by Kitty Thomas
The Last Girl
Kitty Thomas
*Kindle Edition*
Copyright © 2012 Kitty Thomas
all rights reserved.
Kindle Edition License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Publisher's Note:
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Contact [email protected]
Acknowledgments
Thank you to the following people in no particular order:
Robin for cover art.
BIG thank you to Michelle for coming to my aid at the last minute for copyedits so I could meet my deadline. (My regular copyeditor is wonderful as well, we just had a scheduling conflict this time.)
Annabel, Claudia, and Michelle for beta reading.
M for believing in me.
Disclaimer
This is a work of fiction, and the author does not endorse or condone any behavior done to another human being without their consent.
Warning: This book is meant for a mature audience and contains master/slave, group sexual activity, sadomasochism, girl-on-girl, oral and anal play, exhibitionism, blood play, edge play, as well as one other thing I’m not warning you about because it would be a spoiler... but it’s not a big taboo.
~ CHRISTIAN ~
I am seven hundred and eighty-two. In that time, I’ve kept many lovers. Each time I pluck a young, ripe bud, I think this time it will be different. This time I won’t ruin them beyond repair. This time they won’t die. I know even as I think it that it’s a lie. I will ruin them. I will kill them. And their beauty will be gone from the world forever because of my selfishness.
I’ve been alone for the last seventy years. Aside from feeding and the occasional rough fucking with random women never the wiser about what they’ve gone to bed with, I’ve been a good boy. I’ve resisted the siren song of a human pet. I’ve resisted the urge to keep a toy.
But for the last few years, I’ve been planning—and waiting. I’ve told myself thousands of times that I won’t take Juliette when it’s time for her to be plucked. But like every lie I’ve told, this one is less convincing each time I tell it.
~ JULIETTE ~
The sweat lays on my skin like a clammy glove, like the death I barely escaped—or so I tell myself. In reality it’s been years, but the dreams keep coming, leaving the event forever fresh in my mind. It happens over and over. Some nights I make it through without reliving that night. Sometimes I go a few weeks without disturbance. When that happens, the dread builds in my chest because I know the dream can’t be far from manifesting again.
I was thirteen when it happened for real, the night I almost died. I’ve never told a living soul. The dream always replays events as I remember them happening, so I’ll tell the dream. It feels safer, more separate.
In the dream, my parents have gone out for a date night. We live in a quiet, gated community. My parents are overprotective and don’t like to leave me alone at night, but I assure them I’ll be fine. I want to be treated like a teenager for once, not a child.
With some reluctance, they relent to my wishes. I watch all the channels I’m not allowed to watch on the television and take a few sips of wine from a bottle in the cellar. I hide the bottle so I won’t be caught, at least not for awhile. It’s not a very good year.
I glance up to see it’s nine o’clock. They’ll be home in an hour or so. I go about the house making sure I haven’t left any evidence of my minor rebellions. It’s clean—almost too clean—and I’m tempted to mess something up a little to avoid arousing suspicion.
A knock sounds at the front door. I’ve told my friend Susan I’ve got the house to myself, so she might drop by. But when I peer out the door’s stained-glass window, I see a gun. Whoever has the weapon has moved behind a large bush in an attempt to hide, as if they want to lure me outside. But I can see the barrel, which hasn’t been as well concealed as the person holding it.
I spend about a million years locking the door; I can’t deadbolt it because they might hear that. The small lock on the handle will have to do. I hope the person outside can’t pick locks. I can, and I’ve done it before with this one, so I know my defense isn’t foolproof. I slip upstairs to my bedroom, wishing I’d been brave enough to secure the deadbolt.
My closet is a large walk-in with far too many things piled in it. Tonight this is good, because I am able to hide between a tall stack of games and toys I’ve long outgrown. I pull a blanket over my head, and I wait—for what, I’m not sure.
I berate myself for not thinking to grab the phone and call the police. Maybe I’m being stupid. Maybe it was Susan out there with a water pistol. Sometimes they can look real from a distance. Before I can move toward the phone, the door slams shut downstairs.
The thought flits through my head that someone wants me to know he’s inside. He knows someone is home. He knows I locked the door to keep him out. I’m prey, hiding, hoping the predator with the big, sharp teeth doesn’t smell me.
Voices travel up the stairs, though I don’t hear footsteps. I can pick out a female and two distinct males. None of the voices belong to anyone I know. The woman’s voice sounds like smooth cream. I imagine she’s lethal and graceful as a cat with a mouse. In my mind, she’s a femme fatale—maybe some sort of spy.
The male voices are equally seductive. At thirteen, I only have the beginnings of a notion of what the word seductive even means. I know it’s inappropriate to be cataloging them in this way. I should be terrified, and I am, but there is something ethereal about their voices.
They seem to have split up, checking different parts of the house. I hear the light switch of my room flick on. It’s so loud—like a little gunshot.
