Girl On the Edge

by CD Reiss

  “I’m going to move my hand,” Caden said. “If you scream and he’s still there, you’ll go with him and I won’t be able to get you.”

  His palm lowered, leaving behind a chin wet with spit. He leveraged his arms on the counter. The pressure of his hips still pinned me to the sink.

  “He’s gone,” I said.

  “He’s coming back,” he whispered, “and he won’t be alone next time.”

  “You don’t know that or anything.” I looked away. Opposing him was a knee-jerk reaction. I had to fight him. I didn’t even know why.

  “They’re going to take you away, and they’re going to lock you in a room. Maybe for a day. Maybe a week. Maybe I’ll never see you again.”

  I’d already told him he didn’t know that or anything, and he still didn’t. But I knew plenty, and he was right. I’d be taken away.

  What would I fight then? What would I push against?

  “What’s your plan?” I asked the man in the mirror.

  “You need to remember, and we need to use the memory to fix this.”

  He must have said it at the exact right time because in the crack between how messed up my head was and what Ronin wanted out of me, I heard him.

  “I don’t want to.”

  “I know.”

  “I want to run.”

  “I know, baby. I know.” He turned to kiss my cheek

  When he looked back at the mirror, the protection of the sky was back in his clear blue eyes. For a second, I was home inside him again.

  And then it was gone, and blue was just meaningless mutation in eye color.

  My skin was too tight. My boundaries too close, and I expanded into a burst of tears.

  No.

  I was not crying. This was not the time. I took a tight breath through my nose, expanding against his chest.

  “Tell me what to do,” I said.

  “Agree to remember.”

  “What if it doesn’t work?”

  “You’ll get carted away, and I’ll be court-martialed for desertion.”

  With Damon gone, it was easy to forget Caden had a deeply manipulative side. He was going to use his own decisions to direct me. He’d destroy his life to make sure I didn’t destroy mine, which was noble, crazy, and calculating.

  “Don’t worry about me,” he said, taking his hands off the counter so I could turn and face him. He must have been reading my mind. “I’ll be fine. Remember for yourself. Do it for your own sanity. Not for me.”

  He leaned away, giving me more space. I could get to the door. I had shoes on already. All I had to do was go. The impulse formed and grew the longer I denied it.

  “Invite her back,” he said, eyes on mine as his hand drifted down my shirt to the ridge of my waistband. “I’ll stay here. She won’t take over.”

  “It feels like she will.”

  He increased the downward pressure on my pants. “I know.”

  He did. He knew how painful it was to let the other take over, yet he wanted me to go there.

  This was Caden. If I trusted anyone with my soul, it had to be him. I trusted him more than myself with my well-being. I’d forgotten that, but even in the mess of urges I was fighting, that one truth was clear.

  I pushed his hand away. “I’ll do it.”

  His lips tightened slightly, and one eyebrow twitched. “Go ahead then.”

  “You’re staying to watch?”

  “Hell yes.”

  Getting down to business, I put my hand down my pants.

  “How’s that feel?” he asked.

  “Freshly fucked.” I started to yank my hand out, but he held it down.

  “Remember how it was with Damon?”

  “Fuck you.”

  He smirked and pulled my shirt up to kiss my breasts. I was wet and firm under my fingers but felt nothing. I stopped moving.

  “Too pissed to come?”

  “I think I’m scared.”

  He reached behind me to the medicine cabinet. “I bet you are.” He searched over my shoulder and took something off the shelf. “Let’s see if we can distract you.” Holding up a pair of eyebrow tweezers, he said, “Go on. Touch yourself.”

  The tweezers were angled at the ends, creating a sharp tip. He pinched them together in front of me.

  He pressed the two points against the skin over my left breast.

  “I’ve wondered,” he said, drawing the tweezers across, “which one of you likes the pain?”

  The sting crackled along my body, humming down my spine and awakening the nerves under my fingers.

  “I’ve been hoping it’s this side of you. I’d hate to lose it.”

  Across my sternum, lightly perpendicular to the scar, and circling the nipple of my right breast. I gasped when he increased the pressure.

  “Watch me.”

  I did, but he didn’t look back. He was working the tweezers over me like an artist on a masterwork.

  “Touch yourself just a little harder,” he said.

  Harder than before, he pressed the two points over the tender flesh of my left breast, lifting his eyes to mine. “Finger yourself while I mark you, and don’t come until I finish.”

  “Okay.”

  “What do you say if you want me to stop?”

  “Stop?”

  “Very good. Begin.”

  I circled my clit as he drew a hard, hurtful line down to the nipple. The pleasure followed the double line of sharp pain as my skin broke just enough to scrape but not enough to bleed. I watched his face as he worked, the sweat gathering on his brow, the short breaths that told me he was as aroused as I was. When he went too hard, I yipped.

  He looked up and pushed the points hard against me. The pain was a shot of pleasure, but I was held back by the distracting noise in my brain. I didn’t want to flip. I didn’t want to go into the darkness. Into the nothingness. If he was almost done, I was going to fail.

  “I’m going to bend her over this sink and pull her hair back so she has to look at the mark.”

