The Waning Page 8

Now I just had to wait for You and start behaving, start being whatever it was You wanted me to be. Yet You did not return at the normal interval, and the darkness grew around me. I lay alone with the dark with my dormant plan, with this idea unconsummated. It felt uncomfortable in my brain. I feared the longer I lay with it rolling around my skull, the more chance my body would reject it from its very core. I was forcing it down my own throat.

  Means to an end. That is all it needed to be.

  My control. My choice.

  My one chance.

  I could do anything to get where I wanted; that was in my nature. That was how I needed to see it. I am not forcing myself to be submissive; I am not relenting. I am just working another angle; I am exploiting another situation, giving the customer what he wants to get what I want from him. That is what I do.

  The idea calmed the sea writhing in my stomach. That manipulation on the truth settled my rampant brain. I took a deep breath to fill my aching sides and accepted it.

  My mind relinquished the plan into the future, and as always, all mental roads led back to her. Lei walking in her bare feet on her toes through my thoughts, her flowing gypsy skirts trailing color behind her and teasing me with glimpses at her pale legs. I wanted to touch her skin. Even against those cold and lifeless bars, my fingertips still twitched in the memory at the way that smooth sensation would cause my eyes to flutter shut for just a second.

  I just wanted to feel her arms encircle me. She would pull my head into her chest, even as I playfully resisted, until my ear was listening to heart gently rattle her ribcage. When she held me, she meant it. In every inch of her arms, in how her hips pushed forward against me, in the sound of her breathing me in. All I wanted, still alone in that cell, was that sensation. More than freedom, I just wanted her.

  I would have given anything to not have felt so alone. To hear McAllister’s panting in replacement of that vile dripping. To hear another human moving in normal patterns along the edge of my hearing peripheral. To feel anything soft. Lei was the epitome of all these things. Loud and bumbling through our rooms, unnaturally warm and supple, undeniably human and emotional.

  Even if she had to fold into this cage with me.

  I was a shitty partner. I loved her enough, but I never did anything with it. I let her die on the vine waiting for me while I chased a career that meant nothing in here. And here I was, wishing her into this hell with me, asking for her suffering to ease mine. She didn’t deserve to be here like I did. Maybe she always deserved better than me.

  She was everything You were not and, I would learn, would never be.

  These thoughts of her were excruciating. They drew out such a deep longing from my very core that it felt like a knife gutting me deep and splitting me open. I felt my heart flayed wider each time I imagined her touch or hallucinated the sound of her jarring and endearing laugh. In this pain, I was amnesic to all her flaws. I would have bashed my head against the concrete walls encasing me just to hear her scream at me that she wasn’t my priority again.

  I would have that fight a million times to spare me a second in here.

  Images and memories of her destroyed any calm or hope my resolve had kindled and plunged me back into those heavy hands of despair. Remembering her, what I did not have any more in here, made it all the worse. Her fucking warm skin, the fucking smell of the bakery on her, the fucking edge of her voice both annoying and charming, her big fucking eyes swallowing me up. That aching for her at my center dropped a weight on my chest, pulled me under the suffocating depression.

  I thought I should push her from my mind. Again, to make the pain stop. I would take Your pain over the pain of missing her. I just could not let go of her. Yet.

  13

  The creak of the door and the invasion of the light at Your entrance was a welcomed break from the turmoil in my mind, the seething sea of memories and laments. I didn’t want to be relieved to see You. I didn’t want to feel anything but fear or disgust. Yet something else was growing up beneath those stock emotions, something deeper and more subversive.

  I pulled myself up onto the balls of my feet, feeling the bars beneath the thin blanket. I poised my hands under me, squatting at the ready to crawl out to You. You knelt down beside my cage and took the lock in Your hand. You hesitated before releasing the latch, peered in through the bars at me. Your eyes were so piercing and unreadable. I felt them pierce through my own, burrowing into the back of my skull. Eye contact with you caused a physiological reaction in me; I felt my heart seize while my breathing fell quick and shallow. It felt like panic.

