NightWhere

When she began to draw the curve of the upper half of the R, the long line to the left was already weeping red tears. She completed the right leg of the R and then dragged the knife up and down in an inverted V quickly, to make the A.

Peter didn’t say a word as she cut him-he lay there and just watched her face-it felt like he gave her permission to draw his blood, and Rae didn’t question it. She cut the E, and Peter’s chest ran with his blood. It welled up and drops escaped the troughs of the cuts and began to weep across his ribs and down the canal of his sternum to pool in his belly button.

Kharon spoke, but Rae could not tell what he said. His words were a harsh cacophony of syllables that sounded foreign and guttural. At first she thought maybe it was Latin, but then she thought not. She had taken Latin in high school, and there were too many unfamiliar tones to this tongue. Kharon spoke faster and faster though, and the words grew louder as his energy increased. And then his cadence grew to a high point and he nearly shouted one word, “Faut!”

As one, the twelve women and twelve men drew blades from where they’d been hidden in the pockets of their robes. The knives were much like the one that Kharon had given Rae. Long ceremonial daggers. They let their robes drop to the floor and stood with their knives raised in the air. Rae let her eyes wander, wondering what they were going to do with the blades. Part of her worried that they were about to stab her to death in some weird sacrificial ritual, but Kharon’s promise that she would see The Black, depending on her performance here, stilled that fear. Her presence on top of a chained man implied that she was to do something more than that…simply being a sacrifice didn’t equate to doing something and earning a reward.

She looked at the line of pale-skinned men and again thought how they all looked like Kharon. Long, heavy penises hung between their thin thighs, and their sunken bellies were hairless and white. They could have all been carved from marble. And the female Watchers-they had breasts, but barely. They were thin and hairless people, all of them. It was as if they’d bathed in bleach-their skin was beautiful and smooth and white. And then they stepped closer, so that their beautiful, strange skin touched the table, their thighs pressing against the stone where Peter lay.

And then in a heartbeat, their flawless bodies were speckled in red.

As one, the twenty-four standing around the table drew their blades across their own wrists and loosed streams of blood. Some of them drew the knives deep enough that the cuts sprayed blood out in an arc of red. The others still cut themselves deep enough that their blood ran fast down their arms.

Kharon alone remained robed and still.

The rest reached out with bleeding arms, and suddenly they all touched Rae. She was pushed back and forth, as they rubbed their blood across her chest and back. When her skin was smeared and coated in their blood, they removed their wrists from her and instead, one by one, held them to Peter’s face.

“Drink,” Kharon instructed. “And join the body.”

When Peter turned his head away, Kharon reached out and put his hands on either side of the man’s head. He pressed Peter’s face forward to stare at the ceiling. And another white-skinned Watcher held a bleeding wrist to the trapped man’s lips.

“You must drink from us, before we drink from you,” Kharon said gently.

Peter’s tongue came out slowly then, and he licked some of the crimson from the wrist in his face. As soon as he did, the arm was withdrawn and a woman’s took its place. And then a man’s. The Watchers alternated, until Peter had tasted them all. His lips were glossed in crimson.

Then Kharon said something else in the strange foreign tongue and the Watchers raised their knives again, as one. But now, they did not cut themselves.

They cut Peter.

This time, he was not silent. Peter cried out.

The knives stabbed at his thighs and his ribs. Two blades nicked his neck from either side. The blood of the word RAE in the center of his chest was suddenly overshadowed by the blood that dripped from between his ribs and across his hips and calves. The rock table was quickly awash with crimson, as it bled down his ribs and pooled around his body.

“Take him now,” Kharon commanded, staring straight into Rae’s eyes.

“Take him…how?” she asked, suddenly very afraid. Her skin felt cold in the heat of the room, and the man beneath her no longer looked desirable…he looked abused. Pathetic. Lost.

“Take him inside you,” Kharon explained. His eyes did not blink as he looked at her. She could feel his judgment upon her. Either she did as he expected, or she failed. She knew in a flash what he wanted. Rae wasn’t sure how she could possibly fuck Peter at this point, after he’d been stabbed more than two dozen times, but when she looked down, she saw that, in fact, his cock was hard. He was getting off on the pain.

She reached down and picked it up, holding him between her legs. The blood that covered his skin acted as lubricant, and she stroked him with it, coating his sex in his own life. Then she pulled him up between her legs and, with a sigh and gasp, pushed him inside her.

Kharon said something, but she did not hear. Rae only had eyes for Peter, who lay beneath her. His face was drawn in an expression both fearful and turned on. His eyes flicked back and forth from the Watchers to Rae’s face. She moved him inside her, adjusting his cock with nudges and thrusts of her hips, and as she looked at his bleeding body beneath her, something that had long lain buried, but only barely, in Rae’s psyche surfaced. She suddenly realized that she was enjoying his pain. She watched his wounds gape and weep as she pressed herself on him, and when he gasped at the pain, she felt a thrill of pleasure run up her spine. A little orgasm. She had hurt him, and she was hurting him now, as she used him. And she liked it.

Rae knew in that moment that she was evil. Had always been evil. Wanted to keep being evil. She’d tried to hide from it, but the reality was…she wanted pleasure and didn’t care how she got it. And if she had to hurt someone to get it…

Her hips ground faster against Peter as she accepted the understanding of herself. She’d hidden from the realization in the sex clubs and “sharing/caring” trappings of the other swingers. They all pretended to care about each other and to be sharing a lifestyle. But suddenly it hit her in a flash. They didn’t care. She didn’t care. All she wanted was to fuck. And she loved the idea that she was fucking the life out of the man beneath her. With every push of her thighs against his, more blood flowed from the wounds in his sides. The word RAE on his chest grew difficult to read as the blood pooled and spread. She leaned across him and with her breasts rubbed at the gash of her name until the word could no longer be read.

“Your blood is mine,” she whispered, not really understanding why she’d felt the need to say it.

But then Kharon stepped forward and, with a simple thrust, dropped his silken black robe to the ground like the others.

“Your blood is mine,” he echoed, drawing his knife across the soft skin of her breasts. She felt a pinching sensation, and then suddenly heat, as the blood began to seep from her nipples like hell’s milk.

“Let him drink,” Kharon said, and Rae bent lower, until her nipple was at Peter’s lips. He opened his mouth and took it in, smearing his lips with crimson, as Kharon’s cut continued to bleed.

Rae felt the pain of the cuts on her chest, but they didn’t seem to stop her pleasure. Instead, the pain quickened her rhythm, and she pressed harder against Peter’s hips, drawing him as far inside her as she could. Their bodies slipped together in a bloody lubrication that was warm and wet and continued to build. Peter was bleeding steadily from so many cuts across his body that, every place Rae touched, she slid. It was hot and exciting and…she knew…deadly.

Peter moaned beneath her, and she could feel his lust within her, moving, pressing, shifting.

She increased her rhythm, excited by his entrapment, excited by his blood. He lay beneath her, face shifting through a kaleidoscope of emotions: pain, excitement, fear, lust…

Rae could feel her own orgasm approaching, as she pressed her hands to his wet shoulders and slapped her crotch to his. The room resounded with the echo of her passion, their bloody, wet skin meeting and retreating, and then, just at the moment of her release, Kharon leaned forward and picked up the knife she had discarded from the table. He held it out for her to take and smiled at her complete abandon.

“Kill him,” Kharon commanded.