There are codes.
He didn't make them clear and he didn't make it easy to decipher them. From day one, after the ultimatum of whether or not I'd let him carry me off by the scruff of my neck was decided, the stone set of his jaw keyed me on my not-so-co dependence; I'd learn them on my own. Along the way. And either he'd be playing by ear with me or spanking my hands each and every time I struck an off note of his piece
Then again, establishing a type of system to fit with someone who scantly adhered to regularity, from the way he spent his spare evenings patrolling the art museum incognito…I'd doubt he was thinking about "10-4s" and "Roger that's" as he traversed the same halls and lost himself over and over in every painting, sculpture and scribe.
To relieve my mind of the day, I'd visit this gallery. Heard it about through some wanna –be chic friend of a friend-you know the kind; turtle necks, Starbucks, mispronunciations of the artist's names they were supposedly studying. Began this ritual around mid April when the stress of the office had me seeing reds in double, and it was taking more than just a hot cup of tea and a nap to help me wind down at the end of the debacle I called a living. Art seemed to be what the doctored ordered, I realized, after skeptically wandering in and becoming susceptible to rich oils and the overall balmy atmosphere of space and color. Peace, hissed my body.
I never officially noticed the "Ghost of *SAAM" until later, when a chatty bystander grimaced at the sight of a hooded man admiring a glass encased Ming dynasty vase; I say officially because, yes, maybe on a few occasions did we cross paths. I'd get a whiff of his earthy collogue if the speed at which he walked was just right. We made eye contact once, but his eyes were so shrouded I'm not sure if it was just my assumption.
"No sees him come or leave. Some believe he really is a spirit," the man whispered, trying not—so-successfully to glare over at the man inconspicuously. But I openly stared. Very unlike me, I stared, squinting to see a face in the reflection of the glass. "That or he's bumming it out in the building's basement."
"He's of Asian descent…"
"Yeah, Chinese or something. No one knows that either. He doesn't speak. I'm telling you, there's something freaky about him. What the hell could he get out of a place like this? Is he casing the museum to eventually rob it blind? I don't care what anyone says, I don't think he's as harmless as…."
The words started to blur into each other, however. And this time, not solely because this guy was one of those other types (a specifically ignorant type) I usually avoided for my own sanity.
Something about the hooded man and his intent stare at the cracked artifact wasn't right. It was as if I wasn't allowed to look away, not until my mind figured out why I was at a disadvantage to stop the reserve in my body from going haywire, my breasts from aching and the blood in my limbs from solidifying.
A slight gasp under my breath a second later discharged all symptoms of my rather unreasonable (now, very valid) suspicion when I realized he wasn't staring at the vase. His gaze never went beyond the thick glass, in fact.
Brown eyes, barely visible, reflecting, bruising, were directed at me.
Indeed, as it all came rushing back to me, all the times I'd skulk the museum and there seemed to be a lingering presence, every time I unconsciously did happen to cross a tall, jacketed figure way too often in one setting or peered over my shoulder to see the recognizable glimpse of a shoulder or a leg disappearing around the corner….indeed, the Ghost of SAAM had found another, un-admitted piece he'd taken an interest in; and had been doing so coincidently, exactly around the centre of April when a certain someone decided to pay the museum a visit to calm her frayed nerves.
Fate unquestionably took this as a green light. Permitting me to look around for the silhouette, a snatch of face, every time I came to the museum afterwards-though my stuttering heart could never decide between fear and fascination when it came down to its condition every time I set foot in the building.
We were played with, eyeing each other, him becoming my shadow as indiscreetly or as openly as he wanted until the last night of April. Fate muting my ears at the announcement of closing time and making me lose track of time in those acoustic alcoves of art work so that a storm of exaggerated proportions rolls through and strands me there alone.
Or so I think as I sigh in front of Arachne in araneam a Pallade conuertitur. Tug my sweater around my arms and glance up at the painting, now literally seeing everything in it in black and white while the world around me takes on a dim gray. The sky rumbles once above the Renaissance themed, dome-like chamber I'm in, as if cueing the deliberately encroaching, echoing footsteps-faint to lucid and then silent with the offender's too-close-for-comfort stop by my side.