Light floods under the closet door, and the doors are flung open. I’m not breathing right now. I can’t. If I breathe, the intruder will hear it. I’m so still. I don’t think I’ve ever been so still before. My eyes are squeezed shut so tightly they hurt.
My things are jumbled and moved about, and for a moment I think he won’t discover me, but then I feel the blanket lift off my skin. I’m brought out into the light of my room. My eyes are still shut; I can’t bring myself to open them. I don’t know if the people in my house are wearing ski masks or if their faces are uncovered, but I’ve convinced myself if I don’t see them, if I can’t tell the police anything about what I saw, they may allow me to live.
“P—please don’t kill me. I—I won’t look at you. I swear. Take what you want and go.” My voice comes out with more strength than I expect. I thought I would try to speak and nothing would come out. My desperate hope is that what they want is money or some physical object in the house.
Not me.
“Keep your eyes closed.” His voice spills out of him, a dark rumble that’s strangely soothing—like a type of auditory magic that slips inside me.
He’s got me by the arm and leads me downstairs to the kitchen. I know we’re in the kitchen because he pushes me into one of the chairs. These are the only hard chairs we have in the house. Also, the acoustics are different in here.
“A snack?” It’s the woman’s voice. I don’t understand what she means. We’re in the kitchen, so perhaps she’s talking t
o the other man. Maybe he’s rifling through the cupboards, though why he should feel compelled to eat right now, I don’t know.
A moment later I know she’s talking about me because she says, “Don’t make a mess if you kill her. Maybe take her out back.”
“Why do you think we brought guns? If I have to kill, I want it to look normal.”
His words terrify me and give me hope at the same time. He doesn’t want to kill me. If I do what he says maybe I’ll live to see morning, though I’m not sure what he means about making it look normal.
He’s standing directly behind my chair, his heavy hands resting on my shoulders as if I might try to get up and run. I’ve forgotten how to make my legs work, so there is no danger there.
“Just watch her. Make sure she doesn’t open her eyes,” he says.
Amusement threads her voice. “Saving her?”
The man doesn’t answer the question. Instead he says, “Has Finn found the documents yet?”
“He’s cracking the safe now.”
“Good.”
An indeterminable amount of silence passes, then the other man returns. They have what they came for. I don’t understand any of this. They break into the house—a house filled with priceless jewelry, money, antiques, and other valuables—and the only thing they seem to be leaving with is papers. What could be so important?
“You two go on ahead,” he says.
“Christian?”
“Just go.”
They leave and then it’s just the two of us. He takes me back upstairs. My eyes are still shut tight as he settles me on the edge of my bed, and I worry he’s going to hurt me in a way more intimate than the gun I know he must still carry.
He sits beside me, his thigh pressed against mine. My heart is racing.
“I’m not going to hurt you. What’s your name?”
I don’t know why I tell him. He’s a stranger with a gun, and yet the word tumbles out of my mouth as if I don’t know how to disobey. “Juliette.”
“I’m leaving now, Juliette. I expect you to keep your eyes closed until you hear the door shut. It might be best if you don’t tell anyone we were here. What we took won’t be missed for awhile. Do you understand?”
“Y-yes.”
I’m overtaken by an odd sort of madness. I can’t stand this. I can’t stand the fact that three people have just broken into my house with guns, and that one of them has been beside me for the last thirty minutes and I don’t have the vaguest notion of what he looks like. Curiosity overcomes my fear and, eyes still closed, I reach out to touch him.
A voice screams in my mind to stop, but I can’t. This is the craziest thing I think I’ll ever do. The planes of his face are smooth, his jaw strong, his nose Roman, his lips full, the slightest bit of stubble brushing his flesh. I pull my hand back, realizing what I’ve done. I may not have seen him, but I have enough for a description.
“I’m s-sorry, I don’t know w-why—”
He places a finger against my lips, silencing my helpless stutters. “Shhhh. Let’s forget it happened.”
I believe he’s going to kill me and almost open my eyes as if I can reason with him better that way, but before I can, his footsteps recede. A few minutes later the front door slams shut.
The door slamming jolts me out of the dream and I lie there—always shaking, always crying. My life feels so fragile because the dreams won’t go away.
After the real event, I went downstairs and looked out the window in time to see tail lights move down the street. I cleaned the house and straightened the picture frame over the safe in my dad’s office. He’s an attorney and kept a separate office at home. Very little gets by him.
When my parents returned, I didn’t say a word. A few months later, my dad noticed some papers missing from the safe, but no one could determine when or how they came to be missing. For that I was relieved.
My eyes are still shut because when I wake from the dream, there still resides the terror that he’s here. If I see him, he’ll kill me. Several minutes pass like this. Some nights are harder than others to work through the fear and open my eyes.
I peek through the fringe of my lashes. I’m alone. Of course I’m alone. Rationally, I always know, but fear is rarely based on logic.
