Darkroom Saga Omnibus 2

by Poppet

  God I hope I stop hurting.

  He gives me the rib bone, and my soul weeps. Instantly I feel broken again, my wounds pried apart and seeping, the scabs rubbed off, the scars split open. He loves me, he did it for me.

  I won't cry. Polina don't cry! Don't let him know how much this means to you, he'll use it against you.

  No one has ever loved me before. Why Mikah? Why him when I have a soulmate? Why is my soulmate married? Why is god such a vicious asshole! The room spins and I close my eyes, wondering how much vodka he put in my drink. So I lied, I thought I could handle my vodka, but I can't. He carries me to the bedroom because that's where people fuck, in the dark, like they're sinning.

  I'm a sinner anyway, god don't care if I fuck Mikah, he told me I'll do it. I'm afraid of god, I won't say a fucking word to Mikah. I mustn't complain or god will cut my tongue, he said so.

  His chest skin is silky and warm when it slides on mine, when it glides over my nipples it feels good, and then I feel him inside. I want to scream, I want to bite him, I want to stick my nails in his eyes. Jesus fucking Christ! It burns like he's breaking me. It hurts so bad I hold my breath to stifle the tears. I try to move but the dizziness paralyzes me, slack while feeling him grind and hammer, and slowly the hurt subsides, it starts to feel better than the bright pink dildo.

  I hate him for feeling nice. Oleg did this to me and it never felt nice. It hurts almost as bad, but now my body lies and says it's good.

  It's not good! It's not Victor and that means it's not good!

  Mikah moves, leaning so heavy on me he squashes the air from my belly, and I hear the switchblade click, opening my eyes with the fear. Oleg did this. Please don't do this. DON'T DO THIS!

  And just like the Russian bastard he runs it around my eye and I go to the death. Polina pretends death. If you play dead they lose interest. Don't cry out, don't plead, don't beg, just be dead. Be dead!

  Oh my god I can't, my heart is slamming so hard in my chest it pains, my lungs have no air, and he tenses and it burns inside again, heat exploding into me. I can feel his ejection into me, and it's weird. It's alien. He tells me he's still hard, and it's like he thinks I'm brain dead. It's inside me you dolboeb (fuckhead), I know it's hard. Because women are soft and men are hard, and that's just the way it is.

  I hate being woman. The world seethes with our enemies. We lie with the enemy and we don't scream, because we think life is worth surviving for. I want to take my blood and wipe it all over the house, begging Victor to come save me, to stop Mikah from burning my insides with his cock.

  “On your knees,” he says, using the deep voice.

  It instantly reminds me of Lucifer, and the fear subsides.

  “Why my knees?” I ask, worried he's going to whip me because I did something wrong.

  “Because you're my bitch and I'm going to fuck you like one.”

  “Will it hurt?” I whisper, because my hell it's hurting now. I feel odd down in my pussy, it feels strange. Like an itch.

  “No,” he states, his corpse face hiding a smile, but it shows in his eyes.

  My arms are like feathers, they don't want to work, but I manage. My head feels too heavy and the room swings like I'm on the fairground. I close my eyes against it, wishing I could hold my vodka like a man. I can't fight like this.

  “Put your hand on your clit, like the lady showed you.”

  I put my hand there and the heat feels good, it soothes the burn, it calms the itch.

  “Play with it Kisha, fuck that button until you're tight with desire.”

  I see the man in black, I still smell his forest after rain even though I can smell something awful too, the smell of my childhood prison, the smell of a man's milk. Closing my eyes I pretend my hand isn't mine, listening to the whispers of the angel kicked out of heaven. I want to go to hell with him. If god is in heaven I want to go with the devil.

  The devil's button awakens the good feeling again, the urge, the obsession, the ache. I want Victor now, right now. If his wife don't want him I'm happy to be his slave.

  Like the kings.

  He is a king, the king of hell.

  “Mikah?” I ask, so close, so ready for the pleasure, it's building and if he touches me now I'll be in bliss.

  “Mm?”

