Her lips had split from dryness and the subsequent tearing when he’d shoved his penis in and out. They were outlined in red. There were wet and dried tears on her swollen face.
She’d said nothing for the last couple of hours, but now she spoke.
“I forgive you.”
“I told you to knock that shit off.”
“I do.”
“You’re only saying that to irritate me,” he said.
“No. It’s necessary.”
“Really. How’s that?”
“I thought you studied psychology.”
He gave her face a quick slap. “I thought I told you no more talking.”
She ostentatiously pushed her lips together until they formed a thin line.
She said nothing.
Neither of them said anything for a few minutes. He made several satisfied moaning sounds as he applied soothing lotion to his penis.
It was evening again. They could hear the sound of crickets and the occasional raucous quacking of a duck. Or maybe it was a goose. Neither one was an expert. She lay on the floor of the living room with her eyes closed, shadowed in pain. He sat nearby, alternately staring at her and out the windows.
“OK,” he finally said. “Why is it necessary?”
“For psychological well being,” she explained in a hoarse voice. “When people don’t forgive those who trespass against them, they remain tied to their tormentors forever.”
“Doesn’t that mean that they get away with it?”
“You mean you?”
“Among others.”
“No.”
“You’re going to have to explain that.”
She gathered her breath. “It doesn’t mean you don’t press charges. It doesn’t mean you don’t call the police, or testify against them. Or even cut off future contact, you know, like if it’s a relative. You let justice run its course. You do what you have to do to protect yourself from future hurt. But even if nothing bad happens to that person, even if they really have gotten away with it, it doesn’t make them get away with it any less, if you continue to hold a grudge. They don’t feel it. They don’t feel it if you put your life on hold because you can’t stop thinking about what they did to you. They don’t suffer. The victim is the only one who suffers.”
It was amazing she could still talk, but he wasn’t surprised. “But what if you tell them personally that you forgive them, like you just did?”
“I’ll bet a lot of the time it doesn’t make them feel any better. And if it does,” her voice shook a little as she seemed to temporarily run out of breath. “If it does relieve the guilt, then I can’t help thinking that that opens them up to other, possibly better feelings. Maybe they can try to redeem themselves.”
“It’s just a green light for them to do it again. Or more.”
“Really? My saying three little words is that powerful, huh? That would be the reason why they would continue on their evil path? I don’t think so.” Her voice was cracking, but it didn’t stop her. It never did, he’d noticed. “I think it may make a difference inside them. Somewhere, somehow. Or it makes no difference. In which case, it only benefits the forgiver. I’ve done this. I’ve seen how it works. And how it doesn’t.”
“I know this sounds strange coming from me,” he said. “But I think the whole thing sounds completely immoral. They do get away with it. You’ve let them. Freed them – us – from any remorse or guilt.”
“Sorry. You have to let me laugh a little bit at that. Finally, something that shocks your conscience. Forgiveness.”
“Are you a religious person?”
“What? No. I’m not. Not that it’s any of your business.”
“Oh. Then I guess we can’t have that how-can-a-benevolent-God-let-this-happen-to-you conversation.”
“Yeah. That dog won’t hunt,” she managed to rasp. “Even at this moment, someone somewhere in the world is having an even worse time than I am. I don’t believe in God.”
“Or maybe he’s just like me.”
“I refuse to believe in that god.”
“I’m god, as far as you’re concerned,” he said.
“Barring a lightning strike, I guess that’s true,” she replied.
“Don’t hope for that. In fact, don’t hope for anything.” And he grabbed one of his larger dildos and proceeded to continue raping her with that, giving his own body a rest, but not hers. After a while, he grabbed another one and tormented her with both. Every time he started another attack, she writhed (pointlessly, as he had pinned her by her cuffed hands to the floor) and screamed (fruitlessly, as that just seemed to increase his enjoyment). By the time he’d stop – momentarily to rest his arms – she was breathless and speechless.
Time passed.
At one point, during a pause, he leaned over and spoke into her ear.
“What are you thinking?” he asked softly.
She stared at him through red, swollen eyes, her mouth slack, tears flowing. She shook her head.
“Tell me,” he insisted.
“I don’t know,” she whispered back. “It’s indescribable.”
He stared at her, fascinated.
“Please stop,” she breathed.
“I wish I could.”
“Please.”
“Why would I stop?” he asked. “This is all I ever want to do. Ever.”
He went back to work for a while. She stopped screaming and began to wail, a long, pain-filled, almost child-like sound.
But she hadn’t been surviving. Not really. She had barely been alive at all. And she’d been lying to herself all through this. This. This was ultimately doing the opposite of what he had intended. This vicious death-dealer was what it took to bring her back to life. He had penetrated her, all right. He had punched his way through all the protective, intellectual padding she had carefully tucked into the corners of her tormented mind. He had forced all the buried feelings to the surface, like the blood that swelled her vulva under his relentless assault.
