Chapter Three: Kill The Barrier

I'd come home in my black jumpsuit, not having bothered to wash the grime off my face left after greasing the creaking hinges or the polished pendulum. I parked the car and moved towards the house with the slightest paranoia of being watched the entire time. While I had that paranoia throughout the better part of my life—thanks to having a police officer for a father and now being married to one—it was still antagonizing how it crept up like a weed and sprouted roots from the back to the forefront of my brain.

When I walked inside the house, I wasn't surprised to see Mark enveloped in the darkness of the living room except for the blue light that emulated from the television. He was watching—

"Evil Dead?"

I couldn't hide the entertainment in my voice as I watched the characters on TV run from the demon-possessed girl who was doing her best to get the fuck out of the basement, eyes pouring out red and black goop.

Mark held a cup of coffee up to me in a pre-toast: "I've grown fond of it."

"Seems like you've grown fond of everything I watch."

He stood to his feet, surprisingly balanced. He wasn't near as drunk as he normally was, so I gathered he'd been tipsier than anything.

He drank the last of the coffee before putting the cup in the sink, looking me over with amusement. I moved forward, smirking when he noticed the grease stains on my face. Without thinking twice, he slowly wiped it off my cheek with his thumb. This action was followed by familiar apathetic distancing. The latter usually came with an earnest to abstain from anything that felt good.

"What have you been up to?" He asked.

I said cryptically, "If you really want to know, you'll just have to come with me, won't you?"

Mark watched as I left the house, his eyes following my figure until I got into the driver's seat of my car, peering after me like I was a mystery he thought he'd solved, now perhaps thinking he never had.

He joined me in the passenger's side, but never made any move to touch me.

Before Angelina's death, he wouldn't have hesitated to put his arm around me or his hand on my thigh. But now, he kept his distance, knowing if he were to physically touch me, things would inherently be out of his control. Things…such as his emotions. Wiping the grease off my face seemed to have been a weak moment of his, but I was hoping there were plenty more to come.

Along the way, he was silent. Occasionally, I would catch him looking in my direction like he was trying to figure out what was I thinking. I kept all the details of my secret place quiet, not giving him a single hint as to where we were going. One of his hands stayed firm on his leg; the other hung out the window as he allowed the winds to sober him up.

I parked the car in front of the warehouse. When he saw the abandoned structure, he said incredulously, "Jesus, Lex, where the fuck are we?"

I crawled out, saying, "Just get out of the car and follow me."

Mark did as he was told.

He kept close as we climbed the small little stairs and stood in front of the warehouse doors. I typed on the number pad, disabling the alarm before I opened the door with my key. Once we were inside, I turned on the light and when Mark saw the pendulum for the first time, it was as if I could see my project for the first time too.

The fluorescence above flickered and gave it an ominous museum-like perspective. I walked ahead, moving around the room to unfold blueprints that imitated that of the medieval pendulum used to torture and execute its victims as well as the one narrated in 'The Pit and the Pendulum.' Mark's expression was nothing short of awe as he moved towards and stood in front of the metal slab, peering up at the magnificent construct.

"You've been busy." Mark whispered, glancing at the blueprints.

"Well, when we stopped having a marriage, I had to put my energy into something else." He looked at me in preemptive defense mode, although he softened when he saw my little playful smile.

"This is what I've been up to," I explained, gesturing to the machine. "Although, to be fair, it's not quite done."

He traced the edge of the metal table that lied beneath the pendulum, his fingers moving over the surface in one smooth delicate caress. I'd never been more jealous of an inanimate object.

I moved behind him, whispering in his ear, "Would you like to see how it works?"

He startled slightly, but I suspected it wasn't because I scared him. The look he gave me was one I had not seen in months. It was attraction as he looked me up and down in a new light. Taking his silence and intrigued expression for a 'yes,' I grabbed the remote that rested on one of the shelves and handed it to him.

"Don't push it." I warned. "Not yet."

"Shouldn't you be the one to push it then?"

"I've already seen how it works. Trust me. It's going to feel good," I said distractedly, taking a mannequin that sat behind the shelves and placed it on the metal slab.

Notably, this mannequin didn't have a stomach. Instead, it was carved out by yours truly so the stomach lining could be replaced with its general likeness. In place of the hard plastic from which a dummy was normally made was a bunch of red gelatin and bits of dish soap and fragments of sponges all smushed together inside saran wrap. Mark watched as I gathered the mannequin's 'stomach' and poured it all within its mid-lining.

Half-amused, Mark said, "I'm guessing you've done this before."

"I know you're making fun of me, but you're going to get over yourself in a second when you see it happen."

I skipped a few paces and stood next to him, ignoring how my hands were stained red from the dye in the gelatin, soap, and sponge mixture. Without thinking, I pushed the abandoned hairs from my face, dimly aware that some of that red dye now streaked my jaw.

"Once the button is pressed, the pendulum is released," I narrated animatedly, pointing to the button then to the rigged blade connected to the high beam; Mark followed my gestures with an attentive gaze. "Every time it swings, it lowers inch by inch, and then once the blade is in contact with the mannequin—ssqqqqq! Splat! Squish!" (I smiled widely.) "The victim would like a dead bird after being run over by a semi."

Mark crossed his arms lazily. "You're really proud of this, aren't you?"

