𝐜 𝐡 𝐞 𝐦 𝐢 𝐜 𝐚 𝐥. | 𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐛𝐞𝐫𝐭 𝐰𝐞𝐬𝐭.

ii.

how dare you, plant yourself so
firmly in my mind like
it's nothing to you,

As he left they watched him from the window, watched as he fixed his scarf, smoothed his dark hair back into place, watched as he hurried down the steps of the porch, watched as he crossed the road and made his was down the street and soon disappear around the corner, and he was gone. A shame.

A few moments later they would go down stairs and ask the Madam if they might be able to take the day off. They weren't sure they had the energy to work after that. They would come up with something, some excuse as to why they suddenly didn't want to work that evening. She agreed, it was fine, no matter. And so they made their way back upstairs, back to the room they had made a masterpiece in together. They would fall asleep shortly after and wouldn't wake until late in the afternoon.

Herbert West, that's what he had said his name was. They wondered if that were true, lots of people gave fake names here after all. They wondered why they might care, they didn't usually wonder about clients after they had walked out of the door. But, then again, there was nothing regular about this client. No he was an enigma. It was everything, from the way they had barely exchanged a word to one another, only the odd "fuck" and such here and there, to every last detail of those hours they had spent together. The hours that were unlike anything they had every experienced before, not just with any client but any lover, even the ones with the deepest connections. No. He and they had made the deepest connection two souls could, they were sure. They had redefined sex together, rewrote the rules, nothing else would surely do after that. What they had done was rare, so rare is it that two bodies come together in the way they had. They were sure of that. So yes, of course they cared about this particular client and who he was or wasn't.

It was the sun through the window that woke them finally, in the late hours of the afternoon. The sun scorching them through the window pain as they lay, blanketless and almost naked on the bed. They hadn't slept like that in forever, a proper sleep, a deep sleep.

And now that they had had the ideal sleep, they needed to eat something, they were in dire need of sustenance, they could feel their stomach growling. But first, they should get cleaned up. They didn't even want to imagine what they looked like right now, the state they must have be in.

Standing in the bathroom, they looked in the full length mirror. Their legs ached. As they studied themself, they noticed, all over their body, were many different marks and bruises, of all colours; some blue, some yellow, some purple, some so dark they were almost black. Some were smaller than others, some larger, some hurt less and some hurt more. All their own memory of a touch, an individual moment in the nirvana, that was the last twelve hours . They ran over several of the bruises with their fingers. They winched as they touched them, they were fresh and the pain was still present, the touch of him still lingering.

And as they showered, they couldn't help but think, of his hands on their body, skilled fingers, frenzied touch, those lips, his lips, that had written novels on on their skin. The memory of the chaos still fresh. Their hand moved down, down, down until they found themself and they began touching themself. It was unplanned, it was instinctive. They thought of his hand, thinking only of him, only of the way he had touched them, so delicate at first and then so rough without a pause in between, without a warning. It had been as though they were nothing but an object, something for him to take his frustrations out on. They didn't mind this, they liked this. Yes. They thought, there would be nothing better but to be the plaything of someone like that.