A/N: Okay guys, so I got some reviews saying I repeated things in this chapter. I read over my original document and didn't find any repeats, so I ignored it. But when I actually read the story on the site, I saw the repeats. Apparently it duplicated a portion of it when it uploaded. I got it fixed, so thanks to everyone who pointed that out.
My eyes flutter open; I know they've opened because I feel them, but the view doesn't change at all. All I can see is darkness, swarming with silence and damn near suffocating me. My mind's eye flicks through all the possibilities of where I am, why I'm here, why I'm tied naked to a chair - Wait. I'm... naked. And tied to a chair. This sends a jolt of shock through me, and I start to struggle against the rope binding me. I can feel that it's strategically tied in only a few places, like an electric chair used for the death sentence, leaving most of my bare body exposed. As my eyes begin to adjust to the darkness I recognize that I'm sitting in the center of the stage in the Black Box. This epiphany is broken suddenly by a voice ringing through the darkness.
"Relax, Vega. I'm not going to hurt you."
My heart stops; I'd know that voice anywhere. And besides, there's only one person who calls me by my surname. Normally hearing the voice of Jade would send me running, either because I wanted to preserve myself or relieve the ache that she had a tendency to cause between my legs. But this time all it did was fill me with hope. Maybe she can untie me, let me go. I'm supposed to be on vacation, as is she.
"Jade! What am I doing here?"
A low chuckle rumbles from her lips as she moves closer to me, her boots slapping obnoxiously on the stage floor. "You're here because I brought you here. Really, Vega, why else would you be here?" Her voice is a light and teasing whisper against my ear as her hand runs up the outer part of my thigh, and it's only when I feel the cool metal of her scissors running down my arm that I realize she even has them.
A shiver runs down my body, both at the coldness of the scissors and the tickling sensation her hand leaves on my leg. "But why? I thought you were going to Transylvania, or whatever."
"My father decided that it was more important to go to New York with my loving step mommy, so I got stuck home all alone." I listen to her talk with only half of my attention. The other half is focused on the way her hand has moved to my inner thigh, inching higher and higher, closer and closer to my most secret of places. Her voice adopts a childlike, innocent lilt, and I'm more focused on the fact that she sounds oddly like Cat at the moment than the fact that her hand has disappeared from my leg. A sharp crack bursts through the theater as her hand comes down against my thigh hard.
At first it doesn't register that I've been hit. But then the stinging sets in and my face twists to show the discomfort. "But what does that have to do with me?"
"It has everything to do with you, Vega. Everything I do has to do with you." She circles me, similar to the way a hawk circles in the air above a baby rabbit, and her eyes are those of that same hawk. She disappears from my line of vision and apprehension prickles up my back. It wouldn't bother me so much, I think, if I could hear her moving, but her footsteps are soundless on the floor. I can see her in my peripherals now and soon enough she's standing in front of me again. She's got a playful smirk on her face and the point of her scissors is running down the length of my thigh, a delighted and devious laugh rumbling forth from her lungs. "You're going to... entertain me."
"How am I supposed to entertain you if I'm tied up?" My jaw clenches at the feeling of the scissors scraping along my skin and my body trembles slightly, but I hold my gaze strongly.
She doesn't answer me, just twirls the scissors against my skin and watches, enraptured, as my blood pools to the surface of the tiny hole she's made just above my knee. She's still watching in amazement as the red liquid makes a line down my leg, but she does finally speak. "You're going to bleed, Vega." She lowers to her knees and darts her tongue out to follow the red path back up my calf, stopping at the small injury she left on me to clean it, and every sneaking suspicion that I've ever had of Jade being a vampire is crashing to the front of my mind as I watch the display. "And scream," she concludes, just before opening her mouth to suck on the wound. A soft moan escapes her mouth, at the taste of my blood I'm assuming.
It hurts. I won't lie about that. But what person hasn't fallen and scraped their knees as a kid? That's how I try to imagine it, because the pain is just as insignificant. I take a few deep breaths to calm myself, but my voice is still higher and more shaky than I'd like when I speak. "Cut the act, Jade. You've succeeded in freaking me out, so let me go."
Her lips curve into a smile against my skin as she keeps sucking. Finally she pulls away with a gentle popping sound and grins up at me. "What act?" Her voice is syrupy sweet and dripping with deception as she stands, one hand running up the plane of my stomach and brushing against my breasts. She starts to circle me again and I feel my previous unease boil back up.
