That Sik Luv

by Jescie Hall

“No one hurts you, but me,” he says definitively, as if it’s supposed to bring me some sort of comfort. He nuzzles his head against me again like he’s rubbing his scent on me, or my scent on him, before whispering into my ear, “But the pain I’ll bring upon you is the kind you’ll need. The kind your body begs for me to find deep inside that sweet little exterior. The kind your insides scream to release but are muffled with deceptions of sin.”

Something about the danger of being in my presence, forcing her to enjoy something she’s learned a lifetime to deny, excites her to her twisted little core. It’s lovely.

I’m sick. I’m twisted. I’m definitely fucked up. But I know no other way. Briony will learn to live in my world, deriving pleasure from pain and humiliation until she owns her weaknesses. Breaking her into her new life as my counterpart in this sick game of redemption.

If there truly is a heaven as she believes, it was nothing like what we experienced in that house. Hell is the only place suitable for the kinds of fire we evoked.

I fucking love it. Confessing sins while committing them.

“There is right and there is wrong. There is good and there is evil,” he continues. “But their definitions bend for those who wield the ability to manufacture their own fate. The words distort for them. Conform to what they need to hold tight the power over naivety.

“What we have together isn’t definable by a word created by another man. No combination of letters or formulated language can encompass the magnitude of our tragedies. Our pain. Our euphoria.”