The Wounded

I love The Wounded.

I sleep with The Wounded. I fuck The Wounded. I live and breathe and play with The Wounded.

I too, am The Wounded.

I care for The Wounded and The Wounded care for me. If I find you broken down, I will sit beside you and crawl with you to the nearest shelter. For a while, I may even drape my warm body over yours, to be that shelter.

I love and hate The Wounded.

I understand The Wounded.

And I don’t.

+

When I find her, she is slumped over the bathtub. Silent now, she has been, for half of a record and another glass of wine.

When I open the creaky door, her pants are below her ass. She has taken off her shirt and is wearing only a broken bra.

Her right arm is draped over the tub. Her left hand is limp, down at her side.

The yellowing light overhead is decay. The floor is dirty. She is wounded. Bleeding. Wounded.

A razor is in her left hand. Her right hand is empty. The blood drips off the side of her arm and into the tub. Not into her palm.

+

From under her armpits, I pick her up.

My elevation is symbolic.

Rolling her into the tub would be treating her like an animal. A dead, weathered carcass tumbled into a grave site, at best.

But she is not dead.

She does not want to die tonight. Tomorrow is a very different day.

I prop her up against the wall and turn on the shower. She is half awake, half dead. Half intoxicated. Bleeding down her arm, filling her up pants now with red drops of water.

With one strong arm, I hold her up. With the other, I peel her remaining clothes off.

Adjusting the water like a thermostat, I make it hot. Scalding. Almost boiling.

I leave her pants in the tub. Her socks, on her pigeon-toed feet.

My clothes are still on. Soaked from the inside out.

I unbutton my shirt and roll my sleeves up.

+

Pushing her further into the corner, and with the steam rising, I kiss her.

Her eyes open enough to let me know that she still has a pulse.

With her good arm, she touches me at the waist. Her finger somehow sloppily looping into my pants. Like a hook. Like a hope.

I kiss her again. This time, stronger.

The bathroom is filling-up with a heavy steam and by the time I move down her torso, for her swollen, pregnant tits, we can barely see, face-to-face.

She yelps when I clamp down on her nipple with my teeth.

+

When I stand back up, I pin her deeper in the corner.

Her bloody arm is limp and down at her side. I run the pads of my fingers over her series of cuts and draw a line up to her mouth. I do this once, then twice and then the third time I press hard into her cuts and bring my bloodied hand up to her mouth, encircling her aching lips.

I run my fingers inside her mouth, over the back of her teeth. Over her tongue.

Ethereal and vacant, her eyes close in ecstasy. In pain.

+

I open my shirt and press her bloodied appendage into my torso. Into my heart. And that place where fear resides and bubbles to a boil – just below my sternum. In my gut.

As her blood runs down me, she is opening my pants. Unbuckling me.

And I still have one hand on her sternum, pressing her even deeper into this corner she has created. Cried out for.

Wringing out her arm over my soiled body, I am telling her – without words – to let it out. Because if that fear lives anywhere, in its incessant circulation through you, it has to be in your blood. In your inheritance.

Bleeding all over me and I am as terrified as she is.

+

I reach between her legs as she goes limp. As she lets go of my cock.

She moans. I slide fingers inside of her and she expels breath as though it is the last from her lungs. As though her moan was a death knell afterall. But instead of collapsing in this sauna of temperature and emotion and everything necessary, her body writhes awake.

I take her still-bloodied arm up to my face and press it to my lips – feeling the myriad of cuts. The many incisions. The bloodletting.

She has not slit her wrists. She has only made parallel cuts on her forearm. In the same place she always does.

The relief is temporary, at best.

Three inches further down and she would be hoping for permanence.

Someday soon, she will.

+

Squeezing her red arm, I spin her around. With resolve. Without elegance.

Twisting her arm and pinning it to her back, I pull her ass toward me and with my free hand, I slide my cock inside of her.

Squeezing and twisting her arm, I began pumping into her. The blood running down and around her back and her torso.

I have her head pinned into the corner. The steam is rising up around us like a hot envelope.

Wrenching her arm even more and she does not yelp.

I pound at her backside even harder, my cock filling her completely.

Her porcelain skin is now colored in the hue that she imbued. I wring out her arm again and dizzy from the heat, I pull out. I pick her limp body up and spin her back around.

Her eyes are closed. Her torso is runny like spray paint. Her hair is red and dripping down her face.

With her hand, I run her fingers through her hair and down her face. To her swollen lips and into her mouth.

Revived, her eyes come to the misty light of this room. Of this life.

+

The bathtub is red like the water falling from our bodies.

I can see the razor under my foot and instead of stepping to the side, I press my foot harder, down and onto it.

Now I cannot tell who is bleeding, or why, or how.

~ by The Provocateur on October 22, 2007.