  I don’t know what I saw in Your eyes. I don’t know what You were looking for in me. As usual, Your face was largely sedate and neutral, yet there was a flickering behind those eyes. We stared at each other for a breath, two; then the click of the lock roused us again.

  You opened the cage door for me as You stood. I crawled out immediately, as I knew You wanted. I gathered my weak and unstable limbs underneath me before slowly ascending with my head low. It felt awkward to rise above the floor, to abandon the concrete I could feel radiating its cold into my cage at all times. I rose slowly, gradually, unsteady before standing and waiting, always looking down. I studied the gradient in the gray and the map of the cracks of the concrete floor and listened to Your breathing. Composed and controlled, gentle and natural.

  This was not going to be a punishment like last time.

  This was going to be something else. This was going to be my first true lesson.

  Maybe it was excitement in Your eyes, something animating Your calm exterior. Your movements were deliberate but enlivened. I could barely hear Your footsteps drag along the floor as You picked them up lightly.

  Your gloved hands gently took my wrists and guided me forward. I wanted to look up into Your face, explore it for more information, try to glean what it was You wanted from me. I was too scared, too intimidated. Every time my eyes threatened to venture up, the stinging sensation of having my face ground into that soiled blanket slapped through my nerves.

  Like a dog flinching from the master who kicks him.

  Another couple of steps forward across the small space, the concrete spreading beneath my bare feet. I pursed my lips and strove to keep my breathing level. I didn’t want to reveal my pounding heart or my fluttering nerves.

  Do what he wants. Just do what he wants.

  I repeated it through my mind until it became my mantra. I thought the words until they began to lose meaning, until I could hear them in the sound of the drip. I just had to remain calm and figure out what You wanted to make it to the next day and the next day, in hopes that one of those days led me out of this cell.

  At the lightest touch of direction, I lifted my arms to follow Your hands. The sterile, inhumane feeling of the gloves against my skin made me want to shrink back into my cage. Latex today. Everything was so cold and clinical in here, so detached.

  You brought my hands together in front of You and began to bind my wrists. While Your eyes were down at Your task, I took the fleeting opportunity to look up and study You. I did so sheepishly, in punctuated glances, just in case You should catch me.

  With Your head turned down toward my wrists, I saw the part in Your hair cut a crisp line down Your head, exposing Your pink scalp. Each hair was combed into place, beaten down by routine, not held down by product. The skin of Your neck and face had no blemishes, no scars, no dry patches, nothing. It stretched over Your bones tightly, even, and pale. Your skin looked like it would be soft, or maybe I just missed that sensation enough to start flirting with synesthesia.

  With my wrists firmly hugged by their bindings, You let them fall against my body and stepped out of the cell. You knew I would not try to run again. The thought, of course, flitted up into my brain. Run. Just run. Yet I resisted it; I fought the urge rising in my cells and bubbling in my blood. A sprinting escape was a dead dream. I needed to keep to the plan.

  You knew I would stand like a statue and wait for Yo
u. You returned with a plain metal stool, another dead piece at home in this box.

  You withdrew the chain from its place on the wall. You slipped the hook on one end through my bindings then took a careful step onto the stool to loop the links through a ring dangling from the ceiling. A ring You no doubt mounted to this very purpose. Each connection in the chain bumbled and rang through the metal ring as You steadily pulled them toward You and hoisted my arms above my head.

  With each clank and each inch, my limbs were heaved away from my torso. I felt further exposed the more I was extended, more vulnerable and laid out unprotected. My heart managed to twist and tense tighter still in this painfully slow dance, as You carefully posed me to Your liking.

  Breathe. Breathe. Just do what he wants. Just get through it and do what he wants.

  I knew You could hear the fear in my breathing now. I couldn’t hide it or control it. My body was trembling from my fingertips teasing at the cold chain to my flinching toes pressing into the cold concrete floor. My muscles quivered below my skin; my organs shuttered inside my bones.

