Now she sits here, in the almost darkness, spilling her tears for another and I can’t bear it, my fear no longer rules my actions, my desire to have those feelings belong to only me is far more.
“Why are you here, Eiran?” she asks without looking in my direction, she’s still connected to me. I knew it.
“I came for you. I can’t watch anymore.” I tell her the truth, she’s going to kill me no matter what happens here I have crossed an invisible line between us and that means I am a dead man.
“Why now?”
“Because he was different.”
“You are right, he was.”
“Why? Avery why?”
“He reminded me of you. He took what he wanted and left me with nothing but feelings.” Her words are daggers of devastating truth. I’m standing right behind her now and wrap my hand around her delicate neck, she doesn’t move or resist my touch. Her eyes close and her mouth opens as I lean down to where I can smell her and the wine she drowned those emotions in. “No one is like me, Avery. I’m going to take something from you again tonight.”
“You can’t rape me again, Eiran. You cannot take my virginity twice, I don’t have anything worth taking, you asshole.” She stutters out and I feel her tense under the grip of my hand.
“Oh what I’m taking from you tonight is worse than rape. I’m going to steal your emotional virginity and make you fucking feel everything you never wanted to feel.” I feel her shiver not sure if it is fear or desire I continue to squeeze. “Most of all, Avery, I want you to hurt I want you to feel the agony as I fuck your heart and soul. I want to hear the sound of your broken heart shattering underneath me.”
“You know I will kill you this time, Eiran?” she speaks softly her body betrays her mind and a thick lust coats her throat making her words sound like sex.
“Oh I’m counting on it, because I can’t live like this any longer.” In truth I died a long time ago.
I lean over the top of her and kiss her in a half upside down move that keeps her pinned to the couch, she doesn’t kiss me back but she doesn’t resist me either and I know half the battle is won. I stand up behind her the couch separates us and put her knife in my pocket. I want to be closer to her now.
“Get up, Avery and go to the bedroom.” She just sits there, unmoving except for the tear that still rolls down her cheek landing on the coloured side of her chest. Half of her is inked, a straight line down the centre front and back divides the two sides of this woman. Detailed art is etched into her skin, hummingbirds, flowers and sugar skulls. The intricate design distracts me a little in that moment I have only seen them from far away before. “NOW!” I yell because the anger has returned, she needs to feel this searing pain that rips me inside.
“You can’t do this again, Eiran.”
“I can and I will.” I grab her soft hair in my fist and drag her up so she knows that I’m going to do this no matter the cost. She reaches for the knife I already removed when I kissed her, a panicked hiss escapes when I drag the blade up to her throat. “Go to the bedroom, Avery. I am not going to ask you again. I’m going to hurt you, how much, depends on you.” She turns herself so that I’m faced with those eyes that haunt my sleepless nights.
“I can’t feel twice in one day, Eiran, just stop it. I’m breaking and I don’t know how to stop it.” Her fingers wrap around mine on the knife. “He used this knife to seduce me tonight. I liked it, I liked letting him fuck me, Eiran. I liked being hurt so it is not going to work.” Oh, I know this game and she won’t win.
“Give up, Avery, because I’m going to have my cock inside you before I die, and we both know I won’t be leaving alive tonight. There’s just no way on earth that you can’t not kill twice in one night.” I’m going to hurt your feelings not your body. I turn her away again I can’t look anymore I can see the fracture in her composure and it hurts me as much as it does her. I need the rage, the anger, the bubbling I felt after every single clean up. Her bitter words tell me a secret truth and I know just how to break her, wound her and rip that black heart from her chest.
I’m going to love her, something no one else has ever done. I don’t even think her father loves her like I do, she has been coached to exclude emotion from everything all her life. Conditioned into a machine so that nothing can break her. Only they failed because she feels things but hides them under the shell of perfection. I’m going to topple the queen. I have to wreck her forever. I’m going to die for her.
Better than a thousand hollow words,
is one word that brings peace.
I CANNOT SHUT OFF the sickening feeling that I’m broken. Everything I’ve practiced for years is failing me. I feel like every single emotion that I have forced below the surface my whole life is coming alive and they’re attacking me in the form of Eiran. I know I have to kill him tonight, I need to kill him so I can stop feeling everything he was the one who started the feelings if I kill him they will go away. I need them to go away. My body won’t obey my mind and my mind has short circuited with his touch. Eiran said he would rape my emotions and he has done just that, every single loving touch and soft kiss was like having my virginity ripped from me again. It hurt worse this time because he knew exactly what he was doing, he came here with the intention of stealing from me and I am letting him do it again. He doesn’t hurt my body like Mathew did, he slaughters my heart with every feather light intentional touch. Physical touch is blurred out by the tearing of my sanity and the pure unfiltered pain of knowing that I have loved him since I was fifteen and I should’ve killed him then. I kept him because I couldn’t let the feeling go completely and now it is here to murder me. Taking my life with his tender words and sucking my soul with his kisses.
