Jeremiah Quick

by SM Johnson

  She had tattoos on her arms – upper left arm and inside right forearm. Flowers and banners and the names of children. His inked drawings skirted these areas, an indication, she hoped, that he wouldn’t cut them. That he wouldn't ruin them.

  She didn't know if she could be still. The pain of what he did to her legs had somehow been tolerable only because she was strapped down, helpless, unable to escape.

  She shook her head. "I don't think – no, I can't."

  He didn't even look disappointed.

  He left her for a minute to put music on, something beautiful and tragic, that she remembered, vaguely, from a different time. There were no lyrics, but words came into her head, and she would have sworn that she wasn't making them up, that she knew them, and she started an urgent whisper of a chorus, almost like a prayer.

  He didn't start next with her arms, but replaced the ankle restraints over the bandages. She had to work not to fight the restraints because the wounds beneath were so... raw.

  He fed her gulping sips of water, then knelt between her thighs and started at her collarbones, working downward, first wiping away the old blood, his blood, then drawing with the thin blade. The sound of splitting, tearing flesh seemed louder there, but it might have been audible only in her imagination.

  His fingers made blood trails on her chest, stroking the cuts, toying with them, enjoying them, and then his voice joined Pretty's, more a croon than a whisper, and it was so beautiful that she closed her eyes and let his mournful words take her away from this, all of this. Love me… love me…love me… love me until I die…

  She opened her eyes when the song ended, surprised to see him, to be here still, because she felt like she'd been very, very far away. She blinked to clear her vision, although she wished to never, ever come back here. Her thoughts were so ruffled that for a second none of this could possibly be real.

  "You're doing it," he said, his voice soft but clear. Gentle. "You're remembering."

  Not really, no. She'd been pleading – with God or Satan or Fate or Earth or whatever Goddess might answer – for the strength to endure this, the ability to love Jeremiah Quick through even this – to be granted her sanity at the end of it, to see her children again.

  None of her pleas or prayers were to Jeremiah. None of them wished for him to stop, not really.

  He wouldn't stop until she was one great bleeding wound from the tips of her toes to the line of her hair.

  He wouldn't stop until she was done.

  And she didn't want him to stop. This was part of it. Or the whole of it. This was everything.

  "Tell me the story," she begged. "Please. Because I think that comes next."

  He pinched her nipple, then traced the blade carefully around its pink softness.

  Pretty bit her lip, though all pain had suddenly receded, and she wondered for a second if he put something in the water to give her relief.

  She stared up at the beams that criss-crossed the space beneath the roof, at the scrap of black fabric swaying gently, the end of it a jagged series of slices that weren't frayed, but looked as if they'd perhaps been sawn through with a knife.

  And she saw... no. She couldn't be seeing what she thought she was seeing.

  Chapter 31

  She...

  doesn't ask me to stop now, no.

  Instead

  she

  asks for a story.

  "Once there was a beautiful boy, and his name was Jamie."

  She smiles, as if she knows she's going to love this story.

  She can smile already while I cut her, and I feel surprise, because somehow I was never expecting that.

  "The most beautiful boy in the world," she repeats, and her eyes are dreamy.

  I have an impulse to grope between her legs, and she moans as my fingers find her slick and slide inside, which causes another, deeper moan. "Yes," I say out loud, forgetting the blade for half a second, and just stroking her wet warmth, enjoying the soft clench of the walls of her cunt.

  I roll my thumb across her clit and smile to myself as her whole body jerks.

  "He was so pretty," she says. "Blond and innocent, so pure and clean. And he wanted to get dirty, didn't he?"

  She.

  How can she say these things? I want to slap her, slap the words away from her lips, but her eyes, while not exactly rolled back into her head, are definitely focused on something I can't see.

  I look up, and see nothing but that goddamned scrap of black fabric. Taunting me.

  She keeps talking. "He thought you were amazing. He looked for you, for years."

