LOVE MADE US MONSTERS

I place the nail varnish onto the cold, tiled floor and turn up the volume of the music assaulting my ear drums. There were so many varnishes to choose from, I just stared at the tub for 20 minutes. I’ve always been like this. Choosing just one ice cream flavour, just one course to study, just one boy to love. I’m not good with big decisions. I’m not good under pressure. This colour is called Sangiovese Spiral but it just looks matte and burgundy and it’s taking forever to dry. I’m not very good at painting my nails. I tremble and end up painting my skin. I don’t mind spending an hour scrubbing myself red with acetone to get it off, I like the smell of it. I like weird smells: yeast, weed, petrol, Tristan’s shampoo.

The dim lights overhead are crackling. Tristan is running the taps in the kitchen - water splashes in the empty basin and the pipes screech. The noise is getting too loud. There’s police sirens now. That sound always makes my hair stand on end, with goosebumps breaking out across my skin. I know they’re not coming for me, at least not this time, but my eyes always wander to the to-go bags we have stashed in the hallway. I force my phone as loud as it’ll go. I’d rather drown in pounding techno than police sirens. I can pretend I’m in some sleazy, underground club and some long-haired, shrooms tripping DJ is smashing together old pop songs. I let my throat remember the burn of straight tequila and my tongue the dissolving of something I won’t remember the next day. I run my hands down my arms imagining some guy: tall, blonde with green eyes and a deep voice telling me ‘relax, baby, relax’. It’s a stupid fantasy nowadays but once upon a time, before all of this, it didn’t feel so fictional.

My head is filled with bubbles. I hear them popping. Pop. Pop. Pop. They soak my skull until it's all wet and mushy like paper mâché. Pop. Pop. Pop. 

Sometimes I dream about slicing the skin of my face open and exposing my skull. I would peel back all the hair and goo and drill holes into the bone, deep enough that I could pull my brain from my spine and hold it in my hands. I want to scrub it clean with soap and hot water, run a toothbrush through the grooves and bumps until it isn’t dirty anymore. Then I’d probably fall over and die which wouldn’t be the worst thing. At least my brain would be squeaky clean and lemony fresh. 

That’s another smell I like. Bleach. 

I am aware of everything. The scratching of the tag on my skirt against my lower back. The chill of the olive tiles against my exposed legs. The plastic bag concealing my dye-soaked hair and the thick drips of magenta globbed against my neck. The stickiness of the polish drying down to my nails. The weird, uncanny valley Jesus Christ portrait hung above the toilet, judging me. My tongue piercing flicking against the backs of my teeth, chipping away the little enamel the years of coffee and cigarettes have spared. I want to strip myself of skin. I want to fry my nerve endings so no texture or temperature or sensation ever makes me feel like this again. I want to be untouched. There are baby spiders hatching behind my eyes and ants on my bones. I itch all over, leaving deep scratch marks on my arms.

I drag myself to the sink, my hands trembling as I grip the almost burnt out cigarette resting on the side. I frisk myself quickly for my lighter before the small neon green box on the bathtub catches my eye. I relight it. I let the smoke fill my mouth, burn in my lungs, tear my throat. I fail at blowing a smoke circle. My third boyfriend spent a whole winter’s night on the bonnet of his Dad’s stolen piss-coloured Ford Escort, trying to teach me how to do it back in secondary school. I never got the hang of it, I just blew him in the backseat and we broke up the next day. The shaking of my hands finally stops but the feeling of vibration remains. Every muscle in my body finally calms. 

A gentle knock wraps the bathroom door. 

“Puppy? You Ok?” Tristan whispers.

“Yeh, I’m OK.” I frantically inhale one last blissful cloud before throwing the butt out of the window and running the tap water to flush away the ash.

The door cracks open. Tristan held in his hand a small cupcake with pink icing swirled into a peak with a striped candle stuck out of the top. 

“You got a lighter?” he asks, smirking.

I feel myself start to smile, my cheeks lifting. I grab my lighter from the side. Fuck.

“Busted.”

I grumble and turn to face him. “It was just the one.”

He places the cake on the side of the sink and stretches out his hand. I hand over the lighter and the almost empty cigarette pack I’ve been stashing behind the toilet paper in the cupboard.

He raises his eyebrow.

I pull a half-full pack from the medicine cabinet, hidden behind 8 bottles of carbamazepine and chuck them at him. 

He lifts the toilet seat and throws the cigs in. I pout, folding my arms across my chest. Before dropping the lighter, he lit the birthday candle. He clears his throat, eyes like chocolate spread baring into me lovingly. “Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, dear Sky. Happy birthday to you.” He presents the cupcake to me like a knight pledging his sword to a Queen. “Make a wish, puppy.” 

I scrunch my eyes shut as I lean in to blow the candle out. I wish I was dead.

“Happy birthday, Sky.” Tristan reaches over to stroke my cheek. The edge of his most recent hospital wristband caught against my jaw. That night in A+E watching them pump his stomach made him even more attractive. Long gone was that hopelessly charming, curly mopped, lip ringed, bright eyed, eyebrow slit twink that bought me the worst whisky and coke I ever tasted in the Seraphim Club all those years ago. This buzzed hair, chipped nail varnish, rake skinny man with my name tattooed over his right eye, laid on a hospital bed, fourty-eight xanax tablets flushing out of him is the hottest man I’ve ever fucking seen. He looked at me that night like he hated me. He looks at everyone that way now. Everyone. “Sorry I couldn’t fit twenty-seven candles on one cake.” He plucks the still smoking candle from the cake, inhaling it deeply before wafting it under my own nose. I breathe it in deeply. It wasn’t nicotine but it was close enough. “Oh shit, I got you something.” He throws the candle into the sink and darts out of the bathroom. 

