Today, Today by Te June 1999 Disclaimers: All things from _The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996)_ from Edward R. Pressman and New Line Cinema. Spoilers: The Island of Dr. Moreau, 1996 version of the H.G. Wells novel. Summary: Montgomery acquires Edward Douglas. Ratings Note: NC-17 for m/m sex, implied violence, bad language, and disturbing imagery. Author's Note: This version of _The Island of Dr. Moreau_ starred Val Kilmer as the... interesting Montgomery, and David Thewlis as Edward Douglas, irresistible U.N. something or other on one hell of a three hour tour. Acknowledgments: To Viridian and Woodinat for wonderful encouragement, and to the Spike for audiencing and egostroke and beta and all-important irrepressible cutitude. Viridian provided both beta and, well, access to the movie. Feedback: I'd dearly love to hear from you at thete1@earthlink.net. ****** Tuesday There is something truly new on the Ombak Penari for the first time since I set foot on it back when searching for Moreau meant just a likelier than usual treasure hunt. We've acquired a Mr. Edward Douglas, official attache to the etc., etc. A diplomat, in other words, and most likely some form of Brit. Sure, there are other peoples whose skins turn that precise shade of baked in the sun, but only the British are stupid enough to be that way *and* willingly put themselves in those environments. That's probably why they were the only European power to build a truly *lasting* empire. The Dutch, the French, the Portugese... they all went *inside* when it was hot and took fucking naps. Bad for business. This one is burnt beyond red to a brownish shade... that means he'll probably keep his tan whether he wants to or not. The sun has forcibly trained his skin to melaninized good behavior. That means he has a good chance of living. The captain doesn't believe me. He suggested I slice Mr. Douglas up and store the pieces, because the man had certainly already been dried and salted and dried again... But it's nice to have a human body other than my own to play with again. It's been years since Moreau let me touch that mountain of hopelessly diseased flesh he calls a body. Mr. Douglas doesn't seem to mind at all... though that could just be because his throat doesn't yet remember how to speak. When we found him yesterday his tongue was just as dry and rough as a cat's... but still pink, still sharply pointed. Last night I dreamed he milked me as dry as he was and left me to burn as he had. His nose felt very sharp against my skin, his teeth sharper. * Wednesday He woke up screaming today. Well, he couldn't quite work up a full scream, or the crew would've thrown him back to the sharks by now. He was making this breathy keening sound, now low, now high. I dreamed of the windstorms of my youth long before I opened my eyes. The sky is very dark still, the stars against it still numerous and blinding. Honestly, I'm surprised it took this long for his mind to register the absolute agonies of his flesh. I wish I knew how long he'd been on that raft, how many times he'd burned and peeled. Right now, his skin is stretched so taut over his bones I expect it to split at any second, spilling clear fluid -- hot, and scented mildly of pork. I watched him writhe, taking my time with the shot we'd both be taking, being careful with the dosage. Trying to remember where I started. And then I just watched him, wincing every time his movements were too sharp. And every time he didn't break I bit my lip. When I finally leaned over to give him a little rest a drop of my blood fell to the corner of his mouth, and his tongue caught and removed it almost quicker than my eyes could follow. I've given the captain the go-ahead to make a few trade stops before he returns me to the island. It's going to be a while before Douglas is well enough to be of much use, and I know Mei Ling will take care of the doses faithfully when I don't return. He's really very good. * Still Wednesday No please don't fight don't leave don't fight don't fight -- Again and again. Douglas' life signs are just as slow and sedated as they could be, but he talks in his sleep. Chants almost. I almost want a radio so I can find out more about how he wound up in my ocean... he seems rather more shattered than I'd expect a diplomat to be able to get. I suppose he was a political appointment. Maybe he's the relative of someone important and perfectly, Britishly inbred. His face is like a rat's, a whippet's... something slim and lean and predatory. Add a little fur and yellow his teeth and he'd be just another grunting animal in the city. Screaming, breathy animal. * Thursday His eyes seemed to focus on me for a moment today, then on the syringe I held. There was this profound wash of relief over his eyes followed by abject surrender. Yes, Mr. Douglas, I *am* a doctor. Authority. Skill. Drugs. I can already see his skin healing brown. After he slept, I bent down and pressed the