The End

by Charlotte E Hart

  “Do you understand?” Her hand lands on my shoulder, gently trying to tug me backwards into the dark confines of the side of the room. I nod, but snatch my shoulder away from her to crawl forward a little further. I might not stop whatever this is, but I’m damned if I’m leaving him while it happens

  “I stay here, where he can see me.”

  He’ll see me all the way through it, remember it. He’ll fucking hold the pain that’s coming inside him, knowing what it feels like, and then maybe we’ll find a safety in his mind because of it. If that’s what this is supposed to be about then I need him to see me, need him to understand that we’re in this together, at least for now. We’ll feel this as one unit, right to the fucking end so we can find comfort in it. And, just for once, I’ll tend his wounds. Take him home after this, make him bathe in his sea. We’ll walk then, talk. Perhaps make plans for the future he talks of somehow. Life can go to hell. He’s right. And this show of his love proves it beyond doubt.

  “Never letting anyone hurt you again.”

  Tabitha’s words stick in my mind as I watch the woman walk away, her heels forming a rhythm I cling onto because of his lacking sound, until another pair of feet change the dynamic. More force, more power in this set. Heavy steps and an even heavier hand, knocking Blaine from his upright position faster than any other has done. Both his hands drop this time, the pain in his right evident as he clambers back up to take another lash. And eventually his smile begins to fade as another lands. His face flattens, the pain starting to encroach on his carefree attitude, rendering him detached and glazed. I can feel the shiver riding me, not because of my care for him, rather because I can feel where he’s going. It’s the same place I go to when he’s on me. Dark, warm, a place of strength and elevation above the present. I can only hope it’s as nice there for him as it is for me. Mystical and strange, the everyday abandoned for those extraordinary sensations he delivers. I could come thinking about it. I could use my own hands to do it for him, show him how much I appreciate the gesture. I shake my head at myself as I see him finally get into position again, just to have the man slap him so hard it sends him back to the floor again. He’s not fighting at all. No grab for the hand that hurts him. No retaliation. He just keeps taking it. Blow after blow. Humiliation after humiliation. This pack of reprobates doing their worst to him to aid my safety. And while part of me is desperate to stop it all, protect him from it, I understand what Tabitha means and why this is so important. He’s asked for my life; this is his community’s way of ensuring he protects it.

  Eventually it all seems to shadow into one. Feet moving onto the floor and continuing, one after another. Blaine’s body coming to rest on his hands and knees, occasionally being shoved to the floor by a boot, another blow levied at his spine to prove their point further. On and on it goes, the room nothing but pin point precision for me as I watch him take it all, his breath panted out, hardly releasing any other sound than that. Sweat climbs his brow, travelling along lines I love so much, showing a face I’ve never seen before. It’s exhaustion. Fatigue. He’s being pushed to his final limits, no give to the thought that he can’t endure their deliverance onto him. No care either. He’s big as far as they’re all concerned. A surface that needs to feel this energy levelled at it until it has no other option but to show its decimation.

  I tilt my head at it all, wondering why I’m not as bothered as I should be. This is as insane as anything could ever be, but it doesn’t feel that way. It feels necessary. Honourable even. Principled and worthy of true admiration in spite of its degradation.

  “He’s so passionate about you, Alana,” Tabitha says in my ear. “Priest would never do this for me. It’s such a show of love to receive this from us.” She gets up from behind me and moves into my eye-line, her tall silhouette holding a hand down to me. “Much easier to let us all fuck with you, don’t you think?” Yes, I suppose it would be. Not for Blaine, though. I know that now. Others on me confuses him, makes him obscure within his own actions. “Come. It’s nearly finished. He’ll need you to help him.” I dodge my eyes around her, watching the last of a man’s beating being delivered to Blaine’s skin. His body is sprawled on the floor, barely any movement left in him as I listen to the first groan of agony leave his lips. “There’s only one left now.” I scan the line for who is left, finding no one who hasn’t already taken their turn on his skin.

  “Who?”