“Titch, I thought we said no gifts this year.” 

“You’ll like it.” He returns with a small package hastily wrapped with old newspaper and too much sticky tape.

I place the cupcake on the side of the bathtub behind me, licking the artificial, too sweet, strawberry icing off my thumb. I tear through the newspaper wrapping like a little kid on Christmas morning. Into my hand fell a thick but light silver slip chain. The kind that would settle so perfectly around my neck.

“I love it, Titch. I love it.” I threw my arms around him. He rises onto his toes to slip his tongue into my mouth, the lingering aftermath of vomit, spearmint toothpaste and whisky on his breath. I catch his grimace sucking in the smoke still clinging to my mouth.

“I love you.” He nuzzles his nose against my cheek, small hands clad with metal rings groping my arse like he was kneading bread dough.

“Do you love me enough to try some cake?”

“Sky…”

I hook his face with my fingertips, ushering him to look at me. “One bite of cake won’t kill you. Come on. Do it for me.”

“I don’t want it.”

“You haven’t eaten today.” I grab the cupcake and hold it up to him. “It’s my birthday. It’s my birthday cake. Take a bite.”

He drops my hips and pulls away, frowning with a sigh on his lips. He buries his head in his hands. “You have to fucking ruin everything, don’t you?”

“Eat the fucking cake, Tristan. It’s not a fucking seven course banquet.”

“I don’t want to.”

I dip my finger into the icing, stretching over to spread it across his lips.

“Why the fuck would you do that?” He spits and wipes his lips as if I had poisoned him.

“Oh I’m sorry, are the only things allowed down your throat your fingers, xanax and my cock? Is that your diet? Oxygen, xanax and spunk?”

“I try to do something nice for you and this is what I get.”

I bite down hard into the cake, chewing it loudly with an open mouth, letting crumbs fall down my chin. I moan loudly as if this dry, tasteless, corner shop cupcake is French high culinary.

“You’re a twat, Sky.”

“And you’re a fucking bulimic.” I lean in and drag my tongue across his cracked lips, removing the last of the icing.

Tristan rolls his eyes overdramatically, bitchily. Before reaching over to take the cake.

“Too late.” I shovel the rest of it into my mouth. “Go back to your whisky and porn. My hair’s almost done.”

As I try to manoeuvre away he grabs my wrists and holds me against him, shaking me a little. 

“Go on then,” I goad.

He pauses for a moment, long enough for me to wonder if he might actually do something, before he drops my wrists, pushing me back before storming out.

I grab the framed photo of Jesus Christ from above the toilet and throw it at the door. The glass shatters and the frame splinters as it clatters to the ground. 

By the time I’ve finished staining the porcelain white bathtub pink with dye runoff, I can already hear him. I turn on the hair dryer but it can’t drown him out. His gentle grunts, his shaky breaths, the rustling of the bed sheets and the faint slapping of flesh on flesh. He hasn’t fucked me in a month. He always says he’s too tired but he’s bent double on our bed, edging himself like some teen virgin.

I didn’t hate myself until I met Tristan. My freckles, my spots, the collapsed and bruised grooves in my arms, the monobrow I have to pluck, my thin hair and crooked teeth. Tristan can be so vain. I can’t judge him for watching those well-groomed, smooth skinned, big eyed boys that barely pass as male on his websites. I wouldn’t want to look at me either.

I take a deep, steadying breath before I tiptoe into the bedroom. Like a cat I slink onto the bed, my thighs pushing against his as I straddle myself behind him. He slams the screen on his laptop down, the poor thing abused from tight grips and repeated slams, placing it on the side next to us and takes a long breath. My hands crawl across his chest, as I settle my head into the groove of his shoulder. I kiss the side of his neck gently, without pressure. He closes his eyes and exhales shakily. I move up to the edge of his jaw, feeling him tense as I scratch my nails down his back. I pull the earbud from his ear, lean in and in my most innocent voice I whisper, “I’m sorry.”

That gets him there, a crisp inhale, the tensing of his muscles on mine and the sweet release of a long drawn out breath as his body uncoils. He finally lets go, his head falling back as his cramping hand reaches over and strokes my cheek. He’s panting between swear words, reaching for the tissues. He doesn’t even notice me slipping the earbud into my own ear. A booming, thick, male voice commands,

Kneel.

Present your right hand.

The unmistakable sound of wood smacking against skin followed by a pained, shocked gasp.

I said silence. Disobedient little sluts don’t get rewarded.

“Don’t look at that,” he scrambles to grab the laptop, pulling out the other bud.

I get to it first. I see the look on his face as I open it. I can hear the hamster wheel in his brain spinning. 

You take your punishments so well. I think you can take it even harder.

I snap the screen open. There’s a naked young man with powder blue hair and a black blindfold covering his eyes. He is kneeling on red velvet carpet with his right hand quivering and pink as he holds it next to his face. An older man is looming over him dressed in some kind of 1950’s mobster cosplay with a suit and slicked black hair. He’s wielding a thick wooden cane, bringing it down forcefully onto the young man’s hand. With each hit, he chokes back a sob at the dom’s request.

