Page 7 of The Last Feast
Then, she lays on his chest, her ear directly over his heart to make sure she hasn’t taken her reward away. Small thuds slowly greet her, slipping more of that cake over her tongue. A phantom warmth wraps around her the longer she lays there, listening to his heartbeat, feeling the soft rise and fall of his chest.
In the orphanage Hana spent the first ten years of her life, she was never allowed to hug anyone. When her aunt and uncle adopted her, there were still no hugs. But here, with this unconscious man, she can have what she’s always craved. She delicately lifts his arms to cross them over her back before she closes her eyes and sinks into the embrace.
She softly moans as she rubs her cheek against his chest, hugging him harder so his arms are tightly wrapped around her body.
The dripping gets faster as the sharp wires cut through Odette’s skin. It doesn’t deter Hana, since she scared the other group into leaving early then tricked the workers on the door into believing Auguste and Odette had left through a separate entrance. She’s spent her entire life watching people from the outside of humanity, so mimicking how the workers interacted wasn’t a hard feat. But she’s never been as relaxed as she is now, lying on an unconscious man with no one in the vicinity who could harm her. No one will come save the duo. They belong to her until she’s satiated and gorged on her desires.
Yet, she can’t prevent new ones forming as she massages down Auguste’s chest, feeling his lean muscles while imagining how he would look bare.
“Pretty,”she thinks. It’s a word the men who visited her bedroom so she could earn her stay at her aunt and uncle’s property would use to describe her, before they heard her screaming. Later, she’d laugh because she learnt at a young agethat the screams urged them on. She smiles into Auguste’s chest at the irony of the rapists enjoying her fear while promising they’d make her feel good. They were seeking enjoyment in lying to her. But with Auguste, she won’t lie, so she can admit he is pretty.
She lifts up, carelessly dropping his arms as she pulls her dress down to cover her ass, then steps over his motionless body to grab his hands. Hana drags Auguste through the maze until she reaches the point directly below Odette’s suspended body. Full length mirrors are positioned in a rough hexagonal shape, tucked into the hedging. They were originally meant to add to the atmosphere and extend the maze, but she’s repurposing them so all three panes of reflective glass provide an audience.
“He is mine,” Hana grits as she looks up at Odette’s unconscious, bound body.
When Odette wakes, she’ll have no choice but to watch the man she’s been obsessed with since she was six years old be intimate with someone he doesn’t even know after years of him rejecting her advances. She’ll be forced to be part of their audience to feed the freedom Hana has found being in control of others as she tilts her head, checking the angle of the mirrors leaning on their stands.
Hana was never given a phone or any technology that would allow her to communicate with the outside world and take her further away from the scripture. She knows they exist after watching the wealthy children photographing themselves in the forest as they walked, laughing and joking with their friends.
She’s already determined Auguste is the same as those wealthy children. It’s why she pats him down, searching his pockets until she pulls his wallet and phone free. The money is of no use to her, since she’s not long for this world. That gets dropped to the side in favor of searching his phone to better understand her prey.
When hunting animals, she watches them to learn their movements. Humans are no different—they just make it easier with a device on their person containing their secrets. The symbols don’t make sense to her, other than one with a camera lens, so she clicks into it. She’s greeted by row after row of red squares.
Cinematic shots of a red liquid seeping into soft cotton, running over black latex, dripping onto a steel slab fill every tile on the screen as she scrolls up. But they all have one thing in common: the cause of the liquid is out of shot.
As she clicks on one with a timer at the bottom, she lowers to the floor to sit cross legged on Auguste’s stomach.
But what plays builds a new appreciation for her prey.
6
MIRROR, MIRROR
AUGUSTE
Soft grunting reaches my ears before my eyes open and a gentle breeze blows over my naked body. Goosebumps erupt on my exposed back, but I can’t focus on why I’m suddenly bare when my limbs don’t move as I try to sit up. Thick electrical wire covered in harsh plastic is wrapped around each of my wrists, stretching them out at my sides. My ankles are the same, so I’m forced to remain on my knees with my head bowed. I lift my head from the faux foliage and try to pull myself free, but the restraints squeak as my arms are stretched further, to the point my shoulders burn.
Yet it’s the grunting that makes my heart race when the same happens to my ankles.
Grunting I recognize.
Grunting that belongs to me.
I blink into harsh lights glaring back at me, only to see my own bound body from different angles in the mirrors positioned within the maze, small pools of red collecting on the floor to my right. Squinting into the large spotlight shining through themirror, I try to make sense of the crisscrossed wires around the trees to find a weak point and free myself.
The audio of my grunting gets louder.
I attempt to calm my breathing at the fucked up way I’ve been bound. It’s like a distorted depiction of the Vitruvian Man. My thighs are slightly apart, knees digging into the harsh ground, my ankles pulled apart to form a V, my arms doing the same as my chest heaves from the strain of remaining balanced on my knees.
Then, she steps out of the fake tress to stand in front of me.
The skull painted on her face has smudged at the corners near her temples, and pride swells in my chest. I did that. I made this powerful fucking woman sweat.
She slowly lifts her foot and presses her sneaker to my cheek, pushing me down to the mossy ground as the grunting gets closer. The additional pressure makes me groan as my spine is forced to curve due to the way she has me bound. But she changes the pressure, allowing me to lift my head so I’m staring into the mirror behind the little red drops on the floor.
Leaning into me, she holds my phone in front of my face and asks, “Would your mommy and daddy like to see what you do?”
Fuck!
