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It feels eternal. The decaying walls of an off-world motel in the middle of Texas and the buzzing of its neon sign ringing through the emptiness. Four walls devoid of everything but the quiet drag, burn and end of cigarette smoke. The smell lingers through moans that tremble above a worn-out, dirty mattress that creaks through the static of a barely working television. Days bleed into one another; a sting that leaves a bitterness in the endless expanse of hollowness that lingers. Day and night mock you in the eternal walls of one shitty motel and follow you into the next. It is certain, with every lick of silence that greets you when you arrive to vacate a new one. A new state, a new motel, a new rationalised bloodlust that satiates him the more infamous he gets. You know no other home besides the one trapped underneath his impious gaze.
And he is everything. He is everywhere. In the corners of every motel room where his dirty clothes lie, in the layer beneath your skin where he’s buried himself, etched deep into your blood between hollow bones and tough sinew. To rid yourself of him is so far beyond you. He has made a home for himself in parts of you that you cannot scratch away. In parts that yearn, deep and wounded by the big black hole he has for a heart. His scent follows you, resides in your hair, on your skin, between your legs and amongst the bruises on your lips because he bites like he needs to breathe. His name, Danny, Danny, Danny, swims through your head on a relentless cycle of repetition. It spins like the shitty, second-hand CD Player he carries around to play discographies of The Velvet Underground and Radiohead. But it all sounds the same to you. You’ve learned to tune out anything that isn’t the semblance of his voice. Maybe, a year ago, you would curse at yourself for being in this position. For being so taken and consumed by his endless obsession that you’ve so foolishly mistaken for love. He doesn’t love. He can’t, you console yourself. He was not made for softness. His grip is always too tight, unforgivingly calloused and hard when he presses his lips to yours. He is too much, but somehow never enough all at once. His touch weighs like a heavy burden and sticks onto you like the stench of cigarette smoke, staining your teeth black with the taste of his mouth. He is not made to be delicate. He bruises and bleeds and licks it all up at once like he’s starving to taste the venom sting of his own ungodliness.
Danny is so unmistakably cast with a shadow of darkness that it’s just as easily missed. It transpires behind dark eyes and tepid smiles when he presents to the world as Jed Olsen. But with you, he has always been Danny Johnson. He doesn’t have to pretend. Not when you’ve accepted his darkness so willingly. He’s taken by the way you seem to be so enamoured with him, not regardless of his darkness, but because it formulates the very essence of who he is. It excites him in all his own versions of the right way.
You, by no means, are stupid and he knows this. He thinks, maybe, maybe if he were a better man he would urge you to leave him. To make a life for yourself outside the one he’s dragged you into, but he knows he hasn’t taken you from anything worth crawling back to. He is led by his own selfishness, his wanting for you is nothing shy of hungry. He wants and takes and is captivated by your complexity. In his own fucked-up, nonsensical way, he supposes he does love you. A strong attraction that borders an unhealthy obsession is what he would really classify it as; a blistering heat inside him that rises and burns at the thought of another man with you. Another pair of hands on you, around your neck, another blade pierced deep inside you, your blood inked on the hands of another. It’s a thought that itches underneath his skin and inflames his head with jealousy. You’re mine, he’s often said more than once.
But the light inside you is fading and Danny, for the most part, understands. Nobody dreams of a life lived in second-rate motels, cheap dinners at local diners and serial killer boyfriends. Conversations fall short and sex is drowned by the silence and buzzing of motel signs and static television. The honeymoon period seems to have made its exit several motels ago. This realisation hits one night when Danny comes back after a week long escapade of blood-filled nights and journalism. Jed Olsen’s latest piece in the town’s newspaper is discarded on the table, the television is muted, but its light surrounds the room in a dull glow. You’re faced away lying on the bed, but he knows you’re awake. He felt it in the way your shoulders tensed when he closed the door.
It's not long before he has you beneath him and if you’re being honest with yourself, it’s what you’ve anticipated for the past several days. You ponder immensely, because nowadays all you have time to do is think, think and think again. You think about his mouth and the deep curve of his cupid’s bow, how his lips are bracketed with faint dots of dimpled cheeks that dig into his face like tiny scars. You think about his eyes that glow with an insatiable taint of darkness, so black and hollow you can practically see yourself through them. The slope of his nose, the strong line of his jaw, the sunken dip of his cheeks and the deep bags beneath his eyes and how his back seems to stretch for miles beneath your fingertips when you scratch and claw at it. He is an endless void of oblivion that fills the acquainted emptiness inside you; the one in your heart and the one between your legs.
