Taming the Beast

by Emily Maguire

  When she had to go to the toilet, he untied her and carried her there and waited right outside the door so he could carry her back to the bed and bind her again. She asked him to tie the ribbons looser this time; he pulled them tighter. She passed out.

  And then she was waking up and he was kissing her face.

  ‘Do you love me?’ He hovered over her, like a wave cresting.

  ‘So much.’

  ‘Porphyria worshipped me; surprise made my heart swell, and still it grew while I debated what to do. That moment she was mine, mine, fair, perfectly pure and good: I found a thing to do with all her hair.’

  ‘Are you going to strangle me?’

  ‘Not if you don’t panic.’ His hand closed around her throat and Sarah tried to speak but couldn’t. He released his grip. ‘If you struggle you will choke. It’s that simple. Now be a good girl and lie still.’

  He put his hand to her throat again and Sarah closed her eyes and felt the serenity of the lack of oxygen, here under the deep green sea. He entered her body and it was so good to feel him swimming with her. She fought to retain consciousness and concentrate on the sensations flowing through her thighs and the words that he was kissing into her hair. It was hard to understand him though; it was hard to keep her mind focussed on what he was saying. She kept drifting away with the tide, and his sharp words would drag her back and force her to hold on. She tried to hold on like he told her to, to grip him hard as though his cock was the branch overhanging the rapids and if she held tight she wouldn’t drown. If she wrapped herself around it and squeezed it hard enough she would be saved. Her limbs were paralysed and so she held on from the inside, knowing as she did that it was a trick and she was drowning much more quickly by drawing him in further.

  Then she knew she was dying, because when she forced her eyes open, there was only blackness and she could no longer hear Daniel’s voice guiding her. She could see blackness and hear it too, the whoosh of nothingness that was not just around her, but in her and through her. She was nothing, floating in nothing, hearing nothing. Then in a rush of light, she was everything, feeling everything, hearing everything. She was being sliced in two, and as her body opened all the way down, Daniel screamed and fell into her and Sarah screamed too, because the light was too bright and the heat was too hot and the spasms wouldn’t stop even after he climbed out of her and let her breathe again. It was as though he had pressed his hot strangler’s fingers directly to her nerve endings, and her body was in shock because it was not designed to be touched without skin. When the convulsions stopped, he untied her, and she lay in a ball between his legs and slept the deep sleep of the guiltless.

  Sarah woke up on Daniel’s kitchen floor. Daniel was snoring beside her, his left leg sprawled out over her stomach, bruising her ribs. She felt fresh love bursting from the place that was so full that it hurt to have more love crowding its way in. She gently lifted his leg and slid out from underneath him. He grunted and rolled onto his side.

  It was difficult to know how they had ended up on the kitchen floor, because events were so blurred in her mind. Her last clear memory was of dying and being reborn and then there were only a few sharp, violent images that seemed to be part of some weird, drug-fucked dream. She stepped over his sleeping body with difficulty. Everything hurt.

  Sarah found the coffee and started the percolator, hoping that the noise and the scent would wake him gently. When she opened the fridge the memory came back: they had been hungry and come in here to eat. Something distracted them – they distracted each other – and who knew how long ago that was now, but Sarah was light-headed with hunger. She found a packet of croissants in the freezer and threw it in the microwave.

  ‘What’s my girl doing?’

  Sarah turned and smiled at him, causing her dry, cracked lips to sting. Bleary eyed and messy haired, Daniel stretched out his arms and legs and raised himself off the floor to stretch his back. There was a loud crack and he groaned.

  ‘I’m cracking up,’ he said, standing up and twisting his head one way and then the other. Crack and then crack. ‘Coffee! You are a prize!’ He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her lightly. Her lips hurt but she kissed him back, hard.

  ‘I’m making croissants.’

  Daniel smiled and looked around the kitchen. The microwave pinged and he laughed. ‘In there? They’ll be awful and soggy.’

  Sarah pulled out the plate. The croissants were awful and soggy, but he just laughed more and helped her pile them with butter and jam. They carried the coffee and the pastry mess onto his back balcony, wrapping themselves in tablecloths from the cupboard on the way.

