Free Cold-Blooded Beautiful by Christine Zolendz

my skin, and I struggled to draw air into my lungs.  My eyes stung and burned with pressure. His were dead of any emotion or expression.  “Kneel,” he demanded, releasing my neck, watching my body crumple to the floor.
    There was a small creak at the door, the tiniest of sounds, as if a mouse had just stumbled upon us and was scurrying to find food.  My eyes instantly tracked the noise, and they locked on Aurora, who crawled in on all fours with a goddamn spiked collar around her neck, violently pulled with a leash that was in one of David’s hands.  Her naked body was covered in brightly colored contusions, broken capillaries and venules, damaged by whatever trauma he’d inflicted on her.  Crimson abrasions covered her knees as she moved them over the coarse rug, and a small bloody laceration marred her pretty lips.  It was angry and red. My hands itched to clean it, and my mind raced to find something sterile to stitch up her cuts.  Oh, my God, she was acting as if she were his sex slave . 
    I’ve only read about this sick shit in books.  Books I usually choose not to finish, because they never end well.
    “The look of mortification on your face has my cock so fucking hard right now, pet.”  Slowly, as if putting on some twisted morbid show, he stripped out of his clothing, throwing each piece at me, as I sat on the floor clawing my fingers into the plush threads of the carpet.  “I’m going to make you watch me fuck her like a dog.”
    Aurora’s head lowered submissively, but her bloodied lips smiled, and my stomach rolled.  Sick.  Sick.  Sick .
    I gave him my tears then.  The last of them.  Because the minute he was inside her, I was planning to hurl myself at him, and kill him with the buckle of the belt he’d just thoughtlessly thrown at me.
    He’d thought he had finally broken me, slamming his hips against Aurora like she was nothing .  Fucking her so savagely that I thought he’d rip her insides. 
    The one heartbeat he blinked, I attacked him, clawing his eyes, punching him and raking the metal of the belt against his skin.  No technique existed in my fight, none of the combat discipline I had learned in the military; it was raw, ruthless…, and so fucking desperate. But, after a few good attacks, my arms began moving in slow motion, because they were too heavy and thick with fluids.  I knew I’d surprised him, knew I had hurt him in some way, yet the blackness claimed me quickly.  I raged in my semi-unconscious mind, raged to fight him, to fight the drugs, but my body just quit .  I couldn’t tell you what happened after.  And God forgive me, I don’t want to know.  I don’t want any more of those visions.  I still can’t ever feel clean enough, no matter how hard I scrub. I still feel David’s filth…everywhere .
    I was very sick, and that , I was absolutely aware of. Violently vomiting, I knew what was happening. I knew he was killing me slowly.  I could feel my body shutting down organ by organ, but there was nothing I could seem to do.  Most nights, I would find my conscious swim to the surface, becoming vaguely aware of my surroundings. Most times, I would feel the headboard jostling violently against the wall, and could hear Aurora’s moans and laughter as if she was enjoying my torture.
    I was almost dead when he called for an ambulance, the ink still fresh on the fictitious suicide note he penned in my name.  Those morbid, carnival clown giggles and moans from Aurora, the ones I had spent my last breaths listening too, became echoed shadows of sounds.  Cold, strange, invisible hands pulled and pushed my body.  It felt as if I was being strapped into one of those old rickety wooden rollercoasters, my body just slumping against the cool metal of the cart, not being able to do more than listen to the low murmurs of disembodied voices talking all around me.  Eventually, the little cart lurched forward and up, ascending into the warm moist atmosphere and the