Toxic Love

by Kristopher Triana

  “So what changed?” I asked.

  Sage flicked ashes into the dead bushes, breathing even more gray into the misery of the sky. “I don’t usually tell people about this, but considering what we just did, I guess it might help you understand.” She picked at her thumb absentmindedly. “When I was nineteen, I started dating this guy who was really . . . different. He seemed pretty dull on the surface; he was a bank teller, drove a Hyundai. Always wore polo shirts, Dockers, and a Mets baseball cap. But there was another side of him that he hid from everybody. Everybody but the girls he took to bed.”

  She took another drag, her eyes distant in reflection. “He had a lot of scars on his thighs. They were all above the knee and below the pelvis, but they went completely around his leg from front to back. He told me he’d gotten them in an ATV accident where he was hurled into tree branches that ripped through his shorts and into his skin. Being young and trusting, I believed him.

  “The first time he asked if I would cut him, I thought it was some kind of joke. A gross joke, but a joke. We’d been together for a while now, so he decided to tell me the real reason he had so many cuts on his legs, and that’s when I knew he wasn’t bullshitting me. He took one of those old straight razors from a cigar box by his bed and handed it to me. I was super into this guy and wanted our relationship to keep growing, but this whole cutter thing was really weirding me out. I mean, I know some people struggle with self-harm, but this wasn’t like that. He wanted me to do it to him for a sexual thrill. He was getting hard just handing me the razor.”

  Sage looked at the browned grass and cracked gravel of the parking lot below. I wondered if I should say something, but didn’t. I waited, though I wasn’t so sure I wanted to hear the rest.

  “So I did it,” she told me. “Like I said, I really liked Ken. He was a great guy, really. I figured everyone has their fetishes, right? My last boyfriend was obsessed with my feet. I used to have to put them together so he could fuck the gap between them. So maybe this wasn’t such a big deal. I mean, it wasn’t like he wanted to cut me. He wasn’t a sadist. Maybe a little bit of a masochist, but hey.” She shrugged, flicking more ash. “So yeah, I fucking did it. I was nervous as hell and I cut him very lightly at first, so he guided me, making me cut deeper so it spilled a lot of blood. I wasn’t too freaked out yet, not until he ran my fingers through the blood and then put my hand on his dick to jack him off, using the blood like lube.”

  My face soured. “Jesus, Sage. That wasn’t enough to turn you away from him?”

  “You don’t know how hard it is to find a guy as good as Ken was. He was handsome, successful, treated me like gold. He was the only boyfriend I’d ever had that my father liked, despite the fact that Ken was, like, five years older than me. All my friends were jealous. He was a catch. So, yeah, I did what he asked me to do, and when he asked me to get on top of him I did that too. His lap was a puddle of blood and I sat in it, letting it get all over me while we had sex.” She took a deep drag and held the smoke before blowing it out in a long dragon breath. “That was the first time I ever had an orgasm. The blood was so warm and wet. It made the sex so much more powerful because it was like we were fucking in a pool of his life force. It was animalistic. It was primal, you know?”

  I didn’t know, but didn’t argue.

  “Anyway,” she said, “some might say I only climaxed because he was a good lover, and he was, but we’d already had sex several times before he’d pulled out that razor, and I’d never come close to the ecstasy screwing in blood gave me. After that, I couldn’t get enough of it. I wanted to cut him up every single time we did it. It got so bad he started asking me to tone it down, saying we couldn’t do it every time, that his legs were shredded and sore. He was worried we were going to hit his femoral artery and he was going to bleed out like a pig.

  “After a while, I got tired of waiting for him to heal up and started looking into butcher shops to see if I could buy the blood of cattle or deer or something. But I didn’t. I knew that wouldn’t do it. It would be like trying to jerk off to a Sears catalogue when you were used to watching hardcore porn, you know? No, it had to be human blood. That’s what made it so . . . I don’t know . . . so profound, so beautiful. It’s hard to explain. Like I said, shrink after shrink hasn’t been able to explain it, so how can I?”

  I leaned on the railing. “So what happened to Ken?”

