22
Time must have passed. I think I passed out. When I open my eyes, it’s getting dark again. I’m still in the truck bed, the metal ridges cutting into my skin. I look toward the house; the lights are off. I don't hear a thing.
My phone is still inside.
Gingerly climbing out of the truck, I feel the driver-side door swing open as soon as my feet hit the pavement. King is sitting there, one leg out, staring right at me.
Screaming and jumping back, I trip over my own feet. Scrambling up, I start running like a madwoman toward the tree line, just looking for somewhere to hide.
"Help meeeee!" I scream, but there’s no one. Running to the nearest neighbor's house, I bang on the door, but no one answers.
I see a house further down with a light on. Then, bright headlights hit me from behind. The roar of the truck drowns out the silence as he follows me slowly. I run toward the light, screaming for my life. King pulls up beside me.
"Hey," he says.
I scream and bang on the neighbor's door. It swings open, but the man inside meets me with a shotgun leveled at my face.
"I think he's talking to you, isn't he?" the neighbor says coldly. King is smiling from the driver's seat. He beckons me with one finger. I drop to my knees, sobbing.
"Told you there's only so many places you could be, and your dumbass decided to stay in my truck," King says.
He gets out and drags me toward the cab. I punch him in the balls with everything I have. A knife gleams in the streetlight as he runs it across my neck. I feel myself gasping for air—
I’m in the bed of the truck.
It’s dark.
I’m shaking.
Was that a dream?
I look toward the house and see one light on.
I need my phone.
My instinct is to run to the neighbors, but what if they are like the man in my dream? What if this is one of those places where people just disappear?
I need to go back in. Maybe he's come down. I need my phone.
Going back through the window, I can hear mumbling upstairs.
While part of me wonders if the garage even happened, the stickiness between my legs, my ribs, my aching head, and the scratches on me, tell me it was real.
Grabbing two knives from a kitchen drawer, I feel my hands trembling.
My knees follow suit, knocking together for a second before finding their strength to hold me upright.
Heading to the master bedroom, I step in carefully and almost scream when I see King.
He’s sitting with his back against the wall, his knees drawn up to his chin.
Looking up at me, his gray eyes swim with water and pain.
Then, looking back down at his feet, he acts like he doesn't care that I'm there.
Grabbing my phone from the nightstand, I hold it in one hand while pointing a knife at him with the other.
"K-King? You need help," I whisper, tears streaming down my face.
He doesn't say anything.
"King? Do you know who I am?"
He looks up, just moving his eyes. He looks terrifying. "You're evil," he says.
"I'm your friend," I whimper. "Everybody in Brackenridge is w-worried about you. Whatever you're on... you need—you need to detox."
King smiles, the tears falling down his cheeks. "You don't know anything about me. You don't care about me. Why do you think you know what I need?" He puts his head back down, picking idly at the carpet like he’s lost.
I could call the cops.
Tell them what he tried to do… but… he wouldn't do that to me.
"What did you take, King?"
He smiles, eyes seeing through me, as if he's somewhere else.
"Paradise," he whispers. "I need more."
"No, you don't."
“You don't understand… that's my home,” he tells me, his words sounding like it’s coming from the bottom of a well or maybe some void.
“Whatever it makes you feel or whatever… or whatever you're on, I promise you that is not reality,” I say, trying to keep my own voice from breaking.
“I don't WANT reality!!! What is reality? Huh???” He lurches toward me with wide and wild eyes.
“You think that knife you're holding is real? How do you know? 'Cause you can feel it and touch it, right? Right?” He’s yelling now, the sound so loud it bounces off the walls of the master bedroom, before he suddenly quiets down. His tone drops to a hauntingly intense one.
“Well, in paradise… I could feel and touch and smell things a hundred times more. Tell me that's not real.”
“It’s not,” I sniffle, forcing myself to take a small step closer despite the instinct to run like hell.
“Why don't you stab me? Why don't you kill me and get it over with? Take anything you want, I don't care,” he says, his shoulders slumping.
“This isn't your house, King. You're having a bad trip. None of what you were seeing is real. Just come with—”
“This is my house! Or it used to be. I think so… I don't know. Everyone leaves me,” he says, sounding so small with a sadness that wrecks my heart.
Then, he looks at me, really looks at me, but the connection isn't there.
