Chapter 12 #2
I tell myself that it’s okay. That motherfucker deserves I pee on his face anyway. But I just… “I can’t,” I whisper.
“You can, darling. There’s nothing you could do—nothing your body could produce—that would change how I look at you.
Do you understand that?” His exposed mouth curves with something like a smile.
“I want every part of you, Reagan. Every secret, every shame, every function you’ve been taught to hide.
The world tells you to be clean, be pretty, be palatable.
I’m telling you that you don’t have to perform for me. Not here. Not ever.”
“This is—”
“Honest.” He interrupts before I say, sick.
“I have killed for you. I’ve eliminated every threat, every obstacle, every person who tried to hurt you or use you or take what’s mine.
And you think I’d balk at this? At something as simple and human as waste?
C’mon, my little butterfly. It’ll be like squirting. Hot and sexy.”
Jesus Christ. The unbearable pressure builds. My body is screaming, muscles cramping. I can feel it coming.
“Can’t you see, my queen? I’d be anything you need me to be.
” His voice drops with heated intensity.
“A protector. A killer. A lover. A human toilet if that’s what it takes to prove that there are no boundaries to what I’d do for you.
No line I wouldn’t cross. No degradation I wouldn’t accept if it means taking care of you. ”
A sob catches in my throat. “You’re not taking care of me. You’re torturing me.”
“I’m teaching you. Surrender isn’t weakness. You can let go of control, of shame, of the performance you’ve been running your whole life, and I’ll still be here. I’ll still want you. I’ll still worship you.”
My body robs me of any control I have left. The pressure releases in a hot rush of humiliation. I feel it, hear it, know exactly what’s happening and can’t stop it. A broken sound escapes my lips—half-sob, half-moan of relief.
He doesn’t move away. Doesn’t flinch. He just sits there while my piss hits his mouth, and he doesn’t care.
“There,” he murmurs when it’s over, when I’m empty and shaking and mortified. “Was that so hard?”
I can’t speak or look at him. My eyes glue to the darkness before me.
His footsteps echo away. Water runs in the background. He must have a bottle or container nearby. Or is there a faucet or a sink in here? Footsteps come back. Then he’s standing in front of me, the mask back in place; the butterfly is whole once more.
He has a washcloth in his hand. “You don’t understand yet, but you will.
” He starts cleaning me up, and I shiver at the contact.
“There is nothing—nothing—you could do, no boundary you could violate, that would push me away.” His touch clenches my insides.
“That’s what real devotion looks like, Reagan.
Not the shit they gave you, Blake and Shane.
This is the real thing. We are what real love is, my sweet butterfly. ”
He drops the washcloth on the floor and holds my hips. I flinch from the searing pain of the pins and the feeling of his gloved hands on my skin. Then the mask presses against my mound, as if he’s…kissing it.
I open my mouth to tell him to fuck off, but he already leaves. Another click echoes. The table begins to tilt backward, lowering me back to a horizontal position. The gap closes. My legs draw together. The pins shift with the movement, and I bite back a scream.
As I’m flat again, he’s standing over me, looking down. His hand reaches out and caresses my forehead. “Now, are you ready to tell me about Shane Fletcher?”
I meet his gaze—or where I think his eyes are behind that mask. My jaw tightens. “Are we back to that?”
“Of course. Aren’t you freezing?”
“I’m not playing your game. It’s nothing but a trick.”
“I’m not trying to trick you. I’m giving you a chance to tell the truth to earn your much-needed warmth.”
“Stop lying. My answer won’t buy me an hour of warmth because it’s not a secret you don’t know. You already know who Shane was, so why are you asking me to tell you something you already know?”
“Because you haven’t been telling the truth, Reagan!”
My heart hammers against my ribs. Why does he think I’m lying? What does he know about the truth?
“One last chance. Who is Shane Fletcher, Reagan?”
There are so many words I can use to identify Shane. Love. Family. Safety. Beauty. Hate. Mistake. Betrayal. Danger. Loss. Scar. But I prefer the word first. He was my first.
My first everything, especially, my first sin.
“Well, if you’d rather freeze than open up to me, that’s your choice.” He turns toward the stairs. “Enjoy the cold, my sweet butterfly.”
