I also changed some of the reveal around why she's as effed up as she is. This could be taken as canon over the previous entry, but really, they aren't drastically different and the result is the same.
So here it is, the fourth entry of "who writes this crap?", sans preliminary brain vomit.
It's still nsfw. 18+ or whatever.
Episode Four
Her hands were quivering as she
trudged through the hall. Her first hurt like hell. Thin fingers kept flexing,
in and out, a fist and an open palm, some edge of her consciousness
anticipating some horrible crippling crack or shooting pain to indicate that
yes, her hand was broken. That she’d hit Maeko so hard, she’d fractured her
knuckles.
She hadn’t. It was
disappointing, really. The pain would have made a decent distraction. Here,
now, as her eyes overflowed and the world blurred around her, any distraction
was welcome. Anything. A gunshot, a scream. A hug. A hug would have been nice.
The only person who’d give her
one, she’d just effectively told to die in a fire. God, she was brilliant
sometimes. Mouse, the ever-rational mistress of logical thought.
Maybe if she could pause and
think things through for a fucking change, this wouldn’t keep happening to her.
Maybe she could be more like Mutt—or at least have the sense to listen to his
advice. He always turned out to be right. Always. And he never gloated about
that. Not about life. Not about anything that mattered more than a stupid
sparring fight, held for fun above
all else, even if she was completely
incapable of remembering that.
She paused, taking a deep
breath. She was still shaking. Why did this hurt so much? Why was she so
rattled, so shaken, over that asshole’s smug little smile, over a few smarmy
words?
So she’d dated a douchebag. So
what? That wasn’t a first.
She’d dated douchebags before,
right? So why was this one so important? What gave him the right, the power, to
dig his filthy little tendrils into her heart and mind and just pull, to rip and yank and tear her from
limb to limb with a simple grin and a stupid pick-up line?
Why was this such a big
motherfucking deal?
The answer was probably
something she didn’t want to think about. Something she would realize, and
think about anyway, and would lie there for hours in bed, sleepless and
red-eyed, miserable for its own sake, caught in the midst of some twisted
self-righteous half-intentional bender.
Her palm was on her door lock.
It beeped and flashed, and her door hissed open, and she was inside her room.
She paused for a moment, mind blank as her eyes panned around her private
space. Piles of dirty laundry cluttered the floor, stained in oil and grease. Her
distressingly realistic robotic pet cat sat idle in a corner, having plugged
itself into the wall to recharge after tearing up her box of tissue paper.
Posters of men lined her left wall, men of all kinds, from skin to scale to
fur, from half-naked to all-naked. The opposite wall held print-outs of the
cutest, fluffiest things she could find on Outweb, pictures of home, pictures
of the family she loved and missed and would never see again. Straight ahead, a
variety of sharp, deadly objects lined the wall above her simple black twin
mattress. Black, like half her clothes, all of her furniture, and the beds of
her fingernails. Black like grease and oil.
She hated black.
Her bag hit the floor. Unzipping
it, she dug around until she’d found her phone. The battery returned, but the
power remained off. Hastily shoving it in her pocket, she found her wallet and
keys in her top dresser drawer, and did the same. The door hissed open, and she
left, slamming the lock key on the way out.
Just outside her room, a couple
of male soldiers were walking by. Human. Like Maeko. The taller one spotted
her, and paused. He turned to his friend. Whispered something he thought was
quiet enough. For her huge, sensitive ears, it was never quiet enough.
News traveled fast. No doubt he’d
made a scene on the way to the infirmary. And now this—sympathy, sympathy for
the man least deserving of all.
Poor Maeko. Poor Maeko’s face. Maeko Maeko Maeko. He was a hero amongst
these assholes, a man amongst men, with so many tally marks under his belt it’d
become some kind of legend amongst the new recruits.
Her feet began to carry her
away. To where, she wasn’t sure.
The garage. That was where.
Away from here.
Maeko. What a fuck. What a goddamned fuck. His stupid, pretty face was
all she could see, all she could think about, spinning in her head, spinning
spinning spinning. She felt like a little kid stumbling off a tire swing,
nauseous and dizzy, and the world was a mess, a blur, constant motion and she
was falling down, down, rolling on the ground and holding her stomach, and all
she could see everywhere she looked was his stupid, pretty face. All she could
hear was his voice, all she could smell was his skin, all she could feel was
his skin, his hands, his miserable grimy disgusting little fucking hands. She
couldn’t get them out, couldn’t get him out, couldn’t claw him out of her head
for the life of her.
The way he touched her.
Carressed her.
Outside and in. All over her.
All inside of her.
