except only under the direst of circumstances. Normally, he had no need of it since he had his own ways of manipulating people and his own menagerie of horrors. It could have been that he had planned on this specifically for her, but she doubted that, too. He loved being chased as much as he figured she loved chasing him. Not to mention his power was manipulating his own physical appearance within Sarbacapuch boundaries, not shapeshifting others like hers.

There was some other piece of the puzzle she was missing, that she knew for sure. She was standing too close to it, though, and couldn’t see where the piece fit or even what it looked like. This wasn’t Ryu’s breed of vengeance or Sini’s method of practical joke, that she was certain of. Jasmine had no means, Indrid had no reason, and Thanatos would be more inclined to stare at something shiny than do this to her.

That left the emissary, since, to her knowledge, she had no other enemies or potential enemies. The blessing of being a Sarbacapuch female was that people from other species tended to cross the street to avoid you, the curse was no matter what you did, if it was political in any way, the Stith were there screaming at you.

She was aware of two other people, outside of the enclosure she seemed to be in. She couldn’t smell them and could barely hear them, but she knew they were there. She could feel them, in a way. Inside her head.

That was strange. She was physically and mentally superior to the others of her species, but ESP had never been among her abilities, that she was aware of.

As they came closer, she could hear them. One was older than the other, and laughing as he spoke as if he had done something very funny.

“We’ll see just how uppity she is when I’m through with her! Bloody Sarbacapuch need to learn that a female’s place is in the kitchen and the bedroom, not in the political arena!”

“You're so right. Is it true that their males are so weak, they wait on the females hand and foot?”

“Just about. The interpreter she had was submissive, and most of her slaves were male.”

“She’s in there?”

“Yup. I’m going to take her inside now, where her place is.”

In her heart, she knew it was true, but she refused to believe it. Her mind and her upbringing refused to let her believe that she had found herself in the possession of Stith males who would believe she was little more than a trinket to go in their home. Still, she edged away as fast as her binding would allow her to do, which was pretty fast. If she had been able to see or knew where she was, she might have been able to hide long enough to cut herself out.

Light sliced through the air and her head, making the pounding in her head worse.

“Ah, I see that you’ve awakened, dearest,” said the male that she recognized as the emissary in mock-sweetness, pretending that they both believed what he was saying. “I’m sorry to have to tie you up like this, but we mustn’t let the outside world frighten my girl, mustn’t we?”

She heard him step up and into the room she was in. She heard his massive paws striking the ground as he came for her and seized her around the waist, lifting her, hissing and biting and kicking, into the air.

She tried to scream at him to let her go, but something was wrong with her voice! She couldn’t make her spines vibrate and didn’t seem to be flashing color! What came out of her mouth was a hideous, garbled string of half-formed syllables that didn’t make sense to her, except what she was trying to say.

Since giving the impetuous male an earful wasn’t working, she let fly with her claws, which were not bound and the right of which was resting against his chest. He roared and called her a yukili, holding her by the scruff of her neck to slap her. This just made her mad.

She didn’t seem to have sickle, shaped claws anymore, but she knew how to use her feet as a weapon just the same, and she kicked backward, digging her claws into the flesh she struck.

“Rash little thing, aren’t you, child? Don’t worry, we’ll fix that before your husband comes for you!” he answered in a pain-tinged, mock-fondness tone.

He was mocking her. She knew that. And if there is one thing you should never, ever do, it is mock a Sarbacapuch female.

He carried her like an infant again, cradling her in his arms and telling her she couldn’t walk because the outside world was a big and terrifying place that would frighten her. She twisted and fought in his grasp, but something was very, very wrong, and not just the bonds. She was making less headway she should have been. It was as if her mind and body were not in synch with each other, which usually eliminated her size and weight disadvantage

She felt the light change from bright and warm to cool and dark. She heard his claws rip through her bonds and set her free, and she would have turned back on him and fought once more, except he then removed her blindfold…and she was standing in front of a mirror.