Slaughter

by Shantel Tessier

To slap you, Is to touch you. Scream for mercy, Beg for more. To bite you. Is to kiss you. Tied and tethered, On the floor. To loathe you, Is to love you. Pretty princess, Dirty whore.

Love? That word sounds minimal compared to what I once felt for her. She was life. She was … everything.

I’ve become one of those men I swore never to be. All because of her. I want her to beg me. I want her to bleed for me. I want her to love me.

He’s got me under his spell just as he did back then. The past was forgotten for a moment. I like his presence; it silences my mind. All I do is feel.

She can’t die on me. That’s not the plan. I took her to protect her. Not kill her.

I’d rather be a slave to his words than a prisoner in my own mind. And even I know how fucked up that is.

He isn’t the same guy I fell in love with all those years ago. And I’m no longer that naive girl who thought she could survive on love and hope. I was delusional.

“You have to understand.” She interrupts me. “I’m fucked up, Avery.” She drops her head in shame. “I’ve gone so many years with nothing but emptiness. Not able to feel anything.” She lifts her head, and her eyes look into mine. “You make me feel something. It may be pain, but it feels like love. It feels like life. I don’t feel dead. And I welcome that.”

Fuck calm. I’ve never been rational when it came to Bunny. Why start now? No matter what she did to me in the past, she’s everything to me. My rage. My love. And my sanity.

Vaughn is our eldest brother. The only son our father cares to acknowledge. Because he wanted to own slaves, just like our dad.

“I won you in a poker game when you were ten. But by the time you were old enough to be my slave, my son had fallen in love with you. And then you got pregnant with his child.” He sighs as if disappointed. “If I would have taken you to be my slave, he would have fought me for you, and although he would have never won, it was just easier to let you go. Until I found out that he had you. And that you were his slave.”

“I’m going to slaughter them, Bunny. For you. I’m going to put you on a fucking throne and lay them at your feet for what they did to you.”

She’s been my anger. She’s been my love. She had been my happiness. And now she’s going to be my damnation. Because I’m going to burn this world down for her.

The truth is, I didn’t want her to go, but I had no choice. I knew who the culprit was, and I knew what I needed to do. She needed to be as far away from me as possible because I’m willing to die to make sure she remains safe.

But the most beautiful things are never just handed over to you wrapped up in a bow. It takes tears and sweat to get what you want. Even blood. And I’d bleed for this man. All he’d have to do is ask. Because I know without a shadow of doubt that he would do the same for me.