The strange heat of brimstone radiating off him too real to consider him ghoulish.
"Jonghyun," he only murmured, thick and heavy with disuse. Accented to the core. Sending a shiver through me as if I'd been backstroking on ice and all the more when I felt a hand creeping to the small of my back, fingers digging into me not as painfully as I had feared they would, yet so fervently I thought he'd snatch the very flesh off my spine.
I didn't reply. Somehow, I knew I shouldn't. We stood there for an unaccountable amount of time, me biting my bottom lip to ruin, having no stare to avoid because he opted to undress the painting while his hand ravaged my backside, slowly slipping under my shirt, scaling my curves; weighing, pinching, and fingering my behind. Taking his sweet time to peel me, to mercilessly fold me into his will.
Wasn't awkward or invading, not in the least.
I knew very well I wanted what was coming the moment the snakes in the glass turned me to stone.
The snake just knew it as much as I did.
Hissing into my neck, feeding his fangs as he took me right there, on the patch of wall right beneath the painting's encased template. My hums resonating through the entire northern wing of the museum from suffocating pleasure. All of me carefree. Locked to hips that shot into me in never-ending rounds; breathing that foreign, ever more captivating name like I was taking my last, agonizing gasps before death. Athena probably reaching down to wring our necks with wisps of paint sticking to her fingers, her wrath momentarily stolen from the proud, mistaken weaver she is about to punish because though not holy grounds, we are defiling her temple, the area that is her sacred temple since she is in the vicinity.
By the time it is over my lashes are wet. His hood has already fallen off, revealing a sharp, flushed face and a gravity defining style of gold, brown and black; a face like nougat-centered hard candy with the more his features softened from the outside in. Skin competing with the consistency of buttermilk. An unexpected twist as he lets my jelly legs down gently; sending me into a fit of respiratory shock because I haven't been able to catch my breath yet from what we'd just done-never mind trying to grasp it when at last I see him in his all.
"Your number," is the second sentence-like thing from Jonghyun's mouth too soon.
And following that short exchange, I'm too haphazardly entranced to notice the trailing blood dotting the linoleum as he pulls me out of the hall to elude the janitor, out into the soft drizzle that flattens our hair to our scalps. In contrast to the rupture of his voice after our passion, it is too late that I am aware of my hurting womb once he tosses me a sly look and takes his leave. Deserting me to call a cab instead of take the 3-block walk from the museum to my apartment.
But if I'm horrified by the warmth sticking to my thighs, I don't show it. I wait until I'm home and slump down the shower wall trembling, nails like knives into my upper arms. I try to think about the pain while he was in me but I draw a blank.
It's when I know, too, that with whatever else that ensues, I will have no control over. Bitter is the pill I've swallowed, letting his venom spread throughout my poor body, warping my mind down to the single desire of wanting to be broken over and over again.
That is why there are codes.
Codes for when he summons me
Codes on the unspoken grounds that I am prohibited from reaching out to him unless I'm invited. His way of letting me know "this" was never, is never, would never be…about me. In any way, shape or form.
The calls come at any time. A word, and the line goes dead:
"Mine" the code for me to drive to his home.
Daddy's old money pays for this sweet little ranch-style house in the suburbs, which is about a 25 minute drive from the rank inner city; curiouser and curioser considering he more resembled your typical starving college student, yet not so according to the story told by academic degrees on his walls and the ivy league emblem on his several of his shirts.
But that's as far as I knew-my roaming eyes never got to take in much of his bachelor's pad before he was sweeping me off to the bedroom. His age was apparent not from appearance but from the dates on his degrees-perhaps he was a bit older than me-and judging from the hanging scent of cleaning products behind a mild air fresher every time I swung by, he had a touch of OCD. Yet often I wondered about his social appetite; I could peg him as the type who had a hand full of friends (probably who all grew up in the same private school) and as time progressed, they branched out in their respective lines of work carrying on the family business-with that, seeing each other few and far in between, so making it look as if they were recluses of society if they didn't have a family yet. Jonghyun…may have just been the strong silent type of the group who'd been more likely inclined to keep to himself.
