With a Vengeance

by Freydís Moon

Home is a carried thing. Given and taken.

How could someone rested understand their sleeplessness? How could someone satiated commiserate with their hunger?

“You’re too brave for your own good.” “That’s what happens when you’ve got nothin’ to lose, right? A raccoon in a trap isn’t brave for chewing off its own leg. It’s just desperate.”

Kye had listened to doctors, friends, peers, and distant cousins say you’re not alone and if you need help, reach out. But alone was exactly what they’d been. Alone and rotting, like this horrible house, and they were certain their mind had given them something—someone—to fill the silence.

“You’re a person on the precipice of greatness. People who dance that line are always dangerous.” Pleasant warmth unspooled in their stomach. “And what greatness is in my future, huh?” “Me.” Smoke poured between his teeth when he grinned, fangs dimpling his bottom lip.

“This…” he said, and shifted in a blink, appearing at their back again. He gripped their hips, shaking them slightly. “Is yours. This…” He tapped his claw against their temple. “Is yours. This…” Dragged his fingertip down their sternum. “Is yours. You belong to no one until you decide otherwise. You wanted someone else to take the wheel, so I did. But control is just as much yours as it is mine.”

They felt like a snake shedding its skin—their smooth flesh the same as new scales; their vision sharp, unveiled after a lifetime spent walking through fog.

“Every time you move, you’ll think of me. Every time you come, every time you touch yourself, every time you imagine making love, it’ll be me bending you over, and eating your pussy, and fucking you raw—”

Numbness set in. That awful, blank nothing that always arrived after falling apart. They wanted to sleep for a year, run a mile, eat greasy food, sit in a lukewarm shower, fuck a stranger. They wanted to shake it off and sink into it, wake up from it and take shelter in it. It would’ve been easier to let it have them for a while—that static. Would’ve been easy to turn themself off for an hour, a week, a month, another year.

Kye heard an ache in his voice. Tenderness, maybe. Something that mimicked compassion. “You want pain, don’t you? To get outside yourself? Give up control?” He teased the tendon in their throat with his teeth. “Let me break you,” he whispered. “You’ll come back together better than you are now.”

“And what’s that like?” “Drowning. Like someone’s holding me under the water in a bathtub. I know the surface is right there.” The jutted their chin upward. “I know I could just get up; I tell myself move, take a breath, get out of there, but something’s holding me back. There’s an anchor on me and I can’t see it, and I can’t move it, and I don’t know how to get out from beneath it.”

“You asked what it’s like to fall from grace, but you already know the feeling. My father abandoned me—our father. But I could’ve stayed, could’ve been obedient. I chose to fall; you chose to leave.

“I’m nice.” “Super nice. Literally, the nicest person I’ve ever met.” “Fuck off, Eli.” “See? Peachy.”

Doctor Weyland said it was normal. Told them it was common for victims—fuck that term—to deal with their trauma by recreating it in safe environments.

“Sounds like they were traditional. Change is hard for people like them.” “Is it?” They cut their second egg down the middle, cracking their fork against the plate. “I don’t think it’s hard to love your kid. I think that’s supposed to come naturally.”

I know they loved me in their own fucked up way, but I need this. I need to be okay with it. With leaving.

I’ve been around the block, Kye. Obviously, I’ve sucked some dick.

“I’m not your property.” “Mi alma,” he seethed impatiently, speaking against their cheek. “You’re my temple.”

“You want me dripping down your legs?” he asked, snapping the words an inch from their lips. “Walkin’ around like a ruined bride, fucked stupid and full of me?” He stole a kiss. “Want me to desecrate you? Want me to fuckin’ breed you, Kye?”

“She hated me, Esther,” Kye said, not unkindly. Just defeated. Just true. “And she probably loved me, too. That’s what family is sometimes.

Watching them live after wanting to die was a thing he cherished. A thing he was careful not to fuck up.