  What was coming? I didn’t know if I wanted to know.

  Breathe. Breathe.

  You stepped out once more, then returned with a small table and a tray of surgical instruments. Clearly, all of these items had been carefully staged just outside my cell in preparation.

  Oh, fuck.

  I began to shake so hard the links of the chain chimed against each other. My fear echoed in the small, bitter room. My mantra had lost all words and all meaning. Sense and planning dissipated in my mind, and only the base instincts surfaced out of the fog.

  You were not affected by my deteriorating state. You did not acknowledge my emotions quivering on my skin. You simply kept to task, straightening the tools on the tray, pulling the table and the stool to the perfect angles.

  I felt Your gloved fingertips lift my shirt to expose my midsection. My skin contracted from the caress of the air, from the exposure and vulnerability. Your hand then traced along the skin of my side. Not in a sensual or seductive way, more meticulous, more with purpose, searching for something. Your fingers slid along my rib, down around and over my hip, poking the skin, pulling it taunt. Then they settled, hovered over one section draping my hipbone. They swirled over and over in the same pattern, creating a light heat; then they retreated, and I heard You pull the instruments closer.

  I didn’t want to look. My eyes welled up with quivering tears out of sheer fear. They twisted and bent the light pouring down from above me; I wished they could twist and bend the stab of my terror. You wanted me to stand here and take it; You wanted something from that fleshy portion of my side. I had nothing to do with it; I was the stand to hold it up to Your purpose. I just had to make it through this. Then, perhaps, it would prove something to You, make me something worth keeping.

  I felt the first cut split my world, sending pain ripping through my brain. Every muscle on my skeleton flinched, tensed, curled up around the anguish. I felt my opposite foot tapping at the floor, trying desperately to draw the attention of my consciousness away from the sensation. I could hear the bare skin slapping nervously against the concrete as I tried to concentrate on that cold sensation on the sole of my foot rather than the pain opening the side of my body.

  The pain was so vivid crawling up my spine, as sharp as the scalpel parting my skin. I could feel the blood tracing the cut before spilling down the curve of my hip and soaking into the top of my pants. My body wanted to thrash and kick; a scream swelled my tongue. I felt my throat bulging with the sound as I nearly choked on it. I grasped at the shred of sanity being overwhelmed by the primal fight and flight, and I pushed. I shoved reason back down my throat, pounded my resolve through my veins.

  Take it. Just take it.

  My hands were clenching, trying physically to cling to the idea.

  Take it. Just take it.

  My fingernails dug into my palms until my fists quivered. I strained to focus my entire brain, to resurrect it out of the pain assaulting my nerves and bring it back to purpose. The flesh was so compelling though; its pleas infected my brain as organic as the thoughts I formed.

  Why should I take it? How can I fucking take it? There is no way to please this motherfucker. It will never be enough. I will never be enough. He is taking my fucking skin. Taking it. Stealing it. Fuck this. I can’t do this.

  I had to pull my shit together. Collapsing on myself would not unbind my wrists or wrench the scalpel from Your hand. This was my only move; this was all I could do against You.

  I choked in a breath through my own stifled cries and blinked hard until my eyes emptied down my cheeks. I needed to go somewhere else. Guided mediation and breathing worked for childbirth. Or so the straight women would tell me. If they could shove wriggling, splitting life through their vaginas, surely I could endure some unanaesthetized minor surgery.

  I could do this.

  The slice was migrating slowly around the curve of my side. My mind leapt to my mother. My eyes focused on the gravel covering the asphalt. Sunlight blazed around me, and I looked down at my child knees to see the blood flooding to fill where the patches of skin had been scraped off. Grains of that gravel were imbedded in the wounds, and the burning sensation was starting to flare up and spread over my skin in goose bumps.

  I didn’t move; I was paralyzed by the trauma. I felt only the panic and the pain, and I didn’t know what to do with it. My ankle was still tangled in the frame of my fallen bike. I just curled my fingertips into my palm and wailed for her. I let the large tears plummet from my cheeks and the inarticulate sobs just pour from my tiny, quivering lips.