And Danny knows how to fuck.
His hands grip and wander along the curves and lines of your body with an intense, all-consuming need to satiate his appetite. He bites down on your earlobes and pinches his teeth beneath the soft skin of your neck and litters it in splotches of red and blue. His tongue, skilful and smooth makes quick work of lapping and sucking along the peaks of your nipples, sensitive and hard, it puts you in a haze of breathless moans and gasps. When his fingers, long and nimble, work their way through the folds of heat between your legs, he chuckles, sharp and quiet through his nose when you twitch and squirm beneath his touch. His fingers always seem to move instinctively, trailing along the inner flesh of your right thigh before you lazily swing your leg over his shoulder. The stab of hot breath that exhales through his nose and onto your skin makes you dizzy with lust. Your back arches when his hot tongue meets the bundle of nerves between your thighs that's been sitting idly, without his touch, for what feels like forever but in reality is only several days. The tip of his tongue moves skilfully and deep, flattening expertly when he brings both his hands to push your legs open and wide around his head. His grip is tight, nails digging into your skin with a sting of pleasure that makes your breath heavy, enveloping the room with the beckoning sound of your voice.
He makes you come twice without even taking his pants off.
You sit back on your elbows, eyes fixated on the way his arms move and shift to take off his shirt. The clang of his belt and pants hitting the floor knocks you out of your lust-filled gaze towards the ground where his things are scattered. To the untrained eye, it’s almost domestic. Worn-out combat boots, dirty sneakers, second-hand books and the occasional newspaper are all placed sporadically around the room. Multiple overplayed music discs are stacked in a pile in one corner. Discographies of Nine Inch Nails, The Smiths and several self-made mixtapes consisting of Danny’s favourite songs of each decade beginning from the 60’s to the present year of 93’ are laid out, spread across the bedside tables and TV cabinet. Next to the bathroom door a black bag, which at first glance is inconspicuous, lays slightly ajar. Just another bag of luggage to haul into his stolen car for the next road trip. But it’s not that simple. Even in the darkness of the television-illuminated room, you can still decipher the gaping black eyes and elongated mouth that paints deep holes against the white of his Ghostface mask. Next to it, the silver glint of his hunting knife lays sharpened and ready for his next victim.
Your attention isn’t taken for long by his discarded belongings. Your eyes flit back to the curve of his broad shoulders and the perch of his lips against the dull flashing of the television screen when he leans down to bury his head into the crook of your neck. It elicits a feeling inside you that flickers in bursts of warmth and desire to be consumed by him. To feel his tongue between your teeth and the tang of blood on your lips. You want so badly to utter the words out loud, Kiss me until it hurts, but you let the words die in your throat. It’s almost like he can hear the words dissipate on your tongue and fizzle out like the crackling of popping candy; sweet and hard, like the way he kisses. And it’s so good, the adept but messy and aching way he kisses into you like he’s breathing air into your lungs and smothering you all together. You gasp into his mouth when he spreads your legs and enters you, unforgiving with the way he buries himself inside your heat and grunts at your instinctive clench around him.
He fucks like he kills, with an indescribable need to take and plunge himself inside you so that you’re all-consumed with the haze of his bloodlust. His skin against yours is always hot to the touch, like the friction and tension between your bodies is too much to bear. But you don’t care. You embrace the overwhelming thrust and pleasure of his cock inside you, the too-hot feel of his skin slapping against your own and the way his stalking eyes drink the image of your face whole. He likes to watch, he always does. So when you turn your face to the side to avoid his gaze, calloused fingers grab the flesh of your cheeks to pull your face back to suffer underneath his relentless scrutiny.
“You know I like to see your face, doll.” He leans down to mutter into the skin of your neck. He doesn’t talk much when he fucks, but when he does its to tease. Your head is clouded with too many thoughts to even think of breathing out the semblance of a reply. Especially not when you can feel your orgasm, for the third time, approaching its peak and all you can do is chant his name like a mantra. Danny, Danny, Danny, Fuck-
He’s missed this, missed you and the way you take him like it's a lifeline. In many ways, it is. He knows, that you know, that Danny is both the beginning and the end of everything. He is the rush of cool air that dances in your lungs when you breathe in his musk and the heat of the wound that envelops your stomach when he’s not around. He is the bearer of all things in your head that mock and chastise you to run and never look back, but you can’t. Not when the bad feels this good. You have all of him, and this is a realisation that haunts the recesses of your mind as much as it reassures you. He wields the blade that will end you someday, and the thought of its sensuality, the red-hot blood and the taint of his blade inside you makes him come. He is death personified.