Good slut. You like it when I hurt you, don’t you?

Yes, Daddy.

On all fours, now. Hands palm down in front of you. Silence means silence.

I take the earbud out, placing it on the dresser. I hand him back the computer. His face says it all. Guilty eyes, tense mouth, nostrils twitching. 

“Puppy, I can explain.”

I push my hair out of my eyes. “Do you fantasise about doing that to me?”

“Sky…”

“Does that get you off?”

He crawls to the edge of the bed, reaching for my hand. “Sky, Puppy…”

I pull away from him.

“Sometimes,” he admits.

“You’re fucking disgusting.” I threw my hands up and walk out of the room. The bed squeaks as he rises from it, running after me. He grabs me around the waist, the warmth of his body soothing me. I smell his shampoo. God, I love that smell.

He turns me around to face him, gently rubbing the back of my neck with his thumbs.

I let the silence sit before saying. “Do you wish you could control me?”

“Yes.” He doesn't hesitate. 

“Hurt me?” I try to meet those dead eyes, but he's looking everywhere but at me.

“So it was OK when your ex hit you but if I did it, I’d be a monster?”

I grab his wrist and force him to drop his hands. “You know I never asked for that.”

“Last month you were begging me to spank you and now the idea is horrifying to you.” He pulls me close once again.

“Would you like it if I asked to fuck you whilst you were unconscious because your uncle did it one time?”

“Wow.” His smile disappears as he releases me. “That’s low even for you.”

“I’m not a scared little boy pissing his bed every night like you or those runthrough fucks you jerk it to. If you want a sexdoll, go buy one. You ever strike me like the boy in that video and I swear to God.”

“What do you swear? Would you hit me?”

Everytime he brings up that cursed January night, another part of me falls out of love with him. “How many times are you going to make me apologise?” 

“Until it feels like you actually regret it.”

“It was an accident.” 

“You broke my nose.”

“You were fucking asking for it.” I don’t even notice I’m shouting. “You flushed my stash.”

“I saved your life.” He raised his finger to me, his face tightening. 

“You ruined my life the day you walked into it.”

“Not what you said when I had you bent over a dumpster twenty minutes after meeting you.”

I can't stifle my laugh as I grab my battered, frayed grey cardigan from the back of a kitchen chair. “If I stay here a minute longer I’m going to kill myself.”

“Do it, you fucking pussy. You won’t.”

I stop. Key in the hole. “I hate you.”

“No you don’t, you fucking worship me.” 

Leaving the key hanging, I turn around raising my voice once again. “I’d rather be dead than spend the rest of my life under your thumb.”

“I’d rather you be dead than have to listen to your fucking pity party every night, just go do it. I don’t give a fuck.”

“So if you got a phone call from the hospital morgue, two hours from now, you wouldn’t answer? You wouldn’t go in to identify my body? I could go out right now and get some H, relive the glory days. Would you care? If I came home whilst you were sleeping or jacking it to femboys and I vomited all over our bed and forgot my own name, you wouldn’t hold me?” I can't say I'm proud of who I was back then but it was better than this. Better than the fighting and the screaming. We still fought and screamed but at least I wouldn't be able to remember it the next day.

“Don’t joke about that shit. You fucking traumatised me.”

“I'll arrange the fucking parade. Everyone is traumatised, Tristan, you're not special.” I return to the door before spinning around once again. “You were already fucked in the fucking head when you found me. You dragged me down to your level, not the other way around.”

“When I met you, I was sober, employed, in therapy, healing…”

“You were a stripper!”

“At least I was happy.”

“I've never been happy,” my voice squeaks and cracks. “I was miserable before you, jumping from guy to guy. These last 6 years with you, the shit we’ve sacrificed to try and get something out of this. There’s just all this fucking resentment. But I don't think I'd be happy without you, Tristan. If this fell apart and I had to start again, I think I’d go insane. I am not capable of being happy, Tristan.” I sniffle back tears.

“Saturday nights eating shitty cheap chinese takeout whilst watching true crime bullshit. Showering together and wearing each other’s clothes. Going on our dumb little adventures. That’s the closest to happiness I have ever been.” He rests his hand on my shoulder and for the first time all night it didn't feel like a poison dagger. “Somewhere inside you is that sweet, crazy, loud boy that stole my heart. He made me happy.”

“You mean that?”

“Swear on my uncle’s grave. We can be happy, Sky.”

“What if I can't? What if I'm just…broken?” The first tear fell.

He held me in the tightest, warmest, softest hug he ever had. “You're not broken, you're perfect.”

The tears began to flow. I wept into his shoulder for the next half hour. He cuddles me until it stops. I never used to cry all that much, not until I met Tristan. Now it feels like I cry every day. It’s odd when the only thing you have ever loved is also the thing that makes you cry the most. He has worn me down to this blubbering, snotty nosed, pathetic little mess. Just how he likes me.

When I’m done, he dries my cheeks with the hem of his t-shirt. “I love you,” he mouths.

“I love you,” I mouth back.

“If you’re done walking out, shall we get back to the job at hand. We’re truly being terrible hosts to our guest.”

I had almost forgotten we had company. I get distracted very easily.

