Mercy

Part 8: Bedroom

I sit down on the bed and look at the door, waiting for her to enter. She was just a couple of steps behind me but it felt like an eternity. There was a creek on the floor and I knew that this was it. I sat back and watched her. So coy and sweet but she was also half naked in a stranger's house hoping to get killed. I put the knife on the bedside table and moved to lean against the headboard. The house was old and the air cold but it did feel like home. The dimly lit room almost made it feel cosy and somehow the wind against the thin glass windows made the room seem safe. There was stillness until I patted my lap and she came to me, almost crawling to get on my lap. To this girl the thought of murder was dirty talk and I was kind of excited to see what else was going on in that pretty little head.

"Do you want me to tell you what to do, darling?" I smiled and she looked scared but she nodded. I loved the way fear expressed itself on people's faces. It is similar but never the same. There is something in the eyes however, something that is the very same for every person I've killed. Charlotte had it too, like a brand on a sheep ready for slaughter. "Good" I took the knife and gave it to her and she didn't look scared anymore.

"Wh-"

"I want you to do something for me baby" I didn't need her to ask the question. "When I started to kill people... All I wanted was to see the light in their eyes die" I place my hands on her thighs. There was no need to hold her down, no need to restrain her but I still grabbed her thighs as hard as I could and at this she wiggled her hips, just a little but I knew that meant she liked it. She was getting excited. "I got a nice cushy job where I could kill as much as I wanted and I did that. For a long long time I squeezed the life out of people" I acted out the motion squeezing her thighs. "But lately... Something's missing. I realized that there might be something I am lacking and I have a feeling that you are going to give it to me" She swallowed hard.

"Ok. What is it?" She agreed even before knowing. I loved that about her.

"Blood" The fear was back and I almost expected her to try to run. Deep down I knew that she wanted to stay so I wasn't that worried but adrenaline does things to the human body that are quite impressive. I lifted my left hand and let my fingers trace the small cuts on her hip. She looked at the knife and then back at me.

"Tell me what to do" It was a whisper. I think that this is what love might feel like. My finger traces over her torso making an invisible map of opportunities. She was right handed so I traced my fingers along her left arm. I draw a sharp line with my fingers straight across her bicep.

"Cut" I smiled at her. I wanted to see if she actually would do it. My breathing sped up and as she took that knife and put it to her own arm I could feel myself get excited. When she dragged that kitchen knife along her bicep I felt how my body got hot and I knew that this is what the poets wrote about. This was love!

She let out a scream and it was perfect. She started to bleed, god she was beautiful. I pushed her off me and got her on her back. I took the knife out of her hand and I held it to her throat. I straightened out my back and ran the fingers of my free hand over her arm, it almost felt like oil then the consistency changed and it felt more like thin paint. It got sticky as it started to coagulate. I looked at my hand and she was all over it. I decided to put my hand around her neck. It was not the plan but choking felt familiar and natural at this point. She is looking at me like I am the only thing in the world and for a second I don't want to do this. I let go and just looked at her. There is blood, lots of it, down her arm, on her throat, on her chest. I didn't realize that I had been touching her there.

"What are you doing? Why did you stop?" She is still out of breath. I don't answer, I just lean down to kiss her. My hands wander up the back of her head and I hold her close. She lets me but there are a couple of seconds where she doesn't kiss back. I kind of like it, her just letting me do whatever I want. I bite her lip and actually draw blood. I break away to look at her again and I can see a little blood around her mouth. I take my fingers, cover them in blood and push them into her mouth.

"Don't ever tell me what to do and don't ever question me" I take the knife again and I let the tip travel from her clavicle and down the middle of her chest. I stop at her bra and I cut it off exposing her breasts. They were small and perky. She was crying but she never said stop. Not that I would. The bruising on her torso was worst around her chest, specifically between her breasts. A black hole reaches out, ever expanding. He used her as a punching bag, there is something sadistic in knuckle punching someone in the chest. He would have kept going over and over to make this kind of damage. I wondered why. I understood what I liked but I couldn't understand who would like that so I dropped the knife and made my hand into a fist. I could tell that she was scared but she didn't stop me, she just braised herself for the impact. She closed her eyes tightly and I watched her body tense up. I was conflicted. I wanted to kill her, I wanted to make her bleed but after our time together I didn't want her to be frightened. I decided that my feelings were based on disgust for the man that had done this to her and that I wanted to be nothing like him. I was feeling some discomfort, this feeling was not something I had felt before and I was a little worried that I might become a person who cared. Would I care for Charlotte? If I didn't kill her, would she care for me? 

I decided to kill her and then I thought about how careless I had been with Deliah, yes Deliah popped into my mind more often than I actually was aware of. I shouldn't kill her just because it was my first instinct, maybe I should feel this, maybe I should let Charlotte mean something to me. I lowered my fist and looked at the wound on her arm, it was still bleeding, not as much but it hadn't stopped. I took my hand and put it on the wound. It hurt and she yelped but it also stopped the bleeding. Her eyes were open now and she looked about as confused as I felt. She looked at me, my hand on her arm and then back at me.

"Sorry" I said. Was I really apologizing for not killing a person? She flipped us and got on top of me. She grabbed the knife.

"Me too" She put the knife to my throat and I realized that I had not accounted for this. I had never considered Charlotte to be any kind of danger to me and now she had a knife to my throat.