Painter’s Obsession

7. Chapter Seven

Chapter Seven

Ren

“ T hese tacos are amazing,” Gabriela hums, taking a bite of her food. After an intense make-out session and car sex, we’re finally eating, and I’ve managed to learn a little more about her brother and her missing best friend, Mary Jane. Watching her cry for her friend was the highlight of my night. Fucking her right after? Even better.

“They usually are,” I reply, wiping my mouth. “I stop here after work when I want something tasty and quick.”

She hums in approval, chewing thoughtfully. “It’s good. Everything is.”

Her company isn’t bad—enjoyable, even. If I were a normal man, I might entertain the possibility of something real. But I’m not normal. I don’t do feelings. Love, relationships, all that crap—it’s just pretend for me. I’m incapable of anything meaningful. Things are the way they are.

“I should take some home to Byron,” she says suddenly, breaking my thoughts.

“You can. I’ll go order some more,” I offer.

“It’s okay. I can pay for my brother’s tacos.”

I shrug, burping into my hand. “Seriously, I don’t mind. You shouldn’t have to pay for anything when I invited you out.”

She nods, accepting the offer. “Why a lawyer?” she asks, catching me off guard. The question yanks me back to memories I’d rather keep buried.

I cough into my fist, choking on my past. Failed dreams. Roads I never had a chance to walk. “My mom,” I answer finally. “My dad was a big shot, and she thought I should follow in his footsteps.”

Gabriela sighs, her brown eyes softening. “I’m sorry. If you could’ve been anything, what would it be?”

I chuckle, the corner of my mouth twitching. “A painter.”

Her eyes spark with interest, urging me to say more.

“Painter? I would’ve never guessed. Can you draw?”

I nod, reaching behind her to pull out my sketchbook. I hand it over, the black cover worn and speckled with age. Her fingers trace the edges as she opens it.

“Beautiful,” she murmurs. “It looks...rusted.” She sniffs, chuckling. “It even smells like rust.”

“I like to create colors,” I explain, leaning closer. “This one was done with rusted items.” I point to a sketch of one of my favorite flowers, the petals dark and textured. “The splashes here? That’s from water soaked in rusted metal. That’s why it’s reddish-brown.”

She turns the page, her smile growing. “You’re really good.”

“I’m good at most of the things I do,” I reply, confidence lacing my tone.

We chat a bit more, ordering another round of tacos before I drive her back to her house. As I park, I lean in for another kiss, savoring her warmth for just a moment longer.

“It was fun,” she says, pushing open the car door. The light inside the trailer flickers on as she shoos me away. “Go before my overprotective big brother comes out and beats you up.”

I smile, watching her disappear inside. My body hums with restless energy, my mind already drifting. It’s time to create my final masterpiece—a goodbye to the flower withering away.

“Knife Party” by Deftones pulses through the dimly lit room, its haunting melody the perfect companion to the symphony of silence that surrounds me. I kneel before my latest piece, studying her with a mix of admiration and detachment. Her green eyes, once vibrant and wide with terror, are now devoid of light—dull, dead. She’s still breathing, her chest rising and falling in shallow, broken rhythms, but the fight is gone. The void has consumed her, leaving behind an emptiness that mirrors my own.

Her nipples are taut, a cruel testament to the cold air that bites her skin. Her arms, tied above her head, tremble faintly as if her body hasn’t fully accepted its surrender. Blonde hair cascades around her like a golden curtain, framing her slackened face. The flowers I’ve carved into her skin are swollen, red, and puffy, each petal raised in angry relief against her once-pristine flesh. Pain blooms in those delicate cuts, grotesque yet beautiful. A masterpiece.

My gaze trails down her body, following the faint streak of urine tracing her thigh. It glistens under the dim light, a stark reminder of her humanity, her fragility. My fingers follow, tracing the line down to her cunt. Slowly, I circle her clit, eliciting the faintest response—a twitch, a shudder. Even now, her body betrays her, reacting instinctively. But as I kneel there, I know the truth….my toy is broken. Beyond repair. And when a toy is broken, there’s only one thing left to do.

“W…” Her cracked voice breaks the silence, raw and hoarse from the screams, from my cock taking her throat like a possession. “Wh…why?”

