The Monster

by Shen, L. J.

  “Believe it.” My heart pounded loud and wildly. “Because I doubt you can do this with anyone else at this point.”

  “Shut up.”

  “You know it’s true. That’s why you couldn’t have sex with that woman at the ball, who looked exactly like me. You know what you want, Sam? You just don’t want to take it because the consequences would mean you’d lose my daddy’s fat paycheck.”

  “I don’t give a fuck about your daddy.” He plowed into me angrily. I didn’t think anyone had ever been that deep inside of me.

  “Then what is it? Please don’t tell me you actually convinced yourself you are bad for me. You don’t have a conscience, and I can make my own decisions.”

  “Shut. Up.”

  “Make me.” I blew a raspberry. For a second, he stopped thrusting and just stood still between my legs, buried inside me. Then in one swift motion, he removed the latex gloves from his hands, balled them together, and shoved them into my mouth, my juices still on them. My mouth filled with the bitter taste of latex and the earthiness of myself.

  “There. That’s better.” He resumed his thrusts. “Never have I fucked a more infuriating creature.”

  “Furrryerrr,” I offered around the ball of gloves.

  “Yes, sweetheart, that’s exactly what I’m doing. Fucking you.”

  He was close. I could feel it. The way his fingers tightened around my thighs, pushing them outward. The way his expression became less guarded and more surprised like he, too, couldn’t believe it was so good.

  “Are you on the pill?” he asked, mid-thrust.

  I tried answering around the gloves, but my voice was muffled, and he couldn’t catch that I’d said, “Yes, I was, since I was fifteen.”

  “Never mind.” He pushed in and out with jerky movements. “Even if you aren’t, you are going to take the morning after pill. Am I clear?”

  The pleasure and playfulness I felt just seconds ago turned into anger again. He came inside me, holding my legs still as his face tightened. I could feel his warm cum making its way inside my body. I spat the gloves out onto the floor, roaring with fury, swinging my body upright. I pushed him off of me, kicking him for good measure. He barely moved—just enough to let me stand up fully—already tucking himself in.

  “Get out.” I pointed at the door. “Now. And don’t come back.”

  He stared at me with amusement, slowly rearranging himself, buttoning his slacks, removing a cigarette from his pack.

  “Lighten up, Nix. I heard you when you said you were on the pill. I just like to see you getting pissy.”

  “Well, congratulations, you succeeded. You think it’s okay to tell a woman what to do with her body?”

  “Depends on the woman.” He shrugged.

  “Out!” I yelled, louder now.

  He lit his cigarette. Another thing that bothered me. He knew I hated when he smoked. I stomped to the door, flinging it open all the way.

  “Out!”

  “Or what?” He grinned around the cigarette. “You’ll call the police to come and pick me up from your unregistered death clinic, Nix?”

  “Or I will tell my brothers you’ve screwed their baby sister twice now, despite getting … oh, what is it, an extra million just to stay away from me?” I blinked slowly, a sugary smile on my face.

  Sam snorted, moving toward the door with deliberate leisure designed to drive me nuts.

  “Don’t come near me again,” I bit out.

  “That won’t be a problem.”

  And just like that, he was done.

  Leaving me a half-naked mess, smeared in our truths and lies and all the things we couldn’t talk about.

  My heart half-broken but held in his bloodied hands.

  A few days had passed since I screwed Aisling at her death clinic.

  I was sick as a dog and wasn’t showing any signs of improvement.

  My fever was up, I threw up everything I put inside my body, and could barely drag myself from my bed to the door to snatch the DoorDash delivery left there.

  It was the first time I was seriously sick since I was nine. The luxury of being weak and dependable wasn’t something I allowed myself. In fact, I hadn’t taken one sick day from school or work since moving in with the Brennans. I’d always done my best to be worthy of their awe and admiration, a half-man, half-god. Unbreakable and stronger than steel.

  This was why I never let my adoptive parents in. Not fully, anyway. Not into my apartment, my domain, my privacy.

