Seth's Journal #34

I’m at the club. Tying one on with a vengeance. Putting a glass to my head and pulling the trigger. It’s been six days since I found Talia’s head in a bag on my doorstep. Feels like three years. Time feels like it’s spinning off its hinge when you’re grieving, but I’m used to that.

I’m Thinking About My Life, and that’s never a good thing. My current thought, inescapable, unrelenting, is Loneliness. I need to be alone. I'm poison and I know it, and being with someone makes me start feeling like I should be accountable for that. I don't like feeling accountable. Problem is, I just get so fucking lonely. Every few years, I start in on someone. Pushing into their life, making them believe me to be redeemable. We both know it's a lie, but without any truth to fall back on, we pick our prettiest lies and stick with them. I tend to choose women as dangerous as me. I try to tell myself that it's because they need to be able to protect themselves from me. Something else tells me that it's because they have such a low life expectancy, and I'd rather them die than reject me.

I really am awful.

Booze. Lots of it. However, even with a controlling interest in the club, there’s a limit to how much Yendri will serve me. The other owners want to make sure I survive, since I’m Mister Moneybags. The music is loud and would be intrusive, but I am so very good at not living in this world. For someone with as many enemies as I have, slipping into dissociative hazes is a serious professional hazard.

I guess that’s why I didn’t even notice someone was talking to me until actual physical contact was made. I try not to jump as someone’s hip bumps into mine. I look at the short woman elbowed up to me and it takes a second for me to remember. Maybe the night is getting better.

Impa was a Focused martial artist. She hits like a truck and is probably as fast as one. Another beautiful badass, who yes, was a very occasional (hopefully not former) lover of mine. I certainly have a type.

I look at her and lean back, facing her full on. She’s about 5’6”, porcelain-skinned, and very angry. She’s a knockout, for a human. The sides of her head are shaved, and her black and wine-red hair slopes down to the side, coming down to her chin. And her eyes... Fuck. Those eyes. Slightly slanted and hungry. Fiercely attentive and sardonic. They burn into you, causing unexpected things to happen in your chest and somewhat more expected things in your pants.

She looks at me and smiles, then turns her head to order a drink. She’s wearing tight-fitting but comfortable black leather clothing. Durable, yet allowing for full range of motion. She’s a professional, dealing a dirty trade. We’ve partnered up before, but I really do try to avoid working with ex-lovers when I can. She’s a killer, and an artful one at that. And she’s playing coy.

“Hi there, Impa. You usually don’t even say ‘Hi’ to me unless you’re between boyfriends,” I say, hopeful.

“I’m in a transitional phase,” she says, picking up her glass of whiskey and taking a large, grateful gulp. She give me a sideways glance and a smirk.

“What happened to this one?” I ask.

“Eh. He isn’t half the badass he pretends to be.”

“None of us are,” I say distantly. She turns and gives me an assessing look. I turn away to drink, uncomfortable. That bordered way too close to honesty.

“What about you?” she asks, finally turning to face me.

“My girl was decapitated a few days ago.” If she’s shocked, she doesn’t show it. “Want to be a part of my grieving process?”

She laughs. It’s throaty and genuine. Oddly not the least bit cruel. “What stage are you at?”

I give her my best feral smile. “Anger.”

“Lucky me. Upstairs?” I nod. We’ve danced this dance before, and we are of a like kind. She’s exactly who I want and what I need right now.

We start walking up the stairs to my private room. One of my demands for sinking so much money into this place was a private bedroom for having sex with random women. I know, I very probably have an unhealthy relationship with sex. But I desperately need validation and I don’t trust a kind word that a person says to me or a charitable act unless I am actively in the process of hurting them.

Like I said. Awful.

We get to the door and I unlock it, motioning her inside. I step in after her and lock the door again, turning on the low lighting. I turn and face her, barely a foot between us. She looks up at me and cocks an eyebrow.  “Well?” she says, challenging me.

My hand shoots to her throat and I squeeze. She pushes up to her tip-toes and I walk her back towards the bed. She lets me. As the backs of her legs bump into the mattress, she knocks my grasping hand off her neck, ducks under my arm and around me, and before I know it, she has me in a choke-hold. With a thought, I extend the cybernetic claws hidden under my nails and dig into the sides of her stomach. Her grip loosens as she gasps and I spin in her grasp.

I grab a fistful of her hair and slam my mouth into hers, the taste of blood trickling into our kiss. With my other hand, I roughly grab her crotch and flip her onto the bed so that she’s lying on her back, her head at my knees. She smile up at me, swinging her arms up and jerking my knees towards her. I spill to the floor, knocking my head against the hardwood. I see white for a second, and when my vision clears, she’s slinking off of the bed, crawling up my body. “You’re getting old, Seth.” She stops when she gets to my belt buckle and starts to undo my pants. She pulls out my cock and nuzzles it, keeping eye contact with me. She slides it into your mouth and it’s like coming home, with all of the comforting and terrifying emotion that sentiment entails.

I grab the sides of her head and start thrusting. In a flash, she’s on her knees beside me with her hand on my throat. “Just fucking lie there, control freak.” I hold my hands up in a surrendering gesture and put them behind my head. She takes me back into her mouth and starts pulling her pants off, the creaking leather giving way to beautiful pale skin. My heart leaps. Well, something leaps.