Duct taped to one of the wooden kitchen chairs is a balding middle aged man in a grey suit with a white shirt. His mouth is stuffed with my underwear. He is in relatively fit condition, too tall or too fat and you can’t move them easily. No wedding ring but a faint white line where one had sat for a longtime. He is thrashing as hard as he could against the tape, whipping his head back and forth. His eye is teary and bloodshot. Despite his current state, I could smell in his cologne: this is a rich prick. 

Titch and I are always at our happiest when we are hunting. Something about the butchery, the brutality, the beauty of such bloodshed is kind of kinky. Whenever we are going through a rough patch we’d resurface, have a proper date night just him and me and the poor fucker acting as marriage counsellor for the night.

“What was the score?” Tristan asks as he reaches into our duffel bag of goodies and pulls out a chef's knife, long and tall and oh so sharp.

“It was 3-2 to me.”

“3-2?”

Tristan is such a sore loser. “Round one I won with the toenail pulling. I won round two with the finger breaking. You won round three…”

“The cock shot.”

“And round four with the spoon to the eye. Then I won the last round with the car battery. 3-2 and it’s your turn.”

“Don’t worry, Hector, you’re not dying anytime soon,” Tristan said calmly whilst twisting the tip of the knife against his finger tip. “We’ve eased you into it. Lubed you up before we fuck you, we’re not savages. Deep breath now, Hecky.” With the precision of a drunk sniper he stabs the blade through the palm of Hector’s right hand. My pants nearly fell from his mouth from how loud he screams, even louder when Tristan pulls it back out after a satisfying twist of the blade. He ran the sweet red wine soaked blade across his tongue.

I roll my eyes. “You’re so predictable, you always go for the right hand. Where’s your sense of adventure?”

“Twenty-three kills and it hasn’t failed me yet. Your move, Puppy.”

“Plus you wasted the chef’s knife. Can’t reuse an item, no take backs.” I saunter my way over to the bag, noticing Tristan’s eyes hungering as I swing my hips and slow my drop to the ground. It’s like every Christmas and birthday rolled into one. I pick up a heavy two handed pipe wrench that almost bends my wrist backwards.

“This is a new era for us. Let’s get inventive.” 

Hector begins to shake his head and try to pull away as I approach him. I nod in response, my grin widening as I step up like a batter at the bottom of the ninth. The bone cracks as the wrench hits his left shin, a crater left in its wake and I am the fucking meteor. There is a moment of beautiful nothingness whilst his sweaty, shaking body registers what is happening. I pull my pants from his month so we could revel in that scream. He is a crier.

“OK, Hecky,” Tristan said, wringing his hands, “who won that round?”

He didn’t talk, he just kept wailing as dark, rich blood began to trickle from his shattered shin.

“I’d say that’s a point Team Sky,” I said, pecking Tristan briskly on the tip of his nose, dropping my underwear into his hand.

He held them to his nose, inhaling deeply before tucking them into his pocket. “We got pliers in there?”

“You know it.” I pass them over to him.

He straddles Hector like he was still giving lap dances.

“Hold still, you prick!” said Tristan, pliers in one hand, Hector’s jaw in the other. 

“No no no plea-” Hector yelps as Tristan jams his pliers down to the back of his mouth. 

“Could have sworn I saw a gold filling back here…there it is!” Tristan boasts with delight. The slight clicking sound of the metal clasping the tooth, muffled by Hector's whimpering cries. Tristan begins to sharply twist and wrench at the tooth each way, each movement accompanied by a chorus of stifled cries. 

“Careful, you’ll break it off!” I yell, trying hard not to laugh. When he gets all butch and violent, it makes me unexplainably horny.

“I don’t care if it breaks, Puppy, I just want the…”A large snapping sound and a brand new type of agony ruptures and gargles out of Hector’s, now bloody running, throat. “...got it!” yells Tristan. He holds the pliers high to the light, a broken tooth sitting in their jaws with a distinct glint of gold slap dab in the centre. “Oh Hec, you poor bastard, dental surgery is expensive, believe me I know. Here. I’ll save you the trouble and even the other side out for you.” A sickly grin grew on Tristan’s face. He threw me the tooth. It is a little rotted right at the top but with a bit of work it’d make the cutest little trophy.

“Please, stop, please man, I’m beg-” Hector manages to barely mumble before the pliers return to the back of his mouth and the screaming starts again. His voice is all fucked up now.

By the time Tristan saunters back over, I’m already choosing my next weapon.

“Decisions, decisions,” I mutter. I push a roll of duct tape out of the way and my hand falls on some wire cutters. I could probably get a 10/10 for creativity. 

He is sobbing, spit and snot trickling all over his face. It’s so fucking gross. He tries to whip and worm his head away from me. I raise my spare hand to him, fist balled tightly just like Tristan had taught me. I land a couple of admittedly pathetic blows but they do the job, he’s confused long enough for me to grip him by the cheeks and force him to face me.

I almost lunge with excitement at his right ear, grabbing it tight and pulling it taut. With a single squeeze of the cutters I cut deep into the seam where the ear starts and the face ends. Hector’s beady little grey eyes screw up tight as a strained groan erupts in a blood gargled mess. The cutters didn't go all the way through. His ear now dangled on the remaining flesh like one of those dumbfuck rock climbers. I take a moment to admire it. This must be how Van Gogh felt looking at Starry Night, Leonardo Da Vinci gazing up at the Mona Lisa. Yes, Hector would be my masterpiece. 

