Chapter 12
The blonde pretended to sleep. Steele could tell by the forced rhythm of her breathing.
He strode to the bed and eased the white top sheet off exposing a rubber sheet beneath. He took a long red cloth from a drawer beneath the bed and carefully covered the blonde’s body, leaving a small portion of his work on her ankle exposed. He examined it for flaws. He checked every angle of every line then double-checked every angle of every line. He inspected the shading, looked for signs of infection. There were no flaws. Not a single imperfection. The work was perfect.
He moved the cloth up her body so that only a piece of work on her thigh was exposed. Examined. Double-checked. Moved the cloth further up her body. He explored every inch of the work. Work he’d spent a year creating.
Now he would finish her, and it would be over. A sense of accomplishment, along with a sense of loss, threatened to overwhelm him. But he suppressed the emotions, kept his mind pitch black.
Steele opened the ivory handled straight razor. It was his sigil. Both a ceremonial tool, setting the blonde on her path to enlightenment, and a protective talisman, shielding him from his enemies.
He pulled the red cloth back exposing her shoulders, neck, and head. He brought the razor up to her face. “Do you recognize what this is?”
The blonde’s eyes popped open and locked onto the straight razor. Her body stiffened.
Steele tilted the handle allowing the sunlight pouring in through window to glint off the blade. A teardrop streaked across the top of the blonde’s nose.
“I thought you might,” he said.
It wasn’t the first time the blonde had seen the razor--she’d watched him use it on her husband--but it was the first time she’d ever seen him prepare to use it on her. Clearly, she worried he would kill her and leave her body in the same alley he had discarded her husband’s in. He saw it in her eyes, her quivering lip.
“You have nothing to fear,” he soothed her. “I’m not going to kill you.”
Her muscles relaxed ever so slightly.
He climbed on the bed; the mattress sank beneath his knees. He straddled her back and carefully scratched at the skin on her lower back with the non-cutting edge of the blade. She shuddered as the cool metal touched her skin. He dragged it up and down her spine leaving thin white lines. He scraped at her arms. Watched the white lines form and quickly fade.
Her dragged the blade across her shoulders. Her muscles tensed and relaxed with each passing.
When she tensed no more he pushed her hair up and out of the way with his free hand and positioned the razor on the back of her neck. He took a slow deep breath, held her head firmly, and then whispered in her ear, “Don’t move. Don’t even twitch.”
The blonde froze.
He stretched her skin taut between his finger and thumb and cut a two-inch vertical line parallel and to the right of the line of her spine. Her skin parted with a quiet sound like a zip-lock bag opening with a snap at the end.
The first time Steele ever cut someone, that sound and that feeling of the blade piercing the flesh had bothered him. But only the first time.
The blonde’s knuckles whitened around the metal of the headboard. Through the tape covering her mouth, she made a sound that could have been a whimper of pain, but he thought it more likely a moan of release. She was certainly in pain on some level, but wouldn’t be for long. Her endorphins would quickly kick in and her awareness would retreat from her physical senses. The feeling of pain would become more distant and the sensation of the blade edge moving through her flesh would feel more like the severing of strings of tension within her soul. He considered it a very cleansing experience.
A horizontal cut followed the vertical one, starting above and a half-inch to the right of the first cut, slicing down at an angle to meet it. Because the straight razor wasn’t designed for this kind of work, it took all Steele’s skill and concentration to keep the cuts precise. Much of the masterpiece adorning her body was created with various types of scalpels, not the straight razor. The razor was for beginnings and endings.
The blonde’s nostrils wheezed as they strained for air. Her grip on the headboard tightened. Raw power flowed out of her body and into the blade as he worked.
A third cut, below the second, left her marked with a symbol a bit like an “F” with the horizontal lines slanting upwards: an upright Fehu rune, a symbol of fire representing a possession earned and success. Reversed, the rune was a symbol of bondage.
Steele repeated the process, reversing the symbol and placing it to the left of her spine. The blonde let out a quiet sob, which she hadn’t done in quite some time--she’d become quite a good sitter--and Steele cooed encouragement to her while making the final cut.
The two runes, side by side, made up his mark, his signature. They immediately identified him as the creator of the work. Now that she bore them, she was complete.
Steele slid off her back into a sitting position on the edge of the bed. He let the feelings he had been holding back assault his body.
Euphoria and satisfaction surged through him in hard pulses.
Blood ran down from the wounds on the blonde’s neck. He stared as if transfixed by it, but he didn’t actually see it. He was no longer there. His body sat on the bed. His eyes were open. His heart knocked in his chest. But he no longer saw with his eyes or felt with his body. He had moved from the physical world into an ethereal one that radiated pure power and creativity, a place stripped of memory triggers and commercialized patterns. A place where there was no socio-political climate to squelch his individuality, where he found a kind of peace, became centered, communed with the gods.