  "Yes, all of them, while I was looking for him," I agree, angry with her for knowing. How can she know anything?

  "He thought you were going to the UK, to break into the punk scene… so that's where he went. To find you, the minute he could."

  My mouth went dry. She can't possibly know this. "Shh," I tell her.

  "But it's the story, isn't it?"

  She.

  She isn't with me.

  She's somewhere else, eyes, not quite rolled to the back of her head, but no longer watching me, no longer worried about what I'm doing, no longer cringing from pain.

  She's just a little bit, elsewhere, listening to me, but not seeing me anymore.

  That's okay.

  I keep on with the cutting. There's a lot left of her to do. I should worry about blood loss, though my scarring recipe seems to also stop bleeding. I don't want her to lose too much too fast, and I don't want her to die. None of this is preparing her for that journey.

  I have to remember to stop often and have her drink water and orange juice and Gatorade.

  She tells me some of the story I was going to tell her. She tells me easily and simply enough, putting words to events that live only in the memory of one – me – making sentences that fracture me.

  I suppose I'll forgive her, because she doesn’t know how much this hurts.

  I wonder if she is, in fact, somehow talking to Jamie. If she's able to reach him wherever he's gone, or if maybe he hasn't ever left.

  What's clear is that somehow she knows more than I've told her.

  When she stops talking and her eyes focus on me again, she says, "Please, you tell it. You tell it so much better. I promise I'll be quiet."

  Jamie's words.

  And Jamie's little grin, impossibly, shaping Pretty's mouth.

  "Stop that," I warn her.

  "Tell me, Jeremiah. Tell me the story of us. And tell Sunshine Girl, too. You know you want to. You have to."

  It was eerie, seeing Jamie's facial expressions on her face, hearing Jamie's words in her voice. And yet there was still some of herself in her eyes.

  I start again.

  "Once upon a time, in a castle just like this one," I open my arms to indicate the room. "A beautiful boy lived in a dungeon. Just like this one. He was the most beautiful boy in all the world. And he was mine."

  Chapter 32

  Something was happening, something that was Other. Jeremiah was trying to tell her a story, but this blond angel, sitting on a crossbeam above the restraint bed, seemed to be feeding Pretty the lines of the story before Jeremiah could say them.

  He couldn’t be real, could he, lounging up there like that, as decorative and comfortable as a cat on a windowsill?

  She was essentially gone from her body and no longer felt pain.

  She felt Jeremiah's fingers slide into her, pressing the inside of her, and a quick zing of sensation across her clit, before the pressure of the blade against her skin resumed. She even felt the slick wet of seeping blood, and she knew he was cutting her lines again. But everything seemed very far away, everything but the voice of the pretty blond boy – that came to her clear.

  "Is he killing me?" Pretty asked the blond boy – who must be Jamie. Or Jamie's ghost.

  The boy smiled and shook his head. "He loves you," he said. "Needs you."

  Somehow that made sense.

  "Me too. Love him, I mean." />
  The boy looked sad, then. "I hope you love him enough. But I'm sorry if you do."

  That didn't make any sense.

  The boy faded away before her eyes, and she looked helplessly at Jeremiah. "He's gone. You'll have to tell me the story alone now."

  Chapter 33

  She.

  She's fading in and out now, flinching away from the knife, flinching into it – there's no real pattern to how she reacts, and I don't think she's particularly connected to her physical self anymore, just nerves jumping or recoiling, not at all conscious.

  She's listening for the story.

  "…And the boy was a naughty, kinky boy, who had appetites and desires that no one had ever been willing to satisfy.

  I found him ten years after I started looking, and every day in between was one more day I survived with my heart broken.

  I was half a person all those years, half alive with hope, half dead with fear that I would never find him, never hold him, never fuck him until he was screaming into the mattress.