His body is like mine. A machine designed for darkness and destruction yet this time I cannot overpower him because I don’t want to. Time hazes into nothing and I’m warmed by the sun and I don’t care about it, my phone rings continuously from another room but still I don’t care. I’m bound to the headboard of the spare bedroom and Eiran has his face between my legs. My screams silenced hours ago when I surrendered to his love, when I started to believe the words that he whispered in my ears. He loves me. I love him. Over and over, he stabbed my empty fucking heart with his adoration until I felt it start beating. I want it to fucking stop.
I close my eyes but it does nothing but amplify the feelings that have overtaken my whole body as I come again. He won’t stop, he has yet to put his cock inside me but I don’t think I can take anymore. “Stop please. I don’t love you.” I try to sound convincing. I try to make him go away. “Then you can kill me when we are done, Avery, but I’m not done and you’re lying.” His words are the opposite of his actions, hard and cold.
I felt the fear of the truth around my throat strangling me, his hands were there too but mostly it was fear. I gasped to breathe past it, to bury it with everything else I’m not allowed to feel. I pleaded with my mind to lock this all away, no air, no breath comes. I want to let it consume and kill me, but I want to kill Eiran more. His raspy voice in my ear as he finally fucks me unlocks a door that shouldn’t be opened. “Say you love me and I will let you kill me.” My back arches into his body, the pleasure overrides logic. The feelings consume my rationality, the physical touch has started an emotional flood that cannot be contained. I want to slip away and float in the waters that it has set free but I cling to what I know is the truth. Love will kill you. His body becomes a part of me and I want to push it away but I pull him closer still. I’m dying. “I know you love me, Avery. I know that you feel me.” He continues to torture me. “Admit it, Avery.” I can’t admit that I am broken. I can’t admit the truth. I won’t be a failure.
Then there was a minute where I felt myself leave and I was watching from the side, I can see my body being worshiped, he fits so perfectly against me. Every touch designed to make me feel it. Muscles. Scars. The ones I gave him and for the first time I see my name drawn in script so beautiful you can bar
ely read the words on his back. ‘Avery cut my heart to ribbons with her cold knife of love.’ I read them over and over and over as his movements become more focused and the tipping point of my release is getting closer, my mouth is open and my eyes are about to roll slightly as muscles start to twitch. A physical response but only this time, I’m feeling it in another way. I’m up against the wall of my world versus his and it is breaking under the pressure. The physical release causes a mental separation and that me and this me become two separate people, she’s so strong, she won’t ever buckle and break. I have shattered and the shiny pieces of me are floating around the room as I shudder from the orgasm and my mouth lets the surrender slip out of it with words that betray me. “I always loved you, Eiran.”
“I know you did, Avery. I can’t do this any longer.” He climbs off me and the bed. I hear the rip as he cuts the fabric binds from my wrists, the tension is released and I pull my spent naked body to sit up. His eyes are dark, sad and hurt. Ten years he has loved me and I have hurt him. He silently hands me my knife before walking to the bathroom leaving me and all these feelings that have taken the air right out of the room. The silence gives me the space I need to realise that I have always felt this way. Ignoring, hiding and smothering those feelings has been my whole life and I hate it. But right now I hate him more for opening up this giant wound in my mind that I can’t even begin to close. I can still hear my phone ringing. It’s Callum most likely. I’m about six hours late for work at this point I don’t care. I couldn’t work today if I tried. The knife is turning sweaty in my grip as I squeeze it, knowing exactly what it’s going to be used for now. When I slither from the bed, through the silence I find Eiran laying in the empty bath tub, his phone, gun, lighter and a crumpled picture of me are on the edge of the tub beside him. He has a cigarette hanging from his mouth and his eyes are closed. I take a minute to appreciate the man that has destroyed me. No longer the boy from ten years ago that defined a part of me that can never be changed, he’s ripped and muscles line his torso. Beautiful tattoos adorn parts of him that I haven’t seen since that day. He’s something to behold. My knife marks still visible on his body where I was too weak to kill him the first time, I won’t be weak today. “You are taking too long, Avery,” he says opening his eyes and a small smile plays on his lips. He knows I’m going to kill him, he’s not even going to try and escape the fact. “If you love something kill it, right? I’m waiting. I can die now that I know I didn’t imagine what you felt.” I step into the tub standing between his legs, all of him on display to me and although all I want is the numb static noise of every other kill, I’m cursed with the burden of sadness as I lean down and push my knife straight through his beautiful cold heart. The feeling of resistance as I try pull it out as if his heart is hanging onto my betrayal and won’t let go makes me hesitate. Our eyes are locked and he reaches up to touch my face with his now bloodied hand, tears roll down his cheeks and mine. I’m murdering the only thing I have ever loved, I’m killing myself with him. I slide my hands over his bald head and pull it back exposing his neck to my blade, the blood sprays across me and the whole room as I finally end the last ten years.
I sit myself down on his corpse and light one of his cigarettes and do something that is so unnatural to me that I feel ill, I cry. Sobbing noises are coming from my mouth as my chest heaves and tears flow, snot blocks my nose and I melt into a mess of the one thing I have tried so hard to avoid—emotion. Feeling is awful I never want to do it again. I turn on the water to drown out the sound of myself.
