Her gaze darts toward the dark corridor leading to the entrance, then snaps back to me, wide and bright with annoyance.
“Freely?” she spits. “Is this some kind of sick joke?”
My jaw tenses, the muscle ticking like a loaded gun.
“Why would I joke?”
“Because that’s all you perverted assholes do!” Her loud, frantic voice booms and echoes through the halls. “You lie, lie,LIE!”
The final word crashes over me like a wave, twisting something deep in my stomach. Yet I swallow hard against the sudden dryness in my throat, lifting my chin defiantly.
“I’m not the pervert,” I declare, my pale blue eyes cutting into her. “I do this every other month to save girls like you from those dirty, mother fucking rapists.”
For a heartbeat, the fury drains from her face like blood from a wound, and something else flickers in its place—hope.
It hits me, and a strange, unwelcome warmth blooms where my soul should be.
“I do what I can, when I can… because I fucking can.” I finish.
She squeezes her eyes shut, shaking her head hysterically, black strands clinging to her tear-streaked cheeks.
“No, no, no! Don’t do that!”
I draw in a slow, deep breath and take careful steps forward.
“I know it seems unlikely, considering where you’ve just came from, but it’s the truth.”
Her eyes fly open immediately, the blade thrusting out in front of her again.
“STAY BACK!” she roars, voice cracking with rage and terror, her tired body vibrating. “I will stab you! I will… I will…”
I stop mid-stride, my teeth grinding together.
But, of course, I know this is completely normal.
These girls have been devoured by men. Used, abused and broken. And here I stand, dark and towering with this cursed cock between my legs, trying to convince her that I’m the good guy after I bought her like fucking cattle.
The irony tastes like rust and regret on my tongue.
But even as she stands petrified while spitting murder at me, it’s almost as if I am infatuated with her—a overwhelming fascination unravelling inside me like black vines around a dying flower.
Maybe it’s the restless trauma still rotting me from inside out, a disease that never stops spreading, no matter how many girls I pull from the rape market.
Maybe it’s the reflection I see swimming in her hazel eyes, and how it’s the same hollowed-out pain I carry, staring right back at me like a mirror forged from hell.
It never truly gets easier, no matter how many years I spend washing them off my skin, the screams will always live behind my eyes.
Every time I do this, I tell myself I’m carving out a piece of the evil I’ve become. That by saving them, some jagged piece of my own crushed soul clicks back into place.
Like a sick illusion that I’m not completely damned.
And I know I shouldn’t have taken notice, but there was something in the way she first looked at me.
What I sensed wasn’t just the urge to save her, it was the urge to press my fingers into every bruise they left on herskin, and replace their filth with mine.
I clench my bleeding fist tighter, letting the pain ground me. Because if I let whatever this is take over, I won’t be saving her, I’ll be condemning her to something far worse than a fucking auction.
I’llkeepher and make hermine.