by Charity B.
He flies backward off of the bed before he paces across the floor. “Shit!” He rips off his beanie. “Fuck!”
My stomach drops to my toes. He’s mad at me. He’s all I have, I need him. I can’t let him hate me. I don’t like to be touched like that. It makes me feel filthy, sad, and scared. I just can’t lose him.
As hard as I try, I can’t make the tears completely stop, but they decrease as I pull off my dress.
“I’m sorry! You can fuck me, just please don’t stop being my friend.”
“Oh, God. No, Love. I’m not mad at you!” He bounds up to me and wraps his arms around me. “Do not ever, ever think that.”
I feel the fabric of my dress as he helps me put it back on and kisses my nose. “I only want what you truly want to give me.” He sits and pulls me on his lap. “You need to understand, I’m almost fourteen and I sleep in the same bed with a beautiful girl that I love. It’s getting more difficult to…keep things under control.”
I don’t know what to do. I’ll never want to have sex and least of all with him! Why would I want something so terrible and disgusting between us? Why would he? He’s acting like it’s a good thing!
“Is that what you want? To do all those dirty things to me?”
I feel like my world is falling apart, this is going to ruin the only genuine joy in my life.
He shakes his head. “It’s not supposed to be dirty. He made it that way for you and it isn’t fair. I don’t want to do anything to you Tavin, I only want it with you and if it never happens then that’s okay too.” He kisses me again and it helps me breathe. “This changes absolutely nothing, I promise.” I press my forehead against his and he squeezes me tight. His fingers are playing with my hair when he tells me, “We are so much more than just best friends, we’re bound together by something greater, I can feel it. Our situation is one that we’re going to have to figure out as we go. We have to stick together because I don’t think it’s going to get any easier.”
What he really means is: It can always get worse.
Nine months later—June, 2006
I feel like a freak. If I’m honest with myself, I am scared that I’m becoming just like Logan. No normal person has to work this hard to not get aroused by watching someone you love get beaten and raped.
Right now, he has a belt around her thigh that has a bunch of short needles poking out. When he tightens it, the needles puncture her flesh. It’s absolutely sickening, yet I’m having to fight an erection.
It’s not the actual act that turns me on, it’s what she looks like during it. I have to shut my eyes and remember how much she’s suffering and it hits me like the cold shower I need. Her body has been developing and with our close quarters, I’m going a bit stir crazy. I don’t get a lot of alone time and it must be starting to affect my brain because I think I see her push into him. She would never do that, though. She always pulls away.
The next couple of minutes don’t make sense. I know she hates sex, but right now it doesn’t seem like it. When she cries out, it’s not in pain. My face feels hot, the idea of her liking it turns my stomach to the point I actually might puke.
“Lotus? Did you just…?” Logan breaks into wicked laughter. “Oh, my little whore.” He yanks her head back and her face is completely mortified. “This whole time you wanted it? You put on quite the show.”
He’s ruthless with her, forcing more and more from her. Every time I look at her face, my heart cracks a little more. I can almost feel the hate she’s feeling toward herself. I don’t exactly understand how all this works, I just know I can’t always control my body.
Matters become worse when he discovers that pain is a necessary factor. He screams at her how sick she is.
That’s rich, coming from him.
He finally finishes and as he goes into the bathroom, she doesn’t move or look at me. She just keeps staring at the ceiling. I sit next to her and hold her hand.
“Hey, are you okay?” She still won’t look at me or respond, so I hold her chin and turn her head. “Talk to me.”
The tears fall from her eyes and when they do meet mine, they’re desolate. “I didn’t want him to stop.”
As soon as she says the words, she falls apart. I haven’t seen her cry hard like this in…I don’t know how long. I pull her into my lap and kiss her shoulder. I don’t know what to say to her, so I just hold her and let her cry. We don’t have much time, he’ll be out soon and I don’t want him to see her like this.