The way he whispered to her ear,
those fucking little disgusting whispers, the whispers she loved so much, the
cooing and giggling and whispers, always whispers. Whispers so sensual, so
sweet, so lovingly, so fucking lovingly
about how much he fucking adored her.
About how much she was
everything. About how his world centered around her. About how he’d waited all
his life. How he didn’t care if she was a psychotic bitch and had so many
problems and all this trauma she would never, ever, ever, ever ever GET THE FUCK OVER.
Why?
Why her? Why couldn’t she ever
get her shit straightened out, ever forget, ever give it up, ever let go, ever
trust, ever calm down, ever be the sweet innocent loving lustful nasty lovable
little shit she was before? Before her… before he…
Her throat squeezed tight.
Images of that night, that fateful night, played over and over and over and
over, swirling, spinning, drowning out everything else. Her tender, loving,
vulnerable, trusting hands, caressing his face, holding him tight, showing him
how much he meant to her, how much she loved him, how much she wanted to spend
every night like this for the rest of forever.
His eyes. Something so wrong in
his eyes. Like pain. Fear.
His voice, but not his voice
anymore, babbling on about the godbeast, about being part of the whole, about
how she would join him in eternity.
The fear in her gut. The
bewilderment in her head. The letter opener on the nightstand.
His hands, his sweet gentle
hands, as they began to squeeze her throat.
His eyes.
Life. Sorrow. Tears.
Regret.
And then Maeko.
Maeko said:
“I understand.”
He said he understood.
And he wouldn’t push, and he
wouldn’t ask, and he wouldn’t investigate, and he loved her anyway, and he
could wait, and he would wait, and everything would be okay.
And for the first time in so
long, so long, so incredibly fucking long, she started to believe it. She
trusted that man. Trusted him.
Trust.
It was such a simple thing. The
ability to take the things someone said at face value, to accept them as what
they were, to take the basic dictionary fucking definition of what a person
fucking says and accept that as the actual intention of the sentence provided,
with no alternative motivations and no falseness behind it, no falsehood, no
forged emotions and manipulative bullshit.
T R U S T.
And she finally began to give
in, and then what?
Fucking what?!
That mother
FUCKING
PIECE
OF FUCKING SHIT.
HOW COULD HE FUCKING—
GODDAMNIT
god
damnit
all over
her.
all
over
her
those
fucking
hands
She could still feel his fingers. Long and sleek, beautiful like his
face, beautiful like his skin, like his hair. Beautiful like the promises he
whispered so lovingly. Whispers. Always whispers. That gentle tone. That
implied care. The love you could hear, and feel, and taste, and touch, and smell.
The love that wasn’t. The love that was false, faked, forgery.
Award-nominated acting. The love that was there strictly to allow him as much
sex as he wanted. The love that would get her to swallow. The love that would
pet him put her fingers where she didn’t want them, the love that would—
She felt sick. Her hands grasped the nearest trash bin, quivering, her
face flushing as she wretched nothingness over its rank, disgusting maw. She
glanced around, lost, lost for words and thoughts of anything but him.
She was still on the ship. Still inside. Still near him. His blood was
still on her fist. His broken face. That pretty, pretty face, with a big
swollen bloody knob on the front of it.
Beautiful.
She needed to leave.
Her feet were carrying here again, pad pad, tap tap, the sound of angry
bear feet against that horrible floor, the floor that watched and followed and
tracked, the floor that cost more than her life itself. They were carrying her toward the garage,
toward freedom, toward her beloved bike. Toward hours of her free time, hours
of her paid labor, days upon days of her life. Her home away from home. Oil and
grease. Black clothing.
She could smell it up ahead. The smell of oil, of sweat, of work. The
smell of the garage, and the mechanics it held. The smell of her bike. Her
beautiful, loving, always-faithful bike. Her bike that would carry her far away
from here.
Her footsteps changed. She was on concrete now, in the garage, listening
to the clang and wham and deafening BANG BANG!
BANG!!! of the mechanics and
their tools. She shoved her hand in her pocket. Keys. When had she gotten them?
Must have been when she dropped off her shit. Her secret super soldier spy
movie bullshit. Living armor. It made her skin crawl. She loved the strength it
gave her. It made her feel invincible, against everything, against everyone.
Except this. This had ruined it. Ruined her.
She had trusted him.
Her fingertips came to rest on the bike’s gorgeous frame. She’d cobbled
this thing together herself. It was exactly how she wanted it to be, exactly
what she needed it to be. Every sleek contour, from the gently sloping
handlebars to the way each thruster on the bottom, front, and back was
perfectly elliptical. There wasn’t a single hard edge on her darling creation.