“You just going to do half a job, Pup? You’ve lost your moxie.” said Tristan with his signature smirk sipping from his crystalline whiskey glass.

“Oh, lover, this is just the foreplay,” I said before diving back in. I ignore the screams of protest and grab the sliced ear with my fist. With a healthy yank down I rip apart the ear from the head, along with a sizable chunk of face meat with it. It didn't take as much effort as expected but the effect was oh so desirable. Hector thrashes his head back and forth, almost barking. Shouting to see if he can still hear his own voice over what must be the most horrific sound. It is probably bad that a part of me twisted with jealousy. I wanted to hear how it sounded. I wanted the burning sting of that pain. “I win again, Titch.”

From the duffel he pulls a slightly rusted boxcutter. “October 4th 2019?”

I thought for a second before gasping with my hands on my cheeks. “Is it the cutter you used to carve me?”

“The very same.”

I lift up my skirt, exposing my thigh. A large scarred over T still took pride of place.

“How about we give Hector a little something to remember us by?” He yanks Hector’s shirt so hard that the buttons pop off exposing his chest and hairy stomach. 

“Sky and Tristan sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G,” he sang to himself as he made the first incision into Hector’s chest.

I remember October 4th so vividly. We’d been at the club, done more ket than either of us were used to and found ourselves strung out on the beach. It was freezing, the seawater matted my hair, there was sand everywhere. But the sun was rising. I don’t remember exactly what it looked like but it was beautiful. 

Tristan told me, ‘Sky, you are so beautiful. No one should be allowed to be this beautiful’.

I rolled over onto my back and said. ‘Make me ugly’.

I was expecting him to kiss me, maybe toss me around a little. He pulled a box cutter from his coat and told me to lay back. I was so scared. I thought he was going to kill me. He kissed me on the eyelid and worked my jeans down to my knees.

He looked down at my already slashed thighs. ‘You like hurting yourself’?

‘They’re old’, I lied.

His eyes darkened as he leant down and kissed them. As soon as my head rolled back onto the pillow of sand, he slashed his initial deep into the flesh. I cried out and he covered my mouth, pulling my jeans back up so the blood would stain my clothing.

‘Now the whole world will know who you belong to’.

I was so caught up in my memory, I almost hadn’t noticed Tristan straddling Hector. He had become unintelligible at this point - making vague moaning noises that could sound like pleads if he wasn’t missing teeth. 

“I’ll be sure to take my time with this one. I want it to look just right so you wait patiently, Puppy. Hold still, alright Hecky?” 

“Why are you doing this?” Hector grumbles… at least I think that’s what he said. It’s hard to tell. 

“Don’t know, Don’t care. Now hold still, fuck stain,” sang Tristan. With a forceful stab he gouges into the pale meat of his torso. Hector’s pain is an original score for our game. Tristan wasn’t lying either, he made sure to take his time. The blade is old, rusty and blunt. It’s less of a blade than a thin piece of metal. It didn’t ‘cut’, it tore its way through meat and skidded over bone. When Tristan finally stands up his hands are covered in gore and like a child showing their exhausted parent a new trick they’d learnt, he gestures to the most crude, loving gift he had given me all night. In jagged lines and unintentional curves was a heart with an arrow through its side and the letters S+T engraved in the middle. If this wasn’t love then I don’t know what is. He places his viscera-dripping thumb on my chin and tenderly pulls my lips open. He slid two bloodied fingers into my mouth. I didn’t need to be ordered, I knew what to do. I held his wrist and began to suck them clean.

“Taste good?”

I nod with a moan. “More.”

“Not yet.” He pulls his fingers from my mouth, wiping my spit on my shirt. “Your move, Pup.”

Hector passed out, laying limp in his chair while his life blood oozes onto the carpet. I wish I could have seen what Hector saw. Agony and a rusty boxcutter one moment, and the next? A power drill rousing him from a pain induced slumber. I had been saving this bad boy all night. Even when his body gave out on him, I wasn’t going to let him rest. “Which leg did I break again?” I ask Tristan, being half-serious. 

“The one that’s bleeding, Pup,” he answers with a chuckle in his throat. 

“Ah, of course. I can be so forgetful.”

“Probably all the smack.”

“No, it couldn’t be that.” I say as I squeeze the trigger, bringing the thick drillbit to its blurring speed. Hector’s eyes open and widen. He isn’t even able to draw enough breath to cry out as I put the bit to the top of his knee and with both hands begin to push down. The drill’s motor cries out in protest almost as much as Hector does. Blood and bone splatter and splinter up the drill bit, clearing its destructive path. I don’t know how other couples do the soppy cinema, dinner, bowling, flowers and chocolates date night bullshit. I am bathing in the sinew of a man at my mercy and my lover is looking at me like I’m a fucking supermodel. I keep waiting for the resistance to stop and the drill to come out the other side. It isn't until I see that the drill has spun as far as the bit is long that I realise that it’s gone through his knee and straight down into his shin. I wonder how that must feel, I’m almost tempted to cut his restraint and flex his leg to see how it moves. If it moves. That’s half the fun done.

With the drill silent for a moment, I turn back to Tristan, wiping blood off my face with the back of my hand. “And you’re just as forgetful as I am.”

“I have the memory of an elephant.”

“Didn’t it take you until twenty-three to remember you got touched as a kid?”

“That is an extreme example.”

