rohypnol bride

I found her amongst the satellite trash behind the old gas station that had been converted into the broadcasting base for a guerrilla media crew, a corseted rape victim with legs like sculpture.  When I leaned over her she stirred, here eyes suddenly going wide and letting in the blood that wetted her upper body.

"I will not stop following you," I tell her.

I pulled her forcefully to her feet and she spoke.

I had stuffed her in the van after forcing three tablets down her throat in the end because she had puked the first two straight back up again.  She lay silently as we drove across the barren wastescape, past the puddles of junkies gathered around fiery oil drums and discarded SWAT team equipment.

One of the crack-heads, so full of the virus his blood almost glowed, shouted at us as we passed.  "She belongs to me," I say softly without affording him a glance.

The blaze of patrol choppers' spotlights slash across us now as I drag her towards the warehouse I call home.  She mumbles incoherently and I feel the wetness of her blood soaking into me and its still warm.  I shut out the static-thick air and bolt the security door behind us.  The warehouse is like the great carcass of an insect-whale, like the skeletal corpse of a Cthulu god.  The fragments of equipment that make up my gym and workshop lie in one corner, everything else is open and untouched – except the bedding area.

She tries to speak but already knows her muscles won't respond as they should.  She'll be out of it for hours, more than enough time.  I carry her over and dump her on the mattress then retrieve a towel to wipe us both down with.  One of the ribs of her corset has snapped, protruding as if it were one of her own bones and so I break it off and throw it away.

I stare down at her as I remove my clothing and she looks so beautiful now that she is free of the blood.  I know I've made the right choice this time.

The Rohypnol has stunned her body but not her mind and I can see that clearly in her eyes.  They shine as the polished chrome of the roadsters that tear around the district at night do.  I know she is comprehending every minute of this and I can see her crying out.  I remove her underwear and lift her legs onto my shoulders but as I enter her all I can think of is Camille stumbling into the warehouse after one of her excursions, blood spluttering from her vagina as she holds up for me the tiny, tiny corpse.

Was this our prize?

Her body moves involuntarily as I fuck her, the creaking of her leather bondage the only sounds we make until the slapping of lubrication.  I finish then suddenly pull away because everything has turned cold.

She comes to me later that night as I'm trying to leech the numbness out.  I've made six incisions, total – two on each arm, one across my chest, one across my stomach.  The blood works it way towards the concrete floor in needle-thin lines as if I had been turned inside out and my veins had been put on display.

The afterglow of the Rohypnol glitters in her emerald eyes.

"Look what you've done"

And we are both saying this, together, to each other.

She takes the razor from me, then wraps her hand around mine.  I stare down at her through my wet eyes and she is the virus.  She's leaking from her nose, the corner of her mouth.  Her fractured corset has broken the skin on her abdomen where everything is at its most fragile.

She embraces me, and our plasma mixes because true love is nothing without obsession – obsession is the bondage we choose for each other.  It is the metal hoops of our piercings, locked into each other.  It is the sutures she binds me with each time I try to bleed her virus out of myself.  And it is our blood, forever swapped.

She kisses me and tastes of copper and dirt, cups the back of my head.  "What did you do to me?"

My breath is momentarily stolen.  We can't keep doing this.  Love is obsession and love is cyclical.

"You turned the poor baby red," I whisper into her hair and she suddenly throws me away as if I were a poisoned doll.

            "Don't you ever fucking touch me again," she says flatly, picking up a skirt from the floor and pulling it on aggressively.  "You gave me the fucking thing in the first place."

            My wounds have opened again without her to hold it all in and I slowly drip onto the concrete.  I hate her, I want to grab the fucking blade and murder her.  This is her doing this to us, her.

            "Get out," I say, pulling myself to my knees.  "And don't ever come back."

Everything grows cold again once she has gone and I know I have no choice in the matter. I turn the razor over and over in my hands and all I see is her face reflected between the bloody splatters.  Camille is all I can think about.  All that matters.

Even though I know where she will be right now, re-filling herself with chemical cocktails and nestling in the virus like a biomedical crib, even though she strangled the only hope we had for salvation before it even had lungs, even though, even though.

Even though I infected her.  Even though I rape her to try and get it all back.

Even though she makes me do it.

Obsession is the noose around my neck.  And my RX-Queen is the stool balanced beneath me.

There is no choice.

I hadn't been looking long.  There was only a few places she could go now where her existing debts wouldn't be known about and nobody would fuck someone so heavily viral, even if they were so themselves.

I found her amongst the wreckage of old-fashioned video game cabinets behind a gas station that had been converted into the makeshift studio of a body modification cabal, a corseted rape victim with legs like sculpture.  When I leaned over her she stirred, her eyes suddenly going wide and letting in the blood that wetted her upper body.

"I will not stop following you," I tell her.

I pulled her forcefully to her feet and she spoke.

"Take me back," she said, handing me the bottle of Rohypnol.  "Don't ever leave me again."

And I tell her.  "I can't, Camille.  I can't."