Page 20 of His

Not for the first time, I wondered what it would be like if I were squeamish about blood. So many people were, after all. It was a normal fear.

I had always loved bodies, the sheer corporeality of their flesh, the hard bone tied together with thick knotted tendons, the sticky tissues.

And her body…

She was asleep and didn’t feel anything, but I still felt a strange nervousness when I ran my hands over the curves of her living breathing person. Her hips rounded into thick thighs, ripe and smooth. Her chest moved in slight gasps of breath. Inhale, exhale. Her hands, pale and delicate, her fingers cut sensibly, her wrists—

Her wrists.

I leaned closer to her body, smelling her scent. Turning her palm up, I ran my hand over hers and stretched out the skin along her wrist.

Scars, running alongside the carpal tunnel. White dimpled lines from a knife’s edge.

I knew those kinds of scars. Old scars. I knew all kinds of scars. But these scars were attached to a body I found myself much intrigued by, and I could not let go of her hand once I saw them. My fingers traced the line of those white subtle seams over and over again, as though trying to stroke the truth of it out of her body.

“Tell me, kitten,” I whispered, although she could not hear me, “why did you try to kill yourself?”

Kat

When I woke up again, I was lying on a hard surface. I tried to lift my head, but there was something holding me back. I twisted my head and glanced down. There was a strap holding down my wrist. And my neck. Straps against my bare skin.

I was on the kitchen table. Wearing only a bra and panties. He’d taken off the rest of my clothes.

“Awake?”

I screamed. The man stood up over me, his face looking upside down at mine. I was trapped. Oh Jesus, I was tied down. I screamed again, whimpering sobs of a scream that came out in spasms.

He waited until I was done screaming, and then he bent down lower. The strap around my neck tightened, then went slack. I lifted my head.

He cupped his hand around the back of my neck, holding my head up. His hand was strong around my neck, and the tips of his fingers grazed my throat.

“Your arm was cut badly,” he said. “It needed sutures.”

I looked down to see my arm bandaged up. Red blossoms of blood flowered at the top of the bandage. I tilted my head back, settling back into his palm.

“You stuck me with the syringe again.”

“I didn’t think you’d let me stitch you up if you were conscious. You seemed much too eager to bleed to death while escaping.”

“How did you know how to do the stitches?” I asked. My breaths were quick and shallow. I looked into his eyes. I wanted to see if he would torture me, kill me. I wanted to ask him questions forever to keep him from remembering that I would be better off dead and cut up and burned in the fireplace.

“I used to be a medical student,” he said. “I was going to be a doctor.”

Questions. More questions. Anything to keep him talking, to keep him from getting angry.

“Why’d you stop?”

He smiled and his eyes went blank, as though focusing on something in the far off distance.

“I tried, I really did. I loved working with the human body. They’re such remarkable things, bodies. So perfectly made to survive. I would have loved the academic work, certainly. But that whole thing about first do no harm? Doesn’t quite work with my personality.”

“Whatisyour personality?”

His eyes refocused on mine, and I saw them narrow.

“You know my personality, kitten,” he said. “I have a taste for killing.”

“If that’s all you are, then why’d you save me?”

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