It wasn't until my lover died that I even toyed with the box. I had no reason to bother. I had plenty of fun with him. Whips, knives, a cane in one hand and his most sensitive flesh in the other. It was enough -- or if it wasn't, I liked him too much to notice most of the time. Besides, I liked his pain better than I liked mine anyway.
Then I got bored, or heartbroken, or both. I don't really remember. All I remember was spinning the cube around in my hands, my fingers moving, knowing more than my head knew. I'd never solved a Rubix cube or anything in my life. I had no idea where to begin. This was the same. If I'd been thinking, I would have lost my nerve.
There were two of them, a man and a woman. The man was huge, silent, muscular, with hooks embedded in his chest. The skin of his abdomen had been pinned back to reveal the muscle.
He advanced, backing me against the wall. I swallowed hard as the box fell from my fingers.
I propped myself up against the wall, trying to look braver than I felt. I don't know why. I'm sure they knew the terror gripping me anyway.
I looked past him, staring at the woman. She intrigued me more. She had large, dark eyes. Pinned open, unblinking as she appraised me. Her ears, too, had been stretched wide and pinned back to her head.
"She wants to see." The luminous eyes mocked me. The bigger one took up a blade and tore open my shirt. I trembled, waiting for the inevitable.
"She wants to know."
The eyes locked on to mine. Her lips parted as she stared. I could feel something, a pressure in my mind. I remembered things: my lover's face, his mouth open and panting as I dragged a blade over his skin. His teeth clenched in a grimace as I hit him. The small blossom of agony as he twisted my nipple in retaliation.
The male visitor's voice was impossibly deep, welling from him as if from the ground. "She thinks she understands already."
His hooked blade sank into my skin, sending lightning through my senses as I collapsed hard against the wall. "No," I said. "I don't think I have any idea." I could hear my own gasps, heavy, like a lover's sighs. "I'm totally out of my league, okay?" My voice sounded harsh and ugly in my ears. I wanted, more than anything, to sound like them.
I wasn't being entirely truthful, and I'm sure they knew it. The woman's eyes remained on me. "You're sifting through the wrong memories," I said.
She gestured, and the big one stepped aside. I knew what she was looking for. My hands reached down to the button and zipper of my jeans and I laughed. If anyone saw, they'd think this was about sex. I was wet, sure, and I knew that they could smell it.
That wasn't what she was looking for.
My jeans fell with a soft rustle. I stepped free of them and walked over to the woman, my heart in my throat.
Her fingers found the lines of scar tissue down each of my thighs and caressed them. For a moment everything was still. I could hear her eager breath.
"Yes," I said, brokenly. I'm still not sure if I was consenting, or only telling her she'd found them.
She slit them open slowly. I slipped, fell. Every movement of her blade made my nerves sing in protest and invitation.
It's true what they say. If you've done the things I did before they came, you know what it's like, a little. Those moments when everything blends together and the pleasure is the pain and it's just you, there, greedy, drinking everything in with a desperate thirst? Take that and multiply it a thousandfold and you might start to guess at what this is like.
But those are moments, glimpses of something real, something more than you are. Which is a piece of meat that stings and suffers and orgasms and usually damn well knows the difference. I don't care how many times you get tied up, how many times you beg someone to beat you until you come all over yourself. You don't know a goddamn thing.
That's why they liked me, I think, if you can say they like anybody. Because although I didn't know what the hell I was getting into, I wasn't lying when I said I knew I was in over my sorry little head.
Yeah, it feels good. It feels better than the best come you ever had, and it never stops.
Do you understand that? That's the thing: It never stops.
There are no breaks in this. There is no dead time. No time to think on what you've seen, to catch your breath, to cool down. There is only this: everything, all at once, overwhelming you, overloading you.
There is no end.
The flesh was not made for this.
She peeled back the skin, right there, laying my whole thigh open, pinning it back with hooks. She slit open the muscle, to the bone. One leg, then the other. I looked down and saw what my scars had sealed over and kept hidden there: screws, broken off, embedded in the bone.
It was years before that they snapped, failed to hold me together. I was just out of adolescence, barely grown. I remembered the x-rays, pointing, staring at the metal broken off, embedded inside each of my thigh bones. "What about that? Why didn't you take that out?" The numb shock when they told me they couldn't remove them if they'd wanted to.
Their mistake, my crucifixion.
I saw the lines of metal lengthen, emerging gleaming from the meat and blood. I watched, transfixed, as they pierced through the freshly cut muscle. I threw back my head and cried out, unsure whether I felt despair or ecstasy. My whole body trembled with it, electricity through every exposed nerve.
There were more pins than I remembered. The broken metal mended itself, melting and reforming, perfectly shaped, perfectly aligned with the others. The mistakes were smoothed, ordered, perfected.
I should have understood then. I didn't. It wasn't until I looked down and saw my skin, a bloodless, ageless white, that I realized I'd been chosen for more than their amusement. I felt my parched lips twist into a grin and forced myself to my feet.
Pain blossomed through skin, muscle, and bone. I closed my eyes and screamed again, so loud it burned in my own ears, a cry of impossible triumph.
The larger one took hooked blades from his belt, with great solemnity, and handed them to me. My hands closed over their hilts, exulting in their weight.
Laughing, I opened my eyes.