tip of my tongue against the jugular for a stretch of heartbeats. And then I licked him until his skin was raw beneath my tongue, and his body was tensing and relaxing with each stroke. He was trying to moan. I want to slit my wrist and press it to his cracked lips until they heal. I'm going to have another dose instead. * Thursday (?) My skin is hot, tacky with sweat too thick to dry completely. I'm not getting enough water, and that's not a good thing at all. I was distracted by the sailors. I hadn't realized how the dirtiest, meanest of the lot (quite possibly the captain himself) was still so much more noticeably *human*... I think it was Douglas' hands that did it. For some reason *they* remain pale, and obscenely smooth. Smoother than a woman's even. This man has never done a day's work in his life. An aristocrat, and that would certainly take care of my theory about inbreeding. I took his long, slender cock in my hand, and then my mouth. Held it there. Watched him wake up with it there. Douglas' eyes were open, but blank to both my smile and my suck. I will let him scream before I give him another dose. * Saturday. He's peeling badly. Not very pretty at all. It's better in my dreams, where long, slender fingers touch me and probe me and pinch me and slap me. There isn't even a body there, just those improbable hands. I woke him up to shoot him up. * Monday, Monday Douglas is healing brown so neatly I'm beginning to wonder about his bloodlines. It's not that he's dark -- quite the contrary. He's the whitest brown I've ever seen.... But he's brown just the same. All over. Like the sun just ignored his tattered government clothes to get to the flesh beneath. He mewls when he sees me now, just a little. There is no fear in his eyes. * Tuesday Peel, peel, peel. He itches badly. I can tell by the way he rubs himself on the rough, filthy sheets. He wants me to wash him. It took a while for me to understand. And then it took a while for me to stop pretending I didn't understand. The way those improbable hands kept moving over his body. Rubbing here and there, knitting his brow with pain. He thinks water will make the itching stop, I bet. * Wednesday He watched me rub myself down today, eyes trailing the path of a water droplet down my chest to pool in my navel. It's dark down here, but I think his eyes are blue. He watched me so prettily I washed him like he wanted me, too. Nice and professional. I'm disappointed to see so much of the brown wash away, but there's enough left. I'm struck with thoughts of the slight contrast in skin tone that will be there when I fuck him. The captain will either beat off or fuck the first mate and heigh ho watch the world go. I leave his genitals dirty, lick the tears from his cheeks. Scold him for letting such precious fluid go. * Thursday We passed by the island today. One of the younger crew members forgot about the prohibition on fishing in this area and brought up a large and extremely ugly bit of experimentation from the old days. Its teeth were very long, but not very sharp at all. The crewman is gnawed a bit, that's all. Almost entirely A OK save for the smell of his own shit in his only pair of pants. The head of the thing was overlarge, and it was very distinct about letting the kid know that it should be replaced in the water. Could've been a lot worse. Even if that old sonofabitch *had* made another controller the saltwater would have long since eroded the implants to useless bits of metal. They breed down there, alone and unleashed. Moreau was never very good at thinking things through to the consequences. Douglas was unconscious the whole time. * Friday He's feverish, raving about Somalia and the Council. At times he talks to me as though I am his lover, or perhaps his wife. Begs me to understand, not to leave him. I sit, and school my expression to hardness. I don't want to shock him out of the memory with an inappropriate reaction. He just continues to plead and plead. Eventually I can't stand it anymore. I go up to the deck and sit among the sailors, listening to their songs. They're accustomed to my laughter, whereas Douglas almost surely isn't. When I went back down he was still talking. Whispering, now. I checked his throat the other day, it's swollen and painful to the touch. Tonight I open his mouth wide. He doesn't fight, but his eyes are focused wholly on mine. I've started fantasizing about being his GP and abusing all sorts of oaths. If it was just simple trust it wouldn't be this sexy, but it isn't and it is. I slather a little lidocainish concoction I made a while back (it smells like guava and my sex) on two fingers and slip them carefully into his mouth. He opens wider for me, and I don't hit his tongue once. I push and rub the ointment into his palate and beyond. I even manage to get a little stroke of the stuff on his uvula before I trigger his gag reflex. I tell him he's a very good boy, then wash the stuff off my fingers. Any