The Depraved Life.

I closed the liquor store door behind me and waited outside. The thin drops of gelid rain hit my face mercilessly. I couldn´t go back home without getting myself wet, so I decided to stay longer and search for shelter under a canopy.
                Other people were also trying to get shelter from the rain, and they gathered around under the same canopy I was. Among them I noticed a squalid figure that lingered next to me. It was a girl. Dressed in a dirty pink pull over with stains on the sleeves and worn at the seams. The soaked dirty blond hair fell heavily over her face. Her huge eyes looked somber as she gazed at the emptiness before her.

Time passed and people started to leave. They rushed to their cars or to the bus stop nearby. Soon there was nobody left but me and the melancholic figure. I had parked my car two blocks away from the liquor store and I would get wet before I could reach it. So I decided to stay a little longer.

Buses came and went by, but the girl next to me had no intention to take one of them or even leave the place on foot. Actually, she didn´t seem like someone who wanted to leave at all. She kept staring at the unknown as if her soul didn´t dwell in that slim rigid body of hers right next to me. I noticed her elbows shaking from the cold, but she didn´t seem to care.

“Are you waiting for someone?” I asked. Her faced kept calm and she looked at me out of the corner of her eyes. She fixed her inquisitive eyes on me for a short period of time that felt like an eternity. Those eyes were cold and piercing drilling through my soul.

“I might.” She replied after a while. The voiced sounded husky. “Why you care?” She continued in a lukewarm voice. She turned her eyes back at whatever was in front of her and took a deep breath. I had already decided not to keep the conversation going when she retorted. “I might be waiting for someone… but this someone might not be waiting for me… So, I guess I won´t wait any longer”. Said she cryptically.

“Where are you bound to? I could give you a ride if you are going in the same direction.” I didn´t expect her to accept such an invitation from a complete stranger, but, after a second or so, she turned her cold deep brown eyes at me. I wasn´t able to spot any sign of emotion in them. Her pale young face was the image of a wax figure. Her features were angular, the nose small. A thin-lipped mouth perfectly painted with a fragile brush garnished her young face. She parted her lips for a second before saying anything.

“Yes… you could. Where are you going to?”

“North.” Said I, pointing with my finger to wherever I thought North was. She finally blinked. It was the first time I saw her blinking.

“I might go North too.”

I made a sudden move to leave and she followed me without hesitation.
We hurried to my car so we didn´t get ourselves wetter than necessary. I unlocked it and she quickly jumped to the passage seat before I could even say anything.

I lived alone in a two storey bungalow since my parents passed away . The placed wasn´t well cared of and the slate air and the mild scent of decay prevailed all over the place. Nonetheless, I managed to keep everything in order. The tables were tidy and clean, so were the dishes. The musty air started to vanish gradually after I opened the windows to let some fresh air in. She sat quietly in the sofa even before I asked her to do so, and with those slow-motion movements that seemed to be her natural, she turned to me with flushed cheeks and bewildered eyes asked me, almost begging as if she were in pain. “Could you close the windows, please… it hurts me… I mean, the air, the sunlight”. I promptly did as I was told.

“My eyes are sensitive to sunlight, even in this weather in which you can´t see much of sunlight.” I nodded in agreement.

“Would you like a cup of tea”. She laid both hands over her thighs and fell into a pensive mode. It seemed that her mental process took longer for her than average. I started to think that she might suffer from some mental disorder but her constant change from pensive lost eyes to fixed scrutinizing ones made me believe otherwise. She probably went through some kind of trauma and I was most certainly not going to say a word about that.

                She finally whispered through her partially parted lips something that sounded like a “yes”. I went straight up to the kitchen to fix the tea. From there, I could see her from her back. She pulled her hair sideways and I could see her slim perfect neck. The skin looked smooth and colorless in its paleness. I couldn´t help watching my hands and mentally measuring it around that soft fleshless neck. It looked so beautiful, tasty and arousing. My mind started to wander as I gazed at her firm shoulders slight raised up to her ears. They were firm and bony. I started to imagined how soft the skin should be under the fabric that covered her elbows and back… as soft as the skin of her neck seemed to be.

