(WARNING: Explicit and very dark. Proceed at your own risk.)
The room was dark and nearly empty. There was one door, now closed and locked, and no windows. The walls and ceiling were painted gunmetal grey. There was a brand-new, ebony-black torchlight in the corner. The harsh blue light from the halogen bulb was the only source of light. It threw harsh and distinct shadows from the few pieces of furniture in the room. There were two brand-new Teak hardwood folding chairs, sitting about four feet apart in the center of the room. The folding chairs were somewhat unusual as they had arms. Along one wall was a brand-new folding card table.
There were three items on the table; a 13 inch gross anatomy knife with a light green plastic handle, a spool of black #3 stranded silk suture thread, and a #3 half-moon shaped suturing needle. They were laid out carefully in the center of the table. The knife was pristine new and spotless. The spool of thread had been opened and a strand of thread circled the spool loosely, like a small thin snake encircling a barrel. Next was the suture needle. There was a 6 ¾ inch strand of suture thread attached to it.
The perfection of the needle and suture thread was marred by nearly imperceptible traces of blood.
The blood had dried so that it was nearly as black as the thread.
Francine sat in one of the chairs. She looked down to the left of her chair at the small brand new plastic pail and then at the items on the table. She had taken her time buying them. She had originally looked at scalpels, but soon discovered even the largest would not be appropriate for what she had in mind. The anatomy knife appeared to be perfect. She found the sharpness of the knife exciting in a way that terrified her. She felt the same way about the suture needle and thread. In thinking of the needle and thread, she felt just a hint of wistfulness that she was done with them and would not be using them again.
She crossed her legs and thought again how the Teak chairs had been a much better choice than the metal folding chairs. She had no doubt that the metal chairs would be much colder than the wooden ones, even in a warm room.
She was naked.
She heard a small moaning sound and looked over to the other chair.
Erik was waking, slowly and shakily raising his head. He shook it briskly and let it loll back before raising it up and opening his eyes. He seemed to have trouble focusing and squinted at Francine for a few seconds. Then his eyes opened wide and his gaze darted around the room, pausing on Francine, the table, its contents, and finally on himself. His attempt to scream was quickly cut short by the multiple bee stings in his solidly-shut lips.
Francine had sutured his mouth closed. She had also bound his legs at the ankles and the knees to the legs of the chair and his arms at the wrists and elbows to the arms of the chair. The chair itself was bolted to a six-foot square piece of ¾ inch plywood lying flat on the floor. He was also naked.
She watched and could almost feel the different phases of emotions racing through him. Confusion, perception, denial, painful understanding, anger, rage, a forced, difficult and controlled calm, a hint of pleading, and finally a very quiet and waiting fear.
Francine smiled softly. “Good. We can begin now.” Her voice, normally soft and throaty, echoed back from the walls and sounded too loud and harsh. She lowered it slightly as she continued to speak. “I received your letter Monday. Of course I read it immediately and I want to thank you for at least taking the trouble of signing it.” Her smile widened and a dark hardness came over her eyes. “Let’s not pretend you wrote it. I could hear the hateful edge of Sharon’s voice in the carefully chosen words.” Francine saw the words wash over him like a bucket of ice-cold water.
As she continued speaking, she rose, walked halfway between the chairs, and began to pace back and forth, to the right and then to the left in front of Erik. “I’m not really surprised. You’ve made it really clear lots of times that I’m not the one.” She paused to look at him directly. “That perfect one that you keep talking about and, I guess, thinking about.” She continued to pace. “Of course, for a long time, you said I was. Not at first. You liked me. We got along. You liked most of my friends and I liked most of yours. Things worked. We moved on.”
She paused; standing directly in front of him, turned her body to face him, and looked directly into his eyes. Her eyes closed and her hands seemed to involuntarily rise, coiling into fists till they were level with her head. “Then one day. One wonderful, wonderful day. You said I was the one. I was the perfect one.” Her voice seemed to catch and die in her throat. She breathed deeply, willed her eyes dry, and forcibly pushed back the searing pain in her soul. Her eyes slowly opened, still, calm, and empty. “You remember saying that, don’t you?” A hint of sadness in her smile. Nothing in her eyes. Erik’s single nod was almost imperceptible.
“Good” she said, lowered her hands, and continued pacing. Her hands swung easily as she paced. They gestured smoothly and gently as she spoke. A casual observer, ignoring the nakedness of the two figures and the surreal quality of the tableau, might think her a strong and confident CEO speaking to a single stockholder.
“Those were the best times. I can honestly say I’ve never been happier. I saw a future for me, for us. It was real, so very, very real. And so very, very good.” She looked at him, not pausing in her pacing. “And then it changed. Just a little at first. You didn’t say anything. You didn’t criticize. There was just the look. The attitude. You’d see something I did or hear something I said, or hell, I don’t know. There’s no… For so much of it and for so long I just thought it was me. I was..I don’t know..paranoid. Something.”
