Unfortunately, her nails-like-razorblades were insufficient, because her nails-like-razorblades were not an unordinary thing, and her nails-like-razorblades ran down his back not for the first time, and her nails-like-razorblades bore into his mind as something trite and romantic in that aspect- in that they were trite, and in that they were like razorblades, and in that they no longer had any effect on him. He had become used to her nails, those nails that once went deep into his heart, like roots, and they were now simply something ordinary and existing forever. At one time, these things on his back were rose thorns and dove beaks, and they were of the utmost love and of the utmost majesty, lying facedown in satin sheets, caressed by Lover’s fingertips, chills down his spine from tiny sharp nails.
Now, tiny sharp nails were no longer from Persian or Parisian fantasy on satin sheets. Now, the stained mattress curled under restless bodies that tried to escape razorblades, not roses. A john; he had always been some sort of john, if not some sick solicitor of love, then simply an addict of affection. And like an addict, he had become immune to his pusher’s drug, no longer finding succor in her vice; now he was jonesing for a state of normalcy, a state of comfort. Now, tiny fingertips were like razorblades, like needles driving home a fix: he was addicted to routine.
Originally, it was he who attracted her (in fact, isn’t any addict the object of a drug’s affection?) and she fell into him with the unique voracious appetite with which only a woman is naturally imbued. Always the most interesting relationships commence at the most interesting times, and those taught with passion are often also taught with a hidden anxiety of unfamiliarity. There were blurry details leading up to it, like the details leading up to a crime. A short passing in the street, brief lascivious eye contact, hesitation, conversation (were either of them going somewhere? In the end, they had missed their appointments, and their friends feared them missing), she followed him home curiously when he suggested it. At his door, an antiquated peeling pea-green portal, she stared at him hungrily as he fumbled with his keys. He was haughty, he was a veteran libertine, and he was used to control. And she would have him.
He didn’t even have a name yet, but she likened him to some proud, useless feral beast. His unkempt hair fell across his face and his clothes were carefully disheveled and drab, he slouched with the calculating posture of the bohemian. His skin was so pale and lily-white, his wiry frame so tensed with movement, his eyes so vivid and green as they darted from his keys to her soft, hungry face.
“My name is Sera, like the seraphim.”
“Samuel.”
“Sorry?”
“Samuel. Like the prophet.”
He unlocked the door and smiled into her face quite brazenly.
“He wasn’t known for much. He defended the Israelites. But didn’t they all?”
She smiled politely and their lips met awkwardly, but soon opened wide and lascivious with taunting eroticism. He led her inside quickly and they didn’t speak for another day for lack of anything substantial to relate.
Nights became rapid black and moans; mornings sleeping in and soft naïve caresses. They stayed in his dim, cozy trinity- she was almost an urchin, never living in one place long- and slept like royalty on red and blue sheets, the finest he owned. They subsisted on fruit in bed, and never left that soft slab. Any proclamation of love too soon is simply a proclamation of desperation, and they fell fast into a blind abyss. Within a week, they couldn’t stand each other, and every movement was with malice and angry intent. The house was no longer a warm place- it had become tight and claustrophobic, and they could feel each other everywhere. They lay awake wondering when it would be over.
Sometime during the second week together, they sat together at a gnarled, scarred table with a bowl of rotten fruit in the center, which no one had bothered to replace. The shelves in the kitchen had been removed, and what was once a quaint organization of a few dishes was now a collection of a mish mash of cracked tableware. By some chance, they were sitting down together eating breakfast. It was the first time in a week and a half they had been up that early.
“Sera, why in the hell are you even here, still?” She sneered at him and turned sideways in her chair and chewed dejectedly on a frozen waffle.
“You can’t stand me, Sera. And this isn’t your damn home. You’re still here on my goodwill. You can’t stand me at all. Why don’t you just leave?”
She turned and looked him in the eye. “Why would you want me to leave? We’re still sleeping together. If you wanted me out so bad, I’d be out, don’t you think? You would have told me to leave, ‘stead of asking me why I haven’t. You still love it. You love the hate we make, ‘cause I know damn well it isn’t love anymore.”
“Well, it was short lived, wouldn’t you say?”
She threw her waffle at him and it hit him in the chest, leaving a greasy stain on his shirt. As she walked away, he noticed the bounce in her rear as she walked, the way her shoulders tilted to one side, the way her hair fell smooth like a sheet of opal midway down her back. She refused to dress any longer (at first this was a romantic convenience, but now it was simply a protest and a refusal to consider this place she lived as hostile) and her thighs were thick and pale and tight, and she was quite beautiful. Sera. She was named for an angel of the highest degree, but it was no angel that held him at night.