Not a single corner.
It’d taken her two years to finish.
She slowly climbed on. Pressed her key into its waiting hull, the key
that held her fingerprint, held a drop of her blood, her DNA, her source code.
She slid the power switch into place. The bike hummed to life, light seeping
out from between the curves, where one shape met another. Gorgeous, soft blue
light, as empty and pointless as the floors she hated so much, except that this
was hers and she’d earned it, and she’d deserved it, and it was beautiful.
Her hands met the grips. She squeezed. It began to rise. Rise, rise,
until two feet of air separated her from the floor below. She urged it forward,
slowly, slowly, lovingly, tenderly, like the careful, guided flesh of a lover
into—
CHRIST
those fucking
those fucking
fucking
goddamn
hands
She couldn’t do this anymore. Couldn’t’ be here. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t
smell, couldn’t listen, couldn’t see, not without seeing his fucking face, the
face she just put her fist into, the face she just ruined. The bike shot
forward, sharp and sudden, speed without thought of hesitation. The garage door
hissed open just quick enough, as it always did, and suddenly, she was flying
over open terrain. Flying toward the city. The city of locals, civilized
locals, the locals they were protecting from the guerilla warriors of the
neighboring nation. The locals that were brutally raped and stabbed and
murdered just because they lived here, instead of there. The locals she didn’t
really give a shit about. The locals that gave her a moral justification to
take a blade and drive it through the beating heart of a live, sentient person,
to twist, and to smile as blood poured free from his chest.
The locals
that let her sleep at night.
The city wasn’t far. The air was cool and crisp and beautiful and clean. Primitive,
in a way. Almost unfamiliar with the technology humming between her thighs, much
less the tools she now used to protect them. Primitive, like home. So much like
home.
The route that carried her there smelled like dirt. Earth. Gras, leaves,
and bark. Wonderful. The trees blurred into a green mush as she flew bye, a
scarcely textured blur, smidges of brown at the base and endlessly shifting
edges. Her memories of home, repackaged and rerecorded, set in a timelapse and
played around her. A wave of green and brown, rising and falling. An ocean of
nature.
She missed
the ocean. She hated the ocean. Why did she hate the ocean? Why did she miss
it? She hated it a lot more than she missed it, which made missing it a mystery.
Sand in her shorts, sand in her hair, sand in her shoes, sand in her goddamn
cunt for that matter, sand fucking everywhere, she hated sand, hated hated sand
and the beach and maeko and his body and his body on the beach in hers and sand
sand
sand
sand
sand
she
She was in
the city. She was in the city now. Her bike hissed as it slowed, automatically,
its advanced scifi bullshit sensors detecting dense life and concrete forestry
up ahead and realizing, so smartly, that the open-spaces speed, that wonderful
speedy blur, would get her killed in this place.
She was gliding now, a patient pace, gliding through the streets and
between cars and just barely faster than the traffic laws said she should, but
if she got stopped it wouldn’t matter because she was military, so fuck it.
Where was the bar? She hovered, so patiently, so barely outside of the
laws of this place, so close to respectful it almost seemed she gave a shit. She didn’t. So incredibly
far from giving a shit. But, the bar. The bar would take longer if she had to
excuse her speed before showing her credentials and effectively threatening an
officer without a word and telling him by extention, wordlessly, breathlessly,
that she did not respect him or his laws or his world or his people and she was
here because this was where she was allowed to kill bad people without
recourse.
The bar.
She found the bar, the glowing signs, the smell of smoke and death and
cancer and whores, just outside, always the whores. So many whores in this
place. She would never understand it. They were legal. Most things were legal,
if they were done right, in this place. Done correctly. Done within regulation.
But so many whores. They must have gotten paid well. Was that something she
should consider? Sex for money? She would never see the fuckers again, never
build an attraction, and never be poor.
She would hate herself for every second of it. She hated herself now,
even, for considering it. Hated. Loathed. A useless spiteful little monster,
incapable of love or trust, throwing her body and heart away on a monster just
because he was fucking pretty. Because her groin said, wow, this man is so
attractive, you should believe what he says. Because her heart said, it’s about
time, maybe you can trust this man, his words, his sweet sweet tone.
Mutt said he was a creep. Mutt tried to tell her. Mutt always knew, and
she always argued, and she fucking did it anyway
and he was always right. And he never rubbed it in. Even today. That was
nothing. He was right. Always right. A little nudge like that, it was a gentle
reminder. Listen to Mutt. Care about what mutt thinks, not because Mutt thinks
it but because it will protect you, it will save you, and Mutt loves you and
doesn’t want to see you hurt and you don’t want to disappoint him yet again.
