Page 9 of Choke

“Oh, Seamus, dear boy. It looks like your body is desperately trying to compensate for the blood loss.” I glance down at him, flapping like a fish about to vacate this mortal coil. “I fear you might be going into shock very soon.” Bending, I smile as I meet his terrified eyes. “I’m torn here. “Should I let nature take its course, or should I put you out of your misery?”

A painful whimper pours from Seamus.

“I don’t understand. Guess I’ll decide for you.” I press the blade of the knife into his throat and slice through his jugular, watching with fascination until the light abandons Seamus’s eyes.

10

ATLAS

Sex after violence, or violence after sex. That seems to be the motivation for Callum for the last two years. His personal therapy to rid himself of the pain.

I stand in the shadows while he performs the ritual to banish his demons. A ritual that doesn’t cleanse but increases his terror. A ritual that I never muster the desire to end. It unleashes desires that frighten and excite me. I both loath and admire this side of myself. The knowledge that I’m a monster, my father’s son, disgusts me. Yet the power I feel from knowing I am capable of loving even in the darkest of spaces allows me to have some sort of notion that I’m capable of empathy.

Callum laughs as he stabs the dead man’s body. A sick joy fills his expression as blood splatters his face. He looks like a madman—possessed, tormented, and deranged. Wild gray eyes burn bright behind the mask of blood, now dried to rust with streaks of crimson.

“We’re going to leave her alone, Callum. That’s what you said, wasn’t it? Leave her alone so she can live her life, and we can finally be free.”

Callum’s lips curl up, his predatory teeth glimmering in the moonlight cast through the small window. “He deserved it.”

“Did he?” I step toward him. “He was an asshole without manners.” I glance at the pool of blood, the severed tongue, and the brutally maimed body.

Callum ignores my question as he stabs into the deceased man’s body, expanding his wounds to a gaping hole. “No one is rude to her and gets to live.”

I watch in fascination as Callum unzips his pants and unleashes his hard cock. He’s always aroused from violence. Sex is rarely tender anymore. It’s a destructive force that navigates how we physically love.

Callum shoves his cock into the stab wound.

“Oh, fuck,” he moans. “That’s so fuckin’ wet.”

I wish I could say his actions disgust me, but they don’t. I am my father’s son, after all. That sick, twisted DNA runs through my veins. Instead of stopping the depravity and helping Callum cure the disease that’s infested his being, I fuel the illness. Standing before him, I watch with disgusting lust, taking in his thick cock penetrating the dead man’s flesh, lubricating himself with blood.

Callum’s head snaps back from the slap inflicted by my palm. “Open up.”

“I love how you try to be the sane one. The good one. But you’re a little freak just like me, Atlas.”

I smile down at Callum, captivated by his jet-black hair and pretty gray eyes. He’s a work of art. Such beauty. Such artistry. A masterpiece for the ages. God, the Devil, or whoever dreamed the idea of Callum, understood the true aesthetic of perfection.

I twist my hands in his shaggy hair, yank his head back, and spit on his blood-stained face. “Be a good boy, Callum, and do as you’re told. We wouldn’t want me to force you now, would we?”

Callum laughs as he raises his right hand, holding the crimson blade toward me. “I think it’ll be fun to fuck a bloody hole in your body, Atlas. Remember the first time you let me do this? These guys do the job, but there’s nothing better than watching my cum drip from your bloody stab wound.”

I answer him in silence because I’m incapable of forming words. The two sides to Callum. One deranged and one bursting with compassion. I never know which one I’ll get. I’ve consoled myself with the realization that it doesn’t matter because I love both parts of him. The good and the bad. The angel and the demon. Is this my warped devotion to God? Like the blind allegiance of my father’s disciples? Because I’d bow down and accept Callum’s wrath if it meant I could bask in his splendor.

“Is that what you want, Callum? To fuck my wounds? Do you want to breed physical harm on my flesh to match the wounds on my spirit?”

Callum smiles as he lifts my shirt and trails the tip of the blade along the name scarred on my flesh. “I don’t know, pretty boy. Why don’t you cut the crap and tell me what you really want?”

“Fuck,” I groan as I slam my dick into Callum’s warm mouth. “You sound so much better when your mouth is full of my cock. I think I prefer you like this, Callum. Unable to speak.”

My head falls back, and I focus on the cement ceiling with its glaring fluorescent lights. This room is a construct to harbor our madness.

I thought I was finally free when Mona’s sister killed my father. Callum and I could start something new without the weight of our past weighing us down, but we couldn’t do that because of her. She burrowed into the deepest parts of us. Parts we weren’t sure still existed. Spaces that were consumed with vacant memories of kindness suddenly became blaring beacons.

Confusion washes over me as I hold Callum down, forcing him to choke on my cock. My hands aren’t gentle. They aren’t kind. I relish dominating him. Yet even with this exaltation flowing through my body, my heart hammers wildly as I witness Callum gasping for breath.

Icy dread grips me: unspoken desire, a terrifying weight threatening to shatter my fragile composure. Callum allows me to have something I desperately want but am too frightened to voice. The unraveling of his mind reveals my reflection, exposing a terrifying image of my true self. I can’t escape my situation even if I want to because I love the madness and desire the insanity. There is comfort in my gilded cage, shrouded by the darkest shadows.

“I said nothing when you bought the building she lived in so you could install those security cameras in her apartment. I said nothing when you left at the crack of dawn and came home late at night so you could watch her at work. But I’m saying something now. Your obsession with her will blow up our lives.” The words hang heavy in the air, each syllable a hammer blow shattering the fragile remnants of our happiness.

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