The euphoria lasted only a few moments. His mind slowly returned to the physical world.
He collected a small spray bottle and a towel from the nightstand. He sprayed the new markings on the blonde’s neck with a solution to help the blood clot and protect her from infection. The blonde’s arms and legs immediately went taut as the mist touched her fresh cuts, but she was strong. She didn’t cry.
He set the bottle aside, toweled the moisture from her body, and bandaged her. Then he gently pulled the duct tape from her mouth and whispered in her ear. “You did very well.”
“I am thankful,” she said.
He patted her on her head. Of course she was.
It was rare for an artist to be satisfied with his work. Feelings of dissatisfaction plagued him just as they did any other artist. But since starting work on the blonde he had only felt confidence. The work on her had never failed to exceed his expectations. It commented on the work of his mentors, the artists he’d followed, and broke through the boundaries they’d set. It shattered the preconceived notions of all the work that had come before it. What he had created was important. Would be remembered. Would change the way people saw art.
He removed the blonde’s restraints. Then he leaned over her and kissed her on the cheek. Later, they would enjoy a lengthy chat regarding her experience with the cutting. Now it was time to move on.
Steele drifted into the living room and opened the mahogany armoire. Four large video monitors stared back at him. Each was capable of displaying as many as four images from up to four cameras at a time. Two monitors were dedicated to the brunette: One a straight-on shot capturing her from head to foot and the other an angled view capturing her profile from head to knees. They gave him the most complete views of her bare flesh. Two other cameras could reach her on the tree, but they were trained on the property.
He sat down. The antique wooden rocker creaked and groaned under his weight, popped with the back and forth movement of his frame.
The blonde, robed in thick red cotton, brought him a glass of sweetened tea with a wedge of lemon and placed it on the coffee table at his side.
He sipped from the glass savoring the icy sweetness. Then picked up his sketchpad.
The blonde sat on her knee
s in front of him. She looked at the monitors, saw the brunette, and put her head down. She doubled over, pressed her chest close to her knees. Moaned.
Steele ran his fingers through her hair. “As long as you remain true, you have nothing to fear.”
The blonde calmed at these words, as she should. He’d told her the truth. She stood at the end of a difficult journey. A journey few people had the courage to complete, one that had saved her, transformed her, heightened her awareness, and given her purpose and fulfillment. Her decision to engage him that morning in her own little game with the cherry smell confirmed this. Soon she would be ready for her new name, her new life, the one he’d so carefully planned for her. Still, the blonde’s worry-filled eyes remained focused on the monitors and the brunette.
He found himself eager to see what the blonde would do next. Her use of smell was clever and left him curious about her method. Of course, if she moved against him in a more direct way, he’d respond by sending her away. As much as he preferred having her with him, he could not allow that type of interference. Having studied his craft for two years in Japan, he knew he could send her there, to friends who would take her in, care for her as he instructed. Offers to buy her would come, and perhaps he would entertain those offers, but he hoped it wouldn’t come to that.
He studied the brunette. No one had heard her cries for help. Much of her voice drowned out by the symphony of wind, leaves, and cackles of little creatures in the surrounding woods. Thick bark and damp earth had silenced what was left of her pleas long before they could make it to his closest neighbor more than two miles away. But, of course, the brunette had no way of knowing this. He was supremely confident in their solitude. There would be no rescue.
Steele sketched, recalling every minute detail of the demon-like beast he’d imagined that afternoon.
He enjoyed knowing what would happen next, watching the emotions that crawled across the brunette’s face: the anger, denial, desperation, the ripples of resignation pulling her muscles downward, the quiver of fear in her bottom lip. Now she slept peacefully if not naturally.
This brunette had less heart, will, and motivation than the blonde. When he’d first bound the blonde she’d fought like some wild animal before giving up. This validated the choice he had made in taking the brunette. She yearned to break through her limitations, to throw off the role that had controlled her life, and become something more than what she had been.
He studied the nuances and curves of her figure. His eyes shifted from the sketchpad to her body then back to the sketchpad. But the image of the ragged, torn flaws around her pubic region kept popping into his mind. He carefully considered her flaws. The scars he’d discovered were certainly in an interesting location, but he couldn’t seem to incorporate them into his design in a way that added to the demonic beast. Something wasn’t right. He ripped off the top sheet of his pad. Sketched a second demon beast and a third. Still the beast and scars would not come together. It was no use. He could not force them to coalesce. Perhaps he had made a mistake. Perhaps she wasn’t the one after all.