by Kingsley Ash
I don’t sleep a wink. I’m too busy checking the lock on my heart, a thousand and one times.
30
YOU
I’ve been dragging my feet from one day to another. The memories of my torn family are bad. This means my checking is bad.
Echoes of a cackling girl in Shepherd’s room last weekend has made them much, much worse. Not that I’ll ever admit that to him.
I wish I could start doing something constructive. I don’t want to be broken anymore.
Sometimes I lie there waiting to hear Shepherd’s boots on the stairs outside. I’m safer when I hear him go past. I know for sure the door will be locked downstairs. Then I can go to sleep. Sometimes it’s been three in the morning.
After I finish my evening walk by the lake, circling it twice, I head back to meet the girls in the recreational room. On the way, I get a text from Shepherd.
Where’re you? Knocked, you didn’t answer. Come to mine NOW, S
I think the word Please isn’t in his vocabulary.
I woke up this morning not feeling very well. My throat is still dry, my neck sore, my whole body hot and aching.
I hate him and I miss him.
Him and his darkness.
I weigh it against how I feel. I’m already sick. Already sore, already miserable. The fever at least makes the world hazy, makes me feel reckless. Blunts everything.
I look up at the front of the estate, all the way up to the top floor. All his windows are in darkness. The floor below, just the lights from my room shining dimly through to the front. His windows look much more dangerous than mine.
I send a reply.
Give me half an hour? A
I only have thirty minutes to do all the checking. I can’t rush it. I need do it properly first time. No mistakes. Everything six times, get the pattern right.
I go up the stairs half an hour after I sent Shepherd the text. I’ve not even managed to take my coat off.
It’s only when he opens his door I realise how much I need him. Every day. Like popping a prescription pill.
Stop staring, Amy. It just makes your neediness seem more pathetic.
‘Amy,’ he says, grimacing. ‘Where you been?’
I step into his hot, dark room, feeling him close and smelling something strange but familiar. He smells like baby powder and whiskey.
He’s nothing but trouble. He acts like a jerk, most of the time. He can even be very cruel. But I see the same broken in his eyes I see every day in the mirror. And I can’t help but be drawn to him because of it.
We’re in his small kitchen space. He takes my coat and hangs it on a hook on the back of the door, over his leather jacket. He looks smarter today. Dark-grey designer trousers, a black collared shirt, sleeves rolled up to his elbows. I can see the veins through his skin like a labyrinth inside him. A map to his soul.
‘You look pale, Amy. You don’t eat enough.’
He pulls out one of the chairs for me to sit on.
I shrug. ‘That’s not true.’ It is. ‘Maybe I didn’t eat enough today, or I’m just tired, or something.’
‘You’re lying. You’re staying for supper, then.’
‘No – I mean – I wasn’t hinting or anything —’
‘You’re staying for supper. It’s not a request.’
I wait for him while he goes downstairs into the main kitchen. He brings up two steaming bowls of soup and puts them on the table. He sits opposite me and looks me in the eye.
‘Eat it.’
‘Thank you, for this.’
‘It’s just chicken soup.’
He’s still holding that eye contact with me, expectantly, as though he’s waiting for me to say something or do something that will roll things forward somehow.
He’s going to stare at me until I say something to break the silence. I don’t want to say anything. I just want to look. To have a reason to look. To keep looking.
A hot flush creeps into my cheeks, so I look down and start on my soup. It tastes incredible. I feel warm from the inside, and the more I eat, the more I’m aware of how hungry I had been.
He watches me use the last of my bread to collect the final bit of soup from the bottom of the bowl. Then says, ‘When’s the last time you ate?’
‘I can’t remember. I doubt it was that long ago.’
‘I’ll get some more.’
My eyes wander over to his bedroom door. My mind swirls nightmarish images of him and her in there . . . Suddenly, I feel panic scrape at my chest.
I am in a lot of pain. I just wish my heart would slip into a coma.
‘No, really, it’s fine. Thank you,’ I say, not looking at him.