  “You, of course.” My eyes widen, the pupils dilating at the thought. I’m not doing that to the man I love. No way. There isn’t one part of me that wants to further his pain. I want to drag him to a warm space, somewhere he can recover and relax, not be a part of causing more agony.

  “I’m not doing that,” I snap, getting to my feet and heading onto the floor to get him off of it. This is done now. His proof has been shown. I get it. I do. He’ll look after me, never letting anyone else hurt me. “He needs me to help him, not hurt him further. You’re fucking insane if you think I’m doing that.” She smirks as I stand here, my feet slowly backing me towards him. Something hard stops me, a body coming into contact with my back. I spin, finding Priest there, his ever-present smile firmly in place, too.

  “It’s not done until you finish him, pretty thing. This is all for you. I didn’t think he ever would, but he has.” All for me. I back away from him, snatching glances across the darkened room between Blaine’s exhausted form and Priest’s smile between us. “He’s done this for you. You’ve caught him.” I frown at that, unsure if I’m happy about the thought or not. A Blaine caught seems a Blaine clipped of flight, trapped somehow, contained. “He knew in the beginning. Did you?” I shake my head, still peering at Blaine as he pulls himself along the floor, his frame hoisting up onto all fours. A tear comes as I watch him move, love rushing through me now it’s over. All for me. It’s enough that I move to Priest’s side, him turning at the same time so we both stand and watch Blaine push back onto his knees.

  “You haven’t had your turn on him,” I murmur, wondering why not as I keep looking at Blaine’s heaving form. “You’re like him. Why haven’t you done this, too?”

  “I’m here as a friend, nothing else. I’m too close to be effective on his skin. The others are better suited to scarring him.” Oh. I flick a look at him again, searching him for more answers than that. Love maybe. Honour. A sense of compassion. There’s none that I can see, only a continued gaze at his friend as he tries to re-balance himself. I look back, wondering what comes next. What to do. How to finish this now there’s no one left but me. “You can do anything with him now. Beat him to remind him again. Kiss him to remind him. Hell, you could fuck him if you want. We’d all enjoy that one.” I snap my eyes to him, furious with his amusement given Blaine’s pain. He chuckles at me, his hand suddenly pointing at the door we came through. “Or you could just take him home. Give it all some meaning. Give him the life he needs now he’s found you.” The life he needs. I blow out a breath, trying to remember what I need, other than the man who’s just shown me another extraordinary act of care. “Love him, Alana. Make this worthwhile. He suffered without you for long enough. Push those pieces back together for him. Make him whole.”

  I gaze back at Blaine to find him looking straight at me, his body a surface of colours, their glow as incandescent as rainbows on a summer day. He pants through them, his lips trembling around each breath as though he can hear the indecision in my mind. Little Dove. I can hear it in my heart. It’s repeating. It’s longing, clinging onto the flesh as if he’s speaking the words directly at it, bypassing whatever my brain might be thinking about.

  “You think I can?”

  “He does. That’s all that should matter to you,” he replies, inclining his head towards Blaine. “Just remember to use your voice when you need to. Mean what you say with him. What have you got to lose?” My life, that’s what I’ve got to lose.

  I walk away towards Blaine, no care for the skin that shows for the rest of this room to see. It feels oka
y here to be naked, like this is a home of sorts. Perhaps it is in some ways. It certainly is for Blaine. A place for inclusion, for happiness and freedom. I’m not sure that it’s a place for us, though. Not yet at least. More trust needs to come for that. Not mine. I trust him already, but he doesn’t trust himself, does he? Never has as far as I can tell, not really. That’s what this has been about. It’s why I’ve had to ask, I suppose giving him confidence as I do. This reminder here, the one they’ve been battering his skin with, is just another push at him, forcing him in the right direction.

  I kneel in front of him, wondering what needs to be said after this. Perhaps nothing needs saying at all. Perhaps it’s all been said already, the littered bruises on him now displaying more respect than other people ever could.

