21. Less Is More
21
Less Is More
Ever
It was stronger than the strongest drug I’d ever taken, this burning rage inside of me, that clawed at my skin and made me want to scream. I needed to let it out, inflict it onto someone more deserving of the torment that had followed me for years. This grief for my lost innocence, and rage for the continued pain that losing it had caused.
Theron loomed over me as we stared down at the screaming man whose voice had grown hoarse. He’d begged Theron for a release from this life — a quick end to the torment he meant to inflict upon his person but was swiftly denied such mercy. I would deny him that as well, as I’m sure he would have done to me if the roles were reversed.
“The hands are among the most sensitive areas of the body, specifically crafted to help us feel our way through the world and sending signals to our brain at nearly 50 meters per second,” he leaned towards me and whispered. “Imagine the things your hands could do, Ever. I do, constantly.”
I closed my eyes as a shiver ran up my body. The operating room was cold, so much so that my fingers felt nearly numb, but I could imagine it being sweltering while surrounded by all this flesh and blood. I clenched my fists by my sides, ignoring the blood on my right hand where I’d forced my finger into the man’s mouth, eliciting his screams of pain. I wouldn’t think about it.
Theron stepped behind me, his body a warm presence at my back as he pressed forward until his hips pressed into mine. He nestled his chin beside my neck, resting it on my shoulder as we appraised the squirming body in front of us.
“Where does it hurt, rabbit?” He asked me seductively. “Make him feel your pain.”
A hard object was being slid into my hand, and looking down I saw the gleam of an already bloodied scalpel between my fingers. It felt so alien to me, like holding a heavy pen or butter-knife, my pointer finger pressing downward while my thumb supported. In the medical world, his tools were instruments , and Theron knew how to play them with precision.
He kept his hand over my wrist, his own gloves no longer white but a bright crimson that smeared along the sleeves of my scrubs like strawberry jam — coagulated and bright.
“When it comes to torture, my rabbit, less is more.”
Less, more … How true that was. I felt that from my years of self-harm, it was when I was digging deeper that the pain began to feel numb and dull. To really feel, was to make quick and sharp slices along the top of the skin where the blood would bead up before falling to the floor. Theron had strapped down the man’s arms at the elbow, and again at the wrist, with his palms facing towards the ceiling. They were smeared in blood so thick I could have sworn on a bible that this man was born red and not white. Where his fingers once were, there were now only five nubs that still tried to shake and wriggle free.
“With just the edge of the blade, you can cut precisely without cutting too deep. We just want his skin,” Theron cooed as he guided my fingers to press down on the stainless steel of the scalpel until it parted the flesh.
“Uhh — arghhh!” The shaking body screamed below us as our joined hands dragged the blade from the base of where his thumb once was, along the base of his palm where it met his wrist, and over to his pinky in a wide arc that resembled a bloodied smile.
“Good girl,” Theron purred into my ear with breath so warm it escaped his mask and fogged along my face shield. “You’re so beautiful, Ever Knight. So exquisite to me.”
He reached around my left side now, forcing me closer to the screaming man as he started to peel back the skin of his palm so slowly. Agonizingly meticulous in the way he lifted the edges like taking the sale sticker off the cover of a new book. All the while, the monster who’d attacked me screamed and begged for an end to his pain. I was so close to him, I could see the tears running through the blood on his cheeks like rivers in the desert.
When his bloodshot eyes met mine, light blue orbs in a bloodshot sea of chaos and pain, he seemed to recognize who I was and what he’d done to me. “I’m sorry,” he sobbed in a barely audible cry for help. “I’m so sorry.”
I saw something there in the man’s pleas, maybe a shadow of humanity that had been absent as he pinned me to the floor of my apartment, but all I could see was him . Feel how he had held me down in the very same way with my cheek pressed into the bed, rutting into me from behind as the drugs made it hard to fight back. “Please,” I’d groaned beneath the boy who had bought me flowers on Valentine’s Day and took me to Homecoming. “Please, stop.”
With that final plea, the rubber band snapped.