"This act. The one where you do slightly crazy things to freak me out and make me hate you as much as you hate me. I get it already. Let me go. I'm supposed to be on my way to Hawaii right now." Normally I'm a nice person, even to Jade. Especially to Jade. But I can't keep the malice out of my voice, the annoyance.
Her breath fans out across my cheeks, moving to my ear, her voice a hot whisper. "Your parents left without you." The scissors are pressured against my sternum and as she drags them downward she opens and closes them repeatedly, trailing small pinch marks down my stomach, causing a thin veil of tears to form in my eyes. "I told them we had a project to work on and asked if you could stay with me over break because my family was going out of town." I feel her lips connect with the side of my face, slightly parted so that her words can flutter around me. "You're mine, Vega. Just like we both always wanted."
"Why would you tell them that? We don't have any homework for this break, at all. And what the hell are you talking about, 'just like we both always wanted'? How do you know I want to be yours? For all you know, I could want to be Cat's, or... or... Beck's!" I reach for the first thing I can think of that will be a surefire way to piss her off, grind her cogs. Sure enough, I can see her eyes flashing with anger and then she's yelling, her voice echoing loudly.
"Don't you dare pretend you don't know, Vega!" Suddenly cold metal is pressing into my skin, breaking it and making a clean line of red just below my ribs on the left side. Then she's got that 'Cat voice' back. "She says she might want to belong to someone else, but we know that's not true, don't we?" She smiles fleetingly as her thumb swipes across the growing river of red, watching as the digit gets saturated with it. Then she brings the soiled appendage to her lips, sliding it into her mouth and sucking on it gently. Her eyes close, and for a brief moment I feel like I can breathe properly. I take this opportunity to look her over carefully, since all the other times I've tried she's turned away so I couldn't see her, or moved in my direction. She's incredibly beautiful in a sinister way, like most people of her demeanor are. I think maybe it has something to do with the darkness in their hearts, the thick black silt running in their veins. She's standing almost perfectly still like a statue and for a second I wonder if she is. The steady slope of her breasts is intoxicating, the curve of her throat, tensed as her head leans back on her slender neck, is like some sort of hypnotic snake, drawing my attention to it. The flesh of it is pale, almost unnaturally so, and I wonder what it would look like stained with dark bruises left by my lips and teeth and tongue. My eyes wander to her legs, left exposed by her short skirt. They're paler than the rest of her, if that's possible. Nearly transparent. I can see the dark lines of her veins spiderwebbing beneath the paper-like skin and I unwittingly begin to trace them, much like I always imagined doing with my fingertips as I parted her thighs, my head finding a place between them. I would let my tongue flick against her, slide inside her, press against her most tender spots, and eventually bring her to an orgasm. Just the thought of that alone is enough to inject me with a ridiculous amount of arousal so I look away from the demonic beauty in front of me. Just in time, too. Her eyes open and she removes the thumb from her mouth, making it so she can talk without obstruction. "You know what you do to me, Vega. Driving me out of my mind with your sweet perfection. You know exactly what I'm talking about." Her fingers are now between my legs, rubbing and curling. Were it different circumstances, I'd say it was literally a dream beginning to come true, having her touch me so intimately.
There's a part of me that says I probably shouldn't push my luck with the girl who has a scissor fetish, but my impulsiveness decides to rear it's head anyway. "Whatever. You don't know anything. I could be screwing every single one of our friends and you'd never know. And maybe I am. Maybe I'm letting them all into my bed except for you, because I know how much you want me, and I could NEVER want you."
Suddenly two fingers are inside me, curling and twisting as deep as Jade can reach. "Too tight to be fucking that much," she comments absently, her eyes traveling down to the hand buried between my thighs, the scissors following the same trail her eyes took. She straddles me, singsonging in my face, "Tell me how much you don't want me now, Tori." I'm painfully aware of how the flipside to her rhetorical statement is ringing true as the digits begin their work. I do want her. At least, my body does. Or maybe it just wants more of this pleasure threading my bloodstream, making me silently beg her to please, please fuck me harder. I close my eyes, focusing on the way her fingers feel inside me, the way this fire of demented passion is slowly curling it's way up my body, over my skin, and I can almost forget that it's Jade doing this to me, Jade making me feel like an insatiable and needy mess. Part of me doesn't want to. Then she's talking again, her voice noticeably deeper and crusted with desire. "Tell me you aren't constantly staring at my tits." My eyes flick open just in time to see her fondling one of the objects in question with the hand holding the scissors, the dark outline of a hardened nipple oh so very easy to see. She tweaks the bud slightly, a slow moan coming up from her chest. It gets a tiny bit louder as she flips the scissors open, running one precarious edge over it through the material of her shirt. I can see her smirk from the corner of my eye. She knows what she's doing to me. And she knows I can't look away. Her voice is even deeper now, and a bit breathy. She's getting turned on. "Tell me you never wondered what it would be like to feel me inside you, commanding your body." The haze of insanity leaves her eyes for a moment, just briefly, barely three seconds. She looks me up and down like she doesn't know why she's on top of me, doesn't know why I'm bound and unclothed beneath her. But then it's gone just as quickly as it came, the fog clouding those grey orbs that make you feel like they can strip all of you away until there's nothing more than your soul left, bare and raw and exposed.