“Why don’t you just kill me?”
You see the way his eyebrows furrow, both from the post-coital flush of an orgasm and at the frustration of your breathless question, that isn’t really a question more than an anxious plea of yearning. The words slip out, almost unconsciously with an ease that neither you or he were prepared for. You want to hide yourself under the sheets like a feeble, scared child and take it back. You want to mutter a simple, Forget it and bring his head to your chest to lull him into a sleep led by the incessant beating of your heart. It may as well be his, like everything else. Your body, your mouth, your life that rests in the hardened skin of his palms with a tantalising grip. And deep down you hate how much you like it. How he looks at you like he knows the darkness that resides in you, dormant and wanting, can only be ushered out by his command and whim. But, right now he doesn’t look at you like that. He doesn’t look at you at all. You can’t quite decipher the look on his face when he turns around and averts his head down to the floor, his gaze invested in the contents of the carpeted flooring as he picks up his clothes. He’s difficult to read in the sense that his more complex emotions render you illiterate. His baser instincts, sex and murder, lust and hunger seem to be easier to decode. But this look that paints his features in hues of uncertainty, is formidable. He says nothing for the rest of the night and when you lay your head on the pillow and close your eyes, you pretend that you never said anything at all.
───
Why don’t you just kill me? Danny thinks about your words several days later when he’s on his knees, one hand wrapped firmly around his victim's throat and the other penetrating a deep, blossoming wound in the stomach of the man beneath him. He retracts the knife from the fatty tissue as the man whimpers pleas of prayer and mercy. Your voice echoes in Danny’s head like the irritable skipping of a scratched vinyl record and the anger seeps into his veins and heats his body with an unquenchable bitterness. Why hasn’t he killed you? The simple answer is because he likes you. But everything Danny likes, in one way or another, withers away into an ashy pile of darkness. He doesn’t love, not like how people are meant to anyway. His true love is his career, not the phoney glasses-clad Jed Olsen journalism one, but the calling to hurt, kill and maim the very essence that keeps the world operable. To incite fear is his true calling. To feel the hot spray of blood and watch the life die in others is what he lives for. He could give up the pleasure of sex, although tentative, but to give up that innate bloodlust within him is a task he is not even willing to think about.
“Why…?” They all ask that, don't they? Danny almost laughs in his face.
“Why don't you just kill me?”
Danny doesn’t let him utter another word before he runs the blade across the man’s neck, cutting through his skin before a string of gurgling erupts into the silence, the man’s blood staining the floorboards beneath his body. Danny’s appetite has been satiated for the night.
───
You shuffle quietly around the acquainted walls of the shitty motel room that's housed you for the past month. Rummaging through the bedside drawers, you glance briefly at the alarm clock that flashes the numbers 02:12 AM. You search for Danny’s packet of Marlboro Reds and his silver Zippo lighter. Beneath packets of spearmint-flavoured gum and unopened condom wrappers, the glint of silver comes into view and you huff a small victory. You spot the packet of Marlboros on the kitchen table, thrown carelessly amongst half-eaten boxes of take-out and newspaper clippings of Danny’s most recent accomplishments. You ignore the irking throb that penetrates your head when you see the unmistakable, ghastly mask printed onto the pages and grab the packet. It's nearly empty from all the stress-smoking that you presume Danny has familiarised himself with when he doesn’t want to talk. You suppose you share common ground when it comes to the bittersweet burning of nicotine into your lungs as a coping mechanism. You grab one of the cigarettes and throw the rest of the packet back onto the table before you walk outside, bare-footed and clad in a pair of underwear and one of Danny’s Misfits t-shirts. The chill of autumn passes through your legs as you close the door behind you, the sound of an occasional car driving by fills the silent night. You place the cigarette between your lips and open the lighter. The flicking noise of the flame being ignited accompanies the sound of crickets and wind. Your other hand shields the flame as you light up the tobacco. The first inhale and exhale burns sweetly into your lungs and you sigh as a cloud of smoke emanates from your lips.
