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“Six foster mothers. The last one who had you took in ten children and only had time to make sure you were dressed and sent off to school each day. That was probably the best of the lot. ”
The shadows started to form images. “No. ” He jerked, but the glass held fast.
Dona’s arms circled his waist, her fingers playing absently along the top of his cock.
Now he was face-to-face with the obscenely layered images of all of them. There was a reason six was considered an evil number. Violence, apathy, gluttony, indifference, greed and perversity. Six creative ways to rip away the outer shell of a child and thrust a man out of the remains, leaving him shivering and unformed to face the world.
He had to calm down. Dona’s hands were devastatingly tender. Somehow that made it both better and worse.
“They destroyed the perfect human being you would have become. That’s what you think, don’t you? In the deepest part of your heart, the only place you don’t lie to yourself, you think you’re garbage because you came from garbage. Because you were abandoned like garbage. ”
“Please, stop. ” He hated begging. Not the mocking kind he did to win a Mistress’s favor, not even the kind he’d done in reaction to his physical passion for her, but the true, bottom-of-his-gut pleading for something to take away the pain, the hurt. That kind of begging was an admission that someone had been able to hurt him, that he would have to rely on someone else. He hated it. Hated anyone who made him feel it, except he seemed incapable of hating Dona. He just wanted her to stop. “Don’t do this. ”
“Sshhh. Look. ”
He’d rather have been boiled alive. He looked at the new image, his foster mothers gone as if they’d never been, except they were imprinted on his own life in ways it was getting hard to deny.
This woman was younger than he’d remembered her. She wasn’t more than nineteen. Limp blonde hair, the sunken cheeks of an addict, hopeless blue eyes the color of his own. She’d taken him to a homeless shelter, told him to stay there. Not even that she’d be back. Just, “stay here”. In about an hour one of the men who stayed in the shelter had noticed him, taken him to the priest, who in turn called the police and social services. The cogs of the machine began to turn, to grind him up. He could still remember the confusion, the desperation of having no control. Of wishing, forever it seemed, that she would come back and give him the chance to be better.
“Your mother. ” Dona’s voice, quiet. When her hands moved to his arms, rubbing them even as they were held fast, he couldn’t push away the memory or keep himself from saying it.
“I sat on her lap once. Tracing the needle tracks on her arms. She took a pen and helped me connect them to draw animal shapes. It was a game and she smiled at me…
We made an elephant, sort of. She hugged me. She got high later that night, threw a beer bottle at me to get me to leave her alone. ” He closed his eyes to keep himself from seeing his own face now, the tiny white scar covered mostly by his eyebrow so he was the only one who could see it. As he shook his head, trying to push away the image, he couldn’t seem to stop shaking it. He started to thrash, jerking back and forth. Yanking against the hold of the mirror, he shoved against Dona’s grip, shrugging her off. It was going to let him go. The strength of his rage would be enough to break even Hell’s grip on him. The room would be consumed in flame and simply explode from it.
“You bitch. You fucking…stupid…bitch. ” He screamed, roared at the image, wanted to be free so he could beat on it. Not just break it into pieces. He’d grind the shards to dust under his feet, even if it cut him. The blood would mingle with the dust and it would be justice. “I would have done anything to stay with you and you were a stupid…loser…junkie…whore. Tell this fucking…thing…to…LET ME GO!” Dona’s touch came back, rested on his back. He fought, railed, screamed endlessly as she said nothing, just stood behind him as a silent witness. It seemed to take a long while, but at length he became self-aware again, enough to feel her soft stroking on his skin, the way it seemed to be easing the compression in his chest, the burning in his throat and behind his eyes. It helped him get a grip and stop, gasping at his exertions.
“Look at yourself. Look. ” Her voice resonated through his upper body because she pressed her mouth between his shoulders, sliding her hands around to stroke his chest and belly. Long, soothing motions with a hint of nails.
A tall man with murder in his expression, his body layered with cold sweat and his muscles taut, wanting to destroy something with them.
“You said you didn’t believe you could have a true Mistress,” she whispered, kissing the base of his neck, making him close his eyes. “That you didn’t believe in the fantasy of it. Jonathan denies you the reality. He’s the angry little boy acting out, terrified, hiding in the closet, afraid his foster mother will find and beat him again. Or worse, not care that he’s there, as if he’s nothing, as if his existence doesn’t matter. ”
“Stop it. ”
“No. You said it yourself. Think of what you made of yourself. You are strong.
You’re not garbage. ” She slid under his arm and was between him and that mirror now.
When she lifted her hands, laid them on either side of his face, they seemed so fragile.
He could break her fingers with barely any pressure and yet she seemed to have no fear of him when he was like this. When he was so enraged he feared himself, what he was capable of doing. “The only thing you lack is the courage to love, to forgive. That’s the only thing that gives Jonathan power over your soul. That’s what turns all those good things to poison. Let the little boy go and become the fine man I know is in my arms.
Forgive. ”
“This can’t be forgiven. Not ever. ”
“Are you talking about your mother? Or yourself?” She was gone. His hands were free and the glass shattered, as if the brief interlude was just a passing dream and now time had resumed, the mirror feeling the impact of his fists. Blood bloomed on his knuckles.
The shadows in the surrounding mirrors swirled, a heavy fog that spilled out of the glass and poured into the room, black and silver, twisting together like the bodies of charred trees, touching his nose with the acrid smell of burning flesh. It warned him that something was coming, something that was at the heart of all of it. What had brought him here, the foundation of everything else. He knew enough to try and close his eyes, but he couldn’t.
There were crimes that damned a man the moment they were committed. The soul always knew it. After that, nothing evil he did mattered. The black magic of this place wouldn’t let him have the escape of seeing Dona this time. The mirrors clustered around him like the walls of a coffin, dancing out of the way only when he struck out at them.
Then his fists stopped in midair, clenched, unable to strike. For he was surrounded by her. By so many different images of her.
Eliza.
“You met Eliza when you were with your last foster mother. Your first true love.