Again she stopped directly in front of him, turned to face him, and looked, unblinking, directly into his eyes. “And then you did start to say things. I didn’t do this quite right or that. My understanding of a play or song or whatever the fuck just was not quite right.” As she spoke she leaned towards him. Her hands, reaching out, had begun to shake.
She leaned back, coiled her hands into fists, pulled them back to the center of her chest, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. She exhaled slowly and began to pace.
“That went on for awhile. And then it stopped. No more criticism. No more attitude. No more nothing.” Her voice was calm and controlled but there was a steely edge to it. “Two months, three weeks, and four days.” She glanced at him casually. “That’s how long that lasted. In case you didn’t know. I knew. I felt every minute. Every second. I felt it.” She looked away from him. “And then you left. You needed your space…time…whatever. You left.”
She breathed deeply and sighed. “It hurt like hell at first. I knew it was over, but I just didn’t know why. I didn’t know what changed in you or me that made it break. That made it stop. I just didn’t know. And that was really, really hard.”
She stopped pacing. She stood with her back to the table standing just to his left staring at the wall. She looked at the closed door and her face softened. “And then it actually got better. It took time but I got over it, more or less.” Joyful memory filler her face as she smiled, not seeing the door, Erik, or the harsh room. “I met a guy. A really great guy. Phil. He understood. He really did. And it was ok. Not fireworks. Not the moon and the stars but ok. He wasn’t you but he wasn’t bad. And he was THERE! He listened and he loved me and…..” The memory left her like air flooding out of a dying balloon. She closed her eyes for a moment. “No. We won’t talk about Phil. He’s not a part of this. This is us. This is only us.” She continued her pacing.
“And then I got the letter.” She continued to pace but stopped speaking for a few seconds. Her voice was low and flat when she resumed speaking.
“I must have read that fucking thing a thousand times. I just didn’t get it.” She stopped to look at him. “At first I mean. I didn’t get it at first. But the more I read it, the more I heard a voice in it. Her voice. Her voice came through loud and clear. And that made me think about the whole time we were together. All of it. I thought about it for a long, long time.” She looked at him and smiled. “I haven’t slept since getting the letter. I’ve had a lot of time to think about it.” She looked away. “And then I got it. I got it all. Sharon. It was Sharon. It was her voice.” She nodded. “Now it all made sense. All of it.” She looked at him while she paced.
“Even in the beginning. When you first started to change. It wasn’t you. It was her. She was there before, during, and after. She was one of your friends that just didn’t quite click with me. You remember. You said it was no big deal. She was a just a friend. And every time she was around, she’s have the look, the attitude. The forced smile. Then it seemed like she wasn’t around.” She looked away. “And right about the time she stopped being around is when you started changing. The looks, the attitude. Then the criticism and the rest. And then you were gone.”
She stopped in front of the table, reached down with her right hand, and touched the needle. Then she looked at Erik. “I knew what I had to do but I wanted to make sure you couldn’t talk me out of it. I had to be sure. You understand that. I’m sorry about your mouth. It was the only way I could be sure. “She looked down, moved her hand to the knife, and picked it up.
Erik’s gaze was locked, unblinking onto the knife. From the moment she touched it, it became the only real thing in the room. She walked over to him slowly, holding the knife gently by its handle, like a feather.
She stood in front of him, the knife raised. She looked at it for a long time and then to him. “You may wonder why I’m naked.” She nodded. “When I was remembering it all I realized the one thing you never criticized or complained about was this..” She gestured towards her naked body with the knife. “You never complained about my body. You were always complementary. You got a lot of pleasure with my body. We both did. I got a lot of pleasure from yours.” She looked back at the knife. “That’s why I wanted to be naked. I wanted you to see it one more time. Before I mean. After I do what I have to do, you won’t be able to.” She looked back into his eyes. “Not my body. Not any body.”
The knife seemed to move of its own volition. First up in front of her face where she carefully examined it, first one side and then the other. It moved down to the left side of his head, just below the jaw line. Erik began to involuntary make a kind of muffled “Uhhhhhh uhhhh” sound that seemed to rise in pitch as the knife came closer to his face. He moved his head away as far as he could.
She brought her other hand to the right side of his face and began to gently push his face back to the left. “Careful.” She said softly. “It’s very sharp.”
Erik forced himself to move his gaze from the knife to her eyes. He found them empty of hate or anger. Her eyes contained only gentleness, love, and compassion. For an instant, he thought it would be ok.
Her eyes did not change as she brought the knife, blade up, to the side of his face and scraped it upwards slowly, as if shaving him. She did one side and then the other. His breathing was quick and shallow. He tried to force his eyes closed and found that he could not.