  In the meantime, there were people, like Sunshine Girl, hopelessly naïve and led to think like lemmings, allowing society and media to drive their every thought and therefore every action. I did what I could to teach them Non Serviam and Cui bono? Encouraged them to Think, do the research, use their own brains. Eat the apple for fuck's sake – stop following and lead.

  There are many, many good people in this world, many Dark people with beautiful hearts. Some of them are afraid to admit it, afraid to let the darkness in, but once they do, once they start to see, really see, it all comes clear. And it can't be unseen. They know the difference between right and wrong. They know, because their hearts tell them, and – if they don't forget – (and here I raise my eyebrows at Sunshine) – they can change the world.

  I'm outlining her ribs now, carving numbers and symbols, the meanings of which she'll probably never understand, and she flinches away, lets out a hiss of breath.

  I move from one side to the other, trying to distribute the pain.

  "I know it hurts, baby. It has to."

  As I continue cutting, she strains against the few restraints left, fighting this, fighting me and what I have to do.

  All I can do is stop for a minute, give her a chance to recover, to breathe.

  I ease myself off the bed, scooting carefully backward between her legs, her feet. I pick up a clean rag and dip it into the bucket.

  She watches me, eyes narrowed, her breaths becoming sobbing pleas.

  She's cut now from collarbones to sternum, including breasts and ribs on both sides.

  She will have to handle it. She has no choice in this.

  I know the burn. I scarred myself as a test, to make sure I had the right ingredients to turn clean cuts into fine white lines. It works. The scars will probably fade, but not for a long time.

  She will endure, because I won't offer any other choice.

  "Give in to it," I tell her, giving her some slight mercy and dropping the cloth back into the bucket, for the moment ignoring the most recent cuts and patterns. "There is no escape, only submission."

  I want her to embrace that concept, give in to it, to me, to everything.

  She bites the inside of her lip, holds her breath.

  "Come on, Sunshine Girl, give me tears. I'm thirsty for them."

  She lets out the breath, and at the end of it comes a sob, a broken sort of noise as she hiccups another breath in, then lets it out as a keening wail.

  That's better.

  Tears then, and I move closer to her head, and stroke her hair as I bend to take them with my tongue. "Very nice," I murmur, petting her.

  She shudders and sobs, and I trace my fingers through the blood on her chest, delighted that she can anticipate how the burn will build, the agonizing fire that seals the wounds while keeping them open, so she'll stay wounded until she literally grows new skin.

  She's getting tired, her blinks growing into moments of rest. This is not to be tolerated.

  I go back to my position kneeling between her thighs, now that she's letting the pain have her, and the fear of waiting for me to lay the cloth over her chest. I decide to let her worry about that for awhile.

  Her noises make me hard, but I'm a considerate lover. I lay the scalpel on the bed, just at the curve of her waist, and gently rest each hand at the top of each thigh and stroke the crease of her groin with my thumbs.

  I draw circles there until she notices, until I feel her staring at me, and then look up to meet her gaze.

  "Does it hurt?"

  She nods, chewing her lip again, I suppose in some silly strategy to hurt less or distract herself.

  "I'd tell you I'm sorry, but I'm not, so instead I'll make you come."

  Her eyes open wider, and she shakes her head.

  She doesn't think I can do it. This is delicious.

  "Wanna bet?" I ask, but she doesn't answer, just closes her eyes. She's limp in her bonds now, almost relaxed. Submissive.

  I stroke her slit, my touch featherlight. Difficult for her to feel, I imagine, in the midst of her burning legs and still-bleeding chest.

  How I loved cutting symbols into her collarbones, the way they stand in sharp bony contrast to the soft swell of her breasts. The bone just… right there, the knife carving delicate careful swirls, small infinity signs times four – never forget, never forget, never forget, never forget.

  Softly, softly I stroke her, and after just a short while she starts to strain against the strap across her hips. Just a little, but I can feel the muscles of her thighs tense, release, tense again.

  And then her slit opens itself as her labia thickens, and I feel moisture on my fingertips.