I stand. The chair scrapes against the grain of the wooden floor, scratches inside my ears.
‘Thanks for the soup. I’ve got to go. You know how it is, I’ve got important things I need to be getting on with.’ I twirl my back to him, and feel a little bit like the walls are getting narrower.
‘Wait, Amy. I didn’t say I was done,’ he rasps.
‘What is it, Shepherd? I did what you said — I’ve eaten.’
‘Why did you chuck the information I sent you in the bin?’ The heat of his anger is nauseating, makes my stomach and head throb sickeningly. ‘Be honest. I know when you’re lying. You’ve got a tell.’
He gets up and looms over me. It feels like he’s put a weight on me, and I crumble, sinking deeper and deeper until the light goes out.
‘Amy. Don’t make me ask you twice.’
‘I heard you with that girl . . . ’
‘Amy. Look at me. Listen. I was off my head. I was a fucking arsehole, alright — but nothing happened that night. Didn’t touch a hair on her damn head. She means nothing to me. I kicked her out, didn’t you hear that part?’
My blood feels like glue, nothing flows inside.
‘I should be flattered?’ I want to hurt him, like he hurt me.
‘Don’t you fucking get it?’ he shouts like a tempest. ‘It doesn’t bother you?’
I check the lock on my heart again, check if it’s still safe. Then I pretend with icicle eyes that it doesn’t even exist.
‘No,’ I lie.
‘Fine, Amy. I told you to come here tonight because I’m not seeing any effort on your behalf to kill this circus of an OCD.’
I feel my blood simmer. ‘I don’t do these things for fun. For no good reason. Checking, I mean. It helps me to feel safe. If I didn’t check, how would I know I was safe?’
‘It’s better if you could just check once and be sure you’re safe.’
‘Of course. Don’t you think I wish I didn’t have to?’
‘You know yourself there’s no logical reason why you need to check things more than once. You complete these safety behaviours because of the way you feel, not because something has physically changed to make things unsafe.’
‘I somehow doubt therapy is going to fix that.’
I feel his look like the burning sun. I keep my eyes straight ahead. Over the horizon. Where I dream to be.
‘Worth a try. Isn’t it?’ He rubs the back of his neck and his eyes are hard and blank. ‘I know this is hard for you.’
That does it. I’m angry. I feel agitated, my nerves twanging like an elastic band that has been stretched too thin. I spin to face him.
‘No, Shepherd, you don’t know at all. You have no idea. You think you know everything just because you peer into people’s minds every day. Well, you know nothing at all about what’s going on in mine.’
I spin around to escape. Shepherd has other plans. He grabs my wrist and swirls me back to him.
Puppet Master and his puppet.
‘Where are you going?’
‘My room.’
‘Fine, Amy. You wanna tell Daisy and Max to leave or should I?’
‘What?’
‘I’m not seeing any progress. I’ve been patient, but you’ve given me no other choice. You won’t let me help you. Okay. Go help Daisy pack her bags co
nsidering it’s your fault she’ll be out in the cold.’ His voice is venomous, like a snake ready to bite.
‘You’re a bastard,’ I say, and it isn’t the fever that makes me feel shaky. It leaves my mouth dry and my brain empty.
I feel him approach, how his skin crackles with electricity as he closes the space between us.
‘That's already been established. What else you got? Trash baby?’
Trash Baby is the cruel nickname the other children at school gave Shepherd. I always hated it. Now he is using it against me, I hate it even more.
‘You're a psychopath. Or a sociopath. I can't remember the difference. Maybe you're both.’
‘A sociopath you slept with.’
‘No, I’m wrong. You're a monster.’
‘A monster who likes to eat up little girls? A monster coming out of the dark after five years? You're not even grateful that I’ve been trying to help you, are you?’
Of course, he’s angry. But opening up will only open that box of horrors, lurking under my bed. I can’t do it. Because there are monsters waiting on the other side, monsters I’ve forgotten about, waiting to rip me to shreds.