No. No, no, no. Not again. Not more endless hours of shivering in the dark, alone with the butterflies and the pins and the growing certainty that my body will give out before my mind does. “Wait.”
He doesn’t turn around. “You’ve had your chance, and you made your choice.”
“Wait. Please.” My breath shakes out of me. “You want the truth, a secret no one else knows? I’ll tell you one I’ve never dared spill, not even in a book.”
He halts mid-step.
I try to speak through the shuddering. “There was this girl who went to my school. We hung out sometimes. I wouldn’t call her a friend—I didn’t have any back then—but she was probably the only person who was nice to me, who talked to me without ulterior motives.
One summer…she just disappeared. Her parents said she was away for the summer with her second cousin in Europe.
I knew immediately it was a lie. She didn’t have any relatives abroad.
“I was devastated and worried about her, but there was nothing I could do. Luckily, when the new school year started, she came back. However, she seemed like a totally different person, on the inside and out. She gained some weight. Her hair was thinner. Her skin was paler. She had acne, which she didn’t have before.
And she had that haunted look in her eyes I’d never forget.
“People asked what happened to her, and she stuck to her parents’ story about Europe.
Her friends believed her or pretended to, but I couldn’t.
I mean, I was a nerd with no social life who did nothing but study, read and write.
The stories she spun about the European cities she visited were good, but the geography and the details just didn’t add up.
When she realized I’d caught her in too many lies, she finally confided in me and told me the truth. ”
He comes down and faces me. “What truth?”
“It turned out she was in love with a boy, much older than her, and he… He got her pregnant.” I leaf through the memory with a heavy sigh.
“When he found out, he split. Can you imagine that? He got a fifteen-year-old girl pregnant and left her to fend for herself, to deal with this life-altering situation alone, not to mention the fear, the shame.”
“She must have been terrified.”
“On top of that, her parents forced her to have an abortion. Much to her luck or dismay, I can’t decide to this day, the doctors said she was too young and her body wasn’t strong enough to handle it.
They said she could die in the process, so her parents hid her for the summer until she gave birth, gave the baby up for adoption and kept it all a secret. ”
“That’s terrible. That girl must have been traumatized for life.”
“True, but in my opinion, that isn’t the worst part. Do you know what’s even more traumatizing? Nothing happened to that boy. He groomed a fifteen-year-old girl and got her pregnant and nothing happened to him whatsoever, but I…”
Bitter hate stings my throat like bile. “I’ve spent all my life wondering what I could have possibly done that was more vile, more wrong, than what he’d done, that he’d get to live his life like a fucking king while I’d be beaten,” a tremor runs through me, “and called names…and locked up,” I force out through shudders, “and starved…and thrown out in the cold…and mutilated…and…” I can’t control the shakes or the sobs.
Suddenly, Butterfly Man’s arms are around me. He’s holding me tight, careful not to move the pins. He’s whispering things in my ear, like he’s trying to calm me down, but I can’t hear them over the sound of my tears.
It’s not an act. I can’t stop crying. I’m bawling my eyes out in the arms of my captor, and I can’t stop. Thirty-four years of pain unwrap and crack me open, and the only thing I have for solace is the embrace of my tormentor, the mercy of a serial killer in a mask.
“How could the guilty get away with anything while the innocent take the blame for it all?” I sniffle.
“Not anymore, darling. I’m here. No one can touch you again. No one. No more.”
No one but you. And yet, here I am. I don’t recoil or tell you to leave. I welcome the relief of your warmth, the tenderness of your embrace, and let it piece together what’s left of my fractured soul.
“There you have it. A truth I’ve never told anyone but you. How long does that earn me?”
His head lifts off my chest, and he stares at me for the longest time. Then, without a word, he flips the heater switch, gets off the table and heads for the stairs.
For some wicked reason, I mourn the loss of his arms around me. Part of me doesn’t want him to leave. Not now, at least.
He disappears in the dark, but I hear him ask, “The girl, did she give you a name for that monster?”
A chill runs through me despite the heat wrapping around me. “Yes. He was one of the boys who lived on our street.”