  Her face is flushed, lips slightly parted, eyelids at half-mast.

  "Bastard," she says, when she catches me looking, and I almost laugh.

  I continue with the softest of strokes, until she's making a mewling sound, and then I plunge two fingers into her. She's warm and wet and inviting me in.

  The fingers of my other hand find her clit, and trace gentle circles until her mewling gets louder.

  Her nerves are so sensitized that all I have to do is play gently until she begs for something more, and then I win.

  Chapter 34

  Her legs were on fire, her torso a riveting hurt, and the look on Jeremiah's face told Pretty he was enjoying this. It was like he had two distinct and separate personalities, one good and gracious and filled with love, and then this one – this person who reveled in her pain, who knew he was hurting her, and on the one hand believed she deserved it, and on the other didn't care if she did or not, only cared that he liked doing it.

  When he urged her to give in to the pain, she cried, and he took her tears the same as he'd been doing all along.

  There was no escape, and he wasn't the least bit sorry. He was having fun.

  She didn't know how long it took her to notice that he was stroking her intimately, encouraging arousal, but she'd seen his groin bulging when he ate her tears, so maybe it had been quite a few minutes.

  No, she would not allow this. No.

  But there came a sudden tickle beneath the burn.

  Just… that. And after she noticed that, the tickle grew, and she found herself straining against the straps that held her down, trying to get him to press more firmly and in a different place. She could feel how slippery she was getting, despite her predicament, despite the hurt.

  When his fingers slid into her, she was a mass of incongruence – angry with him because she hurt, grateful that he was distracting her and giving her pleasure, sad that he'd never loved her like this, before.

  He ran fingers over her clit in maddening slow circles, teasing, making her tense and release all her muscles at once.

  Seriously, Jeremiah?

  Her flesh was on fire, and he was building a fire inside of her now, too. It wasn't fair.

  The wave started building, and she made more noise, thrashing her head from side to side, tension str
umming her nerves like a wire of molten… something. She was having trouble thinking in words, shitty romance terminology creeping into her brain and scrabbling around, like bugs needing extermination.

  "Fuck," she gasped at some point, and opened her eyes to see him smiling.

  "Yes," he answered.

  "What are you doing?" she asked, and for some reason that made him laugh.

  It wasn't a nice laugh.

  "Rewiring you."

  "Shit, shit, shit," she was almost howling as she came hard against his hand, still straining, still hardly able to move.

  Somehow, using just one hand, he released the strap that held her hips immobile, and then he was mounting her, thrusting himself into her hard, hard, hard – and then, unfathomably, he dropped his upper body on top of her and cradled her head between his hands.

  "Mmm," he said, sliding a little from side to side, smearing her blood into his own skin.

  "Please," Pretty said, and "Don't," but her pleas had no effect. He pressed deep into her, as deep as he could go, and captured her mouth with his.

  The groan came from low in his throat, and he whispered, "Oh, Sunshine Girl – you're alllll dirty now, my love," and she groaned, too, against his weight, against this rape – surely it was rape?

  And then he murmured, as if in response to her thought, "Don't worry, baby, I'll be your sacrifice," and Pretty had no idea what he was talking about.

  He held her for several minutes, his cock still at home inside of her but softening until it felt almost like a retraction. Then he pulled himself away, eased off the bed, and scooped a cloth out of the bucket.

  Pretty was too surprised to beg him not to.

  The smell of citrus hurt the inside of her nose, and then he was covering her with this wet white sheet, and she tried to be prepared, but there was no preparation. All of her was suddenly burning all at once, and if she'd been blindfolded, she would have thought he'd lit her on fire. It was unbearable. He hadn't strapped her hips down again, and she writhed on the bed, pulling hard at the wrist restraints, fighting against the ones at her ankles. The burning consumed her, consumed his next words, surely a repetition of all his words about Jamie so far, because she couldn't hear them, but she knew them, she knew them.