Table of Contents [Report This]
I. t r u s t
You’re not her.
Her eyes are a little less ice and a little more blue, but if you try – and it comes easy enough to you - it isn’t too hard to pretend.
No, but I know what it’s like to be her.
“Get out,” you snarl, but the bruises on her wrist as you yank her back towards you speak otherwise. There’s the taste of tobacco on her lips, and she’s still too close to innocent as you kiss her.
Why are you doing this?
If she protests, you ignore her plea.
Because I know what it’s like to see a lost world in someone. To believe in it with everything you have, even when you know it’s nothing more than a painful mirage. I can see her in you just as easily as you see her in me.
You aren’t gentle, you aren’t careful, and she doesn’t cry out your name when she comes.
You leave without saying goodbye.
II. j u s t i c e
Her death wasn’t spectacular, and you wonder if that’s one of the reasons it eats at you so much.
You have an annoyingly overactive imagination. You didn’t have any trouble coming up with endless possibilities for how he could have done it. You wanted something palpable. Something animal.
You almost wish he’d given you an excuse to kill him.
And he probably wishes the same; that he could have taken her first, drawn out her suffering as if she deserved it. That his fingers could have danced along her glassy skin, that his lips could have claimed her throat and that he could have tasted her.
And then, then your revenge could have tasted sweeter than she ever had.
III. p r u d e n c e
She tasted sweet.
You’d expected defiance. Angry words. A struggle. You sure as hell hadn’t expected reciprocation and yet suddenly there’d been the wall, the chair… the scent of her and the sensation of her skin on yours and it had all been terrifyingly real.
You’d been there – her breath hitching with her skirt and your hands grasping her hips with goddamn sex personified rocking into your lap. You’d lost yourself in the magnificent terrain of the creature you’d been hunting, running from, coaxing since the moment you laid eyes on her.
And so this time, you’d kept your eyes closed.
You never noticed the tears.
IV. f o r t i t u d e
You’d known from the look in her eyes that it was only happening because it shouldn’t.
Only that time, she hadn’t stopped.
Not like when she hadn’t stopped when you were bound to the chair, or when you were handcuffed to the bedpost. Those times there had been a blade; a knife, her words, something slashing whatever it was between you to shreds.
This time there’d been no blade, no words, no chair, no handcuffs. There had been only her – a sold soul and you’d ignored the fact that she’d sold her body too, even if she hadn’t realized it. Because there’d been her mouth on your skin, her hand on your length and no hint in her eyes that tomorrow, she wouldn’t be able to let you go.
Somewhere in the back of your mind, you’d known you’d just signed her death warrant.
V. h o p e
It was only when you pulled the sheet over the red hair and the closed dark eyes for the last time that you began to grasp that you might not ever overcome what they had crafted you to be. That maybe there were such things as curses, and that maybe the darkness in you was truly inescapable.
You kissed forever goodbye on her lifeless lips, and hated yourself for thinking she’d never looked more beautiful.
VI. t e m p e r a n c e
One tequila, two tequila…
Her name was Alison the other night. Melissa tonight and maybe Victoria tomorrow. Not that it made any difference; she threw back the drinks and forgot it just as easily as the man that eventually ended up in her bed. They were all the same - careless and clumsy, waking to search for a number but finding nothing but steel and a glare suggesting it was time to leave.
In a moment of clarity and absence of sleep, she’ll wonder how it is that none of the names will ever suit her.
VII. c h a r i t y
He made me feel like someone she would have been proud of.
She stops despising him for leaving her and instead resents herself for finding comfort in his arms, and for still seeking it from the flannelette shirt when it begins to sink in that he’s never coming home.
You’re more like your mother than you think.
She starts (pretending she’s) wishing she could’ve looked down her nose at him, annoyed that no matter how hard she tried, she never could ask him to leave.
When I find out who did this, I won’t stop until their head’s on a platter.
She’s running out of people to blame. And maybe more than anything, that’s what eats at her the most.
It’s hard to tell which she’s mourning; the harsh reality of having to say goodbye, or the fact that she never did.
You disconnect the call prematurely. You run, she chases.