You’re stuck in a weird mind-numbing limbo, an inescapable purgatory that you’ve placed yourself in with no way of escape. You suppose that it isn’t all bad. Sometimes, in the midst of all the emptiness and buzzing inside your head, you think of your childhood. You think about the innocence of pre-adolescent gullibility, high-pitched laughter and scraped-up knees from playing outside in the dirt, all day and afternoon until the sun kisses the horizon and your mother calls you inside for dinner. You think about what that version of you, filled with the happiness of childhood bliss, would think of you now. An almost shell of a person, wasting away in the arms of a monster that you can’t seem to let go. You tell yourself it’s because you love him, but that’s not entirely true. You burn with something akin to holy revelation when you think about how he sees you, accepts you for the ugliness that brews deep inside your bones. You suppose that’s the appeal of monsters. They serve as mirrors to the dark, flawed pieces of our souls and they aren’t afraid to catch a glimpse of that same darkness within them, in others. They accept and rejoice with open arms at how beautifully that ugliness can manifest.
You think about Danny’s childhood and if he ever, as a boy, felt the joys of genuine, innocent, high-pitched laughter or the warmth of a maternal love. Or had he always been bred from that endless void of darkness? You suppose it doesn’t matter, not now anyway. You sigh, stubbing out the finished cigarette onto the railing of the paint-chipped balcony. You lean your weight against the metal, fidgeting with the silver Zippo lighter. You run your thumb along the engraved side, the words Memento Mori are plastered across the lighter in a stylised font that almost looks hand-crafted. It's unlike the usual factory designed embellishments that litter the common Zippo lighter. You throw the phrase around in your head and rack your brain for where you might’ve heard it. Maybe in a song, a film, or in the yellowed pages of a second-hand book. It irks you when you can’t seem to pinpoint its origin. You tell yourself to ask Danny about it later, it’s his lighter after all. What else seems to irk you, is the packet of abandoned Marlboro Reds that sits idly on the kitchen table and why you didn’t think to bring the whole packet outside with you. The thought is cut short when a flash of headlights consumes your vision. Danny’s home.
───
Later on, after your brain has cleared from the sex-filled haze Danny has fucked you into for the night, you ask him about the lighter.
“It’s Latin,” he replies, a lit cigarette perched between his teeth as you both sit in the mess of bedsheets, your backs against the headboard and your head resting against his shoulder. Your eyes focus on a muted infomercial playing on the TV.
“Remember you must die.”
You don’t say anything. Instead you close your eyes, your mind drifting off to the thought of two things: the comfort that lingers in the warmth of Danny’s skin against yours and the way his pulse seems to quicken at the words, Memento Mori.
───
It's an agonising game that you both play, one that manifests from his recent habit of leaving for longer periods of time. At first it doesn’t bother you. You contend that his craft, his passion takes whatever amount of time he deems to be fit. An extra day of his absence turns into several more and you can’t take the ceaseless buzz of silence anymore, the overbearing swindle of thoughts that convince you he’s not coming back. You start to pace around the room, chain-smoking cigarettes and working your way through listening to Danny’s CD collection. You re-read Macbeth and watch a rented copy of Dario Argento’s Opera enough times that you begin to sympathise with the infatuated serial-killer stalker that taunts the protagonist. Danny had rented the film a day before he left and you both watched it in bed and ate cold take-out leftovers and spent the night pretending you’re a normal couple. When you woke up the next morning he was gone, off to stake out his next set of victims before he ultimately comes back and tells you to pack up. You’ve been here for too long.
He comes back on the eve of the two-week mark of his absence. You’ve spent the day in a weird cloud of optimism. Waking up and showering, walking down to the diner across the street to grab breakfast after what felt like a year-long hunger strike. You eat and smoke a cigarette in the diner and even order dessert to eat later on when you decide to watch reruns of Twin Peaks. That night after you’ve tossed and turned unceasingly in bed in an attempt to fall asleep, you hear the door creak open. You know it’s him because his footsteps are quiet and careful as they stalk around the room. You turn to face him when he drops his bag onto the ground and begins to look for a pair of clean clothes. He looks up at you and doesn’t acknowledge your presence. It elicits a frown on your features. You walk over to him, your footsteps quieted by the rough carpet flooring beneath your bare feet.