WHAT FEELS LIKE HOURS later, I’m still sitting in a pool of blood, above a cold body, blood tears and sex stain my naked body and I realise that there is no one to clean up this mess. I reach for Eiran’s phone to call Callum, but I just can’t, I dial my father instead.
It rings for ages before he answers. “This is Rowan.”
“Dad.”
“Avery, who’s phone is this?”
“Dad . . .” my words won’t come out because I have no idea what to say. I sniff back a new wave of tears.
“I’m coming, baby.” He hangs up and I don’t need to explain to him, I know he will understand that I’m broken, shattered and worst of all feeling this kill down to my soul. I turn around and lay on Eiran’s bloodied chest and stare at my ceiling. My tears and his blood mix and I know he has won in death, he made me feel everything and I cannot switch it off he has raped my soul. I’m bleeding, only there’s no blood pouring from me. The exsanguination of my existence happens slowly as I lay in the empty bath tub with my love and consider whether or not to kill myself with his gun? Time stops and nothing exists past the minute I’m in, that time it takes to decide live or die. I have decided it for so many other people over the years it should be second nature, but something in me is clinging to memories of just before Eiran tapped on my car window—Mathew. I’m going to have to kill him too. It is always this way, let someone close enough and you have the worry of getting rid of them after. He set my alarm bells ringing so loud yet I ignored them, I looked for that thrill of danger in him and I got way more than I bargained for. The last twenty-four hours have turned into a shit-storm that I’m not ready to face.
The sound of my front door wakes me. I must have dozed off again and achy exhaustion still drags my body into a groggy numbness stopping my movements. I just lay still and listen. Door closes, footsteps. Bedroom door opens and closes, click of the handle. Footsteps coming closer to the guest suite, closer to me. I wrap my fingers around his gun and point the loaded weapon at the door. My hand shakes. My hands never shake and I steady it quickly. My nose is still stuffy from crying, I remind myself never to do that again it’s horrible. I shake my head searching for my right mind to come back to me, I feel like I have woken up in another person’s head. Like I’ve come back from the dead and I’m not quite the same any more. I see my father and his stare makes me drop the gun. A scream escapes me as a bullet fires and shatters the mirrored wall while dad dives out of the way. Careless mistakes I would never make, what is wrong with me? I feel physically weak, my body is shaking from the cold and something I haven’t felt since I was just a kid. Remorse. I’m sorry for something and nothing. I sit up a little, still on top of Eiran and still very naked. “Dad?”
“Get in the fucking shower, Avery.” He answers still from around the corner. My dad just saw my boobs—this day can’t get worse. My shaky legs lift me from the tub and the ice cold body in it. He no longer looks like a person, just the empty shell of another life I’ve taken. Usually I leave before they look dead. I stare at him for a minute. “SHOWER, Avery.” Another instruction from my father. I don’t want to wash his blood from my body but I pad across the floor to the shower that affords me some privacy from the rest of the room. The water is cold at first, making me shake even more as it slowly begins to warm me up and rinse the desperation from my body. “Want to talk about it?” my dad asks now inside the room I hear the rustle of plastic and other objects being brought in.
“I can’t.” I manage to get the words out before the uncontrollable urge to cry comes over me again.
“Are you okay?” He’s standing close now just behind the wall keeping me out of his sight. “Avery?”
“No, Dad. I’m not okay.” I tell the truth and slide down to the floor of the shower wishing I could just drown.
“Clean yourself up, you are coming with me back to the estate. I’ll go call Callum.” He sounds just as distant as always.
I hear muffled voices and my dad arguing loudly with someone as I step out of the shower, Eiran is wrapped in thick industrial plastic and Dad has started to clean some of the blood. The bloody footprints I left are still clear as day across the floor and the shattered shards of mirror shine like the diamonds I loathe so much. I try not to cut my feet as I leave the room in a fluffy towel with my wet hair dripping down my back. Why did he give me the knife? He knew I was going to kill him. The only thing I ever loved is dead in my bathtub. He gave me the knife.
Why did he do that? There are people walking about my space, I know them. Cleaners. But I don’t want them to clean him, I want to bury him. With mom in the quiet. He is mine, I got to keep him so he is mine even now he is dead.
Inside my bedroom, I dry my body, the tattoos I have kept so carefully hidden for so long seen by my dad, the significance of ink on skin to us is different than to others. He knows why I do it, he does it too. When I was about twelve, he explained the numbers in his heart to me. He told me the story of my how my mother coloured away the scars of her abuse. I didn’t know then just what she had lived through, only later in life Callum explained how Renzo had tormented her. Slipping on a pair of jeans and a Motherland band T-shirt, I look at my reflection in the mirror, a twenty-five year old ghost stares back at me. I was never a child, never a teenager, never a young woman I was always this black hole and now it’s consuming even the bits of me I was trying to save from the abyss.
“Crocodile farm.” I hear my dad bark at someone, my home is crawling with them now. I’m going to have to move, I don’t want to but I know I will have to.
My Black Hole Heart (Colour #3) Page 5