Chapter 79 #2
Her strange choice of words made me pull back slightly, watching her with puzzlement as she reached into her pants pocket.
“Would you be so kind as to draw some blood from me?”
She pulled something silver out of her pants pocket.
My breath caught in my throat.
Blissful Death
岡部啓一 (Keiichi Okabe)
Frozen, I stared at the razor blade in Quill’s hand.
What the…
Her smile faded. So did the pleasant feelings of lightness in my chest.
I looked back and forth between her and the blade, ready to take it from her hand, but I was so paralyzed that even the gears in my head were on the verge of shutting down.
She wanted me to…
“Please, Davian…” she whispered, and her eyes filled with a glassy film that immediately sent despair coursing through my nervous system. “Cut me.”
My hands clawed into her thighs.
“Quill…”
“Please… Let me bleed.”
My desperation grew and grew. But that wasn’t all those words triggered inside me.
There was something else. Something dark. Something that didn’t belong here. Something that came to life in the deepest depths of my subconscious at that moment, as if it had been waiting there for her words. Something corrupted. Something deeply depraved.
And that realization sent me into another state of shock.
“Quill, I…”
“I explained it to you. It’s not ordinary pain. You wouldn’t hurt me…”
Her voice was shaken, brittle.
“Feather”, I managed to get out through clenched teeth.
“Please…”
Her hand landed on my cheek, driving tears into my eyes and sending a wave of confusion about myself and this situation coursing through my entire body.
“What you’re asking of me…” I whispered, my voice equally fragile, pressed my forehead against hers and closed my hand around the wrist of the hand holding the blade between us.
Because I needed her, needed something to hold onto to keep me from taking that blade from her fingers and doing her a favor, the consequences of which I couldn’t even imagine. “…is…”
My words died on my lips.
I didn’t want to make the mistake of letting judgmental words leave my mouth, of hurting her.
A part of me wanted to see this as fundamentally wrong, feared that part of me that understood her, that had immediately grasped what she was asking of me.
She didn’t want me to hurt her.
She wanted me to take away her pain.
My heart raced desperately.
She trusted me.
Quill looked at me as if life and death depended on my decision, as if she feared I would judge her, or even reject her.
I clenched my teeth, tensing my jaw until it threatened to pop out.
“There’s this pain inside me, Davian. And it’s eating me up. No matter what I do, it won’t go away.”
A tear escaped her eye, and she pressed her forehead more intimately against mine. More desperately.
And it broke my heart.
“Please, Davian. Take my pain away.”
Everything in my chest tightened, so agonizingly intense that I didn’t realize how heavily I was breathing until her free hand landed on my chest.
There was nothing I desired more than to be able to take away, once and for all, everything that life had so mercilessly inflicted upon her.
I could take that blade and toss it in the trash, just as I had done once before. That was one option. The other was to take it, press it against her skin, and send us both into the next level of chaos.
What I had painstakingly trained myself to be over the years demanded that I did the right thing, wanted to show her that there were other ways to deal with her pain, wanted her to finally make those blades part of a past she would bury in this town before she left and had a future somewhere far away from my destructive presence.
But the darkness deep within me grew louder, more relentless; made me stare at the blade like someone possessed by the devil; wanted me to show her that I understood her pain, that I could give her controlled pain if she needed it; wanted to catalyze pain, turn it into something beautiful, allow it to deepen what was between us – whatever it was that bound us – through this act.
Which path was the right one? Which path meant healing? And how subjective was healing, in the end?
Just because society didn’t understand her way of dealing with pain didn’t mean it was wrong.
Dangerous, yes. But not wrong.
Yet that wasn’t what made me say my next words. It was the fact that all of this was bringing her closer to something I wanted to keep her far away from.
Someone To Stay – Sad Piano Version
Vancouver Sleep Clinic
As gently as possible, I let my free hand wander to her cheek, and she immediately leaned into it, looking at me imploringly as another tear rolled down her flushed cheek.
“I know you long for me to inflict pain on you, because something inside you has learned that love means pain.”
More tears.
“That pain means salvation.”
She closed her eyes, pressed her fluttering eyelids shut.
