Chapter 15 #2
Her black dress is slowly getting wet from all the fluids: sweat and blood and, by the way she tries to rub her thighs together, something else I refuse to believe could happen under these circumstances.
Blood on her hands, the same ones she’d caressed her body with.
Sweat on her forehead, like she had just finished the most intense masturbation session of her life.
The dress covering her body is ripped in a way only I am allowed to see.
Her body is broken and beautiful, and her eyes are following me.
Her legs—I should have them wrapped around me right now, should have my hand on her throat while my… Fuck, Azrael. Get a grip.
And still…
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
I reach for the light switch on the wall and dim the overhead light until only the mirrors remain illuminated, each one catching her from a slightly different angle. Her image is multiplied, fragmented in a kaleidoscope of restraint, each angle catching a different side of her body.
To complete the scene, I take the remote Vincent left for me on the table and turn on the projector. The smudged wall in front of her lights up with a familiar frame: her own face, in front of a mirror in the warehouse, naked and full of shame.
The view—Victoria now, in front of the Victoria from two days ago—is beautiful in the most disturbing way, and for a minute my cock forgets she’s just a subject that I’m supposed to break with my experiment.
“You thought you won with your little ploy,” I say calmly, keeping my eyes on hers, while leaning in a bit so she cannot see what she’s doing to my body. “You didn’t complete your assignment properly. Let’s make sure you’re not failing the class.”
The footage begins to play—her humiliation video. The one she probably never watched. Every strained breath, every stumble, every failure to regain control is laid bare in 1080p clarity.
“You were supposed to study this,” I scold her. “Understand why it happened. Correct the mistakes.”
She wanted a professor? She got the professor.
On the wall, the clip loops and loops again. Every weakness, every moment she flinched or hesitated, meant to remind her what she was then: nothing.
“But I—” she tries to say, but it’s in vain when I cut her off.
“I said, watch it. Eyes on the screen.”
She exhales loudly, more out of frustration than pain. While the sounds and the images fill the room.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
“Next time just leave written feedback,” she says, eyes still fixed on the video.
This little…
“You’re missing the point, Victoria.”
“The point being?” she asks indifferently, but there is nothing indifferent in the way her eyes focus on the screen.
I don’t answer. She thought this would be about pain—thought she could compartmentalize, endure, survive.
One last detail.
I take the scalpel again, scraping the skin from her collarbone down to her ribs, ripping the side of her dress.
I move my eyes to hers, silently ordering her to beg, but hers are just wondering, more curious by the minute. This is the last moment of her old life, before I crave myself so deep in her existence, she will have no place to hide ever again. When the scalpel reaches her bone, I mark her mine.
A. Z.
She’ll see it later, when she changes, when she walks past mirrors, long after she forgets about tonight. She will see my mark.
But this was not the same marking as Samantha. I don’t mark Victoria to make her useless, I mark her, so she knows whom she belongs to from now on
Blood wells in thin red ribbons, and as much as I enjoy seeing it on her body, I cannot help but feel like I also need to stop everything and cure her.
I reach for the bottle of wine before I do something stupid, letting the smell burn itself into my memory while pouring the liquid on her body.
Across her shoulder. Down her chest. Over the fresh cuts.
She gasps from the sting over the new wound, and I can feel my cock twitching.
“Now you’ll feel it every time you breathe in,” I say. “Every step. Every stretch. Every glance in the mirror.”
“You are a little psychopath, aren’t you?” she smiles, but it finally shows something else. However, it is not fear, but something closer to fascination. She is beginning to enjoy it, and this only makes me more furious.
“Only for you,” I murmur, brushing a strand of hair from her face. “Always for you.”
She looks so innocent, like she could break if I push my fingers into her skin. Her armor is slowly dropping, leaving behind the fragile girl she is so desperately hiding deep inside. It will be such a shame once I’m done with her. She is indeed a spectacular specimen.
An alarm shrieks in the room, and her face crumpled into a mask of pure confusion, a look that, judging by her expression, was just adding to the mess already brewing in her brain.
“So this is when the pain begins?” she asks eagerly, and I’m pretty sure she is mentally slapping herself for showing how impatient she is.
“No love, this is not about pain,” I say, brushing her arm with my fingers while my eyes follow the disaster I set on her skin, “It’s dehumanization. It’s loneliness.”
