by SM Johnson
He held eye contact, hand leaving his cock to rise to his mouth. He licked his fingers, tongue lingering in the V between each two.
It was like a horror film, without the screaming.
His thighs were a warm line along the backs of her own, calves and feet pressed on the inside of her calves and ankles, holding them apart, holding her open. Not that she was fighting him, not really.
Then the perverse insistence of his cock, there, and she shuddered beneath him, holding her breath against the first stab of his cock at her anus, clenching in a ridiculously futile attempt to keep him out.
His next sound was a laugh, she thought, or half of one, and his cock stabbed against her with more insistence. The ring of muscle that was keeping him out succumbed to the steady pressure of him, and he was sliding into her, impossibly hot, like fire, and she felt her teeth show from the grimace, and when she hissed in a breath, the air was startlingly cold, but so thick with the smell of his blood that she could taste it. She cried out when his hips snapped against her, then bucked back as hard as he was thrusting forward, and she was suddenly being stretched open with great seriousness and little care. Speared with blood and flesh and that searing sense of being ripped apart that she experienced every time she accepted sodomy.
It was exquisite.
She grunted. Hated the stretch, this helpless impalement, yet welcomed her own helplessness.
She felt pulled apart, as if pieces of her might go flying off by themselves, and she had no way of knowing if they would return, or perhaps return to her… different.
As she would be different.
Both his arms were around her now, holding her tight against him, the fingers of one hand spread against the ridges of her ribs, the fingers of the other between her legs, parting the lips there, working, squirming.
This position –
She could almost feel him in her throat, lips burning for a taste of cool water.
She stared at his forearm, muscles standing out, well-formed against the bone, skin so glowing white in places not blood-covered that she could see the blue veins running beneath. The original stab wound was clotted, barely seeping now, and he moved, as if he saw her looking, and pressed it against her lips. No further command was necessary.
She let her tongue trace the wound, tasting him, and her stomach rolled because something snapped then, some internal shift screamed at her that this was not horrible, that it might be depraved and twisted and sick, but she liked it and would like more of it, and she almost laughed out loud.
"Oh, Sunshine." It was a low growl into her ear, so close his voice was like a secret. "You like being dirty."
Shiver of pleasure all through her, radiating like the effects of nitrous, from ear to throat to belly.
He was fucking her asshole with blood for lube and her whole body was happy about it.
She was addicted to him.
He did something to her brain chemistry that made her feel bigger, smarter – invincible, and less sympathetic for even her own plight.
Again she realized she wouldn't choose to be anywhere else.
So. She really was dirty.
When one wound clotted and stopped bleeding, he cut another one.
She reveled in his depravity, rolled in it like the dog does when something smells wonderfully awful and it wants to keep the scent as near as possible.
Pretty felt like that, breathing him in, licking the blood from his skin, all vampiric and naughty. Cannibalistic, even.
"I killed Corrie, you know," he hissed as his hips rocked.
Pretty's next cry had nothing to do with pain, and everything to do with his words, protesting that information. She wanted him to say it wasn't true, to take those words back.
He didn't take them back. He gave her more.
Chapter 29
She.
She's crying now, and it has nothing to do with the fact that I'm fucking her up the ass.
She likes that part. She likes playing helpless. I've figured this out.
No, she's worried I'll tell her that I hated Corrie, that I damaged Corrie, that I never loved her. But that's not even close to the truth.
I loved Corrie, and that's why.
Her badass caught up with her, and when I found her, she was a skeleton in a bed, machines pumping sedatives into her veins, oxygen running to help her breathe. Home care nurses, strangers, spreading her legs, cleaning her, diapering, manipulating her limbs and form, hospital gowns and all their immodesty.
She would have hated it, all of it. This wasn't Corrie. This was a body that used to be Corrie.
Her partner was despondent at her bedside, paralyzed with indecision. Not even allowed to make a decision. Nothing good was happening. The bad had already come to pass, and the worst was here.
I tapped the side of Corrie's face, said her name, and her eyes opened, irises indistinct, pupils drug-fogged, then widening and flaring with fear, horror… hope. I kissed her cheek, tipped an imaginary hat, and said, Jeremiah Quick, at your service. And then I bowed low.
She almost managed to smile, but the attempt was chased off by a look that was dripping-pure-PLEASE – and I stared at her, wondering if it was my fanciful imagination, or if I truly understood what she was asking.
"Really?" I whispered, as gently as I could.
"Please. If you love me at all." It was all she managed to say, but it was enough.
"She can't go on like this," I said to the despondent partner, who shrugged and said, "It's not like cancer gives us a choice."
She was weak. I could see that, and while she may have loved Corrie well for many years, that love had become a trap.
"She saved my life," I said to this lump of depression. "Long ago. All that I am, I owe it to her. She doesn't deserve this."
"Who does?" the partner said. "We just get by, day to day."
I hated her.
I hated Them.
I hated a system of care that let a human being languish in their own waste and called it 'end of life care'. Called it dying with dignity.