Loves? Loves. That word. That
word again. Love. Love meant care. Love meant pure intentions, right? Love
meant trust.
She trusted Mutt. This much she realized. Why was it so different? Why
couldn’t she just tell him? Why didn’t she want him, even as she pined for him?
Why did she push him away, even as she drew him in, held him, cried in his
arms? Why didn’t she just let it happen? Why hadn’t he pushed to make it
happen?
Mutt knew. Why didn’t mutt try, then? Surely she would listen to him, if
he was hers. If he’d made that happen.
Made? Did he
have that power?
He did. Mutt could push her buttons, lead her on, break her defenses,
twist her heart, wiggle past her carefully elected walls and straight between
her legs. Straight between her ribs.
Mutt could make that happen. Because she trusted him. She trusted him and
that made her vulnerable and Mutt could hurt her or use her any way she wanted
and she would be too stupid to see it until it was too late.
But he wouldn’t. She couldn’t even hold the thought. Mutt would never do
that to her, at all, ever, ever in a million years. Mutt saved her life. Mutt was everything. Mutt was her best friend, her
only true ally, the only one she could tell everything to and yet rarely did.
The only person she pushed away, the only person she blocked out, the only good
man in her life and she wanted nothing to do with him that way because he was so firmly, comfortably, blissfully locked
within that safe little friend zone. If he left, if he hurt her, if she hurt him, which god forbid was so much more likely…
Well
She would
shoot herself.
The bike slowed to a stop outside the bar. Slowly lowered to the ground.
She climbed off, limbs loose, almost numb, the weight of her body so sudden and
severe her knees almost forgot to hold her. Key in hand, she left her precious
bike, her beautiful child, sitting alone and unprotected. It was safe. It was
always safe, here. No one here had ever driven one, much less learned to steal
one, to scrap one, to pull a single cherished piece from its precious frame.
They wouldn’t know what to do with it if they could.
The bar door pushed open. She sat, slowly, in a bar stool, because it was
a fucking bar, and every bar had to have impractical seats that didn’t support
her back for no apparent reason. Why were bar stools invented? Was there a
purpose? She didn’t care. She slumped forward, arms against the edge of the
counter, and demanded the most expensive thing on the menu. The most expensive
thing turned out to be a lot of expensive, but a single sip assured her of one
thing. She would be drunk as fuck in about ten minutes. Her epically low
tolerance combined with the sheer BOOZLESNESS of this drink would have her
plastered, senseless, nigh helpless, if not for the fact that she carried a
huge fucking knife between her tits—a slender knife, flat against her ribcage
in between them—and it was enough to scare away anyone with a lick of sense, if
she needed it.
And then she saw him. Just by chance, somehow, the timing perfect and
awful, perfectly awful. She came here to sit, lonely, brooding, becoming
drunker by the millisecond, and now she saw him. The last man she trusted,
before Maeko. The one who had to leave. The one who moved away. Moved away from
her, broke her heart, and pursued his dreams far, far away. How many had she
trusted? What was she, some serial heartbreakist? No, no not really. She’d
trusted this man, and he left. Two years later, she trusted Maeko, and he
cheated on her with some fucking slut bag and she left him. This one, this one
left on terms he considered good. Reasonable.
He was a soldier, goddamnit, and he’d been offered a promotion. Who was
she to tell him not to? She never even asked him not to. She told him, go for
it. Do what you need to. Don’t stay back for her.
Not an ounce of her being had meant it. Some thin shred of decency, of
respect, told her she was supposed to say that. She asked Mutt, and he told her
she needed to, even if she didn’t feel it. Because if she held him back, he’d
resent her, and he’d leave her for realsies and it wouldn’t be on terms he
considered good.
He’d hate
her for it.
she couldn’t
stand the thought. couldn’t stand being hated by this amazing gentle man she
trusted and loved and wanted to keep forever.
She let him go, instead. And she regretted it every day. But she knew
Mutt was right. The lesser of two regrets. The smaller problem.
The man saw her back. Simple name. Taron. Taron, for some reason,
Tae-rawn, emphasis on the first syllable, second short. It was a weird name.
Almost Sharon. But short. Simple. Simple Taron, with his cute little human
ears, his straight red hair, his freckles—seventy three of them, last count,
and something in her gut told her it would stay that way forever.
Taron was looking at her.
her heart
stopped. her face flushed, her eyes peeled away, her drink found her lips. She
swallowed. Swallowed again. Felt her body sway, felt her temperature rise, felt
her bladder remind her that alcohol would make her have to pee every twenty
minutes for no fucking reason and
that she was perfectly within her rights to ignore that urge because she had
peed just a few hours ago, goddamnit, and hadn’t had nearly enough to drink to
justify this.