With a flick of a switch I set the drill in reverse and guide it back up the hole I’ve just caused. Hector’s mental faculties have left us with only a laboured breath and a groan every couple seconds to tell us he’s alive. 

“Josie…Cara…”

“Awww,” I coo, “are those your little girls? Your daughters?”

“...waiting for me.”

“Well, we can always go pick them up, if they need a ride.” Tristan jokes. Hector did not laugh. He claps his hands together. “Call it 5-3, Puppy?”

“I just disabled him for life. That point is mine.”

“I carved our legacy into his chest. I made him a fucking museum exhibit.”

I ponder for a second. He made a good point. “5-3. But I don’t think we’re getting very much more out of dear Hector here. We’re getting to the kid stuff, he’s gone.”

“So where does that leave us?”

“Well, I won this time. So that puts us at fourteen to me and ten to you.”

“Goddamnit.”

“You should see me play poker. Now that’s a game I can win everytime.”

“I have seen you play poker. Strip poker. You lost every round, you were terrible.” 

“Or maybe I just wanted you to see all of me.”

His tongue could barely stay in his mouth. Tristan presents his hand to me. “Grand finale?”

“The grandest.” I took it with a loud slap. “Loser.”

Once more he dives into the bag revealing a broadhead fireman's axe, easily the largest tool we could use. Shiny and red, it matches the blood drip dripping onto the floor as Hector barely reacts. So bloody and beaten, the poor fucker can only muster quickened breath and another terrified look in the eye, like a beaten puppy. 

Tristan takes a second to align the blade along Hector’s belly, preparing a swing. He turns to me, the axe raised over his shoulder. “Happy birthday, Puppy,” he says with the innocent smile of the boy I fell in love with all those years ago. The same smile he flashes me across the bar in Seraphim. With that he finishes his swing, burying the axe into Hector’s stomach with a wet thwacking sound like stomping in mud. What little left strength Hector had is used to scream once more, a final and pitiful thing. Removing the axe with a wetter squelch, Tristan dove into the newly made orifice, digging around and grabbing a fist full of intestines, ripping them out of the cavity. The smell is putrid but I had to cross my legs as I felt myself rise to half mast. With the spiked end of the axe Tristan took the intestine and stabs it into the mahogany kitchen table, pinning it in place. With a quick slice of a wire cutter Tristan cut the duct tape bindings holding Hector, freeing him, what little good it will do. 

Tristan got down to his level, leering over the broken man like a teacher scolding a student. He took Hector’s shaking, drooling face in his hand and said, “You want to see Cara and Josie again? Start crawling bitch.” Before pushing Hector out of the chair, collapsing in his own blood and guts. 

Part of me is afraid he’d just die on the spot but the mad fucker starts crawling for the door. A mouth that will never work, legs beyond saving, bleeding from places that should never bleed, Hector starts to crawl, a string of intestines growing behind him like a spider and its silk. I can’t help but squeal with glee. Giggles rise out of my chest as I scrunch my knees to my chest. This is the greatest birthday gift ever! The floor became wet and glistening with entrails and what I could only presume is piss and tears. The sounds are paltry, a groan and a slap as broken limbs claw at the carpet, all the way to the door. Tristan catches my eye. He’s rock hard and readjusting, shyly trying to touch himself through the fabric of his jeans. 

With the last of his strength, Hector reaches up to the handle, a last ditch Hail Mary grab as he pushes himself up. As if on cue, a sloppy smacking sound erupts from Hector's insides as his stomach falls out of the hole along with his entrails. A squelch, a groan and a smack as Hector's body collapses, inches away from ‘freedom’.  

I wander to the corpse and give him a couple of swift kicks. Dead as the fucking dodo.

“A moment’s silence for our dear friend Hector.” I clasp my hands together in a mock prayer.

“Lift your skirt up and lay down.”

I turn back to look at Tristan, already undoing his belt.

“Lay down where?”

He nods to the pool of blood settled beneath the chair. 

I drop and slowly begin to crawl across the rough, stained carpet, my knees already turning red. I quickly unlace the faux corset of my top, throwing it over my shoulder. As I laid on my back in Hector’s sweet, sweet gore, I felt like Kate Winslet in Titanic. In one swift motion, Tristan pulls his faded, baggy, shoplifted Black Flag t-shirt over his head, dropping it at his feet. He looks even skinnier now, like a skeleton model in a science class. The large tattoo of red roses that covers most of his chest, is obscured by his body hair but just looking at him stirs up my desperation.  

“Christ, Puppy, you’re needy aren’t you?” He’s looming over me as he unzips his trousers. 

“Please…” I beg, opening my legs so he can kneel between them.

“So needy.” He grabs a clump of my hair and gently lays my head back. His fingers fall down my tense face and into my mouth. I suck them eagerly. “That’s enough, Puppy.” He pulls them out but keeps his cold, dead eyes on mine as he slips them inside of me, working me open agonisingly slow. I moan like a fucking virgin. It’s been so long since I’ve been touched by him, I’d almost forgotten how heavenly he is. “Not too loud, we don’t want to wake the neighbours.”

“Don’t hold back."

“Oh, Pup, you’re going to regret saying that.” He leant over to tenderly kiss my forehead. “I love you, Sky Dolan.”