"Not as proud as I'm going to be when I finally get to see what it's going to do to this dummy."

"I thought you said you'd done this before."

"I haven't seen it action—well, 'in action' being with a test dummy. Not with an actual person. Obviously. Speaking of which, you might want to take off your coat."

"And that's a preamble to what exactly?"

I didn't miss the subtle tease in his voice.

I turned to him, saying smartly, "If I didn't know any better, I'd say you were making a pass at me, Detective."

"Maybe I am."

He undid the buttons of his coat before shimmying them off his shoulders and arms while his gaze never dropped from mine as he threw it over the rail nearest to the door.

I bit the inside of my cheek, ignoring the butterflies fluttering about in my stomach, rising to my chest. He'd been trying to ignore me for the past four years. I could have tried doing the same although not as successfully. I'd never stopped paying attention to him.

My face flushed with heat as I said quietly, "Red dye is hard to get out of clothes. You might want to step back."

I handed him the remote. When he took it from me, his fingers brushed over mine. Those butterflies swarmed and left an uncomfortable but pleasant feeling in my stomach…and down below. After all this time, he still had the same effect on me as he did when we'd first met.

"Now?" He asked, his thumb hovering over the large red button.

"Now."

He pushed it.

First there was a dull sound of an alarm, flashing red lights; then the echo of the wrench being released as the pendulum nosedived from the beam, down across the metal slab, and up to the other side of the beam. It creaked ominously and swung right back down, bringing a nice cool breeze with it.

"It's beautiful, isn't it," I drawled.

The pendulum had a greater air than I had anticipated, and I stepped back out of instinct when I thought it was going to reach me.

When I did, my back collided with Mark's chest; my face and neck burned when his hands caught my arms.

"Yes, it is." He whispered.

My first thought was that he agreed with me about the literal swinging death trap in front of us. When I turned my head to see his expression, I blushed when I realized his gaze fell to me.

Mark and I both turned to see the mannequin's makeshift entrails fly left and right when the blade swung into it, splattering the guarded rails, the blackened sheet metal floors and when the pendulum had anchored to its lowest surface level, it slowed to a halt.

I moved forward, picking up the fragmented sponges mixed with the dish soap and gelatin mush.

"I'm actually surprised this worked as well as it did." I snickered, taking off my jump suit. "Needs a few tweaks, obviously, but I'd say that would probably hurt like hell. It's a shame we don't have any human dummies to try it out on…although, I can think of a few people I wouldn't mind putting in its place."

I turned to see him watching me with that familiar predatory look, the way he'd looked at me when we first met. When he advanced, I stepped back, aware that my blue jeans and white blouse were getting soaked with the red dyed dish soap and gelatin that was spilled all over the metal slab once my backside was pinned against it. But I didn't care.

"Just when I thought I knew how dangerous you could be," Mark said softly as he touched my hips with a submerged interest, "you turn around and remind me how dangerous you really are."

"Dangerous to mannequins, at least."

"Assuming that's all you've put in your trap."

"That you know of." I wrapped my arms around his neck, smiling inwardly when he didn't recoil or look like he might duck out of my reach. "I'm contemplating adding restraints to the table to give it a more claustrophobic feel. Adds a bit more psychological terror to the mix."

His hands caressed my legs, adding pressure while his thumbs massaged my inner thighs as he murmured distractedly, "How very Machiavellian of you."

I smirked. "Does that turn you on, Detective?"

"Perhaps."

"Is that a 'yes' or 'no?"

"Why don't you tell me." He took my hand from behind his neck and brought it down between us, running it over the bulge in his pants.

I played coy. "I'd say it's a 'yes'?"

He pressed his lips against my neck, soft and tender, following it up to my jaw. His voice in my ear reverberated deep in my chest: "Absolutely."

"Getting turned on by a device made for execution, huh. That's a lot to unpack."

"Or maybe it's just the woman behind it."

Before I made another coy remark, he kissed me. Sudden. Fierce. He kissed me so hard, it felt as if he were trying to eat me alive. We fell into it together as if we'd never been separated by anything. His hands explored all around my body, over and under my clothes, grabbing my ass and shoving me towards him. I wrapped my legs around his waist as he pushed my back down onto the metal slab where the upper half of the mannequin had been before it had been knocked down to the ground.

The buckle of his belt clashed with the leather, hurriedly undone, the fly to his pants unzipped, revealing just how hard he was. There was an urgency to him as though the longer he went without fucking me, the more life-threatening it would become. Without interrupting our kissing, he started unbuttoning my jeans, but I caught his hands, looking up at him from my back.

He looked at me, startled as I sat up.

"Promise me that you won't shut me out again," I said breathlessly. "'Hell or Highwater.' Remember?"

Mark tangled his hands through my hair, his words strained in a hoarse whisper along my lips: "I promise."

We made love on the metal slab. My clothes and skin became stained with that red tint; pieces of foam from the residual pretend-entrails had gathered in my hair, but all of that was forgotten.

There was passion in the way he held me down as he took me right there, his hard throbbing cock pounding into my aching pussy with zero resistance. He was like a dog, fucking a bitch in heat, and I'd never been more willing.

In a way, 'killing' this mannequin had made whatever barrier there was between us disappear. Through this sort of dark, demented sense of togetherness, we would overcome anything. Even if that meant killing a person or two in the process.