They began to convene frequently- he was quite stubborn and knew that any chance he had to keep her out of his house would be taken advantage of, and he (also quite stubborn) stayed to guard the house and monitor her movements. The house began to feel their odium, and began to sag and cry. The walls, once a sky azure, were now a peeling dust color, and leaned in towards the feuding inhabitants as if in anticipation of the next jab. If it is true that you grow into a house by living in it, then you destroy it by killing in it. The house was softly dying.
Equally matched and equally tempered, the two were stubborn and refused to vanquish routine. They continued to embrace at night and continued to interact more and more with thinly veiled malevolence. They could each feel something was coming down; a sword of Damocles followed them through each room.
She began to poison him in conversation. Every word she said aroused his defenses and she pointed out his blindness and helplessness. He hated her for it, but could do nothing; he was a fair man and an upstanding man, capable of defending his house and sanity to the end. He had never seen it coming and hoped she would fall in the end. He stopped sleeping, instead waiting for an opening, staring at her sleeping in his bed. They no longer made love but there was still copulation- it was almost a struggle of wills, and could no longer be considered intercourse by any social standard. It was simply an automatic response to night, and they did it to win.
His mind became clouded with frustration, and she relished in his growing ineffectiveness. He was becoming dull and dependant- was it that they both relied on habit, or was it she who played upon his habit and planted addiction in him like some sinister seed? His eyes grew dark and sunken with the continued fornication, the continued forced insomnia. His diligence in defending his own house was wearing him down- if he was not allowed sleep at night, and not prepared to sleep at day, what little sleep he had was taken with a junkie’s eagerness. It was not the sleep of the dead but the sleep of the addict. She had begun to kill him, and his refusal only led him further to defeat.
One day as they lounged on the tepid gray couch, there was the uncomfortable feeling of peace between them for an instant. For a moment he was lucid.
“Uh, um, what do we… uh, what do we hope to accomplish by this? You can’t kill me. What do you win by wearing me down? When does it end?”
She had not been prepared for such an eventuality; for a moment, he was aware of her sadistic attempts to undo him: she inflicted pain simply because it was her compulsion, and no proper sadist would hope to realize their own compulsion for ruination of their game. She stared at this feeble man whose head bobbed between clarity and the revenge of sleep deprivation. Sera left the room and went upstairs to the unmade bed and slept.
No dream would have been sufficient to rouse her from sleep, for she slept for spite and no amount of remorse or act of violence will dissolve an act of spite. She slept and he wandered in and stared at her beautiful sleeping body. No sound came, but he was crying. He watched his captor sleep in his bed and he wept for lack of power and he understood now the laws of irony. Indeed, it was quite ironic that this man was being killed by the lover he led into his own house.
They had been living together about a month now. He sat at the foot of the bare, yellowed mattress, between two bedposts, his eyes like those of the living dead, and his limbs gray and ashen, hanging limply off his dying square frame. The sheets had lost their sheen and were in piles in the corner of the room. The room was awkwardly lit and reflected a strange, unfamiliar light across the yellowing walls. Sera sat cross-legged behind him and ran red lines down his back: her nails were like tiny knives and she scratched his back maternally with the needle claw of a vixen. She draped her arms around him and he shuddered, though she didn’t know if he could even comprehend her motions anymore.
“We can end this, Samuel,” she whispered hopefully. “We can just stop. You can’t do this any more. You’re just killing yourself.”
He was the only one who could end it by conceding defeat, she was far to adamant to leave on her own accord. It must be a battle fought and won, this house must be claimed, someone must be vanquished. She would not be satisfied with a simple stalemate. There must be total victory. There must be total defeat.
He stirred and she moved back to lean against the headboard of the bed and lay there with her knees up to her chest. She had become almost more beautiful; or at least, she had retained her beauty and he had lost his to consignation. Perhaps she, too, had become a victim of this viral addiction. She played this game simply to maintain a level of normalcy, which had been lost to dear Samuel. As he lost sanity to lack of sleep, to lack of self-preservation, to the defense of his domicile, she became more beautiful by comparison. She hadn’t the ability to stop; the captor had become captive to her own game. Samuel spoke:
“Why are you doing this?”
He looked dead and accusatory. No, she searched his face for hatred, but it was not anger she found, but his eyes- those black sores- begged for release, and she broke down. Against the sickly light from the bedside lamplight, which washed across the room, she looked like a martyred saint, and tears rolled down her face, sweeter then the fruit they had eaten a month earlier. It was neither vice nor victory that overwhelmed her, but enlightenment. She had taken the willingness of a human being and destroyed it. She had won the truest victory- the triumph over autonomy.
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