  He put the tweezers below my scar and pressed hard down my body.

  “Fuck her in the ass before you bring me back. Make it hurt.”

  “Come now.”

  I hurled myself into the orgasm and darkness.

  Chapter Eighty-Two

  RESPITE

  I couldn’t remember in the darkness. Not clearly. Not with detail. Not without forgetting it immediately. I was in a deep, dark hole. Hopelessly ungrounded even as I was so deep I couldn’t think about anything but getting out.

  Then a tingle of consciousness. The sound of soft chatter and crickets. Night birds and his voice. His hand on my thigh and the desire that came with the unexpected touch.

  I crawled out of the hole with the pleasure as my glue, sticking to it to pull myself out, and after a burst, the light came, and with it, the memories.

  * * *

  I couldn’t move my legs. My scalp was a thousand points of pain.

  “Wake up,” a voice said close to my ear. Caden. “Open your eyes.”

  Light budded in gray bursts, then got warmer. Lines formed.

  Day fought with night. Caden’s voice echoed another man’s. The mental and the physical swirled together until I couldn’t tell one from the other, until a real physical discomfort defined itself. I was being defiled. Hurt. My ass was being probed.

  He jerked my hair. “I told you to open your eyes.”

  A slick finger violated my anus, and I made a noise that was half grunt, half squeak.

  “I told her I’d fuck you in the ass, and I will if you don’t come out and talk to me.”

  I opened my eyes. A bathroom. Caden behind me. A mirror.

  “Good.”

  “Ow.”

  “You want another finger?”

  “No. Please no.”

  “But I promised.”

  “Please.”

  “Look in the mirror. Look at your body.”

  I focused. The mirror over the sink reflected me from head to
navel. Behind me, Caden was shirtless, pulling my hair to make me look up, his expression a cruel, dangerous fire.

  My body was marked in hot, pink double lines. Spots of blood had broken out.

  “What does it say?” he growled.

  I didn’t answer right away. I was too shocked. He placed a second finger at my entrance, and I clamped down.

  “Keep clenching. Just makes it tighter. What do the marks say?”

  I blinked, clearing out the last of the distractions. “They say HIS.”

  “Who is he?”

  “You.”

  He let my hair go. “That arrow points at your cunt. It’s mine. When I say it’s time to come again, you come. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  He slid his finger out of my ass and pulled up my pants. “I want to hear everything you remember.”

  We shifted position so he could wash his hands. His dick was hanging out of his pants, touching the edge of the counter as if it was looking for stimulation.

  “She made you promise you’d have anal sex with me?”

  He shook the water off his hands. “I promised I’d fuck you in the ass until you cried. That’s a different thing.”

  “And you’re not going to?”

  “No.”

  Even after the invasion of his finger, I was grateful. “What else did she make you promise?”

  “You don’t want to find out.” He wiped his hands on the towel. “But you have to cooperate.” He pressed the white towel to my chest. It came back with a tiny spot of red. “And you have to let me take care of you.”

  He let me have the towel and washed his hands, watching me in the mirror.

  “I can take care of you too.” I brushed my hand along the hard rod of his dick. I wasn’t surprised at how it felt as much as I had a very clear memory of being surprised. It ran through me like a gunshot, coming out the other side through a bigger hole.

  “Not necessary.” He snapped open the medicine cabinet and took out Neosporin and gauze.

  “Someone told me it’s painful if you don’t get it.”

  “Someone was trying to get in your pants.” He closed the cabinet door and let his hand stay there while he looked down as if deep in thought. “I forgot how young you seem.”

  “At least I’m not telling you to hurt anyone.” I started to pull down my shirt, but he stopped me.

  “Let me look at your abrasions, then you eat. Do you understand?”

  “I can.” I must have sounded confused because I wasn’t answering his question.

  * * *

  SAN DIEGO

  JULY - 1992

  “I don’t know if I can do this.” I clutched the sides of the metal ladder so hard that even through my fingerless gloves, my hands hurt from the unbuffed steel edges. The thick treads of my heavy boots were good for staying on a ladder, not jumping from one.

  I can.

  The side of the building was so close my breath bounced off it. The fire ladder that led to the roof had a latch at the top that lowered it the final six feet. I hadn’t unhooked it because I didn’t think I’d be able to rehook it from the ground. I didn’t want to leave a trail of actions and intentions.

  Up or down, Grey.

  I looked down. It wasn’t that far. Worst case, if I landed wrong, my femur would get shoved into my pelvis.

  Imagining the smashing bones and ripped muscle delayed me another thirty seconds. Then a bird chirped. I didn’t know one bird from another, but what if it was a morning bird chirping to welcome the sun? I had once chance out, and it was down.

  I can.

  And I did.

  The air whooshed in my ears, the fall of hair in front of my eyes stuck upward, and my skirt flew up, cooling the damp tear in the crotch of my tights.

  I landed on my feet like a cat, legs bent, arms forward with my palms down, pausing to assess if the shot of pain in my hip was anything more than a momentary shock.

  I did.

  I can.

  I ran to the phone, patting my pockets for a quarter. I was still wobbly but sobered by the jump and all that had preceded it. A headache was growing, my stomach tightened and flipped, and my mouth tasted like topsoil.