She enthusiastically sucks on my member, still taking her clothes off. I take off my shirt and try to kick off my pants without interrupting her. I eventually start rocking my hips. She pulls me out of her mouth and sighs. “If you need something to do, try this.” She resumes sucking my cock and swings her body around, planting her wet pussy in my face. I bury my tongue in her, wrapping my arms around her waist to pull her into me. I bring my hands up to cup the cheeks of her perfect ass and dig my metal claws in, drawing blood. She screams around my cock, grabs my scrotum, and digs her own nails in. Like that would deter me. It doesn't deter her, either.

I retract my claws and slide two of my fingers into her. After a few minutes, I feel her convulsing with her first orgasm of the night. I’m bound and determined to make her cum so many times that she forgets her own name. She slumps down onto me, then rolls off gracefully. How she manages such perfect, fluid motion is a wonder. She leans back against the bed. I sit up and lean into her. I grab a fistful of her hair again. “Stick out your tongue,” I say, and she obeys. I move her head to make her lick my face clean of her wetness, but she takes the cue and finishes under her own power.

I stand up and drag her with me. I look at her hard in the eyes. “Tonight, you’re mine.” Her lips twitch in a smile and she nods. “Say it. Say you’re mine.”

“I’m yours.”

“Louder.”

“I’m yours!”

“LOUDER!” I scream in her face.

She screams it back at me and I throw her on the bed. I’m on top of her in a second, pushing her down by the shoulders. I lean down slowly and kiss her softly. I pull back and give her a serious look. “I want you to tell me before you cum. If you’re a good girl, maybe I’ll let you finish.”

“A good girl?” She laughs at me. “You wouldn’t know what to do with her if you could find one.”

I’m not exceptionally athletic in bed. What I lack in vigor, I make up for with cruelty. As a result, I’m not everyone’s cup of tea. But the girls who like me, well, they tend to really like me. Within a few minutes, Impa gasps out that she’s going to cum. I wrap my hands around her throat, thrusting steadily to keep the pace she’s riding with. After a while, she lightly tapes my forearm twice and I let go. The blood and oxygen rush back into her head as she climaxes, intensifying the entire experience. She screams, outdoing the loud music coming from downstairs. I slow my pace while she floats out of the world for a minute and she looks up and me and chuckles.

The rest is a blur of flesh and ever-increasing acts of sadism.

At one point, I realize that my eyes are tearing up. Impa looks up at me, and for just a second, a look of pity flashes in her face. Furious at myself, furious at her, furious at life, I slap her hard. She decks me, and the moment passes in violence and lust.

Later, again, I start getting stuck in my head. Losing the moment. Once again, dissociation starts pulling me out of the world. She looks down on me and senses it. She slaps me hard across the face, hard enough to jar my teeth, but nowhere near as hard as she can hit. “Stay with me, boy.” Pulls me back into the moment sharply.

We fuck angrily, hurting each other as often as pleasuring each other. We fuck angrily, expressing our rage at the walls keeping us from clawing our way into each other. Not because we particularly want each other specifically, we just don’t want to feel so desperately alone.

We fuck like a forest fire, a force of nature burning away the old, leaving the world scarred, empty, and ready for something new.

We open ourselves up and drink each other’s poison, each knowing the other is strong enough to survive it. Strong might be the wrong word. Accustomed. We’re both virulent creatures, inoculated by our suffering and strife and sadness, finally unleashing what we fear to show another, but desperately need to release.

No one fucks like the hopeless.

The morning comes. We’re battered, bruised, and bloody. I feel peace. I know it won’t last, but I am enjoying it while I can. We smoke and don’t talk. We’re still, wrapped in each other’s arms, and to the casual observer, it might even look something like tenderness. We have no genuine attachment to each other, but we have an understanding. A common need that we both know the other shares. That, at least, is enough for right now. We look at each other, strangers, but with a powerful knowledge of each other nonetheless. When she doesn’t know I’m looking, I see her faraway gaze, one that I am deeply familiar with.

We are of a kind. That’s enough.

After a while, I start getting antsy. I sit up and she watches me. “You want me to heal you up?” She nods and relaxes. I chant and slide my hands over her body, using my unholy energies to heal her cuts and bruises. I leave some of the scratches on her back so she'll remember me when she takes a hot shower. That sweet sting of remembrance is too delicious to remove. I leave my own wounds. I want to hurt.

“I think you murdered my cock.” I laugh, starting to get self-conscious and uncomfortable and resorting to humor. She gives that throaty chuckle again. Damn it, I could be with her.

“I always forget just how good sex is with you. No one fucks like the self-hating.” Yeah. I could be with her.

“Sexual skill is my one redeeming quality,” I say, feeling the walls build back up.

“’Redeeming’ isn’t a word I would associate with anything we just did.” She winks at me and looks at me seriously. She looks like she’s about to say something, then thinks better of it.

Probably for the best.

She gets dressed quickly, fixing her hair in the large mirror. “I’ll see you later, old man.” She stops at the door and turns around. “Take care of yourself, Seth. If you need a hand, give me a call. I mean it. Some people hate your guts less than you do.” She shuts the door behind her and I’m a goddamned wreck.