She knelt down. Erik grunted with effort as he vainly tried to close his spread legs. She looked at his eyes, smiled, and shook her head. With her left hand she gently took the head of his very flaccid penis and stretched it towards her. Erik began making the “Uhhhhh uhhhh” sound again. It became much louder when she placed the blade of the knife at the root of his penis and gently scraped it forward to the head. She moved the blade very slowly. The tension and fear just very nearly caused Erik to faint.
She slowly rose and looked into his fearful eyes. Her left hand reached out and gently touched his face. Her voice was very soft.
“Don’t worry Erik. The knife isn’t for you. It’s for me.” She gently and almost demurely smiled and turned away. Erik watched, confused and somehow even more terrified as she crossed the room to her chair. She sat and looked at him for a few seconds.
She then sat back, closed her eyes, and took several slow, deep breaths. Her eyes slowly and her face was empty and grim as she looked at him. Her voice was flat and expressionless. “This is the hard part. For me and for you.” Her face softened and her head cocked just slightly to the left. “Despite appearances, harder for you than for me, I think”.
She sat back and spread her legs. She turned her gaze down and with her left hand, took hold of her left labia lip. Her concentration was fierce as she stretched it out. She began to breath in through her nose and out through her mouth rhythmically as she reached down with the knife and began to sever the extended labia as closely as she could. Her brow furrowed as she continued.
At first, Erik watched in disbelief. Then he closed his eyes as if that would erase the horrific reality. He heard the hard intake and outtake of her breath as she continued her self mutilation. He heard her breath slow and become normal and a soft plop sound as she dropped the wet, severed skin into the pail. He shook his head, unthinking.
He heard her breath change and knew she had resumed. After a time he heard her breath relax and another soft plop into the pail. Her breath was oddly both relaxed and labored. It seemed to last for a long time before changing into the terrible rhythmical intake and outtake. Her breathing suddenly changed into a cry, a sharp shriek of pain. Erik shook his head and willed his eyes to stay closed. Her breath was quick and shallow. Slowly her breath slowed and became more relaxed and regular.
Erik labored, but his will finally broke.
He opened his eyes.
He had thought that knowing what she had done..knowing it..understanding it, would somehow prepare him.
The sight, the harsh, bloody, and unknowable horror of what she had done brought his mind to the very brink of madness. He looked up at her face.
Her eyes were closed and her concentration on her breathing was fierce, fighting the pain with a terrible and determined concentration.
She looked down, opened her eyes, and quickly looked away from what she had done. Looking at her knees, her voice was shaky and ragged. “That was hard. Very hard” She closed her eyes and concentrated on her breath.
A wry, weak smile grew on her lips. “But really…” she said, raising her eyes to his.
“That was the easy part.” She said.
Erik felt a growing, unfocussed terror rising within him.
The smile left her face as she switched the knife to her left hand, looked down, and slightly to the right. Her right hand took hold of the front of her right breast, at the root of the nipple, and raised it up slightly. Her breathing became the same rhythmical harsh grate as she brought the knife blade to her chest under the breast and began to saw into the soft flesh.
Erik closed his eyes and slowly shook his head. “Anything. Anything” He thought. “Anything would be better than this.” He screamed internally. He wished. Part of him begged. Better for her to have sliced his face to ribbons. Better for her to have cut off his dick and stuffed it into his severed throat. Anything would be better.
He kept his eyes closed, listening to her harsh breath for what seemed like forever.
Finally her breathing became relaxed. He did not open his eyes. He heard a much louder sound as something was dropped into the pail. He shook his head.
Again her breathing changed and something, some realization, image, or sound pushed Erik’s mind too far. He passed out.
He woke with his head down, not initially remembering where he was. Horrible realization rushed in the he clamped his eyes closed and listened.
He heard nothing. No…something. Breathing. Very soft.
He opened his eyes and slowly carefully looked up.
Francine had slumped back in her chair, her head lolling off to the right side. She was breathing softly and slowly. He forced his gaze to her chest.
There was a hideous circle of gore where her right breast used to be. Both hands hung loose at her sides. The knife was lodged halfway through the left breast.
Erik reasoned that she had fainted from the pain.
He looked around. Nothing he could do. He waited.
After half an hour his eyes drooped and he slept from sheer exhaustion.
He was awakened by her breath. Looking up, he saw her body shake and quiver. Her breath seemed to catch and pause. Finally the shaking stopped and so did her breath.
No movement.
No sound.
A new terror found its way into his heart.
He closed his eyes and shook his head.
They will come. He thought. Someone will come. He once again looked around the small room and waited.
Francine had pre-paid the rent for the climate-controlled storage unit for an entire year.
She had done the same for every unit that was adjacent to the sides, above, and below.
The police found the bodies seven months, two weeks, and six days later, after several workers and customers had complained about the smell.