  He doesn’t move other than the continued breathing. He just waits, offering me a chance to do my worst to his skin, too, should I choose to. It makes me smile as I gaze across his body, trying to cement those bruises and grazes into my memory, find them a place in my heart so I can hold them there and feel his love for me. Who does this for someone they love? These people do. This man here does, it seems. The one I love without reservation or demand. He still crawls through me, showing me so many new options in life, giving me new perspective and hope. Maybe this can work his way. I won’t know unless I try, will I? Besides, the story isn’t finished yet. We haven’t walked our beach, felt the sand between our toes and giggled stupidly about irrelevances. I need to find that with him. I do. He does.

  Chapter 24

  Blaine

  T

  he dark clouds loom over my sea. They remind me of the shadows in that room, their endless roll as constant as the pain that was inflicted on my bones. I stare into them, watching the way they keep coming, warning me of the potential should I choose not to look after those in my care. Fucking obligations have caught me.

  Love has.

  I snatch in a wheezed breath, watching the moon’s hover, its dissidence high in the sky lighting the waves below. It keeps me from seeing my stars, infuriating me with its glare across them. I want my fucking stars back, the ones that show my path to her. I’ve sat here for hours looking for them, barely moving in case I miss their show, but it’s just moon and clouds, has been since she left, nothing more to tell me she’s coming back at all.

  She did. She came back and supported me, drove me here. Looked after me for a few days and tended to my wounds, all the time giving me hardly any conversation to engage in. She made coffee, cooked food, applied creams and ointments, ones I normally use on her, and then she left. She left me as I slept, leaving a note saying she had to do something. I don’t know what, but it’s been three days now. No calls. No texts. No fucking anything to tell me she’s coming back, coming home.

  She took my car and she fucking left me. Ran like a thief in the night, taking my fucking heart with her. Perhaps she’s not coming back. I wouldn’t blame her, not now she knows everything. Who’d want a monster like me? Who’d be prepared to endure a lifetime of three minds, all of them working against each other, trying to kill my own sense of judgement on how best to handle skin? She may have watched my offer of love. She may even have seen the determination in my eyes as I presented the only sense of loyalty I have to give, took the brunt of them for her, but that doesn’t mean she will bow down and give me her everything.

  Why should it? I’m asking for all that she has, all she’s worked for, without her questioning anything I ever do. It’s a life that raised subs hardly accept, let alone relatively untrained ones like Alana. And I’d take a those blows for her again. I would. I’d have these bones mutilated every month to know she’ll be here when I wake each day, not the once yearly they enforce on my kind of breed. I’d do that to make sure no one ever touches her again but me, that no one ever hurts her again but me. I’d take that for her. Endure it.

  I sigh and gaze upwards again. This is my penitence for Eloise. I know that now. It’s my atonement. My punishment. I can feel it seeping further in with every next hour she’s not next to me. It’s the loss I should have felt for the death I produced. The grief I should have absorbed myself in as they lowered her corpse into the ground. It cuts my souls like a knife, raking agonised tears and sobs from my monster, the lacking stars only highlighting his once again deficient life. And it infuriates my magician, his mind still traversing circles in here, trying to find a way to pull her back to us. But this is as it should be, as we deserve. We’re nothing but monsters after all, ones who deserve little care to our emotions now they’ve been breached.

  We should be left here to rot in our own cesspool of nightmares, alone. Our life, my life, or the lack of it now she’s left, is as it needs to be. Destroyed and shattered. Woken and abandoned. It’s a seascape of endlessly crashing tears, wracked with hopeless dreams and insidious reasoning. I am nothing again. We are nothing. We are hollow without her support. Empty. We are alone once more, nothing but our night and sea for security. Her hopes gone. Ours, obliterated.

  I sit here for a while longer before giving up on my damned stars and moving from the deck back into the house. They’re not coming out tonight. Why should they for the likes of me? It’s still nothing but clouds and rolling waves, their flow as impassive as my heart feels again. I can feel it giving in, giving up. Its thunder in my chest is becoming quieter, just as I’m forcing it to do. I’m closing it down, some small part of me smiling at the thought of her safety and willing her a future that she deserves without me attached to her. She’ll fly out there now, absorbing energy differently, renewing herself in imaginative ways, grasping life by its fucking horns and throwing her dreams into the open again.

