Page 33 of Cruel Cravings

Even exhausted and disheveled, she’s magnetic.

I’m drawn to her despite the chains biting into me.

Her determination, her cleverness, her refusal to crumble under the weight of everything—it’s intoxicating. It fuels my obsession and reminds me why I became fixated on her in the first place. She’s spent years discarded and dismissed, yet here she is.

Still fighting.

She digs out what she’s looking for, a stack of newspapers that she begins taping to the wall page by page. Some are just the clippings. Just the bold headlines or black-and-white photos, creating something of a collage.

“Yes,” she mumbles. “These here. This one over there.”

She’s feverish as she works, like she’s in a trance, refusing to stop until she’s done. But it comes as no surprise—her desperation has grown the longer she’s been apart from her sister. As she tapes news articles on the serial killer the Cleaver, it seems like she’s working on a theory of some kind.

Each piece is a puzzle that she’s trying desperately to put together.

We share one thing in common.

We’re both obsessive. Both on a mission we’ll never stop pursuing.

Her obsession lies in finding her sister.

Mine?

Mine is darker. Mine is about claiming her. Making her mine like my impulses demand. Every aspect of my life revolves around her, though she doesn’t seem to grasp how or why. Even now, chained and captive, I want her.

But I also want to punish her. Iwillbe punishing her when the time is right.

I will give her what she needs in this moment. Some perception of control. Some means to take out her frustrations and anger.

If that’s what she needs from me, that’s what I will be. The lightning rod for her to destroy in her own way, until I rise up and make her understand how misguided she is.

We would be stronger together than apart. We could do all the things she’s frantically working toward together. I could be her greatest weapon.

My jaw clenches thinking about all the ways I would avenge her. I would prove that she’s everything.

The sound of her voice pulls me out of my head. She’s still talking to herself, pacing back and forth as she does.

“It doesn’t make sense,” she says, stopping in front of one of the newspaper clippings. “All the bodies have been found. She’s still out there.”

Her voice cracks on the last word. Her shoulders slump from exhaustion. She’s worn thin and cracks are beginning to show.

My hands ache to soothe her, calm her down. Make her understand that she’s wrong, but in reality, I’m aware I could never tell her these things.

I could never be so human. I’m not like other men. I’m not capable of comfort and affection.

I… don’t even know how. It’s something that I was denied my entire life. From the moment of my accident but also before it happened.

My father was always stony and distant. My mother was loving in a superficial way. I was prized only because of the worth I had. Once I was disfigured and that worth was gone, I was discarded like trash.

For most of my life, I’ve existed in solitude. I’ve lived in the shadows, unknown and unseen.

There was no chance that I would have a normal existence like most people. A man as large as me, with a face that was grotesque and a body that bore endless scars, was never meant to exist in regular society with others.

I was destined to live in the dark, hidden away from everyone else.

It was a grim truth that I had accepted so long as I could watch her from a distance. I could survive if I had one thing in this world that felt like it was mine.

Jael became that possession.

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