The man was approaching her. His lips moved. She heard adoration. Warmth.
Happiness. “By the Graces,” he exalted. His arms wrapped around her.
her body
shrank back, then caved. her shoulders began to shake. Her eyes teared up, and
she buried them in his shoulder, as if that would stop him from noticing.
Everything
poured
out
*
She was in a room. An unfamiliar room. The last two hours had been a
blur. She was hardly coherent. Where was she now? Was this a hotel?
It was a hotel. Was she here to fuck him? To hold him? To confess how
much she needed him, how much she needed someone who wasn’t Mutt, wasn’t quite
that safe, but was trusted and loved and how the fuck could he have left her
like that? For a job? A salary? A raise? What was she, an object to weigh, a
minor facet of his life? Some thing
he could balance against his pay check and realize that she was worth less than
paid vacation and the freedom to eat out every
single day? Was that so important?
He was talking to her again. Sweetly. Her anger melted, melted away, into
her eyes and out onto her cheeks, a river of regret and hate and sullen evenings
filled with drugs and loathing. A pool of pain, washed free from her soul, and
onto his chest.
Her lips crashed into his. He blinked, pushing back. “Whoa”, she heard him whisper. He said something about watching her
for the night. She heard words like ‘don’t look good’ and ‘worried’ and ‘you’,
and they made a picture in her head, a painting, beautiful and desirable and oh
so tangible, a painting she could fall into, and live in, if just for the
moment, of his broad arms, his warm smile, his healing touch, wrapped around
her soul like a father’s soothing embrace, like a lover and a mentor all in
one, perhaps even a god. A mystical being, holding her heart in its palm,
capable of doing anything and everything it wanted with the poor, shriveled
thing, caked in tar and spite.
She was
clawing at his shirt.
She heard his breath pick up. She smelled that familiar smell, that
stench of lust, of bodies destined to clash and grind and squirm and writhe, as if in agony, horrible
inescapable, loveable, salacious, delicious, delectable agony, agony she craved
and needed and yearned for. Agony she deserved. Agony she couldn’t live
without. Not now. Not with him.
She heard his voice again. She didn’t care what it was saying. His pants
fell, and his voice shifted. A gasp. Surprise. Her face was lower, lower still,
between his thighs, his flesh between her lips, and still his voice. Shock.
Protest. Love. Desire.
Agony, at
its finest.
His fist was in her hair. His fist was clenching down, and it was
speaking to her, and it was telling her what he wanted and what he needed, and
it was telling her that the words out of his mouth weren’t true, and what he
wanted was this, and this was what he would have. This was what he needed. He
needed her pain, just as much as she did.
Writhing, like a worm, like a wounded animal trapped in the grip of
another. Her pants and panties disappeared, a single motion, her lips against
his, against his chest, against his stomach, around his cock. His grip
tightened, pulled, shifted, demanded. She was on a surface, a hard surface, a
table or counter or ledge, stable, stable, holding her, never letting her fall.
She was on something firm and unmovable, and he was inside of her, moving,
craving, needing.
His body enveloped hers. Held hers, entirely, wholly, wrapping her meager
scrawny disgusting little frame in safety and hope and love and shelter and
everything she ever needed. He was moving inside of her, and he needed her, and
she needed him, and she was writhing
writhing
squirming
hot air
between her lips, like a cloud, a hot cloud, suffocating and holding her breath
for ransom, pulling the very life out of her lungs, squeezing it, letting her
grasp it just briefly between tiny gasps and moans. enough air to move, enough
air to feel
never enough
to think, to do anything to react, to stop, to wonder
just enough
to writhe
she felt
something hot, so hot and warm, an offering, a manifestation, need incarnate,
so deep inside of her. her lips on her ear were whispering, telling her what
happened, even as the words were lost. the story was sacred, whispered on the
tones of whispers, a story composed of air and breath and the dissipation of
that cloud, the return of her life to her lungs and his to his own, the
quenching of need, the end of agony
a twitch
a quiver
legs that
couldn’t feel
the agony
had stopped, replaced by something deep and powerful and oh so real, so real, so real she could smell
it and taste it on her lips, so real she could feel it inside of her, no longer
moving, no longer needing
just there, sated, loving, holding, making it
all go away
it was going
so far away
she was
flying, now, through the air, so high, so deep in his embrace
she was on
another surface, so much warmer, so much softer
love
incarnate, above and below
his body
enveloped hers
his breath
found her ear
and the
world
began
to
fade
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