  My corner of the world was mine and mine alone—to lick my wounds, be less than perfect, quiet, uncertain.

  I was content to visit Troy and Sparrow, treat them as family then retreat back to the shadows. The less they knew about me, the better. Living with them while I was a teen had been liking holding my breath underwater. Despite pretending I was going to go about my old ways and give them trouble the day I’d moved in with them, I tried hard not to fuck up.

  I was the smartest, fastest, most ruthless soldier Troy had ever had, gave Sparrow jewelry for Christmas, and protected Sailor fiercely every step of the way.

  And now this happened.

  One and a half fucks with Aisling Fitzpatrick. That was all I needed to throw me off the rails. Rails? I was nowhere near the goddamn fucking train station at this point.

  For a docile thing, she sure knew how to leave a lasting impression. But the raw, impossible sweetness of her called to me like a lighthouse in pitch fucking black.

  Touching her was a mistake. One that had cost me more than I was willing to pay. Four days after I had her, and I still couldn’t look her brothers in the face. I’d neglected all responsibilities toward the Fitzpatricks. Of course, I still showed up at Badlands, found the time to slit a Bratva member’s throat for trying to sneak up on me after a business meeting downtown.

  Things were heating up between the Russians and me, and I’d had to recruit more soldiers. Some of them were retired folks Troy used to work with. I needed to keep Brookline protected—and mine. Now was not the time to play house with the little doctor. Not when she could become a target, too.

  On the fifth day of my feeling like a bag of steaming shit, I admitted defeat. Calling Aisling to provide me medical aid was like Johnnie Depp calling Amber Heard and asking her to be his character witness. It was time to hurl my ass into the nearest hospital and get the medical help I so obviously needed.

  Reluctantly, I took a shower, jammed my feet into a pair of sneakers, and grabbed my keys, on my way to the door. I swung it open.

  Aisling was standing on the other side, brown paper bags full to the brim with groceries in her arms.

  I slammed the door in her face, but she was quick—or maybe I was goddamn slow—and slid her foot between the door and the frame. She let out a yelp, causing me to open the door immediately all the way and curse under my breath.

  “Her name was Ms. Blanchet,” she peeped out.

  I stared at her silently. She needed to elaborate for me to understand what the hell she was talking about. She dropped the groceries, cans and vegetables rolling onto the floor, and hugged her midriff.

  “My governess. Her name was Ms. Blanchet. She died when I was seventeen. On the night I met you, actually, at the carnival. I drove there after I found her. She had cancer. Lung cancer. She battled it for three years. The last few months, she spent in a hospice but then decided she wanted to die at home and not in a strange place around people she didn’t know and meant nothing to her. So she moved back to her apartment in the West End. She was sick, Sam. So very sick. She couldn’t eat, or breathe, or laugh without feeling pain. She started peeing in her bed at night, voluntarily, after she’d woken up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom one time and fell in the hallway, breaking her hipbone.

  “But she was a proud woman and refused to wear a diaper. Something had changed after she broke her hipbone. Whenever I came to visit her—not in the capacity of a student anymore; she couldn’t teach, but I would visit her to provi
de company, seeing as she had no one else in the States—she asked me to help her take her own life.”

  There was a pause. Silence hung in the air. Reluctantly, I grabbed a fistful of her dress and pulled her in, shutting the door behind us. My penthouse was the only apartment on the floor, but I still didn’t want to take any chances of anyone listening to this. We left the groceries outside. Aisling twisted her fingers together, staring at her feet, determined to finish her confession.

  “I said no. Of course, I said no! That was the right thing to say. My whole life I’d dreamed of becoming a doctor so I could help people survive, not kill them. But every time I left her apartment after watching her light dim, I felt guiltier for refusing her. It tore me to shreds. The idea that I was denying her something she wanted so badly. Something she truly desired. Helping her make the pain go away. And I began to wonder … wasn’t it patronizing of me to make the decision of her living in pain?”

