I was reaching for the journal that said October when I heard the sound of someone coming down the stairs; the wood squeaked.
“I’m sorry.” I didn’t turn around. “I tripped, and I was curious.”
He didn’t say anything, but his breathing was labored.
Hanging my head, I finally turned around. “Maksim, I’m sorry.”
His pupils had dilated and nearly pushed back the blue of his eyes as he stared blankly at me.
“Maks?” I took a step toward him.
Muscles tense, jaw clenched, he bit out, “Who the fuck are you?”
“That’s not funny.” My lower lip trembled.
“Funny?” He slammed his hands onto the wood table and smirked. “I’m not trying to be funny. I just want to know what the hell you’re doing in this room.”
“Maks, knock it off.” I inched backward toward the other door. “You just went to the bathroom.”
His head tilted to the side in a predatory way, his smile was off, his eyes were blank like he truly didn’t recognize me. “You should leave.”
“Okay, just show me the exit.”
“Or maybe”—he lunged toward me, gripping me by the shirt and shoving me against the door, and his nose trailed down my neck—“I’ll just fuck you first.”
“You already did.”
“I would remember.” He chuckled.
I blindly reached for something—anything to hit him with when footsteps sounded.
“Leave her alone, Sim.”
“No,” Maksim growled. “Smell how scared she is?”
“Sim,” Nikolai said again. “Stand down.”
Maksim shook in my arms; his eyes went from blue to black and back again, he suddenly stumbled back.
Nikolai grabbed him right away and injected something into his neck. Maksim collapsed onto the floor in one quick thud.
“Are you okay?” Nikolai asked.
“What’s going on?” My tongue was thick in my mouth; I couldn’t stop shaking. It was Maksim, but it wasn’t Maksim. What the hell was going on?
Footsteps sounded again; it was Phoenix. He was carrying rope and tossed it to Andrei, who grabbed a chair from the corner of the room.
Neither of them said anything as they picked Maksim up and placed him in the chair, and started tying him to it.
But the knots were different.
Intricate.
I watched in horror and fascination as Phoenix and Andrei worked.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
Phoenix answered first. “Certain things save the psyche, certain things calm and work better than others. Corner a mountain lion, and it attacks, subdue, and you can usually communicate. I used to be a mountain lion, and Andrei was used to subduing them.” He looked up. “I hated him when he came into our lives.”
“Bullshit,” Nikolai said under his breath. “But he’s right.”
“What?” I was so confused I wanted to cry.
“People wonder why we’re close.” Phoenix continued tying the pretty rope, and as he tied, Maksim got more and more relaxed, looking calmer, more like himself. “Andrei and I practice a Japanese form of… tying.”
“Shibari,” Nikolai corrected. “It used to be a Japanese form of torture but turned into an experience that can be sexual, calming, innocent, or even just freeing. You see, when you have a monster inside, the best way to calm it isn’t to fight it—it’s to set it free in the mind.”
“And he’s a monster?” I asked.
“Well, dipshit over there decided to create one,” Phoenix said under his breath, tying three more knots in consecutive order. “Not that it was on purpose.”
“Like I want to die.”
“Each knot,” Phoenix continued, “represents something in your life.” He grabbed the last part of the rope from Nikolai and tied it around Maks and then did a double knot around his ribs by his hands.
“So, what does that knot mean?” I asked, still shook out of my mind.
Phoenix finished, then looked up. “That knot… represents Claire.”
Chapter Seventeen
“Someday, Utterson, after I am dead, you may perhaps come to learn the right and wrong of this. I cannot tell you.” —Robert Louis Stevenson
Maksim
It’s warm.
Maybe it’s hot.
I can’t tell.
I smile.
And then I lean my head back and remember the things I told myself to forget, the things Sim wants me to forget that I must remember.
Or was it that I was supposed to forget?
I shake my head; it makes everything worse. It brings me back to the place I want to leave.
Have I even left?
Or do I exist in a space between both times? Both people?
A dark chuckle spills through my lips before I can stop it.
I like killing.
Blood is warm. The way it spills out of a body is fucking poetic. It’s wonderful how two hands can have control over life and hell, isn’t it?
Tears of laughter stream down my face, yet I can’t decide if I’m really laughing or crying.
I’m both parts sad and happy.
It’s very wrong.
I realize this, and yet I can’t stop myself.
So hot.
“You know why…” Sim rasps. “Because you need it like a drug, you need me…”
Wait, why’s Sim talking to me?
“I’m Sim!” I yell. “I’m Sim!
“Give him more medication,” a voice says.