“I love you, Tristan Roth.” I crane my neck to reach his lips. I only kiss him for a second before he pulls away, big, calloused hands lifting my skirt up to my thighs. He grabs me under the knees and pulls me closer towards him. He kisses my calf as he props my right leg onto his shoulder. A lot more considerate than usual. 

I take a deep breath and let my body relax. My insides stretch around him, a familiar feeling that sends waves of warm tingling pleasure through my limbs as he slowly slides inside me. It may have been a while but my body remembers. He belongs inside me, and I welcome it with a moan. I can hardly keep my mouth shut from my gasps and groans, each time sending shock after shock of euphoria through me. He plunges back into me but not as deep this time; I can’t help but let out a bratty cry, reaching up to pull him further inside me.

“So needy” he says with bated breath before pushing back in as far as he can, over and over. 

With each thrust, my whole body is sent shuffling back and forth like a ragdoll. When he pushes me back, I turn my head. Hector is looking right at me. His one remaining eye of gentle, stoney grey, red and flooded with tears he never got to cry. I wonder if Cara and Josie had his eyes. I know he’s dead, I checked myself but his eyes are still alive, still bright and they’re glaring at me. Fuck. 

I love how easy it is for Tristan to let his animal out. It was the beast that dwelled under those angel curls that first drew me in. He could kill me easily whenever he pleased. I probably wouldn’t be able to fight him off. One day I’d wake up with a headache duct taped to a chair to the buzz of a power drill. If he were to torture me, what would he do? Would he give me a quick death out of love? Or would that love make him hurt me all that deeper? He knows I can handle pain. I enjoy pain. He wouldn’t let me go quietly and softly into the night. No. If Tristan kills me, he’ll make me suffer more than any creature on this planet can stand. It’d be poetic — Clyde killing Bonnie. 

With a flip of my legs and shifting my hips, Tristan turns me on my side. My right leg glides along the fluids on the floor whilst he grasps my left and holds it to his chest. I feel him breathing with me, moaning with me. I feel the heat of the blood on my face and back, iron in the air. One of his hands let go of my leg. With a sharp tug from his hand I feel the warm metal clamp of my slipchain shut around my throat, the blood to my brain is slowed as my legs begin to twitch. As euphoric as this feels, my hands try to fight, half the reason I love it when he chokes me. They settle gripping his arm and I dig my nails in. My body moves on its own and I feel a familiar heat rising in my groin. I let out a gag. He fucks me like I’m made of plastic. My eyes see stars, my whole body tenses and convulses on the floor as I gasp for breath and cover myself in my own mess. Only then does he let go of my chain. 

He’s still moving inside of me. He’s not even close. I don’t get a moment to come back to Earth before I hear the disappointment straining his voice. “Where’d my good little slut go?”

“Tris-”

He grabs me around my stomach, pulling out of me just long enough to twist me onto all fours. “Hands palm down in front of you.”

I do as he says, trying to find a way to make this hold comfortable. His hand presses against the back of my head until I’m cheek to cheek with the blood and spit and tears and piss and spunk cocktail on the once cream carpet. 

“Your back, Puppy.” He pushes me down until my stomach is flat and my arse is raised towards him as he rises to his knees. He’s fucking me like that blue-haired boy in his video.

He’s close. He’s going too fast and making that strange, guttural growl he makes. Fuck this. Fuck him. Fuck his fucking games. I force my body up, pushing back against him. “Sky, what are you…”

“You don’t fucking control me.” It hurts at first, this isn’t something I’m used to doing but if he thinks he has any power here, he’s dead fucking wrong. I keep going, as fast and hard as my body can take. I bite down on my lip. He doesn’t get the satisfaction of hearing me. 

“Fuck, Puppy…”

I drag myself away from him. He’s on edge. “Lie down. Now.” I push him down from the chest, straddling him. I watch his eyes widen and his teeth grind as I begin to move my hips. He never lets me do this. 

“Call me Daddy.”

“Sky-”

“Say it, you fucking slut!”

“Daddy, I’m close.” I hear the spite. His hands clamp down on my arse moving me faster and faster until he grunts, filling me up.

I don’t give him the chance to touch me. I waddle towards the bathroom. My whole body hurts. 

“Pup…” He’s still out of breath as he scrambles to his feet. 

“Don’t come near me,” I shout, practically tearing my skirt from my body and throwing it in his face. My body is on fire. I need it to stop. I need all of it to stop. My head is still spinning, my legs shaking, I’m covered in so much shit that I can’t even identify. I felt so small.

He jams his foot in the bathroom door so I can't close it. “You’ve been begging for a good fuck for months and you can’t even give me five minutes?”

I push against the door. “Maybe if you didn’t only fuck me on my birthday I’d last longer.”

“Masturbate like the rest of humanity.”

“To little femboys getting beaten black and blue?”

“You’re still mad about that?” He barges his way in sending me stumbling back.

Shards of glass from the shattered Jesus frame stab into my feet but I barely feel them. 

“Get out. I cannot look at you right now.”

“Sky…”

“Get out, get out, get out, get out!” I wail. 

He does, slamming the door like a petulant teenager. I let my body flop against the cool tiles. I  choke back the tears as I stare at my bruised knees. The tracks down my arms. The faded stick and pokes and infected piercings. The scars. So many fucking scars. I wish I hated him. I wish I could. I wish I’d never met him. I never would’ve done this to myself if he…

He let himself back into the bathroom a few minutes later to a chorus of visceral splating of flesh hitting the floor. Hector’s gore is smeared up his arms and neck. In his hand, steady and tense, he holds Hector’s heart, freshly carved from his chest. It's still almost spasming. 

