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He bends down and kisses the top of my head, squeezing my hand gently. “Haven’t you learned yet, Tamara? Nothing is yours. Your thoughts are mine. I own every last little part of you.”
“No, Master, no!” I scream. “Punish me till I pass out! I can’t, I can’t!”
He cups my chin in his hand, and an odd kind of strength flows from him to me. “You can. You will. You’re stronger than you know, Tamara. Fight for yourself. You’re worth it.”
I feel as if my mind is splitting in two. My vision swims, and I think I see two Joshuas standing in front of me, and then they merge again.
He’s telling me to fight to save myselffrom him.
He’s telling me I’m strong and worthwhile.
Nobody has ever told me that before. Ever.
“If you don’t tell me,” he continues, “I’m going to have to hurt you really, really badly. What I have in mind? You’ll pass out, I can promise you that, and then I’ll wake you up, and you’ll pass out again.” He sounds very concerned for me. “I’ll keep doing it for days and days. I have defibrillators. I have medical training. I can restart your heart if I have to. And you’ll still end up telling me. Shouldn’t you spare yourself that pain?”
Restart my heart?A wave of terror threatens to sweep me away and drown me. “You’re the one who can spare me, Master,” I plead. “You don’t have to hurt me.”
“Oh, but I do.” His voice is so soft. “It’s the core of my nature, Tamara. The need to cause pain, of one kind or another.”
This is the only person I’ll be with for the rest of my life.
All strength leaves my body. I fall to the ground and curl up in a ball, sobbing convulsively. He kneels next to me and strokes my back, his fingers trailing over the sensitive, punished flesh. After a minute, he grabs my arm, gently, and tugs me into a sitting position. I look at him pleadingly.
“Please, I’ll do anything for you, anything but this…”
He reaches out and wraps his hand around mine. “Come on, sweetheart. Baby. You can do it. I’m going to count now. Don’t let me get to zero. Five, four, three…”
It’s like there are two Joshuas. One of them is kind and sweet and supportive. And the other one… I don’t want the other one to come out to play. I can’t survive it.
“I killed him,” I whisper, cringing in on myself.
He nods with satisfaction, as if he knew it all along.
“How?” Joshua prods.
I twist my head away from him, closing my eyes as hard as I can. Joshua grabs my chin and forces me to turn my head to face him.
“Look at me.”
“He was drunk. I pushed him down the stairs, and he broke his neck.” I realize I’ve forgotten to say Master yet again, but he doesn’t call me out on it. He’s too intent on prying open the hard, closed oyster shell that I’ve clamped around my innermost secrets, and devouring the succulent flesh inside.
“What else? There’s more, I can tell.”
At that, I go rigid.
I curse myself for my cowardice.
He squeezes my hand supportively, and I close my eyes. I pretend I’m sitting there with a close friend, with somebody who cares about me. Somebody who wants to lift this heavy burden from my soul. Susan. I’m talking to Susan. Telling her the secrets that I’ve never told anyone.
“My mother always drank a lot before that, but when he died, it was like a light went out in her. She started drinking so much she lost her job, and our power got turned off, and the neighbors reported us…” My body is shaking with sobs. I must be crying. “…so I got taken away and sent to a group home.” I feel a flood of wetness on my cheeks. Deep, overwhelming sorrow sweeps over me and clings, like a suffocating fog. “She never tried to get me back. She never came to visit me. Why didn’t she come visit me? Why?”
His hand tightens around mine again. “Her problem was with herself, not you, Tamara.”
“I always wondered if she knew what I’d done, on some level. And she was dead from liver failure within the year. It’s my fault. I killed her too.”
The words spill out before I can stop them. Horror floods my body. Saying it out loud makes it real.I murdered my own mother.
I start clawing at my arms, trying to tear my flesh. “I killed her, Master, I killed her!”