“Do you know who I am?” I ask.
“Of course I know who you are,” he breathes with zero energy in his soul. With a biting bitterness, looking away and resting his chin back on his knees.
“Who am I?”
He doesn’t answer when I wait.
Maybe he doesn't know.
“I'm Erica. I'm your friend you met in Bracken—”
“I said I KNOW WHO YOU ARE!!!!!” he screams the words, the sheer volume causing me to jump back, my instinct forcing the knives back up in a defensive stance.
My entire body is shaking so hard it feels like my bones are going to fall right out my ass.
“Is there… is there someone you can call? Like maybe Pastor Darrian or… Sister Paula or Yvonne. Where's your phone?”
“Don't… fucking touch my things,” he growls.
He doesn't even look at me, but the threat in his voice tells me he is one step away from losing his shit again.
It's as if he's on a hair trigger.
“Okay. Okay I’m… okay. I'm not going to touch your things.”
“You're here to put me away like everybody else.”
“I… I'm not going to put you away. I want to help you. King, when I met you, you…” I shake my head, the guilt killing me. “You were such a bright light for everybody.”
“No I'm not. I'm made of darkness. I like the darkness. I like it a lot. And it doesn't reject me or make me feel like something's wrong with me,” he states with a hushed anger while his eyes fix at a point in front of him.
“No, there's nothing wrong with you, King, it's just…”
“Then why are you trying to change me?”
The way he’s talking, the distance in his eyes, makes me realize with terror that… he doesn't actually know who I am.
Not really.
When he stands up super fast, I stumble back, holding the knives out in front of me like a flimsy shield.
The thing that makes me absolutely terrified is... If king wanted to kill me he 100% could.
These knives would barely hold him off.
I've seen officers trying to kill criminals that were charging after them with a knife. I've seen the officer unload his entire clip into the person with the knife, and them not drop until after they've stabbed the officer. Or whoever it was that thought that they would be safe at a distance.
And the sadder part is…
I don't want to kill him.
I don't want to hurt King. He's my friend and he's the man that I love. I want to help him. I really do.
But I'm scared.
I'm so fucking scared. My heart beats even faster as he walks straight into my space.
“Stay back!! I don't want to kill you!” I scream, the tears finally spilling over.
He doesn't stop.
Please no. Please don't let this happen.
He walks right into me, pressing his chest against the points of the knives, looking down at me with an expression on his face that I can't read.
“Do it. I've died before. I've been stabbed before. Do it, but you better make sure you do it right,” he threatens. His white hair looks longer, wilder, framing a face that looks both ancient and lost.
And I can’t.
Can’t do it.
I…
My fingers give way and I drop the knives, knowing full well he can pick them up and kill me. They hit the floor with a dull clang. I know I’ve made a mistake, and the realization clicks as he suddenly reaches out.
He grabs me under my arms, his throat making a kind of growling sound, and lifts me off the floor like I weigh nothing.
He holds me over his head for a terrifying second before throwing me down into the messy mattress.
Then he’s over me.
His hand moves to my neck.
I brace for the squeeze, but it’s soft.
I’m shivering, paralyzed by a fear so loud I feel like I’m going to piss myself, but I hold on.
His face softens, his eyes glazing over as if he’s fighting a blinding headache.
He lowers himself, rubbing his face against mine, his breath hot against my skin. He kisses my neck, his lips finding the bite mark he left earlier.
The one still tacky and bloody in the groove between my neck and shoulder.
“Why don't you leave me alone?” he whispers, his voice cracking. “When I'm good… you don't want me. When I'm bad… you don't want me… so why the FFFFUCK are you here?!” He screams that last sentence directly into my ear.
“Because… 'cause I love you,” I cry out.
“No you don't,” he whimpers, his eyes searching mine.
“I do. And I'm sorry that I didn't respect your faith. I know… I know now that you needed it and I was beginning to… I was trying to protect you from me. I'm bad for you,” I sob, the words tumbling out in a rush of regret.
“Then why are you here? You're not making any sense,” he sniffles, searching my face, as if studying me, a lone tear falling free from his beautiful grey eye.
“You say you're bad for me, but here you are,” he says, a strange malaise taking over as if he’s drifting back to that hazy place he was trying to describe.
His pretty, bloodshot grey orbs seem to recede into the storm within him, to rejoin the grey clouds that formed them.
