Page 41 of Love of the Egoist
He was mesmerized by the view. Red streams of body paint glistened in a dim light… a black flourish of his leather brush… a strong, intoxicating smell of blood, sweat, and fire. He felt powerful like an artist. The creator of a painting, unapproachable in its excellence, a masterpiece on an exceptional canvas. Every stroke he made on that smooth body made him dizzy with ecstasy.
Adrenaline sang through his core, playing on the tightened strings of his nerves, drowning his brain in an endorphin flood.
“Boss, you’ll kill him!” Greg exclaimed as he rushed into the room. His face paled when he saw the blood-soaked sheet.
Yugo swiveled. His face twisted, upper lip curled. An animalistic growl broke through his mouth when he raised the hand holding the whip, wishing to hit his subordinate but froze registering alert in the deep-seated eyes. The opaque veil fell from his eyes. The bloody fog clouding his vision lifted. Yugo looked at his own hand gripping the whip. Slowly, as if he had been in a dream, fearing what he might see, he glanced at the blood-soaked bed.
“Fuck me…” he cursed at himself, threw the whip aside and lit up a cigarette with trembling fingers.
CHAPTER 12
KUON LAY ON HIS STOMACHfor three long days, barely getting up. He didn’t eat, didn’t drink, and didn’t talk.
His body felt broken. Every bone hurt, every nerve wired. Deep nagging pain set in his bones and was spreading… spreading… spreading… engaging each and every cell in his body. Every time he moved, the cuts on his back cracked, bled. When he wasn’t thrown into the cold nothingness of dreamless, reliving sleep, he faced the cruel, shivering reality of the fever that set deep inside. His sheets soaked in sweat. He constantly felt cold, and he couldn’t even hug his middle without causing his back to bleed again. But he never asked for help, never touched the drugs left by his side.
Yugo was a frequent visitor. Every time he stopped by, he acted weird. He changed Kuon’s bandages and smeared his wounds with anesthetic ointment. More than caring, he visibly boiled with a desperate need to talk. But no matter how hard he’d tried, Kuon never replied, pressing his lips together.
On the fourth day, Yugo flipped out. Grabbing the collar of Kuon’s t-shirt, he yanked him up from the mattress in the air, causing the welts on his healing back to tear open again. His other hand pressed the rim of a glass to Kuon’s mouth and poured water down it.
Water rushed into Kuon’s throat, flooding his lungs. Grabbing his throat, he slapped Yugo’s hand away, folding to the mattress in a coughing fit. His other hand hit his own chest in an attempt to get the water out of his respiratory system. The room swam as he tried to grab some air.
“If you don’t eat on your own, I’m going to force-feed you, you hear? Shall I begin?” Yugo grabbed hold of Kuon’s short, chestnut hair and brought their faces together. “Or maybe you prefer me to mouth feed you?”
Kuon didn’t reply, staring back in Yugo’s gunmetal eyes. The hatred he felt boiled under his skin. Yugo paled, scowled, and his fingers hesitantly unclenched.
“If you don’t start eating by the evening, I’m going to be mad.” He stepped back, turned to the door. His fist clenched then unclenched, and he looked over his shoulder at Kuon. A deep crease marred his forehead as he turned and left the room.
As soon as the door closed, Kuon felt the black hole in his chest open and the tug of gravity sucked his organs in.
“Ugh…” Kuon sighed, curling up in a ball, and dug his face in his knees in an attempt to keep himself sane. His shoulders quivered from the relived memories of that night. His back hurt, the newly healed flesh had torn again, but he didn't care.
??E??
YUGO’S HEAD WAS A NEST OF CHAOS. He’d stopped analyzing himself long ago, and now he didn’t even try to give a name to his mixed feelings, knowing it was useless.
Coming to the small back room filled with monitors, he peered at one display. Heavy smoke rising from a cigarette filled his lungs, numbed his wired nerves, bringing him slight relief.
His head buzzed with thoughts, and he started thinking that tobacco was too weak for his state of mind, and he should drown his irritation with alcohol.
His thoughts, time after time, rushed back to the full of loathing gaze Kuon had leveled at him. Contemptuous, filled with abhorrence, that gaze dove deep in Yugo’s pupils, sucking out his soul, leaving him restless, lost. Yugo didn’t like this at all. He didn’t like how Kuon had changed. He felt that the young man would never smile for him with that cocky, put-on smile again. He even started to doubt that he would ever see that bold and challenging look in Kuon’s eye that he admired ever again.
Cursing under his breath, he crushed the cigarette in the ashtray, as if crushing down his own frustration.
??E??
TWO MORE DAYS PASSEDin a silent war. Yugo had stopped demanding any kind of response from Kuon and had also stopped talking. It looked as if he had been coming only to check how the wounds were healing. During his visits he acted weird, sitting with Kuon on his mattress in complete silence. But even if he couldn’t make Kuon talk, his threats hadn’t been in vain; Kuon had started eating again.
The wordsolituderevealed another meaning to Kuon.
If before Yugo’s visits had quenched his need for information, now he had to bite his lip to stop himself from talking.
With each passing day, he felt its growing power erasing his pride, his standards, and his principles. His brain kept telling him that isolation was forever used as a tool to extract information from prisoners. That it was only a way of manipulation that Yugo used to break his mental defense, crush his spirit, but he could do nothing but give in.
He constantly talked to himself. Bouncing against white walls, counting cracks, spots and imperfection, he debated with himself. When he wasn’t training, he played chess in his head or stared out of the window until dusk erased everything around. But that wasn’t enough. He needed to keep busy. He needed simple human contact. Keeping silence was hard when his subconsciousness demanded him to talk.
Boring and colorless, this day silenced birds and cloaked the forest in white mist. Kuon felt excited about any change, even a bad one to his monotonous life as a prisoner. Isolation and this fucking white empty room drove him crazy. That was why his heart leaped to his throat with something similar to joy when Greg entered his room.
“Boss is waiting for you,” Greg informed when pink and blue streaks rolled over the sky behind the window, blending together.