You think you can escape from things. You think you
have
escaped from things. But they’re right there, after all. The things she didn’t want to think about. The things she didn’t want to feel.
There are two ways to get through something like this, she finally realized. Being utterly dead inside and completely cold-blooded. Or being 100 percent obsessed with living.
At first, she had thought she was the first. She had told herself she was the first. Post-human, that’s how she preferred to think of herself. Beyond human needs and weaknesses. And it had seemed to be working; there had been moments when she thought she was winning, but they were getting rarer. As time went by, she was losing too many rounds. She couldn’t be as cool inside, as cold-blooded, as she needed to be, as she naturally would be if that’s what she really was. And so she realized, dead as she was, she wasn’t quite dead enough. Not to compete with this man. He was right about that.
The other option was the alternative she’d been avoiding, the life she’d been avoiding. How could she let herself feel alive enough, want to be alive enough to fight this? Physical pain was one thing. Emotional pain was something else again. She didn’t want to feel that again. And if you were alive, that was the risk. Why did he have to come here? She was fine, she had always told herself, being mostly dead, past the struggle. Now, if she wanted to live, she would have to re-enter the world of human feeling and discover if she was anything more than the sum of her past.
And the thing was, she finally admitted, she did want to live. The thing was, she never
had
wanted to be dead. She had just gotten lodged somehow in limbo. And she still didn’t want to think about how that had happened.
He stopped for a moment and spoke to her again.
“Now you can see how I was just toying with you before. But relax. I’m doing what you asked. I’m going to make your dream come true. Peace in your time.” He smiled briefly, then went back to what he was doing.
Time passed.
She was out of breath now, and she didn’t have much voice left. But her cracked lips were moving.
“What is it?” he asked. He was wearing a bit of a grim look now himself.
“Help me,” she pleaded in a voice without sound. “Help me.”
She wasn’t looking at him. She wasn’t looking at anything.
“That’s the first time you’ve ever said that,” he said, mostly to himself. “I almost wish somebody could. But it won’t be long.”
He paused to look at her. She was very pale now, except where she was bruised or reddened by his activities. She had quite a few abrasions from her interactions with him, the rug, and several pieces of furniture. She looked somehow thinner, less substantial than she had two days ago. She was just a small woman, until recently, fighting off the inevitable. He was the inevitable. It wasn’t even in his own power to stop himself. This was what he did, all he would ever do. And doing this to her had been the high point of his life.
He was hard again. He cast the dildos away, climbed on top of her one more time, and slid his penis inside her. Even though it was tingly from overuse, it felt terrific being inside her, especially now. He’d underestimated what it would take, it was true, but he was almost there, and he could feel it, literally and figuratively, inside her shredded vaginal canal.
He put one hand on each side of her head and pulled it toward his own. Her eyelids fluttered, and she moaned again. He kissed her mouth, then let her head fall back down on the floor beneath him. And with renewed vigor, he began to thrust into her again and again and again.
She caught her breath, but she had no voice left to scream. She could only whisper.
The words she said at this moment would matter more than any she had spoken to him before.
She had to get it exactly right.
PART 3
After two years watching him die, they weren’t actually sure when he did. He was home finally, with hospice nurses visiting every day. Looking at him in the special hospital bed, there was so very little of him left, and what there was looked like an old man. An old, dying man. Their son. They were standing there, one on each side of his bed. Her husband could not stop touching him. All through this last stage, he’d been like that. Touching his shoulder or his elbow or his knee or his hand or his hair, any part of him, just touching him as if to check that he was still there. His mother, meanwhile, would hold his hand for hours. She couldn’t take him in her arms because the cancer had spread throughout his body and his bones, and he was terribly fragile and easily broken. So she just kept his hand clenched in hers. But at this moment, they couldn’t be sure. After expecting it for so long. But still. His breathing had been so slow and so shallow for so long now that they weren’t sure if it had stopped. How stupid. But this wasn’t like TV. They really couldn’t tell. Couldn’t be sure. It would only be when the nurse arrived that she would call the time of death and let them know that it had really happened. They’d been staring at his chest, trying to see if it moved, but neither of them had wanted to lay their head down against it. They didn’t want to do anything that might hurt him if he was still alive. So they’d just stood there, in stasis, far beyond dread, waiting to know.
Once the nurse told them, his mother cried out and took his tiny body in her arms. She sat in the chair by his bed and rocked with him. Her baby. Her husband sat on the bed and clutched his son’s pillow to his face. The nurse left them alone until they were ready to call the funeral home. That was not going to be for some time.