  ‘What time do you think it is?’ Sarah asked, looking at the dark sky, and unlit windows of the building opposite.

  Daniel shrugged and craned his head backwards to see the clock inside. ‘Ten past four. Bloody hell, we must have slept there for hours. No wonder my back hurts.’

  Sarah remembered that the clock in his bedroom had shown six-forty-six when he had first tied her up. ‘Daniel, what day is it?’

  He laughed and flaky pastry flew out of his mouth and landed on Sarah’s lap. She stared at it for a moment feeling disoriented and confused. Everything was hot and shimmery and smelt like his skin and sounded like his laugh.

  ‘Tuesday, space cadet.’

  ‘Oh.’ Sarah noticed that he had jam on his chin and she reached out and wiped it off with her finger. ‘What happened to Sunday and Monday?’

  Daniel caught her hand and put her jam covered finger to his lips, sucking it for longer than was necessary to clean it. ‘We demolished them.’

  Sarah went back inside to get her cigarettes and as she limped through the apartment searching for them, she shuddered. It was like a crime scene. A burgundy velvet cushion had been ripped open, its guts leaking out onto the living room floor. The cream carpet was stained in several places. On the hallway wall, close to the skirting board, there was a bloodied mark the size and shape of Sarah’s hand. In the bathroom, the mirror was broken, as was the shower door which had shattered into a million tiny pieces so unlike the long, shiny shards on the sink. There was no blood in the bathroom, just an overpowering smell of vomit. She found her cigarettes in the bedroom and sat on the bed to smoke one.

  Shaking off the tablecloth, Sarah examined her body for evidence of what had taken place. Black bruising on her inner thighs faded into a greyish mess above her knees, and childish scabs and grazes covered from there to her ankles. Her stomach was sore but looked okay. Her ribs were bruised and the skin was broken on the left side. Her breasts were covered in purple and black splotches, and when she leant forward and checked in the mirror, she found that love bites ran up the right side of her throat to her ear. There were black fingermarks on her throat and she touched them reverently, awed by what he had done and what she had endured.

  ‘I thought you’d deserted me.’ Daniel sat naked on the edge of the bed and took a cigarette from the crumpled packet.

  ‘Never. Since when do you smoke?’ Sarah asked him, thinking that he smoked elegantly.

  ‘I find myself with strange desires lately. Things that I never needed or wanted in my life have suddenly become essential.’ He lay across the bed with his head on her stomach. Sarah noticed that his body was relatively undamaged. A small bruise here and there but nowhere near as beaten up as Sarah was.

  ‘What did you do to me?’ she asked, stroking his forehead.

  Daniel blew smoke up into her face. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I can’t remember much.’

  ‘Ah, I thought maybe you wouldn’t. That’s a shame. We had a good time.’

  ‘Of that I have no doubt,’ Sarah said. ‘What I can remember is thinking that I was dying and then having what I think is termed a spinal orgasm. Man, it was like I had an extra set of nerve endings. What the hell was that?’

  Daniel handed her the smoking butt, and she stubbed it out while he rolled onto his side so he was looking up into her face. ‘You’v
e had some wild days, yes?’

  ‘Mmm, I suppose.’

  ‘Ever used poppers? Nitrate?’

  ‘Yeah. This DJ I used to see was into that shit. Made me want to climb the walls, and not in a good way. But I was speeding all the time back then and I don’t think it was a good mix.’

  ‘Jesus, Sarah.’ Daniel frowned, his eyebrows knitted together. ‘Anyway, what you experienced was the non-chemical equivalent of inhaling nitrate at the moment of climax. I restricted your oxygen supply and the cerebral cortex went to sleep and stopped inhibiting the areas of the brain which stimulate sensation.’

  ‘You strangled me to make me come harder?’

  ‘Basically.’

  ‘Oh.’ Sarah touched the tender flesh on her neck, glancing back at the mirror to see again the black marks his fingers had left.

  ‘Don’t just say “oh”. You’re supposed to be terribly impressed. It cost me a lot of money to learn that technique. It’s considered a specialty.’

  ‘What if I’d died?’

  Daniel bared his teeth and spoke from the back of his throat. ‘I would have cut my throat and slowly bled to death over your corpse.’

