Jeremiah Quick (28 page)

For a while the pain was tolerable, and then
it wasn't.

She begged him to stop.

He didn't.

The feel of the blade along the side of her
foot left her alternately holding her breath and gagging. Higher,
the back of her thigh, which didn't seem as bad, was almost
tolerable with a rhythm, a rising wave of pain that crested,
crashed over her in a cascade of whimpering and begging, and then
receding for minutes in which she was able to catch her breath.

His hand on her non-injured foot brought
dread and terror, and a flurry of
no no no please please
don't
.

He stroked the bottom of her foot and said,
"It's because I care about you."

She didn't believe him.

She cried.

He paused once in a while to squat near her
head and take her tears. This, still. And once he held her chin so
she couldn't look away from him, and kissed her lips. His pupils
were dilated, the expression on his face dispassionate. He stared
at her for a long while, then let her go, left her field of vision,
went back to his horrid task.

What felt like a century later the backs of
both of her legs were, apparently, done. He released her and fed
her strawfulls of succulent cold water, then turned her over gently
and strapped her down again, lying on her back.

When he started cutting the tops of her
feet, she hardly flinched, although she raised her head for long
minutes to watch how the tip of his tongue poked out of his mouth
every so often and rested against his top lip, and how his gleaming
eyes flicked from his hands to her flesh. How sometimes he smiled.
She knew this, then, was somehow the warm-up.

She watched his hand wield the blade like an
artist might cling to a pencil, and when she wiggled her toes, he
frowned.

He wiped her with a wet cloth when there was
too much blood, or if the lines were covered with his own blood and
semen from earlier. She imagined a red pile of rags next to the
bed, out of sight.

The blade tracing the lines on the front of
her shin bone was a new shocking pain, sharp, like banging into a
corner, so little flesh there that she was sure he was cutting to
the bone. She yelled, swore at him. Called him every cuss word she
knew, and some she made up.

His eyes smiled. "Maybe I should have saved
this part for last."

Through the fire and the burn, Pretty tried
to hate him.

She hated the room. She hated the knife or
blade, whatever he was using. She hated the bed and its evil
restraints.

"You have to keep your eyes open, Sunshine.
You can't ever forget again. Promise me."

This he said as he lifted wet lime-scented
strips of cloth out of the bucket and started winding them around
her left leg. For an instant it was a cool soothe, and she was
almost able to compose herself, but then it became fire, and the
fire made her shriek, "Take it off. Make it stop," and she fought
her bindings and bit the insides of her cheeks until she tasted her
own blood. There was too much pain to pay attention to, from the
hot slice of the blade to the agonizing fire of the wrap, to the
pressure wheals of fighting the bondage, and the muscle aches from
the same futility. She was drenched with sweat and snot and
tears.

He ignored her, spiraling the wrap to a few
inches above her knee, tugging the topmost strip tight and tucking
it into the layers beneath.

The burning acid feel of the wet cloth
tricked her into thinking the blade was kind.

He wrapped her other leg, and like the
cutting, the lime-scented gauze hurt her like a process, the burn
climbing with each revolution until Pretty was mad from it, wailing
and thrashing, making begging noises because words beyond "please"
and "hurts" and "I promise" wouldn't form.

When he was finished with the bandages, he
fed her more water. Stroked her face, pressed his lips to the
hollow of her throat. "Shh," he murmured. "
I know
it hurts. And
I know you'll promise anything. That's why I
can't accept any promises, yet. But I think, soon, you'll be ready
for a story."

Whatever was in the bucket was
not
just water.

She finally managed to calm enough to ask,
"What the fuck is that stuff?"

"It's a solution that curls and dries the
edges of the wounds, creating space for scars."

Creating scars. That wasn't exactly the kind
of change she thought he'd make in her, marking her like this.
She'd expected more internal change, not external.

"Take it off. Please. I'll be good, I'll
learn everything you want, I swear."

Jeremiah didn't take them off. In fact, he
came up with sponge from somewhere and pressed it to increments of
the bandages, wetting them more.

She only noticed she was humming when
Jeremiah started singing, softly,
my love hurts, baby, I know it
hurts
… and there was some far-away detached part of her that
wanted to punch him for being such a bastard that he'd teach her
this terrible song and then take his pain,
or excuse me
,
his love
, out on her.

She was too… something… to protest. Too
exhausted. Too hopeless. Too numb.

He left for a while. Left her there, raw,
burning.

When he came back, he said, "If I untie you
and you hold still, you can sit up, in something like a student
desk, while I do your hands and arms."

She went mute, trying to imagine sitting
still, on her own, while he did this. The burn of her legs had
subsided to a throbbing discomfort. Either her brain finally
released a large-enough flood of endorphins, or the unending pain
had burned out her pain receptors. Something.

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

S
he...

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

S
omething 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.