other time I'd treat myself to a long, slow jerk but when I look back his mouth is still open, though his eyes are closed. His lashes aren't special, but they rest prettily on the tender flesh under his eyes. He may be sleeping. I slip a glove on my un-numbed hand, fumbling a bit. I wish I could just stick my bare hand in there, but I want to *feel* this. I probe at him gently, rubbing at his gums, stroking over the subtle, human points of teeth. I tickle his tongue until it curls wetly over the latex. It's very warm, a little rough. I want him. I push at the roof of his mouth and his brow knits up again. He's trying very hard to feel it as more than just muted pressure. Maybe reassure himself that it's just the pads of my fingers, and not some sharp thing to hurt him. * Saturday I washed him again today. He slept through most of it, started to moan as I scrubbed the grime away from his groin. Pushed up into the cloth I was using. I felt the curve of his cock try to mold itself to my muffled palm, but I didn't let myself throw the washcloth away. He opened his eyes just before he came, flushed dark at the sight of my face. After I licked him clean I asked who he'd been dreaming about. He didn't answer. I laid myself across his legs, flicked at the IV tube until its irregular movements formed something I could believe was a pattern. I could feel his skin getting hotter beneath mine, beyond the addition of my own heat. The fever didn't so much break before as bend, and now it's snapping right back into place. I have about a week's less than a full course of antibiotics somewhere among my things, but I'm hesitant to use it. I don't want to allow whatever has a hold to him to get stronger. I need to know how many times he's been on antibiotics before I can make an educated guess. Which means I'll have to wait until he's coherent again, and hope I notice the difference. I ordered him to get better so I could damned well cure his sweet little ass. His lips twitch into several aborted attempts to smile. I turn him over on his belly and rub him and rub him until he writhes under me like a slut. His movements are very cautious and slow. It could be the fever, the drugs, fear, anything. I can't smell anything over his sweat and my need. I pull off him before I can come. * Sunday Storms. My lamp has fallen over too many times. I am picturing myself trying to light it again and watching the room, the ship go up in flames. It's OK, though. I've got Mr. Douglas' raft, even if I made sure his wallet went over the side a few days, a week ago. I can't see the lines on the paper anymore. I'm going to stop now. * Monday Still more storms. I'm going to be pissed if I'm not writing this on a blank page. I'll have to scratch it out if I'm not, and there's just something so *false* about rewriting a diary entry. So if this isn't on the right page this day will never have existed, and that would be a shame, because Mr. Douglas said 'please' when I stroked his cock, and 'please' when I took it between my lips, surprised, as always, by the strange sensation of *weight* on my lower lip, and 'please' again when I knelt up over him and jerked off. He flinched when a bit of my semen hit him on the cheek, but submitted easily to being washed again, and drugged back to sleep. His burn is still very bad, he's still much too warm. There's a good chance he won't remember one minute of this. I have to make him better, conscious. * Tuesday The captain refused to surrender more of the fresh water supply, so he's about to lose a member of his filthy little crew. We go through this once, maybe twice a year. * Friday He asked me for the fifth time what my name was today. I told him Daddy, and he gave me one of those queerly pretty *efforts* to smile. The skin on his face still feels very fragile to him, I'm guessing. I asked him if he hurt and he nodded, confided that it was because he'd swallowed the sun not three hours before. I wonder how long he can keep that fever of his. His accent is thick, pleasantly nothing you'd hear on the BBC very often. I asked him where we were, he told me he'd never seen the raft this crowded before. I asked him why Beth hadn't freshened the place up a bit and he started weeping silently. His lips trembled like a child's. I held him close, rocked him and whispered not-quite-words in his ear. I learned that from the pups. Almost all of them become strange without the mixture of grunts and growls and words their parents make. Moreau confessed once, drunk, that he'd had to give Aissa to one of the sows to nurse. Pretty Aissa-cat-piglet. I think it would've done her some good to live with Nanny a little while longer. She's as respectful of me as the rest, but she doesn't know her place. I stroked Douglas' back, held him tighter when he finally tried to pull away. He remained stiff in my arms for several long moments before he shivered and broke out in gooseflesh. He's coming back from wherever. I told