“King, I'm sorry,” I tell him, my hands reaching up to touch his face. He flinches, but then he lets me.
Something desperate takes over me and I lean up to kiss him. He pulls away at first, turning his face to the side, but then he relents. He lets his body press into mine, and the world starts to blur as he peels his clothes off, then mine.
I don't even know how we got to this point, but suddenly we are moving together.
It’s not just sex; he’s fucking me hard and good, the skin of his belly pressed against the skin of mine, his dick feeling magical, like it’s brimming with that same energy that he probably gets from his "Paradise."
I find myself reaching around, my nails scratching at the skin of his back, tracing the lines where I know that demon tattoo sits.
The irony isn’t lost on me that I’m in the same position of the imaginary demoness from the imagery.
He licks my neck before biting my jaw. He catches the tip of my tongue between his teeth and pulls it out, the cut of the sensation causing a sting of pain.
Then he thrusts into me deep with such powerful blunt force that makes me scream so loud that my throat feels slit, the pain and pleasure blurring into one messily uniform line.
King flips me back onto my stomach, mirroring the way he took me on the cruise. He slams himself into me, moving fast and hard. As he leans forward, his stomach presses firmly against my back.
I’m on all fours, taking the weight of his pace. King is on all fours as well, and because he is so much bigger than me, his body brackets perfectly over mine.
His hands rest on the outside of my own, making us look like one table stacked on top of another. His length is buried inside of me, hitting every spot and sending me into a daze. It fills me with a strange kind of love.
The bed is a mad canvas of blood smears from King’s cuts and some of my recent ones that reopened. It almost looks like a crime scene.
Ironic.
But I don’t care.
It’s us.
As he digs his love-dagger deeper, he slices through my already sore fleshy confines.
King’s humping becomes more harsh, more vigorous, more wanton. With every surge forward, my body takes the impact like a fucking bulldozer is taking me.
Despite how messed up this whole situation is, I want him to seek his pleasure. To claim it from me.
I need him to because I… miss him so fucking much.
“AHH,” I gasp in tandem with his masculine grunts that turn into shouts with each sharp thrust.
His thick penis summons my pain to the surface to commune with the ecstasy the violent rocking of his hips provide.
The buck of his motion increases in pace.
My womb cries out for mercy. But no. If I need to suffer in blissful agony to reach him, that’s what we’re doing.
I swear his cock feels like a large skewer.
Each slam against my cervix convinces me that he’s pushing my uterus and other organs further up into my torso.
Then something actually breaks. At least that’s what it feels like.
The pain threshold overrides as his big dick punches against that inner torture bump, and my entire body convulses.
“Mmmmm,” he moans in a way that tells me he loves this, but is out of it.
And I come powerfully, over and over, like a ricochet of desire.
All the pent-up frustration I've been holding is finally being let go, but it has nowhere to go, so it just plays on a loop. His body keeps me trapped in that cycle, haunting me from the inside.
I can barely breathe.
After what feels like an hour of endless cervix-destroying pleasure, King’s moans quicken.
He sits back on his knees and pulls me into a matching squatting position, making the pain blossom more than before.
My knees are slightly apart as I sit down on him, holding myself up by leaning forward on my hands.
Tears force out of my eyes as I bounce my hips against him, stabbing my interior with his undying erection, while he grips my waist.
Yes, I’m crying. He’s hurting me. There’s no easing myself up to escape the gunshot of his thrusts or the blade of his cock. And that pain… the fact he’s giving it to me, fucks my mind into submission. My body melts into the helplessness of his grip on me as I punish myself.
“I deserve it, King,” I whimper. I know he can’t hear me through his and my breathing.
“Punish my naughty pussy,” I cry silently as another one of my orgasms blasts forth.
My body bucks and trembles but King, almost angrily, grabs me back in place.
My eyesight jumps with each of my bounces and his thrusts as it catch the bleeding wounds on his legs. It’s where the glass had cut into him when he was chasing after me.
It’s like he didn’t feel pain then. But he’s feeling pleasure now. And I’m so glad I can give him that relief.
My heart hurts for him. But he’s here. God I love him. And that love makes me throw my ass back to meet him every time. My cervix is bawling, the pain in the left side of my lower belly grows more intense, but I do it anyway.
Because it’s him.
Because he hurts me so good.