  * * *

  My chest was exposed and cooled with the astringent sting of antiseptic.

  “What happened then?” Caden asked, patting a section of the S with wet gauze.

  “We called Jake.” I was lying on the bed with my back to the headboard and my shirt gathered over my breasts.

  “I wish you’d remember forward.” He put the gauze on the side table and dunked a half-stale pita in a container of hummus that had been in the back of my fridge. “Open.”

  I opened my mouth, and he placed the food into it.

  “I’m getting full,” I said as I chewed. He must have been feeding me for a while.

  He pulled down my shirt. “Good.”

  When the phone rang on the other side of the room, Caden went from relaxed to rigid. It wasn’t until then that I noticed the storm had subsided to a strong wind.

  “They got the lines back up quickly,” he said.

  It rang again.

  “Are you going to get that?” I asked. “Or should I?”

  “I have it.”

  He was at the phone in two steps. Clear of the last memory, I could pay attention to the details of him. I watched the efficient grace of his body and its perfect proportion, heard the deep sonorous layers of his voice as he said, “How did you find me?”

  He was near, but without his attention, I fell down the hole into a black-on-black square with his voice booming from the sky.

  “I’m coming back.”

  He promised someone he was returning as the roof got closer.

  “I’m not deserting.”

  Caden got farther away. The new memory loaded and flicked on like showtime in a movie theater; his last words were a whisper before the lights went down.

  “I have to finish something.”

  * * *

  Overwhelmed with feelings.

  Fear.

  Regret.

  Anger.

  Confusion.

  Anxiety.

  I paced the edges of the roof, corner to corner, the hole in my magenta tights growing with every step. The Red Spot closed at two. The music below was dead. No more Visage or Thompson Twins. No more dancing to The Cure by swaying my body and moving my hands in complex, geisha-like movements. The patrons gone. The employee section of the lot was all parallel white strokes. The line of cabs out front had drawn down to the final rider half an hour before.

  Must have been three in the morning. I had to get out of there. I couldn’t stay up on the roof like a princess in a tower. I was a sitting duck. A lame duck. A girl whose options were limited by fear.

  I stood at the edge of the ladder and looked down. I could lower it from where I was but not from the ground.

  How did I get up here?

  He’d hitched me up so I could reach the bottom rung, which was six feet over the ground. Then at the top, he’d gone around me so he was up first and he could help me over.

  I’d been impressed by that.

  Stupid, stupid girl.

  Now the bottom rungs were still six feet off the ground, and if I unhooked it from the top so the entire ladder slid down, I wouldn’t be able to get it back up once I was on the ground.

  I paced the roof counterclockwise so I wouldn’t have to go past the back of the building, but I had to check. What if…

  No!

  * * *

  “No!”

  I sat straight up in bed with a full bladder and a heart pounding as if I’d run a four-minute mile. The moon was full in the window of the darkened room. The digital clock’s red numbers read 0200, and Caden was rushing to the bedside.

  “Help!” I shouted.

  He took me in his arms and held me. My impulse was to push him away, but something stronger surrendered, and I fell into him.

  “Tighter,” I sa
id.

  He wrapped himself snugly around me until I could barely breathe. I was anchored inside him. Not moving forward or back, he held me in the moment. I needed that. It was uncomfortable, but I needed it.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  I didn’t answer because I didn’t know yet. I let the protection of his embrace surround me and took in the details of the room. The chair with the little light had a book on it. The clock flipped to 0201. Our moonlight shadows made the shape of a face against the wall.

  “You stopped talking,” he said. “I thought you went to sleep.”

  “What was I saying?”

  “You kept describing a roof. I assume it was the Red Spot.”

  I pushed him away. “I don’t want this anymore.”

  “Want what?”

  I threw off the sheets, ready to get out of bed, but I saw what I was wearing. Underwear and a T-shirt. I leaned back. Reaching behind me, I grabbed the bars of the headboard and spread my knees apart.

  “What are you doing?” he asked, eyes on the damp fabric between my legs.

  “You didn’t come before,” I said. “In the bathroom. How about now?”

  “It’s tempting,” he said. “But no. Not yet.”

  His words were pretty definite, but his face wasn’t. Neither was his body. His hand twitched as if he wanted to touch me so badly. Fingertips circling thumb. I imagined one inside me to the knuckle, then the web.

  I took a hand off the headboard and laid it between my legs, groaning as soon as I touched myself.

  He took my wrist and moved my hand away. “No, baby. You’re not flipping back until you’re done.”

  “I am done.”

  “On a rooftop? I don’t think so.”

  The way he was leaning, I could see his erection.

  “It’s true.”

  He leaned over to speak softly in my ear. “If it was true, you’d be gone.” I could practically feel the throb of his dick against the air in the room. “Why do you want to flip back so badly? Are you afraid of not existing?”

  “No.”

  “What are you afraid of?”

  My purpose was to not exist. To push back until I knew all there was to know. My voice would be silenced, and only then would I find peace. I was pregnant with the unknown, heavy and clumsy, waiting for the pain that was promised before the inevitable.