Mercy

Both Billie Joe and Lorraine, who hadn’t even bothered to properly introduce herself until after I’d claimed to have no soul, eyeballed me for what seemed like decades, paralleling each other’s somber auras with unsettling likeness. I loathed the attention, aspiring nothing more than to slither away into the deepest caverns of the earth. Maybe then, after embarking on my shameful descent to the fiery abyss below, I would be where I belonged to burn. After all the evils I’d endured and wished upon others, I couldn’t fathom any alternate options for my end to come in…unless they involved being locked, handcuffed and naked, in a sinister closet where the only promise of glimpsing the light of day came when my captor finally decided between an oral assault or sodomy to inflict upon my virtually lifeless form. I swallowed back a sob as I became cognizant of how repulsion for myself and for being alive settled inside of me, growing steadily in intensity as every fucking flashback paralyzed me with self-loathing. I let this happen to myself. Not once did I fight back. I was nothing but a goddamn whore, and it was all I could ever amount to.

Never in my life had I regretted swallowing more than I did at that moment. If I hadn’t, I would have gotten exactly what I deserved: Death in a fiery abyss.

They were talking to me. The Mistress of Mindfuckery spoke swiftly and gently about how I didn’t truly believe my preposterous claim, that it was a severe case of depression that drove me into self-destruction. The old bastard chose an absurdly blunter path, grumbling something profane that regarded soullessness with requiring growing a pair.

“Frankly, Fairy, you ain’t got the balls to be a soulless cocksuck like Elliot,” he chuckled, intending to be harmless and playful. Mistress Lorraine glared him down, and like the crack of a whip, her scowl left Billie Joe withered and wounded before her. I peered at the comic display before me without as much as a flicker of a smile, yet I was secretly pining for the shrink to stand, crack her metaphoric whip once more, and order the old bastard to either zip it or lick her boots. I came to the conclusion that watching someone else being effortlessly subdued for once may have brought the ghost of a smirk forward.

I held my tongue and averted my eyes from the ever-present solemn haze that seeped from Billie’s and Lorraine’s pores, and I found myself wondering what Elliot would to do me if he found out I’d had a psychotic break, seeing as it was entirely his doing. Of course, he wouldn’t see it as such, and would punish me in any and every way he saw fit. The thought alone compelled my body to shudder. I didn’t want to go back to him, but I didn’t have much of a choice. He had my car, my apartment, my credit card…I was so profoundly helpless without him or his inarguable commands that I actually feared being on my own much more than I feared facing him again.

“You thinkin’ ‘bout him, ain’t ya?” Billie demanded, though the certainty in his voice almost completely masked the audible inquiry a question generally ensued.

I found the idea of conversation tedious, so I continued to stare down at my bandaged fingers.

“C’mon, tell Lorri here what he did to you. Honest to God, she ain’t all that bad,” the old bastard persisted, pressing irksome buttons I wasn’t even conscious of possessing. I was about to crack entirely, to tell him to shut the fuck up before I snapped his neck, but something told me such a threat under my predicament could very well get me put on Loony Lockdown, complete with padded walls and one of Billie Joe’s constant hug jackets.

Though I felt as if being locked away was where I deserved to dwell, the notion of being caged yet again made my stomach flip.

“Don’t make me order ‘n’ call ya Slut again, Fairy. Y’know how fuckin’ great that worked b‘fore,” he growled. “Tell her what happened.”

“Why?!” I spat, bringing my gaze to meet the blazing jade with just as much intensity as he was showering down on me. “Do you honestly want me to relive that nightmare?! I can’t. I won’t!”

“All you have to do is summarize it for me. You can use as little detail as possible. So long as you’ve made your point, you’re golden. Mike, the moment I know what kind of trauma I’m dealing with, the easier I can treat you. You wouldn’t want me giving you the wrong medications because you were too stubborn to talk to me, would you?”

With a sweltering crack of her lethal whip, Mistress Mindfuck and her demanding little sidekick presented me with a deal. An order. Talk, and I’ll be ok. Recount every horrific detail, and I’ll be sent skipping home only to be brutalized once more. With how easily my mind conformed to commands, however, I found the offer impossible to resist any longer.

“I was raped and tortured. Is that enough?” I stated plainly, having no desire to specify what exactly I’d been through.

“Not quite. Were you violated by a stranger, or-”

“My ex,” I interrupted, bandaged fingertips drumming impatiently against my hospital gown.

Lorraine nodded curtly and proceeded to scrawl something down on a clipboard she seemed to have pulled out of her ass. I hadn’t seen any trace of the damn thing seconds prior to my reluctant cooperation, but the minute I began speaking…voilà. The ominous object instantly appeared in her hot little hands with an insatiable thirst for knowledge and inner-turmoil.

“I see…and how often do you think about killing yourself?”

I was stunned. Lorraine had an uncanny ability for making the most absurd inquisitions sound absolutely harmless. In fact, she could easily get away with asking something like And how often did you say you masturbated in a day? or What did you say your favorite position was? without sounding the least bit mad herself. Mistress of Mindfuck: 1; Loonies: 0.

“Answer the damn question, Fairy,” the old bastard muttered, impatience morphing him into a terribly short-fused individual.

Once again peeling my eyes away from the judgmental vortex I’d unintentionally gotten myself sucked into, I whispered, “Every fucking second.”

Billie Joe made a disturbing noise that sounded much like a choked sob while Lorraine continued her incessant scribbling. As the old man was reduced to an unbearable coughing fit, she smiled weakly at me as I stole a quick, furtive glance in her direction. “I appreciate the honesty,” she assured me, though the declaration meant nothing to me. All I wanted to hear spew from her mouth were the words You’re free to go.

“You ok, Limpdick?” I demanded, drawing all attention to Billie’s physical distress to distract them from my own mental anguish.

“Fine,” he panted, yet it was an outright lie. He was rapidly losing his struggle to regain his breath, and with the eerie glaze creeping into his eyes, it was impossible to deny that something needed to be done. Quickly.

“Billie Joe, you fool, why aren’t you wearing your oxygen?!” Mistress Lorraine cried out, jumping to her feet at once to take action against the fiendish illness plaguing his lungs.

“It…it makes me feel…so old,” he groaned, shifting himself with a painstaking cautiousness so he could lie on my hospital bed as well instead of merely occupying the foot of it.

“Well, without the extra oxygen pumping into your lungs, you will die. Now where did you put it?”

Through his pain, Billie Joe managed to crack a malicious grin before sneering, “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

“My God, you’re such a child!” she groaned before whisking away to locate the elusive oxygen tank.

The moment the shrink’s presence had vacated my hospital room, the old bastard’s panting and wheezing ceased immediately. My premier reaction was utter panic as I automatically assumed he’d stopped breathing altogether. When I made to check his vitals, however…Billie peered up at me with mounting interest.

“You comin’ on to me, or didja think I’d gone ‘n’ died on ya?” he giggled, curling himself in to face me.

“Did you drive her away on purpose, Old Man?” I shot back, not bothering to answer his semi-serious sexual advances.

“You bet your little Fairy ass I did. She got her goddamn answers, ‘n’ now she needs to leave you alone,” he confessed, resting his head on my chest with a contented sigh.

I didn’t have the heart to tell him to curl up on someone else, so I settled on not being a complete jackass by thanking him instead.

Fuck, if he was this pleasantly annoying to live with…why the hell had I turned him down in the first place?