  Sage smirked. “I dumped Ken doll’s ass like a baggie full of dog turds.”

  “You did? I thought he’d be perfect for you, given that you shared the same rare fetish.”

  “He just couldn’t keep up with me. One day he told me I was getting out of control with my bloodlust. Can you believe that? Bloodlust. Like I was Ted Bundy or something. So I ditched him and went looking for someone who could take things further. And let me tell you, if finding a good guy is hard, then finding a good guy who is into fucking in a pool of blood is damned near impossible. Most guys won’t even fuck you when you’re on your period, that’s how grossed out they are by blood during sex. I had to start browsing fetish dating websites, and even then, most of the guys who said they were into blood were just wannabe vampires who only wanted to do a pinprick and taste a drop or two. I’m not into playing Twilight, I just want blood around me while I’m having sex, preferably on my body. I’m definitely not interested in dressing up like Elvira for these goth losers and listening to their collection of Bauhaus vinyl all night.”

  I snorted a laugh. Sage’s fetish was bizarre, but there was still so much to like about her. She at least seemed to have a good sense of humor and laid back personality. If not for her one dark kink, she would be the cute girl next door, the ideal small-town American sweetheart, the kind all those pandering country stars sing about.

  “So did you find another boyfriend? One who fit the bill?”

  She shook her head. “Nothing serious. Either they were too wimpy about the whole blood thing or they were rough guys who wanted to hurt me, and I don’t go for that. I started fantasizing about working for a blood bank and pocketing some of it on the side.” She chuckled and, to my surprise, so did I. “But I didn’t want to go to prison or have my dirty little secret exposed. Then one day I read an article about crime scene cleanup in a magazine, some quirky piece where they interview people with strange jobs. No offense.”

  “None taken. It is a strange job.”

  “Anyway, it seemed ideal, you know, if a little intimidating. I knew I liked blood, but guts and brains and feces are another story. But I was curious. I kept looking for opportunities in the field and then one day this gig pops up on a job listing and I’m like, it’s a sign.” She finished her cigarette, stubbed it out and turned to me. “I don’t even need this job, Mike. I come from old money and Daddy’s girl can have whatever she wants. But at the same time, I do need this job. Not for monetary gain, but to satisfy my desires as a woman.”

  She wrapped her arms around my neck, her lips just inches from mine, eyes unblinking in a powerful, hypnotist’s gaze. My mouth was dry. I could feel my penis stirring again in my jeans like a worm unearthing itself in the morning sun.

  “So what do you say, Mike? Think you can keep up with me?”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I couldn’t sleep.

  That evening I sat in front of the television, flipping between talking heads ranting about politics and reruns of The Golden Girls, paying attention to neither. My strange encounter with my new coworker had left me rattled.

  What got to me the most was the way she’d coaxed me into seeing her side of things. She’d done it so quickly and easily. As she’d told me of her cutter ex-lover and her penchant for the red stuff, I had begun to empathize with her and even understand where she was coming from. I had dismissed my initial reaction of fear and disgust. Hell, I’d even chuckled at her jokes!

  It’s amazing how much further good looks can get somebody. If Sage had been a tubby, acne-scarred hag telling me the same story, I would have had a much different
reaction. But Sage was gorgeous and I, like most people, gave gorgeous a pass on things that would turn regular people into social pariahs.

  I leaned further back in my chair and took another sip of my straight whisky. I was drinking double tonight, doing my best to numb myself to reality. What I had done could not be undone. I’d had sex at a crime scene. I would carry that with me for the rest of my life, a scar on my conscience. And when it came to Sage, I didn’t know what to do.

  I’d been thinking about it ever since we’d finished with the cleanup and went our separate ways. When she’d asked me if I could keep up with her, inviting me to continue our affair, I told her I had to think about it and process what had happened. She was very understanding and didn’t put any pressure on me, but as I watched her work throughout the day her body seemed to taunt me, warning that if I didn’t play my cards right, I wouldn’t get to feel its warm touch again. I wanted to hold out hope that I could continue to have sex with her without getting it on in a room full of guts, but I knew it was a futile wish, a daydream, nothing more. The only reason she wanted to fuck an old dud like me was because we had access to all the gore and carnage her mutant libido could desire. We worked alone together and, because of the nature of our work, no one would ever interrupt us while we were cleaning. We could fuck at every single job if we wanted to. Nobody would catch us. Nobody could stop us.

