Last night that knowledge would have stopped my
heart. Tonight I know with unshakable certainty that was
nothing to fear.
He leans over me. The sharp, already evaporating
sting of chloroform rises with his hand. I snap my head
away from him and bury my face in the eye-watering
mattress ticking. He tuts softly and reaches for my chin. I
sink my teeth into his hand. His tut becomes a stifled
howl.
He wants these pristine white teeth, he can have
them, but if he thinks they hurt-
It is harder than I expect to bite and drink from a
threshing morsel without the benefit of hands to subdue
and clamp it steady. But I only need a few drops.
I discover I do not want to die after all as a genuine
tremor of doubt shivers through me; does this wretch qualify
as human? Then I swallow and inside my head an
unparalleled light show explodes.
The kaleidoscope is not caused by the escalating
blows from his free fist against my skull, but the effect of
his blood trickling down my throat. The wretch does qualify
as human. And now the six-foot, sixteen stone man
struggles in earnest with the tethered and half-starved
twenty-year-old girl.
I may only need drops, but I want every last one of
them. His blood wastes down my chin and adds to the
biological soup of accumulated sweat and urine that soaks
the mattress.
34