“Come on, Love, I need you to calm down until he leaves.” Her whole body shakes, and when I look down, she’s pulling off the skin from below her fingernails. “Oh, Goddamn it.” I hate that she hurts herself, she’s suffered enough at the hands of others, me included. I sigh as I hug her tight. “I know you’re thinking bad thoughts, Tavin. Please don’t, it hurts me to see you like this.”
“I didn’t want him to stop.” She whispers those words again, with a darkness that’s chilling with the rasp in her voice.
“Come on, we need to kneel.” I hold her hand until Logan opens the bathroom door.
The fact that he’s pretty proud of himself is apparent. Considering his preference is in torturing children, I’m sure this is somewhat of a rare occurrence.
In fact, when I think about Morgan, she never once seemed turned on or aroused and neither has Nikki. I don’t know what changed and even if I did, I don’t know if I would understand it. I never got to take sex education in school and my father never got around to ‘the talk’. Besides porn magazines, everything I know, I’ve learned from Logan.
He stands in front of her and brushes his fingers across her face. “I would do just about anything to cancel my engagement and spend the night here with you. Now that I know what you can do, I will not ever finish a playdate without making you come at least once.”
She inhales and he laughs as he adjusts himself. When he lifts the duffel, he takes out two long sheets of paper lined in colorful candy buttons, and hands them to us. “Do you want me to fix you up now or are you wanting to go with Toben?”
As much as I want to go with her, she seems like she needs it ASAP. Still, when her almost inaudible voice scrapes out, “I’ll wait, Logan.” I feel relief.
He glares down at her before he places everything we need on the nightstand.
“Good night, my playthings.”
“Good night, Logan.”
He stares down at Tavin once more before he leaves up the stairs. I raise myself off the floor as soon as I hear the click. Tears are streaming down her face when I kneel in front of her and pull her against my chest.
“Do you want to take a shower with me? We’ll clean off this blood, I’ll wash your hair, and then we can make all of this better, okay?”
“Okay.” It’s barely a whisper.
I place our candy on the nightstand and hold her hand as I lead her into the bathroom. Starting the shower, I tell her, “Come on, the warm water will help.”
I take her hand and pull her into the shower. I wash her hair and hug her tight while the red swirls down the drain.
“Can you turn the heat up?” She asks.
I nod as the water runs down my face. “Just tell me when.” I keep turning the knob until it’s too intense for me to stand. “Shit, that’s hot!”
“This is fine.”
She speaks only as loud as she needs to be heard and her body is tense. I turn her so the water can spray her back.
I can’t believe I am going to tell her this.
“I’ve gotten myself off before, and there’s a certain point that I wouldn’t be able to stop it if I wanted to. Maybe it’s the same for girls. I don’t think you could help it.”
Maybe that wasn’t the right thing to say. I’m sure she’s crying even if it is difficult to tell with the water. She rarely shuts me out and I loathe it. She can tell me anything and she knows it, so why the hell doesn’t she?
I kiss her shoulder and up her neck. “Come on, Love. Let’s escape th
is place.”
She nods. “Get everything ready, I’ll be out in a minute. I just want to turn the water up a little more.” I press my lips to her temple and climb out. As I go to shut the curtain, her eyes shine up at me through wet bangs.
“I love you more than anything, Toben.”
I smile and gaze into her, needing her to feel my sincerity.
“I love you more than anything, too.”
After I’m dry, I throw on my beanie and some sweat pants before getting it all laid out and ready to cook. I hate how much I adore the Slayer album Logan got me. It’s still my favorite and I swear it was written with me in mind. I’ve listened to a couple of songs already and I’m beyond ready to get high.
What’s taking her so long?
I walk back to the bathroom and swing open the door. She’s out of the shower, leaning over the vanity. Coming up behind her, I see it in the mirror before I actually see it in person.
Her left arm is sliced open from wrist to elbow.
“WHAT THE FUCK, TAV?!”