There is a long moment of silence as we glare at each other. He raises the organ to his lips and bit generously into the meat. It’s the most I’d seen him eat in weeks. His teeth tug at it like a well done steak. 

He walks across the glass to crouch at my side and pulls me into his arms. I wrap myself around him but I’m unable to speak. I snuggle into his neck. He raises the heart to my mouth.

“Eat.”

I do. It’s so tough I can barely get my crooked teeth through it. I never got the taste for human flesh that Tristan did. From our very first kill all those years ago he’s been obsessed with it. It tastes so foul, especially when it’s this raw. I can’t even describe that taste. I chew it and swallow it down. The fleshy bits get stuck in my teeth and all I can taste is metal. 

He takes another bite. Then I do. Then him. Then me again. 

We keep going until the entire organ is consumed without saying a word. I feel my stomach churn. I inch towards the toilet, throwing the lid up and vomiting into it. The bloody, thick, black throw up is one of the most disgusting things I have ever seen in my life. I rub my stomach, trying to ease the onset cramping.

Before I can even process what is happening, he has me scooped up in his arms. He places me on the floor of the shower and turns on the faucet. It’s ice cold. It numbs my skin. Blood, piss, spunk, I don’t know what else all goes trickling down the plughole. He picks the glass shards out of my bare feet. He washes me gently until every inch of skin is clean. He scrubs slowly. He’s talking but I don't understand the words he’s saying, I can’t hear them. There’s too much noise. Pop. Pop. Pop.

I look up and see the silent tears running down Tristan’s face as he massages shampoo into my hair. 

“Would you ever kill me, Tristan?”

“No.” He said without hesitation. 

“Even if I asked you to?”

Gently, he began to kiss my shoulders. “If you go, I’m going with you.”

I can’t repress my laugh. “You’d kill yourself for me?”

“A thousand times over in the most painful way I can imagine.” He is sincere. His lips twitch when he lies. He reaches up and turns the faucet off. “You know I’m doing this because I love you. You know that I love you, don’t you Sky?”

“You don’t love me. You worship me.”

“I’m going to get you some new clothes, Puppy.” He comes back to me wrapping a warm, fluffy towel around my shivering body. I struggle to stand without his arms to support me.

He sits me next to the toilet, stroking my hair out of my face.

He comes back a few moments later with my favourite grey cardigan and one of his pairs of old, ripped, baggy jeans that still hold his scent. He’s wearing the large green jumper I knitted for him last Christmas with those denim short shorts he knows drive me insane. He takes the towel and starts to dry me off.

“Why are you crying?” I ask him. He’s not trying to hide it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Tristan cry. Maybe once at his uncle’s funeral.

“It reminds me of tying your hair back, cleaning your tracks, holding you through the night, to make sure you were breathing, forcing you to eat. Watching you kill yourself slowly. I want you to be safe.”

He drops the towel and pulls the jeans onto me, zipping them before easing the cardigan onto my arms. 

“Why are you so good to me?” I ask.

“Because no one else will ever love you the way that I can. You?”

“Because no one else ever has been.”

A scream like nothing I’ve ever heard before rips through the house. We turn to each other. Running out of the bathroom we see them. Two young girls with grey eyes, sobbing and hysterical crying. A woman stern-faced in her pantsuit and stilettos covers her mouth in horror.

Fuck.

“I thought you said they wouldn’t be back until next week?” I spat out.

“That’s what her Facebook said.”

“D-daddy?” One of the little girls chokes out.

We sprint to the hallway and grab our bag, throwing in any odd bits we’d left out. We’re all packed up in ten seconds flat. They don’t even get a glimpse at our faces. The bathroom is on the ground floor and the window is shockingly easy for Tristan to kick in. 

Before the mother has even finished dialling 999 we are away down the street. We ran hand in hand, bags slung over our shoulders. I had never seen Tristan smile so wide or laugh so loudly. I couldn’t help but laugh with him. We sprint through Springhollow, hollering like maniacs. This is liberation. My naked, scarred feet hit the pavement hard with each step. I almost felt young again. Almost. Our love is different now. We are different now. 

I can’t help myself. I push him up against the brick wall of a nearby house and kiss him on the mouth as if I’d never been kissed before. He reciprocates, stroking a thumb down my neck. 

“Lets steal their car,” I whisper into his ear as my eyes wander to the driveway. It’s the oldest looking car on the street which made it the easiest to nick. 

“My clever little Puppy.” He smashes the window with a gnome he grabs from the doorstep, sending the car alarm blaring. I throw the bags in the back seat as he begins to fiddle with all the technical stuff I don’t understand. It only takes a few seconds before the engine revs up, almost in sync with the lights of every house on the street switching on. 

“Our DNA is all over that place,” Tristan said gloomily.

“Then you better drive fast, bitch.”

He grins at the side of his face, clamping one hand down on my thigh before hitting the accelerator. Wheeling through those midnight streets just me and him, him and I, us being us. He still has blood under his fingernails after spending so long making sure mine are clean. 

I love Tristan Roth with every cell and fibre of my being. Every organ, every muscle, all the tissue in my system. Every spider and ant inside of me. I love Tristan Roth. And Tristan Roth loves me. He loves me. He loves me. He…

He loves me.