“I missed you.”
He stands still as you gaze up at him, your hand lingering on top of his black t-shirt and smoothing out the wrinkles with your fingers. He hums and you bring your body forward against his, to consume yourself with him so he can hold you and fuck you to bed and remind you of the bittersweetness of his obsession. You want to finally envelop yourself with the smell of his musky, venom-scented body that you’ve been aching for. But that’s not what you smell at all. It’s overbearing and sickeningly sweet, an unfamiliar, foreign scent that travels into your nose and invades your senses. It's unwelcome and it lights up a rage inside you that boils incessantly. A hand cups your face and lifts it to meet his gaze. He smiles the semblance of a reassuring smile.
“Not tonight, doll.”
He steps into the bathroom and the rush of water against the tiled floor lulls you to sleep as you think about the possibility of his infidelity. You know, deep down that his victims are not all impersonal, after all the act of murder is something greatly personal. Especially to somebody like Danny. But this seems different. It seems intricately deliberate because you know that Danny is strategic and masterful. If he wanted to leave himself unburdened by the trace of something as simple as the smell of another woman, he would. He’s done this for a reason. One that you can’t seem to figure out when he comes out of the bathroom and wraps his body around yours, kisses your temple with the remnants of his knowing smirk imprinted into your skin. You’re seething with jealousy.
───
You start to notice the way Danny leaves without his gear. His stupid, black-holed mask and untouched hunting knife lay naked on the kitchen table, mocking you. One night, while he’s away you grab the mask and throw it to the ground, sick of its expression burning deep holes into your irises like the relentless morning sun when you step outside to smoke. Danny doesn’t like confrontation, more specifically he doesn’t like to be confronted or have his authority questioned. You suppose that links to the fundamental characteristics of any man, but he is not just any man. The days he spends away has you formulating ways, methods to utilise to confront him without appearing like a pathetic, obsessive mess. You can’t help the deep, bubbling heat of envy that dances in the pit of your stomach and infects your bloodstream. You can live with the idea that he seeks intimacy in the death of others, that to keep you around for a bit longer opens up a hunger inside him that he needs to satiate. But what you can’t stand is the idea that his hands, his body, his blade aches and wants for another. Obsesses and fucks, kisses and consumes the skin of somebody else. The darkness inside you unfurls and whispers into your head to do something about it.
The handle of your motel room door twists, opens and shuts when you’re in the bathroom, washing your mouth to rid it of the remnants of toothpaste. You turn off the running water that bleeds into the sink when you hear the laughter and voice of Danny entertaining somebody else, someone unfamiliar. Who could that be and why would he bring them here? Surely he knows you’re here, where else would you be?
“It isn’t even that messy!” A high-pitched, feminine voice speaks into the four walls of the room that’s housed your insecurities and anger for the past several days.
Danny says something inaudible, you can’t hear it over the angry ringing in your ears and the way all logical sense leaves your body. You open the bathroom door and there he is, in all his glory, clothed in a powder-blue button up and beige pants, silver rimmed glasses adorning his face. An unnatural smile is plastered on his features when he looks at the woman beside him. You don't pay attention to the intricacies of her features, you’re too busy keeping the embers of rage dormant in your body. The loud bang of the bathroom door shutting snaps the attention towards you, your face devoid of everything but the lingering darkness that sizzles inside your veins.
“Oh! Um, Who is this, Jed?” She brings a hesitant palm towards Danny’s bicep and takes a short step back.
You want to laugh, a deep guttural and heavy stomach-pain inducing laugh when she looks at him, lost and confused. But you don’t laugh, you don’t do anything. Instead you stare at Danny, whose gaze is unfaltering when he looks at you with a mind-numbing smugness and a smirk threatening to break his irksome facade.
“Oh. Oh, how silly of me.” He apologises profusely, an overbearingly sickening trace of insincerity laced in his voice that the woman can’t seem to decipher. You know it’s her, the too-sweet scent of disgustingly powerful floral perfume.
“This is kind of awkward,” Danny sighs in false embarrassment. “This is my better half. She’s a little angry with me right now.”
