Chapter 5
Ilocked the bathroom door and stood there with my back against it for a minute, trying to breathe, but it was like I’d been chased. The parrish home was quiet beyond the wall behind my head. It was the kind of quiet that felt comfortable and familiar.
Maybe God Himself had stepped back to watch over me and hadn’t abandoned me...
Yet.
My hands wouldn’t stop shaking from the cackling demon in my head. The damn thing was relentless and mocking as usual. It was a wonder I didn’t break in front of my people. Maybe I had spent so long with the mask that I forgot who was behind it.
I turned the shower on before I could think better of it, twisting the handle until the water ran scalding hot. Steam filled the room fast, sinking the mirror into the gray abyss, blurring the edges of everything I didn’t want to see anyway.
Look at what you’ve become.
I stepped under the spray and bowed my head. The heat burned, but not as much as my lips from her touch.
Fuck!
How had I let things get so chaotic?
I didn’t have anything left but the God of that church. If he abandoned me, it was only a matter of time until this town with its faker smiles than my own, would lay me down on the altar and stone me for my lies.
Murderer!
Click.
Coward!
Click.
I braced my palms against the tile, feeling the water pounding down my spine, and tried to pray. Even after all this time, prayer felt weird on my tongue. It didn’t matter how many times I did this or how well I memorized the scripture.
I had convinced myself that eventually I would believe the words. I tried to force the scripture into the hollow space inside me where her presence still lingered.
It didn’t work.
Her voice came back to my mind, slinking around me like a caress.
It wasn’t just the words.
It was the control.
It was the calm certainty of knowing exactly how close to stand next to me so her heat would infuse into my bones, how soft to speak to make my body clench in need, and how fucking wet to drown me in my own damning thoughts.
My jaw clenched, and I pressed my forehead to the wall, my hands finding their own way to the ache in my cock.
“No,” I whispered. “Fuck.”
My body answered her instead of me.
What I’d sworn would never happen so that I could keep up the facade of my safety was happening. My flesh betrayed everything I’d built my life around, all the lies I forced myself to believe, and the good I performed to wash myself of the blood spilled.
I hated succumbing to my lust with a violence that made my chest ache, but I kept my eyes shut, my breath ragged, and continued to pound my hand as my punishment persisted. Perhaps not seeing it would make it less of a nail in my coffin.
Liar.
“Taste my sins, Mortifera.”
Why was I calling her anything? A name was a claim. Even in Latin, it was wrong. I shouldn’t be moaning the word ‘Reaper’ in any language. I should exorcise it from my mind and body.
I couldn’t purge the heat, no matter how hard I slammed my hand onto my damn dick, I just wanted more.
When it was finally over, my hands and the shower wall were covered in my release, yet there was no relief.
Only disgust.
At her.
At myself.
I stayed under the water longer than necessary, letting my skin turn raw, and hoping the heat would sink deep enough to hurt, or that the spray’s consistency would physically damage my skin. Sadly, the steam thinned slowly, and with it came the weight of what I’d done little by little.
“For I know my transgressions,” I murmured the verse, my voice hoarse. “And my sin is ever before me.”
I shut the water off and stepped out, wrapping a towel low around my hips. The cold air hit my skin, raising goosebumps all over my body. The mirror was clear now, but I didn’t look.
I couldn’t look at my face.
I couldn’t watch the demon drag me down in the reflection again.
My eyes went straight to the scar raised on my chest.
“Ten years.”
That was how long it had been since I’d stumbled into Monticello half dead, bleeding from the constantly reopened wound, desperate enough to believe I could outrun who I was and the ones who created me—ten years since I’d taken the collar and built a life out of rules.
Silence and restraint were wholly demanded.
Ten years since I’d survived when I maybe shouldn’t have.
Ten years since I left her in that alley, never knowing if I saved her or if she met a fate worse than what I had stumbled on that fucking night of Hell.
Is she alive?
No.
Coward.
“You don’t get to forget,” I whispered, my fingers grazing over the scar that never healed, no matter the length of time.
I wouldn’t let it.
I turned and opened the narrow closet beside the door. My mind absent, my eyes fixed on my horrible reflection in the mirror, I blindly reached for the lighter on the top shelf. Without even looking, it fell into my grasp immediately.
I let my fingers curl around the cold metal like it had been waiting for me—my constant and, oddly, my one tool left from my past. I leaned against the sink, facing away from the mirror and the monster inside it, and brought the lighter to the scar.
I didn’t bother adjusting my towel as it slipped down my body. I wanted the icy cold to meld with what was next.
There was no dignity left to protect anyway.
“Have mercy on me, O God,” I murmured. “According to Your steadfast love.”
The words always felt thin and insufficient.
I flicked the lighter.
Click.
The flame bloomed steadily and brightly, a welcome beacon against the darkness consuming me. I pressed the tip of the flame to the scar and started counting.
“One.”
Initial vibrant pain bit the chewed skin, sharper than memory, and stealing my breath with it.
“Two.”
My jaw locked, a broken sound tearing out of me before I could stop it.
“Three.”
The smell hit my nose, that acrid, unmistakable stench of seared meat.
“Four.”
My thighs trembled as my knees threatened to give out, and I gripped the counter harder with my free hand.
“Five. Halfway…there.”
I clenched my teeth harder and stayed still, letting my mind drift away from the present.
“Six…”
Tears burned hot behind my eyes, humiliating yet unstoppable.
“Seven…”
My hands shook violently, sweat slicking my skin, bathing me in the sins of the past, if just for a moment.
“Ei—ght”
The world narrowed to fire, the searing burn, and my broken, strained counting.
“Ni—ne!”
I thought of the night I arrived here, broken, scared, and swearing I’d be better. My hands never felt clean. Every time I looked at them, I saw the blood. Every time I looked into my eyes, they reflected hers. The deep onyx gems that pulled me into their pained vortex.
“Ahh…fuck! T…E…N.”
For every year I’d lived on borrowed grace.
I ripped the flame away from the scar and snapped the lighter shut, chucking it hard, the metal skidding across the ground under the closet door. I ignored it, my body unable to hold itself up anymore. I tried pressing my palm hard over the burn as pain surged, white hot and all-consuming.
“You…deserve this…demon.” I hissed, folding forward on myself until my forehead hit the floor. I could hear my ragged breath coming in harsh, uneven pulls, even as my vision wavered.
This pain made sense.
This pain belonged to me.
A sound brushed the edge of my awareness.
Soft.
I froze on the ground, not like I could stand anyway. My vision was failing me, the pain creating a black curtain over my eyes even as my heart slammed in my chest hard enough to hurt.
You’re a fool. Burn. Burn like you deserve, demon.
The black icy void was nearly complete, but I heard a voice. That soft husky rasp, it was the lull that made me want to pull away from the cold to feel her heat.
“What have…you done to yourself, ōkami? I do not understand you…I come to collect your soul finally, but even this…you try to take from me.”
I couldn’t speak. My voice was gone along with my sight, and now my hearing followed, drowning her voice in a hum.
Wash me clean of my sins.
And I shall be clean.
The thought felt like a lie, as my thoughts faded, my mind gone.
The burn wasn’t.
It lingered.
Ten years marking my skin.
For her.