He wasn't lonely, just separated. And he wasn't as anti-social as the wary museum regulars thought.
He had me.
"Red tide," is what I give him at that time of the month. A "Yes," when there is a delay. A "No" for the times there is an emergency afoot that's changed to "Can't" because Jonghyun hates that word-and expressed so the same night I'd uttered it over the phone, dislocating my hip a bit in his effort to lodge that into my brain.
Although it is never "no" with him anyway.
I'm compelled not to say it.
I never have, except that once when he clearly let me know of his displeasure.
I can't say no, and I will have a million code words for excuses before I told him no again.
But the most common code word, the one he favors, is the one that lunges pitchforks through my organs, makes it seem as if the sky is crashing down. It is more potent than the thought of the consequences to come if I let the word "no" resonate in his attendance.
The low, breathy, "Now," meaning he is already on his way. So I will have to either wrap up what I'm doing or drop everything to prepare for him-me being the only one at an inconvenience if I'm not ready
For a snake seldom hesitates to devour that of which it has killed.
A starving spider dehydrates the body of its victim with a cold-hearted gusto even it can't comprehend.
And so that this night isn't so different from any other; I'm gradually feeling the thousands of sticky, white threads curling around my wrists, waist, ankles, the phone falling my hand as I am commandeered by his spell. That one word evoking a small whimper and the sudden symptoms of fatigue, nausea, elation, and knee-numbing anticipation as I quit the laundry room for my bedroom, a slight limp in my step. Shuffling around on auto pilot, my inner compass arrow moving erratically.
He hasn't given me enough time to lick my wounds from last time, I think in multiples. He hasn't given me time before he inflicts more.
Unbeknownst to me as I undress, the sick, twitching smile nestled in the corner of my lips.
"I could fuck you all the time," trickles down my ear, his bouquet of flowers still in his hand as he feigns kissing my cheek to console me. The stinging and hemorrhaging between my legs near forgotten with a renewed desire-one that cannot be helped- to mount him. Even as I lie there on the hospital bed incapacitated. His eyes, I know, trained on my lower body under the white blankets, eyes that are their liveliest in reliving the canvas he'd decorated himself. His own art, his own savage creation. Pain is beauty, beauty is pain, beauty that must watercolor the sheets with the Virgin Mary's tears.
"I could fuck you all the time…" Teeth sinking into my lobe, hand stroking my stomach. "Beautiful…"
The door beeps open just as my back layers the pillows, my knees and legs tight together and at a slant. Fingers kneading into the bed with my short, silent breaths.
The suspense of his entry closing once he rounds the corner moments later. As is custom, licking his lips at my naked body in the drab beam of silver from the skylight. Wordless in his belt-buckle clutching tread in my direction in that Jonghyun is neither a man of many words when his supper bell rings. (his silence by choice, less to do with language barrier, as I've tried to convince myself in the beginning.)
Yet he is anything but hallow when climbs my bed with his knees; spreading them, shifting over to me on them, unbuckling his pants in perfect syncopation. Those slits of peril staring down at me the entire time…rousing my inferiority complex-worming a delectable rush to my center.
The moment charging him, eye lighting up with something more dangerous, he suddenly rips his shirt from over his head, dew from an early rain splaying. Thick lips part in, now, a more dire urge to take everything off; so his belt is whipped out of the loops much faster, jeans and boxers discarded by kicks of disgust. Breathlessly licking a finger, Jonghyun runs it down the seam of my closed legs-them parting the lower the finger trails, then he falls upon me to crawl up for his first taste of the evening.
Muscles ripple and flinch under his smooth skin. Everything that I see, breathe, hear, feel, smell, am-Jonghyun. All Jonghyun, my hell-bent curator. His jaws are wide, all the better to swallow the entire bottom half of my face. Tongue frantically screwing itself in my mouth as he picks up a thigh and slaps it, clawing at my stomach, so heavily engrossed with me its sheer madness.
