Max hugged his knees to his chest. He closed his eyes and secretly wished, or prayed, that it was all just a bad dream, one that he would wake up from at any moment. Deep down, he knew it was not so. His capture had happened shockingly quick and without warning, but that made it no less real. He had been greedy to venture that close to the human world and now he was paying the price. He shook with fear, but maintained the small hope that if he bided his time, an opportunity to escape might present itself. He just had to hang in there, no matter what she threw at him. His friends needed him.
After a short while the unsettling, rhythmic jostling of his prison ended abruptly. Mentally, he prepared himself for the inevitable confrontation that was soon to follow, but he underestimated just how disorienting the piercing light would be after being sealed in darkness so long. His eyes squinted and watered as he adjusted. He had no time to react as five gigantic fingers plunged at him and carried him out of the darkness. He screamed.
As quickly as it had snatched him up, the hand deposited him on a flat wooden surface. Max, through blurred eyes, looked upon his captor for the first time. He was speechless. He had seen women before to be sure, but this interaction was magnitudes away from anything he had ever experienced. Survival in his world meant carefully observing, avoiding, and maneuvering around the monolithic creatures. Any notion he had of them had been formed strictly from a safe distance, usually with cover nearby to hide should he be spotted. This, this was different. From his perch, he was staring up directly into her cold blue eyes. She had short, wavy black hair, and pale cheeks dotted with freckles. Her lips were a dark, lush red. She was quite pretty.
Max’s internal monologue was interrupted as her lips parted and she spoke down to him.
“Hello,” she said. Her voice was sweet, drawn-out, and feminine.
Max’s lips fumbled as he attempted to make a response. His mind was effectively scrambled by her huge, commanding presence.
“My name is Lia,” she continued, her lips parting ever so slightly with excitement, “and from now on, I will be your master.”
Max just continued to stare. He felt his teeth chatter, and thought he might be trembling, but couldn’t really tell. A million thoughts ran through his tiny head at once. He thought about all the different, violent ways a being as powerful as his self-proclaimed master could torture or kill him. He thought about any conceivable ways he could appease or escape from her. But, despite what he thought, it seemed that he had lost all control over his body, and all he could do was gaze upon her awesome might.
Lia used the moment assess her new prize. He was an incredible find. When she saw his little legs scurrying around the street corner she had hardly believed her eyes. It had taken extreme self-control to keep him hidden away as long as she had. Now she could finally use him, away from prying eyes. She thought about naming him herself, but she could not decide on anything. She knew of so few bitmen that she hardly had a clue what a proper name for one would sound like.
“What is your name little guy?” she asked.
Max was snapped out of his trance by this surprisingly normal question. He swallowed hard and then worked out the courage to respond.
“M-My name is M-Max,” He stuttered.
“Max! Like Maxine!?”
“Uh no,” he responded. “Just Max.”
She smiled. “Okay then, I’ll call you Max.” She took a moment just to look him over. He was very filthy, but very cute.
“What are you going to do to me?” Max asked her.
“Whatever I want,” she happily answered, “weren’t you listening? I’m your master now. I own you.”
“I can’t stay here. I have friends. They’re counting on me to help them. We have to hunt to survive. They need me. Please, I’ll do whatever you want, but you have to let me go.”
Lia frowned. It seemed as though her new pet would need some conditioning after all. She could be harsh and domineering, but she was still a good person, and truly wanted her bitman to enjoy his captivity. After all, she lived alone and could use some companionship. She imagined that with his attitude it might take more than a few weeks to properly train him, but it couldn’t be helped.
“Listen,” she explained, “you have something that I want. I’m bigger than you, I’m stronger than you, and I’m smarter than you. I could take what I want from you, and I will if I have to, but things will be much better for both of us if you just learn your place and accept it.”
He knew instantly what she was talking about. The same virus that had diminished his gender to such a lowly stature had caused a change in their biology. Men across the globe produced semen that was not only delicious to their female oppressors, but also had remarkable health benefits. A steady supply of male semen would keep a female looking youthful and feeling healthy well into old age. It was for this reason that men lived in fear, hiding in wilderness and scavenging for food. Any male caught would surely find himself enslaved in this new order.
Max dug deep to find the courage to defy her. He knew she could hurt him, easily, but also knew he was valuable to her. She would probably try to avoid doing lasting damage.
“No,” he told her, “I won’t be your slave.”
Lia frowned once more. It was better to get this out of the way sooner rather than later. She would not stand for disobedience or insubordination from her pet. She would have to punish him.
