“I suppose this is kind of romantic after all, isn’t it?” He smiles slowly, pulling his mouth out across straight white teeth. “Do you even know what that is?”
Something cold makes its way down my cheek. For a second, I’m scared it’s a bug, but then it plops wetly on to my shoulder and I realize it’s a tear.
Abel spits a glob of slime into his palm and then reaches down to position himself. It doesn’t feel like being entered by a man; more like a fist, a slick-dry, hot-cold lump that requires great force to move forward, and for a moment, he seems to be stuck.
“Look at me.” He catches my chin with his damp fingers, holding my jaw in place. His eyes bore into mine. “No closing your eyes, now. Do you understand?”
I make a meek little sound. I’m almost afraid to blink.
“Good.”
He has to thrust three times before he gets inside me, and only when he gives a violent shove does he sink all the way down. It’s a hundred revenges for a hundred bullets, shooting through the most vulnerable parts of me and pounding bruises into bruises and agony into aches. Abel grunts, breath hissing through his nostrils as the pallet rocks against the wall.
Thwack. Shudder.
Thwack. Shudder.
My chains rattle. He bares his teeth in a grim, tight smile.
I can’t close my eyes, but I fling the conscious part of myself to the other side of the room anyway, and I lock her away there in a thick cage of thoughts.
I’m so afraid I’ll wet myself. As if that could make things worse.
Kill his darlings. The teenager, dark-haired little Jamie…well, she was obviously Rachel. I don’t know why we didn’t see. But then after Rachel turned into a knot of limbs on bloodied tiles, we didn’t want to look for her. I didn’t.
Thwack.
“Fffffuck,” Abel croons.
The older woman, the first victim, she had two sons. Like Aeron’s mother. And as for the last girl….the prostitute? If it wasn’t for the hair, I wouldn’t make the connection, but those blood-red tresses were meant to be Tuija’s. She was the Sweetheart.
Bile shoots up again, licking at the back of my throat
Thwack. Shudder.
The friction’s pulling my chopstick wound open. Blood, fresh and sticky, dampens the pallet and oozes around to coat my back. The pain I’ve been fighting rushes back up like the bile, threatening to soak everything, acidic and sour and—
“DON’T FUCKING CLOSE YOUR EYES!” he roars, his fist colliding with my cheekbone.
A crack.
A beat.
My mouth fills with bitter ribbons of iron.
The room blurs, his face blurs. Orange seeps into red.
Thwack-thwack-shudder-ahh. Punishment, now. I feel all of it, can’t run can’t breathe can’t—
I don’t remember the last time I felt so helpless. So childlike.
Please please let’s pretend I’m back in my bed in the old house in Dorset, the one with the big world map, colored pins dotting all the places I want to go. The room that smells like lilac fabric softener and the bread my dad used to bake. I miss that smell.
No, don’t scream, nobody will hear you anyway—!
Let’s pretend that Gwen’s boyfriend is really Agent Chen, because it did sound a little like him, as much as anyone, and Agent Chen will save us please rescue us please come for us Agent Chen I’m so sorry I was mean to you
Thwack!
“You miserable bitch,” Abel hisses, red-faced and frenzied. “Miserable. Little. Cock. Sleeve.”
Let’s pretend there isn’t a man who’s trying to be his son, a monster peeling my skin away so he can make sense of another monster. I am the skeleton key and the beast braille, but let’s pretend I’m a princess, please please
Let’s pretend that my hands aren’t bound and empty. In one of them, there’s the old Nokia I used for Rachel, the one I chose so we’d never accidentally link up Google accounts or sync contacts or share anything we didn’t mean to, let’s pretend it’s right there in my hand and I can call her because I’d like to hear her voice…
And tell her I’m sorry…
So sorry, Rachel, you deserved so much better than me but I’m punished now, don’t you worry.