Forward and back. My head rolled. Pain – a lot of it, but it wasn’t a bad feeling. It was coming from a distance. Why? Blood. A lot of it. My Masters would punish me.
The girl. She would see. My eyes rolled open. She did see. She touched me, but I didn’t feel it. I moved to hide my body, so that she would not be repulsed. She resisted me. I tried again. Again, she resisted me. I wanted to hide. My Masters would’ve hit me. But she did not. In fact, her brow furrowed with concern and the corners of her mouth pursed with worry.
Her concern repulsed me. I felt ashamed now but for all different reasons. Something about her seeing my blood seemed like an intimate experience, and it frightened me. Already, she seems too good to be stained by the blood of my inner demon.
There was pain again. It came from far away. She’d drugged me. I tried to talk. I failed. I tried to move. I failed that too.
Finally, I forced my eyes open, despite the pain, and I took her in. Her eyes, just like before, made me feel still inside. They were steely grey, amazingly clear. Her face curved in all the right lines, her skin soft, her cheeks plumpish. If her eyes were closed, she would’ve looked almost girlish. But they were open, and I saw what was beneath. She was nothing short of a woman, even if I didn’t want her to be, and I found myself attracted to her.
I tried to make her look at me, but she winced from my weak hands. I was so used to forcing people to do things though that what came next was natural to me. I grabbed her chin and made her look at me. Her eyes, so clear and full of fear and confusion, wracked me with guilt. She did not even know me, and yet it seemed as if she saw all my crimes written in the dark corners of my eyes. It was now I wanted to look away, but I could not.
I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even breathe. And I began to feel something deep inside of me that I couldn’t access. It took away from some of the numb, but this feeling was agony. I was a wound. She ripped the old and rotted bandages from it, making it bleed all over again
Again, I found myself wordless, paralyzed.
I ached for her, suddenly. It was as if she was a beautiful goddess, and she was offering herself as a salve for my own redemption. She saw all that I was, all that I had done, and she brushed it aside to see the man behind. I felt a need I never had before for another human being. I was terrified.
I released her, and she moved my hands to my sides. I closed my eyes in agony at not seeing hers any longer, but also in relief. I could hide away from her magical gaze. Hide. Rest. Sleep.
The drugs were strong, and I felt myself nodding off once more.
With the uneasy hope that I could hide again in the morning after I was beyond the influence of drugs and fatigue, I succumbed to her diligent ministrations.