‘I . . . ’
I break off, remembering Elizabeth. I remember her face when her skull was cracked open and she was bleeding to death on the cold, hard ground. I feel a thin line of pain slice up my spine, and all I want is for Shepherd to hold me.
Make the pain go away . . .
‘Which monster do you like best?’ he says. His voice has dropped to a husky tone. It’s a dark sign for things to come. ‘Hungry toothy monsters? Or me? It's always one or the other.’
‘Why? Why is it always one monster or another? Why can’t I be left alone?’
‘Because that's just how life is. That's what fate has in store for us. Think about it, how monsters have been dogging us every step of the way. Who's your favourite monster?’
He brushes his hand over my arm, scorching me through my white dress.
There’s only one answer.
‘You are,’ I murmur.
He’s better than some monsters. If someone is always going to hurt me, better it’s him.
He breathes into my ear and whispers, ‘You don't know what a monster is.’
I freeze completely under his searching eyes. I can’t meet those full red lips of his, can’t let myself feel or that dam will break and I’ll be bereft in an ocean of sorrow I don’t think I can hold back any longer.
‘Please,’ I beg in a tiny voice, struggling to sound calm.
He wants me to do something reckless. I take a step back, farther into his room, into his room of darkness. But he follows. Trails me. Still breathing on me with breath so hot, it makes my fever insignificant.
‘You’re gorgeous when you beg. Please what?’
My chest bubbles with tears. ‘Please don’t let me be the reason for somebody else to get hurt . . . I don’t want anyone else to suffer because of me.’
‘What’s going on with you, Amy? You didn’t want to go to your mother’s funeral and you ignore your sister’s letters. Hell, you point-blank refuse to mention your father. What’s got you so scared that you don’t want to leave this place?’
His voice is softer, but still holds a trace of something dark. I’m being pushed into the darkest corner.
I can’t confide in him, even though I desperately want to. Keeping quiet is the only way to stay safe.
Elizabeth is brain damaged because you didn’t keep quiet, and never forget it.
‘Nothing. It was a mistake coming here tonight. You coming back is like a giant wrecking ball to my world and I should never have let you back in.’ I try to suck in oxygen, my breaths heavy and fast.
The look on his face is terrible. Wild-eyed, lacking that unattainable thing. It’s the way he always looks when I’m the Ice Princess. It’s the way he always looks just before he kisses me.
And he does. He kisses me like he’s drinking water in the desert. Against my belly, his cock burns, hard again or hard still. His body is a blackhole sucking me in.
For a moment, he lets me up for air and I gasp, ‘I'm asking you just to fuck me this time. Don’t give me . . . I don’t want to come . . . ’
‘I won’t make that promise,’ he says.
There’s a terrible silence into which I blurt, ‘But I don't —’
‘The way you smell, Amylocks, I guarantee you won't get a choice,’ he whispers into my ear. He strokes the swell of my cheek with his thumb. ‘I could smell your wet pussy as soon as you came through my door.’
I feel crushed.
Defeated.
Because I know those hands and I know how they can take the pain away, know how they can reach into my heart and eek out some small remnant of pure emotion not buried beneath my heart.
Instead of picking the lock to my heart, he used dynamite to blast his way in. He’s turned my heart to dust.
He lifts me up into his arms and carries me to his bedroom. Pushing me down on the bed, he kisses me ravenously. Bites my neck. Sends shivers all over me. His hands are rough on my breasts, stroking and squeezing but not bruising. With a deft movement, he winds the string of my panties around his finger, tugs it down, and tosses it aside. My arousal makes my heart stutter and my throat tight.
He makes his way down my belly with a mix of kisses and bites, and when he opens my thighs, I hiss, ‘You bastard.’
I feel panicky and desperate to separate myself from the moment. The difficulty is that when he slips his tongue into me, lapping at my warmth, it feels good. Too good. I’m already torn apart and barely put back together. This will undo me, permanently.