The subtle tremor that runs through her body tells me everything I need to know. She doesn’t know. For the first time, she is truly lost.
“This is what it feels like to lose the last person who could’ve cared,” I whisper. “Now you have nobody. Not me. Not Alex. Not even your little cat. You’re alone in this, and nobody will save you.”
I let the words hang in the air long enough to penetrate that facade.
“Survive.”
And then, on cue, the guards entered, dressed in black uniforms, faces blank, hands already reaching for restraints and tools I hadn’t used yet.
Her head turns from one to the other, tracking them.
“Wait—”
But I am already walking away, reaching for the door.
“Little fucker,” she screams after me, “Where do you think you’re going? You are a dead man, Azrael, dead. The moment I’m done here, you’re dead!”
I pause, turning my face to her.
“I’ll see you in an hour.” To the guards, “No safe word. You’re not killing her, you’re not fucking her. You’re destroying her.”
And with that, I leave her behind.
They didn’t break her. At least not in the way I expected.
When I get back into the room, she is still conscious, propped against the wall like a doll someone tried to discard but couldn’t quite destroy. One eye is swollen and the edge of her lip split. Her dress barely holds its shape, the fabric soaked with sweat, wine, and blood.
But she hadn’t screamed.
She cried. I can see it in the dried marks staining her cheeks, and the lashes clumped together. But there are no fresh tears. Just silence.
Rule 4: Bleeding, begging, crying or screaming are not reasons to stop.
Her hands are shaking when I reach down and help her stand, but her spine stays straight. Her gaze finds mine and she doesn’t flinch. That is new.
She doesn’t speak when I carry her out bridal style and doesn’t ask where we are going or if there is anything else planned for tonight. She just leans into the seat belt like it is the only thing keeping her from unraveling.
At home, I remove the remaining pieces of her dress carefully. The zipper gets caught halfway, trembling under my fingers. Her skin, beneath it, tells its own story. Raw in places. Bruised in others. A living canvas of everything I did.
She winces once when I peel the dress from her side, but no words follow. She doesn’t flinch away from my hand. Only leans forward enough to let me keep going. And I do just that, gently, like she could break any second now.
The little ember doesn’t need to tell me where it hurts, I know already. I left the marks myself. We both had. And now, I’ll be the one to wash them clean.
I turn on the water in the tub, and once it accumulates, I place her carefully in, letting her body sink in until only her collarbone shows above the waterline.
I watch her for a minute before I go to the kitchen and pour two glasses of wine, but when I return with them to the bathroom, she refuses hers.
“I thought you liked wine,” I whisper, like I’m talking to a child that needs to be appeased.
She replies with a hoarse voice, “I don’t want to smell wine today,” then drops her eyes to where her feet touch the side of the bathtub, “There’s scotch in the cabinet. Back left.”
I place the glasses on the vanity and go to the kitchen to bring the much-needed scotch. From what I’ve gathered, Victoria is not an alcoholic, but she drinks it to soften the edges, which is exactly what she needs right now.
When I return, she takes the glass from my hand and, for the first time in the past hour, I see a hint of calmness and excitement in her eyes, but it disappears just as quickly. I continue washing her hair and her body carefully, paying attention to every scratch and bruise on her skin.
Once I am pleased with the result, I pick her up and carry her to bed, laying her down and pulling the blanket over her. She doesn’t protest. In fact, she is so immobile you could say the life had left her body. My job for tonight is done, she is broken now.
At the door, I stop, watching her chest move as she breathes in unevenly.
“Tonight, I created a monster,” I whisper in the darkness. “And that monster, she’s mine now. You’re mine now. She’ll sleep in your skin, breathe through your lungs, and wake with you every morning. She’s never leaving. Not until the day you die.”
I smile, like Victor Frankenstein watching his monster take its first breath.
“You asked for the monster. I delivered.”
Now, I’m supposed to leave, but my brain is debating whether or not I really want that to happen. My hand hovers on the door handle long enough to betray hesitation. No, it’s the aftershock of a successful experiment, not me caring.
I refuse to believe otherwise, so I leave before I do anything stupid like stay and make sure she’s safe.
And when the latch clicks shut behind me, sounding like the final nail in the coffin, it finally hits me: I broke Victoria.