by Trisha Wolfe
I bite down on his shoulder. The pain urges him on, the way the burn of the rock against my flesh steers me closer to that maddening edge.
He cups the back of my head, holding me tight to him. “I never want to stop.” His words race with his erratic movements. Every pulsing, painful lunge deeper teeters us both closer to the precipice.
“Don’t ever stop,” I hear myself say.
“Ah…fuck. I want all of you.”
The confession digs beneath my Teflon layer—all the pain and bliss and elation sets something fierce and uncontrollable free.
Alex hooks an arm beneath my knee, spreading my thighs wide so he can get even closer. He fucks me hard. He fucks me with wild, insatiable abandon that destroys the last of my sanity and control.
And when I feel the building pressure, I push back against him to alleviate the achy need tearing through me.
“Fuck, Blakely… I love you.”
His words spear me, and the burn blazes through my body like a brushfire. I squeeze my eyes closed as I try to hold back the dam, only the hot sting of tears threaten, and the release gives over to something volatile and explosive as it rips through my chest.
“Oh, god…it’s too much—”
“Let go.”
A war rages between us. My fight to restrain; his struggle to make me release. Soon the clash unfurls a light from the darkest corner—and I can’t fight anymore. I’ve lost.
“Don’t let go,” I say, clinging to him harder.
“Never.”
Emotion claws at my breastplate like a caged animal trying to tear free of its prison. My heart constricts, and finally the tears fall. They streak my temples, hot and quick, like a match setting a trail of oil ablaze.
Alex braces a hand to my neck, thumb pressed to my pulse, and seals us together with a severe kiss. I’m dragged down by the undertow. All fight gives over as a surge of emotion rushes to the surface.
Sex doesn’t feel this way. Something is wrong—something is very, very wrong with me, and it webs inside, sticking to my insides like tar.
I push past the fear and fall further into Alex and the kiss. The place safe enough for me to release.
My walls clamp around Alex, and as the orgasm fires through me, a feeling so overwhelming it defies words sweeps through, decimating me.
I sense the moment Alex breaks; his body hard and tensing, his cock pulsing against my walls as he groans, and as I straddle the wave with him, I feel the chill bumps rise along his skin.
Alex collapses on top of me, and the full weight of his body on top of mine is an unexpected comfort. His breaths are heavy and uneven. I listen to him breathe as the last shockwaves pulse and ebb throughout my body.
I’m relieved that he takes his time recovering, because the tear tracks still stain my face, and I’m terrified about what he’ll see in my eyes. I’m terrified to look at myself—fearing the reflection of the emotions that ripped me apart and the wreckage they left behind.
As the tide recedes, it takes with it the unwanted feelings, and exhaustion claims my body.
Alex lifts up onto his elbows and stares down. He uses his thumb to wipe the tears away. I turn my head, preferring the cold, unforgiving rock to his probing gaze.
“Don’t hide,” he says, and my immediate reaction is to do just that.
He rests his hand on my chest, right above my heart. And with a frantic start, I realize what he feels. My heartbeat is racing. My pulse thumps so hard I can feel the beat of it against his palm.
Dread over what that means barrels through me, and I move away from his touch. “Let me go.”
With languid movements, Alex does as I ask, slowly sitting up to brace his forearms on his knees. “It’s okay to feel what you’re feeling, Blakely. It’s normal.”
I run my hands through my hair. “I just need…quiet.”
“You’re overstimulated. Just relax.” He eases behind me, placing me between his legs.
My skin is raw. His touch abrasive against my nerves. I try to fight out of his hold, but he wraps his arms around me, tucking me securely to him.
“Trust me,” Alex says. Then he slips his hand between my thighs.
It’s almost painful as he touches the pads of his fingers to my clit, but soon the pain transitions to that ravenous, lusty need that I can sense in my lower back. Alex wraps his free hand around the length of my hair and holds it aloft, his mouth landing on the sensitive juncture between my neck and shoulder.
It happens fast. The orgasm takes hold, my sex clenching as he circles his fingers over my clit.
My chest tightens, my head goes light, and euphoric little pulses of sensation flutter through my body.
I fall back against his chest, unable to fight the crash of my body. The calming effect is instant. La petite mort. The little death. Some part of me died with Alex, and I don’t know how to mourn…or if I should.
How can something so tragic be so beautiful?
Alex places a tender kiss below my earlobe. “Overactive nervous system,” he says, as way of explanation. “Your brain is trying to sort every new sensation. It needed more pleasure points to map out.”
His arms shield me as the water tumbles down the rock face around us. My breathing slows and evens out, my body acclimates to the tranquil water.
I despise every word that leaves his mouth—and yet, he’s the expert. Even when it comes to sex, Alex is in control of the sensations I feel. I tense with that realization and a restlessness takes hold. All serenity shattered.
I push forward and scramble away from the comforting heat of his body.
I lied to Alex. I lied and I felt nothing. I told him his treatment worked. I told him I had these feelings…and I felt nothing about the lie—a lie that was supposed to save my life.
Now, that same lie is tormenting me, because I made it true.
I felt every connected second with Alex.