  “Thirty seconds, I told you. What must I do?” I can't speak, my tongue feels too thick.

  “Balance on one hand and play with your nipples, I'm going to take you now, it'll feel good because you're horny.”

  He doesn't need a fortune teller to know I'm horny, it's why he made me touch myself. Idiot. Maybe god should cut out his tongue instead of mine.

  When I rub my nipples they get hard and sexy, and on my knees like this it feels good, like Eve probably felt the first time God had to talk her through sex. He had to teach her too. I'm just like her, a woman virgin being guided through my ignorance.

  I should resent him for it, but I don't. My heart wants to grab the knife and plunge it into his throat, but my body is the sky waiting for stars, for light, for the moment the sparkles shine in the darkness of my soul. He is teaching me to be a wife, and Victor needs a new wife. He's showing me what a man likes, not a rapist. The difference is important because before I was raped, I was used. This is an agreement, I agreed to this, I bought him with his rib, he sacrificed himself for me, he went through pain for me. If two broken hearts can join their jagged edges together, maybe we will seal the holes where our souls leak out.

  Maybe when this night is done I will be a woman, the worst will be over, and then when I breathe it will be with power. When I speak it will be with authority, with dignity, because tonight he smashes the fears with knowledge, giving back to me the pieces that were stolen.

  Fractures of my heart still crunch when I lie in bed staring at the ceiling, I'm hoping after this when I stare up the shards will be a perfect mirror again, reminding me that inside my chest beats the pain of a perfect child, a woman birthed from the magic of unity leaving that pain behind because she has a new pain. One where pain is supposed to live.

  Surely that's why he did it? Once someone said that when you beat a rug, it's not that the rug is at fault, the battle isn't against the rug but the dust within it.

  I am being cleaned so I'll be shiny new again, it will change me, it will show in my eyes, I'll find the smile I lost.

  The hope I buried will rise from her grave and cloak my soul again. The first time always hurts, well almost always, the other girls said that much. But the ache in my heart, the way my mind runs into the darkness chasing after Victor, that's a bittersweet pain. It's the pain of knowing I was the one light that could shine into his heart, but another woman's key is in the keyhole, blocking my light, blocking my vision into him, he can't hear me knocking because she makes him deaf with guilt.

  What a threesome we make. We have one thing in common, we have all slipped in the blood we spilled. When Mikah buries inside me my shaking arms cave, the boundaries I kept so secure fall, my support crumbles. I have made myself vulnerable because I gave this man the right to make me woman.

  The bed is soft on my face, helping me forget that I crave the knife to feel secure. Now Victor is my knife, I want him to cut off this umbilical cord to my world and set me free to dance in the shadows with him. Mikah's body fills and seals and rubs where it feels good, it makes my breath shake out of me in a lunatic voice, burning my mind with the images of perfection because I am no longer a body but a phoenix rising from the ashes of my cremated heart.

  Now I am real. Now I can be like the other women, I know the power they have. This is the power. This is why they wear no panties, they crave this ecstasy.

  If I knew this before I might not have been alone for so long.

  How do I hate the man who gave me this? Hot and dizzy I push to raise my head, but my arms are useless.

  Shoving harder, shaking with effort, Mikah wraps my neck and pulls me up, giving me breath, helping me up, and I almost laugh because he is right. We
are one mind now, he knows what I need even when I don't.

  Does he know my secret then? Will he know now that he's excavated my blood and filled me with himself, exchanging souls, do they dance together on the ceiling, shining down on us because we breathe the universe of perfection when we're locked together?

  I don't know. I'm too dizzy to know. My boobs bounce and it makes me so full of desire that I want to speed Mikah up, to rub him in and out of me faster, until I also lose my mind. Being a woman is nice.

  What's that word? Amazing!

  Mikah is too heavy now, the leather on my throat gone, he's over me and I can't – can't – too drunk – black burns my eyes out. But – it's warm and safe – and comforting.

  My body is in a state of deeeeep relaxation when he blows into my mouth, and I twist my head to get away from it. “I thought you were supposed to blow in my mouth with something else.”