My body is betraying me, reacting to her touches, and I can't help but try and get more friction, more pressure, more something, anything. Luckily, my mind is in far better condition than my traitorous body, and I, out of instinct more than anything, push her buttons further. "You flatter yourself, West. You aren't that attractive, you know. You're the last person I'd fantasize about in a million years."
I've hit a nerve, struck the wrong chord in the melody of her mind. I can see it in the way her eyes narrow nearly to slits and feel it as she readjusts her position to allow her hand more room for movement so she can start rubbing her thumb mercilessly against my overly sensitive bundle of nerves. "Fucking liar," she murmurs venomously and if I didn't know any better I'd say the extra poison in her voice was concealing some hurt. Then she's leaning forward to plant a kiss right in the crook of my neck, where it meets my shoulder. But all too soon the soft lips are gone, replaced by teeth, sinking into the tender flesh and pulling harshly, causing me to cry out in pain. She pushes her teeth farther in as she pulls, and finally the skin breaks. A gentle moan vibrates against my skin as her tongue laps at the fresh wound. Then she lifts her hand and opens the scissors. I don't realize what she's doing until the separate blades are already sunk into the muscle of my thigh, a sharp cry echoing off the walls. She puts forth ample effort to force them shut, a chuckle spilling from her lips when she feels the metal tear through me, and the pent up tears in my eyes start to slide down my cheeks and I feel all pretense of pride leave me as I beg her, my voice laden heavily with desperation and fear.
"Jade, stop... Please..."
My pleas fall on obvious deaf ears because all they do is spur her on and she shakes her head, her fingers moving roughly inside me. The scissors, now drenched in my blood, leave a trail of glaring red on my body as she walks them upwards. "Not so cocky now, are you Vega?" Her teeth are still clenched together from tearing through my skin like a wolf, and somehow it fits her. She's a predator through and through. "It's all fun and games when you're making me go insane with hate for you, with love for you, with absolute disdain for the very air you breathe, but when little Jadey finally takes control it stops being fun." She drapes her arm around my neck, sitting back slightly to meet my eyes and smirking like the devil himself had spawned her. "Beg me. Make me believe you actually value your pathetic life."
The scissors are resting between my shoulder blades now. I can feel the metal, slightly sticky and warmed with my blood. One blade is on either side of my spine, as if the scissors are straddling it just like their wielder is straddling me. I can still feel Jade moving inside me, and tears start to fall more freely and I'm scared. Terrified. This desolate theater is going to be the place I lose my life, I'm certain. Every cut she's inflicted on me is throbbing, my blood welling and spilling, a supple river of red. And strangely, the only thing I can think to do is ask her, "Why are you doing this?" I wonder briefly if she's thought of how ending my life is going to affect everyone that had a connection to me. My mind wanders, imagining the reaction of each person.
The first to come to mind is my family. Trina would try to be her normal conceited self, but the grief would eventually overwhelm her. My dad would mourn for awhile before his inexplicable taste for vengeance would kick in. He'd spend the rest of his life dedicated to ending the person who ended me. My mom... She'd take it the lightest. She'd have to. She'd have to be strong for Trina and my dad and everyone else. Next, mental images of all my friends play in a slideshow, on a loop. Robbie'd be crushed. He'd cry and mourn and grieve just like everyone else, but he wasn't as close to me so it wouldn't hit him as deeply. Cat would try to cover her sadness by being her cheerful, happy, sugarcoated self, but everyone would be able to tell she wasn't the same. Beck would probably go out of his mind, wondering what happened to make Jade do something so vile. I mean, sure, we all knew she wasn't exactly the most normal kid on the block, and she made it crystal clear that she had no interest in being my friend, but to go as far as murder? It would tear him up. It would hit Andre the hardest, him being my best friend. He'd try to stay strong for the sake of everyone else but really he'd be the one who needed help standing. His songs would get noticeably sadder, a rich note of melancholy in every strum of the guitar strings.