All of that anger and sadness bubbled up, and while Theron was distracted peeling the skin from his palm, I lurched forward with the scalpel. It had taken us both by surprise, but I’d been quick enough to stab the blade into the left side of his neck, and rip it towards me so violently that it went clean through. The gushing of blood was immediate, spurting with every beat of his heart like a sprinkler on the lawn. I closed my eyes when the spray coated my face mask, and much of my gown. It war warm, and pungent.
The body finally stopped crying, his shoulders going still for the first time since I’d entered the room — but his eyes were still wide open as his final tear fell. Perhaps thanking me for the small mercy that many wouldn’t have offered.
Was that what that was? Mercy?
I reached around Theron and set the dripping blade onto the instrument table, not meeting his eyes. The only sound in the room came from the cascade of blood overflowing from operating table and onto the floor.
“Ever —”
“It is done,” I said with a strong voice before walking past him and into the room where I’d watched him through the glass. I felt dirty — like the blood of that man was soaking through the gloves and burning my skin. “It’s done,” I muttered again to myself, like repeating it could make me believe it. My eyes closed as I shoved my hands under the tap of the automated sink and watched the blood run from the gloves.
I ignored Theron as he joined me in the room, the door closing behind us as he stood at my back. I could feel his eyes on me, trying to reach me in a place I didn’t wish to be found.
“Ever, let me help you.”
I shook my head once. “It’s done — he’s dead.”
Theron ripped his gloves off, disposing them in the bin before grabbing onto my shoulders and turning me around. His touch was suffocating, and when I opened my eyes I could see the body lying still and mutated through the blood-speckled glass behind him.
“You told me you wanted this,” he said almost accusingly, his gaze dark and angry. His fierce anger wasn’t really at me though, rather formed out of a fear that he had pushed me too far and now I was going to run from him. “You said you needed his pain!”
I flinched, pressing myself away from him and into the sink. “I don’t know what I need, but I don’t think it’s that . I just killed someone,” I whispered.
Whether it was some kind of sick closure for what I’d been through as a teen or a mercy killing to end the suffering that Theron was inflicting upon him, I still ended his life. Simply by allowing Theron to be a part of my world, I had ended that man’s life. Who was I to decide that?
His fingers dug into my shoulder, hand snapping out to rip the face-guard and mask off so he could see my face. I quickly looked away from him, not being able to bear the sight of blood on his body and the disappointment in his eyes. Whatever he saw must have hurt him, because his face fell and his arms dropped to his sides.
“You can’t even look at me, can you?”
I winced, focusing on the floor tiles that were doused in red. “I’m sorry,” I whispered lamely. All I could think of was how much Theron enjoyed what he did to that man, and to think that it was just because of the assault would be incredibly naive of me. Theron was a psychopath, and a serial killer. He lived for this. I was only an excuse to make him feel righteous in his actions.
“What did you think it would be like, then?” He hissed, starting to pace the small area like a caged animal. “Now you blame me,” he said this mostly to himself, as if he was just realizing it. His shoulders were hunched, veins in his neck bulging as he searched for something to lash out at.
I took a step away from him, eyes darting to the glass door that would lead me back to Tabitha, but even that wasn’t safe. She was like him, and without his predisposition to preening over broken women who needed help. I needed to get out of here — to run so far and hide so well that even Theron Hawthorne wouldn’t find me. Did such a hiding place exist?
Somewhere to die in peace because maybe this was not an existence I could live with.
“I want to go home,” I whispered through the lump in my throat. “Please, Theron.”
He laughed under his breath, hands on his hips as he ignored the lingering splatters of gore that clung to his apron. “Where did you think your heart was coming from, Ever? You’ve always known deep down that this was what you were agreeing to. You didn’t argue when the blood was on my hands.”
My lips quivered, tears forming in my eyes. “I didn’t imagine this — couldn’t imagine this. I don’t want it anymore,” I admitted with a determined shake of my head.
Theron’s head snapped towards me, eyes dark. “What did you say?”