It’s always the same question. Why? The real questions— When did it start? How did it come to this? —are far more interesting. But she wouldn’t understand the answers even if I cared to explain.

If I had to pinpoint the beginning, it would be the moment I clawed my way out of the womb. My mother—if you could call her that—snuffed out my light the second I entered her world. The day we buried my father was the day she clipped my wings.

I slide my finger through her piss-soaked folds, parting them with calculated precision. Slowly, deliberately, I circle her clit again. Freud might’ve been onto something— humans are driven by life and death instincts. And sex? Sex is our greatest weakness. Our ultimate drive. The hunger that never fades.

The hunger she fed the night I woke to find her in my bed, her mouth wrapped around my cock. I wish it had ended there. But it didn’t. My mother—the woman who should’ve been my sanctuary—became my need. My destruction. I was addicted to her suffocating love, her control.

She devoured me, molding me into the perfect illusion—the replacement for my father she so desperately craved. Same suit. Same law degree. Same hollow smile. When I faltered, she shaped me through other means—ways that would haunt lesser men. But I wasn’t a lesser man.

I was a monster born of her void.

My fingers plunge inside the woman before me, her body instinctively clenching around me despite her fading strength. Her heat burns against my cold skin, and I hiss, half in pleasure, half in disgust. Fucking doesn’t do it for me. It never has. Control. Power. That’s what gets me off. That’s what feeds the endless, gnawing hunger inside me.

The night I killed my mother wasn’t filled with rage. It wasn’t fear. It was peace—a quiet, haunting clarity. As her blood spilled across the pristine white tiles of our perfect home, I felt free for the first time. But freedom is fleeting. I traded one cage for another, and now I’m incapable of normalcy. I’m successful, charming even. But that’s all a mask.. All play pretend, monsters are master of disguise after all.

I curl my fingers inside her, coaxing a soft moan from her cracked lips. Her hips twitch, the smallest echo of life still responding to me. Even in her broken state, her body betrays her, chasing that final moment of pleasure. And as she cums, her walls tightening around me in a futile act of defiance, I lift my free hand to her thigh.

The blade moves quick, slicing cleanly across her femoral vein. Crimson spills in a sudden, furious rush, painting her legs, pooling beneath her. I watch, mesmerized, as the light fades completely from her dull green eyes. Her body goes still, and for a moment, the hunger quiets.

But only for a moment.

Stepping back, I admire the scene—the twisted beauty of her lifeless form, the red soaking the floor, the scent of copper thick in the air. It’s art. But art fades, just like the satisfaction I chase. I set the blade down with a sigh, my fingers twitching for the next thrill.

The sharp buzz of my phone breaks the silence. I glance at it, curiosity flickering as I pick it up. My lips curl into a grin when I hear the voice on the other end—smooth, upbeat, filled with life. My next flower.

“Hi,” she says, her tone carrying the kind of innocence I live to corrupt.

“Hey, you,” I reply, the purr in my voice masking the dark anticipation stirring within me. I pour a glass of white wine before sitting back on the floor amidst the blood, already envisioning the brushstrokes I’ll create with her.

“Am I interrupting?”

“No, no,” I say smoothly, swirling the wine in my glass. “You called at the perfect time. I was starting to worry I hadn’t left an impression.”

Her laugh is warm, carefree. The sound fuels the fire in me.

“You? Worried? I doubt it.”

“Oh, but I was,” I say, and it’s not a lie. It’s early morning. I haven’t slept. My mind has been consumed with thoughts of her—and him. My Rose and her Thorn.

How ironic that my latest creation fell into my lap quite literally. Long brown locks cascade down her shoulders, golden skin glistening in the sunlight, almond brown eyes wide with innocence. The naivety in her gaze makes her all the more intoxicating.

People talk about passion as if it’s a beautiful, untamed thing. For me, it’s clinical. A ritual. A way to feel something… anything. And feel something I did that day, but it wasn’t from the pretty Rose. It was from the Thorn beside her. His sharp gaze, his defiance, the tension in his frame. I’d do anything to see him broken, on his knees for me, sunken eyes filled with exhaustion, chained and bound.

I couldn’t wait to cut her Thorn.