him I was going to fuck him tomorrow. "Please don't," he said. "I don't... I'm not... don't." And when I laughed he tried to pull back again. "Please don't what?" He shuddered this time. I could feel myself hardening all over. I pulled him in closer and bore down hard. I felt him stop breathing. When I let go he panted against my throat, but did not fight. "What don't you want me to do, pretty?" "Don't fuck me tomorrow." "Then when should I fuck you?" And he cried again. I kissed his cheek and moved higher and higher until my mouth tickled his eye, and I drank him in. He's still too saline, poor thing. A few minutes later he was helping me strip him nude. It was so very easy to lay his hand over mine as I caressed his chest. He closed his fingers just enough and then we knelt there. He looked at me from under his brows. His eyes are blue, and get very dark sometimes. This time they glittered a bit. The glitter moved very fast, as though he was cataloguing my body once every few fast heartbeats. He swayed a little, but I didn't let him lay down until he'd guided my hand to his nipple. I kept it limp in his grasp and waited. He swallowed, Adam's apple bobbing like a teenaged boy's. Closed his eyes, but they still roamed constantly behind the thin, bruised flesh of his eyelids. He tangled his long fingers with mine and the flesh was cool, damp. He awkwardly forced me to pinch him there. However, when I would've eased off he made me do it harder, and harder. I looked up to see his mouth wide open to the sky. He took in great lungfuls of air but couldn't quite push the scream out. I finally ripped myself out of his grasp and pushed him down. Slicked myself quickly with the stuff I used to make the needles slip in easier. I knew it wasn't quite the right consistency, so I practically drowned his ass with it. I know I was too brutal anyway. He's curled on his side now, perfectly still. I want to fuck him again. * Saturday I still want to fuck him again. It turns out Mr. Douglas is a forgetter. It's too complete for just a fever-loss. God, it's like discovering a whole new person within the man. Not just anyone makes a good forgetter, and in my experience the best ones have been women. Moreau broods, the animals exist in a state... Well, no, I can't go that far. There's bound to be some among them who've become practiced at the human art of self-deception in *some* way. Like the goat. He's a wonderful example of that. Harriet Beecher Stowe would weep, or perhaps wax triumphant. I know I've forgotten quite a bit in the last decade or so, including whatever had made me come way the fuck out here in the first place, including most every inhibition about beastiality and abuse of controlled substances. But I'm reasonably sure the controlled substances have played far more of a role in my forgetting than *I* did. But Douglas... I was waiting by his bed for him to wake. I'd appropriated some fresh fruit from the stores from him. I would have liked to give him a lime, but there wasn't a thing resembling citrus in the hold, save for the vaguely luminescent fungus over by the never opened hard tack. I thought it was quaint when I first got on board, I remember that much. He woke up, and he asked me my name, which wasn't odd considering how many different ones I've given him. But I told him Montgomery this time. And then came all the other questions, or at least the sense of interrogation. I wondered if this was something like his self out in the real world. But I answered him, and got his dose ready, pleased with the pleasant banana shade I'd achieved so far from my lab. And then he fought me a little, and then he neither stiffened nor arched into my touch. A completely new person, and one who I, apparently, had never made scream. It was so surprising I just shot him up and went on with my day, and shot him up again when he showed signs of waking. He's gonna have one big motherfucker of a baboon of a monkey on his back when I'm through with him, poor thing. I wonder if he'll forget that, too. * Monday? Tuesday? He looks good when he's high. I decided to join him. He seems to be healing up despite me, which is good. I've decided I want him a bit livelier. It's safe, I know. Underneath all the musky sweat lurks the soul of a man who became a pacifist solely because every bout of anger made him weep. Or something. Because even though he thought of himself as a virgin, even though he begged me eloquently not to take him, he surrendered the moment *before* I moved to be rougher with him. Only cowards have that prescience. Well, that's not true. Only cowards have the prescience to surrender all of themselves they can possibly reach, to throw it all at their attacker's feet. To be noticeably happier with the absence. His eyes are beautiful when they draw me in. By Thursday we will have passed by the last place he can reasonably expect to make a call to civilization without my assistance. He won't notice a thing. End.