Violet stepped back to admire her handiwork. She assessed it, eyes sharp and critical, and shrugged. She rummaged in the pockets of her ratty knitted cardigan with her clean hand, thumbed the pack open and shoved a straight in the corner of her mouth. Her eyebrows drew together slightly, tight on her forehead, as she stared at the window, entranced. She mouthed the cigarette up, down, up, down in some automatic reflex as she held her gaze. Her clean hand reached again, down, down into the dusty depths of pockets, and drew out a packet of matches. Lighting a match one-handed is no easy trick – Violet accomplished the feat with sharp elbow sandwiching the box against sharp ribs, whilst her clean hand scraped and struck a single flickering light. She cupped her bloodstained hand around the flame to shield it, and bent her neck down towards in a delicate arc that spoke of swans and prehensile tails. Perhaps there was some significance in her contortion to reach the flame, instead of bringing the match up to her lips. The cigarette smouldered and lit in a incandescent second, breathing out a curl of smoke and singe of paper audible only to the smoker wrapped tight around the filter. The first sip-suck of sickly smoke coated her insides, and Violet settled heavily into the slight feeling of hyperventilation that accompanies the intrusion of tar, the violence of ash. Her eyelids sank slightly. The scene was delicious, noir even in the bright white of the morning.
The matchbox was still pressed into her side, elbow and hand held awkwardly in front of her. The blood reached past her wrist, delightful as it cooled and dripped slightly down her forearms, snaking rivulets inexorably slowly past the fine white hairs dusting her arms. She let the matchbox fall, pattering down next to her bobby socked ankles. Her clean hand was occupied by the mechanical rise and fall of cigarette from lip to hip height as she puffed away. The window still held her gaze, the spatter and splash of red extraordinary to her. There was nothing clichéd in this frame, she thought, tilting her head to admire it. She may have seen it in dozens of slasher flicks, but the unadultered joy of viscera and violence, with the boy slumped down in front of the long window, axe buried in his skull, sang fresh and new in her bones. Blood was hot and deep. The stain of arterial blood, smeared down the pane by the back of his shirt, the freckling of pump and gushed slash high above his head, the ooze and bruise of wound, she observed it all. The song of pain forgotten and left behind rose up around her. This was love.
She dragged the carcinogens in deep, breathing slow like a scuba diver floating in brine, and waited for the prickling tightening on her hand. Plasma and blood cells, desperately clotting on her fingers, dried brown and red streaked. She watching the process mirrored on his dirty blonde hair, wet locks stiffening. There was a golden glow about the scene, glittering windows underneath the gore. She smoked until the filter burnt, smouldering sweet and cloying, and dragged on, coughing absentmindedly, until her fingers burnt. She dropped the butt like a skeleton's brittle fingers creaking open and reached forward, clasping the axe handle. Bloody hand joined, smearing flakes of crusted viscera on the white of her clean arm and the handle, and she heaved. Violet listened for the crunch and slide, jerking back with her weapon gnawing out of his skull. She leant it against the porch railings and stood, shoulders curved, watching hungrily, picking at the crusted blood around her cuticles as she waited.
'Fuck,' Tate moaned, drawing up a knee gingerly. She leant over, fingers brushing his bone fragments as she watched grey matter swirl and knit, skull inch together and skin nip at broken edges greedily. The gaping maw of the wound closed under her hand. He brushed her hand away angrily, and grabbed her ankles, yanking her off balance viciously. She kicked him hard in the leg with her free foot, and jumped away, grinning. Her teeth shone in the sun, sinister and sharp.
'Cigarette,' Tate muttered. His fingers fluttered dreamily over the wood planking. 'Cigarette!' It was a hoarse groan – necrotic tongue flopping in ravaged head.
She knelt between his knees, pulling out the pack of cigarettes with her flaking hand, extracting one and pushing it between his lips with indescribable tenderness. Feeling behind her, hand blind, she dragged the matchbox towards her, and struck a flame, firm and unshaking. He bent the cigarette towards the flame with a jerk, and inhaled hard. He tongued the cigarette to the side of his mouth to exhale in her face.
Violet didn't blink. She watched him, knelt before him, like a bird of prey. He felt his head.
'This'll be fun to wash out,' he chuckled hoarsely. The pulse of him picked up gently, and he pressed his fingers harder into the planking, pulling at splinters with his nails. The death of him fled faster, expelled from his body like the smoke from his mouth, leaving only the taste of tar and dust behind.
