I stay where I am. Bent over. Ass bared. Cum dripping down my thighs. Mine and his. And I hate myself for it. Because a moment ago, I told him I wanted to hate him. I wanted to. But I don’t. I despise myself instead.
“What is it?” Kill asks, returning to the room.
“Benji’s here.”
“Alone?”
“Yeah. But he’s drunk as a skunk.”
“Fuck. Keep an eye on him. I’ll be down in a minute.”
I hear the elevator doors slide open, then close, and still I don’t move. Ice clinks in a glass and I open my eyes to find Kill leaning against the bar watching me.
“Bathroom’s through that door. Get cleaned up. Stay here, don’t mess with any of the equipment and let that play.” He gestures to the monitor that keeps repeating the image of me playing with myself, the sound turned up so I hear myself come over and over and over again. Hugo would have heard it too.
I’m humiliated. I straighten slowly, bend to pick up my panties, very aware by the soreness of exactly how I was penetrated. Of how he claimed another part of me.
Kill turns to the elevator where the doors slide open.
“Why did you do that?” I ask.
He doesn’t turn around and doesn’t answer my question. He says one word instead.
“Warm.”
“What?”
“Warm. It feels warm. The blood. There’s a lot of blood. I cut into his stomach, carved out a pound of flesh. I weighed it to be precise.”
“Oh my God.” I’m going to be sick.
“That’s why the papers called me a monster. A beast.” He’s silent and I wonder if he’s reminiscing on this horrible act. “I did it so he’d bleed out slowly. Painfully. I stood and watched the life literally drain out of him.” He pauses, meets my horrified gaze in the mirror. “I used the knife my sister used to cut out the bastard he put inside her.”
I cover my mouth. He steps onto the elevator and turns to face me. “Get cleaned up and stay here until I’m back for you.”
He doesn’t wait for me to answer and the doors slide closed behind him.
My mind a blur, I go into the bathroom. It’s fully equipped with a stand-up shower. I strip off my clothes and switch it on, wrapping my hair on top of my head, using a rubber band I find in one of the drawers to hold it in place. I wash myself, wash him off me, feel him still sliding out of me.
I’d never been fucked that way before. It requires giving up my power. Trusting the man doing the fucking. I’ve never come close to allowing anyone that kind of power over me. Kill, he took it. But I didn’t fight him. Didn’t fight it. I can tell myself it’s part of the deal all I want, but I know that’s not all there is to it. As much as I want to hate it, hate his domination, hate my submission, it turns me on. He makes me come like I have never come, not with a man, not with my fingers. He makes me come in a way that I lose myself.
Maybe I need those moments. Maybe I need to lose myself a little. But before that loss, I’m laid bare. It’s like being skinned. Everything is exposed. Everything hurts. But then there’s release. Is that why, in a way, I want this?
I shake my head, switch off the shower and grab a towel from the rack to dry off. The heat of the shower has fogged up the mirror so I wipe it with my hand.
My reflection is obscured in the steam but I stand looking at it, trying to recognize the woman looking back at me. It’s weird to know your face and not really know it. To feel like a stranger in your own skin. I don’t know who I am. It’s been eight years since we left that house. Eight years since anything bad has happened to me. I want to say eight years since anything bad has happened to Jones, but I don’t think that’s accurate. I sometimes don’t know if, even though he walked away, if he wasn’t too broken already. If all these years, I’ve been lying to myself, trying to put on a front, unable to face the reality that he’ll never be okay. Never be whole.
Maybe it’s because I need to believe he is so that I can pretend to be whole myself.
And maybe I’m selfish to not let him go.
“Warm. It feels warm. The blood. There’s a lot of blood. I cut into his stomach, carved out a pound of flesh. I weighed it to be precise.”
I look down at my hands, clean, fingernails polished. I imagine the warmth of blood as it runs over them. As I plunge my hands into Judge Callahan’s belly.