“I’d rather die alone, than know the heart in my chest came from the victim of someone you hunted ,” I spit. “This might be how you cope with whatever the fuck sort of darkness you have, Theron, but I won’t allow myself to die with a soul so stained in blood that I can’t recognize it anymore.”
Theron’s face twisted in anger, and he lurched towards me. I cried out, backing into the wall and covering my face with my arms in an attempt to protect myself from the blow that never came. I looked up; Theron was kneeling at my feet with his hands outstretched towards me. The dark angel who promised me life was begging on the floor, covered in the blood of our victim while unshed tears threatened to fall down his beautiful face.
“I’m sorry, Ever. My little rabbit. I shouldn’t have shown you this — please, Ever.”
He sounded broken, and his voice cracked as his lips quivered. I’d pushed him, forced my way in to see the real him but now that it was done, t I didn’t know if I could ever see him the same way again. How could I replace the smell of putrid blood with his usual oak and moss? Or enjoy the way his hands made me feel, knowing they were slick with blood.
“I can’t do this,” I admitted with a cry. “You’re fucked, Theron! I let you pull me into your vigilante bullshit and now look what I’ve done! That man is dead. I killed him.”
“I know, rabbit,” he said, eyes wide. “I know I’m fucked but I need you. You’ve infected me so, and the fever will surely kill me if you leave. I can’t get you out of my system, and if you’re not near I worry I may never feel alive again.”
He reached for my hand but I flinched, and he let out a moan of pain before letting his body crumble forward so his head was at my feet. Theron Hawthorne, serial killer and cardiovascular surgeon was splayed out on the bloodied floor of his secret facility with tears now falling from his eyes in earnest. Had he ever let them fall before?
“You can’t leave me, Ever. I won’t survive it.”
I shook my head, pushing down all of my emotions and hiding them in the well I’d created so many years ago. To feel was to be vulnerable, and to be vulnerable was to break. I couldn’t allow myself to fall apart any longer, or I’d surely let Theron put me back together however he saw fit.
“You’ll survive, Theron, like I’m sure you have before — ”
“There’s never been anyone like you,” he cried. “Never this call that consumed me so wholly that I couldn’t discern my own beating heart from yours. I dream of your heartbeat, Ever. It’s the only thing that makes the dark bearable. A guiding sound in the void that I’ve become reliant on. It’s only you.”
“I can’t carry the weight of that,” I said with a sob. “I shouldn’t have to crumble under your obsession just to make you feel more alive.”
“You’re right,” he said quickly. “You don’t have to love me, Ever. How could you? But please, let me give you a heart. I can’t live in a world without you in it —even if it means darkening your soul.” His hands moved forward again, wrapping around my ankles as his shoulders shook. “I’m sorry.”
My resolve crumbled, and I slid to the floor beside him as the blood on our gowns ran together with our tears. Absorbing all of his pain, his sorrow, was nothing compared to the way he absorbed my suffering when he entered a room. His black eyes could find mine, pulling me in and making everything else feel obsolete. It was always his darkness that spoke to me, so why was I punishing him for it now? I let him get close to me, let that darkness release something inside of me I didn’t realize needed releasing, but didn’t consider how quickly it could fall apart.
He’d fallen so head over heels that he let me into the sacred, armored placed he’d been guarding t his entire life and trusted me to be gentle with his marred and broken soul — yet I threw it back in his face after begging for it. Maybe I couldn’t participate in whatever fucked up activities he found release in, but I could accept that they came with him. I could try to understand them — from a distance.
My fingers wrapped around Theron’s, pulling to get his attention. He looked up at me through those impossibly long lashes, tears coursing down his cheeks like a weeping angel. “I’m not running, Theron, but I can’t handle all of this. I won’t let myself be a part of this side of your life, or I’d shred my soul to pieces. Can you understand that?”
“Yes,” he said as his face became determined. “Whatever you need, Ever.”
What I needed was a stiff drink, and for the floor to swallow me whole, along with all my sorrows and screams, but that wasn’t happening today. I should be so lucky.
I swallowed my fears and looked him in the eye. “I need time.”