  I made that come, found it in her again. If nothing else, my professor helped her with that. He did well. He set her free from her confines and showed her how to fuck with courage again, be more than she had become. He did as a good man should do, showing her the life I should have given to Eloise. He pushed her into the world again and showed her a path to manage herself with.

  I’m pleased with that. Reasonably gratified with its outcome.

  It makes me look around my bedroom and then watch the bedsheet’s soft bristle in the breeze. I’m contented somehow. It gives me comfort, warming the part of me that’s so often not allowed its pleasures. She’s free, irrespective of whether I am or not. She’s out there again, writing her stories, filling the world with dreams and aspirations, hopefully doing it a little better than she was before.

  I glance at the typewriter, its position in my bedroom a conundrum to me. She’s moved it here at some point over the last few days, and then left it rather than take it with her. She should have. She should have taken it with her and used it when she traps herself again, used the retention it produces. The manuscript’s still there, too. The stack of sheets lined up neatly beside it. I haven’t looked at it, nor do I care too. She’s probably left it there as a nod to her. A reminder. She shouldn’t have bothered. The story isn’t relevant to me, only that she wrote it because of me, because of us. It’s presumably a love story that should be perused by those who have hope for more, those who long and thirst for something above their average. I no longer have that hope. She’s taken the only hope I ever had with her, leaving me with nothing but memories to cling to and the smell of her lingering around my barren home.

  I pull in a breath at the thought, drawing in the last of her scent and gazing at the bed, wishing she was still in it. She’s not, though. She’s gone. A fucking typewriter doesn’t remind me of her. She reminds me of her. She is inside of us. Every breath pulled, every thought made, every crash of my sea and every night that goes by, she will be inside of us, of me. Her skin, the way she moves, her smile and her frown, even the sounds of her tears. They all live inside us for every moment we are awake, and the image of her haunts our every next unconscious thought, too. She has become our reason for drawing in air. We’re somehow unable to stand the thought of not breathing another in case she steps through our
door, offering her hope again. We are lost without her and empty of desire. Alone, just the three of us.

  I move over to the damn thing, needing to touch her again in some way, and finger the keys. They clunk and clatter, irritating my eardrums with their noise. And she comes reeling back to me again, her ass on the seat, her naked body driving the next chapter down, barely a care to what’s around her. I snort, remembering the time I had to beat her to make her eat, forcing food down her throat like a child because she had more words to write and dared argue with me. I adored that fucking arguing from her. Relished the next venomous little bite she gave, her voice somehow making me hear it, unlike the drudgery of every other I’ve heard before her.

  It makes me smile and look at the top of the pile of sheets, hoping to see her handwriting on it, another note or a letter, anything to bring her back to me again. There’s no handwriting, though, only the bold print of the keys, large letters covering the page. The End, it says. The End.

  I shake my head at her, knowing that she means us. The end of us. The end of something she passed through like a tempest, engulfing me in her path and trying to give me a love I don’t deserve. She’s such a clever thing. My cunning little dove. She’s taken what she needed for her story and then made herself safe again. Professional until the end.

  The smile on my face forces me to turn the page, letting it fall to the floor as I stare at the next set of words.

  Ask and you shall receive.

  A portrait of love.

  Our story,

  B. A. Jacobs.

  Fucking bitch.

  I chuckle, letting the sentiment find a home inside me it shouldn’t damn well need. It brings fluid to my eyes, the tears produced by the static holding my damn finger on the words there. Our story? Our fucking story should be still going on, still evolving so I can learn more about her and find solace in her arms dowsed with care, let her guide me with her hopes and dreams. I could kill her for leaving me so raw. Beat her ass and make her finish this, take it to its conclusive end rather than leave it open and wanting still. She’s left a hole here that will never be filled, be mended either. It’s open and weeping, screaming for her return, its blood seeping from corners it knew nothing of before her.