There was no dignity here. It was cruelty, pure and simple, and I felt the rage pulse behind my eyes.
I pulled a folding chair close to the bed, picked up Corrie's hand, and let the rage build. If I did nothing to diffuse it, the rage would grow until it was big enough.
This, I wanted.
This, I needed.
I stayed at Corrie's side all afternoon. All evening. Most of the night.
The partner had fallen asleep in a chair, slumped over with her forehead resting on the edge of Corrie's bed. Her other hand curled and tangled with Corrie's.
This, now, looked like love. A form of love that I could accept. Soft light spilled from the bathroom. Sometime after midnight she came awake with a start, checked to make sure I'd sit with Corrie the rest of the night, and went to her own bed.
Three-thirty in the morning, the time when even those trying to stay up all night start fading, and Corrie made a noise.
I stood up and pressed my left palm against her cheek and pulled at the disease with all my might. Her eyes popped open and she looked at me, but this time not with horror, not with fear.
Her whole body seemed to sigh as she sank into the mattress, a sigh of exhaustion, mouth forming words that could only be translated into thank you, and I nodded once and did what I needed to do.
She welcomed me, welcomed the towel I held in my hands, and when she gripped my wrist with bony fingers, she wasn't fighting so much as holding on, with trust and the hope that what comes next will be better than what came before.
She stared right into me as I folded the towel over her throat, an effort that felt so odd, this… attempt… to not leave marks, bruises, or broken tissue.
She clung to me.
I gave her freedom and let her go.
It didn't take very long, and she went with grace and with relief.
Sunshine makes some noise beneath me, maybe because, yeah, talking about letting Corrie
go makes my cock harder. It's... well, I'm proud of helping her, of not allowing someone I love to suffer for one more minute. Being able to fix that was the most 'me' I've ever been.
Maybe her little cry isn't about that at all, because...
She.
She soaks me up like a sponge, no resistance, no argument.
She is quiet, now.
Not judging.
Not irritating.
It is amazing that she never gets on my nerves.
Most people do, and it's quick and it's permanent.
Not her.
She feels like me somehow, except the opposite of me.
Perhaps she is.
Chapter 30
He woke Pretty sometime later with soft petting and serious eyes. She wanted a shower more than anything in all the world. His blood was crusted to her skin, matted in her hair, and clotted and gritty between her ass cheeks. The metallic scent of it was in her nostrils, and she knew that soon enough she would start to smell like a putrid, rotting thing. Jeremiah was dressed and smelled crisp and clean. He'd apparently showered before waking her up, the bastard.
He walked her to the bathroom, no'd her request to shower with a solemn wry look that said you know better, come on, but all he said was, "Soon enough, my girl, soon enough."
Then it was outside where autumn was fading and the air carried a hint of winter's return. The dead season. The sad demise of everything good, the time to prepare for hibernation. If she guessed, she'd say she'd been with Jeremiah for at least a couple of weeks.
She followed him across the yard and into the dungeon.
Jeremiah put Pretty on her stomach on the restraint bed, arms and legs stretched to their limits, so taut, tight, that she found herself straining against them even when she wasn't trying.
She rested her cheek against the mattress, contemplating the immediate ache in her shoulders, the tingle already starting in her hands.
She blinked as he came into her field of vision, carrying a large green bucket. A sharp, citrus smell made her eyes water. He set it down on the floor at the foot of the bed.
There were a number of straps now that hadn't been on the bed before, and he used them to tie her down at her calves, thighs, hips, chest.
Then he rolled a drawered tool box and a wheeled stool to the end of the bed by her feet. There as a squeak-creak when he sat down.
She was seized with a terrified knowing, even before she heard him slide open a single drawer. She shook her head from side to side, and felt the cry bubbling in her throat.
He held her left foot firmly. She wanted to believe he was only going to fix her lines, but something in her recognized the additional restraints meant something much bigger than that.
The first cut, around her ankle, was slow and sharp and ongoing.
For an instant she thought it was the fine-line pen, but then there was… wet, and too much pain, and she flexed her foot, trying to escape it.
A hard slap to her inner thigh, and his admonishment, "Stop it. Be still."
"It hurts," she said, hearing herself sound wounded, betrayed.
"Yes," he agreed. "But the beginning of the end has to start somewhere."
She couldn't have been more horrified if he was eating her inch by inch.
He had one hand clenched around her ankle. "Think of it like a tattoo."
The pain crawled around up her calf. The spot behind her knee that developed an impossible itch sometimes when she was driving. It was momentarily too sensitive, ticklish, nerves of skin flinching away. Then the wet drag, the split she swore she could feel, and a horrid sick sense of nausea. She pictured her skin, dark with ink. She had a lot of lines. Surely he wouldn't… couldn't…
"You're cutting my lines," she said, her voice pitched high and tight in a way she couldn't seem to control. He couldn't. He couldn't do this to all the lines. Could he? Without bleeding her to death?
"Re-drawing with a different medium," he said, and his voice was dead calm. "A more permanent one. So they last a long time."