  Sarah lifted his head and slid down to lie alongside him. He covered her with his limbs. She had to fight off his tongue so she could speak. ‘If I thought you were joking I would say that’s really sick. But I know you mean it and I almost want you to do it. I almost want you to bleed to death over my still warm body. I want them to break the door down and find you on top of me with your throat open and mine squeezed closed, and my hair stiff with your dried up blood. When they separate us, my hair will be pulled out by the roots and stick in your wound, and then there will be part of me inside you forever. Our cells will decompose together.’

  Daniel covered her face with kisses. ‘You’re evil. You make me want to do the most terrible things. Look what I’ve done to you!’

  ‘What did you do to me? I can’t remember much after the lack of oxygen thing. I mean, I remember bits, but it’s blurry.’

  Daniel sat up and reached for the smokes, lighting them one each. ‘I plied you with scotch and tranquillisers and then I violated you for two days.’

  ‘You don’t need to drug me or tie me up.’

  ‘But it’s so much fun. Your skin breaks too easily though. I hardly have to try to make you bleed.’

  ‘I haven’t even had a chance to hurt you. I resent your undamaged skin.’ Sarah held her smouldering cigarette over his thigh. ‘May I?’

  ‘It’s no good if you ask permission, Sarah.’

  She pushed the cigarette into his flesh and held her breath, while inches away, his cock stiffened. Apart from his erection, Daniel did not react at all. Sarah pulled the cigarette away, leaving a patch of bald, red skin and the smell of burnt hair. His skin was thick; she would have to get tougher. She should have held it at least to a count of five. No, she should have pushed it in until he jerked his leg back, tears filling his eyes and a quiver in his voice.

  ‘You really get off on pain?’ she asked, bending to kiss the burnt skin.

  ‘It’s not my pain that does it; it’s your discomfort. I like it when you are scared but you go ahead anyway, because you trust me that much. I love the shock of discovery on your face when you experience something for the first time.’

  Sarah remembered all her firsts with him, a whole lifetime ago. She felt sad that so much time had been wasted, when this was where she was meant to be all along.

  2

  The days that followed were exploration and discovery. A blur of limbs and whispered words and shadows. For Sarah, it was like finding out what her body was for. Her arms existed to hold her weight up over Daniel, her hands to grab, to squeeze, to stroke and pummel. Her throat existed to roar and howl.

  Daniel told her, one night that could have been a morning, that he had planned this for years. Her complete supplication to him was all he ever wanted. Her virginity had been surrendered, at last.

  ‘You took that years ago,’ Sarah reminded him.

  ‘You were a virgin back then in the modern sense of the word. But you were not a true virgin, in the classical sense. This time, I have you.’

  ‘Classical sense? Like a sacrificial virgin?’ Sarah liked the way that sounded and offered herself to him again. He took her, slowly, because it was difficult to move. Hours later, unable to force heavy limbs into further action, Daniel continued as though nothing had interrupted them.

  ‘The word virgin comes from the Greek and Latin man and woman. It means androgyne, or a person who is whole unto themselves. In ancient times, it was used to describe a woman, or a goddess like Diana, who was on her own. A woman who refused to belong to a man.’

  ‘Like me.’

  Daniel rolled over, crushing her. ‘You, a virgin, with all your men.’

  Sarah tried to smile, but could not manage that as well as talking. Her jaw ached. ‘Irony.’

  ‘History. I own you now.’ Daniel was inside her again, but he was still. She drifted.

  They barely slept. When the smell and stickiness of semen and blood and sweat became overpowering, they stumbled to the shower and blindly, weakly, swiped the bar of soap over each other. Sarah’s arms were heavy, her back and neck ached. Daniel complained that his bones hurt and that his knees were wrecked. They collapsed together in bed, on the floor, the sofa, the balcony, but they could never sleep or rest for long before the stirring began in them both. It stopped feeling good and became a painful compulsion. Sarah was an addict all over again. Spaced out, nodding off, she took him again and again, just to feel normal.

  ‘Shit. Daniel, what about work?’ It was light outside, and she had woken up feeling as though she was not where she should be.