  Snatching me and clutching me against him, squashing my shoulder against his hard muscles, I don't understand why he's kissing me like I am the Virgin Mary.

  Maybe he's a romantic or something?

  “Are you okay?” he demands, his voice hoarse and chalky.

  “Mmm, I'm good.”

  “You sure?”

  “What do you care? I said you could have my blood. It was nice.”

  “Nice?”

  “All those other words I can't remember, my mind is too drunk to think.”

  Mikah laughs like a hysterical woman, holding me against his side, and I rest my hand on his stomach, curious as I stare at the snake. The cobra sleeps, but I know it's lethal and full of danger.

  “Can I touch it?” I ask him, staring at it. It looks more like a fat worm, crinkled like a baby rat.

  Bending an arm behind his head, watching me down his chest with big muscles bent in bulges, he nods. “No biting.”

  “You want my mouth on it? I just wanted to touch it.”

  “Go for it.”

  It's soft and clammy, delicate skin like mine, and it's hard to believe this felt like an ax inside me. “Where did the hard go?”

  “It takes blood to make it hard. Stroke it up and down and it'll get hard again.”

  “Like this?” I ask, flopping against his side with it in front of my nose, stroking it, feeling the way the skin moves. I have nothing that feels like this, it's like a toy made to distract the anxious, like worry beads. It doesn't seem so threatening now.

  Mikah clears his throat, “Yeah, like that. You can hold it a little tighter.”

  “And put my mouth on it? Why?”

  “It feels good, like when I put my mouth on you.”

  “Oh! It's fair, yes? You did it for me so I should do it for you?”

  “That's how it works, sweets.”

  “If I get dizzy can I stop?”

  “If you stop I don't have to, okay?”

  “Okay,” I say, sticking my tongue out and licking the end, watching it get full and smooth. It doesn't taste like much. It sure doesn't taste the way his milk smells. Men marry women and pay women for this? I don't see the big deal. Maybe Victor will let me milk him? If I learn this from Mikah maybe I can win Victor for myself. It gets too big for my mouth so I run my tongue over the veins, amazed how strong it feels now. If I was a man I would want mine strong all the time, it's majestic. My boobies are so soft but this is so rigid, like a club to kill someone. It must be amazing to be a man. Licking the clear dew on the tip, it's like jello shots, but …. not quite salty but something close. There's no name for this, it's unique.

  Sucking his dome into my mouth I run my tongue over it trying to identify the taste, when his hips jolt off the bed and hot goo fills my mouth. It reminds me so much of Oleg that I almost puke, holding my nose and squeezing my eyes shut, afraid to do anything. What must I do?

  “Swallow it, it's a sin to spit it out.”

  It's so hard to do, like swallowing vomit, thick and full of sick, but I manage it, my body convulsing three times before I know I can keep it down. It's so traumatic it makes my eyes water. It's made me tired and I rest my cheek on his belly, rolling to stare up at him. He's also changed, he's not dead Mikah no more. He's happy Mikah. See, Victor needs this. He'd be a gentle man if he had the sex. I wish I could see his face after he's milked the cobra.

  •

  Mikah:

  “I have news for you,” I say, relaxing against the softness of the pillows.

  “Mmm?” she mumbles, eyes closed, head below my chest, hand resting on my heart.

  It's the little things that shout victory.

  “Oleg is dead.”

  She lifts her head and opens her eyes, dewy gray irises gazing into mine. “How?”

  “He was murdered,” I say, making it sound as if I'm disinterested.

  “How?” she demands, intensity entering her eyes with more fire than I've ever seen in them. The taste of his death brings her to life, it chases the dullness from her expression.

  Shrugging, staring down my body to her, I say deadpan, “Some men die quickly with a bullet to the brain, or hit with the impact of a train at such force they're instantly dead. Let's just say whoever ended Oleg didn't want him to die easy or with mercy.”

  “How do you know?” she demands.

  “God told me, that's how I know. I looked into it and it seems he was tortured for hours before someone burned his cesspit to the ground.”