  Nearly instantly, she was there, crouched down at my side. I didn’t know how she could have gotten to me so fast, and I didn’t care. She had cleared the house, front door, and yard after somehow picking up my cries over the radio she always had mumbling in the corner. I felt her hands fall onto my shoulders, and I felt safe again.

  I continued to blubber though, too lost in the shock of the pain and the echo of the fall. She gathered me up into her arms, liberating my ankle, my blood streaking onto her hands and pants. She didn’t notice or care. Her palm found my cheek as she hushed into my ear.

  “Oh, baby girl, dry it up now. Your mommy’s got you. No need for all those tears.”

  Her voice was always like a lullaby to me. Just the sound of it, the tone of it infected me with calm. I curled into her and smothered my cries until they faded. She absorbed them into her chest for me.

  And we sat there in the gravel on the street, her rocking my pain away.

  I held that warm and safe sensation in my chest as I resurfaced in Your prison. I fought to keep my mind on that street and away from what was being done to my side. I dug into that moment as buried as she was and clung hard to it.

  Dry it up now. No need for all those tears.

  I wanted my mother’s arms around me now. I wanted to lose myself in the sound of her voice and the feeling of being burrowed into her chest. I wanted her to take me with her, even if it was into her cold grave.

  Yet my mind could not ignore the relentless screams of my flesh. I could not keep myself clinging to that memory. My disobedient eyes wandered down. You were leaned in close to Your hand as it was administering the endless string of pain. Your other hand held my skin tight to be sliced open. You had drawn a diamond shape on my hip in my own blood, and it wept heavily.

  You replaced the scalpel on the tray and leaned back to get perspective on Your work. You hinged back at Your waist and cocked Your head gently to the side, squinting before releasing Your eyelids again. Seeming pleased, You gathered up the forceps and scalpel.

  You pinched the top corner of the designated shape between the forceps and began to tug it away from my body. Then, with the scalpel, You meticulously began to filet the skin from my hip.

  My mouth dropped open in silent shock. You didn’t even hesitate to observe my reaction. I did not matter here. My brain simply could n
ot process what my eyes and my nerves were telling me.

  The pain changed. The sharp carving spread, deepened, sunk in down to my bones and bloomed out across my stomach. My skin shrieked as You tore away its own part. I squeezed my eyes shut. I didn’t know if it was worse to see what was happening or imagine it from the sensations screaming up from my nerves. My legs were weak and shaking below me, and my breathing was rattling desperate against my ribs.

  My hip, where Lei rest her soft hand.

  My hip, where McAllister pressed his slobbery snout.

  My hip, where my mother tickled me relentlessly until I begged her to stop.

  That was MY hip You were taking from me.

  The blood flowed heavily as the wound widened. I could feel it stealing my heat and spilling it into the growing stain on my pants. I dared to look down. My head swooned at the sight; I had to keep looking away.

  Anger flared beneath my scalp. I did not want to take it; I did not want to stick to my plan. Fuck You. You had snatched me off my stilettos and out of my life. You caged me, starved me, and beat me like an animal. You forced me to use that humiliating bucket and ground my face into my own piss. You kept me from her. Now, You were stealing my own flesh, the only thing I had at the bottom of that small cage.

  FUCK YOU!

  But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t fight. If this was the pain when I complied, when I behaved, what would be the pain if I resisted? The fear of that was paralyzing. Would You skin my whole body with me chained here? I could sacrifice this small pound of flesh to not find out.

  I could only curse You in my mind as I felt the meticulous slicing and tugging of You robbing me of my own body.

  I do not know how long it took You to excise the little portion my skin. At some point, the endorphins swelled up in my veins and floated me off to incoherency. I slumped from my wrists and lay my head against my arm, whispering up to my elbow.

  “I made it. We’re finally here.”

  My eyes and my body grew heavier by the cut. I felt my body melting and my head falling back until I heard the instruments replaced on the tray.