  ‘What?’ His eyes were closed. His hand was resting over her nose and left cheek.

  ‘I have to call work. I have to–’

  ‘I called. I said there’d been a family emergency and you’d be interstate until further notice. You don’t need to worry.’

  ‘What about your job?’

  ‘I’m on leave. Four weeks.’

  Sarah moved his hand away and tried to sit up. It was too hard. She sank back into the mattress. ‘What did you…?’

  Daniel opened his eyes a slit. They were more red than green. ‘Personal leave. I told them– God, I’m starving. We should get up. Eat something.’

  ‘What did you tell them?’

  Daniel’s lips barely moved. Sarah knew it was a smile. ‘I told them I had a personal crisis to attend to. I suppose everyone thinks I’ve cracked up.’

  Sarah rolled to the side, her head landing on his chest. ‘If they could see you now they would be justified in thinking that. You look terrible. Like you’ve been living in a cardboard box, drinking metho and eating dirt for a year.’

  ‘And you look like the six week old corpse of a crack addict who died from syphilis.’

  ‘Fuck you.’

  ‘Please.’

  Somehow, she managed it.

  Sarah started bleeding and was scared, then fascinated. She hadn’t had a period since she was sixteen. The appearance of the blood reminded her that she had not been taking her pills and forced a pause in the uncontrolled depravity. She made Daniel go out to the chemist for her, and she waited in the shower until he came back. He was embarrassed and awkward, a middle aged man with a black eye and scratched cheeks offering her five boxes of tampons, because he wasn’t sure which were the right ones to get.

  He wore black linen pants and a dark green polo neck T-shirt. He said that outside it was sunny, but cool. How long since he had worn clothes? Sarah wouldn’t let him take them off. She dressed in thick, grey socks, pink undies and singlet, a navy blue tracksuit. After being naked for a week, being covered was torturously sexy. The cotton of her underwear brushed against her like tentative fingertips, the elastic of her socks grabbed at her ankles.

  Daniel had bought fresh bread and ham while he was out, and they stood at the kitchen bench
and crammed hastily made sandwiches into their mouths. Their long ignored appetites stimulated, they went through the kitchen in a frenzy, scoffing stale biscuits and half-defrosted cheesecake. Then they drank red wine until Sarah vomited and Daniel put her to bed.

  She dreamt about Jamie and woke up sobbing, calling his name. Daniel was disturbed at hearing Jamie’s name called out with longing; he sat up and smoked, his face dark and frightening. Sarah swore that it had been a crazy, confused nothing dream, a collage of meaningless images that her drunken brain had thrown up. She told him about last night’s dream in which a rabbit plague had forced everyone in Sydney to stay inside until the authorities could take care of the problem. Sarah – dream Sarah – had gone out anyway and been smothered to death by bunnies. Daniel laughed then and called her a mental case.

  It was a lie she had given him, because today’s dream had been startlingly vivid, and as coherent as any she had ever had. She had watched Jamie looping a rope around his neck with the other end attached to a ceiling fan. She had screamed and screamed at him to get down, to stop, she was sorry and she had been blind and selfish and stupid, and please, please, please, get down from there. Jamie looked at her with blank eyes and kicked the chair out from under himself. The sound of his neck breaking had woken her up.

  Despite her assurances and tales about rabbits Daniel was agitated. He took off all his clothes and sat cross-legged on the bed, looking down at Sarah. He poked her in the ear, and in the throat and then in the stomach. She smiled and let him slap her face and pinch her cheeks. Even when he pulled her hair so hard that the skin on her forehead stung, she did not react. He was like a child, prodding and pushing and teasing a small animal. And like a child, he was not doing it out of cruelty, but out of curiosity. He wanted to see how far he could go before she fought back.

  Without a reaction from Sarah he got tired of his game and tried to strip her. She said no, and then when he kept trying anyway, she punched his face. This excited him; he sat back away from her and started stroking himself. He asked her to tell him about Jamie. Specifically, he wanted to know what they had done together in bed. She tried but choked on the words, and instead told him stories about all the men she hadn’t loved, starting right after Daniel first moved away. She didn’t even get to her sixteenth birthday before he sighed and made a mess of himself.