“No! NO! Let me go!”
I flailed in his arms, trying to punch him in the head. He caught my arms and held me in a bear hug, pressing me against his body. No matter how I twisted, I couldn’t get out. My eyes couldn’t stop looking out towards the sunlight, toward freedom. Would I ever get to see the sun again? Or would he kill me now, here, in the dirty basement?
“You’re—Jesus, you’re cut badly,” he said. His grasp loosened. Now was my chance. I took all of my energy and whipped my head around, smashing it into his nose.
He let me go. Go! I ran to the basement door and limped up the stairs. Blood flowed down my arm, but I pushed myself to keep going. I could make it, and if I didn’t then I would die. Die trying to escape. I was halfway across the living room when I felt his hand grab my shoulder. I turned to swing at him again, but then I felt the pinch of a needle in my neck.
Heat washed through me and the room spun. I saw him draw back, the syringe in his hand. Then I fell backwards and the world went black.
CHAPTER SIX
Gav
Stitch by stitch, I sewed her arm shut. I did not want her dead, no, not if I could help it. I wasn’t that much of a monster, and there was something in her face that made me want to know more about her. I could always kill her later if I decided I needed to, anyway.
The glass had sliced through the lower part of her arm, almost to the bone. She was lucky it hadn’t severed the artery. Lucky, too, that I was there.
I’m sure she wouldn’t think so.
Was it luck, then, that brought her to me? Dumb, blind chance that set her outside my window? No, I thought there was something more to it than that. Even though I was an abomination in every sense of the word, sinful beyond normal sin, I couldn’t believe in a world that was so cold and unthoughtful. There had to be something behind this girl, this beautiful girl appearing at my doorstep.
The devil planted temptation. Dare I pluck this flower?
I pulled the needle through her skin.
Not for the first time, I wondered what it would be like if I were squeamish about blood. So many people were, after all. It was a normal fear.
I had always loved bodies, the sheer corporeality of their flesh, the hard bone tied together with thick knotted tendons, the sticky tissues.
And her body…
She was asleep and didn’t feel anything, but I still felt a strange nervousness when I ran my hands over the curves of her living breathing person. Her hips rounded into thick thighs, ripe and smooth. Her chest moved in slight gasps of breath. Inhale, exhale. Her hands, pale and delicate, her fingers cut sensibly, her wrists—
Her wrists.
I leaned closer to her body, smelling her scent. Turning her palm up, I ran my hand over hers and stretched out the skin along her wrist.
Scars, running alongside the carpal tunnel. White dimpled lines from a knife’s edge.
I knew those kinds of scars. Old scars. I knew all kinds of scars. But these scars were attached to a body I found myself much intrigued by, and I could not let go of her hand once I saw them. My fingers traced the line of those white subtle seams over and over again, as though trying to stroke the truth of it out of her body.
“Tell me, kitten,” I whispered, although she could not hear me, “why did you try to kill yourself?”
Kat
When I woke up again, I was lying on a hard surface. I tried to lift my head, but there was something holding me back. I twisted my head and glanced down. There was a strap holding down my wrist. And my neck. Straps against my bare skin.
I was on the kitchen table. Wearing only a bra and panties. He’d taken off the rest of my clothes.
“Awake?”
I screamed. The man stood up over me, his face looking upside down at mine. I was trapped. Oh Jesus, I was tied down. I screamed again, whimpering sobs of a scream that came out in spasms.
He waited until I was done screaming, and then he bent down lower. The strap around my neck tightened, then went slack. I lifted my head.
He cupped his hand around the back of my neck, holding my head up. His hand was strong around my neck, and the tips of his fingers grazed my throat.
“Your arm was cut badly,” he said. “It needed sutures.”
I looked down to see my arm bandaged up. Red blossoms of blood flowered at the top of the bandage. I tilted my head back, settling back into his palm.
“You stuck me with the syringe again.”
“I didn’t think you’d let me stitch you up if you were conscious. You seemed much too eager to bleed to death while escaping.”
“How did you know how to do the stitches?” I asked. My breaths were quick and shallow. I looked into his eyes. I wanted to see if he would torture me, kill me. I wanted to ask him questions forever to keep him from remembering that I would be better off dead and cut up and burned in the fireplace.
“I used to be a medical student,” he said. “I was going to be a doctor.”