I was awaked from my daydreaming by the shimmering sound of the boiling kettle. I poured the hot water on the tea and moved slowly towards her. I went to the back of the sofa, so I could kept my eyes on her slim neck and she couldn´t see my face. I approached silently, but not unnoticed. She clearly saw my coming, but didn´t move a single muscle to turn her head towards me. Every meaningful movement she made was with her eyes. I knew she saw me coming with a sidelong glance. I felt her shoulder shrugging and her whole body go stiff when I laid my left hand on her left should as I handed her out the cup of tea. I made no intend to take my hand off her should as she held the cup of tea and cautiously let my right hand lay on her neck. Her muscles were stiff as a corpse. She showed no sign of fear, surprise or even welcoming as she held firm the cup in her both hands. She embraced the hot warm cup with both palms wide open. It was as if she were unaware of the heat. Then, I place both hands on her shoulders and started to cares it gently, moving gradually towards her neck where I eagerly wanted to reach. To sound of the tick-tack of the old wall clock banged heavily over over my head and filled the room. Her breath, which was deep and irregular, simply came to a halt. Both my hands folded her fine neck while my fingers found rest under her jaws and while my fingers pressed her skin so tight I could feel the flicking of her veins pulsing in her neck.  I was shivering slightly and my breath was getting deeper when, with a sudden jerk, I felt the splash of warm water over my face. My eyes were wide open in ecstasy when they were hit unexpectedly.

                A mix of confusion and pain took over my soul. I stumbled back and fell over. My head hit the floor and my consciousness went black for a second. I tried to regain force to stand up again but a strong blow hit hard my forehead. With my eyes still burning from the hot tea and totally blind I was unable to tell with what I was being hit, but I was conscious enough to take all the strikes that followed through without fainting.

                The flow of warm blood covered my eyes and now the pain was unbearable. The strikes were controlled. I wasn´t being hit by someone who was moved by anger, but by someone with a cold intention to see me lose my will to resist little by little and give up completely. Whenever I stopped trying to stand, nothing happened. My eyes were still sore and swollen from the hot water and the blood over them. Whenever I tried to stand up to avoid chocking, another blow came out of nowhere sending me back headfirst to the floor. Each blow was stronger than the previous one. It was a sort of a game. There was no anger in it. Just a calculate mean of preventing me from leaving the place.

                “So, what you want from me?” Said I in a gasp, spitting the blood that filled my mouth. “Sorry if you thought I was going to hurt you…”

 I was still able to organize my ideas and tried to rationalize with the person who was attacking me, but another blow hit my nose shattering it completely. I wasn´t sure whether my nose was pulled off my face or it just tilted completely to one side obstructing the nasal cavities. I wasn´t able to breathe anymore and a the flow of blood that was pouring out of my nostrils found its way into my mouth . I choked. I could no longer breathe. Gasping for breath was impossible and I tried to cough it off. I tried not to move, so I wouldn´t by hit again. But the blood in my mouth and the broken nose made me raise my torso again to another furious and accurate blow. The lights went off.

                I waked up much later on to discovered myself completely naked lying on my kitchen table with both my hands and neck tied. The pale slim figure was sitting in front of me. She had changed her clothes. Dried and combed her hair. She presented herself very solemnly. Her eyes looked brighter. Her pale skin had some color in it and an almost imperceptible look of satisfaction adorned her eyes. She looked ten years younger.

I couldn´t believe what I saw. I was striped to the bone. The skin of my legs were torn off and pieces of my flesh were served on a white plate in front of her.

                When she realized I had waken up, she smiled for the first time. Her face was bright and full of joy.

“You´re one of a kind” She said. “Since I saw you I wanted to feel the taste of your flesh… roll over so I can feel your buttocks”.

I don´t remember how long did it take. But when the police finally showed up, I had lost so much blood that I was incapable of remembering anything else.

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