“You long for me to give you salvation. And what you’re doing right now is the highest level of trust you could ever give me.”
I smiled through my increasingly blurred vision, wanting her to know how much I appreciated her placing her most fragile pieces in my hands. That she gave me all the shards she had been carrying around with her until I had reached out my hand to her on that bridge.
I would carry all her shards, would cut myself on them until I understood her pain, until I found a way to reassemble her into that structure existence had created her to be.
And should fate deny me this act, I would construct something new from her fragments.
Something that would be destined for eternity.
“But as trustworthy as I may seem.” I shook my head slightly. “That is a game with my obsession that neither of us wants to play.”
This time it was my tear that slipped free and dripped onto the blade.
Quill seemed to hold her breath. And it was as if I saw something flicker through her eyes. Surprised realization.
I shouldn’t have told her that, even though I hoped she would never use that knowledge to drive me to do things that would destroy us both. Things that would serve my inspiration and not her. My creation. And not my muse.
The part of me that wanted to know she was safe would never harm a hair on her head. But unfortunately, I failed to suppress that part of me that, in the form of black ink shadows, was trying to fight its way to the surface at that very moment.
Atrinus.
I pushed him away, unwilling to let him lay his greedy fingers on her and leave new scars on her by exploiting the ones she already carried.
He wanted to drink her ink, revel in it, suck it completely out of her.
Not suppressing him would be the most fatal thing that could happen to me in such a situation.
This was important to her.
My desires had no place here whatsoever.
“There’s nothing wrong with wanting pain,” I assured her, trying to distract us both from my confession. “But I want you to learn that it doesn’t have to be like this forever.”
More tears streamed from her eyes and my heart clenched violently.
“You’re not irreparably broken.”
She shook her head, pressing herself tighter against my hand.
“What if I am? What if some things have eaten too deep into me? What if it’s too late to break certain patterns of behavior? What if I’ll always feel the need for pain?”
Her voice trailed off with her last words. Too distraught, too overwhelmed.
“Then I’ll be there…”
I wanted to. Wanted to give her that promise, even if it would complicate my life.
A complicated life, or none at all?
“…and catalyze it.”
Determined, I let go of her wrist, let my fingers wander further up toward the blade, and wrapped my fingertips around the sharp piece of metal.
“Let me be the last blade to ever cut into your existence.”
We might have been able to push it aside well enough until now, but if our paths were to part, we would both bleed.
The next wave of despair was about to wash over me when Quill... smiled. Even though the emotional heaviness didn’t disappear from her eyes.
“A promise for a promise?”
There was something hopeful in her voice. Something that wanted to give this a chance…
I swallowed, not ready to hear what she would ask of me. But if it meant she would spend one less day teetering on the edge of an abyss from which I couldn’t pull her back once it was too late, then I would accept it.
“I’ll stop doing this. Because for the first time in a long time, my need for it is so small that I’m certain I won’t need a blade anymore as long as you’re in my life.”
In her life.
The lump in my throat grew larger.
“What do you want in return?” I asked anyway, because I didn’t want to think about the fact that simply being part of her life was nearly impossible unless I completely destroyed this life I was currently living.
Focus on Quill. Focus on the present.
“One last cut.”
Everything inside me came to a standstill.
“From you.”
Farewell Life
(Arn Andersson remix)
Nights Amore, Arn Andersson
I didn’t know how long I just stared at her.
She left me no other choice.
Was this really the price I would have to pay?
You would end this chapter for her. You would slam this book shut so she could start a new one. One without cuts in the paper, without ink tears. One that belonged to her. And no one else.
I took the blade completely out of her hand, let go of her face, and she reached for the hem of her sweater, pulled the navy-blue woolen garment over her head, so that I couldn’t help but linger for a moment on the delicate curves beneath her midnight blue underwire bra.
My gradually fading writing still adorned her skin.
I wanted to lose myself in it, but she gave me no time, unhooking her bra with one hand, and it slid down her body, to the floor.
My hardness, which had never quite gone away, reminded me with a longing throb of how good those hard, rosy nipples, stained with pale ink, felt between my lips.
Still, I forced myself to fight against my desire.
“What if I can’t do it? What if I relapse?”