PROLOGUE
THE CURATOR
‘Who are you?’ I ask, gasping like it will make him less dangerous.
‘Sal,’ he murmurs, watching me like something fragile; a porcelain doll he plans to break.
I swallow hard. His stare, his presence pressing in, suffocating me. ‘Are you here to hurt me…Sal?’
Something flinches in his eyes – something dark, something hungry. ‘Hurt you?’ He exhales slowly. ‘Darling, Marguerite,mon cheri, I want to tear you apart, piece by piece, until there’s nothing left untouched.’
I should step back. I don’t. I remain silent, and he continues, ‘I want to ruin you, slowly, completely. And you’ll love every second of it.’
‘How do you know my name?’ I whisper.
‘It’s my job to know things. I’ve been watching you,’ his voice drops, rich and poised with promise. ‘You collect things, little fragments of people, little…trophies.’
He shifts closer, his breath grazing my cheek like a whisper of something inevitable. ‘Well, darling,’ he murmurs with a voice like sin. ‘I don’t collect smiles. I collect fantasies.’
His fingers brush against my collarbone. It’s barely a touch. Barely there, but it’s enough to make my pulse falter - enough to make me forget how to breathe. He inhales deeply. ‘And you’re my favourite one yet.’
I know, in that moment, in the way he says it and the way he looks at me, that this man is already inside my bones. He’s made clear his obsession is raw, ugly, a sickness that’s twisting in his veins.
And I enjoy it.
God help me. I enjoy it.
I’ve been waiting, searching for something or someone to swallow me whole, to draw me in like hunger itself. To make me feelalive,even if it ruins me in the process. This man, he’s going to ruin me perfectly.
And I’ll thank him for it.
CHAPTER 1
THE CURATOR
Two weeks before
They crave the warmth of life draining away – nature’s phlebotomists. They prefer the pulse of a living vein, but they’ll settle for what I bring them. But how do I casually drop into conversation to the average Joe butcher, that my weekly grocery list includes two litres of fresh blood?
I tried spinning a tale of peculiar culinary experiments. I even tried to lean into mystery giving them a cryptic smile and said it was for a side project. However, all it did was raise a few eyebrows and resulted in me shrugging about my unusual needs. I didn’t have the time nor the patience to explain, so I struck a deal with one of the late-shift workers at my local abattoir; a quick blowjob in exchange for a discreet handoff of blood after dark.
The silence in the countryside is amplified as I arrive at the locked-up abattoir. The sharp scent of disinfectant hangs heavy in the air, cutting through the metallic tang. The late-shift worker emerges, his high-pressure hose blasting across the concrete floor, sending rivulets of red snaking towards the drains. He waves at me with a gloved hand as I exit my car – a routine I have slowly become accustomed to as the abattoir slowly takes a breath and resets, waiting for the next day, when the cycle of culling begins all over again.
I take a deep breath as I light a cigarette, and I lean against the cold, metal car door. The flame flickers briefly before I take a slow, deliberate drag, letting the smoke curl lazily into the fresh, night air. The night is still, everyone has gone home, so it’s just me, the late-shift worker and the occasional hum of crickets in the fields. As if on cue, the worker gives me a faint nod of acknowledgement, his face shadowed under the remaining light as he leaves the abattoir. No words are exchanged – just a brief, silent transaction as he hands over the bag, its contents sloshing faintly inside the plastic containers. I glance down at the bag, its weight a reminder of my peculiar arrangement. I place the bag into the car’s footwell, and he already has his trousers ‘round his ankles.
I really need to get a new hobby.
The Frenchman’s belly with its gravitational pull hangs out beneath his shirt, chest hairs peeking between the strained buttons in a desperate bid for freedom. He smiles. His magnificently curled moustache could double up as a coat hanger as it lifts towards the corners of his eyes, and the only reason I can even stomach blowing him off is because he kind of looks like Pedro Pascal if you bought him off Temu, and his voice is as buttery as croissants.
‘No holding back tonight, eh, Francois?’
Francois chuckles, his belly shaking. ‘Ah, madam Dubois, not tonight!’ he exclaims, with an exaggerated French flair. ‘You see, it’s mine and ze wife’s anniversaire. She wants me ‘ome early.Tres romantique, non?’
‘And you couldn’t have forgone your weekly suckjob just this once…because it’s youranniversaire?’
He shrugs with a grandiose wave of his hand. ‘Ze ‘eart desires un petit aperitif before ze night ends with myentrée.Besides, eef I go ‘ome too early, she’ll ask: “What’s zees man want?” Non, better to let ‘er wonder, eh?’
A quiet resignation settles over me as I drop to my knees, clasping his cock in my left hand, my cigarette in the other. Tonight, like every other week shouldn’t be any different. I know exactly how this is going to go – because this is how it always went. Thirty seconds – tops.