I put my hands on his shoulders, push hard, but he doesn’t relent. Putting a hand to his forehead, I try to force him away. He reaches up and grabs that hand, pins it next to my side. We’re tangled together.
To keep some freedom, I keep my other hand away from him, trying to figure a new escape. He goes on licking me, his tongue quick and slow, soft and hard, like an experiment or a demonstration of what he can do to me.
He’s doing this to make a point. I’m not sure what point — to prove he can do that to me, to pleasure me, to show me whatever he means to show me about himself. Or about myself.
I want him to numb me, not set me on fire. Not make me feel.
‘Please not that. Do whatever you want to do.’
‘Whatever I want to do? This is interesting, Amy, in a headachy kinda way. See, I’m having some bad days recently, haven’t slept in months, and here I am eating your pussy — I've heard a lotta girls like that — but you're saying you'd rather I do whatever I want?’
‘Yeah,’ I say dully and look away from him. I need him to be angry. And pretending not to care, that always makes him angry.
He’s still stroking my breast, and when he begins to rub my nipple with his thumb, I feel a sharp answering twinge between my thighs. I shove at his hand, try to force it away. A mistake.
Like a Venus flytrap on a butterfly, he grabs my wrist and pins me down. Then I’m trapped.
‘This is the fucked up thing I want,’ he says and returns to it heatedly.
I try to pull away, to use the leverage of my legs against him, but only open myself more. After that, I lie still, trying to find emptiness, to be empty, but I can’t.
All I want is to be fucked.
Forget.
Feel like I don’t exist.
‘It's okay, Amy. You don't have to look at me. I know you're paying attention to this,’ he says.
After that, the worst part is that it feels like something I’m doing to myself. Hurt he can inflict, but the pleasure is my fault. My failure to control that little bit of flesh he traps under his tongue, stroking it until I want to scream. He fucks me with his tongue, and it feels like a spring in me being tightened. My eyes fill with tears, excitement and shame.
I twist against him restlessly, still trying to stop that moment. When it comes, when everything in me clenches and shudders, wh
en the spring unwinds with a snap and sends hot sparks of pleasure through me, I deny him anything. I clamp down on my lip to stay quiet and press my hips hard against the bed to keep from pushing against his tongue. Still, I feel how wet it is, how my body is completely willing to give him that satisfaction.
The blurring between torture and pleasure is almost unbearable, how he can do something horrible and something so good at the same time.
‘You kept quiet,’ he growls and bites the inside of my thigh.
‘I told you I didn’t want it,’ I mutter and groan at the same time, still trembling from the aftershocks.
‘You said I could do whatever I want. And I’m not done yet.’ He makes his voice dark, but he’s smirking and that is more frightening.
I know he’s cruel enough to go on doing it until I give up fighting. He wants to break me. And when he drags me there the second time, I feel like a cesspool of disgust and anger. I strain against him at the last moment, still trying to fight, and gasp, ‘Fuck you, Law.’
It's too late to take it back. The word slips out like falling on black ice. The fall is hard, and it hurts after.
He crawls up the length of me, looking ready to devour me. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. Then licks at my tears as if each droplet is the drink of the gods.
‘That is pretty goddamned sly, Amy. Gave me the chills. You haven’t called me Law in a long time. Not by your own volition.’
The tremors of my orgasm still shatter through my body, and it feels so wrong to feel so much . . . happiness.
I know that’s what he wanted.
To make me need him. To occupy me completely. To blot out the horizon.
There’s no one else I’ve ever wanted — ever needed. No one else who has made my wreck of a life worth living. No one I’ve ever wanted to return to despite how many times I try to walk away or hide. No one else whose single touch is another nail in the coffin. No one has made my heart die a thousand times, like this.
In the morning, I wake up in Shepherd’s bed. Alone. I get dressed and when I go into his living room I find another note.
Amy—
Left you something in the fridge. Top shelf, blue carrier bag. Keep eating, Amy. You don’t eat enough. Still fucking beautiful.
— Shepherd