Same as always.
You’re not her.
Her eyes are a little less ice and a little more blue, but if you try – and it comes easy enough to you - it isn’t too hard to pretend.
No, but I know what it’s like to be her.
“Get out,” you snarl, but the bruises on her wrist as you yank her back towards you speak otherwise. There’s the taste of tobacco on her lips, and she’s still too close to innocent as you kiss her.
Why are you doing this?
If she protests, you ignore her plea.
Because I know what it’s like to see a lost world in someone. To believe in it with everything you have, even when you know it’s nothing more than a painful mirage. I can see her in you just as easily as you see her in me.
You aren’t gentle, you aren’t careful, and she doesn’t cry out your name when she comes.
You leave without saying goodbye.
II. j u s t i c e
Her death wasn’t spectacular, and you wonder if that’s one of the reasons it eats at you so much.
You have an annoyingly overactive imagination. You didn’t have any trouble coming up with endless possibilities for how he could have done it. You wanted something palpable. Something animal.
You almost wish he’d given you an excuse to kill him.
And he probably wishes the same; that he could have taken her first, drawn out her suffering as if she deserved it. That his fingers could have danced along her glassy skin, that his lips could have claimed her throat and that he could have tasted her.
And then, then your revenge could have tasted sweeter than she ever had.
III. p r u d e n c e
She tasted sweet.
You’d expected defiance. Angry words. A struggle. You sure as hell hadn’t expected reciprocation and yet suddenly there’d been the wall, the chair… the scent of her and the sensation of her skin on yours and it had all been terrifyingly real.
You’d been there – her breath hitching with her skirt and your hands grasping her hips with goddamn sex personified rocking into your lap. You’d lost yourself in the magnificent terrain of the creature you’d been hunting, running from, coaxing since the moment you laid eyes on her.
And so this time, you’d kept your eyes closed.
You never noticed the tears.
IV. f o r t i t u d e
You’d known from the look in her eyes that it was only happening because it shouldn’t.
Only that time, she hadn’t stopped.
Not like when she hadn’t stopped when you were bound to the chair, or when you were handcuffed to the bedpost. Those times there had been a blade; a knife, her words, something slashing whatever it was between you to shreds.
This time there’d been no blade, no words, no chair, no handcuffs. There had been only her – a sold soul and you’d ignored the fact that she’d sold her body too, even if she hadn’t realized it. Because there’d been her mouth on your skin, her hand on your length and no hint in her eyes that tomorrow, she wouldn’t be able to let you go.
Somewhere in the back of your mind, you’d known you’d just signed her death warrant.
V. h o p e
It was only when you pulled the sheet over the red hair and the closed dark eyes for the last time that you began to grasp that you might not ever overcome what they had crafted you to be. That maybe there were such things as curses, and that maybe the darkness in you was truly inescapable.
You kissed forever goodbye on her lifeless lips, and hated yourself for thinking she’d never looked more beautiful.
VI. t e m p e r a n c e
One tequila, two tequila…
Her name was Alison the other night. Melissa tonight and maybe Victoria tomorrow. Not that it made any difference; she threw back the drinks and forgot it just as easily as the man that eventually ended up in her bed. They were all the same - careless and clumsy, waking to search for a number but finding nothing but steel and a glare suggesting it was time to leave.
In a moment of clarity and absence of sleep, she’ll wonder how it is that none of the names will ever suit her.
VII. c h a r i t y
He made me feel like someone she would have been proud of.
She stops despising him for leaving her and instead resents herself for finding comfort in his arms, and for still seeking it from the flannelette shirt when it begins to sink in that he’s never coming home.
You’re more like your mother than you think.
She starts (pretending she’s) wishing she could’ve looked down her nose at him, annoyed that no matter how hard she tried, she never could ask him to leave.
When I find out who did this, I won’t stop until their head’s on a platter.
She’s running out of people to blame. And maybe more than anything, that’s what eats at her the most.
It’s hard to tell which she’s mourning; the harsh reality of having to say goodbye, or the fact that she never did.
You disconnect the call prematurely. You run, she chases.
Same as always.