I know I’m screaming at her, but I’m not mad-I’m horrified. The razor Logan bought her because he ‘hates hair’, is in pieces on the counter. She’s removed the blades, using them to cut a deep diagonal line all the way across the inside of her forearm.
There’s no way she’s leaving me in this shit-life alone.
I grab the blade, cutting as deep as I can, I slice up my arm diagonally. Just like she did. Wrist to elbow on my left forearm.
“What are you doing?!” She cries at me.
I take her hand and lace my fingers with hers, pressing our wounds together to mix our blood.
“When you cry, I cry, if you die, I die, when you bleed, I bleed. You think you’re just going to check out? Well, I’m fucking coming with you.” I squeeze her hand. “There, now our blood is inside each other. We’re the same. Alone, we’re just half people, but together…together we’re whole.”
Even with her tears falling, her glow is starting to shine again. I wrap my arms around her as we bleed all over the bathroom floor and wait to die.
It doesn’t take long to see death isn’t coming. We’re losing blood and our arms are sliced up terribly, but we’re not dying.
Well, shit. I’m going to have to call Logan and he will not be pleased by this. It seems odd that he would care when he’ll probably end up having our bodies dumped in the ocean somewhere. Still, I think I know him pretty well and he has nine months left with us. He’ll be enraged that we tried to take that away from him. We are his to kill, and his alone.
I nudge her awake and help her up. “Let’s go lie in the bed and I’ll call Logan.”
She spins around on me and her head tics. “No!”
“Tavin, these are really deep, we need stitches.”
She obviously wants to keep arguing, I just think she’s too tired because she climbs in bed and pulls the cover over herself.
We’ve never used the cell before and my hands are shaking as I press the call button. A number lights up across the screen and when it connects, I realize I haven’t heard the sound in over four years. It seems to go on forever and I swear my heart pounds a little harder with each ring.
“This better be an emergency,” Logan snaps.
“We cut our wrists and I think we need stitches.” I’m proud of how I keep up the persona of not being scared shitless.
He doesn’t respond for so long that I pull the phone away to make sure we’re still connected. When he does speak, it is in the slow manner that at times is far scarier than when he screams.
“That was not an intelligent move, Plaything. I’m on my way.”
When he disconnects I groan, “Yeah, he’s pissed.”
Vile, nasty, little slut. You have always wanted it.
Toben climbs into bed with me as we wait for Logan. As he looks into my eyes, I realize I’m not only a gross freak, I’m selfish, too. I can’t even kill myself right, and even if I would have succeeded, he would have either been left here alone or died with me. How could I have done that to him? I want to believe with me gone, Logan would just let him go, but what if he wouldn’t have?
I’m a whore just like Lacie, as if it were always inevitable. I’m his whore. When he made my body burst, it felt like a muted heroin rush, and in that moment, I wanted him to continue in his horrid perversions. What kind of sick person would like that? As soon as it was over, I felt grimier and dirtier than ever before. Considering who I am, that is definitely saying something. He told me that he would make it happen again, over and over. I don’t want to live that way. Even though I’m constantly feeling conflicted about Logan, I’ve always hated our playtime. I don’t understand what changed, how I could ever think it felt good.
What if he is right? What if I have always wanted it? If that’s true, then I am as sick as he is. I can’t escape this through death, because I would be killing Toben as well. All I want to do is cut it all out so there isn’t anything for him to play with.
All I know is I don’t want to feel like this anymore.
“Shoot me up.”
Toben sighs as he rubs his thumb over my cheek and kisses me, lingering on my lips. “Logan’s already furious, if he gets here and we’re high it will be worse.”
He’s right. We’re going to get it because he has to come back and he already told us he has plans tonight. I want to scream and pull out my hair. I want to shred my skin so that it’s in little pieces all over the floor.
I want to die.
“We can smoke some weed, though.”