  So that’s what it came down to. I could continue having incredible sex with a movie-star-hot young woman (as long as I could stand doing it in a literal bloodbath), or I could turn her down and go back to jerkin’ my own Gherkin every Friday night while watching blowjob videos online. I would also have to convince Ryker to fire Sage without telling him what happened, because I couldn’t possibly work with her without it happening again. She was too sexy for me to resist her for long. But how would I get the boss to drop her when he didn’t have any cause to?

  I realized I might be stuck with her, at least for a while. Maybe if I refused to have sex with her on the next few jobs, she would get sick of the tease. Maybe she’d get bored. She’d said she was rich, so she probably wasn’t used to hard work and crazy hours. The job was bound to burn her out soon enough.

  Unless the gore is enough to keep her nipples hard, I thought.

  She’d said it herself that she took the job with the idea of it arousing her so she could masturbate to the memories of it when she went home for the day. Perhaps that was all the motivation she needed to show up to every call.

  Face it, Mike. You’re stuck. Once again, a woman has the upper hand on you.

  I thought about Rachel and how easily she’d pushed me out of my own house and torn me away from my daughters, as if I had done something wrong, as if I’d blown all our money gambling or came home drunk and bounced her off the walls. We had simply fallen out of love. That’s all. It happens to the best of couples. This was enough for my wife to demand I move out at once. She didn’t even give me time to save up some money to live comfortably in my own place. That’s how I ended up in the shithole I was in now, living above an old Indian woman whose constant cooking smelled like a cat carcass boiling in a garbage bin on a hot summer day, and below a portly schlub whose footsteps sounded like the goddamn shuttle takeoff at Cape Canaveral.

  Worst of all was living separate from my girls, Carmen and Fay. Carmen was fifteen years old and siding with her mother from what I could see. It didn’t help that she was around Rachel all the time and only saw me on weekends (more often it was every other weekend), with occasional weekdays thrown in at random. That didn’t give me much time to plead my case. Carmen was also struggling to adjust to high school and was more interested in texting and watching puppy videos on her phone than she was in having any kind of normal conversation. She was a good girl, but a little lost and mad at the world, as we all are at that age.

  Fay was eleven, and she was taking things hard in her own way. She was always the more sensitive of the two, the kind of kid who still wanted to snuggle up with her parents on the couch even though she was approaching her teen years. Fay had grown quiet and distant since the separation, alienating herself in her room. I was worried about her most of all. So was Rachel.

  I thought about calling my ex. It was past ten but she always liked to stay up late, even on a work night, so she could unwind alone in her (formerly our) bedroom while watching her stupid cooking shows and sipping on her fourth glass of Chablis. I certainly wasn’t going to talk to Rachel about what had happened with Sage, but I wanted to catch up with her, to hear how things were going; not just with the kids, but with her own life. Thanksgiving was coming. Maybe we could all get together, like a family.

  Luckily, I realized it was just the booze making me feel this way before I could actually place the call and make an idiot out of myself. I tossed the phone on the end table at the other side of the room so I didn’t change my mind.

  What really happened between Rachel and me?

  It wasn’t the first time I’d asked myself that, and I was sure it wouldn’t be the last. It was one of the great wonders of the world, a question for the ages. It would haunt me to my grave, and maybe even beyond.

  When I thought about our early days together, I remembered a young couple that couldn’t get enough of one another. There was so much passion and tenderness. It went beyond the great sex and shared interests, the love of indie movies and old bookstores and Thai food. There was a deeper understanding there, something cosmic—the kind of thing the poets try to capture in prose but can rarely come close to scratching the surface of. Our courting was pure magic, and our wedding was the best day of my life, filled with fun and friends and family and a profound sense of finality when it came to my romantic conquests. I had found the one, a woman tailor-made for me by the gods, the map and the key in one lovely, brunette package with dark eyes and soft fingertips that set my soul aflame.