  “You were just a kid,” I said tersely, but she and I both knew it was bullshit. Life didn’t care about your age, bank account, or circumstances. Life just happened. I was thirteen when I assumed my role as Troy’s successor. I’d crushed skulls, put bullets in people’s heads, tortured, killed, manipulated, and kidnapped people. Because life happened to me, and to stay alive, I had to adapt.

  “She begged and begged and begged. She was slipping away from me, I could feel it.” Aisling stood there, by my door, tears streaming down her face.

  I made no move to console her. It wasn’t what she needed in that moment, even an emotionally stunted dirtbag like me could see it. She had to get this confession off her chest. “The woman I’d looked up to since I was four, the woman whom my parents had collected from Paris to shape me into a lady—she was witty, sassy, effortlessly elegant and chic, and a heavy smoker,” she said pointedly, eyeing me. “She’d become a shadow of her former self. I didn’t know what to do. Until, finally, Ms. Blanchet made the decision for me. We had a fight. She told me to stop coming. Not to visit her anymore. Said she wouldn’t answer if I visited. That was three days before I met you.”

  Her throat bobbed with a swallow, and she raked her shaky fingers through her hair as she took a ragged breath.

  “I didn’t listen. Maybe I should’ve, but I didn’t. I couldn’t not visit her. So I did. I knocked on the door, rang the bell. No one had answered. I went to a neighbor downstairs that I knew had her spare keys. An older gentleman she used to take tea with before she’d gotten too sick. He gave me the key. I opened her apartment. I found her in the bathtub…” she looked sideways then to the floor, closing her eyes “…she used whatever energy she had left to cut her wrists and bleed out. She was in a river of blood. That’s why she had this fight with me. That’s why she didn’t want me to come anymore. She made up her mind about taking her own life. And she did it in such a painful, lonely way.”

  “Nix,” I said, my voice gravelly. Suddenly, I forgot about being sick. I forgot about existing in general. Her pain took over the room and everything else ceased to exist.

  She shook her head, laughing bitterly.

  “That’s why I was such a mess at the carnival. After I’d found her, I called my parents and 9-1-1. I gave a statement then drove home, put on something slutty, and started driving around until I saw the lights coming from the carnival.”

  The carnival where I snatched her first kiss simply because she was too sweet not to take advantage of.

  Where she saw me taking a life.

  Aisling saw two dead people in less than twelve hours after living a too-sheltered life. It must have been a shock to the system.

  “I saw what you did to that man that night…” her chin quivered “…and something weird happened inside me. I knew you would survive, wouldn’t let the guilt consume you. You looked young and healthy and intelligent. I trusted you slept well at night. Ate well. You were … oddly okay with taking lives.”

  She looked up at me for confirmation, her eyes swimming with tears. I gave her a curt nod.

  “I own up to who I am. I have no trouble eating or sleeping.”

  Except for when I touch you … then I become a pussy-ass dipshit with a fever who can’t keep a damn meal down.

  She nodded.

  “That’s what I thought. But you have to understand, I went to an all-girls Catholic school. Euthanasia goes against every bone in my body.”

  “You still do it,” I challenged. “Why?”

  “Somehow, that night, you made it real. The possibility of taking a life. Even though our situation is vastly different. The only guilt I’ve felt was for not helping Ms. Blanchet when she’d needed me. Because she was too far gone, and I was far too selfish to burden myself with such guilt. I ended up feeling horrible anyway. Much worse than I would have had I helped her. That day changed my life. Our meeting was kismet. You made me realize what I needed to do. What I was put on this earth to do. And then it made me think about the rest of my relationships. The world surrounding me. You wanna know what I learned?” She sniffed.

  I got it. All of it. Why she did what she did. How she had become who she was. A Nix. A gorgeous vision of a woman, hiding an enchanting monster underneath.

  But I didn’t agree with her. She wasn’t put on this earth to kill people.

  “What is that?” I asked softly.

  “The thing I learned is sometimes we do very ugly things for the people we love. I do it for my mother. For my father. Even, sometimes, for myself.”