My lips are slightly bleeding by the time he rasps for me to lift my own legs; I do so by the back of my knees and he crouches down, making me cry out from the way his flattened tongue licks up dramatically from my cheeks to my glistening folds. He won't stop until I'm completely gushing. Until his fingers are pruny from the everlasting saturation of plunging them deep inside and the tip of that tongue is totally numb from his efforts. He's so thorough, so intimate without meaning to be, so right that my hips buck against his face- a part of me knowing damn well he didn't like when I did that and that part grinning wickedly when he sporadically bites my inner thighs as punishment.
I'm hot and cold all over. My moans harsh once he maneuvers with murderous intent to my breasts.
But as always, it is nothing compared to when he finally reaches the home plate. Thrusting into me so deeply , I sit up wide eyed, bile in my throat, breath catching in my chest.
Nothing compared to my mewls-turned-screams as he tears me open. Nails and teeth, sinewy hips and thighs- all working together to make sure my makeshift hell of happiness is up to par.
Jonghyun and his manifest obsession to break me.
Shatter me.
Use me for his own placeholder work of art, so his name stands forever.
All from the moment I signed away my soul in blood-the same blood I left in my wake fleeing the museum.
Yet the hospital admissions, the crutches, the wheelchairs, the steady crippling of my body, the relish of fingers stabbing in my legs to keep them back, breaking my skin and leaving pink crescent moons-fuck if it Isn't worth it.
God, I could fuck you all the time
Skull knocking viciously into the wall, I smile tiredly through my hoarse mantra of his name. Bite my lip at his bared teeth and glossy vision, sweat misting his lovely body. The mole on his chest a remarkable flaw I will continually love, my eyes slipping to it in lust when I can't hold the torturous eye contact for long; distracted by nipples that are just as hard and as ripe as mine.
The extra slickness doesn't register-as if it ever did. Jonghyun scratches down the back of my thighs and growls, coming close from the way his own thighs stutter with the fast, flesh-quaking strokes. Eventually, my blood staining his fingers, he lowers himself and props his upper body up with the pillows on either side of my head, a drop or two of drool meeting my chest. There is a pause so he can readjust. Then the pace picks up at a more inhuman speed. My moans of underlying protest ringing in his ears and the smirk that follows, tempting his lips, being more than what I can withstand.
"Yes," vibrates from the pit of his abdomen. Mouth barely moving , narrowed eyes sparking with indescribable pleasure.
Him like this reminding me of the early days, when, admittedly, I tried to run away when it became too much. But even then I'd stop in my tracks after struggling from under his carnal wrath, knowing he wasn't on my heels and instead, waiting for me on his side with the same partial smirk he had on now. Knowing what we both knew: that I would come back.
And I did.
Like a good girl, I did.
Jonghyun's forehead clicks with mine in his ferocity as he weaves down to kiss me, to mutilate my mouth once more and gather chunks of skin of my neck area with his teeth, signaling what the tenseness in my pelvis and the aching arch in my back already knows. With one last cry, I'm exploding around him, braving how deep he forces himself so he can damn near empty himself beyond my womb. The hydraulic stones of his throat moving on my jaw, burning sigh from his violent release tingling my ear as if filters down.
Only when the excitement dies down does he slug up, stumble around for his pants and pulls out his phone. Snaps a shot of my battered, sprawled self, hair obscuring my face so that I am allowed a little confidentiality-for that secret, leather bound book he keeps his drawer. Of me, his first woman overseas…and of all of the other poor , dainty, Korean souls who had flown unsuspectingly into nature's milky trap in the past.
Cocooned, sucked dry, and corpse left in the middle of the web until the dry husk crumbles away.
He doesn't help me up to run my bath or hobble to the kitchen to build my strength; not even to dial up the paramedics if I wanted-what I said about that lack of co-dependency, of course. Reevaluating my attitude towards it though, I've come to accept and understand why the predator doesn't care to give his picked bones a proper burial.
It is like the first time.
A look void of pity, only something lax and deeply sated behind those brown eyes.
And with the wind, he is gone.
Returning on the call of the next code.
Returning until he has nothing left to return to.
And goes back to patiently traversing those portrait-lined halls of immaculate, imperishable wealth like the phantom he is, waiting for the next priceless piece to catch his eye.
End
*SAAM-Seattle Asian