“Your first lesson,” Lia started, “is going to be on speaking to your master with respect. I don’t know what kind of language you use with other bitmen, but I am your superior and you will treat me as such.”
Max swallowed hard. Now that he had taken a stand he couldn’t show weakness. “I don’t…” he began, “I don’t care if you kill me or-“
Max was cut off by the tremendous feminine voice.
“Because you are new, I’ll go easy on you this time. But if you are rude to me again, or refuse me in any way…” Lia’s features suddenly became stern. Her eyes acquired a devilish, power-hungry gleam. “You will suffer,” she finished.
Before Max had time to process his renewed fear, Lia turned her back to him in a swift motion and left the room. He noticed for the first time that, unlike he had originally assumed, the place he was in extended beyond the massive room he where he currently sat. He reasoned that giants like Lia would require a lot of living space, but compared to his meager shelters, this room was already incomprehensibly massive. He stood upon a flat wooden surface that gave him a good view of his surroundings, but he could hardly recognize anything he saw. Large wooden and metal structures seemed to grow out of the walls themselves. He imagined that he was in some kind of dungeon, and conceived of how the things around him would be used to torture him. The one thing he couldn’t figure out was that, if this was in fact a dungeon, why was everything so clean?
In the meantime, Lia retrieved a medium-sized bowl from an adjacent room. Before things would go any further, she needed to have him cleaned. His earlier outburst had given her the idea she was about to execute. In one action, she would establish her dominance and wash the filth away from him.
Moments later, Lia returned with the bowl and approached one of the large metal structures Max had noticed earlier. She turned a large handle and water began to flow out of a metal tube. Max was astounded. He knew the giants had technology you could only dream of, but what he had just witnessed was a casual act of gods. To summon water from nowhere was such an incredible achievement he could hardly believe his eyes. His amazement turned slowly to anger at the fact that the giants kept such technology to themselves. How many times had he or his friends nearly perished searching for water to bring back to the village? How many had met their ultimate end for want of the precious resource? He glared at the machine, and then the giant, in helpless anger.
When the bowl was nearly full she brought it to where Max was. For a moment, they just looked at each other. She smiled. “Bath time,” she said.
Her hand reached out with astonishing speed and hoisted Max until the air. He had resolved to face whatever punishment she had for him with stoic defiance, but he let out an involuntary scream as he plunged into the air. An instant later, the hand, and him along with it, were submerged in water. He struggled for all he was worth, but could do nothing in the face of her overwhelming power. He held his breath for thirty seconds, then forty, then fifty. It finally occurred to him that she was going to drown him. How foolish he was to throw his life away as he had! You couldn’t fight giants, everyone knew that. He struggled some more as he began to run out of air. How long had it been? Ninety seconds? One hundred? He felt his lungs complaining for air but receiving water instead. “What a horrible way to die,” he thought, perhaps, as his final thought.
Just as he was sure he could take no more, the giant hand lifted him out of the water. He gagged and gasped for air as she set him back down on the counter. She spoke while he recovered.
“You’re even weaker than I imagined. That was barely a minute.”
Max made no response as he continued to empty his lungs of liquid.
“Get as much air as you can. We’re not done yet.”
In between pants he moaned with despair. “Not… again,” he struggled, “I’ll… die.”
She smiled at this. Over the next several minutes she waterboarded him twice more, allowing small intervals for him to catch his breath. By now she had mixed in soap, which to Max did meant little but the unfamiliar flavoring as he swallowed water by the mouthfuls. By the end of his third session he was weeping and begging for mercy.
“I’ll do anything,” Max had offered. “I’ll be your slave. I’ll be whatever you want. Please stop hurting me. Please.” This pleased her.
“But I’m not hurting you Max,” Lia answered, “you are hurting yourself. I just wanted to make you nice and clean. All you have to do is so me some respect, and the pain will go away.”
“Yes!” he said. “I respect you, I really do. I promise.”
“That makes me happy Max,” she said, “but how will I know you respect me if you keep being rude?”
“I… I don’t… I could,” he struggled as he searched for the desired answer.
“I have some ideas,” she continued, “when we respect people we refer to them with the proper titles at all times. If you want to show me respect, you will call me ‘Mistress’ or ‘Miss Lia’.”
“Yes… Miss Lia.”
“You will also,” she added, “do what I say, when I say it. Disobedience is the worst disrespect of all.”
“Yes, Miss Lia,” he answered, defeated.
“Good, you are learning quite well,” she sang. “Now, let’s get you dried off, and then we can have some fun.”