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She bent over the bucket and stuck her hand inside, pulling it out to drip red all over the floor. Her eyes reached into the crowd, jumping from face to face, breathing hard. Then she smacked herself across the face. “Undeserving.”
I jerked back.
“Gentlemen,” the Marquis announced. “Your turn.”
Paters stepped out of the crowd and circled the naked girl. The first dipped his hand into the bucket and pulled it out, fingers dripping red. “Whore,” he spit and palmed her face, sliding his hand down, streaking color from her forehead to her breasts.
I shoved my fingers in my mouth. I couldn’t run to her, no matter how much she reminded me of us.
A second Pater approached. “Betrayer,” he accused and dragged his seeping hand across her chest, staining her skin to her hip.
The pungent scent of rust and animal found me. It was blood in the bucket. They were covering her in blood.
“In the beginning,” said the Marquis, in his professorial drawl, “God created Adam. And in his beneficence, he gave Adam Eve, grown from Adam’s own body and destined to serve him and bear his children. For a time, they lived peacefully in God’s kingdom. Close your eyes, Paters, and recall the peace of your own childhood, when you were secure in your place in the world, your understanding of what it meant to be a man.”
His expression grew grave. “But Eve was tempted. The Bible says her tempter was the devil, disguised as a snake, but we know better. We know the Bible is nothing if not allegorical. What does the devil stand for? Selfishness.That’swhat drew Eve to pluck the fruit and take her bite. After that, not even the kingdom of God was enough. Nothing ever would be, would it, Paters? We understand the hidden meaning: With knowledge, women corrupt themselves—and us. Women’s selfish desires, their refusal to take their rightful place as God and nature intended, keep us all from the kingdom of heaven.”
The Paters started stomping, the living room shaking under my feet.
The Marquis’s voice rose above the din. “We are trying to claw our way back, aren’t we, Paters? Aren’t we, daughters? Trying to break through, get back to who we were meant to be. But to do that, first we must right old wrongs. Tonight, we show Eve the truth of who she’s become.”
More Paters rushed forward, dipping their hands into the bucket and sliding them down Katie, scratching her, pushing her, calling herselfish, sinful, dirty, corrupt. One Pater pushed too hard, and she fell to the floor, but they wrested her up. “Feminist,” a man hissed.
“Daughters,” the Marquis called. “Express your guilt. Experience catharsis.”
The women descended, and then it was chaos—blood everywhere, dripping down suit jackets and dresses, caught in pantyhose, streaked across faces. The air in the room was so thick with the scent of iron that it was suffocating. They swarmed like beasts, until the girl in the middle was swallowed.
I turned and locked eyes with the man beside me, who grinned. His voice was deep and knowing. “Standing there all alone, with your clean hands. Are you saying there’s nothing you feel guilty about?”
There’s so much, the voice inside me whispered, and my pause was enough. “I see,” the man said and reached out, twining his fingers through my pearls. He pulled me against him. “You prefer a different method.”
I could’ve stopped him. I could’ve said no, right then, that instant. But he pushed a hand up my leg, warm palm sliding over my thigh, and my traitorous body heated.
He clutched my necklace tighter, knotting it against my throat, and I gasped at the way the pearls bit. “I can tell you’re a proud one,” he whispered. “Watching all cold and condescending. But you’re here…” His teeth brushed my ear, his hand finding me between my legs. I jerked, but he held tight. “Which means you’re exactly like the rest of us.”
I dropped my head back, letting it hit the wall, struggling to push away the memory of Don’s face, his voice, his hands, but it was no use. This was what I’d feared the most—not the darkness of the Paters but the darkness sleeping inside me. The addiction, waking.
The man’s fingers slid under the waistband of my pantyhose, down my stomach. He tightened his grip on the pearls, cutting off my air. Pain and pleasure built inside me until I was aching, and that’s when I knew he was right about me. He was right, he was right, he was right.
***
I walked quickly past the kitchen, smoothing shaking hands down my dress, leaving the sounds of Paters and daughters in the throes of the gathering behind me. I would not think of what I’d just done; would not picture Cal’s face if he ever found out or, worse, Jamie’s. I’d think of nothing but stepping through the front door and putting this house behind me.
A strangled sob came from the kitchen, and I froze midstep. Then another—a desperate sound. I glanced at the front door, imagined pulling it open, emerging into the cool night air. Then I gritted my teeth and pushed into the kitchen.
It was a small, homey space, with a black-and-white checkerboard floor. In the corner, Katie was curled into a ball, rocking.
“Are you okay?” I flew to her, falling to my knees. She was still naked, though she’d draped her dress over her body like a blanket.
She jerked back. Her whole body was streaked with blood; she reeked of it. Some of it was hers—a bleeding lip, and dark bruises already forming from all those hands.
“It’s okay,” I assured her. “Let me get a washcloth.”
“I’m fine,” she said, wiping at her eyes and sitting taller. “Really. Please, I’m embarrassed.”
I rose anyway and pulled a towel off the stove, running it under warm water. “Can I?” I gestured at her arms.
She crossed them over her chest. “I’m just emotional because that was such an experience. So enlightening.”