I nod at him, even though I need something much stronger than just a joint. He rolls and lights it in two minutes flat. He pulls me on to his lap as our bloodied hands pass it back and forth. My fingers leave bloody fingerprints on the paper from when I cut myself taking apart my razor. I’m starting to get dizzy and queasy so I lean into his chest, the only safe place.
The basement door unlocks and we get to our knees as quickly as we can. Toben still has the joint in his mouth and keeps puffing on it even with his hands behind his head. While there are two sets of shoes coming down the stairs, I only look at Logan. He walks up to me, crouches, and grabs my wrist to turn my arm over. He looks at the gash and his nostrils flare before he throws my arm back to my thigh. Storming over to Toben, he rips the joint out of his mouth to put it in his own. I shift my line of vision to the other man in the room. He looks to be about Logan’s age though he’s much shorter and wider. The eyes behind his glasses are looking everywhere other than me, as he approaches.
“Get up,” Logan barks.
I glance at him to make sure it was me he was talking to and he’s glaring at me like he is going to kill me. I hope he does.
I follow the man to the table by the fridge and sit in the chair. He puts on gloves and takes out the same thing Logan used on me the first night. It didn’t hurt, it was just cold and I don’t like it. He puts the ends in his ears before he runs his hand down the long chord connected to the round metal piece. He reaches for me and I don’t want him to touch me. I pull away, making him huff.
“Lotus! Sit still and let the doctor work.”
I hate how my body obeys him before my mind even thinks about it. I stay still as the man presses the metal against my chest. He holds up my arm.
“What did you use?” He still doesn’t look at me as he asks his question, and his voice is neither kind nor cruel.
“A blade from my razor.”
The Doctor turns to Logan. “Has she had her tetanus shot?”
Logan gives him the same look he gives me when I do something stupid. “What the hell do you think?”
The Doctor nods. “I’ll give her one, and I’m going to need to stitch this up.”
“Just make it fast.” Logan lights a cigarette before he hits Toben across the back of the head. “I cannot believe you let this happen.”
It stings when the Doctor pours liquid onto the cut and cleans up the blood. I think the stinging feels nice. When he
puts the little needle into my skin and pulls the string through, it makes my body hum with the sharpness and I let out a sigh. His eyes flip up to mine for just a moment before he quickly returns to sewing.
When it’s apparent he is finished, Logan snaps his fingers and points to the floor. “Kneel.” He narrows his eyes at Toben and jerks his head toward the direction of the Doctor. “Go.” When Toben sits at the table, Logan takes a drag and with the smoke still in his mouth he says, “This one is more up to date.”
Once the Doctor starts sewing his arm, Toben smirks. “So, you’re ‘the Doctor’ huh?” He cocks his head to the side. “Wouldn’t this be easier with your sonic screwdriver?”
“Toben! Enough with the fucking Doctor Who jokes,” Logan snaps as he takes a drag from his cigarette.
Toben slumps back in the chair until the Doctor finishes, then he quietly gets up to resume his kneel position.
As the Doctor packs up his things, he pulls out an orange bottle and hands it to Logan. “These Percocet should help with their discomfort.”
Logan pockets them. “Use your head. Why would I want them to have pain meds?” His golden eyes burn a hole into me when he growls, “They deserve every ounce of pain they get and I want to be sure they feel it.”
Reaching into his wallet, he hands the Doctor a stack of cash. The Doctor turns and with pounding feet up the stairs, he’s on his way.
Now it is just us…with a furious Logan.
“Tell. Me. What. Happened.” His wrath is about to burst from the seams. His control is stretched to capacity.
Toben speaks before I can. “She hates herself because of what you do to her. She doesn’t want to suffer anymore, feel the way you make her feel. You’ve messed her up so bad she wants to die. She couldn’t remember which way she was supposed to cut so she went diagonal.” He’s speaking calmly and with respect, but Logan is seething. “I did it because I live only for her. If she goes, so do I.”
I adore Toben and the way he talks.
My eyes shift to Logan and he is mid stride toward me. He reaches down to pull at my arm, yanking me to my feet.