“Yes,” I manage, though the word feels thick and wrong on my tongue. “I’m… fine.”
The world tilts. My knees buckle slightly, and I catch myself against the counter. My fingers grip the edge as an anchor. It doesn’t help. Just as I feel something solid within my grasp, I plunge forward, falling to the ground.
She steps closer to me—tooclose—and I catch a strange sweetness about her. It’s cloying and overpowering. But there’s a strange familiarity about it.
The haze surrounding my vision clears. But instead of seeing reality again, I’m struck by the way colors dance in front of me. The red of her dress is more striking, almost hypnotizing.
She says something. The veil upon her face moves with each breathed word, but I cannot make sense of the meaning.
“Careful,” she finally says, studying me. Then, after a beat, “Perhaps you could do something for me.”
“Of course,” I answer immediately.
The words slip out without thought, as if they had been waiting at the tip of my tongue all along.Always. The thought echoes faintly in my mind, detached from me, yet entirely mine.
Like a trigger, the red of her ensemble swirls in my vision, prompting me to forget all thoughts that don’t concern her.
There’s only her. And red. And her again. I’m just a lucky bastard who gets to enjoy this apparition.
Her lips curve beneath the veil. “Undress.”
The command is brisk, direct and without mercy.
My hands obey before I can question it. Fabric falls away in clumsy, uneven motions, pooling at my feet as the cold air settles against my bare skin. I feel exposed, but the unease doesn’t fully register, dulled by the haze wrapping around my mind.
Something appears into my outstretched palm—as if I’d been the one asking for it. It’s a smooth handle followed by an elastic chord that ends in a ribbed wooden shaft. A whip of sorts, but one that is much more cruel and vicious.
“Good boy,” she says softly. “You know what to do with it, don’t you?”
I nod even though my mind is blank.
“Then do it. Do it and tell me everything. All your woes. Every ugly thought you keep buried.”
I nod fervently—anything to please her.
The first strike lands before I realize I’ve moved.
Pain explodes across my back, sharp and immediate, tearing a gasp from my throat. I flinch, but my arm lifts again, and the whip cracks through the air once more.
The ribbed bar strikes against my skin, tearing it open. It only takes a couple of strikes for blood to surge forth, erupting down my back like a volcano.
“Tell me,” she repeats, her voice filled with an odd excitement.
“I was never meant to exist,” I choke out, the words ripping free as another strike follows. “I should have died at birth. My mother should have killed me.”
“Good,” she purrs. “Do you feel regret that you survived?”
“Yes.” Another strike. “If I’d died… Everything would be so much easier. My father would be alive and?—”
I don’t even realize when my eyes start tearing up. The flesh wounds are but an afterthought as the emotional ones are viciously torn open.
“My father…” I repeat, remembering his face; how he’d looked at me that last time. He sacrificed everything because he believed in me. He saw me as something more than a curse, a prophecy of doom. He sawme.
But what did I do to repay his efforts?
“I have no power.” Another lash. My sobs become louder.
“I’m useless. So damn useless. I’m a waste of air. A waste of space.” The words spill faster now, tumbling out of me without restraint, dragged from somewhere deep and festering. “I’ve done nothing with my life. Nothing. I’ve just hidden here like a coward and…”