“I’m cracked,” I say to myself. Alex broke my brain back in his crude lab, and none of this is real. “I have to get the hell out of here.”
Everything that just transpired between us is all in my very fucked-up head. Wires are crossed. Neurons are misfiring. And it will all end as soon as I’m free of this place and Alex. Whatever visceral disease has infected me, I have to stop it from spreading.
I flee Alex’s arms and dive into the river.
20
Entropy
Alex
There’s a scientific word for the physical and conceptual state of chaos. By definition, entropy is the measurable state of disorder, unpredictability, or uncertainty.
In a closed system, entropy can only increase, therefore the process is irreversible.
You can never return to the state at which you started.
Blakely and I are inside an isolated system of our making. The cascade of the waterfall. The current of the river. The isolation of the cliffs. The forest and night that surrounds, cocooning us in a sheltered haven.
And yet, the uncertainty is in a state of increase.
The moment Blakely dives into the river, all sure and measurable knowledge of what I know about her, about us, becomes corrupt. Fear is the result of uncertainty, and my fear of the unknown escalates as I jump in after her.
I splash to the surface near her. “What are you doing?”
She wades through the dark water, searching and collecting her clothes. “I’m cold.”
“Wet clothes won’t remedy that.” I reach out for her, but she avoids my touch.
Pain lances sharply, a knife plunged right through my chest wall. She won’t stop moving, searching, running her hands through her tangled, wet hair.
“Blakely, stop.” I try to gain her full attention. “You’re acting erratic.”
She shrugs her shirt on over her head, fighting the soaked material down her body. If she’s trying to hide herself from me, she’s failing, because I can see every beautiful curve of her body, the contour of her breasts, her pebbled nipples.
&nb
sp; I look her over, remembering the feel of being inside her, the connection. “You could roll around in mud and you’d still be the sexiest woman I’ve ever laid eyes on.”
Her breaths are labored, chest heaving as if she’s just swam the length of the river. Her eyes flare and take aim on me like lethal weapons. “And you’re sick. The most sadistic creature I’ve ever laid eyes on.”
I wipe the water from my face. “Erratic and irrational,” I say, reasoning the lingering side effects. “Your neural pathways are new, like a muscle that needs to be conditioned. We need to take this slow—”
Her mocking laugh clips short. “I think taking it slow failed majorly the moment you sank your cock in me.” She shoves at the water, as if trying to push me farther away. Then, with a resolute expression, she goes still. “Logic won’t explain this, Alex. This is just…fucked up.”
Insult lashes at my pride to wound deep. “You regret it…us. Guilt. It’s what you’re feeling. Still, very natural.”
She claws at her hair, an act of desperation to make whatever is assailing her stop. I did this to her, and if I wasn’t so excited about what it means, I might share some of her shame. But she’s beautiful in her tortured state, feeling emotions she’s never experienced before.
“Guilt doesn’t quantify this, Alex. Disgust. Pure, deplorable revulsion…that’s closer. I fucked my abductor, the guy who tortures me. Like some Stockholm victim.”
“I’m not… That’s not who I am, Blakely. I’m your salvation, if you could just imagine the potential—”
“You’re not a god, Alex!”
My head notches back, her words a smack to my ego.
“You’re not a god,” she says again, her voice more reserved. “And I’m not your goddess. This has to end.”
“You’re right. I’m no god, I’m barely a scientist anymore. I set my whole life’s work aflame the moment I craved your lips.” I stride toward her through the water. “But you’re everything now. The result, the antidote. You’re my salvation, Blakely. I’m…obsessed with you.”
“You’re obsessed with the idea of me,” she fires back.
“We’re all just ideas. Concepts. That doesn’t mean my need for you is any less real. You make me weak, I admit that. I lose all purpose around you. I’m just a man with this insatiable need inside him that will never be sated. All I want is you.”
Her eyes meet mine with steel malice. “You’re deranged. You want me now—now that you think I can have real feelings for you? How sick is that?”
“Oh, you have no idea. You are my sickness, Blakely, and there’s no cure.” I tentatively reach for her, and she allows me to touch her cheek. “I wanted you before you were capable of loathing me.”
Her eyes close briefly as she drags in a breath to fill her lungs. When she opens her eyes, letting me glimpse the green that has tortured me, she spits in my face.
“I wish I could loathe you,” she says, “but that would require an emotional depth I’m not capable of.”
I wipe my face, never taking my gaze off her. Her words implode the air around us, like a sonic boom detonating the moment she releases them. I hate the way the water beads down her lips, so inviting, her mouth the apex of my desire and pain.
“You’re confused,” I say. “Sensory overload. I’ll run tests. I’ll fix it…”
“God, Alex. There’s nothing to fix. I’m the same unfeeling psychopath that I’ve always been, and I thought I could do this, but I just can’t. I’d rather you kill me than try to fake caring for you. It’s pathetic. And humiliating, honestly. So strap me to your torture device. Turn the dial all the way up. Do it now, and let’s end this twisted charade.”
“You’re lying.” She’s lying.
“Am I?” She levels me with unguarded eyes, her stare unflinching. “You said you were willing to risk my hating you in the end…but what about indifference?”