  But that was a long time ago. We were in our late twenties then, and twenty-year-olds seemed like kids to me now that I was hurtling toward fifty (not that the feeling had stopped me from fucking one today). My eldest daughter would be twenty in just five years. That might as well have been tomorrow at the rate the time was speeding by. It reminded me of just how old I was, and I didn’t need another reminder. That job belonged to my knees and aching back.

  Maybe that had a lot to do with why Rachel and I drifted apart. People go through stages in life. They grow and change and end up having different hopes, tastes and desires than they did in previous years. No matter how in-sync two people are when they become a couple, it’s ridiculous to expect them to change in the exact same ways as the years roll by. Rachel and I had become different people while we were busy raising two children. Now that the children were able to take care of their own basic needs, we suddenly had time for one another again but found we didn’t want to utilize it. We’d been so busy being Mom and Dad that we’d forgotten how to be husband and wife. Instead of lovers, we’d become a management team for two girls who were the free spirits Rachel and I had once been. We weren’t at the end of our road—we had passed the end long ago and were unconscious in the wreckage of that car crash. For too long we’d had the perfect excuse not to spend any time on ourselves. Now, with the excuses gone, the lack of effort was unmasked, as were the lack of desire and the diminutive flicker of the love that had once been a mighty blaze.

  I finished my drink and debated getting another one, but I didn’t want to get up. I’d depressed myself enough to bludgeon me into sleep.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Ryker woke me at just past three in the morning.

  Another gig, this time near Hunter’s Mountain. Given all the gunfire up there I expected it to be an accidental death, a hunting trip gone bad when someone’s Smith & Wesson went off at the wrong time. Instead, it was another unattended death. The daughter of an elderly widower had found him in the house he lived in alone. After not being able to get a hold of him by phone for three weeks, she’d come by to check on him. Ryker said t
he cause of death was a heart attack, but with that much time having gone by the house was bound to be a real stinker. I would have to fumigate and clean up any putrid ooze the man’s lonesome, decomposing corpse had left behind.

  “I’ll send the new girl out to help you,” Ryker said.

  “Nah, nah,” I said, rubbing crust from my bloodshot eyes. “I can handle this one solo.”

  “Nah, nah, you can’t. I failed to mention the old fart had cats. They got hungry without their normal tuna and turned their late owner into Fancy Feast, if you know what I mean.”

  A gas bubble rose in my chest, but I didn’t burp. “Yeah, I know what you mean, Harry.”

  “I met with the daughter, so you don’t have to worry about any of that meet and greet shit I know you hate. She left the key in a box under the air conditioner. Let yourselves in. The job will go a lot faster and easier with an extra set of hands, bud. Besides, if I were you, I’d want that girl around as much as possible. She’s hotter than a stick of butter up the ass of a turkey.”

  “As usual, Harry, you’re a total professional.”

  His laugh was filled with phlegm. “Being the boss may restrict what I can do with her, but it doesn’t make me blind, Ashbrook.”

  I rolled my tired eyes. “Just give me the address, will ya?”

  ***

  There was an eerie darkness to these small mountain towns. The winding road had no streetlights, turning them into a scene out of a slasher movie. My headlights revealed only bare trees and the occasional bouquets and crosses left by the relatives of someone who had died on these curves. I kept my radio on low so I could better hear my GPS, and the murmurs of the shock jocks sounded like ghosts in a basement.

  My blood mistress awaited me.

  I bit at my thumbnail as I found the street and drove over the potholes, swerving to dodge a cardboard box and other random debris. There were only three houses on the block, and the one belonging to the dead old fuck was the ugliest. It had the most mold and rotted wood, the windowsills so deteriorated it was noticeable even in the dark. The driveway was as crumbled and broken as the road itself and Sage’s shiny BMW was parked in it. I could see the orange glow of a cigarette’s cherry inside.