He pulled at her with his free hand, fumbling under her skirt, and up her thighs, spreading his fingers around the joint of her femur to pelvis. His thumb rubbed unintelligible marks into the softness between her hip, pressing into the ball and socket joint from the inside of her leg. He could felt the sinew of her upper thigh reaching and groaning under him. He smoked, and held her there, occasionally brushing his thumb across her underwear, catching nerves. Violet kept quiet and still, never breaking eye contact. Her flaking hand hung loosely to her side, and the clean hand gripped the matchbox. The effort of kneeling up was meaningless to her, even when her thighs began to shake imperceptibly from the tension. She was strung taut.
He took a final drag, and chucked the butt absently down the porch. It smouldered quietly as he slid his other hand up and under, plucking her knickers to the side. His shifting thumb held the fabric against her leg, as he pushed two long, cigarette scented knuckles into her. He revelled in the muscles of her, fluttering around him, resisting, encouraging. She felt each joint, and the slight twist of his hand. He slid his fingers out, and picked up pace. His palm rubbed warm friction on her clit, as his fingertips stroked her insides. She felt like she was bleeding out into his hands – the hot wet of it stilled her. There was no gentleness in his fingers, only bone and motion, and his eyes were fixed on her chest. He was watching her breathe. As hard as she tried, the panting rose, and she slavered and dripped like a dog, a thin moan rising in her throat. He smiled at the heave of her ribs, and kept time. When she came, weak beatings of orgasm around his fingers, he continued to push and pull. His other hand slid round to her ass, tugging at her knickers and roughly sliding his hand under, kneading at her flesh. Her body wept into his palm, crushed like ooze of oil, and he leant back against the blood-dried glass. He couldn't look any more, but disappeared into the feeling of needy cunt around scarred digits. Stomach fluttered around him again, twice, long and desperate, and she grabbed his hands and pushed him away.
'Haven't been fingerfucked since I was, what – like, thirteen,' she grumbled, smoothing her skirt.
'I didn't exactly hear you complaining.'
'You have good hands.'
She took them, pulling his fingers apart, knitting her hands into his, smiling at the damp stick of them. She pulled his right hand up to her face and spread it, open palmed, across her face, nose under his palm, eyes closed by wet fingertips. He slid it down, watching the pull of her skin, and traced her mouth. She caught his fingers in her teeth and sucked at them, lips a perfect swollen seal below his knuckles. She bobbed her head slightly, pulling back with a graphic pop over his joints, and pushing back over again. He could feel the dark heat of her tongue winding and caressing his fingertips, somewhere in the unknown of her mouth amid the pearlescent rows of teeth. The rocking of her head was unbearable, tugging at his navel. He twisted his fingers so, palm up, he could scratch at her palate. She bit him and spit him out, laving the hurt in her mouth with her tongue.
'Let me help with that,' he smirked.
Tate pulled her into a rough kiss, and she bit back again, making his lip bleed. He held her there, mauling her mouth with insistent tongue, until he felt her bend and moan. He licked across the roof of her mouth, again and again, tasting blood. She felt her knees bruising, and shifted against him.
He stood up, his blood soaked shirt peeling off the window, and picked her up, hands wrapped below her hips. Her legs wrapped around him, vice-like, encircling his waist. His hands roved over her and she kissed him, elevated and bird-like. He knelt forward, laying her down on her back and tore her underwear down her thighs, past her knees. Violet kicked them away and tugged at his jeans, zipper stuck in blood matted fabric. He eased the zipper down, shucking his hips of the baggy fabric, and pressed against her. She pulled at his back, scratching at stained cotton, pulling him inside of herself, and he rocked at the beauty of the tessellation. The fit was jagged and hard, exactly as it was meant to be, and the animal fuck and grind of it overcame then. He gasped into her neck, and she guided his hips down and up her, stomach sliding rough against stomach. The sun burnt on his back and her brow.
Messy orgasm later, and she revelled in the crushing weight of him. He pushed up on his elbows and captured her bloody hand, licking a wet stripe along her palm.
'I taste good,' he stated, matter-of-factly, and arched his eyebrows roguishly. She slid back from under him and surveyed her thighs.
'I should hope so, considering you're all over me.'
He traced lines on her damp thighs, watching goosebumps rise.
'Cigarette?'
They lay back, messy and undressed, against the bloody window, whilst matchbox and cigarettes were located. They puffed together, like maladroit, sleepy chimneys, and watched the grass wilt in the midday heat. Tate's hair shone a rough, vicious red in the light that played over Violet's legs and his half zipped jeans. Each breath chased away the death, and made it comfortable in their lungs.