My hands curl into fists beneath the water. I glance over at the fall, to the cliff where we just made love, where I felt her shatter beneath me…
I seal my eyes closed as her admission pangs through my skull. Truth is a blister scraped raw. I was so eager to believe I had cured Blakely—that I had achieved the impossible—I let her manipulate me.
And I relished every indulgent moment.
“Tell me you didn’t feel anything,” I say, my voice raw. “Tell me that what happened back there, between us…that it was all just fiction. That you didn’t feel one ounce of empathy—”
“I felt nothing,” she says. Her eyes are bottomless, dead pools that chill me. “I feel absolutely nothing for you.”
“You deceived me.”
“You deceived yourself.” Blakely looks around the river. There’s nowhere to go. Nowhere to go for the both of us.
She’s right, of course. I knew who what she was, what she’s capable of, and I allowed her betrayal to become my truth. I wanted it to be, so desperately, I was willing to sacrifice years of research and work…everything…for just the chance to have her.
Lust. Greed. Covet—I’ve committed every deadly sin in the pursuit to own her, and I deserve my damnation.
Blakely has given up on her search. She wades to the shallow riverbank in only her shirt and panties. As she reaches the rocky beach, she says over her shoulder, “You don’t love me, Alex.”
“You can’t possibly know that.”
“I can, because I saw it in your eyes. When you strapped me to the gurney. When you tortured me. You’re this vile thing that can only feel when you inflict pain.” She faces me. “You once told me you took no enjoyment out of others’ suffering. You couldn’t be more wrong. You’re designed like me. And all this—” she opens her arms wide “—everything you’ve done. It’s not to rid the world of psychopaths. It’s not to avenge your sister’s ruined reputation. You did it to convince yourself that you’re not the monster.”
Chaos increases, driving up uncertainty. Loss of control over the system escalates fear. And fear triggers anger.
I can feel her figuratively slipping through my fingers. The hope for a cure. The need for her to belong with me. All destroyed.
I can’t do this again. I cannot start over. Not with another subject. Not to reach another disappointing failure.
I stalk toward her, sloshing water as my feet find determined purchase on the riverbed. “The only monster here is you,” I say, taking hold of her arms. “You’re a flawed design, wrong from birth. You corrupt everything and everyone around you. There’s only one solution.”
I throw her over my shoulder.
Blakely’s nails scratch at my back as she fights to be set free. I wrap my arm around her thighs, preventing her kicks. She beats her fists against me, and I feel no physical pain. Once we’re in the basement, I climb the staircase and unlock the cabin door, then toss her down in the corner of the black room.
“Alex…please.” She pleads my name, but the anguish I detect in her tone is false. I can turn off my receptors now. I can do what needs to be done.
“Fuck you, Alex.”
“There’s the real Blakely,” I say.
She wipes her damp hair from her face, staring up at me with a fierceness I wish she felt. “You will suffer. If not by me, your punishment will come one day, Alex Chambers.”
“Oh, Blakely. To love such an unfeeling thing. I assure you, that is my punishment.”
I close the door and turn the lock.
21
Metamorphosis
Alex
As Blakely observed, the waterfall is beautiful. Though not without its flaws, it’s the faults, the original features, that are unlike any other fall in the world which makes it the breathtaking structure that it is.
A monument carved from the elements and time.
And now it might as well be a shrine. Some hallowed place of worship where her memory will haunt. Every time I return here, I’ll see her face, those jaded green eyes. I’ll remember her soft skin and what it felt like to sink deeply inside her
and lose all sense of the world.
Blakely speaks of torture—but there is no greater torture than to experience a blissful taste, only to have the pleasure snatched away. It’s better to yearn for a moment unfulfilled than to know exactly what you can never have.
Her memory will weaken over time, becoming tarnished and faded around the edges. As humans, we’re not intended to recall every detail of our past in perfect clarity. We require the ability to forget. It helps the mind accept and move on.
The morning sun crests above the treetops, shining a brilliant ray of clarity over Devil’s Peak, making the night before seem like a distant dream. Sleep deprivation might also be giving way to less lucid thoughts.
At least, that’s the theory I’ve developed as I palm the glass vial in my pocket. The tube has three compartments separated by a thin wall of glass. In each compartment: Potassium chlorate, glycerin, and water.
I remove my hand from my pocket, acutely aware of the vial as I drop the threadbare sack to the ground.
Acceptance is a form of defeat. Once you abandon the pursuit to obtain your greatness, you quickly begin to whither.
I can hear my cells decaying. Membranes dissolving. Molecules splitting and devouring the necrotic matter. The stronger cells leech off the weak as they deteriorate.
Self-destruct.
This is what she wrote in the journal—that I would destroy myself. An insightful prediction, seeing as I’m teetering on the verge of just that.
It’s all their memories. The voices inside my head. Every failed subject that became a part of this place, a part of me. As long as I was chasing the obsession, there was no time to remember their faces. They were subjects—not names.
Creating a cure would save me from them, would justify their deaths. Without the cure, with only a failed experiment, their deaths are meaningless.
I dig my hands into the earth near the river. My fingers claw at the sediment, a rich soil that shouldn’t exist in this environment.