I dream things sometimes that no one should endure. There is no pleasure in them. I do not have the why of it. What makes my dreaming mind decide that I should experience such horror, such pain? I am by nature mostly a sunny soul. Is this then my tariff for wearing glasses tinted with rose?
I sat in a small corner of a large room. There was light coming in from somewhere. The room smelled of dust and disuse. Underneath it swelled the cloying scent of MaryJane and sweaty bodies. For the moment the room was quiet, but it had once held so much noise, so many voices, that you could not hear your own thoughts within it.
There was a small chair in the corner and a child's table set before it. On the other side of the room sprawled a naugahyde couch, much worn and sagging. I could not bear to look at its ugliness without shuddering. If objects and spaces are said to absorb the energy of what transpires within them, this room was redolent with excess, heedless urgency and pain. The couch reeked in its pose as altar and centerpiece of debauchery.
My face felt numb and taut. Balloon skin formed of hours of fruitless tears. Needing to feel a little of myself again, I clawed at my face again and again, deeper and deeper, until it was a tiger mask of red running stripes.
My hands ached, curled to claws, now stained with blood. I felt distant from the screaming. Distant still from the urgent pain that pulled my cheeks into a grimace. My hair darkened by the blood, stuck in the wetness. I did not pull it free.
My arms, thin and pale in the watery afternoon light, looked stark against the contrast of my strong red hands.
In a kind of stupor, I reached one hand to caress my other forearm. Smears of red on chalky cool skin. The hot drip of blood staining my sunshine gingham dress. Quietly I sliced my arm open with fingernails grown sharp as scalpels. One long stripe down the arm. Flesh parting easily, only jagged deep hurt as I dipped too deep below skin into muscle. Numb to my observations. I watched it happen. Bloody fingers pulling my skin from my body in one inch wide strips. My legs and arms were the first to be exposed, raw. Then I started on my torso. Slowly, methodically, flaying myself alive.
You found me there and were appalled, disgusted, angry beyond reason. I looked up at you through my tiger mask of blood and tissue. Something that passed for pleasure moved somewhere beneath the swelling skinless tissue of my breast. I reached for you with my weapon fingers thinking to caress you. Feral, I could not touch without using my claws.
You were speaking but I did not understand what you said. Entranced by the rhythms, your words lost meaning. You held my wrists in one hand and stood me up, placing a careful hand on my back. I swayed as lightheadedness overcame me. I looked down feeling unaccountably wet. I had peeled my dress to my waist and a crimson sunset bloomed in the tucks and folds of the smocked gingham fabric. The skirt stuck to my raw thighs and tugged against coagulants as I moved a bit from side to side, keening.
I looked first at my hands, imprisoned in your and then up into your face. So many things written there, I wanted to read the expressions fluttering through your eyes, understand the tightening of your jaw, the bunching of your cheek. I lifted my hand futilely.
My mind was sluggish. I was not done. The imperative was draining from me. The need to slice, swift cool heat a single ribbon of pain. Then the rough agony of pulling against the skin, ripping it from the flesh below. The ache all-encompassing, mind blanking, too much to feel as the skin tears, raw like the kiss of asphalt as you slide bare-skinned along it.
You moved your hands around me in patterns I could not understand. My clothes fell away. My body lengthened, grew taller, larger, softer. Rainbow lights dancing in misty white clouds gathered at your fingertips and you painted it across my bleeding flesh. The room dissolved. Just a dream then. I wondered how a dream could hold the scents, the sensations, the very essence of what was real.
Yet, there you were as the room melted. Lightly you clasped my hair and tip-tilted my head to face yours. I felt blank, an open slate. The coolness of your rainbow clouds soothing away the fire of my self-inflicted wounds.
"I am cold now," I whispered, surprised my voice worked to speak. A bone deep trembling had begun within me.
"You are Mine." You said sternly. My eyes flicked to yours then dropped. Anger, yes, this I knew. I waited for fresh pain that did not come. I looked back into your eyes, tilting my head to the side in mute question.
"You are to take care of that which is Mine." Your hands clasped my upper arms and I felt frost beneath your fingers. My teeth began to chatter.
"This place is forbidden you. These acts are forbidden you. Do you understand?"
I felt tears gathering in my eyes, spilling down and pouring salt into my wounded cheeks. You placed your palms against the bloody ruin of my cheeks and bent to capture my gaze. Liquid cold filled me behind your touch.
"You are mine to cherish, or chastise. Mine to make, or remake. Mine."
I woke and my pillow was wet with tears, and blood lay beneath my fingernails.
image: Lady in Red by mad_snaiL
It nurses in the dark