  “And the … were there –” her voice breaks and she drops her gaze, hiding turmoil.

  “The children were saved. His secrets are out.”

  “Good, I'm glad. I will not mourn him,” she says with bitterness.

  Every time she moves the softness of her hair runs over my balls and it's making me twitch. I need to take that virginal asshole of hers, I need to cut her properly, I need to show her I'm the master, but fuck if I'm not too tired to give a damn about it now.

  “Your papa is also dead,” I inform her. I went looking for him and all I found was a plaque in a graveyard.

  “How did he die?” she hisses, her eyes narrowing with more hatred than she had for Oleg. How intriguing.

  “Liver failure. He had psoriasis of the liver from drinking.”

  “Damn, I was hoping you killed him.”

  “I didn't know you wanted me to,” I say, using the neutral tone, watching her for every nuance.

  “You're a killer, I'm your Eve, you give me your rib, you should murder the motherfuckers who hurt me.”

  Now I'm smiling because I did, two out of three isn't bad.

  “The rose's rarest essence lives in the thorns,” I grin at her.

  It's a quote by a famous sage, and in her I find the thorns the most intoxicating. She bruises like a rosebud, is pink as one, but she has so many barbs and likes to cut people, she likes to know she caused suffering.

  How do I keep her from stabbing me when she becomes dissatisfied with the status quo? Will she ever lose the thorns or am I wasting my time?

  Maybe there are some dirty angels we can't save.

  She hides her rage well, but it's there.

  Only a fool would fall into the false security of Polina Scott pretending she is not tense.

  Maybe she's always tense.

  Maybe I have to break her to remake her.

  ~ Chapter 17 ~

  The process of delving into the black abyss

  is to me the keenest form of fascination

  ~ H.P. Lovecraft

  Polina:

  We've done the grocery shopping online and it'll only be delivered this afternoon. I've made him breakfast and had a cup of coffee with him while he eats, but now that I've packed the dishwasher I feel him behind me, sidling close, moving the hair off my back and hooking it over my shoulder, whispering softly in my ear, “I know your secret.”

  The subliminal threat frosts over my soul and I freeze while a paroxysm of fear detonates through my marrow.

  “My secret?” I gasp, my voice a watery seizure.

  I'm grateful my back is to
him and he can't see my eyes, if he did he'd see the guilt and terror flashing out of them like a broken home movie played through a projector.

  He's going to kill Victor. God forgive me! I'm sorry!

  “You've been training with my DVDs. If you want to learn to fight why didn't you ask me?” purrs gruffly in my ear, his breath stalking down my skin into my collar bone, pooling in a puddle of malicious ether. Jesus, I thought …

  “You'll teach me?” I almost laugh with relief.

  “Sure. Meet me downstairs in the basement.”

  “Okay,” I nod, immediately heading to the bedroom to tie my hair up and change into the only pair of yoga pants I own. Skirts are stupid and made for little girls.

  Maybe Mikah likes the idea of little girls to stock my closet with so many of the dumb things. My chest is full of happy feelings when I skip to the basement door, hopping down the steps to the huge chamber beneath the house. Last time I was here it was not good, but now I'm okay because God is not here.

  “Yes?” I smile, meeting him at the wide open space where he hung his boxing bag.

  “Grab those mats,” he orders, pointing to the big rectangles against the wall. They look light but they're not, and my arms ache when I have them down on the ground, my footing unsteady when I stand on their puffiness.

  Mikah positions me, tapping my feet wider with his foot. “Bend your knees for balance.” So I bend my knees. “Tuck your thumb like this when you make a fist, you can't have it sticking out or it'll break when you hit me.”

  I'm going to hit him! Praise the lord!

  “Keep your arms up, like this,” he commands, and I copy him, feeling stupid. A knife is so much easier and faster than this.

  “What do you want to do when you're confronted with a man?” he asks, towering in front of me. He's taller than Victor, which is saying something. For Christ's sake Mikah has to duck just to walk in the door, yet he's not lanky like you'd expect him to be.