You hate that. You hate the annoying, patronising tone his voice lilts to when the persona of Jed Olsen takes over and presents to unknowing, gullible victims. At least he’s right about one thing, you are angry with him. You are blinded by an all-consuming, flesh-eating parasite that nips away at the part of your brain that formulates reason and logical thinking. You think you’ve finally figured out his endgame in all of this. The why he’s left you to simmer and wallow in the rage of your own manic and depressive emotions. To boil and lay in the overbearing heat of your jealousy and emptiness over something as trifling as the scent of another woman. He felt it too, the spark between you, fading into a mundanity that might’ve stretched into something beyond saving. This is his stab at reconciliation.
“What's…going on?” Danny pushes her forward with an unrelenting force that nearly makes her stumble to her knees. You can see the fear in her eyes when her gaze drops to the floor and catches on the white mask you had thrown in a fit of rage. It was too late for her, and Danny knew this the moment the woman stepped foot into the shitty motel with him. The carpet burns beneath your feet when you shove past her, one hand to cover her mouth and the other reaching down to grip the handle of the hunting knife sitting idly on the kitchen table. She struggles in your hold before you bring the knife up to her neck, threatening her into silence.
“Is this her? Did you fuck her Danny?” You seethe, your face hot and your hands aching with the poison of that bitter darkness that consumes your body whole. She shakes her head violently and tries to muffle out a strangled, no! NO!
“Shut up.” You stare at him and his gaze is amused when he takes off his glasses and steps forward. His eyes shift down towards the woman in your relentless grip, a pitiful and patronising look plagues his features. He smiles, but in the dark, evil, genuine way he seems to do at the sight of your rage. He bathes himself in your darkness and it showers him in a holy glow of euphoria like he could orgasm at the way you hold his knife and threaten to spill blood.
“Oh, yes. I fucked her.”
He can see the betrayal in the woman’s eyes as her brows furrow in fear and frustration. She attempts to shake her head again, no but you’re not paying attention to her pleas. You’re transfixed by the sheer smugness of his voice, the deep and dark cast that shadows against his features and fills his eyes with an endless void of hunger. He wants this and he wants you just as much. You push the woman towards the bathroom and she stumbles onto the tiled floor, her back hitting against the acrylic bathtub. Danny follows, his heart in the grips of your intense anger as you wield the blade into her heart. Again and again and again, you stab and puncture her flesh, your mouth letting out a guttural scream of frustration. The blood fans out beneath her body and splashes against your shirt in messy bursts as life drains from her eyes, her mouth hanging open in shock. The hot-red ink paints the skin of your chin, neck and hands in a hue that matches the fury etched deep between your muscles and veins. Your breathless panting fills the silence of the bathroom and the clang of the blade dropping to the ground echoes briefly.
“You know, she was telling the truth. I didn’t really fuck her.”
He stands, his body leaning against the doorway of the bathroom. His biceps shifting as he uncrosses his arms and walks onto the tiled floor, crouching to meet your gaze. Your hands shake, not with anger, but with the daunting realisation of what you’ve done. You turn away from the mess of blood and wounded flesh that lays unmoving, and you look at him. The glossy sheen of Jed Olsen is gone, as if he was never there in the first place. Instead Danny looks back at you, cast in that unmistakable darkness that surrounds his body and infects his veins. An endless void of evilness gleams in the dark pools of his eyes, it looks at your nakedness, and all you can see is a mirror, a monster that looks back. He brings you towards him, your body nestled in that warmth you’ve been craving. It’s better than the inhale of tobacco and sweeter than the rush of smoke that fills your lungs. His fingers cup the blood-soaked flesh of your chin before he lifts it up to meet his perusing gaze.
“You’re my girl, you know that?” He says, quieter and slightly gentler than he usually would, like he’s saying I love you. You can feel the impact of an overwhelming rush of emotions that threatens to push you over the edge. Your eyes water and threaten to spill tears of yearning when your bloodied hands grip his clean, powder-blue shirt and stain it red.
“Yeah,” you croak out before your head falls into his chest, quiet tears spilling down your face and onto his shirt. I love you too.
You suppose that what you have here, on blood-stained bathroom tiles and shitty motel rooms that linger with the stench of cigarette smoke, is the closest thing to his love. You let yourself drown in his scent, the formidable perch of his broad shoulders and chest that seem to cradle your head in a warmth that lingers and pierces into you unforgivingly. You let his arms wade you into the stream of darkness, of acceptance that he is everything. He is the beginning and end of all things trivial and complex, and he is the force around you that abides and shifts underneath the tantalising brutality of your tainted soul.