A shiver runs over me as I glance about the room. It’s three in the morning. I roll over, pulling the covers over my head as if this magic ritual can confer safety, but it reminds me too much of that night hiding in the closet. In a fit of sudden claustrophobia, I toss the blanket away and flick on the bedside lamp.
I know I won’t sleep again tonight. Usually, I get up at 4:30, which doesn’t leave a lot of room for a social life, but I’m in college and no one sleeps anyway. I only have a couple of classes a day, both in the early morning, then I can nap.
My mother owns a bakery a few blocks from the college. I do the special frosting on the butterfly-shaped sugar cookies. I’ve been doing it since I was sixteen. I love the smells in the kitchen. I love all the colors that go into the frosting. I love filling up the piping bag. And I love licking the remnants of sugary icing off my fingers when I’m done. The kitchen in the bakery is one of my few havens of safety. Enveloped in the warm smell of fresh cinnamon rolls, nothing can harm me.
It’s 3:45 when I arrive.
“You’re early. Couldn’t sleep again?”
I give her a weak smile in response, hoping she’ll let it go. My mom has always known I’ve had trouble sleeping, and sometimes nightmares, but I’ve never told her why. I’m too afraid he’d somehow know and come back, that he’ll change his mind about sparing me. I shudder, and when she notices the movement, I pretend it’s a draft. But I’ve long closed the door behind me. She seems to accept my acting, though. If college doesn’t work out, maybe I’ll think about acting as a profession.
My station is fastidiously neat, all my ingredients and bowls and two sheets of warm, brown cookies already laid out. I don’t know how my mother stands this schedule. She’s here by three each morning.
She lives upstairs, and has ever since the divorce when she opened the shop. She goes to bed earlier than most people’s grandparents. I think she chose this life to shut men out so she’ll never be hurt again. I know she still loves my dad because she keeps his picture out and never takes off her wedding band—even to bake. I was never told why they separated, but deep down I can’t help feeling it’s somehow connected to the people who broke in that night.
My parents don’t see each other much, but when they do they are always friendly. I don’t remember any hostility when they split, so I can’t understand why they aren’t together. But whenever I ask either of them about it, they close off and refuse to discuss it, so I’ve stopped asking.
Mom turns her attention back to her dough, dipping it in the cinnamon and rolling it into the classic cinnamon roll shape. Without a word, I go to my bowls and frosting and colored food dyes. We like to mix our own colors instead of buying them pre-made. Or, I like to. Since this has become my very part-time job, I get to decide how the colors are made. I’ve never gotten tired of the thrill of creating the exact right shade. It feels more creative.
As I mix the frosting and start filling piping bags, I think about the test I have this morning. Organic chemistry is not my best subject, but I need it for med school. I’m pulling a high B, but I need to study more.
I allow my mind to drift as my mother puts on music. There is something otherworldly about being in here, icing sugar cookies in the middle of the night while Pavarotti plays in the background. I feel like I’m in some elegant foreign film that only a small segment of the population can even pretend to understand.
Some days my mother and I chat about everything and nothing, but she knows I’m not in the mood after one of my insomnia nights. So we each do our jobs in silence, our baking or frosting becoming our morning meditation.
When I’m finished with my work, I look back at the glass, behind which are my trays of freshly iced sugar cookies
. Somehow, I think they are less inspired today than they were yesterday. But no matter. The only one who notices the difference is me.
My mom comes out to the front, white powder caked all over her. She can’t make a thing without looking as if she’s been rolled in flour, maybe double-dipped in it for good measure. “Good luck on your test. I hope you get a good nap in today. Is it the test that kept you from sleeping?”
“Yeah,” I lie.
I’ve invented one excuse after another for my uneasy relationship with the night, and today is no different. She smiles a little as I slip out the door, stealing a fresh-from-the-oven cinnamon roll off the counter on my way out.
I kill a few hours, take my test, then nap. I sleep so much better during the day that I sometimes wonder why I don’t shift my entire schedule so I can sleep when the sun is out and then stay up all night. Everything seems safer in the day. It’s the one time I get deep and restful sleep anymore.
The sun has just set when the doorbell rings. I check to see who it is, even though I know it’s Devon. I’m not sure if I love him. If nothing else, I think I care for him enough to have sex—at least that’s tonight’s plan.
I feel absurd being a nineteen-year-old virgin, a fossil from another time. Part of me is just glad to do the deed and get the fucking thing over. I feel like I’ve got a white V emblazoned on me, or as if I give off some type of scent. I don’t like the idea that something that should be private feels as if it’s somehow being broadcast.
I open the door a little bleary-eyed, my hair still mussed from oversleeping.
“Did I wake you?”
He’s got this stupid grin on his face. And flowers. I want to smack him. I know this is all because I’ve decided to give in and put out after three months of dating. I feel like I should love him if I’m going to do this.