I'm brought out of my thoughts by Jade's voice. "Wrong question, Vega." She leans forward so she can look at my back, her breath puffing out shakily. A third finger forces its way into me as she pushes the blades into my back, causing me to inhale sharply. She drags them down slowly and I can feel my blood welling to the surface and rolling down my back, almost as if its racing Jade's scissors to the end of my spine. "It's the only way, Tori, don't you see?" Her voice turns loving and tender and she nuzzles her nose into the still-bleeding bite mark on my neck. "I can't live like this anymore, trapped between wanting to love you and wanting to bash your brains in with my fists. It's the only way to set us both free. You have to die."
My brain is screaming at me to just give her what she wants and beg her to let me live, but my body is twinging with want, with desire. The two conflicting entities inside me are slowly driving me crazy because I don't know which to choose. My life would be the obvious choice, but the carnal part of me wants more, so much more of her and this pleasure I'm feeling, albeit reluctantly, at her mercy, so I opt to stay silent instead and enjoy the last moments of pleasure that I'm ever going to have.
Her fingers still inside me and she pulls back to glare at me. "Not going to give me what I want, Vega?" She shakes her head and wraps her hand around my throat, squeezing as she slides to the floor. Her lips wrap around my aching bundle of nerves and she begins to suck on it, hard. With every motion of her tongue, her hand tightens just that much more around my trachea, effectively cutting off any way for me to breathe. I feel myself getting light headed and eventually I fall unconscious. The next thing I register is a faraway voice. "Not yet, Vega."
The voice is familiar but I can't quite place it. The next thing I feel is something soft and warm against my lips. So smooth... And then I feel air being forced into my mouth, down my throat, and trickling into my lungs. The oxygen filters into my brain and allows me full consciousness once again and Jade's close proximity, namely how her face is so close and her lips are smashed against mine, scares the hell out of me. I love how our mouths feel together but I'll be damned if I let her know that, so I grimace in disgust and tear my lips from hers. "Fuck you, Jade. Get away from me."
I see her pull back and shake her head a little. "You can't help but be a bitch, can you?" She buries three fingers inside me again, her lips finding mine and her tongue thrusting into my mouth forcefully for a few seconds before she pulls away and whispers out against my lips, "Perfect fucking Vega and her perfect fucking life. God I hate you." As she says this, her body arches into mine to keep me from moving.
I allow myself a few indulgent moments of kissing her before pushing her tongue back into her mouth with my own before I have to put an end to this euphoria and pull away, scoffing at her. "Yeah, you hate me so much and that's why you're sitting in my lap raping me. Face it Jade, you need me. If you didn't, we wouldn't be here right now. You're weak." I make sure to put extra emphasis on the word 'weak'. If there's one thing about Jade that she likes, it's that she likes everyone to think she's a badass. Striking her where it hurts is certain to piss her off, maybe even enough that she'll just get this over with already.
I've done it. I've struck in just the right spot to get that rage going. A bloodcurdling screech leaves her lips. "I'm... WEAK?!" She opens the scissors and uses one half to slash all over my torso, again and again and again, in a frenzy, but not careless. She only cut deep enough to ensure that I felt the pain, but never deep enough to be fatal. "Correct me if I'm wrong, Vega, but girls getting raped don't buck and moan and practically beg for it with their bodies, do they?" Her thumb swipes against my clit and her fingers curl to tickle my insides in time with the motion of the scissors. "You're so close to fucking cumming you hate yourself you hate yourself right now, isn't that right, Vega?" I can't deny that her words ring true in my ears. I'm close, so close I can practically taste it. But I know that when this is over, when this delicious and deadly moment has passed, everything will end, so I try to keep it at bay. But my body is a traitor, allowing the sinful pleasure to wash over me, making me see stars and making my breath halt momentarily as the orgasm rushes through me in a river of fire and bliss. A low, sweet moan pulls its way from Jade's lips as I explode around her. "Goodnight, Tori. I hope one day you can forgive me." She lifts the scissors and aims them with the precision of a sniper, straight toward my chest. Horror makes my blood run cold as I realize that this wasn't just some sick game to her, and if it was... she was playing for keeps.
"Jade! Please! No, do-" I'm cut off by her lips against mine as the sharpened blades sink into my chest, straight into my heart. She pulls back and stares me dead in the eye as she forces the scissors open, tearing my heart quite literally in half. I take a final, shuddering breath as I stare into the eyes of my killer and murmur,
"I love you."