  I said nothing. I’d never truly loved anyone, so it didn’t seem like I could contribute to that observation. She stepped toward me, the fog of death and mourning around her evaporating.

  “I met Dr. Doyle in my second year of premed. By chance, if you could believe it. That clinic that you’ve seen? He lives in the apartment upstairs. Back then, he rented it to a few students. I was at a house-warming party there and couldn’t figure out why the basement was so firmly locked. There were no less than three locks on that thing. The guy who lived there said Dr. Doyle used it, and people were coming in and out often, but he’d never asked questions because frankly the rent was too cheap to get picky or vocal about it, and he was a med student—he was hardly at home anyway. My curiosity got the better of me, and I decided to get to the bottom of the situation. I’d scheduled a meeting with Dr. Doyle. Visited his office. The real one, in the nice part of town, where he worked as a dermatologist. He had plenty of pictures of his wife, but when I asked about her, he said that she had died two years earlier. She’d had a stroke that had left her with severe disabilities and brain damage. And by damage I mean, she couldn’t even eat or control her bladder. I questioned him about her death. I knew it was insensitive, but I still did it. I just had a feeling …”

  “He killed her,” I said, staring her dead in the eye.

  Nix nodded, walking briskly in the kitchen’s direction, popping cabinets open, taking out a chopping board then walking back to the door to retrieve her groceries.

  “I knew I had to coax it out of him, so I told him about my story with Ms. Blanchet. It wasn’t easy to convince him, but finally, he agreed to take me under his wing. The minute I graduated, I started working with him full-time. Up until then, I’d studied his work. What he did after hours. He is committed to helping those who cannot be helped anywhere else. We’re not bad people, Sam.”

  She collected the carrots, the celery, the chicken thighs, and the broth, chopping the vegetables and meat on the board and tossing them all into a pot for what I assumed was a chicken noodle soup.

  “Euthanasia means good death in Greek. It is about letting life go peacefully, with dignity, on your own terms. But really, it is about ending excruciating suffering. We have some ground rules we abide by, though, Dr. Doyle and I, which is why we have very few patients. What we do is provide a service for the Ms. Blanchets of the world. Medical and prescription relief to people who don’t want to live in a hospice but spend their remaining time in their homes with their loved ones.”
r />   “What are your ground rules?” I asked, propping my forearms on the kitchen island between us, intrigued.

  I’d met many killers in my lifetime, but all of them were like me. Decadent and soulless. Selfish and cruel. They all did it for the bloodthirst. Not for altruistic reasons. Even those who had moral codes broke them often. What Aisling did had nothing to do with what I did for a living.

  “For one thing, without getting into the bioethics of it, we only do voluntarily euthanasia. Which means that if we do not have the full consent of the patient for any reason, even if they are in a coma, we will not take on the patient. For another, we only take on patients at the very end of their lives. I am talking stage four cancer, people who have very few weeks to live. And even then, we don’t pull the plug, so to speak.” She put the pot of soup on the stove, turning up the heat, lost in her explanation. “We don’t perform the act of taking a life. No. We do something that is called palliative sedation. Basically, we keep the patient alive but under deep sedation when the time comes, until they pass away naturally. Such a thing is legal in many countries, including the Netherlands and France. It is not even considered euthanasia. Not really. But for these people—for my patients—it makes a huge difference.”

  “And you only do it in their homes,” I said.

  “Yes.” She put a lid on the chicken soup, tearing open a bag of egg noodles. “We make it possible for them to be surrounded by their friends and family.”

  “Then what do you have the clinic for?”

  “As I said, we try to prolong their lives as much as we can through medication and consultation.”

  “On Thanksgiving …” I trailed off.

  She bounced on her toes, looking sideways.

  “Yes. And on Halloween, too.”

  “Jesus, Ash.” I planted my forehead over the kitchen island, relishing its coolness.

  “You really are my own angel of death.” She sighed. “Every time I do something like this, we have a moment together. But those were the only times I did it. I swear.”