"Why?"
"Because I don't want you to ever forget again. I want you to live with your eyes and your mind and your senses open. All the way open."
She had no answer for that. It was never merely that she had forgotten, it was that life happened.
Whatever instrument he was using hurt more as time went on. As the blade dulled, as her skin oozed blood. He cut above and below the ankle restraint, removed it and held her foot in a hard grip, cut some more, replaced the restraint. Struggling against the restraint made her gasp. Holding still with her face pressed to the mattress made her howl.
For a while the pain was tolerable, and then it wasn't.
She begged him to stop.
He didn't.
The feel of the blade along the side of her foot left her alternately holding her breath and gagging. Higher, the back of her thigh, which didn't seem as bad, was almost tolerable with a rhythm, a rising wave of pain that crested, crashed over her in a cascade of whimpering and begging, and then receding for minutes in which she was able to catch her breath.
His hand on her non-injured foot brought dread and terror, and a flurry of no no no please please don't.
He stroked the bottom of her foot and said, "It's because I care about you."
She didn't believe him.
She cried.
He paused once in a while to squat near her head and take her tears. This, still. And once he held her chin so she couldn't look away from him, and kissed her lips. His pupils were dilated, the expression on his face dispassionate. He stared at her for a long while, then let her go, left her field of vision, went back to his horrid task.
What felt like a century later the backs of both of her legs were, apparently, done. He released her and fed her strawfulls of succulent cold water, then turned her over gently and strapped her down again, lying on her back.
When he started cutting the tops of her feet, she hardly flinched, although she raised her head for long minutes to watch how the tip of his tongue poked out of his mouth every so often and rested against his top lip, and how his gleaming eyes flicked from his hands to her flesh. How sometimes he smiled. She knew this, then, was somehow the warm-up.
She watched his hand wield the blade like an artist might cling to a pencil, and when she wiggled her toes, he frowned.
He wiped her with a wet cloth when there was too much blood, or if the lines were covered with his own blood and semen from earlier. She imagined a red pile of rags next to the bed, out of sight.
The blade tracing the lines on the front of her shin bone was a new shocking pain, sharp, like banging into a corner, so little flesh there that she was sure he was cutting to the bone. She yelled, swore at him. Called him every cuss word she knew, and some she made up.
His eyes smiled. "Maybe I should have saved this part for last."
Through the fire and the burn, Pretty tried to hate him.
She hated the room. She hated the knife or blade, whatever he was using. She hated the bed and its evil restraints.
"You have to keep your eyes open, Sunshine. You can't ever forget again. Promise me."
This he said as he lifted wet lime-scented strips of cloth out of the bucket and started winding them around her left leg. For an instant it was a cool soothe, and she was almost able to compose herself, but then it became fire, and the fire made her shriek, "Take it off. Make it stop," and she fought her bindings and bit the insides of her cheeks until she tasted her own blood. There was too much pain to pay attention to, from the hot slice of the blade to the agonizing fire of the wrap, to the pressure wheals of fighting the bondage, and the muscle aches from the same futility. She was drenched with sweat and snot and tears.
He ignored her, spiraling the wrap to a few inches above her knee, tugging the topmost strip tight and tucking it into the layers beneath.
The burning acid feel of the wet cloth tricked her into thinking the blade was kind.
He wrapped her oth
er leg, and like the cutting, the lime-scented gauze hurt her like a process, the burn climbing with each revolution until Pretty was mad from it, wailing and thrashing, making begging noises because words beyond "please" and "hurts" and "I promise" wouldn't form.
When he was finished with the bandages, he fed her more water. Stroked her face, pressed his lips to the hollow of her throat. "Shh," he murmured. "I know it hurts. And I know you'll promise anything. That's why I can't accept any promises, yet. But I think, soon, you'll be ready for a story."
Whatever was in the bucket was not just water.
She finally managed to calm enough to ask, "What the fuck is that stuff?"
"It's a solution that curls and dries the edges of the wounds, creating space for scars."
Creating scars. That wasn't exactly the kind of change she thought he'd make in her, marking her like this. She'd expected more internal change, not external.
"Take it off. Please. I'll be good, I'll learn everything you want, I swear."
Jeremiah didn't take them off. In fact, he came up with sponge from somewhere and pressed it to increments of the bandages, wetting them more.
She only noticed she was humming when Jeremiah started singing, softly, my love hurts, baby, I know it hurts… and there was some far-away detached part of her that wanted to punch him for being such a bastard that he'd teach her this terrible song and then take his pain, or excuse me, his love, out on her.
She was too… something… to protest. Too exhausted. Too hopeless. Too numb.
He left for a while. Left her there, raw, burning.
When he came back, he said, "If I untie you and you hold still, you can sit up, in something like a student desk, while I do your hands and arms."
She went mute, trying to imagine sitting still, on her own, while he did this. The burn of her legs had subsided to a throbbing discomfort. Either her brain finally released a large-enough flood of endorphins, or the unending pain had burned out her pain receptors. Something.