The Mist and the Lightning. Part 19

Valentine lies in the toilet room. He is undressed. His naked body is covered in blood stains and bruises. Only his head is still pulled into a leather helmet, tightly laced at the back of his head. There is an iron collar on Valentine’s throat, gloves are on his hands, and thin wrists are closed in wide iron bracelets. Valentine lies motionless on the bare floor. Here, near the golden toilet bowl, he belongs and he sleeps here, but he is not supposed to have a mattress or bedding. So he crouched awkwardly on the cold and hard floor tiles. Dried blood and traces of shit are visible on the inside of his thighs. Damn it! Kors remembered! He was the one who raped and beat the poor fellow that night. Valentine lies motionless, dirty, in his own shit, beaten, torn. He doesn’t move, apparently in a semi-conscious state. The slave comes up to him, tries to lift him up, give him water. She brings Valentine a mug, slips a metal tube under the bottom shield of his helmet so that he can drink. Valentine groans softly. Kors sees that a black strip of cloth is wrapped around his head over the top of his helmet, just where the eye holes were. Kors blindfolded him, he can no longer remember why, because he was too drunk. Maybe Valentine dared to look at him somehow the wrong way, no, it’s impossible, Valentine never raises his eyes at all, Arel trained him well. Kors remembered that he had never liked Valentine’s cloudy eye covered with a white film, and Kors told Arel to close this slot in his helmet. So that he sealed it from the inside with a plaster or ordered Verniy to sew it up. But Arel didn’t want this, it seemed that it was a pleasure for him to see the work of his own hands. Therefore, despite the displeasure of Kors, he didn’t close the boy’s ugly blind eye. And against the background of the black leather of the helmet, the white eye stood out brightly, clearly visible even from a rather narrow slit. Nik often wrapped black strips of cloth around his sore, ulcerated hands, and Kors apparently borrowed a bandage from him to blindfold Valentine’s eyes and not see this disgusting thorn. Or maybe he just wanted to blind him, make the victim even more helpless. Valentine doesn’t touch the bandage, and the slave doesn’t do this either, they don’t dare to arbitrarily take off what they have been put on, change what the master has done to them. The girl brings a basin, pours water into it. Nearby is the door to the bathroom, and near the golden toilet is the same golden bidet, but the slaves do not have the right to use the things of the masters. Valentine does everything by touch, but quite confidently, he is used to blindness. And the girl diligently helps him.

In the next memory of the slave, Valentine is already dressed in his own clothes, he barely steps, holding on to the wall, trying to take a few steps. His movements are so careful, as if he is made of glass.

Valentine stands. Apparently, he still cannot sit on his ass, and standing up he eats the food brought by the slave. He slips the small pieces into the narrow slit of his helmet under his chin. He drinks water through a tube. There is still a bandage over his eyes. Kors pulled it tight around the back of his head. The owners forgot about him, and Valentine, at the behest of Kors, remains blind. Kors doesn’t remember it at all. But this bitch Tyutya was so busy with Valentine, fed, watered, helped him!