Nothing But
…like fire and powder
Which, as they kiss, consume
He's standing at the door, balanced neatly as a tangodancer there in his pretty drugstore cowboy boots and his Sunday suit. Looking like he can't make up his mind which is going to win, the hate he's already feeling or the bigger, better hate he thinks he's going to feel.
Christ, don't you ever clean this place?
What do you care? We're not going to fuck on the floor. This time.
The sheets are supposed to be black, right? I mean, you bought them like that?
'Course not. They are stained and shadowed and smirched with sin. Blame yourself, baby – the dark rubs off.
Are you washed in the blood,
In the soul-cleansing blood of the Lamb?
Are your garments spotless? Are they white as snow?
Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?
I don't think I get the tune exactly right, but I don't claim to be a musician.
His mouth comes a little open, but what's he going to say to that? He stays quiet, but his green eyes get a red shine, like something your headlights might pick up in the middle of an empty road somewhere.
I feel like I need a little time, so I pull the throwing-knife out from under my dirty pillow, toss it up, watch the clean circle it makes in the air, a shining blur with no end or beginning, and catch it by whatever's closest when it comes back to hand. The blade, this time.
Nimis exaltatus / Rex sedet in vertice / Caveat ruinam, kittycat, I say. That little shadow crosses his blank-paper forehead – he doesn't like when I confuse him, which is what I do, so fuck him anyway. All the Latin he knows is Ego te absolvo, and that'sa lie he can't quite make himself believe or he wouldn't be here.
You're a fucking nightmare. Seriously. And you're holding that knife wrong. I can see his fingers open and close, wanting to get his hands on me, fix me for good. He just needs me to tell him he can.
Then why don't you quite wasting my time and come over here and show me how to do it right, Your Majesty? Even to piss him off, even to get him hard – harder - I'm not going to call him master. I know who's driving, and who's the wheel.
And he says what he always says, before he takes off his clothes and lies down with me.
What the hell do you want, anyway?
Like maybe I'll have a different answer this time. My black cat, my beautiful bad luck charm, sorry, no.
Nothing, baby. Nothing but one of your nine lives. And as you shall use me hereafter, til we've got nothing left.